Samsara

“I’m no fuckin’ Buddhist, but this is Enlightenment

The less room you give me, the more space I’ve got”

-Bjork

As you moved forward through the darkness, you felt a stillness, like placid water, which was torn from you the second you rounded the corner and stepped into the light. Before you, moving in your direction down the hallway, was a shapely figure, like an hourglass, her red face pressed into her palms.

Your mom’s face and fingers were so drenched in the moisture and salt of her own tears that she hadn’t even seen you or your cousin pass her by on both sides of the hallway as you continued. Your cousin looked at you, as if to ask if he should be getting her attention. But the look you gave back made it clear to him that it would be better to just keep on moving. There was nothing you could say. You saw the sunlight, bathed blue by the paint on the walls, on the second door from the left, the room that your mom came bawling out of, causing every nurse and visitor to turn their heads, first her way then back again, sombre, preoccupied with their own issues.

When the two of you shuffled inside, your brother lay there on his bed, his swollen eyes shut, and his body encased in plaster and bandages. He must have sensed you through some subtlety in the environment which played on one of his throbbing five senses. He opened his eyes to see the two of you standing there. And rather than comfort, the look on your respective faces, in some ways worse than the one your mom gave him, made him realize that he looked even worse than he felt, if such a thing were possible.

“Hey Craig,” you said, clutching onto the steel railing of his bedside.

He just glared up at you.

“How are you feeling?”

He sat there stoically, as if he hadn’t even realized what had happened to him. And then, suddenly, his black and blue eyes began to well up, and he started to bawl.

You and your cousin stood there, unsure of what to say or do. You both just listened to your brother weeping up to the ceiling there helplessly.

This continued until you saw your cousin’s fist ball up in your peripheral. “Who did this to you?” he demanded.

Your brother, through choking tears, just said “you know who did it.”

“I want to hear his name,” your cousin insisted through half-gritted teeth.

Your brother just continued to cry, lying there.

“He’s not going to get away with this!”

“What are you going to do?” your brother asked rhetorically. “There’s four of them.”

Your cousin stood there for a moment. Then he said “there’s got to be something. They’ve gotten away with so much. We can’t just let them-“

Your brother’s voice jutted in edgewise, through a gap in your cousin’s shivering sentence, which sat in the unease between two words. “They told me they wouldn’t hurt me if I walked with them into the woods.” He stopped for a second, overcome with regret, which then subsided, as if he remembered something. “I had Gary with me, and they told me if I didn’t come, they’d throw him off the bridge onto the highway. So I went with them. I knew they were up to something but I wanted to stay away from any traffic, because I didn’t want Gary to get hurt. We went by the creek, and there they told me that they were going to throw Gary in.”

His face welled up again. After a moment, he continued. “I begged them not to. I was so afraid. They ripped Gary’s cage from my hands and Tony held him over the creek. I started screaming. I told them I’d do anything if they gave him back. And Tony said “anything?” And when I said yes, he said “will you suck our cocks?””

You and your cousin looked down at your brother horrified, feeling voyeuristic just by standing there, knowing vaguely that if it weren’t for the drugs they put him on, he likely would never be telling you this.

His voice became shrill with the next sentence: “I said yes.”

“No…” is all your cousin could muster.

“Tony put Gary’s cage back on the ground, next to the river. And said that if I tried any funny business he’d kick him in. They all crowded up around me and started tugging at their zippers. They told me to shut my eyes. I did. And then they told me to open my mouth, and I did. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

Both your cousin’s hands were now wrapped tightly, uncomfortably, into white-knuckled fists. You looked down at your brother. He laid there, defenseless to the everything now, his voice and eyes his only method of interacting with the world around him.

He continued: “And I waited, expecting to feel something touch my tongue. And then I heard Tony ask ‘are you ready?’ and I nodded my head.” His face welled up again, though this time, his next statement burst forth before he could even gain his composure: “and then I felt a fist hit me in the eye.” It came out high-pitched and whiny, yet guttural, heart-wrenching. They all got on top of me and started stomping on me and calling me a ‘faggot.’ I could barely make anything out, until I saw Gary looking back at me. I could see his cage get knocked around by them thrashing all around me. And then again, and Gary flew around the cage. So I reached out and grabbed it, and they all flinched. I think they thought I was going to hit them with it. But I tossed the cage away from the river. And then they all got back on top of me again and started beating me until I passed out.”

“We need to get those fuckers!” your cousin growled.

“How?” Your brother asked, indignantly, though still high-pitched, hopeless. “How can we?”

Your cousin’s voice became shrill, as if he were about to cry himself. “We have to!”

Your brother looked up at you. “Where’s Gary!?” He asked the question with terror in his eyes. You realized that it was only now that it had occurred to him to wonder.

“They found him,” you said. “He was sitting next to you when they found you. He’s home now. He’s okay.”

The look of relief on his face was the only bright spot that day. Even the sun shining in through the window, and its interplay with the bright blue walls around the three of you, had an ashiness to it, so much so that you knew it had to be a product of the mind. Something that happened when one was faced with something so grim and unfair, as if the external world and the internal world of the mind were one in the same, mere reflections of one another.

“Did you tell mom what happened?” you asked.

“I told her I was jumped by some guys. I didn’t say who. I said I didn’t know them.”

The three of you were still and silent there for a bit longer.

Then your cousin said, with barely-concealed rage in each syllable, “I’m going to get them.”

Your brother looked over at him, with his eyes only, unable to turn his head. “Don’t!” he pleaded.

“They can’t get away with this. They’ve gone too far now.”

“Don’t!”

“They need to know there’s consequences.”

“Please!”

“When we’re done with them, they’re going to wish they could trade spots with you.”

“But you can’t-“

“Just trust me. They’re going to wish they’ve never been born. Come on,” he said, and he pulled you by your arm out of the room.

“Please don’t!” your brother squealed at the two of you from the seat of his immobility, as you rounded into the hallway and out of his sight, his sphere of influence, or rather rectangle, being only as large as that blue room. Once you were gone, you were as good as a star in terms of distance.

When you got to the cramped elevator, being stuffed within it, shoulder to shoulder with half-a-dozen others, your cousin leaned into your side and said in a low but deliberate voice: “I have a plan.” The door closed. The elevator descended.

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Your mom stood in the living room, her fist clutching a bouquet of tissues, wet, soiled with tears. The sun, which peaked through the blinds aggressively, like a ray into her thoughts, rather than an incentive to close the blinds, pushed her within the shadow in the corner, a refugee within her own house. Defeated, cast about, a victim of nature’s worst pain, that of a mother bear grieving over the violated safety and dignity of her cub.

The restlessness, the hopelessness, and the unceasing fear. Every action useless to help him, though somehow still never enough. She shrouded her face in shade and tissue and sobbed. And then hearing her phone vibrate in the kitchen, she turned suddenly, startled by the sound making its stroke against her sadness, and when she did so, she felt the firmness of steel latticework against her right buttcheek and the sound of a disturbed monument.

She turned around to see Gary’s cage sitting there, diagonal, pushed almost entirely off the shelf by the weight of her behind. Gary stood there, wide-eyed and startled, his plastic tube had fallen off its stand and rolled next to him. He had faced enough shock for one day. “You’re such an idiot,” your mom said to herself, jokingly. The self-deprecation of it being lighter than all else that day.

She reset Gary’s cage, and then looked down at him. He looked back up at her and his cheeks went in their circular motion, his disposition settled and calm.

“Oh Gary,” she said. “I wish human life could be as easy as hamster life.”

He stared back up at her, blankfaced, almost serene, as if he hadn’t been the subject of world-rattling earthquake just seconds earlier.

Then your mom heard her phone buzzing again, and she turned around and walked toward the kitchen. Gary watched the bobbing, gyrating motion of her ass, he always did. She slid open the kitchen door, letting the smell of fresh cookie dough waft into the living room towards Gary, then she slid the door shut behind her.

Gary stared at the plain white door.

After some time passed, the light in the living room changing its shape and flavor slowly, as it did each day, Gary caught movement in his eye, and turned toward the window to see you and your cousin walking up the driveway. Then you disappeared behind the window frame. After that sound that happens whenever a new person comes into the house, he heard talking in the kitchen. He stared at the white door. That sound occurred again. Then he saw another flash in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see your mom’s giant ass moving down the driveway and into her car. His cheeks went back and forth in circles.

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You stood with your cousin as he stirred the blue kool-aid. “See,” he said. “You can’t even see it.”

You looked at the clear blue liquid. It was as if it hadn’t been touched. Rays of sunlight shot through it majestically. He picked up the pitcher by the handle and placed it in the fridge. Two glasses of the stuff sat on the counter.

“We’ll be drinking those when they come in. That way they won’t be suspecting anything.”

He noticed something in your face.

“What?” he asked.

You almost didn’t want to say anything, but you managed to spit it out. “What if they agree to our peace treaty? Do they still drink?”

“Of course,” he said, indignantly. “There is no real peace treaty. Maybe last week we could offer them one in clean conscious. It’s too late now.”

You looked at him, and whatever it was he saw in you, it forced him to continue.

“He’s your brother. Are you seriously thinking about living and letting live after you saw him in the hospital like that yesterday? Really?”

“It’s just…” you said.

“It’s just what?”

“I mean…”

He stared at you, his eyes wide, judging.

“What if we go too far?”

“Go too far!?” he asked, furious at the question. “They almost killed your brother. They threatened to drown his hamster. What do you mean, ‘too far?’”

You were taken aback by his fury. “I just meant that… what if we push them too far?”

Your cousin sighed, exasperated. “Your brother has been getting picked on by these guys for years now. He’s always turned the other cheek and tried to not let it bother him. And every year, it gets worse. Do you see them picking on anybody else? No? Why do you think that is? The four of them together can take on anyone, don’t you think? Yet just the thought of one clean shot to any of their faces keeps them in line. If it doesn’t, then why did they single out your brother? He has no problems with anyone. He’s the nicest person in his grade.”

You looked down at your hands, which you held clasped together.

“And that’s why they target him and nobody else. Because they know all he wants is to be left alone. They’re cruel fuckers and they won’t stop until they completely ruin his life. Remember Back to the Future? Biff Tannen only stopped being a bully when George clocked him in his face.”

You looked at your cousin, blinking. Not sure what to say.

“So, your mom’s going to be at her friend’s?”

“Yeah,” you said.

“Until when?”

“She should be gone for the whole night. Until late.”

“Excellent,” he said. You heard his pocket vibrate, and he went “oh,” and he reached down into it. “I think that’s them.”

He pulled out his phone and looked at its face, nodding his head intently. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get ready for action.”

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Your mom’s foot came off the brake and she inched up a bit, before she brought it back down again. The freeway before her was littered with cars, each inching and stopping, each one filled with another mind, another soul, with their own worries and setbacks. Yet none felt as heavy as hers, she was sure of it. It would be another long period of brake, unbrake, brake, before she’d get anywhere. She had been shielding her eyes from the sun for twenty minutes now, and it was only at this exact moment that she realized that she had forgotten her sunglasses.

“Shit,” she said.

The sunlight, though bright, was itself somehow dark, as if it were polluted by some smog, invisible but visible at the same time. And the rust, dust, and mud on all the cars before her were more apparent to her now than the color of their paintjobs. Had the world always been this dirty? Had the colors always been this muted?

