The Misbegotten

I stood and watched her from the other side of the bed. Sandy was sitting next to her. Both Ramona and Katie had taken up posts at the foot of the mattress. We were all in the Loft, concern plain upon our faces over the girl lying before us.

Katie should've been sleeping here, but hadn’t yet. Leda had beaten her to it. She lay propped-up by a handful of pillows. Her eyes closed, her upper body swathed in towels, under which she wore only her bra. Her black t-shirt had so much vomit on it; we had to get her out of it. It reeked worse than death itself.

Of course, I hadn’t seen any of the disrobing. The moment the girls had ascertained her t-shirt was a definite casualty, they ushered me out of the foyer where we’d found her lying in her own chunks. I had gone back into the kitchen to put the food in various plastic containers. I stacked them in a neat pile in the microwave, so we could eat it later.

It was a few minutes after when Ramona had come into the kitchen and asked me to carry Leda up to the Loft.

By the time I’d laid eyes upon the sick girl, the girls had wrapped tight in the towels from the downstairs bathroom.

She was small in stature. Thus, picking her up and walking with her up the two flights of stairs to the third floor was easy enough. She had – listless and with great effort - put her arms around my neck, which helped. She rested her head upon my chest, moaning with stomach cramps that were all too familiar to me.

I placed her upon the heretofore unused bed.

Ramona and Sandy had piled the pillows behind her to prop her up.

Katie had come from the bathroom with a damp wash cloth and handed it to Sandy. “Here this seemed to help me when I got sick a few hours ago,” Katie had said.

I recalled I had used the very same piece of fabric on my cousin. I had been putting her back together after she had spewed all over the bathtub.

Sandy took it and began to wipe down the face of her recalcitrant friend.

“W-what the h-h-hell happened…?” A pause, a swallow, “Oh god, my throat feels like shit,” commented Leda, breaking my train of thought.

“She needs to drink something,” I concluded.

Katie trotted back into the bathroom without a word.

Leda peered up at Sandy, her face bunched with the aches still coursing through her. There was an undertone of worry, carried in her eyes the most. “What’s going on?”

Katie came back from the bathroom with a glass full of water, edging around me. She extended the cup toward the supine teenager. “I think,” began my cousin.

Leda had taken the water from her and took a tentative sip.

“You just experienced what Effy and I did a few hours ago.”

“…And what is that?” inquired Sandy from the other side of the bed. Her body was half-turned at the waist, so she could face Katie straight-on.

“It feels like nothing more than an acute bout of nausea at first, but, within seconds, overwhelms you. Before you can understand what’s going on, you’re barfing your guts out. It’s so violent you almost can’t stand - ,” I supplied, but Leda cut in.

“I couldn’t even do that. I was on my ass in seconds, it came up so quick.”

“Babe, you make it sound like there is more to it,” nudged Ramona. She knew me well enough to know I hadn’t finished my explanation of the sickness.

I shrugged, trying to find some clear way to convey the changes I felt within the first hour of being sick. I let my eyes drift toward Katie who had been there, and had…

“I feel different than I did before I got sick,” I tried, though I was certain it was no explanation at all. It was difficult to conceptualize; speaking about it was even harder.

“How?” Now Sandy’s face bunched in question.

“I can…how do you say…?” I thought over the correct words.

“There is something he can do now. It’s something he couldn’t do before he was sick,” interjected Katie, before I could finish my thought. “Or maybe he could, but not with the amount of strength he can now.” She smiled, uneven, knowing she hadn’t made much sense to the others.

Everyone in the Loft went silent, unmoving, except for their heads, which all swiveled toward me.

I ginned, crooked, from one corner of my mouth. I didn’t feel an inkling of humor though. I felt like an ameba under a microscope with so many sets of female eyes staring in my direction.

The silence stretched.

Leda took another deep drink of water and cleared her throat.

This seemed to spring the question each of them had boiling near the varied surfaces of their brains. Out of some feminine pecking order that I couldn’t discern, it was Ramona's place to ask.

“What can you do, Estefan?”

I winced, abashed. “I’m not one hundred percent sure; because the experience for me was quite different for those around me. I can’t say with any real degree of certainty what it is I do to be exact. I only know the result.”

Both Sandy and Ramona moved to speak, but Katie beat them both to the punch. “It will be difficult for Estefan to explain in a way you guys can understand. It’s not just an obscure sort of ability. It is… well, it’s sort of personal – very personal, in fact.”

Ramona tilted her head. Her natural instincts were already giving her an idea of where the conversation was heading.

But, it was Leda – of all people – who asked: “What do you mean, personal.”

