Morgana's Gift Pt. 09

Interruption Two -- For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

The next few weeks or so developed into a comfortable and delicious rhythm. Kevin was pleased to find that the women in his life all seemed to get along with each other very well, Miriam and Elizabeth doing their best to manage his work life, Natalie managed his diet and exercise routine, and Ashley made sure he didn't take himself too seriously.

Elizabeth had reminded him that he still had three spaces in the house to fill, but Kevin had told her he wasn't in any rush, as he already felt a little spoiled for choice. His majordomo seemed to think he might want to bring on a lawyer soon, as well as a personal physician, but Kevin hadn't felt any real pressure to get either of those.

Miriam, it turned out, actually enjoyed driving him around, saying she found the Tesla Model X a joy to drive, and even when she was working, she and he had developed a great rapport, able to carry on conversations about all sorts of things.

The one thing he had decided, however, was that women in his household needed to be exposed to more music, as it seemed like all four of them were barely familiar with anything that hadn't been released in the last ten years. From the Beatles and the Stones to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, he had a lot of teaching to do.

Work on Emily Rouchard's movie score continued a bit at a time, as the director and the star both wanted to make endless notes on what did and didn't work. If he'd been picky about it, it might have seemed overwhelming, but instead it basically just told him that they were very much invested in the movie, and wanted everything to land just right. Given their working speed and the amounts of adjustments he was doing, he figured he would be on the project for another month or two.

Kerry had also started talks with people who wanted to use Kevin's studio to record their album, and in this regard, Kevin was going to be incredibly cautious, as it meant letting a bunch of musicians into his home for eight hours a day five days a week, and he knew exactly what sort of pain in the asses musicians could often be. Dandy Randy was helping her sort through the proposals and demo tapes of the people who wanted to have Kevin produce their album, and Elizabeth tried to aid as best as she could in helping manage the process, but in the end, there was just so much going on, that Kerry and Randy had to take on the lion's share of screening.

He had narrowed it down to two options, a band from Dublin called Fire Castles that specialized in sort of psychedelic post-rock swells and a band from Madrid called Children Of Adventure that did good old fashioned sleazy rock'n'roll. Kevin suspected Fire Castles would be easier to work with, but that Children of Adventure would make the more interesting record, although they struck him as very hard partying people, and he worried that sort of attitude would get in the way of making the music. It was a decision he was still mulling over.

Elizabeth had also informed him that there was an official offer from Robert Rodriguez's people for him to be scoring a new movie he was working on called "One Desperate Man," something Rob had pitched to him as "the Mexican 'Falling Down,'" a description which had more than caught his attention. The script was going to be sent over to him in the next few days, and Kevin was scheduled to start having meetings with the director next week, something Kevin was looking forward to for multiple reasons.

Not only was Rodriguez an amazing director, one that Kevin had been a fan of for a long time, he was also a guitarist, meaning they could speak to each other in three languages -- English, Spanish and music. And the idea that he would be scoring a Robert Rodriguez movie absolutely blew his mind. He couldn't believe how far he'd come in just a month or so.

Lastly, in stolen moments here and there, Kevin had started writing a new batch of songs, although he wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do with them, whether he wanted to form a new band, put out a solo record or just give them to some other band to record. There was a certain appeal to the idea of being a modern day Prince, just gifting hit songs to people because he didn't feel like recording them himself. He was considering giving one of them as a closing song to Emily for her movie, a track that basically felt like a lost Truth Knife b-side. With Kerry on drums and him playing basically everything else, that wouldn't be far from the truth, since the rest of the band had often been too drunk or stoned to play their parts and Kevin had been forced to step in and record their parts for them instead.

