Note: 18,000 words. Veers more fetish than the normal vanilla sex beats. Thought I'd play around with telling a melodrama through sex rather than using it as the reward at the end.
I lean my ear against my sister's bedroom door—not necessary---because right then, one of the girls inside shrieks!
"Christ! You're such a basic bitch, Sophie!"
"Don't say that! Just because my music's not all that avant-garde beeping and booping and, and rumbly fart noises."
"You are sooo immature. It's called a
synthesizer,
Sopie, not that weird."
"Dude, compared to what? I mean, Taylor Swift won album of the year
three times!!
What's, you know—"
"Austra."
"—yeah, that person, what've they ever done? Compared to Taylor-freakin'-Swift,
three
time winner! And, seriously, all those people couldn't have been wrong."
"All what people? Who are you talking about?"
"You know, the awards people."
Curiously, I don't hear my sister's voice among the mix. But I do have all my gear wrapped up in my arms: Dinosaur sleeping bag—T-Rexes,
obviously
—, Cooling Sensations memory foam pillow, and most importantly, my XXL adult onesie folded up on top—Spongebob themed because my sister's a dick, kind of a gag Christmas gift but one with real sentimentality behind it, or at least, it came with a promise, and that's the part that really meant something to me.
And despite holding all my gear and having a legit invitation, I just
cannot
seem to work up the testicular fortitude to knock on the door to join the party. It's weird, wearing a onesie and going to a slumber party especially as a high school senior, isn't it? I mull that over.
Out here in the empty hall, the grandfather clock ticks in a dark corner; a lone nightlight bleeds out of the bathroom door; a cheap Mack Brown portrait smiles at me; a floorboard creaks; a puff of moist air tickles my earlobe. There's a whisper
"Creeper."
I gasp.
Shivers!
My heart stalls.
Fight or flight!
Lizard brain picks "C" none of the above, and my spine just freezes absolutely shock still. My mouth creaks open and eeks. I realize right then that my body has utterly failed basic evolution.
Fight or Flight
—Nah!
Freeze.
"Oh shit, shit, sorry," I hear my sister say, but it's really hard to believe an apology when she's muffling her giggles through it.
I'm shaking, like seriously got my fingernails dug into my pillow like it's going to be my shield, clenching my onesie as my sword. And I--I pinch my legs together, covertly feeling around my crotch with my thighs.
Phew.
Hadn't drank any large jugs of Gatorade, so no spills.
A total overreaction, I know.
Ah, yup, shoot. Here it comes.
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip.
The hyperventilations. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. So pathetic. I try to swallow them. That just makes it worse.
The A/C blasts white noise through the vents. The air wafts down, and a small cold wet patch prickles my groin. Aw, crap. Guess there was a minor spill.
Beside me, I hear some plastic ruffling and a clatter on the floor. My sister, Brooke, has just set her platter of Bagel Bites and bags of Lindor chocolates on the ground. Her fingers wrap around my shoulders. She has to crane her neck up at me. Even being the tall, lithe, former track-star she is, the top of her head doesn't even reach my nose—me, the six-four brute of a tight end she has for a brother.
Her body is so slender in comparison, so breakable. Her fingers can't even clasp halfway around my shoulders as she spins my body to face her, and yet, "Mason, Mason." She snaps her fingers in my face.
I can feel my eyes spread as wide as saucers as my neck creaks down toward her. Stop that! Hic. Hic. Hic. At least the hyperventilating has stopped. Now, for the hiccups, curing them just requires a good scare—oh, wait. Duh.
"Shit. I'm so sorry." This time, her voice is genuine. "I thought that had gotten better? I thought—" She shook her head. "—no, I didn't think." Brooke glances down the hall. "Is it a big one? Do I need to wake Dad?"
My mouth is dry and tastes like a hot fart. I part my lips and manage to gasp, "N-no. I-It's small. Jus-Just a minute." It really is a small episode.
She places two fingers on the side of my neck, monitoring my pulse, and reaches around with her other hand and scratches my hair, deep long strokes just above a tickle. Those big brown eyes of hers flutter their lashes, maybe flicking away some dust, and she just stares up at me. Her irises are so dark they may as well have been an extension of her pupils, a void to hide away in.
