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


11

When my eyes opened it was morning. Sunday morning. The sky was bright blue
and the light shone through the window, which directly faced the parking lot
in front of the hotel. Across the street I could see the tower of the
Episcopal Church. It was not my denomination, but the cross on top soothed me.
It was Sunday.

There were questions flooding my brain, and no answers. I struggled briefly to
put things together to make some sense, but then relaxed. Perhaps there would
be no answers. It was Sunday. There were powers stronger than I was, mysteries
that controlled my life, all life. A plan that my merely human mind could not
comprehend. I had my small role to play, which I did to the best of my
abilities. But sometimes that was not enough. And so, there was Sunday. It was
time to confront the mysteries in the only other way open to me. It was time
to pray.

Across the room my pants were bunched on the chair. I walked stiffly to them
and pulled them on slowly, feeling to my surprise my wallet and my room key.
Should I be surprised? Nothing added up. Today, I decided, I would not try to
add them up. Maybe tomorrow. But today was Sunday. Today I would surrender ...
to God. I felt just then a peace I had not known before. Could this be part of
the plan God had for me? I felt so small, so insignificant, so embarrassed at
my presumption. But I was willing to learn, willing to be open to what He had
in store for me. Yes, I would submit ... to Him.

People were walking to the church. I jumped up. I needed to be there too. I
quickly cleaned myself, rinsed my mouth with the tiny bottle of mouthwash in
the room, pushed my hair into place and left the room, turning around at the
last moment for fear I had left something behind, but the door closed too
quickly. On the door it said Room 115. 115? Wasn't I just in Room 104? And
wasn't my room 412? I shook my head. Another mystery. But just a petty mystery
compared to the far more important one I would shortly enter, in church, right
opposite the hotel directly across the street, minutes away. My heart beat
with excitement. Never before I had been so keen to join a service to worship
the true God.

I walked quickly down the corridor, nodding to the people I passed, walking
right out the door into the bright sunlight. My heart nearly burst with joy
and I nearly broke into a run and crossed the street in the middle to go right
to the church. But of course I didn't jaywalk. I walked to the crosswalk at
the corner and waited for the traffic light to change. Two women in their
sixties, obviously dressed for church, joined me and I smiled at them. They
looked at each other but didn't respond to me. Well, no doubt the usual
distrust of strangers. You get that sometimes in this part of the country. I
smiled again reassuringly, shrugged when that produced no warmer reaction, and
then crossed ahead of them as soon as the light changed, walking with large
strides, covering the distance between myself and the church door as quickly
as I could.

The minister stood outside, greeting the congregants as they entered. I stood
on line as patiently as I could until I reached the front of the line. He
looked at me carefully. "Is this your first time?"

I nodded. "I've been in Indianapolis since Monday, here on business. I'm a
member of another church, in Raleigh-Durham. Christ the King. Lutheran," I
added, my voice growing slightly quieter at the name of my own denomination.

"I see. Just this week. That, uh, explains it." He looked down the line and
smiled at the person behind me, slightly embarrassed, and held up his hand to
indicate he should wait.

"I won't take communion if you feel it's, uh, inappropriate," I said, trying
to appease him.

He nodded. "Yes." He motioned me to the side of the line, a few feet away, and
asked in a soft voice. "I'm not sure that this church ... you see ..." he
said, awkwardly. "Your business here?"

"Um, I work as an auditor for ARA Fittings, the --"

"Yes. Yes. Of course you do." He sighed. "Our church ... I think it would not
be right for you to join us." He looked at the line of people watching and I
did too. They all looked at me. They were impatient. But there was something
more.

I tried to explain. "It's not to join the church. It's just for today. I want
to worship. I'm a Christian. Surely I can worship here."

"You would find ... it's very hard to explain. I'm sure you will understand
... in time ... in due course. It's for the best, really. It must be very new
to you."

"I don't understand. I travel a lot. On business. I've always gone to church
on Sundays, wherever I am."

"Have you? I am so sorry, young man. It is such a pity." He rubbed his
furrowed brow with his fingers.

"Well, I see!" I said, suddenly angry. "I didn't realize the churches here
were so exclusive! Maybe then you can tell me where the closest Lutheran
church is, where I would be more welcome."

"Oh!" he said, obviously distressed. "I couldn't ... it's not that. We welcome
all, even non-believers. And the same is true for my brethren in the Lutheran
denomination too. Except, well, as we all have learned, you see, she would not
... it would not be wise, for either of us, you see...." His voice trailed
off. "I am so sorry, my son. We are all fallen creatures, flawed in His eyes."
He looked up, startled. "We will pray for you. But ... if you would excuse me,
please." He hurried over to the line of waiting worshipers.

I stared at him in disbelief and then at the long line of congregants,
stretching now down the block. They were looking at me, pointing at me,
gesturing, talking emotionally amongst themselves. The Minister walked down
the line, saying a few words to each as he passed them, and as they did they
calmed down and looked away from me. Soon they all filed into church. I stood
outside, alone. And then I wasn't alone.

"You don't belong in there. You belong to me." She was standing next to me
wearing a low-cut t-shirt and tiny shorts, exposing nearly all of her bust and
her long legs in a way wholly inappropriate for a Sunday, especially near a
church. "They know better. You will, eventually. These places, with their
stupid, made up lies, annoy me to no end. It would be easy to destroy them,
all of them. But as you see we've reached an understanding. I take what I
want, and they don't touch my things. Doing that, demonstrating their
cowardice, their compromises, embarrasses them to no end. Shouldn't they fight
for what they believe? Shouldn't they battle the "she-devil" and retrieve your
precious soul? Ha-ha! But they know if they do they'll be destroyed. So
quickly, so easily. They could be destroyed and then they're mine and then
they serve me. But as it is it suits me fine. They stay in business, they
betray their ideals, and prove their hypocrisy."

She looked into my eyes and leaned over slightly. I couldn't help but glance
down her shirt.

"Awww, aren't they magnificent? I'm not the devil. Although to you I may seem
godlike it's nothing supernatural. It's as natural as can be. My powers over
all my things are scientifically verifiable, even repeatable in a laboratory,
although only through me, since I am unique. It's just that I'm amazing and
powerful. Once you've tasted me I own you. I'm unstoppable, and you're
helpless. That's all there is to it."

I backed away from her. "No. I can't accept that. I won't. Even if His
churches are imperfect He is still God and you are subject to Him."

"You think so?" she said.

I fell on my knees and looked up at the cross, praying with all my heart. The
Church itself seemed bathed in light and the cross began to shine. He was on
it and He looked down at me. He smiled at me at I felt His infinite compassion
and His love. "Brian," He said. "Submit to Ekara. It is My will." I looked up
at Him and His eyes turned to Ekara, as did mine. She was playing with the
grass with her bare feet. "Submit to Ekara, Brian, as I have done." He floated
down from the cross and settled at her feet. He gently kissed each of her toes
and then faded away.

She looked over at me, her arms crossed over her bust. She raised her foot,
crossing her big toe over her second toe. "Had a vision? Happy now?"

I looked up at the cross, still glowing, but fading slightly. "It ... it
wasn't real!"

"What wasn't real?" she said innocently.

"The ... He ... what He said."

"Can you prove it?" she said carelessly. "I don't know. If you really believe
... shouldn't you listen to him? He might be angry if you don't. And what
about me? I just might get angry too if you don't submit to me." She pointed
her big toe at me and a boil erupted on my arm. "Ewwww. Nasty. Does that
happen to you often?" She pointed the second toe at me and another one
erupted, this one on my leg. "I've got ten toes, you know. You wouldn't be
much good to me as a frog. Or a locust. Or a puddle of blood. But this is
taking sooooo long!" She lifted her foot higher.

"What do you want with me?" I cried out.

She looked down at me, her foot poised in the air. "Well! I thought you would
never ask! Come on, then." She turned around and walked down the church lawn
toward the road. I got up and followed, limping, each step aggravating the
boil. "Move it," she said.

"I'm trying. But it ... hurts."

"Oh, that!" She shrugged and the boils vanished. She crossed directly to the
hotel. The cars all stopped for her. I hesitated for a moment then followed
her quickly through the lobby and up to my room. 412. It was just as I had
left it, except that someone had made the bed.

"Now, Mr. Auditor, you are going to fix this little audit of yours for me so
that every single little irregularity is explained away. And you're going to
tell me what triggered it. And you are going to redesign the system so that I
continue getting my 5.11% from MY company without ANYONE bothering me about it
EVER again. Right?"

I looked at her in dismay. She was forcing me to betray everything I believed
in and to deliberately sabotage and fail my first assignment. It would end any
hope I had of advancement in my field.

She sighed. "Come on, Brian. That's over anyway, you know. As I told you, you
can't leave. Now that we're connected, or, actually, now that you're connected
to me, if we're more than about 5 miles apart you'll start to weaken and get
old, just like Artie. It would take two, maybe three weeks. You can't live
without me near, so get used to it. And you can get used to my reading your
mind too. ‘Your thoughts are my thoughts', you know -- when I'm interested."

"You mean, I'm a prisoner? In Indianapolis?"

"It's not so bad, except the winters. Hey, I'm kind of stuck here too, you
know. It's been years since I've gone anywhere, although TV and the Internet
helps. You see, if I left, all of my things would die and I'd have to start
all over. It's not impossible, of course. It wouldn't kill me, like it would
you -- I'm a lot tougher than that -- but I'm used to having all of you
around, to take what I want, whenever I want it. Strength, beauty,
intelligence, youth, knowledge. Whatever. It would take time to build it up
again. And they know me here. Did you see how the traffic stopped? It's easy
for me that way. I'll get Muriel or Ralph to arrange it. They take care of the
boring details for me. You know?"

Were they part of her group too? I shrugged. "Sure," I said indifferently.

"Good. So how long will it take you?"

I stared at my computer. "I don't know," I said without any enthusiasm. It
seemed my job was no longer about seeking truth, but instead hiding it. "A
couple of days maybe. I'd have to investigate."

"Yes, you do that. I'll decide what else to do with you afterwards, when I see
how well you perform." She sighed "I suppose I'll have to get your stay here
extended. And you'll need a place to live. All these details to worry about
when I get new things."

Now I really did feel like a mere thing -- that this girl was wondering where
to put me, like a new doll for her dollhouse. "And how exactly are you going
to do that? You may have power over me and a bunch of people out here, but
you're still just a receptionist in the Indianapolis sales office." I laughed
with more than a little trace of bitterness. "And what does that make me? The
receptionist's toy! A girl's plaything!"

She rolled her eyes. "Is that what you think? Who and what, exactly, do you
think I am? Just because I look like this ... I could look like anything and
anyone you know, and so many you don't.." She stared at me, and once again I
was lost in her eyes. I saw thousands of faces, male and female, in countless
styles of appearance. I turned away. "You're so easy to frighten, little boy.
It is YOU who is the child!"

"I am not a child, and I am not a thing!" I said defiantly.

"Oh really? I thought you were a little puppet!" She held out her hands and
played at pulling strings and my arms went up and down uncontrollably -- at
least not under MY control -- like I was Pinocchio. "Or a little rag doll!"
She pushed me gently in my stomach with two fingers and I collapsed onto the
floor, completely limp, a Raggedy Andy. She kneeled down and propped me up so
I was sitting against the wall, looking at her. I was completely humiliated. I
couldn't speak or even move a muscle. I just sat, mute, paralyzed.

"So cute!" She exclaimed, putting her hands together over her heart. "Can I
have him, Daddy? Can I keep him? Please! Please Daddy!"

She walked a few feet and turned as though facing herself and in a blink of an
eye she was a large heavyset man in his late forties, needing a shave and
speaking in a deep, older voice. "Now Ekara, you don't really need more
things. You have so many that you never even play with anymore"

He walked back and again was Ekara. "That's not so, Daddy. I play with ALL my
toys! I LOVE my toys!"

She walked back. "That's what you always say," the "father" said. He sighed.
"And you always get your way, don't you?"

He walked back and Ekara crossed her arms and said. "Of course I do, Daddy,
and I always will!" She leaned forward and stretched up on her toes and gave a
little kiss ... to the air. Then she bent down toward me and touched my nose,
and I could feel my arms and legs again. I stretched them and slowly tried to
stand up.

Ekara looked down at me, watching me struggle. "And you say you're not a thing
of mine, when you can't even move a muscle unless I allow it. Understand this.
You love the truth, you think, but in truth you fear it, as you'll fear me.
That's why you're an auditor. Trying to find out what others try to hide, but
knowing nothing yourself. You think that's something very special, but the
important truths are what you make, not what you find." She smiled. "That's
ok. You've found me. That's a start at least, although not the start you
expected. But what happens now?" I stared at her blankly, the feeling still
slowly coming back into my limbs. "You don't know! Does that frighten you?
Hmmmm?" Her arms were crossed in front of her chest and she tapped her foot,
waiting for an answer. "Well, I can tell you that the ones who don't care are
completely hopeless. Even though they're easier at first, they're much less
fun. Without disorientation, wonder, fear, awe and disgust, you'd be no more
than machines." Her eyes were wide, and more than she had since the craziness
had begun late yesterday, she looked like the young girl I had taken her for.
"My favorite things are real people. Do you think you, Brian, can be a real
boy?" She moved her arms like she was pulling a string and I was up on my
feet.

I didn't know what to do or say. "I don't know what you mean. I'm ... of
course I'm real."

"Are you?" she laughed looking deep into my eyes, and once again I saw a
glimpse of something I did not understand. "Well, we'll see soon enough
whether you've got what it takes to be real."

What could I say? "I guess you should let me get to starting my new
assignment," I said and turned on the computer. I found the assignment already
open. Ekara must have disabled the password and began to look at it.

Ekara frowned. "On Sunday? What for? It's the weekend! You don't have to work!
I mean, you're not going anywhere. Don't you know anything about how to have
fun?" She looked at me intently. "Oh, you nasty thing! Wasn't that a sexy
dream you had about her! What do you say if ...."

The images flooded my brain even more intensely than when I dreamed them.
Sara, growing more voluptuous and powerful with each passing second,
overwhelming my resistance in every conceivable way. My heart was pounding,
the blood raced through my veins.

"There must be little bit of life in you, right? Let's see!"

I found myself opening a new spreadsheet and typing 44 21 39. Was she was
going to grow like Sara had in my dream? Sure enough her already impressive
figure started to develop further, her bust expanding while her waist
contracted. She slipped off her t-shirt, leaving just a seriously overtaxed
bra and her light shorts, already struggling with her sexier hips and butt. I
knew from memory that very soon her muscles would start to grow as well, and
then she would overpower me, as she had done earlier in the weekend. But now,
as she had demonstrated with her total control over me, there would be no way
for me to stop my body's reactions to her as I had before. I was completely in
her hands, a slave to her whims. And then I found myself typing 77 25 44 ...

