“Scott, I’m out of butter,” Maggie whimpered innocently from the other end of the breakfast table.  “I need you to butter my pancake.”

            Scott tried not to roll his eyes as he sauntered back toward his sister as she pointed her fork and knife toward the ceiling and pounded her fists gently against the tabletop, rattling him under the quaking wooden surface.

            Still, this wasn’t the worst job he could’ve been given.  He could’ve been put on floor duty, giving mid-meal foot massages and cleaning up dropped crumbs, which he was certain Maggie would’ve preferred.  Instead, Judy had assigned her eight-inch eldest son to wander around atop the kitchen table and act as a waiter for herself, Maggie, and Kyle as they enjoyed the culinary rewards of Maggie’s soccer championship labors.

            Scott lugged the open margarine tub behind him up to Maggie’s plate and pulled the butter knife from the swirled yellow miasma, scooping out a slab of it on the tip as he went.  Eyeing his sister’s plate before him, there seemed to be an awful lot of butter already caking the circular skillet pastry.  Why did she need more?

            Obviously he wasn’t going to bring it up, but it was clear she just wanted something else to ask him to do.  Without making eye contact, he heaved the knife over the pancakes with some difficulty and spread it around evenly, until the heat of the pancakes had mostly melted it into a liquid.

            “Thanks, Mr. Waiter.  I’ll let you know if I need anything else,” Maggie giggled.

            “You’re doing a very nice job, Scott,” Judy chimed with a smile as she continued chewing on a bite of pancake.

            “Hey, wait a second,” Kyle Stevens piped in, watching his tiny brother walk back across the tabletop with a suspicious glance.  “I hope you guys, you know, washed him off and stuff after he was in your gross shoes, right?”

            “My shoes aren’t gross.  You’re gross,” Maggie fired back with a snicker at her fifteen-year-old younger brother on the opposite side of the table.

            “Wow, nice one!” the boy quipped, crossing his arms.  “You’re, what, in tenth grade now?”

            “Mom, he’s being annoying, and it’s my game-winning breakfast,” Maggie complained, though Scott couldn’t help but note her tone was far less severe than if, say, he had been the one with the retorts..

            “Kyle, honey, I promise you he’s perfectly clean.  I washed him myself,” Judy said, winking at Scott when she caught his eye again.  “Isn’t that right, Scott?”

            “Yep,” Scott said clearly, still avoiding his brother’s glance.

            Things with Scott’s youngest sibling had been tense, to say the least, since he had arrived home under court order.  Kyle was polite enough to not personally contribute to Scott’s torment like Maggie did so ferociously, but he made no effort either to hide his disdain for his college-age convict brother, and made it clear he wanted as little to do with him as possible.

            Scott leaned against the fruit bowl in the center of the table and picked up the napkin Judy had set out for him with a few miniature pancakes she had made by cooking loose droplets of batter on the stove.

            It surprised him that she had thought to do that.  Generally his meals were a little more mundane and thrown together, like a few chunks of bread and tomato, or slices from a banana.  Shrugging it off as her bizarre current mood of actual gentility, he chewed thoughtfully on the bite-size pancakes for a few seconds with hesitant gladness, knowing it was only a matter of time until a new request for service was made.

            “Kyle, are you finished with that?” Judy asked of her youngest child as he drained the last of his orange juice glass in one gulp.

            “Yep,” he answered back, placing it back on the table with a loud clack.

            “Careful, Kyle.  Those are glass,” Judy scolded gently before turning to face the littlest Stevens.  “Scott, honey, your brother needs a refill.”

            “Okay,” Scott said, placing his napkin back on the edge of the fruit bowl and walking toward the orange juice tumbler.

            “I can get it fine by myself, thanks,” Kyle butted in coldly, snatching the entire orange jug swiftly with one hand before his older brother could begin pushing it across the tabletop toward the boy’s plate.  “I’m not eight years old, like some people here.”

            “Moooom, he’s doing it again,” Maggie groaned, twirling a few locks of hay hair with her pointer finger.

