Impulse Control
by Pizzahead
Three — Too Much Holiday Cheer
It really didn’t take long to get a sense of how I could use the impulse-control spell in dozens of situations. It was like having an invisible hand inside the recipient of the spell, that could either push when an impulse towards some action arose, or block. Another way to describe it—imagine that everyone has a bowl of alphabet soup inside them, each letter representing an action. Somebody accidentally steps on my foot and the letter Y, for yell at them, rises to the top of the bowl. That isn’t an action yet; it’s the impulse towards the action, the action itself occurring only when the letter jumps out of the bowl. Maybe I’m hotheaded by nature and go ahead and yell, and the letter flies out into the world. Someone like a Buddhist monk, however, might have the inner discipline to refrain from action in a similar situation, and the letter Y would settle back into the hidden depths of the soup with all the other letters. With the spell, I had no power to make any single letter rise to the top; life created the situations where an impulse came into being. But once the impulse did arise, I could either: A, do nothing; or B, grab hold of that risen letter and ensure that it leaped out from the bowl; or C, grab hold and drag it back to the bottom.
I practiced very discreetly with my family, small experimental shit like being inside my dad when he brought out the box that held our fake Christmas tree. Lila went all anti-plastic and said she hated the artificiality, and an impulse flared in my dad to go to his car in response. I turned that into a white-hot burn and he left without saying a word. I couldn’t be certain that his impulse was about getting a real tree; it seemed that it was, and I acted upon that presumption. And then, once he was gone, I had no continuous magic to keep him on track, as working with impulses was to work in the present moment with minuscule bits of time. If his impulse had indeed been about getting a real tree, there would be plenty of opportunities for him to think about his actions and stick with them, or change his mind, or react in a thousand other ways.
It turned out that he set a goal and stuck with it, and we had a fragrant nine-foot balsam standing straight in the family room when Meghan returned from Christmas and grocery shopping, me and Lila stringing lights through the branches. My stepmom looked furious for about two seconds—apparently my dad had made a promise years ago that they were done with real trees. In the end, though, she said she’d missed having the scent in the house and she was pleased that her husband had shown enough passion for getting a tree that he had taken the initiative and gotten it done.
The opportunities to affect impulses were everywhere, built into the framework of living, and I got a little bolder as the days went on, like the evening when my whole family went to a mall for last minute Christmas shopping. I went all spy-shit on my stepmom and I got her to whip out her credit card a couple of extra times when she paused and considered whether to get me something. Totally self-serving, which I tried to make up for by hanging out near the guy in the Santa suit, who rang a bell for charity. I figured people had the urge to give all the time, but would then decide to walk on without doing it, and I was right. One by one I whispered the incantation, and when I ascertained the blooming of an urge to give I pounced, and out came the wallets.
Perhaps what amazed me the most was that every miracle I performed went completely unnoticed. It was enough to make me wonder: was magic a more frequent thread in the fabric of life—the world’s life—than anyone might imagine? There was no way for me to answer a question like that; I’d not been provided with any history on magic, on the old magician or the book itself. There was only the “dream”, and the subsequent possession of the spells.
And so I practiced, and made plans, and what I really wanted in the run-up to casting spells on my neighbor were opportunities for practicing the sexual aspects of impulse control. Nancy remained my only test subject there, until an opportunity arose while once again sitting at the Starbucks.
They were a young couple, a lean twenty-something guy with a mop of almost-black hair that belonged on a 60’s album cover, and his girlfriend who was an absolute babe, with an ass to die for. He knew just how fine her ass was; in line his left hand kept going there, and she’d say “Ke-vin!”, giggling and swatting it away. I cast the impulse spell on her and the fourth time his hand cupped her ass, I kept her mouth closed. The guy liked that and stood a little closer to her, hip to hip with his hand squeezing her ass-cheek like it was a balloon he wanted to pop.
They took their drinks to a table, and he pulled his chair so they sat side by side. It was similar to when they’d been in line—he kept leaning close to her ear to say things that couldn’t be heard, and she rebuffed him every time with exclamations like, “Stop it, you’re being awful!” I couldn’t care less about Ke-vin and his dipshit hair, but lo and behold, the babe might be telling him to stop but her clitoris was beaming like a beacon. The girl was horny.
