The Monsters of Faggot Forest

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(Story contains drug triggers, M/t, and t/b)

The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Chapter 8

Lying less than fifty yards away from his fellow officers, Mark Pudroolen let out a stream of hoarse coughs. Throat irritation had struck in the middle of one of his many useless shouts for assistance.

"Oh, fuck," Mark whined out loud when he finally got his coughing under control, causing tickly tears to flow down his temples. Mark was facing the possibility of either being ripped apart by a human-sized spider, or a lifetime spent as a quadriplegic, and he wasn't able to make peace with either one of those two awful possibilities.

Mark cleared his throat and strained to turn his head to the left and spit out the resulting ball of phlegm without it falling back down and landing on his face. Afterward, he slowly twisted his head back to its original face-up position and continued watching out for the spider while staring at the strange globs of light in the fog.

Mark heard something approach, filling him with adrenaline and prompting him to try once again to move his paralyzed limbs. Nothing.

"WHO'S THERE?!" Mark screamed. "I'M A POLICE OFFICER, AND I'M-"

Robbie Byrne stepped out of the fog and planted his feet on both sides of Mark's hips. He was holding Mark's gun in his hands, staring at it with fascination, as if he'd never seen one before. He had, of course, but up until a few moments ago, when Guile used the plum-colored tendril to permanently alter Robbie's mind, guns had never interested Robbie.

Mark had a lot of questions for Robert Byrne, and they all fought to be the first one out of Mark's mouth. Given Mark's circumstances, the winner ended up being the least important, and the most freudian.

"Why don't you got any clothes on?!" Mark barked, contorting his face in disgust in a subconscious attempt to fill Robbie with enough shame that he would quickly carry out Mark's unstated command to get dressed.

Robbie's twisted upbringing and warped sexual desires would've ordinarily compelled him to obey the wishes of an authoritative male, but in addition to giving Robbie lots of new interests and hobbies, Guile's time in Robbie's head had also ensured that Robbie would never be manipulated by anyone ever again. Guile outfitted the boy with all the boldness and psychological tools he would need in order to recognize and resist control tactics. Those skills were installed for use against Linda Byrne, Robbie's nightmare of a mother, but they would work just as well against a cop with a God complex.

"I like being naked, and we're both guys, so why does it matter?" Robbie asked.

"It matters because I don't want to LOOK AT YOU like that!" Mark growled, wondering in the back of his mind why Robbie hadn't gotten pubes yet. He looked young, but....

"You and that mean woman cop like to tell people what YOU want THEM to do," Robbie noted while recklessly staring up the barrel of Mark's gun. "Do you two think being cops gives you the right to always boss people around?"

"Stop acting like a faggot and put your goddamned clothes back on!" Mark snapped, irritated on a deep psychological level by Robbie's defiance. "I got people looking for me, and if they see you like that, that's what they're gonna think you are! Do you want them to think you're a fag?! Around here, the only guys walking around naked in the woods are fags, and have you heard what happens to them?"

Robbie tilted his head as if he were listening to someone else.

"They get killed, and the F.B.I. and state police have to solve the murder because the homophobia and incompetence of the Timbersburg Police Department is just as bad as it was during the decades when they intention- ally botched all those Ferret Forest murder investigations."

"Whatever you want to believe...kid," the cop sighed before letting out a chuckle, a maneuver that Robbie was now able to instantly recognize as an adult using bemused sarcasm to summarily dismiss the opinion of a child as childishness.

But that opinion hadn't come from Robbie, he'd just relayed it for Guile...and it was absolute, indisputable truth.

"I believe in stuff that's true," Robbie shot back. "For example, a member of the homophobic Timbersburg P.D. just called me a faggot."

"I didn't SAY you were a faggot, I just said you're ACTING LIKE a faggot!"

"I'm gay," Robbie said bluntly, "so that kinda means you did. Why do haters like you always assume that every guy they talk to is not only straight, but also as homophobic as THEY are?"

"Look kid, just put your clothes back on and-"

"You can't move, there're bubbles of light all around us, and as far as you know, that spider could be crawling up behind you, but all you care about is me being naked," Robbie pointed out while absently scratching his nuts. "Do you wanna know the REAL reason it bothers you?"

Mark was silent for a moment. Without being able to work the boy or intimidate him physically, Mark had no idea what to say or do.

"Why, Rob?" Mark finally asked, incorrectly guessing at what Robert Byrne preferred to be called in a transparent attempt to use a five cent psychology trick to craft a bullshit rapport with the boy. Thanks to Guile's psychic education, however, Mark needn't have bothered. As soon as Mark said "Rob", Robbie was onto him.

"Because you're afraid of me...Marcus," Robbie revealed, adding the last bit at Guile's request. Guile was giddy for Robbie to say it."

"I'm AFRAID...of YOU?" Mark asked, making a production out of asking for unnecessary verification of something that had been stated quite clearly. Robbie's mother pulled that shit all the time.

"You stole a man's ear protection, so I know you heard me," Robbie said, getting much better at echoing Guile's words when he was eager to add something to the conversation.

"I'm not afraid of you, boy," Mark deadpanned in spite of being weirded out that Robert knew about the ear protection, despite having a tongue wrapped around his head at the time.

"Yes you are. You're afraid of the other cops finding us while I'm naked. You're worried what they'll think...and you're REALLY worried about what I'd say."

"No I'm not, Rob," Mark rejected with a smirk of imaginary confidence. "I can't move, so how could I do ANYTHING to you, not that I'd WANT to?"

"When they show up, you'll be able to move again."

"So...all the shit going on around here...you're connected to it?" the cop asked, becoming concerned.

"I thought you figured that out when you tried to make the spider go away by ALMOST KILLING ME!" Robbie said coldly while dry firing the empty gun at Mark's head, making his face wince with each click.

"I wasn't aiming my gun at YOU!" Mark lied.

"If my new friend hadn't gotten me out of the way, you would've shot and killed me," Robbie snarled while also continuing to dry fire. "So that's why I'm going to tell everyone that you made me take off my clothes so you could do stuff to me."

Contrary to what he was trying to project, Mark WAS scared. Once the guy with the hearing aids uploaded his footage of Mark stealing that ear protection, Mark was going to become an embarrassment to the Timbers- burg P.D., and Mark didn't know if he had enough pull at the station to keep his job. If he were to also be accused of child molestation while waiting for the negative publicity to blow over, lots of people would WANT the allegation to be true, so it would BECOME true! After all, no man ever really "wins" a child molestation trial, because if there's one thing the Court of Public Opinion absolutely HATES, it's an acquittal!

"Nice try," Mark 'hail Mary-ed', "but everyone heard Officer Rogers ordering you to put your DICK away, and at least one news camera got foot- age of it hanging out of your shorts when they recorded you with that tongue wrapped around your head."

The boy's head tilted, and his eyes unfocused, telling Mark that once again, Robert was talking to his "new friend". A few seconds later, the boy started to hyperventilate, and the fog around him started drifting towards his face as if by magnetism.

Robbie's face turned deep red, and he began to sob uncontrollably. Alarmingly, the boy wasn't faking it. Mark had attended more than his share of funerals during his life, and if there was something Mark could recognize, it was genuine emotional pain. No kid, not even a trained actor, could dig so deep, so quickly.

"Th-th-th-th-the policeman said h-h-he saw me j-j-j-joking around w-w-with Officer Rogers. H-h-h-he said h-h-he wanted to t-t-t-teach me a l-l-l-l-less-less-lesson...!"

"Oh, PLEASE!" Mark spat, masking his growing concern.

All of a sudden, Robbie snapped out of it. His flushed face turned back to white, tears stopped pouring out of his eyes, and emotionally, the boy looked as though he'd achieved nirvana in just under two seconds.

"Your Honor, I'd like to request a short recess so that this poor, brave, victimized lad can be comforted with a cookie, a juice box, lots of hugs, and a trip to the potty," Robbie monotoned, repeating Guile's words without a single flub or snicker. "When we resume, Robbie will use his teddy bear to indicate exactly where the disgraced son of Richard and Athena Pudroolen touched him."

Mark glared at Robert Byrne and found himself wishing that he HAD shot him to death.

"DO YOU THINK THAT'S FUNNY?!?" Mark raged, "I'VE WATCHED SEXUALLY ABUSED CHILDREN TESTIFY IN COURT, AND-"

Robbie let out a scream and pointed just behind Mark's head. Mark craned his neck and eyes back, dreading what he would see.

There was nothing there. The boy was fucking with him again.

"And do you want to know the best part?" Robbie continued innocently.

"Go for it," Mark spat.

"In court, you're gonna have to admit that your hands were all over my naked body."

"That's not going to hap...*" Mark stated with conviction before realizing what the boy was about to do. "NO! DON'T DO IT! KEEP AWAY FROM ME!"

Robbie knelt beside Mark and picked up his lifeless right hand and ran it all over his chest and belly.

"Yeah, REAL funny, kid. Seriously funn-NO! DON'T DO THAT!"

Robbie slid Officer Pudroolen's fingers along Robbie's penis and scrotum, giving Mark tactile sensations he didn't want.

"I like how your hands feel," Robbie complimented idly while wrapping Mark's fingers around his stiffy and holding them closed. "They're so soft."

"What are you DOING?!" Mark yelled, in spite of knowing exactly what the boy was going to do.

Up until Guile messed with his head, Robbie would've just guided Mark's hand back and forth along Robbie's shaft, but now, Robbie was seized by the unusual (for him) desire to just hold it steady....and fuck it!

"LET GO OF MY HAND!" Mark demanded indigantly while cringing emphatically at the sensation of a little boy's uncircumcised penis sliding around inside his hypersensitive palm.

"Uhhhhhhhhh," Robbie moaned. It sounded fake, but it wasn't. Robbie was lost in the fulfillment of a long-held sexual fantasy. Sure, it wasn't exactly the way he'd envisioned it, with him drugging his dad and using HIS hand, but as it turned out, fucking the hand of a conscious, paralyzed, and EXTREMELY unwilling cop was nothing to sneeze at.

"LET ME GO!" Mark demanded. "LET GO OF ME!"

But as loudly as Mark protested, and as heterosexual as Mark was, his sexually sensitive skin was causing him to enjoy and respond to the familiar fleshy, push/pull sensations of an erect penis sliding around inside his fist, even if, for the first time ever, the penis wasn't Mark's. And although Robbie was both MALE and a BOY, watching him thrusting his hips while grunting was affecting Mark on a primal sexual level, a part that straight men don't like to acknowledge, especially if it ever causes them to participate in a circle jerk.

The moment also had a secret nostalgia component, reminding Mark of the forbidden things he used to let some of the neighborhood boys do to him, but not because of gay feelings...simply because of feelings. As Mark outwardly resisted, but inwardly reminisced, Guile used those memories, which were washing over Mark's active thoughts, to drag his mind beneath the psychic waves.

"Where the hell am I?!?!" Mark started to scream, but stopped him- self halfway.

He knew exactly where he was. He could move again, and he was standing in the corner of his own personal hell...and secret heaven.

Mark was back in Ethan Young's bedroom.

It was exactly the way Mark remembered it, with its huge recessed windows and vaulted ceiling that did strange things to sound, like it was doing with the laughter that was presently filling the room.

Mark didn't want to look toward the twin bed against the middle of the far wall, but he did anyway. Sure enough, a group of seven boys had the bed surrounded, and they were all bent over, diligently tickling another boy who was lying down on it.

"I wonder if I've got underwear on," Mark thought bitterly at the sight of the bare lower legs that were being held down and spread apart by Ash Lumley and Trevor Pentrail, "or if this happened after I started getting comfortable enough to strip down all the way."

Mark walked to the bed and looked over top of the voracious children to find that, unsurprisingly, Mark's younger self wasn't wearing underwear. Even MORE unsurprisingly, most of the tickling was going on between his legs. Mark couldn't decide which was more embarrassing about the way his younger self was acting, his squealing or his wiggling. As disturbing as the sights and sounds were, however, Mark could feel himself growing erect in his piss-soaked slacks.

"Why the hell did I let them DO this shit to me?" Mark seethed, time, denial, and blame shifting having allowed Mark to rewrite the past and recast himself as a duped victim instead of an eager participant. "They were taking advantage of me, and I just fucking laid there and let them DO it!"

"Hold up, guys!" Ethan commanded. "We're running out of time. My mom'll be home in a half hour...maybe fifteen minutes."

"We're still gonna watch him do it, right?" Lucas Wilson asked with a little too much volume. "You SAID we were gonna watch him do it!"

("It was Lucas' first time there," Mark recalled. "Why did Ethan even INVITE him? He was too young to BE there!")

"Do YOU want to make me do it?" young Mark asked while stretching out and making himself comfortable, unaware that by doing so, he instantly became the epitome of male beauty in the eyes of a little, chubby, gay boy.

("He kept looking at me like I was a god. It was such an ego boost that I wanted to do something nice for him. But he was around TEN, and I was almost FOURTEEN! I could have gotten sent to fucking JUVIE for what I let him do to me!")

"SURE!" Lucas eagerly replied, looking as though he'd just received a fighter jet for Christmas.

Lucas quickly walked over and gently took ahold of young Mark's sleepy, tickle-overloaded snake.

("Christ, I still remember how hot his hand was," Mark pondered while watching his younger self shiver from the sudden application of heat to his penis. "I was a little chilly, even after all the tickling, but as soon as he gripped my cock, it's like his hand was a fucking furnace, warming me from head to toe.")

"Lookit Mark's balls!" Trevor alerted the group in response to Mark's scrotum drooping down to escape the heat.

"What do I do?" Lucas asked while fondling young Mark with a degree of focus that Lucas' parents never would've thought him capable of.

"You're DOIN' it," Ethan noted as everyone watched Mark's penis growing in Lucas' hand.

Once young Mark was erect, Ethan came over and squirted some lotion on Lucas' hand and taught him how to stroke Mark's penis. At the same time, the other boys caressed Mark's front, guaranteeing that Mark would cum well before Ethan's mother got home.

"Does it feel good?" Lucas asked Mark when Ethan finally let him 'fly solo'.

"Yeah, Lucas," Mark politely reassured Lucas while the boy tugged him to paradise. "Feels great."

"When did you start-" Lucas began.

"We don't talk to Mark when we're doing this part," Ethan interrupted. "He likes to think about girls and stuff."

"Don't stop," Mark called out to Lucas, who'd unintentionally left Mark hanging at the wrong moment due to Ethan's distraction.

"Oh!" Lucas exclaimed, resuming his stroking, but going much faster, as if he needed to 'catch up'.

"Does it hurt?" Lucas asked, stopping again as Mark's face scrunched and his mouth opened to reveal his clenched teeth.

"No, keep going!" Trevor growled. "Stop STOPPING!"

("You always WERE an asshole, Trevor. Of all the kids I let touch my cock, you're the one I regret the most. Lucas was too young to know how masturbation worked, so OF COURSE he was going to fuck it up"!)

"Here, gimme! Just watch it happen!" Ethan commanded, pushing Lucas' hand away and finishing Mark off himself, thus saving Mark from being left hanging again, and saving Ethan's bedspread from being splattered with something he didn't want to have to clean up in a hurry.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" young Mark groaned.

("Congratulations," older Mark hissed, "You know how to swear! And you know how to cum in front of an all-boy audience after you let a young kid give you a handjob, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!")

Young Mark let out a gasp (almost causing a startled Lucas to stumble and fall), and a stream of cum squirted up halfway to the ceiling before losing its momentum, stopping, then dropping through Mark's second squirt. It landed on Mark's belly with an audible splat, quickly followed by the third, fourth, and fifth squirts. Mark's post-cum guilt hadn't kicked in yet, so he opened his eyes to see Lucas' reaction to his sticky, white fireworks display. Mark wasn't disappointed. Lucas stared at the multiple spurts, looking as though he'd just received a pet dinosaur to go along with his fighter jet.

After Mark's cock was done shooting, and Ethan gave it a squeeze that made Mark shiver once more, Ash handed Mark a roll of toilet paper.

("The stupidest damned thing to clean up cum with," older Mark pondered. "I always went home sticky, with bits of it in my pubes.")

"Wait!" Lucas cried out while observing the cum puddles on young Mark's belly, "I'm not done lookin'."

"The stuff runs," Ethan grumbled while mummifying his hand with the toilet paper and wiping up Mark's lower abs and crotch.

("Wait. I never would've let him do that. I always cleaned MYSELF up.")

"Did you have fun, Lucas?" young Mark purred, stretching once more.

("Huh? I never stuck around after I came. I always felt weird and guilty. At the very least, I would've hurried up and put my clothes on.")

"Yeah! Are we going to do this tomorrow?"

"Sure are!" young Mark confirmed while reaching out and pulling Lucas' zipper down. "How about letting me see yours?"

("THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN!!" older Mark yelled. "WHAT'S GOING ON?!")

"Okay," Lucas said affably, jutting his hips forward and letting young Mark reach his fingers through his fly and fish around for his wiener.

"I thought you liked girls," Ethan observed, giving voice to the confused looks being exchanged throughout the room.

("I DO!!" older Mark seethed from the base of the bed, just behind Ethan.)

"You BELIEVED that?!" young Mark spat contemptuously while pulling out Lucas' uncircumcised (?!?!?) penis and gently skinning and unskinning it, causing it to thicken up. "I've been over here HOW many times, letting you little faggots put your hands all over me? Who DOES that?! What STRAIGHT boy would EVER DO THAT?"

"H-h-h-h-h-h-h," Lucas inhaled raggedly, pulling away from young Mark's fingertips, then pushing back into them, instinctively thrusting in spite of knowing virtually nothing about fucking.

"WELL?!" young Mark addressed the room. "Did any ONE of you doubt for a fucking SECOND that I was one of YOU?! If you did, YOU WERE FUCKING STUPID!!! I wanted to suck off every fucking ONE OF YOU, but I was too much of a COWARD to stop pretending to be something I wasn't!

("THAT'S NOT TRUE!" older Mark yelled.)

All of the boys suddenly stopped talking amongst themselves and reached down to unzip their pants. Ethan, Trevor, Ash, and the others pulled out their dicks as if they were all going to piss on young Mark together. Instead, they all scissored their little dongs between their index and middle fingers and made them wiggle around, the official first step of pre-teen masturbation.

"It's not true? Seriously?!" young Mark mocked, addressing his older self.

Young Mark swept his free left arm around the bed to indicate the all-male audience.

"Explain THIS then!" young Mark challenged. "Tell me one other heterosexual you know, who has EVER done something like THIS!"

Older Mark was so fucking pissed that he didn't even permit himself the luxury of acknowledging the strangeness of being challenged to an argument by his younger self, both of them trapped in one of several memories that Mark could never come to terms with.

"Men don't go around blabbing about the stupid, weird shit they did as kids, dumbass," older Mark snarled, "so I don't fucking know ANY! And this was NEVER about doing gay shit! I ONLY DID IT BECAUSE IT FELT GOOD!"

"So...you got off on letting boys touch you...but you're NOT GAY?" young Mark asked with sarcastic befuddlement.

"Yeah! I also toke up, but I've never smoked tobacco! SOME THINGS DON'T MAKE SENSE TO OTHER PEOPLE!" older Mark defended.

Lucas' nose let out a whistling noise as he kept on fucking young Mark's hand, momentarily drawing older Mark's attention. The boy was changing, transforming. He was becoming thinner, his hair was turning orangish, and freckles were starting to appear all over his body.

"You let little boys GET YOU OFF!" young Mark laughed. "THAT shouldn't make sense to ANY people!"

"We were ALL boys, so take your pedophile inference and shove it up your ass!" Mark disputed. "And gender had NOTHING to do with it!"

"Then why wasn't this room filled with GIRLS?" young Mark taunted, sweeping his arm low across the bed to indicate all the wiggling dicks.

"Do you fucking HONESTLY not know the answer to that???" older Mark spat with utter incredulity. "How the FUCK...in my early teens...when I was going NUTS needing to be touched...could I have EVER gotten a room full of GIRLS?! Girls can get ANY guy to strip down, so why the fuck would they want to share ME with a whole bunch of other bitchy, gossipy, back-stabbing GIRLS? Ethan and the others were fags in a town where kids had to keep it a secret. I could trust them to keep quiet because I didn't NEED to trust them to keep quiet."

Older Mark mocked younger Mark by sweeping HIS arm across the room while contorting his face to look like a simpleton.

"Fat...scrawny....pimply....ugly....shy....fucked up teeth....," older Mark spouted arrogantly. "FUCK modesty! I'm a goddamned good-looking guy who takes care of himself...always have been! I should've CHARGED these fags for the PRIVILEGE of touching me! But I didn't. Instead, THEY got what THEY wanted, and I got what I NEEDED! That's ALL that was going on here."

All the boys around the bed faded away, including Lucas Wilson, who hadn't yet completed his transformation into Robbie Byrne. Guile was becoming tired of Mark Pudroolen, and realizing that in spite of Lecher's earlier compliment, Guile just wasn't cut out to be Freddy Krueger.

"You're confusing me, Officer Pudroolen," young Mark sighed, linking his fingers behind his head. "How does confessing to being a gay prostitute prove that you're not gay?"

"Keep talking, monster," Mark spat dismissively. "No matter what you say, you're not going to convince me I'm a fag because of what happened in this room when I was a kid."

Young Mark and the bed disappeared, instantly becoming a young man in an open, hooded black bathrobe. His hood covered most of his lowered face.

In spite of his fear, Mark Pudroolen stood his ground.

"If you like, Officer Pudroolen, I can bring Robbie back and offer you a gun, since threatening to kill children helps ease your cowardice."

"I'd rather have you close your robe so I don't have to look at that pissy diaper," Mark hissed. "But if YOU like, you can go ahead and turn into a huge spider again, since scaring people makes you feel big."

"Not as big as you must feel by slapping children across the face," Guile shot back.

"He burned my hand with a cigarette," Mark defended. "It hurt."

"Oh for Christ's sake," Guile groaned, foolishly raising his head up and bringing his palms to his forehead, partially exposing his face.

Although things started out so well, and he'd had lots of fun, Guile failed to achieve his goal of cementing Mark's mistaken belief that he was a homosexual. In fact, Guile had achieved the exact opposite, which cemented HIS belief that he was a failure as a Guile.

Grasping at straws, Guile was about to tell Mark that if he were TRULY heterosexual, he wouldn't feel the need to use the word "fag" to ward off suspicion concerning his sexuality. However, Mark spoke first, and what he said managed to scare Guile far worse than Guile had scared Mark.

