Lyric's Tale 03: A Maple Ferry Story

"Sure! It's no big deal, right? I mean, worst case she gets turned on by my big johnson." Eric stated proudly. "But I want to know how wimpy little Lyric took losing his job. Darcy sounded pissed in her texts last night."

"Mister you have no idea how pissed off Darcy was," Chelsea continued, "You have no idea how pissed off I am! I can't believe you took private pictures of us being intimate, on my phone, and then you sent them to my boss!"

"Hahahahaha, I know right? Best joke ever." Eric was clearly feeling proud of himself.

"Where are you right now, Eric?" asked Chelsea.

"I'm at the baseball fields out by the High School," Eric answered, "Wanna come hang? We could have a repeat of last night? We'd need to meet behind the field house though, too many people here in the stands."

"So you have a whole bunch of people around you, listening in to this conversation?" Chelsea asked shrilly.

"Ah babe, none of them really know what I'm talking about," Eric offered.

"Tell you what, Eric. What happened last night, is never going to happen again. We both knew that we were ending this summer." Chelsea initiated.

"Ha! I knew it," Eric said, "I knew you were going to break up with me. That's why I throatfucked you and then sent those pictures to fuck with Lyric. Little freakshow won't fuck with me again." He was so proud.

"Well, I hope you enjoyed it, Eric. Because that's probably the last head you'll have from a female for a long time." Chelsea finished. "Once the girls of Maple Ferry find out how little you care for their privacy, I don't imagine you'll have folks lining up to blow you."

"What? Like you're going to tell them? You're going to tell people that I fucked your throat and came all over your face?" Eric was shouting into the phone now. People in the bleachers around him were beginning to turn around to look at him or, alternately, cover the ears of kids that were watching the afternoon little league game.

"It sounds like you're doing a good enough job of that on your own, Eric." Said Chelsea contritely, "I'm going to be oh so sad, and share what my mean ex-boyfriend did, to my dear old mom while she finishes up her shift today."

"You wouldn't." Eric said. It was almost as if Chelsea could hear the colour leaving Eric's face through the phone call.

"I would," Cheslea said. In fact, I'm walking to the salon right now. Chelsea got up from her perch on top of the limestone block and hopped back down to the path, walking towards the Salon where her mom and Eric's older sister worked together on a Sunday afternoon.

If there was one place in Maple Ferry where information flew faster than social media, it was the Maple Waves salon.

"Oh," Chelsea added, "Two more things. One, Darcy says to never go to the Shack again. She's going to talk to the Sheriff tomorrow and trespass you. If you show up, you can be arrested."

"What the fuck? She can't do that!" Eric shouted into his phone again.

"In fact she can, you freely admitted to non-consensual distribution of personal images of one of her staff members. The second thing, I've recorded this conversation. IF I don't turn it over to the police, you'll know because you haven't been arrested. Do you know what the statute of limitations on revenge porn laws is?"

*click*

Chelsea hung up, and stopped recording.

She had no idea whether revenge porn laws were a thing, whether there was a statute of limitations, or whether her recording was something she could use against Eric in court or with the police.

But, she had the recording, and both she and he had been in a public place during the call, so they had no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Chelsea shrugged, flicked off a text to her Mom, "Finished work. Coming by for a chat. Have lattes. What a day!" Then she proceeded to walk back up into the Maple Ferry shoppes and into 'Maple Waves' to catch her mom up on the day's gossip.

Eric was so fucked.

-

For the second time in a two-hour window, Lyric was back in his shower.

This time was less intense, the loofa was left on its peg, and the temperature of the water was well below 'imminent death by boiling' versus the shower he had earlier.

Stepping out and pulling up a fresh towel, Lyric took a second to consider how crazy the last fourteen hours had been while he toweled off.

Get cryptically, but certainly, banned from your workplace? - Check

Run and hide in your favourite hiding place and end up watching your gorgeous older neighbour frig herself ragged? - Check

Come home and spend two hours in a drawing frenzy? - Check

Wake up and have that same neighbour scare the living shit out of you? - Check

Find out you were the victim of foul play at the hands of a co-worker's significant other? - Check

Get unbanned from that same workplace, and garner favour with your boss? - Check

Almost get discovered as the neighbourhood Peeping Tom by the sexy neighbour who scared you, but also cared for you? - Check

"Fuck me. What's next?" Lyric thought to himself as he pulled on a second pair of fresh jeans and another clean t-shirt.

