Succumbing to Menudia Ch. 01

And as if Mason wasn't conflicted enough, there was also the thorny little matter of his vinyl fetish. It was all Leanna's fault, really.

Most of his older sister's college friends were fairly uninteresting, but then ... there was Leanna. Though perhaps not conventionally pretty, Leanna had this imaginative, adventurous fashion sense that stood out like a jet ski in the desert.

Whenever she'd come over to his house to hang out with his sister, she'd usually be wearing some off-the-wall outfit like mesh tights or a glittery blouse, but hands down, his favorite outfit was her black vinyl jeans, which she paired with all manner of casual t-shirts, sweaters, or crop tops. And because he never knew just when she might be wearing them, those days were like a special, little secret surprise.

Sometimes Mason would just stare at her vinyl pants all afternoon, thinking about how sexy she must have felt walking around in those PVC jeans like it was no big deal. It was the kind of sight that would have surely left a mark on any impressionable adolescent male, but the attraction was clearly a one-way street. Leanna hardly even paid attention to him. He was just her best friend's little brother -- why the hell would she have?

Katie wasn't entirely blameless either. Later on in high school, a short while after the whole Leanna thing, he had a bad crush on his blonde classmate Katie, who sometimes dared to show up to school wearing black, pink, or red vinyl skirts, combined, like Leanna had done, with more conventional, casual tops. But alas, she and Mason only shared one class together, and besides, she ran in an entirely different social circle -- one that clearly didn't feature conflicted virgins like Mason. Duh.

Those two had set him up for an exciting world full of girls prancing out and about in shiny vinyl apparel, but then he'd arrived at Sacred Saints, and ... well, it just wasn't something he came across very often in his day-to-day life -- which might have been for the best, as whenever he did come across it, he couldn't concentrate on anything else.

Oh, there was that one Halloween party about ... maybe a year before the fateful picnic in question, where he had the pleasure of being in the same room as a girl wearing a black vinyl nurse's costume (hello, nurse!) which was the only sight he could focus his eyes on the entire evening.

See, for Mason, it was all about control. And there was nothing he resented more than something that was beyond his control. So, he figured he could lump that vinyl fetish in along with all the rest of his bizarre sexual thoughts that he'd been so effectively able to ignore.

Mason's own wardrobe was the complete opposite of bold fetishwear, of course, and on the day of the picnic, he was wearing a beige sweater over a white button-up dress shirt (the collar of which poked out appealingly over the sweater), some khaki slacks, and black and white Converses. It was a good look for him, but whatever.

Three boys, nine girls, one chaperone. All blissfully unaware how much their lives, and their relationships with each other, were about to undergo just the slightest alteration ...

*****

Naturally, when presented with any remotely serious situation, Mason's first instinct was to crack a few jokes.

"I heard Menudia's got a nice big screen TV at her castle ... a mini-bar, an espresso machine ... she lives in style."

"Come on Mason, give it a rest," Julie replied with a slight scowl, although he caught Emily and Angela failing to hide their grins.

"Hold on," Danielle said between bites of her sandwich as she craned her neck eastward. "I think I see Jen."

After sprinting out of a grove of oak trees and back toward the picnic blankets, the thespian brunette could barely get the words out as she caught her breath.

"Liza ... she was ... by the water tower ..."

"Is she OK?" Rachel asked.

"You found her?" Ellis inquired.

"Why the hell didn't she come back with you?" Emily wondered.

Jen placed her hands on her knees as she waited for the oxygen to return. "Something wasn't quite right. She was moving oddly, slowly ... not like she usually does ... and her eyes had this weird, like ... vacancy ... it's like she was ... Lady Macbeth sleepwalking."

The students turned to each other with a mixture of fear, curiosity, and confusion.

"Lady McWho?" Emily whispered to Mason, a bit stumped on the reference.

"Lady Gaga's sister," he whispered back.

Jen went on. "I shouted 'Liza! Liza' but it was like ... she didn't hear me. Instead she kept murmuring to herself, as if I wasn't even there, but as if someone else was there." Jen's breath had almost returned by this point. "All I heard was 'Yes, Menudia ... yes, Menudia ..." in this low, monotone sort of voice and then ... I might have been seeing things, but it was like she started ... levitating in the air and ... I freaked, OK? I guess I just ran."

