Sick Bastards (11 page)

PART ELEVEN

Before

Confused Affairs

Sister and I returned to our small bedroom having eaten the bare minimum needed to survive. She went into the room first and curled up in a small ball on the mattress which we had earlier shared. She was crying. I wasn’t sure whether she had stopped since when I saw her sitting at the dining room table with the dead woman.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

It was a stupid question but one I couldn’t help but ask. I knew what the answer was going to be because I felt the same. The only difference being that I was doing a better job of burying it from plain sight. Not that I expected her to, but she didn’t answer.

I crossed the room and crawled onto the mattress behind her. I didn’t wait for an invitation to put my arm around her. There was no intention other than to offer her some support. A little comfort. Let her know that I was here for her if she did decide she wanted to talk.

“We could leave, you know,” I told her. “We could just go out and see what happens. We might find some survivors. We might stumble across a camp, or a town, or something. Something other than this anyway.”

She didn’t answer. She just continued to weep into her pillow.

“And if we don’t make it, if we don’t find anything out there...At least we’d have each other, right? And we’d die knowing that we tried to do the right thing. Maybe that’s better?”

She twisted her body round until she was facing me. Without any words she kissed me. The sweetness of her kiss tainted by the taste of the dead woman. I pulled away, shocked by what she was doing.

“Please...” she said as she moved in for another kiss. This time I responded and kissed her back despite not knowing what was happening. Everything is changed now and I don’t know what’s right and what is wrong. It’s all confusing. It’s all...

I rolled on top of my sister and pressed my erection against her. She moaned as though she were desperate to feel me inside her.

Suddenly the door opened and Mother walked in. I rolled off Sister immediately and sat up, panic all over my face. Sister also looked horrified yet Mother didn’t say anything. She was almost looking through us. A distant look on her face, blood smeared around her mouth.

“Your father is downstairs cutting the rest of the meat up for later, and tomorrow,” she said, “so I thought I’d come upstairs and see what you kids are up to. So. Anything fun happening?”

Mother’s voice sounded funny. It was hard to explain but she didn’t sound like she usually did. A crack in her voice suggested something was amiss.

“We were just talking!” I told her.

I knew she saw what we were really doing. It would have been impossible for her not to see it. Sister jumped up from the mattress and hurried from the bedroom exclaiming the need for the toilet. The door slammed behind her. I wondered whether it were just an excuse to get away from the embarrassment of having been caught out by Mother (once again). Alone, I half expected Mother to berate me for what we were doing. But she didn’t.

“I wish I remembered a time when your father and I were like that,” she suddenly said.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Truth be told, I don’t even remember him sleeping with me. Not like that anyway. And since all this has started he spends most of the night sitting on the end of the mattress or pacing the bedroom. He hasn’t touched me. Not like that.”

She didn’t move from where she was standing. Same distant look on her face that she had when she first came into the room. A far cry from the angry woman who’d confronted me only an hour (or so) earlier in the day.

Was it the meat? Was it the act of cannibalism which was changing our way of thinking? Was it the stress of the situation and the prison-like living arrangements? Each of us, in turn, starting to crack and wear down?

“Sometimes I’d wish he’d touch me like that...” she said. She licked two of her fingers, on her left hand, and slid them down the front of her jeans. Seconds later she let out a small sigh of pleasure. “...Like this...” she moaned.

I could see her fingers working away, rubbing, beneath her jeans. I looked away.

“Mother...”

“Don’t call me that,” she sighed. “Tell me what you did to your sister earlier. Tell me how you touched her. I want to hear...”

“Please stop.”

“Tell me or I’ll tell your father.”

I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I just knew that I felt sick. Deeply sick. More so than I had when I felt Sister’s tender touch. This was different. This was very different.

Mother crossed the room and stood directly in front of me.

“Tell me what you did.”

“Please stop...”

I tried to move but she pushed me back down and put a foot on either side of me. Her crotch was directly in front of my face.

“Did you touch her with your hands?” she asked. She unbuttoned her jeans with her spare hand and lowered them down, along with her knickers. Her other hand was rubbing against her vagina which looked as though it glistened to her touch. “Did you use your fingers? Tell me or I’ll tell your father what a dirty little fucker you are...” she said.

I didn’t want to tell her but if Father knew, I knew things would be worse. I knew he’d be mad at both Sister and me. How far would he go? Would he lose his mind just as we are losing ours? Or would he want to taste Sister too? I felt myself get angry at the thought. Protective or jealous?

“I just put it in her,” I whispered - almost ashamed.

Mother put her crotch closer to my face. I could smell it; a different tang to the scent given by my sister’s. Musty? Dirtier?

“Put what in her? Fingers?”

“My penis.” I felt my face redden.

“What did it feel like? Was she wet? Did you force it in? Did it slide in with ease?” she sighed as she started to rub herself harder.

“Please...”

“What about your tongue? Did you use your tongue?”

“No...”

Mother suddenly grabbed my head and thrust it into her crotch. She angled herself so that her lips were pressing against my mouth.

“Use your tongue,” she ordered me... “Let me feel your tongue against my clit...”

