The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Mike sat tensely in the back of Tom Daggen's burnt-orange sedan and tried to figure out what to do about his looming physical assault. In spite of his gifted status, all he could come up with was texting the police or the rangers to report four teenaged trespassers.

Considering the decades of murders, bashings, muggings, car vandalisms, etc., Mike was certain that whoever was responsible for keeping people out of Ferret Forest would definitely show up to bar them from entering or, if they arrived before the police, kick them out. Like several unfortunate, young, male visitors to the park, many a law enforcement career had met an early grave because of Faggot Forest, so even though nothing bad had happened there in quite a while, a panicked text would probably STILL provoke an immediate police response.

There were just two problems with Mike's plan: Kenny's short-term future and Mike's long-term future. If Mike texted the police, he and Kenny could get charged, which would lead to more child abuse for Kenny, and fewer scholarships and college acceptance letters for Mike. Sure, Mike could explain his situation to the police, and show that he had written the text out of a legitimate fear for his life. However, the bad reputation of the Timbersburg Police Department extended far beyond its racist hiring practices.

The Timbersburg P.D. was notorious for computer "errors". People who were arrested, then cleared, would find that their names were still in the system. When confronted, the police would roll their eyes at the irate citizen and hope they could provoke him or her into doing or saying some- thing arrestable. The only thing that could solve the problem, eventually, was expensive legal action, and even after the police lost, they would vindictively drag their feet up to, and even past, the point of contempt charges, which, being Timbersburg, never stuck.

"Nothing will get in the way of me leaving this fucking area next fall," Mike swore, making yet another doomed vow. Mike would be leaving Timbersburg a lot sooner than that, but only in spirit.

So Mike decided that he would rather face a beating than to call the authorities, in spite of the fact that it would've amused him greatly for Tom and Grant to be arrested at Faggot Forest.

"Let's see Tom spin that story!" Mike thought, trying unsuccessfully to make himself laugh.

"There has to be another way out of this," Mike pondered. "The only thing I've got going for me is my brain. I've got to stop letting fear paralyze my creativity, stop wondering about Lure, and get busy figuring a way out of this."

But nothing came to mind.

"How much further is it?" Grant asked Tom. "I've never been there before."

"Just a few more miles," Tom answered. "We just have to...FUCK!"

A "Road Closed" sign was visible in the distance, making Tom pound his frustration into the steering wheel.

Mike chuckled to himself upon noticing that even though the sign stood at a four-way intersection, there wasn't an accompanying detour arrow in sight.

"Whichever city I end up in will have clearly marked detour routes," Mike sighed fondly.

Mike didn't need a detour sign in THIS situation, however, as he was familiar with the area. He'd already charted a needless alternate route in his head, avoiding any road with a tendency to be flooded out or damaged by winter/spring runoff. The route was "needless" because Mike sure as hell wasn't going to tell Tom about it. As far as Mike was concerned, it was just a fun mental mapping exercise.

"Go right," Grant suggested to Mike's continuing concealed amuse- ment, picking a way that probably had a "Road Closed" sign of its own, and no "Detour" marker of its own, either. Even if it were clear, though, it was still a longer trip than Mike's secret route, and would add a good ten minutes to the journey. But in the greater scheme of things, all that meant was that Mike would be attacked ten minutes later than previously scheduled.

Mike looked over at Kenny, who'd fallen asleep. Mike wanted to be enraged that Kenny could actually ACHIEVE a sleep state after causing so much trouble for him, but Mike's brain wouldn't sign off on that. Mike knew that after Kenny's beating and the intense pressure Kenny said he'd been under, his mind and body probably knocked him out to facilitate healing and alleviate stress. Still...

"I wouldn't want any more of his 'help' anyway," Mike decided.

Mike clicked on Kenny's cell and needlessly skimmed through his memorized text conversation with Lure yet again. When he finished, he tried to decide whether to erase it or not. Part of Mike wanted to punish Kenny by depriving him of the tiny amount of information Mike learned about the white thing that walked out of the woods. However, if Lure ended up hurting anyone, or if there were a series of unexplainable occurences (or God forbid, murders) in the Timbersburg/Johnsport area, Mike would need the texts to show the police. His story about an invisible, telepathic, forest monster would be laughable without something to back it up, no matter how flimsy.

Out of nowhere, Mike's frustration flared up, causing him to internally chastise himself.

"He's GONE!" Mike screamed in his mind. "He's GONE, and I'll never encounter him again! That's the way the supernatural works! One day you see bigfoot, moth man, Nessie, or a UFO, and then you NEVER SEE IT AGAIN! STOP...THINKING...ABOUT...LURE!!!! I've put myself in a horrible situation, and I need to focus on SOLVING IT!!"

Mike looked at the back of Tom Daggen's black, slicked-back hair and the left side of Grant's light-brown crew cut.

"If you two pieces of trash beat me up, what do you think will happen?" Mike pondered to himself. "Do you think I'll just GO AWAY?? This won't just END when you two are laughing over my bloodied and broken body while getting in a few last shots. It doesn't WORK that way! There WILL be consequences, dipshits! I'll make goddamned SURE of THAT!"

Tom and Grant would disagree. Last summer, they beat the son of the most powerful man in Timbersburg nearly to death, and hadn't faced any consequences at all. Hell, no one had even SEEN the kid in months, and no one had any idea what had become of him.

He became Lure.

Robbie stood safely behind the fallen tree and watched his father charge into the woods in pursuit of the monster.

The girl was yelling at the black guy to wake up, and the older guy who'd just arrived was yelling "STOP!!!" repeatedly at a police cruiser whose brakes were screaming in agony while the cop at the wheel tried to avoid slamming into the older guy's car. And off in the distance, more sirens could be heard.

Robbie had a lot of reasons to be excited at that moment, but Robbie felt nothing.

Robbie was broken.

The cruiser managed to stop in time, but it had to twist to the left, almost hitting Robbie's father's wrecked red pick-up.

Robbie's heart should've sped up, or skipped a beat. It didn't do either. In the face of a massive amount of thrilling activity, it just remained steady.

Robbie wished he were normal. It was bad enough that he had to deal with being gay, or rather, the heterosexual bullshit that got directed at him for being gay, but why did he also have to be the kid who was dead inside? Didn't he have enough childhood crap to deal with, with his bad situation at home? Why did all of his tormentors seem to lead such charmed lives, with loving two-parent households, and why couldn't they just enjoy those wonderful lives without making Robbie's awful life even WORSE? Why couldn't THEY be the ones who were dead inside?

But tonight, just after leaving Timbersburg, Robbie started to feel again. He'd gotten a brief flash of excitement when his dad gave him permission to smoke. That paled in comparison to the moment when he first saw the monster, of course. And THAT DEFINITELY didn't mean SHIT measured against the moment when the thing stared at him through the window of the truck and attacked him with his tongue! Robbie was so fucking terrified that he almost PASSED OUT! And THEN his dad pulled the monster over a tree. And THEN his father tried to run the monster over! And then the monster used its fire superpower to blow out the pick-up's tires. And then the pick-up crashed against the guardrail. And then Robbie startled the monster by knowing the answer to a magic question! And then the older black guy shot the monster! And then...and then....AND THEN.....AND THEN!!!

But now, it was all over. Sure, it wasn't over for the people around him. For Robbie, however, even though his father might die, or might already be dead, it was nevertheless over. Why? Because Robbie had gone back to feeling nothing.

Sirens grew nearer, promising firemen, ambulances, chainsaw wielding D.O.T. workers, tow trucks, and maybe even the military. And as excitement filled the air for everyone except him, Robbie asked himself who he'd rather see reemerge from the woods, his father...or the monster.

"SURPRISE!!!!!"

Robbie reacted to the monster's voice in his head by letting out a shriek that would've informed everyone around him of his homosexuality, if anyone nearby were capable of seeing or hearing through the telepathic screen that had been erected around him.

"I'm glad you're not mad at me," the monster's voice said cheerfully in Robbie's mind, "I hate pretending to be sorry....in spite of being genius at it. I DO like receiving thanks, however, so go ahead, I'm listening! Bonus points if you make me cry."

"What do you want me to thank you FOR?" Robbie asked, scanning the woods for the monster, much as Mike Pearson had done earlier. Robbie didn't possess a fraction of an OUNCE of Mike's freakish visual capabilities, but neither did he possess Mike's fear. Robbie was only looking for the monster out of curiosity.

"Excellent," Guile concluded. "The boy is in an acceptable state of mind to be manipulated."

"Oh," the monster replied, feigning disappointment, "I thought you were going to shower me with gratitude for proving to you that you can still feel."

Robbie didn't reply at first, giving Guile the opportunity to wonder if one could accurately use the word "speechless" when dealing with telepathic communications.

"How did you know I worry about that?" Robbie asked haltingly.

"So let me get this straight," the monster teased. "We're having a telepathic conversation, and you want to know how I know you're concerned that you might be an unemotional zombie. Hmmmm...."

"If you can read my mind, do you know what's wrong with me?" Robbie asked, almost pleading.

Guile felt a warm cozy feeling. The scoreboard now read: Guile 1 - Robbie 0. Guile hoped that Robbie wouldn't make things TOO easy on him, though. After all, this might be the last negotiation that Guile ever conducted!

"If you want to know, I'll tell you," the monster offered, "but you're not allowed to get mad at me if you don't like what I tell you."

"Okay," Robbie reluctantly agreed.

"Your mother has something called a Histrionic Personality Disorder. Even before your father moved out, you had to walk on eggshells around her, because whenever she feels provoked, threatened, or she just wants to let off some steam, she melts down and physically and emotionally abuses people who aren't in a position to defend themselves, like you and your father."

"NO!" Robbie contradicted angrily, but not so angrily that Guile needed to quickly reverse course. "My dad proved ON MY BIRTHDAY that he has NO problem hitting my mom!"

Robbie had just handed Guile a plate with too much red meat to chew on all at once, but Guile had been SPOILING for a battle of the minds for a very long time. And much like Linda Byrne, Guile didn't give a shit that Robbie wasn't able to fight back.

"Did you see him hit her?" the monster asked measuredly.

"No, but she SAID!" Robbie 'countered'.

It wasn't the childish simplicity of the remark that made Guile want to bust out laughing, so much as the absolute, baseless certainty in Robbie's voice.

"Robbie, do you seriously believe your mother when she tells you she never flung her iced tea at your father's face-"

"YES!" Robbie screamed mentally with utter conviction. "On my fucking BIRTHDAY! And then he DID BEAT HER UP! AND THEN HE LEFT...ON MY FUCKING BIRTH-"

"A YEAR AGO, YOU ARRANGED TO SELL YOUR VIRGINITY TO A MAN IN HIS FORTIES!" the monster announced at a painful level of psychic intensity.

Robbie instantly stopped mentally screaming and stared off into space with a look of sheer horror.

"AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED," the monster informed him, "for lowballing yourself like that. Three hundred? Seriously? Thank goodness you chickened out! Even now, after depreciating by a full calendar year, your virginity is still worth at LEAST a thousand."

This "joke" made Robbie relax....slightly.

"Are you going to tell my dad?" Robbie asked nervously.

"Shouldn't you be asking me if I intend to kill your dad?"

"I...don't...uh...are you?" Robbie asked.

"I can only scare humans or rough them up a bit, but I can't kill them," the monster confessed, to make Robbie relax even more, "but if you interrupt me again, I will tell him where to go on the internet to watch his son, who was TEN at the time, lube up his ass to see how many hotdogs he could stuff inside of himself. You know that IS kiddie porn, right? People go to jail and have their entire lives RUINED for uploading that shit."

"But...I'm only thirteen...and I only filmed ME!" Robbie justified.

"And neither of those pieces of information will keep you from possibly going to juvie, Robbie. And if you do, the asking price for your virginity will drop substantially, and you won't be in a position to haggle, unless 'haggling' is also the name of a sex act I'm unfamiliar with."

"So? I'm not scared! I'd like it!" Robbie claimed. "I WANT to be fucked!"

"Rapists don't use lube, Robbie," Guile informed him, "and they don't gently finger you to get you loosened up while telling you how fucking sexy your are. They just shove a sock in your mouth, a cock up your ass, and start fucking until they cum...even if you're bleeding and torn up inside."

"Still not scared!" Robbie asserted defiantly.

"Hmmmmmmm. Well, I'm not all that good at scaring people," the monster chuckled, "but let me try this: Although juvie would be iffy, a court-ordered psychiatrist would be an absolute CERTAINTY, especially if I download all of your dreams and sexual fantasies into your father's head. Tell me, Robbie, how would your father react if he knew what you 'might' do to him if he ever made the foolish mistake of getting falling-down drunk during one of your visitations? On a related subject, are you still asking the dealers at school to hook you up with a roofie or two?"

"PLEASE DON'T....please don't tell him about that!" Robbie begged, so terrified that he accidentally started making his plea out loud, before quickly switching to mind-talk.

Guile smiled. If he wished, he could push Robbie just a little bit harder and treat the boy to his very first panic attack. It would've been fun to watch, but it wouldn't have gotten Guile any closer to his objective. If fact, the panic attack would've pushed it further away. That wouldn't DO.

"I'm going to finish my thoughts concerning your emotional emptiness, and you're going to pay attention. Right?"

"right," Robbie agreed softly.

"Now then... Robbie, I see at least two anger-inducing incidences in your mind during which your mother flung her tea in YOUR face during an argument. I see her clearly, trying to assume the body posture of a demure 1930's film star, but actually looking more like a trashy, drunken, bar slut. However, in spite of demonstrating that she likes flinging tea in the same way that monkeys like flinging their shit, you STILL choose to believe her lie that she only slammed that glass of tea down on the dining room table and accidentally splashed some on your dad.

Robbie said nothing.

"When I'm feeling a little stronger, I'm going to show you the entire fight, from beginning to end, which I've already witnessed after looking inside your father's mind. Soooo much passionate hate!"

"I don't want to see it," Robbie said flatly.

"Then do you accept that your mother picked a fight with your father on your birthday, lied about the iced tea, lied about being beaten, kicked your dad out of the house, and didn't give a fuck about you OR your birthday while she did it?"

"If you say so," Robbie replied unconvincingly, guaranteeing that Guile absolutely would make due on his threat.

"You've obviously conditioned yourself to stop feeling in order to deal with the reality of living with a psychotic bitch with zero coping skills who sits you down on a couch for hours and paces in front of you while she rants about the stress she feels she's under, how you should be doing more around the house, how your father's not paying her enough money, etc. And the only way to avoid sighing, yawning, or rolling your eyes in despair, thus risking physical violence, is to simply shut down and let her endless bullshit wash right over you. But you've done it so often that it's become automatic, and you don't know how to turn your emotions back on."

"You really don't like my mother, do you?" Robbie pointed out, unknowingly proving Guile's point by using the same lifeless monotone Robbie routinely switched to whenever his mother would come home from work angry, spoiling to use Robbie for some stress release.

"Oh, no!" the monster differed. "I was created for the purpose of manipulating people, and your mother is a master of it! She has you trained to keep your guard down while she slaps the SHIT out of you! And when she's done, she collapses to the ground, wails that you don't love her anymore, and gets YOU to kneel down, wrap your arms around her, and console HER! It's so fucking MESSED UP that it's BRILLIANT! Oh, how I wish she and I could do brunch and compare notes!"

"So you're trying to manipulate ME?" Robbie asked, seizing upon the only part of the monster's spiel that he felt comfortable talking about.

"Nope," the monster lied, "you and I are just going to make a mutually beneficial deal."

"You're gonna blackmail me, aren't you?"

"Nope."

"So you're not going to tell my dad about me being gay, and that stuff about the hotdogs, and me almost selling my virginity, and wanting to...you know...make him fall asleep?" Robbie asked, trying to figure out exactly how much scarier this situation was going to get.

"Oh, Robbie," the monster cackled, "did you just say 'make him fall asleep', as if you just want to gaze lovingly at your dear old dad and watch him get a little well deserved shut-eye?"

The monster's laughter lingered a bit too long, making Robbie wish he would've phrased his question differently.

"Robbie, you and I are going to play a little game," the monster began, his tone making it clear that participation was not optional.

"Okay...?" Robbie replied hesitantly.

"Your daddy just drank a nice, cold beer you handed him. He said it tasted funny, but he drank it anyway. A few minutes later, you're in his room, helping him undress for bed. He's about to lie down in his skivvies, as usual, but you slide his underwear down, pushing away his fumbling, protesting hands, and ignoring his delirious babbling. Your father gets on the bed, on top of the covers, completely naked and defenseless, and falls into a sleep that he won't awaken from until morning, NO MATTER WHAT. You with me so far?"

"Yeah," Robbie acknowledged uncomfortably.

"So according to your mind, you'd start by exploring his body, viewing and touching all of his hidden, private areas...the places you've never been able to access except for brief 'accidental' contact during roughhousing.

After that, you would indulge your other senses. You would sniff his armpits, then move down and bury your nose between his balls and legs, savoring the aroma until you just HAD to get a taste, then another, and another. Most boys your age, even the gay ones, would puke their guts out at even the thought of inhaling their father's musk, let alone lapping it up like a filthy animal, but YOU are a SPECIAL little boy, aren't you, Robbie? You wouldn't even flinch as you lost control, ignoring any pubic hairs that stuck to your lips or tongue. You'd just surrender your humanity and tongue-bathe your daddy's whole crotch before focusing on his cock and balls, licking them like a mother cat cleaning her kittens, until you'd washed them far better than you've ever washed your own."

Robbie blinked when he finally realized that the monster stopped talking. Guile hadn't even touched his mind. He'd mesmerized Robbie just with words.

"I...I...wash...myself," Robbie blundered, pulling himself out of the fantasy that the monster had momentarily trapped him in.

"Really? Huh. I'm using my telepathy to smell what you're smelling, and someone really reeks! You should tell all of those cops running around that they should skin their foreskins back when they're in the tub and wash away all of that nasty, whiffy smegma!"

