Chapter 1: The Phone Call
The air in the apartment was stale, thick with the greasy smell of old pizza and the sour tang of spilled beer. Matthew scratched his chest, his fingers moving through the coarse hair there as he stared at the static on the TV screen. A blue flicker from the neon sign outside his window painted shifting stripes across the stained carpet and the mountain of laundry piled by the door.
His phone buzzed on the arm of the couch, rattling against an empty bottle. He picked it up. Unknown number.
“Yeah?” he grunted.
The voice on the other end was distorted, a digital warble that seemed to echo from somewhere deep. “Matthew C. One wish. State it clearly. You have ten seconds.”
“What the fuck is this?” he said, sitting up. His boxers were threadbare. “Some kinda prank?”
“Nine.”
“Fuck off.”
“Eight.”
The urgency in the tone, mechanical and cold, cut through the apathy. A wish. His mind, fogged by boredom and three cheap beers, lurched. His eyes scanned the empty apartment, the silent phone that hadn’t rung with a date in months, the vivid, frustrating memory of his own hand being the only thing that touched him. Desperation, hot and sudden, flooded his veins.
“Five.”
The words burst out of him, raw and unfiltered. “I want… fuck, I want it to be easy. I want any girl, any woman, between eighteen and twenty-five… I want them to just be available. No arguing, no games, no fucking ‘not tonight, I have a headache.’ Just… free use. For anyone older. That’s the wish.”
Silence.
Then the line went dead with a soft, final click.
For a moment, there was nothing. Just the hum of the fridge and the distant groan of city traffic. He threw the phone down. “Idiot,” he muttered to himself, slumping back. He reached for the remote, aiming to find some mindless noise.
A vibration started in the air. A low, sub-audible hum that made his teeth ache. The beer bottles on the coffee table trembled, chiming softly against each other. The light from the window seemed to pulse, the neon glow deepening to an angry crimson before snapping back to normal.
Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
Everything was silent again. But the silence felt different. Charged. Expectant.
Matthew’s heart hammered against his ribs. “What the hell?” He stood up, padding barefoot to the grimy window. The street below looked normal. A couple arguing by a car. A guy walking his dog. Nothing.
He turned away, a nervous laugh catching in his throat. It was a prank. Had to be. He went to the fridge, pulled out another beer, and twisted the cap off. The cold bite of it was a familiar anchor. He took a long swig, leaning against the kitchen counter. His gaze fell on the wall clock. 11:47 PM.
A key turned in the apartment door’s lock.
He froze. No one had a key. The landlord was a seventy-year-old miser who lived in Florida.
The door opened.
Samantha from 3B walked in. She was twenty-two, a journalism student with long, straight blonde hair and a sharp, intelligent face. He’d seen her in the laundry room, had fantasized about her while listening to her laugh through the walls. She’d never given him more than a polite, tight smile.
Now, she walked in as if she owned the place. Her eyes were glazed, distant. She wore yoga pants and a tight tank top, no bra. He could see the clear outline of her nipples against the fabric.
“Samantha?” he said, his voice cracking.
She didn’t answer. She just looked at him, her head tilted slightly. Then, wordlessly, she pulled her tank top over her head. Her breasts were small and perfect, the nipples a soft pink. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her yoga pants and pushed them down her hips, stepping out of them. She stood naked in the middle of his filthy living room, illuminated by the ghastly neon glow.
Matthew’s breath hitched. The beer bottle slipped from his hand, thudding onto the carpet, foaming at its mouth. His cock, already half-hard from the shock and the sheer surreal wrongness of it, surged to full, painful erection, straining against his boxers.
“Is this…?” he whispered.
She took a step forward. “You want me,” she said, but her voice was flat, monotone. It wasn’t a question.
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, a frantic, jerky motion.
She closed the distance between them. Her skin smelled like coconut lotion and fabric softener. Her hands went to his waist, pushing his boxers down. His cock sprang free, thick and veined, the large head already slick with precum. She looked at it, her expression unreadable, then dropped to her knees.
