That Damned Blessing Ch. 02

"Oh, yeah," he said, pawing distractedly at the offending lock. "It was like that when I woke up. I think I am going to go to the doctor though, maybe it's...I dunno, maybe some local insect bit it and the swelling will go down."

"It can't hurt. Do you want me to go with you?"

He contemplated and then shook his head. "No, I guess not. I don't want you there if they have to amputate or something."

"Don't even joke."

"Sorry. Yeah. OK, I'm going to go get a jeep."

"Text me when you know."

A few minutes later Ryan was zooming down the same road his mother had traveled earlier that day, even using the same jeep. He called ahead to the doctor's office in Ronea to make sure the physician was in, and shortly after he arrived he was on an exam table, naked from the waist down as what passed for the local medical establishment stared at his erect penis.

The doctor, an ethnic Chinese from Manila ironically named Wang, was one of the seediest human beings Ryan had ever laid eyes on, and every time the man exhaled Ryan got a strong whiff of Jack Daniels. The man peered at Ryan's member, then reached out and gingerly poked at it with a tongue depressor. "Well it's certainly not elephantiasis, which is the first thing I'd worry about around here. Does that hurt? How about here? Here? How about your testicles?"

"Everything feels fine. Completely normal."

"It looks normal. There's no sign of swelling beyond what's natural with an erection. No discoloration, no unusual bumps, nothing disproportionate. Stand up, we need to examine you a bit better."

The next couple of minutes were uncomfortable from an emotional standpoint as Wang felt his balls and penis, but only when they got to the prostate portion of the exam was physical discomfort added to the mix. Wang was not gentle in Ryan's anus. When all that had passed and Ryan was trying to reassert a modicum of dignity by getting dressed, Wang told him, "As far as I can tell you're a perfectly healthy young man. Everything looks and feels perfectly normal. I suppose you always maintain an erection like this?"

"Well...I mean I am eighteen years old, so more or less, yeah. It's been especially bad for the past few days though."

"Did anything out of the ordinary happen in that time? Did you eat anything or drink anything unusual? Have you been taking any drugs?"

"No, no drugs. Right before this all started I saw a native ceremony up in the jungle though."

"Eh, ceremony? What happened there? Did you eat or drink anything strange there?"

"There was fruit...like nectarines or something? They tasted normal - I've been eating the same fruit since I got to the island. And then there was the smoke. There were two flowers and they set them on fire and had us breathe in the smoke."

"If smoke from a couple of local flowers made penises grow, these islanders would be the richest people on Earth. Who else was at this ceremony?"

"Just me and my mother."

"Has she been complaining of anything strange?"

Ryan paused, thinking of the bizarre exchange that morning, but that couldn't have been anything important, that was just he and his mother being silly. He shook his head and said, "No."

"If she complains of a penis growing, we'll really have one for the books," Wang muttered. "I can give you my diagnosis now. You experienced a late growing spurt of the genitals, which is quite rare but not unheard-of. It's been going on for weeks or months but didn't notice it until today."

Ryan was about to protest that his cock was definitely smaller the night before, but before he could open his mouth he thought better of it. What the doctor was telling him was vastly more likely than his dingus sprouting an inch during the night. "I guess that makes sense."

"Now, that's almost certainly fine, but when you get back home you need to get thoroughly checked out at a real hospital. There are things that can cause sudden growth spurts in various body parts and you have to gets tests to rule those out. Also if it keeps swelling, then you may need to cut your vacation short."

"We're leaving in six days anyway."

Wang told Ryan that if he or his mom experienced any other issues while on the island, they needed to see him immediately. That was that. On the way back to the car he texted Lexy what he had been told, and she agreed that they likely had overreacted. He headed back toward the hotel, only to get stuck when a herd of about thirty cows blocked the road.

The nightly beach party was a little smaller than usual, but it went on anyway - the only night the McCullums had been on the island where there was no party was when the big storm tore everything up a few nights back. Kim was dancing in the sand with four workmen who wanted to bang her, but she always attracted a crowd and as far as Jess knew hadn't slept with anyone on the island yet; the girl just wanted to have fun.

