The Ripeness of Spring
For catprowler over on Inkbunny.
On Monday, Amon brought strawberries.
They were bulbous and bloody and filled with seeds, and he loved the roughness as he sank his teeth into them. The young bat looked around the playground and watched the third-graders on the swings. Some of the girls dared a skunk cub to fly off the swings, letting go at the top of his arc. He flailed through the air until he landed face-first on the curb surrounding the wood chippings. He started to scream, clutching the place in his mouth where his front tooth used to be.
Amon picked out another strawberry, and bit into it greedily. He couldn't wait until the bell rung, and he could go home, get away from the hubbub of the ending recess. All the energy made him tense, and he could feel the veins in his wings pump eagerly. He wanted to be like Charlie, and be a vampire bat, and sit in the nurse's office and suckle from a container of plasma or something. Nobody liked Charlie, though. Nobody liked him either, but Amon was used to that and Charlie was still sad.
Why did he have to wait for the bell? Amon looked around at the teacher's aides, and saw that they were talking in a small group, with the principal, Mister Norton, standing with his back to the kids. One of them had broken off to console the little skunk, who was still screaming. Nobody was watching. The flying fox didn't dare fly off with all the telephone wires and the spring wind, but he snapped his metal lunch tin shut and stuffed it into his backpack. He glanced once more for good measure, and then took off. He had made it past seven concrete tiles - one for each of his years - before a whistle blew and he stumbled, clutching his ears.
The principal watched as his fellow teachers struggled to console the child, who was flailing his wings furiously, spindly fingers balled into fists, his backpack abandoned on the sidewalk. They managed to drag him inside kicking and screaming while Mister Norton went to retrieve his backpack. Even the skunk stopped his noise to watch them bring Amon indoors. Blood dripped down the white stripe on his chin.
I want to go, he screamed, I want to go.
On Tuesday, Amon brought a whole mango.
The third-graders had taken the playground and there wasn't anything that the second-graders could do. They watched from the picnic tables as Charlie yelled for them to stop, they hurt, and you're hurting me, please. The Pinscher twins, Taylor and Patty, had his wings outstretched, and a bunch of kids stood behind them as he struggled, the thin skin spread out as they threw small rocks and twigs, pencils and pens, all manner of classroom objects onto his spread arms. He tried to scream, but it came out in a little squeak.
"They shouldn't do that," Amon said, but nobody was listening. He was sitting at a table by himself. He didn't eat.
"They shouldn't do that!" Amon said.
"Mister Norton! They're hurting Charlie!"
"No! You shouldn't hurt him!"
"Because it's not nice!"
"No! Let GO of me!"
"But I have to go home!"
He was by himself.
On Wednesday, Amon brought kiwi fruit.
He didn't like the fuzzy texture of the skin. He ran his fingers over it, and nobody said a word. They were sitting in the classroom and the teacher watched over them like a hawk. She was a hawk, and they hated her, because she made them do multiplication tables on the weekend and if anyone forgot them then they all had to eat inside until the bell rang. Her name was Geraldine Warren. She was fifty-four.
"Hey." Spark Jones poked Amon with a pencil.
They were allowed to talk quietly, but nobody actually did because they were afraid of Miss Warren. Spark poked him again. Amon tried to ignore him as he peeled the texture with one finger.
Spark Jones was actually Spencer, but nobody called him that. He was a short fox that was part of the soccer team that played against other soccer teams when they used to go out to recess. He wore soccer shorts every day, even during the winter. He poked the bat once more, and Amon turned to give him a disgusted look.
"My dad said you were a flying fox, and that you weren't a bat," Spark whispered. "He said that you're too weird to be a fox, though, 'cause you have dark fur and you have really big eyes, and you smell like rotting fruit. Like, it stinks."
Amon turned away and bit into his kiwi.