The thought of your brother being lead into the woods assaulted her, suddenly. The visual itself hadn’t even occurred to her until now, and with it, fresh tears. Her head came down into her palms and the car filled with her sobbing. Then the thought of him lying there in that hospital bed. His eyes looking up at her, desperate. Her crying suddenly shifted into a helpless shriek. The sound was so foreign, even to her, that it took her a few seconds to realize that the droning sound that accompanied it was foreign to the interior of her car.

The car behind her was in the process of one long, unbroken honk. She looked up. Her path forward opened a few more feet, and with it, the empty off-ramp, the first step in the drive back home. The car behind her ceased beeping for a fraction of a moment, before the driver repositioned themselves with their full weight on top of the steering wheel. Violently. Were car horns always this loud?, she thought. Was everyone always this impatient? This angry? Without thinking about it, she had turned her steering wheel, lifted her foot off of the brake, and finally let it come back down on the accelerator, propelling herself toward the offramp, which had all the glory to her now of a hole that had been ripped in the canvas of reality, leading to something more. Jenny will have to wait, she thought to herself. I have cookies to bake.

As she drove down and away from the freeway, she could hear the car horn becoming quiet. And with it, her thoughts as well.

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The four of them walked carelessly through your living room as if nothing had happened. One of them even saw Gary sitting in his cage, looking out at them, and he said “hey buddy,” and put his finger within to brush the little guy on his cheek, before continuing to the couch with everyone else. It occurred to you then that every single one of them was taller than you and your cousin at least by a few inches.

As everyone sat down and got settled, your cousin sat there, his earlier bravado subdued now, as if it were cramped within him, dying to get out, but unable. “Umm…” he started, as if doing so would push the rest out.

“Nice place you got here, man,” Tony said to you. “I’ve always seen it from the outside. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be.”

“Thanks,” you said, curtly.

“Umm,” said your cousin, trying again. “So… I think you guys all know why you’re here…” he looked around at them. They sat there, their faces blank. He looked around again. “Don’t you?”

“Sure,” Tony said. “We know.”

“Yeah,” said your cousin, his voice hoarse. “So… we invited you, knowing that it had to be done, for the cause of making a peace treaty between you guys and our fam-“

“Pfft, ‘peace treaty,’” one of them blurted out involuntarily. “It sounds so gay.”

Your cousin looked over at him. The guy had his hands behind his head, smiling. “I-“ your cousin said.

The guy looked at him and waved his hand “go on, go on. I’m sorry. It just sounded kind of gay. That’s all. ‘Peace treaty…’” he repeated with mirth.

“Okay…” your cousin started. “Like a truce.”

“I get it,” said the one who scoffed, impatiently. “Whatever, it’s all good. Go on.”

Your cousin looked at him, unsure of how to continue. Then he said “after what happened to Craig, we’ve decided that all of this has to stop.”

Tony interjected. “We’ve always had a good time messing around with him and everything. No biggie. But given how it played out last time, I get why you might want to get things to slow down for a bit. I mean, the guy offered to suck us off. I mean… don’t worry,” he said, looking at you in the eye with assurance. “I don’t think it was a genuine gay thing. I think he was so afraid and he thought it would stop us from…. I don’t know what he thought.”

Your cousin glared at Tony, then he looked down. And then back up sheepishly. “But you… kind of did do something… that he’d probably have a right to be afraid of…” He stopped and looked at their faces, each one solid as stone in shape and emotion. “Right?” he asked with an inquisitive uptick.

“I mean, yeah. We gave him a little playful beating. And we joked around a bit with Gary over there.” He pointed at Gary, who sat behind his bars, his cheeks moved rapidly as he nibbled on a pellet of food, which he clutched in his little white hands. “But it was only a joke. I think we may have made a little bit of a mistake in not making that obvious to him.”

Your cousin sat there, looking at them. Two of them had their hands behind their heads, and the other two sat with their legs crossed with their ankles over their other knee. As comfortable with themselves as they would have been in their own homes. Your cousin looked at you, then looked away when you caught his eyes. Then as if it had just occurred to him, he asked “does anyone want kool-aid?” He looked down at the table, and you realized he had forgotten to bring out the dud drinks for the two of you.

“Pfft,” said one. “Kool-aid is gay.”

Your cousin’s eyes went wide, and his head went still. That kind of still that was hard to describe. The kind where you wouldn’t have even realized the slight motion just a second ago had it not stopped dead in this instant.

“Wait,” the bully said. “What color Kool-aid?”

“Umm, blue,” your cousin said, as nervous as he was eager. “I think it’s blueberry.”

The bully leaned back dismissively. “Pfft, blue Kool-aid is gayer than pink Kool-aid.”

Your cousin sat there, his back still upright, but you could tell through some subtle indications that your conscious mind had no awareness of, that he was keeping his disposition and posture from completely deflating, not just from the guys noticing, not just from you noticing, but from his own conscious noticing as well.

His leg started to fidget as the guys continued talking.

“Listen,” Tony said. “I think messing around with your cousin has played itself out at this point. It used to be fun. I think even he would agree with that. But just seeing him on his knees begging us to pull our dicks out, man… I didn’t like seeing him that way. I apologize if we made him believe that we were capable of much more than we were, but at the same time, you have to admit that he was at fault for not communicating with us.”

Your cousin just looked at Tony, who sat there, his face innocent.

“Agreed?” Tony asked, almost certainly in earnest.

Your cousin sat there, his leg fidgeting, yet the rest of him completely still. Then he said “sure…”

Suddenly, the thick air of the moment was sucked out of the living room when the sound of the front door opening penetrated the moment’s bubble. Gary’s cheeks stopped moving.

Your cousin looked over at you, as if expecting an answer. There was concern in his face, though he tried to supress it. When he realized he wouldn’t be getting an answer from you, he looked at the guys. “Did you guys invite anyone else?” he asked.

Two of them shook their heads, and another said “no,” nonchalantly.

Your cousin looked back at you, with slight indications of worry apparent along the fringes of his expression. If he had known it was what he looked like, he wouldn’t have made eye contact with you. You knew that for certain.

He looked back at the guys. As another one of the guys said a few things, you and your cousin could hear someone walking into the kitchen and setting something down on the kitchen table. You struggled to listen to what the guy was saying, his right arm over the backrest of the couch and his legs apart.

You saw your cousin look at you from the corner of your eye when he heard the sucking noise of the fridge being opened. Then it slammed shut. He looked over at you, and when he noticed you looking back, he forced a smile as if everything was going according to plan. Then he looked back down at the carpet. The fridge opened again and closed soon after.

After another minute or two, you could hear the sound of the oven door opening and a tray being placed on the rack, and the oven door closing again. Then the beeping sounds of the oven being set to bake.

“Are you sure you guys don’t want kool-aid?” your cousin asked. His desperation would be apparent to anyone who knew he had something to be desperate about. As of this moment, you were the only one who knew that though.

“You might as well ask us if we’d like to drink cum,” said the usual suspect. “Kook-aid’s for fags.”

Your cousin’s leg was fidgeting so rapidly, you were sure he wasn’t aware of it. He would look over at you, his face red, periodically, and smile, even as his forehead started to go wet with flop sweat.

As the minutes passed, in bunches of fives and tens, the house began to smell like fresh-baked cookies. The two of you sat there, bathed in it, as your houseguests didn’t seem to notice or pick up on any change in the olfactorial atmosphere. You watched their mouths move, pantomiming punching and kicking with their fists and feet to assist the story they were telling, visually, and Tony looking at you, his lips moving, while he looked you in your eyes, as if trying to explain something to you, excited for it, though through your distracted mind, none of it registered. Even when he closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide, with his chin tilted up, and his mouth in a mock-horrified scowl, a fake quiver in his bottom lip, you didn’t recognize who it was in imitation of, the moment of ultimate-low he was making light of, a moment that he created. All you could hear were the nuances of subtle commotion from the kitchen. Nothing more. The rest of creation as silent as the moon.

Suddenly, the moment was sliced in two when you heard the kitchen door slide open behind you, and the look on all the boy’s faces made your cousin’s heart sink.

The first voice you and your cousin could hear for the last fifteen minutes penetrated your silence, sweetly. “Hey guys! Anyone care for some cookies?”

Your mom didn’t so much as glide into view, she burst into existence like being itself, commandeering the tone of the room, as she always did, without effort or awareness. Her body among the best shapes creation had to offer, whether she knew it or not. Gary, who had been running in his wheel, stopped, and stood still to stare at his favorite sight. He wasn’t the only one.

Your mom had no idea who she was talking to, who she was presenting her home cooking to. She had seen some of these faces around the neighborhood before, but it would have made no sense logistically or emotionally why the young men who beat up her beloved son would be the ones sitting here now with you and her nephew speaking to you two so cordially. And because of that, she approached them, holding a plate full of her homecooking. Offering to satiate one of their sweet-tooths while inadvertently creating a craving in another. In her mind, she was just interacting innocently with day-to-day life. Something she was craving to feel again. Something to get her mind off of…

The guys sat there like mirthy pressure cookers, hormones bubbling within them, with the look of one appreciating something that was appetizing. Though it wasn’t the plate they were looking at. And while her cookies sat there, presented plainly to them, by the pedestal of her hand, she stood there, much larger and more delicious, pedestalized by the carpet of your living room.

Your mom’s face still showed signs of duress, in the form of new and temporary lines, which, somehow, enhanced her beauty rather than robbed from it. Though these lines were leftovers from a previous moment, as within this one, she had managed to find shelter from the storm of awareness which battered the hatches of her conscious mind. Your cousin froze in place, looking down at the ground. His face red now. It likely occurred to him then that they had never seen his auntie before and would have had no idea just what she looked like. Now they did. He had given that to them. This murder of crows which sat perched on his auntie’s couches with little grins. Their faces warped by their histories into sinister omens, each grinning moment a victory against what was good and decent.

“Sure,” said one. “I’ll have some cookies. Cookies are pretty heterosexual actually.”

Your mom looked at him, unsure of what to make of that. Possibly assuming, uncritically, that it was some new slang she was unaware of.

“Well, either way,” she said, as she bent down to place the plate on the empty white ottoman. “They’ll be here for anybody who wants them. Regardless of what it is they do in the privacy of their own bedroom…”

Your cousin clenched his eyelids together tightly, making him look a decade older, knowing exactly just what image that throwaway statement put in their heads. He could see it too, quite unwittingly, as if her big ass, both cheeks, were cramped within his cranium in place of a brain. It didn’t help that he had seen his aunt’s nude butt before, having accidently walked into her room while she was changing years ago. She just looked back over her shoulder at him, no real worry, just a reaction to the noise (a gasp) behind her, with her bubble of an ass sitting exposed and open. He closed the door after taking it in for a second. The rhythm of the moment was just perfect enough that it left no awkward residue. He had enjoyed that thought periodically, it’s shape and candidness. Just a round ass, a perfect one, staring back at him. His aunt’s ass, which nobody else got to see. This little quiet moment between them, one which she almost certainly had forgotten as quickly as it had happened, but that he had cherished every few weeks or so in bed with himself and his thoughts. Just his own little private moment. He had never even told you or your brother about it.

