The leaves fell all day at the edge of the meadow, so quickly that Joel thought the trees would be bare within an hour. But each day for two weeks he watched the earth die its yearly death thusly, blanketing itself in a coat whose dry smell mingled with that of the smoke rising from the nearby chimneys. Gray clouds and the chilly air loaned an atmosphere of loneliness, and an emptiness prevailed in the meadow, interrupted only by the steam puffing out of his nose with each breath.

He came here to meditate, to escape from the zoo of punks, jocks, misanthropes, and humans in general at the college where he studied in the center of town. His dark brown wool coat was already not enough to prevent the sharp, cold edge of impending winter from penetrating through to his skin. Dragging his feet through the leaves, he noticed bright green shoots coming out of the dark earth.

He bent to caress one with his gloved finger. Some kind of winter flower, perhaps, like a crocus? He turned his head around this way and that, examining the edges of the meadow. The green shoots were coming out everywhere. Lifting himself from the ground and gathering himself from the cold, he started toward the trees and back to town. It was too cold now to spend his usual few hours here until the twilight pulled its periwinkle veil over the sky.

The meadow and the college town of Atheron were separated by a ten-minute walk within a dense collection of pine and aspen. He never encountered anyone else visiting the meadow, thus he easily claimed it for his own. Joel picked this town to study in because of its quiet dignity; the up-side was that he would not have to tolerate the grating raucousness of the citizens of his hometown, but the downside was that he was always alone.

This time, emerging from the forest and leaping across the empty ditch that bordered Atheron, a man stacking firewood in his back yard saw Joel.

“You!” he said, pulling his hat flaps down over his ears. “Where have you been?”

Joel looked around and behind him, thinking maybe the man was talking to someone else. Strangers from Atheron rarely spoke to him directly. “I was just strolling to the meadow there and back.”

“You shouldn’t go there,” the man warned. “And whatever you do, don’t disturb the flowers that grow there this time of year.”

“Why?”

The man pulled his gloves off with a scowl, before heading back into his home, letting the screen door smack shut behind him.

That night in the dorm, while he curled onto his small bed and his roommate sat hunched over a book, lit only by a dim lamp, Joel fell into strange dreams, the kind of dream which left him feeling puzzled the entire next day, though for no clear reason. In the dream he was sitting in the meadow, snow all around, yet he was wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. He saw the same green shoots springing out of the ground. They grew before his eyes, ever so slowly. When they began to bud, something grotesque wriggled there, like a tiny, bloody fetus instead of a flower. It grew and grew into a full-sized human infant. He plucked the infant from the plant and held it against the warmth of his coat.

Before the sun rose in the morning he woke up, blinking at a shadow hovering above him. He wiped his eyes, clearing his vision. His roommate Bill, a tall, mellow hippy type with a monotone voice, grinned at him, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“That a dorm bed, or a tent?”

Joel glanced down. He had an erection poking clearly up in his blanket.

“What the fuck’s your problem?” Joel said, flipping over onto his stomach. “Do you always stare at other guys’ cocks?”

“Hell no. Was kinda hard to ignore you, though, with all the noises you were making.”

Joel buried his face in his pillow. “What do you mean, asshole? Lemme go back to sleep.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you want to get back to sleep. Who’s Mina anyway? Is that the sexy cunt in Biology? Sounded like you were pounding her brains out in your dream.”

“Mina?”

“You kept moaning her name. Minaaa! MINAAA!” Bill mocked in orgasmic volume.

“Alright, alright. I’m awake now. Now shut the fuck up and let me go back to sleep.”

Joel sighed in exasperation. Then relaxed on his side. His body was already limp, including his aching cock. Mina…with a flutter to his stomach, he remembered where his dream had left off. A beautiful woman, looking as though she came from another time, had been in his dream.

As soon as Bill had quieted down and went back to bed, Joel returned to his dreams. He saw the infant again, and black-red flowers, both of which had sprung from those little green shoots in the ground. The infant grew, or must have grown, but for the labyrinthine turns that a dream takes, he did not see her actually transition into womanhood. But he knew without a doubt that the gorgeous woman, Mina, was the infant who grew from a flower bud.

Her gown was the color of the flowers. So very dark red that it was hard to tell whether it was really red or just black with red highlights. Her long, black hair was slightly wavy, parted in the middle, her skin white like the snow, given color only by the slight blush of blood radiating through her.

Somehow her gown disappeared and they were naked together, toasty warm in the snow. She was only contented to have her breasts squeezed by his large hands, and when his hands fell away to find some other home, she guided them back to the firm mounds. She dotted hungry wet kisses onto his neck, stroked the hair at the base of his cock, nudged the head of it playfully with her knee as she threw her leg over to straddle him, making sure he was watching her cunt as she so expertly spread her legs.

