Chapter 1

So I’m lying here with nothing to do but think. I’ve watched the news over and over and daytime TV sucks hard so I’m bored to tears. Yeah, I’m sick, but feeling better than when I was first admitted and hooked up to a bazillion machines. You’d think if my medical insurance can provide me with a private room and personal, one-on-one care, I’d have some decent movies to watch. Well, what the fuck. I guess I should just be happy I’m still here and thank God my health is edging up on the positive side of the scale for a change.

I was fine until they changed the night nurse. Not that I had anything to complain about with those cute young nurses fussing about. They’re just kids but even the pros, the early thirties I’m-Miss-Efficient, Hello-Goodbye types were tolerable. Some were more than tolerable, actually. Very nicely put together, if you know what I mean.

In fact, so was new night nurse, a woman in her early forties with dark hair pulled back in a tight roll under the quaint white hat. A contract nurse, she was allowed to wear her own uniform and chose the old-school type with a real, God forbid, skirt instead of those crappy fatigues the rest of them wore. Nurse Ratched, I liked to call her, but the daytime nurses warned me not to joke about her.

“Don’t let her hear you say that,” one of the younger ones said.

“You’re barking for a cruise through the graveyard, honey. You better behave yourself or you’ll be doing a u-turn,” one of the older ones warned. “Besides, you’re lucky to have her. Most of her patients get better and she’s pulled two out of hospice that I know of.”

So I wisely took heed of their counsel and for once kept my mouth shut. I pretended to be sicker than I was and watched her whenever she came into my room or passed by. Thing is, she was quite attractive—uniform, severe hairstyle, and stiff mannerisms aside. I liked watching her but it wasn’t until the third night, when I was getting back to my old self, that I realized why. It was quite a shock.

Nurse Ratched looked like my mother did when she was that age, and that was about the time that I...

Well, anyway. Nurse Ratched had a nice figure. She was older than the rest but her body was just as good as the thirty-somethings. Sure, she was different, but different in the way that I had always preferred.

I especially liked looking at the backside of her skirt so I pressed the call button more than I needed to. Hell, she checked on me so often I didn’t need to press it, to be honest, but she didn’t complain. She always appeared to make sure I was okay and checked my readings. She was very professional. And of course, whenever she left, I examined her backside and she never whisked around to catch me I the act like some of the other nurses. Classy lady.

And I’m a dirty old man. She’s still almost thirty years younger than me.

I shook my head and chuckled to myself. Life has few pleasures when you’re lying in bed recovering from a triple bypass. Nurse Ratched’s resemblance to my mother made me remember things I hadn’t thought about for almost for a long, long time.

My mother. What a bitch she’d been. Always nagging. Christ, nothing I did made her happy. Yap, yap, yap. And Dad, he never intervened, no matter how bad it got. And why would he when I was keeping her busy and off his back? It was the only rest he got. If she wasn’t on me, she’d be on him. I could never figure out why he married her in the first place. Yeah, she was pretty nice looking. Hell, she was one of the best looking women in our shitty little town, but her personality completely wiped that out.

I had been the apple of Mom’s eye until I became a teenager and apparently changed from the hard-working boy that did all my mother’s bidding to a lay-about, no-good like my father. It was worse this year because the summer holidays had started and I didn’t get the job I’d had last summer. Was it my fault the owner’s son was old enough to pump gas and had taken my place?

Actually, I watched TV less than my father, who spent most of his time at home watching Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train, Dead or Alive, Gunsmoke, The Ed Sullivan Show, Red Skelton, and even Dennis the Menace and The Three Stooges if there wasn’t a baseball game or the news on. I generally hid in my room. Not that I would dare to have any skin magazines in there. Oh no. The bitch would get onto that right away. But at least in my room, I had some semblance of peace and quiet and kept out of doing the extra chores she’d find if she saw me.

I was eighteen and nearing my final year in school—yes, I had failed a year—and Mom’s tolerance for me was wearing thin. Even my room wasn’t a refuge anymore and I wasn’t allowed out unless I had completed the list of chores that never ended.

