I reached out to touch mom's arm, but she twisted away. "I tried. You were unconscious, too. Thankfully dad was only out for a couple of minutes. When I couldn't wake you, I headed back to check on him and he was already up." I turned back to dad, "you said good night to me when we passed in the hallway. Remember?"
He rubbed at his injury. "I still have a lump, you know. And a headache. And I didn't get dinner, yet."
Mom whirled on him furiously, "Fuck your dinner, Greg! He lied to us. To me! He tricked me into sleeping with him!"
"Yeah, he took advantage of the situation. And, yeah, that was a big line to cross." Dad put his hands on her shoulders, resisting her attempts to brush them away. "But you did want to go to bed with him. You can't take that back now."
"He wasn't supposed to ever know I wanted to," mom sniffed and wiped harshly at one eye before a tear could spill out of it. "Moms aren't supposed to want to do that with their sons."
"We've talked about this, honey. There's nothing strange about loving your son, about wanting to teach him how to be a man. There's nothing wierd about wanting to help him get past the awkwardness of his first time or wanting him to enjoy it. There's nothing abnormal about finding a handsome young man physically attractive. You know I'm not mad at you." He hooked a finger under her chin and kissed her quivering lips softly. She cuddled into his chest as he embraced her, then he glared sternly down at me over her head. "Jim went about things in a very stupid way and I'm not happy about being left out of the decision, but what's done is done. You can't put the smoke back in the transistor as my Uncle Bill used to say."
"I'm sorry, mom. I've wanted you for so long, that when I heard what you said last night, I kind of lost my mind." I got up as my dad gestured with his head towards the door. Mom flinched but didn't pull away when I touched her back. "I should have just told you what I heard. Told you I wanted you, too, instead of using dad to trick you. I wish I had done it differently, but I am glad I did it. I've had an amazing time with you today and I really want to do it again! I hope you can forgive me."
One glittering, dark eye peered at me from behind the mask of her disheavaled hair, then she turned to bury her face against dad's chest. He gave me a frown and kissed the top of her head as he shooed me away. I recognized that "let me talk to her" frown so I gathered up the wad of my clothing and slunk away like a beaten dog, my shame-heavy head slung low between my slumped shoulders. Not knowing what else to do, I crossed to my room and crawled into bed, pulling the covers tight all around me like a cocoon.
The warm darkness under my blankets swallowed me whole and I lay in a sludgy, black puddle of miserable guilt. I had ruined everything. I had taken too much advantage of several situations and now my mother hated me because of my awful lies. I began to prepare a mental inventory of my room for when they kicked me out in the morning and with each thing I considered, the memories attached to my stuff became more and more maudlin and heart-wrenching.
My new clothes and the fun day mom and I had shopping together. I'd have to shop by myself now. The ancient copy of HeroQuest in it's faded and taped-repaired box that my dad found at a yard sale a couple of years ago and all the late nights the three of us had spent around a dinner-table-turned-dungeon-adventure. I wondered if I'd ever get to play it again. Leon, my one-eyed, hug-worn, stuffed lion they got me when a playground accident landed me in the hospital with a broken arm so many years ago. They probably didn't even know I still had him. I shook silently as the tears began to creep blindly down my cheeks. What a damned fool I was! I'd thrown all that happiness away for some sex. I had gotten away with enough last night! Why did I have to push my luck today? Why did I push my luck at all? Why did I have to lust after my own mother so much? Why couldn't I want another girl like a normal guy? What the hell was wrong with me?
My thoughts spiraled off into anger, depression, and self-loathing as I quietly cried myself to sleep.
---
"Jim?"
I pushed the blankets off of me at the sound of my mom's voice from the hallway and stood, swaying sleepily. The walls of my bedroom wobbled groggily in the dimness around me as I swung my door open and rounded the corner. The grey quiet of the house hung in the air like cathedral dust, disconcerting and eerie as I looked around for my mom.
"Jim? Come here. I need you."
