by Gabi Moore
Anders and Blaze both stood behind their counter as Dion entered their office with his parents. He stopped for a few minutes and asked them if his uncle had just come through.
“Yes he did,” Anders, informed them. “Seemed to be in a bad mood. What happened up there?”
“I’m sure you’ll hear about it in due time,” Dion told them. “How did he leave?”
“The door on the wall,” Blaze said, as he pointed to a door where one had not existed the last time Dion had been in the office.
“It’s the same one you used when you came through,” Blaze explained. “But this one has stayed in place.”
“No it’s not,” Anders argued with his brother. “That one had red wood with a brass plate.”
“You’re wrong as usual,” Blaze snapped at him. “It was a brass frame over green wood.”
As they bickered and argued, Dion went to the door and opened it. Blackness again. There was only one way to be sure and he didn’t have time to run tests. He took his parents by the hand and pulled them together as he went through the entrance.
Seconds later, after the light returned, he found himself back in the antechamber where Edward took him before he left. This was the same place and even the little Englishman was standing there in his shirt and tie.
“My, that was quick,” he said to him. “Did you plan on going back and finishing?”
“What are you saying?” Dion asked him. “I was there all night. I’m beat. By the way, this is my mother and father.”
“Ah,” Edward responded. “Time dilation again. I should have known. Fine boy you have there.” He shook the hands of both of Dion’s parents.
Dion went back to close the door and noticed something odd when he looked on the other side. Instead of darkness, light streamed into a vacant chamber. He stepped into the chamber on the other side of the door and saw metal struts holding up an aluminum structure. The clock part of the tower was visible way up in the air. There was even a service ladder, which ran up to it.
He walked into the shaft further and looked around some more. It wasn’t the lack of any activity inside it, the tower was a shell, an artificial creation designed to have the appearance of a medieval clock tower, but it was made from cheap metal and fiberglass. He doubted it would last five years before it needed to be replaced. Of course, this mall would be around for another fifty years at least, his uncle, or whoever he sold it to, would need to replace the tower or remodel the mall. He betted on the latter option.
Dion turned and walked back through the door into the office of the mall.
Lilly almost knocked him over when she collided with him.
“Dion!” she cried out, “I missed you so much!” Lilly through her arms around him.
While his parents looked at Lilly in disbelief, Dion pulled her away and stood behind her.
“This is my fiancé, Lilly,” he told them. “Lilly, these are my parents. I went into the tower last night to rescue them. I was successful as you can see.”
“She wasn’t the only one who was worried,” another voice called from the opposite side of the office. Dion looked across and saw Sean and Emily.
“We were worried about you going inside there,” Emily told him. “I know we weren’t supposed to, but we had to be here when you entered the tower. We showed up late and found Edward standing by the door. He told us you were just left a few minutes ago.”
“Time dilation,” Edward explained again. “It happens when you cross time circles. To us, it seems Dion was gone only a few minutes. To him, it seems he was out all night. I’m sure the boy needs sleep.”
“A little bit,” Dion said as he put one hand to his head. He would need to see a doctor later about the blow he took to it. Surely, he could make up some story how it happened. Most members of the medical profession would look at you odd if you told them about being in the middle of a fight between demoniods and sphinxes.
“I managed to find the fifth element grandmaster,” Dion announced, “so now I have the power of the aether.”
“Did you rescue her?” Lilly asked him. “Wasn’t she kidnapped by your uncle?”
“It was a little more complicated than that,” he explained. Dion looked around the room. “As a matter of fact, where is my uncle? I thought he went through the door before me.”
“He did,” Edward explained. “And I let him go. He shot past us and never said a word. I daresay he has many things on his mind right now.”
“Dion,” his father said. “Can you take us somewhere? It has been a long time.”
“We can go to your other brother’s house,” Dion told him. “I’ve stayed with them since you disappeared last year.”
“Oh,” his mother commented. “We must be in Ohio.”
Epilogue
The porch over the mountains gave a good view of Mount Olympus. This was fine to the man who wore a silk dressing gown and sipped his coffee while reading the newspaper. He’d never accustomed to the modern smart phones and personal computers. The newspaper was enough for him and he liked to read his news after it had a few hours to settle down. He also took his morning meal alone, away from the petty troubles he had to endure later in the day.
So it was a surprise when the servant came into the marbled patio and stood silently by the breakfast table. The older man, who sat there with his newspaper, slowly turned and looked at the servant. The man who was seated at the table had a long grey beard and stroked it when he saw him. This was unusual. What could be so important it required is attention right away?
“Mr. Jupiter,” the servant said to him. “I have a man who wants to see you.”
“Does he have an appointment?” the greybeard asked. He took a sip of his coffee. What could it be this time?
“No, but I think you need to meet with him,” the servant replied. He’d worked for the Mountain long enough to know when to interfere with his boss’s routine. Now was such a time.
“You know my policy,” he thundered back. “No unannounced appointments. Now get him out of here.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” a voice said behind the servant. “He’s already here.”
