Dead Leaves and Naked Branches

Your brother’s girlfriend’s ass was great, but it was still just a pale imitation of your mother’s.

The man didn’t care though. He watched it, near salivating, as he followed behind the young couple.

“Keep it moving,” he said, his eyes on her ass. When he cocked his gun, she jumped, and he enjoyed the jiggle of her ass-cheeks when she did.

“Please don’t hurt us,” your brother said, his voice cracking.

“Pwease don’t hewt us,” Kane repeated cruelly.

Your brother’s girlfriend began to sob, and Kane kept his eyes on her ass as it jiggled with each sucking back of breath.

They all trudged through the woods, ankle-deep in dead leaves, far from the roadside where he had flagged them down. He had done so by a baby blue Volkswagen Beetle. Your brother’s girlfriend had remarked on the strangeness of it as they pulled up. “Now there’s a man that’s secure with his sexuality,” she had said.

He walked behind her now, staring at her ass, taking in its every involuntary gesticulation.

The hood of the car was open. Kane had stood there, his thumb still up as they pulled over to him, his clothes clean. He leaned forward, ready to talk, but was frozen for a moment when he saw your brother’s girlfriend Katie in the passenger seat. He regained his wits by the time the car made a full stop. “My car is just…” he looked to its engine, drawing a blank. “Well… it’s all messed up, can I hitch a ride?”

“Just into town?” your brother asked.

“Just into town,” the man repeated with a wide grin.

“Get in,” your brother said. “Get the lock, babe.”

His girlfriend turned to unlock the back door.

He got into the back seat and sat down, his gun pushing stiffly into his inner thigh. His cock hard pulled up into his waistband. It had been getting harder since seeing Katie.

“Stranded for long?” your brother asked.

Kane looked down at the suitcase sitting next to him, a pair of Katie’s panties clasped haphazardly in it, pink and frilly. “Too long,” he said, not taking his eyes off that delicate pink fabric.

Your brother took his foot off the break, just before asking “anything you need from your car?”

Kane shook his head, grinning at the couple through their rearview mirror. “Nothing that’s worth a damn.”

As the car pulled off, the back trunk of the Beetle sat there, away from the road. Two distinct lines of red blood dripping from it, only drying as they met the shining silver curve of its bumper. Even through the red stain, the bumper reflected the pale light of the sun.

You held the end of the end of Nana’s mattress, struggling to keep it up as your mom lead, carrying the other end. “Now how are we going to get it up here?” she said.

You tried to lean to see around the shapely curve of her body to get a look at the stepladder leading into the attic. You had never seen it before. You had passed the attic a million times throughout your life, its door, with a quaint little string, right above you that entire time, and you had put almost no thought to it.

“We could just leave it in Nana’s room,” you suggested.

Your mom twitched her brow. “For who?” she said. “It’s not like she’s gonna come back from the dead. Not in my movie.”

“For a guest maybe.”

Your mom looked to you. “When’s the last time we had guests?”

It took a few tries upward, with your mom resting, seated, on one of the ladder rungs every few steps. You took subtle looks at her ass when she did, its size pushing into the hard bar of wood. You thought about Nana’s room, about the tiny hole in her closet, the one you and your brother had discovered as kids, the one which peeked into your mom’s bedroom. You saw no utility in it then. Then by the time you did, your Nana had come to live with you. She was a permanent fixture in that bedroom ever since. And now she was gone, with just her clothes hanging in there to remember her by. And beyond those clothes, in the darkness, that tiny little hole with a view to what existed on its other side. You trembled, even as your mom stood back up on the rung. “Well rested?” she asked. “Let’s try this again.”

“What do you think’s wrong with it?”

“Huh?” Kane looked up.

“The car?” Your brother looked back at him through the rearview. “You think it’ll be something a mechanic can just come out and fix, or will you need to send a tow truck?”

“It don’t matter,” Kane said. “You payin’”

Your brother stared at him.

Kane laughed, big and burly. “I’m just kiddin’ with ya, of course.”

Your brother’s mouth untensed, falling into a smile.

Katie didn’t speak.

Kane looked back out the window at the passing trees. It had been a while since they even saw another vehicle. “How close are we to town?”

“At least another good forty minutes or so.”

“Pull over,” Kane said. “I need to drain the main vein.” Two long hard objects sat in Kane’s lap. One of flesh and one of steel.

Your brother pulled over to the side of the road. “Drain away,” your brother said. He gave Katie a subtle look, mocking Kane’s lexicon with his eyes.

Kane sat there. He sat there, not moving until it became uncomfortable.

Your brother looked at him through the rear-view.

“Well?” Kane said.

Your brother just sat there, looking befuddled. Then a bit irritated. “’Well,’ what?”

“Are you two getting out?”

A crow called in the distance.

“Getting out? For what? What are you—”

“When I said drain the main vein,” Kane started. He leaned forward, the fingers of his right hand falling to Katie’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean from my bladder.”

He reached down. The couple was silent. He couldn’t see Katie’s face.

“When I said drain the main vein, I meant drain what’s… well… there’s no PG-13 way to get around it, I meant drain what’s in my testicle sack.”

Your brother’s face didn’t change, only in his eyes, which began to take on an air of genuine anger.

Then his gaze was taken by the sights of Katie’s head moving unnaturally forward. He turned over to see her face, terror in her eyes, as she hunched her head down. Behind it, from between the headrest and seat, the long barrel of a revolver poked through, its nose pushing into where Katie’s head and neck met.

“You two gonna help me drain it, okay?” There was the sound of a hammer cocking. “Now get out.”

He got the two of them to get out first. “This isn’t my first rodeo,” he said when he felt them stalling.

It was only then that he could see, it only being hinted by the sight of Katie’s panties in her suitcase, just how big and round her ass was. “Looks like I just hit the jackpot,” he said, his voice a little distant. “God damn.”

Your brother had no clue what he meant, but Katie, reflexively, stumbled forward, as if pushed by the thought of her own realization of it.

“God damn,” Kane said, leaning out of the window as if he were just a random cat caller. He then opened the door from the outside handle and stepped out. He had the gun trained on both of them, but the direction of its barrel found Katie’s ass more often than not. “Oh,” he said. “You good Samaritans about to get it with interest for being so kind and all. And I’m going to get my reward for being such good company.”

Your brother’s mind was often swimming with fantasies of what he’d do, the heroisms he’d fall into, once a moment like this came, and it came time to prove his love. Yet he stood here, exactly in the kind of moment he had always imagined, and he felt his body rigid with fear, immobile, barely able to even speak. He felt no different then he did, lying in your mom’s bed, clinging to her body after a nightmare, watching the door for something horrible and twisted to enter the room from the hallway darkness. He felt like clinging to Katie now, not to comfort and protect her, but as if she could do the same for him, like your mom had so many years ago. But he didn’t. He couldn’t move.

And then Kane said “move!” and he did.

The two moved ahead and Kane followed behind. “Where are we going?” Katie asked, choking rather than speaking.

“Just to get a little privacy.” They entered the treeline, and he smacked the first tree with the barrel of his gun just to remind them he had it. “Wouldn’t want to do this in full sight of any passers-by. After all… we’re not beasts, are we?”

Your brother’s lip quivered. But worse than that, so did the cheeks of Katie’s ass. And Kane, following from behind, noticed it every time.

As you laid the bed down, your mom then climbed back down the stepladder to go get the bedding. You knelt up there, looking around at the dust. You weren’t alone for long, just long enough to feel a slight chill. This had always existed up here, above your heads, empty of any life, empty of any culture. A dusty window even peeked out at the side yard, its field of sight half-obscured by the sturdy branch of a leafless tree. You felt like you were somewhere where you didn’t belong, like the room had some authority over you, it being here, sitting silently in wait, even when you were a child. It felt like a place which held evil. A place which served no threat because it lay inert, and only now, that its sanctum had been cracked open and violated, would its evil have any reason to drip down to the floor below it.