"Wait.....do I KNOW you?!?!?!" Mark asked, squinting at Guile's face.

"ARRRRRGH!!!!" Mark screamed at being painfully ripped out of Guile's delusion. "WHERE IS HE?!?!"

"Where's...gasp....who?" Robert asked, still humping Mark's paralyzed right hand. He let out a groan, and his mouth slowly dropped open.

"ARE YOU GETTING CLOSE?!" Mark accused.

"Uh....huh," Robert whined, his glazed eyes drifting upward.

Mark stared with dread at Robbie's dick hole, which was now visible due to the boy changing Mark's grip and only using his pinky, ring finger, and middle finger to fuck with his underdeveloped penis. When Mark was eventually found with piss-soaked slacks, he would have to endure weeks of harassment, but if he were also discovered with a little boy's semen on him, those weeks would turn to years...possibly 10 to 20! OR MORE!

"POINT IT AWAY FROM ME, ROBERT!!!" Mark thundered. "I DON'T WANT THAT SHIT ON ME!"

"I'm too young to make white stuff," Robbie groaned, secretly wish- ing that Guile would stop making him repeat stuff until after he was done cumming. "Jeez, you're dumb. I'm only NINE!"

"Jesus Christ, please let him be lying!" Mark thought to himself. "I thought the report said he was older."

Robert's whole body shivered, and the boy let out a whine that set Mark's teeth on edge. Mark kept his eyes trained on the boy's dickhead. In strobe light fashion, it repeatedly popped in and out of view as Mark's clamped fingers skinned and unskinned it at a high rate of speed.

Nothing came out, which was good for Mark in terms of lack of evidence, but potentially devastating for him due to it "proving" Robbie's claim that he was only nine.

Instead of quietly enjoying the post-orgasm bliss, Robbie released Mark's hand and let it fall unceremoniously onto the ground before hopping to his feet and hurrying to the low branch where he'd draped his shorts, in order to get a cigarette.

"You were right," Robbie said, completely unable to keep a straight face while lighting up. "I DID enjoy that, just like you told me I would. Thanks! Can I have that piece of candy now?"

"I never said that, I'm paralyzed, and I explicitly told you to leave my hand alone, Rob," Mark stated robotically, unwilling to play the boy's games. Mark suddenly had more important things to think about.

"My name's Robbie...ROB-BEEEEE...and my daddy taught me it's good manners to say 'you're welcome' whenever someone thanks you," Robbie scolded, pouring on his impression of a nine year old a little too thick.

"Is he the one who taught you how to mess around with men, Robbie?"

"No, YOU just taught me THAT."

If Mark's arms had been working, he would've used them to strangle 'ROB-BEEEEE' right there and then, consequences be damned.

"So why did your 'new friend' attack those people, Robbie?" Officer Pudroolen asked, probing for information to confirm a theory he had about the 'monster', "I gotta say, it's kind of suspicious how your friend protected your hearing and came after me, but he also smashed up your dad's truck. And now your dad's missing...and I'll be honest, Robbie, you aren't acting like any kid I've ever met whose father might be dead."

"HE'S NOT DEAD! THEY SAID HE'S JUST TAKING A NAP!" Robbie blurted, his newborn concern for his father's welfare exploding unexpectedly out of him.

"He IS," Guile lied, "and I just prevented Officer Pudroolen from seeing or hearing your outburst just now. I need to see where he's going with this line of questioning. Answer his questions honestly, and ignore me if I start laughing."

"What's going on?" Lecher asked.

"Mark Pudroolen will have to be Entangled."

"Really? Why?"

"Because he knows who our Lure is," Guile informed Lecher. "Now stop interrupting, because this could get hilarious."

"When we arrived and learned that Craig Byrne had a son who'd been present during the attack, but couldn't be located, we did a little check- ing and found out that your mom has custody of you, and she's got a lot of complaints against your dad. Robbie, did you ask your 'new friend' to make your father 'go away'?"

"No," Robbie told Mark with the typical exaggerated contempt of a boy who'd just been asked a moronic question by an adult.

"I'm only asking because I'm trying to make sense out of something that doesn't make ANY sense," Mark explained. "Y'see, I'm pretty sure that the SUV was the monster's target, and you and your dad were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Right so far...," Lecher mumbled.

"But what I don't understand is why your friend abducted the younger black male instead of the white female. You see, I think SHE was the target."

"....The actual FUCK?!?!" Lecher marveled.

"The girl he's talking about is Cynthia Keim, Raymond Crandal's assistant. Since Officer Pudroolen accurately, yet completely inaccurately, suspects that the attacker is Raymond's son, he believes there's a connection. There isn't, of course, except for Reality Itself.

"What? Why'd it drag Death Ray into this?"

"Don't worry," Guile assured, "I've been monitoring Cynthia's communications with Death Ray, and I'm certain Reality Itself is just using him to apply pressure to the police and military."

"Did you just tell me not to worry that Reality Itself is using Lure's father to get MORE men after us."

"Why SHOULD we worry, unless they don't need to breathe, they can operate in zero visibility conditions, and they possess the kind of psychic shielding that only exists in science fiction?"

"Well if they do," Lecher snarked, "we can always hit them over the head with your bloated self-confidence."

"You think my friend was after a girl?" Robbie asked in a mystified tone.

"Yes, I do," Mark confirmed. "She works for Raymond Crandal. You know who Raymond Crandal is, right?"

"Uh-huh," Robbie lied.

"Well, I'm pretty sure that your friend is his-"

"I don't understand," Robbie interrupted. "Why would a cum vampire want to steal a girl?"

Mark's face narrowed and wrinkled as he tried to figure out if Robbie was joking or not.

"He's a WHAT?" Mark finally asked.

Guile reached into Mark and Robbie's minds and established a screen a few feet away from them. Both man and boy looked towards it as they were forced to perceive Guile, who pulled back the hood of his robe to expose his stringy, unkempt platinum blonde hair and unsettling, slackened face.

"Good evening," Robbie and Mark heard Guile say, in spite of his open, drooling mouth never moving. "Hello yet again, Officer Pudroolen. By all means, DON'T get up."

"CALEB!" Mark hissed. "What the HELL are you doing, and how the FUCK are doing it?!"

"Hello, Robbie," Guile greeted, holding his hand out. Robbie tried to take it, only for his hand to pass right through.

"DOPE!" Robbie cried out before giving Guile an inquisitive look and innocently asking a cringingly inappropriate question. "Is that what you really look like? When you looked like that before, when he almost shot me, I thought you were just looking like that to be scary."

"No," Guile answered politely, in spite of being slightly hurt by Robbie's words. "This is how I look."

Guiles weren't supposed to give a SHIT about how they were forced to appear. Once again, Guile pondered his Thrall's encounter with Michael Pearson. Guile was convinced that Reality Itself had arranged that fight to somehow curse Guile with human sentimentality, to make the defective Thrall even EASIER for Michael to destroy if Lure reached Faggot Forest and posed a threat to whoever Reality Itself was protecting.

"And...and your name is 'Caleb'?" Robbie asked.

"No," Guile replied, turning towards Mark, "I am called Guile, and I am, to put it in terms that a Timbersburg police officer MIGHT under- stand, one of two ghosts that inhabit the mind of Caleb Crandal, a mutually disliked acquaintance who met with an unfortunate 'accident'."

Guile pointed at his face to display the result of said accident.

"To escape his dismal fate, Caleb agreed to be transformed into a 'cum vampire', of sorts."

Even though he was confused, frightened, and paralyzed, Mark Pudroolen just had to laugh.

"I don't feel sorry for him at all," Mark snickered. "Fuckin' PUNK deserves whatever bad shit he's going through."

"In THAT, Officer Pudroolen, we agree. And it should amuse you to know that Caleb Crandal is an even worse failure as a 'cum vampire' than he was as a human being."

"Does being a 'cum vampire' mean that Caleb isn't fucking an army of pretty little gold diggers any more?" Mark asked, genuinely hopeful that Caleb was as miserable as 'inhumanly' possible.

"Correct," Guile confirmed to Officer Pudroolen's delight. "Caleb's transformation into a cum vampire suppressed his heterosexuality and gave him a ravenous hunger for sexual relations with men, which he also tries to suppress."

"So he's just....gay?" Mark inquired, just to clarify.

"Don't you mean 'FAG', Officer Pudroolen?" Guile spat to establish that he and Mark were NOT suddenly 'sharing a moment together'. Although both of them hated Caleb, Guile refused to BOND over it, especially with the man who almost killed Robbie and ruined Guile's plan to save HIMSELF from death.

"And 'no'," Guile continued. "Caleb is NOT gay. He desires sex with men, but like a good whore, he's incapable of falling in love with them. And he finds the idea of marrying a man to be bizarre and simply...wrong. Therefore, Caleb would be best described as a vampiric gay Republican. Please pardon the redundancy."

"So Caleb can't fall in love with ANYONE, even women?" Mark kept prying ignoring Guile's cheap shot at his politics.

"Correct."

Mark smiled.

"Couldn't happen to a nicer asshole."

"I suppose," Guile grumbled. As much as Guile hated Lure, he didn't like Officer Pudroolen getting enjoyment out of Lure's misery. "Perhaps Caleb will eventually find solace. It might take a while, but since he is now an immortal, with an eternity of wild partying and mind-scrambling pleasure ahead of him, he'll have time."

Guile's remark hurt himself and Lecher far more than it did Mark Pudroolen, since in all likelihood, neither of them would even manage to live past the following morning, let alone "eternity".

"At least 'Death Ray' won't have to assassinate any more of Caleb's fetuses," Mark snarled.

"It might surprise you to learn this, Officer Pudroolen," Guile said pointedly, seriously sick of the cop's shit, "but contrary to your ignorance-based judgement, 'Death Ray' had nothing to do with the incident that earned him his unfortunate nickname."

"It's a hell of a coincidence, don't you think?" Mark spouted, failing to read Guile's darkening mood. "She loses the baby, the lawsuit gets dropped, and Raymond saves himself a couple of million. When something bad comes along at just the right time...something that benefits someone THAT MUCH, I reserve the right to be suspicious."

"I feel the same way regarding 9/11 giving George W. Bush the flimsy justification for invading Iraq and settling his family's personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein," Guile countered, taking another shot at Officer Pudroolen's politics, "but unlike George W. Bush, who I've never met, I've actually spent an unfortunate amount of time in Raymond Crandal's presence, and his head, and I know for a fact that he had nothing to do with Miss Johnson's sudden miscarriage."

"Wait, you READ MINDS?" Mark asked, fearing for his many secrets.

"Since I am speaking to you telepathically right now, and since I was just showing you one of your most treasured sexual memories,...."

"It's NOT one of my-!" Mark began.

".....MOST PEOPLE would logically come to the conclusion that I can read minds. It's so precious that YOU didn't, though."

"IT'S NOT ONE OF MY 'TREASURED SEXUAL MEMORIES'!" Mark rejected.

"If you weren't so far past your sexual prime, and you could get over the homophobia you picked up AFTER your happy escapades in Ethan Young's room, you would've made an excellent cum vampire, Mark Pudroolen."

"Why can't I be a 'cum vampire'?!?!" Robbie demanded. "You said I couldn't, but you never said why!"

"Because homosexuals can NEVER become cum vampires," Guile said truthfully with visible remorse.

"WHY NOT?!?!?!"

"Because," Guile sighed, knowing that Robbie wouldn't believe him, "if a homosexual becomes a cum vampire, he explodes."

"Seriously??? WHY????!"

"No one knows," Guile lied to avoid a MUCH more in-depth conversation, and to spare Robbie the depressing truth about the tragic sacrifice that he and all other homosexuals might one day be forced to make.

Guile's newly-inflicted humanity caused him to curse nature for creating homosexuals, only to force them to suffer in so many ways. But Guile was blaming the wrong entity. Nature didn't create homosexuals and their horrific burden, nature's guardian did.

"If you let me go," Mark announced, "I won't tell anyone about you, Caleb, Robbie, cum-vampires....NONE OF IT....EVER!"

"Perhaps," Guile lied, "once you've made an offering."

"An offering?"

"Exactly which part of 'cum vampire' are you having trouble under- standing, Officer Pudroolen?" Guile inquired. "Personally, I didn't care for the phrase when Caleb came up with it earlier tonight. I felt it to be FAR too simplistic. However, it gets the basic idea across. Or at least it DID, until we met the likes of YOU!"

Mark looked uncomfortably at Robbie.

"Uh....yeah," Mark agreed awkwardly. "If you let me move again, I'll...uh....try to do 'that'. It might take some time, though. I'm gonna have a little trouble doing it...here, like this."

"Officer MacCrouder said something similar a few moments ago, but I managed to coax it out of him. He was quite delicious, in spite of being fat-free."

"Yeah, that Brian....he's a....he's a really skinny guy," Mark chuckled nervously. "Um, could I do it standing up, in private? That would help...a lot."

"No," Guile stated flatly.

Robbie let out a gasp of wonder at the sight of the silver tedril rocketing into view and zipping though the air, shoving the fog around as it filled the area with endless loops, creating complex patterns. It was incredibly artistic, which was understandable, since Guile and Lecher's suddenly desire to be creative was caused by psychic interaction with an artist.

"WHAT ARE YOU....!!!" Mark yelled as the silver wire snaked up his right pant leg, under his underwear, and exited through his left shirt cuff. The wire rose up, slicing through the material. Mark's duty belt fell open, along with the fabrics covering his left arm and right leg.

"PLEASE DON'T!" Mark begged, but it was too late. The wire did the other side, along with a third cut from Mark's collar down to the center of the X formed by the first two slices.

"Watch out for his crotch," Guile advised Robbie, who was happily flinging open the shredded panels of clothing, leaving Mark as naked as he. "Officer Pudroolen has pissed himself."

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Mark screamed at Robbie when he dropped to his knees and started exploring Mark's cock and balls.

"Don't worry, Officer Pudroolen," Guile consoled. "You yourself told me to shove my pedophile inference up my ass. You also told me that you sympathize with the children you've seen testify in court against their molester. Therefore, no matter WHAT Robbie does to you, your staunch moral values and half-assed Christianity will prevent your penis from getting hard. Here, allow me to demonstrate."

The peach tendril darted out of the fog and puked all over Mark's neatly manscaped crotch.

"WHAT IS THAT SHIT?" Mark yelled in alarm.

"Soap," Guile inaccurately claimed once again. "Robbie, please wash the policeman's genitals for him."

With a wicked smile and eager hands, Robbie scrubbed Mark's pubes and kneaded his dick like dough until the goop started foaming out of control. Then he reached down and lathered up Mark's balls.

"I don't....like this," Mark announced to someone, maybe God, or maybe to his subconscious, which was obviously in complete disagreement with Guile's pretend faith in Mark's righteous indignation.

"Wow!" Robbie commented at the impressive fuck staff growing between Officer Pudroolen's legs.

"Yeah, I KNOW!" Lecher added, materializing in the screen next to Guile. "Who woulda guessed that YOU could wash a DICK?"

"WHO THE FUCK ARE....*?" Mark started to ask before recognizing that he was seeing another Caleb Crandal, but...idealized...physically superior in every possibly way.

"Don't mind me, Marky," Lecher disrespected while watching Robbie work, "I'm just here to witness a miracle. You should be honored! He doesn't even wash his OWN penis! Hey Cop Sucker! Put your foreskin up to Marky's nose and let him take a whiff! Kid smells like a fuckin' cheese cave!"

"Lecher is the second 'ghost' living in Caleb's brain," Guile explained, happy that Lecher's sudden appearance didn't cause Robbie any mental stress. Robbie was no longer afraid of Lecher. He was ready to be Churned as soon as his father's essence could be located.

"TRAPPED in Caleb Crandal's brain!" Lecher corrected. "Hey Marky, if you can stop giving the boy bedroom eyes for a sec., I'm wondering how you recognized Caleb, considering that neither of us really look the way he did before his 'accident'."

"Because when I pulled him over for erratic driving, his face looked exactly like that," Mark answered, raising his chin at Guile. "He was fucked up on God-knows-what. Daddy made it all go away, like he always does. I never heard about Caleb having an 'accident'. Whatever it was, I'm sure daddy threw money at that and made it go away, too."

"He did," Guile confirmed. "Not to keep defending Ray Crandal, but it isn't HIS fault that the Timbersburg Police Department is for sale. For instance, according to your active thoughts, YOU were one of the cops that Raymond Crandal threw money AT, so unless you intend on redeeming yourself by refilling that fat envelope he gave you and handing it back to him with your head held high, you might want to stop criticizing the way things are done here in Timbersburg."

"Ain't it a little statistically unlikely that we bumped into a cop who's MET Caleb, Guile?"

"Woulda been MORE 'statistically unlikely' if I hadn't," Mark scoffed. "Kid's always in trouble."

"Well, just be glad that you didn't respond first to the Crandals' lake McMansion last July Fourth, after Tom Daggen, Grant Anders, and Kenny Miller beat him almost to death," Guile explained. "Officer Larson collected that particular envelope for doing Death Ray's bidding. It was full of blood money, and Officer Larson is paying a hefty price for earning it."

Mark didn't understand, since he saw Tony Larson almost every day, and he seemed fine. Mark would've asked for more details, but he was distracted by a sudden concern.

"HEY KID!" Mark snapped in his cop voice, "I'M PRETTY SURE I'M CLEAN DOWN THERE!"

"My, it takes almost nothing for a nine year old boy to get you hard, does it, Officer Pudroolen?" Guile taunted as the group watched the last bit of orange goop on Mark's penis fizz away to nothingness. "I wonder, will you STILL tell me to shove my pedophile inferences up MY ass when you're blowing your load up ROBBIE'S ass?"

"NOT GONNA HAPPEN!" Mark vowed.

Robbie looked up from his 'work'.

"Um, I thought you said my dad was gonna be the one who...did it to me. I'll jerk this guy off...or suck him off...but I'd kinda like my dad to be the one who...you know...fucks me."

Mark's face contorted in disgust.

"You want your DAD to-!?!?" Mark started to say before his vocal cords stopped working and Mark found himself soundlessly exhaling.

"I understand, Robbie," Guile confirmed, "and it's completely up to you. However, I think we can change your mind."

"WE?" Lecher questioned. "No way! I ain't sharing your punishment! Leave me out of it!"

"I ORDER YOU TO HELP ME CONVINCE ROBBIE TO LET OFFICER PUDROOLEN TAKE HIS VIRGINITY!" Guile commanded, satisfying Lecher's internal monitoring systems.

"Sure, if you're MAKING me do it," Lecher agreed happily.

"How?" Robbie asked with sceptical interest.

"By reminding you that you can order your father to fuck you any time you want," Guile pointed out, taking delight in Mark's horrified expression, "but it could be years before you have the opportunity to have sexual experiences with OTHER men...new, fresh, and different men."

"Besides, a kid like YOU shouldn't lose his virginity to just ONE guy," Lecher enticed. "You should go from virgin to SLUT, all on the same night!"

Robbie stared at Mark's body while deep in thought, biting his thumb in a way that suggested a desire to suck it instead. Given Robbie's hypercharged sexuality, Lecher didn't know if this was a good sign or a bad sign, but instead of asking Guile which way Robbie was leaning, Lecher just played his ace.

"Wanna know why your dad let Jayce fuck him up the ass, even BEFORE we got started enslaving him for you?" Lecher tantalized.

"Why?" Robbie eagerly asked. He was very curious about that. His dad hadn't just consented, he'd gone fucking WILD!

"We sprayed his asshole, inside and out, with that green tendril Guile told you about. It doesn't just lube you up and relax your hole, IT MAKES YOUR ASSHOLE GO NUTS, AND DRIVES YOU INSANE, NEEDING A DICK INSIDE OF YOU!!!"

"Would you like to try it, Robbie?" Guile asked, employing a secondary incentive. "It would be very helpful to us. As you know, we might die tomorrow, and if you do this, it would give me valuable data that I need in order to try and save myself................and Lecher."

Mark's hopefulness concerning the monster's possible death evaporated at the sight of another wire wiggling around in the air. But unlike the silver one, this one was thicker, and it was colored mint green. It approached Mark, hovering over him, and let out a long hiss. Mark didn't see anything coming out of the opening at the tip, but he could feel it blowing warm air at his naked body. The mint green tube went back and forth across Mark's chest, belly, and legs, as if it were a ceiling mounted painting robot.

"What's THAT doing?" Robbie asked.

"What...you don't already KNOW from its COLOR?" Lecher mocked. "There ain't some video game where a mint green tube sprays aliens with unfeelable, non-tacking, anti-friction spray?"

"Wait...what?" Robbie blurted excitedly before dropping to his knees and sliding his hands all over Mark's belly, almost accidentally slipping and falling forward, going stomach-to-stomach across Mark and planting his face in the dirt.

"Lie on him and slide up and down his body," Lecher suggested.

"He looks angry," Robbie noted. "I don't want him to bite my face, or my dick."

"He won't," Lecher assured Robbie. "In fact, he's just going to lie there with his eyes and teeth shut, or I'm gonna run the silver tendril across his corneas. Besides, he ain't all the way hard, but he sure as hell ain't soft. I think he's looking FORWARD to you fucking yourself with his dick."

Mark kept his eyes and mouth closed while he emphatically shook his head 'no'.

"Why isn't his dick slippery, too?" Robbie asked while testing his theory by fingering Mark's cock, causing Mark's closed teeth to chatter briefly, and piquing Robbie's interest in the cop. That interest grew as Robbie watched Mark's treasonous cock harden in a series of tiny bounces."

"Because the green tendril will make your asshole so slippery that it won't matter," Lecher lectured. "Besides, the two chemicals get in each other's way."

"What happens if you spray my asshole AND his dick with the green tendril?" Robbie demanded, suddenly developing an unhealthy interest in exo-chemistry.

"WAAAAAAY too intense, for both the pitcher AND catcher," Lecher explained. "We didn't even do that to Jayce's dick when he was fucking your dad. If we would've, they'd be out looking for a wedding chapel right about now."

"And THAT, Robbie, is the last question you get," Guile jumped in. "We need an answer. Will you help us with our...er....MY experiment?"

"Yeah, okay," Robbie agreed, casually agreeing to throw away his innocence on a stranger. "I guess so."

Mark was stunned that Guile would con a kid into having unprotected anal intercourse with an adult, without so much as inquiring about Mark's sexually transmitted disease status, something that made Mark even MORE horrified at what Caleb Crandal's 'ghosts' could be capable of.

