Brain Games Ch. 04

Jacob was sitting up in bed, laptop open, books strewn about.

"Hi Zach," he said, lost in his project.

Zach took out his own laptop and settled in at his desk. His entire body was pulsing and crackling with aliveness. He was not going to work on any paper. He was going to figure out what the hell was going on. He was hoping for a cell number, but the class syllabus only had an email address.

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Dear Professor Enkins,

It worked, but maybe too well. I can't control this. I need guidance.

-Zachary Pollum

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Zach leaned back, in wonder and some awe at what had taken place, but he also kept returning to this question: "Who am I?"

Within only a few minutes an email returned.

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Zechariah:

Good work. Straight A's from here on out. Better than expected. 9:30am tomorrow at my office, but before that, listen to the attached recording. Headphones on. Serious!

-E

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Zach put on his earbuds and opened the attached mp3.

"You're doing great," Professor Enkins said. "Now, rest your eyes for a moment."

When Zach opened his eyes, he realized that time had passed, but it was like a deep afternoon nap. For a moment he was dazed, uncertain even where he was. His laptop was open, and a text editor was open with the professor's email cut and pasted.

Zach went back to his email, but it was gone. The trash was emptied. He couldn't find the audio file in his download folder. He frowned.

He felt within himself, was that strange power still there? Just relaxing and opening to it, he felt it held within like a million volts of lightning. What the hell was on that recording? Zach was curious, and worried.

He shut his eyes and relaxed, trying to remember. No memories came, but he immediately felt Jacob working away. Jacob was irritated with himself and his writing, he felt like he was doing a crappy job, writing the same drab stuff, words like mush. But he also wanted to be done with it. He was lusting after Ava at the same time.

Zach felt Ava: where was she? Somewhere. But he remembered her sounds in the night, and he felt her somewhere, laughing with friends, not thinking about Jacob at all.

Zach felt Maddy: she was in a fiery state, part angry with Zach, part angry with herself, mostly eager for whatever came next. Part of her was also enjoying the delay, and appreciating his self control. It was a complex swirl of emotions. Zach could tell, Maddy was power walking through the campus.

He relaxed more, letting his awareness float, trying to stay out of his mind's curiosity, and simply float in a spacious attention.

There was another energy, a connection. A woman, a student, in a room, alone, eagerly touching herself. Zach could feel her fantasy: she held images in her mind of lying naked in the grass, her legs spread, surrounded by men and women watching her. Zach was startled to see his own face prominently among them. In her imagination, it was Zach who parted the crowd and stepped forward, unzipping his pants.

What was this? Who was this?

She imagined pressing her hips up invitingly as imaginary Zach dropped to all fours and pressed his mouth into her pussy.

It clicked; this was the girl from the lawn. She had been horrified, panicked, and now she was enjoying taking the memory even further.

Zach felt himself throbbing. He brought himself out of the reverie, and began writing:

- What is happening to me?

- How much of this is imagination?

- Is anything real?

- Can I control this?

- Am I going to hurt Maddy?

He lingered on this last one. She had been very clear with him. Very mature. More mature than him. Maybe he shouldn't worry about that.

He wrote: What if this is real?

Zach had loved the Narnia books. He remembered the professor laying it out: either she is lying, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. Either my own mind is lying to me, or I am mad, or it is real. The first two are basically the same thing. So, either I am mad, or it is real. If I'm mad, there's not really anything I can do about it, so I should treat it as if it is real.

Zach shut his laptop with a satisfying snap. It was clear.

It was time to experiment.

Shadows had begun to stretch across the quad. Some sought the sun, and some sought the shade.

"I'm going out," Zach said. Jacob startled awake.

"Dammit," he said. "This is complete trash. I hate this paper."

"I might need the room tonight," Zach said.

"Really?" Jacob looked up, startled. "Good for you! Ava and I are going to meet up with some folks at Downlo Pizza, probably hang late. Figure I'll stay out til midnight or one, sound ok?"

"Sure."

* * *

Zach took a strategic spot on one of the stone benches, letting the sun soak into him, inviting that soft sense of blissful openness. He was getting more comfortable with it. In only a few minutes he was feeling the space around himself, and the people in his life. Maddy was sitting somewhere, watching the river. Ava was applying makeup. The lawn girl was taking a shower.

Real? Imagination? Madness?

Zach put the thoughts away.

Looking around, he selected the subject for his experiment. A blond, lying in the sun, in her bikini. She was face down, and very shapely. Tight, round, butt. Some luscious side-boob against her towel. Her face was turned away.

Zach drank in the shape of her, and then relaxed more deeply. He took deep breaths, holding the breath in, and holding it out. He started to visualize her, but remembered the futility of that, and let go, reaching out with his attention in a different way. He listened. The babbling sound of voices, laughter, birds. A plane passing overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a helicopter. A siren. The campus wasn't that far from civilization. He softened into all of it, but letting his awareness center in that area twenty feet in front of him, a blond girl on a towel.

