Chapter 1: Unwelcome Home

March 30th - April 23rd, 1988

I seriously regretting sending Lee Vo away. Cleaning up the shitstorm of a mess she left behind was a lot harder to do than I expected. Too many mutes had witnessed what happened and there were fire trucks, ambulances, police, and even worse, the media. We would have been completely fucked if I hadn’t discovered how to throw large blanket commands. I basically rounded up everyone who had seen anything and made everyone else ignore anything unusual about the day. That caused its own problems. Criminals had an easy time avoiding detection that day.

The Inquisitor and a couple other Cabal members showed up three hours after we started getting a handle on things. When they tried to take over, instead of fighting them, I threw up my hands and told them to have fun. We had nearly five hundred people left to process patiently sitting in two auditoriums, and I was beat.

After the mess had been cleaned up and my promises had been fulfilled, I was looking forward to going back to school and being with my friends and family. My dad’s property management company took ownership of the house and let the girls hash out how to divvy up the rent. They buying the building wasn’t practical as most of them would be gone in two years or less. They would have to find more tenants in order to afford living there beyond the summer.

As Eric and I were loading the last of our stuff into my car, another gang of bikers went past the house. I managed to ‘convince’ them to stop and have a beer. While Eric was busy serving them cold ones, I was scanning their minds one by one in search of any information we could find about James.

I was in the middle of scanning this really outrageously dressed chick when I heard a couple of bikes start up, then nearly had a heart attack when I saw Eric was on one of them.

My jaw must have been dragging the ground watching Eric expertly do figure eights and other simple tricks, finding that his dad had a bike and Eric had been riding with him since he was in diapers. I watched for nearly ten minutes before remembering I was supposed to be doing something else.

Eric had been very quiet and down the entire time we packed and said our goodbyes. The only break in his mood was the little bit of fun he had on the bike. But that biker gang hadn’t run across the gang James had taken off with and telling him that was almost as bad as when I wasn’t able to locate James the first time.

During the drive home, Eric didn’t speak unless spoken to and his replies were always short, plainly indicating he wanted to be left alone. It was so unlike Eric. He usually would be bursting at the seams with some humorous thought triggered by little things which everyone else just noted as interesting. His enthusiasm and easily excitable nature were probably the things I loved most about Eric at the time.

So after trying to ignore the pain he was feeling for over an hour, I suddenly couldn’t take it anymore. Fifteen minutes of hard thinking came up with something I hoped would take his mind off his heartache for a while.

“Hey,” I said as I pulled to the shoulder of the highway. “How about you drive for a while?”

“Me?” he said, startled. “Uh, thanks, but I don’t think...”

“Come on,” I said, opening my door. “I’ll be monitoring you and can take control if anything happens.”

He hadn’t moved by the time I reached the other side, but when I opened his door, he got out and hurried around the car.

But before climbing in, he said, “I don’t think this is a good idea. What if we get caught? Okay. Stupid question. But still ... I’m not old enough...”

He didn’t say anything else since he knew I saw right through his bluffs. The prospect of driving excited him, but it also made him extremely nervous, even a bit scared. So when his pleading eyes locked onto mine, I formed an empathic connection to give him some confidence.

As he felt a little surer of himself, I reinforced it by saying, “Come on, Eric. I trust you. After seeing the way you handled that motorcycle, I’d probably trust you with driving this car more than my old man. Everything will be fine. Now, press down on the brake before putting it into drive, then build up some speed before you pull back onto the highway.”

After a minute of waiting for the traffic to clear, I finally gave him the all-clear and he carefully got the car moving. Two minutes later, Eric had a smile on his face along with a look of deep concentration. And after about ten minutes of sitting with his muscles tensed, he started to relax.

He finally risked glancing over at me to flash me a smile, then with his eyes glued back on the road again, he said, “This is cool.”

