Blood Rush
Chapter Two: The Thought
Jerome held two fingers to the bridge of his nose, pinching hard to ignore the sound of his mother's beseeching moans to a God that she didn't worship in the next room. His eyes pinched shut with furrowed brows, he exhaled to regain some tranquility.
Fifth time this week. Fifth man this week.
A front as a caring son who wanted to see his mother happy—He had perfected that acting career long ago. Sex is a healthy activity, he'd say in defense of her promiscuity. It's a good thing to have a very healthy sexual life…lots of benefits…
Lots of headaches, Jerome thought cynically.
Jerome had waited patiently for Lila Valeska to finish up her escapade, but it was taking longer than usual. He didn't dare try to figure out if the fault was the man or his mother. Unable to bear it much longer, he rushed out of his bedroom and stepped out the front door, closing it behind him with a breath of relief when his ears went silent with a slight ringing.
As always, he found Lila's "love life" more bearable when he could confide in his sister. Deedee could barely stand being in the trailer the moment a man entered the residence. ("Oh, for fuck sake…" she had muttered just a few hours ago when Lila staggered through the front door, holding onto that slag's hand.) Knowing what kind of mess there was to be had—animal splooge all over the furniture, condoms or lube strung around the bathtub, or God knows what else…
Deedee was stationed outside by a roaring campfire in the warm, night of early Spring. Jerome considered her to be quite beautiful, despite the faded burn marks that were illuminated by the flames—She was clad in her performer's outfit, a red-and-gold ensemble that only covered 80% of her breasts and small material to hide the dip of her hip bones and the majority of her bottom. The older she got, the less material the Circus advised her to wear. Profits, they said. Sex sells, they said. And the less material that she wore, the more burns she could receive if she wasn't careful.
When Jerome approached her, she noticed the movement of shadow and then greeted her brother with a generous smile. Her interaction with Mother were polar opposite in comparison to how she greeted him. Her voice was sweet, gentle—unlike the shrill, dry and sarcastic tone that she took with Mother.
"Couldn't take it?" Deedee offered curiously. The small-linked chains of her earrings tinkled as she turned her head.
"The Bitch just doesn't shut up." Jerome groaned, shaking his head. "Still going."
"Yeah, I imagine." Deedee said, sharing in on his look of disgust. "Probably loose as hell. Can't get him off, I imagine. Or maybe he's doesn't, eh…measure up…"
"Deedee, no." Jerome objected.
"Okay, I didn't mean to put that image in your head." Deedee said with a small snort.
"Gross." Jerome uttered.
He stood beside her by the campfire.
Deedee gazed at him for a second. Jerome had turned seventeen just the other day. There was no celebration for his birthday, and like every year, the only person who acknowledged it had been Deedee. He had grown at least a foot; and despite the healing bruises along his strong jawline, he was become quite the handsome man.
"Have you ever…?" Deedee hesitated to ask the question.
Jerome glanced at her when her voice trailed off.
"Ever, what?"
"Have you ever had sex?" asked Deedee lightly, turning to him.
"What sort of question is that? Of course, I have." Jerome answered, his brow raised.
Delilah shrugged.
"I guess I'm curious," explained Delilah gently. "I haven't thought of doing something like that with anyone. Not with the Circus knowing what happened a long time ago, that one time when Mother pulled you out of the trailer..."
"You don't have to explain it," Jerome said, momentarily looking away from her. "I know what happened."
Deedee made a small, lamented smile. "You never asked me what happened."
"I didn't have to," Jerome said. "I saw it on your face."
Jerome glanced at her. He'd never ask her to reveal in great detail about what that man did to her a long time ago. He couldn't blame her for not wanting to date within the Circus. Everyone knew, including Lila, that Deedee's first time had not been her choice. Even Jerome's first time had been with a girl that he had simply met on the way to the grocery store to pack up before the Circus moved. It hadn't meant anything.
Deedee turned back to gaze at the campfire. Jerome didn't take his eyes off her. He admitted to himself that Delilah was a right sight better than Lila. Friendly. Perhaps more gentle than he preferred. But a fighter. And after all of the wrongs that had been done to her, she wanted to know what it was like to actually recall with fondness a "first time". But doesn't everyone wonder about the first time?
Odd conversation to have with a relative. The birds and the bees seemed to be odd territory, despite the constant reminder of it being boned in the bigger bedroom inside the trailer.
"Your face." Jerome noted.
Deedee looked at him. "What?"
"Your face. You have a weird expression on your face," Jerome clarified.
"Weird is probably the right word for it," Deedee said. "And twisted."
