The Auditor 
by Marknew
Brian's first investigation as a manager into misappropriation of resources runs into a scheme far beyond his training.


6

I know that last few paragraphs of part 5 must have sounded very strange. I'm
not trying to be strange but it's not as strange as what follows. I am not
trying to be literary. I'm an auditor, not a novelist, and the stories I am
trained to tell are about dry facts. All I can say is, I don't know exactly
what came over me when I was writing it, but I promised myself when I decided
to write all this down that once I finished a paragraph I wouldn't change it,
except for grammatical reasons. That was to make sure I was being completely
honest about what happened and not dressing it up afterwards to make myself
look better, or worse, than I really am. Nothing makes me angrier when I'm
doing an audit than finding records that have been altered after the fact.
What has happened has happened, and can't be changed. So, I have to leave it
just the way I wrote it, and you, the reader will have to do the best you can
with it. I am determined to move forward only, as best as I can, and not to
waste time trying to change what is already done. There's nothing I can do
about that anyway, so I can at least be true to these smaller things.

7

When I saw Ekara in the lobby, in the back of my mind I was recalling Muriel
Cawle's warning about her. At the time, I could not in good conscience promise
to comply with it. I was under an obligation to follow each lead wherever it
went and to make sure Muriel and everyone else in the office understood that I
would do so. But there was no need to make an office receptionist a priority
in the investigation unless the evidence led me there and at that point in my
investigation there was nothing that pointed to her. So, without agreeing with
Muriel or stating any intention to act as she had suggested, I still had said
no more than ten words to Ekara during the rest of the week. This is why I was
particularly surprised to see her in my hotel.

And now I will relate what happened.

"Poor Mr. Stephensson," she said, with a smile that would have been shy on
anyone else. "You have to stay here weekends, don't you." She looked down at
her chest and laughed a little. "All by yourself."

I wasn't sure if it were a statement or a question, but in any case I said
"Yes," my eyes darting away from the open space between the two front parts of
her cardigan up to her eyes and then back down again. Somewhere in my mind I
felt a small burst of pleasure that she was familiar with our office policies.
I tried hard to look at her eyes, only her eyes, which I knew from my first
sight of her were bluer than any I'd seen, but she was still looking down and
instead I followed their gaze and saw to my discomfort that at this moment her
cardigan was almost completely separated, leaving the milky white fullness of
her very large breasts wholly open. And since she was sitting down, the angle
of my look enabled me to see all the way inside her clothes, and to see in all
detail the full, magnificent shape of each round breast. "What, uh, brings you
here? Passing by?" I said. She was making me nervous. I had done nothing
wrong, but the more I looked at her the more I wanted to. I knew I should stop
looking, and I couldn't.

I don't know how long I was looking at her, but I suddenly became aware that
she was looking back at me and that she knew exactly what I had been looking
at. She made a little noise in her throat and pulled her cardigan closed,
tugging at her breasts to momentarily compress them slightly before they
returned to their natural shape. And then she stood up.

"Ohhh, no. Not exactly," she said slowly, as if she were thinking, her eyes
now looking past my shoulder and out the front door. Her hips swayed back and
forth. For anyone else, it would have been a way of acting out a vagueness and
indecision in the mind, but for her it was anything but that. For her, it was
a casual demonstration of her presence, the space she filled, the space she
owned. And for me, the soft relaxed haze that was the aftermath of my vigorous
exercise was gone. My heart was racing, my crotch was pounding. Each little
movement of her body was like the twist of a corkscrew into the top of the
wine bottle, embedding the sense of her presence more and more deeply inside
me, preparing for some future moment when a different movement entirely would
be needed.

"When you came on Monday ... did you notice how I'm nearly as tall as you?"
she said, changing the subject. "I have very, very long legs. They're longer
than yours are, although you do have a bigger torso." She had leaned forward
toward me when she asked and then moved back again. "In most places, huh?" she
added, giggling. While she waited impatiently for an answer she moved around,
shifting her weight and twisting her body as I hesitated in my response.
"Anyway, so did you notice how tall I am?"

"I, uh, noticed, yes, on the first day," I said finally. "I try to notice
everything. It was when you showed me the coat closet."

She smiled and nodded. "That's right!" She put her hand on my shoulder.
"That's right. Of course I did. Good for you for remembering. Everyone likes
to be noticed, right?" She brushed my shoulder slightly and then took her hand
off. "Most of the men in the office come in through the back door, but you
don't. It's a local habit. I'd bet it's not how they do it in the other
offices, right? That would just be stupid. It's the reception area. It's where
you're supposed to come in. You've been around a lot of other offices so you
would know. Still you came in all week and you never talk to me. You come in
and you go right to work."

"I have a lot to do. I'm here on business."

"I know that. You're the auditor. We haven't had auditors here before from the
head office, so I know you must be different from other people. Something has
to be audited, right? Mostly we have customers visiting. They all want to talk
to me, but the salesmen don't let them. They just want to sell them the things
we make, which I know is the whole point of what they do. And sometimes we
have other company people visiting. We had a lawyer visit here once named
Artie and I got to know him very well. He didn't get along well with the other
people in the office, but he talked to me."

"Artie? Was that Arthur Halberstram?"

"Arthur. Mr. Halberstram. Oh yes! Was he a friend of yours?"

I thought hard. I didn't know him well. Arthur had been part of the legal team
in Raleigh-Durham. The lawyers always sat together with other lawyers in the
company canteen, and the auditors sat with the auditors, and the younger
auditors didn't mix with lawyers unless the audit was important for one of
their lawsuits. I only knew him because he and I went to the same gym and we
spotted for each other a few times. Apart from the fact that he lifted a lot
more than I did, I knew very little about him, and I hadn't seen or thought
about Arthur in a long time. In fact I didn't even know exactly when he had
left. I was sure though that there had never been a memo about it, because I
read all them carefully to understand more about the company and why sometimes
things don't work out. "Not really," I finally said. "We didn't work together,
and he's not with the company anymore. I don't recall exactly when or why he
left but I haven't seen him in a very long time."

Ekara shrugged. "Too bad. I liked him. I really wish he had just stayed in
Indianapolis. But you know, even though our office stays the same, people who
visit us are always coming and going. That's one thing I learn from being a
receptionist." She looked at me. "You kind of remind me of him a little. It's
the way you speak. It's different from people around here."

"My accent, you mean?"

"No! Lots of people have them. It's the way you think about what you're going
to say. Like you're writing a book in your head. I just say whatever pops into
my head. I don't worry about it. Things work out fine for me no matter what I
say."

Her ordinary chattiness was exactly what she needed to do to make me feel more
at ease and I was becoming a little less self-conscious about my reaction to
her body. And it was starting to occur to me that she might be a good source
of information, if she had any. She certainly seemed pretty careless about
what she said. I could see a business justification for talking to her more.
She was just a naïve, chatty innocent girl who could give me unadulterated
information on how the office functioned, who was friends with whom, who
seemed dishonest and who took advantage of their position. It would have been
irresponsible for me not to take advantage of the opportunity to interview
such a completely guileless and unguarded employee in this kind of setting,
away from the office, without anyone else knowing.

I was starting to organise a list of points I wanted her to uncover for me
when she said, "Hey, what I was wondering, um, Mr. Stephensson, was, do you
want to have dinner?"

I was not expecting her to take the initiative like that, and it put me on the
defensive. I was the auditor, the investigator, not she, and my training was
designed to establish the time, place and tone of the interview. Dinner in a
restaurant would be less private and would be subject to interruptions that
would disrupt the flow of my questions. Then again, agreeing to her suggestion
would keep her relaxed and off her guard. My mind was going back and forth. I
knew I had to respond so that she didn't get suspicious, and I was unable to
resolve this contradiction quickly, so I must have stammered something like,
"Um, I don't know, Ekara. I --

This didn't faze her. She wagged her finger at me and put her other hand on
the very curvy part of her torso between her waist and her hips. "Don't tell
me you have something else to do, Mr. Stephensson, because I'm just about
totally sure you don't." She laughed again and said more lightly, "Hey, I
admit you're pretty good looking, but it's not like I'm asking you for a date.
I knew you'd be here and alone by yourself and I thought you'd like some
company. That's all. We both work for the same company, right? I know I'm just
the receptionist, but I figured we could find some things to talk about. I
could tell you lots about the office if you're interested. I've been working
here for a good while, you know." She gave me a big smile showing off her
even, perfectly white teeth.

I had no defense against this. "Well, I wouldn't want to take advantage of
you. You know, as an auditor I'm bound to --"

She started laughing and leaned over, putting her hand on my shoulder again
for support. Once again I looked through the yawning cleavage her position
created as her cardigan fell open and her wondrous breasts floated inside her
wraparound top. "Oh Mr. Stephensson!" she said through her laughter. "Are you,
like, reading me my rights? Am I a suspect, like on a TV crime show?"

This was going all wrong. Had I somehow managed to imply that she needed to be
careful about what she said to me? This was the last thing I wanted. But there
was no easy way to repair the damage I had just done. I could not tell her
that she was not a possible subject for my investigation, not without having
completed more of my work. My scruples would not allow me to mislead her. But
then I had a tremendous stroke of luck. She noticed my look of horror and
evidently misinterpreted it as embarrassment.

"Oh, oh. There I go again! That's what happens when you say whatever comes
into your head. I'm always putting my foot in my mouth. Of course that's not
what you meant. I'm really sorry. Really." She looked a bit upset and I
wondered if she was going to cry.

"Um, never mind that, Ekara. Sure then. Let's have dinner. I guess the
restaurant here isn't too bad."

"Great! But ... do they have, um, room service in the hotel here? I've NEVER
had room service."

"Well ... yes, but I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Please! If it costs more than you're allowed, then I'll pay my share! It's
not like it's a date or anything that you should feel you should pay. It's
just that it's something I've always wanted to do. Can you get anything you
want?"

"Well, yes. But ...."

She clapped her hands gleefully. "Oh great! Thank you! Thank you so, so much!"

