This was written for National Novel Writing Month. I didn't finish the 50,000 words called for, but this stands up well as a novella and part one of a longer story.
Global Weirding - Part Five
Charlie, and his minions (sorry, the students under his care), arranged a floor party in the Hall of residence. He invited me, if only so he can try to find out what's bugging Jana. After a bit of soul searching over just what level of quality to aim for in the alcohol to take I settled for a few cans of Guinness. Not too expensive and not too cheap. I didn't want to look like I was trying to impress the children with my wage and stuff, but I'm not going to buy any of the really cheap crap I used to put up with when I was a student.
The new Halls are far more flash than what was around when I was a student. Listen to me, sounding like the old man. But it's true, most of the new builds have en-suite bathrooms, ethernet and high speed internet access is a necessity and, as they've all gone up in the last few years, they haven't started to peel apart. I found the button and pressed it. After a moment the speaker above the buzzer crackled into life. "Hello."
"I'm here for the party."
"Okay, come on in." The door clicked and I pushed it open.
Some things never change about student life. Obviously someone had gone to great lengths to tidy up the flat for the party, but the indicators were still there. On the windowsill in the kitchen were the trophy bottles, empties that used to hold spirits, wine, even beer, and now had memories associated. The cork board had flyers pinned to it, '£1.00 a pint all night', 'Free entry before 10.30', '£1 off with NUS card', that sort of thing. The washing up had been done, but it was all piled up on the drying board because no-one had been bothered to put it away.
But it was all so new and crisp. They'd plastered the walls, smoothly. I remembered the walls in my hall still had the texture of the brieze blocks beneath, smoothed slightly by a decade or more of paint. Another thing that was different from my day was that this was a mixed flat. I guess with everyone having their own bathroom the embarrassment/ titillation factor of shared showers had been done away with and boys could live, more or less, in harmony with girls. Wish they'd had that when I was at University. I was always complaining about not meeting enough women, a side effect of doing an engineering course.
I weaved my way through the youngsters in the kitchen and stored all but one of the Guinness in the fridge. There was a clean pint glass in the pile of washing up, so I hijacked it and emptied the can into it. It was whilst I was looking around to see if they had a recycling bin that I spotted Jana. She had walked into the kitchen with a couple of other girls, Alison and Kate from our night out drinking I think. Our eyes met. She faltered briefly, then nodded recognition and started over. There was no doubting it, she was definitely the girl from my dreams- the sacrifice who had morphed into a sexy archaeologist.
Jana took a bottle of lager from the fridge and looked around for an opener. I pulled out my key ring, which has two of them on it. "Thanks." She threw the cap, and my empty can, into the bin directly behind me. "Recycling." she pointed out.
I sipped my Guinness, she drew on her lager. Neither of us knew what to say at first.
"Charlie invited you?" she asked.
"Yeah. He said he needed to make up the numbers or something."
It was a weak joke, and it got a weak smile in response. She leaned toward me a little, her expression more serious. "Has any.... Any weird stuff happened to you since we last met?"
"Just a bit. You?"
Her expression said 'Well, duh. Why do you think I asked?' "Have I been in any of your dreams? In a temple of some sort?"
"Yes. Yes you have."
"My body's nothing like.... Well, you can see that my body is nothing like either of those characters." She glanced down, as if to check.
In the real world, away from dreams of barbarians and adventurer archaeologists, her body was far more to my tastes than either of my buxom REM companions. I would have liked to have said this, but it would probably have been taken the wrong way. I tried a sort of half-hearted shrug. "I'm no strapping barbarian, either." I managed to come out with eventually.
She leaned in even closer. "Have you been collecting things?"
"Trophies? Yeah. Though I threw one away the other day because I thought it was giving me those dreams."
"Come to my room," she said, "and I'll show you mine."
"I..... Okay."
We left the kitchen-cum-common room. There was a small splinter party going on in the hallway, with Charlie and a few of his postgrad friends. He looked up as we passed and we exchanged nods.
Jana's room was the last on the left. "This is a great way to start gossip." I commented as she opened the door.
"Whatever. I could do with a reputation. Come in."
I spotted it quickly. On the work surface under the window was a pile of stones. The arrangement was such that it appeared vaguely human. As I approached for a closer look, the top stone moved slightly. There were two indentations placed just right to give the impression of eyes. They studied me.
"That's interesting. He's never done that before. He's normally only animated when we're alone."
If a stone could have an expression, this one was intrigued. It was studying me as I studied it. I extended my hand and it held out a pebble. We shook. "He doesn't say much." Jana acknowledged.
"That's probably a good thing. All Twiggy does is bitch and moan and tell me to put my clothes back on." I could imagine the look that got me. "That's only happened the once."
