The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

If you’ve read this far I’m going to take it as a given that you’re invested in this story. That being said there is no hot scene in this chapter. It is strictly about Sharon coming home and dealing with home issues. It’s drama. It’s character development, which I like to write about. It was supposed to be part of a greater chapter. That greater chapter got too long. Enough said.

I hope you enjoy. And I hope you keep reading. And if you don’t…whatever.

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Standard disclaimers apply.

Chapter 9 Home Matters

The memory of a mother lost. No not lost. She wasn’t lost. She was alive, somewhere. She had to be alive. She had to… Sharon’s mind drifted to thoughts of her mother, Ursula Lopez, a beauty, stern eyes that at the same time could shine with laughter.

She’d ran the house. She may have worked, but none who knew the family doubted that the household was her domain. The family was her pride, her children the joy, the only reason she worked as hard as she did at the jobs that she hated. The long hours she spent, the grueling days cleaning laundry over and over again, only to come home and do almost the same. The children had to do their homework. They had to do well in school. They had to do well in the world, so that they could have the hope of doing better than she could.

Whatever you choose to do make sure you do it well. It was her central rule, repeated a million times in the face of her children, in the face of all opposition.

But she couldn’t always be there. She couldn’t always run the house. She couldn’t always make sure the kids got their homework done. And Pop could be useless sometimes. So the duty of running the house fell often times on Sharon’s shoulders. And when things got bad sometimes it was she who had to fix them. She was hardly perfect at it, but it always seemed to work itself out.

How proud her mother was of her.

Now she was gone, and as the afternoon sun worked its way slowly westward Sharon worked her way into her neighborhood, wondering how much had gone awry with her loss and how much she could really do to fix it.

The house felt quiet. The people spoke in whispers friends, family, neighbors. Some of them had gathered there in the warm Spring afternoon, trying to offer what little reserves of good humor they now had. The heart of the neighborhood had been stolen from them, and so they gathered to show support for a forlorn father and a worried family.

Condolences for a person lost, all borne in a strange and stagnant silence.

It was a middle income house, one story with an attic, bearing a worn greyed pink, rusted chain link fences and a treeless front lawn. It was a living memory, a place where if someone knew it they would see more than the structure. They would know the breath of generations of struggles, wins, losses, and hope…always.

It was a home, her home, Sharon Lopez; college student, daughter, and unbeknownst to her even now, prey.

But that she did not know at the present. Nor if she had known would it have changed much. The neighborhood needed her. The family needed her. Her mother, wherever she was, she needed her.

Things had already begun to fall out of place. That she knew even before she crossed the threshold of her house. As her beat up Chevy had slowly pulled into the driveway of her home her body had felt the change. Her eyes had seen it. The shining din of her mother, how demured the place had seemed without it.

And somehow…somehow during the whole drive over she had expected it.

The interior felt strange, foreign, empty even as those she knew moved about inside it. Everything was so quiet, so different from the usual.

Her Aunt Mercedes was the one closest to the door. Her head turned and her eyes caught Sharon’s. A wan smile came to her face as she rose and approached her.

“Hola, Sharon, it’s nice to see you came. How have you been?”

“I’ve been better, any news on my mom?”

Aunt Mercedes grimaced, her eyes slowly slipped towards the floor. “No” she said as the eyes glanced back towards the kitchen “the police said not to lose hope, but they also said she might be dead.”

Sharon nodded, her eyes staring down at the floor, shifting slowly left and right. “So where’s Anna, Carmen and Immanuel?”

“Anna is in the back with Immanuel. They’re playing, I think. Uncle Cui is with them.”

“And Carmen?”

“Not back from work yet. But she should be home soon.”

Sharon nodded. Her eyes scanning the familiar glazed orange walls and colored stitchings of her home. They fell over family pictures and well worn furniture. Her eyes full with memory. The piano that Carmen had been made to learn because she would do nothing else. A drawing that Anna had made of a forested landscape and the long hours few knew she put in to make it. A picture with little Immanuel staring bleary eyed as a babe in his father’s arms. How proud he had been, Jose Arcadio, her father, his first son, his last child, the memories. Everything was as it was when she had last been here, but something about it was all off. The house had fallen to mess in such a short time, but it was more than that, it was more than her mother’s absence.

A slow realization came to her. “Where’s Pop?”

Aunt Mercedes sighed heavily as she slowly turned and pointed towards the back. She turned back staring at Sharon, “He’s in the garage.”

Sharon headed in that direction. Aunt Mercedes grabbed her by the arm as she passed. Sharon stopped and turned her head towards her. “Sharon” Aunt Mercedes said, “be careful.”

Confusion. “Why?”

“He’s started drinking again.”

Sharon’s eyes slowly hardened. Her jaw closed down like a clamp as she nodded. “I’ll take care of it” she responded levelly.

“Sharon, please be fair to him. Her loss has…he hasn’t slept for the last two days.”

“I’ll take care of it. He’ll be okay, I promise.”

Aunt Mercedes slowly nodded as Sharon pulled herself free of her grasp and turned back towards the small cooking area. Things had to change. Things needed to change.

One action at a time.

Her Pop was a good man. He like her mother put in long hours at work as a day laborer. But alcohol never did him any good. Drinking was something he did a lot of way back. He’d get into bar fights, destroy things, even got arrested once. But he had never hit a woman. It was one of his chief vows.

