Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.
*****
Cole jolted awake.
He recognized the bedroom almost at once. White walls. Dimmed lights. Grey curtains too thin to keep out the bright rays of the afternoon sun.
He tried to sit up, then froze once he felt the fluffy handcuffs dig into his wrists. He looked back and found himself chained to the bedposts. He widened his eyes, surveying the room.
The bed on which he lay was large, the sheets silk and purple in color. A slim nightstand of oak stood by the edge, stuffed with a mountain of empty Pepsi cans behind a single framed photo depicting a voluptuous brunette hugging a willowy blonde in front of a canyon.
His sister, her blonde hair tied in a bun, was smiling in the picture. His mother, her brown hair cascading freely all the way down to the small of her back, was smirking. He remembered that day like it was yesterday; he had been the one who snapped the picture.
He kept sweeping the room. Several pairs of high heels stood in a neat row in the corner. A large plant towered behind them, its mint-green leaves so thick they didn't look real. Across the room was a black wardrobe. Its doors were open, revealing countless colorful dresses and a variety of shirts and jeans. By its side stood a drying rack, laden with beige jodhpurs and an elegant black jacket adorned with silver buttons on its front. Beneath the rack, placed on a wrinkled newspaper, stood a pair of riding boots spattered in dirt and mud.
He looked to the bathroom. The door was shut. He looked to the door leading into the hallway. That had been left slightly open, and bright light was pouring through the gap. For a moment, he contemplated calling out, then thought better of it. He tested his handcuffs, one at a time, and swore under his breath when he discovered that they were locked.
The sound of footsteps stemming from the hallway caught his attention. Someone was ascending the staircase. Cole flinched, only now grasping the fact that - with the exception of his underwear, a pair of black boxers that almost reached his knees - he was naked.
"I went to bed," he mumbled to himself. "I had a headache and I went to sleep it off-"
The door slid open with a high-pitched creak and a voluptuous brunette appeared in the doorway, clasping a glass of wine in her left hand and a bottle in her right. It was...
"Mom?" He narrowed his eyes. "Mom, what the hell? What is this? What are you-"
She shushed him, ambling into the room with a sway to her hips. She wore a pair of white pajama pants embellished with circles of blue and a grey pajama top on whose front was sewn the head of an adorable unicorn with a white coat and a pink horn. A lock of brown hair had fallen on her face, obscuring her eye, and she blew it out of the way before she went to close the door, missing the handle twice. The back of her pajama top was grey with the exception of four pink letters: Anna. It had been a birthday present from her daughter.
Anna turned around to face him, stared at him for a moment, hiccuped, and started in his direction. She was by the foot of the bed in five unsteady strides, and Cole noted that the wine bottle had been emptied of half its contents. Placing the bottle on the floor, she took a seat by his feet, flattening her rump across the mattress. And hiccuped again.
"Mom," began Cole, after a while. "W- What is this? W- Why am I in your room?"
"I work forty hours a week," she replied, slurring her words. She fixated her eyes on the window where the thin grey curtains were fluttering gently and swirled her wine.
"For eight hours a day, five days a week, I sit down at my computer to fix and clean sentences so horrible they appear to have been written by some fifth grader. And do you know why?"
Cole felt his heart drop into the depths of his belly. His hands started to tremble.
"Because you, my twenty-year-old son, does not have a job. Because your sister, my eighteen-year-old daughter, comes home and cries after college because she cannot afford to get her license. I slave away, day after day, so I can give both of you tremendous amounts of money. Which is fine, I suppose. After all, I am your mother."
"U- Unlock my handcuffs, mom. Y- You're drunk. Y- You don't know what you're-"
"Oh, I wasn't drunk when I slipped you the pills. What? Oh, don't look at me like that. They were only sleeping pills, sweetie; I take them all the time. It's not as if I drugged you."
The scent of her perfume was beginning to fill the room. It was a feminine fragrance, soft and sweet and full with a touch of what could only be described as chemicals.
"I forgot my tea downstairs... I ran back down to get it... And you drugged it?!"
"I was planning to put them in your dinner but apparently I had forgotten that you don't eat beans. You know, the beans I bought and cooked to put food on the table for you."
She patted her tummy. "Oh, well. I guess I should be glad I got to eat both plates."
Cole swallowed. "Is this a joke? Did you and Sarah... Saaaraaah! Come out!"
"Your sister," said Anna, sipping her wine, "is out. And she won't be back for some time. She has a college paper, you see, and decided to spend the evening at the library. At least that is what she told me. She apparently thinks I forgot how it was like to be eighteen-years-old and lie to my parents so that I could go drinking with my friends on late Thursday nights."
"You're lying," he said, rattling the fluffy handcuffs. "This is a joke. And it's not funny."
She downed the rest of the glass, hiccuped, leaned for the bottle, and again filled her glass to the brim. Despite the looseness of her pajama top, her ample bust still filled out the grey shirt, and as she turned toward him, he glimpsed the outline of her perky nipples.
"Let's play a game," she said, after a while. Standing up, she sashayed over to the nightstand, drank another mouthful of wine, balanced the glass on the mountain of Pepsi cans, and opened a drawer. Out came a handheld mirror, attached to the back of a pink hairbrush. She sat back down and held the mirror in front of his face. "What do you see?"
He squinted at her. "I'm not playing this game. Get these handcuffs off me-"
Her eyes flashed menacingly. "Tell me what you see."
He huffed and stared at the glass. And saw brown hair and blue eyes. A small chin and a prominent jawline which clenched in a way that filled him with confidence whenever he ground his teeth. Thin eyebrows, angled slightly downward, and a faint scar that ran from the tip of his ear all the way to his buttony nose. He saw himself. And didn't understand why.
"Tell me what you see. I will not ask you again."
