Chapter 6: The Trap Springs Shut
The blank business card left on the cluttered coffee table was a dead spot in the room. It didn’t reflect the flickering string lights; it swallowed the light. Jan felt its presence like a cold draft the moment she pushed open the apartment door.“Guys?Molly? Ginny?” she called out, her voice echoing in the unusually still space.
Stacy moved past her, a silhouette of coiled tension. Her hand rested on the small of her back, near the concealed holster.“Place smells weird. Like ozone and… plumeria?”
The air was thick, sweetly cloying. The peeling jungle wallpaper behind the Lion King playbill seemed to shift, the leaves rustling in a non-existent breeze.From the hallway shadow, two figures emerged. Ginny stood first, her strawberry-blonde hair framing a smile that was all teeth and no warmth. Molly followed, her glasses catching the light, her blue eyes glazed and fixed.
“Jan,” Ginny said, her voice a honeyed purr that didn’t belong to her. “You’re late for callbacks.”
“We’ve been workshopping our motivation,” Molly added, her tone equally off, a perfect mimicry of her usual bubbly cadence but stripped of its genuine joy.Jan’s skin prickled. The Power of Exposure thrummed under her skin, a reflex.But as Ginny stepped into the light, Jan saw it wouldn’t be necessary. Ginny was already unbuttoning her flannel shirt, letting it slide from her shoulders. She wasn’t under a spell of awe; she was under a command. So was Molly, who pulled her t-shirt over her head in one smooth motion, her large breasts bouncing free.
“Whoa, okay, time out,” Stacy said, stepping forward, her hands up in a placating gesture.“What’s going on, you two? You feeling okay?”
“Better than okay,” Ginny breathed, and in two quick strides, she had Jan pinned against the wall by the door. The impact knocked a puff of plaster dust from the lathe. Ginny’s body was fever-hot. “We’re inspired.”
Before Jan could twist away, Ginny’s mouth was on her neck, sucking hard enough to bruise. At the same time, Ginny’s hand dove down the front of Jan’s loose-fitting jeans, her fingers sliding through coarse red curls and into the wetness waiting there.There was no finesse, no teasing. Ginny’s fingers pushed deep inside her, curling upwards.
Jan gasped, a sharp, startled sound that was half-pain, half-shock. “Ginny, fuck—stop, this isn’t—”
“Isn’t what?” Ginny murmured against her skin, pumping her fingers in and out with a ruthless, mechanical rhythm.“Isn’t fun?Your pussy’s dripping, Red. You love it.” Her thumb found Jan’s clit, grinding in tight, rough circles.
Across the room, Molly had Stacy. The fitness instructor was stronger, but the attack was so sudden, so personal. Molly wrapped her arms around Stacy from behind, groping her breasts, pinching her nipples through the sports bra. “Always so put together, Stacy,” Molly whispered, her breath hot in Stacy’s ear. “Let’s see you come apart.”
With a grunt of effort, Molly pushed Stacy forward, bending her over the arm of the thrifted velvet chair. She yanked Stacy’s leggings and underwear down to her knees in one brutal motion. Stacy’s protest died in her throat as Molly’s face buried itself between her ass cheeks, her tongue lashing a broad, wet stripe over Stacy’s exposed cunt.
“Oh, fuck,” Stacy groaned, her hands scrabbling against the chair’s fabric.The invasion was clinical, violating, and her body betrayed her instantly. A shockwave of unwanted pleasure rolled up her spine.Her hips bucked back against Molly’s mouth.
Jan, pinned and rapidly drowning in the dissonance of violation and intense physical arousal, locked eyes with Stacy. Ginny’s fingers were fucking her hard now, a fourth finger stretching her unbearably, thumb still torturing her clit. She was slick and open and trembling on the edge of an unwanted climax. Stacy’s face was a mask of grim acceptance, her jaw tight as Molly’s tongue drilled into her hole, then lapped hungrily at her clit.
“It’s… not them,” Jan managed to gasp as Ginny switched to sucking on her earlobe.
