Told ya it would be out soon!

Gotta tell ya, I'm pretty insecure about how I wrote this one... not my best work.

Make sure you've already read part 1 of this! Especially the ending notes.

Chapter 34 – Dead Frogs and Other Crudities (2 of 2)

Part 3 – gaslighting

(Still November 28th, Wednesday)

Mother and son entered Man's Cave and carefully closed the door.

Nobody else was allowed in. Lily wanted a one-on-one moment with her son and no exception. They were about to have a conversation that she'd rather unwisely postponed in the past. She feared to know that her laxity had contributed to damage her kids on a certain degree and feared to discover that her trust in their inner strength had been disgracefully misplaced.

The woman carried herself into the bedroom in quick, nervous little steps. She kept both arms folded, with the palm of one hand demurely caressing the base of the throat, that slightly heaved under the weight of her own worries.

Chris walked to his desk and sat down, rotating the chair away from it so that he could follow Lily's motions with his eyes. He watched her pace around restlessly and aimlessly, until she lastly decided to sit on the edge of the bed, facing her son who calmly waited.

Lily was unsure whether she was upset more by the discovery or by her son being so untroubled by it.

Among all the things Lily couldn't suspect, sure there were Chris's true feelings, since he let nothing escape the blankness he forced onto his face.

On his side, Chris knew he'd played a bold move out there but he also knew exactly how to play it out, according to a script he'd rehearsed in his head a thousand times. Because, no matter how careful he'd been to keep his and Claire's nastiness hidden from their parents, Chris had always prepared for a potential showdown, the so-called day of reckoning.

Not that he believed Lily had guessed the whole incest thing by a mere sex toy found in a drawer though! He knew she was still oblivious and that's where the whole point of his boldness lay: to make sure she'd stay like that.

What he couldn't be sure of, in fact, was that Lily wouldn't remember the day the sex toy had been delivered. That stupid delivery guy and his wacky attitude hadn't made it pass unnoticed, damn him!

Chris only feared that, if his mother ever recalled when the purchase had happened, it wouldn't take much for her to figure out whom had wanted such a controversial tool and, sure, she'd start wondering why as hell. No, Chris just couldn't rely on her forgetfulness.

Therefore, Chris believed it was better if he straight-up addressed the truth right now than to let Claire take the blame for it and then, be forced to admit it'd been him all the time when the situation called forth lies to be exposed.

He'd gladly expose himself if it spared his sister a whole dose of unnecessary stress, shame and anguish.

Not to mention that Claire's reputation was already undermined by the pregnancy. It'd only take one little detail to go wrong and she'd risk a big, big scandal within the family. There was no need, in Chris's eyes, to add more to it. Especially not by lying.

His precautionary attitude wasn't directed just to protect Claire's reputation and their secrets tough. To cover up had started being his top worry since way before their ungodly relationship started, actually. Having been his conscience never really at rest, he'd always expected to be awkwardly caught in his nightly wrongdoings and get his nastiness to be unearthed and held against him. So, he'd obsessively prepared an explanation for everything, even for the super-carefully stored nudes on his phone! He'd actually been preparing plan Bs since the very first time he'd shoved a hand down on his girly self. Chris was one of those guys who lives by the "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" kind of thing.

The time had now come for plans to be implemented.

Chris kept his calm, his focus, his presence of mind.

He'd not let anything distract him from his purpose: protect Claire and their secret.

And if it required to tell a little truth, he'd not turn tail.

Sometimes the best way to prevent someone's mind from finding the truth is to simply feed them a little of it and make sure the right deductions are made, hijacking them to the lies one prefers. Chris had the great advantage of having total control over the information and he knew it, therefore he had the power to make believe whatever he wanted.

Of course, to confess what he was about to confess was risky and possibly double-edged. But if he played it out well enough, he'd not get his mother's mind to stray to perilous yet truthful suppositions. If things went as predicted, Lily would leave that bedroom knowing that her son had only got kinky because "boys will be boys".

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Lily took a deep breath and got the dances started. "You're not lying, are you?"

"I'm not."

In spite of its redundancy, the confirmation seemed to hurt her nonetheless, as the contrite expression on her face showed. "You bought it while you two were switched, right?"

"Yes," Chris bluntly answered.

"And you used it?"

"I did."

Lily's look dropped to the ground as she took mental note of all that new awareness being unloaded on her. So, it's true, she'd made a huge mistake, indeed. She looked away, peering through the window, at the trees in the neighbour's lawn, trying to find some sort of clarity of mind somewhere but to no avail.

"I don't even know where to begin," she muttered, hurt and headshaking. She looked back at her son's face, her eyes expressing both disappointment and imploration for mercy, and sighed faintly, "what do you have to say?"

Play it cool, Chris, he reminded to himself.

Chris exaggerated his expression of unaffected coolness with an overt shrug of his shoulders. "I was curious."

"It was your sister that you did it to," Lily pointed out the obvious.

"Sister's body."

"Devil's in details like that."

"Mom, I did nothing bad."

