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From: "KG" <kennyg@ameritech.net>
NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 00:09:35 EDT
Subject: {ASSM} The Nature of Man, Chapter 9 (No Sex This Chapter)
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 06:10:04 -0500
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The Nature of Man

By Kenn Ghannon



The Rules

I thought, before we got to the actual reading of this story that we should
set down a couple of ground rules:

1) This story involves frank and explicit descriptions of sex.  If it is
immoral or illegal in your area to read about topics of this nature, please
quit reading here.  If you don't want to read about topics of this nature,
please quit reading here.  (I don't, by the way, agree with the legal
aspects of this.  I believe that the United States, as a society, has gone
too far in putting the onus of maturity on a rather arbitrary physical age.
I've known 13 year olds who were far more mature than some 40 year olds.  Of
course, this may be the exception to the rule, but still.)

2) If you are looking for a story where everyone is always happy all of the
time, please find another story.  If you are looking for a story where
everyone is always sad all of the time, please find another story.  Reality
is somewhere in-between these two extremes and I try to write as near to
reality as an erotic fantasy can get.  Do I succeed?  Only you can tell me.

3) If you are looking for a story that absolutely revolves around sex, sex,
and more sex, please find another story.  I *WON'T* write one of those.
There is sex here, but only as a function of the story.

4) Everything you read here is fiction.  It never happened, so I am
definitely not writing about YOU.

If you've read this far, I hope you enjoy this.

Author's Note

[This is going to be a long one and only has peripheral information related
to the story, so feel free to skip ahead to the story...]

First, I wanted to apologize to all the fans of this story (and there are at
least two of you...).  I never meant to go this long without writing another
chapter...I just got caught up in alot of RL stuff and couldn't get back to
this.  Plus, there were a number of wonderful people who were trying to help
me learn how to write -- I thank them profusely for their efforts especially
Katie McN who probably is a little upset with me and a wonderful person
whose name escapes me at the moment but who's incredibly detailed analysis
of a little story I did called 'Pizza' really got me going back and
analyzing my work -- but RL has to take precedence to this and a lot of
(slang for excrement) has been hitting the proverbial fan.  Hopefully,
things will settle down within the next three weeks or so...

I also found myself needing to take a hiatus from this story.  Chapter 8 was
never meant to have three story arcs in it.  The problem, I think, is  that
I KNOW how the story is going to end, and I found myself rushing to get
there.  Now, this isn't because I was tired of the characters or tired of
writing the story; I just found myself getting short.  I think it's because
I know where I'm going but I don't know how I'm going to get there...and
sometimes the stories begin getting a life of their own well off the beaten
path.

Which brings us to the end of the story.  This chapter isn't it.  The next
one isn't going to be it either.  There is a lot of story left to tell and
it's going to take a while to tell it.  I can't promise a chapter a day, a
chapter a week, or even a chapter a month.  I don't want another chapter 8;
I want to tell this story in my time giving it my full and undivided
attention.  I'm going to spend more time editing and cleaning the story to
make sure there are no errors (and there are at least a few -- I've always
hated it when I was reading a story and a girl named Brenda existed in one
chapter and she was named Mary Beth in the next.  I'm guilty of that here;
I'm going to do my best so that it never happens again.) and that the story
is what I want to say.

On a side note, I've always wondered why Roger Zelazny (one of my favorite
authors, may he rest in peace) never 'finished' a story.  You never got to
the point in any of his wonderful stories, books, or novels where he
couldn't come back later, pick up a pen, and start writing again.  I always
assumed that it was because he wanted to leave his options open; he wanted
to make sure he could always resume the adventures of a character.  I think,
though, that I understand it better now.

He cared about his characters and couldn't bear the thought of their
adventures ever ending.  I'm like that with Eric, Gwen, Christine...the
whole cast.  I currently don't foresee a true 'ending'...where you find out
where they are 30 years in the future or whatever.  I'm not sure there will
ever be a 'book 2', but I don't want there to be a time when there is no
Eric, Gwen, Christine and so on.  They are far too personal to me.

On that note, let's see what fate has in store for them next...

Dedicated with respect to Frank Downey

--Kenn Ghannon, 21 Oct 03



Chapter 9: In hidden moments

For a very long time, Eric sat, back pressed against the wooden headboard of
his bed, arms dangling by his sides, and stared vacantly at the door his
cousin had left by.