"What's 'smegma'?" Robbie asked.

"Smegma is a small island nation in the middle of Lake Erie, just off the coast of Utah," the monster explained. "So your father is lying there, snoring away and enjoying the tits and pussy dreams you're forcing him to have. What do you do now?"

"I don't...I can't...think right now," Robbie told the monster, looking over and seeing a bunch of cops standing around his dad's wrecked red pick-up.

"They're looking for you," the monster informed Robbie, "but they can't see or hear you. I've 'cloaked' you. Just sit on the guardrail and make sure no one walks into you."

"Uhhhh....okay," Robbie replied, straddling the northbound guard- rail and leaning back against the fallen tree."

"To answer my question, Robbie, you roll your father over to have some fun with his ass. You plant your palms against his muscular buns and you use every bit of power in your hands to massage the FUCK out of his glutes. Then, after your hands get sore, you spread your father open and introduce yourself to daddy's puckered asshole, blowing on it to make it wink at you. When it stops, which it'll do FAR too soon for a special little boy like YOU, Robbie, you'll wriggle your fingers into your daddy's crack and push his buns apart to the point that you can lean down and bury your face between them. Then you'll let go, and feel his cheeks envelop your cheeks, coating them with your dad's scent. You breathe in through your nose, repeatedly, causing his musk to go straight to your brain, where it does exactly what it was meant to do, whether you humans want to admit it or not. It works you up to the point that you stick out your tongue and touch it against your father's asshole, which hasn't been licked in three years, seven months, two weeks, and almost four days. The feel of your tongue makes daddy's asshole wink again, but much faster and stronger, grabbing the tip of your tongue in its sticky embrace. You surrender right away, refusing to withdraw your tongue until daddy releases you. And when he does, you lose your fucking mind, Robbie Byrne, and slurp your father from taint to tailbone, never even noticing the shitty taste. And as you defile your father in ways that no son ever SHOULD, you have absolutely NO guilt and no regrets....except one. You find yourself wishing that instead of putting roofies into a beer meant for your dad, your dad would've put roofies into a glass of chocolate milk meant for you!"

"Could we...talk about something else...just for a second?" Robbie asked. "I'm feeling kind of...weird right now. My heart's beating."

"Oh, I was really hoping to have a conversation about sex," the monster said, sounding depressed. "I'm sorry, Robbie, I really didn't know you were so uncomfortable talking about...you know. Well, I really should be going. Good-bye, Robbie. And I'm sorry about making your...uh...heart beat."

"Wait! We CAN talk about sex stuff! I talk about sex stuff with my gay friends all the time," Robbie defended, desperate to keep the conversation going, so he wouldn't go back to being dead inside.

"No you don't! You TRY to start the conversation, hoping it will lead somewhere, but it never does. Instead of a circle jerk...or an orgy ...or a GANGBANG....OR BUKAKKE, it just leads to your 'friends', a bunch of immature, backstabbing babies, exchanging amused looks behind your back while you try to sell them on the idea of actually doing GAY stuff. All of your gay 'friends' are nasty little BASTARDS! And when you get to Weyerhauser Senior High, I've heard the gay kids THERE are even WORSE!"

"Who told you THAT?" Robbie asked.

"I caught a thought from a smart, heavy boy who goes there," the monster said dismissively while preparing Robbie to take the reigns and finish the 'Tale of the Drugged, Unconscious Dad'.

"Does that kid draw...a lot?" Robbie inquired.

"No," Guile lied, while privately thinking: "FUCK!!!!!!!!!!"

"What's your name?" Robbie asked, thankfully shifting gears.

"My name is Guile, Robbie, and in spite of scaring your earlier, I hope we can be the best of friends."

"Guile...guile....," Robbie whispered, fighting with his barely- used memory and his seldom-used, substandard public school education. "I've heard that word before. What's it mean?"

"It means 'wisdom' or 'knowledge'," Guile half-truthed. "But it's important that we finish our little game, because..."

"I would get out my cell phone and take pictures, lots of pictures! I'd fill up my fuckin' phone AND memory card, posing my dad in every way I could. Then I'd video myself playing with his dick, getting him hard, then letting him go soft, getting him hard, letting him go soft..."

"Please keep going," Guile prodded after Robbie started to ponder whether it was safe to open up and bear his dark desires to a telepathic monster, even if he probably already knew them.

"Then I'd get naked and lie down next to him," Robbie continued. "I'd take his hand and slide it all over my body. When I was done, I'd wrap his hand around my cock, squeeze it tight, and use it to beat off with. I'd cum straight up, so it would all land straight down. I'd get my dad's hand all slimy, and move his fingers all around, making him play with my dick and balls until I got horny again. Then I'd keep spittin' in my dad's hand until it was ready to jerk me off again."

"That's it?!" Guile asked. "I was expecting more from someone who thinks like you do, Robbie."

"There is something else, but I'd never really do it, 'cuz there's NO WAY he'd sleep through it!"

"Please tell me anyway," Guile requested. "After all, I DID say that your dad wouldn't wake up until morning, no matter what."

Robbie hemmed and hawed for a little bit.

"I'd lube myself up REAL GOOD, and use my dildo to get good and ready," Robbie finally admitted."

"AND....?" Guile pressed.

"I'd get on top of him...over his hips....like I'm riding a horse. I'd reach back and put lube ALL OVER his dick, and then...you know...'ride' him, wiggling by butt against his dick, trying to get it to...get hard and stuff. And when he started gettin' stiff, I'd put the tip against my ass- hole, just to....feel it there...and wait for it to start growin'...guiding it so that it would slide up into me. And then I'd just...enjoy feeling it in me. I'd let it get soft, but then I'd tighten my butt and wiggle around some more...to make it get hard again. I'd do this again, for...like ...ever, even if my legs got sore, and KEEP doin' it until my dad cummed in me. Then, when he was done cummin', I'd tighten my butthole and keep him in me for as long as I could, even if it took like...you know...forever, until I couldn't stop it from....pullin' out of me."

"I LOVE IT!" Guile announced, forcing Robbie to involuntarily smile. "You're VERY creative! You're a WONDERFUL young man, Robbie Byrne!"

"You're just sayin' that 'cause you want something from me," Robbie accused, but there was a tiny bit of "Aw, shucks!" in his voice as well. The boy was receptive to approval and praise, since his mother never offered them, and he rejected them from his father.

Robbie had just handed over more tools to use against him.

"I DO want something," Guile acknowledged, "but I have something to give you in exchange...something you obviously desperately want!"

"What?" Robbie asked eagerly. He hadn't done so well at Christmas, so he was still 'gift hungry'. His mother told him she couldn't buy him much, because his father was behind on his support payments.

"I'll have to show you what I'm offering, otherwise you won't believe me. Also...according to your dad's...uh...'passionate' thoughts about your mother, he has been completely caught up on his child support payments. Your mother lied. I wonder, before Christmas, did she buy any of that expensive make-up she likes?"

"Uh...I think so." Robbie admitted.

Prodded by Guile, Robbie's subconscious perused his mother's recent purchases, guiding Guile exactly where he needed to go.

"I see in your thoughts that she bought some dresses over the holidays. Funny that she had the money to shop for herself during the Christmas season, but not for her child. How odd. I guess she couldn't wait for the after-Christmas sales."

Guile gave Robbie a moment to digest this information.

"Well, let's step into the woods so I can give you something wonderful by taking something useless away from you."

"What?" Robbie asked, baffled by Guile's impossible-sounding words.

"I'm going to arrange for you to lose your oral virginity." Guile explained.

"I...already lost that...a couple of months ago," Robbie casually disputed.

"No, you did not," Guile corrected. "You didn't suck either of those silly little boys to completion. One of them couldn't cum, so he ended up jackhammering his poor little peepee until he just ejaculated into your mouth, and the other one couldn't cum AT ALL. Neither of them count. You're still an oral virgin! Let's go fix that! Turn on your cell phone flashlight, step into the woods and I'll tell you where you need to go, Robbie."

Robbie looked at the dark forest and felt a swell of fear.

"Are you in there...somewhere?"

"My body is a quarter mile away, with your father. I thought you weren't scared of me anymore...and besides, I thought you liked being scared."

"You're not just trying to trick me into going in there so you can hurt me, are you?" Robbie asked, sounding nervous.

Guile was losing him.

"I CAN'T hurt you, Robbie," Guile assured him with two lies, "and even if I could, I'd need my body to do it."

"What was that stuff you were saying...about a guy in the left side of your brain?"

The only thing Guile hated more than being questioned, was being questioned AND having to tell the truth, even if it's only a half-truth.

"That's ME. I live in the monster's head, and I think for him, since the monster is so fucking stupid that SOMEONE needs to do it. HE was the one who was frightening you, not ME. His name is Lecher, and he's basically like an asshole brother."

"Why did he want the black guy to kill you?"

"He asked Jaden Harris to kill me because Lecher wanted to scare me, like he scared you," Guile explained, glad to be lying again. "He hates that I'm so much smarter than he is, and he feels that I boss him around too much, which I don't, so he acts like a jerk to get revenge."

"I heard you...Lecher...tell my dad he's a vampire, and he's gonna sneak into my house and splatter my blood all over the walls," Robbie revealed.

Guile felt Robbie decide that he wouldn't be going into the dark- ness, no matter what. Robbie had convinced himself that in spite of what Guile wanted him to believe, the monster was actually right there, standing behind every single tree, waiting for Robbie to come closer.

"I was an idiot for thinking that Robbie could shrug off a traumatic encounter with a monster," Guile chastised himself. "Even with his man-hungry psychology, he's still just a thirteen year-old boy."

"Robbie, if I tell you something, do you promise not to laugh?" Guile queried, phrasing the question SO RIDICULOUSLY, given the circumstances, that Robbie would just HAVE to listen to Guile explaining what he and Lecher actually were.

"I don't think I should keep talking....or....thinking with you," Robbie stated firmly, accepting the fact that his emotions would probably now shut off again."

Robbie heard a noise coming from the woods, making him jump up from the guardrail. He decided to run to the nearest cop, and if Guile was telling the truth about him being invisible now, Robbie would grab the guy and scream as loud as he could, and MAKE him see Robbie!

After running a mere two steps from the guardrail, Robbie heard the unmistakable sound of a young man in a state of doped-up sexual ecstasy. Robbie turned and faced the bizarre sight of an older kid, the one the monster...Lecher...had carried off, lying on what looked to be a floating back seat of a car. The boy was bucking up and down, seeming to be trying to fuck the air with his cock, which was covered with some kind of blue external catheter.

No force on EARTH could've made Robbie stop watching the scene, or even blink, for that matter.

"Lecher and I are a vampire, Robbie, but not the usual kind," Robbie half-heard Guile say.

The image of Jayce screamed in triumph and ejaculated into the blue catheter so hard that a section of the loose, wiggly hose went ram-rod straight for the duration of the squirt....and well as the subsequent five or so.

"We're a cum vampire."

Robbie said nothing for about a minute, making Guile think that he was simply taking a while to process what Guile had told him. A quick look in Robbie's mind, however, showed that he was just getting off on watching Jayce cum.

"Lecher was joking with your father," Guile explained, "when he said the police would find your bedroom walls painted with sticky, congealed goop. He meant 'semen', not that we'd EVER waste YOUR semen by using it as paint...or even wallpaper sizing, for that matter."

"Uh-huh," Robbie said, not listening to Guile at all.

"Would you like to watch it from the beginning?" Guile offered.

"please." Robbie begged, his voice barely a whisper.

The "clip" started over, and Robbie watched Jayce slowly succumb to the fog steaming in through his window.

"With the fog, I can make males experience the effects of any drug you can think of, or just make them silly, stupid, suggestible, and completely uninhibited."

"uh-huh," Robbie mumbled, hanging on every word in spite of seeming to be stupified to a level that even the Pit Fog couldn't achieve.

"What just happened?" Robbie asked, startled out of his hypnosis.

"I just wiped some of my special ball sweat on Jayce's upper lip," Guile said seductively. "Watch what happens as it vaporizes and flows up his nose."

Robbie watched, paying more attention to it than Robbie had ever focused on anything, ever!

"It makes....guys wanna.....cum?" Robbie asked blankly.

"Dessssperately," Guile whispered into Robbie's mind.

For the next few minutes, Robbie stared blankly at the perfectly reproduced memory, lost in the 3-D, hidden camera, supernatural, chemsex, reality porn. According to Robbie's mind, the whole world had ceased to exist. There was only Robbie...and the scene playing out in front of him.

Unknown to Robbie, but very much known to Guile, the boy's concerns about "the monster" were evaporating, and he was, with no telepathic "assistance" whatsoever, lowering his guard and forming an attachment with Guile, one based on the hope that if he did whatever Guile wanted, Robbie would get even more presents like the one he was watching now.

Robbie had very sick desires that no thirteen year-old boy should ever have, but nevertheless, he HAD them. They'd started when he was younger, much younger, and he'd been struggling over the years to find ways to keep them secret, contained, and satisfied, without taking foolish risks. But Robbie kept slipping up, letting his internet "fans" get in his head and fill it with their enticing offers.

At some point soon, Robbie's desires would overcome his fears (and virtually non-existent common sense), and he would finally accept one of those filthy and dangerous "opportunities". Unlike previous 'dates', which Robbie had been too scared to keep, Robbie would finally achieve the 'rock hard' courage to do something truly stupid. He would go to meet 'his biggest fan', whoever that man might be, wherever that man wanted to go, and whatever that man wanted to do. Before he met Guile, Robbie had been fated to find himself in a situation that he was far too young, weak, naive, and compliant to handle.

But now?

Jayce was bucking again, shooting his sperm into the blue catheter while degrading himself sexually for Robbie's entertainment and pleasure.

Robbie wished that Jayce could somehow know that Robbie was watching it.

"I just told him," Guile whispered in Robbie's mind.

"Is he....mad at me...for seeing it?" Robbie asked.

"He's too drugged up to form an opinion at the moment. He's blissfully euphoric, and unable to think deep thoughts about you violating his privacy and watching him make an absolute fool of himself."

"I don't think that way!" Robbie protested to Guile and Jayce Harris' subconscious. "I'm not making fun of him...I'm just watching him enjoy himself. I don't see why guys like my gay friends have to be weird about stuff like this! If THEY were watching this, THEY'D be laughing at Jayce. BUT I NEVER WOULD!"

Robbie pointed at the image of Jayce writhing around on the magic, floating car seat.

"If that was ME acting like that, I wouldn't even care! Any guy could watch it, and it wouldn't matter to me....like....at ALL!"

"I'm glad you think that, Robbie, because after I'm done removing your oral virginity, we're going to meet up with your father, Jayce, and Lecher. You're going to strip naked in front of the four of us, and then you're going to willingly breathe my drugged fog. We will all stare at you, watching you squeal and compulsively rub your hands all over your body as the drugs take effect. And after that, I'm going to 'Churn' you, invading your insides and outsides with things that will feel soooooo good that you'll embarrass yourself in ways that will make Jayce's behavior seem DIGNIFIED by comparison! And then you'll cum, so deeply and powerfully that you'll want it to go on and on...and it will...for at least two minutes, until I finish draining every last drop of semen from your body."

The image of Jayce disappeared, but Robbie was no longer watching it. Robbie had turned away from the vision because it was distracting him from paying attention to Guile's words.

"So THAT'S what you want from me...my cum?" Robbie asked, trying to stop fantasizing about losing all control and debasing himself sexually in front of an audience that included his father. The very thought of it was terrifying....but exhilarating.

"Well...I'm a cum vampire, so...logically....*, " Guile teased, secure in the knowledge that he now OWNED Robbie, so he could get away with a little ribbing. Secretly, though, Guile marveled at Robbie's lack of common sense and deductive reasoning skills. In the latter, he was even dumber than Lecher!

"But why mine?" Robbie inquired, asking an actual INTELLIGENT question. Guile prayed it wouldn't lead to more.

"Because most men have semen that sparks," Guile explained, hoping he could get away with a brief explanation that told Robbie almost nothing. Guile wasn't trying to hide anything...not from Robbie, at least,...but the boy was throwing off Guile's schedule. "You, however, have semen that electrocutes. And I want it. Not just all you have NOW, but all that you'll accumulate in the future!"

"Didn't I hear you tell my dad that you're gonna die tomorrow or something?" Robbie asked, causing Guile's happiness, brought on by the joy of 'working' Robbie, to crash back down to Earth...and deeper.

"If you don't help me by giving me all of your cum, yes, I will die tomorrow morning," Guile informed Robbie, making his psychic 'voice' crack, and sound as if Guile were on the verge of crying.

Guile's fake emotionalism, which was far more real than Guile would've EVER admitted, worked on Robbie like a charm. Guile felt Robbie's heart warm toward him, making Robbie determined to do whatever it took to save his new and better friend's life, especially if it involved awesome drugs, ""forced"" sexual self-degradation in front of his father, and a two minute orgasm.

Guile should've just thoughtlessly accepted Robbie's pity, but he couldn't stop analyzing it. A Guile had just solicited sympathy, not just for manipulation purposes, but because he needed it.

"How pathetic I've become," Guile pondered. "First I establish some sort of empathic connection WITH A HUMAN, and now I'm using a thirteen year-old child as a teddy bear."

Guile looked into the face of his 'savior', a skittish, late- blooming, freckle-faced, red-headed boy who kept looking away from the lights being set up on I-147 to glance nervously at the dark woods. Guile felt his savior's fear, brought on by Guile's own stupid decision to frighten the boy earlier. Now Robbie was afflicted with a counter- productive fear of the dark.

Guile followed Robbie's gaze into a darkness that Guile was unable to see. And because Guile couldn't see it, he couldn't understand it. And because he couldn't understand it, he couldn't make Robbie stop fearing it.

"Lure's insanity.....my conflict concerning what I did to Mike Pearson....the Emergency Survival Protocols....Reality Itself...and now.... ....Darkness!" Guile mused. "It would seem that I am beset by invisible, untouchable enemies."

