Chapter 16: Fecundity

JessicaWith the final orgasm subsiding within me I placed the dildo into the sink and left the vibrator next to the sink. My body felt so warm and was slick with the sweat of the sexual exertion I had just done. I turned on the shower and let the water flow over my body. I slid down the shower wall and sat in the stream, just taking deep breaths and marveling at what I had just experienced. After sitting in the shower long enough I got up and cleaned myself up. My body was still sensitive to my touch, but I had work that needed to get done. I got out of the shower and threw on a soft robe that I had hanging in the bathroom. I wrapped my hair in a towel and headed back to my office. I gathered my notes and had my three possible leads to go on. What were the chances that one of these could be Hades? first contact with Earth? I wish that I had more to go on or that Persephone could better guide me. It didn?t matter, time was slipping away and every second could prove to be critical. I sat back at my computer and pulled up a new browser window. Might as well start at the top of the list. I began searching for more information about this man in Louisiana who had the squid god. I soon found some more articles further discussing him and began reading them. The man was named Harold and was quoted as saying his squid God wanted to save humanity. One of the articles discussed that the man had said that the God had appeared to him in his early twenties. It had taken him many years to come to terms with the responsibility of what this meant for him. The man went on to tell about how he formed a church and began writing about his God and the salvation it was offering. The article mentioned that it wasn?t until Harold was in his early thirties that he had begun this work. He said that it was a very obscure church but his God gave him faith and he knew his followers would come. The next article had been written a few years later after the church had experienced some growth. Several people believed in Harold?s preachings and joined. Many of these followers lived in the church itself which had been expanded several times by the work of its followers. According to Harold, the congregation was going strong and he had great faith in its continued growth. The next article addressed what came next for Harold. Allegations had come forth of abuses and assaults within the church. Harold was arrested shortly after and stood trial. A jury convicted him and he was sent to prison. The church and its followers disbanded immediately following this news.The final article was about Harold?s death in prison. The article also caught up with several former members of the church. Each member that was spoken with had said what a terrible mistake the church had been. A few gave accounts of their time within the church. None of their accounts in any way resembled Persephone. So Harold?s crazy cult church was off the list. He was dead and his church didn?t continue in any form after that. If they had been visited by a tentacled creature I couldn?t imagine a world where they wouldn?t have told the reporters about it. The next was the man in Michigan bestowing eternal bliss upon his followers. I sifted through the knowledge that had been gathered by the many minds that had looked into this. This man was named Steve and he was not a Michigan native. He built his following in his early twenties. A small congregation had formed around him. His followers swore that his mere touch was bestowing heaven upon them.It turns out that Steve was no more genuine than Harold. I remembered an article discussing Steve?s arrest. He was charged with fraud as well as drugging his followers without their consent. I guess that explains the eternal bliss that he was giving his followers. He was simply slipping them drugs to make them feel amazing. He was currently serving a sentence in prison.?Persephone, I think we have a problem. The first lead I think is a dud and the second one is currently in prison.??Perhaps I can find a solution to that.?With that Persephone went quiet leaving me to quietly sit in my office alone. I continued reading about Steve hoping to find some more clear information. When Persephone?s voice appeared in my head it startled me.?This Steve did not have contact with Hades and knows nothing of him.??How do you know that so quickly? I can?t find any more information that makes that clear.??I went and saw Steve in his cell. There is a mirror on the wall through which I traveled. I formed with his mind in a similar manner as I did yours. Through this process, I was able to ascertain that he has never had any contact with Hades.??Shit, izmit escort that means we are down another lead. That only leaves this blog post from that weird website.?I had hoped that I would have been lucky with the first lead, but when that didn?t pan out I was hopeful I had gotten it right the second time. Now that was proven incorrect. I now had to pray that my least promising lead would pan out. The problem with that was there was no real information on it that I could find. All that I had to go off of was the link titled ?Woodworth Times, MI 2004?.Maybe that could be enough of a handhold for me to get started. I quickly found the town through an internet search and had the town?s website. It was a pretty sparse website that definitely had not been modernized for quite some time. From the information section of the website, I learned that the town had a population of fewer than one thousand people living there. This seems like a really small place for Hades to try and conquer our world from. I explored more of the website but there was nothing more to glean from it. Most of the information was out-of-date and hadn?t been updated for a while. It was more than likely that a town that small didn?t need a website. It had probably been set up when the internet was getting big and found out later that it wasn?t needed.I was able to find the number for the town hall easily enough. I typed the number into my cell and placed my phone against my ear. The line rang several times but did not go to a voicemail. Of course, this town wouldn?t have a voicemail. I was about to give up when an