Chapter 25: Dorothy and Nathaniel

Waiters are inopportune beasts, cursed with the annoying habit, or skill, or desire to arrive with deliveries of food or simple check-ups of "How's everything going?" at the worst possible moments. So of course it was the exact moment that Lynne Sullivan confessed to Joey that her real name was actually Dorothy Miller, and that they had actually met many years ago, that their food arrived.

"Two chicken soups, rice noodles, white meat!" their waiter announced.

"Yes, thanks!" Joey said, cradling his crying girlfriend. "Just put it down."

"Bowls hot!" their waiter warned them.

"Yes! Thank you!"

"Be very careful!"

"Yes! We will! Can you just..."

"Care for refill of drinks?"

"No! We're fine. Just leave them there."

"You need anything else? More sprouts?"

"We're good! Just..."

"You call if you need anything!"

"Yeah! I know how it works. Can you just..."

At this point, Lynne simply shot their waiter a glance so severe that it actually produced physical and visible ripples in his clothes, and he stumbled back. He appeared to get the message. "Okay. Enjoy!" And he scurried off.

Joey sat and just tried to recenter himself. It was hard to get back to his original emotions of total shock and disbelief, and he turned to Lynne. She watched him carefully, gauging his reactions.

"Dorothy," he said to her, or asked her. He wasn't so sure himself.

She bit her lip and nodded.

"And ... we've met before."

She nodded.

"Before August, in Malcolm X park?"

She nodded.

He studied her. Her face was so pretty and looking so expectant, and so on edge. She seemed terrified of him.

"You have a long story to tell me, don't you?" he asked her gently.

She nodded.

"Okay." He nodded, and thought. "And you're scared."

She nodded.

"Why are you scared?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm worried that ... either you won't like ... who I am, or ... you'll tell the others..."

"Is there a reason why I won't like you? Did you do something wrong?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Okay. Well, I'll still like you then. Okay?"

She swallowed and trembled.

"And I promised. I won't tell anyone." He glanced at the food on their table, the steaming bowls of soup, and the plate full of various leaves still on their twigs, white shoots, and green circles of sliced peppers, and he turned back to her. "This is about trust."

She nodded.

"You trust me, and I trust you, right?"

She nodded, her face turning hopeful.

"Because you trust me, you tell me your story, and I won't tell anyone about it, and I accept you for who you are."

He got half of a grin out of her. Her fear was fading.

"And in return," he continued, "I trust you and you tell me ... just what the hell is on that plate over there?"

Lynne glanced at the plate and let out a giggling snort. She bit her lips shut, and started breaking down, her fear transforming into ridiculous joy.

"I'm mean, seriously, what is that tree doing there?" he asked, pointing at the twig with the leaves.

Lynne was giggling and straining, collapsing into quiet snickering fit, and trying to keep a straight face. "That's cilantro..." she partially managed. " ... and bean sprouts, and um ... jalapeño peppers."

"Okay. What am I supposed to do with them?"

"You put them..." She started laughing. "I mean ... you put them in your soup."

"The whole twig?"

"No," she strained, snickering.

"Show me."

He pushed the plate to her, and with genuine glee, she pulled a few cilantro leaves off the twig and, still giggling, put them in her soup with a handful of bean sprouts and a couple of the peppers.

"Careful of the peppers," she cautioned him between snorts.

He nodded, and then she showed him the plum sauce and how to season the soup. "You just keep working it until you like the taste."

Joey and Lynne took a few minutes together, working on their respective bowls, tasting, experimenting, adding and removing peppers, as well as smiling and giggling at each other. When they finally got their soups to the points that they liked (his with extra plum sauce, hers a little spicy), Joey leaned on one elbow towards his beautiful date and stared at her.

"Once upon a time..." he prompted her.

Lynne smiled and nodded, and took a deep breath. "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman named Eve Miller, and one day she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She walked into the path of a monster."

