Lincoln pulled into the driveway at half past six, cut the engine, and sat slumped behind the wheel for nearly ten minutes, his tired, bloodshot eyes fixed on the facade of the Franklin Avenue house. His stomach bubbled with dread, and with a weary sigh, he reached into the glovebox for the container of Tums he kept there for homecomings such as this.
It was empty. Flashing, he threw the bottle against the windshield and leaned back against the headrest. Lovely, perfect way to start his evening.
Grumbling, he got out and went inside; he was barely through the door when the smell of warm shit wafted over him like a cresting wave. His nose pinched and he staggered back a little. Yeah, welcome home, Dad.
Waving his hand in front of his face, he crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. Loan was lying on her stomach in front of the TV and coloring a picture. Beneath her gray sweatpants, her adult diaper bulged, which told Lincoln she hadn't been changed in a few hours...or days. He didn't know and he really didn't care anymore. Lemy sat on the couch, his long hair dirty and matted: He was flicking a lighter and grinning with absent-minded delight. Next to him, Lupa watched Dr. Phil with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face, her crutches leaning against the end table within easy reach: Her legs were severely deformed, and without them she would be forced to drag her twisted body across the floor like a worm. She looked over, saw him, and nodded. Lincoln nodded back, then crossed to the couch and snatched the lighter out of his son's hand. Lemy turned with a breathless duh, his eyes crossing and his mouth working furiously.
"No lighters, you little pyro," Lincoln hissed. He looked at Lupa, but she turned away. Lincoln knew she smoked and didn't really care, but he expressly forbid her to let her half-brother get ahold of her lighters and matches: The kid had a serious thing for fire, and one day he'd burn the place down. "Be more careful," he said to Lupa, who grunted. Lemy reached for the firemaker, but Lincoln slapped his hand away.
Slipping it into his pocket and shaking his head, he went into the kitchen where Lori was standing at the stove and stirring a pot. Luan sat at the kitchen table with hers and Lincoln's daughter Liby in her lap. Liby was fourteen but had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. Currently, Luan was reading her a Dr. Seuss book. None of them looked up as Lincoln went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and opened it. "Loan shit herself," he said and took a sip.
"Change her," Lori said sharply.
Lincoln sighed. "You know, I just got home from work. Where's Luna or Leni?"
"Luna's at the doctor with Lyra, Lana and Lola took Lizy and Leia to the park, Lucy…" Lori trailed off. "Everyone's busy, Lincoln. You do it."
Lincoln took another drink of beer and sat the can down on the counter. Firmly. Some of the contents splashed out onto his hand. "Fine," he said tightly.
In the living room, he stood over his eldest daughter with his hands on his hips and tried really hard to remember the joy he felt the day Lori gave birth to her...the joy he felt despite knowing full well that she was going to be mentally retarded. He loved her, like he loved all his kids, but sometimes it was so overwhelming: There were ten of them, after all, and each had their own infirmity. The medical bills were through the roof and oftentimes it was like caring for nearly a dozen overgrown babies at once. That's enough to make anyone a little batty.
"Honey," he said patiently.
Loan bobbed her head back and forth, a hum on her lips. Sounded like The Wheels on the Bus.
"Honey."
She looked up at him, smiled, and grunted happily.
"We need to change your diaper."
She pouted and whipped her head away, her tangled blonde bangs lashing her sallow forehead.
"Don't fucking touch me," Lupa spat. Lincoln twisted to look over his shoulder: Lemy was rubbing her arm very slowly and grinning madly, a ribbon of drool coursing down his chin.
"Luuuuuuppppppaaaaa," he said, and tittered madly.
The girl flashed, grabbed his hand, and twisted: He yelped and drew away.
"Lupa, don't do that," Lincoln admonished.
Lemy held his wounded hand and studied it with big, watery eyes, his breathing coming in ragged gasps. "Haaaaaaaand."
"Don't touch your sister, you know she doesn't like it."
