by Lucian Bane
He’d performed The Erase the second she’d left him the night before and already he needed to do it again. He didn’t have time, room, or patience for distractions. He wasn’t positive, but danger was likely growing as they crawled along at the pace of a slug. He just wanted to get done with this human business and get back to plot their journey to the Seven Arks. Thankfully, he was even given a map. This shouldn’t take long at all.
Several hours later, Poe sat alone in the vehicle, wondering if his Scribbler had gotten lost in the mall. Surely she knew her way around her own realm. He’d talked her into letting him stay behind after breakfast while she and Kane fetched the human realm necessities. To make matters worse, his human body was making bathroom demands on him. He followed the shadows that came and went, getting a lot better at distinguishing things. But everything was still a solid blur of light and dark, more dark than light. The door to the vehicle finally opened behind Poe.
“I am so sorry!” she cried, with the sound of crinkling, thudding, and gasping. “Believe it or not, I went as fast as I could.”
Poe bit back the thousand word essay expressing the ludicrousness of her extended absence at hearing her sincerity. “I should like to use the lavatory.”
“Oh my God! I’m a criminal!”
The extreme regret and self-loathing in her tone struck him with guilt. “It’s fine, I understand.” Though he certainly didn’t. At least he believed her not meaning to take all of eternity.
“I got lots of toys, Mr. Poe. Wait till you see them!” Poe reached for Kane as he climbed into the vehicle, touching his shoulder.
“I hope to see them very soon, I’m sure they’re all very…” what was the proper term, “entertaining.”
He realized it must be improper at the sound of his Scribbler’s snicker but didn’t know how to correct it, and he wasn’t going through another embarrassing episode of guess the wrong word ten times.
“I may have gone a little crazy with buying things,” she said with a tiny voice. “But I never splurge, and this time I did!”
The joy in her tone and satisfaction was quite odd. It sounded as though before they came along, his Scribbler lived a very uneventful life outside of fiction.
On the way back to her home, her phone chirped again. “Lisa, speaking.” Lisa? “Hi Ms. Torris. Yes, it’s true. I can’t imagine what the huge fuss is.” His Scribbler did that weird laugh. “I understand. Not a problem. Let the press know, will you?” More laughter. “Goodbye.” She hung up and muttered, “Geeze, you’d swear I was leaving the planet rather than taking a vacation.”
“Who is Lisa?” Poe had to know.
“Oh, a pseudonym for some of my horror works.”
“You’re a horror Scribbler? I’m a horror character!” The proud way Kane said it made Poe angry. After all he’d been through, he still held pride in that wretched genre. Poe hated that it was all he knew and had. Why couldn’t he have been written in a Romance genre? Would have been better to suffer that than what he’d been through.
“Lisa Peterson. Top female Horror Scribbler, at your service.” Poe didn’t miss the dry edge to her chirpy tone.
“Lisa. Charlotte. J.P. Howe. Any others?” he asked.
“Many,” she said. “John Burb. Jack King. Larson Gray. Ummmm Tyler Finn.”
“All males. Why so many?”
“I like diversity, I guess. And male names because I tend to get better responses to my work with them.” More dryness in her tone.
Really. “And what is your real name?”
She let out yet another different laugh. She had as many as she had names it seemed. “That, my friend, is a secret that very few people know.”
When Poe realized she had no plans of telling him, it automatically hit a nerve as well as his need to know list. “So who are you today?”
“I’m your Scribbler today.”
“Ah, Mr. Howe,” Poe couldn’t keep the dry from his tone.
“Yes, Mr. Howe if you must. But Charlotte would be okay too.”
“I don’t wish to call you by another Scribbler’s name, nor do I care to refer to you as a man. So, Scribbler will have to suffice.”
“Suit yourself, Mr. Muse Rider.”
“Can I still be Master Kane? I like that name.”
“Oh you most certainly can!” the Scribbler sang. “Oh, Mr. Poe, I’ll stop at the first public restroom so that you can relieve yourself.”
“Public?” Divinities, he didn’t want to perform that in the open.
“Unless you wish to wait till we get home. It’ll be a fifteen minute drive.”
Poe calculated the misery and decided it was worth the wait.
At five minutes before relief, Poe realized his grave miscalculation. He sat there feeling like his midsection had been pumped full of liquid and would burst any second. It was awful and he suffered not in silence, as his scribbler saw fit to blast their ear drums with a raucous clamor called pop music, effectively doubling his agony. Poe could hardly believe how needy and sensitive these human bodies were. It was almost as though his insides were on the outside, putting him extremely in tune to every little nuance it experienced. Like a virtual science experiment in a constant gone-wrong motion. Vexing!
On top of this, he had to endure the theatrics of his mortified Scribbler when she became aware of the dire turn his need has taken.
“Oh you poor thing!” as she hurried him into the house. “I’m a monster, what was I thinking? You must hate me!”
He didn’t care to refute a single one of her words as he locked himself in the bathroom. This time he choked down the racket his body seemed to need to make when he relieved himself. He didn’t want to hear how painful it sounded to his Scribbler again. Prostate issues. He very well may have them now. The human bladder was surely not able to withstand such extensions without incurring consequences.
