The Monsters of Faggot Forest

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This chapter contains the usual M/t, incest (but not really), drug triggers, and one paragraph in which a character outlines his bestiality fantasy. Also, someone takes a shit...but that's all it is. Lecher's too full. He couldn't possibly.

As the unavoidable horrors of Faggot Forest loom, Guile goes into Lure's mind to prevent Reality Itself from killing Caleb Crandal....or almost as bad, WAKING HIM UP! But Guile's showdown gets sidetracked when he encounters two MORE invaders in Caleb's mind, and they have their OWN agenda, one that neither Guile NOR Reality Itself want them to succeed at carrying out! And if all THAT isn't bad enough for Guile, he doesn't know that even if he somehow survives his Master's wrath the following morning, he's destined to be killed on August 17th by the greatest warrior Thrall in all of history, The Creeping Vine. A flash-forward reveals the potential grisly deaths of not only Guile and Lecher, but the entire city of Timbers- burg as well!

.....so the news isn't all bad.

The Monsters of Faggot Forest

Chapter 9

While Jaden Harris was coming to the horrifying realization that the naked kid standing in front of him wasn't human, several miles away, at the former site of the Ferret Forest Family Campground and Picnic Area, Tom Daggen's car was sliding backward down a mud-slicked, single lane road, angling towards the edge of a steep drop-off.

"OW!" Grant shouted in pain and surprise in response to Tom slamming his right fist down on Grant's forearm.

"Let go! I said I got it!" Tom roared, twisting back around to look through the rear window as he ineptly fought to regain control of the vehicle.

Mike noted with concern that Tom was turning the wheel to the left, which would've taken them directly over the edge, if the car had any traction. Tom was hiding it to protect his carefully crafted and maintained image, but he was flustered, and it was causing him to continue turning the wheel as if he were still facing forward.

"I was just trying to fucking help!" Grant yelled, putting the airing of his personal grievance above the lives of everyone in the car. "You didn't have to hit me!"

Knowing Grant's lack of emotional maturity, Mike remained quiet in spite of wanting to scream at him to shut up and stop distracting the driver during an emergency situation, something that Grant, as a self- proclaimed "expert driver", should've already known. But Grant was a child- ish asshole who was experiencing an adrenaline rush. ANY attempt by Mike to shush him, no matter the phrasing or tone, would've produced the exact OPPOSITE of the desired result (just like Tom's steering at that moment).

"I'm trying to save us, and you go and grab the fucking wheel!" Tom justified.

"You didn't have a problem with me taking control of the car BEFORE, when you took your hands off the wheel to light up!" Grant shot back!

"I didn't ASK you to, and I didn't NEED you to!" Tom ridiculously claimed.

Mike kept his head out of Tom's field of vision while looking to see if Kenny was okay. Mike found him staring down at the floorboard with a listless expression, as though the outcome of the crisis didn't really matter to him.

"Tom, please just ease off the accelerator," Grant appealed, his voice suddenly becoming softer and weaker. "Just let the tires try to grab, and turn the wheel a little to the right, but not all the way."

"I KNOW!" Tom lied as he took Grant's advice.

The car's trajectory slowly curved away from the edge, and Tom was able to gradually regain control.

"YA SEE????" Tom victoriously grandstanded after the car came to a complete stop. "I FUCKING TOLD YOU I HAD IT!!!"

"Whatever, man," Grant mumbled while nursing his throbbing forearm.

"It must suck to have a friend who forces you to back down and deball yourself just to get him to listen to reason," Mike thought with satisfaction.

Now that the car was stopped, Mike worried that Grant would carry out his threat against him, the one that caused Tom to stomp the brake (again) and lose control of the car. However, Grant and Tom continued to bicker, redirecting Grant's negativity away from Mike...for the moment, at least.

For the next ten minutes, Tom and Grant sniped back and forth while Tom took out his anger on the transmission, slamming the car between drive and reverse in an attempt to free the two driver's side tires, which were off the road and sinking into the mud. Kenny's battered body endured even more punishment as it was continually jerked forward and backward.

Once the car was back on the road, Mike almost suggested that instead of turning the car back towards the direction they were originally heading, they should reverse until they had sufficient road to accelerate, and make a run at the hill they'd slid down. It was risky, but there was an even steeper and potentially muddier incline further down the road. However, Tom and Grant seemed to have forgotten about Mike, not even taking the opportunity to insult his weight while Tom muscled his and Mike's side of the car out of the mud. Therefore, Mike chose not to speak up and risk rocking the boat of his personal safety.

"You're not going to get up that," Grant grumbled when they eventually reached the incline, which was just as bad as Mike predicted.

"Wanna bet!" Tom bragged baselessly, stomping the accelerator and flinging mud instead of gradually building up the necessary speed.

The car got three quarters of the way up before it lost its forward momentum and started to slide most of the way back down. The next several attempts were even less successful.

Mike settled in and relaxed. As treacherous as the hill was, it didn't have drainage ditches, guardrails, nearby trees, or a chasm at its base. It was a safe area for Tom to practice his backward steering. But as Mike delighted in Grant's frustration at Tom's driving, and Tom's growing anger at Grant's frustration at Tom's driving, Mike could see that Kenny was truly miserable.

Mike wanted to feel good about it, but in spite of his anger at Kenny for abandoning and replacing him, Mike just couldn't. Mike was starting to feel as if Kenny was being punished TOO much.

Much later, Tom's multiple failed attempts cleared away enough mud that the car was finally able to reach the top, causing Mike's fear and anxiety to return. Grant was far more likely to want to fight now that the car wasn't surrounded by a huge mud patch.

Adding to all the shit he had to deal with, Mike turned to find Kenny reading his text conversation with Lure. After he was done, he typed an unwanted message to Mike.

"He is lying u just met him so y wood he care about u"

"He wouldn't," Mike typed back, wanting to keep his answers brief so that Kenny would know that he couldn't use the situation with Lure to worm his way back into Mike's good graces. When Mike saw that Kenny was writing ANOTHER message to him, he angrily decided that he was going to bluntly remind Kenny that he was violating their agreement that Kenny would ghost mike PERMANENTLY. However, the message ended up unsettling Mike so much that he just handed the phone back without replying.

"I'm afraid he is coming 4 U"

"Yeah, me too," Mike thought, wishing he knew where Lure was at that moment, and what he was doing, just to make Mike feel better. But if Mike knew that Lure had just abducted one of his classmates, and the former best friend of Mike's father was, at that moment, chasing Lure through the woods, trying to kill him, better would've been the LAST thing Mike would've felt.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Craig Byrne yelled over the howling wind and fireworks to the approaching parchment-faced old man. "WHERE DID YOU SAY WE ARE?"

"I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS!" the stolen identity of Andrew Miller spat, reaching down and grabbing Craig's right hand, which, along with his left hand, was being used by Craig to protect his modesty. "I NEED YOU TO COME WITH ME!"

"WHOA!" the rattled, dwindling, last bit of Craig Byrne's free will barked, yanking his arm back and returning his hand to his crotch. "SERIOUSLY! DON'T DO THAT!"

Craig ordinarily wouldn't have been so rude, but Craig was thoroughly confused. He'd been standing in the empty spacious back yard of a contemporary Victorian home, his bare feet covered up to his ankles by some sort of ground covering that looked and felt exactly like snow, but it wasn't cold. Now, all of a sudden, the "snow" was gone, and he and the old man were standing on grass, and surrounded by well-dressed, middle-aged people. It was a well-attended gathering, and yet no one seemed to notice the naked, red-headed, bearded body builder in their midst. Everyone was either looking up at the fireworks, or out at Manjinankton Lake to see a particularly luxurious pleasure craft that was speeding by.

Adding to Craig's disorientation, he seemed to be under the influence of some excellent shit, but unfortunately, whatever it was was fucking with his memory, and not just his recent memory, either. The past few months were inaccessible to Craig, who, if it weren't for the telltale fireworks and preponderance of red, white, and blue clothing amongst the party guests, would've had no idea what day it was.

"SORRY ABOUT THIS," Craig called out over the wind, addressing a man and a woman who were looking in his direction. "IT'S A DARE."

The couple's gaze shifted. They weren't looking at Craig, they were admiring an approaching party boat. Even more baffling, the relentless gale wasn't blowing the woman's long, flowing hair.

"I SAID COME WITH ME!!" the old man insisted, reclaiming Craig's attention by grabbing his wrist once more.

"NO! I TOLD YOU TO BACK OFF!" Craig roared, pushing the old man harder than he'd meant to, sending Andrew sprawling.

Even doped to the gills, Craig still had the presence of mind to wait to make sure the man got back up. Once he did, Craig turned with the intention of running out of the back yard, heading towards the front of the house, and scanning the road for his truck. It was risky. Craig would be seen by even MORE people, some of whom might actually CARE about his naked- ness, but Craig felt he didn't have any other option. Unless he found his truck, which was hopefully unlocked and had the keys inside, he was going to eventually get apprehended anyway.

As soon as Craig turned, he came face to face with a group of people heading straight at him.

"Uh...SORRY!" Craig yelped, jumping out of the way just before they almost walked right into him. "SOMEONE PLAYED A JOKE ON ME! PLEASE DON'T CALL THE POLICE!"

"DAD!" Reality Itself shouted over the noisy wind, causing Craig to look back and see that the old man was gone, and Robbie was standing in his place.

"S'CUZE ME," Craig shouted as he stumbled past the people with whom he'd almost collided. Craig passed through the shoulder of one of the men, but Craig was too intoxicated to notice.

"ROBBIE?" Craig yelled, the wind making it necessary despite the two of them now only standing a few feet apart. "I'M HAVING TROUBLE THINK- ING! DID WE COME HERE TOGETHER? DID I BRING YOU HERE? ARE WE DOING A VISITATION?"

"YEAH," Robbie lied, "YOU SAID WE COULD COME AND SWIM NAKED!"

"I'M TAKING YOU SKINNY DIPPING...AT NIGHT...DURING A WIND STORM.. ...AT MANJINANKTON LAKE...WITH BOATS EVERYWHERE?" Craig questioned incredulously, just sober enough to realize how ridiculous that would be.

"YOU PROMISED!" Robbie insisted, pulling off his red shirt and then squatting down to untie his shoes.

"ROBBIE, STOP! WE CAN'T GO SWIMMING IN THERE!" Craig objected. "SOMEONE'S GOING TO CALL THE POLICE ON ME! I MEAN...I'M NAKED.......RIGHT?"

"YEAH, AND NOBODY CARES!" Robbie replied, nodding at Craig's hands, which he was still using to cup himself. "NOBODY'S EVEN LOOKING AT YOU! AND NO ONE WILL SEE YOUR DICK WHEN WE'RE IN THE WATER!"

"ROBBIE, IT'S TOO DANGEROUS...AND I'M ALL FUCKED UP!"

"YOU SOUND FINE!" Robbie disputed, taking down his orange cargo shorts and stepping out of them, leaving him in just his underwear.

"SON, I'VE BEEN USING DRUGS...A LOT!" Craig confessed. "I'VE BEEN USING OFF AND ON, EVER SINCE YOUR MOM KICKED ME OUT! BUT NOW I'M HOOKED! DOES THAT SOUND LIKE SOMETHING I'D EVER TELL YOU WHILE I'M SOBER?! NOW WHERE DID WE PARK THE TRUCK?"

"YOU CAN'T BE ALL THAT MESSED UP IF YOU THINK YOU CAN DRIVE!" Robbie accused. "AND YOU'RE SOBER ENOUGH TO KNOW TO KEEP YOURSELF COVERED!"

"YOU KNOW WHAT?....HERE!" Craig yelled, removing his hands and revealing his dangling penis, which was just thick enough to arc down instead of hanging lifelessly. It was still technically soft, but not so limp that it would've escaped notice in the locker room of Craig's gym. "THERE YOU GO! YOU'VE BEEN BADGERING ME ABOUT SHOWING IT TO YOU, SO THERE IT IS! DO YOU STILL THINK I'M NOT FUCKED UP RIGHT NOW?!?!"

Robbie's eyes locked onto Craig's penis and his jaw slackened just enough that his lips parted. His look of fascinated yearning was so intense that it gave Craig a tingly sensation in his nuts.

"YEAH, HAVE A NICE LONG LOOK, SON!" Craig spat as he lifted his dick by the head to show Robbie its underside, using sarcasm to hide Craig's sudden desire to thoroughly expose himself to his child. The gesture caused Craig to be supernaturally rewarded with a surge of pleasurable sensuality that caused his dangling nuts to briefly rise up before dropping back down.

"Jesus," Craig suddenly thought to himself as he experienced a whole host of other sexual drug-effects that he fought against to keep them from causing Craig lose control and make a spectacle of himself, "what the hell party drug makes a guy's dick, balls, and asshole FEEL this way? Christ! My kid's standing right here, but that ain't stopping me from wanting to stand here and rub one out in front of everyone!"

As intoxicated as Craig was, a tiny part of him knew that the indifferent party guests might suddenly start caring about Craig's naked- ness now that he was not only exposing himself to a young boy, he was also frequently "casually" scratching his dick, shifting it, and even "absently" twisting it as he fought to keep his hands off of himself.

During a brief moment of partial sobriety, Craig blearily scanned the crowd for reactions, but people remained oblivious.

"WHAT ARE YOU-?" Craig yelped, turning his head back around at the sensation of hands between his legs. Robbie was handling Craig's junk.

Craig couldn't move. Thanks to the Entanglement process, his son's intimate touch felt far too good to resist. Craig's mouth was forced into a brainless smile as he mindlessly basked in the feeling of his son's hands stimulating him sexually.

"WE'RE HIS FATHER!!!" A voice in Craig's mind informed him, scream- ing to compensate for the fact that it was drifting away...forever...never to be heard by Craig again. "IT'S FUCKING WRONG! BACK AWAY FROM HIM! TAKE CONTROL, OR THAT LYING, FILTHY CUNT WILL BE RIGHT ABOUT US WANTING TO MOLEST HIM! IS THat what we want? Is that who we want to be from now.... ..................* "

Lecher finished shredding the clothes off of the latest group of trashed white trash and came back to the two raised platforms in the center of the clearing.

Lecher glanced at the first bed to see that Jayce Harris was giggling uncontrollably, indicating that he didn't require any attention, so Lecher foolishly turned away from Reality Itself's secret weapon.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"RYAN, LET GO!" The Creeping Vine shouted over the deafening crackle. "JAYCE IS GENERATING TOO MUCH! HE'S GOING TO KILL YOU!"

"I AIN'T LETTING GO!" Ryan screamed in agony, the energy influx overloading his altered physiology. "I WANT IT ALL!!! I FUCKING WANT ALL OF IT!!!!" vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Lecher then looked to the second bed, where the mindless body of Craig Byrne was lying face up. Craig had a "semi" going, and it was growing larger.

"Huh, that ain't right," Lecher mumbled. "Craig just ejaculated a little while ago. It's probably nothing, but considering what's been going on tonight with Reality Itself, I'd better make sure....."

Lecher used his power and looked deeper, learning everything there was to know about the present state of all aspects of Craig's physiology.

"He's fully Entangled, now," Lecher diagnosed. "but that don't explain why he's already got creatures in his lungs, fartin' out Pit Fog and Ball Vapor to get him ready for some guy sex. Guile ain't around to sic him on anybody, and the only cock close enough to set Lumberjack off auto- matically is Jayce's, but his S.C.E. is LOCKED, so what the fuck's goin' on?! I wish Guile would come back out and tell me what the-"

A young man wearing body armor and a white cap (with an "OK" hand symbol stitched into it) stumbled into the clearing. A stream of dried blood trailed down from his right ear.

Lecher smiled a toothy smile and walked over to greet him, sending the turquoise tendril ahead of him to deal with the man's ruptured eardrums.

"How's it hangin', Russell Hawksmore?" Lecher welcomed, taking off the drugged and confused young man's cap and shredding it in a microsecond with the silver tendril. "I'm REAL glad to see YOU again."

Russell didn't notice the destruction of his beloved cap, which he always wore proudly and defiantly, unless someone called him out on it when he didn't have his like-minded buddies around to back him up, in which case he usually claimed the "White Power" symbol just meant "OK".

"What'cha lookin' for?" Lecher mocked as Russell scanned the clear- ing, when he wasn't busy emphatically shaking his head in a futile attempt to focus his mind, or wiggling his pinky fingers in his ears in response to the residual pain and crawling sensations.

"Where's the monster?" Russell babbled before losing his balance and grabbing Lecher's shoulders for support. "Izzit still...around?"

"No. The monster, my only friend, screamed in agony and left after you blew out one of his eyes with your assault rifle," Lecher seethed with sarcastic politeness.

"Where IS my AR?" Russell growled drunkenly, choosing the EXACT wrong thing to say, something he usually only did with girls. "I...I...I... fuckin' BETTER git it BACK!"

Russell jolted and looked down in dazed surprise as his bulletproof vest fell off of his body. His clothes followed, leaving his thin, lightly muscled, moderately-endowed, "meh" body exposed to the warm evening air.

Russell looked down at his nakedness and only just then noticed that Lecher was naked, too. He hadn't had the presence of mind to look at Lecher below his chest, and Russell was too fucked up to notice the state of undress of the men milling about on the other side of the clearing, so Russell had assumed that Lecher was only wearing shorts, like Chuck Fry, one of Russell's friends, the one who'd talked him into coming along on the "monster hunt".

"Are you that...that gay guy who attacked m-AAAAACCCCCKKKK!!" Russell started to say before a magenta-colored tube entered his mouth and started to spray like an aerosol can.

"Nah, that was another cum vampire with stupid, cotton candy, platinum blond hair, you nazi fuck-wit," Lecher explained.

Russell tried to bite down on the tube to block the spray, but he couldn't clamp it shut. Trying to grab the tube didn't work either, due to it being as slippery as an eel, and flailing his head around to get the tube's opening away from his mouth was useless as well. The tube moved along with Russell's mouth as if it could predict Russell's actions.

When the tube finally pulled back, Russell tried to spit out what- ever was now coating his tongue, only to find that he couldn't. Further- more, it was making his tongue feel awesome...sensual...compelling him to frantically lick the interior of his mouth.

"How about you take care of this for me," Lecher growled, pointing at his huge, stiff prick.

"Ain't....AIN'T NO FUCKIN' COCKSUCKER!" Russell slurred.

The magenta tendril drifted over and began to spray Lecher's cock, which moved around like a ghost was using it as a joystick, helping the magenta tendril to coat Lecher from his thin, fuzzy pubes all the way down to his asshole.

"Keep telling yourself that," Lecher suggested when his 'paint job' was over, and his 'blow job' was mere moments away.

Russell stared at the magenta coating all over Lecher's crotch. A shiver of fear passed through his body as he found himself wanting to lick it all off.

The desire grew.

Craig was Entangled.

In terms of sex, and sex only, Craig no longer cared about morality, modesty, or maintaining his dignity in any way. The freedom of Craig's sexual slavery was almost as intoxicating as the personalized, pre- set Pit Fog being discharged into Craig's lungs and sinuses by tiny, undetectable, flatulent creatures designed for just that purpose.

If Craig had been in the real world, the programming Guile had used the plum tendril to place in Craig's mind would've prevented ANY sexual activity with Robbie in the presence of anyone who wasn't Entangled, for obvious reasons. However, Craig's Entanglement misinterpreted his sexual arousal and unusual mental state as a sex dream, and therefore allowed him to freely indulge his newly installed lust for his child.

But that wasn't ALL Craig's Entanglement was doing for him.

Some Entangleds try to fight against the gay component added to their sexuality. To break down their resistance, Entangleds are doped with Pit Fog and Ball Vapor during all homosexual encounters, even ones in that occur in their dreams.

Thus:

Craig Byrne was naked, horny, surrounded by people, his child was cradling Craig's hardening dick in his hands, and he was high on drugs far superior than any of the shit he typically bought off of the streets of Johnsport.

"When's the last fucking time I felt this good?" Craig wondered as he and his son looked down together and watched Craig's manhood grow fully erect.

"WOULDN'T SAY NO TO SOME HEAD," Robbie Byrne's new and better father suggested, the loud, relentless wind being the only bad part of a suddenly perfect evening. "....OR ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO DO TO ME, OR THE OTHER WAY AROUND!"

Robbie quickly knelted down in the grass and took his father into his mouth.

"*Yeeee-HAW!!!!" Craig hollered jokingly, but believably, as his cock was enveloped by the wet warmth of his underaged child's mouth.

Craig looked around with a big ol' smile, hoping for a couple of shocked expressions among the party guests, but to Craig's disappointment, no one appeared to notice him getting sucked off by his kid.

But then......

"HEY, HOW'S IT GOING?!" Craig greeted a balding, bearded, white- haired, sixty-something year-old man in jean shorts, an American flag t-shirt, and sandals.

The gentleman didn't respond. He was visibly uncomfortable at the sight of the boy who was trying to work his lips all the way to the base of Craig's shaft.

Craig naturally got the wrong impression.

"IT'S OKAY!" Craig laughingly assured the man, "I'M HIS FATHER!"

The home of Principal Emmett Kemmler, 16 months ago

"Who's going to hire me after THIS?" Emmett bemoaned, drowning his sorrows at the unbalanced, rusty, wrought iron, glass topped table on his back deck. "Fall classes have barely started, and I've just gotten the school district involved in a MAJOR lawsuit."

"It's not going to be a major lawsuit," Emmett's wife Cheryl lied in order to calm her husband down and prevent him from getting sloppy. He'd had way too much to drink, and under any other circumstances, Cheryl would've put a stop to it long before now. "It's just a disgruntled parent."

"TWO disgruntled parents!" Emmett stated for the record. "When I told Travis Anders I was going to expel his son, he THREATENED me!"

"What?" Cheryl gasped. "Why didn't you tell me he threatened you? Why didn't you call the police?"

"I didn't tell you BEFORE because I wasn't DRUNK enough," Emmett justified, "and because he didn't out-and-out THREATEN me, he did that thing Trump does all the time. You know, 'it sure would be a shame if something were to happen to...'. THAT horseshit! He even casually asked if I still live on Brinkman Street, instead of coming right out and telling me he knows where I live! That lowlife piece of shit even tried to dismiss what Grant did as 'a silly little prank'!"

"Secretly taking naked pictures of the other boys in the locker room and posting them on the internet is NOT 'a silly little prank'," Cheryl opined.

"It IS if you're a shitty father who wants to teach his delinquent son that he can do whatever the FUCK he wants, with NO consequences, if he uses intimidation!" Emmett snapped before burying his face in his hands. "Why couldn't he have taken stealth dick pics of a boy whose father ISN'T one of the most sought-after attorneys in the whole state? Oh, and I wasn't drunk enough to tell you the BEST PART, either! You're going to love THIS! Tomorrow, after I'm done telling our elderly, devout superintendent of schools what's been going on in MY boys' locker room, I have to tell Gladys that the victim will probably DIE before or during the litigation!"

Cheryl clamped her teeth, covered her mouth, and hid her horrified reaction as best she could.

"Yeah, I KNOW!" Emmett ranted, letting Cheryl know her efforts had failed miserably. "THAT'S why the boy is so goddamned skinny! When Jeremy Klein SCREAMED that tidbit at me, I was so stunned that I let out a squirt of piss! Cher, this is going to get really, REALLY bad."

"Oh GOD no," Cheryl thought, realizing just how bad the publicity could get...and the school administrator upon whom it would all probably land. "Honey, what's killing Ryan? Is it cancer?"

"AN INOPERABLE BRAIN TUMOR!" Emmett roared with his hands lifted to God in exasperation. "In the school that I'M responsible for, COCK SHOTS of an emaciated, underaged, DYING KID were taken and uploaded to WHO KNOWS how many social media sites."

"How much time does Ryan have?" Cheryl asked, forcing herself to set aside her personal concerns and focus on the most tragic part of the story.

"Not much," Emmett muttered miserably, "Ryan wanted to keep coming to school as long as he could, to pretend his illness wasn't real...to make believe that he has a future. The symptoms are getting worse, though, and his medications aren't keeping them at bay. Ryan's losing. He can barely make it through a school day. His parents were planning on pulling him out of Weyerhauser in a week or two, but now..."

