Darkness and the Librarian – Erotic Story

Gerald hop-skipped across Berry Street to the city library. The howling wind whipped his jacket and ruffled his hair.

Once on the curb, he checked his wristwatch: 7:52. He had a little time before the library closed for the night.

The exterior lights on both sides of the library’s double doors glowed yellow-white in the blustery, autumn evening. The tall windows that fronted the building seemed warm from the interior lighting.

Gerald was rushing to check out this book again or at least not be fined for returning it late. He believed the cost may be merely quarters now, but enough change saved would eventually be enough to buy a cup of coffee—someday.

He grabbed the handrail and leaped up the granite stairs in his loafers and tweed jacket to the large front doors. 

Inside, he rushed through the foyer to the forever-long room of packed bookshelves. Rows and rows of classic literature, mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, memoirs, nonfiction, paranormal romance.

He stopped at the librarian’s desk when he saw his favorite genre: fantasy.

“Ms. Duncan! I’m so glad you’re here.” He huffed and patted his chest as if he actually had raced there. He ran his fingers through his dark hair.

“Hi, Gerald,” she said flatly. She sat in front of a cube-shaped computer monitor.

“I need to renew this book before I get dinged a late charge.”

He handed her The Memory Librarian.

Ms. Duncan took the book and, over her thin eyeglasses, glanced up to him. “You can do this online, you know, right?”

“I don’t trust technology. This book tells me not to.”

The woman pushed her glasses to the arched bridge of her nose. She glossed over the cover and the back. She didn’t smile.

“It does, huh? I didn’t get that point from the author.”

She scanned the reader on the library’s barcode taped to the book jacket. The reader gave a high-pitched chirp that echoed in the quiet room.

“There you go. Renewed. Going to read it again?” she asked.

“There is so much to uncover. Reading a book a second time peels back more layers. Plus,” he said, pointing his finger toward the ceiling as if he had a point to make, “when a librarian has the power to choose which books should be available to the public, I’ve got to know the intricacies of the librarian’s mind games.”

She still didn’t smile. She was unamused.

“Online books are everywhere. Good modern fiction and literature. Great writers post short stories to blogs that a lot of people like to read. We librarians are not gatekeepers, Gerald.”

The young man always felt a quick jolt in his heart and below when she said his name. And that was the second time it had come through her lips.

Finished renewing his book, Ms. Duncan stood and walked to a book cart nearby.

“Got a lot of books to restock,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

Gerald noticed a single, thin book that was obstructed by the big monitor. He reached over the counter and picked it up. The title was Savor the Wild. On the cover was a half-naked man-beast rising high over a thin, scantily clad woman in a dramatically terrified pose. A paper bookmark from the Williston Falls Public Library poked out from the top.

“Ms. Duncan, you forgot one.” He waved it overhead.

She snatched the book and mumbled, “Gimme that.” She jammed it between two books on the cart.

Gerald thought she grabbed it a bit too quickly and angrily and hid it.

The librarian attempted to heave the heavy cart forward. It didn’t budge though. She shoved it again with a grunt.

“Need some help?” he asked gladly.

“No,” she said, with a biting tone. Then she spoke somewhat gentler. “It’s this one wheel that hates to roll.”

She kicked the solid roller with one of her feet in a Birkenstock sandal. She again leaned forward and heaved. As her droopy bohemian dress shifted with her power-push stance, Gerald noticed the skulls and ravens on her gray goth socks.

With another push, the cart lurched ahead. She continued to muscle it forward to keep the momentum.

Gerald offered himself again.

“Don’t overwork yourself. Don’t be Sisyphus. Being a librarian isn’t punishment.”

He moved next to her, putting his hands on the cart. Their shoulders brushed.

“How far do we need to go?” he asked.

She halted and straightened up. Her pale cardigan drooped over her, like melted vanilla ice cream. The sleeves of the sweater covered most of her hands

“Not far,” she said. “Now, Gerald …”

However, before she could say anymore, her tiny, analog wristwatch beeped twice. “The library’s closing. I need to lock the door.”

