My twin sister Rona and I had a pretty good life up until the time our mom ran away with this other woman. She just quit on dad and dad took to drinking pretty heavy. That was just after our eighteen birthday. It was really a shock to all of us but like Rona said, it wasn't really a surprise; dad, though not abusive, just wasn't there for mom in any kind of meaningful way.
About a week after mom was gone dad started hitting the bottle pretty hard; he'd see us and curse at us and yell for no reason, so Rona and I just kept to ourselves and stayed in our rooms. We were scared that something would happen or he'd hit us or something so we just avoided him whenever we could. Pretty much though, by nine o'clock every night he was passed out cold in the living room with the TV going, and that's when we'd come out and make our supper as quietly as possible and then sneak back to our rooms to eat. We were like little squirrels scurrying around but we got used to this new routine pretty fast and things went on like that for a couple of months.
Then dad switched from beer and wine to vodka and things got worse. He was more irritable and belligerent than ever, always going on and mumbling about mom and her "whore lover-woman" and how he'd show them both "what a real man could do" and Rona and me just hid in our rooms till everything would go quiet outside. One night I'd forgotten to get groceries on the way home from class (Rona and I attend a college just down the road from where we live) so I told my sister to stay in her room and lock the door while I went to a Burger King to get some dinner for us. Dad was already in his silent mode watching TV—drinking straight out of the bottle and staring blankly—and I went quickly past him and out the door without saying a thing. But as I headed back after picking up food from the drive-thru, I got this terrible, aching feeling in the pit of my stomach and I knew something awful was happening or about to happen. I blew through a couple of intersections trying to get home as fast as possible and when I finally came in the front door and saw what had happened the bags of food just fell out of my hands.
I recognized my sister's clothes strewn all over the living room floor. Now I'm not the kind of person who would know what kind of panties she'd had on but I saw a pair of them on the floor and recognized the shorts and tee-shirt she'd been wearing when I left. The TV was still on and that was the only light in the room, but from where I was standing behind the couch I could clearly see a bare foot sticking up, silhouetted by the glare of the TV.
Now even though I'm male and Rona's very much female, we're identical in just about every way twins can be. But even if we weren't so much the same I still would've known that the foot sticking up wasn't dad's—it was too pretty.
I moved toward the couch feeling like I was trying to push through a wall of cold molasses but when I finally peered over the edge, though I'd been expecting something horrible, I was still shocked at what I saw.
Dad was laying face-down on the couch snoring and completely unconscious. Normally I would have felt sorry for him but not this time. Pure hatred filled me to the point where it almost overflowed, but from beneath the naked, hairy bulk of our father came the soft, hushed sobs of my sister and that kept my mouth shut. She lay there on her back, one leg up against the back of the couch, the other spread out and hanging off the seat cushion with the motionless mass of dad laying between them. I could only see her legs and an arm so I hurried around to the front of the couch and stared at a sight so pitiful my heart just broke.
Rona was pressed down into the seat cushions by dad's sheer weight, her head turned away from me, weeping disconsolately into her hand. She'd been stripped of all her clothes—even the old pair of socks she wore around the house—but worst of all, her self-respect and dignity had been ripped away. I remembered the times she'd shown me a new dress she'd bought or a new pair of sandals. I remembered picking her up after getting her hair done. I thought of her running and jogging and dieting to keep fit and healthy or telling me how scared she was of going to the dentist for her bi-yearly check up, and now here she was, pressed down and trapped beneath an unconscious, unthinking brute who hadn't seen all those other, happier, sweeter sides of her and had only wanted a fleshy, convenient hole to fuck!
The feeling I'd had back at the drive-thru when I'd sensed something wrong now clutched at my chest. She and I had always shared a certain special wordless connection between us and now I could feel how empty and desolate she felt; how shamed and humiliated and broken—especially by someone you're supposed to trust!