"I never learned his real name. All I know was that he was a monster. He was a telepath, a telekinetic, and a psychopath. He could just look at someone and rip them apart with his mind, tear their spine from their body, disembowel them with a glance. Or he would rip metal out of the walls and twist and sharpen it into spikes and just hurl them at people, impaling them. Or even worse. Sometimes he would play with his victims, pushing concepts into their mind, overloading their pain centers with agonizing torture, and only releasing the pain if they would willingly rip their eyes out or tear their own skin off.

"I don't know how he became this way, I don't know what twisted his mind. I don't want to know. But he just survived by taking what he wanted and moving on. Sometimes food, sometimes clothes or cars or houses, and sometimes it was people. And no one could stop him. Anyone who went up against him wound up dead or mad.

"But he was still a man, which meant sometimes he wanted a woman. And I don't know if he went looking for one or if he just stumbled across her, but when he saw Eve Miller, he just decided to take her. She had a boyfriend with her, and he tried to stop him, but he didn't last long. He killed her boyfriend in front of her, and took her. He took her to a house, tied her to the bed, and used her. Again, and again. Torturing her, humiliating her, degrading her. Raping her. But all the time he kept her body pristine. He didn't want to destroy her greatest asset, her beauty.

"And then one night, after many days, or maybe even a week, he got drunk. He fell asleep, and she escaped. She somehow managed to untie herself from the bed and got out. And she ran. She just kept running."

Lynne took a pause in her story to drink and clear her throat. Joey waited patiently.

"When he awoke and found her gone, he must have gone into a rage, because he hunted her. He started tracking her. And how do you hide from a telepath? He could reach into anyone's mind and see if they had seen her, see what she did, which direction she went. He hounded her, tracking her across the country. And he would get close to her sometimes, sometimes within view, but she was smart. She figured out what he was doing, and disguised herself, travelled alone, and disappeared in rural America.

"And then she discovered she was pregnant."

Joey knew what this meant, and took her hand.

"A pregnant woman on the run needs help, and she found some. She found some isolationists, people living off the grid, living alone with their guns and their farm and their supplies for the coming apocalypse, and when she told them who was after her, and what happened to her, they got her a doctor, and they got the money, and they begged her. They pleaded with her." Lynne was shaking now, her voice cracking. "They prayed, and they demanded, over and over. Abort. Abort this thing before it becomes a monster. Abort it now."

Joey squeezed her hand. She was tearing.

"But she didn't. And I don't know why. She had two babies, a girl and a boy. She named them Dorothy and Nathaniel. This was February twenty second, nineteen ninety four."

She paused in her story for more water, and Joey reflected on an odd detail that caught his attention. "Jeff's real name is Nathaniel Miller. That's why Sarah couldn't get his name to work in the spell. She was using the wrong name." He kept this thought to himself, and just continued to listen.

"I don't remember much about the compound. I wasn't there long. I do remember being called Dorothy. And then one day they went into this lock-down because someone from the government came by, and then the next day, the monster showed up again. There was shooting and screaming, and the woman from the government took us out. I remember seeing fire and smoke.

"We were placed in the Federal Witness Protection program, and we all got new names, new pasts. And how do you tell a kid that they have a new name now? I thought I did something wrong. Why couldn't I be who I was? But my mom told us about the monster, told us to be careful, told us to not talk about our pasts, and not make friends. The government would move us around and she would do paperwork for them and take care of us, but every time we moved it was in a hurry. We would just leave everything behind and run. My mom was so scared, and I was scared too. But things were quiet for many years.

"And then he found us again. I was nine years old."

She took his hand again, and squeezed it, drawing strength.

"He just showed up one day. We were in a shopping mall, and he was there, and my mom was terrified, and he started chasing us. He was furious, raging, screaming. Throwing things and people around with his mind. She ran us through the mall and got us out to the car and before she could get it started, he found us and he just threw the car with his mind. I remember the world spinning, the glass shattering, and my mom screaming. I hit my head ... I was screaming, and he was shouting at us.

"And then you came."

Joey felt a chill run down his back. He remembered this day. This was one day he would never forget. It was their first day out as heroes. He remembered the parking lot, the overturned car, and the screaming kids. And he remembered who it was his father fought.

