Filling the Circle

It occurred to me that I should go back down there and have another chat with her, but then I remembered that the first time down there hadn't really been a "chat" at all. She'd intimidated me thoroughly. When I thought about my visit now, I saw it like one of those movies where the orphan kids get owned by nuns or schoolmistresses or something. Only, in this case, the nun was a smokeshow.

I was muttering to myself at the tail-end of lunch period, my coffee mug balanced carefully in my left hand as I marched back toward my room. The halls were deserted, so I could hear the low burble of a conversation coming from the boys' bathroom by the teachers' lounge. I paused and listened; you can hear a lot of good stuff, eavesdropping on bathroom conversations.

Then, you can boot the fucking door in and scream at the kids to get back to class. So, catharsis. Every teacher needs to blow off steam every now and then, you know?

I slunk just outside the door, sipping at my coffee. There were three boys in there, by the sound of it. "Dude," one of them giggled. "Quit hogging that shit. Pass it here." I felt my jaw tighten: vaping. Little fuckers.

"You can kill it, bro. I'm heading out in a sec." This second voice sounded confident, self-assured. TJ Rowe! "It's my turn in Ms Anthony's little Circle."

"No shit!" The third voice I didn't recognize: it had a definite surfer vibe to it. "I was down there this morning, man. Been feeling swaggy ever since."

"Aw, I know that feeling." Rowe laughed, then a slapping noise advertised a high-five. "Dude, that shit they do..." The silence that followed had an air of awe to it, before the first kid spoke again.

"Fucking insane shit, dude." Another high five, some giggles, and then I noticed my coffee was slopping out onto my hand, I was shaking so much. I was fucking pissed. So I cocked my leg back and kicked hard at the metal scuffplate on the bottom of the door, swinging it hard into the bathroom.

"Okay!" I yelled. I liked this kind of thing. Made me feel like R. Lee Ermey. "What is this, party time in the bathroom?" One of them had already made the vape stick disappear, but it would be found once I marched these assholes down to the vice principal. I shook my head. "It amazes me that you people actually enjoy hanging out in a high school bathroom."

TJ met my eyes with badly-disguised hostility. "Just peeing, Mr Deemer."

"No, you're vaping," I snapped. "That's a three-day suspension."

"Fuck, man," the third kid began. He was tall and lanky, his blonde hair flopping over his forehead. "Whatever. We'll just go back to class," and then I knew he had to be the one with the contraband on him.

"Sure," I smirked, "as soon as you give me the vape pen and your name." These were all seniors, but it was a big school and I'd never met the other two. TJ's feet shuffled nervously. "Got someplace to be, TJ?"

"Well, honestly, Mr D," he said slowly, with a useless grin forming on his face, "I kinda do. I was just finishing up here."

I remembered his voice... it's my turn... I smiled coldly at him and laid down my trump card, a big-ass purple one with silvery script on it. "Before you go down to... what was it? 'Ms Anthony's little Circle?'" He gaped at me then, the hostility right out in the open, and I jerked a thumb at the Surfer Dude. "Tell me all about it. Or I have Mr McCarron suspend you all for vaping after he searches your homie here." They watched me carefully, three cornered foxes, shifting guilty glances at each other. "Well?"

The first kid, who had carefully stayed silent, nodded grimly over at Surfer Dude. That one hesitated a moment, then swept his flop of hair up out of his eyes and fixed me with the kind of look an inmate gives a correctional officer. "So have McCarron suspend us for vaping," he told me flatly, lifting up a ratty tanktop so that he could slip the vape stick out of his back waistband. He held it out to me, almost proud, and I'm sure I looked shocked, if not impressed.

Kids at Glen Avery High didn't take three-day suspensions. We were the wealthiest high school in the district; the little darlings in our classrooms had vocal parents. "You sure?" I narrowed my eyes. "You don't have to. I just want TJ here to tell me where he's been disappearing to during my class."

"Too bad, Mr Deemer." TJ's voice came out as a flat bark. "Kyle's right. We'll take the suspension."

"You're seniors," I warned. "Suspensions don't look good on college apps."

They traded one more look, and this one surprised me: I didn't see fear there, or anxiety, or anything else like that. I saw contempt. For me. "We're not worried about it," the first kid said quietly, and that's how I got a hearty pat on the back from Vice-Principal McCarron for breaking up vaping in the second-floor bathroom.

But I wasn't after a hearty pat on the back.