It took some time for the connection to happen, and his thoughts tried to intrude several times: "See, just imagination. You're trying to hard. You're not trying hard enough. It's gone."

But it drifted into place, and Zach began to feel the warm, drowsy state within her body. She was half-dreaming, lingering on images of her home. She was missing her dog, a golden retriever, and imagining playing with him, throwing a stick across the quad for him to fetch.

Zach saw how slippery it was, she wasn't having any erotic feelings for him to connect to. He filed that away for future consideration, and simply stayed with her sensations, drawing his attention to how warm and heavy she felt, the sun soaking into her. Her dreamy mind continued to float through various images of home, her kitchen, watching tv with her family, remembering various conversations with her parents, with friends from home.

Eventually, Zach settled on a way of caressing her attention back to the sensations of her body. He found that as he centered his attention on her sensations, it would tug very slightly at her awareness. Stroke by stroke, he felt the shape of breasts against the towel, her hips pressed to the earth, the warmth on back soaking in and feeling more and more delicious.

Finally, he felt her begin to move her hips, ever so slightly, pressing her hips harder against the earth.

Checking himself against reality, he very slightly opened his eyes; yes, her glutes were tensing and relaxing just a little. If he wasn't looking for it, he would have seen it.

He felt her relax into a rising warmth within herself, as she slowly and softly began to grind.

Zach had to very carefully relax himself. A few times he almost lost the connection simply by getting excited himself and trying to imagine her doing more. It simply didn't work that way. Imagining happened in his head. Acting in this field of awareness was slower, much more subtle.

The girl adjust something: she added a fold to the towel, giving herself something a little more substantive to press against. She found her best angle on it and slowly rocked her hips against the fold of the towel.

He felt her arousal suffusing through her hips. The energy spreading and rising through her body, her breath quickening.

And then things shifted.

Something went out from him, not from his thinking mind from some other part of his brain.

"Come here," this part of him commanded.

She got up, leaving her towel (and glasses, and a book, he now saw). She sat beside him on the bench, still completely dreamy, delicious sexy warmth flowing through her insides.

Zach watched himself speak.

"Look at me," he said.

She did: gentle green-brown eyes. "Hi," she said with a lazy, almost drunken slowness.

"Meet me right here tomorrow morning at 9:20. We have an appointment. It isn't strange at all. You won't mention it to anyone."

"Ok," she said.

"You're done now. You probably have a lot of studying to do tonight."

"I do," she said.

She stood, shook herself awake, and gracefully walked back to pick up her things and head into the dorm.

The moment passed, and Zach grabbed the edge of the bench, feeling the rough texture of the stone and the warmth of it under his grip. What the fuck was that? Where did that come from?

But he knew. He was going to take her to meet Professor Enkins.

How much of this is me? What am I?

* * *

Zach sat for some time, trying not to panic. Instead, he tried to use the softness of awareness on himself, to feel inward, rather than outward, but there was nothing to grip onto.

Eventually, the quad wholly in shadow, Zach returned to the dorm.

Maddy was hanging out with a group in the common area, but no card game was in action. She saw him come off the elevator as if she had been watching for him. She signaled at him to follow and went toward her room, which was on a different hallway from his own.

The chairs were still facing each other. He could feel the fiery energy of her crackling. Something had shifted since he last checked in.

"Zach: I really appreciate what you did this morning. That took a lot of guts."

"Okay, I feel this is going somewhere bad."

"No!" she didn't laugh. She held with a very convincing gaze, but she softened. "No, I just... I don't want to play games."

"Games?"

She shrugged, "Whatever you want to call it. Cutting us off like that, telling me not to touch myself. It's a power play of some sort. It's some kind of BDSM thing right? I don't want to play that stuff. On the one hand, it was the right thing, let's not rush into this, we don't need to rush into anything. But on the other hand, if we are going to explore together, I just want to be who we really are."

Zach really wanted to know who he was. If only he could answer that for her! Instead he nodded.

"Yeah, to be honest, I don't know quite what came over me there. But you're right, that doesn't feel like me, does it."

"I don't know, Zach. We don't need to know. This is what we are here to figure out, right? Who are we? What do we like? What do we want? I'll tell you something: I don't even know if I maybe prefer girls. I said I had more experience than you. It was with a girl. I really liked it, but... she played games. And I didn't like that. So maybe now you get me a little better."

"I do hear you, totally," Zach said. "I was writing in my journal after that, and I wrote that I think you are more mature than me. I think that's why I said I don't want to hurt you; I don't even know what I am."

Tears filled her eyes, and she reached for his hands.

"Ok, Zach, it's ok. Let's just let this day go, let's go play cards. And let's see what tomorrow feels like, ok?"

"Sounds good."

* * *

It was a perfect Friday night for the card players of the Edgar G. Simmons Dormitory, and Zach went to bed early, feeling like his usual self for the first time in what seemed like a long while.

In the night, however, Jacob and Ava stumbled back into the room.

Not again! Is this going to be the norm from now on?

They seemed a little drunker than the night before, and certainly less quiet.