"I have AIDS!" Mark screamed in his mind, grasping at straws to keep his dick out of Robbie's ass.

"Nice try, Marky," Lecher mentally rebutted. "but if you did, or if you had anything else, I'd know it."

"Are you ready, Robbie?" Guile asked, turning his attention to the boy, whose non-existent attention span caused him to become distracted by rubbing his hands all over Mark's slippery body.

"Uh...yeah," Robbie blurted. "but you'll stop if I don't like it, right?"

"Sure will, right after I pick my fucking jaw up off the floor," Lecher sneered. "Now lie face up on top of him, with your asshole as close to his dick as possible."

Mark let out a huff of air as Robbie sat his skinny bottom down on Mark's hairless stomach and slid into position.

In spite of himself, Mark felt his heart rate quicken and his penis regain the tiny amount of tumescence it lost after Robbie stopped touching it. Once more, Mark's body was betraying his will. Worse still, lying naked and having a kid touch him was filling Mark with nostagia for something he'd tried for years to regret. Old, fond, forgotten feelings were awaken- ing within Mark at the absolute WORST time.

"You're not ghosts, you're fucking demons!" Mark spat mentally. "LET THAT BOY GO!"

"The only demon here is a bad cop who almost shot Robbie in the chest out of fear of a hallucinatory spider, Officer Pudroolen," Guile countered. "But just to chisel away at any laughable resistance you intend to put up, Lecher shaved off Robbie's pubes and temporarily made him incapable of ejaculation. Robbie is thirteen, you see, not nine. We thought it would be funny."

"It wasn't."

"Actually, it IS. You see, Robbie is the same age YOU were when you allowed Lucas Wilson, a young boy who you remember as being 'around ten', to play with your penis, bring you to orgasm, and watch you squirt cum. So by my reckoning, if thirteen is old enough to molest younger children, it's certainly old enough to have intercourse with a man."

"An UNWILLING man!" Mark corrected.

"So who's the greater victim, then?" Guile pondered aloud. "An unwilling adult, or a willing child who, by law, wasn't old enough to consent to what you DID TO HIM! As the older child, you knew it was wrong to let Lucas Wilson touch you, but once his hot little hand was warming you up and satisfying your need to be touched, your morals failed you. Well right now, Robbie Byrne's morals are failing HIM, and since his core temperature is doubtlessly hotter than Lucas Wilson's hand, why not just relax and enjoy it?"

"I just listened to your sales pitch. This isn't ROBBIE'S decision, it's YOURS,.....'GUILE'!"

"I wonder what Lucas Wilson is up to these days," Guile continued, ignoring Mark's accusation. "Maybe he turned out to be a whiny heterosexual who looks back on his days in Ethan's bedroom with self-loathing. Maybe he uses his uncomfortable, fond memories as the basis for an irrational DIS- comfort of homosexuals due to his even MORE irrational fear of 'turning gay'. Maybe, just maybe, you're HIS 'demon', Mark."

"That was a weak argument," Mark scoffed. "Ever think of changing your name?"

"Mark, I wasn't lying to Robbie when I told him I will probably die tomorrow morning. I want to thank you for BOLSTERING my desire to live by giving me something new to look forward to. You see, I need to be alive in order to make you forget ALL ABOUT Ethan Young's bedroom and the stupid, vanilla gay shit that went on there. In the basement of that tacky, sterile, EYESORE of an offering to the satanic gods of contemporary architecture that Raymond Crandal INFLICTED upon the shores of Manjinankton Lake, Caleb has special gatherings for all the male guests who made his Fourth of July party so fucking unforgettable that he can't FUCKING FORGET ABOUT IT! I want you AT those parties so that those boys can be made to touch you, massage you, caress you, rub you, and tickle you to your heart's content. I NEED to stand there and watch you pretend not to LOVE it!"

Mark's panicked eyes clearly held questions, but thanks to Lecher, Guile was sick of Q&A sessions for the foreseeable future.

"So the way this works, Cop Sucker, is as soon as you start going crazy for cock, kick your heels into the dirt and use your legs to pull yourself down onto his tool. Then, grab his arms and use them to pull yourself back up.

"That sounds like a lot of work," Robbie complained.

"I'll be flooding you with the appropriate drugs, don't worry," Guile promised, successfully keeping his fear out of his voice. Now that the experiment was about to commence, Guile was finally starting to consider the possible punishment he might receive for performing it. "They'll give you the strength, and the green tendril will give you the drive. Ready?"

"His dick's drooping again," Robbie complained after reaching down between his and Mark's legs, grabbing Mark's penis, and lining it up with his butthole. "If I start going nuts, and his dick isn't hard, will I die or something?"

The black tendril zipped across Mark's upper lip and deposited a rush delivery of Ball Sweat.

"Wow!" Robbie remarked as Mark's cock stiffened to the point that Robbie had difficulty pulling it down into position.

The green tendril came out of the fog and nuzzled between Robbie's butt cheeks, causing him to giggle nervously.

Guile was FAR more nervous than Robbie.

"Do you want a countdown?" Lecher offered.

"Yeah, okay. Could you start at twenty, though, so I can-"

"SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

Robbie was going to call Lecher a dick, but as soon as the spray hit his anus, Robbie had other things to think about, like the fact that his asshole was alternately clenching and gaping with no effort on Robbie's part. During one of the gapes, Robbie felt the tendril slip into him and continue spraying, followed by sensations of sexual warmth and heightened internal sensitivity that crept deep inside of him.

"I am sooooo not ready for this," Robbie muttered.

"Say the word, and it stops," Guile offered, getting cold feet as well. Guile was reconsidering just using the men in the forest to recover enough of the Thrall's might to summon the Master, but a massive dose of Soul-Creation Energy from JUST ONE SOURCE would process so much more quickly. Still there was the pain to consider. The stories about it...well ...left quite a scary impression.

"I-I-I'm good," Robbie croaked as he felt his insides yearn for fullness and movement. "It j-just f-f-f-feels weird."

Robbie squeezed Mark's cock like a security blanket in the face of the unknown.

"Hey Cop Sucker, the green tendril is done spraying your guts. Do you WANT me to spray the cop's dick, too? I wasn't kidding before...it's REALLY intense, so there's absolutely no shame in admitting you're too much of a pussy to handle it!"

"D-D-DO IT!!" Robbie sputtered, the ass fever taking hold.

Unknown to Robbie, Baby Blue had snaked up and kissed Mark's dick on the lips, forming a seal that guaranteed that the only recipient of Mark's semen would be the Thrall.

"Oh shit...oh shit...oh shit...giggle...oh fuck...oh shit," Robbie muttered in amused, sexual heat as he waited for the hissing sound to end.

Robbie didn't make it.

"FUUUUUUUU!!!!!" Robbie cried out, driving the heels of his shoes into the dirt and pulling hard, stabbing himself in the asshole with Mark's cock and murdering his virginity with extreme prejudice.

"DO IT, COP FUCKER!" Lecher cheered, bestowing a new nickname on Robbie to mark the occasion.

Robbie didn't need encouragement, as he was experiencing a psycho- sexual episode. Robbie let out a stream of gibberish, punctuated by loud grunts and piston action-induced flatulence as he yanked himself up and down Mark's chest and stomach. Profanities were hurled at the universe whenever Mark's cock slipped free and had to be reinserted, or when Robbie's shoes slipped in the dirt, ruining his fuck rhythm. In spite of those setbacks, though, Robbie was having the time of his life.

"MEMORY! MEMORY!" Robbie shrieked, realizing in his frenzy that he hadn't asked beforehand.

"Of course," Guile confirmed with fake light-heartedness.

"Baby Blue just sucked up some of Marky's pre-cum," Lecher informed Guile privately. "Feel anything excruciating?"

"No, nothing yet," Guile replied anxiously, "Not even a warning."

"We could hurry things up," Lecher offered, "if the suspense is killing you."

"No," Guile stated flatly. "By losing his virginity by being fucked on the filthy ground, just so I can test whether my internal monitors will punish me for using a thirteen year old to acquire semen, I've broken my promise that Robbie's first time would be on a clean bed of tongue material. Therefore, no matter how much I want the results of my experiment, Mark Pudroolen will NOT cum until Robbie WISHES him to cum!"

"Christ," Lecher chuckled while watching Robbie's skinny legs push and pull like crazy to keep Mark's green cock sliding in and out of Robbie's green insides, "we're going to have to get someone to CARRY the boy to the feeding area after THIS!"

"So be it," Guile intoned.

Mark turned his head to the right to keep from getting slammed in the chin by Robbie's skull. He'd also tried to hold his breath to keep from inhaling the vapor that was making him hard as a rock and aching to blow, but he lost that fight after about thirty seconds. Mark was going to climax and squirt his DNA straight up the boy's shitter, and there wasn't anything Mark could do to stop it.

"The fucked-up little fag will probably jizz all over himself when they're swabbing him," Mark seethed bitterly, distracting himself from how fucking incredible Robbie's sexually inflamed insides felt rubbing against Mark's pre-treated cock, and squeezing it with anatomy-defying strength.

An image formed in front of Mark's closed eyes. A green erection was sliding in and out of a green rectum, matching the tempo that Robbie was using to sexually assault him. Mark was seeing the view up Robbie's ass, and witnessing his own cock playing a game of peek-a-boo.

"Is..is that a vein?" Mark thought in horror, staring at the baby blue tube clinging to his green shaft, "Did I pop a vein or something?!?!"

"I've capped your penis with a semen siphon," Guile informed him. "SURELY you didn't think a cum vampire would let your ejaculation go to waste, sloshing around a boy's rectum instead of providing us sustenance.

"Wh....what?" Mark asked, his mind dulled by the pleasurable effects of the green spray on his cock, mixed with the tactile sensation of his skin-to-skin, inside and out, contact with Robbie.

"I never cease to be amazed by the mental acuity of the Timbersburg Police," Guile grumbled. "See if you can understand THIS, Officer: As much as you theoretically hate what's being done to you, this IS Robbie's first sexual experience, and it's NOT going as well as I want.

"So fucking sorry," Mark sneered.

"No, but you WILL be if you don't start taking deep breaths through your nose, inhaling as much of that vapor as possible. After it makes you unbearably horny, I am going to return your abilities to move and speak, at which point one of two things is going to happen: You will either stay inside of Robbie and fuck him to completion while assuming ALL of the effort, or you will push Robbie off of you and make a run for the I-147 while masturbating like a chimp. If you choose the second option, I will drop you, and Robbie will be compelled to jump back on your cock and uncomfortably finish himself off. If you make that necessary, I will Free-Per-View the whole encounter, minus Robbie's face, to every male brain I can reach...from tonight onward. In a few weeks, you'll start to get recognized on the street. Later, after a few months, you'll get to enjoy the irony of being treated like a pedophile for NOT willingly fucking a thirteen year old boy."

"If I do it, will you-?"

"NEGOTIATIONS ARE CLOSED!" Guile yelled. "CHOOSE!"

But there was no choice. Just like Caleb Crandal, who didn't choose to be made into a monster by Tom Daggen, and had no choice but to become a different kind of monster by accepting the hellish offer made by Ladislav Kaschak, Mark Pudroolen "chose" the only "choice", by filling his lungs through his nose...again, and again, and again.

Robbie's sexuality and physicality were at war. Sexually, Robbie needed his legs to pump faster and harder, so the cock up his ass would do likewise. Physically, though, he just wasn't capable. One of the involuntary changes that Guile had introduced into Robbie's mind was the desire to start lifting weights with his dad, and Robbie had been seriously thinking about it ever since then. But Robbie needed that strength NOW, not later.

"WAIT...NO!" Robbie shrieked in desperation at the feel of Mark's hands clamping onto his hips. Just like what happened to his father, Robbie's anal cravings were out of control, and stopping right then would've been detrimental to Robbie's sanity.

"JUST RELAX AND LIE THERE, YOU LITTLE FAGGOT!" Mark snarled angrily, his lust and outrage mixing in a very bad way.

Mark engaged his muscles and easily pulled Robbie back and forth along the frictionless interface between their bodies, rubbing Robbie's insides with a lot more speed, power, and control than Robbie had been capable of.

"KICK OFF YOUR SHOES AND KEEP YOUR LEGS ON TOP OF MINE," Mark yelled to be heard over Robbie's enfuriating howls and grunts. "DON'T MAKE ME HAVE TO DRAG YOUR FUCKING LEGS BACK AND FORTH THROUGH THE FUCKING DIRT!"

"Uh...you might wanna paralyze Marky again," Lecher suggested.

"Why?"

"Because he's making Robbie CRY, maybe???" Lecher pointed out sarcastically.

"Those aren't tears of sadness, Lecher. Officer Pudroolen is giving Robbie exactly what he's been wanting and needing for a very long time, and I'm not just talking about his cock."

"A strong male role model?" Lecher guessed.

"Partially," Guile said thoughtfully, "but it goes far beyond that. All that matters is that everything is now even better than what I promised."

"So now, all you have to worry about is getting punished for using an underaged boy to collect semen."

"I'm optimistic."

"Well I'm both pessimistic and REALISTIC," Lecher grumbled, "which means that when you fail to drain Robbie at the feeding area, and you're screaming your regrets into my brain-section, I'm hauling ass back home and I'm going to FINALLY run around that whole, fucking lake."

"I'll probably recover by the time you're done. What should we do then?"

"I'm thinking we should torch Lure's house and flood every bit of our remaining S.C.E. into his brain section so he has to watch helplessly while it BURNS!"

"If we've completely run out of options, that's exactly what we'll do then," Guile agreed to Lecher's surprise.

"GUILE!" Officer Pudroolen shouted. "I'M ALMOST THERE! REMEM-!"

"USE YOUR THOUGHTS, IDIOT!" Guile yelled into Mark's mind, "Robbie has to believe your semen is going into HIM and not US!"

"LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU'RE CUMMIN' IN ME!" Robbie squealed in excite- ment."

"I'm going to show Robbie a false image, Officer," Guile told Mark. "If you ruin this, I'll ruin YOU!"

The screened image of Guile and Lecher turned into a 3-D view of Robbie's insides, exactly like the telepathic image that Guile had sent to Mark earlier, but with Baby Blue deleted.

"I'm ejaculating," Mark stated clinically and coldly, making Robbie (whose virginity loss already had him giddy) bust up giggling.

And sure enough, the screen showed Mark's penis erupt, squirting thick and copious amounts of semen into Robbie. It was a dream come true for Robbie, but it was as fake as the tree limbs that hid Lure from Mike, the deer that made Jaden Harris stop his SUV, and the police lights and sirens that had given Robbie's father false hope.

"Congratulations!" Lecher said into Robbie's exhilarated mind, "Your body is almost as impure as your thoughts, Cop Fucker!"

"Any pain?" Lecher asked Guile.

"None at all," Guile crowed. "It was a complete success."

"Yeah, but the cum wasn't Robbie's," Lecher disputed. "Using a kid to get cum isn't the same thing as using a kid to get cum!"

Guile reluctantly chose not to insult Lecher's ridiculously phrased attempt to say something profound.

Because Lecher was right.

Mark was tempted to say: "We're DONE!" to prompt Robbie to get up and stop sitting on his pelvis, but Mark didn't dare rock the boat, so he did a slow burn and tolerated the icky feeling of his hypersensitive penis slowly shrinking its way out of Robbie.

"Owwwww, my legs hurt," Robbie complained, struggling to his feet after he finally pooped out Mark's dick.

Mark engaged his abdominals to sit up, but they suddenly lost tension, sending him flopping back down.

"Hey! What are you do-?" Mark protested before his vocal cords were once again rendered inoperative.

"Robbie?" Guile asked, ignoring Mark, "You haven't cum yet. Would you like to use Mark's hand again? I could compel him to give you a hand- job or blowjob, if you like."

"NO, THAT WASN'T PART OF OUR DEAL, GUILE!" Mark screamed mentally.

"By the way, Robbie, I would appreciate it if you never tell a soul about the things you've done, and WILL do, with Officer Pudroolen," Guile instructed.

"I wasn't gonna," Robbie said dismissively while going for yet another cigarette, but deciding to wait due to feeling a little smoked-out.

"There, Officer Pudroolen," Guile said to Mark privately, "You took Robbie's virginity, and he's agreed not to haul you in front of a judge. Deal honored."

"But I thought you were going to let me go now!"

"You cannot manipulate a GENETICALLY-DESIGNED MANIPULATOR with something as pathetic as PRESUMPTION," Guile snarled. "When you negotiate a DEAL, all that matters is what you SAY, NOT what you THINK, and you never SAID anything about me freeing you after you were done fucking the boy! You are seeking to employ a PITY PLAY against someone who doesn't give a SHIT about disappointing you! Or to put it in a way that someone of your political leanings would appreciate: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS!"

"You know, Robbie, I could use the green tendril on Officer Pudroolen's asshole, if you like," Guile suggested. "The man DID almost kill you, something for which he feels ZERO remorse, just a tiny bit of phew."

Mark locked eyes with Robbie and almost used his 'cop stare', but the kid was such a defiant little bastard that Mark didn't want to risk challenging him, so he gave Robbie a slight look of concern, instead. That concern grew as Robbie's flaccid penis started to thicken up.

"Now that he's not being a moody little prick, he's acting more and more girly," Mark considered. "There's no way that little faggy bitch is gonna want to rape me."

"Wrong, Marky," Lecher intruded into Mark's private thoughts. "Guile messed with the kid's head and pumped it up with the need to pump. This could go either way."

"Robbie, if you're feeling weird about having sex with Officer Pudroolen, you needn't worry," Guile told Robbie secretly. "Although he'll deny it later, as he TENDS TO DO, the green tendril will make him enjoy it as much as YOU did. Robbie, since he knows we live inside the brain of Caleb Crandal, Officer Pudroolen will HAVE to be enslaved, just like your father, so even if YOU don't fuck him, Lecher WILL."

"Guile," Robbie asked, his mental voice softening, "could you come live in my brain? Lecher could come, too. We could be friends, and do stuff with guys, and...and..."

Guile could feel Lecher listening in and becoming emotional. Guile wasn't too far behind.

"...and maybe you wouldn't have to die tomorrow."

"I wish we could Robbie, but although Lecher and I can drift around outside of Caleb's body, we are not spirits. We each have a brain inside of Caleb's brain. We're stuck where we are, sadly."

Robbie sighed with way too much shoulder action. Guile smiled at how the loss of his virginity hadn't caused Robbie to mature in any way.

"If you don't die, will you come see me, or at least let me know you didn't die?" Robbie pleaded, rubbing tears out of his eyes with the back of his left wrist, since the light from the bubbles revealed just how dirty the back of his right hand was.

"I promise," Guile said as he reached into Robbie's mind and used Pit Fog to elevate Robbie's mood drastically.

"Lecher is governed by passion, so he has an excuse for feeling emotional at Robbie's expression of love, but I do not," Guile considered. "Michael Pearson, what the hell did you DO to me? and HOW DID YOU DO IT???"

Robbie's face lit up as the drug took affect.

"I FORGOT!" Robbie announced out loud. "Can you let the cop talk again?"

"Uh, sure, but he's just going to say...," Guile started before perusing Robbie's active thoughts. "Ohhhhhh, I see. Well, it's YOUR night, so if that's what you want to do to him, I don't have a problem with it."

"WHAT?!" Officer Pudroolen demanded with his restored voice. "WHAT DO YOU WANT, ROBBIE?! WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TO ME?!"

Robbie bent over, rather than strain his achy knees, and moved Mark's paralyzed arms up until they were perpendicular to his body. Then he plopped down next to Mark's right flank.

"Look, Robbie, you got what you wanted," Mark reasoned while forcing himself to sound as kind as possible. "I'm not happy about what you did to me, but as long as you keep quiet about what you made me do, I'll try to forgive you. But if you-SHHHHLLLLLL!!!"

Mark sucked his teeth long and hard as Robbie leaned forward and gently slid his fingertips along Mark's armpits.

"Robbie, please don't do that! I don't like that!"

"You're lying," Robbie grinned, "Guile told me you like being naked and getting tickled by boys."

"That was way back when I was a SSSSHHHHHHHLLLLLL!!!!"

Robbie's fingers fluttered all along Mark's flanks, pushing him to the brink, while Guile helped out by changing the Pit Fog chemicals in Mark's brain into something that would relax him and make him high.

"NO!...NO!...DON'T!...NO!" Mark protested against the potential loss of what little dignity he had left, but Mark stopped speaking when he realized that talking was bringing him closer to breaking. In desperation, he gritted his teeth and strained his neck muscles, making him look like he was receiving a spinal tap.

"PLEASE STOP," Mark begged as a last resort, "I can't handle...I won't be able....I don't.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

The floodgates opened, and Mark lost all control. He fought to make his arms move down to his sides to protect his most ticklish areas, but he couldn't make them engage. He was forced to just lie there and endure the relentless onslaught.

Robbie wasn't satisfied, though. He was determined to whip Officer Pudroolen up into a frenzy of hysterics.

He would succeed.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!"

"Mooooooooooo."

"Stop making cow noises!" Officer Tracy Rogers mumbled groggily while suspended somewhere between unconsciousness and wakefulness. "I know you're not a cow!"

"But he IS a cow, Miss Rogers," Guile disputed through his puppet's mouth. "They're ALL cows."

"Moooooooo-OOOOOOOOOO!"

"No they're not," Tracy groaned, fighting her way back to awareness and not totally sure what she'd just contradicted. Tracy Rogers was simply disagreeable by nature. She disagreed with a lot of people, in both senses of the phrase.

"Of course they are!" Brian MacCrouder reasserted, "They wander around with something dangling from their loins that dispenses a desired liquid. All you have to do is warm your hands, grab it gently, work it to get the juices flowing, and before you know it, your bucket runneth over."

"SHUT UP," Tracy snapped groggily, slowly becoming aware that she was lying on the damp ground, and she had no idea where she was. "Stop saying weird shit and let me try to wake up, Brian."

"I'm not Brian. I'm the monster."

Tracy simultaneously opened her eyes, sat up, and drew her weapon. And in that moment, she felt exactly as Craig and Robbie Byrne did when they drove over the rise of the 'I-147 bottleneck' and descended into a nightmare.

It took Tracy's brain a moment to separate the mish-mash of naked male body parts into something recognizable, but gradually, she saw that Brian was relaxing on a chaise lounge made out of Joe Prender and Kevin Wright, who were down on all fours, shoulder-to-shoulder. Tracy's on-again, off-again lover, Tyler Whitlock, was forming the back of Brian's "throne", by bending over and grabbing his knees, allowing the monster to rest his back against Tyler's muscular ass.

