Urban fantasy erotic romance, with a few sex scenes. In confined dark places, you can meet people from other worlds… The ending is rather sad.
“Stay here until dinner and think about your behavior!”
And Aunt Maggie slammed the junk room door, leaving Mike in the dark. He sobbed and sulked. He wasn’t afraid of the dark (or the spiders that might lurk in it), but being grounded in such a dreary place for so long seemed too harsh. And for what? He was just curious what would happen if he opened Aunt Maggie’s makeup case while she was in the shower. So what if some powder and lipsticks ended on the floor?
He sighed and groped his way forward. He’d explored the junk room before and knew that there was an old mattress behind the boxes of worn clothes. If he was stuck here, at least he could lie down comfortably.
He was about to sit down when a soft, thin voice said behind him: “Booo!”
“Eeeek!” he jumped up, his heart racing.
The voice giggled. It sounded girlish. Girls! Of course, it’s a typical girl’s dirty joke!
“It wasn’t scary at all!” he grumbled angrily.
But he was curious. Who could sneak into their junk room and wait for him here? He quickly remembered all the girls in the neighborhood, and none of them seemed to be so daring and cheeky. And the voice did not sound familiar either.
“But I scared you, I scared!” the girl laughed again. Right, nothing familiar.
“Who are you?”
“Cralla.”
“You’re kidding! There are no such names!”
“Of course there are, silly!” She chuckled. “Just not in this place.”
He ignored the “silly” part. This girlish teasing was far beneath him. But his curiosity grew.
“Not in this place? Where are you from, then?”
“Bersbert, Nordania!”
“You’re making things up! There is no such place!”
Mike got angry. At eight, he knew geography well enough. He wasn’t going to listen to these silly girlish puns!
“Actually, there is,” Cralla said more solemnly. “Just… not here. I’ll explain. And what is your name?”
He sulked a bit more, but gave in.
“Mike. Um… Stillwater, Oklahoma.”
“Nothing rings a bell.”
He felt movement. Cralla, whoever she was, sat down on the mattress by his side. He fished a flashlight from his pocket.
“I want to see you!”
“No, silly, wait, it’s no…”
Click.
Her voice was cut off in an instant when the light came on. And there was no one at his side. But… there was a depression on the mattress… he felt it… still warm.
“Hey, where are you?”
He got up and looked around the room. Nobody.
“What the hell…”
He sat down. Then, on a whim, he turned off the light.
“…like that! We can only be together here when it’s dark!”
Ouch.
She bopped him in the side. Her little fist hurt. But… yes, now Mike felt someone next to him on the mattress. Cralla… whatever her real name was… was sitting right next to him!
“How can that be…” he started, turning his head frantically.
He couldn’t see anything in the dark, so he reached out cautiously… and felt a warm body under the cloth. Cralla giggled.
“Yep, I’m here, totally real! Just… there are some rules.”
“Like what?” Mike asked, moving cautiously closer. He would never let a girl know how frightened he was! She didn’t protest or push him away. In fact… in fact, it even felt like Cralla was moving a little closer to him as well. He could feel the warmth of her side.
“First of all, don’t turn on the light,” she replied calmly, as if nothing had happened. “And do not open the door. We exist separately when the lights are on. So… if you have friends here when it gets light… they will disappear when someone turns on the light and come back when it gets dark again.
“Second,” she added. “It only happens in small, confined spaces. Utility rooms, closets, boxes, such like that. Sometimes under blankets, if they are big and thick enough to cut off the light completely.”
“Why?”
He felt her shrug.
“I don’t know. I don’t make the rules, they just are.”
“So are you… um… some ghost people?”
She laughed.
“No, silly! We are normal people in a normal world, just like you. Just… in another world.”
He remembered a sci-fi series he had seen.
“A parallel one?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
He felt Cralla’s hand crawl restlessly over his back and side. Mike blushed intensely – he didn’t really remember much about touching between boys and girls, except for what he saw in movies and on TV. He had not yet done that kind of thing.
He decided to take a chance. Carefully he put his hand on Cralla’s side. Yes… she was real! A thin shirt, soft skin, ribs, waist… belly.
