Mom is a Mess

Faithful readers of my main series: I apologize for the teasing diversion. I felt the need to test a hypothesis and had to take a break from gifts and girls. But rest assured, this is a one-off and won't keep me from continuing my harrowing tale of many debaucheries. Consider it a warmup for when you-know-who gets home.

For anyone who may find this depravity to their liking: please do let me know. If you supply the motivation, I promise to find the time for another go-round.

And to you, my unintended muse: I'll never claim I did this for you, but I certainly did it because of you. So I hope you're happy. And I hope you and yours don't plan on having nachos for dinner.

I need to take a shower.

Thanks & Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mom Is a Mess

I heard a crash and a cry from the kitchen and rushed downstairs.

"Fuck!"

"What happened?" I asked unnecessarily. There was a pool of soup on the floor below the microwave and Mom stood ankle-deep in chicken and dumplings.

"Fuck!" she repeated, her face twisting into a snarl of annoyance. She stomped her bare foot in frustration, splashing the cabinets and sending a chunk of carrot careening across the hardwood.

"I'll take care of it," I offered. Reaching for a drawer, I pulled out a stack of towels and went to work containing the mess. Mom didn't move; she stood quaking in the quagmire of her own creation, too livid to function. I worked in slow methodical circles around her feet, gradually mopping up her cold spoiled lunch. Standing, I went to the sink and warmed a washcloth, then returned to my task on hands and knees.

"Lift up," I said, taking hold of her bare calf. Despite her fury, she did as I asked and allowed me to clean the flecks of thyme and bits of ruined chicken from her skin. Gods, her feet were sexy. I traced each knob and knurl, slipping fingers between her toes and along her graceful arch. With focused effort and much regret, I set her free lest she discover my perverted delight. Satisfied with the job, though wishing she'd spill something else, I looked up from my crouched position and committed what would perhaps be the most breathtakingly profound action of my life. There, not two feet from my awestruck visage, was the glowing dome of satin-wrapped pussy. Short dark hairs poked through the shiny white fabric, spoiling an otherwise perfect picture of Mom's secret feminine gifts. I lingered, unable to shake my eyes from the stolen glimpse up her skirt.

"Thanks, Jax. I can't believe I did that." Mom glanced down, swinging her hips to the side and swaying her hem away from my immoral gaze. We made eye contact and surely she knew the sight I'd just beheld, etched as it was for eternity in my mind.

I stood, my face growing hot. "Are you alright?" I asked, hoping a distraction would alter the course of her thoughts.

"I'm fine," she sighed. "I just wanted to have a quick lunch. I have to get to work."

"Sit." I indicated toward the table. "I got this." I watched her shoulders slump in resignation as she accepted my help, dejectedly if not gracefully gliding toward the dining room and pulling out a chair. I joined her minutes later, two steaming bowls in hand.

"Here, eat," I said, glancing down at her forlorn face, her cropped sandy hair shading a pair of pretty made-up eyes that screamed sadness.

"It's alright, Mom. It's just soup," I said, sitting opposite and hoping to lift her spirits.

"It's not that," she said with a heavy sigh and set to eating her lunch in a depressed funk.

I knew, of course. Nothing was going right for her. It seemed nothing ever had. She was a single mother stuck in a job she could ill-afford to lose or leave with no chance of betterment and no man to comfort her in her misfortunes. I owed her everything; she toiled endlessly to afford my meager tuition and never asked for more than that I succeed where she had failed.

Mom was a mess.

My own course had been set in large part because of her travesties, not in spite of them. Divorced at thirty, she'd crossed the country to flee a toxic family and bitter memories. A decade later, she'd forced me into the local community college with the demand that I make something of my life. I'd never done well in school, but I did show an inexplicable aptitude for numbers. So I enrolled in any mathematics class that struck my fancy and somehow managed to capture the attention of my statistics professor. Home for the summer, I was continuing my studies at his behest and interning remotely as an analyst for a small startup.

But this isn't a story about me. At least not entirely.

Mom had few friends and her job at the local diner seemed only to bring her into contact with the type of men who had but a singular objective in mind. And once they'd achieved that goal, little thought was left for her. I'd seen it a dozen times in recent years and yet she still persisted, hoping incomprehensibly that Prince Charming could be found in the dregs of a greasy spoon beside a neglected highway sitting behind a plate of soggy fried potatoes and a sloppy burger. Her tenacity at persisting through it all was a great source of my own inspiration and I'd never sought to let her down because of it. It seemed her only source of comfort was that I was becoming the man she'd expected, and perhaps unintentionally, the one she needed.

