The Talisman — Anna Austen Leigh

Okay, you are so not going to believe this. And I know I’m drunk. You’d have to be, if you’ve been through what I’ve been through. Yes, I’ve been at the whisky chasers. After the first two I gave up on the beer in between. So call me an unreliable narrator, or an alkie, or a beat-up too-far-gone piss-artist. But it is, really, all true.

No, you don’t have to believe me.

See this? No, I don’t know what the words mean. Something in Arabic. Don’t ask me. Probably magic.

This guy, this shambling old bum stumbling along Tottenham Court Road, shoved this in my hand. I wondered at first was he one of those Hare Krishnas or something, you know, it was something religious. Or he’d want a handout. No. He just stuck it in my hand and went.

I should have just dropped it. Would have saved me trouble. It intrigued me though, and I thought it might be worth something. I clutched it in my hand. It’s quite heavy, I thought.

Not many people around that time in the morning. I get into work about six thirty; gives me an hour and a half before the place opens. Just a black girl the other side of the road, quite attractive I suppose… Suddenly I knew what she was thinking.

No, don’t look at me like that. You think I’ve gone mad, don’t you? Think I’m some kind of a pervert. I’m telling you, I was inside her mind. I could see her girlfriend, naked, spread out, legs splayed, see her cunt, everything, the way she was thinking about it. Just that, like a flash, then my mind was clear again.

I felt a bit wobbly. Okay, though. I kept going, along Oxford Street, towards Marble Arch. It’s a good walk, that time in the morning.

Guy standing there, by the tube station, waiting for someone. Not that you’d usually notice, really, you know what I mean? You wouldn’t notice someone just standing there. But again, that sudden flash in my head, and I knew what he was waiting for. Images of jeans, zips, unzipping, cock, all in close up, hands fumbling, stroking, jerking, pulling. He looked at me as I passed and I tell you, I felt myself colouring up.

You needn’t look at me like that. I’m just saying what happened. It’s been a bad day.

When I got into the office, I took the thing out of my pocket, put it on the desk in front of me, took a good long look at it. It’s not gold. Don’t know what it is. Some kind of alloy I reckon. Looks like a football club key ring till you cotton on to the symbols.

No. That’s not the inside of a flower. Look, are you listening? Or what?

I kind of didn’t believe what I’d got. I knew what it is was doing to me, but I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I’m a lawyer. I think logically. When I’m not drunk, anyway. So was this some kind of telepathy device out of Roswell or the CIA or something? Come on, I don’t believe that shit, that’s fantasy stuff off the television. Or some kind of Arabian Nights’ Tales thing, genie in a bottle, abracadabra, bob’s your uncle?

This is the only kind of a genie in a bottle I believe in. Right.

Well, I thought, I could have fun with this. We have this graduate intern, very sweet, very cute, legs all the way up to … she’s quite bright, actually. But so sweet, in a My Little Pony kind of way. If I could get into her head, I thought.

Christ! I tell you. I did.

No! it was horrifying. Stallions with huge erections. Tentacles. Stallions with huge erections and tentacles. A forest of cocks waving in the wind. A field of mud, wriggling and writhing; I saw cocks growing out of the mud, like perverted tulips. Women with strap-ons burgeoning between their legs like sea anemones.

Even worse, I was getting hard. Standing there next to her. For fuck sake. Well what would you have done? I grabbed a file, and held it in front of my crotch till I could get out of the room.

No, I did not go straight to the gents for a wank.

No, I’m not sulking. I just think… that was pretty damn rude of you.

Go on? No, I’m not sure I want to talk to you any more.

No. Anyway, I was upset. I always thought she was so innocent.

I stuck the thing in my desk drawer and tried to forget about it. The post came. And a courier. He stank of sweat and lycra. And my mind opened up to men in masks, as if the Lone Ranger had taken over a fetich club; men in masks, women in thigh high leather boots, and then suddenly everything was blank except the plastic scream of flesh on PVC, the heat of breath inside a rubber mask.

I couldn’t turn the fucker off. I couldn’t get rid of it. It wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t stop.

I’m not shouting. Don’t tell me I’m shouting. Shut up!

I’ve had a hard day.

What? Oh. Yes. Yes, I will have another. Yes. Johnnie Walker’s fine.

Take a good look at it, if you like. Go on, pick it up. It won’t bite. It’s only a bit of metal, after all. You think I’ve just been telling you a story, don’t you? You think I’m just one of those losers you see on the street, they all tell you they used to be bigger than Microsoft, bigger than Michael Jackson, only then something happened and…

Well, if you want it, take it. Believe me. You’ll wish you hadn’t.

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Read Anna’s other sexy stories published on Every Night Erotica, here.

Anna Austen Leigh has already published two erotic novels, The Diligence de Lyon, an escapade set in the eighteenth century world of the Grand Tour, and Pilgrim for Love, a Chaucerian pilgrimage with a raunchy, happy ending. She also publishes on Smashwords, and is now working on an erotic romance set in the Napoleonic Wars. . You may find Anna here: http://erotic-history.blogspot.com.