Chapter 2

Paul had not been home from his illicit visit to Julie's house for more than ten minutes before he was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt for what he had done. He had screwed his neighbor! He had screwed her against her will! True, she had enjoyed it and true she had wanted to do it at the time, but it was not something that she ordinarily would have done with him if not for the power. He had commanded her to have sex with him and to enjoy it. He had, in effect, raped her. He was a rapist! The thought that he had raped her in such a manner that would not leave any psychological problems behind, that would leave no physical damage, that would, in fact, not even be remembered, did not help much. He was a rapist, a criminal, the scum of the earth.

When he was not wrestling with guilt over the fact that he had raped Julie, he was dealing with the guilt of cheating on his wife. He had tossed aside his marriage vows in an instant, with hardly a second thought, just so he could relieve a lustful urge. This was something that he had always controlled before, that he had never even seriously considered doing. He had always assumed that he restrained himself from adultery out of love for his wife, out of respect for her. That had not been the reason at all, he realized now. He had just not wanted to risk getting caught at it. Once that risk had been completely removed from the equation, it had taken him less than twenty-four hours to have an affair.

"I'm scum," he said to himself as he sipped out of glass of wine, the odor of Julie's body still clinging to him like a blanket. "I'm absolute scum."

He felt better having admitted that he was scum. It was almost a therapy of sorts. He decided to look upon the entire episode with Julie as a learning experience. He had been given a power and he had abused it. It was regretful that he had done such a thing, it was wrong, and it was shameful. But he would learn from this and practice restraint in the future. He had just gone a little crazy when he had seen his attractive neighbor dressed in her gardening outfit, when he had successfully pried personal details from her.

"It won't happen again," he vowed to himself. "I will not let anything like that happen again."

As he took a shower and began the process of composing himself, he kept repeating that over and over, like an incantation.

By the time Terry came home he had convinced himself that he would be able to practice restraint in the future. He had no right to pry into the thoughts of other and no right to pry into their bodies either. He would try to think of good ways to use this power that he had been given and would stick to normal, consensual sex with Terry only.

"Hi babe," she said, leaning down and kissing him. "Are you feeling better?"

"Much," he told her, though with a voice that was still troubled.

She shot him a worried look but said nothing. They prepared dinner together a few minutes later, fixing a simple dish of chicken and rice. She asked him a few more times during the construction process if he was all right and why he was so quiet.

"Maybe I am still a little under the weather," he told her, giving a weak smile. "I'm sorry."

She returned the smile and gave him another kiss. They sat down a minute later and began to eat. As they chomped away at their chicken breasts and as each sipped a glass of white wine, he finally began to relax. He was scum, he had admitted it, and he was not going to be scum anymore. So what was the point of being depressed about it, of fighting with guilt? He had learned his lesson. The mood lightened up and Terry, whose matrimonial instincts were being jigged, began to feel better at last. Conversation began to flow from them, halting at first but quickly picking up momentum.

This lasted only until the sound of fighting began to drift in the kitchen window from next door.

It was just the unintelligible sounds of a male and a female yelling at each other at first. It was noticeable only because it was such an unusual occurrence. Not even Terry, in the midst of one of her tirades, yelled loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

"Who is that?" Terry said, dropping her fork to her plate. "That's not Julie and Rich is it?"

"I don't know," Paul said carefully, instinctively knowing that his had something to do with what he had done earlier. What else could it be?

"They never fight," she said. "At least not so people can hear. I wonder what's going on?"

No sooner had she said that then the words became louder, and clearly understandable. "You fucking whore!" yelled a male voice, clearly Rich, in fury. "You'd better tell me what the hell this is about!"

"I don't KNOW what it's about!" Julie's tearful voice yelled back. "I really don't."

"Then how the fuck do you explain this?!" came the retort.

"Oh my God," Terry said, shocked. "I've never heard Rich talk like that. Never!"

Paul shuddered a little. What had happened? What detail had he left undone at Julie's house?

