Her family forbid their relationship from continuing. But she was of her own mind, as determined as he was for them to be with each other. They decided to escape, elope together. They could not be married, but they set a day, on which he gave her a ring and she changed her name by deed poll to make it seem to all who cared to ask that they were as married as the next couple. With these plans enacted they ran away and began their life together.

The age gap and his the childlessness of his previous marriage meant that starting a family was a priority for them. And almost exactly a year from their “marriage”, they had a daughter, who became all she and particular he had ever wished for, the true apple of his eye. Their happiness was such that they gave her Joy as one of her given names. These were happy times, he worked, suddenly with a renewed enthusiasm for his career and working life. To provide for his wife and daughter was all the motivation he needed. They had a plan to have several more children and expand the family as soon as was practical.

Unfortunately, the next attempt ended in a miscarriage. This was followed by one of the darkest periods of anyone’s life. They had a baby boy, they christened him, Charles. But things were not good, the baby struggled for life in the early days, and sadly at three weeks old, he passed away and left the couple with unimaginable grief to cope with. Following these dark days, with the joy from the daughter they decided to try again. But, once more the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. They were about to give up at this point.

He wasn’t so sure, but she decided to give it one more try. She became pregnant once again. No miscarriage, but the pregnancy was difficult, she was confined to bed, and as the months past the doctors became concerned, and finally decided 5 weeks prematurely to take matters into their own hands and carry out a caesarian. A baby boy was born, in the nick of time, as they found the fallopian cord wrapped around his neck and tightening with every passing moment. He was a delicate baby and had to spend the early weeks in an incubator, but he survived.

The day they brought their son home was surely one of the happiest of their lives, and their daughter, by now nearly five years old, held the tiny baby in her arms on the car ride home. The effort and emotional cost had been enormous but they had their family complete at last.

With a happy, growing family, more good news followed. He finally secured his divorce and although her family were still not prepared to accept him, they were able to marry 7 years to the day after they had eloped. Another ceremony followed and they exchanged rings once again.

As the children grew, the couple were happy, but things were not entirely right in the family. The early signs were there. The daughter wanted to be more than a sibling, she didn’t take well to a new child in the house. As the boy grew she wanted more and more to control him, to control everyone in the house if she could.

There were ups and downs for the couple, she had problems following the pregnancies and had a hysterectomy to clear up any danger of worse problems to follow. They embarked on ambitious ideas of building their own home. They completed their first in 1968, and their second in 1971. Gaining a measure of financial security and stability for them and their family.

As the daughter grew, the signs were there, she took to stealing from the pantry, the special treats that were reserved for all the family. If she wanted them, she took them. Her mother tried to admonish her, but her father could see no wrong, and always excused the things she did. Her attempts at putting her brother in his place didn’t go well either, he had his own mind, he had a strong will of his own. She resorted to violence and bullying and intimidating him. Never a friend, if he wasn’t doing what she wanted she was always his enemy.

There were more problems for the couple, he developed serious health problems of his own. A series of heart attacks, seeming to put him at deaths door at one point shook the family to its core. Where would it end, their financial security didn’t seem so certain now. There followed difficult years for everyone in the family, culminating in the unavoidable decision for the mother to give up housewife role and return to work just to keep the family afloat for as long as she could. She went to night school, and before long found herself work as a secretary. Single handedly she saved the family.

The daughter who had revelled in the added responsibility she had been given in these troublesome years became a growing teenager and took it upon herself to do whatever she chose no matter what. The bullying and threatening of  her brother continued, especially after school when there wasn’t a parent to supervise. She started smoking at 12, had a steady stream of boyfriends making their way in and out of the house over the garden wall. She always left her brother in fear under sentence of penance should he ever tell on any of her misdemeanors. Meal times in the household that had formerly been happier times, became battlegrounds where everyone began to rage at everyone else, at the heart of which was the selfish, controlling daughter  with the irrational and explosive temper manipulating everyone and in particular her father at the expense of all others.

