Smoke and Roses

Scholars of 18th century Scots poetry will recognize many features of this story, for which the shade of Robert Burns has my most abject apologies. But it's been in my mind to adapt his poem as a Lit story for a year or two, so here it is. This story, of course, stands alone, but Brianna the witch appears with her sisters in other things I've published.

I'm posting this as part of Lit's Halloween Contest, which is always fun. Make sure you check out all the entries and give your votes to your favorites!

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Part I: Annie's Substitute

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I first noticed the girl as we passed down D Street.

Maybe I'd seen her before, as we went along Alloway, a few blocks back.. Maybe I'd caught her out of the corner of my eye as we'd crossed the intersection at Carrick, the moms herding the colorfully costumed kids across the broad street like clucking hens. Or maybe she'd been there all along, ever since we'd left Shanter Lane.

But it was on D that I started to pay attention to her.

At first I thought she was part of our group. It was hard to keep track of everyone: my two children and the other five kids from Shanter, then three more who were apparently Janey's friends from school, plus the gaggle of parents walking along with them. The kids wore a mix of costumes from Stranger Things and the Top Gun sequel, alongside the younger ones in the traditional dinosaurs and vampires. All around us, the night swirled with other groups, other Elevens and Mavericks, other dinos in dizzying profusion under the misty streetlights.

I was confused me about the girl on D because I didn't really know all the grown-ups with us. My wife Kate had arranged this with the other families, meaning most of the adults were moms whose husbands had wisely found more important things to do. "I'll need you to help," she'd informed me brusquely that afternoon. "There's only two other dads, and they'll be drunk."

"But it's not even Halloween!" I'd whined. Around here, when the 31st fell on a school night, the town sponsored trick-or-treat nights on the weekends. Halloween was tomorrow.

"Tough shit," she'd shrugged.

"I have to study!" I'd whined, but she wasn't having any of that: our kids wanted me to take them trick-or-treating, so they were going to get me taking them trick-or-treating. It was that simple, in Kate's logical mind.

"'Study,'" she'd smirked, nodding. "With your little group." Kate often mocked my study group. "Where you get wasted with your friends, then try to ride home after midnight."

"Yes. It's important, Katie."

She rolled her eyes. "One of these nights, you're going to fuck up and fall off your bike into the ocean."

"That's a bit harsh." The test was coming up in a month. It was my first try, but my friend Jeanne had already failed it once and I was skittish. She and I had been paralegals together for years; you'd have thought she'd do fine on the bar exam. "We're supposed to be meeting tonight. I need to brush up on Contracts."

"Well," she'd hissed grimly, "you're going to brush up on Snickers and Kit-Kat instead," and that was it. So here I was, trailing along the back of the gaggle of kids and their parents as self-appointed rearguard, stopping interminably at every house we found. I'd done the early, optimistic math and texted my study buddies; maybe, I hoped, I could get over there by eight. We couldn't possibly do more than an hour of this.

But it had not taken me long to realize the kids would want to stop at every single door. Seething, I'd texted Jeanne and Souter and told them I'd need to pick up with them tomorrow, on actual Halloween.

So I was leaning against a tree, alone on the sidewalk while the moms gossiped on the lawn of 144 D Street, the other two dads sucking at their second beers: they'd actually brought a wagon to pull along, packed with the stuff. They'd offered me a bottle, but fuck that: it was all IPA. A shape had been nagging at me out of the shadows for a few minutes before I turned to see what it was, or at least that's what I thought I remembered later; in any case it was there, outside the house with the scarecrow tied to the lightpost, that I first noticed the girl standing right in the middle of the pool of weak illumination cast by the buzzing streetlight far above..

Well. Woman was more accurate, definitely. She was certainly younger than me, her pale heart-shaped face set in a weird, timeless youthfulness, the kind of beauty that peaks around age nineteen and hangs around for about five years or so. She'd picked out her lips in careful burgundy, and the way she'd set her face made it look like she was smirking even though she wasn't. Intense dark eyes stared at me from beneath the wide brim of a witch's hat that looked like it had much better quality than the typical vinyl shit you get from the CVS.