Lemy looked at him...then burst out crying. He jumped up and ran toward the stairs, the top half of his body leaning forward and his legs pumping furiously. He hit the treads and slammed up to his room. Lincoln started to further chastise his daughter, but he caught a whiff of Loan's diaper and gagged instead. Where the hell were the diapers and shit? He turned just as the front door slammed open and Lacy bounded in, her pale brown hair pulled back in a ponytail: Lincoln noticed the soccer ball just as she pulled back and kicked. It shot across the couch like a cannonball across the prow of a ship and slammed into Lupa's face. She went limp and toppled to one side. Lacy's eyes went wide, and when Lincoln glared at her, she shriveled in fear. Intellectually, she was 'normal.' Her only malformity being her cleft palate, a wide gash running from her upper lip to her left nostril like a trench.
"Really?" Lincoln demanded. "I've told you to stop kicking that goddamn ball in this goddamn house!"
"S-Sorry, Dad," she said and fell back a step. Lynn came through the door then, her arms laden with groceries. She saw Lincoln's face and rolled her eyes.
Instead of backing him up, though, she went into the kitchen like nothing.
Fucking bitch.
Lincoln went over to the couch, grabbed Lacy's ball, and held it up. "This is going bye bye."
"But, Dad!"
Ignoring her teary-eyed protest, he went off in search of the diapers. As he suspected, Loan had a diaper rash too.
Again.
Luna Loud sat next to her daughter in Dr. Lopez's office, her legs crossed and her arms folded her her ample chest. Lyra, a pretty girl with long brown hair and freckles, stared past the psychiatrist and out the window, her lips silently moving as she communed with the demons in her head.
Dr. Lopez, a slight Hispanic woman with Coke bottle glasses, watched the girl intently, her brow pinched in concern. She sighed and sat back in her swivel chair. "Obviously the prescription isn't work the way I had hoped. I'm going to switch her back."
Lyra was a schizophrenic. Her previous medication, Zazaraquil, kept most of the symptoms at bay: She didn't hear voices and she wasn't delusional. It made her very sleepy, though, and sick sometimes: There were days when she wouldn't move from her perch by the toilet, and other days where she couldn't get out of bed at all. Last week, Dr. Lopez switched her to a new drug, and over the past few days, Luna had noticed her daughter talking to herself more. Yesterday, she locked herself in her room and refused to come out because she thought Liena, Leni's daughter and her half sister, was going to hurt her. Poor Liena was so absent-headed she couldn't hurt a fly.
She also complained of being watched: The other day, Luna went into her room and found black trash bags covering all the windows and a towel shoved against the crack under the closet door.
It killed her to see her daughter this way.
Presently, she rubbed a comforting circle between the girl's shoulder blades. "Until then, I'm ordering her placed under care."
Luna's heart dropped.
She knew this was coming.
Until the medication took effect, Lyra would be admitted to the psych ward of Royal Woods General, most likely for forty-eight hours.
Luna nodded. She didn't like it, but it was for the best: Right now, her daughter was dangerous.
She rubbed deeper and more firmly. Lyra had no idea; she was in her own little world.
Leia Loud crossed her arms and stuck her nose up. Before her, her younger half sister Lizy balled her hands. "Please?"
"No," Leia said firmly.
They were at the park; around them kids ran, screamed, and chased each other in endless games of tag.
"But I need help," Lizy said. She wore a red baseball cap, her straight blonde hair framing her circular face. One of her eyes was milky white and blind, and her left handed was webbed. "I'll do anything."
Leia hummed. Anything, huh? "Welllll…" she drew, bobbing her head from side to side; her blonde pigtails swished.
Lizy nodded hopefully. "You name it."
Hmmm. "Do my chores. For a month."
The younger girl's face fell. "A whole month?"
A little black boy ran behind her and accidently bumped into her, driving her forward. Leia nodded. "Yep."
Lizy sighed and bowed her head. She really needed help finding enough worms for snack time, but she really didn't want to have to do her sister's chores for a whole thirty days. She glanced over at the bench where her mom and her Aunt Lola sat, the former with Lulu in her arms and the latter smiling and talking to a man who wasn't daddy.
Seeing no help there, she turned back to her older sister; Leia's eyes twinkled with a mischievous light, and her lips puckered up in a self-satisfied smirk. Lizy sighed and scuffed her shoe across the ground. "Fine," she grumbled.
"Alright," Leia said. She shoved Lizy roughly out of the way and started toward a grassy field. "Let's try there first."
Five minutes later, Lizy, sitting Indian style on the ground, looked up, and found that her sister had ditched her.
