Michael Wellington moved from London to California because he heard the state's women were especially good looking. He had stood outside Amsterdam's whore windows, considered a flight to Thailand, followed girls who might or might not have been streetwalkers through Times Square, but television, and the indisputable fact that the actresses he saw on his favorite shows needed to live somewhere, spurred him to California.
"Dreamers have shown up on less," his doorman said.
"You see any good Latina ones?"
"Latina what?"
"Women. Actresses."
"Shit, yeah, Michael. They salsa by the hotel in red sundresses."
"Fuck you, Merriweather."
"Si, Senor. I'm your little hot mama, am I not?"
"I'm serious, Merry. Shut the fuck up."
Merriweather, the hotel's doorman, pushed his hat back on his head and flattened his braids. He glistened in the ubiquitous mid-afternoon sun. His sleepy eyes slit through his cheeks' sharp angles, and he opened and closed the building's door by moving muscles connected only to his arm.
"You need to wank off more. I'm serious, man. A good wank gets you closer to God. Get that shit out of your system. Those girls on TV, at the movies, whatever, they don't talk to us. Why the fuck should they? You got a nice car, bro? How much they paying you to park cars at the Diamondhead? How the fuck do you afford this building on car-park cash, anyway?" He leaned back into the building's white, sandblasted concrete, shading his eyes with the brim of his cap.
"My parents left me money."
"I'd take some of that money, man, and fly back to Switzerland or Swaziland or Paris or wherever the fuck you're from and get back to your own people. You don't speak American. The sun is too bright for you."
Michael peered up at the cloudless sky, wondering what the soap opera star he masturbated over earlier this afternoon would look like in a red sundress.
The desert isn't one place. If you call every desert landscape "the desert", without differentiation, you better be ready to call the continent west of Asia "Europe" without noting the differences between London and Assisi, or the Rockies "the mountains" with no acknowledgement of the fact that some mountains are little more than dead rocks while others burst with flora and carbon.
Mike watched the medicine man raise his hands to the falling sun. He knew the man had mentioned his title, but the word was such an intricate web of glottal whispers that Michael had nodded politely in return without comprehension. He heard the name before the title, anyway. Dr. Fallingstar.
The flyer on the kiosk near the health food store read "Your Dreams Can Fly" and promised, in small print, "A seminar through which the spirits will set your dreams whirling from dust to flesh and bone. Meet at Yellow Gully at 7PM Tuesday. Call first." Merry had told him that hot, single girls, lost and alone at the city, frequented new age seminars.
"Act all deep and sensitive, like you're a well of wisdom or whatever, and you'll be knee deep in pussy before Christmas."
"That really works?"
"What? The new age shit? Like positive energy?"
"No, acting all deep."
"Fuck, yeah. You have no fucking idea." Merry took a long pull from a water bottle. "I have to take a different tack, being black and from Fresno, but you can pull it off with your Switzerland accent or whatever. Can you still talk like a European?"
"Yeah."
"Then turn on that shit. You think the girls who move from Kansas to L.A. dream of hooking up with some other fuck from Kansas? They could have stayed back in Topeka if they wanted a farm boy. No, they want a guy from somewhere else. That, my soon-to-get-laid deep wisdom European motherfucker, is why they came somewhere else."
"Really?"
"Ok, not all of them. Some of them are looking for those metal guys with the spandex and big hair and shit. But you'd look like a fucking moron in spandex, so, if you insist on California, the exotic European act is your meal ticket."
Michael was pissed to find himself alone, except for Dr. Fallingstar, at Yellow Gully. Dr. Fallingstar stood, a weathered Indian, in cracked jeans, threadbare sandals, a denim shirt, and a black cowboy hat. His eyes reminded Michael of the black dots that symbolized large cities on road maps.
"You ready for this, then?" Fallingstar said.
"Where's everybody else?"
"Everybody else? All around us, brother. The cities. The mountains. The river. Open your eyes and see."
"Ok," Michael responded, "But where are all the real people?"
Fallingstar laughed and removed his cowboy hat. "I only take one at a time. Too many dreams stream through this valley at once and we get a celestial traffic jam. And once some assholes started arguing about who got to go first, and they blew all their wishes wishing bad for each other. I laughed my ass off, but I'd hate to see it happen again."
Michael scanned the horizon. Well off in the distance lights, or what he thought were lights, glimmered.
"So this is just me and you? That can't be very lucrative."
"It's not. I need my exercise. I've got to get this energy out of my system. And most of you are harmless."
"Harmless?"
Fallingstar looked at his watch. "You came for women, didn't you?" he said. "Ok, don't answer, brother, but you'll be wasting your wish. Damn bad trade, flesh for soul, soul for blonde. Of course you know. Everybody knows. We're not meant to have everything we see."
"I'm not here for women."
"Sure you're not, cowboy. You drive way out to the desert for world peace? Hey, I'm just the conduit. But I'd feel bad if I didn't warn you ahead of time. Try to keep from dreaming of pussy. Rise a little higher. You'd be doing yourself a favor. Don't burn your money." "So it doesn't work?"
Fallingstar began painting shapes in the sand with his fingertips. "I didn't say that," he said. "Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. I used to think it didn't work, but I've felt energy, out in the chaos, that makes me think it does. Sometimes. No guarantee." He stood up and sniffed the wind. "You can go if you want, man. I get paid one way or the other. Your credit card already cleared. No refunds."
"The antelope runs through the sky. The rabbit jumps through the moon's hoop. Lizards sleep on Jupiter's rings."
