44 - Something in the Water

From behind a grave marker, Asenath brought out a bottle of water and took a sip. She held the candle in her hand, burned almost halfway down.

"Horror," she said. "Can arise from the most mundane things. The things you can't do without. Can't escape. It's what keeps germaphobes inside, the fear of things they can't see, can't protect themselves from. What would you do, for example, if there was

SOMETHING IN THE WATER

The Takeda family moved into town when Toshi was old enough to attend university. He was eighteen; his mother, Miki was a financial consultant in her early 40s, working from home to help take care of her mother, Hana, who was in her 60s but suffered from a bad back from years of agricultural work. They had family in the area, and cousin Rin, a few months younger than Toshi, was there when they moved into the old farmhouse, having cleared away the cobwebs and seen to the addition of electricity and internet.

"The only problem," Rin told them as the moving van arrived. "Is that we're not on city water. There's an artesian well, but it's pretty hard water. Lot of dissolved minerals."

"We'll have to invest in a purifier," Miki said, firmly.

"Minerals are good for you," Hana said, leaning on her cane. "Build strong bones."

Toshi gave Rin a shy, almost embarrassed smile. They hadn't seen each other for years, and now here they were...

Surrounded by unopened boxes, the family settled down for their first meal. Japanese-style curry with local pork loin and vegetables that Rin's mother had sent over. Hana sent Toshi to fetch a bottle of sake, and the burn of the liquor washed away the clinging taste of the well-water from the taps.

How to track the slow settling-in of life? The unpacking of boxes, the photographs placed on the walls, the small family shrine, Toshi's books, Miki's office where she spent hours on the phone with clients in Denver, Baton Rouge, Boise, Des Moines, and St. Louis. Hana on her knees in the garden plot. Rin's break-up with her girlfriend.

They bathed and showered in the water. Steamed their rice in it. Drank glasses of it. Thoughts of purifiers slipped from the mind. Day flowed into night into day.

It was a hard time for Toshi. It wasn't that he was trying to peek. Yet somewhere in the rhythm of life, things went wrong. Rin leaving the door to the bathroom open when she was changing for the shower was an embarrassment for them both, and his face had flushed as he saw her pale, thin body with the small perky breasts. Grandma Hana, who spilled the water all down her shirt, the nipples on her sizable chest clearly visible through the wet fabric. His mother, whose room adjoined his, he caught sliding in a tampon when he entered the bathroom late at night for a glass of water.

Nothing that they could ever speak of. Isolated incidents.

Then the summer heat came in. There was no air conditioning in the farmhouse, just electric fans. Everyone was drinking more water, Miki reminding everyone to hydrate. Rin's outfits grew skimpier. Tight little shorts. White wife beaters without bra. During the heat of the day she would drip with sweat, and Toshi would feel the perspiration drip down his ribs as he shifted his stance to hide a sudden, overpowering erection. The kind that were immediately followed by shame.

Even the nights were hot, windows open and fans going to move the air around. It was at night that the sounds began to start.

It started in Rin's room. Soft little moans that seemed to penetrate through the wall, like the chirp of the crickets outside. Animal noises that sent a thrill up Toshi's spine and made his fingers dig into the futon beneath him, cock aching.

Then Miki started in. The sound of his mother's voice, raised in the same tone, was almost more than Toshi could process. The two women, pleasuring themselves independently, achieved a kind of syncopation, their moans moving across and within each other in complicated patterns. Toshi gripped his pillow to his ears, tried to drown out the sounds as his traitorous prick threatened to stain his underwear.

Hana's cry, a sharp alarm of pain, broke through the symphony of self-pleasure. In a moment, all three of the younger members of the family were on their feet, doors open, in the hall, ignoring the disarray of clothes and the enormous tent that Toshi was pitching. They found Hana in the shower, naked, the cold water running over her prostrate form, unable to rise.

Grandmother Hana returned from the hospital in a wheelchair, her new hip healing on its own, to find Toshi and Rin had installed a ramp, and a walk-in bath. Safer that way. She smiled...but the old woman noticed that both of them were sweating. Well, it was hot. Nothing strange with that.

Except they were still sweating, that night. Water beaded Miki's face too, ran in rivulets down her face, formed wet stains beneath the armpits. The family enjoyed their meal, a hearty soup with rice doublings. No sake tonight, because of Hana's pain medication. Just water. Tall glasses of it.

