Just the End of the World... Again

This is story is a work of fiction, any resemblances to any characters, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Please be 18 when you read this, and not younger.

*

The girl was found high on the riverbank wrapped in a plastic tarp. Moisture had condensed on the inside and you couldn't see any fine detail. Dark hollows in a flesh-tone face. It didn't look like she'd been in the river, when we unwrapped her the body was relatively dry. The coroner confirmed there was no water in her lungs when he opened her nicely developed chest up and took a look inside. But that happened later. I'm not at that point yet, so bear with me, ok?

Another winter in this Massachusetts town -- where an unbroken, bone colored layer of clouds filter the warmth right out of the sunlight. A microcosm cast in a perpetual dawn, colorless light and black shadows. It was always a bad time in Arkham, I should have gotten out years ago. This is the kind of town that draws you in and keeps you close. And all the bodies are buried on top of each other in the cemetery.

I was relieved when I got out of the car because I didn't have to take off my shoes. Not that I'm above it, I've always been more comfortable doing traditional 'guy' things. Navigating river rock is treacherous in the best of times, and heels make it worse. I wouldn't wear them, but it's the department policy. Small town, old timey sense of what a woman should and shouldn't wear professionally. It was a miracle they LET me wear slacks.

The girl was wearing a purple sweater with the yellow-orange letters MU, the initials of the University, one of the oldest in the United States. It was an easy bet she was a student, but I had no idea who her father was, much less her grandfather. They still tell stories about him around Halloween. But then, it's a small college town, not much happens... but when it does it tends to get weird.

The story involved theft and murder and some kind of cult in the hills. Antichrists or whatever, the story changes with the telling and the teller. A few facts remain in the center, around which the fanciful and the outright false orbit. What happens in Dunwich stays in Dunwich, if you catch my drift.

The girl had been the model student to all those interested in her academic standing. Most weren't, she was too good looking - the kind of girl that turns heads just a little too far and a little fast when she walks by. She wasn't given a scholarship; her parents basically owned the school. Old New England blood keeps this town afloat, and it flows under the streets, slow and dark and full of menace -- just like that god damned river.

They'd called me out to take a look at the body when she was discovered, approximately 2 PM on a Friday. I'd have the weekend to work on it. Ha ha ha ha. Oh Christ.

I was a detective, you see. I'm not... not anymore. Time only flows one way, doesn't it? God help me.

And God help Megan Armitage.

-

Her body was cold when we unwrapped her. I mentioned we did that, right? I don't want to get ahead of myself. It's become... harder to keep things in chronological perspective.

She was wearing the sweatshirt I told you about, but she wasn't wearing any pants or underwear. She was lying on her side, her neck tilted in a real... real unnatural kind of way. I couldn't help it. I looked at her ass. You might not have guessed this about me, but I don't usually go for girls. Sure I may have experimented a little back in high school, but that comes part and parcel with growing up in a small town. It was nice, by the way. Yeah, I know you didn't ask. She was dead, and I was checking out her 18 year old ass. What kind of girl does that make me?

It doesn't matter. You have to know what happened. The story keeps going. Because she had something in her hand.

Her fingers were half-closed around it, but it came loose with a little prying. Dead fingers don't always give easily, and I felt them pinching the paper as I pulled it out. It ripped. I clenched my jaw and kept at it.

On the paper was a number, and next to that number was a picture of a star. Next to that star was the letter L, and that's all I can remember. No. That's not true. There was something else.

Something else on the paper but I can't. I can't remember. I don't want to remember it now. I remember looking at it and it moved. It moved on the paper. Maybe I was just coming down off of my lunchtime glucose rush, but I swear that it moved. But I looked again and it. It didn't again. I really don't want to talk about that anymore. I saw it. God help me I saw the sign.

-

I drove back to the station, filled out the reports, and talked to the other detectives about how we would coordinate the investigation. I crossed the i's and dotted the t's. Shot the shit with the desk sergeant. I decided to head over to the University on Monday and start asking questions. As it stood we'd already notified the Professors, and interviews were set for the next day. Good luck grading those papers, you ivory tower assholes.

I don't dislike the ivory tower, now. I don't want you to think that. It's just not my thing. I can't stand the idea of sitting there and have someone spoonfeed you his view of the world. If I want to know something, I find it out for myself. I guess that is what drove me to detective work, and why I was good at it. But there is that old saying about curiosity and the cat...

I drove back to my apartment. A light snow began to fall and I thanked my lucky star the roads were mostly empty. College kids on a Friday night in the snow was a recipe for disaster, but at least it wouldn't take a detective to figure out the chain of events. Lots of drinking at MU, lots of drinking in general. I had a fifth of scotch waiting for me.

