She was an enlightened being; a guru for hire.
She calls herself a Life Strategist.
For one hundred dollars, she will unburden you of your load; listen to, not just your words, but the wailing of your soul.
For one hour, she will be the most lenient of mothers or the sternest of bosses.
In the comfort of her home office, she can be your emotional punching dummy or your hard-hitting coach.
In the privacy of her bedroom, and for another hundred, she will spoon with you naked in bed; or whip you until you weep.
For a hundred more, she will spread her legs so you can unload all your stresses and troubles inside of her; she will bear your every thrust until you climax sated or energized.
She was a guru for hire; an enlightened Life Strategist.
Her website says so.
_________
Steven Richards has been living in a haze of gray for the past few months. He wanted help out of the mist.
He needed enlightenment.
A buddy of his recommended Vesna Jones, Life Strategist; he snickered as he did so. Steven asked why.
“You’ll see,” his friend smiled wickedly. “Seriously, she’s helped me tremendously after Gail left. She got my life back on track. She’ll do the same for you… maybe then you can stop being such a pansy!”
A mild-mannered fellow, Steve let the insult and the slap on his shoulder slide. He’s always had difficulty expressing anger; but then, having breezed through life comfortably because of his talents and family’s affluence, he hasn’t had much practice feeling it. He’s never needed to.
So when his wife ditched him for another man, Steve was left dumbfounded; his synapses buzzed frantically at the emotion. He’s never felt rage until then, and his brain grappled with the new experience. Its response was quick but unexpected; after which it closed shop and left Steve in a haze of gray, an almost zombie-like state.
Wary of his friend’s recommendation, Steve rang Vesna Jones anyway and made his first appointment.
He would give this guru a try; he had nothing to lose.
_________
At the moment of their handshake, Steve felt good about Vesna. There was an air of steadiness about her. She was a stable keeper of secrets, he felt.
For this reason, he let his guard down and told her about his wife, Tammy: of the good times they shared; of the eventual bad he bore without complaint. He knew things had gotten worse when he suspected her of having an affair. He confronted her; she denied it. She did until the very end, but her leaving him confirmed it.
Vesna Jones listened intently; saying nothing, only nodding. She didn’t take notes; she simply stared at him, her piercing eyes never leaving his.
As he unburdened himself, Steve felt increasingly at ease in her presence. By the end of the hour, he caught a faint glimpse of light.
Steve was satisfied; Vesna Jones was guide out of the gray haze.
When he shook her hand goodbye, he scheduled to see her again the following week.
_______
On their second session, Steve shared stories of his childhood hoping to glean clarity on his lack of passion, particularly anger. Vesna Jones stared and listened.
And on their third, it was more of the same: him talking; her listening. At one point, Steve asked the Life Strategist for her thoughts. Vesna Jones had none; she told him. Steve, happy to keep talking, sank into the sofa more contentedly; at the end of the session, he had trouble getting up from it.
On their fourth session, as Steve settled in comfortably to, again, tell his tales of woe, Vesna Jones interrupted and asked him a question with a voice calm yet firm.
“Is this all you want to do?”
Steve blinked his eyes, stunned. “Pardon me?”
“Did you come here again to blab about the same sad story? Or are you fucking ready to do something and be less pathetic?”
“Excuse me,” Steve sputtered. “I am not paying you to swear at me and scold me like a child…”
“Didn’t you?” Vesna Jones asked; her face implacable. “For the past 3 weeks, you’ve been yammering like a boy who’s lost his fucking toy.”
“I’m leaving…”
Steven stood up and Vesna Jones pounced from her chair pushed him down by his shoulders.
Then she slapped him on the face. Hard.
“What the fuck! How dare you…”
Vesna slapped him a second time. Then a third. A fourth.
Steven’s face fell into in his hands. He started weeping.
The Life Strategist stared at him; she let him cry. Then, calmly and steadily, she took his hands and eased him to his feet. She led him up the stairs, to her bedroom, and eased him onto the bed. She undressed him slowly and lay beside him, still fully dressed. She embraced him tightly, her arm cradling his head.
“There, there,’ she cooed.
Like a babe with his mother, Steven curled up in Vesna Jones arms. He sobbed with abandon, babbled his sorrow onto her breast. When the hour was over, the consoling mother turned back into professional Life Strategist, collected and steady. Even so, Steven put on his clothes and left two hundred dollars lighter and with a smile on his face. Moments before, he thought, he was crying like a baby; now, as he drove home, he could feel the change. He was back to being a man.
_______
On their fifth session, they fucked.
Steven pumped into Vesna Jones with gusto and strength. He hasn’t had sex for months; he started out clumsily. But with every thrust into her, he gained more control of his body; and as he became surer of his body, he felt himself getting a better handle of life.
Then, in the midst of sexual fervor, he recalled the kind of man he had been before he had met his wife.
He ran his own company; kept a big condo in the city and a huge house by the lake; owned two cars and a fancy boat; traveled around the world; had money in the bank for a year’s worth of rainy days. He had been confident and strong; envied and emulated.
