Tim sensed someone was in his apartment and paused in the small hallway that connected his storage room to the main room of the loft he rented.
He listened for a moment before poking his head around the corner and scanning the dark expanse for threats.
The lights were out except for the small lamp over the drafting table near the back wall. A girl was standing with her back to him, her body blocking the light.
"Katie?" he asked.
She turned suddenly, guiltily, and stumbled back into the drafting table she'd been hovering over.
She was still dressed in her uniform so he assumed she must've come straight from campus. She'd cut her hair recently too and now she wore it in a jet-black chin length Bob.
"Tim ... hey," she smiled and stood up straight, "I was looking for you."
"You look very New Wave," he said teasingly.
She twirled a finger through one of the coal-black bangs and smiled sweetly - that only made him more nervous.
"What do you want, Katie?"
He couldn't help but check her out ... He'd seen her in far less clothing before but there was just something kinky about the pleated grey skirts and the tight midriff-hugging cut of the blue vests the college made the girls wear.
"Well," she clasped her hands in front of her and put on her 'Damsel in Distress' look, "I need a little favor from my most favoritist ever, bestest in the world, big brother."
"Can't you get one of your boyfriends to help you?"
She was pale, an almost milk-white, with sexy pouty lips and bright blue eyes. Her full breasts, long thick legs, and wide hips ensured that she was very popular with the boys even if it was only her freshman year.
"I need somebody smart."
"Right," he chuckled, "No one smart would ever date you."
"Of course they would," She turned back to the drafting table and spread a few of the drawings around to separate them. "I just don't let 'em."
"Do you mind not touching those?" Tim asked with a tone that indicated that he did - and therefore that she should.
"Don't you want to know what I need?" she asked, peeking at him over her shoulder.
"I'm assuming it's something related to academics."
She spun and smiled at him again, "See! You are a genius!"
"No," he stated." I won't do your homework and I won't write your papers. Mom's paying your tuition - the least that you can do is your own schoolwork."
"She likes us being together!" she stated in return, "That's why she paid for me to come here."
She leaned back and put her palms on the table behind her. The pose struck him as strangely seductive.
"And since we are here together," the look she gave him struck him as strangely seductive too, "there isn't any reason why you can't help me out ... academically."
He had to look away from her, intimidated by her intensity,
"I got a scholarship, remember? I pay for my school by getting good grades and I pay for this place by selling my work - she pays your tuition and housing out of her fund. I don't have time to help you."
Her smile turned to a frown.
"Are you gay?"
"What?" he stammered.
She looked around at the loft and the small piles of art in various places, the Spartan decor and the pile of pillows and blankets he used for a bed.
"You know you're never gonna get another girlfriend living like this ... it's like you don't want to ever get laid again with this 'Mister Crazy Repressed Gay Artist' shtick you got goin' on here."
"You're never gonna pass chemistry again are you?" he informed her, "And if that's your way of asking me to help you then the answer is definitely no."
She bit her lip to hold back a laugh.
"Okay!" She took a step towards him and held out her arms as if she wanted to hug him. "Let's make up already," she puckered her lips and imitated their mother, "Come give your Mum a kiss!"
"No."
She pouted at him like she always did when she didn't get her way.
"Damn," she reached back and pulled a few of his sketches off of the drafting table. "I didn't want to have to do this but ..." she held up the drawing for him to see.
The charcoal sketch was of their mother in a sensual pose in a window sill.
"That's really good work, Tim," she held up another one. It was a sketch of their mother asleep, one breast exposed, her legs slightly parted.
"Any one would recognize it as Mom." She cocked her head like she expected a response from him. "Does she know about your little Mommy issue?"
Tim looked down in shame and shook his head ... she had him. She'd used blackmail effectively on him when they were children and now that they were in college together, it appeared that she intended on continuing the successful enterprise.
"Bring your books with you next time," he spat.
She held out her arms and puckered her lips in imitation of their mother again.
"Come, come," she smiled cruelly, "Come give us a kiss!"
**************************************
Tim did miss his mother - she was the only family he and Katie knew.
Their father was a mystery to them. She never spoke of him except to say that he'd made sure all of them were taken care of. They'd never met any of the cousins or aunts and uncles she would mention occasionally, and as time passed, he assumed he never would.
She'd raised them herself and he'd always been enamored of her. He'd never outgrown her, not like his friends had outgrown their own mothers. The difference was, to him at least, that his mother wasn't ordinary like their mothers were ... there was too much about her to love.