Gerald picked up a ring of jangling keys. “I’ll do it. I’ll lock the door.”

“You can’t, because I need you out, when I lock it.”

She held out her hand.

He noticed a wicked dragon wrapped around her ring finger.

He plopped the keys into her palm, silencing the jangle.

“Now, go, Gerald.” She whisked him to the foyer, like a mother getting her rambunctious kid out of her house. “Shoo, fly, shoo.”

The tall, heavy doors of the library clanked shut behind Gerald, followed by a disturbing dungeon-esque lock. He was left on the steps in the brisk evening.

“My book!”

Gerald almost knocked so he could get it but decided it would only bother her more than he had done already. He had frustrated her in only a few minutes.

In a café scented with dark, roasting coffee, Gerald sat with his friend Otto, who had paid for their hot drinks.

“Why do I do this?” Gerald moaned. “Why can’t I be normal around her? I just want to be normal.”

“We’re not normal, man. I’ve never had a girlfriend, and you neither, and we’re sophomores.”

Gerald exhaled through his nose. “I should never have told you that.”

“We’re probably the only ones,” Otto continued. “And then you’re trying to bang Ms. Duncan—you are insane. Your chances are nil.” He dragged his hand across his neck, as if gruesomely slicing it.

Gerald stirred his coffee with a thin spoon and then clinked the stirrer on the rim of the cup. “I guess you’re right.”

“I mean she’d only get down with, like, Ed Cullen or Tim Burton. Edward Scissorhands might spread her legs.” Otto laughed.

“She does have this goth vibe. I’ve imagined her with Robert Smith—you know from the Cure. Or doing it with everyone in that band Type O Negative.”

Otto flung himself against the back of his seat dramatically and flailed his arms. “The fuck are you talking about!”

The patrons in the small café glared at Otto because of his outburst.

He apologized with a quick wave and a frown.

“This place is too close to the library—all these quiet people,” Otto muttered.

He turned to Gerald. “You can’t just imagine Ms. Duncan with another guy—worse a ‘goth gangbang.’ You’re doing yourself a disservice. It relegates you to a wallflower who is left to only jerk off.”

Gerald flipped off Otto.

“But all the guys on campus and the professors and the rock bands she likes to see—what chance do I have?” Gerald nibbled on his lip and scrunched his nose.

“You haven’t been looksmaxxing, have you?”

Gerald glared at Otto. Otto clapped and laughed in his humor, again rocking in the shaky chair.

Someone shushed him. This time, he didn’t pay attention.

“Trying to use those brain-rot terms. You Urban Dictionary slut,” Gerald hissed. “You’re like ten years behind the world. Stupid ass.”

Gerald then quieted. He stared at the slowly turning ceiling fan. “I’ll tell you brain rot won’t help me in laying Ms. Duncan. Quite the opposite.”

“Listen, toss the flag. Give up the play. You’ll survive a ten-yard penalty,” Otto said.

He looked at Otto. 

“Football, you’re talking football? That’s as stupid. And I think you used it in the wrong way.”

“My roommate watches the sport religiously. What am I supposed to do? I pick things up quickly.”

“Not everything,” Gerald said.

Gerald leaned back in his chair, which felt weak enough that the back could separate from the seat at any moment.

“What is my plan going forward?” Gerald said, while again watching the turning ceiling fan.

“The question to ask is: What would Poe do?” Otto offered.

Gerald sat up and slapped the tabletop. “Poe! Yes, Savor The Wild! That’s it!”

“The fuck are you—”

They were shushed again by a woman who sat against the wall reading a thick book.

“Ms. Duncan is reading it. I could read it too.”

“Such a chump,” Otto charged. “How about this: Do an interview with a vampire!”

Gerald rocked his head side to side and bounced his eyebrows, considering it briefly. “That’s a good idea too.”

“Anne Rice might know something.”

“But I bother her too much when I’m there.”

“Who, Anne Rice?”

“No. Ms. Duncan,” he said. “I’m a nuisance, and I feel bad about it. I want to be normal around her.”