Katie internalized her embarrassment and glanced my way. Then, she let her gaze linger, her lips twisting with reluctance. “It’s sexual…,” she murmured just loud enough for us all to hear.

Though my vision locked on Katie, I could feel Ramona’s eyes burning into the side of my face.

Sandy and Leda shared an awkward look. Both of them seemed unsure of how to interpret what my cousin had just stated, especially the context. Of course, being female, they began to extrapolate in an instant. She was, after all, my cousin and they both knew what the implications behind her words were.

“What… or how do you know it is sexual?” asked Ramona of Katie. She crossed her arms under her breasts, though she didn’t seem angry or even annoyed, just deeply curious.

Yeah, I know she was walking along a knife’s edge, but she was, otherwise, holding it together.

Katie shuffled her feet. She was facing my girlfriend with a thoughtful sort of cast to her face. “Believe me, it is…,” she trailed off, and then seemed to realize there were others in the room as well. “I mean, it felt that way. It was strong, powerful and we’re related, and even then, the pull was pretty incredible.”

I closed my eyes, knowing she was trying to divert attention from the obvious, but she failed miserably. She just might’ve made things worse. I could sense Leda and Sandy were beginning to catch onto the idea of just how close Katie and I were. They kept glancing from the two of us and then to Ramona in rapid succession, their understanding deepening with each look.

Fucken females!

“’Pull’ – what does that mean?” wondered Ramona, walking the few steps it took to stand before my cousin.

My cousin surprised me by peering up at her with eyes that glimmered with genuine enthusiasm. It was like she couldn’t wait to divulge the entirety of it. “It is just that, Mona. It is like something is pulling you toward him. You have to fight with every ounce of strength to keep from throwing yourself into his arms. It’s intoxicating, the smell of it, unlike anything I have ever experienced.” She quieted down, not out of self-consciousness or because she didn’t want the others to hear. No, it was because of the conviction with which she said her next words: “I almost lost control.”

Ramona’s eyes widened as she searched over my cousin’s face. Then she gazed over Katie’s head toward at me.

It unnerved me when I saw more anxiety there than shock.

“Are you saying you almost lost control with your own cousin?” blurted Leda. She was sitting up in the middle of the bed now, well onto the road to recovery.

Son of a bitch! I seethed on the inside. This wasn’t going as we had planned the day before. We hadn’t put our demented plan into full swing yet and already we looked transparent. This was never going to work. If people could figure out what was going – or going to happen– between us, then our families would find out for sure. Where would that leave us? We would be outcasts, pariahs, excommunicated from our loved ones, like heretics before the Inquisition.

My mother, what would she do…?

“Being family has nothing to do with it…,” was all Katie said. Then she grabbed Ramona by both elbows. She gave each a quick squeeze before she brushed past her to sit upon the bed.

My girlfriend reached for her and caught her by the wrist, making Katie turn back to look at her.

They stared at one another for no more than a second, but I could have sworn a thousand unsaid words passed between them. They are words that we men cannot read, but we get the notion they’re real and they’re important.

Katie returned attention toward the small, dark haired girl. “It doesn’t even matter if you don’t like him or if he has wronged you in the past and have come to hate him. If you lack the will to refuse him, he can make all that go away… in a heartbeat.”

Leda was looking at my cousin as if she had lost her mind in the last few minutes. She worked her mouth, but no words were coming forth.

Then, the quietest of us spoke. Her words proved quite startling indeed.

“Show us.”

We all turned to Sandy, who was standing now, hands clasped behind her, twisting at the waist. She looked much younger than seventeen.

“No!” said Katie at once.

Ramona uttered, “I don’t think that is a good idea,” upon the heels my cousin.

I was too astounded to say anything, wondering why Sandy would want to push the limits of a sudden. Was it because Leda had put her in an awkward situation earlier? Was she trying to get back, level the playing field? Or… or was she wondering if she had the will to refuse? What the hell was she after?

“Why not?” she began. “How else are we going to understand what Katie is talking about? Otherwise, we'd think she's some crazy sex fiend who wants to bone her cousin?”

I blushed, furious crimson, because I couldn’t help but go back ten hours or so. The mental image flashed before me, having a mind of its own. Again, I was balls deep in my cousin… the walls of her vagina electric with orgasmic pleasure. She was telling me, over and over, to fuck her hard.

What Sandy had proposed was either the soundest judgment I have ever heard. Or, it was the most underhanded form of coercion that had ever existed. I was beginning to realize how smart Sandy was, how she had utterly confused us all. She might be bubbly and enthusiastic, but there was a whole other person just waiting to get out of her. I couldn’t make head or tails of her true intent, because I had underestimated her. She had a huge advantage over the rest of us.