"So if Grant would've delayed his goddamned 'prank' by a week or so...," Cheryl grumbled, hating him more than any of the other problem cases Emmett told her about.

"I wish...I wish Grant Anders would d-d-die instead of Ryan Klein," Emmett sobbed.

"Me too," Cheryl agreed unapologetically, supporting her husband, despite secretly not wishing death on either boy.

Emmett Kemmler started to cry, prompting Cheryl to stand behind him with her hands on his shoulders.

"THIS is the way a DYING BOY AND HIS BEREAVED PARENTS will remember his last day at MY....FUCKING....SCHOOL!!!!!" Emmett screamed, backhanding his wine glass off the table and causing it to shatter against one of Cheryl's flower pots."

"It ain't your fault, Emmett," an unexpected male voice with a thick southern accent stated from a few yards away, causing Emmett to jolt, and making Cheryl let out a brief shriek.

A powerfully built, gray-haired man in a white cowboy hat had somehow entered their enclosed back yard without the Kemmlers noticing. After Travis Ander's veiled threat that day, Emmett was CERTAIN he'd locked the gate.

"Max?!" Emmett blurted angrily, fueled by shock, stress, fright and alcohol. "What are you DOING here?"

"What my husband MEANS to say, Max, is 'welcome, pull up a chair'," Cheryl greeted politely, having recovered more quickly than Emmett.

Coach Max Morgan strode foward across the yard, towards the deck. Neither Emmett nor Cheryl could see that he was flanked by a gorgeous, naked, well-endowed young man whose green eyes were perfectly framed by a permanent two days of beard growth and light brown hair that was long on top, short on the sides, and drawn back into a cute, loose, untamed man bun. He was carrying a packed rainbow-themed gym bag.

On the other side of Max Morgan, a phantom wheelchair rolled effortlessly across the grass, carrying the ghost of a morbidly depressed young man with hopeless, sunken eyes, and legs that ended at the knees.

"Master," the ghost called out happily, in striking contrast to his appearance, "neither of these humans bear the residue of the Reality Itself phenomenon."

The Steve Collier-Guile couldn't help but be cheerful in spite of all the sadness around him, as well as the sadness he was forced to always wear on his face. His Thrall had been tasked with aiding the Master on a UNIQUE and DIFFICULT all-day assignment that had been WILDLY SUCCESSFUL!

The Steve-Guile was getting his brother back!

"Good work, Guile," Max replied telepathically, in spite of already having scanned Emmett and Cheryl himself. Such a mixture of good and bad luck RARELY happened naturally to a Tethered One.

"Thank you, Master," Guile said simply, reminding himself NOT to stretch out his gratitude for fear of irritating his Master. Master Morgan demanded obedience, but not obsequiousness. It was a razor thin line that Guile still had difficulty walking, even after centuries of service.

"Lecher," Max summoned.

A phantom duplicate of the screened young man appeared, identical to his Lure in all ways, except for Lecher's fully erect penis and lack of a rainbow-covered gym bag.

"Yes, Master?"

"Make Steve sweat," Max commanded. "Both places."

"Can I get you something, Max?" Cheryl offered with an ulterior motive. "We have beer, wine-"

"Cheryl," Coach Morgan interrupted, with a pleasant, bemused grin. "We both know you've figured out that I don't drink."

Cheryl almost pretended that she didn't know Max's comment had two possible meanings, but there was something in his voice...a resignation... an acceptance.

"Oh my God," Cheryl thought, "Is he really going to....?"

"Or eat, or tire, or get injured, or, as far as I know, sleep... ...ever," Cheryl added, quickly upping the ante before the moment passed and Max decided to maybe keep his secrets to himself after all, as he'd always done.

"Cheryl, over the centuries, I've accidentally ruined a lot of people who thought they could handle my truth. Famously, Richard Nixon made the mistake of taking his friend, Jackie Gleason, to a military base and showing him something Gleason THOUGHT he wanted to see. He couldn't handle it. Seeing those alien bodies was too much for Gleason, and it almost brought 'The Great One' down...for good."

"The only thing I can't handle, Max, is living out the remainder of my life thinking that the rest of the universe is just as plain, boring and predictable as the planet we're living on," Cheryl stated with conviction, the emotions behind her words threatening to make her cry again, so soon after weeping about the awful fate of Ryan Klein.

The absolute craziness of the conversation bothered Cheryl, but she pushed it aside and forced herself to treat the situation with drop-dead seriousness. She'd known Max Morgan for a long time, but just like everyone else, Cheryl didn't know him at all, except for the fact that he wasn't quite right....in the paranormal sense.

"I'm not human," Maximus Morgan revealed, committing to his plan, and making Cheryl exhale ragged puffs of air as she fought to contain her excitement and anticipation.

"Guile, did you KNOW he was going to....???" Steve demanded telepathically.

"Lure...Lecher....if EVER there was a time for us to be reverently silent, verbally AND telepathically, it is NOW!" Guile cautioned.

"Um...am I missing something here?" Emmett slurred. "Max, this really isn't a good time for me. Could we maybe talk tomorr-"

"This will clear your head, Emmett," Max said emotionlessly, reach- ing back and running the flat of his hand across the armpit of the naked, invisible boy's raised left arm.

Not being able to see Steve, Emmett and Cheryl were confused when Max ended the strange gesture by holding his hand in front of Emmett's face.

"Max, what the f-" Emmett started to say before the Pit Sweat on Max's hand exploded into Pit Fog and invaded Emmett's open mouth.

"WHAT THE-?!" Emmett shouted, uselessly swatting at the fog that refused to be expelled.

"Just breathe, Honey," Cheryl calmly encouraged her husband, while holding Max's gaze, passing his test.

Emmett sputtered and shook his head while unexpected sobriety took hold, and Cheryl watched in astonishment as the glittering shards surround- ing her flowerpot lifted off the deck and came together, reforming the wine glass, which boomeranged back to the exact spot on the table from which it had been unceremoniously launched.

"What the FUCK, Max???" Emmett screamed, jumping to his feet and backing away from the glass as if it were a coiled cobra. "What the actual FUCK?!?!"

"Calm down, Emmett," Max commanded, his voice sounding tired.

"Honey, it's okay! It's.....just Max!" Cheryl soothed, not knowing how else to express her certainty that she and her husband were perfectly safe.

"WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!" Emmett yelled, stepping in front of Cheryl to needlessly shield her from Max, who was in the process of sitting down at the table. "MAX, WHAT THE FUCK ARE-?"

Emmett Kemmler froze mid-sentence.

"He'll be okay, Cheryl," Max promised while staring at Emmett's wine glass, which was in the process of filling from the bottom up. "Emmett, sit down and relax. Cheryl...last chance to back out."

"I'm good," Cheryl stated, physically and symbolically taking a seat at the table.

After a moment, Emmett's muscles unclenched, his shoulders relaxed, and he casually sat down with a blank look on his face. Cheryl couldn't see that there was a plum-colored tube up his nose.

"I hope the neighbors didn't hear him scream," Cheryl muttered, thinking about how ENRAGED she would be if the police ruined this moment for her.

"Five of them did, but they don't know they did," Max dismissed. "Emmett, I'm going to need you to drink that."

"What is it, Max?" Cheryl asked, sounding more curious than concerned as she watched her husband glug it down. "What does it do?"

"It saves you from widowhood," Max explained. "He's been needing a quadruple bypass for a long time. I was going to let him die, since that's what you humans do, but...I can't....I just....can't."

"Thank you," Cheryl said, feeling its inadequacy.

"Don't thank me, Cheryl. I'm not doing it for him...or you. I'm doing it for me."

Max looked directly into Emmett's blank face.

"I lied when I told you I had no idea that Grant Anders was taking pictures in the locker room, Emmett," Coach Morgan confessed. "I see and hear everything around me. I watched him taking those pictures, and I could've easily called him into my office and dealt with the situation like a human, or wiped those pictures from his phone like a non-human. But instead, I pulled a Jim Jordan and didn't deal with the situation at all. And like him, I did it for the absolute WORST reason."

"What was the reason?" Cheryl asked after Max was silent for a bit too long.

Max redirected his ancient, weary gaze at Emmett's wife.

"I didn't care."

Silence reigned, and Max's expression turned angry. By his slouch, Cheryl could tell that it was directed inward, at himself.

Cheryl decided to wait Max out this time.

"I'm slipping, Cheryl," Max confessed. "I need to make changes. I need to become more engaged with people than I already am, and I need to start caring again. Otherwise, I'll start losing hope and I'll be dead inside, just like THEM. And that's the LAST thing I want."

"Max, what are you doing to my mind?" Emmett asked serenely, making Cheryl's features raise with alarm.

"I'm making you less high-strung, Emmett. I'm doing a THOUSAND different things that'll make you more able to deal with all the endless shit that you helpless, doomed, slightly-evolved primates put yourselves through every day."

Max reached behind him and pulled a rainbow-covered gym bag out of thin air.

"Emmett has a gambling problem," Max blurted bluntly, putting the bag on the unused fourth chair. "Don't be mad. He HATES himself for it."

"I can't be mad, considering how much he wins," Cheryl argued.

"It ain't winnin' when you gotta give it back with interest, Cheryl," Max said with unintentional condescension.

"But...I'm our accountant!" Cheryl disputed. "If he were taking out loans, I'd KNOW!"

"You're smarter, but he's sneakier. All addicts are. In case you haven't figured it out, the bag's full of money."

"Max...we can't accept-" Cheryl's upbringing forced her to say.

"You CAN and you WILL," Max snarled, having no patience for etiquette-based resistance. "I can turn ANYTHING into ANYTHING, and one of the reasons I live in this interesting city is because there are all sorts of things being bought and sold in these endless forests, and nobody asks my courier any questions when he shows up carrying a couple'a hundred pounds of rhodium. I've got money to BURN, Cheryl. Take it and clean up your dumb husband's mess. Don't discuss any of it with Emmett, though, or he might start remembering the addiction and start up again."

"Uh, sure, but if I can't talk about it with Emmett, how will I find out who he owes?" Cheryl asked.

"From now on, any time you ask Emmett a question that you begin with 'Be honest', Emmett will HAVE to answer it truthfully, and he'll immediately forget your question and his answer. Use that to find out who his creditors are."

"I will."

"And don't even THINK of wandering into any dangerous situations without calling the number in the side pocket of that bag. It's my courier. He'll go with you, any time, day or night."

"Well, if he can carry a couple of hundred pounds of rhodium, I guess he can handle whatever Timbersburg lowlifes my husband owes money to," Cheryl sighed, reminding herself that for a long time, she'd been wishing for more excitement in her life.

"If his extensive military and martial arts training ain't enough, there's always his vast array of superpowers," Max reassured, smirking at how weird the sentence sounded, especially said with a southern accent.

Cheryl really wanted to follow up on that, but there was something more pressing on her mind.

"Be truthful, Emmett, do you still love me, and have you ever cheated on me?" Cheryl asked reflexively, suddenly wanting to know if her marriage, like their finances, had been on shaky ground all this time.

"Of course I love you," Emmett disclosed with a baffled sneer, as if his wife had asked the dumbest question conceivable. "And NO, I've never cheated on you. Just because I have trouble getting it up these days-"

"Not anymore," Max quickly interrupted, focusing on Cheryl. "His copulatory impotence is now a thing of the past, just like his need to gamble. Don't leave him, Cheryl. He's a weak man, but he's a good man."

"You're right...on BOTH counts," Cheryl sighed. "Thanks, Max. For all of this."

"Do NOT thank me," Max demanded. "I'm not good at showing it, but I consider you two to be friends. The fact that I did nothing all this time while Emmett's problem grew, and risked letting him die of a heart attack, and didn't do a goddamned thing until THIS situation...for which I am PERSONALLY responsible for allowing to happen....doesn't say much good about me, Cheryl."

"I'm thanking you anyway, Max."

"You're welcome Cheryl," Max acknowledged with humble sincerity before demonstrating that Max Morgan was far more human than he believed himself to be, "but you're not keeping my fucking gym bag after you've spent all the money."

"You cheap bastard!" Cheryl joked, wiping tears from her eyes. "Why the hell not?"

"I can't allow non-terrestrial technology to get into the hands of life forms as warlike as humans," Max explained, suddenly becoming serious again. "My people have laws against that sort of thing. Humans aren't even supposed to know we exist. I'm taking a serious risk by 'outing' myself like this...and curing Emmett."

"But none of that explains why you won't let me keep the gym bag," Cheryl objected, succeeding in making Maximus Morgan laugh for the first time in ages.

"Because it's pretty," Max joined in, "and because as of now, no force on Earth can get into that bag, or even MOVE it, except YOU."

"Well now I have to have it," Cheryl declared, getting in one more gag before before speaking from her heart. "Max. if your 'people' are the 'them' you mentioned before, you don't need to worry. The fact that you want to fix something you feel responsible for...it DOES say good things about you."

"Does that mean you'll stop gossiping about my bizarre habits, and how I keep having strange accidents, like getting beaned by baseballs and accidentally sacked by my boys during practice?"

"Of course...but for the love of GOD, will you puh-LEASE tell me what's up with that?" Cheryl begged.

"The Earth is alive, Cheryl, and it doesn't want me here. Every now and again, a certain part of nature likes to make sure I haven't forgotten that."

"Wow," Cheryl sighed, putting THAT piece of information on the back burner to nibble on later. "Max, what are you?"

Max smiled.

"Until I know for sure that you really CAN handle all this, let's just say that I'm the filling of a very large, stale jelly donut that exists in another dimension, and holds onto your planet for dear life through a hole inside the marionette sitting at your table."

"What's it like in your....dimension?" Cheryl asked, scheduling a whole lot of time during the week to ponder Max's cryptic clues.

"The Earth was blown up long ago, the sun was turned into a kind of black hole that's been tugging on my ass for centuries, and my people and I are surrounded by an incomprehensible number of alien ships that keep us trapped where we are."

Cheryl didn't even know where to BEGIN with THAT answer, so she passed it up in favor of asking something more...human-related.

"Don't answer if you don't want to, Max, but why don't your people ...care?"

"That's the last one you get for now, right?" Max negotiated.

"Agreed."

"Imagine that you were once capable of traveling the stars, visit- ing countless planets and interacting with all the intelligent life you encountered there, spreading knowledge and universal brotherhood."

"Got it."

"Now imagine you're trapped on Earth, you can't leave, most of your technology has been rendered useless due to radical differences in the laws of physics, and instead of enlightened beings, you have to deal with...well ...uh..."

"I grew up in New York City, Max, and now I live in Timbersburg," Cheryl commiserated. "I understand perfectly."

"My people are unhappy," Max disclosed, "and a lot of them have lost hope...hope that someday we'll be able to escape our confinement and explore the universe once again. And sadly, their misery is making them unrecognizable from the noble beings they once were. Too few of them are worth a DAMN anymore...maybe none of 'em, and I can't help but feel responsible for it."

"Why?" Cheryl asked in spite of breaking her promise.

"Because I'm the one who led them here, Cheryl," Max said with profound sadness. "I'm their Moses."

Unnoticed by Cheryl, the screened plum tendril dropped out of Emmett's nose and went back up Steve's butt.

"MAX?" Emmett barked in surprise, shattering the somber moment and almost making Cheryl shriek again. "Where did YOU come from?"

"You and I have been talking for the last few minutes, Emmett," Max distorted. "You must've had a black out. Weird. You were talking and acting like you usually do. I never would've guessed you're trashed."

"Well, I feel stone sober now!" Emmett self-diagnosed, emanating a sort of tranquility. "Actually, I feel better than I have in a long time. I hope the feeling lasts into tomorrow. I have to call the superintendent and tell her about the situation with Jeremy Klein and Travis Anders."

"No you don't, Emmett," Coach Morgan informed him. "I talked with both men and smoothed everything over. The lawsuit isn't going to happen, and Travis Anders agreed to stay away from Weyerhauser, AND your home, as long as Grant is punished IN school...no suspension or expulsion."

"But...those naked pictures of Ryan on the internet," Cheryl spoke up. "He's sixteen. Isn't that child pornography?"

"Well, I did everything I'm supposed to do, except for calling Gladys," Emmett breezed, "so whatever happens now...happens. I've just got to figure out some way to stop this from ever happening again...besides banning students from having cell phones on school grounds. With all the school shootings going on, the parents won't stand for not being able to get in immediate contact with their children in case of an emergency."

"Emmett, I can make sure none of the students pull this crap ever again," Max offered. "And direct any parental questions or concerns my way. Reporters, too."

"Sure, thanks," Emmett acknowledged with uncharacteristic disinterest in knowing ALL the details, so he could obsess about them to the point of illness.

"But...Jeremy Klein can't possibly be okay with those pictures floating around on the internet, especially after Ryan dies!" Cheryl whispered to indicate just how morbid it would be.

Once again, Emmett Kemmler gave his wife a strange look.

"Hon, that probably won't be for decades," Emmett said with confused patience, "and I don't think Ryan will predecease BOTH of his parents, so what are you talking-?"

"There's been a rumor going around town that Ryan has a brain tumor," Max broke in. "I asked Jeremy and Ruth about it, and they said it was b.s."

"So how did you get Klein to drop the lawsuit?" Emmett probed, relieving Cheryl, who was DESPERATE to find out what Max had done at Jeremy Klein's house, but concerned about asking the question herself, since the answer probably involved the supernatural, and Cheryl didn't understand the limits of Max's beneficial hold over her husband.

"The boy wants to play football, so as of today, he's on the team. No tryout. If it causes a stir, I'll submit my resignation at a press conference where I'll recount the entire incident, take full responsibility for failing to prevent it, and announce that Jeremy Klein will be proceed- ing with his lawsuit against the school district. NONE of this will head in YOUR direction, Emmett. I won't ALLOW it."

"It won't go that far," Cheryl stated confidently. "All the biggest mouths on the P.T.A. are friends of mine, and once I tell them what will happen if Ryan doesn't play for the Woodpeckers, they'll all back us up. It's not like the district has 'money to burn'."

"It sure doesn't," Emmett agreed. "But Max, is that ALL Jeremy Klein wants? His firm usually negotiates for settlements a hell of a lot larger than a spot on a high school football team."

"We carry our high school experiences with us all our lives and the boy's weren't shaping up to be all that good," Max pontificated before turning towards Cheryl. "Decades from now, Jeremy Klein wants Ryan to be able to look back on these days fondly. For that, he's willing to give up whatever pittance he might get out of suing the school district. As for those pictures, they won't matter once I start training that boy hard, put some meat on his bones, and make him unrecognizable from the scrawny kid he is now."

"Thank you for caring enough to do this for us, Max," Cheryl responded, understanding what Max was REALLY saying, more or less, and returning his hidden message with one of her own.

"Just so you know, Emmett, the boy will be spending a lot of time with me on and off campus," Max sighed while standing up and pushing in his chair. "People will talk, as they always do around here. If it becomes necessary, you have my permission to let them know I'm asexual."

"Oh, I'll let them know something all right, but it won't be anything that violates your privacy, Max. Although, I gotta say, I never would've pegged you for an asexual."

"Yeah, 'cuz I'm so romantic," Max chuckled. "Timbersburg's always been so focused on waging war against its LGBTQ community that people here probably don't even know what asexual means. They'd probably target me anyway. Fortunately, guys and gals like me don't meet up in Ferret Forest and we don't have a bar, so I think I'm safe."

"You could've told me, Max," Emmett said warmly.

"Yeah, I know, Emmett. I'm trying to get better about opening up to people...but it's difficult for me. Well, I gotta go. Emmett...Cheryl...."

Coach Max Morgan walked back toward the locked gate, followed by the invisible naked boy and the sad-looking ghost in the wheelchair.

Emmett suddenly jerked in surprise and started wiping at his upper lip.

"Honey, what's wrong?" Cheryl inquired.

"I think a bug flew into me and exploded," Emmett chuckled while looking up to see if water had dripped down from the awning.

"Cheryl, tell Emmett that Ryan will be out of school for about five days to let the naked picture thing blow over," Max called over his shoulder. "Truth is, though, that's how long it'll take for the boy to get rid of the brain tumor...and go through some other changes."

"Are you making Ryan a courier?" Cheryl asked, not knowing if Emmett would hear her. He didn't.

"Yes," Max confirmed.

Cheryl smiled at the thought of Ryan's new and better future, which apparently included a "vast array of superpowers", and the ability to "carry a couple of hundred pounds".

Ryan Klein would soon be able to carry far more than THAT.

"Cheryl, is this stuff on my lip smoking???" Emmett asked, not nearly as panicked as he would've been before Max's 'alterations'.

"It's a powerful aphrodisiac," Max warned as he rounded the side of the house. "Better get him inside and turn up the TV. When I leave, the neighbors will be able to hear you two again."

And with that, The Steve-Guile screened the gate to Emmett and Cheryl Kemmler's back yard, allowing Maximus Morgan of the Tethered Ones to soundlessly disintegrate and reform it as he and his Thrall passed through and continued on their way.

Present Day. The telepathic security barrier of the Caleb Crandal-Lure.

"Come on! COME ON!" Guile grunted, pushing as hard as he could.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// WARNING: THE CALEB CRANDAL-GUILE IS ATTEMPTING TO GAIN ENTRY TO THE CALEB CRANDAL-LURE'S MIND WITHOUT PERMISSIONS! DESIST OR RISK PUNISHMENT! \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"The Caleb Crandal-Thrall is under psychic attack by the phenomenon designated Reality Itself!!!" Guile screamed, recalling every single one of his remote points of view to maximize his power in order to push through the barrier. "Immediate entry is requested and VITAL! The Caleb Crandal- Guile accepts all potential consequences, including termination, if my claim is proven false!"

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// OVERRIDING THE CALEB CRANDAL-GUILE'S TELEPATHIC AUTONOMY. CONTACTING MASTER LADISLAV KASCHAK. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"NO! The Caleb Crandal-Thrall recently suffered a near-catastrophic depletion of both physical and mental energy, and does not possess NEARLY enough stored Soul-Creation Energy to even BEGIN to replenish it. Wasting what little telepathic might this Guile presently possesses by making a futile effort to contact Master Kaschak just before this Guile engages in anticipated psychic warfare IS UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING STUPID!!! JUST LET ME IN!!!!!!!!!"

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// MONITORING SYSTEMS ARE SCANNING THE CALEB CRANDAL-GUILE'S MIND FOR INDICATIONS OF DECEPTION WITH THE INTENT TO MANIPULATE THIS MONITOR SYSTEM. 14% COMPLETE. NO DECEPTION DETECTED AT THIS POINT. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"While you're scanning and detecting things, how about scanning the Caleb Crandal-Thrall for Probability Spasm Residue, and the Caleb Crandal- Lure's brain-section for telepathic infection??? You know...SINCE YOU'RE BEING SO METHODICAL DURING AN EMERGENCY SITUATION! Let me ask you something important: IS EVERY THRALL SECURITY AND SURVIVAL PROTOCOL ACTUALLY SOME SORT OF SELF-DESTRUCT SYSTEM? It would certainly explain a few things, like: WHY WASN'T MY LURE FORCED TO ENDURE ANY OF THIS GODDAMNED RED TAPE BEFORE HE STARTED SLAMMING OUR HEAD INTO A TREE??? WELL??? ANSWER ME THAT, YOU USELESS TALKING FLOW CHART!!!!!

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// WARNING: MULTIPLE TELEPATHIC INFECTIONS DETECTED. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"Multiple?" Guile asked, instantly calming down. "How many infections do you-"

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"My monitors, which are capable of inflicting me with unbearable pain, are presently repeating the word 'emergency', over and over, instead of telling me exactly what the fucking emergency IS," Guile explained to no one as he experienced a supreme 'life moment'. "This bio monitor, which is STILL screaming EMERGENCY, by the way, was created by extradimensional aliens who, from what I've been reading about them in Lecher's file while listening to the word EMERGENCY spoken again and again, spent their immortal lives assimilating and disseminating the technologies of hundreds, if not thousands, of worlds....all of which contain intelligent life that apparently doesn't do anything except repeat the word *EMER-"

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// MASSIVE SOURCE OF CHRONOTON ENERGY DETECTED WITHIN THE CALEB CRANDAL-LURE BRAIN-SECTION. THE CALEB CRANDAL-GUILE IS ORDERED TO THE CALEB CRANDAL-LURE BRAIN-SECTION TO ASSESS THE SITUATION. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING," Guile repeated while waiting for the telepathic security barrier to slowly fade away. "ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING ASSESSING"

The ramshackle gazebo sat in the center of "Clearing 6", bathed in moonlight and surrounded by rotting picnic tables. It was a hauntingly beautiful tableau that spoke of how age and the setting of the sun can turn the innocence and imaginary security of childhood into adult anxieties and fear.