Why did these misunderstandings keep happening around her? I said yes to her
question about what one can order on room service, not whether we could eat in
my hotel room, alone together, and behind a locked door! My mind flashed back
to a business ethics course I had years ago, when I took to heart a deep
insight my professor had given to me. He said: "Never do anything that you
would not want to see published on the first page of the Wall Street Journal."
Most of the problems I dealt with in my job would have been solved if my
fellow employees would only have heeded this advice, and now I myself was
about to be in a situation that would not pass his test, a situation anyone
would see as highly improper. But then I had another insight. It wasn't as
though we were going to my room to have sex, I told myself. Besides, eating
together in this setting was actually very positive for my investigation, and
it would take care of my concerns about being interrupted or being seen by
other people at the office. I started mentally rewriting the newspaper article
to emphasize what we would actually do in my room. There was a small round
table near the window of the room where I already had my yellow pad set up. We
would sit there, eat and talk. That was all. Only the wrong kind of newspaper
would turn the facts into something salacious and inappropriate. Certainly not
the paper my professor had spoken about, the Wall Street Journal! In fact, the
article they would write would be how my audit was a textbook example of how
one should be conducted, a mix of adherence to procedure, good relationships
with the subject office, flashes of insight to make connections between
seemingly unrelated facts and, lastly, slightly unconventional investigative
digging to unearth background information that would otherwise be unavailable.
It would all come together for me. It would be the beginning of the next phase
of my career.

8

I led Ekara up to my room, dismissing with a knowing attitude the looks I was
getting from the few other guests, nearly all male, who were spending their
weekends at the hotel, no doubt caught by the same kind of travel policy cost
controls as I was. There was nothing I could (or should) say or do under the
circumstances to correct their mis-interpretation of the situation. There are
times when seemingly plain and obvious deductions from evidence are simply
wrong, and I told myself to file this instance away as an example from which
many could learn, although it also occurred to me that unless I uncovered
specific evidence from this interview to assist in my project, which was
possible although it could not be assured, it was one I would some difficulty
explaining to others, particularly if they were not familiar with my strong
moral values, if I were ever invited to assist in the company's training
program for new auditors. For most people, the temptation to misunderstand
what I was doing would be too strong. They would emphasize the appearance of
error and ignore the underlying opportunity.

She pushed ahead of me into the room when I unlocked the door. "It's so neat!"
she exclaimed, kicking off her sandals.

"Well, they have maid service. They clean it everyday and make the beds." I
was thankful that my regular routine also included putting away all of my work
papers and ensuring that my laundry was folded and placed in the closet,
because the maids would not have taken care of that. I handed her the plastic
folder that held the hotel services directory and the room service menu and
she scanned it eagerly.

"Oh, I know exactly what I'm having! The triple cheeseburger, fries and the
chocolate milk shake, extra thick. What about you?"

I looked at her in amazement. With her figure and perfect skin I assumed that
she would be accustomed to a much healthier diet. And then I realized that
inferior education and likely limited family resources that led her to a job
with such limited prospects would also make her unlikely to pay attention to
those types of dietary risks. She was someone who lived for momentary
pleasure, indulging each whim as it struck her. It was sad to think how her
fresh young beauty would quickly be lost to a diet rich in salt, oils, sugars
and fats.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, no I ... nothing. Of course not. That food is, er, too rich for me."

"Is it? Well then I'll see what you order. Maybe I'll get some better habits
from you. Let me see how exactly you do it."

"Well, you just press the number "4" here and ...."

"They have a speakerphone like at the office! Let me listen!"

"OK." She really was very childish. I pressed the button and it started
ringing.

"Room Service at the Radisson! Good evening, Mr Stephensson. Would you like to
order dinner?"

"They know your name! How do they do that?" she squealed with excitement.

I waved my hand to indicate she should be quiet. "We'll have the triple
cheeseburger, an order of French fries, the extra thick chocolate milk shake,
and the grilled chicken breast with a side salad and a diet coke."

"The burger comes with French fries. Do you want an extra order on the side?"

Ekara nodded vigorously.

"Yes, please."

"Any dessert?"

I looked at Ekara who thought for a moment, bit her lip in a very cute way,
winked at me and then shook her head.

"Any beer or wine?"

"No thanks," I said quickly.

"Thank you for your order, Mr. Stephensson. We guarantee delivery within 15
minutes. Good-bye." She hung up.

Ekara didn't seem bothered by my not ordering any alcoholic drinks, which
would have been inconsistent with the business nature of our meal, or that I
hadn't even asked her first. "That was neat!" she said. "I can't believe you
get to do this all the time when you go on business trips."

"Well, to tell the truth, I usually prefer eating in the restaurant. It can
feel a little lonely just being in the room sometimes." I wasn't sure why I
said that.

"Well, that's not a problem today, is it?" she smiled. She walked slowly
toward me, the curves of her body undulating with each movement, and I was
worried for a moment that she was going to make some kind of advance, which I
would have no possible option but to reject, embarrassing both of us, but
instead she turned and walked around the room, ran her finger along the
countertop ("they keep it very clean!") and across my briefcase, which
naturally was closed, looked at the generic art ("it's cute isn't it?"),
walked into the bathroom ("these little bottles of mouthwash, shampoo and hand
cream are so cute!") and then went to the window to play with the curtain pull
to open it and close it. I could not but notice how with each movement she
made her body found a completely new way of bending or twisting, revealing new
depths and angles to her figure, but she seemed to be completely unconscious
of the effect her body had on me or would have had on any male who watched
her. "Your room's a lot bigger than I expected, you know?" she said as she
continued to play with the cord, twisting this way and that as she looked out
the window at the fading light. "I think I'd really like going on business
trips. I never get to leave Indianapolis!"

I saw my opening. "I don't think about it too much, except as a place to
sleep. I spend most of the weekdays working, even when I'm not at your
offices. Have you been there long?"

"Three years in July, since I left high school. And I'm still the newest one.
No one ever leaves!"

"Really? So you know everyone there."

"Oh sure! You can get an awful lot out of the people you work with." She
leaned backwards as she looked out the window, her chest thrust out, almost to
the extent that her breasts pointed toward the ceiling. It showed a remarkable
degree of athleticism that she could bend that far and hold the position, and
I thought with more that a few misgivings about how unfortunate it was that
she was "out of bounds" for me. I found I was holding my breath until she
suddenly straightened out and said, "Being here and looking up at the sky I
can imagine I'm anywhere in the world. But then looking out on West Ohio
Street kind of ruins it." She closed the curtain. "That's better."

There was a knock. "Room service."

"Oooooh! Is that it? Is it here already!?"

I nodded and opened the door. It was a young girl, probably just 18, tall and
busty but with thin arms. She was struggling with the tray laden with food.
She looked at Ekara and me and tried to smile. "Will you be ... eating at the
table?" I nodded, hoping she wouldn't drop it. I picked up my yellow writing
pad, and she walked across the room as quickly as she could and put the tray
down, and then spread the plates out on the table. She handed me the bill and
watched carefully as I wrote out my usual precise 15% gratuity ($4.37) and
signed it.

"Enjoy your meal, sir. Please push 4 when you're ready for me to pick up your
tray. Good night!" She smiled again, a bit less fully than before, and left.

"Wow, she even called you ‘sir'! I bet you're used to that. Can we eat?" I
nodded and we sat down. She immediately took off her cardigan and tossed it
onto the bed, leaving her very impressive cleavage completely exposed. "I hate
getting my clothes dirty or stained, especially on my little salary!" she
giggled, and then, following my eyes and looking down at the expanse of flesh
she was exposing, "Yeah, I know, but it's so much easier to clean my own skin!
I'm safe with you, right?" I nodded, embarrassed, and then she unwrapped the
straw, blew the paper that had covered it halfway across the room and pushed
the plastic into the thick, dark drink, which must have been at least a pint
and a half. She sucked hard on it, drawing up at least a third of her shake
and swallowing it in great gulps without even taking a breath. "Oooooh, that's
soooo good!" I couldn't help noticing the goosebumps that appeared on her
breasts. She glanced up at me and smiled when I quickly looked away. Then
licked around her lips and then picked up the thick burger and somehow fit it
into her mouth and took an enormous first bite and then finished off her
shake. I cut my chicken breast into small pieces and ate it slowly,
alternating with my salad and sipping on my coke, not daring to look in her
direction again. In any case, she was eating with too much enthusiasm for me
to continue to question her, so I decided to wait until she slowed down or
finished.

"I always finish my drink too fast! Can I have a taste of your coke? To help
wash down my dinner?" My mouth was full, and before I could swallow and reply
she had already taken my straw and gulped two large mouthfuls. "Ahh, thanks so
much! I was SO thirsty! You didn't mind, do you?"

I forced the food down my throat. "N-n-no, that's fine." I did mind. I knew it
was illogical. In other, more appropriate circumstances I would have wanted
nothing more than to kiss her and engage in other intimacies that involved
considerably more exchanges of bodily fluids than the thin layer of saliva she
would have just left on my straw, but the context would have been completely
different, and even then would have required a much higher degree of mutual
understanding than we had. What she had just done, without even waiting for my
permission, bothered me more than I should admit. I thought about just giving
her the rest of my drink and taking some tap water from the sink instead, but
I knew that she would think I was being very standoffish, and for professional
reasons I didn't want her to withdraw or become uncomfortable with me. Still,
my diet coke was now much less appealing to me, and I left it untouched,
concentrating on eating my chicken and salad while she nearly finished her
burger and the extra order of fries. At least she didn't notice my reaction
and went on eating and drinking happily, oblivious to my emotional discomfort
and the change in the pattern of my eating.

Finally, with just one large bite of her hamburger left, she paused to take a
breath. "This is really good food, you know? I especially like having the
fries on the separate plate, because they don't have the burger juice on them.
They're crispier and saltier, you know? Just the way I wanted them. I know I
shouldn't, but I really love just about anything with a lot of salt, you know?
Especially when there's something to drink. How's your chicken?"

"Good. Mine's pretty salty too." I hadn't realized I was getting so thirsty
and took a sip from my coke, my thirst making me forget for a moment my
reluctance to drink it. She made a little sound, kind of like a chuckle, and
when I looked up she had stopped eating and was grinning at me. I wondered if
I had dripped some salad dressing onto my chin, so I dabbed my face with my
napkin.

"Oh you're fine, just fine," she said looking at the part of my face I had
touched. She leaned back in her chair and patted her perfectly flat stomach.
With a big smile, she picked up the last piece of hamburger and put it in her
mouth and chewed it. "Yes! This was exactly what I wanted," she said with her
mouth full. She swallowed and smiled contentedly. "And now is my completely
absolutely totally favorite part, when I don't have to pretend anymore,
Brian!" she said, almost chirping. She laughed again, freer sounding and more
high-pitched, and then stood up, put her hands on her hips and looked down at
me.

