Spaencest

Note: all Biblically-involved characters in this story are above the age of 18. Merry Christmas. -- Juliette de Lorsange

* * *

I ruined her to save her.

Fear controlled my cousin's life. She was lost inside that fear--abjectly and completely lost. Caged within the steel oubliette of her own mind. She had to look up just to see hell.

She thought she was about to die

. I can't imagine how much she suffered.

One small lie, and I lifted the fear from her shoulders, pulled her from the depths of a black hole. My deceit gave Cailee Spaeny her life back. You would do the same for someone you loved.

What follows is a true account of my actions from 2018 and 2019.

It is not, however, an apology for them.

* * *

My name is Kyle Valance. You're about to hate me for fifty reasons. Here's the first one.

My mom's name was Nora Valance-Spaeny. She has a brother. The brother's name is Mark Spaeny. Mark has a daughter. That daughter's name is Cailee Spaeny.

She is my first cousin. 12.5% genetic consanguinity, on the dot. Or so I thought.

In 2016, mom's marriage collapsed. She divorced my dad, scrubbed

Valance

off her surname like it was dirt, and moved us from Chicago to my uncle's house in Springfield, MO. He had eight children, and was struggling to raise them. My mom got a change of scenery. My uncle got a free babysitter. And I got flung into a snake pit of eight new cousins, some of whom I'd only seen on holidays, and one I'd never met at all.

I still recall that first meeting with Cailee Spaeny. It's a memory clouded by the messy, heart-rending shit that happened afterward. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" seems to thunders over the scene in my head.

I wish I could remember our meeting the same way it happened--pure, beautiful, uncomplicated--and not think of the dark places it was a doorway into, but I can't.

After all, the dark stuff happened

because

of that day.

Mark and my mom arranged a playdate between our new families at Nathanael Greene Memorial Park. Grudgingly, I went along to it.

It was the middle of summer; and the sun scoured the park with a dry, pallid brightness--the ground seemed to dissolve up into the sky like metal flaking into acid. I stood under a sycamore, watching what seemed like an

army

of kids playing soccer, and wondering where I'd fit in among my new family.

And through rippling veils of heat, I saw my cousin.

Beautiful. Sylphlike. Burning, lithogenic patterns of light leaped and curved across her elegant figure, as she moved through the sun pouring in luminous rivers between the sycamores.

I stared at her, and was lost. Not even lost for words. Just lost.

"Hi! I'm Cailee, spelled cee-ayy-eye-el-double-ee."

My cousin rattled that off like she said it twenty times a day (which she did). She wore a vintage-style miniskirt that puffed outward, exposing a good deal of thigh. A sweetheart neckline plunged down sharply into a fitted bodice and tight-cinched corset, pulling her figure into an hourglass. Under a retro Jackie Onassis pillbox hat, her hair was twisted into a sleek black knob.

She wore a thick diamond choker necklace around her neck. The diamonds were paste--she wouldn't become a movie star until years after this, and Mark Spaeny wasn't rich--but she wore that choker like it held the Golden Jubilee diamond.

"Um...hi..." I said. "...My name's Kyle."

"Oh, wow, really? We practically have the same name!" Cailee leaned forward, hands clasped excitedly. "Do you find that odd? Do you think it means something, astrologically speaking? Like we share a cosmic bond? Or we knew each other in a past life?"

"Er, I don't know..." My tongue anti-worked. It felt like all the muscles had been severed, crossed, and reconnected back-to-front.

She smiled, steepled her hands under her chin, and leaned forward with big goo-goo eyes. She was transcendently, lusciously beautiful. Simply radiant with health and youth.

"Well, I wanna figure it out," Cailee said. "I was born in 1998. My Sun is in Leo, my Moon is in Leo, and my Ascendant is in Scorpio. What about you?"

Cailee is very superstitious.

She believes in UFOs, astral projection, and telekenesis. She has a lucky number: 22. Says it's her life path number (and no, I don't know what a life path number is either).

When she orders food at a restaurant, she selects items so that 22 appears in some fashion on her bill. When she's exercising, she tries to keep the heartbeat indicator on her Fitbit to a number divisible by 22.

To Cailee, everything happens for a reason. The pattern of cracks on a footpath tile is a gematria to be decoded; a chipped nail a missive from the astral plane. At times, this shades into neurosis. Obsession. I wonder what a therapist would make of her, if she ever went to one.

Cailee is the same as her name. Mostly normal. Slightly weird. Weird enough to be compelling, weird enough to lodge in the mind like a thorn.

