Chapter 7
It was a funny turn of events, Ted was thinking as he walked down the pier to his mother's, everything that had happened recently seemed so unusual, extraordinary even. What was funny was how you went along for a long time, for years sometimes, with nothing happening, and then everything seemed to start happening at once. All of it surprised him, deep down. First, his mother's taking a lover; second, the fact that he was black, third, his mother's kicking Vivian out in order to be alone with him; fourth, his own new feeling for his sister, and the ease with which the four of them had begun to make it together. He didn't know how many more turns of events he could absorb, and hoped things slowed down for awhile, that they could maintain the status quo. The only cloud in their sky was being estranged from their mother, and he was intending to do what he could to remedy that right now.
There was no answer when he knocked on the door, which was odd since he thought he'd heard hi-fi music from the side of the house, so he let himself in with thoughts of waiting for awhile or leaving a note. The moment he shut the door behind him he realized that the stereo was indeed on, and the music seemed to be coming from the direction of his mother's bedroom. As he was about to knock on the door, he heard voices from within, and a certain unfamiliar tenor in his mother's caused him to stop and listen.
"No, don't do that, not that way," she was saying. "Please don't." Ted recognized fear in her voice.
"Kneel down here," a gruff male voice was saying.
"Not the belt! Not tonight!"
"Shut up and bend over."
"No! No! No!" she was pleading, but Ted heard a sharp thwack, followed by another. "Ah! Ah! Ouch! Ow-ouch!" she wailed, but there was a steady thwack, thwack audible above or between squeals as leather bit flesh. Trembling, not believing his ears, Ted opened the door a crack and peeked in.
The sight took the breath from him. There his mother was, ass in the air as she knelt on the edge of the bed, grotesquely bound hand and foot, a panting Gene flailing away at her helpless hindquarters which quivered, crisscrossed as they were with red lashmarks. Between her wide-spaced thighs he saw her furry blond embrasure, its red eye blinking at him as she writhed.
The sight seared itself into Ted's brain; it was a sight he saw clearly for one split second before his sight blurred. His first impulse was to strangle Gene, but a voice told him that, furious as he was, he might not succeed. Strangulation was not a sure thing. Stab him, the voice said, cut his throat! Thinking clearly now, teeth gritted with a certain perverse pleasure at how clearly he was thinking, he thought of the old hunting knife he kept beneath the seat of his car. With that knife he would cut Gene's throat, then cut off his balls. Thinking, Yes! Yes! he shut the door as quietly as possible and stole out of the houseboat.
When he stepped onto the dock the waft of sea breeze made him realize that his shirt was soaked with sweat. He realized that his face was twisted maniacally, and that anyone seeing him would know he was hellbent on murder. He straightened up, forced himself to compose his features, then walked down the dock to his car, stepping at a quick pace, proud of himself for thinking so clearly, knowing that if he kept his wits, this was something he could carry off.
But was he that clearheaded? There were knives in the kitchen, knives that were both bigger and sharper than his old hunting knife, but he had thought, Kill him, and at the same time had thought of his hunting knife, and so had gone to fetch it. For that matter, if the welts rising on his mother's buttocks and the red eye of her pussy hadn't so unnerved him, if he had been able to survey the scene a bit more casually, more objectively, he may have seen that she was not tied, that bonds did not twist her body into that position, that when all was said and done she knelt like that of her own volition.
A steely-nerved Ted stepped calmly from the dock and through the door as he re-entered the houseboat, opening and closing the front door without a sound. He then unsheathed the knife and, holding it tightly in his fist, face set in grim determination, crept to the door of the bedroom. He took several deep breaths and put his hand on the doorknob: it was not a crime which he was about to commit; he was about to commit justice. Just then, his mother screamed, an entirely new tone in her voice.
"Yes! Yes! Fuck me!" she screamed, her voice containing the quintessential quality of en-flamed lust. "Fuck me in the ass! Oh! Oh! Yes, lover! Stick that great big prick into my asshole! Ohhh yes! That feels sooo-ooe good! Fuck my ass! Fuck my ass! Oh! Oh-uhh fuck!" His mother's voice trailed off into a meaningless incoherent jibber.
A weak-kneed Ted clutched the doorknob for support, almost stabbing himself as he lurched shoulder-first into the doorjamb. The lust so naked in his mother's voice ripped the determination from him. His jaw opened and closed as if he were trying to ask, voiceless, "What's going on here?" For a second time in ten minutes he couldn't believe his ears. With slippery palm he managed to crack the door to view the most depraved sight he'd ever seen.
His mother lay face down in the middle of the bed, a pillow doubled beneath her to lift her posterior into the air, while Gene hovered over her, pumping furiously in and out her anus, his ball's slapping her pussy with each thrust. His mother's face was to him and he observed that her features were contorted into the most frenzied expression he'd ever seen. Her eyes were tightly closed, her nostrils flared, and her lips were drawn tightly back from her teeth. She moaned and reached between her legs with both hands to clasp Gene's balls, then proceeded to rub his scrotum on her pussy, gibbering, Yass, yass ...