For her part, Jess was sitting at a table with her husband, beaming at his handsome face and listening to him tell a funny if somewhat convoluted story of a comedic incident that had happened that afternoon at the site; it was a rambling shaggy dog tale that had begun with the delivery of a shipment of incorrectly-colored bricks from Australia, had escalated when a seagull relentlessly attacked one of the managers, which somehow led to a New Zealand worker insisting that he should be allowed to drink beer for his afternoon tea break, and had finally somehow led to one of the excavator operators being trapped when an errant blow from a passing bulldozer had tipped over the chemical toilet he was in. The bizarre part was that each of these events somehow caused the next in the chain, and before it was done Jess was laughing so hard she was snorting in a very unladylike fashion.

When Paul had finished his story he got up to get them another round (ginger ale for him and a glass of chardonnay for her) when she saw Ryan walking hand-in-hand with Lexy from the direction of the hotel; Ryan was looking very pleased with himself, while Lexy was walking with a slightly uncomfortable gait that every woman who's ever been pounded silly knew all too well. She couldn't help but grin, which widened into a smile when she didn't think anything even slightly inappropriate about her boy. In fact, she hadn't had any such thoughts since she'd gotten back this afternoon, which pleased her greatly. Undoubtedly it had all been a passing bout of tropical madness. Yes, tropical madness, that's all it was.

When Ryan was about thirty feet from Jess, he said something to Lexy; the girl smiled, stood on her tiptoes for a kiss, and went solo toward the bar. Ryan turned and gestured to Jess to come to him, which was kind of odd, but she went with it. "Hey, kiddo," she said when she was close enough that they could speak in a normal voice without being overheard. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to mention something," he said, and she immediately saw he was a bit nervous. "I went to the doctor today. Now don't get excited, he said everything is fine."

"What's wrong? Are you sick?"

"No, it's...it's a private issue."

"A private..."

He blushed adorably. "An issue with my privates."

"...do you have the clap?"

"No!"

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise it isn't that, jeez."

"Crabs?"

"God no!"

"Did you hurt yourself with..." and here she stopped to gesture with her head toward Lexy, who was chatting amiably with Paul at the bar.

"No. No, it doesn't hurt at all. It's...look, I'd rather not explain, OK? Just trust me, everything is OK now."

"You can't tell your mother about a problem with your nasties and expect her not to worry, dear. Maybe you'd better tell me what happened."

"I'd really rather not," he said, shifting uncomfortably and blushing even more.

"I'm going to worry myself sick until you do. There's nothing to be ashamed of, honey. You can tell me anything, that's what moms are for."

He threw his head back and made a frustrated sound, then looked back at Jess. "My junk got bigger, like considerably bigger, really quickly."

Now it was Jess' turn to blush. "I see."

"And we just noti - I mean, I just noticed it today but it must have been growing for a while now. Anyway it's like an inch longer than it was when I got on the island."

"That's...good?"

"Well...I guess so, yeah. But I just noticed it all of a sudden and it freaked me out so I went to the doctor. I feel fine, no pain or anything, and he said everything looked normal. He was pretty quick to rule out the standard tropical diseases especially. Anyway the reason I'm telling you this is because the only unusual thing I've done recently is that ceremony thing, and since you were there too, he wanted you to be alert for any changes and see him right away if you notice anything."

"Whew. That's a lot. Well thank God you're OK, but you'd better keep an eye on it, and have Lexy keep an eye on it too. If you notice anything else odd - anything! - you get your butt to the doctor. You hear me?"

"I will. You too, OK."

Jess nodded, then licked her palm and ran it down the side of her son's head. He jerked away, asking, "What are you doing?"

"Your hair was weird. I fixed it."

"Mom, I've not seven years old anymore."

"You'll always be seven to me. Now go get a drink, you probably need it."

