The Dark Ones by Bryan Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

assault. She didn’t like queers. That wasn’t the correct way to think anymore. It wasn’t a thing she could say out loud to most people. But it was how she really felt. She simply could not have a gay son.
    Suzie moved from the window and crossed the room to Kurt’s walk-in closet. She took one of his belts from a hook and wound one end of it twice around her right hand. The buckle end dangled, brushing the floor. She slipped out of the bedroom, electing not to wake her oblivious husband. He wouldn’t have the balls to do what needed doing. If her son was queer, she was going to whip the perversity right out of him.
    Upstairs, she tried the doorknob, but it was locked and wouldn’t turn. Of course. The boy wouldn’t risk being caught in the act of something perverted. Well, tough shit. She had some tricks of her own.
    The room on the other side of the hall was used primarily for storage. It was crowded with boxes and miscellaneous junk. She entered the room and flicked on the light switch. She negotiated her way through the haphazardly stacked boxes and came to a small desk wedged into a corner. The top drawer contained an array of mostly useless items. She rooted through the assortment of crap and soon found the perfect thing at the bottom—a hairpin.
    The lock on her son’s bedroom door was simple and not designed for heavy-duty security purposes. Suzie slid the hairpin through a hole in the center of the knob and probed for the latch. She found it, pushed, and heard the lock pop open.
    Smiling, she pushed the door open and stepped into the room. The smile faded when she flipped on the light switch and saw that her son wasn’t in the room.
    Derek was sneaking out, after all.
    She felt a strange disappointment at not having caught him in some compromising situation. She’d been looking forward to whipping the boy with the belt. She had a lot of anger. A lot of frustration. She needed a way to vent some of that. Her son happened to be a handy target sometimes. It wasn’t a normal thing. A lot of people would think there was something wrong with her if they could hear her thoughts. Luckily, most people could not hear thoughts, and she tried to avoid the ones she suspected of possessing the ability.
    She closed the door behind her and walked farther into the room.
    “It’s okay, DeeDee.” Her smile returned. “You’ll be back. We’ll deal with you then.”
    Because he still needed to be punished. The boy was still a minor and he would live by her rules as long as he lived under her roof. Sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night—on a school night, no less—merited some level of correction. Of discipline.
    She sat on the edge of her son’s twin-size bed. She plucked at the hem of her silk nightgown and was surprised by the abrupt sound of her own laugh. She looked like a woman dressed for seduction rather than a concerned mother come to punish her wayward son. What would Derek have thought if he’d actually seen her like this? It might have done him some good. She was his mother, yes, but she was very attractive. She had a curvaceous, womanly figure. A boy his age should see a full-grown woman in bedroom attire at some point.
    She smiled and began to feel naughty again.
    Maybe the belt wouldn’t be necessary.
    Maybe something other than discipline would occur when her son returned. After all, there was no real evidence her son was anything other than heterosexual. And she would hardly be the first mother to . . .
    She frowned.
    It was happening again.
    Those thoughts she knew would horrify anyone who heard them. She experienced a moment of deep anxiety. But the moment passed and the anxiety eased. She was alone. No one was around to tune in to her thoughts. And the cosmic forces that were always fucking with her couldn’t hurt her so long as she just sat here quietly and waited.
    So she sat right there on the edge of his bed and studied his things. The walls were adorned with rock band