The Prisoner Of Shalott
By M Alford
Begun September 2008, finished November 2008
Synopsis: Some time after the events of Number One Crush, Bloom wakes up one day to find himself in bed with the Goddess. What does she want from him THIS time?
Rated R for sexual situations, violence, and language.
The chapter titles reflect verses from Tennyson's The Lady Of Shalott.
Lyric by Shakespears Sister.
Obligatory disclaimer: This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter One: A Curse Is On
You'd better hope and pray
that you wake one day
back in your own world...
He woke up one morning and found himself laying across from a face he didn’t recognize--at first.
Apparently he had picked up someone last night. That was cool. She was a little bigger than he liked them, a little chunkier... but sometimes that was a plus. As well as a plus size.
He blinked. Come to think of it, she did look slightly familiar... he tried to think back to last night. Where had he met her? A bar, or a club? He frowned... he’d stopped going to bars last year, though. And he was fairly sure he didn’t remember clubbing last night...
He sat up suddenly, realizing that he did not remember last night--at all. He realized this, in the same moment that he remembered the last time he’d woken up someplace not remembering how he got there--and at the same moment that he realized he knew who the stranger lying next to him in bed was.
He jumped to his feet, startled.
The room was not one he was familiar with, he saw as he stood upright. It looked to be the bedroom of a small apartment... or possibly the only room. The bed shared the same space with the television, the futon, and what looked to be the front door, locked by a slide chain.
He also noted the conspicuous lack of dizzy headache that he had grown used to waking up with, after a long night on the town. He had not been drinking last night. That did little to explain how he’d ended up in bed with a woman he would not have ordinarily approached unless he was at least a little soused. It also did not explain how she had found him again.
He sat down slowly on the bed, his brief fright abated, for the moment. Well... there was only one thing that could have happened, obviously. Just because he didn’t feel hung over didn’t mean he hadn’t partied last night. That was the only possible answer. He couldn’t remember where he’d been or how he’d gotten here. Wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before. As for her...
He sighed, looking down at her. Yes, he knew who she was. The fan he’d met at the con last year. The crazy fox with the sadistic, overactive imagination.
The Goddess.
Bloom, a.k.a. actor Geoffrey Bankblum, star of Vamp Season and Crisis Outpost and a thousand crap B-movies, had been in a violent car crash the previous year. He had fallen into a two-week coma--but he hadn’t known it at first. He had woken up in a boot camp filled with prisoners, men who were all at the beck and call of a Goddess--a supernaturally powerful being who regularly spirited them away for wild kinky sex, among other things. Bloom had been trapped there for what felt like lifetimes, suffering one bloody, painful death after another--actually fantasies crafted in his honor, by she who lay beside him in bed now.
He had eventually found his way out of her deranged realm, finally awaking from his coma, in the hospital. He had even met the so-called Goddess in the real world; last year at a convention for bad sci-fi shows. She’d turned out to be just another devoted fan... one who had somehow kidnapped his consciousness out of his comatose body. Her gory fantasies had only been the result of her rabid fangirl love for him. And after all, he was not really that badly off--for having been brutally slaughtered hundreds of times. He guessed he had forgiven her.
But enough to go home with her? Enough to sleep with her??
It wasn’t like she hadn’t had him already. Many times, in the multitude of beautiful guises she’d assumed in that other world. He would have thought that would be enough for her. Apparently not. What must have happened last night, during that drunken tear he didn’t remember having--she must have insinuated her way into his social circle, sneaked up close to him, and talked him into fulfilling her fantasy in real life. And he, being more than a little easy to persuade when he’d had a few, had granted her wish.
Well, what was done was done. Not like it had never happened before in the history of Hollywood. Now there was nothing to do but (politely) kick her to the curb, once she woke up. And if she turned up with an “accidental miracle” nine months from now (as so many of them set out to do), take every possible step to avoid a long, messy child support suit. They would believe his word over hers; that was just how the system worked. He hoped she’d had a good time last night, because that was the last free ride she was getting from this crush.
He didn’t relish being harsh. He had almost liked her, at that convention. But he knew more than one fellow actor who’d been jerked the wrong way through the court system after some groupie chick pulled this stunt. The Hills were full of unlucky schmuck character actors who’d been broadsided. Pun intended. Paying endless checks out to starstruck welfare moms, who then groomed their illegitimate kids for a lifetime of beauty pageants and reality TV show pilots as “Joe McStupidStar’s baby boy, every bit as talented as his daddy!!” If this was all the self-styled “Goddess” had been leading up to--especially after the months of living hell she’d put Bloom through in that far-off imaginary realm--
Well, to say he felt let down was putting it lightly.