Guile looked into the forest using just one of his many points of view. He scanned all the bare trees, blocking his ability to look all around them, which would've completely demystified the entire forest.

"Frustrating enough to only see through ONE pair of eyes, but to compound that annoyance with this 'darkness' stuff would be intolerable," Guile opined as he moved that point of view directly in front of Robbie's eyelids.

"I am done fucking around with all of the forces, both visible and invisible, that are fighting against my efforts to save my own life," Guile announced to no one.....and Reality Itself, who was watching and listening with great interest. "I will now do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING -no matter how extreme, immoral, or CRUEL- that is required for me to not only survive, but THRIVE! I will live past tomorrow morning, and enjoy the time that one of my kind EXPECTS upon their 'birth'. Somehow, I will deal with Lure and the Thrall Master, and I will carve out a long, happy existence for myself.

Furthermore, I will discover WHY Master Kaschak came here, why he made my Thrall so haphazardly, and what happened to his previous servants. If they are dead, as I suspect, I will learn WHY, and avoid their fate. NOTHING, from now on, will safely get in the way of my longevity. I swear to this!"

"DARKNESS!!!" Guile called out ridiculously, yet with total sincerity, "YOU ARE IN MY WAY!! MY PREY IS FRIGHTENED OF YOU!! GO AWAY AND LEAVE THE BOY ALONE!!!"

Predictably, the darkness refused to go away....

....so Guile forced it to.

"GUILE, HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?!" Robbie cried out in amazement. "THIS IS SO DOPE!"

Robbie strode through the perfectly-lit woods, following a dashed yellow line that looked like it had floated up from the roadway.

"It's a mind trick," Guile explained. "Right now, my mental point- of-view is floating just in front of your eyes. My psychic 'sight' allows me to see the world in perfect lighting conditions, so I'm sending that 'feed' to the visual center of your brain. I call it a telepathic, visual overlay."

"Could I watch Jayce cum again?" Robbie asked. "I could follow the floating back seat instead of the yellow line."

"And you'd probably trip and fall," Guile pointed out. "Tell you what, when we're at my body, I'll put the memory in your head, so you can play it over and over in your mind, seeing and hearing it in perfect clarity. Is that okay?"

"Yeah! Fuck yeah!" Robbie cried out. "And after I'm done gettin' all naked and crazy, can you put THAT memory in my head too?!"

"Why stop there?" Guile proposed. "I can put that memory in Jayce's head...and your dad's....just so you know that your most shockingly private and intimate moment is forever accessible to a young man you don't even know, and your father, who will watch it any time you want, and feel how- ever you want when he does."

"Huh?"

"You could make him watch it while feeling a deep sense of shame that causes him to curl up into the fetal position and bawl like a baby, or you could make him get off on it, and lie naked in bed with his eyes closed and legs spread, watching the scene in his head while you tug on his cock, keeping him perfectly edged, no matter how clumsily you stroke him, until you give him permission to climax. Or you could just sit there, have a smoke, and watch your dad do everything himself."

"What?" Robbie asked in utter confusion.

"Well...haven't you always WONDERED how your father masturbates? Now you can find out! You don't even need to use the memory you'll make tonight. Just tell your father that he's getting very horny, follow him into his bedroom, tell him you're not really there, and watch it all play out! Or, if you're feeling chatty, you could get him to beat off while telling you all of his sexual experiences, but ALSO tell him you're not really there. I know it sounds fucked up, but it'll work perfectly!"

"I don't understand!" Robbie said in alarm, having NO idea what Guile was saying, but DESPERATELY wanting to KNOW.

"Well of course you don't," Guile said with mock exasperation, "I haven't downloaded your father's owner's manual into your head yet. And don't worry, Robbie, I know how much you hate to read. It's not a 'real' manual. It's just unforgettable knowledge that I will put into your brain. After I'm done turning your father into your sex slave, you'll instantly know how to play with ALL of daddy's new bells and whistles!"

"You're going to turn my dad into my sex slave?" Robbie asked, not sure if Guile was joking or not.

Robbie reached a yellow 'X' at the end of the dashed, yellow line.

"Hmmm, well I guess I could, provided that you successfully pass my test by giving head to someone I've picked out for you. In a few seconds, he'll step over the guardrail, come into the woods, and approach us. Now, this is going to be a much lighter form of mind control than what I intend to do to your father, so you'll have to follow my instructions CAREFULLY...EVERY WORD...without doing a single thing that I don't TELL you to do, got it?"

"Uh...okay," Robbie replied, feeling as though his whole world was changing at breakneck speed. It would, very much so, but not in the way that Guile expected. "But...who's it gonna BE? I didn't see any kids my age back at the road."

"Oh, I was under the impression that you were into older men, not little boys like yourself."

"I AM!" Robbie said just a little too loud, "It's just...you said this was a test, so I thought you'd pick a kid my age, to make it easier, and less...scary."

"Wow. Your school district really doesn't challenge its students, does it?" Guile observed before focusing as much spare mental power on Robbie's active thoughts as possible. "That smart, heavy boy I mentioned earlier feels especially bored and unchallenged at Weyerhauser High."

"I know a heavy kid who goes there," Robbie offered.

"What's his name?" Guile asked casually, sounding as if he were just making mindless conversation.

"Michael Pearson," Robbie answered.

Now that Mike was momentarily foremost in Robbie's thoughts, Guile was able to back-trace all of his knowledge regarding their gifted mutual acquaintance.

"Double fuck!!!!" Guile grumbled at what he learned.

"Hey! Is THAT the guy I'm supposed to blow?" Robbie exclaimed in surprise at the sight of a large, powerfully-built individual stepping over the guardrail and using his weak cellphone light to discretely and near- blindly make his way through the dark.

"Yes," Guile affirmed, forcing himself to table the matter of Mike Pearson yet again. "I scanned all of the men at the road, and THIS guy is perfect. He's forty-five, muscular, gruff, tattooed, attractive, and very, very sexual. He's the kind of man you desire: your dad, if he were a total prick."

"But...that guy's a COP!"

"Robbie, on an unrelated topic: If you lived with your father, you'd go to a much better school district that would offer you more challenges, and teach you their importance."

"What?"

"Nothing, just sayin'," Guile dismissed. "Look Robbie, if you and I work together, we can do this! I'm a little bit weaker (a lot, actually) than usual, since I'm so far away from my body (and I keep burning off power as fast as I take it in), but I'm strong enough to give you a 'taste' of what I can do, to show you that I'm not lying when I tell you that you could spend the rest of your childhood enjoying a bedtime ritual that involves your daddy tucking you in and kissing your forehead....after he's done plowing your ass and waiting for you to finish your after-sex cigarette! Are you interested?"

"What happens if this doesn't work....or things go bad?"

"As much as I distrust the Timbersburg P.D., Robbie, I doubt very much that he'll shoot you, dismember your body, put the pieces in trash bags, and scatter them throughout the county. The man you almost sold your virginity to, however...."

"Seriously?! I'm scared to death, and you're making jokes?"

"Robbie, it can't go bad," Guile lied. "I can make the cop pass out any time I want!"

"Really?" Robbie asked nervously.

"Really!" Guile lied.

Robbie watched the cop approach, unable to see Robbie standing a few yards away due to his lack of supernatural, telepathic, night vision.

Robbie turned his head, looking back the way he came. A scared whimper escaped his nose. Still, he didn't start walking away, yet.

"This probably won't sway you one way or the other, but there are a few things you need to know about Officer George Klempernick."

"What?" Robbie asked, barely listening to Guile.

"Well, he's a serial cheater, as well as an alcoholic and a white supremacist."

Robbie stopped glancing behind him and directed all of his attention towards the cop, who'd stopped walking and was fucking around with his cellphone.

"Oh....I hesitate to bring this up, Robbie, but he also hates gay people."

Robbie's stare turned into a glare.

"If you do this, Robbie, I won't be able to make the cop forget that he allowed a little boy to give him a blowjob. I can make him forget what you look and sound like, and prevent him from ever making the connection between you and the little boy they're all looking for right now, but that's IT. For the first time ever, George Klempernick will experience regret concerning his actions, and spend the rest of his life questioning himself for what he's about to allow you to DO to him."

"Tell me what to do," Robbie insisted with cautious confidence.

A few seconds later, Robbie strolled the handful of yards between him and the officer, feeling very much like a vampire himself.

Guile felt a tiny pang of guilt for lying to Robbie. Officer Klempernick wasn't an alcoholic...he was merely an extremely heavy drinker.

The rest was true, though. :)

A quarter of a mile away, at Guile and Lecher's feeding area, Lecher patiently waited for Robbie's startled father to snap out of his momentary paralysis and make a move. He didn't have to wait too long. Craig's eyes twitched in response to catching sight of Jayce's Harris' unconscious body on the ground, telegraphing that Craig was about to try something.

Craig flung his flashlight to his left, hoping it would distract the monster long enough for Craig to jump back and fully extend his right arm to shoot the monster point blank between the eyes.

Instead, without breaking eye contact, Lecher deployed the black tendril. As it streaked at the flashlight, the tip ballooned out and sprouted projections, becoming a fully functional human right hand. It caught the flashlight before it hit the ground, flipped it around, and spotlighted Craig and the Thrall.

In spite of the monster failing to react to the thrown flashlight like a particularly stupid breed of dog, Craig automatically continued with his knee-jerk plan. He hopped backward in a way that he probably envisioned as looking really cool, but from an outsider's perspective, it was kinda embarrassing to watch. It was especially cringeworthy if you happened to be an intelligently-designed, ultra-complex, mini-brain that was capable of adjusting it's time perception to view the world in slow motion.

As Craig floated backward and slowly aimed his gun toward the Thrall, the violet tendril gracefully whisked around the Thrall's smooth, well-formed, blackened, left ass cheek, and darted straight at the Glock. Acting like a caffeinated electron, the tendril sped around Craig's hand, again and again.

Craig touched down and tried to fire the gun, since his fear- flooded brain was too single-mindedly focused on killing the monster to process the fact that the gun in his hand looked as though it been swallowed by a ball of purple yarn. But because the first two feet of violet tendril had slipped behind the curved trigger and lashed it repeatedly to both the muzzle and the trigger guard, and since the violet tendril's reactive elasticity was instantly compensating for the muscle tension in Craig's hand, Lecher didn't have much to be worried about, even if Reality Itself decided to once again rear his ugly heads...or tails.

"No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no," Craig panic-whispered to himself while trying to squeeze his index finger hard enough to pull the trigger.

"Even if you could fire that gun, Craig," the monster's more- polite mind-voice informed him, "I don't think you would like the results. Learning to wipe your ass with your non-dominant hand CAN'T be much fun."

Craig drew back his "non-dominant hand" to punch the monster in the face. The monster smiled and leaned forward, presenting his chin for use as a punching bag. Craig uncocked his arm, and seeing as how the monster wasn't immediately tearing into him, Craig ceased hostilities...for the moment.

"Why do you keep changing the way you talk?" Craig asked, just to fill the moment with something other than mutual glares. "And why do you keep going back and forth, calling me by my name, then calling me 'Lumber- jack'?"

"Because there are two people inside of this body, dumbass," Lecher jeered. "I already TOLD you that!"

"Now, now," the mind voice scolded. "Perhaps introductions ARE in order, since the three of us will be spending some quality time here together."

"Doing WHAT?" Craig wanted to know.

"Please allow me to introduce ourself," the voice soldiered on without acknowledging Craig's question, "My name.....is Guile. I am a telepathic entity slash 'pathological liar' who lives inside the left side of the head of the 'monster' you see before you. I am the creature's intelligence, since my partner, Lecher, has none. He controls the monster's body, which sadly includes his mouth, with which he whines, insults, questions my authority, and calls people by stupid nicknames."

"Guile...mind...Lecher...body," Craig whispered to himself, fighting against his all-too-human inability to absorb new information while terrified.

"Craig, would you be so kind as to remove your boots, please?" Guile requested cordially. "You're getting mud all over our tongue."

The hand at the end of the black tendril aimed the flashlight at the ground, and Craig was horrified to see that the entire clearing was carpeted with the same black goop that he'd tried to pull off of Robbie in the pickup. Craig looked at Lecher in confusion, since he had been speaking to him with his mouth just a few seconds ago. Lecher ADDED to that confusion by sticking his tongue out at Craig.

"Lecher can generate a considerable amount of tongue material and shape it to his needs, as well as alter its hardness, surface friction, elasticity, stickiness, etcetera. However, once he 'breaks it off', I assume control over it until Lecher reconnects with it. Neat, huh? Allow me to demonstrate.

The "ground" beneath Craig's feet suddenly oozed up over his boots and flowed straight up the interior of his pant legs.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Craig hollered at the feel of the goop rising up his thighs and flowing underneath the leg bands of his underwear.

"STOP IT!!" Craig demanded as the material flooded over his cock and balls, and washed between his asscheeks, separating them.

"PLEASE!" Craig suddenly begged, feeling the material touching his asshole, "PLEASE DON'T MAKE IT GO INSIDE ME!!!!"

"That's what SHE said," Lecher joked, amusing himself greatly.

"I'll stop, Craig, but I'm going to have to ask you to lower your-"

"JUST LET THE JAYCE GO!" Craig screamed. "YOU WANT TO KILL ME? FINE! BUT LET HIM GO!"

An orange strand snaked out of the monster's ass and hovered in front of Craig's face. The tip opened wide, just like Baby Blue, but that was the only similarity the two tendrils shared. Baby Blue liked to make men and boys feel good. The orange tendril did not.

"Please do not interrupt me again," Guile urged. "Since you are attempting to turn your face away from the orange tendril, I assume that you remember your son's astonishingly accurate guess as to its function. It was created several hundred years ago to enable our kind to dissolve bindings, such as ropes, or the bars of cages or cells. It's a bit of a relic, since subsequently-added tendrils can do the job so much faster, but it still has its uses, such as encouraging obedience from individuals who value their looks and four of their five senses."

Craig almost verbally agreed to stop resisting, but he was afraid that as soon as he opened his mouth, it would be misinterpreted as defiance, and he would receive the promised consequences. Therefore, Craig just stood silently and redirected his gaze downward.

"The VIOLET TENDRIL...not 'PURPLE BANDING STRAP'...is about to release your hand. You will NOT attempt to use your Glock. You will simply drop it...yet again."

Craig watched in dismal fascination as the ball around his hand unwound at amazing speed. When the last of the tendril retracted up the monster's ass, Craig was tempted to play 'quickdraw', but he knew it would be a futile and costly effort. He'd been beaten.

Craig allowed the gun to slip from his hand. It fell soundlessly onto the living ground, creating a ripple effect that made it look as if the gun had been dropped onto an oil puddle. To add to the illusion, a black wave appeared out of the goop and swept the Glock out of Craig's reach and over to the edge of the clearing.

Craig sighed. He'd failed again, and he was at the mercy of two monsters who literally had him by the balls, and who possessed a buttload of ways to make him experience an agonizing death.

"I hope Linda finds a guy who can handle her," Craig thought miserably. "Robbie shouldn't have to grow up without a father."

Officer George Klempernick finally had the opportunity to take a brief break and empty his bladder before it exploded.

In spite of knowing that crime scenes should remain uncontaminated until they're processed, George didn't give a fuck. He stepped over the guardrail, turned on his cell's flashlight, and walked amongst the trees with the intention of taking a leak while answering a text he'd received earlier on his private, second cellphone.

"How the fuck can you call this an interstate if it has sections with only two lanes?" George wondered to himself. "Of all the places to get stuck in, I had to get trapped in this boring, stupid shithole that doesn't even know that an interstate has to have four lanes!"

Timbersburg was stupid, but it certainly wasn't going to stay boring for much longer.

As George reached the perfect spot, he started to feel weird. It reminded him of when he had too much to drink, and the world around him felt a little less real. George ignored the sensation and read his text.

---------------------------------------------------------- Julia: R U up their looking 4 a MONSTR? ----------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, FUCK!" George Klempernick groaned. "That Cynthia CUNT got the word out! This place is gonna go NUTS!"

When the first police cruiser arrived, Cynthia Keim confessed that her "bear" had actually been a "monster". The responding officers rolled their eyes and took her statement in the most belittling way possible, refusing to echo her concern in spite of the urgency of the situation. One of the officers, Jennie Price, kept interrupting Cynthia to ask her to repeat details, just to shine a mocking light on them. When Cynthia called out Jennie's lack of professionalism, Jennie went OFF on Cynthia and chose to ignore Jayce's peril in favor of suggesting that Cynthia could be charged with filing a false report.

Cynthia turned away from the unmotivated police officers and started making a call. When the officers realized that she'd dialed one of the local news channels to report a monster attack and abduction on I-147, the officers panicked at the prospect of traffic bottle-necking on both sides of the notorious two-lane stretch of the interstate, and the thought of the woods quickly filling with looky-loos, amateur monster hunters, and rowdy rednecks with semi-automatic weapons.

Jennie tried to snatch Cynthia's phone out of her hand.

It got bad. And after Cynthia stopped screaming, she called her boss, who turned out to be Raymond "Death Ray" Crandal, a very powerful local businessman, civic leader, and former (self-dealing) mayor, who made some calls of his own and ensured that Jennie (who'd been contacted and ordered to "LEAVE......NOW!!!") would definitely be "going through some stuff".

"How much money will that son of a bitch and his mob-connected brothers make if this story goes national, and Timbersburg becomes another 'Roswell'?" Officer Tracy Rogers (Jennie's more-professional 'replacement') asked herself. "And how much worse is this crime scene going to GET, now that Ray Crandal is involved?"

Tracy would find out, since "Death Ray" suggested to Cynthia Keim, his Adminstrative Assistant, to continue getting the word out, ostensibly to light a fire under the asses of both the Timbersburg AND Johnsport Police Departments.

For his part, Raymond Crandal got to work applying pressure to have the National Guard activated, to deal with the circus he was having Cynthia create.

