Chapter 2
UP ON THE
"Hill," the fashionable section of Coaltown, the Lutz family sat around the supper table, picking at their meal without appetite. A transistor radio sat in the middle of the table, crackling out the latest bulletins relating to the plague. It was the opinion of the medical investigators that the dire affair had originated in Nova Scotia, where some weeks earlier, an isolated case had been reported on a Japanese freighter docked there. Inasmuch as the disease is communicated by a species of flea that infests rats, it was assumed that an infected rat from the freighter had left the freighter and climbed aboard one of the smaller boats that trafficked the St. Lawrence waterway and the Great Lakes. By grim chance this rat, or other rats which it infected aboard the smaller boat, elected to jump ship at Coaltown. Mingling with the numerous rats that lived in the swamps along the lake front, they had spread the virus. At the moment, a massive rodent extermination campaign was in progress.
Sam Lutz switched off the radio in annoyance.
"They lock the stable after the horse has been stolen," he said. "For years I've been trying to get the city council to clean up the waterfront. So now, they're doing it. Too late!"
Bess Lutz looked at her husband sympathetically. Every day his graying hair seemed to get thinner, the tire around his waist thicker, and his jowls looser. He was getting to be an old man before his time Sam was only 47. Bess noted that there were men at their country club who were older than her husband, but who were years younger in appearance and attitude. A lot younger! There were always one or two of them who made sly passes at Bess when spirits got too high at the Saturday night dances. They would press up against her opulent bottom at the bar, and sometimes they would even try to steal a kiss out on the darkened terrace. Just thinking about the lean, handsome man who had rubbed against her the week before made her buttocks tingle.
The trouble was that Bess's bottom had been tingling all too long without surcease. She was lucky if Sam made love to her once a month in this last year. His libido was fading, while her libido was blooming richer than it ever had at any other stage in her life. What was the term for her present condition? Hot pants, she thought, smiling wryly. She sighed.
At 45, Bess Lutz was a vibrant, attractive matron. Her auburn hair still glowed with a copper sheen, thanks to a good hairdresser. The flesh around her neck and jawline was still firm. Her breasts had never been too large, a fact which she was grateful for now. Even without a bra, they were not pendulous like the breasts of some of her contemporaries. Her legs were still slender, as was her waist. Perhaps her thighs and bottom were getting fleshly, but the men liked that in a woman, she believed.
Lately, she had been briefly tempted to encourage some of the men who made advances to her, but never too seriously. Affairs were such seamy, dirty business, particularly for the woman. The fear of exposure always outweighed the quick, greedy pleasure. Besides, she loved her husband.
The news of the plague and the ominous bottling up of Coaltown from the rest of the world had terrified Sam. Not that he feared for his own life. It was his wife and his two children he was worried about. He looked at the twins, sitting opposite each other at the table, and his heart was wrenched.
Dick and Sissy, a beautiful girl and a handsome boy, just turned 18. Except for the boy's stronger features, they might have been identical twins. They had deep blue eyes and flaxen hair. Dick had a slender, athlete's build and stood a head taller than his sister. Sam had been appalled when his precious daughter had blossomed into a mature female at the age of 15, with jutting breasts and the lush hips and buttocks of a woman. The legion of boys who flocked around her at the pool and at club dances were a source of constant concern to him. He knew what the little lechers had on their minds. They wanted to get their hands on her virginal breasts and her untouched flanks. It got so bad that Sam was coming to regard sex as an offensive mechanism. Every time he had relations with his wife, he would imagine some hot-blooded young stag doing the same thing to his darling Sissy. Now sex had no appeal to him whatsoever. He never considered Bess's feelings, or thought to ask.
He started as she got up from the table. "What's the rush?" he demanded.
"Got a date, Daddy," the girl said.
Sam pounded his fist on the table. "Oh no! Not tonight! You're not running around this city and catching the bubonic plague. You, all of you, are staying inside the house until this mess blows over."
