The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Please make a donation to Nifty. I had a bad experience lately that made me realize what a valuable resouce it is, especially for those of us writing fantasy, because unlike Nifty, not a lot of sites know what to DO with erotic horror ...except REJECT IT. Below the end of this chapter, I talk about what happened, WITHOUT mentioning any other sites by name. I also include a lot of things you may find interesting. For instance, as I've told some of the readers who have contacted me (Hello, Marco), Reality Itself is based on my personal experiences with statistically unlikely coincidences and bad luck. Although it happens to me daily, there are some that stand out. I've listed the weirdest ones, including the story of the unsolved murder of a friend.

Also: I previously stated that there are six Monsters of Faggot Forest. Ummm....could you all do me a favor and pretend I wrote "seven"? You see, Mike's probably feeling left out, on account of him not being included on Caleb's hit list, so I decided to give HIM a monster TOO!

I hope he likes it.

"Do you finally understand now, Mike? You don't need to be afraid of me. I'm not a monster, I'm just the punchline to a fag joke, something straight out of a cheesy gay porn!" the monster cackled. With an extraordinary level of grace, rapidity, and precision, he expertly flipped the knife in his right hand, while Mike frantically attempted to wipe the stinging semen from his eyes using a dry section of his cum soaked sweatshirt. "This whole situation is NOTHING BUT A STUPID JOKE! I mean, what could possibly be more LAUGHABLE than getting slaughtered at the infamous "Faggot Forest"......

.......BY A CUM VAMPIRE?!"

The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Chapter 12

"Piece of Pane, Peace by Pain"

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

"UUUUUGH!" the bewildered trucker grunted, experiencing welcome sexual release after what seemed to be an eternity of crotch pressure.

Seconds later, Jeff Hildebrandt felt the comforting sensation of wet, salty, sticky warmth repeatedly spitting at the back of his throat. It had been a while for Jeff, and even then, only ONE of the three guys in rehab who'd accepted Jeff's offer of a blowjob had been able to cum.

"Hey!" Jeff heard someone right behind him say with too much volume. "Are...are you....can you.....make guyz cum? I c-can't cum!"

To spare himself a conversation with someone even more trashed than he was, Jeff just spun around on his knees and took the absolute stranger into his mouth, without even looking at his face. The man reacted by dancing around a little bit and yucking like an idiot, amused to no end that he was getting head off of a DUDE. Jeff ignored the guy from the waist up while treating him to the kind of blowjob that only a highly experienced professional can give.

"Yur mouth....it's sticky...like syrp...or env'lope glue," Jeff was informed.

Jeff had to agree. He really needed a drink of-

Liquid filled Jeff's mouth. For a second, he thought it was piss and almost spit it out. But it was cold, not body temperature warm.

"It's just water," said a voice in Jeff's head, "clean water. Drink it."

Jeff was too wasted to question the advice.

Jeff guzzled too much, too fast while continuing to orally make love to the cock in his mouth. Apparently, the unknown guy it was attached to enjoyed the sudden cool wetness of Jeff's mouth, because he let out a groan and promptly began to flavor Jeff's beverage. Jeff didn't mind. Semen was Jeff's favorite taste in the whole world, as well as his favorite smell and texture.

Like beer and cigarettes, Jeff had been introduced to the flavor of cum at a young age......by his father.

When Jeff Hildebrandt was eleven, he started watching porn, which naturally led to masturbation. Being a fledgling homosexual, Jeff soon became obsessed with having a dick in his mouth, but being that Jeff was only a boy, one with no idea how to find other boys who would be willing to experiment, Jeff's only option was to suck himself, which...thanks to being skinny and flexible...he was able to do. It wasn't very enjoyable, though, as he couldn't breathe while doing it.

Jeff's frustration didn't escape his father's notice, or rather the notice of the hidden cameras that Kent Hildebrandt had installed in Jeff's bedroom a few years prior in anticipation of one day getting to scratch a very deep and inappropriate itch by getting to watch his child "discover himself". To Kent's delight, when Jeff 'came of age', he turned out to be an exceptionally talented and entertaining performer who unknowingly helped his father to de-stress after many long, hard days. But Kent Hildebrandt wanted more from his boy. However, just because a boy sucks his own dick, that doesn't necessarily mean that he wants to suck other boys' dicks, ......or his father's, for that matter.

But one day, while Kent's wife was away visiting her parents, and the "men" had the house all to themselves, Kent sat naked in his study, watching the feed of his son masturbating upstairs. Something was different. Jeff pulled his legs over his head as usual, but instead of sucking his penis, he pointed it directly at his open mouth and started stroking.

Straight boys might suck their own dicks, but they don't try to drink their own cum. Kent realized that his boy was gay, something that ordinarily would've pissed him off, due to all the shit that families with gay children had (have) to endure for living in "America's Most Homophobic City". However, it was difficult for Kent to get angry, considering that he now knew that Jeff could be used to get what he wanted, what every child molester wants: to claim the sexual innocence of a child.

"JEFF!" Kent yelled up the steps to prevent his child from reaching orgasm before Kent could get to the boy.

Kent felt a strange mixture of elation and fear as he looked at his monitor and saw Jeff angrily slam his legs down onto the bed, get up, and start to get dressed.

Jeff finished dressing and flung open his bedroom door, prepared to yell: "WHAT?!" down the stairs.

Jeff's face dropped and twisted in confusion at the sight of his father, naked and erect, standing right there in the hallway.

"I want to show you something on my phone," Kent Hildebrandt casually informed Jeff while secretly getting off on his boy's comical, age-appropriate facial reaction to seeing his dad's penis in a state of sexual arousal."

"I don't know why my dick's doing this," Kent lied in order to de-sexualize his erection (thus making it a little less intimidating to a child Jeff's age) before using a line on his kid that had worked for Kent three of the four times he'd used it on younger boys when he was growing up: "Feel how hard it is."

Kent usually needed to add some coaxing. Decades ago, it had taken a full five minutes before he'd managed to get his younger brother, Jeff's uncle, to feel him up a little, and one of Kent's cousins had taken almost twice that long. Jeff proved to be much easier, in every way. After a brief period of indecision, Kent felt his child's fingers on his glans, making it flare. It was the fastest that Kent had ever gotten a boy to touch him, and he took an instant sick pride in that "accomplishment".

"That feels real good, Jeffy. You're makin' your daddy feel damn good right now," Kent praised lustily in a low growl, so thrilled at Jeff's immediate compliance that he celebrated by initiating his son to hearing Kent make improper remarks in a tone of voice reserved for men receiving sexual stimulation. He also wanted to give Jeff positive feedback (which he rarely ever did for NON-selfish reasons) so that Jeff would be incentivized to earn more by continuing to follow Kent's instructions, even if Kent asked his son to do something that made him uncomfortable, or if Kent started to feel so good that it made him behave in a way that scared Jeff.

"Kent had done a ghastly good job of laying the groundwork, but he almost ruined it when he handed Jeff his phone and the boy found himself looking at what he had been doing privately in his bedroom a few minutes before."

"You wouldn't have swallowed it," Kent informed his child, making the stunned boy gasp by working his thumbs between the ticklish flesh of Jeff's flanks and the waistbands of Jeff's shorts and underwear. Kent jerked them both to the floor, leaving his boy naked from the waist down, which Jeff responded to by instantly taking his hand off of his father's 6" erection and using it to cover his own 4" erection, a move that Kent saw as losing ground. On the plus side, though, his boy's sudden exposure had broken the unintended hypnotic spell cast by the footage of Jeff's private moment, which had actually been FAR from private. (Kent wanted his son to be aware that the video existed, to make the boy nervous about the possibility of his dad SHOWING IT TO ANYONE ELSE, but he didn't want Jeff to obsess over THE KOMPROMAT. Pedophiles get upset when their marks don't react as anticipated.) "Just before your dick would've started squirtin' your goop into your mouth, your sex drive would've shut off. A mouthful of jizz...or whatever kids your age call it nowadays...would've been the LAST thing you would've wanted. You can only swallow sperm while you're worked up. If you want, and if you can keep your mouth shut about it, I'd be more'n willing to let you suck on my dick. It'd be a lot more comfortable than throwing your legs over your head and crushin' your diaphram, tryin' to do it yourself. And after you make me to drain my nuts in your mouth, you'll still be in the mood to try swallowing it, or you could spit out most of it and leave in just enough to taste the flavor."

Jeff didn't immediately answer in the affirmative, telling Kent that his kid would require a little more sexual excitement in order to overcome his nervousness and make the "right" choice. Kent grabbed the bottom of Jeff's shirt and lifted it up. It had been a while since Kent had last needed to remove one of Jeff's shirts for him, yet Jeff instinctively obeyed his parental programming by lifting his arms up and thoughtlessly surrendering his last piece of clothing, which had been acting as a security blanket to help Jeff cope with the stress and confusion he felt as his father offered Jeff something he desperately WANTED, but he was far from being mature enough to HANDLE. As the shirt slipped over Jeff's wrists, Kent performed a slick move by reclaiming his phone, which had done its job, but was overstaying its welcome by stealing Jeff's attention away from Kent's body.

Jeff clutched his deflating penis defensively as he found himself fully naked in front of his father. Jeff had been naked in front of his dad LOTS of times before, of course, but although Jeff couldn't remember the last time, he knew it hadn't felt anywhere near this awkward.

"Don't worry about the videos...they're just between us and no one else, okay? There's no reason for anyone to even know about them, let alone watch them. I don't want all the kids at school making fun of you for sucking your dick, and believe me, neither do you! You know how cruel kids can be. Also, it ain't nobody's business what you get me to let you do to my dick*, right? You REALLY don't want anyone finding out about THAT!" the pedophile established, making the blackmail sound as much like a mutually arranged deal as possible.

"Why did you....put a camera in my room?" Jeff asked with an adorable, confused grimace.

"Because even though I'm straight, I'm a twisted fuck who's obsessed with the bodies of children under the age of twelve. They're just so.....fucking PERFECT, and I'm not man enough to control my sick urges and act like a proper dad. I also don't give a FUCK about messing you up psychologically during the most impressionable period of your life, which in YOUR case means that you'll grow up with an addictive personality and an inability to separate sex from love, causing you to fall for any of your future johns who show the slightest interest in you after they're done drying their dick off of throwing away the condom."

Obviously, Kent didn't say any of that.

Before answering Jeff's question, Kent stepped forward and brushed away the hand Jeff was absently using to shield his genitals. Kent replaced it with both of his own, massaging Jeff's tight little sack with one hand while tickling his weiner with the other.

"DAAA-aaad," Jeff giggled, dancing around for a moment before settling down and staring at his father's activities 'down there'. Moments later, Kent felt his son grow rigid while watching the boy's body slacken.

Jeff was now in the correct frame of mind to absorb his father's "explanation" for his horrifying invasion of Jeff's privacy.

"Because a few weeks ago, you became a man," Kent bullshitted, smiling at one of the cameras when Jeff momentarily succumbed to overstimulation and looked away briefly to snicker at what his father was doing to him. "Something like that is worth recording. I've been editing the footage and making you a private scrapbook of your sexual development, something you can watch when you're older, like me, when you want to remember what your body looked like when you first started pleasuring yourself."

Kent had already shared parts of Jeff's "private scrapbook" with three strangers on the internet, and he would go on to share it, and further additions to Jeff's "private scrapbook", with many, many more. Jeff readily accepted the explanation, though, because the feeling of his father's hands on his developing sex organs had caused Jeff to stop caring about his question long before his father had finished answering it.

It only took his father a minute and a half more of paternal penile stimulation before Jeff was horny enough that the prospect of using his mouth and tongue on his father's "thing" didn't intimidate Jeff so much. Without a word, Jeff started to kneel.

"Wait...let's go in here," Kent 'directed', lifting Jeff back up by his underarms. Jeff thought his dad wanted to take him into his parents' bedroom, where there was a lot more space, but Kent took his son into Jeff's bedroom instead, where there were a lot more cameras.

And in that moment, a gradual realization dawned upon Jeff - his father wasn't fulfilling Jeff's fantasy, but rather exploiting Jeff to satisfy his own fantasy.

Kent went in first, pushing Jeff's bed against the wall and bringing his son to the very center of the room. Jeff knew it had something to do with the camera (cameras, actually), but Jeff didn't mind. He liked the idea of being able to watch a replay of what was going to happen. He would not have liked the idea of OTHER people being allowed by his father to watch the replay, too.

Jeff went to kneel again, pausing halfway down to give his father the opportunity to reposition him again. Fortunately, though, this time Jeff was "in frame".

Jeff reached up and started moving his dad's genitals around, wanting to examine them up close.

"It's okay Jeffy, go ahead," Kent pressured, aching for head. "You can go ahead and lick it."

Feeling as though he was being rushed, because he was, Jeff leaned forward and licked Kent's glans.

"Yeah, wash your old man's helmet," Kent encouraged, talking to Jeff but speaking at his phone. "Wash your daddy's helmet good. Yeah.....lick around the crown...but get your tongue under the ridge. Yeahhhhhhh. My boy knows how to make his daddy feel good. Go ahead...go ahead. Slurp my pole. Just like that."

As Kent continued making asinine, vulgar, amateur porn comments, Jeff found himself lamenting not being able to do the kinds of things he wanted to do with his father's penis and balls, preferably without his father's mouth being in the room. But Kent was a man, not a child. He had no patience for standing around doing nothing while his eleven year-old used him to play doctor, even if that's what his son really wanted.

"Here is comes, Jeffy!" Kent announced far too soon, barely giving Jeff the opportunity to appreciate the feel of his father's boner sliding along his lips and tongue.

As Jeff craned his eyes up to watch his father climax from the worst possible angle, looking as though he were taking communion, Jeff felt cheated. All of that changed, however, when Jeff's tongue was tickled by a squirt of his new favorite flavor. There was a little weirdness involved in the reality of drinking one of his father's bodily fluids, but Kent had been correct when he'd said that sexual arousal would see Jeff through. Jeff was so crazed that he easily drank his father's cum faster than Kent could pump it out.

For Jeff, it was the greatest part of an otherwise ruined experience, and he wanted to end it by keeping his dad in his mouth until his penis shrank down to nothingness. However, Kent had fallen victim to his own advice to Jeff: his sex drive had shut off, leaving him standing there with his dick inside his eleven year-old's mouth. Kent's new reality hit him hard, and the regret was overpowering. It wasn't based on regret for what he'd done to his child's mind, though. It was more of a selfish regret, the kind involving visions of going to prison for child molestation and being placed in gen-pop. Considering that the damage was already done, Kent could've chosen to just stand there and tolerate the unpleasant, post-incestuous-pedophilic-orgasm creepiness while letting his son do what HE wanted to do. It would've been the LEAST Kent could've done for his boy.

...so of course Kent didn't do it.

"We're done, Jeffy, it's over. Let go of it," Jeff's father insisted. As soon as Jeff released his father, Kent turned and walked out of the room.

Jeff followed.

Kent walked into the bathroom.

Jeff entered behind him.

"Can I get a little goddamn privacy?" Kent asked, walking up to the toilet, raising the lid, and dribbling for a few seconds before managing to start a decent stream. Kent was in an agitated state. He wanted...he NEEDED to get his cock to stop oozing the same batch of cum that his baby boy had just guzzled.

"I just want to watch you pee," Jeff informed his father, seeing nothing strange about the request, considering that everything was different now....wasn't it?

"Why?" Kent stupidly asked the sexually unsatisfied boy who'd just sucked his cock, trying to convey the message that as far as Kent was concerned, nothing had changed, and everything was back to normal.

But that's not the way pedophilia works. Just like sugar, once you introduce a child to sexual pleasure, they're going to want more and more. And just like how his son's initial discomfort hadn't mattered to Kent at all, Jeff didn't give a crap about how uncomfortable he was making his father. Kent continued to empty his bladder while his son stared at his dick and the urine gushing out of it.

"You said you watch ME sucking my dick!" Jeff reminded him. "I should be able to watch you pee!"

Jeff walked behind his daddy and brushed HIS hand away from HIS penis, exactly as Kent had done to Jeff a few short minutes ago.

"JEFF!" Kent barked in response to his piss stream momentarily hitting the raised lid, causing a considerable amount of backspatter.

Kent forced his stream to stop as he and his son struggled for control over Kent's penis.

"I WANT TO HOLD IT WHILE YOU PEE!" Jeff yelled in full-on 'brat mode'.

"Fine, go ahead!" Kent snapped, praying to God (who probably wasn't all that interested in answering ANY of Kent's prayers anymore) that no one outside had heard Jeff yell.

Kent released himself and cringed internally at the feel of his child's hand enclosing him...like a snake wrapping around its prey.

"Your thing is really big," Jeff commented, further distracting his father, who was having enough trouble resuming his urine flow while being 'aimed'. "I hope mine gets as big as yours!"

Kent didn't thank his son for the compliment, nor did he assure Jeff that his penis would get as big as Kent's, as most fathers would've done in that situation. Instead, Kent hoped that if he didn't feed into the conversation, Jeff would stop talking. Being touched intimately by his offspring while 'spent' was unpleasant enough without having to listen to Jeff go on and on, thus reminding Kent about his crime, and the possible consequences. But just like how Kent couldn't shut up while Jeff was sucking his cock, it was Jeff's turn to fill the air with irritating dumbfuckery.

"Can I suck your thing again when you're done peeing?" Jeff asked in the same exuberant tone he used when asking for ice cream or video games.

"No, Jeffy," Kent stated in the same authoritarian tone he used to say "no" to Jeff when he asked for ice cream or video games. "I let you do it once. That's enough."

Society has certain mindless beliefs that they cling to, even in the face of indisputable evidence to the contrary. An example of this (and not to conflate it with child molestation) is homosexuality. Society, or at least a significant portion of it, wants...NEEDS...to believe that homosexuality is a choice. To support that erroneous assertion, they will employ cherry-picked Bible passages, junk science (i.e. conversion therapy), or just good ol' fashioned obstinance. Someone born with a birth defect is never blamed for their own deformity, except by psychotic religious zealots. But if someone is born with the wrong sexual orientation or gender, society holds the afflicted totally responsible for their difference, favoring the self-serving notion that the afflicted "chose" their affliction, and in so doing, offended whatever religion the "offended" happens to belong to, and should therefore be subjected to as much hatred and violence as possible...in the name of the "offended's" religion, which they will insist is based on LOVE. It makes no sense, unless one NEEDS it to make sense.

Society also needs to believe that child sexual abuse is the exact same thing as child physical abuse, in that children are traumatized by it. The sad truth is, not all children respond to molestation by spending the rest of their ruined childhoods with their hands crossed defensively over their crotches. Lots of children love what was wrongly done to them. It's completely understandable, since sex was designed (evolutionarily, or if you wish, "intelligently") to feel good, even if the young human hasn't yet reached the magical sexual maturity age of 16, 17, or 18 (depending on the state, or country, in which you live). Jeff was eleven, far too young for sexual activity, particularly with his father. However, the grossness of his father's actions did not result in Jeff becoming what society DEMANDS: a distraught victim. Instead, it resulted in something society refuses to acknowledge: A sexually-abused child who liked what was done to them, and craves MORE.

"Why is it enough?" Jeff Hildebrandt whined while savoring the feel of urine flowing through his daddy's dong. "Why do we have to stop doing it?"

It was the question that no molester could answer honestly without letting their victim know just how much power they now possessed.

"Jeffy" would soon figure that out for himself.

"I'm DONE," Kent informed his son/victim/new owner, evading the question by implying that he would like to have his penis back so he could squeeze out the last few drops.

"Jeffy" did it FOR him.

"When's mom coming home?" Jeff asked, releasing his father's penis physically while grabbing him by the balls metaphorically.

"Humans believe that they have a singular consciousness, but you do not," Guile explained to Robbie. "You are several consciousnesses working together as one." (Chapter 5)

"Jeffy" had only wanted to know when his mom was coming home. He was oblivious to the fact that several layers of his consciousness had just informed his daddy that unless he agreed to surrender his body, his eleven year-old son might "accidentally" let something slip to mommy, and DESTROY HIS WHOLE FUCKING LIFE AND MAYBE GET HIM SHANKED IN PRISON!!!!!!

Kent spun around and almost went completely OFF on his son, but instead of the devilish smirk he expected to see, Jeff's face only held confusion.....and innocence.

"Uh," Kent pondered, realizing that upsetting his boy was the stupidest thing he could POSSIBLY do at that moment (or any other). Unsettlingly enough, Kent's freedom and safety now depended upon making himself completely sexually available to his kid from now on, any time they were alone together. "I'm gonna need an hour or so to recharge before I'll be able to...you know..."

"THAT'S OKAY!" Jeff cried out with sudden inspiration. "You can just lie down and let me do stuff!"

Like his father, who'd only been interested in HIS sexual enjoyment, Jeff now returned the favor by not caring that his dad wasn't feeling sexual at all.

Kent laid down on the same bed he fucked his wife...the same bed upon which he created the boy who now crawled between his knees and joyfully played with Kent's reproductive organs while acting with as little maturity as a six year-old.

Kent lay there, hour after hour, smoking cigarettes and pretending to read a book as "Jeffy" finally got what HE wanted.

After about twenty minutes of relentless penis stimulation, Kent's dick started to respond to his son's touch, leading to an orgasm that Kent didn't want to enjoy anywhere NEAR as much as he did. However, instead of using Kent's advance warning to put his mouth over his daddy's dick slit, "Jeffy" just let his dad's cock erupt, sending an 18" geyser into the air that came down and splattered all over Kent's upper chest.

"Careful," Kent warned without DARING to raise his voice (despite his irritation).

"Jeffy" didn't pay attention, instead letting the next two squirts land on the sheets, making it advisable for Kent to wash them before his wife got home.

When Kent came back from angrily washing cum out of his chest and pubic hair, he caught his boy taking tiny puffs from the cigarette Kent left in his bedside ashtray.

"How do you do this?" Jeff asked.

Kent hated his addiction to cigarettes, and he hadn't wanted Jeff to pick up the habit. Nevertheless, on that day, the day that began the slow ruination of a little boy named Jeff Hildebrandt, Kent Hildebrandt taught his eleven year-old how to smoke. It wasn't really a big deal, not in a place like Timbersburg, anyway. The sole distinction lay in the fact that when Jeff managed to inhale deeply without coughing, Kent didn't experience the same sense of pride as other fathers in Timbersburg did when they watched their sons successfully take a smooth puff. Kent also felt no pride when Jeff, not Kent, decided when it was time for him to have his first beer, and try smoking some of Kent's stash.

Thanks to his introduction to sex, nicotine and alcohol at an early age, Jeff became hopelessly addicted to all three. And as he got older, new addictions were added to the list. Expensive addictions. To support them, Jeff became a gay prostitute...and a foolish one at that. Everything bad that could possibly happened to Jeff, DID. And by the time Jeff was willing to confront his various addictions and try to salvage his life, he had HIV, lung cancer, and a bad liver.

By then, Kent Hildebrandt had stopped supporting his son, in every possible way.

At some point during Jeff's second attempt to get clean, he tried to reconnect with his now-divorced father. It fell apart when Jeff tried to talk about the day he'd opened his bedroom door to find his father standing there, naked, hard, and wanting a blowjob. Kent, fearing a recording device and having absolved himself of guilt years ago, quickly ended the call.

Jeff's second attempt to get clean quickly ended, too.

"Jeffrey Hildebrandt, I must apologize," the voice spoke up again, just as Jeff deliriously convinced himself that he'd imagined it the first time. "I realize that right now is the happiest you've been since you fried your reward system through years of sex and drug abuse, but if you and I are going to make a DEAL, I have to inflict reality upon you. And if ANYONE knows how unpleasant reality itself can be, it is I.

POP!

Jeff Hildebrant was instantly SOBER, COMPLETELY DISORIENTED, and kneeling on a reddish-pink mat with a spent, softening dick in his mouth.

The dick's owner suddenly decided to leave, rudely yanking himself out of Jeff's mouth and wandering away without so much as a "thank you". His departure allowed Jeff to see that he was SURROUNDED by naked and confused men, just like the guy he'd just blown.

To a sex addict like Jeff, it should've been like finding himself inside a gay porn film. IT WASN'T. Jeff felt like he'd been kidnapped and taken to a concentration camp...or considering the weird way everyone was acting, the outdoor enclosure of an asylum.

"Where am I?" Jeff thought, getting to his feet and removing the inexplicable aqua-blue tube that had been spraying water into his mouth. "What's going on.....and where's my car?"

The tube suddenly jerked itself out of Jeff's hand and retracted across the floor like a spring loaded tape measure, startling him.

"Take a moment."

"WHO SAID THAT?!" Jeff yelled, attracting the strangely unwanted attention of several good-looking, zombified men.

"You're a very inquisitive man....Christ I hate that," Guile opined while scanning Jeff for Reality Itself's Probability Spasm Residue, since Jeff was so GODDAMNED PERFECT for Guile's needs that he couldn't fucking BELIEVE IT! "I have a partner, and he just questions and questions and questions......usually when IMMEDIATE ACTION IS REQUIRED!"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?!" Jeff shouted in his head, half convinced that he'd somehow contracted schizophrenia.

"Wonderful, I was truly praying you would add another question to the pile," Guile sighed.

"Then fucking ANSWER it and there'll be one LESS!" Jeff snapped.

"Careful," the voice said directly behind him, making Jeff spin around and come face-to-face with a sexy, lean, shredded young man whose platinum blonde hair was either a complete MESS....or an elaborate and very expensive coiffure.

Jeff, dizzy from the sudden spin after being drugged and on his knees for so long, stepped back to reclaim his personal space and lost his balance. The platinum blonde kid casually caught Jeff's wrist mid-fall and held Jeff's muscular form at a forty-five degree angle without showing any strain...or even adjusting his stance.

As a weight lifter well-versed in leverage, Jeff knew that he was witnessing the impossible.

"How...How did you do that?" Jeff asked after getting his footing.

"Interdimensional graviton transference between me and a beautiful, powerful, and majestic Pilot Fish," Lecher replied, "but that's not important right now. What IS important is that my partner, the voice in your head that sounds exactly like mine, needs to have a talk with you, Jeff, but he's kind of a ghost, and he looks like an incontinent mental patient who joined a Satanic cult. You gonna be able to deal with that?"

"Peace out," Jeff said with a wave, turning around to leave, only to find himself facing the very same ghost that the platinum blonde had just described.

"To answer your fourth question, my name is Guile," the ghost offered with his palms out, immediately floating in a semi-circle around Jeff to get closer to Lecher so that Jeff wouldn't feel surrounded, and thus less likely to attempt to flee, "and this is my partner, Lecher."

Guile's strategy didn't work. Jeff, not knowing what was real and what wasn't, seized the opportunity to hurry away from the scary duo.

"We can cure HIV," Lecher called out, stopping Jeff COLD, "and cancer.....and fix your liver."

Jeff forced himself to turn around while wishing, for the first time EVER, that he could somehow become even MORE sober than he already was. Jeff knew that he would need as much clarity as possible if he was going to navigate a situation as fucked up as this!

"To answer your FIRST question," Guile hurriedly explained, "after your ears were shattered by a sonic blast, and you kept fading in and out of consciousness due to the AGONY, you were affected by our drugged fog bank, which doped you into pain-free bliss and relative obedience. I whispered into your mind and lured you here, a quarter mile west of the Bottleneck, where we healed your ears."

"And....what's THIS all about?" Jeff asked, pointing at his groin, then sweeping his hands outward to indicate the naked men all around them.

"Promise you won't laugh?" Lecher grumbled.

"Oh...I fucking PROMISE you I won't laugh!" Jeff vowed, finding NOTHING humorous about his circumstances WHATSOEVER!

"We're a cum vampire and we brought all you guys here to drain your nuts," Lecher said matter of factly.

Jeff listened and heard the telltale sounds of enthusiastic fucking and/or sucking from multiple directions. Jeff HAD to laugh, breaking his promise. How could he NOT? The platinum blonde's claim was fucking ABSURD, but it also explained most everything.

"So we're surrounded by......cum vampires?" Jeff asked, feeling stupid, self-conscious and gullible for even saying something like that.

"WE are the only cum vampire in the area," Guile stated VERY incorrectly. "The sex noises you hear are because of humans we have transformed into drones. They collect semen for us, orally and anally, and in exchange, there are certain....perks."