"I don't care how much it costs!" Raymond would tell one of his special 'procurers', who was almost as well-connected as a Crandal herself. "I want both vehicles, including all the broken pieces of Jaden's engine. I also want the trunk of that tree and the affected guardrail sections..... ...ALL OF THEM!"

Death Ray would GET both vehicles, eventually, but neither would be the crown jewel of the display that would make Raymond Crandal far richer than he already was. That honor would go to a shitty, rusted out, burnt- orange sedan, found two days after the events on I-147, at a murder scene.

After the call with her boss, Cynthia finished her statement and walked out of police earshot to make more calls and texts. Lots of them.

When Jaden was being loaded into an ambulance, Cynthia was on the phone with his mother, Jocelyn, who begged/demanded that Cynthia STAY at the site to continue raising hell, giving interviews, and 'motivating' law enforcement to rescue her son. The family would meet the ambulance at the hospital and take things from there.

Jocelyn also asked Cynthia to thank Raymond Crandal on behalf of Jayce's entire family for all he was doing, which was an interesting request since, unknown to everyone, Jayce's kidnappers were in control of the body of Raymond Crandal's son.

Officer George Klempernick stared at his mistress' text and watched his evening of illicit fucking crumble to dust.

---------------------------------------------------------- George: Afraid so, honey. I'm probably gonna be stuck here for a while. Might not be able to come over later. Sorry :( ----------------------------------------------------------

George looked at the sent text and had an "Oh, fuck!" moment. Julia recently said that she felt as if George was "phasing her out". She'd also been really pressuring him to leave Sarah. Even if he had a justifiable reason for ditching her tonight, Julia might not see it that way. George cheated with enough women during his life to know that Julia was on the verge of contacting his wife.

George had to placate Julia, fast!

George texted everything he could remember from Cynthia's verbal statement, which, since George hadn't bothered to take notes, in spite of having a terrible memory, ended up being a wildly inaccurate babble-fest about a flying, naked, black guy with wires stuffed up his ass who kidnapped another black guy, using a herd of deer. It didn't matter, though. As long as George could convince Julia that he was making an effort to give her what she wanted, she would keep wasting her life as George's girl on the side.

George's kidneys were aching, but he HAD to finish his text to Julia. If she read the first one, and the second one hadn't arrived, Julia would start getting ideas in her head. That wasn't good. But neither was George's intense urinary distress.

"Hello, Officer," a child's voice greeted.

George should've jumped in surprise at the sudden appearance of the red-headed little boy standing in the beam of his cellphone's flashlight, but George had somehow known he was there, and just took it in his stride and continued to type.

"Need something?" George asked in his antagonistic cop voice, which he used to intimidate children into leaving him alone.

Officer Klempernick fucking hated kids, almost as much as he hated being expected to engage with the community.

"I can wait," the boy pleasantly informed him.

"Just give me a second to get this text out, kid," George told Robbie. "Then I gotta take a leak."

George was hoping that his bad attitude, drill-instructor looks, and neck tattoo would make the boy go away, especially when faced with the prospect of having to witness an adult, male stranger urinate in front of him.

"Do you want me to help you pee?" the boy asked. "I can do every- thing FOR you, if you want."

George felt a wave of dizziness as the strange, disconnected feeling returned with a vengeance. Once again, George just shrugged it off and focused on his text.

"Sure kid," he said dismissively. "Go ahead. Just don't talk again until I'm done texting, will ya?"

Robbie opened his mouth to say "Okay", but Guile cautioned him against it.

"Don't say anything back," Guile instructed. "I'm barely in control of him. If you say anything at this moment, you risk irritating Officer Klempernick and snapping him back to full awareness."

"Got it," Robbie replied mentally, nervous enough to puke, but too excited to permit that to happen.

Robbie reached underneath the fly of George's pants and pulled down his zipper. Robbie's hands were shaking uncontrollably.

"I'm scared, but I can do this. I CAN DO THIS!" Robbie yelled mentally, more to himself than to Guile.

"It's not fear, it's excitement!" Guile insisted, keeping his voice relaxed in spite of being under MASSIVE psychic strain. "Don't you just feel so fucking ALIVE?!?! Just get over your pre-game jitters, reach in, and TAKE what you WANT! If you don't, imagine how much you'll hate yourself if you don't at least feel the cop's dick lying in your hand!"

Guile's words did the trick, as always. Robbie regained his courage and slipped his hand through the cop's zipper hole, navigated through the opening in Officer Klempernick's underwear, and fished around for his penis.

"C'mon, kid! I really gotta piss! Hurry it up!" the typical example of a Timbersburg cop barked at Robbie impatiently, prompting him to rush through something he would've rather savored.

Robbie pulled out George's circumcised cock, gave it a little squeeze to enjoy its sponginess, and then aimed it up and out toward the darkness Robbie could no longer see.

"Ready, sir," Robbie said briefly, softly, and respectfully, just like Guile instructed.

Feeding Officer Klempernick's ego was essential in keeping his mind passive, docile, and oblivious to the fact that he was surrendering his junk to an underaged boy who obviously had more on his mind than just helpfully assisting an officer of the law.

"Uh huh," The bastard said absently without even the slightest hint of thanks as he let loose with a racehorse-worthy blast of piss.

While Robbie happily fondled the officer's gushing dick as much as possible, Guile quietly endured a considerable headache. Of all the ways to control a human's mind, Entanglement being the best and easiest, THIS was the WORST. It was almost impossible to deeply influence a human mind without having access to the trans-dimensional, plum-colored tendril, but that's exactly what Guile was doing. And it sucked!

"As soon as we get another infusion of S.C.E., I immediately burn it off!" Guile grumbled. "I have to put an end to this cycle as soon as possible! But if I can maintain my loose control over Officer Klempernick for just a little while longer, it will be worth it. I will have proven my power to Robbie, and by being courageous enough to perform oral sex on a total stranger, a cop, no less, he will have shown me that when the time comes for him to play his part in my plan, he won't 'choke'."

Officer Klempernick's urine stream slowed far too quickly for Robbie's liking. He'd switched to an overhand grip, so he could lightly press his fingertips into George Klempernick's urethra, and he was loving both the fluid resistance and the vibration.

But although Robbie could've happily stood there holding the cop's cock for hours, Robbie was excited at the prospect of sucking the forty- five year-old man's dick. Robbie had no idea how Guile was going to make that happen, but he couldn't wait to find out!

"The officer shakes his penis by scissoring it between his fingers at the base, and quickly wiggling them," Guile informed Robbie, "He's so used to the feeling that I can temporarily telepathically 'baffle' him into focusing on the familiar sensation while tuning out the fact that someone else is causing it."

"Got it!" Robbie thought-replied obediently.

"Wiggling his penis in that manner is also how the officer begins his masturbation sessions, so if you can do it long enough and fluidly enough, together we can sexually arouse the officer, and whittle away the more resistant levels of his mind."

George continued to focus on his phone while Robbie slid the index and middle fingers of his right hand above and below the base of George's dangling manhood and began aggressively making his penis flop up and down with the speed of a flicked, spring doorstop.

Out of curiosity, while Robbie was looking through Guile's "eyes", Guile decided to look through Robbie's, just to see what "dark" was. It was fascinating to finally know what all the fuss and fear were about, but also disconcerting to be so visually limited. There was an advantage, though. In the scant light of Officer Klempernick's downward-facing cell-phone flashlight, Guile couldn't help but admit that the cop's wiggling dick looked somehow hauntingly beautiful.

"Artistic, but natural," Guile thought to himself before dismissing this latest reminder of Mike Pearson from his mind.

At odd moments, starting when Guile was screening the back seat of Jaden Harris' SUV, Guile found himself experiencing moments of guilt over sending Mike to his possible doom because of Guile using him as a monkey wrench to ruin Lure's intended massacre. Guile's guilt was building in intensity, much like Lure's insanity, and Guile was beginning to fear it was a sign that the entire Thrall was somehow destabilizing, making their probable death an ABSOLUTE certainty.

"That has to be the reason," Guile worried while wondering if his huge, ambitious plan was a pointless waste of effort. "My brain damage is almost completely healed, so THAT can't be the reason. A Guile ONLY feels guilt for failing his Master...that's ALL! So if Lure and I, and maybe Lecher as well, are having emotional episodes, it can only mean that our two and a half months of non-stop conflict and stress have led to...I don't know...mutual brain-section rejection????? I'm aware that I just made up that non-existent malady, but there's NO OTHER REASON FOR A GUILE TO FEEL GUILT OVER ENDANGERING A HUMAN!!! NONE!!!!"

But there was.

Robbie's mental laughter snapped Guile out of his depressing, private contemplation.

"HIS PISS IS GOIN' EVERYWHERE!" Robbie gleefully exaggerated.

"Officer George Klempernick is a bad cop who has cheated on every woman he's ever claimed to love, so it hardly surprises me that he shakes his penis in a way that gets urine on his clothes and everywhere else. The man is a filthy pig in every possible way."

"If you shake it more than three times, you're playin' with it!" Officer Klempernick barked in an imperious, insulting tone.

"Ignore him and keep doing it!" Guile demanded, "He only partially understands what's being done to him. The rest of him doesn't know nor care that a boy has been shaking piss off of his dick for about a minute. The only reason he regurgitated that obnoxious, inaccurate saying is because he sensed the opportunity to be an asshole, so he took it. It's his nature."

"Wait...what do you mean by 'partially understands'?" Robbie asked while quickly releasing Officer Klempernick, turning his hand from 'palm- in' to the much more comfortable 'palm-out', and wiggling the cop's slowly- thickening dong with renewed zeal.

"A few morally-neutral levels of him are aware of your presence, what you are doing to his penis, and the fact that you chose to wear faded orange shorts with a bright red top. The rest of Officer Klempernick, however, isn't aware of you at all."

"That still doesn't make sense," Robbie disputed. "What do you mean 'levels of him'?"

"Let me explain it this way," Guile began, secretly annoyed that Robbie was questioning him like Lecher and Lure always did, especially while he was under considerable strain to keep a lot of psychic balloons in the air. Why did Robbie need to know the basics of emergency, low- resource, moderate mind-influencing ANYWAY?!?"

"Humans believe that they have a singular consciousness, but you do not," Guile reluctantly explained with a forced upbeat tone. "You are several consciousnesses working together as one. The only times you tend to notice the separate levels are when you are drunk, using drugs, fevered, or psychotic."

"I've been drunk, and I get high a lot with my friends," the thirteen year-old boy truthfully confessed, making Guile's opinion of Timbersburg drop even lower, "but I've never felt, like, split up or whatever."

"So you've never, ever talked to someone while you were drunk or high, and suddenly started saying brilliant things, but you had no idea what you were saying, or where your sudden genius was coming from?"

"No."

"Robbie, while you're still wiggling the cop's penis, why not stick your tongue in front of it to see what it feels like?" Guile suggested to distract Robbie from asking further annoying and unnecessary questions, whose answers Robbie wasn't smart enough to understand anyway.

Still, Robbie was only the second stupidest boy Guile had encountered that evening, so there was THAT!

Robbie leaned in, stuck out his tongue, and rejoiced at the feeling of an adult penis slapping it up and down. Guile, on the other hand, rejoiced at Robbie's mental silence.

"FUCK!" George spat in annoyance at his sudden, nagging need for sexual release, which, as far as the majority of his mind was concerned, had nothing to do with the muted porn Guile had encouraged him to watch on his phone when George completed his text, nor whatever was being done to his dick. It was just one more goddamned thing for the cop to have to deal with, another responsibility that had been dumped on him.

"Hop back!" Guile ordered, deliberately triggering Robbie's need to obey strong-willed people, "Officer Klempernick is going to masturbate. Just SILENTLY watch and enjoy it until I give you further instructions."

"Yes, this will work," Guile thought confidently as he observed the bulge in the boy's shorts, the happy intensity of Robbie's eyes, and the strange way his tongue was moving around inside his mouth as he watched Officer Klempernick unbuckle his duty belt and let it drop onto the wet dirt, then tried to just shove his pants and underwear down. It didn't work. His ass, which was a little big in the best possible way, wouldn't permit it.

"Jesus FUCKING CHRIST!" the Timbersburg cop represented, angrily pulling his belt open, unfastening his pants, and yanking his zipper down with such unnecessary force that, in a just world, would've resulted in either breaking it, sticking it, separating it, or at LEAST misaligning it.

"You seem to be lacking in bad luck tonight, Officer Klempernick," Guile observed, "Would you care to borrow some? I have plenty."

"He can fucking have it ALL!" Lecher grumbled, joining the party.

Back at the feeding sight, Guile had just immobilized Robbie's dad with the tongue-mat when Lecher sensed that Guile was projecting himself elsewhere.

Guile telepathically told Lecher that he was manipulating Robbie back at the road, but he didn't require Lecher's help. He went on to tell Lecher that he should just stay put, since his vastly increased physical responsibilites were weighing him down. Guile also explained that HE, too, was under stress, as Guile was having major difficulties manipulating a homophobic, asshole cop into letting a thirteen year old boy handle his cock, and wasn't sure if he could manage to lower the guy's self-awareness and raise his libido enough to enable Robbie to give his first blowjob to a grown-up.

Unsurprisingly, Lecher refused to listen to reason, especially to Guile's self-serving version of it, and insisted that Guile waste the resources to pull part of Lecher's consciousness outside of the Thrall and drag his astral ass to where Guile was busy "mentoring a wayward boy".

Guile angrily agreed to Lecher's demand, but with the stipulation that Guile wouldn't send Lecher's thoughts to Robbie's brain. Although Robbie was acting as if he was completely okay with what happened back at his dad's pick-up, Guile had no desire to test Robbie's residual trauma by forcing him to listen to Lecher's scary version of Lure's voice, as well as any criticisms of Robbie's cock-sucking technique. Lecher would just have to be satisfied with filtering his counter-productive verbal contributions through Guile.

Guile didn't plan on passing ANY of them along to Robbie.

Guile wasn't fooling himself, though. Lecher was only there to keep an eye on Guile, who was far too busy to let Lecher in on the plan. Guile would have to MAKE time for that, though....SOON! Guile had 'overheard' Lecher's suicidal intentions, should he come to think that Guile's "nothing burger" came with mad cow, a moldy bun, and a big ol' slice of "Hard Cheese".

"Sadly, except for feeling trapped in Timbersburg, which we can relate to, this horrible blight on the badge leads a pretty goddamned charmed life, as far as getting what he wants," Guile spat while ratcheting up the speed of his and Lecher's telepathic communications so that Lecher's babbling wouldn't distract him TOO much. "He's getting it off of his wife, his mistress, and secretly, his mistress' twelve year-old daughter."

"Wait...the cop's doing a little girl?!" Lecher exclaimed in surprise.

"I believe he would refer to her as a 'young lady', and use what- ever power and influence he possesses to stonewall an investigation," Guile speculated. "That's what people of his political stripe tend to do."

"Yeah, if she were SEVENTEEN, Guile. If the gun-loving, right wing religious nuts of Timbersburg ever found out, they'd probably take this guy out..."

"...And buy him a beer," Guile interrupted, "pat him on the back, and vote for him if he ever chose to run for local office...or federal office. You forget, due to personal biases, religious agendas, and politics, the only form of child sexual abuse that matters to people like them is same-sex pedophilia, which they like to pretend is the most prominent form. When he's acting of his own volition, Officer Klempernick is a practitioner of the TRUE prevailing form of pedophilia in this horrible region, and the entire planet, not that any of the disingenuous, Christian, right wing, so-called anti-pedophile crusaders would give a flying fuck if his crimes were to come to light. There wouldn't be a call for heterosexuality to be declared inherently perverse, and no one would demand an end to the institution of heterosexual marriage, due to the actions of a few INDIVIDUAL heterosexuals."

"You sound like you care," Lecher accused. "I'd suck off a little boy the second his nuts started producing, if it weren't for the deterrents forced upon us."

"And I'd have no problem with it either," Guile confessed. "But Officer Klempernick DOES. Amazingly, in spite of having intercourse with a twelve year-old girl on multiple occasions, this man is a vocal opponent of same-sex pedophilia, and homosexuality in general. He fuses the two subjects into one, and rants about it endlessly during social gatherings. I shouldn't know that about him, of course, since it has nothing to do with sex, but when he goes off, he stirs up so much passionate fury within him- self that I have complete access to those memories!"

Guile looked into George Klempernick's angry, put-upon eyes and wondered if that unpleasant expression was what women...and a girl...had to look at while he was boning away on top of them.

"I shouldn't be surprised that he's projecting to keep suspicion away from himself, though," Guile summed up. "Loud, incessant hypocrisy is a wonderful screen."

Guile looked at Officer Klempernick, who, from Guile and Lecher's high-speed perception, barely seemed to be moving at all. He was shoving down his pants and underwear, which, from Guile and Lecher's viewpoint, would take about three minutes.

"I don't like this man," Guile revealed, "which is why he is here. There is a gay officer nearby, whose bad treatment by his fellow Timbers- burg officers is only mitigated by the fact that he's ex-military and bigger than either Craig Byrne OR Mr. Klempernick here. It would've been easier to mind-fuck HIM into allowing a thirteen year-old boy to help him out by sucking-off some steam, but I don't detest him. I wouldn't want him to be burdened with the disjointed memories that will plague Officer Klempernick once I release him, and he realizes that he engaged in pedophilia with the 'wrong' gender."

Guile addressed the near-frozen cop, whose pants and underwear were traveling down over his pubes.

"I do detest YOU though, Officer Klempernick, you gay-hating pedophile who DARES to think you're somehow BETTER than Timbersburg. You're fucking a little girl, you're a terrible father, and you echo the homophobia of an allegedly Christian community that STILL preaches anti-gay hatred to this very DAY, never stopping, even during the Sundays after yet another lonely young man got killed in Faggot Forest. You're not BETTER than Timbersburg, Officer George Klempernick, you blue life that SHOULDN'T matter, YOU ARE TIMBERSBURG!"

