Chapter 5
chapter
five
Jace
Xander, the griffin, is downstairs in my music room doing his best to fix the mess I made three days ago when the last fever hit. When you’ve got a constant erection with no relief, it can be frustrating.
In that state, I can be destructive.
I step into the room to see that he’s nearly got the drywall completely patched.
He glances up at me. He’s pretty much my only friend.
“There’s a human woman asking about you in town.” Xander tells me.
I step out from behind the tree I’ve been standing partially behind. “Who is she?” I ask.
“For fuck’s sake, Jace.” He tilts his head back to stare at my ceiling. “Can’t you wear a kilt or something? Must you have your dick out all the time?”
I wince. This is why I only have the one friend. My perpetual erection. It makes people uncomfortable. Who can blame them? It’s like a third arm extending upward.
Hello, nice to meet you. Would you like to stroke me?
I exhale slowly. “I’ve tried kilts and codpieces and everything else I can think of. I even special ordered some things from Etsy that claimed to be made from the softest yarn imaginable. Any kind of texture is irritating to my skin.”
He looks back at me but keeps his focus on my face. His lips are twitching as he obviously fights a smile. “Was it like a hand knitted dick hat or something? A little tutu for your cock?”
“Fuck off.” But damn him if the image of my junk wearing a little crocheted dress isn’t fucking hilarious. I move back to the tree to angle my crotch away from him.
“It’s not like I don’t know it’s distracting for other people. It’s why I only come out at night. That and I got tired of random women—mostly the humans who visit—propositioning me all the time.”
“That shit was annoying for the whole fucking town,” Xander says.
“If you think it’s a burden for you to have to look at, trust me that it feels immensely worse for me.”
The griffin grimaces. “If I were you, I’d fuck any female that came near me on the off chance she was the one to break the spell,” Xander says.
“I doubt that. And it doesn’t work that way, you know that,” I say. I try to swallow my curiosity about the woman in town, but I can’t manage it. “So, who is she, do you know?”
“I think she’s a friend of the zombie’s human girl.” He shrugs and his wings rise with the movement. Then he shakes them out, the feathers fluttering, then falling back into place. “Fuck if I know, man. People know we talk so they informed me.”
“More than one people?” I ask.
He snorts. “That’s generally what ‘people’ means.”
“You’re such a cranky bastard,” I say.
“You’re no fucking ray of sunshine yourself.”
“What else do you know about this human woman? I mean why has she been asking about me?”
Xander chuckles. “She’s probably heard you’re hard and ready all the time. You remember what it was like to be human? I thought I had stamina, but nothing like I do now.”
My dick aches. It aches all the fucking time, but especially if I think about burying myself inside a warm, willing woman.
I’m not completely sure I do remember what it’s like to be human. “The whole crux of the curse is that there has to be love,” I say.
“I remember. It’s why we stopped answering inquiries about you.
But it’s been several years since you went into hiding.
Several years since you’ve been celibate.
” He stares at me for a minute, then continues.
“ Maybe you should make yourself more visible. This girl could very well be the one you’ve been looking for. ”
“I’m not looking for anyone,” I mumble. “I gave up on that a long time ago.”
“Because of your fiancée?” He shakes his head. He pats the wall once, then starts packing up his tools. “Not worth it, man. You’ve got to try again if for no other reason than I’m tired of looking at your junk. It’s all red and angry.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“I mean if there has to be love, that’s not going to happen if you don’t spend time with her, right?
” He picks up his metal tool chest and walks towards me.
“Gotta let all of that dry. Then I’ll be back to paint it.
Try not to have another episode or whatever the fuck you call them in the meantime. ”
I release a slow breath. “I’d never touch it again if I could help it.”
He braces a hand on my shoulder.
“If you hear anything else about her, will you let me know?” I ask. Because I’m unable not to. I’m dying for more information. How did she even learn about me? I’m pretty sure the townspeople squashed rumors of the randy—always ready—satyr in the monster town.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll let your name slip. Your address. That creepy building where you play piano at night.”
I roll my eyes. Xander’s one to talk. He spends far too much time in a creepy building himself–the abandoned inn at the edge of town.
It belonged to brother and sister, Gregor and Galina, before Gregor was transformed into an Ogre and Galina disappeared.
Apparently, Xander has been dreaming and hallucinating about Galina where she’s trying to tell him something.
And he thinks I’m a weirdo with my perpetually perky penis.
“Thanks, Xander,” I say.
He raises a hand, already walking away. “Anytime.”
I can’t help but wonder if the woman asking about me is the one I saw several months ago.
Sometimes when the fever hits—that's what I call it when I just feel as if I can't control my urges anymore. It’s in those moments I know that I'm more monster than I am man.
I hate that but I can't do anything about it.
So even though I know that it won't help and that it won't make it better and it definitely won't make it go away, when the fever hits, I still have to grab my dick.
I stroke and stroke and stroke and plead just make it go away. It never does.
Sometimes the fever leads to the episodes Xander mentioned where I just lose my shit and break stuff.
I’m not proud of it. If there’s one thing this whole ordeal has taught me, it’s that in my before life, I was very much in control.
Of everything. My life was orderly and predictable.
Here, in this after, I have no control over anything. I fucking hate it.
On one such occasion when the fever hit, I was walking in the woods near the city limits.
And there was a car driving slowly. I don’t normally masturbate on the side of the road.
I’m not a pervert, despite how things might look.
Still, the woman driving the car looked out the window and we locked eyes for a moment. Something happened.
I don't even know how to explain it. I just know that there was something more in that moment when our eyes connected. I felt her. Her curiosity, her passion, as if I knew her.
Sadly, I know better than to put my fate in the hands of a human. Their emotions are fickle and waning. I don't want to get my hopes up. Not again. I certainly don't want to hurt anyone.
The truth is, I never know when the fever will hit. But I do know that it is getting worse, stronger, and a lot harder to ignore.