"He said he was getting lucky tonight," Jacob whispered.

"He's alone in the bed, though," Ava hissed back.

"Sleeping though, right? He always goes to sleep early."

Ava walked unsteadily over to Zach and bent over him. He held himself perfectly still, forcing his breath to stay natural, keeping his eyes open just a sliver.

She went back. "Yep, out like a light."

"Good, cause you know why."

The shades were not fully shuttered, and with a bit more light than the previous night, Zach had no trouble seeming them as they stripped off their clothes.

Jacob had a thick, soft cock, and Ava knelt to give it some attention.

Zach could see her breasts sway as she bobbed her mouth against Jacob's belly, at first sucking all of his soft cock into her mouth, and then just attending to the head as his erection grew.

Zach had always been a bit envious of Jacob's larger cock, but he had to acknowledge it was an impressive sight as it grew under Ava's ministrations.

He felt his own arousal leap within him, and all the power of that coiled energy suddenly surge through him. He felt them both, through and through. With all that erotic energy, there was a lot for him to hold on to: he felt Ava's hunger. God, she really loves cock! She was incredibly turned on by holding and tasting Jacob. Zach felt her heat, her wetness, her urgency.

Jacob was a little dizzy with the alcohol, and his cock only half aroused. It was a tiny nudge, and Jacob sat down. "You know Ava, I think I drank too much. I feel super sleepy."

"No!" she hissed.

But with one more nudge from Zach's attention, Jacob was lying back across the bed, his breath shallow with sleep.

"Dammit," Ava hissed. "I'm just going to leave you like that."

She stood and shrugged into her shirt.

Zach felt her frustration, and it was just a nudge there, too, to boost the intense arousal under that frustration.

She sat on the bed, gently stroking herself.

She pushed Jacob, but got no response. She pushed him again. "Dammit. You didn't drink that much!"

Zach felt into the sensation of her body, and tried what he had done with the blond girl. Stroking Ava's attention down, stoking the pleasure, letting his attention focus hers. She began to really finger herself, spreading her legs for him and rubbing herself all over. She had a thin landing strip and although he couldn't see her wetness, he could hear it, and with his attention lingering at the rising urgency of her pleasure, he could feel it.

"Fuck," she said.

Zach felt the surge of an orgasm rising in her, and he found he could nudge that too, keeping it just out of her reach.

"Dammmm," she said, rubbing herself more vigorously.

Jacob began to snore blissfully.

Zach felt his own throbbing erection and he directed the powerful energy of it between himself and Ava.

With her pleasure continuing to build, and a desperate urgency for release growing, it was easy for him to strip her mind of all thought.

She walked back across the narrow dorm room and tentatively pulled aside Zach's covers.

He stirred a little, still feigning sleep.

She gasped when she saw his hard erection.

"That's more like it," she whispered.

And just like that, she put her mouth on him.

Zach had never felt anything like it before. A soapy hand in the shower was nothing compared to Ava's warm mouth, nimble tongue, and hungry, slurping sounds.

He could feel her, kneeling by his bedside, sliding her fingers over herself, circling her clitoris like she was orbiting the sun.

Zach thought he was going to explode instantly, but he knew that would break the spell, create problems. But Ava was slurping at him. He felt her desire to ride him.

And something shifted.

Zach could still feel Ava drinking at his cock, but there was another presence there. Was he dreaming now?

The woman with dark gold skin, with streaming black hair, with breath-taking wide hips and full breasts all accentuated but barely hidden with a light drape of thin cloth.

"You can have her," the woman said. A smile filling her voice. "She is one of mine. But save it, Zechariah. Save it for now. Let me show you how to give her the gift, and she will be yours from now on, if you want her."

The dream woman reached down seemed almost to reach inside him. Was she a dream? A ghost? Zach felt his looming orgasm like a stormcloud of lighting building.

"Breathe it into her," the woman said. "Let it be hers and your power will be magnified still more."

Zach felt what she meant, and started to tense against the explosion.

"No, relax it out of you and into her."

It was like another door. Zach relaxed his whole body, and offered the stormcloud into Ava.

"Ooohhhhhhhhhh Gaawwwwwwwd."

Ava fell off him, curled on the cheap rug Jacob had brought, her hands between her legs. Zach felt her trembling and quaking, the climax still flickering through her whole body.

The dream woman said: "You see? Easy, and feel yourself now."

Zach did, and he felt like a giant, like he was shining with light.

"You are doing well, Zechariah. Faster than anyone expected. But things are going to start to get more difficult now. Enki is deepening his claws. You will have to be his for a while. I can't protect you yet, but we will turn his power against him in the end."

"Protect Maddy?" Zach tried to whisper to her, but the effort of breaking into the dream woke him out of it.

Suddenly the room was dark.

Ava was lying on the floor, dressed only in her t-shirt. Jacob was slumped across his bed, leaning back against the wall, snoring.

Zach sighed and turned his back on both of them.

Probably his logic exercise was right. He was just going crazy.

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