Brain Games Ch. 12

A cool spring drizzle settled in over the campus, blanketing the buildings, the trees, the flowers--all with a ghostly greyness. Zach felt that very dank colorlessness in his bones.

He kept to his bed, shuffled to classes zombie-style, and avoided everyone.

He wouldn't talk to Maddy. She had been angry, curious, sad, and angry in turn, but he couldn't. Couldn't. She eventually backed off, but he felt her waiting.

Jacob was in his own funk. Something had happened with Ava, and she wasn't around.

When he turned in his Joyce paper, the professor ribbed him about his hangover.

A teaching assistant had taken over the bio class, so Zach had no sight of professor Enkins.

When he slept, which wasn't much, he had terrifying dreams of dark things moving through deep waters; claws, tentacles; a girl sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And he dreamt of a temple built by the sea, looking down on a town wrapped around an aquamarine harbor.

At first, he was waiting for the police to arrive, but no police arrived.

That night (as he would forever remember it) he had showered in the hottest water he could stand and scrubbed himself raw. He had vomited, and then showered again. By the time he got back to his room, Ava was gone.

He showered three, four times a day, but no matter how painfully hot the water was, he could not scrub the ugly, angry sound of the girl grunting Fuck her out of his mind.

Eventually, he cautiously reached out with his awareness, just to see if the girl was still alive; and after a despondent stretch, thinking her bloated body might be well down-river, his awareness found her.

She was laughing with her family, somewhere away from campus, across state. He observed all the layers of her he could without "touching." She seemed buoyant, cheerful, free. Zach couldn't imagine how this was possible, so he examined more closely. Eventually he found it, the shadow, a cluster, faded almost to nothing, memories orphaned and quickly withering. He couldn't see them, couldn't know what her experience had been. Rolling in his bed, turning to the wall, he let it go.

* * *

"You've been a busy young man," Professor Enkins said.

Zach had gone to the Friday office hours. The week was nothing but a bleak, bleary blur. Enkins was leaning back in his chair, with his feet on the industrial-steel desk, and his jacket slung over a coat tree.

"What have you done?" Zach said.

"I gave you what you wanted. You were free. I had a few protections in place, to prevent the worst, and left you to your own devices. And what a complete balls-up it was. Utterly predictable, but it's the only way to learn."

"You were preventing the worst? Like what?"

"Is anyone dead, Zechariah? Are you in jail? Has an angry mob hung you from a tree or burned your family out of their home? How's your little friend, the one you are hiding from me? All healthy?"

Zach tightened his lips.

"You see? You know nothing. Nothing, Zechariah. You're just a decent kid, trying to do the right thing, led astray by his hormones, and energy-raped by a passing ghost. Poor boy. Are you ready to get serious now?"

"And where have you been?" Zach asked. "Both your classes subbed this week."

"I had some unrelated travel."

"I want to roll all of this back. Take it back. Orphan my memories. I don't want any of this."

"That I cannot do, Zechariah. You cannot un-ring this bell, as they say. You have learned enough to be a danger to yourself and others. It's time to man up. Another phrase I like."

"What about the girl in the library? How many others like me are there?"

Enkins steepled his fingers thoughtfully. Zach was pleased to note this was the first time he had caught the professor off guard. And he was also interested to realize he could mention the girl in the library. Ava seemed completely off limits, his mind couldn't even picture her when he was near Enkins.

"Tell me more," Enkins said.

Zach recounted the brief interaction.

"Interesting," was the only response. "That may bear further investigation. In general, Zechariah, you will not encounter others like yourself. These arts have long faded. A few shamans, a few tantrics, here and there a pocket of Goddess worshipers." He said the latter with distaste.

He went on: "But even in those categories, the vast majorities are frauds or delusionary."

"So," the professor concluded, "we will file that one for future reference. In the meantime, you need to know how to contain your energy, control it, and how to protect yourself from ghosts and demons."

"This is literally the craziest shit I've ever heard."

"Your culture has commodified the spirit world, you have the wrong cognitive structures to understand what I am saying. But you know it's real. Now lean back. Five, four, three..."

* * *

He blinked awake, and discovered they were not alone. A young woman had joined them.

"How are you feeling, young fellow?" the Professor asked.

He felt better. Stronger. The weight of dread and horror seemed to have lifted.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing major. Palliative only. It's time for the lesson. Zechariah, please meet my lovely assistant, Yasmin, our sweet gift from God."

She curtsied. "Jasmine, actually," she said. "The professor has a thing about my name."

Zach nodded, "Yeah, mine too."

Jasmine had wavy black hair around a dark olive face and startling ice blue eyes. A low cut top revealed excitingly ample cleavage. She had a short skirt.

"You in my bio class?" he asked.

"No, the professor and I go back a ways."

Zach wasn't sure what she could mean by that, she didn't look old enough to go back very far. Surely not much older than he was, if at all. He had to ask, rude as it was: "Uh, how old are you?"

She laughed. "Manners, manners, sir! I have already graduated from university, and let's leave it at that."