"He said that you had a weird name, too. Like, Amon? He's an Egyptian god. Did you know that? He said that was really weird, because nobody names their kids that. He said that Amon in the myths made the world by touching his privates. I bet you do that. I bet you can make a world. Right in gym class, we saw you by the kickball game, and you were touching your privates through your shorts. You wanna make a world in your shorts? You wanna show us? You wanna pull down your shorts and-"
Amon pulled back with his metal lunchbox and swung, catching Spark in the side of his muzzle and knocking him onto the floor. The young fox started to cry, and everyone watched as the bat jumped out of his seat over him. He pulled his lunchbox over his head and hit Spark in the head and in the neck and in his muzzle again and again and again and again until he couldn't hit him anymore.
On Thursday, Amon brought pieces of watermelon.
Some of the fourth-graders had to move to different schools because the class sizes were too large. Amon was fortunate enough to be put into the group that was transitioning to the closer of the two schools. Each of his peers had to adjust to becoming the youngest kids in the school again. The eighth-graders were all too busy transitioning to high school, and he watched them hang out by the cafeteria entrance, some of them talking to the younger kids, trying to hush them, patting them on the back as they wept into cartons of lowfat milk.
It was quiet on the bus going to school that day, and even though he had always sat alone, today was more lonely than usual. The radio, usually pumping out pop music and northwest artists, was silent, a vigil to the lost. He wasn't really lost, everyone knew that, but nobody wanted to say anything. Even the kids in the back weren't talking as usual, and they shut their mouths as they played music through portable devices, plugged in to their own worlds. The one around them was too heavy at the moment.
After lunch, they all packed up and went to Language Arts class. The teacher, Mister Mellor, was an older wolf who refused to enter his middle age. He always wore a tie and a button-down shirt and the same ironed pants in different styles, but always the same navy blue. He opened his mouth, then closed it again when nobody met his gaze but Amon. Nobody liked the bat, not even the teachers. They just pitied him, and he enjoyed it because he could just cry once, give one tear looking at his test, and he could instantly get a gold star. His teachers knew just enough to let the quiet boy on his own.
Amon and Charlie had been in the same class, at the end of the day, where they got together and talked about their day, and what they saw, and who they talked to, and what triggered them, and how they controlled those triggers. That class was supposed to be right after this one, but because of Charlie, they were allowed to skip it and go home early. Amon didn't have someone to pick him up, so he would have to wait until the end of the day, sitting in the library reading a book he didn't like, or skimming glossy magazines.
Mr. Mellor finally stood and cleared his throat. "Kids, I know you all miss Charles very much, and it can be...hard to talk about these kinds...this kind of...it can be hard."
He watched them watch Mr. Mellor. Mr. Mellor watched him watch them. "So, the faculty said that something I could do for you all would be to have you write. Write poetry, about him. It can be about anything. It's okay. Really, you can write anything and it will be okay, I promise you. It'll be a-okay."
Everybody got out their notebooks and their pencils, and got to work as the wolf went back around his desk. He didn't want to talk anymore. He didn't want to look into Amon's eyes. But the young bat knew what he was thinking, and he knew they were wrong. He was not Charles's friend, nor was he his brother, or his confidant. Charlie was different, too different, and Amon pushed him away. He wasn't sorry.
He tasted the watermelon on his lips, the pink, crushed fluid stuck in his teeth. After about twenty minutes, the class stood up and some of them started to share their poems in a circle. James had written about flight, even though there was a no-fly zone enforced for most of the town, but he wished Charlie could have flown more. Lavender wrote a love poem, but it wasn't addressed to Charlie, because she never loved anyone. It was written to a boy in the eighth grade that all the girls liked, but they could never remember his name. Xander wrote about how much he thought drinking blood was weird, and that was something everyone could agree on.
Amon took his pencil and stabbed a hole in his paper, like the rocks and darts that had ripped through Charlie's wings. The noise of shredded poetry made everyone turn, and they asked Amon if he was crying. He was just angry, and so he ignored them as he stabbed holes around his poem, four words surrounded by holes as empty as pill bottles:
becoming memory
nothing more
_ _
On Friday, Amon brought some dates.
