The Babysitter By Pink Henry

‘Are you shitting me?’ I remember moaning, aged eighteen, to my mother, who frowned.

‘Do you want me to fetch the soap, young man?’

‘YOU’D MIGHT AS WELL FETCH THE BLEACH!’ I yelled. ‘I’M GOING TO DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT ANYWAY!’

Her hand fizzed. She had slapped me across the face.

‘Don’t you ever raise your voice to me like that again,’ her tone was angry. Even a little upset.

‘I raised you better than that,’ she said.

It was a statement, though there seemed to be a question mark that lingered at the end. I felt half-moved to console her. To convince her that she had. Raised me better. Raised me well. It was not a nice feeling to make one’s own mother question her parenting. Especially when I knew how hard it had been on her since Dad had walked out. It wasn’t as if she wanted for money or anything, having taken Dad to the cleaners in the divorce, but still it couldn’t be easy being a single parent. And I had been unruly in the beginning…until the slaps and the soap had begun. As angry as I had been I felt suddenly subdued, ashamed even. And, of course, more than slightly fearful. Mother had quite the temper these days, especially where I was concerned.

‘Sorry Mum,’ I mumbled, contrite.

Tears stung my eyes. My cheek felt like it was aflame. She hit hard, my mother, though she didn’t hit often. Not now that my behaviour had adjusted to her requirements. That she had resorted to slapping me now made me realise that I had crossed the line.

‘I shouldn’t have shouted,’ I conceded, looking at the floor and shuffling my feet, wondering if she would strike me again or carry out her threat with the soap, which was the post-dad norm whenever I cursed. Swearing was something that I used to do often. It was now, for obvious reasons, something that I rarely did at all.

‘No, you shouldn’t have, nor should you have cursed. I had thought we had put all that behind us.’

‘We have Mum, I promise. It’s just…it’s just…’

Fucking ridiculous?

An absolute pig-shit of a joke?

The worst cunting idea that I had ever heard in my life?

All three, actually.

‘It’s just what, young man?’

‘I’m eighteen,’ I moaned. ‘I don’t need a babysitter!’

Mother pursed her lips.

‘You’ve never complained before,’ she observed. ‘You’ve been eighteen these past three months and you haven’t once protested when I’ve had your Aunt Julie watch over you.’

‘It’s different with Aunt Julie,’ I said, sighing as though the point should be obvious.

‘I don’t see why it should be.’

‘I’ve never thought of it as having a babysitter,’ I explained. ‘I’ve always seen it as simply hanging out with my aunt.’

‘Well, that’s all very well and good but, as you know, Julie is in the States on business so I’m afraid that ‘simply hanging out with your aunt’ won’t be possible for a while and, believe it or not, your mother does like to leave the house on occasion.’

On occasion? My mind instinctively scoffed. Seldom did a weekend pass by without my mother dolling herself up for a date, then there was her Sunday lunch meets with her friends, and of course Bingo had consumed her Wednesday evenings for as long as I could remember, even back when Dad was around.

Put it this way, I had seen a lot of Aunt Julie since Dad had skipped town, forgoing his family for the love of a twenty-five-year-old stripper.

‘I know,’ I said, sticking to the point and trying to stay reasonable. ‘But surely I’m old enough to stay home alone when you go out. I’m an adult now.’ The last seemed to pipe somewhat childishly out of my throat, as though I didn’t quite believe it and was half trying to convince myself of the veracity of my claim. It’s true that I did often feel younger than my age, that much I couldn’t deny. ‘I’ll be good,’ I added, quickly. ‘You can trust me, I promise!’

‘Oh, I know you will darling,’ Mother said, reaching out and brushing a stray tear from my just-slapped face. ‘Other than today you’ve been ever so good lately. There’s been such an improvement in your behaviour. But you know how much I worry…I’m sorry Charlie but I need to know that somebody’s watching my baby, and that your safe, and behaving properly, otherwise I won’t be able to set my mind at rest whilst I’m out. You do want me to have a good time whilst I’m out, don’t you?’

I grimaced but she smiled, and her face came in close. Mother’s perfume washed over me. She had worn the same brand since my childhood. It was a scent that comforted, and one that made me want to comfort her in return. The smell of my mother had always had the power to make me melt.

‘Of course, I do,’ I murmured, not meaning it but eager to please. Despite the way she sometimes treated me I genuinely wanted to make my mother happy. It was perhaps the most important thing in the world to me. I just never knew how to go about it.

‘That’s my good boy,’ she beamed, pinching the cheek that she had previously slapped, tugging affectionately on the reddened flesh as though I were a nipper.

‘Mum!’ I protested, pulling away.

‘Watch that tone, young man,’ she smiled. ‘Or I really will get the soap!’

She chuckled as she breezed away through the kitchen-diner towards the hall, the stair-well, her bedroom and her make-ups. ‘Now, we’ll have no more silly arguments on this. Even if you are a big boy now, just be a doll and indulge your mother, okay? Besides,’ she said, from the doorway. ‘The sitter’s already booked. Clarissa, I think her name was. Clarissa Morgan.’

My heart lurched in my chest.

I gaped in horror as the receding figure of my mother swayed down the hall.

Clarissa Morgan was in my year at school.

She was the girlfriend of the boy who bullied me.

‘Mum! Wait!’ I cried, rushing after her.

She paused, her feet on the first and second step of the stairs respectively, her hand clasped around the polished balustrade. She peered down at me, eyebrow raised. Clearly, she had expected the matter to be closed and she was now eager to retreat to her en-suite to make herself pretty for her date.

Not that it took much to make my mother look pretty. She had been young when she had me and was still yet to hit forty. Her elegantly boned face was clear of any blemish or wrinkle, her chestnut hair straight and lustrous, her body tall, curvy, toned.

‘Charlie?’

‘Sorry Mum, did you say Clarissa Morgan?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Joy Stenson recommended her. She’s been watching the twins since last summer and they absolutely adore her.’

Joy lived a couple of streets over and was one of my mum’s oldest friends, from back when they were at school together. Her twins were toddlers, three or four I think.

‘But Mum, she’s in my year at school! We have class together! She can’t be my babysitter!’

My mother frowned. ‘You…have class together,’ she said, ponderously as though not quite understanding.

‘Yes!’ I exclaimed. ‘So, you see…she can’t possibly babysit me.’

I breathed out a sigh of relief as the simple truth of my statement washed over me. My panic started to dissipate. Clarissa couldn’t babysit me, even my overprotective mother would see that. And it would surely now be too late to find a replacement, meaning that most likely I was off the hook and wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of being babysat by some bemused and likely weirded-out stranger either. Mother would just have to trust me to look after myself and, when I inevitably proved capable of doing so, there would be no more talk of babysitting, even once Aunt Julie had returned from her trip. Although I genuinely enjoyed spending time with my aunt the prospect of having the house to myself a couple of nights a week was certainly appealing. Pizza, video games and porn would quickly top my Wednesday and Friday night agendas.

‘I see,’ said my mother slowly as she chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. ‘Do you know her well then, this Clarissa?’

‘Umm,’ I mumbled, not sure on why it much mattered, and equally not wanting to admit to my mother that I had spent most of my school years friendless and bullied. ‘Not really,’ I said, which was in fact true. In seven years Clarissa and I hadn’t exchanged more than a few perfunctory words and though she had been dating my tormentor Tommy for half of that time he had never once accosted me in front of her. She was a sweet, friendly girl - popular, happy, beautiful. I doubted that she would have approved of any of Tommy’s antics. In fact, if she ever caught wind of what he was really like I didn’t doubt that she would dump him immediately.

‘Are you sure?’ My mother asked still looking uncertain. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’ She added sternly.

‘Yes, we barely know each other. She…well, I mean we just have different circles of friends that’s all.’

What I had been about to say was that she’s popular and I’m not, that I’m a loser and that she’s not, though of course that was hardly something I could reveal to my mum, who worried enough about me as it was.

My mum visibly relaxed. ‘Well, dear, then I don’t see what the problem is. Now, I know that you’re too young to be having girls over,’ she said, and then shuddered as though utterly perturbed by the notion. ‘But if Clarissa isn’t even a friend of yours, and so long as she agrees to stay professional and keep it that way and you promise to respect her authority, well, then I can’t see how anything untoward could happen.’

I stared up at my mum, horrified. She looked down at me, seemingly baffled by my expression.

‘What’s wrong now, dear?’ She said, and I detected an edge to her voice. Mother was growing impatient.

‘She…she…I mean…Mum! She goes to my school!’

‘What does that have to do with anything!’ Mum snapped. ‘You need a babysitter and she is one. Who cares what school she’s at just so long as she’s good at her job? And like I said, she comes highly recommended. Joy says she’s great with the twins. They love her.’

‘But…but…but…Mum, she’s only eighteen! The same age as me. If I’m so young that I still need a babysitter how can she be old enough to be one!’

My logic was infallible really. But with my mother that was apt to get me nowhere. Sure enough…

‘Tsk! Don’t you try and get smart with me, young man. I’m not her mother, I’m yours. If Clarissa’s parents decide that she’s old enough and mature enough not to need a babysitter then that’s their business, not mine. You, one the other hand, are my business and I’m sorry but I just don’t feel comfortable leaving the house with you here all alone. Lord, knows what you would get up to, or what kind of foul language you would spout at the walls without me here to scold you for it.

‘Besides, girls mature much faster than boys, mentally she’s probably a few years your senior already so there’s nothing to worry about. If she’s good enough for the twins then she’s good enough for you,’ Mother declared with a finality that I knew, in her mind, killed the conversation, dead. ‘Now I’m going to get ready and I don’t want to hear another word about this, understand?’

Without waiting for an answer my mother resumed her climb, stomping a little too forcibly on each step as though daring me to complain. I watched her go, dark leggings tight around her ass.

I couldn’t help it. I had to try. Just once more, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to face school come Monday.

‘Mum?’ I croaked as she reached the summit. ‘Please…they’ll all tease me.’

She whirled around, unimpressed by my persistence. She seemed a giant, towering so far above me. My domineering mother looked down on me, her slap still stinging my face. Her eyes pinned me. Suddenly I was scared, not wanting to face my mother’s wrath. She had become so scary since Dad had left and I was always on tenterhooks around her. And then her face softened. Sympathy limned her eyes. I thought, for a moment, that she would reconsider.

‘I’m sorry love, there’s really nothing that I can do about it now. She’ll be here in an hour, it just wouldn’t be fair on her to cancel. Listen, if it doesn’t work out I’ll find somebody else for next time, I promise. Hush now, Mummy really does have to get ready.’ She smiled affectionately down at me, the smile she used to smile more often. ‘Everything’s going to be fine, I promise.’

With that she was gone, and I, socially, doomed.

The doorbell chimed. Clarissa Morgan had arrived.

My mother rose from the couch. She held a wine glass filled with sloshing red in her hand and was dressed to the nines. Her close-fitting black dress clung scandalously tight on her curves leaving nothing to the imagination so far as the shape of her bosom and butt were concerned, diamond ear-rings dangled from each of her ears, the heart-shaped locket was intended to pull eyes to her rack, bright red lipstick glossed her mouth and though her date wasn’t due for another thirty minutes, impatient to leave, she had donned her shiny, red-soled high heels already. Her walk to the living room door was thus punctuated by the staccato clack of her Louboutins.

‘No, no, you wait here,’ she insisted as I went to rise and follow, unsure that I wanted the pair to be alone for longer than was strictly necessary. ‘It’s best if I explain the situation in private first, so that you’re not so embarrassed when Clarissa recognises you from school, and to make sure she’s comfortable with the situation.’

She strutted from the room, ass wagging, the hem of her dress riding high.

I plopped my own ass back down in my seat. Sure, I thought. Just so long as she feels comfortable. And I wish you’d wear more clothes, I shouted after her, silently. And then glanced anxiously at the door through which she had exited, frightened she might have somehow heard the hellion-thought.

I waited awkwardly on the couch for what seemed like an age. Feminine voices floated in from the hallway though I couldn’t pick out any of the words or phrases that were uttered. I adjusted and readjusted my position in a nervous, perpetual effort to look as casual as I could on the couch. Sweat beaded my brow. My pits, groin, hands all perspired as I made efforts to look cool. I felt my face grow hot at my own staggering stupidity – in the entire history of the earth no cool eighteen-year-old lad had ever once needed a babysitter.

Still, I did what I could, leaning right back on my seat, spreading my shoulders, throwing an elbow onto the couch-arm, stretching my feet out in front of me, adjudging this to be the perfect posture of a man, relaxed. I wanted to look in control, poised, an adult confident and good-natured enough to indulge the whims of his overly fretful mother.

I practiced a conspiratorial eye-roll that I intended to unveil to Clarissa the second my mother’s attention was diverted. One that would say ‘Sorry about all this,’ and ‘What can you do?’ and ‘Parents, eh?’ and of course, a little more frantically perhaps, ‘It’s her! It’s her! She’s the weird one; I’m normal! I swear!’

Suddenly there was a high-pitched bray of laughter, my mother’s laugh, and I blushed, fretting over what had just been said. Probably just girl talk, but still it set me on edge. The better they got on the harder it would be to convince Clarissa that Mother was the crazy one, that I was just an innocent victim of her preposterous and overbearing brand of parenting.

Finally, the door swung open and my thoughts were cut short as Mother ushered Clarissa into the lounge. ‘Go ahead Clarissa. Just through here,’ she said her voice bright, animated, probably from the wine, of which she was on her second glass, and the excitement she felt about her impending date. Mother stood in the doorway, propping it open, and beckoned Clarissa to enter before her.

‘Oh thanks, Mrs Olson,’ Clarissa said, polite but confident as she squeezed by my mother’s jutting bust and passed into the room, smiling.

Clarissa was stunning even when attired in button-up shirt, tie and conservative grey skirt for class, now in her civvies she took my breath away and I reeled, plots, stratagems and eye-rolls at once forgotten. At school her blonde hair was always arrested by pins and clips and bobbles, tamed into school standard propriety. Now, it framed her face, a wild festoon of soft and tousled gold, tumbling in variegated waves down past her shoulders, the tips kissing the outer-edges of her concealed bosom. She had a pale, heart-shaped face adorned with a light dash of make-up. Her eyes owned the shade and shine of sapphires. Her teeth were white and dazzled in her open-lipped smile, her little button nose wrinkling impishly above. She wore a casual, knee-length black skirt over thick white tights topped by a baggy, pastel pink turtleneck sweatshirt. The strap of the beige bookbag I recognised from school was looped carelessly over a shoulder. Stunned, I gawped up at her from the couch, every inch of her slender five-and-a-half-foot height taking my breath away.

‘Now, Charlie, mind your manners, you know to stand when a lady enters the room,’ my mother’s voice sounded from behind the girl to whom my attention was attached.

I scrambled to my feet as Mother drew up to Clarissa’s side, her arms were folded over her breasts, one hand still cradling her next-to-empty glass of red. They scrutinised me in tandem. I held my breath, still not knowing how Clarissa had reacted to being told that I would be her charge. She looked a little confused and I wondered if, despite her previous words, my mother had neglected to pre-warn her.

Mother broke the silence. ‘Do you recognise him now, Clarissa?’ she asked as they each appraised me.

My mouth dropped. A joke, surely?

Clarissa looked me up and down, up and down, a wolf eyeing up a lamb. ‘Umm…sorry, not really Mrs Olson. What did you say his name was…Charlie?’

‘Yes, Charlie Olson.’

‘Umm…sorry it doesn’t ring a bell.’

I gaped at her, fish-stupid. She knew who I was. She had to know who I was. Even if we didn’t speak often, we’d attended the same school for seven years. Seven long tortuous years for me. Probably they had flashed by for her but, still, she knew who the fuck I was! We had class together! Classes! Plural. She fucking knew me! She did!

‘That’s strange,’ my mother continued, as though I wasn’t there. ‘He’s sure that the two of you have class together, he recognised your name the moment I mentioned it. Well, I guess it’s quite a big school. I bet there’s loads of kids that you don’t know.’

‘Umm…actually it’s quite close knit…I thought I knew everybody,’ Clarissa said peering at me but continuing to address my mother. ‘Are you new to the area? Like have you recently had him transferred from another school or something?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. He’s always been to Whiterose.’ Mother breezed out a laugh. ‘Wow, Charlie-boy you weren’t kidding, were you? You must have very different circles of friends.’

Clarissa smiled up at my mother. ‘That must be it,’ she said. ‘Although, like I said, I thought I was friends with everybody. I try to get along with everyone…even the…umm…quieter, more…unique kids.’

‘Well, that’s very sweet of you,’ said Mother. ‘I had always suspected that Charlie was one of the…yes, quieter boys. I guess he’s even more…unique, oh what a lovely way of putting it, yes, he’s even more unique than I had thought.’

I stood there, quietly and uniquely embarrassed by their conversation. My eyes jerked from one to the other looking for signs that all this was an elaborate hoax, a quick hallway collusion put together to have a joke at my expense.

‘Well, it’s a mystery!’ My mother declared. ‘I guess there’s always one that goes under the radar, although how he’s managed it this long…well, it baffles me. Still, I have to confess that I’m glad, I was worried that the pair of you might become a little too cosy, you know, with you being schoolmates and the same age and everything. However, as you’ve gone all these years without befriending my son, I’m confident you can resist the…umm temptation now.’

Clarissa giggled, nose wrinkling like a rabbit. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Olson. I am positive that I can resist the temptation. No cosiness whatsoever, I swear.’

‘Wonderful! That’s perfect sweetie. Really does put my mind at rest.’ She polished off her wine with a loud, deep gulp and glanced up at the clock. ‘Here, darling, don’t just stand there looking awkward, be a doll and pop this in the dishwasher whilst I give Clarissa a quick run-down before Trevor gets here.’ She looked excitedly to Clarissa. ‘Trevor’s my date,’ she divulged, smiling, face flushed with near-girlish excitement.

I stumbled forwards and took the glass from my mother’s outstretched hand not daring to look either woman in the face. I blundered from the room at near-panic. Never had I been more humiliated in my life. Mother and Clarissa had spoken as if I wasn’t there. As if I didn’t matter. Like I was nothing. No one! And that’s just what I was, according to Clarissa. To her knowledge I had never even existed! Seven years at school together and I had not made a single imprint on her mind. And she had told my mother! Clarissa had made me a loser in my mother’s eyes…and Mother had laughed.

I broke through the double doors that led from the lounge to the kitchen-diner (the ground floor of the house formed a circuit of rooms, hall, kitchen-diner and lounge all being interconnected. From the kitchen you could also reach the conservatory, two utilities and the garden, from the hall branched the stairwell, the downstairs family bathroom and the second sitting room/study).

‘He doesn’t say much does he?’ I heard Clarissa say to my mum as I exited the room.

‘No, I guess not,’ Mother conceded. ‘Well, nothing memorable obviously!’

Twin, high-pitched gales of feminine laughter pitched through the opened doors and poured into my burning ears as I fled across the kitchen in a daze.

I closeted the emptied vessel into the machine and tapped the button that would soon have hot water whirring within, wiping the stains and grime from racked cutlery and dinnerware the way I wished I could expunge this entire night from my life. I moved over to the sink and placed my hands on the rim of the basin, legs spread I leant forwards and lowered my head in thought.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. The evening had been surreal from the off. From Mother announcing that with Aunt Julie being away she would be employing an actual babysitter to take care of me, her eighteen-year-old son, to the revelation that rather than the old biddy that I had been expecting her to hire I would be minded by a eighteen year old girl, and not just any eighteen year old girl but one that went to my school, and fucked my bully; to the absurdity of that very same girl claiming not to recognise me, right down to her and my mothers’ blatant belittling and mocking.

Since Dad had left, I had grown well used to my mother’s eccentric behaviour and the capricious nature of her moods and had learnt, for the most part, how to weather them. And, though she did seem to get a weird kick out of teasing me in front of both Aunt Julie and her Bingo friends, I hadn’t thought Mum capable of acting in the same vein in the presence of somebody that I went to school with. Surely, she knew the embarrassment that I was now destined to face come Monday. Surely, she cared…

The double doors pitched open, cutting off my thoughts and having me whirling around.

‘Right, so,’ said my mother as she entered the kitchen, heels clicking, Clarissa bobbing at her side, a grin plastered over the teenage girl’s face. ‘Any time between nine-thirty and eleven is fine, no later than that please, he gets ever so cranky when he’s tired.’

‘Sure, Mrs Olson. He’s to be in bed by nine, got it.’

I did a double take, but mother didn’t seem to notice Clarissa’s mistake.

‘Right, what else? All homework, without exception, must be done before any TV or Playstation. I know it’s Friday night but I like to keep his routine pretty fixed, also it frees up the weekend for his chores so getting it done is a must.’

‘No TV or games until all homework is done, check,’ said Clarissa, ticking an imaginary notepad and grinning.

My mother favoured her with a smile. I watched, listened, prayed that I was dreaming.

‘The fridges and freezers are well stocked,’ Mother continued. ‘There’s this big double one here and then smaller, single one is in the first utility,’ she gestured as she spoke, hands fluttering imperiously, tits and ass barely contained, threatening to pop loose from the fabrics that held them as she manoeuvred. ‘So just help yourself whenever you get hungry, there’s plenty to drink also. Help yourself to a glass of wine but I keep Charlie away from caffeine and sugary drinks, so it’s juice or water for him, although he does like a nice warm glass of milk before bed, don’t you, sweetie?’

I didn’t offer an answer, and Mum didn’t wait to hear one, but rather ploughed on with her instructions to Clarissa.

‘Now, I don’t have a set meal plan so I’ll leave it to you what he has for his dinner. Whatever you do don’t let him decide for himself - all he ever wants to eat is junk food. He takes after his…well, just make sure he has plenty of greens, okay?’

‘No problem, Mrs Olson. No junk, just greens, gotcha!’

‘Oh please, call me Wendy, no need to be formal.’

‘Okay, I’ll call you Wendy. And I won’t let him decide what he has. I’ve always found that’s the best way with men anyway.’ She winked. ‘Boys too,’ she said.

Mum tittered. ‘You got that right,’ she said. ‘Boys especially. Isn’t that right Charlie-Boy?’