I looked up at her, a bit confused at her remark the slight change in her tone
and the surprising use of my first name. Was she about to try to seduce me? I
was trying hard to keep my focus on her eyes instead of the large breasts that
were bursting right out of her chest, so boldly filling the space between my
eyes and hers. I found however that it was an impossible task and in any event
looking up at her was hurting my neck, so I stood up too. But as I was doing
so she turned away from me and went over to my briefcase. She ran her finger
along the side of the briefcase again like last time, but this time stopped
and put her thumb on the latch, which I had closed. I realized with a skip of
my heart that contrary to company policy and my normal, careful habits, I had
neglected to spin the numbers on the lock.

"Ekara, what are you doing? Come on!" I said firmly, walking up to her. Her
thumb remained on the latch, ready to pop it open, and I extended my hand
toward hers to show her I would, if necessary, remove her hand from my
briefcase (gently, of course) and stop her from looking at papers she had no
right to see, papers I had a professional and contractual obligation to
protect. Now I understood what Muriel Cawle had warned me about the first day
of my trip. Ekara was a bit of trouble, a young girl who didn't observe the
proper limits, who was difficult to control and who had a disruptive effect on
the work of the office. No doubt she was kept on because her attractiveness
aided sales efforts in some difficult to define way, as did other occasionally
questionable practices that our salesmen would engage in. Now she was
presenting me with a delicate situation I would have to handle, properly,
before things got out of control and jeopardized the investigation.
Fortunately I had been trained to deal with situations just like this, and I
was confident that I would be able to act with quiet authority to bring this
situation to an end.

But the closer I got to her the less assured I felt, because something wasn't
right. Strangely, even though I was standing up I felt as though I was looking
up to her.

"Are you having some kind of problem, Brian?" she said, her thumb still poised
on the latch.

I was staring at her, trying to decide. Was I ill? I didn't feel dizzy or
feverish. The room wasn't spinning. She appeared as clear to my eyes as ever,
although perhaps even more solid, more present, more vivid than ever, as if
she extended herself in more than just the usual three dimensions. And yet I
was looking up to her. I glanced down at her feet. She wasn't in heels; she
was still barefoot from when she had entered the room and had, somewhat
surprisingly at the time, taken off her sandals.

"My briefcase, Ekara." I insisted as firmly as I could. "It's confidential
company property. You can't look inside it. You can't open it. You can't even
touch it," I said in controlled, firm manner, although I was thinking, ‘This
is my room, my briefcase, my papers. She has no right to do this." She was in
my space but nevertheless she still seemed to be doing just what she wanted.
In fact, it occurred to me that everything that had happened this evening was
what she had wanted. She had been in control every step of the way, when I was
the one, by age, company authority and, excuse me, as by my sex, who should
have been directing things. And now, suddenly I was in danger of losing
control of my investigation. This was unacceptable, and it had to stop. Right
now.

But just as that thought presented itself to me, Ekara pulled the latch and it
snapped open. She put her thumb into the small space separating the top and
the bottom of the briefcase. "Hey, guess I can," she teased. Her other hand
was on her hip and she twisted her body slightly so that her hip was pointing
toward me. Somehow it made me angry. I felt like her body was unfairly filling
the space between us; that she was taking my space away from me. Yes, I was
feeling there was definitely something unfair about what she was doing.

"I want to see how far you've gotten." She put her other hand on the counter,
leaning on it, and wiggled her ass, side to side, like she was winding up to
do something. She opened the case, in direct contravention to my clear order
and saw my computer sitting beneath a pile of work papers with numbers in
columns in my neat script. "These are just the numbers. I bet you do your real
thinking on your computer."

She was completely disregarding me. "Ekara, this isn't funny!" I was right
next to her. I hadn't touched her. I had done nothing to stop her except talk.
Yes, I had restrained myself so far but now I would have to start getting
physical. "You are not allowed access to those files," I said firmly and put
my hand on her arm to stop her from doing anything further.

"Oh, this is gonna be so great. I just love this part!" she said,
enthusiastically. "You have NO idea how much I love it! I just have to decide
... I could ... nah ... yeah, that's it!"

As she was talking it was like a flickering image, almost as though I was at
an old silent movie. One moment my hand was around her slender girlish arm,
ready to pull it away from my briefcase. In the next my hand scarcely
encircled it and I was looking way up at Ekara, who was more than a full head
taller than I. With her long, feminine legs her hips reached almost as high as
my chest. I was now even more distracted than before by the large breasts
perched just below my chin, bobbing slightly as she moved. In my confusion I
was completely frozen; meanwhile she had opened the laptop and now pushed the
power button, ignoring the fact that my hand still was on her arm. She watched
the lights blink and while she waited she rocked her incredible ass back and
forth.

"Oooh, so when you turn it off, all you do is put it on standby!" she cooed.
"That's not company policy, is it? Tsk-tsk-tsk." The password screen came up
and to my amazement she typed it in, quickly and expertly touch-typing the
complex 23 character password I had chosen for this week, which, consistent
with company policies, was filled with random letters, symbols and numbers.

I was in some kind of shock from all that was happening all of a sudden, none
of which made any sense, and still couldn't quite bring myself to speak. I
must have said something incoherent, like, "Wh-wh-wha ... wha-- how?"

"Keith Hartnett gave it to me," she said casually not even turning her head.
"The IT guys get all the passwords when people go onto the network. You know
that, right?"

As meaningless and insignificant as that particular fact might appear to some
people, compared with everything else that was going on, it offended me
terribly and gave me something concrete to deal with, something objectively
improper and indefensible. "That's ... that's supposed to be COMPLETELY
confidential!" I exploded, filled with rage. It was obvious to me now that she
was in league with the group of defalcators and that this whole evening was
part of a plot to obtain confidential, proprietary information and undermine
my investigation. I pulled her hand away from the keyboard just as my notes
were coming up on the screen. But now it was clear that since she had already
gained access to the computer and sight of the file, taking her hand was no
longer enough. I had to get her physically away from the computer immediately
so that she couldn't read my preliminary conclusions and plan of
investigation. And, following that, much more radical measures would be
necessary. She would have to be separated from the company -- before Monday
morning -- and prosecuted to the full extent of the law!

In my confusion and my anger I have to admit I had ceased complying with
standard procedures. I was not following my training. I was making decisions
based on perceived necessity and emotion rather than the lessons derived from
years of experience and thought on the part of the auditor giants on whose
shoulders I stood. The watchword for my chosen profession was OEREV. Observe
Evidence, Record Evidence, Verify. OEREV. To my shame, in the most critical
situation of my career, I was doing none of those things. It is of no credit
to me nor any defense to say that had I behaved properly at this stage,
nothing different would have occurred. It would be a comfort perhaps to say
that my behavior didn't matter, that I wasn't responsible for what happened
and nothing I did or could have done would have helped. Well I won't say that.
I refuse to take the easy way out. I failed to notice and act on the
flickering image my mind had registered, the subjective perceptions of her
size that were plainly at variance with the known facts -- and perhaps even
known science. I disregarded perceptions and behaved according to
pre-conceived ideas and emotion, a clear violation of OEREV.

Instead, what did I do? What course of action did I take?

What I did was what a normal, untrained, unprofessional person -- to be
precise, a normal, untrained, unprofessional man -- would do. I used physical
force. Physical force against a woman who was refusing to listen to my clear
instructions.

With my feet firmly planted, my hand on her forearm and then my other hand
gripping her upper arm I pulled her arm away from the surface where my open
computer lay, displaying my work, with the full, understandable expectation
that her body would stumble across the room onto the bed. I would then shut
the computer off, stand between it and her to block any further access to it
on her part, and then seek to persuade her by words or, if necessary, more
force, to leave the room.

None of this happened.

I pulled her arm. I pulled harder. I pulled harder still, until I was using
all of the strength of my well developed frame to get her away from my
confidential file. She didn't move. Her body didn't bend toward mine. Her bare
feet didn't slide along the carpet. She didn't whine in pain from a twisted
arm or cry out from the tightness of my grip. No. She made a little muffled
laugh from inside her throat and said, giggly and excited, "You're not getting
very far, are you? With me, or in your investigation." And then, with the
same, casual, rocking motion she had been using she swung her hips away from
me and then towards me, but this time her ass hit me squarely in the middle of
my torso. It felt like a truck hit me, my grip opened and I went flying, not
onto the bed, as I had planned for her, but hurtling across the room into the
wall, which I bounced off slightly, and fell heavily to the floor.

She made a short satisfied sound and went back to her reading, rapidly
scanning down the file through my notes, my preliminary conclusions, my work
plan and my list of questions answered and still to be answered. As I was
mentally taking note, deciding that although the wind was fully knocked out of
me nothing was broken, twisted or seriously bruised, she remarked, "I can see
how you might get there eventually, but I may as well tell you now. The key is
5.11%, and me, of course. I get 5.11% of everything that comes or goes through
the office, whether on the cost side or the revenue side. I thought the
so-called financial wizards here had fixed it all so that no one at the head
office would notice, with our operating profits just on the slightly low side
of normal for the group, but I guess the travel expense procedures have some
additional algorithms that detected something. Either that or someone thought
he was being clever by letting a signal slip through the system. We'll have to
get that fixed Monday morning, either way, won't we?" she concluded, snapping
the computer lid and my briefcase shut. "But it's just Saturday night! It's
not like it's a workday. There's still LOTS of time for play!" She turned to
me and wiggled her hips again while her tongue swept around her lips.

I was slowly standing up, angry that my computer files had been read, sore
after having been thrown across the room, confused about how that had just
happened, though relieved that my body still appeared to be basically in
order. But those thoughts were quickly supplanted by another more exciting
one. As you might have suspected, I was wondering whether her unexpected
confession and explanation could indeed be true. The inaccuracies in the
office books and records would have to be far broader than anything I had
imagined. How had I missed it? But then I comforted myself that I had not been
doing a full audit, just one focused on a single element of cost and
procedure, so it was unlikely that my work was flawed in any way. If she were
telling the truth her scheme would be undetectable using the audit procedures
I had been following, entirely properly, unless I received a tip-off or a
confession. Which I just had received. A confession. Yes! This was just what I
needed! My plan was evidently not so foolish after all! This evening had
turned out better than I ever could have expected.

