What We Inherited

The funeral was over by three.

I stood next to Dad through the whole service. People kept coming up and saying the same things. I’m so sorry for your loss. She was a wonderful woman. If you need anything. Their voices ran together. I nodded and said thank you when I was supposed to.

Dad didn’t cry. He never does when other people are watching. He kept one hand on my shoulder most of the time. His fingers were steady. He looked tired, but he held it together better than anyone else there.

After the burial we came back to the house. People brought food. They stood around the living room and kitchen talking in low voices. I stayed near the wall and watched the clock. Dad moved between groups, shaking hands, accepting hugs, answering questions. He looked like he was on autopilot.

By seven the last cars pulled out of the driveway. The house went quiet. Dishes sat stacked in the sink. Sympathy cards were piled on the counter. Mom’s jacket still hung on the hook by the front door.

I’d only just started college when the accident happened. I took the summer off. It had felt like the right thing at the time. Now the house just felt too big.

I stood in the middle of the living room and listened to the emptiness. It felt bigger than it ever had before.

Dad was in the kitchen running water over plates that didn’t need washing. Neither of us said anything for a long time.

I tried to sleep in my own bed.

It didn’t work. The room felt too empty. Every sound in the house was louder than it should have been. I kept thinking about Mom’s side of the bed downstairs staying cold.

Around nine I got up and walked down the hall.

Dad’s door was cracked. Light was on. I knocked once and pushed it open.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed in sweatpants, elbows on his knees. He looked up when I came in.

“I can’t sleep,” I said. “Can I stay in here tonight? Just for a little while. Like we used to.”

He stared at me for a second.

“No, Laura.”

“I just don’t want to be alone.”

“I know.” His voice was low and flat. “But you need to sleep in your own room.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it. His hands were locked together between his knees. The distance in his voice was new.

I stood there waiting for him to change his mind. He didn’t.

“Okay,” I said.

I backed out and closed the door. The latch clicked louder than it needed to.

I went back to my room and sat on the edge of the mattress. The door across the hall stayed closed. I stared at it until my eyes burned.

Thursday he went back to work. Left before I was fully awake, came home after dark. We ate with the TV on. Neither of us reached for the remote when the show ended.

At night the house felt too big. I slept in short stretches and woke up listening for movement that never came. His door stayed closed. Sometimes I heard him get up and walk around, but he never came down the hall to check on me the way he used to when I was little.

By the following Tuesday the food from the funeral was mostly gone. The sympathy cards had been moved into a drawer. Mom’s jacket still hung by the front door. Neither of us touched it.

That night I was half-asleep when the sound started.

It was low and heavy, the creak of his bed frame, then a dull, rhythmic noise I couldn’t place. A short, rough breath. Something that might have been a groan cut off too quickly.

I sat up in the dark and listened.

It came again.

I got out of bed, heart already climbing, and stepped into the hallway. His door was closed. Light showed underneath it in a thin line. The sound continued for another few seconds and then stopped. The silence afterward felt worse than the noise.

I stood there with my hand half-raised, unsure whether to knock. The same uneasy feeling from the night he refused to let me into his room came back stronger.

Something was wrong.

I remembered that a few days after the accident, while I was going through Mom’s closet, I found a small wooden keepsake box I didn’t recognize. Inside were some old photos, a dried flower, and a set of keys on a plain metal ring. I hadn’t known what they were for. I’d just set the box on my dresser and left it.

I got up, opened the box, and took the keys.

The hallway was dark. Dad’s door was closed. I tried the handle. Locked.

My hands were steady even though my heart wasn’t. I tried the first key. It didn’t turn. The second stuck. The third slid in clean and the lock clicked open under my fingers.

I stood there with my hand on the knob, listening.

Nothing moved on the other side.

I pushed the door open just enough to slip through and closed it quietly behind me.

The room was dark except for the red numbers on the alarm clock. Dad was on his side, back toward the door, breathing slow and even. The blankets were pulled up to his waist.

I didn’t see anything wrong. I just didn’t want to be alone right now.

I crossed the carpet without making a sound and climbed onto the empty side of the bed. The mattress dipped under my weight. He didn’t move.

