The Windowless Building

"Here, this way!" Mauro urged them on. They came to a barbed wire fence with a "No Trespassing" sign attached to it. Brad thought that odd; this was the only such sign he had encountered since moving here. Most of the landowners around here who owned the undeveloped tracts of forest and hills seemed to be pretty lassaiz-faire about letting people hang out on their land, but that evidently was not the case here.

Eventually they stopped. The canyon got narrower and the walls got steeper, and there, near the ground, next to where an intermittent stream would normally flow in the spring, was a cave entrance roughly waist high that would allow them to crawl through one at a time. It was partially concealed by brush and they had to bushwhack through it to crawl through the entrance.

"Oh my God I hope there's not poison oak..." Amy said.

"Nah, there isn't...look." Mauro waved his flashlight around but in the grey light, all the plants looked pretty much the same.

He turned around and got on his hands and knees and squeezed through the entrance. One by one, the others followed him. The air had a dank, musty cave smell, of mud and lime and the pungent, but not altogether unpleasant smell of decaying laurel tree leaves. They had to crawl several yards down the sloping tunnel, their flashlights scraping the dirt floor in front of them, before the passage opened up to where they could stand. The passage still sloped downward but they could at least walk upright for a ways. As the passage opened up and got wider, though, there was some scrambling involved as large rounded car-sized outcrops covered the bottom of the steeply sloping passage.

"So how did you know about this place?" Brad asked.

"Well, me and Paul used to come here when we were little. We'd sneak off and..."

"Who's Paul?" Melissa interjected.

"Oh, he's my little brother."

"Wait, what? I didn't know you had a brother!?" Brad exclaimed. "What do you mean, what happened to him? How come I've never seen him?"

Mauro looked puzzled for a moment. Then he said, "Well uh... he um...he's my half-brother. He lives down in California now with Dad. I haven't seen him for a while..."

"Hmmm, odd you haven't mentioned him before." Melissa said indignantly.

Brad thought something else was odd. Brother or not, Mauro hadn't even lived around here that long, so how could he have come here when he was little? But he had no time to ponder, he was just trying to follow Mauro's flashlight, while at the same time trying to make sure Amy didn't lose her footing or get too far behind. The passage eventually bottomed out and they soon found themselves following a narrow, twisting hallway that still descended, though much more gradually now, and the going was easier.

"It ends here, around this corner, at the Chandelier Room. You'll see it, it's fucking wicked!!" Mauro said excitedly.

Brad, Melissa and Amy rounded the corner and had to duck under a low formation of dripstone. Once they did, they stood up...and were awestruck. The chamber was at least 30 feet high, and nearly 20 feet across. Huge formations of sparkling dripstone, layer on layer, cascaded down the glittering walls. It was like a huge pipe organ, or like rows upon rows of chandeliers stacked on top of each other. They each shined their flashlights around the chamber, trying to take in the whole view.

"Whoaaaa..." Amy said, after several minutes of silence.

"Fucking bad ASSS!!" Brad exclaimed.

"Uh hey guys, what's this?" Amy suddenly said.

They turned to look where her flashlight was pointed. To the left of them, just a few feet from the entrance to the room behind them, was a circular metal door, maybe four feet in circumference.

"What? I've never seen that before! That's new!" Mauro said.

"You mean it wasn't there before?" Brad replied.

"No! I don't know what that is, I've been here tons of times and that was never here! That wasn't there when we used to come here... I have no idea...who could have built this?"

"Weird! What the fuck, some kind of... I don't know. Looks like some kind of weird government shit." Brad said.

"Yeah, I don't know why this is down here. That used to just be a wall. Like..." Mauro walked over to the door. There was a metal wheel, like you would see on a bank vault door, which appeared to be the opening mechanism. The door was set into a round frame with hinges on one end, and looked to be made of stainless steel. It was a sharp contrast to the natural walls of the cave. He started to turn the wheel.

"Stop! Wait!" exclaimed Melissa, her voice suddenly panicking. A weird, disturbingly eerie mood seemed to descend on the cave. Like a feeling of intense dark and nameless dread where the fight or flight response kicks in. Brad could sense it but yet could not seem to pinpoint the cause of this sudden intense prickly fear.

