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The Cabinet (caution)
The following is a complete story of 2666 words. Please take notice of the "caution" story code. I would also like to thank SplineDuck who graciously proofread the story for me.
It is, of course, quite despicable that men who purportedly love their wives or girlfriends, take 'erotic’ pictures of them and splash them all over the Net. Even with their consent, it seems like a betrayal of trust to me. After all, their privacy and dignity is being taken from them. These are just ordinary women with ordinary lives, jobs, even children to look after. I wonder if they fully understand what they are consenting to. They aren’t professional models who appear on billboards, TV or mainstream men’s magazine for whom becoming a fantasy for some greasy wanker is an occupational hazard.
I have to say that this doesn’t stop me seeking out those pictures. I’ll spend hours studying them and using them to feed my own personal fantasies, my penis comprehensively overruling my morality.
When the time came for me to leave home and set up tenuous roots of my own, my mother, of course, fussed over me like a hen. For a start, she hated the seedy little bed-sit I found. It suited me, but for someone as fastidious as her, the damp, the smell and the general grime were intolerable. She would have spirited me away back home and placed me under house arrest where she could keep an eye on me if she could. As it was, she made constant visits, equipped with her vacuum cleaner, black bin-liners and nutritious food parcels to make sure her 'little boy’ was taken care of, as he clearly couldn’t do it for himself. I hated her invasiveness. I wanted to gorge myself on cheap burgers that would turn my brain into a sponge, or to leave my clothes until they evolved into a dangerous life form of their own, before dragging them kicking and screaming down to the launderette. I regarded it as a breach of my human rights not to be allowed to live like this.
Her attitude was hardened by the fact that I chose to spend my meagre earnings on a top-of-the-range PC, an assortment of games, and full Internet access, before considering even getting a table to put it on. Women, it seems, just don’t understand a young man’s priorities. Thinking about it, that’s probably just as well.
"Jerry, I despair. I really do!" she said when she saw my pride and joy. "You’re living like a tramp, yet you waste your money on this!"
I felt vaguely rebellious. I never had an answer when she’d criticise the state of my room back home, but this was my own place. I had a right to live how I wanted, for once.
"Mum," I said, "leave me alone. I don’t criticise the way you live, do I!"
She looked mildly shocked, but said nothing, so I decided to push my luck. After all, for once I was on my own territory.
"I mean you come here dressed like some ... visiting royalty, with your face caked in make-up, wearing those ... those earrings ... You embarrass me, mum!"
She stared at me open-mouthed. I don’t know why I focussed on the earrings, but now I looked at them, they were pretty hideous. Little green jade fairies dangled from her ears like snot.
"Now listen to me, my boy," she said finally. "You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, if you know what’s good for you!"
I would have answered back, but internal alarm bells, installed in my psyche at the age of two, had started ringing. A primeval sense of self-preservation held sway, and I felt it wise to back off. "Sorry, mum," I mumbled.
She stared hard at me for a few moments, consolidating her victory, then relaxed.
Looking around, she sighed in exasperation. "There’s just nowhere to put anything!"
I relaxed slightly, but I was still anxious to defuse any further source of conflict
"Mum," I said, "you remember that old cabinet we had in the living room years ago?"
She looked thoughtful. "Yes, the one with the big scratch on one of the doors. You know, I told your father when we moved in to be more careful with it, but he never listened. You don’t either!"
She stopped and smiled wistfully. "You were four years old then."
"Yes," I said. "I grew up with it. It was a part of my childhood, I guess."
"It’s unlike you to get sentimental."
I shrugged. "It’s just being away from home," I said. "You miss things."
"Well," she said gruffly, "you’re not a kid anymore, and its time to grow up a little!" She eyed the computer balefully.
"So what happened to it?" I persisted.
"I don’t know, probably got thrown out ... no, wait. Yes, your Uncle Simon took it."
"Has he still got it?"
"How should I know? I think you’ll just have to save your money and buy one. I’ll come down to MFI and help you choose if you like."
"No, mum, that won’t be necessary."
