The Fay-tapped

CHAPTERS:

I, THE CRYSTAL BALL, THE DAGGER, THE TAROT, THE BOOK, THE BRACELET, IHKSY, Z, THE NECKLACE, THE PEN, II.

-

I

-

A sated English professor in her thirties was nude, lying on her front atop a crimson chaise of velvet. The slender whiteness of her body merged into the vivid red of the couch and she sighed contentment. The ravished pink of her sex still throbbed between her legs.

She panted, glancing over at a dark shadow of a pale man with green eyes rising in the gloom of a basement office. She brushed free the strands of her golden bob stuck to her lips.

He sat down at his desk, the alabaster of his chest reflecting off the edges of the ancient wood as he lapsed back into devouring a book.

There was a timid tap at the door and it creaked open. A scrawny damsel sporting a sable bob and empty eyes hesitated at the entrance. She squirmed beneath a black, one piece dress trimmed in bleached lace. Lingering at the door, she shifted from foot to foot in a pair of Mary Janes.

"Maison, come." Sea said and beckoned the girl forward.

Patricia promoted a subtle show of herself on the couch and writhed just enough so her sex was biting into the dense pile of the velvet. She smeared her flashing orchid across the girl's retinas, marking her territory. But Maison's creeping gaze hadn't bothered to recognize Patricia's presence.

Maison bent over Sea's desk and unfurled her right hand, revealing a scroll of black parchment. Sea collected the minuscule missive from her trembling palm and untied the whisker of a purple ribbon.

Patricia perked up, eyeballing him with curiosity.

Sea unrolled the scroll and read over it, once, before it burst into nine hundred and ninety nine microscopic butterflies of disintegrating purple light.

Patricia glimpsed the glitter of lavender rays bask Sea's knowing face and she could no longer restrain her curiosity.

"What did it say? Who was it from?" Patricia asked, leaning on her forearms.

"It was a list of students," Sea said, peering up into Maison's eyes.

An understanding invisible to Patricia passed between them and Maison nodded before bowing as far as she could without smacking against the top of his desk.

Patricia watched her slip out the heated den of Sea's office and a feather of jealousy tickled her eyes. She wasn't entirely keen on sharing Sea, but she had no options, Maison existed here the earliest, she was always The First One. At least, that's what Sea told her.

She sighed, plopped her head back onto her arms, and twirled a foot. What could she do, anyway? Sea owned her very soul. The throbbing memento of his inky mark planted high on her inner right thigh divulged the dirty secret of their pact.

"Why Maison?" Patricia asked, plucking up the same thread of questioning for the nine hundred and ninety ninth time.

"She's my house," Sea proclaimed without explanation.

Patricia closed her amber eyes and recounted the poetry that had gushed into her soul just nine minutes prior. She licked her lips and a sizzling desire, erupting from the center of her heart, slithered into her sex again.

Before she could even verbalize the craving plea, Sea was already inside her and she grinned. What did it matter about Maison, Milly, or Michelle? Let him hoard the entire gamut of the letter "M," she was winning more from him than she could ever have dreamt possible.

Her joy-soaked moan of churning bliss tore an echo through the gripping musk of Sea's office.

-

On the first day of the fall semester, Patricia's expensive heels click-clacked down the marble floors of a splendid Queen Anne style English country house. She turned and rushed into a parlor.

"They should be arriving tonight," Patricia said, smoothing her knit skirt, "is there anything you need me to do?"

Sea peeked up from his desk and the lenses of his tortoise shell glasses flashed white moons. He tilted his head a notch and eyed her.

"You seem..." Sea spied her anxieties, "nervous?"

Patricia strode over to an antique chair persevering in front of his desk and let out an expanding breath as she collapsed into it.

"I don't know," Patricia said, "I just don't know what I'm doing, I don't like this lack of control. I usually have a teaching plan or a syllabus ready by now."

"You won't need any of that for these kinds of experimental classes," Sea said.

"But the fairies. You said they were chosen specifically by the fay. I feel like that makes this different. What if I do something wrong? What if I slip up and something happens to me?" Patricia said, rocking one of her scorching pumps aloft the tips of her toes.

"Nothing's going to happen to you, the fairies have a perverse understanding of love, but they're not malicious." Sea said.

Sea noticed his words hadn't dispersed the stress wrenching her sparkling foot.

"Patricia," Sea commanded, "wake up, stop running loops in your head, look at me."