The door began to crack open, turning on its hinges. As it did, unpleasant sensations seem to permeate the room, affecting each one of them differently. Brad suddenly felt a searing pain and felt a blinding flash in front of his eyes, and experienced a momentary weightless sensation. Voices screamed in his head. Dimly, he say Mauro clutch his head and topple forward into the door, forcing it shut. Melissa screamed, and Amy burst into tears. Whatever was behind that door, it was something really bad, and they were all suffering horrible effects from it.

"Fuck this let's GO!" Brad screamed, suddenly. "SHUT THAT FUCKING DOOR!"

Brad barely remembered the quick and sudden evacuation of the chamber in the chaos that followed. Amy was sobbing uncontrollably. She was not coherent until they had climbed clear out of the cave back to the surface, and even then, she was pale and ashen. Mauro had a bad nosebleed. He said he was physically sick, and he had dry heaved several times on the way out of the cave. Melissa was seemingly in a trance, mumbling something about how she couldn't feel her arms or legs. Brad was the only one who was somewhat able to keep it together, although he felt a strange burning sensation all over his body and his vision was blurred. He also couldn't seem to get his right leg or right arm to work right; it was as if they had both gone numb or fallen asleep. Nonetheless he found himself having to help the rest of his party out of the cave. It was only with great difficulty that they were all able to exit it.

Once he had recovered, he drove Mauro and Melissa home. Almost nobody spoke.

After dropping them off, he asked Amy, "Want to come in for a bit?" She just nodded. The night was calm, perfect, almost the perfect antidote for them, as they cruised through the neighborhood. He pulled up to the driveway of his house and brought Amy inside.

"Make you some tea? Or a beer?" he asked.

"Tea's fine." She said quietly.

"What happened back there? Do you want to talk about it, or not? You don't have to. Whatever that was, it was pretty fucked up. I have no idea."

"I don't know!" She said, her voice getting high and almost on the verge of tears. "It was like, as soon as it opened, I saw... I don't know, there was just like this light, and I saw...I had this, like, vision of myself. Just lying there, in this bed, with all these like, tubes and wires, like, all helpless, unable to move..." She was getting worked up, and started to cry. "I was just like lying there, like I was dead, in a hospital, and like I remembered... I REMEMBERED! Like some bad dream, only..."

"Only what?" Brad said. He had his arm around her now, seated next to her.

He could only comfort her as she sobbed. Maybe this was good. They were cuddling together, he was young and sometimes still had the insecurity of a kid, but yet, he wanted to make it right for her, his girl, the first he had truly loved. She was so beautiful he couldn't stand to see her like this. He told her that he had some weird flashback of being in some big metal thing, and being tossed around, guys screaming, then feeling this intense heat, and flash of light.

Which was true- that was exactly what he had felt; what was going on with THAT, he wondered to himself- but that it had passed as soon as they had left the cave.

"Maybe that's just a place of bad dreams. Like they shuttered all the bad dreams in that room, behind that door..." he offered.

"Stop it."

"...But they are only dreams. It's just a door. I don't know, maybe, you know what? Maybe there was not enough oxygen in that cave! Maybe that's what it was. Like when there is too much carbon dioxide and people start suffocating, getting weird visions, making their head funny. Maybe that's what it was."

Brad had read something about that happening to miners once. He supposed that being underground like that, some noxious gasses might have been released and built up over time, especially after whoever built that doorway and the room beyond might have tapped into some pockets of gas that got trapped in there.

The one nice thing about all this, he decided, was that they fell asleep in each other's arms, and the next morning all the bad dreams were forgotten. And, on top of that, it was the weekend. Julio Vasquez was having a pool party and it was supposed to be a hot one. Plus, Amy looked so gorgeous in that red bikini.

5. JULIO.

The sun was shining and the drinks were flowing. Julio found himself surrounded by girls, beautiful wet glistening hard bodies, sitting by the pool in recliners, soaking in the warm sun. At a whim, he got up, tossed his towel at Wendy just for fun, and ran and jumped into the pool. Amber jumped in after him, laughing. He splashed her playfully, she splashed back at him, and when he quickly exited the pool, she chased him, stopping to grab his glass of ice water from the table and laughing, cornered him.

"Would you like some ice in your pants? She teased.

"Maybe the ice will go with what else is in my pants," he said flirtatiously.

"Let's find out!" she said, and giggling and shrieking, she grabbed his boxers and pulled, and proceeded to dump the full cup of ice water into them.

