Chapter 7

I don’t know whether I was relieved or a little bit frightened when we got to the wheat field and saw the old farmhouse and the gate. But there was something different about it this time. There was no yard sale going on and there was what looked from a distance like some sort of statue standing on the porch.

I didn’t pull into the drive because now I wasn’t at all sure there was a drive. I didn’t understand the nature and scope of what the woman could do by way of creating things out of thin air, and if it was all an illusion, I might drive right into an invisible ditch. As we left the car and walked toward the house, I was paying close attention to where I put my feet.

There was no sign of the woman I was expecting to see, but what we thought was a statue turned out to be a young and stunningly beautiful woman. She was wearing some kind of sheer white material draped around her body that left one perfect breast exposed. The garment was so diaphanous that there was a tantalizing hint of the nothing underneath. She wore a wreath of flowers in her ebony hair and she had the kind of looks that make you ache to possess her, even fall to your knees in awe and wonder. I was drawn to her like a magnet and I wondered if she was as much an illusion as the house, just part of the scenery. As we approached, Sherry had a death grip on my arm.

Tentatively, I mounted the first step and asked, “Um, is the woman here?”

She hit me with a smile that could melt icebergs and answered, “Yes, Bobby, I’m here. It’s so nice to see you again. And Sherry, you beautiful child, thank you so much for coming.” She waved her hand at two wooden rocking chairs and said, “Please make yourselves comfortable because we have so much to talk about.” Her voice was soft and low-pitched, and here wasn’t a trace of an accent.

I felt stupid stating the obvious but I couldn’t help myself. “You’ve changed! A lot!”

That brought a lop-sided grin, a lift of the eyebrows and a barbed, “Nothing gets past you, does it? Yes, Bobby, the ancient fertility goddess image had a purpose, but now that purpose has been served. This is my usual appearance, but I didn’t want you distracted from our goal and focusing your sexual desires on me.” She turned to Sherry and asked, “My dear, are you happy in your new relationship with your handsome brother?”

My sister glanced at me and blushed, then answered, “Yes, ma’am, I very happy with it. I guess I have you to thank for making it happen.”

The woman waved it off and said, “Not entirely, dear, I just gave him a little nudge in the right direction. And ma’am sounds so formal. Let’s pick a name for convenience sake, shall we? I’ve had so many through the ages, but my favorite has always been Aphrodite? Does that work for you?”

Sherry reached for my hand. “Oh, my! Are you really her?”

“Aphrodite, Imp, Tellus Mater, Venus, there’s been so many. I’m rather partial to the Greek Aphrodite because there’s something rather poetical about it. A - phro - di - te! It rather sings itself, doesn’t it?”

Trying very hard to keep my eyes locked onto her eyes and not on that luscious tit, I forced my mind to turn to the business at hand. “Um, Aphrodite, why did you want us to come out here? I mean, I’m glad Sherry knows for sure now that I wasn’t making it all up, but did you just need to meet her in person?”

“The other way around, Bobby. I called you both here because Sherry needed to meet me in person in order to fully appreciate the role I wish her to fulfill.”

Turning to Sherry, she leaned forward and said, “My sweet child, I can see that you are truly the embodiment of innocent love. You’re devotion to this beautiful young man is simple and honest, as I knew it would be. It’s why the two of you have been chosen.”

Sherry and I both asked at the same time, “For what?”

Aphrodite glided toward us a couple of steps, regarding us with an appraising look for what seemed like a very long time and making me damned uncomfortable. Like the round woman, she got way inside my personal space, so close that I could have leaned forward and licked that breast, and it took every ounce of self-control I could muster to stop myself from doing just that. She reached out and laid her hand on my face, and this time it wasn’t cold. “Bobby, when I first sensed you, I knew you were the young man I wanted to be the father of my child. Now, after watching how you adore and care for our sweet Sherry, I’m even more certain of it.”

Sherry and I were shocked into silence, gaping at Aphrodite and then at each other. When I finally found my tongue, I choked out, “Did you say I was gonna be the father of your child?”

She acted like she was practically overjoyed. “YES! Isn’t it wonderful? And you, my dearest Sherry, are to be the mother of my child. Not the true mother, rather the surrogate mother because my nebulous physical makeup doesn’t lend itself to bearing children. My progeny are conceived and brought to fruition in the wombs of young, innocent mortals. The fathers must be equally worthy, of course. I’ve searched for quite a long time to find just the right couple! I’m so anxious to get started.”

She laid her hand on Sherry’s shoulder and instructed, “Now, my lovely child, you must stop taking those dreadful birth control pills immediately, and the two of you mustn’t have unprotected sex for at least eight days because all that medication must be out of your body before my egg is imbedded in your womb. You must not take the chance of fertilizing one of your own eggs. Are you agreeable to that?”

