The Girl (Part 3): Angela's Peril

[JSample]

THE GIRL (or, Angela’s Story: A Side-quel to “The Kid”)

by Jason Sample
December 2018–April 2019

In Part Three of our story, Angela, having stepped naked into the mudflat to indulge to the fullest her fetish fantasy of pleasuring herself while pretending to be trapped in quicksand, finds herself sinking helplessly into the depths of the mire as she confronts the reality of the peril in which she has unwittingly ensnared herself... and learns that her fetish is far more insidious than she has ever imagined.

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The Girl (Part 3): Angela’s Peril


Angela stared in wide-eyed alarm at the surface of the sticky ooze as it continued to draw her slowly downward in its clutching grasp while she held her arms up from the surface, and with a mixture of fear and fascination she watched as the flesh of her upper breasts descended steadily into the quag. I’m really sinking in quicksand, she muttered in stunned disbelief as she felt the sucking mire enfolding her more fully into its fathomless depths, a dark, watery tendril exploring her disappearing cleavage as she sank further into the muck’s gooey grip. Cognizant of her deepening danger, she worriedly looked around herself from her perilous position in the mudflat to see if there were any kind of handhold within her reach with which she might free herself. Her body had rotated somewhat to her left when she had fallen over the edge of the drop-off, and as she cast her eyes about from the wall of vegetation now standing before her, to the spot off to her right where the stranger had stumbled upon her earlier, to the sloping riverbank that lay behind her, and to the place to her left where the river fed the mudflat its sustaining moisture, she saw that they were all a good twelve to fifteen feet away from where she was stuck and offered her no means of escape. The irony of her circumstance and of her fearful response to it wasn’t lost on her; on the one hand, this was what she had always dreamed of, to be trapped and sinking in quicksand while she indulged her fetish to the fullest, but on the other she had never intended to end up sinking to her doom for real in the stuff. She had made her way to the middle of the flat where she had hoped that the mire would be at its deepest so that her fantasy could become as much of a reality as she could make it, she ruefully remembered, and now she had gotten exactly what she had wanted… only she hadn’t counted on losing her footing and falling into what now certainly seemed to be bottomless quicksand, fated to become a helpless victim as in one of those old horror movies.

She suddenly remembered something that she had read on the quicksand forum about the difference between “movie” quicksand and the real thing. People going under to their doom is just for dramatic effect, she nervously reminded herself as she continued descending slowly into the mire; in real quicksand, you sink to a level of neutral buoyancy, then you float at the surface. She need only wait until she reached that depth, she reassured herself, and then she could start the process of extricating herself from her “bottomless” trap. Unfortunately, it seemed that no one had explained the concept of neutral buoyancy to this particular mudflat, and to Angela’s consternation she continued settling more deeply into the muck even as she abruptly realized that the pressure of the thick ooze flowing over and around her labia in its post-orgasmic sensitivity was quickly re-invigorating her arousal despite her desperate predicament. Just as she had learned while masturbating during her teenage years that she could make herself come multiple times after having an initial orgasm, she suddenly responded involuntarily to the continuing stimulation of her clitoris within the deep mud, her lower body spasming uncontrollably in a renewed burst of sensual release that took her breath away even as it pulled her deeper into the ooze.

“Oh, no!” Angela gasped in dismay as her spontaneous movements drew her down to her armpits, her body seemingly intent upon dragging itself into the depths of the sucking muck despite her fervent wishes otherwise. She knew from intimate experience under her own hand that once she had reached orgasm for the first time it took little to no effort for her to climax again and again, and now the insidious ooze seemed to have divined that secret as well. Even as her second orgasm was fading a third hit just as powerfully as the muculent mire cunningly drew her into a viscous, vicious circle of stimulus and response, the clinging mud flowing thickly over her innervated womanhood as she sank more deeply into its grip while her body reciprocated with perpetuating pulses of erotic eruptions, which only served to pull her further downward into the mire’s clutching grasp, which in turn sent her again over the edge of orgasmic frenzy, which then…

“No! No! Stop! Please!” Angela begged both her body and the bog as her spasmodic seizures pulled her downward past her shoulders to her neck, and she urgently stretched her arms upward from the surface toward a wished-for overhead handhold that was nowhere to be found. “Helllllp!” she cried out again in fearful desperation even more loudly than before to anyone who might hear as it became clear that she was truly in over her head in trouble, “I’m in quicksaaaand!” While she had fantasized for years about pleasuring herself to orgasm over and over as she sank into the clinging, muddy depths of a bottomless quagmire, it had always been on her terms, not the mire’s, and now what in any other context would have been sheer, unending heaven for her had become abject, utter hell as her every climactic convulsion in the muck’s intimate embrace only drew her deeper into its clutches, her eyes burning with tears not of blissful joy but of helpless torment as the mud crept up to and encircled her lower jaw. She had once read an article about female sexual response that discussed how some women would experience unwanted arousal and even orgasm in the midst of such horrifying experiences as sexual assault and rape, and as the ooze continued to have its way with her while it took her more deeply into its grip, she felt that she now understood exactly how those luckless women must have felt.

“Oh, god… oh, god, no…” she whispered pleadingly even as her body ignored her entreaties while continuing to respond erotically to the mud’s invasive touch. The greatest number of consecutive climaxes that she remembered ever having elicited from her body under her own hand was five, but now she had lost count of the number of times that her inflamed womanhood had betrayed her in the enveloping grasp of the sucking mire that seemed intent upon swallowing her alive. Yet another pudendal paroxysm pulled her down past her chin, forcing her to tilt her head back in the clutching ooze, and in a fury of resistance she drove her arms deeply into the mud by her sides in a desperate attempt to push herself upward before the quicksand could claim her mouth and nose. This abrupt act of defiant self-assertion seemed to break the physiological cycle by which the muck had been continuously seducing her body, and at last Angela hung tremblingly in the mire, the loose mud lapping around her lower jaw, her swollen clitoris only now beginning to settle down from its overworked response to the quag’s all-too-intimate hold.

