Photographs Ch. 08

DISCLAIMER: This is included in the novel/novella category because of length. It is a mother/son incest story. There are also instances of abuse (two of them, which are not the focus of the story). As far as heat level, this story is quite tame, and if you are look for page after page of screaming sex, you might want to look elsewhere. If you want a STORY, please read on.

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The next evening they made the pizza together for their belated pizza night. Christie let him do most of the work, teaching him how to make a bread dough and how to make a pizza sauce.

"This sauce is best if it is done early in the day and allowed to cook," she explained, "but we were both a bit distracted the past two mornings. Here, put a half teaspoon of this in there."

While he stirred and added ingredients, she frequently looked up at him with so much love and desire, he had to stop and kiss her cheek before he could go on. He wanted her to himself, and even though he already hated Steve, his anger at the man who had raised him grew exponentially, a hot, hard knot in his chest.

"Why can't you leave Dad?" he asked.

The hand she raised to reach for the spices paused and then resumed pulling a jar of oregano from the shelf. "Maybe I should tell you," she said. "You're going to have to be very good at keeping secrets, especially from Steve." She handed him the jar. "Teaspoon," she said, "but crush it between your hands as you add it to the pot."

"I think we're both pretty good at that already."

"Sometimes I wonder. Not letting on about what he sees just adds information to Steve's arsenal, to be saved up and used later. Some things, though, like the thought of my infidelity, make him completely irrational, and he'll go off on extremes. I'm more worried about him finding out about that, but you knowing about the blackmail shifts the balance of power, although I'm not certain which direction."

"Power," he said.

"Steve wants control. He wants not only to possess me but to bend me to his will. But he wants mostly to do that by either coercion or force. It's not just that he succeeds in getting to me, but the method he uses to do it and how badly I don't want it." She held up another jar. "Last one. Put in a teaspoon."

"The night I saw you together, he said something about not using a professional because they wanted it."

"Right."

"So he likes to force women."

She froze. "I worry about it, sometimes. What other women might be out there."

"Do you think there are others?"

She bit her lip. "I can't tell. He leaves no clues. All I know is that when he comes back from his monthly trip, he is either cold and distant, like there is a simmering frustration that he's too controlled to show, or he's mellow and content and almost seems like a normal person. If he's cold, he starts beating me earlier in the month before the next trip, sometimes as soon as he comes back."

"He could be a rapist," Danny whispered. "I could easily see that."

Christie shrugged and spread her arms in frustration. Her voice pained, she said, "I know, and there's nothing I can do about it. I couldn't ask him. It would just antagonize him and make things worse for me, and he wouldn't tell me anyway. I've tried to find his stash for years and years, but no luck."

"Stash?"

"Where he's keeping his evidence, all his photographs. The man is so sickly meticulous and careful. I've followed him, but he's so paranoid, he sees me. I've put trackers on his car, but he discovers them before I learn anything useful. Obviously he's checking. I've gone to the extreme of lifting floorboards and crawling through the attic, and using a metal detector in the yard. I managed to get a key to his office and I took that apart. Twice. I need to find that stash."

"Do you think, maybe, you could tell me why?"

She looked down at the boiling pot of sauce. "Turn that down to simmer and put a cover on it. We'll talk." First taking glasses from the cabinet, she went to the refrigerator to get the pitcher of iced tea. "This is a long story," she said as she walked to the breakfast nook. "Sit."

When Danny was seated across from her, she began, "I first want you to understand that this is not my secret, but by keeping it I've implicated myself in a crime. I've sacrificed and suffered to keep your uncles safe, and I expect no less from you if I tell you this. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, absolutely."

"Promise you will say not one word of this to a living soul."

"I promise."

"That includes the people I'm telling you about."

"Okay."

She nodded sharply. "Okay, then. From the beginning." She thought for a moment about where to start. "Andreas Fulton was a friend of your Uncle Mike from kindergarten. They were very close when they were younger, less so as they moved up in grade school, but still hung out together a lot all through high school."

"Wasn't Dad a friend, too?"

