The Video Cassette

I heaved the bulky carton into the kitchen and dumped it heavily onto the kitchen table, and my mum's immediate response was to turn round from what she was preparing, wipe her hands on her apron and shout,

"No! No more junk in this house, you, you're just like you're father used to be, he was a hoarder. If that box was out in the garage it's because that's where I intend it should stay...!"

"But Mum, if it's out in the garage doesn't that mean that you're hoarding as well? If it's no use, just throw it out to the dump..."

"Oh, a smartass. Alright, what's in there then that's so interesting?"

"These." I opened the flaps and drew out a handful of old VHS cassettes, those big rectangular reel-to-reel things my parents used to have before technology got smart and miniaturized. There were lots of them, some bought, with old cartoons and stuff that had kept me enthralled and quiet when I was a kid, some movies, and other stuff my parents had recorded off the TV, like 'Friends' (probably for Mum) and 'Baywatch' (good old Dad. He'd always said Man's greatest invention was the 'pause' button on the video) – in short, a motley collection. But there was also other stuff on them apparently, scribbled in my dad's hand, like 'Blackpool day out', 'Matt 6th birthday', 'Debs almost flips a pancake', 'Matt school-play'...

"Well I think you're right, there are some of these we shouldn't hoard; like my school-play for example. So we'll throw that one out for a start..."

Memories came back to me of getting stage-fright, with people at first thinking the pause was for dramatic effect, but then realizing my statue impression, where only my eyes swiveled scarily back and forth, could be an object of titters, derision and outright mockery. It was the kind of thing which, even ten years later, at nineteen, made you relive the horror in the middle of the night and wake up in a cold sweat.

"No!" Mum reached out and grabbed the cassette out of my hands.

"Good or bad, it's your history and one day you'll want to show it to your own kids when they've gone through a similar kind of embarrassment and then you can show them that you were able to get over it, so they should be able to as well..."

"But Mum," my eyes lowered, "I'm not over it. It's one of those things which haunt you forever...I mean, admit it, even you were laughing, I could hear it on the tape, you were making this funny squeaking sound..." I looked up again with my most pitiful smile and Mum came round the counter and hugged me to her lovely full bosom, pulled my head on to her shoulder, stroking my hair and crooning, "Hush little baby..."

I pulled away, both of us laughing. "OK, OK, I'm over it...!"

"That's a pity, you don't let me cuddle and soothe you any more like I used to..."

I returned to her arms, putting my own arms around her waist and hugging her into me. Even in the kitchen her body exuded a subtle fragrance. I placed a kiss on her cheek and then one on her nose, "Mum, I'm all yours to soothe any time you like."

"Good, then next time I'm feeling lonely..." The sentence hung unfinished in the air and mum turned around and went back to her preparations for dinner. Over her shoulder she said,

"By the way, I was laughing in empathy on that tape. I felt for you. You're a part of me so it was like me being up on that stage with you..."

"Yeah, yeah, you were totally pissing yourself....I mean..."

"No I wasn't, and Matthew Morrissey, mind your language."

"OK then, look me straight in the eye and tell me you weren't, umm, having trouble controlling yourself."

Mum came and stood directly in front of me and brought her face to within a couple of inches of mine. Her lovely eyes with their awning of long lashes...

"I –was – not – pissing – my - self." But she couldn't control the sides of her mouth which were working their way into a grin.

She really was gorgeous, so I couldn't resist,

"You – know – you – look – good – with - out – makeup..."

That transformed her grin into an outright belly-laugh. She stroked my chin and returned to the worktop.

"Haha, that kind of charm'll get you everywhere."

Chop... chop... scrape...

"Oh by the way, I know why we didn't throw the cassettes out. When all that new technology came in we thought we'd go through them and get the family stuff converted to digital and put them onto DVDs. We never got round to doing it before your dad died."

"DVDs? Mum, nowadays everything goes straight onto a flash drive. I could convert this whole box..." I indicated the mass of the huge carton, "onto just a fraction of something this size." There was a gap between my thumb and forefinger.

"Really? Well I remember when we invented the wheel..."

"Mum! Will you stop putting yourself down like that? You're always doing it! You are NOT past it. I'll bet I could take you to any dance at the Uni and the guys'd be lined up waiting for a chance to dance and smooch with you!"

