I'm Mark, an 18-year old student. I live with my widowed mother in a big, rambling house overlooking Blackheath Common in South London. We've lived here since I was four, when Gramps and Grandma moved to a retirement cottage on the South coast. The place has been in the family for generations; one of Mum's ancestors, a celebrated Victorian artist, bought it. It's worth an absolute fortune, and the sensible thing would be to sell it and move somewhere smaller, more modern and easier to heat, but Mum and I love the place too much for that.
Mum works as a commercial artist. Dad died when I was 11, I think from a drugs overdose. Mum was a bit of a pothead at that time too, but she's not touched a drug, not even alcohol or tobacco, since then. She's never had another man since Dad died either. I couldn't understand that: she's still young -- she was only 19 when I was born -- and I think she's quite beautiful, with a sort of pre-Raphaelite beauty. She's tall and slim with long chestnut hair, an aristocratic face with arched eyebrows, bright hazel eyes, high cheekbones, a slim nose and full red lips. She never wears make-up, she doesn't need to. She dresses down -- long skirts, and dark colours -- but even so, I don't know any women who I think can match her looks. We've always been very close. I once asked her why she didn't have a boyfriend. She put her arm round me, hugging me to her, and said, "I already have one sweet man in my life, and he's all I need for happiness."
I suppose I'm not really in any position to talk. I've never had a serious girlfriend, and none at all since I was 16. I have friends, male and female, at college, but nobody special. I spend most of my spare time tinkering with electronic stuff -- computers fascinate me -- or with Mum, whether just enjoying TV or music, going to the theatre, or taking a stroll on Blackheath. I also like exploring the house. With just the two of us there are rooms we haven't used for years, which we keep closed to reduce the heating bills, but they're full of old furniture, even clothes left by the previous occupants of our home. One of my favourite spots is the huge attic that runs the length of the house. It's a real treasure trove of our family's history, full of the sort of junk that tends to be sold in flea markets described as 'bric-a-brac'. Even my first rocking horse is up there. It's a warm, dry, quiet place where I occasionally go to just lie on a slightly moth-eaten old mattress and let my mind wander wherever it chooses.
One evening recently I was in the attic, poking around some of the most distant, undisturbed corners to see if there was anything interesting I'd missed over the years. There's a weak electric bulb fitted into the rafters, but I had a torch with me to be on the safe side. As I flashed the beam across one particular nook something caught my eye. I ran the torch back slowly, and saw a gilt picture frame, holding a dark, grimy portrait. I'd never seen if before, and decided to investigate it. There were a couple of mouldy cardboard boxes in front of it, and I started to drag one of them out of the way. It burst, spilling several spools of film onto the floor boards. Seeing those, I quickly lost interest in the painting. A vague memory -- completely forgotten until that moment -- had popped into my head, of my father filming me when I was a little boy at the seaside.
I thought these must be those films. There were about 20 in all. I thought I would love to see them, and imagined Mum probably would too. I remembered seeing an advert in the local paper -- something like 'preserve your film memories for ever'. It was one of those display ads which appear week after week, and was for a service transferring film onto video tapes. So, a few days later, when Mum was out of the house, I trailed up and down our several flights of stairs with armfuls of films, loading them into my battered old Mini Cooper. Then I drove across South London to the business address of the advertiser.
It was a tiny photo shop, with barely any space to move between cameras, displays of film, faded posters of toothy blondes in garish bikinis, and the counter. A bell attached to the door rang when I entered with one of the film spools, and a slightly seedy looking bloke aged about 40 came through from an office at the back. He took the spool from me and held if up to the light, peering at a portion of the film. The price he quoted seemed reasonable, so I agreed. I had to wait two weeks before he 'phoned me to say my tapes were ready. Excitedly I drove over to his shop again and he greeted me with a cheery grin. "I've put the family stuff on this one" -- he handed me a tape -- "and the, er, other stuff on this one." He leered as he said that, and his smile widened further as he saw the look of bewilderment on my face. "Oh, you haven't seen them then? Well, aren't you in for a surprise! I should have charged you extra for that one." I handed over his cash and hurried out of his grubby little shop as quickly as possible, still perplexed by his comments.
I felt quite excited that evening as I slid the first tape into the player in my bedroom. I'd decided to watch the family stuff first, not knowing what was on the 'other' tape. The first thing I saw was my third birthday party: Grandma helping me to blow out the candles on my cake, lots of laughing children I didn't recognise, Mum hugging me, a happy family occasion. There were quite a lot of seaside scenes -- Mum paddling with me, me riding a donkey, me fishing in a rock pool, Dad swinging me above his head...that last one was a bit shaky, suggesting Mum was less familiar with the camera than Dad. There was no sound on the films, but my mind filled that in to match the pictures. Each scene was quite short, but they made me feel happy with nostalgia and sad at the same time. Even though I hadn't been a small child when Dad had died, my memory of him was a bit hazy, and Mum looked so happy as she smiled into his camera.
It was quite late into the night when, mildly intrigued, I slipped the second tape into the player. Within seconds I was wide awake and sitting bolt upright in bed. The opening shot was of a woman's naked bottom, round and dimpled. It slowly swayed away from the camera, towards an old bed -- the one in Mum's room! Dad was lying on the bed, completely nude and clearly in a state of high sexual arousal. I saw the woman's face in quarter profile, and confirmed it was a much younger version of my mother. As I watched open-mouthed she straddled Dad and began riding him, as he reached up and clasped her breasts in his hands. Mum ground slowly up and down on him, her head rolling around, then gradually increased her pace until she was bouncing wildly up and down on Dad's cock. As she pitched forward to lay full length on top of him the scene ended.
I sat in the darkness in a state of shock. I couldn't believe that I was watching pornographic images of my parents. The camera was in a fixed position, so I assumed they were doing the filming themselves. Before I could react further the next scene started. This one showed Mum giving Dad a blow job. It was filmed in extreme close-up, just Mum's face, Dad's cock and his balls. I couldn't stop my mind creating sounds for the images: not laughing children and the lapping sea this time, but Mum and Dad moaning with lust, and slurping sounds as her lips slid up and down his prick.
I was watching the tape in horrified fascination now: I couldn't have turned it off to save my life. The third film was a detailed study of Mum, as she lay naked on their bed. Her happy smiling face, the eyes slightly unfocused, as if she'd just been smoking a joint; her small, plump boobs, the reddish brown nipples erect; the pale, slightly goose-pimpled skin of her body; the inward curve of her waist, flaring out to her hips; her pubic bone, entirely shaved of hair; her slim thighs. As I watched, Mum parted her thighs and raised her hips towards the camera, displaying the puckered pink lips of her vagina. Her hand appeared and one of her fingers extended, pressing between her lips and beginning to stir around...I ejaculated as that film ended. Without even realising I was doing it, I had tossed off watching my mother's lewd display of her naked body!
