Sally's Portal Ch. 04

Chapter 4

Sally pushed opened the door and entered her bedroom, raising a quizzical eyebrow at the her friends waiting inside. She tightened her red towel about her chest and used a smaller, beige towel to dry off her hair.

"Tell me what you got," Sally demanded.

"What?" Bren asked.

"Don't give me that," she paused, her dark eyes spearing his, as she stopped half bowed in the act of gathering her hair. "You know something. Spill it."

Kendra, leaning against the wall shared a look with Bren, after which sje shrugged and Bren went on.

"Maybe," Bren admitted.

"So?" Sally prodded.

"Alright," Bren sat down in Sally's rolling desk chair. "What do you remember about the basement at Connor's party?"

"It was loud and dark?" Sally couldn't see what Bren wanted.

"When you went down later," Bren pitched his voice to indicate Sally should have clued in. "When you masturbated."

Sally exhaled softly upward and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"I don't know," she rubbed her hair while she thought. "Dark. Halloween decorations. A bit messy and spooky, I guess?"

"Spooky with candles?" Kendra prodded. "Do you remember the candles?"

"Yeah," Sally said, holding a hand out at about the height of her chest. "There were ledges, this high, on all the basement walls. Connor put candles out on them."

"Lots of candles?" Bren asked. "Try to picture it. How many?"

"Ugh," Sally plopped down on her bed, crossing her legs in a manner that opened her towel towards Bren, and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. "There were a lot. He must have set out three or four on each wall, I guess?"

Bren tried to ignore the view under Sally's towel, but couldn't avoid noticing the little triangle of short, dark hair she'd exposed, and started drawing and taking notes in his book.

"How many candles were still lit when you went downstairs?" Bren continued. "Had some of them gone out?"

"No," Sally replied, leaning forward with confidence. "They were all still lit."

"Damn," Bren grimaced. "I was thinking... Well, never mind."

He flipped over a new page and drew a rectangle on it.

"This," he declared, "Is Connor's basement."

Bren added little circles around the edges of the rectangle.

"Those are the candles?" Sally asked.

"Right," he continued. "Now where was this couch you sat on?"

"When I had my orgasm?"

"Yes," Bren rolled his eyes.

Sally took his pencil and drew a smaller rectangle inside the 'basement', showing that the couch had rested up against one of the short walls.

"And you sat on the edge of it, here?" Bren took the pencil back and made a circle on the inside edge of the couch.

When Sally nodded, Bren went on, "And then you kinda pushed your butt out, this way, into the middle of the room?"

Seeing the circle he had drawn, just off the edge of the 'couch' in his diagram, Sally nodded again.

"Okay," Bren exhaled through his nose, his concentration wearing lines onto his face. "Okay."

"So?" Sally wondered impatiently.

"I think that's how you did it," Bren replied, and started drawing a careful circle on his diagram. "Somehow, you managed to make -- or join -- a circle of candles."

Sally and Kendra leaned over his notepad and saw that he'd drawn a circle through four candles, two on the side walls and two more on the wall farthest from the couch. Bren then added five lines, connecting the candles to each other across the circles, and two more connecting to where Sally had sat.

"Wait," Kendra said, "So four of the points on the circle are candles, and the fifth is, um..."

"My vagina?" Sally raised an eyebrow.

"Speaking of which," Kendra looked up at ceiling and held her palm out protecting her eyes from her friend's parts. "I know we've all seen it glowing and everything, but could you put a pair of panties on or something?"

"Huh?" Sally looked down and realized suddenly that her movements had forced her towel to ride up to her waist. "Oh, whatever."

Adjusting the towel more loosely around her waist, she managed to drape part of it over her privates and continued examining the diagram.

"A pentagram?" Sally asked. "So, like, I'm a witch, then?"

"That kind of explains those three creepy chicks in the Arts Quad basement, doesn't it?" Kendra pointed out.

"Huh," Sally grunted, a smirk on her face.

"Being a witch is not a compliment, Sal!" Kendra emphasized, but her friend remained unphased.

"What next?" Sally asked. "How do we use this?"

"I don't know," Bren said. "The thing is I'm not sure what you're supposed to do. Maybe you did something slightly wrong? Or maybe you did everything right and this is the correct result. I don't know. It doesn't feel like you got the full benefit of doing it right, you know what I mean?"

Sally nodded and started to speak, but Kendra got in first.