"Like what?" Jeff asked, intrigue overcoming his fear. He knew ONE of the perks, but as enticing as THAT was, Jeff wanted to know the rest. Jeff had an addictive personality. He ALWAYS wanted MORE...and MORE was exactly what Guile had to offer!

A gilded full-length mirror appeared in front of Jeff. After the initial shock of A GILDED FULL-LENGTH MIRROR APPEARING IN FRONT OF HIM, Jeff found himself wanting to weep at his lying reflection.

"That isn't me," Jeff instantly said of the beautiful man he was seeing. A simple glance at the eyes told him that much. They didn't have crow's feet. But more than that....they were ALIVE, not weary....not tired.

Lecher walked up behind Jeff, reached under his arms, and rubbed Jeff's chest and abs. Appropriately, the "cum vampire" was not visible in the mirror...the only indications of his presence and activities being the indentations his roaming hands were making in Jeff's flesh.

"It could be," Lecher whispered lecherously into Jeff's ear before nibbling on it.

For too many reasons to count, Jeff couldn't keep looking at the false image directly in the eye. His attention dipped, and he found himself captivated by the FULLNESS of the image's face (especially its cheeks) and its flawless, radiant complexion. It was peach, not FUCKING ASHEN!

"The man you are seeing does not have HIV, and no matter how many times he bottoms unprotected for those who DO, he will NEVER contract it," Guile said as if reading Jeff's mind, because he WAS. "He cannot be infected by ANY disease, sexual or otherwise. He can't even get CRABS."

"Wait...how is that even poss-?"

"Let me speak!" Guile commanded.

Jeff instantly fell silent and assumed a passive expression, letting Guile know that negotiations were going exceptionally well.

"The man in the mirror is a bar fixture who drinks himself silly all the time. Why shouldn't he? After all, HE has an excellent liver that isn't on the verge of failure. He also has the seemingly SUPERNATURAL ability to catch a buzz and ride it, never getting the spins, never getting sloppy, never getting nauseous, and ABSOLUTELY never puking."

Lecher started messing around with Jeff's penis, making Jeff incredibly uncomfortable. Thanks to the life Jeff had led -which included a steady diet of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, porn, and excessive sexual gratification- Jeff could no longer get hard without incredible physical and mental effort.

Unlike Jeff's, the penis in the mirror quickly responded to the invisible hands that were fiddling around with it, achieving a salute in mere moments, a testament to the paranormal virility of its owner.

"Real" Jeff's penis remained lifeless. Thankfully, Lecher stopped playing with it.

"You would THINK that the sexy, young, 18-21 year-old gay boys would ignore the man in the mirror. He IS, after all, THIRTY, and young gay men are extremely superficial," Guile continued. "But curiously, they are DRAWN to the man in the mirror. There is just something ABOUT him that pulls them in, even the ones who don't know that his breath can make them experience euphoria, delirium, giddiness, and a whole range of desirable effects! Thanks to that ability, the man in the mirror will never again feel the need to inject himself with heroin or use fentanyl or any other controlled substance. Why should he? The drugs HE has access to are better, safe, and free. Thanks to THAT power, as well as his ability to make men insanely horny, the notion of THAT MAN ever leaving the bar alone is PREPOSTEROUS, and should a dangerous situation arise-"

"I'm in," Jeff whispered, no longer needing to know anything except where to sign. "I won't kill, but I'll do anything else. Please tell me the catch."

Guile was so delighted at Jeff's complete submission that he didn't yell at him for interrupting Guile's perfect sales pitch.

"The 'catch' is that there is a possibility that Lecher and I might die tonight," Guile explained. "And if that happens, you will lose the powers we are about to give you. If that should occur, you will go visit someone who can restore them. You will explain to him that you're not just asking for yourself, but for a father and son who MUST get those powers BACK!"

"I'll do it," Jeff blurted.

"I'll be loading you up with SENSITIVE information, information he WON'T want getting out," Guile warned. "He'll see you as an EXTREME security risk, and either give you and the others your powers back in order to keep YOU quiet....or he'll just make you CEASE TO EXIST."

"I'll do it," Jeff repeated without hesitation.

"Lecher, empower him," Guile instructed, tactically avoiding the word 'Entangle', which might've caused Jeff to raise an eyebrow and reconsider....but probably not. Jeff was completely in the can.

The mirror disappeared, and Lecher stepped in front of Jeff.

"How's this go?" Jeff asked nervously.

"You drink a whole lotta my cum, then it gassifies and you smoke it," Lecher breezed. "Finally, it reliquifies, and I fill your ass with it."

Jeff's nervousness disappeared and he gave Lecher an amused grin.

"Sounds like a party," Jeff said with the barest inkling of the lusty smirk that he was destined to become famous for. "I was afraid it was going to involve blood."

"Wrong kind of vampire," Lecher mumbled, taking hold of Jeff's penis and stretching it out. "So....Guile tells me you like 'sounding'."

"Uh...yeah, I have a set of WHOA!" Jeff yelped as a vermillion tube came up from underneath Lecher and zipped into Jeff's penis.

"Hmmmm, I don't have a set of 'WHOA'," Lecher commented to Jeff's stunned, open-mouthed, delighted face. "I want a set, too. Guess I'll have to check Amazon."

Jeff was barely listening. The tube up his dick was spinning and fucking his urethra, reaching all the way up to his bladder. But just when Jeff thought the feeling couldn't get any BETTER, the exterior of the tube morphed, creating pleasurable surface features that made Jeff Hildebrant drop to his knees and roughly massage his crotch muscles in an attempt to cope with the unbearable enjoyment he was receiving.

FLASH FORWARD

"IT HURTS!! GET IT OUT!! GET IT OUT!!" Kenny shrieked, his voice so high-pitched and agonized that it turned Mike's blood to ice water. "OH MY GOD...MAKE IT STOP!!!"

"IT'S TOO SLIPPERY!" Mike shouted over Kenny's screams. "I CAN'T GRAB IT!"

"GET IT OUT OF THERE, MIKE!!!" Kenny begged. "MAKE IT STAAAAAWWWWWWWP!!!!"

Mike looked out through the windshield. Caleb stood in the headlights, looking quite pleased with himself.

As smart as he was, Mike had no idea what to do.

END OF FLASH FORWARD

Jeff's gritted teeth pointed to the sky, unintentionally showing off his impressive neck muscles. Lecher put his hand on the top of Jeff's head, pushed it down, and inserted his huge cock into Jeff's mouth with no resistance. Jeff didn't even balk when another tube, a plum-colored tube, zipped up his nose, barely palpable at all.

Jeff fully embraced his destiny, passionately worshipping Lecher's glans until Lecher groaned, shuddered, and flooded Jeff's mouth with his transformative cum.

"He tastes even better than dad," Jeff decided, thinking his last thought as a normal human being.

Jeff felt tubes penetrate his asshole, followed by the pleasurable sensation of a high-powered blender inside of him. Jeff didn't know that his waste was being violently liquified and extracted to clean him out in preparation for being pumped full of Lecher's special cum...and Jeff didn't feel the need to ask.

Knowledge forced itself into Jeff's brain via the plum tendril. All humans tended to automatically resist the information stream, at least a little. Jeff was an exceptional bottom, though. Surrendering to any form of insertion came easy for him, even if that insertion was telepathic, apparently. Jeff was fed scads of intelligence that Lieutenant Veronica Preston and the U.S. Military would've LOVED to get their hands on.

"The Tethered Ones/Thrall Masters...Thralls...tendrils...Lures...Guiles...Lechers...Entangleds...Pilot Fish...Pilot Fish internal organisms...Maximus Morgan...Ryan Klein...Ladislav Kaschak...Malawny Hollow...Craig Byrne...Robbie Byrne...Alternate Personalities....the Overseer...Reality Itself...The Corn Man..."

The information was as sketchy as the Archives they'd come from, but the files on Entangleds were complete, as were the files on the Pilot Fish organisms that gave Entangleds all of their special abilities....and their supernatural "perks".

Jeff Hildebrant would study those files until he knew them by heart, backwards and forwards.

"I know you want to make sure Robbie's okay if something happens to us, but why THIS guy?" Lecher asked as Jeff stopped swallowing his cum and started inhaling it. "He looks like a cigarette ad model on the outside, but he's a disaster on the inside. Seriously, I wanna puke my guts out at the sight of his lungs. It'll take WEEKS to fix this guy. If we die tonight, he'll Unentangle before Caboose's creatures even START undoing all that milage."

"Excellent," Guile replied, to Lecher's confusion. "Jeff will be Entangled just long enough to get a taste of the power, which will compel the addict to get to Master Morgan as fast as possible to REGAIN his Entanglement, and thanks to the redundant commands I'm placing in his mind, Craig's and Robbie's Entanglement as well. And as to your question about why I chose him, last year, Jeff flatlined in the back of an ambulance and had to be pumped full of Narcan and electrons, yet tonight, just a few weeks after his latest stint in rehab, he was on his way to Johnsport to score. How could Craig NOT identify with him? The two men can recover together, exchanging their addictions for non-addictive Pit Fog. Also, Jeff is an outdoorsman, just like Craig. Robbie now has TWO instructors who can teach Robbie how to hunt, fish, shoot-"

"Guile, do something about the 'roids' in Jeff's system," Lecher suggested while wiping the sweat from his left armpit and holding the moisture in front of Jeff's face. "They're messing with the process somehow."

"On it," Guile said, making the Pit Sweat explode into Pit Fog and sending it straight up Jeff's nose. "I'll use the Pit Fog to create binders in his blood that will flush away the steroids."

"Good. I'm concerned about his liver, though," Lecher fretted. "I don't like this, Guile. I'm afraid Reality Itself might be tricking us into murdering this guy, and since the Overseer didn't shut down my monitors, like he did yours, I could get fried if this goes wrong."

"I order you to continue Entangling him, and I take FULL responsibility if Jeff Hildebrandt dies," Guile established. "That should cover it. Stop worrying. My Archives do not contain a single incident of someone dying while being Entangled."

"Our Archives don't contain much of anything," Lecher pointed out. "Why the fuck is a guy with a shitty liver juicing, anyway?"

"He's a vain thirty year old gay man with HIV and cancer," Guile explained. "Why wouldn't he juice? But to my earlier point, both Craig and Jeff use bodybuilding to cope with self-image issues, making them perfect potential work-out buddies.....and fuck buddies too, of course."

"Goes without saying," Lecher concurred, as he crouched down and engaged in sexual activity with Jeff, reaching climax instantly, thus foregoing the pleasure he would have otherwise experienced from creating an Entangled. "Is there anything else noteworthy on this guy's resume that I should be aware of?"

"He was willingly molested by his father at age eleven. "Dad" only meant for it to happen once, but young Jeff took advantage of the situation and blackmailed his father into giving Jeff permanent access to the contents of his underwear. He even strong-armed the old man into taking his virginity at sixteen.

"Guile, don't you think it's a little suspicious that this guy sounds like Craig and Robbie stepped into a teleportation booth together and pressed the 'blend' button?"

"Really? Which one worked as a hustler for over a decade, Robbie or his father?" Guile snarked. "Jeff brings a LOT to the table in that regard. Robbie and Craig both need a gay mentor to teach them gay culture and the regional gay scene, such as it is, to help them build a gay clientele to keep them from turning into desperate, semen-starved hose-beasts. After all, ingesting the pre-drained, S.C.E.-free semen of another Entangled won't quench their thirst."

"Are you POSITIVE this guy ain't SWIMMING in Probability Spasm Residue?" Lecher asked skeptically, so used to Reality Itself fucking with him and Guile that Lecher was becoming paranoid.....which was actually justified since Reality Itself's agent was filming him at that moment.

"Absolutely CERTAIN," Guile confirmed. "Statistically improbable though it may seem, Reality Itself had nothing to with this case of statistical improbability."

Moments later, Lecher pulled out of Jeff and stared at him...in the way Lechers do when they examine every process going on inside a male's body. He'd never felt the need to do it before, in spite of Entangling LOTS of people during the last ten weeks.

Far more than he knew.

"Congratulations, Jeff Hildebrandt!" Guile declared in spite of the worried look on Lecher's face. "You're a supernatural cum slut now! If you wish to say something to mark the occasion, please feel free do to so. If you are incapable of profundity at the moment, however, I would be honored to say something appropriate on your behalf...should you de-"

"GUILE, SCREEN HIM!" Lecher yelled telepathically to avoid a panic. "It's all going wrong! His liver failed, and the process is stalled! I don't know how to fix this!"

"Screened!" Guile acknowledged, just in time to stop the 'cows' from seeing Jeff Hildebrandt start to seize...BAD!

All hell broke loose.

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" Jeff screamed in unimaginable pain.

"This is YOUR area, Lecher," Guile buck-passed. "What do we do?"

"There's only one thing we CAN do, and I'm not going to do it until you ORDER ME TO!" Lecher yelled before spitting his tongue at the mat and making a dome of tongue material rise up around the dying, thrashing body of Jeff Hildebrandt.

"What are you doing???" Guile wanted to know.

"Veins are gonna start popping, filling his lungs and stomach with his HIV-positive blood! We can't risk his death throes flingin' it at the uninfected!" Lecher announced.

The dome stopped rising. Jeff was still an uncontained potential biohazard.

"Guile! Something's fighting me for control! Our tongue material is psycho-reactive, just like Pit Fog, SO WHY AREN'T YOU HELPING ME CLOSE THIS DOME???"

"I AM!" Guile shrieked. "Whatever's fighting us, it's TOO POWERFUL!" Lecher, I take full responsibility! KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!"

Jeff suddenly jumped to his feet.

"Whoa, stop trying to smother Jeff in psycho-reactive material!" Jeff's mouth hollered. "You'll form a telepathy barrier and cause me to be ripped out of this guy's head. It'll shred his mind!"

"Overseer?" Guile asked hopefully.

"No, sorry, he's still pre-activated as far as I know. I'm Agent Shard. The Tethered Ones sent me," Jeff's operator announced. "So....about this dome.....?"

Lecher forcefully pulled the dome down so goddamned hard that it generated a ripple that spread all the way across the mat, flowing around men's feet as it sought equilibrium.

"Jeff Hildebrandt agreed to be Entangled, I have no idea what went wrong, and my order for Lecher to kill him was a measure of last resort!" Guile blurted, IMMEDIATELY covering his ass and PRAYING that WHATEVER had possessed Jeff wouldn't find out that their feeding area was FILLED with unwilling Entangleds, and one willing Entangled WHO WAS ONLY THIRTEEN YEARS-OLD!

"Yeah, I know," Shard dismissed, immediately getting to work saving Jeff's life. "Caleb-Lecher, wrap your turquoise tendril around these sexy abs, now!"

A sharp whistle pierced the air as Lecher overcompensated, tightly encasing Jeff's abs and lower back. The tendril flashed, casting a vibrant turquoise light over the clearing. Diminutive creatures crossed the dimensional barrier from Caboose's interior to Jeff's, diligently laboring to purify his blood and restore functionality to his liver.

"Trigger the flash each time the foreign S.C.E. field begins to dissipate and Earth's immune response initiates its attack on Caboose's microbes," Agent Shard directed, "and saturate Jeff's body with as many Pilot Fish healing microbes as possible without impeding blood flow! Don't stop the flashes until Jeff is fully Entangled and transformed into a safe habitat for extradimensional creatures."

"I know what the turquoise tendril does," Lecher grumbled.

"Sorry," Agent Shard sincerely apologized, "earlier tonight you said you didn't know what 'Churning' is, so I didn't want to assume."

"Exactly how long have you been spying on us, Agent Shard?" Guile was eager to know.

"Not long, just since November fourth," Agent Shard quipped, citing the evening Guile and Lecher were 'conceived'.

"And yet in all that time, as our revenge-crazed Lure ordered us to Entangle unwilling boys, who he then used to commit crimes that could've been easily traced back to him, you did nothing to intervene?" Guile asked dubiously. "The Thrall Masters didn't order you to do ANYTHING?"

"My mission objectives were to observe and report, nothing else," Agent Shard explained. "Although...and please don't tell anyone... I've been periodically taking possession of some of those Entangled high school dudes that Caleb's been forcing to get frisky with each other down in his basement."

"Hey, I got a question, where's the PAIN going?" Lecher asked while staring at Jeff's physiology and noting that Guile wasn't using Pit Fog to anesthetize him.

"DAMN!" Guile spat, swiftly initiating a scan of Jeff's mind for signs of pain-induced insanity, only to discover that he was blissfully asleep.

"I'm bearing it, don't worry," Shard informed Lecher, the tension in Jeff's face being the only outward sign of Agent Shard's discomfort. "In fact, once we get Jeff Entangled and 'out of the woods' -figuratively, I mean- you and I are going to perform a compressed full Entangled revitalization on him! Bet'cha never had to do one of THOSE before!"

"No," Guile stated icily, his demeanor undergoing a complete transformation. "You absolutely will not be doing that. Jeff Hildebrandt is on the verge of death, and we'll be lucky if he even survives Entanglement, much less a PAINFULLY-COMPACTED revitalization process that normally takes MONTHS! I forbid it!"

"C'mon, don't be this way," Jeff sighed. "I've been entrusted with a mandate by The Tethered Ones."

"Have you? If you'll permit me to do so, please allow me to tell you what I told the last body-hijacker who tried to assert his authority over me without proof!" Guile snarled.

"The Overseer," Agent Shard commented. "Yeah, I know. I was standing right behind you the whole time."

Guile's train of thought derailed and shattered like glass. It was one thing to have the power to be imperceptible to a Guile in the physical world (like, unknown to Guile, Burt Veribton), but it was QUITE ANOTHER to be able to FOLLOW A GUILE INTO HIS LURE'S MIND!!!!!

"Look, hear me out," Agent Shard pleaded, fighting for words that didn't want to come easily. "You know how you were created 'different' to be undetectable by other Thralls?"

"Thank you for your TACTFUL way of saying we were deliberately made INADEQUATE!" Guile observed, finding his footing in the face of a transparent attempt to MANIPULATE HIM. "I now find myself utterly compelled by your kindness to carry out any conceivable action at your whim, a mere slave to your unexpected, spontaneous benevolence."

"How about one minute of you NOT being a dick, then?" Shard proposed.

"Thirty seconds is the most I can manage," Guile counter-offered. "Go."

"Okay... I'm an enhanced human agent of the Tethered Ones. I wanted to be a Thrall, but I'm gay, so that dream died on the...uh...vine. Sorry, poor choice of words. Anyway, after Ladislav Kaschak came here to steal the Overseer and ended up holding Maximus Morgan hostage, the Tethered Ones offered to give me a couple of mind-based powers in exchange for spying on you and Morgan's Thralls."

"Humans cannot be GIVEN 'mind-based powers'," Guile scoffed.

"Then explain Michael Pearson and-"

"To the best of my discernment, whatever empowerment Michael Pearson was given stems from a process of selective breeding and coerced evolution orchestrated by the biosphere. Nature BY DEFINITION must possesses a profound understanding of human biology -far more than Reality Itself, as I'm sure the late Andrew Miller would agree- that obviously surpasses the insights of a mere handful of aliens whose vast intelligence is hampered by the fact that their superior technology is grounded in physics laws that hold no sway on this side of the dimensional veil. So to AMEND my original statement, Agent Shard, humans cannot be GIVEN mind-based powers by the Thrall Masters. Is that better? Are you satisfied?"

"First, that was a dickish thing to say. Second, I don't want those seconds you used subtracted from my time. Third, explain The Corn Man."

"I have no idea who you're-" Guile began.

"YES YOU DO!" Lecher snapped at Guile before turning to Agent Shard. "Entanglement is complete and his liver is healed. I'll start the full revitalization process on your say-so...as long as YOU agree to TAKE THE PAIN!"

"I agree. Proceed," Agent Shard instructed.

"LECHER, I SAID--" Guile attempted to interject, but his protest was abruptly silenced by Jeff's agonized scream.

"...NO TO THAT!" Guile shouted telepathically, completing his thought and jerking himself and Lecher into Hypertime. Even if Agent Shard were somehow able to hack Guile's telepathy stream, Guile's Archives DID contain ONE interesting fact about increasing the processing speed of the human brain to enable it to reach Hypertime speed: It could NOT be DONE!

"Why are you being like this?" Lecher snapped. "The Corn Man is obviously that Korean guy we saw in that Lecher Archive memory I showed you earlier! All of his hundreds of remote POVs had bodies that looked like windows to a cornfield, so it's gotta be HIM!"

"I know, Lecher," Guile hissed. "I just lied because I'm trying not to engage with Agent Shard! Now that he's saved Jeff Hildebrandt's life, thus salvaging the provisions I've made for Robbie in the INCREASINGLY likely event of our deaths, Agent Shard can go fuck the fuck back to wherever he came from, preferably before he and the GODDAMNED THRALL MASTERS ruin the Overseer's plan...aka OUR BEST SHOT AT SURVIVAL!"

"My body's lying naked on the bed at my Airbnb, halfway between Timbersburg and Mawklynd City," Agent Shard said, startling the HELL out of Guile, "so fucking the fuck back to where I came from means that I gotta reincorporate, pack my shit, and drive my rental back to the airport at Johnsport and hope there's a flight that leaves before Reality Itself gets Masters Morgan and Kaschak to come here and start fartin' mushroom clouds at one another."

"WHAT?!?!?!"

"Oh my fucking GOD, don't EVEN freak-out about THAT!" Agent Shard laughed out loud. "I haven't even STARTED telling you all the shit going on tonight! Reality Itself's BRINGING IT ALL DOWN! He's spun himself a killer tornado of fucked-up cause-and-effect, with a dumbshit named Kenny Miller square in the center of it, picking his kinked up nose!"

"Uh....as a Lecher -wow, I can't believe I'm about to say this- would you mind, like, seriously taking it down a notch?" Lecher advised before pointing at the crotch of the agonized, open-mouthed, time-slowed body of Jeff Hildebrandt. "And could you explain why Jeff's got a HARD-ON right now? And if it ain't TOO much trouble, could you tell me how you're absorbing all that pain, but it's making you happy???"

"My powers are weird," Agent Shard evaded. "Look, Caleb-Guile, the reason I need Jeff Hildebrandt at a hundred percent is because...and I hate myself for saying this, 'cause I'm a gay man, too...Jeff doesn't have anyone, which makes him the least likely to me missed, which also makes him the most expendable Entangled here. I might need to use him to fight."

"Fight whom?!" Guile demanded.

"They're HERE, aren't they?" Lecher asked. "Morgan's Thralls."

"'Fraid so," Agent Shard confirmed. "But hey, good news! The military got rid of the police and The Creeping Vine got rid of the military."

"HOW?!" Guile gasped, now acutely recognizing the danger posed by the Creeping Vine, and regretting not having asked the Overseer and Guile's future self what the hell a "Creeping Vine" IS, anyway.

"The Vine's Guile picked up a massive amount of your Pit Fog and dumped it on them," Agent Shard laughed again, even more unsettlingly than before, "Doped up the women, knocked out the men, and then EMPed all of the military's electronics with his armor."

"ARMOR?" Lecher yelped. "What else can it do?"

"I really don't want to find out," Agent Shard said thoughtfully. "Because if I were a betting man, I'd put a lot of money on it being NAILBREAKER armor."

"Bullshit, he would've used it by now," Lecher scoffed.

"Would he have?" Agent Shard queried before addressing Guile. "You and I were both standing there, listening to the Overseer speak through a mechanical screen that we both know was created by Maximus Morgan. Yet the Overseer's plan entails handing over the Overseer's gestation drone to Master Kaschak, not Master Morgan. I suppose it's possible that the Overseer betrayed Morgan, but there's another possibility....isn't there, Caleb-Guile?"

"It's none of my concern if Maximus Morgan is succumbing to the same despair that has consumed so many of the other Tethered Ones," Guile dismissed. "I'm more interested in knowing how The Vine's Guile "picked up" a section of a Pit Fog bank! A Guile isn't powerful enough to do something like THAT! And Pit Fog can only SICKEN Women...that's ALL it can do to them!"

"Wrong," Agent Shard stated simply, since there really wasn't a way to sugarcoat it. "And while we're on the subject, excessive motion isn't SUPPOSED to make a screen FAIL, and while flying, you should be able to screen your Thrall from every POSSIBLE witness, even during the DAY."

Guile didn't respond. Even in Hypertime, the moment dragged.

"What would I be if I'd been made...the right way?" Lecher inquired, making Agent Shard's telepathic voice sigh.

"I promise you, Lecher, it would destroy you."

"Or give me something to fight for," Lecher countered. "Either way, I deserve to know."

Interminable microseconds passed.

"You only have ONE remote viewpoint, and you think its only purpose is to help you aim and direct your tendrils," Agent Shard established.

"Yeah, this IS gonna destroy me," Lecher thought privately.

Lecher had no idea.

"Lechers have just as many remote viewpoints as Guiles, and the two of you should be able to possess Entangleds...like I can," Agent Shard revealed, devastating BOTH Guile and Lecher. "Guile, if you had your full power, you'd be able to place one of your POVs inside of each and every Entangled you create, PERMANENTLY, not just when they happen to be within a few miles of Caleb. Those Entangleds at Faggot Forest? Not only should you be able to reach them, you should be in constant communication with them, not just dropping in on them to relay messages or manage sexual encounters. You should be handling LOADS of people, Guile, not just your Lure. You should be happily DROWNING in responsibilities, not bored. Historically, Entangleds...WILLING ones...come to depend on Guiles...for all SORTS of things. They'd be LOST without their Guile inside of them. Even without all the perks of Entanglement, most guys would tolerate having periodic urges to suck cock and take it up in the ass JUST TO KEEP YOU! It ain't like insurance, medical, and government forms are getting any EASIER to fill out, you know."

"Sounds like fun," Guile muttered miserably.

"What about Lechers?" Lecher hissed impolitely.

Agent Shard didn't take it personally. He knew what Lecher was going through.

"When a Guile embeds in the mind of an Entangled, a Lecher POV comes with the package. It remains mostly dormant, but once activated, it's ready to go with no notice."

"To do WHAT?!" Lecher roared.

"Lechers are addicted to healthy foods that NO ONE likes to eat, and they're ALWAYS up for any form of physical exercise or manual labor," Agent Shard explained, "so I gotta tell you, I REALLY don't understand your question."

"TRY....HARDER!" Lecher snarled, wanting to know EXACTLY what he'd been missing out on for the last ten hellish weeks.

"Angelo Consiggieri is an Entangled who belongs to Ryan Klein-Thrall. He used to be fat, ugly and bald, but thanks to Entangled beautification and a Lecher who puts Angelo's body through HELL while he sleeps like a baby, Angelo Consiggieri looks like an Olympian God."

"Keep going!" Lecher commanded, wanting to despise his life...and Caleb Crandal...even MORE.

"Ryan-Guile hated Angelo's house...a lot, so he learned everything he needed to know, and then he and Ryan-Lecher remodeled it. And if that isn't enough torture for you, Angelo and his girlfriend were in bed one night when Ryan-Guile woke Angelo up to inform him that someone was trying to break in. After Angelo immediately surrendered his body, Guile and Lecher crept Angelo's body downstairs and-"

"Stop talking. I've heard enough," Lecher spat.

"Lecher, I wish to know what happened," Guile objected.

"YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!" Lecher screamed, now FULLY aware of just how much fate had screwed him over. "THEY WENT DOWN THERE AND TOOK CARE OF FUCKIN' BUSINESS!!!"

"Ryan-Lecher beat the living hell out of the guy," Agent Shard went on. "Afterward, Ryan-Guile entertained himself by talking with the police and filling out reports. The next day, Ryan-Guile scored even MORE "body time" by suggesting that he and Ryan-Lecher install a home security system for Angelo."

"GUILE, SHOVE ME OUT OF HYPERTIME! DO IT NOW!" Lecher insisted.

Lecher left the chat.

Agent Shard patiently waited for Guile to speak, wondering what his first question would be, now that they were alone. Guile went for the most impertative one.

"What is The Creeping Vine?" Guile asked. "When I was talking to the Overseer and my future self, I wasn't thinking right. I was talking when I should've been listening. From what you've said, I gather that he is just a Thrall who wears armor that contains translated weapons technology from the other dimension. What else should I know about him?"

"Just that the Steven Collier-Thrall spent five decades studying things that should concern you. He not only had access to the best human fighting instructors, he was also given the best combat-related Guile and Lecher Archive files available."

