Leave Krystal and go home

Krystal’s offer of another drink is tempting, but you’ve drunk enough already tonight. Politely you refuse. She looks disappointed, and for a moment you think she’s going to add something more tempting. Instead, she just wishes you luck, tells she’ll see you for the preparation week and then lets you go.

You might have been tired when you left the pub, but you’re not by the time you get home. Your mind is spinning. The world is teetering on the edge of drunken happiness, and you don’t feel like going to bed.

Maybe porn will help you relax. Your laptop is in the study, so you head there. That is when you see the box containing the Snetterton Collection. On seeing it thoughts of porn slip from your mind. You haven’t really gone through the box. What other secrets does it contain? Would any of them have a similar effect to the bands?

You look in and pull out a small, stone statuette. It’s a crude approximation of the female form, enough to suggest femininity but with no details. There’s the head, there’s the breasts, there’s the wide hips. The figure appears to be sitting cross-legged on top of a square base. The base itself is split in two, the bottom half can be rotated 90 degrees and when it’s fully rotated it clicks in. In either of its two **** positions, it is stable, but between it’s not. You get the feeling that when the base is turned to the **** right the statuette is on, while when it’s to the **** left it’s off. There’s no sign why that would be the case. It just feels right.

This particular statuette is the size of your hand, filling your palm, but you know there are two more statuettes like this one in the box. One of them is the same size (around 13cm tall), while the other is bigger (nearly 25cm). You dig in and extract these other two and place them next to the first.

You pick up the antiquarian’s notebook and page through it trying to find what he thought about them. It doesn’t take long to find his notes. Thankfully he’d made a crude sketch of one of them. You work through the writing, transcribing his words into more readable script.

He called these the Statuettes of Tlachtga, naming them after a relatively obscure Celtic Fertility goddess. According to him these statuettes when turned on increase the libido of any woman in range. He doesn’t specify what the range is, but he states that the two smaller ones have a smaller range than the large one. He also states that the effects of each are cumulative, such that a woman within range of all 3 will have her libido increased threefold.

Sounds like nonsense to you, but then you’d thought the same about the bands a couple of weeks ago, and you can’t say that now.

You turn one of the smaller ones on. Nothing happens. You turn it off. No change. No sign from the statuette it was on. You didn’t feel any different. You turn on the big one. Still nothing. There’s no indication in the book about the ranges. Just a comment that it’s measured in feet not miles. As there’s no females in your house, you’re guessing it’s having no effect. The only woman you know nearby is Mrs Peterson, and she’s over 80, so you’re guessing she doesn’t have a libido. You wonder how you can test it and come up blank.

The extra study, though, has finally burnt the worst of the **** off and you feel ready for bed.