Amor Fabula Ep. 04

*** This is an oddball story featuring a mix of fantasy and science fiction. It was originally submitted for a Literotica Christmas contest. ***

In remembrance of that grand author, Charles Dickens. May his legacy live on for many more Christmases to come.

Three story arcs are featured in this novella, encompassing the following categories: Loving Wives, Lesbian Lovers and Group Sex, all in profound and hopefully provocative fantasy settings. The characters featured in this story are from the following Corvus Turrim series, respectively: Rudy's Romps, Heartbreakers and Space Relations.

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A Corvus Turrim Christmas Carol

The Monkey King

The Monkey King grew bored as the end of the year approached. It was not a good thing for the Monkey King to become bored, because worlds and even universes tended to suffer as a result. Monkey King was a trickster god who liked to create disruptions for the sake of novelty and change. When things grew too stagnant, Monkey King grew restless, and when he grew restless, well, who knew what would transpire next? There was nothing beyond his reach!

What can I do, what can I do, the Monkey King thought to himself. In one of his adventures, he had discovered the cave of an immortal. In exchange for household chores, the immortal taught Monkey King how to fly, and how to change into seventy-two different things, such as animals, trees and rocks. In another adventure, Monkey King demanded items worthy of a king from Dragon King. This god gave him an iron rod that became Monkey King's favorite weapon and which could turn into other things as well. Dragon King also gave him a cap made from the feathers of a phoenix, a vest of chain mail made of yellow god, and shoes made from lotus flowers that would allow him to walk on clouds.

Monkey King had even invaded Heaven a time or two. In Heaven, Jade Emperor once allowed Monkey King to watch over his garden of peaches. Monkey King had gone wild in that garden, eating all the peaches, breaking branches and making a great mess of the place. He ate Jade Emperor's meat dumplings and drank all of his wine, before becoming regretful of the disarray he had caused and running away.

Then, finally, Monkey King found what he was looking for. In the alchemical lab of Lao-Tzu, he came upon the elixir of immortality. Of course, Monkey King drank it. This is how he became immortal. At present, and after having lived for so long, he needed something new to see, something new to do and some new place to visit.

Where must I go? Monkey King considered this for a time. Perhaps he would visit Heaven again. He would have to be careful, as many of the gods in Heaven were still mad at him for previous transgressions. Thus, Monkey King left his cave where all of his subjects lived, hidden behind a waterfall. He climbed the Mountain of Fruits and Flowers where he was born, because it was the highest mountain in that land, and he looked far and wide for a place he had never been to before.

There, far, far to the north, there was a new place. Buddha once made a challenge to Monkey King, that if the monkey could jump across Buddha's hand, all of Heaven would become his. Several times, Monkey King had tried to cross that cosmic expanse by taking incredible leaps, but each time he had fallen on Buddha's fingers and failed to win the challenge. It was this very skill that Monkey King employed now. Adorned with his feathered cap, his golden armor and his lotus flower shoes, and with his iron rod in his hand, Monkey King made the mighty jump.

He landed in a place full of snow and ice. For a time, he searched about and saw nothing except white ground and black sea. It was a cold place that his furry form could barely stand being in, and very different from the forests and mountains he was used to back home. Then, in the distance, he saw a flurry of little men running back and forth, moving boxes and bags and equipment from one place to another. Novelty at last, thought Monkey King, as he bounded over the tundra until he landed among the little men.

One little man garbed in a green tunic and trousers stopped to look at him. He tugged at one end of his pointed green hat and scratched his head. "Who the hell are you?"

"I am the Monkey King. I have come to see something different than what I am accustomed to seeing."

The little man's voice was squeaky as he replied. "Have you tried looking into the mirror lately? That's a nice suit you have on. You don't think they have something like that in my size, do you?"

Monkey King looked behind the little man, wondering about the great hustle and bustle going on there. "What happens here? Why is everyone in such a hurry?"

The little man frowned. "I have to get back to work, except nobody knows what to do! Everything has gone crazy! Do you know where you are right now?"

"No."

