Chapter 15: The Small Man

[Undated Entry]
Oxford, Oxfordshire

THE RAIN NEVER stopped work at the brickyard. The kilns ran hot and the bricks cooled as they always did. For those who worked outside the rain was a trial, and after three days the small man as well as his fellow workers were almost ready to walk away. The thought that there might not be work for them when they chose to return is what kept them at their labors.

In another change of his pattern and once more for reasons he could not articulate, the small man chose to return to Lucy some weeks later. He’d concluded he wished to sample her charms once more before the final visit.

As he thought about Lucy, visions of his father riding his mother came unbidden to mind. At first he’d no sexual interest in his mother, it was his father’s violence against her he could not stop watching. Did not want to stop watching. That particular day, he remembered, he’d suffered at the hands of his older brother, who accused him of stealing from the brother’s small cache of coins. The small man was guilty of the charge but of course refused to acknowledge his actions. His brother had struck him repeatedly about his head and shoulders and only by the merest of chances had the small man avoided having his nose broken.

He remembered how despite his brother’s blows he’d seen his father strike his mother with the back of his hand. Her scream was half-agony and half-ecstasy, he thought. She suffered the pain even as her spread legs and blatant invitation to his father seemed to bring the sexual rush she craved.

He became erect as he attempted to evade his brother’s blows and continue to watch his father and mother at the same time. He didn’t know it but his brother was erect as well. Meanwhile, as his father struck his mother and her cries grew more desperate, his father ripped and tore at the bodice of her dress until her breasts were free. “The children!” he heard her cry, but his father only laughed.

Finally with a blow once more to the side of her head his mother fell back on the pallet and did not move. Undisturbed, his father stripped his clothing and handled his large erect member with one hand as he pulled aside his mother’s skirts. She seemed to stir when his father impaled her and twisted her right nipple with one hand. Her grunts and cries sounded to the small man like noises of approval. For himself, he’d already begun to spend as soon as he saw his father’s manhood erect and ready. Momentarily confused and slowed, he was unable to avoid his brother’s final blow and darkness enveloped him as he fell back on his own wretched pallet in the corner opposite his parents’ bed.

His parents fought and fucked with equal abandon and without care to conceal their lovemaking from the small man and his brother. Indeed, more than once the small man thought his mother deliberately caught his eye as his father drilled her. After these sessions she was often affectionate with him. He took note, because she was not a woman who showed affection frequently.

For reasons he did not understand, his affectionate encounters with his mother seemed to happen more often as he grew older. Her kisses and caresses seemed to take longer and she lingered in her touch. He did not care why she did this, he cared only to prolong and expand these encounters.