The medicine man spoke in low, conversational tones. "Light stays in the earth. Earth holds the heat. The earth knows its power. Earth wants to hold the power, but she desires the sky as well. She wants her fingertips to dance across sky's back. You should see it. She carries dancing fish in her palm. Straight to the sun. Do you want a toke?"
"No thank you."
"Smart man. You're going to be driving home in the morning? You wouldn't want the state troopers to smell burn on your breath."
"When do I get to make a wish?"
"Who mentioned anything about a wish? You listen closely, brother. You want this badly. I can sense your need. What makes you think you'll be free of the need once you've sated it once? Surely some part of you must understand."
"When?"
"You've got to find the fingertips reaching for the sun. The earth will thank you for your aid. Place your wishes in the palm of the earth and watch them fly. The earth needs, as you would say, a catalyst, a trigger, a push. It needs flesh. It will give the flesh back. Get it out of your system. Don't take flesh in return. Send it back. Burn your soul clean instead."
"Maybe I will have a toke."
Michael took a long pull from the pipe and leaned back against the truck. The sun was high above them. The truck afforded no shade. The dust whispered through the clearing. He fell asleep.
He dreamed of sand baths. He dreamed of a phoenix, plumed in gold, arrogant, slowly working heavy wings skyward. He dreamed of steam and boiling water hissing from a spring, running over boulders, then cooled by moss and rock skin. He dreamed he drank. And when he woke, near morning, in the passenger side of his truck, he heard voices whispering in his ear.
The voices told him to dig into the earth with his raw fingers. They cupped his ear and sang songs about the twin hunger of sky and core. They held his hand and described a canyon valley open like the mouth of a starving bird. They told him to push. His eyes filled with a postcard vision of a river snaking below a cliff.
Michael walked, at dawn, up a state park path. Wooden stairs alternated with shifting sand. He struggled up the mountain until he found the place. He fell on his knees and began to dig. The pot hazed his system and built his erection. He let his fingers loose on his manhood and came into the hole while images of slender clouds passed before his eyes. He fell forward, his ear to the ground, and heard the voices clearer still. Push.
She was honey. Her hair touched just below her shoulders, the length at which he thought a good pull would require him to bend only slightly as he fucked her from behind. She wore loose jeans, but he believed her legs were tanned underneath. A yellow bandana kept the hair from her eyes. She emerged from the brush onto the plateau clearing near the cliffs. Ankle socks peeked above her hiking boots.
"Hi," she smiled, pausing for a drink from a water bottle. She walked past Michael toward the path indicated by the park markers.
Michael went for the hair. She was strong and ready to fight. Balance and momentum, by chance his allies, left her vulnerable. Michael whipped her toward the ledge. She tried to face him but the loose ground near the edge gave. She snatched at underbrush roots, her palms white with gravel. Michael watched her disappear from view.
Over the cliff the air burned, molted, pulsed, a desert blanching that moved from mirage to combustible energy in an imperceptible moment. The force tightened, columned into a silo as wide as a parking space, and caught the color of dark urine. The surface of the silo shook like wrinkled aluminum foil set on the cover of a vibrating speaker. He heard no sound until a rumbling, an earthquake, passed through the cylinder from canyon floor to the sky's zenith. Michael shielded his eyes and peered upward. The column rose as far as he could see. Within it a body ascended. The energy carrying the body upward seemed to move faster until, after two minutes had passed, the body well out of sight, the column disappeared.
Michael breathed heavily. His fear tangled with the whispers that thanked him for his gift and promised a return.
A flailing shadow of a body, silhouetted against the sun, fell from the sky. She landed at Michael's feet, wearing the same tank top and loose jeans. The girl stood up and brushed herself off. Her body should have shattered like china on the barren stone. She smiled. Her eyes, devoid of pupils, glowed with white light. The bandana was gone. Her hair was long, near her ass, and glowed like spun gold.
"You want to fuck, don't you," she said. Michael nodded.
She pulled off her tank top and slid the sports bra from her shoulders. Her breasts were small and healthy. Her body was the color of gold bullion. She stepped out of her jeans.
"Are...are you human?" Michael asked. She smiled. "Yes...I...I remember you pushing me. I remember fear. Then I remember warmth. Motherly warmth. I floated into the sky. The power of the sky...it sent me as a gift. I'll do anything you want. I'll be anything you want. It wants more of your seed. You can have as many you want like me." He turned to look at the hole into which he masturbated. When his eyes returned to her, she had her hand on his cheek. Up close her eyes seemed to slowly spin, the hue lightening and darkening with each orbit.
"Can you make your eyes stop doing that?" Michael asked.
Her eyes shimmered, followed by her body, and she appeared as she had when she first entered the clearing.
"Is that better?"
"Yes."
"Do you want me here?"
"Yes."
She knelt before him on the gravel, teasing his cock with the palm of her hand, working her tongue underneath. Michael played with her hair. When he began to stiffen, she slid back, slowly, and turned, presenting her ass. He slipped forward and failed to enter her. She reached back and put him into her. He leaned near and, his belly touching her back, pulled her breasts back into her body. He came with his eyes closed, red shadows flashing inside his shut eyelids.
Sixty miles away, Fallingstar looked up from his beer to the dark mirror behind the bar.
"Gotta go, Henry," he said.
The bartender touched the hardwood bar with his rag.
"Out in that heat? What's the hurry?"
"Something's up. I can feel it."
"Whatever you say, old man."
Fallingstar worried his hat onto his head. The sun was high.
I wrote this story for the Erotic Mind Control Archive (mcstories.com). Please don't post it anywhere else without checking with me first.
Thanks for reading...comments always welcome at mcwhynow@yahoo.com.