Grabbing one of his less risque completed sketchbooks from a bookshelf on his way out, Lyric stepped into the basement from his apartment.

Remembering to close the door behind himself this time, he paused until heard the happy sound of his lock automatically latching behind him.

Moving back up the stairs into the kitchen, Lyric took a few minutes to clean up any leftovers from his botched first attempt at coffee making, as well as any indications remaining that he had chucked his cookies in the sink.

Feeling remarkably better about life, Lyric went through his brewing ritual again, only this time he brewed into a large stainless steel decanter.

"I wonder what sort of tech support she needs help with," Lyric thought as he let the last drops of coffee drip from the filter into the decanter.

-

Lyric stepped out the storm door onto his parents' front porch and then locked up behind him, before stepping down to the path that connected the driveway to the porch.

Walking across the driveway he jumped over the small flower garden that separated his parents' driveway from Evelyn's, landing on the pavement next to her gutsy little Audi.

Carrying the decanter full of coffee in one arm, like a newborn in swaddling, and his sketchbook in the other, Lyric stepped up to Evelyn's door and rang the doorbell.

There was no response.

As had been the case at his place, Evelyn's front door was open behind her storm door, so Lyric tried the door and found it unlocked.

Stepping into the foyer, Lyric announced himself, "Evelyn? I'm here... with coffee."

He took off his shoes, left them by the front door, and walked into the kitchen.

Looking around for obvious signs of cups or mugs, Lyric took a stab and opened the upper cabinets that were just to the left of the big window that looked out into Evelyn's backyard.

Lyric paused for just a second, staring out at the big cedar hedge that stared back at him from the edge of Evelyn's yard.

It was amazing just how closed-off the yard felt because of that hedge. How secure; a feeling that Lyric knew was entirely misplaced.

He lucked out, and managed to find two coffee cups that he liked in the cabinet and was just unscrewing the lid to the decanter when he felt a light tap on his right shoulder which was accompanied by a, "Boo!"

For the second time in as many hours Lyric nearly jumped out of his skin in a kitchen.

This time, however, he managed to hold onto the coffee and keep from throwing it onto the floor.

"Shit! Fuck! Damn! Evelyn! You gotta stop that!" Lyric cried out, turning around to face the giggling woman who was clearly enjoying how tightly wound Lyric still was.

Once he had brought his heart rate back into a normal rhythm Lyric tried to look sternly at Evelyn, but couldn't quite pull it off and joined her in laughter.

It was obvious, now, why Evelyn hadn't met Lyric at the front door when he rang the bell. Gone were the jeans and t-shirt she had been wearing earlier.

Evelyn was now wearing a pair of tight fitting jean shorts that almost, but not quite, qualified as "Daisy Dukes". Up top she had on a modest blue bikini top underneath a nearly sheer white cover-up which flowed down her body from shoulders to the tops of her thighs.

While the bikini top provided ample coverage, and was certainly not a string bikini by any stretch of the imagination, it did a remarkable job of creating a shelf of Evelyn's marvelous breasts, and Lyric's brain was struggling to catch up to his eyes as he took in his gorgeous neighbour.

She caught him drinking her in, and took a second to enjoy the effect she was having on him. His colour was piqued, and his eyes were definitely not locked on hers. Finally, as if catching on, Lyric had a little subconscious tremor and then looked up into Evelyn's eyes.

"Okay lady, that's enough years off of my life today, please and thank you!" Lyric said as he hastily turned around and poured out two coffees. Hiding his growing erection by facing the counter.

Fortunately, for Lyric, coffee was a good distraction, the floral and fruit forward notes of his Ethiopian coffee wafting off the top of the cup, allowing Lyric to lose himself for a moment as he closed his eyes to savour the aroma, while willing his cock to go down.

When he finally opened them again, his eyes bugged out as he saw Evelyn reaching into her fridge to pull out a small container of heavy cream. "Would you like some?" She asked Lyric who was making startling choking sounds.

