WebNovels

Chapter 60 - part 2

As Bobby and Katrina made their way down the gentle slope toward the Dragon Palace eatery, the sun was dipping below the horizon, casting the buildings of the downtown area in an orange and purple glow. Streetlights were beginning to come on and the neon signs of the various establishments further down Main Street were lit. Beyond that, past four lanes of traffic and the Petro-Chem fill-up station, the buildings got taller and the streets dirtier. This was an area that the Sterling children were forbidden to go unaccompanied by an adult.

The landscape changed quickly in the six blocks between. The Sterling house was gated and opened up onto a private drive that in turn opened up onto Main Street. The children would have to walk past a park and several side-streets to pick up their food. The cars visible outside the wrought-iron gates were luxury sedans at the start of the trip, but by the time Bobby and Katrina hit the crossing of Main Street and Fulton, five blocks down, they were cheaper domestics with rusted bumpers and some of the lawns were overgrown.

Katrina felt a queer sort of excitement in venturing out with her new (well, relatively new) adopted brother, and almost took his hand to lead him along, before stopping herself with the reasoning that Bobby would not want to be treated with such "kid gloves". She was only a just a teenager herself, of course, but still older than him and more than head taller. Bobby had left his suit jacket at the house, with the air being warm, and he had removed his tie, giving him a more casual look - Katrina thought the boy still looked rather handsome in this more casual way. It didn't come from his clothes necessarily but from his utter confidence. She had not offered her hand, and he certainly hadn't asked for it or required it. Much different from her biological brother, Isaac, who when younger tended to cling to their mother.

After church she had changed quickly into a halter top and denim shorts that went down to upper thigh, nothing immodest but still letting her shapely legs get some sun. Her hair was dark enough that she and Bobby could have been biological brothers, to look at them from behind; they shared some of the same traits, both being thin, neat, well-groomed. But her face lacked something present in Bobby's, an intangible quality told in stolen glances, as simple as her wanting her new brother to like her, and wanting to like him in turn, while Bobby was as impassive and unmoved as ever by what anyone thought.

"Have you ever had maqlooba ?" Bobby asked, not looking at her, only standing by her side as they dawdled, waiting for the sparse traffic at the corner of the street before Fulton Avenue.

"No," Katrina said. "Is it Chinese food?" The pronunciation sounded strange to her, like the things on the Dragon Palance menu - egg foo yung, chicken su gai, and all the rest of the stuff almost as fun to say as it was to eat.

Bobby shook his head, and even seemed to smile a little. "No. It's better. I can show you." He began to cross the street after a man on a motorcycle sped past, and Katrina hurried to follow him.

"But the Dragon Palace is just ahead," Katrina said. "And I don't know if-"

"It's just a bit further," Bobby said, evenly, and then his face changed expression for the first time as he turned to look back at her and his voice took on a knowing tone. "I won't tell if you won't." Katrina couldn't help but smile at how persuasive he was, and she liked the idea of venturing to a further eatery for a number of reasons. First, because she had turned fourteen and felt the family rule about not crossing Fulton Street to be quite a "baby" rule for a young adult, and two, it was very interesting and intriguing to have a secret with her new younger brother! A secret was a powerful thing, after all - a speck of grit that trust could form around like a pearl. Furthermore, Katrina didn't want to be the 'uncool' older sister who shook her finger at Bobby and told him they had to obey the Sterling family rules.

"Alright," she said, brushing her long black hair away from her face and smiling sweetly. "I won't tell if you won't!" They had arrived at the corner of Fulton and Main, one of those busy, four-lane traffic crossings that had seemed so scary when she was little. The Dragon Palace was in a plaza to their right, along with a hairdresser and various other boutiques - it looked clean and safe, but that wasn't where they were going. Her and Bobby were going across the street, past the Petro-Chem gas station and then across another street and beyond.

The sun was disappearing below the horizon. She was starting to lag behind Bobby as they approached the opposite curb, just as the 'Walk' sign was blinking ominously, and then, amazingly, it was he who offered Katrina his hand to bring her along. "Come on," Bobby said, tugging her. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not," she said, automatically, but she was, a little. It was getting dark, there were people, adults, out on the streets in places, and they were entering an unfamiliar part of town. Her heart was beating a little faster with each step, and her stomach was swimming with queer butterflies - she really did feel like she and Bobby were doing something forbidden. It reminded her of the way she had felt earlier, when she had knelt before him and taken communion. She found her feelings at that time to be very hard to parse. It was like Bobby had a magnetism, a strange persuasiveness to him that made her want to impress him, to follow him, to see what he had to show her, and take what he had to give her.

They walked a further block, and Katrina examined the windows of the various shops they were passing, almost gasping at what she saw. Kalaf's Halal Butcher , read one window, and nearby the handwritten words were a series of squiggles and dashes that she guessed were arabic. It was closed, seeming alien and shut to her, and she saw dim shapes in the window that scared her, things hanging from metal hooks.

"Gosh," she muttered, and Bobby kept leading her on. They passed a man on a cheap, disposable cellphone, a man with fingerless gloves and a beard. He seemed angry. As the two children veered around him he yelled you bitch, you bitch, I'll fucking kill you! This time Katrina really did gasp. She had so seldom seen adults upset enough to say such things, but she barely had time to process what it meant before Bobby pulled her along.

They arrived at a depression in the sidewalk that opened into an alley between the taller buildings, and Katrina was about to ask where this restaurant was when Bobby veered into it. This time, she stopped in her tracks, not allowing him to pull her. "No, Bobby!" she gasped, staring down the alley. It was lit by lamps attached to the uneven brick, some of which were broken and flickering. Barely wide enough to fit one car. It was an alley that led around behind the shops and apartments, to the street facing their rear doors, where trucks might go to load and unload into their garages. There were no buildings or streets beyond it, only a chain-link fence and a dark sky hidden by dark, high grasses and trees. "We can't go in there."

Bobby looked up at her, still gripping her hand. "It's just around the corner," he said. "I promise."

