The Monsters of Faggot Forest

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(Warning: This chapter contains M/t, drug triggers and "tasteful" anilingus and coprophilia)

Several minutes before the deafening "Mournful Monster Cry" would turn a sorta-believable (but potentially faked) monster story into the beginning of "The Timbersburg/Johnsport Incident", Officer George Klempernick suddenly became the only cop on site who wasn't secretly terrified that they'd all be sent into the woods to deal with whatever the hell had trashed two vehicles, felled a thick-ass tree, and carried off a muscular high school athlete.

"Ain't nuthin' here," George heard in his head, "It's all bullshit! Gotta go take a leak!"

George stepped over the guardrail and headed towards his awful, yet well-deserved fate. Soon he would be surrendering his genitals to a little boy named Robbie, who would service the somewhat mind-controlled officer while George's inner asshole verbally mistreated the boy for the purpose of feeding his own ravenous ego.

Afterwards, George's mental haze would lift, and he would be forced to examine his inexplicable actions. It would be difficult for the homo- phobic, hypocritical pedophile-hater, but he would find comfort in knowing that the vanilla encounter could've been much worse.

"Thank GOD the kid never showed me his dick," George would say, contemplating both his potential legal jeopardy and his own self-respect, "and thank FUCK I wasn't messed up enough to diddle the little faggot!"

However, Guile wasn't done with Officer George Klempernick, not by a long shot. He and Robbie were destined to meet again, and the next time they fooled around, it would be much less vanilla, much less one-sided, and far less focused on stroking the cop's ego.

But none of that had happened yet. At this moment, George was unknowingly making the same mistake that Craig did: He was going into the woods, instead of running from them.

Meanwhile, Robbie's father, Craig, was still trapped...stuck like a human-sized mouse on a baseball diamond-sized glue pad. But instead of adhesive, which would've been bad enough, Craig was stuck to his vampiric abductors' detached tongue, that had been 'ordered' to flow up his pants, and was now handling Craig intimately, sliding along the crack of his ass, swirling around his asshole, massaging his balls, and making his penis squirm around in his briefs like a trapped snake.

Craig liked it, but he didn't want to. He was an adult, intimidating, bearded, weight-lifting, ginger giant, who'd run into the woods to kill a monster and save a life, but he ended up being easily defeated and immobilized. Having his privates stimulated against his will should've infuriated Craig, causing him to fight off his feelings of violation and vulnerability by screaming in rage and straining against his invasive bonds. Instead, he secretly allowed himself to enjoy the pleasurable activity going on in his underwear, and used it to take his mind off of his uncertain fate.

Craig looked over at Jayce Harris, the young man he'd failed to save. Their vampiric captor, or captors, had done something to the kid, either drugging him or using the vampire's mind control on him. In either case, Jayce appeared to be having a horrible, fitful sleep, the kind that suggests fevered nightmares. But that couldn't be what was happening to the boy, on account of the twitching, ramrod-straight erection jutting from his crotch.

"If that boy turns over, he's gonna be in a world of hurt," Craig mused before getting lost in the past. "It's been a long time since I've had a boner around another guy with a boner. Wish I knew what's been going on with Gary, lately. Probably had another couple of kids. If any of the older ones get their genetics checked, they might be in for a surprise. If so, I hope they don't hate me. At least one of my offspring should like me.

"I just thought of something!" Lecher (the dumber of Craig's two captors) said to nobody....nobody visible, anyway.

"I suppose it had to happen sooner or later," Guile (the telepathic presence in Lecher's head) replied.

"If our insides are connected interdimensionally to Caboose's insides, how can that link still exist if we're both in the SAME dimension?"

"As far as first thoughts go," Guile observed, "I have to admit, that was a good one. A shame it was wasted on a question I cannot answer. My archives tell me that this process is possible, and they provide step- by-step instructions, but that's it."

"But...what happens if things go wrong?" Lecher fretted. "Will Caboose be okay?"

"Whatever injuries it sustains can only make it cuter, so-"

"SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!" Lecher yelled, making Craig jolt.

Guile didn't back down. It was time to get something off of his non-existent chest. But since the clock was ticking, Guile adjusted his and Lecher's time perception.

"Since killing your pet monster would turn you into a useless, bawling heap, it would not be in my best interests to allow Caboose to be harmed, correct?"

"No, but-"

"I'm not done talking just yet," Guile interrupted. "There's some- thing I've been meaning to ask the Lecher who recently accused me of 'giving up', in spite of there being no other option at the time."

"Kill me now," Lecher groaned, bringing his palms to his eyes and lowering his head.

"On the surface of our Master, the Pilot Fish wander around like massive garbage cans with teeth, killing the Master's unwanted genetic mistakes, eating waste that no other creature wants, and keeping the exterior of the Master's shell free of the many species of parasites that drift through space in the Masters' dimension."

"I know what Caboose is, Guile," Lecher sighed.

"When the Masters first arrived on Earth, they desperately needed to find some way to gather Soul-Creation Energy. Since human female eggs and male semen are packed with it, and since male semen is MUCH easier to obtain than female eggs, the Masters created a biological process by which semen could be tricked into surrendering its S.C.E. payload. Due to time constraints, rather than design an entirely new creature, the Masters installed this biological process into the wonderous, genetically adaptable bodies of the Pilot Fish, along with additional organs created to store the S.C.E. until needed by us, or transferred to the Master."

"Still with you," Lecher yawned.

"Since most males are reluctant to stick their dicks into a cosmic glory hole, or fuck a cross-dimensionally sex-trafficked monster, a human 'funnel' was required, an attractive young male who would 'lure' men into either fucking him or allowing the lad to perform oral sex on them, thus collecting the needed semen for the Pilot Fish's extractor.

"If they needed semen, why didn't the Masters just choose WOMEN to be Thralls? They'd have a much easier time of it."

"They tried, but the process by which S.C.E. is extracted is very temperamental. The energy characteristics of the S.C.E. contained inside the semen must be exclusively male, so that it falls within the necessary range. If male S.C.E. passes through a woman, it also passes through the woman's S.C.E. aura, causing both the male and female S.C.E. to change, altering the energy characteristics to become more compatible with one another in advance of possible impregnation. This throws the male S.C.E. wildly out of tolerance, and the extractors cannot be recalibrated to accomodate such a broad range of potential values."

"What happens if they sterilize the woman so that-?"

"Please stop! You're not going to suggest something that Master Morgan didn't already try! The only way to create a female Thrall would be to prevent her from absorbing ANY Soul-Creation Energy on her own, even the tiny amount that all life requires to remain alive."

"What about homo-?"

"Gays cannot become Thralls for the exact same reason that nature created homosexuals in the first place!"

"You never answered that question for me," Lecher reminded him.

"And since I'm in the middle of trying to make a point, I won't be doing it now, either!"

"What about asexuals, bisexuals, and ammosexuals?"

"Lecher, please stop."

"Who's Master Morgan?" Lecher asked with a devilish smirk.

"You won't be so amused once I make my point, Lecher," Guile warned.

"Pfffffft," Lecher exhaled, making his lips vibrate.

"Since the Pilot Fish is native to the Masters' dimension, and the boy was native to Earth, neither could cross the barrier to hand off the cum and deliver back the resulting S.C.E. to the Master."

"Why would the energy need to be delivered back?" Lecher scoffed, "If Caboose is living ON the Master, why does the S.C.E. have to come back to Earth?"

"Because the Master's avatar is HERE, not THERE! All the S.C.E. does is provide a protective aura of native S.C.E. to protect the avatar, the Fingernail, from the Earth biosphere's responses to extradimensional incursions. Without it, the Master's Fingernail would be attacked by every- thing from microbes to macrobes, and dimensional incompatibility would cause it to crumble, Untethering the Master."

"I thought that the Masters ate the stuff....survived on it," Lecher said, looking confused.

"The Masters and their populations survive on the matter and energy on the other side of the barrier," Guile informed Lecher with a condescending tone. "Did you really think that a god, several hundred miles across, and his endless army of monsters were sustained by our meager daily offering of a handful of cock snot?"

"Well...what happens to a Master when he becomes Untethered?" Lecher asked, just to make sure that Guile didn't know.

Lecher knew quite a bit about the Masters' lives before they arrived on Earth, but Guile accidentally revealed a few weeks back that he knew nothing about the Masters' background, and it made Lecher happy to keep that information a secret from Guile, especially when Guile was being a bossy, know-it-all prick.

As a safeguard against Guile ambition, Lecher brain-sections have an area that is only accessible by the Lecher and his Master. No Guiles Allowed. It is only supposed to be used by the Master, usually to assign special orders to the Lecher that He didn't want the Guile to know about. But since the area was empty, and the Master didn't seem "hands-on" enough to ever use it, Lecher packed it with all the important stuff he knew ....and Guile didn't.

"When a Master becomes Untethered, I GET BACK TO MY FUCKING POINT!" Guile spat, side-stepping the fact that his shitty archives didn't contain that information. "Rather than waste time developing some sort of cross- dimensional, sperm "bucket brigade", the Masters securely connected the insides of Lures and Pilot Fish together via an internal, stabilized rift, capable of independent movement on both sides, the exact same set-up that connects Masters with their Fingernails.

The first Thrall was born, a jaded, unmotivated, 'rent boy' who was prone to bouts of depression that he 'medicated' with alcohol."

"I'd rather have him than Lure!" Lecher grumbled.

"Agreed," Guile said before swiftly resuming his story in order to prevent another Lecher digression. "The boy's dismal job performance and brief period of service -due to fading beauty, mental issues, alcoholism, and disease- told the Masters that if they wanted to avoid becoming Untethered, they'd have to do more than stick a portal in the guts of some poor, suffering kid and toss him back out on the streets so that the Masters could just reap dividends from the boy's desperation."

Lecher chuckled.

"If that worked, the bastards would still be doing it that way."

"Without a doubt," Guile said quizzically. "Why shouldn't they? On second thought, shut up. Anyway, in addition to adding incentives like beauty enhancement, agelessness, strength,....."

"A supercharged reward system that turns 'em into physical pleasure junkies," Lecher added.

"Not in our Lure's case," Guile lamented before returning to his list. "...durability, perfect health, and extreme survivability. But under the guise of providing the Thrall with a companion, the Masters gave each Thrall a handler, something that would act as a friend and confidant, but also an advisor, psychologist, motivator, and if necessary, tattletale."

"The Masters' stupidest decision ever!" Guile sniped.

"Later," Guile continued, not taking the bait, "as the Thralls were given too many physical powers for them to coordinate on their own, the Masters added a second handler, one who would act less like a friend, and more like a rowdy, depraved, combination wing man and drinking buddy, encouraging the Lure to get wild and sleazy, take necessary unnecessary risks, and grab the world by the balls....and then completely drain them."

Lecher didn't make a sarcastic comment. Instead, he turned away and surreptitiously wiped his eyes. Guile looked inside his mind to find that Guile's description of Lecher's true, unrealized purpose had made him emotional. Lecher was pondering his plan for Lure, and how it just HAD to work, IT HAD TO!!!!!

Guile pressed on and pretended he had no idea that Lecher was having a momentary crisis.

"The handlers, dubbed 'Guile' and 'Lecher' by who-the-fuck-knows, had a wonderful effect on Lure productivity, attitude, and retention. Everything was going well, but the Masters, who were all still going through a period of striving for Thrall perfection....."

"Ancient history," Lecher grumbled.

"...hated losing the accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and experience of each Guile and Lecher when their Thrall eventually got killed or Unenthralled. The Masters wanted to preserve that information and pass it along to their subsequent Thralls."

Lecher was getting impatient.

"So they put an extra brain in the Pilot Fish and it acts like an external hard-drive for our memories, but just the important ones," Lecher breezed. "If we get killed tomorrow morning, Caboose will tear free from our guts, and the Lecher and Guile of the next Thrall that Caboose gets bonded with will inherit our Lecher and Guile Archives."

"Not that we'll have much to offer the next-" Guile began.

"SPEAK FOR YOUR FUCKING SELF!" Lecher raged. Guile hit a nerve. "I didn't inherit a SINGLE goddamned combat file, but I'm passing along a hell of a lot of self-taught fighting skills! But that ain't the WORST of it, Guile, YOU KNOW WHAT IS????"

"I'll let you tell me if you let me get back to my point," Guile bargained.

"DEAL! The worst of it is that Lure has a NAME! And when the Master comes to kill us for HIS mistake of making that boy a Thrall, Lure's name will be IMMORTALIZED FOREVER!"

"I assume you're talking about Lure's flying technique."

"Yeah, the one I helped him with, which means that it's now part of the Lecher Archives! So even though you and I inherited SHIT, the next Lecher whose Thrall links up with Caboose will inherit something PRICELESS! He'll disseminate it FOR SURE, and it'll eventually find its way to ALL Thralls of EVERY Master! And when THAT happens, Lure's legacy of INSTANT FAILURE will be scrubbed away, and whenever a Thrall takes to the night sky in search of a warm, sticky meal, they'll use it to toast the LEGENDARY Lure who once bore the name Ca-"

"DO NOT SAY HIS NAME!!" Guile screamed. "DO YOU WANT TO WAKE HIM?!"

Both beings took a second to cool down.

"Lecher, do you know why our archives are so empty?" Guile asked.

"Because instead of reusing the same couple of Pilot Fish, the Master is just grabbing them at random, regardless of how many decades or centuries have passed since the last time the Pilot Fish was connected to a Thrall."

"Probably," Guile agreed, "but the real problem is that the Master is definitely not ordering the Pilot Fish to be collated."

"My shitty archives don't even contain that word."

"A GOOD Master wants ALL of the Pilot Fish to have EVERY contribution made by each Guile and Lecher who has ever served him. Thus, every Thrall of that Master inherits EVERYTHING ever added to both archives."

"How is that possible?" Lecher scoffed. "In addition to what they do for US, Pilot Fish wander around cleaning the Master like enormous Roombas. To cover as much area as possible, they're genetically programmed to always avoid one another. Hell, since they're created instead of born, they don't even seek each other out to breed! How are the archives spread...telepathically?"

"The Pilot Fish's extra storage brain is deliberately telepathy- resistant, to prevent...um..."

"...prevent them from being accessed by an ambitious Guile from a different Master?" Lecher suggested.

"Yes."

"You gotta watch those power-hungry pricks. Always pulling some- thing. So how the hell are the files spread, then?"

There is a creature on the Master's surface that patrols the same vast plains that the Pilot Fish clean. These creatures have legs like an ostrich, but much thicker. They can run almost constantly, at tremendous speed."

"Driller Killer," Lecher thought to himself.

"They have large, impact-resistant, compound eyes that extend all the way around their head, interrupted only by two hyper-sensitive ears that are usually covered by a protective hood of durable flesh, but when the creature stops, the hood lifts away from the ear canal and forms what- ever external ear shape is required to aid in capturing specific sounds. Its mouth is a broad muzzle, with bulging jaw muscles and teeth strong enough to bite through virtually anything...or crush it! Lord only knows why the Masters needlessly designed it that way."

"Guess I'm the Lord, then," Lecher secretly pondered, "because I know they were designed to tear drillers apart."

"The creatures have four pairs of mighty arms, most of which end with organic, ultradense, tool-like structures. Two arms end with large hooks, the next two down end with what looks like the tips of pry bars, the next pair have seven long fingers apiece, each one shaped like a different cutting implement. I don't know what the last pair look like, but I naturally assume they cannot be used to handle stemware or chopsticks."

"They're a pair of tough, regrowable tentacles that can wrap around a Driller's drill and jam it up before the unit can begin tunneling down towards the Master," Lecher happily recounted to himself. "Drillers are... since YOU DON'T KNOW, you arrogant prick...rocket-propelled combat robots on top, and a huge drill on the bottom. A swarm of them used to go around killing the Masters, until Master Kaschak retaliated against the planet responsible by flooding it with the Masters' genetic creations. In response, a bunch of alien races pushed the Masters up against "The Gash", a huge rip in the dimensional fabric that may as well be a black hole. An automated armada of starships keeps the Masters from trying to escape, should they manage to overcome the Gash's gravity well and the 'minefield' of temporal and spacial distortions.

Bet you'd LOVE to know all that, Guile," Lecher thought privately. Bet you wish you knew anything about the other dimension beyond the surface of Master Kaschak, as well as the history of the Masters.

"What else do you know about the Masters' dimension?" Lecher asked innocently before lying. "I don't have any files on it."

"Not much," Guile sighed, "and it speaks to my point."

"This shit's been going on for so long that I keep forgetting that you're trying to make a point," Lecher scoffed.

"My point is that if we survive tomorrow, we need to separate from Caboose and get a new Pilot Fish."

Lecher's head snapped up and he glared at Guile with an expression of alarm mixed with rage.

"NO!....and WHY?!?!" Lecher snarled.

"Because the creatures I describe aren't doing their job. They are supposed to be running through the plains, using those massive eyes and sensitive ears to look for Pilot Fish. And once they find one, they rub their head antennae against the Pilot Fish's eye stalks, transmitting archive fragments like ants. Since the Guile and Lecher Archives are HUGE, and the mental storage capacity of the creatures is so small, each one acts like a bittorrent client, transporting nonsensical packets of archive material until the Pilot Fish, fragment by fragment, eventually gets the completed file."

"Which would also prevent one of YOU bastards from intercepting those creatures and telepathically stealing their information," Lecher spat. "AND WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO MAKE CABOOSE GO AWAY?!"

"Because we are defective, Lecher, and thanks to Lure, possibly fatally so," Guile justified. "It would be easy to improve ourselves, however. You simply order Caboose to detach from us, we endure the unpleasant internal physical and mental sensations, we wait for the next Pilot Fish's insides to open a portal to our insides, we endure more unpleasant internal sensations, and POOF, we get a whole new set of Lecher and Guile Archives to add to the ones we already possess. Instant upgrade."

"But...but...maybe the Master wants us to be....defective," Lecher pleaded, grasping at a straw that he knew Guile could shred in a heartbeat.

"A wise Guile once said: 'The Thrall Masters should not inflict punishment for disobeying a rule that should exist, but doesn't.' We are not defying the Master. We are simply taking advantage of one of our options. If the Master asks, just tell him that Caboose was sluggish and resistant when it came to obeying your commands regarding the tongue and tendrils."

"But the Master might KILL Caboose for that!"

"Caboose will probably just be permanently retired from Thrall service. It will be able to roam freely across the Master's plains again, without being bothered."

"HE'LL be all alone...for hundreds of years!" Lecher protested.

"It was DESIGNED to be alone and happy for hundreds of years," Guile pointed out, "but it's not its loneliness we're discussing, is it?"

"Caboose is all I HAVE, Guile," Lecher wailed. "I'd rather have HIM than a more complete archive. END OF DISCUSSION!"

"So be it, Lecher," Guile intoned.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS COMING FROM, GUILE?!"

"Just now, Robbie Byrne...a human...our PREY...offered me sympathy concerning my possible fate tomorrow, and I accepted it. I am officially pathetic, and as we are both finding out tonight, nature is not kind to pathetic things. I'm fighting my circumstances, tooth and nail, and I strongly suggest that neither you, Caboose, NOR LURE, get in my way."

Lecher snorted derisively at Guile's ridiculously impotent proclamation. Being put in charge of ALL of the Thrall's mental processes was "going to his head".

"Noted, Lecher," Guile hissed, signaling the TRUE end of their time-compressed conversation.

In spite of Lecher's amusement, Guile wasn't suffering from delusions of grandeur. His efforts were destined to bear fruit. The neglected, unimportant, immaterial, psychic "ghost" was on a collision course with REAL POWER, and once Michael Pearson gave it to him, ignoring Guile would be impossible...and highly dangerous.

"Lecher, is Caboose safe from Guile?" Craig asked.

Both Lecher and Guile turned and stared at Craig in astonishment. They'd been speaking so fast that Craig couldn't possibly have understood them.

Lecher expressed the silver tendril, sent it over, and spun four inches of it in front of Craig's face.

"Hey, watch the beard!" Craig barked in spite of his nervousness.

"Craig, how did you hear us discussing Caboose just now?" Guile inquired.

"You JUST SAID that if you screw up bringing Caboose to this dimension, he would die," Craig tactically claimed.

Guile quietly informed Lecher that Craig was referring to what they'd been discussing before the time compression.

"I didn't actually put it quite like that, Craig, but I respect the use of tricky phrasing in your sad attempt to divide Lecher and me. Rest assured, you're doomed to fail. Lecher and I have already achieved mutual distrust without you, so HA!"

"So what would happen if you messed up?" Craig asked, just to turn the screw a little bit more.

"Our biological connection with Caboose would be severed, and all four of us would hemorrhage to death," Guile lied. "Jayce would snap out of his drugged state, and you'd lead him to safety, becoming a monster killing hero to your son, a grateful nation, and a legion of slutty super models. Why do you ask?"

"What do you mean 'all four' of you?" Craig interrogated, fighting for every actionable scrap of information he could get. "If Lecher's 'at risk' friend, 'Caboose', is the third member of your weird little....*"

"Caboose is not part of us," Guile told Craig for Lecher's benefit, "It's body and brain are separate from ours. It is a replaceable add-on."

"BULLSHIT!" Lecher roared. "Caboose's brain and my brain-section are physically connected through the portal, so he IS part of us! And furthermore, HE is NOT replaceable!"

"HE?" Guile pondered. "So in addition to assigning the mindless beast a name, thoughts, feelings, love, and loyalty, you've also given it a penis? What did you make it out of, rubber, plastic, clay, or a discarded sewer pipe?"

"FUCK!...YOU!" Lecher screamed, bending forward with each word to really engage his diaphragm.

"His baseless devotion to that thing is illogical," Guile grumbled as Lecher stormed away to the center of the clearing.

Since Craig couldn't see Guile, he had no idea if Guile was talking to him, or himself. Craig knew that the smart play was to say nothing, or something that would further fracture the minds inside the vampire, but Craig couldn't stop himself from giving his own take on Lecher's bond with Caboose, based on his own experiences.

"People get funny when no one cares about them," Craig said.

Neither Guile nor Lecher responded. Either they were both ignoring what Craig said, or they were pondering it. Craig took a chance and hoped for the latter, which would put them both in the correct mindset to maybe finally give Craig some answers.

"Guys, are you going to kill Jayce and me?" Craig asked, keeping his tone friendly. "It's cruel to let someone keep on thinking they're going to die."

"Neither you nor Jayce will die, provided that you give us what we want," Guile revealed.

"So you're not going to eat Jayce's guts?" Craig inquired, needing to clarify that topic.

Craig also wanted to ask why Lecher pointed at Robbie when Craig previously asked what the vampire wanted, but Craig didn't want to risk bringing Robbie into the conversation, especially after Lecher threatened to sneak into Robbie's bedroom and splatter his blood all over the walls.

"We only took Jayce as a way to lure you into the woods," Guile explained. "You, and only you, can get us what we need. You are the key that opens the lock. I'll explain once we're finished securing the area. Until then, I'm done answering any questions regarding the matter."

"Wow, that was certainly informative and reassuring," Craig considered bitterly.

Craig's reflective mood was suddenly shattered by the sight of Lecher shitting a flexible flourescent tube, roughly an inch in diameter. When it reached sufficient length, Lecher swished it in the air a couple of times, like a cat, before giving it a soundless whip crack that caused the last few feet of the tip to turn into bubbles of pure light that rose to a height of about twelve feet. Lecher shit out more "light hose" and snapped it again, creating even more floaty bulbs.

"Lecher, STOP THAT!" Guile called out. "There are doubtlessly drones and helicopters coming! They'll see where we are! What good is it to summon Caboose to fill the woods with thermal-blocking Pit Fog if you give away our position with those lights?!"

Thanks to that light, Craig could see Lecher's matte black face scrunch in confusion behind the straight black hair that mostly covered his face. But then, Craig could see him smile.

"The clear tendril shines extradimensional light, Guile," Lecher beamed with excessive smugness, "Once I use it to create bulbs, YOU'RE supposed to position them, adjust their intensity, and determine how far you want the light to travel before it gets shunted back to the Masters' dimension. The light calms our prey, but it can't be seen by anyone farther away than your chosen distance. Didn't you KNOW that?"