In fact, he was particularly pleased with the song "Mind Heist" that he'd even had Kerry go in and record the drum part for him, so the song was basically done except for some final mastering adjustments to be made, and he intended to send it with his next batch of development mixes of the score over to Emily and see if she was interested in using it as a credits crawl for the movie, something they hadn't really talked too much about yet, because she and Alice were massively busy with the reshoots, having been doing twelve-hour days for two weeks straight, the action scene they were filming for the opening of the movie having gotten more complicated, because of the quickness with which it had been put together, so the logistics were constantly shifting, making it a nightmare, although Emily seemed confident that they were close to wrapping, and Kevin had no reason to disbelieve her.

All of this meant that Kevin had lost track of time.

When he woke up on the morning of the 3^rd, the house was completely empty. Ashley was on campus, Natalie was teaching classes, Elizabeth was downtown taking meetings and Miriam was going through the last of the training she needed to take in order to get her guard's license for the state of California. Since he'd moved into the house, he'd never woken up alone, and the feeling was eerie.

He got dressed and walked into the kitchen, finding that Natalie had left out a selection of fruit for him to have as his breakfast, along with a note explaining that he was on his own for the day, and that everyone would be home very late, so he shouldn't wait up for them. At the bottom of the note, Miriam had said that as long as he wasn't heading into any troublesome situations, he should be safe on his own for a day, and that he could consider the privilege of driving himself to be a special treat for the day, and that if he found himself truly in danger, he could call her to come to the rescue.

Kevin was surprised how empty the house felt with just him in it, but took the opportunity to explore it more a little, peeking his head into the each of the bedrooms the girls had claimed, just to look and see how they had customized their living space.

Miriam's room was spartan in its decoration, almost approaching looking like it was unlived in, but there were hints here and there, little things she'd left out on the dresser or the nightstand next to the bed. She'd slept in his bed a few times, but seemed to prefer returning to her own bed most nights. It seemed most of the women in the family were that way -- once or twice a week they'd fall asleep next to Kevin, but the rest of the time, they were happier in their own rooms. Elizabeth had said it was mostly so that when eventually they did find him a wife, she didn't feel crowded by all the other women. It would be easy to get accustomed to always being in bed with him, she'd told him, and that wasn't something they could afford to do.

Elizabeth's room also was ridiculously neat, but had far more clutter to it, all the clutter neatly squared away however, making the room feeling insanely organized, everything compartmentalized and sorted. Both Elizabeth and Miriam made their beds with military precision, the sheets tucked in to make the beds almost look like hotel beds.

Ashley's room, by contrast, looked like an earthquake and a bomb had gone off simultaneously. Clothes were scattered around the room, draped over nearly every surface, and empty plastic water bottles formed a sort of forest bed. Most of the floor was covered with either clothes or books, and Kevin wondered how the hell she even got in or out of the room. Opening the door even a little had forced him to push some of the ground clutter in a bit.

Natalie's room was a balance in between, certainly looking more lived in than Miriam's, but nowhere near as chaotic as Ashley's did. Neither Ashley nor Natalie had made their bed, but Ashley's had also had a bunch of clothes stacked up on it, while Natalie's didn't. The doorway between Natalie's bedroom and her attached bathroom had a chinup bar at the top of it, and there were a handful of weights scattered around the floor, as if she liked having them at hand if she felt the need to pump some iron every now and again.

They'd also gotten all of his stuff moved and settled in from his old apartment, he noted, as he strolled through the empty house, and the new place was finally feeling really like his. Putting some of his own stuff up on the walls, concert posters from gigs he'd played at or legendary shows he'd attended, had stripped away some of that sense that he was just living some place he wasn't supposed to be and was making it feel like his own home.

But the house being empty made it feel eerie.

It made him feel like he needed to get out of the house for the day.

While he didn't have Miriam to drive and look out for him, he didn't feel so helpless that he couldn't just drive himself somewhere and do some things on his own. Just for the day.

Just for this day.

He grabbed his phone, his leather jacket and his keys, hopped into one of the Teslas and headed down from the Hollywood Hills into Los Angeles proper, not even entirely sure where he was heading, just needing to get away from his house for a while.

