Ink Stained Reunion
Chapter 1: Stains and Shadows
“Wake up hun, we’re here.” Pamela’s voice was a sweet welcome back to reality. Sylvia couldn’t remember falling asleep. but the feeling of Pamela’s long fingers trailing through her hair was the nicest way she could have imagined the flight ending. “That really was the first time you ever flew first class, wasn’t it? Won’t be the last. Maybe we’ll need to make flying together a tradition.”
“That sounds like a really good idea. Well, let’s head out, huh?” Sylvia tried to stand, and managed to get halfway up before falling back as though she was suddenly weighted down by bricks. “Nnn my head feels really heavy. I must’ve been really tired. It’s not normally this hard to wake up.”
Pamela kissed Sylvia’s forehead before softly squeezing her shoulder. “You slept through most of the flight. You were stressing out so much you burned yourself right out! But it’s okay now, we’re here in Midas and you can get to figuring out what’s going on. You always feel better when you’re doing something and not just thinking about it.”
Sylvia smiled. It was hard to feel calm as she remembered the reason she was back in Midas, but when she gazed into Pamela’s eyes it was hard to feel discouraged. There was no doubt in Pamela’s eyes. It was a powerful feeling that made Sylvia feel more confident she’d made the right choice.
After a quick stretch the two retrieved their carry-ons and proceeded out of the plane. Silver-and-amethyst eyes gazed around the airport suspiciously. Whoever had gotten Sarah could just as easily be responsible for Valerie’s disappearance. They could be aware Sylvia was back in Midas. She half hoped they were. It felt strange to be almost proactively . . . not reactively . . . heroic, but it wasn’t the first time.
Nothing was suspicious. People ran after loved ones. Gift shops were filled with pointless souvenirs. It looked almost the same as it had a year ago when Sylvia left.
It was disappointing. Sylvia didn’t try resisting the urge to slouch. I’d been hoping that something would happen as soon as we got off the plane. Who would be dumb enough to jump out and announce their motives in an airport? Not someone smart enough to get my moms. Sarah is too quick. Valerie is too smart.
While Sylvia deflated, Pamela was thrilled. She’d never been to Midas before, and the airport was an impressive one. There was a feeling of importance to the place that made the young reporter feel a million stories worth telling were buzzing around her.
A tug at Pamela’s sleeve brought the woman back to her senses as Sylvia led the way to the food court. She sat in the first open chair and held out her hand. “Could I borrow your cell? I want to try to call Valerie again to know if we should hit a hotel to drop off our things first or not. If Valerie is okay, she’d probably let us crash in my old room. You could have Aurora’s bed. At least, if our room is anything like it used to be. Mom said she’d leave it alone, but I wouldn’t blame her if things changed while I was gone.”
Pamela quickly handed Sylvia her phone. “Of course. Do you want me to go for a walk? I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to be alone.”
“No, please. When I do a little bit of exploring I’m going to want you to stay locked away somewhere safe, but for right now I really need your moral support.” Sylvia smiled as Pamela sat across from her, and quickly dialed her mothers’ number.
Three rings passed. Sylvia clicked off the phone before the voice mail started to ask for a message. Without a word she returned Pamela’s phone. Her face twisted in concern. Tears glittered silently in the young woman’s eyes as she tried to look strong. The news had already reported one mother’s disappearance, and now the other wasn’t any easier to find. Sylvia wasn’t sure which of them she felt worse about, or which she missed more.
It was hard not to feel in over her head. She wondered if Aurora ever got any advice for what to do if Sarah and Valerie disappeared without a trace. She wanted to call Aurora, but had no clue what she would say if she got that other woman again. She had no clue what she would say if Aurora answered either.
“Gameplan. We pick me up a throwaway cellphone here at the airport, the prepaid kind. Then we’re going to get a hotel room, and stash everything there. You stay in the hotel room, and if anyone comes, you call me. If I’m in danger, I’ll call you, and you can call the authorities, the news, somebody that can help. I know you came with me to help, but if whoever got to Valerie is still in my old home, or is even still in Midas . . .” Sylvia paused, and failed an attempt to resist frowning. “I can’t let anything happen to you.”