"I see. Are Lecher and I tasked with battling The Creeping Vine while you take on the challenge of engaging Ryan Klein using Jeff Hildebrandt's body? Or is it the other way around?" Guile sighed, a strong desire evident in him, hoping he wouldn't have to face off against either one.

"I'll be taking on BOTH of them myself," Agent Shard answered with absolutely no fear or concern in his voice. "I don't want you and Caleb-Lecher getting involved at all."

"And what powers have the Thrall Masters given you to accomplish THAT miracle, human?" Guile asked, grateful at not having to concern himself with his own defense, but wanting to know if his 'champion' wasn't just talking trash.

"A couple of remote points of view...the ability to assume command over Entangled individuals -one at a time, sadly- who have not yet been 'claimed' by a Guile...manipulation of psycho-reactive substances...and a nasty surprise that I don't even want to discuss for fear that Collier is somehow listening to us through his armor," Agent Shard disclosed.

"Fair enough," Guile dismissed, eager to shift the focus of the conversation to another very important matter. "If you hold a mandate from the Thrall Masters, and Master Morgan is the victim and MY Master is the aggressor, why are you gearing up to fight 'the good guys' instead of 'the bad guys'?"

"Because right and wrong isn't the issue here," Agent Shard replied. "The Thrall Masters intend to order Maximus Morgan to give his Overseer to your Master. They don't give a crap about fairness, they just want an END to all of this."

"Have you reported in since we found out what my Master intends to DO with the Overseer?" Guile really wanted to know. "They might change their minds about handing him over if they knew my Master wishes to use him to wage war and establish a kingdom."

"They already know. He told them. They don't care."

Guile didn't know if he should be surprised or not.

"If you were right behind me during my conversation with the Overseer from the future, you're aware that his gestation pod is located at Faggot Forest, and his primary goal is to prevent 'The Faggot Forest Massacre', with a specific emphasis on saving Kenny Miller's life, and Michael Pearson's, if possible," Guile countered. "Why not take possession of one of our Entangleds at Faggot Forest, utilize my Entangleds controller to direct the others, and then execute the Overseer's plan independently?"

"Uh, I don't think that's a good idea," Agent Shard faltered. "Tom Daggen is armed, and I don't want to screw up and get someone killed, especially Kenny Miller or Mike Pearson."

"Nonsense," Guile disputed. "You claimed mastery over psycho-reactive substances. Use the Entangled you possess at Faggot Forest to exhale Pit Fog until he creates a dense cloud of it, then use it to invade Daggen's car and knock out the occupants."

"I can't import Pilot Fish creatures into the Entangled, so I can't have the Entangleds make Pit Fog. And even if I could, I couldn't turn the Pit Fog into drugs and stuff once it enters someone's bloodstream."

"So, if I understand correctly, you're confident that you can neutralize Morgan's extraordinary Thralls, but you're powerless against two ordinary teenage boys?" Guile inquired.

"Superpowers....am I right?" Agent Shard agreed.

"May I verify: Is your primary objective here to prevent Master Morgan's Thralls from disrupting the Tethered Ones' pursuit of peace by trying to cause harm to Lecher and me?" Guile asked.

"Yes," Agent Shard confirmed. "The Thrall Masters are dealing with everything else, and they'll easily get to Faggot Forest before the Overseer's 10:25pm deadline. You, Lecher, Alan Richardson, Robbie Byrne, and the Overseer will all get what you want."

Guile's bullshit detector pegged so goddamned hard that the resulting shockwave swept across the globe millions of times, vibrating the Earth a billion times worse and a trillion times longer than the 2004 Sumatra quake.

"Agent Shard, what changed?"

"I'm sorry? I don't understand what you're-"

"The Overseer shared that in his past, Thomas Daggen conducted a massacre at Faggot Forest," Guile explained. "However, he neglected to mention that the Thrall Masters, for once, got off of their Tethered, bedsore-covered asses and intervened. Hence, something was altered to diverge our imminent future from the Overseer's past. I am merely seeking clarification as to what prompted this change."

Agent Shard sighed, and Guile anticipated his admission of being full of shit. To Guile's surprise, however, Shard confounded him by offering an exceptionally plausible explanation.

"The Tethered Ones want Reality Itself...BAD," Agent Shard admitted with sudden dark intensity. "Your future self told us that because the Overseer expanded Caleb Crandal's 'Crybaby Theater' all the way across MANzhinan-"

"Man-jin-ANK-ton," Guile corrected.

"...Lake," Agent Shard continued excitedly without stopping, "it's taking Reality Itself FOREVER to reach you...your remote POV, I mean...and that's giving the Tethered Ones time to GET HERE! They're fucking COMING IN FORCE! And when they get here, they're gonna try to either talk to him...trap him...or WHO THE FUCK CARES!?!?"

"This individual yearns for something, a desire burning within him. But what is it?" Guile pondered silently before a sudden epiphany struck. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I see what he wants. I own you now, Agent Shard."

"All that matters is that when they get here, you and I..."

"Apparently I entered into some sort of partnership," Guile noted dryly. "It would've been nice to have been informed."

"...not only hand over Reality Itself, but the psychic data you and I recorded from the TELEPATHIC TIME PORTAL! And as if THAT isn't ENOUGH, we know where the Overseer's gestation pod is, AND the preliminary result of the Earth's attempts to create a THRALL-PROOF HUMAN! Can you even IMAGINE the amount of GRATITUDE we're looking at."

"Hopefully enough for Lecher and me to get removed from Caleb Crandal's cursed head," Guile replied, innocently matching Agent Shard's enthusiastic tone before going in for the kill. "Tell me, Agent Shard, are you in the market for a slightly-used, reconditioned Guile and Lecher, or do you prefer to have 'children of your own'?"

Guile was expecting Agent Shard to feign confusion. He did not.

"Wow, you're GOOD," Agent Shard praised sincerely. "I'd be stupid NOT to ask for you guys. Just like 'Jeffy' here, I'd never leave the bar alone."

"If I were your Guile, Agent Shard, you'd be having sex IN the bar," Guile stated coldly. "And I'm not talking about the men's room or a storage area, either."

"Fuck THAT! Ryan-Thrall and Steve-Thrall already did THAT shit at Dugan's Vroom Room! What I'd do is break into a motherfuckin' PRISON, go to the shower room, wipe Ball Sweat across all the convicts' upper lips, and have those guys gang-rape me the fucking RIGHT way!"

"An unlikely scenario...but feasible if I do a little playing around in the minds of the prison staff," Guile pondered. "Naturally, Lecher would insist that the guards join in, too, which would complicate matters....and give me an enjoyable challenge to work though."

"So how did you figure out that I want to be a Thrall?" Agent Shard wanted to know.

"Because you already told me," Guile insulted, using a less disrespectful tone than he ordinarily would. "But you can't, since you're gay. HOWEVER, after you told me you were able to eavesdrop on my conversation with the Overseer...IN CALEB'S MIND, no less...I got the idea of using Craig's Entanglement to review everything he saw and heard on the other side of the lake, including Ruby Nash's nasty, spiteful, verbal sparing session with Reality Itself. It would seem that Maximus Morgan was correct about nature creating homosexuals just to eventually cause them to start absorbing Kinetic S.C.E. until they explode and release it as Static S.C.E., thus ensuring that breeders continue to breed."

"Uh-huh," Agent Shard admitted. "And now that the Tethered Ones will know for CERTAIN what happened to that gay proto-Thrall back in the day-"

"Peter Toynsbee," Guile interrupted, Michael Pearson's telepathic modifications to Guile's emotional spectrum making him feel strangely irritated that a gay, human servant of the Thrall Masters wouldn't know that name BY HEART.

"Yeah, that guy," Agent Shard breezed dismissively before getting back to his point. "Maybe now they can find a way to turn off my 'kill switch', or, now that Reality Itself can think and talk, maybe the Tethered Ones could work out a TRUCE or something, and get HIM to turn me off."

"You certainly turn ME off, Agent Shard," Guile mused, "but I would Guile for you in a SECOND if it meant freeing himself from Caleb Crandal."

"I want OUT of this bullshit," Agent Shard said as if he'd read Guile's mind. "It's getting bad again, just like it was back in the day...back when the whole country was Faggot Forest."

"It appears as if I am to be educated about the horrors of gay history by a Millenial," Guile groaned. "I hope I survive the enlightenment."

"Parents who don't even install porn-blocking software on their home computers are calling for the removal of books from libraries, labeling them as 'pornographic' and saying they're a threat to their children! Funny how they're all GAY books, isn't it?" Agent Shard began, forcing Guile to fight off the urge to sarcastically say: 'My, I had no idea.', over and over and over. "And then there's those anti-gay legislators trying to ban drag shows because they're some kind of threat to children? Kids are molested IN CHURCH, ALL THE TIME, but no one's trying to shut THEM down! And then there are the "Don't Say Gay" laws! They're trying to wipe out gay culture and take us back to the 1950's!"

"How redundant that a human with the power to create remote viewpoints can also lecture from one," Guile mulled, sharpening his wit to give himself SOMETHING to do while pretending to listen to Agent Shard's preachings to the choir."

"Trump's coming BACK, and when that happens, Daggen ain't gonna be the only one going around looking for gays with baseball bats and semi-auto rifles," Agent Shard ranted. "But when it's my turn to get cornered in an alley for some batting or shooting practice, I want to be able to fucking TAZE my attackers, or gas 'em up and strip 'em down! And if they REALLY piss me off, I'm either gonna tap 'em with my lilac tendril and tell my Guile to either teleport them twelve feet in the air, or slam them into a wall!"

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" thought the telepathic mini-brain with an 'interest' in the accumulation of POWER.

"Yeah, society's either going straight down the toilet or we're just going through a 'correction' before heading into a wonderful future," Agent Shard went on and on and on. "It won't matter to me, though! Thralls were built to survive ANYTHING. As long as I have men, my Pilot Fish can filter their piss into potable water, re-process their shit for nutrition, and turn their cum into all the S.C.E. I'll ever need for myself and my Master."

"I sincerely hope you achieve your goal," Guile lied in order to politely interrupt Agent Shard and get him to SHUT THE FUCK UP!

"HEY!" Lecher screamed, finding himself jerked back into Hypertime. "I SAID I DIDN'T-"

"DO shut up and listen, Lecher," Guile 'invited'. "Agent Shard was just mentioning something about Thralls possessing the power to teleport objects and...something about slamming things into walls?"

"Huh? Oh...yeah, Maximus Morgan upgraded his Thralls," Agent Shard breezed, when what Guile WANTED him to do, ironically enough, was go into EXHAUSTIVE DETAIL! "They can teleport themselves and objects they touch with the lilac tendril. Cool, huh?"

"I suppose," Guile commented, suppressing his TRUE feelings about the news so much that he'd just about reached CRITICAL MASS! "Please keep going."

"And they can touch an object with their lilac tendril and cause it to rocket off in any direction they want," Agent Shard added.

"First and third person teleportation and telekinetic impulsation," Guile summarized. "What about kinetic nullification, or at least kinetic reduction?"

"Both," Agent Shard responded, surprising Guile by being able to understand what Guile had said. "AND KINETIC REDIRECTION!"

"Interesting," Guile understated. "Lecher, while we're in Hypertime, please express our lilac tendril and use it to create a 'slice field' like the one Reality Itself tricked our Emergency Survival Protocols into creating with the silver tendril in order to crush us under a tree."

Following the instructions, Lecher complied, and Caleb Crandal's body became engulfed in a lilac shimmer as the tendril swiftly lashed around, moving too quickly to be perceived, even in Hyper-time.

"It moves a little slower than the silver tendril, but since it would only have to touch bullets, and not slice them into powder, a lilac field would absolutely work better as protection against bullets and other projectile attacks," Lecher summarized. "But since Maximus Morgan ain't gonna operate on us anytime SOON...."

"No surgery necessary," Agent Shard informed them, "Everything is already in place. You just need the Guile and Lecher Archive files that teach you two how to coordinate everything."

If a mind-ghost could drool, everyone in the feeding area would've drowned.

"I promise, if you cooperate and help me keep Reality Itself in Caleb Crandal's mind until the Thrall Masters get here, I'll make sure ALL of us get our hands on those Archives after I get Enthralled," Agent Shard said confidently.

"Huh?" Lecher asked.

Guile groaned to himself. Youth was an absolutely essential ingredient for a successful Enthrallment, and Guile had figured out that Agent Shard was WELL above the age of 22, the upper limit. However, Guile didn't want to let Agent Shard in on the bad news for fear that he would stop being useful to Guile. Unfortunately, Guile had no way to tell Lecher to SHUT UP(!!!!!!) without Agent Shard listening in.

"Yes, in spite of his homosexuality, Agent Shard wishes to become the first TRULY gay Thrall, and not merely a heterosexual whose sexuality is suppressed and replaced by a non-romantic, sexual craving for men," Guile said in his 'DON'T...QUESTION...IT' tone of voice.

"You're gonna fall in love and quit in a week," Lecher commented to deemphasize his unintentional flub. "Every gay guy is gonna want to OWN you."

"Nope, I'm going to go through the same process that everyone else does," Agent Shard countered. "No romantic love for ME. I just wanna suck cock and get fucked!"

"You gave this guy our card, right?" Lecher asked Guile with fake sincerity, successfully smoothing things over. "'Cuz we're looking for a new place to live."

"Are you sure you want ME? Because after tonight, you might be able to get installed inside that boy you like," Agent Shard pointed out.

"A bush in the hand is worth a shaved bush that won't be Enthrallable for another two years and change," Guile reasoned, laying it on thick. "Besides, after dealing with Caleb Crandal for ten weeks, I think I'd prefer a Lure with your maturity, your capacity for professionalism, and your dedication to doing the job."

"Excellent," Agent Shard exclaimed with honest enthusiasm. "We'll talk about it later. But for now, let's slow ourselves down, rejoin humanity and inhumanity, and work out how we're going to keep Reality Itself contained until the Thrall Masters show up."

It was cruel, making Agent Shard think he had a shot at fulfilling his dream, but Guile had no intention of dampening the spirits of his broken, defective Thrall's only protection against an unstoppable POWERHOUSE and an undefeatable ARMORED WARRIOR.

Guile dropped out of Hypertime....

....and was immediately assailed with the sound of Jeff Hildebrandt screaming in pain.

"Are you certain Jeff is okay?" Lecher asked loudly over Jeff's wails.

"Yeah, I'm shouldering it for him," Agent Shard claimed. "The revitalization process will only take another- WHAT THE FUCK?!?!"

"What's wrong?!" Lecher demanded.

"Guile, are you SEEING this???" Agent Shard gasped in wonder.

"Seeing WHAT? Is something happening in Caleb's mind?" Guile snapped testily. "Tell me!"

"My GOD! You can't SEE THIS???" Agent Shard babbled. "I...I...I....I....I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS! H-H-H-HOW IS THIS HAPPENING???"

"HOW IS WHAT HAPPENING?" Lecher freaked, worried about MORE shit going wrong.

"HYPERTIME!" Agent Shard shrieked. "NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-

-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-NOW!-"

"We're here! Stop yelling and tell us what's going on in there!" Guile roared.

"Kenny Miller....Kenny fucking Miller....every fucking thing goes back to KENNY FUCKING MILLER!!!" Agent Shard rambled hysterically. "Why him, though?!?! HE didn't crack Caleb's skull! HE didn't throw the first punch!!! Caleb fucking DESERVED what he got from Kenny!! SO WHY THE FUCK IS IT HIM??? WHY NOT DAGGEN OR ANDERS??? IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE FOR ANY OF THEM TO BE IN THERE...LEAST OF ALL, KENNY MILLER!!!"

But it did make sense. It made perfect sense.....to a brain 400 miles wide.

"Guile, send a POV in there to find out what's going on in Lure's mind before I kill Jeff on the outside chance that this jerkwad DIES WITH HIM!" Lecher commanded.

"THE FUCKING SKY OVER THAT LAKE JUST OPENED UP, AND BLOOD AND DEAD KENNY MILLER PIECES ARE RAINING DOWN," Agent Shard frantically explained. "SOME FRAGMENTS ARE FROZEN, OTHERS WERE SCORCHED WITH ACID, FIRE, OR ELECTRICITY!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, but did the killer leave behind any clues to his or her identity?" Lecher inquired, choosing the WORST possible time to joke around.

"Doubtlessly another time portal, either opened because of Reality Itself's powers interacting with our Thrall physiology, like the last one, or due to the Overseer tampering with the previous one," Guile surmised, ignoring Lecher's poorly-timed attempt at humor. "In either case, I need to send another of my POVs into Caleb's mind to ascertain the freshness of the blood and check the body parts for signs of decomposition."

"WHY?" Agent Shard asked.

"Because unless Kenny's body lay undiscovered at Faggot Forest for five days, and the cold temperatures returned and froze the pieces, I'm guessing that the other end of THIS time portal leads to later tonight."

"NO, what I meant is, aren't you ALREADY inside Caleb's mind?" Agent Shard clarified. "Guile and Lecher remote perspectives shouldn't need to shuttle information and coordinate with each other! Everything your remotes experience should go straight into your brain section, right away, for immediate processing! You should be everywhere THEY are...in real time! And by that, I mean....!"

"Yes, I understand, Agent Shard. Please stop talking before I don't! And to answer your question, I'd like to add my voice to Lecher's and ask that you stop pointing out MORE ways that he and I are inferior!"

"Don't send your POV just yet, we haven't discussed what you need to do!" Agent Shard babbled, sounding as if he were BARELY keeping it together. "One of the Kenny Millers is alive! You tried to take control of Caleb's mind and lower him down safely, but you got hit and Kenny slammed into the lake feet first! BUT HERE'S THE THING, Craig dove in AFTER HIM!"

"Ain't most of his mind back in his body, gettin' done up the butt?" Lecher asked.

"YES," Agent Shard affirmed. "And he's all goofed up on Pit Fog! There's no WAY he's going to be able to rescue Kenny, but after the way he ran after you guys to get Jayce back, I don't think he's the type of guy who'll LET himself fail! You have to go in there and save him!"

"Can't you just yank him out of Lure's mind?" Lecher suggested. "I mean, it sucks about Kenny, but I don't think he'd have much of a life inside Caleb's broken mind anyway. How DOES that work, anyway?"

"NO! If Guile pulls Craig out, Reality Itself loses his anchor and gets ejected too!" Shard blared, fueled by Jeff Hildebrandt's burning blood and searing nerve endings. "Guile, you need to save Craig, then keep Reality Itself in Caleb's mind until the Tethered Ones get here!"

"If YOU'RE in there, TOO, why can't YOU save Craig, Agent Shard?!"

"I'm a GHOST in there!" Agent Shard argued. "I'm invisible, and I can't touch anything!"

"Nonsense," Guile disputed. "My FIRST remote POV turned into a physical being in there! YOURS should TOO!"

"IT DIDN'T!" Agent Shard disputed.

"IN THAT ENVIRONMENT, I'M A SHAMBLING ZOMBIE IN A DIAPER AND A BATHROBE, NOT AN OLYMPIC-LEVEL SWIMMER WITH A SHAVED CROTCH AND A SPEEDO! And the only other person who gives a DAMN about Craig in there is a gay sexagenarian who's a GHOST, TOO! How can I POSSIBLY rescue Craig???"

"THERE'S A REAL GUILE SITTING IN A WHEELCHAIR NEXT TO CRAIG'S PICKUP! GO TO HIM AND BEG FOR ADVICE!" Agent Shard decimated!

"eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww," Lecher mentally exhaled, paying the proper respect to a truly sick burn.

"I need a PROMISE from you, Agent Shard!" Guile insisted. "Promise me you'll GET ME TIME WITH THE TETHERED ONES!"

"I'll negotiate with them on your behalf," Agent Shard offered.

If Guile hadn't been so PISSED OFF at being handled an UNSOLVABLE PROBLEM, he would've laughed so long and hard that even Mark Pudroolen would've been impressed!

"NO THANKS!" Guile snarled.

"FINE! I'll set it up...IF you can pull this off!" Agent Shard angrily stipulated.

"Now that I've been properly motivated, Craig won't be the ONLY one in there who'll accomplish his goal or die trying!" Guile snapped before sending a POV to accomplish the impossible!

Inside the Mind of Caleb Crandal

"C'MON! C'MON!" Craig thought while pushing his body to its physical limits to propel himself down into the black depths. "I CAN DO THIS!"

In the mental-made-physical environment of Manjinankton Lake, a tiny yet significant portion of Craig Byrne's mind was deep underwater, determined to drag the time-lost Kenny Miller to the surface, a task that would've been hard enough without Pit Fog messing with his mindfulness, and the sensation of a green-treated boner sliding in and out of Craig's green-treated, real-world asshole, making it very difficult for Craig to continue kicking his legs. Finding Kenny in the inky abyss, however, was no problem at all. Craig's Entangled instincts were drawing him straight to the vulnerable naked boy like a shark sensing an injured seal.

"Gary, Diane, and their kids always talked about how dumb and shy the kid is," Craig pondered, allowing lustful thoughts to fill his mind in order to fuel his muscles. "When we get to the surface, I'll play with his cock and balls once I get him breathing. Maybe he'll be too confused, nervous, and socially awkward to tell me to stop!"

When Craig's sense confirmed he'd reached Kenny, he extended his hands coming into contact with a foot. A surge of urgency gripped his chest as he maneuvered Kenny's body to face upward, pulled Kenny's back to his chest, got his arm underneath Kenny's armpits, and initiated a flutter kick in spite of the intense anal stimulation, propelling them toward the surface.

Craig suddenly felt a tingling sensation in his scrotum, or perhaps his latest hook-up's scrotum. It was difficult to say, since Craig was suddenly too busy panicking and fighting to reach the surface before WHOEVER'S mindblowing orgasm overwhelmed Craig and sent him and Kenny to a watery grave.

Craig didn't make it. Not by a long shot.

Craig experienced an orgasm so intense that he could have just died, and now he probably would. Bubbles exploded out of his mouth, and Craig's involuntary erection, which had become firmly nestled between Kenny's buns during Craig's emergency scramble for the surface, let loose a cloud of semen in the water, which grew larger with each subsequent "puff" added to it. To make matters worse, Craig started experiencing blasts of pleasure, which meant that the orgasm hadn't come from Craig, but from one of his sex partners, and Craig had been synched to it, as Entangleds always are when receiving semen. That was BAD ENOUGH, from a drowning standpoint. But now, real world Craig was being encouraged to passively leave his partner's unwrapped, ejaculating penis inside of him until he was done squirting. Throbs of pleasure, timed to his partner's ejaculatory pulses, were incapacitating Craig, making it impossible to swim.

Craig's muscles locked, and he and Kenny Miller descended through the semen cloud....and kept on sinking.

Fathoms above and hundreds of feet away, the awkward, uncomfortably corporeal, former ghost of a brain damaged young man in a black bathrobe and an adult diaper stood on a dock covered with body parts and drenched in blood.

It fit his mood.

"Reality Itself, I don't suppose we could have our meeting in the outside world, could we?" Guile suggested to the rowboat approaching the dock.

"NO!" Andrew snarled, apparently not to happy that HE had to row the boat now that Craig had gone on a rescue mission. "I'm connected to Craig Byrne's mind, and he's connected to Crandal's. Here is the only place I can show you what I want you too see!"

At that exact instant, the sky slammed shut, having completed doing its...job(???). Although it sounded nothing like a coffin lid, Guile, never having HEARD a coffin lid slam before, decided that it DID.

"Guile!" Ruby shrieked. "Craig only has SECONDS before-"

"SHUT UP, WOMAN!!!!!" Guile snapped, causing Reality Itself to cackle.

Guile entered Hypertime to make the best possible USE of those remaining seconds, in spite of already having decided what he intended to do.

"I cannot abandon Robbie to the clutches of his wretched mother, and I refuse to let his father become the first victim of Caleb Crandal's insanity," Guile exhaled deeply. "By this point, my external perspectives will have secured Robbie's future, subliminally directing him not to grieve for me should I meet my end... but to hold me in his thoughts regularly and never forget me. It's not the sort of longevity I wanted, but it will have to do."

Guile concentrated, focusing on ejecting Craig from Caleb's mind.

"Still, all is not lost just yet," Guile thought, consoling himself. "As soon as I leave this awful place, Lecher and I will use whatever mental and physical energy we have recovered to make a suicide run to Faggot Forest, probably dodging lightning bolts, tornados, and aerial banana peels on the way. We'll get there or DIE TRYING. And when we do, Tom, Kenny, and Grant are all getting ENTANGLED to put a STOP to this bullshit and silence them...Master Kaschak is getting the Overseer...the Overseer is going to FIX my Thrall...and I am going to GET my goddamned new and better life NO MATTER WHAT! I may not have any hope of succeeding, but at least I have a PLAN, and I intend to STICK to that plan even if-"

A remote point of view, sent from the real world, entered Guile's mind and seemlessly fused with his consciousness. In an instant, the somber atmosphere enveloping Guile dissipated, replaced by an overwhelming surge of RAGE! His head, once bowed in contemplation, now shot up defiantly, a manifestation of the intense emotion coursing through him.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT???" Guile screamed in frustration. "HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO PULL THAT OFF???"

"I can do this!" Guile thought, quickly calming himself down and psyching himself up. "The Overseer told me I'm just as intelligent as any other Guile, so I should be able to figure this out. Okay...Ruby Nash is a future memory phantom. Just before Temporal Uncertainty caused the sky to shatter, he grabbed his head in agony. Logically...or rather theoretically...if the future is now uncertain, HIS future is now uncertain. Perhaps he has seen how I solve this problem."

Guile pulled out of Hypertime.

"Ruby, do you know-?" Guile yelled over to the rowboat.

"I don't foresee how you rescue Craig, but I know for a fact that you DO!" Ruby informed Guile as quickly as possible.

Guile re-entered Hypertime.

"DAMN!" Guile cursed, then set himself to the task of breaking down the problem. "Okay...Ruby is intangible...my body is incapable...but...REALITY ITSELF! He needs Craig alive to continue using him as an anchor to remain here! He's also tangible, like Craig and me. AND he can transform into anyone he affects with his probability alteration! Jayce Harris is young, strong, and covered in Reality Itself's Probability Spasm Residue! So is Mark Pudroolen! WAIT! I'M BEING STUPID! CALEB! CALEB IS COVERED IN PROBABILITY SPASM RESIDUE! All Reality Itself has to do is turn into Caleb and snake the maroon tendril down to Craig!"

Guile pulled out of Hypertime...........again.

"Reality Itself! Please turn into Caleb and send his maroon tendril down there to save your anchor so that we may have our meeting."

"Those tubes that Crandal shits out come from those MONSTERS...like the one YOU BROUGHT TO MY BIOSPHERE AND LOST CONTROL OVER!" Reality Itself reminded Guile. "How the fuck do I replicate THAT? Just give me FIVE goddamned minutes to make my point! Then you can send Craig's mind back with only minimal brain damage."

"What does 'minimal brain damage' mean to HIM, Guile?" Ruby hissed, encouraging Guile NOT to accept Reality Itself's terms. "Tom Daggen didn't do 'minimal damage' to CALEB'S brain!!!"

Guile was about to re-enter Hypertime when the solution finally occurred to him.

"Oh for FUCK'S sake!" Guile raged at himself. "It was so OBVIOUS!"

The black-robed zombie raised his fists to the sky and took control like a BOSS.

"YIELD TO MY WILL!!!!" Guile screamed.

Invisible to all, Shard stood behind Guile and watched the newly-restored night sky. The phase of the moon changed, as did its position in the sky. Clouds appeared and disappeared.

"What the hell are you up to, you constipated bastard?" Shard muttered, truly curious as to how Guile could POSSIBLY save Craig, especially now that Craig was JUST ABOUT TO INHALE WATER!"

Shard heard a buzzing noise, like a huge hummingbird, coming from the other side of the lake house. A dark figure, moving so fast that even Shard had to strain to track it, rocketed from the shore, streaked through the sky, and then slammed straight down into the lake with impossible speed, but producing less than the anticipated impact.

Guile had taken control of Caleb's rotating traumatic memories and switched the southern half of Manjinankton Lake to the night when Caleb's disastrous attempt at sustained flight led to him trying to drown himself. And then Guile forced the memory to play out in 'fast forward'.

