The Great Blackmail_(2)

Author’s Note: I’m not going to shy away from the fact that the storyline is very dark, but as a writer I think it’s important to experiment with the very darkest of plots. I’ve said before, the taboo subjects that I write about are to get me and my audience to a position they’ve never been to before. It’s fiction, after all. This piece is the first in a trilogy, with neither of the following two parts getting any less lighter. It only gets darker.

Every writer has a folder of half finished plots and projects. This series is just a few ideas that never made it into other canons, sort of a blow out of material. As always, I look forward to your comments and I hope you enjoy the story.

Cheers

I.M

“Are you a virgin?”

I tare my eyes from the screen of my Mac to see my little sister, Maddie, standing at the foot of my room, blank eyed, looking back at me, and I sigh hard. Now it’s important to understand that Maddie and I have an understanding when it comes to each other. She doesn’t come into my room and I don’t come into her room, so this sudden intrusion was a surprise to me. It’s not as callous as it sounds though, we just don’t get along. She was born when I was seven, so either I was early or she was too damn late. A brother I could probably have handled, but when you’re seven and all of a sudden fucking Princesses and shit start popping up all over the goddamn place, it can piss you off.

And it’s not that I’m introverted either, I just like my own space. Space, which the luxury of a little sister does not permit. So we decided on the rules early on and we got on with it. I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me. We kept ourselves to ourselves, and we only interacted when we had to, like at family gatherings, Christmas, and when our parents made me the designated taxi driver.

“What?” I ask, taking my headphones out. “Can’t you sleep?”

She’s in a thin nightgown that is about two sizes too fucking small and her long blond hair is in a rushed ponytail. Maddie is now well and truly past the Princess nightgown phase, and she looks utterly ridiculous right now. I take a drink from the beer on the table next to my bed. I’d been writing all afternoon and my head hurt, so perhaps her distraction had come at a good time. I was getting tired anyway.

“Are you a virgin?” she asks again, and I splutter through my mouthful. No, I’m not a virgin, thank you very much, I think in my head. Followed by: Did she just fucking ask me that?

Jesus, I really was tired. “I didn’t hear you,” I say and she smiles.

“Yes you did.”

I know smiles. And I know girls’ smiles. This was no innocent sisterly smile. This was a completely different fucking smile, slightly innocent, but with some seriously sinister undertones.

“That’s none of your business,” I scowl. “Now go back to bed before I get Mom up here for you bothering me.”

“Mom and Dad are out for the night.”

Great, nice of them to mention. Then I thought that perhaps they had, maybe I just wasn’t listening. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone downstairs to find the place vacant.

“Why do you want to know?” I then ask.

“So you have. What’s it like?”

“It’s different for boys than it is for girls.”

“What’s it like for boys?”

If she got anymore excited I could have sworn her eyes would pop out of her head or something. She was practically bouncing in the doorway. I find myself stuttering now, and I can feel my cheeks starting to go a little red. This was not a conversation I was prepared to have with my little sister.

“Fine. Yeah, it’s good. Now go away, Maddie, I’m trying to work.”

“I want to try it with a boy,” she says, matter-of-factly and I just look at her. If my mouth could hit the floor like it does in those Cartoons she always watched (or used to watch. Whatever, I don’t even care what she watches) then it probably would.

“Well you better not tell me the little fuckers name or else I’ll kill him.”

“Jealous?”

I scoff so hard she flinches. “Fuck right off, kid,” I say.

“I’m not a goddamn kid, Charlie,” she says and I scowl at her. She stares at me, blank eyed, again and then says something so matter-of-factly, so nonchalantly that I actually thought for a moment that I was dreaming. You know when you hear something so absurd, so ridiculous, and so beyond belief that you have to do a double take? That it takes just that little bit longer to sink in? That is the sort of shit I was dealing with. “Anyway, it’s you,” was her answer, and I laughed so hard that for a second I didn’t think I was ever going to stop, like I was going to laugh until my insides exploded. “You’re the boy.”

I mean, kudos to the way she played the situation. It was something she clearly had been planning for some time. About a million things run through my mouth at the same time and a verbal shit stream of nonsense spews out. In the end I just look at her and say; “Me brother. You sister. That is wrong on every level. We’ll never speak of this again. You’re insane. Goodnight.”

I grab my headphones, still laughing to myself when she pulls out another blockbuster of a comment. “If you don’t then I’ll tell Mom about that stash of weed under your bed, and I’ll tell Dad about that porn stash you hide in your bottom drawer. And you’ll lose your car and your allowance and you know it.”

This time my jaw does hit the floor. Touchdown, Maddie.

***

I stare at her in amazement for what feels like an age until Maddie glares at me, hands on her hips. “Well?”

I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea that my sister was trying to blackmail her older brother into having sex with her. Where the fuck did that warped, absurdly crafted pan of insanity come from? I’ll also clear up the two points Maddie raised. 1) The weed is medicinal, naturally. (And providing that bullshit doesn’t wash, I’m not going to justify it to anyone. I’m not a fucking kid. I like what I like. Who doesn’t like a joint every now and then? And it helps with the writing) 2) As for the porn … who doesn’t?

“Well what?”

“I want a boy to have sex with me, Charlie, and I want it to be you.”

“No!” I yell at her. “It’s crazy. It’s insane. It’s illegal. It’s sick. It’s wrong. Do you need me to fucking continue? I’m your fucking brother, Maddie, for fuck’s sake. It’s incest.”

“So?” she retorts. “Brothers and sisters often experiment with each other. It’s natural. I’m a girl, you’re a boy. Brother–sister incest is actually considered to be widespread but rarely reported, you know.” So many questions were running through my head right now. This crazy bitch had even Googled it, for fuck’s sake.

“That doesn’t fucking mean we’re going to,” I say back.

“Don’t you think I’m pretty?” she asks and I swallow, hard. A simple response. She isn’t leaving here without getting what she wants, I say in my head. I’d never even looked at my sister as another human being before this moment. I’d just considered her an annoying little fucker that lived in the room at the end of my corridor, and now I was looking at her the way no brother should ever look at his sister.