Your heard sudden thud. You turned to see a hand on the top wrung of the ladder. Suddenly, blonde hair came up and your mom beneath it, her big ass jiggling up with her. She lugged up a heavy ball of sheeting next to her, resting on her pronounced hip. “Nana liked being warm,” she said, and she threw up the blanketing. You grabbed it and she came up and helped you place it.

As much as you disliked all this physical labor, being alone in your house with your mom like this, so close to her, committing to tasks with her felt good. It felt like you were a couple, especially with your brother not here to violate the intimacy of these moments. It had been a weird fascination with you, one which somehow had followed you into your early-twenties, where you felt you should have dropped it; the idea that you and your mother would someday, in the most genuine and naïve sense, be boyfriend and girlfriend. Your mom had been the only woman you had ever had a crush on. You had felt attracted to classmates, and girls on TV or in movies, of course. But you never felt a draw stronger than that which came from your own mom. Her face, her body, just the way that she carried herself, all made every other woman, no matter how beautiful, sexy or sweet, feel dry as dead leaves in comparison.

You had no way to understand such feelings, having never heard of such things. There was no hotline to call for discussions of this sort, and as obscene as the music videos you watched on MTV were, they never broached this particular brand of sexual attraction. Not only did the culture never address wanting to date your own mother, but it never addressed an even more peculiar feeling, the need to see her body, not just in states of undress or intimacy, but in states of awkward unease or broad humiliation. Something akin to the disorientating touch of ice cold water the moment it met your naked flesh. You could sometimes imagine your mom’s flesh naked, meeting the cold water, and you could see the shock in her mouth and eyes and the rippling of her ass and thigh phat as she did. You could only imagine it though in flashes which came and faded, leaving you so quick you barely had time to consider them consciously, only letting it fall into the general morass of your visceral desires.

Sometimes you wondered if the skeleton key to understanding the mystery of your thoughts could be found in the shape and size of her beautiful ass. You had never seen a woman as shapely as your mother was, especially in the large cheeks of her butt, especially not a white woman. You were unacquainted with black culture, only having ever seen a few black people in real life, and you didn’t really enjoy rap music, but you knew that they, for whatever reason, had some fascination with women’s asses, a fascination that you related to deeply.

When you thought of that hole in Nana’s closet, even thinking of it now while you helped your mom guide the sheets over the mattress, it almost seemed inconceivable to you that, somehow, you were actually going to see your mom’s ass naked. All that weight, all that size, and softness, and what you assumed to be its smooth surface; the crack between those heavy cheeks. Were you really going to get to see it? How could it be? Yet, also, who could stop you? It was just a matter of being in that room at the right time, and daring, and doing so silently, to peek one eye through that little innocuous hole.

Your brother had moved out a year ago, and Nana had passed on. There were no obstacles any longer. Every fact and figure had found its right place to make it so. It was as eerie as it was exhilarating. As unreal as it was factual.

And when you saw Katie, like your mom, but brunette, and with an ass beautiful, but nothing compared to your mom’s ass, you knew that you weren’t as alone in your lusts as you thought you were. At the very least, your brother’s mind was influenced by the size and shape of your mom’s ass, growing up along side it, even if he didn’t realize it. And part of you, some whimsical inch, sometimes entertained the thought that it was you, because you waited instead of diving into a relationship, who would be rewarded for that faith and patience with your mom herself, not a pale imitation of her in the form of another girl. While your brother enjoyed Katie’s sweet ass to himself in the privacy of his own apartment, you would enjoy your mom’s in the privacy of your own childhood home. And to enjoy wouldn’t mean just to look. Not for long. You didn’t know how, but somehow, you would get closer with her. She was all for you, and no one else. Just like your brother with Katie.

Katie’s ass was tore from the cover of her pants, exposing it, nice and full to Kane’s eyes.

Your brother lay on the ground, hands tied tightly behind the small of his back, squirming like some panting worm.

Kane pushed the barrel of his gun into Katie’s. It pushed her heavy cheeks aside. Kane pushed it rhythmically at where he assumed her butthole to be inside, and her cheeks jiggled to that rhythm.

“A pair of butt cheeks that flutter like butterfly wings,” he sang in a rasp, bluesy voice. He went for his zipper. “And a mad dog who couldn’t sit still.”

“Stop!” your brother screamed gutturally.

“Please, please…” squeaked Katie, barely audible, pleading to the dirt beneath her saliva-drenched lip.

Kane’s cock fell out of his pants, hard and poking out proudly. “Who knew that he’d be ready, with this stainless steel machete. Katie, be my valentine today.” He sung without interruption even over your brother’s growling threats.

He looked to your brother, grinned, and then let his cock hover over Katie’s ass. He made like he was about to dip it in, pulled back, swung his hips to make his cock bob there, then made as if to put it in again. He then stopped, grinning. “Tell you what…” he said.

Your brother thrashed some more, and then stopped. He was staring now with a look of naive supplication in his eyes and an eagerness in his ears to hear any ‘out’ available to him, no matter how farfetched.

“I’ll tell you something unique about me,” Kane started. “I’m a bit of a non-conformist, I am. And where most people go where they fit, I prefer to be where I’m not wanted.” He looked down at Katie’s ass, watched it quiver. He grabbed it with a full squeeze. “Now I can tell by your hemming and hawing, the two of you, that I’m not wanted in here.” He tugged Katie’s cheek back and forth. “That’s why I am so eager to get in. I feel like I could live in here, it being so big and all. Like some kind of hermit crab or the like, deep in this soft shell. Use it to hide from the law even. But…” He looked up. “Part of me wonders if I only feel this way precise’ because you and her both feel the opposite. Like… let’s say I stepped into your car and sat down and you said ‘Kane, hey Kane.’ And I said ‘yes, what is it?’ And you said ‘Kane, see my sweetheart here? Well… how do I say this, Kane. Me and her have a little game going. A preference really. A really strange one. It upsets some. But you have a look in your eye like one made open-minded by their experiences. Y’see, me and the missus here, umm, shoot, I’ll just say it. I want—really, really, really want—to see you deep inside her. All thrusting and mussin’ with her. Eating her butt and kissing and grabbin’ her as you fuck. And well, I was just wondering…’ Y’see? If you came to me with that, instead of all this hollerin’ and screamin’, I almost feel—perhaps I know—that the thought of being inside little miss’s thing’s big thing here wouldn’t be so appetizing for me. I ‘ouldn’t be breaking a rule, like is my usual proclivity, but livin’ by yours. And the whole thing would just make me sick. I would have takin’ my ride and left ya then. Left you disappointed in your car riding off, with your cock in your hand, and her butt cheeks cold in that passenger seat.”

Your brother stared, wordless.

“So,” Kane cleared his throat, almost as if he were nervous to ask. “I’m giving you a chance here, son. Giving you a chance. You can turn me off. You can turn me off cold, if you just make it known that you want me to do this. Want it more than I do. I couldn’t think of anything’d kill the fun for me as much as that. The thought that I’m only fuckin’ your girl because you gave me permission to. Truly. It would make me sick.” His expression was neutral, as if he had no sentiment or intention in the words, only the cold restating of fact.

Your brother’s brows arched, his forehead a landscape of worrisome lines. But nothing came out from between his trembling lips.

“So, son. What’ll it be? Do you want me to fuck your girl?”

Katie’s tears dropped to the leaves.

Kane repositioned his cock, letting it bob extra exaggerated. “You want me to? Or no?”