"Sensstive." the stones said, though I couldn't tell where the voice came from. It pointed at me and the Jana. "Both sensstive."
"That's about as eloquent as he gets." Jana sat on the bed. I decided not to join her, taking the seat instead.
"Where did you find him?"
"After that night out we went on, after you left us, we went on to a club. You know, I can't even remember which one. There was something in the smoke or my drink or whatever. It didn't really hit me until we got back and I couldn't sleep. So I went for a walk at about half four in the morning. I was on the path they've made on the old railway tracks when I found him. I tripped over him and while I was there on the ground swearing he got up and said sorry."
The rock creature had been looking from one to the other of us as Jana spoke. There was a faint grinding sound as its head moved.
"Pebbles here is the most interesting of the things I've found. I'll show you the others some time. We ought to get back."
When we left the room Jana made a show of adjusting her top and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She grinned and leaned in to whisper, "I'd rather they thought I'd just given you a blow job than found out we were talking about an animated rock pile."
We grabbed more drink and found a corner of the kitchen. "I found my wood spirit thingy or whatever it is on one of those paths as well. Maybe even on the same bit. Can you remember where you found Pebbles?"
"Just about."
"How about we go and check it out tomorrow? We might find something we missed first time out because of the states our heads were in."
"Okay. When?"
"I don't know. Meet here about one?"
"Okay." She nursed her bottle for a while, then said, "You know that this is impossible?"
"What is?"
"This. This whole set of things we've found and that have happened to us. Little elemental creatures, the shared dreams, all that stuff.
"I mean. I'm a physicist. I'm studying the most basic rules of the universe, yet I have things in my room that seriously break those rules. Tell me how that happens."
"I don't know how it could have happened, but I think we can find out. I'm really good at seeing patterns, spotting connections between bits of information. It's my job. We can work together to find out why this stuff's happening to us." I drained my Guinness. "For the record, I don't believe in any of this shit either. More beer?"
"Okay."
I guess what happened at the end of the evening had a certain inevitability about it. After a while a group of revellers decided they were off to a club. Neither Jana nor I were interested, so we stayed behind. It also meant we got seats at the table. By now we'd returned to the whole landscape gardening Feng Shui thing and were practically putting together a business plan to keep from discussing our paranormal experiences.
Next to leave were Charlie and his postgrad pals. Now we were left in the common room with three couples in varying levels of snog. We grabbed the last of our bottles and cans and went to Jana's room.
This time we sat side by side on the bed. We stared at Pebbles for a while. He pretended to be asleep.
Jana finished a bottle and leaned across me to put it into the bin. She didn't go all the way back, shifting her position so we were face to face. "You know, we could go and investigate much earlier if you stayed here tonight."
"We could." I've never been much good at reading expressions, but I thought I had this one pegged. I laid a hand on her waist. She moved a little closer. She didn't move back when I moved forward. We kissed.
We shifted positions. Her hands came round and clasped my back. One of mine ran up the outside of her top to cup a breast, the other sneaked up under it. When we came up for air she had a far more readable expression. I helped her unbutton her top and pull it off. It seemed a bit too enthusiastic to go straight for the bra, so I ran my hands up and down her exposed skin- across her belly and along her arms. I moved to kiss her again, but she stopped me and jumped off the bed. "Sorry. I can't....."
Part of me was annoyed that she was having second thoughts, part of me relieved. "There's just something...." She sat on the seat by the window and talked to the pile of stones, "Umm..... Pebbles, can you look the other way?"
The stone figure pretended to wake up, turned its head to her and nodded. It pointed at the wall cupboard at the end of the desk. "Private."
"You're sure?"
Pebbles nodded. Jana opened the cupboard and Pebbles pulled itself up and walked slowly, like a determined old man, into it. When he had settled and looked comfortable, Jana closed the door.
"Sorry. I just felt a little....." She unclasped her bra and dropped it to the floor. I pulled off my T-shirt and stood to join her. As we kissed we each undid the other's khakis. She didn't have a belt, so I got hers unfastened first and started pushing them and her knickers down.
She still had shoes on. I turned her and navigated her backwards to the bed and sat her down. Crouching before her I slipped her shoes off and pulled her trousers and knickers off. I sat back for a moment to appreciate the view.
Jana sat up, a little confused by my inaction. I gave her a grin and shuffled forward to kiss a knee. I parted her legs and kissed my way up the inside of her thighs. "What are you....? Oh. I don't....." But she didn't stop me. She laid a hand on the top of my head as I started licking and lapping at her.
