Beloved Daughter.

"Liz?"

The woman stood in the frame of her office's door, ashen blonde, pale-eyed, pink lips smiling, immaculately dressed. "How are you today?" Liz felt her hands trembling, making the magazine flutter. Looking from the snapshot to the woman and back, she tried to find a question.

"Yes, she must be my great-great grandmother if I count right," the woman said. "The house used to be my family home, but it was sold eons ago, sadly." She clapped her hands and said, cheerily, "But we have other concerns, don't we? Did our session help? How do you feel now, honey? Any better?"

Annabeth.

During the week that followed, Annabeth Flynn led a double life. When she rose in the morning, taking a shower after yet another more-than-lifelike erotic dream, it felt as if she not just rinsed off sweat and sticky fluids, but also her old, shy personality. Then, with each brush of make-up and each piece of garment, she seemed to replace it with this new, brazen man-eater. Finally stepping out of her apartment, she knew she was someone else, and all she could do was follow and watch this new woman handle her day.

Teasing her boss had become a ritual that he gradually found his part in, starting to flirt back with clumsy double-entendres; he even started asking her out on lunches and theatre visits. She turned him down with sugared cruelty, always leaving him room to believe he might get lucky one day. Most of the things she did and said felt as if prompted by someone else, the one she'd started calling The Other. She never knew what the woman might say or do next, but it always felt right. And then, just as sudden, she'd get all-professional again. It felt as if her old self resurfaced, making her look at her outfit with genuine wonder, or slight embarrassment.

Then came the day of the budget meeting, when she heard herself suggesting he should take the woman to the Opera, handing him tickets. Her mind knew it was a perfectly logical idea, but her mind also knew where the suggestion had come from. The next day, Ethan McAllister was a changed man, stumbling from tired confusion to outright absentmindedness, eyes ringed, shoulders slumping.

In her dream, that same night, Annabeth Flynn had changed too, or rather, changed places. She became the invisible woman with the breezy voice and the expert tongue that licked the red-haired girl while staring into her green eyes and caressing her freckled skin.

Lilian.

The night after the creepy phone call, Lilian Morley didn't dare go to bed. She knew what the woman had meant by 'seeing her tonight.' She'd heard the voice in her nightmare, hadn't she?

She walked around her tiny apartment, wearing her ragged robe and drinking coffee. By eleven PM, she shook from an overdose of caffeine, her heart racing. She hugged herself on her sofa, staring at her own reflection in a dark-paned window. She could stay awake, she'd done it often enough, hadn't she? Just think of her job, just think of her goddamn creep of a boss. But after midnight, short hiatuses started interrupting her consciousness, like glitches of existence. The moments became minutes, and when a far-off church bell started counting two, Lilian Morley fell forward into a velvet pit of sleep.

Her dream was no surprise. The lawn was as pale as before in the midday sun, the birds twittered, a breeze rustled the leaves, and she was naked, sitting in the grass. She wasn't alone, this time; across from her was the girl she'd seen screaming in the picture and in her dream, but she was much older now. She twirled a string of her ashen hair and smiled, nodding a welcome.

On her left was the dead girl. She was very much alive now and could be the woman's twin if only she hadn't been much younger. To her right, the lawn was empty, but as she looked, a shadow crept in, darkening the pale grass. Gazing up, Lilian saw a tall woman, her silhouette fuzzy against the sun. She seemed ill at ease, looking left and right, hesitating if she should keep standing or sit down on the lawn as the others did.

"Annabeth," the ashen-blond woman said, looking up and smiling. "Please join us and sit down." The new arrival bent her long legs, kneeling down to sit on her heels. Lilian noticed she only wore a nightie, the backlight revealing the shape of her body.

"Girls," the woman went on, "please meet Annabeth, Annabeth, meet Lilian and Lizzy. I am Elizabeth Ann." The young girl called Lizzy nodded and smiled a thin smile that was a mere ripple in her waxen face. Lilian nodded too but didn't smile. The newly arrived woman was pale as well, but her hair was a kind of bleached red that seemed to shift and shimmer from orange to ashen blond, as if transferring; her eyes too seemed to hesitate between a light green and an ever-paler blue. Everything seemed to shift around them, anyway, Lilian thought, bleaching out of focus. Except for the object that lay at the center of their circle. It was a piece of underwear, she saw now, frilly cotton panties, all white but for the carmine splash of blood at the crotch. The red smear was the only real color in this world of washed-out beiges and browns. It screamed violence.

