Chapter 3: Special Goodnight Kiss
The silence of the house after the TV was shut off felt thicker than the darkness. Brendan lay in the center of the absurdly large bed, its silk sheets cool and slippery against his skin. The dinosaur posters on the wall watched with faded, cartoonish eyes. He stared at the ceiling, the events on the couch replaying in a dizzying loop—the smell of vanilla, the crushing softness, the whispered words that clung to him like cobwebs.
A soft click echoed from down the hall. His door’s latch.
It opened slowly, without a creak, framing Joslyn in the dim light from the hall sconce. She was a silhouette of impossible curves, backlit into a gargantuan, heart-shaped shadow that spilled across the floor.
“Baby? You awake?”
Her voice was a feathery purr. She shuffled in, the motion an exaggerated, hip-swiveling sashay that made the entire doorway seem too small. The lacy, black robe she wore was a fiction. It hung open, utterly defeated, the belt a limp ribbon dangling at her sides. The two mountainous hemispheres of her implants pushed forward like proud, glossy invaders, each one nearly the size of his head, their weight making the robe’s fabric strain and gape. Below, the dramatic, shelf-like curve of her BBL jutted out, a perfect, exaggerated orb that brushed against the doorframe as she entered.
“Just wanted to tuck you in,” she whispered, as if sharing a secret. “Like I used to when you were little.”
She moved toward the bed, each step a careful negotiation between her towering heels and the unstable geography of her own body. Her hips swung in wide, pendulum arcs. As she reached the nightstand, her left buttock bumped it. A glass of water he’d left there wobbled precariously, sloshing over the edge. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Oopsie,” she breathed, a giggle in her throat. “Still a little clumsy.”
Before he could speak, she sat on the edge of the mattress. The entire bed groaned and tilted, sliding him toward her. She kicked off her heels, then swung her legs up, climbing onto the bed on all fours. The movement was a slow, seismic event. The robe fell completely open, offering a naked, uninterrupted view of her body—the freakish, Barbie-doll proportions, the tan lines stark against artificially smooth skin, the overwhelming, confrontational reality of her enhancements.
She crawled over him, a perfumed eclipse. The vanilla-candy scent was overpowering. Her hair tickled his chest. One enormous breast, cool and firm as a overripe melon, brushed against his arm.
“There,” she sighed, settling onto her side next to him, propping her head on a hand. Her other hand came to rest on his stomach, fingers splayed. “All comfy?”
“Mom, I’m not five,” he managed, his voice tight.
“Shhh. Everyone needs tucking in.” Her fingers began to make slow, small circles on his abdomen. “You seemed so tense earlier. All knotted up.” Her gaze traveled over his face, down his body, and back up. Her plump, glistening lips curved into a pout. “You have… stresses. I can see it. College stresses. Girl stresses.”
Her hand drifted lower, tracing the waistband of his pajama pants. Her touch was proprietorial.
“A mother knows,” she murmured. Her eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. “A good mother… takes care of everything. Makes all the bad feelings go away.” She leaned in closer. Her breast pressed heavily against his ribs. “I could make it all disappear, Brendan. My special touch. Just for you. Nobody ever has to know.”
She dipped her head. Her inflated lips, slick with gloss, met his cheek in a wet, lingering kiss. It wasn’t maternal. It was a slow, deliberate smear. She held it there, breathing him in, letting him feel the full, cushiony pressure of her mouth. When she pulled back, she left a cool, sticky imprint.
“Sleep tight, my special boy,” she whispered, her voice dripping with a dumb, unsubtle promise. She finally rolled away, making a great show of getting up—arching her back, letting the robe fall completely away to showcase the full, bouncing, ridiculous panorama of her body before gathering the fabric with a giggle. “Dream of mommy.”
She padded out, closing the door softly behind her. The room swam with her scent.
Brendan lay frozen, the sticky kiss cooling on his skin. His heart hammered against his sternum. The silence returned, but it was different now—charged, poisonous.
Exhaustion eventually dragged him under, but his sleep was not an escape. It was a descent.
He dreamt he was back on the couch, but the house was silent, empty. Joslyn was there, but she was different—more herself, yet less. A caricature in high definition. She didn’t speak. She just smiled her glossy, vacant smile and reached for him.
In the dream, his own hands moved without his command. They grasped the impossible curves of her waist, his fingers sinking into the firm, foreign fat of her BBL. She melted against him, a sigh escaping her pillowed lips. Her skin was hot, slick with oil.
The dream had no logic, only sensation. A frantic, grinding collision of bodies that defied physics. Her breasts were everywhere, suffocating, magnificent. Her mouth was a hungry, wet o. She chanted his name, over and over, a mantra that twisted into a childish lullaby. The room blurred, the dinosaur posters leered, the model rocket on the desk vibrated and shook.
It was grotesque. It was riveting. A dizzying carnival ride of flesh and need, utterly devoid of tenderness, soaked in a dumb, desperate hunger. She looked at him with adoring, empty eyes, her hands clutching at him as if he were a life raft in a sea of her own making.
He awoke with a jolt, gasping, the silk sheets tangled around his legs. The room was pre-dawn grey. His body was tense, humming with a sick, adrenalized shame. The ghost of the dream clung to him—the feel of artificial flesh, the taste of vanilla and salt, the sound of her whispering voice.
He threw the sheets back and sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. The model rocket on the desk was a stark, skeletal silhouette. A thing forever incomplete, grounded.
Down the hall, he heard the faint, cheerful sound of Joslyn humming in the kitchen. The smell of bacon began to seep under his door.
It was just a dream.
But the stickiness on his cheek, where she had kissed him, was real. And the hum in the kitchen was a siren’s song, pulling him back toward the shore of her world. A part of him, a deep, shameful part he refused to name, still thrummed with the dream’s forbidden electricity. He was disgusted. He was awake.
And he was, in some horrifying way, hers.