Your brother stared at the cock for a moment, then just as it was about to fall on Katie’s ass, he shot up, falling back down to his chest again mid-plead. “Yes! Yes! Fuck it,”  he said in pathetic desperation and without a single convincing note. His chest squirmed against dead leaves as he said. “Fuck my girlfriend’s ass. I want it so bad.”   He lay there, breathing hard, waiting for Kane to back up, zip up his pants with a scowl, swear a few things, and then leave.

Instead, Kane only stared. Then his blank expression turned slowly to a grin. “Really?” he said. “Okay then. Don’t mind if I do.” He plunged his cock right into Katie’s body, its full length disappearing within her, until his pelvis met the soft volume of her ass with a plap.

Your brother didn’t so much as scream, but bellow out the churning of his insides. His mouth frothy with pain and rage as he squirmed there, crunching the brittle earth below him.

His girlfriend’s ass rippled with each pump from the man, her face, flat on its cheek, bloated with tears, but silent, sliding against the crackling leaves.

Kane gave her ass a spank. “Thank you lord for blowing out that engine!” he exclaimed with breathy ecstasy, his thrusts vulgar and deep. “Thank god that ugly couples don’t take care of their ugly automobiles, you left me with a couple of lookers like this, Lord.”

It was only then that your brother knew where Kane had got the car from. And his mind, filled with cacophonous rage up ‘til then, was now silent but for one singular thought. What did he do with the owners of the Beetle?

He was about to find out. About to share the same fate, him and Katie both. But only after Kane was done with her, of course.

“When will they get here?” you asked. You cringed at the cracking in your voice.

“Should have been here about twenty minutes ago,” your mom said, looking at a name and number in the phonebook. The spiralling yellow cord of the phone crossed over it, the receiver to her ear.

You hesitated for a moment. “Where will they sleep?”

She looked up at you. “In Nana’s room. Where else?

You only stared at her as she lifted her glass of milk to her lips and set it back down.

She back at you. Then: “Uh… hello… oh, hi. This is…” She continued on the phone and you turned to look out the window. The leaves were brown and yellow, and some tumbled in the wind. Children crossed the street behind an old woman in an orange vest holding up a stop sign.

You thought about those small moments in the day, when your mom would be in her bedroom, changing after coming out from the shower. Those small moments when she’d drop her towel and when it would all become visible to you for the first time in your life, her every beige inch, all in an instant, as if it were, and never was, any sort of big deal at all.

Then you thought about your brother and Katie in that room. Thought about getting in there, just in time to see your mother in her indecent state, doing so with absolute security that neither your brother nor his girlfriend would enter the room and look through the closet for something and find you hiding there. Fear that you’d attempt it and be caught, and, just as intensely, fear that you’d never have the courage to try. These thoughts gnawed at you on the inside in a way that no other trouble ever did.

You saw the reflection of your mom sitting at the table in the window glass, phone to her ear, making arrangements with the funeral home, the ghost of her translucent against the fall day. You saw yourself in that reflection, twice as ghostly, being only imagination, coming up behind her to massage the stress from her shoulders. Her hand on yours, and her giggle, telling you to stop, as you leaned down to kiss her cheek.

You were a fool.

It was always when she was in the room with you, when her very shape and form were real flesh and blood and not just fantasy, that it was obvious to you how stupid your daydreams truly were.

When was the last time you ever heard of a mother having sex with her own son? More than that, even if it did happen, every third or fourth full moon, why would your mother in particular, being as attractive as she was, ever be attracted to you?

It seemed so crazy to you that things could be this cruel, but how much of it was due to your own foolishness? Your brother had found his Katie, found an ass comparable, even if not quite up to the snuff. But she was real, really there in his arms and in his lap while you stood there, hanging onto a shadow. Had you wasted all this time on a dream?

You hadn’t noticed your mom hang up the phone. You only saw her standing there behind you, startling you with her ghostly reflection. She looked over your shoulder and out through the window with you. “They should be here by now.” It was getting dark. “Wonder what’s keeping them.”

All you could see was darkness, and the faint hints of moonlight on the dresser. That’s where she keeps the clothes she pulls on and over herself, you thought.

You could hear her snoring in the darkness. You let your eye fall from the hole and you slid down the wall. Nana’s clothes hung silently over head. You looked at Nana’s bed, the rich blue moonlight falling over the new mattress and sheets. Katie would be sleeping here, you thought. And my brother will be… You imaged your brother behind her, pummelling her with deep thrusts. Then you imagined the same thing again, except him attempting to do so silently, so that you or your mom, wherever you were in the house, couldn’t hear him.

You looked down at your hands, barely visible. You had imagined them, so many times, gripping your mom’s naked hips, as her ass, whatever it would prove to look like in the nude, sat cradled in the pale embrace of your pelvis. You thrusted. You would thrust into it, feeling its rich volume of soft flesh, because you deserved it. Deserved to have it there with you, even if just resting against you there like a trophy for you to hold. You imagined Nana sitting there on the edge of her bed, watching you fuck your mom’s giant ass there in the closet.

That ass was just behind you, just through that wall, sleeping. You could go into her room. Go to where she slept. And… And do what though? Some half-articulated thought came to you, about her body, how it was just right there, just within reach, and how you could, at any moment, grab it. But what would that mean? What would it do? What would come after that?

It didn’t matter. You were beyond rational thought. You slid up against the wall, a strange sound in the night. You left Nana’s room out into the hallway then you turned left. You couldn’t see your mom’s bedroom door in the darkness, but you knew it was there. You took a step to it and extended your hand, your fingers finding the handle in just one try. You held it for a moment. Then you turned.

Your dick throbbed in your pants, and little massaging crawlies moved through your gut. You gripped the handle in your trembling palm. You slowly twisted it.

It started silently, then made a sound within its latch. You heard your mom’s sheets shift. You froze. They shifted some more. You let go of the handle and it fell back into place, not silently. She was no longer snoring. You stood there for a moment, waiting for the next snore to start. But it never did. You slowly shifted in place, turning around and you moved silently, as if you were never there, down the hall and towards your bedroom.

Tomorrow, you told yourself. Tomorrow, if they’re not here by then, I’ll see her. Finally, tomorrow. No clothes. No darkness. I’ll see her then.”

You woke up to a strange noise, the kind you had been dreaming about all night. A noise, creaking and breathing above. The ice cold water that filled your dreams had drained out their sides, leaving you bone dry on your bed, looking up. You were greeted to the warm glow of your ceiling. Daylight spilled in through the window.

 You stared upwards at a blank nothingness.

You came out into the hallway. As you travelled it, you looked into Nana’s room to see it just as it was last night. You looked into your mom’s room as you passed it. It sat there, empty, with an indentation, about her size, left in her bed and sheets. You almost felt like you could see the indentation get deeper halfway down the bed.

Your mom was in the kitchen, facing away, making breakfast. You looked at her ass in its pajama bottoms, big and fat, accentuating its softness, giving the vaguest glimpse at the ass crack which separated those giant cheeks. Her bare feet stood on the kitchen tile. You looked up to her face to see a tired look in her eyes.

You sat at the table.

She turned with a plate and put it before you. There was no “bon apetit” like there usually was. You didn’t question it though, not until she spoke.

“Weird noises last night…” she said.

You held your toast before you, frozen.

“Did you hear them?”

You remembered your hand on her door, remembered the sound of the latch as you turned it. Remembered her snoring stop in the night. You imagined her turning in her bed, her pajama bottoms running against her sheets. “No,” you said. “I didn’t hear anything.”

As she stood behind you, she looked up at the ceiling and squinted at it. Then looked back down at the frying pan. Two strips of bacon sat there, sizzling, fried to a crisp.

You had promised your mom you’d rake the leaves. But you kept stalling, not wanting to be outside the house whenever she would decide to finally take her shower. It wasn’t until she put her coat on and left for the store that you put yours on and went out to grab the rake.

“Just tell your brother I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said, getting into her car. “Tell them to put their stuff in Nana’s room.”

