Echo in the Hall

by Cricket Starr

  Moving slowly to avoid waking him, Echo slid her hand under the waistband and lifted it. His erect cock sprang out with such force that she nearly let go of the elastic. Thankfully she hadn’t or it might have snapped back onto him…that would have woken him up for certain!

  Freed, his cock waved proudly in her face, transparent droplets forming on its purple head. Echo stared. It wasn’t like Alex’s cock was the largest she’d seen—after all, she’d been chased by Pan more than once—but there was something very attractive about it.

  Very attractive. She could hardly wait to pet it. Carefully easing his waistband to lie below his privates, Echo gave herself room to work. She ran a careful hand from the tip to the base and back again. Outside of another low moan, Alex didn’t seem aware of her explorations.

  She played with the fluid leaking from the narrow tip, using that to lubricate her hand. Spreading his own essence along his shaft, she made it possible to fondle him without pulling the skin. Still careful not to overly disturb him, she closed her hand over his cock and stroked it from base to tip.

  Alex moaned deeper, but still didn’t wake. Encouraged, Echo stepped up her efforts, now using two hands. The purple tip swung before her face and without thinking Echo placed a delicate kiss on it. It tasted lovely.

  Seeking more of that deliciousness, she closed her lips over his cock, still using her hand to stroke the base of the shaft. He was far too big to take completely in her mouth. Alex’s hips moved in time with her efforts, grinding against her.

  She felt so powerful. Never before had she seduced a man, always she’d been the one pursued. There was something blatantly erotic about being the aggressor, about taking what she wanted from a man.

  Alex moaned and his hands found her head, caressing her hair. “Oh, yes…like that. Oh, yeah…” His voice was disjointed, still very sleepy, but clearly rousing. Echo stepped up her exertions. She had to make him come before he woke up!

  Inside her mouth his cock pulsed, once then twice. He stiffened all over, then cried out while her mouth filled with his come. She swallowed the salt-earth fluid and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before looking up to see his eyes wide open, staring at her.

  “What the fuck was that?” he said when he’d gotten his breath.

  She tried to withhold a giggle and failed. “Share bed.”

  Alex sat up and glared at her. “You went down on me to get me to share a bed with you? Is that it?”

  She nodded. He spoke under his breath, words she wasn’t familiar with, but she doubted they were compliments.

  “Of all the aggravating, irritating, stubborn… There are rules about this sort of thing. How would you like it if I went down on you while you were asleep…?” he broke off as she giggled at him. “I guess you wouldn’t much mind that.”

  He tossed the covers off and stood up, his now complacent cock lying outside his underwear. With an impatient gesture he adjusted his pants to put it away.

  “I have class all afternoon today and need to get some sleep, Echo. If I go to bed with you, will you promise to leave me alone?”

  At her nod, he grabbed his pillow and headed for the bedroom. “Okay then, we’ll share a bed, but I don’t want anymore funny business from you. If someone is going to do the seducing around here, it’s going to be me. Understand?”

  Echo followed him down the hall to the bedroom, trying to conceal her feeling of triumph. If Alex wanted to be the aggressor in their relationship, that was fine with her.

  Just as long as they both got laid.

  Chapter Five

  Television sucked. Wearing one of Alex’s t-shirts and a pair of loose-fitting underpants that she’d had to pin in place, Echo used the narrow black box Alex had called a remote, and flipped through the various channels. He’d shown her how to work the TV before leaving for school, but hadn’t bothered to explain where anything interesting would be.

  She understood the concept. It was like having a series of plays available at the push of a button. Hundreds and hundreds of plays and hours and hours of entertainment. Thousands of people must have been involved in the creation of these shows to provide millions of people with amusement.

  And all of it sucked.

  After three thousand years of being locked in a statue, she hadn’t expected to find life as a mortal boring. She was wrong—she was bored.

  Well, not everything was boring. Echo grinned to herself. Waking up with Alex this morning had definitely not been boring. After her “going down” on him, he’d given up sleeping on the couch and joined her in his bed. At first he hadn’t seemed to want to touch her, but when she’d woken he’d been holding her close, his erection a solid rod nestling between her ass cheeks.

  That rod of his had taken very little time in finding a home inside her. Alex growled like a wild beast as he’d taken her from behind. Then he’d pulled her onto her knees and taken her that way, then turned her over and taken her that way…

  In the first hour of waking they’d explored at least half of her sexual repertoire. If Alex’s alarm clock hadn’t gone off, signaling his need to get to class, they’d have probably covered the other half.

  Beds in this day and age were wonderful for having sex on. She’d never been as comfortable while on her back before. Or knees for that matter.

  But then Alex had left her on her own. She had strict instructions not to leave the apartment or answer the telephone. He’d shown her how to use the television as an afterthought, suggesting that listening to the voices would help improve her language.

  He was right. Now she could say “Ask your physician if Zantha will work for you”—whatever Zantha was…the television hadn’t explained.

  Echo continued to flip through the channels. Just as she was giving up hope of finding anything worthwhile to watch, she stumbled into a new program that was just beginning. She couldn’t read the title, but it seemed to be something like “strange guy and I.” What ever it was, it certainly the most entertaining program she’d found yet.

