THE COUNTDOWN
"My aunt always looked at me like I was a dog — until the day I proved I had teeth."
The room smelled strongly of my mother’s perfume — that sweet floral scent she wore on special occasions. Three huge suitcases lay open on the floor, plane tickets to Europe scattered across the coffee table. Paris. Madrid. The same speech as always: “family issues,” “grandma’s inheritance,” “we need to sort this out in person.” Blah, blah, blah. The same rehearsed conversation I had already memorized.
What really mattered was one thing: they were going to disappear for three whole weeks.
Three weeks without supervision. Three weeks of silence, an empty house, walking around naked in the kitchen while frying an egg at three in the morning. It would be paradise. It would have been, if it weren’t for…
I already knew what was coming next. It was always the same thing. Why would this time be any different?
“So everything’s settled, Lucas. Margaret is already expecting you.”
Those words hit me like a punch to the stomach. Her name echoed in my head like a hammer driving a nail.
“Dad, come on!” My voice came out higher than I wanted. I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, trying to look older than I felt. “I’m already eighteen. I can stay by myself just fine. I’ll take care of the house, pay the bills, no parties, nothing. I swear.”
My father didn’t even look up. His fingers worked on the zipper of a suitcase, pulling it hard.
“Lucas, look…” He sighed, the sigh of someone already tired of explaining. “We’ve already talked about this. You’re still irresponsible. Last week you left the gas on. You almost burned down the kitchen.”
“It was one time!” The words escaped hot, and I felt the blood rising up my neck. “I learned. And Mom trusts me.”
My mother appeared at the bedroom door, a leather toiletry bag in her hand. Her look was the same as always — the one that said everything was already decided, and I was just a detail in the equation.
“Lucas, sweetheart, Aunt Margaret offered her house.” Her voice was soft but firm. “It’s better this way. She lives alone, there’s space. You need supervision, and she can give you that. Oregon isn’t that far by plane, and her house is peaceful. You’ll be fine. You’ll have company.”
“Peaceful.”
The word made me nauseous. A bitter taste rose in my throat.
I hated that house. Isolated as fuck, surrounded by trees so tall they seemed to swallow the sun. A shitty little town called Ashland, Oregon — the kind of place where you could scream your lungs out and no one would hear. The kind of place that seemed made for bad things to happen without witnesses.
And I hated Aunt Margaret even more.
To be honest, even today I never fully understood why. I have no blood tie to the family. I was adopted around the age of four — I entered that house as a stranger they learned to call their son. My parents couldn’t — and actually still can’t — have children, and even though they had enough money to choose good genetics, they chose me. From an orphanage. But I won’t brag — I don’t think I’m ugly, and the girls I hook up with don’t think so either. They say I have a huge “friend” down there, and I won’t deny it.
But Aunt Margaret… She always hated me.
Ever since I joined the family, she never missed a chance to step on me. To call me useless. To say I wasn’t a man. To treat me like a stray dog that showed up in the backyard and no one had the courage to kick out. She seemed to take pleasure in it, or… I don’t know, maybe something repressed? I don’t understand much about social psychology; the only thing I understood was that I wanted that redheaded bitch to go fuck herself with all her might.
Unfortunately, where we lived, she was the closest relative. So that was it. It had always been that way. The only thing I know about her is that she got divorced — which is obvious. What kind of man could stand that woman?
“I don’t want to go there,” I muttered, but I already knew it was useless. “She treats me like I’m a dog.”
My mother sighed, her floral perfume spreading through the air.
“Oh, sweetheart… She’s strict, but she’s a good person. Some discipline will do you good.” Her hand touched my shoulder, light as a feather. “Now stop complaining and go pack your backpack. The Uber will be here in forty minutes.”
I clenched my teeth. I took a deep breath, the air burning in my lungs. I went up the stairs stomping my feet, each step creaking as if the house itself was tired of me.
In my room, I threw clothes into the backpack angrily. Wrinkled t-shirts, jeans, worn-out sneakers, phone charger. The backpack filled up, but the anger didn’t lessen.
While closing the zipper, my mind was already traveling. Images of Aunt Margaret invaded my head without permission — as they always did, like an infection I couldn’t cure.
Psychologically, that woman was the most fucked-up thing I had ever seen. I don’t know how she could be my mother’s sister — such a sweet, loving woman. It must be that yin-yang thing. Light and darkness on the same family tree.
But physically… I hated to admit it, but she was a spectacle. She was around forty-five, forty-seven — something like that. A flaming redhead, hair like melted fire, freckles scattered across skin so pale it looked like milk. Two massive tits that bounced when she walked, even wearing a metal armor of a bra. Her ass was perky, thick thighs, waist still slim for her age.
In short: a fucking hot piece of ass who knew exactly the effect she caused. And I bet she used that to humiliate me ever since I was a kid. Because I still remember the day she caught me staring at her tits. I was fifteen at the time, and her words were like an arrow: “Poor thing, you like my tits that much? I must be the main attraction in your jerk-off sessions.”
Her voice echoed in my head like a worn-out recording:
“You’re nothing but a useless brat, Lucas.”
“You’re not even part of our family, you don’t deserve an ounce of my respect.”
“While you’re in my house, you’ll obey like a real man — or at least try to be one.”
“Look at you, still jerking off in secret thinking about me, I bet.”
“What? Staring at my tits again, you pervert? You’re going to jerk off after this, aren’t you? Disgusting… That’s the only way you’ll ever have me.”
I had lost count of how many times she made me feel like nothing. Superior looks. Cutting comments in front of my parents while they just laughed. Giggles when I did something wrong. Years of poison. Years of repressed anger in my chest, fermenting like rotten wine.