Good, she was moving. Finally she was waking up. Best to get this over with quickly. “Hey, fox,” he called to her, quietly but firmly. “Wakey-wakey. I hope you know whose house we’re in, because I sure don’t.”
She blinked, grunting sleepily. A red crease from the pillow was indented into her puffy face, as she blinked her bleary eyes at him.
God, he’d tapped that last night. Well, at least the worst was over. “You know, last night was wonderful,” he lied through his teeth. “I had a really good time, but you’ve got to be getting along. Well--one of us does.” He scratched his head, still not recognizing this room. He could only guess it was her apartment and not a motel room of his.
She’d sat up wearily in the bed, looking as trashed as he would have expected himself to feel the morning after bingeing. She clearly didn’t want to get a move on. He hoped she wasn’t one of those who got all bitter and clingy the morning after. “Yeah, like I say, it was nice. Nice memory for you.” He hoped she got the implication there. “Something to tell your girlfriends about.” He stood up again, facing her as she sullenly made her way around the bed to his side. She hadn’t said a word so far. “Hey, no hard feelings, okay?”
She walked right into his chest. She blew right through him, her rumpled hair disappearing inside his torso.
Bloom felt every single pore on his body break out simultaneously in a feverish cold sweat. He could no longer breathe. There was something blocking the air on its way in--as if his lungs were filled with cement. He felt something squirming in his chest--like his heart was trying to worm its way out between his ribs. A cold-numb feeling like when his leg had gone to sleep for too long was flooding out from his sternum--up into his shoulders, down into his thighs. He felt something move him from the inside out--now he knew how a cow with a farmer’s hand up its ass felt. He saw his own right arm grasping the air over the back that was buried in his chest--his hand clasped the girl’s nightshirt, and Bloom watched in horrified amazement as his fingers appeared to sink into her back like she was gloopy mayonnaise. He was nearly numb head to toe now.
She pulled back suddenly, her chubby face becoming visible. Bloom let out a noise of unsurpassed relief, gasping air into his freshly empty lungs. His entire body was sopping with sweat. He had never felt anything so invasive in his life. Not even being eaten alive by a squid demon in her evil nightmare-land had been that bad!
He collapsed on the bed, his legs still numb, watching only sporadically as she turned away from him--apparently not even realizing she had stuck her head inside his fucking chest cavity! Bloom drew in a breath to ask her what the hell was going on, and he could only choke.
He could only watch as she went through her morning routine, never once acknowledging he was even there. She put herself together, dressed in modestly businesslike clothes, pulled a brush through her stringy brown hair. All the while he sat there coughing and sputtering on her bed, as she grabbed her purse, fumbled for her keys, muttered something to herself, and unlocked her apartment door.
Bloom had regained enough of his motor skills to jump to his feet. He wasn’t sure why but he knew he had to follow her. He had to get an answer. He had to make her talk to him.
Because if she didn’t talk to him--if she really had no idea he was sitting there, nearly dead after she had stuck her head inside his fucking chest cavity!! then there was only one viable reason. Only one explanation.
He was a ghost. People could only walk through you if you were a ghost. People could only ignore your presence and act like you weren’t there and stick their heads inside your fucking chest...! when you were a ghost.
Bloom finally regained control of his voice. “You--come back here!!” he belted out, the panic in his voice rattling off the close walls.
He leaped, literally leaped after her, just barely squeaking through before she shut the door on him. She put the key in the lock and locked her apartment door tight. She set off hobbling down the stairs, and Bloom dogged her steps, stuttering the whole way. He followed her right out to her car, parked in her space.
He stopped short of getting in the car with her. He could not squeeze in through the driver’s side door she opened. He did not dare attempt to... blow, phase, whatever it was called--THROUGH the metal and chrome of the car door. He had the horrible image of some of the metal and glass following him, becoming forever fused into his flesh.
Bloom stood there shuddering, his sweat-dampened skin clammy and cold in the morning wind that was blowing through the parking lot. He could only stand there and watch helplessly as her car, a rusty little Omni, pulled out of the space and took off down the road. Vanishing.
Chapter Two: No Loyal Knight Feedback
Obligatory disclaimer: This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
