It all started when Hal was in a motorcycle accident. He swirled off the high-way into a tree and when the ambulance arrived he was barely alive. Noone thought he had a chance, except Bess, his younger sister. She knew and prayed and when he pulled through we all thought it was a miracle, even the nurses at first. Me and Bess hugged each other, crying like fools, when the doctor came and told us that Hal was in a coma and that they didn't know if he'd wake up.
"You mean when?" I asked.
"No," the doctor said. "I mean if. Hal suffered severe brain injuries in the crash. It is a miracle that he survived."
"What's the next step?"
"Nothing. We'll monitor him, continue to do so, but ma'am, I'm afraid he'll never wake up, and you have to prepare yourself for that. Are you married?"
I said, "No", but something must have hit me by then, because I started screaming and I couldn't stop until I passed out. When I awoke, Bess was beside me and Hal was still in a coma.
That was how it all started.
--
I am a monster. I'm going to rot in hell, but I can't stop. Please, help me.
--
It's amazing what you can get used to, if you have to. Me and Bess had to, but not Jonathan. Jonathan had been my boyfriend for nearly five years, and he loved Bess and Hal, he really did. But he didn't have to get used to anything, and because of that he left us. I've heard he is happily married now.
Luckily, I could work from home. I don't know how we would have managed otherwise.
Me and Bess adjusted our lives around Hal. We moved him home eventually, when the hospital had done everything they could, and I didn't want to move him into a facility. That wouldn't be right, even if the doctors said he basically had no brain function and couldn't hear us or anything. He was my child and you can't put your children away like that. Monitors next to his bed kept track of his vitals. He even had something that would notify the hospital if he ever had a thought, or something.
It was Bess who said he looked like an angel, and she was right. Every care in the world had fallen from his face. Left was this angelic figure that I tended like something alive but wasn't. I sponged him daily, fed him, because he swallowed and worked his mouth if he felt something there. You just had to be careful he didn't choke on something.
At first, we talked to him, a lot. Me and Bess used to sit in his room and watch movies, play boardgames, even sleep there occasionally, but eventually we adjusted so completely that it became the new normal. We knew nothing would change with keeping him company, so we started to leave him alone. It seemed more decent. He wasn't there anymore.
--
Bess usually did the sponging. She seemed happy to. But sometimes I felt bad about it and started again, like on his birthday or other important dates. Sometimes it made me feel like a mother of two children again, taking care of them both, letting Bess take the time off, going out to meet her friends.
Because it became hot and moist, cleaning his penis and scrotum had been one of the most difficult things to get used to after the accident. Now I just did it, like everything else. Because of that, I stopped when I felt something move.
"Hal?" I whispered, but no answer. I checked the equipment, and nothing. No brainwaves.
But maybe it was a positive sign, his penis standing like this. Maybe it was a sign his nerve endings were repairing themselves, after so many years. Miracles did happen. The doctors had told us so. I joked with Hal about it, just to make myself more comfortable, but lacking everything else I soon moved on. The only really interesting thing was how long it took for his penis to calm down. I cleaned his room half and hour later and he was still standing.
Thinking I should prepare Bess for this new adjustment I took over the sponge baths completely, wondering how I should explain something like this to an 18-year-old girl, and very afraid that this was something that would drive her away from her older brother completely, the shame of it. She seemed a bit sad at first, but got over it eventually. She still spent a lot of time with him. She told me he helped her study, because he had learned it all before he went into a coma.
Talking to the doctor about it he managed my expectations, telling me things like this happened. It could be a sign, but probably not. They gave me a new brochure on comatose patients on the way out.
Later the same week, I'd had a lot of work to do, I realized I'd completely forgotten about the sponging, and tormenting myself about what a horrible mother I was I rushed upstairs to do it immediately. Preparing myself for his closed eyes, which sometimes seemed to reflect your own feeling back at you, I opened the door. There was Bess, eyes glaring, mouth open. She rushed out of the room. Immediately I saw what she'd been staring at.
Her brother had an erection, and I realized that she'd tried to fill in for me, and without realizing it she'd triggered the stimuli. And her shock wasn't unreasonable. Even for me it was a surprise, because somehow he was bigger than he'd ever been before, hard and with a nice cushy look. I blushed, ashamed of myself for thinking like that, my only excuse being that I used to have a lot of sex, and after Jonathan I had hidden that part of myself. Seeing a full-sized cock like this made me slightly hot inside. How Bess had reacted I could only imagine. She'd barely started with the sponging. Squishing the sponge, I touched him.
It was like an electric jolt, something alive that jumped out at me when I touched it. Still, I had to do it, and pulled his tight foreskin down to clean him underneath. I had to feel it with my skin. He was so hard the testicles looked tense. My hand barely wrapped around it, and from experience I knew it would fill me completely, like the best of my lovers had. Sadly, none had been steady like Jonathan.
Finishing up, I kissed his cheek. It was uncomfortable, and weird, but at the same time it was almost like speaking. He said something, I reacted.
"I love you," I said.
--
That night, I had trouble sleeping. I dreamed of fucking. Not with my son, nothing like that, but I awoke frustrated, again and again, and I couldn't touch myself because then I would be thinking about my boy. My boy's penis. His big cock. It was crazy. My bedside table had a whole drawer full of dildos I'd tried since Jonathan left, and they were too small, I realized now.
There was something else too, buried underneath, something about Bess. Of course, I had to go and speak to her. We had avoided each other, going about our days, being polite but not talkative, but it was better doing it tonight than dragging it out until tomorrow. Tomorrow was another day.
No. I tossed and turned, unable to get up. That wasn't it either. It was, obviously, but not entirely. Something was still missing, like lost car keys, creating an itch in my brain. A detail was off.
What detail?
Hal's cock had distracted me from something, but what?