“Wow,” she gasped out loud to her surroundings, breathing shallowly as her depth in the mire seemed to stabilize for the moment, her forehead bathed with sweat, “that was different.” She had definitely never felt anything like that before, her moment of genuine terror as she sank deeper into the muck having only intensified the erotic thrill of the experience. “Huh…” she chuckled as she looked around herself, almost eye-level with the surface, “I really had myself going there for a minute…” She closed her eyes and inhaled as deeply as she could against the enclosing pressure of the mud around her chest as she sought to steady herself, exhilarated at having finally indulged her fetish fantasy to the fullest, yet finding relief in the overdue respite from her orgasmic overload while she waited to float back up to the point of neutral buoyancy that she had read about so that, after she had rested for a bit, she could at last begin the slow, arduous process of freeing herself from the ooze.

Someone still seemed not to have informed the mudflat about that all-important concept, however, as after a couple of minutes of panting recovery Angela realized that she was still at the same chin-level depth that she had been when she had regained control of herself. Why aren’t I floating back up? she wondered uncertainly, the weight of the mud around her torso making it difficult for her to take a deep breath. I read on the forum that the human body is less dense than quicksand; I ought to be floating at around chest-level by now. What’s going on?...

Angela decided to move her feet and legs in the thick depths of the quag to get some fluid circulating around them to try to break the grip of the enveloping ooze, but as she pulled up on her right leg the effort just drove her left deeper, and when she reflexively sought to pull that leg up it just pushed her right farther down as well, taking her deeper into the muck with it. This isn’t right! she gasped in renewed panic as the loose mud at the surface again rose over her chin and threatened the corners of her mouth. You can’t go under in real quicksand… can you? she worried apprehensively as her slightly greater depth made taking a breath even more of a burden. She considered shifting her feet again to try once more to break the suction around them, but the possibility of pulling herself even deeper into the mire gave her pause. As difficult as it had now become for her to breathe, at least she would still be able to do so for as long as her mouth and nose remained above the surface... if they remained above the surface. What have I gotten myself into? she agonized with increasing trepidation.

It suddenly occurred to her that the deep mud in which she was trapped and that she had been thinking of as quicksand might not be quicksand after all. Real quicksand formed from an upwelling of water through a mass of soil or sand sufficient to lift and separate the individual particles from one another, rendering it unable to support the weight of anything or anyone on its surface, she remembered reading on the forum. Not only that, but in real quicksand the lesser density of the human body would cause an unburdened person to sink not below the surface but only to the depth where their natural buoyancy canceled out the downward pull of gravity, and they would float. That’s how real quicksand worked, Angela reminded herself, and that’s why she had always believed that she would ultimately be safe if she ever had the chance to indulge her fetish fantasy in it… however, she again asked herself, what if this wasn’t quicksand at all? What if the mudflat’s composition were more a quick-mud or quick-clay than quicksand? The heavy ooze gripping her bare feet and legs deep beneath the surface felt just as fine, smooth, and thick as had the stuff in the shallower parts of the flat, and she sensed no upward flow of water at all from beneath herself. What if, rather than being quicksand per se, the mire that was holding her fast in its clutches was just deep, thick, gooey mud that didn’t give a damn about relative density or neutral buoyancy? What if she never floated back up at all? In a fit of frustration Angela struggled to lift her arms from deep in the muck back to the surface… only to abruptly drive herself further downward, her lips quickly slipping beneath the ooze as it now threatened to invade her nostrils, and she was only able to avoid inhaling the muck into her sinuses by tilting her head even farther back while pushing her arms down into the depths to bring her mouth and chin back above the surface… but just barely. What have I done to myself? she whimpered fearfully, tears beginning to well in her eyes as she tried once more to take a full breath through trembling lips into her encumbered lungs.

She attempted to calm herself by taking stock of her situation and of the most likely direction from which assistance might arrive to rescue her from her miry trap. Anyone coming down the mountain path on the other side of the hedge of greenery before her would simply have to walk around its edge to find her, she reasoned; however, aside from the stranger who had shown up earlier there at just the wrong time — Hmph… if he hadn’t interrupted me then, I might not be in this fix now, she considered with annoyance; thanks a lot, mister — she had never seen anyone else hiking down the tree-and-boulder-blocked trail during other times when she had visited her favorite sunbathing spot. Likewise, she had never seen anyone walking down the path off to her right from the parking lot to visit the river before heading up the mountain; the river was a refreshing end-of-hike destination for visitors to the park, not a first stop. Finally, the sloping bank behind her was about a foot higher than both the surface of the mudflat in which she was trapped and the level of the river on the other side of the bank, meaning that anyone who might happen to be out on the water despite the dangerous rapids and falls a half-mile downstream probably wouldn’t see her even if they were to look in her direction, and of course the bushes and vegetation that grew along the shore would only contribute to her concealment. It seemed that her only hope of being discovered before it was too late would be for someone to hear her calling for help, perhaps even the stranger who had seen her earlier if for some reason he had not yet driven off from the parking lot, and with renewed determination she struggled to fill her lungs with air within the embrace of the onerous ooze in order to draw attention to her plight.

“Please! Somebody!” Angela cried out as loudly as she could from what amounted to a hole in the ground, a tight, form-fitting depression that seemed intent upon drawing her ever more deeply and completely into its grasp. As she forcefully expelled the lungful of air that had powered her call for help, the thick mud enclosing her chest seemed to settle even more heavily around her as she sank slightly lower into the quag, and she realized that she might never be able to take as deep a breath again so long as she remained trapped at this depth in the mire. A disquieting image flashed through her mind, that of the muck relentlessly squeezing her chest ever more tightly after her every exhalation like the constricting coils of a python until finally she would be unable to breathe at all. Was it possible, she wondered fearfully, to suffocate in quicksand… or quick-mud, or quick-clay, or whatever the hell this stuff was… without actually sinking beneath the surface?

Strange the directions that one’s mind can take when facing the possibility of imminent demise, Angela thought as the memory of a silly stop-motion video that she had once seen on Youtube unexpectedly surfaced in her consciousness, that of a talking giraffe, sinking to its doom in a pit of quicksand, going through an exaggerated display of the five traditional stages of grief and bereavement in quick succession as it sank all the way to its chin. Having raced through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, the long-necked animal had finally accepted its impending fate and was looking forward to munching tasty leaves in heaven when its hooves unexpectedly reached the bottom of the pit, leaving only its head above the surface. The joke was that after all the emotional swings that it had endured while sinking ever deeper, the giraffe wasn’t going to drown in the quicksand after all; instead, it was simply stuck there. It was just a silly video, meant only to elicit a laugh from the viewer, but Angela now understood that behind its overt humor lurked something darker: while the poor creature wasn’t going to go under and drown, it also wasn’t going to get out. Therein lay the horror.