My sis, strong and nurturing. And me, well, I'm just the hulking regressive baby that she has to deal with.
Lost in my irrational panic, time slips away. By the time the steam has quit rising from her Bagel Bites on the floor, I feel the cogs in my brain begin to turn again as the halfwit-hamster spinning their wheels wakes back up. It was just a minor episode. Back to having some strands of guile, I twist my body to hide the damp spot on my shorts. Brooke's already seen it. It's just a flick of her eyes, but I can tell she already knew.
I squeeze my slumber-party gear to my chest like a pathetic cunt and mumble, "I gotta get up early for stuff so I think I'm gonna head off to—"
"Mason, no!" She's way too loud. She knows it, too.
The chitter-chatter behind the door immediately halts. The door knob clanks as someone rattles it from the other side, but before the girls in Sister's room can open the door out into the hall, Brooke herself grabs the door handle and opens it just enough to slip her head into the room.
"What's going on?" One of the girls inside, probably Blair, asks.
My sister smooths it over. I hear her telling them "it's nothing, nothing. It's fine...I just....seriously, Mason just had a bit of a scare...no, we'd rather you not...no, please...hey, you know, I got Bagel Bites and chocolate...yes, the gooey truffle ones..."
While she's preoccupied, I shuffle past her and slip back to my room. She peeks her head out into the hall, see's me slinking away and holds up a finger. She tells her friends, "just one sec."
And she tries to say something to me as well, but I cut her off with a hard smile and say, "G'night, sis." I slip into my bedroom and close the door behind me. My fingers linger over the lock, but in the end I decide against it.
Childish, I know.
It takes all of thirty seconds for me to hear the floorboards in the hall creak. Through the crack under the door, I see a pair of lingering shadow toes. The doorknob rattles. It turns. The door opens, and quick as a bolt, Brooke pops into my room. She closes the door behind her slowly, twisting the knob so that it doesn't clank against the latch.
She hesitates over the lock, but in the end, same as me, she decides to leave the door unlocked. Then Brooke turns around to face me, and really, I'm just standing in the middle of the floor like a big piss stained doofus. It dawns on me right then that she's wearing a set of bright yellow pajamas. Not a onesie like mine, but a two piece with separate tops and bottoms. Hers are dotted with brownish spots. There's a pair of shorts, a white shirt, and a red tie painted on. Ha. She's Spongebob.
Brooke puffs her chest out; I even see her perch up on her tippy toes, like she's trying to appear my physical equal.
Trying
is the key word here because while she's wearing Spongebob pajamas, her dominance just comes off as absurd. As if to seal my judgment, Brooke trips and stumbles sideways on...nothing?
Brooke holds up her hands.
I'm alright. I'm alright.
She puts her hands on her hips, sizes me up and down. Then sis grunts and says something incomprehensibly stupid, "You've grown."
I'm flabbergasted. My face must have twisted something fierce because she waves her hands, and opens her mouth to speak, perhaps to smooth over her dumb words, but in the end, she just ends up puffing out laughing. "Sorry, sorry."
"Brooke, it—" This is really hard to say. "—I'm happy you're here for a visit, but really, I gotta get to bed and—"
She points to the slumber party gear that I'm holding. "Really? Like, if you don't want to see me or hang out—" She nods toward the door. "—I can, you know, just go."
I swear it, these words just fumble out before I can think: "Brooke, I don't want to see you or hang out, tonight."
I'd be stunned that I spoke them, but
Holy Hell
was that cathartic!
Her head jerks back. She gapes at the air. "Is that about earlier or...? Because, seriously, I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking. I mean, it'd been so long since you had an episode and..." She rambles on and on. With my wits about me, I can smell the stink of booze on her breath even from five paces away. She wobbles in place during her half-assed apology. It's annoying.
Noticing that she isn't getting through to me, she hops over to the bed, plops her butt down, and sits on the edge. She pats the top of her thighs and holds out her arms. I know what she means:
Sit,