Living in the Shadows

I got home from my job at the fast-food place about ten o'clock as usual and my mother was still up, along with her boyfriend, also as usual. Brett was sprawled out on his couch, a cigarette in one hand while the other scratched his slightly-paunchy stomach, watching the TV as it spewed out a movie or a television show that was long on violent car-crashes and gunfire and short on dialogue. Just Brett's style, all right.

Mom came out of the kitchen where she'd been fetching Brett another beer, and as she approached Brett, I stepped quickly to where I could see their shadows.

Watched as Mom handed the beer to Brett, watching the shadows.

Watched as the shadow-Brett grabbed my shadow-mother and began slugging on her. Not just once, or I would have gritted my teeth and kept quiet. Not this time. The shadow-Brett was now standing over my prostrate shadow-mother, and he was kicking her. Then my mother, having seen my face and its frown, moved away from Brett, breaking the image. The shadow returned to just being a silhouette of Brett and my Mom. Unlike their shadows, neither one had moved much before then.

"What the hell you staring at?" Brett demanded of me.

"Nothing." I said. "I'm hungry." And I followed Mom into the kitchen.

Mom turned to me, her face ashen. "What was it?" she asked me. She wore only a faded blue dress, something she had gotten at a thrift shop. Her hair was thin and stringy, her face pinched and unhappy-looking. "What did the shadows tell you?"

"He's going to beat you something terrible tonight." I told her.

Her hand went to her cheek where a bruise was still visible as a gray blotch, courtesy of two nights ago. "I did everything he asked me to today." she said, her trembling voice in a reedy complaint. "Could you tell why he'll get mad at me tonight?"

I shook my head. "I think it's because he'll get drunk." I opined.

Mom shivered. "I could...I could hide his beer."

I shook my head again. "That'd get him mad at you for sure. He counts his beers; he'll know you got them and are holding them back. I think you'd better just clear out of here tonight." I said. I gave her all the money in my wallet, only thirteen dollars. Day after tomorrow was my payday; I was making minimum wage, but it was the only money Mom and I got our hands on. Brett kept a close eye on the money he earned; if he gave Mom money for groceries, the change had better match up with the receipt to the cent, or he'd know the reason why! First time he hit her was when she was a dollar short, even though it was probably just a mistake at the grocery store.

"Did the shadows tell you to do this?" Mom wanted to know.

"Just common sense." I assured her. "He can't hit what he can't get to."

"But the shadows didn't tell you." she asked again.

"No." I said. "The shadows just said that he'd beat you later on tonight."

Long as I can remember, shadows had been telling me things. I could look at a person, then at their shadow, and know what the man was thinking, what he wanted, what he intended to do or what he would do, for his shadow would do it in silent pantomine. It had helped a lot when Mom and I had been out living on the street, my talent with shadows. I could watch the shadows of the men and women who walked by and tell Mom which ones she should ask for money and which she shouldn't bother with. It matters, a lot, the harsh words of refusal, those who would rather hit you than help you. But with my talent for spotting the nice people, we'd managed well enough on the streets when I was a child, though as I had gotten older, there were fewer people willing to help my mother with me around. They kept looking at me, wondering why I wasn't working to help out. Like a fifteen-year-old boy could get a decent job! I'd begun to hang in the background, and signal to Mom who to ask for spare change. It hadn't worked as well, the man could decide against his initial generous impulse . Mom thought I'd gotten less accurate about my "gut feeling" but I hadn't. Things change inside a man's soul, and the shadow changes. It's different. The shadows tell me the future...but the future isn't always the same, changing from moment to moment, even.

Mom had also insisted I stay in school, and I could see her shadow begging me to agree, and so I did, she dreamed of me making good with an education, and from there, getting us both into a nice house. Her shadow would build a wonderful life for me and her, and the wife and children who would care for her in her old age. So I'd stayed in school and studied best I could, while staying in shelters and roaming the streets, my mother and me, the best money-cadging homeless people there were. Mom managed as well as she could with begging until I got out of school and could help her, so I left my school and went to the street and was there from four o'clock until late at night.

