The Sculptor Ch. 01

Another trick I use to manipulate people's decisions with my powers is to take advantage of the moment of hesitation. If a person is taking some time to decide whether they want to do something, and then suddenly find themselves doing it, they tend to conclude that their final answer must have been yes. So, instead of apologizing one last time and walking back to her sister's place to cry more and sulk alone on the couch with a quart of ice cream, Erika is here having coffee with me and telling me everything.

I already knew it all, of course. The whole sordid tale of ruthlessness and betrayal. I've seen it as clearly as Erika herself, through her own eyes. But I'm pretty good at pretending to learn things for the first time. And really the more important point is that she gets to say it aloud, to share it with someone else. Someone she trusts, even if she doesn't know why she does. It's not easy for her to relive it. More than once, she starts crying again. But now when she suddenly finds herself sobbing on my shoulder again, she doesn't pull back. She lets it all out. I sway her back and forth a little, patting and rubbing her back, whispering soothing little nothings into her ear as the other patrons politely pretend not to see her.

Talking about it does help. By the time we're done with our initial lattes and the following two cups each of decaf - it's getting late, after all - Erika is done crying, and has sorted out her feelings. She's done with Michael. And she's done with Katie, too. Not a moment too soon, I reassure her, sincerely. And she's started making plans for things she can do to help get her life back together. This girl is remarkably strong, I realize - even if some of this is just short-lived bravado, she's made incredible progress in a couple of hours. I'm also taken aback by just how smart she is. She's an engineer by trade, and she has a Master's degree in physics. A side effect of never fraternizing with my subjects is that I often lose sight of their inner life, seeing them only as the art I can make with them rather than human beings with their own wishes, dreams, skills, and quirks. But talking to Erika is blowing me away.

Most of the time seeing one of my finished works in motion again is extremely bittersweet to me, because watching something I more or less created come to life and fly away is an amazing feeling, but usually it also means I'm saying goodbye to a person I feel I've come to know intimately. Most of the time, when I let go of a moment I've shared with a woman I've sculpted, I never see her again. The sheer size of the city means that no matter how many women I sculpt, seeing one of them again is an extremely rare occasion. Erika is not only the most beautiful sculpture I've ever made; she's also an exceptional, intelligent woman. I find myself not wanting to let go of her just yet. So I get a little carried away.

"Y'know what you could use?" I find myself asking when she's done explaining her professional goals for the next year. "You, my friend, could use a drink. Why don't we each go home and change into something nice, and meet up again so I can take you to dinner?" She beams at me, flattered. We have hit it off fairly well, after all. But I know if I give her enough time to come to a decision herself, she'll say no, and if I'm very lucky, just give me her number to perhaps pick this up at a later date. And when time is moving, I am not a patient man. So the next thing she knows, she's wearing the sluttiest dress, highest heels, and tiniest thong she owns, done up in makeup and jewelry, and sitting at a table at a nice gastropub I know in Brooklyn. Her mind accepts that she must have said yes, and we're on a date.

This part was pretty tough for me to pull off, actually. I had to use Recall to figure out where her sister's apartment is, and carry her and her suitcase all the way there. The door opened for me easily - locked doors never seem to keep me from where I need to go when the world has stopped. When we got inside, I found that Erika's sister (Astrid Larsen, age 28) and her roommate (Sarah Braverman, age 26) were getting ready to go out somewhere, so naturally I had to put Erika on the couch for a little while and sculpt both of them. I needed to make sure there was still a family resemblance between Erika and Astrid, after all, and once I was done with her I couldn't just leave Sarah out; that would have been heartless. When I was done, I searched around for some sexy clothes belonging to Erika only to remember that most of her clothes were gone. All she had were some necessities in a duffel she'd hastily packed when Michael kicked her out, and whatever Katie had deigned to give back to her in the suitcase from earlier today, which wasn't much. So I had to go to Erika and Michael's old place.