Her school work fell away at the same time as her behaviour deteriorated. She scraped her way into sixth form college, but by now her mind was incapable of such discipline.  Her social life exploded, the boys in her life multiplied, she came and went when she left. She used the house as a hotel and her parents as her servants, giving nothing back. However, being the apple of her father’s eye she was never once reigned in, he worshiped her for all her selfishness. The daughter knew whatever happened her father would bail her out. The mother took to caring more for the boy, she could not come between her husband and his blindness to his daughter.

On becoming 18 the daughter inherited a tidy sum of money from her grandfather, whom she had rarely met, but nonetheless he had left money for all his grandchildren. She immediately proposed to buy herself a sports car. The mother was totally set against it, even if she could afford to buy it she could not afford to run it. It was madness. But yet again the father pandered to his daughters desires. Terrible arguments ensued, causing a great rift between the parents, but ultimately the mother failed to stop it. She bought the car, she added it to her lifestyle of money, men, parties and selfishness. Within 6 months however she was forced to sell it on, just as her mother had predicted she could not afford to run the car, and with money still being tight within the family fortunately her husband could not bail her out financially.

Undaunted, the by now young girl continued on her wayward path. She failed all but one of her A Levels, scraping a pass in just one. Sobbing yet again to her father at the unfairness and inexplicability of it. Her boyfriends had now changed into man friends, and as ever there was a multitude of them. She brought home married men from amongst the family’s neighbours, she went to married men’s houses. She had no morals, and she tempted all she could, with not a thought for the consequences for the paths she crossed. She really began her trail of destruction and damage to all who came across her in life.

Through a family friend, a real job was found for her at a large insurance company.  Finally with an income, she moved out to the relief of everyone, even her father. She could now expand her lifestyle as she chose, even if it meant returning home for washing and regular meals.

By now driving a less powerful, second hand car that had been her parents, after one evening of partying and such like. In a fit of rage she drove off like mad woman, and crashed the car destroying it in an isolated spot. Through either luck or judgement, the police were not involved until the next day, and she escaped any further punishment or analysis of her condition. Of course in those days, drunk driving was not looked on as it is today.

Her job didn’t last long, with an element of further education involved she was never going to stick at it. She found herself a job with a sales company, and in a typical flit, suddenly moved 40 miles away, again enlisting the help of her parents in setting up home for her. She was still however, a regular visitor and manipulator at her family home, returning for her washing, and to continue her partying wherever and with whoever she could. Unless, that is that she got a better offer, and many was the occasion the family would be expecting her to arrive only for her to fail to appear without word or apology.

A few years passed, and she continued her life of sleeping with whoever she chose, as long as whoever she was with maintained her as the centre of attention for however long or short. As soon as the light faded, she would move on to her next victim. She was however, quite successful as a sales consultant, and began to forge a career for herself. It was at one sales conference she might a guy from hundreds of miles away who she really took a shine too.

Her mother always referred to him as the “Pool Attendant”, seeing as he had just quit that “career” to begin one for himself in sales. He was a genuine charmer, physically impressive and most importantly for the daughter, he had a poor education. Unlike in her own family unit, in him she found someone who couldn’t outwit and out think her. Within days, she had quit her flat and had moved in with him two hundred miles away. She was going to make him into a successful sales consultant.

Finally, moving in with someone, seemed to give her life some stability. Although she was still sleeping with whoever she chose, she just believed that her new man didn’t notice, or perhaps didn’t care. It was true to say, however that she was able to set him on his way to a successful career. As they both prospered in sales, they earned more money and were able to trade up their houses, seemingly ever more successful and wealthy.

Her mother had really succeeded in her own right, not only had she saved the family but she had carved a career for herself as a P.A. in a large company. She too was well paid, and her husband who had somehow survived only worked part time and then was able to retire altogther. Similarly, by now her brother was happy, successful and married and had managed to create a life for himself away from his sister. The daughter also noticed all of her former friends had married, she was the odd one out. She took action and asked her man to marry her. They finally married 8 years after getting together. Her father, who although still seeing her as the apple of his eye, told her mother, “at least she isn’t our responsibility any more”. Already pregnant at this time, she suffered a miscarriage during the honeymoon, which according to her mother was no surprise considering the schedule of jet skiing, dancing and partying that ensued on the trip.