answer came from the other end of the line.?Hello???Hi. My name is Jessica and I was just calling about a question.??Alright, what?s your question???I am doing some research and I was hoping that you might be able to help me. I am looking for an article that was in your local newspaper. Do you keep copies of them or have an electronic copy???Yeah, we have copies of them on microfilm as well as a print copy here in storage.??That?s great news! Could you put me in contact with someone who could help with that???I can help you. What are you looking for specifically??Shit, I hadn?t planned this far ahead. I didn?t have anything other than the name of the local newspaper and the year it would have been published. ?Um, so I don?t have a lot of specifics but it would have been an article published in 2004.?There was no answer on the line. The silence continued to stretch on. I finally decided to say something.?Hello? Are you still there???Yes, we don?t have papers from that time. There was a fire and they are gone. I am sorry that I couldn?t be of more help.?With that, the line went dead. I pulled my phone from my head trying to figure out if I had just been hung up on or lost the connection. I hit redial and put the phone back to my ear. The line rang, but no one answered. The line continued to ring. After a few minutes, I hung up the call. So she hung up on me. That was strange. The worse news was that it would appear that a fire had destroyed those copies of the newspaper that I would need. We were back to square one without any leads. Or were we?I heard the front door open and that meant Thomas was back home. I knew what I needed to do but I had to figure out how to tell him. I made my way downstairs to greet Thomas as he was taking his shoes off at the front door. I could feel the worry in my stomach at trying to figure out how to talk with him about what I needed to do.?Hey honey, can I talk to you for a second???Sure, something wrong?? Thomas responded with looking slightly worried.?No, nothing is wrong. I just need to take a trip real quick. I know this is coming out of nowhere, but I need you to trust me and not ask any questions.?The worry became more evident on his face as he heard me. ?Is something wrong? Why can?t you tell me about this???I know how this sounds, but I need to take care of this and I can?t begin to tell you now. I promise that when I get home I will tell you all about it. I just can?t right now.?The worry in my stomach had been replaced with a sense of growing sadness. I wanted to tell Thomas about all this crazy shit that was going on but I couldn?t even begin anywhere without sounding completely crazy. All I could hope for would be that Persephone and I could save everyone and that Thomas would understand. ?I?m not going to lie to you and say that I like any of this, but I love you and trust you. As long as you explain yourself when you get home I am okay with this, even though I don?t like it. Oh, you also have to promise me that you are going to be safe.??I promise you yahya kaptan escort I will be safe.?I gave him a deep kiss and he held me in his arms. I don?t know how I ever became so lucky to have such an amazing husband. I finally broke off his hug and made my way back upstairs to quickly pack a suitcase and book a flight. ?The wheels of the plane hitting the runway in Maine woke me from my slumber. Having caught the first flight I could meant that I had flown in during the night and spent most of it sleeping, or as best I could. After deplaning, making my way through the airport, and getting my luggage I finally rented a car. I put the town?s name into my phone?s GPS app and started my drive. It would take a few hours to get there. I started a playlist on my phone and watched as the airport began fading into the distance. I had no idea what we would find when we got there, but hopefully, it would be something that could help Persephone. ?As I neared Woodworth I began to realize how isolated this town was. I had been driving for quite a while without seeing anything other than what seemed like an endless forest and no other roads. The only sign that I was getting close to or was even near civilization was the top corner of a large building visible above the tree line to the left of me ahead. The road curved away from that building and disappeared into the tree line again.A few more minutes passed before I began pulling into a small town that my phone said was Woodworth. It was an isolated community nestled deep into the forests of Maine. The road that I had driven in on was clearly their Main Street splitting the center of the town. Buildings were clustered along its length, which I quickly traversed. I pulled to the side of the road and parked my car at the edge of town, which couldn?t have been more than two miles from where I first drove in. Looking around I saw that the few people that were out and about were staring at my car and by extension me. I was guessing that they didn?t get many visitors from outside of town based on the level of attention I was attracting. ?Okay Persephone, we?ve got this,? I said more to reassure myself than anything else. I got out of my rental car and followed the GPS app on my phone to the Town Hall. It was a small two-story building that looks like it could have been built at the beginning of the 20th century. I pushed open one of the solid wood front doors and entered the lobby. A nice middle-aged woman sat behind the desk reading a hardcover book. She glanced in my direction and was surprised that I was someone other than a citizen of the town. She put her book down and put a warm smile on her face.?Hello, welcome to City Hall. My name is Emma, is there something that I can help you with??I recognized Emma?s voice, it had been the same as the person who had answered the phone when I had called. I wasn?t sure if she would remember me or if it was a bad idea to mention it. ?Hi, I?m looking to take a peek at some of the old newspapers you might have in storage here.?The woman eyed me, suspicion clear across her face. I was pretty sure that I had every legal right to view public records, but if this woman pushed back I wasn?t sure what I would do.?I?m sorry I must have missed