Sissy, as she always did, bridled at his smothering, protective domination. Her blue eyes flashed. "Don't be ridiculous, Father!" she snapped. "Let's not get panicky. I don't intend to get near any rats tonight, and that's the only way the disease can spread. You have to get fleas from an infected rat."
Sam grunted. "That Peters boy is a rat if I ever saw one."
"You're impossible!" The girl spun angrily on her heel and stalked away.
Sam started to call her back, but Bess restrained him. "Darling, please," she said. "Sissy is almost a woman. She can take care of herself. You've got to stop treating her like a child."
Sam slumped in his chair, defeated.
Later when young Carl Peters picked up his daughter, he forced himself to be civil. "Where are you kids going?" he demanded.
Carl, a tall, rangy youth of 19, with wavy brown hair and an infectious smile, answered politely. "It's a warm night. I thought we'd walk over to the park and take a boat out on the bay." There was a small amusement park on Lake Erie. Its most attractive feature for the young people was the rowboat concession. For a dollar an hour, couples could go for a moonlight excursion on the bay.
Sam groaned. "You want to invite the plague?" he asked. "That's where the rats are, down by the lake."
The boy laughed. "We'll beat them off with an oar."
Abysmally depressed, Sam watched his daughter come down the stairs. She was wearing a white linen frock that displayed her bare shoulders and the cleavage between her small, round breasts. He was horrified by the brevity of her skirt. It showed her bare, brown legs and thighs in a provocative fashion.
To his wife he muttered, "When she sits down in that boat, he'll be able to see her backside."
Bess nudged him with her elbow and sighed nostalgically. She remembered too well how it was to be young and desirable, and to see the glow that came into a boy's eyes when he looked you up and down. She agreed with her husband about the short skirt. It was too brief, but she trusted her daughter. A girl liked to show off her charms and excite the admiration of the male. Sissy might let the boy look at more of her body than was proper, but she wouldn't let him touch. At least, Bess prayed, she wouldn't let him touch too much.
Sam was furious at the possessive way the boy took Sissy's hand in his own. When his wife went in to do the dishes, he called his son aside.
"I'm worried about your sister," he said. "This town is going crazy since this plague hit it. Drunks roaming all over. I heard a bunch of men and women who work in the paper mill got arrested for going swimming in the nude at high noon."
Dick Lutz laughed. "I'd like to have seen that."
"Don't get fresh," his father said. "Look, I want you to do me a favor. Follow your sister and that chump she's with. See that nothing happens to her."
The boy's fair eyebrows lifted in shock. He knew that his father was foolishly overprotective about Sissy, but he had never gone this far.
"You want me to spy on them?" he said.
"Call it anything you want." Sam took a fat roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off twenty. "This is for your trouble."
Dick's eyes were bright. Twenty dollars, just for playing private eye! He wanted a new movie camera, and that twenty would be a big start in the right direction.
"What the heck!" he said. "You got a deal!" He grabbed the bill and ran out of the house. "I'll have to hurry if I want to catch them!"
From babyhood to adolescence, the relationship between Dick and Sissy had been unusually close, as it is with most twins. They played, bathed and slept together. They did not think of each other as being sexual opposites. Even Bess Lutz did not think about it until one memorable day when the twins were nine years old. They were cavorting about in the big bathtub when little Sissy let out a whoop of delighted surprise.
"Dickie, stop that! It tickles." She began to giggle hysterically.
Curious, Bess popped her head into the bathroom, and her eyes bulged. Dick and Sissy were kneeling in the tub, and the boy was holding her around the waist while he pressed himself against her plump bottom. His innocence was unquestionable, but the instincts of his male body were unmistakable.
She kept her voice calm. "That's all for today, kids. Come out and get dry."
"Aw gee!" the boy protested. "We're having fun."
"Yeah," his sister echoed. "We're having fun."
Bess didn't doubt it, and she was badly shaken. From that moment on, the twins bathed separately and slept in separate rooms. Dick and Sissy were mystified by the change in their routine, but after the initial sadness of it, they accepted it.