He had come to the point where a car passing us didn’t really bother him, but a truck had blown their damn horn when Eric momentarily swerved slightly while the truck approached from the rear to pass. That had rattled him so much it was a wonder that he hadn’t swerved off the whole highway instead of the right side slipping onto the shoulder for a few moments. Shit, I was pretty rattled myself.

I didn’t argue with him when he complained about feeling tired and wanted to quit. Eric had only driven for about forty minutes, but he had been concentrating on the road with such intensity that he was pretty worn out.

Once I was back behind the wheel, I peeled out and took us a little over 100 mph until I spotted the truck. I floored it and blew the horn in one long continuous blast, flying past the truck like it was standing still. If I hadn’t been prepared to grab control of the driver’s arms and hands, the truck would have gone off the road for sure.

Once the truck was well behind us, I slowed down to a reasonable speed and looked over at Eric to see how he was doing.

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw a little of that sparkle back in his eyes. And after we exchanged jokes about the driver’s parentage, I didn’t mind driving in silence while he slept the rest of the trip.

His mom and dad came out to help him with his stuff as soon as we got there. I felt a bit relieved to pull out of the driveway a few minutes later. While I had welcomed his presence on our venture to the college, I also was happy to feel the responsibility for his safety lifted off my shoulders.

But I felt oddly ill-at-ease driving home. I knew the problems I hadn’t faced before running to play scientist at the college were still around, and I was admittedly even less prepared to deal with them than when I had left. Ever since James had taken off with the bikers, I started feeling very uncertain about what I felt was good for other people. I even considered Joey being right about just making people happy with whatever I needed them to do instead of offering something in exchange and giving them a choice to do it or not.

But in my heart, I knew the only life worth living was the one where you made your own decisions and choose your own paths, even if they turned out to be the wrong ones.

I pulled into my spot in the garage at my mansion in Hamilton and felt a little down when I found no one at home to greet me. After I unloaded my stuff into the house, I went through a pile of messages and made a few phone calls. A few minutes after hanging up, Mom called to say she would be home around nine after finishing an important business deal. When I attempted to chit chat, she apologized before telling me she couldn’t talk and had to go.

When I realized she had hung up, I stared at the handset for a moment before placing it in its cradle. Back in the old days, she had always put everything else on hold just to talk to me on the phone. But back then I had no one but her to talk to, and she always felt bad about never being there when I came home from school. And I admit there were times I really needed her to be there to wipe my tears away or answer the strange questions I always seemed to have.

And that made me think about how Joey’s mom had always been there when my own mom couldn’t be. I’ll never forget the time back in third grade she ... er, okay. So I don’t remember exactly what Joey and I wanted to do. But after she played it like she was going to say no, she surprised us by not only giving us the money so we could do it but offered to take us there too.

At the time, this thing Joey and I needed to do or get seemed so important to us that when Joey gave her a kiss and hug, I did too. And the part I’ll never forget was how she hugged us both at the same time, making her chirpy giggling sounds she always made when giving Joey his home from school hug. I had made fun of that giggle before that day once when Joey and I were having an argument. After stirring up these memories and thinking about how much I cared about her, I’d give almost anything just to hear that giggle in my ear one last time.

Anyway, I spent about a half an hour stewing about how I had never verbally thanked her except when my mother had reminded me, and finally took a deep breath and dialed the number. I nearly hung up when Joey answered the phone, and after I had told him it was me, his reply made me wish I had.

I’m not going to try and reconstruct that minute while he used his deep personal knowledge of my soul to hurt me over the phone. When I managed to hang it up, I was sitting on the floor, shaking with grief. It was as if I had lost him all over again.

I sought out Suzi’s mind and was about to gently make my presence known when her mind momentarily recalled the moment she had told some boy named Brandon of her newly realized love for him. Despite her promises and intentions, my absence and Joey’s need for some ‘space’ had finally taken their toll on her love for us. Suzi went through a week of hell after realizing she had formed strong feelings for Brandon similar to what she had felt for Joey and I. And it had all come down to the fact neither of us was there to help her through that week, while Brandon was.

