Day 7

No trip to the great outdoors would be complete without a bonfire.

There was a fire pit at the end of a trail a short distance away from the lakehouse. Three fallen logs had been dragged in a semicircle around the charred ring of stones, serving as makeshift benches. When sitting in the clearing during the day, one could barely make out the glint of the lake’s surface through the trees. At night, however, the darkness was absolute.

Caleb brought down the ingredients for s’mores, while Avery dragged a bucket of water down the path for extinguishing the fire at the end of the night. Suong and Jonah gathered some sticks and logs to burn, then Zach lit the kindling. They all stood and watched as the fire spread to the wood and grew to a magnificent size.

“This is the life,” Suong sighed, stabbing a marshmallow on the end of her metal skewer. She stuck it directly in the blaze, then pulled it out once it caught. She held it aloft and stared as it burned for a few moments before blowing it out, leaving a charred black husk. She popped it into her mouth, not even bothering with the chocolate and graham crackers. “Mmmm.”

Caleb watched her, scandalized. His own marshmallow, which he’d been rotating with clockwork precision for the last few minutes, was a perfect golden brown. Jonah sat next to him and ate one directly off the skewer, which was slightly overdone on one side.

Zach stuck three marshmallows on the end of his stick and waved them over the fire. “Suong, that’s literally just charcoal.”

“Tasty charcoal,” she replied. She skewered another and shoved it into the heart of the blaze.

Avery was trying and failing not to get sticky. Carefully, she pulled her marshmallow from the fire and squashed it between two graham crackers and a piece of chocolate. She shimmied it off her skewer and slowly brought it up to her mouth.

Crunch. As soon as she took a bite, sugary goop oozed out the back of the graham cracker sandwich and dribbled on her chest. “Oh, shoot,” she sighed. She scooped up as much of the mess as she could and put it back on her s’more. “Ugh. So much for not making a mess.”

“I can help,” Suong said, after swallowing her second burn victim. She set her stick aside and crouched down next to Avery, licking the sugar off her bare skin.

Avery sighed with pleasure as Suong’s tongue circled her nipple. It wasn’t really helping her get less sticky, and after a certain point Avery began to suspect Suong might just enjoy licking her titties. but it was the thought that counted. Besides, it felt nice. She leaned back and let Suong work her magic.

“You know what we should do?” Zach said. One of his marshmallows slid off his stick and into the fire with a splat, but he didn’t seem to notice. He waggled his eyebrows mysteriously. “Tell spoooooooky stories.”

Jonah brightened. “I can go first!” He ran his hand up and down his newly acquired boyfriend’s bare thigh. Caleb wrapped his arm around the other boy, pulling him tight.

Avery suppressed an eye roll. All day those two had been acting nauseatingly lovey-dovey towards each other, finding any excuse to kiss or cuddle in front of everyone. Which was cute, but a bit overbearing. Though, truth be told, she’d been acting much the same towards Suong and Zach, so maybe she could give Caleb and Jonah a pass. Pots and kettles, and all that.

“A woman was alone in her home one evening,” Jonah began, his voice taking on a haunting tone, “when she heard a knock at the door…”

“…And the call…was coming from inside the house!!!”

Crickets.

Suong yawned. “Lame.”

“Oh, like your story was any better,” Zach said. “A serial killer who eats people’s fingers isn’t scary. It’s gross.”

“Still don’t understand why you all didn’t like mine,” Caleb said, slightly miffed. “It’s a true story, after all.”

“Caleb, I’m sure ‘seeing a hitchhiker at night and thinking he was a ghost’ was a very frightening experience for you, but it’s not exactly the sort of thing that strikes fear into the hearts of those who hear about it second-hand,” Suong said. “Especially not with your delivery.”

Caleb looked wounded. “What’s wrong with my delivery?” he muttered, tugging on his partner’s hair. After Jonah had finished telling his story, he’d gotten down on his knees in front of Caleb, and was now sucking the other boy off with a blissed-out expression on his face.

Only Avery had yet to offer a spooky tale to the fire. “You don’t need to tell one if you don’t want, Aves,” Suong said. “No pressure.”