Lizy sighed deeply. Her sister was always doing stuff like this to her. Sometimes she would act all nice and offer to help, then, when Lizy needed her most, she was nowhere to be found. To be honest, Lizy was starting to think Leia did it on purpose...like she got some kind of thrill from being mean. Getting to her feet, she got up and went off in search of the older girl, first going back toward the bench, then toward the treeline well away from everyone else. The forest loomed ahead, and though she wasn't a scardy cat, it was kind of creepy. "L-Leia?" she called. She started past a tree, but something jumped over and grabbed her. She let loose a throat ripping scream, and her bladder released: Hot piss filled her shorts and dribbled down her legs.
"Got'cha," Leia said, and laughed viciously.
"THAT WASN'T FUNNY!" Lizy cried, a mixture of shame and anger coursing through her. Now there was a big wet patch on the front of her shorts and she looked like a little baby who wet herself.
Leia put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, a dark shadow crossing her face. "Yes it was."
Lizy was so angry she balled her fist and came forward, but the older girl easily side-stepped her and stuck out her foot. Lizy fell with a cry that turned to a breathless umph! When the tip of Leia's shoe connected with her side. Stars burst across her vision, and she peed herself even more.
"You're pathetic," Leia said, "and weak. Do us all a favor and get kidnapped."
Lizy started to cry, and Leia cackled mad laughter as she walked away.
"Daddy?"
Lincoln glanced up from his phone; Liena stood before him, her bare knees pressed together and her hands behind her back. She wore a seafoam green pair of overalls and thick gray socks that came to her knees. Like her mother, she was a ditz with a capital D; Lincoln couldn't tell if it was from the incest of if that's just how she was. "Yes?" he asked.
Liena flashed a sheepish smile. "Like...hi."
Lincoln blinked. "Hi." He bowed his head over his phone and went back to his Ace Savvy fan fiction: It's how he closed out the world. Well...that and beer. Could you blame him, though? He scrolled down and winced. Damn it. Now Ace and One Eye Jack were having gay sex. He wished he knew it was a fag fic before he started reading it.
Sighing in disgust, he threw his phone onto the end table and looked up at his daughter. She smiled again. "Do you need something, sweetie?" he asked.
"Well...can I sit on your lap?"
Lincoln's eyes narrowed. "No."
Liena's face dropped. "B-But Daddy…"
He shook his head no. "Not right now."
She stuck out her bottom lip and pouted. "Please? I missed you today."
Sometimes Lincoln thought he was a heartless son of a bitch, but in reality he wasn't: He had a soft spot for his little girls, even if they could be annoying as all fuck. "Fine," he relented. Liena balled her fists in excitement and dropped onto his lap; she swung her legs over and wrapped her arms around his neck. She smelled, perhaps impossibly, like cotton candy, and Lincoln felt himself beginning to stir despite sex being the farthest thing from his mind right now. She wiggled her butt against his crotch and leaned in, her eyes wide and bright.
"I really missed you," she said, and pecked the tip of his nose, her blonde bangs tickling his forehead.
"I missed you too," he said.
She giggled and kissed the corner of his mouth. Her breathing was heavy now. "Not as much as I missed you." Her tongue darted out and traced his bottom lip: Lincoln's fingers dug instinctively into the soft flesh of her upper thigh. Heat was radiating from between her legs in sickening waves. She squirmed and giggled.
In addition to her ditziness, Liena was afflicted with an extremely high sex drive: She masturbated at least four times a day, and every afternoon when he got home from work she sought him out for a little daddy/daughter play time. Though he couldn't be absolutely sure, he thought she did things with Lemy too. How far she let him get was something that Lincoln didn't particularly want to know.
Presently, she molded her lips to his and kissed him deeply, her hands fluttering to the sides of his face. He lashed his tongue against hers, and for nearly a minute they grappled for position before she won out like she always did. She planted her knees on either side of him and ran her fingers through his hair, the soft scratch of her nails against his scalp sending electric tingles down his spine. He was rock hard now and ready to go.
Then Lori ruined everything by poking her head in from the kitchen. "Dinner."
Lincoln held up one finger. Gimme a minute, will you? I'm bonding with my daughter.
"Now," Lori growled dangerously.
