Invaluable thanks to Stephanie, my editor, my muse... and so much more.
Thunder outside, and a flash briefly illuminated the dark room. I blinked, trying to chase the lingering afterimage. I was very still, and yet I could feel the bed clothes sticking to my sweaty skin. The AC had been on and off during the past hour, sputtering against the heat while there was some power. Now, the whole room was only lit by the tiny emergency light above the door, everything basking in a weird, greenish glow, and the diffuse light from the neon signs outside the window. I turned my head to the side where Mom was lying. She was breathing hard, the air heavy around us, but then again that might have been the alcohol too. She had raided the mini-bar, and the few solid items it contained had been no match for the liquid fuel we had shared. To be honest, I wasn't feeling too spiffy myself. I was dead tired, and it was dark outside, but I couldn't find sleep. I checked the clock by the side of the bed - close to midnight. I sighed, and Mom chuckled. "Can't sleep either, hm?" I shook my head, then realizing she certainly couldn't see me, I mumbled an approximate "nah" that was closer to a grunt.
It had been a long day, and a strange one at that. After all, Seoul was supposed to be a simple connection on our trip to visit Mom's sister who was living in South-East Asia, just in time to celebrate my 25th birthday. But after a rather enjoyable flight, things started to get bad, and everything went downhill from there. First, the area we had to transit through was under considerable repair, leading to what is best described as a pedestrian traffic jam, and we got to our boarding gate only a bare five minutes after it had closed. Funnily enough, our luggage had made the flight, and was on its way to our final destination. "But don't worry," we were told, "you'll be off on the next flight that leaves in five hours." So we waited, biding our time. Eventually we started noticing that there were a lot of "delayed" notices on the screens listing departure times, and we were finally informed that there was a typhoon warning. Due to that, all the flights were going to be grounded until further notice. Some brilliant negotiating on Mom's part had managed to get us a room in a nearby hotel (which was better than staying in the airport itself), on the promise we wouldn't leave the room so that they'd knew where to reach us at all time. So that's how we had ended up in this tiny room with a single double bed in the middle of a tropical storm. We had no change of clothes except what we had on ourselves, and no food except what was in the minibar (there was a vending machine in the hallway, but it took only Korean cash and local credit cards, and therefore was of no use for us). We were awfully jetlagged. "What could possibly go wrong now?" I thought. And that's when the power started going out.
The hotel was clean and totally lacking in personality, but it was quiet and allowed us to finally relax a little. We had taken turns in the small bathroom, enjoying a long shower and washing away some of the tiredness from the trip. It had been stuffy and hot in the tiny room when I stepped out, and I had considered my clothes for a moment, not really feeling ready to put them back on now that I was feeling clean again. Following Mom's suggestion, we had chosen to stick to the minimum and only put back on our underwear to achieve a modicum of modesty. Mom had joked that we would just have to remember to dress up should someone come knocking on the door, but that little bubble of fun had quickly faded away, along with the fresh feeling the shower had provided. We had eaten what little there was in the minibar, had drunk part of what was on offer (and any more would have been unreasonable), and we were both lying in the dark, waiting for time to pass.
To be honest, it wasn't that dark in the room. There was the faint light coming from the emergency sign that gave everything a spooky, greenish glow, and through the windows, there were the neon signs, illuminating the Korean night. I refilled our glasses with lukewarm water out of the repurposed boiler. I turned to the other side of the bed.
"Hey Mom, here's some water."
She sat up, her spaghetti strap tank top straining to contain her heavy breasts, and turned towards me. "Thanks, baby - I definitely need it. I think I shouldn't have drunk that little bottle of vodka..."
I chuckled.
"You should have told me to stop, Chris. Really."
"But I did, Mom."
"Did you, really?"
"Hm-hm."
"Damn, I can get carried away at times."
"Why, are you feeling sick now?"
"No, it's not that. I'm feeling... definitely tipsy, and weird, and..."
"That might be the jetlag too."
"You think so?"
"Yeah. Remember that trip I did during my last year at the U? We had only eight hours of time difference, and yet I felt shitty the first two days or so."
"Wait, you mean this is going to last for two days?"
I smiled. "Maybe more."
She cringed, and shook her head. "Not sure I can stand it that long."
"I'm sure it won't be so bad once we get out of this room."
"I know, I'm so bored and tired... what time is it again?"
"Nearly midnight."
"Damn. And it's still that hot," she said, putting the glass down on the little table on her side.
"Tell me about it. I'm tempted to take another shower."
"What prevents you from doing so?"
I waved at the darkness around us. "There's no light in there. I'd have to leave the door open."
Mom giggled. "How would that be a problem? As you said, it's not like I can see you in there. There's nothing to be worried about. And now that you've got me thinking about it, yeah, I'm going to take one too. Wanna go first?"
"No, please, go ahead," I said, a bit sheepishly. My cock was unexplainably hard, and I didn't want her to notice. By experience, I have found that time difference is okay when it's under seven hours. Anything above means being completely out of sync - feeling sleepy in the middle of the day, crashing to bed early at night and being wide awake two hours later... and having some strange urges at weird times, be it a sudden bout of hunger or a raging hard-on. Which was the case for me at that very moment.
Mom stood up and started towards the bathroom door when there was a loud noise coming from outside. She moved to the window, and I quickly joined her. On the roof of the building across the street, a large billboard was flapping in the wind, with only one remaining steel post holding it in place. And then, right before our eyes, that steel post broke and the billboard was blown crashing away. "Did... did you see that?" I asked, stunned by the violence of the storm. I guess we hadn't really come to grasp what a "typhoon warning" meant, and the sheer reality of it had just been demonstrated to us. Mom moved closer to me, and I protectively wrapped my arm across her shoulder. She huddled against me, as we were trying to look down at the damage the storm had done in the street below. The contact of her skin against mine - her bare shoulder, her hip, her thigh - suddenly rendered the situation quite awkward for me. I moved away, probably a little quicker than I intended, and she looked at me, worried.
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah, it's just..." I hesitated, looking for an excuse, and explained: "you know, a little sticky with sweat, and..."
She smiled, and said: "Yes, and we had been discussing showers just before. Okay, let me go first, I'll try and be quick." I rolled my eyes, knowing that was so rarely the case, and she caught it. "I promise, this time."