“No, I’ve got one,” Avery said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Avery swallowed. Truth be told, she didn’t, but she felt like she did. She’d had this strange sense of unease over the last few days that came and went like a summer wind. A sense that something was out of place. Wrong. And that feeling had to be coming from somewhere, right? No smoke without fire. So Avery chased it round and round, spiralling down the mental rabbit hole.

“Once,” she began, “there was… a group of friends. On vacation. In a house by the lake.”

“Ooo, getting meta. I like it,” Jonah said, popping his lips off Caleb for just long enough to comment. Humming, he returned to his task. Caleb closed his eyes and sighed in pleasure.

Avery watched Jonah’s head bob up and down on Caleb’s cock, and her world tilted slightly. That’s not right, part of her mind screamed. She looked over at Zach, who was fucking Suong doggy-style against the log bench while still politely listening to Avery’s words. That’s not right either. She looked down and saw she was playing with her tits. Startled, she let her hands fall. “In the beginning, everything was normal,” she continued. “But then, one by one, each of them began acting… strange.”

She paused. The fire crackled. In the distance, crickets chirped, an eerie chorus to accompany their tales. The flames cast weird shadows against the trees, turning their fucking and sucking bodies into distorted, dancing shapes. The next part of the story was on the tip of her tongue–if only she could figure out what it was. She faltered. “It was–they were–”

Suddenly, something clicked inside her, and the words came rushing out.

“It happened slowly. Like boiling a frog. At first, the changes were innocent. Believable. Old lovers getting back together, strange dreams and fantasies. But then, things escalated.” Avery’s breath quickened. “The house, it whispered to them. It was in the food, the drink, the air, even the walls themselves. Suggestions. Prophecies. The house molded them. Shaped them. Made them pleasure each other, give in to hedonistic revelry. And they were none the wiser. Puppets on a string.”

As she spoke the memories of the past week resurfaced, hauntingly recontextualized. Why did I do that? Why did I think that was normal? What in the world is going on?!

“By the end of the first week, they were n-no longer the people they were when they arrived,” she continued, standing up and pacing around the fire. As she spoke, the others stopped their fornication, turning their attention solely on Avery’s increasingly panicked monologue. “They’d been r-replaced by parodies of themselves, creatures driven by base instincts, only able to fuck and s-suck and cum like animals.” She wrung her hands, distraught. “And the worst part was, it all felt so good! So good.” Her face turned dreamy for a second, but then she shook her head vigorously. “So good that even when one of them managed to snap out of it, it threatened to drag her back down. But she had to keep fighting, because it was the only way she could save herself and her friends. Don’t you see?!” she cried, whirling to face them. “It’s us. We’ve changed. The house changed us!”

Four blank pairs of eyes stared back at her.

Avery took one step away from the fire, then another. “You all–oh, God. I need to get out of here.”

She turned to run, but Zach was too fast. He lunged forward and grabbed her by the arm, so hard it almost hurt.

“Aves, you’re having a panic attack,” he warned, voice low and soothing. His back was to the fire, and so there was no reflection of its light in his eyes. “Come back here and let us calm you down.”

Part of Avery wanted to let him. To slip beneath the surface of the lake and let the last vestiges of her sanity drown. But she had to fight that impulse. She struggled against Zach’s grip, but he was much stronger than her. “Don’t you see? We’ve been brainwashed, this isn’t right–”

“Caleb, would you give me a hand?” Zach said. Caleb nodded vacantly and grabbed Avery’s other arm. Together, they dragged the smaller girl back to the campfire, where Jonah and Suong stood, their naked bodies underlit by the crackling flames. Their faces were eerily flat.

“She’s confused,” Jonah said, matter of factly. He bounced a skewer loosely in his hand, the end of which was still coated in blackened sugar. He let it fall to the forest floor, where it made a dull thump against the padded earth.

“She needs our help,” Suong announced. She pointed to a log bench in front of the fire. “Sit her there. Don’t let her go.”

Caleb and Zach pulled Avery down by her arms. She sat between them on the damp wood, body trembling. Suong and Jonah approached, flanking the fire.