Lily hardly restrained a snort. "If you don't mind, I disagree."

Chris reckoned it was about time he started taking due control over the conversation and lead his mother precisely where he wanted to. "Why so? Wouldn't have you done the same if you were me?"

"Not to my own sister's body, Chris!"

"Oh, come on, Mom! It's not that big deal!" Chris exclaimed, accompanying his words with a wide roll of his eyeballs.

"Not a big deal?!" Lily squealed, shocked, almost gasping at her son's stubborn blindness, "Chris, it couldn't be bigger than this! This is a matter of boundaries being... totally destroyed!"

Tsk... If only you knew how much bigger it got! Chris mentally snickered, although he also took mental note of the apparent fact that his mother didn't seem to even imagine any... other incestuous option. Yeah, good thing.

"Listen, Mom, what's wrong if I wanted to know what's different from being a boy?" Chris cunningly gushed, faking a naivety so unlikely of him. "Nobody has ever experienced anything like that before! That was a once in a lifetime chance! I couldn't waste it."

"Honestly, this is unreal," Lily muttered, exasperated by his attitude and bewildered by his strangeness. It wasn't like him to be this shallow. Or was it that she'd never really known her own son? Lily took both hands at the sides of her head, as if it suddenly threatened to explode. "Chris, do you have a slight idea of what your actions mean? You make it look all so easy and normal, when it's not."

Chris opted for a slightly more daring approach. He appealed to all the boldness he could muster and said, "I am a boy, I masturbate. Don't act like you're not aware of that."

"I'm not, in fact," Lily complained, getting a bit defensive since Chris was basically dragging her into such uncomfortable places, "but this is different, Chris. We wouldn't be having this conversation at all if it wasn't different."

"Is it?" Chris rhetorically asked, scoffing in sarcasm, determined to keep playing it from this safe position of advantage now that he saw it having a little distressing effect on his mother, "you and dad told me it's alright to do it, but then it turns out it's not? Is it that wicked?"

"When it involves your sister, it is," Lily stated, sternly.

"That's where you're wrong Mom," Chris announced, contemptuously yet with a gentle tone, "you forget it was about me. It was me, all the time. I was inside that body. Twenty-four/seven!"

Lily forcefully stood up and stomped towards the nightstand just to turn towards her son again with a shocked look umbering her beautiful face. "Chris, this is not like having a shower. This is sexual."

"It is. And I touched myself. Like I do."

"Oh, and that yourself is now being Claire again!" Lily blurted, "how do you put that? You touched a body that's now your sister's again!"

"Frankly, I did nothing Claire wasn't fine with," Chris shrugged, trying to conceal how he hated how, by standing up, Lily physically reasserted her position of authority in the conversation as well as in their mother-and-son relationship. "I stole nothing from her."

"You talk as if she had the chance to actually prevent you from doing it," Lily rebuked.

"And you talk as if Claire didn't do the same with my body."

"Even so," Lily complained but trailed off shortly after with a sharp sigh. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together as she was forced to listen to things she'd rather ignore, even though such truths coming out of the blue didn't exactly surprise her.

It seemed like a good moment for Chris to endorse his point. "What's that?" he scornfully asked, "if she touches it's fine, but when I do it's not?"

"Don't use the double standards argument on me, Chris!" Lily thrashed an accusing finger straight at his face, piercing him with a reproachful look, and told him off, "I'm treating you as an adult, I expect nothing less back from you."

Chris understood the message and toned it down a bit. "Like it or not, mom, it was part of the game. What did you expect us to do? To wash ourselves, watch ourselves naked and not wanting to touch?"

"Precisely," Lily sternly exclaimed. A sharp nod of her head added a tone of conclusiveness to her word.

"Oh c'mon!" Chris yelled, slumping backwards in the chair as the backrest squeaked under him. "don't tell me it never crossed your mind that we'd want to give it a glance!"

"One thing is glancing, another thing is what you did. What you two did," Lily clarified, waving a finger at the door direction, to indirectly include her daughter as well, "don't you think I'm not considering Claire as well in this."

"It was just masturbation," Chris remarked, "it's no crime."

Lily shook her head away from him and scoffed aloud in annoyance. Her head was one bullshit away from blasting into the biggest headache of her life.

Needing to rebalance the conversation, Chris stood up and confronted his mother. His superior height renewed his confidence.

Still following his sly mental script, Chris looked at Lily straight in the eyes as they faced each other. "Okay," he conceded, "I can see it sounds like crazy and all, but back then it was our normality. It felt so normal to be in that body. So true and real! The feelings, the touch, it was like... like it'd always belonged to me. It felt so real. It was real."

Chris shook his head, dramatically.

He struggled to grasp what he really meant and put it into words.

He paced around a bit trying to collect his thoughts and make something out of them. Something undebatable. "It's so damn hard to explain... There was no difference from what I feel now, being inside of me again. I didn't feel like I was doing it to her, but to my own very self," he unashamedly lied.