He stared at her in terror, realizing who and what her father was. "Psi-Clone," he whispered.

"I saw the fight. I saw your father. I saw this new superhero, someone I had never seen before, and watched the whole thing from the car. I saw cars flying and bouncing off him. I saw the metal twisting around him and he just ripped it off. And he walked up to him, grabbed him, and threw one punch.

"And it was over." Lynne returned to silence, and she just trembled under his arm.

Joey just sat and remembered. He remembered the preparations they went through. They knew who they were going up against. He remembered his father coaching him, telling him to give him every imaginable invulnerability possible. Physical resistances, energy reflectivity, psychic shields, whatever he could think of. There was barely enough room left to throw in some super strength, but his father was right. Psi-Clone was a monster, one of the worst. AmeriForce could do nothing to stop him. Heroes fell before him, and police and the government were powerless against him. He remembered his father warning him about the mental attacks. "If you feel pain, and you feel like you want to hurt yourself and rip the pain out, just don't! Just scream. I'll hear you, and I'll stop him! I'll kill him if I have to."

Lynne Sullivan, the daughter of Psi-Clone, shivered under his arm. Psi-Clone was the bloodiest, most terrifying psychotic imaginable, a psychic serial killer, the walking embodiment of evil, and his daughter sat next to him in tears. Joey could feel her warmth, her softness, and could still smell the flowery essence of her shampoo, and the baby talc from her skin. He remembered the screaming and twisting, rending metal, the shouting and warnings. He could hear her sniffing.

"Please say something," Lynne whispered.

Joey wondered what to say. What did she need now? "Accept me." He gently squeezed her shoulder, hugging her closer to him. "I understand now," he whispered back to her. "I understand why you're afraid. I understand why you don't want the others to know. I understand why your brother protects you so much, and now I know why he said he trusts me with you."

He could still feel the blockage in her body, something that prevented the Omegaplasm from pouring in, and that was okay, he realized. She was fighting an entire lifetime of hiding who she was, keeping people distant, and it would take time for her to open up.

He carefully reached up, cupped her wet cheek, and lifted her beautiful face to his. "This doesn't change how I feel about you," he said, staring into her dark eyes. "It doesn't change a thing."

Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook. She was starting to pull back, crying. "I'm the daughter of..."

"Of the bravest woman I have ever heard of," Joey completed.

She was still pulling back, but he held her cheek. "I'm a rape baby," she whispered.

"You were wanted."

She was breaking down, crying, and shaking her head. "I shouldn't be here. I'm wrong. I shouldn't be alive."

"I want you," and he pulled her close to him. He guided her lips to his.

This was a proper First Kiss, one truly deserving of the title. Soft, trembling, tears on her cheeks, her warm body hesitant, then gradually melting into his, Lynne shivered as he kissed her, and he didn't know for a while if her tears were from sadness or happiness or both, but then she grabbed his head and tilted hers, grinding her mouth into his with a sudden hunger and passion that shocked him. Her kiss was powerful, strong, and demanding. Her tongue, spiced slightly from the jalapeño in her soup, burned it's way into his mouth, and she licked and tasted him, sucking on his lips. She squeezed him tightly, dropping one hand down his front, feeling his chest, and turning her torso toward him, as if inviting him to do the same. He dropped his hand down to her bare shoulder, pulling her in tight, and he kissed her deeply.

He squirmed in his seat, his erection growing, pulsing, and awakening for her. Her hand dropped lower, grasping his stomach.

"How is everything? You need refill?"

Joey pulled his lips of hers and turned to the excruciating waiter. "GOD DAMN IT! CAN'T YOU SEE WE'RE HAVING A MOMENT HERE? FUCK OFF!!!"

They spent an hour there in the restaurant. Joey wiped her tears away and encouraged her, and they talked and laughed and kissed and held hands and tried eating soup. Soup is one of those foods that simply does not work well with romance, Joey realized, because it needs to be eaten in a controlled fashion, and that leaves little room to play. Not that they didn't try.