Angela suddenly realized that going under wasn’t necessarily the only way that she could meet her end in the muck; there were more ways than one by which the miry ooze could claim her as its own. Rather than sinking to a smothering doom as Hollywood always seemed to depict the fate of victims of quicksand, she, having sunk to her chin like the giraffe in the video, might simply linger at the surface, floating indefinitely between life and death. While that would certainly increase her chances of eventually being found and rescued, she considered with a twinge of hope, she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to wait forever. Unable to escape from the mud pit on her own, she could be trapped here for days or even weeks, gradually succumbing to the singular or combined effects of exposure, starvation, and/or dehydration, none of which prospects was pleasant, and with gathering despair she began to contemplate how each horrifying scenario might play itself out. The warmth of the late-summer day would seem to make exposure the least of her worries, but even at this time of year temperatures at night in the valley could drop as low as the upper 40s, and the deep mud in which she was trapped felt considerably colder farther below than it did at the surface. The encroaching hypothermia would cause her body to eventually shut down blood circulation to her extremities to maintain her internal temperature, potentially sacrificing fingers, toes, hands, feet, and even limbs to keep her core warm. Compounding that threat was the more horrifying specter of starving to death in the mire, a prolonged, agonizing process that could take weeks or a month or more as her body coped with its lack of sustenance by gradually and inexorably consuming first its own fat resources and then its muscle mass in a futile attempt to keep itself alive. Of course, dehydration was the most immediate threat, one that could overwhelm her in a matter of days, especially in the summer heat. She certainly couldn’t drink the muddy fluid under her chin at the surface of the mud pit, and any rainfall that might slake her thirst would likely also raise the level of the river, flooding the mudflat with a few extra inches of water in a deadly tide that would drown her where she was trapped.

Angela’s labored breathing became trembling gasps as even more gruesome outcomes impinged on her mind. Any thirst-quenching water that she might ingest in desperation at the surface of the mire would certainly be laden with bacteria, possibly leading to internal infection and sickness on top of the effects of the other threats that she had already considered. While she had smartly decided against allowing the mud to enter her vagina when she had been pleasuring herself in it earlier, the reality was that she was naked in the ooze, her vulnerable underside offering potential points of entry to anaerobic microbes inhabiting the muck, leaving her at the mercy of any microscopic organisms that might find the recesses of her body to be a welcome home and begin multiplying therein. And what about wild animals? She knew that the Appalachian park was home to a wide variety of wildlife, including predators such as bears, bobcats, and coyotes, many of which had appeared on her family’s property over the years. Trapped in the quicksand with only her head exposed, she might make a tempting target for a hungry animal willing to brave the treacherous mire for easy prey that couldn’t flee or defend itself. And bugs? Angela’s stomach started twisting upon itself at the ghastly thought of her being beset in her helplessness by a ravaging swarm of biting, stinging insects, all of which would necessarily target the soft tissues of her face, and she pushed the horrifying image from her mind in a concerted effort to avoid making herself sick. Just what I would need, she grumbled bitterly, to throw up while I’m stuck here and then drown in my own vomit. One more way to die in quicksand…

If Hollywood really wanted to depict quicksand as a deadly threat, Angela reflected despairingly, it would forego the melodramatic “sinking to one’s doom” trope and concentrate on all the horrifying things might happen instead to someone who became caught in its grasp and unable to escape; faced with those possibilities, merely going under and drowning would seem almost a mercy. While she had never been prone to self-pity, she had also never felt more alone and helpless than she did now, and with quiet, gasping sobs she began to cry, a thin, plaintive wail emanating from her throat to accompany her tears amid the panoply of macabre ends that were now playing out morbidly in her imagination and that she might soon have to endure. While by all accounts she was an adult woman, she felt like a lost child, trapped, afraid, heartbroken, with no one to come to her aid, no one to offer her comfort and reassurance… all because she had chosen this place and time to indulge her secret fetish for deep mud and quicksand. Her thoughts drifted back to the occasions in her childhood when she and her sister would play in the shallow ooze on the shore of the river near their waterfront home, safe under their mother’s supervision. There she had first become aware of her prepubescent fascination with mud, with the way it would grasp her legs when she would push them down into it. The little girl whom she had once been had had no idea what that allurement would ultimately become in her adulthood, how it would play such a prominent role in her self-awareness… and how, so far as she could now tell in her utter isolation in the grip of the quicksand, it might one day end her life.

In despondent sorrow she envisioned her mother coming to rescue her lost little girl, somehow stepping across the miry surface without sinking into it to reach her. Smiling gently, she would kneel and extend her hand to her entrapped daughter, whose own hand would rise easily from within the ooze to take her mother’s, the moment of generational contact silently communicating between the two of them the whole of the younger woman’s years-long fascination with mud and quicksand and the reason why she had ended up in such trouble, to which her mother would respond with tender, reassuring acceptance and understanding as she drew her daughter safely into her arms. In a perfect world, at least, that’s how Angela imagined that it would be; more likely, if her mother were to suddenly appear and learn of her daughter’s quicksand fetish and what she had been doing before she fell into danger, the older woman would first sternly lecture her wayward daughter with a guilt-inducing sermon featuring healthy doses of relevant Bible verses (Romans 6:21 and James 1:14-15 came readily to mind) to drive home the point before begrudgingly heaving her muddy daughter out of the mire and commenting judgmentally on how long she would have to hose herself off before she would be allowed back inside the house. Even so, Angela thought as she felt herself slip ever so slightly lower in the quag, she loved her mother and knew that her mother loved her despite her hyper-religiosity, and she would welcome even her mother’s self-righteous sermonizing if it meant somehow finding release from the miry bonds constricting her.

