.:
DISCLAIMER(S)
: Sexually active character in this story are 18 or older. Counseling interventions shown here are fictionalized. Drug-use features prominently. If drug-use clashes with your values or beliefs, then you have been respectfully warned. Thank you for understanding. Everyone still reading: fuck yes, and enjoy. :.
Chapter 1
During cross country season, Bryce and I ran.
Here's how practices went. First, our whole team did a little jog around the track. Then, we broke into pairs and stretched. Afterward, the team just kind of discombobulated, either regathering into a big, militant band of dorks or, like Bryce and I, fracturing into little triads and dyads.
Coach never expected us to stay at the track, or even on campus. So, after Bryce and I would depart, we'd run one giant loop around a big, open, walking park a couple blocks away, and then weave the long way home through the neighborhood. Our suburb was vast and old and private. There were massive lawns with giant trees and deep hedges through which we'd learned to trespass sight unseen.
We were also adorable, I might add. We matched in our regulation running outfits. This isn't terribly important to the story, reader, but if you had seen it you'd have remarked on it, too.
Cross country was the most extroverted thing I let myself do. It was also the only sport Mom
let
me do, I guess because it kept me from killing myself; but likely also because Bryce was interested in it (running kept him in shape during other sports' off-seasons). Bryce could do whatever he wanted; I could do cross country. Anything else might have cut into my therapy work. And God forbid I ever
stopped
being a twice-weekly victim of sexual and emotional abuse under Mom's watch.
Even cutting through yards, the properties were vast enough and the route we carved meandering enough that it would take us a little over an hour to get home. Whenever we finally got through the door, we were tired, we were smelly, and we were murderously thirsty.
So, when one day we came home to a cold dewy pitcher of lemonade on the counter, what else could we do? Granted, it was painfully sour. Our bodies needed water, not lemon juice. But if our bodies didn't want it, they didn't say complain. I finished my last glass before Bryce finished his. I watched him gulp his down. After that, he belched. I belched. The lemony gas was artificially sweet, cold, lovely.
Our younger sister Lily was sipping her own glass at the kitchen table. She peered over her shoulder at us and watched us congratulate ourselves on our burps. She made sure we saw that she was revolted.
Then Bryce and I proceeded wordlessly, on autopilot, up to our room. We kicked off our suffocating, grass-stained shoes and undressed over the AC vent beside our laundry hamper. Bryce's sweat-damp, smelly, naked body was looking better than mine. I idly noticed that we had developed matching farmer's tans. And if you want me to tell you about his dick, well, it looked like my brother's dick. Shaved, veiny, sweaty, red, whatever. The state of the man's dick directly after a run was nothing to ogle, folks. It needed a shower.
And it got one. I sat on the toilet dreading my impending therapy session while Bryce took his shower, then he sat on the toilet texting his girlfriend while I took mine. We toweled ourselves off, combed our hair, scrutinized our faces for pimples, all without saying much of anything. Then we hung up our towels and walked naked back into our bedroom.
A startled sound just outside our gaping bedroom door scared the fucking bejeezus out of me. Our intruder scurried away, out of sight, into the hallway. Bryce laughed.
"Maybe knock next time," he chortled. My twin sauntered across our bedroom carpet to the dresser and hopped into some briefs. He threw me a pair, too. Once we'd both safely stowed our junk, he went back to the open door and leaned out. "Hey Sis. You going to be okay?"
Lily stayed out in the hallway, so I couldn't tell how she answered.
Oh
right
, shit. Let me explain. Our little sister Lily had had selective mutism since she was a kid. Do you know what that is? It's kind of what it sounds like. She was, for all intents and purposes, mute. No talking, not ever. But with one exception: Mom. Carefully, quietly, and
only
with Mom. And of course, Mom never told us what she said. Classic Mom.
I hadn't heard my little sister's voice, her actual (non-coughing, non-yawning, non-sneezing) voice, since she was my
little
sister. Let's see: just last week she turned 18, so I guess that made it—holy shit—a
decade
?
Wild
. I couldn't even remember how she used to sound, much less imagine how she might sound today. I could only sort of remember how the timbre of it used to make me
feel
: annoyed, self-centered, protective. Does that make sense?
Anyhow, you got used to Lily's schtick. She still managed to say a lot. Her face and hands and body spoke for her.
Bryce stepped back into the room and welcomed her to follow. Lily entered the doorframe but came no further. Bryce stood aside as if to make way, but she leaned against the jamb and gazed coolly across the threshold at him. He towered over her, seemingly savoring being her mostly naked rakishly good-looking brother, daring her to be grossed out. Barefoot and all of five feet, she looked like a particularly little sister today. And for some reason, she had changed clothes.