Now, even that thought was spoiled. It hung around his neck like an albatross.

Suddenly, his invasive thoughts were pushed aside by invasive tones, high-pitched and unnatural. He opened his eyes to see the white plate spinning on the floor, with cookies, some crushed, some whole, lying on the carpet.

Your mom held her head with her right hand. “Oh,” she said. “That’s weird.”

You felt like saying something, but nothing would come out.

“Huh,” she said, calmly. “I don’t feel too hot.”

She looked down at her mess. And even as she did, the boys were looking her up and down. No plate of cookies, whether edible, or hilariously smashed upon the floor, could ever be as interesting to them as she was. Each inch of her a succulent inch. Her body, as if built in a lab for carnal pleasure. As if she were dragged from the hazy edges of their sickest fantasies. Her shape spoiling the minds of men, lifting the standard for what a woman could be to Homeric heights without effort. She was a female Atlas, holding up her own ass in a void. Her round buttocks jutted in the air, assaulting it with its soft curve. Even a train wreck, of all twisted steel and smashed glass, couldn’t draw their attention away from her. Though they couldn’t know yet, could they, that she herself was a trainwreck waiting to happen.

The only two people who could hear the train coming was you and your cousin. You could hear it because you were sitting inside it with your mom, all three of you in coach, your mom kicking around her empty flip-flop playfully, as your cousin sat beside you, looking out the window at the collapsed bridge at the bend, his face filled with regret, sitting with the knowledge that this train could never stop in time. And he had been the one to bribe the conductor to leave early.

“Oh,” your mom said, looking at the cookies which were now sprawled across the carpet. “I’m sorry you guys. I didn’t mean to…”

“That’s okay,” said Tony, assuringly. “We all make mistakes. Whether they be broken plates or kids.” He smiled out the corner of his mouth.

Your mom turned around without responding and instead said, so casually it was as if she hadn’t just embarrassed herself in front of a crowd of young men, “Okay guys. Have fun,” and she walked toward the kitchen door. You and your cousin looked back at her, and while everyone else watched her bubble butt shaping and reshaping itself in her jean shorts with each step (including Gary), causing them to miss it, you and your cousin (and Gary) noticed how off-center each step was. And before she even made it to the kitchen door, her right flip-flop fell off of her stumbling foot. When she stepped into the kitchen, she turned around and grabbed the door, and looking out at a sea of faces staring at her now getting blurry, she slid the door closed.

Your cousin turned back just as you did, and you both caught each other’s eyes, causing him to look down and away immediately. He looked ahead as the guys shot each other grins and elbows, whispering amongst themselves, as if they were in a football huddle that neither of you were invited to, even though its location was your own living room. In reality, it was more of an example of Monday morning quarterbacking, their assertions to each other toothless and fantastical. They hadn’t realized what had become clear to you and your cousin. They had no idea what was in that kool-aid, nor did they seem to hear that fridge open even if they did. Your cousin’s face was hot red, and he looked like his soul had left his body. His empty husk sat beside you, still clothed in the embarrassment imprinted on it by its now-lost spirit.

“Hey,” one of them asked, causing your cousin’s soul to re-enter his body so violently that he twitched. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Without even thinking about it, you shot out “it’s through the kitchen, to the hallway. The first door on the right.” For some reason, you foresaw them asking that question hours earlier, so you had prepared and stashed its answer on a shelf of convenient height and proximity within your mind, making it second nature to just let that spill out in response, even after the context had violently shifted itself around that quaint and mousy goal of yours.

Your cousin’s eyes clamped shut the way one’s does when they cringe, not out of embarrassment, but from horror and regret over what you just said.

“Alright,” he said. “I don’t’ have to go now, but in case I do later.” He sat there for a second. Then a thought occurred to him. “By the way, Craig pissed himself when we were with him.”

You both looked at him. He looked back at you innocently.

“Yeah, when we were at the river with him and I kicked him in the stomach, I saw a big wet circle on his crotch. I thought that shit only happened in movies. But I guess not. That Craig, man. He’s a character.”

“That’s for sure,” said another.

“Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go,” said Tony. Then he turned around and looked at the little cage on the shelf. “Right Gary?”

Gary looked out at him, his cheeks in fidgety motion. His little face blank, oblivious to the statement, though obviously something he’d agree to if he could, without thought or caveat.

Your cousin sat there, deep in thought. The sweat on his head was enough that it eclipsed any excuse that the day’s weather was wringing him of his moisture. He kept fidgeting his seat as the guys continued speaking. His posture horrible, tight. Every once-in-a-while he turned around to look in the direction of the kitchen. A blank, white door stared back at him, without answer. Behind him he hears their conversation, in hushed tones, select words about your mom. About certain parts of her. Visions, based on much more than estimations, of your mom’s ass in a state of undress assaulting your cousin’s mind, her face looking back at him innocently, and juxtaposed to that, the image of your brother, looking up at him through a slot in his plaster cast as he lay in that hospital bed, his face wide-eyed, horrified. He heard him say it again in his mind: “Please! Don’t!”

You sit next to him, though invisible to his senses, listening to them talk about your mom’s lower half as if you weren’t there. Their proclamations vulgar and raunchy, your mom an object to them, a titillating totem for them to anchor a moment of toxic comradery on. All while you sat there and watched and listened. You look from face to face as each one speaks his piece. “Maybe we should be getting Craig’s mom to… you know… instead of Craig,” one of them says, and then he begins to crush the fallen cookies into the carpet with his foot carelessly. “If Craig was so easy to give it up, maybe she is too.”

“Um,” you hear nervously from next to you. “I have to go to the washroom.” Your cousin stands up and wobbles slightly.

“No!” said Tony with a suddenness that caught your cousin mid-wobble, freezing him in that stance like glass.

Your cousin looked down at Tony. The look on your cousin’s face of submissive uncertainty and sudden shock.

“What?” Tony says, cracking into a smile. “Did you think I was being serious?”

“Uhh,” your cousin says, his face blank.

“Go!” Tony says. “This guy’s funny,” he says and looked at his friends. “It’s your house, dude. Or your family’s house. You do you.”

“Oh,” your cousin said, and then, as if not sure, he awkwardly turned around and headed to the kitchen.

You watched him slide open the door slightly and squeeze in through the gap. The door stayed slightly open for a moment, before sliding closed, as if it were an afterthought. You looked back at the guys. Tony sat with his feet, one over the other, resting on the coffee table, devoid of all evidence of care or concern. “It’s a beautiful day,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at the daylight. “You ever wake up in the morning and just know that your day was going to be particularly excellent?” He was looking at you.

“Umm,” you said. “I guess.”

He smiled at you, then he looked over at his friends as they argued. He had an innocent carelessness to him, as if he could walk over water. The cookies were now crushed into crumbs which sank into the carpet. The boys sitting there had a poetry to them. An ease of access and understanding in life which made it feel as if they were untouchable. There was a beauty in it. A beauty which was illuminated now by the sunlight that spilled in behind them. Even Gary looked on, fascinated, though less articulate. It was as if not a single one of them believed that they were going to die one day. Nothing could hurt them. Not even themselves. They were like gods sitting there, by virtue of their youth and that alone.

You feel your phone vibrate in your pocket, tearing you from the strange shelter of your current thoughts.

You take it out as you look at the guys. They’re focused on each other, with Tony looking over, his hands on the back of his head, curious, lackadaisically, about their conversation. You take your eyes off them and look down at the face of your phone. It was your cousin. He had texted you. It said “come into the kitchen. Now.”

You didn’t even say anything as you got up and went to the kitchen door, which got larger as you approached it. The laughter of the boys persisted behind you. It was as if they hadn’t even noticed you leave.

When you slid the door open, you saw your cousin looking up at you, his index finger pressed perpendicularly to his lips. Your mom lying face down on the off-white tiles below him, her jean-short clad ass up in the air, her eyes shut, her face peaceful. He rushed you in with a hand gesture. You stepped in quickly and slid the door shut behind you. The sounds of the boys became muffled.

As you got close, you saw your mom, from the back of her blonde head, down to the back of her thighs, calves, and feet, one sole exposed, all lying there motionless.

“She was like this when I came in,” he said, in a deliberate and desperate hush. “Help me move her.” He grabbed the back of her arms to lift her, and you grabbed her thighs. You both stood up, and she sat there between you, cradled over the kitchen floor, floating in air, looking down at the tiles that she stepped over daily when preparing breakfast and dinner for you and your brother. Her thighs were smooth in your hands. And her butt was bigger up close than it looked like from a distance. She had a scent to her, both of flesh and of perfume, which was comforting and sweet.

As your cousin guides her towards the hallway, you tagging along with her lower half in tow, you suddenly hear the sound of one of the living room couches creaking. “Hurry,” he says, and begins to pull. But you just stand there, feeling her body being pulled from you, or at least the pressure of it, you standing there, holding her thighs, keeping her from going anywhere. You hear footsteps getting louder.

“Hurry!” he said again, hushed.

You’re motionless, statue-like, looking at that white door. Your mom a knotted tug-a-rope rope between you. Her butt jiggling with each impotent tug. The footsteps don’t stop.

“They’re coming,” he pleaded. He begins to whimper. “Just let her go,” he says. “I’ll take her.” He tugs again. And then again. “Please! I’ll drag her if I have to,” he says. You feel her smooth, juicy thighs in your palms. They rub against them with each of his pulls. You look with your eyes wide at that white door. The steps get louder. The door stares back at you blankly.

“Please!”

They stop outside that white door.

“Please! Just let go!”

The door slides open.

A young man stands in the doorway, his facial expression one of confusion. And then understanding. And then interest.

“What’s happening here?” he asks with a smile. He steps onto the kitchen tile and closes the door behind him with his left hand behind his back.

“Uh,” you cousin starts, not sure of where to go, though knowing he can’t stay where he is. “Oh nothing. My auntie just slipped and fe- She just asked us to move her.”

“She asked you?”

“Yeah,” your cousin said, his voice cracking.

The boy looked at your mom’s face, her bottom lip hung open. He smiles. “I see. So…” he grinned, leaning on the doorway with his right shoulder. “She must have passed out after she told you then.”

Your cousin just glared back at him, his forehead sweaty, his cheeks red. “P-passed out?” he asks. His voice now high pitched and weak. “What- what do you-“

“Oh, so you’re saying that she’s totally conscious now?” he asked. “That’s why you’re moving her. Because she can walk just fine.”

Your cousin held his gaze on the bully for a few moments, then he looked back down at your mom’s arms and said to you “Okay, l-let’s get her to her room.”

He tugged on her again, and you stood firmly with her thighs in your palms.

“Let’s go,” he said, nonchalantly, as if he didn’t already try.

He tugged again, and you dug your thumbs into her soft flesh.

His face was now as red as burning coal. “Huh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” It was the last few syllables of someone who knew they were stuck in a trap of their own making. Not just trapped in the horror of the moment. Trapped in the embarrassment of being caught in that horror. Trapped in the shame. And even worse, trapped in the dread of what was to come next.