After she left, I fired up the PC. There had been something about this encounter with my mother that left me feeling extremely horny. Maybe it was simply the relief at having my own space back, and being able relax and do the things I wanted - the things I knew she would disapprove of most. I went to my favourite sites and started downloading.
The problem with the professional pictures of pneumatic models with their 'come hither’ smiles is that you see only what they want you to see. Within set parameters, the women are chosen by a conventional standard of beauty. The scene is carefully planned. The lighting is set just so. They are posed to show you only what the limited imagination of the photographer can control. This applies to all genres from soft core erotica to what can only be described as reference material for wannabe gynaecologists.
I do find these attractive from time to time, but for me the real thrill comes from those pictures that are characterised by stark white flesh, overexposed under an unforgiving flashbulb. They are taken by amateur photographers who are often so consumed with desire for their subjects that all technique is thrown to the winds. As a result, there is so much more to see, if you look.
There are all kinds of women, from the dubiously young to the grotesquely old. Some are frankly revolting, but I’m not looking for conventional beauty. Beauty has already been sold to me. I have bought it and enjoyed it, but now I want more. I look at one woman; her body is long and her legs are short. Another has one breast larger than the other. The crinkled belly of the next shows the battle-scars of motherhood. All these things are supposed to be flaws, but it is these flaws that provide me with the handholds that allow me to crawl into her soul.
These women might be seen in the act of fingering themselves, all eroticism lost as their sex appears as a red gash under the glare of the flash. In many of them there is an air of compromise. 'It has to be tasteful’, or 'I must keep my panties on’. Most don’t show the woman’s face. I wish they would, not simply because I want to know who she is, but because I want to look into her eyes and see who she really is. This, I suppose, is extreme voyeurism.
This time I sought out new images, then I picked up some of the old favourites. Finally, I started looking for one that I had seen some time ago, which had been preying on my mind. However, despite searching far into the night, I failed to find it.
The next day, I paid a visit to my Uncle Simon. He’s one of life’s fixers. If you came to him with a problem, and he couldn’t sort it for you himself, he knew a man who could. A young, oriental looking housemaid took me through to the garden of the big house that the Inland Revenue had unknowingly bought for him.
"Jerry!" He grinned broadly, clapping his hand on my shoulder. "This is a rare pleasure. To what do I owe it? Are you looking for a job? I’m sure I could find an opening for someone of your talent."
"Not a job," I said, "a cabinet."
He frowned. "A cabinet? Antique? Well, furniture isn’t really my scene as you know, but I do know of ..."
"No, it’s a particular cabinet. Do you remember that cabinet you took from my mother years ago? The one with the zig-zag scratch on the door?"
"Can’t say I do," he said.
"Mum gave it to you when she was clearing out all the old stuff from the house. It was shortly after Faye moved out."
"Ah yes," he said, "poor Faye. You know that boyfriend of hers is still living in that flat I found for her."
I thought of my big sister Faye and the raging arguments that she would have with my mother. I was too young to understand what the arguments were about, and sometimes it seemed to me that they argued for the sake of arguing. Faye’s boyfriend, the one Simon referred to, seemed to be at the centre of it. Although he was older than her, old enough to be her father, according to mum, I couldn’t see what the big deal was. It was, however, a big enough deal to culminate in her tearful eviction from the family household. Simon took her in and had let her stay in one of his flats rent free.
I knew she had gone to Simon because she told me. I was under strict instructions, though, not to tell mum, who, she said, was no longer a part of her life. I knew better than to argue with her or to ask too many questions. Sometimes the flames she reserved for mum could be turned on me.
For her part, my mother couldn’t care less that she had become a non-person in Faye’s eyes. In fact she wouldn’t have my sisters name mentioned in the house, which made it a little difficult to get her side of the story. As far as she was concerned, she had no daughter. Of course, I would meet my wayward big sister whenever I could, but now she had moved away, settled down with someone else, and started a family. My mother still didn’t know she had a granddaughter, but I wasn’t about to tell her. That was up to Faye.
"The bastard still thinks he can live there rent free," Simon continued. "Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile!"