Dick didn't think about the episode in the bathtub which had precipitated the gulf in intimacy between his sister and himself until he was twelve, and some friends told him in shocking detail about the facts of life. It was quite clear to him then that that is what he had been trying to do to his sister the day in the tub, and his mother's attitude became comprehensible.
Puberty was a difficult time for Dick. As Sissy developed into a woman, he found himself regarding her less as his sister and more as a female. She, on the other hand, was as much at ease with him as she had been when they were kids bathing in the same tub. She thought nothing of parading through the hall, past his open door in her bra and panties or in a sheer, shortie nightgown. As he lay awake in his bed on warm nights, visions of her firm, pink-tipped breasts would float before his eyes. He would see her svelte, slender legs with the fine golden hairs bleached white by the sun. He would see her round buttocks peeking coyly out from under the hem of her shortie nightgown when she bent over the sink to brush her teeth. His body would grow turgid with lust. It was a shameful thing to him, but he could not help it. When he was possessed with such thoughts, the only way he could get to sleep was to rub himself until he achieved physical release from his sexual tensions. He would pretend the hands were Sissy's hands.
Things got better after his sixteenth year. He was a popular boy at high school, and enjoyed a surplus of female admiration. Other girls replaced his sister in his lewd fantasies. Then the fantasies ceased altogether. There were numerous girls who were only too willing to let Dick Lutz touch their bare breasts and their bare thighs and to adore his flesh with their hands and mouths. A few of them even let him go all the way.
Sissy was forgotten, an image cast off with his adolescent years and problems.
Dick set off down the dark street, whistling and crunching the crisp new twenty-dollar bill in his pocket. It might be a gas at that, he thought, spying on his sister He wondered whether she did the things with Carl Peters that he did with his girl friends at school. The thought of it excited him strangely, and he was glad it was night so that his condition would not be noted by passersby. Looking down from the Hill on the business section of Coaltown reminded him of the Fourth of July. Lights blazed everywhere. The streets were crawling with people. Down by the wharves, kerosene torches blazed like swarms of fireflies as the exterminators hunted down the deadly rats in their lairs.
The road to the park skirted the main part of town. After ten minutes of brisk walking, he saw Sissy and Carl walking up ahead with their arms about each other's waists. He slowed down, keeping a half-block behind them. The park was jammed with strollers, mostly boys and girls holding hands and mooning over each other. Their faces looked hot, and their eyes were bright with fever. They courted each other with brazen disregard for spectators. Dick passed a bench where one young couple were entwined like two snakes. One of the boy's hands was down inside the girl's blouse, while one of her hands "was deep in his pants pocket, obviously caressing him. The excitement that Dick had felt before was heightened by the lewd spectacle. Now he didn't care who noticed it.
He was sorry in a way that he had accepted this assignment. What he felt like doing was to pick up a girl and take her into the bushes, but he would do the job his father had paid him for. From a safe distance he watched Sissy and Carl approach the boat concessionaire. The man shrugged and pointed to the empty boat racks. Obviously, his boats were all rented out. The young couple turned away and walked off down a path that followed the shore of the lake. Dick followed them.
They walked with their hips and thighs pressed tightly together. Their eyes were locked. When they passed under a lamp, he could see the fire gleaming in their faces. From time to time they would stop and kiss. Hot, lusty kisses. Dick began to feel uneasy about what lay ahead. From his observations, based on past experience, he was sure that Sissy and Carl each had up a full head of steam and were headed for a secluded spot to get their ashes hauled. What would his father expect him to do if that happened?
They walked to the far end of the park which was dark and deserted except for the writhing silhouettes of lovers on the grass. At last they came to a hedge and ducked behind it. Dick took off his loafers and came up quietly on the other side of the hedge. Kneeling down, he peered through a gap in the branches and could see them only a few feet away. At that opportune moment, the moon broke through its cloud cover, illuminating the boy and girl vividly. They were stretched out on the grass, kissing ardently. Beads of sweat oozed out of Dick's forehead, and his heart pounded heavily against his breastbone.
