Aurora - Way of the Goddess Pt. 07

"Well if you're still banging on about it in six months time I might take you seriously."

"And what about Vicky?"

Watson looked over his belly at the top of Beck's head, bobbing up and down as she worked her magic between baseless allegations and public announcements. Head up, she ran her tongue all the way down the underside of his penis to his balls and gave them a loving suck. Hand on the top of her head, the old man arched his back as she took him down her gullet. "What about her?" he rasped.

Beck hefted a shoulder. "Mmm nnn nnn."

"What?"

Beck looked up. "I don't know. Maybe we can play mummies and mummies one day."

"Don't even think about it." the old man growled. "Bad enough she just broke her vow of chastity. Don't go putting that other stuff on her plate."

"What other stuff?"

"You know what other stuff. Most women just aren't into that sort of thing."

"Most women are as matter of fact. I read an article. It said that seventy percent of chicks find other chicks attractive."

"Seventy percent, ten percent, ninety nine point bloody nine. But not Vicky. I'm warning you, that sort of thing could really fuck with her head."

"She kissed me in the pool."

"She thought you'd drowned!"

"On the mouth."

"The kiss of life, Rebekah. CPR."

"Her leg was between mine. She was squishing my pussy."

Watson's cock gave a jump. "She was just holding you up, Moosh. I'm telling you, don't go getting your hopes up." He looked at the clock, wondering whether to call reception to ask Vicky's room number, when Beck sat up and threw a leg over his thighs. A minute ago he was contemplating bribing her just to let him have the rest of the night off, now here he was, reinvigorated, cock pointing straight up, straining to get at Beck's engorged pussy. She hadn't been just watching, it transpired, but fingers didn't pack half the punch of a nice, big, dick. Wrapping her hand around him, she ploughed her slit with his knob a few times, then placed it in her entrance and bore down.

His cock hypersensitised by the marathon of the past few days, Watson threw his head back in a mixture of pleasure and pain. Feet flat on the mattress, Beck rose to a squat as Watson gripped her waist. Beck doubled over, looking in wonder at the sight of the big stiff dick disappearing into her body between the bulging lips of her sex. She raised her eyes. "But what if she does?"

"Does what? Who? Jesus Christ, can't you see I'm busy?"

Beck tightened her muscles around his erection. "Vicky. What if she does like girls?"

"You're dreaming! Aww... Becky, that feels fantastic."

"But really? What if she does?"

"Then I'll walk naked to the Cape."

"What about me?"

"What about you?"

"Can I fuck her?"

"We'll see for fuck's sake. Now for crying out loud, shut the hell up and fuck me."

* * *

The morning was breathless and the air was still cool, but promising a scorcher as the sun rose to fill more and more of the sky. Armies of the city's civil-servant drones, one to a car, streamed grim-faced out of the suburbs bound for their offices. Picking a break in the traffic, Watson jogged across four lanes of blacktop to a small, red-gravelled amphitheatre surrounded by trees. Dressed in boardshorts and a tatty grey T-shirt, he knelt to re-tie the laces of his battered old running shoes then did some random, half-hearted stretching in preparation for the torture to come.

Vicky appeared a few moments later, dressed in high cut running shorts and a loose, light blue singlet over a dark-blue, figure-hugging running bra. Head down, she trotted across the road, as Watson opened his arms with a great big smile. "Good morning, Gorgeous, how did you-"

"Don't talk to me." Vicky snapped, barging straight past him.

"-sleep? What?"

"I am fallen. Don't talk to me."

Watson caught her arm and spun her around looking for cuts and abrasions. "Where did you fall, Sweetheart?"

"In your room," she snarled, "now let me go!"

Vicky took three or four short steps then broke into a run as Watson swung in beside her feeling like he'd just been punched. "Are you for real?"

"Please, Damon. Just leave me alone."

"Well that's very rude. Can we at least act like adults and talk about this?"

"There's nothing to talk about. First of all I drank alcohol. Then let the devil in."

"That's a bit harsh." Watson huffed, struggling to keep up. "I'm no angel, I'll admit, but the devil?"

"I don't mean you!" Vicky snapped, taking a hard right onto the lakeside pathway trying to shake him off. "You're not to blame. I led us both down the path of sin, so I'm doubly damned."

She upped the pace as they ran past a decorative Chinese gate, its ski-jump roof decorated with glazed enamel tiles. Loitering on the manicured grass, a gaggle of bronze cranes watched them leg it past a flying Chinese horse, following the water's edge, heading east. "I'm quite capable..." Watson puffed, hanging on for dear life, "of looking after... my own sinning thanks."

