The Tortured Tourists
Chapter 5
It was deathly quiet in the cellar after Fleming and Darla
were taken away for the second time. Tommy could hear his mother
breathing in long, sighing breaths, and he thought he could hear
the pounding of his own heart. But all else was quiet. He
thought about what he had just been through really, what his
mother had been forced to endure.
Like most well-brought-up young men, he idolized his mother,
and he found it impossible to believe that she had been involved
in the fantastic circus he had just left upstairs. It just
couldn't be! And now, Darla and their father were back up there,
being forced into still more shameful acts. When would it end?
Would they really be allowed to leave if the ransom were paid?
Then his mind shifted again, and he was trying to assess his
feelings during the recent episode. I knew it was my mother there
with met And yet I enjoyed it! I really wanted to taste her body
in my mouth I loved the smell of her cunt, and the taste of her
juice the feel of her heat pouring out of her body at me. My God!
What kind of madman am I, anyhow? I even loved it when I was
fucking her! The feel of her juicy cunt wrapped around me was
like nothing I've ever felt before. And what was that inside her
that nibbled on me? My God! Is there something wrong with her,
too? Could I really have seemed like a lover to her, or
something?
He was working himself up to a nervous tension that he had
never known before. The perspiration was gathered on his brow and
upper lip. He hadn't realized it, but he was panting with the
effort of thinking and searching in the recesses of his mind for
some answers. In short, he was frightened with the immensity of
what he knew had been a very terribly wrong thing. A thing in
which he'd been forced to participate, but which he had actually
enjoyed, once he'd started!
It was several minutes after his teeth started chattering
with his nervousness, and with the cold of the dank cellar, which
chilled him as his perspiration dried, that his mother spoke to
him. "Tommy! What's the matter? Are you ill?"
He was silent, except for his gasping and chattering Then he
bubbled over. All of his fears and guilts and shame all the
things that were threatening his sanity he poured out to her.
After all, for the greater part of his young life he'd turned to
her whenever he couldn't solve his own problems. He thought he'd
outgrown his need of her as a confessor and comforter. But he
could never have foreseen such events as this.
Ann heard him out. At times he was almost incoherent in his
eagerness to get everything off his chest, hoping that complete
confession would relieve him of his aching, bursting burden. But
she understood him all too well everything he said. When he
finally finished, running down like a record on a hand-wound
phonograph that needed another cranking to get it up to normal
speed, it was again silent in the old cellar. She thought a long
time before she spoke. She had to be sure that she said the right
thing. This could affect him for the rest of his life!
"Tommy, I may be able to answer you on everything, and I may
not. I'll try to do my best. You know that I love you very much,
and that I'll always love you. You know that, don't you?" She
waited until he pulled himself together sufficiently to answer.
"Of course. I've never doubted that!" he replied.
"Just keep that in the back of your mind, then, no matter
what else we discuss. Will you can you do that?"
"Yes. And mother? ... no matter what else I said ... I'll
always love you just as I have since I could remember."
"I know, Tommy. I knew that the moment you turned to me to
help you with all this that's bothering you so much." She almost
choked up on her emotions, then got a grip on herself, and
continued.
"Tommy, I'll have to talk to you awfully plain. I know that
your father, thank God, has brought you up with all the basic
sexual knowledge you need, but this mess we're in now is something
no one could be expected to foresee.
"You've taken enough of the basic elements of human
psychology to understand how closely we parallel the lower animals
in certain of our normal functions. What always seems so hard to
understand is that the entire package we call civilization all
the things we try to instill in ourselves, educate ourselves with,
as it were really is only a very thin coating which we manage to
keep pulled over the more basic, more deeply ingrained things
inside us.
"Of course, everyone is an individual, because he has his own
very special formula, which combines the things he has inherited,
the things he has learned, and the environment in which he is
brought up. There are other factors, too, but these affect us
most.
"Now, you won't find two men much farther apart as
individuals than your father and that Gerault." She used the
Frenchman's name as if it were the filthiest thing she could
utter.
"Chuck is a big, husky, he-man type, who pretends that he
doesn't have a good education sometimes, especially when he's with
those who really haven't. He talks as if he'd just as soon beat
you as look at you, sometimes. But you know as well as I do
almost as well, anyhow that he's really an old softy, and more
gentleman than anything else.
"Gerault, on the other hand, pretends to be a gentleman, uses
flowery speech to cover his crude thoughts and drives. He
pretends to be so very refined in all other ways, yet you know
when he tells you he'll do something very horrible that he means
it, for there seems to be nothing too foul or brutal for his mind
to dream up or his conscience to object to. "And yet, if those
two were facing each other in anything like an equal battle, I'd
bet on your father. Because underneath all of the veneer that we
see his personality that we know, his many fine characteristics
lies that basic that we do not know. I think he might very well
break the Frenchman in little pieces.
"Something like that can take place in any of us. No matter
what we are like all the rest of our lives, underneath we are,
after all, very basic creatures. Some of us have as many
surprising differences in our basic nature as we do in the side of
us which we show to the world everyday.
"Now, your father and I are both highly sexed individuals.
And I'm afraid that both you and Darla have inherited more than
your share of whatever genes may cause that trait. I can only say
that I am not surprised you are so much like your father. And
Darla is probably much more like me than I have wanted to believe.
"When we were forced into a situation such as this, Tommy, it
was inevitable that we burst out of our civilized wrappers and
exposed the depth of our sexualities. We were at those moments
just two human individuals who were unfortunate enough to be
placed in that very set of conditions.
"Sure, we could blame ourselves for breaking down, for giving
in to our baser natures. But what would it buy us? It's
happened. We couldn't undo it if we spent the rest of our lives
and all of our family's resources. So, the only thing to do is to
try to shove it into the back of our minds as far as it will go.
If we find that we have trouble living with it, we'll just have to
bring it out and discuss it again. But I hope we can think of it
as a very unfortunate but irrevocable part of our lives that we
need not think of, again.
"Before we do try to forget it, honey, it might be well to
get the last bit of value out of it. Let me tell you that if you
ever have one of those moments when you doubt yourself as a man,
for any reason, you can remember that your mother gave you top
honors.
"You're every bit the man your father is in all ways. You're
thoughtful, gentle, and very exciting to a woman. The girl who
gets you for keeps- and any others in the meantime will be very
lucky. I'll always be proud that you're my son, Tommy."
She was silent, and the cellar was full of her presence as it
had not been all the time she spoke. Tommy felt the magnetism of
this wonderful woman who was his mother, and almost not quite, but
almost he was glad that they had shared the rigors of this day.
It was a lot of female, and a lot of heart that he had the good
fortune to call mother. He wept quietly, unashamedly, for a
while. Then he spoke his gratitude.
"You're great, mother! I've known that for a long time, but
after today, I'm afraid that you're some kind of impossible
combination of saint and sweetheart that just might have spoiled
me for all the other women in the world. I only hope that I'm
lucky enough to get one just a little bit like you."
"Thank you, Tommy." She stopped for a moment, then thought
of something else. "It's a hell of a way for it to happen, but I
don't think we've ever been so close as right now. We've shared
the very worst moments of our lives together, and yet found joy in
them. Not many people can say that."
