My Field Work (Part 4)

The Superintendent looked from me, sitting wrapped only in a blanket, to Gail, who was still blushing, and his eyes narrowed. He may have been slow, but he wasn't stupid.

"If you have anything to say, Miss, now's the time to say it," he said. Gail pulled up a chair, sat down and took a deep breath.

This was what she told us:

She had gone straight into the lab that morning, and she had been weeding some plants in the greenhouse when Alison Carey, our Head of Department, had called her over to the door.

Gail had gone over to see what was happening. Alison was a good Head of Department, a smart, attractive, confident woman in her forties, but she was insufferably bossy and seemed to have no idea about what were the real priorities of research. She was always asking us to do this or that trivial assignment, instead of assigning them to younger students who were less needed on the tough jobs. She was standing in the corridor, her clipboard in her hand, and her usual aloof expression on her face. Nearby stood a young, very pretty, bespectacled black woman, dressed primly in a neat skirt, a grey sweater and sensible shoes. Her hair was swept back in a tight bun. Behind her was a crowd of about twenty bored-looking children, none of them older than ten.

"Gail," said Alison, "this is Sophie Makeba, and this is her class. They're on a special trip to the Biology Department. I want you to show them around a little. Miss Makeba, this is Gail Dawson, one of our ablest grad students."

Miss Makeba smiled at Gail and turned to her class.

"Say hello to Miss Dawson," she said. She had a precise manner of speech, and the faintest accent – Gail guessed she was probably an African immigrant. The class droned in chorus, "Hel-lo, Miss Daw-son." Miss Makeba beamed at Gail, leaned forward, and said with a smile, "It's okay. You can call me Sophie."

Gail groaned inwardly. What a treat – showing a bunch of pissed-off pre-teens through the department, every one of them out of their minds with boredom at having to do a school trip on a weekend. She cursed Alison for palming this job off on her, when any number of freshers could have been enlisted.

"Well, Miss Makeba," said Alison, "I'll leave you to it. Have a nice time."

"Thank you very much," said Sophie Makeba, nodding vigorously. Alison nodded at them both, turned on her heel and swept off.

"Okay, um, if you'll just follow me," said Gail, and she led them away down the corridor. Miss Makeba seemed to be genuinely interested in what was going on, unlike her pupils, who seemed to be continually hitting each other and asking if they could go to the bathroom. She was bright and knowledgeable and was doing her best to communicate her enthusiasm to her pupils, but it wasn't working.

Gail led them through the labs, showed them the computer room, the offices and the research library. All along, Sophie Makeba was keenly interested, and the kids could hardly contain their own impatience.

"This is where we keep most of our plants," Gail said, opening the greenhouse door, and a little embarrassed at pointing out the extremely obvious. Sophie Makeba nodded, and told off a small boy for picking leaves off a rare flower. Gail pointed out the most interesting specimens (the kids hardly paid attention), while Sophie Makeba asked insightful and highly technical questions about them. Gail guessed she must have been a botany grad at some point.

They made their way through the maze of paths and walkways. One of the paths was roped off.

"And what is down there?" asked Sophie Makeba.

"Ah," said Gail. What was down there was one of the extraordinary trees, the prime object of our research, which had been painstakingly uprooted as a sapling and which, under hothouse conditions, had grown to full size frighteningly quickly. There was no way Gail was leading this party anywhere near it. The students themselves only went near it in biohazard suits, and even then, there had been unfortunate accidents. Two students had needed counselling.

"That's where we keep the poisonous stuff," Gail whispered in Sophie Makeba's ear. "I didn't want to say, in case the kids got excited. I can't take you down there, sorry. It's classified as a biological hazard." Sophie Makeba nodded, smiled and squeezed Gail's arm.

"I understand," she said. "It's no problem."

Gail led them away and pointed out some rare orchids. Sophie Makeba went to make a note. "That's funny," she said, "I must have dropped my pen. Has anyone seen my pen?" There was a chorus of "Noo" from the children. The young woman made her way back down the line of them and peered at the ground. She looked down the roped-off path and then looked up at Gail and smiled.

"Ah, I see it," she called. "It rolled down here. I'll just duck in and get it." And she stepped over the rope.