"This ... does not sound good," Emily blurted out.

"She must have been ... taken," Haley added.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Julie exclaimed.

"Hey," Ellis said with a hint of admonishment, receiving a snotty glare from Julie in return.

"Well what do we do?" Rachel asked. "Should we, like, try to hide somewhere?"

"How many of them even are there?" Mason wondered. "Maybe they just wanted Liza for some strange reason."

"No, perhaps we better stick together for now," Danielle said. "The last thing we want is to split up and have to deal with Menudia, or Menudia's victims or whomever, one-on-one, right?"

Vanessa suddenly slammed her fruit salad onto the blanket. "Oh give me a break. You guys are all being so paranoid it's not even funny. Well I, for one, am not worried about some bullshit mythic 'sorceress'," she boasted. "Let me go check these Menudians out."

"Vanessa are you sure?" Danielle asked.

"Yeah. I'll just bring Liza back and then everyone can shut up about this all-powerful Menudia, OK?" She promptly stormed off in the direction Jen had just returned from.

"Someone should go with her," Danielle added anxiously.

"Maybe let's just give her a few minutes," Haley said. She turned to Jen, who had finally regained her strength. "You notice ... anything else about Liza that was strange?"

"Well, like I said, she didn't seem like herself at all. I mean, you know how she is ... a bit reserved, polite ... sensible! But the way she was walking through the meadow, just her body language ..."

Emily had heard enough. "Jen, what have you been smoking this morning? You're reading way too much into whatever you saw."

"Shut up! Let me finish! It was like she was ... strutting, like she'd just ... gotten busy with a boy or something. I even saw her zip up her fly -- it was so bizarre."

"Maybe she just needed to ... obey nature's call," Angela surmised.

Right about then, out of the corner of their eye, near the water tower, they saw it.

Now, if only one of them had seen it, the others could have dismissed it as a hallucination, or optical illusion.

But they all saw it.

What they saw was Vanessa, their very own and otherwise entirely earth-bound classmate, slowly floating over a line of trees -- weightlessly, gracefully, unhurried, as if she'd been floating ever since she was a toddler -- proceeding to make her way East.

The sheer sight of Vanessa -- or perhaps she was no longer "Vanessa"? -- hovering in such an unexpectedly supernatural manner instantly scrambled any attempts within the group to maintain a unified strategy.

In other words: everyone panicked like a motherfucker.

Danielle, Rachel, Karen, and Mason fled toward the visitor's center, Emily, Jen, Julie, and Ellis dashed toward the creek, Angela, Haley, and Curt ran in the direction of the water tower -- each and every one of them beginning to sense a sickening pit in their stomachs.

What in God's name were they up against?

*****

"'So paranoid it's not even funny,' huh?" Emily repeated Vanessa's words in disbelief as she ran.

"Well, you know Vanessa," Jen pointed out. "She's never been one to back down from a challenge." The two of them, along with Julie and Ellis, were hastily making their way past the ranger station and through a thicket of chapparal on their way to the creek, but why they were heading there exactly, they didn't quite know.

"We have to figure out what these Menudians are really up to," Ellis proposed.

"Why does it always have to be the male who tries to take charge?" Julie responded.

"You know, Julie, if you can figure out what they're doing, then you just let me know."

As they heard the sound of rushing water grow closer, Emily, Jen, Julie, and Ellis noticed a familiar figure calmly making her way through a small field.

It was Liza.

Or was it?

As Jen had mentioned, there was something about her that wasn't quite ... Liza-like.

Her gait was calm, slow, methodical, her face eerily passive and content, a satisfied smile on her lips. Not only that, but the collar of her somewhat elastic black shirt, which earlier in the morning had been pulled up near her neck, had now slid down her arms, baring her smooth shoulders to the air and allowing some cleavage to peek out over her neckline, and the bottom of the shirt, which had previously been tucked into her dark green jean shorts, was now rolled up above her belly button, the combined alterations essentially giving the shirt the effect of a crop top. As for those shorts, the top button was unfastened and the fly half-unzipped.