Katrina's lip trembled. The alley seemed so dark . She saw puddles, broken glass, graffiti. Things she associated with badness and wrongness from the watching of a great many movies - movies her parents had forbidden but that she accessed via a friend's Netflix account during sleepovers and visits. "Are you sure?" she whispered, her face worried.

Bobby gave her such a look of calm reassurance that it was impossible not to be convinced. "Trust me," he said. And he looked so competent and confident in his open-collared white shirt and his black slacks, that she allowed herself to listen. Again, she felt that queer feeling in her belly, the feeling of butterflies that comes with doing something forbidden - swiping something from a local convenience store, say, or (as she had once done secretly in the garage of her friend Sharon) trying a cigarette for the first time.

Bobby led on. Katrina followed. They made it through the narrow alley to the street behind the shops and buildings, the sun was down, it was growing dark. The street alternated between shadow and golden circles of streetlamp. Katrina looked side to side and saw corrugated doors and steel shutters, places to load and unload, the part of a store that anyone but the owner and his workers would probably never see. The place was dirty, with only one source of light besides the streetlamps, which was-

There was a growl, Katrina wailed and put her hands up to her cheeks, her knees knocking together. Her teen breasts (much, much more than budding at this point, thank you) bounced behind her arms and her pretty eyes went wide, their irises flashing blue-grey in the lamplight. It was a dog. A large, black dog with no collar and a ragged coat, baring its teeth… at her. At them!

"Oh my god, Bobby!" and this small blasphemy slipped out before she had a chance to think. Katrina instinctively shrunk away, and her hand fell from Bobby's. She did not turn to run, because she knew if she broke eye contact with the beast, the first thing she would hear would be the patter of paws on the cement, growing closer, closer, before those awful-looking teeth tore into her thigh or her ankle. She was backing away, but Bobby wasn't. The eleven-year-old boy stood brave as anything.

"Bobby!" she cried again, and this time it was a shriek. She was really scared, and behind that fear was something worse - if Bobby was bitten, or injured, she would have to face their parents, and explain how it had happened, how she had allowed her younger brother to wander into an unsafe part of town! "Bobby, it's rabid! Back away!" She did not know if it was rabid or not… but it was certainly dirty… and looked gaunt and hungry. It was a Rottweiler or something, a very mean-looking dog.

"No, I know him," Bobby said, and then he crouched down in front of the dog, about fifteen feet away, staring it down. "I know him."

"You don't know him!" Katrina hissed. "Bobby, that is a stray dog-"

Bobby held up a hand behind himself, in her direction, not taking his eyes off the dog, which was growling and snorting all the more, before it let out a series of harsh barks. Katrina was steeling her courage - she decided was going to walk forward and grab Bobby, collect the smaller boy under her arm if need be. She was fourteen and an early bloomer, more than a head taller and physically more powerful.

"Hey brother," Bobby said, and he held a finger in front of his face. From her vantage, even partially behind him, Katrina could see Bobby was had a confident grin. He began to speak to the dog, softly and firmly. "You recognize me? Yeah, you recognize me."

"Bobby…" Katrina said, but her voice came out papery and without force. She watched as Bobby stared the dog down, crouching and getting low to make eye contact. And the crazy thing was, the beast almost seemed to respond to him! The latest growl became a whine on the tail end, and then the growling and barking ceased altogether. The Rottweiler's tail dropped down and fell between its legs and it began to shudder, making a pathetic, high-pitched noise.

"Bobby," Katrina said again. "Bobby, how?" She could not take her eyes off what was happening. The dog that had seemed to vicious just moments before was retreating.

"It's nothing," he said. "I know him, and he knows me. He lives every day looking for his next meal. Scared, ready to kill or die just to eat. That means he knows me. He's known me every day of his life." He beckoned the dog with one finger and all the cur could do was shiver. Then, amazingly, it began to slowly walk forward, whining, head low. It did not want to approach, that much was for sure, but Bobby seemed to be giving it no choice. Katrina had never seen anything like it. It was terrible to watch, in some way. Even with the danger passed, the way the dog was shrinking away, shivering, yet still answering Bobby's call… it was so wrong .

"Bobby, stop," Katrina whispered. Her voice would barely come out. She dog reached Bobby's outstretched hand, it hung its head submissively almost to the pavement. It shivered again and then began to urinate uncontrollably, spraying the ground and its own gaunt, hungry shanks with fragrant dogpiss. She had never seen such a fearsome thing become so cowed. The mutt that had terrified her had been erased, replaced with something pathetic. A servile, crawling animal that Bobby had completely… completely…

Dominated.

Katrina's eyes were drawn to the dog's penis as it sprayed down, forming a steaming, yellow puddle. She was again struck by the sense she was seeing something utterly forbidden, something nasty, a part of the world only an adult might see. She felt those butterflies again, a tingling. "He pisses to mark his territory, usually," Bobby said to her, not turning around. "But he knows it's no good around here. Not while I'm here. He knows."

Before Katrina even knew what was happening, Bobby's hands went to his slacks. It took her a second to register what he was doing; the telltale male movement she'd seen in various movies and even once or twice in person, while camping out, when a male cousin needed to go off the beaten path, turn his face to a tree, and relieve himself. Her eyes went wide.

"Bobby, what are you doing!?" she gasped, but Bobby only gave a light grunt of relief as he took his genitals out of his button-fly. Katrina had only the side-rear angle, but she could still see what her adopted brother was taking out of his pants - an immense, flopping shaft that was unbelievably long, with a pair of fist-sized testicles pouring out behind it.

That's Bobby's dick and those are his balls , Katrina thought, the blood rushing to her face and turning her redder than perhaps she had ever been. Of course she knew that boys had such equipment - she had seen diagrams in textbooks and heard rumors and legends of embarrassing 'boners' suffered by classmates and giggled about by her friends. She was fourteen and not stupid, of course she knew what males did with their penises to consummate a marriage when the time came. However, she knew even at a glance that Bobby was hardly normal. He was huge - far bigger than a boy his age had any right to be, and far bigger than the diagrams in her textbooks. She didn't know how he had hidden such a large member in his pants without anyone noticing!