Shard, in stark contrast to Guile, retained his unhindered visual prowess after undergoing the transformation from a telepathic entity to a tangible form. He watched as Caleb's rage consumed him beneath the surface, the wings that had once forcefully beat the air were now mercilessly deployed to inflict pain upon the water obstructing his path. With a tumultuous fury, Caleb sought to plumb the depths of Manjinankton Lake, using his wings as instruments of anguish in his desperate pursuit of the ultimate release -death.

But as he sank, the seeker of death became an instrument of life. Guile exerted his power on Caleb's mind, distorting his memory, forcing him to recall that as he descended, Caleb expressed the maroon tendril and sent it over to a different section of the lake. He didn't remember why, nor did he pause to care.

Craig cared. Craig cared very much when a hose came out of nowhere, opened wide, formed a seal around his lips, and gave him the kiss of life. Pressurized air from the innards of a mini-kaiju was forced into his lungs.

In the real world, a fresh cock slid up Craig's ass. Craig ignored it as best he could and took a couple of VERY deep breaths from the tube, exhaled them through his nose, and then tried to remove the tube and put it up to Kenny's lips. The tube was stuck to Craig's muzzle.

Craig clutched Kenny and scrambled to get the boy to the surface before either Craig or his latest trick climaxed. Forced to obey his Entangled nature, though, Craig treated himself to a quick reach around.

"You're shittin' me!" Craig thought, chuckling out a blast of bubbles from his nose before finally reaching the surface of the lake. "The dumb little fucker's gettin' hard! Well...that's a good sign."

Agent Shard disagreed. It was BAD sign. A VERY bad sign.

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

For one of the very few times in his life, Jeff Hildebrandt was down on all fours for reasons that had nothing to do with sex or exercise. Sweat poured off of him.

"Revitalization...gasp...complete," Shard panted, completely out of breath. "And good... wheeze.... work... huff... saving Craig... gulp... and gasp..."

"Agent Shard, you're welcome," Guile said impatiently, eager to end the interminable sentence.

Jeff Hildebrandt's body collapsed into a shoulder roll, ending up on its back with its legs spread. For reasons neither Guile nor Lecher understood, Jeff's penis was fully erect.

"Agent Shard's former professionalism seems to be returning...just as Jeff Hildebrandt's pain is subsiding," Guile contemplated. "Is pain pleasurable to him...or does it just take his social filters off-line? I wish I understood him better. It's never wise to enter into a partnership with someone you don't understand."

"Uh....gasp....okay," Jeff huffed. "I gotta go for a bit."

"NOW?!?!?!" Guile wanted to ask, but instead calmly posed the question: "The Tethered Ones will be here soon, right? I cannot occupy Reality Itself for TOO much longer."

"As long as you can," Agent Shard wheezed, answering nothing. "Use your Entangleds controller on Jeff huff as soon as I'm gone, or the other Thralls gasp could puppet him."

Jeff Hildebrandt's head dropped down onto the mat, and his penis began to deflate. There was now a vacant look on his face, which was appropriate, since he'd just been vacated.

"Idle Minds Are The Devil's Playthings, Jeffrey Hildrebrandt," Guile informed him, slaving him to Guile's will.

"Looks like you'll get a pass for making that thing, especially now that an agent of the Thrall Masters ordered you to use it," Lecher noted.

"Lecher, doesn't it concern you in the least that the Thrall Masters...The Tethered Ones...who HATE their confinement on Earth, and refuse to have anything to do with civilization, would adopt the word "AGENT" into their vocabulary to describe one of their human toadies?"

"No, because even I'M smart enough to know that he made up that name to live out some sort of fanboy fantasy. And I'd bet dollars to dick-milk that his name ain't 'Shard', either. He's just calling himself 'Shard' to make himself sound all dangerous and scary."

(But "Agent Shard" WAS dangerous. And as far as his REAL name was concerned....Lecher would find it HORRIFYING.)

"How is Jeff Hildebrandt?" Guile questioned.

"Sweaty and sticky," Lecher noted while expressing the peach tendril and hosing Jeff's body down with cleaning goop, "and the length of his erect cock shot up from 6-3/5" to 8-1/2", and let's talk about the added GIRTH!"

"Let's talk about his HEALTH instead!" Guile snarled, not really in a humorous mood at ALL after having dealt with Agent Shard.

(....but Agent Shard HADN'T been "dealt with". Not by a LONG shot.)

"In a nutshell, Jeff is now HIV-, cancer free, and besides extra-dimensional, genetically engineered creatures, there's nothing inside of him that ain't supposed to be in there," Lecher diagnosed while kneeling down and rubbing Jeff's body, turning the peach goop into a violently frothing and fizzing mess. "And once I trim Jeff up with the silver tendril, I might HAVE to bottom for him...and that's saying a lot, since Thralls aren't attracted to Entangleds and guys with no S.C.E. to 'donate'."

"Wait, why are you shaving him?" Guile objected. "Robbie likes MANLY men!"

"I KNOW how thirteen year-old boys like their MEN, Guile," Lecher joked....maybe. "I'm just hacking his beard down into sexy stubble. A chin, jawline and cheekbones like THESE ain't meant for hidin'."

Lecher proceeded to wash Jeff's erect penis in a manner that would absolutely get a nurse fired on the spot.

Jeff sighed in his sleep.

"Oh, you just GOTTA 'Gerbil' Jeff, Guile!" Lecher giggled in a low and sinister tone while flipping Jeff over and continuing to wash and trim him for Robbie.

"I'll only do it if you stop giggling," Guile agreed provisionally.

"So, are we following Agent Shard's plan or the Overseer's?" Lecher asked while shaving the back of Jeff's neck.

"Why choose? If the Tethered Ones show up, we deal with THEM. If they do not, we continue to feed until it's time for us to go to Faggot Forest to stop the massacre ourselves. If Ryan Klein and the Creeping Vine walk, run, or teleport to our location, we FLEE. If we cannot, we scream like hell for the Master."

"WOW! You actually informed me of your plans instead of just blurting out orders and expecting me to follow them IMMEDIATELY without knowing WHY! I'm impressed! Did it hurt? Do you need to have a lie-down?"

"I only did it because I'm concerned that we'll get into another tight spot and I'll give you a command only to have you stare at me blankly while Caleb smashes our head into another tree."

"So do you TRUST Agent Shard?" Lecher questioned, flipping Jeff face-up once more and capping his penis with the light yellow tendril. No man or boy can hold their piss with a 'Gerbil' up inside of their green-treated ass!!!

"Abso-LUTE-ly not!" Guile spat, utterly aghast at the very NOTION. "I only trust that Agent Shard wants Enthrallment, and he's using us to attempt to obtain it. But that's okay, since I'm MORE than happy to use HIM to gain access to the Thrall Masters and get what WE want: Fixed by the Overseer and placed into a new Lure, using Master Morgan's Guile and Lecher transplant technique."

"Ready for 'Gerbil'," Lecher informed Guile while fighting to keep from giggling in ghoulish anticipation.

"Sending 'gerbil'," Guile informed Lecher, wishing that Lecher would stop rubbing his hands in ghoulish anticipation.

"Jeff! Jeff! Jeff!" Lecher shouted, leaning over Jeff and shaking him awake. "You gotta get up, man! You just gotta wake up!"

"What and I...? Where am....?" Jeff groaned in confused semi-consciousness to Lecher's leering face.

"How nice....more questions," Guile muttered.

"GERBIL TIME!!!!" Lecher screamed into Jeff's face.

"UUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" Jeff grunted, arching his back exactly as he'd done in the back of an ambulance a few months ago, but for a much different reason.

The instant Jeff's ass crashed back down onto the mat, Jeff lost bladder control, sending a urine stream up the light yellow tendril, and his legs began to vibrate out of control, as if he'd just developed a case of TERMINAL restless leg syndrome.

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, yeahhhhhhhhhhhh!" Jeff moaned while thrashing his head to the left and right.

"What in the hell did I send into this man's rectum to make him act this way?" Guile wondered aloud in obvious disgust.

"Project yourself into his ass and take a look," Lecher suggested.

"No, I've seen enough rectal interiors for one day," Guile grumbled. "Describe the monstrosity to me."

"Picture a spongy crab, about the size of a baseball, covered in dolphin skin and tickly sea anemone tentacles, with thick legs and no pinchers or sharp edges," Lecher explained while they both watched Jeff's unconscious body flop around as if experiencing a seizure. "Those legs are FAST and POWERFUL, with an amazing capacity for lightning-fast, repetitive explosive energy releases for high-speed ricocheting!"

"Sounds delicious," Guile commented dryly. "Although I don't eat, I would definitely order it from the menu just so the chef would have to kill one. I wouldn't be able to eat it when they served it to me, of course, but it would be worth it just to be able to stare at the corpse and know that I played a significant role in its death."

"So it's got two 'helpers' living on it," Lecher went on, in spite of Guile no longer wanting to hear any more," and they each detach and obstruct the anus and large intestine, isolating the colon so that the Gerbil can either inflate it with air and GO FUCKING NUTS, running and bouncing around LIKE CRAZY, or deflate the rectum, pull it all in tight, and then vibrate the FUCK out of EVERYTHING, targeting the prostate!"

"Jeff, I apologize. This is hardly the best way for you to enter into your new life," Guile sighed. "I'll get rid of IT right away."

"Please.....don't," Jeff begged through a veil of disorientation.

Guile stared at Jeff's complete loss of dignity and control, trying and failing to understand the appeal of watching a man reduced to such a state....or BEING a man reduced to such a state. The boy would understand, though. The boy would love to watch...and experience...Jeff Hildebrandt's voluntary degradation.

"You're giving this to Robbie, aren't you?" Guile's 'life-partner' correctly deduced.

"Yes...SOME good should come of this horrible thing I've been forced to be a part of."

"Hope you don't mind, Jeff, but we're giving this memory to Robbie," Lecher advised, squatting down next to Jeff while recalling the light yellow tendril, "so don't you go thinking any thought that ain't suitable for a boy of thirteen."

Jeff fought and failed to open his eyes. Caboose's microbes were working to help Jeff get over the physical depletion he was going through as a result of his near-death experience and breakneck Revitalization, but it would take a few minutes before Jeff could be restored to full awareness.

Jeff's mouth suddenly opened wide, and five wriggling, worm-like tubes emerged.

"What the HELL?" Lecher gawked, staring into Jeff's stomach to see what Guile had imported into it. "I don't know that is."

"I find it relevant that you know what a Gerbil is, but you don't know what a 'Circle Jerker' is," Guile commented. "Unlike a Gerbil, a Circle Jerker is USEFUL! Here's the Archive File on it. Ignore it at your leisure."

"I never read the instructions," Lecher dismissed.

A sixth tube emerged from Jeff Hildebrandt's throat and started spewing Ball Vapor. Within moments, a wild-eyed older gentleman caught a whiff and came over for more. One of the five small tubes greeted him by drifting over and capping the tip of his penis, in the same way that penises are immediately capped when they slide through the anus or lips of an Entangled.

"YEAH! FINALLY!" the man cheered as he began to furiously masturbate, confident that THIS time, he would be able to reach orgasm.

"Make room, Lecher, you're in the way," Guile notified him. "I've informed the men in the immediate vicinity that they can come here to achieve the sexual release they seek."

Men and boys quickly approached, receiving a welcoming blast of Ball Vapor to the face and a kiss on the dick lips by a sticky-tipped tube.

"So...the tubes aren't like Baby Blue? The guys have to do all the work themselves?" Lecher questioned while expressing the mint green tendril and spraying friction remover all over the dicks and palms of the men waiting for a spot to open up in the circle surrounding the twitching, delirious man.

"Gotta CUM! "Gonna CUM!" an exuberant teenager broadcast, crazed at the possiblity of being freed from the overpowering lust that had been plaguing him since he'd staggered out of the fog, and into the clearing. "YEAH! Fuckin' YEAH!"

As the boy climaxed, Lecher looked at Jeff and saw, unsurprisingly, that he was climaxing too. Entangleds always got to enjoy their partners' orgasms, as well as surges of pleasure synched to their partners' ejaculatory pulses.

"Geez, what happens if all five of those guys blow at the same time?" Lecher wonder aloud.

"Jeff would probably accept our Thrall as the One True God," Guile commented dismissively. "Other than that, I have no idea. And by the way, if there weren't already a GERBIL up his ass, I'd be able to send over another Circle Jerker and have Jeff service TEN males at once."

"Can he TAKE this many orgasms?" Lecher asked with concern. "I know he's pretty out-of-it, but maybe you should try to contact him telepathically and ask if he's ready for something like this."

"HE called out to ME and ASKED for a Circle Jerker," Guile stated indignantly. "Apparently, unlike YOU, Jeff DOES read the instructions...even while delirious!"

"Then get rid of the Gerbil and get another Circle Jerker over here," Lecher suggested with a grin. "I've never gotten to have fun playing with a willing Entangled who's also a gay SLUT! I wanna see him BEG for the pleasure to STOP!"

But Jeff Hildebrandt, legendary Entangled, would NEVER ask for pleasure to stop. EVER!

Twenty feet behind Guile, Lecher, and Jeff, Tyler Whitlock was dancing. He was dancing to music only he could hear, while a short man with low hips was penetrating him from behind, but nevertheless...Tyler was still technically dancing.

The off-duty and completely out-of-uniform police officer's gooned face suddenly turned serious. Tyler stopped dancing, lowered his arms, and squatted, behaving like a proper whore. Without the distraction of Officer Whitlock's drug-induced buffoonery, the cop's "dance partner" was finally able to enjoy Tyler's inhumanly responsive, tension-variable asshole at his own rhythm, and savor the sensations produced by his supernatural anal lining, which gently grabbed and lightly twisted the dance partner's cock as he fucked.

Miguel "Cabronito" Aguilar experienced a deep, muscle-relaxing climax before his penis went NUTS, firing off a watery load in a series of high-frequency squirts that would've LEVELED Tyler Whitlock...had he been in control of his body at the time.

Tyler felt nothing...neither did his possessor.

Shard smiled with Tyler's lips at the sight of the ghost of a brain-damaged boy in an adult diaper and a black bathrobe holding his hands up to the sky, as if feeling for any TITANIC sources of mental energy that might be approaching.

Guile had fallen for Shard's clever lies.

All of a sudden, Miguel's anti-gay cultural programming overrode his rapidly dwindling libido and he tried to viciously yank his cock free from Tyler's hole. He couldn't. Tyler's green-coated asshole and anal lining TIGHTENED and became impossibly STICKY, and the monster that was suckling the tip of Miguel's dick inhaled every bit of the surrounding air and gasses, creating a vacuum that ensured that "Cabronito" wasn't going ANYWHERE until he was PERMITTED to leave.

"Lemme go!" Miguel yelled, slamming his fists into Tyler's back.

"No hasta que lo tenga todo," Shard coldly informed the man, adding a little fear to Miguel's rage, but not enough to stop the punches.

Shard let the barrage continue. It was a laughable amount of pain compared to what he'd endured inside Jeff Hildebrandt, but every little bit counted when you were trying to keep a monster pacified...and less likely to ruin all that Shard had worked for.

After Shard finished getting every single drop of cum out of Miguel's cock, he gave the man his freedom back. Miguel responded by punching the base of Tyler's skull, knocking Shard's puppet unconscious and rendering him useless to Shard.

"LET ME KILL HIM, SHARD!" the monster begged. "TAKE POSSESSION OF THE ONE WHO FUCKS HIS MISTRESS'S LITTLE GIRL! THE ONE WITH THE TATTOOS SHARD, PLEASE! I'LL USE HIM TO BEAT THE HISPANIC TO DEATH!"

"NO! We're already burning HOT, and I need you to save your strength and keep it together in case the muscle-bound hothead and the Cosplay Kid give us any trouble.

"WHAT? WE'RE GOING TO FACE THEM NOW???" the monster called out with an unsettling amount of enthusiasm.

"We're just going to TALK to them...hopefully," Shard sighed. "Our goal is just to keep Teams Morgan and Kaschak separated and twiddling their thumbs while we slip in and execute my plan."

"WE SCHEME WITH GUILE AND LECHER!" the monster proposed. "WE START KILLING THEIR ENTANGLEDS! COLLIER'S AND RYAN'S GUILES WILL SENSE IT! WHEN THEY TELEPORT HERE TO STOP THE SLAUGHTER, THE FOUR OF US ATTACK THEM!!!!"

The monster's condition was deteriorating quickly. Shard was PISSED at the person responsible for it, and sincerely desired to pay him back.

The monster heard....and secretly sent a piece of himself to carry out Shard's unexpressed wish.

"Maybe it's a good thing," Shard contemplated in response to the monster's deterioration, OBLIVIOUS to having accidentally turned the monster LOOSE on someone. "A looming deadline will motivate me, and make me feel a little less nervous about BLACKMAILING A GOD!"

"Tell ya what....we'll work with Guile and Lecher to kill Morgan's Thralls IF you can tell me one thing we would gain from doing it," Shard conditioned with a calmness he...did...NOT...feel. "Just one, go ahead."

"Pain?" the monster offered innocently after a brief brain-storming session.

The monster had a point, in spite of he himself being unaware of it. If the monster's condition worsened, those boys could feed him the pain that Shard no longer could.

"Look, I need to know if you're going to be able to keep it together when we confront the other Thralls," Shard sighed.

"Worry about yourself," the monster cackled. "YOU'RE the one who won't be able to 'keep it together'. Do you seriously think YOU'LL be able to 'keep it together' once you see HIM, and he finally sees YOU?"

"I'll be fine," Shard lied to himself.

"You'll spring the 'nasty surprise' on him the INSTANT your eyes meet," the monster snarled. "It won't be ME who starts shit with them, it will be YOU! We should just kill them and be DONE with it. You KNOW that's the way it's going to END!"

"We're doing my plan!" Shard asserted. "Now let's pick which Entangled is least likely to be missed and then go on a PAINFUL quarter mile sprint through the woods with him...MAXIMUM exertion."

"BUT YOUR PLAN CAN'T WORK!" The monster objected. "YOU'VE SEEN WHAT CALEB CRANDAL DID TO THE SOLE SURVIVING KENNY MILLER!"

Every once in a great while, the monster would say something intelligent. It never failed to catch Shard off guard.

"Perhaps there are other Kenny Millers out there in the multiverse who managed to survive Faggot Forest," Shard speculated optimistically. "It's just...maybe they all happened to successfully outrun a time portal leading to an opening hundreds of feet in the air above a psychic reproduction of Manjinankton Lake. We just have to hope."

"THERE IS NO HOPE!" the monster screeched. "THERE IS ONLY PAIN!"

"I hate that you always say that," Shard sighed, "and I hate that you're always right."

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

Robbie approached a large mob of men who were watching some sort of spectacle. Whatever it was, it had attracted lots of attendees. In spite of all the men being naked, they were packed tightly together, the drugs in the air having removed any heterosexual male anxiety concerning being naked and pressed up against other naked men.

Everyone was so fucked up on Pit Fog that no one covered themselves, not even men whose lack of size would've ordinarily encouraged them to do so, nor those whose elevated level of sexual arousal could be determined with just a glance.

Profanities, sexual comments, and cruel chuckles filled the air.

"What'cha smilin' about, Red?" Robbie heard an obnoxious, attention seeking voice boom from the inside of the circle. "You keep smilin' like that, Keith's gonna start thinkin' you like him!"

"Red?" Robbie wondered, knowing that only red-heads like him and his father ever got called 'Red'.

Robbie stood on tippy-toes, trying to see over the crowd. He wasn't tall enough.

"He smiles at every guy who sticks it in him, not just me!" the homophobic Keith Moorehouse snarled, not the sort of man who could just let a harmless remark like that pass by unopposed, especially considering that he was presently engaged in an activity that tended to cast doubt on a man's heterosexuality. "So if you're gonna call ME a faggot, you'd better be ready to call all of THEM faggots, too!"

"AIN'T QUEER IF YOU'RE ON TOP!" Someone in the crowd spouted, saying a tired expression that Robbie had never heard before, but was doomed to hear endlessly over the course of the next hundred years or so.

As Robbie pushed his way through the rowdy, doped throng, his head cleared.

"Guile, I'm not high any more!" Robbie protested mentally. "C'mon...fuck me up again!"

"You need to be sober when you see this," Lecher snickered in his mind.

Robbie reached the front of the crowd....and froze.

Craig Byrne was lying at the edge of the platform that Lecher used to Entangle him. Two men were holding his legs in the air. Between them, a skinny, forty-something guy with a soul patch...Keith, no doubt...had his hands on Craig's thighs for support and stability while Keith worked his hips.

Robbie's daddy was being gang-banged.

Robbie looked at his father's face, afraid that he would see fear, panic, pain, confusion, outrage, and everything else one would expect to see in the eyes of a heterosexual man who found themselves in that situation. However, Craig's permagrin and his dreamy, brainless, gooey-eyed expression dispelled all of Robbie's concerns.

Craig Byrne was joyfully and deliriously surrendering his asshole to anyone who wanted it. And like all the other males surrounding him, Craig's willingness and drugged helplessness brought out the sexual predator in Robbie.

"Guile! You're recording this for me, RIGHT?!"

"All of it, starting from the moment your father farted Ball Vapor into the face of a man named Buck Hammond," Guile informed Robbie. "You can relive it all from your father's perspective or that of his various 'lovers'. Be warned, though, the men screwing your father have been thinking and saying nasty things to him while they use him. Several of them have spit AT him while spitting IN him."

Robbie's heart rate accelerated, exactly as Guile knew it would, and the boy's smallish penis started to thicken a little.

"The men have exhibited so much...shall we say...'toxic masculinity' towards your father that I'm almost afraid to add this mind-file to your 'library', for fear that it will be too much for you to handle," Guile lied.

Robbie would 'handle it' just fine.

"You can relive it AS your father, thinking his thoughts and experiencing his intoxication, OR you could experience it as yourself, either drugged or with a clear head. However I wouldn't recommend experiencing this degree of obnoxious male sexual cruelty while sober, though.

Robbie would recommend it. Robbie would recommend it a LOT.

He would give the experience 5-stars.

....as would most of the men who would go on to shell out hundreds to own the complete "Bottleneck Sexual Memory Collection".

"Hey, kid!" Keith yelled, sounding concerned, but not concerned enough for him to stop thrusting, "You look a little young. You don't need to be here watching this shit! You git on outta-"

"Heyyyyyyy, Rawbeeeeee" Craig called out in delirium. "There he is! Havin'....havin' fun, buddy?"

There was a pause in the background noise as most of the spectators stopped talking and turned as one to stare at Robbie.

Burt Veribton was at the perfect angle to record Robbie's pleased smile in response to all the male attention he was receiving.

"Hey...c'mere...whut...whut....happened?" Craig asked while drunkenly pointing at Robbie's shaved crotch.

Craig gestured for his son to step closer.

Robbie stepped forward, capivated by the rocking motion of his dad's body as "Keith" fucked him.

Although he saw it coming, Robbie still clenched his teeth and shuddered at the feel of his father's hand reaching out and sliding across his smooth pubic region.

"You ought not do that, Red," someone in the crowd suggested, who misinterpreted Robbie's pained expression as discomfort instead of intense enjoyment....the erotic equivalent of a sudden elevator descent.

"Where'd they go?" Craig asked of Robbie's missing pubes. "Y'just had 'em uh liddel bid ago!"

"I don't have pubes yet, Dad," Robbie lied, raising his voice to get attention, but not loud enough to appear to be trying to get attention. "I'm only nine. You know that!"

Robbie was just being silly. He knew that NO ONE would EVER believe that he was THAT young.

"People already know I'm thirteen!" Robbie snapped, angrily wiping clipped orange hairs off of his crotch. "And there's no WAY anyone would think I'm only NINE!"

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...yeahhhhhhhhh, suuuuuuuure," Lecher tormented. (Chapter 7) ___________________________________________________________________________

(It wasn't quite as much of a stretch as Robbie thought.)

"Ooooooh, riiiiiiight," Craig played along, but adding a loaded comment: "Bin so...been so long...since I last seen you. Thought you'd be...all grown up by now."

Robbie understood, but his mind was focused elsewhere, so he pretended not to understand.

Craig withdrew his hand from Robbie's pubic region. Robbie immediately missed its tickly warmth. Robbie wanted it back...and LOWER.

"Dad, play with my pee-pee," Robbie commanded, he himself unknowingly obeying LECHER'S command to only refer to his penis as a pee-pee for the rest of the night.

"His 'pee-pee'?" Robbie heard someone in the crowd guffaw, confusing him.

"Yeah, sure," Craig casually agreed, reaching out to diddle his child's stick and berries....and sending a grumble of shocked disbelief through the crowd. Robbie loved how the hand felt on his underdeveloped junk, but in spite of being a total freak, he was still a thirteen year-old boy whose daddy was messing around between his legs. Robbie couldn't stop himself from twitching and spasming, sending a second set of murmurs through the crowd. But this one was different. It was a wicked sound that heterosexual men usually only make when they witness a stupid, naive girl swoon and fall under the sexual spell of a guy who just wants to fuck her and move on.

In spite of Robbie being in complete sexual control of his father, the boy wasn't really in control at all. His hour and a half of (real-world, non-virtual) sexual experience just couldn't compare to Craig's, who'd been bedding women, both young and older, since his late teens. Now that Entanglement and a head full of instructions transmitted via the plum tendril had made Craig fall in love with his boy in a whole new way, Robbie was now in the crosshairs of all of Craig's accumulated seduction skills.

"Control" consists of much more than just being able to make someone follow your commands.

"How'cum....how'cum you don't...you don't kiss yore ol' man anymore?" Craig asked his child once Robbie's pee-pee was fully hard.

With a smile of anticipation at how the crowd would react, Robbie bent over his father and gave him an awkward, juvenile, open-mouthed kiss while reaching down to mess with his daddy's floppy cock and loose balls.

"Let's watch that hand, boy," Keith warned gruffly over the various sounds of disapproval. Robbie didn't listen. He used his index and middle fingers to "walk" the skin of his father's scrotum out of the way so he could get to his spiked asshole and the prick pistoning in and out of it. Robbie put his thumb and middle finger against Keith's cock and took joy in the feel of his daddy's asshole bulging outward and recessing inward as Keith fucked him."

The sensation of his child's fingertips on the rim of his hole felt so good to Craig that he reached up, put his hand of the back of his boy's head, and pushed his tongue up into Robbie's mouth.

"Jesus!" Craig's right 'leg supporter' spat in disgust, although not enough disgust to make him look away from the donkey show-like spectacle playing out in front of him. Many of the morally offended men in the audience ALSO appeared to struggle with an incapacity to avert their gaze.

"Kid, GET YOUR FAGGOT HAND OFF OF MY DICK!" Keith hollered...to hide the fact that fucking a boy's father in front of him, while that boy physically FELT HIM DOING IT, had completely pushed Keith over the edge."

"MMMMMMMMMMM!!!" Craig groaned, making Robbie's soft palate vibrate as he tongued his child with more passion than any pussy he'd ever eaten.

Keith orgasmed, far more intensely than he would EVER admit to, not that any of the men in the clearing would go on to discuss what happened to them near the Bottleneck on the night of the Timbersburg/Johnsport Incident.

Craig shared Keith's orgasm...at an even HIGHER intensity, making him growl into Robbie's mouth while taking his hand off of Robbie's pee-pee and reaching behind him to roughly massage the boy's right glute, just to have somewhere to put the energy Keith was pumping into him.

"God-DAMN!" Craig groaned loudly after pulling his mouth away from Robbie's and experiencing a full-body tremor that all but lifted him off of the table.

A couple of 'WHOA's were heard from the audience, along with a couple of cowboy hoots. As homophobic as the crowd normally was, there was just something about watching another man experience THAT level of enjoyment that naturally caused a male sympathetic response.

Keith started pumping cum into the happy monster up Craig's ass, causing Craig to make unintelligible primal noises as almost-unbearable pleasure pulses washed over him.

No child should ever watch their father go through something like that.

Robbie disagreed, staring deep into his daddy's overloaded eyes while continuing to play with him 'down there'.

"How izzit your dad keeps cummin' like that, but he doesn't get hard and he doesn't squirt?" an elderly gentleman asked Robbie.

"Magic," Robbie dismissed.

"Because HE ain't the one doing the fucking, and because he's saving his load for his boy," Lecher informed the man, coming up behind Robbie and giving the lad a double reach-around. "Besides, who wants to fuck a guy covered in spooge?"