"Paul?" Terry asked, worry in her eyes once more. "Do you think that maybe we should... you know... call the police or something."

"No," he said, standing up. "I'll go take care of it."

She looked at him as if he were mad. "You'll what?"

He looked at his wife and projected towards her. "Just finish your dinner and don't worry about anything that's going on. Start doing the dishes when you're done. It's not unusual for me to go over there like this and you know I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Okay," Terry said, settling back in and picking up her fork. Her face became calm once more, almost serene. "Can you ask Julie if she'll lend me her crumb cake recipe while you're over there? We have that potluck to go to next week and we're assigned a desert."

"Sure," he said, heading for the back door of the house.

Moving quickly he went out into the back yard, stepping over the flower beds and around the birdbath until he came to the wooden fence that separated his back yard from Rich and Julie's. He could hear the sound of the argument escalating as he peered over into their back yard. They were both using more and more angry profanity as he called her a "whore" and a "cunt" and a "slut" and she called him a "paranoid asshole". He knew that the other neighbors were listening in on this as well, knew that it was only a matter of time before someone did as Terry had suggested and called the police; if they had not already done so. It also sounded like only a matter of time before things came to physical violence over there. Whatever detail had been forgotten, it had surely pissed Rich off big time.

Though he had not done such a thing in years, not since he was a kid, he hiked his foot onto the fence and scrambled over to the other side, landing with a thump in Julie's flowerbed, smashing a rose bush. He walked across the neatly manicured back lawn, stepping gingerly around the piles of dog feces that Tundra, their Alaskan Husky had deposited. Tundra herself, seeing the visitor to the yard, rushed up and began jumping on him, leaving little tufts of white fur from her shedding winter coat.

"Down Tundra," he said softly, pushing her to the ground. Tundra, always the obedient canine, did as she was told.

Paul stepped onto their patio and approached their sliding glass door, which led into their kitchen. He gave it a try, hoping that it was unlocked, and it slid easily along its track. As it opened, the sound of the argument, which now consisted of hysterical tears on Julie's part and continued demands of explanation on Rich's, swelled louder. His ears homed in on it, feeding him the information that they were in the bedroom. With a deep breath he began heading through their house, feeling like a burglar.

He walked down the hallway and paused at the open door of the bedroom. Rich and Julie were indeed in there and seemed only seconds away from coming to blows. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, crying and protesting hysterically that she did not know what he was talking about. He was standing threateningly above her, his face red and furious, as he shouted at her.

"Goddamn it," he screamed, pointing his finger at her to punctuate each word. "You had better start making some fuckin sense right now! I'm only gonna ask you one more fucking time. Where did it come from? And don't feed me any more of your shit about how you don't know!"

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her miserable face, about to offer yet another denial. But her eyes caught the sight of Paul standing in the doorway and she jumped, emitting a startled scream. "What are YOU doing in here?" she barked.

Rich, hearing her words, whipped his head around and stared at Paul as well. He too gave a jump as he saw the unexpected presence. "Paul," he barked, taking a step towards him, "what the hell are you doing? We're having a private fucking discussion. Where do you get off coming in our house?!"

Feeling a jolt of adrenaline at the confrontation, not really accustomed to such scenes, Paul nevertheless pushed on. Projecting himself at them, he said: "Both of you calm down right now and stop yelling."

It was actually kind of amazing to watch. Simultaneously they slumped into relaxed postures, all of the tension evaporating from their poses. Their faces, which had been drawn and twisted with anger and fear, softened, taking on the expressions of those on Valium.

"That's better," Paul said, smiling at his accomplishment. "Much better."

"Paul," Rich said softly, calmly, as if he were speaking to a lover or his best friend. "Get out of our fucking house right now. I don't know what you're doing in here but you need to leave."

"Yes," Julie said, using the same calm, rational, friendly voice. "I must say that you have a lot of nerve just barging in here like you did. Have you not ever heard of knocking?"

Paul reflected a little at the strangeness of this all. "Listen," he said to them, projecting again, "there is nothing unusual about me being here right now. You will answer all of my questions truthfully without hesitation or worry."

