Behind Drawn Curtains 1-2

　　According to my mother I was born on a cold but sunny day in January just over 17 years ago. She told me she was happy about it and could not wait to meet me after nine hours of labor. She said I smiled to her that very first moment that she took me in her arms. I just took her word for it. I can't remember it. It would have been weird if I had. But then again that would probably not have been the weirdest thing in my life. Life became way weirder from the moment that I could actually start remembering things.

　　I was 6 years old when my mother married James. My dad wasn't in his grave for a full year by then, and now that I think about it I have no memories of my dad either. I do have one of a Italian looking guy with a massive smile towering above me, but I had never been sure if that was an actual memory of my father or just some dream I made up in order to also have some sort of memory of a father.

　　James however was happy to play my father. That's what he said the day he asked me if he could marry my mother. I said yes. I liked him. He bought me ice cream and toys and even took be to the beach once. And he made my mom smile. She smiled a lot when he was around. It was good after the crying she had done in the months before James came around. He was an angel and he made my life some sort of heaven.

　　I remember the wedding. James took me and bought me my very first suit. I felt like a big boy that day when he asked me if I would do the big job of carrying the rings when he and my mom got married. I was happy to do so and the day they got married my mom looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her in my life. I smiled. She smiled. James smiled. Grandma was crying, but even she had a smile on her face. It was a happy day and I felt just as much part of the wedding than what the bride and groom felt. It was my wedding just as much as theirs. 

　　From that moment on I understood the word "fairytale" and all that went with it. It meant everybody smiling and us moving in to a bigger house that made me think of a castle. The dragon I called "tears" was slain and for the next five years I was possibly the happiest kid on earth. That was until Keith came. 

　　Keith was born on the 14th of February, just after my 11th birthday. My mom called him a baby of love and laughter, because he truly was. He laughed from the very day he was born, brightening up my mother's days. I can barely recall him ever crying about anything. But that was also the day things changed in my life. When my fairytale became a nightmare, and the curtains to my room in the tower was drawn never to be opened again.

　　The first night he came in was just after Keith was born. My mom was sleeping a lot, and when she wasn’t sleeping she was busy with Keith. Changing diapers, washing diapers, making dinner, the usual stuff, but more off it. I could see James was down. He wasn’t himself at all. He hadn’t been himself since my mom fell pregnant with Keith. The smallest thing set him off. He looked like he wanted to cry at times. Maybe becoming a father was just as much of a change in one’s life than when you become a mother? I can still remember the date, because that first time never leaves you. You remember it for the rest of your life. You remember waking up to the smell of his cologne and the bed moving slightly back and forth, as if he was trying to rock you asleep. I can still feel his one hand moving up and down my bare chest, although I had no idea how my shirt had gotten unbuttoned.

　　“Shh,” he said to me. “This is our little secret. Because I love you the most. Of everyone in this house I love you most.”

　　He looks you in the eye, still rubbing your bare chest, moving his hand slowly downwards while the bed is still rocking, daring you with his eyes to look down where he was seated on his knees over your thighs to see what was making the rocking.

　　You feel the blood drain from your face and your body as you see his dick in his hand, being stroked up and down, up and down, up and down; mesmerizing. You feel the smile on his face, although you can’t look at it while he is pulling down your shorts and underwear, putting his hand on you in an attempt to do the very same thing to you as what he is doing with himself.

　　You have no control over what is happening. You are frozen in time. You know it’s wrong, but you can’t seem to get a single word out. You are hating your body for playing along with him. You hate your brain for telling you that this somehow feels good.

　　He starts shaking his hands faster and faster, until the life comes back into your body and he is breathing harder and harder, and your back lifts, pushing yourself deeper into his hand. And then it’s sticky all over.

　　He gets up, leaving you exposed to the cold of the night. Making the humiliation even more as he stares up and down your sticky body, trying to capture the scene to maybe use it again later on. But you feel numb. You can’t move. Your legs are like jelly. Even when he kisses you goodnight on the mouth and tells you that you had better clean yourself up before your mother finds you like this you cannot move. Not even when he threatens that if my mom finds out she will throw me out of the house can I bring myself to move my eyes from my stomach and torso where the sticky evidence confronted me of the terrible deed that I did. Even when he closes the door behind him, promising that this is our little secret and we are going to have lots of fun together in the future do you move. You just lay there. Paralyzed from the neck down, wishing that it was all just a bad dream and that by morning your body won’t be sticky anymore, and the man you have called your dad for the past few years would by morning just be a normal dad-type man again…