His aunt’s body hung in the balance. And you stood there, holding her in place. You watched your brother’s tormenter, awaiting his next move. And then you seen him push off of the doorframe confidently, and grab the door without breaking his sights off of your mom, pulling it open a crack. He tilted his head backward slightly and yelled in the direction of the gap: “guys! You gotta come and see this.” He looked at the two of you with a smile.

You and your cousin stood there now. You looked over at him, his face across from you, on the other side of your mom’s head and torso. He looked down, in the direction of her back, but not at it, just into dead space, as if he had shut down. But when the kitchen door slid wide open, he looked up at it just as you did.

The whole gang stood there, with Tony at the vanguard, not just of the group positionally, but in his stages of realization. By the time the last of the others figured it out, Tony was already halfway between the doorway and the three of you.

He looked back at his friend as he moved. “Did you slug her too?”

His friend shrugged.

He looked back at the spectacle before him. “Need any help?” he asked with a smile across his face.

“N-no, no.” your cousin said. “We’re just…” he trailed off.

“She’s passed out?” Tony asked. He was standing right beside her, at her waist, looking down.

“No,” your cousin squeaked.

“Oh, really?” Tony said, looking up at your cousin’s stammering face. He looked back down at her. “Oh, that’s good to hear. Anyways, how long will she be out for?”

“Maybe five min-“

“9 Hours,” you blurted out.

Tony looked up at your cousin’s face again, grinning. Your cousin stared at the ground, again not seeing it.

“9 hours. Wow. What a nice, long number. A perfect amount of time.”

Your cousin looked up at him. His shift frantic.

Tony continued: “A perfect amount of time for sleeping. You guys putting her in her room?”

Your cousin nodded slowly, apprehensively.

“Okay, then,” Tony said. He turned around to his grinning compatriots. “You guys wait here while we tuck Miss Craig into bed. Let’s go.”

He grabbed your mom by her waist, and when he did, your cousin began to move, but again, he found himself tugging on her upper half, as her lower half stood immobile.

And that’s when Tony reached for her zipper.

Your cousin watched, immobile himself now, frozen, as Tony grabbed it. “I’m just going to give the boys a nice little peek,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He turned to you as he held the zipper between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you mind?”

You looked at him for a moment. “No,” you said.

He looked at your cousin. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you mind?”

Your cousin looked at him. And as he did, the sight of the others standing there, monstrous and surreal, burned in his periphery. After a few moments mounted, what came out was brief: “No.”

“Good,” was all Tony said in response. He smiled from ear to ear, and while looking your cousin dead in his face, he pulled your mom’s zipper down. The sound reverberated through the kitchen, and there was giggles from the peanut gallery. “Just a quick look,” he said. “Hold tight.”

And with that, as if it were nothing at all, your mom’s jean shorts, along with the underwear that they dragged with them, sat halfway down her thighs, pressed into your forefingers and thumbs.

Your cousin looked before him. And there he sees his old familiar friend, bare to him for the second time, his dirty little secret, which he held in fondness in the lockbox of his heart for many seasons, his to remember, and he alone, with Tony’s face hovering above, looking down at it with a grin. Her ass looked back up at him, expressionless. Your mom’s empty face, free of all stress, serene, facing downward towards the kitchen tiles. You look over the vista of your mom’s bare ass to see your cousin’s face, blank, looking down at it. Then you look over to see the others, one of them with them with his phone out, the other two reaching for theirs. Their eyes all aglow, and their smiles impish, like demonic presences, torturers to lost souls.

Then Tony draws your attention back to where it should be when he begins speaking: “Now that we’re here,” he says. “Let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.”

He forms his middle and ring finger together as one mass and lifts it to your mom’s pubic region. And your cousin stands motionless and watches as Tony’s fingers disappear slowly inside your mom.

“Oh, oh yeah,” Tony says, with his tongue jutting slightly out the corner of his mouth. “She’s tight. Not bad. Especially for her age.” He looked up at you, grinning “Looks like you and Craig didn’t ruin her coming out.” You just stared down at his hand, two of his fingers invisible to you as they fished around her insides. He looked back at his friends. “We’re in for a treat, guys.”

Your cousin sucked in air.

They all stood there, grinning, with their phones lifted to chin level, filming their friend’s fingers disappearing inside your mom’s body as the two of you held her level for him. Your cousin watched, his head motionless, his face blank, as if it weren’t happening in front of his own two eyes. As if he couldn’t see it, or believe that it could happen. But happening it was. And no one was stopping it. You and him just watched.

Tony took his hand out and wiped it on her right cheek. “And she’s wet too. Blue velvet. Nice! Hold her still,” he said, taking his hands off her. “Wouldn’t want her to fall.” He lifted his now-free hands and grabbed each of her soft butt-cheeks, pulling them apart.

“Oh my,” he said, as he stared down at your mom’s asshole, which was three-and-a-half feet in the air, exposed in broad daylight, three feet away from where she prepared dinner, and two feet away from where she ate dinner with you and your brother. “Uggh,” he said with satisfaction. “Yeah, it’s perfect. She’s good for a DP.” He looked back at you, his face too close for comfort, and he gestured with a head motion toward the sight and said “you ever see it before?”

You stood there, saying nothing.

“Your mom’s asshole, I mean.”

“No,” you said.

“Hmm.” He looked down at it. “I wonder if Craig has.” He stood there and thought about it for a second. He began to smile suddenly, mischievously. “I knew it reminded me of something.” He looked up at you. “We shoved pinecones up Craig’s ass at the river,” he said, and smiled with light embarrassment. “He has your mom’s asshole.”

“He has her pussy too,” said one of the spectators from the peanut’s gallery before laughing at his own joke.

You looked up at your cousin and saw him looking down at your mom’s open butt cheeks, his face blank of any and all anger, sadness or joy. It was devoid of anything. And then, as if a switch were flicked, his face began to scrunch up, and his eyes welled into that familiar sight. That image of anything from despair to minor discomfort in a woman, but always absolute defeat in a man. A tear fell from his cheek and landed on the back of your mom’s golden head.

Tony looked at him. “Oh,” he said. “You’re crying. You’re face, all wet with tears. Wetness,” he said, and he plunged his fingers back into your mom and began thrusting into her, making a sweet, sucking noise. “I guess that runs in the family too.” He then pulled his hand out, causing moisture to fling itself into your face, and then his hand came back down, as if in the same motion, and slapped your mom on her right cheek, turning it, within an instant, into a blushing pink.

Your cousin just said “oh god,” through tears that choked him. He felt like letting go, not letting Tony have such easy and convenient access to her body, but he realized that letting her face hit the ground would have been a help to nobody. And he couldn’t move her through horizontal space. He had already tried that. You had been holding her in place. She was stuck there. Like a butterfly pinned to a felt board, the beauty of her the centerpiece of the room, and the focal point of all discussion. Her butt-cheeks like wings, majestic and rare.

“So,” Tony said. “I’m no smart-talking female private eye in some movie, but if I had to use whatever smarts I do have, I’m assuming that that blue was meant for the four of us? Does that sound about right?”

He looked at your cousin, who was still looking down at your mom’s ass through tears, unable to move. Petrified. Then he looked over at you. You looked him directly in his eyes, without challenge or threat or expectation. You just stood there, wide-eyed.

“Hmm, you two are awfully quiet. All three of you in fact. Isn’t that right, mommy? So what was the plan when we were out?”

The kitchen was completely silent for another moment.

He looked down at your mom’s ass. “You have any answers? Hello?” He grabbed both her cheeks and flapped them open and closed while saying “humina humina humina,” in a cartoonish voice. “Guess you’re not one for words.” He looked back up, switching between the two of you. “You just wanted us to get a good night sleep, I guess. You weren’t planning on drawing dicks on our forehead or anything demeaning like that, were you?”

Nothing.

“Because that would be hella ironic, wouldn’t it? You invite us, drug your kool-aid, expecting to get the drop on us. And then your mom comes home and spoils the plan. And she’s here now, with her pants at her knees, her big naked, fat, fucking ass exposed. Oh, fuck! I love it. Craig’s a faggot for not letting us know how hot his mom is! But I digress. You got you little scheme all ready to go. Rubbing your little palms together like big geniuses, just ready to embarrass us. Getting revenge and all that. And now here you are, a glorified stand for presenting your mom’s ass to us like a table serving dinner. Like those little things that hold up eggs, what are they called? They hold eggs so you can crack ‘em, like that, but it’s your mom’s ass that it’s holding. And me and my friends here are just licking our lips, and rubbing our tummies. And now whatever it was you wanted to do, and whatever it was you were trying to do when we came in, it’s too late. And there’s two of you, you schemers, ready to go, but… there are four of us. And just two of us could handle the two of you, easy, while the other two had fun with your mom. Two beating your mom’s ass while two beat your faces. Then we can switch off, like night-watchmen. So you have two choices… either carry her to the living room for us, where we’re comfortable and cozy, or take a beating in vain, and still she gets fuck- ”

Your cousin suddenly said “no,” and he pulled again on your mom. She stood in place, but you felt her thighs slide in your palm.

Just as suddenly, as if eager to live up to the good of his word and reputation, Tony lunged over top of your mom and swung into your cousin’s left ear. Your cousin fell backward, causing him to lose his grip on your mom’s arms, and her head would have fallen to the floor below, had it not fell onto Tony’s hip.

Your cousin spun around and shielded his head with his arms, all while Tony stood over him, planting surgical shots into the side of your cousin’s head, as your cousin wailed out “Stop! Stop! Please stop!” Your mom’s blonde head bounced off of Tony’s butt.

You held your mom’s thighs tightly and leaned back, backing away from the swinging arms. Your mom hung forward, her hair touching the ground like a mop, but she was safe, the top of her head suspended over the kitchen tiles by your quick thinking. Her hair caressing your feet in appreciation.

When you made distance, one of the guy’s came up and grabbed her by her head, cradling it underneath his wide smile. “Fuck,” he said, looking at your mom’s ass pressed into your stomach. “Mrs. Craig is going to get it.”

“Take her to the living room,” Tony barked in between blows. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

The other two back up from the doorway, and you helped the third one by guiding your mom through the kitchen door, which one of them made sure to jut his hand in and open it the entire way, concerned that her ass wouldn’t be able to make it through.

All the while your cousin cried behind you, each sob broken by the moment a fist hit him in his head. His cries became less all encompassing once you got into the living room, where they no longer echoed, but seemed to come from a single source behind you. It was as if some relevant but separate work was being completed, like its noisy machinations were happening in a part of the factory you had never visited nor understood.

Gary sat looking at the commotion. But when he recognized what you had been carrying, he shot up. He stood still then, standing on his hindlegs, glaring at the object attached to your mother. This had been the first time he had ever seen it nude. He stared at the crack in between, and a feeling of warmth flowed through his little body. The ass jiggled as it was moved. He was fascinated, in his little way, by the fact that it was now horizontal. And he loved the blank look in her face. And the way in which she was being moved.

When you got to the couches, one of them took your mom’s thighs from you. “Thank you,” he said. “Not just for these thighs. But the whole thing. It’s very heterosexual of you.” He smiled as he held your mom in mid-air. He then leaned his head in and began sniffing her ass. Then, suddenly, he plunged his face in between her cheeks and started moving his face from side-to-side within them, saying “mmmmm” as he did, the sound of which was muffled considerably by the weight of your mom’s butt-cheeks.

