The Girl Under The Stairs Ch. 01

Meg.

"Hey, stranger, coming in?"

I threw my cigarette into the gutter, followed her inside.

*

The room was seats on three sides, ascending like bleachers around the stage. The stage was a run down kitchen. I looked around for a seat, but almost everything had been taken while I dawdled outside, delaying the moment when I'd see my sister naked in a roomful of strangers.

Meg must have seen my hesitation. She grabbed my hand as she climbed up to the light console at the center of the highest level of the bleachers.

"C'mon," she whispered. You can sit with me."

So I ended up perched in a hard chair next to a pale, frizz-haired girl to watch my sister.

"Thanks," I said. "I could use the moral support."

She had a pretty smile.

"Kinda weird for you, huh? This naked thing?

"Yeah, it is" I answered. "This is just like, not how it's supposed to be, y'know?"

She shrugged. Fiddled with knobs on the console, looking down.

"Maur' told me you've been practicing."

"She told you that?"

Another shrug. Meg was wearing a shirt too large for her that hid almost everything about her body. Still not looking at me.

"Yeah, I think it's kinda kinky hot, honestly. It's got a sort of Branwell and Charlotte Brontë feel, yeah?"

"I dunno. I think it was Emily he had the hots for though."

"Yeah, well. Whatever ... I just think it's really nice that you'll help her like that. But also kind of nudist transgressive, y'know?"

I guess. It's not like we're like sleeping together, y'know?"

"Oh god, I know. Did I say it was?"

I shrugged back at her

Thinking about my sister's hand, fingers damp from touching her pussy.

Nothing like that had happened again.

Even though I almost wanted it to.

She held up her hand, spoke into her headset.

"Gotcha. Gotcha."

She held up three dry fingers in front of my face.

"Three minutes, babe, you ready for this."

I shrugged at her.

She smiled at me.

Her hands danced over knobs and buttons.

The lights went down.

*

Ten minutes into the play, my sister came out from the space that stood for the bedroom. She was wearing a sheer nightgown that left a shoulder bare and fell halfway down her calves.

"Fuck you," she said to her husband.

*

A few minutes later, she told him, "It's so goddamn hot, I'd just rather set around naked and never move again."

*

At the beginning of act two, Meg brought up the lights and my sister was sprawled in a kitchen chair, her legs up on the tin-top table. One hand covered her pussy, moving lazily side to side. There's a quiet stirring in the audience: a room too cool to admit the vague thrill of seeing a naked woman, alone in lights.

A man who is not her husband walks in from what stands for outdoors.

"Jesus, woman, ain't you something? Put some goddamn clothes on willya?"

"Fuck you," she said to the man who isn't her husband.. This time, she's smiling.

*

Later, she kisses him. He was dressed. She wasn't. She presses against him, her small ass moving into him, the bottom of her grinding against him, her right leg hooking around his. He tries to fight against her, loses; his hand drifts over her hip , then down between her legs.

Beside me, Meg brought down the lights.

*

Still later, he hits her. She stumbles backward across the kitchen floor, crashes into the stove, slides downward to sit, legs splayed, the pink inside of her opened and visible. It is not erotic, because the man has just hit her. It is erotic because she is an actress.

It is erotic because she is my sister.

When she picks herself up, I breathe again.

"Branwell," Meg whispered in the dark.

Chapter 7 The Cast Party

And then it was over.

When Maura came out for bows, holding hands with the other two actors -- her husband, her lover - she was wearing a white bathrobe, which she clutched modestly at the neck as she bent forward. The audience was standing, seeming genuinely enthusiastic. Meg, disattached from her headphone, punched me in the arm, grinning with that fevered intensity that theater people always bring to opening nights.

"Not bad, huh, Maura's brother?"

Then folded me, into a nice, intense hug; and after a monment, when the actors had left the stage, she brought the house lights up, the applause throbbed and died, the audience milled toward the exit, voices humming.

"Wanna go back?" she asked me?

And again, a woman who takes charge of things, she pulled me along in her wake to the stage. We walked across the kitchen, through the bedroom door into a narrow backstage space and down a flight of stairs to the dressing rooms. The actors were all there, being loud and raucous, passing a bottle of champagne among themselves and the couple techies.