"Smooch? Do you kids still 'smooch'? I thought that went out with Disco...?"

"Then they'd reinvent smooching just to be able to smooch with you."

"I should be recording all these things you're saying so I can hold you to all these promises."

"Aha...I only promised to let you hug me, I never promised to smooch with you. I said my mates'd want to smooch you..."

"So you wouldn't want to smooch with me?"

"What, after all my mates'd had you? Ugh..!"

"....and if I let you go first?"

I hesitated. My mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water.

Then, "Are we recording this?"

"No."

"Then yes."

"And if I was recording it?"

"Then still yes." I smiled. Turning back to the box, I started going through the cassettes again. I sensed my mum had stopped working and then come up quietly behind me. Her fingers went tiptoeing round my waist then across my stomach and clasped themselves together at the front. She pressed her body up against my back and rested her head in between my shoulders.

"Mmm, I really should paint you into a corner now and make you keep your promises. After all, it's a mother's duty to make sure her son keeps all his promises – it builds character..."

I felt the full weight of her breasts pressing into my back and, what with the verbal sparring that was going on, I felt myself getting aroused. I just hoped she wouldn't let her hands accidently drop onto my cock. She didn't, and I was strangely disappointed. I turned around. Mum was still so close that my chest made a sweep across her breasts. While my cock brushed across her hip...

"You really don't believe me, do you?" I took an involuntary glance down at her chest, then up again into her eyes. "I'm telling you, I could take you to one of our dances and no one would actually notice... I mean, of course they'd notice, how could they not, I mean.... They wouldn't even blink, I mean... they wouldn't blink 'cause that would mean missing out on a split second of seeing how beautiful you are... and..."

"Enough."

Mum held a finger to my lips.

"You know that was nothing less than amazingly romantic what you just said? And if you weren't my son I'd have grabbed you by the hand and swept you upstairs so fast your feet wouldn't have touched the ground."

With her thumb and forefinger she lifted my chin and placed a kiss right onto my lips and looked me straight into the eyes. Wow, her lips were so soft and damp, her eyes were so...

"Now, what do you intend doing with those tapes? I don't think the video recorder works any more. I mean it used to mash up the tapes, see, like this one..." She pulled out one cassette where a few inches of the tape were hanging out of the flap, wrinkled. "Indiana Jones...ah, so you can throw that, we've got it on DVD and probably much better quality..."

She tossed it back into the pile.

"No. I think I'll take it apart and see how it works. It's held together by some of those old-fashioned things, what d'you call 'em?"

"Screws?"

"Yeah, that's it... so I'll find one of those, what d'you call 'em?"

"Screwdrivers?"

"Yeah. I'll undo it and check how it works. Like a study in social anthropology, I'll save the archeologists some work... I'll take it all up to my room and see if I can hitch the recorder up to my TV."

"I think all the wires and stuff'll be in that big wooden box in the garage where your dad kept all that electrical junk."

She was right – also about Dad being a hoarder. He'd always said you never knew when something was going to come in useful, so there was a myriad of wires and connections in the box – some just the connectors with the wire snipped off at the base, some two-core wires, three-core, multiple ins/outs, old remotes.... I was looking through my own history. The connection to the electric kettle which had never seemed able to turn itself off when boiling. An old nightlight with cartoon characters in case I woke in the middle of the night (pre- school play era... OK, and maybe a little post- as well...). And there was the old VCR. I checked its input/output sockets against what there was in the box and found I could probably link it up to my TV. I did a bit of mix 'n match until I came up with a satisfactory solution, although not perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing.

Then back in my room, I plugged it in. It lit up. I hadn't been able to find a working remote, so it was all a case of pressing the relevant buttons while sitting on the end of my bed – so archaic! I pressed the eject button in case there was something inside. There was, but it was only making a feeble attempt to extricate itself. I flipped open the letterbox-style lid and yes, there it was – a cassette stuck inside. So how do I remove it? The thought of inserting a knife and immediately electrocuting myself didn't appeal, so I guessed I would be forced to do what dad had done and take it apart.