Spoons rattled and I stood, taking her emptied bowl with mine to the sink. "Working late tonight?"

"Closing again," she said, a bitter twinge tainting her otherwise melodic voice.

"I'll stop by for dinner, then." Mom hated closing, that's when the weirdos came out.

"Okay. Bye, Jax. Keep your head down." I watched her leave; fetching her coat, stepping into her frayed pumps, and tossing her worn purse over a drooping shoulder before swinging out the door.

'Keep your head down' was our thing; a saying born of years of toil and bad luck. It was a cautious reminder to work hard, stay in our lane, and above all else, avoid trouble. It's the mantra that got us through the most difficult years after we'd set off together on a path of uncertainty without a safety net or even a bank account with a positive balance. I often wished I could remember more of those early times because what little I ken painted an entirely different picture of the woman to whom I owed everything.

Mom was fierce back then, even fearless; pissed off at the world and determined to carve a piece off for me and her and hold it up by the balls screaming in victory. But it all came slowly crumbling down as a monotonous reality set in; the bills mounted, the broken relationships piled up, work stagnated, and hopes dissolved into a mess of failures and shattered dreams. Keeping her head down was all she could do now, lest she look up and see the shambles she'd made of her life. Or more to the point, that life had made of her. I longed to have the Mom of my early childhood back; to bask in her ferocity as she tore the world a new one. But she was gone, buried deep, and I feared nothing could bring her back.

I spent the afternoon in my room, hunched over a laptop and applying myself to my studies and work as she would want. My job was quickly becoming a passion the likes of which I'd never experienced. It combined the two things I enjoyed most in life: baseball and math. I found the internship by chance, a random posting on my community college's website. It was obscure enough to draw my curiosity and after a series of phone calls and a glowing recommendation from my favored professor, I had my first paying gig. It wasn't much, but it was enough that I could occasionally spoil Mom and lift a small burden from her hunched shoulders.

The startup I worked for was building a fantasy baseball app. It was a shot in the dark in an industry already crowded beyond reason. But the job was fun and I was being paid to do something I enjoyed, which was more than I could say for Mom. Between a handful of online classes, I filled my time crunching numbers, analyzing baseball statistics, and devising new ways to slice and dice a mind-bogglingly complex array of data. The surprising depth of the math behind such a simple sport was what held my interest. Who knew hitting a ball with a stick had anything to do with higher order mathematics?

I tinkered away, coding a script to run an analysis and test a theory that I'd had kicking around in my head. If it proved true, I may finally have my first contribution to add to the small company that placed their trust in a young unproven kid they'd never met. The function churned on my screen and spat out an error. Bah! Fucking Python!

I had taken a couple of programming classes in my first quarter, thinking it may be the field I could find success in. The introductory lessons were far from enjoyable and I struggled mightily making the infernal machines do as I demanded. But it was a necessary evil; pen and paper were no longer good enough and to get to the bottom of complex statistics using huge sets of data, I had no other option.

My stomach growled and drew my attention to the clock on my laptop. Six hours had passed since lunch; gone in a blink, it seemed. That sort of focused obsession is what kept me coming back, frustrating code aside. I hadn't even considered the glimpse I had stolen of Mom's panties, though it came back then in a flood of hormones and misdirected teenage lust. I shook my head, futility attempting to rid my mind of its incestual notions.

I stuffed my laptop into my backpack and bolted downstairs, hoping I hadn't missed the bus. With seconds to spare, I hopped inside and swiped my student pass through the slot, smiling at the driver who grunted and paid me no mind. Three stops later, I rang the signal and waited until the doors fanned open. Jumping onto the street, I turned up the dirty sidewalk and walked two blocks to the town's only late-night eatery.

I nodded at a couple of old-timers seated at the counter and tucked into a booth. The scent of rancid grease and stale coffee hung heavy in the air, but it was a smell that reminded me of Mom and that made it bearable, if not enjoyable. I pulled out my laptop and continued my work, oblivious to the familiar diner and its wrinkled inhabitants.

"Hi hun, the usual?" Mom asked in her practiced sing-song tone.

