The Serpent's Bite

by Warren Adler

  There was a girl named Harriet who showed her how to masturbate by tickling the tiny thing on top and moving her fingers on her organ. Harriet illustrated how to make oneself feel really good. She called it “coming,” which was quite strange. Then she demonstrated something called a dildo, which vibrated inside and could make you reach a climax, the ultimate of feeling good. It had a name called “orgasm.”

  Soon she had begun doing it to herself—without the vibrator, of course, since she was still a virgin—and discovered she liked it very much indeed. She began to wonder about Scott’s “thing,” often teasing him about it when she would see a bulge in his pants or pajamas. His reaction was always embarrassment and confusion. She became persistent in her desire for him to show it to her, promising the usual trade-off. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine. At such suggestions Scott continued to be embarrassed and reluctant to take her up on the offer.

  It seemed to her so natural. She did not see it in terms of taboo or sin, although she knew that there was obviously something forbidden about a brother and sister playing this kind of sex game. Outwardly, she continued to be modest, making a great show of indignation when her father or brother accidentally walked in on her when she was in the bathroom. But despite her brother’s continued reluctance to participate, she was relentless in her pursuit. Then one day, she had acted. He was in his room doing homework. Her parents were out.

  She came into his room in panties and bra and sat on his bed.

  “You want to see it?” she asked boldly.

  He was, as usual, embarrassed, but at that point, for whatever reason, he had turned his swivel chair and looked at her. She was determined and quickly rolled down her panties, kicked them off, and spread her legs.

  She remembered watching his Adam’s apple slide up and down his throat while his eyes fixated on her exposed genitals, well-coated then with hair, the lips red and aroused.

  “Now you,” she ordered.

  He shook his head.

  “I can’t. You’re my sister.”

  “Just show me, Scott. Just that. No harm in that.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Finally, she got up from the bed and opened his belt and pulled down his pants. He made what seemed like token resistance, but in the end she had her way. He was fully aroused, and there was a bead of moisture on top of it.

  “Can I touch it?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Please. Pretty please.”

  “This is wrong.”

  “I know. But we’re all alone. Who will know?”

  He was obviously too stunned to continue to resist and far too aroused to object. She touched his erection, felt it up and down, looked under it, and touched his testicles.

  “Gee, it gets big,” she said, marveling.

  He had blushed beet red, but she detected a note of secret pride.

  It reminded her of a funny flower with a long stalk. It was veiny and white and not very pretty. But she liked its satiny touch and continued to caress it. Soon he was eagerly thrusting forward, and as she continued to touch it, he began to make strange throaty sounds, and all of a sudden a jet of white starchy fluid came out of it.

  “Look what you made me do,” Scott said angrily.

  She had been told such a thing would happen but had never seen it firsthand.

  “Did it feel good?” she asked.

  He blushed a deep scarlet and shrugged while he wiped away the moisture with the edge of his shirttail.

  “Well, did it?”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “I can make myself feel good, too,” she said, spreading her legs and manipulating herself. He watched her bug-eyed as her breath got short, and she closed her eyes and felt her body vibrate with an orgasm.

  “God, that was good,” she said. “Did you like to watch me?”

  He shrugged, but she could tell that he had enjoyed the sight. Seeing him watching her added to the thrill.

  “You see? No harm done.”

  How easily manipulated he was! With the ice broken and believing she had persuaded him there were no consequences, she asked him if he would like to do it again, promising that next time they would do it together, although she wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

  “It’s wrong, Courtney,” he said, still protesting but with less and less resistance. He needed continuing persuasion and lots of priming.

  “Who said?”

  He did not answer, but she could tell that he had surrendered to the idea.

  “Isn’t it fun?” she asked. “Trust me. Other brothers and sisters do it all the time.”

  He appeared confused and uncertain.

  “I never heard that,” he said.

  “Well, I have.”

  “It’s wrong.”

  “So what. It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Although they soon graduated to mutual oral sex, they hadn’t yet had intercourse. But after a couple of months, Courtney suggested that he “put it in.”

  He refused. By then they both knew how babies were made.

  “I’m afraid,” he confessed.

  “You can pull it out before you come.”

  “I can’t control it, Courtney. You’ll get pregnant.”

  “I’ll get condoms,” she promised.

  “They could break.”

  “Boy, are you a scaredy-cat!”

  “I’m afraid is all.”

  They continued their mutual manipulations short of intercourse. She was, she remembered, startled by the depth of pleasure it triggered in her. Scott was perfectly made, with a beautiful body, and his penis had matured with use. He was getting very adept at the process, swiftly recovering his erections. She discovered that she was multiorgasmic and that Scott’s appetite for sex, as she learned later from other experiences, was gargantuan and limitless.