Then Brett had come along. I couldn't blame Mom for falling in love with him, a burly, cocksure, rough-hewn man who wore dirty t-shirts and faded jeans, and drove an ancient red car whose body was half rust, but whose engine purred because Brett worked in a car repair shop and could keep it running smoothly. Brett had stopped his car at our piece of sidewalk one evening, and flirted with her and she had giggled like any woman would at such attention when the woman has no place to go and no food for herself and her son. I had begun sitting a ways away from her, like I'd said, and she'd looked at me but the shadow had been silent, so I'd shrugged and she'd gotten into his car with him and driven off. She came back, having been fed by him and with a bag of leftovers for me. Brett had been a perfect gentleman, she'd said. So I saw no reason not to let her keep on seeing him when he came by again and again. He had been friendly enough to me when Mom broke the news of my existence to him and the shadows had again been silent.

The shadows had stayed silent about Brett until the day Mom and I moved in with him. I was ready to think the shadows were happy with our new home...until I looked at the shadow of Mom and Brett. Saw shadow-Mom as the docile servant of shadow-Brett, clinging to his leg like any willing slave.

Glanced back at Brett. Well, a man can have fantasies, and the shadows tell me of those. I kept quiet. If he thought of Mom as a slave-girl, well, that's better than living in the street, so long as Brett treated her well.

Isn't it?

So I went to school with a home to come back to, and I got a job soon as I turned sixteen, and could buy clothes for myself and look more like the other kids.

But that joy was short-lived. After about a year of the three of us, Brett began to lose interest in Mom. Oh, she was doting and caring for him, fixing his meals, whatever he'd like to do, she was willing, and I assume that was in bed as well.

But for Brett it just wasn't enough. And the shadows began to tell me as things got worse. For a while, it was showing him yelling at Mom, and Mom at my guidance didn't argue back (the shadows warned if she did, he'd hit her). But the hitting started anyway, after a time.

The first time caught me off-guard, I saw the welt on her arm and started checking out the shadows to tell me.

The shadows told me how to handle Brett, too. Oh, he was curt with me at times, like tonight, but usually he would sit and talk to me. I saw the shadows telling me to sit and chat, when to laugh, when to be his buddy and when to back away. So now I was finished with high school and working a minimum-wage job while I figured out what to do next. You can't do much with only a high school diploma, but there was no money for college or trade school.

So I got my plate of food and went out to watch television with Brett. We had a TV tray out there, so I hitched it up to the other end of the couch and sat down.

Brett sat watching me eat. "How was your work today, Jim?" he said.

I shrugged. "It was okay. The usual crap."

He laughed more than that was worth. "That's the way it is. But never you worry, you keep at it and when school starts again and the kids we have working there leave, you come by and I'll see if we can put you to work in the garage."

His ham of a hand clamped onto my shoulder. I was surprised by this--he had never touched me before that I remembered--and I looked, first at his beery grin, then at his shadow.

His and mine. It showed shadow-Brett and shadow-me locked in a kiss.

A downright passionate kiss!

Startled, I looked back at Brett. He was still grinning my way, and his whole body was leaning toward me.

Mom came in and sat down in the center, between us. I looked again at the shadows. Because of my talent, Mom had placed the lamp carefully to let the lamp show all three of us easily.

Brett had sat back when Mom sat down and was watching the television intently. But his shadow was busily throttling my mother's shadow, hands around her throat. Strangling her.

"Oh, Mom." I said. "I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Johnson down the hall asked me to ask you to drop by. Something she wants to talk to you about."

Okay, it wasn't the best of exit-lines to use, but Mom picked up on it, got to her feet. "I'd better go see what she wants."

"Why didn't she come here to see you?" Brett wanted to know.

"She probably just wants to complaint about the landlord." Mom said. "She gets lonely."

Brett was unimpressed. "So tell her to call someone else." He said. "You need to be here."

"Oh, I won't be gone for long." Mom said. Brett was surprised by this, usually, his suggestion was Mom's law. Mom patted his leg. "You get in bed and I'll be in there before you know it."

"I'll wait up for you." Brett said as Mom went out the door. She had my money in her pocket, but nothing else. Maybe she would go stay with Mrs. Johnson for the night. Thirteen dollars wouldn't get her very far, but if Brett came looking for her, it could get nasty.

