Chapter 3

Wendy

Her parents were drinking again. Wendy hoped that there was enough for them to pass out. Especially her father. Fear kept her awake, listening to the clink of bottles. Subconsciously, her fingertips traced the bruise on her arm. The latest of many. The clock on the bedside table turned midnight, as she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Don’t stop, don’t stop... She silently pleaded. The footsteps stopped. Maybe there was a chance... Her bedroom door opened, the bottom dragging heavily against the carpet because the hinges were bent. The result of a previous, ultimately futile effort to block the door. Wendy feigned sleep as the tears rolled down her eyes. The floorboards next to the bed squeaked and her duvet was moved to the side. A draft of cool air swept across her body, then it was the beds turn to squeak as the mattress springs compressed with the added weight.

Wendy didn’t move as an arm was draped heavily over her. A hand searched out for one of her breasts, squeezing it painfully, accompanied by nauseating stale alcoholic breath. She let the hand grope her. There was still a chance that sleep would win. It was if life was listening to her pleas, and then ignoring them. The hand moved lower, onto her thigh, then up under her cotton nightie, over her panties. She kept her thighs firmly pressed together.

Yellow tobacco stained fingers, nails broken and rough, pinched the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. She yelped at the sudden pain, her legs opening reflexively. There was no feigning sleep now. Not with that yelp. The hand moved higher onto her pants groping at her pussy.

“I’m tired dad.”

Fingers slipping under her pants and into her was her only reply. Smoke and alcohol laden breath wafted across her face as he kissed her neck, moving onto her mouth. His tongue snaked inside her mouth, making her want to vomit. He moved his body across hers, forcing his knees in between hers. His hand on her pussy as she listened to his grunts of wheezy breath and the clink from his belt as he undid the buckle. There was no point in fighting or calling out. Fighting just earned her punches, screaming earned her slaps across the face.

She felt his hard cock slap against her belly as her pants were pulled aside. She was too dry for him, not that he cared, he still shoved himself into her. Grunting away as he fucked her, a dollop of drool slipping from his mouth as he thrust, to fall onto her face.

He took longer than usual to cum, leaving her sore and raw. He collapsed on top of her and fell asleep almost instantly, his cock still inside her. Wendy struggled to free herself, her father’s considerable bulk at complete odds to her slender malnourished frame. She was hot, sweaty and exhausted when she finally pulled free. She stank of booze and cigarettes.

Moving to her dresser, she picked out a clean pyjama set and a clean pair of pants. Wendy lifted a blanket from the floor in a corner of her room, and made her way to the bathroom, where she stripped and washed him from her. She applied cream to her sore lips and slipped on the clean panties and pyjamas. Throwing some towels into the bath, she climbed inside and pulled the blanket over and tried to get some sleep.

Sore and stiff, she climbed from the bath. Her father was snoring loudly in her bed. Wendy collected her school clothes and bag and changed in the bathroom, checking herself carefully in the mirror for bruises. An older blow was going an impressive shade of purple and she tried to hide it as much as she could with a layer of foundation before dressing.

Downstairs, her mother was in the kitchen, smouldering cigarette stub in mouth, beer can in one hand, phone in the other is she gambled away the money she received from the government to feed and clothe her daughter. Wendy pulled a carton of cereal from the cupboard to find it empty. She piled it on top of the rubbish already in the over-full bin. She looked around in the cupboards. There was nothing else.

“Mum, there’s no food.”

Her mother put her can down and flicked the ash from her cigarette into the empty breakfast bowl in front of her. Wendy looked at the residue of cereal and milk in the bottom. Her mother had finished off both the milk and cereal.

With no discernible response from her mother, Wendy repeated herself. “Mum, there’s no food...”

Her mother waved the cigarette dismissively “I’ll pick up something later.”

It was the first day of term after the summer holidays. The uniform she wore, was a cast-off from another girl in the year above who had no younger sisters. She was long past being embarrassed about asking older girls for castoff clothes. Some were even sympathetic to her plight and helped when they could. Apart from that, Wendy generally ignored the other kids, mostly. She didn’t want to think about the perfect lives they lived. Food on the table, clothes in the wardrobe and uninterrupted sleep at night.

