Chapter 1

“This is Kanye,” Walter Mattingly announced. “We’ll be asking for you to take him on for ninety days, as usual.”

“Hello.” The black teen stuck out his hand, smiling. Lucille noticed that he wasn’t holding her eyes, though -- in fact...

“Kanye was accidentally blinded at age six,” Walter explained.

Lucille caught up and moved her hand to accept the one waving a bit in front of her. “My name is Lucille.”

‘Small. Soft.’ Lucille’s hand was smaller than the blob in front of Kanye led him to expect. Kanye couldn’t see much -- more a case of discerning light and dark. She was short, too, he decided. Probably fat. Well, who cared? “Pleased to meet you.” He shook the hand, gently, smiling.

‘He’s black. Stupid people will make comments.’ But then, Lucille’s usual clients excited comments, too -- the ones with Down’s Syndrome and other disabilities. That Kanye’s issue wasn’t immediately visible would be a somewhat refreshing change of pace...

Lucille was forty-one. Married at eighteen, and divorced at thirty, her sexual awakening didn’t really occur until those desperate times when she tried to stave off divorce by being pliant and cooperative, despite the two children she’d had with her ex, Roger. And that, well, hadn’t lasted. Lucille had given up fairly quickly after the divorce -- barflies just weren’t going to cut it. She threw herself into child raising -- but the kids were gone, so three years back, she’d volunteered at an agency that gave temporary assistance to the disadvantaged -- or retarded, or whatever the current socially acceptable term was. It allowed her to give of herself and gave her something to do besides staring at the walls. The agency placed young adults with her for a period of ninety days, then moved them elsewhere so she could get a break from the stress of dealing with people who needed that unusually high level of care. A volunteer could continue with a client for a longer period – and many did -- but Lucille hadn’t found one that she could contemplate a long-term engagement with yet -- they tended to depress her. The stipend and expense reimbursements she got for being a caretaker were nice, though, supplementing her meager income, so she kept coming back.

Banishing her thought process, Lucille replied, “Likewise, I’m sure!” She turned to Walter. “What does Kanye need?”

“Less than usual – and more, perhaps,” Walter replied. “Transport. He’s enrolled in Wentworth College’s special needs program. Help getting around – not so much physical as guidance. Room and board. Meals. Some assistance with cleaning and such.” Walter grinned a bit. “Occasional assistance with his homework.”

“That seems simple enough,” Lucille mused. “Can you think of anything else, Kanye?”

“I try to carry the ball,” Kanye replied. “Just a little assistance once in a while is usually enough. I’ve been doing this a while.”

“All right. I have a room. I have a private bath, so you can have the main one. Will you need a telephone or something?”

“I have a cell. I’ll need some internet access, and to be able to set up my own equipment – web pages don’t do it for me. I listen to music – but I’m not loud about it. My hearing is ... acute.”

“I see. Where are your things?”

“They’re down at the loading dock,” Walter explained. “If you’ll bring your minivan around back, I think it will all fit.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you there.” Lucille set off, thinking, ‘At least he’s not hard to look at. He seems intelligent... ‘ She shied away from finishing a thought that included ‘drooling.’

Kanye had a few adaptive devices that took up some space, but very little in the way of personal effects, it seemed. When Lucille commented on it as they drove to Lucille’s small apartment building, Kanye said, “I’ve been in foster homes since I was fifteen. You learn to travel light. There are maggots who steal from people who CAN see...”

“What can you see?” Lucille asked.

“Not a lot. Blobs. Light from dark. If it is right in front of my face and three inches high, I might make out a letter or two. Thank God for thirty-three inch monitors and magnification software, although nowadays I usually use an adapted VR device and my phone.”

“You type?”

“Yes. I had to learn.”

“Touch.”

Kanye chuckled. “Obviously.”

“I’m not going to have to worry about you catching me coming out of the shower naked, I guess.”

Kanye sighed. “No. For me to be able to recognize you, we would have to go nearly nose to nose.”

‘Why did I even say that?’ Lucille wondered. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No. Girls my age pity me and are sympathetic, but they don’t want to take care of a guy. They want a guy to take care of them.”