I live in a studio. Keeps the costs down -- lets me put a little away. Maybe someday I'll go on a vacation. Well, I'm on vacation now, aren't I? My plan of action on any single night is to get drunk enough to sleep. Any wonder I'm single? My typical night in involves turning on the classic movie channel, pouring myself a tumbler, George Foremaning up some steakums, and conking out early.

Tonight was a little different, there was a good movie on. I forget what it was called. Old time movie, one of the first talkies. Kind of like Thief of Baghdad and Faust had a baby. It had been pulled from theaters early during its original run, but every now and again it comes on late night cable for the true cinema buff.

It was just starting to get good, the grill was sizzling away and the drink was going down smooth and easy when the phone rang. I kept the volume on and, careful of my glass, made my way past the hideabed to answer the phone.

You, sir, should unmask.

Indeed?

Indeed, it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.

I wear no mask.

No mask? No mask!

I missed the part when she starts to claw her eyes out (probably cut for TV, anyway) as I picked up the phone.

"Detective Carter." A pat answer, using my deep 'cop voice' - causes wrong numbers to hang up double quick.

The voice on the other end sounded far away. Like the phone was being held at arms length and the wires had been chewed by rats. "You've seen it?"

The voice was feminine -- but whether it was a pansy or a dame, I couldn't tell you.

"Hello?"

"The sign. You've seen the sign." It wasn't a question.

"Who is this?"

"We'll be seeing you shortly." And the line went dead. No dialtone. Nothing.

I hung the phone in the cradle and lifted back to my ear. No sound. I followed the cord to the wall, and the insulation had melted right off. A ha. Bad connection. Of course.

I'd get the super on it tomorrow. I turned back to the TV, but it had gone to commercial, dancing rabbits selling soap and thoroughly destroying the mood that drove six people to suicide to produce. I clicked the tv off and checked the sizzling strips of 'meat'. They were as ready for consumption as they ever would be.

I guess I fell asleep after that. Funny, I normally undress first, but I was beat. Dead tired, you understand?

I don't normally dream. Or rather, remember my dreams. I definitely don't dream about girls. This wasn't a dream. I'm sure as anything about that now. At the time, sure. I thought I was dreaming. But at... I don't know. 2AM, let's say. Gives the whole thing a kind of symmetry, doesn't it?

I woke up. And I was horny.

Sex has never been something around which I put a lot of energy. I keep my hair shorter than most, and I've lacked feminine graces and curves my whole life. I do have something of an ass, if I may say so myself, if only because I had to run faster and jump higher than the rest my academy class. I like that, being able to outrun most of the guys. You don't have to be the fastest, they always say... just faster than the slower ones.

Still dressed, I sat up and unbuttoned my shirt. My itty-bitties don't require more than a sports bra at the best of times, but I can't afford to not wear something. Seriously. I've worn holes through t-shirts. It's true. Ask my police academy PT instructor. I have mighty nipples. And they're sensitive.

So there I was, half-reclined on the bed, my shirt undone and my bra pulled down. I was lazily teasing my nips with the backs of my fingertips. Occasionally I'd drag a sharp nail edge across one of them-- for a fraction of a second -- but enough to make me gasp. I began unbuttoning my pants with one hand, when I noticed she was in the room, watching me.

In spite of the golden mask she wore I knew it was the dead girl. I didn't know her name yet. She was watching me and she radiated... heat. It was like looking down the asphalt on a hot day, waves seemed to come off of her, shifting the world around her. And I felt it. I felt her shadowy heat inside of me, between my legs. In my pussy.

She stood there and she watched me. I couldn't see her eyes through the mask. The eye holes were dark. She was naked. Completely naked, and she looked alive. Not, not alive exactly... but. More than life. Somehow she was more real than she might have been. It was like watching someone on a moviescreen, but she was there. And that was then.

She had the kind of breasts I would have killed for in high school. They were full and round and seemed to rise against the pull of gravity while retaining bounce and body. She stood perfectly still, watching me. And in that moment I knew that the way she watching me was not with the sexual thrill of the voyeur peeping through the shades, but rather the thrill of the scientist studying her subject through the microscope. Removed, distant. Superior and alien.

The terror I might have felt was on mute. With a new surge of arousal, and I tore open my slacks, and slid my hand into my panties without further ado. My hand pressed hard against my pussy, the pressure mounted and the friction quickened my breathing further. The Girl in the Mask began to move her body. I don't want to call it dancing, exactly. Dancing is foreplay. The movements of her body, her hips and her shoulders and all the delicious rest of her was beyond foreplay. She was fucking. And I began to move my hand, maintaining the pressure, in time with the same sub-aural rhythm, and I was fucking myself.