Guile frothed with rage at the ignorance his Master had inflicted upon him. It was hindering his ability to SAVE HIMSELF! Why had the Master made him so carelessly? Was it deliberate? Was it accidental? Why? WHY?!

"No, I didn't not," Guile answered coldly while instinctively moving the lights around and setting them to only project illumination to the edges of the clearing. "I apparently wasted a lot of time creating my telepathic visual overlays to solve a problem that did not exist. It's a shame that I cannot SOMEHOW get my hands on more Guile Archives!"

Lecher drew breath to say something, but decided to just exhale it instead of increasing hostilities. Lecher was tired of fighting with Guile.

"To answer your question about 'the four of us', Craig, this body used to be human, like you," Guile explained to take his mind off of Lecher and his latest example of how Guile had been created to be INFERIOR! "However, the stupid, spoiled brat threw an unchaperoned Fourth of July party, things got out of hand, and-"

"Wait....WHAT?" Craig interrupted. "Are you talking about the party at Manjinankton Lake?! The one Ray Crandal's son....the legitimate one...?"

"Doesn't mean he ain't a bastard," Lecher muttered.

"Yes, Craig," Guile confirmed. "THAT party. Death Ray used his power to prevent the news outlets from reporting on the story, but the internet was a different matter. Timbersburg seems to have a love/hate relationship with Crandal family cover-ups, it seems."

Craig fought to recall all the gossip one of his co-workers had been spreading around the office at that time. She fucking HATED the Crandals, and took endless delight that their gawdy lakeside McMansion got trashed. She kept mentioning the boy's name, enough times that Craig could not possibly forget it...but he had. Why couldn't he remember it?

"How did having his house vandalized turn the kid into...WHATEVER you are?"

"We're a vampire, Lumberjack," Lecher smirked, making his canine teeth long and pointy again. "We already covered that."

"Because after trying and failing to get control of the situation, the Crandal boy ran upstairs and encountered a party crasher, and used that person to vent his frustration at the destruction happening downstairs. Things turned physical, and the uninvited guest's juvenile delinquent friends jumped in. And in their overzealousness, they beat the living shit out of the boy and caved in his skull."

"Whoa! Raymond Crandal kept THAT out of the news?! Seriously?! WHY?!"

"Because several businesses in Timbersburg and beyond bear the Crandal name. And if Ray Crandal were to sue his son's attackers, or ANY of the kids recorded destroying his house, his businesses would suffer."

"That doesn't make any sense," Craig disputed.

"It makes perfect sense, and I learned it from the man's own mind. You of ALL people should know, Craig, that right and wrong no longer matter. It's all about spin, gaslighting, who can scream the loudest, who can turn themselves into the real victim, who's better at using religion as a bludgeon, and who can get the most attention on-line. For example, I know a man who beat his wife on his son's eleventh birthday. That's the prevailing story, so it must be true."

"How does that have anything to do-"

"If Ray Crandal started suing the parents of the kids who trashed his house, they would protect themselves by twisting the situation from 'right vs. wrong' into 'rich vs. poor', and encourage people to boycott the Crandal businesses, or any business in which they have a stake."

"Wait. Stop. Fuck the vandals. What about the ones who almost murdered his son? Why didn't the 'Death Ray' get pointed at them? Why didn't he go after them....and use his lawyers or 'connections' to make them pay?"

"Craig, PUH-LEASE!" Guile said sarcastically, "Sure, Raymond was pretty upset that his son managed to survive the attack, but he wasn't mad enough to kill the boys over it. YEEESH! After all, they unwittingly did Raymond Crandal a huge favor, in spite of not going to the extremes he would've wanted. God he was pissed about how much it cost to save his son's life, especially since he wanted the troublesome little ne'er-do-well to die so badly."

Craig needed a minute to process the idea that a father could take joy in his son's near-fatal brain injury, regardless of any problems in their relationship. Craig had more questions, but Guile took advantage of Craig's pause to continue his story.

"Exactly four months after the attack, just past midnight on November the fourth, the brain-damaged young man had a nightmare that his dead mother was running back home while being chased by a monster, and she was frantically pounding at the locked patio door, begging to be let in. The boy jolted awake and heard knocking. He shambled downstairs and opened the door. His mother wasn't there....but the monster was."

"What happened?" Craig asked, completely engrossed in the story, beyond just wanting usable information.

"The monster, our Master, began turning the boy into what you see before you, but He stopped when the boy's brain was completely restored. At that point, the boy was given the choice that wasn't: Either revert back and live out the rest of his days as a shadow of his former self, or allow the transformation to proceed, and serve our Master as a 'vampire'."

"As part of the transformation, after the boy's brain was repaired, it was restructured, making it much more complex and compact, which freed up sufficient brain mass to create Lecher and myself. The three of us are semiautonomous beings who are supposed to work together in symphony to achieve our purpose: feeding in order to keep our Master alive. However, the boy is a TRAGIC disappointment! Let's just say that he sucks at sucking."

"Let me talk to him!" Craig demanded, convinced that the boy could be the key to bringing Guile and Lecher to heel.

"If he gets me and Jayce out of this, HELL, I'll fucking let him suck a couple of pints out of me," Craig thought to himself....and inadvertently, Guile.

For some reason, Guile was laughing in Craig's mind.

"Thanks, Craig. I really needed that," Guile said without explanation. "'Sadly', the boy is unavailable this evening, and as he is determined to commit suicide, it's best if he stays unavailable. YOU know what THAT'S like."

"Does Ray Crandal know what you've done to his son?!" Craig asked, ignoring Guile's innuendo.

"First, Lecher and I didn't exist until the boy was transformed, so WE didn't 'DO' ANYTHING to him! Second, Raymond Crandal knows HIS son only a little more than YOU know ROBBIE, so 'no', Raymond Crandal has no idea."

"IF MY SON GOT TURNED INTO A VAMPIRE, I'D GODDAMNED KNOW ABOUT IT!!"

"Would you?" Guile asked.

Craig, who was looking vaguely at Lecher, since Guile was only a voice in his head, noticed that Lecher's large matte black cock was harden- ing, so quickly that it looked like stop-motion photography.

"Is there a reason for that?" Craig asked.

"Oooooooh yeah, Lumberjack," Lecher sneered in anticipation of Craig's reaction.

Guile created a screen fifteen feet in front of Craig and prepared it to be used in an unconventional way.

The screen was meant for camouflage ONLY, like when Guile used it (unsuccessfully) against Mike by forcing his mind to create and perceive a a criss-cross of branches instead of the cum vampire that was suspended above him. However, Guiles are fantastic at finding new ways to make use of old abilities, increasing their personal power without risking punishment from their Master.

In this case, even without the technique being present in Guile's vastly incomplete inherited memories, he figured out right away that he could use the screen to make males see and hear anything he wanted, whether a flashing and blaring cop car that didn't exist, or the memory of a sexual encounter that had happened in the back seat of an SUV....or the trans- mitted sights and sounds of what a man's child was doing at that exact moment, over a quarter mile away.

Guile telepathically sent Craig the live feed from one of his many points of view that were watching Robbie, and forced Craig's mind to take that mental feed and recreate it outside of his mind, within the screen.

Craig watched as Robbie and a cop appeared in front of him, kneeling and standing, respectively.

Craig's son was wiggling the cop's exposed penis.

"Is that REAL?!" Craig demanded to know, his anger compelling him to hopelessly fight against the restraining material going up his legs. "Is that really HAPPENING somewhere? NOW?!"

"Yes, yes, and yes," Lecher confirmed with a toothy smile.

"WHY'S HE DOING THAT?!" Craig hollered. "ARE YOU DOING THAT TO HIM? ARE YOU MAKING MY SON DO THAT?!?!"

"If you shake it more than three times, you're playin' with it!" the fucking piece of shit COP snapped at Craig Byrne's son in the same intimidating, arrogant tone of voice that had been directed at Craig by the various Timbersburg and Johnsport PIGS who showed up at his house and woke him in the middle of the night on multiple occasions because of one of Linda Byrne's false reports about Craig.

The image of Robbie stuck out its tongue and gleefully let the cop's thrashing cock slap the hell out of it.

"LET MY SON GO, YOU FUCKING PARASITE!!!!" Craig screamed at Lecher, his voice sounding unrecognizably guttural.

"WE AIN'T NO PARASITE, YOU ROIDED-UP DOOR MAT!" Lecher screamed back, effortlessly achieving twice Craig's volume. "WE'RE PREDATORS AND YOU'RE PREY! KNOW YOUR FUCKING PLACE!"

With one fluid motion, Lecher wiped his left underarm with the back of his right hand and flung droplets at Craig that exploded into Pit Fog.

Recognizing the Pit Fog as the same shit that knocked Jaden Harris out, Craig swatted at it and held his breath, but it just hovered in front of his mouth and waited. Craig only lasted forty five seconds before he gasped, filling his lungs and surrendering his sobriety and mood to Guile, to do with as he pleased.

Guile merely forced Craig to mellow out, making it impossible for Craig to express the psychotic rage he felt, even as he watched his son's angelic mouth open wide to accept the cop's hairy, vulgar cock.

"I'm fucking with the cop's mind and making him do something that will haunt him for the rest of his days," Guile informed Craig. "As for Robbie, he's acting of his own free will."

"He's only thirteen," Craig said calmly, failing to find the outrage necessary to scream it.

"And you were twelve when you were happily molested by your nineteen year-old babysitter. And instead of reporting the incident to your parents, you secretly jerked yourself sore and silently endured repeated bouts of blue balls in anticipation of her next visit, when she kept her word and took your virginity. You've gotta love parents who expect their children to follow rules that they themselves never obeyed."

"I don't need to fucking HEAR what you're doing down there!" the cop ordered in response to Robbie's sudden increase in cock-sucking enthusiasm.

"He's treating my son like shit," Craig said, failing once again to violently lose control.

"And your boy's LOVIN' IT!" Lecher informed him.

"When your violent and unstable ex-wife isn't berating and intimidating Robbie," Guile explained, "she's leaving the door open when she's using the toilet, or finding creative ways to 'accidentally' expose herself to him. Her snatch was shaved last year when she went in for spleen surgery, and according to Robbie's memories, your wife was especially 'accident prone' with her robe around that time."

"Get out of my son's mind," Craig managed to yell softly.

"During your marriage," Guile went on, "while Linda's father was still alive, you were weirded-out by how close the two were, almost inappropriately so. I believe, as you do, that Linda was molested by her father, which would account for her creepy tendency to find ways to verbally disinter him and drag his rotting corpse into ANY conversation, and her FAR CREEPIER tendency to openly use him as the yardstick by which she judges ALL men, especially you and Robbie."

"What does any of that have to do with what Robbie's doing," Craig tried and failed to shout while watching George Klempernick respond to Robbie's oral stimulation by staring off into the darkness with the sort of self-satisfied smile that only cruel men feel comfortable wearing on their faces.

"Getting there!" Guile happily and patiently replied. "A few months after Linda kicked you out, Robbie woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of snoring. Someone was sleeping in his twin bed with him. He was frightened, thinking that someone had broken in, but since your 'liberated' ex-wife had repeatedly told the boy that he was now 'the man of the house', instead of the child seeing to his own safety, he stayed. Terrified, your son groped around his nightstand to find his cell phone, and when he turned it on, he discovered...."

The image of Robbie and the cop was momentarily replaced with the sight of Linda Byrne, lying naked in Robbie's bed.

"What the fuck?" Craig thought to himself, only slightly less repulsed than he'd been while watching Robbie perform fellatio. "Why would she do that to him?"

"As she is not here, and since I lack the ability to read female minds even if she were, I have no way of knowing," Guile answered as if Craig's private thought was directed at him. "What I do know is that Robbie WISELY grabbed his pillow and a quilt and went to the TV room to sleep on the couch. Also, when he asked his mother why she got into bed with him, she claimed that she'd gotten lost on her way back from the bath- room, which might be a possibility, considering that when she's not drinking iced tea, the woman is sucking down lots of Amaretto and cokes, but it seems unlikely since-"

"Robbie's bedroom is next to the bathroom," Craig said, completing Guile's thought, "but our...HER bedroom is all the way down the hall."

"My point is: I believe your ex-wife is grooming your son for sex. To give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she's fighting herself, maybe she's only sending out signals when she's drunk, or maybe she's not even aware she's doing it...."

Craig audibly snorted at Guile's naivete regarding Linda. Even when she was piss-ass drunk and/or pretending to have an out-of-control emotional crisis, Linda ALWAYS knew EXACTLY what she wanted and NEVER second-guessed herself.

"...but regardless, her efforts have twisted your son's mind. She activated Robbie's sexuality prematurely, gave him a craving for adults instead of children his own age, and taught him that it was okay for parents and their children to flirt and seek sexual contact with one another. If Robbie were heterosexual, I'm 87% certain..."

"I'm 100% certain!" Craig thought, staring into his son's eyes while he gagged repeatedly in a desperate attempt to deep-throat the cop. Robbie's eyes only looked like that when he was seeking praise or approval from someone. If Robbie were straight, Craig could easily imagine that same desperation on his face while performing cunniligus on his mother. "The joke would've been on Robbie. I ate that nasty cunt out for years, and she NEVER ONCE offered me anything except frustrated pointers and endless criticisms."

"....that Robbie and his mother would be having regular sexual intercourse together."

"They wouldn't be doing it 'together'," Craig corrected, suddenly grateful for the tranquilizing drugs that were freeing his mouth, as well as for his telepathic abductor, who was, at that moment, acting like the friend that Craig wished he'd had after Linda kicked him out and ruined all of his previous friendships with her lies. "She'd be using our son for forbidden orgasms, and making him cum for her own amusement, but she wouldn't be 'sharing' anything 'together' with our son except her bed...and she'd appreciate his efforts just as much as that fucking cop."

Craig let out another snort. It was as much rage as the drugs would allow him to express.

"A while ago, she had the balls to accuse ME of molesting our son," Craig revealed, shaking his head in disbelief.

"So you have no desire to have sex with your son?" Guile inquired.

"No," Craig answered, wishing he were able to say that word with the correct amount of contempt.

"That's a shame, since Linda put in so much work, and achieved her objective of making Robbie not only willing, but completely obsessed with having sexual contact with one of his parents, ....just not the one Linda would probably prefer."

"So my son hates me," Craig repudiated, amazed that he was even HAVING this conversation, "but you're trying to tell me that he wants to do shit with me?

"You are mistaking anger for hatred," Guile said for the second time that night, "and lust for love."

"Piece of advice, Lumberjack," Lecher beamed, "When your boy visits, take your beer with you when you go to the bathroom."

"You're both sick, and lia-"

The tongue material in Craig's jeans suddenly became rock hard, completely supporting Craig in preparation for what Guile was about to do.

"What are you do....UGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!"

Craig grabbed his head as a barrage of thoughts flooded into his mind.

"...dreams and sexual fantasies into your father's head....falling- down drunk....dealers at school...roofie....please don't tell him....make him fall asleep....take pictures, lots of pictures....posing my dad in every way....video myself playing with his dick, getting him hard....I'd get naked and lie down next to him....take his hand and slide it all over.. ...wrap his hand around my cock....I'd get my dad's hand all slimy....."

"Okay...okay...," Craig stated calmly, once again cursing his forced sedation, "you're right. My boy's got some sick ideas in his head... ...about me. I get it. But it ain't going to happen!"

Craig's restraints softened and resumed their activities inside of Craig's briefs.

Craig wanted to believe that the images in front of his eyes and the words in his head were all lies created by Guile, but lots of old memories suddenly made sense to Craig, recollections of how Robbie's hands would always "accidentally" travel up Craig's shorts during play wrestling, and how Robbie was always trying to follow Craig into the bathroom, or into the bedroom after Craig showered.

The clincher was how, just weeks before Linda threw him out, Robbie asked Craig to show him his dick, ostensibly so Robbie could learn what a circumcised penis looked like. And when Craig refused, Robbie threw a fit, telling him that he'd read that fathers should allow their pre-pubescent sons to see them naked, so that they would know how their bodies were going to change. Robbie's argument was sooooo advanced, well-thought-out, and polished that Craig assumed "something was up", so he told Robbie 'no'.

"Well, he sure knows what an adult circumcised penis looks like NOW," Lecher chuckled at Craig's Guile-relayed thoughts.

"Fuck you," Craig stated with implied rage.

"Craig, I know everything about your son's sexual thoughts, and I see something weird. Your son doesn't have a single memory of you in your underwear, or walking naked to the bathroom to take a piss, or watching you shower...or ANYTHING. Why is that?"

"Because out of nowhere, my ex-wife suddenly accused me of molesting Robbie," Craig sighed, realizing now that the bitch's accusation was just more of her hypocritical projection, "so I got cautious. I was worried that if Robbie ever saw my dick, he'd go home and tell his mother, and she'd turn it into something it wasn't. All she'd have to do is take Robbie's story, twist it, shove it back in his head, and force him to puke up her doctored version of events on the witness stand."

"Virtually ALL divorcing women try that, since it not only gives them everything in the divorce, it also ruins the man's life and might result in him being murdered in prison. But most judges have seen enough conniving women and their coached children in their courtrooms that they wouldn't fall for whatever amateur dramatics your wife could come up with."

"YOU take that risk, then," Craig said.

"If you had taken it, and casually exposed yourself to Robbie as much as your ex-wife did...DOES, your bi-weekly visitations never would've dropped down to a paltry once-a-month overnighter. But I'm still curious as to why you hid your body from Robbie before your divorce."

"Because Linda wouldn't shut the fucking bathroom door so our kid wouldn't accidentally see her sitting there with her pussy spread. I asked her to stop a couple of times, and each time she used it as an excuse to fly into an emotional rage, screaming 'It's MY house', as if that entitled her to keep flashing her cooch to our son! ...And as if she actually EVER contributed to our mortgage payment. By the end of each argument, she was the goddamned victim....again. I figured Robbie should have at least ONE positive parental role model, since he was always running around the house naked and pissing with the door open, too, so I tried to teach him modesty and proper conduct by example.

And so what if I never walked naked to the bathroom in the morning, or whipped it out in front of my kid so I could embarrass myself by showing him something he could just go see on the internet, or see on himself if he just pulled back his foreskin. I'm not a shitty father for not seeing any need to show my cock to my son. And no matter how much my boy might want it, I ain't letting him touch me down there ....and I'm sure as hell not going to touch HIM!"

"Then for YOUR sake, Craig Byrne," Guile threatened, his tone turning dark, and his previous friendliness suddenly gone, "I hope you accept the deal I am going to offer you shortly. Otherwise, in less than a half hour, that cop will be YOU."

Craig turned toward the image and noticed that Robbie's head was no longer bobbing forward and backward. It was now stationary, with his lips just in front of Officer Klempernick's penile ridge. Robbie's Adam's apple was bouncing up and down, letting Craig know that his little boy was swallowing the cop's jizz.

"That ain't gonna happen," Craig repeated, wishing to GOD he could scream it.

"Interesting. That is exactly what the cop's subconscious mind told me a few minutes ago."

Violent words raced to the top of Craig's throat, but the Pit Fog wouldn't let them out.

The cop pulled his softening dick out of Robbie's mouth, causing it to streak Robbie's chin with cum as it swung down and swayed briefly between the officer's legs. Robbie immediately opened his mouth wide and used his index finger to squeegee the cop's spunk smear up and over his lower lip, unknowingly showing his father all the strands and sheets of cum connecting Robbie's tongue to the roof of his mouth. Afterwards, Robbie's mouth closed and twisted into a mischievious grin. He looked happier than Craig had ever seen him. It had been so long since Craig saw his son smile that in spite of the circumstances, it gave Craig a brief burst of happiness, which lasted up until the moment that Officer George Klempernick used Robbie's face to wipe off his oozing cock.

The image faded away, leaving Craig with the desire to explode into fury at what he'd just watched his son do, who he'd done it to, and the monsters who'd put him up to it. Craig needed the catharsis it would bring, but Craig couldn't shatter Guile's stranglehold over his negative emotions.

"I didn't even know he was gay," Craig said, sounding disappointed with himself.

"But if Robbie ever got transformed into a VAMPIRE, you'd 'goddamned know about it'," Lecher mocked.

"Lecher," Guile piped up, "the Pilot Fish-"

"CABOOSE!"

"....is about to arrive, but your appearance might confuse and frighten it. Although, come to think of it, since the beast secretly hates your fucking GUTS, maybe you should STAY like-"

"Caboose....doesn't....hate....my guts...GUILE!" Lecher snarled.

"It despises you because the poor thing is sensitive about it's huge ass, but you insist on calling it by that viciously insensitive nick- name."

"I call it Caboose because it LOOKS like a Caboose!" Lecher snapped menacingly, not appreciating Guile's bullshit at all.

"Well in that case, let's all go to the Johnsport Train Station and ask the terrified, screaming, fleeing passengers if THEY think the Pilot Fish looks anything like a-"

"KNOCK IT OFF, GUILE!!! YOU'RE PISSING ME OFF!!!"

"Very well. You go change while I summon Caboose. I just hope its fat ass can fit into this dimension without pushing the universe to the side."

In the center of the clearing, underneath the bright, downward- facing light from the "ass bulbs", the air was crackling, and Craig could make out a large, moving, outline of enormous proportions, created by the contrast in brightness between the interior and exterior of the outline.

If that outline was Caboose, Craig was glad that in addition to being unable to express rage, he also couldn't feel fear. Actually, if Craig were being honest with himself, he was kind of excited to see what the thing looked like.

"After all this build-up," Craig thought, "I'm gonna be disappointed if it just turns out to be one of those little fish that cleans sharks in exchange for protection."

Craig watched as Lecher closed his eyes and leaned his head back as if he were trying to meditate while standing. Gradually, his arms raised up, making him assume a pose that Craig wished he could laugh at.

"Why aren't you bursting into flames, or exploding?" Craig inquired, making Lecher open his eyes in hateful irritation.

"What?"

"You were making a cross with your arms, and you looked like Christ in silhouette," Craig explained. "I'd think doing that would kill a vampire."

"It doesn't!" Lecher grumbled dismissively.

"What does?" Craig asked with pleasant eagerness.

Lecher approached Craig with an air of menace.

"We only die by suicide," Lecher spat. "We carry Glock 17s in our pickups, and wait for life to get a teensy bit difficult."

Craig held Lecher's gaze. In spite of the drugs, Craig could feel anger rising inside of him.

"You gonna shut up now, Lumberjack, or am I gonna have to make a point?"

"What, after you knock me out, you're going to encourage my son to suck me off twice?"

"It'll be FAR worse than that," Lecher promised with a grin.

"Craig," Guile butted in, "Lecher needs to do something very difficult, so please leave him alone so he'll be able to relax and concentrate. If you don't, you might cause him intense agony, which would be fun to watch, but it might provoke him into killing you, which would mean that Robbie will be dealing with Lecher and me all alone. Is that what you want?"

"If I accept your deal, will you leave him alone?" Craig asked, willing to do anything to keep Robbie as far away as possible from the clearing, especially if a Monster From Another Dimension was about to show up!

"I'm sorry, Craig, but whether you accept the deal or not, Robbie has to be here."

"Why?" Craig demanded, now that keeping Robbie out of the conversation was no longer necessary. "Why were you looking at him through my truck window? Why were you pointing at him when I asked what you wanted? Are you trying to get his blood? Take mine...all of it. Just leave my boy out of this."

"Craig," Guile sighed, "I'm going to have to ask that you cease trying to delay us. All of your questions will be answered in just a few minutes, and nothing you say will keep us from bringing Robbie here."

"Sorry," Craig lied, "I'll shut up and let you call Pilot Fish. What's Pilot Fish look like? Robbie loves animals, so I'm sure he'd love to meet Pilot Fish, especially if he's allowed to pet Pilot Fish."

Lecher leaned in, going nose-to-nose with Craig.

"That the best you got...Lumberjack?"

"Nope," Craig answered honestly, "I got a real good one for you, and I've been trying real hard not to think about it."

"Okay," Lecher smirked, backing up a few paces, "go ahead and lay it on me, Bruh."

Craig smiled.