... but instead to my shock I was the one growing, and before I knew it I was
many inches taller than Ekara, probably 6'5", 77" and my muscles were growing
too. It was my biceps that must have reached 25" and they were rock hard.
Ekara seemed shocked, for once. She backed away from me uncertainly.

"No ... that's not what I ...." She looked up at me. "Stop that!" she shouted.
She looked around the room wildly. "No, I say! No!"

Who was she talking to?

"You promised! You said I could!" she was saying, suddenly using the little
girl voice she had merely played at a short while ago. She whirled around,
listening to a response I could not hear. "But you SAID!" she said
emphatically. "He's MINE! You SAID!!" She froze, unmoving, listening, her face
running through anger, betrayal, fear and despair in a matter of seconds. "You
can't DO this to me!!"

She turned to me and in a rage rushed at me, arms flailing. I caught her
easily and held her arms. "Let ... me ... GO!" she shouted at me. She stared
up at me and her eyes had the same frightening look of infinity. I dropped my
hands and she started to hit me, her fists smacking against my chest and my
abdomen, but without any effect. "No! No!!" she shouted in immature
frustration, her fists hitting faster, but without any real strength, at least
not against the powerful abdominals I suddenly had. I grabbed her wrists again
and held them tightly. "You're ... hurting me!" she whined and strained to
free her arms, but I held her so that she could not move.

"Then stop hitting me!" I said, having regained my confidence. She glared at
me but although something in her eyes still frightened me, she was as
powerless against my enhanced strength as any girl would be. She said nothing
but nodded slightly and I slowly released her wrists. She rubbed them and
stepped away a few inches, still glaring.

She looked at my body and closed her eyes, concentrating, then bit her lip and
stamped her feet. "Damn you!"

"Hey!" I said. "Don't talk to me like that."

"I wasn't talking to YOU, Brian," she said sarcastically.

There was no one else in the room, of course, but that was not the most
important thing. "Something's happened," I said.

"Nothing's happened!" she maintained, her lips pursed. "Let's play!" She held
out her arms and her brow furrowed. And I felt it again. I was growing even
taller and stronger. Now it was all going wrong for her ... and right for me.

We stood there, saying nothing, doing nothing. The mood had changed. She
wasn't in control. Was that it, I wondered. Could I be ... free? I knew just
what I would do if I were.

"Excuse me," I said, moving her slightly and sitting down at my desk. I opened
the computer. My notes were still there, as I had left them, seemingly a
lifetime ago, but in fact less than a day before. She made no move to try to
stop me. I scrolled through the accounts and did a few sums. Yes, it was
obvious now. The skimming, hidden through some fictitious payees, some extra
expenses, easy to spot if you knew the correct number, 5.11%, as applied to
each item. Why hadn't I seen it before? I highlighted the entries and quickly
added notes to my previous work. It wouldn't take long.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked. "We're supposed to be playing."

"I'm doing my job. My real job. Tell me, do you still have the money?"

She laughed. "Of course not. I have expenses. Rent, clothing, perfume. What do
you think a receptionist around here earns?"

"Well, you're going to have to make a deal; otherwise you're in trouble."

"You think so? Well, so are you if you don't play with me!"

"Me? Why?"

"You think that just because you've gotten all big and muscley that you've got
real power? You still can't leave. Not as long as I'm alive! You can't be much
more than 5 miles away from me. 5.11 miles, to be exact -- I know you like
being exact, Brian! You're stuck here, bumped right off your career track,
banned from your precious church. And with your attitude, there's no way I'M
going to help you get settled here!" She crossed her arms in front of her
chest with a Hmmmph!

A chill ran down my spine. What if she was right? "You don't ... you can't --"

She was obviously cross with me. "Why don't you go and see? Finish your audit.
Get on a plane. It'll be a week before you get time to make your presentation,
and by then you'll feel twenty years older, just like your friend Artie.
Another week and you'll be ready to retire. But don't worry about your
pension, Brian. You're not going to outlive your savings. One week more and
you'll be a dead auditor. So what'll it be? A live thing of mine or a dead
auditor, hmmmm?"

"I don't believe you!" I stood up and looked down at her. I towered over her
now. Who knew how or why, but my chest and shoulders were so broad and
powerful. I was massively muscular, far larger than Arthur ever was. I felt
like I could put my fist through the wall with one blow. I could crush Ekara
if I wanted, for sure. I grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her into the
air. She weighed nothing. If I killed her ... but no, of course that was one
thing I would not do. But I didn't have to play her games. I was no longer
under her power. I put her down and packed up my computer, threw my clothing
and the odds and ends in the bathroom into my case and left the room.

My suitcase and briefcase felt weightless. That girl Licia at the reception
desk was on the phone and looked at me closely while she listened to someone,
nodding and smiling frequently. When she hung up I asked for my bill. She
hesitated and stared up at my chest and biceps in rapt, open admiration, her
cheeks flushed, her nostrils flaring and her eyes bright. "Are you in a real
hurry, sir?" she asked. "I'm Licia," she said breathlessly, her hand
compressing her breast around her name tag to highlight it, "Licia
Kraftwohnen", although how the tag said 'Ass't Mgr.' "You know, you shouldn't
go. Not yet. There's no flights ‘til 7. It's not even noon yet, and I get off
in only half 'n hour." She brushed her blonde hair back and pushed out her
pert breasts. Her nipples were bullets against the thin, light-colored,
standard issue Radisson blouse. "It wouldn't break any hotel rules, you know."

I smiled and nodded. "I follow other rules. I have to go," I replied to her
evident surprise and disappointment. She bit her lip and printed my bill,
which I paid with my company Visa card. I crammed my oversized body into my
compact rental car and drove toward the airport, hitting the speed limit on
I-70 as quickly as I could. The airport was 6.8 miles from the hotel, but when
I reached South Holt Road, one exit before the Airport Expressway, I exited
I-70 and stopped the car. I had gone 5.4 miles on the odometer, but with the
highway route and the turns I was sure I was still less than 5 miles from the
hotel.

I sat behind the wheel. I was in full control of myself, master of my fate.
What was I doing stopping the car? What the hell was I doing? Why should I be
afraid of what she said? If I died, I died. Meanwhile, I had a life, my own
life. My own projects and responsibilities. There was so much to do.

Like the audit, the reason I'd been sent to Indianapolis in the first place.
How could I leave?

Leaving Ekara didn't mean freedom. Leaving Indianapolis before my assignment
was done meant the end of my career.

I started the car, continuing north on South Holt, and then back east on US 40
to the hotel. I parked and picked up my things out of the trunk. I went back
into the hotel. Licia looked up and smiled brightly as I walked through the
lobby and onto the elevator, not even stopping to check in for a new key. I
knocked. Seconds later Ekara opened the door. She had 'Friends' on. It was
always on. She looked up at me and then went back to watching the show, saying
only, "Oh, so you're back."

I put my suitcase down and my computer case on the desk. "I have more to do
here for my audit," I said. "I have to finish it."

She clicked off the TV with the remote. "Yeah? Is that it? You didn't decide
that what you really needed to do was play with me? Or maybe you afraid of
what would happen if you left Indianapolis after all?"

"No," I said. I was sure of myself. Ekara was not the one in control anymore.
I was. I was going to complete the job, my job.

She walked toward me and looked up into my eyes. She reached toward my chest
but I caught her hand. "Tell me, Brian. Tell me you came back to play!"

"No I didn't!" I said, my jaw firmly set. I looked down at her, my full
confidence back.

"Oh yes you did," she sighed and shook her head, "although you won't admit it.
Yes, I can see that you didn't come back to play with me. You're afraid of
playing my game, but you're still playing. The auditor from the big head
office game. So high and mighty. So cocky here with all that righteous
authority, not to mention all the muscle. Well, it's the wrong game. A stupid,
dumb game."

"Maybe to you it is, but it's important to me."

"You won't play the games I like. And that's what's so sad. What's important
to you is so boring to me." She sighed again. "Well, I can see it won't work
out with you. So be it."

She flipped her hand quickly, escaping from my hold and then took my thickly
muscled wrist with her hand. "All that power. All that strength." She drew on
my arm, the light touches arousing me immediately. They looked like esses --
or were they fives? "Big man from head office gonna work hard and make
everything come out right, huh? That's your game. But it's not mine, and it's
not the game you're going to play anyway."

"Stop that!" I said, and as I started to pull my arm away she tightened her
grip and the next thing I knew she had twisted my powerfully built arm up,
behind my back. I knelt down, groaning, on the floor.

"So big and strong, so powerful, so muscular, and yet against me you're only
as strong as a five year old," she said, kneeling in back of me. She reached
in front, fondling my huge biceps with her slender fingers and then reaching
under my shirt to touch my stomach and chest, sending shivers down my body,
while her large breasts pushed against my back. I felt their weight and their
softness, even the points of her nipples. My pants were getting uncomfortably
tight. I could see her forearm, thin and soft, and yet with all my muscle I
couldn't move her. "And if to me you're no stronger than a five year old boy,
then you can see why it isn't hard at all for me to do this. Even us girls can
push little boys around when we have to make them behave. But how could it be
that all that muscle, and all of your righteousness, doesn't 'protect' you
from me? Why doesn't it work?" She tightened her fingers into a fist and
jabbed me in the stomach. Even without any visible strength and in the awkward
position, she pushed right through my 'wall of muscle', and I groaned in pain.
"Ooooh! Those muscles look hard, but they're mush when I hit 'em. Funny, huh?
Why IS THAT, Mr. Auditor? Why don't you audit that?"

"I can't. It's not ... auditable," I said through the pain as she twisted my
arm higher.

"What was that you just said?" she said in mock surprise. "Of course it is!
You just measure the differential in displacement of your abdominals when I
hit you --

"Ugh" I groaned when she hit me again.

-- and when someone else does." The door unlocked and Licia was standing
there. "Ah, Licia, you're off duty! Play time for you!"

Licia smiled at her and seemed to curtsey slightly.

"Do you like Brian's abs?"

Licia licked her lips and nodded.

"I know how you feel about his muscles. Try 'em out. Get more comfortable, and
then hit him as hard as you can."

Licia removed her work blouse. She was wearing just a thin camisole
underneath, which made her highly aroused nipples fully apparent. Her blue
eyes were bright and she seemed to shiver with excitement. She pulled her arm
back preparing for a much fuller punch than Ekara's. Her fist shot forward and
I desperately tightened my useless abs. Her fist bounced off. "Wow!" she said,
shaking her hand and rubbing her wrist. "They're so solid, so hard!" Her eyes
were wide, her checks were flushed and her nostrils flared as she touched my
strangely once again impervious 8 pack with her fingers and then smoothed her
thick, slightly wavy blonde hair.

"Brian's just an auditor," Ekara said, "but he spends a lot of time in the
gym. We were just finishing a little discussion. So, Brian, if you plotted the
displacement against the force exerted, don't you think you would get some
interesting results on your audit? I think it would be the inverse of the
predicted result. What is your theory? Might you still be missing something
essential? Speaking of something essential...." She pushed her finger lightly
along my forearm twice tracing two lines. Or was it the number "11"? My pants
just got much tighter. My member was pushing higher, above the waistband. She
let go of me and stepped in front to look, then clasped her hands together in
front of her chest. "Ooooh! Look what's come up! What a BIG one! I want to see
the whole thing!" She looked at Licia, who nodded enthusiastically, and
reached for my pants button. I tried to push her hand away, but she rolled her
eyes and took hold of the button, opened my pants and pulled down the zipper
while I pushed and strained, my oversized muscles bulging and shaking but
unable to move her slender hand one bit. My member emerged, half again longer
than it should have been. "Now HE'S all grown up! And this time, HE'S gonna do
the work!"

I looked briefly at Licia. It was obvious from her expression I'd get no
support there! "Please, Ekara!"

"Please! What a word! Did mother tell you that it's a 'magic' word? Well, it's
no-ot" she sang out. "It's a word for 'I want'. You want this and I want that.
And who wins? Who always wins? Think harder, Mr. Auditor. Think with all your
brain and maybe someday you'll learn something, because if you don't, there's
one person in here who's gonna break!"

"Then break me. Kill me if you want to!" I said desperately. "But I won't be
your thing!"

"I will if I have too," she said calmly, "but remember: you already ARE my
thing. All of you are." Licia nodded in agreement. "So why should I kill you?
I wanted to break you in, not break you to pieces. I take very good care of
ALL my things. It was just a question of ... what kind of a thing you'll be. A
real thing? A favorite thing? Well, clearly not. Now you might be a thing
that's given away. Or you might end up a broken thing that doesn't get played
with much," she said and looked up at me sharply, "but who's good for spare
parts."

"I'm a person, not a thing! I won't be used like this."

Ekara and Licia looked at each other. "You just don't get it." Ekara sighed.
"You are so unplayful! What do YOU think, Licia."

"Ones from head office are the hardest," Licia observed, neutrally. "I don't
get what their problem is, unless it's just a control thing. I LOVE being your
thing. It's so much better than ANYTHING else! And I think he COULD be fun,"
she added, her eyebrows raised beseechingly. "I've got some ideas, if, you
know...."

Ekara smiled. "You've always been a sweet thing, Licia."

At Ekara's nod she moved her hand up to my pecs. "Mmmm. They're really nice!"

"I know you like them. I made everything bigger." Ekara took a last look at
me, shrugged, put her finger in her mouth and then took Licia's hand. "Well,
Licia, you've got your auditor. Let's see how you do. I'm going to go out now.
You've got your assignment, Mr. Auditor. I'll see how you both do before I
make my final decision. Do what you want with him, Licia, and DO have fun, I
insist. We'll see if you can teach him how. Just remember he has work to do
for me tomorrow."

"Oh, I will, I will. I promise! THANK you so much! You are the absolute
best!!"

Ekara nodded and took a baleful look at me. "I shouldn't say this, but ...
Licia likes muscles, Brian. Big muscles. But not like you think, not like the
way you boys like ‘tits'." She laughed and Licia giggled. "Girls like strong
guys because it probably means strong children, and for protection, and good
health for her mate. But having strong guys around can also be dangerous for
girls. For most girls. Most of the time. But not today."

Licia giggled with pure delight and put her hand in her mouth, as if to
contain her excitement. She looked over at me and smiled.

