Photographs

DISCLAIMER:

This is included in the novel/novella category because of length. It is a mother/son incest story. There are also instances of abuse (two of them, which are not the focus of the story). As far as heat level, this story is quite tame, and if you are look for page after page of screaming sex, you might want to look elsewhere. If you want a STORY, please read on.

A few weeks later, Christie could hear the thunk of the basketball on the driveway minutes after Danny's car pulled into the drive. The uneven rhythm of the ball hitting the cement of the driveway was occasionally punctuated by the reverberations of the backboard as the ball bounced off it.

Danny came in half an hour later when it got too dark to see. Steve had not arrived home from the portrait studio.

"How was practice, Danny?" she asked as he reached for the cookie jar. "No cookies before dinner."

"I'd like to see you try and stop me," he said, but he wasn't smiling.

"What's up?"

"Team sucks this year," he said with a mouth full of cookie.

"You alone make up for a lot of sucky team."

"There's only so much I can do. I'm a lousy defense player against a bunch of fast little guys. I'm a big oaf stumbling around the court while they dart in and around me. All I can do is make baskets."

She knew he would have gone on and on with his personal pity party, so she said, "You've obviously never seen videos of your games. You're...graceful. It's like watching a choreographed dance. And the most amazing thing is they're not choreographed at all. You do it naturally." He was blushing and looking around so she decided to change the subject. "Set the table, will you, Danny?"

"What are we having?

She opened the oven to reveal a roast chicken.

"That's kind of fancy for a week night," he said.

"The jury came in and I came home early." She shrugged. "I felt like cooking."

He knew what that meant. "You lost."

She shrugged again and sighed. "It happens, even to me."

Christie was about to bend down to take the pan from the oven when he pulled her into his arms, holding her tight. "I'm sorry, Mom."

"It was a kid who got into a fight and accidentally killed somebody. He reminded me so much of your Uncle Mike," she said and leaned into him, closed her eyes, and breathed in his faint sandalwood scent, overlaid with clean sweat. "Now he's a felon."

They lingered in the hug. Christie hadn't felt so comforted, so right, by someone's embrace since she was a young girl. Steve never held her this way. Never before being willing to lay them on her son's shoulders, Christie had always borne her hardships alone. Now something unfurled in her chest, a kind of peace.

They heard the garage door and before Christie pulled away he placed a soft kiss on her cheek near the corner of her mouth, a little too close to be entirely chaste. She felt a little thrill that wasn't entirely chaste, either.

#####

Danny came to Christie on a Friday night in February. She was in the big room where she danced and kept up with her other hobby: her many potted plants. Its walls were mostly glass, looking out onto the pool, and it had good light.

"You don't look so good," she whispered to an enormous asparagus fern she knelt in front of. "Haven't I been feeding you enough?" She felt down around its roots. "Or do you need more water?" She took up a pair a scissors and began to prune away dead fronds. "You poor thing. Look at how much I have to cut from you."

Suddenly, Danny squatted at her side, startling her. "Danny!"

"You know, something I love about you is how you talk to your plants like they were children. You do realize they can't hear you?"

"Hush. Don't listen to him, Phineas," she said to the fern.

"You named him -- it -- Phineas?"

"Of course. Phineas and Ferb, Phineas the fern."

He nodded indulgently. "Of course."

She looked up from the fern. "Did you need something?"

He held out the cardboard box he held in his hand. In it was a drab little bird with brownish feathers.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A female something. Maybe house sparrow."

"She looks like she's in a bad way." The bird's wing was obviously broken, and she lay limply on her good side. She was still alive. Christie could tell only when the bird's eyes suddenly opened, but Christie didn't think she had long.

"A cat got her," Danny said. He seemed indifferent, but his distress was reined in, obvious only to someone who knew him well like Christie. "She's bleeding, and I don't think I can fix it."

Danny was like a little boy with all the injured birds he brought home. Christie had no idea where he found them all, but one appeared in the cage he kept in his room every three to four months. Usually there were broken wings or legs, something he had learned how to fix. This one had been mauled beyond his ability to repair the damage.

"She's suffering, Mom."