You cringed as she said it, imagining the room filled with their stuff, the closet maybe even cramped with their suitcases or clothes. She shut the car door and drove off. You looked down at the leaves as you pulled them through stubborn blades of grass, into little piles. “Please don’t come home,” you murmured, thinking of your brother. You wanted him to be stalled at least a day or two longer, enough to have a few good looks at your mom’s naked body in the natural light of today. But part of you, you realized now, would have been okay with him not coming at all. Then you could fill the week with images of your mom in the nude and unawares, and continue to do so nearly every day for the rest of your life.

You stopped raking. Or at least until she kicks me out, you thought.

You looked back down bitterly, the image of you and her lying in lover’s embrace, pelvis to ass, being pulled apart into nothingness by the biting teeth of your rake.

As you formed a hill of leaves up against the tree, its branches bare and cold, you heard a creaking. You turned around to see nothing there, not even a first-floor window on this side of the house. Then you heard the creaking again. Above. You looked up to see an open window sitting there, almost high enough that the top of its frame reached the roof. You squinted at it, its tiny rectangle, barely practical so high in the house.

The attic, you thought. That’s the attic window. You remembered what it had looked like from within, looming out at your lawn and the neighborhood, almost with a claustrophobic air, the strongest branch of the tree obscuring much of the view.

It was strange looking at your own house and seeing it now in such a new light. So many things you had never noticed before. The emptiness there, with two more people missing, must have had a profound effect on your awareness.

The outward-leaning open window squeaked again, pushed by the wind. Mom opened it to freshen it up, you remembered. Why though? Who’d ever sleep in it?

You continued raking.

The rake sat back against the shed when you were done. You were standing in the house, alone, dreading the sound of every passing car. You’d go to the window each time, hoping it wasn’t your brother’s car. But as time passed, you did so much less, and then you stopped. So many cars had passed already, none of them were his. The women who sat in them were almost always old, not young and fresh and alive like Katie.

You went back into the hallway and stood at the intersection between Nana’s room and your mother’s. You could see both beds from there. You could see the wall which separated them, so thin. And you could imagine the little hole which pierced that veil. How could it all be so perfect? Yet, how could it all be so far away? And with every passing second, the fantasy was getting further. It would only be a week longer. But it would be an intolerable one.

You noticed something floating in your peripheral. You turned suddenly, startled, to see the white pull-string hanging there. Above it, the attic. You followed the ceiling with your eyes, all the way into your mom’s room, and you looked up at it, imagining a hole there, one where she could be peeked on from above. It would be so perfect. To stay up there in that nearly empty attic, like a ghost. She wouldn’t even know you were in the house, and you could watch her, at such an unnatural angle, as she changed. Even with your brother and Katie next door to her, you’d be invisible to the entire house from up there. And your mom’s ass, luscious and fat, would stare back at you, and your creeping eye back at it, all until your mom went through the mundane task of covering it up again. And that’s when you’d retreat to Nana’s mattress, sit there on the floor, and tug yourself until completion, all with perfect privacy and peace, only the naked branch of that tree to stare in at you facelessly.

You didn’t believe ghosts were real, but you wondered if that’s what life would be like for them if they were. Or were they trapped, always in places they didn’t want to be, unable to wander and to satisfy such curiosities and thrills? If spirits really did walk the earth, how many of them had seen your mom in states of undress? And if any did, how many of them were of the mind to enjoy it? How many of them deserved to see her? How many of them were worthy of such a beautiful sight?

You had no idea whether or not you were worthy. All you knew was you were going to get to see her. It was just a matter of standing at the right place and the right time as she was. But when would this purgatory in-between that moment and now end?

You passed down the hall to your room, swatting the attic pull-string on your way, feeling its finger-width ring sting your palm. Just one peek, you murmured. One peek before Katie and him get here.

The front door opened, and you lay there, staring at the ceiling. You exhaled disappointment. Then you heard keys fall into the key bowl at the front door, the sound of the coat meeting the rack familiar.

“Hello,” a voice called. “Is my little boy home or no?”

It was your mom. You breathed a sigh of relief.

“No car outside, and I guess they didn’t walk,” she said to herself, half in a sing-song. “Guess that means they’re not here yet.” She exhaled as she placed groceries down on the kitchen table. “I just wish they’d call is all.”

You lay there, not saying a word.

“Well…” You heard her putting a few things away in the cupboard and fridge. Then you heard her say softly, only to herself: “Might as well. While…”

You heard her coming down the hallway. Then she stopped. You heard the hallway towel cabinet click and then squeak open.

You turned your head and stared intently at your bedroom door.

Through it, you could hear the bathroom door opening and then fall shut. Most importantly, you could hear it lock.

The bed squeaked as you slowly pulled yourself off it, your feet meeting the floor and, possibly, the world of action. You heard your mom’s clothes fall to the bathroom tiles. You heard the tap turn on. You peeked out into the hallway to see Nana’s bedroom door shut. You heard the sound of bare flesh against porcelain in the bathroom. Then you heard it, the water pipes groaning echoes through the house. Then the sound, beyond that door, of running water meeting the same porcelain her naked flesh stood upon.

You stood there for a moment, realizing. It was here. The moment had come. She would exit that room, in only a towel, the pajama bottoms she had worn to the store just a bundle against her hip now. She’d bring it back to her room, throw it in the hamper, and soon she’d be reaching for her towel. And then it would be off. And she’d be standing there, across from where the hole was, completely nude from her shoulders to her toes. And all it would take from you is a few steps down that hall, and to hunch in that closet, one eye open to receive, and you’d get to see it all.

It took you a while to move, the thought of it all an oppressive weight over you, like beautiful fabric which became some sort of burden when held in excess. But when you did find your bearings, you slowly crept down the hall.

Her bedroom door lay open. The door to Nana’s just to the left of it, closed shut.

It was a second before your hand found the doorknob that a strange thought occurred to you. But before you could articulate it, you fingers found the knob. It sat there inert, just a mechanism to be acted upon, bringing you one step closer.

You turned your wrist. The knob moved barely an inch before giving you nothing. Your eyes shot wide. You turned it in the other direction. Your hand slipped.

You stood there for a moment. You tried for the knob again. It was stuck in place, locked.

You stared at the face of the door.

Behind you, water splashed in volleys, falling in bulk from the various bare shelves of your mom’s body, including the most prominent among them.

You tried the knob again. Nothing.

Had they…?

You walked out of the hallway, into the living room and looked outside through the curtains, the brighter daylight out there almost jarring you from the unreality of the moment. Not a single extra car sat there in the driveway or along the leave-strewn street, never mind your brother’s. You turned back around.

You moved quickly back to the hallway, your mouth hanging open. You tried the knob again and it still stood firm, unmovable. Out of some thoughtless desperation, you suddenly moved into your mom’s room without any thought as to why. You stood there in the silence of the room, just before her hamper, not knowing what to do. Then you turned, turned toward the wall where the hole sat, just beneath the shade of that lamp, obscured within its shadow.

When you did, you froze. You stood there, your expression giving to sudden shock.

Staring back at you, for a moment, you could swear it, was nothing but a singular eyeball.

You saw it there one second. Then the next second, there was nothing, only the barest hint of a little black hole within the shadow of that lamp.

You backed out into the hallway slowly, still staring into your mom’s room. Then you looked to the left, seeing Nana’s door sitting there. Seeing it shut, locked.

It was as if Nana had never left. Except one major difference. She never locked it for all the years she lived here. It just wasn’t necessary for her to do so. You looked down at the knob, looked up at the faceless door. It had no answers for you.

You looked down at the crack under the door and you could have sworn you saw two shadow stumps emanating outward through the window daylight pushing them from within. You thought of that eye, solitary and searching. You hadn’t even noticed the shower was already off. The bathroom door clicked behind you, and you moved, not thinking, to your bedroom, shutting the door and leaving yourself to your confusion.