"I wouldn't do that!" said Gail urgently, and pushed through the children. But Sophie Makeba was walking up the path.

"It's fine," she was saying, "I won't touch anything…" She disappeared from sight behind a thick bush. The children complained as Gail struggled past them, but all of a sudden, she heard a terrible, familiar SCHHHLUPPP!, followed by a muffled squeal.

She quickly turned around and faced the kids.

"Come on, children, let's get out of here! Who'd like an ice cream?" For the first time all morning, their faces lit up. Gail hustled them out of the greenhouse and slammed the door shut behind them. Her stomach was in knots and she had to get the kids out of there as quick as possible.

"Where's Miss Makeba?" asked a little boy.

"She's coming in a second," said Gail, sweating. Through the greenhouse door, she could hear muffled moans and whimpers from the poor, trapped schoolteacher.

"What's she doing in there?" the boy asked.

"It sounds like she's doing sex," said a solemn-faced little girl. Gail went pale.

"Nonsense," she said briskly. "She's, um, tying her shoelace."

"What's sex?" asked a small, red-haired girl. The solemn-faced girl looked at her scornfully.

"You don't know what doing sex is? You're so stupid, Sherry O'Brien."

"I am not stupid! You're a bitch, Mandy Pendleton!"

"Ssshh, children," hissed Gail, desperately dialling Alison's number on her mobile phone.

"When a man and a woman love each other," said Mandy Pendleton loftily, "the man lies on top of the woman and they take their shirts off and they rub their belly buttons together."

"EEWWWWWWWW!"

"That's disgusting!"

"You're making it up!"

"And then six months later they go to the hospital and they get a baby from the doctors."

"Alison? It's Gail. You need to get here right away. We've got a bit of a situation with Miss Makeba. Yeah. Code red."

The sound of repeated, rhythmical groans leaked through the greenhouse door.

"But you're not allowed to do it till you're eighteen," added Mandy Pendleton.

"Do you have to do it?" asked Sherry O'Brien, who had turned quite green.

"Yes," said Mandy Pendleton gleefully.

"I want to go to the bathroom," said Sherry O'Brien miserably. At last, Alison came running round the corner and up to the door. "I'll take care of these," she told Gail. "You'd better get in there and help her. Come on, children, we're going to have ice cream." She led the children off down the corridor and Gail took a second to breathe a sigh of relief, then opened the door and slipped inside.

She threaded down the maze of paths and got to the forbidden zone. Carefully, she stepped over the rope and edged along the path until she could see the tree.

It was just as she had feared. Sophie Makeba's clothes were lying in torn rags all over the place. Her dark, naked body was tightly bound with a tangle of tough green vines, and a large pseudopodium had completely engulfed her head. A thick rope of vine was pushed up between her jutting ass cheeks and was buggering her, and Gail could see that another had snaked up into her vagina and was sliding back and forth within her. Her arms were lashed behind her back, and tendrils had curled around her firm breasts and were stroking her dark nipples. She was making the most indescribable noises, and her body was squirming and being rhythmically jolted as the tree fucked her.

Even while she was desperately figuring out how to free her from the tree, Gail couldn't help noticing that, stripped of her prim teacher's outfit, Sophie Makeba had a gorgeous body. Her tight, protuberant ass had a physical echo in the globes of her round, heavy breasts, wrapped and enveloped by the thick vines of the tree. The thought wouldn't leave Gail's head, and she felt suddenly dizzy, overcome by a sudden feeling of lust. It's the damn tree, she told herself. It wants you up there, too. Fight it! You have to get her out of there!

Nobody had ever managed to free anyone from the tree before it had finished with them. It seemed impervious to fire, pesticide and even metal – saw blades just juddered off its bark, which could become spongy and voluptuous when it wanted to, and tough as rock when it was under attack. Gail knew that she couldn't intimidate the tree into letting Sophie Makeba go, so she would have to distract it.

There was nothing else for it. She would have to offer herself as a substitute. It had never been tried, but this was an emergency. Gail quickly undressed, and walked up to the tree, stark naked, her arms open wide.

"Come on!" she called. "You know me! Let her go! Take me again! I want it!" Gail had no idea if the tree could understand her, but it suddenly stopped fucking the young schoolteacher and merely held her tight, as if pondering. There was a muffled, dazed whimper from the pod that enclosed Sophie Makeba's head.