Lynne opened to him further, expressing more fears about her life, wondering if she were somehow destined to become like her father. Joey pointed out that supervillains tended to fail, and if her father did try to turn her into some monster, what he actually managed to do was create a beautiful girl who was also a very talented musician with a deep appreciation of the arts, which would have made his efforts to make a monster one of the worst fucking failures in the history of supervillain plans. She was also concerned that when the day did come when people knew who her father was, she would never be able to get out of that shadow. Joey pointed out that she was talented enough to do the same to her father, become so big he would be obscured by her success.

She went through a couple more of her episodes, blanking out into a A.D.D. trance and making odd faces and whispers as she snuggled into his arm. Joey just held her and comforted her, wondering what terrors she still held, and whether this was truly attention deficit disorder, or some form of post traumatic stress disorder.

They hugged and kissed and snuggled and kissed and talked and joked and kissed. There was a lot of kissing, and it soon became apparent that they were causing a bit of a scene. Many of the other diners were watching them critically. And since they were no longer hungry, Joey paid for their meal and pocketed the weird boxes of bubble-gum this restaurant handed out after meals while she visited the restroom, and then together they left, arm in arm and walked out into the street amongst the throng of weekend partiers. The sun had dropped down below the horizon, and the early October night brought a chill to the air. As Lynne shivered in her light dress, Joey wrapped his jacket about her shoulders, and warmed her as they walked. He marveled at her. She was so gorgeous and so sexy in his jacket.

"You ever notice that femininity is stronger than masculinity?" Joey asked her.

She looked concerned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, take a girl and a guy, and their girl clothes and their guy clothes, and switch the clothes. A guy in girl clothes, his masculinity is shattered. It can't survive. He just looks ridiculous. But a woman in guy clothes? Her femininity bursts through, shattering the clothes. No contest. She just looks awesome."

Lynne smiled and leaned into him. She squeezed his body, and he thought he heard a sigh of relief, but wasn't sure what that was about.

"So where to now?" he asked her as they approached the movie theaters. "You're not interested in a movie, are you?"

"Nope," she said, pulling him and dragging him into the multiplex. "But I do like the idea of sitting in the back row of a dark room with you." She scanned the titles on the marquee. "Hmmm ... Toy Story in 3D starts in ten minutes, but that would be expensive. How about..."

"Worth it!" Joey declared, and he pulled his date to the kiosk.

Tickets in hand, they snuggled and giggled as they rode the escalator upwards. They handed their tickets in, took their 3D glasses, stuffed them in pockets still in their wrappers, and headed towards the theater. Lynne pointed out a bathroom to him, but Joey was eager to find seats.

They found seats in the back row, off in the corner, and settled down, folding the seat divider between them up and out of the way. And as soon as the theater lights dropped and the previews started, they were all over each other, kissing and pawing each other. Joey held her close, his arm wrapped around her shoulder pulling her warm body to his and he caressed her cheek. She licked her hot tongue over his lips. Her breath, still slightly spicy from her dinner, warmed his cheek as she quietly moaned, and he dropped his hand, caressing her arm and thigh. She took his hand in hers, their fingers entwined, and as she pulled his hand down on their laps, she broke the kiss long enough to whisper two words to him.

"Don't panic."

Joey really didn't have time to say anything before she started. He just felt it. It felt like dozens, maybe hundreds of invisible fingers, all crawling up past his arm and over his legs and across his chest, rippling, probing, tickling, exploring. He jerked, shivered, and squirmed under the gentle assault as the waves of pressure flowed and swept over his body, stimulating him, and he gasped as they swept past his neck, sending thrilling shivers through his spine.

"Oh, wow..." he moaned.

"You like that?" she asked, the waves washing back down his body.

"Oh, yeah. Wasn't expecting this."

"It gets better," she whispered into his ear, and she nuzzled down the side of his face, softly kissing his neck. Tingles of pleasure echoed through his skin, causing him to shiver. Meanwhile the invisible fingers slid and caressed up and down his body, centering in towards his pelvis. "It's too bad we're in public, and you have to keep your hands in safe places," she breathed into his ear. "But I get to go anywhere I want."