"He moved into the neighborhood when I was ten and he was twelve. Your dad and Andy, they really became fast friends. They were always together. Mike was sort of a third wheel when he was with them, although they seemed to get along fine. Mike once told me that Steve and Andy went off and did things together that they wouldn't tell him about, things he wasn't included in. It made him feel a little hurt, and I think he wasn't any more immune to Andy's charisma than I was - or Sean, or my mom and dad. Steve was..." She smiled a little ruefully. "He was just so easy to overlook. But Andy was charming to the core, and so handsome. God, I had a crush on Andy. At the time I thought he was just my type. He charmed everybody. We'd go to the crazy lady next door for cookies or granola bars, and he'd always coax an extra one out of her. His own mother spoiled him terribly. But the thing was, if you really watched them, particularly when they thought you weren't looking, there was something sly and manipulative about both of them. It was as if the coaxing and the charming was very deliberate, planned. Once I was at Andy's house and was watching his mother get him a snack that he asked for, and for a moment I thought she looked afraid. Then I just brushed the idea off. I was totally bamboozled like everyone else. I was crazy about Andy. He was exactly what I wanted in a boy. When I finally had my eyes opened, it was too late to protect me."

She bit her lower lip. How much pain could have been prevented if she had only seen them for the predators they really were? She remembered Andy coming into the house after playing basketball on the driveway, his skin glowing. He was huge and dark and handsome, and full of smiles that seemed to be just for her. When she was younger, he would pinch her cheek and call her pumpkin. As she got older, his smiles really were just for her, or so she believed. She now vehemently wished they hadn't been.

"The three of them were all in the same year at school. The year they were seniors, I was a sophomore. Christmas of that school year, the apartment complex where Andy lived burned to the ground. Novena candles, they think. Andy's mom died. They didn't know who his father was, and there were no surviving records to find his other relatives. He only knew he had some people in Jamaica that his mother didn't like to talk about. You know how kind and generous your grandparents are. They took in Andy without hesitation."

Christie picked up her iced tea and drank half of it. She sat and stared at the glass. Danny didn't know if he should say something or not, so he kept quiet.

"Everything was great for a month or so. I was in heaven, having THE Andreas Fulton living in my house. All the girls at school were incredibly jealous. Then one day... It was February and the weather was unusually warm. I had this crazy idea of playing croquet on the back lawn. I hadn't done it for years. We kept the gear in the loft of the garage. You know that wooden ladder that leads up to where old crud is stored?"

"I remember cousin Teresa daring me to go up there when I was five, and then when I did, telling me there were black widow spiders."

"Right," she said and laughed. "I think there were. You were so frozen with fear Steve had to carry you down the ladder." She sobered. "Anyway, I was up there, and I got distracted by an old box of Grandma's sewing magazines. I was very quiet when Steve and Andy came in. I was also hidden behind a pile of boxes, so they neither saw or heard me. And they were obviously trying to be quiet. Talking in hushed voices. I peeked, and saw they had beer and some magazines. I decided to stay where I was until they left. I was curious about why they were trying to be so secretive and wanted to spy on them. They started drinking, and to my virginal fifteen-year-old horror, I saw the magazines were porn."

Danny laughed. "Seniors in high school who like looking at porn. I can't imagine that."

"You never have, of course."

"No, of course not," he said.

Christie narrowed her eyes at him, but said only, "Hush now. This is the important part." She paused to get her bearings. "They were looking at the magazines, and then Andy held one up to show Steve, and said, 'Dude, I would love to tie this bitch up.' I was still trying to wrap my brain around this while Steve looked at the picture and said, 'I like it better when they can fight back.' Then Andy said, 'You do like to fuck a bitch up.' I actually gasped, and then clapped my hand over my mouth. I think the beer must have been working by then, because fortunately, neither heard me." She thought about it. "Maybe not fortunately. Maybe nothing would ever have happened if they knew I had heard. Anyway, what Steve said next killed every last fond feeling I had for either of them. He said, 'I know who you want to fuck up. Christie.' And Andy made Steve admit that he wanted me, too. They talked about it. How I was too good and would never go with either of them. They agreed that they would have to force me in some way. The last thing they said on the subject was Steve making Andy promise that if he ever forced me to have sex, Steve would get to be the one to hold me down."

