Busted

Cami Delmore had never looked more beautiful. Chocolate brown hair, strawberry red lips, icy blue eyes, and a body deserving of the many bikinis she wore in these modeling photos. Owen Finley sat in front of his computer clicking through these photos while having a wide-awake wet dream. Something about this felt so wrong, yet it was so right. This was the perfect way to wake up in the morning. Every day, pictures of Cami making his life so wonderful. And then…

“Owen!” shouted a feminine voice from the bedroom doorway. The teenager turned around and covered himself up with his hands while his stepmother stared him down with a look of shock and seriousness. “Breakfast is on the table. It’s oatmeal and honey. Come on down before it gets cold,” said Cami before shutting the bedroom door.

“Come on down? Is she kidding me?” panicked Owen as his arousal went flat. He scrambled as fast as he could to find clothing for the day. Black jeans? Check. A Green Day T-shirt? Check. Sneakers? Check. He never dressed himself so quickly in his lifetime. Was there time to eat the honey oatmeal? “Fuck the oatmeal, I’m out of here!” he said to himself.

He grabbed his backpack and bolted toward the door, but stopped midway knowing Cami’s judging eyes would be zeroed in on him throughout the morning. His hand trembled on the doorknob at the thought of being scrutinized by her. He’d probably never get an erection again, nor would he want one. Maybe his balls would be cut off with an olive fork. Maybe his dick would be broken with a meat tenderizer. Maybe his face would be slashed open with a butcher knife.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god…” Owen murmured while trying to think of a better escape route. Of course! The window! He snapped his fingers at the idea and made a beeline for the fresh air outside. He didn’t care if it was a tall drop to the outside; he jumped anyways. A sore ankle was better than being castrated by his own stepmother and it was the former he got. He hobbled and limped towards the bus stop looking like hell.

The whole school day was nothing but a numbed out blur. Math homework? What math homework? Gym class? Who needs that? US history? The revolutionary war actually happened? No shit! Owen almost got in trouble in class several times for his incessant shaking. The laughter from his various classmates made him tremble that much harder. But when asked about his quirky behavior, he kept giving false answers and otherwise remained tightlipped. He kept looking down at his own crotch to make sure he didn’t get an erection in the middle of a lecture.

By the time the school bus dropped him back off at his house, Owen took his sweet time getting to the front door. The front door? He couldn’t go there. Cami was probably waiting for him with a pair of surgical scissors. These thoughts brought a weakness to his stomach and jitteriness to his legs. Where was the goddamn ladder when he needed it? He snapped his fingers once again as he remembered it was in the tool shed.

He heaved the clumsy metal object towards his bedroom window and became winded after the anaerobic exercise for the day. Owen’s heavy breathing was for more reasons than that. He tried so hard to calm his stomach down and shake the feeling back in his rolled ankle. By the time he actually started climbing, the ankle pain flared up like a burning building, almost to where he fell off several times. He hurried as fast as he could up the metal device and successfully made it through the window.

Owen’s energy was completely sapped from his body and all he wanted to do was lie in bed and sleep it off. If he never woke up again, it would mean never having to talk to Cami. Mission accomplished. Not one awkward conversation was had. Not one genital was snipped. Not one more look of anger from the object of misplaced affection. Or at least so he thought.

“We need to talk,” was the quote the snapped him awake. Sure enough, Cami was standing right there in his doorway with her arms folded and her face emboldened. Now Owen really started to sweat. His eyebrows shot up to the ceiling while his eyeballs moistened and trembled. This was it. He was a dead man. He crawled backwards toward the window only to have Cami yell, “Hey!” at him several times and drag him back inside by his ankles.

“Let me go, damn it! Let me the fuck go!” shouted Owen, but nobody could hear him and he wasn’t going anywhere with Cami pinning his legs together on the bed. He tried screaming some more. “I’m sorry! I’m fucking sorry! Now please let me go!” It was no use. Cami held her hand over Owen’s mouth and the only other screams that came were capital M’s. He could thrash around all he wanted, but there was no escape from what he perceived to be a trip to the gallows. Owen couldn’t help but let a few soggy tears out.

And then Cami’s demeanor changed when she removed her hand from Owen’s mouth and instead petted his puffy black hair. She whispered, “It’s okay” to him over and over again until the stepson stopped shaking. His tears wouldn’t stop coming, but he was at least calm enough to sit on the bed and have a real conversation with the new family member he masturbated to this morning. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes. He kept his head down and allowed his tears to stain his jeans.

“Owen? Look at me,” she said, finally getting his semi-relaxed attention. “I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?”

“Not at all. I was more worried about you than I was angry. You left this morning without eating your breakfast. Come here,” she said while hugging her crying stepson around the shoulders. “You don’t need to be afraid to talk to me. I may not have given birth to you myself, but I’m still your mother. Nothing will ever change that, do you understand?”