My doing, by altering her behavior in line? I couldn’t be sure and in a way it didn’t matter, because this was the practice I wanted, a hot babe with her clitoris in my awareness, essentially throbbing on what I was beginning to think of as the impulse-field, where I could be in touch on another plane and manipulate it.
I sipped my latte and pretended to be absorbed in my phone, but all my concentration was on, or in, the babe. She kept playing with her phone, too, and when the Ke-vin dude leaned in to whisper again, I juiced the girl’s clit, a lot, and watched as her jaw dropped and color erupted on her cheeks. She put a hand on moptop’s shoulder and he winced, like her grip was ferocious. I juiced her clit again and she groaned, and heads turned. I guess I could have gotten her to perform her own version of the Meg Ryan orgasm scene from “When Harry Met Sally”, and I was weighing that when she turned and whispered something into the boyfriend’s ear. You could see the three cherries line up in his eyes and they immediately gathered their things to leave.
The two of them together were hot sex walking—when they passed by me he had his hand on her ass again, only lower, his fingertips dry-touching pussy. I could smell her scent without even trying and what the hell—I got up and followed them out into the parking lot. The babe’s clit was very much in my awareness outside, and it was obvious to me that the impulsivity of a clitoris was all about one thing—cumming—which wasn’t so different from sensing that someone’s bladder might have the impulse to pee, or their eyes to blink. Only there was more complexity where the clitoris was concerned, I suppose because its function was all tied-in with pleasure. It was a physical impulse, yes, but there was an element involved that was like a captive bird desiring for the little wire door of its cage to be opened, so it could leap and fly free.
They walked past my Corolla to their car, a Nissan, parked parallel to mine just three spaces away. I got in my car and just sat there, still tuned-in. It didn’t take long before I detected a different kind of flaring from the babe’s clitoris, and a long look through my side window and theirs showed the silhouette of a woman facing backwards in a front seat, quite obviously riding cock. I wished I could see what her bare ass looked like, but under these circumstances I was content to “see” only on the impulse-field, surreptitiously participating from a distance. They were rocking the shocks over there, their windows fogging from all the heated breaths, and I decided to rev the babe’s clit’s engine, the tachometer red-lining, and then I set it free to burn rubber.
I could hear her through my closed windows and theirs, more like whoops of pleasure than screams. The Ke-vin’s voice came next, a shouted “Jeez!” or “Eek!” something like that. The next sound was their horn honking and staying honked—maybe it was her ass pressed against it, who knows. I started my car and drove away—what happened between them in the aftermath of the babe’s magical spellgasm was no longer my concern. What mattered, and made my cock ache so sweetly, was seeing yet again just how potent a spell I’d been given.
One encounter at a time I practiced like this, and perhaps inevitably, I became more and more aware of my own impulses as I went through the day—to eat that, to pull in there, to order one of those, to say hi to them, and so on. And then the voluntary impulses of the body, to pee, to fart, to lick my lips because they’re dry, to tap my foot to music. I was literally surrounded by impulses of multiple varieties, everywhere, and exploring them as I did was all a rehearsal for affecting Nell, and navigating whatever changes would occur once I had the attraction magic inside her.
I learned some useful facts about her from Lila. Nell came up in a family conversation because she’d agreed to go caroling on Christmas eve with my parents and others, and when I asked Lila what Nell was up to these days, she had gossip to divulge, and the impulse magic got her divulging it.
Nell had a boyfriend, some Swiss/French guy living in Berlin, who was practically a coding savant, developing and patenting phone apps and raking in big bucks. I immediately termed him That Fucking Lucky Swiss/French Bastard in my head, and the term was all about his relationship with Nell, not the talent or money. They had met on one of her summer vacations, which meant they’d really had little time together in a physical sense; so far theirs was mostly an internet and phone relationship, and apparently Nell was learning shitloads from him about designing and coding apps.
In the past I might have felt crushed by the news, with tortured thoughts about Nell swooning over That Fucking Lucky Swiss/French Bastard while he got his carpal-tunnel paws all over her tits. But with the spells in my quiver, my thoughts were more of the “bring it on” variety. She already had a suitor—how could a woman like her not have one, or fifty—and there was no reason for me to feel defeat or even jealousy. I’d fucking obliterate his prospects with the attraction spell.