Maura saw me and Meg and ran over, barefoot to wrap us both in a hug. Held by her, I was briefly aware of the bones and softnesses just beneath the fabric of her dressing gown.

"Shit, Jimmy, we did it. I did it, didn't I? Did you like it? Did you like the play?

I only had to nod at her and she was happy.

She pulled me away from Meg and down the corridor to the two other actors.

This was my night to be pulled this way and that by women.

She introduced me: Husband Tom; Lover: Richard, tall, sharp jawed and movie beautiful make it in California. He'd been good on stage - he had the looks and maybe the mojo for a long and happy future playing detectives in California.

Good to meet you too.

Then, plans: a bar down the street near Flatbush, Meg knows where it is, why don't you two go ahead, maybe get us a table, you and Meg and we'll be there soon, god, could use a drink, have some champagne before you go, and see you, see you soon, god what a night, it was good wasn't it, it really was good, Jimmy, Jimmy thank you so much for everything for give me that bottle

Taking it from Richard, upending it so it spilled from her mouth and jumping onto Richard who catches her, hands on her bottom through fabric, her bare legs wrapping around him...

Her leg twisting his on the stage moving against him.

And then Meg and I are outside in the warm summer night, crowds of hipsters moving around us as we weaved across town to the appointed bar near Flatbush, She is pulling me, cajoling me, in another universe I could love her, but not here, not tonight, because I have just seen Maura naked falling, legs wide, her finger wet in our apartment, her hand moving across herself on stage.

And then Maura is there, and we are all drinking sour amber beers and she is with him, the one she moved against on the stage, of course, she would be, he's the one she moved against, he's touched her there where she's only touched herself while telling me she fucked a man for money;

And I go to the jukebox and take a perverse pleasure in playing Elvis Costello's Watching the Detectives, a forty year old song saying everything about my life, this night. And when I get back to the table, she is kissing him, holding him, moving into him, drinking, swallowing him

And eventually, she leaves with him, all of us standing in the warm night outside the bar, hugs, kisses all around, and she disappears into the infinite New York night and the others are gone and there is only Meg, who turns to me and says, smiling, pretty, lost beneath wild hair and an oversized shirt,

"Don't get any ideas, bucko, I make it a point to never sleep with guys who are in love with somebody else."

"And you think I'm in love with Mo?"

"Hey, you tell me, Branwell."

Then kisses me, lightly, half on the face, half on the lips and she too disappears into pools of illumination and stretches of dark on her way to the subway and she is gone and so is Mo and I am alone in New York, the world, my life.

It is two o'clock in the morning.

Branwell.

My girl under the stairs.

Ch 8 First Morning

Morning.

Mo still not home.

Still raining.

I found myself standing in the doorway of her bedroom, at 7:30 looking at her unslept-in bed. Then figured a shower would make me human, so I steamed up the bathroom and got in and let hot water beat on my shoulders and the small of my back. Tension washed out of me, and, as it did, memories of the last two weeks flowed in.

My sister sitting on the floor watching a movie on Netflix. Bowl of popcorn in her lap, simulating modesty. Rubbing buttered fingers on her leg, gleaming.

Me leaning down to take a handful, my face a hair's breadth from her nipples, my hand separated from my sister's pussy by the thickness of a glass bowl.

My sister moving across the stage, walking up to her "husband, " tiny breasts against his shirt, grinding him: her line:

Don't you want this? Honey don't you want it?

And when he hit her, my sister falling backward, scrabbling across the stage kitchen floor, the pink inside of her opening between her legs.

Not embarrassed. Not embarrassed anymore.

My sister opening the refrigerator in our apartment.

My sister's Keira Knightly boobs.

And found myself touching myself , moving my hand, making myself hard.

Which wasn't hard to do

And didn't hear the door open

And didn't realize until I heard Mo's voice that I wasn't alone.

"Hey, Jimmy, what you doing?"

Oh god, did I freeze.

My mind in overdrive.

Not the truth. The truth was kind of perverted. I couldn't tell her the truth.

I couldn't lie to her.

I'm standing in the shower, facing (thank god!) away from her, with my hand wrapped around my erection.

My erection was all about her.

Shit, everything was all about her.

My sister, the girl under the stairs.

Pirouetting naked in the sunshine.