He had been a man’s man.
And with every stroke, he felt himself reverting to that man.
Tammy had been sloppy with her affair. Her carelessness made him feel stupid; signs of her faithlessness were so obvious that thought himself crazy for thinking them. After she confessed, he felt relief; he was still sane. But her cruel words had emasculated him.
“He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be,” she had said. “He’s fucked me in ways you can never imagine. And why? Because you’re just a wimp. A dull, lukewarm excuse of a man…”
That wasn’t what she said the night he had proposed to her.
She had made him wait; held out for a marriage proposal. Looking back, the night they first made love was more of a transaction rather than an expression of passion: he handed her a diamond ring; she presented herself as his reward. She told him then that he was the first man she’s ever had; that all her past lovers had been boys.
So he couldn’t grasp her words: “He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be…” They ricocheted in his brain like a wild bullet. The words punctured his heart and his manhood.
He had died that day; the gray haze had been his death shroud.
Steven pounded away at his guru-for-hire, wanting to dispel the thoughts he’s long ignored. He felt something stir within him; it burst forth from his loins at the same moment of his climax.
It was anger.
A pile of tinder exposed to flame, the rage he had collected and repressed ignited. His explosion was twofold: semen shot out of his cock; words and bile gushed from his mouth.
“You fucking bitch! Fucking whore! I hope you fucking rot wherever you are, you miserable lying piece of slut shit whore! Cuuunnnt!”
Afterward, Steve felt completely sated; utterly empty of lust and anger. He felt a lightness he had only experienced as a very young boy, running free in the fields of his parent's estate. A strong gust of wind had lifted him momentarily before placing his moving feet back on the ground. The sun had shone brightly then as it did now.
The hour was up; the gray haze has lifted.
********
After Steven left, Vesna Jones walked back to her bedroom and lay naked on the sheets soiled with excretions. Like a cat, she rubbed her body against the bed sheets, relishing the scent of human male.
Then she closed her eyes and focused very hard.
She saw a room, suitcases at the foot of the bed. She saw a man and a woman: he pleaded; she taunted. Vesna heard plaintive words; hateful words.
The woman mocked the man relentlessly, deriding his manhood, or the lack thereof. She stopped only after he reached for her neck and began choking her.
“Stop talking! Stop talking!” The man shook her neck with each word.
The woman struggled and fought him hard; but the man’s rage made him strong. Soon she hung limply from his hands, her neck broken; her windpipe crushed.
Vesna’s forehead furrowed as she saw more.
Distraught, the man embraced the woman; cradled her and wailed. He tried reviving her but she remained motionless. He cried into her breast until his eyes could no longer produce tears.
Then, lifelessly, he carried her to his car and dumped her inside the trunk. He went back inside the house for the suitcases and tidied up the bedroom. Then he drove to a house by the lake. From the garage, he took a roll of jack chain and an eighty pound dumbbell; he placed them, the suitcases, and the woman in a boat docked in the water.
In the middle of the lake, he stopped the boat. He placed the dumbbell on her chest and put her arms over it. He took the jack chain and tightly wound it around her, so tight that the links dug and cut into her skin. Then he pushed her body to the side of the boat until it fell overboard.
Vesna opened her yellow iris-less eyes. They were glowing.
This one had lied to her. He told her his wife had run away with her lover.
But in her mind’s eye, she saw that his wife had, not one lover, but countless random ones. Everyone questioned opined she could have run off with any of them. The police sympathized with the cuckolded husband; they were not moved to investigate further.
Vesna Jones sighed and smiled; she basked in the afterglow of new insight into humanity.
She could feel that Steven continued to love his wife even after he had killed her. Human males and females can hurt the ones they loved; and, just as equally, love the ones they hurt, she noted.
How strange human beings are.
Vesna placed her hands on her crown; her eyes and fingertips glowed as she filed this knowledge into her brain. It was uploaded as data for members of the High Council.
This was her function; she was sent to Earth to get enlightened.
She was to pass on her discoveries to her superiors. Later, the High Council will review her data and relive her experiences for themselves; they will categorize and file them along with other first-hand discoveries of others like her.
Human emotions and logic; strengths and weaknesses: all were vital information to be passed on; they were to be collected by any means possible. This was the High Council’s Strategy for Enlightenment. Started, in human years, almost a century ago, the High Council sought volunteers, ones willing to leave their planet and spend their entire lifetime collecting data. Vesna Jones was one of these. She offered herself and left her home and family. She has been on Earth for 87 years. She has contributed much data for the High Council’s Strategy for Enlightenment.
After all, one needs to do their part in the education of their race; in the understanding of life on the strange blue planet; in the enlightenment of all.
The invasion will come later.
Much later.
But it is coming.
(August 14, 2015. For Friday Frights. Theme is "Fatal Love".)
(August 14, 2015. For Friday Frights. Theme is "Fatal Love".)