"I am sorry to have laid such a burden on your lives," the woman, Elizabeth Ann, went on. "Invading your dreams, manipulating your lives. But there is no other way, justice must be done." Lilian had no idea what the woman might mean, but, in the way dreams work, she didn't bother. Her thoughts, as far as there were any, started sinking into soft, humming layers of well-being, engulfing her body and mind. She felt aroused she guessed, a well-known tingle spreading through her every fiber. When soft fingers touched her left breast, a moan escaped her lips. The fingers were Lizzy's, the young girl on her left. She uttered a silvery chuckle at Lilian's involuntary sigh. Finding her nipple, she fondled it.

"Not yet, you, little animal," the pale woman, said, waving a mocking finger. Lizzy giggled, and her hand disappeared. As soon as it did, Lilian yearned for its return.

"Today, we will kill a man," Elizabeth Ann said.

Ethan.

The moment Ethan McAllister stepped into his big apartment, he knew something was wrong, or, rather, everything was. He'd always had this thing for garish colors. His curtains were a bright orange and the huge paintings on the walls seemed a carnival of screaming splashes. Club chairs and sofas had purple and pink upholstery; the rug in front of them was apple green. Not today, though.

As he watched them, the colors leaked away, turning from orange to ochre, to beige, from purple to brown, from green to sand. And with it, his last drops of energy leaked away too. Sinking to his knees on the rug, his hands pulled feverishly at his tie and the buttons of his shirt. Panting, he tore at his clothes until he lay naked, curled up into a fetal ball, sobbing. Unconsciousness yet again opened the door he feared most, but yearned for with shivering abandon. The house almost felt like home now, hugging him with its cold, creaking claws. The flapping blinds and torn umbrellas were an applauding audience, the storm a sweet-sighing welcome.

"Eeeethannn.. welcommme...," the breezy woman's voice said, ending in a chuckle.

Lilian.

Sitting on the bleached lawn, under a white sky, Lilian Morley knew she should be stunned by what the woman just said. She should be appalled by the almost casual way she talked about murder. But she wasn't, it all just didn't seem to sink in. It was like watching a movie, ah, well, it felt like being in a dream, she guessed.

"Kill a man," she heard the young girl on her left repeat, and when she looked at her, she saw wide eyes and O-shaped lips, but it wasn't caused by horror, it was naughty excitement. It wouldn't have surprised her if the girl had jumped up, clapping her hands and dancing around on her bare feet. She knew she might, because she felt very close to doing that herself, her heart booming, her head dizzy with ever-growing arousal.

The ashen blond woman smiled, making all of them smile, but then a shadow passed over her face, like an X-ray that made her skull shine through her paper-thin skin, extinguishing her eyes. Only her lips stayed pink and full, wriggling as she spoke.

"Killing a man, yes," she said, "wouldn't that be exciting? Don't we all have a man we'd love to kill?" A sigh echoed her words. "You, sweet Lizzy..." The woman turned her empty eyes to the young girl. "You know you never were ill when you had your fever and your nightmares as a child, don't you?" She lifted her bony hand. "You remember." Liz's childish face darkened, as her eyes widened. Her lips worked, but there came no words.

"Lizzyyy... it's our little secret, girl, promise me, just ours..." The words came from the pale woman with the empty eye sockets, but they were in a man's voice, expressed in an agitated whisper.

"D-daddy," the young girl moaned, shivering inside her waxen skin. Tears ran down her cheeks, causing a sympathetic murmur to run around the circle.

"And you, Lili-annn," the woman went on, turning her absent eyes her way. "How does it feel to be the product of a violent rape that destroyed not just your mother, but made your life miserable too?" Lillian stared at her, not understanding. Then the voice turned into a man's rasping hash of hate-driven words: "Don't you fucking cry, you, whore... you love this... I do you a favor, you, ugly fat bitch... take it... goddammit, take it!"

Images flooded Lilian's mind, snapshots from the 80's of a girl with bleached curls and a guy with a porn moustache, strangling her as he humped her body, screaming obscenities. She knew the face, the head was balder now, the moustache gray. But mostly, she recognized the voice, just as vile, but even more arrogant. My God... him? She sank into numb despair. Drowning in the hollow eyes of the pale woman, she felt blood and sweat, and sperm hit her skin. Hands touched her, fingers caressed her, the softness of lips was all over her face as she slowly fell apart.

Annabeth.