Vicky was pushing ahead with long, powerful strides and Watson, whose last running had been from his wife, was almost sprinting to keep up. "Vick... Macca... Sweetheart... can't we... just slow down a bit and... have a talk?"

"There's nothing to talk about." she raged. "I FORNICATED!"

"Yes," Watson nodded, feeling stung, "we did have an excellent time, didn't we?"

Vicky screeched to a teetering halt and turned on him, her shapely chest heaving. "This is all just one great big joke to you, isn't it?"

"Seeing you distressed like this? No. It's not a joke."

"Have you any idea what this means for me?" Vicky seethed, then put her head down and set off again.

"Not really, no." Watson replied, taking up the chase.

"Of course not. You're not of the faith."

"So can you tell me, or is it some sort of cult secret?"

"No. I'll tell you. Now I have to face the congregation. Now I have to face my husband-to-be. And if that's not bad enough I have to face Pastor Neil. After all his hard work I've gone and done it again. I've betrayed him. I've betrayed him, I've betrayed my fiancé, and worst of all I've betrayed God."

"Hang on," Watson puffed, "haven't we been through this? This god guy's omniscient, right? So he already knew. He knew you were going to come to my room, he knew we were going to have sex. How can it be a betrayal if he already knew?"

"Because He gave me free will!" Vicky railed. "He gave me two paths to choose from and I chose the wrong one."

"Ah," Watson sneered, pounding along beside her, flirting with a cardiac arrest, "the old Free Willy. You know, I'm thinking of using that little disclaimer myself. If I create... a script... that turns out to be crap... I'll just blame the script. It was perfect when I wrote it. If it reads like shit it's because it chose to read like shit. No more rewrites for me!" he gave a big thumbs-up, "Nice one, god!"

Vicky put the brakes on again and for an instant looked like she might hit him. "Damon don't! Do not mock God, not in my presence. I find it really, really offensive. And don't go making fun of me either. I'm on the path to hell, it's no laughing matter."

Watson made a grand production of looking around. "You sure? Looks like an ordinary old bike path to me."

"Very funny."

"Oh, lighten up."

"Easy for you to say. You don't have to pay the ultimate price."

Watson patted make-believe pockets. "How much?"

Vicky put her face in his and narrowed her eyes. "Eternal separation from God. That's how much. The greatest price of all."

"Ask nicely," Watson shrugged, "maybe he'll give you a discount. In fact, tell you what, why don't we just go halves like last night?"

Vicky looked like she'd just stepped in dog mess. "Don't be disgusting."

"So now I'm disgusting?" Watson replied, on the brink of just walking away. "You know flattery will get you nowhere."

"No," she said, "you're right. That was uncalled for. Especially since it was all my fault."

"Takes two to tango, Love."

"Maybe. But I started it. Now I've just squandered eternity for a moment's empty gratification. What a waste."

"Empty gratification?" Watson bridled. "Thanks a bunch."

Vicky stared at the ground, lost in a world of her own. "Pastor said this might happen." she lamented. "I'm weak, he said. I'm defective. He's right. I blew it. I should have been more vigilant. I should have gone back my room. I should have had soft drink instead of that b... blinky Champagne."

"Should'a, would'a, could'a," Watson shrugged, "three most useless words in the English language."

Vicky shook her head mournfully. "Most of all I should have steered clear of Alana."

"Alana?" Watson frowned. "What's that poor girl got to do with it?"

"She's the one who kept making me drink Champagne. Every time I go near that girl she tries to lead me astray. God sent her to test me, I'm sure of it."

"In which case god's an asshole." Watson glared. "Alana hasn't got a bad bone in her body so don't go blaming her. If you really must blame someone blame me. It's my fault, Vicky. I knew you were... vulnerable... it was wrong to take advantage of you."

"It wasn't your fault, Damon," Vicky toed the ground, "it was mine. I pretty much asked for it. In fact as far as I recall I pretty much insisted."

"Yes you were quite... keen." Watson nodded. "Still, what happens in Canberra stays in Canberra. I'm sorry you're regretting it now in the cold light of day, but let's just go our separate ways and you can forget it."

"Forget it?" Vicky demanded, aghast. "It was a mortal sin, Damon. How can I just forget it?"

"It was sex, Vicky. Tab 'A' into slot 'B'. Lots of people do it. You didn't murder anyone. You didn't spit in anyone's beer. And look, to be brutally honest, you seemed to have a pretty good time."

"Good time?" Vicky cried. "I adored every minute. So what sort of filthy harlot does that make me?"