The main event occurred the evening of the Christmas Eve party at our house, and I felt pretty well prepared. It was not a big party or anything, just a handful of neighbors drinking homemade eggnog after going about the neighborhood caroling. I was not a part of the singing, but at one point I thought I could hear them, a very faint humming in the distance as Nancy hummed in her own way in the backseat of my car.
I’ll probably never know how long it would take a girl to go from rookie to oral enthusiast without a spell fueling her drive. The second time Nancy gave me a blow-job, I saw and took hold of an impulse in her to get really good at it, and boy had she run with that one. That was as much a testament to her character as anything I did; I couldn’t have gotten her to practice so much without hanging around and casting the spell over and over to re-stimulate any impulses in that direction, but no need when she was a type-A person who wanted to excel at every activity she embraced.
When she demonstrated the transformation of her oral skills and I responded appropriately with a huge cumshot and words of praise, she gleefully confessed to watching dozens of blowjob videos on porn sites, the equivalent of cramming for a different kind of oral exam. I filed that one away for the future—could I get a woman to emulate a particular activity playing out in a porn video? Maybe, if the spell was in her and she was watching, and had even the tiniest impulse to go copy-cat.
We were in the holiday spirit on that evening when so much changed; Nancy might have even wanted to join the others in caroling if her left foot hadn’t been wrapped in gauze inside a padded boot, nothing broken but very deep bruising from the trial run a few nights before. And right after picking her up, she gave me a Christmas card that she said contained my present. The card, handmade with a line-drawing illustration of a woman’s lips, only said: As many as you want, I promise, in blocky letters written with a Sharpie. And below that, in her looping script: With so much affection and DESIRE, Nancy. Seeing the word desire written out in caps gave me an erection, and with that she wasted no time, unzipping my pants and leaning her head into my lap to show me, quite energetically, what I could have as many of as I wanted.
Good times. We wouldn’t see each other on Christmas Sunday and beyond because her family was spending a few days in Chicago, so there in one of our customary parking spots she gave me yet another blowjob, using an entirely different technique. Since I hadn’t bought her anything I gave her the present of a tongue and finger-fuck, and when the mind/body impulse of orgasm coalesced to take her over the edge, I grabbed hold and made her ride through nookie-Nirvana last a good half-minute.
Cumming like that turned her into a wet noodle of a woman, which was perfect, as I just wanted her to go home and chill. I’d invited Nancy to the party at our house, which I have to confess was completely disingenuous, as Nell was caroling with the others and had promised to come over afterwards. If the impulse in Nancy had flared to come and party, I’m pretty sure I would have grabbed that one and turned it into a weight so dense that it could sink an aircraft carrier. No need to go there because her family would be off at five a.m., and she had to pack and do a million other things before leaving town.
She was sweet when I dropped her off at her house, looking at me so lovingly as I walked her to her door, old movie style. A good-bye hug and kiss on the front stoop turned into a passionate tongue-dancing groin-grind that got me hard all over again, and Nancy whispered, “God, I love not being in a relationship with you. Being away in Chicago… It’s going to be so haaard.” That last part delivered with a hand cupping my stiffy, with a sigh that had me wanting her in the car again.
Her dad opened the door just then, and I didn’t believe he’d caught his daughter with her hand on my crotch, but when he said, “Have a good Christmas, John,”, his eyes gave me a disapproving glare.
My parents thought Nancy was a wonderful girl and they were happy I was dating her, but Nancy’s parents, her father especially, seemed to believe their daughter was dating beneath her station. It was probably true—Nancy was likely going to be a Harvard grad some day, while I appeared to be headed for a future filled with uncertainty and maybe some carpentry.
Just like Jesus, so there. I could even perform a minor miracle or two, though very few of my actions thus far had been even close to righteous, and my ultimate goals were more like the opposite.
I drove away from Nancy’s house unperturbed, keeping my eyes on the giant-knockered prize. I got home before the carolers, but Lila was there because she was on an anti-Christmas music kick, declaring earlier in the day that most holiday songs were filled with either religious or commercial propaganda.
Honestly, I thought my step-sis was looking more beautiful than ever. She’d been dancing since the age of five and had the most exquisite ballet legs, trimmer than her mother’s but with a similar degree of muscular definition. She had her legs decked out in red-and-white candy-cane striped tights, with a long black sweater acting as a kind of minidress, a belt around her trim waist accentuating her hourglass figure.