I was still leaning against the kitchen sink, only now I was facing outwards, hands behind me clenched white-knuckle-tight on the basin’s edge. I looked at my mother pleadingly. Clarissa’s eyes were on me. Her face smooth, unreadable.

‘Charlie?’ My mother probed.

‘Yeah, sure mum, whatever,’ I mumbled, hopefully, nonchalant.

‘Oh, don’t be so miserable, show some enthusiasm when you’re being spoken to, why don’t you? And for goodness sake stand up straight in front of our guest. Don’t embarrass me in front of Clarissa,’ she ordered. She looked to Clarissa. ‘I’ll bet the twins are better behaved,’ she said.

‘Sure are, Mrs Olson, I mean, Wendy. Not to worry though, I’m well used to naughty boys. I have three older brothers and they’re all absolute nightmares. And my boyfriend’s not exactly a saint either.’

I jolted upright at the mention of Tommy. My eyes pitched to Clarissa, but her focus was on my mother, her employer, and not on me, her lowly charge.

‘Excellent,’ my mum clapped her hands together. ‘So, dealing with little Charlie, will be right up your street!’ She glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was ten minutes to six. Her date (Trevor she had told Clarissa his name was, although she never divulged to me the names of her dates) was due at six. They had tickets for an eight-thirty show and so had made early reservations for dinner. ‘What else…what else…’ she pondered, her eyes circumventing the room for inspiration, clearly distracted, her mind already with Trevor.

‘We’ve been through the main points…We’re a bit pushed for time so I can’t go through everything with you dear, but I’m sure you’ll manage. Joy trusts you and I trust her so…other than the rules I’ve set down just use your experience with the twins and do whatever you think is best. Charlie knows where everything is so if you need anything he’ll show you or bring it to you or whatever. Just make yourself at home, and you can have Charlie give you a proper tour when I’m gone.’

‘Don’t worry Wendy, we’ll be fine,’ Clarissa said with a surety that I could never hope to match. ‘Honest. Just concentrate on having fun and I’ll take care of the kid.’

Mother beamed. ‘See, Charlie, what did I say? There’s nothing to worry about; she’s a pro. Just like Joy said. Umm…’ Mother bit her lower lip, for a moment looking unsure, she gazed upon Clarissa with an intense fixity for a few seconds, thinking. And then her face resettled into poise and I knew that she had just made her made up about something.

‘Mum?’

Ignoring me, she spoke to Clarissa, her tone serious. ‘There is just one more thing that I need to mention,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a sensitive issue, but I am sure that I can trust you to be professional about it.’

‘Absolutely,’ piped Clarissa, in my eyes a little too quick, a little too eager.

I looked at my mother, frozen.

‘Mum?’

‘Step aside please Charlie,’ she said softly.

That’s when it dawned on me that, subconsciously, there had been a reason why I had positioned myself, a sentinel, before the sink, and the netherworld beneath.

‘Mum!’

‘Just scoot over a sec, dear.’ She took me lightly by the shoulders and manoeuvred my reluctant but unresisting frame to one side. ‘That’s it, be a doll and let Mummy to the naughty cupboard.’

‘The naughty cupboard!’ Clarissa shrilled, crowding forwards. ‘How exciting!’

Mum stepped up to the sink and, horror movie slow, pulled open the cupboard door. Bending, a movement that had her dress riding up her ass, showing off the gauzy black lace knickers beneath, she reached into the dark, dreaded cloister.

I had been at almost full blush for most of the past quarter of an hour but I now felt all colour draining away leaving my face the shade of undercooked oatmeal, my lower lip trembled in the only thing that was worse than the terror of the unknown, it trembled in the terror of the known.

Mother pulled the mundane looking bottle from the gloom. My eyes fixed to it as though it were something live and sinuous, a snake, or an eel, or worse.

‘Mum…please…don’t.’

‘I’m sorry baby but you’ve left me with no choice,’ she said, her voice soft but hardening as she continued. ‘That was a major setback you had earlier. To be soft on you now would be cruel to the future you, to the gentleman I have every intention to sculpt. Charlie. You are not going to end up like your father.’

I backed away in horror, mouth stupidly agape. She frightened me whenever she spoke like this, like she had rehearsed the conversation and already knew how the words would flow at every juncture, having some grand response for everything. I knew that what happened next was immutable. Mother had decided. She held out the clear bottle with the glutinous blue-green liquid inside, displaying it for Clarissa who leant in close and peered at it, eyes crinkled, smiling.

‘This is what we use whenever Charlie says a bad word,’ Mother said. ‘Do you understand, Clarissa? If he curses, if he swears, if he says something untoward, you’re to wash his filthy mouth out with soap.’

Clarissa slowly, almost reverently, took the brandished bottle from my mother’s hands, bringing it in close she cradled it in her palms as though it were some mystical offering. She studied the label, her eyes wide, mouth hanging unknowingly ajar.

‘Oh…my…god,’ she mouthed silently.

My mother watched Clarissa’s reaction, her face smooth and impassive.

I stood, stunned, my mother’s cold, calm voice echoing through my head.

Do you understand, Clarissa? If he curses you’re to wash his filthy mouth out with soap, she said, over and over in my skull.

If he curses you’re to wash his filthy mouth out with soap.

Wash his filthy mouth out.

His filthy mouth.

Their conversation continued. Mother explaining. About my potty-mouthed father. About me picking up his habit. About her program of discipline, of re-conditioning – her program of soap. She brought up Pavlov’s dog and the importance of positive and negative reinforcement. She brought up my terrible relapse, my self-damnation, my heinous utterance of the word ‘shit’.

Clarissa stayed serious. Stayed responsible. Nodding along with my mother’s words. Agreeing with everything she said. Being suitably impressed with her knowledge of well-known psychological studies. Suitably appalled when Mother told the tale of my previous burst of profanity.

‘Oh my,’ she said, and glanced wistfully at the bottle in her hands.

I heard it all, but everything they said was peripheral.

In my head my mother was leaning in close, her face pressed close to mine, her scent assailing my nostrils, her breasts bulging beneath her scorn-filled face.

Wash his filthy mouth out with soap, she hissed.

Wash his filthy fucking mouth out with soap.

Clarissa stood at her side. Nodding, agreeing, as in reality.

He’s so quiet…so unique, the phantom Clarissa cooed in the ear of my phantom mother.

You mean he’s a fucking loser, right? Mother laughed savagely. My unique son. My loser son. My filthy, fucking son. Wash his mouth out. Wash him away.

Yes! Let’s wash him away. Your filthy son…What’s his name again?

Still laughing, Mother’s cold and beautiful face filling my world – Who knows, who cares…we’ll wash the fucking loser away. We’ll wash the filth away.

In my head, a hand reaching out low…

Squeezing…

I let out a strangled cry, one that bubbled from my throat in actuality as well as in the fantasy.

Breaking from their conversation Clarissa and my mother turned and looked at me.

It was Clarissa who noticed it first.

‘Oh my god! Mrs Olson! Wendy! Look!’

She was pointing at my midsection, her eyes were wide and lambent, her face suddenly flushed. Mother’s eyes followed the arrow of her finger and saw.

I lowered my own gaze and gasped. My crotch had hardened and was pitching a tent in my pants.

Silence, the sort that swirled. My mother’s face, an expression that scared. Clarissa, the girl who laughed.

‘He’s got a boner!’ she shrieked, still pointing.

I only had eyes for my mother. Her face had darkened into anger. Her eyes were as glass, reflecting the terrified look on my vaguely weasel-like face. I backed away a step, holding out my palms, as though to ward off some rabid animal attack. I lowered my face, tried to make myself look small, a long-suffering dog caught again at its mischief.

‘Does your own deviancy arouse you Charlie?’ Her voice was smooth and hard as knife-edges, glissading dangerously between her teeth. She stepped forwards, closing the gap I had created with my backstep. ‘I said does it arouse you? Does it turn you on to hear about how much I’ve struggled to cope with your behaviour since you’re lazy, no good father walked out? Come on Charlie is my life all just some joke…some filthy little game for you to get hard over?’

Terrified, I jerked my eyes over my mother’s shoulder to Clarissa as though to beseech the girl for help. She was now positioned behind my mother’s back, and was watching me intently, like the cat who watches the mouse skitter about the kitchen, wondering if it would stray far enough from its bolthole to be pounced upon.

The fizz. The blurred hand. The slap.

I staggered backwards, Clarissa audibly gasped from somewhere that no long existed in the gamut of my vision.

‘Look at me when I’m talking to you!’

Another blur. Her other hand. The other side of my face. The deafening smack of hand bone on face flesh. She hadn’t hit me for months, now I reeled from the third of the day, the second in succession.

I stumbled backwards in a daze, holding my hands up to protect my burning face. Tears watered my eyes, blinding me to shape and distinction, leaving me in a shimmering world of formless, swathing fury.

‘Don’t you dare raise your hands to me!’

Slap!

‘I said lower your hands!

Slap!

‘Put them behind your back!’

Slap!

‘Now stand up straight.’

Slap!

‘Don’t move!’

Slap!

‘Holy shit!’ Clarissa cried, and even in my pain and my humiliation the irony did not pass me by.

Mother either didn’t notice the slip, or simply didn’t care.

My ears rang behind the concussive flurry of slaps. Tears sluiced freely down my blistering cheeks. I sobbed loudly, chest heaving. Beyond the watery haze that filled my world I knew that Clarissa stood watching, expressions of disbelief and delight flashing across her pretty, impish face.

Like the talons of eagles that had swooped from up high Mum’s hands were suddenly in my hair, yanking me backwards, fists balled around clumps of mud-hued curls.

‘Mum!’ I sobbed helplessly as she dragged me roughly across the room. ‘Mum! Stop!’

‘Don’t you Mum me!’ She yelled as she thrashed me about by the hair. ‘No son of mine would embarrass me in such a way! You’re your father’s son! You’ve always been your father’s son! He always thought with the mangled little worm between his legs. And look where that got this family! Look where that’s left me!’

She flung me from her. I careened forwards and bounced off the plasterboard beyond, rolling shoulder-to-shoulder along the wall.

‘Get!’ She cried. ‘Get! Stand in the corner! Up against the wall. Go on, get your nose right up there in the corner. Touch it! I want to see your nose pressed up against the wall!’ She was right up behind me, pressing at me, physically forcing me to accede to her demands, her orders travelling mere inches from her mouth to my ear, her spittle flecking my cheeks like venom. ‘That’s it, hide that filthy thing from view. I don’t want you to move an inch. You’re to stay there until that vile thing goes down, do you understand me?’

My knees hammered together, knocking in turn against each other and the walls that boxed in their outer curves. My toes were painfully upturned against the baseboard, so tightly had I been thrust into the corner. My nose was squished as a bulldog’s face. My cock inexplicitly throbbed at the juncture between wall and wall.

I sobbed and heaved, chest spluttering as I wept uncontrollably into the corner. All of my embarrassment was forgotten. Clarissa, Trevor, my dad. Aunt Julie and my bully Tommy. Joy Stenson and her twins, Mum’s bingo girls, Gracie, the stripper that had stolen away my dad, none of them mattered. None even existed. I was left alone in a world with nothing for company but my mother’s hate.

My mother hated me. She hated me for what my dad had done to her, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing but stand in the corner and weep.

One of her fists was back in my hair, drawing my face away from the wall-joint, which I left splattered with saliva, tears and snot. Her boobs were hard against my back. Her perfume flooded into my wall-crushed nostrils. She levered me backwards by the hair, twisting my neck, tilting my face, creating a torsion that I almost couldn’t bear. Her face filled my field of vision. Her eyes were dark and consuming.

‘I said,’ she hissed, sibilant and slow. ‘Do…you…understand?

‘Yes,’ I gasped, heart hammering.

Her fingers tightened in my hair.

‘Yes, what?’

‘Yes, mother.’

She twisted my head back, and replanted my face in the wall, smearing my face with my fluids.

‘You had better,’ she said, releasing me, stepping back, breathing heavy, breathing quick.

There was silence for a stretch save for my sobs and my mother’s steadily quietening pants and then my mother’s voice sounded. ‘I’m so sorry, Clarissa. What must you think of us? Me and my boy. My only boy. My rotten, rotten boy. I’m so embarrassed. I’ll phone Trevor and cancel,’ she said.

‘No! Oh no, Wendy you mustn’t! He’ll be here any second!’

‘He’ll understand. I can’t leave you alone with him after his behaviour tonight, it just wouldn’t be fair on you.’

‘Please don’t let a silly thing like this ruin your night. Like I said I’m used to naughty boys, and you’ve set out all the rules…little Charlie isn’t going to be a problem, I swear.’

There was a pause.

I knew from experience that my mother would be biting her lower lip. I knew exactly how she would look right then although all I could see was three inches of wall space.

‘Are you sure you can handle him?’ I could detect the hope that was laced through her voice. She wanted to see Trevor, I knew. She wanted to fuck, I thought savagely and my cock gave a twinge, but the tears continued to flow.

‘Yes! Of course. I’ve got the soap, got the corner. Homework, greens, and bed. Easy! Jeez Wendy if you think Charlie’s going to cause me problems I’ll have to introduce you to my boyfriend – Tommy’s double the size and twice as bad as he is.’

‘Oh Clarissa,’ my mother blurted. There was a ripple of movement behind me and instinctively I knew that they were hugging. Clarissa’s small, slight body snugly ensconced in my mother’s warm, scented embrace, in the way I used to be, the way I longed to be. I heard the sound of Mother’s lips on Clarissa’s hair even as leftover pain still shot through the roots of my own. ‘How I wish that I had a daughter like you.’

Clarissa giggled in her arms. ‘What you mean instead of your smelly old son?’ She joked but didn’t joke. Jested but didn’t jest.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ my mother murmured amidst their close-bosomed embrace.

I pressed my face tighter into the corner, tried to smother the stream of my tears against the joint, to muffle the sound of my sobs against the plaster, and failed miserably on both accounts.

From behind I heard the buzz of my mother’s phone. Trevor was calling.

‘Oh my god! Trevor! He must be outside already! Trust him to be on time the only time I want him to be late. How do I look? He hasn’t messed my hair up with that performance, has he?’

‘You look stunning,’ Clarissa assured. ‘Honestly, gorgeous. Wendy! Answer it!’

‘Hello, Trevor? Hi babe you’re outside?’ Mother’s voice now purred coquettishly from her throat. I was hit by the contrast in the voices she had used on each of us. Myself battered and bombarded with angrily spat hate. Clarissa coddled with an almost motherly affection. Whilst Trevor was treated to the demure flirtations of a horny teenage girl.

‘Yes, yes, your baby’s good thank you, very good now you’re here…yes she’s ready…yes I’ve dressed up…you’ll have to wait and see, won’t you? Trevor! You can’t say that! Because it’s ba-aaad…no I’m not laughing…no I’m not smiling at all…how can you hear me smile? Well maybe a little…the teeniest smile I’ve ever smiled…Mmmm…Mmmm…oh god Trevor stop it! Listen, I’ll be out in a minute…I just need to finish up in here that’s why…oh, just two minutes…yes, yes that’s what I meant, one minute, I swear…Charlie’s been acting up…he’s got a new babysitter…no, no that won’t be necessary, I can handle my delinquent son thank you very much, I handled his idiot father for long enough…I am not…No I’m not being sassy at all…Mmmm will you now? Well maybe I am then, just a little…Listen babe, I’ll be out in a second…keep the motor running…and keep those bad thoughts coming…Mmm can’t wait…bye…bye…mwah,’ she kissed the phone wetly to finish the call and my heart jolted painfully in my chest. She used to do that with Dad.

‘That was Trevor,’ Mother offered to Clarissa by needless way of explanation. ‘He’s six foot four,’ she added dreamily.

‘My, that is big,’ Clarissa verified. ‘I trust everything is in proportion?’

Mother laughed, a genuine shriek of high-pitched pleasure. ‘Watch it Missy!’ She scolded playfully. ‘You can always join Charlie in the naughty corner.’

Both brayed, as though it was the funniest thing ever heard or said. I grimaced still snivelling in the corner. My breathing had slowed and I no longer shook – the testosterone that had flooded my system during my mother’s attack was clearly waning. The flight or fight alarums had quietened. And my erection was, thankfully, also starting to wilt.

‘Charlie…’ my mother said as their shared mirth drifted to a close.

My heart pounded.

‘Yes, Mother,’ I blurted quickly.

‘Charlie you’re not to move from that spot until that awful lump in your pants is all gone, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Charlie?’

‘Yes, Mother?’

‘If you misbehave in any way whilst I’m gone...if you make Clarissa feel uncomfortable or threatened…if you answer back or refuse to do anything that she demands…if you break any of the rules I’ve set out…if you do not completely, unquestionably submit to the authority that I have placed in her as your babysitter…or if you embarrass me further in any other way…’

Heels on tiles. Clack, clack. My mother’s perfume. My mother’s scent behind me. Her face drawing close to mine. The minute hairs on my nape rising in unison. My flagging cock dragging its face back up the wall.

‘You’ll be out on the fucking street…or moving in with your useless fuck of a father. Either way you’ll no longer be my concern.’

My eyes clenched in my head, etching tear streaked ravines across my temples. My teeth sunk into one another, my lips unfurling, showing their grating, white agony to the wall. My chest jerked, her words hitting me like boots to the lungs.

‘You’re either my son or your father’s. You can’t be both of ours. And, for the last time, I will not raise Mickie Olson’s son!’

‘I’m not his son!’ I wailed at the wall. ‘I’m your son. I’m yours! Mum! I’m yours!’

‘Then be a good boy for Clarissa.’

‘I will, I swear!’

‘You’ll do everything she says?

‘Yes!’

‘Yes fucking what?’

‘Yes Mother…yes Mother…yes Mother,’ I sobbed, a mantra, against the wall, my now-raging penis pulsing with every ‘Mother’ I cried.

‘That’s it. Keep saying so I know that you mean it. Say it until I’ve gone.’

‘Fuck…’ Clarissa dared to utter softly behind us, voice filled with awe.

‘I think you’ll find him quite agreeable, dear,’ said Mother to Clarissa.

‘What makes you think that?’ Clarissa laughed. ‘Wow. Seriously that was…amazing. You’ll have to teach me how to do that…I’ll have my brothers whipped! Maybe even Tommy too!’

‘I wouldn’t wish for that, dear. Not if you love him. The best men are always untameable…which reminds me...Trevor is waiting. Come on, walk me out sweetheart. Remember Charlie, I want a glowing report from Clarissa when I get back,’ Mother breezed as she sauntered from the room. ‘Otherwise you’ll be moving in with your father and that homewrecking slag of his will be your new mother.’

‘Yesmotheryesmotheryesmother,’ I continued to chant to the wall.

I heard her heels clomping down the hall, her voice airy and carefree as she spoke some final words with Clarissa, though I couldn’t quite catch the latter’s quieter words.

‘Okay dear, so you have my number? Call if you need anything. He shouldn’t be a problem now but if he acts out…you know what to do. Umm anything else? No, I don’t think so. Right!’

I heard the door open.

‘Yesmotheryesmotheryesmother,’ I garbled.

‘Okay, here, give me a kiss. Mwah…mwah. Such a sweetheart. Do you think your folks would be willing to trade? Haha. No, I didn’t think so.’

A car horn blasted impatiently out in the night.

‘Oh, I’m coming! Bye Clarissa…bye…bye…bye.’

The volume of her voice decreased as she headed down the drive to the street, where Trevor waited, engine running.

‘Bye!’ I heard Clarissa call loudly after her. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. Have fun! Just don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do!’

I heard my mother laugh from afar.

‘Same goes to you,’ she shrilled back and then there was the slamming of a car door. A few seconds later and the front door of the house swung emphatically shut leaving me alone in the house with Clarissa Morgan.

My babysitter.

She came skipping down the hall, whistling out a tune, her skirt swishing, the underparts of her thick tights padding softly, barely audible as they hit down against the polished wood. I held my breath. Hoping for succour. For her tiny arms around me, and her little voice in my ear. Telling me that it’s all okay, telling me to come away from the corner, that she’d tell my mother I had been good no matter what, that she wouldn’t tell a single soul at school, that…that…that…

She was standing behind me and, although I couldn’t see her, I could feel her scrutiny, pinpoints boring into my vertebrae, making me itch and scrambling my thoughts to the most far-flung regions of my mind.

‘Hello Charlie!’ She eventually blurted energetically.

‘Err…Hey,’ I mumbled, my embarrassment resurfacing now that the direct threat of my mother had passed.

‘Are you okay, Charlie?’

‘Err…yeh…I guess.’

‘Has your thing gone down yet?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Not yet.’

‘Okay, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s best if we stick to your mother’s rules, don’t you think? I don’t want you to get into more trouble than you’re already in…soooo I’ll just go watch television and leave you to your corner. You can call me when it’s all gone, okay?’ Her voice was ariose, confident and high, spilling from her lips in that quick, teenage-girl cadence that so many of them seemed to speak with.

‘Umm…okay.’

Clarissa tinkled.

‘Okay…what?’ She teased.

‘Okay…Clarissa,’ I murmured.

‘Good boy.’

I heard her skip away across the tiles, skirt-hem wild.

‘I’ll leave the door open so I can hear your shout…don’t move…just call me when you’re ready for your inspection,’ she commanded good-naturedly.

I sensed her lingering in the opened double doorway that sat between dining area and lounge and knew that she was awaiting my reply.

‘Yes, Clarissa,’ I called.

I heard her giggle. A few seconds later the TV burst into life and I was alone with my thoughts and my erect, wall-climber of a cock.

I was still reeling from the way that my mother had treated me, from the words she had used, the fucks she had spoken. Dad leaving had unbalanced her certainly, but I hadn’t realised by how much until tonight.