There were many things he may have not grasped immediately during that fateful month of misplacement into a girl body, but one thing he'd known all along for sure: he loved touching his sister. He'd always, always purposefully touched her body pretending it was still her. It was precisely that awareness that attracted, excited and turned him on the most. He just couldn't confess now how damn much horny it'd made him. Wickedly horny. "And I still believe I did nothing that bad, mom."

Lily rolled her eyes up at the ceiling and exhaled a little sound of exasperation. "You bought a sex toy! That goes a little far from just touching out of curiosity."

"What's even the difference?! I told you, I wanted to know how it feels! I could use my fingers, would that have been alright to you?"

Lily took her face in both hands and shook her head throughout.

This conversation was getting nowhere.

She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together like a prayer, fingertips joined right below her nose, as she mustered her next words carefully. She needed her son to understand her point at all costs.

"Didn't it cross your mind how Claire would feel?" Lily asked, her intransigent brown-eyed gaze piercing his unyielding equally brown-eyed one. "How embarrassing it must be for her to know that you touched her parts and felt what she feels?"

Chris held her gaze bravely as his jaw clutched. Deep inside, he disliked how it was always about how Claire would feel. His father as well, when having that infamous little talk with him back in the cottage that so much trouble had caused in his and Claire's relationship, had immediately put the whole thing in the "Claire must be protected at all costs" perspective. A part of Chris wondered who was to be insulted the most by it: whether him being addressed like a natural pervert or Claire being treated like the helpless little girl to be rescued, the innocent victim, the purity to be preserved.

And she even comes lecturing me about double standards! Well, fuck her.

"I told you, I'd have never dared if I hadn't got the absolute certainty that Claire was fine with it. Ask her if you don't believe me. Also, she's done the same! How many times do I have to say it?!" Chris retorted, progressively raising his voice.

"I do believe you, Chris," Lily clarified, tying to appease a little the increasing tension that imbued her son's voice, "but I expected more responsibility especially from you since you're the oldest one. I thought you were better than this."

"I appreciate the compliment," Chris snorted.

Lily dodged his provocative sarcasm and continued, "I don't think my kids are so weak that they can't stay without touching themselves for a few days."

Chris theatrically scoffed and feigned offense. "I thought you knew how bad we were hurting. Have you forgotten already?"

"Chris, you shouldn't have," Lily rebuked, inflexible, not impressed in the least, "you could've waited."

Chris inwardly cheered for his mother had just served him the perfect chance to push his stance forth, but he made sure to conceal it.

I'm so winning this fight, he thought.

"Waited for what?" he yelled, raising a little his voice as he quickly started running out of patience, "we didn't know how long it was gonna last, we didn't even know it was gonna be reversed someday. Try to walk in our shoes, for a moment. Imagine if this thing hadn't been fixed yet. Or if it was never to be fixed." He let a little pause in his heated speech make his words sink in. "Would it be fine? If I were to spend years in Claire's body, would it be wrong if I tried to... I don't know, even have sex with someone? Or have a girlfriend, fall in love? Or would you rather expect me to stay chaste forever?"

"Well, in that case... I guess not," Lily had to concede, much to her own displease.

Chris just kept going. Flames of long-repressed anger and frustration burned in his eyes. "Then what's the difference if I did it immediately? On my own. Without even affecting Claire's life? Or reputation? How was I to know it was gonna be just, one, month?!"

Lily let out a long sigh of surrender.

She felt so overwhelmed she needed to put some distance between her and Chris. She turned and walked to the window, pretending to resume her hopeless research for help in the opposite lawn. "It's just so... it's so... wrong," she sighed, "this whole story was so wrong."

"Hell, it was! It was a nightmare." Chris chimed in, yelling raucously, and shaking a bit even, "I, I had periods, mom! Me, a boy! I had to endure cramps, and boys fucking looking at me as if I owed it to them. I was harassed and touched when I didn't want to! Hell, I even had to fake being into guys! Even when I was literally surrounded by naked girls! I had to pretend being the opposite of who I am! Can you imagine how fucking wrong I felt then?"

Chris saw his mother nod, hushful and contrite. Her forehead bumped against the windowpane in utter dejection, oblivious of the wry tiny smirk her son did at her back.

Mother and son, both simply stood still, waiting for the other to reconsider their beliefs.

"That body was the only little relief I got, and I... I just wanted, no, I needed to feel good," Chris whispered, surprising himself with the broken tone he delivered his words with. He hadn't expected that to dig it up all over again would hurt him so. Even after all that time, and all the worst things that had piled up. Would that wound ever heal? He cleared his throat and forced the lump in it to go down. "It was the only thing that made me feel alive and… a-and willing to stay so."

The crack in his voice pulled the right strings inside Lily. Her heart ached. Maybe she'd been a little too harsh to him. She turned away from the window and looked at her son, who appeared still blushing for the rush of anger and somewhat struggling inside to keep the pieces of his broken self together.

"Listen, Chris. I don't want you to think I judge your needs. You're human just like everyone else, me included. But I never wanted for you to experience... femininity this way. And sure as hell, not Claire's."