“I’ve never met anyone in the dark before.”
“There are not many of us who can do that. And you probably have not stayed in small dark places long enough for someone to stumble upon you.”
“Yes… Maybe… So do you have some kind of travel gear? Or are you some kind of witch?”
She laughed and rubbed her forehead against his shoulder. The touch made him feel strangely warm.
“Nothing like that. It just… happens. But you have to be initiated for such journeys.”
“Initiated?” His mind raced. He imagined priests initiating people into some secret society with secret ceremonies… something like that? “Does that mean rites and oaths?”
Cralla laughed again. Mike liked the sound of it: so sweet, clear, mischievous.
“Nah! Simple initiation, actually.”
She put her small hand over the palm that was caressing her belly. Mike shivered. She leaned closer.
“We just have to kiss. Well, kiss deep and long. But that’s all. It’s kind of transmitted that way.”
“Oh… Um… okay.”
He was surprised by her frankness – but not disgusted or frightened. After all, he saw girls kissing, and he saw it in movies! It should be natural, right?
“All right! Let’s try it!”
Cralla giggled softly, then moved her lips to his face and kissed him. Oh… how soft… tender… sweet… Mike tried to catch her lips with his mouth and soon their tongues were dancing together. They kissed deep and long, as agreed… Mike had no idea how long, but when they parted, they were both breathing heavily, trembling, flushed.
“Oh… I never… I didn’t think…” Mike caught his breath. “Is it enough? Am I initiated now?”
“I dunno. Let’s do it a few more times to be sure.”
And they did. Again and again, until Aunt Maggie called him in for dinner, opened the door – and Mike was alone again. But… there was the warm indentation on the mattress next to him, and he still felt her taste on his lips, and… he sniffed… his arms and his shirt smelled of her perfume.
***
In a week, Mike had explored all the places in the house that were suitable for the dark journeys. In addition to the junk room, there were two large old closets with plenty of room under the hanging coats. He could probably use the bathroom as well, but he never had a chance to hide there long enough in the dark.
Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tim were puzzled by their nephew’s sudden love of confined spaces, but he demonstratively went there with a thick book and a flashlight, and they decided that a desire to read in a private, hidden place couldn’t hurt.
There must have been some other rule, but every place seemed to be coupled with some fixed other-worldly location. There was always only Cralla in the junk room, and she was never anywhere else. The closets brought him Ngeele – a seven year old girl from Incanice, she was also a dark traveler – and Borp, a boy of the same age as him, from Albora. Borp was just hiding in his closet, bitter about everyone, and he really freaked out when someone moved and chuckled next to him.
When Borp calmed down a bit, Mike told him about the dark journeys, and he agreed to be initiated. The boys hugged and kissed reluctantly. They could not pinpoint the reason, but it felt somehow awkward and not as exciting as kissing girls. They decided that they probably just did not like kissing with the boys. But the initiation still worked.
Aside from kissing the girls, Mike spent a lot of time chatting with all three of his new friends. They were telling each other about their worlds, and Mike could not tell if they were telling the truth or just making out. It all sounded so strange! Cralla told him about huge moving land crawlers, almost whole villages on wheels. Ngeele mentioned air balloons towed by flying manta rays. Borp, on his part, talked about underground cities carved out of rock… but Mike managed to notice that all three of them talked mostly about their parents, home, school, everyday life… the same things he was talking about! And they weren’t that different.
It was fun in itself to figure out what else they could do together in the dark. They played games, for example. Mike suggested Mankala – you could really play it with your eyes closed – and Jenga, which was particularly exciting because they had to feel the unstable tower by touch without toppling it. Ngeele brought Mitonda, where the field was a fine 3D wire mesh and the pieces were rings of different shapes to hang on hooks. Cralla brought Texx, a card game, the cards had distinctive embossed patterns, but Mike could not understand the rules… although he enjoyed lying next to Cralla while trying to figure them out.