            Besides the status of being a normal-sized person with the ability to leave the house whenever he pleased, Scott envied nothing else about his younger brother more than his seeming immunity to calling Maggie out on her behavior.  The fifteen-year-old technology-obsessed bookworm seemed to be an expert at dancing along the disciplinary line of making fun of her without getting into real trouble.  This was a concept Scott had never quite mastered, and often took his insults to his sister well beyond the point of return.

            “Can you two please not do this this morning?  We’re trying to have a nice breakfast to celebrate Maggie’s game.  As a family,” Judy drawled with some exasperation, running her palm along her cheek.  “Let’s just be civil.  You two have been getting along so much better recently.”

            “We are getting along, Mom.  The whole family is.  See, watch,” Maggie concurred, before her gaze fell upon the Ken doll-sized Scott again in the center of the table and she snapped her fingers together with aplomb.  “Scott.  I want more bacon.”

            “Now, now, he’s not a dog you can just snap at,” Judy corrected before glancing over at Scott with a smile.  “I’d like another piece too, though, honey.”

            Nodding to both Stevens women in recognition, Scott meandered toward the paper towel-wrapped plate with bacon strips stacked three layers high.  Reaching over it, he grabbed up a chewy strip in each arm and carried them like closed stepladders along the tabletop, going to Maggie first to avoid an inevitable complaint for being kept waiting.

            “Just put it on my plate,” the ponytailed teenage girl instructed without looking up again, stabbing another thick morsel of pancake sopping with syrup on the end of her fork.

            Scott nodded and began laying the crispy brown strip down on the edge of the glass plate, balancing it there so it didn’t dip into the pooled syrup around the rim.

            “No, weirdo, not on the edge where it’ll fall off.  On the plate.  Here!” Maggie commented aggressively, her tone instantly becoming hostile, though Scott could detect she had decided to sound like that regardless of where he placed the crispy pork.

            On her final word, she pointed at Scott with her fork, which still had the pancake chunk on it, and prodded at his arm, intentionally sliding the gooey bite of food along his bicep and forearm and spreading a generous layer of sticky syrup residue onto his skin and t-shirt.

            “Sorry,” Scott responded rapidly.  He cringed at the gooey sensation on his arm, but shrugged it off quickly, knowing she might’ve done far worse, like pour syrup onto his clean clothes and force him to change out of them already, with breakfast not even done.

            “Maggie, I just gave him a bath,” Judy reprimanded, though there was a small snicker hidden under her words.

            “So what?  Are we running out of soap or something?  It’s no big deal.  I’ll just give him a new bath after breakfast,” Maggie suggested snidely, shrugging and popping the bite of pancake between her lips, her teeth sliding metallically against the utensil tines.  Her eyes met Scott’s and he could see that oh-so-familiar scheming gleam shining through magnificently from her baby blue irises.  “I’ll clean you up again,” she whispered directly to her tiny brother.

            How could so much adorable beauty still sparkle with so much malice and hunger for discovery of what she wasn’t supposed to know about?

            Scott could only shiver at her words.

            “That won’t be necessary,” Judy commented with a sly grin.  “Scott?  May I have my bacon now?”

            “Yep.  Coming, Mom,” he said, jogging over to Judy’s place setting, eager to put distance between himself and Maggie as soon as possible.  He wasn’t sure how it would be done yet, but he apparently would have to cling close to Judy throughout the day if he wanted to try and outlast Maggie’s request to bathe him.

            He arrived in front of his mother’s plate and dropped the bacon slice onto it, knowing Judy wouldn’t care how it was positioned.

            “Thanks, sweetie,” she responded as she gingerly placed her empty fork back on the plate and outstretched her hand toward her son.  “Can you come a little closer for a second?”

            “What?  Um, sure,” Scott mumbled, confused, as he walked around his mother’s tall drinking glass, which sat just barely below his shoulder level, and stood before her near the edge of the table.