Bobby's skin was fair enough that the scant light in the alley reflected off his shaft and revealed that it hung almost to his knee; it was a good eleven inches long, maybe even a foot. The boy began to handle it nonchalantly, gripping it near the tip with one hand and taking aim at the cracked pavement below, where the curs unwilling urine was already glistening. The cavalierness of Bobby's actions seemed strangely in line with their excursion so far - he had taken her into the alley against her warning, had persuaded her to search for a new, exotic restaurant, had fearlessly approached a mongrel dog when she had wanted to run. Katrina knew this was further even than those boundary breaking steps, and waited for outrage and embarrassment to overtake her. Instead, she found she was curious. What Bobby was doing was so different from anything she'd ever experienced - she couldn't help but associate it with being worldly and adult.

"Ahhh!" Bobby sighed, and as his older stepsister watched, a foamy, heavy stream of steaming piss began to erupt into the ground from the large tip of his cock, blasting into the existing piss-puddle and making it ripple and splatter, quickly overwhelming it with sheer volume. The urine of the mewling, cringing Rottweiler was being washed away and replaced by Bobby's, and it was only a matter of seconds before it was his issue that was spreading out, washing into and over cracks in the cement, and twinkling in the semi-darkness. The sun was below the horizon, ringing the piss in a tangerine glint.

He's pissing so much , Katrina thought, and the idea made her feel naughty in a way she couldn't nail down. Instead of turning away from what should have been a scatological sight, yelling 'Ewww!' or similar, she continued to watch. The piss stream was as thick as her finger and seemed to continue on for more than thirty uninterrupted seconds, forming a puddle that followed the cracks in the concrete until it veered off into drainage by the far curb. She could smell it - an acrid, humid, jungle smell that made her head spin.

It's because his thing is so big , Katrina thought, blushing even deeper. She could not help but compare the shuddering, defeated dog - pissing pathetically all over its own mangy shanks - to the power and confidence Bobby was showing. She knew instinctively that this was something she could never tell her mother about, and especially not her father, and that made it all the more enticing. She was in a new place, with a new person, seeing a new thing… and that was making her feel… feel…

"Oh my gosh, Bobby," she breathed, and bit her bottom lip unconsciously. Her nipples were hard nubs inside her top and seemed suddenly sensitive to the fabric. She felt a tingle in her belly and between her legs. She wrestled with these feelings as Bobby's stream began to abate at last, the arc drooping first a little and then a lot, then breaking up and dripping straight down. He shook off the last remaining drops, still making eye contact with the dog, and cooly stuffed his penis back into his trousers, requiring several motions to complete the task, before zipping up again.

Bobby wiped off his hands on his slacks, then gestured toward the shrinking, cringing Rottweiler. "Go on. Git!" His motion seemed to release whatever hold he had on the creature, and it ran so fast its paws barely found purchase on the cement, tossing up droplets of piss as it moved, running as far as they could see and then around the corner and into the deepening darkness of night.

Katrina moved to stand beside Bobby, looking down at him in awe. "Bobby, that was… I can't believe you did that!" Her hip was almost pressing into his side. She put a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, she very much wanted to touch him, to be connected to him. It seemed… safer.

"I just had to show him who was in charge," Bobby said, and his eyes seemed distant. "He doesn't have the will to fight. He's not that type of dog. He's a coward. He slinks after people when he thinks they can't see him. And he only acts tough when he has the advantage." He smiled slyly, then tossed a glance back over his shoulder, toward the alley they'd emerged from. Katrina turned her head as well, seeing nothing, and then Bobby's expression changed and he addressed her. "Did you get a look?" he asked, looking up at her. Katrina blushed yet again.

"No."

For the first time, the boy smiled. "Liar."

Katrina turned her head and said nothing, but she couldn't help but smile back a little. "That was weird, Bobby," she offered, figuring it was what she should say even if she didn't really feel it.

"That dog won't come in my alley again," Bobby said. "He can smell me now, and he'll be afraid. That's all I did." He paused, then locked eyes with Katrina. "I bet you always wanted to see what it's like down here at night, huh?"

"I don't know," Katrina replied. But she did know. Her parents setting the Fulton Street boundary had made her curious about venturing beyond.

"Ever seen a boy piss before?" Bobby asked.

"No!" Katrina said, and then giggled at the pure audacity of the question. "No, especially not in public, Bobby-"

"And I bet you're not afraid of that dog anymore, huh?" Bobby pressed on. His green eyes were twinkling. Katrina shook her head. "A lot happens after sunset, if you're not afraid," Bobby said. He took her hand and gestured further down the alley, toward the one source of light that looked almost like a storefront, and Katrina followed. She didn't know quite what would happen… but she could feel that something would.

Her heart was pounding like crazy.

He's not that type of dog.

Isaac had never been a smart boy, but he'd had enough cleverness to take an old jacket out of the closet and bundle himself in it as he followed Katrina and Bobby down toward Fulton Street. A jacket his sister wouldn't recognize if she looked around and saw him trailing at a distance of, say, two city blocks. Isaac wanted to see how they interacted; he intended to take Katrina aside and tell her of his suspicion that their new adopted brother was a snake and a louse and a bad kid, but he couldn't do so if he attitude toward him was too positive. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his pouting face tucked into an upturned collar. The jacket smelled like mildew, but when combined with a wool cap it made for a good enough disguise.

He'd felt a twinge of fear when Bobby and Katrina decided to cross Fulton Street and hated himself for it. Like Katrina, he knew of the prohibition of doing so without parental accompaniment. The lack of hesitation on Bobby's part made him despise the little schemer all the more. "Where the heck are you going, jerko?" he'd muttered to himself, debating about whether to follow any further or run back to the house and begin tattling immediately. In the end, the certainty that Bobby would later accuse him of cowardice - 'oh look, the little baby is afraid to cross the street after dark' - was what spurred him to follow. That, and his deepening curiosity. When they proceeded two more blocks he'd started to become alarmed, and when they turned into the narrow alley and headed behind the storefronts he'd become very alarmed .