your name,? she says.?I?m, uh, Julie? I lied, hoping that it would be convincing.?Uh huh, well we keep those records in the basement of the building. I could take you down there if you would like. Is there something in particular that you are looking for???No, um, nothing really specific. Just doing some background research for a project that I can?t really discuss in detail.?At least my knowledge of PR was helping me out. I was just hoping that this would be enough for Emma to accept. ?Right this way then,? she said as she pushed back from her desk and started heading towards the back of the building. Somewhat surprised that my excuse had worked I quickly followed behind her. She led me to a door in the back corner of the building, which she unlocked with a key from a key ring she had in her pocket. ?The basement of the building was originally made as an emergency shelter, so it?s a bit deeper than a normal basement.?I followed her down the steps that I would have guessed were between ten and twenty feet below the Town Hall floor. With the flick of a switch, several hanging lights came on dimly lighting the basement space. There were wooden rafters twelve feet up crossing the ceiling, bathed in darkness since the lights hung low and did not shine up there. One-half of the space was set behind a cage that had a locked door for its gebze escort entrance. On the caged and uncaged side sat rows of filing cabinets and racks with boxes of paper.?The filing cabinets to the back right in the non-caged area are where newspapers would be stored as well as any microfiche if it exists. There is a machine to view the microfiche over here, I will show you how to operate it.?Emma led me to a small desk with what looked like a large ancient computer monitor. She turned the machine on and the screen lit up but was blank. Emma quickly walked me through how to use the machine.?Do you have any other questions???No, I should be good. Thank you for your help.??Hm, Town Hall closes at 4 so I need you to be up and out of here by then.??Won?t be a problem. Thank you again.?With that Emma turned on her heel and headed back up the stairs leaving me alone in the basement. Once she had gone, the enormity of the task at hand struck me. There were so many filing cabinets and boxes on shelves that it would likely take me days to work through all of it. I began walking down one row of filing cabinets looking at the labeling on them. The labeling system seemed simple enough. How could one little town have so much paperwork and records? In the next row, I chose a filing cabinet at random and pulled open the drawer. Inside were some kind of public land records, definitely not what I needed. I continued searching the various drawers and boxes for another two hours.Finally, I had come upon the collection of newspapers. The town had a surprisingly thorough record of the newspapers going back for at least a hundred years if the box labels were to be believed. The strange thing was that there were boxes for 2004 with newspapers within them. I could have sworn that Emma had said on the phone that they had been burned and didn?t exist. I began going through newspaper after newspaper searching for any hint or acknowledgment of Hades? presence here in this town. I had made it through May of 2004 but the June collection of newspapers was missing. The next collection began in July 2004 and continued without any other omissions. That certainly seemed strange to me. I grabbed the corresponding microfiche for 2004 and found the same thing. June 2004 had no records in the newspapers from that period. Why would only a single month be missing from what otherwise seemed like a pretty complete and well-cataloged collection? I searched the surrounding boxed and cabinets thinking that perhaps someone had simply put it in the incorrect drawer, but had no luck in locating it.I glanced in the direction of the stairs to make sure the door was still closed and made my way over to the caged side of the basement. I began walking the length of the cage looking through the chain link fencing that made up the cage. The labeling was the same style as what I had seen but with different titles, likely meaning private information.I was about to give up and return to the newspapers that I at least had access to when a single filing cabinet caught my eye. It was nestled in the corner behind another large rack in a way that would be very easy to miss it. That in and of itself wasn?t enough to catch my attention. The fact that it was the only unlabeled item in this basement is what caught my attention along with the large lock on it.?Persephone, I would bet you that what we are looking for might be hidden in that filing cabinet there. I don?t have any way of reaching it though.??I can retrieve its contents for you.?With that, the locket around my neck unclasped, and from the small mirror inside came one of Persephone?s tentacles. I had decided that the safest and easiest way to ?bring? Persephone with me was with this locket that I had. She could use it as needed and it was looking like this was a good idea on my part. Her tentacle extended through one of the holes in the cage reaching to that far back corner. Soon she was at the filing cabinet and her appendage split into many thin fibers which entered the lock?s opening. Within a second or two I heard the soft click of the lock releasing. Persephone withdrew the fibers, forming them back into one appendage, and pulled open the drawers.From where I stood against the cage I could not see what was contained within the drawers. Persephone reached into one of them and pulled out a microfiche canister. Her tentacle carried it back to the cage wall and passed it through one of the chain link holes to me. Once she had checked the remaining drawers and came back with nothing else she withdrew back to the locket. How very strange that they would have a locked cabinet hidden away and the only thing that was inside of it was this single canister. I made my way back to the viewing machine and loaded the roll. As I had suspected, the newspapers from June of 2004 were contained within this microfiche. This was all so very strange, why did any of this need to be hidden?