George Klempernick wasn't a part of the throne. Instead, he was kneeling off to the side, behind both Joe and Kevin. His normally stern and cruel features were gone. Instead, he looked gooned out of his mind, even more than when he, Tyler, and Tracy used to do drugs together. He looked like a simpleton...a fool, something that wasn't helped by the fact that he was merrily whistling "Old MacDonald Had A Farm". But whistling wasn't the strangest thing George was doing. His heavily tattooed arms were extended, reaching underneath Kevin and Joe and gliding frictionlessly up and down their erections.

"Mmmmmmooooooooo!" Kevin said. Seconds later, Joe did the same in a lower register.

All of the men were naked, except for their shoes and hats, which told Tracy that the creature had no love for the Timbersburg police, or maybe cops in general, ....and the monster wanted them to be mobile.

Only two of those "tubes" were present, the brownish-purple one, which was still up Brian's nose, and a light bluish one that was hovering beneath Kevin's tummy, ....waiting. Adding to the supernatural spectacle were bubbles of bright light that were lazily floating around, illuminating the fog like gaslights, giving the scene a "Jack the Ripper" vibe.

Somewhere nearby, a man let out a bellyful of psychotic laughter. It echoed the madness of what Tracy was witnessing.

"Do you plan on shooting Officer MacCrouder, Miss Rogers?" Guile asked with Brian's mouth while lying comfortably on his monstrous throne. "Go ahead. After you do, I'll just remove my tendril and snake it up the snout of one of the other cows so that we may continue the lovely conversation we're going to have."

"Let him go!" Tracy demanded reflexively, used to perps instantly yielding to her gun and forceful personality. "Let ALL OF THEM go!"

"No!" Guile hissed with menace before allowing his phony, friendly smile to creep back over Brian's face.

Silence reigned while Guile gave Tracy time to figure out how best to deal with her situation. Guile was the sort who liked to give his prey time to prepare. It made their failure all the sweeter. But the problem was, Tracy was distracted to the point that she couldn't organize her thoughts, and not just by the mooing and whistling.

Tracy tried to maintain eye contact with "Brian", but her eyes kept dropping down to Kevin....Officer Wright. She'd never found the man particularly attractive, with his slight middle-age paunch and bald spot, but seeing him there on all fours, having his impressively long shaft stroked by George, was causing her to see Kevin in a whole new light. Like Mark Pudroolen, Tracy spent a lifetime trying to control an uncontrollable part of herself, a part so powerful that it was even capable of redirecting her gaze away from the supernatural.

"Did you ever see Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors?" Brian asked, snapping Tracy's attention, and gun, back to Brian.

Tracy did, but she didn't remember a damned thing about it, so she shook her head 'no'.

"Well, let's just say that in horror movies, it's never a good idea to tell the monster to 'let him go'. It never works out"

Tracy got to her feet and holstered her gun. If she shot any of the men, it's not like she could count on the purple-brown tendril to show up in court and exonerate her. As far as Tracy could determine, all she could do was negotiate for the return of her people. And if she couldn't, her only option would be to run!

Another wave of male laughter filled the air.

"Is that Officer Pudroolen?" Tracy asked, finally isolating his voice in the desperation-laced hysteria.

"Why yes, it is," Guile confirmed with the kind of smile that begs for a well-delivered right cross. "Speaking of Nightmare on Elm Street, I showed Officer Pudroolen my Freddy Krueger impression a little while ago, and as you can plainly hear, he absolutely loved it! He literally can't stop laughing about it."

"Can he breathe?!" Tracy asked with drop-dead seriousness, preparing to take off and follow the laughter back to Mark and slap the shit out of him if he couldn't, or, considering the public relations NIGHT- MARE he just caused for the department, even if he COULD!"

Brian sighed in frustration. Guile really hated letting people know that he was unable to kill, but maybe if he would've told Craig right off the bat, before his goddamned CHEST puffed up too much, he might've accepted Guile's deal.

"If a human dies as a result of anything I do, I suffer unbearable agony," Guile confessed. "And before you mention the mess over on the road and that deafening noise, those aren't my fault. You see-"

"Why AM I able to hear again, anyway?" Tracy jumped in, casually stepping to the side so she could surreptitiously watch Joe getting 'milked', too. Tracy's eyes violated Joe's privacy and enabled her to gain a small sense of revenge against a man who never had a kind word to say, either to Tracy's face, or behind her back. But Guile saw what she was doing, so he made Joe instantly relax his bladder without warning, just like the animal he was being forced to imitate. Loud, frothy piss hit the wet dirt, killing whatever gratification, sexual and otherwise, Tracy was receiving.

"I fixed your hearing with the turquoise tendril," Guile answered, telling Tracy nothing. "Anyway, as I was saying, all the commotion taking place around here was caused by...well...a poltergeist of sorts."

"If you want me to believe that you're not a killer, in spite of dropping trees on people, roasting them in their vehicles, and threatening to burn their faces off, could you please give me a better explanation than a 'poltergeist attack'?"

"How's this?" Guile smart-assed, foolishly allowing himself to lose his temper to a woman with a memory nowhere NEAR as good as Michael Pearson's, but impressive nonetheless. "Tonight, Reality Itself initiated a series of intelligently planned attacks against a throw-away Thrall, incapacitating its Lure and activating its OUTDATED and OUTRAGEOUSLY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE Emergency Survival Protocols, which Reality Itself MUST have known would cause the Thrall to GO APESHIT and try to KILL PEOPLE! Reality Itself is making some sort of HUGE PLAY, and for some reason, it depends on keeping the Thrall distracted, grounded, and unable to contact either Entangleds or our Master! That's my statement, Officer! And thanks to Reality Itself, if you want to announce it to the press, IT'S A REALLY SHORT WALK!!!"

"GUILE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Lecher screamed.

"Telling her nothing of consequence!" Guile snapped. "Back off and let me do this my way, Lecher!"

"What's your name, and don't say 'Brian MacCrouder'?" Tracy asked quickly, to distract the monster and make him think that Tracy HADN'T been paying close attention to his string of gibberish.

"Woman, don't even FLATTER yourself into thinking you can work ME," Brian's face snarled. "I just programmed a little BOY into being able to dismantle the pathetic conflict resolution training you received before someone stabbed you in the tit with a badge and slapped you on the ass as you were spit out of whichever diploma mill police academy you attended!"

"I just want to know what to call you," Tracy stated, letting her- self sound pissy to avoid sounding patronizing.

"GUILE!"

"Look, I read Cynthia Keim's statement, and I'm watching two of my follow cops getting handjobs with a tube-"

"TENDRIL!"

"...tendril waiting for the obvious to happen. Am I correct in assuming you feed on sperm?"

"Yes," Guile said more calmly, salivating to know what ploy...what play...the woman would try to use against him. If it were laughable enough, Guile would experience more pleasure than either Lure or Lecher would ever know.

"Is it necessary for you to feed now and here, at this moment, in spite of all the media attention and the military, who will be taking control of everything once they arrive...IN FORCE?"

"Yes."

"So you can't just pack up and move on?"

"And become some OTHER police jurisdiction's problem?" Guile suggested, reading Tracy's mind without being able to read her mind.

"Yes," Tracy stated flatly.

"No," Guile responded with even more 'flat' before suddenly coming up with a way to have some fun. Regretably, though, it involved telling the truth, "I need to feed before I can leave."

"So if you finish feeding off of these guys, and Mark, and the others you've taken, you'll be able to leave THEN?" Tracy asked, falling right into Guile's trap.

"Are you offering these men to me, Officer?" Brian asked, his impassive face hiding Guile's broad, predator smile.

"Uh...no, I'm just trying to figure out your needs...what it'll take to end all this."

"I'll need to feed from Robbie Byrne, too," Brian coldly informed Tracy, masking the fact that she was bringing him to the edge of a massive psychological orgasm. "May I have him as well?"

"He's...just a boy," Tracy said, fumbling bad. "He's only, like, twelve."

"Thirteen," Brian corrected. "So may I have him?"

"I don't think....isn't there anyone else you could feed from?" Tracy asked, stepping deeper in Guile's shit. "We haven't been able to clear the woods. There're a lot of men still around. I could...uh...ask for volunteers."

Visions of men surrounded Tracy, some walking in place, others staggering in place, and still others standing stationary. The only thing they all had in common were rifles and an expression of amused, druggy confusion.

"I don't have time to wait for volunteers! Make the selection for me! These are the men I can reach. Pick which ones I can have!" Brian insisted.

"I'm not authorized to MAKE that decision!" Tracy blurted, feeling the pressure. In spite of knowing that the men surrounding her were illusory, like the deer Cynthia spoke about, they were nevertheless making Tracy feel smothered.

But then the images of men suddenly disappeared and were replaced by three women, all of whom seemed to be distressed, and one of whom was vomiting.

"I'll also need these three women," Guile lied. "I feed on ova, and these women are at the optimal point in their cycles to extract-"

"That's NOT going to happen," Tracy butted in, suddenly far more assertive.

"Not to worry, I'll stop sickening them with the fog, and they'll be right as rain when I begin the procedure."

"Why are you making them sick?" Tracy asked, hoping it didn't mean Guile was forcing them all to spontaneously abort, or causing them some form of reproductive damage or anything.

"I'm sickening ALL of the women who've come into contact with my fog," Brian crowed. "Surely YOU noticed the female exodus from these woods, you trained observer, you.

"I...I thought it was from the ear pain caused by that huge noise you made," Tracy replied, almost afraid to ask the logical follow-up. "If you're making 'all' women sick, why haven't I felt nauseous?"

Burt Veribton's ears perked up. Thanks to 'Guile' thinning out the fog in the area, and due to Burt finding a great angle that wasn't obstructed by trees, Burt was able to film from a distance. But things were getting interesting, so he drew closer while watching 'Brian' carefully for signs that Guile was aware of Burt's presence, in spite of being gifted with alleged unnoticeability by the being who introduced himself to Burt as "Andrew", but who Guile referred to as "Reality Itself".

Thanks to Andrew, Burt already knew that the fog would make women sick, so when Tracy wasn't affected, he knew that "the monster" wanted her for something. Curiosity was consuming Burt, and now it seemed as if he would finally get his answer.

Or not.

"We'll get to that, Miss Rogers, but for now, we need to turn to the distressing matter of why you won't allow me to harvest ova from these women."

"I work with women who've been sexually assaulted," Tracy stated with conviction. "I know what they go through. I'd never agree to put a woman though something like that."

"And yet," Brian's mouth gleamed, "you were perfectly happy to give me your fellow MALE officers.

"Look...," Tracy sighed haughtily, seemingly trying to win the argument with angry exasperation. It hadn't worked on Robbie, and it sure as hell wouldn't work on Guile, "what you're having Officer Klempernick do to Officer Wright and Officer Prender is bad, but-"

"But as long as it's not being done to a WOMAN, you don't care, right Miss Rogers?" Guile completed.

"It's not sexist to refuse to equate internal invasion with a handjob," Tracy stated with as much melodramatic incredulity as she could generate.

George released Kevin and focused his full attention on Officer Joe Prender's "udder". Brian raised his legs off of Kevin, who mooed and crawled a few feet away.

"So, you claim you don't give special treatment to women...," Brian said with the slow pace of someone trying to make their opponent seem like a complete idiot, while pointing his penis at Tracy and spreading his pee hole open with his index fingers, "...you're only concerned with 'internal invasion'? Were you even paying attention to what I was doing to Brian before you FAINTED? Christ knows you screamed like a girl when you saw it!"

"Why's Kevin crawling over there?" Tracy demanded.

"I'm not sure!" Guile snarled. "I'M still waiting for you to tell me why someone who responds to sexual assault complaints feels free to chuck men at me so I can shove my tendrils up their cocks and assholes, but STANDS FIRM against a woman getting similar treatment, AND SOMEHOW INSISTS SHE'S NOT BEING SEXIST!"

"GUILE!" Lecher yelled, "You're not accomplishing ANYTHING with this 'battle of the sexes' BULLSHIT! Just lay down your threat, get what we want, and MOVE ON! You know, ACT LIKE A GUILE!!"

"I AM acting like a Guile, you MORON! You couldn't possible under- stand what I'm doing, so stop trying to-"

"How about YOU 'stop trying' to always be RIGHT, and admit you're out of control!" Lecher shouted. "Michael Pearson's attack DID something to us, and I think I know what. I've been obsessing about Caboose-"

"You ALWAYS worry about that thing," Guile countered. "From the very first-"

"Not THIS much!!" Lecher interrupted, determined to keep Guile from guiding the conversation in self-serving directions. "I was going to KILL that kid for shooting out one of Caboose's eyes, and that's a MINOR injury to a Pilot Fish. Michael Pearson's attack expanded our emotions, made us more human than we were ever meant to BE, Guile. And it's causing us to act out with our Lure's negativity and vindictiveness. Can't you see it?"

Guile pondered this possibility for a moment.

"You might be correct, but I don't have time to discuss this now! I have to get back to working this woman so-"

"You're not working her, you're tormenting her, for the way she treated Robbie! Just like you're punishing Lumberjack for getting in the way of your plan. Guiles don't take things PERSONALLY!"

"We'll talk about this later!" Guile said dismissively, but Lecher could tell Guile knew he was right. But it didn't matter. Guile just had to make his point, and for the first time in his brief life, people were paying attention to him, people were forced to interact with him, and he was becoming addicted to it.

"Because violation is DIFFERENT for women," Tracy responded. "Women are..."

"Weaker?" Guile unhelpfully suggested.

"No! Men just shrug shit off more easily! They process the trauma by NOT processing it! They don't FEEL things like women do! Nothing fucking MATTERS to them!" Tracy spat, letting Guile get under her skin and needle her into revealing a lot about her attitudes about men. "They just don't CARE!"

"Fascinating theory," Brian's body pretended to consider while rubbing his chin like a supervillain. "Let's you and I test it together, Miss Rogers."

"TRACY!" Kevin shouted, suddenly free of his cow persona.

Officer Kevin Wright hopped to his feet and quickly shook the mud from his hands. To Tracy's surprise, Kevin didn't cover his erection, or even block Tracy's view with his hands.

Tracy wished she could stop glacing down at it.

"Run back to the road, NOW!" Kevin yelled angrily. "Guile's using US to get to YOU, ..."

"THANK you," Burt Veribton groaned, basking in the validation of someone else coming to the same conclusion as he did.

"...but if you're not here, he can't-!"

"KEV!" Tracy shrieked, her expression widening in horror.

Officer Wright looked down, and for a split second, he thought he was pissing navy blue blood. He couldn't feel anything, but the sight of it was more than sufficient to throw the man into a blind panic, especially since he hadn't been conscious to see it happening to Brian.

"NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!!!" Kevin screamed as his fingers slid uselessly along the tendril.

"You REALLY don't want to yank that out, Kevin," Brian chuckled at him, casually crossing his legs while his chair mooed contentedly. "That would be VERY painful...and messy."

"GET IT OUT OF ME!" Kevin bellowed, so crazed and irrational that he didn't care that Brian wasn't in control of himself, he was going to beat his body to death anyway. The violet tendril, already 'ribboned', tripped Kevin up and made him hit the ground painfully, and once his ass was in their air, the brown and aqua blue tendrils squirmed inside. THIS, Kevin DID feel!

A high-pitched, child-like cry of fearful confusion exploded out of Kevin Wright's mouth as diarrhea exploded out of his ass.

"STOP IT!" Tracy screamed.

"HE'LL 'SHRUG IT OFF'!" Guile shouted with Brian's finger pointed accusingly at Tracy.

"I DIDN'T MEAN IT LIKE THAT!" Tracy shieked, her voice going so loud and shrill that Guile could barely make it out. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST GOING TO GIVE THEM HANDJOBS!"

"I was, but you restricted my feeding to just THESE men! An ordinary ejaculation only produces a FRACTION of a man's supply of what I feed on, so I have to use the same technique I used on Brian to get it all!"

The Brown and aqua blue tendrils pulled out of Kevin's ass, but before Kevin even had time to clench, they were immediately replaced by the dark green tendril and one of the ends of the pink tendril. Kevin's whole body jolted in response to the dark green tendril turning into a coil, lying on top of Kevin's pink tendril-covered prostate, and vibrating the hell out of it.

Kevin mistakenly believed he was being electrocuted from the inside, and behaved accordingly.

"YOU WIN!" Tracy desperately yielded. "WHATEVER POINT YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE, YOU WIN!"

The lime green tendril opened wide and engulfed Kevin's scrotum, which wasn't easy, since his testicles had retracted so tightly that they almost appeared undescended. Another end of the pink tendril slapped against Kevin's taint, and spread across it, making Kevin's PC muscles spasm like crazy. Mercifully, though, the navy blue tendril withdrew from Kevin's penis.

"If you don't understand the point, how can you cede it?" Brian asked with a mocking, quizzical expression.

On the verge of insanity, Kevin flipped over to protect his asshole and genitals from further invasion, only to get attacked by the remaining ends of the pink tendril, whose tips liquified, covering his nipples and filling his navel. Kevin quickly reached down to protect his penis (which had gotten filthy when the violet tendril made him fall) and made the horrifying discovery that there was some sort of peach-colored goo all over it. As Kevin frantically tried to wipe it off, he started to cry like a baby.

"KEVIN, IT'S OKAY!" Tracy shouted to be heard over his high-pitched wail as his wiping caused the goop to explode into violently fizzing foam. "HE'S JUST TRYING TO SCARE YOU! HE DID THIS TO BRIAN, AND IT DIDN'T HURT HIM! JUST CALM DOWN, KEV! JUST CALM THE HELL DOWN!"

"I'm impressed," Guile chuckled with scorn. "After the way you handled Robbie Byrne -bitching at him instead of comforting him, and telling him his father's life didn't matter-, I didn't think you were capable of expressing compassion for a MALE trauma victim. What's making Kevin worthy of your concern, your shared profession, his crying, or his feminine squeals?"

But Kevin Wright wasn't squealing, crying, or doing much of any- thing, anymore. He was staring at Tracy with a blank expression that made him look dead. Kevin didn't even react when Baby Blue swallowed his penis, and the vermillion tendril slid through a hole in Baby Blue, just in front of Kevin's pee hole, and dove straight in, going all the way to Kevin's bladder.

"I'M not the one who abducted the boy's FATHER!" Tracy shot back, mistakenly assuming that her treatment of Robbie Byrne was Guile's sole reason for his cruel attack on Kevin Wright. It wasn't.

"So because I kidnapped Craig Byrne, you get a pass for venting your bitchiness at his son and treating him with no humanity whatsoever?"

"No!" Tracy denied. "That's not what I-!"

"I wasn't aware that the Timbersburg Police are only expected to conduct themselves in accordance with the low standards of a cum vampire who regards human males as COWS!" Brian uttered with feigned amazement. "You pieces of shit with a shield should really hold yourselves to a MUCH higher standard than THAT."

"Look, if you won't release Kevin, could you PLEASE at least dope him up again, like what you're doing to the others?!" Tracy appealed.

"You want me to give him drugs?!?!" Brian gasped, bringing his hand to his chest in mock astonishment. "I CAN'T! Don't you see that I am SURROUNDED by Timbersburg cops? They might grab me, slam me onto the ground, and spend over two hours taunting me, prodding me with nightsticks, and kicking me in order to hopefully provoke a reaction so they can all pile on me like jackals and beat the SHIT out of me! And then they'll lie and insist that everything they did was done professionally, completely by the book."

Kevin started gagging and convulsing. He couldn't breathe.

"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?" Tracy asked while diving to the ground, opening Kevin's mouth, and securing his tongue.

"This."

Tracy looked up and saw that Brian was pointing at a commemorative tattoo on George's abs. It was a rainbow with a bloody ax embedded in the middle. Beneath the rainbow was a date: 6-22-2019.

"Shit," Tracy muttered to herself, still fighting to keep Kevin's airway open. "The Rainbow Tavern".

"The TIMBERSBURG Rainbow Tavern," Guile corrected. "It was quite brave of the owner to continue naming his bar after the town that used every nasty trick in the book to close it...and eventually succeeded by pulling the NASTIEST one of all. Tell me, Miss Rogers, was that raid JUSTIFIED, PROFESSIONAL, and DONE BY THE BOOK!"

"I wasn't even THERE!" Tracy shot back reflexively, knowing it was the wrong thing to say even as she said it.

"I didn't ASK if you were THERE!" Guile snarled, "I asked if-"

"I don't know," Tracy lied. "Drugs were found-"

"I know for a FACT, you tricky CUNT, that you FUCKING WITNESSED drug transactions at Dustin's Retirement and Dugan's Vroom Room! Did you REPORT THEM?!? Did the patrons of THOSE establishments find themselves face down in dried beer, phlegm, and chew spit, while asshole Timbersburg cops taunted them for hours?!"

"Shit!" Tracy screamed internally. "He's not just controlling them, he's reading their goddamned minds! I've seen drugs and money change hands in LOTS of bars, but the only times I saw it happen at Dustin's and Dugan's were when Tyler was with me. Christ, I hope Guile isn't digging around TOO deep in Tyler's mind! I wonder if Guile can read MINE!"

"No, I didn't report them, but I should have," Tracy finally answered after the extended silence told Tracy that Guile's question wasn't rhetorical.

George knelt down and resumed milking Joe, whose jaw slackened in response. A stream of drool left his mouth, looking like a glistening strand of spider silk. Thankfully, George didn't start whistling "Old MacDonald" again.

"I influenced Joe Prender, Kevin Wright, and George Klempernick to come along with you," Guile revealed, "since not only did they take part in the Rainbow Tavern raid, THEY FUCKING ENJOYED IT!"

"Shit!" Tracy thought once more. As much as she was attracted to Tyler, he could be cruel at times. And by his own admission, on June 22, 2019, he'd been very cruel indeed. He happily told his story of that night to anyone willing to listen. Tracy had gotten sick of hearing it.

"I can't believe I was actually feeling sorry for you," Burt Veribton told Officer Kevin Wright's comatose body, wishing he could spit, piss, or kick the cop without worrying that Guile might sense him again.

"Look, how is this going to go?" Tracy asked, accepting that Guile had no intention of being reasonable, and wanting to find out just how bad things were going to get, so she could plan.

