Londoner Calling

My first foray into Erotic Horror. Only 4000 words, so please read, vote, and leave constructive comments!

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Londoner Calling

I look round my new city, my new manor. It's actually been my home for millennia, but London's changed again, after my quick ten-year nap.

I've escaped a growing infection of shiny polished skyscrapers and steel-glass office blocks, all smooth and sealed. No dingy alleyways left, nor any harbour for anyone not welcome in these oppressive high-rises.

But walking my revised corporeal form another half-mile brings me to Victorian red terraces, with chunks broken off that soft orange brick; ethnic cafés on the ground floor, various businesses on the first, overpriced bedsits on the second and third. Some newer buildings in gaps where bombs landed in the Blitz, all Fifties utilitarian blocks or Sixties concrete. The odd small marble church, a modern Eighties Post Office with garish plastic trim. This hodge-podge of architecture permits passages into small pedestrian courts and fire escapes into poured-concrete yards. Gaps, interstitial spaces. I feel I can breathe a bit better.

Not that I need to breathe.

I reach the Strand; escape the traffic into Villiers Street, where no vehicle ventures unless it must do a delivery. It's a cesspit of barely-adequate franchised takeaways nowadays, though at least the theatre under the arches is something a bit different, enticing, even if it is now neighboured by a respectable barber and an expensive Vietnamese sandwich shop.

At least there's still pubs; thank goodness for an authentic boozer, still painted in cheerful colours from the 19th century, with etched-glass windows hiding the depravity within. Though there's less of that, less obvious vice, now. No proper gin palaces leading to sotted Sallies who would do anything for a bed for the night, no fights over illegal betting, at least not within. But where physical desperation has mostly fled -- those old constant miasmas of hunger and the pain of untreated disease have generally gone -- there's still the old demons of the mind.

Loneliness.

Feeling unloved or unappreciated.

Worries of losing what you had or never getting any further.

And the big one: feeling unseen.

We all feel that way, don't we? Like all our friends and family are wonderful, kind, love us -- but they don't know the real me or the real you. We don't know even how to show that. We just know that it's there: a deep, hidden part of us that would trigger disgust on the behalf of any beholder.

Which makes us both more desperate to be seen, yet more terrified. It's become a cliché: friends are people who know all about you, but like you anyway.

What that doesn't cover is what you call someone who knows all of your secret sick, twisted erotic desires, yet wants to fuck you anyway. Because of them, even.

Humans don't need a word, I suppose, seeing as they so rarely encounter such creatures. Or rather, so rarely are able to tell tales about it afterwards.

The stories of incubi or succubi reflect a faint familiarity with the concept, I suppose, splitting us into two ridiculous groupings, but we're so much more than that.

We call ourselves the Witnesses.

The first pub is full of lunching tourists. Not much in the way of pickings there. Office workers in the second; all in pairs or groups, no way to sneak into a conversation.

I need a place where lone travellers or workers go. Or government officials, wanting discreet chats. A student, seeking a refuge from both house-shares and academic pressure.

That infamous wine bar it is, then. A painted sign on the ceiling, over unprepossessing stairs going down into a basement, is the only clue as to its existence. All the regulars like it like that. Any tourist shies away, nervous for their safety. And quite right. Never enter a strange cellar, alone. You never know what you might find.

In this one, as it happens, you would find excellent wine, comfortable seats in various alcoves in between wine barrels, congenial lighting, and your classic Dickensian etchings covering the walls. I remember when they first bought them. Ever so modish, they thought. Couldn't get more old-fashioned now, but that's how I like it. They serve simple food: cheese platters, meat platters, and concentrate on conviviality.

I acquire a glass of the day's special and begin to listen.

Most of the thoughts I pick up are your superficial top-level ones. What to have for lunch, when will the food turn up, I'm starving, what time is it? I'm used to tuning those out.

Below that are people's mid-level thoughts. They're only partially aware of them.

How am I coming across?

He's getting boring.

Will I ever get promoted at work and would I want that anyway?

This cheese reminds me of that holiday in Alsace -- shame me and him split up.

