Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten

by Richard M. Heredia

  “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Track Star?”

  “Sure,” I mumbled.

  “Would it be too soon to ask for a kiss?”

  I never answered, because our lips met and all thought was banished. Her hand gripped the skin on the back of my head as my hand came to rest upon one of her hips, the other upon her left shoulder blade as our bodies melded together. True to the nature of our relationship, there was no light kissing, no gentle caresses. We attacked each other with gusto and didn’t break a part for nearly half an hour. In fact, I don’t think we would’ve stopped if we hadn’t been interrupted. Off in the distance, on the other side of the Quad, Sandy was whooping and hollering at us, cheering us on. We pulled apart, sweaty and out of breath. Ramona waved at her, laughed up at the concrete decking of the floor above us, and then gave me a ferocious hug.

  That was how things began between me and her.

  About two months into our relationship, she confessed that she’d been the one who had grabbed my man-junk in the hallway, on the day, I showed up late to my photography class with a donkey-sized boner in my pants.

  { ¹Vera Wang Princess: Perfume; touted as an “Oriental-floral fragrance, a modern and playful magical elixir” for young women. It was launched in 2006.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~ Chapter 15 ~

  (Summer – 2018)

  The Rouse

  [He flicks back to the original train of recollection, a smile growing on his face.]

  Thus, I followed Ramona into my parent’s house on the second day Katie was with us, watching her ass cheeks clench and unclench as she made her way to the TV room. Despite the lovely view, a million things raced through my mind. I was struggling to figure out how I was going to get out the mess I found myself mired. It all had happened so fast.

  First and foremost, was to let Katie know, through here weird ass intuition, Ramona had already discerned there was more going on between us than merely cousinly affection. My girlfriend knew it was more than mere moral support.

  As with everything else, I guess I would just have to wait and see what the outcome of this little “talk” Ramona turned out to be. Hopefully, she wouldn’t go off the deep end as Tirza had, hopefully… She had talked about respect and promised there wouldn’t be a major blow-up. At least, I had her at her word she’d refrain from taking us down that possible outcome. It would just be a matter of whether or not she would stick to that statement when the truth started flying around. I wasn’t sure if she’d control herself once the idea of Katie and I fucking seeped into her brain as a real possibility. Ramona could be extremely possessive at times.

  She and I walked into the TV room to find Katie and Jacob standing in front of the coffee table. They were talking and already Katie had her hand on her hip and a tired expression on her face, which told me Jacob was up to his old tricks. The dickhead had totally ignored what I had told him earlier that morning.

  Ramona just walked around the other side of the table and sat down on the couch, snatching up the remote. She changed the channel from the all-news station to another, showing re-runs of a sleazy east coast reality show that had been on air for nearly ten years. The members of its’ cast were so worn down from all of their heavy partying, they looked more like Keith Richards or Alice cooper, though none of them could’ve been older than thirty-two years of age - the females included. I grimaced at the flat screen. True, I was a fan of reality TV, but jeez, that show was the absolute worst. But knowing Ramona had all the cards this day, I sat down on the couch, my eyes automatically searching out Katie’s. I saw her roll her own at something Jake had said a few seconds earlier. I hadn’t heard what has passed between them.

  He was wearing a typical Jacob ensemble today, consisting of beat up jeans with army fatigue print on them. Whether they were authentic or not, I couldn’t tell, because they were so faded and torn. He had a sleeveless Addicts t-shirt on, complete with holes and rents. It was as faded as his jeans. On his arms he wore the usual wide, leather wristbands studded with spikes three-quarters of an inch long. On his feet, he wore his pride and joy, the only things on his person that actually appeared new and of some value, his double soled, 10-hole black and white Doc Martins, of which he kept immaculate at all times. Although my biological father and his mother were only half-related and not full-blooded siblings, despite this he and I shared many similarities. So it was easy to ascertain we were kin. He was about my size in both build and weight. If I were to let my hair grow out as long as he sported his in those days, our hair would have appeared strikingly similar – dark brown, wavy, not curly, and somewhere between course and fine. We both shared narrow faces and triangular chins, and, for the most part, our facial features resembled one another. Although the end of my nose is more bulbous than his and he had very deep-green eyes. I have dark brown.

