[Spirit of Lust] Chapter 88: Terrible memories. (Patreon)

Ishtar was like a presence floating right behind William. She saw what he saw but was free to look around, and what she saw was the fancy backyard of someone’s house. There were tables all around with glasses of juice, soda, plates with snacks and sandwiches. There were colorful balloons adoring the place as well. Ishtar knew the relevant information immediately. This was the birthday party of one of William’s friends during senior year of middle school. Reina and Ruth must have been watching from her eyes, thinking this was just another dream. Better that way, she thought.

They saw 15-year-old William walk around, talking to friends, eating snacks and drinking soda. Then he started to look around, looking for someone. He approached his friend and asked, but everyone gave him negative answers. No one had seen this person for a while.

The feeling of dread started growing in William’s chest and inside Ishtar’s in turn. It hurt. Even asleep, William was aware of what this dream was. He knew what was coming and it hurt all the more for it since he couldn’t stop it.

He heard them behind the house, between it and a wall of privacy trees. It was the sound of two people making out. Fearful, he peeked from a corner and saw them. There was his first ever girlfriend and one of his classmates. From Ishtar’s point of view, it was fairly tame. Those two were doing nothing more than kissing. But to a 15-year-old there’s little difference between that and more.

Will walked away, tears flowing freely down his eyes. His heart was torn in two, and Ishtar hated the feeling. Heartbreak is normal. Everybody goes through it at some point or another and for any reason. However, that doesn’t make it any less painful. For Will, who especially at that age was a boy in love with the idea of love, this event shattered his idealistic views of the world. For the most part, anyway.

Needless to say, Will broke up with the girl the very next day. In the dream, her face from the mouth up was covered in a veil of darkness, like Will had either forgotten her expression at the time or had simply never looked.

The next dream took them to high school, when he was 17 years old. A girl in her senior year happened to ask him for help with some club activities one day, and the two started talking more after that. She made obvious advances on him until Will gathered the courage to ask her out on a date. The two started formally going out after that.

That Christmas break, Will had to go with his family on a trip despite his protest of wanting to stay. He wanted to spend time with his girlfriend, of course. Perhaps finally go all the way after their two months of going out.

When he went back to school, he waited for his girlfriend at the front gates. He saw her approaching and walked up to her with an easy smile to greet her. But someone else came up from behind her, another senior student. The guy held Will’s girlfriend by the waist and pulled her to him, laughing as he kissed her neck.

Again, Ishtar felt Will’s heart being wrung out. He’d been away just a few days. Just a few days. And the bitch had already found herself another man. The look of guilt on the girl’s face left Will with no doubt about what had happened.

“What, you had a boyfriend?”

The words coming out of the dude’s mouth echoed again and again in Will’s head, nearly splitting his head from the pain.

At the very least Ishtar got to see Will break the guy’s nose with a punch, and before the girl could even say anything he shot her such a cold and pained glare she stepped back from fear that she’d be next. They both got off too lightly in Ishtar’s opinion, but seeing Will actually punch the guy…

Oh fuck. What would he have done to the incubi if he had her powers? It was a good thing she stopped him.

The third dream started at someone’s house. Will, now a high school senior and 18 years old, had been invited by some of his classmates to celebrate his birthday. There, a girl, another classmate of his who was a little more than just tipsy, started making moves on him.

The pain of betrayal still throbbed in Will’s chest, so he adamantly refused her advances. That lasted until four more cans of beer. Will and the girl shared a night of drunken sex, his very first time. Sadly, the dream was a little blurry because of it but since she remembered Reina and Ruth were also watching she thought that maybe it was better that way.

That morning the girl asked him if they were a couple now. And of course, the heartbroken idiot still said no. But the girl didn’t give up. For weeks she continued to hang out with him and make eyes at him until he finally cracked. Will had this third ever girlfriend.

For a month.

Their school had a weekend long trip in which they went camping to the woods. From there on, the dreams became clearer. This hadn’t happened all that long ago.

Will was in his tent at night, sharing dumb stories with his friends, when they heard a girl’s voice call his name. Will’s friends teased him, but it wasn’t his girlfriend calling. He went outside to check and saw a girl from another class.

