Lovers Peak

by Dani Stowe

Bradley puts my arms over my head where I let them lay; he gets up on his knees while gripping and lifting my legs and then my ass to yank off my underwear. “That’s more like it,” he says.

  Bradley touches me and my body jerks. He puts his fingers in his mouth, which I’m sure he’s wetting them so he can wet me because I’m not remotely turned on. In fact, I want to run and cry, but I also want to beat him.

  I’m infuriated, except I’m not just mad at him—Shelley left me here. I wish Henry were here or better yet, I wish Orphelius were here. I was more afraid of Orphelius than this joker, yet I don’t believe for a second Orphelius would ever hurt me like this. In fact, if I had at least tried to be a friend to Orphelius and not behaved so apathetically and let those tentacles rescue me, this might not be happening right now.

  As Bradley positions himself to enter me, he groans with frustration. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Huh?” I mumble although I don’t think I should’ve even made a peep.

  “The fucking birds. They keep fucking tapping.”

  I look to the window and my only real friend in the world, the dumb bird, is there but it’s not alone. There are other birds, a swarm of birds, and they are behaving most peculiarly. Seagulls are taking turns to tap hard at the window with their beaks. I’m surprised so many have gathered. I hadn’t noticed them over the past few minutes.

  Bradley hunches over me. He kisses my neck and it makes me cringe, making my head throb harder as tears roll down my face. I keep my focus on my feathered friend who begins to tap much louder now.

  “Fuck!” cries Bradley and he yells, “I can’t fucking focus with all that racket going on!”

  I use the opportunity while Bradley’s distracted to attempt an escape by trying to twist and yank my lower half free of the brute.

  Bradley grabs me by the throat and I’m choking. “Don’t move unless I fucking tell you to,” he curses. Bradley’s face is red and a vein on his forehead looks like it’s going to burst, but his grip on my neck is what has me worried. I feel like he’s going to pop my head right off my body.

  “Br...brad...ley,” I choke as his hips lean heavily between my thighs. The head of his erection is ready to invade me but I don’t even care because I can’t breathe! I claw at his arm and start kicking wildly. “Bra...ad—”

  Thump!

  Bradley loosens his grip and I’m panting.

  Thump! Thump!

  “The fuck?” asks Bradley and we both turn to see a huge seagull dive head-on into the window.

  Blood splatters across the glass and we are both in shock. Another bird bangs into the window, falling, and leaving a few random feathers to stick.

  “What in the hell are they doing?” Bradley stares in their direction. He leans off me as more seagulls begin to smash-dive straight into the pane.

  The brute gets off the bed and I use the opportunity to pull my pajama dress down. Bradley notices and grabs me by the jaw before pushing my head back into the pillow.

  “Hey, we’re not done,” he demands and I yank at his arm until I feel like we are arm wrestling, but we stop when we hear a startling crack.

  Bradley and I let go of one another to look at the window. Seagulls are dive bombing into the glass, killing themselves. Bradley let’s out a sickening, gagging sound that matches my feelings of disgust, as blood and feathers begin to collect on the opposite side of the window forcing the crack to spread wider like a web being strewn across the glass pane.

  I swallow. Beyond the muck of avian innards glued to the glass is a whirlwind of birds. They are flying about in every direction and there are so many of them that the flapping of wings starts to produce the sound of what could be a tornado outside. The screech of their caws becomes a terrorizing chorus.

  One screech stands out as it echoes through the house. A bird has gotten in. A seagull comes flying through the bedroom door from the hall and attacks Bradley.

  He cusses, waving his arms frantically and all I can do is lean back into the corner of the bed to curl myself up and watch the disturbing onslaught.

  My pulse is racing as Bradley grabs a hold of the bird, but before he can throw it, more birds are on him.

  A scream escapes my throat with the shattering of glass from the window but my voice is muted by the swift wind being created by masses of wings and feathers of birds that are now flying in.

