This story was written as a memorial to Rachael, a talented young writer who was taken from us way before she had an opportunity to become old and jaded. Many of the characters and quotes in this story came from Rachael stories. An artist never really dies so long as their art is apricated …
All characters are over the age of 18.
*
The Journey
I, Sapho, awoke to a cool breeze from the open sliding door. I was in a luxurious bed in the penthouse suite of Hamburg’s finest hotel. My old friend Eros was to my left and my “new” friend Wilhelm was to my right. I smiled as I considered the previous night’s festivities that were fresh in my mind. The handsome young German … Well, face it, everyone is “young” to Eros and me, was very obviously looking for something or someone. He said he was traveling to a small town in the west of England, but last night his eyes found us and latched on, and that was lovely. What he lacked in experience he more than made up for in enthusiasm.
As my eyes opened, I could see that Aphrodite was standing at the edge of our bed adjusting some of the flight feathers in her wings.
“Up and at ’em sleepyheads,” she said, “I have a job for you two.”
“It’s five forty-five in the morning”, Eros protested.
“Take this young man home and I will give you your assignment,” Aphrodite said.
“Yes, mom,” Eros said, as we watched her walk to the balcony and fly off into the pre-dawn darkness.
“Well,” said Eros, “I guess we had better get up. We wouldn’t want Ares coming around next.”
So, we all got up and took a shower. We got dressed and headed to the elevator. Being a high-security building, the room’s key card was required to summon the elevator. I fumbled with my card a couple of times before Eros placed his on the device and it lit up telling us a car was on its way.
“Are you okay?” Wilhelm asked me.
As the elevator doors opened and we stepped inside, I stepped hard into Willi and grabbed his tight ass cheeks as I said, “Oh fuck, you feel so nice! Err-oh-oh-ss, wuh-eye can’t we stay here the morning, I so very much want both of you inside of me again.”
“Do you actually want to face my mom and dad if we don’t do as they have requested?” Eros said to me.
He asked Willi for his address, and received an address off of the Lindenstrasse.
“But I am headed for England,” he said.
“We will drop you at your home, the bus station or airport,” Eros said as the doors opened, and we stepped off of the elevator into …
I was going to say the lobby of our hotel in Hamburg, that would have been logical, because we stepped into the elevator on the top floor of that hotel. But inexplicably we were in a great hall and the signs in front of me were in French. The really big illuminated one in front of me read “Calais — Dover, prochaine navigation / next sailing, 0600.”
“Well,” said Willi, “it looks as if we are all going to England.”
I laughed, and as I did three handsome young men walked up to us and said that they had unknowingly purchased six one-way tickets to England instead of three round-trips. Since there were but three of them would we care to accompany them.
I looked at Eros, and he looked at me.
What are the chances, really, of everyone new that we meet deciding to tag along?” asked Eros.
“Oh,” I said, “roughly about the same as us heading out for one place and ending up another in order to discover said person who wants to tag along with us.”
“Extremely unlikely,” opined Wilhelm, “these seemingly unrelated events should not be happening in such close succession according to the laws of probability.”
“‘Seemingly unrelated,” I said.
‘What if they are not random,’ asked Eros.
“Like we were in a pre-determined universe,” I said.
“That’s a stretch,” Wilhelm said. “Everything is as it has always been except for these co-incidences.”
“Perhaps,” I said, theorizing on the nature of reality, “focusing on an event causes it to become increasingly real, and the more people whom we share the experience with the more real it becomes to each person experiencing it.”
Our attention was drawn towards a group of street performers who were evidently rehearsing their routine as we all waited.
A short, beautiful, blonde haired young woman in a quite short, thin white cotton dress recited from memory. “I eliminated the word ‘taboo’ from my vocabulary and decided that I would try everything in the naughty book, at least once. To be honest, I haven’t found many things that didn’t appeal. I’d hate to be on my death bed and wish I had done more!”
