Incest/Taboo Connie and Clyde

NOTE TO THE READER

I've tried to write mostly incest fiction but wanted to try my hand at a pseudo-western based roughly on Bonnie and Clyde. This read includes smut of course, and the taboo makes the story what it is. But it also includes story. And characters. And crime.

And cruelty. And danger. And death.

Hopefully it keeps it all interesting. It'll be put together sequentially, and I'm hoping by the end, you get to have some wild thrills.

Including your Aunt Connie.

Enjoy.

***

The road keeps going

Still going and gone

Ain't no signs left on the road

Nothing but you and wind blowin'*

***

"Clyde James, 'CJ' Halloran."

"Yeah."

"Step up to the window. Get your shit."

There's a saying; when you're born, you come into the world with nothing, and that when you die, you leave the world with nothing. I guess prison's a better deal than life itself then, because when you're booked, you get an orange jumpsuit and a whole lot of new friends. Then when you leave, you get to ditch those friends and never see them again. And you get your personal belongings back.

"One wallet. Two credit cards. Forty-eight dollars and thirteen cents. Huh. Can't believe that's still here." The prison guard read out my list and slipped them under the security window. "One identification. One white tee. One pair blue jeans. One denim jacket. One pair boxers. One pair shoes. One key for a Harley motorcycle." The key was the last to reach me. I picked it up and felt that familiar steel and took a deep breath. Life was in reach again. Thank god. A felony could only taint so much.

I went down the corridors to a spot where I could change out of the jumpsuit and put all my clothes back on. It felt good to be in real clothes, real cottons again. The guard led me out of there and toward the exit, into the lobby type room where people were released and given a last gasp of air conditioning before they had to face the big wide world, all by themselves. No more free meals. No more night lights. No fights in the canteen. Just you and the road.

I wished that I had my motorcycle still, but realistically, it was probably already sold by my family. I didn't mind it too much. Having just the key was enough. It meant freedom, symbolically. Even if it was probably in somebody else's garage by now.

When I got booked, there wasn't much in the way of money that my family had. Rural Kentucky, nothing much in the way of jobs. Decades of the opioid epidemic and NAFTA took the fight out of Riedland where my family and I lived, and enough bad luck took mom and dad out altogether. After that car accident, where it only left enough of the car frame and the little space where I was trapped in it, the extended family was out two full time incomes and now had to deal with a six-year-old orphan.

I had a couple cousins who raised me after that point. By this time now, they were out lost somewhere on the West Coast, stuck on Fentanyl or maybe dead. We hadn't heard from them in years, their last call to my aunt and uncle a request for a few thousand dollars; for what, they wouldn't specify, but I assumed it had to do with the way that they could barely string together any words. I consider them gone.

When you find yourself missing a whole lot of family, and there aren't any good examples to go by except your unemployed uncle, then you get into trouble. It's natural. You don't exactly get the talk from counselors or well-meaning dads telling you to go to college or to stay off drugs, and when your cousins fuck off after getting in trouble with the local police for boosting to feed their heroin addiction, you're left without any meaningful guidance. So I did what the natural and unguided instincts of any young man would push him to do.

The felony itself was a result of that. Not my fault. Not really, though I wish it happened on a day that wasn't my twenty-first birthday.

I had this girl, Allie. Tightest fucking pussy in the world, blonde and proud of it. She and I grew up on the same road where my cousins lived, and once we'd graduated high school I started to hang with her, watched as she climbed the economic ladder at the community college to get into some semblance of gainful employment, and a few certs later she was making alright money at a hospital doing blood work. I was working construction, traveling by motorbike with my tools boxed in to whatever city had anything going on, and even though it was a bitch of a commute, I wanted to stay close to Allie and to what was left of my family.

I had Aunt Connie and Uncle James Taggart close by, just a few miles off and close enough to either talk down my cousins when they were tweaking, or to feed me when things got messed up over there. They were a blessing, Connie and James. Well, mostly Connie. James was the kind of guy that you didn't want hanging around your family, but you knew he was there to stay anyway. He was the one that didn't have a job.