The one with empty hands saw you staring at the sight over your mom’s back, and while ducking down to go underneath her to get to you, he noticed that you were sporting something special in your jeans. When he came back up to eye level, stumbling as he went, he said “guys, Craig’s brother is fucking getting hard.”

“What!?” could be heard, coming out muffled from between your mom’s cheeks. She had wondered fruitlessly about who it was who had jumped her son, and now one of the culprits was here, in her living room, yelling questions into the center of her ass, his face totally sheltered from the sun within. The same sun her bare feet were exposed to as they hung in mid-air. Gary watched on enthralled.

“Seriously,” the empty-handed one said. “He’s rock hard, look.” And then he grabbed your belt and undid it, zipping down your fly and pulling down your pants. You stood there in your underwear, your cock visibly hard within, with a wet spot where the tip was. The sunlight shone on it, obscuring nothing.

The muffled one pulled his head out of your mom’s ass to see. He looked down at your waist with the same enthusiasm and shock one would have had looking at what he had just pulled his face out of doing. “Holy shit,” he said. “This family is just full of surprises.” He looked over at his co-pallbearer for your mom’s dignity. “Right man? Man?”

You looked over at the ‘man’ in question, and your jaw fell agape when you saw him, standing there, thrusting passionately into your mom’s face, his balls slapping against her chin, and his pubic region in her eyes. At about the same moment, you felt your underwear being tugged down, and your cock falling down until it stood diagonal and upwards. You felt your pants and underwear at your ankles, and you heard, just barely over the “glluck glluck glluck” sounds coming from your mom’s face, “lift your feet man,” from an exasperated voice.

You did as you were told, and your pants and underwear were slipped out from beneath you. Then he stood up. He was half-a-foot from the side of your face. He turned around to look at the sight, your mom being fucked where she should be kissed, and kissed where she should be fucked. “You think Craig would be enjoying it as much as you are?”

“How could he not,” the other one said, as his balls slapped against her chin. “She’s a… uh… she’s a fuckin’ beautiful woman. We’d be giving him the show of a lifetime. Oh, fuck yeah… baby…” After a few more pumps, he said “let’s get this bitch on the couch.”

The other one was still buried face-first inside your mom’s ass, making noises like a woeful spirit within it, digging his face in deeper with every shake of his head, only for it to be pushed out slightly with each slacking moment by the weight of your mom’s butt-cheeks seeking to reunite and become one again.

“Come on man!” said the other one, loudly, irritated. “My arms are getting tired. Her ass is heavy.”

“The face popped up again from between your mom’s cheeks, his hair a mess. “Huh?”

“On the fuckin’ couch, man!”

“Oh,” he said, before kissing your mom’s right cheek twice. “yeah, yeah, cool.”

As one of the guys stood behind the couch, preparing himself mentally and physically for his turn, he looked over at you and said “yo man. Why are you just sitting there? Start jerking it, man. Enjoy yourself. You’re not going to see this more than once. This is our first and last rodeo, right?” He asked it rhetorically, with a trace of annoyance, as if he was frustrated that he had to walk you through that obvious point. You could tell that if you weren’t already eager to do just as he said, he’d be forcing you to do it until you were hard just to humiliate you.

Just then, just as you started to pull on yourself, knowing now that you had the permission necessary to even have courage for it, never mind the mechanical freedom and approval, you heard two sets of feet, one stumbling, and the other moving authoritatively through space, come up behind you. A naked, pink body invaded your peripheral, and you looked over to see your cousin, blushing from face to foot, with utter defeat, hopelessness, and relief from pain across his face.

He looked over at you, and saw you jerking off. He then looked quickly ahead and groaned when he saw what was happening on the opposing couch. Even then, it only took a few moments for him to develop a noticeable half-chub, which swung through the air as Tony pushed him down onto the opposing couch next to you.

“Go sit with your cuz. Enjoy the show.” He looked over at you and pointed. “He already is.”

You sat there, in a daze, tugging yourself, not caring that everyone could see you doing it. Your mom’s ass rippled helplessly with the thrusts, and her crown of golden hair pressed, every few seconds, into the belly button before her. You were so into the moment, that you couldn’t even feel the shadow looming over you, until you felt him kick the side of your ankle. “Fucking move,” Tony said. And you pulled your legs to the side to let him through.

He was undressing as he moved. “Move aside,” he said. “Give daddy a piece.”

Your cousins stared at it. ‘It’ was his only name for this atrocity. To register what ‘It’ was in words would have been beyond him. There were seven people in the house now, all of whom party or victim to something horrible. Yet only one of them was to blame. Your mom’s ass naked, round, free, and jiggling, her pussy and mouth stuffed by everyone who was at that river today. They crowded her body, using it for their sick thrill, the same way they did your brother. They had extracted so much out of one solitary family. Such pleasures of flesh, power and ego. Everything they were seekers of, and they found it all in one pile, defenseless and easy. Satiated body and soul. Was there any legacy more pronounced that your family could lay claim to? Or if the history books were omniscient, would they record you all exactly as such? No accomplishment your family could laminate and frame could ever be as impressive as this defeat, could it? And with all the pictures and videos being taken, this defeat would be as etched into stone as the words of great men. You were history now. And your role was as the losers. And your mom’s cheeks drummed themselves on supple thighs to that celebration.

Your mom’s ass, looking like it hadn’t even aged a day since that happy accident years ago, stared back at your cousin like an old friend. Except now it jiggled for him. The nostalgia was awash in a sea of nausea. Your mom, instead of looking back at him, stared directly into Tony’s pubes, as she did for Tony’s cock in ignorance what Craig had promised to do out of fear. Gary watched your mom’s ass jiggle in silence. His little brain processing what it could, but coming up short from each angle.

Your cousin looked over at you, and saw you sitting there, tugging yourself to your own mom’s butt-cheeks bouncing in the sunlight. He turned his head, which was as hard now as trying to steer an ocean liner, and looked down at his cock, and at noticing it was much more than halfway hard, he slowly (his shoulder felt bruised) moved his hand over towards it until he made contact, and when he did, he exhaled. He slowly, and painfully looked back up at the trainwreck ahead, and he began to massage the head of his dick with his fingers.

Why fight it? It wouldn’t help. Besides, it had all been his fault anyways. What direction to go other than south? His auntie’s body, which he had respected and appreciated, and memorized and lionized, was now a plaything for Tony and Co. “Please don’t!?” he heard, picturing Craig lying there, eyes full of terror in his hospital bed. But he tugged anyways. His tears wouldn’t stop. But neither would his tugging. He saw her looking back at him, her face calm, her ass bare to him, in the quiet grey of her room. And the peace of that image, and its quiet stillness, was shattered by the loud absurdity of this:

This wasn’t a memory he was looking at. This was contemporary reality.

The house became a beastial place. Everybody in it without dignity or pants, as if they had all devolved to match Gary’s level of philosophy and civilization. Gary just stood on his hind legs looking out at a commotion he had no reference point toward understanding. All he knew was that that woman who walked around that living room, and occasionally fed him, or scratched him on his little head with her finger, now looked weird and extra pink. And there were four guys standing around her who seemed to be enjoying it. He had seen hard penises before, having watched you or your brother on many occasions tugging yourselves on those very couches when either of you were lucky enough to have the freedom to do so home alone or when everyone else was sleeping. But this was the first time he had seen hard penises being used on their imagined target. The foreignness of their bodies, in contrast with the familiarity of hers, and yours, fascinated Gary to no end. The sole of your mom’s foot, which Gary was used to seeing when she sat huddled in her pajamas on the couch, was now up in the mid-air sunlight, cycling back and forth from one position to the next, chaotically, yet still somehow hypnotically. Gary had never felt more entertained. It was as if he was running on his wheel, the thrill being similar but stronger, though he was doing none of the work. He just had to sit and watch.

The last genuine emotion your cousin felt, even as he ran his fingers at a regular pace up and down the side of his cock, was dismay at seeing that Tony had chosen to stick himself directly into your mom’s ass. After he stood there, brows furrowed, watching Tony’s cockhead press into that tight hole, then watching it be pushed open, and Tony’s cock entering in without further pushback, all that was left to your cousin was a dull grey hum, and a strange tingling within the lower half of his body, one that made any and all touch like sugar or electrical current. Like honey was a sensation, and everything starting from his stomach and lower back, going down below, was filled with it.

Your mom’s body and dignity was being mangled between the flesh, imagination, whim, freedom, and tyranny of these four young men. Her series of holes, her curves and endless soft flesh that went on in all directions from any point of contact. The soles of her feet up in the air. Her body theirs to position. Her holes theirs to fill. Her dignity theirs to crush. Who among them could have known that their jubilee by the river this day, would have ended here? Their hands and feet satiated against the bones and cartilage of your brother, and their thighs and hips satiated against his mom’s flesh and fat just hours later.

They filmed off and on with their respective cameras, switching off to the role of cameraman whenever the moment allowed. Even in their wild youth, they had the foresight to know that they’d want to remember this, even if just for masturbation and an ego boost, never mind as documentation of their best years. It was definitely the former at this moment. Like all young people, they thought these days would never end, as if the old were another species altogether, their claim to have once possessed said youth a lie. A lie which your mother was now being punished for between the four of them, both literally and figuratively. Her body locked securely between their limbs and hips like she was in a cage of flesh and bone.

Your cousin had now known the fear your brother felt when dealing with these four. He understood his plea: “please don’t” only all too well now. Now when it was too late. The only solace he had was the hope that they would push her body to the limit. They would fill his mind with guilty memories that smothered the fires of his unbearable sin with the soaking wet blanket of sexual confusion and irresistible tingling in his hips and thighs. His buttocks tight with vibrations that came from some unknown who-knows-where inside his lower back. His feet on delightful pins, and his pubic region burning but somehow with a fire that stopped at warm. The only way passed this was through it. The only way to deal with his newfound terror of Tony and Company was to let it wash over him. The only way to stomach the loss of his imagined exclusivity to his aunt’s ass was to learn to anticipate with joy what would be coming next.

And he clung to the democracy of the room, hiding behind it like a trench, four in eight enjoying your mom’s form. One in eight, you, enjoying watching, tugging yourself with quiet and moussy passion. One out of eight, Her, not in the right mind to hold an opinion, even if she had any mind now to hold it with. And another one out of eight, staring out at the world through bars, senseless, almost formless, without opinion, only fascination. Why should your cousin be the lone “nay?” The Mr. Smith who went to Washington to oppose the pleasure derived from the mess he himself created. No, no. It was better to just sit back and enjoy the ride. There was plenty to enjoy. Your mom had more than enough skin. Her legs went on for eternities. Her ass, within its enticing blemishes, held all the nuance of the moon. The sole of her foot more fruitful to read her fortune from than her palm. And the serene look in her face of infinite fascination when contrasted with the violence in which her mouth was being stuffed.

Every once in a while, you managed to violently pull your sight from the glory before you, to look down at the flap at the bottom of the couch, seeing those objects peak out from beneath. Those hidden hopes and shame. Your saving grace and secret weapon, and now the petard you feared you’d be hoisted upon within the sleepy familiarity of your own living room. Your cousin had had the memory of his own plan beaten out of him in the kitchen, and even when Tony’s foot brushed passed it, and he seen it with his own eyes, he felt and thought nothing. He just focused on tugging, his mediation, pulling him from the pain of Being; a pain which was much deeper and more profound than his naïve mind, filled with all its little schemings, knew or could conceive of only an hour prior.

