Chapter 5: A Muse at Last

The door from the corridor opened to a maze of rooms. Some had clear walls like Miko's lab. Others had opaque walls of various material: drywall and wood and stone and cement. Along the journey through the maze, the path they followed through the rooms--all doors open--was lit with tube lighting along the ceiling that made the walls glow in various soft and dim colors. Besides the neon tubing, the rooms remained dark except one lit by the glow of a large computer monitor.

Sounds came from the room. Grunts and groans and sighs and the squeal of a sprung chair. Sounds of fucking.

Reaching the small room filled with microphones and cymbals and gongs of various sizes, they watched the couple fucking. Sitting on an armless rolling and rocking desk chair, the man with a thin ribcage and a pot belly and spindly legs watched with his big eyes on his thin, skeletal face some activity on a large monitor, pressing down on a small keyboard of ten keys occasionally while moaning pleasure created by the large, voluptuous blonde woman straddling his lap and lifting and falling, sending his long narrow cock in and out of her cunt. When not pressing buttons, he squeezed her long thick nipples. Using strong arms and thighs, the woman did the work of the fuck, her hands pressed against his bony shoulders while her feet pressed against the floor. Her melodic, rhythmic moans at a higher pitch harmonized with his deeper groans. The fuck quickened, became more haphazard, until the woman howled with pleasure and the man bucked beneath her frozen form and grunted his own. They relaxed and kissed and chuckled.

"You recorded that?" asked Kat, amused.

"It's this new sampler," the man replied matter-of-factly. "Doreen came up with the concept for testing it." He pressed a button and a red light extinguished on the device.

Doreen stood, her thighs dripping with sexual essence. She studied the big man trying not to stare at her nakedness. "Who are you?" she asked him.

"This is FITZjoseph, FITZdorean," Billy explained. "FITZjean sent him here. He calls himself Joseph"

"Oh. Good. You can look at me, Joseph, unless you don't want to."

"No. I just..." Joseph stuttered. "I didn't want to embarrass you."

"You're the embarrassed one," stated the man.

"I guess I am."

"This is FITZcalvin, Joseph," Billy informed him. "He goes by Cal or Calvin, either one."

Doreen's big body sat on Calvin's narrow lap. Calvin didn't mind. He gestured to clothes draped over a bench. "You can bring the clothes here if you want, Joseph, if it makes you more comfortable. I'm feeling the chill a bit anyway. I haven't got the padding." His hands pressed into the thigh of his lover. "Another reason to be envious of you, my love."

She grinned and kissed him lightly on the lips. "You always make me feel beautiful, my love."

Frustration at their visionary ideas being scoffed at or worse, ignored, brought them together. More specifically a professor from Cooper Union brought them together. Dr. Smalley of all the genius teachers at the prestigious engineering school sought those like him that pressed against convention with the mightiest force. Their intellect a given since the students had to be among the young elite in brains and talent to attend, he noticed those few whose vision embraced failure since it encompassed the seemingly impossible in architecture. Once every couple years on average, the student became evident and he befriended him or her, mentoring and encouraging fighting through failure.

A three year drought of interesting iconoclasts had ended with Doreen. Calvin had preceded her. At graduation, when 99% of students had landed jobs beginning their careers, Doreen's tearful frustration at not finding either a firm she wanted to begin her career with or rejection from the couple she held some interest decided her future. Dr Smalley asked her if she had any gigs. She sang for a small jazz group that performed at various old dance halls where gray haired couples danced to music from their youth. It gave her one thing to smile about. "We got booked at Roseland," she proudly told him.

Knowing Calvin's current frustration at being held back from having his creativity heard at his firm—his vision pushed so far past what the engineers could imagine as possible that the firm regarded him as an amusing albeit brilliant eccentric on the edge of insanity—his former mentor contacted him and invited him to Roseland. The professor also knew of Calvin's love of big band music and the songs from musicals of the twenties and thirties.