I was at an all-time low at that point. Well, not really an all-time low since I didn’t have any serious thoughts of committing suicide. But even while I had been Steven’s prisoner, I had never doubted that Suzi, Joey, my parents, and others needed me simply because of the love we had shared.

So for the first time in my life, I felt completely alone. No one to turn to for emotional support. I know things were not truly that way. Suzi, my mom, or probably any number of people would have dropped everything and rushed over that moment if they had known how lonely I felt. But I was depressed, and when you’re depressed, you tend to overlook things that may seem very obvious later.

I spent two long hours in my room, twirling the baseball card Joey had given to me with his heart while every once in a while inhaling the faint sweet Suzi smell from a sweater she had left in my car over a year ago.

And for a moment I found myself thinking, So this is what it feels like to have your heart broken in three.

Then after a fit of tears, I had another moment of rational thought. Something like Now I know how Eric felt... which only added the extra weight of the regrets I had concerning James.

I must have cried myself to sleep, for the next thing I knew, the twins were dragging me out of bed. They were so excited to see me after a month and a half I had a hard time knowing which twin was which.

After the three of us got caught up on a month full of kisses, I was almost feeling cheery. But I couldn’t shake the dead feeling in my heart, and after their enthusiasm wore off, they shared my sorrow and helped me work out some of my pain.

Not even flying to school in Midge for the first time the next morning could make the dread I was feeling go away. I knew there was no way I could avoid literally having it out with Joey, and the sooner I got it over with the sooner I would feel better. And similarly, the sooner Suzi and I talked face to face so I could give my blessing to her finding a new lover, the sooner Suzi could stop worrying how hurt I would be when I found out.

Okay. I admit I love showing off. And I really loved showing off Midge. I had dreamed of flying Midge to school since the day I got her. I hadn’t last year because my mom wouldn’t let me, but this year I didn’t give her the chance to object.

But as I felt the eyes of my fellow students watch me descend towards them, any kind of pleasure I could have gained from the moment was destroyed by the person who first recognized the noise and whose eyes had been the first to see me.

I felt so ashamed of my ... pettiness. I suddenly realized how arrogant it was flying to school in my personal helicopter. It was one of those moments that everyone has when they wished they could just turn invisible. Of course, I could in a sense do just that, but the one person who I wished hadn’t seen me had already seen straight through me.

The disgust on Joey’s face made me shiver as I sat Midge on the ground near the school’s back lot. I never even noticed the huge crowd around me as Joey gave me his most hatred look from ten feet away. I was paralyzed the moment our eyes had locked on each other’s, and I didn’t move a muscle until he was walking away at a calm pace, flicking me off once in such a way that no one but I would have picked up on it.

The five minute bell rang a few moments later, dispersing the crowd for me. Just as I was coming to my senses, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a friendly voice say, “Are you okay?”

John had to repeat his question before I released the breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding the whole time.

“No, not really,” I said. “But I’m glad to see I still have one friend around here.”

John blinked at my statement, then said, “What do you mean? You have more friends than all of the zits I’ve ever had. And I’ve had a lot of zits.”

I couldn’t help but grin at him, then shook the numbness from my body and climbed out of Midge’s cockpit.

John eagerly helped me secure Midge’s blades and asked a thousand questions about her. The last time he had seen Midge, she hadn’t been running and the shit we looked at in my dad’s toy box vault was far cooler than a little broken helicopter.

John had a thing for anything collectible. Coins and stamps were his two main things, but he also had a fancy for things like antique automobiles and ships of combat of all eras. Midge certainly didn’t fit into the ships of combat, but she certainly had that collectible-quality about her.

I think I did jump when Suzi’s voice suddenly said hello behind me. I had become so involved in talking about Midge with John, I had completely dropped my guard and hadn’t noticed her walk across the parking lot towards us.