Her mouth was hot and wet, and she took him in with a practiced ease that made his knees buckle. There was no teasing, no tentative licks. She deep-throated him immediately, her nose pressing into the coarse hair at his base, her throat working around him. Matthew cried out, a guttural sound, his hands flying to tangle in her blonde hair. He fucked her mouth, shallow, desperate thrusts, the wet, obscene sounds filling the silent apartment. He looked down, watching his length disappear between her lips, seeing the tears that had begun to leak from the corners of her blank eyes.
It was everything he’d ever fantasized about. It was fucking terrifying.
He pulled her head back by her hair. A string of saliva connected her swollen lips to his glistening cock. “The couch,” he grunted.
She rose, compliant as a doll, and lay back on the stained cushions. She spread her legs, opening herself to him. She was already wet, a glistening readiness that had no business being there. He fell on top of her, his weight pushing a sigh from her lungs. He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock nudging against her entrance. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to.
He pushed inside.
She was tight, incredibly tight, and so warm he saw stars. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back, but she made no sound. Her face was turned to the side, her eyes fixed on the static on the TV. He fucked her hard, pounding into her with a frantic, possessive rhythm. The couch squeaked in protest, each thrust slamming her body into the cushions. The wet slap of skin on skin, his ragged grunts, the faint rustle of the fabric beneath them—it was a brutal, mechanical soundtrack.
He came inside her with a choked roar, his hips stuttering, pumping his release deep into her body. He collapsed, his sweat-slicked chest heaving against hers. He could feel her heart beating, a fast, frantic bird under her ribs. Her skin was clammy.
After a minute, he rolled off. He lay on his back on the carpet, staring at the water-stained ceiling. His mind was white noise. Samantha sat up. She found her clothes, dressed with the same methodical, empty silence. She walked to the door, opened it, and left without a backward glance.
The door clicked shut.
Matthew lay there for a long time. The smell of sex—musky and sweet—mixed with the smell of decay and beer. His spent cock lay heavy on his thigh. A part of him, the civilized part that had lived thirty years, screamed that this was monstrous. That he had to call someone, do something.
A larger part, the desperate, lonely part that had made the wish, thrummed with a power so intense it was dizzying. It had worked. It was real.
He got up, his body aching. He walked to the window again. The street was quieter now. Then he saw it. Down the block, under a flickering streetlamp, a middle-aged man in a business suit had a young woman in a waitress uniform pinned against the wall of the bodega. Her skirt was hiked up. Her face was a mask of resignation. The man was moving against her, his pants around his ankles. No one stopped. No one even looked.
A wild, sick laugh bubbled up in Matthew’s throat. It was everywhere.
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. A single word: CONFIRMED.
The next few hours passed in a surreal blur. He dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, his body humming with a nervous, electric energy. He had to see more. He had to test the limits.
He left his apartment. The hallway was empty. He took the stairs down, his footsteps echoing. The lobby was lit by a single fluorescent bulb. Mrs. Gable, the eighty-year-old widow from 1A, was sitting in her usual chair by the mailboxes. A young delivery girl, maybe nineteen, was kneeling in front of her. Mrs. Gable’s bony hand was on the back of the girl’s head, guiding her rhythmically. The girl’s eyes were squeezed shut. Matthew walked past them. Neither woman acknowledged him.
The city outside was a different world. It was late, but not that late. The bars should have been spilling out loud, laughing crowds. Instead, there was a eerie, purposeful quiet punctuated by soft, secret sounds. In the shadowed alcove of the bank, a group of construction workers in dusty jeans surrounded a girl in a cocktail dress. She was on her knees, servicing one, while another stood behind her, his hands on her hips, driving into her from behind. Her whimpers were muffled. The men talked quietly amongst themselves about a football game.
Matthew’s cock hardened again, painfully. This was his world now. His creation.
He walked, a voyeur in a new reality. He saw a terrified-looking young man being pulled into an alley by two older women. He saw a couple in their fifties flag down a college-aged guy on a bike and direct him, with pointed gestures, to follow them into their parked van.