She had first washed my mouth out with soap seven days after Dad’s final, fateful departure from the family home, on the day that she had learnt that he had been having an affair for months and was moving in with his mistress. Unbeknownst to me Mother had been sobbing quietly in her bedroom and I had been playing Playstation, cursing and swearing at the shapes as they shifted unfavourably on the screen, screaming imaginative insults down the headset at my gaming brethren. Mother had erupted, a storm, into my bedroom. She had shrieked at me as she launched herself across my bed, fingers outstretched like tiger-claws. I had been utterly perplexed by her rage as she dragged me from my room, hands beating about me. I had found myself in the upstairs family bathroom, sprawled on my back with her astride me screaming down about my dad and my language and my dad and his slut and my dad and how I was just like him. A filthy mouthed lout. Just like my dad. Spittle spraying, hands clawing at the sink, pulling down the hand-soap, she had told me that I wouldn’t be like him, I wouldn’t end up like my father, she’d make sure of that if it killed her.

That had been ground zero as far as the soap was concerned.

The slapping had begun soon afterwards. The first had occurred as the doors of an elevator slid shut on the bustle of the Saturday noon-time mall. We had bumped into Father and Gracie whilst out shopping and all quarters of hell had broken loose from the warring ladies’ mouths. Humiliated by the scene I had tried to drag my mother away. ‘Stop it Mum! It’s embarrassing!’ I had been foolish enough to cry. She had brushed me angrily aside and gone to slap Dad across the mouth. Mickie O had caught his wife’s wrist with ease and flung her away. Mother’s heel had snapped as she was backthrown by my dad and she fell onto her butt in the middle of the totally agog crowd. Dad had grunted and looked a little contrite, an unfamiliar expression across his gruff, laddish face, but Gracie had laughed and taken his arm, drawing him away. ‘See you around son,’ he had said. ‘Byyeeeee Charlie,’ Gracie had cooed, pivoting as she walked, winking and blowing me a kiss, which had my cheeks transitioning to crimson.

Mum had been crying as she walked bare-footed to the elevator, having left her shoes strewn across the glossy linoleum of the mall. ‘Mum?’ I had croaked nervously as she pounded on the buttons to summon the elevator down the shaft, banging over and over, first with her finger then with her palm then with her fist. ‘Mum…stop,’ my weakling voice had pleaded into her unheeding ears. Once in the elevator I had moved cautiously to console her, that’s when she had spun on me, eyes blazing. Her hand had fizzed and unlike my dad I hadn’t had the aplomb to catch it. The slap had stung and shocked me to stillness. The verbal tirade that followed had taken my breath away. I had sided with him. I had sided with her. Or so Mother had spat.

From then on face slaps had come abrupt and always unexpected whenever I most displeased her. At first, I would receive one or two powerfully thrown palms across my face every week, then around once a month until they all but disappeared as I adjusted my behaviour and learnt to avoid Mother’s triggers. But today the slaps were back with a vengeance, my face having received more in one evening than my mother had ever flung before. My cheeks were now scorched with pain and, I knew without looking, glowing red as ripened tomatoes.

The punitive use of the corner was something old rather than something new. It was a retrogradation in Mother’s disciplinary procedures, something brought back from when I was a child. She had used, infrequently, to send me to stand in the corner and ‘think about what I had done’ but the practice had stopped when I was around nine or ten and this was the very first time it had resurfaced.

The threat to evict me from the family home was something new entirely. And the thing that had me most distressed. Mother would only threaten to send me to live with Dad and Gracie if she had hit breaking point. Used to be it was the thing that she feared the most, holding me in her arms after one to many glasses of wine, running her palm over my back and repeating over and over that I was her boy, her only boy, that I was hers and not his, that I would always be hers and never be his. Now she was threatening to make me his if I didn’t obey, to the word, my eighteen-year-old babysitter.

How times had changed, I mourned.

Soon enough, with such sad, rueful thoughts passing through my skull, my erection receded. I could no longer feel my penis against the wall, the blood having fled from its veins, the strength from its shaft. Feeling stupid, I called Clarissa from my position against the corner, a call that was muffled almost to muteness by the fact that my mouth was pressed so close to the wall. I tried to pull back my throat and rest my chin on the joint between wall and wall, calling up into the ceiling and hoping my voice would carry over into the next room, attracting Clarissa’s attention over the din of the TV.

‘Clarissa,’ I yelled, pausing to see if she would respond. ‘Clarissa…it’s gone down,’ I continued when she didn’t. ‘Clarissa!’

The television continued to drone out its mundane concatenation of sounds, the voices of make-believe people going about their supposed everyday lives. It was one of the early evening soaps that my mother also watched, the one set in a town where all the women just happened to be young, stunning and empowered, and all the men love-rats, or assholes, or silly cuckolded saps.

My heart pounded in my chest. The absurdity of my position from Clarissa’s point-of-view was sinking into my skull. My cheeks were already red and burning but I knew that had they not been my upturned face would be blushing up at the whitewashed ceiling that looked down from above. Not only was I, an eighteen-year-old lad who, according to his mother, was requiring of a babysitter whilst she went out on her date but also the degrading manner in which I had been spoken of, the revelation about the soap, the face slaps, the weeping in the corner, all these added to my emasculation in her eyes. Now, even if the immediate threat of my mother having passed, still I stood pressed painfully and awkwardly into the corner of my kitchen, lamely calling up at the ceiling, my voice unheard.

Not for the first time in my life, I wondered at when and how I had become such a wimp.

‘Clarissa!’ I cried, growing desperate, the sound weak and feeble even to my own ears, my inveterately quiet voice becoming more so due to the angle of my throat and the contortion of the muscles within. I knew my voice would never top the sound of the television. Not from here. Not angled like this. I gulped, Adam’s apple rolling upwards along the wall. Against Clarissa’s explicit instructions I prised myself from the corner. Facing the opened doorway, I took a few deep breathes, filling my lungs with oxygen, before bellowing to her, as loud as I could.

‘Clarissa! It’s gone down,’ I yelled, my voice shrill and cracking at the top of my shout, but still far louder than any of the others I had managed. I quickly whirled back around and repositioned myself the way I had been, feeling oddly guilty about my transgression.

There was a moment when I thought that even this had failed and then the on-screen dialogue was muted and Clarissa called back from her position on the sofa. ‘Charlie…did you say something, dear?’

‘Yes!’ I yelled against the corner, hoping that she would hear now the television had been silenced.

A pause.

‘Yes what, dear?’

‘Yes, Clarissa!’

A moment later, and I heard her waltzing across the kitchen tiles, towards me.

‘Has it gone down?’ She said, sounding inquisitive but nothing else.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, Clarissa,’ I quickly corrected.

‘You keep forgetting your Clarissas,’ she observed.

‘Umm…sorry, Clarissa.’

‘That’s okay Charlie, just try to remember in future. I wouldn’t insist on it only I’m trying to follow your mother’s example, you see? I feel that uniformity is very important in any child’s development.’ She stepped up behind me, close as my mother had been, the points of her breasts against my spine, her breath hot in my face. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Clarissa,’ I chirped.

‘Good boy!’ She trilled, stepping backwards, giving me and my thrumming heart some room to beat and blush by. ‘Okay, turn around. Let me see,’ she ordered, her tone friendly.

I turned slowly, feeling uncomfortable. I had never been one to seek the attention of my peers or, as Clarissa assuredly was, my betters. At school I shrunk away from attention at all available opportunities, proactively seeking to eliminate potential sources of embarrassment from my day. Had Clarissa Morgan ever found cause to fix the full weight of her scrutiny upon me in the halls or classrooms of our school my face would have reddened, sans slaps, my words would have been garbled incoherencies, my feet would have been itching to take to flight. Here, in my home, in the humiliating position I had found myself, my levels of mortification were becoming astronomical, having my heart pounding out a dangerous, spiralling rhythm against my chest, my eyes swivelling in their sockets trying to avoid her eyes, trying to avoid her lips, her breasts, her crotch, trying to avoid everything about her but not daring to look away, my upper limbs groping nervously about my body, hands clasping each other behind my hunched back, dangling gauchely at my sides, burying themselves in pockets, not knowing even how to exist so worried were they about causing an offence.

Clarissa looked gorgeous of course. She had made makeshift mittens out of her sleeve-ends, rolling her hands up into them and the lower regions of her face had dipped beneath the pink neck of her sweatshirt, hiding her mouth. However, by the crinkles around her eyes I knew that she smiled. I could tell at a glance that she was thoroughly enjoying my distress.

After a few long seconds of unabashed scrutiny Clarissa slowly lowered her gaze, drawing her smiling eyes down to my groin. ‘Has it gone down completely?’ She wondered from behind the soft, pink bulwark of her turtleneck. ‘It’s difficult to tell if it has, it was only a little bump to begin with.’

I stood there feeling awkward, flummoxed as to how she could think that it hadn’t. I looked down at myself confirming what I already knew – my erection had dissipated; my crotch was flat. Clarissa though was not convinced.

‘Is that a lump there?’

I squinted. What was she seeing? There was no lump. I wasn’t large enough to make a bulge unless I was aroused. The only visible incline was the slight ridge of my fly.

‘I…err…I don’t think so,’ I managed to say.

‘I don’t know…it kinda looks like there might still be a bump in there somewhere,’ she said as she twirled a flaxen thread of hair nonchalantly between her fingers. Her chin and lips having resurfaced from her sweater’s neck she chewed on her lower lip, not unlike the way my mother had.

‘Pull your jeans back,’ she said. ‘Stop fidgeting a minute, darling. Just take hold of the side of your jeans and pull backwards, no further back than that, take a fist full of your jeans and tug backwards, that’s it, just sort of flare them out behind you, make them nice and tight at the front so I can see if there’s anything untoward lurking underneath.’

Feeling the idiot that I knew I looked I followed Clarissa’s instructions as best I could, yanking backwards on the denim, stretching out the front of my jeans, pulling the crotch taut, flexing the fibres of my clothing so that they were flush against me. I could have been a girl for all the manhood that showed.

Clarissa peered at my smooth, bulge-less crotch. ‘No,’ she sighed after a pause. ‘It’s no good I’m afraid, I just can’t tell. You’ll have to pull down your pants and show me for real.’

Her words washed over me, their meaning drifting a heartbeat later into my mind.

‘Huh? Pull down my…’ I trailed off as the understanding of what she had said dawned on me. I stared at her, open-mouthed, wondering if I might have misheard, though in truth I knew that I hadn’t.

‘Yes, pull them down so I can check that your bits have gone fully down. It’s the only way that you’re allowed out of the corner, I’m afraid. Your mother said so herself, didn’t she?’ She said the last part whilst nodding her head exaggeratingly, indicative of how she wanted me to respond.

‘Yes, Clarissa,’ I whispered, taking her hint. ‘She did say that.’

‘Well, lower them then, let’s have a look at your little boy bits and then I’ll let you get on with your homework, you would like that wouldn’t you?’ Again with the exaggerated nodding of her head.

‘Yes, Clarissa,’ I was manipulated into saying.

‘Good! So get those trousers down then sweetie, the sooner you let me see the sooner I can let you get on with all that lovely homework!’

I blinked. It did actually sound enticing considering my current predicament. Sitting at the table with my books out, laptop screen buzzing before me, Clarissa back snug on the sofa watching her soaps, her immaculate, too-happy, too-confident, too-girly face safely out of my line of sight. I would never have thought it but the idea of Friday night homework was becoming increasingly appealing. All I had to do was…lower my jeans and reveal my tiny pink cock to the prettiest girl in my school.

I gulped, my tongue flickering out of my mouth, like a nervous reptile tasting the air in the knowledge that dormant predators were near. My palms sweated, greasing the denim of my jeans. Perspiration beaded my forehead. Tear-stains, palm-prints, and the commingled gloss of saliva and snot marred my face.

‘Are you sure…there isn’t another way for you to…umm know?’ I asked, glancing down at my completely flat crotch, hoping that she would give it a second perusal and realise that me stripping was not required.

‘Oh, I’m very sure, Charlie-Boy. I have to be certain that that nasty lump is all gone…not just for your mother’s sake but for mine…Charlie, I hate to tell you this, because I like you, and I can see that you’re trying to be good for me…but you’re making me feel really uncomfortable…not showing me makes me think that you have something to hide…like you’re still hard over me or something…that you’re having bad thoughts…filthy thoughts about me…whilst all I’m trying to do is my job.’

‘I’m not, Clarissa. I swear!’

‘Goooood,’ she cooed. ‘Goooood, I believe you, really I do. Still…be a doll for me and pull down your pants. Show me your soft noodle so I don’t have to call your mother and tell her that you’re being a bad boy and disobeying the babysitter, already.’

I stepped backwards from the threat as though distancing myself from her words would nullify them. Clarissa stepped two steps forwards, and there was nowhere else for me to go; I was back in my corner, spine knuckling the wall.

‘How do you think she would take that, Charlie?’ Clarissa asked, her sugary too-nice voice now with a definite edge to it. Her face floated beneath mine, no more than a single foot away. ‘How would she react to being called away from her date so early because of you?’ She pushed up the sleeve of her left wrist and glanced at the pink-strapped watch beneath. ‘She’s only been gone twenty minutes and she’ll have to come all the way back because of you, before she’s even sat down for her meal, before Trevor’s even had the chance to pump her full of cum!’

I gasped aloud but Clarissa only saw fit to laugh.

‘Now pull down your fucking trousers!’

My lower lip was starting to shake. I realised in horror that I was on the verge of tears again. I knew that I had no choice. With Mother in the mood she was in I would be in for it for sure if Clarissa saw fit to call her. Slowly, with tremulous hands, I unbuckled my belt. I glanced at Clarissa, wondering if she would reveal all this to be joke with a good-natured laugh and cheeky wink but she only smiled cruelly and nodded to encourage me to continue.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Keep going.’ I undid my fly and peeled down my trousers, revealing my baggy white boxer shorts beneath. ‘That’s it. Good boy. Now let them fall.’ I obediently retracted my fingers from the denim waistline allowing the jeans to fall, a pool around my ankles. ‘Okay, now the boxers. Chop, chop, Charlie-Boy you’ve got homework to do and those soaps aren’t going to watch themselves. Be a doll,’ she sneered in definite mimicry of my mother, ‘and yank those fuckers down.’

I pulled down my boxers, revealing my small, soft penis, drooping beneath its dark circlet of unkempt bristles.

Clarissa giggled, and dropped shockingly to her knees before me. My heart almost stopped. The absurdly hopeful thought fired itself inevitably through my head – was she about to suck me off? Had all this been an intricate ruse to get to blow me?

‘Oh my...’ she gasped, knelt at my feet, her tantalisingly shaped, roseate lips mere inches away from my virgin cock. ‘It really has gone down, hasn’t it?’ She cupped my bollocks and cock in a single soft skinned hand, holding them lightly in her palm. ‘You really could be a doll!’ She shrilled, seemingly delighted by what she saw.

‘It’s not that small,’ I grimaced, blushing.

‘It is,’ Clarissa insisted. ‘Charlie, it really is.’

‘Well…it gets bigger.’

‘I should hope not!’ Clarissa exclaimed. ‘It needs to stay nice and soft and polite like it is right now! No…more…filthy…thoughts,’ she said, punctuating each of the last four words with a two-fingered smack at the head of my cock, looking up at me from her knees, eyes mischievous, my junk ensconced in her palm.

I moaned aloud at her smacks. I could feel heat gathering low around my sex, my balls tingled in her hand. I knew that in moments Mister Nice, Soft and Polite would be stirring in her hand, the head pawing and snuffling against her flesh as it made stuttering efforts to rise, as a nascent jungle shoot does when it detects a wisp of faraway light and worms its way upwards to meet it.

‘Please…’ I whined. ‘Can I go do my homework now?’

Clarissa giggled excruciatingly. ‘That’s the first time I’ve had hold of a guy’s dick and he’s asked me if he can start his homework!’

My cock was starting to itch. I knew that it was soon going to stiffen. ‘Clarissa…please,’ I pleaded, frantic and desperate to pull up my jeans and hide my imminent erection.

‘Oh, very well,’ she said, standing. ‘Pull them up Charlie-Boy, get that noodle covered.’

I yanked up my jeans and shorts with a single, savage tug, covering my cock just as it began to twitch in earnest. As I buckled my belt I tried surreptitiously to position my phallus along the crease of my fly to hide the fact that I had half a chubby and rising.

Luckily, Clarissa didn’t seem to notice. ‘Come on,’ she buzzed. ‘Where are your books?’

‘Upstairs,’ I murmured, moving into the hall.

‘Oh! Fun!’

She followed.

I had hoped for a few minutes alone so that I could soothe my cock back to softness, splash some water across my slapped-about and snotted-up face and take a moment or ten to regather my addled wits. But Clarissa, who clearly had other ideas, followed me to the foot of the steps.

‘It’s okay, you can erm…carry on with your soaps…you know, if you’d rather,’ I ventured, not getting my hopes up, knowing that the girl had plans to entertain herself with me.

‘Don’t be silly, Mister,’ Clarissa said, mock-stern. Smiling, mock-friendly. ‘I can’t let you go upstairs all alone, naughty.’

Huh? I thought and then…

‘Huh?’ I said.

‘Well…’ she smirked, eyes glossy. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘I don’t…I don’t understand?’

‘I know, dear. I know that you don’t. Because, you see, you’re still making the mistake of thinking yourself to be a big boy,’ Clarissa explained like she was explaining uncomplicated things to a child. ‘Buuuuuut your mother obviously doesn’t agree, does she, sweetie? Otherwise I wouldn’t be here now, would I? You’d be all alone and able to get up to whatever you wanted to, go upstairs, downstairs, in the corner, out the corner, drink the soap, eat the soap, lube yourself up and fuck the soap, basically, whatever you liked! But you’re not alone, Charlie. You’re with me. Your mother has put your safety in my hands. It’s a big responsibility you know. Taking care of someone. And, like she said, I have to trust my past babysitting experience, and I’m afraid I would never ever let one of the twins go upstairs all alone. So…’ Smiling evilly, she reached out a hand, offering it for me to take. ‘You’ll take me hand and have me escort you up the stairs.’

I stared at her, a full three seconds of blank-faced scrutiny. I had to make a stand at some point, I knew. I had to.

Her smile didn’t waver. Her confidence didn’t budge.

‘Come on, Charlie. Take your Aunt Clarissa’s hand.’

I balked. ‘Aunt?’ I heard the word rasp questioningly from my lips but could not remember deciding to say it.

‘Of course! Your mother told me your aunt usually watches you, and remember what I told you about uniformity? It’s just so, so important, Charlie. So important. It’s vital to your development that we keep things as close to normal as possible…so you’ll agree to call me Aunt Clarissa from now on, won’t you dear?’

‘Umm…I…I can’t…listen I’ll let you….you know, up the stairs, but -’

Her hand fizzed fast as my mother’s had. It caught my crimson cheeks, bludgeoning the already burst blood vessels which lay beneath the skin and having my face-flesh wobbling, my neck snapping backwards in surprise. My ears rang with the sound of her slap.

‘You…you…can’t do that!’ I sputtered angrily, fists clenched.

‘Of course, I can,’ she said reasonably, and then swished her hand again, slapping me once more as if to prove it.

‘See! It’s easy!’

I stared at her, red-cheeked and once more on the brink of tears. I couldn’t believe that she was hitting me. Making me take my cock out was one thing but physical violence another thing entirely.

‘You’ve gone too far now,’ I said. ‘Mum would never allow you to hit me.’

‘Of course, she would, Charlie’ Clarissa said. ‘She said to not doing anything that she wouldn’t do…and we both know she would hit you. So…’

Her hand rose and I flinched backwards, holding my arms protectively over my face. But the slap never came. She simply held out her hand the way she had before, offering me her palm.

‘You’ll agree to call me Aunt Clarissa from now on, won’t you?’ She asked mildly.

‘Yes…Aunt Clarissa,’ I said in a daze.

‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘Now, go ahead and take your Aunt Clarissa’s hand so she can take you up the stairs.’

I reached out and took her hand and she led me, as she would lead a toddler, up the stairs.

We passed into my bedroom, which, by mandate of my mother, was kept neat and clean, the bed made, the carpet vacuumed three times a week, all things neatly sequestered in their allotted space. Clarissa released my hand as we entered and I moved over to my desk, scooping up the laptop that rested on top and the school bag that nestled underneath. I then went to make a quick exit, hoping to leave before Clarissa could cause any mischief in my bedroom but the girl once again had other ideas and decided to linger a while longer.

‘Let me have a quick snoop first,’ she said, padding about my bedroom in her dark skirt, white tights and fluffy pink sweater, flicking her blonde tousled hair this way and that, opening my wardrobe and my drawers, peering inquisitively inside, turning up her nose and shutting them tight.

‘Yuck,’ she said. ‘Boy stuff.’

‘Ew!’ She held up a pair of faded grey briefs. ‘Loser pants! How many times have you jerked off in these?’

I blushed and shrugged noncommittedly but she was already moving on, pants put back.

She skimmed over the softback novels and comics that lined the five packed shelves of my bookcase, plucking one or two from their places and flicking through the pages, quickly replacing them, seemingly unimpressed.

‘Books!’ She said. ‘Boring! You do know that nobody actually reads anymore, right?’ She asked.

She moved to my bed, a small single, before I could reply – which I wouldn’t have done anyway.

‘What a little bed,’ she said. ‘How cute. Charlie, tell me, have you ever had a girl as pretty as me in this little bed of yours?’

My blush deepened, in heat if not in colour, my face being rouged to the max already. ‘I’ve never had any girl in there,’ I admitted.

Clarissa laughed.

‘Cuuuuute!’ She shrilled.

She reached down and pulled back the covers, folding my duvet over on itself by its corner revealing the bedsheet beneath. She scrutinised the white sheet calmly. I stood and watched, of course aware of what she checked for.

‘There’s nothing there,’ I told her.

‘So it seems,’ she said softly, bending at the waist and lowering her nose to the central portion of my bed, taking a long whiff of the sheets. She made a noise in the back of her throat and uncrimped her spine. Without a word, she readjusted my bed covers and stepped away from the bed, holding out her hand for me to take, wiggling her fingers at me in case I failed to understand her meaning.

‘Take me to your mother’s room,’ she ordered.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. I shouldered my backpack, folded my laptop under one arm and reached out the other, taking her hand.

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa,’ I said, taking her out onto the landing and leading her to the doorway into the master bedroom. ‘In there,’ I murmured and gestured with my head.

‘Well…in we go,’ Clarissa said, turning the knob and giving the door a push, opening it.

‘She’ll be cross,’ I warned.