Entranced by her presence, her beautiful face and big, sexy, voluptuous body tightly held in a silver sequined dress, her voice also beguiled Calvin, deep and throaty, not smooth or perfectly tuned and within a narrow octave range. The limits actually accentuated her expressiveness. Marlene Dietrich came to mind. She told the story of the song, made it emotionally clear, a descendant of his favorite vocal stylist: the cabaret singer.

Expecting her mentor to visit her backstage, she told the bouncer to let him through. Calvin joined Dr. Smalley for the visit. Nervous about meeting this angel, he reacted the way he always did around desirable women. He babbled.

Standing behind her as she removed her makeup wearing a drab cotton robe over her body—only panties underneath—Calvin commenced his high strung monologue. "My God you were magnificent out there. I heard every word and every emotion. And beautiful—your voice and the song and your ... face and body—everything so beautiful it took my breath away. I had a thought. Well, lots of thoughts but one in particular that I hope you'll consider. I'm an architect as you may have guessed what with me being here with Dr. Smalley. But I have a different technique in designing new buildings. I describe them first. More I write a poem that creates the vision. Words become feelings become visions that translate into constructions or new designs that hopefully become constructed although haven't yet. It's a sort of left brain/right brain dialogue which I guess is unique. Anyway the point I'm making is I feel as a creative being that I'm first a writer. Along with these poems becoming buildings, I write songs. I compose the music as well and it's similar to the music you sang out there: Rodgers waltzes and Gershwin diminished chords and Ellington flowing progressions and so forth. I can't sing worth a damn and when I sing my songs I imagine a voice that could give them justice. It's you, Doreen. It sounds just like you. And I kind of hoped you wouldn't find me presumptuous to invite you to my apartment so I could listen to you singing some of my songs."

When she first saw this odd, almost scary face in the mirror—like a skull wrapped tightly in skin—attraction would have been the last thing she imagined. But as he rambled and his intelligence and truthfulness and heart emerged from his words and his eyes, she felt warmth simmer inside her from her heart and her loins. "Was he one of your students?" she asked her professor.

The professor smiled. "Yes my dear. I think you should accept his invitation."

Contemplating this silently for a few seconds, she glanced back at the odd looking young man and saw nothing odd, only interesting features that seemed to form a visage she had known and loved all her life.

"Okay," she smiled.

"Tonight?" Calvin trembled.

"You mean this morning?" she responded.

"Oh Jeez, I'm sorry. You must be exhausted."

"I was. I'm not anymore." The intensity of singing two sets in her biggest gig ever had taken its toll, but that had blown away by a second wind with the infectious excitement Calvin had brought her.

"Oh. So you'll come?"

"Yes. I'd love to. Give me a few minutes to dress and I'll meet you outside."

"Wonderful," responded Calvin enthusiastically causing both Doreen and Dr. Smalley to chuckle.

The Soho loft impressed Doreen. She thought it the coolest place she ever visited. On the second floor, the floor below housed one of her favorite performance venues, "The Kitchen," which she visited three times for three unique avant garde shows.

"It's my mom's." whispered Calvin, gesturing to a big canopied bed with dark curtains surrounding it. "She's had it for years. It's rent controlled so she could continue staying here. I grew up here."

"Cool," Doreen whispered.

He guided her to the opposite side of the loft where a temporary looking wall resembling a lacquered oriental screen—though it reached the ceiling--cut through the space. It shifted angles--at one point creating a square with mirrors on three sides like in clothing stores. The panels essentially formed a convex curve that reached the wall directly across from the loft's entrance. That wall had a couple doors. "Bathroom," explained Calvin, pointing to the right most door. "Big closet," he said at the second door. He pushed a heavy drape aside and motioned Doreen to enter. "Acoustic drape," he said.

Inside, the acoustic drape became understood. The temporary wall had egg cartons tacked to it to muffle sound. "No need to whisper," he said.

While Calvin sat at an electronic piano keyboard and turned to a computer keyboard to the right of it with a wide screen monitor above it and his fingers danced on it, Doreen toured the space. Along the walls, tacked to the eggshell cartons and the permanent hard surface, except for those with large windows looking out on the Soho street, poems and architectural drawings presented Calvin's vision. She felt like she viewed his mind. She didn't just like the view, she loved it.

