Chapter 1

I was enjoying the snow day. It had to be really bad for me to call off work. It was! It really was! It amazingly was! I was laying in bed: playing Netflix on my desktop, watching porn on my laptop, and reading comics on my phone. The apartment shook with the tempest. After three years, I hardly noticed. There was a loud bang. I feared my front door had blown open.

I slid out of bed and looped around the railing to hurry down the short flight of stairs to my door. I lived in a cheap walk-up studio apartment. I was surprised to find a girl at the bottom of the stairs. Girl, woman, she was tall, and slender, and not dressed for the weather. My first thought was “Get out of my apartment!” My second thought was “Pull your boxers up from your ankles!” Finally I thought: “Help her!”

I did just that. She saw me, hopping and not well covered, as I rushed down to force the door shut against the storm. Snow swirled around my bare feet and her leather boots. Click. I threw the deadbolt for the first time since I had moved in.

“You alright? What the hell were you doing out in that?” My words were harsher than my tone. She was shivering: her green dress had a purposely shredded skirt which hardly reached the tops of her knee-high boots. “C’mon, I’ll get you a cup of tea and put on some pants.”

“Thank you,” she said with a trace of an Irish accent.

“Do you have a phone?” I asked what I assumed was a stupid question as she followed me closely up the stairs. She was beautiful, early- to mid-twenties, as tall as I was, six feet, but her boots did have significant wedge heels. She was a ginger, fair skin hinting of freckles, and had her hair tumbled over her shoulders in dark curls.

“I, uh, no,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have just barged in but--”

“The weather,” I nodded. “It’s OK. I’m more embarrassed to have a girl over when my place isn’t the tidiest.”

My clothes were mostly in the front closet but many were scattered on the floor. I walked over to my bed and closed the laptop that was thankfully muted and facing away from the entrance. I paused Netflix. I stepped into yesterday’s jeans and pulled them up. I grabbed my phone and turned back to her. There was only my computer chair and a fluffy armchair to sit on. She had perched her butt on the time-worn green arm to take off her boots.

The table, right in front of her, was a beaten-up coffee table. Its mission in life was to hold up my feet, stack dirty dishes, and count beer cans during hockey season. My phone spun to a stop right in front of her knees. I grabbed a sweater from the closet and tugged it over my head.

“There: better suited for company.” I clapped my hands and she looked up with a smile.

“I like your shirt,” she said. Her eyes were glittering green.

“Right, I promised you a cup of tea.” I was a bit overrun by an easy smile and dark red lipstick. Tea, because I didn’t own a coffee maker. I plugged in the kettle and grabbed a couple of mugs out of the cupboard and teabags out of blue tupperware. I turned back from the little kitchenette to see her waiting still perched on the arm of my chair. “Oh my god, you must be cold and soaked. I’ll--”

I rushed to the bathroom and was thankful there was still an unused towel from the last time I did laundry. I took it from the rack and carried it back to her. She hadn’t picked up my phone.

“Thank you,” she said, patting down her hair and shoulders. She actually seemed to have missed most of the weather. I smiled.

“You’re not calling anyone?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure I have to wait,” she told me.

“Yeah, that’s snowmaggedon out there,” I agreed. The kettle whistled, and I lifted the lid and tossed in two bags. I realized I needed to wash both coffee mugs, despite having put them away earlier, and started vigorously scrubbing at them. “I’m sorry everything’s so scattered and messy. Probably needs a woman’s touch. Or three.”

“Yeah?” she said, looking around. I worried she was going to start cleaning or something. “Maybe.”

I poured the tea from the kettle and carried the two cups over to the coffee table. That’s when the power went out.

It took a few minutes to find both my sleeve of steel-bottomed emergency candles and a lighter. We placed the candles on every surface: the stovetop, the refrigerator, the computer desk, the window sills, and the coffee table. Against the dark whiteout night, it was pretty.

“I was going to ask if you were hungry next,” I apologized as I placed the last candle on the stovetop. It was an electric oven. No power, no cooking.

“I am, actually.” She sipped her tea happily. Her fingernails were dark and sharp. I sighed, but grinned when she cocked her head to question me.

“Right, milk and cereal,” I announced. “Honey Nut Cheerios, OK?”

“You treat me like a Lady,” she giggled.

I took that as a good sign, and smiled back. Luckily, bowls and spoons were clean. I carried our meal to the coffee table and bade her sit in the armchair before I rolled my computer chair over. She shook her head.

“This is the chair of the head of the household,” she announced, and pushed me down by the shoulders. Looking up at her was fun – she was very tall and slender. And her tits...

“And where does the lady sit?” I joked. She giggled again. She sat down on my left lap. I froze until she handed me a bowl and spoon.