  “So, what are we going to do?” he asked looking around the room, bouncing on his heels as though he was trying to shake a turd slide down his pant leg.

  Ramona shrugged, not taking her eyes from the TV, while Katie’s eyes slitted suddenly. She hadn’t missed the chill emanating from my girlfriend. We locked gazes. I arched an eyebrow and sighed, chancing a quick glance at Ramona that I hoped Katie would catch.

  My cousin’s stare intensified for a second, then she looked between Ramona and me a few times in rapid succession. She had sensed something was off.

  “We could have an orgy!” offered Jacob, overly speculative as if his mere mention of a group session made it possibly.

  What a tool!

  My girlfriend sniggered. “Almost walked into one,” she muttered.

  Katie and I glared at her, mortified.

  “What?” asked Jacob.

  “Nothing, Jake, nothing,” mumbled my girlfriend. Maybe she hadn’t meant to speak as loud as she had… yeah, right!

  “Uh, ok… so what are we going to do?” He asked again.

  Katie snapped her fingers, which got our attention. I watched as she appeared to consider something involving my cousin from the other side of the family. At once, I knew she was up to something.

  “Well?” Jake inquired again, anxious almost excited.

  “Hey Eff, you think he knows where to score what we were talking about earlier?” Katie wondered aloud at me, which made my eyebrows rise.

  The fucking girl was good!

  “Score what?” Jake was glancing back and forth between the two of us.

  “You mean the bud?” I clarified with a question of my own.

  Katie just nodded, but Ramona was staring intently at me, her face a mask of calm that I knew was a bullshit cover. I could see she was raging to intercede, but held her tongue. Maybe she was afraid if she opened it, she wouldn’t be able to close it once she got started.

  “Bud? You guys wanna smoke some mota?” began Jacob, his eyes lighting up.

  I could read what he was thinking before he though it himself. He was hoping we would all get high and horny, and then he could go at it with Katie. Motherfucker!

  “We don’t have to go nowhere, though, guys, ‘cuz I already got a joint right here and that’s all we need to get this party started.” He began to gyrate his hips, howling an annoying series of “Oooha, Oooha, Oooha’s”, thrusting his hips this way and that. His eyes were closed as he held the joint before him like an idol of some forgotten deity. Really!?!

  Katie closed her eyes as if looking at him caused her pain. Ramona’s bland mask melted into exhaustion. Having known Jacob since grammar school, all those years of enduring his antics, had tired her beyond measure.

  “Jake!” I bellowed at him, but he didn’t hear me as lost as he was in his own world. “Jake! Jake, dude, cut it out and pay attention!”

  He stopped, confusion on his face. “What? I thought we were going to get hiiiigh?”

  “Dude, she’s not talking about getting high right now.”

  Beside me, the tension that made Ramona stiff, drained away. She must’ve been worried if w
e’d smoked a joint, it would be me fucking Katie and not Jacob. That was the only thing I could think of that would make her so aggravated.

  Jacob frowned, his head twisting to the side, mouthing noiseless “what’s” at me, his hands outstretched, pleading.

  “What she means,” I continued, “is that she would like to know if you could score us a decent amount of weed we could smoke over time.”

  He squinted rat-like, crouching. “Depends on how much money you have and how much you want,” he said of the corner of his mouth.

  “What could we get for like $250 bucks?” wondered Katie both of her hands on her hips now, sensing Jacob was already going into “dick” mode.

  “Depends on the potency of the shit you wanna smoke…” He shrugged his shoulders, knowing we were in his territory now, and he liked it.

  “Jake, stop acting an ass,” I interjected, getting tired of his crap. “Could you get us some strong to semi-strong weed that would last us for a while with $250 or not?”

