Unnatural Lover Boxed Set #1 Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Part 1 - Cabin Fever

  Part 2 - Old Stories

  Part 3 - Stalking Sensation

  Part 4 - Research Questions

  Part 5 - Delicious Nightmares

  Other Books

  UNNATURAL LOVERS BOXED SET #1

  by

  Mac Flynn

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  Mac Flynn on smashwords.com Copyright (c) 2013 by Mac Flynn *****

  Smashwords Edition License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the site where the book was purchased and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Note: This story contains sexually explicit material, and is intended only for persons over the age of 18. By downloading and opening this document, you are stating that you are of legal age to access and view this work of fiction. All of the characters involved in the sexual situations in this story are intended to be 18 years of age or older, whether they are explicitly described as such or not.

  The world was a barren place, just like her.

  Amanda Stenser couldn't stop feeling that way as she climbed up the steep mountain trail. She was up there to get away from it all, to give herself a breathe of fresh air and find some source of calm. So far it was an absolute failure, but she at least appreciated her boyfriend Tony's sympathetic suggestion. He hadn't been there when the doctor had broken the news to her, but he had at least rubbed her back when she'd cried at the end of her bed after the appointment.

  The doctor had told her she couldn't have children. She was barren, lifeless.

  "It's not the end of the world," Tony had informed her.

  Amanda couldn't agree with him then, and she had doubts about it now as she marched up the rocky path. She'd wanted kids ever since she was little, and to learn that it would never naturally happen was devastating. Dreams of feeling the babe kick inside her and soothingly talking to the growing child in her belly were gone, dashed from the hope of possibility and expectations. Now she felt physically and emotionally empty, like a shell unable to produce a seed and create one of its own kind.

  "You're getting really broody," Amanda muttered to herself.

  She generally wasn't a broody person, but then again she wasn't the other extreme, either. Like a lot of people her temperament lay somewhere in the middle. She had her flashes of anger and despondency, but generally she was an agreeable person who poked fun at others and could sometimes even take it in kind. This sudden news, though, had shaken her to her very core and she found herself lost in her thoughts. That's why Tony had suggested she get away from it all.

  That's how she came to be on this well-worn path climbing this tree-covered mountain to a cabin high up in the mountains. Amanda had taken his suggestion with more vigor than he'd expected by renting an off-grid log cabin a few hours outside the city were they lived. He hadn't been eager to see her go out into the wilderness all on her own.

  "You sure you don't want to change your mind?" he'd asked her while she packed her bag.

  "I'll be fine. There's a propane stove and plenty of gas to get me through a few days," Amanda had tried to comfort him. "I'll take up some food with me and treat it like an extended picnic."

  She had been a little annoyed by the hint of panic in his voice. He probably thought she was going up there to commit suicide. While the thought had crossed her mind, she'd opted out of such a grisly, sinful end. She felt more abhorrence for suicide than she did for living the rest of her life knowing she wouldn't ever become pregnant.

  Tony hadn't been able to get her to change her mind and have her reconsider just sitting in her apartment or visiting the each. Now her she was climbing the steep trail to the cabin. She'd parked her car at the bottom of the hill in a well-used, albeit rough, parking lot and started the hike from there. It was about ten miles of decent trail between the lot and the cabin, but she didn't have any problems with that. She was in shape and had made sure to pack light. Amanda was only planning on staying three nights up there because she couldn't get any more leave from work without having a doctor's note.

  Even in her brooding Amanda enjoyed the nature which surrounded her. There were many flowers in bloom beside the trail and the trees reached their thick branches overhead to provide her with cover from the glaring sun. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, though the higher altitude meant the air was becoming chillier. However, her attention was drawn to the lack of animal life which should have greeted her passing. There had been more than enough beggarly squirrels and chirping birds at the parking lot, but the closer she came to the cabin the fewer she saw. By the time the trail made its final gasp to the cabin's approach, all active life had ceased.

  Amanda was both relieved and uneasy when she beheld her temporary residence. The cabin stood out on the point of a large sheet of rock and because of the hard ground the area around the structure was devoid of both bushes and trees. Not even a sprig of grass nor a lone weeds dared peeked their heads up from the cracks in the earth. The cabin itself was of some ancient, forgotten lineage, with massive logs for walls and chink in-between to keep out the cold. The roof was well-steeped against the heavy winters and there was only a single window at the front. The chimney stood out from the back and rose high into the clear, darkening sky.

  However, their was a definite downside to the cabin. There was a distinct lack of indoor plumbing, and only a dilapidated outhouse made up for the non-existent flush toilet. With her priorities in the right order, she first checked to see if the outhouse was sanitary. She found quite the opposite, and instead opted for a nice, large tree off from the trail. Then she turned her attention to the building she would be calling home for a few days.