The old man backed away from Lecher and headed into the crowd.

"ALL'A YOU GUYS HAVING A GOOD TIME?!" Lecher called out.

Mumbles of "Who the fuck does that kid think he is?" went through the crowd...until Lecher flung up his arms, and a POOF of Pit Fog exploded from his sweaty pits and settled over the crowd.

Lecher smiled at the resulting sound of men eagerly huffing the Pit Fog.

"Men are pathetic, Cop Sucker," Lecher remarked, mussing the boy's hair yet again. "Don't let me catch you growing up into one!"

Lecher needn't have worried. Robert Byrne was fated to NEVER grow up........although a few of his cum vampire brothers would come to wish that he would, at least a LITTLE.

"Hey......you," Craig pointed in greeting while still receiving pulses.

To Robbie's surprise, Lecher DIDN'T make a mean comment.

"Hey, Lumberjack. Just so you know, me and Guile made you a new best friend. His name's Jeff Hildebrandt. He'll be around in a bit. Green eyes, built, huge cock. You can't miss him."

"Huh?" Craig replied.

Lecher turned back toward Robbie.

"Oh, by the way, Jeff has the power to control YOU sexually the same way you can control your DAD sexually, just so you know."

"What? WHY?" Robbie balked.

"Alternate Personality Five," Lecher replied.

"What that?" Robbie demanded.

Lecher vanished into thin air. Robbie, aware that Lecher had merely turned invisible, frantically waved his arms, attempting to catch hold of him. However, Lecher had deftly diminished his weight to near nothingness and effortlessly leaped over the crowd, evading capture and making a swift escape.

Wanting answers, Robbie closed his eyes and concentrated. His memory desktop appeared behind his eyes, with icons representing all the special sexual memories that he could experience or relive any time he wanted. At the beginning of the row, there was an icon that said "Paternal Sexual Enslavement For Dummies". Robbie could easily guess who was responsible for naming it THAT, in spite of not completely understanding what it meant.

The icon turned into a book, which opened to the first page. Robbie mentally slammed it shut and opened his eyes. Like Lecher, Robbie didn't like to read the instructions either.

"Craig, whut...what're you doin'?" a young male voice insisted, startling Robbie and making him turn back to the fuck table.

One of the previous 'leg supporters' had been replaced, and his predecessor was now taking his turn inside Robbie's dad. Robbie followed their gaze to the person who'd addressed his father.

"Craig....izzat.....izzat your kid?!?" asked a twenty-ish, unshaven young man with scraggly light brown hair, conspicuously large holes in his earlobes, and so many upper body tattoos that Robbie thought he was wearing a shirt. "Izzat....Robbie?"

"Heyyyyyyyy....Alex!" Craig greeted drunkenly, so oblivious that he didn't care that someone he knew was watching him get fucked up the ass by a train of guys...in front of his kid! "Enjoin....enjoyin' yer weekend? You...you off today? D'yoo....d'yoo hafta go in tomorrow?"

Alex Thornn, a work friend of Craig whose exposure to Pit Fog hadn't affected him nearly as much as everyone around him, made his way through the throng and approached Craig from the other side of the table.

"Craig, ya gotta...ya gotta listen to me, man," Alex urged, determined to plead his case in spite of Craig being completely wasted. "You don't wanna do this, man. You really don't, seriously."

"HEY....KID!" Craig's 'lover' growled. "How 'bout you mind your own fuckin' business till I'm done!"

"He doesn't know whut he's dooon!" Alex protested, fighting the effects of his own personalized Pit Fog party drug cocktail. "He's all fucked up!"

"We're ALL fucked up!" the man shot back. "I don't even know how I fuckin' GOT here! Nobody does! All I DO know is MY NUTS ACHE LIKE HELL, and that VOICE in our heads is sayin' that FUCKIN' these guys is the only way to git it to STOP!"

Alex was about to take things up a notch, but a tiny 'voice' in HIS head reminded him that besides Craig -who Alex wasn't sure would have his back- he had no friends there and was up against a mob.

Unlike Alex, Robbie was thrilled with the situation. As exciting as it was to watch his father sexually demean himself in front of strangers, the experience was heightened when witnessing him do so in front of someone he seemingly knew and worked with. With a devilish grin, Robbie stepped a little to the left, bent over, and started licking his father's cock and balls. The abs of the angry man kept bumping Robbie's head, but that was hardly a BAD thing.

The tastes and smells of his father crotch were heavenly, and Guile made the moment perfect by mentally showing Robbie the horrified look on Alex's face.

"Robbie, after you're done having your fun, your dad is still going to have to work with this man," Burt Veribton sighed hypocritically while continuing to ruin lives with his camera.

"Robbie!" Alex barked, still not 100 percent certain that the boy even WAS Robbie. "Robbie, knock that shit off! That's....that's yer DAD! When we....when HE soberz up, he'z gonna be-"

PFFFFFOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Alex was caught completely off-guard by the thick blast of Pit Fog that Robbie exhaled at his face. The insidious cloud wrapped around Alex's head like cling wrap, blinding him and cutting him off from the relatively less-drugged atmosphere of the feeding area.

Alex had seen enough to know that if he inhaled the cloud around his head, he would be just like Craig: trashed, naked, and helpless in the presence of horny, rowdy men who didn't like Alex for getting in the way of their fun...and would probably punish him by ganging up on him and using his ass just like they were using Craig's.

Alex panicked and tried to turn away from Robbie with the intention of fighting his way through the crowd.

That's when Alex, -who'd understandably been too distracted to pay attention to the mat squishing up between his toes- discovered he was stuck to the reddish-pink mat.

"LET ME GO! LET ME GO!" Alex cried out, wasting his breath in two different ways while also wasting energy by trying to use his hands to dissipate the telepathically-controlled cloud of drugs around his head.

"Mister Thornn, please relax and breathe the fog," Guile counseled. "If you do, I not only promise to give you the kind of high you've spent years looking for, I also vow that I will DROP anyone who tries to hurt you...or put their penis in your mouth or anus."

"LET ME, CRAIG, AND THE BOY GO!" Alex screamed in his mind.

"No," Guile calmly denied. "But if it makes you feel any better, I'm preventing anyone from recording any video -not that anyone here is sober enough to operate a cell phone camera- and I've altered Craig and Robbie to make them disease-proof and self-lubricating, so there is no risk of disease or injury."

Alex wasn't too inebriated to be incredulous.

"You're makin'....you're makin' a little BOY get fucked....by MEN?!" Alex shouted in amazement, so shocked that he almost accidentally breathed. "He's like.....TEN!"

"He's completely willing, and he's actually......like.......thirteen," Guile mocked, "a year old older than YOU were when your mother's friend, Carol, secretly took your virginity...although from what I'm seeing in your sexual memories, I'm certain your mother was in on it. I'm sorry...WHAT were you saying about Robbie being 'a little boy'? And please don't let my telepathy dissuade you from further hypocrisy. I enjoy it."

"If you won't let THEM go, at least let ME go!" Alex insisted.

Guile laughed. Alex was seeking to negotiate with a Guile for his release, OFFERING NOTHING IN EXCHANGE!!!!

"Alex, Robbie really wants to rim your ass and have you fuck him in front of his father," Guile explained. "How will he be able to do that...IF YOU'RE NOT HERE? Now please take a deep breath so I can make you stupid, giggly, and helpless."

Alex jumped at the feel of Robbie's hands on his privates. For a second, a split second, Alex considered pushing Robbie away. But not only would he be hurting Craig's kid, he'd be doing it just before engaging in some hardcore involuntary partying, which would make it real damned easy for the boy to get revenge on Alex. Also, if Alex hurt Robbie, how would that affect the voice's promise to protect Alex from the crowd....and prevent him from taking a dick?

Defeated, Alex let his arms hang loosely to his sides and did nothing as Robbie tugged his balls...pet his pubes...and wiggled his dick. After about fifteen uncomfortable seconds of having his genitals stimulated by a child, Alex's lungs finally gave out, causing him to suck in the majority of the cloud, which in turn caused a round of applause to erupt from the spectators at the sight of Alex's slack expression and sudden slouching posture.

Giggles escaped Alex's lips as the drugs took affect. It was indeed the high Alex had always wanted.

"I like your tattoos," Robbie remarked through Alex's drug cloud, which was now located inside his head.

"Thaaaaaaanks," Alex replied.

"Nice tuh see 'em. Always wanted to...but didn't want you...thinkin' I was queer," Alex's friend Craig groaned over the loud slaps of someone's groin against his muscular ass.

Robbie traced the edges of the howling wolf on Alex's chest, then lightly slid his fingertips across Alex's nipples, making him jolt. The stress of confronting a mob had caused Alex's nipples to harden.

"Do you like this?" the boy asked, gently pinching Alex's nipples and rubbing them until they softened, sending pleasant waves of mild sexual arousal throughout Alex's body.

"Uh-huh," Alex affirmed dreamily while nodding his head like a child, causing another round of laughter and wry comments to erupt from the crowd of looky-loos.

Alex did like it. The rubbing was helping the Pit Fog to remove all of Alex's tension, which was exactly what Alex needed.

A goony smile formed on Alex's face as a thirteen year-old boy reached down and took ahold of the tube hanging down from Alex's crotch. Alex no longer minded being touched sexually by Craig's kid. It felt nice.

Craig got in on the act by reaching over and sliding his large palm across Alex's skinny ass, and up and down his inner thigh.

Alex enjoyed all of the physical attention he was receiving. He'd been going through a dry spell, and it had been far too long since he'd been touched. For reasons he couldn't fathom at the moment, he didn't even care that the attention was coming from a man and a boy.

"Alex?" Robbie asked the bewildered young man, whose head was now looking in random directions as mindfulness abandoned him.

"Yeah?" Alex asked, his head flopping down to meet Robbie's gaze.

Robbie started blowing at Alex's face. Alex huffed it in, thinking he could get even higher, but Robbie's breath wasn't white smoke, it was clear, and it created ripples in the air, like heat off of a sun-baked road. It had a curious smell to it, too, ...kind of like sweaty balls. Alex should've been repulsed, but he liked the stench. He huffed more of it....and more....and more.

Robbie smiled at the feeling of Alex's dick stiffening inside his grip.

Elsewhere In The Feeding Area

Jayce Harris felt yet another hunger pang in his asshole, the tremors cascading down his legs and prompting another involuntary stumble. Undeterred, he pushed himself forward, navigating through the ceaseless sea of naked, white, glassy-eyed men. Despite the overwhelming crowd, not a single individual met his gaze with a hostile glare or engaged in any of the myriad ways the residents of Timbersburg typically used to subtly remind Jayce of his racial difference.

Of all the strange things Jayce had been through thus far, THAT was the strangest of all!

"Gotta get outta here before Caleb sees that I'm missing!" Jayce thought-screamed to keep himself moving. "I don't know what the fuck's going on here, or why he's DOING this shit to me, but I do know how Caleb's last party ended, and this time I'm leaving before I start hearing sirens."

"Ummm....Jayce?" a voice in Jayce's head called out. "Hi, it's Guile...the ghost in the bathrobe...remember me?"

"LEAVE ME ALONE CALEB!" Jayce screamed in his head. "I NEVER DID NUTHIN' TO YOU!"

"And Caleb never did anything to you, Jayce," Guile confessed. "It was all my fault. Look, I shouldn't be telling you this, but Caleb was injured a while ago. That's why he didn't return to Weyerhauser this fall. Anyway, he became a cum vampire."

"WHAT?!?!" Jayce yelled out loud, making everyone turn and look at him as he passed.

"Jayce, let's be honest. After all you've seen and experienced tonight, I think you know I'm telling you the truth. Oh, and before I forget, I showed a boy named Robbie the memory of you being fed upon in the back of your brother's SUV. He wants you to know that he really liked watching it, and that you shouldn't feel self-conscious. If you wouldn't mind, before you go, could you go say hello to him? It would mean the world to him."

"Are you fucking crazy?" Jayce hollered, remembering this time to think it instead of saying it.

"Well, I am crazy about that boy, but getting back to Caleb, he agreed to become a cum vampire to heal his injuries, but he regrets accepting the deal, and tonight he tried to kill himself."

"WHAT?!?!?"

"He almost succeeded," Guile sighed. "Jayce, I would've died with him, and I really didn't want to die, so I....ordered Lecher, my partner who's presently in control of Caleb's body, to help me get an emergency supply of semen. Long story, but basically, semen heals us. Anyway, you were in the car we targeted. AND YOU SAVED US! But then things got way out of control, and it caused me to use you like a piece of meat, and for that I apologize."

"I can't fucking believe this," Jayce muttered aloud while speed-walking through the crowd.

"Jayce, I hesitate to bring this up, because I don't know how you will take it, but after a racist named Russell Hawksmoor directed some nasty thoughts your way, I...uh...decided to make everyone here perceive you as white....BUT ONLY FOR YOUR PROTECTION AND TO CONCEAL YOUR IDENTITY!"

"OH my God, you gotta stop talking," Jayce groaned. "You're just making it worse."

"Probably. I'm a little off my game tonight," Guile admitted. "Jayce, according to your subconscious you appreciate honesty, so I am going to be completely honest with you. There are...beings coming. They will doubtlessly put a stop to all of this and have other Guiles like myself perform a...well...I guess 'audit' would be the best way to describe it. And when they do, things might not go well for me if you consider yourself a victim in all of this."

"I am your victim!" Jayce screamed, pushing his way through the endless sea of men, many of whom slid their hands across Jayce's well-developed chest, arms, abs and groin as he passed.

Jayce wished he didn't like it. He wished he hated it.

"Jayce, I'm tricking you into walking in circles," Guile offered. "That was me, being completely honest with you again."

"What do you want from me?!" Jayce yelled, coming to a stop.

"I already told you I wanted your forgiveness, but since your anger is adversely affecting your short term memory, let's just discuss whether or not you've been enjoying yourself, okay?"

"HAVE I BEEN ENJOYING MYSELF?" Jayce freaked. "YOU BEAT ME UP, YOU SHOCKED ME WITH THOSE WIRES-"

"Not wires...tendrils," Guile clarified. "Common mistake, we get it all the time. And yes, in order to get control of Craig, we did zap you a bit. I am truly sorry about that. But as far as Lecher is concerned, he didn't really beat you up. You beat yourself up by trying to beat him up."

"Whatever, man," Jayce dismissed. "What-"

A large, muscular man wearing a police hat roughly pushed his way through the crowd. He was covered in tattoos, many of which Jayce found concerning.

"Relax, Jayce," Guile encouraged. "The homophobic, racist policeman I enslaved just wants to wash your genitals with his tongue."

George Klempernick dropped to his knees, took off his police hat, and did exactly what Guile said he was going to do. Jayce considered backing away, but if he was only going to end up walking in circles......why bother? It was a lame justification for allowing himself to be fellated by an unwilling enslaved jerk with lynching-themed tattoos, but.....

"Aren't you gonna DRUG ME AGAIN, TOO?!" Jayce snapped, determined to air his grievances and keep the moral high ground. "And turn me into a FUCKING ANIMAL AGAIN?!"

"Jayce, I was CREATED to manipulate. You cannot trick me into doing what we both know you WANT me to do. However, if you simply ASK me to drug you, and you agree to accept my apology, I will," Guile offered, shutting Jayce up.

The boy's eyes unfocused in nervous contemplation.

"Jayce, would you like to know what your problem is?" Guile asked, politely asking a question that couldn't be asked politely.

Another cop, Tyler Whitlock, knelt behind Jayce and removed his hat. Knowing what was coming, Jayce smiled at the feel of Tyler separating Jayce's cheeks and burying his face in Jayce's crack.

"No, what's my 'problem'?" Jayce spat, suddenly having to work at sounding angry now that Officer Whitlock's tongue was scratching a deep, deep itch.

Jayce felt his asshole fluttering against Tyler's tongue. It was heaven.

"Your problem," Lecher informed Jayce, stepping out of the crowd and startling Jayce so much that he farted into Tyler's mouth....which didn't deter Tyler at all, "is that you're too fucking scared to admit that you're GAY!"

"I'm NOT gay!" the young man getting head and being rimmed by two naked, adult males claimed, "I'm just....f-f-f-f-figuring shit out!"

"You've been having your shit 'f-f-f-f-figured out' for over an hour!" Lecher taunted. "You've got a racist cop f-f-f-f-figuring your shit out RIGHT NOW. And he KNOWS you're black...he HATES what we're forcing him to DO to you...but there's not a GODDAMNED thing he can do about it, either now or later! That information ALONE should have you hosing down Officer Georgie's uvula with cum right now...but YOU just want to run home to momma and go back to playing straight again, when what you REALLY want is to stay here and take some more DICKS up your ass and try COCK SUCKING!"

"None of the guys who fucked me used a condom!" Jayce blurted, voicing a concern that had been plaguing him since the moment his sobriety suddenly returned. "I could have AIDS, or-"

"Your blood's O-positive," Lecher derailed. "I know everything about your body. I know everything about EVERYBODY'S BODY! You and everyone else here are disease-free. Any other BITCH CONCERNS you got, PUSSY?"

Jayce looked at Lecher and came to a fearful realization.

"You ain't letting me go."

"WRONG!" Lecher snarled.

The men to Jayce's right dissolved, revealing themselves to be nothing more than illusions. Their absence unveiled the dense curtain of swirling fog that surrounded the clearing, so thick it could be mistaken for milk. There was a tunnel in the wall, filled with the same bubbles of light that were floating above all the naked men.

"Good luck pretending to be something you're not, Jayce," Lecher hissed spitefully. "THAT always ends well."

"Please excuse Lecher, Jayce. He's difficult to understand. He actually likes you, but your refusal to be true to yourself is making him angry and bitter, and he's lashing out because of disappointment, not hate."

Jayce gazed into the face of Caleb Crandal, who looked so different from the kid he'd known for years that Jayce almost didn't believe it was him. He looked even less like Caleb than the ghost in the bathrobe.

"You....like me?" Jayce asked with utter disbelief.

"I STUCK MY TONGUE UP YOUR ASS AND ATE YOUR SHIT!" Lecher roared. "I DON'T DO THAT FOR JUST ANYONE!!!"

For reasons too many to count, Guile let that remark just sail on by.....far over the horizon.

Jayce shivered at the feel of Tyler Whitlock really getting deep in there.

"Jayce, before you go back to your old life, I want to give you something," Guile offered in his sad puppy voice, trying to play on Jayce's sympathy. "If you tell anyone about Caleb, or what I'm about to disclose to you, it will hurt...a lot. I shouldn't even be TELLING you this, and until VERY recently I couldn't have told you this, but if you should ever desire a safe and discrete gay hook-up, with no strings or complications...there is another cum vampire inside your circle of friends who would be MORE than willing to fulfil your every sexual desire, in exchange for your 'liquid assets', of course."

"Who?" Jayce blurted excitedly, his eyes opening so wide that Guile wondered if they might fall out.

"Just approach him at school and THINK your desires," Guile went on, torturing Jayce by keeping him in suspense. "He'll be helpless, just like you've been tonight. You see, WE have power over YOU, but you have power over us as well. The cum vampire will take you somewhere private, or public...if you like, and conceal the two of you with the same sort of illusion I used to conceal the perimeter of the clearing from you. Then, he will create a mattress like the one you were recently lying on."

"Who? WHO?" Jayce demanded, sounding like a crazed owl.

"Afterwards he will clean you up, inside and out, and you can go about your day...or back to class...without that dirty, sloppy feeling you humans don't like."

"WHO?!?!?!"

"Ryan Klein."

"WHAT?!?!?!?!?!"

George Klempernick and Tyler Whitlock stood up and walked away to make themselves available to anyone else who wanted to use them, leaving Jayce Harris feeling sexually unsatisfied...just as Guile wanted.

Lecher and Guile made their way to the tunnel in the wall, walking and floating, respectively.

Lecher refused to meet Jayce's eyes, making Jayce realize that Guile wasn't lying. Lecher wasn't the monster Jayce thought he was. He was just....complicated and....WAY too intense.

"I honestly wish you nothing but the best, Jayce Harris," Guile farewelled.

"Look, it's not that I want to leave, it's just," Jayce fumbled, completely caving in. "It's...Moms is probably flipping out!"

"Yeah, that's what moms do," Lecher grumbled while still looking away. "They let their emotions run wild and make it everybody else's job to get them back under control. You wanna see something FUNNY, Jayce? The next time your mom casually uses the word 'faggot', pitch a fucking FIT! Run around crying while screaming: "YOU WORKED ME UP! YOU WORKED ME UP! NOW I'M ALL WORKED UP! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO AND WORK ME UP?!". Do you think she'll bend over backwards, apologizing and promising to never say that word again, or do you think she'll SLAP YOU ACROSS THE FACE, instead?"

Guile was seriously regretting his agreement never to brain-fry Lecher again........but not as much as Agent Shard and the monster inside of him were regretting it.

"Lecher, are you quite fin-" Guile tried to ask.

"And what about your step-father? Should'a pitched a fit when your mom told you she was MARRYING that asshole," Lecher muttered. "Puts herself on a cross and says she's doing it for YOU, so you'll have a FATHER. I hope you're not stupid enough to believe that, Jayce. She just wants FUCKED on a regular basis, and she doesn't want you RUINING IT FOR HER by not kissing your stepdad's ASS and not INSTANTLY treating him with UN-EARNED RESPECT! And now...you're in the middle of SOMETHING UNBELIEVABLE, but you want to run off AND MAKE MOMMY HAPPY instead of enjoying a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY to its FULLEST!"

"Jayce, I-" Guile tried to interject again, only to be interrupted by....himself, upon realizing -to Guile's suprise- that Jayce had apparently been listening to Lecher's babbling rant. Guile was impressed. Whether deliberately or accidentally, Lecher had put Jayce in the precise state of mind that Guile required.

"Jayce, we'll only be around for another hour...maybe," Guile negotiated. "After that, all of this will be over, and I expect you'll never see Caleb Crandal...or US...ever again. Why not stay until the end? Like the last time, the police WILL probably show up, but unlike the last time, there's no danger of you being arrested for being high."

Jayce stared at his tunnel to "freedom".

"Why's it look like a vag?" Jayce muttered.

"Oh, does it?" Guile asked innocently.

Jayce still didn't move.

Lecher wiped his hand underneath his armpit and held it out. Jayce jumped as it exploded into a dense cloud of Pit Fog -roughly the size of a 5 gallon bucket- that hung in the air between them.

"If you breathe this, you're gonna be even MORE fucked up than the LAST time I fucked you up!" Lecher informed Jayce with a hateful rage that Jayce now realized was simply extreme passion. "After you do, I'm going to make my balls sweat, wipe it up with a finger, and smear it all around the inside of your nostrils. It'll start vaporizing and you'll breathe it, making you horny as FUCK! Then I'm gonna put more of that green shit up your ass...TONS of it...and I'm gonna make EVERYONE HERE FUCK YOU AND PUT THEIR DICKS IN YOUR MOUTH!!!!"

"Fuckin' bring it on!" Jayce dared in his football player voice, making his decision.

Jayce leaned forward to inhale the cloud of Pit Fog, but Lecher put his hands on Jayce's shoulder, holding him back.

"No hard feelings...RIGHT?!" Lecher proposed, his sinister eyes visible over top of the Pit Fog cloud.

"No hard feelings," Jayce agreed, plunging in face into the cloud.

"Sweeeeeeet," Lecher praised as Jayce huffed away at the cloud until it disappeared.

Jayce straightened up...and almost fell backwards. Lecher caught him.

After a period of time that Jayce no longer had the presence of mind to estimate, he felt a wet finger slide up into his right nostril. Jayce laughed. When the finger withdrew, however, and Jayce started to breathe Ball Vapor, he stopped laughing.

Jayce's blood felt hot.

Then the world turned off.

Jayce was an animal again, unburdened by thought. Bent over a table made of tongue material, he was being plowed from behind while burying his face in the crotch of a man who smiled brainlessly at the light bubbles overhead while wondering why it felt as if someone were giving him head.

Jayce glanced over at his old friend, Baby Blue, who wiggled in the air like a cobra, vigilantly waiting...ready to dive into Jayce's mouth or up his ass at an instant's notice to slurp up the results of Jayce's labors. Jayce didn't mind the thefts. Quite frequently, the orgasms of Jayce's partners would overlap, and Baby Blue couldn't be in two places at once, leading to Jayce enjoying a nice warm beverage or having his mind scrambled by the feel of blasts of cum against his green-treated insides.

Even though he was mindless, Jayce was aware that he was having the greatest night of his life.

Death was coming.

The Bottleneck

The ghostly screened images of Steve-Guile, Steve-Lecher, and The Creeping Vine gave Cynthia their undivided attention as she took a drag from her cigarette before telling them the amazing secret of how the Psycho-Thrall was able to fly.

It was disappointing as all fuck.

"He puked tar, it went around his face and poured down his back, flowed up his front, and spread out into wings," Cynthia impatiently exhaled. "And then he flapped them."

"What?" the ghost in a superhero costume asked after turning toward Steve-Guile, desperate for elaboration.

"I believe Miss Keim is indicating that the Psycho-Thrall is using their tongue to create a flying harness and wings," Steve-Guile explained.

"I'm....NO!....I'm calling bullshit," Steve-Lecher disputed. "The tongue can only create basic shapes with uniform thickness, flexibility, rigidity, elasticity, tension, etc. It was only ever meant to make things like beds, ground covering, and small enclosures for sucking and fucking. That's all."

"Guiles are obsessed with increasing our powers, and one of the ways we do that is by finding new uses for pre-existing abilities," Steve-Guile defended. "The black tendril was originally only meant to form brushes to apply Ball Vapor to donors' upper lips-"

"Let's stick a pin in your use of the word 'donor', okay?" Officer Tracy Rogers broke in.

"...and anal beads," Steve-Guile soldiered on. "But over the years, the Archives FILLED with additional uses, like making keys and-"

"Nunchaku, swords, knives, batons, tonfas, sai, kamas, staffs, bolas, escrima sticks, maces, flails-" The Creeping Vine counted off on his ghostly fingers.

"Ahem, Steve?" Steve-Guile tried to interrupt, wishing the black tendril could also be formed into a FUNCTIONING TALKING STICK!

"I'm proficient in LOTS of weapons," Steve went on with an extreme amount of pride. "When I make weapons with the black tendril, I can't do many flashy moves, though, since they're connected to a cord that goes up my butt."

"MISS KEIM," Guile interrupted more assertively, "did you by chance notice a purplish tendril...or purplish ribbon...wrapped around or threaded through the harness? This would explain how he was able to keep the wings from pulling away from his back."

"Uh....no.....yes.....maybe, I think," Cynthia pondered in annoyance. "Look, are you going to go rescue Jayce, or.....?"

"Yes, what's the hold-up?" Tracy agreed. "Stop sucking off the military, grab me a weapon from up there...preferably a handgun...and then teleport your body back here so we can go in and get this done!"

"The fact that you said that sentence with a straight face should concern you," Steve-Lecher remarked.

"It does," Tracy confirmed, impatiently waiting for an answer to her question, "but the fact that you guys are stalling concerns me even more.

"I am afraid there has been an unforeseen complication," Steve-Guile reluctantly admitted.

"Oh for Christ's sake!" Cynthia groaned. "I'm starting to wish that you hadn't disabled the military. I would've been better off with THEM!"

"If the army has a way of preventing over a hundred brainwashed men from killing themselves...while engaging in battle with a being who has absolute control over matter and energy...I would happily clear the heads of all the men and women I incapacitated with Pit Fog, then teleport my Thrall the hell out of here and stop getting in their DAMN way.

Officer Rogers switched on her radio.

"Tracy, what are you doing?" Steve asked, baffled that her takeaway from Steve-Guile's alarming news was apparently: "STAND ASIDE! THE TIMBERSBURG POLICE CAN HANDLE THIS! LEAVE EVERYTHING TO US!"

"I HAVE to call this in!" Tracy declared. "It's my JOB!"

"Officer Rogers, I serve a GOD, and I swear to you that if you do not turn that radio off, right now, I will have it destroyed so completely that even HE won't be able to repair it!"

"Well what is HE doing to stop.....TIMBERSBURG POLICE! IDENTIFY YOURSELF!!!"

For a split second, as Officer Tracy Rogers barked orders over Steve-Guile's intangible shoulder, he thought it was a laughable attempt at manipulating him into turning around so that Tracy could quickly use her radio before Steve-Guile could summon Steve to destroy it.