Cable news softly droned from the tiny kitchen TV while she beat egg-whites in a bowl, which I noticed made her boobs jiggle rather deliciously. It seemed she’d put on five or so pounds in college, which agreed with the shaping of her face, and her breasts looked more full than they’d been in high school.
“What are you staring at?” she asked. And then, with a sardonic smile and the bowl angled for me to see the egg-white peaks: “Finally getting stiff.”
I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling. Lila’s wit often had salacious undertones, more difficult to decipher now because she’d been having mood-swings since returning home, cynical in the morning, cheery in the afternoon, crabby at night, that kind of thing. I’d overheard her talking with her mom about breaking up with Axel, her boyfriend of six months who was a drummer in some wannabe-famous band, so I cut her some slack. Nobody is at their best when their love-life takes a hit.
“You’re the eggnog expert,” I said, feigning indifference. Tonight’s eggnog was eventually going to get every bit of my attention, since I’d decided it would be the vehicle through which I’d get the attraction spell inside Nell.
“You could help me make this; I think we’ll need a lot. But… You were about to go upstairs to shower, right?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Even with nutmeg in the air, I can tell you smell like vagina.”
I was halfway up the stairs when I heard her add that I always seemed to smelled like vagina these days. Like I said earlier, good times.
I was all cleaned up and in the kitchen with Lila, pouring a mix of brandy and whisky into the egg nog, when my stepmom and dad and the others brought some of the winter chill indoors. Their cheeks were red and they were a noisy bunch, talking about which songs they’d nailed the harmonies on, and which they hadn’t. Nell’s voice was among them, and that motivated me into helping hang garments as everyone took off gloves and scarves and coats. I got to witness what I’d wanted to witness, Nell’s figure unveiled, like the biggest and roundest presents that could ever come out of holiday packaging. Fuck, she really was even bigger than back in high school, with her tits turning a clinging cashmere sweater into a feast of oh-my-God curves.
My stepmom said to me, “You should hear Nell sing! She’s an excellent soprano, always on key.”
I smiled at Nell with my eyeballs resisting the gravitational pull towards the uber-tits, thinking, but not saying, “Well, what do you expect? Look at those lungs!”
I never really lost track of those lungs during the bustle of getting a fire going, putting out snacks, pouring egg-nog into mugs. We all settled into the family room with the lights low, so the Christmas tree and the fire in the fireplace could glow. My dad sat in his easy-chair, with Nell and Lila and Meghan all lined up on the sofa, pretty much hip-to-hip, and what a trio they made. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Lila and Meghan, each in their way, were to legs what Nell was to breasts; they just had it going on. From left to right the trio could be captioned as Mega-T&A babe/Ballet body/Muscle MILF, but that would be a bit misleading as, for example, Nell had wonderful legs in addition to her awesome ass and titanic tits, and Lila and Meghan both had impressive tits, especially Meghan.
Emily and Ron Brockton, Nell’s parents, were still a handsome couple themselves, cozy in a love-seat. Emily’s bust wasn’t as ginormous as her daughter’s, but it was pretty damn obvious where Nell’s looks and curves had come from. Joe Ferguson and his fifteen year-old son Jeremy sat in folding chairs near the front windows and the Christmas tree, while Luanne Garrison, a frail eighty-something wisp of a woman, sat in the rocking chair closest to the fire. Molly Littlejohn, a handsome fifty-ish woman who’d tutored me in French for a few years, sat quietly near the kitchen door, with Walter Stone, in his late forties and sadly widowed last March, sitting not too far away from her.
I didn’t have a chair and that was okay; for a time I rested my butt on the sofa arm next to my stepmom, and joined in the smalltalk about the weather, and the new season of Game of Thrones, and even ice-fishing and the goddamn government, my father’s two favorite subjects. I had a wonderful bird’s-eye and sideways view of Nell’s rack at the other end of the couch, and could focus there for a few seconds whenever she spoke, trying to spy where the padding of her bra cups masked the pornographic dynamism of the nipples I’d seen described in green fire. I coveted her in a different way than ever before, feeling like it would be natural for her to seek out my eyes and give me a wink or a certain kind of smile, communicating how we were the only ones who knew the true measure of her beauty.