“Fair enough. I’m not exactly super enough to be of any help outside of moral support, but I can also work on getting a hold of the station back home to raise awareness of what’s going on. Silver Girl might not have ever been as big of a name as the Blue Fox, but she had friends that might be interested in helping.” Pamela grinned and twirled around her phone dramatically. “The media has a lot of power. Point a camera at something, and that makes it real.”
Sylvia forced herself to smile. Cameras had been pointed at her and made the loss of her humanity all the more real. It had taken her mother to bring it back. She was doubtful just how much hope she could put in Pamela’s idea, but knew the reporter wouldn’t stay cooped up in a hotel without doing something unless Sylvia used more of her power than she ever had before.
The thought didn’t strike her as particularly healthy.
Sylvia held up her hand and let enough of her power flow to coat it in shimmering violet filled with silver current. “Let’s get going then. Midas is a big city, and I’ll search every dirty corner of it if that’s what it takes.”
It made Sylvia feel a little better to come home and find the front door locked. She’d been terrified that she would find the front door broken off of its hinges with horrible tears in the carpet as though a robot with tank treads had broken in. “You better not be okay. I don’t want to do this for nothing.”
On either side of the welcome mat was a potted plant. The one on the left was real, but the one on the right was fake and Sylvia enjoyed throwing the cheap pot to the ground. It shattered with a satisfying crash, and laying amidst the dirt was a not-so-shining silver key. It definitely took more effort, and made her stand out a lot more than a hollow rock, but it was still among one of Sarah’s brilliant home safety ideas.
The foyer’s welcome mat was spotted with dried silver . . . something. Sylvia wanted to say it was paint, but that felt too optimistic. How bright the silver was over the black welcome mat made her cringe.
“Hello! Is anyone home?! Mommy! Mother! It’s me, Sylvie! Sorry I broke the key-pot! Sorry I didn’t hold the key over my head, Sarah!” She pulled the door shut behind her and locked it. She was already feeling on edge. The last thing she needed was someone startling her from behind.
Nothing seemed especially out of place. Nothing was knocked over. Nothing was broken in half. It was almost terrifying how similar it looked to the last time she’d been home. She remembered getting ready as quick as she could so there was no chance of seeing Aurora before she left. It would have been impossible to leave. There had been so much Aurora had made sure had gone unsaid. Sylvia knew she had silenced plenty herself in her attempt on the couch.
She stepped into their shared room and looked slowly between their beds. The memory of Aurora curled up and shaking on her bed the day she was shot was still so vivid in Sylvia’s mind. It was almost strong enough to reach out and touch.
Sylvia sat on Aurora’s bed and slid her fingertips across her pillow. When they curled up together, it was always on Sylvia’s bed. It made Aurora’s pillow more hers. It made Sylvia long for the feel of her hair and the kiss of her metal lips.
No signs of struggle. No signs of violence. The only thing that was out of place were those silver stains on the welcome mat.
The young heroine wrapped her arms around her sister’s pillow. Her scent was gone, but the memory wasn’t. She sniffed the pillow, inhaling as hard as she could. Her mind filled in the blanks only satisfyingly enough to be cruel. She had no clue where her mothers were, and Aurora was nowhere near. She squeezed the pillow so tightly it hurt, and then squeezed tighter.
“You’re the tougher one. You’re the one mom trained how to kick ass and shoot out one-liners. I never even learned how to spar. The first time I threw a punch I tucked my thumb and almost broke it . . . but I guess it was a little too much to hope for that you’d be here.” Sylvia threw the pillow into the wall and closed the door behind her.
There was a half-eaten pizza in the fridge that didn’t look more than a couple days old. There was a half-finished glass of water sitting on the coffee table. All warmth had left the couch and the TV was turned off.
One of the couch cushions was slightly raised. Going with a hunch, Sylvia turned it over, and stared in confusion. A black stain marred the hidden half of the cushion. “This isn’t brown like coffee or tea, this is . . . this is really black. What even makes a stain like this?”