With Mom gone, I decided to push beers on Brett. If he got drunk enough, he would pass out, maybe. So I went and got him another beer without him asking me for it.

As I handed it to him, I again looked at the shadows. Saw shadow-me jumping into shadow-Brett's lap and throwing my arms around him. I sat as far away from him on the couch as I could, but the shadows stayed together, shadow-Brett and shadow-me, hugging and kissing.

My stomach convulsed at the thought of that. Not of a man wanting to make love to me (I had encountered that before often enough) but that it was Brett thinking this. Was this the reason he treated my mother like shit? Was this why he had begun to beat her, because he wanted to make love to me and didn't want to want to make love to me (if you see what I mean) and his feelings turned inside out and became anger at Mom? And what was I going to do if it was? Brett had kept my mother impoverished, only my own money was truly ours to do with as we wanted, and I had spent more than that on mom, buying her things she needed and Brett wouldn't pay for. I had three hundred dollars in the bank, and would get another hundred dollars close enough on my payday the night after tomorrow night.

I sat and I waited, getting Brett more beers as he drank down what he had, and the hour turned from eleven o'clock to midnight to one o'clock. Brett getting madder and madder as he waited for Mom, and she wasn't coming back. "Where the hell is your mother?" he asked me for the umpteenth time.

I had dodged answering that until now. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, maybe it was his damnable refusal to get truly, properly drunk, he wouldn't pass out, just got more and more erratic and angry, cussing out loud on and on, cursing the television, cursing everything he could think of, but mostly cursing my mother. Me, he never cursed, he would instead turn into immediate kind wheedling sounds to me, "You're a good man." he'd tell me earnestly. "You're the kind of boy a man can depend on. Not like that bitch mother of yours..." and he'd be off again in anger.

So I was getting worn out and fed up. "I don't know." I said. "Maybe she went to visit a friend."

"Mrs. Johnson." Brett nodded. "That old bitch Johnson. Ought to wring that scrawny neck of hers for her." He mumbled. He seemed to finally be feeling the beers, he was subsiding, muttering instead of cursing.

I judged he was going to pass out, especially if he didn't have anyone to talk to. So I got to my feet and said, "I'm going to bed now. Why don't you get in bed, too. Mom will be back later." A lot later, but I didn't mention that.

"Yeah. Bed. Get in bed and wait for that bitch there." he burped, a rolling rumble of liquid sounds.

I got on out of there. Time for Mom and me to move on, I thought when I got undressed. I'd miss having a home. But we'd done without before, we could do it again, especially with me now eighteen years old and with a job. A few weeks on the street and being careful with money and we could afford an apartment of our own. A small one, but one of our own. With me to spot the kind souls for Mom with my talent like I used to, we could live off the begging and save all my work income. Maybe use my job to get one of those move-in deals.... I lay down on the bed and let my mind tumble around what I needed to do, the details blurring as sleep overtook me.

I was awakened by the front door slamming shut. Hard! "God damn it to hell!" Brett bellowed out. Oh, God, how had he managed to get back to the mean drunk state? I thought when a man went into drunken stupor, he stayed there until he sobered up! He must have drunk more, or had a bottle of vodka or something, something to push him back into the rage I had talked him through.

Then the door to my bedroom flew open and Brett was there, wearing only his underwear like me. He must have gotten in bed, and then awakened again. What time was it? I didn't have a clock with a light in it, it was still dark.

And Brett was crawling on my bed, and his rage was a palpable thing in the darkness. "You son of a bitch of a bitch!" he screamed at me. "Where did she go? Where is she?" Brett wasn't drunk, he had passed out a while, maybe, but he had awakened mostly in control, aware and mad as hell!

"What?" I asked. "Who?" I'd just woke up, you should remember. That's what came out of my mouth.

"Your bitch mother! She isn't home. Where did she go? I know you been giving her money, you son of a slut! Where is she?"

I saw no need to lie. "Staying away until morning." I said. "Giving you a chance to sober up. Maybe then you won't hit her like you planned to!"