I'd love to say it was her face that held my notice, but alas! that would be a filthy lie. No, what grabbed my attention at first were the sweetly rounded tops of two flawless round boobs, rising from the neckline of a heavy black gown like a pair of weather balloons reaching for the sky. What can I say? I'm a guy. So I looked, and she knew I looked, and as she stood there and displayed herself, that implied smirk seemed to twitch into the real thing, her full lips settling into the kind of fine upswept curve that seemed custom-designed to send strong signals straight to my dick.

I know I stared. I know my mouth fell open. I know my balls stirred. And I don't know what I might have done if Kate hadn't bellowed at me from further up the street. "Hey! Tom! Come on. It's time to go! Pay attention." I blinked, my gaze wavering, to find the kids and their parents loping away toward the next house, but when I shifted my eyes back to the young woman in the witch costume, I found nothing there at all. Nothing but the circle of the streetlight.

So I blinked, and shuffled along with the group.

It was not the warmest autumn night on record. Above us the moon rode among the clouds, almost the ideal-looking Halloween sky if it weren't for the glow from the nearby city. It would look great from the beach, I reflected, riding to Jeanne's apartment over the flat sands; I took the beach as a shortcut whenever the tide was out far enough to support my bike. There was nothing like it, the empty dark beach, my oversized tires snicking over the shells, my headlight showing nothing but starlit sand in front of me.

I didn't tell Kate how I enjoyed moments like that. She would not have appreciated the romance of it.

I hung back from the group again at the next house on D Street, a flat ranch at the top of a long driveway, and while the other two dads cracked new bottles and the moms giggled on the sidewalk, I found my eye caught by the girl once more.

She was standing a bit closer now, behind the group, the creamy skin of her face and chest lit by the blue of the night and the window-lights from the houses around. I gaped again, but at least this time I trusted myself to open my mouth. "Uh, hello. I'm Tom Graham. You just joining? I didn't see you before."

She said nothing at first, just cocked her head and regarded me with cool patience. No way could she be a mom: she couldn't be old enough for any of the kids in our group. An aunt, maybe, and I was just about to open my mouth again to take another stab when she nodded. "Yes. I'm joining you, Tom," she said, her voice low and somehow disturbing. "I'm Brianna. Some people call me Annie."

"Um, Annie. Hi!" I smiled, hoping I wasn't staring too blatantly at her tits, but it was hard to avoid it: they dominated the space between us like a Thanksgiving centerpiece, her cleavage seeming to reach out and pull me into its warm, firm depths. I glanced up at her hair under the witch hat, trying some bad humor. "No red curls under there, though."

Her big eyes narrowed quizzically, then cleared. "Oh. The musical."

"Yeah, the musical," I parroted stupidly, knowing I was grinning but unable to stop. It occurred to me, suddenly, that if Kate saw me talking to this girl, she'd be highly unamused. I glanced over at the moms, but they were all squawking at the kids up the driveway, reminding them to say thank you. When I looked back, Annie's smirk had returned.

"If you're worried about your wife looking over here, don't." Her low voice held a hint of laughter buried within it. "I doubt she'd notice me."

"Why would I, like, worry about that?" I stuttered, my eyes sinking again to her chest. Fuck. I had to stop that. She just stood there with that saucy smile, lush and sweet and gorgeous, her very presence an invitation, while I fidgeted tongue-tied, like a kid at a middle school dance. "And. I think she'd notice," I risked, and why not? Clearly the girl knew what she had at the top of her chest, and just as obviously she didn't mind showing them off. "Do you, ah, know her? Like, from the moms' group, or after-school, or whatever?"

She paused, a meticulously plucked dark eyebrow rising. "I'm not with her group, Tom," she said quietly, her voice prodding once more at my gonads, "I told you. I'm joining you."

I know my mouth dropped open. Once again my head swiveled Kateward, making sure she wasn't looking, but she was already herding the kids together at the base of the driveway, their candy sacks that much fuller. "What do you mean?" I asked weakly, but when I turned to look at Annie again I found that my question had fallen into thin air.

She was gone. Again.

This time, I had to adjust my jeans. After that initial twitch, I had paid more attention to Annie's body than my own, but now that she was gone I was keenly aware that my dick was soon going to embarrass me, if anyone bothered looking down there. I sauntered along after the gaggle of kids, now glancing around surreptitiously to see whether I could sneak another peek at Annie, but when we arrived at the next house she was nowhere to be found.

Nor the one after that.