There was no sound but for contented sighs, slurps and a light rustling. I must have found the right place and rhythm, because she held still and pulled my head in closer. She stopped making noises. On an uplick I looked up. She had two fingers in her mouth, biting them to keep herself quiet. I wasn't going to stop and tell her there was no-one else in the flat.
When Jana came moans escaped her improvised gag. I could feel little shudders running down her legs. A strange, shrill shriek made a chill run through me. I stopped licking and looked up. Jana still had her fingers in her mouth and was too blissed out to have heard anything. She certainly hadn't been the source of the sound. I put it out of my mind by standing and undressing.
Stood in front of Jana I crossed my arms and waited for her to notice and appreciate my nakedness. She came down from the plateau gently, eventually opening her eyes and smiling at the sight before her. She pointed at the bedside cabinet, "Condoms."
It's been a while since I wore a sheath, but they're not the hardest thing to put on. Whilst I fumbled with it Jana moved round and stretched out on the bed. She reached out for me, but I intercepted her hand, found the fingers with red bite marks on them and kissed them better. Under her guidance I moved between her legs and let her place me on target. I slid right in, so well lubricated was she.
We held position for a while, kissing and nuzzling, then I pulled slowly out and thrust just as slowly back in. She liked that. On my fourth thrust there was a crashing sound above us, something falling through foliage. I stopped. Jana's expression looked as I imagined mine did. She had heard something too. "Jungle." she said.
I looked around. I could see the walls, the door, all of that stuff, but overlaid on it were tree trunks, roots and vines. We lay on a bed of trampled greenery. It was the forest around the ziggurat. Neither of us was the oil painted inflated Frazzeta figure we had been in our dream, but the setting was the same. There was a shriek again, somewhere off to one side. We both looked in that direction and saw greenery move as something leapt from tree to tree.
Alcohol and sex have long been an interesting combination for me. I've had out of body experiences on the combined effects. One time I woke up next to a pile of Barbie dolls arranged into the shape of a short, and small breasted, blonde. But I've never had a hallucination quite so vivid, or shared it with my partner. We fell into character. "Sir, you have a way with your tongue that any woman would appreciate." she told me.
"Aye, well you're so fair a lady you deserve the best. Now let me see if I can pleasure you again."
"If you can do so then I will later perform the finest fellatio on you." The phrase 'finest fellatio' didn't seem in character, but I was hardly going to complain about the offer.
I took up my thrusting again. I worried I might not last long enough to bring her to another peak, but she was already highly charged and her moans soon told me she would come quickly. She brought her hand up again to stifle any cries, but I intercepted it. "Who can hear us here but the beasts?" We both knew I was talking nonsense, but she smiled at the thought of being so wanton and let her hand go back to clasping my shoulder. I regretted the intervention as she got more excited and dug her nails into my back.
The pain spurred me on to thrust harder and faster. We were both close now. I just needed to hang on long enough for her to get there. From our perspective her cries were drowned out by the jungle sounds of creatures and wind in the trees, but anyone else in the flat, and probably the ones to either side, above and below, would be able to hear her.
I felt the spasms deep inside her, around me, as she came. For all her cries in the build up she was silent now, so blissed out she couldn't make a sound. I thrust a few more times before the jungle started to disappear in bursts of white as I filled the condom.
We were both flushed and breathing heavily. We were back in her room, safely returned from the jungle where we had made love. I carefully pulled out of her. "That was strange." she said.
"Intense." I offered.
"Yeah, yeah, intense" She looked around, groggily, "Where did the jungle go?"
"I don't think it was ever here."
"But we were there?"
"I don't know." I peeled the condom off and dumped it in the bin. "I need to pee. Back in a minute."
Whilst I was in there I washed myself as well, and splashed my face with water. I had the briefest of flashes, as I looked at myself in the mirror, of 'What the fuck did you just do?' guilt. It hadn't completely gone by the time I got back to her bed.
She had pulled the covers about herself and suddenly looked a lot younger. That did not do the guilt any good. "Some of this is scaring me. What if I'm going mad?"
"Then I am too." I sat on the bed. After a moment's hesitation she lifted the sheets to let me join her. "You can't be going mad if I'm experiencing the same strangeness. And maybe there are other people out there having similar weird shit happen to them." I coaxed her into uncurling and cuddled up close to her.
"Maybe." she conceded. She clasped the arm that was wrapped around her and relaxed a bit. "That was the first time I've had sex in a forest."
"Wasn't mine."
"Yeah, but you're a lot older than me."
Good to her word, she woke me a few hours later to give me some fine fellatio. Frankly, any blow job is a good blow job, so I don't usually rate them. But this one was definitely amongst the best.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
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Technorati tag: Fiction, Fantasy, Weird
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