The woman was both sad and playful, both goddess-like and sinister. He didn’t know what to make of her. All he knew about her when he woke up was that he loved her but would never be able to find anything like that in any woman on earth. She was simply an ideal he had, a specter that existed only in his head. He was basically in love with an facet of his psyche.

His nerves were tangled like a ball of rubber bands all day after that dream. He couldn’t concentrate in his classes, though he had read all the material and knew everything the professors lectured about. In lab he broke a thermometer, which he found slightly amusing because the gray liquid splashed out, and the lab instructor, reaching for his inhaler, exclaimed that the entire class was now doomed to die of mercury poisoning.

After his last class, he went back to the dorms and slipped into extra layers, pulled on the wool cap his mother sent him but that he never wore because it was too “dorky,” and headed to the forest.

He was nervous, yet all the while he kept mumbling to himself how stupid he was being. What did he expect to find? A mystical sex partner springing out of the ground to fuck his cock raw? Ever since he had first visited that meadow two weeks ago, he had been feeling something strange looming around the corner. Perhaps he had finally reached his sanity’s limit and it was time to stop stressing out so much over his studies. People expected so much of him. His parents were already telling everyone he was going to be a doctor someday, so what was there to do but just become one?

When he reached the edge of the forest, he saw the same man who had given him a stern warning the previous day. He was looking out his window at Joel with a concerned face. He motioned for someone, and an old woman soon appeared by his side. The woman went to the back door, called his attention, and waved for him to come to her; but Joel ignored her, and crossed the ditch.

There was something different about this forest than the other forests he had visited. This one seemed…stagnant, almost stale. Sure, things were alive, but there was a hush that made Joel feel as though everything had simply stopped breathing centuries ago. Yellow aspen leaves at least scattered some brightness onto the path.

He arrived at the meadow shortly. He immediately noticed the green shoots. They had grown about an inch since yesterday.

Joel walked around the meadow, leaves crunching under his boots, and he was careful not to step on those delicate yellow-green plants that grew remarkably in the season when things should have been dying. The breeze jostled the trees around a bit, whose leafless branches now sounded flat instead of lively.

To the north, the meadow met the side of the forest that stretched away from town and toward the mountains. There was something like a wind, or a distant creek, making a barely discernible noise like static.

Just then Joel saw a shadow move in the trees, which made him startle, and his ankles weaken. A lithe person was walking away from him deeper into the forest, and stopped, turning to look at him.

He could only see the face. Very pale. The clothes seemed to match the darkness of the forest.

The figure walked on, then stopped and looked back, as if beckoning him to follow.

Joel looked behind him, as was his habit whenever he thought someone was looking at him. Nothing there except the leaf-covered path that led back to town.

He stepped gingerly through the meadow and headed toward the figure in the dark.

As soon as he got close enough, something emerged from the person’s clothes–something white–ah yes. A few more steps revealed that it was an arm, twisting in a gesture which commanded him to follow.

He hurried along after the person. Soon, he was ten feet away. The remaining light of the day suddenly shot through an opening in the forest canopy, and revealed the person’s sex: a woman. Her black mane shifted against black robes. Or were they red? It was too dark to tell. He saw her curves moving underneath the thin clothing she wore. Strange, was she not cold?

She stopped only once to turn back and make sure he was there. Slowly she revealed her face. The snowy skin, the slightly blushed cheeks, smart nose; there was an air about her that said she was noble, intelligent. Her head lifted high, in full profile, she flicked her heavily-lashed eyes toward him. Her eyes were dark like the forest soil.

At the sight of her long, flawless neck, Joel felt the warmth in his pants. This–this was Mina!

As she started off again, he followed her, and with horror he remembered something his Psychology professor once said: schizophrenia normally begins when the person is college-aged. What was happening to him?

“Well,” he muttered to himself, “if I’m a schizo, at least I’m being stalked by a sex goddess, and not the government.”

The woman untangled one arm from her robes to rest a hand on a stone precipice they had come to, a creek running so close by that the hem of her robe was moistened. She turned to Joel.

“Undress me,” she commanded without expression on her face.

Joel stammered. Her voice–it was deep, mellifluous, threaded with some kind of accent, unidentifiable, but definitely from one of the Romance languages.

When the woman saw his shy hesitation, she narrowed her eyes, and lifted her arm gracefully, like some burlesque temptress and slid the dark fabric off of her shoulder, revealing more of that perfect skin. Her collarbone was gorgeous, gathering the subtle wine-colored glow of her robes in its shadows.