Leaning over, as she was, the cheeks of her ass were poking out of the bottom of her jean shorts, and her breasts were patently obvious through the sheer top which had ridden up as she reached into the fridge.

"Nope! No. No. I'm good." He managed to get out without, quite, shouting.

Distracted by her ass, Lyric was less mortified than normal at the prospect of someone putting milk or cream into a coffee he had made. That said, his nose still wrinkled with distaste.

None of this was lost on Evelyn as she languished in the moment of pouring the thick and almost syrupy yellow cream into her mug.

When she was done, she took a second to blow across the top of her mug, and then used the little finger of her right hand to quickly stir the coffee and cream together, before sucking it clean.

Lyric squeaked.

"Perfect!" Evelyn exclaimed.

"Mine too." Lyric managed to agree.

They each raised their mug to face the other in a silent, "Cheers!"

Lyric and Evelyn stood in companionable silence in her kitchen and enjoyed the first few sips of their coffees; Lyric looking out the window at the hedge and Evelyn quietly enjoying looking at Lyric.

Lyric was nearly six feet tall, and while he was still skinny, the last couple years had seen him packing on muscle in ways that filled him out proportionately. He didn't have the physique of a football player like Eric, or a body builder like so many of the guys that worked for Evelyn. But he was well formed.

It hadn't been until just after Lyric's 18th birthday that Evelyn first found herself noticing how well Lyric's ass was filling out his jeans; or how much more square his shoulders seemed in the rare instances where he stood straight.

"It's not like I've been constantly perving on the neighbour boy," she thought to herself. Though if she was going to be honest, there had been the occasional finger bang in the shower where Lyric had played an integral role in her fantasy.

Shaking her head a bit, she turned to Lyric and said, "Okay Mister. Come with me."

Putting down her coffee cup she snagged his left arm with her right, and walked him out of the kitchen and down the hall to one of her spare bedrooms which had been set up as her home office.

Lyric took a minute to admire her clean and simple aesthetic and setup.

The desk was set into a corner where she could either work from her monitors, a flat screen set in portrait mode and a curved widescreen monitor in landscape, or gaze out the front window to the yard and street beyond.

The desk was clearly adjustable, and he could see the controls which would allow the user to set the height for working from standing or sitting.

Her keyboard and mouse looked equally well kitted out for office work and gaming.

"Are you a gamer?" Lyric asked Evelyn directly, barely hiding the small sound of hope in his voice.

She blushed slightly and looked shyly down at her feet, "Not really? I hate the culture and communities in online games. Gamer boys are fuckwits. No offense. I... play older single player games. Do you know Skyrim?"

Lyric smiled, "The only good Thalmor is a dead Thalmor. Also, on behalf of gamer boys everywhere, I apologize for the gross misogyny and general assholiness."

Evelyn's giggle helped her relax, as she reached past Lyric to boot up her desktop computer.

"So, you're going to help me connect my new security cameras to this computer. It should be doable by bluetooth. The cameras back up to a cloud account, but I also want them to dump their data here." Evelyn advised. "This way I get to review and purge files as I choose."

She continued, "I have no desire to go through footage every single day, but it will be nice to have on-hand if something ever happens." Evelyn handed Lyric a single piece of paper that had the names of the devices, and he began to sort through connecting them to the desktop.

"The cameras go on at regular intervals for a fixed period of time, but they are also triggered by motion and changes in light. So they'll really be useful in the event something does happen. Heaven forbid." Evelyn continued while stepping back and away from the desk.

"Okay, hand over that sketchbook mister." Evelyn said, one hand on a cocked hip, the other held out flat for him to place the book on.

"Now, listen," Lyric started, "I'm not used to sharing what I draw with people. I never submitted any of this stuff to my teachers in school."

"Don't be shy, hon," Evelyn jumped in, "I just want to see what your folks' have been talking about. It's not like I'm an art critic you need to worry about!"

"Okay," Lyric handed over the sketchbook, "I hope you like what you see."

"I hope you like making my computer talk to my cameras! We'll be out back on a lounge chair when you're done." Evelyn saluted Lyric with his own sketchbook, and snapped her heals together giving her boobs a happy bounce. Lyric had no question what "we" she had been referring to when she said they'd be out back.

Evelyn just cackled and backed out of the room heading down the hall towards the kitchen.

