Poetry & Blood Ch. 03

Chapter 3: Questions

Edited by Abby H.

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Laura was sore again the next morning. She checked her phone: 8 a.m. Better this time. No knocking on the door either. Laura stared at the landline next to her bed. She could call Nikki or Angelica to get some food. But she hesitated.

Why does she feel better at night than she does in the morning?

That's not the flu, is it?

She picked up the phone and called Nikki.

"Hello?" croaked a voice on the other end.

"Nikki?"

"Yup."

"Are you asleep?"

"Not anymore."

"Sorry," said Laura. "I thought you'd already be up and working."

"It's my day off."

"Oh." Laura chewed on her lip. She was being stupid. She should just order the same thing she had yesterday. Angelica was right. The sooner she ate, the better she'd feel.

"Do you need something?" Nikki's voice was coming in a little clearer, a little stronger.

"To calm down, mostly," admitted Laura.

"What's wrong?"

"It's nothing. I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep."

"Laura, what's wrong?" insisted Nikki.

"Nothing. I'm sorry I woke you. Thanks for answering."

Laura hung up the phone before letting Nikki push further. She wasn't even sure what she was worried about. It was weird how she was sick each morning and stronger at night. It was weird to feel better so quickly after eating. She'd never been sick like that before, but there were plenty of weird illnesses or whatever out there in the world. It could just be exhaustion or how she slept or perhaps her new bed. She was being silly.

Laura dialed the kitchen and asked Jacque to make her the same thing he made for her yesterday. He grunted something that sounded like an affirmative and hung up on her. She started to sit up slowly in the bed, hoping to regain her strength by standing and stretching. A shower would help. Food would help. The sooner she felt stronger, the sooner she could feel useful to Camille. You can't miss the first two days of a new job because you feel sore. Especially not this job.

Laura took a long hot shower. Angelica would leave the food for her, and she didn't care if the eggs were cold. Laura needed to unwind. She stood under the steaming water and ran her hands over body. She rubbed and massaged her shoulders, her abs, her back, her hips, and everywhere else that ached - which was basically everywhere. She soaped up her hands and repeated the massage.

Her body sighed with relief. It's hard to massage yourself, but when you're this sore, almost any gentle but firm touch feels heavenly. She needed a moment to herself, in private. She thought she could feel alone in the empty hallways of the mansion or in the privacy of her room, but there were too many eyes. People came into her room at any moment and floated around her. She was watched all the time. She felt it more than knew it. Something about the mansion made it another employee of Camille, another way to contain Laura.

But in the shower, she felt alone for the first time since moving in.

Her mind wandered as she relived the previous night. It was getting harder to remember the Muse Sessions. Something about them made her mind recall them in a different light. They were stranger to her now, removed from the moment, than when she was there. She was familiar with the classic regret and awkwardness of previous sexual encounters. For some reason—the night before—reading to Camille felt normal, almost natural. Now, it felt like some bizarre porno she'd seen on Cinemax.

And when she recalled the Muse Session, Marcilla had a firmer grip on her curiosity. During the reading, things felt wrong or forced. The poems were good, but not legendary. There were problems with anachronisms. Things didn't line up, and that distracted Laura. But in the shower, going over last night, she didn't care about the strangeness of Marcilla's text. All she cared about was Marcilla. She was caught up in the story of Marcilla's hunt and Laura K's simple eroticism.

It was like recalling a dream but in reverse. Being in the room was like recalling the dream itself. Things didn't make sense. Things were obviously imaginary. There was a falseness, a surreal and forced heaviness to each moment. You could only think and tell yourself: "this is only a dream."

But the following morning was like being in that dream. Everythings feels too real. You need to be pinched or shocked to believe it was false. Like as she slept, the bizarreness of it all slipped away until Laura knew with absolute certainty that she couldn't wait for another Muse Session. She had so much to read and so much to learn. She needed the words again. Camille faded away and Marcilla reigned in Laura's mind. She became Laura K and felt the house hunting her, each thing stalking her simple steps and leading her to Marcilla.

A moan escaped Laura as she approached climax. How long had she been in here? How long had she been edging? It didn't matter. What mattered was that she needed to finish. She needed to go back into her room where Marcilla could watch her, could devour her.