Owen wiped the tears away with his wrist and sobbed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Look, I know you don’t take kindly to being embarrassed and that’s okay. You’re a sensitive guy and I respect that. But we need to talk about what happened this morning. I saw what you did and I saw who you were doing it to. Can we please just talk about this and not avoid each other anymore?”

Snorting snot up his nose, Owen said, “Fine. Let’s talk.”

Cami hugged her stepson some more and rocked him back and forth while she talked. “There’s nothing wrong with masturbating, Owen. It’s perfectly normal. Everybody does it whether they like to admit it or not. I bet there’re some preachers in our neighborhood who do it too even though they don’t say anything. I’m sorry I walked in on you like that. I’ll knock next time, okay?”

She kissed him on top of his head and rocked him some more. “But here’s the part I want you to understand. You and I can never be together that way. You know that, right? It would tear our family apart. Your dad would divorce me and he’d never forgive either of us. On top of that, you’re only fourteen years old, Owen. You’re way too young to have sex, let alone with someone my age. I’ll still be your mother and you’ll still be my son. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Owen’s cheeks burned a bright red as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Cami. I really am. I feel stupid right now…”

“Hey,” said Cami while pointing her stepsons chin up with her delicate fingers. “You’re not stupid. I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. You’re a teenager. This is what teenagers do. You’re just figuring out the world around you. And that’s okay. Besides, it’s not my place to tell you what you can and can’t fantasize about.” She pointed at his head and said, “What goes in on here is nobody else’s business but your own. Your mind is the last sanctuary you have.”

Owen’s jaw stopped convulsing and he could actually get words out this time. “I don’t know, Cami. I’m taking this sex ed class, right? And I don’t even want to ask anything in front of everybody because they’re a bunch of giggly assholes. Besides, the teacher won’t stop talking about abstinence and STD’s and shit. Yeah, like that’s going to do a lot of good. I’m already fucked up as it is!” Owen’s last sentence was punctuated by him kicking his own backpack and Cami holding him even tighter to calm him down.

“Sounds to me like you’re not getting a real education out of that class. I want you to listen to me, Owen. Forget everything that teacher taught you. There’s more to sex than just getting green stuff on your penis. There’s more to romance than waiting until you’re married. That’s all bullshit and it doesn’t work. If you see a girl at school that you like, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to her. Treat her like an equal and she’ll treat you the same way. I should probably have a talk with the principal at your school.”

“No, Cami, you can’t do that! If the rest of the school finds out you…”

Cami shushed her stepson three times and petted his hair some more. “Nobody else has to know that I talked with him. It’ll just be a one on one conversation. They shouldn’t be teaching that abstinence crap anyways. It’s not realistic. There’s a lot they’re not talking about that they should. Do you even know how to use a condom?”

Owen shook his head and Cami sighed in disgust. “Yeah,” she said. “I should definitely have a talk with that principal. In the meantime, you’ve got homework to do. I’ll leave you alone and let you do that. And remember, if you have any questions that you don’t want to share in front of the class, you can share them with me. Okay? I love you.” She kissed him on the head again and proceeded towards the bedroom door. “Good talk tonight, son. Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Uh, Cami?”

“Yes?”

“C….could you not tell dad about what happened this morning?”

Cami smiled and made a lip-zipping motion to solidify her silence. She then waved at him and closed the bedroom door behind her. Owen plopped backwards on his bed and breathed heavy sighs of relief. Embarrassment still clung to him tightly and the tears still hadn’t dried up. But at least now he knew what he needed to do. He slowly picked his exhausted body off the bed and proceeded to delete all of Cami’s pictures from his computer. “I need this family. I love her too much for this bullshit,” Owen said to himself.

Silent Warrior, Final Chapter

“Good morning to you…good morning to you…good morning, dear Alan…”

“G…g…good morning to you!”

“Alan, why are you so sad?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sad? This isn’t good morning. It’s fucking dark in here, Ally! I don’t see any sunshine! I don’t hear any cock-a-doodle-doos! Instead all I hear are screams. It could be another prisoner screaming in pain. It could be a guard screaming bullshit instructions. Or it could be me screaming ‘cause I’m constantly in fucking pain! Why, Ally? Why all the worms and maggots?”

“I’m a biologist. I deal with such creatures on a daily basis. I’m not going to just sacrifice my life’s work because you find earth’s critters disgusting. Everything in this world has its own special place. It could be a bat eating mosquitoes. It could be a pack of wolves hunting down deer. It could even be something as natural as a mother bird regurgitating worms into her babies’ beaks.”