  With a grunt of relief Amanda put her bag down beside the door and unlocked the old wooden portal. The door creaked open and light spilled out onto the roughly hewn logs which made up the floor. The cracks between them created deep shadows which she hesitated to step on. The rest of the one-room cabin was a bit friendlier, what with a large log bed in the far right corner and a simple kitchen on the left. Immediately in front of her stood the wide, deep chimney. A pile of chopped logs lay on the left along with some kindle and paper. There were rugs spread out on the floor to keep one's toes from catching blisters on the floor, and to these she stepped on when she entered the room. There were two other windows set in the walls, one to her left above the counter and the other to her right behind the bed.

  "Not too bad," she whispered to herself. Her lonely voice echoed loudly in the silence, and she couldn't help the shudder which crept down her body. She felt there was something not quite right about the place, which might explain the cheap price for the stay.

  Unfortunately for this day, retreat was no longer an option. The sun was setting to her left, and soon the night would settled down over both the cabin and the trail. Amanda got busy setting out her foodstuffs and making a fire. There were several propane lamps for light, and to these she turned for comfort when the shadows crept into the cabin. A soft, howling wind came up out of the north, but she was nice and comfortable inside the sturdy cabin. Before long a warm, comforting fire crackled in the hearth and the shadows of the flames flickered along the walls. She made a simpl
e meal on the propane stove in the kitchen, and happily gobbled up the warm food. Amanda removed her shoes beside the bed in case she needed to make an emergency run in the middle of the night. Then she sat down on the rug before the fire and pulled her bag close to her.

  From the large sack she retrieved a few books she had hauled up here. Most were romance novels where the woman was sought and conquered by the handsome young man. They were a dirty little delight for her, one even Tony didn't know about. They were relatively racy and secretly she longed for him to be a little more creative in their love-life. That wasn't to say he couldn't give her pleasure, but a girl needed some spice in her life.

  That made double for her boring existence. Born in the city in which she still resided, Amanda's life had never been described as thrilling. She was currently a simple paper-pusher in a medium-size business, and that was after working her way up from the dark, solitary mail-room. Tony and she had met nearly a year before at one of the clubs she frequented. She wasn't an habitual party-goer, but she enjoyed being in the company of others and watching how they interacted with one another. Secretly she considered herself an anthropologist of sorts in her amateur study of the human being. She'd always enjoyed watching the families walk past her with their children skipping along beside their parents or at the front leading the way like some adventurer through the wild jungle of the world. The parents would smile at their children's antics and they would go off on their merry way.

  Amanda touched her flat stomach and sighed. She guessed the only way to find that same happiness for herself would be to adopt, but the cost of such an endeavor was far out of her reach. Tony had been kind enough to do the math for her after he heard the bad news. It'd only made her feel worse to know it was so expensive to adopt.

  "If I starved myself I could probably save up enough money in about a year," she wondered aloud. Her soft voice echoed quietly through the empty room.

  Perhaps it echoed a little too much. Amanda frowned and sat up at attention.

  "Hello!" she called to the shadows and empty spaces of the room. There was that strange sound again, as though her voice had lost itself in a great cavern and only a faint echo returned to her.

  Amanda took out from her bag the flashlight she had brought and shone it on the room. The beam passed over the walls and furniture, but nothing showed itself. There was no crack in the wall to show some outside influence, nor any metallic covering on the roof which would give her small voice that large sound.

  "Weird..." she murmured, though in a voice too small to echo. She looked back to her books and smiled at the racy cover on one of her erotica paperbacks. "Maybe if I told Tony these were training books he'd read them," she giggled to herself. She opened the soft cover and dove into the story.

  The time passed gently and without her notice until the heat from the fire began to cool. Amanda glanced up from her book and was dismayed to see there was one log left of the great stack she with which she had sacrificed to the flames. Hurriedly she put down her book and grabbed several of the chopped pieces from the pile. In her rush her finger caught a large, sharp splinter and blood was drawn. She hissed at the pain and dropped all the logs to the floor in her quest to assess the damage. The point of her finger dripped with blood and the sliver stuck out from the wound as though laughing at her suffering.

  Amanda scowled and tore out the offending slice of wood, but that only made the flow of life liquid worse. She rushed over to her bag for a bandage and a path of tiny droplets followed her. Carefully she avoided the rugs, as she had too little water to spare on rubbing blood out of the old mats. Before she could wrap a bandage firmly the wound, blood had spilled out onto the floor and created a small puddle at her feet. She looked in disgust at the proof of her carelessness, and uneasily she swept the pool between the cracks in the floor. The rest was cleaned up with a dampened paper towel and stored in her garbage bag. It would be thrown away later and all evidence of her foolishness, save for the small scar on her finger, would be gone.

  Amanda plopped herself back down on the mat only to look at the fire and recall why she had sacrificed her blood. She groaned and stood once more to collect the logs which she had tossed aside in her pain. They were soon gathered and thrown onto the fire, and she watched with glee as the flames consumed the wicked pieces which had caused her so much trouble. She returned to her books but they no longer held the fascination they had as before. Dreams could only dominate reality for so long, and the pain in her finger pulsed with the reality of pain.