"You look very happy," she said, as she walked closer to me, "for a man who
has just been hip-bumped ten feet into the wall of his hotel room by the sexy,
young office receptionist." She looked down at me and again licked her lips.
She put her hands down heavily onto my shoulders. "What should I do with you
now? Oh what oh what should I do?" she repeated, again wiggling her hips and
licking her lips.

Now that I had the information I wanted from her nothing else that happened
mattered at all. The unwanted disclosure of my notes to her was irrelevant. My
incomplete thoughts couldn't compromise an investigation that would now
proceed along completely different lines. Now all I needed to do to take
control of the situation was to end our meeting so that I could write up my
report and obtain further instructions from the person I was reporting to on
this assignment, Clem Munters, Manager, U.S. Region VII Audit Services. That
was my desire, but I have to admit, I was not in my usual frame of mind, where
I am thinking logically and can form a coherent plan. Other thoughts and, I
admit, feelings, were pressing in on me. I was, after all, about to cause
Ekara to lose her job and most likely, depending on the decisions of my
superiors, the company would turn her in to the authorities for possible
prosecution. I did not ordinarily have to deal so directly and personally with
the person who would bear the consequences of my investigations, at least not
after those consequences were so clear. And Ekara herself was seeming somehow
more formidable than I had at first expected. I remembered just then that,
inexplicably, this young girl had just pushed me so violently that I had flown
across the room out of control. So there was the odd feeling that would
inevitably arise when a man has been beaten in any way by a female in any
contest of strength, however brief or unusual, something that I could not
recall having experienced ever before. And there was the physical pain from my
fall and the strangely strong pressure of her hands on my shoulders to deal
with. And then there was the fact that I was alone in a room with an unusually
attractive woman who was standing very close to me, whose very large breasts
were just inches away, whose scent was very arousing, and who was touching me,
although not in a manner that was at all erotic or seductive. Perhaps also
because it was Saturday night, not a usual workday, personal considerations
rather than work matters were assuming a heavier priority in my thoughts about
Ekara than they should or ordinarily would.

So, although my mind had cleared enough that I was beginning again to make
connections and sort things out, these thoughts were not all directed toward
the proper end goals of my business trip. Perhaps the principles of OEREV were
reasserting themselves. Notwithstanding the important work-related conclusions
I was reaching, what I was now observing and most aware of was the position of
her hands on my shoulders and of her head being much higher than mine. (And of
course I was very aware of her breasts, but this was not a new perception, and
at that moment I did not feel that their size, unlike her general size, was in
any way threatening or disturbing.) That, combined with the apparent
resolution of the immediate focus of my investigation, freed my mind to form,
and, without any further consideration of where it was leading, to make an
obvious, simple, and yet, bizarre observation.

"Ekara," I said, "you said when we were in the lobby just before you were
almost as tall as me. And you were, when I met you the first day. But you're
not ... I mean ... here we are and ... you're --

"5-11. I'm 5 feet, 11 inches tall," she said. "It's always five-eleven,
exactly. 5'11". 5.11%. First name ‘Ekara' five letters. Last name,
‘Imponerende' eleven letters. Just like your names, and what your height is,
supposedly! Get it?"

Although I normally have an immediate attraction to numbers (especially prime
numbers) and the patterns they make, I ignored the apparent coincidence
between her height and the extent of her admitted defalcation and replied
stubbornly but thoughtfully in protest, "N-n-no you're not." As is my usual
habit, I was insisting on an objective fact to discuss for the sake of
conversation while I recovered my wits. "You just can't be. I'm 5-11 and a
half!"

"Oh? Are you really?" she said. "Well, then how come you're so much smaller
than me?"

She sounded genuinely curious in a simple-minded way. I have to admit that
when anybody, and especially a very attractive girl, asks me a question I do
my absolute best to answer it. It's not because I am showing off, but rather
because I love facts and explanations, and I never feel quite so alive and
excited as when I am sharing facts and explanations with other people,
especially attractive girls, who seem interested. But this time I was stumped.
I knew how tall I was. She knew how tall she was. And yet unlike the way
things were at beginning of the evening she towered above me. It obviously
didn't seem to bother her, while for obvious reasons it did bother me. But
first I had to say something. Nothing I could think to say made sense. And
still, I had to respond. So I decided to share my thought process with her.
"Well, from what I know about science, people don't shrink. Not at my age,
that is, so therefore, logically you must have ... grown. And yet ... that's
..." As I was saying this she very slowly seemed to rise higher, so that by
the time I had said the word "logically", her bust was at the level of my
eyes, and then, as my mouth stopped working and my words ceased, her bust
swelled, pushing her black wraparound tighter and tighter, filling the space
between us.

"Um, yeah?" she said, twisting slightly from side to side. My eyes followed
her breasts, helplessly. "You talk like you're pretty confident for such a
little guy," she said, sounding very amused.

"I am not 'little'!" I protested.

She laughed. "Oh, but you are! I bet that's why you became an auditor. You're
too small to do real things yourself so you spend your time checking up on the
people who do. Am I right?" she said, laughing. It wasn't a mean laugh, but I
felt under the circumstances that it was slightly mocking. It was not a tone
that I was used to hearing, personally or professionally.

"N-no. NO!" I said more loudly. "That's not it at all. It's because rules are
important. Following rules is important," I repeated. "That's what makes
everything work."

"Nope! That's just dumb," she said. "People make rules to make other people
work, and I break them. It's fun. I don't need rules. If somebody does
something I don't like, I just take care of it." She laughed again.
"Scientific rules. Logical rules. Corporate rules. Don't you know? Rules are
made to be broken."

"That's 'records are made to be broken'," I said, correcting her.

She looked down at me and there was that low chuckle in her throat and she
said, softly, "Oh, I am so going enjoy breaking YOU in." At that moment,
something in her eyes gripped me. I could not, and still cannot, say what it
was. It wasn't anger; she was clearly very pleased with herself. It wasn't
beauty, although hers was certainly overwhelming. It was something deep,
ageless and knowing. It was as close to infinite as anything I imagine one can
see, and then in an instant it passed and once again I was seeing the eyes of
a sexy, capricious and, I had now decided, entirely unethical young woman.

Her eyes had gripped me and now I felt her fingers gripping me, closing
tightly and painfully under my shoulders. "Does that hurt?" she asked. My eyes
must have widened, because she smiled and replied, "Good!" and tightened her
grip further, her fingers digging into the tender place under my arms. I
twisted and grasped at her arms to get free but her hold was precisely placed
on my pressure points and deadened the nerves of my arms, leaving me with no
strength to fight back. She pressed harder and the pain radiated outwards in
arrows shooting through my whole body, all the way down to my feet and then
she bent down and kissed me deeply, her tongue filling my mouth, probing
deeply, her saliva flowing into me. I had to swallow. At the same time I had
another sensation, not more pain, but like something else flowing through and
out of my body, as if from mine to hers, something immensely powerful,
overwhelming me. I had a vision of her as larger than me and vastly more
powerful. I looked up at her, feeling helpless and lost. Her eyes were more
alive than ever, a thrill and excitement I hadn't seen in her before. She
noticed me looking at her and then pressed her fingers even more deeply. I
started writhing in pain and before I passed out I heard, or at least I
thought I heard, "Tsk, tsk. Hey, Brian Stephensson, you don't know it yet, but
you're mine now. All mine."

But in the state I was in I could not really trust my observations or verify
them, and it is definitely possible that as I lost consciousness I only
imagined that she said that.

9

When I came to I had no sense of how much time had passed, although a glance
at the alarm clock next to the bed told me it was about half an hour. Ekara
was still there, watching an episode of "Friends" and laughing at Monica's
insistence to a cleaning service hired by Rachel that her apartment be
properly, thoroughly and completely cleaned, just the way Monica would do it
herself. I will just say here that I did not regularly watch this show, but
like everyone else I have seen quite a few episodes, and I've never understood
why people find Monica's behavior amusing. I always thought she was the only
character who was completely sensible. In fact, if I were given the option of
marrying one of the characters on the show I would not have hesitated one
moment to marry Monica. Physically she was good -- not my idea of perfection,
but still very good -- but her character was exactly what I would want in a
woman, and I carried the hope that I would someday meet someone who cared as
much as she did about getting things exactly right. I decided that the
portrayal of her in the show in a slightly negative way was really an "inside
joke" between the writer and the possibly very few select members of his
audience that appreciated such perfection, but the joke still annoyed me. I
only wished that commercial concerns about ratings did not in this case so
completely interfere with the writer's true goals and that "Monica" would have
been allowed to take the central role and display her wonderful
characteristics more fully and openly. As a member of the business world I
understood why TV shows had to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but
that did not mean I had to agree with it in all cases.

It was clear to me, however, that Ekara did not share my views. Every time
Monica made a perfectly sensible comment or demonstrated how the cleaner had
missed dirt in some out of the way place that a fully committed house cleaner
should have found Ekara laughed along with the studio audience. (Granted, it
might have been just a laughtrack.) Whatever it was, it angered me. But I had
to control my feelings and focus on extricating myself from the situation I
found myself in, a situation that had continually became worse and worse.
Because now while Ekara sat on the edge of the bed watching television, I
found myself on the bed, flat on my back, with all of my clothing stripped off
except for my briefs. My body ached and tingled, especially my arms, but I
gathered my strength and stood up to find my clothes and, more importantly,
recover full possession and control of my room and my belongings.

Rachel had come in and sent the cleaner away, and Ekara let the brief exchange
between Monica and Rachel end and then clicked off the show. She stood up and
turned to face me, her eyes apparently already familiar with the look of my
body, because she didn't stare or laugh but only said, "So, you finally woke
up." She rested her hands on her hips and said nothing more. I was relieved to
see I was (once again?) taller than Ekara and wondered whether it was possible
that I had imagined the events I described earlier, especially the part where
I was looking up to her, which made absolutely no sense. Had I become ill
suddenly and hallucinated? But why then was I undressed? Had Ekara done that
to humiliate me, or rather, perhaps, as part of taking care of me, loosening
my clothes and watching over me until I recovered?

And had I also imagined her confession? Was it even possible that I was still
dreaming?

"What just happened?" I asked tentatively.

"You don't remember?"

"I'm not sure. Where are my clothes?"

