Mary was worried about her sister in Burma. First there had been reports of chaos, and then for a week almost no news, only rumors, and though the distance between them was great and the means of communication unreliable, Mary thought something bad had happened. Then, a package from Sheila came. It was plain brown paper wrap, unimpressive, but Mary once again had to ignore her instincts about something being wrong as she opened it.

‘Hey, Sis,

‘Here’s some Burmese suntan lotion from the old country, the land of our forefathers, and all that fun stuff. Hope it makes you a golden brown that all the boys there can’t resist.

‘Love, Sheila.’

The package unwrapped, Mary found a plain plastic bottle containing a milky liquid. More voodoo from the homeland of their mother, she mused, derisively. Seriously, when would all this weird stuff be behind them, and they could just be Americans? You never saw this kind of stuff on MTV.

A week or so later, Mary had forgotten about the communications blackout that had engulfed Burma, as was ready to enjoy some sun at the beach, with her best friend, Kari, another nubile Burmese beauty. Mary brandished the suntan cream more out of a sentimental attachment and love for her sister than any belief in its powers to prevent burning: in fact, she half expected to get a bad burn. As she rubbed it into her delicate arms, she glowered defensively at the old fossil with the metal detector who checked the two beautiful brown girls out as they soaked up some sun.

“Jeez, this place could be a little more Perv Central,” Mary complained.

“You have all the luck,” Kari responded. “Can I have some?” she asked, motioning to the bottle.

“Yeah,” Mary said, and handed it to her.

“Cool. I’m just gonna go to the bathroom to wash some of this sand of off me,” she said, indicating she’d apply it later. She left Mary alone, and the brown beauty laid back with her sunglasses on to absorb the rays.

When she awoke was greeted with a rather nasty surprise.

Three men, two teenagers and the old creepy guy with the metal detector, were standing over her, knowingly. At first, she was terrified, expecting a daylight gang rape, and she couldn’t control her heart or lungs. Then, as she realized they only swayed slightly in the beating sunlight and didn’t seem to have a common thought between them, she grew confident and stood up.

“Hello? Is anything wrong with you?” she asked, politely.

“Hey, Mary,” her friend’s voice called, and Mary turned to it.

Kari was being carried on the shoulders of two tan beach studs, with two more in front of them, and two more behind her, and she was kicking her feet out joyously.

“This is the life, hon!” her friend cried, and Mary was about ready to look around for the Girls Gone Wild camera crew. Instead, she looked back at the three zombies entranced by her.

“What is going on, here?”

The lotion did it.

Mary wasn’t a particularly smart girl, but she figured that out soon enough.

There was something in the lotion, that reflected a sheen, made some kind of glimmer, that entranced men, but left women unaffected.

Could this have been the cause of the disruptions in her family’s native land? She sent an e-mail to her sister asking roughly along these lines, for an answer, not suggesting anything too wild, that could later come back to embarrass her.

But what was embarrassment?

Sean Morris, the most beautiful boy in her school, had seldom looked at her, though she had dropped books and lost glasses, and gotten tongue tied in front of him a dozen times. So, the question seemed to ask itself to her: if the person you love doesn’t see you humiliating yourself in front of him, is it embarrassment?

Sean was some mix of Asian, but artificially blond, and clean cropped, muscular, a deity of high school beach life. Mary wanted him. All of a sudden, a path to getting him had come to her, and her life had flipped completely.

“If this were a perfect world, or a movie, I would have no doubts at all,” she lamented.

Sean was hanging out the next day at the burger joint with his popular jock buddies, and Mary walked past them, without even having applied her lotion, and had no trouble in engaging him.

“Hi, Sean.”

She kept walking. The boys looked around at each other, and shrugged, but it was not unusual for girls to address any member of their group, even girls they’d never seen before. After all, it was that kind of guts that differentiated the girls they liked from the loser girls, the ones who didn’t realize how great they were. They high-fived and shoulder patted Sean, assuming he’d be getting some tight new pussy soon.

When Mary emerged from the beach bathroom, her brown skin had a glisten to it that was invisible to their naked eyes, but which was essential and irresistible to them, as ultraviolet light is to vegetable life forms. Their jaws dropped, and angry dedication appeared in their eyes as their attentions were fixed on the small, beautiful goddess walking past their small group’s site, and she tossed her hair at them teasingly as she casually enjoyed the realization that they were hers.

When she got to the burger stand’s employee entrance, she set her smiling face atop her brown, maddening shoulder, and batted her eyes at them, as she imagined a movie star could. They practically trampled each other, running after her.

As she strutted on an unbelievable high into the kitchen in her bikini, a fat man in an apron came waving a spatula at her, but she seduced him with a look from far underneath her brow and a smile and some stylishly flattened hands at her sides riding the wave she was riding like airplane wings. The fat cook and at least two prep guys followed her as her procession formed at the doorway and stormed in to take her lead like dancers in some bad Broadway musical number.

When Mary finally secured her privacy in the walk-in meat locker Sean demonstrated a respect toward him from his fellow men that was nothing short of miraculous as he convinced them with dismissive waves and nods to let him be the first one in, and in the dark and icy environment he closed the door behind him, and he cornered her.