Hana said nothing when she saw Rin sit closer to Toshi than normal. She glanced at Miki when Toshi placed an arm around his cousin's shoulder. The mother gave a sly wink. Well. There was no real surprise there. Toshi's interest was obvious. And when everyone said their goodnights, Hana was relieved to see that Toshi and Rin went to their own rooms.

She settled in on her futon, after swallowing her pills with a glass of water. Then she shrugged out of her night gown, the sweat already beading on her. Lay down on her futon, and waited for sleep to claim her.

Instead, she heard the soft creak of the floorboards, from Toshi's room. Not to Rin's but to Miki's. Hana felt her body stiffen as her daughter's voice asked a whispered question, too soft to make out the individual words. Her body tensed as the first sharp gasp broke through the wall. Then the creak of floorboards, rhythmic, fast, ****, in time with a mother's moans. The wet slap of flesh on flesh. The grandmother felt her breath come in gasps, the sweat running down her naked body.

It seemed to go on for a long time, louder and louder, Miki's voice rising from soft moans to howls of ****, animal need, and finally a hoarse scream that left the older woman shaken.

Hana panted, an unfamiliar heat filling her body. Then she heard the steps, shuffling and heavy, from Miki's room across the hallway to Rin's.

There was a sharp, piercing cry that sent a spike of forbidden erotic thrill through Hana's body. It was the same cry she had made when her first boyfriend had taken her virginity. The walls shook with a steady thump, and Rin was nowhere near as restrained as Miki. Her cries of pleasure were mingled with obscenities screamed in English and Japanese.

The air grew heavy and thick. Hana could feel it, the humidity, the moisture building. She could almost see the dew form on the wall, running down in little rivulets, dripping from the ceiling to land on her hot, naked body. In her mind's eye she imagined all the sweat, the cum, the blood from their bodies soaking down through the wooden floor to drip onto the thirsty earth, to mix and mingle and dribble down to the wet layer down below, from which it was pumped back up out of the spigot into their glasses.

The final scream burst through the vision. Hana moaned, her hip throbbed, her pussy burned to be touched.

Then the floor creaked again.

There was more than one shuffling step. Hana struggled to rise as the door to her room opened. Miki and Rin came in first. Naked. Sweat dribbling down their bodies, tears flowing from their eyes. Water trickled from their thighs, and the strangest thing was that Hana couldn't smell sex on them, just the wet odor as if they had stepped out from the shower.

The two naked women held the grandmother's arms and pinned her to the floor as Toshi entered.

His cock stood out from his body. The sack was massive, too big, sloshing with each step, like an overfilled water balloon. He smiled, but there were tears that flowed from his eyes. As he knelt between her legs, slowly spreading her thighs, she tried to move, to fight. This was wrong, it was all wrong, it was—

"I am sorry, grandmother," Toshi said, as his wet sack hit the futon and he guided his impossibly-stiff prick into her pussy. "I will try to be mindful of your hips."

Toshi pushed inside. Hana opened her mouth to scream. Miki leaned forward and vomited warm, salty water into the old woman's mouth. Rin's hand shot out, grabbed Hana's nose and pinched it shut. As Toshi thrust, gently at first, mindful of the pain that each heavy, wet slap sent through the old woman's pelvis, Hana had **** but to swallow.

And swallow.

And swallow.

Each gulp spread a coolness through her brain that her body didn't feel. The sweat from the family mingled together as the young man began to pound his grandmother's cunt in earnest, the smiling women crying, their tears falling on Hana like rain, her own eyes tearing up as her mind sank away from the incestuous act. Trickling down like water into the earth.

She could feel them with her, down there. Rin and Hana and Toshi, and others, people she could not name, relationships she could not guess. The water carried those memories down and they mingled, all of them, a torrent of experiences, a sea of personalities all sharing the same medium.

After all, humans are mostly water.

Up above, she was aware that a damn burst inside her cunt, a spray of pure water that flooded her channel, as it had Rin and Miki. When Hana opened her eyes, the wet tears still flowing, she smiled, and the women no longer held her down. Miki swung a leg over her mother's face, a hair slit lowering itself down, and Hana's mouth opened hugely to catch the moisture that trickled from her.

When the police arrived, they found the bodies of the family in a single room, utterly dessicated. There was some curiosity at that; but the country had experienced unusually dry conditions, and every fan in the house was going, ensuring constant air flow. With the heat, no one really questioned where the water had gone.

Asenath smiled as she took another sip of water. Then she spat it onto the candle, and the flame was doused immediately.