            “Let’s just see that arm, okay?” she asked pleasantly.  Her hand closed affectionately around Scott’s syrup-coated arm, guiding him closer to the edge of the table, while her face seemed to loom closer and closer to him, until Scott realized he was close enough to reach out and touch his mother’s plush lips.

            “Mom?  What are you…” Scott whispered, completely puzzled now.

            “Just relax.  It would be a waste to give you a bath after you had one half an hour ago,” Judy commented as she continued leaning forward until her nose was brushing her his shoulder, and before Scott could react, she was opening her mouth wide enough that her son’s arm fit easily into the damp darkness.

            With a friendly bat of her eyelashes, then, she closed her lips tenderly over Scott’s limb, trapping the majority of it inside, though she was careful not to bring her teeth down on it.

            “Oh, for God’s sake,” Kyle groaned, rolling his eyes and chomping on his pancake.  “You guys are so weird sometimes.”

            “M-M-Mom?” Scott peeped meekly, and a moment later felt his mother’s tongue wrapping itself around his arm inside her mouth.  He shivered, the full tactile experience of it equivalent to falling face-first into a mud patch.

            It was overwhelmingly warm, like rolling his arm just above the flames of a campfire, and saliva seemed to gush from every microscopic pore of the woman’s curious tongue as she licked him without pause.  Every slimy inch and every slippery taste bud was snaking across his skin, twisting and sliding with such speed and practice that Scott felt the closest approximation of it was having his entire arm French-kissed.

            By his mother.

            “Mmmmm…” Judy murmured without opening her lips to let Scott’s arm escape, savoring the pancake-tainted flavor.  Her cheeks tightened, and she sucked on his arm harder, rending the syrup particles from him and enjoying every sugary taste test of his skin.  She continued working her tongue around his arm, batting at it and slurping along his flesh until she was certain she’d cleaned up every last sticky patch left from Maggie’s fork poke.

            Satisfied, with a soft pop of her lips, Judy opened her mouth again, allowing Scott to hastily retract his arm from between her lips.  She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, still sticky with syrup.

            “Thank you, Scott.  That was delicious,” Judy informed the quivering boy, his eyes unblinking, as he struggled to come up with a reaction.

            “Wow, Mom, and you get on me for being too rough with him,” Maggie laughed, covering her mouth and shaking her head in disbelief.

            “Don’t be silly, sweetie.  I was gentle.  Wasn’t I, Scott?” Judy queried, her expression completely serious.

            “Y-Y-Yeah,” Scott gulped, not sure how he could possibly answer without offending or otherwise inspiring someone at the table.

            “Just be glad you’re too big for her to put the whole thing in,” Maggie added with a menacing giggle that gave Scott a feeling under his skin far slimier than anything his mother’s snaking tongue could do to him.

            “Har-har, honey.  Listen, Nancy will be here in about fifteen minutes, so I’ve got to get changed out of this robe and into some clothes.  Can you guys help pick everything up in here?” Judy requested of her kids as she rose from her chair to leave.  Before she did, she cast a quick glance at Maggie, who was already leaning forward to snatch her brother from the table and whisk him to the nearest tub-equipped bathroom.  “I’m reserving your brother, honey,” she snapped.  “Leave him alone for now.  I’ll need him in a bit.”

            Defeated, Maggie slumped deep back into the chair again and pouted, frowning at her brother.

            “Later,” she whispered matter-of-factly to Scott once Judy had left the room and was out of earshot.  “You’re mine again.”

            Too perplexed by the last few minutes to really be affected yet by his sister’s threat, Scott ignored her and sat down on the edge of the fruit bowl.

            He picked up a napkin scrap to sop up Judy’s saliva on his limb, made gummier from the influx of syrup.  Wiping with disgust on his entire molested arm, he painfully wondered how in the hell Judy could consider what she just did to him to be cleaner than just having syrup splattered on his skin.

            He knew perfectly well she didn’t really think that, but admitting that to himself would also force Scott to admit that his mother had just put part of his tiny body into her mouth for the pure amusement of it, and that was a thought he wasn’t emotionally prepared to recognize.