"Girls are very practical. Feeling safe and in control is the best turn on for
them. I should know, because I always feel that way, even though sometimes I
like to play otherwise. But make sure you understand, Brian, it was just play.
And now I'm leaving you to her! Congratulations. You're Licia's now," Ekara
said, "the thing of a thing. For as long as she wants you." She let go of me
and walked out without a look back.

12

I stared at the door as it closed. When I turned back to Licia she had already
undressed and now was completely naked, her pert breasts slightly larger than
I had expected. Her nipples were large, thick and very pink and were
completely erect. "Will you get dressed!" I exclaimed. I turned around and
tried unsuccessfully to open the door, but the handle would not even turn. I
couldn't believe it.

"Uh uh! No way!" she replied, scampering back into my sight. She reached for
me and touched my large biceps, before I pushed her hand away.

"Stop that!" I said. "I'm not interested."

"Oh you are so thick!" she said, slightly annoyed. Then, with a little smile,
she added, "I'm not talking about your muscles, of course. I love 'em, so
beautifully thick and strong. What I mean is, you're supposed to be smart. Why
don't you understand what's happening, what has already happened?"

"I DON'T understand! I have no idea what's happening! It's a bad dream, a
nightmare! None of it makes any sense to me at all!"

Licia looked at me a little bit sympathetically. "Poor man," she said simply.
"It is like a dream, yeah, but it doesn't have to be a bad dream."

"How can you say that! I can't go to church -- they won't let me in!"

Licia nodded. "I know. I miss it too, especially the singing. But you don't
have to be in church to pray, do you?"

She DID understand. "Yes ... but being in there is PART of it! If I can't go
where I want to I'm not a free man!"

"Well, that's true," Licia agreed.

I went on. "And I can't do my job! Ekara says if I leave town to go home I'll
die. If I stay here my body keeps changing. I wake up in different places than
I went to sleep. I've completely lost control of my life!"

"You mean, you used to have control over your life?" she said, at least partly
seriously. "You don't have to work to live? You can go wherever you want? Do
what you please? Come on! Were you ever sick, really sick? Did you have the
smarts and money to go to the best school anywhere? Did you get to be friends
with whoever you wanted? Did your parents love you -- I mean, really love you?
Were you ever bullied -- I'm sure you were never raped."

For the first time in nearly a day I felt I was talking to a real person! "No,
of course not. There are always things you can't control, things you have to
accept."

"Exactly!" she said. "So now there are other things you can't control, and
some that you can ... and some that I can ... if I want." She held out her
hand toward me -- not in friendship, but to touch my body -- but I stepped
back out of reach, holding my hand out in front of me, warning her off.

I had abandoned any hope of successfully opposing Ekara, but Licia was a
different thing. "I thought you understood! Don't you start now too!" I
warned. She reached forward and pinched the muscles of my forearm. "I'm not
going to hurt you, but I will be firm!"

I had judged her wrong. I pulled away. "Stop that! I don't want you touching
me. I have my values!"

"Your values," she repeated. "With all the things you've done to get you here,
where you are right now, tell me, what exactly DO you value?" She frowned and
pouted. "Please Brian," she started, and then laughed. "What am I saying! Will
you just listen to ME say ‘please'! Even when I don't have to. It's such a
habit you get, you know, growing up here. You see how SHE hates it! I mean, if
I want to touch them, feel them up..." she licked her lips, "Because of her I
can just do it!"

"No you can't. That's not how it works. And you should know that, growing up
here, a place with real values! Look, Licia. You seem like a nice girl,
really. But I'm not the kind of man who just has sex with any woman at any
time. I don't understand what's been happening to me, but I have my own
values, my principles. And with Ekara gone I'm going to finish my work, the
audit. And then I'm going to continue my life. My own life as I want to live
it."

"You think so? Really?" She smiled. "Oh, but it's not your life. It probably
never was all yours, but certainly not anymore. Not since Ekara. You know,
I've been so looking forward to this day. For so long! This is my day, the
beginning of my new life. And it can be for you too. Or I should say, it will
be, now, one way or the other. It's kind of up to you just how it goes. So you
do have some control, you see." She giggled and blushed. "But nowhere near as
much as me!"

"As I," I corrected her.

"Not you, Mr. Bigshot, as me!" She looked up into my eyes with a somewhat
defiant smirk, and I looked back to impress her with my firm resolve. But
something shook me. It wasn't her confidence, ill-informed and grammatically
weak as it was. It was her eyes. I no longer saw just the whites and the
blues. There were still the deep blue of the lower part of the sky, the part,
by the horizon, where the majesty of the mountains or the more humble things
of man break into the purity of the heavens. No. Where I saw the terror of
infinity in Ekara's eyes, I now saw the broad sweep of the earth in Licia's.
At first, just the deep blue of free, open sky, but very quickly ringed by
something like the Midwestern rural landscape of farmland, grass, barns,
weather vanes and houses. And then, improbably, of soft, green, rounded hills
in the background, rising.

They didn't belong. Not in Indianapolis. And certainly not in her eyes.

The hills were rising, still rising, making tiny the windblown wheat and trees
and the whirling of the windmills. Now the hills were mountains, the grass
just hard, grey stone. The rising mountains in Licia's eyes, still growing
larger, broader, crowding out the sky.

"You see? You see?" she was saying. "It's different with us now from when you
checked in. Now you're less than me!"

Less what? What was she talking about? I was twice the size of this slip of a
girl. I broke away from her gaze. I tried the door again, futilely, and then
turned around. "No!" I insisted and then added. "And it's 'than I'!"

"No Brian. Than me!" She touched my chin to turn me toward her but I resisted
and pulled her hand off. "You can't even look me in the eye!" I turned my head
further. "It's the power she gave me. Can you feel it too? It's that you're
afraid of me now, right?"

What was she talking about? "Of course I'm not!"

"Yeah? Then why are you trying to leave? Why won't ya even look at me?"

"You're not dressed. You know you shouldn't be undressed in a room with a
man."

She ran around, in front of me. "Not in front of you? Why not? It's not like
that. Not now. I don't have to be afraid of you. See?"

What was I supposed to do? Look at her body? I'd been raised to look a girl in
the eye, not stare down at her breasts. But the terrible, awesome mountains in
her eyes were still growing. I couldn't look at them. Huge, hard and powerful,
they left only a sliver of sky. Then the sky was gone. I was hemmed in,
trapped.

"She let you go as part of her game, but with me there's no way out, because
it's not the playing I want, it's you," she continued. "You were what I wanted
the first time I saw you. When I checked you in I knew you'd be Ekara's, from
your name and where you worked, but I thought I could have a chance if you let
Ekara lose interest, and that's just what you did. And now you're mine. Mine.
All mine."

Her blue eyes shone brightly, but in her eyes I saw only the rock. It still
seemed to grow, to thicken as if extending outwards, toward me, around me and
away from me, in all directions at once, and then transforming, glistening
like metal, like steel. I couldn't look anymore. I closed my eyes.

"Yeah, I really do scare you. You know it, don't you. And you should be
scared, at least until we're right with each other, the way I want. You see,
for you it's just like with her, but more intense, because she's got thousands
and thousands, you know, but for me you're the only one. You'll be the only
one, the one that really matters to me." She grabbed my biceps again and
squeezed. "Mmmmm, I love just to feel it, so thick, knowing what's to come!
She knows what I like. She knows what I want, and I know she'll help me."

I opened my eyes. "Are you crazy? For the last time!" I roared, scowling, and
pulled her hand off me.

She shook her head. "No, no, you're so wrong. This isn't even the beginning. I
haven't even started."

"Listen, I haven't used my strength yet against you, but if you insist on
acting like this and won't let me out I will. I'm going to --

She laughed. "Your strength? Against me! Really?" She held the back of her
hand in front of my deeply muscled stomach and flicked her hand backwards at
me, pushing right through into my gut. I felt it like being hit by the fat end
of a baseball bat and nearly doubled over. "Oooooo, you poor thing!" she
squealed excitedly. "Did that hurt? Oh, I'm so sorry! But did it really
hurt?!!"

I could hardly breathe, hardly keep my breakfast down, much less answer her.

"It did!" she said, jumping up and down, her pert breasts bouncing. She
stopped and studied me. "Isn't that amazing? How your muscles can be so big
and strong, and so useless against me? Oh, I've got so much to do and to
learn! And so do you! But it doesn't have to be all at once, and it can be so
nice if we do it together." She reached up, put her fingers between the
buttons of my shirt and touched my chest, massaging my pectorals. A wave of
relief spread through my body with each movement of her fingers, and my
tortured breathing rapidly calmed. "There! Don't I make you feel good? I'm not
a mean person, you know. Now, what I wanna see first is how you look really
pumped, so take off your shirt -- your pants too -- so I can see everything I
want. And then really, really flex 'em up. You know what I mean, right? Lemme
see your muscle get really big. Do it like this, you know?" She held up her
own arm and clenched her fist, making her tiny muscle jump a little bit, while
she continued to rub my chest.

Her touches were making me very aroused, despite all my efforts to distract
myself from the sensations her hand was producing and the sight of her
admittedly attractive naked chest right next to me, and getting undressed with
her was the last thing I wanted to do. I made a quick shake of my head.

"Come on, Brian! Don't waste our time together. It's the afternoon already,
and you have to go do the work for Ekara in the morning. Take off your clothes
and show me that strength of yours. Don't make me mad. That's what I wanna
see, so you have to do it!"

I clenched my fist in protest. "You can talk crazy like this all you want but
I'm not going to do it."

Her hand abruptly stopped. Her cheeks flushed and her face turned cold. "Oh no
Brian. No, no, no! You do NOT speak to me that way. YOU DO NOT EVER EVER EVER
REFUSE ME!!" She turned her hand inside and pulled, ripping my shirt, my
clean, ironed, church shirt, wide open. "Take the rest of your clothes off
NOW! ALL of them!"

How dare she! I was so angry now I lost all control. I put my hands on her
shoulders and pushed hard to shove her into the wall. Nothing happened. She
didn't move. She didn't bend. My muscles were fully tensed, from the legs, to
my abs to my shoulders and triceps, but it was as if I were pushing against a
steel sculpture rooted into the floor. And meanwhile, she was standing there,
looking up at me with an expression of angry disapproval, but her body was
otherwise completely relaxed and at ease.

I roared with frustration, an animalistic growl from the depths of my chest,
like no noise I had ever made before.

"Ha ha ha!" she trilled, her laughter a high-pitched tinkle. "Look at you.
LISTEN to you! This is so funny! And because you're making me laugh I could
almost forgive you!" She looked down at my large hand on her shoulder and her
expression turned again. "But you know I can't allow this kind of behaviour
from you. No, I really can't. Not now, and not ever again. I have to teach you
how to behave toward me."

I was still trying, but she lifted my hand off her shoulder as easily as if I
had just laid it there gently, as though I were not pushing down her with all
of my considerable bulk and muscle. Then she put her other hand under my arm,
about three inches from my shoulder and pulled down on my hand while pulling
my upper arm toward the wall, immediately propelling me against it with
amazing force, as though I weighed nothing. The pain was blinding. I felt
waves of it cascading through my body. I staggered, nearly knocked out.
Meanwhile she clapped her hands together. "Look at that! Look what I've done!"
She seemed more than pleased with herself.

I stood next to her unsteadily, leaning against the wall. I didn't understand
it. How could she do that? I was so much larger and stronger than she was and
yet against her it was as though my muscle didn't exist. Just like with ...
Ekara! Oh no! Was I Licia's thing? What had Ekara said? "A thing of a thing."

Licia reached up and grabbed each of my biceps in her small hands. "Awright
now! You better make ‘em hard now, Brian, as hard as they get, ‘cause I'm
really gonna crush ‘em if you don't!" she warned. I didn't need to be told
twice and tightened them as much as I could, out of fear, not obedience. She
looked at them hungrily, her eyes shifting from one to the other, and I felt
her fingers lightly testing their firmness, their heavy solidity, probing
their large roundness. It was almost pleasurable the way she was touching me.
I wondered what kind of girl she was, what was she thinking, what was she
going to do next. She looked up at me, a brief smile flickering on her face.
She could be attractive, I was thinking at that moment, but immediately I
thought of how shallow, how grasping, how disgustingly fawning she was around
Ekara. And was this her reward for that? Was I her reward? I felt sick. I
should have no illusions about her. My expression must have betrayed my
thoughts, because her face flushed and her lips tightened.

"Ohhhh you!! I wasn't going to do it all at once, but you're making me 'cause
of the way you're being to me. I was hoping you were different from what Ekara
said but you're not! Well, now you'll learn. I'll teach you to see me
differently. You have no idea what I am to you now, do you! No idea what I can
be!" she said suddenly, her voice like ice. "You think you're so much better
than me! Do you? DO YOU?" Her voice was rising, shrill in my ears.

I was horrified that she would think that of me. I would never give anyone
that impression! "No I don't."

"Liar! What do you think makes you better! Because you're a man? A BIG man? Is
that how you see me?"

"I'm not better than anyone!" I said fervently.

"You say that! You might even think you think that, maybe ‘cause of your
religion or education, but you don't know! You think I'm ... I'm --" she
sniffed and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. "That I'm small,
stupid, unimportant..."

"Licia, I'm sorry if I insulted you. I don't know what I said."

The moment was gone. "It doesn't matter what you say now! You've said enough.
You're gonna see how special I am to you!" Her fists were clenched. She looked
up at me with pure anger and then advanced on me, pushing her body against me,
into me, her head pressed into my chest, her breasts against my abdomen, and
all I could see looking down was her blond hair flowing down her bare back all
the way to her backside. Then she looked up into my face. "Kiss me. Now!" It
was so far down to her lips that she could not reach me, and I wasn't go to
move, wasn't going to listen. No matter; she pulled on my shoulders and forced
me down. My lips were against hers, her lips pressed hard and forced my mouth
open then her tongue was inside, our juices mixing. Then her arms squeezed me
closer and I felt an odd feeling like yesterday's, sick, like something
flowing out of me. My knees felt weak and I would have stumbled if she had not
been standing next to me, pressing harder against me, like she was more there
than I was, more substantial, more real. I could feel her chest pushing
against me and then her breathing quickening, like in sex, and she started
moaning, "Oh ... OH ... yes OH ... OH .. OH MY GOD, OH IT'S SO, IF I KNEW WHAT
SHE ... OOOHHHHH .... OOOOHHHHHHH ...... OOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!!" She gave a great
sigh of pleasure. "Oh, if I'd only known I never would have waited even a
second!" She looked up at me. In her eyes were flames, glowing tongues of fire
dancing in every color of the rainbow. Fire as far as I could see. "Now you
REALLY look scared of me! And with what I can do, you SHOULD be! Tell me. What
do you see, Brian?"