Even as she wished that her mother and sister would miraculously appear to come to her aid, Angela reflected with a sense of sad irony how very little those to whom she was closest in her life really knew her. Her immediate family and friends were familiar only with the confident, capable, promising young woman whom she had grown up to become outwardly; they knew nothing of her inner obsession with deep mud and quicksand, nothing of how much it occupied her daily thoughts, nothing of how often she had imagined indulging her hidden fetish in real life. Her mother and sister didn’t even know where she had gone that afternoon, she considered forlornly; while they knew that she enjoyed swimming downstream in the summer months to go sunbathing at her secret, private spot, she had never told or shown either of them where it was located — after all, then it would no longer be a secret — and besides, both of them had been out of the house buying groceries for that evening’s cookout with their neighbors when she had struck out earlier that day to work on her tan. By the time they returned home and realized that she was missing they would have no idea where she had gone or what had happened to her... or that anything had happened to her. Even if it eventually occurred to them to break out the canoe and paddle downstream to look for her and happened to come far enough to reach her secret spot, they wouldn’t be able to see her behind the sloping riverbank that blocked her own view of the river, nor would she know in her miry entrapment that they were on the other side of the bank. They would have no idea how close they were to her, what dire peril she was facing scant yards away from their position on the water, unless…

“My bikini!” Angela abruptly cried out in a loud whisper within the mire’s weighty grip on her chest. She had tossed her bright red bikini top and bottom onto the riverbank before she had committed herself to her naked exploration of the mudflat, she remembered, and from the river their contrast against the green grass of the bank would make them stand out like a red flag, alerting her mother and sister to her presence nearby… if they even came downstream looking for her in the first place, she realized as her momentary bubble of hope burst. Oh, who am I kidding? she mumbled despondently as her tears began to flow again. It could be days or even weeks before anyone spotted her bikini on the shore, assuming it didn’t get blown away by the wind or in a storm, and even if someone did see it, what would they take it to mean? No one else knew of her mud fetish, and in her miry dungeon she might succumb to the elements well before her discarded bikini halves and she were ever discovered… if she hadn’t already disappeared beneath the surface by then anyway. Besides, her empty bikini would far more likely suggest that she had gone swimming nude in the river only to have fallen victim to an unfortunate fate, perhaps having become caught in the rapids downstream and swept over the falls, or, more darkly, that she had been assaulted and/or abducted by an unknown person or persons and taken to a waiting car in the parking lot at the top of the trail. No one would deduce from their finding her bikini here that she had deliberately stepped into the mudflat on the other side of the bank to enjoy herself in it and had subsequently met a sad end in its clutching depths. Aside from her bathing suit on the grassy shore, as far as anyone would ever know, she would have simply vanished without a trace.

In deepening despair Angela felt herself slumping lower in the mire, and her mind began to race as she sought to discover some means of freeing herself from her miry prison before it was too late. I can’t lift my feet without pulling myself deeper, she reflected worriedly, but maybe I can loosen them somehow and then push myself up with my hands. She began moving her feet and legs back and forth and from side to side in the gooey ooze as well as she could, straining against its hold on them as she sought to create an avenue of escape from her predicament, taking care not to shift her pelvis around in the muck lest she inadvertently reawaken the sensual arousal that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. After several seconds she thought that she felt the mud beginning to liquefy around her legs, and she tentatively pushed her hands downward in the hope of creating leverage for herself. Unfortunately, the muck responded to her efforts by merely flowing through her outstretched fingers as the deeper mud seemed to thicken once more around her lower limbs when she tried to raise them, and when she then sought to lift her arms she only succeeded in pulling herself lower still as the ooze again crept around her trembling chin.

The implacable, indefatigable grip of the mire around her legs and body had resisted her every effort to free herself, and her cries for help into the surrounding wilderness had gone unanswered, confirming to Angela what she already knew, that she was hopelessly trapped and utterly alone. As the thick mud seemed to encase her chest ever more tightly with each breath, Angela found that she could envision no possibility of escape or rescue from her imprisonment, no future save that of one or more of the horrifying prospects that she had contemplated for herself earlier, even if she never actually sank beneath the surface. With a clarity and a certainty with which she had never before considered it during the brief years of her short life, her sense of her own mortality now rose inexorably within her, threatening to envelop and consume her heart and mind just as surely as the muck itself was already consuming her body. For the first time since she had become enmired in the quicksand, Angela found herself confronted by a reality that she had sought to avoid if at all possible as she at last spoke the words that she had been dreading to say, words that she had been fervently hoping not to have to say… words that she now knew that she had no choice but to say. “This is it,” she whimpered in quiet desolation, her voice barely audible over the breeze in the trees overhead, “I’m gonna die in this shit.”

Her agonized admission released a floodgate of emotion that till now she had kept dammed up within her sinking heart. Weighed down both by the heavy mud encasing her body and by the crushing hopelessness enveloping her being, Angela broke down weeping in the quicksand, her gasping lungs straining to inhale against the constricting bonds of her entrapment. I don’t want to die, she sobbed in grieving, tearful despair, I don’t want to die. One way or another, she recognized in helpless sorrow, her life was over, save for the waiting; for whatever time remained to her, she was a dead girl sinking, doomed to this fate as the enticing allure of the “little death” that had so drawn her into the mudflat would eventually entomb her forever within the cold, somber depths of the merciless mire. Mournful sobs escaped her lips as haunting images of the bright, hoped-for future that she would never know flickered achingly through her anguished mind. She would never complete her education, never become a mentor to disadvantaged young girls seeking to better their lives, never make a real difference for good in the world; she would never travel, never visit new lands, never broaden her horizons beyond the limited scope and experiences that her scant two decades upon this earth had afforded her; nor would she ever know the joy of intimacy in the arms of a loving, giving man who deserved the love that she would give to him, nor walk down the aisle as a beaming bride on her wedding day, nor have children, a family, of her own. She would never again see her mother, her sister, her grandmother, her friends… or even her father, who despite his infidelities to her mother had still loved his girls the best that he knew how. She would never again know happiness in her heart, but only heartache and regret for however much time she had left… all because of her secret fetish for mud and quicksand.