After graduation I got a little apartment with Allie, only a little further away. We were saving up, hoping to get some land at some point and to maybe build a house on it, though the way things were turning out with the economy I didn't have a lot of hope for that. We were thinking about packing our stuff and moving to one of the cities where the construction and hospital work paid better, locking ourselves into a rat race and hoping we could save cash faster than inflation and take advantage of the next housing crash. A guy and his girl can hope. As long as nothing goes wrong.

When I turned 21, we went out to Frankies, which was one of the dive bars we had around here. I knew some of the guys in there, people older than me I hadn't seen since high school, and after they recognized me and Allie, I ended up joining them for drinks. Unfortunately, there's no respect for a kid and his fresh, pretty girlfriend. One of the guys we drank with made a pass at my girl, groped her ass and then rubbed it in my face telling me I wasn't going to do shit.

So I broke his nose and ruptured his eye, and ended up stomping on his fucking head by the end of it.

The cops packed me up and settled me in the local jail before I was sentenced for aggravated assault and had a permanent mark on my record. It meant that when I got out, even though it was early and for 'good behavior', I'd probably have to stick to construction; the dirtier parts of it.

Nothing wrong with that. Just meant that I'd have to sweat for my money.

What was difficult was the fact that I got upgraded from jail to prison. And prison's a hell of a lot different than jail. In jail, you don't expect too many fights. It's a lot more orderly. Ain't no racial tribes, really. Just a bunch of losers who got caught up in stuff, or were too troubled from all the meth, or tried to rip off others a few too many times, and they've all got to get along since nobody else likes to start trouble where it's comfortable. Prison was more for the real dangerous crowd. The family wasn't rich enough to hire a good lawyer; Aunt Connie told me she begged James for just one more loan but I guess they were too under already. So at first it was five years set up for me.

I had to make sacrifices to stay alive in there. I joined one of the gangs, Lost Boys, made pledges. They tatted my fists and my arms and put teardrops and a knife on my face in black, signaled that I belonged to them for as long as I was in there, since that was what it took to stay alive. It didn't take long for me to learn how to fight better too. You had to. Aryan Brotherhood was vicious in there, and the gang I was in only managed to stay independent because we were willing to get bloody time and again.

Some died.

I consider it lucky that I wasn't ever rounded up in the aftermath of those fights and charged with anything else.

A month in and Allie couldn't take it anymore. I called her with the expensive inmate line that they had, hoping for a bit of consolation maybe. She said she had dreams and that even though she liked me, not loved me, she couldn't waste her life pretending that she could marry a felon.

So she was gone.

And that left only a little sliver of family, half of them not caring whether I got fucked up by a shank, and the other too powerless to do anything about it. Aunt Connie was the only little light in there. She'd call every other month, when she could.

Connie was a rarity; the kind of pretty Kentucky girl that grew up in a holler on the east side. My dad's sister. She had this bright red hair, a smattering of pale freckles that grew dark when she was young and free to roam in the sun, paling back up again as she grew up, learned about sunscreen, became a woman, got married to James and found herself living the housewife life. Connie aged pretty gracefully. She and James never had kids, but as I got old enough I started to realize that my aunt Connie was a woman; a real one with hips and a tight waist, and an ass that looked like heaven in a pair of tight jeans. She was slim for her age but somehow managed to develop these lovely fuckin tits that I liked looking at whenever I could. When you're a young man and she's the prettiest woman in the world, you can't resist.

She liked to wear whatever was comfortable in the summer heat and that meant I got to see her pale little belly button and the heave of her breasts under a tank, or whatever it was she could afford. By the time I went to prison it wasn't much.

James used to be a factory super, years ago. It meant that he made money hand over fist, compared to everyone else I knew; he was the guy with the clipboard, the button up with a tie, the actual house with a wood deck and a lawn he could afford to take the time to mow on a little green riding mower.