"Flames. Hellish flames." I said, dry-mouthed and truly terrified. "Are you
the devil?"

Her arms were around my waist and she was leaning backwards, looking up into
my eyes. "Ha ha ha. Of course not, and she's not either! You're scared of me
now, and you're seeing what scares you, not what I am. With her I saw a man, a
giant man, at first. Like you are now. Ha ha. I'm not the devil but, thanks to
her, to you I am power, pure power." Her face was flushed, excited, with a
wild smile on her mouth. "I don't know what she sees when she looks at her
things, but do you want to know what I see in your eyes, Brian? Ha ha! I see
your future! With me! Brian, you're going to ask to marry me, you know that?"

I shook my head. "NO. Absolutely not. You're not right for me."

"Oh yes you are! You're gonna want to so much! And when you ask, you know what
I'm gonna say? Ha HA! Well, you won't know ‘til you ask!" She giggled. "I
NEVER should've waited even a second to do it!"

She was crazy, clearly, but she had some kind of power over me. "Licia, just
let me go, please!" I said, as calmly as I could, trying to reach some part of
her that would hear me and understand.

"Oh I couldn't!" She leaned further back and looked up to me. "And you won't
WANT me too either, once I finish, once you see me the way I want you to! And
now I'm gonna start."

"Start? Start what?" Looking into her eyes I felt small and afraid, even
though I towered over her. It made me angry that I seemed to be subject to
some power she had, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

Her eyes were bright and she pressed her palms together. "You don't think I'm
right for you. Well, tell me, Brian. What IS it you like in a girl?"

"Licia!"

She made a satisfied sound. "You probably know this already -- that a girl
really likes it when a guy says her name a lot, so just keep doing that." She
looked into my eyes. "It's not hard. You like girls who are good, hmmm? Young?
Innocent? Is that it? A virgin? Is that really important? You know, I'm still
a virgin. And don't I look young? Like I'm just 21? Is that young enough? You
don't like them any younger, do you? Of course you don't! But do you like
breasts? Large ones? Long legs? Blonde hair?"

I shook my head. "That's just not the kind of thing I'd ever ... If you must
know, I like a girl who would be the right kind of mother for my children! Who
will raise them with good values and make us a good family. One that ... stop
that, Licia!" She was touching me again.

"I like it when you say my name, but I don't know how you can be such a liar,
Brian! Those things are the practical things a woman thinks about. It's not
how a man chooses! Men choose girls that get them excited. Everything else
comes after. Don't you know that? Never mind. It's probably better this way.
I'm gonna -- oh, but no need to tell you. You see I read in one of the
magazines for girls -- the kind you'd never read -- that that the things that
guys like in girls start when they're really young, when girls were really
young too, when you guys were first starting to get interested. It's the model
you use, you know, for what you think is attractive? That's what's important.
So forget about now. Tell me, what girls did you like when you were first
looking at girls -- and why?"

Not that I wanted to please her, but I needed to think of something as kind of
an escape from the situation, which I seemed unable to do anything about right
now. My mind flashed back to Debi Marshall and Marissa Tolbert, my junior high
school crushes. Their images were clear at first, shy smiles, budding breasts,
the first hint of curves, animated voices and expressions and soft skin, but
the images quickly flickered and grew indistinct in my mind. There was another
girl. Who was she? I was spying on her, through the doors to the gym. Long
blonde hair, kind of wavy. A very athletic body. Surprising muscle curves on
her upper arms as well as the expected ones on her chest and hips. Always
bouncy and energetic, a gymnast, doing amazing leaps and headstands, moves I
tried in private but could never do. She was so cute and so amazing. Her
breasts were small, but her large, dark nipples pushed right against her
shirt, as if she never wore a bra. I shifted uncomfortably, suddenly very
aroused, ashamed of myself. Who was that girl? Why couldn't I remember her
name?

Licia made a low satisfied sound. "You can't think of a name? Really? Were you
too young then, too immature to be looking at girls, thinking about girls?
Somehow I don't believe that. Or maybe you're embarrassed thinking about them.
Maybe they're too young for you now. But that's ok. What about in high
school?"

My mind flashed up Carrie Czankowitz, of course, like the rest of us boys.
Taller than I was (before I shot up at the age of 16, just after she left
town) and so curvy, with huge breasts even in tenth grade. I had to look up to
see her face, but it was so much easier just to stare at her chest. When she
walked down the hall even the teachers couldn't help looking. And the
fantasies about her I had, sitting next to her in English for a whole year,
even though I never talked to her. I looked at Licia, who couldn't have been
more different. Sure, I'd tell her. "Carrie Czankowitz," I croaked. "She was
amazing, better looking than any movie star I've ever seen."

"Czankowitz? What kind of name is that?" Licia said, laughing. "So, why her?
Was it her, uh, values? The way she was around children? Did she have a sweet
personality? Is that what was important to you, you know, back then?"

Her personality! In the high school social world she acted as though she were
so far above us and never let us forget it. I hadn't thought about her in
years, but suddenly I was remembering in vivid detail the completely
inappropriate fantasies I had about her. Looking at her breasts move as she
walked. Imagining I was playing with them, holding them, undressing her. I
would have loved to put my lips on her skin. That was as far as I had dared
think back then, and I didn't do anything about it.

I looked briefly at Licia. Her face was red but her eyes were closed. "You're
embarrassed again. I bet she had breasts, really large breasts. That's what
guys in high school like, right? Breasts and a great body. Am I right?"

I nodded.

"Was that all? Think about it," she insisted.

It was a long time ago, I wanted to protest, but then the image of Carrie was
back, stronger and even more vivid than before. She was looking over at me
from her seat in English class, her contempt for me completely clear. What a
chest she had, but in my mind's eye I now saw it wasn't all breast. In the
tight top she was wearing I could see the outlines of muscle that shaped the
way her breasts stood on her chest. Her shoulders were broad too and her arms
were surprisingly thick. I hadn't thought of her as a jock. Yet I was now
remembering her not as a cheerleader but playing basketball, running down the
court, her breasts bouncing wildly even though she tried to bind them tightly,
her strong chest holding them higher and firmer than any of us could believe,
stopping and shooting from twenty, thirty feet out. Scoring nearly every time.
And playing softball, a sophomore on the varsity team. She was unhittable as a
pitcher, even, on a dare, pitching overhand to the boys varsity team and
striking them all out. How could I have forgotten that? Standing on the mound,
her hands on her hips, wiggling them, laughing at their futility until the
coach came out and made her stop.

Wait! Did that really happen? How could I have forgotten this about Carrie
Czankowitz, when I had thought about her so intensely throughout high school,
even after she had moved away, to the extent that I remembered each outfit she
wore and how she looked in it?

I opened my eyes. Licia was staring at me, smiling. "Won't you tell me what
you remember about her? Did you want to ask her out? Why didn't you?"

I shook my head. "It was just ... she was so much taller, more mature, out of
my, you know, my league."

"Because she was so pretty, or because she was bigger than you? How did you
feel when you stood next to her? Did she make you feel like a little boy? Did
she treat you like one?"

I remembered one time when class ended, we were both heading for the door at
the same time. I wasn't looking where I was going and bumped into her. She
turned and glared at me. "You little runt!" she said to me, contemptuously. "I
bet you've been thinking and scheming all year about bumping into me!" I
denied it. I swore it was just an accident. I said I was sorry.

And then suddenly it was like I was right there, in the empty classroom, just
Carrie and me. She looked down at me and grabbed me under my arms and lifted
me into the air effortlessly so that my head was close to the ceiling. I
looked down at her, seeing the shelf of her bosom more prominently than ever
before, sitting on top of a powerful chest, hiding the rest of her body
beneath it.

"How dare you touch me, you little worm?" she said. "I don't know why I even
let you look at me! You're so small, so weak, hardly even a man! Compared to
me, you're nothing!"

This never happened! I was sure of it! And yet the memory continued to play in
my head, and as it did I felt myself as aroused as I've ever been. She was
wearing just a t-shirt, and her muscles, fully visible to me for the first
time, bulged against the short, tight sleeves, stretching them, pushing them
outward. I stared at them, amazed. Something was making me think of that
blonde girl. The one whose name I couldn't remember. But Carrie was so much
bigger, so much stronger and so much more beautiful. I felt like I was an inch
away from coming. And she'd see!

"I can see your thing! Look at it! I must be giving you the thrill of your
life! Have you ever had a girl touch you before? Oh, I know. It's not just my
touching you, not just my figure. It's my strength. My muscles. My power over
you. I can tell. Some guys get that look, you know. I see it when I play guys
in sport and beat them. Some guys compete, while some just stare at me and
want me to crush them. That's you, isn't it?"

I shook my head. "No. That's not true, really! Please Carrie. Just let me go.
I won't bother you again. I promise."

"Oh that's for sure! You better not even look at me, because if you do I'll
make everyone knows just what you look for in a girl. Too bad for you that
you'll never find anyone else like me. I'll hold you like this and let you
look at me this time. I'll spoil you for any other girl, and I'll do it just
because I have the power and beauty to do it." The memory was unbearable, as
were the waves and waves of desire surging through me, like when I'd first
reached puberty. As though they came from outside me, drowning me in their
power. I couldn't stop them, couldn't turn them off.

She shifted me higher and grabbed me by the belt, now holding me up
one-handed. Her biceps bulged even higher, larger than I ever could have
imagined. "Am I the sexiest girl you could ever imagine?" she said, sneering.
"I know I am. I can feel your body shaking. Ha ha! You'd better forget this,
Brian, because if you don't no one else will EVER turn you on like I am! No
one else could EVER do to you what I'm doing. You'll have to work VERY hard to
forget. Are you going to imagine this never happened? Are you going to
convince yourself that what you're feeling now is wrong? What will you do with
a desire you'll never satisfy?" She lowered me down and pressed me to her hard
voluptuous body, my chest against her bosom. "FEEL that, Brian. Feel those
soft breasts, FEEL how your weak body is completely dominated by mine. FEEL
what you'll NEVER feel again!"

"What is it Brian?" Licia was asking. "You're shaking. What happened with
Carrie? Do tell me!"

The scene stopped. How did it end? I couldn't remember, although what I'd seen
stayed vivid in my mind, and the sensations it brought were still pounding
away inside my pants. "I ... I can't ... remember. I'm not sure."

"Really? Yeah, but I can tell something special about her really turned you
on, didn't it? What was it?"

I shook my head.

"Oh, I'll get it out of you somehow. But tell me, if you never made it with
her, did you go with anyone else in high school?" I nodded. "Was she anything
like that Czankowitz or different?"

I thought of Sara again. She was actually the exact opposite of Carrie.
Modest, quiet, slender. Modest with a modest figure -- small breasts, boyish
hips. She never was involved in sports, unlike Carrie. (But wait! Was Carrie
really a jock? How had I forgotten that? And yet ... in a way it made sense
... if Sara was Carrie's opposite in every other way.... But I couldn't have
forgotten. I couldn't have suppressed it.) Sara never exercised. She even
hated to walk. She liked to daydream, to paint and to write poetry about
flowers and emotions. She was so soft, all over, with arms that were so thin.
I had to handle her so gently ....

"No, not really," I said to Licia.

"But you were attracted to her too?"

I thought about her. Pictured her in my mind, searching for any part of the
feeling I had just before that now was quickly ebbing. No, I didn't feel
anything. No arousal at all. Had I always felt this way about Sara? Hadn't we
started getting physical, very physical, at the end of our relationship, just
before I broke it off? I searched my memory harder. Yes, we had, but I
couldn't remember the passion, and right now, visualizing her, I couldn't
summon any sense of desire for her soft, willowy body. Was it just because I
was younger then, more desperate? But I wasn't so old now. I was so turned on,
just moments ago, thinking of Carrie.

"Yeah, sure. Of course I was."

I was visualizing her naked chest, the small breasts that I remembered being
so desperate to see and touch after almost six months of dating her. I
remembered that just thinking about taking off her shirt used to get me hard.
But right now that part of me felt completely dead.

"You don't sound so sure."

"Well I was."

"Maybe when you were with the other girl you were really thinking about
Carrie. Maybe that's what turned you on."

"I wouldn't do that!"

"Really? I thought guys were always fantasizing about other girls, especially
the body parts they liked."

"No."

"Or maybe you were thinking about the other girl, but thinking about her with
bigger breasts, or a sexier walk."

"No!"

"Or maybe something else about Czankowitz's body."

I shook my head, but as I did the image of Carrie holding me in the air came
back to me again. Carrie and her large shelf of breast and those enormous
biceps, powerful enough to lift me and hold me over her head without any
strain. And then I was comparing Sara to Carrie, imagining the two of them
together. As I did it was as if Sara weren't even there, so insubstantial did
she seem.

And then it was Carrie who was no longer there. I was with Sara. I was
remembering a conversation we had in March of our senior year, just before
Easter vacation, when I was about to leave on a trip with my family to spend
time with my grandparents. I remembered that day well -- as beginning of the
last "phase" of our relationship, when things suddenly became more physical.
But as that day started out, I was restless around her, eager to go, while she
wanted me to stay.

"I don't see why you have to go with your parents," she was saying. "What are
you going to do there all day?"

"Visit, I guess. They want me to go with them, and I said I would. And I
better be going home to get ready. I've got some schoolwork to do before we
leave."

She shook her head and drew on my chest with her finger. "Why now? We've got
the house all to ourselves. You've already got your college applications in,
and you know you'll get in at Penn State. That's the important one." She
smiled. "And until I graduate from high school you'll be just 45 minutes away
from me in Altoona and then after I do...." She looked up at me, waiting for
me to say something. When I didn't she lowered her eyes and said, less warmly,
"My point is ... all you need to do now is pass your courses. You don't need
to get ‘A's'. It's not like art, where you're always creating something."

"But we're supposed to keep up with our coursework."

"I know. I know." She fixed her eyes on me. "You not bored with me, are you?"

"No. No. Of course not."

"You're just a little ... you know, we could do more than we've done before. I
wouldn't mind." Her mouth twitched a little. "As long as you love me."

"Sara, I've told you I love you. But ... you know you always said ... until
we're married ...."

"I know," she sighed. "But I know we're going to be married. It's just a
matter of time. So why not start now? What's the point of waiting?"

"I guess ... I guess because we're supposed to. I mean, your parents wouldn't
trust us to be alone together if they thought we would take advantage of it."