Sighing, Lincoln pushed Liena out of his lap; she fell to the floor in a panting heap, her nose and cheeks cutely shaded red. "But Daddy…"
"After dinner," Lincoln said and got up.
Before he himself could sit down, he had to round up the others, namely Lemy, Lizy, and Leia. He found Lemy sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at a book cover: It featured lots and lots of flames, and Lemy smiled stupidly at it, his lips curling back from his yellow, plaque encrusted teeth in a leering idiot grin. Dirty clothes, toys, bits of trash, and dirty plates littered the floor, and Lincoln's nose pinched at the godawful smell. "Dinner," he said. Lemy looked up and licked his teeth.
"Dddddddddiiiiiinnnnneeeeerrrr?"
"Yes. The evening meal. Dinner."
"Lemy like dinner," Lemy said and got up: Lincoln noticed the erection pushing out the front of his son's dirty, acid washed jeans and looked away.
Next, he went to Lizy and Leia's room. Lizy was sitting on her bed with her arms crossed and her head bowed. Leia sat at her vanity and brushed her blonde hair while humming and bobbing her head back and forth.
"Dinner," Lincoln said.
"Okay, Daddy," Leia piped.
Lizy lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and Lincoln frowned. "You alright, Liz?"
Lizy nodded.
Eh, he tried.
In the dining room, Lincoln took his place at the head of the table, his family spread out on either side of him, Liby to his left and Lacy to his right. Liby brushed her reddish blonde hair behind one ear and straightened her yellow tie. Lacy peeled her number 2 jersey from her budding breasts and let it fall back into place. The fabric irritated her nipples, but she didn't like wearing bras, so...there you have it. Farther down, Lupa sat next to Liena; her nose was pink from where Lacy's ball drilled her, and her eyes were puffy. Lulu was at the foot of the table, Lisa on one side and Luna on the other. Lemy sat next to his mother, grinning like a loon. Shortly, Leia came in and sat between Liby and Luan while Lizy sat between Lynn and Lana. Ah, the gang's all here.
Except for Lyra. She was in the nuthouse again because that retard Dr. Lopez kept fucking with her medication.
And Loan. It was her nap time.
"Like, who wants to say grace?" Leni asked.
"Thank God for fiiiiiirrrrree," Remy said, and reached his fork toward a covered dish, but Lori slapped him away.
"Fine," she huffed, "I'll do it." She closed her eyes and bowed her head, as did everyone else, except for Lincoln. "God is great, good is good, let us thank him for our food. Amen."
A-fucking-men. Lincoln reached for the dish, whipped the cover off...and sighed. "I see Dad's spirit lives on."
It was beans.
And franks.
"Just shut up and eat," Lori said.
Lincoln ground his teeth but didn't say anything as he forked a heaping helping onto his plate. Lori was next, then Luan, then Liby; she spilled some on her skirt.
"Nice fumble," Lacy snorted, and Liby blushed bright red; she hated making mistakes in front of her siblings because they tore her apart when she did.
"You're supposed to eat it, not wear it," Leia said.
Lemy tittered. "Liby drop food!"
Lincoln sighed deeply and glanced up at Liena; she watched him intently, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth.
"How was your day?" Lori asked the table in general as she spooned some beans onto her own plate.
"Awesome," Lacy said, "I got to third base." Everyone looked at her, and she rolled her eyes. "In baseball."
"I remember my first time to third base," Lori said and looked up at Lincoln, her lips curling up in a devious smile. Lincoln remembered too: She and Bobby had just broken up and he was comforting her. They were sitting on the couch watching a movie with a blanket thrown over their laps when somehow, he wound up with his hand down her pants, and she wound up with hers down his. He grinned as he recalled the feeling of that first sinful nut with one of his sisters: It was so powerful he felt like he was shooting out his soul instead of his seed.
"So do I," Lola said and looked at Lana, who blushed.
Lemy reached for his glass, but his fingers brushed it and it tipped over, spilling milk across the tabletop. "Goddamn it," Lori sighed. "You're a real klutz, you know that?"
Lemy tittered.
She got up and grabbed a rag. As she cleaned, Lincoln angrily forked bits of hotdog into his mouth. Every time he ate this shit he was reminded of the ass whipping his father gave him when he, Lynn, and Lucy told him and Mom they were both pregnant: There was so much scar tissue on his ass that to this day it felt like he was sitting on a bag full of dirty laundry sometimes. He was so happy when that bald son of a bitch took Vanzilla and left that he cried.
