The Quarantine at My Grandmother’s House Changed Everything

It was March 16, 2020 when Rubén left Valencia with the engine of his old Honda growling between his legs. He had no choice but to go back to his grandmother Remedios’s village, his father’s mother. They had put him on temporary furlough, one of those euphemisms that let the people upstairs sleep soundly while leaving guys like him stranded in the ditch.

He bullied that heap through nearly seven hours of travel on secondary roads, dodging Civil Guard checkpoints with a mobility certificate as fake as the money he’d paid for it. Past Teruel, the sky split open, and the rain found the seams in his leather jumpsuit until the cold turned into a metallic pain. Beyond Huesca, the shivering stopped being just the water’s fault. Fuck, you’ve caught the damn bug, he told himself with a stab of dread. On that final stretch, fear of fever beat the Guardia Civil in a dead heat.

When he stopped the bike in front of the exposed-stone house, panic was devouring him from the inside. He had crossed half of Spain to take care of his grandmother, and what he was about to do was bring her death in his lungs. If the bug didn’t kill him, his father would.

From the upstairs window, Remedios watched the hunched figure on the motorbike. She didn’t recognize that soaked rider at first; he looked like a defeated stranger seeking shelter. When she realized it was her grandson, she came down the stairs adjusting her mask with knotted hands. She was already at the door when he switched off the engine, dressed in those ash-colored clothes she detested so much, leaning on her cane. She made to run out and hug him, but he stopped her dead.

—Stay right there, Grandma! —he cried. The burst of authority startled him, but his fear of contagion was stronger than any family protocol—. I think I’ve got a fever… don’t come near me.

—All right, Rubenico —she answered, with a resignation that soured her expression. Her eyes were looking for the little boy she had always known in that man ordering her around from the middle of the street.

—Don’t call me that, you know I hate it —he shot back, with a sad smile that barely hid the tremor in his jaw.

His grandmother stepped back with an agility that surprised him. Though she barely stood taller than five foot three, she moved with a physical decisiveness that seemed to fill the hallway. She was a generously built woman, and the sway of her clothes, however rough, couldn’t hide the curve of her hips or the weight of a bust that defied her own age. He followed her down the corridor and up the stairs behind her, unable to take his eyes off the sway of that ass. They reached the bedroom that had once belonged to his parents, the only room with its own bathroom besides his grandmother’s: the perfect refuge in which to lock away his fever and, above all, the thoughts that were beginning to turn dangerous.

Stripping off the leather suit was a butcher’s job on his bones. He was taking off his soaked boxer shorts when he turned toward the door. Remedios was there, planted in the doorway, staring at him with a fixity that froze him solid. The mask hid her mouth, but her eyes flared, two embers that seemed to feed on his nakedness. He tried to convince himself it was the fever projecting his own desires onto that чужой gaze.

—Grandma, hand me a laundry bag —he said, trying to sound firm—. I’ll wash it myself tomorrow.

His grandmother reappeared in the doorway with a roll of black trash bags, approaching in a way he considered dangerous. Her eyes, fixed and bright over the filter of the mask, performed a visual autopsy on him, running over every inch of his body with improper shamelessness.

—Stay there! —he ordered—. Throw them to me and back up. If we both go down, who’s going to look after us?

—All right, Rubenico —she replied, her voice muffled by the mask and sounding charged with a dark irony, almost a challenge.

Dazed, he went into the bathroom desperate for hot water. He showered trying not to think, but through the steam he thought he made out a grayish silhouette moving on the other side of the smoked glass. When he slid open the screen, she was there, a towel in her hands and a look that crossed the distance with the force of possession.

—I brought you a towel —she said. Her eyes, however, weren’t looking for his face but were fixed directly on his manhood.

—Pass it to me —he answered, rubbing his face to clear the haze.

—Sorry… I… —her fingers clenched around the towel—. C-could I ask you something?

—Of course —he said. He had started drying off and, whether by accident or feverish exhibitionism, he made no effort whatsoever to cover what she was staring at.

—D-don’t you still… still have any h-hairs? —her stammer surprised him more than the boldness of her gaze.

—Grandma! —he laughed—. I’m twenty years old! I’ve got plenty of hair; that’s why I shave it.

—You shave it? —her gaze remained fixed on that limp yet unmistakable instrument—. Are you… you know… queer?

—No, Grandma. I like women —the fever let him use that plural, launching a dart that left her breathless. She lowered her eyes, not out of modesty, but from the vertigo of feeling herself included, if only by a slip of the tongue, in the inventory of hungers of that man. What she had in front of her eyes was not the childish appendage from summers by the river, but a raw, full-bodied piece of meat. She didn’t blink, until a sudden wave of dizziness made him stagger.

—Give me the towel, Grandma —he said, breaking the spell in a thread of a voice.

She reacted as if waking from a dream. She handed him the towel with a jerk and backed out into the hall, her breathing hissing behind the mask.