Enkins clapped once. "Enough chit-chat children, let's begin. Yasmin, what does our Zechariah need to know about you?"

"I belong to the professor. I am his. Body, mind, and spirit. All women should belong to a man. The stronger the man, the more the women he should have."

Zach recoiled.

"And this is why you get yourself in trouble, Zechariah," Enkins said. "You are unwilling to fully accept your power, and so it's just floating all over the place inviting others to take it from you. And now you know what that feels like. For most men, it doesn't matter much one way or the other. But for you, you've opened a door, and it's not just a life of bad relationships ahead. It's your survival at stake now."

"I respect women," Zach said. "I don't want to--"

"You are caught up in a tangle of cultural and political thought structures. I respect women, Zechariah, by showing them what they want and giving them what they need and using them in the way they are meant to be used. And if they respect men, they will do exactly the same to me."

Zach struggled to find words.

"Don't bother," Enkins said. "You will figure it out in time, for now. Take the lesson. The lesson is containment, engagement, and will. It's a lot. But you have moved too quickly and attracted too much attention. If I hadn't put the brakes on while I was away, it would all be over. So, stop thinking, start listening."

Zach grudgingly set aside his opinions. Survival was a meaningful term, given recent events.

"Good. You are making progress with control, so let's practice that a little. Yasmin, resist Zechariah. Don't follow his instructions." And to Zach: "Now, take control. Have her undress."

Zach relaxed his mind, and reached out, feeling for Jasmine. The layers of her life energy, the millions of threads tying her energy together. She was bright and absolutely beaming with life. He sought the kernel of her desire, and it was already bright and pulsing. He give it a boost.

"Remove the top," he said. He heard the waver in his own voice and was unsurprised when she didn't move. She offered him an encouraging smile that only made him angry.

He felt his own desire flickering brighter, the arousal of his libido coming back for the first time all week, and he used that, focusing it toward her.

It was easy to turn up the level of her desire, her pleasure, and he saw her body beginning to tremble with it, but he felt something else, something taut through her body, a weave of lines in a pattern his mind could not quite grasp.

"That's it," Enkins said. "That's her intention, set firmly against you. Can you disarm it?"

Zach pushed her arousal further, wondering if the energies within would overwhelm her intention. He heard her gasp and a small whimpering moan escaped her lips.

"Remove the top," he said again, putting more conviction into it.

She didn't move, but her eyelids drooped and her breath quickened.

"Observe closely," Enkins said. "Look!"

Zach observed, and perhaps Enkins helped guide his attention, because he saw the edges of the pattern. He reached out with his own arousal and lifted it away, as if pulling a net off her.

"Perfect," Enkins said.

"Now watch what happens when you try again: notice everything."

"Remove the top," Zach said and he watched the pulsing of her body as her hands reached and pulled the top off.

"Did you see how she moved? Can you do the same without words?"

Zach set an intention for her to remove her skirt, and tried to match that intention into the pulses of her own being. He felt how it didn't align, but couldn't find the match.

"It's fine," Enkins said. "Use your words, but watch closely. Notice and feel."

"Take off your skirt," Zach said, putting that same intention into his words, and watching. He felt the pulse that went through her, and the flare of her arousal as she took in his command.

She removed the skirt, standing now in bra and panties, both seemingly more symbolic than practical.

"Try without words," Enkins directed.

Zach set the intention to remove the bra, felt his arousal and hers, aligned them and pulsed the intention into her.

He felt exultation as the bra hit the floor.

Also: her breasts were exquisite: full with dark aureoles and hard jutting nipples.

He used his intention to have her remove the panties. Her fur was trim and black, her lips swollen and pink.

"Excellent," Enkins said. "I cast a net and you showed up in it. I can't say I would have gone looking for someone like you, but I'll admit you are a quick study. I've seen men require a dozen lessons before they got it."

Zach wondered how many men Enkins had trained... and why.

"We are going to come back to this, Zach. What you were really using there is what I call will. It's more than intention, it's asserting your reality into the greater flow with enough presence that the flow accepts it. That might not make sense yet, but it will. Now, the meat. Containment."

"Yasmin," Enkins said. "Come to me and kneel."

She did so, her body still trembling.

"You know what to do," he said.

She unzipped his trousers, and brought out his thick, heavy cock. It was tumescent, but not yet erect.

She brought her mouth to him and as she took him between her lips, she cried out. Zach felt waves of pleasure peaking through her.

"As you are, but stand now," Enkins said.

Holding just the head of him in her mouth, gasping, moaning, shuddering, she got to her feet.

"Zechariah, I want you to take her from behind. It's fine, she is more than willing. Hold yourself inside her. Don't do anything, just feel. You need to watch what happens."

Zach didn't need to be told twice. He unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his throbbing cock out.

"You'll want to take those off," Enkins said, and Zach obeyed.

He stepped up to Jasmine, took her by the hips, and carefully guided himself into her. She was very hot around him, and soaking wet. She easily took him into her, and began to churn her hips back against him.

He saw her head bobbing on Enkins as well, slurping and slobbering over the end of the professor's rising cock.

