Prologue to Chapter 10 - Breakdown
That school week was even worse than the other. As fake Chris' grades were going down, not only his friends were getting more and more worried but, also, the teachers were starting doing many questions and suppositions. Professor Burton, Moira's father, even paternally recommended fake Chris to pay a visit to the school's psychologist as he saw the fake boy collapsing into a rising state of exasperated and dejected nervousness. The more anxieties around fake Chris grew the more real Claire would have panic attacks. The more she would try to avoid talking and socializing, the harder she'd find concentrating and studying. It was a vicious circle. A general lack of sleep just aggravated everything as, by then, every night had become a sluggish chain of nightmares, insomnia, anxiety.
Regarding fake Claire, his friends were even more harder to handle. He had learnt that girls have a different way to care about each other, they wouldn't content of a fake smile or an excuse but they'd just keep pushing to confide. Real Chris was always wondering how much deceit they were detecting on his face.
Also he knew they would talk about his demeanour at his back. Rebecca and Jill might always be defending their friend but girls like Ashley would surely spit poison and point fingers. Real Chris' heart ached badly because he knew he was ruining many of his sister's friendships with his standoffish attitude.
Not to mention boys, too. Being his sister a really good-looking girl, it wasn't rare at all that a random dude would make a move on her. Boys that he had to systematically turn down, earning for sure the increasing reputation that Claire Redfield was a haughty, conceited girl.
Heading back home at the end of the day was their priority. The school bus ride being the last tranche of an abysmal torture. Home meant safety. Home meant being together. Claire was home for Chris. Chris was home for Claire.
But home also meant going down their personal highway to hell, leading them right into a deep hole of sin and perdition. Home meant misbehaving with their bodies, sinking every pain in pleasure, as if a brush of the hand on their genitals would somehow brush away the weight of a hard day. Masturbation was their personal moment of loneliness with a secret, always attainable lover, a private whore, someone at their complete service and who wouldn't complain.
And while doing that, not keeping anything untold anymore between them (especially smutty details about their daily sexual experiences), they were getting closer and more intimate, ignoring every alarm inside their heads - if there were any - to stop doing their disturbing talks, to stop wrecking their siblinghood.
They had no more reciprocal shame.
The line between who's Claire and who's Chris was getting thinner and thinner, day by day. All that dirty pillow talk was somehow creating a dissociation between souls and bodies. Chris would just keep being aroused by that new female body of his, stopping considering, in the making, that it was his sister he was looking hot and hungry at. Also, that was his sister's the reflection he was so aroused by, his sister's the needy eyes he was insatiably thirst of.
That body was familiar to him as long as it was clothed. But when it was naked it turned out being an exotic, irresistible attraction for him.
The same about Claire. She was getting more and more attracted by her new sculptured, beautifully shaped body, more and more addicted to whacking herself: that was the only way she had to rub the pain out of her body. Gym was helping too… but masturbation was better.
She simply seemed to be unaware of the fact that it was her brother the guy she was picturing in her mind while stroking herself, because she considered that body hers by then.
But it wasn't. It was never meant to be hers.
She could repeat herself that lie a billion times, but it would always have been Chris the boy in her mind.
Chatting at night was becoming quite a habit for them, and through the filter of their phones screens, their talk would get even dirtier than their attitude and they'd just keep playing again that sick fake couple game. It was a way to keep them busy during the long insomniac nights or just to procrastinate the tormented sleep.
Eventually they started playing that same game even outside their phones, when watching movies on the sofa in the living room, bodies entwined below a blanket, sweet words and the, by then usual, smutty jokes about each other being whispered hotly. Movies' mandatory sex scenes would always ignite their fantasy and provoke saucy comments about each other's reaction to it.
They had even started to do their homework together in Man's Cave, as it had a big desk enough wide for two people, and even there they'd just exchange naughty looks.
This was the life they were carrying on. Sorrow and anxiety in the morning and afternoon, dangerously sinful behaviours in the evening and night time.
They were falling apart. Together.