I’d been noticing how Molly Littlejohn and Walter Stone had carved out their own quiet conversation, and she might even be flirting with him. I hadn’t intended to use any magic until later, but curiosity bloomed and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to have extra practice before going forward with my plan. No one noticed as I mumble-breathed the impulse control spell, directed at Molly. In just a few seconds it was like having a half-opened window into her mind and feelings. I couldn’t read her thoughts, not even close, but as impulses arose, almost always not acted upon, I could put them together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, never a complete picture but with enough to make out a few things. She was purposefully flirting with Mr. Stone, and three times thought to ask him something, but failed to do so. She wanted to touch his knee once, too, while telling a story, but her hand only twitched a little, like her mind had canceled out her heart’s will.
I cast the spell on Nell next. I’d been waiting days to do this, and I had to shift my position on the couch-arm because finally being inside her gave me such a boner. Her interior territory was very different than Molly’s, as there were few impulses arising, and when one did she mostly acted upon it without hesitation. She had an itch on her right forearm—she scratched it. At one point she had an impulse to show Lila something on her phone—they took a moment to view it together. She wanted more of the yummy eggnog—she got up from the sofa and ladled more into her mug.
I could have cast the attraction spell right at the eggnog in Nell’s hand, and It took so much self-control to refrain from doing so. Nancy had remained the only recipient of that magic, and her transformation had been pretty sudden, and might have been conspicuous if there had been anyone around to witness it. I didn’t want to risk Nell making some kind of unnatural scene in front of everyone else; the magic, I figured, should remain as invisible as possible, its clandestine nature being an integral part of its—my—power. The plan for tonight, and I thought it a good one, was to eventually use the impulse magic to thin the crowd in such a way that Nell could drink her magic potion with no one, or almost no one, there to witness the change. If she said she didn’t want any more, I could just tell her I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten the booze-to-nog ratio correct, and ask her to please just take a tiny taste. All it would take would be one little impulse to comply, and I could invisibly shove her into the rest.
And so I furtively ogled, and waited. At one point during a fairly heated discussion about the difference between civil disobedience and outright revolution—Lila had a hand in turning the talk political—my stepsister espoused an opinion that a little bit of anarchy might be just what the country needed. Her form of anarchy was the political opposite of my father’s conservative definition, and she goaded him into going on one of his tirades. She caught my eye at one point and winked, letting me know it was all a game to her. She had known exactly what to say and how to say it—she had a few impulse-control tricks of her own—and the conversation turned into a debate, almost a shouting match, about how susceptible “the masses” were to media brainwashing. Lila appeared energized by the increase in the decibel level, and now there would be turmoil in the house until Meghan got things calmed down.
During one of the contentious exchanges about Fox News and “the mainstream media”, I picked up the bowl that had been emptied of eggnog and carried out my own efforts in the cause of brainwashing, by quietly going into the kitchen where there was more eggnog cooling in the fridge. I poured enough out to fill a sixteen-ounce plastic bottle with a lid, then filled another eight-ounce bottle. I cast the attraction spell onto the contents of the smaller of the bottles; that one would be for Nell, while the other would be available for me to drink from, or to give to Lila or anyone else who’d hung around to the end. That done, I carefully hid them behind a dozen other things at the very back of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, which was completely stuffed with food for tomorrow. No one would dig that deep to stumble upon my magic stash.
My phone buzzed, and I saw it was Nancy. I debated for a couple of seconds before deciding to talk with her.
“I’m in bed already and just wanted to hear your voice before turning the light out,” she said. “What are you doing right now?”
“Escaping a family argument.” And bewitching Yuletide cheer in order to make the woman of my dreams want to fuck me.
“Oh, you poor thing.”
“It’s okay. It actually makes me even more determined to have an extra-magical Christmas this year.”
“God I love your attitude. And your eyes, and your mouth, and your cock. Especially your cock. I guess I just love everything about you.”
Fuck was she making my cock hard, because just listen to her, and I’d have this same magic inside Nell’s knockers in an hour or less.
“Tell me a dirty bedtime story,” Nancy said, voice low. “With juicy details.”
“I can’t… I’m not really alone.”