‘Not if I’m with you,’ Clarissa assured. ‘She told me you would show me where everything is…so show me.’ Letting go of my hand she pressed me forwards, her hand in the small of my back, forcing me into the gloom.

I entered nervously. The light switch was right there on the wall beside me but I daren’t reach out and flick it lest Mum’s date had been some cruel ruse and she lay somewhere in wait, unseen in the darkened peripheries of the room, anticipating the eruption of light that would verify my illicit entry and free her to pounce and take me once more to task.

‘Go on,’ Clarissa urged from behind.

I took another step. Mum’s king-size bed was in front of me, her floor-to-ceiling, sliding-mirrors-for-doors wardrobe to my side. Across from me the door to her en-suite was ajar, bleeding a deeper darkness into the room. I stared, transfixed by the slender wedge of pitch between the slightly opened door and its jamb, half-expecting to see my mother’s leering face materialize from the impenetrable black. I stared in horror at the gap, my imaginings getting the better of me. I could almost see her, the smooth, pale face outlined by black, the body beneath wan and naked, a breast glimpsed in the dark, between door and jamb a ghostly hint of my make-believe mother’s sex.

I near jumped out of my skin as Clarissa flicked on the light and shoved past me, striding confidently into my mother’s boudoir. I shuddered, appalled at the journey my own mind had taken and noticed that the seam of my fly had furrowed outwards, bulging noticeably.

‘We shouldn’t be in here,’ I moaned, as I furtively slid my laptop over the front of my crotch, both hands wrapped around the bottom edge of the machine, pressing it flush against me to hide my arousal.

‘Shush you,’ said an unconcerned Clarissa as she breezed about the room in which my mother slept at night.

She drew open my mother’s wardrobe and examined the plethora within. There were leather coats and sleek dresses, fluffy jumpers and comfortable blouses, denim jeans, chinos and wet-look pants, all sorts of everything that the department stores’ designers could think up, all dangling orderly from the rail. Lower down were racks of shoes and boots, heels and pumps, sneakers and sandals and everything else ever to enclose a lady’s foot.

Clarissa whistled out a long, low breath between her teeth.

‘Woweee, she has quite the collection.’

I shrugged. Mother was a lot of things. One of them was a girl. She had a lot of stuff.

‘Momma’s been spending,’ Clarissa told me, stepping away and moving to the drawers, opening the top one and peering inside. ‘Yum,’ she said as she reached into the cavity and ran her fingers over the soft silky things therein. ‘No dirty boy pants in here.’

She pulled out a set of lingerie, glossy, purple, soft. It shimmered and slithered through her fingers as though fashioned from liquid.

‘Your dad paid for all this with the divorce,’ Clarissa said matter-of-factly. ‘Now Mummy wears them to fuck big men like Trevor.’

‘Why are you saying this?’ I asked, hurt by the fact that she wanted to hurt me more than by what she was saying. I had no sympathy for my dad. Mickie O had hurt my mother. He’d torn our family apart. He’d made Mother stop loving me. I hated him.

‘Because I’m in charge and I can say what I like,’ came her rapid-fire response. She allowed the velvet underwear to sluice through her fingers and fall back into position amongst its exotic counterparts and pushed the drawer closed. ‘Why are you holding your laptop like that?’ She asked abruptly, spinning.

Shit!

‘Umm, like what?’ I said, acting innocent, playing dumb. The mirrored doors of the wardrobe told me that I sure looked dumb enough, but not one iota innocent.

‘Like you’re hiding something behind it?’ Realization dawned on her face. ‘Oh, Charlie! Have you gotten hard again? You have, haven’t you? I can tell by your face. Come on, show me! Show your Aunt Clarissa at once,’ she sounded excited, rather than angry, but I had found that, same as my mother, Clarissa’s moods could change before the clock’s tick had transferred to its tock. I wondered then whether she was doing it on purpose. If her apparent capriciousness was merely just another example of Clarissa bowing to the idol of uniformity. Was she being changeable because my mother was also changeable? Was she tempestuous on the back of my mother’s tempests? I thought I knew.

One thing that I knew for sure was that, as with Mother, it was futile to argue with the girl and so I reluctantly raised my silver shield, revealing to my schoolmate-cum-babysitter-cum-aunt my crotch, and the penis that was outlined vertically across its centre.

‘I knew it!’ Clarissa shrieked, delighted. ‘Oh…my…god! Is that from seeing your mummy’s panties?

‘No!’ I blurted, too quick, too nervous, but true all the same – it had actually been my mother’s imagined pussy that had set my dick to rise.

‘It is, isn’t it? You can’t lie to your Aunt Clarissa. You’re hard for Mummy aren’t you?’

I groaned. My erection stiffened. Her words humiliating but having blood pumping undeniably groinwards. My testes were drawn up towards me as my sac tensed around them. I couldn’t believe how turned on I was about all this. My cock had been acting up all night but this was getting ridiculous now. I needed to get soft, get my homework done and get this bitch out of my house for good. Mum had said that if it didn’t work out then she would find somebody else. Well this was definitely not working out.

‘Answer me,’ Clarissa murmured, stepping forwards. ‘Tell me that you are. Tell me you’re hard for Mummy.’

She stood right before me now, looking up into my eyes with her baby blues. God, she was beautiful. My cock twitched in my jeans directly in front of her, pawing to get out and get at her.

‘Say it, or I’ll put you back in your corner for the rest of the night, and you can explain to your mother why your homework’s not done when she gets back. I’m sure she’ll find your inability to not get hard whilst thinking about her quite…unique.’

Panic swirled about me. Shame seeped through my every pore. But cowardice won out over all.

‘I…umm…I’m hard for…I’m hard for Mummy.’

Her eyes narrowed. Suddenly her fingers clenched around my balls and I yelped, jumping on the spot and almost dropping my laptop from my hands.

‘What’s my fucking name?’ Clarissa hissed as she tightened her claws around me.

‘Aunt Clarissa,’ I cried.

‘Well fucking say it then!’

‘Aunt Clarissa,’ I said. ‘Aunt Clarissa. Aunt Clarissa. Aunt Clarissa.’

‘Not like that! Idiot! Say “You’re my Aunt Clarissa and I’m hard for my Mummy.”’

I said it.

‘Say it again!’

‘You’re my Aunt Clarissa and I’m hard for my Mummy.’

‘Louder.’

‘You’re my Aunt Clarissa and I’m hard for my Mummy.’

‘Keep going.’

‘You’re my Aunt Clarissa and I’m hard for my Mummy.’

I rasped out my lines at a phrenetic rate. Her fingers were ferrous around my ball sac, snagging my plums through the denim, nails digging deep. Her eyes were on me, narrowed into a glare. Her lips were straight and stern. Her poise was immaculate as she squeezed my bollocks and had me recite.

‘Put your laptop on the bed,’ she commanded and I obeyed, practically throwing it down. ‘Get that fucking bag off your back!’ I shrugged myself out of its straps and it fell to the carpet behind me. ‘Now get your ass in here,’ she marched me over to the bathroom. ‘Obviously, the corner didn’t work so your Aunt Clarissa’s going to have to improvise!’

She dragged me by the testicles into my mother’s private bathroom and slammed closed the door.

The door juddered in its jamb as I was hauled forwards across the matte black floor tiles. Clarissa stopped us before the toilet and seated herself on the closed plastic seat, leaning back against the cistern and eyeing me predatorily, her face confident as a queen enthroned before the court.

‘Undress,’ she ordered. ‘Get your little filth-stick out for Aunty.’

I didn’t hesitate this time. I had already revealed myself to her once this evening so doing so again was easy. And in truth I was excited, in brain as well as in balls, by this development.

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa,’ I mumbled before quickly pulling down my jeans and peeling my boxers away from my erection revealing my slender five-inch jut, spiking upwards towards the ceiling.

I stood there, embarrassed and ashamed but at the same time incredibly horny, turned-on by the way events were unfolding despite my growing discomfiture. I knew that it was wrong, especially the way she was involving my mother but no girl had ever taken interest in me in the way that Clarissa was now. Sure, her attention was derogatory. Her intentions could be in no way good. However, for all that, my cock was hard and my cock was out and my cock was being looked at by a real live girl.

‘No,’ the girl in question now said. ‘Not like that, don’t just pull them down, take them off. Your top too. Strip, fully for your aunt.’

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa.’

I jerked my feet through the loops of both jeans and underwear, depositing both items on the ground beside me, swiping them away across the tiles with my feet, and then pulled my t-shirt over my head, tossing that aside also.

I stood naked before the girl, Clarissa.

‘Good boy,’ she cooed across at me. ‘Now fetch me your mother’s perfume.’

I was perplexed but I moved over to the washstand at my back without argument. My naked body looked thin and frail in mother’s wall-consuming, backlit vanity mirror. I looked ugly and gauche in the too-bright light of the spotlighted bathroom. My cheeks were raw, shining so red that at first glance I thought they were bleeding. I saw Clarissa eyeing my reflection through the mirror and quickly averted my eyes, returning to my task.

The deep rectangular basin was overlooked by a veritable amphitheatre of sprawled cosmetics. I hadn’t been in here for at least a decade so I wasn’t sure if this was the norm but everything was everywhere and there seemed to be no sense to the inchoate mess. Still, I spotted my mother’s perfume easily enough amongst the tubs and bottles and pouches and rollers and wands and curlers and straighteners and blushes and balms and all else girly and extant. Since my early teens it had always been a given that I would buy her a new bottle at birthdays and Christmases and so the familiar branding jumped out from amongst the sprawled others. In fact, I now noticed, there were numerous unopened packages queued along the mirror’s lower ledge, awaiting the time when this bottle be depleted and their glossy boxes be breached, bottles opened, liquid innards sprayed in the holy chore of scenting my mother.

‘Hurry up! What’s taking so long?’

I turned sharply at her words and quickly resumed my position, naked and hard-dicked, before my toilet-sat, eighteen-year-old babysitter who had me calling her Aunt and conveying to her my mother’s perfume and marvelled that I did not marvel at the absurdity of my situation. Always it seemed like these strange, clownish sorts of situations were destined to happen to me.

‘Hand it over,’ Clarissa barked impatiently.

I did so, leaning forwards and handing her the bottle before resuming my stance before her.

‘I saw you sniffing her earlier…when she was…disciplining you…you made sure that you got a right good whiff of this, didn’t you?’

‘Umm…yes Aunt Clarissa.’

‘Pervert,’ she said. ‘Loser. Fucking sniffing your own mother. And getting a hard dick over her panties. What would she say to that I wonder?’

‘Cla – I mean Aunt Clarissa, please I will do anything you want…just don’t tell my mum about any of this. I’ll do my homework and I swear I won’t get hard again for the rest of the night.’

‘Umm…I don’t know…you’ve already proven yourself pretty incapable of keeping yourself soft...and you can’t stand in the corner all night, not when you have homework to do…so I’ve had to come up with a solution.’

I stood there and waited as she talked. My nerves were getting the better of me and one of my knees started to shake idiotically beneath me.

Clarissa smiled, Cheshire Cat-smug. ‘How cute; your body is anticipated my orders…kneel,’ she breathed the last as husky and seductive as movie murderesses.

My knees had buckled beneath me before my brain even had time to give them the nod. The tiles were cold, hard and uncomfortable on my patellae and floor-stubbed toes – the two points of my body now grounded.

Clarissa pulled the stopper from the glass bottle and pulled the opened chute up to her nostrils, giving it an audible sniff, taking in the scent like a cocaine hit.

‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘Dreamy.’ She sprayed a single dose onto her palm and, reaching beneath the pink turtleneck, massaged it into her throat, lilting up face to the ceiling spotlights and eschewing the knelt and naked sight of me.

I watched her, hungrily. Clarissa, scented as Mother. My dick throbbed for her. Its head arrowed piteously towards her aloofly, upturned face. Clarissa, I intentionally thought. My cock throbs for Clarissa. And then, unintentionally, Mother. It throbs also for Mother.

Clarissa, I made my mind say to itself as I waited beneath the girl. Clarissa. Clarissa. Cla –

Mother.

No! Cla –

Mother.

My apostate brain beat in time with the throbs of my dick.

Mother. Mother. Mother. It was pulsing and throbbing for Mother.

Clarissa looked down at me knowingly. She reached down, eyes locked to mine, perfume at the ready. Delicately boned finger on the nozzle, in preparation to spray. She pointed the bottle at her target, her tight-covered feet. And sprayed.

Once, twice, three times on either foot. Once on the top, once on the point of her toes, once, with a crimp of the ankles, on the arch of her sole. Repeating the process left and right, dowsing her feet in my mother’s perfume.

When she was finished with her feet she leant forwards on the toilet lid and pointed the nozzle at my penis. She sprayed. A direct shot to the sensitive glans of my cock, sousing it with the myriad notes of my mother’s perfume and causing a tide of stinging pain to assail me. She sprayed again, up and down the shaft and all over my balls, until my pubes and sex dripped, soaked through with perfume. So much had been sprayed in the relatively small (Mother’s en-suite was larger than most family bathrooms, but still…), enclosed space that the entire room was saturated with its intoxicating scent. Its aromas flooded my nostrils, its flavour my mouth, its too-sweet flowery taste strong on my tongue.

Preparations made, Clarissa stoppered the bottle and placed it on the tiles between my splayed knees.

‘Right,’ she said, smiling, smug that her game was nicely set, the scenario that she had mapped out primed to happen and me being none the wiser. She was the kitchen cat with the trapped mouse tightly sequestered beneath her paws, knowing that at any moment of her choosing she could unfurl claws and fangs and have the rodent skedaddling through the pearly bolthole that separated this life from the next.

‘Since you like the smell of your mother’s perfume so much you can smell it directly from my tights. I do need to rest my feet and your idiot red face looks like the perfect place for them to settle.’

Leaning back on her seat she raised each of her legs in turn and plopped them onto my face, squishing my nose, which was further filled, exponentially, with the heady scent I most associated with my mother. I grunted as the arches of her feet took sovereignty over my reddened face, roaming tyrannically over my cheeks, perturbing my lips as they passed up and down across my face, folding the rubbery flaps of flesh upwards and downwards away from my teeth, which sat exposed as gravestones in my gums, taking on the fluff and debris that detached from Clarissa’s hosiery.

I couldn’t see more than two white blurs but I heard her next instructions clear and crisp as summer mornings. ‘Sniff them,’ she said. ‘Sniff them and stroke yourself, loser. Use your Momma’s perfume as lube. Stroke until you’re soft. Make that noodle soft for Mummy.’

I moaned open-mouthed into the abrasive veil of her tights. My hands remained at my side, at once desperate and reluctant to take hold of my cock. I knew that to stroke myself now would have me cumming quickly, cumming whilst under the intoxication of my mother’s perfume. It was something that I knew would have repercussions going forwards. Bad ones. Pavlov’s dogs, I remembered, couldn’t help but start to salivate at the ticking of the metronome.

But the suggestive dialogue of Clarissa Morgan made it almost impossible to resist.

‘Do it!’ She urged. ‘Stroke for Mummy, breath Mummy in and stroke. Sniff and stroke for Mummy.’

The fragrance filled me. Suffocating and sweet it whelmed my senses, consumed my ken. Her words were everywhere at once. Brain and soul and heart and cock. They all absorbed what the ears heard spoken.

‘Sniff and stroke, loser. Sniff and stroke for Mummy.’

I couldn’t resist. She had me beaten. Clarissa did. Mother did. Clarissa and Mother. Clarissa. Mother. Clarissa. Mother. Mother. Mother.

Mummy.

My fist circled my wet, perfumed dick.

‘That’s it. Stroke for Mummy. Let me hear you sniff. Let me see you stroke.’ Her voice drifted down to me, calm and possessive. Like Mother’s. Like Mummy’s.

I took a deep, audible whiff of her feet, pulling the scent decadently into my lungs, filling them to the brim with Mother. The perfume made me feel lightheaded and woozy. I began to pump my fist over my smooth shaft, drawing the foreskin up and down with the fast and frantic rhythm of my palm, which slipped and slid over my moist length, flying off at the end like a hand off a broom handle.

‘No! Not like that. Stroke it slow. Long and loving strokes. All the way up and all the way down. That’s it, coat that little cock in Mummy’s scent.’

I slowed my rhythm as commanded, bringing my fist right down to the base and sliding it up to the head, twisting a little at the zenith. Inevitably, with every other tug, my palm was skidding right off the tip of my small, slippery penis, squirting up and away from my throbbing member before I could take it once more between my fingers and continue to stroke.

‘Ahhhh,’ I moaned into Clarissa’s scent-steeped feet as they kneaded into my face.

‘Kiss my feet,’ she ordered, as she manipulated their soles to rub violently against me. ‘Make out with them. Use your tongue. Make believe that they’re the perfumed face of your mother and snog the scent right off them.’

I began to grope at the undersides of her feet with my mouth, thrusting forwards with my neck, jutting out my tongue. My jaw muscles worked against her soft, thick stockings, lips forming the permutations and patterns of a deep and frenzied kiss as I wanked myself off beneath her.

‘That’s it. Taste her. Tongue her taste off my feet.’

My balls hummed. There was a weird, lightless feeling to them, as though my scrotum had absorbed, through its pores, the spirits it had been sprayed with, and now my testes bobbed in perfume as onions pickling in jars vinegar or apples in the Halloween trough.

So moist was I that the friction was negligible as I ran my clenched fingers and rounded palm up and down the drenched length of my shaft however Clarissa’s words alone were enough to have me spiralling towards the brink of orgasm.

‘Stroke to the smell of Mummy, loser,’ she laughed, high and cruel and unseen, from her toilet throne, above me. ‘You’re pathetic. Such a filthy…fucking…loser. I bet you’re such a massive disappointment to her. I bet she’s been dying to disown you for years. Your dad walking out was just an excuse to set the wheels in motion. Your life with her is over now, you know that already don’t you? Tonight, is the final straw. She’s going to kick you out. She’s going to send you to your dad’s or put you out on the street where you belong. You’ll be sleeping under bins whilst she’s fucking Trevor in her bed trying to forget that you ever existed.’

I garbled unintelligibly, voice muffled by the feet she was making me kiss. My cock throbbed and twitched in my fingers as I slowly drew them up and down its length, my arm muscles aching to be put to better use and jerk the thing aggressively to climax.

‘Stroke for me, loserboy. Stroke to the smell of your mother. You never know…this could be the last chance you get. When I tell her what a bad boy you’ve been tonight, you might never get another opportunity to see her.’

‘Who am I, loser?’

‘Raunt Crissa,’ I mumbled, desperately tugging my wiener, sensing the spasm circling in.

‘I can’t hear you loser, who am I?’

‘Raunt Crissa! Raunt Crissa!’ I said, sounding like ball-gagged Scooby Doo.

She laughed. ‘Pathetic! Stroke faster now. We’re nearly there. Strong as hard and fast as you can and tell your Aunt Clarissa who you’re stroking for.’

I pumped my fast harder, faster, tightening my grip on my shaft.

‘Rime, roking, or, ry, rummy!’

‘Again! Louder! Over and over until you cum! Spew your nasty goo and make yourself nice and soft for Mummy.’ She jabbed her feet into my face. ‘And don’t forget about these, loverboy. Kiss them like you’re kissing your Momma goodbye.’

‘Rime, roking, or, ry, rummy!’

Even though the sound was idiotically distorted my brain translated my words for me so was I stroked my dicked and nipped and kissed and sucked on Clarissa’s feet the scroll of words smashed itself endlessly through my consciousness.

‘I’m stroking for my Mummy!’

‘I’m stroking for my Mummy!

‘I’m stroking for my Mummy!’

I couldn’t last any longer. My balls ached beneath me. My cock was afire in my hands. I cried out into her soles, my froze-into-ecstasy face pressing into the damp fibres of her hose as my body spasmed beneath. I felt the first spurt of spunk torpedo through my rod, arching into open bathroom air as my arsehole convulsed and another stream of white rocketed up after the pioneering first. My chest heaved and sagged, heaved and sagged. My heart was turning cartwheels in my chest. A third and fourth tail of jizz fountained from my super-slickened penis, each one less powerful than the last, until a fifth dribbled from the head and oozed like the hot flow from a lazy Vesuvius down my already softening phallus, sliming the hand that still held my penis in place.

My body sagged, weakened through release. I panted a moment against Clarissa’s soles before she withdrew them from my face. Colour re-entered my world by slow gradation as my spasm-clenched eyes widened and Clarissa Morgan’s cruelly grinning face painted itself in portrait before me.

‘You’ve made a bit of a mess down there, Charlie-Boy,’ said Clarissa, her ever-changing voice articulating now something of a sisterly amusement. Clarissa was a girl that knew all the right sounds and all the right tones. She knew how to coo and how to twinkle, she knew how to bark and, as my cheeks would testify, she knew equally how to bite.

She hadn’t lied about the mess. The floor between us was patterned by tapering puddles of semen, glistening like fish-scale beneath the blaze of artificial bathroom light. Though my seed had felt like it had positively rocketed from my launch-pad cock-end, clearly the blasts had not been quite as dramatic as I had imagined, none of the spurts had arched high enough to bother the underside of Clarissa’s, then, overhanging legs, or jetted far enough to sully the porcelain base of her seat.

I felt weak and empty with my balls drained, weaker and emptier even than before. There was an explicit sadness to the straggling strands of jizz that still drizzled from my exposed glans, rolling sheepishly over the sticky, creased-back foreskin and down the flagging shaft, an apologetic dribble of weak and watery gunk. I watched it puddle across the edge of my hand and slide over the brink, running in sordid rivulets down the back of my fist and sliming the edges of my knuckles grossly.

I felt Clarissa as she watched me watch it. Her face was slightly tilted. She was blurred and impassive in my peripheries.

‘It’s the best place for it,’ she said so softly that it hurt. ‘Better that than inside a girl…Charlie…look at me.’

I looked at her. Her face was perfectly still and immaculate. It showed no iota of compassion nor hate nor loathing nor liking nor anything else for that matter. It was not the face of a human at all. Clarissa wore then face of Truth.

‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘Never put your seed into a girl. This…whatever you have…whatever you are…it has to end with you. Charlie…just make that promise to me, it’s the last good thing that you can do.’