"Watch, Zechariah, feel."

He did. He felt the incredible power building in Jasmine, flooding through her, filling her. She was in a state of stuttering, quivering orgasm, mindless with her pleasure as the two men filled her. He felt her pushing herself harder against Enkins, taking more of his now-hard cock against her throat, trying to swallow it.

Zach felt the craving flood her, the absolute need as she struggled to get more of both of them deeper into herself.

Zach's own orgasm was rising swiftly through him and he gave Enkins a worried look.

"No fear, Zechariah, all is as it should be. Stay observant."

Zach drank in everything about the scene, both physically, and in the swirling flow of power that was increasing in velocity through them.

He noticed that there was absolutely no desire alive in the professor. It was an intense and powerful pleasure, a rampant arousal, but no desire at all. It would have meant nothing for him to disengage at this edge of explosion and walk away. He knew that Enkins wanted him to see that.

He noticed that the opposite was true in Jasmine. Her craving was taking her over. She was now swallowing Enkins deep into her throat, holding him there, skewered by cock at each end, groaning, moaning, thrashing with her craving for more.

And then he saw the important part: this explosive power was in a tight loop. It was swirling as if they were inside a bubble, as if there was a black obsidian shell holding it all close.

"Good, Zechariah, you see it now." Enkins spoke as if he were lecturing, without the slightest hint of passion in his voice.

"Keep your focus there," Enkins added. "Now."

A detonation of blinding power rose up within him, within Jasmine, and also within Enkins. It flooded through all of them. Zach felt himself let go, cumming hard, jet after jet into Jasmine. He also felt a hot gush of fluids drenching his legs.

Finally, with a long happy moan, Jasmine sank to her knees, releasing them both.

"Stay observant," Enkins directed.

The black shell was intact, the power of their release still swirling tightly.

"Containment. We have attracted nothing beyond what we brought in with us. But now, engagement."

Zach held his awareness in this other reality and felt Enkins thin the shell down in one place, finally letting the energy beam out.

"Watch," Enkins said urgently.

And Zach saw, a dark hungry presence descend from nowhere drinking their energy. At first it was nothing but mindless thirst, but as it filled, it took on form and purpose. It showed itself to have many arms, all with claws, and many eyes, seeking for the source of the light that had drawn it.

Enkins continued to increase the flow of the energy, even as it faded from their bubble, until it was gone, and this wisp of many-armed shadow was slaked.

"Watch," Enkins said again. "Very carefully."

The being--Zach didn't know what to even call it--turned all its eyes on Enkins.

Zach could almost see it with his eyes, something dark and vaguely malevolent sitting on the corner of the professor's desk, reading itself to pounce.

But the professor laughed, and Zach felt that exertion of will. "You are my creature now, formed for my use."

The shadow gripped the edge of the desk with six or eight dark-taloned claws.

"You will ensure no harm comes to Zechariah," Enkins said. "You will protect him for as long as this energy lasts, and then you will depart, never to set eyes on him again."

The shadow squirmed for a moment, and then all the hostility fell away from it as if it had shed a skin.

It cast itself up, out of the papery remains of their bubble and seemed to disappear.

Professor Enkins tucked himself away and zipped up.

He tossed a towel to Jasmine and another to Zach.

"Clean yourselves up."

* * *

"You are going to need to master containment at the very least. That little fellow is not going to be much help, I'm afraid. You make do with what you get, but that one's not much. Nothing like the one that did a number on you the other day, Zechariah."

Zach nodded, sort of getting it.

Jasmine adjusted her clothes and plopped into a chair.

"What are they?" he asked. "You said ghosts, demons?"

"Those are just words. There's no real value in labeling everything. Just as the physical world is full of many creatures, so is the pranic world."

"I don't know that word."

"Just another label, don't worry about it. You know everything you need to know: there are beings out there. Mostly we don't interact with them, nor they with us. They can barely see the physical world at all, and most people are barely more than meaningless shadows to them. But when we engage with this raw life force, then they can see us, for that is their substance. And when we activate it, they come, like moths to a flame. Except they will consume and extinguish that flame, if they can. So, containment..."

He went on: "But, as we get skillful, we can use this life force, and we can specifically use it to enforce their service. Isn't it better to be friends than enemies? They don't disagree! When conducted with skill, it is of mutual benefit."

"Ok, I think I'm getting it, but... where does all the energy actually come from? I still feel great. I feel like we made something out of nothing. We boosted what we felt, what we have, and we... fed? ... that thing. Where did all that come from?"

Enkins smiled broadly. "You are finally beginning to think like a student, Zechariah, very well done. I am not going to answer that yet, because the words would be meaningless. But what I will say is, we were made for this. What is available to us is beyond measure, and beyond depletion. You need not fear tapping into this as much as you want. Congratulations: you are practically a God now."

"So, ok, here's my other question. Why? What does helping... helping?... why are you doing all this? With me? For me?"

"Because I am a kindly old gentleman who saw some potential in a fine young man," Enkins said.

Jasmine snorted with laughter.

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