Enchanted Again (12 page)

It quickly became apparent that whatever the instrument was, it was meant to stand upon three metal legs, like a tripod. At the center of the tripod there was secured a heavy circular revolving mechanism of some kind. Claire did her best to snap the gizmo into place, examining the parts as she set it upon its legs. She knew instinctively that somewhere this contraption held the mates to the nut and bolt at the base of the lifelike phallus that was hidden in her closet. Her heart raced as she tried to disentangle the jumble of metal into something she could understand.

Four hours later Claire gave up. She concluded that there must be parts missing still. She shook with a mixture of indignation, mortification and frustration. Her body ached from the hours of neglected arousal. She trudged off to bed miserably, her anger making it possible for her to avoid her closet and what she kept hidden within.

What was she to do? Her consciousness struggled to conquer the feelings of unrest and longing that besieged her. The whole situation was insupportable. There was nothing even remotely acceptable in her connection to the benefactor of these highly inappropriate gifts. But her awareness of how wrong it all was did very little to dampen her desire. She could not sleep. She stared wide-eyed at the ceiling in a sort of ecstatic stupor. She should be contacting the police and here she was, barely able to contain her emotions while she waited breathlessly for his next deplorable action.

The next morning Claire was surprisingly alert and optimistic. She had accomplished much in the week so far, and decided to continue on the path of productivity by riding out to Brenda’s to drop off more typing. As she drove she tried to keep her thoughts on the manuscript and her new typist, wondering vaguely if being a wife and mother would inhibit Brenda’s ability to manage all the work.

Brenda lived in a more rural part of Anamoose, where the houses were rarely in sight of their neighbors. Just beyond the long driveway that led to her house Claire spotted a truck pulled off to the side of the road and parked in a small, dirt clearing that was mostly hidden by trees. She passed Brenda’s driveway and drove up beside the truck to verify that it was, in fact, Dan’s. Stopping right in the middle of the street, she stared at the truck, and then looked all around her. Brenda’s was the only other driveway by quite a distance. Dan could be visiting Brenda; he may well be her friend. No doubt they had known each other all their lives. Or perhaps Dan was hunting in the vast woods behind and in between the sparse houses. There were many explanations, none of which were any business of Claire’s, but even so, Claire parked her car beside Dan’s truck and walked surreptitiously through the woods toward Brenda’s house. She noticed that one side of the house had only a single window, set up high. It was unthinkable, and yet, she found herself taking long, determined strides toward that side of the house so that she might poke around until she found a suitable window from which to spy through. The word
Peeping Tom
came to her mind but she brushed it away. She felt that she must see what was happening. She was certain things were being kept from her. She believed that in one of those windows she would find Dan, and that whatever else she saw there would shock her. Even so, she had to see it. She reached the house at last and then moved purposefully along the side of it, taking one window at a time, to carefully peer inside.

There was a small basement window at ground level that Claire almost passed by, but getting down on one knee and supporting herself with the side of the building she bent down carelessly to have a quick glance. Her head immediately shot back up. They were in the basement. Claire got down on her hands and knees and, very cautiously this time, peeked in the basement window.

Brenda’s basement was considerably darker than the outdoors, so it took a moment for Claire’s eyes to adjust. Even so, she instantly perceived the enormity of what she was witnessing. Her mind reeled as she took in the astonishing scene before her. Brenda was not fully visible from her vantage point, but Claire could see enough of her to know that it was indeed Brenda who was fully nude and splayed out on all fours on a low, sturdy table. Perhaps three or four feet behind the table upon which Brenda knelt, there stood a contraption much like the one Claire had received the night before, with the same type of tripod base firmly holding in place a revolving mechanism of some kind that was being controlled by Dan. At the moment it was circling at a sluggish pace, similar to that of a train engine that was just starting to warm up. Claire noticed that Dan had his hand on a large lever which increased the speed of the machine as he slowly moved it toward him. The circular motion of the apparatus appeared to power a long, metal arm that connected the machine to a phallic-like sculpture that was very similar to the one Claire had been given. With each rotation of the machine, the long, metal arm was thrust forward and back. With the increase of speed to the machine’s revolving engine came an increase in speed to the thrusts of the long, metal arm.

