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o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o  	This part of my collection offers a very wide variety of stories. o
o  They have been submitted by people from all over the world.  Also from o
o  alt.sex.stories (Newsgroups). There is no particular order to this     o
o  section of my collection,  other than offering them to you in  alpha-  o
o  betical directories.                                                   o
o  	I don’t believe in categorizing things. "I don’t want to be typed o
o  therefore I don’t type things myself." I think it’s a lot more fun to  o
o  browse around and find 'little' surprises,  and topics that you might  o
o  not have even thought of looking for. I hope you enjoy your time among o
o  Kristen’s book shelf directories.                                      o
o   	Lest we forget!!!  This story was produced as adult entertainment o
o  and should not be read by minors.  Thank you, Kristen Becker           o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

				APHATOS
  			   by Yosha Bourgea


		"A dream like this must die."
   					--"Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns",
					  Mother Love Bone


	The memory comes at me like a dream.  I cannot trust it.  Pictures
shift in my mind and slide over each other in a pastiche of light and
darkness, like leaves moving in the wind.  Smells come to me from nowhere,
more distinct than the pictures but shifting just as quickly; the smell
of moss, of the loam of needles in the forest, of the sweet decay of wood.
The smell of woodsmoke, shifting to the smell of smoky tea, first hot
and then cold.  The smell of rain in the sky and rain on the grass.  The smell
of damp wool, the smell of sweat.  The smell of musk.  Each of these pull at
different chords in my mind and my heart, deeper and more powerful than words
can follow.  The memory comes at me like a dream.  I want to write it out, but
I am afraid of the limits of words.  I am afraid I will get it wrong, that
the lie I write will replace the flickering truth I now hold in my head.  But
I must try.
	The pictures slide over each other, but slower now, slow enough that I
can write what I see.  There is the empty pasture, overgrown with milkweed and
lush grass.  The wooden posts of the fence have a silver sheen from the
fog.  Now the rush of the swollen river comes into focus, somewhere off to the
right.  Or is it the left?  My focus shifts and now I am looking at the
pasture from a different angle.  Suddenly, I see the top of a blond head rise
over the embankment at the pasture's edge, and my heart quickens.  I feel
again the giddy drop of my stomach, the strange mixture of dread and love.
	Now the head and the body have reached the top of the embankment, and
behind them follows another head, brown.  That's my head.  I look much as I do
today: skinny, nervous, pale-skinned, awkwardly dressed.  My hair is short,
still at the rice-bowl length I kept throughout puberty.
	Another picture slides slowly past.  We are at the "bridge", three
boards laid across a small stream.  I am still following her.  Just beyond the
bridge, the forest starts.  Behind us, the fog creeps across the meadow in our
direction.  The ground is wet and spongy with layers of slick brown leaves and
crumbling needles.  The air is thick with moisture.
	The smell of the humus comes in sharply, and close after, the sound of
voices.
	"How old are you?"
	That's my voice.  Higher and thinner, but recognizable.
	She looks back over her shoulder.
	"How old do you think I am?" she says.
	"I asked you first."
	"I asked you second."
	"I don't know.  Fourteen," I guess.	
	"Wrong."
	"Well, what?"
	"I'm not going to tell you.  You have to guess."
	We keep walking, marching up a gentle slope.  The path has curved up
and around back toward the stream.  It continues this way for as far as I have
gone, which isn't very far.  In a few moments we will have to cross another
plank bridge.
	"Fifteen," I guess.
	"Close."  She brushes her long, blond hair back over her right
shoulder.
	The love/dread grows stronger in me without warning, and as I feel it
sink into the pit of my stomach, a picture flashes into my sight: her hand
brushing back her hair as she leans forward to kiss me.  And another picture,
a picture of her breasts bared as she raises her shirt over her head.  And the
smell of her sweat.
	But I shut this out.  I am losing continuity.  I am in danger of
slipping back into an incoherent dream.  I must try to remember, not just see.
I must try to remember how it really was.
	e the forest below.  We're about halfway up the hill.  Fog is tangled in the
trees, finding its slow way up the hillside toward us.  The meadow and pasture
are hidden in a blank, white sea.  I yawn a little, feel the tired ache around
my eyes.  I don't usually get up this early.
	"Isn't that beautiful?" she says, stopping to look.
	When she says "Isn't that beautiful", she isn't gushing it like
some girls would do.  She isn't asking me.  She isn't saying it rhetorically,
to fill a gap in conversation.  She means it. 