　　When morning came James was a dad again and he wasn’t nearly as on edge as he had been in the last few months. He was the James that came into our lives at the very beginning. He made pancakes for breakfast, ruffled my hair, and made jokes that made me giggle and almost forget about what happened the previous night. By lunch time I could easily make myself believe that everything had just been a dream, and if not that, it was just a once off thing that would never happen again. By the evening he surprised me with an iPod, something I had been asking for at Christmas and my birthday but never got. James was happy, I was happy and my mom was smiling as she gave Keith his bottle.

　　That night however the bad dream started all over again. I fell asleep with my earphones in my ears, listening to the latest music on my new iPod. I didn’t hear him come in and by the time I woke up I was sticky all over as he thanked me with a kiss, reminded me to clean up the mess and left the room. I hated myself for not waking up, and at the same time I was glad that I didn’t have to lay through the whole ordeal. Maybe it was better this way, if I was just asleep while it all happened, just waking up to clean myself of the sticky white evidence that showed the sins of my father.

　　This became the norm for me for the next year or so. Every night James would come in and sit over me. Every night I would have to clean his and my mess from my body with the cloth I started keeping under my bed and washing by hand when I went to take a shower. Every single night for more than a year I dreaded going to sleep, but my room filled up with more and more of the stuff I always wanted to have. Out of all my friends I was the spoiled one. I became the one who had it all. The one who should have been the happiest of all of us.

　　It was just after I turned twelve that the routine started to chance. Just like every night I woke up with James sitting on me, stroking himself and me at the same time.

　　“You’re becoming a man,” he said, a smile on his face.

　　Like always I didn’t talk to him when he was busy with his dirty little hobby. I just started.

　　“Look. You’re growing hair,” he said, pointing down, trying to show me what he was seeing. “You’re becoming a man now.”

　　I looked down and saw what he was talking about. Beneath the piece of flesh he was holding in his hand, there it was. Hair starting to sprout at the base he was holding. I wasn’t shocked. I knew that it was bound to happen sometimes, but I had no idea that it would happen so fast.

　　“You know what that means right?” James asked, a smile on his lips.

　　I looked at him, a question mark in my face, asking him what on earth that meant without using a single word.

　　“You’re a man now. You should take over,” James said as he took my hand and put it on his shaft, grunting as my soft skin touched him.

　　I just rested my hand. Not doing anything. I could not bring myself to do it. It was still okay if it was him doing it to me, but I did not want to be a part of what he was doing. Wanking him would make me feel like I was saying I was okay with all of this, and I was not. It made me feel dirty and sad, and cheap.

　　“Stroke it boy,” James said when nothing happened, but still I did not move my hand. “Stroke it or else…”

　　There was a warning in his voice, but I could not bring myself to stroke him. I kept my hand still, grasping it, but not moving. Keeping myself paralyzed as I did every single night.

　　His hand moved. Fast. Like a cobra. He had me in his hand. All of me. And he was squeezing.

　　“Ahhh,” I moaned in pain, my eyes starting to tear. “Please, don’t.”

　　“Want me to stop?” he asked, but he kept on squeezing, making me gasp for air.

　　“Yes… Yes… Please stop…” I begged, both my hands now on his wrist, trying my best to stop him hurting me.

　　“Then do what a man does. Stroke it,” he said.

　　And I did. I stoke him and he let go. I stroke him until my arm felt numb and he came and the sticky mess was not just over my chest and my stomach but also over my hand and my arm. Then he left with a kiss goodnight, promising to buy me something nice since I am a man now.

　　I crawled out of bed and wiped the stickiness away, hoping for the pain in my crotch to go away while I hid under the bed in a panic that he would come back for more since I had not produced the sticky substance that he had. I cried and cried until I fell asleep under the bed out of pure exhaustion.

　　So another year passed where what happened after my twelve birthday became my new normal. Every night he would let himself in. He stroked me and I stroked him. He always ended it with a kiss goodnight, reminding me that he loved me more than anybody else, while I wanted nothing more than to tell him that I hated him the most of anybody in the house. And then tomorrow would come and he would be the perfect dad, buying me gifts while my mom had tea with her friends telling them how close I was with my stepdad and how much he loved and spoiled me. If only she knew just how much he really loved me.