The fun and games continued, the four heavy hitters switching in their rounds of batting practice against that single, sweet-smelling, soft and smooth, woman-sized baseball. Knocking it out the park with every go. Your mom’s flesh all vibrations between them, as if if they fucked any harder, she’d disassemble at the atomic level and they’d all fall towards each other. Your cousin stared blankly as the first nut hit the cheek of her face. His face was considerably less blank when the second nut hit the cheek of her ass. White ropes fell on her at all angles, coating her with cheer like decorations to a Christmas tree. The nut of one young man could fill a tissue. The nut of four was a flood. Your cousin began to weep anew as he watched a line of that pure white testicle-extract drip down her right cheek like icing on a microwaved pastry. The contents of four sets of balls, ejected, exposed to the light, and held above the carpet and cushions by a table of flesh and shapeliness. Your mom, a pound or more heavier with it, adorned by it, it elevating her, while simultaneously demoting her, from her status as mom to that of a cumrag.

And this – this unbelievable low point in all regards, whether of this moment, this day, this saga, your lives – would have ended at this very moment without encore if it weren’t for one shift of Tony’s foot.

He moved backward, pulling his knee from the couch, a large noise, like a foot smacking against plastic could be heard by everyone. Everyone except your mom, who lay there silently. The room followed in her silence. Until Tony, looking into dead space, again kicked his foot, this time more lightly, underneath the couch. A tap could be heard.

He looked back at your cousin. Your cousin sat there, motionless. Barely taking in breath.

Tony turned back around, and he got down low towards the ground, and reached his hand underneath the couch and caught something plastic. “Huh?” he said. He regrabbed it with the fullness of his palm and he pulled it out. He held it to his face for a second, his friends enthralled by where this would lead, but having no room to guess through the obscure object that Tony now held between his index finger and thumb. “Doesn’t this belong in Gary’s cage?” he said. He turned around and looked at you?

You swallowed.

He looked down at the clear plastic tube he held in his hand, just big enough that a hamster could fit through it. He had remembered seeing it in Gary’s cage by the river.

“What is it doing down here?” he asked. He turned around to look at the two of you. “What were you setting it aside for?”

When he saw he would get no answer from either of you, he threw the tube upwards with a flick of his wrist, and it landed, after a modest spin, onto your mom’s lower back, stopping and settling right in the groove where her butt-cheeks began.

“You know,” he said. “If I was a lot dumber, I wouldn’t put my hand under this couch again.”

Your cousin’s hand was still, and his penis flaccid within it.

“And if the two of you were a lot smarter, you wouldn’t have put all your tools under the same couch, would you? You know, just in case I’m not dumb.”

You could hear your cousin’s teeth chattering. He knew his pain had only started. The real suffering was now barreling towards him at full speed, headlights and whistle meaningless. He was stuck to the track and his time short. And his form weak against the steel of what was coming.

“Let’s see if Harry and Lloyd are as dumb as a I think they are.”

Tony’s hand went back under the couch. He fished around through the darkness, looking at the two of you as he did with a grin on his face. And for a while he touched nothing. Not even dust (your mom had always kept things clean in the house). And the grin on his face was replaced with mild confusion. And that persisted, as everybody watched silently. And then you all heard it.

That soft thud.

The grin was back.

The sound of a bloated bag of something scraped against the hardwood. And then his hand emerged from the darkness, bag in tow, as if the couch was giving birth to this horrible truth. Your mom lay naked, wet, and sticky above Tony’s head.

Tony snorted to himself as he looked down at it. “It figures,” he said. “you two may be dumb. But you sure are creative.”

On the ground next to him, sat an all-white bag with big text on it that simply said “Itching Powder.” The two of you sat there, dry-mouthed. He began to laugh to himself. His friends looked down at him, speechlessly.

He reached up and grabbed the tube from your mom’s back with one hand, and the itching powder in the other. “You were going to pour itching powder into our asses while we slept.”

The room was dead silent. You and your cousin sat on the couch, as still as rocks.

“It’s so stupid…” he said, laughing to himself. “Yet so brilliant.” His laugh got louder, as if each time he had the thought, it appeared to him more hysterical than before.

He brought himself up using the back of your mom’s thigh as leverage. He then let the tube drop lengthwise so that it fell along her butt-crack. He then cradled the bag of itching powder in his arms as if it were a baby.

“You guys are a couple of sick puppies,” he said. “You wanted to use the same tube that poor Gary runs through to open up our assholes…” he paused for emphasis. “So that you could pour itching powder inside as if you were cleaning a drain. Can I ask you, what would your mom think if she came home an hour later and found me on the couch lying facedown with my ass hanging open so much that she could see inside it? What would she think of the two of you? Do you think she’d see it as normal? As something guys just did? Did you seriously sit around, giggling amongst yourselves, thinking about what it would be like when we were desperately shoving objects up our ass later tonight, fucking ourselves with carrots and zucchinis to scratch that meddling itch?” He opened up the bag and looked at its contents as he inched up closer towards your couch.

“Yo, these guys are fucked up. Straight homos man,” said one of the crew, breaking the silence. “Who does shit like that?’

“Whatever they are,” Tony said in response. “karma is a bitch.” He was looming over you two now.

He suddenly – so suddenly you hadn’t even thought to expect it – flipped the bag over. Powder fluttered through the air thick, like a snowstorm, and landed in a heap, covering your cousin’s entire crotch and thighs in a pile, obscuring them from the sun. The couch around him, in a messy circle, white as collateral damage.

The room was silent for another moment, your cousin sitting there, motionless. When just as suddenly as its catalyst, the yelping tore through the room.

Your cousin screamed in horror as both his hands plunged towards his crotch, leading to him rubbing everything he could put his palms and fingers over. He pushed his crotch out into the air, slingshotting a clump of the stuff, which Tony dodged nonchalantly, leading to it landed on the carpet. He scratched all over himself, wailing, including his cock and balls, trying in vain to stop that needling sensation. His face was red with pain and humiliation.

Tony turned around slowly and walked with ease and deliberate motion toward your mom’s ass, with Gary’s tube sitting on top of it, as if it was there waiting for him. “And as for Gary’s tube,” he said calmly and without a change in volume, as if there wasn’t a wailing, gyrating man on a couch behind him. “It’s only Gary’s to walk through.” He picked up the tube with one hand, and rested the other hand, palm down, on your mom’s ass. “You were going to let Gary forever walk through a tube with itching powder residue still in it from your one-time childish prank? How cruel. Did you think it would just wash out? Or were you just planning on throwing out his favorite toy after you used it for your sick thrill?”

He then pulled your mom’s ass open, and you watched with wide-eyes as he jammed Gary’s tube effortlessly, thanks to earlier stretching, into her ass, twisting it back and forth as he went, squeaking like windshield wipers with each twist, until it was as deep inside of her as its exposed portion, which sat hanging outside of her by considerable length. You watched as he lifted her up and placed her stomach over the couch backrest, with her ass facing you. Her upper half hung over the back of the couch, and her ass sat, totally open looking back at you. You looked down the length of the tube, which was so symmetrical with where you sat, that it looked like a flat circle. At the end of the tube, staring back at you, was a profound darkness. Pitch black. Like a portal to oblivion and non-entity. As if it were the path to nothingness, an end to all pain, including the pain of the moment. All of it, within your mom’s open ass. Your mom’s butt-cheeks coming down on both sides of it, as if trying, yet failing, to collapse the hole, closing it once and for all. Her ass flesh, into two convex semicircles, fully surrounded a large portion of the tube in terms of length, as if it were the walls of the dividing gate between the outer world and that inner darkness.

Tony, after admiring his work, turned to look at you. “You think Gary would bite me if I took him from his cage?”

You said nothing. You just stared at your mom’s black inner world, as pitch black as the light of her consciousness in the here and now. Her face was invisible to you now on the other side of the couch, and covered by her own blonde hair, which hung to the floor carelessly, but it possessed no sense of proportionate response to any of the goings on within this room or within her body. The pain and humiliation unknown. Uncounted. As if this world wasn’t hers to react to.

Tony continued, as he moved toward Gary’s cage. “I guess I’ll find out.”

He opened the cage and reached within, grabbing Gary in his palm. Next to you, your cousin, no longer screaming, just panted and rubbed himself, moaning in agony and unbelieving horror, the powder being rubbed into his skin, dying it a chalky hue.

“Here’s the deal,” Tony said. “I’m going to give you the choice. Whatever you pick, I have to do. Gary wants to run through a tube. He’s been missing it all day because you guys took it from him for your little plot. So… I was thinking we could do either one of two things. We could either let Gary swim in the toilet, maybe give him a little waterpark action, if you know what I mean. That’s sort of like his tube, right? Or…” he began to smile as he pointed at the plastic toy jutting out of your mom’s ass with his free hand. “… we give him his tube back.”

You sat there, your cousin moaning pathetically next to you. No words would come out. Nothing. You couldn’t say a word. You couldn’t think.

“It’s all up to you. But just know that if you don’t say anything, I’ll opt for the waterpark option.” He scratched Gary’s head with his index finger. Gary stared at you, blank-faced. Unconcerned with the meaningless sounds of man, it being as mysterious to him as rain or thunder or where his food came from. “So…” Tony said, looking up at you with a grin. “What will it be?”

You looked at Gary’s face, and then back at the round, infinitely dark hole at the center of your mom. It stared back at you. Saying nothing yet implying everything, and, paradoxically, implying nothing and speaking in every tongue. You cousin squealed as you struggled to think. His squealing filling your thoughts, as if it were your own.

“Well,” Tony said, before suddenly taking a step away from your mom. “Bathroom it is-“

“My mom’s ass!” you yelled.

“What!?” Tony asked.

“The tube,” you said, clarifying in your embarrassment. “…you can put him in the tube…”

You remembered seeing Gary in that cage, your brother looking down at him ecstatically, as the three of you walked out of the pet store. “Thanks mom!” he said. Excited.

“Don’t mention it sweety. What are you going to name him, by the way?”

“Umm…” he said. “I don’t know yet. Hey, can I take him out of the cage.”

“Only if you watch him,” she said, as she pulled out her keys and unlocked the doors remotely. “He’s so small, we don’t want him getting lost in any tight spaces.”

You watched as Gary’s little palms reached delicately for that familiar plastic rim. Tony guided him in, and then you watched him, silhouetted by that dark circle. He looked into it, enthralled. The cavernous void before him.

And you watched from behind as he took his first step. And then he took another, and stopped and looked. And then he stepped again and didn’t stop. And you watched as he was engulfed in shadow before completely disappearing into that void. And you looked into it and saw nothing. Nothing that had a name or shape. Nothing that had an emotion or color. Or memory or a truth. Or substance.

And right then, Tony’s hand came down and grabbed the tube, tugging it instantaneously from your mom’s ass with a pop, and you watched as the open circle snapped out of existence, and was replaced by a tight asshole peeking back at you between monumental butt-cheeks. And your mom lay there, eyes shut, peacefully.

