A Good Boy by JK Mill - NSFW

Content Notice: READER BEWARE! INCEST, SUICIDE, SEXUAL ASSAULT.

He’s such a good boy, I think as I watch him from the window.

He’s strong but sweet, my Caleb. He is my whole heart. He’s making incredible progress at his task, his broad shoulders and big arms flexing and unflexing as he works in the field behind the house.

It was never supposed to happen. I didn’t plan it, and gentle Caleb, all of 19 innocent years, certainly didn’t either. We’re good people, we love God and His Only Son. We pray together, read our daily devotions together, and drive the thirty miles to the Life Fellowship in town together every Sunday.

It was the Devil, corrupter of Eve, and Father of Lies. That’s what Pastor Amos calls him.

We pray for our souls, and those of all sinners, and we pray for the everlasting soul of Joseph, who died 10 years ago last summer, in the very field Caleb is labouring in now. We buried him close by where he died. Caleb lost a father, and I lost a loving, devoted husband. There’s been an abyss in our hearts for a decade, but the Lord sustains us.

And we sustain each other. We’ve had no choice but to lift one another up through the trials and tribulations of keeping the farm running while I got a part-time job in town and Caleb kept up with his studies. Those were hard years, but the Lord graced us with the will to carry on, just as Joseph would have exhorted us to. We toiled and we cried as we faced drought, broken machinery, and the long lonely nights without the head of the household.

As a single mother, it wasn’t easy to raise Caleb— and a boy needs a father — but I never remarried. The Lord didn’t see fit to put a man pious, strong, or industrious in my path. It seems men these days have become soft, complacent, and impatient. They sip fancy coffees in a waiting room while another man, a man who knows the value of hard work, fixes their tiny electric cars. They take no interest in the lives of their children, playing games on the computer well into their forties. Sometimes they do it in their mothers’ houses!

But not my Caleb, not my good boy, I think as I watch him in his undershirt and boxer shorts. His clothes — his Sunday best — are folded neatly on the picnic table in the backyard, between the field and the house.

He’s like Joseph in so many ways, even though they differ so much in appearance: Joseph dark-haired and -eyed; Caleb with hair like straw and eyes like cornflowers. Joseph instilled righteousness, devotion, and perseverance in him, and he’s an upright young man. He never touched the drugs the other children at the high school reeked of, or the ones that destroy your teeth and make you crazy. You would never catch him necking with a girl in the backseat of a car at the drive-in, or God save us, getting a girl pregnant.

No, not Caleb. Up early for chores, then either to school or church. When he comes home, it’s more chores, then homework and he and I will watch a show before he turns in. He’s aware he’s behind the kids his age — that first year he spent almost no time in school and had to repeat — and he’s made sure not to fall behind again. He would graduate next month if things had turned out differently.

If the Devil hadn’t infiltrated our little homestead, if he hadn’t come with his pitchfork and his pack full of sin. He gets around, does Lucifer. 

He’s visited me before.

My reverie is broken when the kettle whistles, and I pour myself a cup of tea. Watching the boiling water stream into the cup, steam rising from it, makes me think of heat. Heat leads to sin, sure as reaping follows planting. In Dante’s bottom of hell, the Devil chews on the traitors as he’s trapped in ice, Pastor Amos told us in one of his sermons. But what does that ancient Italian know? He was a Papist who lusted after a woman, so much so he blasphemed by making her a Christ figure.

No, the Devil is a snake whose scales sizzle and smoke with fire. A demon with burning coals for eyes who reigns over flames and boiling pits in the real hell.

Pastor Amos told us that too, and I believe him. His already red skin — he’s so fair and never remembers to wear a hat in the sun — absolutely blazes when he’s sharing the Good Word from the pulpit, his blond hair flying as he waves his hands and reminds us that the sinners will burn. That we must always be on guard against the Devil, who appears in that rock noise they call music, in the filth on the television, in casinos, bars, and bedrooms.

A righteous man, Amos is. Not as disciplined as Joseph, but full of passion for the Lord and for his flock. He was our Peter, our Rock, when Joseph died, and took Caleb under his wing. He took him fishing and hunting, and allowed him to join Bible study even before his baptism in the river, an exception to Amos’s rule.

I sit down at the kitchen table and sip my tea. I’ll need to drink faster than usual, because Caleb won’t be long finishing, and then my chores will start. He’s making quick work of his task because he’s strong and determined with his work. Work that shouldn’t be necessary.

Because it never should have happened. Not again.