Silently, Christie took the box from him. Made of stronger stuff than her son, she would be the one to take it outside and end its misery.

#####

When she returned to the hobby room, Danny said, "I thought you should know that Dad was going from room to room when I got home from school today. He spent a long time in your bedroom."

"Ugh. We'll have to do it tomorrow. The equipment is locked up in my office." She stood, dusting off her hands. "You know the drill."

"Can't we do it tonight? I hate that feeling of being spied on," he said as he rose up beside her.

"We'll just miss things in the dark. Daytime is better."

"Can we sleep in a hotel tonight?"

She thought seriously about this. In the last half-hour Steve had left for a weekend trip to visit his mother. Going from room to room before he left meant that he had likely bugged their home. Again. Video or audio, it could be either. Christie had no idea how long the first set of bugs had been in place before she found them six years ago while putting mouse bait in the attic. It could have been years. The wiring had been dusty and mouse-chewed. She ripped out the whole set-up and invested in radio-frequency sweepers and laser detection devices. Then the games began. Sporadically, Steve would bug the house, with wireless devices now; she would put GPS trackers on his car to try to find out where he was hiding his stash of inflammatory photographs. Neither entirely quit, but they had both slacked off over the past couple of years. They proved to be too good at thwarting each other.

Christie eyed Danny now. She knew he had been looking forward to a weekend without his father around. Having the house bugged, even for one night, was almost worse than having him here.

"A place with a pool?" he asked hopefully, correctly reading her expression.

"We have a pool here."

"Yeah, but a hotel pool has women in bikinis." He didn't smile. Apparently, the bird was not yet forgotten. "Can we go someplace where women wear bikinis?"

Steve hadn't hit her in over a month, so she had would have liked to wear a bikini herself if she went to a pool. She thought about the way her son looked at her lately. Danny could watch her swim every day, in a sensible one-piece, if he would get up at 5:30 in the morning. That being unlikely to happen, he rarely saw his mother with that little clothing. With the way he had been behaving, lingering hugs, kisses not quite on the mouth, she wasn't sure what his reaction would be.

"Yeah, sure. A nice heated hotel pool."

#####

True to her word, she found a major hotel with an enormous pool that was not only heated, but had a hot tub, waterfalls, and a glass enclosure to keep out the winter chill. Night sky and city lights were visible overhead and on three sides. The pool was nearly deserted that evening, and they enjoyed the feeling of a watery hideaway.

Danny did a cannon ball into the deep end while she dipped a toe in and then entered with much more decorum. And sure enough, after surfacing Danny watched her the entire time. Her suit was one piece, black, and fairly modest for that kind of attire, but Danny had eyes for only her and not one of the other three women who were much more scantily dressed. One woman, bronzed and golden blond, wore a thong with a top that consisted of little red triangles of fabric that barely covered more than her nipples. She strolled along the poolside right in Danny's sight. His eyes flickered in her direction but then returned to Christie. She reached the bottom step, pushed off into a smooth breast stroke, and headed for the waterfall. Christie stood beneath it, cool water flowing over her head and torso. Soon Danny joined her.

"I was just thinking," she said, "about being in a real waterfall in some tropical paradise."

"Fruity drinks?"

"Yes. With pineapple and an umbrella."

"We never go anywhere," he complained.

Christie sighed, reality intruding again. "Steve doesn't like anything new. You wouldn't believe how much stuff from home he packs with him for his trips."

Danny suggested the hot tub, but coward that she was, she did laps for half an hour, giving Danny nothing to ogle until she exited the pool, showered off the salt water, and settled onto a lounge chair. He joined her moments later.

Now she knew, she thought. Danny had a thing for her. She didn't know if it was normal, abnormal, a phase, or what. She didn't know if she should ignore it, confront him, talk it over. What she did know was that it disturbed her on some deep level she didn't understand. Those hugs and kisses, the looks, were something she craved, but she thought she craved them from an older man. She knew she always had, but now she was beginning to think she might be actually looking forward to the next time he did something inappropriate. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Danny was such a sweet boy, and so in tune with her. They had always talked, always enjoyed doing things together. Their home situation, the two of them versus Steve, had forced them into a union that simply was not an ordinary mother/son bond. She didn't want anything to ever come between them.