The cleft between my sister's legs. The red strip of her pubic hair.

Standing on the other side of a steamed glass door.

This time I was the one naked.

Naked with a hard-on that wouldn't go away.

"What's it look like?"

I stared at tiles, steam, water. Anything not to look back over my shoulder. Anything not to turn around.

My sister in the room .

Who got laid last night by an actor who pretended to hit her, then kissed her at the cast party.

While I watched.

Everything I watched.

"You tell me, Jimmy."

"I'm beating off , Mo. I'm standing here in the shower beating off."

"This got something to do with me Jimmy?"

"Yeah, Mo. It does."

"It's okay, Jimmy."

"I don't think so, Mo."

"Hey, I asked a lot of you, you know?"

"No," I started to say. My sister in the room behind me. My hand on my dick. Ashamed. Embarrassed. And all I wanted to do was come.

Which is when I heard the sound of metal sliding on metal and cool air on my back.

And her arms around me.

And her tiny breasts against my back.

Her voice in my ear, husky.

"Turn around, Jimmy."

I did.

She was standing there, washed by water, wreathed in steam.

My hard-on was in the way.

She brushed it upward with the back of her hand until it rested on her belly.

My penis resting on my sister's belly.

Her hands down low on my back, pulling me closer.

My penis pressed against my sister's belly.

My girl beneath the stairs.

My girl in the shower, looking up into my eyes.

"I slept there, but I didn't fuck him,"

"That isn't my ... "

"Yeah, it is. I want it to be."

And leaned up on her toes, to kiss me, my mouth. Her tongue whispering against my teeth, then flowing inward to wrap around my tongue.

My sister my sister my sister my sister my sister.

Hands, lips moving from my face, neck, chest, belly,

Saying, murmuring, "It's alright, it's alright, Jimmy, alright, alright."

to take me in her mouth, her hands surrounding my balls, fingers drumming pressure on the nerves at the bottom of my body.

Disattaching for a moment to look up, water streaming her face, hair dark with water. "It's okay, Jim. I want it too. Just relax and let it happen."

And taking me back into the soft inside of tongue and cheeks, her hands beneath me pressing, pressing

My sister who knows a thing or two about how to drive a man crazy.

Who slept there but didn't fuck him.

And moving her hands up across my buttocks to my back and drawing me closer to her, pulling me in as I melted inside her

and came and came and came and came and came and came and came.

And when it was over and I was detumescing, body and soul, she released me and leaned her head against my belly, my spent penis -- now suddenly almost devoid of feeling -- sliding slowly down her water slick cheek and I listened to her say:

"I love you, Jimmy."

She wasn't my sister anymore.

*

She turned off the water

Led me out of the bathtub into the steam swirling room .

Wrapped a towel around my shoulders

Took my hand in hers.

Led me

Out into the apartment, across the living room, through morning sunlight as bright and pure as on the first morning she pirouetted naked in front of me.

And into her bedroom

And to her unslept-in bed.

Still holding my hand (my hand in hers)

And with her other hand turning down the sheets

And sliding in,

And bringing me with her.

Shrugging off the towel,

Crawling in beside her.

My skin alive with the touch of her skin

The length of my body.

Maura.

Mo.

Her hand finding me again.

Holding. Moving.

"I just ..." I start to tell her.

"Oh, I think you'll be able to," she said, hand tightening, letting go, tightening, letting go. "It'll be our first time."

Reader, she seduced me.

And made me want to believe in god.

Ch 9 First Time

Then it was my sister's turn.

If the first time with almost anyone is electric, the first time with my sister was nuclear.

The first time, you want to devour your lover; and if, a man, you can't take her inside your body, can't absorb her the way she can absorb you, then you try to come as close as you can to ingesting her, touching as much of her body as you can with your tongue: her varying textures, the softnesses of her skin -- her breasts, the insides of her thighs, the barely stubbled silk under her shoulders, the roughness of her heels juxtaposed against the nearly virgin smoothness of her arch. The feel of her pulse against your tongue as you kiss beneath her wrists.

Maura's breasts were small enough that I could fit each one inside my mouth, sucking on the whole breast, my tongue moving across the papery smooth edges of her nipples, to their rough, uneven centers, each one growing hard and longer between my lips.

