"Money may be the route of all evil, but sex is the route of all pleasure"

Slaanesh proverb.

Neil rooted amongst the dusty shelves. Some of the books had not been disturbed in years by the look of it.

Considering most of the books were on Imperial tax laws, Neil was not surprised.

Neil rued the day his father had talked him into accounting. He had wanted to be a mechanic, or a pilot, possibly even a great commander in the Imperial Guard. He had even flirted with the possibility of becoming a doctor. His father had talked him into accounting, with the promise of large wages and a decadent lifestyle. So he became an accountant.

The wages turned out to be mediocre, at best, and when members of the opposite sex found out he was an accountant, they suddenly remembered previous engagements elsewhere. Life, as far as Neil was concerned, was shit and getting shittier.

His dreams of partying hard and late, in reality, had become working hard and searching for obscure tax loopholes late into the night.

Wandering back to the counter, he paid for the book. Deliberately he paused and counted out his change in front of the old shopkeeper. One of the first lessons in life as an accountant, he had learned; was that stores that catered for accountants were the most likely to short change.

He was short.

The old man grumbled under his breath as he added the correct amount to Neil's palm.

The day was dark and miserable. Neil pulled his cloak tighter round his ungainly form. He had always meant to enrol in a gym and bulk up. Somehow he just never got round to it.

Stepping into his ramshackle apartment, he let his cloak slip to the floor in a brown sodden pile.

Unwrapping the packaging around the book he dropped it amongst the paper work on the cluttered desk. He left it there as he went into his tiny kitchen. He made himself a strong cup of black coffee as he waited for the kettle to boil.

Placing the mug on a well-stained mug ring, surrounded by a looming pile of final demand letters, he sat down to work.

Using the book to clarify a point on the rates of tax of Uka plants when the two moons were in alignment, he finished off another customers return. That was the food bill paid for the next month.

Loathe to start another customer so soon; he idly flicked through the pages of his new purchase.

A list of what looked like ingredients caught his eye. He stopped and turned back a few pages. Yes it was a list, and a strange one at that. He glanced at the page numbers. They were in order. He looked at the dusty spine. It didn't seem tampered with.

Happy for any excuse to avoid work, he went back a further page. The chapter had the title 'A servant for the fulfilling of every-whim and the calculating of crotacious equations.' Neil laughed. The author obviously had a sense of humour.

He didn't have all the ingredients, but he was sure he could swap them for something equivalent. He read the instructions on the preparation. They were a bit bizarre. Neil wondered if the recipe was for the concoction of an illicit drug.

Doing something illegal and therefore risqué, sent his adrenaline levels soaring.

He looked at the book open before him.

"Fuck it. I could do with a break."

Whistling tunelessly he assembled the various ingredients. Some he had, some he didn't but possessed similar. Some he didn't have nor an equivalent. For those he just substituted for something he did have. He wasn't particularly bothered; it was just a bit of fun, if it got him drunk or out of his head for a few hours, all the better.

Neil carried a pot and a mug with the two separate concoctions as described by the book, back to his table. He placed both on the floor.

The book said that some words had to be said and arms waved in certain configurations. It was quite precise on this. Neil laughed; it reminded him of initiation ceremonies back at the Imperium College. He glossed over the memory that he had never been asked or invited to partake in those initiation ceremonies, never having been chosen to become a member of one of the many chapters within the college.

Game for a laugh, he went through the motions and stumbled over the words. That achieved he read out the next part.

"'Once the motions have been carried out and the words said, add the two mixtures together'" He added the contents of the mug to the pan, the two mixtures oozing together. The resultant concoction bubbled, emitting white vapour with a bluish tint.

Neil watched the vapour slowly weave its way to the ceiling.

"Cool! Now what?" He picked up the book "'The beaker should emit a pink vapour and your servant will be ready for every desire'" The instructions stopped there, the chapter finished.

Neil looked back at the plume of bluish smoke, wafting gently to the roof.

"Okay, so it's bluish instead of pinkish, a mere minor detail. What in the name of the Immortal Emperor are you supposed to do now?" He looked questionably back at the book "Drink it? Inhale it?"

The book stayed quiet.

"Well. At least it doesn't smell so bad."

It didn't. It was soothingly pleasant.

Neil's vision wavered for a moment.

"Aha! You inhale it!" He looked accusingly back at the book "But then I suppose it's not a good idea to drink a concoction with boot polish in it!"

The vapour started to twist; Neil struggled to focus on it.

"Whoa, strong shit!"

Something seemed to be forming in the vapour. Neil blinked his eyes rapidly in an effort to focus. The vapour was slowly coalescing into a definite humanoid shape. Neil was intrigued.

The wall behind slowly disappeared from view as the haze solidified, the vapour taking on a denser mass. The slowly materializing form was taking on a decidedly female silhouette that was pleasing to Neil's eyes. A pair of breasts-appearing almost material enough that Neil wondered if he could touch them- played peek-a-boo with the blue vapour. He felt himself harden at the sight of the pert nipples that adorned each exquisite breast.

His gaze slid, lasciviously, downwards. The belly of the temptress was curiously smooth and devoid of any existence of an umbilical cord. Neil was not bothered unduly by the absence. His gaze slid lower still. Vapour still swirled between the temptress's legs tantalisingly hiding what lay beneath.