‘I promise,’ I swore, weak, vulnerable, tears again brimming, budding in my eyes and threatening to fall.

‘Good boy, it’s for the best, really it is. Now. Time to moisturize that awful red face of yours, I’m really fucking sick of looking at it.’

My heart thundered, eyes fixed to the shimmering, floor-strewn ejaculant.

‘No, no,’ she said, seeing where my eyes had turned. ‘Start with your hand. Smear that all over your face. Lather it all in until there’s nothing left and then you can move on to the floor. No hands,’ she added offhandedly. ‘Just lean forwards like a dog at dinner. Don’t cheat by licking it up either. Just be a doll for your Aunt Clarissa and mop that filth up with your ugly red face.’

I drew my hand up to my face, allowing my now fully flaccid penis to loll lifelessly between my knelt-down legs, and gazed morbidly at the dollops of amalgamated cum that garnished the held-up appendage, glistening white and gooey as dollops of mismanaged mayonnaise.

I stared, my heart hammering towards coronary crescendo.

If I did this…

This cum…

On my face…

Pervert. Ponce. Faggot. Freak.

I couldn’t help it.

The bigoted, hate-filled words my dad would use flashed through my mind.

Of course, I hadn’t really been caught in a homosexual act, there would need to be another man present for that but being face-to-face with my own jizz was gay enough for my narrow-minded dad. I imagined what Mickie O would say if he saw me now. I imagined the look of shock, and then outrage, and then disgust being smashed in succession across his gruff, proudly-masculine face.

‘You’re not son of mine! I didn’t raise no faggot!’

I flinched from the boot I imagined him swinging my way.

I imagined then my mother’s reaction. It was angry, also, but for reasons that differed.

‘Charlie Olson, you obey your babysitter this minute! Don’t you dare embarrass me by acting up! Oh, I’m so sorry, Clarissa I don’t know what has gotten into him. You horrid little boy! I can’t even go out and have fun, can’t even get my face filled with hot dick without you trying to humiliate me. You know, you’re just like your father! You’re your father’s son, not mine!’

I flinched from Mother’s slap, as my father’s ghost near choked in my head.

‘My son…my son? He’s not my son! He’s a faggot! A cum-faced freak! I should have known! I should have known this is what you’ve turned him into!’

‘Me!’ the mother of my mind shrieked. ‘You’re the one who’s turned him into a foulmouthed, delinquent little freak!’

‘AND YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S MADE HIM A FRIENDLESS, LITTLE FAGGOT-FREAK!’

‘HE’S YOUR FREAK!’ the one of them cried.

‘HE’S YOUR FREAK!’ the other returned.

‘He’s a freak…’ they accepted in unison, looking at each other, disappointment etched across their unmotherly, unfatherly features.

‘Freak…’ they each whispered.

And I wondered if that was what I was to become.

A freak, hated by mum, and hated equally by my dad.

‘Freak.’

‘Freak!’

‘FREAK!’ they began to chant, and then to roar, the two of them united again at last – accepting of each other in their rejection of the thing they’d spawned.

They filled my head. My parents and their cries of ‘freak!’

And I was one, I knew. I was one, for sure, if I did this. I turned my eyes from the cum to the girl who wanted it painted across my face. She looked haughtily down at me.

‘Do it,’ she said.

And then, nightmarishly, as if she knew, as if she was privy to each and all of my thoughts.

‘Do it, freak!’ Clarissa demanded.

Without thinking, I slammed my face forwards. Without thought, I slammed my hand back. We met in the middle. The fleshy part of my hand, between thumb and forefinger, where the greatest portion of white gunk had accumulated, splatting against my right cheek as I set about coating my face in my cum.

‘That’s it,’ Clarissa encouraged, laughing wickedly from her throne above. ‘Spread it around. Not just the cheeks. Make sure you get it all around the mouth and eyes too. Come on dipshit, jizz-up that nose a bit!’

I smeared the cum obediently across my face. Squirming at first, sickened at first, but once it was on there, it wasn’t so bad. The texture was no different to face cream or liquid soap and the air was saturated with so much of my mother’s perfume that I was only assailed with the vaguest hints of its smell. I used both hands, rigorously rubbing the gunk in, almost as though I was deep cleaning my face, knowing that that would rid me of it quicker than being tentative would. I was careful to keep my eyes and mouth closed as I scrubbed my face, engaging my palms in powerful circular motions, the cum quickly sinking into the pores of face and hands and leaving my face sticky and slick but without any tell-tale globules of semen across it.

‘All gone?’ Clarissa asked.

‘I think so,’ I said, probing my face with my fingers.

‘Looks like it…better get to cleaning that floor up then, you don’t want your mother to step in your filth, do you?’

‘No, Aunt Clarissa,’ I murmured, defeated.

‘Get to it then,’ she said, clicking her fingers low.

I stooped low, as she had said, like a dog at dinner, and without thinking, plunged the side of my face into the most expediently placed puddle of cum and began to scrub the tiles clean with my cheeks. Clarissa placed a single foot lightly on my back as I worked and cooed words of encouragement down to me.

‘That’s it, mop it all up, mop it up for Mummy.’

‘Say – ‘yes Aunt Clarissa’’

‘Tell me you’ll mop it all up for Mummy.’

‘Yes…Aunt…Clarissa,’ I said as I scooched my face from cumstain to cumstain, using my cheeks as a makeshift dishrag, crooking and twisting my neck and spine to manoeuvre in the tight space in front of me. ‘I’ll mop it all up for Mummy,’ I assured as best I could, with a face full of cum.

‘Good…good…keep going,’ she said, sounding, if anything, slightly bored by the whole situation. ‘Be quick about it. You’ve still got all of that lovely homework to do.’

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa,’ I murmured distantly, concentrating on my work, trying my best to block all else out.

She giggled.

‘Good boy,’ she said.

I felt dehumanised and ashamed as I cleaned my cum from Mother’s bathroom floor. The motions I was making were motions humans never made. My spine was uncomfortably scrunched, my neck pivoting this way and that, cheeks flattened against the cold tiles, the soft flesh smearing the glossy puddles across the smooth, hard surfaces of the floor, soaking the cum in, amalgamating my seed with the burning skin of my ultra-flushed face.

As I worked, Clarissa laughed in delighted little tinkles above.

‘Oh my god!’ she kept on saying between her giggles.

‘Gosh, you’re really doing it, aren’t you?’

‘I can’t actually believe you’re doing it!’

‘What a loser!’

‘Idiot!’

‘Freak!’

That word hit me harder than the rest. My imagined mother, and imagined father, still chanted it through my mind.

My body tremored. My organs, all, were somersaulting on the spot, unlatched from their berths and doing cartwheels and clown-moves within me. This was heinous. This was outrageous. This was stupid. This was dumb!

My legs were shaking like those of an overexcited pup, just before it’s bladder offloads. My nervous system was going haywire. Testosterone, adrenaline, fear, hormones – whatever! – flowed in wild rivers through me. My body had fallen into flight or fight response, the frantic signals of my brain tricking my nervous system into thinking I was under threat. But I could not fly, and I could not fight, all I could do was wipe.

Wipe my face across my cum.

Smudge, and smear, and scrape my seed from where I had spilt it.

Clarissa continued to goad and tease as I worked.

‘That’s it, make your Aunty proud.’

‘Get it all up, get it all up from mummy’s pretty floor. Better on your ugly face than on Mummy’s pretty floor.’

‘That’s it, mop it all up with your face, be a good cum-rag for your mummy.’

I groaned piteously beneath her, and helplessly obeyed.

Clarissa had me mop the remainder of the cum from the floor with my face and then commanded me to await her return. She then breezed from the room, but not before she had scooped up the bottle of perfume she had utilized so adroitly earlier, as well as my bundle of clothes, bearing them with her as she left me to kneel forlornly on the bathroom floor, thinking frantically on the events that had unfolded so far that evening, and dreading immensely what else was to come.

The disapproving voices of my parents still echoed through my skull. I thought about what I had just done, and what they would say, how they would react, if they knew. Father would never forgive or understand the weakness those acts had entailed. Mother…I didn’t know what Mother would think. In a way, I had been being a good boy. In a way, I had been obeying. Which, more and more, was what Mother wanted and expected from me – always. I shunted the thoughts away. Mother approving of me licking cum from her bathroom floor was not a thought worth countenancing. If I dwelt on it, such visions would creep into my dreams later.

Luckily, before long, Clarissa re-entered the room and returned Mother’s perfume to the sink-side jumble.

‘Your bed smelled a little funky earlier,’ Clarissa told me. ‘Don’t worry though, that nasty, boy-filth smell should be nicely masked now that I’ve doused your pillow, duvet and bedsheets in your Mother’s lovely cologne.’

An odd tingle ran through my soft and shrivelled penis at this, and I quivered in horror at what this might mean. Fortunately, I hadn’t the time to dwell on this as Clarissa was quickly ushering me out of the bathroom and then bedroom of my mother, and back to the peak of the stairs.

‘Umm…Aunt Clarissa...shouldn’t I…umm are you s…s…sure I shouldn’t be wearing any…erm…I’m naked,’ I finished my murmurings, head lowered, face red, heart shy.

‘I can see that, sweetie,’ my new aunt said. ‘I need to keep an eye on your little thing. Make sure it stays nice and soft like it’s meant to.’

I was blushing furiously. Feeling vulnerable. Feeling stupid. Feeling, what’s more, like my penis had more chance of hardening with me being naked than with me being clothed. But then, I guess Clarissa knew that. I guess she was already anticipating another chance to chastise me.

She had me follow her down the stairs, once again making my take her hand as we descended the steps and soon I was sitting, naked, at the dining room table, facing the propped-open doors that led into the living room, so that Clarissa could twist her neck at will and see me from her position on the couch.

My laptop purred in front of me. My books were opened. Pens and notepads out and aligned, ready to be used.

As Clarissa left me to work, I asked her a question that had been burning inside me from since just after she had arrived. Despite all that had happened since it still seemed pertinent. Perhaps, even, the most pertinent thing.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I ventured, adding quickly – ‘Aunt Clarissa?’

‘I guess...’ Clarissa allowed, hovering in the doorway, eyeing me at a half-turn.

I took a breath.

‘Do you really not recognise me from school?’

Clarissa smirked.

‘Why would I? I don’t take any note of losers.’

I downturned my eyes but before I could stop myself I mumbled bitterly beneath my breath:

‘I bet you’ll remember me on Monday, though.’

Clarissa laughed loudly. A genuine burst of amusement. It was a laugh I had heard often, in corridors and in classrooms, and a laugh I had often felt a pang of sadness upon hearing – knowing that I will never be the one to cause it. I was causing it now. Through my discomfort and degradation, I was making Clarissa Morgan laugh. The Clarissa Morgan. And at her laughing I felt the sad-pain blossom once more, realising forlornly that only through my being the butt of the joke, could I ever be part of the joke, that pretty people have.

‘It depends how well you behave for the rest of the night,’ Clarissa told me, chuckling lightly. ‘Be ever-so-obedient, ever such a good boy for your Auntie Clarissa and you may just slip my mind come Monday. Be a naughty, nasty little boy and I’m quite sure that I will remember you vividly…and if I do remember you, I’ll be sure to tell everybody all about it.’

She eyed me cruelly and spoke the next in a harsh, deliberately scything tone.

‘I’ll tell Tommy all about it…and you get on so well with Tommy, loser, don’t you?’

She laughed again, and without waiting for an answer, sauntered away into my lounge, ass wagging excruciatingly beneath her skirt, and, watching her go, I knew for sure that I had no choice at all but to continue to obey Clarissa Morgan’s whims, and Clarissa Morgan’s increasingly capricious will.

I turned to my homework and did my best to concentrate on my assignments, working through the problems as methodically as I could. However, Clarissa’s words haunted me. She had me completely powerless. If I didn’t do what she said, all that she said, then she would tell my mother that I had been badly behaved, something which – if Mother followed through with her threats –could change my life forever.

I still didn’t quite believe it…

Not all of it. Not the part about kicking me out, about shipping me off to Dad.

But she had been angry. Angier than ever I’d seen her. And who knew with Mum these days? Who knew what she would, and what she would not do?

Not me.

Maybe god, and maybe the devil, but definitely not me.

Equally horrifying was the spectre of school come Monday.

If Clarissa spoke about this at school…

If she told our classmates, her girlfriends…

If she told Tommy…

About the slaps, about my mother, about the cum, the cum on my face, the cum mopped up, and the things that I said whilst doing it.

I physically cringed, my cheeks burning though no eyes were upon me. The equations before me became as hieroglyphs, depicted in a language I did not understand. Unable to concentrate, my mind was darted inevitably to Tommy; Clarissa becoming, in my mind at least, a mere agent of his, an offshoot of his evil. My bully had followed me home, previously the only real safe haven I had from him and his cronies, and here he was, here in feminine form.

In the form of the good girl.

The sweet girl.

The one who everybody loved.

The one who everybody wanted to be with, or to be liked by, or even to be.

But I had been wrong about her. Everybody had. The innocence in Clarissa was feigned. The sweetness contrived. I had been wrong about her character, I had been wrong, equally, about the depths of her knowing. She knew. About Tommy’s dark side, his mean side, his bullying. Clarissa knew. Why else would she mention him? Why would she drop his name so meaningfully into her threats?

Clarissa most definitely knew about that side of him, and most probably liked it.

She loved it, I’d wager.

Maybe that was what had brought them originally together. The one of them the sadist in the open, the other the sadist in secret. I imagined them now, plotting their escapades. I imagined them reliving Tommy’s iniquities, Clarissa giggling as he told her of the fingers he had stomped, the money he had stolen, the toilets he had thrust heads into. I imagined Clarissa getting all hot and bothered, and moist in the middle, as Tommy sermonized about the boy he had made cry, the one he had drawn blood from, the one from which he had knocked a milky white tooth. I imagined Tommy holding her down against the bed, ploughing her roughly into the mattress as she squealed and laughed and screamed and climaxed, thinking of Tommy, her man, and the evil he dealt.

My cock was throbbing, I realised, and was instantly sickened at myself for my arousal. It said a lot that I found it more depraved that I be titillated be my bully, than I did that I be titillated by my mother. I had issues, I knew. Mummy issues. Daddy issues. Bully issues. All issues. Weak-little-bitch issues. Can’t-get-a-girl issues. All those issues, I had them and more.

My glans shuffled pathetically against my thigh, the soft and scrunched shaft itching, making efforts to harden once more, making efforts to straighten, to strengthen, to rise. Castigating myself in my head, I rushed through my homework, thinking furiously about chair-legs and grandmothers and the things that were supposed to cause erections to wane. I fidgeted, naked thigh against naked thigh, attempting to ensconce, and thus hide, my penis between them. It was impossible for me to deduce whether or not Clarissa would be able to see the changes occurring, should she look over. She was laid back on the sofa, her face close to being on a level plane with my groin, however the distance between us and the shade that the table provided may have been enough to conceal my privates from view. I was not, however, keen on putting this theory to the test.

First, it had been the corner. Next it had been the cum, and the socks, and the floor. I dreaded to think what would befall me should I be caught erect for the third time that night.

So, I ploughed on with my homework, desperate to get it done. To be up and away from the table – hopefully to the safety of my room. I cared not a jot if my answers were correct, or if my math added up, or if any of my summations or sentences made any sort of sense. My mind was gone. Goodbye. Toodaloo. It had said. And all it had left me to dwell on was Tommy.

Tommy…

My bully…

My nemesis…

My devil, my demon, my fiend.

I hated him.

Hated.

Not little-boy hate either. It wasn’t a petulant hate. It was a bitter, deep-boned hate. One that I felt like a punch to the gut whenever I espied him. A punch only matched by the punch of fear I felt when he espied me back and grinned.

Tommy was, I held, and would always hold, the most significant factor in my…my uniqueness as Clarissa would say. My loserdom, if you would. Whilst probably not being the sole cause, he had unquestionably added to its depths over years of physical and mental domination. My lack of friends, my poor self-esteem, and low self-worth were all, to a certain extent, consequences of Tommy’s schoolyard tyranny. Who would want to be friends with the guy who smelt so often of toilet water? Who would risk being associated with the one who was accosted daily by the biggest boys in the school and therefore potentially bring about their own peril? The answer, as the empty chairs either side of me in each of my classes demonstrated, was nobody.

And now Clarissa used him against me in her threats. It was bad enough, her invoking the name of Mother, without her invoking the name of Tommy as well. Truth be told, I knew that I now had little choice but to obey her. I could only barely bear what I had already borne. I was always on the brink already. Perpetually on that razor’s edge, that one that separated collapse and calamity from getting through the day; the one that was a hair’s breadths wide and a million miles in length. If Clarissa were to give Tommy further impetus to bully me, further ammunition to hit me with, if she were to furnish him with the truths that would hurt the most; with my family situation, with my mother…

…Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Not unless you like to see the sad one swivel on rope so high and so taut…

I saw the image. Smashed it. Sent it skedaddling away. I could get through this. I could get through it. All I had to do was obey. That way Clarissa wouldn’t tell. She had said as much herself – if I was a good boy she would forget, if I was a bad boy then my secrets would be remembered, and, on the schoolyard, told.

I finished my homework – luckily, with it being early in the semester, only a negligible amount had been set – and checked my penis, ensuring that it was again fully soft. After several moment’s hesitation, I called meekly to my sitter, making sure to address her properly as ‘Aunt,’ that I was done.

‘What’s that, dear?’ Clarissa called back casually, from the couch.

‘I’m all finished with my homework,’ I all but squeaked from my chair.

‘Okay, good boy,’ she replied. ‘I’ll bring you mine, and you can get started on that.’

She brought her schoolbag into the room and I stared at her dumbfounded.

Noticing, Clarissa smiled.

‘Your mother said you’re to do all homework without exception,’ she explained as she dumped her back of books before me. ‘And there’s plenty of homework for you to do in there.’

Sighing, but without argument I reached for her bag. After all, what choice did I have?

‘Good boy,’ my ‘Aunt’ Clarissa cooed. ‘I expect to get A’s in everything,’ she told me, as she turned away to return to her cosy sofa-base. ‘And fetch me a glass of your mother’s wine,’ she added curtly as she settled herself into the cushions, stretching out her legs and laying back her head. ‘Be a good host, Charlie-Boy, do your mother proud.’

Clarissa’s wine poured and delivered to her – for which I received a ‘good boy’ and a patronising smile – I settled myself back into my hard-wooden seat and arranged Clarissa’s books and files around me. I sighed. I didn’t know where to start. As prementioned Clarissa and I share some of the same classes. But not all of them. And there were textbooks here that I didn’t recognise. Sociology, for a start, I had never taken a single lesson in. I shrugged and opened the book at the bookmarked page. Sociology. Sounded made up to me. How hard could it be?

I put far more effort into Clarissa’s homework than I had put into my own. I surmised that not getting her the A grades she expected could have dire consequences when the school week came lumbering inevitably around.

Occasionally Clarissa’s voice would float into the room.

‘Everything alright in there, Charlie-Boy?’

‘Are you behaving yourself in there?’

‘It’s very quiet in there, I hope you’re not up to no good?’ she would call.

And…

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa.’

Or…

‘No, Aunt Clarissa,’ I would call anxiously back, eager for her to be reassured and not feel the need to come and investigate.

Not because I was doing anything wrong. More because…Well…I didn’t know. It was the same with Mother, now that I thought on it. She had me ever on edge, on tenterhooks, on eggshells, and all other things that are precarious and/or in any way breakable. And she had me there whether I was behaving myself or not. I realised then that Clarissa was having the same effect on me that Mother had, and not for the first time, I found myself wondering whether that was by chance, or by cruel, girlish design.

My stomach rumbled as the clock-hands span. I hadn’t eaten since I’d polished off the third of my Mum-made ham-and-cheese sandwiches at lunch, some seven hours earlier. Mother would have usually served supper by now, and if Aunt Julie had been here, we’d be sharing pizza on the sofa as she told me about work, and as I made up lies about how great school, life, and the universe in the general were going.

Though Clarissa had called for a second glass of wine – which I had duly conveyed – she had not yet broached the subject of food. Maybe she ate later than I did, I reasoned. Mother did have me going to bed at ludicrously early times for a teenager, so it was probable that most kids ate later in the day than I did.

Still…

I glanced at the clock for the third time in a matter of minutes, my tummy pining to be fed. It was a quarter past eight. Mother and Trevor would have already eaten. They would have had their pre-show drinks, and would now be settling down, eager for the opening of the curtains. I pictured them then, pressed together in their theatre seats, speaking in only-slightly-hushed voices, neither of them cowed by protocol or the glares of others around them. I pictured Mother giggling at something the imagined Trevor said. I pictured large manly hands wandering…

Fuck!

I snatched my focus away. I couldn’t afford to think thoughts like that. My mother and Trevor. My mother and men. My mother, at all. Not after what had just happened. The perfume. Her perfume, and the words, and the cumming over those words, over that perfume.

Fuck, I thought again as I realised that my dick was throbbing once more.

Fuck off, I demanded savagely, of myself, or my mother, or both.

I shunted her forcibly from my mind, and tried, equally, to push my hunger aside, allowing me to concentrate on my – on Clarissa’s – homework. Head down, I worked. Typing tortuously the answers to problems I had never been taught how to deal with. Constantly turning to the textbook index for clues as I came across stumbling block after stumbling block in my endeavours to complete my babysitter’s, to me, totally alien assignments.

From the lounge, the soap opera sounds transitioned to those of reality TV. I knew the type of show from the voiceover and the snippets of conversation that pervaded into the kitchen. Twenty-somethings, hard-bodied hunks and hard-bodied honeys, put together, closeted away in circumstances that led inevitable to hard-bodied sex. I had watched an episode of one such show some years before, and I had eschewed them ever since. It would never be me. It would never be me on the beach, in the hot tub, in the pool. I just couldn’t relate. Not to their easy dealings with the opposite sex. Not to their confidence. Not to the way all things led to touching, and then kissing, and then more.

More…

Other people always seemed to get effortlessly more than I ever got. Shows like that exemplified the fact. As did people like Clarissa.