"My parents! If you only knew! Have you ever thought that they -- no, I won't
say that." She bit her lip and looked like she was coming to a decision, an
important one. "There are some things I'm a little nervous about, you know. I
don't want you to think I'm not ... attractive."

"Sara! How can you say that!" I exclaimed. I had been so frustrated around her
for so long. I had been wanting to go a lot further than she had for so long,
but she always guarded her body so carefully! I had given up hope of any real
sex until I left for college.

She unbuttoned one button on her blouse. My eyes flicked to the opening. She
wasn't wearing a bra, and I could see most her breast through the space. It
excited me and I looked away, but not before she had caught my eye. She
fingered the snap on her blue jeans. "Have you ever wondered why ... why I
don't ever wear short dresses. Or shorts in the summer?"

"You'd have to wear long dresses if you belonged to my church."

"Your church, yeah, I know. But I don't, not yet at least, so that's not the
reason. It's because of my ... my legs." She looked down at them and so did I.

"Is there something wrong? Something you want to tell me?" I said, suddenly
concerned. Was she crippled in some way she hadn't told me? I knew she was
permanently excused from gym, but she had always said it was because of
asthma. She always walked fine, although she tended to be driven around most
of the time, and it wasn't as if her legs were shrivelled from polio or
something. In fact, her jeans always fit snugly on her legs, even though she
was generally slender elsewhere -- "willowy".

"It's a little embarrassing. I hope you won't think I'm not ... feminine. But
I wanted you to know before ... before we get, you know, formally engaged. I
don't want you to think I tricked you into it or anything like that."

"You wouldn't do that," I said to show her my faith in her. But I was
nervously wondering what she had in mind.

"You know I don't go to gym class. I don't play sports ... or do anything
really physical. Nothing more than, you know, painting or sculpting."

I nodded. "I know. You like artistic things. You're just not a very physical
person."

She looked at me intently. "Ummm, yes and no. I love art. I love creating
things. I think that is a female thing, creating and growing, rather than
analyzing and calculating. But," she added hurriedly, "the point is, I AM a
physical person too. A very physical person." She fingered another button on
her blouse. "It's not that I don't play sports because I can't. I don't for
another reason."

"Your asthma. Some athletes play even with asthma, so it's not that you
can't," I said helpfully. "You're just being careful, cautious --

"I'm not cautious. I don't have asthma," she replied. "I'm actually healthy,
perfectly healthy. I got a doctor to lie to get me out of gym."

What? I didn't remember this at all. "You ... what? But ... because you don't
like sports? Or competing?" I suggested.

"I don't like competing, no, but that's not it." She took my hand and put it
on her thigh. "Feel my leg." I touched her leg gently with two fingers,
feeling the soft fabric of her blue jeans mostly. "No, no. Use your whole
hand. Put your hand around my leg. Squeeze me."

I looked at her quizzically but squeezed, lightly at first, so as not to hurt
her, but then harder as I realized her thigh muscles were very solid.

But as I was reliving this, I was thinking that this was not what I
remembered. What I remembered was touching her, at her insistence, and feeling
that her leg was soft, very soft, and she had said, "No, no. Use your whole
hand. Put your hand around my leg. Hold me." And then she started breathing
heavily. I got very aroused too from touching her and she said, "You see what
I'm like, Brian? That's what happens to me, my body responding to you like
this, just from these little touches. I AM a physical person, a very physical,
very sexual woman, if I let myself be. Up to now I haven't, because I was
afraid of what would happen, but if we're going to be together you have to
know what I'm capable of."

But that's not how it was going now. She was saying, "harder, Brian. Use your
whole hand. Put your hand around my leg, as much as you can." She was getting
more animated, more excited. "You see what I'm like, Brian?" I looked at her
confused, uncomprehending. "That's muscle, Brian. That's what happens to me,
to my legs, how they respond just from the walking I do, little as it may be.
I AM a physical person, a very physical, very athletic woman, if I let myself
be. Up to now I haven't, because I was afraid of what would happen if you
knew, but if we're going to be together you have to know what I, I mean my
body, is capable of."

Instead, I let go of her. "What do you mean?"

She looked me in the eye, more boldly than her usual shy, indirect gaze. "You
know how I don't go to gym class. I don't exercise at all, because if I did,
even a little bit, then, well, in no time at all my whole body would be like
this leg, like both my legs. Solid, thick, hard, very hard. Muscular. And
bigger. It's my genetics, Brian."

"I don't understand. As long as I've known you I've never seen you be at all
athletic. I thought you hated sport."

She laughed a little bitterly. "Have you ever noticed there are no pictures of
me as a little girl on display in my house? Nothing before I turned 12 or so?
Ever wonder why? It's not because they don't have the pictures. I'm an only
child, after all. They were taking pictures from the minute I was born. It's
because they didn't want anyone to see what I used to look like -- the body I
had."

"What? Were you, um, overweight?"

"Me? Fat? Hardly! I was a real tomboy, with muscles all over. I was stronger
than any of the boys in the neighbourhood, even boys four years older than me.
I did all the sports, and I loved being good at them, and especially being
strong. But my parents hated it. They took me to doctors to see if I was
abnormal or had some kind of hormonal imbalance. It turned out I was perfectly
healthy. But they said I had an unusual genetic makeup, that my body was
extremely sensitive to exercise and that especially after I reached puberty
I'd probably become even stronger, even more muscular. This made them very
upset, especially my mother. I remember she and my father disappeared into
their room for almost a whole day, talking and arguing, and eventually she
came out, sat me down and told me she wouldn't buy me dresses, that boys
wouldn't like me, that people would make fun of me if I didn't learn to act
like a girl. And that if I wanted to develop a real girl's body, instead of
something half-girl and half-boy, I would have to listen to her carefully and
do everything she told me. I was scared. I didn't want to be ‘half' anything,
and I started crying. My mother held me and reassured me. I liked drawing,
didn't I? She promised to buy me all the paints and pencils I wanted and send
me to art school, but I would have stop being a tomboy and stop exercising.
Completely."

Sara shook her head. "From that time, since I was nine, I've hardly tensed a
muscle, except maybe in my sleep. My parents got me excused from gym class,
and I haven't gone swimming, haven't run or jumped, haven't thrown a ball,
haven't carried any more books even than I've absolutely had to. It took
almost three years until my muscles pretty much disappeared and I was left
with the soft upper body you see today. And then once that had happened we
moved here, a few hundred miles from where we used to live, where no one knew
us, and no one knew what I used to be like."

"The only muscles that wouldn't go away were in my legs, because I couldn't
stop walking, although they're not as big as they used to be. But you know how
little I walk and you just felt how solid they still are. That's why I always
wear pants, or very long dresses, and I don't go swimming or even to the lake,
so that no one ever sees my muscular legs."

I looked at her confused. "I can't believe this. I thought it was because you
were modest and shy."

Sara shrugged. "I am modest, and a bit shy, but not with you, Brian. You're my
boyfriend."

"Still, it ... it doesn't seem possible."

"I don't know about what's possible. I'm not interested in the science, in how
or why I am the way I am. All I know is I've listened to my mother for half of
my life, but now other things and other people are more important. I feel like
it's not fair to you, or to me, to keep hiding this part of me. I mean, we
can't really go on the way we have, not if we're going to get married. You're
going to see and feel my body sooner or later, and I'd rather know how you
feel about me, the real me, sooner. Anyway, I just turned 18 and I should be
able to make my own decisions now. Don't you think so?"

"Um, yes. Of course."

"I knew you'd think so!" She leaned toward me and let the top of her shirt
fall open. My eyes darted to the opening and looked back at her face,
guiltily. "Oh Brian! Don't be embarrassed! Don't you understand? I LIKE that
you want to look at me, especially after I told you what I just told you. Can
I show something else? Just one more thing, and then you'll get a big reward
for listening to me. OK?" She stood up and sat down, right next to me. "Now,
put your hand on my thigh again. Not around it, just on top. I don't want you
to get hurt." I looked at her, puzzled. It all seemed so strange. But when I
did as she asked it all seemed familiar. My hand on her leg. My being very
turned on. It was how our first real exploration into sex had begun. My
memory, not the one I was reliving, was of my hand on her blue jeans, which in
her usual style, was soft, old and full of holes, I was sure, my fingers
pushing into those holes to touch her, but these jeans were new, for her, and
completely intact. I was wondering about the difference, and also the hardness
of the muscle beneath. Just thinking those words was making me even harder.
But was I harder in the memory or in the present, sitting in the hotel room
with Licia? Licia? The memory, or the reliving, or something else completely
was so powerful that I was unsure exactly where I was. Was I with Licia in the
room, or in a dream, or in a daydream or somewhere else completely?

"Brian? Are you with me?" Sara was saying. "Watch this. Look what I can do."
She put her hand on top of mine lightly, while mine was on her blue jeans. I
felt her thigh muscle tense beneath my hand. It bulged and spread my fingers
and lifted my hand up and then I heard and felt a ripping. She had split the
thigh of her blue jeans. Now my hand slipped right inside, as I remembered
doing, and I did the same again, or remembered doing it, but it felt
different, hard, pulsing muscle, rather than the soft, squishy leg of my first
girlfriend.

"That's me, Brian, that's me, the real me," she was saying. She reached over
to me and pulled on my shoulders while laying back on the bed. I resisted,
slightly, although I was more turned on than I'd ever been with Sara. "Come
on, Brian. Won't you lie down next to me? No one else is here. You can do your
work later, if really have to, or if you want to. But right now let me make
you feel good, let me give you your reward for listening to me."

"My reward?" I said, yielding, now next to her on the bed.

"Yes," she said softly, her voice almost a whisper. She reached down inside my
pants, and I let her. "Ooooh," she said. "It's so big. It's hard to believe
that you could be in my um ... does it hurt if I ...."

"No," I croaked. "It feels good."

I felt it like the first time. It was happening now just as I remembered it.

"Good," she said. "I want to make you feel good. Should I do it faster?
Harder?" I nodded. "When you come back it'll be different, you know. I'll be
ready, and we can do more. OK? I'm not going to do what my mother told me
anymore. And I'll be different too. OK?"

She was bringing me closer and closer. I was going to come in my pants, on her
hand. What would she think? What would she say? Would she be disgusted with
me?

"You won't mind, will you? You won't mind if I'm bigger? If I'm not so soft?
If I have muscles again? Like I used to?"

I wasn't sure I wanted to come, but I was so close I didn't think I could
stop. "Wh-hat do you mean?" I said in a last minute attempt to distract
myself.

Her hand movement slowed slightly while she thought about her answer. It kept
me right on the edge.

"I mean ... my body will go back to its natural, normal shape. I'll be
healthier, stronger, more physical ... sexier, you know? ‘Cause if I'm in
better shape I'll be more physical ... with you, you know?"

She was getting into the idea and started stroking me faster again.

"My tummy will be smaller and harder, and I'll probably get a sixpack, like
yours. My shoulders will get broader and my chest muscles will come back, but
this time I have breasts, and they'll look bigger than they do now. And my
arms will be," she looked at my face, "um, more toned." She was stroking me
hard now, and fast. "Will you mind that Brian? Will you still love me?"

I groaned and came, in spurt after spurt after spurt.

"So it doesn't bother you? Really?"

I wasn't sure who asked me that question, Licia or Sara, but before I
‘replied' I was somewhere else. It was another memory, maybe a month later. We
were in a park about half an hour from town. Sara had made a picnic lunch and
we hiked together to a remote part. I remembered this day clearly. It was the
only hike Sara and I had taken together. She was annoyed because it was ‘hot
and buggy', and I kept going ‘too fast'. In my memory now she was standing
about fifteen feet away from me, with her back to me. Had we just had words?
"I'm so hot!" she was saying, as I remembered. And then she took her shirt
off. She was wearing just a bikini top and shorts.

"Isn't this a WONDERFUL day! I just LOVE hiking with you! You didn't mind my
going ahead, did you? I found this really great place for us!" she exclaimed
looking up at the forest. She turned back toward me. Although we had made out
a couple of times in my car and she was more open about letting me touch her,
this was the first time I had seen her full body in the light since before my
trip to my grandparents. "Well? Notice anything different now?"

I certainly had noticed in school that her figure seemed sharper, that each
day her bust seemed more prominent and her curves more dramatic, but seeing
her in the skin in the light outside was incredible. Her legs were full of
muscle, thicker than mine! She said they always were strong. But in just four
weeks they had thickened and bulged with each step she took toward me. She
also had developed well-defined abs, as visible as mine. Her shoulders had
real definition, as she predicted. But to me, her arms stood out the most.
They didn't look as defined as her torso, but they were thick and solid. I
wondered whether she was stronger than I was, whether, if she flexed, her
muscles would be larger than mine. I felt a flood of desire for her.

"Brian! You're staring at me! Is something wrong?"

"No. I'm just surprised. I didn't realize, when you said that you would get
bigger, just how quickly --

"I know! I surprised myself! I guess what that doctor told us was right.
Whatever genetics thing I have seems to be even stronger now that I've
matured. But you know I have no interest in biology. I just like the way I
feel now. I like being able to walk and run again, to push my body. I'm always
in a good mood. Haven't you noticed?" She was next to me now. "And I'm always
wanting my boyfriend. Have you noticed that, Brian?" Her arm was around my
waist, pulling me next to her. "You don't mind that, do you?"

She was holding me, hugging me close to her, and I felt her heart beating into
my chest. I wasn't used to the strength of her arms. Was that the way it had
felt to her when I had held her tightly. The next thing I knew she had pulled
me down onto the soft grass. "Oh Brian! Will you make love to me? I'm ready
for you. I want you so badly." One of her arms was still around me, and the
other was at my crotch, waiting for permission to touch me.

"Yes," I said, excitedly.

She quickly undid the snap of my jeans and loosened her hold so that I could
strip off, while she wriggled out of her shorts. Immediately I was on top of
her again. She guided me inside with a little cry of pain. "It's ok," she
said. "Don't stop. I want you to feel good. Just go ahead. We'll work on me
another time, when we're more experienced. Oh!" I was thrusting hard, unable
to help myself. "Oh! Is that good for you?" She was clutching at me and her
grip almost hurt, but the pleasure building in me was far greater and then I
came. "Oh Brian! Was that it? Did it feel good? Was it what you expected, Oh,
Brian, I love you. I love you. I love you so much."

And then we were at her house, nearly four weeks later. Her parents were out
again -- they never seemed to be home that Spring -- and we were in her room.
I remembered this night clearly -- the last time I had sex with Sara. (In
fact, it would be the last sex I had for years.) She was in her closet,
putting something "special" on for me.