  He stood up straight, his eyes still like gashes on his face. He weaved his head right than left, tucking his long hair behind each ear as he considered my question. He sucked in his cheeks, making his lips look almost fish-like. I glanced at Katie, who shrugged noncommittally, then I eyed Ramona, who didn’t meet my eyes. She was watching the TV again. Fine act like a baby, I thought of my girlfriend when Jacob spoke.

  “Okay, ‘cuz, I can do that. For you, I can do that, but I’mma have to make some calls and see what I can set up, because scoring the good stuff is usually harder to come by these days, especially with all the NIA drug crackdowns and shit.” He was all business now, no messing around.

  “You think you could get on that, while Eff and I order some food for later?” suggested Katie as nonchalantly as she could. No one said Katie was stupid.

  “Gonna need the Mula first, luscious cheeks,” retorted Jacob, raising his brow like Groucho Marx¹.

  “Not a prob,” I piped in, already on my feet and heading toward the kitchen where Katie had left to $380 my mother had left for us.

  When I got back, Katie was sitting on the couch with Ramona, both of them watching “the party animals from the east coast”, chuckling as one of the cast fell down drunk at a club. Next, she threw-up on her one thousand dollar Jimmy Choo’s².

  Jacob was already on his cell phone, rummaging through his pockets for something to write with, a much wrinkled and dirty looking scrap of paper in the other hand. He glanced at me when I handed him the money. He quickly snatched the bills out of my hand. He stuffed them in one of his front pockets, then pulled forth a tiny nub of a pencil. He walked out of the TV room, so he could hear whoever was on the other end of the phone without the impediment of the television program. I walked over to Katie and handed her the remainder of the money.

  “You’re the guest, so whenever you are ready, order whatever you want, ok.” I smiled at her and she returned it, her eyes sparkling for me.

  “Thanks, Effy,” she muttered, and scooted away from Ramona, making room for me to sit on the couch in between the two of them.

  The girls, sitting silently to either side of me, seemed focused on the program as it flashed with the strobe lights from one club to another, while the aging cast members floundered, argued, and fought their way through another alcohol infused Saturday night.

  Purposefully, I didn’t watch, not because I despised the show, which I did, but as time went on and the silence stretched. Occasionally, the quiet was broken by Jacobs’s voice flouting into the room from the hallway beyond. I could feel this tugging sense of dread that either Ramona or Katie would say just one thing and the whole precarious situation was going to blow up in flames. I could feel Katie’s bare feet against my thigh, her toes flexing now and again, which was making it hard for me to concentrate. She was sitting with her legs tucked under her like she was wont to do. While, on my other side, I could feel the soft flesh of Ramona’s hip against mine. This was equally distracting for me knowing how many times I had used that particular area of her body to hold onto while I entered her from behind. I would be centered up between her legs, giving her a nice doggy-styled pounding. She had the perfect hips for holding onto when in that position, perfect!

  Dude, stop!

  I sat there with my hands in my lap, covering a twitching cock that couldn’t make up its mind what direction it wanted to point. My mind was racing. I kept trying to calculate what would happen should someone say something wrong or get out of line. If that happened, the whole situation could quickly get out of control, especially if word got out that Katie and I had more than cousinly love between us. If our parents caught wind of it, we’d both be at the head waters of shit creek in less than a heartbeat. It was true, I wanted to be with her more than anything, even if she was my mother’s sister’s daughter. I really didn’t care. That wasn’t the issue. What bothered me deep down was what it would do to my mother. She had always been there for me, had always supported me, in every single one of my childhood endeavors. I didn’t care about Katie’s parents. Yeah, they were my uncle and aunt by blood. To me, if Katie and I did hook up, and somehow became a couple, it would still pale in comparison to what those two had done in their lifetimes. From that perspective, what did it matter that Katie and I were first cousins and in love. Their cocaine and heroin induced fuck frenzy’s would still be the cherry on top of the cake regardless of what we did.