“Please, you guys, you have to snap out of it,” Avery whimpered. She struggled against Zach and Caleb again, but still couldn’t break free from their grasp. “I–I’m barely holding on, I can’t… I feel myself slipping away…”

Jonah fell to his knees while Suong grabbed her chin. “Let us comfort you,” Suong said, and kissed her. At the same time, Jonah gave her pussy a long, slow lick.

Avery moaned and shook. “Please,” she begged. This time, she wasn’t sure if she was begging them to stop or keep going.

Caleb’s free hand stroked the length of her spine, while Zach’s traced her bare breasts. “Good girl. Isn’t that so much nicer than fighting?” Zach said. He leaned down and peppered her neck with kisses, then grabbed her tit and squeezed.

“Ngh… no…”

“Shhh,” Caleb whispered, gently biting the corner of her ear. “This is right. Let it happen. Give in.”

All four of her friends had that same glazed lack of expression on their faces. Like they were sleepwalking. Entranced.

This mobbing behavior…it’s a defense mechanism, the last rational part of Avery observed, with clinical detachment. A form of self-correction. If one sheep strays from the flock, the others are conditioned to shepherd it back. Clever, clever.

Not that knowing that fact would do her any good.

Jonah continued to eat Avery out, his skilled tongue relentless and firm, his curls damp with sweat and juices tickling her inner thighs. Involuntarily, her legs curled around the back of his neck, spurring him onward.

Avery’s limbs threatened to give out. She wanted so badly to relax, to lean in. And why shouldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be easier? To let yourself be carried away by love, to allow that energy to pass through you and between you? To become one, in body, mind, and soul?

Avery could tell those thoughts were not her own, but it was getting harder and harder to differentiate them from her own stream of consciousness. No. I can’t. I have to hold on…

Simultaneously, and without prior discussion, Caleb and Zach let go of her arms, their freed hands joining the fray in teasing her body. Avery didn’t move. Couldn’t move. It was too late. Too late, too late. I’m being dragged back down.

Slowly at first, and then with increasing eagerness, she began to return Suong’s kisses. A collective sigh reverberated through the five of them as Avery returned to the fold.

This was right. This was the world as it should be. The five of them, sharing freely. In communion.

Already, the memory of what had caused Avery’s adrenaline to spike was receding into the back of her mind. Why was I afraid? she wondered, buoyed aloft on a cloud of endorphins. This is perfect. This is right. She pawed at Caleb and Zach on either side of her until she found their cocks, and wrapped her hands around them. She loved the feeling of flesh stiffening under her touch, loved the tactile proof of the service she was providing.

“Mhr,” she moaned into Suong’s mouth. More.

She came with a shuddering gasp, but her friends weren’t done with her. She was picked up and moved like a ragdoll–she wasn’t even sure by whom–and positioned with her hands on the log bench, ass towards the fire.

Caleb’s cock slammed into her pussy, while Zach used her mouth like a fleshlight. Next to them, Jonah finger-fucked Suong with one hand while rubbing his clit with the other. Their bodies occasionally brushed against Avery’s as she was spitroasted, eliciting tingles of arousal wherever they made contact with her skin.

This is good. I want this. I need this.

Avery drooled around Zach’s member and did her best to accommodate the double sided pounding she was getting. Accept them. Receive them.

God, did she love cocks. Cocks were amazing. Pussies, too. And boobs, and asses, and lips, and thighs. But cocks were inside her right now, and so she loved them. Caleb’s was a different shape than Zach’s, but it felt just as good. She knew she’d happily spread her legs for either of them at any time. Jonah and Suong, too. Half-remembered fragments of her dreams flitted through her mind, and she shuddered in ecstasy. She’d have to buy them a strap-on to fuck her with. Maybe for their birthdays. Or hers. It was more a gift for herself, after all.

Avery came, and came, and came. She came until she was an overstimulated mess, but there was no stopping tonight. She needed to serve, needed to offer her body, needed to prove she wouldn’t stray again. And her friends used her until they physically couldn’t anymore.

By the time they all were satisfied, the flames had long since died. Avery made sure to pour the bucket of water on the smoldering embers before the five of them stumbled back to the house, legs shaking with fuck-drunk exhaustion. The smothered remains of the fire sizzled and hissed, and a cloud of steam billowed up from the pit, obscuring the stars in the night sky above.

Thus ended the first week at Lake Stillmind.