	"Yeah," I say.  "It is."
	After going up a bit more, the path turns back down again toward the
stream.  We cross another set of damp boards. Up ahead, I see a wooden
structure in the trees.
	"That's not it, is it?" I ask.
	"No.  You haven't been here before?"
	"Uh-uh."
	"That's the fort that never got finished.  It was supposed to be a
couple of stories high, but I guess they got tired of building it or ran out
of wood or something."
	"Can we stop for a sec?" I say.  "I'm tired."  I'm not used to walking
this much, and I'm out of breath.
	"Sure," she says, and smiles at me.  It's a nice smile, with no malice
in it.  I feel the love/dread again.  How long have I felt this, for how many
months?  When did I first meet her?  I don't remember.  But for weeks now,
every time I see her, I've felt that giddy terror and delight.  She is the
most beautiful person I've ever seen, I tell myself.  My pubescent stirrings
are about a year old, still tentative, still mysterious.  Still a little
frightening.
	This unfinished fort, which is built against five redwood trees
standing in a square, has a floor but no roof, and only two walls.  The floor
is raised an inch off the ground, but is still damp.  We sit on the edge while
I catch my breath.  The fog has caught up with us, filling the space between
the trees.  I can see a patch of the sky, shifting from light to dark gray.
	Looking back down at my feet, I see a clump of goldenback ferns
growing near the base of one of the redwood supports.
	"Oh," I say, bending over to pick some of them.  "Have you ever seen
these?"
	"Ferns?"  She looks at me incredulously.
	"Goldenback ferns.  Here, stretch out your leg."
	"Why?"
	"Just do it."  She shifts, moving a little closer to me.  "Here," I
say, "I'll do it on your knee."  I take one of the ferns and press it against
her blue jeans.  I hold it there for a minute, suddenly conscious of _my hand
on her knee_, and then take my hand and the fern away.  On her knee is an
imprint of the fern in gold dust.
	"Wow," she says, impressed.  "That's beautiful."  Again, I know she
means it.  "Thanks."
	"Sure."  I turn away, embarrassed, and press another of the ferns
against my knee.  We are quiet for a while.
	"What are you thinking?" she asks me.
	I glance over at her.  "I don't know."
	"What do you mean, you don't know?"  She smiles.  "What are you
thinking?"
	Suddenly I find myself unable to look at her.  I stammer, trying to
remember what I was thinking.  What I'm thinking of now is the way she looks,
but I can hardly say that.
	Then I remember.
	"I was thinking about how I'd like to live in the woods."
	"Yeah?  Really?  Me too."
	I glance at her.  She's not lying, I can tell.  In fact, she has never
lied to me, not once in the short time we've known each other.  We have
become friends over this past month.  Not deep friends, but close enough to
take a walk at dawn in the woods near where we both live.  She wants to show
me a house that she found just over the edge of her mother's property, out
past the hill in the thick of the forest.
	"Have you ever dreamed about living in the woods?" she asks.
	"Yeah, lots of times."
	"Tell me about it."  She draws her feet up onto the platform and hugs
her knees to her chest.
	I think.  "Well, in the dream I'm kind of like a hermit.  I live
in a hollowed-out tree trunk by a river, next to this waterfall.  In the
summer I sleep under the stars.  And I have a garden where I grow my own food
so I never have to leave the forest.  And I have a rope ladder that goes up to
the top of the highest tree, and I go up the top and sit there every morning
to watch the sun rise.  None of the animals are afraid of me."
	I stop.  She doesn't say anything, and I look over at her.  Her mouth
is aSmell of wet bark, damp wood.
	The sudden picture of her mouth kissing mine.
	Heavy, damp silence.
	I am flipping over and over inside, and I think I'm starting to shake.
And I don't think I can stop.
	She stands up, steps off the platform, walks out onto the path.  "Come
on," she says, looking at me.  I am in shock, and cannot respond.  She says it
again.  "Come on.  Let's go."
	Now I see a picture of the stream.  The banks are high and steep,
covered with moss and ferns.  The stream is flowing toward me, down
over boulders and rock ledges.  It's small, about the width of my arm.  It
comes out of a dark hole of trees.
	The path follows the stream for a long time.  It switches now and then
from bank to bank, but stays parallel.  We walk in silence.  She is about six
steps ahead of me.  The shaking has taken over my body, and my teeth are
chattering.  I don't dare to say anything, but I want desperately to act
normal.
