...cont'd...

It was that sudden glimpse of... something... in her attitude that unsettled the psychologist. A prickling began at the back of his neck as the gory horror of the incident allegedly involving Mercy once again came to the forefront of his consciousness.

He tried to take breath but found he couldn't, as he glanced the insanely attractive, young pinnacle of muscular development sitting opposite him. She was again studying the floor intensely. In silence. He could still see large veins protruding on her massive, bulging chest beef, right through the shirt. Her protruding nipples looked very small compared to what they were pinned to, but they were erect, and seemed very, very hard. His eyes took in the immensity of the fully separated, chiseled slabs of pectoral muscle, and he shivered at the sheer strength that Mercy must possess. She looked capable of bench pressing a locomotive. Or a van, his memory reminded him, and he twitched involuntarily at the thought.

A drop of cold sweat formed on his forehead. Nonetheless, he deliberately filed his fear away mentally and prodded Mercy back to her dream, the one in which she was abused. If this dream provoked a reaction like the one she just displayed, then it was something that had to be pursued.

After an eternity of affirmations and encouragement, Mercy barely managed "Uh, I was ten..."  and then stopped. But it was obvious that deep down, she really did want to tell him about this dream, despite the fact that she hemmed and hawed, squirming. The psychologist gently prompted her, studiously trying to ignore the rippling and bulging of the grotesquely overdeveloped, living anatomy chart before him as she fidgeted. Finally, under his persistence and cajoling, the words came.

When Mercy was only 10 years-old, there apparently had been a murder at her gym -- that much Mercy knew was fact. The therapist vaguely remembered reading about that incident in the newspaper, years ago. An male gymnast in his late teens was killed in the evening, as the last instructor had been in the far office on the telephone. The horrific crime had provoked a wave of fear amongst the community that ended up shuttering the facility permanently.

It turned out that the young Mercy had known the victim, if only very briefly, and she had been at the gym the very same day he was murdered. In fact, Mercy had walked the several blocks home only a couple hours before the teenager had died at the hands of unknown, uncaught assailants. At least she thought that's what had happened. "I can't remember exactly. I do remember being at the gym, working out with him, and then I remember walking home. That's all -- nothing else happened in between. And that's what I told the police back then."

The man scratched his head. Mercy was probably traumatized by the boy's death, but it didn't speak of any kind of abuse. He said so.

Mercy protested mildly "I haven't gotten there yet... like I was about to say, I keep having this dream." and hesitated. He looked at her as she decided if it was safe to continue. "Well, it's only a dream, right?" Mercy convinced herself with a deep breath. She looked up at him, her youthful, beautiful face solemn. "The gymnast who was murdered? In my dream, he was the one who molested me... at least, I have feelings that he did." She said plaintively, "I don't actually seem to remember that part too well."

The psychologist's eyebrows shot upwards, and Mercy's eyes turned downward. She softly added, "That's not the end of it. In my dream, what's really vivid is... I'm the one who kills him."

She looked up, timid. The man was just staring at her. He didn't say a word. An unreadable expression and a twinge at the corner of his left eye gave nothing away. This time it was his turn to be silent. Just sat there, waiting. Mercy spoke again, at last, sounding lame. "Are you sure you want to hear about this? It, uh ... gets really, um ..."  She looks at him almost pleadingly, her radiant blue eyes a mixture of conflicting emotions.

"I think it's important that we go over your dreams," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "Dreams," he continued, "are sometimes what we call re-enactments." Mercy nodded, but her face looked a little blank. The therapist explained that by re-enacting something traumatic but changing the eventual ending, it was possible for victims to gain a sense of mastery and come to better grips with what happened. A way to cope, in essence. The gorgeous young hulk said nothing, but she looked impressed with his insights.

He delved deeper, but like she had said earlier, Mercy was unsure as to exactly happened at the time she was abused in her dream. Mercy frowned, trying to recollect. All she remembered from that portion of her dream was the 17 year-old gymnast -- the one that died -- saying that she was "sooo sexy" and then a series of confused, jumbled emotions, and a sense of being profoundly violated.

Frustrated, she simply could not remember details as the psychologist tried to gently walk her through the narrative. For all his efforts, he got nothing. Something was clearly missing, and it was obvious that it had affected her horribly. After several futile attempts, he scribbled a note on his pad, reminding himself to refer her to a colleague that used regressive hypnosis to retrieve memories. He glanced at Mercy dabbing at her eyes, her amazing muscles rippling, clearly upset. He decided to move on.