It took him a minute to work up the courage to tiptoe down the alley and look around the corner. By that point he was sure he'd lost them… but what he saw instead was something he couldn't quite understand. Bobby was standing with his dick out… pissing! And he was doing it right in front of his sister, Katrina. And she was watching him do it! And her eyes seemed to be glued to his penis… which from Isaac's vantage was really, really big!

Isaac cringed into his collar until the only thing popping out of it was his mousy brown hair. What he was seeing was wrong, and though his barely-teen mind wasn't seasoned enough to articulate it, he felt as if he had stumbled on some dark ritual, something that would twist him just in the seeing of it. All the piss spraying out of Bobby's dick, a dick that was way bigger than his - it seemed like ten times bigger. His pretty older sister standing rapt and blushing, and the final lunatic touch, a mangy, whimpering black dog shuddering in front of Bobby, looking like the mistreated pet of a wicked witch.

He wanted to look away and could not. And then he heard Bobby speak: He doesn't have the will to fight. He's not that type of dog. He's a coward. He slinks after people when he thinks they can't see him. And he only acts tough when he has the advantage.

Bobby was not talking about the dog at all. Isaac had never been more certain of anything in his life. And as this certainty drew over him like a shroud, Bobby looked back into the alley, his head turning unerringly to look directly at Isaac and his shadowed, peeking hiding place. He stifled a gasp, pulled back behind the edge of the building and pressed his palms against the brick. He was in a cold sweat. He had been so careful, yet the boy had turned his head directly at him, as if guided by a supernatural sixth sense.

Isaac clenched his fists and found his palms damp. He swallowed and tried to slow his breathing, too afraid to look back around the corner again. Afraid that if he craned his neck around the damp brick he would come face to face with those green eyes, Bobby's eyes. Eyes that now seemed frightening. "Go away," he whispered, so silently only he could hear it. "Just go away."

As Bobby and Katrina moved down the alley they approached a small shop - not much bigger than a center-aisle kiosk at the mall. It was lit by lanterns that hung from iron hooks - rather anachronistic for the time. A stained countertop separated the storefront from the street, on this counter was a grooved and battered cutting board with a large cleaver buried in the edge. Overseer of this setup was a man in a turban with a deeply lined and grooved face. Katrina guessed his age to be seventy or more. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes hellishly bloodshot. He wore a simple white thobe beneath a dark crimson shawl. His gaunt body made the garment look like the shroud one would place over a corpse.

There was a sign above; large letters of weathered paint. Al Azif , it read, with the same translated in alien-looking crescented and hooked arabic below. Katrina smelled smoke and incense and blood, she heard the sounds of live chickens and goats emanating from the darkness further in. This isn't the supermarket, Katrina thought. This isn't like any place I've ever been. Her parents had presided over countless chicken and turkey dinners and not once had she considered the meaning of the butcher's block and the blade.

The shopkeeper stood impassive and unblinking as they approached, and when they got within five feet, Katrina felt a wave of fear. "Bobby-" she started, but she could not bring herself to say she was scared, not after all he had shown her of overcoming fear.

"It's alright." He led her up to the counter, which came up to just above her waist but nearly to his shoulder, and looked at the intimidating arabian man without a trace of apprehension. "Two," said Bobby, and flashed two fingers. " Maqlooba . And make it fresh." The man nodded and pulled his cleaver from the cutting surface with the crackle of splinters. Katrina looked at the blood-soaked surface and gulped. At the center of the stall, casting light and burning, was a stove with a cookpan, and the proprietor doused this with cooking oil that sizzled and drew steam, tossing in tomato slices, cauliflower, and eggplant.

Katrina looked down at Bobby, putting her hands to her chest and finally managing to exhale. She only realized then how tense and scared she had been. "Gosh," she said. "I don't even know… this is so crazy, Bobby. I can't believe a place like this is like, ten blocks from our house." But when she looked up into the sky and around to study the surrounding buildings, she couldn't recognize any landmarks. Upon entering the alley she'd heard the traffic on Main Street. Now it seemed muted, as if they existed in their own little bubble. And the sky was darkening awfully quickly.

"I bet you always wanted to see what it's like out here, huh?" Bobby said. The robe-wearing man left his cookstove and grabbed a wire-mesh cage with a chicken inside. Katrina watched with growing tension, blushing a little ay Bobby's question. It was true, she was starting to chafe under the strictness of her father. The restrictions on dress, media consumption, and movement had seemed more and more unreasonable as she saw how other girls her age were living. Certainly this side of the city was something her father didn't want her to see.

"Maybe," she admitted. "But… I guess it isn't so bad." Her eyes wandered to that steaming cookpan and the vegetables frying in oil. She smelled spices she wasn't used to. Once, she had asked her father what Indian food was like and he said that it was like a guaranteed case of diarrhea. Cal Sterling was always putting up walls to stop her from meeting new people, trying new things. With Bobby she felt more adult .

She watched as the shopkeeper took the chicken cage over to the countertop, her heart beating faster and faster. She felt almost hypnotized by a combination of horror and dark curiosity. "Bobby, this isn't-"

"Did you know poultry farms grind up all the little male chicks?" Bobby said, evenly. "Because they don't lay eggs or get big enough to be broiled. The chicken we ate last night for dinner came from a place like that."

"Oh," Katrina said, her eyes glued to the chicken in the cage. "That's awful."

"Dad and mom never told you that, huh?"

"No."

"This is better," Bobby went on. There was a creak as the silent man opened the wire cage and took then chicken roughly by the neck, barely two feet away from where Katrina was standing. He pressed the bird down against the cutting block, where it struggled with scrabbling feet. Katrina shut her eyes and looked away. But then she felt Bobby's hand clutching hers.

"Don't close your eyes," Bobby said. "This is may be scary, but at least it's true. It's how things really are."