Weird enough to be worth saving.

* * *

Cailee and I chatted for several hours at the park, in the shade of the lepidopterarium.

Her brothers and sisters kicked a ball around on the field; and my mom discussed her living arrangement with Mark and Vanessa Spaeny.

We were left on our own.

I found everything about this girl deliriously attractive. The staccato lilting rhythm of her voice. Her fey, star-constellated insanity. As I talked to her, my face glowed with heat. My innermost thoughts and secrets were melting through my skin.

Cailee knew--didn't hope but

knew

--that she was destined for big things. An aspiring actress in the Springfield Little Theater group, she certainly had star power. Enough to captivate me, anyway.

But she also believed--equally firmly--that it was her destiny to die before this could happen. She would not live much longer. She didn't know yet how she'd die, but sensed that the reaper had already marked a notch on his scythe for her.

"I'm already a dead girl."

Cailee said this casually, offhandedly. And despite the summer heat, a cold wind blew through me.

"Yep. Dead Cailee. That's me."

A soccer ball blurred toward her face. She caught it--her reflexes were blindingly fast--and drop-kicked the ball back to her older brother. The loud, reverberant thud still echoes inside me.

Pow!

...That flash of white teenage thigh kicking out under her miniskirt filled me with sudden, dizzy desire. Made sweat crawl through my armpits.

How would those legs feel wrapped around my neck?

Alarm bells rang inside me.

No. Stop. You're not allowed to perv on this girl. She's your cousin. Halfway to your sister!

My mind understood that Cailee Spaeny was off-limits.

The problem was my penis.

It didn't didn't care about

halfway-to-sister.

It cared about

short hoop skirt

. It cared about

knee-high socks

. It cared about

thick diamond choker necklace

. It cared about

bra strap showing through shirt

.

It cared about

hot girl.

* * *

"I'm bored," Cailee said, leaning against a tree. "Wanna go back to my dad's place? We can watch a movie."

Cailee is a film nerd. I heard

movie

and assumed we'd be watching

Jurassic World

or

Infinity War

. Instead, she put on

The 400 Blows

by François Truffaut.

We flopped on the couch together. She sprawled supine in front of me, curling up like a cat. Her legs swung and kicked, angled toward my face. I stared from behind...but not at the movie.

Her jeans stretched low around her wide teenage rump, giving me a good look at her panties and the chubby mounds of buttmeat pouring out of the tops. The A/C was broken, and it was 95 degrees indoors. Dripping-hot.

She yawned and scratched herself, making her shirt ride up her body. Perspiration glistening like dew upon the curves and dimples of her hips and ass and stomach. A shallow runway of pubic hair wisped from above her belt buckle.

"It's so hot," she huffed, blowing a lock of hair from her face. "I'm sweating like a pig."

She kicked off her sneakers and socks. Then she planted her legs back on the couch, and stuck her bare feet out just a dozen inches from my face. She wriggled her dirty toes in front of my face. My nostrils flared at their smell.

...I wasn't thinking. That's my only excuse for what I did next.

No thoughts.

Head empty.

My hands moved behind Cailee's body, seemingly acting on their own. They found a blanket, drew it over my crotch (like I was cold, in the hottest part of summer), and slooowwly unzipped my jeans.

As Cailee stared ahead, absorbed in the movie, my fat cock plopped out behind her, jutting like a compass needle seeking north.

As quietly as I could, I began jerking off to the smorgasbord of teen butt, legs, and feet sprawled on the couch.

I could have been caught. Hell, I probably

should

have been caught.

But I wasn't.

Eyes focused on the Truffaut film, chattering brightly about something she called "

the method

", Cailee never noticed that I was masturbating under the blanket.

"...This shot's really important," Cailee pointed at the screen, as my testicles drew up and the slippery jerking of my hand hit a crescendo. "Antoine has spent the whole movie trying to become a man. And when he sees the ocean, he symbolically becomes one."

I stifled a grunt.

My breath hitched; my body tensed. My cock began blasting out disgusting amounts of cum. Thick bursts of sperm went

flup-flup-flup

as they smacked against the blanket, which I draped in front of her body like a shield.

Once the cum-strands stopped flying, I wadded up the blanket and speed-shuffled back out of the room, my cock hanging out of my pants. A final blob of ejaculate pulsed from my shriveled glans, going

splat

on the floor, but there was no time to wipe it up. I prayed she wouldn't turn around, and see my cum glistening on the floorboards like an oyster.