His essential concept became evident immediately. Amorphous shapes, natural as trees and flowers and rolling hills, met geometric shapes and somehow meshed. Tension, inevitable in their juxtaposition, created excitement. Also buildings seemed about to collapse from top heaviness or cantilevered juttings. The engineering possibilities thrilled her to her core.

Two areas of pinned images at the end of her survey looked out of place. First were a series of photos of mundane suburban houses. Drawings underneath creating interior mazes made them more interesting. Second was a photo of the Pentagon in Washington DC. Beneath that a poem written within a five sided shape adhered to the wall, entitled, "Billy Wants Five Sides."

Before reading the poem, Calvin called to her. "Come and sit."

Handing her music sheets with lyrics underneath, he played the melody on the keyboard. She hummed it and read the lyrics.

In Machination

(intro): In all of your past journeys wherever you may have gone

Wherever you have entered, whatever you have done

Imagination stayed a stagnant place, a place in which you longed

Remaining all too far away to find until this song

With every line

With every verse

I make you mine

I bring my curse

You cannot leave

You cannot go

All you perceive

Is what I show

(chorus): In machination, you are slave to me

Imagination it's me you only see

Indoctrination makes you my own

In machination you become what I have sewn

You find no quarrel

You can't resist

You are my girl

I must insist

It's what you want

I know it's true

It's not a taunt

I do own you

(repeat chorus)

(repeat 1^st refrain)

(repeat chorus)

In machination

In machination

(repeat and fade)

"Oh my, I can't sing that. It's a man's voice."

"Not if you're lesbian," Calvin replied.

"Who's a lesbian?" a woman spoke, startling Calvin and making Doreen jump in her seat.

"Oh, hi Martha."

A beautiful long faced woman in her mid to late thirties with disheveled chestnut hair and pale skin--tall and lithe, her small breasts and hardened nipples pushing out the fabric of her silky nightie, her tummy pushing out a little bit a few inches lower--sat on Calvin's lap, kissing him with surprising lovingness. "I'm horny," she whispered into Calvin's ear.

"Uhm, Martha, this is Doreen."

"Hi Doreen," she smiled. "My, aren't you beautiful."

"Thanks. Uhm, are you his mother?"

Martha chuckled. "That would be most incestuous young lady. No, I'm her lover."

"Mom discovered she likes women much more than men," shrugged Calvin.

"I got her on the rebound after his father started treating me like he treated her. A real soap opera, don't you know."

"There's more than that, Martha. You make it sound like you're some mistress fucking up my parents' marriage."

"I was," she insisted.

"Bullshit. Tell her. Tell her how they found you naked and beaten and scarred and frightened to death and shivering in the cold."

"Yes, his parents saved me. But I ended up fucking things up."

"Only when Dad started..."

"I insisted," she moaned, tears rushing out her eyes.

"That's not what Mom said. She said you became his punching bag instead of her."

"Because I could take it. Then he bought that fucking whip."

"Mom called the cops and got him arrested on assault. She let him whip both of them before so as to gain proof."

"Your mom's so brave," Martha stated.

"Right," Calvin shook his head. "She's still the most nervous woman I know unless of course you're with her."

"And you. She needs both of our love." Martha kissed Calvin, lingering on it.

"But you two..." Doreen started.

"I need a cock sometimes," Martha explained matter-of-factly. "He's got the only one I can trust. I mean he's the only man who I can trust and love when he gives me what I need. Speaking of which..." She straddled him and rubbed her groin against his.

"Martha, I've got company."

"She won't mind."

"I just met her."

"It's already beyond that. Sorry Doreen. I promise I won't take him from you. Just borrow him on occasion."

"I wanted her to sing one of my songs," Calvin objected, though his cock wanted planting in a nice juicy cunt, even if the cunt offered wasn't the one that interested him at the moment.

"Can you play the piano?' Martha asked Doreen. Doreen nodded. "Then play and sing for us while we take care of my needs."

With surprising power, Martha pulled Calvin off his chair and to his bed. Kneeling before him, she removed his shoes and his pants, her hand catching his long lean cock as it bounced out. "Go on, young lady. Serenade us." Her mouth found his glans.