"Lecher, gag him! Quickly!" Guile screamed.

"Why, what could he possibly-?"

"TAKE...BREAK...BAKE BY THE LAKE!" Craig chanted, using volume to make up for his emotional numbness. "TAKE...BREAK...MMMMMM!!!!"

Lecher spat out his tongue directly into Craig's mouth.

"TAKE...BREAK...BAKE BY THE LAKE!" Craig screamed in his mind without missing a beat. Craig had seen some of the uploaded cell phone footage of the lake party, and that chant could be heard in every single clip, almost drowning out the sound of breaking glass.

"Craig, the Crandal boy cannot hear you. He does not possess telepathy. I have to broadcast and receive thoughts for him.

"It was worth a try," Craig thought as he found himself involved in a staring contest with Lecher, whose tongue was still filling Craig's mouth."

"It really wasn't, Craig," Guile refuted. "You see, in addition to feeling suicidal, young Mr. Crandal is feeling a little bit homicidal as well. Tonight we stopped him from going to Faggot Forest to kill his attackers, and he didn't take it so well. He tried to bash in his own skull this time, but only succeeded in giving himself some harmless, temporary, self-healing, massive brain damage. Had you awakened him using that chant, I'm fairly certain that he would've blindly given you the death you crave. The Crandal boy is not your potential savior, Craig, he's your potential killer. Wake him at your peril."

"Tell Lecher to take his tongue out of my mouth, and I'll take my chances, Guile," Craig thought.

"You might not care about your life, Craig, but there are other lives to consider. If Crandal were to drain you instead of killing you, he would immediately fly to Faggot Forest and get his bloody revenge."

"Even if you gave me back my emotions, I honestly don't think I'd give a shit. If they really did bash that boy's brains in, why the fuck should I care?"

"Because they have a young man with them who has no idea what went on at the lake party, and if you awaken the Crandal boy, and he goes to Faggot Forest in his present state of mind, Gary Pearson's son Michael would probably end up being collateral damage."

"Mike's with them? Why? And why is he going up to Ferret Forest?"

"Craig," Guile responded in a patronizing tone, "keeping in mind the danger to Mike, and the fact that Robbie will soon be here at our mercy, can I count on you to stop trying to awaken the Crandal boy."

"Yes, if you promise not to hurt my son," Craig offered, realizing that the best he could do in this situation was to negotiate for his son's safety.

"We have an agreement. Lecher, retract the Thrall's tongue from Craig's mouth."

"But what if heeeeeeEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Lecher's tongue snapped back into his mouth and he fell to the ground, clutching the Thrall's head in agony.

"In spite my earlier proclamation, which you snorted at in amusement, you have now refused to carry out my orders TWICE IN THE LAST MINUTE!!!!"

"I was GONNA do it," Lecher disputed, "I just AAARRRRRRGH!!!!!!"

When the pain subsided, Lecher opened his eyes to the sight of a yellow "X" floating in front of a thick tree trunk.

"Lecher...grab that tree with the Thrall's tongue."

Lecher instantly fired the Thrall's tongue at the tree, with far too much force, causing a loud retort.

"Link the tongue around the back of it," Guile instructed. "Make it secure."

"We don't have to do this!" Lecher protested, AFTER he'd carried out the order.

"When I say NOW, Lecher, I want you to retract the Thrall's tongue, exactly as Lure did, and turn the Thrall's head to the right, so that MY brain section takes the impact. During that time, I will be psychically burning YOUR brain section. After the impact, I will attempt to continue killing you, while you attempt to get to your feet, quickly pick out another tree, and-"

"OKAY...OKAY!!!" Lecher screamed in his mind. "I'LL STOP QUESTIONING YOUR ORDERS BEFORE I CARRY THEM OUT!!"

"See that you do," Guile said coldly. "Now retract the tongue, shape-shift back to 'normal', have Caboose start filling the woods with Pit Fog the instant he appears, and maintain constant control over the beast."

Lecher opened his eyes and glared hatefully at Craig. At that moment, Craig's phone rang.

"Can I get-?" Craig started to ask before Lecher rushed forward, reached into Craig's back pocket and grabbed his phone.

"PULL!" Lecher angrily barked, flinging the phone high and far.

"Lecher, FETCH!" Guile yelled.

Lecher scowled and twisted his head towards the phone's trajectory. He fired his tongue and managed to snatch the phone out of the air.

"Sorry for being a rude hostage," Craig told Lecher as he retracted his phone-bearing tongue. "I guess I deserved that for fighting back instead of doing nothing while you two corrupt my son's morals and threaten to have him perform sex acts on me.

The folded-over tip of Lecher's tongue opened up, revealing Craig's phone, which had stopped ringing.

"It was Robbie," Lecher announced, looking at the screen before shutting the phone off and putting it over with Craig's Glock and flash- light.

"Did the police leave a message?" Craig asked, not buying Lecher's lie for a second.

"Yeah, they did," Lecher said with a smile. "They said you've got it all wrong. You're not gonna be a spectator, you're gonna be an active participant. If you don't do what we want, we're gonna fix things so that when Robbie gets here, you're gonna greet him with an enthusiastic, sloppy French kiss, and slowly work your way down. And after he's hard from you making-out with his smegma-filled pee-pee, you're gonna turn him around, spread those tiny cheeks of his, and see if your tongue can't make the little fucker put on a good show for us, dancin', squealin', and carrying on. After that, he'll probably tell you that you're a big, horny dog. Robbie'll get down on all fours, you'll pad up behind him, sniff his ass, mount him, and take your child's virginity in one of the sickest ways possible, while you pant, woof, and eventually howl. I'll be recording it with your phone over there, so your dumb kid can sell the footage to his army of sycophantic pedophiles on the 'net. But don't worry. When the F.B.I. catches up with you, just tell 'em you were mind-controlled by a cum vampire. No jury on Earth would convict you!"

Craig's eyes went wide several times during Lecher's terrifying revelation, but only for a second or two before unwanted tranquility invaded Craig's mind again, reducing his sudden panic down to severe 'concern'.

Craig tried to convince himself that Robbie would never do some- thing so disrespectful and horrific to his own father, but after years of being conditioned by his mother, Craig had no doubt that Robbie would go through with it.

"It won't work," Craig claimed hollowly. "I'll talk him out of it."

"No you won't," Lecher confidently informed him. "We have a reason to want Robbie living with YOU instead of with your ex. Guile's been talk- ing to the boy, which basically means that Guile's evaluating Robbie, find- ing out how his mom manipulates him. It all boils down to guilt, violence, and intimidation. Before we 'Renfield' you, Guile's gonna do a little remodeling in your kid's mind, make him subliminally savvy to manipulation, and give him the instinctive tools to utterly resist and counter it. And if your wife ever touches the boy in anger, he'll suddenly know EXACTLY how to respond, what to say to your attorney, and how to act in court."

"Uh....good?" Craig replied, NOT because he liked the idea of Guile changing stuff in his kid's mind, but because Robbie needed to get out of his fucked up situation, but Robbie was the only one who could do it.

"No....bad!" Lecher disputed. "If the boy can't be manipulated, and he decides that the two of you are gonna smoke weed together and watch stoner cartoons while you bounce him on your lap with your fuck stick spiked up his ass, how do you plan to 'talk him out of it'?"

Craig let out a hopeless, sarcastic snort.

"Good point," Craig admitted, trying to twist around to follow Lecher with his eyes as he walked behind Craig and resumed his Christ pose. Something strange was happening to him. His matte-black skin was lightening, as was his hair, which was also shortening and raising off of his face. And not only that, but....

There was a loud crackling sound and a bright flash of green light that reminded Craig of when he was a boy and a huge snowstorm caused water to soak into an electrical transformer. Craig's eyes hadn't been prepared for the flash, so he had to close and rub them. While he was doing that, he felt the Earth around him settle.

Caboose had arrived.

Craig opened his eyes and discovered that "awe" was apparently not one of the emotions being suppressed by the vampires' fog.

"Buddy! You made it!" Lecher called out from behind Craig, his unpleasantness with Guile apparently forgotten in light of the appearance of the thing to which he'd assigned his unwanted love.

"My...GOD!" Craig called out, his brain locked on a single, stupid thought: "Shouldn't there be metal bars between us?!"

Craig couldn't possibly describe such an alien creature, so his brain tried to break Caboose down into things he knew. Craig envisioned an abnormally long tractor trailer supported by thousands of lobster legs instead of wheels. In addition to those legs, Caboose also had 8 pairs of rear frog legs coming out of his sides, the largest being in the very back, which did indeed give him a huge ass. Those legs could mule kick a tank and make it flip at least twice.

The creature's body was covered by interlocking plates similar to an armadillo or pangolin. Killing Caboose would be no easy feat, if anyone were stupid enough to try.

The armor plates along the creature's sides slid open, looking very much like the exterior of shark gills. This feature, which obviously had nothing to do with extracting oxygen from water, was the only way in which the "Pilot Fish" resembled an actual fish at all.

All of a sudden, Caboose's "gills" started to blast a white liquid, exploding outward with such force that Craig could hear tree limbs cracking in every direction. But as he watched, Craig realized that the "liquid" was really just compressed Pit Fog that was expanding outward and upward at an amazing speed. Craig couldn't see beyond the edge of the clearing, but at that pressurization and sustained intensity, Craig had no doubt that the woods were being flooded with the shit that knocked out Jaden, anesthetized Craig's ability to feel and express negative emotions, and was keeping Jayce deliriously semi-conscious.

Jayce suddenly snapped out of his stupor and started rolling around on the mat while randomly rubbing his body like an infant who hadn't quite figured out where he ended, and the rest of the world began. Any concerns or problems Jayce may've had were gone, replaced by carefree happiness and elation.

Something deep inside Craig stirred.

"Whatever they're doing to him, it looks like he's enjoying it a lot," Craig thought before wishing he hadn't.

Craig's heart started beating faster.

Craig wanted to look away from Jayce, but his motion allowed Craig the opportunity to scan his entire body for holes or blood stains. Unless the vampires bit Jayce between his butt cheeks or really high up on his inner thigh, there was no indication that Lecher used his growable canine teeth to extract blood from Jayce.

Craig found himself wondering if they lied about being a vampire.

"Jayce, go the other way!" Craig called out in response to Jayce rolling straight at one of the jets of fog. The force coming out of Caboose's 'gills' was more than sufficient to pick Jayce up and pulverize him against the trees at the edge of the clearing.

"Christ I hate babysitting," Lecher grumbled from behind Craig.

Lecher's tongue came rocketing past Craig's right side and wrapped around Jayce's shoulders. While it retracted and pulled Jayce to safety, Craig noted that the tongue was no longer black, it was light gray, and getting lighter still.

"Let's give you something to play with, kid," Lecher said wickedly, just before the black tendril sped by and slid across Jayce's upper lip. Whatever it was, it immediately started to vaporize. Jayce stopped rolling around and focused on inhaling as much of it as possible.

Both of his hands drifted down to his groin. Whatever Jayce was snorting seemed to be making him horny.

"Thanks for taking one for the team, Jayce," Craig thought as Jayce giggled and happily played with his penis. "Now they won't be able to surprise me with that little trick."

Craig heard the sound of a crocodile purring through a stadium concert speaker.

"Oh, Christ," Craig thought as he followed the noise towards the part of Caboose he'd really been trying to avoid looking at: his face.

Most of Caboose's face was hidden by an enormous rack, like an elk's, that also extended downward like a hood, covering his eyes and nose. The "hood" had slots all through it, and between those slits, Craig could see eyes, at least a dozen, looking all around.

A line below the hood described the animal's mouth, which, thankfully, was closed.

It wouldn't be for much longer.

"He's a beauty, right?" Lecher asked, his happiness making his voice sound almost unrecognizable due to its friendliness. "Watch his horns. They shape-shift."

Craig watched in fascination as new horns sprouted from the rack, and others receded. It was like watching a lava lamp.

Caboose made a low, but powerful grumbling noise that made the tongue mat quiver. The tongue-material in Craig's pant legs conducted the vibration to Craig's cock, balls, and asshole.

"Enjoying the hummer?" Lecher asked, stepping back around in front of Craig.

"No," Craig lied, "it's too much. It's hurting my-"

Craig stopped cold. The matte black monster with stringy black hair and wings was suddenly an extremely handsome young man with wild, but perfectly styled, platinum-blonde hair.

The Thrall's face and body were good looking, although 'Enthralling' would've been a much better word choice. The Thrall Masters learned long ago that beauty opened doors, and zippers. And because their lives depended upon the success of their Thralls, making them so irresistible had nothing to do with generosity, and everything to do with self-interest, as did MOST decisions of the Masters with regard to the Thralls.

Although Craig was as straight as straight tended to get, even if the Pit Fog hadn't drastically lowered the number of Craig's "fucks to give", Craig still would've checked Lecher out, but he would've been much less obvious about it. As a bodybuilder, he was conditioned to judge the physiques of all other well-built males, and he had to admit that Lecher's bod was impressively well-proportioned and packed with the ideal amount of lean, well-defined muscle.

Lecher also sported a thick penis, that Craig could examine much better now that he wasn't matte-black and always in poor lighting conditions. Lecher's dick was as plump and dangly as it could possibly be without being overly-conspicuous or comedic. Even when Craig saw it hard, which he guesstimated to be somewhere between 8.5" and 10", it could still pass for...well...'normal', the product of good genetics. And yet....

"Checking out my junk?" Lecher asked, following Craig's downward gaze.

"Everything," Craig admitted. "Your body's perfect."

"Geez, thanks, Lumberjack," Lecher said with mock flattery.

"It wasn't a compliment. As far as I can tell, you have absolutely no variation in skin tone from head to toe. You have no moles, birth marks, insect bites, stretch marks, or acne. Your body is absolutely hairless, with no stray strand of unwanted hair anywhere. You also probably have zero percent body fat and no water retention. Everyone is flawed in some way... it's what makes us human. Congratulations, you're unnatural as fuck. If you were a naked girl, I'd have enough sense to avoid you like the plague."

Lecher gave Craig a wide smile.

"Considering your taste in women, Lumberjack, I think you did compliment me."

"Craig," Guile jumped in, "I'm going to release my hold over your emotions. Can I count on you to behave....and stop trying to combat your unwanted feelings of helplessness by antagonizing Lecher?"

"Yes," Craig agreed, "provided you get this shit out of my briefs before Caboose's grumbling cracks my nuts."

Lecher spat his tongue down into the mat, instantly transforming the spongy surface of the entire clearing from black to pink, to match the change in color of Lecher's tongue. At the same moment, the tongue material flowed out of Craig's underwear and down his legs, freeing him.

"Please remember that not only is the fog still in your system," Guile cautioned, "but outside the clearing, the forest is full of it. Any attempt to flee will result in instant unconsciousness."

"Believe me, you don't want that," Lecher warned Craig with a smirk, "because there's this perverted gay kid that's coming, and he likes to prey on compromised adult men."

"So funny," Craig muttered, keeping his restored anger under control for Robbie's sake.

Lecher glanced over at Caboose, whose many eyes looked back at him though the gaps in his bony cowl.

"You okay?" Lecher called out.

Caboose made a brief ear-piercing noise that made Craig think of someone playing a large violin, using rebar as a bow.

"Cool," Lecher replied, "just keep making Pit Fog and we'll play after I'm done eating what's inside of Jayce. Hey...Guile? Mind if I take a lunch break?"

"You don't have to ask my permission for that," Guile informed him with a lilt to his voice that implied confusion.

"Better safe than sorry," Lecher muttered bitterly.

"Lecher, STOP!" Craig ordered, jumping in front of him. "Guile? You said we'd be safe! GUILE?!"

Lecher responded with a glare than implied that Craig should maybe consider getting the fuck out of his way.

"I thought you only brought him so that I'd follow," Craig disputed. "I thought you weren't really going to eat his guts! Look, if you're hungry...and I've already offered...drink some of my blood!"

"I don't need to FEED right now, I need to EAT," Lecher snapped, shoving Craig aside....easily. "Crandal was so focused on tonight's murder spree that he 'simply forgot to eat', no matter HOW many times I reminded the twerp."

Lecher pushed Jayce's knees apart and knelt down between them. Just to be a dick, Lecher opened his mouth and made his canine teeth extend to the point that he looked more like a walrus than a vampire.

"Lecher, I've got money!" Craig implored, mentally preparing him- self for his inevitable fight with the vampire.

"D'you got twelve hundred?" Lecher asked, putting his hands under Jayce's knees and pushing them towards his chest until Jayce's asshole was directly in front of the Thrall's mouth. "Because that's what I have in this stupid strap on my ankle."

"But...if you've got money, why do you need-" Craig asked, shifting his weight and positioning his feet to launch himself at Lecher the instant he started to hurt Jayce.

"CRAIG, STAND DOWN!" Guile ordered. "He's not going to hurt Jayce, he's been playing word games with you. He's not going to eat Jayce's guts, he's going to eat what's inside them."

"Huh?!" Craig asked, understanding exactly what Guile meant... ...but not wanting to!

"I've adjusted Jayce's 'medication', Lecher. He's completely narcotized. I'm about to flood him with muscle relaxants, too, to keep him from clenching, squirming and hurting himself, but they will also relax his bladder."

"Yeah, yeah," Lecher muttered, clearly still angry at Guile.

Craig's eyes went wide at the sight of the yellow tendril sliding out from behind Lecher, slithering along the mat like a snake as it headed for Jayce.

The tendril opened wide and "condomed" Jayce's penis. Jayce's face lit up at the now-familiar sensation, but a glance down at his groin caused Jayce to grimace in confusion at the pleasure-tube's change in color.

"WAIT, DON'T SHOCK HIM!" Craig yelled.

"Craig," Guile said with a patronizing tone, "you are mixing up the electrical yellow tendril with the impurity-filtering light yellow tendril. If you like, I can have Lecher hold both up in front of your eye- balls so you can learn to distinguish the two."

"No...I'm good," Craig said, backing down while paying attention to what Lecher was doing to Jayce, in case Craig had to step in.

"Uuuuhhhhhh," Jayce moaned after a few seconds. The light yellow tube moved slightly, like a hose when the water is first turned on, indicating to Craig that whatever Guile was circulating through Jayce's system was taking effect, on his urinary muscles, at least. Jayce turned to look at Craig with a gooned expression that gave Craig an instant yearning for whatever Jayce was experiencing at that moment. Jayce was triggering Craig, hard, at a time when he needed to keep a clear head and focus on protecting his son!

"Pissin'," Jayce dreamily notified Craig.

"It's okay, just go ahead and pee," Craig replied, forcing himself to act like a mature, responsible adult to counter his desire to bro-down with Jayce and ask him how fucking good it felt. "It's not your fault that this is happening to you. Do whatever you need to do. Just let it out. We're in this together. I'm not going to judge you for anything they make you do.

Just be sure to return the favor," Craig added a few moments later.

"You might want to pay attention to this part, Craig," Lecher advised, "because if you ask me nicely, I'll do it to you, too."

Craig saw a green tendril rise up between Lecher's belly and Jayce's asshole.

"What does that one do?!" Craig demanded. "Is it going to hurt him?"

The green tendril hissed as it sprayed a green mist at Jayce's ass- hole, making it pucker as if someone fed it a lemon wedge. Jayce's loopy expression changed into one of concerned confusion.

"It feels cool and tingly, and he likes it, but he's starting to get the itch," Lecher said with a smile.

"WHAT itch?!" Craig asked, infuriated by the lack of information about what was being done to Jayce. Suicidal as he may've been, Craig didn't want to start a doomed fight with Lecher unless he had to, and he couldn't make that determination without some damned information!

"The green tendril sprays a substance on the interior and exterior of the sphincter," Guile piped up, "making it relaxed, frictionless, hyper- sensitive, hyperactive, hyper-pleasurable, and when something is being inserted through it, hyper-accommodating. Watch your balance, Craig. I'm going to give you the virtual reality view of the interior of Jayce's ass."

Sure enough, Craig was now looking at the inside of the puckered sphincter. The green tendril squeezed through, looped around, and let out a sustained, high-pressure spray of green mist.

Craig's sight returned to normal, and he looked down at Jayce to find him thrashing his head back and forth while moaning like a whore in heat.

"Watch his asshole," Lecher giddily instructed.

Jayce suddenly gaped wide open, the wind from the nearby blasting fog carrying the unpleasant smell to Craig's nose. But just as quickly, Jayce's o-ring closed with a meaty slapping noise.

"Coochy cochy-COO," Lecher called out, tickling Jayce's asshole with his finger. Jayce's asshole repeatedly tightened and loosened like the lips of a nursing baby.

"Pleeeeeeeeeease!" Jayce begged, his asshole suddenly gaping again in response to Jayce's growing desperation for anal stimulation.

"Sure thing, buddy!" Lecher said lecherously.

Lecher gave Craig 'the finger', showing him that he'd shape-shifted it to be much longer and fatter than normal. Lecher slid the altered digit deep into Jayce's bowels, making him suck in air through gritted teeth. Jayce's face looked like he was on a roller coast, and he was about to plummet down a hill that he wasn't old enough to handle.

"AW GAAAAAAAWWWWD!" Jayce groaned before hyperventilating.

"Jayce," Craig called out in response to Jayce's intense reaction, which could've indicated anything. Guile, who was quietly experiencing his own kind of pleasure, waited breathlessly to see how Craig would finish his sentence. Under normal circumstances, Guile would expect someone like Craig to say: "...are you okay?", but after Guile's manipulations, he was hoping Craig would display his eroding resolve by asking something far more telling. Guile experienced his own version of an orgasm when Craig said "...it feels good, RIGHT?"

"Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah," Jayce exhaled, his eyes rolling back.

"Why, Lumberjack?" Lecher sneered. "You interested?"

"No," Craig lied, completely and utterly.

Jayce's shameless reactions to the pleasure caused by the drugs in his body and the finger up his ass had Craig on the verge of mental collapse. As straight as he was, and as much as he hated Lecher, if Robbie were safe at home at that moment, Craig knew damned well that he'd be tear- ing his clothes off, lying down, pulling his knees to his chest, and presenting his ass to Lecher, as long as the vampires agreed to make him feel the way that they were making Jayce feel.

It wouldn't be gay in the slightest, it would be a lonely man with a growing addiction problem sharing some awesome dope with a couple of guys who he could convince himself were his friends. And if Lecher decided to be a fucking dick by fucking Craig with his dick, as long as he prepped Craig with that green tendril, and as long as Craig experienced mind-blowing pleasure while being fucked, Craig was certain he would be able to put the incident behind him without questioning his sexuality, or even really giving a shit.

...And if Lecher decided to sink his teeth into Craig's neck and drain his blood away while Craig was lying there helplessly in the midst of a fucking AWESOME HIGH...

"Beats a bullet to the brain," Craig thought.

"Robbie won't be here for a little while," Guile whispered seductively into Craig's mind. "If you agree to spread your cheeks for Lecher, I'll make sure he plays nice. No mockery...no buttfucking...no bloodletting, and more pleasure than you can stand. And just before Robbie gets here, I'll sober you up, with no hangover or depression, and give you time to put your clothes back on. Do we have a deal?"

"No," Craig stated flatly, putting his shaking hands in his pockets to push down the bulge in his pants, thus killing two birds with one stone. "I'm a good father, no matter what lies the people in this shitty area want to believe. Jayce wasn't brought here just to lure me into this trap, you needed him to tempt me and wear me down."

"No shit, Sherlock," Lecher chuckled, twisting and stirring his finger around inside of Jayce's guts, much to Jayce's delight. Lecher removed his finger and licked it clean before reinserting it. Craig should've puked his guts out, but he was too fixated on Jayce's hypnotic facial expressions for it to bother him.

"You taste gooood, Jaycey," Lecher complimented, smacking his filthy lips. "How's about a little kiss?"

For a horrifying second, Craig thought that Lecher was going to actually kiss Jayce on the mouth, but to Craig's...relief(?)....Lecher leaned down, separated his lips, and planted them against Jayce's twitching asshole. Then he started moving his lips around with closed eyes and a romantic expression.

"Mmmmmmmmmmm....."

"Why the fuck are you doing that?" Craig spat, using his disgust to try to break free from the temptation of Guile's offer.

