Mortal End: A Simmering Pit of Jiggery Pokery

Chapter Three

From her shaded hiding place, she had watched the two young moppets dart like wild animals suddenly released from captivity, into the dense wood.  Completely preoccupied with their activity they didn't see her.  She was a vision of all dark woman, dressed from head to toe in ragged male garb, that had obviously seen far better days, terrifying even by the merest glimpse.

The children, a young boy and girl, "most probably brother and sister," she thought to herself, rocketed from the honey trap.  And in her own nonchalant way, the woman had been neither surprised by their sudden reappearance, nor otherwise. "Although," she noted to herself, "it was the first time she had ever seen innocents reappear from that place."

Umbra, the name she was given by the rare few who were aware of her existence, clung to the shadows darkly, shuffling heavily on fortified feet across the forest.  Like Pan or a mature Danish Blue, Umbra had a stagnant, rancid aroma, that had matured pungently, over the many years that she had been placing one flattened foot in front of the other.  Being a social outcast had given Umbra very little incentive to bathe or to dull down her spiced up bodily aroma, which the truth be told, she had utterly no perception of.

It was initially believed, by those who had truly seen 'her' in the wood, that her swarthy mass was a ghost ship sailing through the black sea of night, a portent of impending evil.  Horror stories, narrated by harassed mothers to their naughty children, proclaimed that Umbra was the Bogy man, and would gobble them up if they didn't behave.  Many a child feared venturing into the wood for only a few paces, as they had been duly trained, in case they were never seen again.

Apocryphal tales were abundant of children having disappeared into the forest never to be beheld at their mother's heaving bosoms or heard of ever again.  Although, no one in Mortal End had experienced this at first hand, only having heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend...so, that as children became adults, they put the tales they had heard down to frustrated parenting or to the existence of Umbra, the Bogy man.

Umbra had absconded into self-imposed exile from her home in Little Napoo more than thirty years earlier.  Her family had arrived on a spice ship from the Africas.  As they had docked in port, she stumbled scared and almost naked, down the jetty was bought for a pittance by an extremely wealthy and doughy merchant.

From that moment on, as she was wrenched from the safety of her their ebony arms and bundled onto a cart, she had no knowledge of what became of her parents and siblings.  Responding to a swift crack of a savage whip, the horse dragging her buggy, started up and lurched erratically off into the distant countryside.

Upon her arrival at the Manor, Umbra, tall, lean and as black as pitch so terrified the rest of the house-staff, that she was given the grandiose job of being Lady's Maid. A job she was more than capable of doing single handedly. 

Unfortunately, her patron was no lady and soon Umbra found herself involved in sapphic duties, which were before long, no duty at all.

Catering generously to her Lady's every whim was the greatest joy Umbra could ever dream of.  Sailing around the mansion with a constant smile on her face, Umbra, glid from room to room, bequeathing behind her a fragrant trail of heavenly perfumes, that had been massaged into her firm young flesh. 

This naive behaviour - Umbra was totally unaware that fondling her forewoman was unacceptable conduct - soon pissed off her peers, who had quickly guessed at the disgraceful feminine activity taking place around them.  And for the most part, were envious, wishing it had been them.

In no time at all, a situation whereby the portly Master of the house would discover what his zesty wife was up to, was engineered by the people below stairs, who gleefully rubbed their palms excitedly together, counting off the seconds.

But it took many more seconds than they had anticipated. 

In fact it wasn't until the early hours of the following morning that the saucy stable boy and his scrubber girlfriend were witness to the sight of Umbra, oddly clothed in a groom's outfit, scurrying sheepishly away.

Eventually, after many night shifts spent with servants holding tumblers to ears and skulking in hallways, some of the truth of that night emerged.

Rather than being dismayed by his wife's continental bedroom tastes, the Master had been overjoyed and had wholeheartedly joined in.  Sending Umbra innocently off, with secret instructions to fetch a selection of uniforms to their salon, the Master had a plan all of his very own.  He had wasted absolutely no time at all upon her laden arrival, in dressing and making up like a maid and forcing both women into donning male attire.

Same sex activity was one thing but being shagged by a hairy, hoary bloke in a maid's outfit and scarlet lipstick, was another.  Umbra was so disgusted with herself and her possessor's violations that she fled into the woods and had been there ever since, roaming ungroomed, in her groom's array.

Umbra, the fantasy Bogy man was still suffering deeply from having faced her real Bogy man.

© 2003 Toula Mavridou-Messer All rights reserved. ***Mortal End, Too is the second novel in the Mortal End series. There is an excerpt available on Wattpad to give you a taste of the storyline. I will post chapters regularly, but there are as yet unknown chapters, so this may take a while. You can sign up for my newsletter, follow me on Twitter (Princess Toula), or like my Facebook page. For more information, see my Amazon author page Author.to/ToulaMavridouMesser. Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks for reading! Toula Xx