I lay down facing his back and carefully pulled the edge of the blanket over myself. His body heat reached me right away. I scooted closer until my forehead almost rested between his shoulder blades.

The smell of him felt comforting. My chest loosened for the first time since the funeral.

I closed my eyes and let the quiet take me.

Pain ripped me awake.

Something thick and hard was already buried deep inside me, stretching me open farther than my body was built for. The burn was immediate and sharp, centered right between my legs where nothing had ever been before. I felt the tear happen in real time, a wet, wrong giving way that flooded me with heat and panic at the same time.

My eyes flew open.

Dad was on top of me. His face was inches from mine, eyes open but empty, staring through me like I wasn’t even there. His breath came harsh and uneven against my cheek. His hips were already moving, driving that massive cock deeper with every short, powerful thrust.

I made a broken sound. My hands shoved at his chest on pure instinct.

“Dad—stop—what are you—”

He didn’t answer. A low growl rolled out of his throat. One of his hands clamped around my wrist and pinned it to the mattress. The other gripped my hip hard enough that I felt the bruises forming already. He pulled back and shoved in again, harder this time. The stretch was intense. I felt more of that wet heat spill out of me—blood, I realized with a sick jolt.

My virginity was gone. He had taken it while I was still asleep.

Now he was inside me, using me, and there was nothing human left in his eyes.

I twisted under him. The movement only made his cock drag against the torn places inside me. A sharp cry tore out of my throat. He answered it with another thrust that bottomed out completely. Something heavy and full slapped against my thigh with the motion, an extra weight that didn’t belong on a normal man. It was hot and tight against my skin every time he buried himself to the hilt.

I tried to close my legs. He forced them wider with his knees and kept fucking me in long, relentless strokes. The sound of it filled the dark room. My blood made everything slicker. Each thrust shoved the air out of my lungs. My free hand clawed at his shoulder, then the sheets, then his arm, looking for any leverage that wasn’t there.

“Please—Dad, it’s me—Laura—”

Nothing. No recognition. Just the animal rhythm of his hips and the low, continuous growl in his chest. The head of it dragged over places that sent confused sparks up my spine even while the stretch still burned like fire.

Tears blurred the ceiling. One second I was trying to push him off. The next my hips gave a small, involuntary twitch to meet a particularly deep stroke.

He shifted his weight and drove in harder. His cock pulsed inside me like it had a heartbeat of its own. Another thrust forced a broken moan out of me that started as pain and ended as something else.

I turned my face into the pillow to muffle the sounds I couldn’t stop making. My wrist stayed pinned. My other hand finally stopped fighting and just held on to his forearm. The burn between my legs was still there, but it was starting to change under the constant friction. Heat was building under the pain whether I wanted it or not.

He never stopped.

The first time he came I felt it as a sudden, hard pulsing deep inside me. Hot fluid flooded the torn places and spilled out around his cock in thick pulses. I thought it would be over then. I thought the weight on top of me would finally ease.

It didn’t.

He stayed hard. The growl in his chest never faded. He pulled almost all the way out, the thick head dragging through the mess he had left, then shoved back in to the hilt. Fresh pain flared, mixed with the slick heat of his cum. My body jolted. A broken sound left my throat.

I tried talking again. His name. Mine. Please. Stop. None of it reached him. His eyes stayed empty and fixed on nothing. The only answers I got were the low animal noises in his throat and the steady, powerful drive of his hips.

My blood and his cum made the sheets under us soaked and sticky. Every thrust pushed more of the mess out of me and down the insides of my thighs.

He shifted without warning, dragging me onto my side and then onto my stomach. One heavy hand pressed between my shoulder blades, holding me down. The new angle let him go even deeper. I felt his huge balls slap against me with every stroke, full and tight and hot.

I cried into the mattress. The sharp burn of the first penetration had dulled into a deep ache. My hips gave small, involuntary movements. I hated them. I couldn’t stop them.

He came a second time with a harsh grunt, flooding me again. The pressure of it made my stomach feel tight. Still he did not soften. He pulled out only long enough to flip me onto my back once more and drive back in. My legs were shoved wide. My knees pressed toward my chest. The position left me completely open and helpless under the weight of him.