"Well, for one thing, Miss Rogers, I want you telling me the TRUTH, which might be difficult for someone who can defend the actions of the Timbersburg Police during their raid on the Timbersburg Rainbow Tavern while in the presence of Officer George Klempernick's victory tattoo, which matches nicely with his bullet-riddled gay pride flag, his swastika, and his noose lying on a confederate flag, don't you think? I'm starting to wonder if Officer Klempernick didn't move here because it's one of the few places in the U.S. where he can go shirtless without much pushback."

"What do you 'want' me to tell 'the TRUTH' about?" Tracy asked, relieved that Guile had as much as admitted that he couldn't read HER mind, which she'd suspected, since he didn't seem to know about the drug trans- actions she'd witnessed when Tyler wasn't present, and because only men received the warning to cover their ears before the sound wave hit. It wasn't because Guile didn't WANT to warn women, it was probably because he couldn't.

"Come over here and I'll tell you," Brian instructed.

"Kind of busy," Tracy said coldly while continuing to hold Kevin's tongue, since unlike Burt, she wasn't strong enough to turn Kevin over, especially since he was now hard, which meant she'd have to flip him AND keep his erection flat against his stomach.

Tracy let out a regrettable squeal and fell back on her ass as a maroon-colored tendril zipped into Kevin's mouth.

"He'll be fine," Brian growled, "much as I'd like otherwise."

Tracy looked back at Kevin as she approached Brian's throne. In spite of his erection, he still seemed dead. Tracy wished he would groan or something, just to give her a sign that he was okay.

Mark laughed again, making Tracy feel as if he were laughing at her. Tracy was in WAY over her head, dealing with the stuff of nightmares and shitty horror films.

"Moooo-OOOOOOOOOO!!!" Joe called out, drawing Tracy's attention to the gruff, white-haired, 50-ish, no-nonsense bastard.

Tracy watched in horrified fascination as George, the most homo- phobic man she'd ever met, quickly laid down, face up, beneath Joe's haunches. George opened wide just before Joe started to ejaculate.

"Isn't that wasteful?" Tracy asked to conceal her blatant interest and inability to respectfully avert her eyes as surges of cum splattered audibly inside George's mouth.

"Vasectomy," Brian replied without elaboration. "Let's get down to business, MISS Rogers.

"You know, I've been ignoring it, but you just made it pretty damned obvious that you want me to correct you, so I will. My name is MISSUS Rogers."

The back of Brian's throne straightened up painfully and staggered around to Brian's left side to face George, who'd gotten out from under Joe and stood up at Brian's right side after swallowing, clearing his throat, and swallowing again.

"MISSUS Tracy Rogers," Guile pondered, letting the name roll off of Brian's tongue while he "absently" reached up with both hands and gave Tyler and George each a brief, complimentary penile deep tissue massage. "Huh! I wonder why I thought you weren't married."

Burt's camera view of the scene shook as he tried to contain his need to laugh. He hoped the camera was high-quality enough to compensate for it.

"I suppose I could be forgiven for assuming," Guile mumbled while casually giving testicular examinations to Tracy's illicit lovers, "since you're not wearing your wedding ring. They DO have black silicon stand-in rings for police officers who are on duty and don't want to risk having their wedding ring stolen...or their ring finger ripped off in case of some sort of horrific accident, you know. You might wish to invest in one, to keep men from sniffing around, thinking they've got a chance with you."

"Finished?" Tracy inquired bitterly after spending a moment chastising herself once again for her inability to remain faithful to her husband.

"No, but your marriage will be, if you keep giving me lip," Guile replied.

"No, her marriage is finished whether she gives you any more lip or not," Burt opined while wondering how many other people's personal lives would be impacted by his work. Not just Tracy's, but George's, whose hate- inspired body art would definitely cause a stir nationally, and also locally, because of his tattoo celebrating his part in the infamous (to homosexuals, anyway) raid on the Rainbow Tavern.

"The press will HAVE to do an exposé on the raid, especially after Guile's rant about it," Burt thought excitedly before realizing that it might lead to even more effort to find the video's filmographer, who didn't want HIS personal life investigated as a result.

"What do you WANT?" Tracy blurted, sick of Guile's bullshit.

"What I want is to take a memory I retrieved from Officer Whitlock here and shove it into your son's HEAD!" Guile growled, "Tell me, is fifteen too young for a boy to see his mother naked, coked out of her mind, and begging to be DPed?"

Tracy winced, and Guile could see her eyes getting wet, but Tracy wasn't quite where Guile felt she needed to be mentally before being interrogated.

"I have a question for you, MISSUS Rogers, and I want you to answer it completely, holding back nothing, or I'll start sneaking into your house late at night. You'll never hear or see me, and you won't be able to stop me. I'll creep up to your son's room and fill it with my drugged fog to temporarily dope Noah's sleeping brain into a state of utter stupidity. Then I'll wake him up with a deep kiss, remove whatever he's wearing, and get my mouth between his legs so I can enjoy the sound of his idiotic giggling. Then, when he's good and hard, I'll lie down on his bed, reach back to spread my ass open, enter your son's mind, and MAKE HIM FUCK ME!"

Tracy's face filled with alarm, which Guile interpreted as fear. It wasn't. Tracy thought she'd just figured out who "Guile" really was.

*************************************************************************** Dugan's Vroom Room Biker Bar, 2 days after the incident at Malawny Hollow. ***************************************************************************

"His dad and him are lying, Tracy. It was HIM. We didn't know the boy he was WITH, the kid he called 'Steve', but we ALL recognized RYAN!"

"I wish you had security cameras here, Dugan," Tracy said wistfully before taking another sip of her beer. "Then we'd have proof it was him."

"Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither!" Dugan announced ostentatiously before taking a puff from his ever-present cigar.

"What freedom would you lose by protecting yourself from being robbed?" Tracy asked, wishing Dugan had the ability to crank it down a notch. The bar was almost empty. There was no need to project, but Dugan was under the impression that everyone in his bar was interested in every- thing he had to say. Talking to Dugan one-on-one was a challenge.

"I would lose the freedom to NOT have to turn over the footage to YOU and YOUR FRIENDS every time something happens here, and my customers would lose the freedom to be themselves, which would result in me losing the freedom to make a living."

"Yes," Tracy agreed, lowering her voice and hoping that Dugan would do the same, "but installing them might be a helpful constant reminder that you have to watch what you do, and stay in control. Prison was your past, but it almost became your present and future."

Dugan's characteristically lighthearted mood soured instantly.

"If I'd had cameras going when it went down, this weird cover-up wouldn't be happening, Jeremy Klein wouldn't be able to deny that his son was even HERE, and I would already BE back in prison right now, Honey Tits. And we're not talking about this, since I'm concerned that although I don't have anything recording us right now, YOU might."

"Dugan, I'm off-duty, I'm not here in an official capacity, no one's pressing charges, and as far as I can tell, every elected official is screaming for this to GO AWAY. You're going to get away with it, with- out even losing your liquor license. I just need to know WHY and HOW it happened, for...well...personal reasons."

"PERSONAL REASONS? You need to know why I served two boys...one who I knew wasn't old enough...and why me and a whole bunch of guys over- powered 'em, held 'em down, and almost fucked 'em to DEATH right over there on those two tables.....for 'PERSONAL REASONS'???????"

Tracy hoped that Dugan would just say "mob mentality" or "mass hysteria" or confess that something about Ryan Klein (or someone who looked exactly like him), caused Dugan to suffer a psychotic break, triggering the prison persona that enabled Dugan to survive a lot of crap that would have broken most other men.

Tracy just needed something to "de-coincidence" it all. Something that would tell her police training to shut up!

"Dugan, the day you and the others decided to use Ryan and his friend to reenact Jodie Foster's rape scene in "The Accused", it was the same day that dispatch sent me to check out-"

Dugan crinkled his nose and bared his teeth, causing Tracy to stop speaking mid-sentence. Then he moved his eyes twice to the right, indicating three men sitting over at the corner of the bar. Dugan always watched out for Tracy, so she knew that the men were either military, reporters, paranormal researchers, or some of the freaks and weirdos who'd descended upon the area after the Malawny Hollow story broke, and were also looking into the incident at the Vroom Room. Dugan was getting a lot of bar traffic he did not want. As his bar was part of a narcotics trafficking ring, unlike other regional business owners, Dugan had just cause NOT to appreciate the sudden national scrutiny being directed at the area.

"What do you need to know, Tracy?" Dugan sighed in obvious annoyance. The elected representatives of Timbersburg weren't the ONLY ones who wanted Ryan Klein's alleged gang rape on March 1st. to 'GO AWAY'.

"I will not judge you, or tell anyone anything you say to me right now," Tracy prefaced before taking a large breath of smoky air, "But Dugan, I NEED you to tell me...no matter HOW damning it might be...that you've been struggling for a while with the desire to do what you did..."

Dugan was already shaking his head 'no'.

"....and that it could've been ANY other boys, at ANY other time, in ANY other place."

"Nope."

"Dugan, you know my secrets, because you're one of them. I know what it's like to be haunted by lust for forbidden things. I'm not calling you a fag, because male rape is almost never about love, it's about a man destroying another man. Ryan is young, good-looking, and he's got a shot at playing pro ball. That's the kind of thing that makes an older man jealous.

"Why would I be jealous of a queer?" Dugan inquired with a quizzical squint of his right eye, before wiping his brow with a dirty napkin and adjusting his red hankerchief patterned durag, "He ain't doing the kinds of things I'd get jealous OF!"

"Then maybe he and his friend came in here, acting like they were better than this place, acting all smug, smirking at people they considered freaks-?"

"Ryan was an emotional mess," Dugan interrupted. "His eyes were red from crying, and he kept swearing bloody revenge on-."

"Dugan, I don't want to hear about the rape!"

"I'm not talking about the rape, I'm talking about when he first came in. The kid was in CRISIS. He was in pain, Tracy, but before you ask, he wasn't using it as an excuse to pick a fight or even stare anyone down. He kept it to hisself. His friend, 'Steve', was helping him through it, and everyone just left them alone. The vibe in the room felt sympathetic, not mean."

"You MUST'VE felt sympathetic if you kept serving them BEERS to cry in," Tracy shot.

"Tracy, if you're having a problem with something you saw in the hollow...and it's probably better for the two of us if you don't tell me what it was," Dugan suggested, twitching his eyes once again towards where the three men had been sitting before they'd moved over to one of the pool tables, where they weren't making any effort to listen in, "maybe we should change the subject, because otherwise I'm going to give you information that will only add to this...existential crisis you're plainly having."

Tracy almost took Dugan up on the offer and asked if he picked the dates for the bar's summer motorcycle rallies, or if the Vroom Room would be having their famous Fourth of July fireworks display, which Tracy rarely missed. But instead, for reasons that confirmed Tracy's theory that she didn't know herself as well as she thought, she said: "Tell me, Dugan."

"I know my own mind, Tracy, and no one pressures or influences me to do anything I don't WANT to do! But that night, something got inside of me and started pulling my strings. I could feel it, starting when those boys walked in, and ending the moment they both fled naked out the back door and disappeared into the woods."

"Is that IT?" Tracy asked. "I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed."

"We're just getting started," Dugan said, raising his right arm, closing his fingers and holding his fist in front of Tracy's face. "Take a real good look at my knuckles."

"Yeah, AND?" Tracy asked, not knowing what Dugan was doing, and irritated that the people around them might be thinking that Dugan was "putting Tracy in her place".

"You know how worked up I get, right?" Dugan asked with a wink.

"Yes," Tracy responded, pushing Dugan's fist down with a look that implied that it might be in Dugan's best interest not to resist.

"Well I got REAL worked up when I was pumping Ryan's ass, and I ended up punching the hell out of that boy. BOTH boys. Most of the guys got in a few solid shots before, during, or after fucking 'em. When Ryan and Steve ran out of here, their bodies were black and blue, and their faces were swollen to the point of being unrecognizable."

Tracy grabbed Dugan's right hand, realizing what he'd been trying to show her. She examined Dugan's knuckles, finding no bruises, and put enough pressure on them that if they were injured, Dugan would've flinched. He didn't.

"But yesterday," Tracy said, disputing her own eyes, "Ryan uploaded a video to his YouTube channel where he gets made up by three of the kids from Weyerhauser High's drama club. He's only wearing shorts, there were plenty of close-ups, and each of the boys removed their make-up from Ryan's face, each using a different method. One boy scrubbed WAY too hard."

"I know, I watched the whole damned thing. It's boring even when you know you're watching something impossible. Funny how he kept finding ways to casually mention the date and current events, isn't it? Almost like he was trying to authenticate the video."

"But how did he FAKE that?" Tracy groaned, leaning her head back and looking up at the filthy bare rafters."

"You're not going to make detective with a perspective that narrow," Dugan teased.

"And you're not going to convince me that Ryan Klein has magical powers with a story about punches that I didn't witness first-hand," Tracy said in a sing-songy voice to soften the harshness of the truth behind her words.

"So you don't trust me?" Dugan questioned.

"I always trust you," Tracy asserted, "when you're not, by your OWN admission, being controlled by an exterior influence that is so power- ful that it can make you serve minors and then sexually assault them."

"Hold up," Dugan cautioned. "because this is your LAST chance to hop off the crazy train."

"I bought my ticket and the train's already in motion. If I jump off now, my bruises won't just disappear."

"Then welcome aboard. Ryan and Steve came here and forced us to rape them against our will."

Tracy locked eyes with Charlie Stewart, who'd been lingering nearby on the other side of the bar. He nodded in agreement at Dugan's pronounce- ment. Charlie had participated in the assault as well, something that really surprised Tracy when she'd heard, but not nearly as much as it had surprised Charlie himself.

"SERIOUSLY!" Tracy exclaimed in astonishment after politely directing her gaze back at Dugan. Tracy was usually sent out on all calls involving female victims of sexual assault, and she thought she'd 'heard it ALL', but victim blaming on THIS level was just....WOW!

"Should I continue, or do you have another theory that explains my undamaged knuckles, Ryan's lack of facial injuries, Atty. Jeremy Klein NOT pressing charges AND suing me for everything I'm worth, and the fact that not one single man in my bar declined to participate?"

"EASILY!" Tracy scoffed, "You raped two other boys who don't want to come forward, you only imagined you hit them as hard as you did, and Jeremy Klein doesn't want his son's football future ruined by a spreading rumor that could end up defining Ryan, and any team he plays for. It SUCKS, but being a gay quarterback is bad enough without being a gay quarterback who was once fucked like a bitch by bikers. Good luck packing the stands with someone like THAT as the face of your team."

"You're not done yet, 'detective'," Dugan noted while Tracy took a victory swallow of her beer.

"Oh, I could answer the last one, but not without insulting both your gender AND your clientele. Please continue with your explanation, though. Just because I can tear your theories to shreds, doesn't mean I don't want to hear them."

"Here goes...try to keep up," Dugan challenged, taking another puff to help organize his thoughts before starting. "Ryan and Steve wanted to be gang-raped, so they came to my bar, which is usually full of rowdy, virile men, and doesn't have any security cameras to record what they intended to do. Shortly after those boys arrived, Shannon and Tamara, the only women working that night, complained about feeling nauseous, so I sent them home. Female customers started leaving too, and although I didn't find out until later, THEY were complaining about nausea TOO. Once the bar was a sausage party, the air started feeling...warmer...and I..everyone...started feeling our oats. The volume of the bar increased. Around that time, Ryan stood up and took his shirt off...."

"Dugan, I already read the statement."

"First of all, whoever reported the rapes BETTER have included his OWN involvement, and second, the statement left out all the REALLY bizarre shit!"

Tracy felt like she was betraying everyone who'd ever been blamed for their own sexual assault, but she told Dugan to continue anyway.

"So Ryan starts taunting his friend's...Steve's...manhood, challenging him to level Ryan with a gut punch, which the kid tries, and it was PAINFUL AS HELL...TO EVERYONE BUT RYAN! Shitty form, no hips, no power. Ryan STUPIDLY...or BRILLIANTLY...made everyone think of Steve as easy prey, and he set HIMSELF up for one of US to do what Steve couldn't. CHRIST, Tracy, if my theory is right, it was a GENIUS way to 'get the ball rolling'. So much goddamned CUNNING...so much GUILE!"

"Still waiting for that supernatural," Tracy piped in, disturbed by how excited the perpetrator was getting while recounting his violent crime.

"So other guys start 'asking' Ryan for a turn, and he starts looking worried, like he's in over his head. But you can't challenge a guy and take him down a peg in a place like this without 'inspiring' ANOTHER tough guy to do it to YOU. In this case, it was me, and I end up doing something that no defensive line has managed to do: I drop Ryan Klein's muscle-bound ass down on the floor of my bar, right...over....there. And once he's down, and he's trying to get back up, I start whaling on him until he stops. Then a group of us haul him to the table and bend him over while another group stops Steve from helping Ryan out. I have no memory of doing it, but according to most everyone, I'm the one who got Ryan's pants and underwear down-"

"DUGAN!" Tracy shouted in irritation, getting everyone's attention. "I TOLD YOU NOT TO-!"

"Tracy, Ryan wasn't WEARING pants! I never stripped that boy! Everyone saw me take his pants and underwear down, but I didn't do it. From MY perspective, and I was too crazed to notice it at the time, Ryan's pants and underwear DISAPPEARED at some point while I was undoing my OWN pants!"

"You were 'crazed'! Of course you don't remember it right! Victims aren't the only ones who forget details or get them all wrong!"

"Tracy!" Charlie called over. "I saw Dugan take Ryan's pants DOWN, but I never saw him take them OFF! They were still down around Ryan's ankles. I saw them! But when Dugan shoved his dick in him, and Ryan freaked out...PRETENDED to freak out...he kept replanting his feet, and his pants didn't restrict his leg movements at all. And when I realized that pants just don't STRETCH like that, I looked down and THEY WERE GONE, along with his underwear, shoes, and socks! But before I could figure shit out, I lose my fucking mind and start helping the other group restrain that Steve kid. But just as I see Cody Brinkmann unbuckling Steve's belt, I reached down and grabbed the crotch of Steve's jeans."

"AND?" Tracy asked, waiting impatiently for Charlie to finish an 'emergency' vape pull.

"And my hand went through Steve's jeans like a GHOST, and I'm cupping the kid's JUNK, and Cody Brinkmann is suddenly all the way over there. And when I looked back at what I was holding, all of Steve's clothes were gone, but some of the guys were still shouting for Cody to get Steve's jeans off. It was totally fucking INSANE! ....And did Dugan tell you what those boys FELT LIKE inside?!?!

"Hold up, Charlie!" Dugan commanded, realizing that Charlie's unability to process what he'd done was causing him to blurt out things that Tracy might not be comfortable hearing. "Let me just finish this up by saying that when everything was over, and Steve and Ryan were gone, and a whole bar full of men started thinking about what we'd done, Herman Castle broke the silence by asking the most important...and STUPIDEST...question: 'Should we find 'em and give back their clothes?'. Tracy, there WERE no clothes, not even a wallet with money to pay for their drinks, because they never INTENDED to. And before you say it, I made damned sure nobody took them as souvenirs, because everyone was so damned rattled about what happened that the rest of us would've DESCENDED AS ONE against any son of a bitch who DARED to feel good about what we all just did."

"So....?" Tracy began, trying and failing to put it all together.

"So Ryan Klein and his buddy came into the bar totally naked and played around with our minds and senses, making us see what they wanted us to see. They did something that brought out the worst in us, just to get our juices flowing. They got rid of the women and picked out me and Charlie, the owner and the manager, to go first to 'bless the proceedings', and then............THEY MADE US ALL FUCK THEM!!"

"I GOT YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!" Tracy screamed triumphantly in her mind. "YOU CAN HIDE YOUR FACE IN THE DARK ALL YOU WANT, BUT THEY'LL FIND YOU WHEN I TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE!! LET'S SEE YOU THREATEN MY SON WHEN YOU'RE LYING DEAD ON A SLAB IN A GOVERNMENT LAB....RYAN KLEIN!!!!"

But there was just one problem: Although Tracy had discovered the poorly-kept secret identities of two Thralls, Ryan Klein and Steve Collier weren't responsible for Tracy's present predicament, nor were their Guiles. Ryan Klein wasn't the ONLY son of Timbersburg with a recognizable face that needed to be hidden in darkness. But whereas Ryan Klein brought honor to Timbersburg, Caleb Crandal only brought disgrace.

"Naturally, I'll also be making your husband fuck me too, giving him his son's sloppy seconds," Guile continued to taunt, oblivious to Tracy's sudden, wildly-incorrect revelation. "Normally, a child shouldn't watch his father having sex, and vice versa, but this IS Timbersburg we're talking about. Fathers and sons share girls here all the time. Who knows what's going on at home while you're out spreading your legs for all the boys in blue?"

As concerned as Tracy was for her marriage and family, she felt the best way to protect both was to chew on the bone Guile had accidentally thrown her, so she ignored Guile's threats and quickly pieced together everything she thought she knew at that point, which bore the distinction of being completely correct, yet totally off the mark.

"Ryan used that fog to sicken the female staff at Dugan's, just like he's using it to clear women out of these woods," Tracy deduced. "Dugan refuses to comply with the smoking ban, and the Vroom Room is far enough away from the city, and brings in so much revenue, that we're told to turn a blind eye. It's famous for having an interior haze that you could swim though, so hazy that no one would notice Ryan's fog mixing with the smoke and affecting Shannon, Tamara, and any woman who stepped through the door, getting rid of anyone who couldn't be forced to take part in the gang rapes, and who probably would've called 911. But I've never heard of Ryan doing anything like this before, and if he HAD been involved in any sex crimes before Dugan's, I would've HEARD about it through the grapevine. So why would he have done something so public, so.....desperate, unless....... ........OH...MY...FUCKING...GOD!!!!"

"MISSUS Rogers, am I boring you?" Guile inquired, realizing that Tracy wasn't paying attention to his pre-interrogation scare tactics.

"Are you feeling okay?" Tracy blurted. "Besides being hungry, I mean."

"Why are you asking me that?" Guile countered, Brian's face filling with angry skepticism.

"Well, you're out here, causing a huge commotion, stirring up LOTS of attention, and it suddenly occurred to me that you're acting like a wounded animal. It would explain your attack on the SUV, and-"

"I TOLD you that WASN'T MY FAULT!"

"Yes, I know," Tracy dismissed, hitting her stride, "but since I'm a 'trained observer', as you put it, I heard you blame an 'emergency survival protocol' for your actions, and if that name accurately describes its function, then tonight you must've experienced an 'emergency' that threatened your 'survival', possibly the attacks that were waged against you by 'reality itself', whatever you mean by that."