When she moved a tiny inch, the small bits of metal along her neck and waist tinkled like little bells. She glanced at him, wondering if she should say what was on her mind. Jerome knew that the conversation was taking a bit of a turn.
She hoped he'd understand. Or come to understand. Her brother was the closest thing to a friend that she'd ever had, for Lila had poisoned the Family with years of saying that Deedee was the "Prophet Whore"...someone who had cried rape over a reality that she actually wanted strangers to take advantage of her, but too ashamed to admit it.
Jerome knew otherwise. It's a disgusting lie.
Since he had turned fourteen, he had kept off the men who wanted the daughter rather than the maturing mother. He had come to feel overly protective of her. And in ways, when a man looked at her with hungry eyes, an inner fire in his belly boiled his blood.
Such a thing could be explained away by a brotherly love. Though, he had a slight disagreement in his head why he felt jealous that it was socially acceptable for other men to covet her, and not he.
Deedee was fond of her brother's affection like that. He was the only man who didn't treat her like a trollop. Her provocative dancing in the flames drew some negative attention her way—But it was what it was: just a dance to draw in the clientele to stay in the circus a little while longer.
Wherever the conversation had been going, it was disrupted—the sounds from the nearby audience, a voice exploding from behind a megaphone, and an eruption of music blaring came from under the big tent. Deedee jumped, glancing in its direction.
"COME ONE! COME ALL! GATHER 'ROUND!" the ringmaster's voice boomed.
"Well, would you like to come with me?" Deedee suggested. "Better than sitting in the trailer listening to her. I'm first up, like usual."
Jerome agreed to watch her performance, if not just to be there to get away from Lila's bitch-moaning. When he walked beside her, he caught a pleasant scent of fireworks and something flowery—Scented oils, non-flammable. He liked that smell. He realized that the scent was coming off Deedee's hair and the nape of her neck.
Deedee's fingers wrapped around his wrist, guiding him to the big tent.
Jerome furrowed his brow again.
Something about her in that outfit. Something odd, for he enjoyed the smell of her way too much to be a normal thing. Something about the way she looked at him. This is dangerous territory. No, no, this is wrong.
Before they entered the tent, Deedee stopped him mid-step, standing within inches of him.
"Something is on your mind," said Jerome, vaguely aware that his voice had become hoarse. "I know that look."
"In my mind, on my mind," Deedee answered vaguely with a shrug. "All the time. Just wanting to be asked. Afraid, I guess."
"Stop speaking in riddles," Jerome said with mild irritation. "Just say it."
Deedee made a small smile.
"What if you showed me…?" she whispered.
He could barely hear her over the Ringmaster's voice in the megaphone.
"Showed you what?" Jerome asked.
Deedee leaned in to speak into the shell of his ear,
"What it's like. What it feels like." Deedee considered quietly, out of earshot of passersby.
Jerome stared at her when she pulled away.
What?
"Deedee," warned Jerome. "That...That is—"
"Haven't you thought about it?" Deedee said curiously, almost insistently. "I know, to say it out loud sounds fucked up. Sounds really, really wrong. But is it so much, really? We've never been outside of the circus. We've never been out of each other's sight. Our messed up childhood...How often Lila has brought it around."
"What you're suggesting," Jerome whispered affirmatively, "is that we try to do something that only couples should do. We're siblings. You're my sister. Blood relatives."
"I am not suggesting that we…" Deedee said quickly, shaking her head. "Just keep an open mind."
"Blown open, more like."
"Open-minded, more like."
"That's fucked."
"I'm not denying it," Deedee agreed. But she smirked. "I have seen the way you look at me...wearing this," she added, gesturing to her scantily-clad body.
"You're half-dressed."
"Half-naked," Deedee corrected. "Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about—"
"That's sick." Jerome said.
"No sicker than what we are now," Deedee said, still smiling. "Jerome. Are you telling me that you never have thought about it? Not one time?"
Jerome opened his mouth to say something but he stopped himself. Twisted as it was, perhaps she was right. Two people stuck in one room, sharing a bed from childhood to puberty...Some things in 17 years couldn't go unnoticed forever. Perhaps it was their perverted upbringing. Lila's constant sex life. Unstable environment. Psychopathic tendencies...
"Uh-huh," Deedee remarked skeptically when Jerome didn't answer her immediately.
"Shut up." Jerome said curtly. "We are not doing anything. Won't do anything. That's messed up, maybe even for us."
Deedee shrugged.
"Not even just to see what it's like to kiss someone? Other brothers and sisters have probably tried it one time."