—Dry yourself off and get in bed, boy. I’ll bring you some broth —she said, trying to be a grandmother again.

***

The next three days were a blur of sweat-soaked sheets and the tapping of Remedios’s cane, striking the floor with a urgency that had nothing nurse-like about it. The ritual was always the same: the door opened, the smell of disinfectant flooded the room, and there she was, with her surgical mask and blue latex gloves that squeaked with every movement.

She sat on the edge of the bed and made him drink the broth. When the sweat became unbearable, came the sponge, which she ran over his chest with a slowness that made both of them bristle. The wet latex clung to the boy’s skin, a synthetic caress replacing human warmth. Sometimes the sponge went lower than necessary, lingering on his belly and brushing the base of a sex that, betraying his will, began to swell under the old woman’s fixed gaze. One noon, while she dried him, Rubén felt his grandmother’s fingers close hard around his shoulder: a spasm of possession that had nothing to do with nursing.

One night, the fever gave him a break and he woke lucid in the dark, uncovered and naked. The door was ajar and a thread of light cut across the room like a knife. He heard a whisper—it could have been a prayer or a curse—and saw his grandmother’s shadow outlined against the wall. She wasn’t carrying her cane: she stood upright, watching that thin body and that member of his, now awake. Remedios hated herself for her own needs, for that flesh that dried out her mouth.

The next morning, when she came in with breakfast, something had changed for good. She set down the tray and, before pulling back, buried her latex-covered fingers in the boy’s hair with a hungry roughness that burned hotter than the fever itself.

***

On the sixth day he felt much better. It was fully dark when an urgency made him get up. In front of the bathroom porcelain, he picked up the hiss of the pipes behind the wall: someone had turned on a tap, and he didn’t need to think to know that water was running for Remedios.

Muttering to himself, “you’re a fucking sick bastard,” with a tone that sounded more like self-affirmation than insult, he stepped out into the hallway naked. The light leaking through the keyhole of his grandmother’s door short-circuited him: he bent at the waist and pressed his eye to the metal eyehole, becoming a voyeur inside his own family.

Remedios emerged from the bathroom steam, wrapped in a terry towel that seemed to weigh her down. She stood in front of the huge mirror of the old wardrobe, lost in herself, and loosened the knot of the towel.

—You’re a filthy old slut —she hissed to herself—. Who’s going to pay attention to this fat old woman?

On the other side of the door, Rubén felt the incorrigible kid he’d always been take possession of him. He didn’t care that it was his grandmother: she was naked flesh. His erection grew more violent while she ran her hands over her mature skin, her wet hair falling down her back and revealing those heavy buttocks with every turn. He clenched his fist and began to punish himself in a frantic rhythm. When the old woman bent to pick up the towel from the floor, the spread of those buttocks offered him a total, obscene view.

—Aaah…! —the cry shattered the silence of the house as he ejaculated against the wooden door—. What an ass, Grandma!

The crash alerted Remedios, who flung the door wide open, exposing her nakedness. The last lashes of that release splattered against her shins and bare feet. The sticky heat burned her skin while her eyes stayed hypnotized by the boy’s hand, which was still moving up and down with suicidal inertia.

—I… I’m sorry, Grandma… —he gasped—. I’ve been dry for a year. I’d forgotten what a woman feels like.

—You’re sorry? —she growled, trying to weld the pieces of her authority back together before she exploded—. Tell me how sorry you are, you pig! Shameless bastard!

But when she turned toward the bed she offered him, without meaning to, the pallor of her buttocks once more. Rubén’s smile widened; his erection, far from calming, regained a violent hardness.

—What a fat ass you’ve got, Grandma! —he blurted, unable to hold back.

—Rubén! —she shouted at him, using his name like a weapon—. I’m your grandmother! You owe me respect, you brat!

—Yes, I’m your grandson —he replied, hardening his expression—, but I nearly lost my life on the road. Either one of us could croak tomorrow. That bug doesn’t know anything about respect.

The old woman was hypnotized by the throb of that flesh, while he, stalking her weakness, began to rock his hips in an obscene rhythm.

—This isn’t right… —she whispered—. You’re my grandson… You’re mean to your grandma.

—Yes, I’m a bad boy —he replied in a whisper full of pure venom. He caught her hands and forced them to close around his own naked waist—. I’m very bad, but I want to be good to you… I want to be the best.

What flashed through that grandmother’s mind wasn’t a return to the fold, but a dry lightning bolt that scorched her insides. She exploded: she slapped his buttocks furiously, a series of blows meant, in vain, to exorcise the demon devouring her reason. But the spanks, far from punishing him, set his skin on fire, turning pain into an electric current that ran down into his groin.

—That’s enough, Grandma —he declared, holding her by the shoulders—. Now we’re going to be really bad.

That sentence finished demolishing the woman: in that instant the respectable widow died, and only hunger remained.