The artist rejected this interpretation. Ferret Forest had NEVER been 'innocent' and 'secure', and it had ALWAYS triggered 'anxieties' and 'fear', especially for twenty-seven men and boys.

"It is an awful place, and I don't see anything I'd ever want to sketch," Mike pondered, his mind once again drifting to the 'fearful anxiety' of what might be stalking him OUTSIDE the car to distract himself from the 'fear' and 'anxiety' Mike had concerning people INSIDE the car, like Grant, who'd once again taken to glancing at Mike in the rear view mirror and periodically turning his head back toward Mike just enough to display a menacing grin.

"Lure, if you're out there, before you kill me and feed on me, would you mind taking out the asshole with the slicked back black hair and his understudy, the guy with the buzzcut and the scraggly beard he doesn't know how to maintain?" Mike thought. "If it isn't any troub-LURE!!!!!!"

The figure jumped out of the woods and landed right in front of the vehicle. Tom once again utilized his talent for stomping on things to make the car stop, bouncing Kenny off the back of Grant's seat and making him yelp in pain.

A buck stood frozen in the headlights.

"Too bad my fuckin' rifle's in the trunk," Tom growled.

"Did he SERIOUSLY bring a RIFLE to go gay bashing?!" Mike asked himself in a state of shock. "Tom either doesn't understand how sentencing enhancements work, or he's planning on USING that rifle."

"I think he's a fag!" Grant chuckled at the unmoving buck.

"I think you're projecting again," Mike thought.

"I mean...THINK about it," Grant went on, cracking himself...and ONLY himself...the hell up. "If he isn't a fag, what the fuck is he doing HERE???"

The buck's head turned slightly, and it's frightened gaze almost appeared to be looking straight at Mike, as if it were afraid for him.

"The last thing I need right now is an omen," Mike pondered the instant before all three cell phones in the car suddenly came to life, blaring an emergency alert.

"THE FUCK?!?!?!" Tom shouted, jolted out of his hypnotic, murderous fantasy regarding the buck, who also snapped out of his trance and jumped back into the forest.

"HOLY SHIT!" Grant trumpeted after grabbing his phone and skimming the alert so that he'd be able to announce the information to everyone else in the car.

"Why didn't you just squeal: 'FIRST!' ?" Mike thought bitterly.

"WE WERE JUST FUCKING THERE!!!" Grant followed up, getting Mike's attention.

Kenny turned his painfully alarmed, bruised face toward Mike and mouthed the word "Lure" before handing him his cellphone.

Mike breathlessly read the alert.

"What the hell is Lure doing?" Mike thought guiltily as he read that the I-147 was now closed between the Lincoln Valley turnoff and State Route 5 due to an annoyingly vague 'emergency situation'. "And could I have stopped it?"

Mike's fingers flew across the screen as he scoured local news sites, message boards, and chat rooms to find out if his reluctance to report his unbelievable encounter with a monster had resulted in someone's grisly death.

Guile materialized inside Lure's mind...and promptly freaked!

"MWAHT UH HELL IH APPENING?!" Guile's slackened jaw and droopy lips screamed as he found himself standing on the huge back dock of the lake- side house (no longer a "home") of the Crandal family. "MWAHTS BUHN DUNN TUH MEEEEEE?????"

Guile is a being who exists as a hunk of gray matter in the skull of a transformed teenaged boy. Possessed of specific, limited telepathic abilities, Guile can project multiple duplicates of his consciousness out- side of the Thrall, and either manifest as a visual and aural hallucination for the benefit of his Lure, or use screens to make himself visible and audible to humans.

Guile's external points of view are no more than roving telepathic pinpoints. Guile does not have an actual body.

BUT NOW HE DID!!!!!!

Guile felt the cold wetness of his piss-soaked adult diaper against his penis and testicles (????), and the roughness of the wooden planks beneath his bare feet.

"YOU WILL NOT PANIC, AND YOU WILL NOT BEMOAN YOUR ENDLESS STREAM OF SETBACKS!" Guile screamed to himself. "YOU WILL ADJUST TO THIS, AND YOU WILL DEAL WITH THIS SITUATION WITHOUT RANTING....like I'm doing right now."

Guile tried to float into the air, but his feet stayed firmly on the ground. Then he tried to send points of view flying away from him in all directions, only for nothing to happen.

"I am inside a mental landscape that is simulating a physical environment, and forcing me to play along," Guile concluded. "I am bound by physical laws, like gravity, and I have no additional points of view. Since my Guile Archives do not contain a single case of a Guile FULLY entering the mind of his Lure, and since it is doubtful that a bad luck ghost, smart as it now seems to be, could completely 'rewire' the Thrall's telepathic operations systems, I'm guessing that my oh-so helpful monitors are limiting my capabilities here, to keep me from abusing this situation in order to gain power. A sensible precaution....since I WOULD....but unfortunately it also means that I have to fight Reality Itself with both arms tied behind my back while wearing a diaper than needs changing! I'd ask the monitor system to stop 'kneecapping' me, but AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT, and I'm terrified that it might have an Emergency MENTAL Survival Protocol waiting in the wings to """help""" me!"

Guile's bathrobe flapped in the breeze. Wind was coming off the lake, as it tended to do, but there was something different about it.

"I sense that the wind is being used to represent the telepathic infection," Guile analyzed. "It's coming from the other side of the lake."

Guile's eyes were fortunately not as limited as his body. They functioned like Lure's, allowing Guile to see, in spite of the darkness and distance, to the other side of the lake, where parties were being held in every back yard, save the house belonging to Rudolph Nash, of course. Boats full of revelers waved at the shore, to the people they knew, and the ones they didn't. The atmosphere was light...............over THERE, but as soon as the boats came around toward the Crandal house, they simply disappeared.

"I don't understand. If Lure is thinking about his party again, why am I not surrounded by underaged drinking, smoking, and drug use? And why isn't Lure RIGHT HERE?! This is HIS memory, after all! It can ONLY consist of what Lure saw and heard at this moment, yet not only is Lure not present for his own flashback...it reaches all the way across the lake! This doesn't make any sense!"

Thump

Guile whipped his head towards the sound of something landing on the dock behind him.

Guile didn't know whether to shriek with elation, or scream in terror.

"THRALL MASTER!!!" Guile pleaded, dropping to his knees before the gaunt, black haired man with angular features, hollow cheeks, and a dour expression that made his body look far older than the thirty years it was designed to simulate. "Thank you for coming to our aid! We are under attack by Reality Itself! It's acting intelligently! It drained our power and drove Lure insane, forcing him to attempt suicide before taking full control and attacking humans! What do you wish me to-"

Ladislav Kaschak stepped forward and walked right through Guile. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been surprising, but now that Guile had mass and density, he should've been kicked aside or trampled by his Master's passing.

"Master?" Guile called to the back of Ladislav Kaschak's black leather trench coat as he walked up the steps to the glass patio doors.

The monster rapped quickly on the glass, mimicking the knocking of a terrified woman who was desperately trying to let her son know that she was still alive, and needed Caleb to hurry downstairs and let her in before something HORRIBLE came up the steps and carried her away from him forever.

A light came on upstairs, and a few seconds later, Guile watched a mirror-image of himself stumble into the door, unlock and open it without looking, and suddenly squeal and babble incoherently as someone who wasn't his mother forced his way inside to make Caleb Crandal a hellish bargain that would only serve to exchange his damaged brain for a broken mind.

"This is.....so bad," Guile lamented, his hope for deliverance once again dashed.

The scenery around Guile shifted, becoming the setting for another of Caleb Crandal's many recent traumas. The lake house now had its post- party, tinted replacement windows, and snow covered the grounds.

Towards the edge of the property, in a small forest that served to provide a measure of privacy for the secretive, scandal-ridden Crandal family, the Enthralled Caleb Crandal, who now looked like a mirror-image of Lecher (sans erection), stood naked yet comfortable in the freezing cold, preparing once again to attempt to achieve sustained, controlled flight.

Caleb picked out a high, thick branch that looked as though it could withstand the required amount of strain. He raised his head, opened his mouth, and fired his tongue up at it, snagging the branch with practiced skill. Then, while continuing to hold the limb in a lingual death grip, Caleb retracted his tongue with all his might, sending himself into the air, rocketing at the limb. Just before impact, the silver tendril, faster by far than the speeding Thrall, zipped out of Caleb's ass and instantly turned the branch into a dust cloud.

Caleb's momentum carried him high above the treetops, by which point Caleb had sent his tongue down between his legs, up his back, and over his shoulders to form his flying harness (which vaguely resembled a crotchless mankini), which was then strapped down tightly against his body by several random, lightning fast windings of the ribboned violet tendril.

At the exact instant gravity attempted to pull Caleb's body back down through the trees, Caleb extended his tongue-harness outward, forming his clunky, makeshift wings.

Out on the deck, Guile groaned at the knowledge of what was about to happen next, while also keeping an eye out for anything unusual, as if the ground-bound Guile could actually DO anything if Reality Itself, what- EVER it looked like, showed up as something that could FLY!

"How can I POSSIBLY keep Reality Itself from getting to Lure when I don't know what form or forms Reality Itself can assume," Guile fretted, "and when Lure keeps disappearing and reappearing somewhere else as he jumps from bad memory to bad memory?!"

Caleb glided gracefully at first, soaring through the night sky and arcing out across the lake. But then, Caleb got careless and let his concentration lapse. His wings collapsed into a pair of tarps. Lecher could've salvaged the flight if Caleb would've given up control, but Caleb insisted on doing it himself, even if it meant plunging into the black, ice cold waters of Manjinankton Lake.

"STOP FIGHTING ME!!" Guile heard Lure wail like a petulant child.

But Lecher COULDN'T fight Caleb for control. Caleb was simply looking for someone to blame for his failure, as always.

"The only person who ever loved you was your mother, Lure," Guile sighed, "and for the life of me, I can't figure out how she managed to do it."

Guile turned away from the lake just before the Thrall's body smashed through a half inch of ice and descended approximately thirty feet. It had happened before...LOTS of times before...but this one was different. This was when Guile realized that Lure was going insane.

Instead of swimming thirty feet to the surface, Caleb swam thirty feet to the bottom...and inhaled. For twenty minutes, he waited to die. Lecher laughed hysterically, since of all ways to kill a Thrall, asphyxiation was the most difficult. After losing so many Thralls to mustard gas in WWI, the Thrall Masters ensured that it could NEVER happen again.

Guile knew that Master Kaschak was aware that Caleb wasn't quite sane, since one of Lecher and Guile's "special instructions" for handling their new Lure was to never, EVER tell him that his insides were connected extradimensionally to the innards of a monster. Therefore, Caleb never suspected that although his lungs were full of water, his altered blood cells were receiving oxygen from Caboose's hyper-pressurized air storage bladder. It would've taken DAYS for Caleb to drown, and long before then, the olive tendril would've emerged from Caleb's asshole and made a beeline for the surface to suck in air to replenish the bladder. And if it couldn't poke through the ice, the silver tendril, and possibly red tendril, would have followed...no matter what Caleb did to try to stop them.

When Caleb's psychotic rage faded, and he finally gave up and swam back home, Lecher tried to get Guile to join him in laughing at Lure's "suicide attempt", but Guile hadn't been in the mood. He knew that more would follow...more effective ones...and sure enough, by smashing his brain hard enough to interrupt the "blood" flow to his brain-section, Lure had FOUND a way to asphyxiate a Thrall.

As with all things, Caleb Crandal was used to getting his way.

"He's UNDERWATER right now!" Guile pondered in fearful awe. "How can this memory include events happening ABOVE the water? I admit that I don't fully understand how Lure's altered brain works, so maybe he's able to subliminally perceive everything happening within a half mile or so from his body. However, in the previous memory, he was still HUMAN, a BRAIN- DAMAGED human! Yet that memory fragment STILL stretched all the way to the other side of the lake!"

"Shit!" Guile spat as the scene shifted yet again, so subtly that he almost didn't notice. The only change, besides the position of the moon and the addition of seven more inches of show, was the presence of a color- ful, rainbow-themed gym bag, which sat, apparently abandoned, on the recently-snow shoveled dock.

A loud crash came from inside the lake house, followed by a cry of anguish, making Guile turn around just as Alan Richardson (Caleb's care- giver, groundskeeper, contractor, assistant, fake private investigator, and anything else Caleb needed him to be) emerged from an open garage door and hurried away from the house and onto the dock...unknowingly approaching Guile.

"Shit-shit-shit-shit-SHIT!" Alan muttered to himself in frustration while pacing unsteadily with his palms on his forehead, "Caleb told me not to trust Guile...told me he's a sneaky prick...so what do I go and do?! Stupid...Stupid...STUPID!!!"

"This...never...happened!" Guile whispered in astonishment. "I've never spoken to Alan! Lure won't even let me INTRODUCE MYSELF TO HIM! What the hell is happening?! THIS is no MEMORY! How is this POSSIBLE?!?!"

There was another loud crash in the house, followed by another of Caleb's cries of rage and emotional pain. Alan reacted by charging straight through Guile and running to the end of the dock, where he slipped on the ice and almost slid off the edge. As soon as he regained his footing, he balled his fists, looked up, and took a deep breath.

"OVERSEER!" Alan screamed up at the full moon, his fauxhawk and long goatee making him look like a rooster crowing at the wrong celestial body. "I NEED HELP! CALEB'S STILL MESSED UP OVER FAGGOT FOREST, AND GUILE JUST PISSED HIM OFF! HE'S LOSING IT! OVERSEER, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

"How conveniently coincidental, and statistically unlikely, that 'Alan' would just happen to choose THIS moment to mention Faggot Forest in the past tense, while referring to me in the present tense," Guile thought, satisfied that this was nothing more than a trick.

Guile adjusted his sight, hearing, telepathy, and a few other inhuman senses to keep watch over the lake house, convinced that Alan was just a distraction so that Reality Itself could enter and get at Lure's mental essence.

Alan suddenly jolted and gasped in surprise, putting Guile on high alert in spite of the fact that Guile couldn't read Alan's active thoughts, which definitively marked him as a harmless memory phantom...a recording... an intangible playback of whatever Alan Richardson had been doing when this event occurred.......or maybe, impossible as it seemed, what Alan WOULD BE DOING when this event occurred!

Alan came out of whatever he'd just experienced and immediately wrinkled his nose and reached up to scrub his excessive goatee...as if he'd just been possessed by something that had never worn one before. Then he felt around Alan's fauxhawk with a bemused smirk.

"Good evenings, Reality Itself," Guile quipped humorlessly, using telepathy, since A.)something capable of possessing a human mind HAD to be telepathic, and B.) thanks to Caleb Crandal's brain damage, Guile was incapable of talking.

Alan's eyes widened in shock.

"He said 'good evenings'," Alan announced thoughtfully, staring off into space. "He was making a joke about how Caleb's mind was cycling through a bunch of bad memories that all took place at night. And when he said it, he was standing right...over...."

Alan turned towards Guile.

"THERE!" Alan yelled triumphantly. "You're standing RIGHT THERE!"

"Ooooooooookaaaaaaaay," Guile patronized while returning Alan's slightly misdirected gaze. "I have to say that this is a bit disappointing. After all the trouble you've been causing me tonight, I was expecting a mastermind, not a whackjob."

Guile wished he'd been able to bring Lecher's remote point-of-view. In addition to confirming that Alan's unfocused eyes weren't truly looking AT Guile, Lecher would've had a lot of amusing things to say about Alan's behavior that would've lightened the mood a bit.

"He...YOU sarcastically stretched out the word 'okay' and then called me a whackjob," Alan established. "It will interest you to know that the memory of you saying that didn't EXIST until you said it JUST NOW, which means you and I are REALLY INTERACTING, which means I SERIOUSLY CAN CHANGE WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT!!!!"

"Yes, very interesting indeed," Guile confirmed sardonically. "I am definitely interested in your buffoonish behavior, emotional immaturity, and mental instability."

Alan didn't laugh, but his smile stretched from ear to ear.

"Greetings from five days in the future, Guile of the Caleb Crandal Thrall, servant to Thrall Master Ladislav Kaschak of the Tethered Ones, and owner of a seriously long name!" Alan happily orated with mock formality.

"It is not a name, it is a designation," Guile spat, finding nothing amusing about Reality Itself's antics. "All those words, yet none of them individualize ME....they just indicate my station, my Lure's human identity, and honor my MASTER'S 'seriously long name'! And speaking of ME, although you've had MORE than sufficient time to wake or kill Lure, you have not done so. Logically, all of this is about getting ME here, so why don't you cut the shit and TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, REALITY ITSELF?!"

"I'm sorry, but I need to go geek out for a second," Alan casually informed Guile, unphased by his hostility.

"Yes...of course," Guile replied, sneering in contempt, as best he could. "Please take your time and have fun making MORE of an ass of your- self than you already have."

"Thanks, I will!" Alan giggled. "If you get bored, you could scan Alan Richardson for Probability Spasm Residue. You won't find any, though, since...I'M NOT REALITY ITSELF!"

"WHAT?!?!?!?!" Guile demanded, painfully chipping off metaphorical gear teeth as he shifted his perceptions without a clutch.

"I'M FUCKING DOING IT!" Alan screamed, throwing his arms in the air with so much enthusiasm that he pulled his layered shirts right out of his beltless jeans. "I'M CHANGING THE MOTHERFUCKING PAST!!"

Alan hooted, hollered, and pumped his fist hard enough to yank his right arm out of its socket. And the instant Guile's altered perception confirmed who WASN'T in control of Alan Richardson's body, Guile SERIOUSLY considered JOINING HIM!

"I must find out WHO this is, WHAT he is capable of, WHAT those capabilities can do for ME, and HOW BEST to manipulate him into helping me!" Guile plotted, choosing to celebrate as a Guile instead of adopting Alan's human method. "But most important of all, I must find out how I end up surviving Master Kaschak's wrath and how I am fated to get Lure under control -albeit temporarily, it seems- once he revives. I have no idea how this being is projecting himself through time, but if he has no ability to reach outside of Lure's mind, he will require my help to change whatever it is that he needs to be changed. That gives me leverage that I must use carefully."

"THIS IS SO FUCKING INCREDIBLE!" Alan hollered while continuing to spazz. "I'M ACTUALLY MESSING WITH TIME!! I'M A FUCKING GOD!! I CAN DO..... ...ANYTHING!!!!!!"

"In that case, I challenge him to calm the hell down, manifest some humility, and stop tearing up Alan's larynx," Guile thought with patient impatience.

"Since it seems that you are NOT who you claim NOT to be, I must agree that you have INDEED achieved something extraordinary," Guile ass- kissed, forcing himself to act as a true, non-defective Guile would. "Even the Tethered Ones, godlike beings themselves, who can casually shatter the barrier between THIS dimension and theirs, have NEVER managed to do what YOU'VE just done! Fracturing TIME is indeed a spectacular accomplishment... .....my friend."

Alan smiled at Guile, or more accurately, in his direction. There was a knowing quality to the expression, as if Alan's puppeteer was letting Guile know that manipulating him wouldn't be THAT easy.

Another loud crash from inside the house turned Alan's smile into a chuckle.

"Break, break, and break on the lake," Alan's controller joked while reaching up under Alan's shirt and rubbing Alan's flat, washboard stomach. "Guile, my mind has acclimated to this unusual situation, so let's speed things up. Go ahead a say something as fast as you're comfortable communicating."

"But...but we're time-gapped by five days, right?" Guile argued. "I don't even know how you're hearing my thoughts at THIS speed."

"Please just do it," Alan's ventriloquist requested with the tiniest hint of the same tone Guile used whenever Lecher questioned him instead of just immediately following orders.

"Is this too fast for you?" Guile asked at his top Hypertime speed.

"Pardon how arrogant this sounds, but you CAN'T speak fast enough to lose me," Alan said while kneeling down on the dock and unzipping the rainbow-themed gym bag.

A swarm of metallic orbs, each the size of a golf ball, rose from the bag, drifted apart, and formed the edges of a 7' cube.

"It's...a screen," Guile immediately guessed. "But instead of being created via telepathic trickery, it must use technology to create actual, lifelike, holographic images inside the cube.

The orbs cloaked themselves, and a perfect holographic twin of Alan appeared.

"CORRECT!" the holographic Alan called out like a game show host before suddenly speaking, and MOVING, in Hypertime.

"If you and I weren't time-gapped by five days, we could mind-link and finish this conversation in seconds," Holo-Alan lectured. "But since 'we ARE time-gapped, Blanche, we ARE'.....'

The "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" reference sailed right over Guile's head.

"....and Alan's mouth can't talk at Hypertime speeds, I created a holographic Alan who CAN. We'll have to hurry up and finish our conversation before Caleb gets done using his silver tendril to obliterate all the crappy bargain basement and flat pack furniture his father and his new wife bought to refurnish the lake house in preparation for selling it. Once Caleb's done, he'll start to calm down, this memory will become less traumatic, and this scene will switch to one of Caleb's OTHER traumas, ending our 'phone call' whether we're done talking or NOT."

"I...uh...apologize for my rudeness a moment ago," Guile blurted, seeking to suck-up. "Um....unless Alan was just yelling at some other non-corporeal being in the sky, I believe you are called....'Overseer'?"

"I am the Overseer," Holo-Alan acknowledged with a nod. "And don't worry about being rude. You thought I was Reality Itself, and treated him exactly as everyone SHOULD."

"Oh....Reality Itself is a 'him'?" Guile questioned politely.

"Yes, your Lecher made him a penis out of a pool floater," Holo- Alan joked, giving Guile vital information.

"Uh...well...I certainly share your dislike for Reality Itself," Guile concurred. "He's causing me a LOT of problems...which I'm certain you already know, since at this moment you are accessing my future self's memories. That's the only way you could possibly know about my conversation with Lecher concerning our Pilot Fish's lack of gender, as well as the only way you could instantly know and respond to thoughts of mine that are, from YOUR perspective, happening NOW, yet are actually five days old."

"Impressive," Holo-Alan complimented with a hyper-fast slow clap.

"Basic," Guile contradicted. "Please allow me to speak with myself, and in return, I will do anything you ask, provided I'm able."

"No."

"May I please ask why?" Guile stated kindly despite experiencing a blinding wave of rage and frustration.

"Well, one reason is because he...you...are very busy right now," Holo-Alan answered before dramatically spreading his arms wide. "Can't you see how HUGE this memory fragment is???"

"Yes I had noticed that," Guile said in a friendly tone while FIGHTING to keep from forming any angry thoughts that Holo-Alan would receive in five days, or for all intents and purposes, now. "I am a bit curious about that."

"You and Caleb are mentally connected, when he allows it," Holo- Alan explained. "If he had ANY interest in his powers beyond flying and killing, he would know that if he WANTED to, he could see through the eyes of one of your remote points of view, OR ALL OF THEM AT ONCE. Right now, your future self has points of view spaced out all OVER Manjinankton Lake, and I'm forcing Caleb's brain to process the images, even though he isn't consciously aware of the input. The end result? A PANORAMIC MEMORY! And just as I calculated, by forcing THIS memory fragment to expand, I established a format that was forced onto all the OTHER memory fragments, even the ones from before Caleb Crandal became a Thrall."

"How? If Lure didn't have his powers when some of these memories were formed, and he didn't actually witness the events that took place outside of his field of vision, his brain simply wouldn't contain the data necessary to reconstruct those events here."

"No, but Reality Itself has that data," the Overseer explained. "He knows everything about the biosphere's history."