Angela’s chin dropped into the thin sheen of water blanketing the miry expanse of the mudflat as it puddled around her despondent face, her tears rolling down her mud-spattered cheeks as they sought the quickest path by which they might join their element. As deeply as she had sunk into the clutching ooze, her heart had sunk infinitely deeper, sucked into a morass of misery that was now engulfing her very soul. She looked down through watery eyes at the reflection of her face in the fluid surface, its features distorted by the extreme angle at which she was viewing the visual echo of herself as it gazed back at her, the perverted vision rippling in tandem with her sobbing gasps. Through her tears, her shimmering likeness seemed to be making faces at her, its eyes and lips smirking and sneering mockingly at the foolhardy young woman whose hidden fascination for quicksand had left her so utterly fucked in its inescapable grasp.

Then… to Angela’s absolute astonishment… the reflected image looked directly at her… and spoke.

“It was worth it, wasn’t it, Angie-girl?” Angela’s twisted duplicate said to her in a sensual voice from the surface of the mire.

“Wh… what?” Angela responded in wide-eyed disbelief, completely taken aback at the impossibility of what she was seeing and hearing.

“You know, indulging your secret fantasy to the fullest,” her reflection replied nonchalantly. “Sinking into the quicksand, orgasming over and over as it drew you in deeper, until…”

“N-no,” Angela protested in rising confusion, “not… not that… I mean, what’s going on? What’s happening?” She looked her watery counterpart in the eye as well as she could from her low vantage point in the mire. “Who… who are you? What are you?!”

“Oh, I think you know exactly who… and what… I am,” the image retorted tauntingly. “I would think it should be obvious... Angie-girl.”

“Wha… what do you mean?” Angela replied in bewilderment, certain now that she was in the process of losing her mind. The mud around my chest is restricting my air intake, she considered silently, reducing the flow of oxygen to my brain. Yes, that’s it… I’m hallucinating…

“You can call me a hallucination if it makes you feel better,” the image responded with a snicker, “but as far as ‘who I am’ is concerned, well… I’m you… or, at least, I’m a reflection of you, if you haven’t already figured that out. As to what it is in you that I’m reflecting, well… that’s the answer to ‘what I am.’”

“I… I don’t understand what you’re talking about!” Angela exclaimed in frustration at her distorted doppelganger with as much energy as the grip of the mire around her chest would allow.

“I think you do!” her likeness answered with a mocking laugh. “You just don’t want to admit it,” it continued, seeming to nod its head toward her. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret… Angie-girl.”

“Stop calling me that!” Angela demanded, tears welling in her eyes again. “That was my grandfather’s special name for me!”

“Hmph… your grandfather,” her reflection sneered disparagingly. “You know, you wished he’d stop calling you that when he was still alive, remember?”

“Um… well… I…” Angela stammered, fumbling for an answer to her alter idem’s challenge. She had wished that her grandfather would stop using his diminutive nickname for her, she remembered, especially as she had gotten older… but he had given her that name out of love and affection, and to hear his memory now being mocked by this… this thing reflected in the quicksand… was more than she could tolerate.

“Just stop calling me that, okay?” Angela insisted in a firm, quiet voice.

“Suit yourself,” her rippling likeness acquiesced while seeming to shake its head derisively, “but I have to call you something. How abouuuut… ‘Angie Baby’? Yes, that sounds appropriate, don’t you think?”

Angela rolled her eyes in a slow burn of exasperation at her mirror-image’s taunting tone. Maybe there was something in the water, she wondered, some chemical interaction going on in the mud that was producing imperceptible fumes that she was now inhaling from so very close to the surface and causing her to see and hear things that weren’t there. Whatever the hallucinogenic hell was going on in her head, however, she refused to give in to madness. If she were indeed soon to meet her end in the miry depths of the mudflat, then to whatever degree it remained within her power to do so, she would meet it with a clear mind.

“After all, the fact that you’ve sunk to your chin in a bottomless pit of quicksand and are maybe only minutes from going under, if that long,” her watery counterpart continued, “yet here you are wasting your final moments arguing with a twisted reflection of yourself instead of calling for help or trying to escape… well, that would lead anyone to suspect that you’re a little touched, you know… Angie Baby.”

Angela ignored her perverted likeness’s ridiculing words even as she felt herself slipping lower into the quagmire, the pressure around her chest increasing with her every breath. If her mind were indeed playing tricks on her while she was about to succumb to the quicksand, she decided, then playing along with her deceptive image might at least help to preserve her sanity as the end approached. “You said you were going to let me in on a secret,” Angela prompted her twisted twin, “the answer to what you’re reflecting in me.”

“Oh, yes, that,” her reflection answered slyly. “Well, normally I would keep it a secret to maintain my hold over you, but considering that you’ve probably only a little time left with no hope of escape, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and tell you.” Angela’s distorted duplicate seemed to lean closer to her, as if it were a schoolyard playmate seeking to share an intimate secret that it wanted no one else to hear… as if there were anyone else around to hear what it was about to say. “You want to know what I am? Why… I’m your quicksand fetish… Angie Baby.”

Somehow Angela didn’t find her doppelganger’s answer surprising; after all, if anything were going to speak to her from the depths of the quicksand, she considered, it would most likely be her fetish for the stuff... then again, the fact that this conclusion didn’t seem all that strange to her might be one more indication that she was indeed losing her mind. Regardless of the degree of her remaining grip on reality, for what it was worth during what now seemed more and more would be her last moments alive, she thought, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to gain at least a degree of understanding about herself and her fascination for quicksand before the end.

“Okay… you’re my quicksand fetish,” Angela replied matter-of-factly. “Sooo… how long have you been around… inside my head?”

“Oh, since your age of innocence,” her image answered smirkingly, “when you would play in the mud with your sister by the shore of the river near your home. From the very first time you pressed your legs into the mud and noticed how it made you feel when you would try to pull them out, that was the moment of my conception.”

“I was just a child!” Angela retorted indignantly. “How dare you take advantage of me when I was too young to understand what was happening?!”

“Oh, don’t blame me, little girl!” her likeness replied mockingly. “I was still only a possibility, a potentiality, in your developing psyche; there was no guarantee then that I would eventually awaken as a full-blown sexual fetish in your mind. No, something more was required to bring me forth, something rather overt to induce my birth… and if you want to blame anyone for that, Angie Baby,” her counterpart continued coolly, “you can blame… your grandfather.”

