Chapter 12
The big crisis didn't come to the three Nor-rises until two years had gone by. Although their lives had changed, the change was almost imperceptible to them. But tensions had built up and certain resentments had been harbored within each of them. Rena had just been biding her time until she turned eighteen. Her future plans had centered on a man or two older than she, a Randolph Brooks, whom she had met the previous summer when she began working in an office after graduation. Randy was solid and knew where he was going. He was in real estate and Rena had been a clerk, gotten to know him, dated him secretly. She hadn't even told her mother about Randy because she didn't want Val to spoil it.
Laura had become, for all purposes, a defeated woman. She had settled into a groove at the bindery that seemed to portend she'd be doing that work for the rest of her life. Her one bright spot had been Hank Belitsky, whom she had gotten to know through the company's bowling league. She had joined, gotten the red team shirt, bought a ball, bag, and shoes and it was Hank who had given her her first lessons. But she had never invited him to her home, always making some excuse. It was a wonder that Hank didn't think she was crazy, but the truth was that he thought she was just a fine woman who didn't bring single men home with her. He liked her because she learned to drink beer, enjoyed the same kind of simple food that he did, and was a good worker, as he was. Their friendship deepened but didn't seem to be going anywhere.
Val was seventeen, just graduating from high school. Rena had been working at the real estate office for almost a year. Val was almost totally a loner, with both women in the house working. He also felt restricted from the fact that he was the only one not working. But he looked forward to changing that once he finished high school. His mother wanted him to go to college, but he told her he wanted to work. He hinted that he'd like to learn the bindery business but she told him it was hard work with no future to speak of. Then he told Rena he'd like to work in real estate, learn the business, but she said he'd have to go to school for that. So Val felt left out of things and to make up for this he became a regular tyrant at home.
The crisis came on a weekend, just after Val graduated from high school. His mother and Rena had had to work on Saturday and the next day they had all planned to go to a movie together. Laura came home early that afternoon, since she wanted to be fresh on Sunday. Val had been looking halfheartedly for a job and arrived somewhat later. He and his mother waited for Rena. She had thought they might all go out to dinner that evening, and so she and Val had dressed up. They waited for Rena and when she wasn't home by 6, her mother called the real estate office. There was no answer.
"I wonder what's keeping her?" Laura said to Val.
"Who knows? She probably went shopping. We should have called her this afternoon." He started to bite his fingernails.
His mother poured herself a beer. She asked Val if he wanted one and at first he refused. At 7, he had one with her. By 8, his mother was worried. She was beside herself with anguish and indecision.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "Could something have happened? Maybe she was in an accident." Rena had a small car of her own by then.
"Maybe we should call the real estate owner. At home. Maybe ... no, she left the office. I don't know. I'm worried too," he admitted.
At 8:30 the phone rang. Laura jerked as though she had been shot. She ran to the phone. Val hunched forward on the chair where he had been sitting as though on a cactus.
"Hello?" Laura said into the phone.
Val looked at her.
"What? No. Where?"
"Dammit, who is it?" asked Val. His mother motioned for him to be quiet.
"I don't understand ... why couldn't you have ... I see ... Well, yes. I'm disappointed ... Did you have to? ... When? Who? What's his name? We were worried. You should have ... no, I don't care ... if you're happy, I guess I am. Tomorrow? Yes ... bye ... wait a minute, Rena..." She looked into the phone. It was dead.
"Was that Rena?" Val asked, watching his mother. Tears began to flow down her cheeks. "What happened to Rena?" he insisted, a hard ball beginning to form in his stomach.
His mother looked at him. "She got married," she said simply.
"She what?" Val's face was contorted in rage.
"She got married. In Las Vegas. A few minutes ago. She left this morning. She didn't even say anything to us."
"The goddamn bitch," Val spat.
"It was very thoughtless of her. Why? Why?"
His mother seemed stunned. She wiped the tears on her face, but fresh ones came running down from her swollen eyes.
Val was silent. He knew. She was afraid, that little bitch. She was afraid to say anything because she knew goddamned well he would have beaten the living shit out of her!. But he couldn't tell this to his mother, so he just sat there, steaming, his anger rising like a storm cloud in his brain.
Just wait, he thought. Just wait'll I see that fucking Rena again. I'll make her wish she never set eyes on this sonofabitch! I'll teach her to hurt us!
In Val's mind, Rena had betrayed him. There was no thought to her own happiness or her wishes, only his own. He included his mother as a victim of Rena's behavior, too. At the same time he was nagged with the thought that if Rena could do such a thing, completely behind his back, then his mother was certainly capable of similar behavior. The thought left him cold.