"I'm still not seeing why you care, Guile," Lecher admitted. "Homo- sexuals are just prey to us, same as all the others. Fuck them and their problems."

Guile looked down at the ground. He really didn't want to tell Lecher, but he deserved to know. Also, he might've been like an "asshole brother", but he was also as close to a brother as Guile would ever have.

"I'm experiencing an obsessive level of remorse for using Mike Pearson to block Lure from carrying out his plans," Guile confessed, wishing, as he spoke, that he could go back to the beginning of his sentence and shut the hell up, instead. "It's affecting everything about me, and I have no idea why."

"shit," Lecher said simply.

"I'm viewing the world as Mike must, full of hypocrites like Officer Klempernick, who once screamed and moaned that 'faggots are attacking my marriage' while they were merely seeking equality. He repeated that mantra over and over, never explaining exactly HOW they were attacking his marriage, while he himself attacked his OWN marriage through serial marital infidelity. But now that the Supreme Court has been packed with cafeteria-Christian, right wing ideologues, using lies and dishonorable tactics that I nevertheless can't help but respect, Officer Klempernick has no problem LITERALLY attacking GAY marriages AT ALL!!"

"Whoa, calm down, Guile," Lecher said with alarm. If Guile DID have a plan, and it COULD save Lecher, the LAST thing Lecher wanted was for Guile to be having some sort of crisis while he was implementing it.

"Thank you, Lecher," Guile snapped. "Such excellent counsel!"

"I haven't started yet," Lecher rebuffed, his fear and self- interest momentarily raising his I.Q. into the 'adequate' range, "After we get done 'testing Robbie's mettle', we're going to walk him over to Mike's cell phone and have him text your FANTASTIC solution for being a gay guy trapped in a car with two violence-prone gay bashers who want to beat the shit out of him."

"I cannot."

"What?! The GREATEST GUILE IN HISTORY, the Guile who's going to save us from Unenthrallment tomorrow morning, DOESN'T HAVE A PLAN?! I'll bet you could save Mike with only a few words of text!"

"I can," Guile sighed despondently, "but I'd have to...admit to a very large...indiscretion. One that the Master would be furious about."

"A loophole?"

"I created a verbal, password-activated, Entangled controller with supreme override capabilities."

"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT?!?!? TO HELL WITH FAGGOT FOREST, THE MASTER WOULD KILL US ALL JUST FOR THAT!!!"

"I know."

"My Lecher memories....my Lecher Archives might be a mostly empty void, but it STILL contains FOUR inherited memories of Thralls being Unenthralled because their Guiles tried to make themselves more powerful! There's a GOOD REASON you guys are loaded with checks and balances! You fuckers CAN'T BE TRUSTED!"

Lecher waited patiently for Guile's counter-insult. It never came.

"I didn't create it to USE it, I created it because I was bored. The last two and a half months haven't been easy for me," Guile said gloomily, his droopy features sagging even more. "Besides being a telepathic switchboard operator and a screen and fog technician, I do nothing. Lure could've used me as a friend, confidant, sounding board, or whatever. Instead, he just pretended I didn't exist. I never used to be this BITTER, Lecher...and neither did YOU! We should LOVE him. Instead we hate him. We are, all of us, WRONG. And at dark moments, I think we SHOULD be Unenthralled."

"It hasn't exactly been easy on ME, either," Lecher claimed.

"Oh...was I talking too much about myself just now? Oh, by all means, let's talk about YOU! Let's talk about the hundreds of hours you and he spend training together, learning how to use the tendrils and tongue as murder weapons. And once he figured out how to craft those preposterous, so-called 'wings', you two have been spending endless hours together, flying over the lake in the middle of the night."

"We could've told him that our tongue is detachable, instead of making it one of the secrets we keep from him," Lecher argued. "YOU could've been helping him control the wings instead of me!"

"I don't have your elevated coordination," Guile countered. "Besides, in spite of the kind words he extended to me before trying to kill us all, you and he have more of a relationship than he and I do, in spite of your open mutual antagonism."

"Wait!" Lecher defended, "We're not FRIENDS, him and me! We don't have 'conversations'! He just barks telepathic orders and gripes at me when he fucks up and wants to blame it on me! He doesn't care about ME any more than he cares about YOU! I'm just the means for him to get his fucking revenge! If the little bastard had any imagination, he could've used YOU to become a real-life Freddy Krueger, but instead, he decided to take his cue from "Jeepers Creepers" and became a murderous, flying, cocksucker-of-prey! That ain't MY fault! I BEGGED the selfish prick for just ONE or TWO hours to go on a naked midnight run around the lake, just to enjoy piloting a body, and to see how fast I could do it! If he and I were FRIENDS, he would have LET ME! But no! My first time's gotta happen when I'm running for my life through a mushy forest with a high school athlete on my back! And as far as those moonlight 'friendship' flights over the lake are concerned, we spent the first few weeks falling from hundreds of feet in the air and breaking the surface tension with our NUTS, then plunging down into its frozen, winter depths! NOT....FUN!"

"But at least he utilized you, and directed words at you," Guile lamented. "Even if he were to snap to his senses, forgive the Master, and devote himself to our purpose, he would never forgive me for lying to him about his revenge, in spite of the fact that I was 'only following orders'. Whether I win or lose tonight, Lecher, my fate is sealed. And all of it, EVERY BIT OF IT.....IS BECAUSE OF THAT CURSED, MOTHERFUCKING FOREST!"

"Okay, look," Guile began, becoming aware that HE was going to have to be the one to get things back on track, "then you are going to teach Faggot Forest a lesson by snatching a victim from out of its jaws. After Robbie gets done "copping a suck from a cop", get that phone and text Mike the password. If the Master finds out, so be it."

"I cannot."

"WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?" Lecher moaned with exasperation.

"Because Craig Byrne used to be best friends with Gary Pearson, Mike's father, before the relationship soured over Linda Byrne's lies of spousal abuse. What an unusual, statistically-improbable coincidence, huh?"

Lecher took just a few seconds to process this unwelcome news before turning back to Guile.

"Do it anyway."

"It's not that simple," Guile sighed.

"Yeah it is," Lecher disputed. "It looks like Reality Itself is setting a trap, and you and I have decided to step right into it, face first, and deal with the fallout."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes. If it helps you to focus JUST on the plan, it's worth the risk."

"Very well," Guile announced, sounding much more relieved than Lecher would've expected, "let the record show that the vote is two to zero, with one vote abstaining, that the sole Thrall of Ladislav Kaschak will save Michael Pearson from possible death. Now let's adjust our temporal perceptions back down to human levels and enjoy The Robbie Show, or rather, The Robbie Audition."

"Before we see if the kid manages to 'get the part'," Lecher interrupted, "I'm gonna need to know the rest of the plan. Simply blaming EVERYTHING on Reality Itself isn't going to motivate the other Masters to prevent Master Kaschak from destroying us. What's your angle?"

"If you don't like it, do you intend to carry out your unstated threat to play Lure's paddleball game with the left side of the Thrall's head?"

"Only if you order me to jump in front of another bullet without telling me why."

"Fair enough," Guile mumbled, fighting off the urge to remind Lecher of the chain of command. "What do you know about Reality Itself?"

"Almost nothing," Lecher admitted. "When the Masters first arrived in this dimension, hundreds of years ago, they started having a lot of bad luck...stupid shit, really. Nothing that could untether them, like a million bolts of lightning hitting one of the Masters' Anchors. It just-"

"No one calls a Master's physical presence in this reality an 'Anchor' any more," Guile contradicted, "The Lures took to calling them a Fingernail, as in 'holding on by their fingernails'. The name stuck. Keep going."

"Yeah. Anyway, the Masters looked into it, and found that these spurts of bad luck were mathematically impossible, and left behind a weird, harmless, slow-dissipating energy on anything used to create the bad luck, as well as the target, should the 'attack' be successful. But again, the effects are only mildly irritating, not a threat. Reality Itself is a joke, and the only reason I was concerned when you told me that it had targeted us for assassination was because Lumberjack scored that trickshot on us, and if Reality Itself caused it, it could do it again, and maybe hurt us."

"And that's all you know of Reality Itself?" Guile inquired.

"Yes. I don't even know where the dumb name came from."

"It came from an offhand remark by one of the Masters, according to my inherited memories," Guile explained. "Master Dionicus had an unusual day in which he kept running into people he didn't want to talk to, almost got trampled by horses four times, kept seeing and hearing the word 'hirsute', kept having his hat blown off his head by sudden gusts of wind, and got shit on by bluejays five times. When he told the other Masters the story of that day, he remarked that it was as if 'reality itself' was against him."

"What else do your 'Guile Archives' have on Reality Itself that my 'Lecher Archives' don't?"

"I know exactly what Reality Itself IS."

"DO tell."

"Through a lot of research and experimentation, the Masters have come to believe that whenever life clusters, like in the Earth's biosphere, for example, it causes a limited sentience to form. This sentience acts to protect the life that created it, using, among other things, probability."

"So it's like...God, if He were only God of Earth?"

"Hardly. As far as the Masters have determined, R.I. is more like life's "flighty, unfocused, and disorganized" immune response. It obviously sees the Masters as threats, but it never mobilizes in a logical way by concentrating its power on one specific Master, choosing instead to be a minor pest to ALL of them instead of a major threat to ONE of them."

"How powerful IS it?" Lecher asked.

"Unknown. To use your earlier expression, it's never 'maxed out', as far as my archives tell me, but it HAS periodically done some really impressive things."

"So Reality Itself is like a ghost who wants a family to "GET OUT!" of its house, but plays stupid, ineffective pranks instead of just turning a knob on the stove and fumigating them all while they sleep?"

"Yes," Guile agreed, "but tonight, the 'ghost' has seemingly pulled itself together, turned on the gas, barricaded the doors, nailed the windows shut, and lit a match. And all that planning and effort isn't being directed at one of the big, bad Masters, but at one of their insignificant, failed, doomed Thralls. Why?"

"Pfffft. I'm giving your nothing burger a wilted lettuce leaf, some watery mustard, neither shaken NOR stirred, and an expired packet of catsup...NOT KETCHUP!"

"Don't dismiss it, Lecher! The Masters are insatiably curious! Some of them have spent human LIFETIMES learning everything they can about Reality Itself. They want to communicate with the thing, learn what it wants, and find a way to arrive at a truce! And NOW, WE'RE their best shot of doing that! They'll protect us, and all we'll have to do is bend over, turn and cough, and submit to humiliating, invasive testing. You know, things you LIKE to do."

"funny-ish," Lecher said distractedly. "I don't suppose you could contact one of those OTHER Masters and have THEM come for us instead of Master Kaschak, could you?"

"Wow. You really want to take risks, don't you?"

"Said the Guile who created a verbal, password-activated, Entangled controller with supreme override capabilities."

"Accepted," Guile admitted, "but no, I cannot. Guiles can only contact their own Masters. And even if I could, Master Kaschak is a petty and vindictive Master. He would unenthrall us remotely, out of spite, just to see if any of the other Masters would DARE to risk his wrath by poaching us, which would be the only way to save us for continued study."

"So we can't send a message to the other Masters, just to let them know that Reality Itself has a strong interest in us?"

"No."

"Shit," Lecher snorted. "Master Kaschak could kill us secretly, WITHOUT telling the other Masters about Reality Itself fucking with us."

"Yes, and even if he doesn't, we still have the little matter of Lure wanting to die."

"I can handle Lure," Lecher revealed, making Guile's illusory eye- brows raise. "Jayce gave me an idea. I researched it in my archives and came up with a solution."

"What.....YOU?"

"Yeah.....ME!"

"Well, don't keep me in suspense!" Guile said excitedly. "My only idea regarding the Lure problem was to ask the Thrall Master to somehow KEEP Lure in a coma, and for the two of us to try to muddle through, doing the job ourselves."

"I'm not gonna tell you," Lecher announced defiantly. "You kept ME in suspense about YOUR plan, so now I'm gonna keep YOU in suspense about MINE."

"I'll throw another 'nothing patty' on the grill. Since I'm certain your plan is 'half baked', I won't bother to flip it."

It wasn't a half-baked plan, though, and Guile knew it. Lecher's foolish mention of Jayce had enabled Guile to figure out Lecher's plan, and it was SIMPLE, it was OBVIOUS, it was GENIUS, and it was almost GUARANTEED to SUCCEED! And if Guile had had even a SECOND to think about anything other than keeping himself and Lecher alive, GUILE would've figured out the solution to their Lure problem LONG before Lecher did!

Guile really wanted to present Lecher's plan as his own, just to steal his thunder and make Lecher scream: "HEY, THAT'S MY PLAN!" Instead, Guile simply blended Lecher's plan into his own and hoped there would be enough time to implement it.

"For your information," Lecher snarled, "my plan is awesome!"

"Well, feel free not to tell me, since my uncontrollable snickering might distract Robbie during his audition, but is there anything you need me to do in order to ensure the success of your plan?"

Surprisingly, Lecher took Guile up on his offer.

"Get a Thrall Brother here before you summon the Master," Lecher insisted. "Tell his Guile and Lecher to light a fire under his sexy ass! His arrival will ENSURE my plan's success."

"You know we don't HAVE any Thrall Brothers," Guile said wistfully, having no earthly idea what Lecher was getting at.

"So you can't keep up your end of my plan?" Lecher concluded. "Well I guess if my plan fails, it's all your fault."

"Actually, I believe we can put the blame for THAT at Thrall Master Kaschak's feet," Guile deflected. "Traveling to the United States alone, without a Thrall Entourage is....suspicious. I wish I knew why the Master did that."

(Guile was a half-hour away from getting that answer, along with several others that would only serve to unsettle him even further.)

"Lecher, I won't pry...I'll let you indulge in your childishness... but I do have one semi-related question."

"I'll consider answering it."

"When Lure woke up from our transformation, if there had been Thrall Brothers present, would Lure still have tried to drag us to Faggot Forest tonight."

"Nope. Tom Daggen, Grant Anders, and Kenny Miller would've just been three more Entangleds in the tangle of naked bodies at the Lake House Fourth of July Afterparties. There's no way Lure would've refused the compromise. And tonight, like every night, we would've been out hunting for dick....like we're supposed to."

"Interesting."

"Why do you ask?"

"I have a theory, but I'm still working on it. When you're ready to tell me the rest of your plan, I'll let you in on it."

"Whatever," Lecher grumbled, not taking the bait.

"Whatever."

Both Guile and Lecher turned towards the cop, who was slooooowly straightening up after lowering his pants and underwear down to his knees. Guile took a long look at George Klempernick, the "man" who Guile believed most closely represented the values of the city of Timbersburg, and said something truly shocking.

"Timbersburg isn't really all THAT bad," Guile decided.

"WHAT?" Lecher exclaimed with laughing astonishment.

"Well, I didn't think so when we left the Lake House this evening to murder three high school boys, but now I'm suddenly of the opinion that if I'm not dead in a few hours, I would be perfectly happy living here for the next few hundred years or so."

"Yeah....me too," Lecher sighed.

Lecher checked out the impressive size of Officer Klempernick's penis, which was apparent even though it was almost completely limp. Then Lecher looked at Robbie's smallish mouth.

"Well THIS should be interesting," Lecher muttered. "I hope the boy had his tonsils out."

"Still wondering why I'm blocking you from speaking to the boy?" Guile asked. "For your information, one of Robbie's endless number of secretive, not-so-secret admirers sent him an expensive realistic dildo, and I'll have you know that it has spent far more time in Robbie's mouth than up his ass. The boy has practiced on it for almost three years. Robbie will not disappoint me."

"What kind of sicko sends a little boy a lifelike fuck toy?" Lecher chuckled.

"A local."

"No surprise there," Lecher eye-rolled. "That's fucking creepy."

"The hours of videos that Robbie makes for the man are creepier, especially the scripts he writes for the boy to read," Guile revealed. "The four thousand dollars hidden in Robbie's closet is LESS creepy though, ....or maybe even MORE creepy, now that I think about it."

"It's a shame his dad can't be here to help cheer him on," Lecher joked. "Robbie shouldn't exclude the poor guy from EVERY aspect of his life, after all."

"I am viewing this moment from every possible distance and angle in the immediate vicinity," Guile informed Lecher. "Both Robbie AND Craig will be able to experience this event whenever they choose."

"I can see why Robbie would want a permanent mental record of what he's about to do, but why would Lumberjack ever want to watch his child suck off a cop in 'bullet time'?"

"Because Robbie has been hiding his sexuality and abuse for so long that it's resulted in an overpowering desire to expose himself to people in the most personal ways, and vice versa, but he's held back by his fear of the possible negative consequences and judgements. But as soon as Craig is Entangled, Robbie will be able to say or do anything to his father, and if he reacts badly, Robbie can just make Craig forget all about it. But what good is that ability without something outrageously scandalous for Robbie to show Craig?"

"But you're already giving the boy the power to turn Lumberjack into an obedient, incestuous pedophile at will. Why do you need to sweeten the pot?"

"Because I'm creating a series of 'gifts' for Robbie, should he falter and require additional incentives. And it's hardly any trouble. What IS difficult, however, is turning Craig into an 'obedient, incestuous pedo- phile' who never feels guilty about his sexual relationship with his son, yet knows to keep it a closely guarded secret. It'll be tricky."

"Well," Lecher considered, "I'm glad you finally found a fulfilling challenge that doesn't involve possibly getting us all unenthralled. It's a shame that you had to ruin Lumberjack's life to do it, though."

"Craig is swirling the drain," Guile justified. "When he followed us into the woods, he was determined to either emerge a hero to his son, or die in the attempt. He's been skipping workouts, something that is LIFE to him, and his company is growing concerned about his depression. They've been trying unsuccessfully to get him to enroll in their free counseling program, but he refuses. Instead, he keeps that Glock handy, just in case he's driving around and suddenly feels calm and determined enough to use it!"

"You sound like you're getting irritated again," Lecher pointed out. "Does this relate to Mike somehow?"