Nice?  Brave?  Him?  He hadn't done anything to deserve being called those
things.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  He was nothing more than a
failure.  A big, fat, brutish failure.  He had failed to do the only thing
his mother had ever asked of him.  He had failed to protect Christine.  He
had failed to take care of his family.  Of course, his mother had said to
take care of his sister but Eric knew intuitively that it wasn't so much
what his mother had said as what she meant that mattered.  Besides, wasn't
Christine like his sister now?

He had failed.  Failed miserably.  His father was right.  He was worthless.
A weak worthless coward not worth the pot to piss in.  And to hide his
weakness, his failure, he had attacked someone.  He had attacked the person
who had shown him how weak he was.  He had dredged up all the hatred and
anger that his father had used every day and had attacked Evan.  Evan hadn't
been the problem.  It wasn't Evan's fault that he had been so weak.  The
fault lied within him.  Within his very soul.  If it had not been for this
weakness he would have been able to stop Evan; he would have been able to
protect his sister.

His sister.

Eric's thoughts drifted back, going deeper and further into his memory.  It
wasn't memory, though.  Not really.  He couldn't really remember the day
itself very clearly -- he had only been 5 or 6 years old.  Things were very
different to someone that young; it was difficult for an older mind to
firmly grasp the thoughts that churned within someone younger.

In his mind's eye, though, he was standing with his mother.  Her arm was
draped lovingly around him, holding him close.  A warm sun blazed across
him, blurring his vision.  Everything around him seemed at once real and
unreal, flickering in a halo of frosted light.  The sunlight seemed to blind
him slightly, yet he could still see clearly somehow.  The wonder of it
tugged at his consciousness, but he pushed all thought aside to live within
that single moment.

The room smelled sugary and sweet, the scent of honey.  It lapped at the
periphery of his senses, a small thing yet seemingly so important.  The
scent of his mother, the perfume she wore, intermingled with it.  Hers was a
flowery perfume, so light and airy that you could never even be sure it was
there but made all the more real because of it.  He loved that smell, the
way it seemed to play with your nose.

The way his mother's arm draped around his shoulders, the warmth of her body
and the sun, the smell of her perfume combined to make him feel happy.  He
felt comfortable and cared for.  At peace with all the world.  In a word, he
felt safe.

Before him was a crib and as he looked down into it he saw a vision.
Something that looked so radiant it could not possibly be real.  It was the
perfect image of a baby, asleep.  A small, white coverlet was tucked
lovingly around it seemingly caressing the soft, beautiful skin.  It's eyes
were closed and you could just barely make out the soft gurgling of its
infantile snores.  As the sunlight struck it, the baby seemed to take on a
light of its own, outshining the sun.  It was simply perfect.

"This is your sister, Gwen, Eric," his mother's appropriately hushed voice
said to him.  Her voice had always seemed so shrill, so lost.  But now, her
voice was strong and vibrant even in its hushed tone.  It made her seem
happy and proud, and her arm clenched around him just a little tighter as
she spoke.

For a long time they stood there, just staring down at his little sister.
The room seemed to grow even warmer and more comforting as time went on.  It
was a perfect moment that lasted for days...and Eric was happy to let it
last as long as it wanted.  With his mother holding him and his sister
laying before him, life simply could not get more happy or more perfect.

The sound of the slamming of a door somewhere outside the perfect little
room changed that.  The sun hid and the room grew cold.  The light that had
given the room an ethereal quality suddenly turned to frost.  Even the walls
around him seemed closer and tighter.  His mother's arm, which had once
seemed so comforting and protective now seemed heavy and clinging.  It
pulled at him, pulled him hard against her, almost choking the air from his
chest.

Everything seemed to darken and decay before him. The white paint of the
crib peeled back to reveal the gnarled roots of an old, rotting, dead tree.
The white coverlet surrounding his sister turned a dark, sinister black and
seemed now to clutch at her more than simply covering her.  Around him the
rooms walls ran the dark red of blood as if they knew that the time to bleed
had come.  Smoke filled his nostrils, and he gagged and choked, unable to
draw clean air.

He heard footsteps slowly thudding up the stairs outside.  Pounding,
pounding as they ascended.  Each deepening thud brought them further and
further, closer to where his mother and he stood.