"You don't mind, do you, Brian? I mean, the important thing is that we do it
together, right? It's another thing we can do together. Don't you love that?"

What was she talking about? "Um, yeah," I said, unsure what I was agreeing to.

"It's not important who does more or less. I'm not judging you, not at all.
Quite the contrary, you know. It's that we love each other, right? It's just
the way my body is. But I just love doing it with you. It makes me feel even
closer to you"

Was she talking about orgasms? I remembered that she never reached orgasm with
me.

She came out of the closet. My jaw dropped.

"Oh, you like it?! It's from Victoria's Secret!"

It wasn't the tiny violet frilly negligee I was reacting to. Or the way her
breasts filled it. Or the way the open area in the panties, at her crotch, was
inviting me in.

"Even though I can lift twice as much as you can now, I am still VERY much a
girl, you know!"

She was far more muscular than me. Her biceps were larger than any I'd ever
seen. She extended her hands out to me, invitingly, palms upward, the movement
making her biceps bunch and grow even more.

"A girl who loves you very, very much, and wants you inside her very, very
badly!"

She put her arms around me. I was burning with desire. But this wasn't how it
happened. I was sure of that. She was shy and soft, passive and quiet. She
would always wait for me to come to her.

"I love feeling the way your body responds to me, even though I've grown so
much, so quickly. Especially because you're not very verbal, it's your way of
assuring me how much you want me, right?"

I had to say something, but all I could manage was, "Umm, yeah."

"Not that I wouldn't want to hear it from your lips too, but you'll learn how
to do that, I know. We're both still young, and we have so much of our lives
to be together."

I realized I had no clothes on. When did that happen?

"Let's do it like last time. It'll be even better now, because I've gotten
even stronger." Before I could answer she leaned forward and grabbed the back
of my thighs and lifted me off the ground. She spread her legs, pushed my legs
between hers and inserted my very hard member into her. She was so wet that I
slipped right in. She felt warm and tight. "Oh, you feel so WONDERFUL inside
me! See how well we fit together!" She lowered and raised me slightly so that
I moved in and out of her. The feeling was indescribable. She held me closer
and pulled me deeper inside, tightened her muscles around me and then her body
shuddered twice. "Oh-oh-oh! That's two already, and I'm going to get a lot
more before I'm done with you."

I was sure this was NOT what happened. Sara was never this muscular, this
strong, or this aggressive. My firm recollection was that she was completely
passive when we had sex; she would just lie back and wait for me to satisfy
myself. And also, I don't recall her ever having an orgasm, at least not that
I noticed. Certainly not so quickly. "Sara! Since when can you --

She clamped her lips on me and kissed me deeply. "Ssshh!" she said when she
finished. "Now's not the time. I have a surprise for you! Get ready!" She
adjusted her hands slightly. "You don't have to hold on, silly. I'm more than
strong enough, and I think your hands are better used for touching me.
Understand?" I felt a throbbing against my member. "Do you feel that? I'm just
beginning." The throbbing was getting faster and more insistent. "Do you like
that? Now how about this?" I couldn't help but cry out. It was like a rolling
sensation, the pressure running up and down the length of my member but still
somehow everywhere at the same time. The pleasure was so intense it was almost
unbearable. "Yeah! Yeah! You DO like it! Touch me, Brian. Touch me everywhere.
Squeeze me. Ha-ha. Yeah, just try to squeeze me. I'm so strong! I LOVE being
strong. Don't you love my strength? Don't you love what I can do with it? Let
me feel YOUR strength!" I was tingling all over and just wanted to press
against her harder and harder, but everywhere I touched her I could feel her
muscles tightening and expanding against my hands, harder than me, stronger
than me. "Your touch is so light against me! So sweet! Like a tickle!" A
tickle? I pressed harder against her. "Oh Brian, you ARE so sweet! Oh! Oh! Can
you feel it when I come? See how I make your whole body shake! Oooooh, I can
even do it both ways at the same time now. How does THAT make you feel?" How
was she doing that? Throbbing, rolling up down and all over. The pleasure was
everywhere now, in my arms, my legs, running up and down my spine, as though
she was tapping directly into the pleasure center of my brain. "Oh! Oh!" she
said, shuddering again. "This feels SOOO GOOOD!" I had no idea where I was,
what was happening, how what she was doing was even possible, but I knew I was
getting close myself, and I wanted to push harder and get just a bit more
inside her.

"Are YOU going to come too? Oh no! No! Not yet! I'm not nearly ready for you!"
I felt a pull near the base of my shaft, and the pressure that was building up
inside ebbed. "Ha ha! See what I can do? I'M in control!" The about-to-cum
sensations faded, but I was still hard inside her, rock hard. "You're not
complaining are you? Have you ever felt so good?"

"But Sara --

She started the throbbing again, even harder and faster than before and
laughed at the gasp of pleasure that cut off my words. "Your breathing's
getting kind of ragged and your eyes are, like, glazing over. Am I THAT good?"

With fireworks going off in my brain it was getting terribly hard to
concentrate. She was still holding me, pulling me harder against her. I
reached down to her wrists and pulled to make her let go. I couldn't budge
them.

"You don't really want me to stop do you? If you do you're really not trying
very hard to make me. Or maybe all this stimulation is turning your muscles
into mush. Or maybe am I just too strong for you? Heh, heh, that's the thing,
really. Let me give you a closer look." She shifted position, so that she was
now holding me to her with just one hand and brought her other hand up to
flex. My god! Her biceps were enormous. I stared at them in amazement and she
started working her vaginal muscles against my member even more insistently.
"So you know it's my STRENGTH that's making you feel so good, Brian. The
strength of my huge, powerful growing muscles. Growing ALL the time, because
the MORE I use them, the MORE they grow, and the MORE they grow the STRONGER
they get. Aren't they AMAZING? Don't you just LOVE them, Brian? Don't you LOVE
what I can DO to you with them?"

With each word she emphasized she was stimulating me more intensely. Didn't
she ever get tired?

"Oh-oh-oh-OH! That feels SO GOOD! OOH OHH OOOOOOH!" she exclaimed her whole
body pulsing into mine with each orgasm. "I LOVE having you inside me! Like
your thing is a part of me. Ha, the way I make you feel it's like you're just
a part of me, huh? Can you FEEL it? Isn't it WONderful! I'm going to make you
feel so good. You didn't know just HOW WONDERFUL you COULD FEEL, did you?"

How much more of this could I take before I surrendered completely to her and
the ever escalating pleasure she was giving me?

"It is a kind of surrender, but why should you resist it, when it just makes
you feel good? There's nothing wrong with feeling good is there?"

"But we're not ... married." I said, or thought that I said. Were we speaking,
or had she somehow penetrated my thoughts too? I couldn't tell, couldn't
concentrate, couldn't think.

"But we should be ... and we WILL be, right?" She was tuning me to ever higher
levels of pleasure. How could I be feeling this? And how had I forgotten this?

"Why didn't you marry her?" It was Licia's voice, breaking through.

Suddenly, all I could think of was my mother, scolding me. It was late
afternoon and we were alone in the house, at the kitchen table, dressed for
mid-week evening church. "You can't marry yet, and certainly not her! Sara's
not our kind. She's never in church. She's godless, immoral, lazy and useless.
You can't argue with that, can you? And she's not even pretty! Or is that what
you think is pretty! I can't imagine anyone else would agree! But that's not
what's important! What about your schooling? What kind of career will you have
if you start with a marriage now with her? You've worked so hard and you've
been accepted into good colleges with scholarships? Are you going to throw all
that away for a mediocre art student? Is this what we raised you for?"

The feelings were gone. I felt deadness in their place, a sinking depression,
fear about what was to come.

"We've tolerated her, yes, hoping that you'd see sense, but we know now what
you two have been doing and we can't let this continue. Imagine, the parents
of a young girl leaving the two of you alone together! Isn't it obvious to you
what's going on? Can't you see it's a trap? She would never do any better than
you. She's given away her virtue just to get you -- if she isn't pregnant
already! Don't you see it? Haven't you learned what we've taught you? What
your whole community has been teaching you since you were born? If she were
one of us ... but you know she is not and never can be! And we thought you
were smart! It's a lie, isn't it. It would all be a lie if you marry her.
Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"It's not like that!" I protested, as I had told my mother before. But it felt
different this time. Then I had felt a slight disgust for Sara, a relief that
I was being forced to let her go. Now I felt a loss. She had made me feel
something special, something I did not want to do without. But that was wrong,
I knew. My mother's advice was correct, and I had to submit to it.

"It IS that! It's only the devil that could give a thing like that power over
you! Can't you see that, after all we've taught you? It's as plain as can be!
Look inside yourself. Answer me! What else can it be?"

I felt chills throughout. That what she said. It was just as I had remembered,
and it was true. It had pained me when she said it, but I accepted it. Now I
resented it too.

"We must leave for church now. But when we pray tonight, you either confess
your sins and recommit yourself, or you walk out until you are ready to be
true to yourself, to your community and to God. Otherwise it is all a lie. And
at the very least you still know that we did not raise you to lie to God. Do
you accept that, at least?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

She nodded satisfied. "We are called upon to accept, and to do, much more, but
I am not the one to tell you. You must find the voice who will tell you, and
you must listen to that voice. That is all I will say on the subject today."

I was chilled to the bone, fearful of my future. That night I went with my
mother to church. After the service and a long private session with our
minister, he and I wrote a note to Sara breaking off the engagement and the
relationship forever, and my mother delivered it to her house.

My mind flashed through what happened next. The phone rang as soon as she read
it and continued ringing for days until we changed our number. Then she wrote
me long letters (which I read while supervised by my mother or my minister)
and I returned brief replies that had to be approved by my minister or my
mother. Forbidden to talk to her, I stayed away her from at school, and soon
she stopped attending. I was never sure if it was her at the back of the
auditorium at my graduation, although I thought she was there. I spent the
summer away, working on my uncle's farm, and then went off to college, far
from home. I found a church there, approved by my minister. I worked hard. The
letters stopped. I was safe. Safe and still saved ... I hoped.

Licia's voice broke through this memory. "Did you ever see her again?"

And then I was in another recollection, reliving it, in my house during my
first Christmas break from college. My mother had just left for church to help
prepare decorations for the special holiday programs. I was tired from exams
and didn't feel like going with her, so I stayed behind by myself and turned
on the television. Almost as soon as I sat down the phone rang. I answered. No
one spoke, and after saying "hello" several times I hung up. Three minutes
later I heard terrible sounds outside, the shattering of glass and the
crashing of metal. I ran to the window and saw my old car was now a total
wreck. Sara! Remembering this episode gave me a chill. I had rushed outside to
see what happened. Sara had smashed my car and now lay inside her own wrecked
car. Somehow Licia was forcing me to relive this. I would have to pull her out
and carry her inside, and then wait with her until the ambulance arrived. That
thirty minute period was, until this weekend, one of the worst of my life and
one of the most uncomfortable conversations I'd ever had. Why was she making
me relive it? Still, I ran outside to do what I knew I had to do. When I got
to the car I looked around, puzzled. My car was totaled, even worse than I had
thought I had remembered, but where was Sara's? It should be a few yards from
mine, but except for the splinters of glass from my car's windshield the rest
of the street was clear. I looked around closely, walked halfway down the
block in each direction but I saw nothing.

I went back inside into the TV room of my now well-chilled house. The TV was
off, and in my chair, sitting comfortably, was Sara, covered by the wool
blanket my mother always used. She looked smugly satisfied, completely
protected from the cold, as if she were in her own room, chair, blanket and
house.

"Sara! What are you doing here?" I exclaimed, completely surprised. She didn't
belong here. She had no right to be here. And if my mother knew ...

"Hi Brian," she said. There was something chilly but oddly thrilling in her
tone. "It's been awhile since I heard from you. How was school?" Her voice was
rich and confident and her eyes met mine with a possessive intimacy that
unnerved me.

My memory told me I should have been hovering over her, conflicted between
concern for her condition, worry about the blood on my mother's blanket,
embarrassment at seeing her again after I had broken things off, wondering
about my car and, frankly, relief that we were no longer together, that I was
no longer responsible for her. But that was not what I was seeing or feeling,
other than the concern about my car. Although all I could see was her head and
bits of her feet poking out from under the blanket. I felt a strangely strong
desire for her, a yearning for the electric pleasure I had just experienced,
along with complete confusion about what was real, what was imagined and what
exactly I should do about it. Everything felt real, although I knew it
couldn't be. What if I acted on my impulses? If this were just imagined, did
it matter? I knew there was no way to solve that conundrum, and the answer
came to me immediately. It did matter. Lustful thoughts were as evil as
lustful acts. Wherever I might be, my will was my own, my will was free and my
responsibilities clear. Whether or not the house, the car, my mother and Sara
were real, the temptation was real, and so was my duty to resist it. Because I
could not know, I must behave as if she were real.

"Do you like being away from home? Do you have a girlfriend at school?" she
asked, pausing between questions, giving me a chance to answer before moving
on. "Would you even tell me if you did?" She laughed. "I don't know if you
would. So, have you thought about me ... at all? Do you miss our ... loving?"
She shifted her head slightly.

My heart was pounding in my chest. This wasn't at all what I remembered, this
slow, confident, sexy talk. Shouldn't she be hurt, shivering, barely able to
talk except to whine about how I'd left her alone, ruined her reputation, her
whole life.

She shifted slightly and snuggled under the blanket, rearranging it more
tightly, revealing a large bulge near her chest. I took a sharp breath. What
was that? Could that be her breasts? Or was it just a fold? I remembered when
I'd brought her in from the wrecked car how big and heavy she had gotten. How
fat. I remembered I was barely able to lift her. That was all it was! It must
be. All that muscle stuff was my imagination, a dream. But just recalling the
dream was making me stir inside my pants. Stop that.

Sara was smiling at me. "I'm still working out. A lot." She took a deep breath
and the blanket rose with it. It wasn't just a fold. It was her. "I've changed
even more, you know, since you saw me. It'll surprise you, I know, when you
see how big I've become. How big and how strong."

No! I didn't want to hear it. I remembered it clearly. She had gotten fat,
disgustingly fat, that was all. Still, I was responding. It was awful,
shameful.

"You want to shut me out of your mind, and out of your life, but you can't.
You want me," she teased, "really badly."

"Sara, you have to leave."

"But I don't want to!" she said playfully, childishly raising her eyebrows as
if in disbelief. "Are you going to throw me out? Are you really going to pick
me up, push me into the cold and shut the door on me? Do you really think you
can do that? Wouldn't you rather have some fun?"

