Succumbing to Menudia Ch. 01

"Who said?" Danielle asked.

Haley spoke haltingly. "The store clerk ... he's been hearing about it ... all morning ... someone else went missing earlier ..."

"Maybe he was just messing with you," Jen suggested.

"Maybe our little Haley just wants some attention," Emily added.

"Girls, girls, just be quiet for a second, OK?" Ellis implored the group.

"No one's seen Menudia for years," Angela pointed out. "She's like ... someone my grandmother used to talk about."

"I thought Menudia wasn't ... real," Karen added meekly.

"Seriously, you think Menudia would come to a village like this?" Mason said. "A bunch of upscale tourists and some preppie college kids?"

" 'Menudia' ..." Emily spoke it deliberately, as if inspecting the very word itself. "What kind of a ridiculous name is that anyway?"

"Everybody calm down," Danielle said. "It's just some store clerk that Haley talked to, maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't."

Suddenly a determined Jen darted up off the picnic blanket.

"You know what? Fuck it, I'll go look for Liza,"

"You sure?" Rachel butted in. "I can go with you."

"Look, everybody just chill out, OK? I'm sure she's not far. Nobody's going to come 'get' me. As Chekhov once said, 'Any idiot can face a crisis; it's the day-to-day living that wears you out.'"

And so the others, after watching Jen decisively march off, collectively pondering the import of her quotation, attempted to return to the consumption of their various lunch items, with varying degrees of success.

The four less talkative and boisterous females of the group, who were sharing a blanket with the three boys, now stared at the empty spot where Liza had once been sitting.

*****

Liza

Ah, Liza. Poor, poor unsuspecting Liza.

She was one of those well-adjusted girls who somehow got along with everybody and had about twenty casual interests but no one overriding passion. The other students didn't honestly know much about her, but they always enjoyed having her around anyway.

Sort of an Italian-American version of Emily, Liza sported similar facial features, haircut, and height as her blonde doppelganger, except for her big, puppy dog eyes and long lashes, which immediately gave anyone looking into them a feeling of absolute trust and comfort.

Angela

Angela was the type of girl best described as a "hippie chick": she was into yoga, meditation, and massage, loved nature, the outdoors, and animals, and kind of expected the whole human race to just hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" together.

Her penchant for cozy, flowing, pre-20^th century-styles of clothing (a distant reminder of her family's mostly Polish and Hungarian background) tended to accentuate her shoulder-length blonde hair, slightly stocky build, and large breasts quite nicely. Being such a free spirit, she possessed some vaguely bisexual tendencies, which she had nevertheless only acted on sporadically.

A village picnic being the sort of activity that was right in her wheelhouse, Angela had shown up in a thick white knitted sweater, a long midi skirt with a purple and yellow floral design, and beige espadrille sandals.

Danielle

One of the school's most skilled student counselors, and the only member of the group to be in her 30s, Danielle found herself tagging along and acting as something of a supervisor to the other students.

Given the challenges of raising two young children at home (although her spouse obviously pitched in when he could), supervising certainly wasn't anything new to her, but at times she wondered if college kids could sometimes be more of a pain to manage than toddlers!

No matter. Danielle found tremendous professional fulfillment by helping out the troubled students of Sacred Saints with their most confidential problems, and talking them through their crises and conflicts in her relaxing, comforting office. Only thing was, she often got the sense that the male students enjoyed therapy with her mostly because ... well, because they thought she was hot.

And, to be fair, with her silky black hair, pointy nose, angular cheeks featuring a beauty mark on the left side, small but compact breasts, and two front teeth that almost made her smile suggestive of a cute bunny rabbit, she was quite the MILF.

Roughly the same height as Julie, and the product of mostly Dutch and Scandinavian breeding, she exuded something of a priggish, upper-crust air, as if her parents were landed gentry and she rode ponies in her youth. But those incandescent green eyes often suggested a more fiery, restless spirit underneath.

Alas, she tried her best to look past unavoidable distractions from the young men in her office (such as having her thighs and cleavage constantly scanned by their roving gazes), and felt confident that she still managed to provide the best guidance possible. To the picnic, she'd worn a long-sleeve flannel blue and white button-up shirt, a short black tailored tennis skirt, and tall leather boots that might have been more appropriate for an office, but were quite comfortable outside of it as well.