In class, she focused on the school work in front of her. It was hard and she struggled to understand most of it, but she didn’t want to end up like her mother. She was going to have a proper life, a job, dignity. The other kids seemed excited about something, not paying much attention to the work in front of them, and it wasn’t just because it was the first day back at school. She ignored them, they were an annoying distraction.

At lunch, she sat at her usual spot at her usual table in the corner. There were others at the table. ‘The losers table’ the other kids called it, and like Wendy, they kept to themselves. A couple had nose’s in books, a few others were transfixed to their phones. One boy focused purely on eating and as soon as he was done, which was normally within minutes, he was gone. Wendy ate her meal and waited patiently until the last pupil was served and the hand bell rung, at which point there was a mini rush to be first in the queue for seconds. Some days there was more left than others, so it paid to be near the front. The Losers table was not the closest, but it had good clear access to the front of the queue and Wendy was slim and agile. Most days she normally managed a good second plate full. The rest of the ‘Second chancers’ as they were derogatorily known, were mainly male and fat.

Classes in the afternoon were generally easier, now that her stomach was full, the growing hunger of the morning that made concentration so hard, gone. After school, Wendy was in no hurry home and stayed behind in the library to do her homework. After an hour, it was done and she reluctantly made her way home.

It always took her father three or four days to regain his libido, so she was normally safe at night from his sexual needs until then. She just had to worry about his anger instead. Anything could be his trigger, a squabble with her mum over the last can of beer, his football team losing a match, his horse not coming in. Sometimes there wasn’t even an obvious cause. Those were the dangerous ones, when his blows hit hardest, the kicks vicious. The last time she had to skip school, because her bruises had been too severe to hide.

At home upon the kitchen table, was the remains of a takeaway. Normally what was left was hers but not always. She ate the scant remains anyway. The flat was cold so she slipped under her duvet for warmth. There was no TV in her room and she did not possess a phone. She was probably the only child in the entire school not to own a phone, and that included the primary kids. Wendy looked around at the mouldy and peeling wallpaper. There had been a fitted wardrobe in her room once, but the mirrored doors had long since been sold. Even the rail inside had been sold.

A couple of cardboard wine boxes in the damp space that had once been the wardrobe, held her few clothes, and even that could change on a whim. On more than one occasion, she had come home from school to find the boxes empty, her clothes sold for pennies. It had annoyed her to rage the first few times, that her scrounging had been for naught. Now, she just shrugged.

Under the grubby duvet, she wasn’t tired, just cold. For want of nothing better to do, she pulled out her schoolwork and did next week’s homework. There was no hurry to do so, since it hadn’t even been issued yet, but she slowly worked her way through it, her mind on other things. It was good that school was back. It was somewhere warm, somewhere she could actually get something to eat. Social Services were supposed to check up on her regularly, but she hadn’t seen a welfare officer for months. Not that it was much of a loss, they - social services - didn’t seem that interested. A woman was supposed to be round every week, it was supposed to be a woman, because of her ‘vulnerable state’ but she had been seen by several men over the years. Some had been nice, and some had been downright creepy. One had even gone as far as to say that he could help her, as long as she ‘helped him’ in return. The look he had given her, had made it perfectly clear how she was supposed to ‘help him’. She declined. Her father was bad enough, and she didn’t want yet another adult using her body as he saw fit. She knew that she was supposed to have one woman who checked up on her. That, apparently, was the legal requirement. However even Wendy knew that ‘legal requirement’ and ‘real life’ were too completely opposing entities.

Wendy still saw one of her support workers, Margaret, but that was because she had packed the job in and now worked at a local supermarket for more money, less hours and a lot less stress, Margaret had said. Underfunded and understaffed, the local child services had supposedly been put into emergency measures by the watchdog who oversaw child services. Wendy had yet to see an improvement. Or a support worker.