"That's right!" urged Gail. "Take me! I want you to do it! Let her go and take me!" She stepped up closer to the tree. She wasn't afraid that it might trick her – all of its vines and fronds were occupied in binding and invading the naked young black woman. She moved a little closer to the tree, and laid a hand on its trunk.

"Come on," she said softly. "Let her go. If you must take someone, take me. She's an innocent, she doesn't know what's happening to her. Take me."

There was a silence. Sophie Makeba trembled, lashed tight with vines, her head engulfed, vines penetrating her pussy and her ass. Gail's heart ached for her, and she reached out and gave her a reassuring pat on her left buttock.

"Don't worry, Sophie," she whispered. "We'll have you free in a jiffy…"

Suddenly, with terrifying speed, a dense tangle of fresh vines erupted from the soil around the roots of the tree, and spiralled around Gail's bare ankles, locking her in place. She gasped and turned to run, but the vines shot up her legs and swarmed all over her naked body, around her waist, coiling about her head, fastening her arms behind her back, and slithering between her legs, pushing insistently between her pale ass cheeks. Gail screamed "No! NO! You BASTARD! NOOO!" She had been tricked! The vines withed and swarmed up over her eyes, pushing into her mouth, and she choked and let out a "MMMMMMM!", but then she was already being lifted off her feet, and the thick, slimy vine tips were forcing themselves into her vagina and her anus. It was happening again, and the flood of lust was pouring through her just as it had before.

Gail writhed, forcing her hips back and down onto the twin, impaling vines that were fucking her, and through the thick coils of vines that were wrapped around her head, she could hear Sophie Makeba's rhythmic squealing – "MM! MM! MM! MMM!" Oh God, she had failed utterly to rescue the girl – but the desperate need to be fucked by the tree was driving the shame of her failure from her mind.

Then she felt a warm body against hers, and the vines that separated them drawing apart and lashing them close together. The tree was tying her to Sophie! Gail was mortified at being so intimately in contact with the girl, but she was so electrified with lust that she could do little but whimper as her breasts rubbed against the other girl's naked back. The vines kept pumping into Gail's ass and pussy, and she was dragged down Sophie's body until her face was pressed between the young teacher's naked ass cheeks. The pressure on the back of her head increased, and Gail's blindfold face was pushed deeper, parting the other girl's buttocks, until she could feel the vine that was in Sophie's ass touching her own chin. Sophie was trying desperately to move her hips away, but her struggles were feeble, and her moans were taking on a more voluptuous and less panicked tone.

The vines in Gail's mouth pulled out of her, and she whimpered "Please, no, please don't make me do this, oh please no, oh God…", but her blindfold face was inexorably pushed up against Sophie's anus, and with a long, slow, "MMMFFF!", Gail gave in. The vine in Sophie's ass pulled out of her, and Gail's lips were pressed up against the poor girl's tortured, tight little asshole. Gail kissed it and tongued it as lovingly as she could – which wasn't much, considering they were both still being bound and raped by the tree – and Sophie whimpered pitifully inside the prison of the pod that enclosed her head.

Gail's tongue eased itself up into the girl's anus, and Sophie shuddered, with a long, low moan. Gail felt the fucking in her own ass and vagina increase in urgency, and she deliriously fucked Sophie's ass with her tongue, causing the girl to squeal with ecstasy and shudder violently once more, her ass cheeks clenching around Gail's face. Gail gasped for breath as she desperately tongued Sophie's anus, feeling the vine swell and expand inside her own rectum, while her pussy was on fire, slick with juices – she felt her nipples tingling as the vines stroked them, her whole body urged on to orgasm, and she pushed her hard little tongue as hard as it would go into Sophie's ass – and then there was a muffled, agonised, ecstatic wail, as Sophie came, her body shaking all over, quickly followed by Gail, letting herself go, relaxing into it – and then, finally, the tree erupted into orgasm.

The sticky white sap boiled up inside the pod and burst over Sophie's head and shoulders, flowing in gallons over her body and incidentally drenching Gail, whose face was still buried between Sophie's naked ass cheeks. The pressure burst inside Gail and she felt the sap filling up inside her and exploding out of her ass and pussy, before the vines were blessedly loosened and the two exhausted, sap-coated, naked young women fell away from the tree and landed in a bruised, tangled heap on the path.