Using her bodyweight she pushed me back against the mattress until she was straddling my face, getting her stink all over me. She started grinding down against my mouth until she managed to part my lips.

“Lick me!” she hissed. Was she angry or sexually frustrated?

I felt disgusted with myself yet I found my tongue enter her vagina. The taste of her juices coating my tongue. With her legs either side of my head I couldn’t hear much other than her sighs.

Just get it over with.

Part of me hoped that Sister would walk back in and interrupt what was happening but another part of me wished (more than anything else) that she’d never see what was going on and that she’d never hear about it either.

Mother’s hands gripped clumps of my hair and she pressed down hard with her pussy, her legs twitching either side of my head and rattling my brain inside of my skull. I was feeling as though I was about to pass out, from loss of oxygen, when she suddenly rolled off my face. She was huffing and puffing, clearly out of breath. She laughed.

“If you show your sister that, she’ll love you forever!”

Mother wasted no time in suddenly jumping to her feet. Within seconds she was pulling on her knickers and jeans.

“Don’t tell her,” I told Mother as I wiped her juices from my face.

“It’ll be our secret,” Mother laughed. “And I won’t tell your father about what you two get up to either,” she continued, “as long as you do that to me when it’s needed...”

The thought of doing that to Mother again made me gag but if it meant keeping the dirty secret of Sister and me then...Whatever it takes.

Mother looked at me. “Did you want me to suck you off?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. She laughed. I guess she was joking.

“I’m going to see if your father has finished cutting the meat up. Are you going to come downstairs or are you going to stay up here sulking?” she asked.

I want to wash my face,
I thought.

* * * * *

I half expected to walk into the bathroom to find Sister there (sobbing still) but she wasn’t there. I didn’t give much thought to where she had gone (or why she didn’t come back to the bedroom) as my mind was too focused on washing the stink of Mother from my face and swilling some soapy water around my mouth to lose the taste of cunt and flesh - an extremely potent mix if ever I tasted one.

I caught sight of myself in a mirror which hung on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I looked like Hell. No. I looked like I had been to Hell. I don’t feel human anymore. I feel like...I don’t know what I feel like. I just know that everything is wrong and I don’t know why or how it has come to this. It’s not right. It can’t be natural for people to change in such a short amount of time, when something bad has happened such as the bomb. Is it just us? Or would there be others out there too, reacting in the same way? Everything starts off okay and then it changes when the food vanishes. Before you know it you’re killing people, eating them and fucking your family as a dessert.

A single tear rolled down my left cheek. A single tear? Is that all I am capable of now? Nothing more and nothing less. I didn’t wipe it away. I left it there for as long as I could until it dropped off the bottom of my cheek and onto somewhere on the floor. The last of my humanity?

I couldn’t believe where we had ended up. I may have believed it a little more had we been here for years but we hadn’t. In the great scheme of things - all of this has happened really fast. Too fast to be normal. I wish I could explain it.

“Son!” I heard Father call out for me. His voice sounded distant as though it were coming from downstairs. I won’t pretend I didn’t jump when I heard it. I had gotten used to the silence of the house as we tended to go about doing our own things (most days).

I quickly washed my face in the sink before leaving the room and heading down the stairs to see what he wanted. I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was to do with Mother and me. Had she told him after all? Maybe she was filled with the same amount of guilt that I had first been filled with when I slept with Sister - the feeling also shared by Sister who couldn’t help but cry after the event (despite wanting me to kiss her again today). Or maybe Sister had come back to the room and I just didn’t notice, what with my head stuck between Mother’s legs.

I walked into the dining room and was shocked to see the whole family was there. Mother was sitting (looking fairly relaxed) at the head of the table where Father used to sit and Father and Sister were standing by the remains of the dead girl. Sister had a knife in her hand and was hacking away at a piece of torn flesh.

“That’s it,” Father guided her.

“What is it?” I asked when I managed to shake the shock from my expression. Earlier, Sister had been crying about the woman and the fact we’d eaten a piece of her and yet here she was cutting some more flesh from the body under Father’s instruction. Maybe she had been crying upstairs because of what we had done and the meat hadn’t bothered her like I originally thought it had.

Sister slapped the piece of meat onto a plate already filled with other off-cuts.

Father congratulated Sister and then looked at me. He looked angry.

Father and Son ‘Chat’

I was led into the lounge by Father. He told me to close the door behind me so we didn’t disturb Mother and Sister and then he instructed me to take a seat. He sat on the larger of the sofas meaning I could either sit next to him or choose the armchair.

I chose the armchair.

“You saw what it was like out there,” he started, “with those things running around. We nearly died, you and I, killed by whatever the hell that thing was. And yet you’re still here, with your sister, saying that leaving is the best option. With what you’ve seen out there do you honestly believe that’s the case? And let’s not forget what happened the second time you left the house. You bumped into a stranger. A stranger who then made you fear for your safety, as well as the safety of your own family, forcing you to take his life. An axe to the head, wasn’t it?”

“We can’t stay in here. We can’t pretend that a group of people will come on by claiming to be survivors and that they’ll lead us away from all of this to somewhere safe.”