Squinting his eyes out of an unforgiving resentment, Chris hissed "then you shouldn't have carried us to dad's lab that day."

Words can cut as deep as blades.

Those words sure cut deeper.

Chris and Lily stood still, like frozen in time as his words blurred into a sullen silence. The hurt they'd bore overwhelmed the room. Man's Cave was now as quiet as a cemetery in august, when no one really cares to visit their passed ones.

"Sorry," Chris muttered, scraping his neck out of unease, "that was mean."

By the window, Lily turned away again and glanced downwards, at her husband having the time of his life with his leaf-blower below in the front lawn.

"No, it wasn't," Lily answered with a low whisper.

Robert was so oblivious. He'd always been intentionally oblivious. He'd spat blood and cried tears and pulled many all-nighters to find a solution to the accident and that's honourable of him, but he'd always refused to admit things might've gotten even more horrible than to just have their kids switched. He'd always refused to acknowledge all the implications that Lily instead presumed, sensed, feared. Since day one, he'd brushed off her worries with his obsessively repeated "they're strong kids". Rob had made sure to stave off the awareness that his kids suffered big time, because he'd not be able to stand it. To stand the awareness of not being helpful enough for them.

And she'd let him convince her.

She'd trusted his words.

Maybe she'd just been as scared as him and to simply turn her head away had appeared like the preferable solution. The safer one.

"...you're right, actually," the woman whispered, still facing away. "There's not a single day me and dad don't blame ourselves for what we caused you..."

Today, Lily had discovered that she should've looked out a little more, checked how her kids related to those new bodies and identities they'd been forced to undertake.

Yeah, Chris was right. All in all, it was just masturbation, she couldn't really blame them for it. Maybe it even helped them keep their heads above water somehow.

What really allowed no rest to her mind was the fact that now Chris and Claire were themselves again – their normal selves – and maybe those little lines they'd crossed back in that dreadful month and that meant "no big deal" back then, might come back and call them to account, affecting their siblinghood for quite some time. Maybe what had kept them "afloat" during that tempestuous month, would now backfire and sink them.

What if their recent quarrels were actually related to it? What if Claire was embarrassed by the awareness that Chris had seen her naked and touched? If Lily were in her daughter's shoes, she reckoned she'd sure be totally bewildered. Maybe all that new awkwardness in between them had ruined their relationship. And what had she done throughout? Just watch and do nothing?! Believe them when they brushed things off as mere bullshit?! A mother would sure not take any easy answer for good. Sure, not the kind of mother Lily wished to be.

"...we should've watched out," Lily concluded, sternly, "for everything."

Chris exhaled a long breath in which guilt first mixed with relief although it lastly prevailed. Yes, he was going to win that fight, he'd most likely already scored enough to win the match, his forbidden relationship with Claire was safe and secret and still beyond any stretch of imagination for his parents, but at what cost? He'd broken his mother's heart.

He only wanted to mend his ways.

"It's alright now mom," Chris said, lying as if there were no tomorrows to call out for all the crappy lies he kept sputtering out, "we're doing just fine. We're alright."

Lily turned and addressed him a look full of seriousness. "Should I believe it? You two were on daggers drawn until a few days ago."

"That was bullshit that had nothing to do with this. We're alright now. You have my word." Chris stated, not wholly oblivious of how deep he'd come to regret his word someday, how much he'd go back on it and call himself a true liar.

Lily nodded in acknowledgement and stretched a little smile meant to secretly deprecate herself.

The mother she wished to be would just keep believing her kids' words for a bit longer. The option of going to the bottom of it was too scary and unsettling for her to actually want to grill them more. If they said it's fine, they're fine. If they're lying, lies will eventually come out. For the time being, she'd just gladly keep her head buried in the sand.

"Okay. I believe you, darling. You're a good boy."

After bidding one last look beyond the glass of the window, Lily turned on her heels and released a long funny sigh to undo the accumulated tension and end that conversation gracefully. "Phew, what a mess, uh? Who could imagine I'd be talking about vibrators with my son someday?" she tittered, while walking to the door, "other moms have no idea..."

With the doorknob in her hands, Lily turned one last time and smirked maliciously at Chris who was quite already celebrating the end on that uncomfortable situation.

"Tell me, since you were sooo curious..." she tittered, "what feels better?"

Chris scoffed and shook his head, blushing a little as he bashfully said "I'll tell you this: it almost made me wish I was born a girl. Almost!"

A bubbly little giggle carried Lily and her a-little-less-heavy heart out of Man's Cave.

As soon as the door closed and left him alone, Chris slumped onto the bed, breathing in relief. He couldn't quite believe his script had played out well in the end. If he'd got something out of that shameful conversation was the certainty that the incest option hadn't even slightly crossed him mom's mind.

"Woah," he sighed to himself in disbelief.

Claire had been shamelessly eavesdropping the whole thing.