She decided children were her next thing, despite the miscarriage, and the “happy” couple struck a deal that she would bring up the children and he would make the money. By now he had become very successful in terms of sales earnings in his own right. She set her heart on a daughter for herself and got to work. She gave birth to a boy, not disappointed she soon anointed him as the golden child. Barely more than a year later, she again gave birth to a boy. Two boys, no girl. Babies were her speciality, a time of her children’s life she said herself she enjoyed the most. This was certainly helped by leaving her husband at home and taking the regular 400 mile round trips to her parents house, where she could leave the babies with her parents while she went out shopping and partying.

Around this time, her father died, leaving the greatest hole imaginable in her mother’s life. For her mother, life was never to be the same again, the light in her life went out. Her 40 year love affair was over, and she was left to make the most of whatever years she had left herself. This seemed to give her daughter added influence, and seeing as her son seemed to have a happy and stable life, she chose to make herself available to continue serving her daughter as she chose.

The daughter tried again for a girl, and little more than 3 years since beginning, she was the parent to 3 young boys. And now, it didn’t help that soon after her brother fathered a baby girl.

I am trying to make you feel everything you want to feel. Do you believe in me?

I love holding your hair taut like this, I can feel the connection it makes. Our connection. The tension enough so it pulls your head back just slightly, but it gives me the control you want to give me. I don’t need to see the smile on your face, a smile that would tell me you are on the precipice of pain. That is where you need to be.

I have something more for you. For us. In fact we have so much more to explore, now that I have your naked body here for me. I am going to release you for a moment, let that beautiful hair of yours fall across your neck and shoulders. The fine strands are spraying out, enhancing your beauty.

Never enough.

How are your senses? Elevated? What can you hear? Something is running through my fingers. It feels good, soon it will be a part of you, soon it will be connecting us. Let me give you a sensation. Can you feel that on your back? Flicking across it, how about lower, flicking, and whipping a little across your wide ass. Let me feather those curves. Do you know what it is?

Do you want it? Do you want it enough?

Let me make a little loop, and then I can grasp that mane of your silky hair once more. Slip it through the loop, pull it tight. Pulling it. You like that? You like the way I can pull your head back with the merest tug on the rope? I know you do. One hand has the rope wrapped around it, sensitive to the tension in the rope connecting us, my other hand is exploring the fleshy, soft curves of you again.

I have more.

The path tipped forward suddenly and I had to stretch out my arms to prevent myself from losing my balance. At the same moment my shoes started to slide on the now sloping path. I had no grip and felt myself slipping downwards. Like a rollercoaster I picked up speed, and I was soon hurtling along. Anyone who knows me, knows I have quite a poor sense of balance and so the sensation of gliding in and out of curves to the left and right was a rather enjoyable and new experience for me. It was like skateboarding or snow boarding down a magic path that only appeared a few metres before you at a time. It felt great. I was a natural at this, feeling the curves before I entered them, speeding out of them. Gradually, the pitch of the path was gradually steepening, with my speed increasing, but I had no difficulty in raising my skills to cope with it. I could do tricks to. Glide on one foot, make a jump, nail a 360˚. Though eventually the path became so steep that it was almost vertical. I was going down into nothingness at terminal velocity.

I could hear the white rabbit, “Hey Andre! Hey Andre! Hey Andre!” Over and over echoing in my head, almost chanting in my ears but I couldn’t see it anywhere. I couldn’t see anything at this speed.

My speed kept increasing and increasing, I was moving straight down at an incredible speed. Until suddenly, I could see the path ahead sweeping up into a ramp where it abruptly ended and I was going to be catapulted forwards and upwards like a ski jumper. Preparing myself as best I could from my memories of those skinny jumper in the Winter Olympics, I crouched slightly, arms parallel and backwards, and as I reached the end of the path jumped from the knees.