“You’ve seen the planes overhead. There is something out there other than destruction and decay. There’s something out there and they’ll find us.”

“But you can’t be sure they’re even looking. They might have enough to be getting on with, repairs and such like. There’s nothing to say they’re out there and looking for people like us. And what’s to say that they’re not the enemy? Flying overhead - it could be the people who dropped the bomb in the first place.”

Father didn’t say anything. I could have sworn I saw a little doubt in his eyes but only for a second.

“What we have here is sanctuary. Safety. Relative comfort. Your mother and I thought you’d be happy here. We thought you’d both be happy here. And safe. And you are safe. You saw what happened to the woman who came by here. She wasn’t given a chance to ruin what we had...”

“She wasn’t given a chance at all. What if she were one of the only survivors? You talk about someone coming here and rescuing us but how are they going to do that when you kill them?”

“One lone person, even two people together, will not be the ones who come and pluck us from all of this and you know it. The military - or whatever surviving groups have formed out there - wouldn’t send a couple of people. There’d be a convoy of some description. People who travel by themselves or in twos...They’re not to be trusted. I did what was necessary just as you did what was necessary with the man you brought home. We’re survivors now and we need to do whatever it takes to remain alive.”

“It’s not right...”

“No it’s not but it’s all we have. But please, if you want to leave, don’t feel as though you have to stay here. By all means leave. The door will be open for you, should you wish to come home again. But, know this, if you choose to leave - you do so alone. I won’t let you take your sister out there. I won’t let you put her life in danger.”

I fidgeted in my seat. Staying here, we were in danger - danger from those things out there stumbling across the house and getting in, and a strong danger of starvation. After all - it’s not everyday people accidentally come by the house. They’ll stop coming. For all we know no one will come by the house again and yet Father couldn’t seem to see that. Blinded by what he thought to be the best course of action for our family.

“Everything I’ve done with regards to getting the windows and doors blocked up, what happened to that lady and doing what we did to the man...I did it for us just as you took a man’s life for us. It’s all with the best intentions. The world we used to live in is over now. It’s gone. There’s a new world out there. One in which we need to find our place. It’s cruel and it’s harsh and old rules we all used to live by are out of the window. You need to realise that or else you’re going to go mad...”

I couldn’t help but wonder if I had already gone mad. Lustful thoughts of my sister, what happened between Mother and I and (of course) what we ate now...I’ve already gone mad. But so has the rest of my family.

“It’s natural that you’re feeling a little guilty. Any normal person would. I did too. But we need to bury those feelings. In this world guilt doesn’t exist. Surviving exists...”

“We’ve heard birds outside though. Remember? When we first got to the house. When we left the house. Before we found those things out there - the mutated people...We could be out there, you and I, hunting for food. At the same time we could be looking for survivors too - the convoys you mentioned. Two birds with one stone. Staying locked in the house isn’t the answer.”

“You step outside and you bring attention to all of us. What if those things are out there? What if they’re close by? You see them and they see you? You run back to the house, they chase. You get in here and then - eventually - so do they. We’re sitting ducks.”

“We’re sitting ducks by staying in here.”

“Not all the time we are keeping look out. Every day I go around this house periodically to look out of the small gaps left in the windows. Every day I check to make sure they’re not coming towards the house or even to see if there’s a convoy out there. And I will continue to do so. At some point, I’ll expect the same from you and the others too. We need to work as a team. Trying to divide us, like you did to your sister, is only going to cause trouble.”

I didn’t say anything. I just sunk into a despairing silence. Father was wrong but he wasn’t going to hear it. In his eyes he was right and it was like his ears were closed to any suggestion otherwise.

“Do you want to leave? Knowing it will be by yourself?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“So you want to stay?”

I reluctantly agreed.

“Then remember - all the time you’re living under my roof, you’re playing by my rules. These conversations with your sister about leaving - they stop. Now. It doesn’t get mentioned again. If it does then you need to leave and - next time - it won’t be your choice. Do you understand me?”

I nodded again.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes!” I said.

Father nodded, “Good. Then we’re done.” He stood up. “Let’s see how your sister and mother are getting on with cutting up the meat.”

He walked over to the lounge’s door and opened it. He stepped back, keeping the door open for me. I walked through and Father followed.

In the dining room the woman had been decimated. Most of her flesh was piled up high on a plate. I couldn’t begin to describe the stench and I almost gagged when I saw Mother was sitting at the table grating a piece of the flesh onto a plate for herself.

“It’s much easier if you eat it like this,” she said, “because you can get the same quantity of meat but it’s in smaller, easier to swallow flakes.”

Sister was staring at me. Her eyes had changed. They no longer looked to be the windows to her soul. They looked to be closed. Dead almost. The once-sparkle shining no more. I couldn’t help but wonder what Father had said to her to get her to change so suddenly; to go from a crying tormented angel to this so quickly...But then Mother had changed too. One minute she was lecturing me about sleeping with Sister and telling me it was wrong and the next she was grinding herself against my tongue.

Father pushed past me and joined Mother and Sister at the table. I remained in the doorway.

“You’ve done a good job, ladies!”

This is my family. They’re all mad.

We’re all mad.