And his fist came at me and slammed into my jaw. It hurt like hell, though he didn't land it as well as he could have stone-cold sober. I couldn't see much of anything, Brett was just a white blob in the darkness of the room, I reached for the light at my bedside table and got it turned on before Brett hit me again.

The lamp tumbled off the stand onto the floor, the shade coming off it. But the light wasn't broken, it stayed on, and I looked up at Brett's angry eyes blazing down at me. "You lousy bastard!" he called me and slugged me again.

Or tried to. With the light on, I could see and block him. And I was ready to fight back if I could, fight back for all the times he had hit my mother, even if he was so much bigger and stronger than me as to make it futile. Why had I let him get away with hitting my mother, even though the shadows said it would be a single slap or blow to her? If I had stopped him before, then maybe he wouldn't have gone so far as to attack me, if I had listened to...the shadows?

I looked over at my wall, the light on the floor throwing our shadows up large and tall. Brett over me on the bed, his eyes trying to focus, his arm trying to form a fist and punch me. But the shadows....

Shadow-me and shadow-Brett were having sex. Me on top of Brett, riding his cock, and loving it!

I looked at Brett and something of my thought must have communicated to him. Or maybe everyone's a little bit psychic, I just had more of it than other people. His face twisted from desire into anger and back again, flickering like a candlelight in a wind. Guttering, flaring, steadying, failing, renewing.... Brett stopped as he was, as he waited for his emotions to sort themselves out, let him decide what to do.

I broke that by reaching up and putting my hand on Brett's face. His face froze, from a constant change of emotion into emotional nullity. Or maybe he was just trying to figure out what it was that he was feeling. He was breathing heavy (well, so was I, and not from passion) and his face wasn't moving.

"It's all right, Brett." I said to him. "I know what you want, what you really want. It's okay. Just stop hitting me, okay? Okay?"

I didn't have any real plan here, just to use the fact of Brett's desire for me to stop his attack. But what I got was his eyes focusing on me, the resolution of his emotions, and then he dived down onto me, and this time he wasn't attacking!

His lips slobbered onto me, kissing only by definition, it was more like I was being devoured by him, as he tried to kiss me and possess me and make me love him all at once. Less a desire than a hunger in him, and he had resisted it for so long, his anger had been his shield, and that was gone now, and there was just me and his need, and he was far from being a man who could fight off his animal passions, he could only displace them as he had in his anger for my mother, and now they were past displacing, he was upon me and he was going to have me!

I could have resisted him. I could have fought him off, maybe, and run off. I don't think Brett would have chased me much beyond the front door. It would have left me in my underwear in a hallway, but I think, I still think now, that I could have gotten away, or at least tried to.

What I did was let him kiss me, let him spew his spittle over my lips and onto my face around my lips so that the whole mouth area was a wet smear as he mouthed me. Awkwardly, I moved my lips to match his, to make it a true kiss, and then that left my mouth open and his tongue slid deep into my mouth, a heavy pink intruder that nearly gagged me; it was like he was trying to ram it all the way down my throat!

I hadn't dated in school at all, I'd had to get to Mom and help her when we were on the street, and I'd gotten a job after school as soon as I could after we'd moved in with Brett. I only knew from stories and jokes what to do, I tried to turn his tongue in my mouth into a playful thing, used my own tongue to wiggle it about, and Brett's breath was a heaving monster that drove into my mouth around his tongue, the monster drove into me and then stole the air from my lungs, and I could only breathe through my nose, and it wasn't enough for me, and I grunted, broke away from that too-invasive kiss, and his tongue slimed a trail like a slug across one cheek before he reeled it back into his own maw.

And Brett commenced to kissing at my cheek and neck, nibbling at it, painfully at times, he was pressing his crotch up into mine and rubbing it around and around, I could feel the thick tool rolling there like a truck tire rolls upon the gravel, scrunching the small stones under it in a rabble-rabble cacophony, and then he began to pretend-fuck at me with his crotch, and that rock-hard spool of manhood was almost bruising my groin flesh.