Karen

The typical wallflower, Karen, unlike most of the other girls at the picnic, didn't possess much in the way of, as they say, confidence, self-esteem, or curiosity about her body. "Virgin" was hardly the most apt label -- she had never even bothered to masturbate! That all seemed like stuff for the "other" girls, not her.

What Karen didn't realize was that, although perhaps she wouldn't have been considered conventionally pretty, with her somewhat awkward gait, petite breasts, a bit too much acne for a girl her age, and almost a bird's beak of a nose that seemed to be placed a little too high on her face, most of the other boys, if they'd been honest with themselves, actually would have found her quite cute, in her own gawky, subdued way.

Not that it was ever going to matter, of course. Slightly taller than Julie and equally thin as a rail (if Karen had possessed any inquisitiveness at all about her family background, which she didn't, she might have discovered that it was mostly English), no two girls could have been more divergent in their preference for voicing their opinions.

At the picnic, she happened to be wearing a black zip-up hoodie over a pink t-shirt that was perhaps a size too small for her, along with some loose-fitting grey corduroy slacks and black Nikes, with her straight brown hair dangling behind her neck in a utilitarian braid. All morning long, Karen had hardly spoken a word, but ... she was usually like that.

Haley

And then, there was Haley.

With her wavy red hair, shy, hesitant smile, and black-rimmed glasses, Haley could have easily been the object of affection for any number of men, both within the college and outside it, except there was something about her that seemed a little ... unusual.

Not that she was into drugs and piercings and tattoos, or that she shouted radical slogans at school rallies, but when it came to dating and relationships, she just didn't quite fit in with the other girls.

It wasn't that she "hated" boys exactly. Hell, she'd even dated a guy for a little while, and had even lost her virginity to him, but she didn't really enjoy it as much as she thought she would -- too sweaty, too hairy ... like sleeping with a sentient bag of potato chips. Maybe he just wasn't the right guy? No, for better or worse, her sexual thoughts always seemed to wander to ... the ladies.

Perhaps it was merely the lingering after-effects of having attended that all-girls Catholic high school. Surely she couldn't have been the only student to have admired Mrs. Simmons as she guided the class through the pillars of English literature in her blazer, blouse, skirt, stockings, and heels? Just because her teacher was absolutely stunning, that didn't mean she had some kind of ... crush on her, right? It was simply a little female-to-female admiration!

Or what about Caitlin and Candice, sitting on either side of her at their desks all day, in their white polo shirts, short plaid skirts, and knee-high socks? It didn't mean she genuinely wanted to suck on their pretty little toes and lick their creamy little thighs, did she? There weren't any boys around -- who the fuck else was she going to stare at all day?

(Oh, and she certainly didn't have any kind of "foot fetish" -- that one sleepover where she and Ashley ended up giving each other foot massages ... they were just "playing around late one night," you know?)

Surely it was "just a phase." Of course, a select few of her peers swung that way and were unabashedly "out," but Haley, not the most confident and independent of young women, found the very prospect mortifying.

Her rather conservative family (mostly Irish-American like Jen's) would have had a field day; they almost certainly would have sent her to one of those horrid "gay conversion therapy" camps. And everyone at the school would have teased and ridiculed her, and ... she just wanted to stuff all those wayward thoughts into a big helium-filled balloon and watch them float off toward the horizon. But the more she tried to ignore them, the more they seemed to gnaw at her insides.

If she had been honest with herself, Haley would have admitted that she had a thing for almost every girl at the picnic, with particularly bad crushes on Jen, Emily, and Angela, but despite sensing her lightly freckled cheeks turning the same color as her hair every time they merely spoke a few words to her, she hoped to God that they didn't have the faintest inkling.

She certainly didn't give off any overt lesbian "vibe," wearing to the picnic, for instance, a snug-fitting, long-sleeve button-up blouse with a vertical blue-and-white striped pattern on it, generic blue jeans, and white lace-up sneakers.

Whatever the potential presence of Menudia might have meant, perhaps none of the girls found the possibilities more terrifying than Haley did.