"This other part of the dream is the part that you really clearly recall, isn't it?" the therapist asked and she nodded, looking relieved that they were going to familiar territory. He thought for a moment, and went for the straightforward approach. "You know he's already dead. But do you dream about finding this person, the one that hurt the 10 year-old you, hunting him down and killing him?"

"Not really," Mercy said, matter-of-fact. She licked her lips. "I don't have to find him at all. It's not like I'm older or anything." When the psychologist looked quizzical, she added, by way of explanation. "It's immediately after the part I don't remember. He's still alive. He's right there and I'm right there and it's the 10 year-old me that kills him." Mercy gave a slight shrug, bunching her hulking traps, and stared at the wall.

For his part, the psychologist was disconcerted by this revelation; most revenge fantasies had the victim, if they were this young, coming back in the future to wreck vengeance. But in this dream, the 10 year-old Mercy had actually turned the tables right in the moment. It was most unusual... "You said it felt really vivid... What exactly does the young Mercy do?" he asked, trying to envision a very young, preteen version of the extraordinarily muscled girl across from him. Frighteningly enough, it really wasn't that hard to do. With that conjured image, his mouth seemed suddenly dry, and an apprehensive premonition clutched his insides.

Mercy looked at the floor, shutting her eyes. This was the part of the dream she secretly enjoyed, disturbing and grotesque as it likely would be to others. "I break him," she smiled chillingly, eyes still closed. "All over. His spine, his legs and arms... with my bare hands, I snap his bones like toothpicks. The dream's so vivid that I can actually feel how weak and brittle his bones are as they pop against my pumped-up body. I'm so much younger than him, but my muscles are just so much bigger and harder. And so, so strong."

Her beautiful, smiling face was dreamy, bizarrely juxtaposed against the carnage she described. "But I don't stop there. I even tear apart his ribcage, and I can see all his organs. I grab his heart with one hand, and rip it right out. Blood bursts out everywhere. It's still beating, until I crush it to mush between my fingers." Mercy's voice rose, her grotesque grin still showing. All the hair on the back of the therapist's neck was standing, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat as his outlandishly muscled young client continued, eyes closed, oblivious to his fearful discomfort.

"Then I pull his entire body apart into dozens of separate pieces, limb from limb, rip off his head, his internal organs. I totally dismember him, and it's so easy with all my muscles...â" Close-eyed, Mercy spoke with a relish that was not only disconcerting, but utterly terrifying.

"I remember what I'm thinking -- I'm only a 10 year-old girl, but I've literally broken and torn a boy twice my age into pieces with my bare hands. I flex my muscles in superiority, and I see myself in the mirror. At first, I'm still only ten, but then my reflection changes..."

Mercy continued, "...and now I'm seeing myself as I am today... My reflection looks so powerful! I'm naked and I've got so much beautiful, sexy muscle! Pecs, biceps, lats, abs, legs all exploding with strength! I'm SO strong I can tear a man to death. And it turns me on, making me jack like you wouldn't believe. That's where I usually wake up. Wet with jack." Mercy finally opened her eyes, and looked up, blinking. She sighed a little; as she halfway expected, the therapist looked like he was having a heart attack, or a stroke.

He just stared at her. His jaw slack, his face sheet white. Unlike what Mercy thought, it wasn't just the shockingly gory and sexual nature of her dream. He had no idea how the male gymnast had died, as he didn't recall what the newspaper had disclosed all those years ago. But dear God, the dream was so close to what the report said. Apart from the sexuality in the dream, the similarity was inescapable: Gory, wanton dismemberment.

He didn't want to think it was even possible that anyone could be so vicious. He was absolutely stunned by her account, and even more so by how Mercy seemed to savor her slaughter, even in its retelling. It was like a door had cracked opened into her inner life, and its darkness was pitch black. Utterly foreboding. There was a discernible shift in Mercy's presence, one that he'd only glimpsed when she stopped his slap, but that sense of mind-numbing, malevolent power was unmistakable. The psychologist tried to gather himself, but still found no way to respond.

As the man opposite her made attempts to pull himself together, Mercy lamely added, "It's only a dream, I guess." She awkwardly fidgeted a bit, and caused several seams to audibly tear under the bulges of her hardened bronzed brawn. The young beauty ignored the sound, and considered what the therapist had said earlier about dreams. Mercy pursed her lips, saying "In a way, I guess I have dealt with being molested. I think that's why I now love building my body even more." The psychologist's eyebrows lifted at the remark.