He stood against the door, facing her, feeling the other guys fall foolishly against the steel as they fought for some trace or echo of what was going on within the freezer. Sean was in a mode now. He lowered his eyes on her, and stalked forward.

“Okay, baby, today’s your lucky day.”

“It sure is,” she said, and stopped him, mid-stride, with a hand to his solar plexus. “Go get me a reclining lawn chair.”

The slave of course did as instructed, and fetched her the sort of yard chair on which she could put her feet up. He had quite a trial, fighting his way in and out of the mob assembled to worship her, but he accomplished his mission.

“Good,” she told him. “Now turn the temperature up.”

The slave went outside, manipulated the dial, and returned faithfully to her side. The thought of all the meat around her spoiling as she executed her plane seemed appropriate and decadent, simultaneously.

“Sean”, she said, and his face lit up, “listen carefully, and don’t do anything.” His features slackened, but a ready awareness remained in his eyes for her. “For years, I threw myself down for you, in front of you, and got nothing in return. You ignored me, humiliated me, and now, I am in a position to turn all of that around on you. You might not have meant to do what you’ve done, but for that matter, I might not mean anything I am about to do, either. Sean, you will remain motionless, until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“Sean, you want me more than oxygen. More than water. Your need to please me agonizes you more than the need to cum, itself. Now, watch carefully. Men,” Mary called to the outside of the freezer, “come in here.”

The men assembled, like a small military unit.

“You,” Mary said, pointing to an attractive one at random, “may fuck me.” The man did as he was told.

Sean watched it, watched the taking, watched and couldn’t move, as he was told. And he watched as another one came, and another one, to touch the fruits he’d spurned and now had lost, and he was frozen by her will as she was satiated in front of him, wanting her more than anything, powerless and impotent as a shy school girl to improve his situation.

The gang rape continued with Mary crying out with her eyes closed, giving splendid performances as stud after stud came into her, and then got back in line. When the whole group had used her three or four times, she sent them home, and stood up, and stretched her lithe and girlish form, relishing pleasures that few women would ever know, and she bid the still entranced Sean follow her outside.

When they were back on the beachfront, with tourists and drunks gathering to enjoy the night life, Mary spoke to him.

“Sean, I want you to think about your place in life, and how it creates suffering in others. Most of all, I want you to ask yourself if that’s fair. Now, get the fuck out of here, you faggot.”

He obeyed her.

Mary leisurely walked up the stairs to her family’s apartment, barely able to process the feelings between her legs, when Byron, her nervous neighbor jumped out at her.

“Oh, sorry, Mary, I was just off to Radio Shack to buy some parts for my computer.”

Jesus, Mary thought, have I been oblivious to this hot, intelligent, isolated guy all this time? Sure, Byron was nerdy, with his thick glasses and matted down hair, but he had been more than a friend to her than any of the guys she’d used and humiliated (though of course they’d been used so badly they’d never know they’d been humiliated) and she’d treated him the way those jerks had treated her, before she’d gained power of them.

“Hey, Byron,” she said.

He turned, halfway down the staircase she’d just come up, a vacant but expectant look shining through his thick glasses.

“Why don’t you come over, tonight?”

Since Byron had never been around a female long enough to have the offer of sex vaguely hinted to him, he’d also never had the chance to heroically turn it down without admitting he’d received it. Mary had a blanket on her magic shoulders, and hiked it up in night’s growing cold, and he nodded finally, accepting her offer without her powers affecting him.

“Great,” she said, and they parted company. When he was gone, and she was at her apartment door, a realization came upon her. “He’s such a great kid,” she thought warmly. “He deserves the lotion.”

Byron knocked on the apartment door around 10:15 that night, after the biggest gang-bang of Mary’s life, but he was just expecting some mild Platonic interaction.

When she met him in her room, naked, glistening with the magic lotion her sister had sent her from Burma, he didn’t even have the chance to know he was in trouble.

“Sit down,” she said, and he chose her study desk’s chair. “What am I going to do with you, Byron?” she asked plainly, taking his glasses off, realizing again the painful similarity between this boy and the girl she had been, between the jocks of her school and the powerful woman she’d become. She felt she owed him. “Take off your clothes.”

When he was naked, she realized he had a great build, and when his was hair messed up a bit by her small brown hand, he nearly resembled a Greek god as he kneeled before her patiently.

“Byron, look at my body. What do you feel?”

“Honestly?” he asked her. He was completely under her power, almost too far gone.

“Yes.”

“I see a radiant creature.”

“Radiant?”

“Your skin is crying out to my eyes. It longs for satisfaction. It is more than alive.”

“What is it?” she asked him.

“It is nourishment, itself, an end to my hunger,” he droned robotically.

“What do you want from it?”

“I want to ravish it,” the boy said, in monotone.

“Then take me. You have my permission.”

Without a moment, he was upon her, engulfing her, with an honesty perhaps only the hypnotized have, and he feasted savagely on her blessings.

He kept his eyes open, and she left the light on, so it could reflect off her brown skin, and the more he saw, the more he had to have, as the lotion did its magic.

When the morning came, Mary turned on the television and saw that riots had broken out all across Europe and Asia. Weird rumors of mind control flew around, haphazardly.

“What’s that?” Byron asked, awakened by the TV and sitting up.

“Shut up,” Mary said, and he fell dead asleep.