He held the tube in his hands, looking at it. “Wow,” he said. “This thing really did work. You guys had quite the plan.” Something then caught his eye. He looked over at your cousin and slowly his lips curled into a smile. Your cousin was hard again. “What do you know,” he said. “Watching a hamster crawl into your auntie’s open ass has got you going.”

Your cousin didn’t say anything. He just scrubbed at his itching flesh with his palms, making himself, deliberately or not, harder in the process.

“Sorry about the little spill,” Tony said. “You know what I heard alleviates that? It’s saliva, believe it or not. But I hear women’s saliva works best.”

He grabbed your mom by her hair and lifted her up, dragging her across the floor, her feet falling to the floor in a dull thud, over her own spilled cookies. He then dragged your mom’s head over your cousin’s cock, to which your cousin thrusted upwards shamelessly. Desperately. Tony pulled her head away and started to laugh. Your cousin thrusted more, eager to find shelter from his horror, and Tony pulled more, eager to deprive him of it. Your cousin, aggravated, reached out and grabbed her head, and Tony pulled away with a smile on his face. But your cousin was able to finally get her down low enough to be able to get his tip in. And not long after that, he sunk the full length of his shaft into her mouth when Tony lost his grip. Her face came smacking down into your cousin’s crotch as the full length of his prick disappeared inside her mouth.

Your cousin had a look of grateful satisfaction, as if it was magic that cured him and not your mom’s spit, but it only lasted a few seconds, before he grabbed her by her hair and began to lift her head up and down on his cock, thrusting into it with aggression and drive. “Uggghhhh!” he screamed. With each degree of intensity, the itching would stop. For a while at least. But it would eventually come back with a vengeance, pushing your cousin to fuck your mom’s face harder and faster. That face that looked back at him innocently in her bedroom, now his only tool for relief, however slight.

He got hard as he watched his cock disappear into his aunt’s mouth. And he was past the point of having any shame over what he was doing, what he was enjoying. Even as you watched. He looked over the length of your mom’s back as her ass jiggled with each thrust. He was making it jiggle. And he enjoyed it. Tony’s lackies stood there, watching, visibly impressed by the force of your cousin’s incest, which took no prisoners. His face aglow, angelic with passion, the back of her head, and her ass staring back them, blankly, without judgement or ego.

You had forgotten about any and all potential threats to you, even after the suddenness of the one visited upon your cousin. But you could tell that Tony’s spontaneity, which he seemed to have no end to, was now focused entirely on your cousin, whose eyes were rolling back within his head in relief and pleasure, two doves that flew simultaneously and gracefully through the same air. You jerked off to the sight, in surreal contradiction to every aspect of how your cousin thought this day would end. It was shockingly as fantastical as he predicted, but not in the way that he expected. As if it were some sort of cosmic blowback, humbling him, in the most obscene way possible, for his arrogance. It was a visual poem, containing the deceptive simplicity of a haiku.

“You know,” Tony said, destroying the trajectory of the moment in his usual way. “You know what I hear alleviates the itch more than a woman’s spit?”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds, until a lightbulb went on over the head of one of his buddies, who vocalized this moment with a loving and wry “ohhhh!”

Your cousin must not have been listening, or he hadn’t understood what he heard, because when Tony pulled your mom’s head away from his cock, he tried to pull her back. But when Tony pulled her fully upward, and then pushed her knees over the ends of cushion on either side of your cousin, your cousin sucked in air involuntarily, in anticipation of what he now knew was coming.

Tony held your mom by her hips and positioned her over the head of your cousin’s cock. And just as he arrived over his target, he put pressure downward as if he were trying to sink a lotus leaf. Your cousin’s face transformed within an instant, from novel longing to absolute pleasure, as if every inch of him were beyond peace. Tony gave a loving spank to your mom’s right cheek, celebrating her first and only go at the ride of incest.

Your cousin’s hips did what his biology demanded and he began to thrust passionately and without reserve. The serenity in his face matched the peace in hers, and he pulled his close and began to kiss her, first on the lips, but then letting his mouth wander all over her face, chin, and neck. Making love to his aunt was something he never knew he wanted, not until he saw her body, in all its smooth fullness, being artificially straddled over his. He let his hand wander down her back slowly, not wanting to spoil the moment, even as he thrust like an animal. And when his fingers began to lift horizontally, as they came down vertically, and her could feel the arch, and then the soft, endless flesh, he gave it a squeeze that was a long-time coming. Her face stared down into his, without concern. Without trouble.

He slipped his middle finger in between her cheeks, surprised at how they pushed against it from both sides, and when he fished in deeply between her crack, he felt her tight butthole, which stood there, as if it were inviolate. He caressed it lovingly, barely believing that it was now there for him. He could have never imagined being this lucky in his life. For some reason, it amazed him to have it there at the tip of his finger, more than it did to have the full length of his hard cock inside her, rubbing against her inner walls, which were tight and warm.

You tugged yourself, blind to the rest of the room, to life itself, but for the sight of your cousin and mom in lover’s embrace. The joy on your cousin’s face intoxicating, contagious. The beauty of it being that while he violated her form, his love for her remained the love any nephew would have their aunt, nothing more. His kissing of her cheeks, chin or shoulders, and his tonguing of her nipples, in keeping with that spirit. She was a woman that he loved, not a woman he was in love with. She was the auntie he always knew, now in a context that made it more so.

As he pushed his finger into her butthole, he felt a little shifting within her body, not from her, but from something inside. And that’s when he felt it, as if it was in response to his probing, he felt a tumbling movement, a small one, against his hard penis, as if it were coming from the walls of her vagina itself. As if it was equipped with a tiny massager. And that’s when he realized where the little tickling sensations, different from the feeling of the itch powder, were coming from. They were coming from deep within her asshole.

And that’s when your cousin came.

“Okay then,” Tony said, as he pulled his shirt over his head. “You say a word about this to anyone, and we tell just how it was that that kool-aid was spiked in the first place.”

Your cousin sat back on the couch, fidgeting, his nether region still irritated and getting worse. Your mom lay haphazardly, freshly-used, between the two of you, the top of her head pressed into your hip.

Tony looked down at your cousin, who rubbed himself continuously as Tony spoke. “And they’ll believe us to. We have you on video fucking your own aunt. And four witnesses to say that it was your idea.” Then he looked at you. You look up at him as you continue jerking off. “And you, you were tugging away to it too. You still are. Not only will you end up in jail, you’ll be in the newspapers for that one.”

Just as he said that, you began to feel the sweet vibration you were so familiar with, though this time it was multiple times stronger in intensity than your second greatest release. You pointed it towards your mom’s hair, hoping it would catch most of the mess you would have created without her hair there.

As rope after rope shot through her golden locks, Tony said: “Oh, and now you start to cum! As I lecture you. And we thought Craig was fucked up.”

You looked him in the eyes as he said it, the contents of your balls, being pushed out beautifully, being caught by the top of your mom’s head the second they saw the sun.

“That’s a goodboy,” Tony said, visibly aroused now. “Cum on mommy’s head.”

“That was totally heterosexual,” one of the guys said in admiration. “Fucking badass, man!”

You sat there, your mom’s head in your lap, in the afterglow of your release. The stress gone. The terror gone. All negative sensation and thought gone. Your mind as empty as your ballsack.

You cousin lay there, looking up at them, rubbing all the way up his stomach, down to his kneecaps, with his palms, only spreading the itch further out with each rubdown. The air itself somehow feeling itchy to him around the effected area.

“Well,” Tony said. “It’s time for us to be leaving. Tell us how your brother’s doing, will you man?” He smiled. “We’ll make sure to send him a get-well card.

You watched, your eyes narrowed in peace as they left.

After they were gone, your cousin stood up, and began to pace back and forth, sometimes on his tippytoes, around the coffee table, down the hallway and back. His pink body illuminated by the setting sun. He sucked in air deliberately through the sides of his mouth, and occasionally would try not touching his lower body at all, before giving in in a flurry with double the intensity. He’d then stand there, hunched over in the middle of the room, rubbing himself, whining in aggravation.

And eventually the moment came, it coinciding with the stiffening of his cock (which came more and more as his hand passed over it, more furiously with each round), and he looked down at your mom, her head resting on your lap. And without saying anything to you, and without you saying anything back, he picked her up and took her to the opposing couch, laying her facedown, and getting on top of her, he inserted himself inside, feeling the modicum of relief, and he began to pump away. The dual pillars of smoke, one being joy, and the other relief from suffering, came back to his face.

You watched, flaccid, unjudging, as he had his way with her a second time, this time less pure, less divine. Her body but an object to him now. A means to an end. The round perfection of her ass useful to him because it filled the entirety of his itching pelvis, nullifying that horrid sensation with his constant grinding against it. And when he finished inside her, he rested his head on the back of hers. And before he knew it, he was sleeping. And you watched them, breathing in, and breathing out, as the sun dipped behind them and the night got cool. Eventually, your eyes closed too.

-------------------------------

Your brother woke up again, much to his aggravation. He couldn’t even tell how much sleep he had actually gotten. Every time his eyes closed, it felt as if no time had passed at all by the time he opened them again. Yet he knew better than that. Whenever he’d close them, nightmarish visions of some unknown horror accosted him. Without shape, without content. Half-remembered. Half-understood to begin with.

He stared up at the ceiling, purple with moonlight. He could hear distant noises down the halls, but silence otherwise. His only blessing, other than the fact that he was still alive (if that really was a blessing), was that he could finally move his left arm, though not without significant pain. But at least he could wipe the wetness from his eyes whenever it came. And tomorrow morning he’d be able to reach for the TV remote to watch something other than daytime infomercials. And being able to lean the phone on his chest and play Candy Crush was also a plus.

He lifted his hand to his face, putting his fingers through the open notch, scratching the center of his forehead. Then he laid his arm at his side, sucking in air through the sides of his mouth as he did. After his arm settled, the pain went away. He was still.

His eyes were getting heavy.

They closed.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

Weird shapes, impressions of ominous color and size assaulted him. Forebodings, as if darkness had an image or sound, came at him, menacingly, though he could only tell through his gut.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

He opened his eyes. He saw an acute light in his leftward perhipheral. When he turned to identify its source, he saw his phone lying face down, the light peeking out from beneath it on all side.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

The phone vibrated along the counter.

He slowly reach towards it, feeling the pain shoot through the left side of his body as he did.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

He grabbed his phone.

When he lifted it to his chest, and looked at it. He was surprised to see that it wasn’t a phone call. He was being texted.

When he saw who the texts were coming from, he felt a shudder, and the thought of that fist smashing into the side of his head in the darkness came back to him. Not just the sight and feeling. But the sound of the running water and the birds. And the fresh smell in the air.

He went to go put his phone down in disgust and fear at what the messages would say. But he had moved too quickly and he felt the pain shoot through him. He growled in the darkness, which soon turned into sobbing, before realizing he had dropped his phone.

When he found it lying beside his torso, he lifted it to see that he had involuntarily opened his messages. And what was waiting for him there wasn’t words, but images. Videos to be exact.

The images that represented the videos, still images of their larger content, were hard to make out. Random beiges, pinks, and brown accosted him. Colors of sensual implication. Nothing had definitive shape. But he knew that what he was seeing was naked flesh, not just of one person, but many.