"So, I stole second," Lacy was saying. She shoved a spoon full of beans into her mouth, and they oozed back out from her cleft, some of it dropping onto her shirt.
Uh-oh.
Leia snickered. "What's the matter, Lacy...got a hole in your chin?"
Lacy's head whipped up and she fixed her sister with a deadly gaze.
"Leia, that was mean," Lola said admonishingly.
"It's true," Leia said, "her face looks like a World War I battlefield."
Lincoln started to yell at her, but Luan slapped her across the back of the head. "That's enough," she said sharply.
Excited by his younger sister's cry of pain, Lemy giggled like a girl and threw himself against the table: Liena's glass tipped over and she jumped up with a sharp yelp that hurt Lincoln's ears. "Lemy! You got me wet! And totes not in a good way!"
"Nice going, Lemy," Lacy said savagely.
"Yeah, idiot," Leia added.
Lemy looked around in confusion, tears filling his eyes.
"Alright, everyone shut up," Lincoln said firmly. After that, no one spoke again until dinner was over.
Lupa Loud left her crutches at the bottom of the stairs and pulled herself up the steps, stopping to rest once halfway up. Leia, of course, chose than time to come bounding down, and stepped on Lupa's knuckles, which brought tears to the little goth's eyes.
"Oops," Leia said over her shoulder, "sorry." Her tone indicated that she was not sorry, but of course she wasn't. The little bitch did it on purpose: She was a grade A sadist. A sociopath, too. Lupa knew because she wasn't dumb like some of her siblings, she read a lot of books and watched a lot of Investigation Discovery. Leia displayed all the classic signs of being a fucking psychopath: She liked hurting people, manipulating them, and, like Lemy, she had a thing for fire. Several times now Lupa had caught her sister with her lighter, flicking it and grinning satanically. If it was up to Lupa, Leia would be in the bed next to Lyra at the psych ward, but it wasn't because no one ever listened to her. Mom, Dad, and her aunts thought they knew so much better. Pffft.
In the room she shared with Lacy, Lupa closed the door, climbed onto her bed, and reached into the nightstand drawer for her cigarettes and lighter. She took one out, put it between her lips, and lit it, drawing the smoke in deeply. Ahhhh, yes, warm my cold, dead heart.
She didn't realize she wasn't alone until Lacy spoke from her bed. "Those things are going to kill you."
Lupa nodded and took a drag, her eyes pointed at the water-splotched ceiling. "I know."
Lacy turned onto her side in a rustle of fabric, her eyes widening. "Do you want to die?"
Lupa opened her mouth to speak, but cut herself off. Sometimes, when her clinical depression snuck up on her, yes, she did want to die; she wanted to close her eyes to this miserable, good for nothing world and drift away. Most of the time, though, she didn't...not that she had a particular zest for life.
"No," she finally said, "but we all have to do it sometime." She took another drag and blew it out slowly, the smoke spreading in the stagnant air like like radiation over a blast site. Lacy watched her for a moment, then shook her head. She grabbed her tennis ball from the nightstand and got to her feet.
"At least crack a window."
Lupa nodded and took another puff, her lips curling thirstily around the filter. "Sure thing."
In the hall, Lacy tossed her ball into the air and started toward the stairs; she'd go out back and play a little handball or something. She was approaching the top step when Lemy's door flew open and he came out in just his underwear. She noticed his erection and sighed. Oh, do not come to me for this.
A stupid smile crept across his face when he saw her. "Laaaaaacccccyyy...I need jack-jack."
Lemy had a series fire fetish, and spent most of his time in his room looking at pictures of it and leering like a trailer park pedophile. Sometimes he got so worked up that he needed one of his sisters to relieve him. He could do it himself, but an orgasm always feels better when someone else gave it to you, Lacy knew that first hand: She'd been having sex with her father since she was ten. She didn't mind jacking him off (or even sucking him), but he rarely ever bathed, and his crotch smelled like the inside of a locker room toilet.
"No," she said and started down the stairs.
