The Misbegotten

She closed the last drawer with a degree of finality now that the task before us we finished. She peered over her shoulder at me with a smile like those she used to give me when were an item. It graced the lower half of her visage with a false brilliance I could almost see. It was a happy one. The type I used to see before she had burst into the Loft, her family murdered in cold blood, running for her life.

An hour had passed, since she’d asked, “What did she do to you?”

We had reached the stairwell leading up to my 3rd floor bedroom.

I turned at the waist, but continued up the stairs. “I can’t say for sure.” I had shrugged the words out of me. “It was like she distracted me, but more thorough. It was like she took all thought away from me and made me think only of her.”

Tirza had tsked. “So she could find out if she liked you or not?”

“I guess.”

“Sounds a little dramatic to me,” she added.

We attained the landing before the Loft door, which stood at our left. The entrance to the Attic was at our right; an identical door barred that way as well.

I opened the door and let her in.

She passed me, twisting her shoulders, not wanting to touch me for some reason. Tirza was like that. When she didn’t want physical contact with someone, she barred all physical contact.

“Well, it wasn’t as bad as they were making it out to be downstairs.” I wanted to clarify the situation for her for some reason. Maybe I felt embarrassed for Leda.

Tirza had spun on the ball of one foot, her sock twisting underneath. “Oh I bet, who wouldn’t want the chance screw Leda Quintanilla.” Then she spun back around and made her way to Katie’s bed where her and my step-sister had piled a bunch of Flavia’s castoffs.

“That’s not what I meant, Teezee.”

“Whatever.” She tried to appear as though she didn’t care.

I could see it though, concealed behind her bland expression. She cared. It bothered her. I’d begun to wonder why.

We had both stood before Katie’s bed gazing down at the large pile of clothing.

I knew there wouldn’t be room in the chest-of-drawers my mother had provided for Katie. I’d stood there mulling over what to do for a few minutes. Then, I remembered the old dresser my mom had pulled out of Lucia’s bedroom after her and my step-father had purchased new furniture for her. She had me and Johan lug it up to the Attic, because she had decided to keep it to store old linens and tablecloths in it. According to my practical mother, it “still had some years of use in it”.

The chest of drawers itself was in the large Attic, the one across from the Loft to be exact. This was not the one we had planned to stash the girls should my parents come up unannounced to our private sanctum.

From an architectural standpoint, the Loft was part of the Attic as well. But its' building was within the roomiest confines of the area. Thus, my bedroom bisected the Attic, its’ walls cutting it in two. This was why we differentiated between the two sections when describing them to others.

Anyhow, true to form though, my Mother proved once again she wasn’t all that speedy when it came to completing her projects. She had promptly forgotten about dresser. So now, six months later, it stood against the far corner of the Attic, facing the door, empty and unused.

Tirza and I pushed and pulled it into the Loft, across the huge room and had placed next to Katie’s. That had taken some time, but we had time on our hands.

With the task done now, a much different Tirza stared back at me as she stood, rubbing her hands. It was a gesture one would see just about every time another completed of a given task.

“Do you like the dresser?” I asked, hackneyed, not sure what to say, not wanting to ruin her mood.

The tiny teenager glanced back at it. “It’s nice.”

Tirza not only had a wardrobe now, but a decent place to store it.

I grinned, unsteady at the girl before me, hooked my thumbs in my waistband. My perverted mind took note that I’d done something analogous with Leda’s panties not too long ago. I yanked my hands upward, clapping my palms together, shaking the memory. The sound was too loud for the confines of the Loft.

Tirza’s quizzical cast told me she hadn’t missed my discomfort.

I didn’t want to think about Leda at the moment, even though my cock spasmed in my shorts.

Her pale skin was so beautiful underneath the dark hue of my hands, so pliant and yet strong… Her pussy had been so wet…

I teetered from one foot to the other, like an electrocuted puppet. “So… uh, now what?” I wondered, trying to clear my thoughts of the dark-haired beauty I had come so close to bedding.

Tirza was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I guess we just wait for the girls to finish pissing in the sand.”

I laughed, thinking of the girls squatting down to mark their territory. Then the thought matured and I saw myself in the middle of the “who would get what” bullshit.

I don’t like golden showers, people! I’ve never been into that shit.