Christie placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. Even to this day, she could remember the shock of betrayal in a visceral way. She could see the dim, dusty loft, the two boys furtively adjusting themselves through their pants as their cocks grew hard. The smell of the beer. She had cried silently, dizzy and lightheaded from the effort to breath without making a noise while choking on sobs. With that conversation, Andy and Steve had ripped away a piece of her innocence.

"Did they find you?" Danny asked as her silence drew on.

"No. They finished their beer and jerked off to the magazines. They must have done it before, because they seemed perfectly comfortable in doing it in front of each other." She shook her head. "Things they shared that did not include Uncle Mike. Thank god.

"I remained up there for a long time after they left, trying to figure out what to do. I finally decided to tell Mike. Andy was living in our house and wanted to force me to have sex with him. Someone needed to know. I told Mike what they said - God that was an awkward conversation - and bless his heart, he believed me. There had been rumors."

"What rumors?"

"That Steve and Andy would deliberately get a girl drunk at a party and then take her somewhere. What they did with her was just assumed, but no girl ever came out and complained. It's like they didn't remember. Rohypnol, probably."

"What did Uncle Mike do?"

"We discussed it over a couple of days, and decided to visit Sean and get his advice. Andy had no place to go, and he actually hadn't done anything, so we weren't sure what was appropriate. I mean, if not for the parties, we could have written it off as two teenagers drinking and talking shit. Until we could figure it out, I was warned never to be alone in the house with Andy."

"But you were."

She nodded. "I had seen them on a Tuesday. It was the Friday of that same week. Mike went to sleep over at Sean's apartment and to talk it over with him. Which is ironic, isn't it? Both of us forgot that that particular Friday was my parents' monthly date night and they would be out very late. I came home from dance class at 5:30 to find no one but Andy in the house. I always poured myself a glass of iced tea when I first came home. Always. I drank it while I decided where to go. The last thing I remember was heading for the phone to call Sean to come get me. The next thing I knew, it was Saturday morning and I was in the hospital. My parents were there and the police. There was a lot of talking and questions until I started to cry and my parents made everyone leave me alone."

"What happened to Andy?"

"He was gone. Disappeared."

"Did they catch him?"

"He was never found."

"So..." He frowned. "How do they know what happened if he was gone and you don't remember it?"

Instead of answering, she got up to put more ice in her glass. "More?" she asked him. He held out his glass for her. When she sat down again, she had the words right in her head.

"This is the official version: Mike remembered date night and ran home to get me. He found me in my room, naked on my bed, with blood all over the place. Some girls just bleed a lot their first time, and I was one of them. He also raped me anally, and I guess he didn't prepare at all, and he was real big, so he tore me there and that produced some blood too. Mike freaked out and threw a blanket over me and took me to the hospital. The police were called from there.

"When they searched for him, Andy was nowhere to be found. His stuff was gone from his room, and he was never seen again. They found the iced tea with the Rohypnol in it. Lucky no one else in the family drank it; he doped the entire pitcher.

"The theory was that he had intended to rape me, clean me up, maybe put me in the bath, and then tuck me into bed with no one, including me, being the wiser. He could have made up a story about me not feeling well when I got home. Whatever. The point is, he could have gotten away with it if he was careful. But he got careless and tore my anus, and there was so much blood, there would be no way to hide it."

"Don't you think you would have realized someone had sex with you?"

"I don't know, Danny. I was so sheltered and innocent, even if I was sore the next day, with all the dancing I did, I might have just figured I worked out too hard. I just don't know. Andy had some problems with impulse control, and maybe he just didn't care. Whatever the case, Andy was gone. The case remained open, but the statute of limitations has run out now, and no one cares except my parents. They felt very betrayed and taken advantage of. They still talk about it sometimes." She smiled fondly at him. "Although they are very glad we have you."

Danny drank off the last of his tea. "I'm kind of glad, too." He lifted the pitcher. "Should we make more?"

"Start the kettle."