Angela recoiled in horror at the merest suggestion that her beloved grandfather had or could have ever done anything improper to her or with her in any way. “You shut up, you bitch!” she exploded in fury at her distorted doppelganger, “My grandfather was kind and sweet! He loved me and treated me with respect! He was always there for me! He was the best thing in my life, the only man who ever kept his promises to me!” Tears began to flow again from Angela’s eyes as she sought to defend her departed grandfather’s honor and memory against this… this… creature’s… insinuations. “He never did anything… like that… to me or my sister!”

“Calm down, girl, calm down,” her twisted image responded with a chuckle, “I never said that he ever did anything deliberately… or even knowingly… to you or with you in an inappropriate way, but he did play a key role in my awakening. I think you know what I’m talking about… Angie Baby.”

After a moment’s puzzlement Angela realized that she did indeed know what her perverted reflection was talking about: that time when she fell into the mudhole on her grandparents’ farm all those years ago, while her grandfather was pulling her out of the bog with his tractor, when the thick ooze grasped her shorts and pulled them down around her hips, and then the mud—

“And then the mud gave you your very first orgasm!” Angela’s rippling likeness crowed in triumph. “Oh, the look on your face was priceless! You, shaking and trembling in the ooze with no idea why! That was the moment that gave me birth, when I truly came to be, deep inside you!” her mirror image continued, snickering at the double entendre. “You didn’t know it yet… hell, it took me a couple of years to get you to open your eyes to what had really happened… but from that moment on, you… were… mine.”

“I… I was… yours?” Angela replied in bewilderment at her reflection’s boast.

“Girl, after your first time in the mud it was only a matter of time before I got you into real quicksand!” her doppelganger insisted. “It’s what you’ve… what we’ve… always wanted… to be trapped and sinking in the sucking ooze, our body squirming and writhing in the sensual bliss of repeating, unceasing orgasm after orgasm as the mire draws us deeper and deeper into its sweet, clutching embrace,” the creature went on, a dreamy lilt to its voice, “until finally… beautifully… we become one flesh with the mud… with our beloved… forever.”

“N… no!” Angela cried out in protest even as the muck seemed to draw her slightly deeper. “That may have been what you really wanted, but I just wanted the fantasy of it, to pretend I was sinking to my doom while I pleasured myself in the mud. I… I have my whole life in front of me; I don’t want to die in this shit!”

“You wanted to make your fantasy as much of a reality as you could,” her counterpart calmly countered her. “News flash, Angie Baby… ain’t nothing more real than reality itself.”

Angela’s lips began to tremble, her shallow breaths coming in fits and starts as she considered the import of her reflection’s words. She had indeed wanted to make her quicksand fantasy as real as possible, had wanted to do so for years, in fact… she had just never considered that in her finally indulging herself of her fetish she wouldn’t survive the experience, that the ultimate taste of the climactic “little death” that she had so sought in the grip of the sucking mire would be nothing less than the real thing. She had always believed that she was the one setting the terms of her fantasy, that she was ultimately in control of her fetish… only to realize now for the first time that her fascination for quicksand was much more subtle than she had thought it to be… much more crafty than it had seemed to be… much more inescapable than she had imagined it to be.

“And that ‘whole life’ you think you have ‘ahead’ of yourself, Angie Baby? Hah!” her twisted image exclaimed derisively. “Girl, your life stopped being your own as soon as I woke up in the middle of that mudhole on your grandparents’ farm. From that moment on, you were living on borrowed time… and today I’m calling the note due… and payable in full!”

Angela shuddered in the mud as for the first time in her short adult life it occurred to her that she was in fact not in control of her own fate, that her sense of self-determination and agency was merely an illusion, perhaps conjured by her quicksand fetish itself as a means of blinding her to its ultimate goal while gradually luring her into its clutches. “Oh, don’t look so down in the mouth,” the creature in the muddy puddle said dismissively. “Surely you knew that one day it’d be time to pay the devil her due, and besides,” it went on, a salacious grin coming over its face, “those intense, multiple orgasms you had as you sank into the quicksand a little while ago were more than worth it, wouldn’t you say? There you were, climaxing over and over and you sank deeper and deeper, just as you’d always wanted…” A lascivious chuckle escaped its shimmering lips as it recalled the erotic experience. “And I’ll let you in on another little secret before you go under,” it added slyly, again seeming to lean closer to Angela’s face. “A fetish isn’t a thing you ‘have,’ Angie Baby… ohhh, no… a fetish… is the thing… that has… you.”

Her reflection drew back and began laughing in scornful self-satisfaction as an awful reality began to dawn upon Angela’s mind. In the short time since she had slipped over the edge of the submerged drop-off, she had fallen from the heights of orgasmic ecstasy in service to her fetish to the depths of sinking despair as that same fetish now exacted its due for the momentary thrill that it had deigned to allow her, and Angela at last recognized that, just as her twisted image had insisted, it was not she who “had” a fetish for quicksand buried somewhere in the tangled web of her neurons but rather her fetish that had entangled her in its clinging grasp… and that it had always held her thus. From the moment years before when she’d had her first orgasm in the mudhole on her grandparents’ farm, her fetish had slowly and deftly infiltrated and overtaken her; she now understood that she was not its master but rather its slave, enthralled to its irresistible charms, ensnared in its all-encompassing desire, enmeshed in its smothering intent. It had seized its opportunity through her secret fascination, quietly growing and expanding within her willing psyche so as to eventually occupy her every waking thought… until, having seduced her completely into its bondage, it had finally deceived her into its clutches… and having now entrapped her at last within its miry resolve, it would engulf and swallow her whole… body, mind, and will… and there was nothing that Angela could do to prevent it… or to save herself.

Passing clouds overhead began to obscure the sun, and in the diminishing light Angela’s reflection in the watery surface began to fade. “Looks like it’s about time for me to make room for you down below, Angie Baby,” it said sneeringly. “I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity for this little chat before you go under; I would’ve so hated for you to have taken that final plunge without understanding the truth about you and me… about us. But be a dear and do me a favor, hon, while there’s still time.”

