The Birthday Present

Admittedly, this one is going to get a little weird and a little surreal.  Might even get existential, I don’t know.  Let’s see what I have in store for @MagicalFirefly this time.

Carlie really didn’t expect it, a small apartment on the back of a complex in a corner of a college town, but she was here, just like she was supposed to be.

It didn’t surprise her at all.  BenjaminEagle had written a number of stories with her in them, so it made sense that he’d put her here, now.  I mean, it was his birthday.

She knocked on the door to see a fairly tall, bald man with a beard and an eye that seemed perpetually closed. “Oh, Carlie, you finally made it.”

Carlie smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, you finally wrote the part of the story.  Happy Birthday by the way.”

Ben smiled and laughed. “That was a few days ago.  I’ve been trying to figure out what to write with this story since then.”

Another voice came from behind him. “Ben, invite her in already.  It’s cold out there!”

Carlie looked around him to see a woman, incredibly beautiful and a little taller than Ben. “Oh yeah, come on in.”

She smiled a radiant smile at Carlie. “You’ll have to forgive him.  Sometimes he gets a little forgetful.”

Ben gave her a lovingly serious stare before smiling at her.  Carlie knew Ben was engaged to be married but had no idea his fiancée was so gorgeous.  She would’ve felt a little plain by comparison, but his fiancée simply welcomed her in like she was already a member of the family. “I know that this is a birthday story, so let’s see if Ben’ll write some cake and ice cream for us.”

It seemed like only a moment later before Carlie found herself on the couch, Ben’s fiancée in the big chair with Ben in the office chair for the computer, all of them eating the most decadent chocolate cake she could imagine as well as a good helping of mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Carlie could remember singing happy birthday and something about telling Ben’s fiancée how she and Ben met and how Ben asked if he could saw her in half in one of his stories and it just kind of rolled from there.

And Ben’s fiancée was telling how they met or was apparently in the middle of it. “…and so he straight up asked me if he could use me as a model for a character in his books.”

Carlie could remember the rest of the story and figured Ben must’ve just skipped over all the parts he thought might be boring, so she just went with it. “And life imitated art?”

The two of them just sort of smirked at each other and Carlie could tell that something more deep had happened between them. “All this because of a story of your fictional daughter. You don’t have any real children?”

Ben shook his head a little sad. “No, my first wife died from a heart attack, leaving me alone without anyone else until I met her.”

He reached out and touched her hand and Martha saw something else pass between them. “But we’re hoping for children someday.”

At that, the two of them leaned forward and kissed each other, Carlie looking away.  She kind of felt like an intruder, but she was already in this story, so she cleared her throat. “You know the reason I’m here.”

Ben nodded. “Of course, I wrote it.”

Carlie sighed.  Ben had written so many stories with her getting cut to pieces, but never quite like this.  Sure, this was a story itself, but she never thought the author would be involved. “Go ahead and lay on the couch, Carlie.  And don’t forget to tie your shirt up.”

As she did that, Ben brought out a cylinder about a foot long with dials on it.  One of the ends was opened up and Carlie tried to recognize it before his fiancée just laughed. “Don’t you know?  Ben’s a complete nerd!”

As Ben approached Carlie with the lightsaber, he paused for a moment. “Baby, go and grab the other one. I want to try something here.”

A moment later, she returned with a second lightsaber. “Now, Carlie, we’ve cut you in half then cut off your head before, but we’ve never done it at the same time.”

Carlie rolled her eyes. “Go ahead.”

She knew what to expect. Ben never let the pain of getting cut hurt for very long, at least not outside some horror stories.  As the lightsabers snap-hissed on, Carlie couldn’t help but notice both were red.  Did that make them evil?

Ben lifted a hand, counting down on his fingers before he reached zero and Carlie felt the heat from both blades on her skin as they cut through her at the same time.  Carlie knew what to expect from experience as the pleasant sensations coursed through her now-divided body.  She caught her breath before catching her head before it rolled off the couch.  Ben looked over at his fiancée, smiling as she smiled at Carlie. “Well?”

Carlie managed to smile back. “It was intense, that’s one way to describe it.  But aren’t you forgetting something?  What about my feet?”

Ben just laughed a moment. “Not this time.”

He produced something from somewhere and Carlie felt her stomach tighten up as a smile spread across her face.  Ben went down to her feet as his fiancée lifted her top half up.  Carlie felt her shoes and socks being slipped off before Ben went to town with the feather he had.  Ben’s fiancée began to tickle her ribs.

It seemed like it lasted forever, but Carlie knew it probably only lasted a few minutes.  Ben knew Carlie’s fetish for being tickled and even wrote a few stories with that in them, so now there was a new one.

Before long, Ben placed Carlie’s head on her torso and lined her waist up. “Carlie, thank you so much for coming to celebrate my birthday with me.  I’d use Velcro, but I’m out, but I know you can saw yourself in half whenever you choose to because I’ve read your stories as well.”

Carlie smiled and accepted their goodbyes as she left, but, as she headed out the door, she had to ask Ben something. “What would happen if we were to ever meet outside this realm of storytelling?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I’d expect to be greeted nicely, but I might also have to tie you up.”

Carlie smiled at that idea.