  Seagulls are swirling into the room. The huge feathered creatures are everywhere, but mostly on Bradley and he is shrieking—his arms becoming exhausted from defending himself against the feathered fury.

  Bradley runs out of the hall as birds keep coming through the window to chase him. He runs about the house bloodied as beaks and wings and bird feet attack him. They are clawing, pecking, and scraping at his eyes, his ears, everything!

  I hear the clamor of car keys as Bradley grab them and bolts out the door then down the front steps to his car. He is still screaming when I hear the car door shut. He curses between shrieks and yelps as he starts up the engine to take off. As he goes, most of the birds also disperse and as quickly as the chaos rolled in, a calm takes over.

  I sit on the bed for a few minutes, hugging myself, and watching a few remaining seagulls poke about the house until they finally make their exit. White and gray feathers float about and I take a breath. My face feels sticky and damp and I wipe my upper lip of beaded sweat, also smearing a tiny downy feather that sticks to my hand.

  The space between my thighs tingles like it’s happy to have been saved from assault, but at a cost to my poor head, which is pulsating from adrenaline and after being hit.

  I regret what happened; I feel dirty and ashamed, but I also feel something else. It’s dread mixed with a teensy bit of curiosity and, I hate to say it, hope.

  I swing my legs over the side of Shelley’s bed and force myself towards the open window now framed with shards of sharp broken glass. The ocean calls to me with crashes of waves but I don’t look at it right away. Instead, I peek at the ground.

  A mass grave of bloodied seagulls with broken necks and disfigured wings lay piled outside beneath the window frame. I let my eyes wander past the death heap and further towards the sand on the beach and finally over the water. I can make out a human head before it slips beneath the ocean’s surface and I hear a tapping from behind me. I turn to see my regular feathered friend perched on the vanity.

  I walk over to the vanity to sit down next to my fowl friend and look at my inflamed face in the mirror. I feel behind my ears and on each side there is a tender lump where Bradley struck me.

  I look at the seagull and sigh. “So, Orphelius can control you, can he?”

  The seagull screeches.

  “Did he leave you behind to keep an eye on me?”

  The bird cocks its head, blinks, and screeches again.

  “Are you content with the power Orphelius has over you or do you often try to resist him?”

  Another screech bellows and the big bird nestles down seemingly content atop the vanity.

  “Yeah,” I say leaning back into the chair. “It’s getting harder for me to resist him as well.”

  Chapter 9

  Orphelius

  THAT FUCKING WITCH!

  “This is not right,” I say to myself as I descend to the ocean floor. “That sea witch and I made a deal that Kumiko would come back to me, but this was not how it was supposed to happen. Kumiko is still being beaten. She’s still being bruised and I swear upon the gods that if my lover should fall dead in my arms again, I’ll have that witch swallowed whole to be digested slowly within the big belly of a whale. Better yet, I’ll bleed her and hang her by a rope above a hundred hungry sharks so she can watch the kind of frenzy she creates before I cut the rope to watch her get torn limb from limb.”

  “That’s rather grotesque even for you, isn’t it Orphelius?”

  A rippling wave moves swiftly past my face.

  “Fuck off, nymph,” I tell the small feminine creature as I move sluggishly along
the ocean bottom using all eight of my massive tentacles.

  She swims back into view. “Don’t be upset, Orphelius. None of us like it when you’re upset. Dealing with your sadness for centuries is hard enough for us to bare as it is.”

  I study the nymph for a minute. She is not much bigger than my human hand and I put out my palm. She flicks her long blonde hair back with her tiny blue hands and then grips my fingers to pull herself up and settle in my palm. Her top half looks human except she is completely blue in color, which makes her difficult to be seen, especially by humans. Her bottom looks much like a lady’s poufy velvet skirt that gathers at the end, as it was tied together by what looks like soft delicate silver leaves, which she uses as a propeller to swim speedily.

  “Forgive me,” I say. I forget I can project my feelings and not just my demands into the creatures I command. “Where is the witch now?” I ask the nymph because nymphs know everything; they are better at gossip than aristocratic human women.