This time it wasn’t going to be the same. Not even close.
I wasn’t the fourteen-year-old kid who lowered his head anymore. I was eighteen now. A defined body from working out to vent. A weight between my legs that had already made some girls at school very happy — and that they all praised. And a head full of very dirty ideas about how to make that arrogant redhead pay for every word, every laugh, every look of contempt if I got the chance.
The Uber arrived. My parents hugged me quickly — dry hugs from people whose minds were already in Paris. They gave me stupid recommendations that I didn’t listen to. They got in the car, and I stood on the sidewalk, watching the car disappear around the curve of the street.
Then I got into the other Uber my mother had called, the one that would take me to the regional airport. The driver was a bald guy with a face that said he didn’t want conversation. Perfect, I hate making small talk in Ubers…
During the trip, I stayed quiet. The windows fogged up with the humidity, and I drew circles on the cold surface with my fingertip. The landscape passed too quickly — roads, poles, cars. But my head was somewhere else.
The closer I got to Oregon, the more my anger mixed with something else. A kind of cold calm I didn’t know how to name. I imagined her opening the door — that body I hated desiring. Short shorts, her nipple almost showing through the thin fabric, the freckles descending into her cleavage.
And this time, I wasn’t going to look away.
This time, I was going to be the one looking down.
After hours of getting out of one vehicle and into another, the house appeared at the end of a dirt road that seemed to swallow the car. Big, dark wood, surrounded by trees so tall that the sun could barely pass through. Isolated as fuck, the trees like a wall of thorns. Perfect… Worthy of a cheap horror movie set. The difference? The cruelty was the same, only the monster in this movie was a hot forty-something.
I paid the driver and got out with the backpack on my shoulder. The Oregon air was different — colder, denser, as if the forest itself was breathing. The front door opened before I even knocked.
Aunt Margaret was there.
Exactly like the image burned into my head for years. Her flaming red hair loose over her shoulders, pale skin dotted with freckles like a map of constellations. She wore a black silk robe — too short for a “family woman.” Her tits almost spilling out of the neckline, her thick, toned legs showing up to mid-thigh. At forty-five, she was still a dangerous piece of ass. And she knew it. She knew the Uber driver had looked. And she liked it. The sparkle in her eyes said it all — the pleasure of being seen, of being desired, of being untouchable.
“Look who’s here,” she said, her voice sweet-poisoned, her breath heavy with alcohol. The many wines she bought every week. “The useless nephew… Come in, Lucas. I don’t want dust getting into the living room.”
I entered without saying a word. Her scent — expensive citrus perfume mixed with red wine — hit me like a punch to the chest. It stuck in my nostrils, an odor that was both intoxicating and repulsive.
“Your parents told me everything,” she continued, closing the door and turning the key. The sound of the metal clicking echoed too loudly, the sound of a cage closing. “Three weeks. You know how it works. You’ll follow my rules. Set times to wake up, eat, sleep. No mess, no porn on my Wi-Fi, and you’ll help with the housework. Understood?”
She stopped in front of me, crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up on purpose. She measured me from head to toe as if I were a stray dog that had come in through the wrong door.
“Yes, Aunt Margaret,” I replied, forcing a neutral tone. My voice came out calm, but inside my mind was already boiling like a pressure cooker.
“You have no idea what I want to do to you right now, you arrogant bitch,” I thought.
She smiled, satisfied. The kind of smile from someone who is sure she’s going to win.
“Great. Your room is the same as always. Drop your backpack there and come help in the kitchen. Dinner isn’t going to make itself.”
As I went up the stairs behind her, my eyes glued to that ass swaying inside the short robe. Each step made the fabric ride up a little more, revealing the lower curve, the pale skin. I felt the blood rush downward, a hot weight forming between my legs. Under any other circumstances, I would have felt disgusted to get hard over my own aunt. But this one… no, she deserved it. Besides, technically, we weren’t even blood-related. I mean, if it were anyone else, under any other circumstances, the reaction would be disgusting. But not her. She was different. She had done this to me.
In the room, I threw the backpack on the bed and stood still for a second, breathing deeply. The house was silent — just the wind in the trees outside, a distant whisper that seemed to come from another world. No one for kilometers. No one to hear. No one to save.
I took out my phone and opened the gallery. A hidden folder, named after some random game. Inside, the photos I had secretly taken of her years ago — her changing clothes, getting out of the shower, sleeping in shorts. I kept everything. I hate to admit it, but those photos had kept me company many times alone at home, on the nights when anger and lust twisted into a knot that only my hands knew how to untie.
“This time I’m not letting it slide, Aunt Margaret.” I closed the gallery.
I went down the stairs slowly, each step creaking under my feet. She was in the kitchen, with her back to me, chopping vegetables with a large knife in a steady rhythm. The robe had ridden up, showing the lower curve of her ass — the pale skin, the freckles that went down to where the fabric hid them. No panties, it seemed.
My blood boiled. Anger, hatred, lust — all mixed into a cocktail that burned in my veins. It was hard to believe that a person like this existed, that even a whore dressed with more decency when there was a man in the house. But from the way she talked, I guess she didn’t even consider me a man. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was why she felt so comfortable showing herself off like that.
“I’m here,” I said, my voice coming out harsher than I wanted.
She turned her face, the freckles highlighted by the yellowish kitchen light. A superior smile on her lips.
“Then start washing yesterday’s dishes. And do it right, brat. I don’t want to see a dirty plate. I’m going to change while you do that.”
I approached the sink, my shoulder lightly brushing against hers. She didn’t pull away. She just looked at me sideways, as if expecting me to lower my head like always.
This time I didn’t.
I smiled on the inside.
The countdown had begun, you bitch.