There was a moment of hesitation on both our parts before we finally did manage to give each other a hug. Just smelling her and feeling her against me was too much for my broken heart to take. So instead of the warm and calm discussion I had envisioned having with her, a tear formed and fell, followed by a second, then a third. Once they had started, there was no stopping the rest.

In moments our hug became a tear fest. Several times I attempted to tell her, but she couldn’t make any sense of what I was saying. She, too, was crying, believing she had betrayed me and that she was the sole cause of my grief.

I had completely missed Suzi telling John to get Joey, so when Joey’s cold voice said, “How the mighty have fallen,” every muscle in my body went stiff.

Joey had been at least twenty feet away when he had said it, but I had heard it as loud and clear as if he had said it in my ear. And I swear it echoed around in my mind for moments after he said it too.

Joey said a moment later, “What’s the matter? Can’t bear to look at your old buddy?”

The pure hatred in his voice stabbed my heart, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t expected it. I opened my eyes to find Joey’s intense gaze seemingly attempting to burn a hole through me. I will never understand how anyone could hate me that much while still being able to remember everything we had done together.

Suzi got over her shock first and said, “Joey, what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing. It’s what had been taken out of me you should be asking about.”

“I...” Suzi started but never finished as she became completely confused.

“Aren’t you going to say something? Buddy old pal?” Joey said with a sneer. “Why don’t you tell them about how you hid my true feelings from me. How you blocked my memories and programmed me to be your ideal best friend. How you turned me into your puppet, your unquestioning partner in whatever your ‘conscience’ allowed you to do!”

“Joey! Stop this right now!” Suzi cried. “You can’t possibly make me believe Tim would ever...”

“It’s true,” I said softly but plainly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Suzi’s shocked expression brought the tears back to my eyes, but I overrode my nervous system and blocked any more tear signals from reaching their targets.

Suzi finally had to shake her head attempting to clear her mind of her colliding thoughts. She looked back and forth between Joey and me, then sighed and said, “Okay. What’s going on?”

Her voice was so calm and open, Joey and I both found ourselves staring at her instead of each other.

“Come on. I know you two better than this. Joey, you know whatever Tim did wasn’t to control you or make you his ‘puppet’.”

Then to me, Suzi said, “Is this why you ran off to play college boy? Something you did that you couldn’t face telling us about?”

When she saw it in my face, Suzi started getting angry. “Damnit, Timmy! After everything we have been through, you still haven’t learned that you can’t keep these things to yourself!”

“I haven’t kept it to myself. I just couldn’t tell you. Suz, I left because of what I did to you as much as what I did to Joey. I couldn’t deal with that while this symbolic sight was overwhelming me. And if I hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have found someone else.”

This time the look on my face told her more than what she wanted to know. Suzi and I were both kneeling on the ground with my head being held against her chest. Or at least had been until that moment. When her arms went limp and fell to her sides, I felt I was no longer welcome in her space, and promptly scuttered away.

John found himself the only one who wasn’t overcome by their emotions. Joey, Suzi and I had formed a sort of triangle, none of us saying anything or moving except for our eyes passing from one to the other.

I surprised myself by being the first to break the silence by saying I was sorry. When neither of them said anything, I sighed the deepest sigh I have ever made my entire life, then stood up and walked away.

No one followed me or called out my name as I continued walking past the doors of the school, and as far as I know, no one attempted to follow me even after I had walked off school property and made my way up the road.

I walked for hours, not really caring where I was going. But things had become a little clearer by the time I found myself back at the school’s entrance. I hadn’t lost them forever. They still had all their memories and feelings of everything we had had. I felt my heart lighten a little when I realized Suzi had been right, and now that they both knew, given time we might just work things out.

As I was making my way towards my locker, the bell rang, flooding the halls with people. For some reason, I wasn’t surprised at all when Brad suddenly was walking beside me.

He said, “I heard you were back. Did you get a lot of college pussy?”

I raised my eyebrows at his directness and found him completely serious without any concern for how crude he sounded.

“Well?” he said, indicating he expected a serious answer.