The rules were being explored, tested. It was chaos, but a quiet, accepted chaos. There was no screaming, no riots. Just a horrible, pervasive consent that was no consent at all.
He found himself outside a 24-hour diner he sometimes went to. The light was bright and clinical inside. He pushed the door open. A bell jingled.
The usual late-night crowd was there, but the scene was wrong. A truck driver was spooning eggs into his mouth at the counter with one hand. His other hand was under the apron of the young waitress standing beside him, his arm moving steadily. Her notepad trembled in her hand as she took an order from an elderly couple, who were pretending not to notice.
In a booth by the window, a sight made Matthew stop dead.
It was Justin, a buddy from his old gym. Justin was thirty-five, married with two kids. And he was balls-deep in a girl who looked like she’d just come from the library, her glasses askew, a stack of textbooks shoved to the end of the vinyl seat. Justin saw Matthew. His face flushed, not with shame, but with a kind of manic triumph. He gave a quick, breathless nod, never breaking his rhythm.
Matthew turned and left, the bell jingling again behind him. The cool night air did nothing to clear his head. The enormity of it was finally crashing down. This wasn’t a private fantasy. This was global. Cataclysmic. And he had caused it. A dizzying mix of god-like power and crushing guilt twisted in his gut, but the guilt was being smothered, fast, by a rising, addictive thrill.
He walked back towards his apartment, his path taking him through the small, neglected park a block from his building. The playground equipment was skeletal in the darkness. And there, on the bench by the rusted swing set, he saw her.
A girl, alone. She was maybe twenty-one, wearing a thin sweater and jeans, hugging herself against the chill. She was crying, her shoulders shaking silently. As he approached, she looked up. Her face was pretty in a destroyed way, streaked with mascara, her lips chapped.
She saw him. Her eyes widened for a second in pure animal fear. Then the fear drained away, replaced by that awful, blank acceptance. Her body went limp. She looked down at her own lap, her tears still falling, but she made no move to run, to fight, to speak.
Matthew stood over her. His shadow enveloped her. The wish thrummed in the air between them, a tangible law. She was in the age range. He was older. The protocol was clear.
He unzipped his jeans. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet park. She flinched but didn’t look up. He freed his erection, which was already full and eager. He pushed her back onto the cold wooden slats of the bench. He didn’t bother with her jeans, just yanked them down along with her panties to her knees. She let out a small, broken sound as the night air hit her skin.
He knelt on the bench between her legs. He didn’t touch her otherwise, didn’t kiss her, didn’t say a word. He just guided himself inside her. She was dry, tight with fear and resistance, but the supernatural mandate of the wish overrode biology. She took him, a tight, hot sheath. He fucked her slowly, watching her face. Her eyes were squeezed shut, more tears leaking out. Her hands gripped the edge of the bench, her knuckles white.
This was different from Samantha. This was colder, darker. There was no pretense of passion, no heated fantasy. This was pure, brutal ownership. And as he moved inside her, feeling her body reluctantly accommodate him, a dark and terrible certainty solidified in Matthew’s soul. The guilt was gone, burned away by a fiercer, more fundamental fire. This was his world now. He had made it. And he would use it.
He finished inside her with a low groan, savoring the violation, the absolute control. When he pulled out and stood up, fastening his jeans, she just lay there for a moment before pulling her clothes back on with trembling hands. She didn’t look at him. She just stumbled off the bench and ran, a fleeing shadow into the deeper darkness of the park.
Matthew turned and walked home, the taste of power coppery and sweet on his tongue. His apartment door was unlocked. He went inside, closing the door on the silent, broken night.
He didn’t turn on the lights. He went to the window, watching the city. A siren wailed in the distance, but it sounded thin, irrelevant. The old rules were gone.
In the reflection in the grimy glass, he saw his own face. His hazel eyes were dark, hollow. A stranger’s eyes.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t reach for it. He knew, with a chilling clarity, that the wish was just the beginning. The confirmation was not an end, but a receipt. The price was coming due. And the real horror, the deep and personal horror, hadn’t even started yet. It was out there, in the transformed city, waiting for him. And it would know his name.