"Where are you bitch?" came the voice of his father, but the sound seemed to
take on a sinister quality he had never heard before.  It was a carnal,
gutteral sound as of a raging beast barely able to contain itself.  It sent
a shiver through him and his mother's arm pulled him even tighter to her.

He turned to look at the vibrant beauty that was his mother, but now all he
saw was a poor, beaten-down, old lady.  Fear and loathing owned that face,
written plainly across the cracks and crags within it.  He watched as she
turned to the door, the light of her eyes dimming and fading until nothing
was left.  The fear that crossed her face as the thudding footsteps grew
closer scared him.  He wanted to run, but his mother's arm held him so
tightly he couldn't even move.

The thundering footsteps stopped suddenly, but rather than feeling relief, a
great fear overcame him.  The silence was ominous in its intensity.  He
watched helplessly as the cracked, beaten face of his mother turned slowly
to the great, black door of the room.  As he turned his own eyes to that
door, it seemed to grow harder somehow, more sinister.  It was foreboding,
and angry, a testament to pure evil.

The distraught face of his mother turned to him, a forbidding sorrow filling
her eyes.  As he watched, a small droplet of blood rolled down from her
hairline.  He was mesmerized by it, slowly rolling down her forehead.  Soon,
it was followed by another, and then another.  The blood just seemed to keep
flowing, coming from some unseen place.  Absently, his mother wiped at the
blood not really understanding what it was.  But all she managed to do was
smear it across her forehead.

"Eric, my Eric," her voice had resumed the shrill listlessness of hopeless
despair.  He could not manage to look away as yet more blood seeped from her
hair.  It held him enthralled, unable to take his eyes from it.  He was
unable to see anything but the flow of blood from her hairline as it grew
steadily stronger, flowing a rich red.  "You're Gwen's protector, Eric."
His mother wiped harder at the blood crossing her forehead, but it was just
smearing everywhere.  Soon her forehead was coated with a smeared layer of
dark, rich, red blood.  "You have to protect her, Eric.  That's your job.
Promise me, Eric.  Promise me to always watch out for your sister.  Promise
me..."

Her voice faded into the background as his attention was pulled to the door.
If anything, it looked darker now.  It bulged and struggled with its frame
as if it were alive.  Something was behind that door.  Something was coming
that was strong and dark.

Suddenly, the door slammed open and his father was there, but not quite the
father he had remembered.  This man was tall and strong, built thick around
the chest and arms.  An ogre of a man.  He wore a football helmet that
partially obscured the dark, leathery folds of his evil little face; a face
that Eric could not really recognize but that seemed all too familiar.  An
awful sneer crossed his features making him look even more disturbing than
before.

Eric shrank in horror from that face, not knowing what to do.  He wanted
with all his being to run, but his mother clutched and grabbed at him,
keeping him at her side, holding him in place.  His eyes were glued to the
malevolent face that was and was not his father.  He couldn't turn away from
the stark foulness of that hideous face.  It called to him, beckoned to him.
It was almost as if he recognized something else in that face.  Something
beyond the evil thing his father had somehow become.  It absorbed his
attention and refused to let him look away.  Then, beneath all the darkness
and evil, beneath all the anger and hatred, he saw it.  The face behind that
evil mask was his own.

He screamed, loudly, longly.  A pitiful wail that put into sound all the
fear and self-loathing that he had ever felt.  He went on and on even as
breath left him.  It couldn't be.  He could not be that horrid man.  He
could not be like his father.

And all the time he could hear his mother's shrill voice getting higher and
higher in pitch.  "Promise me, Eric.  Promise to protect Gwen, Eric.
Promise me."

In stark terror, he turned to his mother to tell her that he would.  That he
would never let anything hurt Gwen.  That no matter what happened, not
matter how hard he had to work, he would never turn into the evil man that
was his father.  But when he turned he couldn't see his mother's face.  It
was all bloody and there was a big hole...

Eric screamed himself awake.  He couldn't remember falling asleep but he
could remember the nightmare.  It clung to him turning him nauseous with
fear and anguish.  Even as he awoke, he screamed into the daylight.  The
sunlight streaming through his window seemed so cold, so like the frosty
sunlight of his nightmare, and he shivered despite the great runs of sweat
running from his body.  He had not had a nightmare this bad in a long while.

It took him a minute to notice Shawn standing just inside his door.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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