There was a flash. Whiteness. I felt something surge through my body as I again passed from one place to another. My brain scrambled into pieces as it tried to make sense of what was happening. I tumbled to the ground and found myself, I was panting for breath, and resting on my haunches on a pavement.

“Hey Andre!” the rabbit said, and it started thumping the ground with its feet, and then it hopped off into the nearby high grasses and bushes.

The rabbit had been human sized I should add, and it filled me with a certain amount of fear. I half expected to see myself wearing a blue dress with a white pinafore over the top of it.

It soon hopped back into view, like an annoying child trying to get attention, showing off around me. And it repeatedly shouted, “hey Andre!” in what seemed an ever more sinister way. It was kind of hypnotizing and gradually the rabbit flattened the grass and bushes near to me, giving me the feeling that I was becoming more and more exposed. Though, to what I wasn’t sure. As the bushes were being crushed by the bouncing rabbit, the sky above me was turning grey, a menacing grey, the kind of which tells you a storm could be brewing. The rabbit happily kept bouncing as the sky darkened above me.

I knew I needed to take control, the rabbit was controlling matters not me, while my attention was drawn to the rabbit something about me was being eroded. Even though I knew I must be the one creating all this, I didn’t like what was happening. Was I being manipulated? I needed to regain my self-control and create something better for myself. I still needed to think it out of here, because the rabbit was somehow suffocating my thought processes. I breathed deeply, I blinked deliberately, the sky was black but at least the air was clean and fresh with a delicate forest pine like scent. I looked ahead, trying to shut out the rabbit as best I could. I started walking again as I had when I first entered this reality.

The further I walked and the more I shut out the rabbit the further away it went from me, and although the grasses and bushes remained flattened, the sky did begin to lighten. Soon enough, the rabbit was a rare sight, and merely only every now and then I saw it rabbit bouncing high out of the far bushes it hadn’t yet squashed, making a skipping, yippee sound and a distant, “hey Andre!” as it went. I felt myself become free again. Somehow the rabbit wasn’t a good thing, perhaps it was a kind of contamination or a manifestation of a reality I didn’t want. As this thought came to me, I started walking faster and immediately the dead grasses and bushes seemed to fade away. A new and totally different creation was forming, and forming fast. A smooth, mirror of a path was now under my feet. I was wearing pristine, white trainers, I became aware of my physical presence again, and I was dressed all in white.

All plant life was gone and with it the sounds of the forest. The rabbit was in the far, far distance now, a distant, bouncing speck on the horizon, and it was just my white self and the mirror path stretching out in front of me. I steadied my pace to a methodical stride and wondered where this was all going.

There was a reception committee waiting for him, Dave was there chatting with Dominique and Lorraine.

“Lucas!!!!” they all said at once, beaming grins on their faces.

“Tell all,” said Lorraine flicking her swath of thick, blonde hair from one side of shoulders to the other. Lucas wasn’t a big fan of Lorraine. Dominique wasn’t so bad but sufffered from being Lorraine’s constant sidekick.

Lucas didn’t bother to reply, instead he gave them a furtive glance and poured himself a big mug of French Vanilla, a drink he had at first found pretty disgusting, and if he was honest, his opinion of it hadn’t improved much over the three years he had worked here. However, he wasn’t touching the decaf. and the supposed 100% Colombian was as weak as dishwater. No milk and no sugar, he just let the black liquid slosh around his mouth as he leaned back against the table top wondering what on earth was going to happen next in his life.

“Lucas!” said Dave. He was almost hopping with excitement. “Come on! That was quite a show yesterday.”

Lucas nodded.

“Well, are you going to tell or,” Lorraine paused, “not?”

Lucas told them there was nothing to tell, he lied and said that he couldn’t remember a thing about what had happened after leaving the office. He said it was just a dream. Well a dream of sorts. Dave told him he was crazy, everyone saw the five of them come and take him away, he wasn’t going to get away with it that easy.

“Listen I wish I could tell you more. I don’t know what happened myself. I don’t know who they were. I don’t know why they came. I don’t know where they took me. And I don’t remember anything up until I woke up this morning alone in my apartment.”