Neither of us could speak. We just looked at Aphrodite with our eyes wide and our mouths hanging open.

“But you can’t be serious!” Sherry gasped finally. “You want me to get pregnant? My god, my mother will strangle me! And Bobby too when she finds out he was the one who got me that way!”

Aphrodite laughed, “Your mother will only know about the pregnancy if you choose to tell her.”

Sherry comes back with, “Yeah, maybe for five months, tops! She’s not stupid or blind! How could she not know at some point? I’ll be waddling around the house behind a huge belly!”

“But my dear child, our pregnancy will hardly show at all. And as for you two being lovers, she already knows about that and has almost from the beginning! As you said, she’s neither blind nor stupid. Did you really believe you could carry on having sex almost every night right under her roof without her being aware of it?”

Sherry and I looked at each other in stunned silence as Aphrodite went on, “And if you think your mother is shocked and angry about your joining, you don’t know her like I do. I really must insist that you discuss it with her at the earliest opportunity. I believe you’ll find she has some interesting revelations of her own to share with you. Your father, on the other hand, knows nothing of it and it might be wise to leave that as it is, at least for the time being.

“Now, about this pregnancy: This may be a little difficult for you to grasp, so listen carefully, both of you. As I said, when we are impregnated by your handsome and worthy brother, it will be Bobby’s seed, but it won’t be your egg, it will be mine. Never mind how that’s going to happen, just know that it will. The fetus will grow very quickly in your womb, but she won’t grow nearly as large as a normal baby. When she’s ready to be delivered one hundred days after conception, I shall be there with you and your dear brother. And you may rest assured there will be no physical discomfort when I take the child. You really should consider asking your dear mother to attend the birth.

“Now, let me tell you why you must do this. First of all, Immortals cannot procreate among themselves; never have and never will because when they came into being, Mother Gaea or Erde or whatever name you wish to call her decreed there would be no more. They were, however, allowed to recruit mortals to birth what your literature refers to as demigods or half-gods, beings with abilities not equal to a god’s, but considerably above those of mortal men and women. Throughout the time of man, these beings have become increasingly necessary for Immortals to carry out their missions. Needless to say, they are very, very particular about whom they choose to carry their children to birth.

“And yes, as you have correctly assumed, I am one of the Immortals. But even we have our limitations. There is so much work to do in this world and only so many of us to do it, and while we can do many wonderful things, we can’t be everywhere at once, so we must constantly be increasing the number of our, um, staff positions in order to cope with the demands. I wonder if you can even imagine the enormous burden put upon us by your runaway population growth. Lack of constraint and planning among your kind has almost taken all the fun out of being deities.”

Whatever we were expecting when we stepped up onto the porch of that phantom farmhouse, it wasn’t that. Sherry and I numbly agreed to the whole program because neither of us felt like we had much of a choice in the matter, although Aphrodite insisted we did, that we had veto power. I mean, IMMORTALS? Holy crap! Were we living a fairytale?

The impregnation was to occur as soon as Sherry’s body was cleared of the birth control medication. Just exactly how we would know for sure when that would be was beyond me, but the Greek goddess of love assured us we would. There was no reason to believe otherwise, other than the fact that so much about our lives had become completely unbelievable.

On our way back home we stopped at the Starbucks and sipped lattes as we tried to make sense of everything we’d just seen and heard. Personally I’d have preferred a stiff shot of booze, or anything mind-altering for that matter, but being sixteen made that inconvenient. Sherry seemed to be more accepting about the whole thing than I was. I don’t know why I resisted it so unless it was just the fact that I felt as if I had no control over any of it. I was starting to get a little tired of being used like a toy and I said so.

Sherry squeezed my hand and tried to soothe my wounded macho pride. “C’mon, bro, except it for what it is. I mean, how many people in the whole world would ever be chosen to be part of something so amazing? Besides,” she added as she snuck her hand between my legs and tickled my balls with a fingernail, “I could see you were totally awed by her because you grew a big boner the second you laid eyes on her. I saw you licking your lips over her boob.”

I was about to deny it but it would have been an obvious lie. I grinned and shrugged. “You saw that, did you?”

That got a laugh. “How could anybody who wasn’t totally blind miss it? It looked like a big old cucumber stuffed into the leg of your jeans!”

“Yeah, well I have to say she’s about the most perfect woman I’ve ever seen. Except for you, of course.”

She leaned against me and teased, “That’s a nice thing to say, but we both know it isn’t true. God, Bobby, she was absolutely out of this world, wasn’t she? I’m pretty sure I don’t have a lesbo bone in my body, but even I wanted to ravage her body!”