"No." Jerome repeated. Is she nuttier than me? "I know what it's like—"
Among their conversation, the Ringleader announced Delilah's performing act. "ALL RIGHT, FOLKS! Our first act—"
Deedee frowned, concerning that their conversation was over. But with a small second relapse, she stepped a little closer to her brother and said quietly,
"I won't tell if you don't."
The smell of fireworks, the bell-like sounds from the metal on her costume; that smirk on her face that seemed to bore through the reasoning of such taboo—Jerome gulped quickly to push back those thoughts—It's wrong—
"Not. Happening." Jerome said roughly through gritted teeth.
"Fine, it was just a thought...As you said. Just something on my mind." Deedee excused the whole discussion as a rhetorical line of questioning.
Jerome walked with her under the big tent, where she stepped onto the stage by herself. Jerome bit the inside of his cheek as the fires ignited around her stage.
A round of applause for Deedee. Clap, clap, clap, clap. A roar of approval as she stepped up onto the stairs of the stage—the slit of her costume revealed the slither of her smooth legs.
And someone hit the boom box and a song played along as Deedee extended two batons into twirling poles—she began to twirl and swirl with ignited ribbons, creating an illusion that she was controlling a stream of flame.
And then, as the dance began, Jerome realized that Deedee's suggestion was more than just an annoying muse in his head. Was he just as fucked up as she said that they were? To think of his older sister in such a way that only a lover should? Or was she just as fucked up he was? To think of her brother in a way that only a lover should?
Experimentation could be innocent. Right?
Jerome sat in the center of the front row, watching Deedee's performance take off without a hitch. The flames illuminated the forbidden areas that no family member should look upon with hinted interest. The heat of the ignited ribbon beat down on Deedee's body—within minutes, her body was trickling with a slight sheen of sweat.
Deedee caught his eye knowingly, a swift smirk on her lips. That she knew the thought would eat at him because she knew that the two of them were linked by a common bond from past to present. That their darkest natures could only find commonality with each other because they were what the other had in this life.
How absurdly poetic. But dark and twisted and forbidden and maybe that's why Jerome couldn't get the image of a fully naked Delilah Valeska out of his head, with those green eyes and long hair and—
And, it didn't help that her body was on preview onstage, swaying and delivering a coy and subtle manner with a song playing overhead about a dangerous game of lust…
I feel a wave of passion,
Move through my heart with such pain…
I have no time to reason,
So I just let passion reign…
I let go so easily,
On a night as warm as sin.
Midnight swimmer, midnight sea,
I will not come back again.
Deedee stepped toward the front of stage, a rush of fire circling her seductively. Maybe the name fit her better than she thought she did. Jerome thought so as a dark smile crossed her face, glancing at him in the crowd with a swift look of pleasure, for she too knew that melody invoked the forbidden truth.
Deedee was attracted to her brother. As he was...to her. Even if not, the idea of being intimate in that way would very likely cause their mother some grief. It wasn't a bad idea for it, if that was really the best outcome of a naughty tryst.
My sin and my obsession,
Crazy desire you bring.
I know there's no salvation,
I see our bodies burning.
Your Gypsy dreams all haunt me,
I live to see your dances.
Please raise your eyes and want me,
Please give me all the chances.
Jerome felt his heart race. Blood rush.
You brought the spring time to fill,
My heart in its winter chill.
I lost my strength and my will,
And now my tears start to spill.
I never knew such desire,
Just looking into your eyes.
And now the soul in me cries,
And now the night is on fire.
Whoosh—A blast of propelling flames, seemingly incasing the red-headed temptress in a circle of light. The performance made Deedee look less human, but something predominantly other-worldly—a fiery atronach. Jerome's face was brightened by the red and yellow cast off from the show, and the light dancing in his eyes caught Deedee a little off set, reeled back in to the thought of skin on skin, perpetual immorality.
Just the wrongness of it all, deplorable sin.
When her routine finished, there was a hollering standing ovation. Jerome stood quietly in the front row, encased by pride and a surprised, throbbing below the belt. He attempted to adjust himself unnoticeably. He caught the tip of his tongue between his lips. Throat suddenly dry.
Deedee bowed, calling out a charming and appreciative 'Thank You' to the spectators. Jerome watched her jump down from her personal, mobile stage. And then, swiftly but he heard her correctly without missing a beat as she muttered against the nape of his neck in passing,
"I'm not afraid. I know that you aren't either. Meet me under the Arkham Bridge later tonight. We'll sneak out. Mother is getting drunk. Anyway, she won't care where we are if we disappeared for a couple minutes."
Deedee half-smiled, and she sisterly nudged his shoulder with hers. Jerome made an amused chuckle, watching her sway to and fro to make her way back to the trailer in order to dress down.