"No," Guile hissed. "It relates to the fact that I'm FIGHTING TO STAY ALIVE, yet I keep running into those who wish to SURRENDER TO DEATH! The first thought I ever received from Craig was a vow that he would do ANYTHING to get his son to stop hating him, so that's PRECISELY WHAT HE'S GOING TO DO! I'm going forge an unbreakable bond between father and son, giving each of them exactly what they want from the other."

"So Robbie gets unlimited access to Lumberjack's ax, but what does "daddy" get in the deal?"

"I'll tell you in exchange for the details of your plan to deal with Lure."

"No dice."

"Then I think," Guile said as he brought both his and Lecher's time perception back to human levels, "it is time to give Robbie some pre-game practice before he shows his daddy how he really feels about him, at least from the neck down."

George was angry. He'd only stepped into the woods for a moment to take a piss and check his messages, but now, for no reason, he was horny as FUCK. It was probably the boy's fault, the one who'd offered to take out his dick and hold it for him, but although George was distracted with texting and porn, he could still feel what the boy was doing "down there", and it wasn't any different from what little boys usually do with a man's penis when they help him take a piss.

So why did George get horny? And why did his head feel so funny?

"Prob'ly get cum on my pants," George grumbled while begrudgingly wrapping his hand loosely around his semi-erect cock and stroking aggressively. The way Officer Klempernick's penis was banging around inside its finger 'cage' made Guile wonder if George was trying to coax it the rest of the way hard, or if the Timbersburg cop was merely subjecting it to routine police brutality in order to secure a forced confession.

"Sir, I could help you do that, too, if you want," the boy suggested to the violently masturbating peace officer, repeating Guile's exact words, which carefully avoided mentioning WHAT the cop was doing. If Robbie would've said 'help you jerk off', for example, George would've regained FULL awareness that he was engaged in an activity that could result in him needing to put a sign in his yard and have an uncomfortable chat with his neighbors, as well as his wife, mistress, and children...one of them being a son roughly the same age as Robbie.

"No," George said absently, deliberately forgetting, as he usually did, to add the word 'thanks'.

Robbie stayed back and patiently waited for Guile's next command. There was a pleasant smile on Robbie's face, the result of him relishing the fact that he'd just fiddled around with the cop's penis while the guy was forced to stand there like a fucking moron and let Robbie play. And now, Robbie got to watch the officer angrily deal with the consequences of what Robbie had done to him.

Even if Robbie didn't get to suck off Officer Klempernick, tonight was still, indisputably, the greatest night of Robbie Byrne's entire life. But he wanted MORE. He NEEDED more. Homosexually, Robbie wanted everything his new and AWESOME telepathic friend could do for him. Robbie wanted his WHOLE virginity, not just his "oral" virginity, GONE!! And he wanted the kind of sick (in both senses of the word) perversity that he couldn't talk his useless friends into doing with him!

Robbie would soon get everything he wanted, and far more than he ever could've imagined. Robbie Byrne would return to I-147 without his despised virginity, but in exchange he would receive several priceless (to Robbie, anyway) gifts, including a feeling that Robbie hadn't experienced since his balls dropped: complete sexual satiety.

"I'm about to give you an instruction, Robbie," Guile warned. "Do you still want to suck this horrible man's cock, and have his baby juice pour into your mouth?"

"Sure do!" Robbie affirmed. "Just tell me what to do, and it'll get done!"

Guile was heartened by Robbie's plea. Neither Lure nor Lecher had EVER expressed such enthusiasm and willingness to take direction from Guile.

"It's a tragedy that Robbie is a homosexual," Guile sighed. "He would've made a wonderful Lure.....and I would've served him well."

"Kneel down and start licking his nuts," Guile advised. "Don't lean on him or even TOUCH HIM with anything other than your tongue! Be careful to stay out of the way of his pumping fist, or the pig might carelessly 'knuckle-dust' your face."

Robbie knelt at Officer Klempernick's feet and got to work without hesitation. Given Robbie's inexperience, Guile expected the boy to give the officer's testicles nothing but timid, uninspired tongue-swipes. Not so much.

The boy completely lost his humanity and started desperately slurping the officer's balls like he just finished snorting bath salts.

After about two minutes of Officer Klempernick enjoying the sensation of a tongue sliding all over his scrotum and creating a lot of sensual movements inside of his sack, George stopped beating off and dropped his "mobile, cellular, porn theater" onto the yellow-stained pouch of the 'underwear hammock' between his knees. Then he straightened up and stared vacantly off into the darkness with his arms hanging limply at his sides.

"Whatever. I don't care," Officer Klempernick muttered in lieu of politely letting the boy know that he was accepting his offer of 'help'.

"Your efforts have caused several more 'sympathetic' levels of Officer Klempernick's mind to 'get with the program'," Guile told Robbie. "Unless your technique involves lots of teeth and blood, he will remain under my control for the duration of your fun."

The cop smiled at the woods beyond, but not at Robbie, as he felt the wet warmth of a small-ish mouth enclose his dick, and small palms press into his butt for balance. Robbie would've smiled too, if he'd been able to do so.

"Feels good, Chrissy. You're a lot better at that than your mom is," George babbled aloud, knowingly insulting his mistress' young daughter by paying her a backhanded compliment."

Officer Klempernick got so much smug satisfaction over his remark to the absent girl that Guile seethed. Guile was tempted to REALLY push himself and encourage the bastard to give "Chrissy" a deep, passionate, French kiss. However, the real Chrissy didn't smoke, and George hated cigarettes to the point that Guile couldn't make him ignore the taste, so Robbie had unknowingly cheated himself out of having the cop grab him by his upper arms, effortlessly lift him up off his knees, and then get Robbie in a lip lock and force his tongue into Robbie's mouth, all without bothering to ask permission or even announce his intentions.

Robbie would've fucking loved it.

"Warning: Cigarette Smoking May Result In Not Having a Mind- Controlled, Bad Cop Shove his Tongue Down Your Throat," Lecher observed.

"Even if that label had been printed on the crinkled pack in Robbie's cargo pocket, I'm certain the boy never would've read it. Warning labels aren't his style."

"Yeah, but pretty soon, daddy'll be injecting the boy with a daily dose of 'CALM THE FUCK DOWN', so that should take Robbie's foot off the gas until he matures some."

"No it won't," Guile rejected. "The Soul-Creation Energy that seeks the boy out and saturates him is super-charging his sexual desires. His father's dick will only serve to stir up Robbie's lust for more and more men. The S.C.E. wrongly thinks Robbie is heterosexual, and seeks to force the child to spread his power-packed seed far and wide."

"That's a stupid mistake for nature to make," Lecher observed. "Of course, if the purpose of life is to procreate, why did nature create homosexuals to being with?"

"Thanks to the studies of the Masters, I have the answer to that," Guile informed Lecher, surprising the hell out of him. "I'll tell you later. My main concern right now is figuring out Reality Itself's reasons for not only handing us a boy who knows Michael Pearson, but who is also an S.C.E. super-attractor.

"Yeah, you're right. What the hell DOES Reality Itself gain by handing us a walking box of fresh batteries?!"

"A better analogy would be a walking crate of fresh batteries, and we're desperately trying to manufacture a crowbar to get at them."

"What's THAT supposed to mean?" Lecher snorted.

Just before the tree almost fell on Lure, I'm fairly certain that Reality Itself caused Jaden Harris to take a nasty fall on the road, which was the only reason that he, Jayce, and Cynthia were here long enough to encounter the emergency survival protocol. At the time, I thought it was Reality Itself's intention to simply expose us to the world and make the presence of the Masters known. Now, however, thanks to Robbie and his many peculiarities, I have a different theory."

"And that theory would be.....???"

"Distraction."

"From what?"

"No idea," Guile confessed, adding dickishly: "I have a theory, though. I'll tell you when you let me in on your plan for dealing with Lure."

As Robbie felt the head of George Klempernick's thick, circumcised cock flare repeatly in response to the helmet wash Robbie was giving it, he seriously doubted that the officer would experience the same difficulties that had plagued the two boys who'd had trouble cumming in Robbie's mouth.

"He likes it, Robbie, but he's getting a little impatient," Guile lied to get Robbie to stop paying so much attention to the dickhead's dick head and speed things up a bit.

Robbie bobbed his mouth on the officer's fully-erect cock, gradually working his lips further and further back, until George's coarse pubes tickled Robbie's nose.

"He looks like an adorable, freckle-faced, red-headed duck," Guile commented to Lecher.

"Yeah, he's a cutie all right," Lecher agreed. "If his grandmother were here, she wouldn't know whether to slap his cheeks, or pinch them."

"The piece of filth you're servicing, Robbie, is a life-long bully who joined the force in order to treat people like shit, throw his weight around, receive undeserved respect, and 'hopefully' find out what it feels like to shoot and kill someone," Guile casually (and tactically) mentioned.

Guile's vile and truthful description of George caused Robbie's cock-sucking to become sloppier, more enthusiastic, and so much louder!

"I don't need to fucking HEAR what you're doing down there!" the cop shouted with extreme intimidation, feeding Robbie's fire even more. Although Robbie's dick was still in his shorts (painfully), Guile worried that Robbie might climax too, maybe even before the officer did.

"Damn it, I didn't mean to push Robbie TOO close to the edge," Guile grumbled.

Fortunately for Guile, for the first time that evening, "Timbersburg's Finest" had a rapid, if not premature, response time.

"Robbie, the officer gets off on hiding his orgasms so he can blow his load into women's mouths unexpectedly, especially if they make him promise NOT to. He's climaxing right now. Asshole cop ejaculation in 4...3. ..2...1...*"

Three of Guile's points of view, which had been set up in Robbie's mouth, watched as semen spat out of Officer George Klempernick's piss-slit, instantly spreading his unfaithful, pedophilic slime all over the top of a thirteen year-old boy's tongue.

Robbie eagerly nursed the cop's squirting cock as if he were a starving lamb, swallowing with no hesitation at all. He'd been swallowing his own cum for years. The only difference was that Officer Klempernick's was warmer, thicker, stickier, and much, much sweeter. Robbie could feel it travel all the way down to his tummy.

Lecher found himself captivated by the rising and falling of Robbie's Adam's apple, and the continual glugging noise created by the boy struggling to keep up with the endless twitching and spitting of the proud fuck-pole in his tiny mouth.

Back at the Thrall, Craig watched in disgust as Lecher's penis suddenly grew erect, right in front of him, for no apparent reason.

Almost a minute later, George Klempernick's dick-pulses slowly became too weak for Robbie to feel them with his tongue, and Robbie no longer needed to swallow excessively. Robbie wanted to stay there all night, sucking on the cop's dick until he eventually got horny again, but the officer had places to go and things to do...badly, as usual.

Officer Klempernick pulled his dick out of Robbie's mouth, gave his cock a base-to-tip squeeze so he wouldn't ooze cum into his underwear, and was about to dick-flick the resulting droplet at the ground when he got a confused look on his face and wiped his dick across Robbie's face instead.

Robbie smiled and made no effort to wipe it off. He wanted it to stay there and dry, so he'd be able to scrape it off later and have a taste while he daydreamed about this....!!!!!

"GUILE!" Robbie almost yelled out loud.

"Yes?"

"YOU'RE GONNA GIVE ME THAT MEMORY TOO, RIGHT?!"

"Yes," Guile verified. "And if you keep doing such a good job, I'll give you the 'footage' from the three 'cameras' I put in your mouth.

"AND MY DAD, TOO! RIGHT?"

"The whole scene will play out in his mind whenever you order him to watch it.

Robbie hugged himself to keep from giggling with joy.

The officer was just about to pull his underwear over his weeping cock when he suddenly stopped.

"What the FUCK?" the cop complained, raising his hands to his nose and sniffing at them.

"God fucking damn it," the officer muttered, taking a water bottle from his duty belt, pouring water in his hands, and using it to awkwardly rinse off his penis. The water dripped all over his 'underwear hammock' and soaked into his pants.

"Fucking cock smells like a fucking ashtray!" George muttered angrily. "She's gonna fucking smell it on me!"

Another yellow dashed line appeared in the air. Robbie ignored the cop's plight and happily scampered off to find the next yellow "X".

"How'd I do, Guile?" Robbie called out, feeling VERY pleased with himself.

"You were FANTASTIC," Guile raved. "In fact, if N.A.M.B.L.A. ever offers a scholarship for early-adolescent, men-loving, cocksucking prodigies, I would be HONORED to dictate a letter of recommendation for your application!"

Robbie had no idea what Guile was talking about, but he wasn't really listening anyway. He was busy walking on air with his head in the clouds.

One of Guile's points of view accompanied Officer Klempernick back to the roadway. After the cop explained his absence and received an update on the situation, Guile released the tenuous hold he had on his mind, allowing him to remember everything about his time in the woods, except for the face and voice of the boy who'd performed oral sex on him.

"George," one of his fellow officers said upon noticing his jaw going slack and all the color draining from his face, "you okay?"

"Uh, yeah," he lied as he left to carry out his assigned role in the growing chaos while hiding his panic and mental turmoil.

The night would only get worse for George Klempernick. Much worse.

"I REALLY need to jerk!" Robbie commented as he stopped and pulled the front of his bright red shirt up and over his head and let the material rest against the back of his neck.

Robbie ran his fingers through his reddish-orange hair a couple of times before sliding his hands sensuously all over his hairless, under- developed chest and stomach. Robbie was thirteen, but he sure didn't look like it. As a late-bloomer with a short stature and a small frame, the only thing that marked Robbie as Craig's son was their identical red hair.

Robbie pinched his nipples securely, then pulled his hands off of them roughly a couple of times. When that didn't give him the stimulation he craved, he massaged his nipples between his thumbs and middle fingers, instead.

Guile was about to ask him to quit when Robbie suddenly undid his shorts, pulled them down, and then hooked his thumbs over the waistband of his briefs.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Guile yelled, his panic making him sound too much like Lecher. "WE HAVE A DEAL!!"

"Relax, I'm not gonna touch it!" Robbie assured Guile after taking a second to get over his fright. "I just wanted to give it some air."

"Why?"

"Cause I just blew a cop!" Robbie said incredulously. "And I saw that Jayce kid all naked, then I watched him get milked by that blue tube. OH...AND YOU....I mean that Lesher guy-"

"LeCHer," Guile corrected.

"Yeah. Well, I saw both or yours' dick, even though it was hard to see in the dark, and it was HUGE! It hadda be, like, a FOOT!"

"It was nine inches, but he can make it a lot bigger if he wants."

"HOW BIG?!"

"He once made it six feet, just to see-"

"SIX FEET?!?!" Robbie yelled out loud.

"Robbie, I'll have him show you exactly how long he can make it, but in the meantime, please pull your pants up."

Robbie seemed reluctant.

"Can I just....show it to you first?" Robbie requested. "It's just, I'm lookin' at all these dicks tonight, and I really wanted to show mine to that cop, but I was only doing the stuff you told me to do, and I really like showing my dick to people when I can get away with it."

Guile was a non-sexual creature who wanted to see Robbie's dick about as much as Robbie wanted to eat pussy.

"You can show it to me if it gives you a thrill, but if you have an orgasm, you could be sentencing me to death!" Guile exaggerated. "But before you whip it out, please light up and take a few puffs to calm your- self down."

"Uh, SURE!" Robbie said cheerfully, enjoying having someone actually ASK him to smoke, for once.

Robbie reached down, retrieved his pack from his shorts, ineptly tapped out a cigarette, and put it between lips, only for it to fall to the ground. But as painful as THAT was to endure, it was a picnic compared to watching Robbie try to just light a match, let alone successfully line it up with the tip of his cigarette without risking burning off a fingerprint or two. Guile wasn't sure, but he didn't think it should've required three matches to get the job done. If it weren't for the fact that Robbie was looking through a pair of Guile's eyes instead of his own, Guile might've thought that perhaps Robbie needed glasses.

"If Tom Daggen were here right now, he'd forget all about Mike, and beat up Robbie instead, for reasons that have nothing to do with him being gay," Guile pondered. "Maybe Mr. Daggen should teach a smoking class, since it's his only talent besides self-promotion and literally busting skulls. Hopefully the piece of shit doesn't become a driving instructor."

Robbie took a deep pull on the cigarette, parked it securely between his lips, and pushed down his underwear, exposing his erect penis. Robbie was still growing, so his boner was only three inches and change, but compared to the rest of Robbie's little-boy body, it looked comically huge, an effect that was magnified by Robbie's seemingly-VERY-premature bright orange pubes. It almost looked like Robbie had been worked on by a perverted make-up artist, and with a cupful of isopropyl myristate, Robbie's mirkin and prosthetic penis could be removed, revealing his peewee peepee and smooth, hairless, baby crotch beneath.

"Nice," Guile remarked after Robbie skinned his boner and eagerly presented it to his new friend for his inspection. Guile praised Robbie's developing stiffy with just the right amount of enthusiasm. Not too little, for fear of seeming indifferent, and not too much, for fear of sounding sarcastic.

"Can I just 'hang out' here for a minute and finish my smoke?" Robbie asked, reaching down and absently scratching his pubes and balls, carefully avoiding his erect penis.

Guile really wanted to get to Mike's phone, but he forced himself to be accommodating. His main priority was getting the boy's dick down! If Robbie still had an erection by the time he was done with his cigarette, and he stuffed that stiffy back into his shorts, the rubbing of the fabric could eventually cause him to orgasm.

Guile could simply suggest to the boy that he just continue walking while leaving his dick hanging out. However, Guile was concerned that, in spite of Robbie being invisible, he might spontaneously ejaculate at the exhilaration of exposing himself to a road full of cops, as well as the assorted workers trying to deal with the wrecked vehicles, the tree, and the large thawing puddle of automotive fluids.

There was also the matter of the reporters who were now showing up. Reality Itself could easily make a cameraperson turn towards Robbie as he snuck by, and unless cameras now possessed human brains, Guile would not be able to screen away Robbie and his hard-on's television debut.

