Heaven Hath No Wrath Read online

  Heaven Hath No Wrath

  By Isaac Byrne

  Copyright © 2018 by Isaac Byrne

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition, 2018

  Prologue

  Before getting in the car, Cindy took one last whiff of her surroundings, holding it in for a long moment before releasing it with a happy sigh. This would be the last apple-picking trip for the year, and she wanted to savor the fragrance of the orchard for as long as she could. Eric was smiling at her as she settled into the passenger seat after settling her sack of fresh-picked apples in the trunk. She was so glad she had a friend like him who liked to do these kinds of things.

  Marcus used to, before he left her for the Peace Corps. That had been such a difficult time, so many powerful emotions jumbling up her recollections that she tried not to think of it. Honestly, sometimes she could hardly even remember his face. Or if it was really the Peace Corp, or… something else, maybe? Was that strange? She didn’t know. Besides, what did it matter. She forgot the train of thought almost as soon as it cropped up. Again.

  Eric good-naturedly listened to her gab on about her plans for their apple haul. She was so excited about this process for turning apple peels into rose-shaped decorations she’d seen on pinterest that she was home before she even noticed. Cindy loved the little adventures they had together – picking apples, going hiking, taking squash lessons, even a weird weekend at a LARPing camp that she knew she’d never stop giggling at. She and Eric just had so much fun together, and he never seemed to mind her quirkiness. Boyfriends in the past sometimes got irritated with her always wanting to go do something, go try something, that she’d spent long periods in her youth just not dating at all so she could just hang out with her male friends as friends, and nothing more complex, no baggage.

  Speaking of baggage, presently Eric helped her carry the apples up to her apartment, and after a few more minutes, she gently steered him towards the door so she could get on with her evening.

  “Hey, thanks again for taking me, Eric. I had a lot of fun today.” Cindy opened the front door, the setting sun throwing a red light on the two of them. She took a big bite from her apple, eyes closing in delight at the crispness, the juiciness of it. Oblivious to how beautiful she looked just then.

  When she opened them again, her friend was looking at her with an intensity that was almost staggering. And in an instant, she knew what was about to happen. It had happened to her so many times before, so much that she’d even learned not to even dread it any more. Just enjoy it while you can , she’d told herself. And now, the window was closing.

  “Cindy… I’m in love with you.”

  There it was. She stifled the weary sigh that threatened to come out by reflex. She’d always preferred the company of guys as friends, finding girls a bit too catty, manipulative, jealous; still, she knew she was pretty, and she knew her friendly nature could easily be taken for more than it was intended as. Cindy had lost a lot of her guy friends that way. All of them, really, practically a revolving door.

  “You’re so kind, and sincere, and beautiful, and brilliant, and talented, and driven, and… truth be told, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. And I want you to be more than that. You know how I haven’t been dating?”

  She nodded, trying not to look discouraging. She knew this would be hard for him, and at least wanted him to have the peace of mind of getting the whole thing out. “Yeah, how you turned down Kiera a while back. I remember.”

  He smiled. “Exactly. And you know Kiera – she’s great. But… well, she’s not you. Kiera, and plenty of other girls, too. More than you’d think, honestly. I just kept thinking it over, and I just knew I’d never be able to stop comparing her, stop realizing that she wasn’t what I needed. And I do. I need you Cindy. I love you.”

  A plaintive smile tinged with desperation stole over her friend’s face as he took a step forward, lips parting. In a moment, he’d be kissing her – it was time to intervene.

  “Eric, wait.” She stopped him with a feather-light hand on his chest, carrying with it a mountain of grim reality. “Eric, you are my best friend, and I care about you so much . You’re my best friend, too, and you’ve been so good to me, especially these past months after Marcus left… I just…”

  She trailed off, as ever unsure of how to say it without destroying him. Eric interjected, “…need more time? Is that it. I waited a year, Cindy. You need to move on. Let yourself be happy.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I’m ready, really. Honestly, I’ve been wanting to start dating again for months now, but something just keeps stopping me.” What did keep stopping her? She banished the question from her mind. Again. He had that look on his face, that crestfallen, shattered look she’d seen before.

  “Don’t let it stop you. Let me make you happy, Cindy. I’ll be so good to you.” Tears welled up in his eyes, and as the awkward silence loomed, they began to leak out down his cheeks. Dirt from the orchard washed away in the narrow rivulets, dripping down onto his shirt.

  Somewhere, the sun had set while she still searched for those words she had never found, would never find, to make this go away like it had never been, to make Eric stay her contentedly platonic friend. But those words just didn’t exist.

  “Cindy? Say something?” The desperation in his voice almost overwhelmed her.

  And finally, she spoke, her voice small and tremulous, squeaking guiltily through the tears that threatened to break out at any moment. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I wanted you to say yes.”

  “I’m sorry, Eric. I just don’t feel that way.”

  And then, in an instant, all the hurt on his face melted away, leaving a look like nothing else she’d seen before. Blank. Nothing. It was like looking into a bottomless pit. Cindy staggered back away from the door. Eric closed it with himself inside.

  “Well all right then.”