The new fourth-graders got to come in later than the other kids on the first day of school, while everyone else had been there already. They piled off the bus, wide-eyed and nervous, a heap of fur and fear. There was supposed to be a small memorial in the front of the school, but it was declared to be upsetting, and so the mass of students walked right past the bare patch of dirt in the middle of the pavement where the kids played for lunch and recess. One or two of them gave it a glance, but everyone walked past it and over it. Amon watched from a fence and tossed another date in his mouth, the sticky sweetness making him chew thoughtfully. It forced him to slow down when he was eating, and when he was thinking. The student guidance counselor, Miss Hudson, would be pleased to hear that, and she would as if Amon could make his father bring dates back when he came home.
He was coming home soon. The boy got a drop in the pit of his stomach, and his teeth ground to a halt. The kids stared at him for a second before the last of them rushed inside to be herded off into their homerooms and their easy classes.
It was strange, watching them come into the school as he had done one year ago. Even though he was hardly pushing eleven, he felt old. Too old, in fact. Everything was a blue since his father had started to leave. One week on, one week off, weekends back at the house for them to be together - that was the way. He liked being alone with his father, because then he didn't have to watch him drive away, and he didn't have to come back and hear about how Spark had made the front page of the local paper, or how his new girlfriend was so happy, and his ex-girlfriend was so sad. There was a stupid balance - a balance of stupidity, Amon thought - between Spark and the girls who surrounded him. He said he had already had sex, and he kept it in whispers around the locker room as everyone listened intently.
The fox told them how it looked, and he traced lines in the air with his finger, and he thrust into the air in his designer underpants while all the other kids laughed and changed around him. He turned to Amon after a story had finished one day, and they shared a look. Neither of them had spoken for a couple years. They stopped and everyone around them watched, hoping for a fight, for some confrontation.
But Spark shrugged, the word 'fag' still on the end of his lips. He didn't dare say anything to the bat as he turned, sliding his shorts easily up his muscular legs. Amon slid his own jersey over his head, the vest-like canvas settling on his skinny torso before he zipped up the sides, sealing himself in. They stared at his wings, at his long, veiny arms, as the face that so neatly mirrored the fox's own muzzle. But Spark's fir was red, vibrant and shiny, while Amon's face was dark, nearly black, and lacked a scar down the side of his mouth. Spark never forgot, and Amon never stopped relishing that memory. It was worth it, so worth it, to be able to hurt him again and again and again and again until he couldn't hurt him anymore.
On Saturday, he came home.
Amon's ears flickered as he heard his father's car pull into the garage, his bed messy and his fur all tussled. It was a rough night alone, but he had begun to get used to them. His father had loaded up a queue of scary movies for them to watch alone, so that they could talk about them together when he returned. And here he was, so close. The young bat could barely see, and he rubbed his knuckles into his eyes as he yawned, giddy and exhausted all at once.
Monty Pomus had never liked being away for the week while his son was at home, but there was no other way. Nobody knew how alone he was, how alone either of them were. His suit was as crisp as the day he had gotten it pressed, and the specialized buttons and seals around his wrists were tight enough to give him a stature like marble. Everything was too tight - his schedule, his clothing, his history. It constricted around him and choked off the blood.
Monty reached over, his graying wings making a curtain around him as he undid the seals on his right sleeve, and then the left, down to his armpits. His suit-coat came off as soon as he could remove it, and h hung it around a stool in the kitchen. There were only two.
"Amon?" he called, his voice dry and rough against the walls of his own home. All the lights were out, but he knew that his son never needed them. He didn't need them either. Glancing towards the stairs, he thought about where his boy might be hiding. It was early in the morning, but neither of them liked sleeping late. Monty pulled off his tie and began to undo the buttons on his shirt, kicking his work shoes off on the hardwood floor, making an exaggerated noise for his son. Nothing.
Monty was shirtless underneath his business clothing. He tried to keep his muscles strong in his old age, but the abdomen that was once tense had become soft - certainly not obese, though. His arms were still strong and his chest was packed with cords of muscle, and underneath was the most important muscle, beating away as strong as the day he was born. On the day his son was born, his wife was not as fortunate. Amon was a reminder of this, a sigil, that his heart needed to be twice as strong for them. And he told his son this every day and every night, over phone calls and over e-mail. He didn't have to say it in person.