"If you continue, I won't last," Calvin informed Martha.

"She's got you turned on, hunh?" Martha smirked lustily up at him.

He looked at Doreen's blushing face. "Yes." Doreen's smile pleased him.

"I don't mind," said Martha, removing her nightie and lying down, her legs spread lasciviously, her fingers sliding into her wet grotto. Other fingers twisted her nipple. "Fuck me."

Instead, as Doreen breathed deeply, steadying herself and began playing the piano, Calvin crawled between Martha's legs, bringing his mouth to her need.

"Your mom already did that," Martha complained within her moan.

"But differently," smiled Calvin, his cheeks already wet with her dew.

"Spice of life," Martha moaned.

Doreen worked the song, her body trembling with the activities nearby somehow working with the lyrics.

"Nasty song," murmured Martha.

"It's about your captivity," explained Calvin.

"Ugh. But I love her voice," she mumbled.

"Me too."

"Fuck me! I'm more than ready."

He climbed up. She took hold of his cock and guided it in, her legs rising to his shoulders. In one long thrust he entered her completely. "Yes!" she exclaimed.

Silently except for panting, the couple fucked. Doreen sang the song again, watching. Unable to resist anymore, she stopped playing the keyboard and played with her nipples and her clit. When the bra restricted her needs, she unlatched it and shoved her hand through her unbuttoned shirt and caressed directly. Finally she undid her jeans and pulled them off, leaving her panties to hide her hand stroking fingers into her pussy.

Despite his earlier declaration of quick ejaculation, he held on for several minutes, stroking until Martha tightened and shivered before starting up again. Three times the older woman came before Calvin ended his resistance and came with her during her third, the biggest one of all as far as her frenzied motion and shaking and squeal seemed to indicate. Doreen wondered why he stared off until, in the midst of her orgasm, she noticed a mirror and within it his beaming smile. Her orgasm intensified.

A couple minutes later Martha stood up, her long lithe beautiful body on full display. She leaned down and kissed Calvin and grabbed her nightie off the floor and pulled it over her head. "I best go. Thanks my dear. Sorry." She said the last to Doreen.

"I ... I enjoyed it," Doreen replied shyly.

"Good." Martha approached the young woman and kissed her cheek. "You really are lovely. So's your voice."

"Thanks."

Martha whispered into Doreen's ear. "He's yours if you want him. Too many stupid girls missed the catch of the century. You're not stupid."

"No I'm not."

The ladies giggled.

After watching the graceful woman exit, Doreen turned back to Calvin feeling a tinge of disappointment because he had put on his pants. Despite his legs being awfully thin, she enjoyed the flex of his thighs and especially the contraction of his glutes as he shafted into the woman. She wanted to feel that.

"What you must think of me," he said, buttoning his shirt, his lean chest and slightly distended belly not typically attractive to women but being his body, again Doreen missed seeing it.

"I don't know what to think."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's been a most interesting evening. The morning just continued it." And she thought moistly to herself, "Besides, I can't wait to enjoy your capacity for pleasing women."

"I didn't scare you away?"

"No." And she thought, "Quite the opposite."

When he sat beside her, she pushed her legs against his. She noticed the direction of his eyes. Her shirt remained undone exposing the space between her breasts and the thickness of her abdomen.

"You're beautiful," he whispered.

"Right. Compared to that model body..."

"Yes, Martha's a lovely woman."

"To say the least."

"But your body excites me more than hers ever could."

"You're crazy."

"Maybe, but I know what I like." He took her hands in his and lifted his eyes to hers. "I like you."

"I like you too." Both avoided the kiss. Both knew it wouldn't end there and both wanted to learn more about each other before the physical took over. "Why did you say you based the song on Martha?"

"Yes, let's get to the important stuff."

"What do you mean?"