With an ear pressed against the closet wall and the other carefully tapped by a fingertip, she dived among her hanging clothes, trying to find a spot where the wall was hollower. A few words here and there had gone missing, especially when they whispered, but overall Claire had overheard no confessions being made either about their forbidden romance or the pregnancy.

In all honesty, as soon as Chris had started raising his voice her heartrate had sky-rocketed. She'd feared for the worst. Somehow though she'd managed to stay still and not roll in the other room yelling.

Even now that it seemed to be over, Claire still felt quite nervous though.

I need to talk to Chris.

She emerged from the dense stock of hanging clothes and walked through the pearly entrance in the very moment when Lily herself made her appearance into Girly Room. If her mom had come back to check how she'd stored the bedsheets, she'd be outright disappointed, Claire reckoned.

Paying absolutely no mind to any previously appointed chores, Lily approached her daughter and asked, "is it like Chris claims?"

Blinking in feigned confusion, Claire played for time. She wasn't expecting such a straightforward approach. "Claims what?"

"C'mon, I know you heard everything. I wasn't born yesterday and I know how these walls are made well enough," Lily scoffed, "so, is it like he claims? That you were fine with it?"

Claire forced a nod through the tension that ran through her whole body like a tight rope. "Yes, I was. And he even asked me if I was. And yes… I uh," Claire looked away, blushing in utter discomfort. She felt like she owed Chris to confess something as well and share the same shame. She needed to show herself she'd made her part. "I did it too... while I was a boy. It helped."

Lily nodded and rubbed her forehead with a hand, trying to sort things out of her mind.

"It was just us being… ourselves but in new bodies, Mom."

"Yeah, darling," Lily smiled, "I didn't mean to make such a big deal out of it, but… I needed to check he didn't... uhm, take something away from you that was only yours to give...?"

Claire grimaced in confusion for a good couple of seconds before figuring out what her mother's cryptic words truly meant. Her blue eye widened as realisation dawned on her. "Oh!" Claire awed, her cheeks blushing even harder, "oh, no, no, Mom! It's absolutely not the case!" she exclaimed, swaying her hands to remark as much as possible the absoluteness of her words.

"Honey, he said he used it on himself, and I'm sure you know how that thing works..."

"Yes, Mom, I do. And, trust me, Chris took nothing away from me," Claire said, regarding her mother with a look that meant do you really want me to say out loud I already wasn't a virgin?!

Lily got the message.

Smiling in relief and female intuition, she nodded. "Okay, darling, I only need you to be really okay about it."

"Oh, yeah, sure, mom! It's fine! A-and we are fine. It's in the past and it stays there." Claire repeated, underlining each sentence with reassuring sharp movements of her hands. She jabbered words out on repeat, fearing not being believed. "We're good. For real! You have to believe me!"

"I got it! Okay!" Lily chuckled, raising both palms in the air to soothe her daughter and, at the same time, finally end the whole matter once and for all. Headshaking, she seemed to look around for something. "Where's the… thing?"

"Oh, uhm…" Claire gulped down to find some courage. By then her cheeks were burning red. "I put it back in the drawer. Do you want me to trash it?"

"No, no, it's no biggie, Claire, you can keep it if you like," Lily said, "just make sure that your father never… hears of it, okay?"

Claire's blush reached inhuman heights of embarrassment, as she instinctively covered her face in shame. "Mom…!"

Lily let out a little titter, "actually, let's never tell him anything about what we discussed today, do you hear me?" A brief shadow crossed her face as she mumbled "he'd not be as easy to convince."

Man's Cave door opened and let Claire and her stunned face in. It obediently closed right behind her as the girl ran towards the bed, whereupon Chris sat down, sighing a hushed "babe…"

"Hey," Chris murmured, stretching out an arm to loop it around her waist and welcome her into his embrace, "come here."

He looked as worn out as he'd just survived a year-long war by muddy trenches.

"I'll never understand how you made it, I swear, it's been incredible, babe," Claire jabbered, speaking as if she'd just stopped running for her life.

Chris wordlessly drew her closer and pressed his lips against hers, silencing her altogether. In order to keep her balance, Claire was forced to slump on one side and clumsily land onto the mattress, while Chris kept leaning closer and closer to her body, deepening the kiss all along. He almost completely hovered her by the time Claire found a little window of time to speak again.

"Honey, if mom walks in…" Claire warned, slightly pushing him back with a gentle move.

Chris tilted his head from hers and let his enamoured look glide over her beautiful features, while his hand did the same to her upper body. He caressed her cleavage, then her breasts, then her side and went down, down, straight to the hips and there his hand stopped, somehow unable to move further and caress her womb.

Humid for the kiss, his lips grazed her mouth and left tiny little pecks everywhere they touched. He wanted to say he loved her, he'd missed her, he'd do and say anything for her. Instead, he only said a half-assed and lame "you're right. That'd be hard to explain."

That said, Chris sat back up, easing his sister up to do the same.

"Why did you take the blame, Chris?" Claire inquired, now that her mouth was free again and they simply sat together, side by side, on the edge of the big blue bed.

"Because it's the truth," he shrugged.