* * *

I was brooding about all this the next day, my mind racing toward an unthinkable universe where a senior would rather take a three-day suspension instead of answering questions. Even with a lie; that was the weirdest part. TJ and Surfer Dude should have been able to come up with a plausible story quickly enough to satisfy me, and what I'd seen of Ms Anthony told me she'd definitely back them up no matter what they said.

But they hadn't.

I was still pondering that the next morning before the homeroom bell rang. Students milled around in the halls, trading texts and high-fives. The hall was a smorgasbord of humanity: Geoff Jakes, being casually bullied down the hall. Grant Yoshi and his girlfriend Petra (last name, regrettably, unremembered) necking before the day began; Petra was visibly straining to keep her hands on top of his shirt. Leah Fuller, whom I'd had the year before, striding down the hall with the best ass in the senior class. She'd changed her hair color, I noticed. I glanced up from my attendance when a stocky shadow fell over my keyboard. "Oh. Hi, Nelson."

"Morning, Mr D." I could barely hear him over the morning announcements. He looked a little agitated, like he'd just run a red light and barely gotten away with it. "I need to use the restroom."

"The restroom?" I squeaked back in my chair. "Truly? Or, you know, Guidance?"

"Yeah," he nodded, and at least he had enough shame to look away. "That too. Just for, like, a few minutes."

"Oh really." I scowled once his eyes found my face again, then sighed. I could say no, but I knew I'd never get any backing from Administration for stopping a senior from going down to Guidance. Not if his parents wanted to push it. "Fine," I said flatly, a new idea slinking into my brain. "Make it quick."

"Yeah," he nodded again, and then he was making for the door. I smacked the enter key to submit my attendance and rolled my chair quickly over to the door that connected my classroom to my neighbor's.

"Jake!" I called into there; he had a free period this morning. "I just got called down to a special ed meeting. My kids will just be working on journals. Mind if I keep the door open?"

"Sure, dude." Jake was polishing one of his endless geometry powerpoints. "I'll keep them from killing each other."

"Great." I called it over my shoulder as I skedaddled from the room to the surprise of my students. "Response journals!" I rapped out. "I've got a meeting I forgot about. Comment on the characterization of Wiglaf and his admonishment of the Geats, and we'll discuss when I get back!" I was already out the door, headed for the stairs down to Guidance and hoping I'd catch sight of Nelson before he went down.

This was stupid, I knew. I was leaving my class to chase down a snide little brat and his patron down in Guidance. I don't know what I thought was happening, but I remembered Alex' eyes and the memory of that strange smell and I stopped thinking much more about it.

I paused at the hallway intersection near the science wing, listening, and when I heard the quick clomp of Nelson's Timberlands heading toward the back of the school, I stole off that way. Somehow I wasn't all that surprised he wasn't heading for Guidance, near the main office; no, the only thing back this way was the stairwell leading to the athletic offices, the place where the custodians sold weed, and the boiler rooms.

My chest seemed to take on an odd stillness as I padded down toward the back stairs and into the mildewed kingdom of the building's various support personnel, the dust in the corner of the landings looking like it had been there for decades. It was like a different world back here, an eerie one, but Nelson's footsteps on the stairs sounded bold enough.

Mine did not. I was being as stealthy as I could.

He stepped calmly through the big steel doors at the bottom, back in a part of the building I'd only ever used as a shortcut to the locker-room bathrooms. So, maybe twice. I was seeing cigarette buts and vape cartridges, even a nip bottle crushed into the corner under the last flight of stairs, the students knowing this was a no-go zone for teachers and, predictably, taking advantage.

I scanned around briefly, wondering how many used condoms had found their way down here.

I waited at the foot of the stairs, peering down the chipped-tile service hallway, seeing Nelson's retreating back turn to pass through the fire doors leading to the boiler room. I stole quickly along the corridor after him, my heart pumping now, and just as I passed a peeling sign on the wall advertising the route to a Cold War fallout shelter I caught it, prickling at my nostrils, stirring everything from brain to balls.

The spicy-flowered scent.

It dragged me instantly back to Alex' little lair in the Guidance Department, into the web of her voice, the pit of her cleavage, the twin pools of her eyes. I felt myself holding my breath just outside the door, feeling the obscure gnaw of some sort of dread growing in the pit of my stomach, just above my groin. It was a weird feeling, both terrifying and intensely, almost irresistibly curious, drawing me toward the boiler room almost against my will... and yet?