He could kill both of them, he knew that. He bit his tongue and realized that he couldn't kill anyone, that any second now he was going to choke on either tears or vomit.
"Oh! OH! OH!" His mother's voice rose shrilly and her body began to convulse, on the verge of orgasm. Ted shut the door and fled. He ran across the living room and out the front door. His mother's climactic squeals chased him out of her house and up the dock. He started his car and sprayed gravel in the parking lot as he sped away, his mother's depraved ghostly wail-aiiieeeeee-following him onto the freeway as he headed north. He cut over to the coast and drove blindly up it, the squeal of his tires on mountain curves failing to help him forget that depraved pig-stuck wail, the wind whistling about the car through the night only to remind him: Aiiiieeeeee!!
Ellen hung up the phone and sighed, then began playing with her earlobe. Vivian frowned questioningly but didn't speak. After a minute Ellen said, "Well, Fran hasn't seen him. She said she's been half expecting him for the last hour or so."
"He should have been there a couple of hours ago!" Vivian said.
"Yeah. Well, anyway, Fran said she's been there all day and he hasn't called and hasn't come by." Ellen sighed again.
"Well maybe he got a flat tire or ran out of gas or something," Vivian said, helpfully.
"I don't know," Ellen said.
Neither of them knew, and both of them knew it was best not to fret about it. Nevertheless, the possibility that something might have happened to Ted entered their minds. The remainder of the evening-there wasn't much of it left, although it seemed like a long time-passed quietly. Bob came home and, informed of the situation, tried to make light of it:
"Hell, if I know Ted he's probably stopped in San Francisco to see one of his old girlfriends."
"They're all married and have kids," Vivian said.
"Well, he probably picked up a ravishing hitchhiker-female-and is spending the night in a motel with her."
"Can't afford it," Ellen said.
"Okay, they're either at her place or they ran off to Mexico. Anyway, I'm sure old Ted-babes is okay, so let's all calm down."
Ellen did not appreciate Bob's jocularity; in fact, although she didn't get mad at him, she resented his effort to make light of something so potentially serious. She brooded in silence until one a.m. when she again called Fran, waking her only to have the same conversation they'd had hours earlier. She sat there for a moment afterwards while her face grew grimmer and grimmer, fiddling with the fringe on her shawl. "Crap!" she said. "Something's happened to him! I know it!"
"Now, now," said Bob, who'd been leaning against the doorjamb watching her since she'd hung up the phone and wondering what she was going to do. "Nothing's happened to him. You don't know quite where he is-that's all."
"No!" she cried. "I feel it. I know something's happened."
"Well, if that's what you want to believe," he said.
"He's never done this before," she said heatedly, "I know that if he was able to get to a phone, he'd call me. And if he can't get to a phone, something must have happened."
"That's not very good reasoning," he said.
"It's the way he's always been."
"Don't you think you're going to feel a bit silly when he pops up safe and sound?" he asked, annoyed at her for refusing to be comforted.
"No, I'll be relieved," she said.
"You will be relieved," he said with emphasis, smiling somewhat sardonically.
"Yes!" she roared.
"Well, if you're so sure you're going to be relieved in the near future, why let yourself get so goddamn upset now?" he said.
Her lips trembling, livid with outrage, Ellen managed to mutter, "You smart ass."
And then when Bob just sat there smiling at her, she screamed, "Fuck off!"
As Bob left the room he muttered, "Hysterical bitch," shaking his head, as he passed Vivian, who was coming into the living room to see what the ruckus was about.
When a puzzled Vivian sat down on the sofa beside Ellen, she didn't quite know what to say. Ellen was so visibly shaken that Vivian put her arm around her, feeling motherly.
"Dumb shit," Ellen began muttering, "he can really be a dumb shit sometimes."
"I'm sure he didn't mean anything," Vivian said, not at all sure.
"It doesn't matter," Ellen said. "I'm wo-wor-ried about Ted."
"Oh," said Vivian, who had heard part of the phone call. "Has something happened to him?"
"I'm afraid it has," Ellen sobbed. "Why else would he ... it's not like him not to call."
As the immensity of her fears descended full weight on her, Ellen began sobbing helplessly. Her arm around the quaking girl's shoulders, Vivian tried to comfort her. She hugged her and picked up the corner of her shawl to wipe the tears from her eyes. There was not much more to be done for her. When she had cried herself out, Vivian walked her into the bedroom and helped her into bed.
"Can you go to sleep?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"You'd best try," Vivian said. While obviously shaken, her sister-in-law did not look particularly sleepy. Still needed, Vivian crawled into bed beside her and, concerned, lay awake for a long time, listening to Bob on the mattress on the floor beside them, his breathing slowing and then becoming quite heavy.
Vivian rose to her elbow and peered closely into Ellen's face. The eyes stared back, sad dark pools, then blinked and looked away.