“Yes, I got some.”

“Man, I know you and Joey have issues right now, but you could have still let John and I come down that weekend,” he stated point blank. “I would have loved fucking a few college sluts. You think we could take a trip back down there sometime this month?”

We reached my locker, but instead of opening it, I turned to Brad with a frown and said, “You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“Fuck, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be, man? And you have to admit I would have been a hell of a lot more fun than those two queers you took with you. Shit, Tim. Why did you take them? I know you didn’t take them to...”

The anger in my eyes stopped him from finishing his sentence, but he had his mind set on getting me to supply him with some “fresh pussy.”

“So ... er, are you going on any more field trips?” he asked after I finished spinning the combination lock’s dial.

“Maybe. But I was thinking more about starting my own little college right here, enrolling only the sexiest and most desirable students I could get my mind on. After seeing how well Leanne has done, I figured there should be a university for sluts. I don’t suppose you know anyone who has experience in ordering women around and fucking them like animals, do you?”

“Aw, come on, man! I’m serious,” Brad said with urgency. “Don’t tell me Joey was right about you fucking those queers. He says you probably didn’t even fuck any pussy while you were surrounded by it.”

I slammed the locker door shut a little harder than I intended, then looked at Brad straight in the eye and said, “We need to have a talk.”

Brad actually felt a little concerned over that, but quickly turned his thoughts to the prospect that I may just grant him what he wished.

I changed the subject a little and asked how his sister was.

“Great, man. She’s doing so well at school they keep talking about letting her skip a grade. And she’s growing tits finally too. We’re hoping they get as big as moms. Oh, and ever since puberty hit her friends, she’s finally hanging out with her old friends again. Hey! Why don’t you come over today and we can fuck her together? She keeps asking for you. And without you and Suz around ... Well...”

Brad was all of sudden stalling, not wanting to tell me something he wasn’t so sure I would want to hear. While he hadn’t bothered to stick around to chat after I had landed in Midge, he hadn’t been so self-absorbed to not notice the looks between Joey and I were not exactly friendly. Of course, Joey had already confided in Brad about my betrayal. So he wasn’t so sure about how I would take knowing he had invited Joey over a few times to fuck his sister.

“It’s okay, Brad. No matter how strange Joey acts around me, he’s still more or less the same Joey where everyone else is concerned. At least I think so. I’m certain he won’t purposely do anything to people he cares about. As long as you don’t take my side in things, I’m pretty sure you won’t have any problems. But you can forget us ever playing on a team or anything else together again.”

“Shit, man,” Brad said sincerely. “Is it really that bad?”

When I couldn’t look at him to reply, he put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, man. Let’s just forget about the college thing for now and go fuck some high school pussy. That will take your mind off things.”

To my surprise, I found his suggestion extremely attractive. And when I thought about hearing Julie’s moans again, I surprised Brad by asking if he had anyone in particular who he wanted to fuck.

“Well, there is this one chick, but you wouldn’t go for her.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“She isn’t in high school yet.”

“Brad...” I said, stopping in my tracks, “We REALLY need to talk.”

When we finally arrived at the door of what had always been OUR room, my mind instantly flashed to how I had someone take down the painting in my bedroom of Joey taking my backdoor because I couldn’t stop looking at it. I found myself unable to even unlock the door knowing another painting was inside. So we just went across the hall to the drawing room which hadn’t been used since before Joey and I had been kidnapped by Steven.

Brad started getting very nervous, realizing I wasn’t going to be very happy with some of the things he and Sandi had been doing. Actually, he was more nervous about me thinking less of him than what I might do. Brad prided himself on not being a cruel or selfish person, but he obviously had some things hanging over him that he believed I might see as being just that.

So once we were sitting down, I told him straight out to spill it, and not to leave anything out because I would know if he was holding back.