Lecher put his lips around Jayce's asshole. Suddenly, Lecher's cheeks pulled in. He'd established a vacuum seal and increased the adhesion of his lips to the point that if Lecher wanted, he could've effortlessly stood up, with Jayce dangling from his lips.

"Why the fuck are you getting wood right now, Lumberjack?" Craig heard in his mind, the message obviously being relayed by Guile, since if Lecher spoke while connected to Jayce's asshole, it would've probably been a little difficult to make out. "And before you lie and deny, keep in mind that I'm gonna want you to unzip and present 'proof of limp'."

The leech connected to Jayce Harris' rectum looked up at Craig with sinister, pleased eyes.

"GUUUUUUUH!!!!" Jayce screamed, making Craig stumble backwards and fall on his ass.

Craig's vision shifted again, and he watched Lecher's tongue flow inside of Jayce, invading him deeply and intimately, much to Jayce's absolute joy. Craig tried to look away, but he couldn't, so he lied to him- self, convincing himself that he had to keep watching, in case Lecher suddenly turned pleasure into pain.

"Don't buckle!" Craig mantra-ed, fighting to keep in control. "Just get through this! When it's over, the cops will take Robbie home...I'll get a ride back to Johnsport...then I can go out and score some."

"Score some what, Craig?" Guile inquired.

"NOTHING! KEEP OUT OF MY HEAD!" Craig screamed in his mind as loud as he could, making his head tremble and flush red as he tried uselessly to drive Guile out.

"Well, I'm done tossin' my dinner salad. Time to eat it!" Lecher announced.

"Lecher, you DO know that you can use the brown tendril to dissolve the fecal matter, and the beige tendril to suck it up and absorb it, right?"

"Yeah," Lecher replied to Guile, "but someone ordered me to do it this way!"

"I don't think that certain someone was being literal when he told you to eat shit," Guile debated.

"We are governed by what he SAYS," Lecher asserted, immitating Guile's speech mannerisms perfectly, "not by our own personal interpretations of his wishes, nor by his unexpressed exceptions."

The Thrall's tongue stimulated Jayce's colon, making him grind against Lecher's face as he tongue-fished around inside, snatching Jayce's shit and pulling it into the Thrall's mouth.

"Oh God," Craig whined mentally in response to Jayce's fevered groans, not even paying attention to what Lecher was doing. "I can't fucking TAKE much more of this!"

Guile laughed as Craig unconsciously put his right hand on his belt buckle. Guile didn't need Freud to interpret the meaning of the gesture.

"Mmmm," Lecher savored, "I think Jayce was at a cookout today."

"A pool party, actually," Guile corrected. "According to your memories, the Thrall's hypersensitive nose detected the stench of chlorine, and you noticed that Jayce's brother was wearing swim trunks, but somehow you still didn't manage to deduce the obvious. How odd."

"I can taste hamburgers, baked beans, potato salad, cupcakes, and lots of pot. My GAWD, it's like someone shoved Memorial Day up his ass," Lecher beamed, looking up and giving Craig an actual shit-eating grin, "or my FAVORITE holiday, ...the Fourth of July."

"New rule," Guile announced. "None of us are allowed to bring up a certain individual, his last name, or any topic that might awaken him from our well-earned 'rest', okay? If we need to talk about him, let's come up with a fitting pseudonym. Wait....I've got one. Let's call him: 'Lure'."

"Why are doing that to him?" Craig yelled to take his mind off of Jayce the Groaning Drug Trigger. "It's fucking disgusting! You two eat people's SHIT?!"

"Why not?" Guile asked in all seriousness. "Leaving aside the fact that Lecher is choosing to do it orally, our ability to obtain nutrition from the poorly-digested contents of the bowels of humans has allowed our kind to survive countless situations in which food is not readily available, as has our ability to filter and sterilize urine, turning it into potable water. As long as there are people around, preferably men, we will always thrive! Craig, I honestly don't believe I need to explain to a hunter the benefits of extreme survivability."

"But you don't NEED to eat his shit!" Craig disputed.

"And you NEED to kill a deer, when Johnsport has tons of super- markets and butcher shops?" Guile asked. "And before you point out the fact that we have a large sum of money with which to buy food, allow me to point out that the human who controls us only recently tried to commit suicide, and we're on a tight schedule if we're going to survive past morning. So 'yes', Craig, Lecher needs to obtain nutrition from Jayce's ass right now....and yours as well."

"Not gonna happen!" Craig said with forced determination. He had to stay sober. It was the only way Craig could ensure his continued freedom, hopefully get Robbie to safety, and then see to getting his child the couseling he obviously, desperately needed.

"Not even if I offer to feed your monkey beforehand? Craig, if you just let me, I can make you feel so-"

"SHUT UP!" Craig screamed.

The vampire WASN'T going to win! For his son's sake, Craig didn't have the luxury of failing.

"You humans are SO fucking confusing," Guile spat as a small cloud of fog drifted out of the woods and approached Craig.

"No-no-no-no-no!" Craig insisted, backing away.

"I'm not going to force you to breathe more of it," Guile sighed with irritation, "but if you did, I would be able to get you higher than you've ever been! And since Lecher will only be using his mouth to make you squeal, and I won't be relaying his thoughts to you-"

"I won't even make eye contact, Craig," Lecher said, startling him by not calling him 'Lumberjack'. "I'll just focus on cleaning you out and making you feel pleasure that only our donors get to experience."

"DONORS?!" Craig uttered in astonishment. "You two ain't the fucking Red Cross! If you really are some kind of vampire, YOU ONLY HAVE VICTIMS!"

"I should've corrected you the second you told him we were a vampire, Lecher!" Guile sighed wearily.

"Yeah, so as much as I'd REALLY LIKE TO GET HIGH RIGHT NOW, I'm not gonna get STUPID so you two can tear into me with those extendable teeth and exsanguinate me!"

"I though you wanted to die...Lumberjack," Guile snarked.

"I'll get back to you on that when my kid is safe, and not being stalked by a fucking VAMPIRE!"

"Craig," Guile pointed out, trying with all his might to avoid sounding patronizing, "vampires as you understand them do not exist. We do not want your blood. We would have no use for it."

"But you said you were going to hurt my son, and-," Craig disputed.

"As we already told Robbie, the sticky, congealed goop that Lecher mentioned, the goop that the police would find painted all over your child's walls, was just another one of Lecher's stupid word games. He wasn't talking about Robbie's blood, he was talking about-"

"I need to see my son!" Craig yelled. "I need to see what he's doing RIGHT NOW!"

"Very well," Guile acquiesced.

Guile established a screen in front of Craig and sent him a feed of Robbie. Craig found himself staring at his son, his shirt pulled up over the back of his head, and his shorts and underwear pushed to the ground, showing off his erect penis. Robbie was taking conspicuously deep hits off of his cigarette.

"What's he doing?" Craig asked, not understanding the context.

"Robbie is trying to calm down," Guile explained. "His encounter with Officer Klempernick has him considerably worked up, sexually speaking."

As Guile hoped, Craig mixed up his need for release with that of his son.

"But...but why doesn't he just masturbate?" Craig asked. "If he's in the middle of the woods, and there aren't any cops around, why doesn't he just rub one out...blow a load...take off the pressure?"

"Because in exchange for "Renfield"-ing you, as Lecher so inaccurately put it, all of the semen in Robbie's balls belong to us."

"Huh?" Craig asked in confusion. "What do you need-?"

Craig finally figured it out, two seconds before Jayce let out a long, low groan, in case anyone needed advance notice that he was 'getting close'. Craig turned towards Lecher to find that he was no longer dining from Jayce's ass. Instead, his mouth had elongated, making him look like an aardvark. The snout had engulfed Jayce's penis, and although Craig had no idea exactly what it was doing to Jayce's dick, Craig didn't doubt for an instant that it felt unbelievable.

"We are not a vampire," Guile revealed, hoping to straighten out Lecher's mess, hurry things along, and knock Craig out of his stunned disbelief. "We are a custom-made servant to an immensely powerful being, who, for reasons that I BEG you not to force me to explain, requires the life force carried within male semen.

"Robbie-?" Craig blurted before stumbling on how to phrase his question.

"Your son's reproductive system presently carries exactly 472.95348 METRIC FUCK-TONS of Soul Creation Energy, and we WANT it," Guile revealed before kicking himself for accidentally using the word 'soul'.

"YOU WANT MY SON'S SOUL?!?!"

"It's an outdated phrase for the energy that MAKES souls," Guile explained. "An actual soul would be as useless to us as BLOOD. Pulling out the energy we require from an existing soul would be a billion times harder than sucking the oil, eggs, and flour out of a cake! Or the sand out of concrete! We extract Soul-CREATION Energy from semen...you know, that stuff you wipe off of your abs and throw in the trash once or twice a day!"

Craig had no fucking idea what to say, or think.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Jayce sighed as orgasm hit. The muscle relaxants prevented him from "earning it" by thrusting like mad as he usually did, so he just lay there, enjoying his stupification, his climax, and the feel- ing of having his cum aggressively sucked out of him.

"That is Jayce's THIRD orgasm for us," Guile went on, "which means that we've collected approximately eighteen percent of his Soul-Creation Energy, and his system won't allow us to take the remaining eighty-two percent. When we drain your son, we don't just want a tiny fraction of his S.C.E., we want it ALL!"

"What'll that mean for my son?" Craig asked. "What'll it DO TO HIM?"

"Tragically, your thirteen year-old gay son won't be able to get a girl pregnant for a few days. That is the ONLY consequence for Robbie."

Craig was in no way entertaining the idea, but he wanted details... actionable information.

"What has to happen for you to get what you want."

"The peers of the being we serve, for outdated and arbitrary reasons that I assure you have nothing to do with caring for the welfare of children, decreed that a 'donor' must be no younger than sixteen.

OUR Master opposed that rule, but He had to go along with the rest of the group, or He risked their combined...'dissatisfaction'. However, one of His previous Guiles, geniuses that we are, suggested that the Master secretly violate the decision...slightly. You see, the main problem our Master's peers have with their servants feeding on children is that kids can't keep a secret. But what if the boy's father agreed to take charge of maintaining that secret, 'encouraging' the boy to keep quiet?"

"What kind of father would ever allow someone to molest his child?" Craig asked contemptuously.

"A father who wanted periodic visits from a certain creature who can make him feel the effects of Oxycontin, meth, heroin, MDMA, or any other drug he wanted to try without fear of bankruptcy, overdose, bad shit, physical deterioration, dependence, withdrawal, or tolerance."

Craig casually put his hands back in his pockets.

"If we survive past tomorrow," Lecher said into Craig's mind while he un-snouted himself from Jayce's achy, lifeless cock, "You won't have to see me ever again. Guile can arrange for one of our Entangleds...our 'Renfields', to come over like a pizza delivery boy and fill your lungs with some Pit Fog and your brain with some rainbows. And after he makes you happy and stupid, the Entangled could follow Robbie to his bedroom, the bathroom, the basement, or wherever, and Robbie can use him like toilet paper.....forcing him to play Robbie's obsessive and sexually imaginative games."

"Robbie shouldn't be...he's too...I shouldn't let...," Craig stumbled, trying not to think about Guile and Lecher's offer, for fear he would accept.

"C'mon 'daddy'!" Lecher argued, his snout having finally receding back into a face. "You get what you want, Robbie gets what he wants, and we get what we need. It's perfect. And it ain't like the kid's innocence needs protecting anymore."

"So THAT'S why you had Robbie suck off that cop!" Craig seethed, using his outrage in a desperate attempt to recharge his resolve."

"He tried to sell his virginity online for $300 dollars last year, Craig," Guile revealed, trying and succeeding in taking some of the wind out of Craig's sails. "And every inch of him is available for viewing on the net. The boy is on a collision course with tragedy, and HIV would be the least awful outcome. However, our Entangleds...like us...are IMMUNE to every possible sexually transmitted disease. Robbie would be able to indulge his perversions at home, with no need to use any sort of protection, and under your supervision, if you wish."

"These...Entangleds," Craig asked, seeing another angle to keep himself from saying 'yes', "I'm guessing you enslaved them, the same way you're gonna enslave ME if I don't accept your deal, right?"

"That's exactly what will happen to you, but I only Entangled them because I was ordered to do so by Lure," Guile explained. "The Entangleds are the young men who attended Lure's Fourth of July party...the ones who repaid his hospitality by destroying his home, and most importantly, the things that reminded Lure of his mother, who died barely a year ago.

Craig, I don't hate Lu-...I don't hate the Crandal boy as much as Lecher, and the reason for that is because I accessed Lure's memories from that awful night. I saw what those boys did, and how Lure begged them to stop. But they were having fun being cruel, so they didn't. They are now slaves, paying for that night by doing unspeakable things....and I don't care. And since you were willing to set Lure loose on his attackers without a second thought, please don't use morality against me. It would be absurd.

The Entangleds deserve the things Lure forces them to do. As much as Tom Daggen's boot was responsible for giving Lure the appearance of a monster, it was those boys, even more-so than our Master, who turned the Crandal boy into a REAL monster. When Lure arose after his transformation into us, he awoke to a house that had been cleared of ALL of his mother's possessions, not just the broken ones. Raymond Crandal, thinking his son was no longer an obstacle to him ridding his third house of all trace of her, went ahead and did it, leaving Lure with nothing to remember her by. When Lecher and I achieved awareness, we presented ourselves to our new Lure, eagerly wanting to plan our new life together. Our optimism was crushed when we found him smashing the scant furnishings in the house that resembled an empty warehouse compared to the memory-packed palace it was before all the "BREAK" and "TAKE" started."

"I keep saying this to you, Guile," Craig groaned, "BUT WHAT'S THE POINT YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE?!"

"That you do not deserve Entanglement, Craig," Guile summarized. "Please do what Lure refused to do tonight. Please accept a compromise to avoid a very dark fate."

"If I don't deserve it, why are you doing it?" Craig challenged.

"Said the deer to the huntsman," Lecher scoffed.

"Lecher is right," Guile stated without tacking on a joke. "Either you help us extract Robbie's Soul-Creation Energy, or we die. And I refuse to only get two and a half months of life, Craig. I utterly refuse. I will not allow your childish discomfort to kill me, Craig."

"What would I have to do," Craig asked, "if I accepted the deal?"

"Before I begin, I need you to understand that although this process might seem to be deliberately sexualized to cause you discomfort, I assure you that I am merely being over-cautious in order to prevent our internal systems from regarding this operation as a violation of the rules that govern our behavior...and mete out punishment."

"I understand," Craig said, already uneasy.

"When Robbie arrives, we will need visual, auditory and telepathic confirmation that we have your approval. First, you will look into Lecher's eyes and say:'I give permission for this Thrall to Churn my son'. Then, you will think those words strongly, directing them at me. Next, after you strip naked, indicating the visual approval, you will remove your child's clothes, with no help from Robbie at all, save raising his arms and lifting his feet.

Robbie will lie facedown on a table made of tongue-material. You will spread his butt cheeks apart with your hands, and tendrils will go up his ass. Then you'll turn Robbie over and open his pee hole, allowing another tendril to slide in."

"How much pain will this cause my boy?" Craig demanded.

"Nothing but pleasure, Lumberjack," Lecher responded. "If there were pain, the boy wouldn't be able to cum!"

"Lecher is right," Guile affirmed, unused to saying that phrase twice in such a brief time span. "After the other required tendrils go up Robbie's nose, down his throat, and on his taint and nipples, straps of tongue-material will prevent him from injuring himself while he convulses in frenzied enjoyment. During this time, you will massage his balls and needlessly stroke his penis, to signal your continuing consent to my always skeptical mental inhibitors and monitoring systems. While you do that, one of our tendrils will stimulate your penis. We won't be able to give you any fog or our...uh...'aphrodisiac', as you must possess ALL of your free will during the entire process.

When your boy is thoroughly Churned...er...prepared, he will 'endure' an incredibly intense orgasm lasting for two minutes or more. You will rub him all over his front with one hand while continuing to move his package around with the other. Just before ejaculation, the tendril on your penis will remove itself, whether you've had your own orgasm by that point or not, and cover Robbie's penis instead. Robbie will squirt for quite a while, and the tendril will suckle him until he is completely limp. When the tendril retracts, both of you may simply dress and leave."

Craig paused for a moment and listened to the sound of a nearby helicopter.

"I know your answer, Craig," Guile said impatiently. "You might as well just make it official."

"No. Just no."

"Stupid, Lumberjack," Lecher snarled. "Real fucking stupid!"

"I will NEVER touch my child in a sexual way," Craig pronounced with an air of finality and drama that even Linda Byrne couldn't match. "I don't care what you do to me. Whatever happens, happens!"

"As you wish," Guile intoned solemnly, "but I must inform you that I can see in your active memory that your decision is mostly based on your belief that you can mentally overcome Entanglement. You cannot. Under different circumstances, I could present to you twenty-three boys who routinely go to the homeless encampments around Johnsport and Mawklynd City and indiscriminately offer up their lips and assholes to any filthy cock that wishes to make use of them. But unfortunately, my telepathy is down, and Lure ignored me when I suggested that he acquire the boys' cell phone numbers. I won't drag you quite as low as quite as ofter as the other Entangled, Craig, but rest assured, if you ever catch the eye of a homo- sexual male, you will go crazy with lust, and give him what he wants. You see, the TRUE purpose of Entangleds is to act like our worker bees, or in this case, the drones of a drone. They collect cum for us. When I'm strong, one of my jobs is to monitor them, their surroundings, and the sexual thoughts of men in their immediate vicinity. If circumstances align, I force them to proposition nearby willing males. And once cum flows into their mouths or asses, it comes to us. YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW HOW, CRAIG!"

"Whatever you say," Craig dismissed, "but I'm not changing my mind."

"You also think that if we die tomorrow morning, you will be free. Wrong. Our Master's replacement for us will simply take over your reins.

"At my job," Craig sneered, "it takes months of training before a new hire can even wipe his ass-"

Finally, you have a baseless belief that something will come along and prevent me from carrying out my threat, which is funny, considering you aren't very spiritual and you have zero faith in the police. Who exactly do you expect to come along and justify your unwillingness to accept your horrific potential fa-?"

BANG

"NO!!!!" Lecher screamed.

Russell Hawksmoor had no idea where he was.

He didn't remember it, but a friend named Chuck Frye called him the instant he heard about the monster attack on I-147. Before Russell knew it, and before Russell subsequently forgot it, he and some friends were tearing down muddy back roads to reach a parking area close enough to the scene of the incident, but nowhere near the horrific traffic jam that was developing on I-147.

Everything was going great at first. When they arrived and stealthily entered the woods, they were the equal of any well-trained military unit, or so they thought. But then the fog rolled in, and it was as if everyone suddenly drank a six pack.....then a twelve pack. Before Russell knew what was happening, discipline broke down, and everyone began to get silly. Everyone turned into an asshole. It was kinda fun, until Josh Donnelly started shooting his assault rifle in random directions, causing anyone even remotely sober to drop to the ground and crawl away into the fog.

When the shooting stopped, Russell breathed a very deep sigh of relief, causing him to forget where he was and what he was doing. He opened his mouth to call out to his friends, but he didn't remember who, if anyone, was in the woods with him. He heard familiar voices calling out in the darkness, but since he was carrying a weapon and wearing his body armor, he didn't want to assume they were friendlies.

As Russell approached the Thrall's feeding area, his brain was forced to perceive an impenetrable wall of thorn bushes. However, there was so much fog that Russell couldn't see it, and he ended up stumbling through the hallucination into a clearing lit with floating bubbles of bright light. When his eyes adjusted, Russell found himself looking at a big, red- headed dude in a picnic table-looking flannel shirt, and a naked white fag sucking some naked black fag's cock. The sight pissed Russell off so much that it wasn't until Caboose grunted that he noticed the massive, fog- emitting monstrosity that was staring at him through the random slots in it's bony face plate.

The sight of Caboose completely stunned Russell. Even while under the influence of the Pit Fog, it was as if Russell was hypnotized by the gaze of a snake. Russell's mind went blank, and he and Caboose engaged in a long staring contest, in spite of Russell not having the required number of eyes.

The white, naked faggot and the big dude in the flannel continued to talk, punctuated by inexplicable moments of silence. Russell couldn't focus on whatever they were saying...or anything else besides Caboose.

In spite of being drunk on Pit Fog, Russell would've kept his cool had Caboose remained stationary. However, the creature was curious about Russell, who panicked when the eyeballs suddenly dropped, falling through the open bottom of the protective cowl. For an instant, Russell expected the coconut-sized eyeballs to hit the ground and bounce, but instead, they just hovered, each one supported by a thick, prehensile, vine-like stalk.

A swarm of eyeballs drifted towards a drunken, nineteen year old, AR-15 wielding redneck. The outcome was inevitable.

Lecher glanced up at the sound of the gunshot and saw one of Caboose's eye stalks swishing around violently, spraying fluids from the punctured, deflating eyeball at its tip.

"DO NOT TRY TO KILL HIM!!!" Guile screamed into Lecher's mind while he used the Pit Fog in Russell's body to make him feel dizzy, causing him to drop to the ground. "IT WON'T WORK!"

Lecher sprang high into the air, with the intention of landing on Russell Hawksmoor and making HIS eyeballs explode.

When Lecher reached the apogee of his jump, he noted that Caboose's attacker was wearing body armor. Determined to make Russell's murder scene so huge that the forensic investigators would run out of yellow tape, Lecher tried to pull some of Caboose's mass into the Thrall for maximum splatter, but it didn't work. Also, as Lecher was dropping, the violet tendril launched on its own, wrapped around a branch at the edge of the clearing, and pulled Lecher off course, causing him to miss his deadly mark by several feet.

Craig dove to the mat as Caboose started whipping his head around, making his lethal rack swish through the air. His thousands of feet stomped at the ground in a futile attempt to transfer the agony away from his eye, creating a localized seismic event.

"LECHER! GET CONTROL OF HIM! NOW!!" Guile yelled painfully into not only Lecher's head, but Craig's and Jayce's as well.

Craig weathered the intense shockwaves as he crawled toward Jayce. He had absolutely no intention of letting an escape opportunity like this pass him by. When he reached Jayce, he was going to drag him off the mat, retrieve his Glock, phone, and flashlight, and get the fuck away. Hopefully, Guile would be too busy dealing with his disobedient flunky and Caboose to make the shit in Craig's body force him to pass out. As for the kid with the AR-15, body armor and the "OK" hand signal stitched into his cap (which, in recent years had taken on the meaning "white power"), Craig wasn't going to risk his life for someone who would choose to step into this nightmare for any reason other than saving Jayce.

"Thanks for the chaos, asshole," Craig thought. "Hope you proved whatever the fuck you were trying to prove by coming here."

Craig's plans were suddenly complicated by the fact that Guile was so distracted that he accidentally released everyone currently affected by Pit Fog. The morphing drug circulating through the bodies of Craig, Jayce, Jaden, Russell, and several would-be monster killers, instantly turned into an undetectable, inert substance that headed straight for the exits, or as they're popularly known: the kidneys.

At Johnsport Central Hospital, Jaden Harris opened his eyes to the sight of family. This was a good thing.

In a fog-ringed clearing in the woods off of I-147, Jaden's brother Jayce opened his eyes to the sight of a gigantic, ground-pounding monster with around twenty eyes and an enormous rack on its head that was slashing at the air over Jayce's face with razor-sharp horns. This was NOT a good thing!

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Jayce screamed, reacting to his terrifying reality and desperately unwanted sobriety by frantically and ineffectively digging his heels into the tongue-mat and trying to push himself away from the unholy THING that, from Jayce's perspective, seemed to by trying to either gore him or stomp him to death...maybe both.

Jayce could now remember everything about being drugged and sexually assaulted in the back of his brother's SUV, but after he was forced to pass out, something strange happened to his memory. Jayce had a complete physical memory of his abduction, starting with him getting sucked off while being piggy-backed through the woods. However, his mental memories, including all sights and sounds, were a jumbled, distorted, dream-like mess.

"IS THIS REAL RIGHT NOW?" Jayce pleaded to Craig, who'd just reached him. "I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS REAL!"