There's a few crumbs of nourishment for me there, but precious little. I need those deeper thoughts, ideally conscious ones, though I'll settle for unconscious ones when I have to -- the thoughts which drive people's minds crazy in their efforts to rationalise or suppress them. Or, rarely, the thinker embraces them and lets them run wild, like a smorgasbord for my kind. That's what I'm always on the lookout for.

Problem is, most people don't think much.

They get general impressions of what fits with their life view or opposes it, and amble, like cows, in that direction.

They used to say TV rotted the brain; I can assure you people were equally stupid beforehand, just quoting from fewer works that everyone knew. The King James Authorised Version was the meme of centuries, and it wasn't even funny. That pun about Simon Peter being 'petros, my rock' wasn't any more hilarious a millennium ago, I tell you.

Maybe one in ten people regularly produces a rich vein of real thought. In this bar, it's a bit higher, full of civil servants and university scholars. There's someone contemplating the rind on his cheese: how do they make it, what does it add?

A woman speculates as to why her feckless man values pert tits over familiarity and security, not content with her immediate superficial-level response of 'he's a bastard'. I inhale the thought, but she's too maudlin to be much fun. Not tasty.

Sexual frustration and response -- now that's flavour! Not enough to nourish me -- it's like the Krispy Kreme ring doughnut of mind-waves -- but mixing sexual ideas with some deep thought -- that's my idea of a gourmet meal.

Another man considers how his cock feels -- no, not like every other man in the building, but questioning why it's semi-hard here, but rigid in certain meetings, soft at critical moments. This is good, he decides, considering what his emotions are when he's with Sarah from Legal. He's got an explosion of emotion, but he's simultaneously considering what it means to be human -- why those emotions? Why her? And the big one -- what might he want to do about it? He's pulling on a thread of guilty want, weaving it with others of wrongness, impetuousness, security, curiosity. Not just the sugary gossamer of guesswork; he's really thinking. Building what should be quite a meal for me.

Too bad that he leaves, the question unresolved, and tidily packed away behind considerations of the building's structure.

And then I scent it. Rich chocolatey ropes of logical consideration. The red strands of sexual tension. Those precious droplets of someone who's thought about sexual satisfaction.

It's a girl, I think, when I spot the student type with dyed black hair and a pierced nose. Or maybe it isn't. These humans have got me trying to overlay gender and sex differences onto everything, now. So petty and tedious! But this one doesn't have clear signals broadcasting, "Here's the shape of my genitalia! Don't let the innie or outie surprise you!" Which is nice, not having to tune out such rubbish.

You're objecting. 'But Witness, you see thoughts,' you complain. 'Don't those include gender portrayals?'

We perceive things differently. These humans may be screaming out loud with their imagery, but like people seeing white flowers and missing the lurid ultraviolet patterns which bees see, I won't notice.

It's only thoughts, not emotions, that feed me, though I admit emotion adds a bit of flavour to the experience, like a spice. So if someone feels vague satisfaction or unease with their looks, or with how their body and self-image mesh, I won't really grasp it. Them deciding, consciously, to play with what they could look like -- I'll completely comprehend that. That, my friend, those thoughts, are lunch.

This one has created a stylised persona.

This one has opinions on dress, on make-up, on musicians, on life.

This one, oh, I like this one's thoughts.

This one wants some really filthy, earthy sex.

Raw desire, allowing themselves to want to feel, is so rare under this veneer of civilization, that oppresses with its expectations of behaviour. They're starting to shuck it off, layer by layer, like snakes in too-tight skin, but actually there was more naked desire to feast on when everything in society was constrained. The more there is to rebel against, the less programmed the rebellion is.

There's a conformity in the modern non-conformist, with their piercings and tattoos and restrictive diets. Like the ripped jeans and earrings of the Eighties, the hippies and Rockers before them, the Mods and beatniks before that; before them the Teds and spivs.

Before that, you had the big wars. Nothing like a war to focus their minds on wild desires, and if possible acting upon them before the chance was taken away forever.

I love wars. All those dandies with their desperate wishes, wanting to live before they die.

Humanity is slowly getting the hang of other ways of interacting, reducing those desperate last sexual thoughts available for me to feed on. Though the population has increased, so it balances out, mostly.