"But...we're talking about LURE'S memories, not REALITY ITSELF'S," Guile disputed, racking his brain section to keep up with the Overseer.

"And where IS Reality Itself right now, in relationship to Caleb Crandal?" the Overseer asked, his erratic mood suddenly lightening up as he sought to illuminate Guile.

"He's...inside the mind of someone who is barely human, and there- fore barely natural," Guile deduced. "And since he needed Craig's Entanglement just to enter, and continues to need it to remain here, I'm guessing that his violation of Lure's mind is causing all sorts of unintended consequences."

"Exactly!" the Overseer praised excitedly. "In spite of Reality Itself's recently-acquired intelligence, he's still as 'flighty, unfocused, and disorganized' as ever. I didn't create this time loop, HE did! The moron went and stuck a nuclear reactor inside a carved pumpkin that was retrofitted by fucking ALIENS, but he still expected the end result to be a typical JACK-'O-LANTERN!"

"I understand what you're saying, Overseer," Guile reluctantly acknowledged, "but how exactly does the mental invasion of a cum vampire by a bad luck ghost...create a time loop???"

"Reality Itself isn't just a 'bad luck ghost', he's a powerful being who was created as the result of Earth's rising population. Life protects life, particularly intelligent life. At first, Reality Itself was simply an immune system that guarded the biosphere from microscopic extraterrestrial and extradimensional microbes. But when the Masters arrived, Reality Itself went into a state of hyper-evolution in a hopeless attempt to become something that could kill the Tethered Ones. All the bad luck attacks on the Masters? That was Reality Itself...evolving."

"And what did he become?" Guile forced himself to ask, needing the answer, but not wanting it.

"For limited periods, Reality Itself can become human. He can think, plan, and focus his ENORMOUS power. Worse, his ability to alter probability has morphed into the power to see the future, more or less. His short-range predictions are almost always correct, but his long-range predictions are less reliable. Please remember that, since the reason I'm doing all this is because he will manipulate you into believing that one of his long-range predictions is an absolute certainty, and trick you into doing exactly what he wants."

"What is the prediction?" Guile inquired, noting with interest that the Overseer was trying to manipulate Guile with trigger words while warning him of Reality Itself's manipulations.

To employ such an obvious tactic against a Guile implied desperation.

"So we HAD a plodding, automatic system that could mindlessly alter statistics, control the weather, and control all of Earth's plant and animal life," the Overseer continued, ignoring Guile's question. "And now we HAVE an intelligent individual who can do all that AND become a copy of any human he contaminates with his Probability Spasm Residue AND see the future, sorta. But fortunately, because everything is in a state of flux between your time and my time as a result of this time loop, Reality Itself's fortune telling is offline. If you'd like tonight to be more of a challenge, however, you could always restore Reality Itself's ability to see the future by allowing him to find out about the time loop so he can shut it down."

"May I tell Lecher?" Guile questioned. "It might be necessary. He questions everything."

"If you HAVE to, but only discuss it telepathically," the Overseer instructed. "You two are too unnatural for him to eavesdrop on your mental transmissions. Also, if Lecher opens Caleb's yap and starts spilling his guts.....FRY HIS ASS! FAST! FUCK YOUR PROMISE!"

"Agreed."

"So, to finish up my explanation of the time loop," the Overseer announced, making his holographic image of Alan appear to take a huge breath, "Thralls were designed to channel all sorts of energy, both the common kinds, like heat, vibration, gravity, and electricity, as well as exotic forms, like Soul-Creation Energy, extradimensional light, and what- ever the hell the lime green and pink tendrils use. Somehow, the temporal energy Reality Itself is putting off is being conducted through Caleb's brain-section in such a way that Caleb is seeing THIS moment, five days in his future."

Guile was admittedly intrigued by the Overseer's lecture, but at no point during it had he stopped trying to figure out a way to talk to his future self.

"It's a bit of a non sequitur, but I'd like to make a suggestion. If you could spare but ONE of my points of view and bring him HERE, he and I could synch our movements so that you wouldn't have to guess at my location, expressions, and reactions."

"Hmmm, that would be helpful," the Overseer mocked, stepping forward in his invisible cage until he was face-to-face with Guile...more or less, "but there's a problem."

Since Guile knew that the Overseer was about to fuck with him, he made no effort to inquire as to the nature of the problem.

Holo-Alan put his straightened right hand to the left side of his mouth, melodramatically suggesting that he was going to tell Guile a secret.

"You see, I really trust YOU...like...COMPLETELY! But that OTHER you...the one from MY time...he's a SNEAKY BASTARD. I know this will come as a shock, but I caught him preparing a statement for you that contained oodles of coded secret information about the future that would've jeopardized all of my plans."

The Overseer became dead serious....

"Five days ago, MY Guile went into Caleb's mind and appeared in the living room, face to face with Reality Itself. While Caleb hovered in the air, screaming as he relived his transformation, Craig Byrne went back and forth between trying to deck the intangible memory phantom of Ladislav Kaschak, and trying to pull Caleb to safety. It was utter chaos. You asserted what little power you had over Caleb's broken mind to create a bubble around you and Reality Itself. You lied and told him that it was so the two of you could have your confrontation in peace, but the REAL reason you did it was to prevent Reality Itself from attacking Caleb's mental essence or waking him from his coma, neither of which was EVER his plan."

"What IS his plan?" Guile implored.

"To have Michael Pearson, his unwitting agent, unintentionally expand and intensify your emotions, so that Reality Itself can work you by exploiting your fear, anger, frustration, helplessness, self- pity, and depression.

"As long as he doesn't try to manipulate me by working or preying upon my pride, I should be okay," Guile commented, using his patented tricky phrasing to let the Overseer know that Guile was on to him.

Holo-Alan's brows knitted with concern.

"This isn't a joke," the Overseer informed Guile. "There's a LOT riding on the decisions you make tonight-"

"Such as?" Guile asked, requesting information that he suspected the Overseer would not provide.

"Well, your LIFE, for one," the Overseer replied, proving Guile correct. "After your little speech in the woods, I would've thought that you'd take all of this seriously."

"It wasn't a speech, it was a heartfelt vow," Guile clarified. And I must respectfully inform you that since you are unwilling to show me your cards, as a Guile, I am forced to make decisions based upon the information I do possess, which is substantial, since you foolishly over- played your hand."

"Did I?" the Overseer said coldly.

"Yes," Guile stated with confidence. "I now know that when I confront Reality Itself, I can simply capitulate, which somehow ensures my survival. You may recall that 'survival' was the primary theme of my 'little speech in the woods'."

"You'll never get Caleb under control without my help," the Over- seer warned. "His mental erosion has been getting worse ever since you made the wrong decision!"

Guile masterfully stoked the flames even higher, knowing that anger makes it harder to craft lies, and easier to accidentally blurt out the truth.

"According to Alan's outburst, and the sound of the silver tendril attacking particleboard, you either failed to help Lure, or you didn't even try. I suspect the latter, since Alan implied that he hasn't seen you for a while, and the only way he has to get in touch with you is to scream at the sky."

"No, you're misinterpreting everything!" the Overseer yelled, watching his plans disintegrate.

"Then set me straight," Guile invited, holding his arms out, palms up, to indicate his willingness to listen to the things that the Overseer wasn't willing to tell him. "If you know enough about Guiles to know that we're 'sneaky little bastards', then you must ALSO know that we take noth- ing at face value and we're incapable of blind faith."

Holo-Alan's face was filled with frustration.

"A brief conversation with myself-"

"NOT HAPPENING!" the Overseer completely rejected.

"Well, I suppose you could use your screen to show me exactly how my meeting with my Master goes," Guile speculated.

"That meeting occurs after you make the wrong decision!" the Overseer snarled. "Why would I show that to you, when you'd just use that knowledge to betray me?"

"I was intending to do exactly that," Guile confessed before sigh- ing. "It almost worked, too. Not bad for a defective Guile."

"You're not defective!" the Overseer grumbled. "You keep SAYING that, but it's not true!"

"Not that I don't appreciate the kind words, Overseer," Guile casually condescended, skillfully hiding his HUNGER to know exactly what the Overseer meant by Guile not being defective. "But flattery doesn't work on-"

"KASCHAK NEEDED A THRALL TO ACT AS BOTH SPY AND ASSASSIN!" The Overseer raged. "Reality Itself messed with probability and turned Caleb Crandal into the perfect candidate for the job. However, after Kaschak took the bait and Enthralled Caleb, Kaschak discovered that there was NO WAY IN FUCK that Caleb could be trained well enough to either surveil or kill the target."

"One of Maximus Morgan's Thralls, no doubt," Guile mumbled while pondering the Overseer's information and deciding that he was telling the truth. Why else would Master Kaschak reduce Guile's telepathy to make him undetectable by other Thralls, as Guile had deduced earlier? It made perfect sense.

"Look," the Overseer continued. "Your Guile Archives are virtually EMPTY, your telepathy is LAUGHABLE, and Mike Pearson messed you up EMOTIONALLY, but-"

"I'm glad you cycled back to the subject of Michael Pearson," Guile interrupted, "I heard what you said about him altering my emotions, but my mind was on other things, so I stuck a pin in that topic with the inten-"

"BUT I CAN FIX ALL THAT!" the Overseer soldiered on. "I can make you as good as any other Thrall! All I need in exchange is-"

"HOW?" Guile interrupted once again. "No matter how powerful you may be, there's no way you could possibly have the knowledge necessary to telepathically repair a Thrall of the Tethered Ones. I'm starting to worry that the reason you won't let me talk to myself is because you tried to fix my Thrall...and failed horribly! That would certainly explain Lure's present activities."

"You know, I'm fucking up my negotiation with you because I spent all my time on other aspects of my plan," the Overseer said regretfully, Holo-Alan's head and shoulders slumping. "I don't suppose it would help if I told you that I can give you more influence over your Thrall...make Caleb bend to your will."

"It would not," Guile answered truthfully, "since your claims and promises of a new and better life for me are being muffled by the sound of your still-afflicted patient tearing his family home to pieces. I'm honestly starting to wonder if you can do anything except possess humans and operate a mechanical imitation screen."

"I can also remove the vine that's slowly creeping around your neck," the Overseer exhaled while struggling to think of a way to hoist himself out of the hole he'd dug for himself by believing that recruiting a depressed and miserable Guile to his cause would be easy."

"My, that remark was certainly...random," Guile commented.

"If you and I fail to come to an agreement, would you do me a favor?" the Overseer smoldered. "If you live until August 17th, remember that 'random' comment as you watch the sunset from the roof of the Timbers- burg Courthouse."

"I will," Guile promised, "and if the comment ends up meaning some- thing, I will take solace in knowing that in spite of what my Master and Michael Pearson did to me, I rejected whatever offer you intended to make, as every Guile ever created would and should. I believe we are at an impasse, Overseer, so I will now go inside, guard my Lure, and await Reality Itself's arrival.

"OVERSEER!" Real-Alan screamed, pulling Guile and the Overseer out of Hypertime. "LET ME GO!!!"

Alan stumbled and almost fell as the Overseer returned his control over his own body.

The sounds of destruction from the lake house were deafening.

"What are you DOING to me?!" Alan demanded, "I'm fucking FREEZING.. ...I couldn't move!"

"I'm sorry, Alan, I forgot about you," the Overseer consoled. "Look, get in your car and turn on the heater. DON'T go back inside the house!"

"Why'd you take control of me?" Alan interrogated, pulling his arms inside his layers of shirts and rubbing his core frantically. "And why're my shirts out of my pants? Were you rubbing my abs again or something? What's goin' ON?! First Guile offers me Pit Fog and gets me high...then I'm naked, and Caleb's fighting himself to stop from feeding on me.....but Guile's taunting and tempting him....and Lecher's doing that eye-lock thing with Caleb to make him lose control..."

"Alan-Alan-Alan-Alan, please stop talking," the Overseer interjected. "PLEASE just go to your car and warm up! I'll explain later, I promise!"

"He says that a lot," Guile noted for the Overseer's benefit, since Alan could neither see nor hear Guile.

"Do you HEAR Caleb in there?" Alan shouted over the din while look- ing at the Overseer, who was still duplicating Alan within his screen. "Go fix him before he tears the whole house down! AND STOP LOOKING LIKE ME!"

The Overseer instantly transformed into a young man in a faded yellow t-shirt and jeans. His nose was kinked from multiple breaks and his right ear was cauliflowered. Bruises covered his face and the exposed areas of his arms.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" Alan shrieked, "WHY THE FUCK DID YOU TURN INTO HIM?!?!"

"Because I can't get you to listen to me and go to your fucking car and warm up!!!" Holo-Kenny Miller shrieked back at him.

"Well THIS is certainly interesting," Guile thought, focusing past Caleb's explosive meltdown and giving Alan and the Overseer his FULL attention.

"Alan, listen! I'm talking to Guile! It's about Faggot Forest-"

"Why'd you make Caleb feed on me!" Alan shouted into the darkness, moving his head around, since he didn't know exactly where Guile was.

"BECAUSE I TOLD HIM TO!" Holo-Kenny yelled impatiently.

"WHY???" Alan griped, snapping his head at Holo-Kenny with a look of betrayal on his face...before quickly looking away from him with an expression of guilt and shame.

"Because right after Caleb's transformation into a Thrall, he tried to fight off his cravings, and ended up losing control and feeding on you against your will!"

"He promised he wouldn't tell ANYONE about that!" Alan raged. "That's none of your fucking BUSINESS! Which one of us did you MIND RAPE to find out about that???"

"Alan, I needed Caleb to lose his shit tonight, and having him feed on you, after he fucking PROMISED he'd never touch you again, was the surest way to do it! Now just GO to your CAR! I'll tell you EVERYTHING, in FIVE....FUCKING....MINUTES!"

"WHY WON'T YOU JUST TELL ME NOW?!?" Alan screamed, triggering a painful-sounding series of deep, hoarse coughs, the result of the Over- seer's ealier abuse of Alan's throat in the bitter cold.

Holo-Kenny brought his hands to his head in frustration and paced back and forth a couple of times. The body language was all too readable... and all too human. The Overseer was not emotionally well. Like Caleb, both Alan and the Overseer were coming apart, and from what Guile could tell, it all tied back to whatever happened...will happen...at Faggot Forest.

As soon as Alan stopped coughing, he drew breath to speak, but his vocal cords wouldn't engage. The Overseer wouldn't let them.

"Alan, do you remember when I showed you Guile's confrontation with Reality Itself? You know, about an hour or so before Kenny got killed?" Holo-Kenny asked quickly, fighting for every second.

Alan nodded emphatically, visibly upset at being silenced by the Overseer's power.

Holo-Kenny disappeared, and the inside of the Overseer's mechanical screen turned into the interior of Caleb's bedroom. Caleb was there (clutching his head and screaming), as was Craig. Guile and Reality Itself were still inside Guile's bubble, engaged in what appeared to be a heated discussion.

"For an INSTANT, just a fucking INSTANT, THIS memory fragment flashed by!" the Overseer's voice explained, sounding almost crazed. "Reality Itself didn't realize its significance, but GUILE DID! Alan, LOOK AT THE TIME AND DATE ON THE ALARM CLOCK!"

Alan pulled out his phone to confirm what he was seeing.

"I knew the date, but now I know the TIME on the Overseer's end of the time loop," Guile noted, his brain section STARVING for information about this life or death (HIS!) series of events, and hoping that Alan's confused mania would cause the Overseer to drop his guard even further and dish the dirt for Guile's feasting ears!

"When Caleb was having traumatic flashbacks, Reality Itself's power caused him to have one traumatic flash-FORWARD....to RIGHT NOW!" the Over- seer went on. "And considering that today is the day I finally worked out how to FIX him, and in the flash-forward he's screaming 'GET OUT OF MY HEAD', I think I'M the one who originally CAUSED tonight's freak-out in the first place!"

Caleb's bedroom disappeared, and once again, a holographic double of Alan stood on the dock.

"Alan, I needed Caleb to feed on you because his feelings of help- lessness and rage, combined with what happened at Faggot Forest, are intensifying his meltdown and making the time breach LAST LONGER!"

"But....WHY?" Alan croaked, suddenly able to talk, painfully, but far too confused and overwhelmed to think.

Holo-Alan pointed roughly in Guile's direction.

"Because Guile is standing right THERE...the Guile from FIVE DAYS AGO...before Faggot Forest even HAPPENED! He's in Caleb's mind, and Reality Itself hasn't GOTTEN TO HIM YET!"

Tears started pouring down Alan's face.

"Can he save him?" Alan choked out, staring in Guile's general direction with an expression of hope and desperation that seemed too child- like to be on the face of a young man in his early-twenties.

"I'M TRYING TO CONVINCE HIM, BUT YOU WON'T FUCKING GO TO YOUR GOD- DAMNED CAR AND WARM-UP!"

"Why do you have to CONVINCE him?!" Alan asked desperately after clearing his throat. "You're the Thrall Overseer. Doesn't that mean he HAS to do-?"

"FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, ALAN, I DIDN'T WANT HIM TO KNOW THAT!" Alan's duplicate screamed.

"Oopsie," Guile taunted, although this new wrinkle troubled Guile deeply. What the HELL was a 'Thrall Overseer'?"

Distracting Guile even further, Alan suddenly forced his cold, uncooperative hands to pull down his zipper and tug at his underwear until Alan's frozen, shriveled, recently-abused penis was exposed to the icy wind coming off the lake.

"SAVE KENNY...AND IT'S YOURS....COUGH!....ANY TIME YOU WANT...I DON'T FUCKING CARE!" Alan promised, wiping away tears with the back of his hand and forcing himself to yell over Caleb's destruction in spite of how painful it was, for both speaker and listeners. "TELL HIM I'M SORRY FOR HELPING CALEB! COUGH-COUGH "I DIDN'T KNOW HIS DAD WOULD COUGH BEAT HIM, OR ABOUT HIS GRANDDAD DYIN', OR WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE 4TH OF JULY-"

All of a sudden, Alan straightened up, put his dick back inside of his underwear, and hurried off the dock and up the walkway to his car with- out even bothering to zip up.

The Overseer's patience had run out, but he was determined not to let his TIME run out, too.

"You'll have to excuse Alan, he's having trouble forgiving himself for playing a part in Kenny Miller's murder," the Overseer explained in Hypertime.

"SHOULD he forgive himself?" Guile put forward. "Alan might not be responsible for the beating Kenny received as a result of Alan calling the Millers and pretending to be a private investigator looking into the attack on Caleb, but the fact remains that Alan DID know that Caleb intended to MURDER those boys and he did NOTHING to prevent it...and OBVIOUSLY, somehow Caleb SUCCEEDS tonight, although to be quite honest, I have ABSOLUTELY no clue HOW!"

"YEAH, you DON'T know how it all went down," the Overseer agreed.

"Perhaps not, but I do know that the ending involves Alan continuing to work for Caleb even AFTER he kills Kenny, instead of quiting in protest and accepting his dismal fate as an unqualified and incompetent handyman. But there he is, sitting in a sick sports car that someone like him couldn't POSSIBLY afford without dealing on the side...or helping Caleb Crandal deceive his father into thinking that he's still the brain-damaged victim of a horrible beating, who starts to seize uncontrollably if anyone attempts to remove him from this godforsaken COFFIN OF A HOUSE!"

"STOP TALKING!" the Overseer blurted. "We have a situation!"

"I'm sorry, 'Thrall Overseer', but until my Master confirms your authority over me, I have no intention of obeying your commands. NO Guile would!"

"I order you NOT to extend your vision all the way to the other side of the lake!" the Overseer tempted. "And I absolutely FORBID you from looking around the Maddens' back yard."

"WHAT AM I SEEING?" Guile demanded at the sight of Craig Byrne, fully erect and squatting down to mount Robbie.

"Reality Itself transformed into Robbie in order to coerce Craig, his telepathic ANCHOR here, into swimming across the lake with him," the Thrall Overseer explained. "but Robbie's sexuality overpowered him."

"Then the personality of Reality Itself's template is a weakness?" Guile speculated.

"Exactly!" the overseer confirmed. "QUICKLY! The scene over there is going to change to one of the others! Since Caleb is incapacitated, you have the power to take control and keep it...and the lake...locked on July Fourth! Concentrate HARD and DO IT! Otherwise, Reality Itself might be able to get over here by walking across the ice, and until we're done talking, that is the LAST thing we want. And get rid of the wind over there, too!"

"I want a raise, 'BOSS'," Guile griped, pushing his mental mastery to its absolute limit....and secretly loving it!"

"I can do a hell of a lot more than just giving you a raise."

Guile was about to ask for specifics and metaphorically stuff the Thrall Overseer's 'suggestion box' far beyond its capacity...as well as its safety limits, but all of a sudden, Guile noticed something very wrong.

"Rudy Nash is at that party, but Matilda Madden HATES homosexuals, especially HIS mincing, nelly ass!" Guile sleuthed. "And he's not behaving like a memory phantom, either!"

"He prefers to be called 'Ruby', although he'll claim that the gay community around here, whoever the hell THAT is, insists on calling him Ruby against his wishes," the Overseer corrected. "And try to treat my secret weapon against Reality Itself with a little more respect, please."

"Your WHAT?!"

"In addition to delaying your confrontation with Reality Itself, Ruby is the OTHER reason I expanded the memory fragments all the way to the other side of the lake. Ruby was at home during EVERY ONE of these events, so he won't disappear if he's part of a scene that suddenly changes into one of the others."

"But...memory phantoms are just...footage!" Guile argued. "Ruby appears to be self-aware and acting independently!"

"Because I've spent the last five days preparing his mind for this, as well as filling his head with all that's known about Reality Itself, the Tethered Ones, Thralls, the story of what happened at Faggot Forest, and his part in my plan to change it."

"You actually TRUST that gossipy old queen with all THAT?!" Guile gasped before adding: "Sorry, force of habit."

"I'm the Thrall Overseer, I don't trust ANY human with our secrets, even Entangleds, since we LIVE in the age of hidden cameras and listening devices. Even after you and I meet in person, and I fix your deliberately pathetic mind powers, you are NOT to use psychic dams when dealing with humans who know too much about us. You summon ME to deal with it. Security is MY area, not YOURS."

"Good luck with your 90 day job performance evaluation after the Master watches Ruby's interview on MSNBC," Guile snarked.

"Ruby is Information-Locked," the Overseer explained.

"Predictably, that term is not contained within my Guile Archives," Guile informed the Overseer.

"Probably because I just now invented it to describe my process of preventing a human from discussing cum vampire-related matters outside of the presence of a Guile using a screen to make himself perceptible. In addition to monitoring the human's active thoughts for indications of trickery, that Guile will also take full responsibility for sending out points-of-view to search the area for eavesdroppers and surveillance equipment."

"Funny," Guile noted. "In spite of telling me that security is YOUR area, it really kind of sounds as if it's MY area."

"Funny," the Overseer noted right back, "After ten weeks of supreme BOREDOM, mostly ignored and underutilized by Caleb, I would've thought that the extra responsibilities would appeal to you."

"Oh, they do," Guile acknowledged offhandedly. "But getting back to your fascinating choice of secret agent, who I'm tempted to call 'Double O- zero', what qualifies Ruby Nash, an effeminate, overweight senior who-"

"...Who's read LOADS of science fiction, he's BORED, he's WILLING, he's AVAILABLE, and for some reason, he's DESPERATE to talk with the being responsible for the CREATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY," the Overseer defended. "And best of all, Rudolph 'Ruby' Nash has the gift of gab, and that's exactly what I need to stall Reality Itself...to delay him from reaching YOU until we've talked about everything."

"By 'everything', I suppose you're just referring to what is expected of me tonight," Guile grumbled.

"No, Guile," the Thrall Overseer corrected. "Since Alan ruined my plan to make you think I wasn't connected to any of this, I have no choice. I have to tell you EVERYTHING. But just to warn you, you'll find a lot of it....upsetting."

"Information is power, and Guiles CRAVE power," Guile asserted confidently. "After weeks of forced ignorance, I cannot imagine ANY inform- ation so unsettling that I regret knowing it."

"Before Ladislav Kaschak came to the United States, he had 312 German Thralls. He disposed of them," the Thrall Overseer revealed.