***

Between caresses and kisses, Rubén led her to the enormous bed she once shared with her husband. After the spanking, she clung to the boy’s buttocks with a double-edged terror: panic at what was about to happen and a ravenous hunger for it to finally happen.

Lying on her back, he kissed and fondled that body that seemed like a dream to him: the skin of ancient marble, the gray mane spread over the quilt, the full breasts with dark nipples hardening under each squeeze. He kissed that prominent belly and buried his tongue in her silver-streaked sex, warm and wet.

—N… no… what…? Aaah… —Remedios gasped, gripping the sheets—. You don’t suck that! You dirty thing! What are you doing to your grandmother?

Spurred on by that stammer from another era, he thrust his tongue in more savagely. Remedios was no longer in command of her body; only that wet muscle invading her existed, and that electric brush over a clitoris no one had ever dared to kiss. It was a blessed filth dragging her toward an abyss of pleasure that decades of marriage had not even let her imagine.

It took less than two minutes before she exploded. It was a mute convulsion that tensed every tendon before her body arched over the mattress as if a current ran from her heels to the nape of her neck.

—I’m coming, Rubenico! What a fucking bliss, my God! —she cried, tangling her fingers in her grandson’s hair to push him away—. Get off, I’m falling apart!

When he returned to the spring, hungry, she rolled over until she was face down. But Rubén didn’t stop at the old woman’s modesty: he forced those pale buttocks apart and drove his tongue viciously into that other dark hole, a grotto that for decades had only known the way out. It tasted to him like the purest, most erotic sin he had ever tasted in his life.

—Filthy boy! —the old woman roared, struggling against the mattress with a rage that had become pure helplessness—. Not there, Rubenico!

But he kept control, his hands dug into her flesh and his whole weight crushing the woman’s legs.

—Do you like me eating your ass, Grandma? —he whispered, with a bluntness that made her tremble.

—Don’t say it like that! —she stammered, in a voice that sounded like it came from a distant dream—. It’s disgusting… but… God… yes, I like it.

Remedios’s resistance crumbled from sheer moral exhaustion. He hoisted her by the waist until she was on all fours and slid his tongue, slow and hot, toward her sex.

—Dirty boy! Do you like smelling me? —she blurted, her voice thick with desire—. Yes…! Like that, like you’re a little dog!

Rubén rose up on his knees. His erection was a column of blood so taut the skin looked ready to split, something that had never happened to him right after cumming. Either his hunger wanted old flesh, or it was taboo dictating that violence. He brought that column to the buttocks she was offering him and began to whip flesh against flesh.

—Did you like hitting me when I was a kid? —he spat, sweeping away every trace of respect.

Remedios’s treacherous mind dragged her to an image: the hairless ass of a little boy over her knees, taking her spanks, now fused with the present, where she was the one being spanked. She felt the blind pressure of that flesh demanding the back door, but a last scrap of lucidity warned him he would split her in two. He pulled back a few inches and, with a single thrust, sank into his grandmother’s soaked cunt.

—Take that! —he roared, saliva escaping from his mouth—. Right into your cunt!

—Aaah, you’re tearing me apart! —she howled, beside herself—. I love it! Give it to me with that cock!

After several minutes of deep thrusts, Grandma Remedios, the respected lady of the whole village, could no longer and would no longer contain that wave. That orgasm, a violent hybrid of spasm and agony, ripped a howl from her as her body twisted like a wounded animal, and hot wetness overflowed between them, soaking the sheets.

—Grandma, yes…! —he shrieked, releasing his orgasm—. Take my load, horny granny!

Even on the brink of fainting, she felt the hot bursts seeking the center of her guts, blasts so violent she would have sworn they were tattooing her womb from the inside.

***

When everything was calm, Rubén realized his grandmother was motionless. His panic lasted only long enough to check that she was breathing, slow and deep. The beast he had just ridden subsided, giving way to a grandson who suddenly felt the weight of that fragility. With the strength of his twenty years, he carried her in his arms to his own room. She, more asleep than fainted, clung to his neck, hiding a face in which the shame of the respectable lady struggled against the satisfaction of the sated woman.

—Don’t be ashamed, Grandma —he whispered tenderly—. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

He laid her on the bed, tucked her in carefully, and lay down beside her, and she hugged him with the complicity of someone who can no longer go back.

—Well, granny —he said, kissing her forehead and switching off the light—. As my grandfather used to say: nobody reaches the end of life regretting having loved too much.

He looked at the glow of the alarm clock. They had said it would be fifteen days, but the news was talking about extensions, about a country locked down for an indefinite time. As he felt the warmth of Remedios against his chest, a cynical smile spread across his face: if the world was going to hell out there, they still had weeks, maybe months, of dirty sheets and shared sins ahead of them. The lockdown, for grandson and grandmother, was not a sentence. It was the safe-conduct pass to keep going down into hell every night, whenever they wanted.