And to illustrate her point, the invisible fields concentrated, oscillating on his crotch. "Oh, fuck," Joey sighed, and he squirmed happily.

"How's that?" she asked, licking his neck.

"That's good," he managed, shifting and writhing in his seat.

Lynne concentrated her fields, actually focusing them inside his clothes and wrapping them around his hardening shaft. They rippled and stroked, vibrated, and squeezed, and Joey just about convulsed as she telekinetically stroked his hard cock inside his pants. And it wasn't clumsy strokes either, but very precise, rubbing his frenulum and the ridge of his swollen glans, squeezing the shaft, as if she knew exactly where to stroke him to please him the most. She sent multiple repeating waves of circular pressure, encircling him, starting at the tip and sliding down across the glans, shaft, and deep into the base, giving him the sensation of sliding his hard cock several feet down into a welcoming pussy. Joey shook and gasped, and bit his lip trying to keep quiet as the ecstasy overwhelmed him, and he held on tight to her body, squeezing her close, and fought his one arm against her hands as he tried to reach for her breasts.

He stared at her in awe, realizing that he had probably and finally met his match, sexually speaking. He was used to the fact that he could bring a woman to orgasm by simply holding her hand and probing her pleasure centers with Omegaplasm, but Lynne somehow still managed to block his access to her deepest core. Meanwhile, she apparently had the inborn ability to get him off by merely thinking about it. And she didn't even have to touch him to do it. "You're amazing," he whispered. She smiled back at him, looking pretty fucking smug in the process. He was breathing heavily, and was so hard for her. He dropped his eyes down to her full breasts, squirmed, shifted, and tried to lift his free hand upward. "I want to touch you."

Lynne gave him a coy smile, and pushed his hand forward. She then leaned forward, and slipped his jacket off her shoulders, pulled it around, and blanketed herself with the jacket. She snuggled closer to him, allowing his arm behind her to slip downward, below her soft shoulders. Joey could feel the invisible fingers guiding his hand around behind her, and he reached all the way around her, slipping his hand under the loose layer of her dress, and over the taut and stressed fabric of her bra, and he touched the warm supple softness of her full breast. Lynne Sullivan's large mammary easily filled and overflowed Joey's hand, and he marveled at the thought that he was finally touching her there. She sighed and squirmed in pleasure as he caressed her breast, and leaned into him, giving him more room to fondle her. The jacket covered his hand completely, hiding the fact that he was now fully cupping her big tit in one hand, and he squeezed and rubbed and played with her fleshy mound. Her breathing deepened, becoming rapid and heavy, and her nipple hardened as he playfully pinched it.

She pulled on his head with invisible fingers, turning his to hers, and practically shoved her tongue down his throat.

Life really didn't get any better than this, Joey figured. They were in the back row of the movies, two horny teenagers necking during the previews, his one hand currently fondling a breast that was the envy of the entire school district, the other entwined within her fingers or casually stroking her hot thigh. At one point the people sitting close to them moved, apparently disturbed by the commotion, and at another, Lynne noticed a young boy in the row in front of them who was turned around in his seat and was watching their show intently, his super-big-gulp of soda in one hand. She tried to be gentle the first time, guiding his head telekinetically to turn back to the screen, and he did so for almost thirty seconds, but then he climbed back to watch them again. A moment later his super-big-gulp of ice-cold soda had "somehow" spilled over him, and his mother had to carry the screaming and crying child out of the theater.

Previews over, the movie started. Lynne broke their kissing as the opening song played, and she stared into his eyes, smiling, and softly singing along to the opening theme. "You've got a friend in me."

"You're going to have one inside of you very soon now," Joey promised, snaking one finger up her inner thigh. She giggled and continued singing to him along with the movie, and they cuddled and turned to the screen. The 3D movie, without glasses, was kind of blurry. Their glasses were, well, somewhere, still in their wrappers, and neither one was that intent on finding them. They watched, they kissed, they snuggled, and fondled, and settled in for the duration.

Bladders, like waiters, are inopportune beasts.