My fingers became wet, and the movements of my hand more pronounced. I lessened the pressure and felt my fingertips slide over my wet flesh. Focusing on the tactile sensations in my digits allowed the heat between my legs to smolder. Deeper and hotter, and I watched the Girl in the Mask move her body in time, slowly coming closer and closer to where I lay. I continued to tease my nipples with the backs of my fingers, occasionally pinching one bud or the other. I could feel the blood flowing, under my skin, into my nipple. I pinched. I felt the blood squeeze out and all the while my nerve endings fired shots of pleasure through my spine and into my sex.

Her movements took on a beckoning quality, and I found myself scooting toward her (but my hand wasn't going anywhere), and the first time she touched me it was like static discharging from a television set. She continued her sensuous undulations and stepped up onto the bed, her balance was perfect. She stood over me, giving me an unparalleled look at her body, her pussy seemed to be radiating more distorting black heat, and I caught my clit between two fingers, near the second knuckle and gently squeezed in time with the rhythmic pulsing that beat like a metronome between my legs.

She dropped to her knees suddenly, the bed bounced only a little as her weight shifted. She began to just barely brush the outside of her labia against the back of my hand. I felt her wetness begin to coat the back of my hand, and dampen my slacks even more than they already were. I took a moment to wriggle my hips and pull the pants lower, groaning at my untended need. She leaned forward, and her big, luscious breasts were suddenly in my face, and then one of her nipples was in my mouth. And I heard her gasp and begin to moan. And it was the sexiest fucking thing I'd ever done, making her moan like that.

My hands went up to touch those breasts, to feel that tactile sensation -- softness and voluptuousness and feminity. I sucked one of her nipples, nibbling slightly with just enough pressure to elicit a squeak, and then the other. I went back and forth that way for a while, I don't know how long. She was humping me, my belly and my mons, still mostly covered in panties. I had both of her breasts pushed together, and I was trying to suck both of her nipples into my mouth at the same time when I felt her hands under my elbows. I looked up and released her tits with a wet POP.

She was a goddess, and it wasn't about gay sex or straight sex. It was about sex. It was about fucking her. She started kissing me, and I sat up to return her kisses. My tongue and her tongue exploring, tasting, touching. The sensation was tactile and unbelievably erotic. I'd never felt like this before, so completely horny, so totally filled with lust. I wasn't kissing her like a woman kisses a man. I wasn't kissing her like a woman kisses a woman, either. I was kissing her because to not kiss her would be unthinkable at this point. She straddled me for some time, and then shifted her crotch over one of my thighs, and began moving in a slow, erotic grind. That's when I began to feel it.

First, our kisses changed. I became bolder, more in control and she pliable and willing. I felt a welling up of masculine energy, for lack of a better word. I felt the inescapable need to fuck her like a man fucks a woman. I don't mean with a dick.

I felt my hips pressing my thigh tightly between her legs. One of her hands was between mine, but she was rubbing me over my panties and the friction was pleasant but not orgasm inducing. I didn't care. I put my hands on her hips and started moving her body for her. I was taking control of her, using her body to pleasure itself on my thigh.

She worked her hips faster and faster, a desperation fell about her as her breathing became even more ragged between the kissing. Her tongue was just touching mine as I probed her mouth. I had to get inside of her. I had to make this little bitch cum. I pushed her off of me, and she fell backward. Before she could protest, I was on her again.

My fingers moved quickly but without hurry or unnecessary fumbling. I pressed my middle and ring fingers into her pussy, and began to stimulate her. I positioned my body so that I was on top of her, my slacks still around my legs, preventing me from straddling her, but that was fine. Her mouth was agape and the mask seemed to give off light of its own. Her eyes, briefly illuminated, were crossed in a manner that was at once endearing, ridiculous, and under the circumstances, unbelievably hot.

She screamed as her tight little pussy clamped around my fingers, and I felt her wetness go. So too went my need to fuck like a man. I gently pulled my fingers out of her, and she guided my hand to her lips and began to suck her juices from her fingers. Then she offered them to me, and I couldn't resist. I closed my eyes as my lips closed around my two fingers and I tasted her. It was so erotic. I felt her move around behind me, and I relaxed back into her.

She massaged my scalp for a few seconds before trailing her hands down the line of my jaw, over my collarbone. She pulled my shirt open, exposing my smaller breasts and for a moment I was embarrassed. Honestly. My endowments were nothing on hers. Then her fingers began to tease my nipples, and I moaned. I hardly even noticed I was still sucking my own fingers as I lay back against this sexual goddess, my shirt opened, my pants around my ankles, and my panties wet through and through.

I laid my head back in the crook of her neck and shoulder as one of her hands traveled down my body, into my panties. All she had to do was brush my clit, and I was ready to cum for her. With one hand squeezing a nipple and the other on my clit, I felt a reflexive inrush of air... and a soundless scream as every muscle in my body contracted at the same time. I felt her kissing my neck as I fell back to earth, onto the bed, and through the bed into a dark oblivion that could not be rightly called sleep.