Aunt Phoebe's Masturbatorium Ch. 11

"Tomorrow night's fine."

Lenore's voice was becoming more animated by the minute.

"You will have to be initiated, but that's just a simple formality. It won't take long. You'll have to sign some papers…but we'll go over all that tomorrow. How does 7:00 PM sound to you?"

"That's fine."

"Good. I'll call Phoebe as soon as I get off the phone with you and let her know. Got to run."

"Lenore?"

"Yes, my dear?"

"I just want you to know that it was Craig who helped me make my decision."

"Really?"

"Really. He can be very influential when he wants to be."

Lenore laughed. "Well, please give him a big kiss from me and tell him that I think he's wonderful. See you tomorrow night chéri!"

Craig and I spent the rest of the day making love and at 5:00 PM I took a cab back to the chateau. When my aunt saw me she greeted me with open arms, congratulating me on my decision. Charlotte was there too, looking every bit like the cat that got the cream.

"This is a momentous event," she said, hugging me. "What do you think, Phoebe? Will she not make a great leader of our Order?"

"I have no doubt about it," my aunt replied. Her voice was airy and light, a refreshing change from her more recent gloomy ramblings. "So, all of us will be meeting here tomorrow night."

"Yes," I replied. "I guess Lenore can't wait to get things rolling."

"Perfectly understandable. She's excited for you—and for all of us. You've taken a great burden off her shoulders."

Charlotte agreed. "And ours too!"

"Well, I'm glad of that," I said smiling. "I just want to do what's best for our Order."

Both women encircled me with their arms and hugged me close. "Just as it should be, my dear," my aunt Phoebe said. "Just as it should be."

************

After sharing dinner with my aunt and Charlotte, the three of us spent the better part of the evening discussing my decision and the ramifications—both real and imagined—related to it. On certain issues I was quite clear; on others, I was not. My aunt and Charlotte both reassured me that Lenore would explain everything to my satisfaction, and that those cloudy areas would, in time, also be made clear. I said goodnight to both of them around 1:00 AM and went to bed. However, I did not fall asleep for several hours later, as my mind kept reflecting upon not only the Sisterhood, but also upon Craig. When I did finally close my eyes, it was Craig's loving arms that held me close.

Things began to transpire very quickly once I had made the decision to take on the role of Sisterhood leader. No sooner had I told Lenore than the calls started coming in from my Sisterhood colleagues. Felicia Antonetti was the first to offer me congratulations, followed by Estelle, Justine, Dr. Monroe, Janet Walsh, and a whole slew of people whom I barely knew. My aunt got so disgusted with all the phone calls I was getting that she turned off the ringer and let the answering machine take the remainder of the calls.

"I think we got over one hundred phone calls between yesterday night and this morning," she said to me as I was preparing to have my breakfast. "They all want to be your friend now—even the ones who don't like you."

"It's okay, aunt Phoebe. I know who my real friends are."

"Well, let me warn you. Even they will be tapping you on the shoulder before too long."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that even your friends will be asking you for favors. Everyone wants to be in the winner's circle. But don't worry. Lenore and her girls will be running interference for you. At least for as long as it will take you to get on your feet."

"I don't see how I can make any mistakes you with you, Lenore, and all the rest of them watching over me."

"Oh, believe me, you will. It's part of the job. But you'll get the hang of it. You'll have to because you won't always have Lenore and auntie Phoebe to rely on."

"I hope that won't be for a very long time."

"I hope so. But fate has a way of interfering with one's plans."

My aunt's face suddenly looked sad. On the mantel next to where she stood was a picture of her, my uncle Pierre, and my cousin Angelique. It was a very old picture taken when my cousin was probably no more than five or six years old. In the picture they were all smiling, and to the observer would have given absolutely no clue as to the horrendous events that were occurring in the family at that time. Seeing their happy faces, I could scarcely believe that my uncle, looking so handsome and debonair in the picture, could actually have beaten his wife and sexually abused his child.

"The fates can be cruel, Holly," she said, carefully studying the picture. "Very cruel."

"Do you want to talk about it auntie?"

"There's nothing to talk about. Pierre is out of my life and so is my daughter it seems. I have to think of myself now."