Sitting on the bleak lawn, Annabeth Flynn watched the faces of her dream-companions as the pale woman exposed their innermost tragedies. There were no tears, she saw, but the faces seemed to morph into masks of sadness. They all stared at the blood-smeared panties, old-fashioned knickers, really, with their touchy innocence mocked by the stain of violence.

Why was she here? Annabeth mused, trying to tear herself away from the paralyzing magic of the nightmare. Ah, who was she kidding? She knew, didn't she? Maybe she always did. The ashen-haired woman focused her eyeless stare on her, and from her mouth came the voice of Stephen Moore, her ex-husband, as cold and cruel as she remembered. Every detail of the horrid evening returned. She felt his strong hand pin her down on the sofa, smelling alcohol on his breath as it mixed with his cologne. Towering over her, he was a dark silhouette against the room's ambient lights, the sweet hues she'd selected, lovingly, just as the tasteful decoration. Her thoughts tried to flee into memories of a happier past, like she always did when he was like this. The slap of his hand stung her into focus, followed by a backhanded repeat. Her mind reeled as tears welled from her eyes.

"I...," she tried, "please, no." A claw tore the precious Cashmere sweater off her chest, fingers pushed up her bra and nails tortured a nipple. Did she cry out, or was her throat paralyzed from panic? She remembered the cloak of numbness falling over her. It removed her from the presence, pushing her into a realm of buzzing indifference. Her body shook as he tore and pulled at her clothes, and at the belt of his pants. The sound of a metal zipper ripped through her cloudy awareness, right before a flame of pain burned up into her crotch, tearing her flesh. She shook and rolled with his violent humping, but all senses mercifully left her when darkness came.

"Stephen," she whispered. Her face felt as stony as those of the others. Bright, sparkling eyes lighted up again in the woman's sockets. Annabeth felt arms closing around her, two, four, six arms, pulling her into an embrace of soft, sweet flesh. A flood of tears washed her thoughts away.

Ethan.

As he stood in the great, dilapidated front hall, his naked body bathing in the bluish light of a full moon that shone through holes in the roof. Ethan McAllister felt how his bare feet found their familiar way across a rubble-strewn floor of marble tiles. He passed through shadows and light, his body flashing on and off like a failing neon light. Exhaustion receded, to linger at the back of his mind. His lips moved, there must be words coming out, but he couldn't hear them. His hands waved in front of him to find a safe passage through the darkness, touching the clammy gossamer of invisible cobwebs. Each second screamed horror, but it was all right. This was as it was, his Fate. It might be terrible, but it was his, wasn't it?

A shimmering shape emanated from the darkness in front of him, where the one door must be. It looked undefined, just like the voice that had forever haunted him through his nightmares. Then it morphed into a woman. She looked bleached out, her hair, her skin, even her eyes were pale. A long gown floated around her limbs, white and gauzy. Only her lips had color; they were pink, leaking crimson, and with every step, they seemed to grow larger in her face. A long-fingered hand moved a fan that made her ghostly hair stir, and he knew.

"Ethannn," the lips said, "so good to see you here again. You must be so very curious." Ethan, Ethan, she said over and over, each word in another voice, voices he knew, or knew he ought to know; so many voices, panicked, angry, desperate, hurt. They echoed through the hall until they died into whispers.

The woman chuckled as she stared at him while the voices ran their course. "Girls!" she then went on, turning her eyes to the darkness behind her. Three more shapes appeared, pale like her, hair ashen, eyes vacant, bodies naked or skimpily clad in white rags. "Prepare him," the woman said.

Ethan should have fled; he knew there was nothing but himself that held him captive. All he had to do was wake up, but he didn't. He couldn't, could he? Ah well, he could, of course, but, while urging himself to run, he didn't. He was firmly held in place by the soft tentacles of horror, heart racing, mind screaming. A sickly-sweet perfume clouded his thoughts as cold fingers started caressing his flesh, fanning a lust that painfully grew in his loins. Lips of moist satin touched him, eyes probed his, feeding an alien hunger, ah, who was he kidding: a deeply familiar hunger.

Icy cuffs gripped his wrists and a clanging chain pulled him up to the vaulted ceiling; or did he just ascend by himself, a doomed angel held up by the eyes that watched him? Four pale faces followed him as he slowly rose, his cold feet leaving the marble floor. A well-known tightening told him that his cock must be swelling into an erection more turgid than he ever felt. It rose hard and purple from his crotch, going from lustful to painful and beyond, pre-come running down the pulsing shaft like boiling tears. Looking down through teary eyes, he saw a flock of pale demons. Harpies, wasn't the word harpies, the horrible she-devils of mythology, staring at him from hollow eyes, licking their blood-stained beaks?