"Please," I said, looking up and smiling at her. She looked tired. "Long day?"

She nodded. "Stacy's out sick so I'm all by myself aside from George."

George was the diner's long-time short-order cook. Always good-natured and always ready with a joke to lighten the mood. Had it not been for him, Mom would have walked out years ago. I secretly wished the two would get together, but he was married and showed no signs of being unhappy with his station. Stacy, on the other hand, was a raging bitch who'd never worked a full shift in her life. She called in sick more times than I could remember and try as she might to get fired, her looks kept her employed. I'd wager more than one roll in the hay with the owner helped, too.

I frowned and simply said, "Sorry, Mom. Keep your head down," as I'd offered so many times before.

Then she smiled at me; the sight that never failed to warm my soul. Her weathered face betrayed her age but did nothing to hide the beauty that had always been. She looked like she'd lived a hard life, and she had; but as ever the rain wears the stone, nothing would ever completely dissolve her intrinsic elegance and strength.

"Back in a jiff," Mom said, spinning on her high heels and lifting her skirt. My mind dove back up that twirling hem and my pants twitched. Dirty thoughts crept in as I continued to dwell on Mom's creamy thighs and tender feet. What the fuck! I shook my head again and tried to return to my work, but Python proved no match for the perversion that overpowered my feeble psyche. I continued to daydream about the forbidden until her lyrical voice shook me awake.

"One bacon cheese for my growing boy."

"Thanks," I mumbled, not wanting to make eye contact for fear of adding further fuel to the fires of my wickedness.

I ate my solitary dinner in focused distraction, counting the holes in the red upholstery of the bench opposite my seat. Once I got to fifty-seven, I started again and landed at sixty-two. Unable to believe five foam-filled gaps had mysteriously sprouted in the few minutes between attempts, I began anew. Fifty-four. Fuck! My compulsive nature refused to allow this preposterous transgression to stand. After a sixth try, I surrendered, having polished off the last dollop of ketchup with the remaining cold soggy fry on my plate. Schrodinger's holes would have to wait for another day.

Suitably distracted, I returned to my laptop; tweaking code, renaming variables, cursing errant semicolons, and formatting squirrely curly brackets. I ran my script for what felt like the thousandth time and it finished for a change, displaying a matrix of numbers. I pulled up a spreadsheet and ran several cursory calculations to confirm my hypothesis.

Success! I'd mathematically shown that changing a baseball player's position based on age has a net positive result on his offensive capabilities. It was something every fan knew, but with numbers to back it up, I'd potentially be able to predict when a player should be moved, and maybe even when a player should be cut. It was the sort of hypothetical that any serious fantasy sports player needed to consider. I fired off an email to my supervisor and hoped to receive a quick response.

"Hey, champ," I heard a familiar voice say. "Your mom's almost done."

"Thanks, George."

"Hey, uh, have you heard about the mathematician who's afraid of negative numbers?"

I shook my head and braced for the punchline.

"He'll stop at nothing to avoid them!"

I shared a forced laugh with the charming grease-splattered gentleman and then shook my head. "Even for you George, that was pretty bad."

"Aim to please," he said, tipping an invisible cap and pushing open the diner's squeaky glass door.

"Have a good one!" I shouted at his back. He turned and gave me a wave as he disappeared into the night.

Chuckling at the jovial cook's friendly demeanor, I stood and headed back to the kitchen. George's humor was always welcome, no matter how awful. But in this case it proved germane; his choice of jokes showed that he recognized my interests, and even though we knew little of each other, I knew that he cared. Mom needed more people like him in her life.

Pushing through the pair of swinging saloon doors, I found Mom hunched over a counter, giving it one last polish before calling it a night. Her flowing skirt swished side to side as her shapely hips rocked with each thrust of the washcloth. I couldn't help but stare again, focusing on her taut thighs and lifted bottom, artificially enhanced by the well-worn green pumps that held her dainty toes. Fuck! I couldn't stop myself.

"Oh, hi hun!" Mom exclaimed, pulling a hand to her breast. "You scared me!"

"Sorry. Guess I was just admiring your work," I admitted sheepishly.

"Like you've never seen me clean a counter before?" she asked with a smirking grin.

Gods I loved to see her smile. I shrugged and felt my cheeks start to heat up. "Need any help?"