"Sure, Robbie, but please try to stop thinking about sex until we reach your dad," Guile requested. "You're causing us to be followed by a fleet of white vans."

Robbie spun around, almost flinging his cigarette from his mouth like a javelin.

"Oh...I get it," Robbie said sheepishly after failing to see any white vans in the forest, their headlights turned off and their engines running soundlessly as they effortlessly traversed the loose, muddy soil and weaved their way between the trees.

Robbie turned back around and blew a plume of smoke straight into the air, like he was imitating a howling werewolf. He watched the smoke quickly dissipate in the warm air.

When Robbie finally lowered his head and prepared to take another amateur puff, he noticed something that didn't make any sense to his altered vision. From his perspective, it was a bright sunny day, and a ground-level cloud was heading lazily in his direction.

"Guile, is that a forest fire?!"

"No," Guile replied distractedly, "Gotta go. I'll be back in a few seconds."

Enjoying a momentary break from his suddenly-chaotic life, Robbie admired the advancing cloud and focused his limited attention on his amateurish smoking.

Guile's attention, however, was presently laser-focused on the tip of Robbie's dick.

"ARRRRGH!!" Guile screamed at the glob of precum that, unknown to Robbie, was slowly oozing out of his pee-hole.

"I made him spin around with that STUPID white van joke!" Guile snarled to himself. "That's what must've caused it!"

In spite of possessing no sperm, precum nevertheless contained Soul-Creation Energy, meant to flow into a woman (or a Thrall) and release its relatively-tiny (but always appreciated) energy payload into a uterus (or fake uterus) to help saturate a (real or fake) egg, contributing to either the creation of a human soul....or a tasty supper.

Guile found himself mesmerized by the blazing brightness of the glob. It wasn't actually shining, of course. If S.C.E. put off any luminescence at all, Earth scientists would've probably discovered it by now. No, the brightness Guile saw was his perception telling him exactly how much S.C.E. remained within the glob, and its rate of contamination. In this case, the contaminating agents being the relative (to 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature, air pollution, skin oils, background radiation, and a whole host of things that WOULDN'T affect its ability to create a human soul in an actual uterus, but COMPLETELY fucked up a Thrall's ability to extract S.C.E. from it.

Guile's frustration turned to bitter rage as the glob slowly dimmed. He would've watched it to the dark, bitter end, if Robbie's (thankfully) flagging erection hadn't caused his foreskin to slide back over the head of his penis, squeegeeing the glob into a droplet that lowered itself down a glittering, gossamer thread of cum until it simply dropped to the filthy ground below.

At that moment, Guile was like a pirate who'd dug up a treasure chest and carried it for miles, all the way back to his ship, only to discover that one of the gold coins had fallen out along the way. There were SO many gold coins left in the chest that the loss of ONE shouldn't matter at all. BUT IT DID FUCKING MATTER, BECAUSE THE GODDAMNED PIRATE WANTED EVERY SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING COIN, BUT NOW THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN, BECAUSE ONE WAS FUCKING MISSING AND LOST FOREVER AND HE'D NEVER, EVER, EVER GET IT BACK!!!!!!!

How easy it would be for a Thrall to achieve his quota if contamination and freezing didn't render semen useless. But it did, so the only foolproof way to score as much S.C.E. as possible was to have "daddy" RIGHT THERE, squirting his goopy seed into the Thrall's mouth, asshole, or his baby blue-colored tendril, .....PERIOD.

But on the bright side, fertility clinics were safe from robbery, boys didn't have to worry about actual monsters hiding under their beds, trying to steal their 'used' socks, and Thralls would never have to sneak into adult movie theaters with a mop.

Getting at Robbie's Soul-Creation Energy would be a difficult challenge. Physical contact was out of the question, and previous Guiles had done the excruciating 'loophole lab work' and discovered NONE. Using tendrils (Baby Blue) was "found" to be considered "physical contact" by the Masters. And after decades of fearful speculation, a Thrall finally had the guts to try to flick ball vapor at a little boy's upper lip and give him verbal instructions on how to masturbate. The Thrall opened his mouth and accepted the boy's elated and poorly-aimed offering without experiencing any pain....until the Thrall left the boy's house and it was decided by the Thrall's internal "deterrents" that he was far enough away from people that his screams of agony wouldn't be heard by anyone. (The screen hadn't been invented yet.)

But even if a Thrall stayed away from children and obeyed all of the rules, collecting Soul-Creation Energy was nevertheless ALWAYS far more difficult than one would assume. It always had been, especially at the very beginning....

The Origin of the Tethered Ones

In a neighboring dimension, there was an unusual race of space- faring creatures who once wandered from star system to star system, exchanging enlightenment with the various forms of life they infrequently encountered.

These creatures were born asexually, starting their lives as giant blobs, several hundred miles across, floating in the vast interstellar void, far from any forces, both natural and unnatural, that might cause them harm.

The blobs had the innate ability to manipulate matter and energy, and when they were not transforming and consuming the radiation, dust, and gasses they collected (by spreading themselves thin like endless sheets of fly paper), they got to work constructing two massive half-shells that housed and protected the creature. Once the shells were brought together and the blob successfully sealed itself within the gigantic, rocky egg, the creature remained inside for the duration of it's long, long life, never physically leaving.

Visually, the creatures were indistinguishable from asteroids, unless the blob opened up one of the massive "trapdoors" to the surface and sent large quantities of itself out into space to either "cast a net and fish" for more matter and energy, or simply to dazzle passing ships by giving them a friendly wave, indicating that they could land if they so wished.

Being able to manipulate matter and energy, a blob could whip up increased gravity and a cosmic radiation-deflecting atmosphere consisting of all the respiratory gases required to create a habitat for its guest(s), one that helped make them feel right at home during their interaction with the blob's avatar, usually custom-created to resemble the blob's guest(s).

But the blobs didn't just rely on friendly waves to passing ships to quench their thirst for knowledge and social interaction. Sometimes they would pass by a planetary system and send out telepathic greetings in the hope that one or more of the planets might extend an invitation. When this happened, the meeting would either occur on the asteroid, or the blob's host would send a shuttle craft to collect the blob's avatar.

A visit by one of the "living asteroids" was quite an event, if not an honor.

But nothing good can last forever.

The blobs had near complete control over matter, energy, and the fundamental forces! Many of the races that interacted with the blobs, DID NOT! And since the ability was tied in with the blobs' amazingly complex micro-biology, and enhanced by their enormous MACRO-biology, it didn't seem likely that the secrets of the blobs would be discovered by anything less than an undesired living autopsy.

The first attack on a blob was completely unexpected, which must've made its failure even more embarrassing to whichever race carried it out. The blob simply opened up some of its trapdoors, sent out huge amounts of itself, and bitch-slapped the robot-controlled ships. It also increased it's personal gravity immensely, pulling the remote-controlled fighters down and making them crash onto the blob's rocky exterior. And as far as the massive amount of incoming fire directed at the asteroid was concerned, the blob just absorbed it and considered it breakfast.

But one battle does not make a war. And the next time the unknown invaders struck, they used a strategy that would serve them better.

Instead of using massive ships and firepower against the fortified, gelatinous creatures who would one day be known as "The Tethered Ones", or "The Thrall Masters", the invaders changed tactics and sent endless, multi- directional waves of robots at the artificial asteroids. These robots were designed to do just one thing: dig. They would bore into the surface of a blob's home, reach the creature, and tear into its gelatinous body with drills made out of materials that took longer for the creature to absorb. And by then, physical damage had been done. Not much, but after thousands of such wounds, it added up. In panicked desperation, the creature would send floods of itself across the surface of its home to stop the robots from drilling, but all that did was spare them the chore of digging through miles of rock. The blob didn't have a hidden brain, after all. The whole creature was a brain, eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and fingertip. An attack on any single part of it was the same as an attack on any other part of it.

In the end, the blob would flail around violently, trying to put an end to the pain and maddening physical irritation, accidentally "hatching" from its home and exposing itself to a barrage of energy weapons that it was too injured, weak, and confused to absorb.

A robotic message would then give the defeated blobs the choice of either death, or extensive, invasive testing that probably would've resulted in the first choice. The blobs would always choose death, but out of spite, they did it themselves, transforming their own bodies into a devastating blast of energy.

The universe was becoming a much more dangerous place for the blobs, so they were forced to take steps to defend themselves. First, they clustered together for protection, which many planets misinterpreted as a show of force and hostile intent. But even as a group, they were still vulnerable to the attacks of the digging robots. They needed an army to defend them, so they used their wonderous biological knowledge and matter transformation abilities to create life that would bring death.

Paradoxically, the creatures protected themselves by changing the composition of their dense, rocky shells, making the top mile lighter and porous, to create habitats for all the ghastly creations that would be tunneling around inside them. Their surfaces were populated by even more terrifying, warlike things that thrived within the impossible biospheres created by the blobs, who increased their personal gravities to establish toxic, corrosive, high-pressure atmospheres for their hellish populations.

In another paradoxical twist, the blobs' homes no longer resembled asteriods at all, with their acidic lakes, and their thoroughly alien fields and forests full of monster food, thus robbing the blobs of a camouflage that had served them well for an eternity. But considering the army of horrors that now protected them, hiding was no longer viewed by the blobs as a necessity.

Now that the blobs were safe, they felt secure enough to continue visiting worlds, as they'd always done, for purposes of exchanging wisdom and knowledge, as they always had, but few solar systems felt comfortable being visited by something carrying a potential planetary extinction event on its back.

By merely trying to protect themselves, the blobs were now pariahs.

Thanks to the rhetoric of a blob who would one day use the name Ladislav Kaschak, some of the blobs went to the homeworld of the race believed to be responsible for the digging robot attacks, and thus the lives of countless blobs. The seven hundred or so members of the revenge- minded blobs unloaded their monster payloads onto the planet to kill the populace. But even though the world government of the planet tried to defend itself with the very robots that had been attacking the blobs, it didn't matter at all to the coalition of races that didn't want THEIR planets destroyed in such a horrific fashion. Justifiable revenge or not, it was decided that the blobs needed to be hunted down and destroyed.

Eventually, the few surviving blobs were corralled into a hellish area of space that used to be a solar system with a yellow sun, but an ancient act of war by two competing alien races turned that star into a terrifying rip in the dimensional fabric. It was the hope of the Blobs' hunters that their quarry would get sucked into the massive gravitation of "The Gash" and get crushed to death. However, the blobs knew that "The Gash", although similar to a black hole, WASN'T. It was a door, not a trash compactor.

Initially, the blobs thought their enemies had outsmarted them- selves, but when the blobs started flinging avatars into The Gash, to see what it was like on the other side, they found it to be...shall we say.... somewhere they really didn't want to go.

To distance themselves from the myriad long-range, custom-made, blob-killing weapons of their enemies, the blobs positioned themselves as close to The Gash's gravity well as they could, without getting sucked in, but they discovered that the closer one got to "The Gash", the more that the laws of time and space broke down and stopped being constants, or even scientifically predictable. Suddenly, none of the blobs experienced time at the same rate, leading to great difficulty communicating, and thus preventing them from pooling their efforts and acting together as a team. Even worse, since the surrounding space was in flux, TOO, their physical positions would suddenly change, wisking them apart, or slamming them together. Often they would find themselves alone, much closer to their persecutors, ....or The Gash.

When all hope seemed lost, a future Thrall Master who would someday call himself "Maximus Morgan" realized that The Gash wasn't just breaking down the laws of time and space, but also the natural laws of dimensional separation. One day, the barrier between the blobs' dimension and a neighboring one became so thin that the future Master Morgan sensed a planetary biosphere on the other side, where The Gash hadn't been created, and Earth, as it was named, hadn't been sucked into it.

Taking immediate advantage of the weakened barrier, Master Morgan sped to Earth's former position and slammed a small hole through the barrier. And into that hole, Master Morgan sent some of his "inhabitants" a swarm of harmless, tiny, biological "explorers", intelligently-designed bugs that looked vaguely like flies, to telepathically send Him sounds and images to help Him learn about Earth.

The results were astonishing, but not for the right reasons.

As soon as the explorers flew through the barrier, they began to die, and for some unrelated reason, their tiny bodies started to rot. Still, they were genetically-designed to continue their mission, so they did, until the wind suddenly picked up and swirled around the swarm, preventing them from scattering far and wide. But then the wind stopped, just as a cloud of birds arrived to eat the extradimensional aliens.

Subsequent experiments firmly established that matter from the blobs' dimension would disintegrate within minutes of crossing over to Earth, and that if extradimensional life made the crossing, not only would it immediately start to die, but the native life and the elements would aggressively help it along.

It had been Master Morgan's hope that the blobs could all send custom-made avatars through the dimensional barrier, avatars that unlike the remotely-operated ones that carried part of their consciousnesses to the worlds they once visited, would instead remain in direct physical contact with the blobs via a permanent dimensional breach located inside the avatar.

Once an avatar entered into Earth's dimension, it would naturally synch-up with Earth's physical laws, and time and space would once again become constants, more or less. And since the avatar would still be bodily connected to its blob, the stabilization effect could be made to travel along the tether, through the tiny tear in the dimensional curtain, and surround and protect the blob's home as well. The blobs would be safe from the wild variations of space and time caused by The Gash, and as long as the blobs could continue resisting it's gravity, which was easy for them at that distance, they could safely and happily evade both their enemies and The Gash by staying forever between them, dancing in space, rotating in circles around a planet and a sun that no longer existed on their side.

But unfortunately, if Master Morgan tried to implement his plan, not only would the avatar begin to crumble, but any nearby life, either human or animal, would be instinctively triggered by the avatar's "wrong- ness" and violently attack it. Furthermore, Lecher's "million bolts of lightning" would've come to pass, or a tornado, or some other sudden, devastating weather phenomenon chosen to destroy the avatar.

But worst of all, the avatar, part of the blob itself, would start to die. Sadly, Master Morgan had confirmed an ancient theory that "in person" multiversal travel was impossible, due to a being's lifeforce being irrevocably bound to its own dimension.

Tethering to the Earth seemed to be an impossible challenge, and it would've been, if Master Morgan hadn't known a special secret. Long ago, He discovered that there is a virtually undetectable form of energy that circulates throughout the universe. Pushed along by the solar winds, this unusual energy washes over planets, looking for life. And when it finds the biospheres it seeks, it behaves in astonishing ways. The energy clings to living organisms, saturating them with its power, and encouraging health and reproduction. And most astonishing of all, the energy is the source of all sentience.

When he discovered it, Master Morgan named it something that was eventually translated into: Soul-Creation Energy.

Testing a theory, Master Morgan created an avatar for himself. But before He sent it through the dimensional barrier, He used a MASSIVE amount of his matter/energy power to reach over to Earth and grab a large amount of ITS Soul-Creation Energy, which was both similar, yet very different, from the S.C.E. on the blobs' side of the barrier.

On that day, hundreds of years ago, Maximus Morgan's avatar arrived on Earth, protected by a meticulously-designed internal system that kept the avatar saturated with trapped, unwilling, native S.C.E. No lifeform attacked him, the avatar did not begin to disintegrate, the weather stayed nice, and Master Morgan did not feel his avatar start to die. But best of all, Master Morgan's theory concerning Earth's extendable temporal and spacial stabilization effect was correct, and now He had successfully protected himself from the The Gash's time and space distortions, Tethering himself safely to the Earth.

The other blobs quickly repeated Master Morgan's experiment, and delighted in finally being able to relax, and not have to continually compensate for The Gash's violations of the physical laws of their native dimension. They were also free to finally interact with another species, which, as they got to know the human race, would be considered less and less of a blessing as the centuries passed.

But the blobs' problems weren't over. A PROHIBITIVE amount of the blobs' power was required to trap and concentrate sufficient amounts of foreign (from their perspective) Soul-Creation Energy to satisfy their needs. Using the S.C.E. to insulate an avatar constructed out of blob- compatible, extradimensional bio-materials caused the S.C.E. to degrade over time into a form of energy that wasn't any good for living things on EITHER side of the barrier. This energy was dumped into The Gash, and the avatar was regularly infused with a fresh supply. But although the blobs could survive indefinitely on the matter and energy that passed by on it's way into The Gash, way too much power was needed to keep gathering Earth- side S.C.E. The blobs were starving.

The blobs needed to find an alternate way to collect S.C.E., and they needed to find it SOON!

Robbie finally finished his cigarette, and to Guile's great relief, the tip of the boy's uncut penis now had a "safe" amount of tube in front of it. The beast was asleep, and would hopefully remain so until Robbie could be Churned.

"Guile, can I just let it hang out of my zipper?" Robbie asked as he tried to flick away his butt, only to have it fall to the ground.

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Well...can I just leave it out and walk by those two cops standing on the road....PLEASE?!?"

"Sure," Guile said with unfelt patience, "but then I want you to zip up and pull your shirt back over your head. And watch out for people and cars! They won't be able to see you."

"Okay," Robbie said automatically, making it too obvious that he hadn't heard anything Guile said.

The yellow dashed line in the air suddenly changed, reminding Robbie of when his mother would make a wrong turn, and the car's G.P.S. would recalculate. Robbie's new walking route went over to the road and past the two gabbing cops.

Robbie hurried along and hopped over the guardrail, his zipper giving his dick a little, toothy pinch that made him momentarily scrunch his boyish face.

"The way things are going," Guile pondered, "I'm amazed that Reality Itself didn't cause it to be sliced clean off."

But that wouldn't have served Reality Itself's interests at all.

Robbie walked by the young, skinny cop and the older, fatter cop, wiggling his dick at the two men while sticking his middle finger far too close to their noses. When he walked on, Guile left a point of view behind to listen in on whatever had the two men looking so angry.

"So we're supposed to hand this off to them and just leave?" Guile heard one of the cops say, a scrawny kid with no ass, whose pants looked to be on the verge of falling straight down.

"Oh, no," a walking beer keg with a badge replied, "WE gotta do crowd control and keep folks out of the woods. You know...THE REAL WORK!"