Laura K was such a fool to resist Marcilla's attention. Laura would do anything to have those eyes of lust, of hunger, of power on her. Even from a woman, it didn't matter. Lust was pure. Lust was good.

Laura K should expose herself and beg Marcilla to take her.

Laura should expose herself and beg Marcilla to take her.

Laura should expose herself and beg Camille to take her.

Laura came. She grabbed the side of the shower while her knees buckled and gave out. Her thighs quivered. Everything in her begged for her to pull her hand away from her clit, but she couldn't. She pressed on. Another moan escaped, this one slipping into a shriek. Yes. She didn't need to stop. She could keep going. She imagined Laura K on her knees, the stupid girl eating out Marcilla. Yes. She should submit.

Laura's vision went white. Laura pulled her hand away and sunk to her knees, panting as waves of orgasm shook her body. She smiled to herself. She didn't normally masturbate this much. Even once a day was a lot for her. But if she was going to participate in poem orgies and read sexy romance novels every day, she supposed she should get used to it.

Laura grabbed a towel and stepped out of the bathroom to find Nikki sitting on her bed with breakfast for both of them. Laura blushed, yelped, and scrambled to cover herself with her towel.

"Nothing I haven't seen before, hun," laughed Nikki.

"What are you doing in here?"

Nikki pointed to the tray of breakfast. "I'd thought we'd eat together."

"Can I get dressed first?"

"Be my guest." Nikki opened her hand, granting Laura permission, but she didn't turn away. She smiled wider and stared at Laura, wondering what the girl would do.

Laura blushed deeper as she went to the dresser, grabbed herself a simple tank top, panties, and shorts, and went back into the bathroom. Nikki laughed as Laura closed the door. Laura dried herself as best she could, put her hair up so she didn't look like a drowned weasel, and got dressed. She looked herself in the mirror, took a deep breath, and stepped back into her bedroom.

"Feel better?" asked Nikki.

"Much." Laura crossed the room and grabbed the chair at her desk. She dragged it close to Nikki and sat down.

"Plenty of room on this bed," teased Nikki as she tapped the spot next to her.

"I'm not quite feeling well. I'd like the support of the chair," lied Laura. She didn't know how much Nikki had heard of her in the shower, but she felt like a slut and an idiot at the same time. It felt like Nikki sensed that and wanted to tease her for it. She'd rather not.

"Awww, again?"

"Yes. But I think food will help."

"It should." Nikki lifted the dome off the tray and went to work giving Laura her plate, fork, and smoothie while also serving herself some. "Is that why you called this morning? You know you can call Jacque directly."

"I know, but that's not why I called you. I wanted to get your advice."

"On how to loosen up?" Nikki raised an eyebrow while she took a bite of scrambled eggs and spinach.

"No," said Laura, looking down at the floor. "I was worried when I was feeling sick this morning."

"Worried to miss work again?"

"No ... well, yes. But that's not it. I was worried because last night I felt fine and then this morning I felt terrible again and that's strange, right?"

"A little bit. Not Bigfoot strange, but sure."

"Right, well I had this idea that maybe—now this is crazy so bear with me—but maybe there was something in my food that was making me better?"

"Yeah, I think they call them nutrients," said Nikki.

Laura rolled her eyes. "Not like that. Like maybe something or ... or maybe it was ... someone that was making me sick on purpose and then giving me food to make me better?"

"Like poison and an antidote?"

"Well, when you say it like that ..." said Laura. She shouldn't have said anything. Gosh, she was being stupid. And paranoid. And now Nikki would think she was a stupid, paranoid, slutty girl after only knowing her for two days. Great. Perfect.

"I don't think anyone's poisoning you, hun," said Nikki. "And I don't think you're crazy."

"You don't?" Laura looked up to watch Nikki. The redhead was watching her intently, but with a look of tenderness, not of judgment.

"I don't. Think about it. Who would do it? Jacque? Why would he put you through some type of system like that. That's crazy. He'd lose his job and Miss K would have him deported in a second. Who else? Angelica? She'd never do anything to piss off Miss K. And Miss K doesn't make sense. When you're sick, you don't work. She hired you to work. What good are you if you're sick? So, unless you're accusing little ol' me of poisoning you," Nikki smiled and winked at Laura, "then I think you're out of suspects. Anyone in this house serves and loves Miss K. We'd never risk pissing her off by hurting her new favorite thing."