"I put them away." She looked at the drawers built into the wall and then I
noticed sitting on top, next to my briefcase, a new tray of food. No, not
food. Four more milkshakes, all chocolate, extra thick. The old tray was gone.

"You ordered again?" I said, confused.

"While you were sleeping. The other ones were so good. And it's really
healthy. You know, 'Got Milk'. 'Milk the wonder tonic.' 'Milk: Good and good
for you!'"

"Um, I don't think the last slogan was for milk ... and anyway, they're not
about milkshakes."

She made her throaty laugh and stepped over to them. "Yeah?" She raised one to
her lips and started drinking, hardly stopping for a breath until she had
finished all but a quarter of it. She lowered it for a moment to lick her lips
and clean off the milk chocolate moustache and then gulped the rest down.
"Mmmmmmmm. More!" She took a second tall glass and started drinking.

I thought about stopping her and then decided not to. Having fallen asleep or
fainted, or possibly something much worse, and now being almost completely
undressed, I didn't feel I was in a position to exercise much authority. And
although I was increasingly feeling that the events I just wrote about
(including, I sadly concluded, her confession) was a hallucination connected
to whatever had just knocked me out, the advice I had gotten from Muriel to
keep away from Ekara was now strongly replaying itself in my head. Ekara was a
problem. She was certainly beautiful, but there was something strange and
troubled about her, and gulping down three milkshakes in less than an hour was
certainly proof of it. She obviously was bulimic. She might be delusional. In
fact, I realized now, she had probably slipped some kind of drug into my food!
Who knew what else she might be capable of? That must be what the rest of the
office knew and why they avoided her. How stupid of me not to heed Muriel's
advice and realize there was good reason for their conduct! The last thing I
wanted was to involve myself in her life in a semi-parental role, particularly
if I would have to take on an adversarial position later on. She inevitably
would get sick, hopefully in my toilet rather than on the carpet, but, that
was not going to be my responsibility.

She had now nearly finished the second glass of the thick, sweet drink, and I
could see how the shakes and dinner pushed out her otherwise perfect stomach.
I tried not to think about what she would be doing soon, what she doubtless
had to do to keep her stunning figure while still eating that way.

"You're looking at me funny," she said.

"What?"

She picked up a third glass. "You are." She took a long drink.

"I'm not. I'm really not."

She drank again, draining the glass almost without taking a breath. "Liar."

"What did you say?"

She put the glass down on the tray and stared at me. "I said you're a liar,
but you're a cute liar."

"Excuse me, Ekara!! You can't talk to me like that." She ignored me and picked
up the fourth glass. I couldn't help myself. "And you CAN'T be having
another!"

"This will make five. They're so good. I have to have five."

"Five?"

She nodded while she drank it down steadily. "Aaahhh. I did it. Five glasses.
With eleven breaths."

I stared at her. The bulge in her stomach from drinking the milkshakes was
very noticeable and not at all attractive, but the rest of her was still
breathtaking. "Eleven?" I asked, the numbers echoing uncomfortably in my mind.

"Yeah," she said as she walked toward me, swaying her hips, which seemed to
have a bit of extra heft to them too. "I've got a real good pair of lungs,
don't I?"

I glanced briefly at the breasts that filled out her wraparound top and looked
away. "Ekara, that's really not a proper question for you to ask me. This
whole evening was not at all what I had planned when you suggested we eat
together, and I think you'd better go. Now."

"You have a nice body too, even though it's a bit too chiseled for my taste. I
prefer raw muscle, do you know what I mean? The kind that's just naturally big
and powerful, instead of from working out in a gym. Still, I'm not
complaining. Our numbers match; I think you're cute-looking; you definitely
have potential, the way I see things."

She had stopped just within an arm's length and now she extended her hand and
lightly fingered my bare chest. I grabbed it and pulled it off my skin, not
gently. "Ekara!!"

She looked up at me. "Brian," she said, calmly and confidently. "What are you
doing?" She looked into my eyes and I looked away, avoiding looking at
whatever I was seeing.

This was ridiculous. I was getting nowhere. Clearly I just had to get her out
of the room. Until then there was nothing I could do. The more I thought about
it, the faster my mind was going in circles. I usually control my feelings,
but now my anger was really rising. My fists clenched and my arms tensed.
"Just get OUT of here!" I said, perhaps more loudly than I intended but
certain to impress her with my determination and, to be honest, my muscle.

"Do you think you're going to throw ME out?" She put her hands on her hips and
stood her ground, her breasts and her extra thick chocolate milkshake bloated
belly thrust out at me, absurdly, as if their soft mass were any kind of
defence against my masculine strength. "You can't make me. You don't have the
power or the strength to do anything to me, except -- ha ha -- except audit
me," she said with a smile, "and you haven't even done a very good job with
that!"

That taunt was it. She was denigrating my profession again, and me by
implication. I started forward, ready now to show her once and forever how
wrong she was.

"Oho! Why don't you audit this!" she said.

The words hit me. They didn't make any sense until I saw what happened next.
And then, what happened didn't make sense either, but her words did, or at
least I could see how in her mind they did, in the mind of someone who is not
trained as an auditor, who has no grounding in systems, processes, rules and
laws. She thought all an auditor did was observe, spy, stand on the outside of
things and report on people. That's not it at all. OEREV. We do observe, but
according to clearly defined rules. Our work has no meaning in the absence of
those rules. OEREV. That's why I couldn't 'audit' what happened, what she did.
Not that she cares.

What was I supposed to audit? In the two seconds it should have taken for me
to reach her before I grabbed her by the shoulders and propelled her out of
the room the roundness in her stomach pulled back, leaving it as flat, no,
flatter than it had been before. I stopped short, momentarily, confused, half
thinking she was about to exercise some disgusting bulimic power to cause what
she'd eaten and drunk to erupt from her mouth onto me in a stinking mess. I
looked up, watching out for contractions in her chest and throat, the screwed
up face, the open mouth, ready to move back at the first hint. But that was
not it.

Her hands stayed on her hips. She stood erect, calm, watching me, the little
Mona Lisa smile on her face, pleased I had noticed something had changed, that
I had stopped short for the moment, that she had my full attention. There was
that little throaty, self-satisfied laugh, and it started. I saw it first on
her chest. Her black wraparound tightened and stretched, stress marks
appearing and distorting the shape of the fabric, but it was not her breasts
pushing it. It was her chest, her torso, widening, deepening, thrusting her
breasts higher, pressing them together and out toward me. Another laugh, and
her arms began to thicken, like they had during the momentary vision I had
before, in what I had been thinking was just a dream. The vision, whatever it
was, was merely a prelude. In seconds her arms were as muscular as mine. In
seconds more the muscles were more than twice my size, not sleek, sculpted,
trained muscle, but, in the same words she had just used, "raw" muscle,
bulging, bursting, exploding out of the softer feminine flesh in her arms. She
was no taller than before, still just very slightly shorter than me, but she
was now massive and unmovable, overflowing with strength.

She lifted her chin and laughed, more loudly. "Audit this!" she taunted,
flexing her biceps. I stared at her muscle in disbelief. No muscle could grow
like hers, no muscle could pulse with such power. But what exactly did she
mean for me to do? What was I auditing? What standard should I use? What
periods should I audit? What procedures should I perform? With each flex they
were growing more. Was I supposed to measure it? Compare it? To what? And
when? When she first laughed? Now? In another five seconds, when it had become
even larger and stronger? No. I knew what she was saying. She was telling me
to compare the power of my audit against the power of her muscle. How my plan
to report her to my superiors stacked up against her power over me. What did
the truth of my report matter when she stood in the way of my doing anything
with it? Or, in classic macho talk, do you have any idea what you're up
against, chump?

But what was her game? Why bother confessing to me, only to kill me? With all
the people who saw her come to my room, how would she ever get away with it? I
couldn't put it together.

"You're looking a little scared. Do you think you're getting it?" she said,
grabbing MY arm and spinning me around, hooking her arm around my chest and
locking me against hers, soft for a moment when I pressed against her breasts
and then hard when I reached the solid muscle beneath. I was having trouble
breathing and pulled on her arm, struggling against a strength so vastly
greater than mine. "No, you don't get it. Obviously. You have no idea," she
said and slipped her other hand inside my briefs. "Now, what have we here?
Something to take out on a Saturday night?"

"Ekara! No!" I said, as an unexpected tingle of pleasure coursed through me. I
had not realized I was so fully erect. It was not what I wanted. I pushed
harder, trying to free myself from her unwelcome touching and then when brute
strength failed I applied the basic martial arts training I had. First, the
sharp elbow in the stomach. It was a useless maneuver, I should have realized,
against abdominal muscles that were evidently as thick and hard as the biceps
in the arm holding me, and she just chuckled. An elbow in the throat was
impossible due to our positions, so I next tried to stomp on her foot. It was
a less effective than it should have been because we were both barefoot, but
she still grunted. Unfortunately it didn't make her let go.

"Ooooh, hey!" she said, annoyed.

Suddenly my toes were really smarting -- just the way hers should be, although
I hadn't noticed her stepping on me. In fact, she couldn't have; I was in
front of her.

"That's better. My pain's all yours. I hope you'll learn. You won't try
anything like THAT more than once! But 'cause of that I'm going to make
another adjustment." I felt a strange flowing sensation, like I had before I
had passed out, but without the shooting pains to cover it. "Mmmm hmmmmm!" she
said in her throaty voice. Her grip tightened around me and it felt like her
body was harder or that I was more sensitive. I must have moaned. "Yeah, yeah.
You all do that at first but then you learn to stop, because it's so
annoying."

"What ... exactly ... do ... you mean?" I said, now only managing little gasps
of air.

"How would I know? I don't feel whatever it is you feel. I don't really care.
It always feels good to me." She squeezed and it felt like she was cutting me
in two. "Heh heh. It just got worse for you, auditor."

She must have gotten stronger. Although I couldn't see any difference, when I
pushed against her, the muscles in her arm felt more resistant, and even her
breasts felt firmer against me as I tried to shift position. All the effort I
was making was tiring me out and my legs were getting wobbly.

There was a knock on the door. "Room service."

"I didn't ..." I started to say.

But Ekara called out, "Come in."