She stared at the picture for a few moments more and then quickly walked out of the room without another word.

The meeting took place at 7:00 PM as planned. Lenore arrived a half hour early with both Estelle and Justine, each of whom were carrying valises containing paperwork related to my situation. My aunt and Charlotte had prepared a small buffet, which all of us partook of before getting down to business. Lenore reported to us that her visit to the doctor went very well, and that she was reacting positively to the prescribed medication. She looked much better than she had when she last paid me a visit, and it was refreshing to see her so buoyant and vital.

After we had eaten, the paperwork was discussed and fully explained to me by Justine and Estelle. The powers I would be granted would be immense, as I would be, in effect, the supreme head of the entire worldwide Sisterhood Order. All that was now required to effect this transfer of power from Lenore to me was my signature. With some hesitation, I signed on the proverbial dotted line.

"Congratulations Holly," Lenore said, shaking my hand. "Or should I say, 'Sister' Holly!"

"Is this it then?" I asked her. "Am I the official leader of the Sisterhood?"

"Yes, you are," Justine said as she handed me my copy of the signed documents. "I would keep these in a safe place."

She handed the documents to me and I placed them in a drawer in the sideboard behind me.

"As I told you Holly," Lenore began, "there will be a small initiation ceremony that you will have to attend. We can set that up for a few days from now. It's just a formality. Legally, you are now the head of our Order. How do you feel about that?"

I shook my head numbly. "It's going to take some time to sink in. I have so much to learn."

"That's why we are here," Estelle said. "To help you get acquainted with your duties and responsibilities."

"Oh, you make it sound like a drudgery!" my aunt said good-naturedly. "There will be plenty of time for such things after she has been officially installed. For the present, let's enjoy ourselves."

"What do you mean, 'officially installed'?" I asked my aunt.

"You know, there's got to be a ceremony. "An official ceremony to welcome you into the Order."

"It's similar to what your aunt when through," Charlotte said to me, "only a hundred times more extravagant."

"And where is this ceremony going to be held?" I asked her.

"Here, of course," my aunt responded. "Where else is there?"

Lenore rested her hand on my shoulder. "You have to understand, Holly. There may well be over a thousand Sisters attending this event. Your aunt's chateau is the only place big enough to handle such a crowd. It's going to be magnificent!" She raised her glass to me, as did the others, in salutation. "To our Sister Holly! May she reign with wisdom, honor, and courage!"

As the hours passed our discussions centered less upon Sisterhood matters than about my relationship with Craig. Lenore had recalled that it was Craig who had convinced me to accept her offer to lead the Sisterhood, and she only had wonderful things to say about that.

"Such a fine young man," she began. "A rare gentleman. You are lucky to have someone like that in your life, Holly. Don't let him get away."

"I don't intend to," I assured her.

"Do you think you two might get married?" Justine asked.

"Not anytime soon. We both have other obligations and frankly I'm just not ready."

"Well in a way that's good," Charlotte said. "You're very young and you have plenty of time for that. It's not something you should rush into anyway."

"Agreed," my aunt said. "Especially now that my darling niece is our new leader, she'll have her hands full with running this organization. There's no harm in waiting, Holly. No harm at all."

At precisely 11:00 PM the front doorbell rang. Because of the nature of our meeting, my aunt had dismissed all the servants for the day, so it was she who rose to answer the door.

"Are you expecting someone, Phoebe?" Lenore asked her.

"No," my aunt replied as she promptly exited the room.

For a few moments we heard nothing and then, suddenly, an exchange of words and the sound of the front door closing.

"Phoebe? Who is it?" Lenore asked in a rising voice.

My aunt didn't offer a reply. Instead, she came walking back into the room looking somewhat flushed, and following behind her appearing every bit as flushed was Angelique, dressed in a skin-tight black leather dress and black high-heel boots. Her long blonde hair fell almost to her buttocks and the large, hypnotic blue eyes surveyed the room with quick and furtive movements, at last resting their malevolent gaze upon me.

I, as well as all the other women in the room, was startled to see this unwelcome visitor suddenly appear after months of self-enforced hiding. And to show up at this late hour unannounced was quite rude, despite the fact that her actions were in keeping with her natural, self-absorbed personality. I regarded her with deep suspicion and saw that no one, not even my aunt, was happy to see her. Without being asked, Angelique took a seat near the window from opposite of where I sat.