I had to know. I had to see.

The lights were off in the boiler room when I peeped around the doorway, but as my eyes grew used to the dimness I saw bleared light filtering through high, skinny transoms, warring with the warmer glow of something else from behind the far boiler. The smell grew stronger now, pulling at me, and once I was sure Nelson had disappeared at the far end of the room I tiptoed through the doorway after him. I was just one quiet step into the room when a rich, low voice shook me.

"Behold!"

I stopped short, the deep tones of that voice tolling through my head, my eyes finally picking out a flickering orange glow beyond that far boiler. Candles, I told myself suddenly; the light rose and fell that way, and I knew with a sudden certainty that they were the source of that cloying smell.

Huh. Scented candles. Who'd have thought?

The voice rang on into the gloom. "He is here, my ladies of the Circle."

"He is." I was surprised at that; the reply came from two or three other voices, all female, all hushed. What the fuck was this? I crept closer, the flickering light drawing me.

"Who is he?" That same ringing voice, deep and husky, and I knew suddenly by the lurching of my balls that it was Alexandra Anthony's.

Again, that chorus in reply: it seemed weird, unearthly, a chant that sent a chill all the way down my spine to my asscrack. "He is a man."

"He is." Alex' voice was soft and lilting in agreement, a nurse soothing a patient who has done well. "Whose turn is it today?"

"It's my turn, Mistress Alexandra." The voice was quiet, but determined.

"Ah. Lady Nicole, dear. You may take charge. Remember the spell."

"Yes Mistress." Spell? I frowned to myself, the voice familiar, as I snuck around the boiler. Nicole Cross. Her sister had been the terror of the school. I was close enough now to hear the shuffling of many feet on the far side. Take charge? This sounded like some kind of initiation? Some rite of passage? Nicole's sister Natalie, I remembered, had played soccer when I'd had her a couple years before: did Nicole play? Was Alex coaching? Was Nicole some kind of team captain? And what did spelling have to do with anything? Nicole's voice had a rush of excitement in it when she cleared her throat and spoke. "Before us stands a man!"

"Before us stands a man," droned the other two voices, joined now by Alex' deep tones. I was heading for a patch of shadow behind the shelf where the custodians kept all the paints and solvents. From there, I decided, I should be able to catch what was going on.

"A man of strength!" Nicole's voice was confident, somehow harsh.

"A man of strength," murmured the rest of the voices. I'd almost passed my side of the big boiler, the shelf just ahead. They wouldn't be able to see me in the shadows over there, I told myself.

"A man of passion!" She delivered the line with feeling, and the response had an unmistakeable tension in it.

"A man of passion." I held my breath and waited until she spoke again to cross behind the shelves.

"A man who needs a woman!" I shook my head as I shuffled through the gloom. What the fuck was this?"

"A man who needs a woman!" The others were louder now, and the eerie silence that followed left the hairs standing up on the back of my neck as I slunk behind the paint.

The silence stretched. I could almost see around the boiler now: just a couple more feet. I shuffled forward, then stopped uncertainly when Nicole's voice came lashing out once more. She was practically hissing now. "I am that woman."

The response, too, was a low, sibilant whisper. "You are that woman."

"Yes." I caught sight of the first candle now, stuck in an ornate silver candlestick on top of a rusty 55-gallon drum, and I squinted over its glow. I felt my jaw drop at what I saw.

Nelson was standing in a chalked circle on the concrete floor. His back faced the boiler tank, and he stood calmly in his letter jacket, with an oddly feral look on his face. On either side of him were two girls in what looked like... robes? Almost like graduation gowns, but these were a pale sheer white. It took me a second look to realize two things.

The gowns were almost transparent in the candlelight. And the girls weren't wearing anything underneath.

The near one, I was shocked to see, was sprightly Brianna Riley, tall and with all those eighteen-year-old curves that had brought her the Homecoming Queen crown at the side of her boyfriend Franco Lattner. I looked at her near-nudity, then at the way she was standing so close to Nelson, and decided she and Franco probably were no longer dating. Her nipples were a pair of dark-pink bullet-tips tenting the gown above a soft blur where the silky material showed dark pubes.

I peered past the two of them and, amazed, caught sight of none other than Leah Fuller on his far side. She had the same kind of robe and, I noted cynically, the same kind of nipples; it must have been cold over by the boiler. She had a weird expression on her cute, blue-eyed face, a flushed look of rapture as she stared straight ahead at short, slender Nicole Cross.