"We could've lied and saved your face!"

Chris seemed to mumble it over a bit and lastly shrugged again, "I don't think that would've worked out well in the end. Trust me, it's better this way."

"The look on your face when I walked in tells a different story, honey."

"Maybe. But now we know that they have absolutely no clue about…" Chris said, nodding at Claire at first and then at her belly. It seemed to put him into a certain discomfort. "…us."

"I had the same feeling! Mom seems not to imagine a thing!"

"That says quite a lot on how big we fucked up, doesn't it?" Chris lamely joked, without smiling in the least.

A part of Claire wondered whether he was just deadpanning or being dead serious. She grabbed his hand, trying to cheer him up and set the tone of the conversation back to more positive aspects, like, the visit they'd booked for the upcoming Friday afternoon by the Arklay City Hospital for instance, and said, "well, it won't be as fucked up for so long."

Chris curled his bigger fingers around hers and squeezed her hand onto his thigh. "Yeah, two days."

"Two days!"

Two days wouldn't solve a single fuck in their lives. And they perfectly knew it. It'd only give them a better view on the "bigness" of their fucking up. It'd remind them how horrid their situation was and, ultimately, it'd push them two days closer to asking grandma Mary to be complicit in the greatest secret of their lives.

Which, honestly, it scared the two siblings way harder than the idea of expecting a monstrous baby.

Part 4 – everything bare and crude

November 30th, Friday.

Claire felt dazed.

Her head was spinning.

Her stomach was churning.

She sat in the passenger seat of Chris's car, staring absently at the windshield and whatever displayed beyond it. She hadn't breathed a single word since they'd left the doctor's office.

She felt like a pile of dirt.

Wronged yet sinful.

A pure abomination.

Some aberrant shadow of a woman who only deserved to be discarded as rotten.

A few paper sheets with the black and white scan printed on loosely hung from her frozen fingers. She was so numb that she didn't even flinch when the papers slid off her grasp and fell down in the legroom ahead.

Right beside her, in the driver's seat there sat an equally crestfallen Chris.

Unlike his sister, he was evidently flaring mad like a bull. Despite his silence, one could quite hear the resentment boiling within his chest and building up to extreme pressure.

Rats! Bunch of filthy rats!

Eyes-closed, he smacked a hand on the steering wheel and tightened his lips together, struggling to take a grip on himself.

This was not as things should've turned out.

He'd had different expectations for that afternoon.

Claire had had different expectations.

Instead, both had only had their hopes crushed in the name of… of what? WHAT did entitle those bloody rats to crash their choice and discard it as it meant nothing?! As it was invalid?! As it wasn't theirs to take?!

Everything had just gone so wrong. One little thing after the other, in a huge single chain of wrong things. And it'd only taken it less than forty minutes for everything to go to hell.

It hadn't even passed an hour since Claire and him had walked into the doctor's waiting room, holding hands, holding hopes. Holding secrets. Not even an hour gone since Claire had smiled at him when the secretary had called her name.

"Doctor Harris will now see you, please follow me," she'd said. And they had stood up and followed her into the gynaecologist office of the Arklay City Hospital.

Everything started off fine.

Claire had introduced herself, the doctor had asked who her escort was, then Chris had introduced himself as her boyfriend, namely "I'm Ethan." A fancy name Claire had come up with earlier on, when Chris had brought up the need to create a disguise for himself before revealing their real bond and kinship and she'd just read "that incredible horror book that Sheva lent me" starring a certain character called so… and it was either that or Lucas.

The doctor hadn't inquired further than "are you the father, sir?"

A nod was all the confirmation Chris gave.

Although he was Ethan there, a guy with no past, no future and no sins to be rubbed in the face, Chris still didn't feel safe to say it aloud, especially with strangers around.

Claire held his hand all along.

They sat in front of the doctor's big glassy desk, holding hands below the tabletop while Claire kept answering questions about her periods, symptoms, pregnancy tests and everything else a gynaecologist might need to know. The only information she kept for herself for now was the genetical origin of the embryo. Without even getting started on what risks would a human embryo run if conceived by a closely blood-related couple for now, Claire needed to know what they were exactly talking about.

In her opinion, it was about time the doctor would start speaking about what papers needed to be filled, what tests needed to be run, what does a miscarriage really imply to the body and how much invasive the procedures are, when exactly grandma Mary's presence would become necessary… anything to let her have a clear picture of what kind of future loomed ahead.

"What if we'd like to terminate the pregnancy?" she'd said, bringing her intentions up immediately, once she'd assessed that the doctor knew enough to understand that yes she was pregnant and no it wasn't intended to last.

The doctor stretched a sympathetic smile and said, "well, at least let's see if there's a baby in the first place, shall we?"

Claire and Chris exchanged a glance.

Yes, there was this improbable teeny-tiny chance that the test might have been a "false positive", they sure didn't live under a rock. So to check was actually plainly reasonable.

"Yeah, yeah, sure."

