New Stories of Incestuous behaviors..... ......
Comatose Alexis and Me
"Samuel!"
Remember when your mother's voice called your name and it had that special tone in it that meant something serious was happening, and that you were part of it, but you didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing yet?
That's the tone of voice my mother called my name in. It's that tone that makes you wonder if maybe you should sneak out and pretend you didn't hear her.
"Samuel!" she called again. There was an added note of impatience in her voice.
I decided that bright and chipper might deflect any anger that was headed my way.
"Yeah, Mom," I said happily. "What's up?"
"I need you to read to Alexis."
I opened my mouth to complain, but she held up her hand to forestall me.
"I know!" she barked. "You've established beyond question that participating in the care of your sister is an onerous task that will practically kill you, but your Aunt Betty is having her baby and I need to be there to help her for a week or two. Your father is working on a big project that could mean a promotion for him, so you're just going to have to step up and deal with things. She's your sister, Sam. She would do this for you if it were necessary."
"Yeah, right," I thought darkly, but I kept my mouth shut. My mother's tone of voice also suggested that this was not a negotiable situation.
"It's not the end of the world, Dear," she said, already selecting things to take with her to her sister's house. "We're reading her Monster Dick, and if you finish that, there are any number of other classics you can start on. It's only an hour or two a day, and it's summer. You have plenty of time to give a little to your sister."
Alexis, as is already clear, is my sister. She's a year and a half older than I am, and if you look up pushy, snotty, prima donna sister in the dictionary, her picture will be there as the ultimate representative of that concept.
Well ... it would have been before the accident. When I was 14 and she had just gotten her license, she went out and smashed up the family car. She was probably texting, eating a hamburger and putting on makeup at the same time she was driving breakneck speed somewhere she didn't really need to go.
Whatever the cause, though, the result was that she was in a coma, and had been in that coma for over six months. Other than the coma she was perfectly fine. When it became clear after a couple of months in the hospital that she wasn't going to wake up, they'd brought her home and she was in her own room. There were tubes stuck in her to feed her and for other stuff I didn't even want to think about, but other than looking kind of pale she looked like she was only sleeping or something.
I felt bad about all this, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking. That's because it had been kind of nice at first. I mean she wasn't screaming at me any more, or telling me 10 times a day how stupid I was. There were no more slumber parties where she and her bitchy friends would throw open the bathroom door and run in screaming and giggling while I was in the shower, embarrassing me. Nobody called me ‘pencil dick’ any more.
But after a while it felt all wrong. I mean nobody was screaming at me any more, or telling me ten times a day how stupid I was. And there were no more slumber parties where she and all those other wet dream babes would throw open the bathroom door and run in screaming and giggling while I was in the shower. It might have been embarrassing, but all those smiles could be turned into something else when I was in bed, in the dark. I had a lot of really good jerk off sessions because of Alexis and those girls.
After they brought her home I used to go in her room and look at her sometimes, but it was creepy, because no matter what I said, or called her, she never moved at all. I called her some pretty bad things too, because I knew I'd never get another chance. But it didn't make me feel better. In fact, it made me feel so bad that I quit going in there at all.
My parents had done all the research after the doctors delivered the prognosis, which was basically "She might come out of it, and she might not." They had glommed onto the idea that someone in a coma might not be able to interact with the world, but could still be aware of what's going on around them. So they embarked on this whole thing where they got what would have been her assignments from school, and read her the text books and pages of class notes that the teachers sent home. They went over all the math problems, explaining them to her and read her the newspaper every day and stuff like that. My parents were the only people I knew who could routinely answer all ten questions on Are You Smarter Than A U-Grader?
And they read her books.
I didn't pay that much attention to them when they did all that stuff. I knew they had read her all sorts of books, from Tom Sucker and Alice Through the Looking Class, to books by Tammy Sassy and John Guru. As for me - I like comic books, and I had lots of time to read them because my big sister wasn't bothering me any more.
Mom's job was on the computer, so she could do almost all of it from anywhere she could take her laptop. As such she was the one who spent the most time with Alexis, often 8 or 9 hours a day. She even bought a special chair to put in Alexis's bedroom so she'd be comfortable as she sat and read and talked for hours.
Mom said Alexis deserved to have a vacation just like everybody else. Mom tried to believe that Alexis would be okay, and that some day soon she'd just open her eyes, say "Where am I? What happened?" and then go back to being completely normal. Dad lasted about 3 months that way, but now I think he was just going through the motions to keep mom's dream alive.
So, at least for a week, I was going to have to take Mom's place, and read to Alexis. Luckily it was summer, so there were no classes going on. I had enough of my own homework during the school year to try to take hers on too, especially since she was a year ahead of me. And, thanks to the politicians who care so much about kids they don't know, it wasn't legal for me to work a real job yet. My moving business gave me minimal spending money, and didn't take all that much time.
I walked in her room for the first time in a long time. It was quiet ... too quiet ... and spooky somehow.
Alexis was lying there, like always, her brownish black hair fanned out on the pillow under her head. I thought of Sleeping Beauty for some reason, and studied her face.
I was shocked to realize she was beautiful. I mean she'd always been the model of growing girl, morphing into teenage even-more-girl, if you know what I mean. I had gotten to see her develop bumps on her chest, and other growing up stuff. Just because I was younger than her didn't mean I was either blind or stupid. I'll never forget one day going in the bathroom and finding the water in the stool stained bright red, obviously by blood, and what seemed like a lot of it. I'd yelled for Mom, because it was pretty clear that somebody had gotten hurt bad. She came in, looking flustered, and when she saw what I was concerned about, she relaxed.
"Your sister is having her first menstrual period," she said calmly. "I'll remind her not to leave the commode like that again."
Then she flushed the stool and left. Just like that.