When the stain didn’t respond Sylvia slumped forward and threw the cushion down at the floor. It was the only clue she had and it was already a dead end.
“I hope Pamela is having better luck.” Sylvia fell back onto the couch and pondered who she trusted enough to turn to.
“I know I’m local news, and it’s local news if it’s happening in another city, much less another state, but this is different. Sylvia LaSilvas has given us ratings like serial murder, and that’s been thanks to me. It’s a local story because the people of New York love her, and they’ll want to know what’s happening to her.” Pamela paced in the hotel room, eyes narrowed as she spoke loudly into her phone. “They’ll tune in, and they’ll be glad they did!”
Hundreds of miles away the woman on the other side of the phone frowned. Her office was dark, lit only by what light her half-closed blinds let through. “So what am I supposed to do, Pam? Am I supposed to send you a camera crew? I thought you were done doing fluff news and special interest pieces.”
“This isn’t fluff! A super heroine is missing and could be dead! A famous super hero, who happens to be the mother of our biggest locally based ratings-grabber in my history at the station. Her other mother, a famous doctor and former heroine? Not answering her phone. She could be missing, grief-stricken, any hundreds of things. She could have done it. We have the story of the year on our hands, right now. You’re damn right you send me a camera crew. You send them express shipping, because this is going to be big. Do I need to tell you how big? I can smell a story here!” Pamela’s frown grew more intense.
Pamela stared at herself in the mirror for a moment and purposefully forced herself to smile. She was far too young to show any of the ravages of age, but she wasn’t too young to worry about frown lines.
“No dice, Pam. I think you overestimate the station’s investment in you. Yes, Sylvia LaSilvas has been good for us. Sleeping with a news story doesn’t make you good for us. See the difference there?” Pamela’s boss smirked with a roll of her eyes. “Besides, you made the little teenybopper enjoy the spotlight. Think it’ll be hard to have her cozy up to a new lead reporter? Jeanette has more than a pretty enough face to pull it off. Come back home, now, and you get to keep your job.”
“That’s your final word on the subject?” Pamela’s smile stayed strong even as her voice filled with frustration.
“Yes. Yes it is, Pam. I want you back here by tonight, or you’ll be lucky if you can wind up back on the news as a weather bimbo.” Pamela’s boss grinned. She’d butted heads with Pamela’s forceful personality for too long. The girl was starting to forget who was in charge. She’d seen it happen a million times before. A young upstart thought she was destined for national, and pushed every limit to further her career. “Are you going to come back?”
Pamela hummed to herself in thought. She wasn’t amused at the thought of reading the weather, but she was still very amused. “Well it’s not my last word on the subject. That word would be seven, as in ‘Fifteen, thirty-two, and sixty-seven’.”
“As in . . . in . . . fifteen . . .” Pamela’s boss felt like someone as far from being Pamela’s boss as was humanly possible. “Thirty . . . two . . .? What-what’s . . . huh . . .?”
“Mrs. Phillips, or wait, I think that Betty is more appropriate for this conversation, I think you’ll find those words much more gripping. In fact, I think those words, are clenching away at that sweet, decisive mind of yours.” The reporter’s voice dripped with seduction. Husky and rich, her voice flowed like velvet as her lips curled into a very satisfied smirk. “Forty-five, eleven, six.”
Betty groaned, eyes rolling back into her head as she clenched her hand around the phone, and her thighs. The numbers Pamela had spoken trembled on Betty’s lips. If she could think, she would have wondered at their significance. Betty instead wondered at their beauty as she moaned into the phone, legs spreading wide as she melted onto her desk.
Her hand moved between her legs, pumping fingers into her pussy in rhythm with the syllables. Places in her mind she didn’t know were there opened. So much time spent in Pamela’s lap, her focus more on the hands roaming her body and less on the lips whispering into her mind, revealed itself in her memory.
The first memory stood out so clearly. Betty was staying late to finish something that she couldn’t remember, but she could remember Pamela slipping into her office and using her body to shut the door behind her. She’d heard the door lock, and was so captivated by the sight of the young reporter unbuttoning her top to reveal glistening cleavage. She’d had so many try to get ahead with their bodies, but Pamela’s was the first body she needed to feel, to have touching her, to have pinning her back in her chair.