When I finally found her, I stood behind her in the hall looking at a familiar scene. My dad was sprawled out on the floor in the bathroom, half-naked and face down in a mess of make-up containers with mom kneeling demurely by his side.
She looked worriedly up at me and asked, "what are we going to do, Jim? I can't wake him!"
I bolted towards them...or I would have if my legs had obeyed my brain's orders. I wanted to run over, but my lower half was heavy and slow as I moved. I tried to rush to them, but it felt as though my feet were becoming a part of the floor, tiny hands grasping at me as I worked to pry up first one foot, then the other. I struggled to force my legs to move through the slogging quicksand it seemed was engulfing them, to make my way to my parents, across the impossible expanse of clutching carpet.
"Help me, Jim," she said as she stood up and reached towards me with one hand, "don't you love me?" She touched her stomach with the fingers of her other hand and I noticed there was something moving there, like a skeletal maggot writhing under the taut skin of a fresh sausage. Her distended belly seem to be swelling roundly, inflating like a balloon as she walked to me. "How are we going to take care of the baby without dad?"
My tongue felt like a lump of useless meat in my mouth, I couldn't make it form the words to answer her; to ask her what the hell was going on. I was wrapped in mummy-cloths of paralysis, the betrayal of my body holding me imprisoned in place, powerless and mute.
Her lovely face distorted with righteous fury at my silence. "Nothing to say, liar? No clever words in your defense? No half-truths and sneaking to get you out of this mess?"
I tried to protest, to plead momentary insanity, to beg forgiveness, anything, but I could make no sounds with my plastic mouth and wooden tongue. The hallway twisted into hellish infinity behind her as she shambled at me, her claw-like fingers reaching for my heart.
"You tricked me! You tricked me!" Her shrieking accusations rose in a fever pitch, digging at my ears like a thousand frightened kittens, echoing through my skull. "Tricked me! Tricked me! Icked me! Icked me! Me! Me! Me!"
---
"Ree-ree-ree-ree-ree!" The alarm on my phone buzzed like a trapped hornet and I fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs, blankets and confusion, blinking blearily at the room around me. I took a deep breath and swallowed hard. It had just been an awful nightmare, the terrible images already fading from memory as the cheery morning sun peeked into my room from behind the curtains. I knuckled at my eyes then crawled out of my covers to look around for my phone and turn off the irritating sound.
I pulled my jeans on slowly, trying to predict what would happen this morning, to figure out what our conversations would be like and what I might say. Nausea and hunger wrestled a jagged boulder back and forth across my protesting stomach as I kept going over and over the events of the last two days, mentally kicking myself for what I'd done. I tugged my shirt over my head and trundled down the stairs, hoping that maybe neither of them had gotten out of bed yet.
No such luck. Dad was waiting for me, seated at the end of the island with a cup of coffee in front of him, and he gestured at a second cup set out in front of a stool near his. "Morning, Jim. Did you manage to get any sleep last night?"
I sat down and poured out a steaming mugful, then stirred in the creamer, intently watching the swirling, dark brown liquid turn light tan so I wouldn't have to meet his gaze. "Some, I guess."
"Mom's out getting us breakfast. Said she wanted some muffins this morning. She's calmed down a bit about the whole sex-with-you thing, but she's still pretty mad at you for lying to her." He leaned over trying to catch my eye. "So am I, son. Why didn't you just tell her the truth? Why didn't you say something to me? I could have helped you talk to her."
"Think about what you're asking, dad," I frowned, flicking glances at him but having a hard time looking at him straight on. "Why didn't I just tell my mom that I overheard her saying to my dad in the heat of passion that she wanted to have sex with me and that, oh, by the way, I wanted to have sex with her, too, so why don't we go do that? How was I supposed to just come out and say something like that? Or come ask you for help getting mom into bed with me? I kind of panicked in the moment and it just sort of came out this way. Once it got going, it was hard to take things back."
"Yeah, and now you got caught." He smirked, "this seems like a familiar lesson. Didn't I teach you this stuff, like, twelve, thirteen years ago?"