But when I was in high school, the factory closed without hardly any notice. And that's when things changed for them. Connie had to pick up odd jobs, to sell their belongings bit by bit. They stopped doing work on the house. James started to bloat out from the drinking and the stress of being unemployed. He tried to get different jobs doing this or that but enough of the town knew he was a fucking bastard to work under, so people steered him away from anything related to management, and he was too fuckin proud to do any sort of manual labor. So he remained mostly unemployed, on the government dole that he said nobody deserved, proud of the past, unable to handle the present, and settling more and more into the only lifestyle he could manage; as a drunk.

I and their neighbors knew James abused Connie. It was common enough that nobody really wanted to step in. I tried it a few times, happening upon their house when I needed to drop in for some food and finding instead a screaming James, red-faced, bottle in hand, raspily berating Connie who was either trying to sit with the dignity he demanded out of her, or on all fours, trying to clean up something he had broken, tears making her bright red hair stick to her face. Even when Aunt Connie was crying, she was beautiful. And maybe that was why I was so ready to fight James and to do something about how he was beating her.

Maybe it was how I learned to fight. You only needed a few tries to get the feel of it; the adrenaline, the sudden pain that knocked air and sense out of you real fast. I learned how to handle it pretty quick.

It ended in a beatdown anyway though, on me. I learned to take punches and to cover my head and neck. I learned to throw a real punch and how to guard my face with my bare fists, all useful stuff when I was locked up.

Once, he was slapping Connie around after I got to eat a little dinner at their place. Just a bit of chicken and biscuits that Connie whipped up on their food stamp supplies. He didn't like how she cleaned the kitchen, so while I was in the other room watching the TV, he started mocking her and then there was the sound of an open palmed slap. I heard Connie whimper after that.

It heated me.

I knew for a fact that Connie had made everything special, and it wasn't like she wasn't cleaning already. I think it was that James felt like he wasn't a man because the food on the table didn't come from him. Neither did he prepare it, neither did he do anything the whole damn day except polish off a case of beers. In his nitpicking he pointed out spots on the counter that had crumbs or bits of flour, stuff she hadn't gotten to, and I heard the first slap, and got up to see Connie with a hand hovered over her red cheek, her red hair hanging over her eyes and her head bowed. She still had the dishwashing gloves on, suds now in her hair.

I was mad enough that I didn't even announce anything to James. I went up behind him and pushed him over, and he tumbled against the kitchen table and managed to prop himself up on it. He didn't waste words either, swinging for me and then we were in a tumble, punching and smashing each other in the face. At some point he managed to grab a jug from the counter and rammed it against my stomach, doubling me over. The fight was done, the pain was too much for me to get back up in any meaningful time. He kicked me a couple times and then went to bed. But at least that night, he left her alone.

Or so I thought.

The next day, I dropped by again to make sure everything was okay. And on the surface it was. I saw James wave to me from the garage, looking a little less impaired as he worked on his car. Connie came outside and invited me in for a sandwich. I remember it pretty clear. Connie was wearing a long sleeve shirt that day, one of James', something baggy and dark. When I got past the door and into the hall, I felt her hand pull me off to the side in front of the pantry. Her hand was really gentle and soft on my arm as she led me where James couldn't see inside their deteriorating house from the outside.

Connie's voice that day was like an angel. Or at least, what I imagined one to be. Soft and with the subtle Kentucky drawl that wasn't intentional, just real and frank, but quiet enough to where you really made sure to listen. Her accent was clean, and judging by her tone nobody would have thought anything was wrong.

"CJ, I know you tried to keep me safe the other day. I know." Her breath was scented like apples. I hoped she was going to tell me how grateful she was. That I did a good thing. But her next words threw me off and made me realize that I had just made it worse. "You need to know what happens when James feels frustrated, things happen. And I'm not blaming you, I just need you to know." She pulled up the sleeve and on her pale, pale white skin where the freckles dotted along her upper arm, there was a mottled bruise that looked as big as my fist.

Connie looked at me with electric blue eyes, her lashes light, her gaze unhurt. "Don't try to save me. I'm not going to die, okay? If you want to help me, just let him get it out. Slapping is better than fists, and I'm alright living with it. I signed up for it. Okay?"

