Mum called out, "Your sister'll be round shortly, she wants to use my sewing machine to adjust a dress for a ball that they're going to, so please try and be nice to her for once."
"Fucking wonderful," I muttered to myself.
"I heard that David." She hadn't of course, but knew that I'd say something along those lines. My sister was only two years older than I, but she and I weren't close any more, and hadn't been for some years now.
"Bye love," my mother called through the kitchen window, she was laughing as she spoke. "Bye Ma," I called back as she walked towards the car. I heard my Dad say something, then Mum relayed it, "Your Dad says goodbye."
"Bye," I yelled, hopefully loud enough for him to hear. Seconds later they drove away to his mothers' house for the weekend, leaving me in peace. Mostly I was required to go with them to Grandmas' whenever they went, but this time I seemed to have dodged the bullet.
Almost instantly they were out of my mind, and I went back to sharpening my new hunting knife. When I say new, it wasn't new, new, it was my Dad's old knife but was still a good one, a Diamond Blade Pinnacle Skinner. I'd lost mine on a hunting trip last week, it'd been just an inexpensive starter knife, the brand of which I'd long ago forgotten as the badges had fallen off. I thought that I must've dropped it on the trail somewhere, but didn't realise it'd gone missing until we'd got home. After I'd pulled everything apart and there was still no trace of it, Dad then reached into his bag and gave me his.
I choked with emotion as I knew how long he'd had it, and it'd been a present from his Dad. When I hugged him, and said thanks, he shrugged and said, "I just want an excuse to buy a new one, what you need to know about the Pinnacle is that once you get it sharp, it stays sharp for ages, but once it loses its edge, it takes a lot of work to get it back, and as that one's pretty blunt, you'll have some work to do on it."
I didn't care, I'd decided to try to save the money to buy my own, but as they go for around $400 progress was very slow. They're handmade and the very best that you can get, but $400 takes a bit of saving at my age. So, since he'd given it to me, I'd spent almost every spare moment using a stone to bring up the edge, and if I was to be honest, it was as sharp as it would ever get, but still I worked on it.
Just this morning I'd cut a sheet of paper that I'd held up in the air, and then shaved some hair from my forearm, but still I needed to give it one last rub. I was so engrossed in my knife that I failed to hear a car pull into the drive, and only realised it when my sister Carol walked in from the patio.
"Dork," her normal greeting to me.
"Bitch," I spat back, again normal, I'd forgotten that she was coming, and would have hoped to have been left in my own space.
She and I weren't close now, but had been earlier, when due to financial circumstances we'd shared a bed, top 'n tail, until she was about ten, and I was eight or so, when our parents decided it would be better if I had my own mattress. It was on the floor of the same room, and nothing at all changed for a while, the mattress was just ignored. Then something happened which caused Carol to make the decision that I should now use it, I worked out later that she was, 'a woman,' now. It wasn't long after that, that we were able to move into a bigger house and I'd got my own bedroom, I was pleased about that, but did miss crawling into bed with her, I guess I got over it ok though.
As we'd got older Carol could always get me to do what she wanted, mostly because even though I'd nothing much that she wanted from me. She had something that I was vitally interested in...tits, which by the time she'd got to be eighteen were large and very firm. She'd let me play with them from time to time, but only when she said so, which was of course only when she wanted something from me.
Most of my mates thought that I was crazy because I'd washed her car almost every week. One time I washed it before she'd even asked me to, hoping to obligate her into letting me play with them, but of course she'd said no as I'd already washed it, and now I'd got nothing to bargain with her over.
There's a lesson somewhere in that for all of us.
We hadn't seen a lot of Carol for the last couple of years after she'd married Eric. I'd tried to hate him, especially when I thought about him having exclusive access to her body, but as he really was a good guy and went out of his way to become a part of our family, it was hard not to like him.
Carol'd changed a lot after she'd got married, she'd always been a know all bitch but now she was even worse. She never missing an opportunity to give me the benefit of her knowledge on just about every subject up for discussion, and to be frank I was getting a bit sick of it all, especially as now that she was married, her tits were totally of limits. Just sometimes all that I wanted to do was punch her in the mouth, and that's why I wasn't too pleased to see her today.
"What brings you here anyway, you're a long way from home, bitch?"
"I want to try on Mums' red evening gown, we're going to a ball in two weeks, and if it fits ok it'll save me buying one, or adjusting an old one of mine. I hope that you're not still wearing Mums' clothes when you're here alone, because if you are it'll have stretched, and be too big for me." I clenched my teeth with anger as I recalled the night that she'd come home early and caught me wearing one of Mums' skirts and a blouse, luckily Carol didn't find out that I was wearing her underwear.
Carol was such a total bitch, and as this was of course was right up her alley, she'd used it to get me to do all sorts of stuff for her, just to ensure that nothing was said about it to anyone.
This went on for months and months, making my life a total misery. Eventually however, I grew some balls and told her go and get stuffed, and that if she said anything I'd deny it, and that I'd already made something up about her to tell them. She'd had a good run out of it, and it took a while for her to realise that the fun times had ended, but eventually she had to let it go and never mentioned it much after that. It was only on the odd occasion when she wanted to wind me up that she started on it, and when she did, I got embarrassed and then angry, and now I was embarrassed and starting to get very angry.
I just so wanted to punch her in the mouth right now. "Fuck you." I was really pissed.
"Wouldn't you like to?" She stood in front of me, legs apart, tits thrust out towards me. I said nothing, just sitting there realising all over again why I hated her so.