His stout neck pulsed as he swallowed, his belt falling away as he walked up the stairs. Amon had played this game before. God, it was his only vice. All the other desires of the world had fallen away to lead him up the winding stairs to his son's bedroom. The door was open, and the older bat could see the sliver of sunlight peeking in. His slacks bulged outwards, and he felt the pressure of the week building up in his loins. "Amon, buddy," he said, his voice low and husky, "you in there?"
Amon hung carefully from the bar above the horizontal portion of his mattress, the curved bed arcing down to make a slope, a resting spot for his back. He was wearing only the fancy striped pajama shorts his father had gotten for him as a gift from somewhere in northern Europe. Neither of them remembered.
"Scoot over." His little boy moved closer to his wall, and the older bat undid his slacks, stepping out of his pants as his son watched closely. The blinds were drawn just enough to keep out prying eyes, and Monty reached over to give a second tug on the cord just to make sure. Grabbing the upper bar, he swung upwards, hooking his feet onto the bar before letting go. The room spun around as he descended, and he curled his wings around his body as he grinned at his son, who was lying against the mattress, right-side up, sleep still in his beautiful brown eyes. He was so small, compared to his daddy, but he was twice as beautiful, pure, even with his rage and his fists, the elements beyond Monty's control.
"Did you miss me?"
"I love you, daddy."
Monty opened his wings, and his son jumped over, wrapping his lanky arms around his father's body, burrowing into his fur. "Love you too," he said, wrapping his wings together, covering his son in a blanket of warmth and fuzzy skin.
They came down in a half-hour because Amon had to use the bathroom, and his father waited outside the door in his underwear, a matching pair of black silk boxers that almost blended into his darker fur. When the boy came out, he saw Monty's back walking towards the bedroom down the hall, considered a guest bedroom at this point because of how little it was used. But both of them knew its exact purpose.
Monty kept two beds in his bedroom - a horizontal one for guests and a vertical one for sleeping when he came around. He never worried, though, because guests never came around. Amon didn't make any friends at school, so he never worried about sleepovers or kids coming over to his house. Both of them were alone, together.
The bat kit clambered onto the horizontal bed where his father sat and laid down on his belly, watching the older man through curious eyes. Both of them were always prepared for one another, even when his father surprised him, coming home in the middle of the week. He had done that once, only once, and for the rest of his life Amon thought he would always be ready for his father, always ready to embrace him and kiss him and keep his body tense while he waited, always waiting, for daddy to come home. His father rolled over and pulled his son over, lying on his back on the mattress with Amon on top. The child giggled into his ear, as soft as his heartbeat and as quiet as a deck of cards being shuffled.
Monty gave him a gentle kiss on the lips, and let him hold on as they kissed, back and forth, smaller lips planting warm, slow kisses down onto his. He reached for his son's shorts, fingers tracing down those lanky sides as he felt himself growing hotter again. He knew he couldn't keep himself for long. He never could, especially not around his son. Amon was kissing longer, slower, and his skin grew hotter. Monty could feel his wings constrict as he pulled down his son's pajama bottoms, the bare skin touching his own, brown thighs and a petite rear. There was so much anger packed into one small space. It was beautiful, like watching a snowglobe shatter, whenever he heard his son's trouble, when he saw the reports of violence and temper. It excited him. He was the only one who could quell it.
Monty kissed his son once more before gently rolling him aside. The child made no effort to cover his nudity as he watched his father strip out of his underpants. The adult bat was broad and his shaft was meaty, cut and clean and bulbous, a black, veiny head on the end of his member. Amon knew he would grow into his father eventually, and that he could become quiet and powerful, and his body would be twice as large, three times! He showed his father his arousal, smiling at his little prick. Monty just smiled back as he dug out strawberry lubricant from the bedside table, the same kind they had used since before Amon transferred schools.