“Reading the same book is smartest. Safest too. Start there. Poe would have done something way too weird.”

In a moment, Gerald found Savor The Wild online and bought it. “Should have it tomorrow.”

Otto looked at an image of the book cover on the website. “Strange,” he said and then read the blurb about the book. “A sex-crazed monster is bound to lose his form if it cannot possess a woman …” He stopped reading. “She has bad taste in books.”

“She’s got a little erotica in her blood. I can’t complain about that.”

“Maybe she needs a little Otto in her pussy.”

Gerald pointed at his friend across the table. “Back off, bitch.” 

Otto paused for a moment. He straightened up and looked toward the menu over the barista. His forehead wrinkled. Gerald knew something was concocting in his mind.

Otto’s attention returned to Gerald.

“You need to meet my uncle. He may have some answers on what to do.”

“Answers on how to get down with Ms. Duncan?”

“He knows things—stranger things!”

The next day, they were at Otto’s uncle’s house. Otto sat in a hard chair, and Gerald sat in an old recliner. The springs in the seat had been worn flat, leaving a deep crater. Worse, it had a scent of mothballs and tobacco smoke.

The dimly lit room had framed pictures that chronicled the life of a smiling couple. As young newlyweds, the bride was in her white gown, and the groom was in a dark suit. They stood beside a 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

Across the room sat Otto’s old uncle, Buzz Meadows. The man mashed tobacco into his Bent Billiard smoking pipe. He was wrinkled and had a dreariness, or some darkness, around his eyes. Gerald likened it to his smoking habit.

“But you know some voodoo stuff, don’t you? Mom says,” Otto said.

“Voodoo,” Uncle Buzz said, frustrated. “‘Voodoo’ ain’t what it’s been. Your mother calls it that. Too rude a description. She always was that way, always rude. Didn’t know much.”

Uncle Buzz lightly tapped the pipe on the arm of his rocking chair, and he mashed more tobacco into the end of the pipe. 

“I do research. Only a few twists and some extra spices and things added. That’s what she might liken to say is ‘voodoo.’”

Listening to them, Gerald was unsure what this gray-haired man was talking about.

“Yeah, so,” Otto said, “you think Gerald can use it to get to the librarian? I mean, can you help him with your research.”

Gerald moved from the crater to the edge of his seat.

“I really need your help, Mr. Meadows. I do. I can’t think of anything else.”

“A woman. Ah, yes, the days,” Uncle Buzz said, pointing to the wall of framed, black-and-white photos. His eyes lingered on the wedding picture. “Julia. My wife—forty-seven years. She was one who would lose control when the winds came to Williston here. Could never understand.”

Gerald and Otto glanced at each other, confused about what he meant. Otto only shrugged.

Uncle Buzz lit the tobacco with the single match and, with a few drags, made gray smoke rise from the end of the pipe.

“Yep, sir, it might. This may be the year,” Uncle Buzz said looking at the smoke from his pipe. “I can see it come near time. The winds, they’re getting strong. Seen a few trees cracked. None blowed down nor a house resettled, like had been the case years back.”

He grinned and puffed several times.

“This whatever-it-is, I never understood. Could never comprehend. Only heard once the name Zulmanu from Julia. Said it in her sleep when winds were high. These winds make people go crazy—women, that is. They go insane, hysterical.” He drew circles at his temple with the end of his pipe.

“They just can’t stop going.” Uncle Buzz shook his head. “Always thought they get kind of scared. And pant, good god, they pant like animals, for sure. My Julia did. Bought her a kerchief one time. That got her miffed, so vinegary.” He grinned. His face lightened for a moment. It darkened quickly though.

He then smoked and made the guys wait. All the while, Gerald was itching to get some useful information for his situation with Ms. Duncan.

“I’m never to be sure about this woman-thing. Travels with winds but does it always come with the winds—don’t think it does. The women ain’t crazy every year, just every few years—three, four, five.”

He blew out the heavy smoke from the corner of his mouth, opposite where the pipe hung over his bottom lip.