“Will you undress me, Joel, or will you leave me on my own to do it?”

With dutiful obedience he nervously approached her and fumbled with the fabric. He remembered the only other time in his life he felt this apprehensive and awkward: when his Anatomy professor had handed him the scalpel and told him to begin revealing the secrets of the corpse which lay before the quivering students.

The woman laughed at him. Removed his hands from the robe which he was too clumsy to undo. She led his hand through the elaborate maze of the gauzy fabric, too thin for this weather, and helped him to find the fleshy breast underneath.

His breath shot out of him. A sharp aching shot into his crotch. The hard nipple he could feel at the center of his palm, and the whole breast, so full in his hand, was so warm and inviting. He lowered his head to place his cheek on the other breast, and the woman brought him tighter against her, so that he could feel the nipple on his face, poking out through the thin fabric.

“Who are you?” he breathed, warm with desire and defended from the cold.

She held his face in her hands and brought his gaze to hers. “You know who I am. I entered your dreams last night.” She turned away, and followed the edge of the rock. With bare feet she tiptoed through the rippling creek and Joel followed close behind her. She led him to a small cave just around the bend, where they both sat on the slightly concave floor.

“H…how did you enter my dreams? Are you real?”

She laughed gently, almost sadly. “Yes. I am real. However, most of your little townspeople will say I am a witch, or a ghost, or Satan’s Wife, Queen of the Faeries, an ancient pagan goddess, or something to that effect.”

Joel swallowed hard, not wanting to offend her by his obvious fear. “Are…are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Any of those?”

She scoffed. “I am a woman, can’t you see?”–and here, she slid off her robes from the waist up, to reveal those large breasts. “I am…so very much a woman.”

She brought his hand to her slowly, and underneath the robes her legs widened. Once again, she guided his hand through the robes, only this time his fingers came to rest on the wet, hot mound of flesh between her legs. Joel gently tickled the intricate folds, which he longed to see, but he was so bewildered by all of this that he couldn’t bring himself to shove the fabric above her hips.

The woman moaned as if in pain. “Joel,” she gasped, her mouth open, eyes closed, head rolling back. “Do you know how many centuries it’s been since I felt a man’s touch?”

Joel withdrew his hand, which made the woman throw him a look of anger.

“What? Are you afraid of me?”

“It’s…it’s just….” He sighed, hung his head. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I think I’m going crazy.”

She furrowed her brow. She got up on her knees and moved closer to him.

“Joel, my Joel,” she coaxed. “Be not afraid. I will reveal all to you in due time. But for this moment, let us enjoy our desire for one another.”

He looked at her face. She was almost deer-like in her grace. He realized that her breast was pressing up against his arm, and the consuming lust coursed in waves to his groin. Her hand, sliding down his heavily clothed torso and down to his cock, brought him to his hardest.

“Mina…” he said.

She nodded, as if to say Yes, I am your Mina. “You’re a very handsome boy,” she whispered in that deep voice of hers which made her seem older than she appeared. She looked the same age as Joel, 21. Though a woman like her was ageless.

He covered her mouth with his. Squeezed that breast, then the other, almost roughly, so that he felt her squirm and return the violence through her kisses.

She straddled him, and he reached behind to gather up the fabric in his hands. He wanted to rip it, but he thought he shouldn’t, for it wouldn’t be too far fetched to think that it was made of something unearthly. So instead he found his way to the flesh of her buttocks, pulling her roughly towards him so he could reach the slickness between her legs. She writhed, rubbing her hard tits into his face, as he stroked her pussy.

He stopped only to remove the many layers of clothing, a pause that left a most delicious look of pain and longing on Mina’s face. That face, her open mouth, made Joel undress faster, made him want to shove his cock past those pink lips.

She interrupted his fumbling hands to undo the pants herself. This Joel found so arousing that he almost came at that moment. But Mina gave him a stern look, as if to say, Wait. So he slowed his breathing intentionally, and leaned back. The cave, it seemed, was perfect for fucking. It sloped up slightly toward the wall, so that when he lay back his head was elevated. There was just enough room in there for a man of his size to lie with a woman.

He lifted his hips so she could slide his pants off. Then his shorts. The widening of her eyes showed that she was pleased with his cock.

“It is beautiful,” she said, admiring it.

He laughed. “I suppose I’ve never been so damned hard in my entire life,” he joked. He reached his hand out to stroke her cheek, while she stroked his thighs, her face just inches away from his cock, just gazing at it.

“I like your cock,” she said, then wrapped her hand around its base.

“Well, it’s all yours then; do with it what you will.” His mind darkened for a moment, thinking he should not have said that. What if she were a witch? What if “do with it what you will” meant she had his permission to chop it off, and toss it into some strange concoction that would kill the poor man and the old lady in town who had tried to warn him?