The vapour remained teasingly opaque refusing to show what lay between the phantoms legs. Legs that looked almost lifelike in their long slender stance. Legs he imagined wrapped around his waist, as he plunged deep between them.

Neil rubbed his eyes to remove the moisture that was distorting his vision. He looked again expecting the vision of loveliness to have vanished. She was still there.

Looking at her face, he noticed that her ears were slightly more pointed than they should be, the tips peaking through strangely colourless hair. There was something disconcerting about her eyes that he could not place. Beautiful and compelling yet something else as well, something that he could not quite place.

Her lips were full and inviting. He could imagine his lips upon hers. It was a nice image.

The side of those luscious lips slowly rose in a seductive smile. He found his mouth mimicking hers.

"NNNEEEIIILLL"

Life went all distorted for Neil. He didn't know if the figure was saying his name or commanding him.

"NNEEIILL"

He felt his knees start to weaken as he experienced a strange desire to obey.

"NEIL" A tongue, split in two, accompanied his name with an enticing lick of the lips.

"HOLY FUCK!" Almost unconsciously at the sight of the split tongue, Neil blindly reached for a book and threw it at the figure with the exclamation.

More by pure chance than design, the book fell into the pot. The rise of blue vapour stopped. The figure disappeared.

Panicking, Neil grabbed the pan and its contents. Rushing to the bathroom, he threw the whole lot, book, pan and mixture into the cracked porcelain toilet bowl and flushed.

Letting go of the flush handle, he raced throughout the flat opening all the windows. Papers flew around un-noticed in the resultant draughts.

Leaning on a window ledge, Neil took deep breaths of polluted air, filling his lungs to bursting before releasing.

Neil's heart slowly calmed down, no longer trying to beat its way out of its rib-caged confinement. His gaze roaming without seeing, Neil looked upon the slums and its associated effluent. Populace and waste.

He spoke aloud and to no one. "Fuck me." Letting out a deep breath, he ran a pale, shaking hand through his limp and slightly greasy hair.

After taking another deep breath of polluted air, he turned back to his room. He cursed inwardly as he surveyed the paper-strewn chaos. Taking shaky steps that firmed as he crossed his hovel, he systematically started to close all the windows.

His feet took and deposited him at the threshold of his toilet, a breeding ground for every plague and virus known to humankind. Neil had not known what to expect. It looked exactly like it did everyday, with the exception of a pot handle poking forlornly above the porcelain rim.

Grasping the handle, he lifted out the pot and dumped it in the washbasin. He looked down at the murky water and the book within. It was not the recently purchased book of obscure laws on horticulture. It was his notebook containing his notations on more common tax avoidance methods. It would be far too much effort to rewrite another.

He sighed, closed his eyes and shook his head.

Opening his eyes, he rolled up a sleeve and plunged the bared arm into the water. Shuddering and trying not to think too much about what he had plunged his arm into, he grasped the notebook and pulled it out. Once clear, he flushed the toilet again. The brown murky colour of the water failed to change appreciatively.

He placed the sodden notebook on the cold bathroom radiator almost reverently. A radiator that would stay cold and lifeless until the heating bill and its associated arrears was paid. In full.

He lifted out the pot from the sink and headed into the kitchen. Rinsing out the pot he added it to the small, almost nonexistent pile of kitchenware he classed as clean. The kettle was refilled and turned on.

Wandering through his flat, Neil collected the strewn paperwork. Sorting and cataloguing the bundle in his hand into customers, he prayed fervently that none had been lost out of an open window.

Setting the precious paperwork back on his desk, he stared at the mug still lying on the floor distastefully. The kettle in the kitchen came to the boil and clicked off. Neil wanted to throw the mug out, but he only had the one and the one on the floor was it.

Hygiene and the need for a hot brew battled ferociously and noisily in his head. In the end, there could only be one winner.

The mug was picked up, scrubbed under the tap and rinsed out with hot water for good measure. Ingredients were added along with the freshly boiled water. Mug and fresh brew were carried through to the desk and placed by habit on its ring stained spot.

Sitting down, Neil set back to his work of saving other people money.

As the days passed, the incident failed to leave him. He found himself thinking about the curvaceous form as he lay in the dark. After two days the apparition failed to be so repulsive. The incident did not seem to be so shocking. The exact opposite was slowly taking over. He imagined the forked tongue exploring, teasing, in ways that no longer seemed so repulsive. The sibilant voice no longer seemed so commanding but teasing with the possible revelation of pleasure unbound.

The image of the spectre slowly moved from the repulsive to the erotic. The first time, after the original summoning, that the image aroused him to the point of hardness, awakened feelings of disgust and shame. Feelings, that insidiously changed to lust and desire.

After four days, the distraction was proving to be all but impossible to work with. He'd sit at his table with the best intentions in the world, yet three hours later, no work would have been accomplished. It was not even as if he could take the time off. His nights become long, restless and fraught with imagery that denied him rest. In the morning he would wake irritable and haggard. His food supplies dwindled to nothing and he perpetually shivered in his cold, damp and dark flat.