Lorraine and Dominique just gave him a look, the look of I don’t believe you. Dave poured himself a second cup of 100% Colombian, plopped in two sugars, gave it a stir and seemed to be contemplating his next move. He took a couple of sips and everyone let the silence hang there for a disturbingly long time. Lucas turned to leave.

“O.K. Lucas. I see where you are coming from,” said Dave, “You want to keep it to yourself. I understand that. That’s normal.” He raised the palms of his hands in a non confrontational way and then added, “but you have to realise, people are talking. Your private life is big news round these partitions now, people are going to find out one way or another. I’m just saying that’s all.”

Lorraine and Dominique were nodding, and smiling very scary smiles.

With that, Lucas said, “thanks Dave. Thanks all of you. I’ll keep you posted as soon as I remember anything. You will be the first to know, alright?” He left for the relative sanctity of his office space.

He tried to keep his head down all morning, sorting out the deal he had conducted on the phone with the man from Perugia yesterday was going to be enough to keep him busy. Thank God it had all been verbal, as soon as the Italians get back from lunch he was going to call and renegotiate it. As he fiddled and fuddled with his accounts he often heard less than whispering voices rise and fall as they passed his partition.

“Just who were they? How old do you think they were? What kind of ac-tiv-i-ty is he involved in? Will they show again? Frank was hopping mad you know. Is he doing something illegal?”

His face was burning, he was asking himself these questions as well. Just what was he mixed up in, and why the hell did he know as little about it as everyone else?” Clearly, right at the very top of his priority list would be to find these girls again, or at least to find out what happened. Had they really taken him away from this dingy office, had he really been serenaded in their convertible and had they then taken him for a near romantic stroll in the long grass? Had they not stroked and caressed his face? Perhaps, he thought, something did happen yesterday, but not all of it, they took him away, got him drunk, or maybe spiked something he drank, and he had somehow staggered home and dreamt the rest of it? But there was so little he remembered that seemed plausible. It was all to confusing to make head nor tail of.

As the morning wore on, things calmed down a little and he was beginning to feel it was on some level possible that it had been nothing more than a bad or fantastically brilliant dream after all. And as he made his way out to the sandwich bar down the road. He was almost able to believe they had never existed, though he wasn’t sure that was what he really wanted to believe.

He was keeping himself to himself in a mostly subconscious way and not taking notice of anything for fear of catching the eye of anyone, particularly anyone from the office. He turned the corner to where the sandwich bar was located when…

“Looooo-ca!”

He nearly walked straight into the five of them who were lined up and blocking the whole pavement. There they were in the same order, the sky-blue Tyche, the pink Hebe, the golden brown Eleos, the red Kakia and the violet Epione.

He almost passed out there and then.

He felt his eyelids grow heavy under the warm hand of Tyche as she stroked his forehead, his body was aching, and he was feeling himself drifting away from here. He wanted to sleep, but he also wanted to stay awake to take all this in. To fight it, he opened his eyes as wide as he could, but it was only momentary, before he had realised his eyelids were weighing down again and his eyes were closing. He could feel Tyche’s palm on his forehead, he could still feel his hand held tightly by the girls, but he was losing consciousness with every second.

He woke up, opening his eyes to a familiar scene. His dark red drapes with the cream stripe, the aluminium base of his bedside light, a glass of half drunk water, an untidy pile of clothes, and his digital alarm clock’s bright red display. He was at home. To say that a massive wave of disappointment swept over him would be something of an understatement, as the realisation hit him of what had passed the previous day had in fact been merely a single night’s dream. He closed his eyes again, with almost a forlorn hope of returning to his five goddesses, but to no avail.

“Damn it!” he shouted out loud.

Squinting in the half light he took a second look at the display on his alarm clock. It read 7:35AM. He had to leave for work in twenty five minutes. He threw off his covers and swung his legs out of bed.

He arrived at work fifteen minutes late, cutting a rather sad figure, he sloped in past Janie the receptionist, trying to keep a low profile. If he had hoped to sneak in unnoticed, he was out of luck.