"Did Faye get the cabinet by any chance?"
"Yes, I think she did," he said. "As far as I know it’s still there. She didn’t take much with her when she left."
I had never been to Faye’s flat. She wouldn’t let me have the address, in case mother found out. However, by now, I figured I could ask.
"Sure, if you like," replied Simon, scribbling the address on a piece of paper. "If you can get the cabinet from him, see what else you can retrieve for me, will you."
I took the paper and smiled. "Thanks, Uncle Simon!"
I went straight there. I had met Faye’s ex-boyfriend only once, and even then the word 'boy’ seemed to hang heavy. Now, I wondered what she could possibly have seen in the seedy, rat-like man who answered the door.
"Hi, I’m ..." I started.
"I know who you are, what do you want?" he asked suspiciously.
"Can I come in?"
He looked this way and that, as if I was some kind of policeman, then stood aside.
"I just want to know ..." I said.
"It’s none of your fucking business!" he hissed.
I was taken aback for a moment, then realised what he must be thinking.
"It’s OK, I haven’t come from Uncle Simon to demand ..." I said.
"Did she tell you all about it, then?" he sneered, ignoring me.
"I ... er, no!" I really didn’t want to get involved with Faye’s exciting love life.
I glanced into the living room. There was the cabinet, with that familiar zig-zag scratch. I filed the image of it in my head like a Polaroid snap, taking in the shabby sofa and the faded striped wallpaper as I did so.
"Well, what are you doing here?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but he interrupted. "Piss off! Piss off home then!"
I thought it was pointless to ask him about the cabinet, so I left. I had what I really wanted anyway.
If you look at enough web sites, you can lose track of where things are so easily. I was now more determined than ever to find that missing picture. I skimmed thumbnails that I would previously have inspected greedily as I searched.
Finally I found it.
Before looking at the woman, I noted the shabby sofa she lay on, the striped wallpaper, and what had triggered my search in the first place. In the murky halflight just out of range of the flashbulb, the cabinet with that familiar zig-zag scratch told it’s own tale.
I smiled, turning my attention to the woman. She lay back, her legs parted, her fingers buried in an unkempt bush of dark pubic hair. With her other hand, she squeezed at a milk white breast. Her head was thrown back, and I could make out the taut tendons in her neck. The face was lost over the border of the picture.
Of course she wasn’t Faye; she was older for a start. I know Faye was wild, but I liked to think she had higher standards than to let herself be photographed like that. Perhaps it was because of his 'hobby’ that she had left him. Even so, if the dirty sod had taken pictures of women in the flat and posted them on the Net, I had to admit that there was a good chance that Faye would be out there somewhere, and the thought of seeing my sister like that filled me with horror.
Relaxing slightly, I studied the woman more closely now, feeling my penis twitch with anticipation. Blue veins formed a tracery on the underside of her foreshortened thigh, and there was a little red pimple near her groin. The flash picked all this out ruthlessly, along with the dark downy hair that covered her shin.
I savoured the quality of the image, probing every little detail hungrily with my eyes, as I always did. I used what I saw to suck in her essence. My mind enveloped her, like a lover, and tried to penetrate her psyche. In order to consummate this encounter completely, though, I needed to see her face but, as so often, it was out of frame. I had to make do with what was left to me.
The power of the glare faded further up, as I continued looking at her, but I could clearly see the wrinkles on her belly and make out a tiny mole just to the left of her navel. I began to feel slightly uneasy, and for the first time I felt a sense of guilt at what I was doing. My hand on my hardened penis ceased its rhythmic movement. I tried to bring my reason to bear, but my anxiety wouldn’t diminish. I wanted to look away, but I needed to know why I wanted to look away. I felt trapped by the picture, searching it, now, for the source of my discomfort.
Suddenly, my heart lurched. Roaring into my consciousness like a train, came the confirmation of the subconscious suspicion that had been troubling me.
I couldn’t see the face, but my eye now focussed on her ear. It was almost lost in the dimming background, but there was no mistaking that earring. A green jade fairy, hung like snot from her earlobe.
END