But he must not think these things about his Mina. After all, he didn’t know what she was all about. Why she was so strange, why she had the ability to enter his dreams, what she was planning to do with him, why she seduced him in particular.

Thankfully, Mina seemed oblivious to his thoughts, stroking his cock slowly, seemingly absorbed in that act. Or perhaps she was pretending to be oblivious; if she could enter his dreams, why could she not see what was in his head while she was in there? Indeed, that must have been where she learned his name.

She looked up at him, parted her lips just slightly. His cock throbbed at the sight of her. Her breasts hovered over his thighs, dipping down every now and then so that the nipples grazed his skin, tickling the hairs. Expertly, carefully, she lowered her hand and made sure his balls were not neglected. A gentle massage between his legs and her hand was back up and down his hard shaft, the foreskin sliding lazily, pre-cum gathering at the tip, which, when almost dripping down, she bent down to lick with the very tip of her tongue, teasing the head of his cock. He twitched with pleasure. She seemed to enjoy his cock’s slight movements in her hand, because she would look up at him and smile, then her thick black lashes would lower back down to her most enjoyable task.

He rested his head back down on the stone floor of the cave, and closed his eyes. Breathing out heavily, he was met with a surprise: Mina crawled up over him, each of her legs to the side of his hips so that he felt the hair between her legs tickling the head of his cock, and she pressed her mouth into his ear.

“Would you like me to ride you until you cum, or would you prefer me to suck your cock?” She trailed her tongue from his ear, across his cheek, and forced it between his lips. She opened him wide and sucked the breath out of him. He looked up at her in somewhat of a shock.

“Uh…well…I’ve never been asked that before. Both?”

She giggled at him and briefly pinched his nipple. “Don’t be so greedy. Besides, we’ll have many times together. Pick a way to spend your seed tonight, and let us get on with it!”

He smiled giddily, and searched the shadows of the cave as if for an answer. “So many possibilities. Hmm. I believe I’ll fuck your mouth tonight, my sweet girl,” he said.

“Good choice,” she said, and turned around slyly, straddling his chest, so that his face was nearly met with her pussy. Even in the dark he could see it glistening with liquid. A perfume emanated from her; not like the smell of other girls he’d been with. She was completely floral. Like a mixture of jasmine and gardenia, so out of place in this cold cave.

The warmth of her mouth came tightly around his cock, and she moved slowly, her breath shooting out of her nostrils to warm his balls.

He forced a finger into her pussy, which made her squirm at first, then widen her legs. He slipped another finger into her, moving in and out of her in perfect time with her mouth on his cock.

Her orgasm forced her to lift her head and gasp, and the exquisite spasms consumed his fingers. Her moans of ecstasy brought him over the edge, and he came. She brought her head down to receive his seed. The twitching slowly died down against her warm tongue.

A warm numbness overcame him and for a moment it seemed he was unconscious in the twilight, floating in the void between the stars, feeling something like tropical water lapping against him. But almost as soon as he had caught his breath, he saw Mina in his blurry vision standing up.

“Now, my lover,” she said, tugging at his arm, “you are warmed by me. But you do not notice that the weather has dropped to almost freezing. You must dress up now and go home.”

He sat up, but wrenched his arm free. “I want to stay with you, making love to you until the sun rises.”

Her countenance grew sad, and she knelt beside him, held his face. “Then you would die,” she said. “it is only an illusion, this warmth I give you. Besides, I’ve grown weak after our exertion, and I need to rest. I cannot warm you any longer. Don’t you see your fingertips growing swollen and red from the cold?”

He looked at his hands and gasped audibly. His brain was registering warmth, but his body was suffering the consequences of the cold. He immediately began to gather his clothes and dress up.

For a fleeting moment he felt anger towards Mina. She was putting him in danger by luring him out here and getting him naked in this weather. But one glance at her tender face and he forgave her.

Mina hurried him along the way. As soon as he was away from her, he felt the cold slap against him and he sucked his breath in. The gray clouds in the darkened sky hung low, and he felt slightly annoyed, as though Heaven were invading his personal world. These clouds were a definite sign that it would snow silently and heavily through the night, infusing the air with a deceptive warmth.

He rushed through the thicket, as if running away from the trees. He cleared the ditch in a single leap. Passing the small house at the edge of town, he saw the same old woman again, watching him through her window. She rapped at the pane and mouthed some words, all the while pointing toward the forest. He couldn’t hear her and didn’t care to hear her, but as he passed the window to gain the road back to his dorm, he could hear one of her muted words drifting through the icy air:

Evil.