Katrina opened her eyes. She felt as if she wanted to jump out of her own skin. Anticipation, fear, unknown delight, all twinkling in the gleam of that upraised blade. Wild dogs. Scavengers. Scoundrels in booze-soaked alleys, screaming at their girlfriends on phones with cracked screens. Shadows in the wake of tangerine sunsets. Lamp oil. Sesame, saffron, and black pepper. The bleating of a caged lamb. Her little brother, spraying heavy, copious piss over cracked pavement.

Her belly swam. The place between her legs tingled.

The butcher's cleaver came down. Blood splattered in a light haze, she felt droplets tickle her face. She cried out in alarm, but when she did, it sounded like pleasure. Her knees trembled and knocked and she leaned over forward, leaving her round, shapely buttocks out-thrust in their tight shorts.

"Oh my god," Katrina whispered, bringing a hand to her face. "Oh my god." She leaned against the counter, knock-kneed and squeezing her thighs together. The counterman clutched the dead chicken brutally with one hand and began to pluck it without caring about her proximity. Blood flowed, feathers puffed into the air. Katrina moaned out and the sound mixed with the hot sizzle on the stove. So many times she had heard of the metaphor - the lion and the lamb, the Lamb of God. Always so sterile and metaphorical and clean. But this was the real fate of the lamb. The world was filled with things like these, and her father's safe morality seemed more like denial.

Katrina suddenly felt the very urgent need to urinate, and she felt something else between her legs too, a wetness and tingling that had nothing to do with urination. It was one she had felt before, very rarely and always with rather embarrassing stimula, one she had never before acknowledged aloud, even when alone. It was as if the situation - the entire place, from the night sky to the alley to Bobby himself, was casting a spell on her.

"Bobby, I feel... strange," she confessed, palms on the countertop. Her face was flushed.

"You have to go to the bathroom?" Bobby asked. She nodded, her eyes following the arabic man's weathered hands as he prepared the chicken, cutting it into sections, coating it in oil, throwing it into the sizzling pan. She could feel a feather fluttering on her cheek and knew it was stuck there because it had adhered to one of the stray droplets of blood. Once the chicken was cooking the man moved to the cage where the lamb was tied up. In his hand he brandished a wicked knife.

"Yes," Katrina said, her face burning with embarrassment. "I do. I do." That need, the feeling of needing to let go and pour out and release , seemed allegorical to a larger and more complex awakening.

"So go," Bobby said. "I did it in front of you. You can do it in front of me."

"I can't!" she moaned, automatically. "Not out here, with you watching!"

"Who says?" Bobby said, simply, and shrugged. He made it seem so simple; her adopted brother was gatekeeper of a place that didn't require every hemline, hairstyle and article of clothing to be father-vetted and approved. A place where chicken came not plastic-wrapped from the sterile grocery but hot from the bloodstained block, killed by a foreign man with skin like jerky. A place where all direction and sound seemed to disappear in the dark and all things were permitted.

It was a place she wanted to go. She realized she would go.

She brought her hands down to her hips and looped her fingers into the denim of her shorts, unbuttoning them, using her thumbs to hook her powder-blue panties as well and peeling both layers of clothing down. No chill came from the exposure to the night air; she was sizzling hot and her skin flushed. The gentle curve of her pubic mound was dusted with the wispy ghost of thin brown pubic hair. Her pudenda were absolutely engorged, the lips wet and swollen, the throbbing bean of her clit visible. She peeled her shorts down over her ass, letting the round globes of pert flesh bounce as the waistband rolled over and revealed them, and then lowered the clothes to the crook of her knees, bending at the waist and thrusting her rear out lewdly. She didn't have time to step out of the leg holes of her garments, and leaned against the counter, crouching a little.

"Oh, god… Bobby, what am I doing? This is so wrong!" she moaned, but Bobby said nothing, and only watched with an expression that was impossible to read. Her mouth was open and breathing hard, panting almost, as her young body went into a state of rut. She stared as the shopkeep pulled the lamb to the counter. It was much bigger than the chicken, and watching him toss it onto the countertop and control its head with a firm was an order of magnitude more brutal. And the sound it made - the desperate bleating - seemed to echo. It almost sounded like a human. Katrina couldn't hear any traffic coming from main street. She could not see any clouds or stars. The sky was dark with a blue-orange hue near the horizon. She felt disoriented. Disoriented, and… and…

She felt Bobby's hand slide between the counter and her belly, pressing on it, making her insides feel hot and warm. She needed release .

She cried out and tilted forward. The arabic man drew the knife across the lamb's main artery. Blood flew through the air, splattering his white thobe , but the greatest volume of crimson sprayed directly into Katrina's face. Her pussy trembled and clenched with a sensation that was beyond anything she had ever felt, she couldn't comprehend it. She reached down to spread herself, feeling the slick heat of her own folds, and spraying, splattering starburst explosion of piss erupted from her slit. It showered down to the alley pavement, pooling beneath her, partially soaking her panties despite her efforts to lower them.

Her gasping, crimson-soaked face was afire with the knowledge that she was pissing in public, taking a big, nasty unencumbered piss out in the open, right in front of her little brother! And, it felt good! It was a valve, loosened at last! More than that, there was a feeling beyond pissing that she just knew had to be an orgasm - the first of her nascent sex life. She was cumming her brains out, her graceful, sinfully voluptuous barely-teen body flexing and undulating against the counter as spurt after spurt of arterial blood erupted into her features, masking her in crimson, making her taste copper. The cut throat of the lamb was pumping out all over her face and it felt so nasty and good !

Katrina thrust out her buttocks even more, reaching behind herself to spread them, cupping them, pulling them apart so the pink crescent of her pussy was as exposed as possible, and the shower of piss turned into a tight rope of golden, glistening waste. She arched her back and pissed down and behind her, splattering the pavement so hard it was audible, riding out her orgasm as she voided her bladder, pressing her sensitive breasts into the countertop, smearing her halter in blood and chicken feathers. Her tiny, pink, quivering pee-hole was straining to deliver such a heavy outflow of piss - it was all so primal, she couldn't help but let out a cry as she spread herself and let her little brother see every detail. Each time a spurt of blood hit her face, it made her pussy clench, another hose-blast of piss spray out of her folds, and another trembling shockwave of pleasure rip through her ripe cunt.