The young lady narrated a story about young love gone horribly wrong as her fellows played gaziantep escort ilanları various roles, and then one about meeting a handsome young German with impeccable teeth while schnokkered. As a third story begun about experiencing young love on a ferry boat to France, Willi asked softly if the troupe was capable only of performances involving lust, love and sex.
Eros looked at him and said, “my dear boy, what is there in life if not love for others, why do we live if not to make a difference for someone else? For as my young friend David said, we all end up the same place so it cannot be the destination that matters, it has to be the journey.”
“What do you suppose that Aphrodite wants with us?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Eros, “you know how she is, always tight-lipped. Do step one and then get instructions for step two.”
After boarding the cross-channel ferry the young blonde stood before us and unbuttoned her dress half-way to her navel. She deftly reached up under her dress and removed her panties as she stood before us. Then she invited the three young men whom we were traveling with to re-enact the group sex scene from her earlier performance.
We watched as she lifted her short dress and gleefully took one of the young men vaginally. He was inside of her and she bent over to fellate the second young man. Then after the second came and stepped back she happily took the third anally while she cleaned her own juices from the first young man’s penis. A fourth young man wandered up to the show and remarked to Willi how much the girl looked like an old girlfriend of his named Holly. Just then the third young man ejaculated and the fourth boy, whom we would soon learn was named Jack, took his place. In no time at all our little street performer was a happy, sticky mess.
After they had all finished, Jack stood on the deck of the Ferry looking at the white cliffs in the distance saying to nobody in particular that a powerful force that he could neither understand nor resist was drawing him to the North West of England. One of the three young men looked at him strangely.
“Is something amiss?” I inquired.
“I got this letter yesterday,” he said. “We were summonsed to Prestbury.”
“Where is that?” I asked.
“North West England, Cheshire …”
But of course it was.
We made landfall not at Dover as advertised, but at a small quay with the name “Pevensey Bay” prominently displayed. We were wondering what to do when a young raven-haired lovely walked up and introduced herself, saying that she would be our tour guide for Stamford Bridge. I was quite confused as were Eros and Willi from the expressions on their faces.
Jack ran to our dark-haired tour guide and said, “Ashleigh!” In a most ecstatic tone of voice.
We looked at them. She greeted him with a kiss that indicated a long friendship if not significantly more.
“Jack!” She said, “where have you been?”
“Working as a deckhand on the cross-channel ferries, and you?”
“Working for English Herritage,” she said, “I just got here Thursday. Have you seen Holly recently?”
“No,” he said, “where is she?”
“University,” she said, “have you seen Flic?”
“No.”
We were about to climb on board the tour bus when the young blonde street performer began a new performance. It was weird, we knew that we had things to do, but her tales were mesmerizing. They were stories that had been told before, but not in her unique way. This story was an angry story of a young woman contemplating eternity.
An artist, she truly lived when people appreciated her art, and likewise she died the death of a thousand cuts when her efforts were ignored. In the end she said that artists are the opposites of “normal” people, doing in public what others reserve for private. Baring their souls to strangers.
Since the first bus had left while we were watching her performance we walked into a local Public House to have a drink as we waited for the next one, advertised to be in forty-five minutes. But as we emerged from the pub, we had that strange feeling again. Perhaps it was the Greene King, who knows, nothing looked familiar. The street sign said that we were at the intersection of Westgate Street and Crown Street. The next pub up Crown Street said that it was the “Dog and Partridge, Bury St. Edmunds.”
Walk into a pub in East Sussex only to walk out in Suffolk, that is how today is going.
A young man stepped from the Dog and Partridge.
“Flic!” Exclaimed both Jack and Ashleigh together.
“Oh my God it is so good to see you two,” Flic said excitedly.
“Where have you been?” asked Ashleigh.
“Working at the brewery,” Flic said, “but I need to get to Prestbury.”
“I know,” said Jack, “we need to get Holly in Cambridge and go there, all of us together.”
“I have really fucking missed you guys,” Flic said.
“Yeah, us too,” said Jack.
Once again, I stared at Eros, and found that he was staring back at me.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked him.
“Damned if I know,” he said, “but let’s roll with it, maybe it will make more sense as we travel.”