“No shit,” Stacy hissed, her body arching as Molly added a finger, sliding it deep inside her.“They’re edited. Programmed.”
“Gotta… play the scene,” Jan panted, the words a desperate strategy.Find the flaw in the performance. She let her head thud back against the wall, surrendering to the sensation. “See… the direction.”
Stacy nodded, a quick, sharp jerk of her chin.Then she stopped resisting. She shoved her ass back against Molly’s face.“You want it, Molly?Take it. Lick it clean.”
The shift in energy was immediate. The predatory smiles on Ginny and Molly’s faces widened, becoming more vacant, more rehearsed.They were following a script. Ginny released Jan’s wrist, using both hands to tear Jan’s jeans and panties the rest of the way off. She dropped to her knees, her mouth replacing her fingers, her tongue spearing into Jan’s cunt with an expertise that was Ginny’s, but the fervor was not.
Jan cried out, her fingers tangling in Ginny’s hair, not to pull her away, but to hold on.The orgasm building was a trap, a snare made of nerve endings. She rode the edge, letting Ginny lap and suck, watching Stacy.
Molly had stood up, her mouth glistening with Stacy’s wetness. She unzipped her own jeans, pushed them down.“Your turn,” she breathed to Stacy, her eyes vacant.
Stacy understood. She yanked her leggings up just enough to free her movements, then turned and pushed Molly back onto the low sofa.She stood over her, a dominant pose. “How do you want it, starlet?”
“Hard,” Molly whispered, spreading her legs, back arching. “Make me feel it.”
From the pile of her discarded things, Stacy grabbed the enchanted strap-on Jan kept there.She didn’t bother with the harness. She just held the base of the realistic, veined silicone cock and pressed its tip against Molly’s soaked entrance. With a single, powerful thrust of her hips, she buried the entire length inside her.
Molly screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated fucked-out pleasure.Her eyes rolled back.
Ginny, provoked by the sound, rose from her knees. She dragged Jan by the hand to the floor in front of the sofa. “My turn to perform,” Ginny said, her voice a throaty command.She straddled Jan’s face, lowering her dripping pussy onto Jan’s mouth. “Make me come.For the director.”
Jan didn’t hesitate. She opened her mouth and licked a firm stripe up Ginny’s center, then circled her clit with the tip of her tongue.Ginny ground down against her, moaning. The taste was Ginny’s, but underneath it was that faint, sickly-sweet tang of ozone and plumeria.
Beside them, Stacy was fucking Molly with a brutal, piston-like rhythm. The slap of silicone against flesh, the squelch of wetness, mixed with Molly’s continuous, high-pitched keening.Stacy’s face was set in concentration, her muscles corded. She was searching, fucking with purpose, trying to feel for a break in the programming.
Jan worked Ginny with her tongue and lips, sucking her clit, sliding two fingers deep inside her twisting heat. She pushed Ginny towards climax, watching her face. The ecstasy there was glassy, rehearsed.A perfect performance.“Come on, Ginny,” Jan muttered against her folds. “Give it to me.Show me.”
Ginny’s thighs tightened around Jan’s head. Her body went rigid. A shattering, silent scream contorted her face as she came, her cunt pulsing rhythmically around Jan’s fingers. A moment later, Molly’s cries peaked into a broken shriek as she clenched around the fake cock, her own orgasm triggered by Ginny’s.Stacy slowed, then stopped, panting. She left the strap-on buried in Molly and looked at Jan.Jan gently eased Ginny off her. Ginny collapsed onto the rug, breathing heavily, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes.
The sickly yellow glow from the business card on the table flickered and died.A shudder passed through Ginny.She blinked. Her gaze focused on Jan, naked and glistening with her own fluids, then at Stacy standing over a spent Molly with a strap-on.
“Jan?” Ginny’s voice was her own again, confused and raspy.“What… what are you doing here? Why am I on the floor?”
Molly stirred, pushing herself up on her elbows. She looked at the silicone phallus still inside her, then up at Stacy, her expression one of dawning horror.“Oh, my God. Did we…? We auditioned again, didn’t we?”