"You're at the North Pole, buddy." The man replied. "Except guess what? The North Pole is gone! It just disappeared overnight! We're trying to find where it went, except we don't even know where to look! So we've got this guy Santa, right, he's our boss. He's out on his sled and flying around all over the place. He can't find the North Pole anywhere! He's been looking high and low for days now!"

"Why must the North Pole be found?" Monkey King asked.

"Well, duh, that's where all the presents are!" The little man shook his head, as if Monkey King should have known better. "You really are new around here, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

The little man frowned. "All right, all right! I'll give you the short and skinny version, on account of how we have a lot to do around here. We have these huge factories, right, where we make all kinds of toys. The factories didn't disappear, by the way. They're right over there, disguised as freshwater icebergs. Well, we make all these toys, and we wrap them up and hide them under a mountain. We do this all year, so that when Christmas comes along Santa can just pick them up and go drop them off. It is a good system; we've been doing it for hundreds of years now. The bad thing is that we are coming up on Christmas, and then the North Pole goes missing on us! The pole is gone, the mountain is gone and all the presents are gone! Basically, Santa has no presents to deliver and we don't have enough time to make new ones. A lot of people are going to be disappointed in Santa if he doesn't make good on his rounds this year."

"All of you little people are looking for the North Pole now?" Monkey asked.

"Little people?" The man asked. "We're not little people! We're little elves! Wait, I mean we're normal-size elves. We're not looking for the North Pole, because Santa and his reindeer are already doing that. What we're doing is moving our factories and our materials and our lists with people's names on them over to Iceland. Whatever happened to the North Pole, we don't want the same thing to happen to the rest of our operation."

"Dweedle, we need you!" Another little man, err, elf called out. "Stop talking to that monkey!"

"What do you need me for?" Dweedle asked.

"We're taking all the quantum telescopes apart!"

"Oh, right." Dweedle remembered. "I'm supposed to be watching the R & D lab right now. That's where I was going until I saw the monkey."

"Forget the monkey!" The elf ran off. "Hurry up and help us!"

Dweedle frowned once again as he turned to Monkey King. "I have to go now. Hey, you said you wanted to see something new, right? Have I got a treat for you, buddy! You see that little building shaped like a cube? That's where we do a lot of our research and development. We've got all sorts of gizmos and contraptions in there. You can play with all of that stuff, because that's what we do! Just make sure you read some of the manuals before you start goofing around. At the same time, you can be watching the place for me, since they told me to go watch it, but now they're telling me to go do something else. If you get tired, just get somebody else to take over for you. I'll come back to check on you later! See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!"

Dweedle bounded off, leaving Monkey King alone. Other elves glanced at him as they hurried by. Even a few giant penguins stared at him, before they hopped into the freezing ocean and swam away. Just seeing all that ice and water made Monkey King shiver, so he hurried over to get inside, where hopefully it would be warmer.

Professor Rudy

The holidays were tough to get through sometimes, Professor Rudy thought, as he lay there on his bed. He should have been asleep by then, because it was so late. Despite being in the dark and after a couple of beers, his sleep still chose to evade him.

Ever since Rudy had gone through his divorce, he had been through one failed relationship after another. They had all fallen apart like shattered glass, glass that could never be put back together again. Because Rudy was a thinker, he tried to analyze what was going wrong in his life, to pinpoint whether the fault was with him or with the women he ended up sharing beds with. At first, he'd taken to thinking that the specter of his ex-wife was haunting him, as if his level of happiness with that woman had been something lofty and ideal. Subconsciously, he was forcing his recent lovers to reach that level. When they couldn't there didn't seem to be any point in his staying with them.

Rudy thought he could solve this problem by turning away from women altogether. He'd taken a couple of male lovers, including a student of his from back when he was teaching Alternate History at the local university. He supposed it could be called a mid-life crisis that he'd opted for men instead of women, but that kind of novelty didn't last too long. The men were gone from his life, just like the women were, and for the last few months he'd been alone.

"At least I'm still working out." Rudy grumbled, to nothing but the darkness of his one room studio apartment.