“So?” she said. But Lucas was either too dazed to hear, or just assumed she was talking to someone else, because he kept on walking.

“Lucas!” she shouted, waking him from his stupor in double quick time. She could command an army that girl.

“What?”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So what happened. You leave the office at 2.15 in the company of five,” she paused at this point, unsure of what word to use, “women. And don’t reappear for the rest of the day. You really think you can just brush that kind of behaviour under the carpet.”

Lucas is taking this in, wondering what to say, when a door opens briskly to his right. Out steps Lucas’ direct report manager, middle aged, mid-life, middle living, Frank.

“Lucas. A word,” he says beckoning him into his little office.

Lucas is computing as fast as he can, the presence of Frank is a mere speck on his awareness horizon.

It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream!!! That’s all and everything he is thinking. He breaks out into a huge smile.

“Lucas! What’s so funny? Come into my office, I must have a word with you!”

Lucas sees Frank clearly for the first time, but he is now delirious in his happiness anyway as he goes into the office. Frank closes the door behind him. They remain standing.

“I’ll make this brief. Your,” he pauses, “visitors. Yesterday.”

Lucas nods and tries to suppress his happiness, visually at least.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t make a habit of bringing your personal life into the office.”

“Yes. Understood Frank.” Lucas says, trying to look serious.

“On this occasion, I’m not going to ask you for an explanation. Despite the fact that for a whole,” as Frank says whole his face kind of explodes into a spherical ball as if to emphasis the gravity of the situation, “afternoon’s unexplained absence. But, that was your one indiscretion. You will obviously lose half a days holiday as a result. And I want your assurance that it won’t happen again.”

“It won’t happen again Frank.”

“See that it doesn’t, there’s a good fellow.” Frank kind of smiles, man management is not really is strong point, despite his position.

With that, Lucas left Frank’s office. He closed the door behind him and had to lean against it to steady himself, his head was in such a spin. Fortunately, Janie was by now taking a call, and despite her expansive efforts at sign language wanting Lucas to hang around, he was in no state for explanations. Janie’s eyes blazed wide as he wandered off to find his desk.

He fired up his computer and saw the half finished scribbled notes from his conversation yesterday with his supplier from Perugia. He really didn’t feel like working, so while his computer clunked, clanked and flashed various screens of nonsense as it tried to get itself going, Lucas went to the kitchen to get himself a coffee.

It was barely perceptible at first, like the first moments of dawn breaking. Merely a slight fading in the blackness into a tinge of grey. But also like the sun rising, soon the landscape around me was lighting up and changing rapidly. A new path was appearing beneath my feet, as it did so, I could feel my feet hitting the earth with each stride and at once my legs started to feel heavier. I was rapidly re-entering an earthly experience. I could feel my breathing too and I was starting to pant from the exertions of running.

There were sounds too, my feet were pounding the earth, I could hear the leaves blowing and twigs cracking under my feet. Trees were sprouting and shooting up into the air, two hundred years growth compressed into a few seconds. In no time at all a complete forest was surrounding me, the path had become narrow and was bordered by thick undergrowth. My breathing grew heavy with the exertion and I was feeling the lactic acid in my legs building and I was feeling pain. I had to slow down. No longer the Olympic athlete, I was back to the real, less than athletic me.

I was sweating all over and it was obvious I couldn’t keep up running like that. It seemed futile in any case. Where was I running to? I slowed to a brisk walk and almost immediately to a slow walk, and then I stopped completely. I stood still so I could look and listen. There was a pretty thick and high undergrowth surrounding me, I only had a barely perceptible path left to stand on. I could hear plenty; animal sounds, birds calling, rustling in the undergrowth, I even thought I could hear voices.

Then I heard a loud noise in the leaves. My heart was pounding inside me, it was getting nearer. Something was approaching me. Should I hide? Too late already. The leaves shook to my left and out sprang a very large, rabbit like creature. I say rabbit like, it’s hard to say really. Then it spoke to me.

The rabbit spoke to me.