Your mom whistled on the way to her bedroom, her towel fitting her silhouette tightly, her naked calves and shoulders hinting at the bare flesh which waited between them. You could have sworn you heard, after her door slam shut, her towel falling to the floor.

As you did, you thought of that eye. Thought of its probing glance. You looked at your wall, stared directly into it, like you could see through it, see what was on its other end. Whatever it was, a mix-up, your wild imagination, or something more, it had kept you from seeing your mom’s fully naked form, at least for one day (if not one whole week) longer. And, maybe, it was seeing the sight that was promised to you.

And before you could come to single solitary explanation for what locked that door, and why, your mom’s bedroom door was back open, and she came out, fully-clothed, decent as she was every other day of her life.

Nana’s door was open. Nothing inside looked like it was touched.

You stood there in the hall, staring into it. Looked into your mom’s room. Then back into Nana’s.

It was as if no on had been there at all.

You turned around and went to use the bathroom. You shut the door and as you turned around, you could see an imprint of your mom’s bare-naked foot against the moisture, a shadow of the perfect nudity which was there but there no longer.

Always the floors. She would wipe the glass walls of the shower after using it, just like she told you to do. She had demonstrated for you how to do it years ago, and you remembered watching her body as she did. The way she’d bend forward as she wiped closer to the ground. Her ass bending over slowly, unaware of what it looked like there, straining the fabric of her shorts. She’d then shoot back up and do it on the next section. “You see? Like that.”

You imagined her there, not too long ago, doing it in here, but completely wet and nude this time, every clearing of a column of mist exposing more and more of her luscious beige body. Doing so to the sight of no one. No one among the living at least.

You turned to the toilet, lifted its seat, which was still wet with the moisture of her heavy ass cheeks, and you pulled out your hard cock. Please don’t come for another day, you thought, begging your brother to be late. “Please don’t come ever.” Your murmured it to yourself over the sound of your piss meeting the toilet water. “Just leave me alone with her. Please. Me and her and no one else in the house.”

You imagined your mom behind you, the first second of water falling, before it would get warm, and the shudder she’d make, something like your own shudder when she did, feeling those icey fingers meeting the flesh of her hips and thighs.

As your piss stream began to slow down, you heard something. Your face shot up. You heard it again. This time from above.

Your gaze slowly lifted, fearfully, until you were staring directly at the ceiling. Another sound, like a creaking, came through.

You stared at it, unmoving, holding your cock. No piss came out anymore.

Suddenly, there was a loud banging behind you.

You spun around.

“Sweety?”

You exhaled, our shoulders falling into a relaxed position.

“Sweety?” your mom called, again knocking on the door. “Are you in there?”

“Yeah, yeah,” you called back weakly, still catching your voice.

“I—I just need to go out again. Just… if your brother comes…” you swore you could hear her voice crack when she said it. “…please just tell him that I’ll be back.” Her ‘please’ sounded like she was pleading to you, somehow. Or pleading for something.

You stared at the door. “Y-yeah,” you said. “I will.”

There was silence. Then “good.”

You listened as her footsteps continued down the hall. Rustling at the coat rack and keys bowl and then the front door open and shut and she was gone.

You stood there for a moment. Then, slowly, your gaze lifted upwards until you were facing the ceiling yet again. It stared back at you. But now it was silent.

As your mom got in the car, she felt an unignorable strangeness.

She turned to see the attic window hanging open, looming out at her.

She stared at it. It had been open since yesterday. “When I get back,” she said, promising herself she’d go up and close it. She turned the ignition. “When I get back…”

“Craven’s Hardware Store,” said the man in overalls. “Over on Leroux. They said it had been sitting there with its window open all night. It’s lucky no one noticed.”

Your mom stared at the suitcase, a pair of pink panties hanging out of it.

The man stood behind her, staring at her big bent over ass, her body leaning deep into the backseat.

She looked in the front, the driver seat where your brother had sat for countless hours over year’s worth of travel.

“It was stolen?” she called from within.

The towman furrowed his brow. She had already asked that. “Like I said, I don’t know. If it was, he took the key with him. There’s two wallets in the glove box, both have money in them. It’s a weird thing to take a set of keys but not take cash.”

Your mom crawled to the front seat. He followed her, resting his elbow on the window frame.

She clicked the glovebox and it fell open. Two wallets sat there on top of the registration and other junk. She picked up one which looked like Katie’s. She opened it to find a hundred dollars in twenties there. The driver’s license sat at the front. Sure enough, Katie’s face stared back at her. She then looked in the other wallet, looking just like her son’s. She opened it, and money all but spilled out onto the floor. The towman watched her trembling fingers as she thumbed through it. A vacant space sat, right where your brother’s driver’s license should have been.

Even as she leaned there, her elbows on the seat, staring at the empty space in the wallet, trying to make sense of what it all meant, the driver couldn’t help but let his eyes wander to the backseat, just to get a good look at her giant ass, its cheeks jiggling with activity as she pulled the wallet apart. It was only when those cheeks pulled taut that he looked back up to her face to see her staring at the now-emptied wallet, all its contents spilled fruitlessly to the floor below. She let it fall, and placed one hand against her forehead.

As she did, his eyes crawled slowly to the backseat. He wondered what her ass would look like naked, and what it would be like to be the lucky sonofabitch who got to see it that way.

How could anyone be that lucky?

“He’s an adult, you mean?”

“Yes, he’s twenty-three. And his girlfriend is…”

The woman slid the form back to herself just as deliberately as she had slid it forward. “It’ll be two weeks then.”

“Two weeks for what?” your mom said.

The woman spun around and rolled her chair back to the filing cabinet. “If he’s a minor, that’s an amber alert and can go out immediately. If he’s a legal adult, that’s missing persons, and it’ll be two weeks until he qualifies for that.” She took out a form and turned back around, rolling herself to the desk without breaking eye contact. “So, when’s the last time that you saw him then?”

“A few months.”

“Oh! Well…”

“He was supposed to come visit and stay for a week yesterday.”

“Oh, well…” she repeated, this time dryly. “Ma’am, it isn’t my place of course to tell you what to feel. But if he’s only been unaccounted for for a day, there’s a mighty high chance that he’s fine.”

“But his car…”

The woman squinted at your mother through thick spectacles. “I don’t mean to be crass, miss, but were there any signs of foul play at all? In the car, I mean. If so, you need to go downstairs and talk to an officer. Not me. Anything? Anything at all?”

Your mom only stood there, wordlessly. The woman laid her hand on your mom’s.

“Listen. You’re stressed out. I understand. But I’ll just tell you this. In the large majority of these cases—and trust me, I do this all day—there’s almost always a perfectly innocent reason why someone isn’t where you expect them to be. There are only a small handful of serious cases in any given moment of time, most of them being done to shady characters by shady characters. There’s only a small handful of murders per year in this town. Same thing. The majority of them are shady characters being taken out by other shady characters. As unlikely as the explanation for why your son lost his car is, it’s much more likely than whatever you’re worrying yourself imagining.” Her cold bureaucratic face slowly turned to a smile. “And thank god for that.”

Your mom awkwardly smiled back.

The woman’s smile disappeared and she pulled her hand away. She looked down at her paperwork and continued working. “So again, two weeks. Until then, have a nice day.”

Your mom stood there for a moment, feeling cold. Then she slowly turned. As she began to walk out, any sense of security she felt slowly began to melt away, probabilities and sober analysis giving way to intuition and ‘knowing.’ As she went, the woman looked up, looking over the thick lenses which magnified the size of her eyes. She looked at your mom’s ass as it bobbed its way out of the room. She shook her head. “It’s always the lookers,” she mumbled. Then she looked back down and continued her work.