It wasn't okay. But I nodded and decided that I'd have to bear it just the same. She wanted it that way and I wasn't about to do anything to make things worse for her. Even if it meant she wasn't living the life she deserved.

You'd think I could just call the cops. But when dealing with a guy like James and in a town where the cops really did parse out justice based on who they knew and liked, there was no amount of calls by their neighbors that would get the cops to do anything about saving Connie or slapping up James. None of the police bothered to even explain to him that there was such a thing as a domestic violence charge. Maybe things were better in other towns. But in Riedland, it wasn't. The good ol' boys held everyone in their hands and let whoever they liked do what they wanted.

I was even arrested by one of James' friends. A cop named Hillman pulled up after I had knocked the other guy out and broke his cheekbones and a few other spots. I was calmed down by that point, realizing I had made a mistake. Allie was still screaming at me, calling me a fucking psycho and telling me I went too far. By the time Hillman arrived, I cooperated, and without too much fuss about it was cuffed and in the car. Like it was a matter of fact.

He was a square looking man. Big jaw. Eyes set a little far apart. Built like a combine. What was eerie about him was that he'd never really look at you. When he'd talk at you you'd get the sense that he wasn't really saying anything to you. The rights he recited were just words. He was like a mask on a man-sized box and the uniform on him was the only thing that told you that he was a part of society. Otherwise you'd think he wasn't anyone. Just a shell.

What was weird after was that Hillman testified at my trial and seemed to get the details a little wrong. I didn't like to think about it, but he said that I was aggressive, even with him. That I advanced on him, that he had to talk me down, and that it was obvious that I was in the kind of mood that made me want to hurt people at the time. The judge seemed to like that answer and after just a little bit of deliberating, I was sentenced to prison and considered a danger to society until I could prove otherwise.

So coming out the front door of the prison just a little early suited me just fuckin fine. I knew I hated the judge. I knew I hated Hillman. But what can you do when you're a kid fresh out of the clink and there's nothing going for you at all?

Evidently, there's just family, if you have it.

When the brightness of the sun hit my face, brighter than I was used to since I was always surrounded by the concrete walls or shaded by fences and never got the real, full sun in a few years, I squinted and almost cried because of how beautiful it was, to see light.

And then when my vision cleared up and I could finally see, there was the parking lot, black asphalt, a few rows of parking spaces and a distant fence of barbed wire.

And in front of all that, looking like she was sent from Heaven itself, was my aunt Connie, looking up from where she stood, leaning on James' pickup, eyes widening over her sunglasses, and realizing that her fucked up nephew had finally come home.

She held me tight to her, and for a few moments aunt Connie was just crying.

Only crying.

I wrapped my arms around her, looked at the ink across my arms and felt a little ashamed. Not because I was tatted, but that I had changed. Aunt Connie didn't. She looked exactly the same, smelled just the same, clean, her hair just as deep red and vivid in the wine color of it. She was wearing one of her old plaid shirts, a few faded blues and pinks mixed in, the elbows fraying but still perfectly clean, tucked into blue jeans and fitting just as well as I remembered.

"Oh my god," her voice was a croak and she couldn't keep herself from shaking with each sob. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"Everything's good, Connie," I said. "Don't worry about me."

She leaned back and looked at the tattoos, her fingers going up and brushing at them. She wordlessly bit her lip and tried to suppress even more tears that were welling up.

"Really," I insisted. "Don't worry about me."

"You're marked," she whispered.

"I'm free," I said. It was true. Lost Boys were one of the only kinds of gangs where you were out when you were out. It was the last little handhold of freedom in the place where it was otherwise ruled by the Aryans and MS13. There was a lot of blood shed and a lot of Lost Boys dead to gain the respect necessary to stay free of the gang life after prison. I was out. I was myself. The only Lost Boys are in the prisons, and outside, they weren't lost any more.

"Really?"

"Really."

Connie drew me close again and I closed my eyes as I took in the only female touch I had experienced in years. Her breasts were pushing up against my chest and I closed my eyes to feel them better. Call it inappropriate. But I needed the release, something, anything feminine in the world. Connie and the way she held me was enough.

