Chapter the Twenty-seventh: Wheels...

I had become used to 'reading' people. Not really deeply, not the details of everything they were thinking, that required more concentration than I usually fancied using. Their general 'aura' however, was something that I could see without really having to think. It was more than the 'first impression' feeling we all get, but only a bit more. Maggie now glowed like a new-born baby.

I always thought she was a bright, beautiful person but this was like repainting your kitchen ceiling and seeing the difference between old and new white paint.

Nickie, completely ecstatic and exhausted spent the rest of the day with us. She was bubbling over with praise for the way she had felt so 'controlled' it was such a turn on to be forced into such blatant submission. The afternoon and early evening wasn't the sex fest that you might imagine. We spent a long, long time just laying together. Both women tickled each other to another couple of orgasms more for the sheer hell of it than anything else. It was like I had just been married again for the first time, and I told Maggie as much. She cheerfully replied that although I was a bigamist at the very least, she loved sharing me with Nickie.

"What do you feel has happened Maggie?" I asked, propped on one elbow next to her and helping Nickie brush her pubes into a neat fan on her mound. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then replied that it was as if she had been given a new pair of glasses and could see things clearly for the first time in years.

Not since she was a young teenager could she remember feeling so weightless.

Much as I was overjoyed to see the new woman in front of me, the fact that she could pinpoint a particular time in her life and that there had been an element of something that had been 'wiped off' her; piqued my interest as to the cause of the original 'dirt.' I decided to use another of the connections that Sara and I had enjoyed. Nickie sat with Maggie's head in her lap, stroking her face gently as she watched me feed my stiff cock into her pussy. I began to set-up the interfaces and soon the two of us were completely enmeshed in each other. I could feel Nickie with us too, but still outside us as a couple.

This time, there was no need to filter through the memories. I was looking for something.

I was beginning to recognise something familiar about the way I saw Maggie. The breakthrough I had made could be seen as the removal of a false skin that had lain over her psyche. Like the crinkled dead skin of a snake after it has been shed, there was an ethereal 'appendage' that I could detect. It hung like a half-discarded sock from the heel of one foot. In the nether realm that we now found ourselves, her 'self' stood before me as a perfect being; a clean, pink, elegant woman in her full magnificent beauty. The thing she had shucked off was ugly. The evil oily scab was very much like that which I had seen on Debbie and Sara and even myself when I fell into Shaw's trap in the office stock cupboard.

But this was subtly different. It wasn't something of Maggie's doing, someone else had smothered her with this; but Shaw couldn't possibly have had anything to do with it. It was too old and his touch was too hateful, too brutish. This spell had been cast by someone else and many years ago and was of a much more insidious nature.

With a command similar to a scalpel, I sliced the dead thing away and held it up to look at it.

Maggie's beauty was now unblemished, the fluttering of her sex around mine tipped us into small spirals of pleasure. The bad thing had been taken away and she was free to drift where she liked.

The malignant bundle held no clue as to it's creator, it dissolved in my fingers and was gone. Maggie began to thunder towards a climax and I followed close behind, only pausing to ensure we avoided the feedback loop that had been so painful before for Sara and me.

Nickie was kissing Maggie deeply when we arrived back in the 'real' world. Her hands had been all over the both of us, pleasuring and finding pleasure in our lovemaking.

I fell into an embrace with her too, and soon found myself performing the same 'surgery.' Both women had possessed, or had been possessed by the same filthy sheen. Nickie to a far smaller extent but it was there nonetheless. There was a definite difference though, between her and Maggie's level of coverage. And when revealed, Nickie could not hold a candle to Maggie's brilliance. This was a major puzzle. I would have to discuss this with Bran.

Nickie left for her house as the time was getting late. Her husband was due home soon and she needed to shower and change to 'be ready for him.' Whatever had been missing from her love life up until now, she was going to have some fun trying to get it back.

Maggie and I sat at the dinner table and talked whilst we ate. I couldn't even remember a time before, when we ever did such a thing. The conversation was refreshing and honest and held nothing but a desire to tell each other the truth about how we both felt. She was no longer the antagonistic harridan who had asked for a divorce, rather she was eager to find the cause of her adult lifetime of disappointment. I had allowed her to see the full extent of my life too, and she knew and accepted it all. More than that, I began to get a real feeling for the extent of my own shortcomings in our relationship. As we chatted, I found myself responding to her in a way which I found difficult to place.

Maggie, suddenly put her knife and fork to the side of her plate and took my hands in hers.

"I love you Danny. I always did."

The confession was shocking, not particularly because of the circumstances which preceded it, but more because of my own reaction.

"I love you too Maggie." I told her and knew that, for the first time in our lives, I meant it.

The thing I had found, covering her 'soul' was significant, the coating she had been wearing had been covering a 'someone' who was very compatible to my own self in its new existence. We both realised how much we had always been meant for each other and how events were beginning to unravel some odd questions about human and sihde relationships.

Between the two of us we developed the germ of an idea as to the way things could be resolved. I couldn't remember a time when we'd found each other so well. When we'd split up, my belief had been that Maggie and I had simply found ourselves together by force of habit. She had her circle of friends and her career and I had mine. Our spheres of influence had barely intersected if at all. When she had left her job as a journalist to raise the kids I could almost feel the palpable resentment she harboured against me. No matter how much I tried to follow the textbook methods of supporting her, it was never enough. She had always been unable to forgive the fact that she felt trapped by our relationship; but we both now saw it as some sort of anger that my true potential wasn't being realised. She was still able to feel that she was being cheated but not able to identify why. With the real root cause of the problem uncovered and removed we found ourselves almost as some sort of new species. Not just husband and wife, but two people who loved each other, and also loved our other partners equally, without bias. The new-found liberty was wonderful, it allowed us to concentrate on what needed to be done.

I even found myself quite admiring Simon, he had been pretty decent to her. I found out that he had actually insisted on a purely platonic relationship with her. He stood by her even with the coldness that she couldn't help but display.

And I knew he doted on the kids. His was a friendship that allowed her to live with the sort of freedoms I realised I should have allowed her. Of all the shortcomings I knew I had, the fact that I had let the sparkle drop from our relationship was the least defensible. It made me realise how Simon was actually the decent beneficiary of my own bad fortune.

It was nearly ten-thirty that night when we reached a decision. I first telephoned Amy at the school residence and then contacted Aileen and Aiden at the farm. I put in a call to Karen and Jennifer at their apartment and left a message on their machine asking them both to meet us there.

By the time the teapot was filled for the second time in the farmhouse we were all there, even Jon and Susan from my old office. Susan, a very large engagement ring on her left hand, was showing signs of a definite thickening of the waist and Jon was beaming. They were expecting the event sometime in the Winter, Susan was hoping it would be a Christmas baby. She grinned at Jon's sheepish admission that the wedding was going to be a 'fat affair.' I assured them that a pregnant bride was a long established tradition. Aileen even admitted that most of the wedding dresses in the village in her day had been in need of careful altering by the time the day arrived.

Each of the arrivals was checked by me. It soon became apparent that there were two distinct categories into which our group fell. Those like Maggie appeared to shine in much the same way as I did. I could 'feel' the magic in them. Some of my friends; Aiden, Aileen and Jon for example, were without magic of any great understanding. Aiden's wisdom did seem to gleam around him but he was not of our group. No discernible outside spell was on them and they were left the same as before. I was pretty swift now at identifying and removing the remnants of the spells we had been under. Each removal was accompanied by a metamorphosis of the person into someone immediately recognisable as a free human. Susan and her unborn baby were glorious and her radiance glowed around the room.