Her mind drifted back to the day just gone. Tried to recall the warmth, the feel of a full belly. Tried to imagine herself as one of the other girls, with a wardrobe full of clothes and parents who loved them. Her mind drifted to the new girl who wasn’t a new girl. Wendy never normally paid attention to the hormonal politics of the other girls. It just seemed like a ridiculous waste of energy.

Whilst she ignored it, she was never completely oblivious to it and the new, but not new, girl - whose name she couldn’t recall - had been causing quite the ripple in the schools brutal social pond. Their gaze had met, briefly, in the corridor today. For Wendy, the experience had felt like she was a mouse, out in the open, no cover, looking up at the curious gaze of a cat. As brief as it had been, Wendy came away feeling as though she was being judged, that her very soul had been stripped down to its component parts. Her every secret, her every terror being laid open for the consideration of another. It was terrifying and a cold shudder had lanced down her spine, and then the girl had walked on, as though nothing had happened.

Wendy had barely made the toilet before she threw up.

Dearglil

Dearglil lay in bed. She could hear the television downstairs as the parents of It wiled away the evening. Bored, she allowed It a bit more freedom, wallowed in Its desire to be free, to be free of Dearglil. The pain, the anger, the terror, the humiliation, it was all such sweet ambrosia, and when it subsided, all Dearglil had to do, was tell It what she planned to do with Its body to fire Its anguish anew. Dearglil allowed herself a moment of introspection. She had made so many mistakes over the centuries. Mistakes she was only becoming aware of now. Her last time on this plane had been during what they now called the medieval period. She had been here many times before, but that had been her longest period to date. Her most restrained. After a fashion. Previously, she had always followed her basest of desires and the slaughter had been wonderful. And brief. So much blood, so much misery. It had been too much to take in.

Quite literally, as it turned out. Her last possession had been a concerted effort to reign her lusts in, and it had mostly been successful. She had been aware, as much as she could be, that her existence had attracted the attention of predators more powerful than she and they had acted accordingly, banishing her back to the planes.

Dearglil didn’t know what had brought her back each time. One infinite moment, she was nothing, and then she was something. A something in a tangible plane of existence. And then she had ruined it. This time, unusually, she knew how she had arrived, summoned by the naivety of the It now trapped inside. This was new, this knowing. With knowing came power. Dearglil thought back to her previous term. How she had hidden her desires, had limited her excesses. She had gained toys, had bent her toys to her will. Had taken such pleasure from making them do that which horrified them.

Yet, ultimately that had brought her downfall. She had pushed one of her toys too far and it had sought succour in the arms of the church. Unfortunately, the priest had relayed the toy’s confession further up the chain of the priesthood and the church had responded by sending a Cardinal. Who just so happened to be one of Dearglil’s kind. Not that she had known it at the time. Dearglil and her fledgling coven had been taken prisoner one unsuspecting night and chained and gagged. She had thought that she could power herself out of the situation. And that was when she had found out.

It - posing as a cardinal - hadn’t allowed the much weaker humans any close contact alone with her, so she couldn’t use her power to possess them. It had even forced a red hot coal into her mouth, destroying her tongue, her taste buds. A red hot poker in each nostril had destroyed her new carriage of flesh’s sense of smell, followed by the poker to the eyes, the orbs bursting in superheated steam. It had enjoyed the pain emitted by the body she had been in. Much in the same way that she would have done. She hadn’t felt the pain, not as the pathetic creatures who called themselves human would have felt it. The true loss was in the inability to experience all this plane had to offer, and the more powerful denizen of her plane knew this.

Dearglil had felt the lives of her vassals wink out of existence, one after the other. The one who had betrayed her had been last. Dearglil had understood then, how the one from her plane who had called himself ‘Jesus’ had felt when it had been similarly betrayed by a vassal of its own. Her existence in this plane had not lasted long after that. Her captor could not feed off her, and she remained a threat, so there was no point in her existence and she had been swiftly returned to whence they had come from.

