Page 21 of Kindred Spirits

Yeah, sorry, bro. That was shitty of me. Won’t happen again.

I got the distinct feeling nothing would be happening again with Ben. He and I didn’t know each other well enough to be friends, and I’d probably just blown it with him anyway. I let the phone fall back to my lap with a sigh and looked up to find Ghost had gone, or at least disappeared.

“How do you know so much about irqed?” I asked Honor.

He shrugged and cleaned his greasy fingers on a napkin. “My job to know about the creatures I was hunting.”

I sat up a little more. “You hunted irqed?”

“On occasion.” He glanced up at me and then quickly away. “I was told they were responsible for what happened to your mother and father.”

A familiar ache flared in my chest and I reached to rub my pec as if I could wipe it away. I didn’t have a ton of memories of my mom and dad since they’d died when I was eight, but I had enough to know I missed them.

I never knew what happened to them, just that they’d died. After it happened, Honor spent almost a year drunk while I stayed with Hopper Meadows on his dragon ranch, and when he finally sobered up, he refused to talk about them. He wanted to move on, acting almost like they’d never existed. I learned quickly not to ask questions about them, as that just made him withdraw if he didn’t shut down completely. It was weird to hear him talk about them after so long.

“That wasn’t the truth,” Honor said slowly, making me look up from where I sat. “I don’t know how much you want to know, or if you want to know anything. But when you’re ready, we should talk. I…” Honor seemed to choke up, continuing only when Ziggy put his hand over his. He took a deep breath. “It’s been along journey, kid. But I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Whenever you’re ready.”

I swallowed and looked away, saying nothing. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready. How is a son ever supposed to be ready to hear about how his parents died in another world?

Maybe Ghost had the right idea after all. A little water to wash away all the shit of the day. I didn’t want to go dive in an ice-cold lake, though, so a shower was the next best thing.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I announced and stood. “You guys crashing in here or what?”

“We can sleep in the van if you’d rather we didn’t,” Honor said.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not making you sleep out in the van. There’s plenty of floor space. Ghost gets dibs on the couch if he wants it, though.”

“Sure, kid,” Honor said quietly. “Whatever you want.”

I dragged myself to the shower and stayed in it until the hot water ran out, trying to empty my mind. It didn’t work. So much had happened in the last couple of days. Too much. More than I could process. I needed to get back to normal, whatever normal was for me.

What does a normal night look like?I leaned against the shower wall, trying to remember. This was usually a streaming night. I didn’t have internet at the house, so I usually drove out to someplace where I got service and streamed from my phone. Public stuff always got me more views, but I couldn’t just drive off and leave Ghost alone with Honor and Ziggy. They’d all want to know where I was going at that hour, and I didn’t have a good excuse. Plus, I was bone tired.

Maybe I can just make a couple of videos and upload them tomorrow before work with an apology to the fans.

I sighed and shut off the water. My life was about to get way more complicated than I liked.

Axel

I brought out allthe spare blankets and pillows I had, dumping them into the middle of the living room, figuring my three guests could figure out how to divide them up. That was a bridge too far, apparently, since Ghost immediately snatched all of them and hissed at Honor, who backed away, hands up.

“Share,” I reminded him. “And you promised to be nice.”

Ghost dropped his head, sulking, and then kicked a single pillow and blanket across the floor to them. I sighed. This was going to be harder than I thought.

I got them all settled as best I could, helping Ghost build a nest with the blankets and pillows under the kitchen table. He had me hang a sheet over the table to make it into a tent, and I was half tempted to crawl into it with him. Who wouldn’t wantto sleep in a blanket fort with a tentacle monster? But then I remembered I have a spine, and hard floors hurt to sleep on. Plus, I had a perfectly good bed and some videos to make, so I left him to it.

When I first started making the videos, I thought all I had to do was turn on the camera, jerk off, and bam. Success. Not true. There was a lot more work involved. Whenever I did a live stream, I had to hype it up on the socials beforehand. That meant making enticing clips a few times a month and spending a few hours a week making promotional images or text. All the real money in porn was in live events, which meant the pre-recorded videos were all just samples of what people would get if they joined my stream.

For the videos, I had to think about lighting, camera placement, shots, angles… And that was to say nothing about doing all the setup to make cleanup easy.

Like everyone else, I had a gimmick. Toys were mine, which would surprise no one. I had every sort of sex toy imaginable, from dildoes and vibrators to sheathes. I didn’t have a fuck machine, mostly because of space issues, but I’d thought about trying to build one myself. All my videos were solo affairs. I preferred to keep my sex life and my sex work separate. Not that I would’ve objected to a team up with the right person, but it didn’t fit my brand.

I set up two tripods, one to hold my phone and the other to hold the camera. I’d get everything from two angles and then either pick the best one, or cut the shots together if I had time to do a little editing. I doubted I would, considering my house guests, so I tried my hardest to get everything just right the first time.

With the cameras set up, the inconspicuous waterproof plastic laid down, and the lights right, I went to the wall of sex toys to pick out what I was going to use. I had over four hundredto choose from, crowding the space of a bookshelf. Of course, some of them showed up better on camera than others, but my favorites were the tentacles. I had a whole shelf of them, many of them in neon or glow in the dark colors.

I picked up a purple one, turning it over in my hands with a frown. After what’d happened between me and Ghost in the woods, it almost felt like cheating to use one of the tentacle toys. Why would I use it when he was right there? He’d probably help me if I asked, but I couldn’t put that on camera. He could go invisible, though, and maybe…

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