“Then get alone.”
“Okay, I… Wait. Listen Nancy, my stepmom needs help with something. I think… I’ve gotta go; it’s kind of crazy around here. Have a wonderful Christmas in Chicago and… I have to go.”
With that interruption ended, I had to calm myself down to be presentable with the others—down, boy, I know you really want your special treat but you have to wait just a little bit longer.
Once back in the family room I went around ladling regular eggnog into mugs. My dad looked truly pissed-off and that might be why Meghan asked me to give Blizzard a tiny taste. He eagerly licked a bit of egg-white and nutmeg from a spoon, then sneezed and everyone laughed.
That was all it took to change the atmosphere. They became a jolly bunch again—I’d made sure there was plenty of booze in the eggnog—and as conversations came and went I got to work, casting the impulse control spell on everyone there. It was time for the wolf to thin the herd.
I worked on Joe Ferguson first, mostly because I wanted his kid gone. Jeremy had been stealing looks at all the women on the couch since the beginning, but his main focus seemed to be Meghan, like his most potent adolescent fantasies involved muscle babes or an experienced older woman.
Joe didn’t seem to have many impulses; his was a tranquil world inside. I kept waiting for him to think it was Jeremy’s bedtime, or that he needed to get back to be with his wife and visiting family, but no. Changing tack I focused on the kid, and he was tamping down impulses every two seconds, mostly to stare at the way my stepmother’s calves flared out from her soft boots. Sometimes his urges moved his gaze to Lila’s legs, or over to Nell’s sweater-covered whoppers.
I had an idea and thought boob-fixation would be the most visible to everyone, so the next time the impulse arose in Jeremy to study Nell’s tits, I latched on and lit it like a flare, and kept the flame going. His eyes locked on and stayed on; with me in control her breasts might as well be twin black holes that were sucking his eyeballs in and through to the other side of the universe. Nobody noticed at first; the women were talking about some sort of fabulous body-wash, with the men making fun of the Lions’ defense, which wasn’t hard.
Lila, no surprise, was the first to catch on. She stared at Jeremy for a few seconds, brought her head over to glance at Nell’s rack, then back to Jeremy with a what-the-fuck face. Anyone in their right mind would have stopped the ogling, and he was in his right mind because I kept sensing the impulse in him to look away. Only uh-uh, and his staring continued.
Lila cleared her throat, and then Meghan and Molly Littlejohn saw, and Walter Stone stopped his criticism of the Lion’s head coach in mid-sentence, and then everybody else, including Nell, all at once saw the kid’s immutable boob-stare.
Several things happened simultaneously—Nell laughed, blushing as she did so; Molly Littlejohn said, “Ill manners are alive and well, I see”; Joe whapped his son’s shoulder so hard the kid almost fell out of his chair.
“We’re leaving,” Joe said, rising. “And you’re apologizing to that young woman for acting like an idiot.”
I’ll give it to Jeremy—he had an impulse to protest, probably to say it wasn’t his fault, that he didn’t know why but he hadn’t been able to look away. No one would have believed him, but it didn’t even come to that as he stood and marched right over to Nell and very respectfully said he was sorry, and that she was very beautiful but that didn’t mean he should stare. And she was more than gracious, taking the hand offered in apology and lifting it to give it a little kiss. The kid smiled shyly but down below his dick stiffened; I was tuned-in, so I could feel it.
With two leaving and the second eggnog bowl sitting empty, Molly Littlejohn said that maybe it was time for her to go as well, and I focused on Walter just in time to catch his impulse to offer to walk her home. I seized on it and out tumbled the words, sounding breathless with excitement.
My dad yawned and joked, “Maybe we should call it a night then, and kill the fire so Santa doesn’t get his keister burned.”
I focused on Nell, in case she had thoughts of leaving. She didn’t, but it looked like her mom might be entertaining the idea. My dad had an impulse to yawn again and I pushed, and his yawn came out with theatrical exaggeration, like he was trying to send a message. The Brocktons glanced at each other, and when my dad stood I noticed that his tongue was active, working at his teeth. I pushed that impulse, too, of his tongue to clean his mouth, and it became a little manic, like his tongue was going to clean between every single tooth-crevice and he didn’t care who saw. I let up and he let out a little gasp, and then: “My mouth feels sugar-coated. I really need to brush my teeth.”