I thought at first it was the same girl as before, but no, she was stockier.
Her arms were thicker and made the standard uniform tighter in the sleeves and
her chest forced the front buttons of her blouse slightly open, with a gaps
that left part of her bra visible. She picked up the tray with the four empty
glasses. She looked at me, enfolded in Ekara's crushing hold and suppressed
her laughter. She wasn't talking to me or calling me sir. "Would you like any
more, ma'am?"

"No. That's all."

"OK. Thanks a lot for the extra tip, ma'am. It really comes in handy."

"You looked like you needed it. It came from him, anyway, from his PERSONAL
assets. 15% was very cheap on his part. I always give at least 20%, and I was
happy to let you have another five."

It WAS the same girl, but she looked so different. How? And then my mouth
dropped open in outrage. Ekara had no authority to sign my name on the room
charge! I was sorry that this girl would have to suffer the consequences for
Ekara's actions, but surely she should know the rules. I started to speak but
Ekara clamped her hand over my mouth.

"I hope you'll enjoy it. Just remember where it came from."

"Oh I sure will!" She looked at me again and chuckled. "I'll make sure you're
not disturbed, ma'am. Thanks for the tip ... SIR!"

Ekara took her hand off my mouth and I yelled "Hey! I need help. Hey!!"

She nodded. "You sure do, 'sir', but you're really, really not going to get
any from me." She pulled her blouse closed slightly, compressing one of her
breasts for a moment and feeling her flexed biceps through her sleeve, and
then smiled. "I have to go." She pulled the "Do NOT Disturb" sign off the
inside part of the door and slipped it on the doorknob outside and shut the
door.

I twisted and managed to turn slightly in Ekara's arm, but that did nothing to
free me and she tightened her grip on me once again. I groaned loudly.

"Aren't you a fragile boy! Now you aren't even strong enough for a hug, let
alone a REAL job!" I tried to move and then realizing how pointless it was I
stopped and collapsed, surrendering to exhaustion, letting her hold me up. She
pushed me onto the bed, where I lay, breathing hard, eyes closed, for a minute
or two, confused but tired beyond caring. "Yeah, that's better," I heard her
say. "You're giving up. I like that."

I'm not giving up, I said to myself. I didn't know what to do next, but as I
rested it occurred to me not to do anything. What did I have to do? She would
leave, eventually. She might take my computer, destroy my work, try to
embarrass me, but she could not change the facts. I didn't understand exactly
what had happened or how, but there were some things that were clear. She had
confessed to embezzlement. She had kidnapped me and no doubt drugged me,
making me weak and dizzy and giving me hallucinations. She had forged my name
on the hotel charge slip, tipping far in excess of company guidelines to buy
the loyalty of the hotel waitress. Well, she was having her fun now. She
couldn't stay here with me forever, and unless she killed me the truth would
come out. That was the wonderful thing about my job. I was interested only in
the truth, in facts, in what actually was. So long as I was honest and worked
hard, I would always succeed. Everything that happened would have a logical,
scientific explanation. Nothing impossible happened. The words of the Beatles
song came to me. "Nothing you can do that can't be done." Yes, this was my
faith -- logic, law (the Lord's, the Nation's and the Company's), reason and
science -- and in my faith my strength could not be questioned or overcome. It
gave me strength to think about it, and I repeated the words to myself like a
prayer.

She was talking again. "No, there's nothing you can do, Brian. Accept that
your life as it was is over. All you can do is to learn how to play my game.
You're mine now. No one can save you. You can't be saved. In time you'll learn
how to be. All you need is to let go of ...."

No, I thought. She's twisting it. Twisting the words of the song. That's not
what it means. That's not how it is.

I felt a light slap. "But I didn't say you could go to sleep!" she said
impatiently. She slapped me again. My eyes snapped open just in time to see
her hand coming in to hit me a third time. I grabbed her wrist to stop her,
but her hand continued on its way and struck me harder. Our eyes met and once
again I had the strange feeling of being drawn in to her, of seeing something
like infinity. The moment passed and she said, "Get up!" broke my hold,
grabbed MY wrist and yanked me to my feet. I was startled and alert all of a
sudden, like I just had three cups of coffee. Whether I was drugged before or
not, I felt wide awake now and perfectly fine, other than the wrenching
feeling in my shoulder and the vice-like grip around my forearm. I tugged to
pull away but was still caught. I looked down ... and nearly passed out.

There were our arms. One thick with muscle, bulging and round in all the right
places, the other, slender, smooth, straight from wrist to elbow and from
elbow to shoulder. One held firmly in place by the hand attached to the other.
And it was her powerful arm gripping my thin, weak one. But that's not my arm.
It's really not my arm. It can't be my arm.

"Don't like your little arm, Brian?" My eyes darted to her other hand moving
across her body, and after pausing on the vision of her large breasts, watched
her long finger run slowly up my arm from my wrist to my shoulder, stopping
momentarily on my biceps, or where my biceps should have been, to push down
gently, showing me how easily she compressed it, how little was there, before
completing her little journey. "Next time you'll be more generous with your
tipping, so that I won't do it for you and give away more." She let two
fingers rest against my upper arm again, tapping it occasionally. "For now
she's just got 5% of yours -- I've got most of the rest, although I'll let you
have most of it back if it pleases me. You're one of mine now, and I do take
care of my things. But five percent was a tip, so you'll have to make that up
by yourself, whatever way you men do these things with your weight-lifting. Or
don't." She pulled me closer to her and let out her throaty little laugh. "But
... no, I want you do it. Yes. Understood?"

"What ... what are you talking about?" I said uncomprehendingly. "You did
this?" I tried to take back my arm but I couldn't move it.

"Yeah. You're mine now, as I said. So, yeah. I do what I like with my things.
Those shakes were good. You, however, you've been bad."

She looked at me mostly impassively but deep down I could tell she was
enjoying this. My rational mind told me what she was enjoying was putting one
over on me, seeing whether I would acknowledge as true what was impossible, so
that she could mock me for doing so and undermine my authority as auditor, and
the very core of the values I cherished. And then another voice inside was
saying something else entirely. But I said to myself, that way, the way of the
other voice, meant only panic, despair, and horror. The end of all security,
all certainty, all rules, all that I lived for. I grasped for support, for
facts, my beloved facts.

"You'll just have to get used to it. Most of you do. Artie didn't." She
shrugged. "Too bad for him."

I don't know why, but a memory came to mind suddenly of a meeting at our
headquarters that I had interrupted accidentally. I had the wrong room,
evidently, for an audit department meeting discussing possible changes in our
Excel report template to take advantage of more advanced features in the new
version of Microsoft Office, and had walked in to one of the conference rooms
on our floor to see, to my shock, the senior members of the legal department
and some HR representatives. I thought it was odd at the time that they were
meeting so far from their part of the building, but I apologized and waited
for them to acknowledge it before I left, so as not to seem disrespectful.
Before I did I saw an old man trying hard to convince the others to do
something, while our army of executives listened unwillingly and impatiently,
some with a frown, some shaking their heads and some just reading emails on
their Blackberries. The man seemed familiar, but looked to be at least fifteen
years older than anyone working at our company, and probably older. I assumed,
since he had attracted so many people to the meeting, that he was a retiree
unhappy with his pension, someone who must have been important in his day or
just someone with a big claim. The head lawyer there indicated with his hand
that I should go, so I apologized again and left, although the old man was
looking at me and seemed to want me to stay, as if I could help him. Obviously
he didn't know that I would have nothing to do with approving his request. I
can't explain why that thought came to me, just then.

"Artie ran away. I told him not to, I told him what would happen, but he
wouldn't listen. He brought his problems on himself." She pulled me closer, so
my body pressed against her breast. "I hope you're smarter, because I think
you're cute, even when you're small like you are now."

"What problems?" I asked.

She looked serious for a moment and then smiled brightly and ran her fingers
down my body in a very proprietary way as if it were her own body, as though
she really did own me. "He couldn't live without me. He insisted on trying,
but he just couldn't. That's the way it is, once someone is mine."

"Wh-what do you mean by that?"

"You're mine. It's really quite simple. Everything you have, everything there
is about you belongs to me now." I shook my head. "Oh yes, you'll see, even if
you haven't figured it all out already. Just about everyone does after a
while, and they get used to it." She looked around the room, satisfied. "It's
always a good feeling when I've got someone new. I just want to play with him
... or her, to see what they're good for. It's exciting, and fun, especially
when it's someone who responds to the way I look like you do."

"Uh uh. I'm not --

"Hey, even without doing anything, I really make you hard, whether I'm
'Muscles Ekara' or just normal 'Sexy Ekara'. I like that," she said, playing
with me again inside my briefs. "It'll come in handy when I want it from you."
I tried to get away, again. "Oh, no no no. What DO you think you're DOING? Do
you have ANY idea how EASILY I could break you? Look at these muscles! This
part is always so funny, especially for you guys, when you start worrying that
you're not the one in control. You're so much weaker and you still try, for
awhile at least. And you never see the humor in it. Not now and not later
either."

I was still pushing against her. "This doesn't make any sense!" I insisted. "I
don't belong to you. I'm not your slave. You're NOT stronger than me. You
CAN'T push me around like this, and you CAN'T tell me what to do. I have a job
to do and I'm going to finish doing it."

She held me closer still, almost crushing me. "You're completely wrong about
everything!" she replied gaily. "I am SO much stronger than you, so much more
powerful in SO many more ways than you can imagine. I'll make you do ANYTHING
I want, and the jobs you'll be doing will be the ones I give you, or, if you
bore me, it'll be up to someone else, someone I choose. Or, if that doesn't
work ... well, you don't want to know about that. So what happens to you is
partly up to you. But just understand, I'll make YOU into anything I want and
there's nothing you can do about it." She smiled sweetly. "You'll see."

She let me go and I staggered away from her, my legs thin and weak. "This
isn't real! I'm imagining all this. You've drugged me."

She stood back. "Yes, I have, in a way." She smiled again, a smile of utter
confidence and triumph. "So? There's nothing you can do. You're part of me
now. Nothing can change that, as long as you live, which I hope, for your
sake, will be a long time. But that's up to you. Just don't go too far, Brian
Stephensson."