The doctor had then stood up and waved at them to follow him into the next room. Just like the office they'd just left, everything was as clean looking. Immaculate white walls, spotless furniture.

"You said the last menstruation was on the sixteenth of October, am I right?" the doctor had asked while inviting Claire to take a seat onto a certain fancy long chair.

"Yes, yes. It started then," Claire answered looking at her brother who nodded in agreement since it'd been him to have "had" that menstruation. Not that his confirmation was actually needed though, but it was his way to participate.

The doctor had nodded and mumbled "then you should abundantly be in the sixth week of pregnancy, give or take. Which gives us the chance to see if there's a foetus directly via scan."

Claire listened intently and nodded. For once, the internet had provided her with correct information.

"Now, if you would please undress the bottom parts and then lay down," the doctor said, inviting Claire to take a seat on a certain fancy long chair next to a sci-fi movie worth computer.

"Open your legs and rest your calves on the supports, please."

Claire had done everything as requested without batting an eye. But, when the doctor approached the chair, Claire had looked for her brother's gaze, seeking support.

She felt exposed and uncomfortable.

Vulnerable as never before.

Soon, Claire had discovered she knew nothing about ultrasounds. Everything Hollywood rom-coms had showed her about pregnancy scans was just not happening.

Claire sure wasn't expecting an oblong plastic stick to be shoved inside her vagina. It was cold and rigid, and it made its way into her inners paying no mind to her grimace of deep discomfort. The doctor twisted and gyrated it according to some specific procedures the girl ignored. Her flesh could only tighten around this extraneous object, pretty much like her hand did around Chris's and his firm grip. It was the worst feeling.

That first procedure didn't last long, fortunately. And Claire was pretty glad to see the doctor remove the stick from her folds and grab a more familiar, external transducer probe.

"Whew, chilly, uh?" Claire had nervously tittered when the cool transparent gel hit her belly skin.

Chris had smiled at that face of hers who only sought his reassuring smile.

"Oh, it has to be so, otherwise the ultrasound might sear your skin," the doctor had explained, smiling nicely.

In no time, the second part of the ultrasound, the one they expected – and would also most likely tell them if they "expected", began.

The more grey triangles appeared on the near computer screen, the tighter Claire clutched Chris's hand. Their hold was so tight that it'd be impossible to determine whose hand was shaking the most.

The doctor kept moving the probe over her belly, maybe typed some buttons here and there and minutes passed in complete silence. Chris and Claire held their breaths all along. Both praying for the scan to give a negative result. Like, "sorry, your cheap test was flawed and faulty, you'll do better next time". Such a shame those words were never to be spoken that day.

"Here it is," the doctor announced, motioning the screen towards the two kids so that they could see the little white spot that the tip of his pen pointed at. "This is your baby, Miss Claire."

Both siblings slightly shifted onward, staring open-mouthed at that ridiculously small white spot on an ever-changing dark grey background.

So it was there.

It was real.

One's never really prepared for such news. Not even when it's nothing new to hear at all.

Chris and Claire exchanged a sad look. Chris rested a warm hand on her shoulder and gently shook it trying to infuse her some courage. Maybe that same courage he struggled to muster for himself.

The view of that little bean-shaped white spot was terrifying.

It honestly made his legs turn into jelly and his heartrate speed up like rollercoasters. Claire placed a shaky hand onto his and looked up at him, fear running wild in her eyes.

Dr Harris didn't miss to notice their reaction and interrupted their little moment of frightened intimacy with a brisk "do you want to listen to the heartbeats?"

The siblings hadn't the time to shout their common "NO!" that the doctor simply clicked a few buttons and the speakers next to the screen started playing a sort of up-tempo beat.

That's exactly when things stopped going sort of not-so-fine and started going straight to hell.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump….

It hit like drums, pounding hard and fast.

"Given you're in the sixth week…" the doctor started explaining, speaking low and slowly so that the fast heartbeat wouldn't be overdone by his voice.

Thump-thump-thump-thump….

"…the size seems about right, in line with the average standards…"

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump…

Claire lay on the chair almost hypnotised by the terror.

"…the heartbeats and heartrate seem also just fine, no particular irregularity showing…"

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump…

Chris stood silent, with his eyes closed, wringing Claire's hand as he kept holding it. The rifling heartbeat flew through him like a rain of bullets through a vintage gangster.

Thump-thump-thump…

"…so we can exclude any apparent health issue for now. It's overall pretty healthy…"

Gasping for air, Claire jolted and sat upright on the white chair, putting an abrupt end to the scan. A thin high-pitched noise replaced the pounding sound. Her chest heaved as her heart pounded inside the ribcage like a rifle gone mad. Funny though, because there wasn't just one heart pounding so within her allegedly.

With the gel dripping down on her, Claire covered her exposed parts with her hands and repeated her request, more clearly, more commanding this time, sounding shocked and bewildered, "we want to terminate the pregnancy!"

Dr Harris stood up, tore a couple of paper tissues from a big roll hanging from the wall and handed it over the girl to clean herself. "You can get dressed, now. I'll meet you in the office as soon as you're done."