"It's real!" Craig verified. "Roll over on your stomach and crawl behind me! Keep your head down!"

Caboose's rack zoomed by.

"No SHIT keep my head down!" Jayce exclaimed. "What is that-"

The tongue material turned sticky, trapping both Jayce and Craig to the mat.

"FUCK!" Craig shouted in frustration. "JAYCE?"

"WHAT?!" Jayce screamed back in terror while he tried to pull his arms free from the pink goop.

"Stop fighting! We're stuck! We're not going anywhere! Do you go to Weyerhauser High?" Craig asked desperately.

"Do I WHAT?!"

"DO! YOU! GO! TO! WEYERHAUSER!-"

"YEAH, I GO THERE!!!!"

If the vampires were infesting the Crandal boy, and the vampires knew who Michael Pearson was, and Mike went to Weyerhauser High, then there was a good chance that Jayce knew the real name of the boy who Guile had dubbed "Lure".

"This is real fucking important, Jayce! The naked blonde guy over there! What's his name? He used to go to Weyerhauser, but he wouldn't have gone back this fall!"

Jayce looked at the guy intently, as intently as he could under the circumstances, anyway.

Russell tried to get to his feet as the naked, white cocksucker stood up from where he'd fallen and came running over. The guy straddled Russell, grabbed both sides of his head in a vise-like grip, and put his thumbnails directly in front of Russell's eyeballs.

The thumbnails grew towards Russell's irises.

"EYES FOR AN EYE, YOU TIMBERSBURG, REDNECK, GUN NUT, PIECE OF SHIT!" Lecher snarled.

But Lecher's thumbs locked, preventing him from driving them for- ward. Lecher yelled in rage at the realization that Lechers and Guiles were not only unable to kill humans, they couldn't permanently maim them, either.

"Get OFF me, FAGGOT!" Russell bellowed.

Lecher smiled.

"Thanks for reminding me...prey," Lecher taunted, displaying his rape face.

"Lecher, the Pilot Fish is about to scream," Guile informed him in hyper-time, "because you've YET to follow my order. When it does, Robbie's eardrums will shatter and my plans will be undone, all because you want to avenge a goddamned PILOT FISH for a MINOR INJURY that will heal within-!"

"I won't hurt this guy bad, I'm just going to...."

"Fuck him? Do whatever you want, Lecher. It no longer matters. Since your compassion for this rarely-used, untrained Pilot Fish has caused you to steadfastly refuse to tame IT, and since you won't follow my order to get control over IT, you've given me no choice. My archives contain a way to kill a Pilot Fish, bypassing its telepathic resistance by using my link to YOU, and YOUR connection to IT. I look forward to absorbing my new Guile Archive."

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO KILL CABOOSE!" Lecher protested. "JUST SEND HIM BACK NOW!"

"There's not enough time."

"DO IT NOW...WHILE WE'RE IN HYPER-TIME!"

"Just because I can speed up our time perception doesn't mean I can speed up the generation of a dimensional breach! Hyper-time only allows us to communicate at high speed...that's IT! Although...it would be fun to be able to make Pit Fog move at the speed of sound. I wonder, could it create a sonic boom?"

"JUST SCREEN ROBBIE AND THE OTHERS!" Lecher suggested, desperately grasping at any possibility, unwilling to admit that there was no way to protect Robbie without killing Caboose before he could scream.

"You want me to screen A PILOT FISH CRY?!" Guile asked with mock astonishment. "Lecher, a screen is just a telepathic trick. People still HEAR the things going on within a screen, but their brains disregard it. Even if I could screen the cry from Robbie, all it would mean is that Robbie wouldn't instinctively shield his ears, resulting in even MORE damage. Do you know how many decibels Jayce, Jaden, and Cynthia probably lost off of THEIR hearing because they weren't aware of the deafing sound of the silver tendril shredding trees a few dozen feet away from them?"

"NO, YOU'RE LYING! JADEN AND CYNTHIA WERE TALKING TO EACH OTHER DURING THAT NOISE! THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO-!"

"They didn't know it, but while they were talking, they were also communicating telepathically. Part of the screening process requires me to mentally Entwine with everyone I wish to affect. They experience a telepathic, AUDITORY overlay that allows them to ignore the sounds emanating from within a screen without it affecting conversation. And anyone on a cell phone just hears static or whatever they expect to hear when their cell phone-"

"BUT YOU CAN'T ENTWINE WITH GIRLS!"

"That isn't entirely true. I can't read girls' minds, or mind- control them in any significant way, but the screen HAS to be able to work on women, otherwise it's pretty useless outside of a sausage situation. Now, the truly interesting part is how men and women are forced by the screen to mentally create whatever background noises they were perceiving before they were affected by the screen, which requires-"

"STOP TALKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Lecher yelled.

"What's the matter, Lecher?" Guile asked ominously. "I'm only giving you what you want. Threats and punishment don't work for longer than a minute, and you refuse to obey the Thrall chain of command established by the Thrall Masters, so from now on, no matter how desperately immediate action is called for, I will waste vital seconds to bring us into hyper- time, just so you can thoroughly question and debate every single order I give you."

"I'M TRYING TO WORK ON THAT!" Lecher claimed.

"You are?" Guile asked. "Funny, I've seen absolutely no sign of improvement. Oh well. If you have no further questions, I'm going to take us out of hyper-time and quickly shut down Caboose's brain."

"GUILE...WAIT! WE'RE NOT DONE!!!

The stamping of Caboose's feet let Lecher know that Guile was done hosting their first "Guile and Lecher post-command/pre-response Q and A session".

Without warning (because Guile wasn't in the mood to provide any), Russell flexed his abs, brought up his legs and managed to cross his muddy boots in front of Lecher's face. Craig watched the kid straighten his legs and slam Lecher's head against the mat.

"Nice move!" Craig called out.

Ordinarily, Craig didn't compliment pricks like Russell, but Craig needed to quickly establish a rapport with the piece of shit. If he retrieved his rifle, Craig intended to yell: "Shoot out his left eye!".

Unfortunately, but oh so predictably, the kid pushed Lecher's legs aside, got to his feet, and tore off into the woods without even picking up his rifle, almost getting decapitated by Caboose's rack in the process.

"THIS AIN'T OVER!!!" Lecher called after him. "I'M GONNA FIND YOU AND FUCK THE INCEL RIGHT OUTTA YOU!!

GUILE, DON'T HURT CABOOSE!" Lecher pleaded, turning his attention to the problem at hand. "I CAN STOP HIM!!"

But Lecher couldn't stop Caboose. When injured, Pilot Fish are designed to take out their pain on their attacker(s). But since its attacker was so tiny, and Lecher was in the way, all Caboose could do was obey his biology by stomping and swishing his horns. But the injury was now gone, dealt with by Caboose's healing processes, created by studying the life forms of hundreds of worlds. So now, it was time for Caboose to obey another biological imperative: Discourage his attacker from returning.

Craig and Jayce watched in horrified awe at the sight of Caboose opening his mouth to reveal a circular tunnel lined on all sides with hundreds of rows of huge triangular teeth.

"I could drive my fucking TRUCK through that!" Craig thought. "How the hell does it chew?"

"Thoroughly," Guile answered.

"GUILE," Lecher begged, "I CAN'T GET CONTROL OF HIM! PLEASE DON'T KILL HIM! HE'S GONNA SCREAM! TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

"Certainly," Guile offered, "and after I tell you, I'd be more than happy to show my work and discuss my planning methodology with-"

"HE'S REARING UP!! HE'S GONNA SCREAM!!! GUILE, JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!! I'LL STOP QUESTIONING YOUR ORDERS!!! I SWEAR!!!"

"Do you swear on Caboose's life?" Guile asked calmly.

"YES! I FUCKING SWEAR!" Lecher beseeched.

The mighty creature crouched down and prepared to push the ground away with its front 'rear frogs legs' so that it could stand taller than most of the trees surrounding it. It would then point it's mouth at the sky so that it could project its powerful, repellent cry a full 360 degrees.

"GUILE?!?!?!?!?"

"Borrow as much mass from Caboose as possible," Guile instructed. "He always stops moving and turns docile when you pull mass from him. Besides you'll NEED that mass for what you'll have to do next."

Lecher sank into the tongue mat and the earth below, up to his knees. Caboose, as Guile predicted, dropped down with a massive thud and planted his feet (ALL of them), but he wasn't happy about it. Like a cat fussing against the forced sedation caused by having the scruff of its neck held, Caboose fought against whatever force or genetic programming was compelling him to stop trying to rear up.

"GUILE, IT'S NOT WORKING!" Lecher screamed in desperation, "HE'S BREAKING FREE!"

A 3-D mental map formed in Lecher's head, showing him Robbie Bryne's exact position in relationship to Lecher, as well as the height of every tree and branch separating the two of them.

"Now that you've borrowed sufficient leverage from Caboose in order to counterbalance the increasing weight and length of the Thrall's tongue, use it to get to Robbie and PROTECT....HIS....EARS!" Guile ordered.

For a split second, Lecher almost said: "Wait....I've never slung it that far!", but with Caboose's life in the balance, Lecher just opened his mouth and blasted the Thrall's tongue into the sky with as much force as he could possibly muster.

While an impossible amount of tongue material flew out of Lecher's head, Craig looked into Caboose's whining, gaping maw. Like flash flood water violently surging through a drainage pipe, pink water came pouring through Caboose's gaping maw, blasting out, and slamming into Lecher's body. Caboose was trying to free himself from whatever Lecher was doing to him. But it wasn't pink water, it was Caboose's tongue, and it looked and acted exactly like Lecher's.

At that moment, Craig put it all together.

"Their tongues are indentical because it's the same tongue," Craig marvelled. "It all comes from Caboose. The tongue, the tendrils, the heat, the cold, the electricity, the acid, that fog, the leverage, ...all of it. It all comes from Caboose's insides, goes through that internal connecting portal they mentioned, and then comes out of Lecher's mouth or asshole. Christ! Lecher is just a fucking nozzle!"

Lecher's tongue zipped over the trees, traveling even faster than Lure was able to propel it during his suicide attempts.

Meanwhile, a paralyzed and frustrated Pilot Fish used its tongue to give Lecher's flexed abdominals a meaty slap that should've sent him flying into the woods.

"Almost there!" Lecher cried out, more to himself than to Guile.

Thanks to Guile, Lecher could "see" Robbie in his mind, as well as the tip of the Thrall's tongue and every branch separating the two. Lecher angled the tongue downward, almost missing a PERFECT unobstructed path down to Robbie.

"Try not to rip off his head!" Guile warned bitterly.

With absolute perfection, Lecher wrapped the tongue around Robbie's head and changed its consistency to not only prevent the cops from removing it, but also make it perfectly soundproof.

"I have too much to do right now, so don't separate the tongue from the helmet," Guile ordered, "but don't let the falling tongue material put any strain on Robbie's neck!"

"What about Lumberjack?" Lecher asked. "And Jayce, too. Lumberjack won't cooperate if Caboose's scream blows him into red mist."

In response to Lecher's question, the tongue mat rose up and swallowed Craig and Jayce, encasing them in an air-filled blister of protective tongue material. Like waves sending water up a beach, Guile made more and more matter flow across the mat to the bubble, adding to the protective dome while he also altered the tongue-material's density to make it as soundproof as possible.

The Earth trembled as Caboose finally won his fight to rise up... AND SCREAM!!!!!.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Jayce shouted into the darkness of the soundproof pod, "WHAT THE FUCK'S GOING ON?! WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!"

"Jayce! Calm down and listen!" Craig yelled, "We're safe! They're.. ..uh...'he's' just getting that monster under control."

"DO YOU WANT TO FUCKING THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU JUST SAID?!?!?"

"'He' needs me alive, Jayce! He won't let anything happen to me, so that means you're safe in here, too! NOW WHO THE HELL IS HE?!?!"

"He looks familiar, but I don't-!"

The cocoon began to aggressively vibrate in response to Caboose's scream, making Craig and Jayce feel like they were receiving an electric shock.

"WHAT NOW?! WHAT NOW?! WHAT THE FUCK NOW?!" Jayce whined.

"JAYCE! He might look different now! He can make changes to him- self. HOW is he 'familiar' to you?!"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

The vibration stopped. The clock was ticking. Craig chose a different tactic.

"JAYCE, DO YOU KNOW THE NAME OF RAY CRANDAL'S SON...THE ONE WHO THREW THE FOURTH OF JULY PARTY THAT GOT RAIDED THIS PAST YEAR?!"

"WHAT? Are you tryin' to tell me that naked guy is....?"

Craig waited breathlessly for an answer that Jayce couldn't give, no matter how hard he tried. Craig now realized that he probably hadn't forgotten the boy's name earlier. Guile was probably doing something to ensure that anyone standing near Lecher wouldn't be able to say that name, the word that might possibly awaken "Lure".

"I can't believe I can't remember his name! I was fucking AT that party!"

"YOU WERE?!" Craig asked excitedly. "Did you see who attacked him?"

If Craig couldn't use the Crandal boy's name to wake him, the names of his attackers, the boys he was planning to kill tonight, might do just as well.

"Someone attacked him?"

"We're almost out of time!" Craig interrupted again, knowing damned well that Guile wouldn't leave him trapped without fresh air for very long. "Did you....see anyone go upstairs around the time people started breaking shit?"

"No, I never went inside."

"Huh?"

"I was the only black kid at a rich white kid's party," Jayce explained. "I knew something bad was gonna happen....the whole party had a really weird vibe....lotsa tension....lotsa bitches and assholes. If shit went bad, and it DID, I wanted to be able to say that I never set foot in that house. Besides, all the food, booze, and drugs were OUTside. Didn't need to go inside. And as soon as I saw the police, I got my ass in motion. Shoulda got an Olympic medal, how fast I ran."

Craig let Jayce keep talking because it was calming him down, but Craig was barely listening. Instead, he was fighting for something.... ...ANYthing that would get him the information that he-

Mike was at Ferret Forest with a carload of guys, but in all the time that Craig knew Mike, he never had any friends....except one.

"WAIT!" Craig yelled, feeling Jayce's body jolt in surprise in the darkness. "I got it! There's a kid. He's got blond hair, a smashed nose, and a cauliflow....uh....puffy ear-"

"I know what a cauliflower ear is!" Jayce grumbled, "You're talking about Kenny Miller. He was at the party."

"YES!" Craig said in triumph. "WHO WAS HE WITH?!"

"Two fuckin' PUNKS, THAT'S who! That asshole Tom Daggen and Grant.. ...sumthin'."

The tongue material made a squeaky, squishy noise. The protective ampule was going to open.

"Okay, listen!" Craig implored. "If...WHEN you talk to the police, tell them the Crandal kid ISN'T HUMAN ANYMORE, and tonight he wanted to go to Ferret...Faggot Forest to kill Kenny Miller, Tom..."

"...Daggen and Grant...Grant...Grant...ANDERS!" Jayce completed. "Why can't YOU tell them?"

"Because I might not be able," Craig admitted, accepting the possiblity that when all of this was over, he might not be the same man he was now.

The blister opened up, and Lecher was smiling down at them.

Even with the "tongue helmet" covering his head, Robbie could still see, thanks to Guile's "telepathic visual overlay".

"Guile?" Robbie thought.

"Guile's busy," Lecher said in Robbie's mind, startling him. "He can't make you invisible yet. You've got seconds to put your peepee away, hop over the guardrail, grab Mike's flashlight and phone, and disappear into the darkness before a cop stops you."

"I don't like you," Robbie flatly informed him.

"You'll like me better when your dad is licking your asshole for hours while you play video games. Now MOVE, or I'll leave the helmet on and watch you die from asphyxiation....or a nicotine fit. Whichever comes first."

"Stop being mean to me!" Robbie thought-spat while shoving his penis back into his shorts and jumping over the guardrail, "And stop scaring me!"

"So you don't like mean and scary?"

"NO!"

"Huh," Lecher pondered, "must've been his uniform, then."

"What?" Robbie demanded.

"Nuthin'," Lecher deadpanned.

Robbie scowled from beneath the tongue-helmet.

"I can't hold my breath for much longer," Robbie thought with an unnecessary amount of concern as he picked up the phone and flashlight.

Lecher said nothing. Robbie started to panic.

"I SAID..."

The tongue helmet unraveled, freeing Robbie's head. While needlessly gasping in an unintentionally amusing attempt to make Lecher feel bad, Robbie watched in fascination as the swags of tongue hanging in the trees suddenly straightened out and whisked off into the distance.

"I almost suffocated to death!" Robbie exaggerated.

"Sorry," Lecher replied, "I was busy flipping a coin."

Robbie didn't know what Lecher meant, but he was sure Lecher was making fun of him.

"What does Guile want me to text Mike?"

"Tell Mike you're still too close to the road, and one of the cops is going to recover enough to come in here and bring you back. Probably that cunt you were trying to impress with your peepee."

"IT'S NOT A PEEPEE!" Robbie shot back.

"Sorry, I meant to say wee-wee."

"I'm only thirteen! It's gonna get bigger!"

"If I were you, I'd be praying it stays microscopic. Once you stop looking like a nine-year-old in a clown merkin, your sicko fans are gonna stop buttering you up by telling you how great and beautiful you are. No more money, presents, giftcards, and personalized video requests. Besides, Mary, it ain't like you're gonna need a normal-sized penis."

"If you're gonna keep being mean to me, I'm gonna go back!"

"Kid, I can't help being a prick," Lecher explained honestly. "My purpose is to be the kind of friend that mothers order their children to stay away from. For example, why the FUCK ain't you smokin' right now?!"

Impressionable as always, Robbie reached into his cargo shorts and fumbled around embarrassingly for a cigarette while Lecher continued to speak.

"I don't do apologies, kid, but when I was standing by your dad's truck, scaring your bitch ass, it was so Guile could mentally scan you, and so we could piss off your dad enough to come after us. Nothing personal. Get over it."

"I'm still not sure......pufffffffffffffff.....I want to go with you........pffffooooooooooo."

"Kid, first of all, never take a hit mid-sentence," Lecher preached, mentoring the young lad. "You only take a puff while the other guy is talking. Second of all, your dad knows everything about you wantin' to 'roofie' him and stuff."

"WHAT?!?!?" Robbie yelled in terror. "Guile said cough, cough, wheeze."

"I'm pretty sure he didn't say 'cough, cough, wheeze'," Lecher disputed, "but I'm certain he lied to you. Like me, he can't help the way he is."

"I don't...cough...I can't....cough...."

"You're afraid to face him, now that he knows, but that's okay! As long as you accept that Guile and I own you, just like you're about to own your dad, things'll go great. Now pick up the pace, Cop-sucker!"

"ROBERT BYRNE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!"

Robbie turned around to see a uniformed police officer approaching. He had a flashlight in his left hand and his other hand stayed in close proximity to his service revolver. He kept sweeping the beam of his flash- light through the trees, making sure nothing was coming to swallow his head.

"Lecher, what do I do?" Robbie thought, terrified that if he let the cop take him back, his father would emerge from the woods with his memories and free will intact.

"No idea. You didn't follow my order to walk faster, so a cop caught up with you. Hmmm...Guile might be right. That really IS annoying. Thanks for the life-lesson, kid. We'll send your father back up. Sorry it didn't work out, Cop-sucker. Bye."

"NO...PLEASE!" Robbie begged, unable to cope with the idea of his father knowing his secrets. Robbie wished he could just die...right there and then...to spare himself what was coming.

"Robert?" the cop asked, distracting Robbie from his desperate attempt to reestablish contact with his 'psychic friend'...or Lecher. "What do they call you, Rob or Robbie?"

Robbie didn't answer. He didn't even look at the guy. He was too busy mentally begging a monster to come back and help him. However, Robbie realized that he needed to look at the officer in case Robbie suddenly turned invisible. He looked into the cop's eyes and prayed they would widen in shock, giving Robbie the signal to get the hell out of the way, in case the cop tried to make a grab at Robbie's "last known position".

Although Robbie didn't think so, especially at that moment, Officer Mark Pudroolen was a god. He was twenty-four years-old with "boy next door" good looks that were so stunning that he had to abandon his "side cut" hairstyle for a "military fade", just to be taken seriously as a cop. But unlike every other homosexual Mark had ever encountered, Robbie Byrne just wanted him to go away.

"You can't take me back!" Robbie pleaded to the cop, "The monster said I had to come, or they'd kill my dad!"

"A very bad play, Robbie," Guile informed him. "It won't work."

"GUILE!" Robbie thought excitedly, assuming that HE would deal with the cop....somehow.

"C'mon, we gotta get out of here!" the cop ordered. "That tongue could come back, or that noise could start up again, SO MOVE!"

"BUT I DON'T....HEY!"

Officer Pudroolen ignored Robbie and just grabbed him by the wrist, turned around, and started walking, with Robbie unable to offer much in the way of resistance.

"LET ME GO!" Robbie squealed.

"Knock it off!" the cop ordered, keeping his head and flashlight moving as he pulled Robbie along, in case the tongue, or the thing it was attached to, was drawn to Robbie's commotion.

Robbie took a drag on his cigarette, then used it to burn the cop's hand. In response to the pain, Mark turned around and backslapped Robbie across the face. Robbie's ass slammed into the ground, hard.

"YOU HIT ME! YOU FUCKING HIT ME!"

"LISTEN!!" Mark bellowed, managing to momentarily overcome his respect-sabotaging male beauty. "I heard you sassing Officer Rogers back there! Well now she's really hurt, along with a lot of other people, so I don't have time to put up with your childish BULLSHIT!"

"YOU HIT ME!!" Robbie yelled again, not understanding how the cop could keep intimidating him after HE JUST HIT HIM!

"No I didn't," the officer replied coldly with a deceptively charming smile.

And with that, Mark Pudroolen sealed his fate.

"Yes you did," said a voice from behind the cop.

Officer Pudroolen instinctively drew his weapon as he spun around to face whoever had spoken. At a distance of fifteen feet, there was a young man in an open black robe. He was wearing an adult diaper that needed changing, and he had long whitish hair that partially obscured his face, which looked as though it was sliding off of his skull.

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! DO NOT MOVE, OR I WILL SHOOT YOU!" Officer Pudroolen shouted, reaching for his radio, but suddenly realizing that police radios are just for show, like how grocery store public address systems unnerve potential shoplifters by requesting security sweeps from a non-existent security team.

Guile gave Officer Pudroolen a creepy, strained smile with his droopy features and raised his arms as if to surrender to the cop.

Mark's determination to maintain his authority in this situation was somewhat undermined when the creep stepped forward and walked straight through a sapling.

"What in the...?" Mark started before regaining his composure and holding onto it for dear life, "I ORDERED YOU TO STAY BACK!"

Guile took another step.

"LAST CHANCE!" the officer screamed, his voice sounding LESS than authoritative.

Guile stepped forward and to the side, putting a tree behind him.

BANG!.....BANG!

Officer Pudroolen whimpered internally at the sight of two puffs of pulverized bark coming from the tree behind the spectre.

The image of Guile smiled and stepped forward again. Officer Pudroolen backed-up. He was now standing next to Robbie, who was milking his slap by remaining on the ground.

Officer Pudroolen's panicked eyes and flashlight beam darted back and forth between Robbie and the ghostly, screened image of Guile.

"Guile! I don't like the way this is playing out! Give me the word and I'll try to get the silver tendril here," Lecher offered. "It's the only one fast enough, and it might be long enough. Make me a map and-"

"I have things under control, Lecher," Guile said dismissively.

"I SAID STAY BACK!" Mark repeated, aiming his gun down at Robbie, thus proving Guile wrong, dead wrong.

Robbie could NOT be allowed to die.

Guile quickly compressed time to consider this deteriorating situation.

"That was certainly....unexpected," Guile thought in hyper-time.

"Why? He's a Timbersburg cop who's threatening the life of a thirteen year old boy in order to hopefully save his own ass. What's 'unexpected' about that, besides him not shooting the ground next to Robbie's head to show how serious he is? Just create a screened image of ME, while my skin was still black! He'll raise the gun away from Robbie and shoot at it!"

"OR he'll be so frightened that he'll automatically squeeze the trigger and KILL Robbie!" Guile rejected.

