Izzy sat, silently, dazed and confused, as every incriminating, dirty, hot and horny second of the evening’s action once again unfolded on screen, with her mother watching avidly, cuddling herself up against Ollie, who was treacherously starting to re-inflate as his naked mother undulated gently against him; Izzy could feel something beginning to bubble inside her, building toward some sort of climax, finally hitting ‘Overload’ when Ollie’s hand crept around Carol’s waist to cup her breast.
“What the fuck, mother, are you fucking insane? I’m trying to blackmail you, bitch, why can’t you just do the decent thing and stay fucking blackmailed? Just what the fuck am I missing here?” she exploded, the rage clicking up another notch when Carol just smiled at her; at least Ollie had the decency to snatch his hand away and try desperately to not look guilty, which fooled no-one, but her mother…
Carol was enjoying herself thoroughly; Izzy was going in and out of focus in incandescent rage, Ollie was looking like he was about ready for a return bout, and the best was still to come. Time to stoke the fires a little further…
“Is there something wrong, little Izzy-bear? Sit down and tell me about it, mummy only wants to help, baby-boo!”
Izzy froze; ‘Izzy-bear’? ‘Baby-boo’? That was a great big full HD clue she’d finally gone ga-ga; Ollie’s big boner had knocked her brains loose and they’d scrambled, that must be it, there was no other explanation…
She opened her mouth to tell Ollie to call the nut-house, they had an express delivery, one crazed old trout, when Carol grinned slightly maliciously and flipped a corner of the bedclothes over.
“If you like, you can join us, baby; Ollie-pollie’s been so sweet to me, and even after last night, I’m sure he’s still got a spare tank-full for you! Shall we ask him?”
The question caught Izzy mid-outrage, and the strain of her conflicting needs to scream, demand what the fuck was going on, and launch a kamikaze attack on Ollie the Traitor nearly sprained her jaw and catapulted her into the closet.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Izzy-bear,” continued Carol in that infuriatingly calm voice. “This is what you two were plotting all along, wasn’t it? While you were busy humping like two jackrabbits last night? Poor Izzy-bear, and you too, silly Ollie, you’d really do that to me? What would your poor mother say?”
Izzy’s ears pricked up at that. Ollie just looked blankly at her, while inside, Izzy crowed delightedly. Yesss, Old Trout had finally slipped her cams properly; referring to herself in the third person, definitely a sign of some sort of mental derailment; now they could get finally get her off their backs for good! Hah, the rubber-room was in sight!
“What are you yakking on about mum, as if I didn’t know!” she asked, expecting a stream of idiocy, but Carol sat up straighter and pulled the bedclothes more comfortably around herself.
“I said, Izzy,” she said, speaking slowly for the benefit of the hard of thinking, “What would your poor mother think of you two plotting, seducing, and blackmailing me like this? Simple question, sweetie…”
Izzy plumped down on the edge of the bed, fixing Ollie with the Reaper-Stare of Imminent Death. His burgeoning erection promptly decided it had important business elsewhere and faded from sight, while her ‘deal with you later’ look intensified.
“Now, Mommy-Dearest, just what are you babbling on about? You are my mother; you’re a vindictive, poisonous old rat-bag, but you’re my mother, so when they come and take you away, and they will, because you’re obviously as mad as a fucking mongoose, please try and remember it’s for your own good; we can’t have someone as bonkers as you wandering the streets and frightening small children, so believe me when I say it’s for your own good. I’m going to laugh like a fucking drain, but then you probably won’t remember any of this, because you’ll be spending your days doped-up to the eyeballs and chained to a toilet.”
Carol gave Izzy her patented long-suffering ‘what have I done to deserve this’ look and eye-roll, and settled herself a little more comfortably against Ollie, who stared slightly apprehensively at the faint line now showing between Izzy’s eyebrows.
Carol sighed, and patted the bed.
“Come closer Iz, I need to tell you something; it’s about time you knew. I meant it when I asked you what your mother would think of all this. I asked you that because, baby, I’m not your mother. Nor yours,” she added, flashing a quick glance at Ollie.
Izzy stared at her in shock. ‘Oh my God, she’s a fucking nutter, it’s worse than I thought!’ roared through her mind. ‘Bonehead’s going to have to sit on her while I call the cops, they’re going to have to section the old trout, she’s finally cracked… OK, play along, play along, don’t set her off, find out where she’s going with this lunacy…’
Izzy schooled her face into a carefully neutral, non-threatening, ‘don’t startle the nut-case’ expression of friendly interest, only mouthing ‘call the police…’ at Ollie when Carol looked away for a second.