Grunting like something not entirely human, Brett's hands caught my briefs and began to worm them off my hips. Again, I could have tried to get away, I could have run, even now, I could have tried to avoid this...and I didn't. I just lay there and let him do what he wanted to me.

What he wanted more than anything. I looked at the shadows, their sex-play now mocking me. If I could really see the future, why hadn't the shadows told me before Brett arrived? Why had they waited until now, when the warning was too late to be of any use to me?

Brett had to raise up from me in order to peel my briefs the rest of the way off. I let him do that, take my last scrap of cloth from my body, leave my body pale and available to him. The two of us in a pool of light, surrounded by shadows. Useless, inert shadows, most of them, and the other two, of shadow-me and shadow-Brett, only telling me what was going to happen next, so I couldn't even pretend it might not happen after all.

Brett didn't take off his own underwear, he just fished out his cock and fell back onto me, heavily, his entire weight landing on my chest, and forcing my last ounce of air from my lungs. It nearly stunned me, the blow of his body and in that moment, Brett had moved into the final position and I could only rouse to the feeling of his cockhead, unlubricated, unwashed and unwanted, as it banged at my anus and demanded entrance like barbarians at a city gate. My choice was much the same as those city-dwellers. If I let him in, he would take what he wanted...but if I didn't let him in, he'd get in anyway and destroy everything in his wake.

So I gasped as that hard glans surged against my sphincter, I grimaced as it spread my tender portal wide and I groaned as it slid inside...but I didn't fight him. I just tried to make it all fit, even though every movement of Brett's was raw agony to me.

Brett didn't pause as he shoved the length on inside, he was blind to how much he was hurting me, I grunted, my hands on his back dug my fingernails into his flesh, he hissed but he didn't stop, not at all, as I dug into his back-muscles with my feeble claws, and his grunt of pain was transmuted by his cock into more desire. With his entire length imbedded in me, he promptly began to pull it back out again, slowly but agonizingly out, and then drove it back in, and now my butt was plowed open for his dong, and while I still winced and drops of pain fell from my lips, he was in a steady rocking motion, plunging in and pulling out and he had me, he had wanted me and now he had me, his desires had been answered and he could fuck me now. It was why he was mad at Mom, because she wasn't me! I'm not sure if he had dated Mom to get to me, or if it just evolved that way subconsciously, but now he was where he had wanted to be for some time, he was in my bed and his cock was up my ass and I was squirming in his arms.

His tensions resolved, he spoke to me. "You want this, didn't you?"

I was mute if you discount my moans of pain. It was subsiding now, some, from searing screams of pain to mere mutterings of now-ravaged flesh.

"Tell me you want it." Brett demanded as I stayed dumb.

"No." I denied him that.

His reaction was to hump me faster and I gasped out. My body was now nine-tenths acclimated to this shaft of hot man-meat pumping in me. Could I be feeling something else inside now?

"Come on, come on, tell me you want it." Brett ordered me. "Come on, you little bastard, you little cunt's son, tell me you love this hard dick in you."

"Yes." I whispered hoarsely, my throat insulted at the sound.

"Yes, what?" He said as he fucked me even rougher now. The sensations rushing from my ass were now undeniable. Had Brett truly burst in upon me completely unawares, if I hadn't been warned by the shadows what was coming, I may never have felt this at all. As it was, it was like I'd had time to make a choice, not a good choice (get fucked or get whomped on) but it had been a choice. And I'd made it.

"Yes, I want it." I said, my voice still raw and uneven.

Brett laughed a short, hard laugh, a bare single burst of sound divided into three syllables but still joined together firmly. "You Goddamned bitch's brat, you wanted me all the time, didn't you? That's why you told your mother to date me. Why you told her to stay with me, even after you saw I'd been hitting her."

"No, no." I moaned. It was bad enough to have him violate my body with my reluctant consent, but to steal this as well? "No, I didn't. I don't want you hitting her!"

"Well, long as you put out for me, I won't hit her." He offered me cruelly. His cock was still thrusting in and out of me, he was enjoying this mastery over me, he was determined to take my soul as well as my body. Like he had my mother's.