"Why are they even interested in this?" the thin, blue line asked, hoisting up his britches.

"Attention, probably," the beer keg replied, sympathetically pulling up his pants as well, while sweeping his eyes over the fallen tree and the damaged vehicles. "This ain't no bigfoot tale. With proof like THIS, this story's gonna explode!"

"No, there's something else going on here. After what happened last March at Malawny Hollow, I'm bettin' we're not only gonna see military here, we're also gonna have us a whole lotta guys in black suits."

"Wonderful," Guile thought, "Maybe they can recommend a tailor for you."

Guile tried to go into the cops' minds to discover what had happened last March at Malawny Hollow, since although it probably had nothing to do with sex, it had nevertheless just been mentioned, and both men seemed to be familiar with the case, so it should've been possible to trace the information from the active memory of one or both officers all the way to their recorded memories of the incident. Unfortunately, their thoughts were instantly disrupted by a 'chainsaw quartet', whose protective gear fit much better than either of the officers' uniforms.

"Well-played, my unseen adversary," Guile said into the telepathic void, before turning towards the skinny police officer, who was busy stuffing earplugs into his head. Sure enough, the boy policeman was coated with Probability Spasm Residue.

"Reality Itself, I do hope your shit comes out of that comically over-sized uniform. It's DISGUSTING......and so is that goop you've covered it with!" Guile quipped before linking with his point-of-view floating next to the Thrall.

Thankfully, the Thrall was STILL covered with Probability Spasm Residue. Some was gone, but that was to be expected. The Masters had conducted extensive studies into its rate of dissipation, and as far as Guile could tell, he still had plenty of time to drain Robbie, contact Master Kaschak, and use the P.S.R. to scheme...uh..."explain" his way out of Unenthrallment.

Without that Probability Spasm Residue, Guile and Lecher had nothing!

"Umm....when you say my dad'll be my sex slave, does that mean he'll be, like, stupid....acting like a zombie?" Robbie asked nervously, moving briskly to please Guile in the hope that he wouldn't get angry with Robbie for asking too many questions.

"Your father will act as he always does," Guile explained, "but when you two are alone, with no chance of interruption, and you desire to mess around with him, your minds will harmonize, and he will THINK and FEEL however you want, while he ACTS however you want, and DOES whatever you NEED him to do."

"Um, how will he feel about me....forcing him do stuff? Will he be mad at me for it?"

"He will never know that he's a slave, and if you ever try to tell him, he won't understand. As far as your father will be concerned, the two of you are just doing a personal, private, father/son activity that families don't discuss, like a father giving his son his first beer, smoke, getting him high, or, if you happen to live in Timbersburg, taking the boy to a prostitute to lose his virginity WELL before his eighteenth birthday."

"Um, about my virginity," Robbie begin haltingly, picking up on Guile 'accidentally' mentioning virginity to 'deliberately' stop Robbie from beating around the bush, "how exactly do I ask him to, you know, fuck me?"

"You say 'Dad, I'd like you to take my virginity'. He will start getting sexually excited while also getting emotional at the fact that you asked him to be the one to do it. He will insist upon having a long, gushy, cringeworthy, heart-to-heart talk about it, and then a 'pre-game' planning session to determine exactly how you want the monumental occasion to play out, although telepathically, he will already know the answer to that. You will then proceed to the bedroom, or kitchen table, at which time the two or you will start making out, in spite of neither of you needing any help starting your engines. Your father will ask permission to enter you, which he will do slowly and lovingly while repeatedly asking, many, MANY times, if you are okay...if he's hurting you...if you want him to stop for a second...if you need him to slow down...if you need him to cluck like a chicken....."

"It won't be like that," Robbie scoffed.

"Yes it will," Guile stated flatly. "I'm in your father's head right now, preparing him to be mentally enslaved, or what we call 'Entangled'. My description of how he would react to you asking him to take your virginity, post-Entanglement, came straight from his mind....except for the part about the chicken....I think."

"Huh," Robbie said casually, although in his mind, the boy was pondering the possibilities, which were causing him to grow erect again.

Guile had just the thing to entice the boy, but scare him enough to keep him soft...AND PREVENT THE LITTLE SICKO FROM LEAKING OUT ANY MORE OF HIS PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS, SOUL-CREATION ENERGY!!!!

"Tell you what, Robbie, just to make sure you bite the pillow instead of your fingernails, I'll help you through it. But after that, you're going to have to solve all of your future sexual daddy issues all by yourself, by consulting your father's owner's manual, which I told you I will download into your mind later."

"Does that mean you're coming home with us tonight?" Robbie asked in all seriousness.

"No, your father will be deflowering you at our meeting place, after I finish enslaving him for you.

"My dad's going to fuck me HERE?" Robbie asked incredulously, indication the trees with one hand, and the muddy ground with the other.

"Robbie, the tendrils I used to melt your father's tires and freeze those burning engine fluids....those were really only meant to turn into ribbons, snake up a man's shirt and pants, wrap around him, and either warm or cool him, enough that temperature-related discomfort wouldn't prevent him from being drugged or mind controlled into an uninhibited sexual state.

"But...what does that have to do with my dad fucking me on the ground...in the mud?" Robbie asked.

"The point I'm trying to make, Robbie, is that I was designed to create the perfect conditions for oral or anal intercourse, regardless of environmental challenges. I've covered a small clearing with a clean, mud- shunting material, and the surface can be transformed into a nice, soft bed, where you can relax and enjoy my drugged fog while your daddy sings you calming lullabies at the same tempo he's using to fuck you up the ass."

Guile felt Robbie stiffening in his shorts. He liked the idea, but the police were everywhere, and.....

"Robbie, the police won't be a problem. The fog you noticed a minute ago is MINE, and soon, the police won't be much of a problem."

"Wait...they're all gonna be fucked up?!"

"Yes, and they'd better be careful! There's a thirteen year-old boy on the loose who likes to molest mind-controlled cops! Who knows what he'll to do any unconscious or intoxicated cops he encounters!"

"Awww, MAN!" Robbie 'whined', knowing that Guile was creating a situation in which Robbie wouldn't have any self-control.

"So you see? Everything's going to be fine?"

"If my dad's gonna fuck me, I'll have to take a shit in the woods. That's gonna suck."

"No it won't," Guile disputed. "I'll snake the brown tendril up your ass, fill you with a harmless substance that dissolves feces, and suck you clean."

"Wow, that's messed up!" Robbie exclaimed with melodramatic disgust.

He was very interested in having it done to him.

"What's it feel like?" Robbie asked when he was done displaying his childish fake revulsion.

"If Lecher turns it up full blast, which he no doubt will, you'll experience the sensation of being given an enema with a hot tub full of ginger ale."

"I'd probably squirt all out!" Robbie exclaimed too loud.

"Impossible," Guile explained. "The black tendril goes along for the ride and plugs you up. No anal leakage....guaranteed."

"What's the black one do?" Robbie asked.

"I thought you already knew what all my tendrils do," Guile teased, "but since you don't, it changes shape."

"Like your tongue?"

"Yes, but the black tendril is more exact. I can't make brushes out of my tongue, like the one I made with the black tendril to apply ball sweat to Jayce's upper lip so fast that you obviously didn't see it. I also can't use my tongue to make intricate dildos, or anal beads, or a ten pound bowling ball that I can whip around and take out a group of attackers."

"So it makes anal beads and dildos? Are those for you?" Robbie asked, zeroing in on the sexual items instead of the killer bowling ball, which would've captured the imagination of most boys Robbie's age.

"No, I don't need them," Guile replied, desperately wishing that he could trust Lecher to answer these horrible questions. Guile didn't HAVE a sexuality, nor did he WANT one. That was LECHER and LURE'S area, not HIS to deal with!"

"Then why can you MAKE them?" Robbie insisted "if you want cum, you get a guy to fuck you...or let you suck them off....oh, or use that blue thing. Why would you need a dil-"

"Sometimes men won't fuck YOU until you fuck THEM," Guile interrupted, eager to bring this specific line of questioning to an end, "but the main reason is that if I start an orgy situation, the 'blue thing' can separate like the 'yellow thing', then slide up all of the men's asses like the 'brown thing' and cover the tips of their dicks so that I can score lots and lots of the 'white stuff'."

"Oooooohhhh!" Robbie chuckled. "That's SMART!"

"And you're not, junior," Lecher added, in spite of Robbie not being able to hear him. "Guile, bet'cha every hundred in Lure's ankle wallet that 'Smokey the Brat' here doesn't even shut up while his dad's plunging him like the filthy little toilet he IS!"

"I'm not in the habit of taking sucker bets, Lecher.

"Guile?" Robbie asked.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!" Lecher groaned. "Children should be DRAINED, not HEARD."

"Yes, Robbie?" Guile replied in a happy tone.

"If I get....scared....and back out of letting my dad fuck me, can you....you know....MAKE me want to do it? Like you made Jayce want to ....have to cum, but...uh....you know....get fucked, instead?"

"Count on it," Lecher grumbled, viciously adding: "Uh....uh....you know."

"Robbie?" Guile asked.

"Yeah?"

"Care to guess what the green one does?"

"Wow," Robbie remarked, "those things can do EVERYTHING!"

"Most of them can shut you up, one way or another!" Lecher muttered ominously. "Come and find out."

Robbie saw that the dashed yellow line went over the guardrail, so he pushed his flaccid penis back into his underwear, partly to keep his promise to Guile, and partly to avoid another potential injury.

"Robbie," Guile ordered, "take your penis out again."

"Uh...okay," Robbie said, reaching down and fumbling with the front of his shorts until his dick was once more exposed, wiggling in front of him as he walked.

"Stop at the guardrail. Do not step over it."

Robbie approached the guardrail and noticed a muddy shoe print. Someone obviously made it on their way out of the woods. But who would-?

"Robbie, please scrape your foot across that footprint, removing as much mud as possible."

"Okay," Robbie replied, sounding confused.

Robbie carried out the instruction.

"Now rub your feet across the four on the asphalt."

Robbie complied.

"Now urinate on the print on the guardrail, washing it away as thoroughly as possible. I don't want the mud attracting the attention of the police."

"Whose footprint was that?" Robbie asked as he shoved his penis back in his shorts and pulled his shirt back over his head and covered his exposed front."

The symbolism was not lost on either Guile OR Lecher.

But Guile hesitated.

"You could tell him 'Mike Smith'," Lecher suggested. Maybe he won't see Pearson's full name on the text app."

"Even if the app. opened on 'conversations' instead of 'contacts', Mike has no friends. His parents and siblings are the only ones who text him. The last name 'Pearson' would appear repeatedly."

"Well," Lecher lamented, "if Robbie's parents don't know he's gay, and they don't know what he's been doing on-line, at least we know the boy can keep a secret."

"Robbie, the footprints are Mike Pearson's. We met earlier, and I scared him and made him drop his phone and flashlight-"

"Oh, I can give them back to him," Robbie offered.

"That would be (FUCK!FUCK!FUCK!FUCK!) great, Robbie, but I'd like you to write him a text for me, first."

"Sure," Robbie agreed, lifting his leg to step over the guardrail to go to the yellow "X" on the other side.

"Uh, Robbie? I still need you to...."

"Oh, yeah," Robbie said, whipping his dick out and holding it while spraying the muddy guardrail. "What do you want me to text to Mike?"

Guile didn't answer.

"Guile?" Robbie asked while continuing to empty his bladder on the rail, which was causing a tremendous amount of backsplash. It felt like an army of flies were landing on his shins.

"Guile?" Robbie called out again, growing worried that Guile wasn't going to come back.

As more time passed without a response, Robbie's worry turned into fear. Maybe Guile was gone forever, along with all of his promises. Robbie could feel the familiar chill of emotional emptiness growing within him.

"Hey...KID!" a female police officer yelled at him. "Are you Robert Byrne?"

Robbie was visible again, but he wasn't paying attention. The darkness was coming back, both figuratively and literally, making Robbie feel an overwhelming sense of dispair.

"Kid! I asked if you-" the officer repeated before stepping up to Robbie's side and noticing that his dripping penis was exposed.

Robbie didn't care. Robbie was broken.

"Yeah, I'm Robert Byrne," Robbie said listlessly.

"Uh...there are people all around here! You shouldn't be doing that out in the open!" the woman bitched, as much of an asshole as her male counterparts. In the Timbersburg P.D., the only female officers who can endure the male-oriented bullshit are toxic women like Robbie's mother, and Robbie wasn't in the mood to deal with his mother at that moment.

Robbie shook his penis in a deliberately masturbatory way, making the cop melodramatically turn her head in an ostentatious way, the only way that women like her can do anything.

"When you're DONE, I'm going to need you to come with me!"

"Why do women always tell people what THEY need?" Robbie asked softly, bitterness rising in his throat.

"Look, I don't TIME for this!" Officer Tracy Rogers spat. "I need.. ..I mean...you need to....!"

Robbie turned towards the woman, his penis still hanging out, and looked up at her coldly.

"My mom tells me what SHE needs all the time," Robbie monotoned in the same voice he used to cope with his mother's extreme emotionalism, "making me sit for hours, listening to her yell and scream about all sorts of stuff. Most of it has nothing to do with ME, but she screams it at me anyway."

"I'm sorry about that," Tracy spat in a tone of voice that made it obvious she didn't. "Since you refuse to stop exposing yourself, I'll get one of the MALE officers to deal....talk to you. Do you WANT that?!"

"Will he ask me if I'm hurt, or if I'm okay, or if I need anything, or will he be like you?" Robbie asked, maintaining his robot-like demeanor.

Officer Tracy Rogers straightened up, smoothed her uniform, and let out an exasperated sigh before before turning and striding away.

"She's going to stop, stare at the sky with her back to me, then suddenly whip around like mom does, stomp back over, and start threatening me," Robbie thought.

Robbie had seen this practiced, polished, over-used, falsely spontaneous, predictable, female performance on thousands of occasions.

And although he was too young to articulate it, Robbie knew damned well that Officer Rogers wouldn't DARE to ask a male officer for help in performing her duties. Female pride, and the fear of male pride, wouldn't allow her to do it.

As predicted, Officer Tracy Rogers spun around with melodramatic defiance, like she was working the runway in Paris, or like her name was Linda Byrne, and came at Robbie in a menacing way that she would NEVER use to approach a GIRL who'd been through an alleged, traumatic ordeal.

"First," the woman in uniform snarled, "I'm going to NEED you to zip up, or I'm going to tell your FATHER when we find him!"

"So you don't know if my father's dead or not?"

"IT DOESN'T MAT-" Officer Rogers began before realizing what she'd almost said, but continued yelling rather than cede her authority, or obey her training. "Look, I'm going to need a LOT less attitude from you, young man!"

Robbie looked straight up at the woman and created a memory that Guile would add to his treasured collection.

"I don't give a FUCK what you WANT, you CUNT!"

The woman's face contorted and she drew breath to yell, and in that instant, Robbie knew for certain that he did not love his mother, nor any woman who thought and acted like her.

The world suddenly got brighter again, both figuratively and literally.

"ROBBIE!" Guile warned. "TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND DON'T BE AFRAID!!"

Still hanging out of his zipper, Robbie smiled a cruel smile at the typical Timbersburg cop while quickly emptying his lungs and filling them as full as he could.

Cynthia Keim watched the strange exchange between Officer Tracy Rogers and the boy from the red pick-up. She'd just finished a call, and was about to text Raymond Crandal and Jocelyn Harris an update, but she was fixated by the...standoff(?)...due to the fact that the boy's penis was poking out through his zipper.

Ordinarily, the penis of a little boy wouldn't have mattered to her at all, but considering that it was the third phallus she'd seen that night, she wondered if something was happening to the boy, something related to the naked monster and his naked victim.

"HOLY SHIT!!!!!" a cop screamed as a pinkish snake reached out of the woods and swallowed the boy's whole head.

In spite of the color change, Cynthia knew exactly what it was.

"IT'S THE MONSTER'S TONGUE!!" Cynthia screamed, unknowingly going from a local news celebrity to a NATIONAL celebrity.

The police rushed the boy, who wasn't flailing or ANYTHING. He was just standing there with his arms relaxed at this sides while men tried to free his head.

It was pandemonium, but things got stranger still.

"Cover your ears?" a man called out. "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah," another man, a reporter, confirmed. "I heard it, too."

Murmurs of male agreement were heard all over the road, but women were just looking around, confused.

For the second time that evening, Cynthia put two and two together at lightning speed.

"The monster feeds on semen...only men make semen...it only cares about men......it gave men a warning....the tongue is protecting the boy's ears.......!!!"

"COVER YOUR EARS!!!!!!!!" Cynthia Keim screamed with all her might before planting her palms against both sides of her head, pushing as hard as she could, and gritting her teeth against whatever was coming.

SSSCRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTCH!!!

Even with her ears covered, it was agony. The people who hadn't followed Cynthia's advice dropped to the wet roadway and rolled around in pain, clutching their ears.

Somewhere relatively nearby in the woods, something had just let out a high-pitched scream of enormous power. It wasn't so much a 'noise' as it was a 'sonic blast'!

The nightmarish cry went on for seven seconds, which seemed a HELL of a lot longer at the time, according to witnesses. Scientists would have no explanation as to how the noise could possibly travel so far, given the sound dampening qualities of the miles of forest surrounding the epicenter.

Footage of the monstrous howl was captured by a fallen news camera, along with graphic images of several people on the road, screaming them- selves in a desperate attempt to protect their hearing. Others crouched down behind vehicles or people, in the hope that their chosen 'shield' would either absorb or deflect some of the painful bombardment.

As difficult as it may have been, the hardcore deniers could've convinced people that the fallen tree, Jaden's engine, and all of the other physical evidence, was part of an elaborate hoax.

"The Mournful Monster Cry", as it would soon be called, would not be so easily debunked. Nor would the subsequent paranormal events that would occur that night.

Things were only getting started.

End of Chapter 5