“So, mum, you were saying how you’re not my mother. And yet I look just like you, mother dearest; how do you explain that?”
Carol smiled secretly at the condescending, ‘keep the loony calm no matter what’ tone in her voice, but the face she turned to Izzy was open, honest, sympathetic, even.
“Izzy-bear, you and I look alike because we both look like mum, and Ollie looks just like poor daddy. Did you never wonder even once why he didn’t look anything like me, or you, or your father? It’s because your father, my husband James, isn’t your father; he was my husband, yes, but I’m your sister, babies; I’m your big sister…”
Izzy stared at her in shock, thinking ‘OK, never saw that coming. God, this is worse than I thought, she’s actually demented, what the fuck are we supposed to do now…?’
Ollie decided it was time to chime in.
“Hold on a minute… mum… Carol… whoever, just answer me one thing; why, if this is true, have you never told us anything before now, and where’s your proof? Sorry, but this just feels like another head-fuck, pardon my French, in a long day of head-fucks; show me some proof, mum, or Carol, or whatever you are, because otherwise why should we believe you? You have to admit, after a day like today, this just sounds… fucking crazy…”
Carol nodded agreement, and shooed Izzy off the bed so she could slide out and stand up. Ollie felt more than a passing twinge of sheer lust as her wonderful body once more revealed itself as she shook her hair out completely unselfconsciously, her body rippling in a manner guaranteed to make any red-blooded straight male wank frenziedly like a safari-park baboon.
She padded over to the dresser, took a small key from a drawer, and unlocked the bottom drawer, pulling out a pile of photo albums and a thick sheaf of document folders. She closed the drawer and carried the armload back to the bed.
“Come here, Ollie, and you, Iz; I need you to see this.”
Izzy peered curiously at the photo album, wondering what she was looking at, half expecting pictures of obscure pop stars, or some gibberish story about how they’re all really the secret clone-children of Marilyn Monroe and the space aliens/lizard people/Illuminati/Freemasons who actually run the planet. The reality, however, was more mundane; in one picture there was a man who looked amazingly like Ollie, with his arm around a woman holding a baby, a little girl, judging by the pink shawl she was wrapped in. The woman looked just like Carol. Standing next to her was a girl in her late teens or early twenties, the spitting image of Izzy, with a toddler, a little boy, in her arms, grinning happily at the camera. With a shock, Izzy realised the little boy was Ollie, with light, fluffy, baby-hair and a chubby little baby-fat face, to be sure, but unmistakeably Ollie; that meant the baby had to be her. What the hell was this, and who were these people?
Ollie and Izzy looked at each other, and then at their mother.
“Mum, are these…?” began Ollie, and Carol nodded. Izzy realised her mother’s eyes were brimming as her finger gently stroked each image in turn.
“That’s daddy, mum, me carrying you, Ollie, and mum’s carrying Izzy. You were almost two when James took that picture, Ollie, I was eighteen, and we took this picture because it was your first birthday, Izzy.”
Ollie slowly ran his finger over the faces of the two people in the photo, tracing their features; the hair was different, but he could see how he was almost the image of the man in the picture.
“What happened, where are they now…?” he murmured. Carol tried to speak, but her voice cracked, and Izzy suddenly realised Carol was trying not to cry. Ollie slid out of bed and grabbed the box of tissues from the dresser, handing a handful to Izzy, who gave them to her mother in turn, while they waited for her to compose herself.
Carol finally smiled to show she was OK again, and flipped through the album until she came to an older photograph, a tall man with sharper, more angular features, but the same eyes and expression as Ollie.
“This is granddad, Oliver Bartlett; he came here just after the war, when this place was pretty much still deserted and quite heavily bomb damaged from the Blitz, and he bought most of the houses along this street. Before the war this was a pretty run-down, working-class district; this is where the Covent Garden market porters, dray-men and cab-drivers lived, here and Pimlico, where he also bought-up a couple of streets; hard to believe, eh? Anyway, granddad was a builder, so he began rebuilding and refurbishing the houses he’d bought; I suppose today you’d call him a property developer. Daddy worked with him when he was old enough. He was born in this house, and so was I. He met mummy at school, they got married when they were twenty-two, and I was born the next year. They always wanted more children, but I was seventeen before you were born, Ollie; poor mummy had so many miscarriages, but she wouldn’t give up trying; she wanted to give daddy a son, someone to take over from him and granddad one day.”