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 The Nature of Man

   By Kenn Ghannon



   The Rules

   I thought, before we got to the actual reading of this story that we
should set down a couple of ground rules:

   1) This story involves frank and explicit descriptions of sex.  If it is
immoral or illegal in your area to read about topics of this nature, please
quit reading here.  If you don't want to read about topics of this nature,
please quit reading here.  (I don't, by the way, agree with the legal
aspects of this.  I believe that the United States, as a society, has gone
too far in putting the onus of maturity on a rather arbitrary physical age.
I've known 13 year olds who were far more mature than some 40 year olds. 
Of course, this may be the exception to the rule, but still.)

   2) If you are looking for a story where everyone is always happy all of
the time, please find another story.  If you are looking for a story where
everyone is always sad all of the time, please find another story.  Reality
is somewhere in-between these two extremes and I try to write as near to
reality as an erotic fantasy can get.  Do I succeed?  Only you can tell me.

   3) If you are looking for a story that absolutely revolves around sex,
sex, and more sex, please find another story.  I *WON'T* write one of
those. There is sex here, but only as a function of the story.

   4) Everything you read here is fiction.  It never happened, so I am
definitely not writing about YOU.

   If you've read this far, I hope you enjoy this.

   Author's Note

   [This is going to be a long one and only has peripheral information
related to the story, so feel free to skip ahead to the story...]

   First, I wanted to apologize to all the fans of this story (and there
are at least two of you...).  I never meant to go this long without writing
another chapter...I just got caught up in alot of RL stuff and couldn't get
back to this.  Plus, there were a number of wonderful people who were
trying to help me learn how to write -- I thank them profusely for their
efforts especially Katie McN who probably is a little upset with me and a
wonderful person whose name escapes me at the moment but who's incredibly
detailed analysis of a little story I did called 'Pizza' really got me
going back and analyzing my work -- but RL has to take precedence to this
and a lot of (slang for excrement) has been hitting the proverbial fan. 
Hopefully, things will settle down within the next three weeks or so...

   I also found myself needing to take a hiatus from this story.  Chapter 8
was never meant to have three story arcs in it.  The problem, I think, is
that I KNOW how the story is going to end, and I found myself rushing to
get there.  Now, this isn't because I was tired of the characters or tired
of writing the story; I just found myself getting short.  I think it's
because I know where I'm going but I don't know how I'm going to get
there...and sometimes the stories begin getting a life of their own well
off the beaten path.

   Which brings us to the end of the story.  This chapter isn't it.  The
next one isn't going to be it either.  There is a lot of story left to tell
and it's going to take a while to tell it.  I can't promise a chapter a
day, a chapter a week, or even a chapter a month.  I don't want another
chapter 8; I want to tell this story in my time giving it my full and
undivided attention.  I'm going to spend more time editing and cleaning the
story to make sure there are no errors (and there are at least a few --
I've always hated it when I was reading a story and a girl named Brenda
existed in one chapter and she was named Mary Beth in the next.  I'm guilty
of that here; I'm going to do my best so that it never happens again.) and
that the story is what I want to say.

   On a side note, I've always wondered why Roger Zelazny (one of my
favorite authors, may he rest in peace) never 'finished' a story.  You
never got to the point in any of his wonderful stories, books, or novels
where he couldn't come back later, pick up a pen, and start writing again.
I always assumed that it was because he wanted to leave his options open;
he wanted to make sure he could always resume the adventures of a
character. I think, though, that I understand it better now.

   He cared about his characters and couldn't bear the thought of their
adventures ever ending.  I'm like that with Eric, Gwen, Christine...the
whole cast.  I currently don't foresee a true 'ending'...where you find out
where they are 30 years in the future or whatever.  I'm not sure there will
ever be a 'book 2', but I don't want there to be a time when there is no
Eric, Gwen, Christine and so on.  They are far too personal to me.

   On that note, let's see what fate has in store for them next...

   Dedicated with respect to Frank Downey

   --Kenn Ghannon, 21 Oct 03



   Chapter 9: In hidden moments

   For a very long time, Eric sat, back pressed against the wooden
headboard of his bed, arms dangling by his sides, and stared vacantly at
the door his cousin had left by.