	"I think it might rain," she says, without looking back.  I don't know
whether I should respond, whether it's a piece of conversation or just a
statement.  I can't think of anything to say.
	We walk like this for some time.  I almost ask her how much farther it
is, but I reconsider.  I don't want to sound like a child.  But I have to do
something!  I can't be invisible.  I don't want to scare her off.
	Suddenly, without thinking about it, I break into a run.  I don't slow
down as I pass her, but keep running.  I don't know what the hell I'm doing; I
just know that I have to do something to break the tension.  The path comes
out into a clearing.  I hear her running behind me, calling out, "Wait!
Wait!"
	I look back and grin at her, feeling strangely confident, although I'm
still shaking terribly.  She's gaining on me.  I run faster, veering off the
path and up the foggy slope of the hill.
	"Come back," she calls, still running along the path.  "The house is
this way."  I change direction and come shooting down the hillside back into
the trees, a good ten yards ahead of her now.  I'm shivering from the cold and
I start to slow down, feeling my ribs knit on the left side.  My body isn't
used to strain.  As she comes up behind me, the path turns and I see the
house.
	Picture: under a dark sky, hardly recognizable as morning, a pane of
glass.  Through the pane of glass: she is kneeling at a woodstove, putting in
a handful of sticks.
	The house isn't really a house, just a small room.  One large window
by the door lets in the cool, gray light.  There is a big, broken couch, old
brown velvet with the smell of mildew and a spring showing, against the wall
at the far end of the room.  There is the woodstove, of course, with a small
pile of wood and a few logs beside it.  A chest of drawers stands just past
the door, tilted on a short leg.  A page ripped out of a magazine is
thumbtacked to the inside of the door, showing a bottle of Absolut vodka
surrounded by green leaves and purple berries.  An axe-head lies on top of a
pile of old newspapers next to the couch.  And at the back corner of the room
is a wooden ladder that leads up to a loft.
	I sit on one of the arms of the couch, my hands clasped, watching her
fill the stove.  "How are you going to light it without any matches?"  I ask.
	She smiles.  "Just a minute."  She stands up and walks over to the
chest of drawers.  "Why don't you wad up some of that newspaper and throw it
in?"
	I take a newspaper off the top of the stack.  The axe-head slides off
and makes a heavy thud as it hits the floor.  She pulls out one of the
drawers.  "I come up here a lot," she says.  "I've made a few preparations."
She brings out a box of matches.  "Would you like some tea?"
	"Tea?"
	"I have a teapot in here, and some tea, and a cup," she says.  "Just
one cup.  We'll have to share."
	The pictures are starting to shift agam is warm, the
tea is warm, but my body still shivers.  Less violently now, more of a humming
through my blood.  We sit beside each other on the couch, taking turns sipping
from the cup.
	"Aren't you worried someone's going to come up here and find you?" I
ask.
	She shrugs her shoulders and brushes her hair back.  "No, I don't
think anyone's been up here but me in a long time.  I mean, it's really
isolated.  Probably the guy who owns the property built it for a getaway cabin
or something, but he doesn't use it any more.  Those newspapers are from last
year."
	"Oh."  I take the cup from her.  Our fingers touch, slide over each
other.  Hers are colder than mine, and somehow I find that comforting.  "What
do you do up here?" I ask.
	She pauses before answering.  "I write.  Poems."
	"Really?  Can I see them?"
	"No," she says, sort of laughing, blushing and looking down.  "No."
	"Why not?"
	"You just can't.  No one gets to see them."  She sees my look of
disappointment.  "If I showed them to anyone, it would be you."
	"Maybe someday?"
	"Maybe."
	We're quiet for a while.  She finishes the tea. The rain is coming
down harder now, splattering against the roof.  I am absorbed in my senses,
which are keyed to a fever pitch.  I notice everything subtle, turn it into
passion in my mind.  The sound of the rain.  The way her long yellow hair
captures what little light there is and holds it, like gold.  The warm tea in
my stomach, the trembling and nausea I feel.  The heat of the woodstove.  The
dank smell of the couch, the mushroom scent of the forest coming in through a
crack somewhere.  The image in my mind of the kiss, the ghost of her pressure
on my lips.  My feverish, unspoken questions: _Why?_  _What does this mean?_
_Will you kiss me again?_  _How can I ask?_
	"I was right," she says, breaking the silence.  "It's raining."
	"Yeah."