A young man stepped from behind the servant and starred at the older man. The greybeard looked at him and nearly dropped his coffee. The eyes, it was the eyes. Only one other person on earth had those eyes. There was another one long ago, but she was gone, to his eternal shame.
Which meant this young man had to be…?
“Dion,” he announced. “My name is Dion. We need to talk.”
“You are my son,” Jupiter Olympus said while his voice trembled. “I am your father.”
“No you are not,” Dion said. “You might have some part in my conception, but my real father was the one who raised me.”
“Doesn’t all the money I spent to make sure you were adequately cared for count?” the older man snapped back at him. “It should amount to something.”
“Not any longer it doesn’t” Dion told him. “I’ve passed my own trials. I can show you an example later, but we need to talk. There is much you and I have to discuss.”
The servant was gone. He understood sometimes his presence was unnecessary.
Dion went and sat down next to the older man. The weather was good outside and was supposed to remain that way all day.
- THE END -
Steamy Short Stories
Break - A Bad Boy Romance
Chapter One
The woman in front of me was being fucked to within an inch of her life. Her entire face was flushed red, the color extending far down onto her chest and to her two swollen nipples. She was writhing like something possessed, as though she was about to combust into flames at any second.
“She won’t come until I tell her she can,” said her tormentor to me. He flicked a sweat-damp fringe from his face and pummeled into her with more urgency.
“What do you think – should we let her come?” he said through strained breath, flashing deep, laughing
brown eyes in my direction.
My mind raced.
A year ago, I had only seen this man in pixelated images. He had been nothing more than ink on a newspaper for me, and now… now he was sweaty and deep in a yelping woman who seemed to be melting before our very eyes.
Maybe I should back up a little. Everything happened so fast that it seemed like one day my life consisted of nothing but the endless cycle of work, sleep, eat …and then he appeared, like a dark hurricane, and turned everything on its head.
It started like this: I had gone into work early that Tuesday to beat back my growing inbox and try to get a head start on the madness that the rest of the week would surely entail. I was in that sweet spot where I had successfully started at Cache magazine on the right foot, but after six months there, I didn’t need to be so ‘”yes ma’am, no ma’am” as I had been in the first few weeks. I was beginning to relax into my new role a little.
I was young, sure, but sometimes having a lot to prove and nothing to lose is exactly the state of mind you need to write well.
“Katie, come in here a sec, would you?”
It was my boss Penelope Welsh, a severe pedant of a woman and dying supernova in the publishing world. She had used that notorious icy voice that could either mean I was about to be praised to heaven or threatened with my life. For Penelope, life was a dreadful bore, and she lived only for those moments of either sublime journalistic joy that made life worth living …or else eviscerating the newbie guts of baby writers like myself.
It being only Tuesday, I hoped it was the former.
“Your Tom Hood piece …walk me through this. What where you doing here exactly?”
Her artsy metal earrings swung on either side of her head. She gestured to her computer screen like an unknown bug had landed there. This looked bad. As far as I could tell, Penelope asked people to “walk her through” things only so she could eviscerate them all the better. Shit.
“Uh, yes, Tom Hood. I wanted to suggest that those nude photo leaks are kind of a new avenue for self promotion for him, that celebrities are looking for ways to manage their image by curating this completely fake online presence, except tha--”
She raised a single bony finger to shut me up.
“He didn’t like it,” she said, revealing a new cryptic streak that was unfamiliar to me.
“Who didn’t?”
“Tom Hood didn’t,” she said, relishing how ridiculous this clearly sounded to me. Her earrings had stopped swinging. I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised the bony finger higher.
“He called me, you know. For some stupid reason. He says you’ve been unflattering and he wants an apology.” She turned her face back to the screen with a quizzical look. “As far as I’m concerned you did the asshole a favor with this piece, but what do I know? He doesn’t seem like he wants to cause any trouble. So, will you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Oh, right. Will you meet with him? He wants an apology. And he says he wants to do a more formal interview and a larger piece on this nude photo scandal crap. I’m going to have to bump Mira’s piece this month and that’s going to burn her ass, but he wanted you specifically, and I’m not going to turn that down, so I said you would. You OK with that? We kind of need it this quarter.”
It was barely 5 minutes past 7 and I had already been assigned the biggest story of my short and desperate career. It was a lot to take in.
All at once, Tom Hood was real.
I had written a mere line or two of snark about him and now he had appeared right in the middle of my boring Tuesday morning, like a demon summoned with some kind of spell.
I was thrilled. I played it cool.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual about it.
“Good. Just see what he wants. I don’t mind where you want to take it, honestly, but just keep Eddy in the loop, too, you’ll need some photos.”
She handed me a Post-It note with a time and place scratched on it in tight, impatient handwriting.
“Tomorrow?!” I said, horrified.
“Yeah? You can’t do it? I can get Mira to try -”
“No, I’ll do it,” I blurted.
I turned quickly to leave her office before anything else happened, but as I was about to close the door she quipped, “Well, have you seen them?”
