The crisp fall breeze brought a fresh smell to the water as Isaac Turner walked along the deck. He looked over the rail as the ship coasted along down the Detroit River. There was a chill in the air and he thought about going below deck to get a jacket but decided to check on the youngster first.

He looked down the length of the over 700 foot long freighter and tried to locate his charge. Before he caught sight of Jimmy he saw something else that brought a smile to his lips. There on the shore of Belle Isle, the gem in the center of the river between Detroit, Michigan, USA and Windsor, Ontario, Canada, he saw them. There was a group of small children, all waving as hard as they could at the ship as she passed. The group of smiling small faces brought a smile to Isaac's weather beaten visage as he watched them. He knew at that moment in time every one of those kids wanted to be on the ship.

By tomorrow their thoughts would be back to music, monsters and video games, but for that one brief moment as the ship passed by, it was their total focus.

That was the great thing about children. Isaac knew from experience because he had two of his own. They put their hearts into everything they did. If only adults could do the same.

"Hey, Ike, who ya wavin' at?" asked Jimmy from behind Isaac.

"Just a bunch of kids there on the shore," said Isaac.

"Why bother?" asked Jimmy.

"I probably made their day, just by being polite," said Isaac. "Besides that, what goes around comes around. You never know, one of those kids might grow up to become our next shipmate or our next owner. I always try to treat people the way I'd want to be treated. Shitty things that you do tend to come back at you. Good things tend to come back too."

Jimmy nodded his head and shivered at the breeze. It was definitely chilly out today. Even for late October in Michigan. But at least there was no snow. Michigan was a state that had the full complement of four seasons.

The state's weather was also subject to abrupt and violent changes. There was an old saying in Michigan, "If you don't like the weather, just wait 10 minutes and it'll change."

The ship they were both working as deck hands on was called the Bill Maitland. Its company ID and shipping number was DQS1. She was 729 feet long, 75 feet wide and 38 feet tall. The ship carried iron ore to ports in Michigan and Wisconsin. At that moment, in fact, she had almost 26,000 tons of pellets in her belly that would soon be made into cars and trucks.

"Shit it's cold out here," snapped Jimmy. This was his third trip on the ship and he was getting used to it. He sometimes liked to show off his knowledge of things about the ship, so the old timers didn't still treat him like he was green.

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear the wit..." the rest of Jimmy's words were cut off so quickly by Isaac clamping his large hand over the young man's mouth that it felt to Jimmy like he had eaten the rest of sentence.

"Shut the fuck up, boy," sneered Isaac angrily. "You NEVER mention HER, anywhere near the lakes. You especially do not say it around October and November. Do you understand me?" Isaac was looking so intently into Jimmy's eyes that Jimmy felt fear.

Jimmy knew that Isaac was big enough and strong enough to snap him in half without a thought. But Isaac was also the kindest and most gentle man that Jimmy had ever met. It took something miraculous or very serious to raise his friend's ire. Jimmy nodded his head to let Isaac know that he understood him totally.

Jimmy had known that sailors or mariners, as they were now called, because very few ships actually sailed these days, were a very superstitious lot. Those superstitions seemed to be magnified on the great lakes. But with all of the advances in technology and modern equipment, Jimmy didn't expect anyone to truly believe in all of those old tales.

Maybe it was just the generation gap rearing its head again. Ike at fifty some odd years and Jimmy at twenty four had more than a generation of differences between them.

They had nearly no shared life experiences to bring them together. In fact, the only thing that made them friends was the fact that they were both deck hands on the DQS1. Other than that their lives were nothing alike.

Where Jimmy met a new woman in every port they hit, his friend Isaac had been married to the same woman, Tina, for longer than Jimmy had been alive. Their relationship was often tumultuous and there'd been many occasions where Jimmy had to calm Ike down. Almost everyone on the ship knew about Ike and his wife's continuing battles. That was one of the reasons that Jimmy didn't see himself trying to settle down until he gave up the sea. It was simply too hard trying to keep a relationship stable when you'd be away for weeks at a time. Ike claimed they stayed together because they loved each other. But Jimmy, after listening to the couple's nearly constant battles often wondered, what love had to do with it.

Ike also still maintained a lot of the superstitious practices that had long been a part of sailing lore. Jimmy on the other hand wasn't religious or superstitious. He didn't believe in anything he couldn't see, feel, or taste. Even most of the things that he could hear, could be explained scientifically. One of his favorite shows, that he watched whenever he could on the internet, Ghost Hunters, showed that a lot of the things that people thought were supernatural in origin, were actually very easily explained.