"It doesn't make you any sort. It just makes you a normal, healthy young woman with perfectly normal drives."

Vicky rounded on him. "Can you hear what you're saying? I just fornicated. Out of wedlock. And you're making out like it was just a... just a..."

"Just a bit of harmless fun? Yes."

Vicky was having none of it. "I've sinned." she said, determined to drag her cross through hell and high water. "I've fallen in the eyes of God and my congregation."

"Well god needs to take a chill-pill and it's none of your congregation's frikken' business. Look... do you mind me asking? I mean... last night?"

"What about it?"

"Was that your first time?" Watson asked and held his breath.

"First time?" Vicky echoed. "That's none of your blinky business."

"Come on," he chided, "we're both on the red-eye to hell according to you. You're not going to make it any worse by squaring with me."

"Well, I've sinned once before if you really must know."

Watson nodded, feeling ever so slightly let-down. "Who was the lucky ba... person?"

"A boy I met at Bible Camp." Vicky mumbled. "We'd just broken a one-week fast and I was in his tent after communion. We were talking about the Lord, how he suffered for our sins, and the miracle of the resurrection. And, well, you know..."

'Only too well', Watson thought. A Middle Eastern mystic wasn't the only thing to rise. "How was it?" he asked.

She glanced at him out the corner of her eye then looked away, plainly embarrassed. "Terrible." she said. "He only lasted a few seconds before he... well..."

"And you survived?"

"Pardon?"

"You did this terrible thing and yet, here you are."

"Only by the grace of God." Vicky railed. "And Pastor Neil. He raised me up out of my sin and cleansed my soul."

"Cleansed it, eh? Like at the local soul wash or something?"

"Be as flippant as you like." Vicky sniffed. "Truth is I did forty days penitence, exiled from the congregation, sleeping on the floor, taking only bread and water for sustenance."

"He starved you?"

"He was helping me to conquer my carnal appetites."

"How old were you?"

Vicky looked at the ground again and shrugged. "Fourteen."

Watson's jaw dropped. "That creep starved a fourteen year old kid? How come he isn't rotting in jail?"

Vicky rallied her indignation. "He's not a creep! He was doing it for my own good."

"Really? And what about lover-boy?"

"What about him?"

"Was he hung drawn and quartered as well? For his own good?"

"Of course not. It was me who led him astray. Pastor held a vigil to help with his healing."

"His healing?" Watson demanded aghast. "From the soul-crushing devastation of having nailed a fourteen year old virgin? While you were in solitary? Living on bread and water?"

"He was a youth leader, Damon." Vicky said then turned and walked away. "Until I came along and ruined his life."

A black swan watched them pass with imperious disdain, while its mate delved the turbid waters, bottom up, foraging for snacks. "You're shitting me, right? Who wrote the rules for this bloody club and where do I join?"

"God did," Vicky replied flatly, "and you join by opening your heart to Jesus."

"God wrote them, did he? What did he use? A crayon? A hammer and chisel? Microsoft Word?"

Vicky stopped abruptly. Her eyes were like green lasers and a little trickle of sweat ran down the angle of her clenched jaw. "We're talking about the Bible, Damon." she breathed, "The word of God! Don't be so dashed disrespectful."

"No. We're talking about a Bronze-age science-fiction porno. God wrote it? Bahh! It was cooked up by a bunch of sand-dwelling old malcontents, to control men, crush women and destroy nature with divine impunity. I've written more convincing scripts for boilerplate soapies."

A tear mingled with Vicky's running sweat. "And just what do you think you'll achieve by that? By belittling something I hold so dear?"

"Your liberation from two thousand years of suffocating superstition. It's a long shot, I grant you, but I have to at least try."

Turning away, Vicky set off again, but the steam had gone out of her and she was sobbing quietly as she ran.

Watson draped an arm over her shoulders and eased her to a stop. "I'm sorry, Sweetheart, I didn't mean to make you cry."

Vicky put her face in her hands. "It's all had, Damon. My faith. And now I've forsaken it."

Watson gave her shoulders a gentle shake. "It's not all you had, Sweetheart. Come on. Lift your little head and look around." Vicky shook her head, sniffling through her tears, and Watson stroked her chestnut hair. "Feel that? Your hair's all nice and warm."

Vicky shrugged. "So what?"

"It feels lovely." Lifting her chin, Watson pulled the hem of his T-shirt up and held it to her nose. "Come on, Macca, blow."

Too defeated to argue, the young woman trumpeted tear-snot into the bunched grey fabric.