“Too hard to tell the future. I never been able to figure out a pattern or a real trigger to know for sure it’s come. My ‘voodoo’ never told me. But it’s here. Shows up. Then gone. One night, maybe. Maybe more. Always glad it was gone. My house calmed after. Me and the wife were ordinary again. Sweet. Back to cooking and cleaning. I could read the paper in peace.”

He took a few more puffs from his pipe. A gray cloud surrounded his head and shoulders. To Gerald, the swirls of smoke looked unnatural. He thought they looked voodoo-like.

Gerald leaned back when the spreading tobacco cloud began to bother his eyes.

“Well, what can we—he—do?” Otto asked.

“Stay with the woman,” Uncle Buzz said flatly, as if the answer was obvious.

Gerald then sat forward again. “She doesn’t want to be with me. I annoy her.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Can you make me a man who she wants to … I mean, a man who she likes a lot? Possess me or her,” Gerald suggested with voodoo in mind.

“The winds. They will show what to do. That’s all. Everything.” And Uncle Buzz continued to smoke, clouding up the room.

After a few minutes of quietness, awkwardness, frustration, and reddened eyes, Gerald and Otto stood.

“Thanks, Uncle Buzz, for the help.”

“Yep, thanks.”

As Gerald sped down the highway in his car, he emptied his frustration. 

“That was a complete waste of time and gas.”

“Yeah, I’m upset he wouldn’t help. He’s, like, a voodoo doctor, Mom says, and he can’t help his own family? Won’t help. Evil is very selfish.”

Gerald continued driving.

“I don’t know what to do next,” he said.

“That was my second best idea. I guess it’s back to reading the book,” Otto said.

“Yeah, anyway, I even need to pick up the book I left at the library. I wanted to wait until she was—”

There was a loud crack and a boom among the forest beside the road. Otto pointed through the windshield.

“Look out! It’s fall—!” 

Gerald yanked the steering wheel to the left, slinging them wildly in the car. There was a terrifying screech of the tires, and a deep smash. In an instant, they were stopped and facing the way they had just been driving. Blocking the road, only feet before them, was a thick, old tree. Its trunk was split and its orange autumn leaves were smattered all over the paved road—even on the car’s hood and windshield.

The pair panted. Their mouths open and eyes wide. They stared at what might have just killed them.

“Oh, shit!” Gerald wheezed. “Did that just happen or am I dreaming?” 

“We were nearly …”

“Mm-hmm.” Gerald’s hands still were squeezing the steering wheel. His knuckles were white.

Neither spoke the rest of the trip back to campus. That night, Gerald lay on his narrow bed, staring at the ceiling. A detailed image of the fallen tree was stamped on his mind. Along with that image, the strong winds and thunderstorm through the night kept him awake. The rain pelted his window and a tree branch scraped against it. The winds and the fallen tree. He thought of Uncle Buzz and what he could never figure out about his wife and the strong winds this time of year.

All the next day, he was exhausted, but, late that evening, he went to the library to get the book he had left behind.

He walked into the large, quiet room. The place had a sense of an apparition. Dark corners. A black curtain covering the ceiling. He thought the librarians were prepping for a Halloween party for the kids or simply playing up the autumn season.

Through the large windows of the librarian’s office, he saw Ms. Duncan. She came to the front desk.

Gerald noticed the whites of her eyes were bloodshot as if she had allergies or had been crying.

“Need anything?” she asked.

“These storms have been bad. They’re worse than I have seen before.” He held up his wet ball cap. “Drenched. And it was almost blown off my head.”

“Bad storms, very—” She took in a deep breath. “—very bad.”

Gerald studied the unsteadiness that she did not typically have. She wore the same droopy vanilla sweater. He noticed her fingers were reddened—almost frostbite-red.

“You, um … you left a book here the other day. I kept it for you.” Ms. Duncan handed it to him.

Her hand looked shivering as if she was really cold.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “You seem like … never mind.” 

“Fine, but just like you said, this weather is affecting me. I can’t keep my attention on my work. I want to run crazy.” She patted her chest as if breathing heavily.

“Has it happened before?” he asked. He riffled the corners of the book’s pages nonchalantly.