Patricia's racing ambers halted and her gaze skidded into the shamrock depths of the seas swelling beneath his glasses.

"Let go," Sea asserted in a voice that doused the combusting tangle of her thoughts, "relax and enjoy the fairy tale."

Every muscle in her body melted into a gel of shushed devotion as his eyes gobbled up the icky deposits of her doubt. She sanctioned the cleansing succor of her deliverer with a curtsy of her eyelashes. Patricia permitted her legs to unlatch and her body to stretch into the chair. His power to subjugate her psyche and pacify her body was one of the mysteries she loved about the man.

"Things will become chaotic quickly and the best way to deal with chaos is to be open and empty. Plus, you won't have to worry about all nine kids, just your three students."

"My three students?" Patricia asked.

"I'll watch another three myself, and the last three will be in the care of..." Sea peered past Patricia.

"Me," A woman said behind Patricia.

Patricia shut her legs and rotated, her bob swishing out like a fan of gold dust. She caught sight of a slim, pale woman, flaunting a wild bolt of a raven braid. Her eyes shimmered silver and sparkled flecks of amethyst as she smiled. Her body was a milky dream in a shift dress that seduced reality. Patricia wasn't sure if the woman was younger or older than herself. She possessed a kind of exaltation about her white flesh, like it disclosed the secrets of eternity.

"Hey Diana," Patricia said, "what are you doing here?"

"She's the third professor," Sea said.

"I'll take my old room," Diana said, "have my bag sent up there by that white-haired man."

Diana kissed Patricia on the top of her head and said, "I always love working with you, Patricia. Let's have a fun semester."

Patricia raised an eyebrow and scrutinized the sway of Diana's rope woven from outer space as the goddess drifted out the room.

"What is she talking about?" Patricia said, "I've never worked with her before."

-

THE CRYSTAL BALL

-

Alyssa clutched her phone in her hand as she peered out the tinted window of the black Bentley. Her hazel eyes bloomed as the giant manor emerged through the pine trees thriving at the top of the hill. The driver whirled the car along a driveway that looped around a marble fountain. Alyssa's gaze ferried her attention to the circular water feature adorned with a sculpture of a fairy couple dancing on tip-toes with wings aflutter. A marble cat purred around their feet.

"Wow," she whispered.

Her clipped-up hair, the color of silky butterscotch, swished when she shifted her admiration back to the manor on the right. She gasped behind the tips of her fingers as the entirety of the country house annexed her field of view. She edged up her phone and stole a picture.

"We've arrived, Miss Appelgate," the white haired driver said, smiling through the rear view mirror into the back seat. Alyssa smiled back.

"This place is amazing!" Alyssa said, locking her phone and sitting back down in her seat.

The driver opened her door and ushered her out with the aid of his hand. Staring up into the ancient splendor of the building's facade, a breeze with the taste of fall rolled its fingers through her hair, sending some stray threads of caramel rippling in the wind. The setting sun eavesdropped on her pulse and gushed warmth into the nape of her neck.

"I'll have your bags sent up to your room," the driver said, "why don't you go ahead in and join all the others, M'lady."

"Thanks Gus!" Alyssa charged up the stone steps and slowed down at the top to respect a set of imposing double doors. Above the entrance, subsisted a circular, bronze carving of a crowned squid with nine arms. Alyssa recognized it as the school's mascot and perceived the weight of MU's unorthodox lineage.

One of the two rosewood doors hung open and Alyssa wandered inside. The sounds of the outside died down and she found herself inhaled into the majesty of an elegant darkness. A red carpet conducted her down the throat of the entrance into a main room boasting a balcony and pair of staircases that frisked its walls. She gazed up at the dim chandelier dangling from the ceiling like a tub of rain frozen in the cone of a streetlight's glow. The interior of the estate exuded an otherworldly titillation that fondled the backs of her ears. She gripped cartilage and her heart clung to her rib cage.

"Ms. Appelgate?"

Alyssa, turned, squinted, and discovered a blonde woman in a scarlet dress leading eight others behind her.

Alyssa nodded, "that's me."

"I'm sorry you just missed the tour. I'm Patricia Spinnennetz," Patricia said, stepping forward, "one of the three professors leading these... privileged classes. You can call me Patricia," She procured a hand and Alyssa shook half of it.

"Nice to meet you," Alyssa said, peeping past her to study her peers.

There were four young women and four young men standing in a scattered group. Alyssa eyed up the girls, two seemed timid, one seemed like a pretty lesbian, and the other one seemed like she could be a decent friend. Alyssa smiled at her and she smiled back.