"So that was the official story, what is the real one?" Danny asked as he filled the kettle.

This was the difficult part of the story. Although it was a hard, traumatic experience, and she still felt insecure and violated afterward, Christie had no memories of the rape to haunt her. Instead, she was consumed with not knowing, with wondering how she had behaved while she was with Andy. Did she enjoy it? Did the drug make her a willing participant in her own rape? After a month had passed, Steve came along to fill in some of the gaps.

"It was just a day or two after I found out I was pregnant, when I thought my life couldn't get any worse, Steve showed up with some photographs. You remember how I said he wanted to be the one who held me down? Instead he photographed the whole thing."

"Do you think he raped you, too?"

The kettle whistled, saving her from answering right away. Danny got up again, and began preparing the tea.

"Do you?" he asked.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I married my rapist. He never admitted it, and there was no DNA evidence tying anybody but Andy to it, but I think he just had the sense enough to wear a condom. Anyway, there were two series of photographs. The first showed me naked on the bed, Andy raping me in the ass. I was crying. It must have hurt a lot. I know I was uncomfortable enough the next day. The next photo, Mike is rushing in the door. This was taken from outside the room, so I'm surmising that Steve heard him coming and ducked out, but Andy was so preoccupied, he never saw him. Then Mike had his arm wrapped around Andy's neck, dragging him off me. Andy was huge, like you, but Mike, even at eighteen, was big too. More, he was a wrestler in school, and brawler outside of it. There was another photo of both boys on the ground, struggling, Mike choking the life out of Andy with his forearm around his throat. Literally. Your Uncle Mike choked Andy to death."

Silence ruled the kitchen after that bomb detonated. Danny's mouth hung open, the tea forgotten. It took a while for him to shut his mouth and turn back to the counter and stare vacantly at the tea bags and kettle. "What happened next?"

"The next thing was Mike panicking. You see, he had just turned eighteen, and while he hadn't had any trouble, there were a lot of fights at school before that, and some public drunkenness." She sighed. "Mike was definitely the black sheep. He gave Mom and Dad no end of grief."

"But it was an accident. Wasn't it?"

"I believe so. Mike loved to fight, but he rarely did it with any real anger."

"What does he say about it?"

"He doesn't know I know."

"You never told him that Steve had photographs?" he asked, his voice rising with shock. "Why?"

"I'll get to that. Let me tell you my story." She pointed a finger at the counter. "Make the tea before the water gets cold."

He turned back to the counter but most of his attention was on Christie. "So?"

"What I know for certain he did was call Sean. You see, the next series of photos was of Sean, digging a hole and burying Andy's body."

"Shit. I can see Uncle Mike doing that - he's kind of rough around the edges - but Uncle Sean has his shit together."

"I know. He was studying criminal justice when this happened. Both of them were just so stupid. It was clearly a crime of passion, and maybe even unintentional. I don't know what was going through their heads. Knowing what I know now, as a lawyer, I think Mike would have got off very easy. It takes a lot longer than you would think to choke someone to death, so intent might have been murky. He might not have got off scot-free, but I don't think he would have seen any hard time. Sean should have known this."

She shook her head. "We all were so young. I had been sheltered unbelievably. Mike was hotheaded and prone to panic and overreact. What you have to understand is how close my family is. If Mike panicked and begged Sean to cover it up, Sean would have. They would do almost anything for each others' sake, and I would do almost anything for theirs.

"So when Steve told me he wanted me to date him, and would send the photos to the police if I didn't, I decided to agree."

"Wouldn't the police have arrested him?"

"A few photographs and an anonymous note would have sunk both of them. And even if I pointed the finger at Steve, there would be no proof."

"So, he used this both to get you to date him, and then later to get you to marry him."

"Yes. No one in my family understood it. Part of the deal was that I never tell anyone, including Mike and Sean. My mom never understood why I went through with the wedding after crying myself to sleep the night before." She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Danny."

"Why?"

"I was so young, and still so naive. One of the reasons I agreed was because I thought that at least you would have a father. A real family with a mom and dad, not living with your grandparents. It never occurred to me what it would do to you to be raised by someone like him."