As if to emphasise the point further my belly grumbled powerfully. I was hungry, I wanted to eat, and yet I did not eat. Simultaneously, my dick throbbed. I was horny, I wanted to fuck, or at least to have a tug, and yet I did not fuck, and I did not tug. My primal urges were being ignored. My biological drives denied. Instead, as ever, I waited to be told what to do next by those more important than I. Usually it was Mother who did the telling, but her duties had been usurped for the night, falling instead to the little blonde girl, strewn across the sofa, and sipping smoothly on her second glass of red.

I worked quietly. From time to time, an instant message popped up on my screen. By now, I should have been logged into my Playstation, headphones in, part of a squad of soldiers, shooting, stabbing, sniping the night away. My gaming buddies – none of which were local, and none of which I had ever met – wanted to know what was keeping me, message windows popping up and flashing on my laptop screen. I ignored them, minimizing the windows and continuing Clarissa’s work. Normally, I would be feeling pissed; agitated that I was being kept from my games, but today such grievances seemed trivial.

It was a few minutes to nine when I took my first bathroom break, surreptitiously checking my genitalia beforehand, making certain there was no sign of stiffness on show.

‘Aunt Clarissa,’ I called. ‘May I use the bathroom?’

‘You have one downstairs?’ she asked, without taking her eyes from the television screen.

I confirmed that we did and Clarissa baby-spoke back to me.

‘Do you want to be a big boy and go all by yourself,’ she asked in that soft, patronising way. ‘Or do you need me to come and hold it for you?’

I grimaced.

My penis twitched at the thought, and for an absurd moment my fucked-up libido nearly got the better off me. I almost said yes. That I needed it holding. Imagining her soft hands around my shaft, her body close to mine, brushing softly against me, as her scent…

‘I’ll be okay,’ I called back, voice breaking up as the words were issued.

Clarissa tittered softly.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, eyes glued to her show.

I scrambled to my feet and went scuttling away to tinkle. As was habit when at home, I left my laptop unlocked. And that, of course, was my biggest mistake yet.

I returned to the kitchen with my bladder relieved, but with everything else instantly aghast.

Clarissa was at the kitchen table, looming over my laptop, frowning.

I halted in the doorway and stared, the tableau frightening

I had no doubt that Clarissa perceived me, standing there on the peripheries, as she viewed the laptop screen, but she did not yet condescend to acknowledge me, instead allowing me a few moments to stew, and for bad thoughts to blossom, and foment.

I had done something wrong, I instantly knew, but did not instantly know what. Had Clarissa been checking my work, I wondered? Had I made some obvious mistake, something so glaring that she thought it intentional? And then my heart skipped about a dozen of its beats. Had she somehow found my hidden folders, my secret files, and the porn stashed within?

The thought horrified me. Sure, all girls knew that all boys wanked, but I didn’t want Clarissa to see what it was that I’d been wanking over. And I didn’t want her revealing my secrets to my mother.

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I stood and I stared as Clarissa turned on me with the slow, dangerous precision of Mother. Shit! If she had been an actress playing my mum on either stage or screen, then Clarissa’s performance would have guaranteed her trophies called Tony and Oscar, such was the semblance between them. The mannerisms. The way that she stared. Telling me I’d done something heinous without speaking. Telling me I was in trouble, and deserving of correction, without a need to articulate the fact with words. This all from the handbook of my mother. And the pair had only met the once. I wondered then if all females, all women, took their tricks from the selfsame pages of the selfsame book.

‘Come here please, Charlie,’ Clarissa murmured dangerously.

I stood stricken, heartrate frantic. Delicate shivers ran down my spine and along the length of my cock. I knew that behind me my butt-sweat sparkled. She looked at me, and I looked back at her, and wished I was blind. There was a heat; an electricity; an expectancy, almost, in the air between us. To me it was an unwanted heat. Not the heat that sparked when would-be lovers clashed, but the predatorial heat that exists between the thing that eats and the thing that’s eaten.

‘Do not keep me waiting,’ Clarissa, in Mother’s voice, advised.

She had the tone and the tenor just right. Gone was the baby-talk. Gone the little schoolgirl vibe. She sounded mature, and in sounding mature made me feel puerile. She sounded angry; disappointed; indelibly composed. She made me feel nervous, sheepish, and the thing furthest from being composed.

I took a step on my legs of jelly, feeling certain that I was on the verge of skeletal collapse. I was unsteady as the postnatal legs of those quadrupeds, that simply slide from the cleft in a torrent of birth-gunk and immediately begin, stutteringly, to walk.

‘Chop, chop, Charlie. I haven’t got all day.’

I came forwards skittishly, eyes roving, the deer that knows innately that the gun barrel is locked on them, but knows not from where the bullet will come.

‘I…umm…I can explain,’ I mumbled, not knowing yet what I would be explaining.

‘Really, Charlie? Really?’ asked Clarissa, her eyebrow raised. ‘Because I really would like to see you try and explain this.’

She rotated the laptop around with her hands, so that I saw the window on screen.

It was a conversation with one of my gaming buddies, one that had tried to contact me earlier, and one I had ignored. His latest messages were there at the bottom of the screen, the initial one that had made the window pop up, and a few follow ups, all of which I had neither read nor replied to. They were harmless enough, I saw. Asking me what was keeping me. Telling me they were starting without me. Telling me to hurry my ass up.

I stared, my brain not understanding. I had done something wrong, Clarissa’s tone stipulated that I had. But I couldn’t work out what. My brain cogs were moving at chelonian rates, turning through my mind like tortoise legs through treacle.

‘I…I didn’t respond,’ I stammered, still not understanding. ‘I was concentrating on my work, I swear!’

Clarissa stared. Her blue eyes were stern and cold. Her facial features revealed nothing about what thoughts were circulating her skull. She blinked, deliberate and calm. Blinked again. Her lips pursed. Her arm moved, catching my eye the way the reticulated skin of a snake would, when it moved through its near pitch-dark cave. Her arm moving meant danger, my mind – from the slaps previous – had learned.

But she did not hit me.

Instead she thrust a finger higher up the screen.

‘And here,’ she asked sternly. ‘Did you respond then?’

Above the messages received today were the archives of our previous conversations. As with everything else these days everything was there, everything saved. I gulped as I stared at the page, words leaping out at me like horror-movie ghosts.

They were all there.

All the ones you’d expect.

Fuck was there, represented in its many different forms. Fuck off. Fuck you. Fucking hell (or should hell be italicised as well?).

Shit was there also.

And bastard, and bitch, and I winced upon seeing the word cunt.

‘Did you type this, Charlie?’ Clarissa asked staring, highlighting with the cursor the offending words on screen. ‘And this, and this, and this, and this?’

‘I…I…it wasn’t tonight! It –’

This time when Clarissa’s hand moved it was to slap me.

She screwed her face up in fury and her palm came flashing in. I heard the smack. I felt the sting. Sound and sensation both familiar in ear and on face-flesh now. I didn’t have even a moment to react before Clarissa was screaming in my face, anger evident, though probably contrived.

‘WHEN I ASK YOU A QUESTION YOU ANSWER IT! DO YOU WANT ME TO TELL YOUR MOTHER? DO YOU WANT TO GO LIVE WITH YOUR DAD?’

‘N-n-no,’ I whimpered as Clarissa came raging forwards and had me backpedalling arms out in defence.

She slapped me ferociously again and I yelped, backstepping desperately.

‘WHAT DID YOUR MOTHER SAY ABOUT RAISING YOUR HANDS?’

Swooping in, she hit me, catching me right on the ear rather than cheek, creating a loud concussive pop that threw me off guard, such were the reverberations in my head. I rocked to the side, and Clarissa was on me again, gripping me, grabbing me, hauling me forwards.

‘NEVER RAISE YOUR HANDS TO YOUR BETTERS!’ she cried, yanking me savagely with a fistful of my hair. I recalled earlier my mother’s tirade, her violence, her manhandling of me, and couldn’t help but to continue to compare the two, them each becoming interchangeable in my mind.

She hauled me forwards as though she owned me, and perhaps for now she did.

‘YOU NEVER – NEVER! – RAISE YOUR HANDS TO WOMEN!’ my babysitter cried. ‘IS THAT SOMETHING ELSE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR DAD?’

She beat about my naked body with her palms and her fists, hitting me in the back of the thighs, and in the gut, and the side of the face, whilst she held me tight, one-handed, by the hair. Suddenly, she was at my back, and her foot came up between my legs, connecting viciously with my balls. I hollered as the debilitating pain rushed in. I bent double and clamped closed my thighs, an instinctive motion meant to protect against the pain, and further attack. But Clarissa wasn’t having any of it.

‘Get those fucking legs open,’ she snarled, her breath hot against my ear.

My neck was crooked back, my throat pulled taut by her grip on my hair. My body was bent, crimped in the middle, with ass thrust back. Clarissa’s free hand reached around. She took tight hold of my balls and my cock, scrunching my genitalia painfully together.

‘Open them!’ she rasped.

She twisted, and I screeched.

‘Open!’

I opened my legs, tears in my eyes, as her fingers stabbed like glass shards in my scrotum and sex.

‘Please! Please! Please!’ I yelped.

But Clarissa was already releasing me as my legs were opened. She stepped away. She came lunging back in, foot driving up between my thighs, catching me sweet again in the dangling sac. The pain rifled up into my gut, as my balls and penis bounced.

I yelped again and went to drop, but Clarissa was swarming me once more, her clothed body wrapped around my naked own. Again, she had her claws her my hair, and her claws in my crotch. She pressed me forwards, and, unbalanced, I stumbled and was guided easily by her hands, her grip on my balls making my body instinctively pliant to her will. Dread flowed through me. It was a panicky, biological sort of dread, mandated by the explicit threat to my masculinity. With genitalia caged in her sharp, nail-rich fingers, I was nervous and vulnerable, with brain racing, screaming at me to make my escape. Being forcibly gelded was not something any animal could take without terror – and that of course is what the deepest, most primal parts of me deduced was happening.

‘Look!’ Clarissa demanded of me, thrusting my face towards the laptop screen. ‘Just fucking look! Look at it, you filthy, little freak! What kind of language is that? And after everything your poor mother has tried to teach you!’

Again, the hypocrisy stung, but not as much as the hurt in my ball sac, or the knife-like pain in the roots of my hair. She held me, doubled-over, before the laptop. The curse words were there, right in front of me, on screen. I saw them through a veil of tears. Words that Clarissa used against me now. Words my mother had used earlier. Everyday words that so many people used at will and without reprisal. The injustice stung. It made new tears well. The hopeless, impotent, angry tears that little boys weep when they think the world is being biased against them. The self-made tears that come out of ugly red-limned eyes, and that slither down ugly red-cheeked faces, when ugly little boys sit in their ugly rooms and write ugly letters to their parents, telling them that they’re stoopid and that they don’t know anything! and that because of that little Timmy, or little Tommy, or little tantrum Charlie is running away, and it’s all their fault! Those were the tears that I wept, a useless anger bubbling inside me.

‘No wonder she wants rid of you,’ Clarissa hissed, knowing or not knowing what was going on inside me. ‘No wonder she wants you back with your dad, and out of her life for good…I bet that’s why your dad left in the first place – you didn’t know how to behave, you didn’t know how to be normal, didn’t know how to be good!’

I let out a deep, throaty sob. It came from nowhere, not planned, not decided upon, just there. I didn’t believe a word Clarissa was saying. They had split up because they had grown apart, and fallen out of love, and because Dad had cheated. Because Dad was an asshole, and he thought with his dick. So, I knew her words to be untrue…

But, somehow, they hurt me all the same - these untruths, these lies. They hurt in the pit of my belly. In the untameable pith of my soul. Because, whilst they were not right, they also were not fully wrong.

If I had been better…

A stud…

A sports star…

A jack-the-lad type, that Dad could be proud of...

If I had been more rugged, and robust, and better with the ladies.

If I had been more confident, and charismatic, and if I had been able to flash that same winsome smile that Dad flashed to appease and to charm.

If…

If I had been more like Tommy, more like my bully, then maybe Dad would have stayed. Maybe then he would have seen our little three-piece family as being worth fighting for. Worth combating his libido and adulterous urges for. Worth resisting Gracie’s younger, blonder, bigger-titted charm. Maybe he would have played away, but not stayed away. Maybe he would have made his mistakes and seeing me, a handsome, smiling rogue of a man, like he had been, he would have related, and then relented, and we would have all been closer for it.

But I had never been that guy, the guy to whom Mickie O, Dad, could relate.

And now he was gone.

And Clarissa was telling me why.

And though she was in almost all ways wrong, I knew now that she was, also, in some ways, right.

‘Your Dad left because of you! He couldn’t have left because of your mother…she’s beautiful, she’s perfect, she’s normal, she’s right! You’re the one that’s wrong! You’re the one that drove him away you freak!’

I was in tears. I was bawling. Snot bubbled from my nose. My penis throbbed, balled up like crushed salami in her hand.

‘You’re not even sorry, are you?’

Fuck!

She was squeezing me, squeezing so tight that the pain and panic was animal inside me, rising, corybantic, from balls through gut to brain and then back out, everywhere else.

‘Yes!’ I screamed. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’

Clarissa planted a foot on my calve even as I was screaming, she pushed out at it, bending my leg, forcing me to drop down to my knees. She crouched behind me, face level with mine, breath hot, perfume gusting against me.

‘Sorry that you broke your own family up? Sorry that your dad never loved you. Sorry that you drove him away?’

‘Yes!’ I bawled.

Clarissa yanked back on my hair, bending back my throat, tilting back my face until it met hers.

‘Sorry that your mother’s all alone because of you, sorry that your mother is sad and depressed and has nothing good in her life because of you, sorry that she has to go out week after week and fill herself with cock after cock because her life is so empty because all that is in it is you!’

These words frenetically spat, hitting me in near-unison, a jumble accompanied by visions of Mother upset, Mother depressed, Mother riding cock and weeping.

‘Yes!’ I trilled, salvia latching the portions of my mouth together in glistening threads of white-silver spit.

‘Yes? You’re sorry? Yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said, blank-eyed, staring. ‘Yes…Aunt Clarissa…yes.’

Clarissa stared back at me, her face startling in its immaculacy. Her eyes were blue pools – unreadable. Her face was serene and devoid momentarily of all human emotion. Everything was hidden. Everything veiled by her mask of feminine perfection.

And then the pools of her eyes froze over.

Serenity was tweaked into hauteur.

Emotions showed once more on the marble-like visage.

And the emotions were disgust and conceit.

Her pink, pillowy lips parted.

Her sharp, white teeth flashed, fat red tongue showed.

‘Then crawl on over to the naughty cupboard,’ she whispered, so quiet that the words were barely there. ‘Bring the bottle back in your mouth…the one your mother showed me.’

Her cooing, coaxing voice sleeted through me, seeming to come from within, as much as from without.

‘I’ve tried to be nice to you, really I have…but your mother was right…she was right all along…there’s only one way to get through to you…’

As she spoke her hand moved up my chest, delicate as threads of gossamer blown in by the breeze. It moved upwards, brushing over the right clavicle, and then higher, palm ringing my throat. Squeezing gently, inquisitively, as though testing my defences, and then moving on up. Up to my chin which it rounded, and flared, fingers furrowing my lips, mushing the edges in, forming an ugly pit, a cistern bottomed by clenched teeth.

My heart was making its best efforts to kill me, playing pneumatic drills against my chest. My penis, once-scrunched, had straightened, standing, rock-solid and throbbing.

She kneaded my lips with her hand, squishing them into shapes as she stared. Then her fingers were sliding in, invading the orifice, gently probing. Her nails scraped across teeth, tongue and gums, making me cringe. Her fingers filled me up. They went in deep. My penis was glued upright to my belly and quivering. They went deeper, threatening my throat with their points, taking ownership of my hole.

Her movements, at first, were sensual and then they became rougher, bordering on violence. At first, she glided, and then she jabbed. Her face screwed itself up at the edges, revulsion and hatred showing where serenity had once reigned. My own eyes transitioned, widening, mimicking the expressions of the agog. It was one thing to realise that you had yourself an enemy, another to realise it when they had their hard, sharp fingers in your soft and fragile throat.

Clarissa’s face flickered between her own and my mother’s, the selfsame disgust painted on each of hate-filled visage.

‘It’s time,’ Mother-Clarissa whispered, fucking my face with their fingers. ‘That we washed this filthy cunt out with soap.’

I whimpered as I crawled.

Thoughts of despair sluiced through me.

Clarissa was breaking me down. She was butchering my pride. But what was more, she was bringing doubts from deep, bringing them to the forefront of my ever-fretful mind. Doubts about my mother and father’s love for me. Doubts about the past I had lived, and my culpability in the events that had happened, the schism that had occurred between my mum and dad, especially.

The kitchen stretched out before me, each tile grown into near-epic proportions; each tile vast. I crawled across them, fearing the place – or person – I crawled from. Fearing equally the place I crawled to.

The kitchen cupboard loomed, the middle one, beneath the sink.

The naughty cupboard.

Where this night was always going to lead.

They floated forwards in my mind – Mother and Clarissa, standing side by side, Mother manoeuvring me out of the way.

‘That’s it, be a doll and let Mummy to the naughty cupboard.’

The excitement in Clarissa’s response was evident.

‘The naughty cupboard! How exciting!’

The recollection was vivid and haunting. Clarissa had wanted this, had planned for it, from that very moment she had decided that this was to happen.

And here I was, some time later, crawling across floor tiles, tears pattering down on the cold ground beneath me. My breaths came in rasping sighs. Kitchen units towered to either side, like the walls of a white-gloss canyon. Pain rifled through my knees, flaring in the joints. I moved forwards in lurches, crawling awkwardly from my tormentress, who mocked me.

‘That’s it, Charlie-boy, be a doll and bring your Aunty Clarissa the soap.’

I twisted my neck and peered back at her from my lowly position, my face red-blotched, tear-smeared and ugly. Clarissa had perched herself on the edge of the table, where she sat and looked down knowingly at me.

She remembered as well as I did, the words of my mother. It staggered me how much Clarissa noticed, how much she stored. I didn’t think that that was how things worked. I always thought that events happened, and the pretty girls of the world smiled or laughed, but never retained. Never remembered. They never looked back, such was the ever-present immediacy of new and exciting things in their lives. It flattered me in a way that Clarissa remembered my mother’s words. Though it frightened more than it flattered.

I didn’t want her remembering. I didn’t want her recalling, all or any of what was going down this night.

‘Chop, chop, Charlie-boy,’ Clarissa floated down to me, seeing me stopped. Her feet dangled from the table-edge, and she kicked and flicked them little-girlishly as she spoke. It was a contrast that killed – her the adult, and me the child, and yet Clarissa slipping into actions so girlish, childlike and free.

I continued my crawl, nearing the cupboard, reaching it.

I glanced back at my table-topping ‘Aunt.’ I knew not to expect mercy. I only looked because I had to be ordered. If I was to do this, I would need to be instructed, step by step. To be coerced. Forced. I couldn’t bring myself to volunteer my own downfall. Even when Mother, the highest authority in my life, decided that the soap was needed, she forced me, she took hold of my body, and took hold of the soap, and brought them forcibly together. Mother made it so that I had no choice. She wrestled me, held me down, screamed, and threatened, beat about me, and finally poured the admonishing liquid down.

Clarissa saw my hesitation, and I could almost hear the cogs turning, I could almost see the thoughts flashing through her quick and devious mind. She was putting two and two together. She had seen the multiple ways my mother had treated me – aloof and patronising, authoritative and coldly commanding, violent, screeching and immensely angry – and she was working out which one Mother would be using now.

I saw the exact moment the realisation hit her.

I saw the moment the blue of her eyes darkened as she understood that violence was what was needed.

And then the storm was unleashed, and the Hell of an angry girl was loosed.

She wasn’t really angry, of course. But the switch was immediate, and she played her new part with absolute vigour.

Springing down from the table, she came booming in. Small people have the ability to boom. Little girls in tights can boom just as well as storybook giants in big, leather boots. She boomed, charging, eyes showing me they were angry. She was on me. No seconds had passed. Just splinters of a moment from realisation to impact.

I was knelt, so she smacked down at me, a savage downwards swing of her arm. It wasn’t a slap. No soft palm this time. Clarissa backhanded me brutally across the side of my face, rocking me, driving me backwards, and down.

‘Don’t you fucking disobey me,’ she spat, grabbing me by the air, yanking me upwards, back to my eyes.

She stabbed her face forwards, so that it was inches from mine. It was scrunched. Filled with fury. My heart pounded. She looked monstrous – terrifying!

‘You need to learn that you’re not the sort of person who gets to disobey women, you’re not the sort of person who gets to even think about disobeying women!’

She shook me as she shouted, rattling me, drawing that tight, disorienting pain to the back of my head.

‘I say, you do. Your mother says, you do. Any woman says, you do. Got it?’

She tossed me contemptuously from her.

Tossed me against the cupboard, against which my shoulder bounced.

‘Got it? Freak?’ she repeated.

‘Ye-yesssss,’ I moaned.

‘Then get me the fucking soap, you disgusting, foul-mouthed little shit!’

Suppressing another wet-eyed gasp, I swung into action, opening the cupboard door and delving into the dark beyond. I brought out the bottle of blue-green soap, gaze glued to the shimmering soup within. I held it up to her, eyes downturned, naked body knelt. My palms formed a plinth on which the bottle was rested. Held out and presented to Clarissa, who stood over me, pink-clad and beautiful, though with face pinched by rage.

‘That’s it. Hand it over. Be a good boy,’ she said, taking it, bringing it up to her face, studying it reverently. Studying it in the way the Great Professor and his student had once studied the Bad Wizard’s sea-cave potion. I looked up at her and waited, feeling stupid. She looked so normal, standing and clothed. I felt so freakish, naked and knelt. I was so out of place. I felt so stupid, so nervous, so me. I fidgeted beneath her, as she examined her weapon.

‘I’m going to wash it out,’ she murmured, not looking at me, still looking at it.

‘I’m going wash that filthy hole out…’

Her voice was quiet and cooing. A state of snake-like trance had befallen her. Meanwhile, a scared-shit anti-trance had befallen me. I quivered in a way that had me thinking of that time Mum had thought it right we take in a rescue dog. The malnourished, perpetually-frightened thing had sat in the corner, shaking and then shitting, until Mickie O had stood up, swearing, and, snatching up its lead, hauled the thing back to the car, never to be seen again.