They brought candy, chips, drinks, and other things, and they treated each other. The tastes were sometimes quite striking and not always pleasant. Mike, for example, could not stand the fish-smelly chips that Ngeele adored; Borp did not understand cola; and licorice… absolutely no one liked licorice, including Mike himself. But as it turned out, all otherworldly food disappeared from their stomachs under the light, leaving only smells and tastes.
“Of course,” Cralla shrugged. “That’s the rule. We cannot bring through anything material.”
They tried to synchronize their clocks, but it proved impossible. First of all, their clocks were all different. And second, time seemed to run erratically when they came out of darkness. So the only way to meet someone was to hide in the dark, wait patiently, and hope.
It was probably for the best, otherwise Mike could have been stuck in the dark explorations forever. As it was, he still spent quite a few hours with his old Earth friends. He told them everything, and not everyone believed him, but some (mostly girls eager to start kissing) agreed to be initiated, and, one by one, in a few months the whole neighborhood was hiding in dark places.
Mike often wondered if the adults knew about the dark journeys, but since none of them ever mentioned it, he decided that they did not.
***
Strangely enough, on their dark journeys they never found anyone who was too old, or too young, or too rude, or too stupid. Perhaps that was also the rule, and it worked out perfectly for all of them. The dark friends grew up with the local friends. Sometimes someone would move out with their parents, breaking the dark bond forever. They longed, sometimes mourned lost friends, but that’s life; and in time, another person would appear in the vacant place.
And so it was that at the age of twelve, when Mike moved back in with his aunt and uncle from his parents, he lost Cralla. Mike cried for several days – he really loved her… not just as a friend or girlfriend (although she was that), but because she was always happy, funny and positive. Borp and Ngeele tried to cheer him up, as did his local neighbors. It did not help much, but with time Mike’s grief dulled.
And one day, as he was sitting in the junk room all gloomy, he happened to meet Dordette from Llatappagos. She was a year older than him, and taller, and sounded scared. With a touch of annoyance – she was not Cralla! – he nevertheless tried to start a conversation, to learn something about her and to calm her down.
She turned out to be quite a nice and open person, and this was her first dark journey, and her body wasn’t quite human. As they examined each other by touch, Mike ran his hand over Dordette’s unbelievably soft and abundant hair, to discover to his amazement that it continued to grow at her neck, down her entire spine, and ended in a beautiful ponytail at, well, where ponies have their tails.
“Wow…” he said. “We’re so different…”
“You d-didn’t know?” Dordette was surprised. “In every world, people are a little different.”
And Mike wondered how many subtle differences he might be missing in his dark friends.
They examined each other more closely, and more and more closely. Mike wasn’t particularly athletic, he was just starting to put on muscle, but Dordy was still amazed at his build. She was thin and flexible, almost like a blade of grass. And she was startled by his prominent canines.
“Oh… your teeth are different! And sharp!” she gasped.
“Aren’t they the same for you?” it was Mike’s turn to be surprised.
But no, Dordy’s teeth were all the same, the teeth of a plant eater. She was shocked to find out that Mike, like most of his people, ate meat.
“Aren’t… aren’t you going to eat me?” she asked, obviously scared.
“What?! Oh, no! Of course not!” Mike laughed. “You’re my friend, and we never eat our friends, even animal friends…”
“Are you s-sure?..”
She sounded terrified. Mike realized that in Dordy’s world, carnivorous creatures were probably looked upon with horror, maybe they regularly ate herbivores like her, and now… oh… now she was alone in a dark compartment with one of them! Poor girl…
Mike cautiously grabbed Dordy and pulled her close, hoping she wouldn’t get away. She tensed and twitched nervously, but he held her tighter, stroking her back and gently patting her hair.
“Shh… I won’t even bite you, ever. I promise.”
It turned out that touch of fear and excitement was the last straw, as they started kissing and undressing each other, examining each other in all the hidden places, until… until they both gasped when Mike entered Dordy. He couldn’t say how it happened, he was a virgin (unlike her), but somehow it all happened so naturally… so easily… he entered her, and Dordy trembled and clung to him, and…
He moved faster and harder, and Dordy sobbed happily, wrapping her slender arms and legs around him, and she bit his shoulder (apparently biting carnivores was okay with her) until they exploded in orgasms almost simultaneously. Mike groaned and kept hammering into her, releasing loads of cum until… until Dordette went limp.