As soon as the doctor had left, Chris had bent over to check her. He'd placed both hands on her shoulders and held her, drawing her a little closer from behind. He was shaken. And terrified. And, allegedly, utterly useless.

"My panties, please," Claire had hardly whispered, cry-broken.

Back in the office is when the situation totally spiralled and the kids realised all their hopes and expectations had been misplaced since the very beginning.

"I want to get an abortion as soon as possible," Claire had said immediately after stepping into the office.

The doctor had waved at her to take a seat in a detached manner.

"I fear that'll not be possible, Miss Claire."

"Why not?" Claire gasped in horror.

"Listen, it's pretty simple," Dr Harris said, pouring an annoying amount of conceited sighs in his speech, uselessly elongating it, "in this honourable hospital all the medical staff shares a common view on what's the best way to protect people's health and grant everybody the healthiest life possible as the core values of our great country-"

"Can you please just cut to the chase?" Chris had blurted, impatiently, showing evident annoyance. "Why won't you grant us what we want?"

"We believe there are more suitable options than abortion, which, to be clear, Mr Ethan, we do not practice in this hospital."

"But I need it!" Claire had cried, "I don't want to have a baby! We can't have a baby!"

"That, sweetheart," Dr Harris hissed, in a hateful, patronizing manner, "that's something you should've thought about before. Abortion is not a contraceptive, you kids need to stop believing you can have all the reckless sex you please and then magically fix everything with a pill."

Claire could hardly believe her ears.

Chris could hardly believe he wasn't already smashing the guy's face into a pulp on his stupid spotless glass desk.

"Doctor, you don't understand, we need to terminate it! It's dangerou-" Claire retorted but was cut off by Chris who brutally stood up and incited – rather commanded – her to leave that "sordid place". Confronted by a look she'd never seen on his face before, Claire could only abide and leave with him, trembling like a leaf.

Back to the present time, now that they'd gone back into the car, in the hospital parking lot, Chris regretted his self-control. That's why the steering wheel got a smack it'd done nothing to deserve.

"What do we do now?" Claire whispered, interrupting her absent silence but not her pointless stare.

Chris could hear the crying in her voice. He hated it. He hated that doctor. He hated that hospital. He hated that whole city.

He looked down at the papers scattered over Claire's feet and bent over to pick them up. He briefly browsed them again. The bean-thing was still there, printed black and white.

"We'll find another hospital," Chris resolutely said, stacking the sheets back together.

Claire slumped back into the seat backrest, with her head dropped onto her chest, but said nothing. There was nothing she could add to that. Finding another doctor was the only way. But… what if every doctor was like Dr Harris and refused to treat her?

Almost like he'd read her worried thoughts, Chris said, "I know for sure they do practice abortion in the Spencer Memorial down in Raccoon City."

Claire looked at him in confusion and fear at the same time.

Chris nodded, sadly. "I know a girl who got it there, she's in college now."

"I thought we wanted to avoid staying in Raccoon…" Claire said, remindful of the accuracy they'd put in avoiding any possible encounter with someone they knew.

"Yeah, but it doesn't look like we can do otherwise," Chris replied, reaching out to grab one of her hands and thumb it affectionately. "The nearest hospital is too far. And we'd still not know what their fucking policies are. About the Spencer Memorial instead, we do."

"But Leon's mom works there…"

Chris nodded in acknowledgement of her more than reasonable worry. "Yeah, I know… but she works in the E.R. so we won't have to actually meet her."

Claire didn't seem to be totally convinced by the option. She looked away and sighed, worried and regretful, "maybe if we told him you're my brother, he'd have changed his min-"

"No, Claire," Chris exclaimed, cutting her speech with his forceful determination, "he'd not change his mind. He clearly couldn't care less about the reason we want an abortion. He's, just, against it. A fanatic like him would even straight out report us to the police."

Claire whimpered in pain, "that's so unfair."

Chris bowed closer to Claire and took her cheek in his hand. He drew her into a short kiss on the lips. "We'll get through this, I promise," he whispered against her lips.

Claire nodded and sat back on her seat, looking out the windowpane.

When Chris started the engine and drove the car outside the parking spot, a lonesome tear ran down her cheek as she whispered "I didn't want to hear the heartbeat."

Chris frowned, heartbroken.

"Me neither."

Things to clarify: yes, it's that Ethan. Yes, Sheva's recommendation had actually been addressed many chapters ago. Yes, "Behind the Scenes: Chronicles" readers know exactly what delivery guy I'm talking about.

P.S. I know this update happens in the immediacy of the US Supreme Court decision that "cancelled" the Roe vs Wade decision and the constitutional right to get an abortion in the US, so I reckon it may still be a pretty hot topic, pretty sore shock for my American readers (if I have any actually). Such coincidence wasn't intended to happen, of course.

Anyway, American or not, either pro-life or pro-choice, if it hit any nerve, please remember it's fiction, there's been a timely warning and you can stop reading any time.

Love, Fangirl.