"Can you feel that sun on your pretty little head?" Watson said.

Vicky nodded, crying, eyes downcast.

"Well? What's the bible got to say about that?"

"About what?"

"The sun?"

Vicky squinted at him through her tears. "W... w... what do you mean?"

"The sun!" Watson gestured at the great plasmic orb. "That big old light up there in the sky. What's the bible say about it? Hmm? God reckons he made it, so what's he say about the Sun in his book? Humans have written volumes about it so surely god could spare it a couple of lines? In the good book? Anything?"

"Umm..." Vicky frowned, "well, the Bible says, 'The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises'? And... 'God made the two great lights— the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night- and the stars'?"

"That's it?"

"It's just the sun, Damon. What more do you want?"

"Just the sun? Are you serious?"

Vicky threw her hands up in exasperation. "What do you hope to achieve with all this waffle? It's the sun. God created it to provide us with light."

"Did he now? So what's it made of? Come on. Coal? Petrol? Uranium?"

Vicky looked around uneasily, wondering where this prattle was leading. "Isn't it some sort of gas?"

"Top marks, it is indeed. What sort of gas?"

Vicky shrugged. "Propane maybe? Something flammable? I have no idea. Why? Is it important?"

"Important? Life on Earth only exists because of the sun. No sun, so life."

"Well no, actually. God-"

"Well no, actually, not god. Vicky, listen to me. You say god wrote the bible?"

"No. The Bible is the word of God."

"Same bloody diff. Look, if god made the sun what's the recipe? I mean, there must be something in that stupid bloody book, surely."

"It's not stupid!" Vicky glared, clearly annoyed, "And the truth is only God knows. Many things in the universe aren't meant to be known."

"It's mostly hydrogen." Watson said flatly. "The lightest and most abundant of the elements. It's a big ball of hydrogen, around one point four million kilometres in diameter. In the core of the sun, hydrogen atoms are squeezed together under immense heat and pressure until they fuse into the next element, helium. Only the mass of the helium is slightly less than the sum of its parts, and the missing mass is converted to energy according to Einstein's equation, E equals M C squared."

Vicky stared at him, dumbfounded. "You're making it up."

"Most kids learn this kind of stuff in kindergarten. At least the ones who aren't having their heads crammed full of religious bullshit." Pausing, he looked up as a rescue helicopter clattered noisily overhead, bound for the mountains. "Ooo," he pointed, "look at the helicopter god made."

Vicky shrugged. "I'm not biting, Damon."

"Tell me, Vicky. Did you do science at school?"

"Of course. Physics, Creation, Intelligent Design. The normal stuff."

"You went to a religious school?"

"What else?"

"Well that explains it. Did they teach you anything about Darwin's theory of evolution?"

"Yep." Vicky nodded. "We learnt all about Darwin's heresies. How they were finally disproved by irreducible complexity."

"Heresies?"

"Uh huh. Darwin was a devil worshiper who fornicated with animals."

"Who told you that?"

"Pastor Neil. He said the theory of evolution was Darwin's attempt to lure us away from God. He said the creation of man by random chance was about as likely as a tornado tearing through a junkyard and creating a Boeing 747."

"Which pre-supposes the existence of 747s." Watson scoffed. Reaching out, he picked up Vicky's slender arm. "Listen, Vicky. What sort of life form are you?"

Vicky pulled firmly but away. "Please, Damon, I think I've heard enough."

"Just humour me. What sort of life form are you?"

"I don't even understand the question."

"Well let me help you. You're a carbon-based life form. Most of your molecules contain the element carbon. So where did the carbon come from, and if you say 'god' I'll throw you in the lake."

Vicky clutched her hands defensively to her chest. "I don't know, Damon! I don't know!"

"You mean it's not in the bloody bible? That's odd, it must have slipped his omnipotent's mind. Allow me to make up for the all-powerful's little oversight. The carbon you're made of was created in the core of a supermassive sun. It went supernova sometime prior to five billion years ago and exploded. Our solar system was created out of its scattered remains and so, eventually, were you. Congratulations, Vicky. You are literally star-stuff."

"Look... mate, if I wan't science fiction I'll go and watch Star Wars."

"Except it's not fiction. Here, star-girl, tell me this. Why does ice float? I mean everything else contracts when it cools but ice expands. Why is that? And yes, it's important, very important, because if ice didn't float, the oceans would freeze from the bottom up and we'd be cactus."

Vicky gripped the hair at her temples. "Why are you doing this, Damon? My world's just turned upside down and now you're trying to fill my head with garbage."