  Fascinated, she watched as an apartment that could have been Alex’s was transformed through the course of the hour, with the help of several men who behaved very strangely. From their gestures and speech, she would have guessed them to be lovers of men rather than women. The man whose apartment they were fixing up was more like Alex. He claimed to be interested in making his place livable for his lady friend.

  Livable seemed to mean new wall colors, flooring, furniture, and a lot less clutter. Echo took a serious look around Alex’s place. It could stand to be made livable.

  While several of the strange men spent time cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, another took the man shopping for new clothes. Echo liked the garments they purchased. The green knitted shirt in particular would look very nice on Alex. After the shopping trip, one of the men who seemed to be a cook explained how to create a Greek dish with grape leaves and rice. It looked delicious and Echo realized that she was hungry.

  Leaving the television playing, Echo explored the kitchen. The large white box held cold food, but outside of a bag of small orange vegetables, nothing she found interested her.

  Where did food come from in this world? Obviously Alex didn’t grow it himself…he had no garden that she knew of. Perhaps there was a market nearby.

  Grabbing a few of the orange vegetables, Echo returned to the living room and examined it carefully. While Alex had done some work clearing the floor and tables of trash, there was still a lot of clothing lying around.

  She picked up one shirt and immediately regretted it. The distinct odor of Alex, while intoxicating in person and small amounts, overwhelmed her senses. She temporarily lost interest in her vegetarian lunch.

  Perhaps she should wash some of his garments. That would at least be something to do. There were no streams around, but Alex had a bathing tub in his bathroom. She could use that.

  Humming happily Echo began collecting items to wash.

  Twenty minutes later she leaned back
on her heels. Well, there was one problem with this idea…it was a lot of work! As a nymph Echo had never had more than one gown to deal with. Alex must own at least a dozen shirts and nearly that many pants. The bathing tub was filled and there was another basket filled, ready to be washed.

  There must be an easier way, she decided. She left the clothes to soak and returned to the living room. A play was showing on the television. A woman and two men were arguing over a baby, and who’d fathered it. Echo took a close look at the child. It didn’t really look like either of the prospective parents. The background music swelled and the scene changed to a woman with piles of dirty clothes, smiling as she pointed to a box and a large metal machine.

  Fascinated, Echo watched as the clothes went into the machine. She crept closer to the television the woman poured powder from the box into the machine. Minutes later the same woman held up a basket filled with dry folded clothing. How clever…a washing machine!

  That’s what she needed. The trouble was, where to find one.

  She tried to remember if she’d seen a washing machine in the apartment. Outside of a box in the kitchen that held a collection of dirty dishes, there was nothing like a clothes washer. There was a box of powder like the woman on the TV had used under the sink. There must be a machine nearby that Alex used.

  Depressed, Echo settled onto the couch. Obviously she was supposed to have used a clothes washer for doing the laundry, but she hadn’t. Instead she’d filled the bathtub and now had a bunch of wet clothes to deal with. There was probably a washer around somewhere, but it wasn’t in the apartment.

  Alex would be home in an hour and he wouldn’t be happy to find his bathtub filled with wet clothes.

  Echo felt like crying.

  After a couple of tearful moments, she decided to change the channel on the television again. This was clearly the most important form of information in this time. Surely the magic television machine would be able to deliver to her something she could use to get herself out of this fix.

  She picked a random set of numbers on the TV remote, hoping for the best.

  Wow! Echo sat up and stared in amazement. Every part of the screen was filled with naked skin as men and women engaged each other in sex. Sex. Lots of sex. Sex with each other, sex with objects, sex between men and women, women and women, men and men.

  It was a virtual cornucopia of sex.

  Fate. It was clearly fate, telling her that no matter how much laundry she did, sex was what she needed to win a place with Alex.

  The man could always hire someone else to do his laundry.

  As she watched, the flurry of bodies sorted themselves out and she was able to make out individual couples and trios and—well—more than trios involved in prodding, licking, and groping each other. At the perimeter of the room was a single figure, not actively involved in the action, but watching, directing, and lending the occasional helping hand.

  Echo stared at the woman, recognition coming slowly. Nemesis? Could it really be her sister nymph from so long ago? What was she doing in the television box, and why was she in this sexual playground?

  Even stranger, why did she have a large purple penis in her hand?

  Still mulling over these questions, Echo almost missed the first faint tapping against the TV screen. Attention caught, she realized that Nemesis was now right behind the screen, tapping the glass with her purple plaything.

  “Echo!” Nemesis’s face turned up into a happy grin. “You’re out of your statue!”

  “Out of statue,” she acknowledged. She still wasn’t sure how happy she was about it.

  “This is wonderful. How did you get out? How long will you be here?” From behind her an arm appeared, wrapping itself around her waist. A man’s face showed up behind her head, whispering something into her ear. She turned to glare at him.

  “I’m not interested in fucking you. You will let go of me now.” There was a loud smacking sound as Nemesis used her purple penis as a bludgeon. The wayward face and hand disappeared immediately.

  “Hold on, Echo. I’ll have to transfer to where you are.”