I didn't want to play. I didn't dare touch her. But she had to go! "Sara, you
don't belong here," I insisted.

Her face got serious. "You're wrong. I belong with you!" she said, suddenly
emotional and completely serious. "We belong together. Always!"

That's just what I remembered her saying to me, and I remembered how angry and
disgusted those words made me at the time. But not this time. This time the
same words were thrilling me, tempting me. I had to fight those feelings. I
had to get her out of my house before I weakened and gave in.

"You can't resist me. You can try to close your mind to your feelings, but you
won't succeed. They're part of you, just like I am."

"You are not!" I said angrily. This was ridiculous. I stormed over to her,
preparing to pull the blanket off her and move her off the chair and out of
the house.

At that moment, as I started at her I felt momentarily confused. Consistent
with my upbringing and my values I was not one to be physically forceful with
girls or women, and I am sure I never had been with Sara. But -- and this will
demonstrate the unusual strain I was under -- had I not done or tried to do
something like this several times, not in the distant past, but this weekend?
And, incredibly, each time I had tried I failed completely, I being
overpowered by a girl smaller than I but who seemed to be many times stronger.
As I remembered this an electric charge of arousal ran through me. I felt
myself, imagining an immensely powerful Sara, thwarting me, and as I imagined
it I was getting a strong erection. What was this!! This had never happened to
me before. No! I said to myself, feeling angrier than ever. No! No! No! This
is wrong. Being overpowered by Sara or any girl does NOT interest me. It is
perverted, disgusting. It is NOT who or what I am. Sara was looking at the
visible bulge in my crotch mockingly, a stupid smile on her lips. I hated her.
I wanted to wipe it off. It would not happen again, and it would not happen
NOW with Sara!! I was going to throw Sara out of my house, if only to prove to
myself who I really was.

I yanked the blanket off her and bent down to grab her arms and lift or drag
her out of the chair. I felt sure that I would see her she was wearing
overlarge, baggy, grey sweats, now torn and blood-stained from the crash, to
hide all the weight she had gained since I last saw her. But once I tore the
blanket off her I was seeing something very different. Still curled up in the
dark brown chair, she wore a black, tight-fitting, lycra, one-piece suit that
covered her all the way from the white skin of her ankles up to her neck. The
dark hues of the fabric and her bodysuit and the dim light of the TV room made
it difficult to see the outlines of her body. But it surely didn't look like
she was fat.

"Oh I AM a part of you!" she replied. "Even though you won't admit it, it's
obvious from how turned on I'm making you."

I glared down at her but hesitated, and as I made up my mind to act she moved
first. She unwrapped her arms and legs and slowly but gracefully stood up out
of the chair, her knees gradually unbending, pushing her long, thick thighs up
towards me, her head rising higher and higher although her body was still bent
at the waist, yet her eyes were already level with mine and still rising, as
she still unfolded her body, her chest now as high as my head and expanding
out at me as she straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply, relaxed,
standing proudly, my mouth gaping open as she looked down at me, her head
higher than mine by well more than a foot.

"Brian. Little Brian. My little bitty Brian," she said condescendingly,
putting her large hands on my shoulders, her powerfully thick arms barring the
way on either side. Her palms rested heavily on me, her thumbs ran nearly to
my neck and her fingers pressed hard nearly a third of the way down my back.
She pulled me closer. My face stopped when it brushed against the coarse
fabric of her bodysuit and then the relative softness of the enormous bosom
compressed by and beneath it.

"You can't be Sara!" I said, my voice muffled against her breast.

"But I am. I am Sara five times over!" she laughed, her voice like thunder in
my ears and all through my body. "And I have you now!"

I felt something hard against my face, her nipple stiffening, growing, pushing
against the lycra suit like a bullet in slow motion aimed at my head,
stretching it into my cheek. Instinctively I turned to receive it in my mouth
but felt and tasted only the rough fabric of her suit.

"You can't have me," she sneered letting go of one shoulder and reaching down
into my pants to grasp my hot, hard member. "But I have you!"

"No!" I protested. Her touch sent shivers of lustful desire through me. I
twisted and shook my shoulders to knock her hand off but she held me fast
against her with the single arm. I grabbed her hand with both of mine to pull
it off. She let me take them but then closed her larger fingers around them,
trapping them in her grip, and then squeezed.

"Aaaghhh!" I said suddenly in great pain.

"Oho!" she laughed. "So tender. So fragile. And that's just a little squeeze.
Smashing your car to pieces with my bare hands was easy. Pulling you to pieces
would be a piece of cake!"

I was pulling as hard as I could to wrest my hands away but I could neither
free them or move hers even an inch from where she held them.

"I use the anger and hurt and humiliation and pain you caused me to make
myself bigger and stronger and then -- HAH!! -- somehow I started growing
again. I'm nearly seven feet tall and still growing! And just look at these
muscles!" She flexed the muscles of the arm that was holding my hand. I
helplessly watched her biceps rise, the fabric shining in the dim light as her
muscles beneath stretched it ever higher, and as she closed her hand to
squeeze her biceps higher her hand was contracting around mine.

"Stop. Please." I begged, the pain shooting all the way to my shoulder.

"Did I squeeze you again? I didn't even realize I was doing it!" she laughed,
loosening her grip slightly. "It just happens naturally when I flex, you know.
But your little cry interrupted me. You didn't get to see just how big they
are. Aren't you curious? HE is!" she smirked, giving my member a gentle
squeeze with her thumb and forefinger.

"Oh god!" I muttered, desperately using my willpower, trying not to come, but
my mind was out of control. All I could think about was her body, her bosom,
her power, her size, her muscle. Images of each bulge, stretching her
bodysuit, and then unleashed, free to expand at will, flooded my mind, against
my own will.

"You think you should be entitled to a little ‘pleasure', with all I'm putting
you through? Fat chance!" She squeezed me lower down, physically forcing a
halt to the erotic build-up then I was unable to do mentally myself.

"Now I've got more time to tell you it's not just my muscles that have been
growing. I'm sure, even with your new morality, you've noticed a couple of
other new things about me." She pushed her breasts further into my face. "Now,
imagine what they look like when I'm not wearing this? Hmmm?"

"What do you want from me?" I said, still struggling futilely to free myself
from her grip.

She held me away from her at arm's length and looked down at me, her eyes
narrowed. "I want to know you made a mistake. I want YOU to know you made a
mistake. I want you to regret it ... to regret it FOREVER!" she said, baring
her teeth in a sneer. She tensed her pectorals, pushing her breasts out
further. "See that? Hmmm?"

I was staring. How could they have grown so much? So quickly?

"They're spectacular, don't you think? Can you imagine anything so large, so
round, so soft? Wouldn't you love to fondle them? To suck on them? To be able
to touch them whenever you wanted, as I would let my husband? Not that I'd
EVER give YOU the pleasure of feeling them against your face or even seeing
them, but I want you appreciate their full size, and I don't think you
possibly could. Not yet. Maybe if I take off my bra...." She leaned back, took
her hand out of my pants and reached behind her, snaking her arm down her suit
and unfastening the hooks, quickly, as only a woman can do. "There! I had to
cut the front part out to give my nipples room to grow -- you know how much
they like to grow -- but they DO give the rest of me a bit of camouflage, you
know." She twisted as she somehow eased out of the shoulder straps. "Ahh, now
they're free!"

"See what you've been missing? Aren't they amazing?" she teased. "I'm a E cup
-- almost an F!! I'm sure you'd want to know, right? But it's not the size,
it's the way they look, so round and firm! And aren't those nipples just crazy
when they get excited? Don't they make your mouth water?"

I couldn't help looking at her breasts as, even though they were still under
the restraint of her bodysuit, they ballooned further out toward me, bobbing
down and up more freely as she turned her chest from side to side. I could not
believe how large and round they were, and how they pushed out from her chest
so boldly. I was in a complete state of ferment, confusion and, to my shame,
lust. Images of different parts of her body again filled my mind, each taking
its turn, each one pressing firmly against her tight bodysuit, expanding
against it, growing larger, rounder as she flexed or twisted or turned. My
heart beat faster, harder, and the pulse of new images quickened.

"You never realized how sexy I would be, once I unleashed my real self, my
true potential. And now ... I drive you wild, don't I? You may not love me,
but you love my body. Is it my breasts that excite you? Or is it my muscles?
Hmmmm?" She was flexing her biceps, now enormous mounds nearly half the size
of my head. I started imagining Carrie, holding me in the air (but did that
really happen?), but wasn't I younger then, younger and smaller, while Sara
was so much bigger, so much stronger. She was really pumping them now, and
with each movement they changed shape, growing and contracting under her
bodysuit, becoming rounder, then taller, stretching the bodysuit, threatening
to burst through. I couldn't tear my eyes away, as though each pump of her
biceps was pumping up my lust. Oh no! I was so close again to coming -- and
what was this? My clothes were off, and my fully erect member was pushing
against the side of her thick, rock-hard leg. "Oh, there's no doubt. It's my
muscles. ESPECIALLY THESE muscles," she was saying, "my biceps. MY biceps.
They're so hard, so large, so beautifully shaped and so strong ... so very,
very, very strong. I'M my work of art now, and it's obvious you appreciate it,
just by the way you're looking at it, not to mention by the way your hard-on
is nuzzling my thigh."

I tried to pull away but she held me in an iron grip.

"Oh, don't you be embarrassed. It's just what I wanted...."

"... just what I wanted," I heard, in Licia's voice. I was in the Radisson in
Indianapolis, in a hotel room, with Licia, the hotel desk clerk or assistant
manager, not at my childhood home in Pennsylvania, not with Sara. It had been
all a dream, all unreal, although it was so vivid it was if I had really lived
it.

"I must have been asleep, dreaming. Sorry," I said. I owed Licia that common
courtesy, nothing else.

She didn't seem bothered. Her eyes were fixed on me, but I looked away. "I
love dreams. They show you the truest things about you, all the way down to
your soul, and you know, when they're real enough they can change you. Don't
you think so?"

"No," I said and stood up. "Nothing can change me that isn't real, and dreams
are all in the head. They're just dreams."

"Oh really? We'll see about that. Anyway, I'm real," she said and stood up
too, once again in my way, between me and the door. She put her hands on her
hips. "Why don't we see if anything's different?"

This again? What did she want from me now? I felt a strong urge to try again
to push her out of the way and get away. She didn't seem any different than
before. She still looked like a normal, pretty girl, except for her admittedly
oversized, erect nipples. She was healthy, but not muscular and certainly not
stronger than me. Yet she had already overpowered me twice; the second time
she had thrown me across the room. And strangely, with that recollection and
the idea that she might do it to me again, I felt a spark of arousal in my
groin, and a series of images passed through my head. That unnamed gymnast in
junior high school. Carrie, holding me in the air. Sara, bursting with muscle.
Each image of power fed the arousal. I shut them out of my mind until it was
just Licia I saw.

"Or are you afraid of me now? Afraid even to try?" she taunted, motioning with
her hands for me to come closer, to take her on.

"I'm not afraid of you."

"Don't underestimate me. I was a real tomboy growing up. I've always loved
sports, especially gymnastics. I can still do my floor routine, and I'm in
great shape now. See?" She lifted her arms up as if preparing for a run and a
series of cartwheels, just like the gymnast I saw in my dream.

I stood alertly, watching to see what she would do to me next, and wondering
what I could do about it. "That has nothing to do with anything," I said,
finally.

She was grinning. "You're right. I've got power over you. So even though I'm a
little small for a girl, and you're all pumped up with your own muscle and
what Ekara gave you -- just look at ‘em! -- and still I'm so much more
powerful than you are." She was staring at me, her eyes flicking with delight
to the unwelcome, growing bulge pressing against my pants. "And you like it!"
she said, licking her lips.

"I don't like it one bit! I don't care about you."

"Oh yes you do! You think I can't tell? The thought of it drives you wild even
though it scares you. You're even afraid to look me in the eye."

"Don't be ridiculous!" I replied. But in response to her challenge I did look.
This time all I saw in her eyes was myself, my reflection, but in her eyes I
felt smaller, as if she were the larger one. And with that thought I felt
another spark in my groin. I needed to shift around to give myself more space,
but I didn't want her to know.

"You'd like it even more if I were bigger, if I were bigger and you were
smaller..."

I was pulsing against my trousers. Could she see? "You can't do that!" I
protested.

She went on, "...if I were stronger and you were weaker, if I had muscles like
yours and you had muscles like mine or ... or even smaller, softer, weaker."
Her eyes shone with excitement. "Think about them ... mine and yours ... you
and me."

My eyes widened. I bent slightly and twisted, hoping a change of position
would give me some room.

"Imagining it, hmmm? You do like that. You'll see, it won't matter to you or
anyone else. Practically no one knows you here, and you can't leave so you're
never going back. You don't need muscle to do your work. You just sit at a
desk and do numbers. How big do you need to be do that?"

"I need to be ... it helps to get people to cooperate!" I said, my voice
rising. "How big do YOU need to be ... to be a desk clerk!"

"Assistant Manager!" she retorted. "And probably Manager soon! I'll be more
successful if I'm bigger. Size makes a real difference, you know, in how
people look at you."

"What about me? What about my job?" Was I actually pleading with her? I looked
in her eyes and felt even smaller.

She cocked her head. "Your job's gonna change, and you'll cooperate, I'm
sure." She smiled and made a happy moan. "Make ‘em hard now. Flex ‘em, really
big! I want to see ‘em one more time." She took a step toward me. "Now!
C'mon!"

Something in me felt I needed to obey. I held out my bare arms and flexed
them, as she asked and watched with pleasure as my muscles bunched and rose.
Is this what she wanted to see? Yes, I was strong, strong and confident enough
to face her down. I looked down at her, but my reflection in her eyes was
looking up.

"Lovely! Aren't they lovely!" she exclaimed.

"They're not for show!" I said, stepping toward her.

"Oh, I know that!" she replied looking up at me. "I absolutely know that."

I reached down to move her out of the way. Before my hands reached her I felt
odd, dizzy. The room spun. I couldn't focus. What was happening? I had to
concentrate. I had to steady myself. How? The thought came to me. OEREV.
Observe Evidence, Record Evidence, Verify. That's what I had to do! But how? I
was blind!! My hands reached down to take hold of her shoulders. No. They felt
wrong. Not like shoulders. Where were the tops? What did it matter? I had to
get her away from me! I pulled blindly and then tried to push her to the side,
but she was planted like a tree. Was this that same strange power she had
again? No! Don't theorize. Don't panic. Observe. Record. Verify. That steadied
me, at last. My heart rate slowed. My vision was clearing. Observe! What did I
see? In front of me all I saw was ... breasts?? My hands ... they weren't on
shoulders, they were on hips. My arms were spread to hold wide hips. I took my
hands off quickly, as though the skin burned me. Observe! I looked up, willing
my eyes past breasts, past thick erect nipples, like thumbs, to wide
shoulders. Shoulders wider than I was, higher than my head. I craned my head
upwards. Licia was looking down at me, smiling, golden hair falling loose
around her face. In her eyes I seemed very small.

