The week following the evening at Rich and Barb's house saw new routines develop in the Weaver residence. Sharon was no longer snorting coke alone in the bathroom and isolating herself in shame or secrecy to preserve a veneer of normalcy in the home. She and Amanda were now openly railing themselves into oblivion in every room and off every hard surface in the house. Jim had been utterly horrified to find his wife and his daughter sat on the couch snorting lines off a small glass mirror that they traded back and forth after coming home from running an errand.
Unfortunately for Jim, however, Amanda had the support of her equally coke-fiending mother and the secret of their incestuous relationship to hold over his head. This meant that as much as it devastated Jim to watch his wife drag his barely 18-year-old daughter into the perils of cocaine addiction--he didn't have a move to make to stop it. This translated into a fall into depression and eventually hopelessness for Jim, and he teetered over into intentional obliviousness more and more as the days passed. By the time the weekend had arrived it had been days since he'd spoken to either of them and although they all lived together and shared a bloodline--there were veritable strangers.
Sharon had increased her coke intake now that she had a precocious 'partner in crime.' It seemed to Sharon that Amanda's appetite for the stuff extended beyond the boundaries of her comprehension. Her limitless insatiability had rubbed off on her and while she had already become comfortable with multi-day coke binges, she simply did nothing sober anymore. Going more than an hour without a bump had become something that just did not occur and between going through 8-balls like they were oxygen Sharon could always feel the hunger of her addiction pressing her for more.
Amanda had quit her job. She simply stopped showing up, finding the tedium of the bowling alley unbearable and the inability to do coke and smoke cigarettes for any stretch of time pure torture. She had also began drinking like a fish. Having carte blanche to drink in front of her parents during the party had opened the floodgates in a lot of ways.
She began every morning with lines and a cocktail. It had become common for Amanda to reach obscene levels of intoxication by early afternoon and only remain upright as a result of her equally obscene cocaine intake. In fact, Amanda had fallen in love with the delicate dance of drunkenness and coke highs that allowed her to drink like a fish and snort like a vacuum and stay on her feet in a superhuman feat of chemical reactions.
What's more, she'd been able to keep her mother in the dark about her arrangement with Rich and met him every few days to score more coke and take his dinosaur cock. She was double-dipping by allowing her mother to nurture her coke habit while scoring her own supply on the side. This had allowed Amanda to do literal mountains of cocaine daily as it never seemed like she could get through her own supply before her mother was offering her some more. She didn't know what it would take for her to overdose, but she figured she should prepare for it because at this point it seemed inevitable. Strangely though, she didn't really care, and her youthful sense of invincibility had convinced her that was okay.
It was Friday night and Sharon was intent on attending another swinger event, but this time she was potentially looking at going stag. Jim had expressed no interest in accompanying her which wasn't surprising--but when she pressed him and spat insults it hadn't even gotten a rise out of him. Sharon expected for him to try to rebuff him, but also expected to be able to bend him or manipulate him into doing what she wanted. Unfortunately, the man that she'd originally known as her husband was but a shell of himself and couldn't be relied upon to act in a predictable or consistent manner with his previous self.
"So, what, you're just going to sit around the house and mope all night?" Sharon spat.
"Why do you care? It's not like we'd stick together once we arrived anyways," Jim questioned reasonably while sipping on a whiskey in his now perpetually present sleeping robe.
"Oh, cry me a river Jim. This was your idea and now that I'm enjoying myself you don't want any part of it," she continued, sniffling, and wiping her nose to alleviate the presence of a healthy drip from the lines she'd done moments ago.
"That's not it and you know it," Jim sighed.
"Then what? You don't want your dick sucked? I don't get it," Sharon pressed angrily, sparking up a cigarette despite finishing one less than five minutes ago.
Jim let out an audible sigh of exasperation and took another gulp of his whiskey, wanting out of this conversation as soon as possible.
Sharon waited for a response that didn't seem incoming and took a strong drag on her Marlboro Red 100, a 'pop' and 'whoosh' accompanying the sharp inhale that saturated every fiber of her darkening lungs.
Stepping into the living room, Amanda looked from her father to her mother with a sidelong glance--taking a drag off her own cigarette and exhaling a cone shaped stream of smoke up in the air. It didn't even elicit a look from Jim who would've normally been transfixed but in his depressed state didn't lift his eyes. Taking a long swig off the dark bottle of strong IPA in her hand, Amanda waited another moment and gulped down the beer to see who would speak next. It became apparent to her that it had reached a stalemate and she intended on breaking it.
"I'll go with you," she slurred, realizing it might be time for another bump before she fell flat on her face.
This time Jim's face reacted, and his gaze shot up to his daughter's eyes in a look of pained confusion. Amanda shot back a challenging smile that only half appeared as she'd intended due to her inebriation but conveyed what was needed, nonetheless.
It wasn't that Amanda had contempt for her father, much to the contrary, but ultimately, she was happy with the direction of her life and wanted it to continue. It had been ironic to her that as soon as she'd gotten the stick out of her mother's ass it had seemed to go directly up her father's. In a lot of ways, they'd simply switched roles and as sympathetic as she was to her father's obvious emotional pain, she was still a selfish teenager in a lot of ways.
Sharon seemed to shift her expression in relation to a few different thoughts that ran through her mind before settling on a bemused grin.
"I don't see why not," she concluded.
"You don't see why not? She's our fucking daughter, is that not a good enough reason not to bring her to a veritable meat market of sex? You have to be kidding Sharon," Jim expressed with more passion and excitement than he'd had in weeks.
"No one has to know she's my daughter, she can be my younger girlfriend. What's the difference?" Sharon questioned, missing Jim's point entirely.
"
You
know she's your daughter.
You
should want to keep her out of something like that. Don't you see how it's completely