I slunk to the laundry. Face flushed, heart racing like I'd run a marathon, I threw the sperm-soaked blanket into the hamper, rezipped my pants, wiped the demon's harvest of sweat fermenting on my brow, and dashed back to the TV room.

I returned to find my cousin sitting upright on the couch. Her eyes flicked from the screen over to me. Her stare was cold.

"...you totally beat it," she said tonelessly.

Terror tore my mind apart like an arctic gale.

Then Cailee giggled. "Wow, did

that

come out weird! I mean you left really suddenly. Was wondering where you'd gone. Anyway, what did you think of the movie? It's my favorite."

I laughed, she laughed, we both laughed, and then we had a one-sided conversation about Truffaut.

* * *

I went to my room, alone with my racing thoughts and pounding heartbeat.

Okay,

I thought with clenched teeth.

You masturbated to your BIOLOGICAL COUSIN while she lay next to you. Yes, very dirty and taboo. Now that's out of your system, you'll NEVER HAVE SEXUAL THOUGHTS ABOUT HER AGAIN, right?

...Right?

As if in reply, I began to get another erection.

I moaned helplessly, balling my fists as my cock made my pants tight.

No. Not my cousin. God help me!...GOD HELP ME!

I felt like I was sinking into shit. And the worst part? I

loved

it. I sank into shit with my mouth wide open.

More, more, more.

* * *

When a horny teenage boy swears an eternal vow of sexual purity,

eternity

usually lasts a very short time.

Within days, I was fully under her spell. Wherever she went, I was close by,

watching

. My eyes stealing little flashes of flesh--the insides of her pretty legs as she kicked a soccer ball, the white slip of her pantyline as she bent down to tie her shoelaces--and adding them to the Cailee Spainy Skinemax porn reel playing on endless loop my head. I saved every photo she put on the 'Gram if it had so much as her

thumb

in it.

I began losing my mind, caught in an endless spiral of frantic self-abuse. I almost started to hate Cailee, for how much she was in my head, in my fantasies, my wet dreams. Her laugh. Her sweat. Her Omnia perfume. Each sense, each memory meant I had to run to my bedroom to wring more poison out of my body.

Cailee was a

disease.

And I was infected.

I wonder if the Spaeny family noticed the boxfuls of tissues I was flushing down the toilet, the bedsheets I was scrubbing stains from several times a week. If they did, they never commented on it.

Once, Cailee loudly complained to the whole house that her panties and bras were disappearing from the laundry hamper. I just played

Black Ops 4

with her youngest brother Jonathan (the only member of the Spaeny clan I liked much, apart from her) and tried to look dumb.

I knew where her panties were.

I also knew that if she learned what I was doing with them, she would not want them back.

When I heard Cailee use the toilet, I'd wait until the

flush

and the sound of her footsteps receding down the hall...then I'd rush to the bathroom myself, and shove my face against the toilet seat, relishing in the fast-fading warmth of my cousin's butt cheeks.

When she left the house, I let myself into her bedroom. I sniffed her pillows and sheets, wallowing in Cailee's scent. I jerked off into her bathtowels. Over her toothbrush. Over the seat of her bike in the garage. Wherever her ass had been, my rock-hard cock soon followed.

I felt no shame, no sense of self-disgust. When you're at the lowest place in the world, it doesn't feel like you're

low.

It's just the place you're at. You're normal. It's the world that's sick. My actions, excessive and depraved after I'd nutted, never seemed like enough when I was in the moment. Little drops of water, for a man dying of thirst. It was only after I'd ejaculated that I felt horror at who I was becoming.

Dude, you are fucked up. Abnormal. Get help.

And then five minutes later I'd be sniffing her shoes. Or or rifling through her drawers, her bedside dresser.

Always, always, always seeking more fuel for fantasy.

Under Cailee's mattress, I found a hidden diary, and read it over several days--consuming little sips of words when she was showering or out in the garden, and deep, thirst-quenching gulps when she was away at drama club or theater rehearsals.

The diary was a mandela of her fascinations, her fixations. But I didn't care about astrological tables or horoscopes. I wanted to know about

her.

There was one revelation that I never would have seen coming.

TMI, but dear diary: why can't I orgasm??

Maybe it's my Leo coming out, but I've literally never had one. The other day, I tried rubbing myself for three hours. It didn't even feel that good. I just got sore, and now my hand is cramping up lol :(

I really want to climax! Other girls can do it. Why can't I?