*****

And now here she was again, freaking everybody out, all because of what some crazy clerk in the store had told her. Maybe she should have just kept her mouth shut? No one seemed to care what she really thought anyway.

Alas, while waiting nervously for Jen, the others made a not-entirely-successful attempt to resume their previously mirthful ways.

"Last time we were in the village," Rachel recalled, "it wasn't nearly as nice weather as it is today."

"Oh yeah -- it started to rain," Angela said. "It was kind of a bummer. I mean, I love the rain! The smell of the moisture, the dripping flowers, the cascading little streams that form everywhere ... but not during a picnic, of course."

Everyone was comically trying to avoid a certain subject, despite it obviously being the first thing on their minds.

"Does anyone know what happens if you ... you know ... become a Menudian?" Karen asked haltingly.

"Well, I don't think any of us know for sure," Danielle said.

"We don't know, and we don't wanna know," Emily said.

"Of course, it's impossible to separate the truth from the legends," Danielle added unhelpfully.

"I heard that she supposedly has a 'castle' somewhere," Ellis said.

"I heard that ... if Menudia takes you over, you start to, like, defy gravity or something, like in The Matrix or Inception or some shit," Mason offered.

"Well whatever it is she does, she sure ain't doing it to me," Julie proclaimed.

"I dunno. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad," Vanessa suggested.

"Not so bad?" Julie retorted. "To lose your freedom, your independence, your individuality, to some nefarious ... sorceress? Do you even know how ridiculous you sound?"

"Well, you know. Allowing your body to serve as some kind of ... vessel for someone else's plans? I mean, it sounds kind of ... sexy."

The rest of the group gave off a unison groan at Vanessa's unsurprisingly slutty interpretation of the threat that awaited them.

"No, no, I mean ... it's bad, I'm sure of it!," she replied defensively. "I'll totally resist! We'll all resist. I'm ... I'm just sayin'."

"Let's just see what Jen finds out, when she comes back," Danielle said. "No need to overreact."

And yet ... secretly, privately, individually ... they all continued to wonder -- none more so than the three boys of the group, who, for various, generally unrelated reasons, all happened to be virgins.

*****

Yes indeed -- the three boys. They certainly hadn't planned on being outnumbered at the picnic ten to three, but if they were inclined to complain, they'd clearly kept it to themselves.

Just how did these three eminently desirable and misguidedly celibate young men come to find themselves in such a condition on that soon-to-be-notorious day? What were the forces that had molded them into that unusual state, the tantalizing encounters that had influenced their tastes, quirks, curiosities -- and an overwhelming impulse to ignore them all?

Curt

Although he'd never lived anywhere remotely close to the ocean, Curt gave off the aura of a baby-faced, blonde-haired surfer dude, with a pleasingly muscular build for a boy of his height (5'7"). Or, perhaps due to some Danish and Norwegian heritage, he could have passed for captain's assistant on a Viking ship? In reality, he mostly toned his ripped body in a much more mundane fashion: by lifting weights and riding his mountain bike.

Curt was the type who should've gotten plenty of action but, the funny thing about him was, although almost every girl in the school found him insanely hot, he suffered from the most laughably crippling case of shyness anyone had ever seen.

Whenever Emily or Vanessa or Angela, to name merely a few, would tease him or flirt with him, his face would grow red and his fingers would twiddle and he found himself utterly unable to function -- which, to the girls, was insanely adorable and only made them lust after him more. He clearly had some Mommy issues (indeed, she'd mostly been absent from his childhood, but he didn't talk about it much).

And if they'd ever found out about his wet clothing fetish, oh man, his face would've really turned red.

It must have all started with those two girls in his neighborhood -- God, what were their names? Back in his early teens, on those majestically warm summer days, he would go swimming in the pool across the street, and his two older (and highly bangable) female neighbors would simply jump right into the pool in their t-shirts and jeans, not even changing into swimsuits.

There was something about the way the fabric would change color and cling to their bodies and inadvertently drip water onto the pavement as they ran back and forth ... that mixture of naughtiness, "inappropriateness," shyness, wholesomeness ...