Managing to wash his hands, he made his way out of the bathroom feeling a thousand times better and ready to get to business. This blindness was not helping his patience one bit. Laughter reached him as he made his way to the living room where his Scribbler and Kane seemed to sit and fascinate over everything the boy had as though she’d not been the one who purchased it.
“Mr. Poe, I got a fire truck! And it really works!”
“Wonderful,” Poe said, bracing for the moving shadow of his Scribbler headed his way.
“Can you see?”
“Not exactly.” He moved his arm from her light touch. “Still shadows.”
“You stare right at me,” she said, “it’s creepy.”
“I’ll do my best to refrain.”
“No, I mean it just seems like you can see and I… just it… it throws me off a little.”
“Why?” Poe regretted his need-to-know-everything impulse in that second. He realized with her, he may not want to know everything.
“When you think you can’t be seen and you seem to be stared at, it’s alarming.”
Poe was no more informed than when he asked. “I would like to—“
“Get ready to leave, I know. Your impatience has me on edge!”
“What impatience?” Poe was sure he’d shown no such thing.
“I can feel it, your need to leave. Go. Conquer. I put it in your blood, remember? I can feel it.”
Poe was a little surprised and maybe concerned. “What else can you feel?”
“Ummm…” she said lightly, “Nothing. That’s it.”
Poe sensed dishonesty.
“What!” she cried.
“What?”
“You’re looking at me like I’m lying.”
“I can’t even see you.”
“You’re staring at me like you can and remember I can sense your feelings.”
“I’m not meaning to.” He almost said why are you smiling? “You will help me get the boy clean?”
She leaned close and Poe leaned away a little when a faint scent of that smell hit his nose. “I will,” she whispered. Poe was thankful to fi
nd it was no longer unpleasant. “Now, as for you, I have your clothes. I will lay them out in the bathroom.”
“What sort of clothes?”
“The sort humans your age wear in this era.”
“How do you know if they’ll fit?”
Poe leaned away from her light pat on his face. “You, dear Poe, are fearfully and wonderfully made. I have all your physical measurements in a document on my computer too.” She gave a sneaky chuckle. “I know all about you.”
Her words or maybe the way she said them seemed to cause his human body to erupt in malfunctions. His heart sped up and the blood in his veins thinned with the spike of adrenalin.
“Enjoy a shower, Mr. Poe. As a human,” she whispered, further inflaming the problem, “I think you’ll find the experience… different.”
What was that supposed to mean? And why did it anger him? “It’s not as though I’ve never had a shower before, Scribbler.”
“Oh, I know. I hope it makes you feel better. Relaxes you. Takes some of that edge off. Oh,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him. “I’ll show you where everything is.”
He took his hand back. “I can find it.”
“You cannot find which is shampoo and which is soap, Mr. Poe. Stop being so difficult.”
He allowed her to tug him on again, his mind doing calculations with the grip of fingers on his wrist. “What is the big difference?” Her fingers were small, slender. A confirmation really. Stupid brain always needing data and confirmations. He’d be glad when his eyes could do that for him, it all took place without him being so utterly aware of everything. And judging by his body’s reaction to her touch again, his Erasing hadn’t worked very well. Figures his powers would lessen and his weakness increase.
“I’m going to guide you to the handles so you know which is which.”
“Or you can say the hot is left, the shampoo is right etcetera.”
She paused and he stumbled into her, forcing her hands into his body to catch him. “Sorry,” she said, laughter in her voice. Why was that funny?
“Glad to entertain you.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry. No, that’s not it.”
“Then what? Why are you laughing?” And when would he learn not to ask her questions?
“I’m… it’s just funny how much you hate to touch me.”
Poe stood confused now. One, how did she know that? Two, why did she think it funny? And asking her either of those was not going to happen, which left him frustrated with more inadequacies to ponder.
“Left or right, Scribbler. Just tell me. It’s not rocket science, I’m sure.”
“Yes, of course.” Though she clearly fought to remove the humor out of her voice, he heard it with his exceptional hearing. “Shampoo is the only thing in the tub. It can be used for your hair and… whatever else. Hot water is on the left, cold is on the right. The lever to turn on the shower is on top of the waterspout. I would imagine you might want to wait to shave when you can see.”
Shave? “I’ve not shaved in my entire existence.”
“Oh,” she gasped. “Right. Leave it then.”
Now he was curious. “Do you think I need to shave?”
“Only if you want to shave.”
“My wants are not the question. Do you suppose I need to, is the question.”
“I can’t see why? There is no law that says you must. Although…”
“Although what?”
“Well, I don’t know who the Seven Arks are but I guess they’ll likely be more convinced with a man who doesn’t look like you hail from the Dregs of Dersota.”
“The what?”
“Oh,” she said lightly, the shadow of her hand waving, “It’s something from one of my fantasies.”
Another negative sensation hit him. “You have many of those, I see. All unfinished?”