He'd done this after being conned out of money in a repair shop. When he couldn't get a picture through the machine, only sound, they'd said it would need an expensive video-head replacement when all it really required was the head cleaned. This embarrassment and introduction to suckerdom had made him decide in future to make his own repairs, and I'd watched him.

So I unplugged it, opened it up and was faced with a cassette with its tape wound around several cogs. After trying unsuccessfully to lever it out I figured there must be some rationale to it all, and there was – I turned this cog, then that operated that wheel which in turn made the tape get pulled across this rotating cog. I reversed the direction, and slowly but surely the wheels moved away from the tape and the cassette lifted itself up and out the letterbox – except one bit of the tape was still looped round another bit so I had to lift that out more gently – then it was released! A bit crinkled at that spot, but not torn. I looked for the title but there was none, so I put it to one side.

With the machine open, I used the opportunity to clean the video heads as well, then reattached the cover, plugged it in and inserted a cassette – play - dadaah...! An episode of 'Friends'... terrible picture quality, after all, it wasn't digital, but it was acceptable. In the episode, Ross was trying to sell cookies to help some girl go to Space Camp, and when it didn't work out, they converted Joey's room into a make-believe Space Camp with all the special effects. Aha. Funny. But worth keeping?

Then I went back downstairs to find Mum in the meantime had laid out dinner. She had now changed and was dressed in a light cotton form-fitting sleeveless dress which showed her great shape off to good advantage before flowing outwards around her bum and ending just above the knee. I felt a bit underdressed in just my shirt and shorts, but Mum didn't seem to mind, even though she'd set the table with a nice tablecloth and place-settings and everything. I think every now and then she liked to feel that she was out in a top restaurant – certainly her food wouldn't have disgraced a place with stars after its name...

There was even wine. We were just missing the candles.

"Mum, this looks so great."

"Thanks, it's nice to be appreciated..."

"Oh, you are. No one could replace you." I thought, then said, "One night I'm going to take you out to dinner – a movie and dinner..."

"Maybe dancing and dinner...?"

"Dancing?"

"I thought you wanted to introduce me to your mates so I could get some smooching in? I think I'm out of practice...I'm sure a bit of canoodling would help settle the stomach after dinner..."

She was winding me up – I think. "Canoodling?"

"It's a bit like smooching, but teasier."

She waswinding me up.

"You mean hotter...?"

"Well, canoodling introduces an element of slurping into the action, so I guess..."

By chance, I was at that moment tackling the tasty soup she'd served.

"You mean like this?" and sucked the soup noisily off the spoon.

"I think that would be the definitive passion-killer." She laughed. "More like..." and she licked around the complete circumference of her mouth, until the point of her tongue was caressing and wiggling along the top lip. "Oh my, now you've stopped eating..."

I had. In fact my spoon was now perched midway between my bowl and mouth and the soup was dribbling off it, much in the way my cum would likely start dribbling from my cock if she kept this up...

"Look, don't mind me, it's just that that talk of dancing got me all nostalgic... anddon'tsay, 'you need a fella'."

"I was going to say you need to get out of the house a bit more."

"Well that movie and dinner sounds appealing."

"A promise is a promise and I know how you hold me to my promises..."

She smiled.

The rest of the meal went by in easy conversation, but in the back of my mind the germ of an idea was already forming. After clearing the dishes and washing them (my part of the agreement where meals were concerned), I went back upstairs to my bedroom. Mmm, I could do that, and maybe that... yes...

Half an hour or so later, I came back down and went into the garage to look for some of my old junk. Coming back through the kitchen I picked up a couple more items and returned to my room.

Then it was back down again and into the kitchen cupboards. There. I knew we had some.

I prepared it then ran back upstairs. I pressed the switch. OK. Well, here goes...

"Mum, we're going to a movie."

"Now?"

"Yeah, and guess what? We're going in my Aston Martin DB5..."

"Your what...?"

I handed her my old toy model car and took her by the other hand.

"You're in the passenger seat. Just don't press that button there – it's the ejector seat..."

I guided her upstairs towards my room. "It's a drive-in movie, but it won't rain so we can keep the top down..."

I opened the door, and the only light was being emitted by my television screen. The sound was coming out of a couple of computer speakers I'd hooked up to the sides of my bed. Lined up in rows in front of the TV were various toy cars of different sizes and vintages. Others were dotted around the room.

