The Lamia

Morning.
****

The night passed. Some of it in pleasure and some of it in sleep. Outside on the grey moors the wind whistled through the heather and the bare hawthorn trees and then found its way to the lonely cottage in the inner depths of Heatherstone Moor. Briefly it rattled the shutters and cut through the ruined sheds before the storm front struck.

Sheets of freezing water, untold gallons and tons of water splashed onto the moors from the open heavens. The water collected in pools of slimy mud and bristling reeds. It did not flow but soaked into the peat and mud making the moor a morass of slime.

Brian had got as far as putting on his still damp boots and donning his waterproof clothing but the view from the door was a clear signal that he would be floundering in the mire in minutes if he tried to escape from the moors.

He pulled out his mobile phone and waved it around to find a signal but it would not even start.

"Can I charge my phone here?" he asked Elspeth.

"Of course my dear Brian," she said as she pointed at the point where her laptop was plugged in. As he went to look at the power-point a few drips of brown water trickled from the casing of his phone and down his wrist.

"Shit," he swore as he shook the phone. "It's not the battery, the phone is full of water.

"There is probably no signal here anyway," said Elspeth. "I don't even bother with a phone when I am here, I come here for the quiet as it is. The last thing that I need is a mobile phone disturbing my work."

"Well at any rate," said Brian, "I cannot leave now so I'll just have to sit the storm out. I notice that you have a laptop, can I go on the Internet and send an E Mail to my girlfriend, she'll be wondering where I have got to?"

Elspeth started to laugh. She clapped her hands and said, "I'm so sorry. The electricity for this place is from batteries, the gas is canisters, the water is filtered from the moor, the toilet is chemical and there are no telephone lines, Internet, television, wireless links, CB radios or any other stuff like that."

"And you live here? In the middle ages?"

Elspeth smiled again. "I am a thoroughly modern madam young man. I spend my winters here, finding inspiration on the moors and writing for fun and to make a living. It is here that I let imagination invade my research. Isolation helps me to concentrate and it is only for three months a year whilst the winter grips this deserted moor."

"Now shut the door and stop letting the cold north wind into my home. You are either going to struggle across the moors and die in a pool of brown water or you will stay a day or so and hope that no snow blows in from the north."

Reluctantly Brian closed the door and pulled off his boots. "Please understand, Elspeth I am not ungrateful, I had a great time last night and you have fed and watered me. I just have to get off the moors. By now they will be searching for me and they will all be worried."

"But, there is no helping it!" she replied as she threw another log on the fire. "If you cannot escape my moor then why beat yourself up about it. We will see..."

Brian spread the map on the table and got Elspeth to show him the location of her cottage. There was no mark for the buildings but the track that Brian had found was marked as the faintest dotted line.

"Here, this is the site of this cottage, Bruin Tarn is just here, follow it for fifteen miles and you come to the main road," she said, almost reluctantly.

"How did I get so far from the trail? I am a days hike from the nearest road, even more from a village. What the hell made you come to this godforsaken cottage?" he said.

A rather angry look came over her face. "Just as well that I did or you might be lying face down in a pool of filth or floating in the tarn with grey blue skin. Right now your corpse would be cooling and going rigid. I am not to blame for you’re being lost! Do not take it out on me or I will throw you out like the ungrateful whelp that you are and you can wander until you freeze to death."

At this diatribe Brian pulled a contrite face and apologised. "Of course you are not to blame, it is just that I am frustrated."

Elspeth's face softened a little. She still looked sternly at her young lodger but she was determined to sort out his temper tantrum before life could move on. "If you ever speak to me like that again I shall throw you out of my house. You are a guest and don't forget it. Now apologise properly and I will forget your loss of self control."

"I apologize. I am sorry that I upset you, Elspeth. You are not to blame for my stupidity. Please do not throw me into the moors."

"There, you see," said Elspeth with a slightly schoolmarm look, "A proper apology makes both of us feel better. I accept your apology on the condition that you are polite in future. If we are to spend a little time together then we must get on with each other!"

With this rather old fashioned statement she turned and left for the small kitchen leaving Brian to wonder at Elspeth.

'She is like a mother, a school teacher and a lover all wrapped into one package,' he thought to himself. 'She is certainly a new experience for me. Tweed, sex, lacy stockings but fully dressed. I wonder if last night was a one off? Maybe there will be more?'

He went to the window and stared out at the view. It was midday but the scene was almost like early evening grays. Snow swirled across the bare farmyard outside. It piled a little on the frames of the windows and then gathered as he watched.

The snow poured from the grey heavens like a dense blanket of grey goose feathers settling on the moors to muffle them of texture. It covered the ruins in soft layers where it was dry and melted in the water that gathered amongst the reeds. It swirled in the north wind and then settled. It smothered his hopes of leaving the cottage.

More Soup.