They both nodded their understanding and looked at him expectantly.

"Now then," he said, feeling like he was getting somewhere. "Please explain to me Rich, just what this fight is all about."

"Well," Rich said, still calm as a pilot, "I came upstairs when I got home from work and I found a large stain on the bedspread here. It is quite obviously a stain that appeared there as a result of someone having sex on the bed. I have not had sex with Julie in more than a week and the stain was not there when I left for work in any case. Julie, when I ask her about it, just keeps saying that she doesn't know where it came from and that it couldn't possibly be from sex." He shook his head a little, like a man that has just heard something amusing. "I mean look at it," he said, pointing to the bedspread.

Sure enough, right next to where Julie was sitting was a large white stain, right where their crotches had been joined during the earlier encounter. "Yes," Paul said, shaking his own head a little at his own stupidity. "That is what it appears to be."

"Do you see dear?" Rich asked his wife reasonably. "Even Paul says that's what it is."

"I'm sorry," she replied lightly. "I just don't see it that way. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what it is. It's weird though. If I look at it for a moment and try to think about it, I can't. My mind will just start thinking about something else."

"And it is quite infuriating when you do that," Rich told her.

Paul tried to think for a minute, trying to sort through this mess that he had left. He now knew the detail that he had forgotten. This power thing surely did take practice. He needed to fix things here, that much was obvious, but how?

He considered and rejected several scenarios, finding them too complicated and full of potential traps. At last he decided that the simplest, most direct approach was the answer. He turned to Rich. "You made love to Julie as soon as you got home from work," he said, projecting. "It was a typical session of lovemaking for the two of you. That is where the stain came from."

"Oh yes," Rich said, smiling in fond memory. "I remember now."

"We did no such thing," Julie protested mildly. "I haven't had sex in more than... "

"You DID make love to Rich when he got home," Paul interrupted, projecting.

"Oh yes," she said, smiling. "We did."

"And if either one of you finds any other signs that sexual activity took place in this house today, you will conclude that it came from that session."

"Right," Rich agreed.

"Got it," Julie added.

He probed and prodded at them a few times, searching their answers for possible pitfalls. Finding none, he instructed them that the moment he left their house, they would forget he had been there at all. But before he made good his escape, he did have one more request of them. "Terry would like your crumb cake recipe," he told Julie.

Three minutes later he left the house, via the front door this time, with a small recipe card tucked into his pocket. Before returning to his own house he made the rounds to every house that was potentially within earshot of Rich and Julie's. He knocked on each door and demanded entry when it was answered. He then gathered each person in each house and instructed them that they had never heard a thing coming from Rich and Julie's that day and to forget that he had ever been there.

This process took nearly an hour. By the time he walked back through his own front door he was exhausted, both mentally and physically, by the effort of cleaning up the mess he had made. If nothing else this episode reinforced the decision he had come to earlier. He would no longer abuse the power he had been given. He would have no more sexual interludes. Having extramarital sex by using the power was just as complex, if not more so, than having it without the power.

"You've been awfully quiet the last few days," Terry observed to him in the car the next morning as they drove to work. "Are you sure that nothing's wrong?"

He looked over towards her for a moment as he drove down Interstate 80, not failing the note the genuine tenderness and love in her tone. She was really worried about him. Terry really was a good, loving wife. And what had he done? He had cheated on her with the neighbor and had reprogrammed her mind on several occasions when it became convenient to do so.

"Things will be better Terry," he told her, patting her leg, which was clad in nylons, with his free hand. "I promise."

"That's good," she smiled, stroking her fingernails against his arm. "You've really seemed... well... different lately."

As he drove he made another vow to himself. He would no longer use the power on Terry if he could possibly avoid it. Somehow that seemed even more wrong than using it for sex.