So I ‘disappeared’. Sometimes I could hear Mom looking for me, asking Dad where I was, to no avail. She wandered around upstairs calling my name while she tried to track me down. Her persistence should have been a warning to me that she suspected I was somewhere in the house. And she was right. When I wasn’t in my room, I was hiding in the old rumpus room in the basement which had long been used as a storage room. I had configured some of the old dressers, bookshelves and boxes to make myself a hideaway at the far end of the room.

I was sitting in there on an old mattress with my back against the wall, reading, when Mom came downstairs. As usual, I became quiet as a mouse. Unfortunately, the book I was reading was really good and by the time I was aware of her presence in the doorway, it was too late to turn out the light.

“Warren? Is that you back there? What the...”

Shit. Mom’s head poked around a bookshelf and her body followed through the narrow entrance into the secret room-inside-a-room that had been my sanctuary for almost a year.

“There you are. What are you doing hiding down here? Didn’t you hear me calling? I have work for you to do. Is this where you’ve been all along, slacking off, when there’s work to do? I won’t have it. I won’t have you turn into a lay-about like your father. Get up. Get up, you lazy bum!”

Mom grabbed my arm and wrenched on it. I stood up and started to go past her but she immediately began yapping again. I don’t know what was different this time than any other time but I suddenly whirled around and pushed her against the wall. I covered her mouth with my hand, pressed tight so she couldn’t move, and glared at her.

I about to shout ‘Shut up the fuck up!’ but suddenly changed my mind. It wasn’t the shock on her face which was transforming to anger before my eyes; it was something else I couldn’t quite put a finger on. An uncomfortable feeling created a vacuum in my chest and I stepped back, pulling my hand away from Mom’s mouth. She gasped for air, face flushed and chest heaving, and would have been yelling at me if she didn’t need to breathe. She was some upset. I don’t think I had ever seen such a weird look in her eyes before. Unsettled, I turned and walked briskly away.

“Well, I never!” Mom finally screamed.

I was already at the foot of the basement stairs and heard her scrambling to catch up to me.

“Don’t you ever do anything like that again. Ever!”

In my haste to escape I stumbled on the stairs.

“Wait ‘til your father gets home. He’s going to get an earful and then you’ll be in for it. You’ll see. Just wait ‘til your father gets home.”

Thank God for small miracles. Saturday was Dad’s bowling night. I ran through the kitchen and up the stairs to my room. The door banged shut behind me. I could hear Mom yelling at me, still talking about what would happen when my father got home, but she wasn’t coming upstairs. I threw myself on my bed and covered my ears with my hands.

My hands. I had held Mom so hard I could feel the press of her teeth in my left palm. God, had I hurt her?

My forearm tingled. Christ, how hard had I pushed her against the wall? I replayed the scene in my mind. I had used my arm to push Mom against the wall. Funny, I hadn’t registered it then but playing the memory in my mind I noticed how firm and plush her breasts were, substantial, like the ones in the skin magazines Kent kept hidden under his bed—his mother didn’t search his room like mine did; he had privacy.

I wondered. If Mom’s tits felt like those, did they look that good too? I pictured Mom’s heaving chest, tits swelling and deflating as she gasped for air. I had never thought about Mom’s tits before. I did check out Kent’s mom’s set when nobody was looking, and Darrel’s mom’s, and they were about the same age as Mom, but I had never looked at Mom’s before.

I rolled over and pressed my suddenly hard cock into the mattress. Mom’s chest swam before my eyes and, magically, the buttons on her blouse burst apart, freeing two creamy white tits with ridiculously large nipples begging to be sucked. I moaned and turned my face into the pillow, sucking an imaginary tit that felt impossibly real.

Jesus. It’s strange how you can remember things from long ago as if you were you were still there. That was the first time I got hard thinking about my mother. I didn’t wank off but I did hump the bed until I came in my pants and that was a disaster. The way Mom snooped around I had to get rid of the evidence. I dropped my pants and looked for a hiding place before realizing nothing could stay hidden in my room. In the end, I threw my shorts out the window and went to the bathroom where I used a wet facecloth to remove the residue that had seeped through to my pants. I put on another pair and threw the others in the laundry, hoping they would dry by morning.