"Well, I just hope she's happy," his mother sobbed.
"I don't," he snarled.
She looked at him, then, surprised at this latest impression of his anger. "Val, that's no way to talk. It's over. There's no changing what's happened. I'm sure Rena had her own reasons for marrying this man. He's probably very nice. I wish her only the best and so should you."
"Yeah, well." He knew his mother was right about some of it. But he wasn't going to forget his sister's sneaky act that quickly. "When is she coming back?" he asked his mother.
"In a week, I think. Yes, a week, she said."
Laura began drying her eyes. "We'll send them something when they get settled," she said.
"Yeah, sure," Val said. A week. She'd have to come home to get her things, wouldn't she? Well, he'd see about her wedding present. If not then ... well, he didn't know what. But, one way or the other, Rena was going to pay for what she'd done to him, to his mother, to all of them. The goddamned little sneak!
Rena put down the phone, her hands trembling. She had done it! She had made the call. But now her hands were sweating. Her mother had been shocked. But what about Val? She hadn't dared talk to him. She had made her mind up before calling that if Val answered she would just hang up. She could almost picture him now, clenching his fists, wanting to smash something. Oh, she knew him. He would be so uptight because she didn't tell him about wanting to get married. Well, there wasn't anything he could do about it now. She was Mrs. Randolph Brooks and Val was a thing of the past. Everybody had to grow up, didn't they? Well, now she was out of Val's little scene. She was married and would have a home of her own. She would be polite to Val, of course, and once he'd cooled down, she'd be glad to be friends with him again.
She almost laughed out loud as she thought about Val's getting the news of her marriage. He was there with Mom, she knew. And he couldn't say a thing about why he was angry to anyone. He'd just have to swallow it. She felt sorry for her mother, of course, but it couldn't be helped. Val might have made an ugly scene if he'd known about her engagement beforehand. She would explain to her mother later that it was just a spur of the moment thing and she hadn't meant to hurt her. In a way, it was. When Randy popped the question, she hadn't wanted to wait. He wanted to ask her mother, but she said she'd rather just go to Vegas and do the thing. Now it was done. She was so happy with him. The hell with Val. That was all in the past. She wasn't going to give him another thought. She would have been surprised if anyone had pointed out to her just how much Randy resembled Val. Randolph Brooks looked enough like Val Norris to be his brother.
Laura was too emotionally upset to go out that evening. She called up a chicken delivery place and ordered dinner for Val and herself. She promised that they would still go to the movie the next day, but that she just couldn't face going out that evening. She listlessly went to change her clothes.
Val sat in the living room waiting for the delivery boy. He couldn't help thinking about Rena. He could picture her with her new husband. Making love to him and laughing at him, Val. It brought his anger back again. He wanted to beat Rena up. But there was no Rena there to beat up. Still, he would have wasted her if she had been in the same room with him.
The delivery boy came and Val paid him. He set the table in the kitchen for them and went to get his mother.
"I-I don't want any, Val," she said. "I'm going to bed. You go ahead and eat."
"What?"
"Please," she said.
Val was furious. Now his mother was rejecting him. He couldn't take that. His anger flared like a volcano. "Come on, Mom, at least eat with me," he pleaded.
"No, I said. I'm not hungry. Leave me alone," she said curtly, unaware that Val needed to vent his wrath on someone, someone close at hand.
"No, I won't," he fumed. "Do what I say!"
"No!" He advanced on her, his face chalk white with barely controlled rage.
"Val, you'd better mind me," she said. She was just too tired to take anything off Val this night.
His lips clamped together, Val walked over to his mother who was just taking off her robe. She was wearing an old pair of pajamas. He slapped her in the face as hard as he could. Laura gasped and brought her hand up to her face. Her mouth open, stung by the hard blow, she glared at Val. Then she slapped at him. Her fingertips rattled across his cheekbone.
All the pent-up fury in Val was instantly released. He doubled up his fist and smashed her in the shoulder, sending her careening across the bedroom. Then he began slapping her face and screaming at her at the top of his voice. The anger that he'd had for Rena was now fully directed at his mother. He didn't realize what he was doing. His mother choked and gasped, stunned by his blows. Tears streamed down her face. She couldn't defend herself against his raging onslaught. Finally, she fell to her knees, her sobs loud and keening.
Then Val saw what he had done. His anger dissipated at once. He fell to his knees beside his mother, his heart caught in a visegrip of misery. He was suddenly terribly ashamed of himself. He began to cry himself. He took her head in his hands and pulled it to his own.
"Mom, I'm sorry ... so sorry," he sobbed. "I didn't mean to."
