TABOO TALES(erotica)

This became the pattern of my evenings. Come in, tuck Nia in if she was already in bed, answer her questions about my school, and read to her until she fell asleep. Some nights, though, she’d vary the routine. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and she’d be there, rolled up next to me, fast asleep, so I’d go and get her duvet, cover her up, and go back to sleep; the one time I tried to take her back to her own room, she made such a fuss she woke the house, and mum had to put her in bed with her just to get her to go back to sleep. It got so I became used to feeling this little body scrunched up next to me in the middle of the night, and took to keeping a spare duvet in my room, to throw over her when she sneaked in. Nia had won, again, she’d got her own way, and I had to share my room with her. Like I said, manipulative little baggage.

On weekends, though, she was almost tentative with me, never moving more than 6 feet or so away from wherever I was, one eye always cocked in my direction, never obviously trailing around after me, but always there; if I went to the bathroom, she’d be playing in the corridor outside when I came out, If I retreated to my room to read or watch TV, she’d find a thousand reasons to come in looking for something, or ask me a question or some other reason. She also became more touchy-feely, which weirded me out, as I usually took great pains to avoid having her sticky little paws on my clothes; usually whatever she had been eating was all over her hands, and now it would be all over me. The one time she leaned over to kiss me, I honestly thought she was going to bite me, going for the germ-warfare option, and I ducked backwards, causing her to fall over, start screaming, big family post mortem, why can’t you be nice to your sister, she’s only young, she only has you, etc, etc. Spoiled, conniving, manipulative little troll-spawn.

As she got older, the screaming for her own way tailed-off, and she actually became more tractable, easier to deal with. The sneaking into my room and sleeping next to me never stopped though, and it actually got to the point where I felt almost cheated if I woke up in the night and she wasn’t there. When she began secondary school, at 11, like me, I fully expected this to stop; there was more scope for friends, new people, new subjects to study, so I was confident her life would stop intersecting with mine quite so much. It didn’t stop, not at all.Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

I was 14 by then, and girls were definitely a subject of mucho interest, for me and all my friends, hell, my whole generation, so I was glad Nia was fully occupied with her own life, at last, and I could start hanging with my pals on weekends without Nia hovering in the background. I met a nice girl, Lisa Simons, sweet, cute, red hair, and we dated for a while. Dad just grinned, and said, in his own inimitable way “Behave yourself, you dirty little beast!” and mum was distressed that I was dating, she thought I was too young for entanglements, I was still just a little boy. Nia hated her, refused to speak to her, acknowledge her presence, or speak to me. Suited me fine. The chance of spending an evening in a dark cinema with a pretty girl, as opposed to spending it staring at Nia and her captive-troll expression, what do you think I fancied more?

And then, one afternoon I brought Lisa over, Nia saw her in the house, and was rude and nasty to her. At last I blew my top.

“What the hell’s your problem, Nia? All I’m doing is dating a girl, it’s not against the law, why do you have to make it so difficult, she’s only my girlfriend, for Chrissake!”

Nia reared right back.

“Why do you have to bring that… that girl to my house all the time, this is my house as well, and you’re my brother, and you belong to me, not her!”I looked at her in shock. Was she really that freaked-out by me having a girlfriend? Why? Lisa left after that, and wouldn’t see me anymore. Thanks, Nia.

Eventually, dad had to ask me what was going on with Nia and me. I confessed that I was baffled; she had her school friends, she had her own interests, she was in secondary school now, and I couldn’t understand why she had been so hostile towards my girlfriend she acted like she was jealous, even though I could only ever see Lisa on weekends, and her curfew had been 9pm, so what was the problem? If she wanted me around, she had me every evening plus all day Sunday.

Dad thought about it for a while, then held forth.

“Jamie, she’s had you dancing attendance on her all her life, whether you liked it or not, and she thinks, quite rightly, that you’re getting too grown-up for her, school, and sports, and girlfriends and so on. Give her a chance to level off; she’ll eventually accept that you’re moving on from her to someone else. Just be patient with her, and try not to snap too much she’s still only young, so ignore it, it will go away.”