Her image burned in him.
The only release he could ever fathom was sketching her or sculpting a likeness of her. He particularly liked sculpting her and he wondered if it wasn't a pleasure derived out of some sick need to run his hands over her body.
When he sketched her, he'd spend hours just shading her hair or shaping her breast. He'd linger on the line of her cheeks or the nape of her neck. He especially paid attention to her eyes ... sometimes; he'd press the image of her eyes into the paper with his charcoals so hard that he'd rip it.
Her gaze entranced him - even from the two dimensional prison of the papyrus.
He had hundreds of them ... sometimes he'd do three or four in a night, those times he could sleep decently for a few days afterwards - at least until the tension built up again and new images of her would burst from him in a flurry of creativity.
Lately the sketches had become darker, more sensual.
He wasn't blind to it. There was an obvious subtle shifting of her image as he perceived her. As if the innocent admiration of her beauty and charm so evident in his earliest work was fading and being replaced with some dark sexual obsession.
He was sure it was some sort of mental illness, a form of Oedipus complex most likely. He just didn't know if he wanted any help with it - and that was probably the most damning part of it all.
His sister had seen them now. She knew what they meant to him even if others wouldn't. She would use that to her advantage.
**************************************
They lay on their stomachs on a makeshift bed of pillows in the center of the loft's cold hardwood floor, her books and papers between them, facing each other.
She was eating a long red licorice stick and gazing over his shoulder.
"Well?" he asked.
"X equals negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four times a times c and all divided by two a," she droned and buried her head in her arms.
"That's right," he told her encouragingly, "You understand this stuff. I don't understand why you can't learn it from the professors."
"They aren't as interesting as you are," she said off-handedly, looking up, and appearing distracted by something behind him again.
It struck him that she had just complimented him without realizing it.
"What is that?" she asked pointing the licorice over his shoulder.
He turned around and tried to follow where the licorice was pointing but wasn't able to discern anything in the clutter of the loft to concern him.
He turned back around and came face to face with one of his sketches.
This one was different from the others. It was a relatively innocent picture - his very first - and one of the most precious to him.
She stood in a white summer dress, her arm entwined in the ropes of a plankwood swing suspended from the branch of an Oak tree. She was caught in a beam of sunlight that shone through the dress, outlining the waiflike body beneath. The sketch was dominated by the looming presence of the old gnarled Oak, its branches spread above her in a way that somehow appeared to be both menacing and protecting her at the same time.
"She told you?" Katie asked quietly, lowering the sketch so she could look into his eyes. He almost looked away but managed to hold her gaze - he'd figured out that it was bad luck to show weakness to his sister. "She told you the story about the tree?"
"What tree?" he asked.
She looked at the sketch again for a moment and shrugged, tossing it aside carelessly, making him cringe.
"Never mind," she said.
He glared at her; she smiled sweetly and stuck the licorice back in her mouth.
"So," he said, opening her Calculus book to the relevant chapter, "You understand Quadratic Equations and the basics of Differentials ... you're good for your first semester."
She looked at him strangely for a moment then smiled like she always did just before she vandalized something.
"Will you sketch me like you sketch Mom?" she asked.
He froze and looked up at her again.
"Why?" he managed to ask.
She pulled herself up into a sitting position with her chin on her knees. He had to sit up to keep her from kicking him in the face.
"Listen," she pointed the licorice at him. "You're a really good artist- I mean it. You draw Mom how she really looks," she waved her arms as if trying to summon the words she needed to express her thoughts, "not like a picture ever could ... but you capture 'HER' y'know ... like you draw her ... her essence!"
"Thanks," he said, actually very pleased that she'd been nice to him twice in the same day, even if unintentionally.
"I want you to draw 'ME'."
He rubbed his eyes so she couldn't see his expression.
"I don't think that's a good idea," he said through his fingers.
She pouted the way she always did when she wanted her way.
"You don't want to draw me?" she asked as if offended.
Tim knew the ice was thin. It was the classic 'does this make my butt look fat' sort of trap - only far more dangerous.
"I do draw you," he admitted. "I just don't think ..."
She sprang up and dashed for his piles of artwork on the drafting table. He grabbed at her but the uniform skirt was too short and his hand slipped off of her leg as she ran past him.
He sprung after her and they collided when they reached the table. He slid and smashed her body into the table with his but she ignored the collision to shove away the piles of paper she'd already been through to find his sketches of her.