  She sighed and looked at the only tome which wasn't of the romance variety. The cover read Coping With Loss: How to Manage Life Without Life. The title wasn't exactly uplifting, but the contents were meant to soothe her sense of loss within herself. The giver of the book had been her psychiatrist, Dr. William Gerber, a young man she had been seeing since the doctor had informed her about her incurable problem. It was at the insistence of the medical doctor that she'd seen Gerber, but she was skeptical he'd help her get over her bouts of depression. Mostly she suspected he was in cahoots with the hospital through a contract and needed to fill his patient quota every quarter.

  "Or maybe he's right and I'm not dealing with this very well," she mused aloud. She certainly wasn't usually this narrow-minded with people's actions. Even if the psychiatrist did have a contract with the hospital, he'd been nice to her and seemed to genuinely care about her mental well-being. He also hadn't wanted her to go on this trip alone, but that was because he feared she'd harm herself.

  Amanda glanced down at the bandage and smirked. She had to admit Dr. Gerber was right there. She had hurt herself, just not on purpose nor as badly as he feared. Even with her opinion of him slightly improved, she still didn't think much of his book so she shoved it back into her bag. A quick glance at her watch told her it was about time to hit the hay. Her body was also yelling out for some relaxation after that long hike up the rugged path. The young woman stood up and stretched her arms high above her head.

  Then she froze. There had been a noise. Amanda frowned and held very still. She swear she heard something creak along the floor. Her eyes searched over the worn boards, but she couldn't see even the shadow of a small bug. Maybe it was a mouse, or even just her imagination.

  Her breath stopped when the noise repeated itself. Now she knew it wasn't her imagination. It sounded like something was moving beneath the floor. She let out a yelp and scrambled over to the bed. Her heart wildly beat and she waited for some little creature to pull up a board and make a homicidal dive at her. The sounds did continue, but not as loud as before and soon they faded out altogether. She waited on the bed for several minutes expecting the noise to return, but all was quiet. A soft, nervous twitter escaped her lips. She wondered if she'd gotten excited over some stupid mouse or varmint trying to dig their way in through the floorboards.

  Cautiously Amanda slid off the bed and edged close to the center of the room. She thought the loudest of the noises had erupted from that point, and sought to find whether they were still there. She got on her hands and knees, and pressed an ear against the closest board. She heard a soft rustling sound and then a small tremor beneath her fingers. It was almost like there was a tiny earthquake shifting beneath the cabin, but she'd never heard of anything remotely like that happening up here.

  That's when a dark, formless shape shot out of the crack in front of her face.

  Amanda screamed and jumped up to her feet. She tried to dash toward the door, but when she grabbed the knob she let out another shriek of terror. The handle was covered in the thick blackness. She staggered back and jumped a few feet into the air when she felt the part coming out of the floor touch her leg. The young woman dove for the bed and raised her feet just in time.

  The creature was fast, unnaturally fast, and Amanda barely avoided its split-second grab at her ankle. She frantically crawled back into the corner and looked around for a way to escape. Her eyes settled on the window. Desperate, she clumped the bed covers toge
ther into a tight ball and pressed the sheets into the glass. The old panes shattered out into the night air and she turned to toss back the covers. Amanda's eyes widened when she glimpsed the dark creature slithering up the bed post like an intangible snake.

  She dove for the open window and didn't heed the shards of glass which cut deep into her skin. The creature followed too swiftly and she felt it wrap around her legs. The young woman grabbed the sill and tried to put her way out. She managed to pull her head out before the thing gave a great yank and dragged her back inside. Her arms flailed and her cries of help went unheard in the solitary mountain air.

  Amanda kicked and thrashed to try to get it off, but it only stuck tighter. Then the thing started to pull her away from the bed and Amanda was dragged across the covers. She managed to catch onto the bed post and clung tightly as though her life depended on her keeping her grip. The terrified young woman glanced over her shoulder and her eyes widened in horror.

  The creature now covered a large swath of the floorboards in front of the fireplace and with each passing moment more of itself oozed out. The door was now completely covered in the dark ooze which poured forth from the baseboards in front of the entrance. The unbroken window on the far side of the cabin, too, had vanished beneath a disgusting curtain of black, writhing shadows. The darkness appeared to have no intention of climbings the walls, however, but only in cutting off any escape route she could take.

  In that millisecond time of distraction, she didn't notice the shadows around her creep up the bed. The darkness slithered over her hands, and in her terror and disgust she released her hold on the bed. Amanda expected to crash to the floor but the thing placed itself beneath her body and she landed on its soft, writhing form. She kicked her legs and thrashed her arms, but it was like fighting an intangible shadow. The effort only tired her and at every touch the thing wrapped itself tighter around her body.

  It tore her away from the safety of the bed and out a few feet into the center of the floor. She clawed and squirmed in its grasp one last time, but the darkness was elastic. The more she pulled the larger the thing stretched out. Out in the center of the room, the creature pressed itself up against her back and pushed her up off the floor. Amanda was forced to stand up onto her legs and caught a glimpse of the floor beneath her feet. The dark pool bubbled like a rancid stew and the tendrils toppled over one another in their eagerness to touch her.