After Joey grabbed Suzi last year, Brad, Sandi, John, Jason and their families spent the summer living in Washington state’s Rocky Mountains. While the weather was idyllic and they got to spend a few weeks on the Pacific beaches, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do otherwise. Without any other girls around, Brad, John and Sandi spent quite a bit of time taking advantage of the numerous concealed spots they found to fuck.

Not only had he been taking a few extra liberties by sharing his sister with John and Joey, but he also had been using Sandi to get looks at some of her friends. He had even reached the point where he had rigged a video camera to videotape Sandi and two of her friends as they compared their growing bodies in the bathroom, and Sandi had managed to tape three of her friends masturbating, each on a separate occasion. Brad had become obsessed with this one girl named Karen and had already taken some steps towards fucking her.

After Sandi had talked Karen into frigging herself in her presence, Brad had spent a month watching them from Sandi’s closet as Sandi slowly took Karen further and further. Last week, Sandi had introduced Karen to her first dildo, and just the day before, Karen watched through the crack of Brad’s unshut door as he jerked himself off. Brad and Sandi planned on repeating the encounter at least three more times before he confronted her and hopefully get her to try jerking him off herself.

I was at least relieved to learn Karen had turned fourteen. All of Sandi’s close friends were a year ahead of her in school, a circumstance of living in walking distance in the same subdivision together. Despite being the youngest in her group of friends, Sandi had always been their leader, much like how Suzi had been. None of the girls in her group were as interested in sex as Sandi was, but the older they got, the more interested most of them became.

Brad had even already picked out the next girl once Karen had been brought into the fucking circle. He knew Brenda would be a lot harder since she was such a little thing, but just thinking of her tight cunt sliding up and down on his cock made him ready to shoot his load.

At first, I was angry with him and even threatened him with enslaving him to show what it was like. But then I started doubting myself, especially when I found out that the entire idea had been Sandi’s and not his, and she had basically talked him into doing it. The three girls our age he fucked around with last year had moved on to more exclusive arrangements, and Brad felt honor-bound not to get serious with anyone unless they could accept his and his sister’s situation. His conscience and lust were having a tug-of-war, and with Sandi’s help, his lust had been winning.

In his heart, Brad wanted to be the sweet guy who taught the girls how it should be with a guy. And I knew he could be that guy. Hell, his insistence they be at least fourteen wasn’t just to satisfy the legality of doing it. He wanted to make sure the girl was old enough to appreciate the experience. I knew all too well that while a girl can think they were ready, that didn’t mean they were.

Brad knew what Sandi was doing was wrong, but Sandi had promised him pussy and she was going to deliver. Brad admitted he sort of hoped I would solve his problem by taking him and Sandi to college where he could work out his growing lust out on real women instead of little girls.

We talked for a while, and I suppose he did a lot more listening than talking since I had a lot on my chest I needed to unload. I poured my heart out to him, but while he was sympathetic to my problems, he had his own problems that to him were just as important.

I admit that I probably told him a lot more than was necessary, but I couldn’t excuse it when I found him fantasizing about having sex with a hairless crotched college woman instead of listening to me.

If you hadn’t figured it out yet, Brad had become a bit self-centered. He was a jock, a bit full of himself, and had this idea that he was so good looking and was such a great lover that any girl or woman wouldn’t resist having sex with him because of his charms and sexy body.

And to be honest with you, Brad was probably the nicest looking guy in the school. But his attitude had turned the girls off. He felt the only reason he hadn’t actually fucked more than three high school girls that year was because he found they weren’t as good as his own sister.

That’s when I realized the source of all these problems was his sister’s obedience and desire to fulfill his every whim. I wondered if Sandi was ready to be given her freedom yet, seeing there wasn’t really any better way to bring Brad down from his lofty perception of himself.

“Brad, I’m going to have to think about this, and the bell is about to ring. I can’t miss fourth hour. Promise me you won’t try seducing any other girls, and I won’t make you stop with Karen. I only say this because you haven’t forced her to do anything. But I warn you right now. If you do anything that Karen doesn’t want, Sandi will become MY responsibility and MY slave. Got it?”