"Fifteen years ago my parents drove through the south returning from a vacation at Cape Hatteras, taking small roads and driving by old mansions for the hell of it. They saw a naked woman staggering, trying to run, and collapsing by the side of the road. This was late. Mother and Father had been fighting by the end of the vacation and halfway through the night Mother demanded to be driven home. I guess Dad had gotten violent and apologetic and Mom had the upper hand. So at dawn, or at least the hint of dawn, they saw this weird and upsetting sight.

"Dad threatened to leave the poor woman, not wanting to be involved, but Mom screamed at him to stop. Martha explained years later that the New York license plate and the modest sedan kept her from fleeing. She knew the woman who jumped out of the car and led her into it wasn't one of them."

"One of them?" asked Doreen.

"One of her captors or their associates. Luckily I'd been sitting up front, so Mom guided Martha into the back. When Mom exited the backseat, Martha murmured, 'You have to go now.'

"'Let me grab my suitcase. Jack, pop the trunk, ' Mom ordered, seeing my dad leering and shaking her head. He popped the trunk. 'Hurry, ' said Martha.

"Mom grabbed her suitcase and hopped back in beside Martha. Mom sort of leered too. I mean at 18, Martha had a youthful version of her model's body and Mom had been fighting her preference for women for years. But the flailed back and the bruised wrists and neck and stomach and breasts brought her out of it. Dad continued leering.

"Once dressed in Mom's loosest blouse and a pair of her panties and a long skirt, they continued driving until they spotted an open pharmacy. Martha pleaded for them to keep driving north, but Mom insisted they needed something for her wounds. She told the young beauty to lie low on the seat.

"After getting salves and bandages and aspirin, they took off. Martha remained lying across the back seat, her shirt removed so Mom could apply the salve. She started playing with Mom's ... vulva. In a whisper, Mom asked her what she was doing. 'It's what I do, ' Martha explained. 'And this time I want to do it.'

"When Mom told her to stop, she did as commanded, but managed to press her head there enough to continue the stimulation. Mom asked what she meant by her explanation, but Martha refused to answer. When Mother suggested stopping at a hospital, Martha pleaded for her not to. It wasn't until they arrived home in Long Island that Martha visited a doctor. Again when asked the abusers' names, she kept her secret."

Doreen asked, "Why?"

"Fear. Fear for her safety, and fear for her saviors' safety."

"From what?"

"A network of rich fuckers who bought and sold girls. Martha happened to have been a popular commodity for trading and therefore became a dangerous asset. She knew locations of these pseudo sultans and their slave harems located throughout the United States. Rich fuckers bartered her for new flesh or lost her in poker. We know the place she escaped to be a central hub in white slavery commerce."

"We?"

He studied her. Could a superficial examination of a face reveal a person's integrity? If it could, she revealed openness and empathy. "Does the idea of a network of rich fuckers trading in young women, seeking out teen virgins to deflower for an exorbitant but to them affordable price sound plausible?"

"Of course," Doreen answered. "Money and power breeds contempt for those without. And being able to afford to sate lust, to obtain a variety of receptacles, the fresher the better, and keep it discreet makes it not only plausible, but inevitable. Money and power breeds corruption; the more power, the greater the corruption."

"Yes. We call ourselves FITZ. I'm FITZcalvin. Our nominal leader's name is FITZwilliam. Billy."

Doreen remembered the pentagonal poem. She pointed it out.

"He wants me to design our own little pentagon," Calvin explained. "It may very well be my first completed commission. Let me show you." He walked her to a high slanted table and had her sit on the tall stool. He showed her the design.

"It's really cool. An interesting mix of material. Have you thought of the integrity of the walls? What sort of land will it sit on? How deep will you need the foundation?"

Calvin smiled. "I could bring you to the site."

Doreen smiled back. "When and where?"

"Washington DC next weekend."

"Sure."

"Great."

She returned to the wall and pointed at the mundane houses. "What are these for?"

"Billy wanted me to go mainstream, to create a portfolio so a firm would hire me in the DC area. The mazes release my creativity. The actual designs show some uniqueness but aren't nearly as wild."

"So you plan on moving?"

"Yes." He looked at her with hopeful eyes.

She chuckled. "Let's see how our trip south goes."

"Okay."