Jan scrambled up, her body aching.She grabbed the business card from the table. It was just cardstock now, blank and inert.But the room still felt charged.
“He used you,” Jan said, the dread solidifying into a cold, hard lump in her stomach.“As a delivery system. For the edit.” She touched her own neck, felt the heat of Ginny’s bites.“He wanted me occupied. Distracted.”
Stacy pulled the strap-on free, making Molly whimper softly. “Distracted from what?”
“From whatever he was doing while we were busy getting fucked by our own friends,” Jan said, her voice flat. She pulled her jeans back on, wincing as the denim rubbed against her sore, wet flesh. Stacy retrieved her strap-on, wiping it clean with a detached efficiency before packing it away.
“He’s not just picking us off one by one,” Jan continued, zipping her hoodie over her bare breasts. “He’s targeting the whole network. Everyone connected to me. And that’s not counting bystanders who just get in the way.”
Stacy nodded, holstering her pistol at her back. “We’re damage control in a spreading fire.”
As they gathered their things, a soft, synchronized sigh came from the floor. Ginny and Molly were stirring, but their movements had lost the frantic, predatory energy. They moved with a dreamy languor. Molly sat up, her glasses askew, a serene smile on her face.
“That was… invigorating,” Molly said, her voice airy. “But the blocking felt off. We should rehearse the transition from the chair to the floor again.”
Ginny stretched like a cat, her eyes half-lidded. “Mmm. The emotional through-line needs work. The desperation wasn’t consistent.”
Molly’s gaze landed on the bag holding Stacy’s strap-on. Her expression was one of professional appraisal. “Stacy, darling, can we borrow your prop? Ours just doesn’t have the same… heft.”
Stacy and Jan exchanged a look. The programmed edit was gone, but a deeper conditioning remained—a compulsion to perform, to perfect the scene Nergal had initiated.
“Yeah,” Stacy said, her voice carefully neutral. “Knock yourselves out.”
She left the bag on the floor. As she and Jan slipped towards the door, neither Molly nor Ginny noticed. They were already moving together, Ginny’s hands on Molly’s hips, Molly reaching for the silicone cock with a focused, rehearsed intensity. The door clicked shut behind Jan and Stacy, muffling the first soft moan.
“We’ll call Jules,” Jan muttered, striding down the hallway. “Get them a proper check-in as soon as she can. But right now…”
“Right now, we’re behind,” Stacy finished, hitting the elevator button. “Who’s next?”
Across town, Mara let herself into her sleek, modern apartment, the quiet a welcome relief. She’d spent the afternoon using her legal mind to help Jan parse the mystical “contract” of the edits, and it felt good. Tangible. She dropped her briefcase by the door.
“Zack? You home?”
Silence. The apartment felt too still. Her eyes scanned the living room, landing on her coffee table. A heavy, leather-bound lawbook sat there, one she didn’t recognize. Next to it was a plain, blank business card.
Frowning, she approached. The book’s spine was stamped with gold lettering: Principles of Jurisprudential Transmutation by Zachary Kreuger.
“What the hell?” she whispered. Her fiancé was a brilliant researcher, but he wasn’t a published author. Not of anything like this.
She opened the cover. The pages were thick, high-quality parchment, but utterly blank. She flipped a few pages. Nothing. Then, as if ink were bleeding up from the paper itself, words began to form in Zack’s familiar, neat handwriting.
Mara. Can you see this? Don’t touch the card. He’s—
The sentence stopped mid-thought. New words scrawled frantically beneath it. He’s here. He’s in the room with you.
Mara’s blood turned to ice. She spun around.
“Mr. Niles” stood by her reading chair, having simply appeared. He was a man of average build, wearing a perfectly fitted but nondescript grey suit. His face was pleasant, forgettable, but his eyes were the color of a fading bruise.
“A compelling read, isn’t it?” he said, his voice a smooth baritone. “The author is quite insightful. Though his perspective is currently… limited.”
“Get out of my home,” Mara said, her voice low and dangerous. Her hand inched toward her phone.
“I think not, Counselor,” Niles said. He raised a hand, his fingers making a gentle, beckoning motion.