"Bren," Kendra interjected. "I know you want to Science the shit out of this, but I'd prefer if we could just send the demon back, alright?"

"Yeah," Bren nodded. "But anything we do could make it worse, too."

Bren flipped through his pages, looking at the diagrams he'd drawn, and chose one to show Sally.

"This is what happened just now," he explained. "I managed to get two of the candles lit, and they formed an arc with your, um, vagina."

"You saw this curve?!" Sally asked.

"I didn't see it," Kendra admitted.

"It was on my side of the room," Bren pointed at one of the three points on the arc. "This is your vagina. The other two are candles. I think, if you'd hadn't come so soon, I'd have been able to place the other two candles and finish the circle."

"Or pentagram," Kendra rolled her eyes, her voice tinged with anger.

Sally examined the diagram and took a deep breath.

"Alright," she said, "Should I try again?"

Bren watched as Sally's hands drifted under her towel, pushing it aside to expose herself to them again. Instantly, Bren grabbed her right arm as Kendra grabbed her left, pulling her hands away from her vulva.

"No!" they shouted together.

"Christ," Bren added.

"Jesus, Sal," Kendra scolded. "At least give us a day to recover."

"Alright, alright!" Sally reclaimed her limbs and rubbed her upper arms as if they'd bruised her.

"Sorry," Bren's voice came out sheepish. "But we do need to think about this. Try to be as safe as possible."

"Okay, okay," Sally rolled her eyes. "I'm telling you, though. It's not going to hurt us."

"It tried to tear the room apart," Kendra reminded her. "It threw that little stand by the door at us."

"An accident," Sally assured her. "It was a little testy, that's all."

"Sal?" Bren held out the forefingers of both of his hands in front of her face. "No masturbating until tomorrow. Promise?"

Sally inhaled deeply, closed her eyes in a clear bid to marshal her frustration, and nodded her head.

"Promise?" Kendra added.

"Promise," Sally sang out, her voice full of sarcasm and mockery.

"Thank you," Bren replied, took a moment and added, "I need to get some sleep."

"Me, too," Kendra said.

"Gah," Sally scolded. "I feel like going out drinking. You guys suck."

Rolling their eyes, her friends waved their way out of the room.

"Think she'll keep her promise?" Bren asked when he reached the entrance to the house.

"She usually does," Kendra said. "Weird as she's getting, I think we can still count on her."

"She's even more casual about her body," Bren said.

"Don't think I didn't notice," Kendra agreed. "Sheesh. I bet if you asked her, she'd just do the next one naked."

Bren thought about that for a moment before responding.

"You'd think that would excite me," he said, his eyes searching the ground in confusion, as if he expected to find his libido on the floor.

"But you're just terrified?" Kendra offered.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Thanks, though," she said. "I'd hate to have to do this without you."

That won a half-smile from Bren, who bade her good night and took his leave.

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The next morning flew in with a flurry of new assignment and Bren couldn't manage to meet up with Kendra and Sally the entire day. Instead, he kept track of Sally via SMS messages with Kendra.

"how is she holding up?" Bren sent at four o'clock.

"So far, so good. A little antsy"

"Again, tonight?"

A long pause from Kendra, during which time Bren imagined Kendra casting a worried look at her friend.

"Looks like yes"

With a sigh, he sent back his last message, "Let me know when"

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"Thanks for coming over early," Bren said as he held the door open for Kendra. "How far behind you is she?"

"Fifteen minutes at most."

"I don't really like doing this at my place," Bren waved at the bachelor apartment. "There's barely any room here."

Kendra nodded agreement, looking around the ell-shaped space. Around the bend to the right, a futon hid in the corner. The left side of the apartment had been assigned as the 'living room' with a television and a couch crammed too close together. Nearest the entrance, a small washroom hid away on the left, standing opposite the kitchenette on the right.

"But our roommates are home for the night even though it's Friday," Kendra lamented. "And this would get weird if they saw us."

"Sure, sure," Bren sighed in embarrassment.

"Hey, c'mon," Kendra prodded. "This place is pretty clean. Way nicer than I expected a boy to keep his apartment."

"Uh-huh," he acknowledged. "Let's get things moved."

As they shifted the couch out of the way, they talked about Sally.

"Do you think we need to do this every day from now on?" Kendra asked. "It feels like it's getting worse... like the demon is becoming more violent every time, and the intervals are getting shorter."