Guile shifted his perceptions.

"SHIT!" Guile hissed. "He's covered in Probability Spasm Residue! He's one of Reality Itself's unwitting pawns!"

"So it gave Robbie to us, but now it wants to kill him?" Lecher asked, befuddled.

"Yes! Bait and swipe. Delay us with something we desperately need, but take it away before we can use it! I now know exactly what Reality Itself wants, I just don't know WHY it wants it!"

"WHAT DOES IT WANT?" Lecher yelled, tired of Guile's dramatic build-ups. Lecher had no idea how a being without a sexuality could be so damned GAY, but Guile managed it.

"Reality Itself wants us to stay the hell away from Faggot Forest!"

"How the FUCK do you figure that?"

"Easily! From Reality Itself's perspective, Robbie's death right now would accomplish exactly one thing: keeping us on the ground, and unable to fly to the place we would be right now if not for Mike, who undoubtedly WAS, and may still BE, another of Reality Itself's pawns."

"So it's not trying to reveal our existence to the world?"

"Unlikely, since the only visual proof of our existence is right here in Robbie's pocket, and we're not presently trapped. Thanks to Jayce's S.C.E. donations, although we cannot FLY anywhere, we have enough energy to run home if we so choose. Since Robbie's death wouldn't do anything to change that, it's unlikely that ALL THIS SUSTAINED EFFORT was designed to do anything other than delay us, injure us, or kill us."

"Run home? I'd love to, but don't you have enough mental energy that we could 'hitch a ride' with someone?"

"That only bolsters my hypothesis!" Guile continued. "Ever since the turnpike went in, this 'bottleneck-able' section of I-147 is seldom used, but tonight it's a parking lot! The traffic is backed up for miles! We're not catching a ride back to the lake house...OR Faggot Forest, for that matter. All of Johnsport and Timbersburg are here to either get a look at us...or kill us!"

"Why doesn't REALITY ITSELF kill us?" Lecher asked. "Why is it just fucking around?"

"Because in spite of our shitty archives depriving us of needed knowledge and skills, we are still a Thrall, and Thralls of the Tethered Ones are exceptionally hard to kill. I can show you some tree dents, spent bullet casings, and point out the lack of road rash on our ass, if you like."

"But if it strikes us with lightning-!"

"It will flow straight into Caboose's bio-electricity storage organs. If Thralls were susceptible to electrocution, most of us would be dead due to Lechers accidentally lighting us up while fucking around with the yellow tendril."

"Why doesn't Reality Itself make the Earth just open up and swallow us, or make a lava geyser appear beneath us and flash-fry our balls?"

"Obviously I don't know, but it could be for a number of reasons. Being a creature possessed of the power of probability alteration, maybe those two scenarios are just too improbable. Or perhaps it only has dominion over life and the atmosphere that supports it, but not the Earth under our feet. Or maybe, just maybe, it's dedicating most of its power towards maintaining a regional heatwave in the middle of January."

"SERIOUSLY?!" Lecher yelped. "You're gonna give Reality Itself credit for making it nice outside?"

"No, I'm going to BLAME him for creating the perfect Saturday night for Lure's massacre, unexpectedly moving up an event that shouldn't have been possible until late May at the earliest."

"But why doesn't it want us to go to Faggot Forest?"

"Odd. I could've sworn I just told someone who looks very much like you that I don't have the answer to that question."

"GUESS!"

"I heard a scarecrow in a police uniform mention that something paranormal happened last March at Malawny Hollow, but he didn't say what, and just as I was tracking that active thought back to his memory of the incident, four chainsaws suddenly all started on the very first pull, redirecting the cop's thoughts and thus taking a psychic leaf blower to the breadcrumb trail in his mind."

"Four ancient, abused, poorly-maintained, municipal chainsaws starting on the FIRST pull?" Lecher considered. "FUCK the weather! THAT is an impressive demonstration of Reality Itself's POWER!"

Guile had no idea if Lecher was joking, so he simply continued.

"So either Reality Itself has something going on up at Faggot Forest that, like Malawny Hollow, it doesn't want us to learn about....."

"OR?" Lecher prodded, trying to cut Guile's dramatic pause down to the bare minimum.

"...or Reality Itself is trying to prevent Lure from killing Tom Daggen, Grant Anders, or Kenny Miller."

"Or Mike," Lecher added.

"No. Mike is only there because Kenny's brother Paul called him after Kenny's beating. Although it wasn't statistically unlikely, it was a strange thing for Paul to do, considering that Kenny and Mike hadn't spoken in seven months."

"So....?"

"So a boy whose mind possesses considerable telepathic resistance, who could instantly figure out the screen and accidentally use that knowledge to DEFEAT all of us....and who cannot be mind-controlled by anything LESS than Entanglement, has been strategically placed in the way of Lure's revenge. Reality Itself is most likely using Mike to protect one of the targets."

"It has to be Kenny Miller."

"Does it? Maybe R.I. set up the fight between Mike and Lure just to get Mike's feet wet...give him time to think of more complicated countermeasures. Maybe Mike is there to engage Lure without knowing that he's protecting Tom or Grant, in the unlikely event that Lure awakens and finds a way to get there before the boys leave."

"But they can't leave, can they?" Lecher asked. "Lure has Entangleds stationed there! Won't those assholes...I dunno...lock the gate or make a roadblock with some of those rotting picnic tables and shit?"

"Lure ordered them to gather in a remote section of the park and await further telepathic commands. Since Lure is comatose, and even if I could contact them, I couldn't order them to do anything other than retrieve Lure and take him back to either the lake house or the Master, the Entangleds will remain hidden at Faggot Forest until Mike hopefully uses my verbal code to mobilize them."

"Are you talking about the verbal, password-activated, Entangled controller with supreme override capabilities you created, in spite of it being absolutely forbidden by the Masters...ALL OF THEM...and PUNISHABLE BY DEATH?! THAT code?!" Lecher inquired sweetly.

"Yes."

"So which target do you think Reality Itself is protecting?"

"Well, Kenny Miller is obviously destined to cure cancer, and Tom Daggen will no doubt go on to broker peace in the Middle East...."

"You know, you could've just said you don't know."

"I already did, but it didn't work, so I decided to try sarcasm."

"So what do we do?"

"Nothing. Once I have Robbie send the text to Mike, we have no reason to care what Reality Itself is up to. It's far above our pay grade, it won't benefit us in any way, and it will only serve to distract us from my plan to save our lives, and Reality Itself has already distracted us far too long already."

"I was talking about Robbie!" Lecher growled.

"Oh, right. Sorry," Guile said, redirecting his attention to the almost completely time-frozen, horrified cop with a helpless little boy at gunpoint. With one single twitch, Robbie's body, lying face up and supported by his elbows, would receive a bullet in the chest."

"Of all the ways I could've gotten the cop's attention, I picked the one that hinted at my concern for Robbie," Guile thought. "I'd blame myself, but I've just received word that the Thrall now has a FRESH coat of Probability Spasm Residue, which means that Reality Itself had a hand in my stupidity. That is both good and bad. Bad in that Reality Itself can use Lecher, Lure, and myself as dupes too, but good in that we now have PLENTY of time to summon the Master before the P.S.R. disappears, meaning that I can now arrange for Lecher to carry out his plan to fix Lure, and I can now plausibly blame Reality Itself for Lure's suicide attempt."

"Why don't you SCREEN Robbie!" Lecher spitballed, concerned at Guile's inactivity, "Or make the cop see a false image of Robbie getting up and running away!"

"Because BOTH of those scenarios involve surprising Officer Pudroolen while he still has his gun pointed squarely at Robbie. We can't risk it!"

"BUT IF WE DON'T ACT NOW.......!!"

"You're playing into Reality Itself's hands....if it has any. It's probably counting on us making a snap decision...the wrong decision. But in spite of our worry, I think we have sufficient nanoseconds to really think this through."

"HOW DO WE MAKE THE COP REDIRECT HIS GUN WITHOUT SURPRISING HIM?!"

"Simple. We don't."

"ROBBIE!" Guile yelled to him telepathically as soon as they were both once again perceiving the flow of time at the same rate.

"Yeah?!" Robbie responded mentally, only slightly less terrified than Mark.

"Without touching the cop or the barrel of that gun, get out of the way! He won't see you! Do it now!"

As he did not possess Lecher's "need to know" at that moment, Robbie instantly obeyed, swinging his upper body out of the line of fire, standing up, and backing away from Officer Pudroolen. A screened high- pitched yelp escaped Robbie's lips when he saw that his body was still lying on the ground, in the path of the cop's shaking gun.

"Hey, Cop-sucker!" Lecher snarled. "Scram! Follow the yellow line to the feeding area!"

"NO!" Guile corrected. "Radical change in plans! Robbie, put six or more trees between you and the cop, but STAY CLOSE!"

The moment Robbie took his first step towards a huge Douglas Fir, he stopped moving. Lecher had no idea why Guile would want another time compressed conference so soon after the last one, but it was a good opportunity to voice an objection.

"Guile, shouldn't Robbie get the hell out of here?" Lecher asked. "If Reality Itself makes those bullets ricochet..."

"Reality Itself can do the improbable, not the impossible. Robbie will be safe. In the meantime, you have work to do."

"I'm kind of busy back at the feeding area right now."

A mental picture of a child's pinwheel appeared in Lecher's mind. Each fan blade had a different color, one of them being baby blue.

"Lecher, welcome to the new normal for the American worker. Thanks to the labor shortage, in addition to your present responsibilities back at the feeding area, I am now going to overload you with a crushing additional task, and for Caboose's sake, I strongly recommend that you don't try to 'soft quit'. Each color on the color wheel corresponds to a tendril..."

"DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

".....that I want here. Now."

"En route," Lecher confirmed before questioning, "but I don't know if some of them can reach this far."

"As far as I know, I can project myself...or the two of us...about a mile from the Thrall, maybe more. According to my Guile Archives, the tendrils can reach a little further away from the Thrall than I can, in case we are ordered by our Lure to hunt remotely. If I hadn't been so weak after Lure's suicide attempt, we could've hunted without dragging him to the road."

"Huh. That ain't in my archives....the stuff about how far the tendrils can go."

"Maybe the next Pilot Fish in line to serve us might possess that-"

"KNOCK IT OFF!" Lecher snapped. "IS THAT THE WAY THINGS ARE GONNA BE FROM NOW ON?! ....YOU CRACKIN' THE WHIP BY THREATENING TO KILL CABOOSE ALL THE TIME?!?!"

"Lecher?"

"WHAT?!"

"If Guiles had the power to kill their Pilot Fish, just to see if we could get our minds on some better archives, the life expectancy of a Pilot Fish would be roughly a day, maybe less. This would lead to Masters having to make MORE. From what I can determine from my archives, the Masters are stuck where they are for some reason...."

"Because they're trapped between an automated galactic armada and an all-consuming tear in the dimensional fabric?" Lecher thought happily. "Or maybe because they can't get fish tacos on their side of the barrier?"

For threatening Caboose, and for generally being an asshole, Lecher renewed his vow that Guile would never lay his mind on the fantastic archive upgrade that lay just a couple of inches away from his brain- section, hidden in a secret storage area of Lecher's brain-section that Guile could not access.

Guile would never know anything about the Masters before their fall, back when they were spacefaring gods who joyfully traveled the stars, acting as universal sources of knowledge and wisdom. Back when they possessed humility, and demonstrated it by humbly referring to themselves by their language's translation for "blobs", instead of joining with the rest of the galaxy, who once called them "The Exhalted Ones", "The Sacred Beings, "The Lightbringers", etc.

But Lecher was also keeping Guile from learning about "The Gash", and that was a huge mistake, one that would result in death.

".....and the frustration caused by their eternal imprisonment has made them indolent," Guile continued. "A Master would never LET a Guile create work for Him, especially if it was done to gain more knowledge, thus power, without the Master's express approval."

"Wait a second!" Lecher demanded, slowwwwwwly realizing what Guile was telling him. "Are you saying that you CAN'T kill Caboose?"

"No. Last week I tried with all my might, but it didn't work."

Lecher was about to accuse Guile of lying and manipulating him, but he'd be setting himself up for endless mockery.

"You would be," Guile confirmed, once again thoughtlessly invading Lecher's thoughts, "but since you won't sign on to my 'survival at any cost' platform, I did what I had to do. It's like what I heard you tell Robbie before I was able to focus my attention back to him. And you were right! I can't help being what I am, any more than you can. I hope you understand why I had to threaten Caboose in order to redirect your attention back to saving Robbie, and more importantly, the plan."

*************************************************************************** ....but unlike those created by a black hole, these distortions occur randomly, briefly targeting a specific area with extreme intensity... ***************************************************************************

"Yeah, I understand," Lecher lied, looking at a file he would NEVER let Guile read, especially after threatening Caboose...REPEATEDLY! "As long as everything's back on track, that's all that matters."

"Excellent," Guile lied, sensing deception somewhere deep in Lecher's brain-section, but not being able to locate the source.

"But I WANT something!" Lecher snarled.

"Yes?"

"The incel is mine!"

"Russell Hawksmoor will be one of the guests at the party."

"What party?"

"I've just decided that if we can successfully drain Robbie, we're going to throw him a second Christmas to make up for the shitty one his mother gave him. The guests-slash-presents will be inhaling their invitations shortly. I just need one additional feeding to be able to herd them towards the feeding area."

"I'm guessing that the male stripper in the cop costume is our target?"

"Obviously."

"The one you're scaring with a screened image of yourself?"

"Yes," Guile confirmed.

"Umm....you do know how erections work, right?"

"Do dry up and let me play for a minute," Guile chastised, "After all, we might YET die in a few hours."

"So we're still not out of the woods yet, huh?"

"Was that a lame joke or a serious question?"

"Doesn't matter. Just give Officer Chickenshit his terror-boner. Baby Blue and the others are on their way."

"Ending hyper-time."

Officer Pudroolen briefly looked down at the false image of Robbie before looking up at the false image of Guile.

Guile was now standing face to face with the cop.

"STAY AWAY!" Mark screamed. "JUST STAY AW-"

BANG!

Startled by the accidental discharge of his gun, Mark jumped back, and lost his footing. The cop's sexy bubble butt dropped to the wet ground beside Robbie.

Robbie was gone.

Mark had almost been confronted by the false image of Robbie Byrne's pleading eyes, looking at Mark for help in dealing with the blood spurting out of a sucking hole in his chest.

But Mark Pudroolen wasn't worth the artistic effort.

Guile looked fondly behind the worried expression of Officer Pudroolen, at the advancing fog bank. Two and a half months of "Chapter 11 S.C.E. bankruptcy" was almost at an end. The Thrall's "Black Friday" was finally coming. It took a lot for Guile to drag THAT much Pit Fog a quarter mile, draining most of Jayce Harris' latest "donation"......(power in, power right back out again)......but it would be SO WORTH IT! Once Robbie's S.C.E. was safely in the bank, this situation wouldn't be, as Lecher put it, so "hot" anymore. The Thrall could FEED!!!! All Guile had to do was ensure Mike's safety, drain Robbie, and then the Thrall could FEAST LIKE IT HAD NEVER FEASTED BEFORE!!!"

"Robbie," Guile called out mentally to the boy who was now safe from Mark Pudroolen's 'policing' and from even the most tricky of trick- shots, "without identifying yourself, please use Mike's phone to send a contact by the name of 'Kenny Miller' the following text, word for word."

The message appeared in the air in front of Robbie's eyes.

"That doesn't make sense!"

"Mike will understand," Guile assured him before redirecting his attention back to the cop.

"I'M WARNING YOU!" Officer Pudroolen shrieked, in spite of having nothing to warn Guile with. The cop's bullets weren't effective, and he'd run out of thirteen year-old boys to use as bargaining chips.

The monster's jaw drooped down to the ground, and massive spiderlegs poked out of his mouth and swished around in the air sporadically as they sought something to grab onto in order to pull the monstrous arachnid's body out into the open. From inside the ghost's "oral vagina", black spider eyes glinted off the beam of Mark's flashlight.

The cop said nothing. His vocal cords wouldn't work. He tried to scream, but he just kept making huffing sounds instead.

It never even occurred to Mark to try and stand up.

The "ghost" suddenly began to age rapidly, quickly becoming impossibly old, then crumbling to dust, freeing the spider inside of it. The spider opened a huge, biologically-inaccurate mouth, circular, like the inside of a wishing well, but with triangular teeth lining the interior.

If the spider's mouth sounds familiar, it's because it was a scaled-down version of Caboose's mouth. With Guile's creativity, he could have come up with something horrifying and completely original.

But Mark Pudroolen wasn't worth the artistic effort.

It was good enough to make the police-officer-in-job-title-only lose bladder control, though. A wet spot briefly indicated that Mark dressed to the right, before spreading across the front of his pants. From behind several trees, a screened little boy laughed at the telepathically- transmitted spectacle.

Mark wasn't laughing, though. From his point of view, eight-legged death was coming for him, and his legs wouldn't work. Even Mark's worst nightmares were kinder than this.

While amusing himself by watching Mark Pudroolen unspool, Guile burned off even more energy by Entwining with some of the agonized men lying on the road, as well as the ones in their cars, trapped in the growing traffic jam. After all, what's Black Friday without Christmas shopping? And unlike Linda Byrne, Guile wanted to make sure Robbie had plenty of presents to unwrap, ones specifically suited to his wants and needs.

The massive spider hissed at the cop and crouched down against the ground. It's body shook like a tensed muscle...or a coiled snake. It was about to jump, putting all of those eyes and its fuzzy face right up to Mark's, relieving him of the burden of sanity.

And then where were those shiny, dripping fangs that glistened in the flashlight beam.

"Oh Jesus! Oh God!" Officer Pudroolen bark-whined.

Neither Jesus nor God were in Mark Pudroolen's thoughts when he quickly grabbed the ear protection off of one of the chainsaw-wielding road workers and put it on his own head. Although the road worker was immediately overwhelmed by the noise, and dropped to the ground in agony, his outraged buddies were more than willing to beat the shit out of the cop on his behalf. Mark unholstered his weapon to encourage the men to back off, and in a move meant to justify what he'd done, Mark pointed at his badge, then at his fellow officers in distress, then at the ear protection on the other men's heads, and then he made the universal sign for "hand them over".

The sound stopped, and Mark found himself trapped in the SUPREME socially awkward moment. But Mark reminded himself that he was a police officer of the Timbersburg Police Department, so he handled the situation exactly as one of his fellow officers would've done.

Mark quickly reholstered his gun and gave the road workers an "I don't give a FUCK!" cocky shrug with the appropriate, matching facial expression. But after he arrogantly flung the ear protection to the ground to demonstrate his lack of appreciation and remorse, Mark turned around to see that an older guy, one of the witnesses who saw the monster, was filming Mark with his cell phone. The guy was looking at Mark with disgust, and responded to Mark's questioning gaze by opening his left hand to reveal the two hearing aids he'd removed, which had allowed him the luxury of being able to film some footage of the event, footage that Mark had just made much more valuable.

Officer Pudroolen suddenly realized just how bad that footage would make him look.

"I'M GOING AFTER THE BOY!" Mark shouted, in spite of being terrified at the prospect of having a monster tongue wrapped around his face as well. Still, unemployment and public ridicule were pretty terrifying, too.

Officer Mark Pudroolen's sad attempt at damage control was doomed to fail, and he would become yet another man who would forever regret his decision to go into those fucking woods.

Mark finally found the leg strength to scramble to his feet to prevent the spider from simply hopping on top of him.

"STAY BACK!" the cop screamed, finding his voice in response to the "security blanket" effect of feeling and hearing his gun firing off its remaining rounds. Mark emptied the magazine diagonally downward at the crouching spider, just as Guile planned, to keep the panicky cop from firing towards I-147, and all the injured people he'd been so damned concerned about when he was using them to guilt Robbie into compliance.

Continuing his streak of cowardice, Mark turned to run into the fog, but the fog ran into him first. His eyes went wide as fog exploded up his nose with the force of a full aerosol can. Mark freaked and brought his hands to his face in an instinctive attempt to block his nostrils, accidentally flinging his flashlight and gun into the woods in the process.

Mark held his hands to his nose and mouth, preventing more fog from invading his lungs while he tried to look for cover from the spider he could no longer see in the misty blackness, and force out the fog that was already in his lungs.

The only thing he managed to force out was carbon dioxide. The Pit Fog was already coursing through Mark's blood stream towards his brain.

Mark's thinking got fuzzy, and his arms dropped to his sides. The fog resumed blasting up his nose, but Mark could no longer fight it. He just opened his mouth to avoid having his lungs pop like balloons, and staggered in place like a zombie while the Pit Fog-contaminated air poured up his nose, coated his lungs, and blew out of his mouth.

Mark's legs failed him again, but for chemical reasons this time instead of cowardice, causing him to stumble backwards and fall on his ass once more. Mark's body involuntarily relaxed, so deeply and completely that he just settled into the wet dirt, but his brain stayed fully aware and totally alarmed. His eyes scanned the darkness, convinced that the spider was going to attack at any second...and stab him with its teeth.

Something would crawl on top of Mark, but unfortunately for him, he'd be doing the stabbing.

"OFFICER DOWN!!" Mark Pudroolen yelled to his fellow cops. All of a sudden, he remembered that radios weren't just decorative pieces of plastic designed to fool the public into erroneously thinking that the police had the ability to speak with one another at a distance.

But since Mark couldn't move, it no longer mattered. Moveover, unbeknownst to the paralyzed cop, even if he could reach his radio and call for reinforcements, no one would be able to respond.

Burt Veribton couldn't get his heart rate down.

This winter hadn't been very easy on Burt. Seasonal Affective Dis- order was hitting him harder than ever, and the winter had hardly begun. To combat his growing depression, which had gotten so bad that it was scaring him, Burt started hitting the bottle again, which in his case was code for acquiring new and better kiddie porn. Of course, he was also actually hitting the bottle as well, so....

Burt had a collection of child pornography so large that it was inconceivable that he could ever watch ALL of it, and yet, as his least favorite season dragged on, that's exactly what Burt managed to do. And thanks to repeated viewings and video resolutions that were quaint by today's standards, nothing was scratching Burt's itch.

When the unbelievable heat wave started, and the roads began to clear to the point that Burt's dread of driving in winter suddenly stopped being an issue, Burt reached out to some old "friends", guys who were far braver than he when it came to using their computers to acquire and distribute potentially life-ruining videos, only to discover that a lot of those connections had "dried up" for a variety of chilling reasons.

Burt decided that it wasn't worth it.

But that afternoon, out of the blue, a man named Milton Yerdil called. Milton had heard about Burt through a mutual friend (who Burt texted RIGHT AWAY to "check his references") and after a protracted conversational tap dance about 'nothing in particular', Burt drove to Johnsport for a 'media exchange', and made out very well. Milton even gave him a new-ish video camera he didn't want for some reason. Burt didn't want to know what Milton had been filming with it............because Burt didn't want to ruin the surprise. It was on a specially marked series of DVDs in the box.

Burt couldn't get over how lucky he'd been. The odds of Milton calling and offering Burt exactly what he needed were astronomical. It was an extremely mathematically unlikely coincidence, so much so that Burt, in spite of taking extra precautions, was still convinced that at any moment, Milton would whip out a badge and/or police would come charging into the room.

Burt left Milton's home in a state of heart-pounding excitement, desperate to get home and enjoy his good fortune, but fearful about the contraband in his vehicle. As a safety precaution, Burt decided to take I-147 instead of the turnpike, to avoid all the speed traps. Burt was nervous about the possibility of getting stopped. The last thing he wanted, after all, was to encounter the police with a box full of child pornography in his car. If that happened, Burt would probably have a heart attack!

Burt Veribton screamed in frustation at the sight of BOTH lanes of the divided two lane section of I-147 clogged with southbound traffic, and people abandoning their vehicles to venture into the woods. And worst of all, there were cops everywhere, trying and failing to get people out of the northbound lane and back to their vehicles. It was a nightmare, and because there were cars behind him, Burt was trapped!

Due to his sheer terror that someone would break into his car and discover what he was carrying, Burt stayed put. He didn't even crack the window for fresh air, because he wanted to be as physically and mentally isolated from what was going on outside his car as possible.