In the brief moment before her forced return, she had understood that certain feelings she had been experiencing, had been a reaction to the proximity of another of her kind. Back in the Never, she had thought back to all the times she had experienced those feelings. They had mostly been felt during her previous incarnations, when the blood had flown the most, when they had been nought but a pack of hungry wolves feeding on the carcass of society, and had previously heralded her unwanted return to the Never. It stood to reason that if she could feel them, then they could feel her. This was another, new, revelation. She tentatively opened herself up, felt for even the barest hint of her kind. Could feel nothing. She didn’t go far, thirty miles or so -in all directions.

Nothing, she appeared safe, so far. She could possibly sense further, but others of her kind would sense her touch, might search her out in turn, she wasn’t prepared to take that risk. Not so soon after her arrival.

She pondered, in the dark, her new awareness with each subsequent arrival to this plane. If she was learning, becoming more aware with every ... Dearglil was hesitant to use the word ‘life’, then it stood to reason that it could also be the same for her kind in general. It was a troubling thought. But it made sense. And it also meant that others of her kind would be looking out for the likes of Dearglil. She would have to tread warily and learn more about the world which had changed so much since the last time she had walked its surface.

It wasn’t just the world that had changed. Humans had been so different then, consumed by the simple needs of pleasure, warmth and sustenance. The children had been so carefree, so ... bland, so totally devoid of sustenance. Now they were roiling turbulent seas of emotions. It was so hard to remain composed with such an emotional pleasure palace that was the school. So much fear, hate, lust, happiness, envy, all in such a small confined area.

And so many of them as well.

The village she had existed in before, had been so small, surrounded by such emotional emptiness. In fact, the emotional emptiness had been a prison of its own, in a fashion. She had not wanted to leave the village, for fear of finding herself alone, hungry, with nothing to feed her, to feed off, to slowly starve till she found herself slipping back into her own plane.

Knowledge had been so scarce then, now an almost endless stream of it was available at Its fingertips. As if on cue, Its phone rumbled. She lifted the slim device up from her its bedside table. A message from Chris. There was a picture attached, of his erect penis. So subtle, not. If he really wanted her attention, he should have just taken a picture of a puddle of his cum. She had no interest in his body, only in what it produced. Not that she was ever going to tell that secret to him. She wanted him to have no power over her, no matter how slight. It didn’t help that her careful, tentative search for her own kind a few minutes ago, had reduced a lot of her precious power.

The hunger inside awakened and she ruthlessly fought down the urge to feed. No. It inside felt the turmoil, felt hope that it might break free of its prison. Dearglil allowed It its false hope. It made the pain all the sweeter. Dearglil was aware that she needed to be more cautious and restrained than ever, if she wanted to make the most of her time here. Her coven idea the previous visit had worked, for the most part. There had been issues, one’s she would learn from. Torturing her vassals had been fun, but ultimately, had led to her return. So this time she would not torture them, give them no reason to betray her. Women were the easiest to control. They valued warmth, safety, security over everything else. Men were too Mercurial, too rash, too impulsive, the most liable of the two sexes to make mistakes, bring her down...

She needed damaged, broken, pliable women. Girls would be better, as they were more malleable. She thought back to the girl in the school corridor. There was emotional pain and insecurity aplenty in that small vessel. Dearglil felt her tongue tremble at the memory, start to elongate as she remembered the hint of semen emanating from the girl. The bruises that she so desperately tried to hide. Bruises that said the abuse was physical as well as sexual. The girl was alone in school, no-one paid her any attention, no-one would pay any attention to the attention Dearglil was going to pay her.

Dearglil thought back to the smell. The lingering traces of semen were fresh, but the semen itself was old, weak, lacking in power. As much as she could make out with just a few hasty sniffs, the origin of the semen was just one male, old, most likely a family member, her father possibly. There were very similar similarities between the semen and the girl. All the better. If the girl was protecting her father, then it wouldn’t take much to transfer that misplaced loyalty elsewhere. She would get Kerry to help. The girl would unconsciously latch on to Kerry’s own emotional frailty.

One of the mistakes she had made during her previous visits, was that she had fed on too many males for the size of the village. Word had got around, after several males had got drunk and boasted about things they shouldn’t have boasted about. Word had inevitably made its way to the wives and enemies had been made. Ultimately, those wives had helped orchestrate her downfall. Telling the priesthood about ritual sacrifices that, ironically, hadn’t taken place and curses and spells that hadn’t been cast. It mattered not how truthful these lies had been to the clergy and the women had achieved their goal when Dearglil had been burned at the stake.