  They could not get enough of each other. It became, clearly, obsessive and addictive. Soon they went at it, although just short of intercourse, whenever they found safe private moments, which were many, since their parents spent lots of time at their jewelry salon. Not that they were neglectful parents. It was just that raging hormones and proximity made it easier and convenient for them to imbibe, satisfying an appetite that neither of them had ever expected or experienced.

  To her it seemed so innocent. Above all, it was convenient and accessible. They were clever in keeping their secret from their parents and were cautious and deft at concealment. Of course, they knew that if their parents found out, they would think that she and her brother were disgusting perverts. Such a revelation was sure to explode their parent’s cherished view of a normal, conventional, loving family with good morals and the right values.

  They apparently never did find out, which considering the frequency of their activity was a miracle.

  It was during that first trek that it happened. They had been at camp one day and had snuck out into the darkness, out of earshot of the others who were sleeping, exhausted by their first day’s riding.

  “I got pills,” she told him. “My girlfriend stole them from her mom.”

  “Pills?”

  “Birth control pills. They don’t let the woman make babies.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve been taking them,” she confessed. “Getting ready. We can fuck now and nothing will happen.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me, Scott. Come on, let’s do it.”

  She leaned against a tree and bent over.

  “Come on, baby. Put it in.”

  He did. It was fantastic.

  “Didn’t you love it?” she asked when they were finished.

  “You sure nothing will happen?”

  “Trust me, baby brother.”

  During that trek she and Scott would sneak away numerous times, feeling totally secure in the vast wilderness, practicing every sensual delight that filled their imagination. Little did their parents realize what made their wilderness experience truly memorab
le for them.

  Yet while they characterized their actions as simply a form of recreation, they began to sense a need, a longing, a sense of entitlement and possession, which crept into their relationship. They became jealous of other teenagers who expressed interest in one or another of them. What had started out as fun and games was reaching a stage that neither of them could control. They had become lovers, locked in a relationship that they both knew would be looked upon by others as sick and perverted.

  Trapped by their own emotions, they came face-to-face with the reality of the taboo. Living such a secret life was draining, the pretense debilitating. Their perceived need to give each other pleasure overwhelmed them. They contemplated running away, disappearing, obliterating their sibling identity, starting a new life somewhere, anywhere.

  Scott, who had been reluctant from the beginning, began expressing deep second thoughts. In an odd insight for someone so young, Courtney was noticing things in her brother beyond what she knew was her own obsessive pursuit of pleasure. At the ecstatic moment of his own release, he would burst out with expressions redolent of deep attachment.

  “I love you, my sweet sister. I love you with all my heart and soul.”

  After a while, Courtney discovered that her sensual relationship with her brother was less all encompassing emotionally than how he expressed himself. Soon his outbursts about love began to strike her as over-the-top clichés, the kind of reactions that she had encountered in movies and books. In those teenage years she dismissed them from her mind as merely words expressed in an intense moment. Actually she had no idea what they meant.

  “We should stop, Courtney, but I don’t know how.”

  “Why stop? No one knows.”

  “Besides, I love you. I know it’s wrong. But I love you. Not as a sister.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Really, Courtney. I swear. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

  “Okay, then. I love you, too.”

  “Not just, you know, being together like this. More. I swear it. I hate it when I’m not with you.”

  “We’re having so much fun, Scottie,” she told him. “Aren’t we?”

  At the time that seemed to be the only definition she could muster.

  “Don’t you just love doing this? The feelings you get. Don’t you just love when it happens?”

  “That especially,” he had admitted, but even then she could tell he was confused by what was happening inside him. At that point she had no idea how deeply it was affecting him, and how the experience and its consequences would impact so profoundly on his later life.

  Then Courtney found herself pregnant. She was sixteen years old.

  Chapter 10

  They had taken too many risks, been carried away by the intensity of their emotions. She was sure she was impregnated on their trek through Yellowstone. Perhaps she had not followed the directions she had been given about the use of the birth control pills. She would never be certain.

  The condition complicated their dilemma. They pondered running away, having the child, their love child. When they learned brother-and-sister children could be born retarded, they quickly rejected that option.

  Their only solution was to abort the child. That took money. They didn’t have any. Not enough. They had found a place in New Jersey where the doctor would do the abortion and make sure there were no records. Above all, they did not want any record of the procedure, and they wanted to be sure there were no complications. The cost was a thousand dollars.

  At that point in time, both she and Scott worked after school at their parents’ jewelry salon doing odd jobs, tidying up the premises, arranging and bringing out trays of gems for customers, and generally being helpful.

  Their parents normally locked all their valuable stock in their big safe in a room off the main display area. There were many trays in the safe, all carefully arranged and containing row upon row of precious stones that would find their way into rings, bracelets, broaches, and necklaces, according to the customer’s wishes, as well as many finished jewelry designs.