  No, what bothered me, was my mother, she had never been that way. She’d never done reckless things or anything extreme. I’m not saying she was a saint or anything. I know once she got away from my demented biological father, she partied. She had gone out there to “find herself” as she often told us. But hey, I’m not stupid either. We all know when most people come out of an abusive relationship and go in search of themselves, what that really implies. Often there is a sexual component to that, so I know exactly what my mother was saying when she said that. I know she had a few one night stands. I know there was a time when she dated more than one man at a time.

  Truth be said, everyone should be able to experience what they freely wish to experience as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. That’s what stuck in my mind that morning, now slowly becoming afternoon. I didn’t want to do something that would hurt my mother

  Still, as things flushed out and became less murky, I knew myself better than anyone else. I knew my tendencies. Once I wanted something, I went for after it – one hundred percent. I wanted Katie. This told me, even though I had a willing and wild sexual partner with the rockin’ body of a twenty-something, I knew still, when push came to shove, I’d most likely be willing to face the consequences with Katie. When I looked over at her as she watched TV, with Ramona at my side, I couldn’t help but think she was worth it. I knew then, I would risk hurting my mother. I would, and I had a deepening sense of foreboding that Ramona knew this as well. That scared me even more.

  I sighed, letting my head rest against the back of the couch, and looked up at the ceiling. I stretched my arms above and behind my head. I felt Ramona shift her body away from me and visualized she was turning to face me more directly. I wondered if the time for our little discussion had finally come when Jacob came back into the room.

  “Alright, fuckoids, my boy from around the way, says he has some good stuff for us –,” Us? “- but he said the shit is a hot commodity and its selling fast, so I’m gonna bone out and go get it before it’s all gone. He lives close by, so I won’t be gone for long,” explained Jacob with a satisfied grin on his face.

  “Hey Jake,” I started, “Is this guy on the real?”

  Jacob waved a hand at me. “Yeah, yeah, ’cuz, I’ve been buying shit off him for years and he’s always been straight up, at least with me. He knows what family I come from.”

  “You sure?” I had to double-check, right? I mean, he was a jackass, but he was still family. Besides, he was right about one thing, if the guy knew our family – meaning, our family from the other side of the t
racks – then Jacob was good. No one fucked with those guys, not even us and we’re related.

  “Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll be back in like a half hour or so,” was his answer as he put his cell back in his pocket and began back peddling out of the TV room.

  “Then, you’re good?”

  “Yes, Eff, I’m fucking-a good!” he said with irritation beginning to creep into his voice.

  “I’m not talking about you, fuck face; you know how things can get out there sometimes for a guy all alone and out of school when he should be in it. There’s fucking eyes everywhere nowadays, belonging to people just dying to turn someone in for that Muto Bounty. Are you good enough to avoid all of that?” I asked with genuine concern in my tone. Jacob might be a pain in the ass, but what the fuck, he was still my cousin.

  Jacob snorted through his nose. “You know me, cuz, I’m always ready, and with my huge dick in my hands who’s gonna fucking try and stop me? I’d just knock ‘em flat by shaking it to the right!” He began to shake his hips to the right with ridiculous gyrations, thrusting then swinging – it was all loathsome and redundant at the same time. I am sure the three of us on the couch had all rolled our eye in unison.

  In typical Jacob fashion, he didn’t notice and kept on and on and on.

  “Alright then, beyotch!” I interrupted loudly. “Get the fuck out of here, will ya? You’re grossing us out. I want to be able to eat what we’re ordering when it gets here.”

  He stopped, then with a lopsided grin on his face. “Sounds good,” he said. Then he glanced over at Katie. “You make sure you take care that nice ass body of yours until I get back!”, and then he was gone.

  “What a fucker.” I heard Katie say softly, though she never looked away from the TV.

  From my other side, I felt Ramona jiggle with a quiet laugh.

  { ¹Groucho Marx: Born, Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian and film and television star, widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era. }