"Tired already?" she asked when he plopped down in a chair beside her.

"You should be," he said. "I was beginning to think you'd never come up for air."

"I've swum half an hour every morning since we bought that house, and even before that if we were living in apartments with pools."

"You're certainly fit."

She smiled to herself. Yep, he had a thing. She couldn't help preening a bit, stretching out her long legs and relaxing back into her chair. "I like this swimming at night. I don't have to worry about sunburn."

"I never have to worry about sunburn."

"You burn, it just takes longer. We learned that the hard way when you were very small. I felt like a horrible mother that day. That's why I insist you wear sunscreen, even if you're half black."

"You shouldn't have worried. You're a great mother."

I'm beginning to doubt that, she thought.

"I'm hungry," he said next.

"My role in life: keep the teenager fed. If you died tomorrow, I'd put 'I'm hungry' on your tombstone."

"Uh huh. So..." He grinned. "I'm hungry."

#####

Food, more swimming, a late snack, and eventually they went to their room. Suddenly, the idea of sleeping in the same room with her son, even with separate beds, felt very awkward. She decided not to shower, even though the poolside showers had not washed all the salt from her skin and hair. Taking a robe with her, she changed in the bathroom into her usual night clothes of girlie shorts and a camisole, and wore the robe until seconds before she slipped into bed. She didn't catch Danny's smile at this, but she did notice that he had no qualms about coming out of the bathroom in his t-shirt and boxers. They turned off their lights.

"Night, Mom."

"Night, Danny. Love you."

"Love you," he said sleepily.

Soon Danny breathed softly and regularly. She didn't think she would sleep easily, but all the swimming caught up with her and she soon drifted off.

#####

Christie awoke in the middle of the night from light coming on in the bathroom. Frightened and disoriented, she started up in bed. Hotel, hotel room, she realized. Through the thin wall, she heard the sound of Danny peeing, then the toilet flush and the tap in the sink. And then nothing. Danny didn't come out. After a few minutes she gave in to her first thought: Danny was jerking off in the bathroom.

To her shock, the thought aroused her. She squeezed her legs together and rolled over in the bed. Thoughts of Danny with his hard shaft in his hand filled her head, and her breasts became so sensitive, the fabric of her camisole felt like sandpaper against her erect nipples. She wanted to rip it off her and knead and twist them between her fingers. She rolled over in bed again. Her legs clenched and rubbed together to try relieve her swollen pussy. Finally she held the extra pillow over her head and groaned, keeping it there until she realized she wouldn't hear him if he came out. From the bathroom, Danny moaned, and she could hold back no longer. She thrust her hand into her panties, rubbing her aching clit and pinching her nipple with the other hand. She pictured Danny jerking off and she began to rock her hips, squeezing her pelvis. Danny, his face taut with excitement, his boxers pulled down, his hand working furiously on his cock. She heard another moan, and then Danny groaned loudly and she had to hide her face in the pillow to muffle her cries as she came with her son. Never had she come so quickly.

All was quiet for several minutes, but Christie still breathed heavily when the bathroom door opened and the light flicked off. She kept her face in the pillow and held her breath the best she could. Apparently, it wasn't good enough. Danny paused at the foot of her bed.

"Mom?" he said in the barest whisper. "You awake?"

She made a soft, sleepy sounding groan, wiggled a little and went still. Danny didn't move for several moments, but went to his bed without saying anything further. She heard the squeak of the mattress and then nothing.

Christie had masturbated thinking of her son, and it produced one her best orgasms ever. She felt too relaxed and sated to worry about it much right then. That would come in the morning.

######

At 5:15 a.m., Christie awoke as she always did no matter how little sleep she'd had. Her bathing suit was still damp, but she pulled it on anyway and quickly braided her hair. Before she left for the pool, she paused by her son's bed to watch him sleep for a moment. He had grown very handsome, she thought. He wasn't the standard American idea of male beauty, but she thought him beautiful none the less. His face could almost be Anglo but wasn't quite, his lips a little too full, his cheekbones a little too wide, and his eyes a rich, glossy, dark brown. His body was perfect. Muscled in the right places but not overly so, he had the body of someone several years more mature than eighteen. He filled the bed, sprawled on his stomach with the covers kicked aside. She could look at him much longer, but she wanted to be in the pool at her usual time.