She was not aware of anything for several moments as the feeling subsided. The blood of the lamb became a flow rather than a burst. She laid her cheek on the countertop and breathed hard, dimly aware that the 'chef' was now moving on to the task of butchering and preparing it for their supper. "Oh god, Bobby," she gasped, weakly. She blinked, twice, and then raised bolt upright from the counter, this time with more alarm. "Oh! What did I do!?" she said. She brought a hand to her face and it came back streaked with blood. The scent was in her nose, all over her body.

"Don't worry," Bobby said, looking up at Katrina as he stood at the counter alongside her. He shrugged and smiled confidently. "It can't hurt you. The blood of a lamb is just the blood of a lamb. It only has power if you give it power."

Katrina's voice was rising and speeding up. "But I'm covered in blood and my clothes are ruined… and I did… I did that in front of you-

Bobby took her hand. "It doesn't matter," he said. His flat retort was punctuated by the sizzle of fresh meat being thrown into the cookpan by the mute, turban-wearing proprietor.

Katrina wrapped her arms around herself. "I feel so… dirty," she said. Her eyes were lost in thought, but the volume in her voice had dropped, and the tone suggested she was viewing that adjective, dirty, in a different light than she ever had before. Dirty streets, dirty movies, dirty clothes, dirty foreigners and their dirty ideas. All things her parents had warned her away from in one way or another.

"But you liked it, didn't you?" Bobby asked. She squeezed his hand back. Her shorts and panties were still around her knees; the night air was mild and she could feel her own wetness… and remember all the hot piss she had spread herself to void, in great big bursts like an animal . Letting her brother watch, showing him every bit of herself as she moaned and rutted and bathed in blood-

"Yes."

"And did you like watching me when I did it?"

"Yes," she said again. "You're… you're really big, Bobby." Her face, had it not been crimson red from lamb's blood, would have grown redder.

"That's important to you." It was barely a question.

"Yes," she said. In the moment, words seemed like weak equivocation compared to a physical measurement. Bobby's cock impressed her in a way she could barely articulate. "You're really big, and… you pissed a lot, too."

"You like that?" Bobby asked.

"Y-yes." She was not sure of the answer until it was halfway out of her mouth. At first it did not make sense. But then it made perfect sense. Katrina nibbled her lip and realized that her nipples were poking against the cotton of her halter top, tenting it up with how turgid they were. There was a clatter on the counter as two steaming plates of food were placed before them; the heady scent of blood was replaced in Katrina's nose by the best smell she had ever experienced, a strong aroma of succulent lamb, chicken, rice, vegetables and spices. The turban-wearing chef did not make eye contact, and indeed, had not done so at any point in their visit. Her blood-soaked face and chest did not seem to disturb him in the least.

" Maqlooba ," Bobby said again. The plates were simple black metal, each with a fork included. "This is the good stuff." He picked up his utensil and began to eat, tearing into the meat hungrily. Katrina watched him eat as if in a trance. He was so handsome for his age; his teeth were blinding white and the point of his canines seemed a little exaggerated as she tore into a piece of hot strip of seasoned lamb.

That was a living thing like five minutes ago , Katrina marveled. And he's devouring it. Consuming it because that's what he wants to do. He does only what he wants. That's… that's what *I* want!

Beside both of their plates had been placed a dish of water and a hot hand towel; Katrina took hers and wiped her face and chest, still watching Bobby in that trance-like fashion. The chef retreated to the rear of the kiosk-like area to sit and smoke hookah in shadow, she barely noticed him. It was as if the man was but a prop in Bobby's performance; the night itself with its shroud of secrecy seemed to obey Bobby's command. She reached into her plate with her hand, grasped a piece of lamb and brought it to her mouth, tearing off a chunk and swallowing it down. Her hair was wild and spilling down over her shoulders, a thin trail of the remaining blood was mixing with the glisten of sweat on the swell of her chest. Her blue-grey eyes glistened.

It was the best thing she had ever tasted in her life. And Bobby… Bobby was-

"We should say grace," Bobby said, suddenly. "Our father would want that, don't you think?" Katrina felt a sudden revulsion toward the idea, those droning recitations of a rote prayer at every meal seemed like performative nonsense from another dimension. She did not want to think about them, in the feral night. She shook her head.

"No," she said. "No, I don't want to."

"You should," Bobby insisted. "And… there's something else you can do at the same time." He leaned in to whisper into her ear, and as his mouth moved her face reddened and filled with nervousness that was not refusal. After Bobby pulled away, Katrina lifted her plate and set it down on the ground next to the restaurant counter, the cracked and piss-splattered pavement, getting down on her knees to do so. Her eyes were filled with the hypnosis of the evening, a series of events that had enchanted her impressionable mind with the promise of so much freedom, so many new sensations.

She spread her thighs as she knelt. Bobby turned toward her and she reached out for the fly of his pants, unbuttoning it as he himself had done earlier. She had an intimate view as his size and length was revealed. Pale, smooth, fading to pink at the end, and nearly as thick as her arm and reaching knuckle to elbow. She wrapped a hand around him and, even though she had never stroked a dick in her life, took to the task with cautious but uncanny skill.

"Bless us, oh Lord," Bobby prompted, softly.