Since our three “newest friends” insisted on going to Cambridge we walked to the Bury St Edmunds Railway Terminal. I traded the better part of two purple etchings of Boulton and Watt for three tickets on the Greater Anglian Railway: our first destination was that famed university town on the River Cam. It was advertised in the timetable as “43 minutes, hourly service.”
As if the day just couldn’t get any weirder, as we made our way through the train in the “club car …” When did “club cars” return to local trains, I asked myself … The young street performer was there with her troupe performing a skit they called “The Treehouse.” The crowd was enjoying a performance more commonly seen in Paris’ Pigalle District.
A raven-haired beauty was being spit-roasted by two young men while our blonde friend sucked on one young man’s scrotum before literally “switching-over” to perform cunnilingus on the black-haired girl as her male lover moved from her vagina to anus. Ashleigh was exchanging deep passionate kisses with Flic and Jack and saying that they should duplicate this scene with Holly tonight.
Wilhelm questioned the realism of the street performers constant stream of impromptu orgys, but Flic and Ashleigh weighed in supporting the performers.
I thought I heard Jack say, “Yeah, well, we’ve been there, done …”
I say think I heard, because after passionately kissing me, Eros gently pushed me to my knees. I opened his robes and began to fellate him. He motioned to Willi, who understanding lifted the hem of my dress exposing my bare butt.
Ashleigh took Flic’s penis out of her mouth just long enough to say to Willi, “make like Sigmund Freud.”
“What?” Willi said.
“Anal-ize her!” Ashleigh, Flic and Jack said together laughing. Jack took his own advice and began to lovingly bugger Ash.
The club car needed a good hose down when it arrived in Cambridge, there were naked people everywhere. Ashleigh, Jack and Flic wandered around looking for their clothes. I kissed Willi and shared with him my flavor mixed with Eros.’ The street performer had invited our young friends to reprise their ferry roles on a train, so they were searching for their clothing as well. We overheard a passenger remark that the street performer had a penchant for male characters named John.
“John, Jack, Ian, Emma,” she said to him, her blue eyes flickering, “some names just hold lots of personal meaning.”
We had to change trains in Cambridge for Nuneaton, which was a bit more than two hours more. Luckily with hourly service we did not have to wait long. Jack went to ring Holly at the University, but proving to me that we were currently existing in a pre-determined universe. Holly was aleady in the terminal waiting for her childhood friends while chatting with a girl named George who was returning home.
I made my way to the loo, and once inside was nearly flattened by the blonde as she bolted from a bathroom stall and crashed into the girl next to me.
“Spider!” The blonde screamed as she lay on the floor holding her ankle. “Spider!”
“Hey, I’m Kelly,” the girl said as she bent down to help the blonde,” we won’t let any nasty spider get you.”
Kelly then stepped into the stall and squished the arachnid before lifting the blonde up, copping a feel and helping her sit down on the commode. Then as I was exiting the adjoining stall, I watched Kelly help the performer, apparently the blonde’s name was Rachael, limp out of the loo. They seemed so familiar, both to me and with each other. As they reached the concourse Kelly introduced Rachael to Ryan and Rick. They had only just made their introductions when the announcement was made for Nuneaton.
“That’s my train …” All four said nearly simultaneously before breaking into laughter.
Well of course it was, that was just how today was going. Everybody was going our way. As Ryan and Rick each took one side to help Rachael to the train, Kelly explained that Ryan had just graduated from medical school and was to be the new doctor in a little town in Cheshire …
“Prestbury,” I thought as Kelly said it aloud.
Once on the train the young doctor examined Rachael’s ankle and pronounced it a ‘bad sprain,” prescribing rest and time for a full recovery. Kelly got some ice to put on it and we passed around a bottle of single malt scotch that a young man named Abe had in his suitcase. Well of course he did, I didn’t bother to ask him his destination, I already knew.
