36 - The Injection

Anya rose to pick up a candle a few feet away. She held it up to her upper right arm. There was a pentagram in a circle there, surrounded by circles of zodiac signs and Hebrew characters.

"The pentagram is an odd symbol. Depending on the context, it can be a symbol of protection, it keeps the evil things out; in others..."

She moved the candle to show her left arm. There was a figure tattooed there of an inverted pentagram that overlaid a goat's head.

"...it invites the evil in. The symbol of defense becomes one of summoning. Magic requires both, but it is important not to confuse the two. That is what happened in this story, which I call...

THE INJECTION

"Mr. Mallory?" The doctor said, her wrinkled face locked in a small smile. "I'm Doctor Veylan. Please come this way."

Quentin Mallory rose to his feet and exited the waiting room with shuffling steps. He was tall, tall enough that the basketball team coach had scouted him, until he found out Quentin had the coordination of a newborn deer. Black hair close-cropped, strong features on smooth skin.

She led him into an examination room, and closed the door behind him.

"So!" She said. "You've read the paperwork. You signed it. I just want to make sure you understand the procedure."

"Okay," Quentin said.

"I'm going to feed a sterilized, lubricated tube down your urethra. It's going to go to your seminal vesicle. Then I'm going to inject you with the compound we've invented. Which will make you absolutely immune to all known STDs," she said, still with that same smile.

"It is going to hurt?" Quentin asked.

Her smile didn't falter. Not a bit.

"It's going to burn," she said.

The idea that all Black men were ridiculously hung was a stereotype in bad porn. Quentin was six inches hard. Dr. Veylan put on surgical gloves, and he saw a small tattoo on her left wrist. Through the latex, her hands were warm as she ran the **** wipe over his prick.

The tube was smaller than he thought. It felt weird. Not painful. She held his soft shaft in one hand and fed the tube down, deeper and deeper, very slowly. Quentin felt the heat rise to his face as his cock began to swell. She paused. Waited. Not encouraging or discouraging. Just waiting as his purple glans cleared the foreskin. When she judged it was as big as it was going to get, she returned to her work.

Until it tickled something deep down at the base of his prick.

Dr. Velayan held up the free end of the tube. She had a syringe in her free hand. The syringe was pure black.

She fitted the tip of the syringe into the tube and began to press the plunger.

At first, there was a sense of pressure.

Then the burning started.

"Nnnh," Quentin gave a little grunt. His face twisted into a mask of primal pain as the pain between his balls built and built.

"It hurts," he said.

"Almost there," she said, her eyes fixed on the plunger.

His cock didn't grow. But it grew harder. The burning spread. Quentin's balls tensed. He almost closed his eyes. Instead, he focused on the tattoo on her wrist. Except his eyes couldn't really focus on it. A letter? A symbol?

"There," Dr. Velayan said, a smile on her lips. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Gently, she pulled the tube out of Quentin's hard, quivering prick. The sensation was like his first erection. The burn was spreading through his balls. With the gentlest tug, she pulled it free.

A black, glistening drop stood out on the tip of his cock.

"Why does it hurt so much?" he said.

Dr. Velayan sighed. She stood up. Her smile seemed more natural now. Her eyes more alive.

"I said it was going to burn. You can't feel it, but they're hunting down your sperm. Killing them, one by one. Replacing them. You can't feel that. You can't feel your sperm die, your geneline end. What you're feeling is your soul burning away. Replaced with something...older."

She let her lab coat fall to the floor. Pulled off her sweater with shaking, eager hands. The eyes almost fanatical now.

Quentin couldn't believe his eyes as he saw the tattoos scribbled across her skin. They seemed to swim in his vision. Words in an alphabet he couldn't read, but which translated in his brain as taste. As something black and cloudy flooded the white of Quentin's eyes, Dr. Velayan was pulled off her panties. HIs cock ached, the veins on it writhing beneath the skin. His lips peeled back as new senses blossomed inside his skull.

He could smell her eagerness. Her excitement. Need. But something was wrong.

"You will be the first," it spoke with Quentin Mallory's voice.

"I'm...I'm not worthy," she said.

"You will be," he said.

With a smooth, athletic grace that Quentin Mallory had never possessed, he slid off the bed. His hands closed on her throat, and Dr. Velayan shuddered. Something dripped down her tattooed thighs. A twinge she had not felt since menopause had set in. A hot, wet pool of blood spread between her feet.

"Quentin Mallory disappeared. I don't know how far he got, before his body burned out," Anya said. "He had hoped for protection, but in the end, what he invited into his body was something else. He was no more than one single seed, cast into the void, searching for what it was meant to fertilize. A lesson for us all."

She blew out the candle.