So Jimmy just laughed inwardly at his friend's abject fear of Jimmy mentioning the Witch. The Witch," thought Jimmy. "The Witch, the Witch, the Witch. Fuck the Witch," said Jimmy, very quietly under his breath, as Isaac walked away.

Though Jimmy's nearly silent words were too quiet to be heard by human ears, they still echoed through the river's water and became a part of it. By being a part of the river they were a part of Lake Huron that it fed into. Jimmy's words were carried through the St. Mary's River and the Soo Locks into Lake Superior.

Lake Superior, by surface area, is the world's largest freshwater lake. Both Longfellow and Gordon Lightfoot wrote about Gitche Gumee which means "big water". Whatever you call it, Lake Superior is big and scary. The depths of the lake contain areas where the water is below freezing most times of the year. Local superstitions tended to say that the lake and its sister lakes were all living entities with spirits and personalities.

There were all kinds of legends revolving around the lakes and their abilities. In Jimmy's case, the problem wasn't with the spirit of the 10,000 year old lake. It was with something far younger but at the same time far older.

Deep near the center of the lake, in one of the coldest parts of the lake, the area that was so cold it was called the lake's ice water mansions, the ripples of Jimmy's words caressed a body. Just the touch of the word laden water was enough. A being stirred and eyes of an eerily icy blue opened. A thin arm waved and the wind along the top of the lake whipped up, creating a whirlpool that knifed deeply into the lake.

The rapidly circulating current was not un-noticed by superior herself. In a voice as deep and watery as the ocean, Superior spoke, "Return to you slumber, little sister. It is not quite your time."

The wind howled back to the lake in answer, even as the whirlpool cleared a path for the body to the surface of the water. "Something calls to me. And I must answer."

The force of the wind increased, until the body, emaciated yet bloated by the water broke the surface and floated suspended above the surface of the water. Thunder cracked and lightning struck the water. The winds whipped up to gale force in a very tight arc around the body. The suction and friction from the winds drew all of the water out of the body. The lake water had acted as a preservative, keeping the body fresh.

As the body dried out the wind entered it. The body became the residence for the consciousness of the wind. In a way that was very strange, the body became the wind's vessel. It allowed the wind to interact with beings and entities on the mortal plane while still tethered to the ethereal plane on which she and her cousins, the spirits of the lakes, existed.

The wind and the lakes could always affect people, places and things on both planes, but had no knowledge of the results, nor any motivation for their actions on this one. Her sister, Superior, often sank ships and killed many without realizing it.

The body, whose consciousness was now that of the wind, smiled thinking about it. She shook her head vigorously. So hard, in fact, that if she'd still been human, her neck would have shattered. Her eyes glowed with unnatural fire and purpose. She still had thoughts in her head that belonged to the original consciousness that this body had housed. That human had been dead for over 30 years as humans counted time. She wondered why the human's thoughts, memories and feelings sometimes still plagued her.

No matter, she thought. She was no longer ... Sue Ellen Hopper. It was amazing that she could still remember the human's name. She was November. The humans, those frail, useless little beings, called her the Witch of November. They only knew her for the storms she brought when she awakened each year. They knew so little. For the past 31 years she'd had a purpose among them. Surprisingly no one had figured it out yet.

As November looked around her she felt herself called towards the shore. The call came from outside of Gitche Gumee to where Huron's waters rolled. She felt the call very strongly and what it promised. But first, she needed a snack. Fuck the witch, indeed.

Clifford Darden slid out from under the back end of his 2008 Mustang GT. He'd been doing some work on the car's suspension. He needed stiffer upper and lower control arms to keep the pony car's rear end from hopping every time it hit a bump or a chuckhole.

The car had a lot of power but getting all of it to the road was difficult. He wondered why the hell Ford still refused to give the car an independent rear suspension. Shit, most of them came with a limited slip rear differential anyway. So why the hell were they still using a rear axle that was basically an I-Beam with a wheel on each end?

Realistically he didn't care. He loved his car so much that the few flaws in its design were more like personality quirks than failings. Cliff didn't know any people who were perfect either. What had caused him to come out from under the car was the sound of another car outside of his garage. He knew that it was more than likely the arrival of his wife, Ramona.

He wiped his hands and ducked inside the house just in time to see the attractive blonde run up the stairs and go straight into the bathroom attached to their bedroom. She'd been doing that a lot lately. It seemed like she needed a shower every God damned night when she first got home. He wondered what she did at her job as a receptionist that was so strenuous that she needed to shower as soon as she got home.