I heard there’s a handsome British man playing the Devil on the TV, and of course he owns a bar, and of course he sleeps around. You know Satan was in that TV studio. In reality though, sometimes the Devil comes as a snake, as with Eve. Sometimes as a man, like Hitler or Osama Bin Laden, or as a woman, like that awful Hillary Clinton. And sometimes, he’s in the people we know.

Like Caleb. Even my sweet, beautiful boy wasn’t spared. What else but the Devil’s dirty influence made him go strutting naked as the day he was born, from the bathroom we share to his bedroom last night? Didn’t even take the time to dry, just stepped out wet and glistening — also just like when he was born — and swaggering down the hallway, when he knew I was in my study, reading the latest by James Dobson.

I was so taken back I nearly dropped my book. This is what I get, I supposed, for leaving my door open. I normally don’t. I must have forgotten to close it after Caleb told me he was going to shower.

“What the blazes are you doing, Caleb?” I exclaimed when I had recovered somewhat from the shock of seeing him flaunting his nakedness. “You’re not decent!”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said in his angelic voice.

The best singer in the pews, I think, and Pastor Amos agrees. He has a strong, manly baritone that makes Onward Christian Soldiers a real battlecry for the Lord.

“I didn’t notice there were no towels…”

“Then, boy, you could have called out, and I would have left one by the door,” I say. “Now, get going!”

“But Mother, I…” he started.

But I will take no insolence from a child, even my own flesh and blood. I rose quickly from my chair and strode into the hallway, closing the door behind me. I got right into his face, staring into those big blue eyes.

“But nothing!” I said. “This is sinful, parading around naked in front of your mother. I’d expect it from those heathens in town, but I know I raised you better than that!”

“Mother, I thought I could get to my bedroom,” he said, his chin high.

“Oh you’ll be going, by Jesus,” I said. “To your bedroom, and over my knee. March.”

I followed behind him. He made no effort to cover his buttocks. The Devil was surely in him. Once in his bedroom, I sat on his bed, and tapped my thigh. He knew what that means; he’s known since he was five and thought it the world’s greatest idea to use the living room wall as the canvas for his Crayolas.

He didn’t hesitate, just positioned himself over my knee, as if it hadn’t been a good five or six years since he’s needed correction this way.

Maybe Lucifer hasn’t completely consumed him, I thought.

“Ten,” I decided, and started spanking him good and hard.

Joseph didn’t believe in sparing the rod — neither for his wife nor his son — and neither do I. He’s well-muscled, my Caleb, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to skin and the sensitive nerves just under it. He grunted and whimpered with each blow, and after number five, he turned to look up at me.

There was lust in his eyes, I swear it on my father’s Bible. At first I thought I must be mistaken — who would be lustful being bent over his mother’s knee for good Christian discipline? — and that it was pain in his eyes, but I surmised Satan was still in him.

Even if he had not completely taken over, he was shining a lecherous light from my Caleb’s eyes. And he was shaking, positively vibrating with lust.

“Begone!” I shouted as I struck him for the sixth time, hard enough to strain my arm and shoulder. “Leave my boy alone, fiend!”

But he didn’t stop leering at me, even after I reached ten blows. My shoulder and arm ached and I was breathing hard, but I kept going.

His misty eyes started to shine.

I had to stop after 15 blows, my muscles and lungs on fire. He stood, towering above me. His…manhood was between us, at the level of my face. A big, filthy, disgusting thing, all red purple and full of veins.

His eyes still shining, Caleb leaned toward me, arms outstretched.

“Take that dirty….thing…away from me!” I shouted. But he didn’t.

“Momma,” he said, his voice wavering and full of lust. “I just need…”

But I didn’t hear the end of it, because that dirty, filthy thing was on my lips and my mind went blank. It sounded like I just need a tug (where did he learn such nasty language?).

I put my hands on him. His manhood, this thing, was in my mouth, pushing past my lips, brushing my tongue. I remember a salty, clean taste, and the silkiness of the skin sheathing the steel beneath, but that’s all. My mind was still mostly black, from the shock of the whole dirty ordeal.

I was wrong before. He was fully consumed by Satan. The Devil had completely consumed my son, this I knew for sure. How else to explain that when I finally came to my senses, I was naked on his bed?

That my hair — which had been done modestly, as always, in a bun — was a mess on his pillow?

That I could still taste that salt and soap on my tongue?

That my bosoms were red, the tips painfully stiff?

That my womanhood, which I am almost never aware of, was engorged and wet?

That I could feel something dripping from it?