This one is in black and crimson, earrings, a bit of make-up, dark straight hair. It's reading a book and sipping wine, not like it's read in the Sunday Times or the Observer about how reading and sipping are supposed to be sophisticated activities, but simply relaxed, enjoying them. This one just happens to be doing both activities at once.

It turns a page, mildly interested in the contents, but more thoughts are rumbling beneath.

This one wants.

I suck gently on that thread of thought, hoping to lure it out. It's like delicately slurping spaghetti. More like enticing out a tapeworm, some would say.

It wants to feel. Good.

To feel filthy and depraved. It yearns for a firm touch in those areas strangers shouldn't know, but oh, this one wants a stranger to be doing that, a muscular hand between the legs, pressing...

I check my hands have manifested with an appropriate amount of muscle. I beef up my palms a bit. They'll do.

It fantasises, wanting to do these indecent things in a secluded public space. An alleyway, fortuitously lacking in CCTV.

I run down my mental map of London, so sanitised in recent decades with so few ginnels creating semi-secret places now for a good frotting and fucking. Perhaps Lower Marsh; that's still got some twists and turns and hidden courtyards behind the buildings.

Besides, it's Southwark. I've always felt more at home on the south side of the river, lack of cabs notwithstanding. Like the Rive Gauche, it's the bad side of town, where actors and whores and queers still come together to create my sort of entertainment.

Another thread of thought reaches me, of walking along the river, first, but being gripped rudely underneath its clothes. I calculate I could reach under that shaggy jumper and play with a nipple while walking. Of course, we'd have to stop and admire the view when halfway across the bridge.

Time to pounce. Of course, to this one it will look like seduction.

"Hello. May I join you?"

I suck on that thought of what it -- she -- wants, getting it to the surface of her mind, reminding her she wants a being -- a man (I hate this human terminology, with their gender obsession) -- who will provide her with what she wants. Mustn't swallow the thought, just suck gently on it.

Once she looks up and smiles, I spit the fantasy out. I never claimed to be a gentleman. I just play one.

I ask her what she is reading, and roll her enthusiasm around my tongue. Real, genuine enthusiasm, with no social pressure contaminating it. That's always been rare. She offers to buy me a drink, but I refuse, claiming I'm older and probably earn more, especially if she's a student. I get her one, instead. Alcohol always helps thoughts to bubble up to the surface. It's great stuff.

It basically turned humans into a species worth feeding from.

We clink our glasses. I make a bit of polite chit-chat, lull her into a sense of security, encourage her to mention she wants to walk down to the South Bank. I offer to accompany her, lapping at those fantasies bubbling up, of sex with a stranger, coaxing more and more from her mind.

She stands close to me as we cross the road to the Jubilee Bridge. It's windy and grey, as is the weather. Trains rumble past on the rail bridges between the pedestrian ones. No chance, any more, to push a human under the trains here and feed upon the terror as they know they're going to die. It's a cheap trick, the McDonald's of brain food, but sometimes you just get that yearning, you know?

This one is warm. I like that. I happily press to her side, encouraging her feelings of closeness and nursing those little shoots of arousal.

She wants to do things with me.

Terrible things, of which other humans wouldn't approve.

She'd like it if I fucked her on the bridge, leaning on the rails, looking down at the torrents of grey water. Held her, firm and forcing her. She imagines that fear, my warm body. That's a point, I hastily bring myself to her body temperature. Chasing down dinner -- it's all in the details.

As she's visualising things she'll never ask anyone for, I push her onto the railings. She's excited, and scared, and happy. There's an appetiser of little ideas for me.

Then I kiss her neck, because that's always a good precursor for sex stuff. You can get away with anything, if you start with a kiss.

She's facing the water. I'm behind her, my lips inhaling her neck, nose in her hair, resting on her back, careful to weigh the right amount. I make my male genital shapes rub back and forth over her buttocks, like a demanding man. She's worried about being seen, but also exultant, that her fantasy is playing out perfectly.

Anyone would think I could read her mind...

I let my long coat flare round us, reassuring her that nothing is visible, and reach between her legs. There's a short skirt and some other material in the way, but I can lengthen my arm a bit as needed, so that doesn't impede me.

