The Blood: A Denouement

Steiger has been back for some time, but he stays over on East Street, down from the Cathedral, where his people have always been. He and Delia are never present at the same time. Delia has been gone since she left almost ten years ago, and where the witch has been roving, who knows? I never understood how much Pamela cared about her, but Pamela is elated to have her, and Delia is just as glad to be with Pamela.

“Pamela is like my mother. And like a grandmother too,” Delia tells Becca. “She is fiercesome, but you mustn’t be afraid of her.”

Rebecca, who was so fierce about owning her house and putting her stamp on it, doesn’t mind Delia at all, is with her every moment, and when I come to see my wife and Mara, Becca’s head is pressed against Delia’s and both of them are playing with the baby. The two of them are inseparable except at night. Marabeth sleeps with us downstairs.

One night I wake up because of the thudding above. Rebecca sleeps right on through it, but I get up and walk through the house, listening for mice or possums or something that creeps in old walls. When I get upstairs, I hear loud, frantic sounds, and Byron’s bedroom door is open. His little hurricane lantern is on. He lies on his back, looking stupid, his mouth wide open, and Delia, is kneeling on him, naked, red hair swirling about her as she rides him.

I don’t stop watching. I only realize how engrossed I am when I feel someone else’s presence. Kristin is in the dark hallway too, watching, and tears are streaming from her eyes.

“Krista…”

I take her by the hand and lead her back to her room. We can still hear Delia and Bryon going at it.

“He said that he loved me,” she says.

“What?”

“He said that he loved me,” Kristin said again. “He said I was the one.”

“Who said?”

My sister banged her fist against her head and when I pulled them apart, she said, “Byron!”

“Byron! He’s…. He’s our brother.”

“He said he loved me,” Kristin said again. “And look at you?” she accused me. “When you watched them you were hard as a rock?”

“I…”

“You still are. Hanging out of your trousers.”

She was crying on the floor in her dark room, and just like that, she pulled down my pajamas. At first I didn’t know what she was doing, but as Delia and Byron fucked in the next room, Kristin sucked my cock until I came in her mouth.

I pulled up my trousers not entirely sure what I’d just done, or let be done to me, and then she began to cry, her mouth full of—of me—“Neither one of you loves me.”

She spat my seed out of her mouth. It made a long, drooling pool on the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Get out, Nate,” she wept.

I didn’t know what else to do. I obeyed.

THIS PART IS TOO MUCH. CUT IT OUT. REMEMBER TO CUT IT OUT!!!!

B&D

Together with their Parents

Byron James Friederich Strauss

&

Delia Renee Frye

Request the pleasure of your company at the celebration of their union

Saturday the Thirteenth of June, Nineteen-Hundred and Eight-Five

At four o’clock in the afternoon

The Cathedral of Saint Ursula, Lassador, Ohio,

Reception to Follow

STRAUSS

Kristin Marie

Left this world on November 4, 1986

aged 34 years.

Beloved Sister to Byron and Nathan

Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.

Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to attend Kristin’s funeral to be held at The Cathedral of Saint Ursula.

With Requiem Mass

commencing at 11 am

on November 11, 1986

No one talks about the cache of pills found in Kristin’s bedroom.

After the funeral I am sitting in the mausoleum all alone in the little chapel, when Delia comes in, all glamourous and in black. She always looks glamourous and her hair is so dark and red, and Byron is always pale beside her. She says how sad it is and how sad I must be, and I just nod and say yeah and yeah, and we’re standing looking at each other in this crypt and she says, “There’s always one way to defy death.” And then she says, “And I never even got to know my mother.”

And she gets down to pray, or so I think, for a minute, and then before I realize Delia never got on her knees to pray a day in her life, she’s unzipping my pants, and then she’s sucking my dick right there in the crypt the same way my dead sister did just a few months ago. And let me just say, I loved when Kristin sucked my dick. I hated her and I hated myself, but in that moment, in the dark, I thought about fucking her. All these fucking sluts in this family, seducing guys. They need to learn their fucking lesson!

And Byron and Becca are on their way back to the house with the rest of the family.

“I told them I’d come back and make you feel better,” Delia says, and then she lays down on the floor and pulls me to her, and I fuck her on the floor of the mausoleum. I haven’t fucked her since I was sixteen and it feels so damn good, and I don’t feel guilty about it at all. It just feels right and I keep saying, you take that, you take that like a slut, and the dirtier I am the more she likes it. It feels even better than it’s ever felt with Becca and I almost pass out coming inside of her.

I don’t want to feel guilty again. I’m not. Life is crazy and awful. I just had sex with my sister in law in a crypt in front of my sister’s dead body. I feel like a monster, but the truth is a monster is what I am.

When we’re done I say, “Kristin was fucking Byron.”

And she says, “Tell me something I didn’t know.”

And then Delia’s face changes. She has just discovered something, and for once there is no malignance in her eyes.

“You wouldn’t know then.”

“Know?”

Delia looks as troubled as I’ve ever seen her and she even seems to be thinking about what she’s about to say.

“Kristin had a baby.”

I don’t say anything and Delia continues, straightening her stockings.

“Kristin and Byron. Your mother was, naturally, too upset to deal with it much. Pamela handled the matter. She’s good about those things.”

“Did she… Did she have an abortion?”

“No, no,” Delia shook her head. “Strausses don’t kill their clan. They gave the baby to one of your cousins.”

“How did you know and I know know?”

“Because you weren’t supposed to, and what’s more, I’m sure Rebecca does know. Pamela told me. They were even going to be stupid enough to name the baby Byron,”

I was still shaking my head over this thing I had never known about my own family when Delia said: “In the end they just made a compromise and called him Myron.”

Not possible! Dillard and Cynthia even look like Myron. It is not possible that her cousin is…. Her cousin. It is not… helpful, Marabeth searches for the words. It seems like it would be violence to tell Myron this truth about himself, and at the same time it feels like it would be high handed to keep it away from him. He’s the smartest of them all in some ways, and like Jim, he had hid much of his pain in smiles. She had had more compassion than she knew until now for the boys of this family and for jug eared Myron who plays at being a clown. She shakes her head and decides she will burn this and never tell him, and the moment she decides this, determines that she cannot keep it from him. She cannot decide. She reads on.