She couldn’t see them, those humiliated wives, what with her eyes having been burned out, but she could sense them, sense their anger at her and then their pleasure at her impending demise. Dearglil had felt no regret at the death of her vessel, or at her return to her plane. Nor did she feel any desire at revenge, which was in itself pointless, as the women had long since ceased to be. This time, she would limit those she fed from. Use her coven to be as proxy’s. Feeding from a womb was not as satisfying as feeding direct from the source: The fluid was aged, many of the sperm were dead and those that survived were much weakened, not as powerful ... Regardless, it was still a preferable option to being returned. Again.

Dearglil didn’t require sleep, the body she inhabited did, though. Whilst it repaired itself, Dearglil amused herself by playing with the trapped mind of Peggy.

They met up in the bus the next morning. Dearglil could smell the arousal coming off Kerry in waves, and she had a glow about her that she didn’t use to have. “Hi” Kerry said as she sat down.

“Hi.” Dearglil returned with a smile.

They were both in skirts and their bare knees touched, along with a portion of thigh. Kerry opened her bag and reached inside. “I made you this.” Her voice was not much louder than a whisper, barely audible over the engine noise of the bus, let alone the loud voices of the other child passengers. Kerry pulled out a rose made from green and red card. The petals were not uniform and there were smears and globules of glue here and there. It was obvious that what the creator had lacked in skill, they had made up with enthusiasm.

“It’s lovely.” Dearglil said, turning as though she was about to whisper something conspiratorially into Kerry’s ear, but sneaking a quick kiss on the cheek as well. Kerry went an even deeper shade of red and fidgeted with her bag.

Dearglil suffered a geography lesson that she found both tedious and fascinating in equal measure, as she had never really understood the size of this plane, nor had even considered that the ground on which she walked, was not flat like she had previously thought, but a massive circular ball. The memories of It had said that the plane was a ball, but Dearglil had never really accepted it, thinking that It had simply been wrong. They had a large sheet of paper in front of them, as did every other pair in the room. The large sheet contained the outline of the world as it would be, if it were two dimensional. They had another smaller sheet with two columns of words. One column was countries and the other was capitals.

The task was to place the names of the countries and capitals on their retrospective places on the map. They did the easiest ones first, Australia, America, Canada, England, Scotland. Whilst they knew what the capitals were for those countries, they weren’t sure exactly where they were on the map. “Where’s Canberra?” Kerry asked.

“No Idea. Can’t you just write it in large letters across Australia?”

“Good idea!” Kerry wrote Canberra in large letters, covering as much of Australia as she possibly could.

“I was thinking Kerry...”

“Hmm?”

“We should start our own little band of sisters.”

“Why?”

Dearglil could taste the sudden hint of jealousy from Kerry. “Why not? To have fun, sleep over at each other’s houses, share make up and clothes, gossip...”

“Hmm,” Kerry did not sound amenable, nor particularly enthused about the idea. “Where the fuck is Azerbaijan?”

“No idea.”

“I think it’s in South America. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is” Kerry carefully wrote Azerbaijan down the country of Peru “Capital?”

“No idea.” Dearglil looked down the list of available capitals. “I think it’s Zagreb.”

There was an awkward pause before Dearglil casually leaned close again. “Don’t you want to wake up next to me in a morning...” She whispered quietly.

“Well, yes...”

“If we were staying over at someone else’s house, their parents wouldn’t think anything amiss, if they were to walk in unannounced, and there were a few of us scattered about on the floor, sharing sleeping bags. We couldn’t do it at yours, as your brother might walk in and know what we were up to, and emm, he might want to join in...”

“Yeah, but then they would know about ... us...”

“If they are friends, why would they even care?”

“I don’t know...”

“I want this,” Dearglil whispered “I want you...” Kerry squirmed in her chair upon hearing those words. Dearglil let the matter drop, turning her attention back to the map on the table. “Why are there so many countries!”