Claire’s eyes traveled the length of the cylinder as it firmly and steadily drove the phallic sculpture—which was fastened to the arm with a nut and bolt similar to the one at the base of her own sculpture—in between Brenda’s labia and far into the softness beyond. Claire moaned involuntarily at the sight of it. She felt all at once incredibly drained by the powerful surge of emotions that flooded her consciousness during the seconds that passed while she comprehended the incredible scene before her. The initial, debilitating surge was past, but she was still affected by the conflicting sensations that lingered. Foremost was a sort of unspecified infuriation so palpable that it brought physical discomfort. This, she knew, was what caused her to shake so violently. The source of her fury was unclear to her. She told herself that what she was watching had nothing to do with her, and yet, she felt that she was at the core of it. She felt as affected as if she were somehow being physically attacked.

Joined with the unsettling frustration was a disturbing mixture of pungent revulsion and painful desire. The two emotions battled for control within her, finally leaving her with such a feeling of jealous longing that in that moment she actually abhorred Brenda. She bitterly wished it were she who knelt on that table, and she resented the forces that caused it not to be so. Her desire was so acute and palpable that she could almost imagine she felt the cold, hard table beneath Brenda’s hands and knees. She watched impotently as the sculpture was powerfully and unrelentingly thrust in and out of Brenda’s exposed body. Without a whisper of hesitation it mercilessly propelled the sculpture back and forth, with its whirring engine turning round and round all the while. Dan remained back near the controls of the mechanism, with his hand clasped firmly over the lever, moving it steadily but ever so slowly, so that the continuous thrusts of the arm gradually increased in speed. Throughout Brenda remained motionless, apparently helpless to move against its power. She seemed helpless to move away from or stop the unrelenting thrusts of the machine.

Claire could not drag her eyes from the sight of the sculpture being propelled in and out of Brenda’s pinioned body. She watched Brenda tremble and shudder as she was obliged to accept the machine-driven phallus into her body again and again, and at an alarming force that no ordinary human could achieve. She wondered that Brenda could endure it, even as she yearned for it herself. She was aroused to the point that she couldn’t even move. She could only continue to stare through the basement window, amazed and aroused and wickedly envious. Every new nuance of the event that she was able to capture caused her more discomfort. She could perceive Brenda’s euphoric response even without being able to hear her cries of ecstasy. Brenda’s demeanor as she quivered vulnerably at the receiving end of Dan’s powerful machine was more telling than words. Claire could also observe that the thrusts from the machine were indeed powerful, for the flesh all around Brenda’s opening pulsated violently from the force of each and every thrust, and the lips of her labia clung fervently to the irregularly carved material of the phallic sculpture. Claire noticed all of these things, and each new little observation increased her own arousal.

At one point Claire did finally manage to pull her gaze from the tantalizing image of Brenda’s body accepting the thrusts of the sculpture to look once again at the amazing mechanism at work. Her eyes traced slowly along the length of it, wonderingly, longingly, and eventually they fell upon the man operating it. And she saw that Dan was watching
her!

Jarred from her stupor, Claire jerked her head back and away from the window. Panic flooded her insides and made her suddenly hot. She sprung up from where she had been kneeling in the grass and ran at full speed across the yard and through the woods to her car. Dan had caught her watching. She wondered what her expression had been while she watched.

Claire got in her car and began driving but she did not want to go home. Nor could she bear to visit the diner. It suddenly occurred to her what Dan was most probably doing at Maggie’s house that night. She wondered how many other women benefited from Dan’s services. What a bizarre situation it was! These were Claire’s thoughts on the surface of her mind, but beneath them there still stirred the conflicting emotions that had assailed her since that first package was left in her mailbox. Dominating every other emotion was a yearning that was driving her to distraction. She rode out of Anamoose and headed south; traveling through one town and then another while attempting to find some measure of calm.