"Ahhhw hoohohoo!" Julio said, grimacing at the sudden cold in his crotch made him double over. He grabbed her thong and tugged gently, but let her go as she skipped away.

Amber joined up with the group of girls, poolside. "Me and Julio down by the schoolyard!" Jane, Melissa and Amber sang, playfully, in a chorus. Brad and Mauro were engaging in a vicious game of ping pong, while Amy and Kammi were standing in the 4-foot deep section, chatting idly. Elsewhere, people were just lounging and congregating, occasionally sipping on their drinks.

Julio thought that it was pretty neat that these days, nobody ever seemed to drink too much. Or at least, nobody ever got out of control obnoxious, or cause drama from partying too hard. He had seen plenty of that in his days as a veteran party animal, but yet lately- no matter how much anyone drank, there was never any fights, drama, or other bad things that ever resulted from it. His friend Brad had once summed it up like, "I like to drink and party, but after a while I just... It's like it doesn't affect me anymore after like two or three. I can drink like fifty beers and it just stops working." But be that as it may, Julio did not drink at all. Mostly out of principle, rather than out of any fear of consequences. He had sworn to leave that behind, and he had stuck with it- even though he knew it would no longer be an issue.

Because there had already been consequences. In the back of his mind, somehow he knew that. He had a gift, in that he had far more intuitive recollection of how he came here than many of them.

Meanwhile, Mauro was pumping his fist in the air, celebrating a decisive match point in his ping-pong triumph over Brad. "He came here the same way I did...same mistake." Julio thought to himself, regretfully, as he saw Mauro took another swig of rum and coke. "Only, I don't think he even remembers any of it." Ironically, Mauro was one of the only people who had been from this neighborhood in what he thought of as the "before" time, although he was much younger then, and Julio hadn't really interacted with him much.

Right now, Julio was checking out Amber longingly, her dark hair and beautiful dark eyes spilling behind her as she sauntered across the cement pool deck to flirt openly with Mike Hartley. Let her flirt, it was all good, because at the end of the night, he would have her to himself. And Mike, well, Julio knew that like everyone else, Mike still had his flings once and a while, and it was all good. No need for possessive jealousy any more. Though people in this neighborhood might have their petty spats now and again, in the end, there was too much love for each other.

It was always good here. This was a good place. Dang, Amber looked good in that little thing bikini!

"Hey Julio! Can we crank some tunes?" Mauro asked, standing by the pool table, and in an obvious celebratory mood after dispatching Brad in what had appeared to be a fairly intense ping pong contest.

"Yeah, fire it up!" Julio replied. "Fucking crank it, it's all good, the neighbors won't mind."

"What neighbors?"

"Yeah, fuck, I don't know. I don't ever see them. It's great!"

"You don't know who your neighbors are and you've lived here how long?"

"Seven years man, before any of you fuckers showed up!" Julio replied. And no, I don't pay attention because I never see them and it don't matter!" And with that, he ran and jumped in the pool, deliberately trying to create a huge splash next to where Amber and Amy were standing poolside. The girls shrieked, giggling loudly.

"Hay yo, where's Darshaun and Karri at?" Mike asked. "I wanna pay him back that fifty bucks I owe him."

"Oh I think he took her down to the falls to go rock climbing. They talked about doing that yesterday. I told them to stop by afterwards though!" Julio replied.

As the endless afternoon wore on toward evening, the grill got fired up and everyone ate to their satisfaction of baked beans and roast chicken. There seemed to be exactly enough for everyone to eat- and drink- their fill.

The sun began to set, a golden orb that turned the sky orange, then vivid pink, and a perfect calm descended on the evening, while the sounds of summer evening's joy rang out from their back yard, and from other nodes of activity around the neighborhood. Everywhere around the neighborhood, young people like them were enjoying their youthful and boundless energy on this warm summer evening.

Eventually, Brad and his girlfriend Amy left, while Mauro and his girlfriend, a hot curly haired brunette named Melissa, had shacked up in his spare bedroom (with Julio's permission of course; as a host he never minded extending his hospitality toward amorous couples.)