I shook like that wretched thing now.

Shook as she handled the soap and stared.

‘How does your mama do it?’ she asked, quietly, fingering the bottle.

‘She…she…p-p-pours it on a d-dishcloth,’ I stammered. ‘And then…and then…’

Clarissa put her finger to my lips, silencing me, instantly.

‘I understand.’

She moved back towards the table, strolling from me, ass wagging agonisingly beneath her skirt, which swished with her steps.

She clicked her fingers as she walked.

‘Chop, chop, Charlie-Boy, crawl after your aunt.’

She sat back up on the table-edge, feet dangling, facing me as I began to crawl.

‘That’s it, crawl to me. Kneel before your aunt so she can administer your punishment.’

It wasn’t a long crawl, and less humiliating than it should have been. That worried me. That my degradation was becoming normalised in my mind. It now seemed normal for me to be crawling naked, whilst a clothed Clarissa was enthroned above me.

On hands and knees, low-down, like a dog I approached. Halting before her. Kneeling. Waiting.

Clarissa looked down at me, with hooded, inscrutable eyes.

‘I don’t want to be presumptuous by using up your mummy’s dishcloths,’ she murmured, softly. ‘So…we’ll stick with my feet, shall we? They should serve well enough.’

She removed her tights, shifting her hips, and peeling them from her butt, downwards. Rolling them from each of her legs and pulling them from her feet. Beneath them, her legs were slender, silken and shiny-skinned. Her feet were small, delicate, and gracefully arched.

Clarissa tossed her fluffy white tights in my direction. They draped across me, one leg running down my back, the other over one eye and the right side of my face. They were the tights that had been pressed into my face as I wanked myself off, and as they retouched the surface of my face, the scents now imbued within them, washed over me, and my dick twitched wildly.

It was a Pavlov’s dogs’ reaction.

Clarissa’s feet.

Mother’s scent.

She was training me.

She was doing things to me that I would not later be able to control. She was ingraining things in. Tweaking me. Adding to, and taking from, my biological imperatives. She was potentially making long term changes to sexual preferences and identity. And to the way I view my mum.

And, though I knew what she did, and hated what she did, and feared immensely what she did, I was totally powerless to resist.

Clarissa had become a thing to be obeyed in my mind. She could hurt me too much otherwise. She could hurt me at home. She could hurt me at school. Things were bad enough already, and I was too weak to take any further things she could inflict. I had no choice. I had to please her. I had to do what she said and hope she would show mercy when my mother came home. And again, when Monday came around. And ever on after that. I was in a position, I realised, that I could not escape. All I could do was rely on Clarissa Morgan’s clemency.

I left the tights where they were, not daring to remove them, even as my dick hardened over the scent of my mum. Above me, Clarissa administered the soap, squirting it first into her hands and then lathering it extensively into her feet. The first of it was absorbed into her skin as she rubbed, vanishing from view. But Clarissa kept going. Applying the soap in copious amounts. Sudding her feet up. Creating a crust of frothy white around her tiny pink toes. She rubbed it over the arches and heel and over the dorsal top surfaces, until her feet were painted white and dripping.

‘There we go,’ she said. ‘That should do it.’

Her feet probed out.

‘Open wide, Charlie-Boy,’ she ordered. ‘Let’s get that filth-hole cleaned out.’

Clarissa’s feet came in.

I knelt, naked, dick rigid, mouth open, before her.

‘We won’t be needing these,’ she said, hooking her tights adroitly with her toes and flicking them from my face. ‘That’s better, this whole face needs scrubbing. Every ugly inch.’

She planted her feet on my face, her heels against my open jaw, her soles arching over eyes and cheeks. Her toes were in my hairline. She scrunched them, snagging my hair in their clutch. My nose was sandwiched between the curvature of her feet.

Her scents overwhelmed me. The clean, aqua scent of the soap was there. So too the stronger reek of my mother’s perfume, having been absorbed through her stockings and imbibed by her skin. The taste of the soap and perfume invaded my opened orifice, as she pushed her heels against my mouth.

‘Stick out your tongue,’ Clarissa ordered. ‘Clean yourself. Lick the soap from my feet.’

I obeyed, darting my tongue out against her heels. The soapy, perfumery taste multiplied as the surface of my tongue connected with her feet. It pushed, inadvertently between the pair, the powerful muscle separating them slightly and sliding through the gap as I thrust it out.

Clarissa giggled.

‘That’s it. Fuck my feet with your tongue. Jab it back and forth as though it’s a cock.’

I did what she asked, pushing my tongue out, sliding it into the space between her two hard heels, drawing it back in. Jabbing it, drawing it in, pulling the taste of the soap into my maw. My nostrils itched. My eyes – though shut – stung.

Clarissa was laughing her cute little laughing.

‘That feels good, actually,’ she told me. ‘Wow, good job Charlie-Boy, you’re basically losing your virginity in your own special way.’

A burst of laughter. Not from Clarissa this time, but in my head.

‘You mean in his unique loser way, right?’ my mother mocked.

An image flashed behind my shuttered eyes. My scantily dressed mother sat in a muscular, though faceless, man’s lap, drink in hand, laughing cruelly.

I groaned into Clarissa’s feet, and it was her turn to laugh, laughing with my mother, who laughed in my mind.

‘That’s it, fuck my feet. Get that tongue clean by fucking your Aunty Clarissa’s feet.’

I fucked them, tongue jabbing, soap frothing in my mouth, suds amassing around my lower gums and teeth.

‘That’s it, Charlie. Just like that. In and out, in and out. Just like Trevor in your mamma’s cunt.’

I moaned against her feet.

My dick throbbed.

The flash. My mother on top. Her hunk beneath. My mother no longer scantily dressed. No longer dressed at all. Riding him, reverse cowboy style. Her breasts bouncing. Hair mussed. Lips parted. Eyes pleasure glazed.

They flicker open.

She smiles languidly.

‘Are you being a good boy, Charlie?’

‘Are you being good for Clarissa?’

‘You do want Mummy to have fun, don’t you?’ she cooed, as her hips undulated, and as her body rose and fell, rose and fell, sheathing itself on cock.

‘You have such a unique way of fucking, baby.’

‘That’s it, fuck your Aunty Clarissa’s feet with your tongue.’

‘That’s how losers fuck.’

‘That’s how foul-mouth freaks like you fuck.’

Massive phantom hands were roaming across her body, cupping the breasts that had once given me milk. Squeezing. Her eyes were closed. His pussy was being sensuously pounded from below.

‘This is how Mummy fucks, baby.’ She murmured.

‘This is how Mummy fucked your daddy.’

‘This is how she fucks her Trevors.’

‘This is how she makes new daddies for you.’

‘This is how she’s going to fuck…’

‘Tommy.’

His name echoed around my head. My bully’s name spoken in the lust-filled voice of my mum.

I let out a garbled sob against Clarissa’s feet. My dick was throbbing. My heart was thumping. I couldn’t believe the thing I had just thought.

Clarissa laughed.

‘You don’t like the taste, huh? Well you shouldn’t have been such a foul-mouthed little fuck freak then, should you?’

She slapped her foot across my face, right in the chops. The impact creating a loud wet smack as soap exploded across my cheek.

‘What was that? I asked you a question?’

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa,’ I quickly said, the sound muffled and distorted, but clear enough for her to understand.

‘Yes? Yes, Aunt Clarissa?’ Yes?’

She slapped me across the opposite cheek, and then again across the first, using alternating feet. Her feet came in on either side of my face, trapping me between them in a pincer formation.

‘Yes? You should have been a foul-mouthed fuck freak?’

‘I mean no, Aunt Clarissa.’

‘I’m not so sure I believe you.’

She mushed her soap-soused feet against my cheeks, pressing them together, making patterns of the pliable parts of my face as though it were dough.

‘You don’t seem very contrite,’ she observed.

‘Tell me you’re sorry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I managed through my foot-squished mouth.

She foot-slapped me hard across the face.

‘Sorry for what? Sorry for being a foul-mouthed fuck freak?’

‘Y-yes!’

Again, I was slapped. Other foot. Other cheek. Same wet soap effect.

‘Then say it, idiot.’

‘I’m sorry for being a foul-mouthed freak!’

She slapped me viciously across the face. So hard I would have toppled, had her other foot not caught me, holding me in place so she could foot-slap me again.

‘Is that what I said? Try again, loser. ‘I’m sorry for being a foul-mouthed fuck freak.’ Say it!’

I hesitated.

‘Say it!’

She foot-slapped me again across the chops.

‘I’m sorry for being a foul-mouthed fuck freak!’ I blurted, knowing the trap she had led me into, but not having any other choice.

This time it wasn’t a slap, but a kick, Clarissa smashing her sole and heel against the side of my head and temple, knocking me to the side.

‘How dare you use that type of language with me!’ Clarissa hissed.

Clarissa whipped her foot against the other side of my face, following it immediately with a kick to the forehead, snapping my neck back. I struggled to rebalance, arms flailing, as I teetered on the verge of falling back from my knelt position to a prone one.

‘Here I am trying to punish you. Trying to teach you right from wrong, and this is how you behave! Doing the exact thing I’m telling you not to do!’

Clarissa had my mother’s indignation down to a tee. She even had me feeling the same helpless sense of injustice as she yelled at me. I felt that my eyes were welling up. I was on the verge of tears.

‘Tell me you’re sorry!’

‘I…I’m sorry…’

‘Sorry for what?’

Again, I paused too long, and Clarissa slapped her foot against my face.

‘Sorry for what?’ she demanded once more.

‘S-sorry f-for b-b-being…a f-f-foul-mouthed f-f-freak.’

She kicked me. She foot-slapped me. In the head. In the face.

‘You’re not a foul-mouthed freak! You’re a foul-mouthed fuck freak! Apologise!’

‘I…I…I c-can’t!’

‘Why not?’ Clarissa demanded.

‘You’ll kick me!’ I shrilled, tears stinging my already soap-stung eyes.

She kicked me in the mouth.

‘Say it!’

The tears rolled.

‘I-I-I’m a-a foul-mouthed f-f-fuck freak!’ I blubbered.

‘You beast!’ shrilled Clarissa, jabbing her heel and sole into my face. ‘I’m trying to teach you not to swear! So, don’t’ – she kicked me – ‘fucking!’ – she kicked me again – ‘swear!’

She punctuated the last with another kick to the side of my head.

‘You told me to!’ I shrilled.

‘You told me to, you told me to,’ Clarissa mocked in a savage caricature of my voice. ‘If I told you to jump of a bridge, would you?’

‘N-no,’ I sobbed, giving by rote the answer you were supposed to give when asked that question.

‘Well you fucking well better!’ she yelled down at him, as she delivered yet again slap with her foot to his face. ‘You don’t even get to think about disobeying me! Or anybody else, until you learn how to behave! Got it?’

‘Y-y-yes Aunt Clarissa,’ I panted.

‘You’d better have.’

She placed her feet across my face and pitter-pattered them lightly over the skin, which was wet with tears, sticky with soap, and reddened by kicks.

‘Honestly,’ she told me, in a more normal voice, no longer shouting. ‘Your mother is a saint for putting up with you, if this is how you behave.’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I moaned, with my face against her feet.

‘Just take your punishment like a good boy,’ Clarissa fluttered down at me. ‘Lick those feet. Eat that soap. Clean that filth-hole out.’

I did what she asked. Not thinking. Just doing. My tongue slid back and forth across her arches, drawing the soap-taste into my mouth.

‘That’s it,’ Clarissa cooed. ‘You just kneel there like a good boy and suck the soap from your Aunty Clarissa’s feet.’

I sucked on her feet as she moved them gently over my face, adjusting their positions and offering me different portions, from soles, to heel, to top, to toes.

‘Go on,’ Clarissa urged. ‘Get all the gunk out from between my toes. Get your tongue right in there. Pop them in your mouth. Suck them clean.’

Above me, she had taken control of my laptop. She had set it on her lap and was typing away as she spoke softly, distractedly down to me. Presumably she was corrected any mistakes I’d made in her homework.

I had other things on my mind, however. My face was throbbing, and I didn’t want to do anything that would see it kicked again. So, I concentrated on what I had been told, trying to do a good job, so I wouldn’t need be punished anymore.

My tongue flickered desperately. I probed it forwards between her toes, licking clean their inside edges. I slurped on the soap and on whatever else was caught between them. I took one into my mouth and then another. I sucked on them as she had said. As I sucked, I swirled my tongue against their edges, trying desperately to please her.

Clarissa giggled.

‘Good job,’ she praised. ‘You’re sucking those toes like a pro.’

She had set my laptop aside, her amendments presumably complete. She watched me from her table-top perch. We caught each other’s eye, her looking down at me, me looking up at her. And she looked so perfect and so pure, with her baby blue eyes, and her sun-gold hair, and in the fluffy pink sweater she wore. Give her white wings Clarissa Morgan would be an angel. Shrink her down and she was a faerie. There was a near-otherworldly sweetness to her physically appearance, and yet she had me naked, on my knees, and sucking her toes.

And the things she said…

‘That’s it…wow…you’re actually good at this,’ she purred.

‘I’ll have to tell your mother that you’re not a complete failure after all.’

She laughed then, teeth showing, eyes shining.

‘Who knows, if you get good enough maybe she’ll let you have a turn on hers.’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘The chance to show her what a good son you are?’

‘You know, maybe if you do a good job sucking her feet, she won’t pack you off to live with your dad.’

My dick throbbed wildly. It jutted from me, hard as it had ever been. I whimpered around the toes I sucked. Clarissa laughed, enjoying herself, knowing she was hitting her mark.

‘Oh my god! Maybe she’ll let you be her little foot cuck! Maybe she’ll let you suck her feet whilst she’s fucking her man!’

My cock spasmed.

Twitched.

Jerked.

My hands itched to touch it, to tug those few quick tugs it needed to send it over the brink. The thought sickened me. To cum over this would be a bridge too far. Of course, Clarissa knew that. And of course, that meant she was going to make it happen.

‘That little dickie’s hard again,’ she sing-songed down. ‘Now, you know that’s not allowed, don’t you?’

‘Why don’t you stretch that jaw for Aunty Clarissa’s foot and make that dicklette soft again.’

‘Come on, wide as you can.’

‘Wider…’

‘Come on, Charlie, stretch it! Imagine that you’re Wendy and my foot is Trevor’s big dick! Widen that slut-hole. I wanna cram my whole foot in there.’

She forced her foot in deep. Ramming it between my teeth, filling my cavity as I strained my jaw to accommodate the soap-slopped mass. Her toes scraped against the back of my throat, causing me to convulse and gag.

‘Suck it,’ Clarissa ordered. ‘Suck it and stroke.’

‘Suck the soap from my foot like your mum sucks the cum from Trevor’s cock.’

‘That’s it. Stroke that nub until it spurts and goes soft again.’

Clarissa’s words were driving me insane. My cock was as hot iron in my hand. My heart was in overdrive, hurtling towards that skipped beat that signified an explosion. She drew her foot back and forth in my face. My face muscles ached. My jaw distended as far as its joints allowed.

I did what Clarissa asked, pulling my cheeks into face as I sucked on her foot. My tongue lathered at its underside. My sensitive upper palate squirmed violently against the topside as I fought against my gag reflex and the urge to vomit.

‘That’s it! Suck that dick.’

‘You like that Wendy? Huh? You like it?’

‘Suck Trevor’s big dick whilst you finger that slutty clit.’

I stroked and sucked. I imagined myself as Mother, and I imagined Clarissa’s foot as a dick. But it wasn’t Trevor’s dick that I was sucking. I didn’t even know what Trevor looked like. But after years of abuse, the exact image of Tommy was seared indelibly in my mind.

It was Tommy then that I imagined now.

Tommy looking down at my mother as she filled her head with his dick.

I saw Clarissa as Tommy, smirking.

I saw myself as Mother, knelt, naked, and gagging.

I saw Clarissa on the peripheries, grinning down at her, or me, or her, or me, or whoever it was who fingered their clit whilst sucking Tommy’s dick.

The explosion came. Balls knotting powerfully. Jizz jetting over the kitchen tiles as it had jetted over the bathroom tiles before.

Clarissa withdrew her foot slowly.

She examined it and saw that it was free from soap.

‘Good job!’ she exclaimed as she hopped down from the table.

‘Now, get this mess cleaned up, no hands of course, and then finish up my homework so that I can put you to bed.’

She replaced the soap bottle in the cupboard, reclaimed her tights and walked calmly back into the lounge. A few seconds later the TV blared. Alone, I lowered my face to the shimmering stream of white, amazed and appalled at how depraved I had become.

I finished Clarissa’s homework as best as I could, not at all confident that she would be getting her A grades but physically and emotionally exhausted, and just grateful to finally be done. One way or the other I wanted the night to be over with. Monday was just too far away for me to care about. I just had to get through tonight and everything else would take care of itself.

I packed away quietly, placing Clarissa’s possessions into her schoolbag with care, and went shuffling into the living room.

‘Umm…Aunt Clarissa…I’m done.’

Clarissa threw me a perfunctory glance as I hovered nervously, mid-room.

‘That’s nice, dear,’ she murmured distractedly, eyes already back on her show.

I felt a knot in my belly spasming. I didn’t know if it was hunger, or nervousness, or a reaction to the soap, or a combination of the three at once. I knew from her manner that I had been dismissed – it was a manner Mum used with me often. Still, whatever Mother thought, I was a man, and a man needed to eat. No man was ever any good without something in his tum.

‘Erm…what…what…Cla…Aunt Clarissa, what time are we having dinner?’ I said, stupid and puerile, standing like a child before her.

My baby-sitter laughed.

‘N’awww is poor, little Charlie a hungry boy?’ she tittered, baby-talking me again.

I shrugged, blushing.

‘A little,’ I conceded, pangs stabbing at my gut.

She laughed again.

‘Did all that yummy soap not fill my little Charliekins up?’

I shrugged.

‘No Aunt Clarissa,’ I mumbled.

Clarissa paused her show and came rising to her feet, her face wearing a confident, in control smile.

‘And what did your mother say you’re to have?’ she asked, with a little too much shrewdness across her face for my liking.

‘Umm…’

‘Don’t worry, I remember,’ said Clarissa, beaming. ‘Greens!’ she exclaimed happily. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

Again, I struggled for an answer. Her question was leading, and my mind-cogs whirred, groping for comprehension, knowing, subconsciously, that something was amiss. Clarissa’s smiles were too wide, too bright, too many teeth were showing. She was as the shark that circles and takes friendly nibbles from your flesh, until there’s nothing left but swirling red, and only then, when there’s nothing left of you to realise, do you realise that the smiles and the friendliness are faked.

‘N-no junk,’ I said, keen not to spring Clarissa’s little-girl trap.

‘That’s right! No junk, just greens.’

I stood quietly, not wanting to respond, knowing that Clarissa was playing me. Her eyes were sparkling as she looked up into my own. Her skin shone. Between perfect pink lips, perfect white teeth were on show.

‘Isn’t that what your mother ordered?’ said Clarissa, nodding her head in that exaggerated way again, cajoling me into following her script.

‘Yes, Aunt Clarissa,’ came my meek, eyes-averted, reply.

Clarissa’s smile widened.

‘Well kneel down then my silly boy, so that I can feed you your greens!’

I balked, jaw going slack and drooping.

Clarissa laughed.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said, flicking her hand in a conspiratorial, offhand gesture. ‘I’ll let you eat in the living room today. Such a treat! Come on, kneel and thank your Aunt Clarissa.’

I hesitated. I didn’t know what Clarissa intended, but I knew that it wasn’t to feed me, not unless she had a three-course meal hidden away between the cushions of the sofa.

‘Charlie-boy…don’t make me tell your mother…don’t make me remember this on Monday,’ she said in a sing-song sort of voice, tapping her foot and making mock-stern faces.

That did it. My knees buckled, and I was down. I stared helplessly up.

‘Don’t forget to thank me,’ she sang.

‘Thank you, Aunt Clarissa.’

‘Open,’ she ordered imperiously. ‘Come on, I can’t feed you otherwise.’

I parted my lips.

‘Wider,’ Clarissa insisted.

I stretched my mouth wide, petrified about what was to happen.

Clarissa hoicked something horrifically up from deep, the noise gargling and vile.

Leaning forwards, she scrunched her face, and spat into the hole my mouth made.

She smirked.

‘Bon Appetit,’ she said, smiling, as the slime slithered down my throat and my whole body squirmed as the greenie went down.

Clarissa led me once more up the stairs, holding me again by the hand.

It was bedtime, she told me, now that I had eaten, and all my homework was done.

My belly rumbled incessantly, my meal of a single spat batch of phlegm not having sated my hunger any.

‘Come on, up we go,’ Clarissa baby-cooed as I trundled along at her side.

‘There’s my big boy!’ she exclaimed as I made it up the final step.

I was blushing and embarrassed, but still my ludicrous little penis gave out a ludicrous little twitch at her words. In my chest I felt something strangely akin to pride. It was stupid, I knew. And dangerous. By chance or by design, Clarissa was making me think of her in the same way that I thought of my mother. It was bad enough she was making me call her ‘Aunt,’ I couldn’t afford to begin to associate Clarissa with my mother, or Mother with Clarissa.

When I thought of Clarissa, my mind would inevitably turn to her prettiness, my desires, and subjects of sex. When I thought of Mother, I thought of somebody that I am to love, to fear, and to obey. To get the two mingled in my mind…

Well, the consequences could be dire.

I jumped, heart jolting, as Clarissa’s hand swooped in behind me, pinching my left butt cheek. It was a casual, possessive act that I’d seen men do to women, both in movies and in life, often. It made my penis twitch again, bobbing beneath my pants.

‘Go brush your teeth,’ she murmured in an offhand manner, a manner that expected no discussion, or hesitation in her orders being followed. Sure enough, Clarissa did not pause in breaking away from me, waltzing forwards confidently, and pushing open the door to my mother’s bedroom.

‘And then await me in your room,’ she added, as she breezed into Mother’s domain.