Her eyes circled the boys. One was pure white snow with a head full of black honey. A smart, yet nervous look stalked about his pale green eyes. There was a cute one with a treasure chest of curls and sapphires, his attention doted upon his new surroundings with a slack concentration. The next wore a sarcastic smile and his lonely gaze surveyed her under a whirl of sienna, he finished his appraisal of her and crossed his arms of ivory. Alyssa instantly didn't like him. The last guy, oh the last guy, Alyssa fell in love.

He had the body of an athlete who was having trouble eating. Fractured storms of complexity thundered in the depths of his blue-grey eyes. The blank mask of his expression struggled to conceal his suffering and leaked out along the fringes of his eyelashes. Alyssa lent him her smile and he didn't notice. Her lips faded as she realized he wasn't in the room with them but meandering, lost, on the plane of a distant memory.

Alyssa took in the group as one block and noticed they weren't whole. They all lacked the innate hope that buzzed at the center of the human condition. In a way, they were long dead. And most of them just as pale to boot.

"I'll bring the lot of you in one by one so you can sign some paperwork," Patricia glanced down the hallway and peered out the front door, "hopefully by the time we finish that, the moon will be out."

"Alyssa, let's start with you," Patricia beckoned with a finger, "follow me and we'll get started."

Alyssa trailed behind Patricia's clicking heels back down the entrance, "I love your shoes, by the way."

Patricia glanced down at the ruby heels with golden soles on her feet, "thanks, these are my most treasured pair."

They strolled into a parlor posing as an office near the entrance and a pale man wearing a dark tweed suit was already inside. His gaze climbed up from a book with glinting glasses. A rain cloud of a bun subdued the wildness of his onyx locks.

Patricia sealed the door with a click behind Alyssa as she strayed into the center of the room.

"Hello Miss Appelgate," the man said.

"Alyssa, this is Professor Sea," Patricia said, "he's one of the other professors here."

"Nice to meet ya," Alyssa spurted out a small wave.

"Why don't you take a seat Alyssa," Sea said, pointing to a chair in front of his sturdy, wooden desk.

Alyssa squeaked a perch on the leather chair across from him and Patricia settled into a couch on the outskirts of her hazel periphery.

"This is your first semester at MU," Professor Sea confirmed.

"Yes, I'm a freshman," Alyssa said, jabbing a finger under a tear in the knee of her designer jeans.

"What attracted you to MU?" Sea asked, he spun a pen between his thumb and forefinger. For an instant it flashed in her mind as a crow feather. Alyssa blinked.

"Uhhh, what attracted me to MU..." Alyssa looked away from Sea and studied the ornate carpet, "I guess I thought it would be a good school for me."

"But your family is wealthy, you could have attended any school. MU isn't exactly close to home either," Sea stated. He leaned back and rolled the obsidian pen with gold accents between his fingers.

A pressure began to burn Alyssa's ears and she didn't know how to reply in a way that would sound good, so she blabbed the truth.

"Well, honestly, I heard stories about this place," Alyssa said, glancing up, "strange stories. I guess I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on here."

"Have you ever had something unusual happen to you?" Sea asked, flooding his eyes through her head.

"Sometimes, I get a weird kind of shared déjà vu," Alyssa said. She polished her eyes with the elegant room. The setting sun cast gooey lines of honey across three walls decked, head to toe, in books. "It's like I'm in two places at once sometimes," she rested her eyes on Sea.

"As you know," Sea said, "you're one of a special group selected for an experimental instructional format. In order to keep our teaching methods a secret and release MU from anything that might, or might not, happen to you, I need you to sign a waiver. Can you do that for me Alyssa?"

"Yeah, of course," Alyssa said, "I'll send it over to my family lawyer first and..."

"I don't think that will be necessary," Sea said, "you'll be able to see it's a simple contract and you have to make the decision on your own." He slid a creamy paper of crimson cursive across the desk.

Alyssa collected it from the polished surface of the desk and read the ink that stained the vanilla slip with sweeping lines.

"I, Alyssa Appelgate, hereby submit myself to the timeless institution of MU and all its secrets for fear of death or insanity." Alyssa read the paper aloud, jerking an eyebrow.

"I just need your thumbprint on that sheet of paper if you don't mind," Sea said, pointing to a golden dish cradling an inky pad.

Alyssa scanned over the sheet of paper again, "you want me to sign this?"

