Page 64 of Like Fathers, Like Son
“I dunno. I’d… I want us to be, yeah. It’s complicated though.”
Ember looked unconvinced, but then we didn’t really talk like this, did we?
“How have you been? Still seeing that therapist?”
She rolled her eyes at me, digging her phone from her pocket and fussing with it.
“Yeah. For all the good it does, I mean, she’s all ‘it’s okay not to be okay’, and I’m like… well, she doesn’t know shit about my life, right? That’s where the others are, by the way; family session with Ash and the twins. Ash got into another fight at school, and they’re threatening to kick him out, and well, you know that Phoenix prefers wearing skirts and stuff, and that’s causing trouble for both of them, so yeah. Usual shit, right?”
Jesus. Our parents were great people, so why’d they end up stuck with so many fucked up kids? Was so much of this my fault, because of the whole thing I could have protected my family from?
I clenched my fists, staring at my knuckles and wondering if I should get them tattooed too, maybe with something outing me as the bad seed I really was.
“I’ve never… Em, I fucking failed you back then, and I never took ownership of that. I should have, and, fuck, I’m so sorry. I should have just told them I was being bullied like that, and we could have kept you from walking into that hellhole, and, well yeah.”
Ember looked up from her phone, and wrinkled her nose.
“What would that have achieved? Assholes are everywhere, bro, and even if I’d been able to go to another school, I’d still have faced it somehow. You can’t just choose another school, you know. It’s all about postcode areas and shit.” Huh. I knew that, but I guess I was so busy blaming myself that I’d pushed that logic aside. I knew I had a tendency to do that.
“Still, I could have made sure you were prepared, or had mum and dads talk to the school or something. I was so busy trying to man up and soldier on, that I never even thought about what it would be like for you.”
She’d turned away during my little speech, but I saw a brief side-eye from her when I finished.
“Still… so many of the assholes from school seem to have died mysteriously this year, so I guess they got theirs, right? Rumour has it that a certain someone was found with a poker shoved so far up his ass, he probably choked on it.”
My baby sister… what a way with words.
Anneka
MUM MANAGED A SHORT walk, and then I made lunch for us, and we curled up in front of the tv to binge watchSchitts Creek, making it the perfect day together.
I’d booked the day off work to try and do some planning for the future, but since it was a good day for mum, that became my priority.
I still hadn’t told her about the pregnancy, and I wasn’t sure how to broach that subject since I’d have to answer for who the father was, and I didn’t know if I was ready to say any of that out loud yet.
She didn’t even know Blaze and I had seen each other since they moved away, and she’d always thought he seemed a little ‘strange’, so there was no way she’d see his reappearance as anything other than worrying.
That night as I went to bed, having changed the bedding to get rid of not only the smell of Blaze’s cologne, but also the dried cum he’d left behind, I idly wondered if he’d return, and how I’d feel if he did.
My dreams that night were insanely weird and twisted, and among the parts that made so little sense, I had fragments of moments where Blaze was here, and he was touching me, kissing me, making love to me. It wasn’t the rough brutal sex from before, it was sweet, and gentle…loving, even.
He’d got into my head so completely that I was dreaming about him, and romanticising our twisted ‘relationship’ into something beautiful in my mind, and in my subconscious. Was I disappointed when I realised he hadn’t actually come to my room that night?
No, for a very clear and disturbing reason. I woke up naked, but covered up, and his scent was all over me. Even creepier, when I pulled back the covers, once more there was dried semen on me, and on the bedding. Maybe they weren’t dreams at all, but why couldn’t I remember everything? Why was it so disjointed and confusing? How had he been here, and had sex with me, and I had no real memory of it?
There was only one possible reason, and it was even more horrifying than him forcing himself inside me the night before. He’d drugged me and taken what he wanted, leaving me used and covered in his fluids, like I was nothing more than some cheap whore.
Why did that hurt even more than the other things he’d done to me? I curled up in the shower, letting the sound of the water drown out my gasping sobs, as my heart broke all over again.
38
Blaze
Afterthatchatwithmy sister, I’d realised something important about the way I’d been treating Anneka, that my cruelty, that side of me that I was struggling to suppress around her, was causing her more harm every time I was with her.
How could I be with her and fill her with my seed, and yet not brutalise her and terrify her the way I had before? I already knew I couldn’t stay away again tonight, that I needed to be with her, and I needed to sleep wrapped around her again, but I couldn’t hurt her again. Not if I ever wanted her to return my rapidly re-emerging feelings and love me, right?
When I sneaked into her room, I watched her sleeping peacefully, and yearned to touch her and taste her, but I knew I had to be good to her and protect her from that dark side of me that always came out when she was naked.