“Not in a long time. When I was young.”

Uncle Buzz’s comments came to mind. The winds. An unsettled woman.

Gerald glanced to the ceiling again. “Is it darker in here than normal? I get this weird vibe.”

He watched Ms. Duncan run her eyes over the rows of bookshelves, but she did not glance at the ceiling, where Gerald felt the dark heaviness. She seemed to keep her eyes from looking.

He pointed. “See anything up there? Putting up some decorations?”

Ms. Duncan only looked directly at him. “Nothing, no, nope, nothing is weird to me.”

He nodded but decided to poke around.

“I need to do a search for a topic. I wondered if any books come to mind about something called ‘Zulmanu’?”

Ms. Duncan took in a quick breath when he said that name. “Nope, never heard of it, no.”

“Mind if I do some database searches?”

“Well, I guess.” She checked her thin wristwatch. “I guess you have time.”

“Zulmanu, that’s the name. I have trouble remembering it.” So she could hear it, he repeated the name. “Zulmanu.”

Miraculously, when he said it, the curtain above seemed to whisk away, disappear. The large room was brighter. The interior lights were warmer.

As he walked to the computers, he glanced back at the lovely librarian. Her eyes were on him. They were fierce and piercing. Miffed, maybe. Vinegary.

He sat at an outdated monitor. He typed Zulmanu.

A light above the bookshelves flickered and went dark.

Gerald pressed Enter on the keyboard. Another library light flickered and went dark.

He wasn’t so much concerned about what the computer uncovered.

Sorry, no entries were found for “Zulmanu”

Gerald sat back in his chair. He rubbed his fingers over his chin.

Unsuspectedly, he jumped when two hands slid over each of his shoulders and around the base of his neck.

“Can you help me … with the lights?” Ms. Duncan asked, followed by a quick breath.

Gerald stiffened. He remained steady, staring at the gleaming computer screen.

Her hands were heavy and were not friendly. They were hot.

Her hands stayed on him but then began to massage.

“Help?” His voice cracked. His heart was speed-beating, and his eyes unblinking. He gathered enough breath to ask again. “Help with?”

Her hands slid away, snake-like, and off of him.

“The lights. They just went out.”

He heard her swallow and pull in a chest full of air.

Panting. Uncle Buzz. Julia. Craziness. 

“Sure.” He pushed back his chair.

Ms. Duncan stood before him.

She obviously was not annoyed or wanting him to leave. He noticed her stretch her neck as if something was bothering her. A redness was rising up.

“The ladder is in the maintenance room by the heater.”

“I think, um, I know where it is,” Gerald said.

He rushed to the closet in the back of the library. He maneuvered the ladder through the door of the maintenance room. Even so, the ladder banged against the door frame.

He hauled it into the forever-long room of bookshelves.

Ms. Duncan waited under the first burned-out light. She was looking up. Gerald noticed the light was above the paranormal romance section.

As he returned with the ladder, he felt that same curtain or darkness—the odd presence—was overhead again, somewhere up high.

“Do you have a lightbulb to replace that one?” he asked the entranced librarian.

He snapped his fingers right in front of her face to draw her attention.

“A what?” She was confused by Gerald’s question.

“A new lightbulb. We need one to replace the other or there’s no point of going up.” Leaning against the ladder, he saw that her mind still was not focused on the light, changing it, or getting a new bulb.

“Are you okay?”

She pushed the sweater’s sleeves up her narrow arms. However, the sleeves slid right back down.

She pushed them up this time higher on her arm. They drooped again. Frustrated, she pulled off the sweater and threw it on the carpeted floor.

Gerald saw that the reddened skin on her neck covered her chest as well. Now her ears were turning too.

Her eyes ran up the ladder and toward the dark bulb.

“I’ll go up.” She spoke mindlessly, monotone.

She put her foot on the first rung. She wore her Birkenstocks and black socks.

Gerald touched her shoulder. “It’s a long way up—all the way to the top rung. I can—”

But she didn’t acknowledge him. She climbed and soon was higher than he was tall. However, she was staring at the ceiling, not the light.