We got into the truck and were soon going down the highway and toward the hills where Riedland hid, nestled out of sight. I got to see the fast motion of the drive, feel wind, real wind, out the window.

But the prettiest thing I ever saw was Connie.

Connie had this narrow nose, just a little turned up at the end. Full lips for a woman like her, lot of her relatives had these thin pale lips that were always drawn tight in the strain of poverty but Connie's were full, a little lush like the forest on the sunny end of spring. Her eyes were this bright blue, almost gray with how light they were, always seeming a little wide open. This time especially, they were wide and vibrant with life, like I hadn't seen her since the sentencing. At that time, she kept her head hung low. I didn't see the blue of her eyes until I was guilty and sentenced, and then they were cloaked in crying red. But after the initial cry outside the prison, she seemed happy enough to just have me in the truck.

"James didn't want to come with his car?"

"It was sold a few months back," Connie said, sadly. "There's some loans that came due and we had to..." She paused. "...make a few tough choices."

"Still nothing?" I asked.

"Nothing," Connie said, a little grim. Her voice was sad. A lot sadder than I remembered. "Well, he makes a bit. Here and there."

"Doing what?"

"I don't..." Connie's words were a little slow and halting, like she wasn't sure. Or like she was hiding something. "I guess they're odd jobs. But he never comes back with anything. Not often. I guess once he made something decent and put five hundred on the table. But that was a while ago. But we're making do."

She leaned her head to the side, thinking with a disappointed, ashamed frown while the road disappeared before us. Her neck was white, clear white.

I don't know what it was doing to me, but I found myself wanting to get close to it, to feel her skin there.

Ha. Aunt Connie.

I guessed I really was desperate for pussy and made the little resolution that I'd get my shit straight and get dateable again. I wondered how expensive tattoo laser removal was. Or whether girls were into tattoos now. Connie seemed to mind it a little much, though. Sometimes I'd catch her glancing at the knife by one eye and the teardrop by the other and looking sadly at the ink that patterned my arms. She'd see me noticing her and her face would snap back, focused again on the road. Her mouth pursed every time. Her little hands would clench the wheel. I wondered what she was thinking. It seemed like it was heavy on her.

After a bit of time we were driving up the road where James' house was, and I felt my heart sink. Mostly it was the way the house was sagging, seeming to rot on its foundations, noticing even the gutters that were hanging clean off the edge of the roof like they were the first bit of the house to really unravel.

"Home sweet home," Connie said, quiet and with the sad sweet drawl that said it wasn't how she felt.

When we got out, and the humidity hit us hard after the truck's feeble air conditioner, I finally saw James. He stood at the edge of the porch, beer in hand, looking like absolute hell. Face unshaven, eyes bagged black.

"You're out?" He asked it like he didn't know that I told them when I was getting out. He was scratching his stained, tattered wifebeater and looked at me with dark, beady eyes. He looked almost suspicious of me. "You're looking a little bigger. What the fuck's that on your face?"

"Nothing," I said. "Got tatted a bit."

"I see," he said, his eyes narrow. "You in a gang?"

"No," I said, firm.

"If you are," his voice was heavy with mistrust, "they'll lock you right back up if you try anything."

"Alright."

"Where you staying?"

Right after James asked that, Connie and I looked at each other. I figured it was a given I'd get to stay with them, just for a little until I could get my own place.

James continued. "It ain't here."

Connie balked. "He's got nowhere to go!"

"He's a felon and he's tatted to hell and back," James snarled at her.

"He's our family!"

"I'm not trusting him around here. He'll end up stealing or fucking with us one way or another. Or his friends will come, all the little friends he made in there."

"I'm not with anyone," I said, but I knew James wasn't going to stand for it.

Connie still protested, futile against James' hard stare. "What the hell's he going to steal, huh? There's nothing to take here, James!"

"No. There isn't. You hear?" He looked at me and I could see the smolder of some little coal of hatred in James' eyes. After a minute, he relented, just a little. "You're not going to stay past noon tomorrow. We sold your motorcycle, by the way. And your tools. Ages ago."