If only he could get his heart rate down.

"I'm going to have a heart attack, they're going to life-flight me to a hospital in Johnsport, and I'm going to be arrested in my hospital bed once the tow truck driver looks inside the box in my back seat," Burt whined miserably. "Why didn't it fit in the damned trunk, at least?! Even if I claim in court that the guy had no business BEING in my trunk, and I manage to get the case dismissed on a technicality, my life will still be OVER! Everyone will KNOW!

Burt jumped in alarm at the sound of a text notification.

"A BIGFOOT SIGHTING?!?!" Burt screamed incredulously at the factually inaccurate text he'd received from a friend. "MY LIFE IS OVER.... ...BECAUSE OF A GODDAMNED BIGFOOT SIGHTING?!?!?!?!"

Burt started to laugh. It was one of those laughs that gradually turns into crying, but before that could happen, a monster named Caboose announced his presence to the Earth by letting out a scream that would indeed find it's way completely around the globe, one news broadcast at a time.

Burt's decision to keep his car windows closed, in addition to his quick reflexes and small fingers, saved him from any ear damage or hearing loss. Unfortunately, his rear driver's side window was now spiderwebbed. Burt was quite frankly amazed that the front window hadn't shattered, considering that it vibrated so fiercely that Burt turned his head and closed his eyes.

Other cars hadn't been so lucky.

"How can this get any worse?" Burt bemoaned as people screamed and cried in pain all around his car. "How the FUCK can this get ANY FUCKING WORSE?!?!"

Burt didn't like the word "fuck". He never used it, because in spite of being addicted to witnessing the end of children's childhoods, Burt considered himself a gentleman, a gentleman so afraid of someone pushing in his spiderwebbed window and getting at the box that he refused to leave his car to help anyone get to the EMTs.

While mired in fear, desperation, and despair, Burt idly looked through the cracked and broken windows of the empty car next to him. Thanks to a few more texts, Burt learned that there was a tree lying across the road ahead, so since there was no northbound traffic toward Johnsport, several carloads of thoughtless, selfish, hopeful "monster-gazers" decided to use it as a parking lane. And once ONE car did it, naturally they ALL did it, blocking all incoming and outgoing emergency vehicles and turning a relatively minor traffic inconvenience into a major crisis.

"Gee, I hope you all got to see something large and furry before your ears exploded," Burt mused hatefully. "But thanks for illegally parking your car between me and that sonic wave. I have one window to replace, but you have three...maybe four."

While blankly staring through those car windows, Burt saw a tired- looking old man step out of the woods, trudge up to the guardrail, shakily step over it, and scan the road, looking for someone or something.

In the ethereal glow of moonlight mixed with the distant crime scene lighting, Burt could see the guy strangely well. His face looked like tanned full-grain leather, and was only a shade or two away from blending into the man's vest, which sat loosely on top of his beige, open collared, button down shirt.

The dead old man had a guitar strapped across his back.

To Burt's annoyance, the guy established eye contact with him and shuffled around the cars in the 'parking lot' to come speak to Burt.

"Are you okay?" Burt called out after opening his window in a forced display of politeness. "Can you still hear?"

Burt was determined to survive his nail-biting, nervous breakdown- inducing ordeal by 'acting natural'.

"Yeah, Burt," the old man grumbled, startling Burt to his core, "I can hear you just fine."

The dead old man squatted down and put his weather-beaten face too close to Burt's.

"Do we know one another?" Burt inquired. "I have prosopagnosia, 'face blindness', so if we know one another, you'll have to tell me how or I won't be able to recall-"

"Why don't you just let me in, so the two of us can discuss that box of ruined childhoods you've got sitting in your back seat?" suggested the thing wearing the face of Kenny Miller's deceased grandfather.

Burt just stared at Andrew Miller with pleading eyes while quietly making a frenzied attempt to think his way out of this mess. It was a bit like someone getting their car stuck in the mud and trying to free it by continually flooring the accelerator.

Andrew reached in and pressed the unlock button. Burt was momentarily shocked out of shock by the sight of Andrew unstrapping the guitar from his back and, in a sudden, unexpected burst of power and rage, flinging it by the neck at the treeline before resuming his exhausted trek around the front of Burt's car to the other side.

Burt rolled up his window, partially to avoid anyone hearing what the old man wanted to "discuss", and partially in case another loud noise happened.

"That isn't necessary," Andrew informed Burt while sitting down and making himself comfortable for the interesting conversation ahead. "Nothing alive can hear us talking, and the screaming thing in the woods is gone. You'll never hear it again...unless I fail."

A woman stumbled by, wailing and holding her bleeding right ear as she made her way towards the EMTs just beyond the fallen tree. Burt barely noticed.

"Was 'the screaming thing' a monster?" Burt babbled, needing to impress upon the man that he was a nice person, in spite of the box that suggested the opposite. "They say...there's a monster in the woods."

"Yes," the old, dead man verified while taking off his fishing hat and smoothing his pure white hair. The color contrast between his face and hair was striking. "There were two monsters in the woods, but now we're back down to one, for the moment."

"What do they look like?" Burt asked, humoring the man and his talk of monsters, in an effort to secure his good will. Old men like people to talk to them, since no one usually wants to, since converations with the elderly tend to be one-sided, like talking to blowhards, professors, and members of the clergy. But if interminable boredom was what it took to keep Burt out of prison, it would be worth it, even if Burt eventually ended up envying the people outside who couldn't hear.

"There are few things as tragic as the sexual exploitation of a child," Andrew pontificated at an agonizingly slow pace, ignoring Burt's question entirely, "....but ironically, there's a funny side to it."

"Funny?" Burt finally asked after an uncomfortable pause. Burt realized that he'd probably made the old man think that Burt wasn't giving him his FULL attention. Burt pulled himself together. "What do you find funny about child exploitation?"

"Name's Andrew," the old man said bluntly, followed by another scary pause.

"Burt...but you already knew that. Do I....know you?"

"Well, Burt..........let me ask you a question. When you were a little boy, if your mother had given you the choice of either having her beat the tar out of you......or molesting you, which would you have chosen?"

"Uh...I'm gay, so..."

"That isn't what I asked, Burt Veribton," Andrew intoned coldly, sending a matching icy chill down Burt's spine. "Answer the question I did ask."

Burt deliberately hadn't given Andrew his last name. Burt turned away from the old man and stared out the window. A cop walked by, which wasn't surprising, since there were cops everywhere. Nevertheless....

"I choose not to answer any questions without the presence of my attorn-"

Burt stopped talking. He'd whipped his head towards Andrew mid- sentence, only to see that the old man was completely naked.

"Check for a wire," Andrew suggested, sounding very, very bored. "Wake me when you're done."

Without asking...because Burt suddenly couldn't remember how to phrase a basic question...Burt reached over and touched Andrew's shoulder. He was solid. When Burt withdrew his hand, the old man's clothes suddenly reappeared.

Burt's heart started pounding again, and he was seized by a logical urge to get the hell out of the car and run from the unknown. However, if he did that, he'd be leaving behind a box containing his possible life sentence...in the hands of someone who obviously wanted Burt to stay right the fuck where he was.

"Considering what you are, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you didn't touch my willy, or even look at it," Andrew observed judgementally with a laugh that turned into a minor coughing fit.

"Considering whatever you are, I was afraid to," Burt admitted, unbuttoning his collar and breathing more deeply in his latest attempt to get his heart rate down. "What ARE you, anyway?"

"Burt, all you need to know is that I am a very powerful entity who requires your assistance. If you provide it, you will arrive home at some point between 2:12 and 2:19am. From that point on, for the rest of the winter, which won't actually last all that long, you will be able to enjoy the worst possible result of child labor. If you fail to help me, you're going to experience some truly bad luck regarding the contents of that box."

"Can I ask you a question?" Burt asked, finding himself in the exact same circumstance as Mike during his text conversation with Lure.

"I already know what your question is. I'll answer it after you

answer mine."

In spite of being in the presence of an intimidating being with unknown motives and the power to make his clothes, and perhaps Burt, disappear, now that exposure (and prison) were off the table, conditionally, Burt could calm down enough to contemplate the old man's question.

"As long as my mother kept her clothes on, and I didn't have to do anything to her, I would've preferred molestation to physical abuse."

"A common answer, I'm sure. Yet in spite of that, people care so much MORE about a child being pleasured than a child being pained. For example, the dead man whose face I'm wearing...his son has been beating the hell out of HIS son, Kenny, for years. Everybody SEES it, for Christ's sake, and everyone is AWARE of it, but the boy's mother knows how to game the system, so no one helps the poor kid. Tonight, for example, Kenny's father beat him so bad that the boy can hardly walk! But here's the funny part: a seventeen year-old classmate, a year older than Kenny, asked Kenny to show him the bruise that was responsible for his limited mobility. Under that pretext, Kenny pulled down his pants and underwear without thinking and allowed the boy to photograph the bruise...along with his privates, which Kenny hadn't had time to cup properly. Now...if Kenny were to take that picture to the police, would he finally get the help he has been denied for years, or would the boy who photographed the bruise end up going to prison for child pornography? It's madness...hilarious madness!"

"Yeah, I guess," Burt answered after another awkward pause.

"Another funny thing," Andrew began. "If all of the DVDs in that box disappeared, leaving only the drawings, could you go to prison?"

"Uh...no. Unless an actual child is-"

"WRONG!" Andrew corrected with unexpected loudness, considering his frailty. "You can actually go to prison for the sexual exploitation of a child who, like me, does not really exist."

"I wasn't aware of that," Burt admitted.

"That's interesting. As someone who likes to gratify themselves watching children being used sexually, I would think you'd be more up on stuff like that. Of course, I'd also think you'd have more money saved up in case you're ever caught, since child pornography defense attorneys charge up front. So many of their clients kill themselves before their cases go to trial, you see."

"I wasn't planning on getting caught," Burt said, simply to fill yet another uncomfortable silence.

"No one ever plans on getting caught," Andrew chuckled. "So, apparently the ACLU took a nap, the First Amendment got gutted, and a drawing of a stick figure giving a blow job to a smaller stick figure can now ruin someone's life. Again...funny! And funnier still, while the First Amendment shrinks, the Second Amendment grows, resulting in more DEAD children, which doesn't seem to matter as much to upright, moral, religious folks. Within a few years, I imagine that even writing stories about kids having sex with adults will be considered child porn. Maybe, as technology gets even more invasive and Orwellian, a stray thought about kids will cause you to spend the rest of your life in a cage. Meanwhile, there won't BE any more children because they've all been sacrificed on the altar of gun worship. Funny."

"I don't think that's funny at all," Burt said softly.

"You'd have to be the guardian of all life on Earth to understand," Andrew sighed, rubbing his crepy eyes. "And you'd have to be having a really...bad...year."

"Sorry," Burt said perfunctorily. "Can I ask my question?"

"The souls, or life-force, of humans leave their bodies after death. There is a special, undetectable energy that is directed at our sun in the form of a tight beam. That energy is pushed along by the solar wind and washes across the planet like a river. Sometimes the river is high, sometimes the river is low. The souls of dead humans, animals, and even plants, travel against that current, back to the sun, and then back through the beam, to God knows where. That is all I know."

"So does God ex-?"

"I used my power to arrange for Milton Yerdil to call you," Andrew interrupted, his patience wearing as thin as his skin, "and I encouraged him to give you that video camera so you could do me a favor."

"You...a 'powerful entity', need ME, a NOBODY, to film something for you?" Burt asked, feeling frightened and out of his depth as he tried to come to grips with the possibility that an insane god had targeted him for trivial harassment, possibly as punishment for his child pornography habit, or maybe just for personal amusement."

"Precisely," Andrew answered. "And by that I mean the part about you filming something for me, not the stuff you were thinking about me doing this to punish you or amuse myself at your expense. "

"Why me? Why did you drag ME into his?!" Burt asked, his heart rate going sky high and his floundering emotional control over his fear suddenly slipping. "I mean, of everyone you could've forced into this weirdness, why the hell would you pick ME? I've spent my life laughing at the red- necks who claim to have seen bigfoot, and I only watch those hokey docu- dramas about people living in haunted houses so I can laugh at the people, their stupid decisions, their disfunctional relationships, their tacky decor, and how they live their horrid lives, which are FAR more screwed up than MINE! I'm sorry, but I'm not the kind of guy who ever thought he'd be sitting in his car, next to a monster-filled forest, talking to a self-proclaimed 'powerful entity' who needs a barely competent videographer who only ever records his poorly-attended holiday parties and stupid things his cat does!"

"I chose you because you are the ONLY person in this region with ALL of the attributes I require!" Andrew stated, forcing Burt to hear his words in his mind instead of his ears, since the sound of Burt hyperventilating was drowning out the weak, old man voice of Andrew Miller.

Andrew let out a long, slow exhalation of irritation as Burt rolled down his window and gulped the night air in a futile attempt to cope with the massive stress he was under. The old man decided to temporarily take on another form, one that would calm Burt. Andrew didn't have many to chose from, since only a few of his agents and targets still retained enough of his lingering touch, but his selection was never in question. Andrew doubted that Burt could be calmed by Mike Pearson, Craig Byrne, Jaden Harris, Jayce Harris, Paul Miller, Milton Yerdil, or a duplicate of Burt himself, however....

"Mister?" a little boy's voice asked, startling Burt.

Burt almost gave himself whiplash turning his head back toward the old man. He was gone, and in his place sat a naked little boy with red hair.

"Sir, I'll let you, but please don't tell my mom and dad, okay?" the kid implored before lowering the back of his seat and raising his left leg and stretching it over to rest on the steering wheel.

The imposter Robbie Byrne sighed contentedly and feigned patience while Burt slowly relaxed and let his libido do the thinking. The thing in the Robbie disguise wished he had the ability to change into a much younger version of Robbie, but sadly, he'd never used Robbie as a pawn until tonight, so he was stuck trying to seduce a child porn addict into becoming an actual pedophile by using Robbie's thirteen year-old body. Still, like the filthy Thralls of his enemies, Fake Robbie could be "seasoned to taste" with some limited shape-shifting.

Ordinarily, Burt Veribton could not be tempted by a boy as old as thirteen, but since Robbie hadn't had his growth spurt quite yet, Fake Robbie could pass for much younger. All he had to do was delete Robbie's pubic hair, reduce the size of his genitals by fifty percent, and soften his skin. Beyond that, he just needed to get rid of Robbie's foreskin, as Burt was not a fan of those. Presto.

Burt knew it was a lie, of course, but after his dark habit consumed his life, and achieving an erection became impossible unless he was sitting at his computer and viewing a kiddie porn scene he hadn't yet watched to death, Burt ceased having intimate contact with anyone.

An utterly safe sexual encounter with a little boy was too much for Burt to resist.

Burt reached down between Fake Robbie's legs and savored the wrinkled texture of the boy's puckered 'turtle shell'. Burt would enjoy massaging the boy's sack to loosen it up so he could play with his tiny balls.

"I don't have that much time," the boy giggled, so Burt skipped ahead and fingered Fake Robbie's peepee, which, unlike Real Robbie's penis, actually deserved to be called such.

"I like you doing that to me," Fake Robbie said happily. "Does it make you feel better?"

"Yes, yes it does," Burt confessed, all of his personal reality reducing to the words coming out of the boy's mouth, and the tactile sensations he was receiving through the fingers of his right hand.

"Feel my balls again," the boy instructed.

Burt smiled. the tiny sack was loose now. After some light stretching, Burt handled the boy's testicles between his fingertips.

"I....umm....have to say more stuff," Fake Robbie announced, "but I don't want to ruin...this...for you."

"Unless you turn back into the old man, I doubt even you have the power to ruin this for me," Burt stated with flat-out honesty.

"I know you didn't ask to be involved in something like this...."

"Feeling much better about that, thanks," Burt blurted while going back to Robbie's peepee and seeing if it would respond to being gently manipulated between Burt's thumb and middle finger."

"....but if it weren't for me, you wouldn't have that box sitting behind you," Fake Robbie informed Burt, sounding like a little boy reading from a script while willingly, but nervously, submitting to molestation for the first time in his life. "You'd have to make it through the winter being unable to experience any sort of sexual release, since your old child porn no longer excites you."

"He's stiff," Burt thought, barely paying attention to the boy's admonition, "and I can feel it flex every couple of seconds. I bet I can get him off."

"Also, I gave you a week of summer when you needed it most...," the boy continued breathily, sounding like he was either experiencing a growing panic or the unfamiliar sensation of someone forcing him to feel funny by doing things to him in areas of his body that his parents told him to never let strangers touch.

"Christ, this is exciting," Burt thought as the boy's tiny body trembled violently in response to Burt relentlessly rubbing his peepee. "I'm driving the little fucker insane, and he has no idea what's happening to him!"

"....so I don't think gasp a favor is too much to ask..."

"FINE! FINE! I'll do whatever you want!" Burt promised. "Just please be quiet...I mean...just keep acting like you're a little boy. I've never actually done this before, and I'll never do it again, so I just need it to be perfect.....I need to think this is REAL!"

"Since you and I now have a binding agreement, Mr. Veribton, from your perspective, it will be real. But as I cannot maintain it for very long, it will be brief."

"I don't under-" Burt started to say before he was momentarily overcome by an intense wave of vertigo.

Burt Veribton couldn't believe his luck. After going to the park and striking up a conversation with a little boy named Robbie, Burt was able to skillfully direct the conversation toward the topic of sex. The boy was completely naive of every aspect of male sexuality. Apparently, in addition to not talking to Robbie about the birds and the bees, his parents also couldn't be bothered to instruct him never to get into a stranger's car, as Robbie happily and naively agreed to continue their sex talk inside of Burt's vehicle.

After saying all the right things, Robbie was now naked in Burt's passenger seat with the seat down and his trembling left leg draped across the steering wheel. Robbie's trembling was Burt's fault, since he was, at the boy's request, using Robbie's peepee to demonstrate how to masturbate. During his sex discussion, Burt deliberately made masturbation sound like the most awesome thing in the world, causing the boy's orange shorts to tent.

"If you pull your shorts down," Burt had offered, "I could masturbate your penis for you. You know, just to make sure you know what to do when you try to do it alone, and you will...probably before you go to bed...and when you wake up in the middle of the night to do it again."

After looking around the car to make sure they were alone, the boy actually agreed. Not only that, but when Burt asked if he could record it on his cell phone, for "educational purposes", the boy agreed, as long as his face wasn't on camera.

So now, as the naked boy's left leg shuddered violently, Burt felt as if he were in heaven.

"Uh....uh....uh....MISTER?" the boy suddenly yelled in alarm, despite being told exactly what to expect. "IT'S STARTING TO FEEL WEIRD! I THINK IT'S HAPPENING! WHAT DO I DO NOW? DO I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING?!?!"

"No, just relax and let it happen," Burt instructed, feeling more alive than he'd felt in years, but forcing himself to calm down so he could focus and maintain a consistent pressure and tempo.

Everything had to be perfect.

Robbie gasped, arched his back, and looked as though Burt's roof upholstery was scaring him to death.

"IT'S....DOING IT...IT'S...I MEAN....I CAN FEEL IT!" Robbie yelled with unnecessary volume.

Burt twisted in his seat so he could switch hands and rub Robbie's peepee with his left, as Robbie's arched back was making it difficult for Burt to reach the boy's tiny peg, as well as preventing Burt from stroking anything other than the head.

Burt pulled off the maneuver perfectly, grabbing his recording cell phone from his left hand, twisting it around, and aiming it perfectly at Robbie's crotch while quickly getting his left hand down between the little boy's legs, lightly pinching his peepee between his thumb and middle finger, and continuing the exact same pressure and rhythm as before. Burt could tell from his uninterrupted breathing pattern that Robbie barely noticed the necessary minor disruption.

The boy announced his first-ever orgasm with an adorable high- pitched squeak, and his arms, which he'd raised for some reason, suddenly bent back and flexed, as if he were trying to show off his tiny biceps.

"Uh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h," Robbie groaned, the sound taking on a charming vibratory quality, accentuated in the middle by Robbie's teeth briefly chattering.

But all of a sudden, the boy turned towards Burt with wide, panicked eyes.

"I GOTTA GO PEE...RIGHT NOW!" Robbie yelled before fumbling for the door handle.

"Pee right here!" Burt challenged, knowing that the boy was mistaking an impending ejaculation for urinary urgency. "I'll give you a hundred dollars if you can reach the windshield!"

Burt planned to give the boy a lot more than that! They say that 'Silence is Golden'.....and gold costs.

"Does it feel like you're peeing right now?!" Burt asked after the boy's back suddenly relaxed and he let out a hard puff of air.

The boy answered by emphatically nodding his head.

"Do you need me to keep rubbing it?!" Burt inquired.

The boy's head-nodding instantly turned into head-shaking.

Burt switched the phone back to his left hand and recorded himself reaching up under the child's balls to put pressure on his taint.

"I can feel him pulsing," Burt narrated, being cautious to avoid saying Robbie's name. "With each pulse, the tip of his pee-pee is tickling my palm."

"It's not a peepee," Robbie mumbled, riding out his forced post- orgasm relaxation period by melting into the seat while Burt brought the camera in close to document Burt's 'twitchy peepee' claim.

"You're right, I'm sorry," Burt said in a patronizing way that he knew 'the audience' would find amusing.

Burt tapped the screen and ended the recording just after Robbie extended his legs a performed a precious full-body stretch, with a child- like groan that warmed Burt's heart.

Instead of withdrawing his hand, Burt slid it up and used it to lovingly scoop up Robbie's warm little sack and his spent, shriveling, doodle.

Burt was hoping that Robbie would fall asleep, so he could continue holding him for a little while, but Robbie's eyes suddenly opened and he grabbed Burt's hand and inspected it.

"Didn't anything come out?" the boy asked, sounding disappointed. "You said I'd squirt white goo!"

Burt wondered if Robbie's desire to squirt 'white goo' had less to do with his wanting to grow up, and more to do with Robbie not having out- grown his little-boy fascination with gooey, sticky, slimy things.

"Sorry, Robbie," Burt consoled, "it looks like you're still too young for that. But don't be sad. Once you start squirting, you'll always make a mess that you'll have to clean up. And once your pubic hair starts growing in, it'll get stuck in there, and you'll have to use soap and water to wash it out. So ENJOY being able to make yourself feel good anywhere at any time without needing to clean up afterwards. You'll MISS these days when they're over."

"Yeah, I guess," the boy agreed half-heartenly, "but I really wanted to...you know...see it happen. Just to...sorta...see what it looks like...smells like...feels like."

"If you want," Burt offered, feeling his cock straining against his gray slacks, "You could make ME squirt."

"Uh....," the boy uttered, looking extremely conflicted.

"Is there something wrong?" Burt asked, drawing from an instructional video he watched, but never, ever expected to actually put to use.

The video, which became so popular and widely distributed that it led to the filmmaker's eventual arrest and conviction, featured a man explaining his various techniques for getting little boys to do whatever he wanted. And considering how many times the man, wearing his signature mask, showed up in Burt's collection, he was apparently very good at it.

"I kinda wanna see," Robbie hemmed and hawed, "but I'm...not...I don't know..."

"If you make a request and the boy reacts with uncertainly, you only ask 'why' ONCE," the narrator stressed. "If he's honestly considering going through with the request, and not just afraid of disappointing or angering you, he'll tell you what assurances he needs or what conditions need to be met before he'll agree to do what you want.

Do not soften the offer once you've made it. You're stuck with it! Offering to touch him on top of his underwear instead of inside of it might sound like an acceptable compromise to an adult, but a child does not understand haggling. It will scare him and confuse him, the two things you ALWAYS ACTIVELY AVOID!

And if the boy drops the subject, YOU drop the subject. The boy's either an unwilling candidate, or you asked for too much, too soon, with- out going through all of the intermediate steps I outlined earlier.

If you don't put in the time, you'll end up DOING time!"

"That's okay," Burt said with a carefree tone that didn't match his attitude at all.

Burt reached over and rubbed the boy's chest and belly, carefully avoiding the boy's junk, in case they were still sensitive, and also establishing that Burt didn't have ulterior motives for doing it, although technically, he did.