"Please!" he cried and grabbed her shoulder, "I need jack-jack!" His nails dug into her flesh, and she tensed; if it were anyone else, she would have swung around and clocked them. It wasn't just anyone, though, it was her only brother.
Sighing, Lacy turned. "Fine." She gestured with her hands. "Whip it out."
Lemy tittered madly, reached into his pants, and pulled out his dick: What he lacked in mind he more than made up for in body. His dick was big is what I'm saying. If he could last more than two pumps, he'd be a hell of a lay.
Rolling her eyes, Lacy wrapped her fingers around his length and squeezed. Lemy's breath caught and he rested his forehead against hers. She stroked slowly at first, trying to ascertain how long it would take him: He was hot and thick, which told her it would be over fast. She increased her speed. His eyes rolled back into his head and a ribbon of drool spilled down his chin. "Fffffiiiirrrrreeee," he moaned.
"Yep," Lacy said, "fire."
He giggled and jerked, his dick expanding and releasing. His seed splattered her shirt and shorts, then coursed down her leg. As he did every time he came, he shook and moaned, his entire body quivering and his hips thrusting madly.
"There," Lacy said and unhanded him, "happy?"
He nodded.
"Good." She turned and went down the stairs just as Leia was coming up. Lacy was not overly impulsive, but that chin joke Leia made during dinner came back to her, and as they passed, she shot out her fist and punched the little girl in the shoulder as hard as she could; Leia's feet went out from under her and she collapsed with a cry.
"You bitch!" she screamed.
"Next time it'll be your nose, you little fuck," Lacy growled.
She froze when Leia spoke next. "Great, then I'll look like you."
Lacy was very sensitive about her cleft; she knew it was hideous, and she spent more time looking at her face in the mirror and hating it...wishing it was different, better...than she cared to admit. Growing up, she was taunted mercilessly by her classmates until she eventually got sick of feeling like garbage every day and started beating them up. All of her siblings knew this...knew how she felt...and none of them made fun of it.
Except for Leia.
Lacy turned slowly, her hands balling into fists and heat spreading across her face: Blood crashed in her temples and her heart slammed. Leia was on her feet now, holding the rail and looking down at Lacy as though she were an exceptionally disgusting bug: Chin jutted, eyes narrow, lips screwed up in a sour expression. "You better shut your mouth," Lacy said, her voice trembling.
For a moment they stared each other down before Leia shook her head and turned. Even after she was gone, Lacy stood on the stairs and fought to catch her breathing. She hated Leia; in fact, she was the only one of her siblings that she honestly and truly hated.
Little cunt.
Still filled with angry energy, Lacy went into the backyard and ran sprints, pausing only long enough to punch the fence on each pass. Her knuckles were raw and bloody, but she didn't care. Pain felt good when she was mad.
She was not aware that she was being watched from an upstairs window: Two brown eyes burned with hateful intensity as they traced the jock's every move. Leia bared her teeth and dug her nails into the pads of her palms so hard they drew blood.
Leia's feelings for her siblings ran the gauntlet from abiding disgust (Loan) to neutral indifference (Lulu), but Lacy...she fucking hated Lacy. Lacy thought she was big and tough and every time she won a sports trophy she paraded it around like it was the greatest thing in the world...like she was the greatest thing in the world. But she wasn't. Leia was: She was prettier and smarter and just better than everyone else. In fact, her only deficiency was her inability to fake emotions as well as everyone else. Then again, she didn't want to fake emotions. Everyone else could pretend to feel love and honor and all that crap, she would rather be open with her disdain.
"I'm going to get that bitch," she said and turned from the window. Lizy was sitting in the middle of her bed and building a model airplane. Her head was bowed, and her blonde hair veiled the side of her face. She grunted.
Leia shot daggers at the younger girl. That's it? A grunt? Flashing, she stalked over and snatched the half finished plane from her sister's lap. Lizy's head shot up and a mixture of anger and fear filled her good eye. "Hey!"
"You're disrespectful," Leia said.
"Give it back!"
"You need to be taught."
"Please!" she begged. "Daddy bought me that!"
That made Leia even angrier. Daddy shouldn't be buying dumb, blind Lizy things, he should be buying her things. Sneering, she launched the plane at the wall, and thrilled in the satisfying sound it made as it broke into a million little pieces.