Carl was stroking her bare shoulders, gleaming palely in the moon glow. She whimpered as he slid her shoulder straps down over her arms. Dick held his breath as Sissy's round, firm breasts popped into view. She wasn't wearing a bra. Obviously she had wanted to make things easy for him. Dick felt anger simmering inside of him, mixed with his rising sexual excitement. Her nipples swelled up rigidly as the boy caressed them with gentle fingers. Dick hated Carl Peters. He had no right to take such liberties with his twin sister! He could hear Carl bragging about his conquest in the locker room tomorrow.
Sissy was breathing very hard and twisting in Carl's embrace. Now the boy was stroking her legs, shoving her skirt up higher and higher on her lovely thighs. She parted her knees eagerly as his hand dipped between her thighs. Dick's anger and resentment climbed to dangerous heights. He hated Sissy now as much as he hated Carl. She was a little tramp, no better than the sluts who slobbered over him in the back seat of his car on Saturday nights. Her skirt was twisted up around her hips, and Carl was rolling her panties down. Her round tummy quivered whitely in the moonlight. She lifted her buttocks to assist Carl. At last he pulled the panties off her feet and tossed them aside.
Dick was shocked by the sight of his sister lying there on the grass in naked wantonness, all of her glories exposed to the lecherous gaze of Carl Peters. What was even worse, she was clawing at the boy's clothing like a hungry animal.
"Be patient, doll," Carl mumbled. He pulled off his trousers and shorts.
With a little moan of pleasure, she grasped him eagerly. A red mist descended over Dick's eyes. Rockets exploded in his brain. He fumbled around with his hands under the hedge and found a large stone. Holding it tightly in his right hand, he stood up and vaulted the hedge.
Carl was already on top of the girl, so he didn't see what hit him. With a savage cry of satisfaction, Dick swung the heavy stone against the side of the other boy's head. He collapsed without an outcry. As Carl fell to one side on the grass, Sissy gaped at the dark figure looming over her in mute terror. The terror turned to astonishment and shame when she finally recognized him.
"Dick!" she whispered. She was too stunned to move, or even to pull down her skirt.
Dick stared down at her bare belly and thighs, spread wide to receive her lover. Brotherly rage and indignation fused with inexorable male desire excited by the vision of the lovely, naked, ready female body. He wanted to kill her and to love her at the same time.
Her throat constricted as she sensed the way he was looking at her. Stricken with shame, she pulled down her skirt and started to get to her feet. She tried to muster up righteous indignation to meet his scorn.
"Dick Lutz, you ought to be ashamed, spying on me like this!" Tears welled up in her eyes as she stood up and faced him.
"Whore!" he snarled, and spit in her face. He grabbed her bare shoulders as she tried to cover her breasts and shook her violently. His fingernails bit deeply into the soft flesh.
"You're hurting me!" she whimpered.
Blood seeped up between his fingers, dark and slippery. The feel of it lashed his fury. Still holding her with one hand, he slapped her face, then backhanded the other cheek. Her head snapped back and forth as he hit her harder and harder. She began to scream, but he silenced her with a fist in the mouth. Her lips were a bloody smear. Grasping her by her blonde hair, he forced her down on her knees and bent her backward until she thought her spine was going to snap. She cried in pain.
"Oh, no! Please, I'm sorry!"
"You're sorry!" he said scornfully. With her back arched, her breasts were thrust up boldly into the air, their round slopes gleaming in the moonlight. The nipples were still tumescent from Carl's kisses.
"Is this what you want, whore?" he said wildly. He bent over and pressed his open mouth to one of the hot, satiny globes.
Sissy stiffened and gasped. "Dick! Stop that!"
His kisses were savage and agonizing. He bit her, softly at first, but as he approached the scarlet summit, his teeth dug deep and pierced the tender skin. Sissy writhed helplessly in his iron grasp and bleated like a wounded animal. Abruptly, he shoved her away from him, and she sprawled on her back on the grass. Her skirt was tangled high on her thighs. Her bare legs shone like ivory in the moonlight. He gazed at them, entranced. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand and laid it on the thigh nearest to him. The flesh was warm and sweet with youth. His fingers glided up the velvet inner side, pushing her skirt all the way back. His hand plunged greedily into the soft nest of her belly and thighs.