But then Cynthia's eyes followed Tracy's, and both women were staring at........nothing.

"What? What are you two looking at?" Steve shouted, since without his body, Steve was just a POV projected outside of his body by Guile. Therefore, if a Guile POV couldn't see something, neither could a Lecher or Lure POV.

"Officer Rogers, I see NOTHING there! I need to know-!" the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair insisted.

"WHITE MALE...EARLY TWENTIES...NUDE...DARK HAIR WITH TIGHT CURLS!" Tracy Rogers shouted with her hand placed on her baton to send a clear message to the man she was talking to...if he even was a man. "I REPEAT: IDENTIFY YOURSELF!"

"Agent Shard," the figure said with casual confidence, startling all the members of Steve-Thrall, who weren't really certain that Tracy and Cynthia were seeing anything at all, "superhuman operative in the service of the Thrall Masters, and empowered to negotiate on their behalf. Get your bodies here. We have to talk. And I know about your ability to teleport, so go ahead and use it."

A 9mm semi-automatic pistol suddenly appeared on the hood of the car next to Tracy. She picked it up, performed a quick check, and held it on 'Agent Shard'.

"Only use that if absolutely necessary, keeping in mind that you will most likely be shooting a mind-controlled innocent," Steve-Guile instructed.

"Guile and I have been here before," Tracy barked.

"I'm not C-Guile," Shard sighed before looking over at Cynthia. "Hey, sorry 'bout all this, hon."

Cynthia cringed.

"Are we calling Psycho-Guile 'C-Guile' now?" Steve-Lecher grumbled. "Is that his rap name or something?"

"What's the "C" stand for?" Steve asked.

"His Lure's first name," Agent Shard said with a smirk.

"Please allow me to shit ALL OVER your ridiculous claim, 'Agent Shard'," Steve-Guile mocked, speaking louder than the other members of his Thrall, demanding Agent Shard's complete attention. "Although I admittedly do not know quite where to begin. I suppose I could start with the ludicrous notion that the other Tethered Ones LOWERED themselves to use humans as anything other than COWS or PROSTITUTES! And then, of course, there's the matter of them EVER emulating humanity by assigning you a title such as 'agent', followed by the matter of you calling yourself a 'superhuman operative', coincidentally...TOO coincidentally...the same phrase I wish my Thrall to use when referring to ourselves. But MOST TELLING OF ALL is the laughable notion that the Tethered Ones -hindered as they are by Earth-side physics and an inability to get out of bed to PISS in the morning...in spite of never needing to sleep OR piss- managed to surpass the work of Maximus Morgan by creating a telepathic HUMAN who can sift through the VASTLY complex, unENDing shotgun blasts of psychic signals that humans constantly spray out of their heads in all directions....and somehow make SENSE OUT OF IT!"

"Jesus," Shard marveled, "that was a lot of words for something that doesn't even have a mouth."

"Oh, did you think I was DONE?!" Steve-Guile laughed. "FINALLY, there's also the matter of you claiming that A GUILE was so inexplicably STUPID as to think that ANY of the other Tethered Ones would COME WITHIN A HEMISPHERE of this dispute between Maximus Morgan and Ladislav Kaschak, especially since THEY'VE DONE FUCK-ALL ABOUT IT FOR THE LAST SIX AND A HALF MONTHS!!!"

"Yeah, that WAS pretty fucking dumb of him," Shard snickered and shrugged, "but then again, you can't spell 'gullible' without 'Guile'."

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// "TELEPATHICALLY IMPERCEPTIBLE ENTITY ON SITE!" Steve-Guile mentally shouted at Ryan-Thrall. "HE'S BEEN SPYING ON US, AND HE IS ATTEMPTING TO DECEIVE!!! ABANDON FEEDING AND TELEPORT RYAN'S BODY DOWN HERE, NOW!!!" ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The bodies of Ryan and The Creeping Vine materialized in the middle of the road, and the ghost of a boy in a superhero costume jumped into his physical body and resumed control over it.

Steve-Guile felt a wave of relief as he realized he could now perceive the young man through the eyes of his Lure.

Russell Hawksmoor was silently glaring at them from behind the northbound guardrail just outside of the forest at the very edge of the light created by the strange, shining bubbles above.

Shard's eyes went straight to the ghost of an emaciated boy in a tanktop and athletic shorts....and locked on.

"WELL?" Ryan challenged. "You got something to say?"

Shard casually put his right foot up onto the guardrail and crossed his forearms on his thigh, unintentionally highlighting Russell's junk in front of mixed company.

"Cynthia Keim is standing behind you," Russell informed Ryan, making him whip around in surprise, coming face to face with his teammate's brother's girlfriend, "and I blocked your Guile's screen from disguising you."

"Ryan?" Cynthia quivered as she addressed the stunned, naked, hulking teenager who absently reached down and attempted to conceal his privates. In spite of his huge hands, it was still like covering a boa constrictor with a toilet paper square.

"I'm sorry, Ryan," Ryan-Guile blurted remorsefully. "We whisked you away from Johnsport, making so many teleport 'jumps', so quickly. And then, when we got here, we had to deal with the military, and you went into a feeding frenzy! I should've told you Cynthia was here, but I didn't have the opportunity! And I don't have any idea how he telepathically blocked me, but...."

Ryan wasn't even listening to Ryan-Guile. Ryan was in shock.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

This was NEVER supposed to happen.

Ryan and Cynthia exchanged wide-eyed gazes, their features reflecting a shared moment of astonishment and dumbfounded realization.

"Cynthia?!? What are you DOING here???" Ryan bellowed as if Cynthia Keim had purposely maneuvered herself into whatever was going on. Ryan's energetic feeding had also prevented Ryan-Guile from telling Ryan why they were even GOING to the Bottleneck!

Cynthia was too speechless to reply, but Tracy instantly put all the pieces together, (kicking herself for not having guessed the connection between Maximus Morgan and Jayce Harris) and answered Ryan's question."

"Reality Itself tricked the other Thrall into attacking Jaden Harris' SUV and abducting Jayce Harris in order to get someone's attention," Tracy explained, that 'someone' being Jayce's football coach, Maximus Morgan.

"If Reality Itself can arrange a coincidence THAT complicated, we're screwed," Steve-Lecher muttered.

Ryan advanced menacingly towards Russell, crunching shattered auto glass beneath the supernaturally tough bottoms of his feet with each step.

"Ryan, calm down," Steve instructed, stepping in front of Ryan. "Let's talk to him...hear what he has to WUMPH."

"Here we go again," remarked Ryan-Lecher in Hypertime as Ryan pushed Steve aside. "Ryan's out of control, and if that Shard guy works for Kaschak, Ryan's gonna provoke Shard into calling out to him...if he ain't ALREADY on the way!"

"Ryan's been outed, which will lead to Master Morgan Unenthralling him and putting the two of US back into storage months ahead of schedule," Ryan-Guile lamented. "But all that matters at this moment is that Ryan is once again a complete liability. Should we teleport our Lure away, somewhere far from here AND Master Morgan's compound?"

"No," the ghost of a boy in a wheelchair decided, asserting his Thrall's authority over all other Thralls of Maximus Morgan. "I need Ryan's might right here until our Master says otherwise. Just be ready to kick him out of his body if need be."

Steve's lilac tendril slid out of his ass, through the channels in his black body stocking, and out of his right gauntlet. Just as Ryan was about to grab Shard to establish how their 'conversation' was going to go, the tendril lightly tapped Ryan's back. Cynthia screamed as Ryan suddenly rocketed backward and slammed into Craig's pickup, crumpling the passenger side door.

"We're not doing this Ryan...we're just not. Not again," Steve sighed, astonishing Cynthia, who thought he'd just KILLED Ryan.

"HE JUST...HE JUST...!" Ryan sputtered.

"LISTEN!" Steve yelled. "We serve a GOD with a TEMPER! If Cynthia decides to talk, she's putting everyone she loves in grave danger! And if THAT isn't incentive enough..."

Steve turned to Tracy.

"...Jeremy Klein, attorney at law, sure made people think twice about talking about what happened at Dugan's. I'm not proud of what we did there, Tracy, but it was necessary, and I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat."

"Uh...hi," Shard jumped in, waving his hand at Steve. "If the supervillain could interject something...I couldn't help but notice that you're seeking the understanding...or approval, maybe...of a Timbersburg cop who's sleeping around on her husband with two of the missing officers, both of whom gleefully participated in the Rainbow Tavern raid, and one of whom has a tattoo celebrating it...next to a tattoo of a lynching rope."

Cynthia gave Tracy a disgusted grimace before quickly looking away.

"Now that I have your attention," Shard announced, "here's the way it's gonna be: Guiles, keep your POVs away from C-Thrall's feeding area. I want you boys separate!"

Shard spread his arms majestically to indicated the fallen tree and damaged vehicles.

"And just for the record, EVERYTHING that has happened here at the Bottleneck HAS NOTHING...TO DO...WITH LADISLAV KASCHAK!" Shard overdramatized.

"Including the hostages surrounding our Master's home?" inquired Ryan-Guile.

Shard stared angrily at the ghost of an emaciated boy.

"Is your Master's home here at the Bottleneck?" Shard asked in a tone usually reserved for irritating, petulant children."

"No, I suppose not, but-"

"THEN WHY! THE FUCK! DID YOU OPEN! YOUR MOUTH?!" Shard hate-screamed at Ryan-Lecher.

"Told you so," the monster cackled at Shard. "Said you wouldn't be able to keep it together when you finally revealed yourself to him."

"We know that the Reality Itself phenomenon was responsible for incapacitating C-Thrall's Lure and utilizing an exploit in the Emergency Survival Protocols to create this mess, but exactly how far does its involvement in these matters extend?" Steve-Guile interrogated.

"Reality Itself "phenomenon". Wow, you people are so far behind the curve-" Shard mocked before Tracy interrupted him with malice.

"According to the other Guile, who I'm pretty sure is YOU, 'Shard', Reality Itself is making a 'huge play' that requires Guile to be isolated, grounded, and distracted, ...and considering the number of distractions: the people flooding into the woods, the police, the military, the scream... I bet you're going to try to blame Reality Itself for EVERYTHING."

"Everything since last February, when the Reality Itself phenomenon achieved sentience and got word to Ladislav Kaschak that Master You-Know-Who was creating a sentient Tethered One-to-human telepathic bridging device called: The Thrall Overseer," Shard finished while casting hateful side glances at Tracy and Ryan-Guile.

"So Reality Itself is the one trying to lure our Master here, not Kaschak," Steve-Guile observed, "and since the situation with the hostages surrounding our Master's home is impeding that goal, the logical assumption is that Kaschak and Reality Itself are accidentally stepping on each other's toes."

"You just HAVE to appreciate the paradox of The God of Bad Luck experiencing statistically unlikely bad luck," Shard gleamed. "Two gods making a play on the same day? I wouldn't want to bet money on something with odds like THAT."

"I find it hard to believe that after centuries of minor inconveniences and insignificant misfortunes aimed at the Thrall Masters, Reality Itself is suddenly capable of completely rewiring chance to THIS extent," Ryan-Guile commented, receiving another dark look from Shard.

"I can prove it," Shard snarled spitefully at Ryan-Guile. "Reality Itself's first scheme failed because he didn't realize that gods make for TERRIBLE pawns. His second scheme, the invisible maze we're all trapped in, started back in June when a boy went to a gay friend's birthday party and...I swear I'm not making this up...he ended up leaving because the birthday boy asked him to strip down and pose for a sketch."

"DON'T REACT, BROTHER!" Steve-Guile screamed telepathically at Ryan-Guile. "Until we find out what Shard, C-Guile, and Kaschak know, REVEAL NOTHING!"

"Of course," Ryan-Guile agreed pleasantly, in spite of just having had his intelligence severely insulted.

"Lecher, prepare for Archive File Transfer!" Steve-Guile called out, fighting to keep his telepathic voice low enough that he wouldn't startle Steve, thus alerting Shard to his deception. "Steve, emergency briefing!"

The image of a teenage boy appeared in Steve's mind. He had tall, dirty blond hair, a cauliflowered right ear, a nose that looked like it had sustained several breaks throughout his life, and the lower half of his left front tooth was missing."

"Kenneth 'Kenny' Miller...16...suspected child abuse victim...goes to Weyerhauser with Ryan...shy...below average intelligence....special education classes...mediocre acoustic guitar player...parents, Don and Gayle...two brothers, Bill and Paul...paternal grandfather died in late June of unknown causes...suspected foul play, but none proven....."

Shard scissored Russell's penis between his index and middle fingers and made it rapidly flop around like a flicked spring door stopper.

"Ain't it crazy that out of all things, MALE NUDITY is the reason we're all standing in the middle of this devastation?" Shard chuckled while lowering his head and shaking it slowly at the guardrail and shattered glass below it in a display of amused disbelief.

"So..." Shard proposed, lifting his head back up to face the group, "How exactly do all of you know.......KENNY MILLER?!?!"

Everyone's face lit up, including Steve's and Steve-Lecher's, neither of whom had even HEARD of Kenny Miller until a moment ago.

"Steve-Thrall is going to lie about teleporting into Kenny's house late at night, keeping everyone asleep using Pit Fog, and then feeding on all four male members of Kenny's family!" Ryan-Guile informed his Thrall. "Pretend we already knew about it...and SUPPORT THE LIE! It is VITAL!"

But Shard never followed up on his question. Instead, he focused solely on Tracy.

"Now, being that Kenny has a penis...like ROBBIE BYRNE...and Kenny has never been inside of you, or got squeezed out of you, you probably couldn't be bothered to remember how you even KNOW THAT NAME, so allow me to jog your-"

"Knock it off, GUILE!" Tracy snapped. "First, I'm not buying this SHARD act! Second, I went up against Gayle Miller and it almost COST ME MY JOB! I've done EVERYTHING I CAN to help that poor kid, but there's nothing more I can DO. My hands are tied!"

"Tied by the same police department who brought us the mishandled murder investigations of Faggot Forest and the Timbersburg Rainbow Tavern raid, two things you DEFENDED YOUR DEPARTMENT AGAINST when Guile confronted you about them," Shard snapped, contorting Russell Hawksmoor's face to the point that it had lost all of its moderate handsomeness. "And by the way, I outed Ryan Klein to Cynthia without being subjected to agony by an excruciating psionic pulse...I'm telepathically invisible...and I jammed Ryan-Guile's attempt to screen Ryan's appearance to conceal him from Cynthia. These are things a Guile cannot do! I am NOT C-Guile. I am something never seen before...something that has never even EXISTED before."

"WHY did you out me?!?!" Ryan screamed. "The FUCK I ever do to YOU?!"

"This isn't about you, Ryan," Ryan-Guile answered before Shard could. "This is about me. Shard has been directing hate my way since the moment he laid eyes on me, and the reason is painfully obvious. Before Kaschak ruined everything, my life was blessed. I would argue that my time as the Ryan-Guile has been the best a Guile could possibly hope for. ALL Guiles should be jealous of what I had. So jealous that they would out my Lure, thus prematurely ending my joy months ahead of schedule. Isn't that right, ......Shard-Guile?"

Shard took his foot off of the guardrail, stood up straight, and offered the target of his hate a bitter, congratulatory slow clap for having figured him out.

"You said he wasn't Guile!" Tracy shouted at Steve-Guile.

"Apparently, Kaschak brought another Thrall with him from Germany," Steve-Guile deduced.

"Wrong! Ladislav Kaschak MURDERED his German Thralls, all THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE OF THEM, once they'd finished acquiring the S.C.E. stockpile Kaschak needs for the WAR he intends to start once he gets his hands on the Overseer," Shard revealed. "That MONSTER FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION wants a fucking KINGDOM...HERE...in this whites-only, Christians-only, heterosexuals-only SHITHOLE!"

"Wait!" Ryan jumped in, trying to come to grips with the avalanche of information that had just been dropped on the group's head by Shard-Guile. "Do I know the guys who were Enthralled by Kaschak."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Shard-Guile corrected with a smile, clearly enjoying the stupid expressions surrounding him. "CYNTHIA, IT'S TIME! Tell everyone WHAT I AM!"

All eyes turned to Cynthia, who choked on her smoke.

"I don't...I'm not...I'm not a p-p-PART of this!" Cynthia stammered in confusion.

"There ARE no superfluous characters in Reality Itself's little drama, Cynthia," Shard-Guile corrected. "You're trapped in the Kenny Miller Web along with the rest of us, and your part is a LOT bigger than just 'The Girlfriend'. YOUR purpose is to let ME know that Reality Itself is aware that I exist...and that he is prepared for me. And I'm MORE than a little PISSED that the bastard not only put you through HELL, he also RUINED YOUR FUCKING ENGAGEMENT, MAKING ME A LIAR!!!!"

Cynthia's gaze faltered, losing focus for a moment, as if grappling with the sheer magnitude of what she had just learned.

"SHATTER?!" Cynthia gasped. "YOU'RE SHATTER???"

"Cynthia, you KNOW him?" Ryan asked.

Cynthia could only nod in shock, fighting to process the fact that the supernatural weirdness she was dealing with that night had actually begun WEEKS ago.

"I lied to you, Cynthia, sorta," Shard-Guile confessed. "I did have a nasty break up on July 4th, and another one on November 4th, but I wasn't really talking about relationships. I was being literal. And in yet another statistically unlikely coincidence, my screen name has a double meaning. So go ahead, Cyn. All eyes on you. Tell these two stupid Thralls exactly what I.....what 'Shard'.....truly is."

Cynthia took a deep drag, and exhaled a horrifying reality.

"Shattered Fourths."

"IMPOSSIBLE!!!!" Steve-Guile screamed. "THAT CAN'T HAPPEN!!! THAT COULD NEVER HAPPEN!!!"

"And yet, here I am," Shard-Guile defended. "Proof that even GODS can FUCK UP!"

"Could someone let the HUMANS in on the big secret?!" Ryan growled.

"And the Lechers?" Ryan-Lecher requested.

"The Master will not be pleased," Ryan-Guile groaned miserably. "He will not take this well."

"It's worse than that," Steve-Guile joined in. "This has the potential to destroy him.

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

Craig Byrne's head suddenly cleared.

The last thing Craig remembered was lying down at the edge of a reddish-pink platform and having his legs held in the air by ever-changing faces while an endless stream of disoriented men stepped up, shoved their cocks into him, and fucked him full of the will to live.

Nothing had changed, except for Craig's physical orientation. At some point, he'd gotten up to restore the blood flow to his legs, only to be bent over the platform and invaded from behind. And while that guy was using Craig's ass for a pocket pussy, another man sat down on the platform and scooched his legs between Craig's arms -which Craig had clamped onto the edge of the thick, rubbery table to stabilize himself against all the pounding. Craig found himself looking straight down at the flaring helmet of a prick whose owner was so desperate for release that he didn't seem to care that he was sitting in Craig's wet spot. Before the man could even ask for head, Craig's Entangled nature took hold, causing him to lean down and start giving the guy a crazed suck job- licking, slurping, and bobbing his head up and down with so much enthusiasm that most of the onlookers found themselves on the verge of either committing an anti-gay act of violence upon Craig or going to find a discrete place to puke their guts out.

Yet somehow the men managed to quietly remain in line, controlling both their fists and stomachs as they hoped that once they reached the front, they would get head instead of tail.

"Guile! What happened?" Craig called out in his mind while continuing to energetically worship the latest pole under his face. "I'm sober! I don't want to be sober! Fuck me up again! Please! I've EARNED it!"

"I'm sorry, Craig," Guile replied. "but part of your mind is several fathoms below the surface of Manjinankton Lake and it's breathing through an air tube while trying to drag a naked Kenny Miller up from the depths. You'll need to be sober in order to attempt to resuscitate the lad, if possible."

"Uh....okay," Craig dismissed rather than ask for an explanation that he really didn't care about, "it's just...Robbie keeps looking out from behind Alex's ass to watch me suck cock."

"Is that a problem, Craig? I thought Robbie ordered you to like him watching you degrade yourself sexually."

"He did...and I do," Craig assured Guile. "But now that I'm sober, I'm too close to being like I used to be, and it's fucking me up. I mean...I'm still hot for my kid...and I can't wait to get my hands all over him in private...but having him see me like this, while I'm sober and thinking dad thoughts....it's just....weird. Understand?"

"Oh, I understand all right," Guile affirmed, despite the sexless creature not understanding at all. "Craig, switch to Alternate Personality Four."

A smile crept across Craig's face. A few seconds later, Robbie looked out from behind Alex's behind once again to find his father staring straight at him, licking the cock beneath him like an eight year-old boy enthusiastically eating a melting soft-serve ice cream cone. Robbie smiled with approval, then returned to rimming Alex.

"Craig, arrrrrr yoooooo 'kay with me lettin' him dooo this?" Alex drawled. Alex was bent over the other side of the platform, exactly like Craig, except that instead of putting his hands on the table for support, he'd reached back to spread his skinny buns so that Robbie could tongue his hole nice and deep.

Craig enjoyed one last ejaculatory pleasure pulse from the guy up his ass...who then suddenly pulled out and hurried away. Before the next guy could step up and take his turn, however, Craig's "client" on the table suddenly hopped up, told the next guy he'd only be a second, and shoved his spit-covered tool into Craig's shitter.

Craig smiled as the guy banging away. The guy was sooooooo close.

"You're not 'letting' him lick your asshole, Alex," Craig corrected as his legs shook at the approach of another mind-blowing release. "You've got no fucking choice. So just relax and enjoy getting your ass licked. You ever get your ass licked before?"

"No," Alex admitted honestly, something he never would've done if he'd been in his right mind. In spite of having his cherry popped by a friend of his mother at the age of twelve, Alex's sexual experiences weren't very broad or frequent, and his magic number was far below the Timbersburg municipal average.

"Oh CHRIST yes," Craig moaned as he was rocked by a thunderous climax that made him consider lying back down. In the middle of it, Craig snickered at the sound of Alex's loosened asshole suddenly letting out a long flappy fart whose sound characteristics were alternately distorted or muffled by Robbie's tongue.

"Heee shoon't be doin' this tuh meee," Alex slurred while sending a mixed message by widening his stance, which Craig correctly guessed he was doing because his fart had caused Alex to gape wide enough to give Robbie deeper access.

"No, he shouldn't," Craig agreed, because despite his being under the influence of Alternate Personality Four, Craig Byrne had something he really needed to say to his son, "but the demons who set up this sausage party gave Robbie total sexual control over my mind and body, and the power to drug men stupid and turn them into straight trade."

"Whut'z straight trade, man?" Alex queried.

"You, and the guy behind me who can't stop giggling while he plows my ass," Craig illustrated. "But my point is, Alex, don't blame yourself, and don't blame me. This is all Robbie's fault."

"Are you mad at me, dad?" Robbie asked between tongue swipes without looking around Alex...because he couldn't face his father at the moment.

"Of course not," Craig said truthfully. "The other guy would be, but I'm not him anymore. I not only accept your decision to turn me into a sex slave, I fucking support it! I'm still your dad, and I love you. It's just...now I love you in ways that I absolutely shouldn't. And I'm cool with that! I just want to make it clear that every minor who engages in any form of sexual activity with one of their parents is a victim, with one exception: YOU. Either you undo the deal and we work through this, or you accept FULL responsibility for everything we do together, even if I initiate it, because THIS isn't who I really am. this was YOUR CHOICE, not mine."

"But Guile said you'll kill yourself if I let you go," Robbie argued. "Or O.D."

"Huh?" Alex exclaimed. He had no idea that Craig was using, nor did he know that his work friend was considering suicide.

"Maybe not, if you'd stop ducking out of our visitations," Craig highlighted. "But Robbie, my drug usage and depression aren't YOUR problems to fix, and a thirteen year-old boy shouldn't be making major decisions for his father, regardless of the circumstances."

"Tough," Robbie snarled while taking out his conflicted feelings on Alex's glutes, roughly massaging them with all of his hand-strength. "You're staying Entangled!"

"Don't make it sound like you're punishing me, 'cause this version of your dad is completely fine with that. However, we could both stay Entangled, but you could just leave me alone sexually. And you could order me to stop having sexual thoughts about you. Just sayin'."

Robbie finally stuck his head out from behind Alex and looked into the eyes of his father, and Burt Veribton's camera.

"No. I've got things I want to do to you," Robbie said in a chilling tone.

"And I can't wait for you to do them to me," Craig agreed with a shit-eating grin, "as long as you never blame ME for what you force me-"

"I ORDER YOU TO...TO...TO..." Robbie angrily fought to articulate.

"Never again mention that you CHOSE to enter into a sexual relationship with me, and never remind you that you can't blame me for any of it?" Craig suggested with an excess of smug.

"Yeah! Do that thing! And forget you brought it up!" Robbie snapped.

Craig Byrne jerked and looked around in confusion.

He and Alex were still face-to-face, bent over the fuck platform, with Craig still getting fucked by the same guy and Alex getting rimmed by Robbie, but something had happened. It was as if the world had skipped a beat.

Thousands of people would press "pause" at that moment and stare at Craig's confused expression with a variety of feelings of their own. Basically, Craig had failed to convince his son to take responsible for turning his father into an incestuous pedophile.

....but Craig had established his innocence in front of everyone who would go on to view Burt Veribton's video, for either sexual purposes or otherwise.

After Robbie got bored with rimming, Craig watched Alex straighten up and stretch out his arms, giving him a moment to fully appreciate the naked, flushed, sexually aroused body of someone he knew...someone Craig never expected to ever see in such a state (not that Craig would've cared all that much before his Entanglement). Craig's eyes quickly dipped down to check out Alex's erection, and Craig noticed that his child's make-out session with Alex's asshole had caused a glistening drop of pre-cum to form between the lips of Alex's dick-slit.

Craig's Entangled instincts caused him to react to it like a dehydrating man seeing a drop of water....or more appropriately, a vampire seeing a drop of blood...which made Craig want to jump on the platform, slide his head beneath Alex's Y-stance and nurse Alex's penis until Craig's drugged and helpless work friend was forced to blow his load in Craig's mouth, down the suction tentacle of an extradimensional monster in Craig's tummy.

But Alex was Robbie's. Robbie had hunted him down, dropped him, and was having fun pleasuring Alex sexually.

In a fucked up yet genuinely heartfelt display of paternal love, Craig ordered himself to step back and leave Alex to Robbie.

"Hey, I need to get rid of this, but would'ya mind gittin' back on the table?"

Craig turned around to see a large bald man with a beard, but no mustache. He had a rotund pot belly that was in danger of making contact with his reddish tool.

Even though Entanglement caused men to become homosexually indiscriminate, just like Thralls, most Entangleds would've rejected the guy. But Craig, who was under the influence of Alternate Personality Four, became instantly fixated on the idea of being fucked like a bitch by someone who neglected their body as much as Craig diligently took care of his own (on the outside, that is).

Robbie noticed a can of dip in the man's hand, ....and promptly spazzed.

"Dad! I order you to start dipping again!" Robbie squealed excitedly.

Craig opened his mouth to refuse. During his youth, Craig used dip all the time, leading to eventual gum recession and a throat cancer scare, neither of which had as much to do with him quitting as his wife's constant nagging. But even though Craig's Entangled instincts informed him that he was immune from any negative consequences of tobacco use, Craig just didn't feel like picking up the habit again. Besides, Craig had been offered a pinch every now and again in recent years, and he'd discovered that his heroin addiction had completely dulled his ability to enjoy it. And despite the fact that his Entangled instincts were telling him from now on, he would enjoy tobacco more than any non-Entangled human who'd ever LIVED, Craig nevertheless decided not to-

"Fuck yeah," Craig said, obeying his child's command. "Tell you what, I'll get my legs back in the air if you let me pack my lip before you start packin' my fudge."

"Deal. Keep it," The man said, tossing the can to Craig and wanting nothing to do with it once Craig's fingers touched the contents. The man viewed Craig as something filthy and digusting, which was ironic, considering that he'd just negotiated to insert the most precious part of his body into the filthiest and most disgusting part of Craig's.

"Hey, why am I doing this!" Craig appealed to Guile. "I thought Robbie can only force me to do sex stuff! If he can make me do NON-sexual shit-!"

"Relax, Lumberjack," Lecher interrupted. "The boy's just customizing his fuck toy. Robbie likes his men to be men."