His mother's weeping became worse. Her sobs were deep and anguished. They tore through her with body-wrenching force. Val's helplessness only added to his deepening shame.
"I'm sorry, Mom. I don't know what happened. Please, please, don't cry." He began kissing her and gradually her sobs diminished. Then she began kissing him, seeing how concerned he was. They went into each other's arms and sat there on the floor for a long time, sobbing quietly together. "Can you ever forgive me?" he asked finally.
"I know you didn't mean it, Val," she said. She stroked his head. They rose, then, together, and sat on the bed. Their kissing went from small pecks on the cheeks and mouth to a passionate embrace. They kissed on the mouth with a renewed fervor until their tongues met and began a mutual probing. From rage and pain and anguish to love was only a short distance. Soon Val's hands were kneading his mother's breasts, roaming over her body, exciting her to a lover's passion.
Again, as always, Laura was helpless before the tender ministrations of her son. Each touch of his fed fuel into the smoldering flames of her passion. Every time he kissed her, her limbs turned to jelly, her contrary intentions blew away the puffs of smoke before the wind. She had learned to accept Val's cruelty, to enjoy it even. Although he was seldom physically cruel to her, the threat of it was always there. A stronger woman than Laura would not have stood for this behavior in a son, under any circumstances, but Val's mother was no match for him. She took Val's verbal and physical abuse because she thought that she probably deserved it. This is why he had so much power over her, why she was, after two years, so incredibly dependent on him.
Now Laura was once more under Val's domination. Two years ago she would have been able, perhaps, to combat his physical attack on her. But not now. Now she wanted only his forgiveness and his love. Even though she knew he was unreasonable, she wanted his love. She blamed herself for becoming upset that Rena had married without letting her mother know about it beforehand. So it was that she surrendered herself to Val's stinging kisses, his hot and searching hands, his terribly demanding physical presence.
Val was so gentle with her now. He undressed her as he would an invalid. His tenderness and solicitation moved her deeply. His kisses raked her cheeks with a soft fire. When he, too, was fully naked against her, she opened herself to him like some morning honeysuckle waiting for the urgent visits of bees and hummingbirds.
Hunger took over between them. Their mutual loneliness, mutual need, drew them together and fused them inexorably. They knew each other so well by now that they complemented each other in their lovemaking. Val slid onto her even as she reached for his swollen shaft. She found it, took it in her grip and guided it to her honey vessel. His cock throbbed in her hand as she placed it against her lips where the moisture had already seeped through. Val positioned himself over his mother and felt the top of her slit where she had placed his eager shaft. He slid it down the groove and it slipped easily into her vaginal opening.
"Ooooh, Val," his mother sighed as he entered her. He felt the contractions in her body. Her cunt seemed to pull him in and clasp and unclasp his cock like some feeding sea anemone. His own organ felt the pull of hers and began throbbing with a similar tide. His blood seemed to be drawn by the rhythm of her vagina so that his organ pulsed with that same constriction-loosening beat.
Val held his mother's head in his hands and kissed her tenderly as his manhood stroked her swollen and flaming vagina. Despite herself, Laura began to weep softly and, as her tears came, Val drank them with his kisses.
His mother melted under him like wax. His body impressed itself under her as they melted together, flame and candle. He stroked her with his cock and she swelled to him like a sea. All of her senses seemed heightened to the point of instant explosion. She was the vessel, and he the filler, full of flame and stark unctions, oiling her, flaming her, making her ebb and flow as though she were the tide and he the strong full moon.
Laura wondered why it was so much better this time. Was it because of the violence that had preceded it? The quarreling and now the making up? It could be. She just knew that her whole body seemed perfectly attuned to her son's. Every stroke of him seemed to make her tender membrane quiver with a lavalike flame. He was a full man, she knew, more of a man than his father ever was, more sure of himself, infinitely more exciting.
But she knew it wasn't fair to compare them. Or was it? Wasn't Val part of his father? The best part. Every stroke of him made her grateful that she had opened herself to the experience of her son. Yet there was fear, too. Not with him, like this. But away from him. Alone with her thoughts at the bindery, she feared ... what? Not so much her son, for himself, but something else. Consequences. What might happen. The nameless, the unknown. But his temper was something, too. But that was his father's. And now, as she lay beneath her son, letting him fuck her as she had never been fucked before, she knew that this was part of his fire, part of the fuel that made his passion overpowering ... and wonderful.
"It's so good, Val," she whispered to him, and her words seemed to trigger the orgasm.