"Bless us, oh Lord," Katrina breathed, milking his thick boymeat toward her face. She lifted her plate of maqlooba with her opposite hand until it was centered just beneath his cockhead. "For these, thy gifts, which I am about to receive. From thy bounty." Her hand went far down his shaft to feel those big, smooth balls - so big, so perfectly egg-shaped, so heavy. She clutched and kneaded them, her heart beating even faster at the sensation of slickness and fullness. "From thy bounty," she repeated, swallowing with a salivating mouth. She drew her hand up Bobby's shaft again and there was a wet, splurt sound as a thick rope of white goo poured from the nickel-sized pisshole on his cocktip and trailed all over her food, decorating it. A nasty scent mixed with the smell of food, but Katrina found she didn't hate it, or hate what she was seeing. The stuff coming from Bobby's dick was so thick and there was so much, even though she had only stroked him a little.

"Through Christ our Lord, amen," she whispered, her eyes wide and unblinking, taking in every detail. She saw Bobby's balls twitch and then another huge dollop of chunky white spew poured onto her food, mixing with the meat and vegetables and oil.

That was how it was with them, for five minutes. Katrina milked, and prayed, and watched with rapt attention as spurt after spurt after nasty spurt of that chunky cream pumped out over her food. She gasped and marveled about what a pair of big, churning cum factories her little brother had, he just kept spurting out semen seemingly without end, until her entire plate of savory food was completely buried in it. She just knew from looking at the thick wads of cum that they would get stuck in her throat if she tried to swallow them; she would need to chew them first.

When it was done, she made the sign of the cross and put her plate on the ground, braced her palms upon the rough pavement, and, with her little brother's huge penis swinging and brushing against her hair, slurped and gobbled her food like a dog. Her eyes were blank with a hunger and need to transgress. She did not care what she did, as long as it was a rebellion against the way things had been.

They ate together, her standing with a fork, Katrina on all fours with her back arched, her butt outthrust to make her shorts cling to their shape, her knees splayed.

She did not stop until her plate was licked clean.

Back home, Vanessa was sitting in Bobby's room with an expression of vexation. She had retreated there unerringly, not meaning to but simply wanting to leave the living room after a shouting match with Cal. She had come to her husband to tell him that Isaac seemed shaken by the events at the church, and to counsel with him on what seemed to be a deteriorating relationship between the biological son and the adopted one.

To her dismay, Cal had first been dismissive, then obstinate. It was clear that after the disaster at the Church of the Divine Pentecost, he was in no mood to hear of further troubles, child-related or otherwise. Rather, he had his laptop open, and seemed to be composing a new sermon. He had reacted negatively to all of her attempts to start conversation, and eventually they had come to shouting.

"You can write your sermon later!" Vanessa had objected, trying to draw his attention away from that maddening screen that had dominated so many of his hours throughout their marriage. "Cal, after what happened, don't you think the children need-"

He had first told her the flock at CDC were also his children, an infuriating response. They, he explained, would need his spiritual guidance sooner rather than later. He had an opportunity to use the unfortunate death of Miss Carlyle as a 'teaching moment'. The people would be vulnerable and looking for answers. Furthermore, he had only one day to prepare a suitable spiritual testimony. Doing a proper job with it, he concluded, would insure that levels of support for the church would only grow.

Vanessa had always been fine with going along with Cal's explanations for most things, but this time she had grown angry, because it seemed like he was using on her the same wiles and silver-tongued methods he used on the flock. She became dimly aware that perhaps he had been doing this for years, and her comfort in their large house with all the amenities of upper-class life had encouraged her not to rock the boat.

She didn't know why she brought up Bobby then; it seemed like the thing most likely to get Cal's attention.

"Your son needs you," she insisted. "You should talk to Bobby when he and Katrina return. He was right there with the old woman when she passed. He must be terrified." She realized as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she didn't believe them herself - Bobby seemed like the most unflappable young boy in the world, and if anyone could deal with an unexpected death, it would be him - but she found she wanted to challenge Cal anyway. The way he was typing away at that laptop, coming up with ploys, tropes and gambits to lead the masses to the collection plate… Miss Carlyle's death made it all seem so phony.

She had expected to rankle him, but his response was even stronger. Cal slapped the laptop shut and thrust it forward onto the coffee table, rising from the couch. He looked at her with such an expression of frustration and anger that she was momentarily scared. "Don't talk to me about that boy," Cal grunted, dismissively. "What he did up there - it made a bad situation worse." He looked down at the floor and furrowed his brow. "He shouldn't have been up there to begin with. We had a good thing going, honey - a really tight-knit thing, it was running like a machine. It should have been Isaac up there."

"Cal!" Vanessa had barked, hands on hips. "Bobby didn't do anything wrong!"

"I don't want to discuss it," Cal replied, and his anger had made his voice clipping and mean. "Bobby is going to stay in the back from now on, and that's final." He looked down, almost pouting. "I should never have let you convince me to put him out front to make trouble."

"He's an eleven year old boy, Cal! What trouble could he make!?"

"I don't care , Vanessa!" he roared. "You didn't see the look on his face. When she was slipping away, that old bat-"

"Old bat?!"

"He didn't care. And he doesn't care about any of it," Cal sneered, throwing up his hands.

You're the one who doesn't care, Cal, Vanessa almost said, but didn't. And we both know it. We both know what we're doing with CDC. But to say that would be to expose something she had been complicit in for years, and she knew it. She had always seen it as harmless.

"You sound deranged, Cal," Vanessa scolded. "Paranoid about your own son!"

Cal's brow darkened. The fight was either about to explode into an all-out screaming match, or one of them would have to remove themselves. She saw him go back into himself, making an effort to calm down and disengage. "Get out, Vanessa," he said, his voice back down to calm. He sat back down on the couch and re-opened his laptop. "This discussion is over."

She'd been already gone. Stomping off down the hall, along the doors that led to the laundry room, turning into the first one that was open… which happened to be Bobbys. She'd shut the door behind her, sat down on his bed with a thump, removed her earrings as she huffed and clenched her fists and glowered at the wall… and there she found herself still.

Vanessa's eyes turned to the light wood of the bedside table. She knew what the bottom drawer contained- that stack of Bobby's drawings that she had found so frightening and intriguing. She shifted over on the bed in her skirt and her hose and her shoes, leaning forward until her large, round breasts hung like boulders in the blouse, and opened the drawer. The drawings were in the same place he had left them before. Unable to resist doing so, she thumbed through them again, feeling heat flush in her face as she arrived at the ones that had struck her as inappropriate and possibly blasphemous - the ones she hadn't wanted to tell Cal about since he might react, well… similarly to how he had just reacted.