This one likes that. Pressing upon her crotch, getting the fabric covering it all damp. I know there will be a good scent on my fingers when I take them back. Once, I made a whole town have just that smell, just to see what happened. It was fun to watch; almost all the citizenry going wild, wanting, not understanding why they wanted. The brighter ones were trying to figure out what was going on and what to do about it -- and then loving what they did do about it. Their brainwaves made for a fine gourmet meal that day, I tell you.

"I won't hurt you," I tell her truthfully. "I just want you. You want it too, don't you?"

It almost seems like cheating, pretending you can read someone's mind when you actually can, but hey, all's fair in love, war, and predator-prey relationships.

"Yes," she breathes, visions of different sexual scenarios bursting out of her head like so much popcorn. I let myself munch on a few of them, the ones involving indoors, rooms, and equipment. Her ideas about risky outdoor sex, being taken standing up, an arse being visible to strangers -- those tasty thoughts I encourage, rolling them around my tongue, but letting her keep them -- for now.

I squeeze and roll her arse -- that's quite fun, actually, almost like kneading solidified ichor -- you can see why the humans like it.

I push her buttocks up and apart with my thumbs, and she dazzles me with her fancies: how much she'd like to be penetrated, how, by whom, where, what she'd be wearing, how the other person would make her feel, feelings of submission mixed with power from being able to get what she wants, thinking about how a shaft inside any of her orifices would feel, how her jaw or cunt or arse would ache, pleasantly or sore, depending.

She's weighing up all the options in her mind, considering them, making them into pieces of meaty thought for me to chew on. Only a few at a time, though; I'm not going to rush this meal.

She wants to be fucked. She makes some incoherent noises which mean that, as well. As if she's begging in plain English, I tell her, "Yes, I want that too. Come with me."

I put my arm round her, and hers inside my coat, so she gets some warmth from my new body as I steer her through the crowds round the National Theatre to the eerie silence of Lower Marsh, trying not to nibble away too much of her anxiety as she tries to rationalise it away. The street's full of big open spaces, now, though, between the Brutalist modern buildings.

But there's some underground car parks, and porticos creating shade over locked back entrances. I give her a big snog under one of them, lifting her top enough that I can fondle her tits, tugging her bra down and exposing her to anyone passing. Her undercurrent of aroused thought gets stronger, and I slurp more of it.

"Not here," I tell her, slapping a breast as I yank her top down to create some semblance of decency. Yes, those ideas are still burning away. Semi-public sex, a bit of physical force, mild embarrassment -- she wants the lot.

So I'll give it to her.

I usher her back along the road, her skirt hitched up to what she thinks of an embarrassing degree -- I gobble up that idea, hungrily, like the bread brought out with your menus. We cross roads around the IMAX, where she remembers the old Cardboard City, a hundred homeless people living in the warren of underpasses, now demolished, but back then she'd wondered about getting her own box for privacy and shagging a boyfriend -- or a stranger -- or both -- where anyone could hear, all the commuters tutting and judging while the denizens accepted it all.

Wonderful, original, mind! I eat up every morsel of that image, as a glorious starter.

I want my main course. We're on the Cut, now, where various alleyways still offer cover of shadow away from the main road. There's cameras now, of course, but I don't need to worry about that. She won't, either.

There's an unlit narrow passage. Two large wheelie bins blocking much of the entry, but beyond that there's space between two talk Victorian buildings either side, some black-painted fire escapes. No-one else about except a pigeon, and pigeons see all, everywhere.

She grabs me, now, applying as much squeezing force as I use to spin her round and push her back against the grey-brick wall. She holds my head to kiss me hard; I hold her to the wall by her chest and reach to pull her skirt up out of the way. She's got stretchy artificial fabric over her legs and the area in between, but nothing a quick slash with a demonic fingernail can't destroy. The cloth covering her queynte is soft, damp, scented, and stroking with one of my humanoid fingers leads to a cacophony of mental images coming from her.

She wants something inside her; her thoughts flicker through images of fingers, cocks, and phalluses made from a wide variety of materials, including some of the modern substances I'm less familiar with. I do tend to be about 50 years behind, with technology. It saves time, not learning about passing fads.