***

"More soup?" she asked as he finished the last of his plate and sat back.

It was early evening and it had snowed all day now. The snow was still falling but in the dark it fell silently, unwatched. It drifted in the wind, seemingly a meter of snow had fallen but it was deceptive. It had just piled up in the dell.

"No thanks," he replied. "It sure is filling."

"Well it certainly ends up filling me!" she said with a little laugh.

The soup was another portion of Viagra for her reluctant guest. Another night of being Elspeth's means of satisfaction was about to start. Just half an hour or so and then he would be ready for her attention.

Elspeth carried the dishes out and chuckled to herself. If last year was anything to go by the snow would isolate the cottage for two or three months. With a small peek over her shoulder to make sure that she was not being watched she checked the bottle of the blue pills. There were thirty of them left.

Brian went to bed. He felt a little drowsy but he was consumed by worry. It had been a day since he had arrived in the cottage and no one knew that he was here. They would be combing the moors for him. After a day or two they would call off the search and he would be listed as 'missing'.

Once again he felt the stirrings of an erection.

'How was this happening?' he thought to himself. 'He was consumed by worry and experiencing the strongest erection since the tower of Babel.'

Soon it was pressing against the covers in pent up inactivity as he contemplated its meaning. His thoughts turned to Elspeth as he moved his hands to relieve himself.

Once again he saw the apparition at the end of the bed. Elspeth had arrived to take advantage of him; she was ready to use him again for her amusement.

Fully clothed, she joined him on the bed. Espeth lay alongside her young victim and stroked his body with her hand.

"Are you ready for more pleasure? Are you ready to be consumed?" she asked as her hand cupped his balls and her lips closed on his.

Brain could feel her lips softly cover his and then press to part his lips as her tongue entered his mouth. The rough weave of her clothes on his smooth naked body excites him as he felt her skirt ride up and the lace of her stocking tops rasped across his prick.

He tried to speak. He wanted to express his passion and his fears but Elspeth silenced him with her lips. When he tried to find her breasts with his hands she caught his wrists one by one and pressed his arms under his body, trapping them and allowing her free access to his body.

Never had Brain been so overwhelmed by a woman in bed. He had read all the contemporary advice in magazines. 'Foreplay and a slow build up to sex are so vital to build the female partner's excitement...' but Elspeth was like a sexual black hole. All of his advances, all of his technique, all of his modern caring stimulation were sucked into the gravity well of her need and lust.

Her hands probed him and guided him as she placed him on the edge of the event horizon of her sex. For a moment there was a still moment when he realized that she was about to suck him into herself, and then her hips flexed and she slid smoothly down the length of his cock until the root of his erection struck the flesh of her clitoris and he was swallowed whole.

All the while she raped his mouth with her probing tongue and pushed him into the bed. Then the fury of her need was loosened and the fucking began. It was Elspeth fucking Brian. He lay, trapped under her weight, supine and static. She sucked him in and spat him out as she reamed the length of his prick and then engulfing it again, stretching and pushing.

At last she released his mouth as she sat up to push him that final inch into her flesh. Her hand clawed at him as her knees moved to pin his arms.

"This time you will come inside me. This time I will have all your come washing my cunt," she said as she found the rhythm that suited her.

"Fuck me!" he cried as Elspeth piled on the pleasure and the agony.

Her claws scratched him from neck to waist as she let her passion have full reign. He felt her nails gouge his flesh but her control of his body overwhelmed him and all his focus was the grip that her flesh had on his shuddering prick. He looked up at her breasts, enclosed in starched cotton but swinging with her body as she fucked him. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open but her face was drawn with the heat of her coming orgasm.

Finally he felt that clutching that signaled the inevitability of his coming. He bucked against her and for a moment it seemed that he was too strong for her to to ride him. But Elspeth stayed in the saddle and allowed her weight to hold him to the bed.

"Come now!" she ordered.

Brian could not do otherwise. He did not come at her command, but inside his head he felt as though she had pulled the trigger that allowed orgasm. He could feel her hand as she brought herself to a peak and then a shuddering as her thighs clenched his body with an iron grip.

Brian had come and the juice of his body ran from her like water but Elspeth had not finished with him yet. She was in the throes of her own passion and it had not yet run its course.

Under the influence of the drug that she had slipped him he did not lose his erection. It remained stiff and potent, deep inside her. Now he was just an object. His passion was spent but hers was in full fury.

Now he could feel the sore lines that she had placed in his flesh. The ache of his spent loins and the tiredness that assailed him. But Elspeth was still riding her mount over field and dale. That intrusion into her loins was all that she wanted from him as she used him to come again and again.

"Please.." he cried.

Brian was not sure. Was he crying out for her to stop? Was he at the beginning of another round? What was he begging for?