Christie thought swimming laps a perfect way to meditate or work out problems. While she swam her way from one end of the long pool to another, she thought a lot about her porn habit. It was a secret pleasure, and an urge that she still did not understand, although she often figured it arose from her completely unfulfilling marriage bed. She and Steve had regular sex -- frequently, despite sleeping in separate rooms -- but he simply failed to arouse much feeling in her. Oral sex was the exception. She liked to both give and receive it, and Steve was very good at it. Steve liked to go down on her, but he seldom let her have so much control over his own orgasm as to let her suck him off. She would have liked more of that, but Steve was more likely to fuck her face.

Christie needed the emotional connection to raise her libido. That's why she liked Romantic Interludes so much. The website stirred her fantasies. Then there was her taste for men of color. She had always known about that one.

Now, all these factors were coming together in one person: her dark son who was her friend and companion. She had masturbated last night while thinking about him. Christie groaned with her face still under water. She never thought of him that way before, but the genie had popped out of the bottle and she didn't know how to stuff him back in. One thing she did know was that she was headed for trouble.

#####

On March 1, Danny arrived home from basketball practice at his usual 5:00 p.m. He parked his car in the driveway and got out with his basketball in hand. It was still a bit light, and more practice never hurt. Besides, he was dressed for it already.

Danny bounced the ball at the end of the drive a few times before speeding toward the hoop on the garage, dodging imaginary opponents, and performing a perfect lay-up at the hoop. He smiled, then repeated the moves to the opposite end of the drive and circled back again to make another basket. Over and over. It wasn't that he loved basketball so much, but he did love being good, that exhilarating feeling of a perfect performance. He enjoyed games and overcoming a good opponent, but games with a crowd unnerved him. Danny was uncomfortable in large groups of people, preferring to stay out of the center of attention.

On a good practice like this, Danny could forget time entirely, so he was startled to notice how dark it had become when a small floodlight suddenly came on. He heard applause from the side driveway.

"Hey, Mom." She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt from the Maroon V concert they had been to last fall, so she must have been home for a while.

"There's mail for you," Christie said.

"Where from?" He stepped back from the hoop and began to make shots.

"University of Pennsylvania and UCLA."

His next shot missed by a full foot. "Oh." He didn't know whether to feel excitement or dread. "Why don't you read them?" He caught the ball and dribbled back to make another shot.

"Okay." She tore open an envelope while saying, "Word for word or just the gist of it?"

"Just tell me whether I got in or not." Another shot missed. "Damn."

Christie noticed. "Calm down, I'm sure it's good news." She held the first letter up toward the nearest string of lights. "Woo hoo! U Penn accepted."

Danny stopped mid-dribble, clutching the ball to his stomach. "Okay," he said slowly.

"Aren't you excited?" she asked, a big smile on her face. She walked over to where he stood like a statue and hugged him, the ball coming between them.

"Read the other one."

She retrieved the UCLA letter from where it was tucked under her arm, opened it, and also held it up to the light. "Scholarship." He relaxed, suddenly happy. She hugged him again. "This is amazing." Tight squeeze. "I'm so proud of you."

Danny dropped the ball to return Christie's hug, feeling better than he had in two months. He knew his parents could afford to send him anywhere, but with a scholarship to UCLA, Steve would have no excuse to insist that he move out of state to take advantage of a scholarship elsewhere. He could continue to live at home and keep watch over his mother. Danny had made it his mission to prevent more beatings. Following his mom's lead in her dealings with Steve, Danny had been subtle. He stayed up later on Friday and Saturday nights which, being a teenager, wasn't hard for him. He kept his door open more often, and found excuses to leave his room in the middle of the night. He'd begun to build a backlog of little excuses, canceled spring break plans, turned down offers for sleep-overs with friends although he invited friends over as often as possible. Danny intended never to travel anywhere ever again as long as Steve was in the house.