   Nice?  Brave?  Him?  He hadn't done anything to deserve being called
those things.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  He was nothing more than
a failure.  A big, fat, brutish failure.  He had failed to do the only
thing his mother had ever asked of him.  He had failed to protect
Christine. He had failed to take care of his family.  Of course, his mother
had said to take care of his sister but Eric knew intuitively that it
wasn't so much what his mother had said as what she meant that mattered. 
Besides, wasn't Christine like his sister now?

   He had failed.  Failed miserably.  His father was right.  He was
worthless.  A weak worthless coward not worth the pot to piss in.  And to
hide his weakness, his failure, he had attacked someone.  He had attacked
the person who had shown him how weak he was.  He had dredged up all the
hatred and anger that his father had used every day and had attacked Evan.
Evan hadn't been the problem.  It wasn't Evan's fault that he had been so
weak.  The fault lied within him.  Within his very soul.  If it had not
been for this weakness he would have been able to stop Evan; he would have
been able to protect his sister.

   His sister.

   Eric's thoughts drifted back, going deeper and further into his memory.
It wasn't memory, though.  Not really.  He couldn't really remember the day
itself very clearly -- he had only been 5 or 6 years old.  Things were very
different to someone that young; it was difficult for an older mind to
firmly grasp the thoughts that churned within someone younger.

   In his mind's eye, though, he was standing with his mother.  Her arm was
draped lovingly around him, holding him close.  A warm sun blazed across
him, blurring his vision.  Everything around him seemed at once real and
unreal, flickering in a halo of frosted light.  The sunlight seemed to
blind him slightly, yet he could still see clearly somehow.  The wonder of
it tugged at his consciousness, but he pushed all thought aside to live
within that single moment.

   The room smelled sugary and sweet, the scent of honey.  It lapped at the
periphery of his senses, a small thing yet seemingly so important.  The
scent of his mother, the perfume she wore, intermingled with it.  Hers was
a flowery perfume, so light and airy that you could never even be sure it
was there but made all the more real because of it.  He loved that smell,
the way it seemed to play with your nose.

   The way his mother's arm draped around his shoulders, the warmth of her
body and the sun, the smell of her perfume combined to make him feel happy.
He felt comfortable and cared for.  At peace with all the world.  In a
word, he felt safe.

   Before him was a crib and as he looked down into it he saw a vision. 
Something that looked so radiant it could not possibly be real.  It was the
perfect image of a baby, asleep.  A small, white coverlet was tucked
lovingly around it seemingly caressing the soft, beautiful skin.  It's eyes
were closed and you could just barely make out the soft gurgling of its
infantile snores.  As the sunlight struck it, the baby seemed to take on a
light of its own, outshining the sun.  It was simply perfect.

   "This is your sister, Gwen, Eric," his mother's appropriately hushed
voice said to him.  Her voice had always seemed so shrill, so lost.  But
now, her voice was strong and vibrant even in its hushed tone.  It made her
seem happy and proud, and her arm clenched around him just a little tighter
as she spoke.

   For a long time they stood there, just staring down at his little
sister. The room seemed to grow even warmer and more comforting as time
went on.  It was a perfect moment that lasted for days...and Eric was happy
to let it last as long as it wanted.  With his mother holding him and his
sister laying before him, life simply could not get more happy or more
perfect.

   The sound of the slamming of a door somewhere outside the perfect little
room changed that.  The sun hid and the room grew cold.  The light that had
given the room an ethereal quality suddenly turned to frost.  Even the
walls around him seemed closer and tighter.  His mother's arm, which had
once seemed so comforting and protective now seemed heavy and clinging.  It
pulled at him, pulled him hard against her, almost choking the air from his
chest.

   Everything seemed to darken and decay before him.  The white paint of
the crib peeled back to reveal the gnarled roots of an old, rotting, dead
tree.  The white coverlet surrounding his sister turned a dark, sinister
black and seemed now to clutch at her more than simply covering her. 
Around him the rooms walls ran the dark red of blood as if they knew that
the time to bleed had come.  Smoke filled his nostrils, and he gagged and
choked, unable to draw clean air.

   He heard footsteps slowly thudding up the stairs outside.  Pounding,
pounding as they ascended.  Each deepening thud brought them further and
further, closer to where his mother and he stood.