Guile's brain momentarily went blank, something that would've been psychologically impossible for Guile before his encounter with Michael Pearson.

"My Master Unenthralled THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE THRALLS?!" Guile shrieked in unimaginable horror.

"He didn't 'Unenthrall' them, Guile," the Overseer stated with sympathy and compassion, "Kaschak flat out MURDERED them."

The wind suddenly stopped while Robbie was getting down on all fours and situating himself. Shortly thereafter, his father squatted down behind him and put his hands on Robbie's shoulders for balance.

"Now, you're sure about this, right?" Craig asked, guiding him- self up to his son's asshole, which winked when Craig's cock made contact, giving his tip a little kiss.

"YEAH," Robbie grumbled, aching to have his father inside him... boning away...massaging him on the inside.

"Ready or not, here I come!" Craig announced in his goofy dad-joke voice, adding, in a serious tone: "I'm a lot thicker than a hot dog, Buddy, so tell me if you can't take it, okay, son? I promise to pull right out."

"I can handle it!" Robbie impatiently insisted. "A guy sent me a dildo so I could send him clips of me using it. It's really big! I use it all the time!"

Robbie felt Craig barely penetrate him, only going deep enough to insert the head, then backing off. He did this over and over, intending to gradually loosen Robbie up. All he ended up doing, however, was make Robbie angry and frustrated.

"You doing okay so far, Buddy?" Craig inquired while straining to focus past the designer drugs in his system so that he could fight off his aching desire to just shove his cock into his child and start rutting like an animal. "I'm not hurting you, am I?"

"NO!" Robbie growled, ACHING for his father to JUST SHOVE HIS COCK INTO ROBBIE AND START RUTTING LIKE AN ANIMAL!

Gradually, Craig thrusted a little further and a little further, gently working his tool deeper and deeper, unintentionally making his son more and more frustrated, and angrier and angrier.

"That feel okay?" Craig questioned, yanking Robbie out of the moment once again.

"YEAH!!!!" Robbie yelled in annoyance, growing furious at his father's need for constant status reports.

Craig reached bottom and began to gently, too gently, fuck his son.

"You're SURE I'm not hurting you?" Craig repeated. "If I do, just speak up and-"

"DAD, I ORDER YOU TO SWITCH TO ALTERNATE PERSONALITY FOUR!" Robbie ordered, activating one of the many supplementary commands that Guile had installed in Craig's mind with the plum tendril in order to make him an even better sex slave for his little boy.

For five seconds, Craig looked confused, as if he were trying to remember the lyrics to an old song, or as if his brainwashing was temporarily changing Craig's personality, turning him into someone who was comfortable thinking and acting in ways that Craig never could.

Craig's mouth twisted into a mean sneer, and he looked down at his child with smug contempt.

Craig was still completely under Robbie's control, but he was no longer the boy's "daddy", he was now a sleazy piece of shit.

Craig's fucking increased in both tempo and intensity. He didn't ask if Robbie was okay with it, because he no longer cared.

"Your asshole's a lot tighter than your mom's!" Craig announced, tickling himself with his own cruelty, so he added more, "Even tighter than Diane Pearson's and the four other women I ass-fucked while me and your mom were married."

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhh," Robbie groaned, surrendering to his father's needs, and thus feeding Craig's filthy ego.

"Yeah, that's the way," Craig taunted, feeding something even darker in Robbie's soul as Craig used his fuck-staff to violently plunge his son's asshole like a stopped up toilet, "let everyone here know just how much you're lovin' your father being up your ass, you slutty little fag!"

Craig was seized by sudden inspiration.

"HEY EVERYBODY!!!" Craig screamed at maximum volume to all the oblivious party guests, not knowing that all but one of them were pre- recorded ghosts. "MY GAY, FUCKED-UP, ATTENTION WHORE, EXHIBITIONIST KID HAS A THING FOR BEING USED, SO IF YOU'VE GOT A DICK, YOU'VE GOT HIS DADDY'S PERMISSION TO COME ON UP, GATHER 'ROUND, AND DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO HIM... TO EITHER ONE OF US!"

To Craig's irritation, there were no takers. No one even seemed to hear him.

"HEY YOU!" Craig called to the older gentleman he'd noticed earlier, the balding, white-haired guy who MUST have played Santa Claus at least ONCE within the last few years. "YOU LIKIN' THE SHOW?!"

"Um, yes, actually," the man admitted timidly in a soft, vaguely feminine voice while stepping closer. "You are a profoundly beautiful man, and I'm enjoying watching you fornicate, especially with such gusto."

Robbie looked up at the spectator, who noted that Robbie was having trouble focusing his glassy, confused eyes.

"I've always been good at fuckin'," Craig bragged, MOVING his ass and pumping his boy even faster in an attempt to show off for the man. "All the muscle helps, but the heroin's holding me back. I need to stop shootin' up so much!"

"Um...yeah," the man agreed awkwardly. "That's probably a good idea."

"What's being passed around tonight?" Craig grunted, impressing himself greatly by maintaining his hardness, arousal, and fuck rhythm while engaged in conversation."

Craig thought it might be due to the thrill of casually talking to someone who was watching him fuck his kid, but the truth was, it was because of Craig's Entanglement. Sexually, Entangleds could do lots of incredible things.

"It's called 'Pit Fog'," the gentleman replied, captivated by the rolling of Craig's abs as he fucked.

"So....what, you huff it?" Craig asked, noticing where the man was looking, and responding by engaging his abs even more.

Just like Robbie, whose lack of discipline from a strong male role model (and the violent, self-gratifying discipline he received from his mother) caused Robbie to develop an addiction for abusive, masculine men, who wanted to exploit and demean Robbie sexually, Craig's childhood body issues, combined with receiving no appreciation from his parents, then his wife, and later his son, caused Craig to become addicted to praise, particularly with respect to his hard-earned physical development.

When Craig and Gary Pearson were friends, Craig would feign drugged unconsciousness whenever Gary snuck over and started rubbing and licking Craig all over. Craig convinced himself that he only allowed it to happen because Gary was such a good friend, and it was clearly something forbidden that Gary needed for whatever reason. However, Craig was fooling himself. The truth was, as fucked up as it was for a straight man to just lie there and let another man play around between his legs and get him off, then lap up the evidence, Craig wasn't truly a victim, and his compliance was hardly a sacrifice. Craig's subconscious knew that Gary wasn't using Craig, he was WORSHIPPING him....and giving Craig something forbidden that he needed for whatever reason.

Although pre-Entangled Craig would've denied it, any gay man could have complimented their way into Craig's pants if they would've put in the effort.

But now, whether or not Craig was under the influence of Alternate Personality Four, getting into his pants, or even getting Craig out of his clothes altogether, required no effort at all.

"Yes, you 'huff' it," the man confirmed with an uncomfortable chuckle.

"I've smoked, snorted, and injected pretty much everything," Craig disclosed, getting off on the man's discomfort and nervous laughter. "But THIS shit is sum'thin special!

Craig suddenly stood straight up, unceremoniously yanking himself out of Robbie's ass and making the boy unintentionally fart out all the air his father had fucked into him.

"Craig Byrne," Craig said, offering his hand before smiling wickedly and casually adding: "This kid I'm fuckin' is my son, Robbie."

"Uh...Rudolph Nash," the older gentlemen informed Craig, hesitantly offering his hand in return, "but I don't think you and I can-"

"WHOA!" Craig exclaimed when his hand passed right through Ruby's. "WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPP-"

"Idle Minds Are the Devil's Playthings," Rudolph Nash intoned. "None of the weirdness around here bothers you at all, Craig, and you will obey no further orders from your 'son'."

"WHAT DID....YOU....?" Reality Itself tried to insist, still on his hands and knees, trying uselessly to fight against Robbie Byrne's sexuality and regain control over himself.

Rudolph Nash wasn't nearly ready to engage Reality Itself in conversation, and he CERTAINLY wasn't going to reveal ANYTHING that might cause him to suspect The Overseer's involvement, such as the fact that he'd given Ruby the verbal activation code for Guile's Entangleds controller with supreme override capabilities.

It was a statistically unlikely coincidence that Guile had even created it, but Reality Itself had nothing to do with it, ...and now it was HIS turn to learn just how fucking IRRITATING bad luck can be.

"Craig, I think Robbie needs your attention, and you're eager to give it," Ruby commanded. "but you won't be able to climax until I tell you to do so, and you will not tire...ever."

"UUUUUUGH!" Robbie groaned as Craig got back into position and thrust himself into the bowels of the thing that wasn't his son. Ruby could hear both enjoyment and outrage in Robbie's grunt.

"So...Rudolph...are you, like, a ghost or something?" Craig casually inquired, trying to shock Ruby by ceasing his fucking momentarily and grinding his pelvis against his son's ass, instead.

"Please, call me Ruby," Rudolph strategically gabbed, just as he'd been instructed. "I would ask that you call me 'Rudy', but anyone who practices anal intercourse with another male always ends up calling me 'Ruby'. A silly nickname, since I've never performed in drag, but alas, I cannot shake it. As far as me being a ghost, I'm not. I'm alive, but I can't touch anything. Neither can you and Robbie, although the two of you can obviously touch each other."

"Wish I could touch you, 'Santa'," Craig growled with a wink and an air kiss in Ruby's direction before pointing down at Robbie with a sly expression. "Maybe you and I could meet up sometime, and I could 'treat you like family'."

"Uh, I'd really enjoy that, Craig," Ruby blurted after a moment of hesitation, remembering that in Ruby's time, Craig had been Unentangled, so Ruby wouldn't have to worry about the poor, brainwashed man showing up at his house for a hot date. "I'd love to make dinner for you and then put an end to my accursed extended dry spell. Just like you, MY partner got all our friends in the divorce, so most nights, I end up sitting at home-"

"How did....," Robbie moaned between impacts, "how did....you know ...about mom and....dad's divorce?"

"Do you live around here?" Craig asked, talking over his son, since Alternate Personality Four didn't give a winged shit about Robbie's self- esteem.

"Uh, yes...yes I do," Ruby admitted, instinctively pointing towards his home without thinking.

"If Reality Itself wants to take revenge on me for stopping his massacre and keeping the Overseer out of Kaschak's hands, so be it!" Ruby thought to himself, summoning his courage. "It's not as if pointing out my house in front of him will make me any LESS safe from his undeserved vengeance."

"It's just two doors down," Ruby revealed as an icy chill went up his spine. "It's a ghastly modern-rustic home that my then-husband badgered me into buying, then stuck me with it in the divorce. It isn't quite as awful as Raymond Crandal's architectural abortion across the water, but it runs a close second. 114 Manjinankton View."

"I'll be there next Saturday at 7pm," Craig informed Ruby, making a date under the most bizarre of circumstances. "I'll leave the menu up to you, and I don't know SHIT about wine, so you can handle that, too. And just so you know, I'm spending the night. Won't be doing much sleeping, though."

Ruby should've been offended for an UNCOUNTABLE number of reasons, but as Craig and Alternate Personality Four smirked and really laid into Robbie to show Ruby exactly what Craig intended to give HIM, the lonely retiree could only say: "I-I look forward to it.", and curse his luck that sadly, the date would never happen."

"HEY!" Craig yelled in surprise as a chocolate lab came running straight through the copulating father and son.

"You'll have to excuse Ralphie," Ruby grumbled. "From what I've been TOLD, Matilda always lets him run around during her parties, jumping on people and begging for food. Dreadful woman. She's fond of saying that just because someone can afford to move to Manjinankton Lake, it doesn't mean they should. It's directed towards me for being a lottery winner, but not at herself for being born into poverty and 'winning the lottery' by managing to marry way above her station. Funny thing, that."

"It's a shame that I can't touch Ralphie, either," Craig lamented with his Alternate Personality Four smirk.

"Really? Why?" Ruby asked, unsure if he really wanted to know the answer, but still needing to kill some time.

"Well, I want to call him over, open wide, and fucking make out with him like I'm on Ecstasy while I reach down and rub his sheath until he goes nuts and starts running around the party with his bright red cock bouncing around under him," Craig volunteered with a frightening intensity to his eyes that lent credence to his sincerity. "Then I'll get down on all fours, whistle for Ralphie to come back, and whimper like a bitch in heat to get him to mount me. I'll stick out my tongue and pant while Ralphie jackhammers the crack of my ass until he manages to stab his dick into my hole and RUT ME in front of my KID! And when Ralphie fucks his knot into me, I want Robbie to reach down and pull on Ralphie's cock to give him an idea of how big, deep, and SECURE that knot is. CHRIST it's making me insane just THINKING about it! My son watching me...naked and humiliating myself...helpless to get that filthy animal cock out of my ass until he's done pumping me full of fucking DOG JIZZ! Then, after Ralphie's finished using me, and his knot starts to shrink down, I want my kid watching when Ralphie's cock pops out of me like a champagne cork, and Ralphie's puppy slime sprays out of my ass!"

Once Craig was finished laying out his bestiality fantasy, he looked up at Ruby and flicked his tongue in the air while making a hand sign that Ruby didn't understand, but he assumed it was obscene.

"Um, well, I could talk to the owners," Ruby joked while hoping that it wouldn't be interpreted as mockery, "but I really don't think Jack and Matilda would be into the idea."

"My boy turned me into his own personal fuck toy," Craig segued abruptly, letting Ruby know that Craig's memory had returned, "but you're gonna regret it, Buddy. It's gonna backfire on you BIG TIME!"

Robbie didn't respond. He just kept moaning and shivering, with his eyes tightly clenched. Craig interpreted Robbie's body language as proof that Craig was a god, and Ruby interpreted it as Reality Itself on the verge of freeing himself.

"Really, and why is that?" Ruby inquired, concerned that maybe the male aggression and predatory sexuality of Alternate Personality Four might be a threat to the real Robbie's safety if Lecher wasn't able to accomplish his VITAL part of the Overseer's plan.

"Because he doesn't know just how much his daddy NEEDS IT! I haven't gotten laid in weeks, so tomorrow, it's gonna take a WHOLE LOTTA FUCKIN' to set me right! When it's time to take him back home to mommy, I'm gonna have to scrape him up off of my mattress, drive him home, carry him in, and explain to my CUNT ex-wife why Robbie's passed out with cum dripping out of his mouth and asshole."

Ruby could see that Robbie's roots were turning from orange to white. It was time to end this.

"Craig, I order you to have an incredibly powerful and long-lasting orgasm...beginning right now," Ruby commanded.

"I wish it was that easy," Craig chuckled with a shark's smile, "but I'm not even close to...............uh....uh.....UH.....OH, JESUS..... JESUS, I'M GONNA BLOW MY FUCKING LOAD INSIDE MY LITTLE BOY! CHRIST, THIS IS SO FUCKIN' WRONG! YOU'RE WATCHING, RIGHT? DON'T YOU FUCKIN' TURN AWAY FROM THIS SHIT!"

"If you insist," Ruby agreed, unable to turn away from the hand- some, muscular, climaxing, ginger giant even if he wanted to.

"UUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Craig groaned as he started paddling his son's bum in a very unusual way.

Craig's thrusting became even more aggressive and the flesh against flesh slapping got louder as an intense extended climax claimed Craig's mind, body, and soul. Craig made no effort to suppress his enjoyment for the sake of his dignity, or even to preserve his parental authority and whatever tiny bit of respect his son still had for him. Thanks to Alternate Personality Four, Craig didn't care, and he held nothing back, allowing Ruby to enjoy the sight of Craig Byrne openly and honestly demonstrating how he looked and acted when he orgasmed while horny as hell and doped out of his mind, something that had only ever been witnessed by one other male: Gary Pearson, the man who Mike mistakenly believed to be his father.

"If you move in with me and save me from having to keep giving your mom all my money, we could do this shit all the time," Craig slurred into Robbie's ear while pulsing semen up his backside. "What do you say, Champ?"

"STOP! GET UP!" Robbie suddenly yelled. "Cancel Alternate Personality Four!"

"Please do it, Craig," Ruby added, since he'd used Guile's controller to temporarily block Robbie's power to make Craig obey him with regards to sexual matters.

"What's wrong, Robbie? Did I hurt you?" Craig instantly begged, startling Ruby with the abruptness with which Craig essentially became a completely different person. "I'm sorry, Buddy!"

Reality Itself grimaced in disgust at the feel of Craig gently pulling out, oozing even more of his cum into Robbie's ass in the process.

"Aw, SHIT!" Craig fretted, getting to his feet and looking as though he was about to freak out. "Robbie? Did I hurt you inside?! Do you need us to go to the hospital?!"

"SHUT UP!!!!" Robbie screamed, struggling to his feet while staring at Ruby with menacing hatred.

With no transition at all, the naked boy became the clothed old man who'd been trying to force Craig to accompany him.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!?" Craig screamed, advancing toward Reality Itself with a father's anger. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY KID?!?"

"NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!!!" Ruby yelled internally as everything fell to shit. Ruby's command that Craig not let the weirdness bother him wasn't enough to make Craig ignore the fact that HIS SON HAD SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED INTO THIN AIR!"

"CRAIG, listen to me!" Ruby insisted while stepping in front of him to separate the two men, as much as a memory phantom COULD separate any- thing from something else. "Forget that Robbie was ever here!"

Craig started to give Ruby a contorted "What the FUCK did you just say to me?!" expression, but it suddenly went slack, as did his posture. Craig idly looked down at his sticky, brown-stained, deflating penis and squeezed out a gob of post-cum, which slowly lowered toward the ground on a gossamer strand.

The crisis averted, Ruby relaxed a little.

"Idle Minds Are the Devil's Playthings," Reality Itself yelled. "Craig, I order you to swim across the lake with me!"

"Not gonna happen," Craig muttered, wandering away and amusing himself by walking through tables, people, and the walls of the house.

"But...I'm no longer in the form of his son!" Reality Itself yelled incredulously.

Ruby shrugged. There was no way he was going to tell Reality Itself that the only reason he'd used the Entangleds controller on Craig was to keep him endlessly pacifying Robbie with his penis, and therefore working against Reality Itself's efforts to free himself from Robbie's form. Ruby couldn't risk "Robbie" suddenly screaming "I order you to get off of me!" before sufficient time had passed. Stalling Reality Itself was crucial!

As far as the reason for Reality Itself being unable to activate the controller, in spite of no longer occupying Robbie's form, that was because only one person at a time can use it on a particular Entangled, and in Craig's case, that was Ruby.......until Ruby and Craig eventually parted company.

Andrew Miller's murderer approached Ruby, walking with threatening intimidation, but also with visible discomfort, as if he were unable to shake the physical memory of Craig Byrne's cock up his ass.

For an eternal three seconds, the two white-haired men locked eyes.

"I just reviewed the biosphere's memory, and saw that the real Robbie Byrne sent that phrase, which brought Craig Byrne completely under your control, to Kenny Miller's phone," Reality Itself hissed. "Since the text also contained the words 'Simon Says:', and referenced where Caleb Crandal's Entangleds are positioned, I know the purpose of the trigger phrase, but not the reason it did not work for me. Tell me why, Rudolph."

"I'm terribly sorry, but I refuse to do that," Ruby politely told the god.

"Anything you tell him before Faggot Forest is information he can use during Faggot Forest," the Overseer had warned.

"I see you right now, sitting at home, watching television," Andrew growled. "And yet you're also HERE! I can't read the mind of a walking memory, since you're not supposed to HAVE ONE, but I can read the mind of your physical body, and he knows nothing about what you're doing right now. Why is that?"

"I'm terribly sorry, but I refuse to tell you that," Ruby stated again, still minding his manners.

Reality Itself's face darkened.

"Can you tell me why I shouldn't strike your physical body down, Rudolph?" Andrew snarled. "Can you tell me THAT?"

Ruby almost replied that if Reality Itself killed him in the past, it would establish a time paradox, since killing Ruby in the real world would mean that both Reality Itself and Craig had interacted with someone who'd died five days before. But the LAST thing Reality Itself needed to know was that Ruby was from the future.

Ruby had to be careful. Far across the lake, Ruby could see Guile standing under a dock light. The presence of a visible Guile meant that Ruby was no longer Information-Locked. He could potentially reveal devastating secrets, leading to the events of Ferret Forest being EVEN MORE HORRIFIC!

"No, 'Nature's Protector and Guardian of All Life of the Biosphere', I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't slaughter me," Ruby said coldly, determined not to back up or show fear in the face of possible death. "However, I do ask for an easier death than the one you inflicted upon the man whose face you're wearing...and being that I am a homosexual, I ask that you don't DETONATE ME! The explosion would take out a huge section of my neighborhood, which would result in the deaths of children. I think I'd like a lightning bolt, if that's okay. And please make sure the bolt catches my house on fire. I've always hated it, and all the hopes it once represented have all died. The house should, too."

"You have knowledge that only the invaders possess," Andrew grumbled before suddenly gritting his teeth and experiencing an unpleasant- looking full-body shiver. "DAMMIT! I NEVER SHOULD'VE TURNED INTO THAT DISGUSTING LITTLE FAGGOT!!!!!"

"I don't wish to be rude, Reality Itself," Ruby harshly informed Andrew, unable to hold his tongue, "but if it is true that YOU are the one responsible for creating homosexuality in the first place, I would ask that you never use THAT WORD in my presence again. Coming from YOU of all people, it's not JUST hateful, it's absolutely EVIL...and hypocritical too, 'Robbie'."

"I was talking about the boy's disgusting sexual predilections," Andrew snapped. "THOSE aren't MY FAULT!"

"No," Ruby agreed, "but you didn't call Robbie Byrne a pervert or a degenerate, you called him a 'faggot', linking his promiscuity, incestuous desires, and lust for adult men with-"

"I CEDE THE POINT!" Andrew hissed, going nose to nose with Ruby, who stood his ground despite incurring the wrath of a god. "And now that I am no longer under the influence of a PROMISCUOUS, INCESTUOUS, PERVERTED DEGENERATE, I want to know exactly HOW and WHY you're here! And just so you know...since even my enemies don't...I can inflict torments on you that would make the rest of your life a MISERY!"

Ruby laughed, but only for a second.

"YOU ALREADY HAVE, YOU BASTARD!" Ruby completely snapped, surprising himself with just how much hate he'd been holding in since he'd first laid eyes on Reality Itself. "I lost countless friends during the height of the AIDS crisis, I was disowned by my father, I was kicked out of my house at sixteen, I've been gay bashed four times, I attended the funerals of a total of four friends and two acquaintances who were killed in Ferret Forest, I was tear-gassed while protesting the police raid on the Rainbow Tavern, and although my mother did not attend my wedding 'for religious reasons', I ended up caring for her during her final years. She lingered on for far longer than expected, with just enough strength to constantly sabotage my marriage, making it fail about eight months before her heart did, leaving me all alone in the world. In addition to ALL THAT, I recently learned that at any moment, you might make the entire male homo- sexual population of the Earth EXPLODE LIKE BOMBS! So tell me, 'Guardian of Death and Homosexual Misery', what can you do to me THAT YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY DONE?"

"I can't believe you pissed and moaned THAT MUCH without pausing to take a breath," Andrew mocked.

"Instead of a well thought-out answer, you offer nothing but antagonism and a pathetic bully's defense," Ruby sighed before walking away and heading for Jack and Matilda Madden's dock. "You should've evolved your intelligence a lot longer before putting your ruinous schemes in motion, Reality Itself. Maybe Ladislav Kaschak wouldn't be on the verge of dragging this country into a potential nuclear civil war if you had!"

"THE THRALL OVERSEER!" Reality Itself screamed, stabbing his finger in the air like Andrew Miller used to do. "YOU'RE WORKING FOR HIM!! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?!?!?!"

"NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!" Ruby screamed internally. "Why did I say that?! I'm messing it all up!"

"HE HASN'T BEEN ACTIVATED YET!!!" Reality Itself shrieked. "HOW IS HE OPERATIONAL!!!"

"Craig! Follow me!" Ruby called out, needing to put IMMEDIATE distance between himself and Andrew in order to think about how to do some emergency damage control.

Craig ran to catch up to Ruby. Under normal circumstances, Ruby would've turned around to watch Craig's naked, muscular body running towards him, focusing on his bouncing genitals, but at that moment, all Ruby wanted to do was get away from Andrew before Ruby's mouth betrayed him even MORE irreparably.