Lizy's face twisted in agony and tears sprang to her eyes. "Have fun with your plane, you little cyclops," Leia said and jabbed her sister in the forehead with her finger.
Lizy sniffed and started to sob, her knees drawing to her chest and her arms wrapping around. Leia shook her head in disgust and left the room.
"I hate you!" Lizy cried through her tears.
"Are you okay?"
She looked up and blinked. Liena stood in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame and concern written across her face. Lizy shook her head and tried to speak, but cried harder.
Frowning deeply, Liena came in and sat next to her sister, her hand going tentatively to her back. "What's wrong?" she asked softly.
"Leia," Lizy finally managed, "she broke my plane a-a-and called me a cyclops!"
Liena blinked. She started to ask what a sighcops was, but shook her head. That wasn't important right now, what was important was that her little sister was sad. "Maybe we can fix it," she suggested.
Lizy sniffed. "Maybe."
Liena ran her sister's hair through her fingers. "Sure, let's, like, give it a try."
They weren't able to fix it, but Lizy really appreciated her sister's efforts. If only Leia was more like Liena, things would be so much better.
*Contains spoilers*
On January 14, 2018, a California teenager climbed through a window in her parents' home and stumbled into the night. She was malnourished, crisscrossed with bruises, and terrified of what would happen to her if her mother and father found her, but the inhuman abuse she and her twelve siblings had endured over years pushed her on. Using a stolen cellphone, she called the police, and what responding officers found was nothing short of a charnel house. 13 children ranging in age from 2 to 29 shackled, beaten, and starved, - the oldest, a woman, weighed just 82 pounds. Early news reports stated that the children were fed just one meal a day, allowed to bathe once per year, and were marched through the house at night like POWs on a journey to nowhere. Investigators were surprised by the systematic character of the abuse - most child abuse is not premeditated, but what David and Louise Turpin did to their thirteen children was.
I listened to radio reports of the Turpin case every night for a week at work. As a parent, I was shocked and sickened. What kind of monster does that to their own children? I tried to imagine what those kids went through - the suffocating despair, the hopelessness, the constant, gnawing fear - and I saw the Loud family. That was only natural, I suppose, since I'd been writing Loud House fan fiction non-stop since the previous May; our minds seek to contextualize the unknown by comparing it to the known. Our brains are hardwired to make meaning out of chaos, and for me, my first step to understanding the Turpin case was by relating it to characters I knew and loved. I saw Lori and Lincoln climbing out of a window in the dead of night the way the unnamed Turpin daughter did. They were hurt. They were scared. And most of all, they were betrayed. The very people who should have loved and protected them - their parents - beat, strangled, and starved them instead. Lana, Lola, Lynn, all the others, were tied to their beds, or locked in tomb-like closets. Lincoln and Lori were both scared, but they pressed on regardless because their sisters needed them to.
Inside of three days, I resolved to one day write a Loud House story based on the Turpin family.
Just as soon as Reeling in the Years was done, which, at that time, I stupidly believed it would be by March.
Around that same time, I was turning a comment someone had left on, I think, Work With Me, over and over in my head. I can't recall what it said exactly, but it pointed out that the Luancoln child born in it was serendipitously free of defects just like every other incest child in the fandom. I was vaguely aware of the sin kids at that point, mainly as names in summaries of FFN stories (who the hell is Lupa? Did I miss an episode?) and with a few other 'cest kids, ala the Lunacoln child from Fallen Pens' One Night Stand, and, you know what, none of them did have anything wrong. I didn't expect dramatic deformities (say, a cleft palate or spaghetti legs), but children born of incest are at a much higher risk for many genetic diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. The more I thought about it, the more unrealistic it seemed that with all these brother x sister kids cropping up, none had any sort of problems. It started to feel like people were dismissing the very real dangers of inbreeding in the name of "muh OC."
I decided, one day, to be just as unrealistic in the opposite direction, to write a story where Lincoln's kids with his sisters are all fucked up.
At some point while telling all this to AberrantScript, he directed me to Pat's sin kids graph on DeviantArt. He followed all the artists and Tumblr and fandom stuff, I didn't. I didn't know shit, to be honest. I knew who JumpJump was but that was about it. So I get there and I check this thing out - pretty self-explanatory, all the kids look exactly like their mothers in dress and demeanor if not physical appearance, lot of the same color schemes, etc. Okay, I thought with a shrug, I'll use these characters. I was only planning a oneshot, and that turned into the first chapter of The 'Cest Kids.