They had better figure something out and fast. To be honest, I didn’t want to have to deal with stupid backbiting and territorialism. This wasn’t the time for crap of that magnitude. It could get us all killed.

Tirza must’ve noticed a change in my face, because her next question seemed to piggy-back on my thoughts.

“How does it make you feel, Estefan, knowing all those girls want to be with you? Does it bother you that they are willing to share you between them? Must make you feel like some sort of Superman, huh?”

I grimaced, my lips down-turning. “Naw, girl, I’m not that way. You know that, Tirza,” I replied. “I mean, I’m not going to lie, okay? I like girls. I adore them. I like being around them, talking with them, being with them. You know that as well, I guess.

“But, this shit is different, this Mutation thing has tipped the scales in a way I didn’t think I could tip them.” I stared at her, imploring as she sat on Katie’s seldom used bed. “I’m used to chasing after you guys, you know? I’m used to the pursuit and the capture thing. I like reaping the rewards of getting a girl to like me, of getting her to want to be with me. This shit is nothing like that.”

She tapped the bed with the palm of her hand. It was an old signal between us. She wanted me to sit and talk with her.

I capitulated without thinking.

“I’m not sure how to deal with things when I girl just comes up to me and begs for me to pound her. Because I always worked so hard at it in the past, it unnerves me. It scares me, the more I think about it.” I peered through a wrinkled brow. “I don’t like the possibilities, Teezee. I think that’s what scares me the most.”

She was grim, sitting with one leg tucked beneath her, her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes glossed over like someone delving through the layers of the past, lost in memory, trying to reconcile an unforgiving present.

I allowed the silence to grow, hoping she wouldn’t continue to think I was a douche. This was much more than me muttering Katie’s name while her and I were making love. Things were much more complicated now, dangerous. There were four girls downstairs, hashing through the “do’s” and “don’ts” of their time with me. They were discussing how they were going to share me, how they were going to divide up my time. They were even finalizing how they were going to allow the others to bed me! It was a civilized discourse, considered with calm and careful deliberation. I was the motherfucken Christmas ham for fuck’s sake.

Come and get it! It’s your turn to jump on this rock hard cock!

“And there will be more…” That’s what Ramona had said. There would be more.

No there won’t!

Well…

“The fact that it scares you is a good thing, Effy,” Tirza finally spoke. She must’ve weighed the situation in her head and had come to some sort of conclusion.

I bobbed my head in assent, thankful for at least a moderate response and not one of condemnation.

“But, if you had an ability like Leda’s, to force someone to not think, would you have used it to say… save my family?” Moisture clouded the brown of her irises, making them lighter.

“Yes.” There was no need to say more.

She cleared her throat. “If it had been a gun bearing, gang of women bursting into my house that night what would you have done? You’d have used your Mutation and made them lust after you to save my family, am I right?”

I could see where she was going with this. “Yeah, I would’ve.”

“Do you think you could make yourself use it against a girl just so you could bang her?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered, a little afraid of questioning the darker side of me. Could I do that? If I wanted someone real bad could I force her to fuck me? Was I that sort of person? Could I live with myself afterward? Could I rape? Was it rape?

“What if she made you mad? What if she hurt you in some way? Could you do it then?” She edged closer, but it was more out of emphasizing her point than anything else.

I went on pondering what she’d proposed. “I guess, it would have to know the severity offense, right? I mean what had she done to hurt me? Did she hurt one of my siblings or had she just insulted me? My reaction to either would be very, very different.”

Tirza’s face brightened as if I had hit some proverbial nail on the head. “It’s like owning a gun, huh?”

My face clouded, perplexed.

“You have to respect a gun enough to know when to use and when not to, correct?”

Some of the clouds in my head cleared.

“Pulling out a gun at the wrong time could cause an escalation that could lead to fatal consequences…,” she trailed off. She sat back, more centered down her spine. “Sex is your weapon now, Estefan.” She shivered. “I can’t believe I just said something like that. It’s like it’s no different than making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

I chuckled, but she had me thinking and my mirth evaporated.