Kneeling at the front of the couch I reached out and touched her shoulder but Rona wept even harder, shaking her head, refusing to even look at me. I sat back on my heels, trying to figure a way to get our 250 pound father (if I could still think of him as that) off of her. She was laying trapped beneath him and though I'm a bit stronger than my sister, dad was just dead weight now and Rona and me are not exactly weight-lifters. I got up and went around picking up Rona's things while I tried to think of a way to get her out of there, took off my jacket to cover her when and if I did and finally came back. It still looked like the only thing I could do would be to try and roll dad off her and hope he didn't wake up.
Reaching over, I grabbed his shoulder and one leg and pulled, and after a little bit got him to tip and slide to the floor. Rona moaned a little as his weight ground over her thigh and knee but then he was down, still snoring, still passed out. I rushed to cover her with my jacket, helped her sit and when she was able, I got her on her feet and guided her out of the living room and down the hall to her room. I helped her get in bed, asked her if she wanted to shower or bathe but she didn't say a word and just shook her head. Then she told me to get out and not bother her anymore, and just hearing her—my own sweet sister—talk to me so coldly and to dismiss me like that was a change that hurt almost more than anything else I'd already experienced. But as I walked out and closed her door, I realized that I could never know hurt like she'd just experienced and just left it at that.
Alone in my room I started thinking of ways to get even. I thought of tying dad up and leaving him there, naked on the living room floor, until he sobered up. I thought of going out there and kicking him in the head so he'd never wake up, but there was another part of me that still really pitied him. Sure it was maybe his fault he was always so busy he never had time for mom but nobody's perfect. He'd provided. He'd never been abusive to her. She'd simply found someone else. I knew it had hurt him to the core but that still didn't give him the right to take it out on my poor sister—his own daughter!
Rona was crying again. The sound came through the wall that separated our rooms and a cloud came down over me once more. I felt heavy, fatigued, tired, sad. All my anger had drained me so I shut my eyes for just a moment to clear my head and think but when I opened them again it was morning. I lay there listening, hoping it had all been a nightmare, but trying to hear if anything was going on. I listened hard—especially for dad's voice—but couldn't hear a thing. I glanced over at the clock, saw it was almost nine and knew that dad, if he was awake at all, would probably be well into another bottle. Getting out of bed quietly I crept to the door to listen, didn't hear anything unusual, opened it and went down the hall. I stopped at Rona's door, listening, wishing again that none of this had ever happened, but didn't hear anything and went on down to the living room.
"Gawd, yer sweet, sweet ass baby!" dad's voice growled and I froze in place. From where I was, just where the hall opened onto the living room, I could see dad's head moving above the back of the couch as he stared at something in front of him. "You got just the silkiest legs—mmm...."
I had to squint because there were no lights on and the room was as dark as it gets at night because of all the curtains being drawn shut. There was a little splash of light where I was, beaming in through the kitchen window, so I held my place, not daring to move or even breathe. Dad hadn't sounded so drunk but I couldn't really tell, and though I doubted he'd be able to recognize me if he saw me, I was still cautious when I stepped out of the light to get a little closer to the couch. I stopped short again and stood there stunned, staring at a repeat of the previous night's outrage, hearing the moist squishing sound dad's cock was making as it forced in and out of my twin's body. My heart rate flew out of control!
Rona was on her knees, bent over against the front of the couch with dad right up behind her, shoving away. She wasn't crying so the only sound was dad's grunts and heavy breathing and the slapping sound of his front against her butt—and that wet, soggy, squishy sound.
I felt like dragging him off her and beating him. I'd probably get my ass bludgeoned but I had to try something! But as I stood there I suddenly felt that comfortable, reassuring empathy with Rona—the sort of link we'd always shared—and though it was only for a second and certainly not the best time to be feeling this way, the familiarity of this growing link put my mind somewhere else. It was almost as if I'd traded places with her for just that one moment and though there was a burning in my groin and a tightness all over my body, I felt at ease; calm, patient; maybe tolerant of what she was being subjected to right then. But we'd always shared this secret empathy with each other and even when things were difficult or scary or confusing, simply touching each other in this silent, private way had always helped whichever of us was in trouble at the time. Staring at my sister in all her natural beauty—her pretty butt and silky legs that dad had so eloquently mentioned—I felt some of the things she was feeling right then and wished somehow I could really and truly take her place.