"Well, this is quite a surprise," my aunt said to Angelique in a voice quavering with repressed anger. "No contact with you for two months and then you just show up at my door. I thought I'd raised my child with better manners than that. Why are you here?"

Angelique did not answer right away. Instead, she threw me a menacing glance and then looked at her mother with an expression I can only describe as lightly veiled contempt. I saw not one vestige of familial affection in her face, only an icy coldness that pervaded her every movement and expression, casting an impure pale upon the entire room.

"I think you know why," she answered coldly, her voice dripping with malice. "You've made this creature," she said, pointing at me, "your new leader. I found out not long after you did, thanks to a certain few loyal Sisters."

"I'm sure you didn't come here to congratulate your cousin," my aunt retorted. "Again I ask you. Why are you here?"

"It's simple mother. I came here tonight to tell you that your little plan is not going to work. You think Holly is going to make everything right again. You think she is the answer to all your problems. You're just deluding yourself. You are all deluding yourselves."

"Is that right?" my aunt replied. "And who are you to tell us we're deluded? You're the one who thinks the entire world revolves around you. Therefore, I would say it is you who is deluded, not us."

A slight, sinister smile appeared on my cousin's lips. "You're wrong. I see things very clearly. You're afraid of me. All of you are—especially you, Holly. And you should be. Has Lenore told you that you are losing adherents at the rate of thousands per month? No? I didn't think so. But it's true. They are coming over to my side in droves. And do you know why? Because I have a vision of the Sisterhood that none of you pompous, arrogant fools could ever entertain. And that vision is why people are coming to me. In a very short time there's going to be nothing left of your old Order. Nothing. It's dying away even now as we speak. And you know this Lenore. What you handed over to Holly today is a phantom full of false promises and broken dreams. Your Order is nothing more than a decaying corpse, fit only for worms and the dust. That is what you inherited today Holly. That is Lenore's fucking legacy to you."

Before I had a chance to respond to my cousin's outrageous accusation, Lenore stood up and violently shoved her chair to one side, glowering at Angelique as if she wanted to shove her hate-filled diatribe down her vulgar throat.

"As God as my judge," she began, her face turning red with anger, "if you weren't Phoebe's child I would tear that vicious tongue from your filthy, lying mouth! How dare you come here and insult your mother, and all of us, with your ridiculous accusations? There's no truth to anything you say. It's all conjecture—an invention of your troubled mind."

"You foolish old woman," Angelique spat. "You'd like everyone to believe that wouldn't you? Angelique is crazy. That's what you think, isn't it? Well, fuck you! I'm not crazy and very soon I'm going to prove to you—to all of you—that you made a big mistake in not making me leader of the Sisterhood!"

"What are talking about?" my aunt interjected. "What in God's name are you talking about you sick little child? Didn't we go over all this long ago? Lenore didn't choose you because you're unstable. And what you're saying right now is proof of it."

Angelique threw her head back and laughed. "I'm unstable? Oh, no mother. You got that dead wrong. I'm just one of those people the world calls a 'blessed lunatic'. We're not really crazy, just a bit different from the normal status quo. We're the dreamers, the visionaries…the ones who shape the world in the form of our visions. That's what I've done with the Sisterhood. Not your Sisterhood, my Sisterhood. You took the old Sisterhood away from me, remember? Well, anyway, I've created something new and beautiful with my Sisterhood. Something that did not exist before—and for that I'm called 'crazy'."

My cousin delivered this speech as though she were talking to herself. She even began to giggle at the end of it. I have to admit that it had a disconcerting affect upon me and everyone else. I could tell that my aunt was particularly disturbed by her daughter's odd behavior. It seemed to me as though my cousin spoke as if she were alone in the room and that we had suddenly become nonexistent. For a moment I thought that she might be possessed of some evil spirit, even though I did not believe in such things.