"You ought to sleep."
"I can't."
"It won't do any good to stay up. He'll be home in the morning."
"I can't help it. You don't have to stay awake with me," Ellen said, chuckling one long chuckle because it was a ludicrous thought.
"I'm worried about you."
"I'm worried about Ted."
"So am I."
"What can we do?" she asked, those big sad eyes blinking again.
"I don't know," Vivian said, and she really didn't, either. She reached over to brush the hair, damp to the touch, from Ellen's face, their eyes searching in each other's face shared concern. And then, without knowing her own true motives, perhaps only expressing sympathy, Vivian bent to kiss the distraught Ellen. Their lips met, then met again, Vivian's parting slightly as her tongue darted out. She found the underside of Ellen's tongue warmly sweet, a surprise. Maybe Vivian was curious without quite knowing it about Ellen's intimate responses, or maybe she was acting subconsciously with the assured knowledge that there was a time-honored if indirect way for a young lady to approach sleep even if it was something one usually did to one's self; at any rate, as her hand slid up Ellen's leg she was in no sense preying on the wrought-up, emotionally tense woman.
Without further ado, with more tenderness than she would have used on herself, Vivian's long slender fingers parted the soft moist crevice between Ellen's legs, parted it so gently, spreading it apart. One sharp fingernail touched the bud of Ellen's clitoris to bring it immediately erect, stroking it with care. All was still for a breathless instant before Vivian asked, "Do you like that?"
Vivian's movements had been so sure, so deft, and had so taken Ellen by surprise that she gave a straightforward response: "Yes," she whispered, automatically, without thinking ahead to what "yes" might mean.
"Lift up," Vivian said, and without thinking about it, Ellen raised her hips for the few seconds it took Vivian to slide her nightgown up past her hips. With a tug, Vivian pulled the other girl's gown on up in front, depositing it beneath her chin. Vivian surveyed the naked white body beside her, eyes drinking the creamy smooth skin covering a body thin save for those heavy twin mounds, rolling to the sides of the ribcage, and Vivian rubbed her knees together as she felt her pussy begin to secrete the first anticipatory juices of lust. Thus it was with some unaccustomed personal confusion that she began to caress the other girl, watching the nipples rise under her tender ministrations, growing firm and pouty, and she brushed her hand across first one nipple then the other, stroking, stroking shoulders and sides and breasts, stroking rigid nipples and then sliding her hands across the flat belly and to the velvet on the in-sides of the thighs. Her hand found Ellen's delicate pussy lips again, found them slicker, and she began to rub her finger rhythmically up and down the hot moist slit as she lowered her head to affix her lips to a pouting nipple, her hand circling and plying the softness of the breast.
Their movements were on the surface slow and dreamlike, as if entranced they proceeded ... Ellen had begun to rock her hips slowly up and down on the mildly crazed finger working in her now-pulsing slit, while Vivian's lips nibbled an erratic path from tit to tummy to tit, then pausing as tongue probed belly-button only to have her nostrils enticed by the musk rising from Ellen's fevered slit. She moved between the wide-spread legs and tongue replaced finger in the pulsing slit, tongue outstretched and head bobbing slowly as Ellen continued to rock her hips, moaning silently.
Vivian clamped her mouth onto the seething little Etna, sucking the labia between her lips as her tongue played havoc with the clitoris. A sharp throb of raw wild lust shot through Ellen. Both hands went to Vivian's head, holding either side of it, holding that hot sucking mouth firmly on her quim as her spine went absolutely stiff, pulses shooting through her, rippling like a tide from the twitching point of her clitoris caught in a firm bite, and her breath came in grunts as she went, "Uh-uh-uh ..." until she collapsed.
Vivian held her sister-in-law's sex in her mouth until the twitching stopped, and then drew dazedly back from it, staring at its glistening wetness closely, as if in surprise, for a long minute before she wiped the slick goop from her chin with her hand and rose to lie beside the recently spent girl. Vivian realized that she was hot as hell, that her nipples had erected achingly and her pussy tingled to beat the band, its juice having overflowed onto her thighs.
She lifted her own nightgown and picked up Ellen's hand to pull it to her cunt. Ellen took a tentative feel, pressing the wet puffy lips with three fingertips before withdrawing her hand, saying, "Uh-uh."
"What?"
"I can't do it to you."
"That's odd," Vivian said, feeling suddenly nauseated.
"I don't know ..."
"It's weird."
"I just don't have any lesbian tendencies, that's all."
"I don't either," Vivian said. "I mean, I wasn't thinking of it like that-I was just being human."
"You're sex-obsessed."
"Huh?"
"Sex-obsessed. All of you are sex-obsessed."
"You get plenty juiced-up."
"I'm not a Lesbian, though."
"I'm not a Lesbian, either."
"I can't force myself to act like one, though."
"You sure can act like a bitch, though," Vivian said, throwing back the covers and going into the bathroom to wash her mouth out.