"I can't tell if that's the demon or Sally," Bren shrugged. "Or if somehow the two of them are playing off each other."

"But our goal is to break them apart, right?" Kendra winced, hoping for clarity.

"Definitely," Bren agreed. "Send this fucking thing back where it came from."

"Good," Kendra sighed. "So what are you planning tonight?"

"I think Sally accidentally did a poor job of summoning the demon," Bren explained. "You can see how it's transparent sometimes and solid sometimes, right?"

"Sure," Kendra's tone indicated Bren hadn't completely convinced her.

"So if we pull the demon through, do the ritual right," Bren said. "It'll be happy, or content, or whatever. And then we can be done with it."

"Maybe," Kendra said. "Or maybe we'll be stuck with it? Here on our side of, um, whatever it is?"

"Fair enough," Bren sighed. "I'm only guessing that the demon is so pissed off because it's half way through. Maybe if we let it all the way through and it does it's, um-"

"Demonic ejaculation?"

"Sure," Bren agreed. "Then maybe it'll be done completely."

"Worth a try, I guess," Kendra said. "What's the set up?"

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The urgent banging on the door came just as they'd finished placing the candles.

"You light 'em," Bren said as he wound up the length of string. "I'll let her in."

"Right," Kendra said.

Sally burst in the moment he opened the door and already had her jacket off.

"It's getting bad," she declared. And then, "God! How can I be so terrified and so horny at the same time!?"

"We're almost ready," Bren promised.

"Almost?" Sally protested. "Listen, I -"

She paused a moment and tilted her head, looking at Bren's hands with a pained expression, "What's with the string? You're not planning on tying me up?"

"No," Bren enunciated carefully before waving Sally into his living room. "It's for measuring out the candles."

As Sally kicked off her boots, Kendra lit the fourth and last of the candles. Sally surveyed the space they'd created, with all of the furniture pushed against the walls and the candles burning away on various surfaces; two on the Bren's television stand and one each on his little breakfast table and the window ledge.

"You think this will work?" Sally asked, ticking her chin at the arrangement.

"I think you will know, not us," Bren sat on his desk chair and took out his notebook.

"Huh?"

"Just take off off your pants and get started," Bren rolled his eyes. Then he pointed to the edge of his bed. "Sit there."

Bren's bed didn't have a foot board, and the surface of the mattress lay only as high as Sally's mid-thigh. Frowning, Sally sat on the edge and extended her legs, pausing for a moment in the middle of unbuttoning her jeans. With a shake of her head, she finished the motion, unzipped, and pushed her pants down.

"What's the deal?" she asked again, pointing the candles.

"I don't want to bias you," Bren held up his left hand, palm toward her, without raising his eyes from his book. "Just start and tell me what you feel."

Something cracked off the window pane, making all three of them jump.

"We're five storeys up, here," Kendra assured herself out loud.

"I don't think it has to worry about gravity," Sally explained. "At least not when it's invisible like now."

"Ri-ight," Kendra muttered.

"You good to go?" Bren's voice carried a note of worry.

"O-o-oh, yeah," Sally assured him, then flicked her fingers in a direction over his head. "The lights, though?"

Hoping the candles would suffice for his observations, Bren reached behind his head and turned off the ceiling lights.

Sally nodded and, with her feet firmly planted on the floor, leaned back in to the soft, downy comforter which covered Bren's bed. Looking up at the ceiling, her hands went to her crotch. The left lifted the waistband of her white panties out of the way while the right got down to business underneath.

Bren noted the motion by the way the impression of her knuckles stretched out the white fabric.

She really is ready to go, he thought, seeing the speed with which she applied her fingers.

The first moan issued from her throat just as the bed gave a little kick and the candles seared into their strange blaze.

Fifteen seconds in, Bren wrote in his book. Vag glows purple. Candles high. Arcs starting.

"Damn, you were right," Kendra whispered from behind Bren as she watched thin curves of orange fire flicker into existence between the candles.

Bren saw, from his chair just outside their arc, that the candles closest to Sally started to spark into purple and their flames began reaching for the masturbating girl.

Halting, though, Bren though. If the flames were speech, the speaker would be stuttering right now, trying to find the right words or the proper emphasis for the next word.

Sally looked uncomfortable, her legs twisting against some unseen force.

"What's wrong, Sal?" Kendra slipped along the wall behind her friend to ask.