“What?”
“The nudes.”
Ah, the nudes. Tom Hood had had his phone “hacked” and all his precious dick pics were now “leaked” all over the world, and it was shocking, simply shocking to him. Not only did this idiot have the gall to try this stunt, he actually believed people would fall for it. The photos were pure trash of course – grainy candid shots of him in various stages of undress, one with him completely naked, a pair of bikini-clad models in the background, him laughing with an obscenely large dick just hanging there…
“No, of course I haven’t seen them, ew,” I said, crinkling my face up.
“You should. Guy’s hung,” she replied and returned to her work, smirking.
Okay then.
I went to my desk, the emails I was dead set on just a second ago suddenly seeming utterly unimportant now. The butterflies in my stomach had not abated. I chewed nervously on the end of a long-suffering pencil and typed into Google, “Tom Hood nude pictures”, looking once over my shoulder.
Chapter Two
By the time I got home that evening, it was already somehow eight o’clock and was drizzling slightly. I was bone-tired, a little scratchy, and in no mood to deal with what I found there.
“Tigger’s got his diarrhea again!” he said, the very first second I walked in the door.
My head throbbed.
Tigger was nowhere to be found, but the vague odor of cat shit lingering in the air let me know immediately what had happened. My boyfriend stood lamely in front of me.
“Jeremy! Really? I told you not to feed him scraps from the kitchen, it messes him up,” I said, flinging my bag into the corner. My eyes caught the sight of a sickly brown puddle peeking out from behind the kitchen corner.
I wanted to cry.
“What! You haven’t even cleaned it up yet!” I rushed over and found a guilty-looking Tigger nervously cowering beside the fridge.
“Yeah, he only did it just a moment ago,” Jeremy said.
“Well, when?”
“Uh… I don’t know? I was in a game, babe, so I didn’t actually see him do it, you know?”
I glanced my eyes over to his Xbox, a half open bag of Dorito’s spilling onto the floor. I glared at him, fuming.
This was my boyfriend, the kind of man who would play Call of Duty for five hours straight, spew Doritos all over the floor and then when feeble old Tigger ate them, would literally watch him shit himself and think, well, Katie will just clean it up. When she gets home. From her job.
Anger shot through me. I was too tired to deal with this.
“How long have you been home, anyway?” I asked, slowly and not without a bit of poison in my voice.
He looked away.
“Oh come on, not this shit again, Katie. I didn’t realize I had to check in and out of my own house everyday.”
Something in me snapped. His house? I’d had enough. I kicked the fridge with all the energy I could muster, sending poor Tigger scampering away.
“I want you to leave!”
He started to protest, but one angry look from me shut him right up. He stormed out, banging the door behind him.
I stood there and waited for the throb in my big toe to subside, and felt my eyes filling with furious tears. Tigger poked his head round the corner to see if it was safe to come out again. I had had a long, stressful day and this is what I came home to? I crumpled down into a heap on the kitchen floor, defeated, and instantly felt my phone bleep.
It was from him.
“Don’t bother apologizing, I’m not coming back,” his message read. I nearly laughed out loud. Apologize? My first thought was to hurl the phone against the cupboa
rd, but somehow I found myself doing something else. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand. With a few easy swipes of my fingers, I was staring at my phone, at him again. Why had I saved these pictures? That’s easy: research. He’s a public persona, and one who probably loved the attention anyway, so there was nothing unethical about me having these images. And looking at them. Right?
I stared for a long time at the last picture in the series, the one that had appeared just a few weeks ago across the pages of every junk tabloid in the country, the one that had brandished (large!) black censor bars all over the only parts that people had wanted to see anyway. I stared at his face. At his body. At his face again.
Three lean supermodel types were in the background, frolicking, mid-giggle and each probably no older than twenty. With bleary eyes I focused on a woman in the center back – she was all catwalk model limbs and jet-black hair extensions, some kind of music video whore, probably. But at least she’s not wasting her evening cleaning up cat shit, now is she?
I sighed.
I allowed my eyes to fall on his body again. Surely people didn’t really look like that. Not really. I stared for a long time at the almost comically large cock hanging loosely between the two toned, tanned thighs. Was it photoshopped? It was the look of a Spartan still pumped up from battle, but the face was all wrong somehow and didn’t match: it was an easy, mocking face, too comfortable, arrogant even. Familiar somehow. It was the face of someone who’s never struggled, never had to fight for a thing in their lives.
My hand found its way into my pants. Fuck that stupid idiot for taking advantage of me. I wanted all his dumb gaming equipment out, and I never wanted to see him again. I slipped a noncommittal hand into my underwear, still looking at the picture. What was her life like? Did she have to put up with a man-child for a boyfriend? Or was it champagne and Gucci, all day, everyday?
I closed my eyes and felt ugly threads of tension slowly leaving my body. The kitchen floor was cold and hard, but I deflated with a huge sigh and try to calm down. It would be OK. I would be OK. It was hard now, but I was working for something. I had a purpose. Men could wait.