This wasn't what he'd signed up for when he married her. He didn't really understand why she needed to work in the first place. His six figure salary was more than enough to provide for the both of them. Ramona's job didn't earn her nearly enough to pay for the clothes he bought her to wear to work.

He'd sat down and showed her several times that in terms of saving them money; it would be more economical for her to quit her job. The cost for the clothes she needed for the job, in addition to her regular clothing, plus the wear and tear on her car and the gas it cost, were far more than she made. When you threw in the lunches she ate every day at her favorite restaurant, they were losing money at her job.

He respected her desire to work and to retain a semblance of economic independence, but this was pushing it. They'd been married for a little less than two years and they were already starting to fall apart in the bedroom. They went from almost nightly sex, to the point where it seemed like now she was only throwing a weekly mercy fuck in his direction. Even those weren't enough because it felt like she was just going through the motions.

Cliff loved Ramona. He'd taken one look at her and fallen hard. His heart had just been laid at her feet to do anything she chose to it. Although Cliff was no troll, he wasn't exactly Romeo either. He'd expected her to stomp his heart into the ground and walk off laughing. At the very least he'd expected her to give him a gentle and polite brush off while searching for some leading man type guy. He'd been more than pleasantly surprised when she returned his interest and affection with what appeared to be similar feelings of her own.

Their courtship had been brief but intense. They were engaged after only three months, married after six and headed rapidly for a divorce after only two years. It hurt badly. Lately Cliff got more affection out of his car than he did Ramona. It would probably only be a few more days before he'd be ready to confront her. One way or another, this had to end.

Of course, he suspected an affair at work. He'd done all of the usual things, including putting an investigator on her. The man was supposed to report back to him in only a few days but what then? What would he do if it turned out that she was having an affair?

The macho thing would be to kick that bitch to the curb immediately. Throw her out on her well-shaped ass. Maybe he should even get more macho and beat the shit out of her and whomever she was fucking. That was the John Wayne way of doing it.

The problem was that he wasn't John Wayne. Cliff didn't take any shit off of anyone, but this was real life. He loved Ramona so much that he couldn't see a life without her, even after only two years. He was torn, but he knew that in the end his only hope was that if he confronted her and bluffed, she'd agree to give up the other man.

Spending his nights cuddling with Ramona, even when she claimed to be too tired to do anything else, was still better than being alone and it was better than being with anyone else too. On one hand, he wished that Ramona could love him the way he loved her, on the other he wished with all his heart, that he'd never met her. One way or another though it would all be over soon. He shrugged his shoulders and went back to finish the work on his car.

Ramona Darden stood in the shower of the home she shared with her current husband. She quickly scrubbed every inch of her body as she leaned back and watched the cum that was leaking from her bruised pussy run down the drain. The milky fluid was diluted as the spray from the strong shower hit it and changed its consistency. She bent down and scooped some of the now thinner semen from the inside of her leg. She licked it off of her fingers to satisfy her curiosity about whether it would taste the same. It didn't.

She thought back to the past four hours she'd spent in a motel room on the other side of town with three guys she hadn't known this morning. She had to get herself squeaky clean so Clueless Cliff wouldn't be able to tell that someone else had stretched her pussy out for her.

Ramona loved rough sex and poor little Cliffy, though an adequate lover, just didn't have it in him to give it to her the way she needed it. The one advantage that Cliff had was his house. It was hidden away in a nice little gated community. It had been the perfect place to hide out after the insurance scam she'd nearly been busted for just before they met.

Now two years later, no one was still looking for her and she'd almost gotten enough access to Cliff's accounts to bleed him dry as well. When she left him in a few days, she'd be able to pull nearly a million dollars in cash and investments out, to ease her way to her next scam.

The thing she loved the most about Cliff was how God damned trusting he was. Being with him also taught her that the insurance scams and B&E jobs that she'd cut her teeth on were just too dangerous and not nearly profitable enough. This thing that she'd pulled with him was nearly too good to be true.

Just find a rich sucker. Get him to fall in love with her, marry her, hide out with him for a while then leave him and leave him broke. It had simply been too easy.

Her long thick blonde hair and big innocent looking blue eyes made men stupid over her. Her large breasts and rounded backside made them all eager to have her shit on them. None of them knew that the fire between her legs burned so fiercely that she'd have paid them to take what they wanted from her anyway. But what really got her off was not a guy who treated her nicely. She really liked a man who knew what he wanted from her and just fucking took it. The men she'd met this afternoon were all like that.

They hadn't wasted her fucking time trying to get to know her. They didn't even know her name and didn't want to. They'd marched her straight to the motel and made her use some of Cliff's money for the room. Then they'd proceeded to fuck the shit out of all three of her holes and even the valley between her large breasts. She was still tingling from the memories of what they'd done to her.