Down on the street, a young woman walked alone, her head on a swivel, her body tense with a fear that was now the most rational thing in the world. She passed under his window, never looking up. Matthew watched her until she disappeared around the corner.
Matthew watched her until she disappeared around the corner.
The silence after she’d gone was absolute. No crickets, no distant traffic, just the hum in his own ears, the leftover adrenaline sour in his mouth. He should go inside. He should try to sleep. Process. But the image of her—the tear-streaked face, the limp surrender, the tight, dry heat of her—played on a loop behind his eyes. It wasn’t enough. The frenzy of the first few hours was cooling into something harder, more deliberate. An appetite.
He pushed off from the window and grabbed his jacket. He didn’t know why. An impulse, a pull. He left the apartment again, the door clicking shut like the cocking of a hammer.
The street was a tableau of quiet horrors. A young man was sobbing quietly against a mailbox while an older woman kneeled behind him, her arms around his waist, her face pressed between his shoulder blades as she moved rhythmically. Nobody looked at Matthew. He was just another shadow.
He turned the corner where the girl had vanished. It was a tree-lined residential block, mostly old Victorians converted into student housing. He saw her about halfway down, stumbling up the front steps of a large, dilapidated house with a sagging porch. A faded Greek letter was nailed to the door, barely visible in the gloom. A sorority house. Light bled from the windows on the first floor. He heard muffled voices, the tinny sound of music from a phone speaker.
She fumbled with a key, got the door open, and slipped inside.
Matthew stopped at the iron gate at the foot of the path. His heart was a slow, heavy drum. This was different. This was a contained space, a hive. The thought of what lay inside, of the scale of it, sent a jolt of pure, undiluted lust straight to his groin. His cock, sore from use, twitched back to life against his jeans.
He walked up the path. The grass was overgrown. He didn’t knock. He turned the knob and walked into the warm, perfumed air of the house.
The foyer was cluttered with backpacks, pairs of cheap shoes, and a mountain of unsorted mail. The music was louder here—some pop song about being fearless. From a room to the left, he heard a girl’s voice say, “Chloe? That you? You okay?”
The girl from the park—Chloe—was standing at the foot of a staircase, frozen, staring at him with fresh terror. She’d been wiping her face. She made a small, helpless sound.
A doorway to the living room framed a scene of normalcy that was already crumbling. Four other girls were in various states of repose. One was typing furiously on a laptop, glasses perched on her nose. Two were sharing a bag of chips on a stained sectional, watching a reality show on a large TV. Another was doing yoga stretches on a mat in the corner, wearing nothing but sports shorts and a tight tank top.
All of them turned as he entered.
The one with the laptop blinked. “Who are you?”
Matthew didn’t answer her. He looked at Chloe, then at the room. His voice, when it came, was flat, a command that brooked no argument. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.
“All of you. In the living room. Now.”
The wish did its work. It wasn’t a magic compulsion that erased their will; it was a rewiring of reality. His words carried the weight of the new law. Resisting was like deciding not to breathe. Technically possible, but the body, the new world, screamed against it.
Confusion flickered across their faces. Then it melted into that vacant, accepting blankness. It was faster this time, seeing it happen to a group. A collective sigh of defiance leaving five bodies at once. The girl on the yoga mat straightened up. The two on the couch put the chip bag down. The one with the laptop closed it slowly.
They filed into the living room, standing in a loose semicircle on the shag carpet. Chloe joined them, her head hung low. They were all between eighteen and twenty-five. Every one of them. They waited.
Matthew closed the front door. The click was final. He walked into the living room, his shoes crunching on a stray potato chip. He looked them over. The studious one with the glasses and a nervous mouth. The two from the couch—one a curvy redhead with freckles, the other petite with a black bob. The athletic one from the yoga mat, her muscles toned and defined. And Chloe, fragile and broken.
“Get naked,” he said.