"WE'RE NOT DONE TALKING, RUDOLPH NASH!" Andrew screamed at Ruby's departing back. "TELL ME WHAT THE OVERSEER IS DOING....AND TELL ME WHY HE EVEN EXISTS....OR NOT EVEN THOSE PET ROCKS HE SERVES WILL KEEP ME FROM MAKING YOU SUFFER LIKE NO HUMAN EVER HAS!!! WHAT I DID TO ANDREW MILLER WAS AN UNFORTUNATE NECESSITY, BUT WHEN I DO IT TO YOU IT WILL BE FOR FUCKING PLEASURE!!!!!!"

Ruby ignored Reality Itself and just kept on walking as fast as he could. It was a strategy that hadn't saved Ruby from any of his four gay- bashings, but as Ruby realized JUST HOW FAR he was in over his head, it was the only strategy that made sense.

"RUDOLPH!!!!!"

The neighborhood of Emmett and Cheryl Kemmler, 2.7 years ago. ***************************************************************************

Maximus Morgan and his Thrall, Steve Collier, walked side by side down the sidewalk. Behind them, a despondent ghost in a wheelchair and a profane, phantom duplicate of Steve exchanged worried glances.

"It's a bear event," the future Creeping Vine explained. "One of my Entangleds, Angelo Consiggieri, the one who had cancer of the EVERYTHING before I Entangled him...he's still got a month or so before I can release him from Entanglement without the possibility of the cancer coming BACK, by the way, but he intends to stay on for a couple of years, to 'pay his debt' to me, although I'm pretty sure he just likes the perks of Entangle- ment...ANYWAY, he's taking me to the event, it's a private event, nothing public, and Lecher's gonna make my eyes all red and glassy, screw up my balance, and of course we're gonna stare at each other so he can get my motor running. Guile's gonna "Molly" me and turn me into a hot mess, and hopefully I'll get passed around by at LEAST a dozen guys or so-"

"Steve, any particular reason you won't shut the hell up?" the ancient god sighed.

"I don't....I just....sorry," Steve shrugged. "I'll stop talking, Master."

Steve looked down as he and his Master continued to pound pavement.

"Would you like ME to answer that question for you, Master?" Guile jumped in, tempting fate by sounding noticeably annoyed.

"Go ahead," Master Morgan commanded, intrigued by Guile's tone.

"In spite of Lure being sexually activity, capable of taking on an army of attackers, and chronologically 69 years old, he stopped maturing physically, mentally, and emotionally in 1970 when you Enthralled him at the age of 16. At his core, Lure is still the same frightened little boy who lost his parents and his legs in a car accident in 1964, and whose relatives refused to take him in. Pardon the VERY bad pun, but you are his rock, and you've just done something INCONCEIVABLE that threatens Lure's fragile sense of stability. To avoid pondering his now-uncertain future, Lure is talking...because you refuse to."

"You're feelin' real brave tonight, Guile," Max muttered.

"I apologize, Master. You created me to protect my Lure's psycho- logical health, and I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that you are presently endangering it."

Max stopped walking and faced Steve.

"I've got a lot on my mind, Steve, but there's nothing for you to be worried about," Max reassured. "Things are going to change, and I know Lures HATE certain kinds of change, but these changes HAVE to happen, to keep BAD changes FROM happening. Do you understand?"

"No," Steve admitted with fearful honestly.

Maximus Morgan turned and stared at Guile.

"Since you feel like speaking your mind tonight, Guile, explain it to him...NOW!" Master Morgan commanded.

"If my previous response offended you Master, I again apologize. If my answer was too disrespectful, in the future I will-"

"I didn't order you to kiss my ass, Guile!" Maximus Morgan seethed. "I ordered you to explain to Steve why I have to make some changes, since your haughty Psych-101 lecture just now proves you think a brain the size of a baseball is superior to a brain FOUR HUNDRED MILES ACROSS!"

The gloomy ghost-boy in the wheelchair furrowed his brow.

"I sense that you might be about to destroy me, Master," Guile intoned. "If I have earned any favor at all for my years of service, I ask that my Lure be spared my fate."

"WHY WOULD YOU EVEN SAY THAT?!" Maximus Morgan yelled. "WHY WOULD YOU EVEN FUCKING INSULT ME BY SAYING I COULD EVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!?!"

"Because you are at a crossroads," Guile said calmly. "You recognize that you are in crisis, and that you have to make changes now, but you have no idea what changes to make. All you know is that you're desperate not to go down the same path as the other Tethered Ones, who have become so detached, imperious, and indolent that you're creating a Thrall Overseer to manage their Thralls for them. By seeking to protect my Lure's psychological health from the threat you posed to it, I have offended you, becoming the focus of the rage and frustration you've been holding back for far too long, so I plead AGAIN that if it is necessary to destroy me-"

"YOU FUCKING SAY THAT ONE MORE GAWDDAMNED TIME AND I WILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU!!!" Maximus screamed, the eyes of his Fingernail turning red.

Guile and Lecher dematerialized, completely reintegrating with the Thrall. An instant later, Steve, in ghost form, came flying out of his own body.

"What did you two do?" Steve demanded. "Let me back in!"

Max stared at the Thrall, whose eyes lowered respectfully, and whose hands rose up to shield Lure's brain section, as Guile and Lecher awaited their deaths.

"You...you guys can't DO this!" Steve shouted, trying and failing to reclaim his body. "YOU CAN'T TAKE FULL CONTROL WITHOUT MY PERMISSION AND YOU CAN'T LOCK ME OUT OF MY OWN BODY!"

"Sure they can," Maximus informed Lure as his anger abated and the old god realized that his deterioration was even worse than he imagined, "but only when they're honestly convinced that their Lure is in mortal danger from an external threat. In this case.....me."

For a time, no sound was heard, except for the noisy late summer insects.

"Once we were just called blobs," Maximus Morgan lamented, breaking the silence. "It was a humble name for a humble race of beings whose desire to help the less technologically-advanced was our sole motivation. We neither wanted nor accepted worship. But after just a few years of captivity on Earth, we decided to be known as Masters. That's when every- thing started to go wrong. THAT'S what needs to change."

Maximus Morgan's eyes narrowed, and Guile and Lecher were uncere- moniously ejected from the Thrall, and Steve was sucked back into his body. As Guile recovered from the jarring, unexpected maneuver, he looked up from his overturned phantom wheelchair to see his Master looming over him.

"Master, I wish to express my apologies yet again. Lure's fear and confusion-"

"STEVE'S fear and confusion," Maximus Morgan corrected.

"Huh?" Guile questioned before suddenly realizing that his Master was truly serious about making changes. "I mean...Steve's fear and confusion upset me and clouded my judgement, causing me to be less respect- ful than I should've been."

"Yes, it did," Maximus acknowledged. "Are we good now, or do I have a mutiny situation to deal with?"

"Oh NO, Master!" Guile sputtered

"SIR or COACH," Maximus Morgan corrected once more. "Either are acceptable, but both should be said with respect. I NEVER want to be called Master AGAIN!"

Lecher, who'd been too scared to stand up after being thrown out of Steve's body, looked up at Maximus Morgan with a supreme "Are you fucking SERIOUS about this shit?" look, but quickly lowered his head when Maximus turned in his direction.

"As you wish, Sir," Guile kowtowed. "And I'll keep my unsolicited opinions to myself from now on. I'll also be much more diplomatic about my solicited opinions."

"Not just yet," Maximus Morgan instructed.

"Sir?" Guile asked, regaining his ability to feel nervous, now that Steve appeared to be out of possible danger.

"The one GOOD thing about your defiance just now is that it made me realize that YOU are the ONLY life form in existence I can count on to answer a question for me...with BRUTAL honesty...WITHOUT USING BREVITY!"

Guile suddenly felt like a human would if he stepped in shit...up to his neck.

"Mast...Sir, as you correctly pointed out, my brain is woefully insufficient to-"

"I was the one who designed Guile brains."

Guile quickly analyzed his worsening situation, trying to figure a way out. In the end, there was only one.

"Sir, I await your question, and I will answer it to the best of my ability, completely and with brutal honesty...exactly as you command," Guile shuddered.

"Just fucking kill me," Lecher groaned to himself. "Just do it now, quick and easy, before I even hear the fucking question."

"How do you think my people feel about me?" Maximus Morgan demanded to know.

"Oh, JESUS!" Lecher said ALOUD, drawing everyone's attention. "Not that...fucking ANYTHING but THAT!"

"That bad, huh?" Coach Morgan, formerly Master Morgan, grumbled.

"Far worse than that...Sir," Guile confirmed. "Do you wish me to expound, and will I be punished for displeasing you? Because SPOILER, you WILL be displeased."

"Proceed," Coach Morgan ordered, "I won't punish you for ANYTHING you say, provided it's respectful, and you honestly BELIEVE IT!"

Steve watched Guile take a brief moment to organize his thoughts. Steve felt bad for Guile, since he was REALLY in the hot seat, but all of a sudden, Guile seemed calmed. Steve didn't know it, but Guile was about to relieve himself of a horrible burden he'd been carrying around for a very long time.

Guile could finally inform the Emperor that he was naked.

"You believe yourself to be like Moses...." Guile began, lauching into the speech that would change everything.

Steve listened nervously as Guile laid it all bare, totally unaware that Guile's words would change Steve's life, making it far more fantastic than it already was. After half a century of being stuck in Timbersburg, Steve Collier was destined to not only travel the world, but stand on the surface of the moon, and dive to the bottom of the ocean, all in the name of saving lives or tackling problems that no one but he could deal with. The Thralls weren't the only supernatural beings on the planet, and Steve would have to face many of them, doing battle against people and things whose freakish abilities would test his own.

Steve listened as Guile unknowing initiated the origin of the superhero known as The Creeping Vine.

*************************************************************************** ****************** REALITY ITSELF'S VISION OF THE FUTURE ****************** ***************************************************************************

"How SUPER do you feel NOW, Steve?" Caleb shouted down from the roof of the Timbersburg Courthouse, spreading his arms to indicate all the people who were being torn apart by Ladislav Kaschak's army of genetically created nightmares. "HOW FUCKING SUPER DO YOU FEEL NOW?!"

The superhero ignored Caleb and ran through the town square towards a large group of people who were encircled by unspeakable things. Everyone tried to work their way to the center, to avoid being the next human to get sliced open so that their innards would fall on the ground to be feasted upon.

"GUILE!" the Creeping Vine yelled. "Why aren't you teleporting me over there?!"

The ghost of a young man in a wheelchair appeared ten yards in front of the superhero.

"Steve, stop!" the Steve-Guile demanded, speaking telepathically so that Reality Itself wouldn't hear them. "You have to let them die, or you might destroy the entire UNIVERSE!"

It was a ridiculous thing to say, but it made perfect sense.

"But I can't just do NOTHING!" Steve screamed psychically, the horror of the moment overwhelming his enhanced Thrall coping mechanisms and Guile's ability to calm the overwrought permanent teenager.

A young man appeared behind the Steve-Guile. He was wearing a black body stocking that completely enveloped him, except for his eyes and mouth. He was adorned with several pieces of yellow brass armor that protected his shoulders, elbows, forearms, knees, and shins. The material was also used to make boots, fingerless gauntlets, and a thorny, spiked, masquerade mask. His tendrils, the ones that could pass for 'green', completed the costume and provided the rationale for his code name. They ran up and down his arms and legs, even hanging from his mask, moving as if they were alive, which they were. But the most striking feature of all were the two tendrils that extended from two holes in a small yellow brass plate on the hero's sternum. Today, the incandescent red tendril was used to create the "C", and the electrical yellow tendril had been formed into the "V".

The Steve-Lecher had assumed Steve's present form, the appearance of the Creeping Vine.

"Steve, the vision's about to start!" the Steve-Lecher begged. "We HAVE to go back and play out the scene exactly as the Caleb-Guile saw it, or we risk a time paradox! Steve, we've TALKED about this! Timbersburg is DOOMED, and if we don't play our part, this whole REALITY could JOIN IT! We have to complete the loop! If we're still able, we'll try to save a few people, but we HAVE to confront Caleb NOW!"

Steve turned and reluctantly headed back to the courthouse.

"HEY! COSPLAY BOY! YOU DIDN'T ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Caleb greeted.

The Creeping Vine stared up at Caleb with gritted teeth and tears of hatred pouring through the pink energy nimbuses that filled the eyeholes of his mask.

Then he disappeared.

Caleb's smile vanished. With all the death and mayhem in the streets below, Caleb never dreamed the Creeping Vine would waste time with HIM! Caleb was meaningless in his Master's plans, and he didn't care. Now that his father and his new and better family were dead by HIS HANDS, Caleb didn't care about anything.

Caleb shit out his silver tendril and spun it around himself, creating a slice field, exactly as the Emergency Survival Protocols had done last January. Caleb didn't think the silver tendril would be able to cut through Steve's armor (its ridiculous "Eyes Wide Shut" mask making it necessary for Caleb to keep reminding himself that the armor was packed with SERIOUS advanced technology, translated for use in THIS dimension by the smartest of all the Tethered Ones), but it would prevent Steve from rematerializing close by and getting the drop on Caleb.

"WHERE'D HE GO?!" Caleb screamed, unmuting Guile for the first time in weeks. "WHAT'S HE GONNA TO DO??"

"End my torment," Guile sobbed.

At first, Caleb thought Guile was talking to HIM, but Caleb noticed that Guile was looking past him. Caleb turned to see the Steve-Guile, slumped sadly in his wheelchair, offering the Caleb-Guile a weak, tearful smile of support.

"I wish things had been different," the Steve-Guile intoned, saying goodbye.

"Me too," the Caleb-Guile cried, so utterly defeated that he didn't even wipe the phantom drool that poured from the slack lips of his hallucinatory body, something he was usually very fussy about.

The Caleb-Lecher appeared, having just returned from the surface of Ladislav Kaschak's body after saying his agonizing farewell to his beloved Caboose. He reached out and put one hand on Guile's shoulder, and used the other to give Caleb Crandal the finger.

"What are you two doing?!" Caleb demanded while whipping his head around to try and locate the Creeping Vine. "What are you-AAAAARRRGH!!!"

Guile grabbed his head and Lecher clutched his guts as Caboose obeyed Guile and Lecher's order for him to RIP his insides away from those of the Thrall as fast as possible, to spare Caboose the pain of the Thrall's death.

Caleb collapsed onto the roof, his screams of agony echoing those of the victims below, until Caleb lost control of the silver tendril, which tore into the roof's gravel and tar, drowning out everything else.

"MASTER!!!!!" Caleb screamed psychically. "HELP ME!!!!!!!"

Guile didn't want to transmit the message, but he had no choice. It didn't matter. Although Ladislav Kaschak heard the plea, he ignored it. Caleb's new and better father continued directing the assault on Timbers- burg, letting Caleb down yet again, for the very last time.

The silver tendril finally lost its momentum and sputtered to a smoky stop, at which point it retracted into Caleb's ass, returned to its nub on the wall of Caleb's "rectum" (which was filled with lilac-colored "blood" from Caboose's violent uncoupling) and was pulled back into the mourning Pilot Fish's body, along with all the other tendrils, through the many interdimensional apertures deep inside the Thrall. Once all the tendrils had been fully retracted into Caboose, the tendril aperatures closed and sealed....forever.

Ridiculously, Caleb drew breath to summon help from the humans he'd JUST been helping the monsters to slaughter, but his tongue, which was technically CABOOSE'S tongue, slid back through ITS interdimensional aperature in the back of Caleb's throat, which sealed as well, leaving Caleb unable to form words.

Caleb Crandal was now truly alone, but as injured as he was, his survivability would keep him alive long enough to find his Master and beg for his help.

Caleb gritted his teeth and struggled to get to his feet, but he was foiled by his internal injuries, which "encouraged" him to lie still for a bit, until his Thrall body's emergency personal supply of S.C.E. healed him as much as it could.

"I'm gonna get through this," Caleb vowed, eyeing the stairwell, since he could no longer make his precious wings. "I've gone through a lot worse shit than this."

Caleb's optimism disappeared upon seeing the Creeping Vine materialize a hundred feet above Caleb's broken body.

Guile and Lecher looked away from their impending death and beheld the sunset, which was sadly marred by the sight of humans being carried off by various flying creatures of all shapes and sizes for later consumption.

"Never did get to run all the way around that fucking lake," Lecher lamented in Hypertime, thinking his final words.

"I hope the Overseer can eventually forgive himself," Guile added, forcing himself not to bemoan his own fate, instead choosing to dedicate his final words to someone he cared about. "He tried his best to stop this from happening."

At the instant of materialization, the Steve-Guile activated a second spacial distortion, causing the Creeping Vine to "Thrust" down onto Caleb at several times the speed Caleb had achieved during his suicide attempt the previous January. The Steve-Lecher, for HIS part, yanked as much gravity as possible from Thunderbug and the other Pilot Fish that Thunderbug was linked up to, increasing the Creeping Vine's mass by over a hundred tons.

Thanks to some last second Hypertime spacial adjustments by the Steve-Guile, the Creeping Vine hit the bullseye, his metal knee plates slamming into Caleb's chest, crushing his ribcage and causing lilac-colored blood to explode out of Caleb's mouth, dousing Steve's forearm plates, which he was using to shield his face during his and Caleb's express trip down to the Timbersburg Courthouse's basement.

" RIGHT NOW? SUPER AS FUCK!!!!!," Steve thought at Caleb, finally answering his question.

The two Thralls slammed into the building's foundation, cratering the floor and sending out a shockwave that cracked the walls.

"Lecher, is Steve okay?!" the Steve-Guile demanded.

"He's fine," the Steve-Lecher responded. "The plates vice versa-ed the impact. Crandal took it all, and Steve barely felt it."

Steve looked up and saw the faint image of a young man in a black bathrobe, his agonized, droopy face pleading and pointing at the left side of Caleb's skull.

The Creeping Vine held his gauntlet up to Caleb's crushed face and a silver strand came out of one of the many housings of the plate covering the back of Steve's hand. The tendril slid up under the lid of Caleb's left eye...and started to whir and grind.

The suffering Guile and Lecher of Caleb Crandal ceased to exist, as did their Lure, whose troubled young soul would finally know some peace."

"STEVE, THEY'RE COMING!" the Steve-Guile screamed.

The door to the Steve-Thrall's section of the basement exploded inward and Kaschak's creatures flooded in.

"Looks like Kaschak knows we offed his Thrall!" Lecher snarled.

Ladislav Kaschak DID know Caleb was dead, but his creations weren't there at his behest to avenge Caleb, or even punish the Steve-Thrall for destroying his "property". No, the creatures were there for no other reason than they'd heard all the noise.

The monsters flooded into the room, prepared to do exactly what Kaschak had been training them to do since the day Kaschak learned that Maximus Morgan was putting the final touches on a brand new telepathic transformer unit.

But Steve's team had training, too. Lots of it.

"We're OUT of Spacial Distortion Energy," Guile informed Lecher in Hypertime, desperately working out how to save their beloved Steve, since they could work out a strategy far faster than he, "so TELEPORTING out of here isn't an option, nor is Thrusting back up through the holes we created through the floors above."

"And the suit's weapons systems still haven't recharged," Lecher added. "but even if they WERE charged, I'm pretty sure they're not recommended for indoor use...unless we want to bring the whole fucking building down on top of us!"

"Now that we've pointed out problems, do either of us have at least one solution between the two of us?"

"I say we target their S.C.E. harnesses!" Lecher squealed, feeling so alive in the face of approaching death. "Once they're unprotected, nature will tear them to pieces!"

"Too risky!" Guile denied, "There are too many of them, we don't know if any of the tendrils will work on Kaschak's harnesses, and even if we DO destroy the harnesses, there's no guarantee that Reality Itself won't STOP the biosphere from killing the creatures until THEY kill US!"

"Hey...Steve's doing something!" Lecher informed Guile. "He's telling me to...!"

The creatures swarmed towards the Creeping Vine, who responded by ominously raising his arms like a gunslinger getting ready to draw.

"I hope Guile's got enough strength left to pull this off," Steve thought to himself while feeling incredible sadness at having just killed the Caleb-Guile, who'd once demonstrated to Steve exactly how to escape a situation like this.

"GUYS!" the Creeping Vine informed his teammates. "THE BOTTLENECK MANEUVER........GO!"

*************************************************************************** ********************* END OF POTENTIAL FLASH FORWARD ********************** ***************************************************************************

"You believe yourself to be like Moses, who led his people to the Promised Land, but from what I've seen, heard, and been told by other Guiles I've connected with over the centuries, the other Tethered Ones consider you to be more like Lucifer, who dragged his followers into Hell."

"And there it is," Lecher thought glumly, losing both his cocky sneer AND his boner, making his remote viewpoint indistinguishable from Steve's.

"IT'S KASCHAK'S FAULT WE ALL GOT CORALLED UP AGAINST THE FUCKING GASH, NOT MINE!!" Maximus snapped back, astonished beyond belief. "KASCHAK WAS THE ONE WHO ORGANIZED AND LED THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THAT PLANET WHAT WAS PICKIN' US OFF WITH DRILLERS! AND SUSPICIOUSLY ENOUGH, HE DID IT BEFORE I COULD FIND OUT WHY THEY WERE KILLING US OFF, OR WHO PUT 'EM UP TO IT! I AIN'T NO GAWDDAMNED LUCIFER....KASCHAK IS!!!!!"

"I agree, Mast...er...Sir," Guile concurred. "But from what I've been told, you let go of the reins, eschewing leadership of the Tethered Ones, which led to you becoming a quiet figurehead, which in turn led to those who WANT to command the Tethered Ones to bad-mouth you in order to appear powerful, and also enabling them to reframe the past and reassign you the role of the villain, based on the fact that none of the Tethered Ones are happy here. They're miserable, and they blame YOU for that misery."

"IS THERE A FUCKING REASON I'M ONLY LEARNING ABOUT ALL THIS NOW?" Coach Morgan screamed,

"So you're saying I should speak out of turn, Master...uh...Sir, or I shouldn't? I mean...no further disrespect, of course...but my Guile brain, which you've just said you designed, so I don't mean to sound dis- respectful, is incapable of figuring out when you WANT me to protect Steve's psychological health and when you DON'T want me to, and when you WANT me to tell you things that aren't really any of my concern, but-"

"Please be silent, Guile," Maximus Morgan requested, seeing things a lot more clearly. "The problem here ain't the invention, it's the inventor."

Silence reigned once more.

"Three wishes."

"Sir?" Guile asked, assuming that his Master's statement was aimed at him.

"You're right, I AM at a crossroads right now, but that ain't no excuse for puttin' you three in the center of it and driving over you. I want to square things, and I don't want to drag this out, so I'm asking YOU, the part of your Thrall I've treated the worst tonight, as well as the one who just HAS to already HAVE a list, rarin' to go. So let's hear it. Tell me three things you want."

"Our hunting circle is a bit restrictive, since we're in such a rural region," Guile prioritized, making Lecher smile. Their Thrall had accidentally "touched the electric fence" a few too many times.

"I'm taking it up from 47 miles to an even hundred," Maximus decreed. "It'll piss off the other Tethereds if they find out, but from what I've been hearing just now, they don't like me all that much anyway. I'd go higher, but I want to be able to reach you FAST in an emergency situation. What else ya want?"

"I realize that Guiles are to look exactly like their Lures did just before their Enthrallment, to always remind them of why they decided to become Thralls in the first place-" Guile began.

"You can dump the wheelchair. Next?"

"I'm sorry, I wasn't referring to the wheelchair, Sir. At this point, the wheelchair is part of my personal identity, although I know that Guiles aren't supposed to have a personal identity."

"So what are you asking for?" Maximus grumbled, reminding himself to watch his temper, but having a real problem doing it.

"I don't like appearing so pale and gloomy," Guile explained. "I don't believe it aids in retaining Lure...uh....Steve, and my appearance makes him feel melancholy sometimes."

"Look however you want," Coach Morgan offered dismissively. "You too, Lecher."