"Well more of a stamp of your thumb really," Sea said.

Alyssa whipped her head up from the paper and contemplated the handsome man of a professor. She chewed on her cherry lip, unsure. His calm gaze waited for her as she grappled with the wounded slip of his terms.

"Fine," Alyssa said, "I'll do it."

She leapt up, dropped the paper on the desk, and squished her right thumb into the pad of ink. There was a prick of pain and Alyssa winced. She smudged her thumb in a void under the words. Lifting her digit, she discovered a bloody seal in the shape of her thumb.

"Correct choice," Sea said, conducting the paper away, "Diana here, will help you wash off." He gestured towards the door at a woman with silver eyes waving daggers of obsidian nails.

Diana padded over and shepherded Alyssa by the hand with the pricked thumb. She allowed Diana to steer her across the hall into a kitchen like area with three sets of tables and chairs. In a sink near the doorway, Diana rinsed Alyssa's hands with the concentration of a considerate nurse.

Alyssa sprinkled the lunar beauty with spotty glances.

"Who are you, again?" she asked.

"I'm one of the three professors here," Diana said, drying between Alyssa's fingers and knuckles with a washcloth of marshmallow cotton. "Take a seat over there and wait for the rest of your peers to join you."

Alyssa settled in at the center of one of the three tables and stared out a lancet window that stretched down for twelve feet from the ceiling. The sun set over the peaks of pines that flourished around the glade at the top of the hill. A shaft of light glittered out through a gap in the dense vegetation, alighting on the monument of fairy lovers. The marble clawed shadows across the driveway.

-

The first of Alyssa's classmates to join her was one of the timid girls. She maintained a plaited braid of natural platinum hair punctuated with occasional streaks of bronze. A powder blue button front dress shrieked the secret of her delicate form.

Diana guided the living gasp of spring over to the sink and swabbed her hands under running water. The professor in white pressed her cheek against the blonde's left temple and confided three or four words in the girl's ear and departed.

"Hi," Alyssa said, flashing her palm.

"Hi, Alyssa," the girl articulated softly. She interlocked her fingers and stretched her wrists.

"What's your name?" Alyssa asked.

"Claire," she said and touched down in a chair across from Alyssa. The sun drooled an orange glow where she sat, igniting the topaz flames of Claire's eyes. Alyssa entangled her arms, jealous of Claire's silent elegance.

Alyssa languished in silence for a while. She manhandled the image of Claire in her mind while the blonde cast her eyes far out the window and stroked her neck.

A girl with a tight body flirting beneath a slate sweater dress clambered into the room.

"What's your name?" the girl asked Diana, groping her with the red-brown of her eyes.

"Diana," she replied.

The professor wrung out the girl's loosely freckled fingers at the sink. It was the pretty lesbian sporting thick ropes of licorice twin tails. The young woman beheld Diana as she rubbed her hands. The newcomer wore that thirsty leer certain types of feminine lesbians cultivated. Alyssa had learned all about that look in Europe as a young girl traveling with her parents.

The night-haired nymph cavorting in seashell skin took the place next to Claire and snickered to herself. Her ruddy gaze ensnared in Diana's dissipating caresses whizzing from her hands.

"I'm Alyssa, she's Claire," Alyssa said, "what's your name?"

"Riley," she said, unhooking her garnets from her fingers, "did you guys also sign a contract in blood?"

Alyssa grimaced, "yeah, something like that."

"Diana's pretty isn't she?" Riley said, "I think I might start wearing my hair like hers."

Alyssa glanced over at Claire for help, but she still gazed out the window as the sun continued to sink into darkness.

Thankfully, Diana paraded a porcelain doll in and Riley swiveled towards the door. It was the other timid girl. She whirled a short bob of black silk with choppy bangs as her eight-balls fretted through spectacles. Ghost lace cuffed the pleated midi dress that clutched her body like baby spiders. Diana washed the girl's digits with the tenderness of a proud mother.

Alyssa concluded this petite shiver of a girl was even worse than Claire. Where Claire seemed haunted by some kind of grace that was beyond Alyssa's understanding, this new girl was a deer forever chained to headlights. The smart obsidian of her eyes discharged the hesitation of an introvert.

She slipped in at the end of the table and patted her skirt. Alyssa had to pivot her body in order to see her.

"I'm Alyssa," she hurled down the table, "what's your name?"

The girl lifted her head and scooted her attention over to Alyssa, "Miyu."