He pulled out and rolled onto his back, feeling Dordy relax beside him. They lay down for a while to catch their breath. Then they gently touched each other again… Mike had never experienced a girl so wet… inside and out… but after all, he had never experienced another girl so close, so… he kissed the juices from her fingers… wow… how good… salty…
And they could not clearly tell how they began and ended the second, more intense round.
Only then did he remember.
“Shit! Protection!”
“What?”
“We didn’t use protection! You could get pregnant!”
She laughed.
“Mike! No way! First of all, we are too incompatible. Second, your sperm will disappear inside me as soon as I come into the light…”
Mike thought hard for a moment, then breathed a sigh of relief. True, Cralla had explained it to him once, but then they were still kids… and anyway, he forgot…
They cuddled for another moment, then talked a bit more, exchanging impressions. Dordette was very happy with Mike, and he… he missed Cralla, but… yes, it was interesting to explore this new girl. She was so different from the others… so unusual…
So they had another round, this time longer and more tender.
***
So began the teenage period in their lives, in the lives of Mike and his dark and local friends and their dark and local friends… Not having to worry about pregnancy (well, until you try to fuck someone from your own world) was a godsend, and they engaged in all sorts of couplings, threesomes, foursomes, moresomes – as much as the confined spaces would hold.
Sometimes the combinations were so complex that Mike had no idea who fucked whom, licked where, and why. But it was still fun… the experiments were varied and numerous… as were the variations. Mike learned to give blowjobs to boys and cunnies to girls (as it turned out, there were no significant biological differences in that part, but he still preferred girls); he learned how to lick and penetrate a girl in front of her boyfriend and vice versa; he learned about everything.
They also started drinking and smoking, and the substances from other worlds sometimes had very funny effects on them – but fortunately everything faded away as soon as they came into the light.
And they started to go out with each other on Earth, why not. The only difference was that you had to think about condoms.
This all continued seamlessly into college. Just more new friends to initiate for the dark journeys, just the games got more sophisticated as they got smarter (Mike could already play chess, Othello and Go in the dark, as well as dozens of similarly complex otherworldly games), just the conversations got deeper (they started discussing art and science, and by God, there were amazing differences between worlds!)
One day, Mike stumbled upon Mik-Aart, a seemingly simple but really deep game from Dordy’s Llatappagos, at the tabletop game store. He stood there stunned for a moment, then realized. Obviously, someone had decided to publish the game they had learned in the dark and raise some money. Why not? Nobody gets hurt! How many new games that appear every year are really smuggled in from other worlds, Mike wondered…
***
Mike chose to be a miner, probably attracted by the darkness of the mines (though modern mines are a far cry from the dark and dirty holes they were for centuries). Anyway, he began to live on his own.
He made good friends with dark people in some tunnels and adits, and in his closet. But – he couldn’t say why, but he was sure – there was someone in his bathroom he hadn’t met yet. There was enough space on the floor, so he moved his mattress there and began to wait.
His patience paid off one night when Senda’s bathroom light went out while she was in the shower and she stepped outside to open the door, dripping wet, and stepped right on Mike. To say she freaked out is to say nothing. Mike’s good reactions saved him from a bad beating. He hastily explained who he was and why he was hiding there, and Senda gradually calmed down. It helped a lot to see Mike disappear from her bathroom when she opened the door and reappear when she closed it. Mike offered her towels and dry clothes, they sat down to talk (in total darkness), and Senda gradually opened up.
Senda confessed that she was tired of living alone, but she was too shy and afraid to start a close relationship. She almost accepted her fate when she literally stumbled upon Mike.
Needless to say, they had very little sleep and a lot of sex that night. And since then, they both moved their beds into the bathroom and spent every night together. Mike loved Senda’s tender, slender, little body – she was even smaller than Cralla (and she was no giant!), and she tasted so good…
Senda was thrilled by Mike’s strong body and especially by the size of his dick. In her world it was almost unheard of, and she could not say how she managed to take it, but she did.