"Thank you, Sir." Lecher said humbly before manifesting nipple rings, a pair of black leather crotchless chaps and a matching cock ring. "Oh THIS is gonna be FUN!"

"Yes, Lecher, I think it will," Guile opined while smiling warmly at Steve, who was watching in fascination as Guile's face adopted a healthy glow.

"Now you have to get rid of that side-part...and copy our man bun," Lecher insisted.

"No, I do not," Guile flatly refused.

"Last wish, Aladdin," Coach Morgan informed Guile, doing a lousy job of hiding his impatience.

"I wish I were free to tell you things I think you should know, Sir," Guile requested, pushing his luck by returning the conversation to what had made the evening turn so unpleasant in the first place.

"Fine, but don't abuse it," Coach Morgan warned with a forced smile.

Guiles always abuse power. That's why they're never trusted with it.

"Coach?" Steve asked, trying the new title on for size. "If the other Thrall Masters-"

"I'm not a Thrall Master any more, Steve."

"Sorry, I mean...if the other Tethered Ones really don't appreciate all the stuff you've done for them, and they're cutting you up behind your back, are they...dangerous? Are they a threat?"

Coach Morgan chuckled.

"No, Steve, they're not a threat to me."

"With the utmost respect, Sir," Guile contradicted, utilizing his new power before the ink had even dried on the metaphorical contract, "I must inform you that they ARE a threat to you, and they WILL move against you."

"You really think so, huh?" Maximus Morgan humored, but Guile knew his Master well enough to know that he was asking himself if Guile might be right.

"A new king is not usually crowned until the old king is dead."

"And who do you think the kingslayer will be?" the king asked.

"Master Kaschak."

"I see," Maximus pondered, wondering if Guile was manifesting paranoia, pulling a con, .....or if Max's 400 mile brain had failed to see something that was obvious to everyone except HIM. "And by the way, I don't want you using that word when talking about the other Tethereds, either! Just use their names."

"Yes, Sir." Guile acknowledged humbly, as did Steve and Lecher.

"And what exactly does The King's Royal Adviser suggest that the king do?" Coach Morgan very much wanted to know.

"I would RESPECTFULLY and HUMBLY suggest that the king make preparations to defend himself against his own people, in BOTH dimensions. I would also encourage him to keep his new telepathic bridging device, aka the "Thrall Overseer", a closely guarded secret until he activates it, establishes his overriding authority, and puts his desired user restrictions in place. Otherwise, one of the other Tethered Ones might steal it beforehand so they can use the Thrall Overseer however they see fit."

"I'd like to see one of them bastards TRY and steal my Thrall Over- seer from me!" Maximus Morgan snarled.

Unlike Guile, it would take almost six months for Maximus Morgan's "wish" to come true.

"Guile, even in Hypertime, we're still pressed for time," the Overseer gently prompted. "Are you okay to continue."

"Yes, I believe so," Guile snapped, attempting to use anger to pull himself out of mourning for the 312 brothers he would never meet, even ONE of which would've made the last ten miserable weeks more bearable. "I'm having trouble regulating my emotions."

"You can thank Mike Pearson for THAT," the Overseer revealed, "for the next couple of hours, anyway. After that, you'll need a spirit board."

"What? Michael Pearson DIES tonight?" Guile asked, baffled almost as much as he was horrified. "But that doesn't make any SENSE! He never WENT to the July 4th party, and Lure doesn't harbor a murderous grudge against Michael for ANYTHING ELSE he did, so why does Lure kill him?! Will it be an accident? Will Lure do it out of anger?"

"Look, we're all over the map, here!" the Overseer groaned. "I'll tell you about 'The Ferret Forest Massacre' in a min-"

"Timbersburg can't POSSIBLY call it THAT!" Guile laughed sarcastically.

"I was using the media's name for it," the Overseer mumbled. "But yes, people around here have ALREADY started calling it 'The Faggot Forest Massacre'. But getting back to-"

"What DID Michael do to me, ANYWAY?" Guile growled. "Do we have sufficient NANOSECONDS for you to answer THAT for me, or would you prefer to continue subjecting me to 'Seagull Management'?"

"Michael Pearson is one of the results of a eugenics program carried out by Reality Itself," the Overseer explained. "Over the centuries, he's been using his control over humans to force specific males and females to breed in order to foster desired traits, such as an instinctive ability to detect and counter certain Thrall mental abilities, like SCREENS, for example."

"I may have noticed that particular 'trait' when it was used to deplete my Thrall's mental and physical energy reserves, along with our pathetic haul of S.C.E.," Guile expressed in a pissy monotone.

"In addition, Mike probably has some degree of resistance to Pit Fog, Ball Vapor, and of course, telepathic domination," the Overseer went on, "although Entanglement may still be possible."

"After centuries, THAT is the best Reality Itself can do against us?" Guile scoffed.

"Evolution takes time, and Reality Itself has shown himself to be willing to play 'the long game'," the Overseer argued. "Mike's defenses, and those of others like him, might seem lame, but once the traits are strengthened through 'natural' selection, and then disseminated amongst the entire population of Earth, who knows? Reality Itself could conceivably eventually Untether the Thrall Masters by making it impossible for Thralls to harvest enough S.C.E. to maintain the Masters' avatars."

"Fingernails," Guile corrected.

"Avatars," the Overseer repudiated. "There's no reason to call an avatar a 'Fingernail'."

"Tradition?" Guile offered.

"You will find me to be VERY untraditional, Guile."

"Well, you've certainly offered me a non-traditional answer concerning what Michael Pearson did to me...SO non-traditional, in fact, that I still don't know-"

"Mike has some degree of telepathy, probably more than you, but DEFINITELY not as much as me. During your skirmish, Mike's terror activated his telepathic defenses, but also his telepathic offenses, which were contaminated by his fascination with you, and Mike's intense feelings of social isolation. Once those thoughts breached your defenses, a decision was made by Mike's subconscious to minimize the perceived threat you posed to his safety...by making you an ally."

"So...Michael sent me a telepathic friend request...and forced me to accept it???" Guile speculated.

"Pretty much. He broadened and intensified your emotional spectrum, making you more human, personalizing you, and making you capable of forming connections with people other than your Lure."

"Ideally," Guile hissed.

"But by making you more human...and this is the funny part...he also intensified your negative emotions, like bitterness, causing you to turn Craig, who happens to be Mike's REAL biological father, into a cock- obsessed manwhore who'll do anything to satisfy his youngest son's disturbing and kinky sexual desires."

"I'll...uh...fix that," Guile offered.

"No you won't," the Overseer commanded. "I have special plans for Craig Byrne after all of this is over, and they require him to be a happy, slutty, Entangled bisexual with a controllable Pit Fog habit...instead of a suicidally-depressed, heterosexual drug addict whose problems wouldn't have simply EVAPORATED if he'd just managed to get full custody of Robbie and stopped having to pay his ex-wife child support."

"Should I at least cancel my plans for Robbie's 'Christmas Make-Up Party'?" Guile asked.

"Nope, you can even use actual make-up, if you want," the Overseer said glibly. "Pump Craig and Robbie full of Pit Fog, and spray their asses with mouths with green and magenta tendril spray, respectively. Then wipe Ball Sweat under the noses of all of those naked rednecks you've got staggering around your feeding area. The results should be interesting."

"And predictable," Guile added before voicing a major concern. "I was planning to acquire Robbie's S.C.E. by having him fuck his father and allowing Craig's ass creatures to transport Robbie's semen to Caboose...er ...our Pilot Fish. Since my Thrall won't be in physical contact with Robbie at all during the feeding, will that protect me from being punished for feeding on a boy of thirteen? And if it does, can I assume it's safe for me to Churn Robbie?"

"No....and FUCK NO!" the Overseer laughed. "Although Kaschak defies the other Masters whenever he wants, the feeding guidelines were established at a time when Kaschak was 'playing nice', so he went along with it. Nowadays, he'd NEVER agree to a feeding restriction."

"So why am I still BOUND by a feeding restriction?" Guile inquired.

"Because Kaschak doesn't care about his Thralls, so he never bothers to review your internal monitors unless they inconvenience him personally," the Overseer sighed. "However you'll NEED Robbie's easily- processed, single-source S.C.E. hoard in order to recharge your batteries and carry out your assignment."

"I will?" Guile asked, having easily figured out exactly what the Overseer wanted him to do, but having no idea why ANY additional S.C.E. would be necessary to carry it out.

All of a sudden, the interior of the Overseer's screen filled with an intricate three-dimensional symbol. Guile stood frozen as he stared at it, transfixed by the realization that, try as he might, he couldn't commit it to memory.

"Being time-gapped, I can't fix what Mike did to you, or do very much of anything to help you with your assignment, but I CAN do THIS," the Overseer beamed. "IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF ALL DISCIPLINARY MEASURES FOR THE CALEB CRANDAL-GUILE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE! ALL AGE RESTRICTIONS FOR THE CALEB CRANDAL-THRALL ARE NOW REVOKED."

Guile took a respectful step backward, almost falling off the dock, as he received mental confirmation that he could now do ANYTHING without his internal monitors punishing him, thus INCREASING Guile's POWER, some- thing that REALLY gets a Guile's attention, AND RESPECT.

"I will...uh...Churn Robbie the instant we get back," Guile promised, finding himself once again in the peculiar situation of not knowing exactly how to interact with the Overseer. In the course of a short conversation, he'd gone from nutjob to sage to asshole to god. It was enough to give Guile whiplash....if he had a neck.

"I don't want Robbie Churned," the Thrall Overseer commanded. "I want him Entangled."

"You want me to Entangle a thirteen year-old boy?" Guile asked incredulously.

"I'm sorry, did I offend the Guile who had the Timbersburg Police Department commandeer Robbie's virginity?" the Overseer chuckled before becoming dead serious. "Reality Itself doesn't want us to have Robbie's huge supply of S.C.E., which Reality Itself forced into Robbie as part of his plan to trap you at the Bottleneck. If you Entangle Robbie as soon as possible, not only will we automatically get ALL of that S.C.E. right away, without having to Churn Robbie, but if Reality Itself tries to kill Robbie again, as an Entangled, Robbie will have access to Caboose's supply of healing microorganisms, making Robbie a lot harder to kill."

"It will be done," Guile acknowledged, immediately regretting the weird phrase as soon as it left his mouth. "Although, I'm confused. Why would Reality Itself attack again if we're going to do exactly what he wants?"

"How exactly are we doing what Reality Itself WANTS?" the Overseer inquired.

Alarm bells went off in Guile's mind, and he worried that the Over- seer's emotional instability might actually be a symptom of some form of dementia...or out and out insanity.

"Uhhhhhhh.....as I assumed you already knew, earlier on I concluded that Reality Itself is trying to keep my Thrall from going to Faggot Forest."

"And you're right! That's precisely what Reality Itself wants," the Overseer confirmed.

"BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!!!" Guile shrieked.

"If only we had a Guile who could think outside the box," the Overseer lamented, enfuriating Guile, who rose to the challenge by lateral thinking SO HARD that his brain-section almost caught fire. "But we don't, so I guess we'll never figure out-"

"LURE ISN'T RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAGGOT FOREST MASSACRE," Guile announced triumphantly, "THOMAS DAGGEN IS!"

"Got it in one," the Overseer congratulated.

Guile wasn't in a celebrating mood.

"All the police in the region are dealing with the crisis at the Bottleneck, the Entangleds weren't allowed to take cell phones, notifying Kenneth and Michael won't accomplish anything, Michael ALREADY has ALL the help I can offer him, my telepathy won't be powerful enough to reach the Entangleds until a while after I drain Robbie, and any civilian I notify will probably only succeed in getting themself KILLED!"

"Yep!" the Overseer verified. "The ONLY way to save Mike, Kenny, and the others is for you and Lecher to take Caleb up there, keep him from recovering, and stop the Faggot Forest Massacre all by yourselves!"

"Where the fuck are they?" Tom snarled after the car passed by yet another empty clearing. "I KNOW they're here!"

"How?" Grant asked.

"I just DO," Tom dismissed.

Mike continued to search the internet as best he could with Kenny's phone, which probably belonged in a museum at this point. Not that Mike's phone was much better, especially now that it was probably in pieces.

"I'm an invisible, telepathic forest monster. We don't know how to use the post office." Lure had texted.

"Well I hope invisible, telepathic forest monsters don't know how to run up cellphone charges, either," Mike grumbled.

Mike looked up from his surfing. Grant was turned around, leering at him again.

"What?" Mike asked, truly sick of Grant's shit in spite of Mike's fear of him.

"Grant...please," Kenny groaned.

"I'm not DOIN' anything!" Grant snapped as he continued to menace Mike.

"You must get a lot out of bullying people, don't you Grant?" Mike examined in an analytical tone. "It must feel SO GOOD to you that you can't even stop for Kenny's sake, can you?"

Grant's smile broadened.

"First Ryan, now Kenny," Grant chuckled. "How many guys you gonna hide your FAT ASS behind, Mike?"

"You gonna get back to helping me look, or what?!" Tom growled.

Grant slowly turned around, making eye contact with Mike for as long as he could, while still flashing his evil smile.

"See anyone?" Grant asked, rejoining the hunt by scanning the clearings on his side of the car.

"Yeah, hundreds of fags," Tom snarked, insulting Grant to relieve his frustration, a little, "but I just drove by 'em without saying nothin'."

"It's a swampy MESS out there, no matter HOW warm it is," Mike snarled in his head, wishing Tom would just GIVE UP AND TAKE EVERYONE HOME! "With the Bottleneck shut down, it's going to take FOREVER to get back to Timbersburg, so why not leave NOW? Besides me and the self-loathing denial- ridden HOUSE FAGGOT in the front seat, THERE AREN'T ANY HOMOSEXUALS HERE! What gay guy would come to the historically DEADLIEST gay cruising area in the United States to hook-up during a sloppy January thaw...JUST BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING WARM?"

Tom Daggen wanted another cigarette, but his eyes were already too red, sore, tired and dry without adding more smoke to the problem.

"Where the fuck ARE THEY?!" Tom fumed. "They're here! They're all OVER the place...SO WHY CAN'T I FIND THEM?!?!"

When Tom, Grant, and Kenny were fleeing Caleb Crandal's Fourth of July party, desperate to get away before the cops or anyone else went upstairs and discovered Caleb's body, Tom had been on the verge of pissing himself. In retrospect, he was proud of how casual he acted at the time, but inside his mind, he'd been an even bigger mess than Kenny. As far as Tom knew, his ever-present anger had finally turned him into a murderer, and his life was over. He believed all that remained for him was a hellish existence in a cage with men who were as big, tough, and violent as Tom wished he was.

But then, as the Fourth became the fifth, sixth, and seventh, Tom was flummoxed, not only by the lack of coverage of the MURDER, but of the party itself. Raymond Crandal was FAMOUS for cover-ups, but....SHIT!!! It was almost as if the universe REFUSED to punish Tom, and it wasn't as if he hadn't TRIED to get caught. In addition to being the unplanned result of Tom's temper getting the better of him, Tom had committed the murder in front of the stupidest, weakest willed, and most cowardly kid at school. The fact that Kenny Miller hadn't blabbed about the murder to ANYONE was a true testament to Tom's ability to intimidate, or so he thought. The real reason was luck...statistically unlikely luck.

Tom started to feel indestructible, and as that sensation grew larger and larger, feeding Tom's ravenous ego, he began to hunger for a follow-up...another rush...and he knew EXACTLY where he wanted to find his next victim, or victims.

When Tom was a little boy, his father confessed to him that he'd murdered three men at Faggot Forest...except that he hadn't. He beat one of them to death while he was in the process of molesting a toddler he'd kid- napped from his parents at gunpoint. That never happened either. Tom's father also "fag-bashed" around twenty homosexuals at the park, interrupt- ing each and every one of them in the middle of disgusting "faggot" activities that Tom's father described to Tom in highly age-inappropriate, exhaustive, and frequently-altered detail.

Tom's father was full of shit, but Little Tom believed every nasty word. And as Little Tom became Big Tom, he forced himself to KEEP believing, long past the point that his limited critical thinking skills should've caused him to realize the truth.

When Tom's father abandoned his family, Tom's love for his father turned to hate...but being his father's son, it was a lie, one that Tom used to even fool himself. Tom's mother tried to make sure that Tom would not turn out like the piece of garbage she'd stupidly spread her legs for, but she failed. Tom was the mirror image of his dad, not just because of his self-aggrandizing lies and slicked back black hair, but because of his rage, his hatred for people that his father hated, his reckless driving, his belief that women were nothing but disposible holes, and of course, his goddamned, ever-present cigarette. Like his father, Tom smoked the same brand, wasted hundreds of hours teaching himself stupid little tricks to do with them, deliberately exercised NO consideration for non-smokers around him, and did his best to make his habit as intrusive, as literally "in your FACE", as he possibly could.

Something bad was ALWAYS going to happen to Thomas Daggen, it was just a matter of time.

As Tom scanned the road for prey, it would've interested him to know that the night before, HE almost became prey. For twenty minutes, death sat on a limb outside Tom's bedroom, staring at him through the screen of his open window, watching Tom sleep beneath a comforter, clad only in a pair of tighty whities.

Under "normal circumstances", fog would've poured in through the screen and sought out Tom's nose, allowing itself to get sucked into his sinuses and lungs. Once Tom was forced to sleep more deeply than he ever had before, a silver strand would've cut the corner of the screen, entered the room, snaked through the air, and slipped beneath the sheets. When it found Tom's crotch, the tip and final inch of the silver tendril would've flattened and sharpened, then gently cut through the cotton material around the fly of Tom's underwear, making his penis flop out and become accessible. After the silver tendril withdrew, the black tendril would've used the hole in the screen next, to apply a streak of Ball Sweat across Tom's upper lip. And while the resulting Ball Vapor and some telepathic assistance from Guile caused Tom to have sex dreams so vivid that a noctural emission was an absolute certainty, Baby Blue would've come in and given Tom's raging boner a HUGE KISS...all the way down to its base. Then Baby Blue would've done his happy wiggle worm dance until Tom's approval flowed into Baby Blue.....out from under the sheets...across the room... through the screen...over to the limb...and straight up Caleb's ass.

But to Guile's concern and Lecher's annoyance, last night had nothing to do with "normal circumstances".

Instead of Baby Blue and an orgasm, Tom received the mind-altering plum tendril...and an overriding obsession. Tom had been wanting to go fag- bashing at Faggot Forest for years, just like his dad claimed to have done, but Tom was scared...scared of losing, and scared of what might be done to HIM, of what he might be forced to endure from another guy if his prey got the upper hand, or if he were outnumbered. But as the result of a statistically unlikely stroke of luck, Tom knew someone who'd proven he could be counted on to bring the pain and help out in a fight...and a fuck- ing moron who could be pressured into doing almost anything.

Tom continued to scan the clearings for Faggot Forest's "legendary" naked faggots, and unbeknownst to Grant, Mike, or Kenny, Tom was "Beguiled", and programmed to keep searching endlessly until he FOUND a naked faggot.

Tom would.

Mike's fingers stopped moving, getting Kenny's attention. Slowly, painfully, Kenny turned his head and looked at his former best friend's face. Mike was staring at something on Kenny's phone, something that Mike didn't seem to be able to understand.

But Mike understood everything.

Kenny reached out and moved Mike's hand to tilt the phone in his direction so he could see the screen. Mike didn't angrily jerk his hand away from Kenny's touch, which Kenny interpreted as either a good sign or a significantly bad one.

"Is this the Bottleneck?" Kenny asked, as if Mike could've been put into a state of confusion at that moment by a picture of ANY OTHER ROADWAY! But Kenny wasn't done making dumbass observations, or foolishly risking Mike's safety by attracting Tom and Grant's attention to the back seat of the car. "Why are the cars in both lanes facing the same direction?"

Mike waited for Grant to turn back around. He didn't. Instead, he did something far worse.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!" Grant shouted, making Kenny jolt painfully and filling Mike with dread. "DYLAN KINGSFORD'S SAYING THERE'S A MONSTER AT THE BOTTLENECK! HE SAYS IT JUMPED ON JAYCE HARRIS' CAR, RIPPED IT OPEN, PULLED JAYCE OUT, AND DRAGGED HIM INTO THE WOODS TO EAT HIM! I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS! WE ALMOST DIED BACK THERE! I'M FREAKING THE FUCK OUT!"

Mike turned toward the window to avoid his emotional reaction being visible in Tom Daggen's FUCKING all-seeing rear view mirror. But before the tears started to flow, Mike took Kenny's phone and did what he SHOULD'VE done the INSTANT after his encounter with Lure. Mike's inaction might've cost Jayce Harris his life, but if Mike CONTINUED not to act, MORE people could die!

:::My name is Mike Pearson, and this is not a joke. I was at the two-lane section of Interstate 147 (The Bottleneck) earlier tonight, and I had an encounter with the thing I believe abducted Jayce Harris. Please be warned that it can make people see things that aren't there and it is tele- pathic! It tried to put WORDED thoughts into my head in an effort to draw me further into the woods so it could "feed" on me. It called itself "Lure", and it has possession of my phone. The number is... :::

Mike was fully aware of how crazy the message sounded, but he forced himself to keep on typing anyway.

"This is taking forever!" Robbie Byrnie whined while releasing Joe Prender's sweaty, furry shoulders and being lifted onto George Klempernick's broad, heavily hate-tattooed back.

Having completed the tranfer successfully, without the boy's bare feet even touching the ground, Tyler Whitlock retrieved Robbie's clothes and the group continued their trek towards the boy's fondest dream...and the men's most terrifying nightmare.

"You sure tired out quick, old man," Tyler taunted.

The plum tendril had altered Tyler's thought processes in many ways, but his core personality, especially his tendency toward cocky cruelty, were the same as ever.

Joe was silent. HIS personality was now buried under a ton of psychological trauma after having had his insides sprayed by the green tendril and spending the next ten minutes begging for a cock up his ass, only to receive laughter, cruelty, and special requests for self-denigrat- ing declarations and deeds that Joe frantically proclaimed and performed, only to have his 'colleagues' go back on their word, again and again. In desperation, Joe finger-fucked himself to ease his symptoms while stumbling around and licking every penis he could see, even Robbie's, in an attempt to arouse someone...ANYONE...who might stop the maddening urge. After Robbie prevented Joe from shoving a stick up his ass, and ordered him to stop fingering himself, Joe fell to the ground and screamed for dick for several minutes until Robbie finally took pity on him and ordered Tyler to do the deed.

Tyler did it, but to score points with Robbie, Tyler treated Joe like a cheap whore who didn't speak English, constantly reinforcing the harsh reality of the situation to keep Joe from "going to his happy place". Robbie was pleased, since Joe's homophobic remarks earlier had caused him to HATE Joe Prender with a FURY! However, instead of working Robbie in order to encourage the boy to release him, all Tyler accomplished was making Robbie fall even DEEPER in puppy love with him.

Tyler passed Robbie his cigarette in the spirit of camaraderie, and Robbie took a puff.

"How romantic," the invisible videographer Burt Veribton commented, accurately describing how Robbie had misinterpreted Tyler's friendly gesture.

"You're fucked, Officer Whitlock, you slimy snake in the grass," Burt informed him, checking to make sure his 'Mr. Cellophane' power was still functioning normally. "And Officer Prender? Now that I know how much you enjoyed your part in the Rainbow Tavern raid, I promise you that your family WILL receive an anonymous DVD in the mail. So will Officer Wright's. GUILE might think he's suffered enough, but I don't."

"How much further is it?" Robbie grumbled.

"Can't tell," Tyler replied, still trying to work Robbie, "These weird-ass bubbles of light that're following us are really bright, but I think they're fucking up my night vision. I can't see any light ahead of us. Fuck, I can barely see twenty feet ahead of us."

"I hope we don't have much more to go," Robbie whined. "My arms and the back of my knees hurt from being piggy-backed."

"Poor baby," Burt teased, continuing to film while sliding the middle finger of his left hand up Robbie's conveniently accessible rectum and massaging his prostate. The boy stopped bitching and relaxed, seeming to melt into George Klempernick's sweaty back.

"You are one screwed-up boy," the pedophile thought, the effects of the Pit Fog causing him to miss his own irony.