The next day, I retrieved my shorts and threw them in a city trash bin on the way to school but that night I sat in my room waiting for my Dad to come home, hoping he didn’t walk around the side of the house. I searched for excuses for why I had pushed Mom against the wall but came up short. I heard the front door open. Dad was home.

Oh crap, here it comes.

I put my pyjamas on so I could pretend I had gone to bed early and had fallen asleep. I waited for my father to bellow—something he never did but I hadn’t done anything like this before—for me to come downstairs but heard nothing. I went to the door and listened, my ear plastered against it. Still nothing. Carefully, I opened it a couple of inches. Nothing.

I inched my way down the hall. The TV was already on. I stretched up and craned my neck to peer over the edge of the stairs. Dad’s feet were poking out from behind the wall where his chair was in the corner. I could hear the TV but Mom’s wrath was absent. She was probably waiting until his favorite show because he would only half listen to her while it was on.

I inched closer. Mom was sitting on the couch. I couldn’t see her face but her legs were visible from the knees down. They shook in a rhythm that told me she was knitting, something she often did when she was stewing about something. I knew she was building up a head of steam that, when the time was right, would blow off in a long diatribe about what I had done.

I wanted to return to the false safety of my room, but couldn’t. I was like one of the characters I had seen in a Paladin show, looking out the jailhouse window, mesmerized with the construction of the gallows that would soon end his life, yet was unable to look away.

My legs got stiff craning my neck so I inched closer into a more comfortable position. Despite my impending doom, Mom’s ankles and feet caught my attention. They looked nice in their sheer stockings, arches straining over curled toes and wrinkled soles. That observation revived the memory of my forearm pressing across Mom’s breasts and the way her face flushed when I removed my hand from her mouth. A trace of something else flickered through my mind but was gone and I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that had overwhelmed me then, sucking the energy from my chest and making it difficult to get away.

The show ended and the commercials played out yet Mom remained silent. The next show started. Dad coughed, the only sound that didn’t come from the TV. Mom’s legs wiggled as the pace of her knitting increased. Though my ears were tensely receptive to any sound, my gaze remained fixed upon her feet, and my thoughts returned to her breasts. I was hard and cupped myself to contain my burgeoning cock.

When the second show ended I was kneeling very close to the edge of the stairs, staring at Mom’s feet. Somehow, my cock had found its way into my hand. Dad stood up to stretch and I rolled onto my back, scrambling into a crouch just in time to see Mom get up. I faded back into the hallway trying to stuff my cock back in my pants as they turned the lamps off and started toward the stairs. I slipped into my room and pulled the door closed but not shut, panting and hoping they wouldn’t come into my room when my cock was so hard and obvious. Why hadn’t I pulled the door all the way closed?

I knew Mom would tell Dad now, when they were getting ready for bed, when he was close enough to reach my room in anger just a few steps away. She was such a manipulator. They were talking but the voices were too low for me to hear what was being said. Every muscle in my body was rigid and each nerve tingled. I awaited for the inevitable roar from my father and the stomp of his feet toward my room, but nothing materialized other than the low murmur of calm conversation.

I opened the door a couple of inches and peered into the dark hallway but couldn’t hear the voices any better. Within a minute the crack of light shining under the door to my parents’ room winked off. There were no more muffled words in the darkness that followed, just a rustling or two, and then silence. The house was dead quiet for about fifteen minutes and then my Dad started to snore. I crept back to my bed and eventually fell into a fitful sleep.

I was wary of Mom the next day. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told Dad. She always did when she threatened to do so even though he seldom did anything. I stayed in my room until Dad left but I couldn’t avoid Mom completely. Dad had left his newspaper on the kitchen table but the classified section, which Dad didn’t read, was lying on top of the news. Several entries under Help Wanted were highlighted with a red marker.