  They knew that their parents had very accurate inventory controls, and occasionally she and Scott were called upon to count the gems as a double check. It was before computers were in common use. All of their parent’s recordkeeping was done by hand.

  Desperation moved them to commit a theft that would never have occurred to them if Courtney had not become pregnant.

  “A couple of diamonds would solve the financial problem,” Courtney suggested.

  “Some of these trays are rarely shown. Besides, most of the time we do the counting.”

  “Steal from our parents?”

  Scott’s reaction was outrage.

  “They might never find out. We could fake the double checks. And if they did find out, they would think that they were careless in their inventory. Even if they thought the diamonds were stolen, they’re insured.”

  “I can’t do this, Courtney,” Scott protested. She was used to his timidity and amazed how his sexual prowess was astonishingly so much more powerful and assured.

  “Okay, then what’s your suggestion?” she goaded. “We need the money for this procedure. Hell, I’m the one that has to go through with it. Or should I tell the folks that I screwed some stranger and got careless?”

  She observed him as he grappled with this new dilemma. Even then she was well aware of his fragility and prone to guilt and knew all the flash points of manipulating him. But the one emotional underpinning of his character that had always baffled her was his self-defined idea of eternal love and his constant iteration of his feelings for her. He seemed to dwell on it, obsess over it, as if she were some strange creature created in her brother’s mind.

  For her on the other hand, Scott had become merely the means to, the instrument of, overpowering pleasure that could cause an inner sexual eruption so thrilling and ecstatic that it was beyond any rational explanation. It was, then and in retrospect throughout her life, a unique once-in-a-lifetime happening that had never occurred to her again. As for any connection beyond that, she could never understand the obsessive power it held for her brother.

  “I hate this, Courtney,” he had whined when their argument grew heated.

  “You sure as hell liked the fucking part,” she rebuked. “You liked that a lot, didn’t you? Felt good, right? You enjoyed that part.”

  “You said you were taking pills, that it wouldn’t happen.”

  “Well, it did and your stuff did the trick.”

  He had called it “love juice” which amused her.

  “You can’t run away from that, brother mine. Or maybe you should confront dear old Mom and Dad with a confession. Go tell them, Scott. I screwed my sister, and I made her pregnant.”

  She was deliberately relentless, goading him. He had to be part of it. Her principal worry was that he would in the end crack and confess to their parents.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “You’re such a pussy, Scott.”

  He started to cry, which required much soothing sexual activity on the table in the back room of the salon where the safe was kept. Nothing was more persuasive.

  “Do you really love me, Scott?” she would whisper repeatedly.

  “With my whole heart forever.”

  “Then we must do this, Scott.”

  She waited until his body tensed at the ecstatic moment. She would freeze her movement.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must prove it.”

  “I love you, my sister. I love you.”

  “Show me then.”

  “I will. I will. I promise. Oh God, I promise.”

  At that her movement had commenced.

  “They’ll never find out, Scottie,” she assured him. “We’ll get the money and it will be over. Besides, I’m the one at risk, and you need to help me. It’s something we have to do together. It will be our secret. Another solemn secret. I’m the one to go th
rough the pain. If you really love me, you will. ”

  “Of course, I love you. I will love you forever.”

  As she knew he would from the beginning, he went along.

  They picked two pear-shaped diamonds from the least-used tray and fenced them with a jeweler in New Jersey, who bought them for far less than their worth. It gave them enough for the abortion. The physical experience of the procedure was so traumatic, it left her with what she later would realize was a kind of fractured libido.

  The event ended their physical affair, but it did not put an end to his obsessive “love” feeling for her.

  “That part is over,” she told him, leaving it deliberately open-ended. “For now.”

  Of course, he agreed, obviously fearful of the risks, although she sensed that what he felt would not disappear with maturity. Apparently, as she suspected, it never had gone away.

  The experience left her with a diminished interest in the sex act, which never ever reached the sexual power of her relationship with her brother. She was well aware of how it had distorted her relationships with men, none of which were ever satisfying. Nor was any relationship with a man ever a priority. As her passion for her acting career grew more intense, she was able to put her energy into the obsession that forever would dominate her life.

  As for her brother, although they never referred to it openly, she was convinced that his experience, like hers, had a profoundly negative effect on his relationship with women.

  Nor did she dwell on it. Like her, he had to cope with his demons on his own. When the memory would pop up in her thoughts, she ruthlessly edited them and willed them to disappear from her consciousness.

  Chapter 11

  Throughout the preparation for dinner, Scott observed the Mexican. What they had done was risky and stupid. He forced himself not to dwell on the whys and wherefores. Hundreds of hours with shrinks hadn’t reached the root of his vulnerability. There are two things at work here, the shrinks would tell him: love and sex. But it was only the sex part that they could explain. Not the love part. It was beyond their analysis, beyond their definitions, beyond their conclusions. And his.