“A… a favor?” Angela replied bitterly as her shimmering image became less and less distinct.

“Your hands are at just the right depth,” her dissolving doppelganger muttered salaciously, “for you to slide them over through the mud to your perky little clit. I’m sure we can wring at least one more orgasm out of that sweet pussy of yours before the quicksand sucks you under for good.”

“Wha…? NO!” Angela shouted defiantly at her lascivious likeness, her heart filling with disgust at the lewd suggestion.

“Suit yourself,” the disappearing image whispered, “I just figured that since it’s your time to go anyway, you might as well go out with a bang and not a whimper, like the woman in that story you read on the quicksand forum your first day there. But when you do finally go under, sweetie,” it added in a barely audible voice, “make sure you do it with a lot of struggling and screaming for help that will never come. It makes the moment of submersion… of final submission… that much more… delicious.”

Angela felt the beginnings of nausea rising from her stomach at the derisive words of the wanton creature beneath her, and in desperation she tried to reason with her distorted reflection before it vanished altogether. “But… don’t you understand?” she objected as she felt the ooze rising over her chin and creeping slowly toward her lips, “If I go under and die, I’ll take you with me!”

“Ooooh, that would be just heavenly,” her fading facsimile cooed, more in Angela’s mind than in her ears. “Don’t you understand, Angie Baby?” it went on, its voice becoming thinner with each passing second. “As your fetish for quicksand, I live for that climactic moment when the ooze finally closes over us forever… believe me, girl, it’s to die for… and I’m willing to take you with me!” A sickening cackle rose from the dissolving image’s lascivious lips as it rippled in the ooze beneath Angela’s face. “See you soon, Angie Baby!” it taunted her mercilessly as the mire crept up to the corners of her mouth. “Too bad those ample double-D’s of yours don’t double as flotation devices!”

Angela’s disintegrating reflection threw its head back in silent, triumphant laughter as it sank back into her psyche, and as the entrapped young woman now glanced around herself in utter despair at the miry expanse encompassing her, a wellspring of recrimination and resentment began to rise within her heart, feelings that she knew that she could rightly direct only toward herself. Her fetish had beguiled her into the mudflat to satisfy its own salacious lusts, she recognized, but, as she also understood, those lusts were ultimately her own… she just hadn’t before considered the implications of that reality. But while she knew that she had no one to blame but herself for her dire predicament, in the midst of her sorrow and self-pity she couldn’t help but to fault her fetish as if it were some separate entity, some alien… thing… that she had awakened from the depths of the mudhole on her grandparents’ farm all those years ago, a ravening, sexual beast that she had unknowingly summoned to the surface and had been powerless in her youthful immaturity to prevent from invading her mind and taking over her will. She remembered thinking just a short while before that after years of fantasizing about it she was finally giving herself to the mud out of her own wondering curiosity, but now she understood that she had instead given herself over to her fetish, to that creature that was somehow both herself and another, both her and a-not-her, to the thing that lurked in her subconscious and innervated her secret desires, that sought to envelop and ultimately extinguish her very being within its inescapable grasp; the quicksand, she realized, was just its surrogate, its stand-in, its proxy. Now she felt that she understood why that older guy whose post that she had read on the quicksand forum her first day there had described his own fetish as a monster in his head… the same kind of monster that she now recognized had taken up residence in her own brain… and was implacably seeking to evict her forever. From the moment that she had committed herself to pleasuring herself in the mud, her fetish had been calling the shots for her, dictating its demands and conditions to her, having its way with her…

…But no more, Angela insisted silently to herself, no longer… and never again. Having revealed the truth about itself to her when it seemed that there was nothing that she could do to stop it, her inner creature had inadvertently given her the means by which to resist its intent, to oppose its will, to deny its final victory over her. She would indeed meet her doom in this sucking, fucking mire, she now recognized and sadly accepted… but she would not go out with her fetish-thing’s suggestive “bang” any more than she would with a pathetic whimper. Instead, she would embrace her end on her own terms… in her own time… and in the manner of her own choosing.

Angela closed her eyes and shuddered as she confronted the import of what she was about to do… of what she knew that she must do. The elements would have her wait interminably for the inevitable effects of exposure to eventually do her in, while starvation and thirst would have her linger at the surface of the quicksand for days or even weeks while she wasted away in their pitiless grip… but she would not submit to their ravages. Neither would she become a meal for the jaws of a rapacious predator as it ripped her to pieces, nor a target for the claws and stings of attacking insects as they swarmed her face, nor a home for invading microbes as they surreptitiously gained entry to her body and consumed her from within. She would not go to her doom in a struggling, screaming submersion of her will to that of either her fetish or the quicksand… instead, she would meet her fate in her own way, under her own control, and by her own hands… the quicksand and her secret fetish for it be damned.

She had only one regret.

“Mom… Amy… I’m sorry…” Angela whispered in quiet, tearful apology to the two people whom she loved most as she slowly turned her palms upward by her sides deep beneath the surface, “I’m sorry you’ll never know what happened to me. I’m sorry I wasn’t… I’m sorry I’m not… the daughter… the sister… you thought I was.”

Angela’s hands were indeed at the right depth, as her creature had said, but not for the self-indulgent purpose that her fetish reflection had suggested. Instead, as a last act of self-determination and control, she would take several deep, expansive breaths, and then, once she was sure that she was ready, of her own volition she would abruptly and strenuously lift her arms and hands toward the surface, the suction of the mire grasping them tightly as she strained her biceps against it. The intent and effect of her action would be to drive her legs and body deeper into the thick, clay-like ooze in which she was trapped, the effort pulling her downward as her arms pushed upward against the mud from beneath, until her upturned face became completely submerged within the quicksand, at which point she would stop pushing as the deep muck would again clamp down tightly around her feet and legs, preventing her body from ascending while she held her breath beneath the surface. There, suspended in the darkness and silence of utter solitude, she would wait, calmly and patiently, willfully and resolutely, while her body and brain slowly and inevitably exhausted the dwindling supply of oxygen coursing through her bloodstream. Then, in the increasing pangs of an irresistible need and urgency, she would finally part her lips as her diaphragm involuntarily expanded her lungs in a final, compulsory gasp for air… and she and the mire would become one. There would be a momentary panic, a brief struggle against the sense of suffocation as the mass of muck filled her mouth and throat, a spasm of release… and then blessed oblivion, her consciousness slowly fading while her oxygen-depleted brain gradually shut down forever. There her lifeless form would remain, concealed within its sloughy tomb, her arms extended upward toward a surface that they would never again reach, her face lifted toward a sky that she would never again see, an eternal Venus of the mire.