"It's....it's just a stupid ghost that has some degree of control over nature and probability. It uses both powers randomly, achieving nothing. But none of that is important! Getting back to-"

"If it's stupid, how is it 'making some sort of huge play' and how did it pull off a 'series of intelligently planned attacks' that 'incapacitated' your 'lure' and left you 'grounded' and so debilitated that you're 'unable to contact...(your) master' and you 'need to feed before (you) can leave'?"

Lecher didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Guile had given Tracy waaaaay too much information, and the woman was running with it. Lecher was going to say something insulting, but he decided to stay silent. MISSUS Rogers had things covered.

"Are your injuries the reason you're communicating through Brian?" Tracy asked with fake sympathy. "DO YOU REQUIRE MEDICAL ASSISTANCE? Considering how MUCH you've told me, I don't understand why you won't tell me if you're injured."

Brian stood up straight up and glowered at Tracy.

"What are you playing at, woman?" Guile seethed menacingly, his intimidation slightly softened by Joe, who'd crawled around Brian and was dutifully licking his dangling genitals, making Brian's cock and balls dance around with each tongue-stoke.

Adding to the strangeness, Kevin let out a mournful groan and started to spasm. Tracy guessed that he was climaxing, but it didn't sound like he was enjoying it. He reminded Tracy of her father's last days in hospice care.

"Well, you called me out for the way I handled Robbie Byrne, and you were right," Tracy admitted. "I was offended by him urinating publicly. A thirteen year old should know better. But I shouldn't have allowed that, and his attitude, to cause me to mishandle the situation. He's STILL a scared and confused little boy. I fucked up, and if I see him again, I WILL apologize. But getting back to you, is the semen you're ingesting through that tube....helping you, somehow? Maybe.......HEALING you?"

Guile continued to glare at Tracy through Brian's eyes.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Tracy thought angrily behind her fake smile. "Confirm my theory, Ryan, and GIVE UP YOUR BOSS!!"

But Brian didn't say anything. Instead, he walked over to Tracy and stood a few feet away. An instant later, tendrils filled the air between them.

A white tendril, ending in a coil, was so cold that it showered the ground with a flowing cloud of water vapor, while a similarly coiled red one, which Tracy recognized from Cynthia's statement, gave off rippling waves of heat. These tendrils were positioned to Tracy's left and right, for maximum discomfort.

A yellow tendril appeared, its end splitting apart, surrounding Tracy's body, and passing electrical arcs between all of the tips, trapping Tracy within an electric spiderweb.

Ironically, the last to arrive was the silver tendril, which presented itself as a straight wire, but bent the last 6" of its length by ninety degrees and started to rotate, building up speed until it was a lethal, silvery glint with a terrifying high-pitched whine.

"I can't kill you, but I can sure as hell disfigure you," Guile threatened.

Since women are primarily judged by their appearance, it was a pretty damned effective threat, especially for someone like Tracy, who had a deep psychological need for men to tell her how beautiful she is.

But tonight was different. Since Guile couldn't get into Tracy's mind, except to create screens, he made certain necessary guesses as to Tracy's personality, and how she would react to various stimuli.

Guile couldn't have been more wrong.

In a move that Guile couldn't have possibly seen coming, Tracy moved with lightning speed and drew her weapon, pointing it up under her chin. Then, without warning, she started to walk straight at Brian. If Lecher hadn't seized the initiative and deactivated the electricity net, the shock could've made Tracy accidentally blow her brains out. However, the move made Lecher lose control over Brian's body, making him fall on his ass.

"A HEADS-UP WOULD'VE BEEN NICE!" Lecher shouted.

"I CAN'T READ HER MIND, ASSHOLE!" Guile shot back, furious with himself for how badly he'd miscalculated. "HOW CAN I WARN YOU ABOUT SOME- THING I DON'T KNOW ABOUT?!?!"

"I know you want to know what I saw in Malawny Hollow, FREAK!" Tracy announced, knocking Guile on his ass mentally as much as she'd done physically. "But if you so much as TOUCH ME with your ASS TUBES, I'm taking my secret to the grave!"

"How did you know I wanted to ask you about Malawny Hollow?!" Guile asked, retracting the red, white, and yellow tendrils, and choosing to stay on the ground to keep Tracy feeling in charge and less likely to accidentally kill herself.

"No, I'm not telling you anything until you free Kevin," Tracy insisted. "Do it....NOW!"

"I don't suppose you could wait just a minute or two, could you?" Guile asked sweetly, pointing at Kevin's penis. Even though it was encased by Baby Blue, and had loops of dark green tendril wrapped around it, Tracy could tell by the sharp twitches that Kevin was ejaculating.

Tracy looked down at Guile's puppet and desperately wanted to call Ryan out, but as effective as her suicide gambit seemed to be, Ryan still had all the power. Outing him could prove fatal, in spite of his claim that if his actions killed someone, he would be forced to 'suffer unbearable agony'. Even if that were true, though, Ryan might decide that enduring the pain would be preferable to exposure.

"What did you do to Kevin?" Tracy interrogated. "Brian loved what you were doing to him, but Kevin doesn't. Why!"

Guile looked down at Brian's emaciated body before flexing his embarrassing, non-existent biceps at Tracy.

"I let Brian enjoy it because in spite of joining the Timbersburg Police department for all the wrong reasons, as all of you bastards DO, Brian's tendency to take out his body image issues on the general public doesn't put him in the same category as Kevin Wilson, who gleefully took part in the Timbersburg Rainbow Tavern raid. Kevin has been trapped in his mind, reliving those events...AS A PATRON! In his time-compressed, VERY lucid dream, Kevin has spent two hours being victimized by monsters wearing the same uniform that YOU'RE wearing. But far worse than that, he was DARED by the cops to fight back while they cut off his clothes with box cutters, molested him thoroughly, and forced him to pose and act out scenes for sexually humiliating photographs and videos."

"I'd trade the box in my car for THOSE videos," Burt thought darkly.

"Officer Wright was made to 'act gay' while licking their night- sticks, which were then used to sodomize him. Eventually, the cops got so worked up that they unzipped and replaced the nightsticks in his orifaces with their cocks."

"My car, too," Burt added.

"I'll bet he didn't enjoy it as much as you and Steve did, did he, Ryan?" Tracy was thinking when all the tendrils attacking Kevin suddenly departed, including, curiously enough, the baby blue one. This confused Tracy, since both Tyler and George were still 'unmilked'.

"All done," Brian announced cheerfully as Kevin Wright pulled him- self into the fetal position.

Kevin let out a wail at the same moment Brian Pudroolen shrieked with laughter.

"You're a monster," Tracy proclaimed with a scowl.

"Perhaps," Guile admitted, "but this is Timbersburg. There are TONS of monsters here, including a group of monsters who wear blue and go around terrorizing people. Unlike bigfoot, however, they're seen ALL THE TIME, and EVERYONE in Timbersburg has their own personal hair-raising tale about their traumatizing encounter with them. Homosexuals in particular have OODLES of stories about these monsters and all the bad things they've done over the decades....and all the good things they FAILED to do. Speaking of that, my sister's getting married his summer, Mrs. Rogers. She's looking for a venue to have an outdoor reception. Somewhere with picnic tables, playgrounds, pavillions, and some idiot who's paid peanuts to wander around in the summer heat while dressed as a black-footed ferret. Care to suggest somewhere?"

Tracy knew what Guile meant, but unfortunately for four teenaged boys who were AT that particular venue, she dismissed Guile's words as more of his random pro-gay, anti-cop bullshit.

"Tell you what, Mrs. Rogers," Brian offered, still sitting on his ass in the dirt while Tracy held a gun to the underside of her jaw, "once you tell me what you witnessed at Malawny Hollow, I'll give Kevin back to you. I believe he's suffered enough. I'll also hand over Brian too, since he ended up not knowing anything about Malawny Hollow beyond what was in the news, in spite of tantalizing me back at the road by making me think he had the inside scoop."

Tracy was about to demand that Guile release ALL of his hostages when she suddenly realized something that never would've gotten past a properly made Guile.

"You lied to me," Tracy cautiously accused.

"About what?" Guile inquired while scanning their dialogue to FIND the lie in preparation for covering it up with an even BIGGER lie. Suprisingly, Guile couldn't find it before Tracy began to speak.

"You told me that the scream wasn't your fault," Tracy continued, "but you knew it was coming. You even warned all the men beforehand."

"I had MAYBE a minute to prepare for the inevitable," Guile said truthfully.

"If that's true," Tracy grinned. "Your 'stupid' probability ghost just set you up."

"Oh, shit," Lecher groaned. "What's it done NOW?"

"TELL ME HOW!!!!" Brian snarled, getting to his feet.

"I DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD GET UP!" Tracy yelled.

With pinpoint accuracy, the silver tendril sped by and sliced the trigger off of Tracy's gun, rendering it unusable.

Kevin pulled out of the fetal position, got to his feet, and bared his teeth at Tracy as he stalked in her direction. George, Tyler, and Joe wore similar expressions as they followed suit, surrounding Tracy.

"I will not ask again," Guile threatened point blank.

"ALL RIGHT!" Tracy shouted back. "I knew you were going to ask me about Malawny Hollow because you said you telepathically lured George, Tyler, Kevin and Joe here because they took part in the Rainbow Tavern raid. So when you said you needed me, I assumed you'd arranged for Brian to come into the woods after Mark Pudroolen in order to interrogate Brian about Malawny Hollow, the only OTHER bizarre event that's happened around here lately. Brian's been going on and on about 'the monster'...you...some- how being connected to Malawny Hollow from the moment we all got here, so I figured you 'heard' him."

"I DIDN'T lure Brian into the woods," Guile said truthfully, "It was just-"

"Coincidence?" Tracy suggested. "Too much of one! Everyone at the station knows that I was the only officer to arrive at Malawny Hollow before the military showed up and took control of the site, but Brian is the only one of my coworkers who knows that I was having problems coping with something I saw there...something that the military "kindly suggested" I not mention to anyone. That's a pretty big coincidence, don't you think? Also, a few minutes before the sonic blast, Brian put in earplugs to deal with the noise from the road workers' chainsaws. I remember wondering why Brian even HAD them, and how fortunate it was that he'd kept them in. But it wasn't good fortune. Your probability ghost shoved him at you so that he would lead you to ME."

"WE'RE DUMPING THE SCARECROW!" Lecher announced, seizing the initiative and withdrawing the plum tendril from Brian's brain, letting it fall out of his nose.

"Put it in Officer Prender!" Guile instructed, completely ignoring Lecher's violation of the chain-of-command. "No sterilization! Entanglement will deal with any disease transmission."

"The Probability Spasm Residue wasn't all over Brian JUST because Reality Itself was silencing him from telling us about Malawny Hollow," Lecher deduced, "it was there because he was being used as bait to lure-"

"STOP SAYING THE WORD 'LURE'!" Guile snapped as he used the plum tendril's 'strings' to set up his new 'puppet'. "And 'yes', Reality Itself clearly WANTED US to find out what happened at Malawny Hollow, in spite of making us think otherwise."

"So here's a thought," Lecher proposed, "how about we DON'T ask Tracy about what she saw at Malawny Hollow. That way, we won't be able to act on the information Reality Itself is feeding us, and we won't end up doing exactly what it wants us to do."

"No, knowledge is ALWAYS power, and if my plan fails, I'll need all the information I can get in order to save us," Guile reasoned.

"You two, scram!" Joe Prender's mouth ordered Brian and Kevin, who both staggered back toward the road.

"Wait!" Tracy shouted while staring at the diarrhea running down the backs of Kevin's legs. "You can't send them back like that! Let Kevin clean up! Let them put their uniforms back on!"

"I shredded them," Joe informed her while pointing at the piles of fabric. "Stay away from their guns or I'll shred your uniform, too."

Tracy was pissed, but she took solace in knowing that at least her actions had resulted in two of the hostages being freed.

"IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS OF MARCH THE FIRST," Guile announced, refocusing Tracy's attention, "reports started coming in about a series of explosions and bright flashes occurring in the woods of Malawny Hollow. The damage was so extensive that the military couldn't possibly cover it up. Acres of trees had been uprooted, twisted, pulverized, burned, and subjected to elemental fury the likes of which have never been seen before. Scientists suspect a highly-localized weather phenomenon. That is the sum total of everything I learned from the minds of Brian MacCrouder, Tyler Whitlock, George Klempernick, Joe Prender, Kevin Wright, Mark Pudroolen, and Craig Byrne. I do hope you have something interesting to add."

"Yes. It WASN'T just a weather phenomenon," Tracy said confidently, "The weather can't create what I saw."

Joe's face was calm, but inside his mind, Guile was doing cart- wheels. Whatever Reality Itself created in Malawny Hollow would be of MAJOR interest to the Masters! Guile happily imagined a LEGION of Masters and Thralls arriving in nearby Mawklynd City to stake out the army base there. The psychic tentacles of TENS of Guiles would reach out and Entwine with the minds of every male in a uniform until the item was located. Then the Masters could use their vast matter/energy powers to steal the item. It would be so GRAND! Guile would be UTILIZED TO HIS FULLEST POTENTIAL! People would TALK to Guile, and he would finally be a part of something that wasn't so completely BROKEN!!

"And what did you see, Mrs. Rogers?" Joe asked, the human's salivary glands going wild and causing him to swallow away the taste of Brian MacCrouder's cock and balls.

"Let all of the men go...right now...and I'll tell you," Tracy offered.

"I won't release them until I hear the information," Guile counter- offered. "You could be bluffing. Malawny Hollow is quite large. I doubt you could've spotted ANYTHING amid all that devastation."

"It was only about ten feet away from the road," Tracy tantalized. "It had dug a long trench in the dirt, and knocked over trees, tearing a path through the forest that went back for what looked to be MILES. And if you want to know more, you'd better......*"

Tracy stopped speaking. Tears were flowing down Joe's face.

"Guile??" Lecher asked, "What's wrong?"

"Not now, Lecher," Guile said in a mental tone that sounded weak... defeated.

Lecher wanted to press, but he could feel Guile asserting his authority to keep Lecher silent. Lecher wondered how bad their circumstances had just become.

They couldn't be WORSE.

"Officer Rogers," Guile said via Joe's mouth, "I have need of these men, and I wish to punish them for their crime. In about an hour, I will release them, free of physical injury or disease. Now leave. I am on the verge of an extreme negative emotional reaction, and you do not wish to witness it."

"But...I didn't tell you what I saw!" Tracy insisted, fearing that her only bargaining chip was now gone, and she wouldn't be able to save Tyler, her primary concern, from whatever torments that Guile had planned for him.

"You saw a large silvery orb," Guile stated with certainty. "It had an opening on the side facing away from its path of destruction. It DOUBT- LESSLY reminded you of Pac Man. LEAVE....NOW!"

"Look, just give me Tyler as a token of-"

"I SAID GO!!!!!!!!!!!" Joe screamed with his fists balled and every muscle from his neck to his lower abdominals clenched as if to push his words out with even more force.

Tracy watched her lovers' muscular backs and asses as they walked into the fog to embrace a cruel but well-deserved destiny that would begin with being compelled to seduce and have sex with a thirteen year old boy.

"TYLER!" Tracy screamed. "SNAP OUT OF IT!! HE'S GOING TO MAKE YOU- GAAAAACK!!!!!!!"

The fog rushed into Tracy's lungs, making her dinner want to rush out of her stomach. The nausea was so intense that in spite of wanting to go after Tyler, her legs rushed her back toward the road, where she prayed the fog still hadn't reached the top of the southward rise.

Tracy soon found herself immersed in darkness, having passed beyond the limits of the light bubbles' extradimensional radiance. She smacked into two branches before she had the presence of mind to turn on her flash- light.

As she approached the guardrail, Tracy heard a tormented scream filling the forest to her back. It was the cry of something trying to achieve an important goal, only to have the world fight back with all of its might, dealing out setback after setback, each one more insurmountable than the last.

In spite of the sickness clutching at her stomach, made worse by her breakneck run through the dark, foggy woods, Mrs. Tracy Rogers smiled at the sound of Guile's frustrated rage. But she wasn't done. Reality Itself set up the meeting between Tracy and Guile, and by being a total prick, Guile sprung the trap. Tracy Rogers now hated Guile more than she'd ever hated anyone before, and once she was out of the damned fog, she was going to vindictively use the information that Guile arrogantly handed to her to fulfil her destiny, a destiny FAR more grand than the one Reality Itself had assigned her. Instead of helping Reality Itself try to kill just ONE of its monolithic enemies, Officer Tracy would give Reality Itself the means to be rid of them ALL!

Tracy reached I-147, barely managing to get over the guardrail without stumbling. two dozen yards later, however, her luck ran out. Tracy's foot slipped on the wet pavement and she became the third person that night to fall face-down on its surface. Her impact was much less pain- ful than either Kenny Miller's or Jaden Harris', but it was the deadliest of the three. The nausea, combined with the impact, caused vomit to explode out of Tracy's mouth, and her exhausted gasping pulled it right into her airway, choking her.

Tracy fought to pull air into her empty lungs, but it wouldn't come. Too desperate to consider the impossibility of success, she got to her feet and tried to sprint all the way up the rise to get help, but she only made it about seventy five feet before she passed out. However, as she fell down to kiss the road one last time, a pair of strong arms came out of the fog and grabbed her.

"Is he wearing......fingerless gauntlets???" Tracy wondered as she lost consciousness.

"NOOOOOOOOO!" Guile wailed, forcing Lecher to whip the silver tendril around wildly, tearing through the trees surrounding Joe Prender and sending tons of wood raining to the ground.

"Guile, you're gonna kill this guy!" Lecher shouted. "And there are helicopters and drones everywhere. If you bring down one of the trees that's higher than the fog layer, they might notice! They could get their hands on Robbie! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!"

"It just gets worse and worse!!" Guile sobbed. "Every time I think I can save us...every time I feel hopeful...IT ALL COMES CRASHING DOWN!!!!"

"I GET THE METAPHOR!" Lecher screamed as he made Joe Prender run to avoid a falling pine. "KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!"

Lecher's words got through to Guile, whose rage and frustration turned to despair. Lecher obeyed Guile's subliminal command to make Joe Prender's shoulders slump.

Once the tree limbs and hunks of wood stopped falling, the silence was deafening. But it endured, until another wave of psychotic laugher filled their air, with far fewer trees in the way to absorb the sound. In that instant, Guile felt as if Mark were channeling Reality Itself in a similar way to how Joe Prender was channeling Guile and Lecher.

"Go ahead and laugh at me, Reality Itself," Guile seethed to his faceless, formless enemy, who was nowhere around.....and yet literally directly between Guile and Lecher, in a way that would soon TERRIFY Guile! "You haven't won yet!"

"Before you make me shake Joe's fist in the air while you sing 'I Will Survive', would you mind telling me what has you so bent out of shape?" Lecher droned, unable to get too upset over the thought of MORE bad news.

"Our Master came to Timbersburg to wage war against another Master, and the only other Master in the northwestern part of the United-"

"MAXIMUS MORGAN?!?!?" Lecher screamed, FINDING the necessary upset to appropriately respond to this crushing news. "BUT HE'S...HE'S...HE'S OUR GOD! He saved the other Masters from DEATH by teaching them how to tether to Earth through the dimensional barrier! He made the avatars that allow them to exist here! He created the Thralls that SUSTAIN those avatars! Why would Master Kaschak DARE to attack the RULER of the Masters?"

"That I do not know...yet," Guile grumbed, ignoring the fact that Lecher apparently knew quite a lot about Maximus Morgan, in spite of recently asking who he was. "I've come to some other conclusions, but I want your remote point of view reintegrated with your Thrall-bound consciousness first, so I don't have to repeat myself."

The plum tendril dropped out of Officer Joe Prender's nose and was sucked into the fog, taking Guile and Lecher with it.

A minute later, Joe Prender's programming kicked in. He reached down and held his penis while squeezing out two residual squirts of piss. Then he scrubbed some sawdust out of his gray hair and smoothed it neatly. Joe had to look his best, after all. He had a hot date with a boy who would probably appreciate Joe's gruffness...and his cock...a lot more than Joe's wife did.

Robbie would......at first.

"Kid, please!" Mark Pudroolen gasped, high on Pit Fog and exhausted from relentless tickling. "Just gimme...just gimme a few minnits to catch my breath."

Robbie wanted to keep going. Guile was giving him Mark's memories of this encounter, which meant, as Guile explained, that later on, Robbie would be able to lie down in his bed and experience this moment from Mark's perspective. Robbie was salivating at the idea of coming home from school, lying down in bed, and being forcibly, yet willingly, tickle-tortured by himself. But lost as he was in his childish greed for the memory to go on and on, he hadn't realized that he could simply solve the problem by reliving the memory multiple times during the same session.

"C'mon, Robbie," Mark begged at the leering little boy whose hands were once again approaching Mark's body. But instead of going for Mark's neck, flanks or armpits, which had lost most of their sensitivity due to Robbie overusing them, Robbie had spread Mark's paralyzed knees and was now concentrating his efforts on Mark's inner thighs.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!" Mark shrieked.

"Sounds like like illegal stuff's going on here," a voice said from behind Robbie, making him jump to his feet and spin around. "We came over to investigate."

Robbie had no idea what to think. Part of him was panicked by the two police officers who'd snuck up on him, whose hats identified them as such. But then he saw that they were both naked, and one of them was Officer Klempernick.

"Uhhh...hi," Robbie mumbled, thrown off-balance by the magnificent, imposing men, and therefore completely unable to access Guile's anti- manipulation training.

"Tyler, whud're are yoo two doing?!" Mark asked, trying to pull reality into focus. Nothing was making sense to Mark, due to whatever shit Guile was circulating through his bloodstream.

"Nice manscaping," Tyler sneered while picking up Mark's sticky, shriveled penis with the tip of his muddy shoe and flopping it back onto Mark's neatly trimmed pubes.

Mark didn't reply. He was too baked to figure out what to say, so he just rested and recovered from Robbie's tickle onslaught and let things play out around him.

Tyler turned toward Robbie.

"Hi! You must be Robbie Byrne," Tyler greeted with a wide, sexy smile while holding out his hand. "Guile told me all about you. I'm Officer Whitlock. This is Officer Klempernick, but you've already been introduced to him....part of him, anyway."