The book in Mara’s hands erupted with a blinding yellow light. A terrifying suction pulled at her very essence. She felt herself unraveling, compressing, her consciousness streaming down into the whiteness of the page. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.
There was a soft thump as the book closed itself and fell onto the plush rug. On the floor above it lay Mara’s empty blouse, skirt, and underwear, collapsed in a heap where she had been standing. The blank business card beside them glowed once, then went dark.
In Brigid O’Connor’s dorm room, the atmosphere was one of focused frustration. Textbooks on advanced calculus and metaphysical biology were piled next to ancient grimoires. On the cleared desk, Fatima stood, three feet tall and perfectly proportioned, her arms crossed. She looked like a furious, voluptuous action figure.
Hank Powers knelt beside the desk, his large mechanic’s hands clenched. “There’s gotta be a switch, right? A button we ain’t seen?”
“It is not a malfunctioning carburetor, habibi,” Fatima snapped, her voice unchanged and full of its usual sharpness, which only made her diminutive stature more surreal.
Brigid, her long red braid slung over one shoulder, peered through a complex lens made of intertwined copper wires and quartz. Will and Sarah flanked her, their hands lightly resting on her shoulders, channeling their triadic focus. Shiv O’Connor sat on the edge of a bed, sipping tea, her cockatiel Larry perched on her shoulder, preening.
“The alteration isn’t an illusion,” Brigid said, her young voice strained with concentration. “It’s a permanent re-write of her spatial relationship to local reality. The equation is… locked. I can see the integral, but I can’t find the limits to solve it.”
“What does that mean in English, Brigid-Bear?” Shiv asked, her Irish lilt deceptively mild.
“It means I don’t know how to fix it yet, Mam,” Brigid admitted, lowering the lens. Defeat washed over her features. “The edit is too elegant. It’s like trying to un-bake a cake.”
Fatima swore, a blistering stream of Arabic. Hank reached a giant finger out to comfort her, then thought better of it.
The air in Mike and Casey’s living room was warm and carried the clean scent of sweat and chamomile. The four of them—Mike, Casey, Jason, Amy—sat naked on the rug, wrapped in blankets, the earlier frantic energy settled into a post-coital calm. Rick was down for the night, the monitor silent. Polluck watched from the bookshelf, unimpressed.
The front door opened without a knock. “Hello? Amy said you needed a ride back—whoa.”
Yukio Harata stood in the doorway, her dark eyes wide with surprise that quickly melted into pure, unadulterated delight. She took in the scene: the discarded clothes, the tangled blankets, the relaxed, naked bodies.
“Well, this is a welcome committee,” Yukio said, a grin spreading across her face. Without hesitation, she kicked off her shoes, pulled her t-shirt over her head, and shimmied out of her jeans and panties. Her body was a contrast to Amy’s willowy frame—short, curvy, with a bold rose tattoo blooming on her shoulder.
She plopped down naked next to Amy, her thigh pressing against Amy’s. “Don’t mind me. Just a party without Jan’s special brand of encouragement. I can dig it.”
Amy blinked, pulling her blanket a little tighter. “Yukio, it’s not… we were just…”
“Just reclaiming your corporeal forms through intimate connection?” Yukio finished, her tone knowing. She leaned in, her voice dropping. “I felt it, you know. When I picked up that little porcelain version of you. I felt the echo of that fucking.” She turned Amy’s face towards her and planted a firm, deep kiss on her lips, her tongue slipping briefly inside.
Before Amy could sputter a protest, Yukio pivoted and gave Jason an identical, thorough kiss. He froze, his eyes wide, but didn’t pull away.
Yukio leaned back, licking her lips. “So? What’s everyone waiting for? An engraved invitation?”
Mike and Casey looked at each other. Casey’s lips quirked into a tired, amused smile. She shrugged, letting her blanket fall away from her shoulders.
“Looks like the therapy session’s back in,” Casey said, her voice dry. “Might as well lean in.”
Mike sighed, a sound of fond resignation, and tossed his own blanket aside.