Kevin found himself nearly down by the beach before it dawned on him that today was that day.

Today was the 3^rd.

Merlin hadn't been specific about what would happen to him on the 3^rd, only that it would be something he'd called 'Midas Day.'

The day after he'd met Merlin, Kevin had done as much research as he could into the legend of King Midas, a character from Greek mythology who was known to have the ability for anything he touched to turn to gold, but beyond that, he couldn't find anything else that was all that prominent about the legend.

He parked the car near Venice Beach and walked the rest of the way, moving towards the edge of the water, having taken off his shoes so he could let the sand sift through his toes, all the while trying to run the story of King Midas through his head.

What did Merlin have planned for him? Why had the mage seemed so amused by the whole thing? And what sort of excitement could the mage have had planned for him on the 3^rd day of every month?

Kevin kept running these questions over and over in his mind as he walked along letting the water lap at his feet. He'd shown up relatively early, and the weather was chilly in the morning, so he hadn't seen many people milling around on the beach, but the sun was high in the sky now, and people were starting to show up to go swimming or surfing.

He was at the very edge of the water when it dawned on him.

The Midas myth was about how too much of anything wasn't good for you, how it wasn't wise to want more than you were capable of handling. It was about moderation. It was about restraint. It was about how being overexposed to anything would teach you to respect it.

"Oh shit," Kevin thought to himself as he looked back from the water and noticed that nearly every woman on the beach was looking his direction, some of them already starting to slowly approach him but most of them just looking onward, like he was the only thing of importance within their entire field of vision.

He stepped away from the water back onto dry sand feeling all the world like the protagonist in a horror film who just realized he's surrounded by zombies, or someone in Jurassic Park who just spotted a pack of velociraptors close enough to be on him in moments.

It wasn't just two or three women looking at him, either, but dozens, maybe even a hundred, of all sizes and shapes, most of whom were in swimsuits, but all of whom had the same almost predatory look on their face.

The most disturbing thing was that they were all smiling.

He tugged on his socks and pulled on his shoes again as fast as he could, as the army of women slowly started to close ranks around him, some of them approaching alone, some in packs, more than a couple of them rubbing their hands against their own nipples or crotch through whatever clothing they had on.

The closest woman to him was a Latina girl in her early twenties, fit as a fiddle, wearing a hot pink bikini that covered most of her breasts and not nearly enough of her toned ass. She caught his eyes on her, and licked her lips, curling a fingertip in his direction, making him immediately turn and head the opposite direction from her, still trying to make his way off the beach.

None of them were moving quickly so Kevin realized that as long as he was keeping at a quick pace, he could easily stay ahead of them, although he did notice that they seemed to be marginally accelerating just a little bit with each passing moment.

He sprinted across the beach, weaving between the women who seemed to be slowly working to close ranks as best they could, making him have to cut around clusters of them every so often before he finally reached the sidewalk, the parking lot still feeling like it was a million miles away.

There weren't anywhere near as many women around, now that he'd gotten off the beach, but the ones that were there were moving more quickly now, Kevin doing his best to keep constantly in motion, always drifting away from the largest packs of women he could see.

He couldn't see any easy and clear way to get to the parking lot, but on the other side, he saw there was an LAPD vehicle over by one of the food trucks, a male officer standing near it, enjoying an ice cream of some kind.

Kevin had never been so happy to see a cop in all of his life.

The pathway to the cop was relatively clear, and Kevin found himself jogging over towards him, seeing a handful of women starting to converge on that area. Kevin reached the cop and tapped him on the shoulder. "Officer, excuse me, but I think I'm in need of help."

The cop looked exactly the kind of person Kevin wanted right now -- he was over six feet tall, square jawed, wide shouldered, bulging with muscles straining against the uniform like he was ready for a fight at the drop of a hat. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and a neatly trimmed beard that just screamed 'please fuck with me, it would make my day.'

"Oh, hello Mister Bishop," the officer, whose name tag read 'Wilton,' said to him. His face contorted in a warm and almost unnatural smile. "Happy Midas Day!"

