TABOO TALES(erotica)

He rolled off her and they embraced. “I’ll never leave you again, Sis,” he whispered, and it was true. How could he have ever thought he could do better than her?

“Then you can stay,” she whispered back, and she reached up and took him in her arms.

*****

PROLOGUE: JUNE 2008

“Mum! We’re going to be late!”

Melanie Phillips regarded her son Dirk in the rear-view mirror and tried to console him. “He’s coming now, honey. We’ve plenty of time.” She tooted the car horn again, more impatiently, her eyes on the front door as if to will her husband out quicker. She glanced at her watch – five to ten. It was at least a thirty-minute drive, and then they had to find parking and walk to the audition room. It was cutting things very fine. She could feel the rising level of stress and she tooted again.

“Here he comes,” Dirk said, a note of hysteria in his voice. “Can we get there on time, Mum? I can’t be late.”

Bruce Phillips hurried to the passenger side and slid into the seat. “Sorry, sorry…. I had a client on the phone – a big job.” He leaned over and looked at his son. “We’ll be fine, Dirk, if we hurry.”

Melanie revved the car and shot out of the driveway, turning left towards the town. Dirk had been working for this day for months, and she knew that the auditioning team were very strict on people who turned up late. She spun the steering wheel, negotiating her way around an SUV that was loitering, and accelerated hard. She thought that the coastal road was probably quicker and she entered the left hand lane, filtering at the green arrow and then accelerating out of town.

Bruce turned to her. “Take it easy, Mel. We’ve plenty of time.”

She glanced at him, and her voice was hard. “No, we haven’t Bruce. We’ve got to be there five minutes ago, but I don’t suppose you thought of that while you were chatting on the phone.”

“That’s not fair, Mel. I told you it was important.”

Her voice was scornful. “More important than your son’s future?”

“As it happens, yes. It’s bread and butter on the table.”

“It could have waited a day or two!”

He looked at her angrily. “It couldn’t. Peter wants the draft contract tomorrow.”

Dirk sat in the back seat listening to his parents fighting, his own heart hammering in his chest. He could see their faces set in anger, and he heard the shrillness of their voices. He watched his mother turning to respond, her eyes on her husband and her lips pulled back in fury, and then a movement ahead drew his focus forward, out of the car to the narrow road ahead, and he saw the tractor turning, its heavy trailer slewing across the road into their path.

“Look out!” He screamed.

Dirk watched it all happen, as if in slow motion. His mother, turning her head back, seeing the obstruction and reacting. The squeal of tyres locking up on the road, the back of the car fishtailing, losing control; the farmer’s face looking down, his mouth open in fear and dismay and the trailer’s steel side filling the windscreen, so close he could see the dribbles of rust and the stains of ordure on the dark, pitted metal.

His brain registered the impact – not the crunch of metal he expected, but a single blow that reverberated in the morning air like a giant hammer on an anvil as the two ton car was suddenly halted. The horizon dipped as the back wheels reared up, and the cabin around him was instantly filled with dust and debris flung upwards with the deceleration. He felt the sudden crush of his seatbelt expelling the breath from his chest in an explosive whoosh! and he saw the airbag deploy, his mother cascading into it with her head lolling like a broken puppet. With horrified eyes he saw his father exit from the vehicle, plucked through the windscreen in an instant of time, his body bent and his limbs disjointed, the glass exploding around his head in a shower of glittering fragments like a bucketful of diamonds flung into the crisp morning air.

The vehicle fell back onto its wheels with a thump and there was the tinkle of falling debris and then the tick of cooling metal in the sudden silence. For a long time there was no other sound or movement and Dirk thought they must all be dead, and then he heard the shouts of the men running from the fields nearby.

Dirk stood by the grave as the coffin was lowered. He regarded his mother and elder sister Cielle, clinging together by the graveside, their faces grey and pinched and their eyes red from weeping. His younger sister Sarah was next to them, watching the leaves blowing around the grave with empty eyes – her lack of awareness a blessing for once. Behind them were other mourners – family and friends, the greys and blacks of their clothing reflected in the low winter sky, and beyond them the hearse that had brought his father on the final journey. He saw the priest, his white cassock stark against the raw earth as he leaned over the grave, his voice thin against the sigh of the wind. “We commit the body of our dearly departed son, Bruce Arthur Phillips, to be buried…”

The priest stooped to pick up earth from the grave, fingers stained by the heavy clay. Dirk could see a smear of it on his sleeve, as red as his father’s blood as it dribbled and dripped from his shattered head. Dirk watched as he stretched forward and scattered it into the grave, each clod thudding against the coffin like the beat of a lonely drum, and he heard the dreadful finality of the priest’s words. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

He fastened his eyes on his mother as she stared down into the grave, and his heart was filled with hatred. He felt it rising in his consciousness as thick and bitter as bile, directed towards her lonely figure huddled before the open pit. You killed him, you bitch, he thought, as surely as if you put a gun to his head, and I will hate you for ever. A fanatical gleam flared in his yellow eyes for a moment, like a flame licking at a piece of kindling, and then the light went out of them and they turned flat and cold and empty.

The mourners turned away, singly or in groups, walking through the churchyard to the little car park beyond. For a long time Dirk stood alone, looking down into the grave and remembering all that he and his father had done. At length he sighed and turned away, and the wind swept around the churchyard unimpeded, plucking up the flowers and scattering them across the wet, raw earth of the open grave.

September 2010

The house was silent when Dirk slipped out of his bedroom and moved quietly down the corridor to Cielle’s room. He turned the handle and the door opened silently and he moved quickly to the bed. He could see the faint outline of the window with the gleam of stars beyond, and the shape of her body under the bedclothes. He slipped out of his jocks and then moved forward and placed his hand firmly over her mouth.

Cielle awoke and the terror seized her again. She struggled briefly, knowing even in her sleep and confusion that it was no good, and after a moment she lay quiescent. His voice was low, oozing into her ear like warm oil. “Hello, little sister… you’re not going to make any noise, are you?”

She shook her head, her heart hammering in her chest. He moved his hand and then the bedclothes lifted and she felt him sliding into bed. His fingers reached out of the darkness and she felt the tips touching her, like slithering roaches on her body, brushing over her temple then down over her lips – lingering there for a moment before sliding down the smooth skin of her neck to rest just above her larynx.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“I want to talk to you, Sis. Are you listening?”

“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper.

“Put on the light. I want to see you.”

Cielle reached across and switched on the bedside light, blinking in the sudden brightness. Dirk was looking at her, his strange yellow eyes almost luminescent in the light. “That’s a good girl,” he said smoothly. “Mother’s going to talk to you tomorrow… she wants to know if you would like to go away for a while.”

Cielle felt the leap of hope in her breast. Perhaps the nightmare could end after all. “How do you know?”

“She thought it clever to discuss it with the family first.” He chuckled, an ugly little sound without humour. “She seems to think you’re unhappy at the moment. Of course I agreed that it was such a good idea.”

“Where does she want me to go?”

“It doesn’t matter, Cielle – you’re going to say no.”

She shook her head slightly and her voice was desperate. “Dirk… please. I’d like to go… you can’t keep me here for ever… I won’t tell -”

He pressed his fingers downward sharply, his fingers digging painfully into the soft tissue under her chin. His voice was very calm. “You’re not listening, Sis. I said you won’t be going.”