Joey tried to make it all the way through the movie, but the pressure just kept building and building. And he really had no one to blame other than himself. He had soup for dinner, and a couple glasses of soda and water, and had turned down two opportunities to use the restroom. He had this false confidence built upon multiple experiences of outlasting Tricia's thimble-bladder, and who really knew anything about Annie's, but now he felt stretched and bloated and ready to burst, and Lynne's telekinetic stroking wasn't helping.

"Lynne? Stop. I've got to..."

"What?"

He sighed in embarrassment. "I've got to go to the..."

She groaned. "You should have gone before we..."

"I didn't have to then, and I wanted to be with you."

"Go."

He kissed her. "Stay here." Kiss. "I'll be right back." Kiss. "Don't go anywhere." Kiss.

"Would you just go?" she giggled.

"Keep everything warm for me."

Joey stood and sloshed and fumbled his way out of the row, scooting past several other people, and headed out of the theater.

A minute later, he was standing at the urinal, relieving himself with intense pleasure, and cursing his own stupidity. "Did I ever tell you the time, Jimmy, when your grandmother and I went out on our first date?" he said to himself in a mock elderly voice. "I took her to a fine restaurant, and we had soup, and cokes, and water, and I was so hot for her and to play with her big titties I didn't think about takin' care o' business." He pissed and pissed and pissed, an endless stream of relief. "And we're just sittin' in the movies, and we're kissin', and I'm playing with her big titties and she's strokin' my johnson and we're getting ready to practice makin' your mother, and I had to fuckin' piss like a racehorse. Damn near hosed the urinal off the wall when I had the chance."

Finished, the tranquil pleasure of a relaxed bladder warming his pelvis, he zipped and flushed, and wisely washed his hands. "Always wash your hands, Jimmy. Especially if you know where they're going." He grabbed a paper towel and dried as he left the restroom. He briskly walked back towards the theater, eager to get back to her.

And then stopped in his tracks.

He wasn't sure what it was; a thought, a sensation, a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye, but it had returned. It was that sense of being watched, the sense of being hunted, that paranoia that had been haunting him all evening. He spun and checked out the hallway. It wasn't terribly full; perhaps about a dozen people wandered the hallway, shifting between theaters and restrooms or concession stands. Attendants pushed large carts with garbage bags.

"I'm being followed," he said to himself with certainty. "I know it."

He touched his pocket, feeling for his phone, and remembered it was in the pocket of his jacket, which was currently draped over Lynne in the theater. "Never mind the phone. I can handle this." He walked slowly, expanding his senses, listening, smelling the air, and watching every detail. Popcorn. Butter. Dull booming sounds from the theaters. People wandering. Talking. Laughing. An employee lifting bags of trash with a vacant look of disgust. Two women looking at each other with odd expressions as they left the ladies room.

Intellect would have told him that it was nothing, but instinct said otherwise.

He stepped carefully towards the ladies restroom, listening in to the conversation. "Honestly, what does he think he's doing?" one asked the other. "Totally inappropriate." They two women continued walking out of earshot, and Joey waited for several seconds, and then slipped into the restroom.

Pure instinct, that was what he was reducing himself to, pure instinct. Learning how to avoid the hunters on the streets taught him how to hunt, how to track, and how to follow clues. Instincts guide where intellect fails. If he thought about it too much, he would lose the trail. Joey stared at the line of stalls. No side urinals here, just stalls, and he carefully dropped to the floor, checking under the walls. Feet and legs in several stalls. High-heeled shoes and flats and stockinged legs, skirt or slacks bunched at the ankles.

One in tennis shoes and unbunched jeans.

"Gotcha."

Joey jumped to his feet, ran, and kicked the stall door open. There were yelps and shouts from several women in the restroom, but he ignored them. He stood in the stall door and stared in a blind fury at the person sitting there.

"JEFF!" he screamed. "WHAT THE FUCK?"

Jeff Sullivan sat cowering on the toilet, and he held up his hands in panic. "It's not what you think!" he pleaded.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Joey screamed at the boy, and he stormed into the stall, grabbing the big guy by his shirt. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? SPYING ON US?"

"I'm not spying!" Jeff tried to pry Joey's hand off him.