Soon enough, D Street's intersection back onto Carrick appeared between the trees ahead, another dim streetlight trying to get through the branches. I paused by one of the trunks, yawning, listening vaguely to some adults partying across the street by a small firepit. The voices of my kids and their friends drifted far away from me up to the door of the corner house, away from my patch of dappled shadow there, under the crooked oak. I checked my watch, figuring I should probably text Jeanne soon and tell her I definitely wouldn't be there, when I heard that low voice once more.

This time, it was just over my shoulder. Close enough for me to feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. "Still worried about your wife seeing me?" The laughter in her voice was closer to the surface now, even though I still caught a little twinge of darkness in it. I shuddered and turned.

"Um." I had no clue how to answer, but to be fair I wasn't really in any shape to talk right then. Not with her standing close enough that her sublime breasts grazed my shirt, her beautiful ivory face tipped up to look at me just inches away. "No?"

"That's good," she nodded, a half-whisper in my ears. She raised one slow arm and laid her hand on my forearm. "There's no need for her to see me," she breathed. Her fingers were a hot, insistent weight on my arm. "I'm with you, Tom," she repeated.

My eyes dropped straight to hers, and drowned there. They were great, limpid pools in the night, pulling me in like her cleavage did, and I could not have stepped away if I'd wanted to. Vaguely I felt my dick prod my jeans again, my head filling with the heavy buzz of arousal. "With me," I croaked back, all uncertain.

"Yes. As you asked," she nodded gravely.

"Asked?" My mind flew away, down into her cleavage and down past it, into her underwear: wildly, I felt the sudden urge to seize this young woman and press my body to hers, my tongue in her mouth. I knew with sudden certainty that she wanted that same thing.

"You invited me to join you."

My mouth went dry. "I did?"

"I was pleased." Her voice was low enough, now, that I had to lean in to hear her. "I wanted to join you." Her hand squeezed me. "I'm glad you let me in."

I smiled uncertainly. "I mean, I assumed you had a kid in..." My voice went still as her other hand moved up between us, one finger warm and firm as it pressed my lips closed, and all at once the wildness in my brain fought its way to the surface. Once again, that implied smirk went whimsical, the touch of her skin on mine electrifying me. I could smell her hair, a hint of smoke and roses.

"So glad. And I think it's charming that you're worried about your wife," she went on quietly, pressing those glorious tits a bit harder against my chest, and her mention of Kate made me very aware that I should most certainly not be found by her, hanging out under a tree with a buxom little witch and a raging hard-on. "She seems to be running you ragged, Tom. It would be so nice if you could relax a bit, here on D Street."

And suddenly I was relaxing a bit, here on D Street, the images strong and sharp in my mind, flicking through like a movie on jerky fast-forward: me lying on the floor in an unfamiliar room, in a house that smelled like Annie's hair. Outside the windows showed tonight's clouds racing past tonight's moon, but the images felt older, more faded, like they'd already happened in some other lifetime I could not quite remember. I felt my limbs, weighed down by tiredness and comfort, as with a hazy note of concern I realized I was naked.

Beneath me was softness, the luxury of some sort of fur, and with an effort I picked my head up and realized I lay before a fireplace, the sparky smell of sulfur telling me I was about to be warmed. My glasses had disappeared, so I had to squint to see Annie herself crouched before the fire, lower lip caught between her teeth as she focused on her kindling. She wore some sort of nightgown, very short, which looked completely translucent to me: it veiled her lush figure in a pale gossamer web, hiding nothing, for under the gown I could see she was as naked as I was. It only reached to her mid-ass, and before me was the long, sleek expanse of her bare thigh, almost all the way to her waist.

I felt like I should speak, or cry out, or at least moan, for just then I became aware that I wasn't merely naked, but hard. And I wasn't just hard, I was being touched, my balls and shaft leaping as a feathery finger skated over their veins and ridges. Alarmed, I searched the blurred room for a look at whose hand it was, only to see two other girls kneeling on the fur alongside me. You like this, one of them purred, a lithe woman of Annie's age, all angular limbs and a predatory smile. It was she that was caressing my penis. You like being here with us. Her slim body she'd sheathed in a corset red and shining with satin, the dim light showing strongly shadowed muscles twisting along a lovely young body.