Despite being concerned, he noticed he could see up her long, flimsy dress. She wore tiny panties that were caught awkwardly in her butt, likely from a long day of moving and shuffling.

“We need a lightbulb to replace this one,” she said from the top of the ladder.

“I told you that before.” Gerald shook his head. “Where are they?”

“Maintenance, uh, room.”

“All right. Be careful up there.”

She didn’t answer.

Gerald flicked on the light switch in the room and began to scrounge around on the shelves and inside boxes for a single bulb or a packet of them.

Unexpectedly, he heard a heavy clack at the door. It sounded the same as the dungeon-esque lock that he heard when Ms. Duncan had kicked him out of the library at closing the other night.

Gerald stood up and leaned his head to the left at the goofy tactic.

“Ms. Duncan,” he said flatly and rolled his eyes, “is this a game—locking me in here? I laughed, so now you can let me out. Game over.”

There was no answer.

He walked to the door and knocked. “And I told you that you need to be careful going up and down that ladder when no one’s there to help you. I don’t want you hurt.”

There still was no reply.

“Did you hear me, Ms. Duncan? Did you?”

He twisted the door handle. Locked.

He knocked again. “You can open the door now. The joke is over with, Ms. Duncan. … Ms. Duncan? Ms. Duncan!”

He put his ear against the door. “Hello?”

A dark shadow passed by, casting a darkness briefly under the door and onto his feet.

“Let me out!” he called. “Come on, please?” He pounded twice on the heavy, industrial door.

The darkness once again cast the shadow under the door and on his feet, but this time it didn’t move. It remained there.

Gerald heard an oddly husky voice.

“Is it you?”

It had to be Ms. Duncan. She was the only person in the library. He had never heard such a wanton tone from her.

“Yes, it’s me,” Gerald said. “I’m in here. You locked me in.”

“Do you want me on my knees?”

It sounded then as if Ms. Duncan gulped and struggled to restrain herself. Gerald couldn’t quite tell from what, though. He was confused. Yet, the thought of what she had said to him—being on her knees—flipped his mind. It erected him, despite his circumstance.

“Yes, definitely,” Gerald said. “But it’d be best if—”

“You’re what I’ve wanted for so long.”

“What, really?” Gerald pugged his nose at what she said, as if in disbelief.

“I’ve heard about you. I’ve searched … searched for you.”

“Um, there are no books about me.” Gerald gave a quick laugh at the absurd statement.

“I believe in you when no one else does. I really do.”

“I’ve been here the whole time. Believing wasn’t necessary,” Gerald said. However, his voice trailed off in greater confusion at what Ms. Duncan had said.

“Can I have you?” Ms. Duncan panted. “I need you.”

“If you let me out. I’ll tell you true, I’ve wanted you for so long. I mean no other—”

His voice was startled quiet by a long, aching groan. Ms. Duncan’s groan was guttural. It was uncivilized, as if roused from the depths of the first creation, from the fundamentals of natural procreation.

The door, which Gerald’s cheek was pressed against, rocked in rhythm. Then her groans became grunts due to thrusts. He heard her bared butt slap and a series of continual dead thuds against the door.

Ms. Duncan attempted to speak, to compliment, to encourage. Yet, she didn’t form the full words as thrusts jammed in her and her body banged against the closet door. She was left to mutter and mumble.

With the muttering, he could tell her mouth couldn’t close. She was feeling a sought-after pleasure. Gerald knew she was getting what she enjoyed.

He thought of the curtain in the library and what Uncle Buzz had said.

“Ms. … Ms. Duncan,” Gerald said through the door. “What are you …?”

Instead of answering, the librarian screamed, “Oh my god! Yes!”

Ms. Duncan huffed and gruffed. He heard a whine and then a collapse of the woman. She didn’t speak, and he was silent. There were only, on her part, intense pants that quickly evolved into gentle coos and whimpers.

Then a small whirlwind filled the maintenance room, making the copy paper and bookmarks fly up and spread everywhere. A box of cleaning supplies spilled over and a steel work shelf toppled onto him. It pinned him against the door.