Laura felt a soft warmth rise to her cheeks. She conceded Nikki's logic, surprised at her insight. But more than that, she latched onto the idea that she was Camille's new favorite thing. Camille liked her? A lot? She knew Camille appreciated her, but she would never dare describe herself as a favorite of Camille's.

"And you're not crazy," added Nikki. "This place is a little spooky. It has this effect on everyone."

"What effect?"

"Suspicion," said Nikki. She cleaned the side of her mouth with her napkin and finished her smoothie. Gosh, the girl could eat fast. Laura took the time to appreciate what Nikki was wearing. Nikki was a thick girl, with pronounced curves and a heavy chest. She wore a grey v-neck t-shirt and short, flirting with too short, jean shorts that showed off her powerful thighs. She was gorgeous. There was so much woman to her that Laura had to look away for fear of being accused of ogling her co-worker.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Old houses and money attract wealthy people like Miss K and scare us regular folks away. I spent the first few weeks here sure there was a ghost or several ghosts haunting this place. It creaks. Things sound like footsteps. It messes with you. You start to suspect something sinister around every corner."

"And there are a lot of corners," said Laura. She finished her eggs and braced herself to drink the smoothie as quickly as possible.

"Indeed."

A silence bloomed around them. Laura focused on her smoothie, taking it in with tiny sips, but Nikki was clearly uncomfortable. She tapped her foot nervously while waiting for someone to talk. Laura smiled to herself, happy to see the awkwardness get to someone besides herself for a change.

"Do you know how old the house is?" asked Laura, trying to help the girl.

"No one does. Well, maybe Miss K does, but no one else does. It's been here since the 1800s at least. It's one of the few houses so close to the river that it survived the fires and yellow fever plague that struck after the civil war. Apparently, Miss K inherited it."

"Wait, she inherited it?"

"Yeah."

Laura finished her smoothie and put down her glass. "I always assumed she bought it with the money she made writing."

"She had the money first. She's an heiress whose family line goes all the way back to nobility in Austria, apparently." Nikki cleaned up all the dishware from breakfast and moved the tray across the room.

"So, what, she writes romance novels for fun?"

"Pretty much," said Nikki as she sat back down on the bed.

"Must be nice."

"Must be," admitted Nikki.

"I mean," Laura could feel some heat building in her. She knew it was petty jealousy, but she knew if she simply had the right attention in the publishing world, she could probably put Camille to shame with her own writing. But no, she wasn't born a millionaire. "I wouldn't even need all the money or the house," continued Laura. "If I had enough money so I didn't need to work, I'd love to have the time to write. Think of how much better writers we could have if every one of them had the means to write full time."

"Better than Miss K?"

Laura looked away in embarrassment. "No ... I mean. Better in general. I mean, too many people work jobs just to pay the bills, and here she gets to do whatever she wants because the bills are paid."

"And then some," added Nikki.

"I mean, do you have a passion for being a maid or is this just a job to you?"

"Well, no, I didn't ever want to be a maid."

"Exactly."

Laura got up and went into the bathroom. She grabbed her hair brush and let down her hair to let it dry and began brushing.

"But this isn't just a job to me," added Nikki.

"What do you mean?"

"In a way, this is sort of my dream job."

"Being a maid?"

"Working for Miss K," said Nikki.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"How did you get the job?" asked Laura.

"Well, it started in grad school. I was studying to be a biochemist. I was focusing especially on botany and plant interactions with living materials compared to their interaction with more raw materials, through processes such as photosynthesis."

"Let's pretend I know what that means."

"Venus fly traps. They can turn living flesh into nutrients. Other plants use more direct sources, like nitrogen and water from the soil and sunlight. I wanted to know how they did it and why and a bunch of other things."

"Oh," said Laura. She had to admit, she would have never believed Nikki had studied to be a biochemist. Biochemists sounded like stuffy nerds, and Nikki was anything but that. She was a sex bomb: confident, flirtatious, fun, and bold.