Gail whimpered, coughed and wiped the sap out of her eyes. Sophie was unrecognisable, a barely humanoid form, moving feebly beneath a thick coating of the white goo. Gail quickly cleared it from the girl's face.

Sophie's eyes focused on hers. "Oh my God," she gasped. "What happened?"

"I know, Sophie, it's okay," said Gail, panting for breath. "It's happened to me, too. It's not your fault."

"It was so terrible," the young teacher said, trembling, "and yet…I have never…nothing like that…I never knew it could be so…was that you? Did we…?"

Gail blushed and nodded. "It made me. It uses people. You shouldn't feel ashamed, there was nothing either of us could do."

Sophie shook her head, wide-eyed. "I should feel ashamed. I should. I don't do this, I really don't…but I don't feel ashamed. Why is that?"

"I don't know," said Gail. "We're still investigating it. Look, let me help you." She held out her hands and Sophie staggered to her feet, naked, the sap dripping heavily off her body. The two young women limped down the path, out of the tree's range, and they sat down on the ground again. Gail saw that Alison was hovering anxiously in the doorway. She nodded to her: it'll be OK.

Sophie groaned and put a hand to her mouth. Gail, too, felt the nausea hit her. "It's okay," she managed to say, "let it happen…", and then she rolled onto her hands and knees and threw up gouts of green slime onto the path, even as, humiliatingly, a jet of it voided from her ass. She glimpsed Sophie, bent over and clutching her stomach, puking onto the verge and coughing as the green juice shot out of her own ass – and then they each threw up once more, and then it had passed.

Sophie was lying, weak, on her back, on the ground, looking up at the ceiling.

"The children," she murmured. "They didn't see…?"

"No, we got them out of here," said Gail, wiping her mouth. "Thank God," said Sophie, and then she laughed softly.

"What is it?" Gail asked. Sophie turned her head and smiled wearily. "I was just thinking," she said with a low chuckle, "this would not look good at the next PTA meeting…teacher raped by tree. I don't think it would be a great career move, hah?"

Gail smiled. Two female students in Biohazard suits were coming down the path with blankets. Gail nodded a hello to them, struggled to her feet and helped Sophie to stand. Sophie leaned on her, her legs trembling, her head lolling. Gail gave her an encouraging squeeze. After all they had been through, after what the tree had done to them, and what it had made Gail do to Sophie, it seemed ridiculously petty, but Sophie took Gail's hand and gave a weak squeeze in return.

"We'd better get cleaned up," Gail said. Sophie nodded. And then, to Gail's amazement, Sophie kissed her fondly on the cheek. Gail stared at her. Sophie was smiling, but her eyes looked serious.

"Thank you for trying to save me," she said. And then she laughed softly once again. "Maybe it was time for a new career, anyway."

When Gail had finished this story, the Superintendent looked like somebody had told him that he'd grown a parrot out of the back of his head.

"What happened to the teacher? We need to talk to her. She may want to press charges against the college. This is very serious."

"There won't be any charges against the college," said a quiet voice. We turned.

Standing in the doorway was a young woman wearing an oversized college t-shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants. Her glasses were held together with tape. Her black hair was swept back into a frizzy ponytail. Her skin was rich and dark – but also pale with tiredness. Her eyes looked bloodshot, and she was leaning wearily against the doorframe, sagging like someone after a long race. She held a steaming coffee cup. She glanced at Gail, and then at me, but she spoke to the Superintendent.

"Gail did her best to save me. It's not her fault what happened. I won't be pressing charges. The children have gone home, they know nothing of what took place. But I will be informing the school about my resignation." She stepped into the room and had a long gulp of coffee, and then she spoke to Gail and me.

"What happened has changed me forever. I must know more. I don't suppose it means much to you, but I have made some study of plants like these, in my own country. I would very much like to work with you, on this. I think we can learn from each other. Do you think that will be okay?"

Gail put her arm around me and squeezed. I grinned. Gail held out her hand, I held out my hand, and Sophie came forward. We all three shook hands. And Sophie smiled.

To be continued...