  Moments later, Nemesis materialized in the middle of the living room. Echo fell into her arms and both had a crying and laughing jag.

  It had been three thousand years since they’d been together. A few reunion tears were called for.

  Finally, Nemesis pulled away, wiping her eyes. “It is so wonderful to see you. I’ve missed you, sister.”

  “Miss you, too, Nemesis.” All nymphs were sisters to each other, but Nemesis had always been close to her.

  “You should call me Nina, like everyone else. You can talk, too, not just repeat words!”

  Echo shrugged. “Repeat still, sometimes. Talking getting easier.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. How did it happen?”

  In her halting speech, Echo described how Alex had made love to her while she was solid, and how Aphrodite had broken the spell as a result.

  “So this is his place?” Nina looked around with obvious disdain. “It’s kind of a dump.”

  Echo felt compelled to defend Alex’s home. “Not so bad. Needs cleaning. No housekeeper.”

  “No housekeeper, yeah, I can see that. Couldn’t you have gotten seduced by someone rich—or at least a man who does his own laundry?”

  “Laundry!” Echo suddenly remembered the clothes she’d left in the bathroom. She grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled. “Need help!”

  Nina took one look at the bathtub and broke into laughter. “I see you tried to make yourself useful.”

  “No washing machine,” Echo tried to explain.

  “Oh, I’m sure we can solve that. There is probably one in the building.” Nina grinned at her. “Let’s see if we can find it.”

  Moments later they were out of the apartment, damp clothes in arms. With an uncanny instinct Nina led the way to a basement laundry room. Once there she helped Echo load the machine, reading the instructions on the lid for her.

  Echo sighed. One thing about it—to get along in this world she needed to learn to read.

  “All we need now is some money.” Nina snapped her finger over her palm and a pile of silver coins appeared. She handed the bounty over to Echo.

  Using the coins, Echo started the machine, carefully tucking the rest into the pocket of her t-shirt.

  Over the sound of water filling the tub, Nina said, “Don’t worry, you’ll figure out how to make money like that soon.”

  “Can’t…no magic…human now.”

  “What!” Nina stared in horror. “That man made you a mortal? Echo, that’s terrible.”

  “Not his fault…Aphrodite…”

  Nina grimaced. “Oh. I might have known. Our fair goddess is always having some kind of fun. Making you mortal for sleeping with a mortal is probably her idea of a good joke.” She patted her sister’s arm. “I’ll ask around and see if I can’t find a way to reverse it.”

  The machine whirred to life. Anxious to see what it was doing, Echo carefully lifted the lid. The movement stopped, but the clothes were still agitating in the soapy water. There really were simpler ways to do things here. With a machine like that, having a lot of clothes wouldn’t be much trouble at all.

  Why, she could have a different dress for every day of the week. Echo looked down at the borrowed t-shirt and shorts. They weren’t really ugly, but she could go for having something new and pretty to wear. She hadn’t wanted to put back on the gown she’d come to life in…it was attractive but she’d been wearing it for centuries!

  She glanced over to find Nina giving her outfit a similar examination. “If you’re going to be here a while, maybe we should do some shopping.”

  Alex hadn’t wanted her to leave the apartment. “Should stay here,” she said reluctantly. “No money.”

  Nina grinned at her and flicked her fingers again to show an oblong piece of plastic with raised letters. “No problem, sweetie. This trip will be on me. We’ll call it a welcome to the world present.”r />
  Four hours later, Echo happily explored how to make the stove work, intent on making the rice and grape-leaf dish she’d learned about on the strange guy show. In addition to buying clothes, she’d talked Nina into stopping at a food market where Nina’s “credit card” had purchased food as well as other necessities.

  Her newly acquired humanity had needs, ones she’d solved in the pharmacy and feminine hygiene aisles. Thank the gods that Nina had been able to explain everything to her. While not troubled by such things herself, Nemesis knew a number of mortals and their problems and knew how to create a valid-looking prescription.

  Pills for preventing pregnancy were a wonderful invention.

  Having finished the laundry, which was now put away in the bedroom, Echo had given up her t-shirt and shorts for a light yellow blouse made from a satiny smooth fabric while a moss-green skirt swirled around her ankles. New gold-colored sandals covered her feet.

  Under her garments was to-die-for underwear in black lace. She couldn’t wait to see Alex’s face when he caught sight of them.

  Speaking of which, he should be home pretty soon. Coaxing the flame up under the pot of cooking rice, she checked the rest of the room. While it didn’t look like the “after” picture on the strange guy show, it certainly looked a lot better. All of the clothes were gone and the papers and books had been collected and placed on the bookshelves. Walls that had been dim and dingy now had a soft clean off-white to them and the carpeting was a clean tan shag.

  In the kitchen the sink had been emptied of dishes and the counters and floor gleamed as a result of the afternoon’s polishing.

  Nina had insisted on helping out, using the magic Echo no longer had access to, which was the only reason the place could have been fixed up in the time they’d had. She’d wanted to stay and meet Alex, but Echo had decided that wasn’t such a good idea. Meetings with Nemesis often hadn’t gone well in the past.

  Certainly Narcissus had had thousands of years to regret it.