She was the kind of young woman people sometimes describe as mousy, never the hottest girl in any crowd, nondescript brown hair, a dusting of freckles. But there was quite a bit of sex appeal in that athletic little body of hers, especially now that I could see just about all of it where the white silk draped her. She stared fixedly at Nelson. "Prepare my man," she ordered, then watched as Brianna and Leah began to move.

They knew what they were doing; I could see they'd done this before, and of course Nelson had too. Leah, her mouth twitching into a smile, stood directly in front of Nelson and, her face smouldering into his, reached to his waist and without ceremony dropped his pants and boxers straight down. Or she would have, anyway, if the boxers hadn't gotten hung up on his stiff, stubby erection. She giggled, her hands disentangling his penis while Nelson raised his arms so Brianna could whip his shirt up over his face.

"Hi there," I heard Leah whisper. She was looking straight down his hairless chest at his groin.

Brianna knelt, pulling off Nelson's Chuck Taylors, handling each one with practiced ease. She wrinkled her nose a bit as she did so. All the while, Nelson stood relaxed, every part of him calm and slack. Except for his dick, that is, not terribly long, but with pretty impressive girth and a loose, quivering pair of balls. Leah gave the whole thing a fond little tug.

The candlelight drew my eyes back toward Nicole, flashing off an ornate silver charm that had found its way between her tits, hanging from a fine chain. I squinted at the pair of hands that were fastening the pendant around her neck, and I was not a bit surprised to see that they belonged to Alex Anthony.

I thought she was in silk too, though it was difficult to tell, her body draped in a black so dark it seemed to swallow the candlelight. I saw long, drooping sleeves, but then nothing else but her gorgeous face seemingly suspended in the darkness from behind her. Her hair was a luxuriant spray of curls in all directions, as if an electric charge was passing through her. Her face showed pride and lust and an ecstasy of a kind I'd seldom seen since I'd caught my ex, mid-orgasm with her coworker. She finished fastening the necklace and then laid her hands on Nicole's shoulders, trembling slightly as they watched Nelson's slow exposure.

I could hear Alex' low, soft murmur to Nicole as Nelson's firming cock came into view. "Look at that!" she sighed. I glanced up to see dark lipstick curved into a gloating smile.

"Yes." Nicole sounded calm and unruffled, though there was definitely some thickness in her voice. She cleared her throat again. "His balls..."

"Hanging low," Alex agreed. Her fingers caressed Nicole's arms and shoulders, the rasp of her nails on the silk filling the room's flickering silence. "He's loaded for you, Nicole."

"I'll drain him," the girl said with quiet confidence, and Alex gave her biceps a brief squeeze.

"Yes. You will," she chuckled. "Keep going. The spell," she prompted gently.

"Yes, Mistress." Nicole's voice rose, still husky. "Is my man prepared?"

"Hell fuck yes," came Nelson's wry voice, and sprightly, carefree Brianna wasted no time; she reached out a lazy hand and brought it sharply downward onto the shaft of his cock. "Ow!" Nelson whined, bending slightly as his erection bobbed.

"Shut the fuck up, Nelson," Brianna snapped. "We told you. Just keep your mouth shut and let us work."

"Candle!" Nicole called, and I watched spellbound as Alex wound her fingers beneath Nicole's hair, working a knot at the base of her neck; the sheer robe swept down off her body like a magician's trick, leaving Nicole naked as the day she was born, every sleek muscle outlined in flickering flame with her pert little tits high on her chest. She spread her legs slightly, a finger passing down the smooth skin of her belly, past her smooth-waxed mound, and into her slit without a hint of self-consciousness. "Mine is the power," she muttered, her eyes closing briefly. When she pulled her hand away from her crotch, her finger shone.

"Yours is the power," Brianna agreed, stepping forward with one of the candles. Nicole took it in her left hand, her right still glimmering with her juices, and walked slowly forward as Leah slid close behind Nelson. I realized, suddenly, that I could no longer see any trace of Alex.

"Greetings, lover." Nicole extended her shining finger toward the waiting young man's lips, touching the lower one gently. "Accept my offering."

"Tell her, 'I accept,'" Leah stage-whispered to Nelson. She rolled her shoulder down, reaching boldly between his legs from behind; I gaped as her fingers gripped his deep-dangling ballsack. Nelson gasped.