So, for the next four years, I manfully held my patience. Nia never accepted any of my girlfriends, never tried to be nice, or even polite, and I took to not bringing them over to the house any more, making her even more incensed that I was dating someone she had no chance of sniping at. I followed dad’s advice and blithely ignored her artless little questions about whoever I was seeing at any given time, and it drove her bonkers. Other than that aspect of our lives together, we mostly got along just fine. Periodically, though, I would wake up and find her huddled against me, but thankfully, as her teen years progressed, this tailed-off and had stopped altogether by the time I left for university at 18.

I was studying Environmental Geosciences at Bristol, as I wanted to work in the Oil industry, and I was living in halls in Clifton. My days were pretty full; the course didn’t offer much latitude for spare time or socialising, which was pretty much what the Course Adviser at 6th Form College had told me, but I was enjoying myself. I didn’t get much opportunity to go home; lectures were usually scheduled on Saturdays, and funds were limited; after paying my expenses, a trip back to London was usually out of the question. Even my summer was no break, spending it as I did mentoring and coaching A-Level mathematics to earn enough money to get a deposit for a flat-share for year 2. At the end of my first year, I had been home a grand total of zero times. I felt guilty, but dad was breezy and unconcerned about it; he understood from his own student days. Mum just used to weep down the phone at me, and Nia refused to talk to me at all.

My second year, I got a job in a supermarket, unloading the trucks, tough work, but it was nights, so it didn’t cut into my classwork, and it enabled me to pay for an apartment-share in a student flats complex near the uni and feed myself. As it meant working weekends, plus my Saturday classes, again I couldn’t get home at all reliably. Luckily, dad’s bank had a regional office in Bristol, so he would come down every so often, pick me up and we’d have dinner, talk about the family, bring me mum’s letters and any home news, advice or messages mum had. Nothing from Nia, though. I was saddened by this. Although we squabbled about any and everything, often fought like two cats in a sack, I did love the bone-headed little cave-troll, and I couldn’t believe that she could be so offended by my going to uni as to cut me out completely. Dad was more pragmatic.

“She’s hurt by you going away; she thinks you deliberately left her, and she’s offended that her brother, (who she owns, by the way!) could actually walk away from her, and leave her alone. Let her work it out for herself. She’s a teenager, Jamie, she’s having it tough enough right now, she’ll find a way; in the meantime, get used to it!”

The third and last year was more difficult still; I had to spend part of the academic year working in industry, so I wangled a place with a geophysical exploration team, surveying the possible oil bearing strata off and around South Georgia, Elephant Island and the Falkland Islands, in the South Atlantic, 600km off the tip of Patagonia. It was a hard and arduous assignment, winter in the South Atlantic polar regions is rugged and treacherous, and we had to be protected by the Royal Navy picket ships as Argentina was claiming the area. We had several heated exchanges with Argentinian patrol boats until the Royal Navy boys unlimbered their 20mm Oerlikon cannons, at which point the Argentinians would remember pressing business elsewhere. 6 months of this, followed by 4 more months of analysing my findings, creating survey charts and drilling forecasts, estimating yields, and then writing the whole thing up as part of my Bachelors thesis, so a very hectic final year. I graduated with an Honours Degree in Environmental Geosciences, foregoing the graduation ceremony as I was eager to go home. I already had my degree and paperwork, and, as my sometime girlfriend/sex-partner/Friend with Benefits, Bev and I had finally broken it off permanently, I had no pressing need to remain. I left Bristol forever, glad to be finished, looking forward to a few weeks of lazing before I had to find a job; luckily I had some very good contacts from my months in the south Atlantic, so I’d contact them as soon as they were contactable.

When I arrived home, mum was all tears and hugs, reaching up to touch the top of my head in wonder at my height, marvelling that she couldn’t get her arms all the way around my waist anymore, fussing over me gratifyingly. There was no sign of Nia, which was crushing for me, a sharp pang echoing through me. Despite all our arguments and fights over the years, I still adored the malicious little goblin, although sometimes it was difficult to remember why! Dad was away at a security show in Birmingham, would be gone for a couple of days, so I had mum to myself, her wonderful cooking and warm presence. I was so glad to be home after 3 years, all that was missing now was the demon-child.