She was wearing a new summer dress. It was lilac and simple and cute. It stretched across her modest chest, hung loose on her shoulders, and flared to just above her knee.
The next observation was one I made very privately and discreetly. Backlit by the sunny hallway, Lily's dress was slightly see-through; and so, leaned to one side with her legs apart and crossed at the ankle, it was possible to make out the entire slender shape of our sister's bottom half. Spunky butt, lean legs, glowing thigh gap. A couple of pendant necklaces of different lengths hung between her clavicles and just above her cleavage. These she fiddled with.
Odd, I know, to notice all this. But I guess we were all teens. Boobs and butts and stuff, you know. My hormone addled gaze didn't always mind, I guess, whose body it happened to be appreciating.
Lily pointed downstairs, then to her wrist, and then at the three of us.
Time for our session with Mom
, she meant.
I sighed the sigh I always sighed. I scrounged in the closet for a decent outfit. Mom required that her clients dress "smart casual." I had to look put-together. I threw on some good snug pants and a button-down shirt. I checked my hair in the closet mirror. And then at
last
I processed the baffling, unprecedented,
incomprehensible
thing my sister had just gesticulated to Bryce and me.
Time for:
our
session? "Our"
who
?
I glanced at Bryce. Bryce peered down at Lily. Lily stared up at Bryce. Bryce looked back at me. Lily rolled her eyes at the both of us, and shrugged off toward Mom's office. As she started to leave, she gave Bryce's mostly naked body one last judgmental look.
Maybe put some clothes on first
.
Our sister left us stupefied. We gaped at the empty doorway. I know what I was thinking, but I have no idea what Bryce was thinking. She had disrupted our twin-sync. We could hear her bare feet padding down the hardwood stairs, and across the tiled foyer. They sounded nice.
Shit, was I thinking about my sister's body again? Just because her feet were dainty and cute, and just because she was kind of fastidious about cleanliness, so what? Sister's feet, schmister's feet. They were just feet. Sexy, bare, slightly sweaty feet that sort of smooched the tile as they stepped.
Bryce adjusted his junk in his underwear. Twin-sync reestablished.
But okay wait. We were all three going to counseling together. This was an incalculable predicament for me. Mom's mistreatment of me was either (a) a secret, or it was (b) not. Right? We had all somehow acclimated to living around it. Nothing ever,
ever
, was said by any family member about my twice weekly sessions with Mom, except to perhaps acknowledge that these sessions did in fact occur, and then only if it was
directly
relevant to the conversation at hand. Even then, such potentially dangerously related conversations everyone determinedly avoided. But so, it was an open secret. Right? Wasn't it?
So now today, all of a sudden,
right now
, I was going to enter a therapy session with Mom
and
my siblings. Secret or not, this was definitely fucking with the usual boundaries. What could this
mean
? What could Mom possibly be
plotting
? Surely she was not about to administer a harmless,
rape-free
therapy session? I could scarcely dare to imagine it.
Likelier, I figured, was that Mom had decided the time had come at last to rape me in
front
of Lily and Bryce, and to do away with all the pussyfooting and subterfuge. I sighed at the sheer plausibility. I'd had the nightmare who knows how many times: Here, brother, here sister, watch Mommy desecrate me for your viewing pleasure. You always knew it was happening. No, no, don't try to help. That will just make it worse.
One question had tortured me eternally: why had Mom chosen
me
as her sole victim? Bryce was the studlier twin, his charisma so much more
attractive
. Surely she could have gotten into his head just as she had mine, broken him down, gotten under his skin, etc. He was dumber than me, more gullible, and so offered an easier challenge. Surely Bryce would have been the logical child to start with?
Or if my
intelligence
was what drew her to me, then why did she pass over Lily? Her baby girl was positively
cunning
. She had gone ten years without speaking and still had straight A's. Plus, I mean, imagine a rape victim that doesn't
talk
! What a bonus! Was Mom simply not into girls? I could hardly believe that a monster like Mom even had sexual preferences. And my brain straight-up refused to compute that she sexually
preferred
me.
Yet there it was. Mom had raped me, and only me, twice a week, every week, for months on end. I could not comprehend it. In fact, shit, maybe that
was
the reason? That I was uncomprehending?
But then a crazy idea floated into my imagination, and my heart thrummed: what if,
actually
, she had decided to rape
all three
of us today?
Please forgive me if this thought not only failed to disturb me, but filled me with clandestine hope. Not that I wanted to see my brother or sister subjected to the cruel perversions of our mother. But I badly, miserably wished to stop being so alone with Mom.
Chapter 2