One thought alone comforted her. While she no longer subscribed to the antiquated notions of heaven and hell with which her mother had raised her, she yet held to the hope that there might be some kind of afterlife, an undefinable somewhere, an unknowable somewhen, wherein the essence of who she was might somehow survive this miry ordeal. If there were such a time and place within the bounds of the universe, and if there were any mercy at all within the immensity of its depths, then perhaps, she wished… just perhaps… it might be granted to her to share it with her grandfather.

The clouds began parting overhead as the afternoon sun came out again in full strength, its light reflecting brightly off the watery surface of the mudflat as Angela made her final preparations. On the count of three, she murmured to herself as she took a long, final look through gathering tears at her otherwise pleasant surroundings, seeking to imprint indelibly on her mind the last visual experience that her eyes would ever see before the mire closed them forever. The ooze began creeping over her bottom lip, forcing her to tilt her head back to keep her mouth free of the muck even as her lower ear lobes dipped into its fluid surface. Far below, she cupped her hands by her sides and drew her fingers together to maximize their lifting power against the mud as she began taking a series of long, deep, trembling inhalations, seeking to oxygenate her system for as long as possible against the inevitable throes of suffocation once she had committed her body to the smothering depths of the quicksand… and then, once she was certain that she was ready, in a quiet whisper she began to count.

          One…

Angela squeezed her eyes shut, weeping silently as she pointed her feet and toes downward to facilitate her willful descent, while childhood memories of her sister and herself laughing and playing in the mud on the shore by their riverfront home flashed through her mind…

                    Two…

Angela’s breathing became quicker and shallower, bitter tears seeping through her eyelids in anxious apprehension of her imminent plunge as she tensed her biceps for their final exertion, while tender recollections of her grandparents and the love and happiness that she had known in their home afforded her a final comfort…

                              Thr—

“Hey!” a male voice suddenly called out from off to her right, “Are you okay?”

Angela gasped as her eyes snapped open at the unexpected sound, her arms freezing in place just as she had begun to pull herself beneath the surface. Wha…? she whimpered in stunned disbelief, Some… someone heard me! Someone came! Whereas scant moments before she had been steeling herself to embrace her end at her own hands and on her own terms in the choking depths of the miry ooze, the fortuitous arrival of a last-minute possibility of rescue abruptly shattered her grim resolve as every shred of panic, every shard of fear, that she had felt since she had fallen into the quicksand now exploded to the surface of her psyche, raw emotion squelching her somber intent. Her frightened face jerked toward the direction from which the voice had come, utter terror reflected in her eyes, one searing thought screaming through her desperate mind: I want to live!

“Oh, god!” she cried out to her last hope of salvation, her voice trembling with dread as she tried to keep the mud from invading her mouth, “Help me!”



––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

To be continued in Part 4: “Angela’s Plight.”

[beachbum]

Holy Crap! I never seen anyone write like that in my life! Amazing!

[bogbud]

Part 2 was a great build-up, but this part was really intense. Fantastic read!!

Strange to admit this, but i can quite relate to Angela, her story and also her predicament that i have encountered a number of times, too

[JSample]

Holy Crap! I never seen anyone write like that in my life! Amazing!

Now you're gonna make me blush. Thanks, beachbum; I appreciate the compliment.

[JSample]

Part 2 was a great build-up, but this part was really intense. Fantastic read!!

Glad you're enjoying my story so far, bogbud!

Strange to admit this, but i can quite relate to Angela, her story and also her predicament that i have encountered a number of times, too

You more times that I, then; everything that I'm imagining for Angela I've only experienced in my own imagination.

[bogbud]

You more times that I, then; everything that I'm imagining for Angela I've only experienced in my own imagination.

That's even more impressive!
I have been in mud that did behave pretty much like the one you did describe here and it was a mixture between excitement and fear, too. Just by reading this part and part four I relive my memory and want to go sinking again so bad now.

[JSample]

You more times that I, then; everything that I'm imagining for Angela I've only experienced in my own imagination.

That's even more impressive!

Thank you!

I have been in mud that did behave pretty much like the one you did describe here and it was a mixture between excitement and fear, too. Just by reading this part and part four I relive my memory and want to go sinking again so bad now.

Then I suppose that my work here is done... oh, wait, I've only posted half the story!

[Solrex]

Holy freezing crap... you took my hidden fears of quicksands, my qualms and uneasiness, my lack of faith, the inner demon, the inner succubus literally trading sex for her life, at the beginning of the story, yes, I was aroused, but by the end of this chapter, I was completely entralled by your writing. This is ten out of- no, this took it to eleven. This freezing took it up to 11. This is by far the best story that has ever been written on all of QSF. You deserve a medal. You have got to be a brilliant writer. What other hidden gems did you put into the rest of your story? I don't know how you will top this; you can't top this! Brilliant writing, fan-freezing-tastic writing.

11/10

Keep going.

[JSample]

Holy freezing crap... you took my hidden fears of quicksands, my qualms and uneasiness, my lack of faith, the inner demon, the inner succubus literally trading sex for her life, at the beginning of the story, yes, I was aroused, but by the end of this chapter, I was completely entralled by your writing. This is ten out of- no, this took it to eleven. This freezing took it up to 11. This is by far the best story that has ever been written on all of QSF. You deserve a medal. You have got to be a brilliant writer. What other hidden gems did you put into the rest of your story? I don't know how you will top this; you can't top this! Brilliant writing, fan-freezing-tastic writing.
11/10
Keep going.

Boy, Solrex, you've got me blushing at least as much as Angela was when Jason stumbled upon her pleasuring herself in the mud in Part 2! I'm so very glad that you're enjoying my story, and I deeply appreciate your compliments. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that Angela's creature intends to take her to the limits of human endurance... if not beyond.