One that he broke, eventually.

There was one night, and it was the first and last time, that coming home drunk he had gotten into an argument with Ursula. He had struck her. It had only been once, but it had been enough. It was one thing to yell and argue. It was a completely different matter when you hit a woman. Her mother hadn’t seen it like that and neither had he. He had sobered. He had recanted. He had vowed never to drink again.

She’d been there, thirteen she’d seen it, a promise made and kept seven years ago.

But an alcoholic is always a step away from going back, the craving never quite leaves no matter how many years stretch between drinks. She remembered an Alcoholics Anonymous councilor saying that.

As far as Sharon knew this was the first time since that moment.

The screen door snapped closed as Sharon stepped out onto the chipped white painted deck in the back. She smiled and waved to Anna and Immanuel as she worked her way down the short concrete walkway to the garage.

“Hola mi hermana” Immanuel said in Spanish (Hi my sister) as he ran towards her, Anna trying hard to keep up, “Que pasa?”

“Not much” Sharon replied, “I need to take care of Pop right now.”

“Why what’s wrong with him?”

Anna ran up to Immanuel and pulled him aside, Sharon’s little sister casting a knowing eye in her direction. She knew where Sharon was going. She knew what she was going to try to do. “Good luck” she said “Uncle Cui tried. Pop wouldn’t listen.”

Sharon nodded, heading towards the rear door.

The hinges creaked as Sharon pushed open the side door into the garage. Her eyes scanned the dusty confines of the garage, squinting at the intense light radiating from the open garage door. Her father, Jose Arcadio, sat against the grill of the family’s ‘95 Grand Marquis, a near empty bottle of Cuervo locked in his right hand. His eyes stared out at the empty alleyway. Plugged into the back open outlet of the garage was the stereo, a Led Zeppelin tape in the player, the music droning.

Tangerine…Tangerine
Living reflections from a dream
I was her love
She was my queen
And now a thousand years between
Thinking how it used to be
Does she still remember times like these?
To think of us again…
And I do.

Sharon walked over towards the boom box and turned it off.

Her father stirred his eyes looking up and back, bloodshot, not recognizing, his hair a nappy mop. He yelled at her, not knowing who she was, “Heeey, what’s wrong wit’ you-you fucking cunt. Turn dat back on!”

“No.”

She approached him and took a seat on the concrete next to him.

Her father shrugged, took a last swig on the bottle, emptying it and tossing it behind him with a shatter. Sharon couldn’t help but notice there was a lot of broken glass behind him. His breath was heavy, smelling of the pungent aroma of alcohol, his eyes raw red from tears and lack of sleep.

She cast a sympathetic eye and sighed. “Pop, what happened? You look like hell.”

He turned over to her, a confused expression on his face “I dun’ know what yar talking about. I feeeeeel fiiiine…”

“You look like hell.”

He bat an eye at her. “Who da heelllll are you to-to-tell me that? I dun’ even know yu…”

“Yes you do…yes you do…it’s me, Sharon, your daughter.”

He continued, indignant, sniffling, his eyes watering, tearing. His head fell into his chest, away from her.

Sharon turned towards him, grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. “Pop, look at me! Answer me! It’s me, Sharon you daughter. You need to get a hold of yourself.”

Her eyes welled up, tears screaming for the breath of air, but she forced them back, not now, now wasn’t the time for it.

His body slowly slid down from grill and collapsed onto the floor. His head lay parallel with the concrete, his breath ragged.

Sharon sighed, biting her lip. It couldn’t stay like this.

She crawled over next to him and picked him up, moving his back in front of the grill. She knelt in front of him, her eyes looking hard into his.

Two glazed and hardly lucid globes stared back.

She slapped him across the face. “Pop look at me, look at me.”

Her father stirred, recognition for a moment. “Sharon? What’s happened? When did you get here?”

She bit it back. Not now, not now… “Pop” she said, her voice shaking with the effort “ you need to get some sleep. You need to stop drinking.”

“But…”

“No but’s, mom wouldn’t want to see you like this…not when she comes back.”

“She’s not coming back…she’s probably dead…she’s probably dead. The police said it.”

Sharon slapped him again. “She’s not, goddamnit she’s not! You have to believe that. She will come home. You have to believe that.”

“Why do I?”

She sighed, her eyes staring dead into his face. “Because…nothing else helps, that’s all. What you’re doing is hurting everybody Pop.”

Her father turned over and threw up on the floor. His body heaved over and over and over. The hot alcohol dropped from his mouth like a torrent, spreading outward along the plain gray concrete.

Wiping the spittle from his mouth he looked at Sharon. He really looked, nodding. “I’m a mess. I’m such a mess…Oh God…” His body shook, as he dropped onto the floor and into the waste, fresh tears welling up in his eyes.

Sharon lifted him up and dragged him into the sun. The rays fell down upon him, illuminating. He stared up at her, her face lost in the light. “Come on Pop, I’ll get you to you bed. It will help.”

He looked into her, his head slowly nodding. “Help me…”

“Stand up. I can’t carry you. I need your help.”

On shaky legs, one arm over her shoulder Jose Arcadio Lopez worked his way back towards the house, back along the walkway, back up the stairs and inside.

Eyes of family and friends shot up and shined and for the first time in that one long day they truly smiled.

Ursula was home, if not in body through her daughter. Things were changing. Things were getting better.