Val felt her body shudder and a wave of exultation came over him. This was the way he liked it. This was the power he enjoyed. It seemed to him that he had the biggest cock in the world and to know that it was filling his mother's cunt, making her quake with orgasm, was the most marvelous feeling he'd ever had. He ground into her, wanting to tear her cunt with the savagery of his attack. He slammed his hips down, hearing the slap! He shoved his cock in harder and his mother cried out with the sudden pain, the unexpected ecstasy. That was good, he thought. That was how to do it.
The gentleness he'd brought to her at the beginning seemed to disappear as his lust mounted. Now he just wanted to drive her over the brink again and again. Make her come. Make her come like a machine gun. Wham, wham wham! Give it to her. Pour the meat into her like a battering ram. Tear in and out of her tunnel like lightning. Drive on in to the womb. Make her jump from the ramming.
Laura's head began to toss from side to side as her son drove his cock into her with a fury-she had never known before. Every stroke was a searing poker thrust, jabbing in and out of tender folds of flesh, jamming high up in her, higher than he'd ever gone before. Each stroke triggered her clit and she gushed like a smashed fire hydrant. She moaned and squirmed under him, wanting him to break her open with his driving lust. She pushed up against him, giving him deeper depths to plumb.
"Goddamn," Val exclaimed, unable to express how he felt.
"Ooooh," she moaned. "Give it to me, Val. Give it to me good."
"I will," he said. "I am." He seemed possessed. He didn't let up. Some unknown energy welled up in him so that he was capable of pounding into her without tiring. The harder he jammed, the more she liked it. He kept his mind only on the exertion, not wanting to spend himself before he had made her scream with the force and ecstasy of her orgasms. He moved his cock in and out like a stitching electric sewing machine, in and out, with blinding speed. He went in straight; he went in crooked. He left no spot inside her untouched. His mouth hung open, his eyes glazed mindlessly as he watched his mother's head moving from side to side.
She bucked and buckled under him. She cried out and bit her lips until the blood came. The veins in her neck stood out like blue cords under the skin. Her cunt gushed and clutched him, retreated before his assaults, and folded over again when his passage took another course. "I've never been fucked like this," she moaned. "Never!" Her hands and nails raked Val's back.
He could stand it no longer. He hunched down closer to her and drove his cock into her on the final sprint to his own pleasure spurting.
"Oh, keep fucking me, darling," she groaned. "Keep on fucking me."
"I am," he said. "I am."
She could feel him tighten up before he exploded. She held him tight and jammed her cunt up on his shaft as deep as she could. She didn't want it to go soft. She didn't want to lose that huge swollen cock that had been tearing her to shreds, bumping her, exploding her. But it was coming. She could feel it. She could almost feel his juices start from his sac and skyrocket up the long tube.
"I-I'm coming," he said. Tears sprang into her eyes. Val shuddered as he spurted deep inside her. He collapsed on her naked body and let the fountain discharge its milky fluid. His mother held him tightly as once more he became a little boy, robbed of his power, bereft of his force.
"It was so good," he moaned.
"I know, Val," she said, stroking the back of his head as he lay spent on top of her, their sweat mingling.
"I'm so sorry I was mean to you," he said, his voice muffled at her shoulder, next to her hair.
"Don't think anything about it," she soothed. "Just love me. Let's just love each other."
"I do love you," he said. "I love you, too, Val."
The ugliness of those moments that had preceded their impassioned lovemaking seemed to disappear into the heady musk rising from their bodies. Laura stroked her son's back very gently and, as he tumbled out of her, she felt her body return to normal, the fires quenched. His seed inside her was comforting, a reminder that he had given himself to her only moments before. It was a good feeling she had just then and she wished it could be that way all the time.
Val rolled off his mother's body and lay beside her, his breath coming steadier now that his exertion was over. He wasn't angry anymore. He felt that he had redeemed himself, somehow. It was like being born all over again. The wetness, the tiredness, the musk, all of these things gave him a strange feeling of peacefulness. He was glad to be here like this with his mother, close and warm, safe.
She patted his stomach and let her hand fall gently on his limp organ. She could feel sleepiness overtaking her and she tried to hold her eyes open. Val kissed her on the cheek and she whispered a good night to him.
"Good night," he answered, snuggling closer to her. He thought it would be over, then, but it wasn't. Despite himself, thoughts of his sister came back to him. The rage, though gone, was still there, dormant and far away, but still there. He tried to push it back into the cubbyhole where it lay like some pulsing beast. He tried not to form the thoughts that came swarming up from the cave where his rage stirred once again.
Rena, he told himself. I'll get even with you. You'll be sorry, you bitch. After that, he found it easier to drift off to sleep, sated finally, the thought of revenge almost as good as revenge itself.