  Cindy gasped in shock as a bizarre feeling shook her mind. It was like the feeling of peeling dried glue off her fingers, except the glue was being peeled off of her brain. She heard him speaking, but distantly, the way you hear people sitting at another table in a restaurant but don’t really register the words.

  “I tried to do right by you, Cindy. This past year, holding myself back… it’s practically a miracle I managed it. I thought maybe I could do it the right way. Earn your affection, like I tried to before. But no, nothing was ever going to be good enough for you, was it. Well, except for that asshole Marcus.”

  She wanted to speak out in his defense, that he’d left to go join the Peace Corps, she realized that… that never happened. They’d had a fight, he’d… what had happened? That was part of the glue that had come off. How could that be? She remembered, he had… had… what had happened to him? “What did you do to him?”

  Eric sneered. “He got off easy. He cheated on you, Cindy – some slut he met at a bar, no less. You walked in on them, remember?” And she did. Balls deep in some skank with blonde highlights and a tattoo reading “RIP Gpa” on her shoulder. “You were wrecked, Cindy. You wanted to kill yourself. Even then we’d been friends for a while, and it was the first time I ever thought about using my gift on you. You were always special to me, and I didn’t want to risk that you’d get low one day and do something awful to yourself, especially over an asswipe like that.”

  She remembered, the cobwebs of false memories swept away by his words as he continued. “So I rewrote the memory, let you think he joined the Peace Corps. Had to mostly block you from thinking too much about it,
since obviously that idiot would never make the cut.”

  “No – it wasn’t like that! I never would’ve…” She trailed off, the memories of how depressed she’d been flooding back. She’d been heart-broken, and it had destroyed her sense of self-worth. “Still, you had no right to–”

  “You don’t think I know this is wrong?” Eric roared over her hoarsely. “I tried to help, and sure, I was happy to see Marcus go and happy to see you move on, for all the selfish reasons you’d think. But I also saw how unhappy you were – remember how much you complained about him to me, even before the incident? I did you a favor making you get over him – just like I’ve made a lot of people do a lot of things. And I could have made you do a lot of other things, but with you, no, I had to be a fucking sucker, fell in love, decided to lower myself to being like every other pitiful chump too blinded by love to realize it’s a one-way relationship.

  “Six months. I told myself, I’ll play it straight, give you half a year to get over him organically, move on, and see what could have been yours. Let you fall in love with me like I did with you. But you know what? Time is up. You have no idea how much I wanted this to be the right way, but that’s impossible now. Now, we do things the easy way.”

  Cindy looked up at him, her head swimming with the pace of realizations. “H-how? How are you doing this?”

  Her erstwhile best friend shook his head. “I’ve been able to do it for a long time. How? I don’t know. I could describe what it feels like, but it probably wouldn’t make any sense to you. How does a dragon breathe fire? It just opens its mouth and does it.” She had an odd recollection in that moment, of a poster that used to hang in his bedroom: a depiction of a dragon, with the caption “do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”

  Eric allowed her a moment to collect herself, rising back to her feet but still trying to keep her distance. “So what happens now? What are you going to,” she swallowed with difficulty past a lump in her throat, “to do to me?”

  “Cindy… I wasn’t lying when I said all that earlier. I do love you. And I wanted more than anything for you to feel the same way.”

  “Is that it? You’re going to… make me love you?” She shuddered with a sudden chill.

  “What, you mean like this?”

  Cindy gasped, vision clouding – and then it cleared. Eric stood across the room, his presence soothing her as always. He looked upset, but she’d lost track of what they’d been talking about. It didn’t matter – it was just hard seeing him that way. She wrapped her arms around his waist, kissing both cheeks and then his lips softly, pouring her empathy into it. “You look tense.”

  “I am.” Their common language was unnecessary to understand his response. It infused his tone.

  “C’mon, let me help. Let me rub your shoulders, we’ll put on a movie, order Chinese, and just cuddle the night away.” She kissed him again. “You pick the movie, I pick the restaurant, like usual, right?” Another kiss, a comforting smile.

  But his stern tone didn’t waiver in the least. “I’m sorry Cindy, but that won’t cut it.”

  “Oh, hon. What’s wrong?”

  “Unlike you, I know this is all bullshit.” And as suddenly as before, his power, whatever it was, reached into her mind, and after losing the time again for a brief span, she was herself again. Her hands recoiled from him in horror, and she stumbled backwards.

  “And that’s why I won’t just make you love me. Because every word out of your mouth is going to reverberate with the bullshit that it is. I don’t want you to love me because I forced you to, and I’m not going to settle for it.”

  She tried to breathe steadily. “So you’re going to let me go?”

  He laughed – but it was a dark, ugly thing, bitter and wounded. “Oh, Cindy, of course not. I’ve wanted you for so long, wasted so many hours fantasizing and dreaming of what it would be like to… well, I won’t spoil it just yet. I’m not letting you go. Not ever. But… I meant it when I said I love you, so I’m going to do something for you I’ve never done for any woman before. I’m going to give you a choice.”

  Choice . The word was pregnant with meaning, and she kept silent to let him explain. “I can mold your mind into anything I want. I could have you be a harem girl, a robot, hell I could have you be a fucking hat rack with a pussy. But instead, I’ll let you choose your fate.”