Up until this point I had remained silent. I wanted to hear what my cousin had to say and thought it best to let her speak in the hopes that, in her desire to appear self-important, she might reveal her true motives for coming to see her mother. But now, as she sought to defend those motives, I sensed quite clearly that Angelique was not in her right mind. Her aberrant behavior, so long manifested in all my dealings with her, had not abated with the passage of time. She really believed she was a crusader on some kind of quest—a quixotic type figure who had become the prisoner of her own disordered mind.

"The real reason you came here tonight was to convince all of us to join you," I said to Angelique. "Isn't that the truth?"

"Ah, she finally speaks up! Now there's a great leader for you! She lets her underlings do all the questioning and then when she thinks she has a handle on things, she opens her mouth! Way to go cousin Holly! Way to go!"

"Oh why don't you shut up, Angelique, and go home!" Charlotte said. "Nothing you've said makes any sense whatsoever."

"That's not very nice aunt Charlotte. Not nice at all."

"How can anyone be nice to you?" Justine broke in. "You treat everyone as though they're below you."

"Not everyone, Justine. Just people like you."

"Justine is a lovely person," Estelle said, coming to her friend's defense. "A very lovely person!"

"Ha!" Angelique replied. "That's fine coming from a lawyer!"

"I've heard enough of this," my aunt said, her patience at an end. "Angelique, I want you to leave now. There is nothing to be gained from this conversation. Once again you've shown yourself to be a heartless little bitch. I'm ashamed to say it because you are my daughter. But the truth is the truth. Please get out."

Angelique stood up and looked at me then Lenore, her icy stare sending shivers down my spine.

"I don't miss this place. I don't miss it at all. It's become the repository for bimbos and stupid old women. Go ahead. Sit around here and rot. I don't care. The days of the old Sisterhood Order are coming to an end—and the sooner the better. Goodbye all. You can't say I didn't offer you a chance."

As Angelique moved to exit the room, Lenore intercepted her, putting her hand out to block the willful girl's passage.

"A chance for what?" Lenore asked. "To be like you? To live a life in total abnegation of the principles upon which the Sisterhood was founded? To take something wonderful and honorable and turn it into a mechanism for the maltreatment of others—especially men? Men, whom you think of as nothing more than vermin? Whom you would eagerly crush into the ground under your boot heels simply because they don't add up to much in your exalted opinion? Well, let me tell you my poor, misguided girl that in the grand scheme of things you're the one who doesn't add up to much! And you can take this message back to all those other misguided Sisters who foolishly bought into your act and chose to follow you. Tell them that Lenore has no use for them. Tell them that Lenore will never take them back into the fold of the true Sisterhood. Tell them that I think you are an evil, hateful, and selfish girl who is only concerned with her own twisted desires. And tell them this: that under the new leadership of Holly McKenzie, the one and only true successor to the crown of Antoinette, there will be a reckoning. And all those that are found to be proven false will be cast out. Forever. Go tell them that, you miserable little bitch. Go, before I lose what patience I have and strangle you!"

Angelique stood motionless before this verbal onslaught, never once taking her eyes off Lenore. Then, suddenly, she pushed the older woman aside and hastily ran toward the front door, slamming it shut after her.

Lenore was visibly shaken and fumbled to find her chair, at last falling into it with a great thud. Her face had gone from beet red to pale in a matter of seconds and she was breathing hard.

"Oh, my God!" my aunt cried out as she, and all of us, rushed toward our fallen friend. "What is it, honey? Are you all right?"

"I'm…I'm sorry," Lenore replied breathing fast. "I shouldn't have said those things…she is your daughter after all. Forgive me, Phoebe."

"She deserved what she got. Here, drink some water."

My aunt handed Lenore a glass of water, but she couldn't seem to hold the object in her hand. "No, take it away," Lenore said, her breathing becoming shallow and irregular.

"I'm calling an ambulance right now," Charlotte said, reaching for the phone.

Estelle took Lenore's hand in hers and began taking her pulse. There was worry written all over her face. "You should lie down."

The Sisterhood leader lifted her eyes up to meet her associate's gaze but she said nothing.

"Lenore?" Justine said, her voice filled with emotion. "Do you want to lie down?"

"No…just let me…catch my breath."

"She should lie down Justine," Estelle suggested. "She just needs to get her breathing under control. Come on, Lenore. Easy does it. Take a normal deep breath…in an out, in and out."