"That's fine," I said, already resigned to it.

"Don't go wandering. You're a guest here. No fuckin' felon's going to live off me. Connie, make some fuckin' dinner." James snapped his fingers like Connie was a servant or something and then turned around, draining the can and heading inside.

"He looks like shit," I said, a little grudging.

"He's..." I could tell Connie had long run out of nice things to say about James. I figured the only thing that kept them together was that oath that they swore to each other in front of God and the pastor, even after the richer and poorer and sickness and health were already run through. "He's my husband. And technically we're in his house. He's the only one on the title."

I snorted and followed her into the house, trying to avoid the obvious rotted wood on the porch and gingerly propping the door open. It looked like it was about to fall off the hinges. The paint had flaked off a hell of a lot more than I remembered, too. Inside, there was the smell of must, like the moist air outside had permeated the few remaining spots left in there that were safe from the climate. It was strange, seeing how clean the place was, considering the evident neglect everywhere else. I guess Connie held up her side of her responsibilities.

"I've still got some of your old clothes," Connie said, looking back at me briefly and smiling. She went up the stairs ahead of me and I tried to keep respectful, keeping my head low as her ass shifted from side to side with each stair.

She brought me up to one of the abandoned rooms that they had turned into their meager storage for the stuff they had left. We sorted through some of the clothes and found a duffel bag, and a few shirts and pairs of pants that still fit, a bit of old underwear and socks. "Lucky I saved these," she said. "I guess when you... went away, I realized it was probably a good idea to keep a little extra from the time before. Maybe. James tried to get me to throw these out a few times now," she laughed.

She took me downstairs to the couch, pulled out a couple clean blankets and a pillow and set it up for me. "If James is going to kick you out by noon tomorrow, at least you're going to get a good night's sleep," she said, smacking the pillow as if that made it any comfier. "Now wash up. I'll make some dinner."

When she left the room, I collapsed on the couch. I had to make plans. If I was out by noon tomorrow, then I had to figure out a job. I had to figure out where the hell I was going to go. Based on how James didn't want me around at all I knew I couldn't count on getting to come back for anything more than the occasional meal, and I knew James was happy to begrudge me that too. At least there was a coat in the clothes from before. I figured if I could somehow convince them to give me the blanket I was sleeping in too, then I'd probably be able to rough it in town as long as the cops didn't mess with me. I figured I might be able to get a job, too. Washing dishes or something. Or if I could use a phone somewhere, I could call up some of the quarries or one of the local logging operations or something. Being dirt poor and fresh out of the clink meant I didn't have a smartphone, and so I'd have to make do with something else. Maybe the library. If the funding for that wasn't gone yet.

My head spun until it was time to eat, and while Connie and I ate at the table, James took a plate with him to the porch. After a few minutes of quiet eating, both of us almost afraid to say anything, we heard his truck start up.

"That's the second time this week," Connie said, looking down.

"Where's he going?"

"I don't know. He won't tell me." She sighed and looked toward the porch, a little worried. "Part of me is afraid of what he's up to. I don't think he's handsome enough to cheat but I don't trust him to not run up a tab somewhere. It seems all the beer in the world isn't enough for him."

"When does he come back?" I asked, curious.

Connie looked at me with a bit of concern. "I don't ask anymore."

"No?"

"He's gotten a lot more secretive."

I wondered if he was getting up to something bad. Something illegal.

"He's really particular about the garage too," she said, referencing the outbuilding as if driving my own thoughts home.

"Do you know what's in it?"

"No." She said that a little too quickly. "You're not going to go find out either, right? I don't want you to."

I definitely wanted to find out, but not enough to cause any more trouble than necessary. So I resolved that if uncle James was doing anything on the wrong side of the law, that I wasn't going to be the one to find out about it. But it made sense why he'd be so hesitant to let me in. I figured he felt that anyone familiar with the criminal world would see right through him.