	"Raining pretty hard."
	I can barely say the word for the spinning in my head: "Yeah."
	"Do you..."
	I look at her.
	"Do you want to go back?" she asks.
	No.  I don't want to go back.  I want to stay here, and I want
you to kiss me again.  Like you did before.
	I can't say the words.  I can't speak.  The pressure in me is almost
more than I can bear; I feel like I'm going to cry.
	So I do the only thing I can do, the only thing that makes sense,
beyond fear or dread: I follow my need.  I reach out for her hand and hold it,
shaking, pressing lightly.  And I lean in, and I kiss her lips.
	There is no picture.  There are no smells, no sounds, nothing.  My
mind is blank.  For a time, an undefinable length of time, the only contact to
this world is the feeling of our lips touching.  We hold the moment, and then
move out of it as her mouth moves and I feel the wet underside of her upper
lip slide in.  Everything so slow...the soft vitality of her tongue entering
my mouth, touching my tongue.  I don't know how this is done.  My tongue
ventures forward, sliding along hers.  Everything soft, softer than I could
have imagined.  I feel a tear breaking loose from my eye, rolling swiftly down
my cheek to my jawbone.  I regain my mind, and the kiss has become definite,
deliberate.  This is no mistake.  This is what we want.  We are making it
happen.
	Fears still hover around me as we move in closer to each other,
deepening the kiss. They are vague fears about the three-year difference
between us, which I never knew until today.  I fear that this isn't real, that
somewhere I've fooled myself or made a fool of myself, for how could someone
so beautiful and confident be attracted to me?  But my body does not hesitate.
The kiss continues. I explore her mouth, the boundary of teeth, the water
under her tongue.  The hum in my blood has evened out into a pulthe roof, drumming faster and faster.  The
pictures move by in a blur.  I don't think I can slow them down; the memory
rushes forward out of control, and the images come out of place, heated, as in
a fever dream.  The recurring image of her arms pulling her shirt over her
head, baring her breasts.  The smell of mushrooms and smoke, of the damp wool
of her sweater, of the gentle salt of her sweat.  The heat coming from her
body as I press my face against her neck.  The rigid place between my legs,
that place I am afraid to name.  I feel like a child standing in the
wilderness, soaking in the rain.  Someone's skin is cold.  Cold and moist.
Hers.  I press warmth into it.
	We are in the loft.  Dark here, only just enough light to see the
seashell curves of her backbone.  The profile of a breast in shadow.  The
tendon of her neck, a thick, straight line.  The marble-statue contour of her
shoulder.  Her hair, like a waterfall of sun.
	There are no words.  We are unable to speak, unwilling to break the
spell.  I kiss the cup at the base of her throat and feel a shudder run the
length of her body.  She wants me, and that knowledge pushes away all
remaining fears.  This is right.  This is what is supposed to be; oh God,
finally something so pure as this, something so clear.  This is what is
supposed to be.
	Floating in, the musky smell of her juices.  I have never smelled it
before, but it is instantly familiar.  It smells like the secret, dark places
in the forest that I never dared to go as a child.  It smells like the deepest
earth that a gardener kneads with his hands before planting.  I am
inexplicably frightened by it, even as I am intrigued.  It  is almost too
vital.
	I touch her breasts.  The motions I make are ones I know instinctively
to be right, though I've never made them before.  My thumbs slide down over
her brown nipples, which start up from the areolae like gooseflesh.  I reach
forward with my tongue tensed into an arrow, moving like a newt underwater.  I
suck in the nipple, fainly hearing the intake of her breath.  My hand caresses
the other breast.  It is different from what I expected.  The breasts of
models I had seen in magazines looked like rock-hard sculptures, and so the
softness of her skin surprises me.  As my tongue slides over it, I hear her
moaning quietly, a low, uncontrolled sound.
	My hand slides down between her breasts, down over the arch of her
ribcage onto her belly.  A finger hooks into the hole of her navel.  Her
moaning grows deeper and breaks off in a sigh.  Slowly...slowly...my hand
slides down and further down, and I feel crinkly hair at the base of my palm.
I feel the throb of expectancy in my penis.  We are set into the tempo of the
pulse of our blood.  With each beat she makes another sound, my hand slips
down the smallest bit.  And I begin to feel the slick vertical line of her sex
at the center of my palm.
	That's the word I am thinking of, sex.  It is the first time it has
occurred to me today.  It fits what I feel more than the other dirty words or
clinical terms I know.  This is sex.  We are having sex.  I am touching her
sex.