   "Where are you bitch?" came the voice of his father, but the sound
seemed to take on a sinister quality he had never heard before.  It was a
carnal, gutteral sound as of a raging beast barely able to contain itself.
It sent a shiver through him and his mother's arm pulled him even tighter
to her.

   He turned to look at the vibrant beauty that was his mother, but now all
he saw was a poor, beaten-down, old lady.  Fear and loathing owned that
face, written plainly across the cracks and crags within it.  He watched as
she turned to the door, the light of her eyes dimming and fading until
nothing was left.  The fear that crossed her face as the thudding footsteps
grew closer scared him.  He wanted to run, but his mother's arm held him so
tightly he couldn't even move.

   The thundering footsteps stopped suddenly, but rather than feeling
relief, a great fear overcame him.  The silence was ominous in its
intensity.  He watched helplessly as the cracked, beaten face of his mother
turned slowly to the great, black door of the room.  As he turned his own
eyes to that door, it seemed to grow harder somehow, more sinister.  It was
foreboding, and angry, a testament to pure evil.

   The distraught face of his mother turned to him, a forbidding sorrow
filling her eyes.  As he watched, a small droplet of blood rolled down from
her hairline.  He was mesmerized by it, slowly rolling down her forehead.
Soon, it was followed by another, and then another.  The blood just seemed
to keep flowing, coming from some unseen place.  Absently, his mother wiped
at the blood not really understanding what it was.  But all she managed to
do was smear it across her forehead.

   "Eric, my Eric," her voice had resumed the shrill listlessness of
hopeless despair.  He could not manage to look away as yet more blood
seeped from her hair.  It held him enthralled, unable to take his eyes from
it.  He was unable to see anything but the flow of blood from her hairline
as it grew steadily stronger, flowing a rich red.  "You're Gwen's
protector, Eric." His mother wiped harder at the blood crossing her
forehead, but it was just smearing everywhere.  Soon her forehead was
coated with a smeared layer of dark, rich, red blood.  "You have to protect
her, Eric.  That's your job.  Promise me, Eric.  Promise me to always watch
out for your sister.  Promise me..."

   Her voice faded into the background as his attention was pulled to the
door.  If anything, it looked darker now.  It bulged and struggled with its
frame as if it were alive.  Something was behind that door.  Something was
coming that was strong and dark.

   Suddenly, the door slammed open and his father was there, but not quite
the father he had remembered.  This man was tall and strong, built thick
around the chest and arms.  An ogre of a man.  He wore a football helmet
that partially obscured the dark, leathery folds of his evil little face; a
face that Eric could not really recognize but that seemed all too familiar.
An awful sneer crossed his features making him look even more disturbing
than before.

   Eric shrank in horror from that face, not knowing what to do.  He wanted
with all his being to run, but his mother clutched and grabbed at him,
keeping him at her side, holding him in place.  His eyes were glued to the
malevolent face that was and was not his father.  He couldn't turn away
from the stark foulness of that hideous face.  It called to him, beckoned
to him.  It was almost as if he recognized something else in that face. 
Something beyond the evil thing his father had somehow become.  It absorbed
his attention and refused to let him look away.  Then, beneath all the
darkness and evil, beneath all the anger and hatred, he saw it.  The face
behind that evil mask was his own.

   He screamed, loudly, longly.  A pitiful wail that put into sound all the
fear and self-loathing that he had ever felt.  He went on and on even as
breath left him.  It couldn't be.  He could not be that horrid man.  He
could not be like his father.

   And all the time he could hear his mother's shrill voice getting higher
and higher in pitch.  "Promise me, Eric.  Promise to protect Gwen, Eric. 
Promise me."

   In stark terror, he turned to his mother to tell her that he would. 
That he would never let anything hurt Gwen.  That no matter what happened,
not matter how hard he had to work, he would never turn into the evil man
that was his father.  But when he turned he couldn't see his mother's face.
It was all bloody and there was a big hole...

   Eric screamed himself awake.  He couldn't remember falling asleep but he
could remember the nightmare.  It clung to him turning him nauseous with
fear and anguish.  Even as he awoke, he screamed into the daylight.  The
sunlight streaming through his window seemed so cold, so like the frosty
sunlight of his nightmare, and he shivered despite the great runs of sweat
running from his body.  He had not had a nightmare this bad in a long
while.
   It took him a minute to notice Shawn standing just inside his door.