She looked at them again, one after another, until she arrived at once she hadn't seen before. It was new - so new there were pencil and eraser shavings still clinging to the page. Vanessa's eyes went wide behind her hot-mom spectacles, and then she gasped and then shut them tight.

The new drawing depicted a sacrifice. It was a full half-minute before she could open her eyes and look upon the picture. Part of her wanted to crumple it and throw it out, or shuffle it back to the bottom of the pile and never look at it again. But she could not resist. In it, a lamb with sinister baphomet horns was put under the knife by a grizzled, Moorish-looking butcher. Beneath the act, receiving the flow of blood on her body, was a naked girl. The figures were flat and drawn in an old style, like a stained-glass window but without color. To the side, a washer woman was soaking clothing in a tub, looking on, and her face was unmistakable again. Prominent cheekbones, glasses, full lips. The washer-woman looked like her.

And the young girl being splashed with the blood of the lamb, well she looked like-

"Oh my god," Vanessa whispered. There was an inscription at the bottom of the page, painstakingly written by Bobby:

2 Samuel 12:1-4

The poor woman had nothing except one little ewe lamb which she bought and nourished; And it grew up together with her and her children. It would eat of her bread and drink of her cup and lie in her bosom, And was like a son to her.

Her eyes moved back to the lamb with those strange, sinister baphomet horns. Though it was being slaughtered, throat cut, it looked alert and intensely outward at the viewer, and seemed to be looking directly at her. A black lamb, utterly unbothered by something as trivial as a slit throat. Bathing a girl in its blood, while a washer woman stood by and watched, a washer woman with her face. A washer woman who appeared to be fine with the blasphemy before her, perhaps even enjoying it!

Washer woman. Laundry. She looked over at Bobby's laundry hamper, on the other side of the bed. She felt a tingling in her belly as rolled on the coverlet and moved to examine it. It was half full… and right at the top of the pile were a pair of boxer-brief underwear, in black. She lowered her hands into the basket and grabbed them, and groaned as she found the underwear damp and heavy. Pulling them up and out, it was clear they were absolutely loaded with semen . The crotch was actually bulging downward from all the piled up, backed up sperm hanging in the middle, weighing it down like a hammock.

It grew up together with her and her children. It would eat her bread and drink of her cup.

Vanessa felt a tremor between her legs. She had already seen once how much semen her young adopted son could produce. The idea of him laying in bed, drawing her, maybe thinking of her, stroking himself through the underwear that were clinging to his thin young body until he gasped out and the sounds started coming, those heavy spurting, spraying, liquid sounds like the last bit of dish soap being squeezed from a bottle, while her son filled up his underwear until they were caked with it, shot after shot, massive load after massive load -

"So much!" she whispered, and without knowing precisely what had come over her, she brought the sperm-slathered underwear to her face and pressedt them directly over her nose and mouth, breathing in deeply as she muffled herself and flopped back on the mattress, unclasping her skirt and spreading her knees, then moving a hand up to grasp one of her large, sensitive nipples and tweak it.

Vanessa's nose immediately filled with an overwhelming smell of semen, the strongest she had ever encountered. She inhaled and snorted and moaned and felt that accumulation of thick semen actually smear her lips and clog her nostrils. The scent of thick, virile kid cum poured into her brain, and she instinctively knew that if Bobby were to fuck a woman, even at his young age, she would get pregnant instantly. Her adopted son's cum was so thick and it smelled so strong ! Without thinking her hand moved to slip under her pantyhose and panties, stroking and fingering there; she found herself unbelievably responsive, more responsive than she'd been with Cal in all their tears of marriage. She dug into her self with first two fingers, then three, rubbing herself roughly and mauling her clit with a thumb. She wore Bobby's underwear like a mask, breathing in his essence, and then she actually stuffed the underwear into her mouth a little, living the taste of that clumpy, thick sperm. She moaned out orgasmically around the makeshift muffle, letting firecracker climaxes rattle her as her pelvis pushed up and out and her body posted off of the mattress.

"Ouunnnngh!" she moaned, her eyes crossing and rolling behind her hot MILF spectacles. She slapped and squeezed and kneaded her breasts, breathing sparsely with undies stuffed into her mouth, digging desperately at her pussy and drawing out orgasm after orgasm. She had felt some of these sensations and compulsions the first time, when she had discovered Bobby's bedspread covered in semen. But this was ten times stronger, and she couldn't resist doing more!

She both feared and craved the dark strangeness that seemed to linger around Bobby. Not like Cal. Cal, or Isaac, who both seemed to distrust the boy. But Bobby was good, Bobby was strong and brave and had a lot to admire, a lot to offer! They would be made to come around, she decided. They would have to accept Bobby, just as she accepted him. Bobby was a special boy… and she didn't want to give up these feelings, these feelings that fulfilled both her need to nurture and to feel pleasure herself.

There was no light coming in through the window as she fingered herself and moaned. The sun had set. She coaxed herself to one orgasm, two, three. She rubbed Bobby's underwear on her face, kneaded them roughly against her breasts, stuffed them down the front of her panties so her son's issue would slather her folds with an even greater wetness. The orgasms were guilty, effortless, and without guile.

It was a half hour before she gathered herself and emerged, flustered and stained, for a change of clothes. Isaac, looking troubled, and Cal, looking peevish, were hanging around the living room and waiting for dinner. Cal his glowing expression still hardened from their argument, asked if Bobby and Katrina, who had gone for takeout, shouldn't be back already. He did so only grudgingly, as if he didn't care to ask about Bobby at all.

"I'm sure they're fine, Cal," Vanessa said, thinking about the drawing, and the black lamb, and the taste and smell of her son's semen. "I'm sure they're just fine."

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