There was no giggling, no faux-modest protests. Just the soft, rustling sounds of clothing being removed. Zippers. The snap of elastic. The whisper of fabric sliding over skin. Sweatshirts, t-shirts, leggings, shorts, bras, panties. A pile grew in the corner of the room like a discarded second skin.
They stood before him, five naked young women. The air grew thick with the scent of their bodies—soap, sweat, perfume, and underneath it, the sharp, coppery tang of fear. Their postures were resigned, shoulders slumped, arms hanging loosely at their sides. The reality show played on, casting shifting colors across their skin—pale, freckled, tan, all yielding.
Matthew unbuckled his belt. The leather slithered free. He unbuttoned his jeans, pushed them and his boxers down his thighs. His cock sprang out, fully erect, thick and angry-looking in the muted light. He saw their eyes track to it. The redhead flinched. The athletic girl’s jaw tightened.
“On your knees,” he said. “All of you. Together.”
They sank down, one by one, onto the rough carpet. They formed a hesitant half-circle around him. He took a step forward, the head of his cock nudging against the redhead’s cheek. She turned her face into it, obediently, her lips parting.
“Not one at a time,” he growled. “Together. Now.”
They understood. They leaned in, a cluster of faces, their breath hot on his skin. It was awkward, chaotic. Lips and tongues vying for space. The studious one took the head into her mouth, her glasses digging into his hip. The black-haired girl licked along the shaft. The athletic girl cupped his balls, her touch surprisingly gentle. Chloe, tears still wet on her face, kissed the base. The redhead found a spot on the underside and sucked.
The sensation was overwhelming, not from pleasure alone, but from the sheer, impossible power of it. Five mouths, five separate tongues, all working on him in a wet, sloppy, desperate unison. He groaned, his hands tangling in their hair—red, black, blonde, brown—pulling them closer, guiding their movements. He fucked into the knot of their faces, a tangle of soft lips and flicking tongues. The sounds were filthy, wet, obscene: gulps, gags, the slick slide of saliva.
“Yeah,” he hissed. “Just like that. All of you. Use your tongues.”
He watched, head thrown back, as they serviced him. They were drones. Beautiful, living toys. The reality show reached a crescendo of dramatic music, a jarring soundtrack to the silent, kneeling blowjob. His hips pumped faster. He could feel his climax building, a tight coil in his gut. He pulled the studious girl’s head off him by her hair, a string of spit connecting her lips to his cock.
“I’m going to come,” he announced, his voice ragged. “You’re all going to swallow it. Every drop.”
He aimed at the center of them. With a guttural shout, he came. Thick, hot pulses of cum shot out, streaking across faces, into open, waiting mouths. It splashed across the redhead’s freckled nose and cheek. It landed on the tongue of the girl with the black bob. The athletic girl caught some on her chin, her eyes closed. Chloe opened her mouth like a baby bird and received a direct hit to the back of her throat, gulping instinctively. They stayed there, kneeling, painted with him, until he was spent.
He stepped back, panting. His cock glistened, already hardening again under their blank, cum-smeared stares. The energy in the room had shifted. It was heavier, darker. The initiation was complete.
“Turn around,” he said, wiping his own sweat from his brow. “On your hands and knees. Line up.”
They moved like sleepwalkers. They turned their backs to him, getting onto all fours on the carpet. They shuffled, forming a line parallel to the couch. Five pale arcs of ass, five vulnerable backs, five heads bowed. The view was dizzying. A banquet.
Matthew walked to the first in line—the studious one. He knelt behind her. He didn’t prepare her, didn’t touch her. He simply positioned the head of his cock at her entrance and pushed. She was tight, tighter than Chloe had been. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath, and her knuckles turned white where they gripped the carpet. He sank into her in one slow, relentless stroke, burying himself to the hilt. Her inner muscles fluttered around him, a weak, biological protest.
He fucked her with steady, deep thrusts. Her glasses slid down her nose with each impact. He reached around and roughly pinched her nipples, feeling her body jolt. He didn’t linger. After a dozen strokes, he pulled out of her with a wet sound. She remained on her hands and knees, trembling, a trickle of fluid tracing down her inner thigh.