She pushed shut the door behind her, shielding herself and her activities from my sight. I stood and lingered, staring at the boudoir portal a moment. Mother’s door was an exact replica of all other doors on this floor, in fact of all other doors in the house. And yet it seemed like it was different, it seemed like it was more. A portal rarely crossed. A bridge between adulthood and childhood. A bridge between the important and the puerile, between the silly and the grave.

For Clarissa to stroll right through, without pause or hesitation, heightened her image and importance in my mind.

Clarissa was on, or close to, Mother’s level. And I beneath them both.

Accepting this, but upset by this, all the same, I entered obediently into the upstairs family bathroom and brushed my teeth, slowly, thoughtfully, thinking things over in my mind.

I was still bemused as to how I had allowed this to happen. I guess I had been powerless from the beginning, at Mother’s and then Clarissa’s mercy from the evening’s outset. Unfortunately for me, neither one of them seemed to have very much mercy where I was concerned. I now had very little choice but to go along with Clarissa’s games and hope she lived up to her end of the bargain and ‘forgot’ all about this come Monday.

I brushed my teeth, used the toilet, washed my hands and moved slowly to my bedroom. It was still empty. Totally devoid of any babysitter-aunt hybrids. Whatever business Clarissa was conducting in my Mother’s bedroom was evidently not yet complete, so I perched myself on the edge of my bed and waited anxiously. Mother’s perfume quickly filled my nostrils and I realised that Clarissa had completely soused by bedsheets in it. I leant in and sniffed my pillows and found them too coated in the heady scent. In fact, it misted all around me, suffocating me in its increasingly sexual reek.

I should have moved.

Away from my bed.

Away into the corners of my room, where the scent might not yet pervade.

Instead, I stayed where I was, knowing well the treacherous road I was being led down.

My prick itched in my pants as the perfume assailed me, drifting in waves up into my nostril slits, tickling the tiny hairs within as it floated up into my brain, saturating the spaces therein, conquering completely all aspects of my ken.

I coughed.

My eyes watered.

The scent made my head sway. It felt like there was no solid stanchions propping it from beneath, my neck-bones, throat-bones – packed up; all absconded – gone. It felt suddenly like it was a weight of a thousand tonnes that topped me.

I couldn’t keep my head still.

Couldn’t see.

Couldn’t think.

And then…

Through blurred eyes, in a cloud of her scent, I saw her.

Mother...

No, Clarissa, but dressed in the black lace negligee that Mother wore to bed.

She came slow and sensuous out of the haze.

She was wearing Mother’s see-through nightclothes. She was wearing Mother’s makeup. She was dowsed in Mother’s perfume. I could see parts of her breasts, the side-boob, the bosom beneath the gauze. I could see her ribs, her pale side, her umbilicus, beneath translucent lace. Her legs were glossy in the semi-dark perfume-filled room.

I saw then the extra bottle shining like knife-edges in one of her tiny-clawed hands. Mother’s perfume was weaponised in the hands of Clarissa. She came forwards, slow, hips swaying, face tilted. The heady scent swelled with every oneiric step that she took. I sat as though in a trance. I sat and watched and trembled.

‘Strip down, baby,’ she cooed, stepping slowly forwards. ‘Your Aunt Clarissa is going to read you a bedtime story.’

I could barely breathe. There were ghosts throttling me, ghosts bearhugging my chest, ghosts scented as Mother. Ghosts! Ghosts that were as wisps, tickling in my throat. Ghosts fragmented, in my ears, and my eyes, and my mouth. Ghosts caressing my bones, masturbating the length of my spine. Ghosts fellating me through my clothes, enticing my dick to throb and to rise. Ghosts supping softly on my scrotum, causing my balls to tingle and ache.

Clarissa came forwards, as unseen things swarmed me with their hands and their mouths. My flesh crawled. My skin pimpled. My whole skeleton began softly to judder.

She leant forwards, face floating serenely towards me.

Lord, was she beautiful!

Holy, almost, anointed as she was in the scared odours of my mother.

‘Strip now, little one,’ she whispered, lips parting before my hypnotised eyes. Voice soft, sugared and seeming to sound from the inner portion of, if not my soul, then at very least, my skull. ‘Strip for your Aunty and let me tell you the story of the ‘Boy Who Lost His Mother.’

I trembled in her arms as she huddled me close.

My naked body was tremoring lightly. My penis poked out from my middle. Enough time had passed since my last eruption, and it ached in the need to be touched. My head was nestled against Clarissa’s soft, lace-veiled bosom, my body was sprawled backwards across hers, reminiscent of a little boy in his loving mother’s arms. She ensconced me in her clutch, pulling me backwards into her, making of the two of us a single, cuddling one.

We were sat upon my bed, Clarissa propped by the walls and headboard, myself propped by her. The superpotent scent of Mother was everywhere. Washing over us both. Swarming us as we huddled together in my bed. And she squirted it still. Spraying it against us in intervals as she began to speak, her voice soft and coaxing, barely heard, but all of it heard, every word heard, though the sound was very barely there.

‘Once upon a time,’ she whispered, filling my head with her melody. ‘There was a little boy called…now can you guess what his name was, little one?’

‘Charlie,’ I murmured, head lolling helplessly against her, body twitching as she sprayed another dose of perfume out.

I felt Clarissa’s lips against my hair. She kissed me softly.

‘That’s right,’ she cooed. ‘Good boy. Charlie…the little boy’s name was Charlie…like yours.’

Her lips brushed against me again, the perfume sprayed out, coating my cock, coating my balls, my tangle of pubes. It twitched. They throbbed. The dark forest glistened. And her words went on.

‘Now, Charlie was such a lucky little boy. Do you have any idea why?’

‘Why?’ I murmured.

Clarissa’s hand enclosed my penis, squeezing lightly the base of the shaft. Her lips were millimetres from my ear. Her warmth was all around me.

‘Because he had the most beautiful mother in the whole wide world,’ she breathed.

I groaned, my dick twitched in Clarissa’s hand, and the perfume sprayed.

Mother’s scent swelled. It was everything. It was in me. It was around me. It was me. A strange forced symbiosis existed between the two of us. A symbiosis of Clarissa’s formation. It assailed me in clouds. Passed through the pores of my skin via osmosis alone.

My head wobbled. The somniferous effects of Clarissa’s soft sounds and the heady scents of the perfume were overwhelming. My neck felt like it was made of plasticine. My lids were leaden. I was half-awake, and half-asleep. Part of me was listening, and the rest was dreaming.

Dreaming that it was Mother’s body I was huddled in.

Mother’s hand around my penis.

‘She is beautiful, don’t you agree?’

‘Mmmm,’ I sighed, eyes closed, head lolled back against Clarissa, trying not to allow my dick to erupt, trying not to fall into an exhausted sleep.

‘Say it,’ Clarissa whispered, and the perfume sprayed, higher now, against my chest and neck now.

‘Mmm my…my…mother is beautiful.’

‘That’s right,’ said Clarissa, kissing my hair, spraying the perfume, stroking her thumb over the smooth glans of my cock. ‘That’s right. Charlie’s mother was beautiful. So beautiful that Charlie couldn’t help but look at her in ways that little boys don’t usually look at their mothers.’

I tremored. My penis pulsed. The perfume spritzed. Clarissa continued.

‘Charlie couldn’t help but think about her in ways that little boys don’t usually think about their mothers.’

I groaned and shifted awkwardly in her arms.

‘Please…’

‘Don’t…’

But she ignored me.

She carried ruthlessly on.

‘Little Charlie started to think that his mother wasn’t only beautiful, but that she was sexy also.’

The perfume sprayed.

‘Say it,’ she said.

‘I…I c-can’t.’

‘It’s true,’ Clarissa cooed quietly. ‘She is sexy.’

She tightened her grip around my penis.

‘So, say it!’

‘My-my-my m-m-mother is s-sexy.’

‘Say it again but say it clearer. Like you mean it.’

‘My mother is sexy,’ I intoned quietly.

‘Charlie loved his sexy mother,’ Clarissa murmured, spraying, whispering for me to ‘say it.’

‘I…I love my s-sexy mother.’

‘Charlie wanted to fuck his sexy mother.’

I whimpered.

My body tremored against her. Everything was a haze. I could barely keep my eyes open. I knew I shouldn’t say it. Knew I couldn’t, not if I ever wanted to be normal again. But my resistance had dwindled almost into nothingness. My penis was spasming, my load moments from blowing, despite my penis not being stroked, despite it only being held and the head very gently rubbed.

‘Say it,’ Clarissa crooned.

‘I-I-I w-w-want to f-f-fuck my s-sexy m-m-mother.’

As I stuttered the damning words out, Clarissa stroked my penis a slow, single stroke. Up and then back down again, twisting at the top, squeezing at the base. And as her hand clenched around my shaft, my penis pulsed, and from its tip my semen flowed.

There was no blast of jizz this time. My orgasm came out in weak dribbles – creamy white oozing down the head, coating Clarissa’s hand with my slime.

‘That’s right…that’s right,’ she murmured, clenching and unclenching her head around my softening length. ‘Charlie wanted nothing more than to fuck his mother.’

My head throbbed. My heart fluttered. I felt drunk. I felt drugged. I was on the cusp between consciousness and slumber. I could hear her words floating around in my ken, but my understanding of them was dreamlike and vague. My now-squishy, desensitised penis squelched pathetically in protest, as Clarissa milked the last of my cum from its head, drawing the white gunk out into her hand.

‘But,’ came a whispering voice in my ear. ‘Charlie’s mother was too good for Charlie.’

‘And Charlie, too much of a loser…’

‘Too much of a freak…’

‘To be loved by his mother.’

‘Say it,’ ordered the husky, feminine god in my head.

I barely recognised the weak, childlike voice I next heard as my own.

‘My m-mother is too good for me…I’m too much of a loser…too much of a freak to be loved by her.’

‘Yesss, that’s right,’ the voice came sibilantly, as the perfume bottle hissed and sprayed out its venom.

‘Little Charlie didn’t deserve his mother…’

‘I don’t d-deserve my mother,’ I said, as if in a trance.

The perfume hissed.

‘His mother deserved better…’

‘My mother deserves better.’

Hiss.

‘Deep down, the boy always knew it…’

Hiss.

‘And finally, the mother started to see…’

Hiss.

‘That she deserved better…’

Hiss.

‘Better than this worthless boy that her useless husband had given her.’

Hiss.

‘Better than his bad language.’

Hiss.

‘Better than his backchat.’

Hiss.

‘His disgusting erections.’

Hiss.

‘His filthy, loser mind.’

Hiss.

‘His ugly, loser heart.’

Hiss.

‘His depraved, loser soul.’

Hiss.

My eyes watered. My head felt on the verge of explosion. The scent was everywhere. My nostrils salivated with water streams of snot. The taste of perfume whelmed my throat. The voice of Woman enveloped my mind. I was in a near-hallucinogenic state. I had forgotten whose arms I lay in.

Were they Mother’s?

They must be Mother’s.

Mother is the only woman in my life.

But then why is she saying such terrible things?

Because they’re true, the voice of my mother whispered in my head. They’re all true.

I whimpered.

No! It couldn’t be true. She doesn’t think like that. She doesn’t think those things about me.

‘Open your mouth,’ she said. The Woman. The Mother, who held me.

I half-saw, half-dreamt the cum-glistening hand as it came slowly up to my face.

‘Suck this from my fingers, whilst I finish our tale.’

My lips parted, no resistance left in me.

Her fingers entered. I tasted cum and perfume on my tongue.

‘Suck on them,’ the Woman ordered. ‘Slurp on them.’

She fingered my mouth with her cum-glazed fingers, pushing them in, sliding them around my teeth and gums. The perfume bottle fell into the sheets as the hand that had utilized it took hold of my soft spent penis.

The story continued.

‘The Mother wanted more. She deserved more. But she didn’t know how to get more. She thought that she was stuck with her little loser boy.’

‘But she wasn’t…’

‘She just needed to be told...’

‘She just needed to be shown...’

‘That things could be better…’

‘Without him.’

She stroked my soft dick slowly. She floated her words into my head. I wept quietly. My tears flowing in constant rivers down my face. My head was lolled against her breast. My lips groped mindlessly around her fingers, as they caressed gently at the insides of my mouth, feeding me my own cum.

‘One day, just when things couldn’t get any worse, when little Charlie’s behaviour was at an all-time low, a saviour came along. A little blonde superhero dressed in pink came into Charlie and the beautiful mother’s lives. Do you know what she was called, little one?’

‘Mmm C-Clarissa?’

‘That’s right. Super Clarissa. Now, Super Clarissa saw how badly Charlie had been treating his mother. She saw how his behaviour was affecting her happiness. And she vowed to rescue the beautiful mother from her filthy, loser son.’

I moaned against her teat. I sucked on her fingers with desperation, like an infant who’s had their first taste of milk. Soft wet sounds came from my penis as Clarissa tugged the small, soaked length. It had stiffened slightly but was still a long way from being erect.

My eyes flickered open and shut. Sleep beckoned me. My body knew that I had been wounded, even if it didn’t understand how. It knew I needed time to recover. To recuperate. But Clarissa’s words flowed around me, sleeting into my consciousness from all sides and angles, keeping me partway alert even as my brain endeavoured to shut itself down.

I snuggled into her. My enemy. The one who would see me vanquished. I was helpless. The lamb that offers throat to wolf, knowing it’ll do no good to struggle. Clarissa continued her tale. Her words entered into me like smoke, taking residence inside me.

‘Super Clarissa exposed the real Charlie to his mother. She showed her what her son really was. She showed her just how pathetic her son was. She showed her how undeserving her son was. How much of a loser he was, how much of a freak he was.’

‘Super Clarissa showed the beautiful mother how much happier she could be without him. She brought into the light how much Charlie had been holding her back, how much he had been negatively impacting her life. And, she offered to save the mother. To save her from her son.’

‘And do you know what the mother said?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘The mother said yes, save me, yes!’

‘That’s right…the mother said yes.’

‘And Super Clarissa saved her.’

‘She took Charlie’s mother from him.’

‘She made him into a motherless, fatherless, friendless freak.’

I cried against her, snivelling, tears streaming.

She stroked my penis expertly. She pumped her sticky fingers into and out of my mouth as though they were cocks.

‘Do you want me to make that story come true?’ she asked me.

‘No,’ I croaked desperately. ‘Please…’

Clarissa kissed my brow.

‘Then you had better not spoil this new job for me,’ she told me. ‘You had better not tell on me. You had better tell your mother that I am the best babysitter you’ve ever had. That way I won’t need to take her. That way I can keep coming over, and instead of saving your mother by taking her from you, I can save her by changing you, by making you better. Less of a loser. A more worthwhile son. Does that sound like a deal?’

‘Yes!’ I blurted. ‘Change me! Make me better!’

‘Very well…you will have to do what I say from now on. You will have to follow my instructions.’

‘I will…I swear.’

‘Maybe then, I can allow you to keep your mother, a little while longer.’

‘Thank you, Aunty Clarissa. Thank you,’ I rasped desperately, pressing myself into her gratefully.

‘No, Charlie,’ she whispered, pumping my cock. ‘I’m not your aunty anymore. I’m your mummy now. You have two mothers now, Charlie. And if you’re lucky you might end up fucking them both.’

At that my cock exploded, and very soon afterwards, I fell to sleep, nuzzling piteously against Clarissa Morgan’s chest.

Epilogue

I dreamt.

Mother and Clarissa writhed across the bed together.

They fucked.

They moaned.

They laughed.

I dreamt.

Mother, Clarissa and Tommy writhed across the bed together.

They fucked.

They moaned.

They laughed.

I dreamt.

Mother, Clarissa, Tommy, Gracie, my Dad and Aunt Julie writhed across the bed together.

They fucked.

They moaned.

They laughed.

Mother laughed. Clarissa laughed. Tommy laughed. They all laughed. They laughed, and fucked, laughed, and fucked, and laughed.

At me.

Loser, the ladies giggled, their bodies entwined.

Freak, my father growled, the only one who wasn’t laughing. He was fucking Gracie aggressively, taking his anger with me out on her ass. Faggot! Fucking fairy! You’re not my son. You’re not my son. I didn’t raise no queer. I didn’t raise no cum-guzzling fag.

Dad…I’m…I’m not gay. She made me! She made me do it! Dad!

I’m…not…your…Dad! Mickie O yelled furiously, emphasising every word. The skin of his face had purpled. His mouth foamed. His temple throbbed visibly, such was his wroth.

Tommy wore a shit-eating grin. He winked at me. His mammoth phallus was being triple-teamed by Clarissa, Aunt Julie and my mum. He fucked their faces. They choked on his cock and gobbled on his balls. They slithered like snakes to his back and ate out his ass. Salvia and pre-cum dripped from their chins and clung to their gasping, groaning mouths as they made out with each other and Tommy’s fat throbbing cock.

Tommy made satisfied grunts and groans as the three women worked together on his prick. His meaty hands found handholds in their hair, his palms slapped at their asses, from his mouth the most degrading slurs were issued. Not to me, but to his three filthy whores.

Fucking sluts.

That’s it, suck it.

Fill that slutty throat.

Gag on it.

Who’s your daddy?

Say it, say it with my dick in your throat.

His cock exploded with their three soft mouths groping against it. Cum erupted. It drenched them all. It drowned them all. It glazed them all in white.

They all laughed.

My dreamt world became a world of high, cruel laughter.

I woke, tearing myself from slumber.

And I woke into a world of laughter.

My bedroom door was wide open. Light poured in from the landing. Noise spilled up from the bottom of the stairs. They were talking in the hallway, my mothers, the old and the new.

Mother-Wendy’s voice came loud and booming, and I knew instantly that she had had her fill of wine.

‘Well, thanks again Clarissa, and hopefully I will see you again next week!’

Mother-Clarissa laughed.

‘I guess it depends what kind of review little Charlie gives me!’

Wendy laughed, loud and drunkenly.

‘You’ve learnt his name then!’

They both laughed.

I listened on in horror. My temples throbbed. My mouth was dry. My belly ached and twitched. My head floated in Mother’s ubiquitous scent.

‘Sorry again, for the late hour. Me and Trevor got a little carried away!’

I winced in my bed as though I had been stung. A kick of envy bounced against the walls of my gut.

Fuck! I cursed, horrified at being jealous of the man who was fucking my mother.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I know how it is,’ Clarissa reassured in an overloud voice, and I knew then that she knew, or at least suspected, I could hear them. ‘It’s easy to lose track of time, when…well, you know.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Mother said wistfully. ‘He wanted me to stay the night but…’

‘You should have! Wendy you should have just texted. I would have slept on the sofa.’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t have that.’

‘Wendy! It wouldn’t have been a problem, I swear.’

A pause.

My heart beat wildly.

I knew that Mother was biting her lip. I knew Clarissa was looking angelically up into her eyes.

‘Well…maybe next time,’ Mother ventured.

I saw Clarissa’s smile in my mind’s eye.

‘Of course, stay the night. Little Charlie’s no bother. I’ll take the couch.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Mother exclaimed. ‘You’ll have my bed.’

‘Perfect!’ Clarissa exclaimed.

‘Yes, you most certainly are, you darling girl,’ said Mother. ‘Here, let me give you a squeeze.’

Downstairs, they hugged. Upstairs, I listened. A freak. A voyeur. Spying on his mum.

‘I could keep you forever,’ Mother sighed as she held Clarissa to her bosom. ‘Are you sure your mother wouldn’t trade?’

Clarissa laughed.

‘Sorry she’s not a big fan of sweary, smelly teenage boys.’

‘Who could blame her?’ said Mother.

Clarissa giggled.

‘You’ll have to share me,’ she joked.

‘As long as she lets me have you next Friday! It’s been so long since…well it’s always such a rush. It’ll nice to be able to take our time. Sometimes once isn’t enough. Sometimes you need seconds.’

‘And thirds, and fourths, and fifths,’ Clarissa chimed in and they both laughed.

‘And waking up in a man’s arms. That’s something I miss,’ said Mother in a wistful tone.

‘And the drowsy morning sex,’ Clarissa reminded her helpfully.

‘Oh god, yes. I’ve almost forgotten how good that feels. So, next Friday? It’s a date?’

‘Shoot! I’m not sure about next Friday. I promised Tommy we could have some time together next weekend.’

‘Oh, darn it.’

I heard my mother’s heart sink. I heard it from my bed as I was surrounded by her scent. And I had the idea she would have before she had it. Before she said it, I knew what she would say, and somehow so did Clarissa. Mother said the exact thing Clarissa had manipulated her into saying.

‘Wait a minute? Why don’t you just bring him over? Just put Charlie to bed a little earlier and we can both have romantic nights with our men!’

‘You would allow that?’ Clarissa asked excitedly.

‘Of course! You would be doing me a huuuge favour. Just as long as he’s not going to be a bad influence on Charlie. They’re not friends, are they? I just don’t want any more setbacks in Charlie’s discipline, that’s all.’

‘Umm…no, I don’t think so. Tommy hangs around with the pop…Tommy and I move in the same circles and I had never heard of Charlie before tonight.’

‘That’s all I needed to hear. I don’t want Charlie thinking this house is some sort of boys’ club. As along as he’s willing to leave any friendship or comradery they might have at the door and adopt a professional, authoritative role with Charlie, like you have, then I have no problem with Tommy spending the night.’

‘Okay Wendy! Next Friday then, it’s a date! And I will make sure Tommy is a total authoritarian when it comes to Charlie, I promise!’

‘That’s my girl! Maybe we can make this a regular thing? That way we can both get regular dick!’

‘Wendy!’

They laughed, high, loud and happy. Peals of feminine mirth, echoed up the stairs, bouncing off the walls, bounding into my bedroom and reverberating endlessly through my skull. In my bed, I sullied the scent of my mother with a scent of my own, masturbating recklessly to my fifth orgasm of the night even as Clarissa and Mother shared their hugs and their kisses and said their goodbyes.

Downstairs the door slammed shut, and I was alone in the house with my mother once more.

The mother that my new babysitter had tricked me into falling in lust with.

I closed my eyes.

I trembled in my puddles of spilled spunk and sprayed perfume.

And I wondered if my life would ever be the same again.

The End?