The others quickly ducked down behind a bush.

"You see what I mean?" Jen said.

"No kidding. It's like ... she's being 'controlled' by somebody," Emily observed.

"It's Liza, all right ... but she looks a little ... open-minded, if you catch my drift," Jen added.

"Maybe we can bring her back to 'normal' somehow," Ellis added.

The group thought for a minute.

"I'll go talk to her," Jen declared.

"Jen are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure. Let me see if I can knock some sense into her. Everybody's freaking out, and we don't even know why. Maybe it's just a ... practical joke?"

"Pretty weird practical joke," Emily responded.

"Look, you three stay behind these bushes. I'll be right back."

Ellis, Emily, and Julie bent down out of sight and proceeded to listen intently.

"Hello Jen." Liza's voice had an air of bold and yet aloof assertiveness to it.

"Hey. Uh ... we've been searching all morning for you."

"Oh yes, but no need to worry. You'll see."

"Are you pulling some kind of ... stunt? You're not the most terribly convincing thespian, I should point out. Perhaps you should give whatever you're doing a rest and leave the amateur theatrics to me?"

"That's a very good observation, Jen. In a way, I have become a different version of myself -- a more satisfied, more adventurous, more confident version."

"Uh huh. You feeling OK? You need any ... help or anything?"

"Oh, I've received all the help I need, you might say. If anything, it's you who will need help, but fortunately for you, I'm just about to provide it. And you will be oh so grateful."

The mischievous lilt to her last sentence, like a young bride-to-be, hiding behind a changing screen, who'd just put on a special, naughty outfit for her fiancée, was unmistakable.

Ellis turned to Julie and whispered. "What's going on?"

"I don't know, they went quiet."

Just then, the three hiding students felt a brief but noticeable breeze roll across the bushes, and what sounded like a faint siren-ish noise, before hearing Liza speak in an unnervingly authoritative, yet soothing tone.

"You have succumbed ... to Menudia."

Jen's reply, equally flat and obedient, devoid of her usual verve and flair, sent a chill into the others listening from behind the bushes.

"It is a pleasure to serve Menudia."

While unable to see what was going on, and glad to be out of sight, upon hearing the pronounced change in Jen's speech, Emily, Julie, and Ellis felt a strange combination of incomprehension, dread, and ... though none of them dared admit it to themselves ... almost a kind of envy?

"Soon we will take the others. I know they are hiding nearby. But there will be a proper time for that. First you shall know the pleasure that I have known. Come with me."

"Yes, Liza."

And just like that, Liza flew off to the east, with an apparently altered, possessed, and levitating Jen dutifully following her into the skies.

The others thought of shouting after their two rapidly disappearing forms, and yet ... they didn't dare. There was something about the one-sided manner in which the exchange had unfolded, how instantaneous Jen's transformation had taken place, that suggested they were dealing with a power far beyond the realms of their previously quotidian small-town college existence.

Although they recognized that Jen's gift for acting was beyond reproach, one thing was clear: what they'd just heard ... was no performance.

Emily, Julie, and Ellis remained crouched behind the bushes for a minute or so, before they all quickly darted to a nearby open-air hut, and proceeded to chat in a series of whispers.

"Something's not right here."

"We have to warn the others."

"But can we even get to the others?"

"It's like Jen was perfectly normal one moment, and then the next moment she was ... one of them."

"But what did Liza do to her?"

"I don't know, she was just ... standing there."

"What did she mean about us hiding nearby?"

"And then she said, 'There will be a proper time for that.' A proper time for what?"

"Whatever it is," Ellis stated with intense determination, "we must not succumb to it."

*****

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the village ...

Angela, Haley, and Curt were scurrying along a dirt path through a grove of nut-covered trees -- the "Hickory Grove" that Liza's stranger had supposedly been looking for -- until they came to a grassy clearing, where they unexpectedly heard footsteps in the distance.

"Quick! Hide behind the trees!" Angela suggested.

As they poked their heads out, they could see a young man with light brown hair (sporting a tasteful smidgeon of gel), and olive skin (somewhat reminiscent of Mason's), wearing a flannel button-up shirt and blue jeans, walk leisurely through the clearing.