She paused for a moment, and seeing she hadn't made herself clear, tried to spell it out. "Because it makes me so strong. Strong enough to deal with ANY man who thinks muscles are sexy." She thought that this conclusion, which she felt was insightful, might somehow spur the doctor back from wherever the hell he mentally was to the here and now. But he still looked stunned. Absently, the powerful girl watched him take a deep, shuddering breath, visibly focusing on what she had just announced. Mercy cocked her head, waiting.

"That doesn't make sense," the therapist finally offered, objecting to the obvious fallacy in her logic. Mercy was so intelligent, he couldn't believe she wouldn't see it a mile away. "If you thought that muscles made you sexy, and you didn't want the attention, you'd stop building your body. Not add to it."

Mercy sighed, the side of her perfect mouth curling. "Doctor, my muscles... they're a given. A constant that can't be taken away." Seeing that she still didn't make sense to him, the gorgeous young brute explained, "I can't NOT be muscular. Like I told you earlier, I was born this way. It was written in my DNA, and I've done as much research as I can to see if it can be reversed, but there's no way I can go any further. Even gene therapy isn't going to work on me." She looked at him with a tinge of impatience, her blue eyes reading him: hadn't he been listening earlier to everything she said about the projects she was involved in? She had talked about it in substantial detail.

Seeing that the man gave no response to her conclusion, Mercy licked her thin lips, and repeated herself for emphasis. "I'm always going to have muscles. It took a long time for me to accept it, but now I actually love my muscles again," she said, and glanced down at her own massive, chiseled chest. A mere, slight tensing and both giant breastless slabs seemed to leap full inches. Mercy's vest cracked, the material barely containing her unholy brawn. In fact, her shredded pectoral separations were clearly visible through the cloth, and her small areolae were now fully outlined to the extent that the tiny tips of her nipples were actually exposed, pushing through the fabric. Just as the man thought that she was going to literally explode straight out of her clothing, Mercy relaxed, and her mighty chest receded, but only slightly.

She smiled at her awesome physical power. "Since I'm not going to be able to change, it's not up to me anymore. The problem is men and their urges: it's up to them. And men don't change -- they all want the same thing. So to deal with whoever finds me sexy, I'm going to build even more strength and more muscle, more muscle than anyone can ever handle."

Mercy regarded him closely, and breathed out quietly. "Men will want me. And they will pay." Her usually melodic voice was pointedly neutral, but there was a latent venom in those words... As he thought about that last statement with a shudder, he realized that the silence between them was again lengthening, and Mercy was regarding him quizzically. He swallowed nervously.

"Ultimately, I don't think that muscles have anything inherent do with being sexy," he told her, almost for lack of anything better to say. Still trying to make sense of all that had been explored, he went on, thinking things through as he talked. "It's all in our heads, what makes someone sexually attractive to someone else. For example, a lot of people don't find girls with big muscles at all sexy. In fact, the effect is quite the opposite, I would say that it's not attractive at all."

Mercy opened her mouth, and then shut it again. She looked like she was about to make a rebuttal, but instead fell silent. She frowned, appearing upset and perhaps a little angry, but said nothing. Several full seconds passed. The hypermuscular girl continued to just sit on the couch, her smooth forehead furrowed in thought. Pondering his statement far more than he would have anticipated, Mercy pushed an errant strand of her brown hair back behind a broad shoulder with an absentminded flick of her wrist.

The therapist couldn't help but flinch at the sight.

Just that simple, careless motion had orchestrated a rippling symphony in Mercy's obscene, frightening muscularity. The coiling of her bare arm had made the huge, heavy bicep gather itself into an incredibly large, jutting mass, which the twisting of her wrist then further made explode into freakishly high, jagged steel peaks over the hanging bulk of her sculpted triceps. One enormous lat flared out, almost tearing through the armhole of her vest as it expanded under her arm. Her vein-strewn forearm had become a den of writhing snakes as she absently played with the ends of her hair, before tossing it back. As a result, her thick, sloping traps and bulging deltoids were also now exposed, the material of her sleeveless top clinging to a hulking ridge of ripped sinew that ended at a thick cap of brawn which showed chiseled vertical separations even when fully at rest. Her muscles were simply mindboggling. Without even trying, Mercy exuded unreal physical strength.

A drop of sweat fell from him as he tore his eyes away from the sight of her ungodly, casually mighty arm, trying to suppress the thoughts of what Mercy could do... what she had maybe done as a mere 10 year-old with her incredible physique. With muscles like that, it actually wasn't that difficult to imagine what she dreamed about being mortifyingly real. Not to mention that equally horrific and graphic report, descriptions of her vicious fearsome strength that he had read and prematurely dismissed as certain exaggeration.

...to be cont'd...