They sat back at the keyboards. She took his hand in hers. "If Martha became such a liability, why didn't these assholes pursue her?"

"Let me show you something." He brought up a password field and typed several letters. It opened a group of files. He double clicked "Slave Site1." In bold white block letters at the top of the page appeared "White Slavers in Our Midst." Below it in similar script it said, "Have you seem these girls?" Several thumbnail faces filled the rest of the space except at the bottom where an e-mail address had been placed in discreet small letters. Calvin clicked on the first thumbnail.

"This site began the revelations and brought me into contact with Billy and FITZ. Martha was the first image." Her photo filled the screen, beneath it the name, "Ginger."

"Martha's brilliant," explained Calvin, "or naturally defensive. She never gave them her real name. The photo came from a private broadsheet posted to a network of clubs and corrupt law enforcers or greedy Private Investigators. One PI, actually a husband and wife team, managed to ingratiate themselves into the network and gleaned several of these images of escapees. Unfortunately after a few rescues, they disappeared mysteriously and permanently. Their legacy lives on thankfully. Anyway, when Mom and Dad brought Martha home, she could safely use her social security number which she kept hidden in her memory for years."

"How many years?'

"Around five."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. She was thirteen when she ran away from home and landed in the claws of the slavers."

"Fuck. How did she survive?"

"She's the strongest woman I have ever met."

"So when she came back on line, didn't her parents get notified? Or the police?"

"Her mother never reported her missing. She resented her. The pregnancy had ended her modeling career and her marriage. And when her newest boyfriend seemed more attracted to Martha than her mother that was the last straw. Her mother abused her verbally and slapped her around and the boyfriend ... masturbated in front of her when she showered. Martha managed to keep his hands off and basically encouraged his climax. The next day she escaped before he went further."

"And she kept all this information from your parents?" asked Doreen.

"Yes. I found the site a couple years ago and showed it to Martha. She fainted, which blew my mind. When she recovered, Mom joined us which was remarkable in itself since Mom avoids us when we ... get together..."

"What's that about? When did that start?"

"As you could tell, Martha gets horny. Both Dad and Mom benefitted at first since Dad had sex with her instead of Mom who never enjoyed sexual intercourse all that much. And the women had sex too, more often then Martha fucked Dad. When Martha saw Dad's abuse of her lover and savior and only friend, she tried channeling it towards her own body, but she hated to be abused more than anything. Finally it went too far and they finally got rid of Dad. After that, once a month when horniness overcame reason, they'd find a stud. Mom hated it, so Martha went to the stud's place alone. It got scary one time and they stopped. Mom was thankful and felt guilty too, because Martha needed the injection of cock.

"The decision to provide Martha her needs using me took awhile to be accepted. When Martha found my first spermy underpants, the discussion became earnest. Finally they confided in me. Of course being adolescent and completely preoccupied by sex, I couldn't believe my luck. Martha had been my primary fantasy image when I masturbated. In a way it was incestuous because she had been my maid and my nanny, basically a second mother. I had memories of that morning when Martha entered our lives. Images of her naked while I masturbated came from that memory. They didn't take it lightly though. They spent days preparing me. They didn't want me to be messed up by it. No one has had a more thorough sex education--and I mean that in an intellectual way--than the two women gave me. I learned the biology of sex and techniques including the Kama Sutra and the Joy of Sex among various other manuals. And most importantly I learned the ethics, the priority of giving rather than receiving and the pleasure gained by providing pleasure. They gave me an exercise wherein I envisioned myself as a woman and they spent hours creating scenarios in which I reacted from a female perspective. They wanted me to be the most empathetic male lover on the planet."

"It looked like it worked," purred Doreen.

Calvin blushed. "Except when we finally had sex that first time, Martha just wanted me to fuck the shit out of her for hours. Confusing to say the least. It's just that, well, she hadn't been fucked in years. Her horniness out ruled any tenderness. The next time I insisted I use what they taught me, and I think she enjoyed it a lot more. But in the end, she insisted I use her selfishly. It's a traditional ending to a night of lovemaking."

Doreen sighed. "I'm horny too, but I'm also exhausted."