“Wow,” I said, after she smiled broadly around her first spoonful. “My name is Gene.”

We ate until our bowls were empty before she acknowledged me. She pushed me down by the head when I tried to follow her up and carry the bowls back to the sink. She didn’t wash them; that actually would have embarrassed me into acting. She came back and sat on the coffee table facing me.

“Thank you, so much,” she smiled.

“You’re very welcome.”

“I won’t forget, I promise.”

She leaned forward and kissed my forehead. I fell instantly asleep. I woke up hours later, the storm still blowing. I was tangled up in the blanket from my bed. My bed was empty. I would’ve called for her but she just wasn’t there. The power was back on and my front door was still deadbolted. I worried. I went to my armchair. I fell back and moaned, uncertain and a little scared. I opened my eyes sometime later, sure she was just a dream. She had been a pleasant dream, despite the evidence: the candles were beginning to burn themselves out. More than that, her boots were still by the railing.

I didn’t tell anybody about her. Three days later, the sidewalks were clear enough that I could walk to work instead of taking a cab. It was supposed to be sunny for the next few days, but on the way home, the wind came before the clouds, and the snow came as hard as it had with my mystery woman. I was running, trying to get home, behind a gaggle of three college girls I assumed were doing the same. One of them stepped on a patch of ice; she slipped and fell into a heap.

“Sam!” shouted one of her friends. I skidded to a stop to help.

“I’m OK, I think,” said the fallen girl from the ground, and grimaced as her friend helped her to her feet. She hardly seemed fine. Her eyes flew open when she put her weight on what was probably a twisted ankle. She would have fallen a second time if I hadn’t caught her other arm.

“That looks bad,” I said forcefully over the wind. “My apartment’s right there. We can get some ice, and call an ambulance if we have to.”

“We don’t know you,” said the one who hadn’t helped.

“No, you don’t,” I agreed. “I’m Gene.”

“Samantha,” grunted Samantha. She clamped tighter on my elbow. “Please don’t let go.”

She made the decision for the three of them, and the wind got worse. I carried Samantha’s left side and the helper carried the right. I nodded to the complainer and flicked my eyes to the door; she opened it for us.

“Stairs...” moaned Samantha. I slung her arm onto my shoulders and picked most of her weight up by her hips. There wasn’t room in the stairwell, so helper girl fell back as I carried Samantha up. Even if my otherly visit had been a dream, I had learned my lesson. The apartment was near spotless. The fridge wasn’t bare. The towels were fluffy and still had tags on them. Hell, the bed was made. I was steering Samantha to the armchair, but she shook her head and made me hop her over to the computer chair. She stretched her hurt foot out on the table.

“The bitches are Maxine,” the helper, “and Alexa,” the complainer. Samantha smiled at me. “I think I can handle this with some rest and some Advil.”

“It’s store brand from Richardson’s,” I apologized. “I can put on a pot of tea if you like. And there’s Diet Pepsis in the fridge.”

Alexa had thrown the deadbolt and come up just after Maxine. The three of them were all about the same height, five foot seven. Maxine had light red hair, pale blue eyes, freckle-swamped cheeks, and soft attractive curves. Her breasts appeared the biggest, I couldn’t help but notice, even though these girls were a decade younger than me. At least. I’d been trying to not let my eyes wander too far. She was hanging up her pink parka next to my sport coats and showing off a black knit sweater over a deep-collared white t-shirt. Her legs were beautiful, in tight jeans, and stuffed into fur-lined boots with buckles around the ankle. She knelt down to unzip those and stow them next to my last guest’s. She flickered a smile, and I realized she was relieved to see another woman’s boots.

Alexa was platinum blonde, with long mildly curled hair. She was the darkest, even with Samantha’s tan. Maxine, a redhead, feared the sun. Alexa was the skinniest, the least curvy, of three fit builds. She was still tightly bundled up in her leather belted jacket and over-the-knee boots. She was the only one wearing slacks and not jeans.

Samantha thanked Alexa for stripping our damsel in distress out of her coat. It was a pretty new ski jacket in white and red. Her jeans were a dark blood red and her undershirt was a black long-sleeved heavy metal tour shirt. Her breasts were the same size as Alexa’s, but Samantha’s waist and hips were more defined. Gene! Eyes off the teenagers, old man!

Samantha licked her dark lips and stroked back her fair brown hair. She had large grey eyes, and I kept eye contact a few heartbeats into ‘creepy’. I smiled weakly. She waggled her dark painted nails and asked me to help her with her boots. I kept the smile and plugged in the kettle as I let Alexa do the chore. Samantha pouted, and quietly giggled something to Alexa. Alexa laughed back, more loudly, her body jiggling where it should in her tight white sweater.