Never: an erotic retelling of Peter Pan Read Online Free Page A

from the overpowering stench of sweat and stale beer emanating from her mother.
      
    "...and if you'd told me sooner about havin' a bun in the oven, you wouldn’t’ve ended up here."  The thin, grotesquely crimson lips twisted in scorn. "Spreadin' your legs for the teacher.  Did you think he'd marry you?  Stupid girl.  'Course he'd run back to the city..." 
      
    A nursing sister padded silently into the room, taking up a position at the end of the bed.  After listening to the tirade for several moments, she met Wendee's eyes over the top of her clipboard and any embarrassment Wendee might have felt about her sordid  history being revealed was erased by the older woman's sympathetic smile.  Her eyes were warm and dark like the fur of a possum and her calm olive-skinned complexion gave her the air of a peaceful Madonna.  Wendee wished she could smile back, but there was no smile inside herself to give.  
      
    Her mother finally paused for breath, giving the sister an opening to cut in loudly from behind her, "I'll give you ten minutes, Mrs O'Connor..."  Her mother's huge frame lurched in fright.  "...then our young patient will have to rest."  The bed rocked as her mother swivelled, narrow eyed, to see who the intruder was and Wendee experienced fresh pain.
      
    "She's my girl and I - "
      
    "Ten.  Minutes," the Sister repeated with such authority that even her mother was quelled, turning back to Wendee with a surly glance as they listened to the sister's rubber heels retreating across the linoleum floor. 
      
    "Bloody sneaky wogs," her mother said.  "Wouldn't let one of 'em touch me."  But of course, in her mind it was quite all right for a 'dirty wog' to touch Wendee.  She was already soiled.  "They come over here and get a bit of learnin' in 'em then they take all the best jobs.  I've seen plenty of 'em in my time.  Filthy dirty they are.  Never wash..."
      
    Wendee closed her eyes, wishing above hope that the lovely sister with the understanding eyes was her mother instead of this fat, ugly, wicked, spiteful...   
     
    "...and you with your smart maths brain," the acid voice jeered.  "Couldn't even work out your monthly was late.  Now look at you."
      
    Wendee swallowed in a dry throat.  She should have asked the sister for a glass of water.  Her mother would never get her one.  Her mother would prefer her to suffer for the embarrassment she'd caused, and Wendee was sure the suffering was just beginning. 
      
    She'd never be allowed to forget.  Never be allowed to become anything other than a stupid girl with her brains between her legs .
      
    "It's your fault old Doc Wesson messed up," her mother continued.  "If you hadn't left it so late..."            
      
    Her mother went on and on and Wendee squeezed her eyelids tightly shut to hold back the tears.  She'd always wanted to have a child of her own, a child she could raise the right way, with love and respect.  Not a slave given nothing but an ever-increasing list of chores and no time for school work.  Wendee tried to swallow again, wondering how she'd ever been naive enough to believe her mother would sympathise with her desire to keep the child.  In her whole life she couldn't remember a single time her mother had sympathised with her about anything. 
      
    The fault had been with Wendee since the moment she'd been born; her fault that she'd been a girl instead of a boy - that her mother had been unable to have more children - that the farm had failed and they'd had to move into the nearest country town looking for work.  Her fault that her father had died and left her poor mother to raise such an ungrateful child.  And now, her fault that the alcoholic old doctor her mother had recruited, with his foul breath and unkempt fingernails, had botched a simple abortion and mangled her insides.
     
    "...so don't you be thinkin' you'll be doin' anything about that scholarship nonsense."
      
    Dee felt