"Looks like the feature's already started, so let's park the jalopy and settle down shall we?"

I indicated the bed where I'd stacked cushions and pillows to lean against. She giggled as I led her to one side of the bed and she stretched out on it, whipping her shoes off in the process. I threw myself down next to her. The speakers to either side of us let us know we were watching 'Ghostbusters'.

"It's an old movie, but that's what you get at a drive-in. Besides, I'm told most of the audience probably aren't really watching the movie anyway..."

I glanced at her with one raised eyebrow and she returned a look of apparent shock.

"From what I remember of drive-ins..."

"Wait." I reached under the bed and brought out the big bag of popcorn I'd just prepared, fresh from the microwave.

"I was going to mention 'Cola'..."

"Tut. This is a posh drive-in." I reached into my bedside cupboard and brought out the half-full bottle of wine from dinner, and two crystal glasses. I handed her one glass and then topped up both of them with the wine.

"That's true, I've never been to a drive-in this posh before. I mean, that Rolls in front of us, and the Ferrari... maybe we can dismiss the chauffeur?"

"You're right. James, bugger off..."

Mum laughed. Then we actually started watching the movie. Well, mum did. I think I was watching mum more. I enjoyed seeing her happy, but at the same time I was conscious of how her dress had slid up to mid-thigh, mid smooth, luscious, creamy thigh, when she'd climbed up onto the bed. We shared the popcorn, sometimes reaching into the bag at the same time and clashing knuckles, but nothing 'Lady and The Tramp'-ish. At one point Mum actually dropped a piece and it fell down into the front of her dress, the top of which just covered the beginning swells of her breasts. She straightened her back and pulled her dress out in order to look down the front. From my vantage point a full bosom came into view, supported by a lace-edged white bra. Mum then delved down into the bra and, with a bit of fiddling, located the errant piece and brought it back up into her mouth. I never wanted to be a piece of popcorn so much as at that moment.

"You know..." She turned her head towards me and maybe she saw where my gaze was concentrated before she said, "from myvastexperience of drive-in movies it tends to get a bit chilly around this time, so most people bring a blanket along with them. Of course though, in a posh place like this..." And she lifted her bum to pull back the blankets from underneath her and then drew her knees up to her chest, exposing her white panties as the dress fell back further into her crotch before thrusting her legs back into the bed. She then snuggled deeper down. I didn't see her adjust her dress under the bedclothes, so I guessed it must now be up as far as her waist.

"Of course, you being the macho man, you can freeze out there with a stiff upper lip..."

I thought to myself, Mum, believe me, it's not my upper lip that's stiff...

I moved off the bed, crouching a little in an attempt to hide my boner, and lifted the blankets at my side, giving me just a momentary glimpse of mum's dress which had indeed crumpled around her waist, with her brief panties, the side of which was more like a string, on full view. I got in beside her and we snuggled up. Mum put her head on my shoulder.

"This is so nice. Thanks Matt." She reached over and kissed me on the cheek. I put one arm around her shoulder and her head came in to rest against my chest. Her outside arm came over and placed itself onto the middle of my stomach where my shirt fastened, a couple of the fingers insinuating themselves in between the buttons and playing with a few of the hairs they found there. I felt across for the hand that lay between us and grasped it, linking her fingers through mine. We lay there contentedly, watching the movie play out.

Had she noticed the moment my hand had crept away from her shoulder and started entwining itself in her hair? I don't know. She seemed very intent on the TV screen. I think she did notice though when one finger of that hand began to encircle her ear, first on the outside and then around the inner rim, because it sent a pleasant shudder through her.

"Mmm, ooh, that tickles..." and she pressed in further towards me. The fragrance of her hair was intoxicating.

"Mum?"

"Yeah...?"

"It's all about ghosts..."

"Aha."

"Mum?"

"Yeah...?"

"I'm scared of ghosts..."

She pulled herself up slightly and turned her face towards me to see my most endearing little boy lost look.

She grinned. "There's no such thing as ghosts. And if there was, I'd protect you."

"But it's scary. I think I'll have to sleep in your bed tonight..."