Mom didn’t say anything. I still didn’t understand why she hadn’t squealed on me but wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth so I quietly sat down and started reading. She had been harping on me to get a job forever so I peered intently at the listings trying to look earnest to get in her good books. I didn’t even look up when she put a bowl of cereal down in front of me and a glass of juice. A minute later, she added a side plate of buttered toast. I didn’t whine for jam like I normally would have done.

I kept my eyes to myself until Mom started doing the dishes but quickly looked away. When I realized she was as intent on avoiding eye contact as me I stole a few more glances. She was wearing a simple, cotton house dress that outlined her body well even though it wasn’t tight. The utilitarian shaking of her breasts as she washed the dishes held my attention for the first few glances but for some reason my eyes drifted south, past the pout of the belly pressed into the edge of the counter and down her legs to the feet I had admired for so long the night before while awaiting my fate.

Why was I looking at my mother this way? I couldn’t explain it.

Something had happened when I pushed Mom against the wall. That moment of anger had awakened, or infused, something strange inside me. I had been looking at her as a woman ever since and may have at that instant though I couldn’t remember doing so. Yet, I was convinced now that her reaction wasn’t just about me pushing her against the wall and clamping my hand over her mouth. That would surely have led to anger but at first she had been uncharacteristically speechless.

Had I looked at her the way I was doing now, even for a split second, and if I did, had she seen it in my face? Was that the subconscious reason I had felt so uncomfortable and why her face had flushed so pink? Was it why she hadn’t said anything to Dad and why she couldn’t look at me now? So many unanswered questions.

I finished my cereal. Mom turned toward me as soon as the scrape of the spoon in the bottom of the bowl broadcast its empty status. She gathered the spoon and bowl and put them in the sink. I watched her wash them, or more accurately, watched the motions of her body responding to the movement of her hands in the sink. Again, the slight shaking of her breasts, her tummy pressing and relaxing, then pressing again into the counter. Mom hooked her left foot behind her right leg and slowly scraped the back of her toes along her calf. I wondered if she was really itchy or aware of my attention and testing to see the direction of my gaze? Could a woman ever be observed without being aware?

I nibbled on my toast while Mom thoroughly cleaned the bowl and spoon. When she put them in the rack to dry I had already returned my attention to the wanted ads and put the last piece of toast in my mouth when Mom took the plate from the table. I turned to watch her return to the sink.

“There’s lots of jobs in there. You should be able to get something,” she said in the same fucking nagging voice I was used to, causing the weird, erotic sensations that had been welling up inside me to piss out my pores in a flash flood.

“Make sure you make yourself presentable,” she barked, “and don’t sit there like a bumpkin. Speak up and show them you’ve learned something in eighteen years. Just because you’re no good at school doesn’t mean you can’t work. God knows, you’ve got to do something with your life.”

And to think there had been a swelling in my pants. I was halfway across the front lawn when the door opened and Mom leaned out.

“Don’t come home before supper unless you get a job.”

I tried three places but got nowhere. I could have tried a couple more but went to the pool hall instead. I was tired of being treated like I was a waste of time. I picked up a few bucks and then wandered home. Mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway so I went inside and down to my hideaway. Its secret was broken but it was more private than my room.

I flipped through a skin mag and scratched at my jeans but threw it aside in disgust when Mom’s face replaced the hot young centerfold and her body gradually matured into one that resembled my mother’s. Fuck! What was the matter with me?

I looked at the wall and remembered Mom pressed against it, arms back and face flushed. My jeans were suddenly unzipped and my cock was in my hand. I started pumping it in my fist and had soon made my face more than flushed.

The front door banged shut.

She was home. Her footsteps clomped through the kitchen to the top of the basement stairs and stopped, probably because she remembered I was out looking for a job.

Don’t come home early, her harping echoed in my mind.

Footsteps started down the stairs rather than up, catching me by surprise.

Shit! I jerked my jeans up and caught my cock in the zipper.

“Oww, shit!”

The footsteps stopped.

“Warren? Is that you down there?”