"Nope, I'm almost done. Just need to put away the last of the leftovers." I watched her toss the rag into the sink and then head for the stainless-steel prep station and lift out a half dozen hotel pans. With deft practiced moves she slid them down the counter and wrapped each in plastic before hefting one to the fridge. I reached out, opening the door, and she graced me with an appreciative smile. Hrrng. There it was again.

I held the door until Mom had the last heavy pan in her grasp and was sliding it into the back of the fridge. Then disaster struck. The wire shelving gave way and two of the near-full metal containers came crashing down.

"Fuck!" Mom screamed, trying to back out of the impending avalanche of food. But it was futile, a cascade of chili and nacho cheese rained down upon her. The pans crashed onto the floor, one sharp edge striking the top of her precious foot causing a second cry. "Ow! Fuck!" I could see blood begin to rise from the ugly wound and mix with the red and yellow slop that coated her body.

Mom lost it. Lost it like I'd never seen. She collapsed, broken, folding to the ground in a heaping mess with her hands covering her face and wailing sobs wracking her body.

"Mom?! Are you ok?!" I'd taken my share of the colorful fallout, but she was my only concern.

She didn't respond; she just shook her head and continued howling into her hands. I didn't know what to do. She was always the strong one. She was the one who held me when I couldn't handle it anymore. So much hurt and resentment came flooding out of her that the sounds she made were painful to hear; they didn't seem human. My heart ripped in half seeing the straw that finally broke her back; the back that bore the weight of our combined troubles for almost twenty years.

Not knowing what else to do, I knelt into the pool of spilled chili and cheese and wrapped my arms around her. "It's okay, Mom. I'll take care of it."

"It's not okay," she sobbed. "I'm such a fuck up!"

I'd never heard her make such an admission. As often as life had gotten her down, she'd always stood back up. Maybe more battered, bruised, or weather-worn for her efforts; but never once failing to return to her feet.

"No, you aren't," I insisted. "The fridge broke, it's not your fault." Her shoulders shook as I held her tight, trying my best to offer what comfort I could.

She peeled her hands from her face and turned a tear-stained cheek in my direction. "George told me it was broken and I forgot." Her face scrunched into a ball of frustrated despair and she broke down again, sliding farther into the mess. Unable to hold her up, I let her go. I felt horrible. Had it not been for my distraction maybe she would have remembered.

I saw the cut on her foot, oozing blood and covered with chunks of ground beef. I stood and slid in front of her, pushing waves of viscous liquid cheese across the tiled floor. I put my hands under her armpits and said, "Stand up. Let me take care of your foot." I lifted and was glad to feel her comply, raising slowly on one knee, then standing on a wobbly foot.

Disaster struck a second time as the infernal mess caused her pointed heel to lose traction and she toppled against me. I slipped and we fell together with a squelching splash. She landed atop my chest as my back slapped onto the floor and launched a tsunami of chili cheese at the front of the oven. I saw stars and then heard the most blissful sound I'd heard in years.

Mom was laughing. She wasn't just laughing, she was bawling. What a ridiculous mess we'd made! Rolling on the kitchen floor like a couple of pigs in slop! I couldn't help myself. Her mirth was contagious and a welcome shift from what was just moments ago a scene of unspeakable heartbreak. Her body shook atop mine; I could feel her soft breasts pressing into my stomach as she slid up my torso and looked into my eyes. Streaks of red and yellow smudged her smiling flushed face as she leaned down and kissed me. It was over in a split second, but I felt as if an eternity had passed with her messy wet lips pressed onto mine.

"You taste like chili!" she blurted and buried her head into my chest, cackling with laughter. She lifted her face again and I lunged with my tongue, licking up her cheek.

"Whatever, cheese head!"

Mom guffawed and leaned down, taking my ear into her mouth and sliding her tongue through my crinkled curves before latching onto my lobe and popping it free with a loud smack.

"You've got some tomato in your ear, Jax," she purred.

It was hot. I was getting turned on with her body pressed into mine and her warm breath crashing against my skin. The thing in my pants awoke and made its presence known. Her bare thigh brushed against it and she stopped all movement. Another heartbeat of an eternity passed before she quickly regained her composure, at least to the extent possible while covered in chili and nacho cheese, and rolled off me. She splashed into the mess and sat up, her skirt riding high on her stained legs. All I could think was that her poor white panties had to be ruined. Hrrng. My cock raged at the illicit visualization.