"I FUCKING AM A MAN!" Alternate Personality Four Craig raged. "I hunt...I shoot...I drink...I fix my own goddamned truck...I cheated on my wife...I lift weights...my ex calls the cops on me...! I'm about as manly as it GETS!"

"Yeah, but the boy thinks you're missing a few things...things that a manly man has hanging from his lips, chomped between his teeth, or packed around his gums."

"What if Robbie gets off on making me empty my bank account to buy him shit?" Craig snarled.

"Guile's taken an interest in Robbie, Craig. He wants the boy's needs fulfilled, but he wants Robbie's remaining childhood to be as normal as possible, and that won't happen if Robbie's power extends too far beyond the bedroom. So just calm down and accept the fact that from now on, the back right pocket of your jeans are gonna have circles on 'em. Oh, and Guile recommended to Robbie that you start smoking a pipe, 'cuz that's what intellectuals always suggest, but I said that you could easily pull off a cigar."

"I vote for neither," Craig sighed mentally.

"You don't GET a vote, Lumberjack," Lecher snickered. "Just stop thinking so much and let your boy have his fun. That's what fathers are supposed to do, right? Oh, before I go: Guile told Robbie that Alex dips too. Encourage him to take some, too. Robbie wants to be fucked by a man who's packing. Er...you know what I mean."

"Whatever...I guess," Craig pondered while clicking the can three times with remembered skill, opening it, then getting himself a sizeable pinch.

"I'll be right back," Craig told his imminent sex partner in a muffled voice as he seated the wad with his tongue while getting some for Alex, who seemed barely aware of his surroundings as Craig pulled down his lower lip and inserted a pinch. However, after Craig let go, Alex, who'd been dipping since he was nine, instinctively took over and used a finger to tuck it in place.

Craig went back to the other side of the platform, sat down, laid back, and lifted his legs in the air, presenting his asshole in order to repay his debt. The two men next in line came forward to act as "leg bearers", thus securing their places in line. They had to raise Craig's legs higher than usual to elevate his asshole enough to bring it in line with the large man's cock.

"Norm," the fat, bearded, supplier of dip grunted while his cock pushed against Craig's starfish and his gut pushed against the backs of Craig's legs and inner thighs.

"Craig," came the amused reciprocation, as he observed 'Norm's' peculiar inclination to introduce himself under the bizarre circumstances, "and that's my boy, Robbie."

Norm got a sour look on his face that made Craig follow his gaze over to Robbie, who was kneeling in front of Alex, licking his balls and the underside of his shaft.

Alex was smiling vacuously into space.

"Uh-huh," Norm muttered, pushing his way into Craig and proceeding to 'do his business' as fast as possible so he could leave and forget all about Craig and their 'time together'.

To Norm's annoyance, his sweaty gut was lying on Craig's crotch, and as he fucked, Norm was uncomfortably aware that he was giving Craig's taint a "belly job". Worse, Norm could feel the loose skin of Craig's scrotum, and the exact positions and movements of Craig's balls as Norm unintentionally massaged them and slid them around.

Norm rolled his eyes as he felt Craig's limp dick rising up. Soon, Norm was bumping against it with each thrust, something Norm could hear the audience commenting on.

But just when Norm thought things couldn't possibly get even more awkward and embarrassing:

"Ohhhhhhhhhh, you fucking OWN me, Big Daddy," Craig groaned within earshot of his young son while stretching his arms and arching his back to let everyone know good Norm was making him feel. "Fuck me, Daddy, fuck me!"

Robbie pulled his mouth off of Alex's cock, making a pop that made Norm turn towards him.

"You gotta fuck ME now...so I can call you Granddaddy!" Robbie proclaimed, surprising himself by being sexually attracted to someone like Norm. Robbie would always prefer lean, muscular, rugged, toxic males....but thanks to Entanglement, Robbie was now sexually attracted to any potent male with S.C.E. to give.

"Sure," Norm mumbled, looking away and fantasizing that Craig's warm, moist, tight, squirming asshole belonged to a girl.

"You promise, right?" Robbie pressed.

"Yeah," Norm grumbled noncommittally, becoming irritated.

Cum vampire Robbie would remember Norm Yawitz's promise.

One night, he would materialize in Norm's bedroom to collect.

Maximus Morgan's Compound

The obliterated Fingernail of Maximus Morgan trudged outside the main building of his compound and headed through the grass towards the mob of men gathered near his home.

One of the intruders stood apart from the others, indicating to Max that he was the representative with whom he should speak.

Off in the distance, Ladislav Kaschak stood exactly where he'd been standing since the afternoon of March 1st. Maximus resisted the urge to flip him off.

"Good evening, Thrall Master Morgan," the representative, a Native American man in his early sixties, greeted with a pleasant, servile smile that instantly marked the man as an Entangled being spoken through by a Guile and puppeted by a Lecher.

"I don't call myself a master anymore," Coach Morgan grumbled.

"Of course, Tethered One, my apologies," the Native American puppet adjusted with the utmost respect. "I would also like to apologize for all the air horns. You weren't answering my calls, and with your fortress's defensive perimeter and Master Kaschak's telepathic screen preventing my approach, ringing your doorbell was simply not an option."

"If Kaschak or any of the other Tethereds have anything to say to me, tell them to say it to me IN THE OTHER DIMENSION!" Maximus exploded. "Or if Ladislav wants to bring his Fingernail a little closer so we can talk....?"

"My Master is not foolish enough to approach your defensive barrier, which is doubtlessly unidirectional, allowing you to attack outward but preventing my Master from attacking inward," the Guile noted, "You would be shielded, but he would be completely exposed. That would be neither fair nor honorable."

"NEITHER WAS MALAWNY HOLLOW!!!" Coach Morgan raged, provoked into mentioning Malawny Hollow, exactly as the Guile had planned.

"My Master has ambitious ideas, and he knew you would not give him unlimited access to your Overseer in order to carry them out," the Guile explained, setting his secret scheme in motion. "You, Tethered One, FORCED my Master to do something bold, something brassy to achieve his goals. And as far as Malawny Hollow goes, even if I were brassy enough to Monday morning quarterback my Master's actions, I wasn't there, so I am oblivious as to how all of that went down."

"He knows about Ryan and the armor I made for Steve, but he's hinting that he never passed the information on to Kaschak," Coach Morgan accurately deciphered. "He's letting me know his loyalty is for sale. This is GOOD. This is DAMN good!"

"But speaking of brass, Tethered One, please allow me to get down to BRASS TACKS. Due to my Master's loathing of humans, and his unwillingness to engage with them at all, I was tasked with finding a way to use humans against you in order to secure the Overseer. As the Father of All Guiles, you should be proud of how well I've done that job!"

The avatar of Maximus Morgan swept his one functional eye across the crowd. It mostly consisted of Native Americans, but blacks, Asians, and Hispanics were represented as well.

There were no whites at all.

"A race war?" Maximus Morgan guessed scornfully. "Setting morality aside, why the hell should THAT impress me?"

"Please, hear me out," the Guile encouraged. "I'll admit that on the face of it, killing a large group of various minorities won't accomplish very much, especially since you will no doubt use your powers to atomize the dead and cleanse the crime scene long before I could get the police here to set things in motion. Therefore, I will have to carry it out elsewhere."

"He's intentionally giving me TIME," Max pondered. "He could've taken all of these men to his intended murder site NOW, leaving only one here to make the threat, using a video call to show me these potential victims."

"While Timbersburg has gained national notoriety as the most homophobic city in the United States, it also excels in perpetuating racism," the Guile babbled. "The prevalence of white supremacy flyers being produced and distributed is so alarming that I find it astonishing that there are still so many trees around."

The Guile paused in case Max wanted to react to his humorous remark. He received nothing but a cold stare.

"In addition to Entangling all of these men, I have also been having my Lure feed on previously-convicted members of local white nationalist organizations and like-minded militia groups, obtaining not just their semen, but blood and hair samples, as well as their weapons. When their DNA is found at the crime scene, and their mysteriously-returned 'borrowed' weapons match the ballistics found on the bullets used to kill these men, Timbersburg will once again be in the national spotlight for the worst of reasons, and the residents of Timbersburg....being the residents of Timbersburg...will do what they do best: defend the perpetrators, laugh at the victims, and smile with evil glee at the news crews they pass on their way to church."

"Whatever goes down, it won't be as bad as what would happen if Kaschak gets his hands on my Overseer," Max commented flatly. "I'm calling your bluff."

"Oh, I must beseech you to withhold your decision until I'm done, Tethered One, because I haven't gotten to the best bits yet. All the minorities represented here have something in common with the Caucasian majority: HOMOPHOBIA! So to further fan the flames of hatred, and drag the gay community into my shit-storm, I'm going to strip all these men down, make it appear as if they were forced to perform homosexual acts on one another, inject white supremacist semen up their asses, and massacre them at the PERFECT location."

"Take I-147, the turnpike's closed," Max quipped.

"I think you got that backwards, Tethered One. And I WOULD KNOW, since MY Thrall is the one Reality Itself is using to create the MESS up there! My Lure, who's been steadily going INSANE since his Enthrall-"

"I DESIGNED THE THRALLS!" Maximus Morgan screamed, unwilling...on top of every OTHER indignation he'd been subjected to...to have his work maligned. "THE ENTHRALLMENT PROCESS FIXES ALL FORMS OF MENTAL ILLNESS!"

"Liar!!!!" the Guile screamed in rage. "My lure's mind has been steadily shattering for the last ten weeks, but my mind and my Lecher's mind were fractured at BIRTH! I'm not even technically a GUILE, Father....I'm just a fucking SHARD OF A GUILE!!!"

Shard-Guile's puppet's face contorted as the monster inside of him, his Lecher, demanded to address his creator.

"I was supposed to be a creature of pleasure...BUT I'M NOTHING BUT A MONSTER OF PAIN! PAIN IS ALL I CAN FEEL, FATHER!!!! FIX ME!!! LACK OF SUFFICIENT SENSORY INPUT IS DRIVING THIS POOR LECHER EVEN MORE INSANE THAN MY LURE!!!!"

Shard observed Maximus Morgan's shoulders slump and listened as the serene night air resonated with Ladislav Kaschak's laughter.

"We can hear our missing pieces...miserable...in pain...underutilized...and barely able to project themselves a measily mile from their horrible, unwilling, and psychotic Lure!" Shard informed Maximus after successfully fighting his Lecher for control. "All because of your shitty Thrall design!"

"You might want to walk that back," Maximus Morgan attempted to convey with power and authority, but it emerged feeble and breathy, resembling the utterance of an elderly man.

"How about I take it even further?" Shard offered. "Tonight, I had to make myself and my Lecher known to our 'other halves' because they tried to Entangle a man with HIV, lung cancer, a bad liver, and a bloodstream full of steroids. The Entanglement LOCKED UP! I had to possess him, bathe him in Gash-side Soul-Creation Energy, and pump him full of healing creatures."

"Tell me he survived it!" Coach Morgan snapped.

"He survived your FAULTY Entanglement process, but only because this FAULTY SHARD-GUILE was able to funnel all that pain into the FAULTY, psychotic, sadomasochistic Lecher I'm unnaturally BONDED TO as a result of your FAULTY ENTHRALLMENT PROCESS!"

On a whim, Maximus Morgan glanced in Kaschak's direction with his one good eye. Kaschak returned the gaze with an amused smile. This was the first time Kaschak had heard about Jeff Hildebrandt's Entanglement-gone-wrong, and he was evidently delighted with the news.

"Oh, and just to clarify something," Shard offered with a giddy smile, "I wasn't the one who called your work 'SHITTY,' THRALL MASTER TIBERIUS COMMONSWORTH DID! All the other Tethered Ones agreed when they met without your knowledge to discuss HOW OVERRATED YOUR ALLEGED GENIUS IS!"

"Who. Is. Your. Lure?" Maximus Morgan demanded.

"GETTING THERE!" Shard hissed. "So tomorrow morning we will have Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and homosexuals demanding action and change! What happens when the most powerful, influencial and distinguished man in Timbersburg jumps in front of the cameras and starts saying things to the rest of the nation...the rest of the WORLD...that would make HITLER blush?"

"You ENTANGLED Ray Crandal???" Max Morgan snapped before coming to an alarming realization. "Where's his son?! He didn't return to school this year! Where's he....? WAIT! You said you were born TEN WEEKS ago??? I thought your Lure was one of his German boys!"

The Entangled Native American puppet smiled more broadly than ever.

"Former Thrall Master Maximus Morgan of the Tethered Ones, PLEASE allow me to introduce myself! I am .731 percent of the Guile of the CALEB CRANDAL-THRALL...."

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Maximus Morgan screamed, unleashing a focused nuclear blast wave through his defensive barrier at Ladislav Kaschak's Fingernail.

"....SERVANT TO THRALL MASTER LADISLAV KASCHAK OF THE TETHERED ONES!" the other half of the Caleb-Guile continued to taunt, yelling over the deafening crackle of energy.

The power discharge suddenly stopped, and the former king fell to the ground, his overtaxed avatar now damaged worse than before. Ladislav Kaschak suffered no damage at all, having shielded himself with ease.

"You now have forty-five minutes to give us the Overseer.....Max," Shard-Guile mocked, making Ladislav Kaschak beam yet again.

As the self-defeated God crawled back to the door of his laboratory, the possessed Native American man stepped back and blended in with the rest of the multicultural, non-white pawns.

"Well, THAT didn't go anywhere, Lecher," Shard-Guile sighed. "I know he picked up on my hints.....and he has to be DESPERATE to negotiate with me...but however he secretly maintains contact with Ryan Klein-Thrall and Steve Collier-Thrall, he didn't establish it with ME. FUCK!!!!"

"Maximus Morgan bypasses the telepathic shield by exchanging some sort of signal between his compound and the Creeping Vine's armor," Lecher informed Shard-Guile, startling him, as he often did when Lecher spoke with intelligence.

"Huh? Are you certain? How do you KNOW that?" Shard-Guile barraged, taken completely by surprise.

"Because while Morgan was throwing energy at Master Kaschak, I felt one of our other puppets acquire a pinky ring."

"YELLOW BRASS, LIKE THE CREEPING VINE'S ARMOR???" Shard-Guile asked hopefully, becoming the first entity on the planet Earth to ever get excited about jewelry made out of yellow brass.

"Yellow brass," Shard-Lecher confirmed.

Shard-Guile cheered silently so as not to arouse his Master's suspicions.

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

"HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA- HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA- HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA..............."

Mark laughed non-stop. Tiny extradimensional creatures continually shuttled air to his lungs and kept his throat from getting sore, theoretically enabling him to laugh until he eventually passed out from exhaustion, or more likely, an overload of stimulation.

Mark's body was paralyzed again, his arms and legs spread, and his body completely shaved from the neck down. Lecher had even used the peach "soap" to wash off Mark's deodorant and sprayed Mark with the mint-green tendril, making his flesh slippery, and even more ticklish than it already was.

Even in an area nationally known for being cruel, Guile was amazed at how many men eagerly responded to the telepathic call for volunteers to tickle torture a naked cop (identifiable as such by his hat).

"Izzy...izz he gonna cum AGAIN?" One of the older ticklers, a man named Jack Thompson, asked a fifteen year old boy who had forced the Entangled Mark to climax SIX TIMES already...or maybe eight. Since Mark's orgasms were dry (to keep Mark's flesh ticklish and stop him from repulsing the ticklers who were straight) and Mark was laughing so goddamned much, his orgasms were easy to miss unless you happened be the one stroking his dick....and you weren't so poorly educated and fucked up on Pit Fog that you kept losing count.

The boy remained silent, doped stupid and hypnotized by the up and down motion of his own hand as he relentlessly stroked the helpless cop. The kid didn't even seem to notice when Jack stealthily slipped his left hand behind and beneath the kneeling boy and gave his brown eye a massage with his thumb while fingering the child's balls.

"Feelin' any SHIT up in there?" Jack asked, concealing what he was doing to the boy by turning the group's attention toward a creepy-looking guy with a WAY too intense expression who'd somehow managed (green tendril spray) to get his whole hand up into the cop's ass, increasing the pitch of Mark's hysteria by tickling his green-treated, hypersensitive colon.....and causing Mark to let out an involuntary squirt of piss, which rolled off of his frictionless skin.

"Piggy squeals a lot," Gavin DeWitier noted, ignoring Jack, too. "PIGGY WANTS IT TO STOP?!"

Since Mark's uncontrollable laughter made it impossible for him to answer verbally, Gavin expected the cop to either nod or shake his head. Mark didn't do either. Not out of defiance, but because Guile was screening the world around him, blocking the sights and sounds of the real world and replacing them with a false (and even more demeaning) reality. ___________________________________________________________________________

"Mark's fuckin' pissin' the bed!" Trevor exaggerated, laughing as if Mark had let loose with a bucketful instead of a tiny squirt.

"I don't care!" Ethan Young dismissed, his hand deep inside adult Mark's ass, lightly sliding his fingertips along the walls of Mark's green-treated rectum.

To Mark, it felt like Ethan was tickling his soul.

Young Lucas Wilson's hand was once again wrapped around Mark's cock, slowly sliding up and down and up and down, mirroring the actions of the trashed fifteen year old boy in the real world as he gave Mark an endless, involuntary handjob...inflicting repeated public orgasms upon him.

"He's a grown-up, but he's squealing like a girl!" Lucas Wilson announced.

"I totally called it!" Trevor announced, lifting Mark's lifeless left arm and tormenting his armpit. "I always KNEW there was no fucking WAY you could be straight!"

"Actually, he was," a familiar black robed figure explained, coming up behind Lucas and placing his hands on the boy's shoulders. "I tried to sow doubt in his mind, just to mess with his head as payback for almost shooting and killing a boy around the same age as all of you, but it was all a lie. The truth is, young Mark Pudroolen only ever came to this room because he needed to be touched. Genetics super-charged his tactile sensitivity, and cruel fate placed him with a sterile, physically distant set of parents."

Guile turned toward Mark, whose eyes looked afraid despite his rest of his face expressing only hysteria.

"And from a certain perspective, you're STILL straight, Officer Pudroolen. "Unlike Caleb Crandal, you still find women sexually and romantically desirable. When you leave this place, you could go to a bar to drink your bad memories away and end up accidentally meeting the woman of your dreams! You two could get married and spend the rest of your lives together. But the dream ends there.

You will never have children, a DEAL-BREAKER when it comes to finding a wife...especially around HERE, where girls can't even put off motherhood long enough to GRADUATE. There is a form of energy that clings to people like static electricity. We call it Soul-Creation Energy. Without that energy, a man cannot father a child. We NEED that energy, so we STEAL it. All the Soul-Creation Energy you absorb naturally is being shunted to US from now on, rendering you essentially STERILE! Your family line will die when you do.

Also complicating your quest for a mate is the fact that although you are not gay, LIKE Caleb Crandal, you and he share an artificial LUST for men! CUM contains LOTS of Soul-Creation Energy, so from now on, while you're fucking women to make your body attract more Soul-Creation Energy, you'll also be THIRSTY FOR JIZZ, and YOUR ASSHOLE WILL HUNGER. It will tingle...and pucker...and move around like a baby's lips, begging to be FED! And it WILL! NOT! STOP! Until you DO!"

Guile began to dissipate, and with him, the illusion of Ethan's room faded away, revealing the unsettling truth to Mark. It wasn't his old friends who had their hands on him, inside and out, but rather strangers.

"Good luck finding a Timbersburg wife willing to put up with THAT, Officer Pudroolen," Guile spat just before disappearing altogether.

Mark laughed harder than ever, at just how good he felt....and just how FUCKED he was.

Faggot Forest, a half hour prior

___________________________________________________________________________ "You have to watch where you're going, Mike .....OR FAGGOT FOREST WILL SWALLOW YOU WHOLE!!" -a horrific distortion of one of Mike's happy childhood memories.....just like the park itself. ___________________________________________________________________________

Mike had done it.

He'd won.

But how exactly do you escape your fate, when reality...itself has other plans for you?

Mike could see Ferret Forest's sole entrance/exit through the trees. All Mike had to do was cross the large, uncomfortably wide-open welcome area, pass through the main gate, and get to the far side of the parking lot, ...all while praying that Tom and Grant hadn't arranged an ambush.

"Overseer, are you there?" Mike thought-shouted, making another attempt. "I need the nightvision you gave me, but it's preventing me from seeing approaching headlights. And I've been trying to project a piece of my perception, like I did when I watched Tom pee, but I can't get it to work. Can you let me know if Tom's car is coming, or if I'm walking into a trap?"

No response.

"Great," Mike sighed, stepping away from the protection of the trees and out into the open.

Mike ran. He knew that the ground was dangerously soft and muddy, but he ran anyway. As Ruby Nash would've agreed, recovering from a fall in the mud takes a lot less time than recovering from a queer bashing.

Mike reached the gate and stopped. He didn't want to stop, his brain MADE him stop. It had seen something that wasn't right, and it needed to figure it out, Mike's safety be DAMNED!

Mike stared down at the wide patch of mud. He could see Tom's bald tire tracks alongside two other sets. At first, Mike considered the possibility that both were made by the mysterious, unseen vehicle that had entered the park before he, Kenny, Tom and Grant had arrived. However, the two sets of tracks didn't match.

"There's another vehicle in the park, and it doesn't look like Tom's car or the first vehicle ever left," Mike pondered. "Did Tom arrange for people to MEET him here? Was he getting a GROUP of gay bashers together tonight?

"FOUR O'CLOCK ATTACK!!!!" the Overseer's disembodied voice screamed at Mike.

Mike turned 120 degrees to his right, brought up his arms to shield his face and chest, and braced himself as much as the cracked, loose, muddy pavement would allow.

There was nothing coming.

Mike's acute ears detected approaching footfalls, enabling him to swiftly ascertain the precise spatial coordinates of the oncoming threat. The distinct rhythm conveyed vital information: the intruder possessed two legs and a relatively light weight. It was human ....or maybe LURE!

"Overseer, I can't see-"

There was no dramatic sound...no flash of light...and no high-budget CGI materialization effect. In one moment, there was nothing except the sound of running...and then Austin Mitchell suddenly appeared, just a few yards away, charging Mike with an expression of pure hatred.

Just before impact, Mike did the last thing anyone would expect a boy of Mike's considerable size to do: a squat. Instead of colliding into Mike's bulky upper body, leading with his right shoulder, Austin Mitchell slammed into Mike with his lower body, causing him to flip over Mike, hit the pavement HARD, and roll to an excruciating, flailing stop.

Austin should've been screaming in agony, but he felt nothing. The monster inside of him was stealing his pain.

....but it was FAR from enough to satiate him.

Austin Mitchell let out a shrill wail of despair that traveled straight through Mike's spine and chilled his blood.

"L-L-L-LET ME GO!" Austin bawled to the heavens as if he'd regressed into a child. "S-S-S-STOP DOING THIS TO M-M-M-MEEEE!! J-J-J-J-JUST S-S-S-S-STAAAWWWWWWWP! LET ME GO-O-O-O-O-O-!!! LET ME GO-O-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!"

Austin Mitchell was one of those kids who were blessed with good looks, excellent genes, and he came from a well-to-do family. And now that Caleb Crandal hadn't returned to school that year, Austin had pretty much assumed his social crown. But that wasn't good enough for Austin. He was yet another of Mike's classmates who couldn't feel good about themselves without making someone else feel bad, especially if that person weighed over 300 pounds...and was Austin's artistic rival.

But Austin had WON. Not because he was a better artist...because he absolutely WASN'T...but because he'd driven Mike out of art club by cruelly showing Mike the truth: Mike had no friends there, not even Mrs. Dollins, the faculty advisor/art teacher, someone who'd completely lost Mike's respect...and vice versa.

Mike turned and quietly walked through the gate, leaving Austin to his fate. Maybe he was experiencing some sort of breakdown...or maybe he was on something...or drunk. In any case, Mike wasn't equiped to handle it, and even if he could, Mike was done patching up wounded birds, only to have them fly away and abandon him.

Mike walked into the parking lot. Rather than stay and get used by Austin, Mike could just as easily go home and get used by his parents, doing their child-rearing for them.

Austin's emotional outburst stopped.

"Keep walking," Mike told himself. "Just keep walking. If he comes at me again, I'll hear it."

Mike kept going, knowing that if he so much as turned around to see where Austin was, or what he was doing, it might attract Austin's attention, and encourage him to attack Mike again. Or worse, TALK to Mike.

Mike reached the other end of the parking lot. He should've felt safer, but he didn't. Mike had the unpleasant sensation that Austin was following him. It wasn't based on any of Mike's heightened senses, just...a feeling...a feeling that Austin had somehow SURROUNDED Mike. It wasn't exactly something Mike could put into actual words, mind you, just-

"Mike?"

MIKE LET OUT A YELP OF SURPRISE AND SPUN AROUND!

Austin Mitchell, "wearing nothing but a (deranged) smile", had snuck up behind him.

Mike's eyes did what they always did, and in an instant, Mike formed a SECOND unwanted image in his mind that evening: ANOTHER intimate memory of SOMEBODY WHO'D HURT HIM!"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Mike roared, focusing on his hatred of Austin in an attempt to stop himself from glancing at Austin's unexpectedly chiseled body and his enviable penis, which dangled even lower than his low-hanging balls.

(The physical effects of Entanglement had done wonders for Austin's body. The psychological effects of Entanglement had done horrors to Austin's mind.)

"Where ya goin', Mike?" Austin asked in unnerving sing-song.

"HOME!" Mike spat in a tone meant to imply that it was none of Austin's business WHERE Mike happened to be going.

Mike didn't know it, but he was already home...his final home. Ferret Forest just hadn't gotten around to claiming the body.

"You hurt me, Mike," Austin pouted. "You hurt me real bad."

Mike had already memorized the cuts and scrapes that Austin received from his short spin down the road, so instead of using Austin's perfect opening to examine his injuries, Mike treated himself to a lingering look at Austin's dick.

What Mike saw concerned him.

Austin's loose, dangling penis had filled out, and it was starting to lift up, twitching as it grew...revealing Austin's pulse. Mike instantly calculated Austin's heart-rate and realized that it was too low. Adding to Mike's unease, Austin's respiration hadn't deepened and his skin showed no signs of flushing.

Austin wasn't sexually excited. He was either experiencing a side effect of a psychoactive drug...or he was psychotic.

"I'm sorry I got in your way," Mike lied, misunderstanding what Austin was upset about and swallowing an OCEAN of pride in the process. The apology was being offered to a HATED ENEMY for something that had been HIS FAULT, after all. But it was necessary. In addition to being a lot more physically impressive and imposing than Mike had ever imagined...

....Austin was palming something.

"You're sorry you got IN MY WAY???" Austin sneered. "Wow! You're such an intellectual snob that you can't even PATRONIZE someone without insulting their intelligence. OUCH! That's no way to treat a guy who was nice enough to take it all off for you without you needing to go through your whole "artistic nude" routine. Or did I spoil the hunt? I know how much you enjoy a challenge Mike. I learned that about you WHEN YOU DAMNED ME WITH A PSIONIC FEEDBACK LOOP!!!!"

Mike backed the fuck away.

The monster stepped forward to make up the distance.

"Lure?" Mike croaked.

"SHARD-LECHER!" the monster barked, letting the metal object hidden by his palm slide down to his fingers before snapping his wrist with inhuman speed and dexterity, flipping open a butterfly knife.

Austin's youthful cock was now rock hard, with a severe upward curve that looked as though it hurt, telling Mike that whatever was inside Austin, it was deeply disturbed.

"Overseer?!" Mike called out. "I could really use some help! Overseer???"

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

Mike was learning very quickly to hate telepathic dead air.

"Shardletcher-" Mike began, hoping to reason with...WHATEVER he was dealing with.

"SHARD....LECHER," the monster over-enunciated into Mike's face, poking Mike in the gut with Austin's erection in the process.

"I don't understand how I hurt you," Mike disputed while keeping an eye on the knife. "but Lure TERRORIZED me! He made me afraid! I was just trying to defend myself!"

"BULLSHIT!" the monster snapped. "You fell! You could've rolled over, got your feet under you, and run away! But instead, you ordered Lure to reveal himself! And you weren't so 'terrorized' that you couldn't CONCENTRATE, FOCUS, and use the gifts Reality Itself gave you to UNLEASH TELEPATHIC DEVASTION ON ALL FIVE OF US, YOU LITERAL FREAK OF NATURE!!!!!"