I looked up at his face in the dark. There was nothing of my father there. Only the rutting animal he had turned him into. Thoughts of the funeral kept pushing in while his cock split me open over and over.

My body kept betraying me. The ache between my legs became heavier, hotter. Each deep thrust forced a sound out of me that no longer sounded like pain. When his cock dragged over one particular spot inside me, my back arched suddenly. A broken moan slipped out. He answered it by slamming into that same place again and again, like the animal in him had found something useful.

I came for the first time with a shocked cry, my pussy clenching hard around the thick length still pounding into me. The orgasm tore through the confusion and the grief and left me shaking. He did not slow down. He fucked me straight through it, using the way my body tightened to drive himself deeper.

After that the night became a blur.

He put me on my hands and knees and took me from behind with one hand in my hair. Then he pulled me up into his lap and used my own weight against me. When my arms finally gave out he just flattened me to the mattress and kept grinding.

He came more times than I could track. Each load left me heavier, fuller. Cum ran down my thighs in thick lines every time he pulled back. The sheets under us were already ruined. His balls stayed tight and hot against me through all of it, a constant wrong weight.

Somewhere in the dark the fighting went out of me. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t the only thing anymore. My hips started meeting him. My hands stopped pushing and just held on. I still knew exactly who he was. My body stopped caring.

I came again with his teeth on my neck. Then again when he had me on my side and hooked my leg over his arm so he could get deeper. He fucked me through both of them without slowing down.

Gray light was starting at the curtains by the time his rhythm finally changed. Even then he didn’t stop. He kept moving in long, deep strokes, still hard, still leaving another slow pulse inside me. I was sore in places I didn’t know could be sore. Cum was everywhere, inside me, running out of me, smeared across my stomach and the sheets.

I lay under him, breathing hard, staring at the ceiling. He was still moving. The grief was still there. The shock was still there. And underneath both was the plain fact that whatever was wrong with him had needed this, and my body had given it to him.

The light through the curtains had turned fully gray by the time something finally changed in him.

His thrusts slowed. The low growl faded into rough, uneven breathing. The empty look in his eyes cracked. I felt it happen while he was still buried inside me—one moment pure animal, the next something human clawing its way back.

Then his whole body locked up.

A deep, guttural sound tore out of his chest as he slammed in to the root one final time. His cock swelled and kicked hard inside me. The load that followed was bigger than any of the others. Hot, thick cum flooded me in heavy pulses, more than my body could hold. I felt it hit the deepest part of me and then have nowhere left to go. Pressure built fast. Excess cum forced its way back out around his cock in a sudden, messy overflow that spilled down my ass and soaked the sheets beneath us in a warm rush.

That was the moment the animal broke.

He froze.

I watched the horror hit his face. His eyes locked on mine for the first time all night, then dropped to where we were still joined. Blood and cum were smeared thick across my inner thighs and the sheets beneath us. The smell of sex and sweat filled the small space between our faces. My pussy felt raw, swollen, and stretched around the thick shape of him even as he stopped moving.

“Laura—” His voice came out wrecked.

He pulled out too fast. The sudden empty ache made me flinch. A heavy rush of cum followed him, hot and thick, spilling out of me and soaking further into the already ruined mattress. I felt it run down the cleft of my ass and pool under me. The air in the room was cool against all that wetness. My clit throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Every muscle between my legs pulsed with a deep, used soreness that went all the way up into my belly.

I didn’t try to close my legs. I didn’t have the strength. My wrists ached where he had pinned them. Bruises were already darkening on my hips in the exact shape of his fingers. My stomach felt tight and overfull, like I was carrying the weight of every load he had forced into me through the night. When I shifted even slightly, more cum leaked out of me in a slow, warm trickle.

Dad had scrambled back against the headboard. His cock was still hard, shiny with my blood and his own cum. His heavy balls hung tight and obvious between his legs. His hands were shaking. He stared at the mess between my thighs like he was seeing it for the first time.

I looked at him and did not look away.

Neither of us spoke.