Lyric found the different cameras easily with the computer and began connecting them via bluetooth one at a time.

There were more than he had expected, and Evelyn had named them before having them installed: Front Door, Back Door, Garage Door, Front Yard 1, Front Yard 2, Back Yard 1, Back Yard 2.

As Lyric connected each camera, he created a file for each to feed the video and still images they collected into.

Like Evelyn said, each camera appeared to have been set up to only take video when triggered by motion or light, and/or at regular intervals established by the user.

He had no idea what intervals Evelyn had established.

As he set up the filing system for the video and image data for each camera he pulled the first thumbnail picture from each camera to serve as the folder image for the file.

When he saw the first image of Back Yard 2, his heart skipped a beat.

The picture was of his hedge or, well, Evelyn's hedge, but Lyric's hide away.

Opening the image up to enlarge it, Lyric noted that the camera was definitely taking a wide field of view that captured Evelyn's side of the hedge from where Lyric would enter, all the way across to where he would sit to watch Evelyn in her bedroom window.

This was a problem.

Lyric broke out into a cold sweat, again.

He opened up the data file from the most recent data-dump from the camera. The file had been uploaded at 7am on Sunday morning; almost eight hours ago now.

As the video file uploaded Lyric could see that it was relatively short. The video feed started at 7pm on Saturday, and showed approximately 15 seconds of video captured on the hour for every hour of the evening. This was fine, aside from changing light angles each video looked entirely the same, almost like still life.

Until the video timestamp clicked over at 12am.

There was a problem. The video kept running longer than 15 seconds.

Looking into the images being broadcast on the widescreen monitor in front of him, Lyric paused the video to stare at where he knew he had been hiding at this time.

Lyric looked directly at the hedge and looked to see if he was visible.

He wasn't. What had triggered the video to run longer? Had there been motion when he crawled into the hedge?

Lyric released a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.

He pressed play and let the video run through. He watched the timestamp through the period that he knew he was in the hedge.

It wasn't until near the end of the 12am video capture that he got his first shock from the video. The hedge was clearly moving as he scuttled out from his viewing position and back along the pathway to his entrance on his parents' yard's side of the hedge.

Still, he wasn't visible, and it wasn't clear where the activity was that was causing the hedge to move.

The second shock came when, for two full seconds, his own floating head was visible through the hedge.

Lyric caught sight of himself in profile, forehead, eyebrows, eyes and nose. Visible through a small break in the top of the hedge on the left side of the screen.

He was there. Just for a second, before he watched himself turn away and the image was lost in the darkness.

Goddamn the night vision mode on these cameras was good.

"What the fuck am I going to do!?!" was the thought hammering to get out of Lyric's head.

"I'm only on camera for a second, and I am only visible because I knew where to look and when, at exactly the right time." his rampaging brain was starting to snowball.

"She's not going to look at last night's tapes anyway, she has no reason to," the snowball picked up pace and size.

"I could always just delete all the files from yesterday and tell her I lost them while setting up her database," destroying trees on the slopes of his mind the snowball of despair continued unabated.

"What if I just deleted this file and said nothing?" Lyric's brain was moving a thousand miles a minute, as he desperately sought a way out of the pickle he was in.

Without another thought Lyric deleted the video file from Back Yard 2 which had been uploaded from the data collected at 7am.

He went to the recycle bin and deleted the file permanently and then did a quick windows search to see if the file was captured or backed up anywhere else on the computer.

It wasn't.

Taking another deep breath, Lyric put the computer to sleep and pushed back from the desk. Standing up, he stretched out the kinks from working at someone else's workstation and went to the kitchen to retrieve his, now cold, coffee.

Looking out the kitchen window into the backyard he first saw his hiding spot in the hedge. Not obvious, even in the broad light of day, it was a spot he had spent so many hours over the years.

He was sad to have to abandon it. But he knew that he couldn't go back now. Not with the cameras Evelyn had put in. Not with the risk of being caught.

Yet still, he felt loss. That had been his one true escape.

Sure, he had other places, and other windows, to go to. But this hedge, this yard, these windows.

They had been his first.

Scanning his gaze down he saw Evelyn in her lounge chair scanning through his sketchbook.