When they arrived at the school their first stop was the administration office to pick up any mail that they had received and to check-in. When they walked in, the secretarial staff was busy pounding away on their computer keyboards and swilling down the cheap coffee that the district supplied. A few of them gave unenthusiastic grunts of greeting to the two teachers but most simply ignored them. The school office staffers were not, as a general rule, the happiest people on earth.

Paul grabbed a stack of memos and other junk mail from his cubbyhole and began leafing through it, scanning for anything that might potentially be important. Seeing nothing that fit that description he tossed the pile in the nearest convenient round file. As they sank to the bottom, joining a ream or so of others just like them, he looked up to see that Vice Principal Maureen Flagstaff was looking at him from the doorway of her office.

"You know," she said with feigned pleasantness, her jaw snapping the gum that she perpetually chewed, "we don't print those memorandums up just so you can toss them into the garbage without reading them."

Maureen Flagstaff, at thirty-two years old, was the youngest assistant principal that the district had ever promoted into that position. She would undoubtedly, in a year or two, be the youngest principal that it had ever promoted. This would of course be followed by her being the youngest district manager and so on and so forth. Maureen was the woman with all the right connections. She had moved up the ladder into administration after spending only four years in an actual classroom, assisted along her path by her husband, who was a semi-influential Nebraska State Assembly member with a seat on the education committee. Jack Flagstaff, her husband, was thirteen years her senior. He was a bald, nerdy looking man who wore black power suits everywhere he went, including to school functions. Maureen had met and successfully courted him when she herself was nothing but a simple but very attractive Geometry teacher with ambition and he was a simple Lincoln City Council member from the ritzy district.

Maureen had lost a little bit of her once heart-stopping beauty along her trip. Though her face was still smooth and unlined, the cold, calculating, soulless look that was always in her eyes served to detract from the aesthetic qualities. Her demeanor, which was constantly commanding and nit-picking, also did much to draw attention away from her looks once a person got to know her. On the surface however, she did have an impressive stature. She was tall and thin, with dark brown hair that was always stylishly set and primped. Her breasts were aristocratically small but well proportioned to her body. Her ass, which was always displayed in a tight, fashionable dress, was mouth-watering to behold.

Maureen's greatest joy in life was flaunting the power that she had over others. She would never hesitate to leap upon any of her underlings who dared violate the letter of any district rule or regulation, no matter how minor or insignificant. If she did not have a clear disciplinary course of action to follow, she still tried to throw her weight around, often disguising her bitchy comments and corrections as pleasant conversation. The way she had addressed Paul about tossing his memos in the garbage was a perfect example of this.

In answer to her comments Paul said, "I read all that I needed to read in that pile. There wasn't anything that pertained to the History department."

"All of those memos pertain to everyone employed here," she said sternly. "Please take the time to read them in the future."

"Sure," he said absently, heading for the door that led out of her domain. Terry was standing there, waiting for him.

"And are you feeling better today?" Maureen asked sarcastically as he passed her.

"Well enough to come in," he said. "Thank you for asking."

"We in the office," she told him, "would much appreciate it if, in the future, you were able to give us more than ninety minutes of warning when you call in sick. It's not the easiest thing in the world to get a sub to come in on such short notice you know."

He paused, looking at her, seeing that she was having herself a ball by talking to him that way in front of the office staff, all of whom had stopped what they were doing to listen to the exchange. He found himself tempted to use the power on her, to order her to submit her resignation that day, that minute. But he restrained himself. Who knew what the consequences of that might be?

"I let you know as soon as I knew that I wasn't going to make it," he said instead. "If you could arrange for God to let ME know that I'll be sick twenty-four hours in advance, I'll surely give you more warning next time, okay?"

Before she had a chance to reply to that he stepped through the doorway, letting the door shut behind him.

"You know," Terry said angrily as they walked towards their classrooms, "there are not many people in the world that I actually hate. But that bitch is one of them. I can't wait until she gets her blue-blooded ass promoted out of this place."

"Amen to that," Paul said, trying to put the episode out of his mind.