You stood outside of the shed door, the plastic bag in your hand blowing in the window. You were frozen, staring at the house.

The kitchen window sat there, innocuous and bare, just like usual. But you could have sworn, coming from the shed, that you saw, for the smallest fraction of a second, a tall ominous shadow passing by within. You came to the backdoor and stood there for a moment. The wind dragged your dropped leaf bag slowly along the grass. You, just as slowly, turned the backdoor knob. You looked into the house. There was nothing but silence. Everything in its right place.

You moved slowly, terrified of rounding a corner and seeing something that shouldn’t be there, but as you leaned into the kitchen, everything sat as it did moments ago.

You walked to the middle of it and stood there. The image of the shadow passing through the window occurred to you and it gave you a chill. You imagined it passing the very spot where you stood, doing so without contest as you worked outside. “But what would a ghost want with the kitchen?” you murmured. Your fear slowly began to wane, and soon you were laughing to yourself at the thought. “To get a glass of milk, I guess.” You laughed. “Not a bad idea actually.”

You went to the fridge to pour yourself one. Then you stopped, your fingers on the jug handle as the fridge hummed. “Leaves first,” you said. You put the jug back in its usual place. “Leaves first. Then milk.”

You turned around and headed back out.

You knelt by the tree, leaning against it as you shovelled arms-full of leaves into the bag. Would have been nice to have some help, you thought, thinking of your brother. You remembered the two of you standing in this very spot as kids, both in your fall jackets, you trying to scoop up the leaves while your brother kept falling back-first into them. He would wave his arms like he was making snow angels, the leaves crinkling beneath him in a satisfying cacophony.

You leaned down to grab more and suddenly were greeted to the sight of your brother.

You froze.

His face sat awkwardly, staring up at you from a little square. You reached down, grabbing it. It was his driver’s license.

“How’d this get out here?” you said, turning it in your hands. Then you squinted, noticing something wrong. The address was your house, naturally. Though he had a tendency to still use his old address on paperwork through force of habit. Either way though, the license would have had to be from when he lived here, of course. But how did it end up outside. Then you looked down at the date, its numbers grabbing your eye instinctively. And that’s when you noticed, the issuance date was less than three weeks old, despite him having never visited the house since moving. He lived hours away. You just stared at it. “How’d this get out here?” you said again, this time with real gravity.

You looked up at the street, seeing nothing, nothing out of place or missing. No curious detail or change in the air or anomaly in the sky. You looked back down at his license.

After a few moments longer, you put it in your pocket and you went back into the house, all but forgetting the leaves beneath you, even as they crunched beneath your feet on your way in.

You went back into the kitchen, this time pouring yourself a glass of milk.

It moved, smooth and pure in the glass, with faint hints of blue falling through it. You didn’t notice though, still feeling the license in your pocket. You continued to your room. You moved through the kitchen to the hallway. In the hall you looked to your mom’s room and the open room of your late Nana, some part of you terrified you’d see her standing there, ghostly and pale, confused as to where her mattress and sheets went.

The thought gave you a chill but to shake it off on the way to your bedroom, you swatted upward. Your hand moved carelessly through the air, its path obstructed by nothing, not even the lightest of strings. The absence of any sensation felt more visceral to you than any sting in your palm.

You stood there for a moment. You slowly looked up.

Your milk glass dropped from your fingers, shattering on the floor.

Up there was the attic doorway, shut tightly, just the way your mom had left it yesterday. But, unlike yesterday, sitting there caught within the trapdoor was a white little pull string, its finger-width loop dangling from its now short leash. It swayed slightly there, as if only recently in motion.

When your mom came into the house, it was to complete silence. Part of her expected to pull into the driveway and see your brother’s car sitting there, waiting for her. Like the car at the tow company was only a hallucination of some sort, some waking dream.

The house gave no reply, even as she called to it. It all just echoed back at her with her own thoughts, crowded and baffling. The very hallways and rooms of her home felt labyrinthine when painted by her rising worry and dread over your brother’s absence and all the circumstances surrounding it.

“Any explanation,” she murmured, her mind swimming around that empty car seat. “Except for…”

She sat at the kitchen table, resting her arm on it, and stared into space. As she sat there, trying to connect loose ends—the car in the lot, the open window, the missing keys, Kaitie’s suitcase, your brother’s wallet, full of money but without his driver’s license—she only felt herself being dragged further and further from any workable explanation.

As usual, the chaos in her times of stress, gave way to strange thoughts of maintenance. The attic window, she thought. I still need to close it. Even still, she did nothing of the sort, only sitting there, staring at the wall. It took her a while, many volleys of barely swallowed spit and pursing of her chafing lips to realize the most obvious of things. I’m thirsty, she thought. Even then, it took her some time to get up and to head for the fridge. She grabbed the milk jug and took it out. She grabbed a glass from the cupboard as the jug sat there on the counter, leaving a ring of sweat beneath. She poured the milk. It swished through the glass pure and white, almost completely. Almost.

She then headed down the hall. She took one sip on her way. As she turned into her room, the pull string to the attic was down, fully extended by gravity, its finger-width ring spinning slowly in place, as if recently disturbed. The door to Nana’s room was shut. Your mom didn’t notice. She went to her room for some privacy, some time to think. Most of all, to drink her glass of milk.

As she did, you sat on your bed, your eyes wide, staring out of your bedroom doorway at the section of the hallway that was visible to you. It was cold and empty. Just before that you could see your mom’s shadow on her way to her room, shapely and black, a phantom of her beauty. Just moments before that, before she even entered the house, you had seen another shadow. This one spidery and tall, moving securely on its way to Nana’s room. It had shut Nana’s door. That door hadn’t opened since.

You looked at your wall. Looked through it, in some way. Your mom was two bedrooms down. But between you, in the room where Nana once slept, something else waited. And you, for some unexplained reason, could no longer move. You could only sit there and stare.

Your mom, unaware of all except her thoughts of that empty car seat, lifted the milk to her lips and took another sip.

The only thing creepier than the shadow of one person cast against the wall was the shadow of two.

You could see the shape of your mother, in bare hints, among the shape of the other figure, dancing along your visible section of the hallway. You heard the attic door creaking open and then heard its staircase being pulled down. The shadow of the stairs sat over top of the shadow of the two figures. You could see the figure lugging your mom up there, could even see the jiggles in her ass and thighs, as it grumbled. “Knew it,” grumbled the figure. “Just fuckin’ knew it. Pretty boy with a pretty girl’d come from such a pretty—”

You couldn’t hear the next word over the sound of your mom’s ass being slapped.

You thought of the shadow passing through the kitchen. Thought about the weird tinge of blue you saw in the spilt milk you wiped off the floor, doing so beneath that swinging caught pull-string leading to the attic. Thought about the sounds at night, the locked door, and the searching eyeball. The milk, you thought. He thinks I drank the milk too. He doesn’t know I’m still awake.

As you sat there, immobile, only staring up at the ceiling and the strange sounds which came through, all the pressure and its creaks from the now-unafraid footsteps above, you thumbed nervously through your jacket pocket, in lieu of doing anything else. Not sure what to do. And as you did, you felt something. You pulled it out. It was your brother’s driver’s license. You only squinted at it, then looked back up again. You still couldn’t draw together all these threads entirely, but there was enough there that a strange and horrible dread seasoned the moment even more so, leaving you alone, on the main floor now, with only your own horror to keep you company down there.

You thought of your mom, thought of her ass, thought of the way it had been dragged off by this mystery ghoul, the shape of which was beginning to become more and more human in your mind, and you felt a distant and strange ringing, almost musical, from some deep recess within you. As seconds passed, it only grew stronger, until suddenly, the terror you felt only rolled up into your rising sense of curiosity. It was not too unlike the fear and pleasure which came from the thought of hiding in that closet, of risking being caught, on one side or the other, as you peeked through that tiny little hole, getting to see what you always felt you would one day, naked and beige.