He had a set of weights sitting right there across the room, which he used every other day. This gave the forty year-old Hispanic man something to look forward to, because there weren't that many other things cluttering up his days. Don't think about the loneliness, Rudy told himself, think about how defined your shoulders and arms are getting. Think about how your chest looks when you've got your wife-beater on.

"Who the hell am I kidding?" Rudy sighed. "I've got my lousy job and my fucking weights and that's it. I keep telling myself that it's okay that I'm single, but mostly its because I don't have any choice."

The solitude was complete, until Rudy got a whiff of something tropical in his room. It had the smell of a strong fragrance, like citrus and pineapple and coconut all mixed in with woodsy and flowery smells. He sniffed it in, wondering if he might have slipped into a lucid dream, except he hadn't one of those in a couple of months. When the smell didn't go away but got stronger, Rudy sat up in his bed. The light switch was only a few feet away on the wall, so he reached over and flipped it on. The light flooded his eyes for a few seconds, before he acclimatized to the glare and took a look around. He had two armchairs in his apartment, and there was a very strange looking creature sitting in one of them now.

"I am the ghost of Christmas present." The creature said. "Do you believe me?"

"You're the what?" Rudy asked. "The ghost of... No, I don't believe you! I'm having some kind of weird lucid dream where I'm talking to a monkey. What do you want, monkey?"

Rudy watched as the monkey scratched under its armpit, like a person would scratch at the top of their head.

"The manual said I should pretend to be the ghost of Christmas present." The monkey shrugged at him. "I don't think it is working well."

Rudy had his slippers on the floor beside his bed. After leaning over the edge, he picked one up and threw it at the monkey. The monkey caught the slipper before it smacked him and dropped it on the carpet.

"If I turn the light off, will you still be there?" Rudy asked.

"Unless I decide to leave, the answer is yes."

In order to test out his theory, Rudy turned the light off. "Are you still there?"

"No." The monkey replied.

"That's a lie!" Rudy switched the light back on. "Bad monkey! If you were gone, you wouldn't be able to say anything, would you?"

The monkey scratched itself for a few moments, before it pulled what looked like a small remote control out of its shiny golden clothes.

"What's that?" Rudy wondered.

"Oh, this is a device I picked up a short time ago." The monkey held the thing up so Rudy could see it. "There is a manual for this device, but I'm afraid that it wasn't very thorough, or very helpful. One of the guidelines suggested learning how to operate this device on the fly, because it would be more fun that way."

"Okay, so what were you trying to do?"

"I went looking for a person in need, and I found you." The monkey admitted. "You see, one of these buttons allows me to speak out in words what sort of person I want to find, and the device will seek that person out. I chose to find a person in need. Another button will take me back to the North Pole where I got this device. I know which button that is because it is large and red. I don't remember what the button is that allows me to be seen or not seen because there are so many of them."

"That sounds totally logical." Rudy said, sarcastically. "Why don't you go back where you came from so I can try and go to sleep?"

"I came here to help you."

"Help me what?"

"I don't know." The monkey shrugged again. "I am supposed to ask many questions and not to give away what my intentions are. Since you don't believe that I am the figure I pretend to be, it throws my plan out of true."

"Did you come out of my beer bottle?"

"No, I came from the North Pole."

"Right. You said that already, so it must be true because that really makes sense. Let me see if I have this straight. You have that thing in your hand, but you don't know how to use it. You came here to help me, but you have to do it in a way where I don't know what's going on. Why can't you just help me straight out?"

"Because in your perspective, it looks like I came from nowhere. You were supposed to think I am part of your imagination, except that part did not go as planned. My part in this is to ask the right questions until you reveal to me what is causing the most distress in your life. Once I learn that, I can use the device to help you."

Rudy shook his head. "I only had a couple of beers and now I'm seeing monkeys with a savior complex. Well, since I'm pretty sure this is a lucid dream, let's go along with that. You want to know what's causing the most distress in my life? I have a crap job with a crap boss, and I'm sick and tired of that!"

"Will a new place of work make you happy, or a new captain?"

"Captain? You mean a boss, right? Yeah, if you could swing either one of those that would be sweet."