The workday rolled on. Paul opened up his assigned classroom, room 237, and delivered lectures on American History to classes full of high school students. They sat in their seats facing him, group after group, most with the perpetually bored expressions of adolescents that were trapped in the presence of adults on their faces. They wore this expression because their peers expected it of them, because it was almost legally required of them. They wore it regardless of whether they were actually bored or not. And most of them were not, at least not while they were in his class. Not a great subscriber to false modesty, Paul knew that he was a damn good teacher and that his lectures were interesting and not dry. He took great pains to compose them that way.

But as he spoke of the early stages of the American Revolution to them on this day, he was robbed of a little of his usual flair for the dramatic and his sharp sense of adolescent-level humor. His attention kept wandering as he looked at the fifteen to eighteen year old girls that inhabited his classes. Though he was not a lecher like the principal, neither was he a eunuch. He had always enjoyed looking at these young nymphs as he delivered his lectures or administered their tests; particularly on those rare occasions when one became a little careless with her skirt. Like any red-blooded male, he found teenage girls, who were the essence of innocence and youth, to be physically attractive. Who could help but look at them? They were as visually attractive as a sunset, as a mountain stream in winter, or as the wide, blue ocean. But as a teacher and an educator and a moral human being, he had never, not a single time in his career, seriously considered engaging in any sort of sexual activity with one of them. Not even when one girl or another developed their typical school-girl crushes on him and such a thing could possibly have been pulled off, had he ever given the matter much more than a passing, wistful thought.

But never before did he have the power to enjoy them without consequences. Like with Julie the previous day, that factor produced temptation of enormous magnitude. As he lectured, as he moved about his classroom, his eyes kept locking onto their young bodies. There were fresh, nubile, teenage girls of all shapes and sizes, just sitting there less than fifteen feet from him. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, bleach-blondes, and died-blacks. There were short and tall and fat and skinny. There were plain girls and skanky girls and girls so pretty that it almost made the eyes tear up to look at them. Many, thanks to the school's liberal dress code and the warm spring weather, were wearing shorts and sleeveless blouses, or they were wearing short skirts. He could see set after set of attractive, smooth, bare legs in sandals or expensive athletic shoes. He could pair after pair of firm, jutting young breasts, just sitting beneath the cotton blouses or the T-shirts. He could have any one of them that he wanted! He could HAVE them! He could take one right now, or at any time that he wished! He could instruct them to come over to his house after school! He could have two come over and have them make love to each other while he watched! He could conceivably take one right here in the classroom at this very moment and instruct the rest of the class to ignore what was going on!

He actually had to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead during third period as he contemplated this. He actually had to sit behind his desk and give a large portion of his lecture from there to conceal the erection that was pushing outward in his slacks.

"Christ, I'm going crazy," he mumbled to himself during a pause in his lecture, forcing his eyes away from Denise Louder, one of the short-skirted, tearfully pretty types. When she had crossed her leg from one side to the other he had been treated to a brief flash of her panties between her thighs. They were red. She was actually wearing red panties, this sixteen-year-old girl! Would she be tight? How would she feel around his cock if he took her? How would those pouting, puffy lips feel like sucking him off? How would those red panties feel between his teeth if he were to pull them off of her trim body in that manner? How would she smell when aroused?

"Stop it," he told himself. "Just maintain. Just fucking maintain."

Somehow he maintained. When third period let out and his lunch period began, he sat behind his desk taking deep breaths and willing his hard-on to retreat. It did so, only reluctantly and only after five minutes had passed. Slowly, trembling a little from arousal and the heady knowledge that he could have anyone, anytime he pleased, he walked to the teacher's lounge to eat his ham sandwich.

The teachers, like the students, were equally divided among two lunch schedules, fourth or fifth period. Paul was in the fourth period lunch but Terry was in the fifth period lunch. This separation of marital eating times was the work of none other than Maureen Flagstaff. As the vice-principal it was her task to assign the teachers to their class schedule and lunch period each semester. Every previous VP since Paul and Terry began to be known as a couple had always made a point to assign them to the same lunch period. But not Maureen. Since the first semester break after she assumed her new role, they had found themselves consistently on different eating schedules. Complaining to her or requesting the same eating period in advance did no good. Maureen would simply tell them, in her pleasantly snotty voice, that scheduling was at HER discretion and that there were factors and variables involved which she had to consider but which they, as mere peons, were simply incapable of comprehending.