The bright side of him leaving was that the atmosphere of the house seemed to lighten up an incredible amount. After dinner, Connie grabbed a couple beers from the fridge and we went out to the porch, listening to crickets and watching the night cool down. The place they lived was nice. Surrounded by pines, the subtle, rolling hills up and around them. If it weren't for the dilapidated house the property would have looked like prime real estate, and with the breeze of the evening finally cooling the thick humidity, and the cold beer, I felt safe, finally.

Connie talked with me about my plans. Made suggestions for places that might be looking for work. When I told her I planned on sleeping in the doorway of some business in the middle of town, she frowned at me. Then she wrote down her number and told me the instant I could get a phone to call, and she'd be able to help. Maybe. The night got colder. Even with the single beer, I had been dry so long that I felt the happy looseness of the alcohol lulling me into the first real bliss I had in a long time. The night was pleasant and cool and I felt like I could breathe freely.

It lulled me to near sleep, too. I woke up at some point that evening, Connie helping me while I was so tired that I could barely walk on my own, settling into the couch, the couch blanket around my shoulders, my neck stiff from leaning to the side. Aunt Connie's hand was stroking my face as I laid out and let the comfort and safety take me into the unconscious dark.

I woke up, marveled at the first sensation that came with consciousness. It was a quiet comfort that came with the sound of the television, with the cushions underneath me.

Sleeping on a couch was a hell of a lot better than a prison bed.

As I stretched and felt myself coming to wakefulness, I looked around to see what time it was. The windows were pitch black. Had to have been late. The TV had one of those really late-night shows on, cutting to commercials, without an indicator of whether it was past midnight or before. I got up, stumbled to the bathroom, and saw that James's truck was back. At the same time, there was a bright light on at the outbuilding far off.

I remembered that James told me, warned me that I needed to stay away from there. I had a few suspicions about it. I figured it was likely that he might have had a grow op in there, if he could afford the energy. Or maybe he was hiding stolen goods. Maybe. I knew for a fact that James wouldn't resign himself to grunt labor, but I wondered if maybe there was a part of him that was more okay with turning to crime instead, it meant that he could make money. It would explain some of the fruitless nights, and the occasional return where he would come back with a wad of cash.

My curiosity got a little stronger when I suddenly saw the door to the outbuilding open, and instead of James, it was Connie that stepped out.

That was just a little strange. She had this big coat on, and she hugged it to her, looking nervously around as she pulled out a cigarette and started to smoke. I decided I would watch her, just for second, wondering why it was that she was okay to go into that building, and I wasn't. That was odd. I felt a little funny knowing that Connie didn't trust me to talk about what was in there either. Then I noticed that her legs, below the coat, were bare. Which was even stranger. She was wearing full length jeans earlier. After a couple minutes, James poked his head out, and I saw him mouth something at her. She looked down, disappointed, threw the cigarette on the ground and then went inside.

I had a weird feeling about it. A sick feeling.

I decided that even though it was a risk, there wasn't much worse they could do to me if I was caught. James could kick me out early, but I already had clothes, and I'd go peacefully before he could try anything physical.

I went out the front door, keeping my eye on the outbuilding for any sign of movement, and snuck along the edge of the gravel driveway, careful only to step on grass so I didn't crunch the rock with my shoes. I sidled up to the building, put my ear up to the sheet metal, and heard a little bit of talking inside.

There was James's rough voice, along with a couple protests from Connie.

I listened more closely, but the words were still muffled, jumbled. There was a window that I could probably look through, and I figured that was my best bet. I moved slowly, careful not to touch anything, especially the siding that would warp and crackle if I pushed on it, and once I got up underneath the window, I could almost hear them talking. James went quiet, then there was only on Connie, saying something nervously, her tone a little scared, a little sad, and definitely resigned to something. I poked my head up, and peered through the curtain that was hung over it, looking through a slight gap between fabric and the edge of the window.

At first, I couldn't really tell what I was looking at. It looked like there was a little electronic device, fist sized, something electronic, on three legs like a tripod. I thought I saw what looked a little bit like a bed, pressed up against the wall. There was what looked like living room floor underneath it, planking, and on the wall I could see a couple of things attached that made it almost looked like it was a suburban home. Drywall strategically placed and a sheet tacked up made it look like a painted wall.