She had admitted it again. She admitted everything. I WAS drugged. Perhaps
nothing I was perceiving was real. Or possibly some of it might be, but there
was no way to be sure what. I shook my head as if that would clear it and
backed away from her to my clothes drawer. She didn't try to stop me. I pulled
on my other weekend pants and a shirt. She just watched. I slipped on my
loafers and continued backing away until I reached the door. She was still
standing there, a slight smile on her face, not saying anything. It felt even
more unreal. I felt as though I were dreaming or sleepwalking. Why wasn't she
stopping me? Was she even there? She must be. If not, who had drugged me? But
everything else was a trick. A powerful trick. She was beautiful, but
manipulative, evil, horrible. I wasn't going to ask her or wait until she did
something else to keep me there or terrify me even more.

10

Needing all of my strength I pulled the room door open and ran away as quickly
as my shaking legs would allow. Strangely, my weakened limbs seemed restored
nearly to normal once I stepped outside the room, out of her sight and her
malign influence. No wonder everyone in the office avoided her. I didn't
understand her or her hypnotic powers but I knew I had to get away. I avoided
the elevator and skipped down the stairs to the lobby. I had to get out and
report back to my superiors. But then I stopped cold. My wallet was in my
other pants. How would I get home? And could I just leave without checking out
and settling my bill? How would I explain such a gross violation of policy? I
thought about returning to retrieve it and almost shivered with fear, which
was ridiculous. If I KNEW she had drugged me then I must simply disbelieve
everything she told me and everything my senses told me that was nonsensical.
Surely I would be able to detect that. The knowledge of that key fact would
protect me. Yes, I would get my wallet, my computer and briefcase, check out
and return home to report. It was settled, until another thought hit me just
as hard. What exactly would I report? What evidence did I have? What proof did
I have that any of this was real? My own story of what had happened to me
tonight would never be accepted. It would probably cost me my job, perhaps my
career as an auditor. The fact it was true was not the point. What had I done
to substantiate it? How would the evidence be interpreted? If she didn't
confess, what evidence, either positive or circumstantial, would I have to
present to support Ekara's dismissal? I was the auditor. It wasn't my job
simply to make accusations but to prove them with evidence or deliver a report
showing the proper completion of the audit process. And if I left now I would
have failed my assignment, and what's more, would fail a crucial test for my
own career. I couldn't let that happen, to be defeated so early in my career
-- by a receptionist! No. I couldn't leave. Not now.

Let me say that I know that most people consider me emotionless and cold. I
don't really understand why. My feelings are very strong and real to me. Isn't
that clear by the previous paragraph? Perhaps where I differ from some people,
not only women, is that just as I would not make unfounded statements of fact
or obligation, I don't feel it's right to impose my emotions on other people
unless they are logical and justified by the situation. So I normally consider
carefully whether and how to express the feelings I have. But in this case,
the stress of the evening, all the confusion about what I should do, and, to
be completely honest, perhaps a bit of fear, must have weakened the control I
normally exercised, and my face must have betrayed what I was feeling, right
in plain view of everyone in the hotel lobby.

I came to realize this only because a girl working at the hotel, one of the
employees who cleans the rooms, who I think was nearing the end of her shift,
noticed the irresolution in my movements and the evidently shifting
expressions on my face that evidently revealed the slightly disordered state
of my mind. She was staring at me with a mildly curious expression, as if
after turning on a television she was deciding whether to stay with whatever
program happened to be on the first channel or to try the next one. The look
on her stolid, Midwestern farm girl face struck me as dull, and after being
with Ekara her small-breasted, but hefty, broad-shouldered, wide-hipped body
seemed to blend in with the chain hotel decor. So please understand that at no
time was I looking to make any kind of advance on her. That would absolutely
have been contrary to my ethics and also, to be frank, contrary to my
admittedly conventional personal taste in women's bodies.

"You ok?" she said hesitantly. I heard the words but they barely penetrated. I
wasn't even sure she was talking to me. I nodded but my expression must have
been unconvincing. "Are you ... sure?" she said slowly.

She didn't seem very bright, not at all, which would probably be expected
given the job she had, but once I became aware of it I had to acknowledge her
expression of concern, regardless of whether it was personal or mandated by
her training, so I nodded again more vigorously and said, "Yes, thank you --
Elsie." I had noticed her name, Elsie Wolkowitski, on her name pin. It was
simply common courtesy that I do so.

Then I got an idea, an idea that I realized could turn everything around.

"Um Elsie, well, actually I was planning a surprise for my girlfriend, but I
ran out to meet someone and realized I left my wallet, my briefcase and my
room key in the room."

"Oh. That's no big deal. You can get the desk to make you another. All you
need to do is show them your ID."

"But my ID is in the room."

She nodded more seriously but said nothing. She could see that this was true.
This was now a problem outside the scope of her training or her obviously
limited ability to solve.

I suggested a solution. "Don't you have a master key? Couldn't you get my
things for me?"

She looked shocked. "I ... I'm not allowed to do that with my key. It's just
for me to use for cleaning rooms."

I had anticipated that reaction, and I nodded gravely, showing my concern. "Of
course. If my girlfriend is there, you can ask her if it's ok. If she isn't,
just come back and tell me, and then I'll ask the desk to send someone up with
me. It would, um, upset her if I came up with you. Like we were, um, in it
together. You know?"

Elsie looked at me with a dull, uncomprehending look for ten seconds and then
the penny dropped. She looked shocked, and just this side of offended, but
then flattered and then hoped she was hiding it. "Oh. Oh I see. Yeah! Well ...
if you think it would be best that ...."

"I'd rather not have to get the desk to help me if I don't have to. She'll
think I've been stupid. But if you do it, she'll think it has something to do
with the surprise."

"She knows about the surprise?"

"Well, she suspects I have something planned but she doesn't know. She knows I
like to surprise her."

Elsie sighed. "I think she must know she's a very lucky girl to have a man
like you, sir." She looked around to make sure no one was in earshot. "I'll
help you," she said quietly and dramatically. She held one finger up for
emphasis, to make sure I understood she was taking part in my plan.

"There's one, um, thing. Is there someplace else we could meet? If I'm in the
lobby and she comes out she'll probably wonder what I'm up to."

Elsie nodded. She looked in both directors and motioned me to follow her down
a corridor, then she fished a cardkey out of the pocket of her uniform.
"Here's the card for Room 104. It's a special room for us cleaning girls to
change and, you know." She looked embarrassed. "Guests aren't supposed to use
it, but you can wait for me there." I nodded. She continued, her momentum
slowing. "The other girls are all gone by now. I'm a little slow." She looked
down at the ground.

She seemed so simple that I felt a little sorry for her. "You're being a great
help, Elsie. I can't imagine anyone being more helpful. My room is 412."

She looked down but couldn't hide her smile. I understood her feeling. She
felt I was giving her an opportunity to show how she was truly performing her
job, a service job. She was an important part of a greater whole, fulfilling
her role at work and in life. We shared that feeling about our work, and for a
moment I felt a real kinship with her. But quickly her face settled back into
its dull expression, and my mind was again focused on my own concerns.

She hesitated a moment, unsure whether some sort of physical contact was
necessary to seal the agreement, but I moved away slightly and she seemed to
acknowledge that, probably considering that this was a professional errand
rather than a personal one, and turned abruptly to disappear into the
elevator. I walked the rest of the way down the corridor and waited in the
room.

It seemed to take ages for her to return -- there was no clock in the room, I
had no watch and the darkness outside gave me no clues about how much time was
passing. There were the usual sounds of people moving through the halls. At
one point someone fell against the door and started moaning in the hall.
Knowing I was not supposed to be in the room at all, I didn't come out to
help, but I peeked through the fisheye lens in the door and saw a very old
woman dressed in the hotel uniform on the floor right below me, her limbs
moving spasmodically. We were not far from the lobby, and someone must have
heard her. Very quickly there was a lot of bustle outside the room while
several employees and a doctor tried to help her, but she resisted and kicked
the door as long as her limited strength would allow while muttering
incoherently. After a few minutes of this she went limp and then several men
picked her up. A short while later emergency lights lit the room from outside
and I watched an ambulance drive away.

About ten minutes later there were two knocks on the door. I looked through
the hole. It was Elsie, and I let her in. I had kept the lights off; she
didn't turn them on, but the room was lit from the hotel lights just outside.
She was breathing rapidly, her face was red with emotion, the effect
exaggerated by the odd lighting.

"It wasn't ... wasn't at all what you said!" she said breathlessly between
sobs, obviously angry, though keeping her voice quiet. "You ... you liar! I'm
so ... embarrassed. And angry. Why did you make me DO that?! What kind of
person are you ... to do this to me?"

I flushed too. She called me a liar ... and I did lie to her. I'm not used to
lying about anything, and now to be caught like in a lie like this by a room
cleaner, to have my little plan fail like this. But what could have gone
wrong? It was so simple. Ekara must have said or done something to her.
Everything was spinning out of control. "What happened? Tell me exactly what
happened," was all I could think of saying, my normal auditor's instinct
taking over.

She didn't respond at all like my interview subjects. The tears were really
flowing now, while the flashing of the lights outside made a kind of strobe
effect. "Just ... because ... you ... think ... I'm a ... nobody ... and
you're some ... kind of ... big shot, you think ... I don't ... matter? Just
... because ... I clean up after you ... and other people ... you ... think
... you can just ... use ... me to play your games?" She stopped and breathed
heavily to control herself. "That getting me in trouble is ... ok? Now what am
I supposed to do?"

"You're in trouble?" I said, surprised. "What kind of trouble?"

"That girl in your room ... she called the desk. She said I was some kind of
con woman, taking advantage of my position here to steal a wallet. Either that
or I was too stupid not to realize someone else was using me to do it. She'd
never heard of a hotel person here acting this way. The way she was acting I
know she'll call the desk and complain. But I would never have done anything
like that. Never in a million years."

"Of course not. I'm sorry. Really. I had no idea ... I'll talk to them. I'll
explain."

Her fists were clenched. "They'll fire me. I know it. Bad things always seem
to happen around me!"

"Let me help. It's all a misunderstanding. I'm sure I can clear it up."

"You?" She crossed her arms under her chest protectively, looked down and
smiled. Her smile, so innocent-looking before, seemed more threatening now in
the strange light of the room, and the shadows from outside made her bust seem
much larger than it was. "What can YOU do? You're in as much trouble as me.
More," she said, with a gleam of satisfaction.

"Me?"

"Yeah!" She nodded vigorously. "Yeah. They'll come for you. With the police.
You're the big mastermind who got me in trouble, so I'll make sure it comes
back to you."