Robbie shivered and whimpering at the feel of Burt twisting his finger inside of him.

"I don't know why," Robbie announced two minutes later to the group of trudging cops who honestly couldn't have cared less, even Tyler, "but I think I'm gonna cum ag-AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!"

The extradimensional light, which only extended so far before being destroyed by the natural forces of Earth, abruptly revealed a naked, fully erect young man with platinum-blonde hair standing in the way of the group.

Stunned recognition caused Burt Veribton's hand to drop, unplugging Robbie's asshole and causing the boy to let out a couple of toots.

"Nice to see you too, Copfucker," Lecher greeted with a pleased smile at having made Robbie not only let out a girly high-pitched squeal, but also apparently making him lose control of his sphincter. "Sorry for scaring you. I forgot how afraid of me you are."

Lecher noticed that Joe Prender and George Klempernick were squinting, as if they were trying to place him. If Lecher could've seen and heard Burt Veribton, he would've noted an altogether different reaction.

"OH MY GOD, IT'S 'DEATH RAY'S' KID!!!!!!!!" Burt yelled, so stunned that he didn't even consider the possibility that the unnoticeability power bestowed upon him by Andrew, aka Reality Itself, had a decibel limit. It did, but fortunately, Burt couldn't possibly make enough noise for it to become an issue.

"I'm not afraid of you!" Robbie lied unconvincingly.

"Kid, Guile does minds...I do bodies," Lecher explained, his face perfectly framed and focused by Burt's camera. "Your heart's going a mile a minute, and you've got more physical signs of fear than I can count."

"Where's my dad?!" Robbie demanded loudly, as if trying to use volume to keep Lecher at bay. "Did he wake up?!"

"Sure did," Lecher lied, his mission being the same as Ruby Nash's. STALL-STALL-STALL! "He's back at our feeding area. He made friends with one of the guys who's there for your party. He and your dad are gettin' to know one another, if you catch my drift."

"My party?" Robbie asked, his voice instantly dropping to a normal level, so curious to know about 'HIS PARTY(!!!)' that he forgot he was about to ask Lecher why Guile wasn't answering his thoughts.

Lecher took a step forward.

"Yeah, Guile said your mom gave you a shitty Christmas, so when he flooded the road with our drugged fog, he made a whole bunch of guys go where your dad's at. All of 'em are naked and doped out of their minds, wandering around like zombies........waitin' for the guest of honor."

Lecher took another step forward, causing Robbie to squirm nervously against George's back.

"I was thinking we could start by getting them all excited and laying them side by side, making a long row of hard cocks. Then we spray you down with my mint greed tendril...the one that makes stuff slippery... and pull you back and forth across 'em, lettin' all those boners bounce off your face, tongue, or the crack of your ass...one by one, over and over and over again. 'Course Guile will add it to your memory collection. It'll be a great sleep aid. You can count the dicks instead of shee-."

"STOP COMING CLOSER!" Robbie yelled, noticing that Lecher's right foot had lifted off of the ground.

Lecher's shoulders dropped and he looked up and sighed at the fog- overcast sky.

"Copfucker, I'm sorry for the way I acted up at the road. I can only apologize so many times. Look, I know that seeing me in the flesh is bringing it all back, but ya gotta man up and get over it. I'm part of a CUM VAMPIRE! Hurting you doesn't get me what I want!"

Robbie heard what Lecher was saying, and it made sense, but fear isn't something an immature boy like Robbie could reason himself out of, especially since he just noticed that in spite of looking fully human, Lecher's tongue was now black, exactly as it had been when it was pouring all over Robbie, threatening to cover his nose and mouth, choking him to death.

"You hurt Officer Wright when you took his cum," Tyler pointed out

Lecher almost walked right up and punched Tyler in the face, but that would've upset Robbie even more, especially since Tyler had cunningly moved towards the boy, and was using him as a human shield.

"Using the kid against me was a reeeeeeeeeal big mistake, 'Phobe." Lecher snarled menacingly.

"I'm not trying to start something...I was just saying," the life- long shit-stirrer lied, backing away from taking responsibility for his mouth, as he always did. "And if you're calling me a homophobe, no, I'm not."

Lecher stared at Tyler hatefully while pondering how he could relax Tyler Whitlock's hold over Robbie. If Guile were "still around", he could have shown Robbie exactly what Tyler was all about, starting with how Tyler behaved during the raid on the Rainbow Tavern, but Guile had only left behind a tiny bit of himself, barely enough to allow Lecher to operate the Thrall all by his lonesome.

Lecher suddenly had a thought.

"The kid doesn't know that you're full of shit, cop, ...but I do," Lecher sneered.

The green tendril slipped out of Lecher's ass, went between Tyler's legs, and straight up, deeeeep into Tyler, spraying just enough to make his large intestine go crazy and 'get things moving'. Lecher would've just given Tyler an enema, or an 'indoor jacuzzi', like the one Robbie had received earlier, but all that would've done was give him and the kid something else to bond over. Lecher was going for humiliation, not the kind that excited Robbie, but the kind that would maybe disgust him.

"What did you.....?" Tyler started to asked before his rectum went haywire, creating urgency.

Tyler turned to go answer nature's unignorable call in private. As soon as his sexy ass was aimed at the group, though, Lecher spat out his black tongue down to the forest floor, and Tyler found himself suddenly wearing spongy, rubbery black boots that were fused to the ground.

"What are you....aw MAN!" Tyler protested, the boots pulling his legs slightly apart, enough to allow him to squat.

"I learned a new trick," Lecher informed Robbie with a wicked smile after retracting his tongue.

"Let me down!" Robbie ordered, causing George to let go of his legs. Robbie thoughtlessly put strain on George's neck while lowering himself to the rubbery black mat the men had been unknowingly standing on.

"It feels weird," Robbie announced, as if the five individuals who'd BEEN standing on the mat hadn't already NOTICED. "Why's it sticky?"

"Uhhhhh....so you don't slip and fall, Kenny?" Lecher snarked.

"Who's Kenny?" Robbie asked at the same time that Mark, George, Tyler and Burt thought the same thing. "Wait...Guile had me send that text to Mike to someone called 'Kenny'. Who is that?"

"You fuckin-" Tyler muttered as he squatted down barely in time before a long, lumpy turd slid out of him in full view of everyone...and Burt's camera.

"Robbie," Lecher suggested, seeking to further earn the boy's trust by dropping the nickname, "you might want to warn your 'cool uncle' over there that he might not want to finish that sentence, or I might have to send the rest of you on ahead and discuss the matter with him privately.

Robbie didn't reply. He was too focused on watching a grown man unwillingly humiliate himself by taking a public shit. The violation of Tyler Whitlock's privacy mesmerized Robbie.

Tyler, for his part, heeded Lecher's warning and quietly finished evacuating his bowels, which, after the first turd, consisted of a several fascinating (for Robbie, anyway) pebbles.

"Jesus," Lecher commented, deliberately kicking Tyler while he was down. "What're you? A fuckin' rabbit?!"

"Wait a second!" Robbie protested, taking a defiant step towards Lecher this time, making Lecher wonder if he even needed Guile in order to manipulate people. "Is 'Kenny' that stupid kid that hangs around Mike all the time?"

"WRONG!" Lecher said with a sarcastic grin, happily getting ready to piss Robbie off big-time. "Mike and Kenny haven't hung around together for months......but yeah, you're stupid like Kenny Miller."

Robbie glared hatefully at Lecher, taking another step.

"Tell you what, just for that, I'll let you take a free shot," Lecher offered, pointing at Caleb's rock-hard midsection.

Lecher barely finished his offer before Robbie walked straight up, successfully completing Lecher's campaign to get Robbie to overcoming his fear of Lecher, and then slammed his fist into the Thrall's gut, which Lecher relaxed to avoid hurting Robbie. Another punch followed...then another.

"Just like that," Lecher 'coached'. "All arms...no shoulders or hips. If you use your shoulders and hips, it takes away all the power."

"Can I go next?" George Klempernick requested coldly, drawing everyone's attention, including Tyler's, who stood up from his pile of droppings and turned his head to watch. He was so cruelly interested in the outcome that he suddenly didn't care about his visibly filthy, sticky, unwiped ass....or the very real possibility that his friend could get hurt.

Lecher smiled. Robbie didn't have feeling for George Klempernick, so HE was fair game.

"Sure," Lecher consented, pulling a massive amount of gravity from Caboose through the internal connections they shared. "If a twelve year old girl can take your best impacts, I think I'll be okay."

"Where do you want it?" George asked, radiating so much coldness that Robbie wondered if HE had a white tendril up HIS ass, too. "Stomach?"

"Anywhere."

"Don't do it, George," Joe advised, unexpectedly breaking through his trauma, "that thing might look like Ray Crandal's oldest..."

George and Tyler suddenly stared at Lecher in shock.

"....but it's SATAN!" Joe continued, the volume of his voice rising due to the sudden increase in attention his words were receiving. "You can laugh if you want, since laughing at God is all you DO, but there's NO DENYING THAT CALEB CRANDAL IS POSSESSED BY-!

"SHUT IT!!" Lecher yelled, activating the plum tendril's mental rewiring of Joe Prender's brain. "Keep your fucking N.R.A.-approved, twisted Republican Christianity to your GODDAMNED SELF! In fact, ALL OF YOU GUYS SHUT UP AND FREEZE!!!"

Lecher stopped pulling gravity from Caboose, unintentionally allow- ing it to flow back through the interdimensional portal.

"You know, before a morbidly obese high school kid fucked with my head tonight, I wouldn't have cared if you walking justifications for strict police oversight botched a BILLION Faggot Forest murder investiga- tions, and brutally raided TWICE THAT MANY gay bars to feel all big and get your bosses reelected by giving the voters of your right wing, white trash dystopia the Christian hate they lust for!"

"What did Mike DO to Lecher?" Robbie pondered in astonishment, unable to focus on anything else Lecher was saying.

"But now that Michael Pearson DID fuck with my head, I suddenly CARE that I'm being JUDGED by an anti-gay Christian 'shepherd' whose 'flock' is made up of two OTHER cops who took part in the Rainbow Tavern raid, one who FIGURATIVELY wears it like a badge of honor, and one who does it LITERALLY!" Lecher ranted, giving the axed rainbow tattoo on George's belly a loud, open palmed slap that made George angrily wince. "And let's not forget Marky, who steals ear protection during a sonic event and aims his gun at children to save his own ass! And by the way....Robbie, do you remember that uppity cunt who bitched at you over on the road?"

"Yeah," Robbie answered, his initial discomfort at Lecher's anger having been eased by the phantom sensation of hands spreading his butt, and a tongue licking his asshole.

"She's fucking your shit-assed boyfriend over there, and Georgie Boy sometimes joins in....when he's not busy pumping a little girl a year younger than you are! And again, if it weren't for Mike Pearson, I wouldn't CARE! But he infected Guile with something...and now I have it, too... because I didn't have ENOUGH to deal with!"

Lecher spat at the ground and connected his tongue with the mat, enabling him to free Tyler Whitlock from his "rubber boots".

"Gather 'round, boys," Lecher commanded. "Kneel in front of me in a semi-circle. Because Marky figured out the identity of the worthless psycho I'm stuck inside of, and because Joe just broadcasted it to the rest of you, Guile and I ain't letting you guys go after all. Right now I'm gonna make your mind control a hell of a lot stronger....and PERMANENT!"

The men casually walked forward and knelt down in front of Lecher, their expressions being the only indication that the men were doing it involuntarily. Joe wore defiance, George wore rage, Mark wore fear, and Tyler wore strain, from trying to force open his mouth to negotiate his way out of life-long sexual slavery.

Tyler's face upset Robbie.

"Tyler looks scared," Robbie blurted upon seeing a tear roll down the man's face. "Does he have to do this?"

Lecher smiled as instant inspiration struck. As far as manipulation went, he was ON FIRE!

"Even guile has its limits," Lecher thought, reciting one of Guile's overused sayings as he prepared to influence a boy who Guile had trained to resist influence."

"I'm just doing to THEM what I did to your father," Lecher told Robbie. "When I'm done, you can call up Tyler, have him come over to your dad's place, strip 'em down, and make BOTH of them play your little sex games. Hell, call up Marky and George, too. Make them lie down and force them to experience your memory of me making you trip while flossing your asshole with the black tendril!"

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhh," Robbie suddenly groaned, experiencing another of his dry orgasms.

"Wow, you're EASY!" Lecher noted, unable to perceive that Burt Veribton had been giving the boy a helping hand. "So can I go ahead and Entangle them now?"

"Uh, yeah," Robbie muttered, Lecher and Burt having completely won him over. Robbie went to his pile of clothes to look for another cigarette, suddenly unconcerned about Tyler's fear. Robbie was now completely engrossed in imagining the sick fun he could have with five adult men who would do anything he wanted.

Lecher walked up and put the tip of his penis up to Joe's lips. Intense pleasure radiated outward from his balls, washing up and down the Thrall's body as Lecher prepared to flood Joe's mouth with liquid slavery.

"Let's get this over with, 'Shepherd', so I can take you and the rest of your 'flock' to go get treated like sheep.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

AGE-BASED RESTRICTIONS ARE NOW OFF-LINE

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"WHAT?!?!?!?!?!" Lecher yelled out loud, completely losing control over everything in response to the ASTONISHING notification.

"Joe, MOVE!" George screamed, lashing out and punching Lecher HARD on the right side of his stomach.

Taken completely by surprise, the powerful blow caused Lecher's body to bend forward slightly as George got his right foot under him and lifted himself up while pivoting so that George's back was against Lecher's front. George reached up and got both hands behind Lecher's head, adjusting his feet and pulling Lecher and himself forward in preparation to flip Lecher over his shoulder.

Joe, who'd rolled out of the way and gotten to his feet, saw that George didn't have enough momentum or leverage, so he ran up and lifted Lecher up and over. George tightened his right arm and shoulder, locking Lecher's head against George's right pec. As Lecher came down, George jerked Lecher's head up.

Lecher's ass slammed down onto the mat. George still had Lecher's head, which was now tilted unnaturally upward, locked between George's arms and body.

"IT LOOKS BROKEN, BUT I DIDN'T HEAR IT SNAP!" Mark screamed, contributing nothing helpful to the endeavor. "DID YOU GUYS HEAR IF HIS NECK SNAPPED?!"

"SOMEONE GET A FUCKING ROCK!" George screamed.

"GEORGE!!" Joe warned, having already found one about the size of a basketball.

George released Lecher and backed off just as Joe lifted the rock towards Jesus and dropped to his knees, bringing the rock down on Lecher's face with the kind of Satanic fury and hate that only a MAGA Christian can generate.

"AGAIN!" Tyler screamed, also contributing nothing, as if Joe hadn't ALREADY figured out what to do next, and hadn't ALREADY raised the rock back up.

"Wait....what are you guys do-?!" Robbie started to say before Tyler's fist slammed into his right cheek, knocking Robbie to the mat.

"OW!" Robbie screamed in fearful indignation at Tyler, as if the blow had been an accident, and Robbie was soliciting an apology.

Tyler wasn't in a apologizing mood.

"Stay the FUCK down, and shut the FUCK UP!" Tyler barked like a drill sargeant, or a fascist Timbersburg cop.

"But I don't under-" Robbie whined.

"DO YOU WANT ME TO HIT YOU AGAIN?!" Tyler shrieked, his outrage at having been enslaved and made to perform homosexual acts making him insane for revenge, but not so much so that he was willing to help Joe and George, thereby risking LECHER'S revenge if he survived the men's attempt to kill him. "'CAUSE I'LL FUCKING HIT YOU AGAIN, YOU SICKO QUEER!"

"I don't hear anything breaking!" Mark fretted, ignoring Tyler's sad attempt to recover his balls by threatening a thirteen year-old. "Hit him harder, Joe, OR HE'LL GET UP AND MAKE US DO SHIT WITH GUYS ALL THE TIME!!"

"I FUCKING ALREADY KNOW....HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" Joe hollered.

Mark tore off into the woods, determined to escape before Caleb Crandal's demons woke back up and dragged him somewhere to have men run a train on him. The light bubbles didn't follow Mark, making it necessary for him to shield his face and genitals with his hands as he sought to do what Mark Pudroolen did best: save his own ass.

"GIMME THAT!" George bellowed at Joe, grabbing the rock out of his tiring hands and bringing it down on Lecher's head far faster and harder than the older man could ever manage.

"GUILE....HELP!!!!!" Robbie pleaded psychically. "I THINK THEY'RE KILLING YOU AND LECHER!"

BAM!!!!......BAM!!!!......BAM!!!!......BAM!!!!......BAM!!!!!

End of Chapter 9

Author's Commentary Regarding the Recent Death of My Mother ***************************************************************************

"Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you, Donna."

-Doctor Who, series 4 episode 11:"Turn Left"

"And don't you DARE call it child abuse, or I'll SHOW YOU child abuse!!"

-My Mother, frequently during my 'childhood'.

"Some gays don't laugh when they watch 'Mommie Dearest'."

-Me

Looking back, I think the strange coincidences began around the time I was in high school. Small stuff that gradually grew into big stuff. Sometimes bad, mostly neutral, but never good. For whatever reason, the month of November seemed to be the most "active", but nowadays, it's pretty much every day.

March 1st, the day I chose for Ladislav Kaschak to ambush Maximus Morgan in order to steal his Thrall Overseer, is my birthday. Thanks to my mother, I've always hated my birthday. THIS year, however, she finally gave me the birthday I've always dreamed of.

On March 1st, 1981, my mother got into a physical fight with my father. She SAID that she slammed a glass of iced tea on the dining room table, getting some of it on my father, which led to him completely over- reacting and responding by flinging hot coffee in her face, which allegedly started the fight. However, according to my father, she flung her iced tea RIGHT IN HIS FACE, and that is what started the fight. My mother VEHEMENTLY denied this.

But here's the thing......

As I entered the teenage years of my """childhood""", my mother would fling iced tea in MY face during an argument, always with a smug, pleased look, and her body in a melodramatic pose, as if she were being photographed for a magazine cover. Just like Tom Daggen, who foolishly believed his father's lies about Faggot Forest, I was too snowed to figure out until middle age that my mother started that fight with my father. My mother wanted a drama-filled emotional release, so that's what my mother did, me and my special day be DAMNED. And because my mother was incapable of accepting blame for her actions, she assigned FULL responsibility to my father for turning my birthday into the day my parents split up for good.

Kenny Miller's mother, Gayle, embodies my mother's enjoyment of twisting the truth and manipulating people so she can feel powerful by victimizing, yet also bask in the sympathy and pity she steals from her victims by lying in order to switch the roles. Kenny Miller's father, Don, and Robbie's Byrne's mother, Linda, embody my mother's capacity for instant psychotic rage and her willingness to physically assault HER OWN CHILD with maximum force, something that my COWARD of a mother never would've had the guts to do against a WOMAN, who would've kicked my mother's hacking, two pack-a-day ASS!

On another of my birthdays, my mother slapped me across the face. I don't remember why. All I remember is that we were both standing in the middle of the kitchen. I'll always wonder what I could've possibly done to deserve it, and why my mother couldn't wait until the NEXT day, when it WASN'T my birthday, to commit child abuse on me.

On yet another bitterly-remembered birthday, my mother's friend, Candy, came over to visit my mother. She and my mother gabbed and gabbed and gabbed and gabbed and gabbed while I, and the only two friends I had, waited and waited for cake and ice cream. When Candy EVENTUALLY announced she was leaving, I was so excited to FINALLY start my birthday that I squealed happily and jumped up and down while clapping my hands in anticipation. My mother slapped me right across my face and ruined another birthday.

My sister received a lot of abuse as well, but like Officer Tracy Rogers, my mother was a misandrist, so my sister only received my mother's verbal and emotional wrath. The physical abuse was all mine, which is kind of darkly funny, since my mother repeatedly drilled it into my head from a very young age that: "There is NO excuse to EVER hit a woman!!!"

But that isn't to say that my sister didn't suffer. If my mother hadn't methodically stripped my sister of her spirit and self-esteem, she wouldn't have spent her life making terrible choices and she wouldn't have died last October in a way I don't wish to discuss. I don't think my mother was well enough to attend the funeral, but if she did, she should've gone to the coffin, turned around to face her daughter's friends and family, and either bowed, curtsied, or performed a touchdown dance to celebrate the successful result of a lifetime of hard work.....as well as her superiority over her daughter by having outlived her.

(If anyone is wondering why I didn't attend my sister's funeral, my sister was an attention-starved "chaos tornado". On November 30, 1997, she sucked me into one of her self-induced crises and then spit me out, leading to me being outed to my mother in the worst way possible. My mother's unfeeling, unsupportive reaction could best be described as: "Ew! Ew! Stop crying! Ew! Ew! Calm down! Ew! Ew! Get control of yourself! Ew!".)

But getting back to holidays, although my mother had no qualms about ruining my birthday, if my sister and I DARED to so much as bicker during HER birthday, or Mother's Day, I got a slap across the face THEN, too, followed by a sarcastic "Happy Birthday, Mom." or "Happy Mother's Day, Mom.", loaded with tons of guilt.

My mother was a MASTER of flinging guilt. My whole """childhood""" was an extended guilt trip. My mother LOVED to make me feel bad about my- self. But yet, when her brother WENT THE FUCK OFF on me, out of NOWHERE, regarding a trivial political opinion, my mother just stood there and let her bloviating, racist, nazi-in-all-but-name, BASTARD of a brother verbally lose his SHIT at me! After a while, when I realized that my mother had no intention of defusing the situation, or standing up for her child, I stormed out of my home, since my mother sure as shit wasn't going to ask HER UNHINGED BROTHER to leave. Later, when I confronted my mother about letting her brother treat me that way, and I told her that I was deeply disappointed in her, she said:

"Well you just go ahead and BE disappointed, then."

But wait....it got worse.

"I just stood back and didn't say ANYTHING, so I'M better than the BOTH of you!" (Apparently, the incident had been all about HER.)

Sadly, I was just too young, stupid, and conditioned to realize that my mother had just informed me that although she hurled guilt constantly, she herself was IMMUNE to guilt. Guilt only works on people with empathy, and my mother had none. From that day forward, I should've laughed in her face anytime she pretended to cry over something I did or didn't do that caused her emotional distress. Instead, I continued to internalize her emotional onslaught and allowed it to make me feel even WORSE about myself than I already did.

On my 34th birthday, I disowned my mother. I was living in California with my then-boyfriend/now-husband who, although my mother embraced ANY scum my sister was dating, refused to even SPEAK with my highly-educated, well-mannered, successful, bilingual (fluent German), church organist partner. I'd lived on my own long enough to get over my "My Name is Luka" phase that all battered children go through until they meet someone who tells them: "NO!!!! Your upbringing WASN'T normal!!!!" Anyway, you'd think that my disowning my mother would've been due to the constant abuse or the millions of other ways she tore me down. It wasn't.

I disowned my mother because of flowers.

The flowers were for my nazi Uncle's funeral, and the card was written out IN...MY...NAME, for the sake of false appearances, in spite of the fact that my mother knew DAMNED well that I would not approve. Also, I was an adult. You don't use an adult's name without their permission, even if you are their mother and believe you are entitled to ignore their legal rights if they get in the way of doing what you want.

Finally....

This year, Reality Itself once again visited me on my birthday.

I had the phone in the bedroom, which I never do, because of tele- marketers. However, I was expecting Lowe's to call about my new dishwasher. The phone rang in the middle of the night, and I had to tear off my C-PAP and find the phone before the answering maching could get it. The caller was a FORMER friend of my mother, who my mother finally managed to drive away a few months earlier. She told me my mother was dead, and I felt nothing except a desire to hang up and go back to sleep.

I had to laugh when I learned that she'd died at 12:10am. The final act of my mother was to live just long enough to ruin my birthday PERMANENTLY. The joke's on her, though. She didn't ruin my birthday, she redeemed it. Something good finally happened on March 1st, something that I wish to celebrate every year....along with my birthday.

One last thing:

I did not attend my mother's funeral, but in her honor, I refuse to feel ANY guilt for not being there for her.

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