Day Five

Jess awoke once more to a convulsive orgasm, feeling herself squirt into the sheets in the way that was starting to seem inevitable. Next to her, Paul slept on as though nothing was unusual. These dreams were going to be the death of her. They wouldn't be so bad if she could only get a decent night's sleep, but they always made her lose an hour, maybe two. She forced herself upright in bed and swung her legs over the side, noticing that the clock said 4:08; would it even be worth it to try to go back to sleep, seeing that Paul woke up at 6:15 and their permanent ritual saw her get up at the same time? With a grown, she grumbled, "I might have to take a nap today."

She made her way to the bathroom, thighs dripping with girl-cum and leaving a sticky trail; she made a mental note to use her bath towel to wipe that up before she returned to bed. A few moments later she was in the shower, using up what little warm water had managed to accumulate in the hotel tank. She rinsed herself off, careful to keep her hair dry.

Every morning that she woke up like this, the feeling had grown stronger inside her that she really, desperately needed to figure out who the man she was dreaming about was, because she was certain he was someone she knew well, and just as certain that wasn't her husband. She wasn't sure why this need was there - it wasn't like she was going to do anything in real life with the guy no matter who he was - but it was like an itch at the base of her brain, always there, unable to be scratched. And today, because of what had happened in the dream the night before, it was worse than ever.

The dream had started out like it always did, her and this paragon of a man in a soft-porn version of her living room back home. She had been naked and tanned and young, and the man was naked and tanned and young and perfect. They had made love - much more playfully this time than in the past, as though the dream from two nights ago where the man had knocked her up had taken some pressure off of them. She and her dream lover had had fun kissing and touching, and the foreplay had lasted for a very long time. He went down on her and made her come with his mouth and she did the same to him, and then they sixty-nined, making love to each other's genitals with their mouths and playing with each other's asses (a new wrinkle and something she had never done to Paul, though her dream man seemed to find it pleasurable). But that little difference was nothing compared to what happened when he finally pushed his hips between her legs and she felt his hard cock rub against her entrance: he had given her a name and she remembered it when she woke up.

Seetsahm.

That was no sort of name Jess had ever heard, and there was nothing to even show it was a name and not just a random sound - nothing except her bone-deep certainty that he had bestowed upon her a name that had always been hers without her knowing it, as insane as that was. Seetsahm. What the hell? Why not "Laura" or "Maggie?" She had always liked those names.

Somehow Seetsahm fit her better though.

She must have heard that name somewhere though. It certainly didn't sound like a native word. Maybe one of the Frauen-Trinkclub had mentioned it? She could ask them...but what would she say? Hey girls, I've been having dreams of getting fucked by a mysterious stranger that make me cum so hard I soak my bed and last night he called me Seetsahm and it really feels like my name. Yeah, right.

She stepped out of the shower and dried off, then stared at her reflection in the mirror as though looking in her own eyes for an answer. She knew the man. She knew she knew him, and she needed to figure out who he was before it drove her bonkers.

She remembered to use her damp towel to clean up the path she had left. She nestled back into bed but sleep didn't come. Her mind raced, swirling around the name she had been given and what it might mean, and around the half-remembered face of her dream lover. Before she knew it, it was getting light outside and Paul was stirring. She was on her side, looking lovingly into his eyes as he opened them.

"Wow, that's what I want to see first thing in the morning," he murmured with a smile.

"I don't know how you're even more handsome when you wake up in the morning than when you went to sleep the night before," she told him, nestling her nose into the crook of his neck and planting a kiss on a sensitive spot. "I think I'm the luckiest woman around, getting to wake up next to you."

"I'm the lucky one. You have to smell my morning breath."

"Ooh, fair point, stinky," she chuckled. "Your mouth smells like a goat's butt."

"And how do you know how a goat's butt smells?"

"A woman is allowed to have secrets."

He chuckled and put his arm around her. "What if I call in sick and we spend the whole day fooling around?"

"Don't dangle that in front of me and then yank it away. You haven't called in sick in fifteen years."

"Seventeen, but who's counting. God I'm going to miss you when you go back."