	And now the tips of my fingers enter as they pass the top of the slit.
A strange incoherent sound comes from her throat.  I move in.  I have never,
never in my life, felt anything this soft and yielding.  It feels limitless.
My fingers travel farther and farther in.  When I am in to my knuckles, I
slide them back out.  And in again.
	There is a pain building between my legs.  A dull pain, growing sharp.
I am very close to the breaking point.  I look at her, about to ask, but her
eyes are unfocused, unseeing.
	I take my fingers out of her sex and trail them back up her belly.  I
move up on the bed, holding my penis with one hand as I search for the
opehe completion of a circuit.  What I have put into her is no longer
mine, and what she has opened up to me is no longer hers.  This is the
connection of man and woman.  I feel my manhood for the first time.
	We hold in place for a moment.
	Then her hands come up around my back, pressing into my ribs.  I slide
partially out of her, then back in, a motion like the throb of a heart.  We
hold each other close.  Out, in.  Stop.  Again: out, in.  Out, in.  A rhythm.
Out, in.  Out, in.  We are pressed into one body, rocking back and forth.
Blind motion.  Out, in.  And I feel it coming, like the flowing of water,
mounting steadily.  A pleasure so vital it could almost be pain.  My mind has
ceased functioning, and my body moves unbidden.  There is nothing I could do,
even if I wanted to.  I am moving toward the inevitable.  My body tenses,
tightens.  Her fingernails dig into my back.  Tightening, tightening, drawing
closer.  Out, in, out, in, rocking faster, climbing like a geometric curve.
An arch.  I arch my back, drawing her up with me, closing in on
	the crest
	of
	
	it

	and! OH
	flood, rain flooding down upon the roof,
	falling,
	falling...

	The silence that we shudder into lasts for a moment, and then I hear a
small sound coming from her.  I raise my head and I see that she is crying.  I
move up to a level with her, kissing away the tears.
	She looks as though she wants to say something, but can't find the
words.  She doesn't have to speak.  I know what she's feeling.  It's not that
this was wrong, far from it.  There has never been anything so right.  It's
just that it was so unexpected, such a quick rise of passion, such an
uncontrollable unfolding of our private selves.  It is the trust we have found
that makes us cry.  We cry in relief that the chance we both have taken has
come to this. 
	We hold to each other for a long time.  The rain slackens and
gradually tapers away altogether.  And the pictures turn and flip in the cool
wind that comes after rain.  My memory begins to fail me now; it was such a
long time ago, such a different place in my life.  It falls away so quickly.
Heavy drops of rain fall from the trees, and the dark places of the forest
become darker.
	Where did she go?  I have pictures, but some of them contradict each
other and I'm no longer certain which ones are real and which are dreams.  In
many of them, she is dancing away into the forest, or down a sloping meadow.
Sometimes she is naked and sometimes not.  Sometimes it is raining.  One of
the clearest of the pictures has her running through the trees in a storm,
covered in mud and leaves, but I fear that is only a dream.  I do not think
she found the hermit's tree we dreamt about.  If she had, I think I would be
there with her.  But the cave is no longer accessible to me.  I don't know the
path through the woods that leads to it. I cannot remember how I made the
journey from that boy of thirteen to the man I am now.  I have lost the way.
	All I have left are my memories.  Walking has become a habit of mine,
and on my walks I sometimes catch the scent of things that bring back the
memory sharply.  I have, of course, doubted in my mind that any of this was
more than a dream, but when I smell the smoke from a fireplace or the odor of
wild mushrooms in the fields as I walk under an overcast sky, there is no
doubt.
	There are some places that language cannot go.  I know, as I write
these words, that when I look back over what I have written I will be
disappointed.  Something will be missing.  There will be a bit of literary
gloss here or a rough approximation there, and the flickering truth I hold
will waver and go out.  So it must be.  Such is the fate of all memories, and
the more beloved they are, the quicker they die.  I am resigned to this.
	The pictures slow and begin to fade.  Her face looks out at me,
smiling softly.  The light grows dimmer.  She turns away, taking the light
with her.	

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


--
-----------------------------/\----------------------------
Yosha X. Bourgea, Grand High Dispensor of Arbitrary Illogic
-----------------------------\/----------------------------
"I met a strange lady, she made me nervous,
But she took me in and gave me breakfast."  --Men At Work
-- 