As he scrolled through the many videos, more appeared as his phone vibrated in his hands. One of the images contained what was almost certainly a hard dick. He now figured he understood what was happening. They were sending him gay porn, a backhanded olive branch, which was their usual style, a way to attack his manhood while pretending to be sorry. He knew it all too well. And he knew one thing for sure. After he recovered, they were never going to touch him ever again. He was going to make sure of that. He’d die before he’d let it happen.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

Another image appeared at the bottom of his open chat.

This one grabbed his attention.

Violently.

The still image, though blurry and hard to make sense of, was Tony sitting on the backrest of a couch, completely nude, with his hard cock in his hand.

Your brother squinted at it, believing that it must be some mistake. Or some humorous self-deprecating deepfake. But that didn’t make it make anymore sense. In the foreground of the shot was a hard cock. Tony had been in a room with other naked men. His cock hard along with there’s. One click on the video would make sense of it all. Were they gay? Was this why they wanted him to suck their co-

*bzzzzzzzzz*

The next image which appeared was similar to the last one, with one of your brother’s tormentors, the one who started the rumor that he was gay, standing behind the couch, his cock bright in the sun. With the window behind him. That was the thought your brother had in his head. Not a window. The window. And at his first moment of self-awareness of this, his stomach dropped.

Tony was laying backward, most of his body out of the frame, looking up at something that loomed over him. Above his head, a small hand gripped onto the backrest of a couch. A white couch. It all being illuminated by a large window with a white frame, and, in this image, unlike the others, he could see what was outside of that window. It was a green lawn. With a long driveway. With a car.

And every thing in it, except for his bully’s naked pink cock, was familiar to him.

Your brother looked at the little hand. His mouth dry. His insides black with terror. The little hand, too small to belong to a man, gripped the couch with feeling. Tony looked up at something, in vulnerable delight. And the cock behind it all, hard with joy, as its owner smiled at something wonderful. Your brother had learned, only too hard, that whatever gave these four joy meant disaster for everybody else, especially him. And he whimpered audibly at the thought of that being true yet again. Especially now. Because every inch of that image, and the context in which he received it, implied to him, with vivid strength, that the stakes were much higher now.

He shook within his full-body cast so fiercely that it caused pain to shoot through him, though he kept looking ahead at the image. The sideways triangle, the universal symbol for play, overlayed the picture, whatever it was. And the truth, whatever it was, relied on him touching that symbol.

“Please no!” he said, the desperation against cruelty more intense than any he made by the river. More intense than when he had pleaded for a level-head from your cousin. More intense than any in his life.

He hit play.

The image came to life.

As he watched the hand grip harder onto the fabric of the couch, and the young man behind it jerking himself off with a maddening grin, the sight that caused his world to stop was Tony’s face exploding into strange joy as it animated into existence. Tony’s arms were outward, as if he were grabbing onto something from both sides.

“No, no, no, no, no,” your brother pleaded with the night.

The sounds of smacking, sucking, and, worst of all, laughing, came from the tinny speakers of his phone. The camera floated awkwardly, ghostlike, observing the sight. And then the shot panned awkwardly to the left, and golden blonde hair came into view. And your brother said, in a voice that was no longer a whisper, “no…”

And another naked male body stood before it, with the other standing next to him, jerking off, and his hands came down on the golden head of hair, as he gyrated his hips towards it, his face ecstatic with pleasure.

Your brother’s shriek was beastial.

And then the camera panned out, and exploding into view, attention grabbing as always, was the sight of a female’s naked ass, as Tony’s body thrust into it. And your brother whimpered, feeling cornered as the truth approached without mercy. He knew that ass by its shape, size, and jiggle. He knew it by its soft being. He knew it by everything it was in that video except for who it was riding on top of. Except for the hands that clutched and pulled at it. Squeezing it, kneading it, spanking it. The same hands that were balled into fists, and that came crashing into the side of his head.

And not long after, as if to destroy what little hope there was left, the other hard cock floated towards that golden head, with its owner grinning. “You’ve been hogging this mouth for too long.”

The other one pulled his dick out, it appearing in the sun moist with saliva.

“My turn.”

And he turned the golden head towards his erect penis, and what appeared then, as if to make sure your brother understood, was the familiar side profile of your mom’s face.

The cock slid into her mouth.

Your brother screamed in agony.

The tears began to fall from his eyes, and that itch on his forehead came back. As he went to reach for it, the pain shot through him and he screamed again. As he sobbed under the weight of his physical and emotional torment, his phone, which was now sitting on his chest, buzzed again.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

And when he looked down at it involuntarily, he received the second great shock of his night. It was a picture of Gary.

And the thought of how they almost killed him by that highway when he was there to defend him crossed his mind. Seeing Gary there, with nobody in his corner now, in a daytime that had clearly past, in a past that was irreversible even if your brother could just climb out of bed and leave right this moment, instilled your brother with an impotence that he had never known before. His best friend, who he had thought had been safe in his cage at home, was now right in the hands of those he feared most. Gary’s little face looked out at the world, innocent. With the sideways triangle obscuring his cheek.

Your brother, anxious with dread and anger, pressed the play button.

He saw Gary floating through the air in Tony’s hand, and suddenly, the edge of some clear, plastic contraption came into view. As Gary reached out towards it, the cameraman, snickering, pulled backward. And your brother could see that the plastic contraption was Gary’s tube. As the camera pulled back more, your brother’s eyes went wide.

The sight of a perfect, large female ass came into view, along with the sight of a gaping hole.

The camera pulled back more to reveal a full female body, draped carelessly over the back of the couch. The carelessness and haphazard nature of it filling your brother with dread at what horrors all the other videos clips contained.

But when he saw Gary latch onto that tube, and Tony guiding the rest of him deeper within it daintily, as if concerned with Gary’s safety, he knew that the worst of what was possible was coming soon.

And he watched as Gary walked forward into the giant gaping hole.

Gary disappeared.

And then the tube was tugged out, and his mom’s asshole clapped shut.

The itch on your brother’s forehead inflamed itself, so much so that it was maddening. But instead of reach for it, he reached down towards his waist, as his tears made him blind and his thoughts made him insane.

And he came down toward a more intense itch. A more troublesome itch. A maddening pest burrowing against the walls of his solace.

He came down towards it and was stunned when he felt a plaster wall. The fingers of his left hand pushed into the plaster wall, but it wouldn’t give.

On the other side of the plaster wall, his raging hard prick pressed against it, dying for touch. He grabbed the area over it, first pushing into it, then grabbed around it with his entire palm, failing to make a fist around its flat surface. Then he searched around for a hole or a weakspot, before painfully pulling his hand up to his face, and trying to get his arm in through hit face-hole, pushing it against his chin fruitlessly. Then he pulled his arm to his side and tried to pull in his arm through the armhole. Nothing would work, and his cock sat beneath, pressed aggravatingly into plaster, waiting for touch. Waiting for release.

Release that would never come.

Even as the thought of his mom’s ass being pummeled by Tony’s hungry pelvis, in all its jiggles and vibrations, accosted his mind. And when he reached to grab his phone from his chest to see it, to go through the back-catalogue of such maddening and enticing sights, he was shocked to feel no phone there. He rapidly, and with great pain, let his hand scuttle itself around in wild circles looking for it, winnying to himself the entire time.

*bzzzzzzzzz*

He heard it come from the ground.

He had dropped it.

He, with great discomfort, let his arm hang to the side of the bed, trying to reach for the ground, only to realize he wasn’t even halfway there. The phone sat directly below. And as he sobbed painfully into the darkness, longing for the sight of his mom’s ass in Tony’s lap, and all the other horrors that he had been offered, horrors he could disappear into and lose himself, lose his dignity in the throws of wild ecstasy and shame, the face of the phone, to no one who could see it, said “Get well soon Craig. From me and the boys.”

-------------------------------

The darkness was all encompassing. As was the sensation of pressure on his every flank. Only the tip of his face, and his backside were free from any sort of pressing wall. He had fallen asleep many times, finding it easy in the warmth. He would then crawl forwards a bit, sometimes stopping to turn around, as hard as it was, and crawl in the other direction. Every time he did, he had felt like he was being massaged all over. The walls of this tube were warm and comfortable. And the silence beautiful. There were no sounds here except for those he made as he pitter-pattered around.

If he had any thoughts to think, he would find it easier now then ever to think them. But Gary was devoid of all thought. He was devoid of all worry. Devoid of all expectation. Life was easy for Gary. All he had to do was enjoy the novelty of any given moment, this one surely not excepted. Though in the dark, he found it easier to see images that weren’t there. One of those images, other than the sight of the sun shining through the window and the river passing by just inches from his cage, was the image of that amazing ass. The way it gyrated. The way it moved. It was the only thing he cared about. The only thing that occupied his thoughts other than the thought of the moment.

And now he was inside of that beautiful thing, existing within its source, embraced by it on all sides. He had been sleeping inside it, warm and cozy and all-embracing. Those nice people, the ones by the river, had given him what he always wanted. His instinct about them had been correct. Somehow he knew, without language to vocalize it, that it was only through them that something like this could have happened. The woman he now sat inside of never would have given that to him willingly. Neither would Craig.

He could now tell, despite having no visual cue, that it was time to wake up. He knew this because he no longer felt sleepy. He could also feel through the sensation of the walls that the large weight that sat on top was still there. He knew that humans did that thing where they closed their eyes and stopped moving for the night, because he’s watched you, Craig, and your mom do it on the living room couch countless times. He had no idea what that was about. But he knew that when the sun came back up, the three of you almost always opened your eyes and got up not long after.

He had no idea what would happen once that occurred. Would he still be allowed to stay in here, or would they remove him and put him back in his cage like they always did after letting him out to play for a bit?

He couldn’t say. The world was full of mysteries. He figured there was no reason to ask why that was. Just enjoy the ride while it lasts. Besides, it was a fun ride. One never knew what would come next. The last 24 hours had proven that to him and then some.

And the next few seconds would do the same.

Because suddenly, and out of nowhere, he felt stirring in the walls around him. As everything went about in strange direction, which were hard to discern without sight or sound, suddenly the peace was broken by a large noise. It sounded something like “Aaahhhhhhhh!” It was high-pitched and shrill. It came from without, muffled, but a louder version of it reverberated from within the tube he sat in.

As the sound came through, the walls that surrounded him circumference-wise began to vibrate against him, massaging his every nerve, like heavenly fingers without dimension or end. Gary sat in this bliss of it all. As all the darkness vibrated in one endless Om, his body almost feeling like it dissolved within this beautiful chattering of Is. Like he’d become one with the vibration itself.

When the screaming stopped, but the movement around him increased, he knew somehow that his time within this wonderful place was nearing its end. He’d be back in his cage soon enough, with the sunlight, and the rain against the window, and the sight of that beautiful ass from the outside, where he’d again admire it from afar.

But something, like a wise voice, though silent and from some place within, told Gary, in whatever primitive language a creature like he could understand, that one day he’d be in a place like this again. And though Gary had no way of knowing what death was, if he had, he’d be able to live the rest of his life in peace knowing that it was nothing to be afraid of.