Katie laughed throatily, having come to the same conclusions as had I.

Ramona squinted at her with suspicion.

Leda chuckled knowingly, exuding a sort of ‘I knew it all along’ tone that befouled cheer and smacked of sarcasm.

“What do you think, Eff?” asked Sandy, as if only my opinion mattered.

Why was my decision the binding one? How could anything I had to say resolved one way or the other?

I shook my head. “I sort of agree with Katie and Ramona. It wouldn’t be the best idea. I’ve seen what it does. It’s pretty powerful, whatever it is.”

“What about you, Leda, since you seem to think I have to ‘hot’s’ for Estefan anyway. Do you think is it wise to tempt fate?”

Why is she pushing so hard?

Leda stared at her for a few moments, bringing her arms up one hand cupping her chin. “I think you’re just trying to prove an unnecessary point right now.”

“Why, because you’re not in control of it?” shot back Sandy at once, more than a little agitation in her voice.

Leda rolled her eyes, but the knowing sneer never left her face.

“Whatever, then,” said Sandy, walking around the bed. Now we were all on the right hand side, except Leda who remained sitting at its middle. “Do it, Estefan. I want to see this… change you and Katie are talking about.”

“Sandy - ,” I started, but she cut me off.

“Whatever happens will be on me, ok? No blame on you, got it?” Her eyes were piercing and direct, which was a mold of her I had yet to see. She was always so cheerful and happy, seeing her keen, like a raptor, made me feel like I was walking on uneven ground. My mind wobbled, my thoughts jumbled.

I glanced at Katie, sitting on the bed before me, searching for some sort of direction.

She tilted her head to the side with the universal, “I don’t know” expression on her face.

I found Ramona, but she wasn’t even looking at me. Her gaze she locked on Sandy, unyielding and cold. I knew she had learned something new about her long-time friend. It was something she hadn’t known was there. She didn’t seemed pleased by it ether.

“Give it her, Effy. I can’t wait to see what happens,” challenged Leda, without warning.

It surprised me that she used my childhood moniker – a thing she hadn’t done before.

Ramona let out a gasp of exasperation and spun on a heel. She walked to the end of the bed, her hands crossed across her body, but she stayed silent.

Though she didn't approve of anyone other than Katie wanting me in a sexual fashion – somewhere, hidden, she was curious. She wanted to know more about this “change” in me. I think she wanted to see what would happen. If it raised the possibility Sandy would be unable to stop the urges that would pour through her, unabated, she would put that aside. I think, even then, Ramona had a clue of what was happening to us, the truth of it. If I did, in fact, make her friend crazy for a good pounding, it would confirm what her instincts had already told her. Mutation hadn’t been the root cause of Ramona’s intuition. She’d been born with it. Mutation, over time, turned her into the most powerful Empathist any of us have ever seen. She was most likely on the verge of unearthing the reality of what was occurring, the sickness and the changes, etc. It was too bizarre for the rest of us grasp. It baffled us. I don’t think Ramona was – not at all.

“Okaaaay,” I drawled and stepped back from the bed. I moved to a more central location, away from the girls. I wanted to make sure there was sufficient distance between them and me – just in case…

“So, the earlier times I did this, it started with me searching out some sort of scent and I… I don’t know, I guess I kind of fell into it. I began breaking apart its component parts. According to Katie, that’s when the ‘power’ or ‘smell’ or whatever came out and she…” I stopped to glance at her.

She was shaking her head in resignation at the memory.

“Well, she was acting very, very strange to put it mildly.”

“I was acting like a bitch in heat, is what he is trying to say,” added Katie.

“Fucking gross,” muttered Leda under her breath, but we all heard it.

Ramona’s laser-wielding eyes bored into the side of Leda’s head, but the other girl was unaware.

“So, Sandy -.”

The girl’s expression frozen in place, the bravado she’d shown earlier seemed to bubble and waft out of her like an errant smoke.

“– could open your blouse a bit more, or maybe take if off if you don’t mind? I need to be able to smell your perfume or something, ok?”

“Oh fuck,” mumbled Ramona.

We all watched as Sandy, like a robot, removed the garment she wore over her pink tube top. She let it fall to the floor.

I couldn’t help myself. I watched her drop the cotton shirt to the ground. I saw the white skin at the inner part of her arms, the delicate splay of her fingers as the blouse left them. It all was captivating. I stiffened where I stood.