“Good night then,” Nell’s mother said, and then I was back inside Nell, afraid that with her parents leaving she might follow suit.
“I’ll be home in just a little while,” she said to them. “I want to show Lila something.” And the two of them went up the stairs to Lila’s room.
With my father absent, probably giving his teeth the most thorough brushing they’d had in decades, it was Meghan pulling out coats and dispensing merry Christmas hugs as people filed out the door. I joined her and thought everything was going perfectly, until my stepmom made eyes back towards the family room and said: “John, walk Mrs. Garrison home. And be gentle in waking her up, okay?”
The frail old lady—I’d totally forgotten about her because she’d nodded off, sleeping perfectly quietly in her rocker. I opened my mouth to say some version of “But I…”, but Meghan dismissed any protest with one of those looks, and the last thing I needed was tension or anger in the house when casting a want-to-fuck-me spell on my next-door neighbor. It was a risk; I had no idea how long Nell and Lila would remain upstairs, and I couldn’t even try to make Nell stay until I got back. But it was only about eight houses to Luanne’s place, and that couldn’t take too long, could it?
It could. There were slippery patches on the sidewalk and black ice on the road, and she held onto my arm the whole way. If the woman had been a car, her transmission would have had a dozen gears that only led up to first, and those were the ones she was using tonight. A baby could have crawled faster, and I learned a few things—plenty of time, after all—about my own recurring impulse to scream in frustration.
It might have been a means to hold onto sanity when I spied Walter Stone talking to Molly Littlejohn on her front porch, and I tuned-in to Molly and saw the urge to just kiss the man. Fuck her shyness; I made it happen. Strike a match, create a forest fire—that’s what it looked like, as they started groping one another and Molly pulled Walter into her house. That felt like a good deed, a much better deed than missing out on fucking the hottest girl I’d ever known because I was helping an old lady get home safely.
After what felt like an eternity, I had her up the steps to her front door and safely inside her house, and no human being’s hips have ever pivoted as fast as mine did on that porch. I ran back home flat-out at first, nearly slipping and wiping out twice, and only assumed a more measured approach towards the end, not wanting to arrive home all breathless.
Maybe I should have been looking for ill omens, a raven perched over our front porch or a snowman with his smile melted into a wicked grin. That might have lessened the shock when I opened our front door and saw Lila and Nell standing almost side-by-side at the entryway to the kitchen, both with mugs in their hands. My stepmom was kneeling on the floor in front of them with a mug in her hand, too, while Blizzard licked something from her index finger.
“You little shit!” Lila said, pointing her own index finger my way. “You hid some of the eggnog for yourself, didn’t you? I…”
I don’t know what words would have come afterwards, because just then the change was upon her. I could witness the magic spreading through Lila’s system the same way it had happened with Nancy, only this time I was aghast.
This was a five-alarm fire, not in my pants but just… everywhere. I needed to know—did anyone but Lila get the enchanted eggnog? Specifically, did Nell? I took a good look at Nell and I thought I could see that the magic had gone into her even before Lila; when her eyes met mine, they looked extra-liquidy somehow, green swimming pools with the deep ends filled with emotion.
“He’s not a little shit at all,” she came to my defense, and the way the words purred out, you might think I shat the most beautiful turds on earth. “Just look at how lucky we are, getting this all to ourselves.”
Meanwhile, my stepmom… Oh fuck, oh no, because as she stood, she rested the hand that had been feeding the dog onto her hip and the posture was curiously wanton, like that of a brothel mistress who’d just decided she might want a brand-new customer all to herself.
“We saved some of the eggnog for you,” she said, licking her lips even though I didn’t see any froth there to wipe away. I thought a ripple of puzzlement swept through her features, before she added: “Even though you have been such a bad boy, hiding what should have been shared with everyone. Naughty, naughty…”
A much badder and naughtier boy than I’d ever intended to be or even wanted to be, because it had been shared, between all three standing right in front of me. It felt impossible that they’d found the hidden bottles so easily, yet the ladling bowl we’d been using all night was right behind them on the kitchen counter, both of the containers I’d filled standing right next to it, emptied.
“Fuck,” I either thought or whispered, right before Blizzard came running and furiously humped my leg.