She'd come home from the motel room full of cum. She was also covered in it. She'd run up to the bathroom to clean herself up before Cliff saw her. If he had, there was no way he'd stay married to her.

There was also the fact that even though she didn't love him, she did have feelings for him. And she didn't want to see him hurt needlessly. Ramona wasn't actually capable of love as most people knew it. So in a way Cliff was the closest she'd come. She felt the same way about Cliff that most people would feel about a pet. She showed him affection but she wouldn't hesitate to put him down if he caused her too many problems.

After she was done with her shower she decided to give him a little treat that evening. She was a little sore from the afternoon's exertions, but his gentle licking and lovemaking would be just the thing to help her relax.

"Cliff," she called out to him. She went down the stairs covered only in a towel with her hair wet and dripping.

She looked around the house and didn't see him. Where the hell was he? As she looked through the house she realized that she was going to miss this place. Cliff had spent both money and time to assure that she was both comfortable and happy in the sprawling ranch house. It really did feel like home to her. She'd never had a home before this, at least not one of her own. She looked at the pictures scattered around on tables and on the walls. There were lots of pictures of her and Cliff in different places around the world. They seemed to be really happy. Only she knew that the memories they'd shared were just a part of her efforts to work her way into his trust.

She heard a slight clanking sound from behind the kitchen and realized where he was. He was in the garage with his other wife. She wondered whether he would choose to keep her or the car if he had the choice.

"Cliff," she called as she opened the door that separated the garage from the house.

He looked away from whatever mechanical thing he was working on under the car and she saw sadness in his eyes. He knew. Instincts honed from years of scams told her infallibly, that her mark was on to her.

She didn't know exactly how much he knew, but he knew something and they wouldn't last much longer.

"Hey Honey, I thought about you all day," she cooed. "It's been a few days since we uh..."

"I'm kind of tired," he said, looking back to his car. She now knew the extent of his knowledge. The pain she'd seen on his face was jealousy. He suspected that she was fucking around on him. He would probably get someone to follow her around. If they looked too closely they might find something. She'd have to bolt tonight. She wouldn't get all of the money this early in the game though. She'd have to settle for a few hundred grand.

Luckily, her backup puppy would be home tonight. He was a sailor and could probably smuggle her away, if she pressed him. She'd already fucked him on that huge ship that he wasn't supposed to take her on.

"But, Baby, don't you want..." she began. She really wanted to try to save this if possible. Her best chance at getting all of the money was to convince him to put up with her shit for a few more weeks. To be honest with herself she hated to admit it but she really wasn't ready for her time with Cliff to end. Yeah he was Clueless, but he loved her unconditionally. She'd never had that before either. She'd proabably miss that more than the house. She put an expression of regret and pain on her face, as if he'd hurt her badly.

Her performance was so good that she could see he was beginning to cave. Maybe she'd even let him have her ass this time. Everyone else she'd fucked had just taken it, so why not give it to her husband. She almost laughed about it. She started walking towards him and let her towel open just a bit. And then it happened. His cell phone rang. He looked at her apologetically and said, "I have to take this."

Ramona knew Cliff like she knew the back of her own hand. She had him so well trained that he usually told her everything. If he had a business call, he had no qualms about discussing it in front of her. But he didn't want to take this call with her present. That could only mean one of two possibilities. The first was that it was something he didn't want her to know about. And the second was that it was directly involving her. Of course it might have been a surprise that he was planning for her, but better safe than sorry. She had to assume that he knew about her and this phone call was not good news for her.

She tip-toed over to him even as he turned away from her and shielded the phone. She kissed him lightly on his cheek and left the room. She made a big show of silently closing the door behind her and then dropped a pan in the kitchen. The sound carried througout the house.

She knew that he'd think she was making something to eat. Then she quickly walked back to the door that she hadn't fully closed and listened. She heard him talking about pictures and video. She couldn't make out the entire conversation but hearing his side of it let her know that her instincts had been correct.

She went back to the kitchen and made herself a sandwich. As Cliff came over to her she smiled and asked him if he wanted something to eat too.

"Maybe when I get back," he said. "There's something I need to talk to you about too, okay?"

She nodded her head and smiled. "I love talking to you Honey," she said. "I'll be waiting."

Her smile was so bright and the look she gave him told him that she'd do anything for him. He left the house. He got into his Mustang and thundered out of the garage. God Damn it, she wished that he'd driven a different car. She'd have taken that one with her in a heartbeat.