I know I have said on many occasions, during the course of telling this tale, I’m not the best person in the world. I have numerous faults. I have many flaws and this has always been one of them. I’m helpless against the onslaught of the female form, in whatever guise it may show itself to me. I’m mesmerized by women to put it in simplest terms. I always have been and I always will be. There is no evading what's engrained in my DNA.

The second she turned me on by her graceful gesture, my senses expanded of their own accord. The fragrance she was wearing hit me like a ton of bricks. I closed my eyes to revel in it. It was some sort of body mist, because it wasn’t heavy or overpowering, like so many perfumes they had sold back then. I could smell the Aloe Barbadensis Leaf extract offset by a calm sort of Chamomile. It washed over me and then came the overarching garden scent. It smelled of grapes and peaches and honey, but it was mild. It was a lovely mix of fruity sweetness, combined with the natural musk of her. That thin sheen of her in basic olfactory form, seeped from her pores over the course of the day. I inhaled deep and then opened my eyes to look at her.

She had already come half the distance between us. Her hands reached for me, her face somewhere between rapture and pure lust. She was still coming forward.

I drank her in once again and her pace increased.

Katie came forward and blocked the larger girl from moving any closer. My cousin’s shoulder bowled into Sandy just below her breasts.

I could see Sandy’s erect nipples through her pink tube top. I couldn’t stop. I reached forth with a combination of my mind and my nose. I delved through the weft and weave of the garment covering the upper portion of her body. My mind searched the taut flesh of her nipple. It reeked of the detergent her mother had used to clean the cotton top and of something else. I smiled. This was the something I had come to know all too well when I had laid girls upon their backs. It was a most honest expression, the knowledge that sex was nigh. It was expectation. Sandy was ready.

“Oh god, I need to…,” she said, a plea that edged toward begging. She tried to move Katie out of the way.

I held my breath then, a tiny bit of control sneaking back into my consciousness. I knew if inhaled her one more time, even my cousin might lose it. We were one sniff away from seeing Katie do a quick about face, from seeing her throw me to the floor and have her way with me.

Instead, I chanced a quick look back in Ramona’s direction. She held her ground by the bed. She watched the entire episode with eyes as wide as saucers. Both hands pulled upon her breasts, kneading them as she often did when she wanted to bring herself to her peak. Yet, she was unaware of what she was doing.

She’s doing pretty well, I had just thought to myself when I saw a dark brown blur out of the corner of my eye. I was just able to turn to see what it was when something slammed into me with bone-jarring force. It knocked me to the ground, lifting my feet clean into the air. An instant later, I felt arms and legs, hands and feet all over me. There was clutching, rubbing, squeezing, grasping, pinching and clawing from what had to be every direction imaginable. I felt nails digging into my skin, lips and teeth - kissing, sucking, nibbling and biting. I imagined a wild banshee had attacked me, was licking me, was nibbling and was trying to shove its’ tongue down my throat.

That was the first positive impression I received in those moments. Whatever it was atop me, it was, at least, human. Its’ tongue felt much like many others I had toyed with over the years. But, I had only a moments’ time for that to register, when it spoke. This dumbfounded me into complete inaction.

“Please take me,” came the voice, eerie, familiar, too deep and husky for a female, but one I could recognize all the same. “I want you. I don’t care whose here. I don’t care who’s watching, just fuck me! Fuck me!!!” demanded Leda in her usual, no-holds-barred way. Only now, she wanted sex and she didn’t want to wait for it.

I could never have dreamed of her saying what she was saying to me right then. I figured she didn’t like me all that much and here she was willing to give me everything.

She stopped long enough so her eyes met mine.

I swear, her pupils had dilated almost to the edge of her irises. I had never seen anything like it. Whatever I had sent out, whatever smell or scent or pheromone, it affected in her like so many of the best synthetic drugs on the market today.

She didn’t wait long though. She lowered her head, her mouth over mine, talking into me. Her harsh, horny breath filled me, making my body respond out of sheer animal instinct. “Effy, do it, please. Do it. I’m sorry for every bad thing I ever did or said about you. Please, forget all that. Let me make it up to you. Let me. Yes, let me. I’ll let you have me any way you want, every way you want. I don’t care just fuck me!” She continued on, but I didn't hear her.

I couldn’t fight it, my cock began to swell in my shorts. My arms began to encircle her devoid of conscious thought. I began to push my knees between her legs, so she could straddle me. Almost at once, I felt the boney hardness of her public bone smash against the shaft of my penis. That’s all it took, I was harder than rock. I was just about to put my hands on her ass and crush her into me even harder, when of a sudden…

…She was no longer there.