"But it was my wallet you were getting. I didn't do anything wrong."

"I'm not stupid like you think," she said triumphantly. She straightened up
proudly when she said it, squaring her broad farm girl shoulders. "I wasn't
sure what you were up to, so I made sure I'd get something out of it too,
something from the other room you told me about, room 511."

"I told you 412. I didn't say anything about room 511."

"Nothing but 511 would do," she repeated. "You DO think I'm stupid. Well. I'm
NOT!" Her eyes flashed. Then the lights outside. Then her eyes. The light
seemed to linger there, and something about them frightened me, but I couldn't
look away. "You're finished. You'll see."

I shook my head. "I'll be able to explain everything."

"No you won't. You can't explain anything." Her hands dropped to her hips and
rested on her feminine curves. She pulled the fabric of her uniform down so
that it fit more tightly across her bust.

My auditor's intuition was telling me there was something wrong here. "I don't
believe you. If you told them then why aren't the police here? Where are they?
Where's hotel management?"

She bounced up and down on her feet slightly. "Maybe I didn't tell them yet.
They're busy with the old woman -- that is, with her body. With explaining."

"What's to explain? The ambulance took her."

"They had an 85 year old woman working here. Cleaning rooms. They worked her
until the day she died."

"Huh?"

"Didn't you see her just now? She was trying to get into this room. Good thing
you didn't let her, or you'd a been caught up in that too. She wasn't too
bright. Always the last one finished. But they say she was a hard worker and
pretty strong -- when she was younger."

I stared at her. A chill ran through me. "That's horrible. I can't believe the
hotel would do that."

"Don't feel bad. She didn't suffer long. I bet she was happy to be working
until the very end. She probably had no idea what was about to happen.
Wouldn't you prefer it that way?" I shook my head slowly. This was all very
wrong. "No. You're different. You're probably the kind who'd want to know what
went wrong. All the details. How it happened. Why it happened. So you can
explain it, and then figure out a way stop it from happening next time. But
you can't. No! You can't."

"Wha-what do you mean?" The flashing light, the dim room, the strange talk was
making me increasingly agitated.

"Maybe I'll let you off. Maybe, if you know how to please me."

"What are you saying? What do you want from me?"

"You don't know, do you? You don't know what I've done or what I can do to
you. And you hate that, don't you? You like to know!" She stepped closer and
grabbed me tightly. I felt her breasts compress against my chest. "Come on!"
she said, her voice low and hot. "Elsie's farm girl muscles are strong. They
can take you for a real ride, you know. I'm not the innocent farm girl you may
think I am. No, I'm surely not." Her hands cupped my ass and pulled me against
her. "See what those muscles can do." She pushed forward with unexpected force
and I toppled backwards onto the bed. She hiked up her dress -- she had
nothing on underneath -- and hopped onto me.

"Come on, big shot. Fuck me. I need it. Fuck me hard! I'm not some helpless
little flower." She was a wildcat, unearthly strong, holding me down,
straddling my legs, tugging at my pants, which, beltless due to my hasty
departure from my room, slipped off easily. She clawed my undershorts off and
stroked me lustily. "Yeah, yeah, there he is, like a fucking horse's. I'm
gonna ride him, like my daddy's horse!"

"Stop that!" I said, but she had already mounted me. She was very wet and she
was already pushing me deep inside her.

"Come on, move it. Move your thing, move that fucking thing of yours! Move it!
More! MORE!!" She let go of my arms and now was bouncing on me heavily,
gripping my ass so hard I was probably bleeding where her fingernails were
digging into my skin. It was hard to resist her, even harder to resist my
body's desire to do just what she wanted me to do, but I couldn't let myself
take advantage of her that way, even though it would probably have appeared,
on the surface, that she was the one "taking advantage" of me. Wherever that
balance lay, this was not something I could allow to continue, or even worse,
to reach its soon-to-become-inevitable conclusion. My arms now free, I took
hold of her upper arms to pull her to the side as the first step to getting
her off me. It was my arms against her abdominals, but I didn't have much
leverage, and her legs clamped onto me more and more tightly. "No. No!" she
cried out, sounding very determined. She let go of my ass and grabbed at my
arms while still moving her pelvis against me and squeezing me inside her.

I was struggling too much to be paying close attention to her body or to the
progress of my response to her, but she suddenly started moving in a way that
stimulated me even more strongly, and her too, judging by her breathing. I was
getting increasingly desperate to get her off me before my reactions passed
out of my control, and I summoned all my strength once and for all to pull her
harder. I was bending her body down, her legs were cutting hard into me,
desperately trying to hold on. The light outside flashed again and for the
first time I saw her looking concerned, biting her lip.

"No ... you ... WON'T!" she cried out. "YOU ... WON'T!" She breathed deeply
and said "There!" and then added a "Hmmph!", sounding pleased with herself.

There was that strange unsettling feeling again, and when it passed she was
upright again, having undone in seconds all my hard-won progress. I kept
struggling, but now almost completely without effect. She leaned down slightly
over me, with one hand to hold my shoulder to the bed, forcing my right arm
away from her and put the other underneath me again. "Now, come on. Get ON
with it!" she demanded, her right hand now pushing me upward into her more
strongly, while she moved on top. "Come ON, damnit!" she said, getting angry.
"What kind of man are you? Are you DEAD or something?"

I might have been wondering why she was suddenly handling me so easily, but I
was using all my concentration to focus on other things. My work plan. My
computer passwords. The order of the church service. My route to work. My fat
boss. It was working. I was getting softer, the progress toward orgasm had
halted. I had won. I must have been smiling as the lights flashed again.

She took her hand out from under me and shook both my shoulders. "Oh you nasty
... you think I can't make you? You think you can stop me? Hmmph. Well. Just
this one time ... it won't be as much fun ... but this will show you what can
happen. You little fucker. Little big shot fucker. Teach YOU to deny me. I
could ... no. Not yet. Well, see what you think of this!"

She gripped my shoulders tightly and I felt a swirl of dizziness and then a
stabbing pain in my crotch and I screamed.

"Yeah! Let's HEAR you scream, fucker!"

She was moving on me again, a different motion now, up and down, each motion
pinning me to the bed and with each movement I screamed, a mixture of pain and
something else, a feeling that was starting in my crotch but pulsing
everywhere. I couldn't help pushing back, trying to move the stabbing to the
right place, to exactly the right place where there was less pain and more of
that incredible pulsing that was making me shiver and scream even more. I
wasn't pushing her away now, I was clutching at her and screaming "Oh! OH! OH!
OH!"

"Yeah FUCKER. Yeah! Let's HEAR you scream ... bitch!"

"OH! OH!"

"Yeah! I'm --

"OH!"

-- gonna --

"OH GOD!"

-- give it --

"OH MY GOD!"

-- to you so --

"OH NO! OH NO!"

-- hard, so good --

"OH GOD! OH GOD!"

-- you're gonna --

"OH ... OH ... OH PLEASE!"

-- DIE when you never --

"OH PLEASE DON'T ... PLEASE DON'T PLEASE DON'T STOP!"

-- ever, ever, EVER --

"Oh oh oh oh"

-- feel this ever --

Ohhhh AAAIIIIII"

"AGAIN! Uhhh!"

"AII! AII!!! AAAIIIIII!" I said, clutching her with all my strength as I felt
a final burst of stiffness and then a warm fullness inside and my body pulsed
in a thousand ways at once and my legs curled and twisted around her wanting
more of her, more of her inside me. Inside me. Inside ... me? And then she
wasn't there anymore. There was no there, no feeling at all where stars had
just exploded inside me, nothing except wetness, sticky wetness, growing
colder, and my soft penis pushing against her. I tried to get out from under
her but she held me there roughly.

"Where do you think you're going?"

I pushed but couldn't move away, couldn't get her off me.

"What happened? What just happened?" I said, finding it hard to speak.

"You KNOW what happened."

"No."

"Yes you do."

"No. It's not ... who ... what are you? Elsie?"

"Elsie?" She laughed. "Partly. What do YOU think?" I couldn't think. She
reached over to the wall and switched on the light, and it was Ekara's face
looking down at me. I should have been shocked, but I wasn't. Still, the chill
I had felt earlier returned fivefold. Goosebumps ran down my arms. "Elsie got
old and died. She's gone now. Except for what I took." She extended her arm,
showing me the well-developed biceps of a hefty farm girl who had done
physical labor her whole life. "Yeah, these are Elsie's." She flexed and the
muscles bunched impressively and then grew, more than doubling in size. I
groaned from a sudden increase in the weight on me. "Yeah, and these are
yours. Miss ‘em?"

I looked down at my own arm, thin and soft again, like a young girl's and
obviously as weak.

"Where oh where did they go? Yeah, you're pretty sad for a man now, aren't
you? Maybe you should have done me as I wanted, when I wanted it. You'd think
a smart fellow like you would learn more quickly. Hmmmm?" I felt another huge
increase in weight. "Ooooh, I bet that must really hurt, Brian. Just to be
clear, I don't care." She turned her wrist, forcing her inhumanly large biceps
higher. "These were Artie's. Poor old Artie. Poor, poor, old Artie. When he
was young, he was really strong. He could lift a lot more than you, I bet."

I nodded, scarcely able to breathe.

"Is it nice to know that parts of your friend live on? You probably need words
like those for comfort. To help you accept things you can't understand.
Mortality -- yours, that is. Loss -- again yours. And Me."

She shifted position and put her hand on my chest, gradually pushing down,
slowly forcing the remaining bits of air from my lungs. I gasped trying to
gulp down even a tiny breath. Any movement I made just made it worse. Then she
lifted her hand. I breathed desperately, too weak to move otherwise. She
watched me and, looking somewhat bored, pressed down again, harder this time.
I fought to breathe and then to push her hand away, but my hand did not even
fit around her muscular forearm. Pushing it away from my chest was far beyond
my power.

Expressing her impatience, she drummed her fingers heavily on my chest, each
"tap" of her finger feeling like a hammer blow. "Do you see how easy this is
for me? Against me you are completely helpless. I'm sure this is obvious to
you. Why isn't the next step for you obvious too?" She looked into my eyes.
"I'll let you think about it awhile." I stared back into the infinitely
reflecting window of her soul, and the terror built in me, overwhelmed me,
until I could take no more. Short of breath and courage, I passed out.