It took me a moment before I realized what Caleb had done. What the Devil, taking charge of him, had done. That this was Satan’s seed running from my most private, my most dirty place?

Caleb was not in the room. I stood, then had to steady myself with a hand on the wall. My legs felt like rubber. As I composed myself, I saw my clothes heaped in the corner and was dismayed. My favourite blouse, the one with the buttons made in the shape of crosses, a matching long skirt, my modest undergarments — white, never coloured — had been tossed in the corner. On top of the pile I saw a number of those beautiful buttons.

I picked up my undergarments and saw both had tears. I put them and the skirt on, and then my blouse. Pulling it closed, I started back to my bedroom, keeping an eye out for Caleb. The Father of Lies might still be in him.

“God help us,” I muttered as I made it to the refuge of my own bedroom, and quickly changed into my nightgown.

After a few seconds’ thought, I also put on my only pair of pants — Christian women shouldn’t wear pants, just look at what that’s led to, those awful “leggings” showing off everything that should be covered — and a wooly sweater.

I sat on the bed, trying to remember what had happened. I don’t recall much. I must have been hysterical as I was overcome. I have flashes of shouted commands, of hot flesh on me, of high-pitched screams, and exhortations to the Lord.

I eventually walked through the house, but Caleb was not there. I was relieved; the temptation might return. I made sure all of the doors and windows were locked, and went to bed.

And dreamed of cornflowers in the field behind the house.

Caleb came back from the truck — he slept there overnight with a pillow and blankets from the linen closet — a few hours ago. His fair face was white, and his eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

“Mama, what happened?” he burst out when he saw me sitting at the kitchen table, reading my devotions. He hasn’t called me Mama for ten years or more. “What happened?”

I could tell the Devil had left him. His shoulders were slumped, and there was none of the swagger from last night. His hair was tussled and sticking up wildly in places, just as it had when he was a small boy, tossing and turning on his pillow. The light had left his eyes.

“The Devil is what happened, son,” I said, and stood to embrace him. I’m still wearing the pants and the sweater; my gumboots are by the door. Something came over his face then, a shadow, but so quick it may not have actually been there. He hugged me, and starting sobbing.

“There, there, Caleb,” I said, caressing the back of his head, smoothing his wild hair. I let him hold me for a few moments, then pushed him back and held him at arms’ length, my hands on his firm biceps. So forlorn, so ashamed that he had allowed himself to be corrupted in body and soul, he flinched at my touch.

I told him to sit, and he winced as he did.

We spoke for a spell about what the Devil had done to him.

“But you know what has to happen now, my son,” I said.

He nodded before casting down his eyes. I used a finger to lift his head back up, and he winced again, even though surely his chin didn’t hurt the way his bottom would. “Tell me you know.”

“I know,” he said, his voice trembling. “I know, Mama.”

He rose to collect his Sunday clothes.

I don’t flinch when I hear the crack of Joseph’s old .22. I set down my tea and sigh. There’s a lot to do:

I need to fill in the hole my son is lying in. I need to not look at the wreck of his face, of the brains and blood in his beautiful golden hair. It’s easy enough to shovel the dirt in without looking in the hole until the body is covered; I knew this from experience.

Joseph’s head was a wreck, his arms and legs askew because he fell in the hole he had dug after pulling the trigger. Mercifully, Caleb was in school that day, and I filled in the hole, and told Caleb about the horse kicking him. He wept over the grave, and had brought fresh flowers every week since.

After my work in the field, I am going to need to shower, so I will need to remember to put towels back in the bathroom. The ones under my bed will need to come out or they will collect dust. And pick up my clothes from Caleb’s floor. There will be no dust, dirt, or disorder in my household, I think as I take off my dirty boots at the door. Cleanliness is next to Godliness; that’s what Amos says.

Speaking of which, I need to call the Life Fellowship and tell his father that Caleb is dead.

My angel Caleb, in his rightful place with God now, and with Joseph in the Kingdom Everlasting. They will be close in heaven, close enough to embrace. Here on Earth, where the sinners live, they are near, but not so near they can touch.

My beautiful Caleb, my whole heart, will never know he’s buried three yards to the south of the man he thought was his father.

I lean the shovel and the rifle against the house by the door — they may be needed again today — and re-read the note Caleb wrote after our talk, unbidden. The note tells me he needs to go out into the world. That he’s sorry, but a man needs to make his own way, out of his mother’s house. That he is thankful for my loving discipline and for keeping him on God’s straight and narrow path, lessons that will serve him as a man on his own. That he loves me and will pray for me.

He’s such a good boy.