Not to mention that one holiday in Florida, where he'd gaped at that group of vacationing girls jumping in and out of the water in their skimpy little summer dresses and tied-up satin blouses ... good lord.

Unsurprisingly, Curt mentioned this odd little fetish to absolutely no one, and on the day of the picnic, he was wearing a certifiably dry outfit that consisted of a comfy white t-shirt, beige cargo shorts, and white New Balance sneakers.

Ellis

Like Curt, Ellis was frankly much too good-looking to have been a virgin, but unlike Curt, he couldn't even claim shyness as an excuse. Nope, Ellis's excuse was that -- unlike the majority of the students attending Sacred Saints of the Cross, he was actually, believe it or not, a fully practicing Catholic (!).

A purer, more wholesome Catholic boy the college could never have found. Haley's parents would have adored him.

Here was a young man who attended mass every Sunday and confession twice a month, dutifully said his Our Fathers and Hail Marys at bedtime, and believed, to the core of his being, in the principle of no sex before marriage. Which was a shame for the college's girls, given that, at 5'11", with broad shoulders, chiseled jaw, and a slight goatee (like Liza, he claimed a mostly Italian background), Ellis was a supreme male specimen.

Oh, he'd gone pretty far with a couple of his (brief) girlfriends, who had tried their darnedest to persuade him to go just that extra bit farther, with some heavy make-out sessions and even a pair of quick hand jobs, but alas, they had failed in their efforts to fully corrupt him. He was a good, committed little Catholic boy, and that was all there was to it.

Not even masturbation was on the table, which did result in the occasionally bizarre wet dream, as well as nagging, recurring fantasies of him fucking beautiful women at random -- his classmates, his female professors, complete strangers he would pass on the street, so on and so on. But until that special wedding day, where he'd marry his equally special and equally observant Catholic bride, desires like those would just have to wait.

Boy, sometimes he really paid the price. For instance, like Rachel, he was a fixture on the school's tennis team (some of the girls considered him a physical cross between Roger Federer and Tom Brady), and back in their first year on the squad, Rachel had actually tried to ask him out. Oh yeah. Arguably the hottest girl in the whole school, asking him out!

But ... a Jewish girl? He was super flattered but, it just wasn't going to work. Did he seriously turn her down -- on religious grounds? The other guys all thought he was batshit, but Ellis paid no heed. He knew he'd pleased the Holy Father, and pleasing the Holy Father was all that mattered.

The Holy Father most likely felt rather indifferent to Ellis's outfit that day, which consisted of a grey Sacred Saints sweatshirt (with a white tennis jersey underneath), a pair of tight and slightly torn blue jeans, small black hiking boots, and a chain with a shiny gold cross attached to it dangling around his neck.

Mason

And finally, there was Mason.

Mason's deal was something else entirely. All because his parents had "rushed into things."

It was one of those highly volatile, loveless, dysfunctional, and yet financially comfortable marriages from hell, and Mason swore that when he grew up, he would never fall into the same trap as they had. Thus, as a young adult, he'd become quite adept at denying his own urges. If he ever went that far with a girl, he really needed to trust her.

The boy marched to the beat of his own drum, scoffing at peer pressure, thumbing his nose at biology. The other kids were just so desperate. His life didn't revolve around sex, you know? Whereas his fellow horny-as-hell male classmates were eager to hook up with any willing female at the drop of a condom wrapper, Mason was deeply suspicious of anyone who flirted with him too intensely. After all, he'd seen what kind of misery poorly thought-out sexual activity led to. It was like girls always wanted something from him.

The dude was one conflicted cookie, all right.

All his female classmates could see how badly he needed to explore the same pleasures of the flesh that his peers were exploring without hesitation, but he instinctively rebuffed their frequent advances -- which, paradoxically, only made them crush on him even harder. Mason was playing a masterly game of hard-to-get, even if that was hardly his intention.

Plus, his mostly Greek background, with some Croatian and Romanian (giving him a slightly darker skin tone than the others), curly black hair, quirky teeth, and wiry frame all added to his devilishly exotic sex appeal. Oh, and his dry, playful, occasionally edgy sense of humor, laser-like intelligence, and overall aura of heavily repressed passion certainly didn't hurt him in that department either.