Studiously, the monkey looked at its remote control.

"What are you doing now?" Rudy asked.

"I will find a better place of work for you."

"Because you can really do that?"

"Yes." The monkey replied. "In the same way that I can travel from the North Pole to here, I can ask this device to rearrange the fabric of destiny so that you will find a happy workplace soon."

"Right." Rudy chuckled. "Wait, wait! If you're like a magic genie or something, forget about finding me a new job. I should be able to do that by myself. I've got something else that you can do for me. I want you to find me a woman who will make me happy."

"That is impossible."

"Why? Am I that bad?"

"The emotions of people cannot be manipulated." The monkey explained. "There was a walk-through in the manual for this type of request. First we must find out why you are so unhappy."

"I was happy when I was married, but I've been largely unhappy ever since I got divorced."

"You wish to return to this same woman?"

"No." Rudy denied. "We were compatible once, but not any more. My entire life is different now. I don't want to go back to that same life I once had."

The monkey hopped off the seat and stepped into the middle of the room. It said, "I can take you to see her. Do not be afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I will take you into the dream dimension, and I will open up a portal that will allow you to see this woman you were once partnered with. The manual told me that this will be a very jarring experience for some people."

"You don't know who you're talking to here." Rudy grinned, as he left the comfort of his bed. He was dressed only in his boxers. "I can go all over the place in my lucid dreams. I can even meet people in my lucid dreams before I meet them in real life. What do I have to do this time?'

"The process is supposed to remain a secret." The monkey answered. "Since I have already mentioned the device to you, I suppose I can tell you more. You must simply stand at my side and look in the same direction I am looking in."

"No problem." Rudy shrugged his manly shoulders.

"You must close your eyes now." The monkey told him.

"Why?"

"Because then you will not see me pushing the right button on the device."

"But I already know about the device."

"This is true." The monkey acknowledged. "In that case, you may keep your eyes open. I will push the button now."

Rudy didn't really expect anything to happen, but it did. Instead of remaining in his brightly lit room, he suddenly found that he was somewhere else entirely. It was a very dark place, or maybe it was only dark because he'd been in a bright spot right before that. He said, "Good dream."

"There is a dimness setting on this device." The monkey told him. "It will brighten the room for us, but keep the room dark for those we are visiting now."

As Rudy watched, a soft glow began to form up around them. It was like an aura of pale yellow light. He realized he and the monkey were standing in somebody's bedroom. There was the usual furniture like a dresser and mirror, and also a standing wardrobe that looked like an antique. To one side of the room sat a queen-size bed. As the amount of light increased, he saw that two people were sleeping there. Intrigued, Rudy went over to have a closer look.

"You are not able to disturb them." The monkey cautioned. "You can only see them with your eyes but not touch them with your hands."

"That's my ex-wife." Rudy discovered, seeing first the woman and next the man sleeping next to her. "Don't worry, monkey. I'm not going to pull her hair or anything. I guess that's the guy she's with now, huh? He's a white guy. She thought I was going to start some shit with him if I knew who he was. I didn't really care back then. I still don't. We had something good before, but that's gone now. Know what I'm saying?"

"Go on."

"Why go on?" Rudy turned back to the monkey and shrugged. "That's all I really have to say about her. She's in my past now."

"The more you talk about your distress, the more opportunity I have to come up with a solution for it."

"Is that right? Well," He pointed at the woman on the bed. "Me and her, we're done. Any solution for me will not include her. For my own personal curiosity, if either of them woke up and saw us standing here, would they even be able to see us?"

"They would see us as fleeting shadows." The monkey held up his device. "This distorts reality so that no true sight can be realized. If there is a woman that you would like to see, I can take you to her next."

"Somebody that I like?" Rudy pointed at his chest. "I don't like anybody. Half the time I'm okay with being single, but the other half I'm not. I'm more of a cat than a dog right now. Do you know what that means?"

"No."

"A dog needs to be around somebody all the time. A cat comes around when it feels like it, and then it walks away when it feels like it. Can your little gizmo find me a cat woman like that?'