And they talked a lot in between sex, and they agreed on every important subject. If only they could meet not only in the dark… But some things are impossible.
They never promised each other that they would be exclusive, so they both met other partners and sometimes even brought them into their shared bathroom. These were really weird sex parties in the dark. But it all worked out fine, everyone was happy, and Senda and Mike always returned to each other afterwards. They grew old together – literally. And they did not regret a single day.
***
One day, as usual, Mike was working in his mine, carefully extending the adit on the seventh level, when the ground shook violently, and rocks fell from the ceiling here and there. When it calmed down, Mike got up and went to check, only to find that he’d been cut out.
Well, he shrugged, shit happens. It was not the first time he had been trapped in a mine shaft. He activated the beacon – now all he could do was wait patiently for the rescue team to dig him out – and turned off the light.
It wasn’t long before he felt the presence of someone in the darkness.
“Anyone here?” he asked. “I’m Mike. Princeton, Indiana.”
“Hi, honey,” a woman’s voice answered. “Name’s Tukla. Valtown, Porteira.”
“Nice to meet you. Are you in a hurry? Because I’m not. I’m stuck in my shaft.”
“You too?” she giggled. He felt her sit down beside him. She was tall and stocky, taller than him.
“So why don’t we just keep each other company?”
They laughed. Then they shared information about their worlds – after years of dark travel, it became almost a reflex. Then, since they had no games to play and no booze to drink together, they undressed.
She was really big and strong, but still soft in all the places where she should be, and he pressed himself against her, feeling strangely calm. He couldn’t say why, but it didn’t bother him that this woman was so tall – somehow it fit him perfectly.
They cuddled and kissed. Mike realized that Tukla liked him. A lot. And it felt wonderful to realize that he liked her, too. Really liked her!
Then they began to do what they both wanted most. Mike stroked Tukla’s thick bush and ran his fingers through it, wondering if Porteirans shave there (probably not), then slid his fingers along her labia, stroking them gently… And there she was, like all the other women, enjoying his touch no less.
Tukla moaned blissfully and spread her legs wider. Mike lifted himself over her and climbed between her thighs. Wow… she was so wet… he blindly found the hole, carefully plunged in… and heard Tukla gasp. Yes, his size fit her perfectly!
They began to rock slowly and rhythmically, finding each other more and more precisely with each movement. Tukla moaned and wrapped her strong legs around Mike. And they fucked until they were both panting with pleasure.
And so the hours passed. They alternated between talking, caressing and sex. And they were still trapped.
“It’s taking them an unusually long time to dig me out,” Mike said as the ground rumbled again. “Ouch. Was it on your world too?”
“Yep. Now I’m afraid they’ll be even more delayed.”
They napped a bit and focused on each other again.
“The air is getting stale,” he admitted. “The canary would probably be dead by now.”
“Canary? What’s a canary?”
Mike sighed sadly.
“Canaries are cute singing birds from my world. Unfortunately, they have low respiratory activity and react faster than humans to lack of oxygen, so they die sooner than us. So special cages were placed in the mine shafts. When the canaries died, the rescuers knew they had to hurry.”
“Um… poor canary…”
Mike stroked Tukla’s hip. Her skin felt coarse compared to the other humans he knew, but it was wonderfully coarse.
“I’m beginning to think I won’t make it out.”
She was silent for a moment.
“I think the same.”
“Poor Senda. I wish I could hug her one last time.”
“Who is Senda?”
“A woman from Innuerdo. We share our bathrooms in the dark. For decades.”
“Oh. I wish I had someone that close to me.”
“Do you have someone?”
“I had. At the moment, no one.”
She hugged him tighter.
“You know what, Mike?”
“What?”
“I heard that asfixycation makes the sensations of sex incredibly strong. I never checked, though.”
He chuckled.
“Wanna try it?”
“I don’t see any other way.”
They hugged, kissed, and began to caress each other.
***
By the time the rescuers finally dug in, he was long dead, of course. Strangely, he was naked and lying in a peculiar pose, as if hugging someone.
And he was smiling lightly and happily.
