My Beloved Family

Sampson wet the bed again last night. I went in to wake him at 7.15 and the rancid odour, exacerbated by that general teenage sweat smell, gathered in my nostrils. I put him in the shower tray, still in his pyjamas, and turned on the water. After piling the sheets in the hall for my wife to deal with, I looked around Sampson’s room. Everything had a road or bridge theme. There were dozens of road atlases on the bookshelf: Britain, France, the US, Canada all featured. He also had heavy coffee table tomes with titles like ‘Great Bridges of the World’. Big posters of open road scenes and famous suspension bridges obscured the woodchip walls. For most people, these images would be all about freedom. Sampson, however, was afraid of cars and road journeys. It had taken three weeks of attempts to get him into the taxi for his special school, and if the driver he tolerated took a holiday, he had to stay home.

Having wiped down the rubber sheet over the mattress, I went back into the bathroom. Sampson had his head tipped back, eyes open, letting his mouth fill with the shower water until it overflowed and ran off each side of his jaw. I opened the glass door and knelt down to take him out of his pyjamas; water pooled on the tiles around my knees. Sampson bared his teeth, peeling back his slightly spiky top lip, as I shampooed his lank hair and soaped his skinny body.

My wife didn’t emerge, musty with sleep, until I’d towelled and dressed him and given him a bowl of porridge with glossy golden syrup. Sampson spat out his mouthful when she arrived at the kitchen door; he knelt next to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, grabbing onto the dressing gown cord. She patted him absently then brushed his arms off.

She sat down. She didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to her. I watched Sampson pressing over-full spoons of porridge into his mouth, laughing grimly inside, as I often did, at my wife’s choice of name for our only son. She’d said, a day after his birth, that she wanted to call him Sampson. I joked that he’d end up with very long hair, just in case; she stared at me, not getting it. I couldn’t be bothered to explain, so I let it go and the name remained.

His taxi hooted outside so I wiped Sampson’s face and took him onto the pavement, shoes velcroed on. The driver wound down his window.

‘Morning, good sir! How about a ride? We’ll listen to the railway tour audiobook, if you like.’

Sampson didn’t say anything, but he got gratefully into the back of the car.

‘Thanks, mate,’ I said to the driver, who smiled briefly and set off.

I went to work, but spent most of the day trolling cat videos on the internet. Pornographic sites were filtered, that’s why.

That evening, while Sampson and my wife watched a talent show on the TV, I put in my earphones and got my fix using the laptop. The double penetration was quite interesting, but I was bored after an hour or so. By then it was time to put Sampson to bed. I saw that the sheets were still in a pile outside the boy’s bedroom; my wife had forgotten to wash them. I prodded them tentatively; they felt pretty much dry so I just stretched the sheet back over Sampson’s rubber mattress protector and stuffed his duvet into the cover. It would be alright for another night. He’d probably just wet it again.

At that point, inspiration struck me. I went to the junk drawer in the kitchen, dug through the dud batteries and free casino matchbooks to find a rubber band.

I helped Sampson brush his teeth with the strawberry-flavoured toothpaste (his mouth clamped shut at even the aroma of ordinary mint toothpaste) and got him into his pyjamas. Once he’d climbed into bed with his bridges book I pulled back the duvet. He ignored me, captivated by images of the Bosphorus Bridge, as I dragged down his pyjama trousers. His penis flopped out (quite girthy, I couldn’t help noticing) and I wrapped the rubber band around it, doubling it over a few times so it was snug. Sampson didn’t seem bothered, so it can’t have been too tight.

I went to bed, leaving my wife watching a horror film in which the sheer power of some people’s meditative skill could explode the heads of others.

In the morning, I got up, only just realising that my wife hadn’t come to bed, and went in to wake Sampson, as usual. He was pale faced against the navy pillowcase. I hauled back the duvet to see if my ploy had worked. There wasn’t a urine patch, but a slightly bloody stain. I tugged down Sampson’s trousers and his dick tipped onto the sheet. He mewled pathetically. The stump seeped a grotesque mixture of urine and blood – even at a time like this, he couldn’t help wetting the bed. I turned to see that my wife was at the door: she saw the accident and slumped against the doorjamb as through she’d been sniped. I sighed, stepped over her body, went out of the front door, got in the car and started driving.