The party began to wind down, and suddenly it was just the two of them. The stars were out and it was another perfect summer evening. He and Amber found themselves seated on the pool steps, water up to their knees, kissing gently. But he could feel the stirring in his pants and when he looked into her eyes, pools of sparkling black, he seemed to read the same sign in hers. She smiled and climbed on his lap. His erection was poking her in that tight little thong, straining against it, almost as if it wanted to poke right through it. She shifted in his lap, grinding against his stiffness and he shuddered, almost ready to lose it, right there in the pool. Before things went any further, she leaned over and whispered, "Let's go inside!"

She was seated on his bed, now topless but still wearing her wet G-string. Julio was naked, his hard, tan, muscular body and washboard stomach right in front of her. He did not need to command or even ask. She took his golden penis in her mouth eagerly and began sucking on it thirstily, eagerly devouring his manhood, lustfully going down on him. She seemed to crave that hard meaty cock attached to his tan, buffed, perfect body, a gorgeous specimen of manhood. And she herself- Julio had fantasized about having a girl this hot, but he had never found one so eager, so horny. Before long, he felt the pressure building up and he orgasmed long and hard into her mouth, spurting a long load into her, and she gasped, trying to swallow it all at once. But the nice thing about these warm nights by the pool is that it seemed to boost both of their appetites to near insatiable levels. He was hard again in no time flat as he thought of that tight, tanned little body and those gorgeous black eyes, and how they had ground against his crotch and he had almost prematurely came right there in the pool.

This time, her thong would not get in the way. He dropped to his knees and pulled it off gently and watched it drop to the floor, exposing her dark pubes and wet glistening crotch to his face. And this time, with that initial release already out of the way, he could last much longer. He stared longingly at her crotch and then began licking her gently, probing her, flicking his tongue into her and stroking her clit until she started moaning lightly. "Change places" he told her gently but firmly. He sat on the bed. She climbed on his lap, this time facing him as she straddled him. His raging boner thrust into her tight body as she began to rock, moaning gently, then louder. Then after a while she started bounding up and down on his cock, riding it up and down. When he finally let go inside her tight, bikini-licous body, after what seemed like a half hour, it literally felt like his body was a geyser.

He caught his breath. Never thought I could last that long with a girl this hot.

"I've never came that many times before!" she said. "But then again, I've never been with a guy this hot!" she giggled softly.

Julio sang softly in response, "Whoa-ooaaa... Amber is the color of your energy..."

"...Me and Julio down by the schoolyard!" She finished. Finally both sated, they lay there, loving and admiring the wholeness and perfection of their bodies and the still perfection of their universe.

Time in this universe may be an illusion, as is this universe itself. But right now, the perfect moments last forever and everything is right and real with the world, and all that mattered was them and the moments they shared together.

6. JASON.

The dog days of summer stretched on.

The evenings were okay, driving around delivering pizza with the air conditioning cranking, and on a good night I could make up to 25 deliveries, and maybe as much as fifty dollars in tips if I was lucky. I wasn't exactly making bank, but I figured it was a decent summer job and a good way to earn some extra spending money for college. But I usually got home too late to really go out and do much, though.

The hot days, though, could drag, especially when I had to be in to the store at 5. Then there wasn't enough time before work to do very much.

Yesterday, Rick and Glen Amherst had just been lounging in the front yard, dicking around with Rick's old Camaro, when they said, "Hey, you may as well come on over and have a swim." One nice thing about the Amhersts- they were the family with the pool. Soon the Smith brothers showed up, and it was a good old fashioned pool party, just like when we were kids and we used to go splash around. Good old fashioned roughhousing in the pool with the old neighborhood boys. Except it was Rick who naturally commented, "You know, this would be a heck of a lot more fun if there were some girls here." We all agreed, and I actually thought about calling Lilly at that point. But I decided not to- she probably wouldn't fit in being the only girl with a bunch of bored dudes like us, and the guys would probably fuck it up by assuming we were dating. (Or even worse, they'd fuck it up by hitting on her themselves.)

But that was yesterday. Today it was a hot, dry and boring afternoon, and what was even worse, the power suddenly kicked off. Total brown-out. And I didn't have to be at work until 5 so I had a couple hours to kill. I thought about driving around with the AC on and heading over to the record store or something. But instead I took a walk down below to the ranch, thinking the huge spreading oaks would at least be shady and it was better than hanging around at home. Plus, I had a bit of smoke, and I could get away with it much easier if I was away from the house (though I still had to be careful of course, or they would smell it on me.)