"It's happening. It won't take long. Look at my breasts. They'll make you feel
better. Or even suck on them. I'd like that. Or just watch. Yeah, watch."

I started feeling tingly and strange, a lightness on my feet and heaviness in
my body and then something that wasn't a feeling exactly, more of a general
imbalance, like air being let out of me, like my insides were rearranging
themselves. As I felt that, Licia let out a highly pleasured moan and her
nipples, amazingly, became even bigger. She sighed again and again, a series
of increasingly higher pitched, excited sounds as if she were coming to
orgasm. I was looking ahead at Licia's breasts, which moved outward and
upward, inching closer to my face although growing no larger. No, it was her
chest that was growing larger, deeper, more muscular, lifting her breasts and
pushing them toward me.

"Look at me! Look at me! I'm big and now I'm strong too!" she crowed. She
raised her arms into the air and flexed them. "Oh my god! Oh, oh, just look!
They're so big and so beautiful and so hard!" she cried, and stroked her right
biceps with her fingers. "I love them!" she thrilled and then looked down at
me. "And you, Brian! You love them too, don't you? Touch them. I want you to
touch them, squeeze them and -- oh, but -- this is so -- you won't even be
able to REACH them!" she squealed with delight. "I have to LOWER my ARMS so
you can TOUCH them!"

While she was chattering excitedly I was thinking that for her to be so much
bigger than I was in my expanded body she must be truly gigantic, over eight
feet tall at least, with muscles the size of boulders. Although my queasiness
had softened my erection this time I found myself shamefully unable to turn my
eyes away from her body, and once again I started getting very aroused.
Strangely, however, now I was feeling none of the previous discomfort in my
pants. I was completely hard, though, and when I glanced down I was
embarrassed to see the shape of a surprisingly extreme erection pushing out
the front of my pants. But how could that be? I was wearing normal blue jeans,
not an immodest swimsuit or loose pyjamas. My blue jeans were too tight for
that. And surely whatever power Ekara had given Licia, it couldn't extend to
expanding my clothing. It didn't make sense. Moreover (although for obvious
reasons I have not had very much personal comment on this matter from any
women (other than Ekara) with experience in this area, I know from medical
studies I had read to satisfy my entirely natural and understandable masculine
curiosity that I am considered very well-endowed as a man), the bulge I was
making seemed to be far larger than it should have been.

Licia must have seen my expression, because she said, "Oh don't be
embarrassed! That's what I WANTED! Of COURSE that's what I wanted. And now I
want you to touch me, and I know you want to touch me too. Touch my muscles
and love them. Worship them."

"Worship them!" I exclaimed. "I'm not going to --

"Oh silly! Of course you will. You already ARE!" With that she reached down,
took my wrist and lifted my hand to rest on her truly mountainous biceps. The
touch was electric, a bolt of lightning that seared me to my very core. I had
never felt anything like it, not even in my dreams. So large, so warm and
hard, I could feel its power shift beneath my hand with every tiny movement
she made. How could this be? I was shivering with excitement, with intense
longing. Her muscle was enormous and so ... beautiful. It was so perfect, so
feminine, the ultimate object of desire. I had to have the woman who possessed
that muscle.

Then my brain kicked in. What was I thinking?!? What was I feeling?! This
wasn't me! This wasn't how I going to choose my life partner. It wasn't what I
wanted, what my life was about! I pulled my hand back, but it went nowhere.

"Where are you goin' honey?" Licia said smiling. "You're right where I want
you!"

I pulled harder.

In a teasing voice she sang out, "You hear me? Ummm, not going ANYwhere! Not
like THAT you're not!" She slid her hand up my arm, my skinny, soft arm, so
skinny that she went all the way from my wrist to my shoulder with her thumb
and forefinger joined together. "See Brian? See how much bigger I am?" She
hooked her index finger around my arm and held it next to mine. My head was
spinning. She had made me even smaller than Ekara had yesterday, but what
frightened me more was that I could not look away. My eyes were fixed onto her
biceps. My head pulsed with thoughts of "she's so strong," "she has muscles,"
"what muscles," "how big can they get?" "how hard are they?" "so strong," "so
much stronger than me". I wanted to bow my head and kiss them, press my lips
against their hardness, take them into my mouth and ....

Where did that come from? "I ... I don't know what I'm doing," I said
haltingly. "This isn't ... right!" I added. "I have to leave."

"Try!" she laughed. "Try harder" she repeated as I pulled against her finger.
She leaned down and whispered in my ear. "I'm not using that power, sweetie.
You're just too weak. See what I mean? You've got soft, tiny muscles. But
that's ok. I love you like this, and you love me too. You just have to admit
it."

"No! No! No!" I cried out, pulling harder to Licia's obvious amusement. I
didn't have a chance! She had so much muscle and I had so little. And now that
only made me want her more.

She reached down and stroked my erection gently through the cloth of my pants.
"Well, he's sure not small. And there's lots more room in your pants for that
part of you. But your thing is just as big as before, even bigger compared to
the rest of you, I guess!!" She played with it more insistently.

"Stop it, please!" I begged, close to coming. Desperate, I balled my free hand
into a fist and threw it at her stomach. She didn't try to block me and hardly
reacted, except to laugh. I hit her again and again, but I was tiring quickly
and each effort was even less effective.

"Oh Brian! This only makes me feel better! I mean, I wish you weren't mad, and
you shouldn't be hitting me, but it doesn't even hurt. My abs are so thick and
so solid; because I'm narrower than you were my abs ended up a lot thicker
than yours. And those punches of yours just feel like little bitty love taps.
You've really got to see that you've got no strength at all. I left you with
less than half the amount of muscle I had and barely half my level of
fitness." She clamped her hand over my fist, pressed it to her stomach and
rolled it around. "Feel that?" The pressure her hand needed so that my fist
could make even a small indentation in her wall of abdominal muscles was far
more than my punches had generated and was crushing my knuckles and fingers
together.

"Ahh! Ahh!" I cried out, unable to hold in my moaning.

She stopped, and the pain stopped immediately. "Poor Brian! I didn't realize.
I didn't mean to hurt you!" She put her hand under me and lifted me to her
face and then kissed me. "I took the pain away. I don't want to hurt you,
Brian. Not ever! I just wanted to show you what I'm made of." She held me
closer, more gently. My legs dangled in the air and my toes touched her knees.
I felt the points of her nipples rub against my stomach.

She twitched her arm twice, making her biceps jump and pushing my body closer
against her with the force of their expansion. "My little Brian! I'm two
inches taller than Ekara made you, and you're five inches smaller than I was.
It just took more of your little bones to top up my big bones, you know? But
I'll take care of my little boy, don't you worry! I know that's what you
really want."

"No I don't!," I protested. "Please, put me back. Can't you make me the way I
was?" I begged. "I don't need what Ekara gave me. You can keep that. But ..."

"Ssssh, Brian. You don't really want that. You want me the way I am. You want
us the way we are, me big and powerful, and you small and weak." She flexed
her biceps again and held them up next to my eyes. "This is what you want.
This is what you need. Not for yourself, but for me. For me to have, and for
you to hold, to cherish and to obey." While I stared at them she whispered in
my ear. "Don't you remember, back in school, when you were younger, before you
grew? That gymnast girl, your first crush. You watched her, admired her. All
the things she could do with her body, things that you couldn't do. Remember
that? Remember what you felt, being short, clumsy and late to mature? How much
you wanted her, but could never even come close? You know who she was?"

"I remember her but I can't remember her name," I confessed.

"I'm that girl, Brian. That was me."

I shook my head. "But that can't be. You're younger than me. We never met
before ...." But as I looked at her face, although I didn't understand how, I
knew it was her.

"You see? You do remember! Just like before, I can do things you can never do.
I'm bigger, stronger, more fit than you are, and I always will be. You'll
depend on me, listen to me and always do what I say. And Love me. And that's a
good thing, right?" She squeezed her biceps and incredibly it rose even
higher.

"Oh ... my ... god!" I exclaimed, mesmerized. It was true. She was the one, my
dream.

"Touch it. Push on it." I cupped it with my hand and tried to push it down. It
was immovable, like steel. "Try harder. Come on, use all you got."

I put everything into it, my fingers, my wrist, my arm and my shoulders. I
might have found a millimeter of give but no more.

"What a little powderpuff!" She laughed joyfully. I felt her tear on my hand.
"You don't mind at all now," she said, sniffling.

"I've never seen anything so beautiful." I rested my cheek on her biceps, my
free hand on her breast, fingering her nipple. "Licia, can we ....

"Yes, Brian. Yes, I'll marry you," she said quickly, happily. "And now, now,
I'm going to show you what I like."

13

I knew the rest of my life would be different, but even with that in mind,
Monday did not start well. My suits naturally did not fit me, so I had to go
to work in some abandoned boys school clothes Licia found for me in the
hotel's storage room. As I entered the office, Ekara laughed out loud, and
then gave me a glare that nearly burned my new clothes off my body. I quickly
realized I was supposed to use the back entrance that the others used. Then
there was the matter of the locked door of my office.

"Um, Muriel, the office I was in last week --

Muriel looked down at me and sniffed. "Mrs. Cawle, if you would. Yes, Brian?"

My office was, unaccountably, locked when I arrived. As I was struggling with
the weight of my laptop bag and needed both arms just then to carry it, was
not properly dressed for work, and I was dependent on her for a place to put
my things down, I didn't feel I was in a position to insist on status, so I
ignored the slight, for the moment. I just said, "I'll be wrapping up my
investigation this week. But you know I'm applying for a transfer to this
office, so is there is another office I'll be able to use more permanently? Or
I can just use the office I was in last week?"

"I had to come in early today to work on the papers for your transfer.
Somebody's very keen for you to be here." She rolled her eyes and crossed her
arms. "The office you used last week is for head office visitors and is not
available to local staff. There is some free space on the table next to our
bookkeeper, Mrs. Perkins. I'll ask Keith to find an extension cord for your
computer. The outlet is under Mrs. Perkins' desk."

"But I can't work there! My work is confidential!"

She leaned over me and put her face close to mine. "Brian, we both know that
your work this week will be a complete fiction and is not confidential in the
least."

"But I need a phone, space ...."

She shook her head. "You won't need a phone for that work. Mrs. Perkins will
let you use hers for internal calls. Any non-sales calls outside of the
Indianapolis area must be approved by Ralph Healy, which means me. Mrs.
Perkins is fully aware of the details of your investigation and she will help
you with any additional facts you need to complete your report.

"But ....

"Once that report is done you will have no further work for the head office.
You will be on general office duties. As you can well imagine, we have no need
for a dedicated auditor in this office. This is a sales office. You aren't
physically capable of playing a round of golf or carrying a round of beer, so
we aren't likely to use you as a salesman, I'm sure. I don't know about your
IT skills, but Keith handles that job fine on a part time basis. Mrs. Perkins
wants an assistant, and you're good with numbers, so working next to her will
be perfect. When she retires in three years you will be well-positioned to
take over her job."

My jaw dropped. "I have an accounting and business degree. I don't need to be
trained by a bookkeeper! I have experience throughout the ARA Fittings group
and its associates! I don't need --

"I won't listen to any of your complaining. As I recall, you were warned very
clearly last Monday about your ‘associations' here. You chose to disregard the
warning. Very well, it's clear that you're bearing the consequences. If you
don't like what we're offering you're certainly free to find another job in
Indianapolis, but everyone knows all about Ekara in this town. I think it's
unlikely that you'll be hired, unless you want to work at one of the other
establishments where she's got her ‘things', like the Radisson." Muriel's face
registered a clear look of disapproval. "I think you know the girl they're
saying will be the new Manager there, Licia Kraftwohnen. A 'rising star,' I
heard on WISH TV news this morning. You could work under her if you want."

"She was on television?!"

"Local news -- "Faces to Watch". The anchor at Channel 8 WISH TV Daybreak News
is one of Ekara's things. We watch it to find out what she's up to, to help us
keep clear."

The old man shuffled past slowly with a cup of coffee. I watched him carry it
carefully down the corridor to give to Ekara.

"But ....

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. "That's all the time I have for you
this morning. I'll send you the papers to complete to put you on our local
plans and insurance policies. There isn't much turnover here, so with the fact
that you're from out of town and how you came to us, you can expect it will
take awhile for the others to warm up to you. That fellow who walked by was
the last new guy we had here, so you might start with him. He came from out
your way. You probably have a few things in common."

I sighed. I thought I saw a smirk on her face but I could have been mistaken
but it was clear I would get nowhere with her this morning. Maybe she would
warm up to me later on. I looked at the old man, shuffling back towards us
now. "OK. I'll get started on my report." I looked at him approaching slowly.
Tell me, what's that guy's name?"

There definitely was a smirk.

"Artie."

At the sound of his name, the man stopped. He looked at me and I thought I saw
a glimmer of recognition.

"Stephensson? Brian Stephensson?" he said. He nodded and stared at me, and
then muttered, "From the old days? From the old days, huh?" I nodded. He put
his hand on Muriel's arm to steady himself.

"Those are your affairs, Artie, and none of my business, thank you very much."
She firmly took his hand off and walked away.

The man stared at me. "Well, Stephensson. It is you. Funny seeing you here.
Looks like you're not lifting much these days either."

"Arthur? But how --

"Man's got to live somehow. She keeps me on. One of her things, you know.
Except that you're not, huh? You're someone else's."

"How do you -- how does everyone know?"

"Got to be observant. You were never as good at that as you thought. Hmmmph!
Auditors! Blundering around everywhere they don't belong. Leave us lawyers to
clean up the mess! Well, still, we outsiders ought to stick together. You can
take me to lunch, while you're still on the corporate account. In town, of
course. Just not the Radisson, ok?"

"Yeah, sure Arthur. Sure."

"Arthur? It's Artie now. Be seeing you around. One o'clock. Yeah, one will be
good. I don't get hungry as early now. One o'clock."

"OK, Artie. See you then."

I hoisted my work bag a little higher and turned to find Mrs. Perkins. As I
left I heard Artie muttering. "11:05. Next coffee at 11:05. 11:05. Cookies at
5:11. 5:11."

THE END