We arrived in Warwickshire, Nuneaton to be exact, and changed to a West Midlands Train for the 58 minute trip to Crewe. One moment we were being told that the train would be departing for Crewe in fifteen minutes, a moment later it seemed that the announcement was being made that we would be arriving in Crewe in fifteen minutes. I didn’t recall getting on the train, I looked at Eros, he seemed as confused as I was. Willi looked at us both and shrugged.
I reached into my purse for my ticket, the one I had purchased in East Anglia, but it wasn’t there. There was a “Tour Certificate,” for the Chippewa Falls Tour Company’s “Cheshire Gem: Prestbury.” A small pamphlet with a photograph of a gorgeous little mill pond and timber framed houses and a “Meal Certificate for “Wisconsin Pepper Sauce Steak, Cheesecake and Leinenkugels.”
As we stepped off the train at Crewe, we saw a parking lot filled with those dreadful little Toyota Priuses. But there in the back row, with a uniformed driver holding a sign that said “Rachael” was Bertie the bus, a lovingly restored 1950’s era AEC Regal in a Midland Red with imitation gold lining. A card in the front window said “Cheshire Gem: Prestwick.”
As we reached the bus, we heard a young man and a young woman arguing in a car beside us.
“Jenny, you cheap little thief, getting naked is just so I can see if you’re worth fucking! If you want to leave here… you’re giving up that prize between your legs …”
I looked at Eros, “I bet you 100 Pounds they follow us to Prestbury.”
He shook his head not wishing to accept that wager, not today.
On the road to Prestbury we heard Rachael say that all paths end in death. Soon after saying that another young woman whom I had not noticed before struck up a conversation with her.
Her name was …
Johnnie.
Well, but of course it was.
Willi lost it at this point and conceded to Eros and me that everything in our current reality was predetermined. I wondered if I could have said no back in Hamburg. But I wouldn’t have left Eros to face Ares’ wrath alone, so I guess I had the choice, but chose not to choose it.
Almost immediately, Rachael was in Johnnie’s arms, the other passengers moved aside and gave them space. It had become dark and the soft light filtering showed her delicate features perfectly. I smiled and watched. She, Johnny, was both very excited and very nervous
Johnnie whispered into Rachael’s ear, and Rachael smiled.
Between their kisses we heard a very few words slip out.
“Oh, I want this.’
Johnnie said, “Be sure.”
“If I’d waited … I’d have never …”
Rachel undid her dress, and Johnnie cupped her breasts and kissed them and licked the tips of her tender buds.
A girl named Emma took out her cell phone and began filming their love-making.
I slowly took off my dress and bade Eros to my breasts, he took my right and pushed Willi to my left. Then I felt a hand on my butt and my dress being lifted to the small of my back. I think it was Ashleigh between my legs licking my rosebud, but I was too enthralled by Eros and Willie to break away and look. Holly took out her phone and filmed me as Flic removed my dress from around my waist. Ash moved from my butt to his cock and Jack slid his prick into my saliva lubricated anus. I was totally opened, and Holly showed me the footage of me with four boys and two girls.
Rachel was there beside me on the seat and I French-kissed her exchanging the saliva and spunk in my mouth with the saliva and spunk in hers. Let’s see I had Eros and Willi up front and Flic and Jack in the rear. I had eaten Holly and Kelly. Ashleigh and George had licked my asshole before and after Jack, then I blew the elder John.
Beside me Rachael was giving as good or better than she got. After Johnnie elicited two orgasms, Eros and Willi buggered her for three and four. Kelly ate her for five. Flic, Jack and Abe gave her six seven and eight. Jenny slipped her hand inside for nine. Then Emma delivered the penultimate orgasm.
“Oh my God!” Rachael screamed as she came for about the tenth time. In doing so became a creature composed of pure light, pure joy.
“Whither the fates carry us,” I said looking at Eros.
“Rachael,” said Willi, “we … All of us … We live now, and we will live forever in the hearts and minds of your friends. Jack, Flic, Ashleigh, Jenny, Holly, the three young men from the ferry, John, Abe, Kelly, Rick, Ryan, another John or maybe two … We are alive because you gave us life. And just as you gave us life, we can give you a form of immortality.”