"I can't justify juggling everyone else around just so a husband and wife can eat lunch together," she would say. "It's not fair to the other faculty members." The fact that none of the other faculty members really cared which lunch period they were assigned to and that most of them were very supportive of the desire of a man and wife to see each other during the afternoon, just didn't seem to enter her equation. In truth, everyone knew that Maureen was simply throwing her weight around. It was something she did with anyone if she had opportunity. She got off on it.

So, thanks to Maureen, when he entered the teacher's lounge in the administration building that afternoon, Terry was just starting her fourth period Junior English Composition lecture. On this particular afternoon her absence did not irritate him as it normally did. She knew Paul better than anyone else on the face of the earth and, as such, would have been able to take one look at him and known that something was wrong. She might not have known that he was being driven insane with lust from three hours of staring at his female students, or that he had a semi-painful case of blue balls from having a constant erection, but she would have known something was amiss.

The teacher's lounge was a moderately large room full of cafeteria tables, lockers, a few refrigerators, and a bank of vending machines. About twenty teachers were clustered in groups at the tables, talking to each other in low tones and eating their lunches. The majority, like Paul, had bag lunches that they had brought from home but a few brave souls were actually eating the cafeteria swill. Paul went to one of the refrigerators and opened it, removing the bag that had his name printed on it. He carried it over to the vending machines and purchased a can of Diet Pepsi. He then began looking for a place to sit down.

He found an empty table near the door and sat at it, ignoring the strange looks he was getting from his peers for sitting apart from them. Though he was normally an outgoing and companionable soul, he did not really desire the company of others at the moment. He opened his bag and took out his sandwich but he only nibbled at it, not feeling hungry, only feeling conflicting emotions assaulting him; the chief of which was desire. Even though he was out of view of them, he still could not get the image of his female students out of his mind. He could have them! Any one of them! At any time! He could go get one right now and be inside of her in less than ten minutes and no one would ever know! No one would ever know!

As he thought about this his erection returned to him, pushing at his slacks and increasing his desire. He had to stop this, he told himself. He had to! But how? How could he ignore the knowledge of what he could do? How could he stop thinking about it? And how long, he asked himself, trying to do some soul searching, would it be before he would not be able to resist the temptation to act on his depraved impulses? How long? How much could an average man take of this without giving in?

"What's the matter Paul?" a voice said from behind him. "Feeling unsociable today?"

Even though he knew who was talking to him he still jumped a little. She had approached from behind and he had been so lost in his own thoughts he had not detected her until she spoke. "Hi Laura," he said, a little shortly.

Laura Flowers taught Math to the freshmen and sophomores. She was thirty years old and the ex-wife of a Lincoln Police officer. Less than a year before, Laura had been fat. At five feet, four inches in height she had weighed in at close to two hundred and fifty pounds. The weight had been put on gradually since her marriage until that fateful day she had gone home early with the flu and caught her husband screwing not just one, but TWO night shift dispatchers in their marital bed. Her husband had never spent another day in that house and Laura herself had since become obsessed with high impact aerobics and vegetarianism. Eight years of weight had come off in eight months, leaving her at a trim one hundred and twelve pounds and restoring her rightful place among the masturbation fantasies of her students. She now had a resting heart rate of forty and an average blood pressure of 90/40. Her legs, which had once been flabby and thick, were now firm, well-muscled piston-like machines. Her ass, which had once been wider than the seat of her chair, was now a rippling, eye-pleasing mechanism when she walked. Her stomach, which had once bulged over her waistline, was now a flat, hard, smooth expanse of desirable flesh. Her body looked tight and healthy these days instead of jiggling and chunky.