"Uh, hi," Robbie said in that nervous, uncomfortable way that boys always do when introduced to an adult. Tyler's bold formality clashed with his impressive nakedness, making the moment even more awkward for Robbie.

Robbie sheepishly extended his arm, fogetting to switch his cigarette to his left hand. Officer Whitlock plucked it from between Robbie's fingers and put it between his own lips while firmly shaking Robbie's dead fish.

"Bring 'er in," Tyler instructed after completing a much needed, much appreciated, hands-free drag and blowing out a plume of smoke that immediately disappeared into the fog.

Tyler pulled Robbie into an embrace, giving him a friendly squeeze across his back before letting his hands drop down to Robbie's ass. After a few initial caresses, Tyler dug his fingers into Robbie's tiny buns and started roughly massaging his glutes.

"Bet that feels good, doesn't it, you horny little fucker?" Tyler growled.

"Uh......yeah," Robbie replied, his voice barely a whisper.

Robbie had faced male sexual aggression before, but never off-line. Tyler wasn't just words on a screen, and Robbie couldn't just log off and go to the kitchen for a snack. Robbie was face-to-chest with a man who obviously had bad intentions, and it was overpowering to the boy. Robbie hated it. Not because he didn't enjoy Tyler establishing sexual dominance over him, but because Robbie had no idea what to say or how to act while Tyler was doing it. He felt like such a child.

"Guile showed me you fucking yourself with Pudroolen's cock," Tyler informed Robbie, looking down at him with a lewd sneer. "It looked like you were having fun, but all that work made your legs ache, right?"

Robbie felt the cop's mashed penis slithering around against his belly, causing Robbie's flaccid penis to respond by drooping and thicken- ing. Officer Whitlock was infecting Robbie with his lust.

"Uh huh," Robbie confirmed weakly. "The backs of my legs hurt bad."

"Poor little boy," Tyler mocked, but made it endearing by putting his police hat on Robbie's head. "You should do yoga, like me. I just had to bend over and put my face between my knees for like...twenty minutes... but my muscles don't hurt at all. Fuck of a head rush when I finally straightened up, though. Here, let me help you out."

Taking advantage of Robbie's unintentional opening, Tyler took one last puff of the cigarette before expertly flicking it far into the fog, impressing Robbie greatly. Then Tyler knelt down in front of Robbie and reached back to massage Robbie's calves and hamstrings.

"Uh, thanks," Robbie said, not knowing what to say, but needing to say SOMETHING to stop seeming like the kid he was. "They're really sore and-"

Robbie let out a loud gasp at the feel of Officer Whitlock's tongue licking his tight, hairless balls.

"George?" Mark called out, drawing Robbie's eyes to the heavily tattooed body of Officer Klempernick. The cop's face was flushed red and contorted with strain. "Whud're yoo doin'? Yoo 'kay?"

"WHY....AREN'T....YOU....RUNNING?!?!" George choked out in spurts. "GET.....HELP,.....ASSHOLE!"

"He para...paral...I can't move," Mark tried to explain, unable to find words, put them together, AND concentrate on reality all at the same time.

"Give it up, George. I used to drop acid with this chick who taught me all about controlling my mind and shit, and even I can't break outta this," Tyler boasted over his shoulder, greatly over-stating his mental fortitude. "Besides, Guile's fucking with my head and gettin' me all hot and bothered for this kid. It's fucked up, but it feels real fuckin' AWESOME. Nothing can get into these woods, George, so help ain't coming. This IS going to happen. Just surrender to it...ride it out. In an hour or so, Guile says he's gonna to let us go, and we're just gonna walk away and never talk about it. It ain't worth popping a blood vessel over, George. It just ain't."

Tyler turned back to Robbie's crotch, accepted his little stiffy into his mouth, and treated the boy to his very first blowjob. In response, Robbie's mouth opened wide with delight and he let out a series of childish noises that were a cross between laughter and a coughing fit.

"SO YOU'RE...GONNA....LET HIM....MAKE....YOU A....FAGGOT?!" George strained, fueled by his momentary fear and revulsion at what Tyler was doing.

"No," Tyler denied after briefly uncoupling his mouth from Robbie's boner. "I'm planning on making myself stroke out so I can live the rest of my fuckin' life as a vegetable. George, if you keep fighting Guile, he's goin' to make you NOT love it, like what he did to Kevin. Is THAT what you want?"

"Whudder you guyz talkin' 'bout?" Mark asked dully.

"Just keep breathing the fog, Pudroolen," Tyler dismissed. "Just keep-"

The plum tendril appeared and wiggled up Mark Pudroolen's nose. He neither saw nor felt it.

"Feel weeerd," Mark announced. "Whut's happ'ning?"

"Guile's making you into a mind-controlled cock sucker, like me, George, and Joe," Tyler informed him before taking Robbie back into his mouth and revitalizing his sagging wood.

While Tyler gave him head, Robbie watched Mark's face twitch in response to whatever the tendril was doing to his brain.

"So....if you're all mind-controlled, do you hafta do anything I say?" Robbie asked, realizing the potential of the situation.

"Yeah," George confirmed, answering for Tyler, whose mouth was full.

"I ORDER YOU TO TELL ME THE MOST FUCKED UP SEX THING YOU'VE EVER DONE!" Robbie shouted excitedly at George.

"I'm fucking my girlfriend's twelve year old daughter," George casually disclosed.

"SERIOUSLY?" Tyler asked after pulling his mouth away from Robbie's cock, producing a comical popping sound. "You're fucking Chrissy?"

"Uh-huh," George answered vacantly.

("And yet I'm the sicko just for WATCHING men having sex with children," Burt Veribton thought while recording the confession. "Enjoy going to prison as a pedophile, George Klempernick. Your tattoos and soon- to-be FORMER profession will get you LOTS of attention there.")

"What's YOUR answer?" Robbie asked Tyler, interrupting his intention to ask George a LOT more questions about his sexual activities with Chrissy....but not to gather incriminating information, merely to get off on it.

"Uh...I...uh...," Tyler began, trying and failing to fight the intense urge to obey, "my parents have a lot of dogs...a kennel...and when- ever I'm taking care of them, I like to get naked, smoke up, smear my junk with peanut butter, and let the dogs lick it off.

Robbie's eyes lit up. Several of his clients had been asking Robbie for bestiality clips, but Robbie's mother wouldn't allow him to have a dog.

"I ORDER YOU TO TAKE ME OVER THERE AND HELP ME MAKE SOME VIDEOS!" Robbie commanded.

Burt turned off the camera, set it down, and came up behind Robbie to test his "Mr. Cellophane" power by having some taboo fun.

("I have some dogs that I've trained to do that very same thing, Robbie," Burt Veribton offered, rubbing his left hand all over Robbie's chest and belly while using his right to enjoy the feeling of the boy's under-developed erection and baby-smooth crotch, all the while keeping an eye on Mark, for fear that the tube up his nose would turn him into Guile, "and I'd be honored to film them licking your beautiful body.")

"Sorry, Robbie, no can do," Tyler declined gently, oblivious to the middle-aged man giving Robbie a thorough reach around as Tyler tried to fight his programming so that he could lie to Robbie, or at least soften the harsh truth so that Robbie didn't get mad and force Tyler to do any- thing REALLY disgusting. "Guile said he'd let us go after we...uh...help him. And after we're free, I'm sorry, but....I'm not going to...like you any more. I mean, I like you NOW, but once I'm free, I don't....think I.... ................sorry."

"Oh," Robbie said sadly. "Will you hate me?"

"Once I'm free," Tyler reluctantly disclosed, "I'm going to have a big problem with all of this, so 'yeah', I think I'll probably hate you. But...we're cool NOW, though!"

Tyler quickly went back to sucking Robbie's dick, but Burt could tell by the look of sadness on Robbie's face that the boy probably wasn't in the mood any more.

("Sorry, Robbie," Burt consoled while Tyler sucked Robbie in vain, "but budding friendships don't tend to last after the mind control wears off. Here, I know how to make a boy like you feel better.")

Burt squatted down and steadied himself by holding Robbie's left shoulder while sliding his middle finger up through Robbie's slippery ass- hole, causing him to let out a loud gasp in response to Burt accidentally reactivating the green tendril residue inside of him.

("My, what's that nasty Mr. Guile gone and done up your bum, young man?" Burt asked with delight as Robbie's anal tissues spasmed and quivered in response to his touch.)

Burt crooked his finger and twisted it around, causing Robbie to whimper and hyperventilate, and creating shockwaves in the boys haunches, so powerful that Tyler blindly reached back and cupped Robbie's small buttcheeks with both hands in order to keep him from falling. Tyler could feel Burt's hand finger fucking Robbie, but he ignored it.

("I don't like that your penis is so much bigger than Andrew's was when he impersonated you, Robbie, but I must say that you're a lot more fun to play with.")

To Burt's enormous relief, the plum tendril exited Mark Pudroolen's nose and flew away. Mark stood up, stumbled a few steps away, and looked around with uncertainty.

Tyler started giving Robbie a hummer, kicking off the inevitable.

"FUCK...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK...FUCK," Robbie grunted as his first official blowjob reached its inevitable conclusion.

("Fuck, indeed," Burt chuckled at Robbie's sad attempt to cum like an adult.)

"UHHHH!!!!" Robbie groaned, thrusting repeatedly into Tyler's mouth.

Although Tyler was forced to enjoy the moment, a tiny part of him was very glad that Robbie couldn't cum. After Tyler felt Robbie shrinking down, he opened his mouth, let Robbie fall out, and got to his feet.

Burt reluctantly pulled his finger out of Robbie's ass, but he continued touching the boy, while forcing himself to avoid the lad's penis until Robbie's post-orgasm sensitivity died down.

Robbie watched Tyler's bobbing ass and broad back as he walked over and grabbed a smoke from Robbie's hanging, orange cargo shorts. Tyler took a deep pull and passed it to Robbie, who did likewise, assuming the exact same body posture as Tyler while he did it.

Burt was charmed by Robbie's obvious infatuation with Tyler, whose rugged good looks weren't quite as breathtaking as Officer Pudroolen's, but were more than compensated for by Tyler's devil-may-care attitude and self- confidence.

("You should ask Guile to let you KEEP Officer Whitlock," Burt suggested.)

Robbie didn't acknowledge the words, nor the man who spoke them, since Burt's power made that impossible, ...but his mind heard Burt Veribton's suggestion loud and clear, and adopted the idea as its own.

Tyler cleared his throat and almost spit out phlegm.

"KEEP IT IN YOUR MOUTH!" Robbie yelled.

Tyler obeyed, but gave Robbie a perplexed look.

"George, I order you to get down in front of Tyler, open your mouth, and let him spit in it!"

("Looks like I'm not the only one flexing their superpowers right now," Burt commented while tweaking Robbie's nipples, trying to get him sexually excited again so that Burt could enjoy more of the boy's antics.)

"I'LL FUCKING....KILL YOU....BOY!" George vowed as he knelt down and faced Tyler's long, dangling cock.

Robbie was having far too much fun to give a shit about Officer Klempernick's death threat.

"You WANT Tyler's hawker in your mouth," Robbie ordered, using a regional term to describe a loogie. "You want to eat it!"

George's head trembled for a moment, but it soon relaxed, and he opened wide. Tyler bent over and spat out his phlegm so hard that it stuck to George's uvula. George closed his mouth, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed it down.

"EWWWWWWWWW!" Robbie cried out in disgust, despite being the one responsible for the repugnant sight.

Robbie suddenly remembered how pissed George was that Robbie made his cock smell like cigarettes.

"You don't smoke, do you?" Robbie asked George.

"NO!" George snapped, taking umbrage at the way Robbie asked the question, as if smoking was somehow humanity's established default setting, and there was something wrong with anyone who DIDN'T want to go around spewing that smelly shit out of their mouths, stinking up their breath and clothes, and fowling every room they entered. Both of George's parents smoked, and he'd spent his childhood enduring the constant stale odor and the sight of full ashtrays. As an adult, George hated smoking so much that he didn't even like going over to Tyler's house to help him fuck the pretty girls he always managed to get. And although George loved pot, and Tyler insisted that the effects were better when you smoked it, George stuck with edibles.

George started to get up, but Robbie ordered him back down.

"Open your mouth and breathe it in," Robbie ordered before taking the mother of all drags and handing the cigarette off to Tyler before leaning down, lip-locking with George, holding both of their noses shut, and exhaling hard.

George's muscular chest expanded as Robbie forced smoke into his lungs. Midway through, though, George started to cough. Robbie maintained the lip seal.

("Such a filthy little boy you are," Burt noted while reaching under Robbie and massaging his balls. Enough time had passed for any penile sensitivity to have worn off, and Burt wanted to get Robbie horny quickly, before Guile's inevitable return...perhaps, to Burt's growing concern, IN PERSON!!!)

"FUCKING SICK FAGGOT!" George raged, finally managing to break his mind-control just long enough to turn away and cough the smoke out of his lungs.

Tyler laughed along with Robbie, but Burt could tell that he was forcing himself to do it.

("I smell a player," Burt mused as he realized that Tyler was acting just like the manipulative men in his kiddie porn collection. "You sneaky snake in the grass. I hope Guile returns before you manage to talk Robbie into freeing you.")

"You WANT the smoke in you!" Robbie suddenly commanded. "You NEED the smoke in you! You can't stand NOT-!"

George suddenly jumped to his feet and grabbed Tyler, who'd been on the verge of exhaling. Unsurprisingly to Burt, in spite of receiving no orders from Robbie, Tyler just went with it and allowed George to mouth kiss him and suck the smoke from his lungs, giving Robbie exactly what he wanted to see.

Once again, George broke it off and started coughing out smoke uncontrollably. As soon as he got himself together though, he lunged at Robbie, who'd taken another hit and was patiently waiting for George to come steal it.

The cruel game went on until the cigarette was done, at which point Robbie deactivated George's craving....for the moment, and Tyler gave Robbie a brief lesson on the proper way to flick away a cigarette.

"Tyler, I want you to fuck me," Robbie suddenly blurted as Tyler went for another cigarette, obviously trying to keep Robbie focused on non- sexual things. And if it weren't for Burt tirelessly stimulating Robbie whenever he was stationary, Tyler's plan might've worked.

"Really?" Tyler asked, taken by surprise. "I thought you wouldn't want that, since I just made you...you know."

("Is that what you assumed, Officer Whitlock?" Burt mocked while reinserting his finger up Robbie's ass, palm forward, and giving the boy a prostate massage. Robbie's green tendril-inflamed insides began to ACHE for another cock up his ass.)

"Uh, yeah...sure...okay," Tyler muttered. "Hey George, let's do that thing we did to that waitress we fucked at the Crawford Sleep Inn. You remember.....that thing you did to her when she was riding me?"

("I can only HOPE it didn't involve chloroform, a suitcase, and a bone saw.")

Tyler laid down on the tattered fabric that used to be Mark's uniform and was compelled by his programming to casually show Robbie, Mark, and George his personal, pre-masturbation ritual. Tyler started off by rubbing his nipples, something that Robbie didn't think straight guys ever did. Then, while murmuring encouragement to himself that was obnoxious, filthy, and highly embarrassing, Tyler pulled on his balls and soft-jerked, all the while reaching back up to rub his nips.

Robbie would've ordinarily been delighted to patiently watch Tyler, or any other desirable man, openly demonstrate something so deeply personal, but there was a problem: Robbie was overcome by sexual urgency. Something had anally penetrated him, and it wouldn't stop wigging around inside him, driving Robbie crazy. It was bad enough that Robbie's legs were sore, but now they were also jittery, making it difficult for Robbie to even stand.

Burt Veribton was hard as a rock inside his sticky, cum filled underwear. And the more Robbie whined and shivered because of Burt's unacknowledgeable, phantom finger fucking, the more Burt considered seeing if his "Mr. Cellophane" power would allow him to "cut to the front of the line". Unfortunately for him, Tyler finally achieved an erection.

"Come on over and have a seat," Tyler invited, patting his thighs.

"My legs are really sore," Robbie complained, not wanting to have to put any effort into getting fucked, and concerned about 'trading down' by walking away from the constant anal and genital stimulation he was receiving in exchange for pleasure that he'd have to work for.

"You won't need to use your legs, I promise. George will take care of that."

Robbie felt a finger pull out of his ass, leaving him with an over- whelming emptiness and a desperate need to have it filled. Robbie hurried over to Tyler, receiving a pat on his butt as he started walking.

"Sit down on my cock, facing me," Tyler instructed.

George grabbed Robbie by the underarms and lowered him down onto Tyler's cock while Tyler guided himself into Robbie's loose, buzzing ass- hole, which, to Tyler's enjoyment, suddenly contracted, squeezing him tightly.

"Yeahhhhh," Robbie moaned shamelessly, relishing in the feeling of fullness, a sensation that he'd been too crazed by the green tendril to appreciate during his encounter with Mark. Robbie's quiet enjoyment was short-lived, however, as George suddenly knelt down behind Robbie and started wriggling his fingers between Robbie's ass and Tyler's loins, making Robbie giggle.

"Ready to show Robbie how fucking STRONG you are?" Tyler asked George, preying on his vanity concerning his physical strength in order to get George's head in the game.

"Sure," George said emotionlessly before lifting Robbie's ass up, almost all the way off of Tyler's cock, then quickly lowering him back down.

"Uhhhhhhhh!" Robbie cried out. "DO IT AGAIN!"

George picked up Robbie's ass once more, but he didn't put any effort into lowering Robbie gently. George just dropped him, and instantly lifted Robbie's ass back up before dropping him again...and again...and again. Soon, George's massive arms started going so quickly that Robbie wasn't being raised and lowered, he was being dribbled.

Robbie raised his arms and let out a happy squeal that made a drop of pre-cum ooze out of Burt's cock.

("I hope you can handle mega-stardom, Robbie," Burt remarked while recording Robbie's beautiful, innocent face as the men played 'horsey' with him. "So few child actors are cut out for it.")

Buck Hammond staggered through the darkness and unbelievably thick fog, unaware of either. To Buck, it was bright and sunny, with none of the trees casting a shadow, something that only ever happens at noon. But when Buck drunkenly looked up to confirm his suspicion that he'd passed out and slept for fifteen hours, the sun was nowhere to be found. Buck only saw blue skies through the tangles of limbs.

Buck was thankful for the intense intoxication he was experiencing. He'd taken the deafening blast much harder than any of his friends, and when he realized that his blocked-in truck and the overwhelmed EMTs meant that he wouldn't receive any painkillers for a long time, he took out his frustration on a tree, receiving MORE pain, and a fistful of bloody knuckles and torn layers of skin.

But the fog made everything okay. Waaaaaay okay. And it promised to get even better if Buck followed the voice in his head to a special place.

"Wuuuh?" Buck mumbled after finding himself in the dark once again. Technically, though, the only thing that had gone dark was the sky. There was still illumination, but instead of coming from an invisible sun, it was emanating from bright bubbles that hung in the air.

Buck found himself in a clearing, covered by what appeared to be a reddish pink gym mat. In the center, a large, red-headed man was lying naked and unconscious on a raised platform. A handsome and impressively shredded young man with platinum blonde hair was standing next to him, waving his arms around while he talked to the air. Buck wondered whether the boy was high on something, or schizophrenic. Buck also wondered why there were colorful tubes trailing out of the kid's ass and leading off into the woods.

"What's goin'...." Buck started before trailing off.

Buck looked to his right and saw an even more bizarre sight. A group of naked men, about a dozen or so, were lying together on the mat, writhing around as they seemed to be enjoying the effects of something far more euphoria-inducing that what Buck had been dosed with.

Although clearly spaced out of their minds, the men were engaging with one another, in ways that repulsed Buck. The men were all reaching out and feeling each other's bodies, devouring one another with their hands. Although the groping seemed to be random, there was a high incidence of hand-to-cock and hand-to-balls contact.

Buck was conflicted. Even though the male nudity and touching made him want to flee the clearing, the look on the men's faces was having the same effect on Buck that Jayce's loopy expression had on Craig. Buck froze and continued to stare as his homophobia and love of drug experimentation fought inside of his duller-than-usual brain.

The platinum blonde kid finally noticed Buck.

One of the tubes hanging out of the boy's ass lifted up gracefully and formed a beautiful wave in the air as the tip came out of the forest and dove into Buck's right ear, producing a bright flash of a color that Buck could neither identify nor spell. Buck immediately felt a click in his eardrum that would've made him scream in agony, if not for the pain-killing Pit Fog in his blood. Before Buck could wave the tube away, it zipped over to his left ear and performed the same flash-click procedure.

"The hell....?" Buck spat as his knuckles were flashed, resulting in the skin knitting back together and the bruising and pain fading away.

"If you want to 'have what THEY'RE having'," the kid informed Buck, who was surprised to find that he could suddenly hear again, "strip down and join them."

"Fuck you, fag," Buck spat instantly with a level of lucidity that surprised even himself.

"Just for THAT," the boy scoffed, turning away from Buck dismissively, "I'm even gonna cut up your wallet and key fob."

The unsettling sounds coming from the pile of delirious men was momentarily muted by a high-pitched whistling noise that caused Buck's clothes to fall off of him in tatters. But before he had time to react, the fog rushed in and gave Buck a needed attitude adjustment.

Buck collapsed to the mat and crawled over to join the party. One of the men, a thirty-two year old lumberyard worker, instinctively reached out and greeted Buck by copping a feel.

Buck was too trashed to care.

"So Reality Itself had nothing to do with Malawny Hollow?" Lecher asked Guile a few feet away from Buck and the others.

"No," Guile stated incorrectly. "Master Kaschak ambushed Master Morgan and tried to Untether him, which I can only assume is the same thing as trying to kill him."

"It is," Lecher confirmed. "In the Masters' dimension, the Masters are surrounded by a fucking DYSON SPHERE of enemy ships that keep them trapped between the sun and either Mars or Jupiter. But over there, the sun doesn't exist. An ancient act of war resulted in the sun collapsing in on itself. But thanks to alien tampering, it didn't turn into a black hole, it turned into a huge rip in the barrier between dimensions, called the Gash. It sucked in Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and it's been trying to suck in the Masters too, but because of how weak the Gash makes the dimensional fabric throughout the solar system, Master Morgan was able to locate Earth, THIS Earth, and poke through the barrier, so that the Masters could...I don't know...hang onto it, or something. It's all pretty technical, and I'm not smart enough to understand it all."

"But I could've!" Guile fumed. "What all have you been keeping from me....AND WHY?!?!"