Her fingers moved faster, chair stained with her lust as weak cries dripped from her lips along with saliva.
Puzzle pieces hidden behind numbered locks fell into place, and Betty wasn’t Betty anymore. It had been almost instantaneous. The first set of numbers held her down and the second set overrode her. Her eyes turned glassy and unfocused as her head fell onto her desk.
Pamela laughed a bedroom laugh, grin expanding with each sound of mindlessness and pleasure that oozed from her employer’s trembling lips. “You will send me a camera crew, because I am vital to you. I am important. I am irreplaceable. Even you, are more replaceable than I am. This isn’t spite, Betty, this is reality. I’ve been training you to see the reality of this for a while, but you’ve been so stubborn. It’s time you stopped being stubborn, and started embracing reality. You will embrace reality now that you have no other choice, won’t you?”
“Embraaaacccce . . . Yesssss Pamela . . . I will . . . send you the crew . . . Anything for you . . . You’re more important than anything . . . pretty . . . sexy . . . smart . . . don’t compare . . .” Betty whimpered as her hands opened her pants, sliding them down her legs to help her fingers move quicker, enhancing the wet mess.
“Good. I expect that to be done quickly. Sorry, no time for being sweet. Sylvie has been getting all of my sweet. I don’t really have a lot to give anyway. Enjoy yourself several times first. I’ll text you the hotel details. Give the crew my number when they get to the airport. Ciao.” Pamela closed her phone with a satisfied laugh. Her thighs clenched. She hooded her eyes before reopening the phone and starting to text.
As soon as she finished, she tucked her cell away and fell back onto the bed with a sigh. Numbers that she’d made mean more than words filtered through her head. What she did was simple, and she knew it. It was parlor tricks. It was her body that got her where she was.
A smirk fought at her lips and Pamela surrendered to it. “But at least I wasn’t dumb enough to use my power to become some kind of super villain. I wonder how many women there are like me out there, gifted, but not altruistic enough to save the world, or dumb enough to think they can own it. I can’t be the only one.”
Pamela’s hands slid along her body. It was impossible not to admire herself from time to time. Though her power affected her to a much smaller degree than it affected others, that didn’t mean she hadn’t spent time entranced by her own reflection, or reveling in the curve of her hip. It had taken effort, but she’d learned how to ignore it almost entirely. She could still feel it every time her fingers brushed against each other, and each time she noticed a mirror. There was just a gentle tug at the back of her mind that reminded her to look away, or to stop rubbing her fingers together.
She held up her hands and noticed her fingers had started doing just that. A faint blush rose to her cheeks. She was lucky Sylvia hadn’t wandered in. She wondered how many women masturbated just by rubbing their fingers together. It had definitely made high school interesting.
The sound of a knock broke Pamela from her thoughts. She didn’t respond, instead staying as still as she could. There was no way her crew had already arrived. Sylvia would have called first.
“Room Service.” A silky feminine voice melted through the door and sent a shudder down Pamela’s spine. Something about the voice sounded so powerful. There was an authority to it that made her feel she had to listen very carefully. She found herself standing before she even decided to move. It was startling, embarrassing, but she swore her nipples hadn’t been throbbing before. Her thoughts lingered on her phone for a moment, but then that voice came again. “If you could open the door? I can get it myself, but I think you’d have more fun getting it for me.”
Pamela gasped as she felt herself opening the door. “Of course. I’ll get the door for you.” Her voice sounded dazed. She didn’t remember wanting to respond. It was hard to stay standing as she pulled open the door. Her body felt heavy, and her knees felt weak.
Standing on the other side of the door was a woman in a black cloak that flowed loosely over her body. Her face was hidden in the shadow of a hood. A gloved finger pressed to her lips as Pamela opened her mouth to speak . “I’ll be the one asking the questions here, Pamela.”
The reporter’s eyes rolled back into her head as she slumped forward, melting against the woman with a quivering moan.