But it did not make any difference. He had to give when she demanded and she demanded more from his tortured body. He gave and she rode him to another peak, another shuddering climax.

'Was he a willing partner? was she raping him?' he wondered as he drifted into slumber.

Sex for Elspeth was beyond consensual and forced. It was her need against his will.

Words, but not of comfort.

****

Brian woke from his deep sleep to find himself alone in the dark room. Shutters had been pulled over the small window of his room. He sat on the bed and felt the sheets stick to his chest where the wounds of last night's sex had left trails of blood and semen to dry during the night.

His naked feet touched the slate floor, Brian recoiled at the cold of floor and the air but had to leave the bed that had been his bastinado. The rack where the heretic is dismembered under torsion of twisted rope.

He could smell the tempting aroma of cooking and struggled to dress. His clothes felt stiff and cold, his boots were hard and uncomfortable but he battled them on and opened the door into the main room of the cottage.

A warm fire filled the room with the smell of peat. There was no crackling and popping just a steady heat. At the desk was his nemesis, the woman who took what she wanted.

She turned to him and smiled. "Fucking is obviously making you tired and, dare I say it, shagged out?"

Brian was lost for a reply so she continued, "If you are hungry there is something in the pan, if not then there is a little job that you could do for me before breakfast."

"What time is it?" he asked as he peered through the panes of the window.

"About four in the afternoon," she replied.

He could see the swirl of movement outside. White on white the giant flakes settled over every feature outside. No color, just shades of white.

Brian felt a gathering gloom. It was more than snowing, it was total white-out and impossible to leave the cottage for civilization.

"Snow and more snow," he mumbled in a depressed groan.

"Absolutely," she said, watching his shoulders drop. "It usually snows for several days here before letting up at all. Perhaps you could chop some wood for me out the back. It will give you something to do and allow you to gauge conditions outside. Just looking through the windows does not give a very good impression of the amount of snowfall."

Brain looked at her, all prim and warmly dressed in the glow of the computer screen and wondered at the contrast between day and night, sex and school teacher.

"If you go round the back of the cottage you will find the wood under the lean-to. Break up a couple of logs for firewood and bring them in with about this much," she signaled with her hands, "peat for the fire as well."

Opening the door against the piled up snow was not easy. Struggling through the thigh deep drift around the walls of the cottage was a chore. The snow was not so very cold. It melted and soaked through his clothes so that he was dripping with melt and sweat by the time that he found the pile of wooden logs and the axe.

The work was hard. The axe was heavy. The logs were dry under the lean-to roof but they were fresh and did not split like seasoned wood. It took an hour of hard work to break them up and bring the wood into the cottage.

As he went back for the peat he noticed a small door at the back of the cottage and peeked in to see a small generator and a stack of car batteries. The sight of this modern adjunct to the medieval cottage made him curious and he wandered around the rest of the tightly grouped farm buildings to see what else there was.

One of the ruins was another cottage. The walls stood but the roof was now a mass of slates that had been stacked into the corner of the room. Everything was covered with snow but it was plain that the cottage had been a ruin for many years.

The other main building that lay in ruins was some sort of barn or sheep pen. The walls were rough-built with no mortar and had tumbled to ruin many years before.

These buildings encompassed the farm yard that he had seen when he arrived. The third side was a low ruined wall with a number of large stones standing at lonely intervals in regimented order. Brian looked out, past the buildings and realized that the falling snow blocked all view of the moor, the stark vista of ponds and fen. As for the distant hills, there was nothing to be seen, just white, grey and the tracks that Brian had left that were, even now, filling with snow.

Brian trudged back to the cottage and entered to find Elspeth busy laying the table for a meal.

"Eating is one of my main activities here," she said as she turned to him. "Writing, masturbation, sleep and thinking amount for pretty much all of the rest. Actually, now I can add fucking you, Brian, to the list! It is the first time that I have had company here in a few years and I must say that it is somewhat inspirational."

Brian just nodded as an answer. He was depressed. He was trapped, exhausted and tired. He peeled off his clothes and hung them over the chairs whilst Elspeth went to the kitchen to fetch the meal that she had prepared.

"In a couple of weeks you will be OK to get out of here," she called out to him as she filled the plates in the kitchen. "There is no point in being depressed, though I do appreciate that you are not a gabbler of nonsense and gossip. I prefer quiet men!

The noise in the kitchen carried on as Elspeth ground another Viagra in the pestle and mortar ready for the night that lay ahead. Meanwhile Brian looked at the screen of her laptop. The screen was filled with writing in the word processor that Elspeth had been using.

He glanced over the text but none of it made much sense to him. There was some Latin. 'Probably medieval church Latin,' he thought as tried to remember his two years of optional Latin at high school. Then there was a list of what he took to be names, but they meant nothing to him. Underneath it all were notes in English that just made no sense. Like they were a recipe or a set of instructions.