"But he...I was...five of you?" Mike sputtered, incredulous at having been put on the DEFENSIVE concerning his actions at the Bottleneck. "No...NO! I asked Lure to talk to me, but he kept trying to mess with my mind instead. I'm sorry I accidentally hurt...all five of you(???)... but that never would've happened if Lure would've left me alone instead of scaring the shit out of me! BESIDES, he was trying to get me to stay behind SO HE COULD FEED ON ME!"

"THAT ISN'T WHAT HE SAID!" Shard-Lecher yelled. "STOP TRYING TO SEX-UP YOUR LAME-ASS JUSTIFICATION FOR WHAT YOU DID!"

"He said he needed to FEED!" Mike fought back. "That can only mean TWO THINGS: flesh...or blood!"

Austin Mitchell's eyes rolled and he slowly shook his head, but the knife was still spinning in his hand.

"Well.....what, then?" Mike asked in annoyance. "I would've given him ANYTHING HE NEEDED! What did he want? My hair? My snot? Phlegm? Spit? Earwax? Tears? Sweat? Urine? Feces? WHAT?!?!"

"Keep going," Shard-Lecher replied stoically.

Nothing was heard for the six seconds that Michael Pearson stared at Austin Mitchell's chilly expression.

"I....don't.....I don't understand," Mike lied in disbelief.

Shard-Lecher sighed.

"Miracle...friend...hero...luxury...and genius," Shard-Lecher grumbled. "Terms that have been so extensively misapplied that their significance has been diluted. Allow me to give you a hint."

Austin Mitchell's eyes opened wide.

"No! PLEASE! Not now! Not in front of HIM!" Austin begged. It was the plea of someone who'd been systematically stripped of most of his dignity, and wanted to protect the final piece. "I don't want him to see me do it! I don't want him to watch!"

Austin was back, if indeed he had gone anywhere while Shard-Lecher was puppeting his body, but Austin only seemed to be in control from the neck up.

"Why do you care so much about what other people think of you?" Mike remarked, experiencing something similar...but FAR less intense...than what was happening to Austin. Life rarely offers people the occasion to throw an enemy's enfuriating words back in their face at the perfect moment. "It wouldn't be such a big deal if you weren't MAKING it one by being a BIG BABY about it."

Austin opened his mouth to give bawling, enraged voice to his personal belief that: "IT'S NOT THE SAME THING AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT!", but before he could engage his vocal cords, his features suddenly fell slack and he began to hyperventilate. Spittle flew at Mike, and drool poured from the corners of Austin's mouth, and if it weren't for the heavy droplet of pre-cum hanging precipitously from the glans of Austin's flushed, heavily-veined "boomerang", as well as the worrisome knife flipping around in Austin's hand, Mike might've been tempted to check to make sure that Austin hadn't swallowed his tongue.

The knife stopped and flicked forward in quick succession, telling Mike to move back. When Mike reached a distance of sixteen feet, Austin's left palm signaled for him to stop. Mike obeyed the signal but also stepped to the right, avoiding Austin's 'line of fire'.

"DON'T...LOOK!" Austin croaked out hoarsely, sounding as though his amazingly-flexed neck muscles, as reddish and veiny as his erection, were crushing his throat. "IF YOU LOOK....YOU'RE A FAG!"

Mike stared in complete fascination, showing as little concern for Austin's dignity as Austin had displayed for Mike's a few months ago.

"You're running around naked at Faggot Forest, just like gays used to do back in the day, AND you're having an orgasm in front of another GUY, but you're calling ME a fag?!" Mike asked incredulously, finding amusement at Austin's plight despite the threat he posed to Mike. "It's a good thing you bought that stupid, gimmicky knife from the late-80's. Crazy Tom and Grant Anders are here doing some queer bashing."

"I.......KNOW!" Grant grunted.

"Wait, you KNOW?" Mike gasped, snapping out of his vindictive, pervy enjoyment by having a fistful of missing puzzle pieces flung at him. "But if you're under Shard-Lecher's control, and he knows Lure, and you're HERE, that means... WAS LURE JUST TRYING TO GET ME OUT OF THE WAY?!"

It presented a horrifying and unsettling scene: Austin's head trembling, his exposed, tightly clenched teeth coated in foam pointed toward the night sky, and his tearful eyes partially hidden by his eyelids. While further down Austin's body, Shard-Lecher, still holding the knife, skillfully orchestrated a sarcastic slow clap with Austin's hands, exactly like the one Shard-Guile would give Ryan-Guile several minutes later.

"Austin! What do Shard-Lecher and Lure want with Kenny?!" Mike demanded, ignoring the animalistic noises coming out of Austin's mouth, which had suddenly sprung open. "What's this all about?!?!"

"SHUT UP...SHUT UP...SHUT UP...SHUT UP....!!!" Austin shrieked over and over, having yet another mini-emotional breakdown, one of several he'd gone through since "The Big One" back in mid-November.

It was bad enough having Michael Pearson get a glimpse at what Austin's life had been like since the night Caleb Crandal snuck into his bedroom and sexually assaulted him as his family slept blissfully through the attack, but to TALK to Mike about ANY aspect of it.....!!!

It was too much for Austin's mind to take.

"LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!" Austin screamed, filing the air with noise and scrunching his eyes shut in an attempt to shield his wounded, scarred psyche from the psychological threat posed by Michael Pearson witnessing his secret shame.

"And you called ME a 'Big Baby'?" Mike marveled, having no idea what Austin had been going through...and justifiably not caring. "All I'm asking is -AAAAACKKKKK.....OWWWWWWW!!!!!!"

Before Mike could react, Austin's body twisted at the waist and his penis discharged a powerful surge of ejaculate, so perfectly aimed that it hit...and HURT...Mike's uvula and soft palate. Even at a DISTANCE, it had more pressure behind it than a water flosser at close range.

But even worse, before the stream had even traveled three feet through the air, Shard-Lecher adjusted the aim of Austin's penis twice in fast succession, causing Mike to receive a painful high-velocity splatter to each eye before he had time to blink in response to also being hit in the back of his throat.

Mike screamed at the burning and stinging, but focused through the pain in a desperate attempt to vomit. Mike was terrified by the possibility that Shard-Lecher was the result of some form of paranormal S.T.I., and Mike had just been exposed to it.

Additional spurts of cum hit Mike on the top of his head, saturating his hair with a copious amount of semen.

Stupid as he was, even for a Lecher, the neural connection between Shard-Guile and Shard-Lecher enabled Shard-Lecher to "borrow" intellect when needed. He'd started employing it right after his failed "neanderthal approach" to killing Mike, and it had just directed his attention to an important detail about Mike that Shard-Lecher would've otherwise missed."

Austin's "LA-LA-LA" song stopped, telling Mike that Shard-Lecher reclaimed control of Austin's head.

"Do you finally understand now, Mike, or do I need Austin to splatter you with ANOTHER quart?" Shard-Lecher laughed maniacally "You...a QUEER...ran squealing out of the woods to get away FROM A FUCKING CUM VAMPIRE!!! YOU CHOSE A BASEBALL BAT OVER A BLOW JOB!!!"

"STAY gag AWAY!" Mike choked, still trying to puke.

"Why not just savor it, Mike?" Shard-Lecher suggested. "It ain't exactly as if a kid as FAT AS YOU could ever get a guy as cute as Austin to blow in your mouth any other way. Hell, that's probably the first jizz you ever tasted that didn't come out of your own faucet."

"IT cough IS!" Mike snarled hatefully at having such an important first time experience ruined for him.

Shard-Lecher stopped flipping the knife and used his Lecher power of flawless physical movement to attempt to creep behind Mike, exactly how he'd snuck up behind Mike after silently removing Austin's clothes.

In spite of being temporarily blinded, Mike turned to keep Shard-Lecher in front of him.

"STAY AWAY!" Mike shouted, giving up on his attempt to puke and frantically attempting to wipe the stinging semen from his eyes using a dry section of his cum soaked sweatshirt.

"JEEZ, Mike, calm down! You're getting so upset that I can hear that LISP you try so hard you conceal," Shard-Lecher cackled. "RELAX! You don't need to be afraid of me. I'm not a monster, I'm just the punchline to a fag joke, something straight out of a cheesy gay porn!"

With an extraordinary level of grace, rapidity, and precision, Shard-Lecher began flipping the knife around again.

"ARRRRGH!" Mike screamed in fear and annoyance at his inability to stop the stinging that was preventing him from using his only natural defense: his brain.

"Mike...Mike...Mike," Shard-Lecher tsk-ed. "I've been watching you from the moment you arrived at Tom's house, and I've just gotta say, you've got NO sense of humor. Kenny's been mentally reminiscing about Ferret Forest all night...the fun you both had here...the two of you laughing together. Yet here you are...back at Ferret Forest...AND YOU HAVEN'T LAUGHED ONCE! Why not?! Think about it! This whole situation is nothing but a stupid joke! I mean, what could possibly be more LAUGHABLE than getting slaughtered at the infamous "Faggot Forest"......BY A CUM VAMPIRE?!"

Mike took off running. He had a plan. It was stupid and desperate, but it was all Mike could manage on the fly. Mike ran back to the entrance of Faggot Forest. If Mike could reach Austin's discarded shorts, there might be a cell phone inside...hopefully unlocked. As much as Mike DIDN'T want the Timbersburg Police involved, he now had THREE PEOPLE WHO WERE TRYING TO KILL HIM!

"OVERSEER!" Mike called out mentally. "HELP ME!"

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

"OVERSEER, PLEASE!" Mike begged.

Shard-Lecher overtook Mike and brought him down roughly. Before Mike could try to get back up, the naked body of Austin Mitchell landed on top of him, straddling him.

The knife was at Mike's throat.

"It's okay, Mike, I don't mind lying in your wet spot," Shard-Lecher snarked at the cool wetness of Mike's maroon sweatshirt, which had been transformed into a drenched cumrag.

"I WAS AFRAID...I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT LURE WAS!" Mike shouted to keep his voice steady and his fear under control. "IF HE'D TOLD ME WHAT HE NEEDED, I WOULD'VE GIVEN IT TO HIM! IF HE'S AROUND, I'LL GIVE IT TO HIM NOW!"

"Sorry, Mike. My other half handles negotiations, not me," Austin's throat growled. "I'd ask him to come here, but I don't want him finding out that I tried to kill you."

Even in a state of pure terror, Mike noticed that Shard-Lecher said "tried to kill you" instead of "killed you", implying that Mike could possibly survive this.

"WHAT DOES LURE WANT WITH KENNY?!" Mike asked, trying to gather as much information as possible.

Shard-Lecher pretended to slice Austin's throat.

"WHY?!" Mike yelled, wanting elaboration. "WHY DOES LURE WANT TO KILL HIM?"

"Why do you care?" Shard-Lecher taunted, Shard-Guile's borrowed intellect handing Mike a question that he couldn't answer. "And why DON'T you care about why Lure wants to kill Tom Daggen and Grant Anders?"

Mike glanced back and forth between Austin's eyes and the knife blade, both of which were uncomfortably close to Mike's face.

"Do you like mysteries, Mike?" Shard-Lecher purred.

"Not tonight!" Mike lied.

Mike loved mysteries. He was genetically engineered to challenge himself, so how could he not?

"Good, because I've got a humdinger for you," Shard-Lecher tried and failed to tantalize. "It goes like this: It's dark, so why aren't your eyes dilated? I didn't notice it at first, which is inexcusable. I'm a Lecher. Lechers are all about the body. I should've noticed your eyes right away, but I didn't. It was only after I blinded you that I finally started to see. Those red, tear-filled, cum-filled, frantically-blinking eyes of yours can barely make me out, but you know exactly where I am...and what I'm doing...at all times. You also ran back into Faggot Forest without colliding with the gate or tripping over those speed bumps. How are you doing it, Mike? How are you seeing?"

"I don't know!" Mike confessed honestly, since he DIDN'T know what the Overseer had done to him to enable him to see without his eyes.

Shard-Lecher smiled and leaned down even closer to Mike.

"Overseer," Shard-Lecher strategically whispered into Mike's face.

The Overseer had helped Mike, and Mike was a VERY loyal friend, so he concentrated on not reacting and keeping his features still. A human would've been deceived....but not a Lecher. To Shard-Lecher, Mike's face lit up like a Christmas Tree at the mention of the being Mike wanted to protect.

Shard-Lecher released his flimsy hold on Shard-Guile's intellect, once again becoming a twisted mockery of male sexuality...a monsterous THING!"

"SHARD-LECHER KNOWS YOU'RE HERE, OVERSEER!" Austin's mouth roared, Shard-Lecher's now-reduced mind-power causing him to mix up telepathy and sound, just as Enthralling a boy with extensive brain damage had caused Shard-Lecher's brain-section to separate from Caleb-Lecher's and become mixed up with Shard-Guile's.

With a hellish scowl, Shard-Lecher put the point of the knife against the skin directly above Mike's jugular vein.

"FIX SHARD-LECHER, OVERSEER!" Austin raged. "OR SHARD-LECHER KILL THIS BOY AND GET LOTS AND LOTS OF PAIN FOR SHARD-LECHER!!!!"

Once again, Mike tried to reach out to the Overseer. There was no reply, and there would BE no reply. The unborn Overseer was weak and sleeping, and no matter how great Mike's need was, the Overseer would continue to doze.

Shard-Lecher wasn't bluffing. He fully intended to kill Mike if the Overseer didn't give him what he wanted. Mike's death at the hands of Shard-Lecher would cause the Caleb Crandal-Thrall's physical monitors to engage, giving Shard-Lecher all the pain he could ever want.

No one would come to save Mike.

As always, the only person Mike could count on...

...was himself.

End of Chapter 12

My Life of Strange Coincidences

Weird things happen to me. Coincidences SO unlikely that sometimes I'm afraid I'm losing my grip on reality itself. THAT'S where his name came from. But although Reality Itself is a character I created for my story, that isn't what I call the imaginary beings who fill my life with such bizarre coincidences and bad luck. At some point before 1999, the year I met my husband, I started calling them...

....the goblins.

(If you've seen the 2023 Doctor Who Christmas Special, I think you know where I'm going with this.)

One of the problems with convincing people that the phenomenon exists is that the very notion sounds psychotic, and I'll admit that if someone were telling ME what I'm telling YOU, I think I'd be glancing around to avoid making eye contact and mapping out my escape route.

My husband's primary responsibility is to BE there when this shit happens to me and affirm that he sees it, too.

As I said at the end of chapter 9, my mother died on my birthday last year (less than 10 minutes into it). My birthday was also the day, in 1981, that she decided to start a fight with my father, turn herself into the victim, and throw my father out of the house.....for good.....on my birthday.

But that is FAR from the strangest thing to ever happen to me.

Of the thousands, THESE are the ones that really bother me:

-At some point between '95 and '97, I met a guy in a gay bar ("Yuppies") in Mount Pleasant, PA. For some reason, he wanted to show me the halfway house where he worked. He drove me around for about a half hour, taking me down dark, forested roads very similar to the ones Tom Daggen took to get to Faggot Forest (why DIDN'T I end up getting killed by a trick?). Anyway, by rights I should've been completely lost. I wasn't. He didn't take a single lonely country road that I wasn't completely familiar with. When we finally arrived at where he worked (in a tiny housing development in Jeanette, PA called Strasser Plan), I showed him the house I grew up in...TWO DOORS DOWN FROM IT!

-The Unsolved Murder of Debbie W. The story is too long to put here, so it's at the very bottom of the page.

-Until I moved out on my own, I briefly lived with my mother in a trailer court, also in Mount Pleasant. After I left, I found out that two of my former friends (and like Mike Pearson, I had almost NO friends, which makes it stranger still) had moved into that very same trailer court (separately, and long after their friendship had ended), which was FAR from where either of them had lived previously (Jeanette and Penn). It makes no sense. I just used Google Maps to confirm this one, in case I was misremembering, and to check to make sure that my cunt mother hadn't had the audacity to sell HER shitty trailer TO SOMEONE I KNEW! Fortunately, she hadn't. Ray and John just both happened to end up there, choosing THAT trailer court...of all the HUNDREDS of trailer courts in that section of Pennsylvania...to settle down and start families. Fucking weird.

-In 1999, my husband and I moved from Meadville, PA to Garden Grove, CA (for 4 years, until we moved back). One day, we went to a gay book store at Laguna Beach. I was looking for a pornographic gay horror story, WHICH DOESN'T EXIST, SO I'M WRITING ONE! (Recommendations, please. Anything that reminds you of MY story, please pass it along.) Anyway, I picked out an awful book called "Desmond", about a gay vampire who does nothing except describe gracious furniture in boring, exhaustive detail. Anyway, near the beginning of the book, one of the characters SPECIFICALLY MENTIONS that he went to Allegheny College, in MEADVILLE, PA. It is about a mile from where I'm sitting at this very moment.

But the most bizarre coincidence happened to me a few days ago, and the best part: You all know I started this story in '22, a year before the Doctor Who '23 Christmas Episode titled: "The Church on Ruby Road", so this example of one of my "goblin incidences" cannot be disputed.

No bullshit. This freaked me the fuck out. My husband and I fucking HATED the episode, but once we realized what we were seeing...HOW THE FUCK DO YOU JUST TURN IT OFF?!

In the episode, the enemies are called "GOBLINS". They cause people to not only experience MISFORTUNE, but also COINCIDENCES. And if THAT isn't bizarre enough, the doctor introduces a new invention: Gloves that allow him to shed or gain mass, exactly like Thralls can do. And at the climax of the episode, the Doctor uses the gloves to pull an airship out of the sky. I hate to spoil my own story, but when shit hits the fan at the Bottleneck, I've always intended for Guile and Lecher to attempt to fly away, only to have The Creeping Vine get ahold of them with his violet tendril and borrow mass from his Pilot Fish, Thunderbug, to weigh them down, leading to a Caboose vs. Thunderbug "Mass-Transfer Fight".

I don't understand why I've been plagued by strangeness, but I've decided that from now on, I'm done with people poo-poo-ing my experiences with "rational" explanations involving math and psychology. None of that shit explains "Desmond" (do you know HOW MANY fucking podunk colleges in podunk cities there ARE in the United States?), and it absolutely doesn't explain "The Church on Ruby Road".

I don't know WHY I'm afflicted with weirdness, but at least I now know for certain that whatever it is, it is REAL.

Author Babblings

1.) To start, I apologize for any typos or scrambled sentences. I bit off WAY more than I could chew with this chapter, and if I would've proofread it one more time, my brain would've melted. I apologize to the authors I've giggled at over the years for missing "obvious" typos. I didn't realize that after reading over something multiple times, your eyes just gloss over the text, missing all sorts of mistakes.

2.) Why Nifty is the best story site:

I wanted more readership, so I took the time and effort to fix up chapter 1 of my story and submit it to a certain site that I do not wish to advertise. I'll simply say that its name involves several X-es. Anyway, in spite of the fact that THERE IS NO SEX in chapter 1, just Kenny whipping it out for Mike to look at, my story was REJECTED for mentioning that the boys in the car were between 16 and 17, and the site does not permit stories about "minors". (I guess "Porky's" and "American Pie" are now kiddie porn in this strange new world we live in now.)

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that despite rejecting my admittedly LAME first chapter (with regard to sex, I mean), that site prides itself on their "anything goes" stories.

But here's the thing: If they don't permit stories about minors, why does the "THEMES" listing include:

Boy (1243)-----------I GUESS the "Boy(s)" could be 18+, but keep reading. Boy/Boy (1916) Boys/Teen Female (774)----Shouldn't the BOYS be at least teenagers, TOO? Female/ Girl (1343) Girls/ Female (413) Girls domination (368) Male/ Female Teens (2401) Male Male/ Teen Female (507) Male/ Teen Female (3843) Teen (5461) Teen Female Solo (195) Teen Female/ Boy (315) Teen Female/ Teen Female (1178) Teen Male/ Female (2215) Teen Male/ Teen Male (1403) Teen Male Solo (195) Teen Male/ Teen Female (4787) Teen Male/ Teen Females (1080)

And last but CERTAINLY not least!!!!

Young (8491)

With so many TEEN themes, why is "Young" even HERE, if it isn't refering to minors?

I'd also like to point out that "Young" stories are only exceeded in number by:

Anal (12719) Blowjob (17846) Consensual sex (14554) Cum Swallowing (11990) Incest (12330) Oral Sex (13064)

....which makes my story's rejection all the more conspicuous.

It's taken me forever to get this chapter out, partially due to wasting WEEKS polishing my first chapter for a sex stories site that rejected my submission off the cuff without even reading it.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of sites force you to waste time registering before you can access their author guidelines. Nifty doesn't do that under-handed SHIT.

I donate to Nifty, and I would encourage you to do likewise, if possible.

3.) ChatGPT

(I'm not receiving anything for mentioning them, and it's a free service, so...)

I fucking LOVE ChatGPT. I have a FANTASTIC story to tell, but I'm not good at writing. But with ChapGPT I can put in a garbage sentence and type "Please make better:" or "Please improve:" or "Please rewrite in thirty different ways."

BUT BEST OF ALL, my husband no longer has to answer my ridiculous sci-fi questions. BEHOLD:

My question: For my story: Someone has five independent brains inside of their skull, but two are unnaturally linked, making them merely semi-independent. Is "conjoinment" a good term to use to describe this unnatural slight fusion, or is there a better word to use?

ChatGPT's answer: "Conjoinment" could work well in this context to describe the semi-independent linking of two brains within the same skull. However, if you're looking for a term that specifically implies a fusion or joining together, you might consider using "neural integration" or "cerebral amalgamation." These phrases convey the idea that the brains are coming together or merging in some way. Choose the term that best fits the tone and style of your story.

My follow-up question: Is there a less flowery way of saying "neural integration"?

ChatGPT's response: Certainly! A less flowery way to describe the linking of two brains could be to simply say "neural connection" or "brain linkage." These terms are more straightforward and less metaphorical while still conveying the idea of the brains being linked or integrated to some extent.

How awesome is THAT?! And that's HARDLY the most science fiction-y question I've ever asked it. (No matter how heavy Shard-Lecher forces Caleb-Lecher to become, Caleb-Lecher cannot sink into the Earth. ChatGPT is ADAMANT about that. Fuck. It would've been a funny scene.)

I just wish I could input all the previous chapters of my story and use ChatGPT as a continuity czar. If any fellow writers know of any AI programs that can DO that, please notify me, even if it's a pay site. A continuity czar is something I'd definitely fork over money for, but in spite of being all "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY", I still haven't managed to find one, or at least one that doesn't have a problem with pornography.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

-The Unsolved Murder of Debbie W.

Back when I was a stupid 20 year-old, I worked at a Rax Restaurant (Arby's, but better) in Greensburg Pennsylvania. I was fond of one of my managers, "Big Debbie", so named because there was another Debbie who worked there, "Little Debbie", who was quite small. Anyway, Big Debbie was my manager, and if I would've had the courage to come out to ANYONE back then, it would have been her, but I was still in "I can change if I pray hard enough"-mode, so I never did.

I formed a work friendship with a young guy named Zack (not his real name), who'd moved to the area all alone (suspicious, but I didn't think so at the time because I was young and stupid). Big Debbie and Zack apparently started up a relationship of sorts, despite Debbie living with her boyfriend's family.

One night, I visited Zack along with John (from the trailer court story) and an OBNOXIOUS FLAMER (Jesus CHRIST he was a mean-spirited asshole) named Scott, who CLAIMED to be straight, and eventually ended up marrying a girl who also worked at Rax. Anyway, Zack was behaving strangely that evening. He seemed preoccupied. That's all I remember about that night, aside from the fact John and I felt like fifth wheels. Scott and Zack were spending a lot of time talking off by themselves. About what, I cannot say.

The next day, I was in line at the Rax drive-thru, getting lunch, when Zack appeared out of nowhere and walked right in front of my car. I acknowledged him, but he only glanced angrily in my direction. I found out later that Debbie had been strangled to death at a car wash the previous evening, and Zack had apparently been woken up by the police, who (from what I heard) took him to straight to the car wash, showed him the body, and asked if he'd done it. And in a statistically unlikely coincidence, I arrived at Rax just in time to watch Zack go into the restaurant to create a scene.

On the day of the viewing, Zack called and asked me to take him, which put me in a HORRIFIC spot, since NOT ONLY had I agreed to take another set of people, ...the family believed Zack to be the killer! I was frantic, and in the midst of all of this, I remember my mother -with a smile on her face- asking: "Now...WHO are you taking WHEN?" She was fucking DELIGHTED at my frantic turmoil.

I arrived at Zack's place, and I was met by a police detective (WHO DIDN'T ASK MY NAME) who explained that a special PRIVATE viewing was arranged for Zack, one meant for BEFORE the family arrived. We made the trip, entered the funeral parlor, and were met by a SINGLE, SOLITARY GREENSBURG POLICE OFFICER, who stood FAR BACK from Zack and myself as we approached the coffin. Zack put on quite an emotional spectacle, going so far as to put a locket in the coffin. I didn't actually see him do it...he told me as we were driving away. I was barely listening. I was too busy watching someone glare at me hatefully as we drove out of the parking lot. I believe it was a family member who'd arrived early and figured out why I was there and who I'd brought with me.

NO ONE EVER INTERVIEWED ME, in spite of me having been with the main suspect on the night of the murder, even after taking him to Debbie's viewing. Even though I couldn't have given them any more information than I'm giving YOU, I find it odd....so very odd...that besides the detective who told me what to do at the funeral parlor, and the detective AT the funeral home (who wasn't all that interested in watching or listening to the prime suspect as he babbled emotionally at Debbie's corpse) NO ONE WORKING THE CASE EVER TALKED TO ME! I swear to you all that before I started writing this, I never ONCE consciously made the connection between the Timbersburg Police deliberately botching the investigations of the murders at Faggot Forest with the Greensburg Police horribly botching the investigation into Debbie's death.

I see it NOW, though......clear as crystal.

A few weeks after Debbie's murder, in the middle of the night, the phone rang. I ran to get it, fearful that the call was for ME, and that it might wake my mother, who would react like she reacted to everything: Violent Cunt Wrath. The call was from Zack, who was in a state of emotional collapse regarding Debbie. Had I been older (like I am now) and not so childishly CERTAIN that he'd had nothing to do with her murder, I might've gotten a confession out of him, if he indeed HAD done it. But I was young and stupid, KENNY MILLER stupid, so I just listened to his drugs/alcohol/guilt(?)-induced ramblings for hours. Weeks after that, he called to tell me that the killer had been caught. Excited, I told everyone, only to find out that "no", no one had been arrested. Zack later called up and told me not to tell anyone, and I agreed for some reason, in spite of ALREADY HAVING TOLD EVERYONE. I remember Zack being pissed at me, but I have no recollection of him explaining the reason he'd made up an arrest that hadn't occurred.

While refreshing my memory in order to write this, I discovered that there had been an update on the case. A girl in Texas went to a male friend and frantically asked for advice. Her boyfriend had confessed to Debbie's murder. For legal reasons, no doubt, they never mentioned his name.

There was another update, and it was actually FUNNY. Actually it wasn't...it was enfuriating...but Guile certainly saw the humor in it. After all, he'd been looking out through Lure's eyes as he researched Faggot Forest, and Guiles LOVE to learn, so Guile learned a LOT about investigative ineptitude. The Greensburg Police have the killer's D.N.A. Apparently, Debbie put up a fight (I didn't know that) and there were skin scrapings under her fingernails. I wonder if the Greensburg police even bothered to examine Zack's upper body for scratches. Anyway, the part that made Guile laugh: On the video he and I watched, Debbie's sister-in-law claims that the Greensburg Police tried to get the family to pay for DNA testing. A police representative...the most UNCONVINCING HUMAN I'VE EVER SEEN ON TV...disputed the claim! He was a deer in the headlights.

I hate Greensburg. I hated it as a scared, closeted, friendless, bullied, abused boy, and the years haven't changed my opinion. Neither has the continued failure of Greensburg law enforcement to apprehend Debbie's killer.

One night, long ago, I was closing the Rax salad bar. Debbie, feeling silly, started singing into the cashier microphone. She did a sarcastic, drunken-esque version of the chorus to "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)", by the group Cinderella. In spite of having an awful memory and prosopagnosia (face blindness), I can nevertheless see and hear her right now, singing that tragically apropos song. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.