"Here," Lecher sighed, making his secret file available to Guile. "It was in my Lecher Archives, and I hid it once you started treating me like shit. I just needed to hold onto it to make myself feel better, and I was scared that if I ever DID hand it over, you would punish me. But NOW THAT YOU CAN'T, happy fucking reading."

"Digesting a file this HUGE would take hours that I do not have, so I dearly HOPE there's nothing VITAL in it that could've been used to SAVE US FROM MASTER KASCHAK'S WRATH!" Guile fumed.

"So what's the deal with the silver Pac-Man that Tracy Rogers saw?" Lecher inquired calmly, desiring an abrupt subject change.

"Although silver in color, it was actually made of the element called osmium," Guile corrected, as if it really mattered, and as if Lecher knew a goddamned THING about the periodic table. "A few hundred years ago, a Master named Vesta pissed off Master Kaschak, who used His matter/energy powers to encase Master Vesta's avatar in a sphere made of osmium, one of the few substances that can block Soul-Creation Energy. For weeks, Master Kaschak kept a constant vigil on the sphere, preventing Master Vesta's Fingernail from breaking out. Once the Fingernail's internal S.C.E. supply ran out, Master Kaschak freed Master Vesta's Fingernail, which was promptly attacked by the Earth's...and this reality's...defense mechanisms. The Fingernail crumbled, Master Vesta was untethered, and from what you JUST BOTHERED TO TELL ME, I can only assume that Master Vesta's true body was pulled into the Gash."

"Do you think Master Kaschak succeeded in killing Master Morgan?"

"No, I do not. Officer Rogers found the sphere near the road, which means that Master Morgan saved himself by reaching potential witnesses."

"Maybe Master Kaschak caught up with him later and finished the job," Lecher speculated.

"No. Although Fingernails can only conduct an UTTERLY INSIGNIFICANT amount of the Masters' powers, even when damaged they are still capable of altering matter and energy to an awe-inspiring degree. "Round 2" wouldn't destroy QUITE so many acres of trees, but it sure as HELL wouldn't go completely unnoticed. Adding to my theory, I've just examined Lure's memories-"

"WHAT IF YOU WAKE HIM UP?!?!?!" Lecher panicked.

"Relax, Lecher. I haven't been inside Lure's head ever since his suicide attempt. I was referring to the general biographical files that I copied and imported into my brain section upon our 'birth', in order to instantly recognize everyone Lure knows, their shared history, and relationship status."

"I'll bet that's a depressing read," Lecher scoffed.

"It is," Guile agreed, "except for the part that informed me that Lure's high school gym teacher is a man named Max Morgan, and he took an emergency leave of absence after ALLEGEDLY being involved in a horrific single-car accident on March 1st. of last year, although he still teaches a few classes remotely."

"Shit," Lecher said in amazement.

"Indeed," Guile agreed. "Although understanding why a man capable of turning anything into gold would take a JOB is quite beyond me."

"Keep reading the file," Lecher suggested. "He probably does it to keep engaged with the community, so he doesn't lapse into the same misery that's affecting all the other Masters. None of them are all that happy to be trapped on Earth. Before they were "Masters"...back when they were just known as "blobs"...they used to travel the universe spreading knowledge and interacting with thousands of inhabited worlds. Now they're stuck HERE, and they can't even spread their technical knowledge because all of the natural laws are RADICALLY different on this side of the barrier. Master Morgan almost went NUTS adapting avatars for use on Earth."

"Uhhhh," Guile began, not knowing exactly how he wanted to phrase his question, "the Masters called themselves....'blobs'?"

"They never had a name for their race, so the universe picked one," Lecher explained. "Every planet just referred to them by the word that most accurately described a "formless mass". The Masters didn't care, since back THEN, they possessed HUMILITY!"

"I don't suppose this 'RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED' file of yours contains any information about where Master Kaschak lived before coming here to assassinate Master Morgan...or what happened to the Thralls he HAD there...or why he would create a Thrall HERE, a poorly made Thrall with a defective Lure who would NEVER be willing to move away from his mother's ghost and his father's money, should Master Kaschak complete his murderous mission and decide to move on."

"Nope."

"So even if we survive tomorrow's meeting with the Master, we will STILL die after the resolution to this conflict between gods, regardless of the winner."

"Sucks to be us," Lecher said simply before making a sudden realization. "Where are Master Morgan's Thralls? Masters usually have at least two. Where ARE they?"

"I should be able to sense their Guiles, and their Guiles should be able to sense me, but given that our Masters are at war, I.............. ......just figured out why we were made defective."

"They can't detect us because we were made inferior, right?" Lecher guessed, hoping he was wrong. He wasn't.

"I believe so."

"THEN WHY CREATE US AT ALL?" Lecher fumed. "The guy obviously isn't hurting for S.C.E., or he would've been riding our ass about nobody riding our ass! Our numbers SUCK because of Lure. So what FUCKING PURPOSE do we serve?"

"I have a depressing theory," Guile grumbled, "one I guarantee you WON'T want to hear."

"Go ahead and throw it on the shit pile."

"Master Morgan probably appealed to the other Masters for help, but Master Kaschack denied attacking Him, denied remaining here in order to track Him down, and simply claimed that Master Morgan was just being pissy about another Master moving to the area. We might've been created just to provide Master Kaschak with false proof of the intent to reside here."

"The Masters aren't STUPID enough to believe that," Lecher chuckled darkly.

"No, but they might've gone along with the bullshit out of fear of Master Kaschak," Guile disputed. "He's the most warlike of the Masters, and he DID Untether one of Them."

"He also massacred the entire population of a planet that was responsible for killing a few of the 'blobs'," Lecher pointed out. "That's what led to the remaining Masters getting pushed up against the Gash. Look it up."

"I cannot," Guile sighed. "I don't have time. I have to devote ALL of my points of view to locating Craig's essence so we can get Robbie's ass over here for Churning. We have to follow my plan and focus on surviving tomorrow. Everything else, no matter how hopeless, must wait its turn."

"Wait!" Lecher called out excitedly. "If Master Kaschak left the osmium sphere behind for the military to find, it might mean that He no longer cares about exposing the existence of the Masters, which means that He might not care about all THIS!"

"No. Master Kaschak broke off the attack once Master Morgan reached the road, instead of continuing the fight publicly. I believe the osmium sphere was left behind because Master Morgan gave as good as He got, and Master Kaschak's Fingernail was too damaged to conduct a sufficient amount of His matter/energy powers to transmute the osmium sphere into something else...something that wouldn't get as much attention around here, ...like a meth lab, for example."

And with that, Guile exploded into multiple points of view that flew outward from the clearing to search for Craig Byrne's mind.

They were all going in the wrong direction.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Tyler yelled in triumph just before squirting his sleazy, manwhore slime into Robbie's guts. To Robbie's suprise, he felt each spurt hit his green tendril-prepped anal walls, something he hadn't felt with Mark, since unbeknownst to Robbie, Mark's cum had been snatched away by Baby Blue.

Robbie relaxed and enjoyed the feeling of Tyler's cock deflating and slowly pulling itself free from Robbie's slippery asshole. But all of a sudden, George grabbed Robbie around the chest and lifted him up, pulling Tyler's cock out of his ass.

"It's my turn," George announced thuggishly.

Robbie was so stunned and intimidated by George's manly assertive- ness that he momentarily forgot that he could've just ordered George to stop and back off, not that he ever would've DONE that. George roughly swept Robbie's legs back with his right leg and lowered Robbie face down onto Tyler.

George rested his weight on top of Robbie, sandwiching him between the two cocky, muscular studs. It was a little uncomfortable, but Robbie didn't complain. Amongst Robbie's twisted sexual yearnings was the desire to be taken by force, by someone EXACTLY like George Klempernick. Thus, Robbie simply surrendered and laid there obediently while George angrily stabbed his dick around between Robbie's buttcheeks, searching for Robbie's hole.

George achieved insertion, found his groove, and started really putting it to Robbie. An adult in Robbie's position would've been offended. George wasn't "making love" to Robbie, nor was he even just "having sex with Robbie". Instead, George was simply using Robbie's asshole to masturbate. Robbie should've been brought to tears by the soul-crushing emptiness of it all, making him realize that he'd thrown away his virginity on three men who didn't even want it. But Robbie just didn't think that way. He was lost in the glorious filth of it all.

All of a sudden, Robbie's hypersensitive rectum let him know that George's cock was squirting (or rather "dumping") cum into him.

George Klempernick might've been helpless to overcome the mind- control that was forcing him to perform gay sex acts, but he had enough free will left to try to ruin it for Robbie by acting like a complete jerk and refusing to share his orgasm and ejaculation with Robbie by suppressing all physical signs of both.

But by doing that, George had only made the encounter even BETTER for Robbie.

"Meh," George insulted, then pulled out after the fourth pulse and got to his feet, not giving a shit that his flagging cock was still squirt- ing and dripping cum all over Robbie's back and ass. He walked behind a tree to take a private piss, but before he could get a stream started, Robbie gave him an assignment.

"Lie down where I can see, and pee all over yourself!" Robbie commanded excitedly, reminding Tyler of the all-powerful little boy from an old episode of 'The Twilight Zone'. "Mark, pee on him, too!"

Robbie watched in giddy delight as George lied down and started pissing straight up, causing urine to rain down on him.

"IN YOUR FACE, TOO!" Robbie squealed while continuing to lie down on top of Tyler.

George tried to make sure the piss was directed at his forehead, but his poor aim and fluctuating stream caused it to shower his lips and go up his nose. Mark walked over and relaxed his bladder, which hadn't refilled all that much since he'd pissed his pants, but contained enough urine to amuse a perverse little boy.

"GEORGE HAS TO OPEN HIS MOUTH, AND BOTH OF YOU HAVE TO FILL IT UP!" Robbie shrieked in inspiration.

George opened his mouth wide and both he and Mark brought one of Robbie's endless number of sick fantasies to life.

As Robbie tried to decide if he should make George swallow, he was startled by someone suddenly getting down on top of him.

"Took you long enough, old man" Tyler commented sarcastically, his upper lip curling in a sexy way that made Robbie's heart hurt at the idea of Tyler not liking Robbie any more once Guile was done with him.

Robbie wanted to keep Tyler.

And he would.

Robbie didn't turn around to look at Officer Joe Prender as he situated himself, slipped his dick into Robbie, and started boning away. Getting fucked to completion by an anonymous partner was another of Robbie's fantasies.

"Why am I doing this?" Joe asked without interrupting his fuck- rhythm.

"RUN! GET.....HELP!" George raged after turning his head to the side and dumping the piss out of his mouth. Afterward, his features quickly softened. George's mind was getting weaker.

"You KNOW why we're here, Joe." Tyler sighed in annoyance.

"Whudd're yoo guyz talkin' 'bout?" Mark asked.

"The Rainbow Tavern raid," Tyler informed him, "That's why Guile's doing this to me, Joe, and George. You met Guile yet?"

"Yeahhhhh....uhhhhh-huh," Mark droned before getting a dim idea. "Tyler........maybe yoo could...ask Robbie to...ask Guile to..."

"Nobody's allowed to ask me for help," Robbie announced, Guile's training once again coming to the rescue.

"I don't have a single regret about that night," Joe Prender suddenly offered. "Faggots brought it on themselves."

"JOE!" Tyler screamed, his face straining like George's did when he successfully fought off Guile's programming for a few moments.

"Well they DID, Tyler!" Joe doubled-down while still continuing to pump Robbie's ass. "This ain't New York or L.A. This community made it CLEAR AS GLASS that we don't like that shit here. We never HAVE! But they refused to shut down, and just kept shoving their lifestyle in our faces, year after goddamned year!"

"Joe, I am...BEGGING...you to shut up right now," Tyler strained while glancing at Robbie, who didn't appear to be enjoying Joe's cock nearly as much as he had been before Joe opened his mouth.

"Every day I went to work, I had to pass that fucking place, during my shift, too," Joe continued, grunting out his views, unwilling to be silenced. "Every time Helen and I went downtown, we had to SEE that bull- shit...RIGHT THERE...like a flaky scab oozing green puss! Faggots had plenty of fag bars up in Johnsport and a few in Mawklynd, but they just HAD to HAVE one HERE! And it ain't like this community didn't do a REAL GODDAMNED GOOD JOB lettin' them know they're not welcome here, if you catch my motherfucking drift."

"JOE, WHY ARE YOU TALKING?!" Tyler shouted. "WHY...THE FUCK...ARE YOU TALKING?!?!"

Even if all of the cops had been like Joe, whose will power was enabling him to speak more or less freely (since Guile wasn't there to supervise him), Robbie would've not only tolerated, but ENJOYED being called a faggot while the cops fucked him. Hell, they could've spit on him, pissed on him, or shit on him, and Robbie STILL would've been having the time of his life. But just now, using words far more hateful than just "faggot", Joe Prender managed to teach Robbie Byrne the importance of pride.

"Get the fuck off of me!" Robbie ordered.

("This should be interesting," Burt considered.)

"THANKS, JOE!" Tyler screamed, his eyes bulging with the effort required for HIM to speak freely. "THANKS FOR PISSING HIM OFF!! ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS MAKE HIM HAPPY UNTIL GUILE COMES BACK!! GUILE WAS JUST GOING TO MAKE US DO SHIT FOR AN HOUR...AND LIKE IT!! BUT NOW...I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, OLD MAN!! IF GUILE DOES TO ME WHAT HE DID TO KEVIN, ME AND YOU ARE GONNA HAVE A REAL BIG PROBLEM!!"

Unfortunately for Tyler, decades of being a Timbersburg cop had emboldened Joe and gotten him used to being able to shoot his mouth off about anything he wanted, wherever and whenever he felt like doing it. And no stupid, snot-nosed rookie was going to tell him he couldn't.

Joe got to his feet, as did Robbie, who stared angrily at Joe.

"I've been watching you guys while I've been trying to snap out of whatever's been done to me," Joe revealed before turning back to Robbie. "You've taken a real shine to Tyler, haven't you? He's got himself a talent for opening hearts and legs. But let me tell you a little something about your new smokin' buddy."

"JOE.....STOP!!!!!!!!!!" Tyler yelled, his voice going so gutteral that it would've normally made Robbie jump. At that moment, however, Robbie didn't react at all.

"Everyone except Joe, be quiet," Robbie ordered, not wishing to single Tyler out.

"You're just like Tracy Rogers, that woman officer you were sassing before," Joe continued before Robbie could order him to speak. "You both fell for his looks, his steroid muscles, and his bad boy image. You let him inside of you, and now you think you have a connection with him. Well I got news for you, you spoiled little faggot, you ain't controlling HIM, he's controlling YOU! Guile told Tracy he could put some of Tyler's sex memories about her into her son's head. If Guile can really do that, you might want to have him put Tyler's FOND memories of the raid into YOUR head. You might not be so sweet on him once you do."

"When you were talking about the community doing a good job letting gays know we're not welcome here, were you talking about the murders at Faggot Forest?" Robbie asked.

Mark Pudroolen leaned his head against a tree and silently wept. George labored uselessly to make his body walk back to the road, and Tyler remained lying on top of Mark's shredded uniform, miserably gazing at the fog above while wishing he could see the stars.

"Yep, and I honestly don't think there were ENOUGH murders," Joe snarled, sealing his fate. "FERRET Forest used to be a nice place to take the family, but faggots ruined it, like they tried to ruin downtown by keeping that bar open. And once those murders started happening, you'd think they would've had the brains to stay OUT of the damned place, but the fucking queers just kept going there! And each time one of them got them- selves killed, WE'D have to go up there and DEAL WITH IT!"

("YOU FUCKERS NEVER DEALT WITH SHIT!!!!!" Burt screamed in outrage, knowing full well, as all Timbersburg homosexuals did, that the Timbersburg P.D.'s apathy and ineffectiveness regarding the Faggot Forest murders bordered on complicity. Even worse, they used the murders as a pretext to orchestrate sex stings within the park that did nothing to deter the violence against gays, but delighted conservative, religious folk when they picked up the Timbersburg Times' Sunday Supplement and gleefully read the names of all the men who'd been entrapped and arrested there.)

"So since faggots wouldn't stop committing crimes against nature, and refused to follow God's plan for them, I can't help but wonder if the murders weren't God's way of expressing his displeasure about what they're, YOU'RE, doing! And before you laugh at me, let me remind you that you forced me to-!

"Shut up, Joe," Robbie ordered before thinking a brief message to Guile. "And don't move. And by the way, I didn't force you to do anything. You just crawled on top of me and started fucking."

Robbie went to retrieve another cigarette, and when he came back, he looked up at Joe and noted that his face was full of something that Robbie didn't know the word for. The word was 'righteousness'.

"My mom always says bad things about gay people, so when I knew I was gay, I prayed to God to fix it, cause I didn't want her to hate me. I prayed every day, but nothing happened. God isn't real. He's just an imaginary guy who thinks whatever mean people like you want him to think."

Joe solemnly shook his head no.

"So....gay people shouldn't meet other gay people in public places, like the Rainbow Tavern...and they shouldn't meet other gay people in secret places, like Faggot Forest. Oh, and straight people OWN Timbersburg, and gay people should know to keep out, right?"

Joe indicated nothing, since he had a lot more to say on the subject, and he didn't think the questions could be whittled down to a simple 'yes nod' or 'no shake'. But if the Bible and a bunch of debunked right wing talking points were deleted from his intended reply, his answer would HAVE to be 'yes', even though Joe never would've admitted it.

In response to Robbie's mental request to Guile, the black tendril whipped out of the woods and slapped Ball Sweat across the upper lips of Tyler, Mark, and George. An instant later, the green tendril zipped straight up Joe's asshole and started to spray.

"In a few seconds, you're gonna beg one of us to fuck you like a 'fag'," Robbie warned Joe. "If you want, you can try to pray the gay away, but God didn't 'fix' me, so I don't think he'll 'fix' you, either."

Joe's eyes were wide, his breathing was deep, his face was flushed, and his ass was trembling. He was quickly losing control over his sexuality.

("Officer Prender, I do hope you're not considering 'committing a crime against nature'," Burt mused to himself. "If so, I would advise 'following God's plan for you', which apparently involves being filmed while going cock crazy and getting gangbanged by three of your fellow officers.")

The tendril continued to spray.

"Any luck?" Lecher asked as Guile's many viewpoints returned to the feeding area.

"None!" Guile seethed. "Craig isn't ANYWHERE within my spacial projection limits. I'm starting to wonder if he ISN'T dead, BRAIN dead, at least."

"No. This isn't about his brain, it's about his mind. I'm positive about that," Lecher stated before venturing a suggestion. "Guile, I'm look- ing at sixteen gooned-up, naked men, ripe for the sucking. I know Mike Pearson drained us pretty bad, but if we feed from THESE guys, and Churn a few...."

"The problem isn't quantity, it's processing speed," Guile explained. "Semen from a BUNCH of different men will take MUCH longer to process than the potent semen of one particular boy. Even if we Churned all sixteen-"

"Eighteen," Lecher corrected as two more males staggered into the clearing, prompting Lecher to send the turquoise tendril over to repair their eardrums. Agonizing ear pain was a total boner kill.

"...all eighteen," Guile continued, "by the time my mental abilities were charged up enough to call the Master, Reality Itself's Probability Spasm Residue will have dissipated."

"Have you sensed Reality Itself recently," Lecher inquired, "like you did when we were controlling Officer Scarecrow?"

"No, not at all."

"Do you think it's gone?" Lecher asked hopefully.

Craig's mindless body suddenly opened its eyes, startling Guile and Lecher half to death. A cruel smile formed on its lips as it answered Lecher's question with a shake of his head.

"Where's Craig's essence?!" Guile demanded. "And where is Reality Itself?!"

Craig's right hand reached up and tapped the middle of Craig's chest, then it pointed at the center of Lecher's forehead.

"NO!!!!" Guile shouted in panic. "I HAVE TO GO IN AND STOP HIM!!!"

"I don't get it!" Lecher asked, failing to understand Craig's body's hand signal. "Go in WHERE?!"

"REALITY ITSELF IS IN LURE'S MIND!!!!!!" Guile screamed.

Craig Byrne had no idea where he was, in spite of knowing EXACTLY where he was.

Craig was standing between two magnificent houses on the shore of the ritziest area of Timbersburg: Manjinankton Lake. The lake was directly in front of him, and on the other side was a large, black, boxy structure of glass and metal that was under the gravely mistaken impression that it was stylish, trendy, modest and tasteful. It was none of those things, just like Raymond "Death Ray" Crandal, the man who built it.

It was night...several of them, in fact...and extremely windy, although the weather seemed quite mild on the other side of the lake.

Scenes were playing out in front of Craig, all of them occurring at night, and each one distinguishable by the moon's position.

In the first scene, fireworks filled the sky, and the Crandal lake house appeared to be under seige, from the inside. The immense, clear glass windows were being shattered by people throwing chairs and small appliances through them. Police cars were approaching via the access road that circled the lake.

In the second scene, the fireworks and police cars were gone, and the windows of the Crandal house were whole again. However, the full moon and exterior lights revealed that the windows were no longer clear. They'd been replaced with heavily tinted glass that seemed to isolate the house, making it seem like even LESS of a home.

A large figure was floating up the steps towards the patio doors.

In the third and final scene, the figure was gone, and the Crandal house remained the same, save for a sudden abundance of snow. There was, however, a huge bat swooping over the lake. It wasn't until the bat's wings suddenly turned into a pair of useless tarps -sending the bat plummeting into the lake- that Craig recognized it as the monster that had been flapping its wings above the I-147 bottleneck.

The scene shifted back to the Fourth of July party, but Craig was distracted by the sight of an old man trespassing through the emaculately maintained yards. As he approached Craig, the old man unslung an acoustic guitar from his back and flung it angrily into the lake.

"I COULD USE SOME HELP!" Craig yelled over the sound of the wind and exploding fireworks while politely covering his genitals with his hands. "I'M REALLY CONFUSED RIGHT NOW! I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON! COULD YOU PLEASE CALL 911 AND TELL THEM I'M HAVING SOME KIND OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EPISODE?"

"911 CAN'T HELP YOU, CRAIG BYRNE!" the old man shouted back while holding his fishing hat against his head to protect it from being taken by the increasing gusts.

"I'M SORRY, DO I KNOW YOU?" Craig asked, trying and failing to place the weather-beaten face.

"MY NAME IS ANDREW MILLER!" the old man greeted. "WELCOME TO THE SHATTERED MIND OF CALEB CRANDAL!"

End of Chapter 8