He moved to the second girl—the redhead. Her skin was milky white, dotted with bright copper freckles across her shoulders and ass. He entered her from behind. She was looser, wetter. She’d been more aroused, or more terrified, or both. Her body accepted him with a damp, heated readiness that made him grunt. He gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her soft flesh, and hammered into her, the slap of their bodies a quick, staccato rhythm. He came inside her, a shorter, secondary climax that left him shuddering. He stayed embedded for a moment, pumping the last of it into her, before withdrawing.
He was hard again immediately. The wish, the reality, it was like a drug. His stamina felt infinite, his need a bottomless pit.
The third was the petite one with the black bob. She was tiny, and taking him was a struggle. She whimpered as he forced his way in, her whole body taut. He fucked her with short, brutal strokes, one hand fisted in her dark hair, pulling her head back. He didn’t come this time, just used her, feeling her tight channel milk him until he was throbbing and unsatisfied, then moved on.
The fourth was the athletic one. Her body was all lean muscle. He entered her with a grunt. She was the quietest, her breathing controlled even as he pounded into her. He reached around and found her clit, rubbing rough circles. A low moan escaped her, a genuine, reluctant shred of pleasure torn from the violation. He fucked her harder, chasing that sound, and came again with a choked cry, his release hot inside her.
Finally, he reached Chloe. The last in line. She was shaking violently, her sobs silent, her face pressed into the carpet. Her ass was in the air, the cheeks clenched tight. He knelt behind her. He didn’t hurry. He ran his hands over her hips, her thighs, feeling her flinch at every touch.
“You first,” he whispered, though it wasn’t true. “And you last.”
He pushed into her. She was loose now, used from the park, slick with his previous spend and her own fear. He slid in easily. He fucked her slowly, agonizingly so, drawing it out. He leaned over her back, his mouth near her ear. “This is your life now,” he breathed, his voice low and venomous. “This is everyone’s life. Because of me.”
He punctuated each word with a deep, grinding thrust. She cried out, a broken sound. He fucked her through it, his pace increasing, becoming punishing. This was the final conquest, the sealing of the deed. He came inside her for the third time that night, a final, possessive claim, collapsing over her back as the last pulses left him.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of his ragged breathing and the muted laughter from the television. He pulled out and stood up. His legs felt weak. The line of girls remained on their hands and knees, spent, dripping, waiting.
“You can get up,” he said, his voice hoarse.
They stirred, slowly, painfully. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t cover themselves. They just stood, a group of ravaged statues, staring at nothing.
Matthew pulled up his jeans, not bothering to clean himself. He felt hollowed out, purged. A god surveying his silent, broken temple. He turned and walked out of the living room, through the foyer. He opened the front door to the cool night.
As he stepped onto the porch, he heard a voice from the living room. It was the athletic girl. The words were clear, devoid of emotion, just a flat statement of the new truth.
“Will he be back tomorrow?”
Matthew didn’t answer. He closed the door behind him. He stood on the porch, the wood creaking under his weight. The neighborhood was still quiet, but the quiet was different now. It was the quiet of a held breath. Of a world waiting.
He looked at his hands. They were trembling. Not from exhaustion, but from a feverish, incandescent energy that had no place to go. He had done that. In there. He had unraveled five lives in under an hour. And there was an entire city, an entire world, of possibilities just like it.
He started walking back to his apartment. The path was familiar, but he felt like a stranger in his own skin. The guilt was a distant memory, a smudged photograph. In its place was a vast, echoing hunger. And a dawning, icy realization.
The wish had been for them. For their bodies, their availability. But it was changing him, too. It was carving out his humanity, leaving something sharper, colder, and infinitely more greedy in its place. The phone in his pocket felt like a lead weight. CONFIRMED.
It wasn’t a gift. It was a transaction. And as he turned the key in his apartment door, he knew with a certainty that froze his blood, the payment was going to be extracted from him, too. It was just a matter of time. The world outside his window was his masterpiece, and his prison. And the night was still young.