“But, it’s true,” she added. Her voice was quieter, giving my face a once-over. “You’ll have to treat your Mutation like a weapon. No, you have to use it like a weapon of mass destruction, because, from what the girls told me, you’re pretty strong.” She plucked at something invisible on her skirt. “I mean look at what Leda did just so she could know if her own feelings were real. You have to be pretty darn powerful to push her to do such an outrageous thing to you.”

“So will you,” I reminded her.

Her face bunched. She was so pretty.

“A tracker,” I began, “at least that’s what Mona said you’d be.”

“I know, but a tracker of what?”

My lips twisted wryly. “Of everything if I remember right.”

Tirza leaned back on a hand, her elbow locked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I have no idea, but it sounds ominous all the same.” I snickered, playing with the end of a thread, twirling it around my forefinger.

“I can’t even begin to understand what she meant by ‘tracker’. I don’t feel anything different inside me, even after I got sick.” She spoke with a drop of sorrow in her tone.

I knew she was remembering her life before her Mutation began to manifest, before her family was massacred.

“It’ll come, Teezee, whether you want it to or not, it will.”

After all, mine had, and I almost drove Katie insane with lust because of it.

She grunted with discontentment. “I hate the inevitability of all this shit. It’s like we have no choice. It’s like ‘here you go, bitch, your life had no changed forever’.” Her voice dropped an octave, mimicking somebody without much of an intellect. “I hate it!”

“Yeah, things were a lot easier a few weeks ago,” I agreed, rubbing at my neck. It was getting stiff from sitting half on and half off the bed. I cracked it and lay down on the mattress to ease the pressure on my spine.

“I don’t know if ‘easier’ is the right word, Estefan,” she retorted. Her words she measured as if she was holding back a floodwater of emotion. It made her sound raw, like the sundering of something critical.

I felt stupid for saying something as dense and uncaring as I had. My choice of words was an affront to her, a gross understatement. What the fuck was wrong with me?!? She had lost her entire family over the course of days. These were the same days that had gone from being easy to a nuisance for me. What was I thinking? Her parents, her sister – they all were gone. And all I could say in summation of such a monumentous loss was it wasn’t easy anymore! Sonofabitch! I had never felt like such a complete idiot than I had that afternoon.

“Tirza, I’m so sorry,” was my inadequate attempt at reconciliation.

She pinched the bridge of her nose as tears fell onto her lap.

I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to touch her or not. She could turn downright berserk if she didn’t want someone touching her. I just sat there, repeating myself, saying I was sorry for being obtuse, sorry for what had happened to her. I promised I would never leave her side, vowing to be the best friend she could ever have.

She cried for a while longer, then took a huge draught of air and shuddered with its release.

I watched with the eyes of an eagle, searching for the tiniest notion of a breakdown.

She surprised me by pulling herself back together. She gazed at me, her expression open for once. The hurt hadn’t melted from her face nor had the haunted afterglow diminished in her eyes. It was Tirza stripped down, bared to me, vulnerable with the hope things would get better. Her innermost feelings were finally exposed for me to see.

I hadn’t seen her look this vulnerable since the day she told me she was ready to lose her virginity. The day she told me she wanted me to be the one to take it from her.

“You have no idea how much I wish things could be like they were eighteen months ago,” she whispered. She was so hushed I don’t think I would’ve heard it if I’d been standing.

Startled, guessing at why she would think back to when we had been together, I turned onto my side, toward her. “Really, why?” I had to ask. It was too intriguing.

“Things were much simpler then, Estefan,” she replied, her face thoughtful. “We were so naïve and new to the world. You know that place where things seemed all shiny and crystal clear, so easy to figure out?”

I didn’t respond. I wanted her to continue.

“You and I had just taken that last step in our relationship. We were both kicking ass on the track team. We even shared the same friends,” she went on.

I knew I had the right of it by staying silent.

“You remember, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

She flung her hair from one side, then to the other. It was something she did when a given topic of discussion made her happy or enthusiastic. “Everyone was so excited when we finally decided to date. When we began to thrive as a couple, they all said we looked good together. Even C-Tip said we’d have beautiful children, remember?” Her chest filled with air, her eyes cast up toward the ceiling. She lost herself in the past. She exhaled, quivering. “I mean, we both knew it was something far, far in the future. But didn’t it feel like something realistic, Estefan, like it was just over the horizon?”

“Yeah.”

“I liked those days,” she ruminated with an idle scratching behind her ear.