"Ethan McAllister," the tall, ashen-haired woman said, her voice echoing through the vault. "My poor scapegoat, it's all so utterly unfair, isn't it? We should pity you; I bet you pity yourself." Her laugh was a cackle. "Look at poor Ethan, girls, crucified for the sins of his brethren." The last syllable hissed away into the darkness beyond. "Sweet Lizzy," she went on, turning to the young girl and urging her forward with her pale, long fingers. "Go, admire his big, delicious cock; touch it, it'll make him happy. It's his gift to womanhood, he thinks, turning us all into grateful sluts. He's so proud of it."

The young girl seemed puzzled, looking up, studying the man's face as the shadow of his jutting penis fell over hers. Then her eyes went wide with childish delight, her lips trembling. "Daddy?" she whispered as her hand went up to touch his cock, caressing its stem with a butterfly's lightness. Ethan felt how it jumped in response, painfully throbbing. A new flood of clear juice ran from its purple slit to where she touched him. She lifted her fingertips, pulling a sparkling string as she brought them to her open lips.

"Daddy is so big," she said. Then she sucked her fingertips, before chuckling a childish giggle. "It is our secret, daddy, our little secret. I told no one; I promised!" Ethan stared into her innocent face with mounting, helpless horror as he felt a hot ball grow and expand in his arching body. Noooo.... God, noooo... Then he exploded, roaring and roaring when, with blinding pain, he spewed arches of goo on the girl, once, twice, again and again.

Liz.

Liz Carlson's head felt light and empty when Elizabeth Ann's hand pushed her forward to the dangling man with the obscene cock. It leaked, she saw, with a stream of juices. So big it was, veined and purple; so brutal. She walked with glassy dreamer's eyes until she looked up into the man's face, studying it in the bluish light of the moon. Her pupils widened, and, with recognition, a cocktail of emotions welled up inside her. Panic and fear she felt, but also a deep need to be used, to be loved. Love me, daddy, she thought, I'm here, and beams of light poured down her eyes, filling her with memories that made the skin on her back crawl. Yet, she giggled. "Daddy, daddy, so big," she said, gasping with childish awe. Shaking, she reached for the pulsing monster, touching it with trembling fingers and bringing them to her mouth. A long-forgotten taste tickled her tongue. "It's our secret, oh yes, daddy, our little secret. I told no one; I promised!"

The man screamed, and hot jets of whitish fluid flew; the pulsing cock spewed its sperm on her ecstatic face, hitting open eyes, flaring nostrils and a gaping mouth. Her pale body shook in response as her throat swallowed. Crumpling to the marble floor, she spasmed; muffled moans gurgled up from her clotted throat. Three pale ghosts lifted her up, weeping as they hugged her writhing body.

Annabeth.

Fighting conflicted emotions, Annabeth Flynn stared at the girl being splattered by the floods of sperm that the hanging man's penis kept vomiting on her. When it stopped, it started again and again, an ongoing volcano of goo. Nausea fought sick arousal inside her as the girl gurgled the word 'daddy' through the whitish goo coating her lips; it caused rivulets to run down her chin. As they lifted her spasming body, hugging her, Annabeth felt a new, irrational mix of disgust, envy and hunger strike her as she joined the others in licking the girl clean. While it made her gag, the bitter-sweet taste spurred her to hunt greedily for every forgotten drop. Finally, the three of them rocked Lizzy's body in their embrace while a hummed lullaby filled the room. So terribly sick it all was, yet so horribly arousing.

"Annabeth." It was the voice of the woman with the pale, forbidding eyes. Looking up, she met her gaze that seemed to pulse with light. "Go, girl," the woman said, smiling. "You go now." She rose and moved forward. Maybe she felt what puppets feel, if they ever feel anything; a sensation of watching yourself rise and obey. She breathed deeply and felt her feet walk up to the floating man, her hips swaying with each step.

He'd been a stranger to her, she'd never seen him before, had she? But he wasn't anymore, as she looked up into his shadowy face. "Stephen," she murmured, feeling a taste of vomit rise, and yet tingling with arousal. Her nerves sparkled as her fingers met his thigh, her face almost touching his lunging cock. It was still hard, even harder as it dripped and reeked of masculinity. Reeling with nausea, she took a step back, but her hand rose with a mind of its own. Its fingers gripped the veined shaft, sensing the pulse inside its core, her eyes smarting with fascination. "Stephen," her lips murmured.