"I know. Not the most exciting," said Nikki, but her face betrayed her. She was glowing now, like something she long missed was awake inside her. "But anyway, it's a lot of dense reading of journals and publications and research and blah blah blah all the time. So when I came home, I didn't want to read anything dense or complicated. I always read to relax, but Virginia Woolf was not appealing after a day of parsing protein strands into some form of English."

"Makes sense."

"I went to the bookstore and went straight to the romance section. I wanted cheesy dialogue, simple plots, basic description, and hot men with hard bodies. I would plough through a book in a day or two after spending time in the lab. It wasn't terribly satisfying. Sure, it turned my brain off. It turned me on. But it didn't compel me. That was, until I found Miss K's stories. There was something special about them, something I couldn't articulate. For one, they were much sexier, almost pornographic. A lot of romance authors dance around the material, but not Miss K. She never faded to black when a couple fell into bed together. In her books, you went to bed with the couple. You did more than watch what they did, you felt what they did."

Nikki blushed, brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear, and looked away from Laura. "Needless to say," she continued, "I became obsessed. Miss K doesn't just write about lust. I mean, she does, and it's hot. But she writes about love. True love. It isn't damsels in distress finding a hot man to make their life easy and perfect like most stories. There is real conflict in her stories. She wants to see estranged people reconnect. She loves to take broken couples and fix them. She is always healing a wounded relationship, like The Magician's Mistress."

"So you have read it!" I laughed.

Nikki smiled. "Pages here and there. Whenever she asks me to take a manuscript to an editor or publisher, I flip through it. I can't help myself."

Nikki smiled again. She looked young—almost young and in love. There was something so endearing and so simple in her look. It was the same look an old couple has when they talk about each other, like they can't help but be in love with the other person and they know it's a little naive and overly romantic, but that's the way it is with them.

"How does a super fan become a maid to their favorite writer?"

"Blind luck," said Nikki. "I'd suspended my studies at grad school. I couldn't afford the tuition. There was supposedly a grant coming, but then it got denied. I didn't want to take out even more loans, so my professor agreed I could continue studying in a year or two when I had figured out my finances. So I was looking for a job online when I saw a posting for a maid position and the address was this address. Of course, I knew this was Miss K's house. I'd sent fan mail here. I'd driven by just to look at it and see if I got a glimpse of her. But the posting didn't mention that it was Camille Kontalban. It just said it needed a job for a live-in maid for a highly private employer. I didn't have to think. I submitted my application an hour later."

"Wow," said Laura.

"I know. And it was perfect. I knew that if I got the job, yes, I'd be closer to Miss K. I'd see her more often and get to know her. But more importantly, I'd be helping her. Now, I can't write a novel or catch a typo to save my life, but I can clean a house. I can do dishes. I can bring her food. I can do everything I can to make sure she is happy and comfortable so she can focus all her energy on her writing. That's why this is my dream job. Even though I do such a small thing, the thing I do helps my favorite writer create. I help in the way I can. It's intoxicating."

Laura was impressed. She hoped that one day she'd inspire such devotion from fans of her writing. She also found a new respect for Nikki. It wasn't just the biochemistry. Nikki had always struck her as someone that was flighty and fickle. She was always seeking a new guy or a temporary fling when she went out. Laura had come to think of her as shallow or even slutty. But this version of Nikki was like Angelica: fiercely loyal.

"How long have you been working for her?" asked Laura.

"Only six months or so. I'm still earning her trust."

"Having to steal peeks of her stories?"

Nikki blushed. "Well ... yeah. For now. But I hope someday I can become more useful to her with her stories. Or at least get into her head on how she creates them."

"Well ..." Laura bit her lip. This was risky. And stupid. But she liked Nikki, and she wanted to help her out. The poor girl gave up life as a serious academic to be Miss K's made. She deserved a little treat for all her hard work. "I could let you read over the pages she sends me."

"Really?"

"In secret, of course," added Laura.

"Of course!"

"I think it's technically a violation of my non-disclosure, but you won't tell anyone that I gave them to you, right?"

"Absolutely not." Nikki held up her right hand like she was going under oath in court. "Girl Scout's honor."

"And you won't tell anyone what happens in the stories? No leaking spoilers or earlier drafts?"

"I swear. I won't even take them out of the room. I'll read them in here. You can watch me."