It was that exact feeling now, only bigger. Bigger by a million times.

You were staring up at the ceiling, its wall impenetrable from down here. And then it occurred to you.

The sight of that little hole in the closet, a ring of light bleeding through which promised beauty beyond your imagination; it slowly transformed in your mind into the sight of a little rectangular window, sitting up on the side of your house in the broad daylight, obscured slightly only by a sturdy, naked branch.

You shot up. You moved for the back door, heading for the dead tree, with its long trunk, and its dead and powerful limbs. They were strong enough to get that towering phantom into the attic while you all slept. Then they’d be strong enough to support you as you looked within.

“Your son is a pervert,” Kane said.

“Gets himself a sweet little girlfriend with an ass like his mom’s.” He jiggled your mom’s cheeks. “But this ass is miles above hers.” The copious flesh of her cheeks jiggled with infinite novelty. “He tried his best though, god bless ‘im.”

You stared from the window, astonished, staring at his hands jiggle your mom’s near-nude ass cheeks. Their volume was exposed to you in glorious full, even if the crack between them was not yet. Your limbs trembled so much it was a miracle you could still hold fast to the tree.

“Had my way with his girlfriend in front of him. Now I’m gonna have my way with his mom. Your son can’t catch a break now, can he? Came here to take out his family just like I promised him I would in his final moments. Didn’t expect the boy was gonna give me a second perfect ass to fuck.”

He grabbed your mom’s panties and pulled down in one fell-swoop. Your limbs went weak, almost betraying you to the grass below.

“So should I snuff you out and leave your boy downstairs as the only survivor? Or do I snuff him out and have you wailing, phat ass all draped in black, over two caskets?” he leaned back on Nana’s mattress. “Decisions, decisions, guess I got time to think. Come ‘ere.”

Your mom’s naked ass looked better than you could even imagine. And if it was true what he said about your brother, then no one was going to come and save it from what was about to happen.

There was very little room to think about loss now, what with the overpowering arousal which took hold of all of you. Even still, the very little regret which poked its head through, rather than taking the form of your brother’s face and smile, took the form of Katie’s. It was only a flash, one obliterated by the sight of watching your mom’s ass fall to the face and lips of your brother’s killer, but it was enough to add strange flavor to the moment.

Maybe part of you regretted not getting to see Katie’s body the way you were seeing your mom’s now. And the thought of that, even the bitter irreversibility of it, only made this moment all the more miraculous. If you hadn’t noticed that caught string hanging up above, if you had finished that glass of milk, you’d be downstairs, sleeping on your bed, as unaware of the moment as your mom was now.

You were lucky. Lucky beyond belief.

Your mom’s giant soft ass (even better than you imagined it) jiggled wonderfully on the stranger’s face, his cock throbbing in response. His rugged stubble tickling the flesh between her thighs and butt-cheeks. You could hear him speaking, filling in the blanks yourself, within that tight space, your mom’s phat absorbing the echoes of his cruel voice. “Killed your kid and I’m still eating you out. I’ll take your family and I’ll take this ass, ma’am. It’s the new order of things. Halloween’s coming, then Christmas, then the Millenium. Four walls and a society of laws ain’t enough to protect you’s no more. Not from creatures like me. We take what we want. And right now I want every inch of these ‘ere ass.”

“Dead son, dead son, dead son,” he growled. Your mom’s unconscious husk responded well to the vibrations of those words. “Raised the little shit for twenty-sum’ years, and all he added up to was a relay t’bring me to you.”

Your cock throbbed. The words were so unreal, almost to the point of unbelievability, yet so was the sight which sat before you, and that you could see with your own two eyes. You knew he was telling the truth. Knew its finality. Knew there was no rewind button to life. You saw your mom now, her ass and pussy being eaten out, and as final and definitive as that experience was, it was only that much more final due to all the dire things which were attached to it.

Your brother was dead, had been all night. Katie was too, but not after being used to her fullest one last time. The man was clearly a man of taste. You knew he had enjoyed Katie, and knew, by the same token, that he was enjoying your mom even more.

Your Nana was gone, leaving your family one ring tighter. Now your brother was gone too, and it was just you and your mom left. The man who enjoyed her ass was also the man who created this strange new fate, the man who brought tidings of it.

You felt a strange intimacy with your mom, even in this moment, knowing that your brother would play no part in this circumstance. He’d play no part in anything ever again. Your mom’s body, both perfect and humiliated, had become yours, as strange as that was to consider, but only doing so in a way you never could have predicted. Without touching her, she had become your bride in this new reality. Without her awareness it had become true. This was your honeymoon with her. This sight your consummation.

Kane said your brother’s name, then reminded her that he was dead with a growl. Her ears couldn’t hear it, her mind couldn’t process it, yet her body could become electric with its vibrations.

 The same tongue which spread such horrid news was the same tongue which dipped itself liberally into your mom’s inside, taking in her warmth and taste.

You almost felt as if you could levitate off the tree, seeing his tongue probe where you desired so badly, and for so long, your cock to be. You had been fiending for these private parts of her for so long that you could barely believe they existed now that they were here in front of you.

“Your boy,” he said, lapping again after saying it. Then continuing. “Thought his slurp humiliation slurp ended slurp with his missus.” He squirmed his way out from beneath her. “But really,” he said, getting up. “It’s only started. He’s lying face down in a shallow grave, like some stack of shit, and he has no idea just how much I’m still taking from him. Thank the lord.”

He got behind your mother.

“Wish he was still here though, just to trick him into asking for this again. ‘Fuck my mom!” all squeaky and pathetic-like, hoping it’d make me do the opposite. I’d pay a medium just to hear him do it again.”

You held tight to the tree. “Fuck my mom,” you murmured under your breath. “Fuck her.”

Right on queue, as if he could hear your pleading, his cock slid deep into your mom’s body.

“Ughh,” he groaned at the sensation of it. “You’re twice the age of that bitch of his, but twice the sweetness. Like grapefruit or tangerine in here.” He thrust his cock in her, feeling its every inch meet hers, as he said it.

He spanked her ass, making it jiggle in the way you always wanted to see, jiggle in the way you fantasized doing yourself. Jiggle obscenely on the same mattress Nana slept on every night. Jiggle obscenely up in the attic that you didn’t even know existed until yesterday, the space which existed above the house, in it, and never part of it all at once.

“Your boy will never know what fuckin’ an ass like this feels like. He tried with that bitch of his, but it just doesn’t compare to this. Little pervert tried to find your doppelganger and only found the dollar store ripoff.”

Some part of you, shocking as it was, found satisfaction in this revelation. Satisfaction to know that your mom was the cream of the crop, satisfaction to know that Katie paled in comparison. Even more so, satisfaction to know that there was a limit to your brother’s pleasure. That the man who killed him experienced just as much as he did, taking it out of Katie’s ass, and was now experiencing even better with your mom’s.

“I live a whole life waiting for an ass like this. Thank your boy for leadin’ me to it. Thank your boy for giving me the car to get here. Thank ‘im for pulling over. Guess it pays to be kind, doesn’t it? But who does it pay?”

You still had issue processing the full weight of the moment, it being so overwhelming, the very rippling of your mom’s ass cheeks overwhelming your senses, yet you could still absorb the miraculousness of your brother pulling over to find exactly this human being, this one of a million who could have the will and the wherefore to pull this off.

“Twenty years. Twenty fuckin’ years, and I don’t even remember the lion’s share of my victims. Yet the one thing I know is that you’re the cream of the crop. Big ‘ole fresh ass, jiggles when it’s fucked. Cheeks that open up like butterfly wings. I got a trombone like a swordfish, just swimming through this ass.”