Before he'd gotten to the end of the block, she was putting her clothes on and had grabbed several of his credit cards that she'd hidden. He, like a number of people, used the same ATM pin on all of his cards. That would make it easier for her to drain them.

She tucked the cards into her purse, and then hit the safe. He usually kept between ten and twenty thousand dollars in cash there for emergencies. He also had a couple of easily redeemable CDs. She'd max out all of the credit cards with cash advances and then cash out the CD's in her next town. She'd probably come out of this with about a hundred thousand dollars. It wasn't chicken feed but she didn't have access to the main bank accounts yet.

She'd been planning on pretending to buy him a really expensive car for his birthday. She'd already spoken to the man who handled their accounts at the bank. She was going to give the idiot the impression that she was buying Cliff a Ferrari. That would kill two birds with one stone. It would give the idiot at the bank the impression that he was more attractive to her than he was or would be. She might even give him the impression that she might give him something extra for helping her. On the other hand, poor, stupid Cliff would have thought that she was buying him something. He'd think that she didn't know that he'd had to release the money. By the time the car was supposed to be there she'd have been long gone.

Oh well, next time, next sucker she thought. She really was going to miss him though. He really did love her and her heart wasn't completely stone. But she'd get over it, they both would. And in a way she was doing him a favor. She was teaching him a very important lesson. He'd learn that he had to be far more careful with both his money and his heart.

Cliff met with his PI, Frederick Sandford.

"Sit down, Mr. Darden," said Sandford. Fred Sandford was a grizzled old vet who went into the investigations business after leaving the military. Through the years he'd seen it all. He'd seen men who cheated on their wives so often, that chasing strange pussy was like buying a hamburger to them. He'd also seen men who loved the women who cheated on them so much, that even after they caught them, they gave them chance after chance until it became more a game of "Don't ask, don't tell."

He was sure that Darden would be one of those. The guy loved that bitch so much it was crazy, but who wouldn't. The woman was hot. Hell, Sandford himself would have fucked her if he'd gotten the chance and then told Darden that she wasn't doing anything. It would probably have been better for the guy anyway. That way at least he could have kept his self-respect.

It was not going to be fun telling this guy that the woman he loved was fucking anything and everything that crossed her path. Age, sex, race, appearance, none of those things seemed to matter. If it was breathing she'd fuck it.

He'd seen women before who were bi-sexual, but this woman was Quadra-sexual. She'd try anything sexual for a quarter.

"Mr. Darden, I have some bad news for you," said Sandford. He'd put on his professional, sad sounding voice because it made the clients think that he really felt their pain. In reality, the clients paid better when they thought that he was sad for them.

"Your wife is definitely playing around on you. But the good news is that it's not one special guy. That would be far worse," said Sandford.

"Okay, I'm lost," said Cliff. "Wouldn't it be better if it was just one guy?"

"Hell no, much worse," said Sandford. "If she's fucking one guy all the time, there are feelings involved. She probably likes him or loves him even. If you put her back against the wall she might even leave you for him. But if it's a bunch of guys then she probably loves you, but needs more sex or more excitement or something like that. Things like that can easily be fixed. You might even be able to save your marriage."

"In a case like that, maybe her sex drive is just way higher than yours and rather than trying to hurt your feelings, she just goes out to get what she needs and then comes home to you. When you're together, how does she treat you?" asked Sandford.

"Well, she does treat me well," said Cliff. He was beginning to see this totally different from the way he'd thought it was. Maybe things weren't so cut and dry. "She seems to just light up when I come into the room."

"So there you have it," said Sandford. "Take this folder. Go home and show her the pictures and the videos. Scare the shit out of her. Make her think that you want a divorce and get some counseling to help you work through this."

Cliff's mood was substantially better as he headed home.

Jimmy had sacked out on his berth for a quick nap after helping the other deck hands unload most of the cargo. It was heavy physical labor and very tiring. He'd had a quick nap before he called Melissa, his woman in town. She was a few years older than him, but she was so hot that it didn't matter. Jimmy also knew that she was married and that didn't matter to him either. He was fucking her, not her husband, so it was none of the husband's business.

Even though there was a large crane that lifted most of the cargo, Jimmy and the other deck hands as well as the loading crew from the docks, had done hours of exhausting work to unload the ship. They'd moved thirteen thousand tons of pellets and loaded almost that same weight of un-milled castings. Both the castings and the rest of the pellets would go on to Wisconsin with the ship. They'd head for Wisconsin first thing in the morning, so Jimmy would only be able to get together with Melissa for one night. On the return trip, he'd be staying for three days so maybe they could actually have a real date of some kind. But tonight would just be about taking the edge off.