"Not quite right," Sally muttered. She pointed to the head of the bed and added, "Hand me those pillows."

Taken the proffered pillows, Sally propped up her back and set her hands back to work under her panties. Bren watched the arousal and sexual frustration bring an angry sweat to her forehead. Every item in the room started to shake. In the kitchen, a pan fell off a dish rack and clattered on the floor.

"What the hell?" Sally cursed. "It's getting angry now!"

Bren didn't want to ruin his experiment, but he had to close this episode up as quickly as he could.

"Try moving around a little," he reminded her, trying to keep his voice soft and helpful against the clear wrath coming from the girl on the bed. "Remember the Halloween party?"

Sally eyed him a wary impatience before closing her eyes. Experimentally, while continuing to prod and poke her vulva under her panties, she tried shifting her hips side to side, or back and forth on the bed. As she did so, the flames reacted, waxing and waning in time with Sally's moans of appreciation.

"Almost," she muttered. "And... there!"

As she found the sweet spot, all four candles blazed into bright torches and two arcs of purple light launched from the nearest candles, curving through Sally's thighs to complete the five-pointed circle.

"Yes!" Sally cried out, jabbing at herself with reckless abandon. "Yes!"

Circle formed, Bren jotted down. No pentagram(???)

The room shook and the window panes banged, but no demon appeared.

"Where is it?" Kendra called out over the din. "I hear it, but I don't see it!"

"I don't know," Bren said.

With her feet still planted on the floor, about shoulder width apart, Sally twisted to clamp her thighs together, an involuntary motion that stymied to her masturbation. From between her thighs, regardless of the amount of flesh in the way, a purple glow lit through her underwear.

Eyes closed, Sally pushed down on the waist band of her panties.

"Sal?" Kendra hissed from beside her friend. "What are you doing?"

"It wants me," Sally whimpered. "It wants me naked."

"Bren?" Kendra asked. "Should we stop her?"

"I have no idea," Bren replied, scribbled furiously.

Sally's hands fought against the friction of her skin, the muscles in her legs still locked together as she tried to unthread her panties and pull them off.

"This was your idea," Kendra protested. "Do something!"

By then, Sally had her panties halfway down to her knees, the purple glow in plain view through the cleavage of her lips.

"Please, Bren," Sally moaned, her eyes pleading. "Help get them off. Help me call it."

Christ, Bren thought. Is this the right thing to do?

As much as circumstances had forced themselves on Sally, and Sally had forced Bren and Kendra to help protect her, Bren had come up with the brilliant idea of building a pentagram and he had to take responsibility for the consequences.

Shit.

While the circle of orange and purple fire in the air didn't seem to harm Sally, even though it burned right through her thighs to reach her vagina, Bren didn't want to take any chances. He first tore a blank page out his notebook and dipped an edge of it into the flaming band.

Circle of fire doesn't burn paper, he jotted down on a page still in the book.

"Hurry, Bren," Sally begged him, her knees locked too tightly together. "It won't let me move now."

Indeed, while her body could gyrate, it seemed that the circle of fire had staked her out like a bug on a pin. Every part of her could move, but her genitals had to remain at the exact, mathematically precise place that Bren had laid out for her.

"Alright, alright," Bren conceded.

Laying the notebook aside, he crouched down under the beam of light and knelt in front of Sally. His eyes couldn't avoid looking over her thighs into the slit of purple light burning through her thin layer of hair.

This is fantastic, a tiny part of his brain told him. If terrifying.

Despite the rigidity of her legs, Bren found it easy to pull her panties down. In point of fact, her muscles seemed much more relaxed than she'd made him believe when she'd demanded his help. With some suspicion, he pulled them down to her ankles and Sally helpfully lifted her feet so he could remove them.

Raising an eyebrow to look up at Sally, he began to speak, just taking a breath to ask her what sort of chicanery she'd gotten herself up to. But her eyes had gone completely black, both pupil and iris.

"Now!" she screeched, the voices of thousands of witches shrieking from that one throat in the most bone-chillingly frightening moment of Bren's life. "Come to me!"

What the fuck!?

"Bren!" Kendra shouted, looking with panic over his shoulder. "Get out of-"

Bren made a mistake at that moment, and he knew even as he erred that he was doing the wrong thing. He ought to have jumped, sprinted or rolled out of the circle of fire. Bren should have understood exactly what Kendra's warning meant and removed himself from the situation.