  “Mmm, she’s around,” replies the nymph, wrapping her arms around my middle finger to caress it.

  “Why is the witch avoiding me? I’ve been seeking her out.”

  “You know why, Orphelius,” she smirks.

  I pinch the nymph’s face between two fingers of the opposite hand. “No, I don’t.”

  “Because she warned you about this. The witch warned you this might happen. Bringing the dead to life is a finicky trick of magic. You made a deal with no guarantee that deal would ever come to fruition, but you still killed for it.”

  “I’ve killed many things.”

  “But the dragon,” she snickers, “we all know you regret killing it. I can see it on your face. It was the last of its kind and you sacrificed it for the sake of a lover that might’ve never returned.”

  “She did return.”

  “But she doesn’t remember.”

  “I don’t want her to remember.”

  “Do you really think the girl you’ve been waiting around for is going to love you as you are?”

  I wrap my fingers around the nymph and tighten my grip.

  “Orphelius!” she cries. “That hurts!”

  It does hurt. I can feel her pain and I let go. I watch the nymph flutter away, quickly disappearing to become invisible among the vast blue backdrop of the deep.

  I look down at my lower half. It is grotesque and I hate to exist this way, but the thought this form gave me powers that might reunite me one day with my lover has always given me hope. Of course, the grotesque nature of my physical state—these fucking huge tentacles attached to a boneless, spineless blob of muscle, has certainly left me worried that Kumiko would reject me. I remember the witch warned me this could happen and I remember how I came to be this way.

  IT WAS A STILL NIGHT aboard the Annabelle and few weeks into our journey towards the Americas. No wind or waves could be heard, but we were all uncomfortable. The stiff air seemed to intensify a slave’s cries aboard the opposite ship. She was being tortured.

  Her crying often followed her screams and it made all the seamen uneasy. I feared Kumiko’s lord might fall under the influence of whatever atrocities were being committed and I had no choice but to confront my Captain about it.

  Luckily, Willis was also upset. I never knew his history; he would not confess his past to me, but I knew the man would not sit idle in the presence of such torture. He was not averse to blood or the spilling of guts, preferring to see a person—good or bad, succumb to a quick death rather than be tortured.

  Captain Willis and I discussed a plan of action to deal with Captain Porterman. Willis decided he would have a talk with the other Captain. Not having any wind at our sails made our new crew anxious about supernatural entities and a woman wailing, as some thought, might trigger a visit from the gods. We decided I would accompany Willis to inspect the cargo, although the only cargo the two of us were interested in were the women—the slave and my whore.

  Our first inspection did not yield good results. There were several women aboard the ship, all being abused. Despite my Captain’s plea for better treatment, the slave—the African beauty whom we heard the night last, was screaming worse the night hence. I also did not see Kumiko, as her lord locked her in his quarters.

  I regret the tortured slave cried out for a second night in a row, but it gave us another excuse to revisit the ship to have a second go at discussing the treatment of slaves with Captain Porterman.

  The man was an arse, laughing when the slave professed to be a witch and cursed us all on our second visit. Captain Willis and I chuckled a little; in all our adventures, never had we’d seen anything that remotely resembled anything having to do with magic.

  But of course, magic found us. Like idiots, Willis, Henry—who was the first to volunteer, of course, and I left the Annabelle to save what we could aboard Captain Porterman’s ship, which was on fire, never minding the lightning striking suspiciously about the vessel.

  We each had our own reasons to face the fiery hell that awaited us, but we had no time to discuss it. When I saw Kumiko’s lord, without his wench, arrive on the small lifeboat to join Captain Porterman and a few other officers, I wished to slit his throat, but I had no time for that either. I grabbed the oars of our small boat as Willis gave Henry a speech to encourage him to push off and off we went.

  Yes, away we went across the still sea to climb aboard the burning ship only to find the slave in chains. Henry went looking for a key, as ordered by the Captain, and I went in search of Kumiko.