  “What kind of choice is that?!”

  “The last one you’ll ever get to make as your own woman, Cindy. I knew you might react the way you did, so I have a few options ready for you. Are you paying attention?”

  She realized she’d been borderline hyperventilating, still reeling from the shock of knowing how easily he had made her become his adoring little girlfriend. How casually he undid it, like her brain was a radio with dials available for adjustment, switched on and off at will. She tried to steady herself, and nodded. What else could she do, after all? She’d tried to run out of the room, scream for help, grab the taser out of her purse – but there she stood. She was sure Eric was holding her in her place, because every instinct she had was to panic.

  “All right. Now I could spell the options out for you, but honestly, I worry that you’d judge them on your preconceived notions and not on the actuality of it. So for the next few days, you’re going to live the options. Each morning, you’ll become one of the versions of you that I’m offering. Then, when you’ve seen all your options…”

  Eric walked back to the apartment’s door to the outside and opened it. “You’ll choose.” Cindy remembered how different he had seemed when he had last opened that door. How different everything had seemed. She had trusted him then. Loved him, even, though not in the way he wanted. But now…

  “Rest up tonight, Cindy. You have a busy day ahead of you tomorrow. And for what it’s worth … I meant every word.”

  Day One

  The morning began bizarrely. Lying on her side, Cindy’s eyes opened the split second her alarm clock turned from 7:59 to 8:00. Normally she wasn’t a morning person, slow and late to rise and groggy until she had her coffee and often for hours beyond it. At her job as a copy editor, it was well-known that if you wanted a favor from her, wait to ask until after lunch. Today, however, she immediately sat bolt upright and whipped the covers off in a rush, ignoring the uncomfortable shift in temperature.

  Today was the first day she would be… well, whatever it was Eric was going to have her be. He had been cryptic on the subject last night, but she could guess.

  She realized that she had no real control over what she was doing, a passenger in her own body, no more in control of it than she was of blinking when dust got in her eye. Her body just knew what needed to be done, and did it. Her morning routine passed almost as if she were watching someone’s first-person recording of their routine on their cell phone. She shed her pajamas and started the shower, brushing her teeth mechanically while the water warmed. In the shower, she watched her hands scrub every nook and cranny. She had always been proud of her long, toned legs, and from the attention to detail she took in shaving them, it seemed likely that Eric admired them as well. She wanted to gasp, or grumble, or something to express her anxiety as she shaved her pubic hair down to a neat little patch. (Being single, after all, she hadn’t had to bother with yard maintenance in quite some time.) Instead, she finished the methodical process and then proceeded to tweeze the few wayward bits of stubble that remained. She supposed she had Eric to thank for her stoicism in not making a sound despite the pain.

  The next few hours passed by with her only semi-conscious of it, and what she was conscious of, she was in a state of near disbelief. An appointment with her stylist, a mani-pedi, a makeover (which had to have included more makeup than she had since Cindy had been in middle school trying to prove that even straight-A students could look chic), a trip to a clothing retailer to pick up a few new outfits, and finally a stop by a seedy little sex store on the outskirts of town that ended in more ch
arges to her credit card than she earned in a month. Her skin refused to blush when she walked out of the store wearing one of the purchases, no matter how much she wanted to as she felt the eyes of the store owner on her body. She wore one of her purchases out of the store; the part of her that would have been aghast at what she was wearing was absent. Instead, there was merely a calm contentment that she had done the thing she needed to do.

  It was just before noon when she arrived at Eric’s house. She carried her bags of purchases with her up to the house and walked right in without knocking, though that was normal enough. They hung out four or five days a week, after all, and both had keys to the other’s place. She found Eric reclining in the armchair in his living room, watching her evenly as she came in. Cindy set down her bags on a coffee table and stood back up, posture proud and erect.

  Suddenly, in that instant, she was in control again.

  Eric sat patiently, only slightly smirking, as her hands flew into protective positions. Cindy stood clad in a joke of a fetishized French maid costume, the square neckline so low that a careful eye would see the tops of her nipples exposed. It hugged her tits like a second skin, then after nearly a foot of exposed tummy came the skirt. The straps of her white lace thong poked out atop her exposed hips above it, and then it flared out to near horizontal, leaving her butt almost completely exposed. Fishnet stockings rose most of the way up her long, pale thighs, and finally a pair of glossy black boots with at least a four-inch heel. Later, she would see her makeup was caked on thickly around the eyes, and even with the flesh feast she was offering, the deep red lipstick would captivate the gaze of anyone looking at her with its unspoken promises of a long, wet blowjob.

  It wasn’t even the sort of attire a slutty college girl would wear to a party. It was the sort of thing a prostitute would wear when a john bought it for her – and would probably charge him through the nose to see her in it. Cindy’s breasts were not huge; she had always kept to a B-cup, enjoying spilling out of that rather than having her breasts go unnoticed swimming around in a C. Today, in this slutty get-up, they conveyed the image of an under-endowed slut so desperate for attention she’d try anything to get men to leer at her.