Katie still wasn't back, thank God. Michael was in the middle of talking to someone on the phone; he didn't look happy. Good. I tossed his wallet out the window and gathered up a bunch of Erika's clothes to take back to Astrid's place. When I got there, I tried to put Erika's sexiest little black dress on her only to remember it wouldn't fit her anymore. None of her old clothes would. So I threw most of them out as well as all of her bras, carried her to the store where she'd gotten the dress according to its tag, and kept putting different sizes of it on her until one of them fit. Then I had to carry her all the way across the damn bridge to Brooklyn. Then I had to get her to the gastropub, find a middle-aged couple who had just sat down, move them to a perfectly fine pizza joint next door, and take their table. It was a lot of work. But seeing Erika sitting across the table from me in that dress, smiling coquettishly at me, makes it all feel worth it.

The date goes really well. We finish our dinner, and order another round of drinks. Then another. I really don't want to say goodbye. So I get even more carried away. I ask her if she wants to go back to my place for a nightcap, and the words are barely out of my mouth before she finds herself sitting on my couch with some soft music playing and me mixing her a White Russian.

When I'm drunk and horny, I tend to use my powers a bit more indiscriminately than I should. I get an idea of something I want to happen, and I freeze time and maneuver things so that when I'm done, that thing is happening. But Erika must be drunk and horny too, because each and every time I skip some time she responds extremely well.

She's sitting on my couch laughing at something I said. Then, suddenly, she finds herself straddling my lap, her dress hiked up to her waist and her arms around my neck, and her response is to bring her mouth to mine and kiss me with all of the fire and passion I could see within her since the coffeeshop.

My mouth on hers and my hands on her bare ass are doing strange and unprecedented things to her for reasons she cannot understand. Then, suddenly, her dress is on the floor behind her, and her response is to push her big round F-cup tits into my face, purring and dry-humping me through her thong.

She is completely surprised when my mouth on her nipples, my hands on her ass, and her clit on my crotch are enough to bring her to an extremely forceful orgasm. Then, suddenly, she finds herself kneeling on the ground in front of me with one hand on my zipper and the other in her thong, and her response is to take my cock out and stuff it as far into her hungry sucking mouth as she can, her free hand playing with her pussy.

Her body continues to surprise her by building most of the way to an orgasm just from sucking my cock and playing with herself. Then, suddenly, she is taking me all the way into her throat more easily than she ever has before, and her response is to cum explosively, again, and keep taking me into her throat over and over until I do the same, filling her stomach with my first load.

She's sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath and trying to make sense of all the things she has just learned about her body. Then, suddenly, she is handcuffed and lying facedown over my lap on my bed getting spanked, and her response is to mewl, squirm, call me both "Master" and "Daddy," and beg me to punish her.

She's falling deeper into subspace than she ever knew she could under my stern hand. Then, suddenly, she's tied to the headboard of my bed by all four limbs, her soaked thong stuffed in her mouth and her quivering pussy and asshole on full display for me, and there's not much of a response she really can have to that other than to look at me pleadingly with those big blue eyes I made myself until I relent and force myself into her.

The changes I've made to Erika's body bring her unimaginable pleasure each second my cock is in her. Sex has never been like this for her before. She doesn't even know how to process it at this point. A mortal man would probably last two minutes at most in a body like Erika's and still manage to bring her off like a firecracker two or three times. But I've just sculpted myself permanently hard and boosted my balls to many times their original semen-producing efficiency, so there's nothing keeping me from going for hours. I fuck her savagely, her eyes rolling back in her head under the force of the sensations she's experiencing. I periodically pull out, crawl up her body, and pull the thong out of her wailing mouth just long enough to fill it with a big healthy load of jizz, then move back down to repeat the process. Over and over.

I fuck her ass too. The way her eyes bug out the first time I do it, I'm pretty sure it's the first time she's ever had it done. But she's cumming again within seconds, nothing even touching her pussy. That's what happens when a woman has an asshole like the one I've given her. I'm the best at what I do, whether it's sculpting a woman or fucking her.

Eventually my lust is sated, and after I pull out of her mouth this one last time I sculpt my cock soft again. I am completely exhausted. I wouldn't even have the energy to untie Erika if I couldn't stop time. By the time I'm done and the world starts up again, Erika is already unconscious. I guess she's earned a rest. I collapse to the pillow beside her and fall asleep.