She jerked up her knees and tried to roll away from him. Her voice was weak with shock and disbelief. "Dick! What's wrong with you? I'm your sister!"
"Dear sister," he said dreamily. He unfastened his belt.
Her eyes widened in horror. There could no longer be any doubt of his intentions. His lust was a blazing, ugly reality that stupefied the girl. As he fell on top of her, she lashed out at him with her arms and legs. Her nails lacerated his ears and face, but he felt no pain. His body was dead, but for one throbbing, demanding sensation. He punched her in a breast. Her little fists battered at his face, bloodying his nose, but he came on relentlessly.
He pinned her shoulders to the earth, and pried her legs apart with a knee. He gazed into her wide, terrified eyes. They were his eyes, exactly the same shade and shape.
"No, Dickie!" she pleaded with him. "You mustn't do it!"
"I must," he said.
She moaned and reared up as his body found her body. The touch of his flesh against her flesh was like a jolt of electricity. A crazy, vague memory flitted through her mind, of a day long ago when they had frolicked as children in a bathtub. The impact stunned the girl. This thing that was happening to her now was the culmination of what had begun on that day, years before. She saw it now, the terrible inevitability of it.
"Forgive him!" she howled at the stars as he swelled within her.
It was not the first time for Sissy. There had been Carl, and before him another boy. This was not the same. She lay as one dead as he commenced the age-old rhythm. Her body was cold at first. The first sensation she noticed began in her fingers and toes, the warm tingle of quickening blood. Her breasts came to life, next. She gazed down at them and was shocked and shamed to see the nipples stiffening. She whimpered in resignation as the warm, swirling sweetness seeped down into her belly.
An elation that was more than sexuality filled Dick as her hips rose to meet his thrusts, picking up their tempo. Her contractions delighted him. Suddenly, she was as wild and wanton as she had been with Carl. He closed his eyes and listened to the thunder of his pulse. It was like the roar of breakers crashing on an ocean reef. A tidal wave swept down upon them and lifted them high on its crest. He heard his sister screaming as the wave broke and sent them tumbling high and free into empty space.
After a long time, they sat up and stared at each other. Dick winced at the spectacle of her swollen, bloody face and bruised breasts. His own blood was salty on his lips. He looked at the crumpled figure of Carl Peters lying on the grass. He had a bump on his head the size of a goose egg, but he was stirring restlessly. Soon he would be conscious.
Sissy buried her face in her hands and began to sob. "Why, oh why, Dick?"
"I don't know," he said in a dazed voice. "I think I went mad when I saw him touching you. I thought I was being protective, like Dad. Then, somehow, it all changed when I looked at you lying there so naked and lovely. I've always loved you, Sissy, but I never realized how much. You and I being twins, that must be it. I read once that man loves his own self more than he can ever love anyone else. We're all narcissists, basically, I suppose."
"I think I understand," she said miserably. "You love me with a special love because I'm your other self, your twin."
"Something like that. I guess I've always wanted to make love to you, because in doing so I'm making love to myself in some strange way."
"It's terrible, Dickie," she wailed. "The worst part is, it was wonderful for me. Even the pain."
"Even the pain," he repeated. "I wish I could say I was sorry, but I can't."
"What can we do? It will happen again, won't it?"
He waited for a long time before he answered her. "No," he said finally and with finality, "it won't happen again." He stood up and buttoned his clothing.
"Goodbye, Sis," he said.
"Where are you going?"
"For a long walk." He took the twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and dropped it beside Carl Peters "You can tell Carl and the folks that you were jumped by a couple of thugs."
He walked away without looking back, far past the boundaries of the park. He cut through the woods to the shore of Lake Erie. He walked down the beach to the water's edge, and kept on walking. The dark, oily water reached his waist, then his chin. Then he was gone.