It had a natural scent, and they could use it without fear of stains or scents infiltrating the bed; the sheets all smelled like fruit and sweat and debauchery, regardless of their spills. Monty watched his son take a pillow from the head of his bed and stuff it underneath his groin, spreading himself for his father. Both of them were silent as the adult climbed back behind him, popping the top to the bottle of lube.
The boy shivered as his father poured it onto his little red hole, bright and round and as tight as anything, like a cherry cut in two. Amon's wings were folded to the side as he closed his eyes, and his father sighed deeply as he began to grow longer, his shaft filling with fresh blood as he spread his son apart with one hand and inserted a long finger with his other. He wriggled it inside, making sure not to scratch and tear up his passage. He felt the cub squirm and tighten uncomfortably around him, and he pulled out, wiping the sticky finger on his son's fur. Amon was trembling now, and Monty knew he was the only one who could make his boy this nervous, even after all these years.
He rubbed the strawberry lube all over his thickening shaft, and he pressed the head up against his son's hole. Amon whimpered as his father ground against him, the plum-sized head sliding over his entrance. With both thumbs, the adult pushed his child's ass apart as he leaned over, his legs bucking forwards as the head slid into that ruined hole. He groaned as the meat constricted around his cock, the tiny passage making way for the girth that had demolished his boy's body years ago.
Amon squealed and whined as the familiar pain began to seep through his body. Each time his father came home, every start of the school year, he had gone a little deeper, a little more, until he was all the way inside of the cub's body. It had taken such a long time, but now, the older bat was able to plant his hands on the mattress, his wings spread as he drove his hips back and forth, stretching out the poor boy's hole with each plowing thrust. He could feel his insides tugged along with his daddy's cock, and Monty could see the way that his thickness dragged on his son's hole, drawing it out before he shoved back in, making the little bat groan and grab the pillow again, biting into the softness as his father pumped in and out of his burning loins.
"Daddy loves you, daddy loved you so much," the man whispered under his breath, just loud enough for Amon to hear. He knew he had to say these words, he knew he had to make the squirming cub underneath him as comfortable as possible. It wasn't possible to be silent with Amon, because he had taught the little bat that silence was hostile, that noise and shouts and grunts and groans, that was the language of truth. He watched as Amon squealed under the pressure, whimpering as he fucked that tight ass. He couldn't hold himself if he tried. His boy's hole was too much, and it had always been too much for him.
Monty grunted and pushed into Amon as deep as he could possibly get, holding him to the pressure as he squirted his seed deep inside the child's body. Amon hugged the pillow and cried out, his little voice making the adult see whiteness before his eyes as waves of pleasure washed over him. His cock hammered into his child as he filled him with cum, a heavy load making his son pant and beg with his breath, begging for his daddy to fill him up and fuck him raw. Monty pushed in deep once more, deep enough to spread the cub out more than he had ever been spread. He simply held himself there, and the wormy little bat underneath him did all of the work to milk him for all the cum he had.
Amon couldn't move, and he moaned in agony as the giant cock filled up his hole. He knew that his father could stay like this for an hour or more, and he had no choice but to lay there, his legs spread and his body crumpling under the weight of his father's body as he collapsed, still inside of his son. Both bats were heaving, their breath hot and sweaty in the morning air. Amon smiled despite the pain in his body, the pain running through his legs and his spine, and he let his father's tranquility feed into him. He could feel the empty balls, his fathers and, by extension his own, pulling down, their weight no longer oppressive.
"I love you, daddy."
Did that mean anything to Monty anymore? He remembered the first time his son had come home with a bloody face, with bruises and scratches from the playground. He had beaten up another boy, and he said the same thing when he first saw Monty's face.
"I love you, Daddy."
They laid on the bed, enveloping one another with their wings, a tangle of fur and family and kisses, gentle kisses that the father placed on his son's neck. He could feel the blood in the veins underneath, and he had the sudden urge to taste it, to bite at his child's skin and tear it open.
"I love you."
© 2014 TheOrigamist