I'm allowed at least one "I'm not like other girls!" entry, right? RIGHT?? haha

The idea of demure Cailee fingering herself--hunched over on a chair, trying to wrest an orgasm out of her cunt for hours like a thief trying to pick a broken lock--was inconceivable. Undreamable. Like imagining your teacher doing something that isn't teaching.

This pudibund, fashion-obsessed pixie seemed like she should be above such mundane bodily concerns as pissing, shitting, and masturbating.

But then, would she believe that her quiet, shy cousin had feelings for her? No. Of course not.

We have secrets. Hidden depths. Literal hidden depths, in Cailee's case.

I thumbed through the diary, looking for

me

. A marginal reference to the totally cute cousin staying at her house, haha.

C'mon,

I thought, sweat gathering as I turned pages.

I need to know I exist in her world.

But she hadn't written one word about me.

That's the best yet worst part of a crush. No matter how brilliantly you think you're glowing with ardour...you're not. You're a fused lightbulb, dead and cold, casting no light and no heat outside your own mind. To the girl or boy you love, you're invisible. Just a sad nobody, fantasizing into a brick wall.

Things might have gone no further between Cailee and I.

But God had plans for us.

* * *

Remember the Kotokovirus-1 panic of 2019?

No? Strange. Nobody does. Some days, I wonder if it ever happened.

If you were a teenage girl through that period--or the longsuffering relative of one--Kotokovirus-1 hysteria was inescapable. It was the air you breathed.

The story goes like this: a mystery supervirus called Kotokovirus-1--endemic to African ground pangolins--had leaped the species barrier into humans, and then had breached containment in a Libyan biolab. Well-meaning pangolin activists had accidentally infected themselves, and had brought the disease back to America, where it was now silently spreading through the water supply.

For some reason, only women could catch Kotokovirus-1. Soon, millions of teen girls--never the most discerning and levelheaded of demographics--were freaking out, convinced they were about to die from a lab-engineered superplague.

Nobody knew how Kotokovirus-1 worked, or even what the symptoms were. Any unexpected cough, headache, or period cramp could be interpreted as early-onset Kotokovirus-1 symptoms. Anything at all.

Kotokovirus-1 is fake, by the way. It does not exist. No such disease has ever been recognized by WHO.

But that raises an interesting question: what makes a thing fake?

Money is fake. We could all stop believing in it, and it would cease to exist. Yet it rules our lives. National borders are fake. But try walking north over the Korean DMZ with a South Korean flag.

A thing can be fake, yet persist because of our collective belief.

KTK-1 existed in the form of a social media hysteria. No superplague, however virulent, could have infected so many people so quickly as the

idea

of a superplague, spreading unchecked over Tiktok.

And Cailee caught

that

disease worse than anyone.

* * *

In 2019, I noticed my cousin becoming obsessed with KTK-1. Almost as obsessed as I was with her.

She constantly had her phone out, doomscrolling Tiktok tags like #KTK1Outbreak and #KTK1Pandemic and #OMGWeAreSoFucked, frantically absorbing everything she could about this mysterious illness.

"It's a fake disease," I told her over and over, wishing she'd glance away from her phone just once, and over to me. "You know that, right?"

"It's real." Cailee's voice was ice cold as she thumbed her phone. She couldn't be snapped out of it. Couldn't be reasoned with.

"It's all bullcrap. Pangolins aren't even

native

to Libya."

"You don't understand, Kyle.

And stop distracting me.

"

And she buried her nose deeper in her phone, falling deeper into her algorithmic fear-world.

It was sort of funny at first. Until I looked into her eyes, and saw the terror of the grave.

To Cailee, this wasn't a joke. Wasn't a game.

This is how I'll die

her terrorstruck face said.

All along, it was waiting for me in a Libyan biolab, and its name is Kotokovirus-1.

A horde of unscrupulous people took advantage of the hysteria to launch social media brands. They presented themselves as doctors, gurus, truth-tellers, concerned citizens. You might remember some of their names. PangolinAssassin69. KayTeaKayFacts. KTKTruthWarrior22.

Most contented themselves with spreading misinformation over social media. A few crossed the line, selling quack remedies to gullible teenagers. PangolinAssassin69 went to jail after getting busted for selling "KTK-1 cleanser" pills that (as per lab analysis) were sachets of dishwasher detergent. He put multiple young girls in intensive care before he was arrested. Really fucked up stuff.