I was going to abandon it, but the Turpin case came back to me, and I realized that, with The 'Cest Kids, I had a premise that was close to that Loud / Turpin crossover I'd been planning. The abuse aspect wasn't present in the oneshot, so I'd have to largely forgo that, but, sure, I thought, why not? I looked at what I had on the page - an unhappy alcoholic, a sadistic little girl, a firebug, a schizophrenic, and the others - and got to work. The result was a story that somehow morphed into a dark satire about moral and familial decay and has been called "edge" more times than that dude from U2 (whose name is literally Edge).
The 'Cest Kids is first and foremost a story about things falling apart. Things had been falling apart since before it began, and continued right up to the very end. There were other themes and topics I touched on, namely how selfishness and complacency lead only to ruin. Every evil act in The 'Cest Kids was committed out of selfishness, and the only two people who could maybe have stopped it - Lupa and Lori - didn't. They sat by and watched until they, too, were engulfed.
The characters in The 'Cest Kids are all broken people, exaggerated and cartoonish to a degree, but reflections of reality nevertheless. Lincoln was the man who couldn't say no. He took shit from his sisters for years and became bitter. When the story starts, he's hanging on by threads, and those threads sever entirely when he aborts Lacy's baby. That is the moment he snaps, just like many men in real life do; you see them on CNN shooting up post offices and high schools. The sisters were emotional vampires in a way. It was revealed in the final chapters that they and Lincoln were abused and disowned by their parents. They didn't get the love and support they needed from Rita and Lynn Sr., so they latched onto Lincoln and drained it from him, only it wasn't enough...because with people like them, it never is. I've used the "cracked mug" analogy several times before. People who are emotionally broken are like a cracked coffee mug. You fill it with liquid, and it all leaks out until it's empty again. Some people are so broken that they cannot retain the love they are given. It might last a little while, but before long, it's all gone and they're back for more. Often times, this leads to things like constant sleeping around, cheating...in essence, chasing a fleeting feeling like a crackhead chasing a midnight high.
No, whatever Lincoln gave them would never be enough. Nothing anyone gave them would be enough.
They were all, Lincoln and his sisters, withered vines...and they bore rotted fruit.
To quote Chapter 11 of The Loud Warrior (only because I had a stroke and somehow managed to say it better there than I ever will again): "To love others...to love a child...you must first love yourself. These creatures prove again and again through their actions that they do not love themselves, and are as unfit for parenthood as they are for life. Broken men and broken women can only make broken homes...and broken children. Those broken children grow into more broken men and women who one day preside over a broken society…"
The kids were all broken in one way or another and almost all of the parents showed, at one point or another, that they did not love their children. They said they did, they may even have believed they did, but when the pressure was on, many of them cracked and walked away.
I treated other themes here and there, one of which was abuse. Leia abused Lizy, then in the end, Lizy began to abuse Lulu, even calling her the same name (One-Eye) that Leia called her. Children who are abused often become abusers themselves, a cycle herein set in motion by Leia selfishly indulging her psychopathic urges.
That indulgence brings us back to evil. I wrote somewhere else that the root of all evil is not money but selfishness, and that's something I honestly believe. Lynn, Lucy, Lola, Luna, Leia, Lemy, even Lyra - antagonists all, to a greater or lesser extent - each acted evilly because they were selfish, Lemy by molesting Liby, Lynn by assaulting Lacy and killing Lyra, Lucy, Lola, and Luna by abandoning their children when they needed them most, Leia by what she did to Lizy and by setting Lincoln on fire, and Lyra by killing Leia. They all had their own internal justifications for what they did...but evil people always do.
I believe that people like the characters in The 'Cest Kids - and like the Turpins - are far more numerous than we might like to think, the broken people, the emotional vampires, the sadists, the sit-by-and-watch-the-world-burn types, the men who can't say no until they do it with the barrel of a gun, the selfish, the abusers, the evil.
In life, as in The 'Cest Kids, evil flourishes when good people stand aside and do nothing, and it's all too easy for one selfish act to send lethal ripples through the world - or a family.