I groaned as Brett's dong mauled my inner sanctum and awakened the spirits of lust that reside there. I had this lusty prod ramming me, I had his body upon me, a lead weight, and I had his cruel face above mine, wringing my weakness to make me crumple up entirely.

"Do we have a deal?" He pressed me. "Can I fuck you instead of her every night?" he asked. His cock was inexorable, my body was traitorously rising into a much-too-familiar tingling of gathering sensation.

"I...I can't." I gasped.

"Come on, you piece of shit, you crap off the street, come on, give yourself to me and I'll spare your mother. She can live here long as she wants, cook and clean and sleep in that bed alone. I'll be in here, fucking this sweet little ass.

I looked despairingly for the shadows, I needed their guidance now like never before. I saw three, the first time the shadows had ever added a figure not already there. I saw Brett fucking me like he was, while my mother stood over, trying to pull him off, but failing. Yes, that's just what he would do. Every night. Fuck me right in front of her, love the way he controlled both of us that much.

"All right." I said in total despair. "Leave her alone, and you can have me."

"Good boy." he said. "Now, come on and shoot your load so I know you mean it. I see your face, you're loving this fat cock up your ass, aren't you? You need to come so bad right now you can't take it, can you? You want it, don't you? Don't you? Don't you?"

"Yes, yes!" I screamed, I had to release the tension and that was the only way. Give myself to him, give it all, give it all! "Yes, I want you to fuck me!"

And with a scream that broke only for gasps of inhaled air so they could be renewed, I spurted my wad all over both of us, and Brett laughed as I came, as I ejaculated heavily all over both of us, the biggest load I had ever had before, it was like there was a bucketfull of it and it all came out at once, and I was drenched, and my brain was like it was filled with firecrackers all going off at once, and over it all, was Brett's laugh, mocking me in my climax, loving my humiliation as he brought me to my orgasm even though I didn't want him to. Oh, God! Brett had won! He had won!

Only after I was fully done did Brett start fucking me again and I was like a piece of limp meat under him, and he finished up and his hot jets of jizz hit my innards like a bath of battery acid, but I was past screaming now, I could only lay there and groan, a sound part pain, part despair, and part disgrace.

Brett fell on me when he was done, and I lay without moving, accepting the pittance of air I could still pull in with his body atop my chest, and when he was good and ready, he got up, and stood over me, the triumphant king-beast, looking at me all sweaty and sticky and fucked below him.

"That's better." He said. "Going to be a new arrangement around here. You're going to move into my room with me. You pack your stuff up tomorrow."

"I have to work tomorrow. Open the place." I reminded him, my numb lips forming the words without emotion, without heat or light.

"So you pack up after." he said. "Your mother and I will talk it all out when we both get home." On days when I worked the first shift, Brett and I arrived home about the same time.

And he left me in my soiled bed stained with his sweat and smelling of his spunk and I lay there for the longest time. I think I slept, but I'm not sure.

I went through the morning like an automaton. A job like mine, you can do that and people hardly notice. Going through the motions is good enough. It left my mind free to plan, such as it would.

By the time I got off work, I'd made something of a decision. Okay, Brett would fuck me each night. I only had to put up with it until I could save enough for an apartment. Two months, if I was careful and we could move out without telling him. Brett didn't even know for sure where I worked, but I could ask for a transfer to another location to be safe. We'd move across town, maybe, and start afresh. Only a couple of months.

I got home and Mom was there, and so was Brett, though he'd just arrived, he was still wearing his shirt and work helmet, and his lunchbox was sitting on the coffee table. "There you are." he said to me. "Come on, you and I can tell your mother together about the new arrangement we're having around here."

Mom said, "What new arrangement?" with a tone of worry and as she walked up next to Brett, I automatically looked for our shadows.

Saw shadow-Brett plunge a knife into shadow-Mom's throat, while shadow-me made joyful motions of approval, hugged shadow-Brett as shadow-Mom fell lifeless to the floor. Beyond all doubt, a short play of what Brett was thinking/hoping/planning to do.

Brett was talking but I wasn't listening. We'd have to gather what we could, make a break for it, tonight. I had my money in the bank, and the paycheck tomorrow. Somehow, we'd survive.

After all, I was used to living in the shadows.

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