He sure does, agreed the other kneeling woman, and as I moved my gaze to her all I saw were nipples, huge nipples behind a filmy black-lace bra, beneath a beaming red-haired head. She moved her hand to join the first girl's, her thumb rubbing the precum around the head of my dick, and this time I did moan. My head rolled back on the furs to see, dim in the shadows by the hearth, the eyes of a fourth woman, older, glittering back at me amidst a suggestion of a thick, black-purple gown. No sooner had I grasped that she was there, than the fire flared up at my feet, young Annie rising before it, the flames silhouetting a body perfect and complete in every way. The other girls giggled when my dick gave a lurch. He certainly loves being here with you anyway, Annie, the redhead cooed, but then that ripe young body was stepping toward me, her friends drawing back, and the imagined sensation of their hands releasing my penis brought me blinking back to the tree at the tail-end of D Street all of a sudden, the night before Halloween.

"You wanted me to join you, Tom? It would be uncouth of me if I didn't return the favor." My mouth was bone-dry, my arm clasped by this insistent young lady with the mesmerizing look in her dark eyes, staring up at me from atop the glory of her breasts. "You're more than welcome to join us, me and my friends. I live right over there," she added, tossing her head back along D Street. "Unless you're still worried about what your wife would think..."

"Fuck." I shook my head and closed my eyes tight, trying to figure out what was happening here with this strange girl, and when I opened them again Kate was staring up at me.

"Earth to Tom," she said, loudly and slowly, her head cocked oddly. My kids stood beside her, looking up through their masks.

"Dad is so sus," Tanner observed.

"Totally sus," Sam agreed.

Tanner nodded soberly and added, "Cap."

The two of them bounced away, leaving me with Kate beneath the tree. "Seriously, honey, are you all right?"

"I... I guess?" I glanced wildly around for Annie, wondering what the hell was happening, aware that the rest of the group of trick-or-treaters was already far away up Carrick. "Just tired, I think. Like, daydreaming."

"Okay." She snuffed the air near me. "You smell that? It smells funny. Like... roses? And something sorta smoky?"

"Let's catch up," I blurted, reaching down in the dark to haul my erection upright inside my jeans. I wondered whether she noticed.

* * *

Annie was on my mind all the rest of the trip, but once we moved on from D, I didn't see her again. I didn't have to, though. I only had to close my eyes to remember her, her calm presence, her sweet face, her gravity-defying boobs. Her grinning friends, and their hands on my dick. It was all there, injected into my mind, dominating my thoughts as I hobbled along Carrick in an unsuccessful attempt to walk with a hard-on.

The return home made a mockery of how dearly I'd looked forward to it. That's always the way: you put yourself through a moderate ordeal, like grocery shopping, or hiking on a hot day, or trick-or-treating, and you really look forward to getting home... your relief when you arrive, though, is tempered by your sudden, pressing need to turn right around, make three trips out to the car, and bag the chicken thighs. Or you need to laboriously take off your hiking boots and make sure your pockets are empty before you drop your hiking clothes in the hamper and run a wash.

Or? You have to take two eager kids with a sudden windfall of candy, calm them down, and get them to bed...

It exhausted and irritated me, but in the end it got done: we put the candy in two separate boxes way up high after letting them have four pieces each, then bullied them off to bed with threats of withholding more of their bounty. Entirely unfair, of course, but who said life was fair?

"Get upstairs!" Kate growled at last, in that Mom Voice that finally penetrated to their silly sugar-high little heads, and then all of a sudden she and I were alone on the couch, breathing the kinds of sighs that usually accompany the end of a long shift at work. "Fuck," she grunted at me, rolling her eyes, "that's never fun."

"Yeah." I wasn't really listening, though. I was thinking of a soft, pale face, of massive dark eyes, of a luscious ripe body in a short nightgown, kindling fires or more than one kind... "I'm glad it's over."

"You were zoning out there, hon," she went on, but when I finally looked at her, I could see her eyes were concerned. "I know you're all stressed about the bar exam; was that it?"

I thought about my dick, about the hair-trigger it had been on all evening since that moment under the circle of the streetlight. "Part of it," I said vaguely, my mind still elsewhere. Like an eager finger scraping at a mosquito bite, my consciousness prodded away at my libido, endlessly reminding me of her. Her low voice. Her heavy tits. The smell of her hair. I wasn't even thinking as I reached deep into my boxers, hoisting my dick into shape. Kate gasped.