Then I realized it. I was looking at a stage.

And a camera. It was connected to a laptop that was on a stool, facing the bed. Then my stomach dropped when I saw Connie.

She was still wearing the coat, but after another gruff, and angry word from James, I saw on Connie wiping her eyes, and then unfurling the jacket. It left her shoulders, revealing them, bare.

There was only a little sliver of fabric on her shoulders, holding up a set of lingerie.

It was black lace, crisscrossing her pale, fragile body. I could see the smudge of her freckles on her arms, across her chest, across her face which was a little red from embarrassment. And I looked in shock, as I saw that the lingerie itself was so thin, it was almost see-through. I could see the real curve of her breasts, the way they naturally sat, and I watched with a little bit of shame as I realized that I was seeing my aunt's body for the first time, but the confusion as to what was happening in front of me was blending with the arousal that I felt. She was the very first woman I had even seen close to naked ever since I was put into the prison, and I felt a horrible pit in my stomach that I had to see her this way.

Connie moved herself up to the bed, looked at the camera, and said some things towards it, and then I heard James say something about... a live stream.

My vision went white hot.

I realized fully; James was using Connie as a cam girl.

He gave her some orders. She obeyed.

Connie shifted and turned on the bed in order to expose different angles of herself, her eyes on the laptop, watching and waiting for the reactions from whatever audience was watching. The curve of her ass lifted high off the bed, emphasizing how small her waist was.

My cock hardened, and I bit the underside of my mouth trying to hold myself back from feeling anything. But I couldn't help it. The only thing that was sane about this was that more than anything else, more than the arousal, was the body of an insane anger in me.

I couldn't believe James had stooped this low. I knew he was scum, sure. I knew he was too proud and too lazy simultaneously to work, but I had no idea that he was so disgusting as a person that he was more willing to pimp out his wife like this, to put her on display, and to milk her beauty for whatever people would donate as they watched her.

I heard the laptop say things out loud, requests by people that were watching the stream, and Connie reluctantly turned to face the camera, hands sliding up over the lace and over her chest. She looked down, ashamed. Then she peeled the thin, translucent lace down.

Down, below her breasts, revealing that her breasts were somehow more pale than the rest of her skin. At the tips of her breasts, her nipples were the color of strawberries, so small and bright, the areolas only marginally larger than the nipples themselves.

I wanted to look away.

But I couldn't.

This wasn't the way I wanted to see her. It wasn't the way that I wanted to learn how her body looked, and as the streamers asked for more things, asked her to pull it off, asked her to rub her breasts together, I watched helplessly as she did, the nipples kissing on the front of her chest, flicking over each other. She nervously looked at James, who stood watching her with his arms crossed and it with a scowl as if it wasn't enough.

The rage boiled up in me, and I planned it out; the way I was going to kill James for this.

I could grab a knife from the kitchen, catch him off guard, go for the neck. I could hide in the shadowed corner by the door, and--

Connie.

If there was one thing I had learned over the years of Connie's choice to put up with her husband, it was... that she wouldn't want him to die.

She wouldn't even want me to hurt him.

My teeth ground together as I fought to control myself.

After a minute, I went back to the house, sneaking the door open, and heading back inside. I positioned myself in the bathroom in order to watch the outbuilding, and after a few moments, saw them both exit. Connie was wearing her real clothes again, and the coat was over her, and James was speaking angrily with her. I could make out a few of the words.

Not enough. Need more. You should be grateful.

I tightened my fists, then snuck myself over to the couch in order to pretend that I was still asleep. They came in through the front door, and James immediately went lumbering up the stairs, but Connie silently closed the door behind her and looked at me for a moment. She was watching me, looking sad, and I was sure that she felt ashamed that she was lying to me. I pretended to wake up, straightened, stretched, looked at her and asked where she had been.

"Just a night walk," she whispered. She had these bags under her eyes that made her look so tired. She looked at me sadly​