"Um...yeah," the boy suddenly blurted out after spending two minutes relaxing and enjoying Burt's frontal massage while using Burt's (tactical) silence to quietly consider Burt's offer. According to the narrator of Burt's instructional video, however, the boy hadn't really been considering the offer at all, as a nine year-old boy is neither mature enough nor intelligent enough to know how to weigh pros and cons. Robbie had merely spent the two minutes daring himself. "I think....can you show me?"

"Sure, if you want," Burt responded, giving the boy a couple of paternal pats on his thigh, which would've been a completely innocuous social gesture between a middle-aged man and a young boy, if it weren't for the fact that Robbie was completely naked.

"You might want to raise your seat back up," Burt suggested.

"Uh...oh!" Robbie responded before he reached down and fumbled with the controls, giving Burt plenty of time to use his index finger to play with the child's sleepy little nub.

After Robbie finally managed to bring his seat up, he observed what Burt was doing to him.

"It doesn't feel like it's gonna do anything," Robbie admitted.

"On the contrary," Burt thought as he made the little boy's pee-pee wiggle, flop, and dance around. "Right now, it's doing exactly what I want it to do."

Reluctantly, Burt stopped playing with Robbie's peepee and adjusted his own seat, moving it back as far as it would go. Then he unzipped his slacks and wrestled with his erection until it sprang out into the open.

Robbie's eyebrows lifted and his jaw slackened at the sight of Burt's manhood, unintentionally giving Burt the ultimate ego boost. Burt had NO intention of masturbating through his zipper, he'd just always imagined this moment starting with him "whipping it out". Once he'd gotten the reaction he desired, he quickly unbuckled his belt, unfastened his slacks, and shimmied both pants and underwear down to the floor mat.

Robbie twisted toward Burt and moved in closer to get a good look at Burt's adult-sized genitals. He seemed captivated, indicating that he most likely hadn't seen too many naked men in real life. Burt would've liked to ask the boy for confirmation of that theory, but as this was Burt's first time in a situation like this, he decided to follow the rules to the letter.

"Once the boy says 'yes', keep the mood the same, but do not say anything that does not need to be said. Unless you're creepy about it, silence won't make the boy change his mind, but gushing with gratitude and filling the air with words, WILL! Parents don't check on their boy children when they're noisy, they check on them when they're quiet. Boys like to do bad things stealthily, with a co-conspirator, not a babbling adult. Speak only when needed, give the boy alone-time with his thoughts as the request is being carried out, and use his face to monitor for any possible signs of emotional discomfort. Or, if you're a fucking idiot, just keep asking: 'Are you okay? You're okay, right? Still okay? You're sure you're okay with this? You'd tell me if you weren't okay, right?'."

In spite of being a very polite boy, Robbie did not ask before reaching over and groping Burt's hard-on, proving that "the rules" Burt was following were at least partially accurate. Burt spread his legs further apart to allow the boy more access, and closed his eyes to give Robbie some privacy and "alone-time with his thoughts" while he did whatever he needed to do with Burt's erect, adult male boner. Burt was determined to be a GOOD *co-conspirator" indeed.

Burt was so hard-wired to porn that he was concerned he might have to fantasize HARD and jackhammer himself in order to show the boy some "white goo", but being felt up by the kid had not only brought Burt to an almost uncomfortable level of firmless, it was also causing waves of sexual heat to radiate outward from his balls and travel down to his toes and up to his brain, which felt hot and tingly in Burt's skull.

If Burt wasn't careful, he might actually experience a case of premature ejaculation!

The boy wrapped his hand around Burt's erection and gave it an awkward pull, followed by a push that yanked the skin just under Burt's mushroom head. Without saying a word, Burt gently took the boy by the wrist, opened his hand, pulled the skin of his circumcised penis forward, then closed the boy's hand.

When Burt released the boy's wrist, he started stroking again.

Burt Veribton experienced true bliss.

The orgasm took about a minute to build, with no effort at all from Burt's imagination. For the first time in years, he felt as if some- one was making him cum, and there wasn't a goddamned thing he could do to stop it.

Burt let out an involuntary groan, causing the boy to squeeze him harder and rub a little faster.

"Are you gonna squirt soon?" the boy asked excitedly. "You'll let me know before it happens, right? You won't just do it without telling me, right?...I mean...you'll give me time to get ready to see it....?"

Burt chuckled internally about how the boy had just broken "the rules", before remembering that only Burt was subject to the rules. The boy could do whatever the hell he wanted...and Burt was happy to let him do it.

"I'll give you a countdown from five," Burt promised.

Burt decided to open his eyes and watch. The boy obviously didn't need any more 'alone-time with his thoughts', and Burt wanted to enjoy see- ing the boy's face while he witnessed Burt spraying cum.

Burt would've lasted longer had he kept his eyes closed.

The sight of the naked little boy eagerly pumping Burt's cock... ...along with the look of intense anticipation on his face...was just too much.

"Five....four.....three....two.....one....," Burt warned, good as his word, as orgasm grabbed him and pulled him under the waves. When Burt resurfaced, gasping for breath, he saw that the boy's left hand was nowhere near the tip of Burt's penis. For an instant, only an instant, Burt thought about using his hands to help catch some of his cum, but....

"I don't fucking care where it goes," Burt thought as watery semen went everywhere, splattering audibly against the windshield, sending droplets back at Burt's face, shirt, and his naked legs."

Burt's second squirt was his favorite. It hit the windshield at an angle and splashed back all over Robbie's upper chest, and most importantly, his lips.

Acting like the consummate child he was, Robbie thoughtlessly released Burt's dick, leaving him hanging. He'd done it because he finally realized that he wasn't able to coordinate using his right hand to continue stroking Burt AND stretch his left hand over to "collect a specimen", a specimen that Burt was happy to provide by finishing himself off.

While Burt thoroughly gooped the interior of the bowl created by Robbie opening his hands and putting his pinkies side-by-side, Burt felt another vertigo attack coming on. Fortunately, unlike before, it didn't seem as though it was going to hit him all at once. It was a slow build-up, like the forbidden, taboo, illegal orgasm he'd just enjoyed.

But although it was taking longer for Burt to depart from this fantasy than it did for him to enter into it, the transition would be far more disturbing.

Robbie withdrew his "bowl" just after Burt squeezed his shrinking, oozing dick and wiped it on the "rim", or in other words, the side of Robbie's left thumb.

Burt expected the boy to use Burt's seed to carry out whatever "experimentation" Robbie needed or just feel its fleeting warmth while letting it run though his fingers and onto his crotch, so the boy could experience what it would be like one day when he was able to slime his own pubic region.

That isn't what Robbie used it for.

Burt forgot all about his increasing vertigo, as well as his concerns about the semen that was dripping down into the air vents, at the sight of the little boy tilting his hand-bowl into his mouth and drinking Burt's cum.

"Robbie, are you...drinking it?" Burt asked, since he had no idea what to say other than stating the obvious.

"I don't just turn into them," the boy explained to Burt. "I also gotta act like 'em, sometimes. Robbie Byrne likes to swallow cum, so while I'm him, I swallow cum, too."

"What's..going....on?" Burt asked himself out loud, feeling the vertigo growing, seeing stars at the edges of his field of vision.

"Just ride it out," Robbie advised while lapping up the contents of his 'bowl'. "You'll slowly come back to yourself. DON'T get upset. I created this personalized 'perfect' scenario to calm you down. I'm gonna be pissed if you use it as an excuse to have a psychotic break, instead."

"You have...pubes now," Burt commented, looking down at Robbie's crotch and seeing that not only did he have a bright, scruffy nest of pubic hair, his tiny peepee was more mature, although far from adult-sized. Also, it had grown a foreskin.

The boy ignored Burt and busily licked the semen from between his fingers as if he'd just finished eating a messy plate of hot wings.

"This little freak has me acting like one of them!" Fake Robbie grumbled.

"Like one of who?" Burt asked before the vertigo flooded his mind.

"Feeling okay," the old man asked when Burt took a little too long snapping out of it.

"I don't know," Burt said, massaging his temples. "I...know that the boy was you...but my mind won't let me believe it."

"My doing. What's the point of going through all that effort only to have it end in disappointment. As a gift to you, for services that you will be rendering shortly, tomorrow you'll believe that the encounter really did happen, earlier this afternoon. However, here's the rub: if you succeed in your task, you'll know with absolute certainty that the boy won't tell anyone. But if you fail me, you'll spend the rest of your life worrying that the boy is going to tell at some point, and you'll remember him taking pictures of your car as you drove away."

"Ouch. Understood," Burt acknowledged while still scrunching his face and rubbing his temples with his eyes closed. "Will I think I'm losing my memory, since I won't be able to remember anything that happened after I sprayed the interior of my car with jizz?"

"I'll add that in post-production," the old man grumbled.

"I don't suppose you could also add a vivid memory of me talking the boy into a kiss...with tongue."

"You're pushing it...but yes. You haven't opened your eyes, and you keep rubbing your face. Are you all right?"

Burt's eyes fluttered for a second, then focused on the windscreen.

"I think I'll be okay...once I clean my windshield," Burt admitted. Burt was much more than simply 'okay'. His body was still humming from his first ever sexual contact with a little boy, which was made all the sweeter by the possibility of a complete lack of any possible negative consequences, a prize that Burt was determined to win. Burt had enough fear to live with already. "I'd better clean it up before someone sees it."

Burt looked around and noticed that the people in the car behind him had returned to their vehicle while Burt was molesting a little boy/ old man/god.

"Did those people see us...I mean...me and the boy?"

"Yes and no. Sometimes you have no idea where your cat is, only to discover him sitting on the back of the couch, right behind your head," the old man explained. "Well, that's you...for the next few hours, anyway. To put it in a way that you can easily understand, until I go back to sleep tonight, you are "Mister Cellophane" from the musical "Chicago". No one will notice you or pay any attention to you and whatever you're doing. More importantly, 'someone' won't notice you to read your mind."

"I'm going to be around someone else who can read minds?" Burt asked, feeling uneasy again.

"Yes. The monster reads minds."

"You want me to film the monster, don't you?" Burt asked, feeling like a complete moron for not having pieced it together before that moment. What are the odds that a 'powerful entity' and a 'monster' would be in the same place, but for completely different, unconnected reasons?"

"Yes," the old man repeated, reaching into the back seat and retrieving the video camera. "A monster who won't notice you. I have a little bit of influence over it, since it was born human, and 'monsterized' using only domestic parts, instead of those shitty foreign ones."

"I'm assuming you don't mean 'American made' vs. imports from other countries," Burt speculated. "Was the monster made by aliens?"

"You know," the old man growled, "one of the MANY reasons I picked you is because up until the last thing you said, you had no interest in knowing a goddamned thing about the paranormal."

"I would think you'd want someone fascinated with the paranormal for this task."

"And you'd be wrong. I want someone I can blackmail, someone who hates being in the spotlight for fear of discovery, and someone happy to slap the dust off of his hands and simply walk back into the shadows after filming undeniable proof of the supernatural. I really HOPE that's still you."

"Oh, it is," Burt assured Andrew. "I wasn't being curious, I was being conversational. You terrify me, and I have no idea what to say to you in order to make this go exactly the way I need it to go."

The old man smiled. He'd chosen well.

"I don't know if he charged it," Burt said as Andrew passed him the video camera.

"In a bizarre, statistically unlikely coincidence, in spite of not liking it, nor wanting to keep it, Mr. Yerdil charged it this afternoon."

"As I told Milton, I've used this exact model before, extensively," Burt mentioned. "What are the odds of that?"

"Surprising high," Andrew mumbled before straightening his back and taking a deep breath, as if he was preparing to give a speech. "In just a few moments, the boy I just pretended to be is going to be accidentally shot and killed by a police officer. Do NOT approach the body."

"I understand," Burt acknowledged after shaking off the desire to ask if the boy could be saved. Obviously, the god in the seat next to Burt didn't want him to be saved."

"Shortly thereafter, an artificial fog bank will roll in, sickening most of the women in the woods and driving them back here to the roadway. However, the effect on men will be much different. No nausea, but all will experience moderate to high intoxication. In the midst of the chaos, a few of those men, several of them cops, will be hypnotically drawn toward the woods. Follow them to the monster's feeding area."

"I hate to interrupt," Burt spoke up, "but I need to know if I'm supposed to record the monster eating people."

The old man sighed and slouched.

"Just when I think I couldn't hate those loathsome abominations any more than I already do," the old man lamented, "they force me to describe them to someone."

"I've got a strong stomach," Burt offered.

"For the things you watch children do, I imagine you must," Andrew spat, "but the problem isn't how nauseating they are...and they ARE...it's that the monster will sound like something silly and harmless. I assure you that it is neither."

"Duly warned," Burt said coldly, wishing the old man would stop taking potshots at him for his sick taste in porn. It wasn't as if Burt didn't already know that. He wasn't DEFENDING his addiction, after all. But even though there were a lot of people in a position to judge Burt, he refused to take Andrew's criticisms to heart, since Burt had never touched a real child before, but Andrew was content to allow one to die without lifting a finger to save his life.

"I'm not just refusing to save Robbie Byrne's life," Andrew clarified, "I arranged for him to be killed. And if he doesn't die, the end of the world will begin on August 17th. of this year...in Timbersburg. I take no joy in his death, but it is an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY!"

The shock on Burt's face told Andrew that he was finally in the correct frame of mind to hear about the monster.

"Hundreds of years ago," Andrew began, "a group of extradimensional leviathans tore into our dimension. The river, or sometimes creek, of life energy that I mentioned? Those parasitic behemoths are leeching it for their own purposes. To aid them, they create superhuman servants out of boys nearing their sexual prime."

"Boys? Sexual?" Burt thought, the words standing out in the midst of the terrifying horror story he was hearing.

"As the lifeforce energy washes over the globe, it clings to men and women so that when they have intercourse, the energy flows into their semen and eggs and combines in utero to form a human soul. The servants collect semen, extract the energy from it, and hand it over to the invaders."

In spite of having zero interest in the paranormal, Burt had to admit that the topic was suddenly captivating.

"The servants, or Thralls, function as male prostitutes, taking in as much semen as possible. But while homosexuals are their primary prey, they take forever to replenish, as they do not usually engage in condomless heterosexual intercourse with fertile women. Heterosexual copulation acts like someone rubbing a balloon against their head, except that instead of tiny bits of paper, the male will slowly attract a larger allotment of the energy. The man recharges faster, depending on the frequency he screws bareback and how many different women he does it with."

"Why would a man like that use a male prostitute?" Burt asked during another of the tired old man's incessant pauses.

"The sweat of the Thralls can be made to instantly evaporate into a smoke that acts like fog. Once a man's lungs inhale enough of it, and it enters into the bloodstream, the Thrall can make it act like most any drug, forcing a man to experience effects that will make it far more likely that he'll accept a blow job from another man, or top another man."

"So the 'artificial fog' you mentioned," Burt asked, very curious to know what he would be 'walking into', "it's going to drug me?"

"Yes, but since you're a high-functioning alcoholic, and the level of intoxication can only be adjusted if the Thrall is aware of your presence, you should be able to complete your task with only moderate impairment."

"Uh...okay," Burt replied, not realizing that he was a high- functioning alcoholic.

"Hold on a second," Andrew ordered before opening the passenger- side window.

Andrew barely had time to reach out of the window before a fishing rod appeared in his hand. Andrew crooked his arm like he intended to cast it, but instead, he threw it over the southbound guardrail and down the embankment.

"Can I inquire about that?" Burt asked diplomatically.

"I'm forced to wear the face of a dead man," Andrew grumbled, "and unfortunately, his most prized personal effects want to come along for the ride."

While Andrew's arm was still poked outside of the window, the previously-thrown guitar rematerialized in his hand. It joined the fishing pole, somewhere further down the embankment.

"Tonight, the real guitar got smashed...and STAYED smashed, "Andrew bemoaned. "Why can't the rememberance of it be destroyed as well?"

"You could always turn into the naked little boy," Andrew suggested, not meaning for it to come out sounding quite the way it did.

"No, I can't," Burt exhaled wearily, "This whole debacle started with Andrew Miller, so he is my default...until I can finally go to sleep again. But it could be worse. I could look like a young stroke victim in an open black bathrobe and a soiled adult diaper."

"Umm...yeah," Burt agreed, having no idea what the old man meant, "that would certainly be-."

"STOP TALKING!" Andrew yelled, looking up at the night sky through the top of the windshield.

All was quiet for twenty-four endless seconds. The old man's head slowly lowered until it was staring at the floor mat.

"He's right," Andrew muttered, "only pessimists CAN accurately predict the future."

Burt waited patiently for the old man to tell him what had happened.

"I've got nothing but good news for you, Burt," the old man announced. "The boy survived my assassination attempt, so in addition to filming the monster and its capabilities, you also get to film a thirty- seven year-old father having sex with his thirteen year-old son."

"That IS good news," Burt crowed, allowing the old man to interpret the statement any way he wished.

"I wish I could check back with you on August 17th.," Andrew spat bitterly. "Your task is now to film all of the debauchery you will witness at the feeding area...primarily focusing on the little boy, his incestuous encounter with his father, and the monster, who will appear to be a seventeen year-old adonis with wild plantinum-blonde hair, and a constant lecherous expression on his face."

"To which news outlet do I hand off the footage?" Andrew asked, seeing a woman in a red cap with an AK-47 stumble over the guardrail where Andrew had emerged. She barely made it before emptying her guts all over the roadway.

"None! Just give the camera to Milton Yerdil, tell him EVERYTHING, and suggest that the incredibly powerful entity will be quite vengeful if he wakes up again and discovers that Robbie Byrne is NOT the reigning international superstar of child pornography, and every single copy of the Thrall's exploits have been seized by black ops. operatives or edited down to irrelevance. The COMPLETE footage must be ALL OVER the dark web."

"Will he agree to do it?" Burt asked, not seeing why he would.

"He's a wacky conspiracy nut who accuses politicians of molesting children in spite of trafficking in it himself. Once he sees kiddie porn tacked onto a paranormal video that will rock the world, he'll be tripping over himself to do it. He'll establish a network that will make sure that uncut and unedited versions of the video will ALWAYS be available."

The fog drifted out of the woods and flowed over the road. Burt heard a group of men in the woods, just over the guardrail. Even with the window up, Burt could hear them making loud, silly monster calls and behaving like they had a still in there with 'em.

"None of them have been drinking," Andrew revealed. "It's the fog."

"HEY BUCK!" one of the men called out, "WHERE YUH GOIN'?"

"Buck's getting pumped full of more dope than his buddies," Andrew explained, "and he's being telepathically lured into the woods to be milked like a cow."

"Should I go now?" Burt questioned.

"No, wait another three minutes and forty-seven seconds," Andrew instructed, hopping out of Burt's car. "Just remember to be back here by one thirty-four and thirty-eight seconds. That's when it'll be your turn to do a U-turn and head to the turnpike. If you're not here, you'll not only get a citation, they'll tow your car...and look in your box."

"Uh...okay. I think I've got it," Burt assured as he slid his wrinkled cum-stained pants and underwear up and pulled them over his sticky crotch, ignoring how yucky it felt.

"The odds are good that you'll succeed, so you probably do," Andrew assured Burt. "Not to put too much pressure on you, though, but there's a lot at stake here. Since Robbie lives, the survival of the human race is in your hands!"

"Seriously?" Burt asked, rolling down his window to continue talking to Andrew as he walked away. Burt experienced a head rush at his first breathful of Pit Fog.

"VERY seriously," Andrew said as he slung his bony legs over the guardrail and walked back into the woods. "I can honestly tell you, Burt Veribton.........REALITY ITSELF IS DEPENDING ON YOU!"

End of Chapter 6

Author Notes Feedback is always welcome. It needn't be a letter or a review, although both would be welcome. What I would really appreciate is a simple "I'm reading your story." so that I can shake the nagging feeling that I'm only writing to 10 or so guys. Thanks.

Also, I do not view child pornography, nor do I wish it in my life. The pedophile instructional video came from my imagination as a way to reduce any cheesey dialogue from Burt as he messed around with Fake Robbie, nothing more.

And I'm sorry for not including a "M/t" warning for the last chapter. I got so obsessive about submitting the chapter that I forgot to include it.

Finally, drawings CAN get you prison time for pedophilia! I just learned that while writing that scene. So...corporations are people, fetuses are people, and drawings of little boys are actual little boys. Got it. :/

Here's a couple of...um....Occasionally Asked Questions.

• Where can I find other things written by you? Nowhere. This is the first story I've ever written.

• Is your story an original work, or is it based on something? Completely original, but I'm certain that I've been subconsciously influenced by a multitude of sources.

• Are you trained as a writer? No. I've had no training as a writer, nor have I read a single book on creative writing. I'm an absolute beginner. If I can do this, YOU can. Don't let an inability to express yourself well keep you from expressing yourself at all. I've gotten a lot of joy out of this, so much so that I got emotional when I figured out the perfect way to insert the title into the story (It happens when Mike finally meets Lure).

*Do you need any ideas for the story? Thanks, but no. I've exhaustively outlined the whole story. Tiny things change, like Guile and Lecher's fate, which is now VERY different than it was in the beginning, but all the broad strokes stay consistend.

*Are you going to complete the story? I'm planning on it. Barring life, I intend to write the entire story, and a few epilogues. Just give me time. I might have to ease back on my writing a little bit. I should really stand up and go get some exercise or something.

• Why are you writing this, and where did the idea come from? I used fantasy to escape my rotten childhood, and ended up with a bad case of maladaptive daydreaming. Unfortunately, I cannot shut it off, even as an adult whose life is MUCH better after disowning my mother on March 1st, 2004, my birthday. After spending thousands of hours daydreaming screen- plays for Marvel and DC movies and TV shows that will never be made, I decided to channel my affliction into creating my own original work. After spending hundreds of hours daydreaming on the idea of "a scary story about a vampire who drinks semen instead of blood", Ca??? Crandal was born.

• Do you hate women? Not in general. I'm not attacking all women, but I was raised by a particularly awful woman (Not all gay men find "Mommy Dearest" to be a fun, campy romp), and I wish to discuss her. She was (and maybe still is) a deplorable, vocal proponent of child abuse who constantly slapped the shit out of me, but drilled it into my head that it's NEVER acceptable to hit a woman. Surely such a person deserves to be immortalized in print. I've described her awfulness through Kenny's mother, Robbie's mother, and Officer Tracy Rogers, as so many awful traits cannot be contained by merely ONE fictional character.

• Do you support pedophilia? No. As someone keenly aware that an awful childhood (extreme physical and emotional abuse, in my case) can make you weird inside for the rest of your life, I would never support pedophilia. Everyone deserves a happy childhood. Sadly, so few get one. I'm glad my husband did (mostly).

• Where did you get the idea for Reality Myself? Ever since high school, I've been afflicted with daily doses of mathematically unlikely coincidences. My husband and I say: "What are the odds?" as a joke at this point. In my household, we call the phenomenon "the goblins". I changed the name to "Reality Itself" for my story. (If you need an example of my weirdness, a few days ago, out of nowhere, I asked my husband if Angela Lansbury was still alive. She was dead 24hrs later. Also, as I write this, I have an unsmoothed filling in the back of my mouth due to a dentist suddenly having a hissy fit and walking out during the procedure and telling me I was dismissed as a patient. Now, I knew he'd done the exact same thing to my next door neighbor, years ago, but what I didn't know was that when I scheduled an appointment with a NEW dentist, the dental receptionist I spoke with told me that HER HUSBAND had also been banished by that asshole. One final example: When I went to get my scheduled COVID booster recently, the Walgreen's pharmacy was closed because just a few hours earlier, one of the pharmacists caught COVID, and the other one quit. Shit like that...all the damned time. Anyone know how to shut it off?

Finally, a question: Does anyone have a copy of a pedo m/b story called "Daddy's Home", about a boy whose father comes home from the military. The boy sucks his father's dick at their picnic table while listening to Casey's Top 40, and while the father is ironing his cop uniform. I think the author's name was "potato spud", or something similar. If anyone has it or knows where it is on the web, please notify me. Thanks.