He pushed it aside. The clang and crack echoed in the room. It smelled like bleach and Pine-Sol. There was the airy explosion of lightbulbs in a box.

The twirl stopped. Everything settled. And then the door unlocked.

He pushed it open and found the librarian flattened on the floor. She was breathing sweetly but was exhausted. Her right leg was askew and the left was straight. Her knees were rug-burned. The hem of her dress was higher than her waist. She was naked from the waist down. Her black panties were caught around her left ankle.

Her eyes opened. She smiled at seeing him.

“Come here.” She urged him with her finger. She was slow in body and in speech, as if exhausted.

He stood over her and reached out for her hands to lift her off the floor. But her hands, instead, tugged at the dress until her slender breasts appeared. She was braless.

“Put your mouth on them,” she said, rolling her fingers over her nipples and stretching the pink flesh.

Gladly, Gerald sucked on one while dallying with the other. Ms. Duncan cooed again and watched him move above her, attending to her weak body.

His tongue circled the long, oval areolas and his fingers drew lines from one breast to the other.

Meanwhile her hand drifted down the front to his pants. She covered his dick with her hand, cupping it against the heavy fabric of his slacks.

“You’re hard,” she said, speaking languidly although with a hint of surprise. “Because of me?”

Gerald took his mouth off of her. “Yes, always. You make me—”

She interrupted. “Help me up. Take me to the Paranormal Romance section.”

When up, she shook her panties off her ankle, as if it was a ball and chain.

In the section under the burnt-out light, Ms. Duncan passed between the bookshelves to a comfortable reading chair. She plopped down heavily.

She smiled wearily but had enough energy to peel open his pants. She bent down Gerald’s long erection. She flicked the very tip with her tongue. She flicked it against, like a cat getting milk from a bowl.

Gerald had enough of the flicks though. He grabbed her hair and shoved his dick through her lips.

Ms. Duncan heaved and gagged and her feet stamped on the floor at the deep and sudden thrust. Gerald held her hair tighter, dragging her warm mouth over his cock. She was working harder, although her fingers were digging into his legs to keep upright. Sloppy foam drooled over her lips and from the corners of her mouth. When she pulled off, his length was glistening in her spit.

He moved her off the chair and plopped into it. He grabbed her hips. She worked herself above him.

Gerald’s dick moved from the warm cove of the librarian’s mouth to her wet cunt.

Her pussy had him grimacing each time she rose and slammed down on him. He moaned and wailed as his fantasy fucked him. It went fast.

Suddenly, he shoved the heel of his hand in her back. He began to thrust upward wildly.

He paused stiff. He yelled out, letting it echo in the quiet place. Ms. Duncan fell into his lap. She flung a leg over the arm of the chair.

Gerald felt a warm stickiness drip onto his thigh. He realized what it was when Ms. Duncan moved. The woman on him pushed her finger into it. With a subtle twist at her waist, she shoved her long finger into Gerald’s mouth. He licked her finger clean. She offered him more. And he sucked hard to the point she giggled.

Soon, Gerald had an exhausted, unmoving woman resting on him. She only stared toward the ceiling. A smile was smeared over her face.

Gerald broke the silence.

“What happened against the door? Who were you with?”

“Love … a mystery …” Ms. Duncan said lethargically. “Someday … I may know.”

“I think I might.”

She gave a soft laugh. “I doubt it.”

Gerald saw the darkness hanging in the ceiling before it slithered away. The library became brighter and warmer.

The winds in Williston Falls calmed after that night. It was years before they rushed through the town.

Over the next weeks, Ms. Duncan was distant and comfortable around Gerald. She would dart her eyes. He thought her cheeks reddened when seeing him. She said very little when they had to interact. Gerald had hoped for more—even mere companionship. There was nothing. She wouldn’t allow it.

She worked at the Williston Falls Public Library for a few more months. She left for Chicago. She would not say more than that Williston Falls was too strange.

After getting the news of her leaving, Gerald urged her, “Come back and visit in the autumn sometime.”