"Maybe we can ask him if he's seen Vanessa," Angela proposed in a whisper.

"Something about him doesn't look quite ... right, though," Haley observed. "Do you think he's one of 'those' people?"

"Well ... you two stay here, just in case."

"You sure about this?" Curt asked Angela.

"Oh it'll be fine! He's probably just some lost hiker. Sometimes you have to assume the best in people. You can't go around being suspicious of strangers all the time -- imagine all the wonderful people you'd never meet!"

But the moment Angela stepped out into the open and made her presence known, the man turned and gave off an ambiguous, tight-lipped grin.

"Excuse me, I'm ... looking for a friend," he said.

"Heh," Angela chuckled. "Funny thing, I was, uh, looking for a friend too."

The man continued to stare intently into Angela's eyes. "Then perhaps we can look together."

"Yes, perhaps we can. Maybe you've seen her, she's this Latina girl, about 5'5", she was wearing a dark green sweater and a --"

"Ah yes, she recently joined us."

"You mean you've seen her? Wait ... recently ... joined you?"

"That's right. And you are about to join us too."

His eyes began to glow a penetrating, supernatural glow. The bright baby blues of the unsuspecting hippie chick instantaneously glowed in return, as her normally bouncy demeanor shifted, with an almost frightening rapidity, into something much more passive -- her cheeks flattening, her hips straightening, her arms falling limply at her sides.

The wind picked up, and a strange, high-pitched tone briefly bounced off the surrounding hillsides. The man proceeded to hover over the dirt about three feet or so, and the now-altered Angela followed him into the air, her majestically feminine floral print skirt blowing about her legs.

"You have succumbed ... to Menudia."

"It is a pleasure to serve Menudia," she replied with a vacant confidence completely alien to her normal tone of voice.

"My name is Greg."

"My name is Angela."

"We are so pleased that you have joined us. You will make an excellent Menudian."

"Yes, Greg."

"And now, we shall bring your transformation to its natural fruition."

"Yes, Greg."

Curt and Haley, almost detecting a hint of zesty relish in Angela's last reply, looked on as Angela dreamily flew at least twenty feet into the air, gently leaned back onto what appeared to be an invisible board or table, tugged the fabric of her skirt outward with both hands, and waited.

They watched as Greg began to unzip his jeans, although after initiating the unzipping, by some sort of magic, his fly seemed to finish opening without his fingers remaining on the zipper. Then Greg hovered directly over Angela, cupped his hands over her massive breasts (still covered by her soft sweater), and gave off a look that all but said "Oh yes, she will do quite nicely."

He calmly pulled the sweater up over her head and let it float into the air, exposing the white peasant-style crop top that Angela had been wearing underneath, the hardened nipples under the fabric a clear sign that, true to her "child of nature" ethos, she had been walking around all day sans bra.

Frozen in place, wanting to flee but transfixed by the sight before them, Curt and Haley gazed on as Greg slid his hands under the crop top, inducing Angela's head to tilt back in unanticipated delight.

After a minute or so of fondling her inviting bosom, his hands exited her top and made their way to the bottom of her skirt. When his right hand found itself crawling under the colorful fabric, trickling up her legs, and finally making its way to her sexy spot, Angela's mouth formed a wide oval and she let out a series of peculiar breaths.

For a brief moment, Curt and Haley could have sworn that a spark of terror and rage flickered within their victimized friend's eyes, as if some remnant of the "non-Menudian" Angela were desperately attempting to regain control of her body and resist Greg's advances, but the impotent spark vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. If anything, the experience of her defenses being overridden only seemed to be heightening the oncoming pleasure.

Curt and Haley couldn't take anymore. And yet, as they sprinted away from the harrowing and yet intensely compelling scene, they couldn't resist one quick glimpse back.

The last thing they saw was Greg teasingly rolling up Angela's long skirt past her calves and thighs and over her hips, the free-spirited blonde's arms floating at her sides and her curvaceous bust heaving upward against her top.

By the time they heard the unmistakable sound of Angela's fevered grunting, they were at least fifty feet into the woods as her delirious moans grew ever more distant.