“Those were good times,” I reminisced alongside her.

“Do you remember when we went bike riding, down by that manmade creek?” she asked, life returning to her. At once, she was the tiny, teenage girl I had fallen in love with years past.

I felt excitement arise within me as the recollection washed over me. “I sure do!” I exclaimed. “We had snuck out of our houses and rode our bikes down to the ‘creek’ at like… jeez, what time was it?”

“It was after 1am, I know that for sure,” she answered, her smile splitting her face from ear to ear.

“Holy shit, Teezee, and we were what, fifteen, at the time?”

“I was fourteen,” she corrected.

“Damn, we were just little brats. And there we were riding up and down the two mile length of that ugly trickle of water they had the audacity to call a creek.” It was coming back to me, in greater detail now.

It was a shy smile. “We kept marveling at the stars, looking up and admiring the night sky.” Her voice became wispy and distant.

“That’s not all we did,” I prompted, other memories coming to mind.

She blushed, even though it had been so many months later. “Yeah, on the grass, I remember,” was all she said at first. Then she seemed to gain a degree of courage, no longer willing to shun what had happened between us. “We kept changing positions, so one of us could look up at the stars, while we made love.” That appeared to be all she could manage.

“You’re right,” I marveled at that detail I’d forgotten, “and the rule was the one on the bottom couldn’t move. The one on top was the one making love to the one looking up at the stars.” I quivered. “Sheesh, girl, it sounds so erotic!” I concluded, shifting to my back, looking up at the ceiling. It was my turn to lose myself in what had gone before.

“I got so lost, Eff. I hadn’t realized you had cum inside me until you were looking down at me with this look of terror on your face.” She giggled. It was so unexpected, it was enthralling.

I ripped my gaze from above to look at her. Tirza hadn’t been this forthcoming about our former sex life since the night I had murmured Katie’s name.

“At first, I thought I’d done something wrong,” she continued, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. Her smile was still huge. “Then, I felt all the gooeyness down there and I knew what had happened.” She giggled anew. “That’s when I freaked.”

“I never knew you could move that fast,” I added, trying to be flippant. Yet, I was too giddy at seeing her with her guard down to pull it off. It felt like it had been so long ago.

In reality, it hadn’t.

“I can’t believe I paced back and forth, ranting about how you just got me pregnant, butt-ass naked form the waist down. I didn’t even notice your cum was dripping down my leg!” She reached over and poked me in the side.

I curled at the waist, my elbows and knees almost touching. “Aaah,” I bellowed, flustered. I hated it when someone tickled me.

“And you just lay there on the grass, staring up at me with that same dreadful look as if you had done something evil…,” she let her voice die. Then, she edged closer to me and her elbows. “Was I just only fourteen years old when you came inside of me and we thought the whole world was going to end?”

“Yup,” I said, still recovering from the jolt she had sent through my body. “It was the next weekend that we went to Rite-Aid to buy condoms.” It was all coming back to me now.

“And two weeks later, I went with my cousin to get birth control pills. Those darned rubbers made my kitty-kat burn like it was on fire.”

I laughed.

“Wow, Eff, that’s so young to know about that kind of stuff,” she intoned. Her words strangled in her throat by deeper thoughts. “And yet, even though I was so young, maybe too young to be having sex, I still would rather have those days then these.”

“Those problems seem lame compared to the problems we are facing now,” I agreed.

“Yeah,” was all she said.

“Tirza,” I ventured.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry about the Katie thing. It was never supposed to come out,” I tried miserably to explain.

She gathered herself, looking me straight in the eyes. “I forgive you, Eff, because to cling to that kind of anger in a time like this seems childish, maybe even borderline contrite. But I have to say this out loud, so you know my feelings and you won’t get hurt.”

“Okay, shoot,” I urged. I was willing to take whatever she had to dish out. If it meant we could get past the awkward, fumbling mess our relationship had become, it would be worth it.

“I will never make love to you again. Not after you and Katie have done what you have done.”

It was like the Thor’s Hammer striking from on high.

“Okay,” I squealed, then cleared my throat a moment later.

“But that aside,” she added, a thin smile etching her visage, “doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

I let two full seconds pass before I replied. “Okay, then friends it is.”

Her nod was enough for me.