“Mmmm, yes, I can see that. The motherhood instinct usually limits itself to young children, until you’ve had a set grow up.”

“Do you have children?”

“Yes. One is in college and the other has her own family.”

“Can I ask?”

“What?”

“How old are you?”

“I’m ... forty-one.” Why was she so reticent? ‘Habit,’ she decided. “Since we’re busy asking embarrassing questions, how did it happen?”

Kanye shrugged. “We were poor. We didn’t have squirt guns, but there were squirt bottles around. My big brother got ahold of one that had something in it that wasn’t water. I don’t think we’ll ever know what it was – the babysitter hid it when it became apparent that something bad had happened while she was supposed to be watching us. I think she was having sex with her boyfriend or something – at least, that’s what went around. I was too young to really know. By the time Momma got home from work and was convinced that there was a problem, the damage was done.” He shrugged. “Things actually got better after I was blinded, because there was money and there were relief agencies. Everybody else in the family benefited – and I did, too, but I was the one paying.”

“What happened when you were fifteen?”

“They caught Momma doing some fraudulent shit with my disability money. She went to jail and we went into foster care.”

Life’s been hard for you,” Lucille said sympathetically.

Kanye shrugged. “You learn to deal with it.” It was time for him to go on the offensive. “Where’s your husband?”

“Gone. It’s been a while.”

“What happened?”

“I didn’t know how good I had it, I guess. I took some things for granted and I wasn’t providing him things he wanted and needed, so he found a woman who made him a better offer.”

“So things haven’t been any picnic for you, either.”

“No, not really.”

“Why do you do this?”

Lucille smiled – and he could hear it in her voice. “I’ve been through the child-raising wringer and can raise an adult, I guess. It keeps me busy and focused.”

“You’re lonely.”

“Not particularly,” Lucille lied. It lay there like a dead thing, though, killing the conversation, because Kanye knew better.

The afternoon was taken up with settling Kanye in, getting his equipment working and making him familiar with his surroundings, which included several sweeps of the house so that he could memorize where everything was. He got good at it fairly quickly, which surprised Lucille. Dinner went well. As bedtime approached, Lucille asked, “Do you bathe or shower? Will you need help?”

“I shower, usually. I shave with an electric, when I have to. I try not to, actually. I think what I would need there mostly would be for you to be alert to the whole thing in case something happens.”

Lucille nodded, then realized he didn’t see it. “That makes sense. I’ve done that. Occasionally, I’ve had to do more than that...”

‘Is she coming on to me?’ Kanye wondered.

But Lucille went blithely on with, “Some Down’s clients are just ... inept...” Unknown to Kanye, Lucille’s thoughts drifted to the subject of sex, but from a different direction. Young Randolph, one of her clients, had been a wild animal, slave to his burgeoning sexuality. He attacked her during his first bath, alienating her – and the only reason he lasted three days was because Lucille thought that maybe she could make him understand that he couldn’t initiate sex acts with every woman he came into contact with. But it wasn’t going to happen, so she opted out ... There was a scandal involving Randolph and the woman who finally DID take him in for more than a day or two, and Randolph ended up institutionalized because he was uncontrollable. Lucille wondered sometimes what his institutional keepers did to slake his drives...

“I should be okay,” Kanye declared, “I can find the bathroom.”

“Okay. Let me know...”

“Sure.”

The evening went without incident. Kanye went off to bed and Lucille did, too – and only when the receiver for the baby monitor in her bedroom reminded her did she remember it. The camera was mounted in one corner of the room, where the curious couldn’t get at it. Kanye, being unable to see it, wasn’t even going to know it was there... ‘I’ll say something to him about it tomorrow,’ she decided, ‘in case he has privacy concerns.

... But she didn’t.

It was a week before anything happened of any significance. Kanye and Lucille settled in comfortably. Kanye needed little help – usually just assistance in finding things he couldn’t see. He tended to remember, too, once he was shown something. Much of what Lucille had to do consisted of pickup and meals – and Lucille found that she enjoyed Kanye’s choices in music, in general, not that he disturbed her with them.