“Yes, Mr. Poe. All unfinished. I shall leave you now.”
“Thank you.”
He stood in the silence and blotchy darkness for several moments. He’d upset her. And that bothered him too, it would seem. Was there anything that didn’t bother him? He was sure every single thing in this realm was a bother in some form or another. He removed his clothes and made his way to the shower and climbed in. Why was the floor so high up? His own had no walls, this one seemed to be shaped like a small boat.
Before he managed to set the stream of water at the right temperature, he’d both scalded and frozen himself. Finally he stood with his back to the wall of water and closed his eyes, refuting the anger in his gut. He didn’t care about being wrong. He cared that the Scribbler had been right—no cared about what had been right. The showers on Octava felt nothing like this. It was as though, again, his insides were turned out and everywhere the water touched proved to be an excruciating plethora of sensations. Poe turned around into the hot water, ready to immune himself to his human condition but the assault on his front was seventy times worse. He focused on wetting his hair.
By the time Poe got to the body washing part, he was in great duress. What was wrong with him? He was positive now that he was having a negative reaction to the realm. Just what he didn’t need. A defective body prone to every single weakness it could possibly possess. Poe looked down when the ache in his manhood had reached distracting. Divinities! Something was incredibly wrong with him. It was swollen and extended to thrice its normal size. Dear Octava’s heavens. He carefully touched the angry looking limb and gasped when it jerked as though in response. Had he damaged it from twice prolonging his waste release? Poe wished he knew more about this human catastrophe. His Scribbler was the only one to ask and yet seemed to be the greatest source of his flaws. As though confirming this, his phallus jerked with a burning ache that seemed to demand touch, like an itch that demanded scratching. And yet, he also felt a strange power in it, like if he succumbed to it, he would be overcome.
But he must ask. He’d find a way without including this tragedy. And if there was something she was doing to cause this or make this human journey harder for him, they needed to figure that out and do what it took to make it stop.
Poe rinsed his body, barely escaping the clutches of this dire infirmity. He dressed in the clothes the Scribbler gave, puzzling over the small fabric he encountered. He finally figured out they were a type of undergarment to be worn under the thick leg coverings. He stood, ready to growl at the way the soft fabric molested him. He couldn’t handle that and removed them.
But where the undergarments molested his manhood, the leg coverings practically raped it. By the time he removed them, it had become like an appendage between his legs. He’d have to suffer with the undergarments.
Putting them back on, he followed with the leg covering, sure his Scribbler made a mistake in knowing his size. The confines of the material annoyed him to say the least. But he’d wasted enough time with the nonsense. Finally, he puzzled over the material that was to cover his top. Extremely… scarce. Was this an under garment too? He felt around for something more, feeling along the floor in case it had fallen. Nothing.
He clamped his teeth together, loathing his predicament more than ever. And if he weren’t mistaken—and he was pretty sure he wasn’t—she seemed to find it entertaining.
Chapter Thirteen
Emerging from the bathroom, he listened. Following the low chatter to the kitchen, he held onto the door jamb at entering.
“You’re done,” she called out. “I take it you had an invigorating shower. You look just fantastic.”
The exuberance in her tone was turned up high. For what? “Is there more than this for my top?”
“Wow Mr. Poe, you look different,” Kane called, sounding happy with whatever he was doing.
“I have a long sleeve to go over that. Figured you’d want to be comfortable inside. Would you like me to get it?”
“Yes. I don’t like so little clothes.”
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll go fetch it then.”
Poe mad
e his way toward Kane. “What are you up to? Toss me a wave so I can find you.”
“Over here.” He waved his arm and Poe followed it.
“What are you doing?” Poe asked.
“Putting together my log cabin house!”
“Ah, nice.”
“I got a camera too, Mr. Poe!” he said excited.
“Really! That’s fantastic my boy.” Poe wasn’t really sure what that was in this realm. Once again, he kicked himself for not keeping up with the modernizations of this realm in Octava.
“Here you are, Mr. Poe.”
Poe turned at the soft voice of his Scribbler. He grabbed the fabric she pushed into his stomach and looked down at the shadow. Holding it up, he felt around for the openings.
“Oh give me that,” she whispered, yanking the fabric from him. “Put out your arm. Right arm.”
He did as she said, not wanting to make a fuss. The material slid over his arm until his hand emerged from the end.
“Other arm.” Poe reached for it. “More behind you. No… you’ll need to…” she directed his hand. “There.”
Poe swished his shoulders, adjusting the fit.
“Let me.” She pulled the material at the front and he grabbed her hands.
“I can.”
“Let. Me.” Her firm soft words warned of a fight and he released her hands, his heart and body erupting in those absurd reactions.
“Fine. I need to speak to you.”
“Fine.”
The burn of her hands could be felt through both the shirts. Quarks she was slow as volcanic lava. He bit his tongue on several annoyed expressions, not wanting to alert Kane to his problems.
“There.” She patted his chest with her hands and he stepped back. “Kane, do you mind if Mr. Poe and I have a private talk in the other room? Then you can show me how that camera works!”