I took the trimmed traces of hair at the bottom of her belly in my teeth, pulled upwards, not entirely gently, pulling the skin of her mound upward, then released her, moved downward, licked her thighs until her legs lifted and moved around my head in a bicycle swirl that drew me inward, closer to her until at last, my tongue drew apart her swollen lips and found the deepest softness of her. My tongue, my mouth exploded with the sudden taste of her: she was like sour honey. I moved my face against her, found with my tongue the rim of the furred inside of her, probed, withdrew: tasting the deepest part of her, more acrid now than honey, then sliding down between her rising legs, circling, kissing the soft lined flesh between her cheeks, then moving back across all the territory I had explored of her, feeling the different tastes and textures of her inner parts, and then moved through the soaking softness above until I found the hood at the top of her cleft, and beneath that tiny skin: her clitoris, hardened, elongated, exposed, alive.

Her sounds: low moaning, a long sustained note, the song of a tenor saxophone, an indrawn breath, another long note, another: each outdrawn breath a release of tension, each indrawn breath more intense than the one before until, when I found the rich place at the top of her fold, she deepened, alto, short notes, neither rising nor falling, sustained staccato panting. No longer music, a sound more elemental, reducing her -- reducing us both -- to something more pure than human. Blind animals writhing. I looked at her from the bottom of her belly: the veins and tendons of her neck distending, becoming taut ropes beneath flesh, the muscles quivering, the veins pulsing with blood, with life -- a silent screaming - alive, alive alive.

Her head moving side to side on a pillow, hands threading her hair, moving down across her lips, her chest. My own hands on her breasts, nipples distinct against my palms, and one hand -- hers -- coming to rest and squeezing downward on my hand, tightening my grip on her, squeezing so hard that I half- thought it would hurt her; while her other hand slipped down the side of her body, fingers grazing the sharp bone of her hip, then twining into my hair, pressing against my skull, pushing me downward, downward as my tongue ran down and inside her, the opening now loose and salty, the soft gate to the inside of her, but not yet, not yet, and so out and up to touch again the fiery thing at the top of her lips, and as I start to release her, start to move upward along her sweat slick body, impelled by a million years of genetics to be inside of her body, her self, her soul, hearing her voice, too deep to be her, nearly (but not) unrecognizable, saying no, no, this way for now and bringing my face back into the glorious swamp of her, where my tongue ceased all ornamentation and simply licked over and over the hard small knob that was for the moment the center of all her feeling until her legs clamped onto my ears, my shoulders, her heels digging into my back (I am her horse, she is riding me, she is telling me where to go.) and her moans becoming suddenly articulated into one endless, elemental word. I feel her shuddering against my face, my hands have somehow travelled unnoticed to grip open her buttock and my thumbs are surprised by the sharp wonderfully immodest contractions flowing up from inside the back of her (all of her muscles -- seen unseen -- alive and pulsing) and her voice washes over me like water, gasping, almost choking "Fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, Jimmy, oh fuck."

*

Then it was over.

And I was lying between Maura's thighs, my head resting on her slick belly, the top of the triangle of flesh that holds her insides. I can feel the tendons at the jointure of her legs and torso against my shoulders.

"God, Jimmy," she said, her voice rising to a nearly normal tone - still winded though, still drinking air to recover -- "I peed. I swear I think I peed myself. I think I peed on your face."

"I don't care," I told her. And slowly, half-exhaustedly, I pushed up and above her, crawling up along the white living skin of her beautiful (to me, to me) body, until the end of my erection was touching her lips and moving inside (sweet ferret!) the still damp inner piece of her. Braced above her, face now to face. We looked at each other, the eyes are the window to the soul, and to my unasked question, she gave the silent answer and, in response, my hand found myself and moved that hardness into her deep and procreative inside.

"I don't have anything," I said. "I never thought ..."

But she shook her head and rolled against me, drawing me millimeters further into her and then I was falling down and in and the warmth of her enveloped me. And we moved -- awkwardly at first, first steps of a dance, then with more shared and conscious rhythm. And so it happened. On a warm July morning, rain drumming the windows of her apartment in Brooklyn:

I fucked my sister.

I made love to the girl beneath the stairs.

*

We were as careful as any normal pair of lovers.

She came quickly, while I was inside her.