The next morning I'm woken by the squealing teakettle. Erika must have started breakfast for me. How sweet! I smell eggs, but I think they're burning.

I go out to the main room to find her standing naked in front of a painting, the burning eggs and boiling teakettle all but forgotten. The painting she's staring at is my masterpiece. It's the one I did of her at the park.

"That's me," she says, as if in a trance. She turns to face me. "When did you have the time to paint this? We were together all night. Did you paint this while I was getting changed for dinner?" She pauses, furrowing her brow. "How on Earth did you paint this in that much time? It couldn't have been more than an hour, maybe."

"Uh. I can explain," I stammer, trying my damnedest to think of an explanation that would satisfy her.

"Have you been... spying on me?" She squints at the painting again. "No, that can't be right. I only changed my hair after Michael kicked me out. ...wait." She spins her head back toward me, her sex-hair flying wildly. "How did I grow my hair out that much in two days?"

I gulp audibly. No one I've sculpted has ever logically defeated their own rationalization before.

Her eyes narrow. "You... changed me."

Shit.

PART 3: IT WASN'T A DREAM

Of course my response to this is to stop time. I don't like being in this moment any longer than I have to, but I need time to think up how I'm gonna get out of this. I can't believe I forgot to hide the painting.

Finally I pick Erika up, carry her and her clothes all the way back to her sister's place, and leave her naked under a blanket on the couch with her eyes closed and her clothes strewn haphazardly around the room. Let her think she staggered home drunk from the gastropub and dreamed the whole thing. She doesn't know where my apartment is since time was frozen when I took her there, which suits me just fine. The sooner this entire episode is behind me, the better.

I note with satisfaction when I note that Astrid isn't around, and Sarah is asleep stark naked in her bed with a gentleman caller sleeping next to her. My gifts got both of them laid. Feels nice to accomplish something good. I leave Astrid's apartment and stalk back to my own, trying to shake off what just happened.

A couple hours later I'm back at my apartment on the phone with the owner of a small local gallery I know when there's a knock at my door. I open it absent-mindedly, and there, with the same sex-hair as this morning and in the same little black dress as last night, is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. "It wasn't a dream!" Erika exclaims triumphantly. "I knew it wasn't a dream!"

Well, shit. Erika pushes past me into the apartment. "Jim, I'm gonna have to call you back," I say as I hang up. What am I gonna do, carry her back to her sister's couch again so she'll think this is a dream too? Fuck. First things first. "Hi, Erika. How do you know where this place is?"

She is pacing manically around my main room. Luckily I had the good sense to put the painting somewhere else by now. "Goooooood question! You see, I didn't know where it was, until I checked Maps on my phone this morning while you were asleep. And it's like, why didn't I know where I was before then? I always text Katie the address when I go home with a guy, just in case - well, I guess I would have texted Astrid this time, because Katie's a fucking snake now, but I didn't text her either. Why wouldn't I do that?" She finally comes to a stop and whirls to point at me. "What did you do?"

Goddammit. Of course she checked her phone. Why didn't I think of that? Just my luck that the first woman to even suspect that I might have changed her is smarter than me. "Erika, I'm gonna need you to calm down -"

"Or what?" She waves her hands wildly in the air. "Are you gonna turn this into a dream again somehow like you did before? What was that? What the fuck are you? Some kind of wizard?"

"I'm an artist," I mutter.

"Nothing makes sense anymore! I'm wearing this dress again because none of my other clothes fit, and I tried to think about why none of my clothes fit, and I couldn't! I couldn't think about something! It was hard enough for me to think about how I couldn't think about it!" She rounded on me again and grabbed me by the upper arms. "You need to make shit start to make sense again. Now. Talk to me."

I sigh. "Fine, we'll talk in the park."

She frowns. "No, we'll talk right here." But this is an empty protest on her part, because a second later we are in the park. Erika is lying propped up on her side on a picnic blanket, wearing a pink string bikini, sunglasses, and a floppy sun hat. I'm sitting next to her on the blanket, hugging my knees, fully dressed. I admit I'm just showing off now.