Thursday was laundry day. Lucille dropped Kanye at the college extension campus and went home to gather clothing and strip beds. That’s when she found the stains...

Kanye’s sheets were stained. It wasn’t urine – she could tell immediately. ‘Maybe he has some kind of health condition – an infection or something,’ she mused. Then she found the T-shirt under the bed. It was crusty, and it smelled ... She brought it to her nose and took a big sniff – and her pussy clenched, releasing a wash of lubricant! ‘Omigod! Cum!’ It had been some time since she’d been exposed to the stuff, but, yes, it was just like the wet spot that sex tended to generate on the sheets, back when she was active... ‘Do I talk to him about this? No. He’s ... handling it ... in privacy. I shouldn’t embarrass him.’ She gathered the clothing and linens up and took them to the laundry room. Everything went into the wash – except that T-shirt. Somehow, she couldn’t let go of it! Things were a blur until she found herself in her bedroom, the T-shirt parked under her nose while she dug in the bedside drawer for her favorite jelly vibrator. She shoved down her shorts and panties, arranged herself on her back on the bed, and let her mind wander while inhaling that Heavenly scent...

Unlike a normal masturbation session, where she cudgeled her brain for a leap of imagination while feeling the cool jelly’s buzz all to clearly, she was humping herself to drive the vibrator deep into her hungry, throbbing cunt, again and again, in mere seconds, while screaming into that crusty T-shirt! Gasps caused by her frenzy merely caused her to inhale more of the intoxicating aroma, extending the duration of peaks the likes of which she hadn’t had in a decade – peaks that came easily and quickly, instead of after her usual hard fight to escape the reality of her self-abuse. Only when exhaustion brought her unconsciousness did she relax.

The nap lasted three hours. Lucille awakened and dragged herself upright, groggy. The effects on her of the smell of Kanye’s semen deposits was scary! She tossed the T-shirt away, fearing that she might succumb a second time. Then she got up and, holding it at arm’s length between her thumb and forefinger while holding her nose with her other hand, she marched down to the laundry and put the shirt in the washer. That fixed that! Temptation washed away in a wash of suds.

Kanye noticed when she brought him home. “New sheets?” he asked, feeling the bed.

“Laundry day.” Lucille hesitated, but said nothing further, and swept out. Kanye went and reached under the bed – and yes, the T-shirt was gone. Had she noticed? ‘Probably not... ‘

Kanye had been masturbating regularly since he was thirteen. It usually hadn’t been an issue – he was usually required to collect his own laundry and bed linens in the various foster homes or institutions he’d been in, so nobody else was likely to go through the things he brought to the laundry already bundled and discover the messes he made. The few times that someone had noticed the sheets, it had been people who were used to the idea of nocturnal emissions. It had never been a problem – but Lucille had caught him unawares with her laundry sweep. ‘I’ll be more careful next time,’ Kanye promised himself.

Kanye was vigilant the next week, and Lucille discovered him headed for the laundry room with his balled up laundry – which upset her, because despite good intentions, the memory of that masturbation session had set up a craving. She managed to sort things, but he was present and there was no way for her to ferret away that week’s semen-stained T-shirt.

It had become important to her, so after she took him off to his classes the next day, she hunted down his replacement cum rag. Given that it only had one night’s worth of deposits on it, it wasn’t particularly redolent, but Lucille counted that as a good thing, given the way she had overdosed the first time. Still, it helped her to reach a plateau that mere imagination hadn’t provided an adequate assist to get to, Lucille’s memories of her sexual encounters having faded quite a bit. More disturbing, however, was the fact that with the smell came a picture of the source of the emanations ... The idea of having a sexual liaison with Kanye was seductively attractive, despite the object lesson provided by the scandal involving young Randolph and his caregiver. The fact that it was forbidden on more than one level made the whole idea titillating and hard to put away.

Kanye was home the whole weekend, so Lucille couldn’t borrow his cum rag until Monday – at which point it had collected several deposits. Lucille nearly overdosed again as a result, and she forgot to return the shirt to its location under Kanye’s bed! This caused Kanye some consternation on Monday night...