“Cut the bullshit! You know how disgusting you really are! Scott had it right all along and I didn’t listen to him! He’s got more common sense than the two of us put together!”

“Don’t you talk to me that way, little boy! If I wasn’t a hallucination, I’d wash your chubby mouth out with soap! I left Scott George on his own for the same reason I left his father Carter. They rejected me, just like you’re rejecting me now. I tried to keep the peace between you and Scott. I even showed up at his trial to put in the best possible word for you. But you threw that all away when you tried to stab him in your cell. Now you’re in the darkest part of jail and you’ve no one to blame but yourself!”

“It should be Scott in this room, not me!”

“Then prove it, Alan! Scott became the man he is today because he fought for everything he believed in whether it was right or wrong. Now’s your time to fight. You may be under lock and key, but your war with Scott is far from over. As long as your mind continues to destroy you from the inside, you have all the reason in the world to fight. You don’t want these images and words, do you? Forget the worms and maggots for a minute. Your real enemy isn’t anything that can be found in the animal kingdom. It’s your own weakness!”

“Weakness? I’ve been beating ass since the day I was born and you have the gall to call me weak? What about all the crybabies on the playground who threw a fit because they couldn’t hang with me? What about all the teachers who care more about precious self-esteem than they do about the real world? Why aren’t you calling them weak?”

“Because they’re not weak, Alan. They have the kind of strength you could only dream of having: strength in numbers. You’re only one man trying to fight an entire world. But if Mr. Simpson has taught you anything, it’s to pick apart the army one soldier at a time. Mr. Simpson may have softened over this long exhausting semester, but that doesn’t mean you have to. I want you to take every ounce of your insanity and use it as a weapon. Fists alone have achieved nothing.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in solitary confinement! You even said yourself you’re a fucking hallucination! Who am I supposed to use this weapon on? There’s nobody here with me! Even the guards have tuned me out, for Christ’s sake!”

“You can’t stay in solitary confinement forever, Alan. Even the strictest prosecutors know this to be true. For what you did, you won’t even be in jail forever. You may be a destructive bastard, but you’ve never once murdered another human being. Implanting suicidal thoughts in someone else doesn’t count. I’m talking about the worst kind of murder there is. I’m talking about animalistic rage that can only be forged in darkness like this. Channel that rage and don’t let the world get away with locking you up like this!”

“…You want me to survive this place…by beating the shit out of everyone here? You want me to find my exit by pushing around people more powerful than me?”

“This isn’t the sandbox, Alan. This is jail. If you don’t stand up for yourself here, nobody else will. The guards aren’t here for your protection. They’re here to make sure you conform. They’re here to use you as a punching bag whenever they damn well feel like it. You’re not going to let that happen, are you?”

“…Never…I never wanted to be a part of society…I never wanted to follow anyone’s rules…Why should these assholes in uniform be any different? Is it because they have keys? Is it because they have so-called training? Is it because they’re tougher than me?! I don’t fucking think so!”

“Good! That’s what I want to hear from you! That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear from you since I married your father! Nobody pushes my baby around! And when I say baby, I’m not talking about that ungrateful snake Scott! I’m talking about by one true baby. The one I’ll forever cherish. The one I’ll forever spoil and love. Alan…this is your time. Don’t screw it up!”

Alan Young awoke in his solitary confinement cell with rough stubble on his chin, razor sharp hairs poking out of his bald head, and his heart beating a combination of fire and nitro glycerin. He breathed heavily like a wounded animal. He lusted for violence and aggression with bloodshot eyes. He smiled so hideously that he could smell his own sour breath.

Only a small patch of light illuminated the room through the barred window to the outside. Even though the sun was barely rising over the landscape, Alan still had lost track of how much time he spent cooped up in here. No clocks, no indication from the guards, only the occasional shitty meal which was inconsistent with the rest of the feedings.

Alan stood his clumsy body up and grabbed hold of the bars while staring out into the horizon. He held his stepmother’s words deep inside him until his very core was hot enough to melt away the last of his sanity. What once was a heart was now a heap of ashes. What once was a racing mind was now a zombie’s rage. The urge to kill had taken over his entire body. Just one taste of blood…anybody’s blood…

Surely another prisoner would satisfy his violent appetite just fine. He even believed some of the guards deserved a few undead thrashings. But the ultimate dessert at the end of this blood-soaked meal would be none other than Scott Marcus George. All Alan needed was one opening to strike. One tiny mistake made by another occupant of this hellhole. The rest would come as naturally as breathing.

“Scotty-Boy…I’m coming for you…and not even your marsh-dwelling girlfriend will be able to save your skinny ass this time!” Alan ranted as he shook the bars like a steroid-pumped professional wrestler. “I’m coming for you, motherfucker!”

THE END?