Kerry just shrugged and wrote ‘Sudan’ over India.

“So who do you have in mind?” Kerry asked suddenly out of the blue as they ate lunch.

Dearglil shrugged. Human emotion was alien to her, but she found mimicking it put others at ease. “No-one, I was merely postulating an idea and I wanted to know what you thought. I appreciate your advice, you know.” Kerry perked up at being told her thoughts were appreciated. They weren’t really, but it was a useful tool that Dearglil had found worked just as well as the more expensive use of power.

“So if there is no-one, or you don’t find anyone amenable to joining this ‘gang’...”

“Then we fly solo...”

“And if you see, or know of someone...”

“Then we have a place where I can bury my tongue in that lovely pussy of yours...”

“Shh!!! Not here! And not so loud!” Kerry looked hurriedly about her.

“Of course not here! These seats and tables would be far too uncomfortable, but if you’re willing to give it a go...”

“Stop it!” Kerry blushed.

“What about her?”

“Who?” Kerry asked.

“The girl over there.”

Kerry looked to where Dearglil had surreptitiously indicated. “I dunno. I don’t know her.”

“She looks lonely. In need of a friend or two.”

“Hmm...” Kerry didn’t sound convinced and Dearglil let the matter drop.

“Hurry up!” Kerry almost begged, as they walked up the street to Kerry’s house. Dearglil raised a perfectly formed eyebrow at her. “Mistress.” Kerry added, not looking the slightest bit remorseful. She was positively bouncing as they walked up the path to the house and Dearglil was hardly in the door when Kerry slammed it shut. Kerry’s lips met Dearglil’s as the Yale snib engaged.

Dearglil was starting to notice that Kerry’s demeanour changed remarkably when she was highly aroused. Becoming almost wanton. Dearglil, with a little difficulty, broke their kiss. “You want something?” She teased.

“I’ve wanted something all day, Mistress.”

A little positive reinforcement never did any harm. “And what was that?”

“You, Mistress. I’ve wanted you all day ... Waited for this moment...”

Dearglil didn’t really need to ask as she could smell the answer, almost taste it. But she still asked. “Are you wet?”

“Soaking Mistress.”

“My beautiful Kerry...”

Kerry moaned and resumed her hungry kissing as her hands reached up under Dearglil’s skirt to roam over her bum. Dearglil let her school bag fall from her shoulder, forcing Kerry to let go long enough to allow the bag to reach the ground.

“You want it here, or on the bed?”

The answer wasn’t immediate in arriving. “Bed.” Kerry finally replied.

They made their way upstairs, Dearglil laughing as she watched Kerry hastily disrobe as she moved. On the bed Kerry wore just her panties whilst Dearglil was still fully dressed in her school uniform. In Dearglil’s senses, Kerry was an absolute furnace of desire. Her need was so great that Dearglil could, and was, feeding off of it. Kerry was too far gone for subliminal instruction and it would be quicker just to give her what she wanted, what she desperately needed. Dearglil pulled down Kerry’s panties and off, before she buried her head between Kerry’s thighs. There was no need for foreplay and Dearglil inserted her tongue, licking up all juices she found inside, extending her tongue to travel deep inside and reach right to the back of Kerry’s womb.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck...” Kerry cried, when her orgasm hit. Dearglil trickled a little power to the right nerve endings. She didn’t need to, but she wanted Kerry to become used to and demand, orgasms that only Dearglil could deliver. It made her less likely to stray elsewhere.

Kerry had been loud, possibly a bit too loud, but it was done now. They lay wrapped in each other’s arms. Dearglil almost silent, Kerry panting like a dog after a long run. Dearglil listened to her breathing slowly calm. Kerry kissed her. Slow, relaxed, loving. “I love you Mistress...”

“I know. I love you too.”

Kerry sat up, slowly started to unbutton Dearglil’s blouse, kissing the tops of her breasts as they were exposed. Dearglil let Kerry move at the pace she wanted, moaning and letting out false wriggles of pleasure when they seemed appropriate.