"You'll visit for a couple weeks at Christmas," she said, putting her head on his chest. "We'll just have to survive until then."

"If I didn't need this job..."

"But you do. This job will make you what you always wanted to be, so do it and do it great. A little separation won't kill either of us." She paused, then added, "Of course, now that I know how hot the native women are, I'll be worried about you leaving me for one."

"None of them can hold a candle to you, babe."

"Aww. You're just saying that because you want to get laid."

"Is it working?"

She lifted herself and swung her hips atop his. "Hell yes it is."

She didn't come. She rode her husband for all she was worth and then took it from behind the way she liked, but her orgasm didn't come. She was fine with that - sex with Paul wasn't about coming, it was about being together with him completely, so if she sometimes didn't finish, she was fine with that. But once, as she was just realizing she wasn't going to orgasm, a wonderful, thrilling image of Ryan behind her, pulling her hair and hammering her like a cheap slut entered her mind; she almost climaxed then, almost lost herself in it and let herself run with the fantasy, but through sheer force of will she pushed the fantasy away, her potential orgasm receding with it.

Something was wrong with her, but that didn't mean she had to let herself be vile. She was in control, not her dark perversions.

Afterward she waited as he showered and shaved, when when he came out of the bathroom she had gotten dressed, selected his clothes for the day and laid them out on the bed. They chatted while he dressed, and when it was time for him to leave she walked him down to the dining room, where he grabbed a plastic plate of papaya from the buffet and ate it on the way to the shuttle bus. She waved him goodbye, trying not to feel sad that in just a few days he would be waving her goodbye as she flew away.

Don't be a fool. Cherish the moments you have because they don't last.

Kim had really tied one on the night before so it was no surprise that she wasn't at breakfast. Jess joined Vilde and Kendra as they finished their breakfast. She was still lingering over her morning coffee when the ladies had gone and Ryan emerged from the hotel. She waved at him and he approached, but as he got closer she saw the dark patches under his lovely eyes. "Good morning, sweetie. Are you feeling OK?"

"Oh, yeah, just tired." He took a seat at her table. "I haven't been sleeping well lately."

"Me neither. I think I'm anxious about leaving your father."

"I can understand that." He rubbed his eyes, then flagged down a passing waiter and ordered a mushroom and cheese omelet.

"So what's keeping you from sleeping?" she asked.

"Oh...it's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"When you tell your mother not to worry, that's when I start to worry. I'd have thought you'd have learned that by now."

"It's really nothing. I just...it's nothing."

"Well now you're just lying to me."

He exhaled rather dramatically. "It really is, it's just dreams."

She tilted her head. "Dreams."

"Yeah, I've just been having really crazy dreams lately. That's all."

"Nightmares? Like of the river?"

"I...no, not nightmares, just strange. They wake me up and I can't get back to sleep."

"I've had some of the same myself," she admitted. "Do you want to talk about them?"

He blushed so red he looked as though he'd been lying in the tropical sun for eight hours with no sunscreen. "No. No I don't."

"OK then, never mind. What are your plans for the day?"

"Lexy is going to spend the day with her dad at the construction site, so I'll probably just do some swimming, maybe a little solo hiking around here."

"That sounds fun. I'd invite you to join me and the ladies this afternoon but I can't imagine you'd enjoy spending time with a bunch of drunken, gossipy middle-aged women."

"I'll probably pass on that, yeah."

There was a lull in conversation. Ryan looked out at the sea, and Jess looked at Ryan. Finally she said, "Sweetie, it really does seem like there's something on your mind. Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"It's stupid. It's something from the dreams but I can't figure it out and it's driving me nuts."

She put a comforting smile on her face and reached across the table to take his hand. "You can tell me if you want. If you're comfortable."

He seemed to think about it for a long moment before finally looking from the ocean to her face. "It's silly, but...have you ever heard the name Seetsahm?"

Jessica's smile froze on her face, slowly changing from that of a comforting parent to something resembling the smile of the corpse at a wake. She felt numb, as though it was someone else using her voice who asked, "What did you just say?"