The Wicked: A Love Story

Jim stopped reading.

He had stopped several times before, but the truth was he didn’t know any of these people. Pamela had been old and almost dead when he was just a little boy. He had never known his grandfather Jimmy ,and certainly Friederich was nothing more than a picture on the wall. But here, this was his grandfather. This was saintly old Steiger Frye, and Pamela was saying… well, first that he had been a Nazi.

Jim turned in bed and saw Seth sleeping beside him, curled up close, and he wanted to snuggle back down into the covers with him, only he knew if he tried it, he’d have no real sleep. His grandfather had been a Nazi. Oh, well, then, he had only been a boy. People changed. And, yes, the real Nazis who had done the damage had been in Germany. He knew that there were eugenicists and Nazis in America, that a lot of all American church going good hearted white people had been perfectly fine with shit like that. But that he was related to such good hearted white people, that his own grandfather, whom he loved, had believed this…

And fighting with that, also the revelation… Steiger was… My grandfather was my other grandad’s… boyfriend? They were lovers?

What happened?

Jim had never told his grandfather or his grandmother Natalie for that matter about his sexuality. It was something more or less known but never stated. But that years ago, before he had had been born, his grandfathers had been lovers, and everyone just called them best friends…

Jim cleared his throat and pushed his brass rimmed spectacles up his nose. He got closer under the lamp and further from Seth, though he longed to touch him.

“Grandad was gay.”

Then, Jim almost hit himself.

“Grandad IS gay.”

He took a breath and turned back to the book.

“That’s really the only reason I’m reading this shit.”

Steiger stayed at the house so often, and always in Jimmy’s room. Never had we questioned it. Now, at night, I came into their room while they slept, naked, lithe, beautiful truly. Steiger was curled up in Jimmy’s arm and I thought how fair he was, how, in some ways, he was a much more fitting heir to the family Strauss than my brother, whom I now had to protect. Leaning down, while they barely stirred, breathing so gently, with silver sheers I cut a bit of Steiger’s hair. I had given them strong wine and I pricked him with a needle. It hurt me to prick him, He winced a little in his sleep. I wiped up his blood with the tip of my finger and mixed it with the hair before moving out of the room.

The next morning I came into the dining room and said, “Father, I need a word with you.”

The way I stood at the door, Friederich knew this was a private matter and he looked at Katherine, her blond hair long greyed, and at my sisters, and said, “Leave.”

They said nothing, not even Katherine, and as they left he commanded, “Close the doors behind you.”

The French doors were pulled close and Freiderich said, “What is it, Pamela?”

“Jimmy is weak.”

“He was always weak. We should drown him and adopt Steiger.”

He barked out a laugh, but I knew he wasn’t entirely joking.

“I want to bring him a woman.”

“A woman? A whore?”

“He won’t know what to do with Natalie unless he’s with a woman.”

“Ah,” Friederich leaned back in his chair, smirking at me. I wondered was he angry because I was no longer in his bed or because I had moved so far away from him in these last years?

“But you know I am right,” I said.

“So you would bring my son a whore?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

It was after nine o clock, and Katherine and the girls had gone to bed. This was when I brought her. She was an American, dark haired, a little too plump, with that displeasing accent my sisters had, and I brought her upstairs to my room first.

“We should talk about what I charge,” she said.

“No,” I said, turning away from her to go to my dresser. “We won’t do that. You will take this.”

I handed her money.

“More than you’ve ever seen, and you will leave these clothes and that perfume and take mine.”

She did not argue. I left her in the room to change, and when she was gone I began the magic. I had learned some things from Augustus and some from Inga. There is some work which only a true witch can do, and then there are things which those with witch blood can always do, even if their training is small. And then there are even those things which one with no gift can do if only they listen. Augustus had told me there were many times when he had to be someone else. He told me that, as I was by my nature a shapechanger, this spell would be easy for me.

“Now your family turns to wolves, but of old you were simply changers. All changers could change to anything.”

I easily became the wolf, but whatever I might be able to change into or not, with some skill, at last, I looked in the mirror and saw, in place of a fifty year old woman who had once been beautiful, a twenty something year old plump prostitute smelling of cheap cologne and wearing too much rouge. It was in this guise that I went down the hall. Steiger had stayed at home this night. I had told Jimmy a surprise was coming. I tapped on the door and his thin voice called, “Steiger.”

But I opened the door and he said, “Excuse me. Who are you, ma’am?”

“Your father sent me,” the whore said. I said.

“My…” Jimmy’s voice croaked

I closed the door behind me. I set the lock. He kept a night lantern and I turned it to the lowest light. He still sat on the bed, paralyzed with fear and perhaps something else. Out from the opening of his pajamas, his penis rose. He must not have even known he was erect. I knelt, and pushed the fabric of his pajamas away from it.

“Ma’am… his voice was still thin, and a little desperate. I could feel his heart pounding against his chest. “What are you doing?”

I bent down quickly, choosing not to think, and took my young brother’s cock in my mouth, sending him into rapture. He stifled his pleasure or fear or both. I could feel his body tensing as I moved up and down on him. Soon, much too soon, there was a hot shower of his semen in my mouth. I swallowed it and was surprised by my pleasure, by my own excitement. Could it be that I had wanted to do this?

“Undress me.” I commanded.

Jimmy did so, and then buried his face in my breasts, sucking on my nipples like a young wolf cub. Though he had already spent himself, quickly he was erect again. I opened my legs and he buried himself in me, fucking me savagely, with no tenderness, sweat running down his frail, sixteen year old body. I had never known this, how I had wanted to be battered by this frail boy, this boy I considered so unworthy, Friederich’s son, and in some ways Hagano’s too, the newest generation of their family. We both screamed as he came, my arms purpled with the bruises of his fingertips. That night we slept together exhausted, and early in the morning I crawled out of that bed, redressed and crept back to my room. My cunt ached. After the celibacy, after no longer feeling beautiful, after, in truth, never having been with a young man, not even when I was young, my cunt ached for Jimmy again, and I knew I would go to him, not simply for his good, whatever that meant, but for my pleasure.

“Jim?”

Seth stretched and looked up, concerned at Jim who was sitting in the chair on the other side of the room, the lamp above fully on him.

“I didn’t want to wake you so I just moved into the chair.”

Seth stretched, turned over and said, “Good Lord, it’s so… Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“No,” Jim said, yawning. “And my eyes hurt, but I just can’t stop. Not yet.”

“What have you learned about your family?”

“That we’re a sick bunch of fucks.”

“Well,” Seth said after some some consideration, “I imagine that’s what everyone learns about their family somewhere down the line.”

“My great aunt had sex with her father.”

“Oh,” Seth said, distastefully. He lay on his side and, scrunching up like a child, shuddered.

“And apparently she slept with my grandfather Jimmy, Marabeth and Kris’s granddad. She slept with him because he was gay and she wanted to make him straight.”

“That is the absolute extreme end of conversion therapy,” Seth observed, and suddenly James laughed, and then Seth began laughing, and then Jim laughed harder and then they were both laughing and, at last, Seth said, “But how did your aunt… Pamela?”

“Yes?”

“How did she know your grandfather was gay?”

“Oh. Because she found him in bed with my other grandfather.”