  I found her lying flat on a bed, as if ready to accept her fate; I had to shake her to arouse her.

  “Master Mayhem!” she cried and wrapped her arms around me as I pulled her to stand.

  “We have to go,” I shouted, but I was too late.

  An explosion came from behind me and we both felt the ship tip and shake. It also began to creak and I could hear wood snapping and what sounded like chewing and chomping. It was as if the mouth of the sea was swallowing the ship.

  I panicked as water began to flood at our feet, rising quickly to our shins and then our knees and hips. The boat tipped further sideways and we began to slide. I gripped a pillar with one hand and Kumiko with the other to pull her up, hoisting her with every bit of strength I could muster towards the opening of the door through which I could see the stars. I figured the ship was half submerged and I needed Kumiko to climb upward as we sank.

  “Climb out!” I shouted. She did as I said and when she turned to reach down to me in an attempt to help me up, another explosion rocked the ship.

  I believe it knocked me out for a time although I know it had not been that long, as my transformation must’ve been very quick. By the time I awoke, I was already different. When I saw my lower half, I screamed, believing a giant squid-like creature had me halfway in its mouth.

  I also couldn’t breathe—but I could breathe. I felt like I was choking, gasping for air at my nose and mouth, which were flooded, but my lungs were easily expanding. Each time I screamed, the sound was somewhat mute. That was my first indication I was breathing underwater.

  I tried to swim, but my legs were not there. My arse was not there either and I panicked again. I felt for my bawbels and let out a muted scream again when my hands found nothing but a smooth slick mass of squid. I peeped down and that’s when I felt it—the maneuverability of eight boneless legs attached to the lower half of a hipless body. And there was a slit—right in the center where my bawbels and my Man Thomas should be—I nearly cried. My first thought at that point was that I was in hell and I’d been turned into a sub-creature, but worse! A female sub-creature.

  I decided to reach my fingers into the slit; I cringed as I dug into myself until my heart rejoiced! My manhood, thick and large, was still with me.

  But Kumiko was not. I looked about the space and realized where I was and what had happened. I was still in Kumiko’s room in the hull of the ship. I had no idea how I had come to be in the form I was in, but I needed to focus on w
hat else was going on.

  I had to find Kumiko.

  I made my way to the door where I hoped Kumiko was able to make it to the surface, but I became stuck. As slick and as pliable as my new lower half was, it was too large at the girth to fit through the doorway. This was the first time I felt my power, my many powers. Creatures began to gather about as I tugged with my hands to try and pull myself free. I should have been afraid of the many sea critters—some big, some small, some looking more like a stick while others were shaped more like a ball. In either case, I could sense their inquisitive thoughts.

  One at a time the creatures gathered to spy on me. I had never known fish to be so curious except with bait and when the shark showed up displaying row upon row of jagged sharp teeth, I yelled at the massive thing.

  Astonishingly, I felt the shark’s fear from my bark and it swam away. I told all the aquatic creatures to swim away and they each did. In the meantime, I had unconsciously managed to squeeze my tentacles about the doorframe and, with one easy push, the frame and the surrounding wood collapsed.

  Quickly, I made my way out of the ship. I knew I was in the dark, but I could miraculously see through the deep murky sea. I managed to use my new boneless limbs—all eight together in quick motions alternating between curl and push, curl and push, to propel and swim me to the surface.

  I soon found my head above the water. Floating debris from Porterman’s ship was strewn everywhere. The wind had picked back up, blowing the Annabelle away—her sails wide open and at high mast.

  I could sense something in the water—something unusual and the feeling was magical. The sliver of something like a snake with a large head swam past me.

  “Stop,” I said to the thing and it did as I commanded, halting right in front of me.

  The creature poked its head out and it was unlike anything I had ever seen. It had both fire and compassion in its golden globe of eyes. I had heard tales of dragons and this one was no doubt such a creature. It was inquisitive, eager to help me, so I encouraged the sea creature to accompany me in my search for Kumiko.