Her face was as clear as day to Ishtar. A brunette of long, straight hair; thick, full lips; big dark eyes; a slender build and a chest so big it almost didn’t match her.

“Helga? What is it?” Will asked.

“Sorry about this, William, but can you come with me for a moment?” the girl asked, her eyes gloom and narrowed.

Will followed her, believing her to be in some sort of trouble and needed help. She led him deep into the woods, getting farther and farther from the light.

“Don’t we need a flashlight?” he asked, but Helga shushed him quietly. They kept walking until they heard the sounds of flesh smacking against flesh along with painfully familiar moans.

Will’s girlfriend was fucking someone else behind the trees.

His body shook with fury, his heart in his throat preventing him from letting out a scream of rage and frustration. He took a heavy step forward, ready to go and confront them in the middle of the act, but Helga stopped him.

With pleading eyes, she shook her head and held him by the hem of his t-shirt. Gritting his teeth so hard his jaw was getting numb, Will stomped his way back to camp, where Helga gave him an explanation.

“I share the tent with her and saw her leaving. I thought she was going to meet with you, but then I heard one of the guys say you were still in your own tent. I found them there and… figured I should tell you.”

“Why did you stop me?” he asked, his voice raspy and eyes tearful.

“You already got suspended for punching a student before.”

Well, he should’ve punched this guy too, Ishtar thought. The girl, too, for that matter. It would be true gender equality! So the girl pushed Will into a relationship only to cheat on him a month later? What the fuck!?

Also, at which point did Ishtar start feeling her own disbelief? She was a spirit of sex. In her eyes, nearly all sex was good sex. Cheating on someone didn’t matter so long as you got a good fuck out of it.

…

But goddammit, this was happening to Will, to her partner! Ishtar was feeling in her own soul what betrayal felt like. What it meant to put your trust in someone and have it stepped on. Will put his trust in these girls, despite it all, and they…!

…

The fourth dream was practically a continuation of the previous one. Helga started hanging around Will for months. The two became better friends over the course of the entire first semester. Then on the second semester, Helga asked Will out, stacking promise upon promise that she would never betray him, that she truly loved him, that she had for years.

Will delayed his answer a full week, but ended up accepting.

A year later, Will would enter his apartment in front of his university and hear the cracking of the bed in the room he shared with Helga. He found her completely naked and riding one of her classmates.

This and the first one, Ishtar realized, were the ones that hurt the most.

Will punched the door to the room, freezing the two lovebirds out of shock.

“Get out of my house,” Will said, voice low and ice cold.

Helga and the guy collected themselves and got off the bed. The guy, taller and far more muscular than Will, stepped up to him with a confident stride and superior attitude.

“Hey, hey, relax, man. So your girl likes me better than you. There’s no need to get so angry. It’s not my fault my cock is so much better than yours.”

The idiot had it coming. Will snapped and kicked the guy in his supposedly superior dick and balls. Ishtar would swear she heard a crack. The guy bent over from pain and Will grabbed him by the hair and kicked him out of his apartment, naked as he was.

“WILL! What the FUCK are you doing!?” Helga shouted.

“Don’t you fucking speak to me,” he seethed. “Out of my house. NOW!!”

Helga spat on his face. “Fine! This place is a fucking dumpster anyway! You have no fucking idea how to treat a woman how she deserves! No wonder every woman picks a better man than you!”

Helga got dressed in the bare minimum and left. The sudden silence was oppressive. Will rushed to the bathroom and threw up, feeling sick to the bottom of his wrecked heart.

That was the night Ishtar found him. Heartbroken, weak, desperate. She promised him the loyalty of women through domination, and in his sick and fragile state, he accepted.

That was the start of it all.

***

Author's Note: Okay, so full disclosure, I actually fucking hate this chapter. Not because of anything technical, but because I had to get myself in the mindset to write it. This is the kind of stuff I hate. I did not write this for pleasure, not even morbid pleasure. But since William's fear of betrayal has been a bigger plot point these past few chapters, I needed to write this and show more of why he's the way he is. As such, this chapter is longer than usual simply because I didn't want to make it two. I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as I could.