I bent forward to finish zipping up my jeans, then buckled my belt.

“Yeah,” I yelled.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up the rec room,” I lied.

“You better be. I want to see that fort or whatever you call it gone, do you hear?”

“Yeah, I hear.”

“Don’t ‘yeah’ me.”

“Alright. I’m doing it.”

The footsteps retreated.

I hid my magazine stash, the bottles of beer, and a bottle of wine in the furnace room and put some of the pillows back in the rumpus room proper, then settled in to wait for Dad to come home. As soon as he did, I went upstairs and through the kitchen. I slipped up the stairs to my room while Mom was at the door greeting Dad.

She harped at me all through dinner. As usual, Dad didn’t interfere. I took it, getting madder and madder. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone and shut the fuck up? My friends didn’t have to put up with this kind of shit.

“Since you didn’t get a job today, you can do some work around the house. You can start by doing the dishes tonight and tomorrow you can paint the back fence.”

I looked at Dad but he was studying his plate, though it was empty save for one bite. Mom gloated.

“Did you hear me, Warren?”

“Yes,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Yes,” I said.

She came into the kitchen when I was draining the sink.

“You can dry them, too.”

“Can’t they dry by themselves?” It was futile but I couldn’t help myself.

“Do the job properly or not at all.”

Like the last was really an option. “You let them dry on their own,” I said.

“Don’t talk back to me, Warren. Do you hear?”

“Yeah ... yes.”

“And put them away properly.”

She walked out of the kitchen, all proud of herself. The bitch.

She came back ten minutes later and opened a cupboard.

“Is that where this goes?” she said, pointing at the cheese grater I had put in with the bowls.

“Where what goes?” I asked, now thoroughly pissed.

“This!”

I walked over to the cupboard and looked at the cheese grater, then at Mom, triumphantly standing in her smart-alec pose.

“Is that where it belongs? How many times...”

I didn’t hear her finish. Her voice dwindled off to nothing but her mouth kept yapping. I looked down her body—the breasts shaking with anger, the trembling belly—and felt a tingling glow surge within me, spreading from the middle out to my head and toes. I felt dizzy with a strange sensation of power and the next thing I knew my hand was on Mom’s mouth, clamping it shut. Her eyes widened and I leaned forward, pressing my arm across the top of her breasts and pushing until her back arched over the counter.

“No,” I hissed. “It isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Is it?” I demanded.

Mom’s eyes flickered uncertainly and she looked scared. She glanced toward the living room where my father was watching Josh Randall relieve the West of another bad guy. I shrugged and Mom tried to twist away but I held her firm. Only her face managed to turn away. I pressed my palm more firmly against her chin and pulled her face back toward me.

Mom’s expression changed again, no longer fearful but not angry either. It was something else and I recognized it as the look I had remembered so fleetingly from our rumpus room hideaway confrontation. I must be doing something the same as I’d done then but I wasn’t looking at her like I had in the kitchen, I was just angry.

I was breathing hard and I had her pressed back with my hand clamped over her mouth. That was all the same but there must be something else. I took a deep breath and my hand started to slip from Mom’s face. While getting a better grip my middle finger slipped inside her mouth and her lips had automatically closed around it.

That was it! Both the memory and the current act stunned me. Mom’s weird expression hadn’t been in response to the way I had looked at her and it wasn’t quite the accidental slippage of my finger into her mouth either, it was her reaction to it that mattered. I didn’t understand that until now and I still didn’t know what to make of it.

Not wanting my confusion to look like weakness, I looked into her eyes, and warned, “Don’t push me.”

I was buying time to think. I wasn’t upset about her yapping anymore and I think she knew that. I also think she knew I knew what I hadn’t known then but I sensed she didn’t want to acknowledge what was really happening any more than I did.

Mom looked afraid but I didn’t believe she was actually scared. Still, to play along, I leaned forward menacingly but her eyes changed again, from feigned fear to something else. I was in the middle of trying to figure out what the new look meant when I felt myself pressing into her soft belly. It was my turn to look confused. I was hard, really, really hard.