Eventually the road had its effect and Claire felt sufficiently soothed to return to Anamoose. The long drive back further depleted her so that when she arrived home at last, she was too exhausted to feel much of anything. It was pitch-dark when she turned into her driveway, but she could clearly see Dan’s truck parked there. Her entire body came alive at the thought of speaking to him.

Dan was sitting in his truck, with the driver’s-side window down. The manner in which he parked made it necessary for her to walk by his open window in order to get to her house. She stopped when she reached him. She didn’t speak, only looked at him.

“How’s it working?” she heard him ask. It was so dark that she could not fully make out the details of his face. Only his glassy blue stare stood out clearly, which almost had a luminous quality at night.

“How dare you,” she choked out in a low voice. She could not begin to give words to the feelings of outrage she felt over his audacity, nor could she come close to telling him how much she needed him to be even more audacious in order to stop the painful aching between her legs. And aside from all of this, she knew that he knew that the long metal arm that connected the sculpture to the mechanical base was missing from the parts he had sent her.

“I was just following up on the job I did to your water heater,” he said with a small smile. It was the first time she had observed even the slightest amusement in his expression.

“No, you were not,” she said.

At this he laughed out loud. “You don’t have to use it, you know. Throw it out if you want to.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent.

“Or,” he continued slowly, “you could let me help you enjoy it to its fullest potential.”

“You are a pervert,” she told him forcefully, but her voice was clearly full of anguish and she blushed.

“You seemed to like what you saw today.”

“Why do you do it?” she asked, suddenly allowing her curiosity to come to the fore. “What do you get out of it?”

“Pleasing women is my fantasy and my pleasure. They don’t have to do anything but allow me to watch while they get pleasure. Best of all, they don’t have to feel embarrassed or guilty. Who cares what ‘Desperate Dan, the dirty old man’ thinks?” Claire blushed when he recited the rhyme. Dan didn’t seem fazed by it in the least.

“Is Maggie one of your…recipients?” she asked.

“You were the one spying on Brenda,” he reminded her. “No one will ever learn anything about you, or any woman, from me.”

There followed an uncomfortable pause. He seemed to be waiting for her to reply. But Claire remained silent. It was all too new, and her sense of values was still so genuinely offended that any overture would have left her feeling debased. She fervently wished that it did not have to be her who made a step forward; if not for that she might gladly acquiesce to what he was suggesting.

“Suit yourself,” he said at last, but he said the words gently and without anger. Claire watched him drive away, feeling suddenly inconsolable.

She avoided leaving her house for nearly a week. During this time she worked practically nonstop, infused with a strange energy that never seemed to burn out. The sculpture had somehow made its way from her closet to a new hiding place deep within the folds of her bedsheets, where it remained buried until those times when she reached for it and then the soft, malleable material suddenly came to life. It thrilled her to know that it was created for her by Dan.

But at long last, when she could evade the world no longer, Claire left the house in order to attend to some of the things she had been neglecting. One of these was the typing she had left with Brenda. She completed all of her other errands first before making her way down the quiet country road where Brenda lived.

“I’ve been worried about you,” Brenda said, seeming genuinely pleased to see Claire. “I was going to call, but I’ve been so busy.” Claire was taken back by the naturalness Brenda demonstrated with her. Clearly Dan had not informed her of Claire’s violation of her privacy. She had never really worried that he would, but was nevertheless apprehensive about the prospect of seeing Brenda again. Under Brenda’s guileless demeanor it was easy to slide into the old friendship that was developing and, if not forget then at least set aside, her surreptitious knowledge of how the woman spent her days when her children were away at school and her husband was far off in another state driving his truck.