He grabbed her, and in a swift and full motion, he rolled with and guided her until she was on top of him, the exact position you imagined your mom riding you, taking initiative into her own hands to make up for the initiative you lacked.

And though it wasn’t you she was on top of now, you felt all the joy you would have if it was.

“Okay now, beautiful,” said Kane. “Give all the pleasure you can give to your son’s killer. Like this.” He guided her hips until the motion become automatic.

“He’s dead. Ooh. I think I’ll kill the other one too. Then keep you locked in a little case, one just big enough for you, and store you under the bed for whenever I get a hankerin’ for all this.” His fingers glided over the flesh of her ass. “Then just slide you out to feed you and bathe you and keep you exercising and looking nice. And to fuck you, of course. And then stuff you back in after some good use. Have you crying there in the darkness, all blubbering, spicing my dreams up with your sweet, sweet sobs.”

Your lifelong fantasy, with you since puberty, had died in this moment, replaced by another one, a better one, and one which could actually come true. Your mom stuffed in a case, barely big enough for her ass, the terror, the claustrophobia, the indignity, only to be slid out again, her lying naked within, her very body inviting its own suffering.

The horrible thought that you were only having a nightmare, that you’d wake up again in the mundane hell of your actual life, your brother and girlfriend pulling up outside to take Nana’s room for a week; all of it occurred to you, sent chills through, but mercifully faded as the cool autumn wind pinched your arm for you, securing you in the thought that you were awake and not dreaming.

You could see on the other end of the attic, over the jiggling flesh of your mom’s ass, the gun which we planning to use on you. The gun he used on your brother and Katie. The gun, you were sure now, he no longer wanted to use on your mom, her ass buying her life. How could it be any other way? It was almost too poetic to be real.

You thought about running after he was finished, leaving him with your mom and his wild ambitions for her body, and saving yourself in the process, but you feared that his twisted logic required at least one victim. That’s the way he made it sound. And you didn’t want to do anything to sacrifice this beautiful change in your mom’s foreseeable future.

You were alone on that naked branch of that solitary tree, yet you knew you couldn’t be alone in this sentiment. You knew that there were others out there like you who were only hoping, praying and wishing for the same for their own moms. It was the first time you had ever been secure in that, but just inducting from the pleasure you felt now, immeasurable, you knew that your deepest secrets could no longer just be your own. And that was a liberating thought.

You knew you weren’t the only one willing to die for this, and you believed, without hesitation now, that you might. That climbing back down, sneaking into the house, crawling into bed, and lying there with your eyes shut for what happens next was what you would be doing. And then, with one final blaze of glory, a loud bang from above, you’d be gone before you even knew it, you’d have cleared the way for your own paradise. A paradise that could live and breathe so powerfully you could stand to have it exist beyond even yourself.

“Your whole family dead,” Kane said. “And you, my spring-loaded fuck toy. I just turn the crank on your jack-in-the-box, and pop!, your ass flops out for perfect use. Nobody even knows your alive but me. Fat jiggly ass crying and sobbing and screaming. Fun with every orifice. Lockin’ you in there with every creepy crawly. And maybe one day, when I’m finally bored of heaven, drop you in a foot or two of water, case and all, and watch the whole thing fill. Have you panickin’ in the dark as water fills in, submergin’ you while you sit cramped in there, knees to your chest, big ass mashed against the edge. Water coming up slow to your blubberin’ face.”

The whole world and all its hiding places existed at your back. A police precinct a few blocks down, payphones at every corner store, houses with empathetic neighbors who’d burst the door down. Yet you wanted none of it. You only held tight there, as if nailed to the tree. In actuality, nailed to your fate, doing it with your own hammer, nailing your mom to hers with just as much eagerness.

How could you regret years full of this? Torture beyond imagining. No escape in sight. No rest for the innocent, with the wicked sleeping like a baby. Your mom peeking through the crack in the case, searching for the barest hint of light, just like you imagined yourself, in Nana’s cramped little closet, peeking through for the barest glimpse of her.

All sorts of objects shoved in that sweet little butthole of hers. Constant reminders of the two sons taken from her. Constant reminders that after years of abuse, she still had years to go. And that when she was finally boring to him, she’d face an end unlike any other.

“He came home from his work with a party in his head,” he sang in a bluesy rasp. “And an idea for a fireworks display.”

A thought flashed in your mind, one solitary and quick, but visceral, as if you could feel the freezing cold river water on your own flesh instead of hers. The sight of water rushing in, or at least the sensation of what it would feel like in total darkness, unable to move. As you saw that, another image occurred to you just as strongly. As strong as any image of you and your mom lying nude in bed, embracing each other in lover’s kiss. It was the image of a small case, just big enough for the body of one thick adult woman, being sucked away through frozen river water, as the light of the sun penetrated to it only through a thick sheet of glassy ice above.

You looked at your mom one last time in exactly the way you wanted to remember her.

Without even blowing her a kiss, without even kissing her in your mind, you scaled down the tree. You came around the back of the house, sneaking in, knowing these would be your last few moments. You stood by your bedside, writing the note you’d soon drape over yourself. The note which let him know you knew. Let him know you saw. That let him know you were awake there, lying with your eyes shut, just waiting for him to take it all away from you with the single pull of a trigger.

Your pen just floated, your words effortlessly gushing over his plan, his attitude, and his right to your mom’s ass.

“Her ass is yours,” you scribbled feverishly, exciting for when he’d see it. “If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to you. You took my brother’s life to get it. Please take mine.”

The note ended with three lowly requests, requests which you knew somehow he’d follow through on. You could feel it through your every bone. Your bones which would lie naked soon, inanimate and dry wherever they were. The requests were as follows:

1.      Extract every inch of pleasure she has to give from her until she has no more to give you. Make her give you heaven and you give her hell.

2.      Put my body in my Nana’s closet. It’s the one with the hole. I don’t know what happens to you when you die. But if there’s even a chance, I want to watch you and my mom through that little hole. I know when they take my body from there, my soul, if it has any existence at all, will stay, and will watch you wherever you go with her and whatever you do.

3.      And finally, promise me, when you one day get bored with her, whether it be in months or years, you wait until the winter, drag her out to the river in her little case, auger yourself a hole big enough, and drop her, case and all, into that hole.

As you dotted your last full stop, you could see it again, that case being sucked down the icy river, and you could feel it, body thick within, cramped as she screamed, icy fingers, painful to the touch, filling in and engulfing her in that little pocket of darkness.

Without regret, you put your head to the pillow, laying it over you.

After a few minutes, the ceiling creaking all the while, the sounds became slow, and then there were no sounds at all. Not until you heard footsteps above, moving to the attic door. Then you heard him coming down the stairs. “Un-fuckin’-believable,” he grumbled. “Thought I hit my peak years ago.”

You heard something banging against the hallway wall as he moved. Then you heard the air in your room become strange. You could feeling him standing at your bedroom doorway. You could feel his smile.

He came to you, and you clenched your eyes shut, expecting it to end right there just as easily as any other time. Instead, the note on your head rose. You could feel a pair of eyes scanning from its one end to the other, then again, then again, as his eyes combed their way downward to the letter’s conclusion.

There was a silence for a moment. You could feel the heaviness of the gun in his hand, the cold hard reality of the trigger against his finger. You could hear him shaking his head, with what sentiment, you didn’t know. Not until he spoke. You could hear the wide grin in his single word. “Deal,” he said, his voice gravelly and sweet.

You smiled, even as you felt the hard barrel, and the empty space at its center, pushed into the back of your head.

You didn’t hear a sound.

All you saw was a light, far, far up above.

You slowly rose, flying through the universe toward that light, until you realized, you weren’t flying, you were moving up a wall, on your direction to standing upright. Nana’s clothes meeting the crown of your head. Your mouth dry. The pinhole waiting there. On its other side, daylight.

You put your eye to the hole.