And then the cop turned away from him, like he wasn't even there.

"Office, please, you need to help me!" Kevin said, grabbing the cop's shoulder.

The officer turned to look at him once more, this time a harder look on his face, as those steely blues stared him down, the man's voice sounding not entirely like his own. "Look, Mister Bishop. It's your first Midas Day, so I'm going to forgive that, but no man is allowed to help or even talk to you on Midas Day. This is your day, where every woman on the planet is going to want to fuck you. The later in the day it gets, the more intent the women are going to be and the less about your feelings they're going to care. The trial of the day ends when you fuck a woman you've never fucked before. All the women Morgana's introduced to your life are always going to be busy on Midas Day. No matter what you say or do, you will always be alone on Midas Day, until you fuck a woman you've never met before, or until you survive an entire Midas Day unscathed. But we both know that's going to be a complete impossibility," the cop said, with Merlin's voice mostly overlaid in his words. "Oops! They've almost got you, Mr. Bishop! Better run!"

Kevin looked over his shoulder and saw that less than thirty feet away, there were three women in their early twenties, all in workout clothes, and they had linked arms, as if they were going to use themselves as a barricade to prevent him from getting away.

He moved to run around them and headed towards his car in the parking lot, only to see the Tesla was surrounded by a ring of women who were grinding their asses against the surface of his vehicle, facing outward, daring him to try and approach his vehicle.

"Of course they've got the fucking car," Kevin muttered to himself before turning to head off on foot along the street. He needed to stay in motion, but everywhere he turned, he saw women of all ages, shapes and sizes suddenly turning to face him as soon as he got close enough for them to see him. He wondered if there was some sort of proximity to it, because clearly not every woman in Los Angeles was trying to come and get him right now, but it sure seemed like a whole hell of a lot of them were, as he saw women slowly filing out of the corner Starbucks, including a couple of the barristas. If there was any consolation, it was that they weren't in the classic arms up zombie pose, so at least it felt a little less creepy.

Not much, but a little.

As he kept making his way down the sidewalk, a long line of women was forming behind him, and now they were starting to jog a little, making Kevin have to work to keep a bit ahead of them, although something in him knew he couldn't keep up this tempo forever. In fact, he was starting to notice additional women coming out of buildings in front of him, and just like that, he was pretty sure he was out of escape routes.

Suddenly, an Escalade whipped up alongside of him on the street, and a door opened, as an Asian girl in her early twenties hopped out from the back seat, tossed him into the Escalade, then hopped back in, slamming the door shut behind her as she yelled, "Jade, drive!"

As the Escalade squealed off, Kevin realized he was in between two women, with two more in the front. The woman on the left of him was the woman who'd throw him into the car, dressed in tiny blue gym shorts and a blue sports bra. The woman on the right of him was an over six foot blonde girl, around the same age as the girl on his left, much bustier, however, wearing an outfit matching the girl on his left. "Don't you dare lay a finger on him, Elle, until we settle who's gettting him," the driver, a brunette girl said over her shoulder.

"But Jaaaaade," the Asian girl whined, her hand rubbing down on his cock through his jeans, "he smells so fucking good, and I don' wanna wait..."

"Del?" the brunette said.

The blonde reached over and grabbed Elle's wrist, pulling her hand away from his crotch. "Jade said wait, so we wait," she growled. "Otherwise I'd have had that dick buried in my fucking throat already, so cool it, bitch."

The girl in the front passenger seat looked Indian, with long black hair and deep brown skin, pointed over to the side. "There, just drive up to the top of the parking garage, and that'll give us plenty of time."

"Good thinking, Rose," Jade said, turning the car into the parking garage, stopping only long enough to get a ticket from the entry machine before making the vehicle squeal, starting to drive in the circles needed to ascend the vehicle multiple floors.

"You ladies don't have to do this," he said, daring to speak for the first time.