It's a bit late in the year for park sunbathing, but nobody pays us much mind. Erika tips her sunglasses forward and looks around nervously. "Okay, fine, we're in the park. Now tell me what's - wait." She stops and rubs her forehead under the hat. "I didn't even want to go to the park. But I guess I got changed into a bikini anyway. That doesn't make any sense. But if I try to think about why I'd do that, I can't. The thoughts just slip right off my brain. This is getting old." She looks down at herself. "I've never even seen this bikini before. I think I bought it, but I don't remember where."

I shrug. "None of your old ones fit anymore, remember? That one's much cuter than they were anyway." She starts to interject something about how that doesn't answer anything, but I stop her with a raised hand. "If you keep asking questions over and over I'll never be able to answer them. Now calm down and I'll tell you everything."

And I do. She deserves some answers at this point, and honestly my earlier panic was probably an overreaction. What's she gonna do, tell the police that some guy with superpowers gave her unsolicited magical plastic surgery? No one will ever believe her if I just tell the truth. So I tell her I can stop time, and make changes to women which their minds twist around themselves to accept as the way things are and should be. I even tell her I can read memories and open locked doors.

She lies on her back, looking up at the sky, taking all this in. "So... the way I look..."

I nod. "Yeah, I gave you a pretty complete makeover. You still mostly look like you did before, but much more attractive. But people will still recognize you, and they'll rationalize away the changes themselves."

She shades her eyes with her hand. "That makes sense. I'm pretty objectively super fucking hot, but if I think about it, my childhood and romantic history aren't the kind a super hot woman would have had." She pauses contemplatively, trying to think of her next question. "Why me?"

I shrug. "I saw you crying on that park bench and I felt bad for you. Then I saw your memories of what Katie and Michael did, and I got attached to you. But I sculpt women all the time, basically at random. Usually at least two a day on average. I usually don't talk to them afterward. Or take them on dates. Or, y'know, anything else we did."

Erika is gobsmacked. "Holy shit. All those women... thousands of them. You walk up to them on the street at random, you strip them naked, you touch them everywhere... you mold their bodies however you see fit... you make them into fffucktoys... then you walk away and they never even notice you did anything." Her words are harsh, but she doesn't sound angry. She sounds... breathless. She unconsciously raises a hand to her midsection and strokes her bare skin a bit before catching herself.

I cough. "I usually think of it less like 'making them into fucktoys' and more like 'making them effortlessly beautiful and letting them enjoy sex more,' but otherwise, yeah, that about sums it up."

Erika rolls onto her stomach, resting her chin on her hand and kicking her bare feet into the air. Her eyes behind the sunglasses are intense. She's really into this, the idea of me, and the questions start coming out quickly. "How did you get your powers?"

"I don't know."

"How did you learn to use them?"

"I have to figure it out myself. I learn new capabilities all the time."

"When did they first show up?"

"I made time stop for the first time when I was twelve. I used it to steal candy and draw pictures of girls without them knowing. I didn't realize I could sculpt women until art school."

"Can you sculpt men?"

"Uh, yeah, in theory, but I've only ever done myself."

"What did you do to yourself?"

"Minor tweaks. Next subject, please."

"Has anyone ever realized you've changed them before?"

"As far as I know, you're the first."

"Could you kill someone?"

"Sure, I guess."

"Have you killed anyone?"

"No."

"Have you hurt anyone?"

"Only their pride."

Here she pauses. "...Did you hurt Katie?"

I grin. "Only her pride."

She puts a hand on my leg. "Can... can you show me?"

I fish out my phone. "I took a video. Are you sure you're ready to see it?"

She scrambles up onto her knees and drapes herself over my shoulders to get a view of my phone so quickly I wonder if she stopped time. "Yes! Let me see it!"

Erika squeezes me tightly and holds her breath as she watches the video. Katie, stark naked on the street, falling flat on her face into a giant stagnant puddle because her legs are tied together with her own underwear, flopping around with no dignity for a very long time, finally struggling loose and fleeing around a corner. Soaked, filthy, nude, and utterly humiliated.

Erika's nipples are practically poking holes in my back by the time the video's over. "Was there something in her ass?"