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A Swiftly Changing World

By: nightshadow



A Swiftly Changing World

As a five-time novelist there are a couple important things that I have learned about life:

1) Life never tries to imitate art, but it has mastered the surreal.

2) While truth is not necessarily stranger than fiction, it can definitely be harder to believe.

For all intents and purposes, I am known to you as Duncan Goddard. I live in Providence, Rhode Island with my wife Jessica and daughter Emily, just a short distance across town from my older brother, Sam, and his family. Sam's family is significantly larger than mine is and his house is where we usually have our annual Thanksgiving dinner, since his house is also significantly larger than mine. Of the two of us, Sam is the one who really made good on the family name. He successfully climbed up the ladder within the CIA and stopped when he got an assistant director position within the local agency office. He makes oodles of money and lives well, from what I understand. I, on the other hand, struggle through life as a writer and, believe it or not, earn every penny that I get, which isn't much to begin with. We're comfortable and have a nice nest-egg, but we aren't rich by any stretch of the imagination.

Sam and I don't talk much these days, mostly due to the fact that our lives are so different, but when our daughters were younger we saw each other almost all the time. I'd been thinking over the last few years that it was almost criminal to live in the same town as my brother and his family and still not see them as frequently as we used to. I knew that his twin kids, Rebecca and Bill, had just transferred to the University of Massachusetts so that they could finish off their last year of college and that Polly, my daughter's favorite cousin, was going to college for her second year in California. Elizabeth, Sam's wife, has always been the classic house mom-cum-stepford wife, so she always had things going on that were always interesting, whether anyone else found them interesting or not. Beyond that, though, I knew very little about what they were up to these days. Little did I know that events in my life were about to change all of that.

Most of my work is done at home, in a little room that I call my office. The place is my sanctuary, my haven, and there is a standing rule in the house: NO ONE goes into my office, ever, without my permission. There is an intercom system setup just outside my office's double-doors so that my wife or daughter can call on me when necessary, but the office itself is considered forbidden territory. As far as I know, that rule has been largely respected. I've never found anything out of place or unreasonably disturbed, so I never really bothered with locking it. If we had another child in the house, I might have installed a lock, but since we have only Emily, locks seem like a pointless investment.

Speaking of Emily, I should probably fill in some details about her. My daughter is both the brightest and most mischievous girl I've ever known. I've heard that I gave Mom and Dad a lot of trouble back when I was a kid, but Emily simply takes the cake. She's not necessarily rebellious, but she is most definitely headstrong. It took me MONTHS to get it through her head that my office was off limits when she first became aware of its existence as a child. Eventually, however, she learned to follow that rule and never broke it. Other rules, however, were broken all the time. Not the major rules, mind you, just the ones that would annoy me and my wife to no end- sneaking out of bed at night for snacks, making plans to spend the night over at a friend's house and THEN telling us about it, dating boys she knew damn well would never win my approval and other such things. More than being precocious, though, Emily is beautiful. And I don't say that lightly- she's a knock-out young lady, definitely a gorgeous man-eater who has had the fortune of looking like a much shorter version of her equally beautiful mother. Long brunette hair; large, supple, firm breasts; a nice, small, round ass; piercing steel-blue eyes; full, luscious lips; and legs that look strong and muscular on her 4'8" frame. Technically, she qualifies as a midget, which she likes to joke about sometimes, but everything on her tiny body is in perfect proportion. She looks like a miniature version of the hottest brunette porn star you could think of. Guys follow her around like sick puppy dogs and she has her pick of the litter. Actually, it was her natural beauty that led to her being a tom-boy for most of her childhood. Consequently, she always had boys hanging around her, either as friends or suitors, but the only girls who could stand to be around her were the ones who either looked as good as her or simply didn't give a shit about how much attention she got from boys in general.

I, however, most definitely gave a shit about how much attention she got from boys and did everything I could to protect her. I'm not foolish enough to believe that Emily was still a virgin and purely innocent by the time she got to her Senior year of high school, but parents often like to live in ignorance of such facts. Protecting my daughter, while ultimately pointless, was something that I could do thanks, in large part, to my career as a writer. On the surface, sitting in front of the computer and writing stories might seem somewhat boring, but the fatherhood angle keeps it all pretty interesting. My wife, Jessica, has a full-time job as a nurse while I stay at the house and write my books and raise Emily, who has just reached the graceful and frightening age of eighteen. I say graceful because my daughter has turned into a stunning beauty and I say frightening because, well, my daughter has turned into a stunning beauty. Boys her age are more insistent than ever before and it's all I can do to keep up with her. She's always keeping me on my toes, whether it's going out and dancing on a school night or disappearing for entire weekends under the pretense of staying at a friend's house. But, to be fair, she's as much a joy to my life as she is a burden- she has those incredible moments where all the mischief disappears and she's my adorable little girl. So I bear the burden of fatherhood gladly while my wife pays the regular the bills, having done her bit for parenthood during Emily's formative years.

Being a writer provides me with a lot of alone-time. When I'm not writing, I'm usually thinking about a story or looking for inspiration. Inspiration, I have learned through hard experience, can come from all kinds of sources. This being the case, I don't limit myself and expose my creative mind to all kinds of stimulation. TV, movies, plays, shopping malls, my daughter's conversations with her friends... nothing is taboo for me when it comes to the never-ending search for an inspiring idea. And I get plenty of them, some good and some not so good, but the well is never dry if I push myself hard enough and slog through enough crap. Lord only knows that I've gone through several VCR's and DVD players over the years doing exactly that. Translating some of that inspiration into a viable story, on the other hand, is where the work of a writer really comes in- and that's where the dedication to my craft must be applied. I actually look forward to working every day and can't wait to see what I produce by the day's end. I'll be the first to admit that 70% of what I end up writing is crap, but that golden 30% makes it all worthwhile- both literally and figuratively.

I'm not the most popular writer out there, but I've got a modest fan-base, which keeps me honest and my family well provided-for. I am what many people in the pulp industry would call a second-tier author. I've sold a rather healthy number of books but still haven't made it to the New York Best-seller's list. My book advances are just big enough to pay the bills for a few years while I spend that time working on another book, in order to keep the mill running. Residuals and royalties help some, but not as much as you might guess. It's the advances, really, that matter most to us second-tier authors. Those and the odd jobs that all authors must do: signings, readings, conferences, conventions and radio or TV interviews (for those rare and lucky few who get the attention of the mass media, that is).

So when my agent calls me once every few months to tell me that she's booked me on a short signing tour, I typically don't make much of a fuss about it. Truth be told, some of those jaunts can be a real blast- and the fans are almost always interesting in one way or another. The only real downside, though, is that I oftentimes have to leave Emily, basically, home alone since her mother works all the time. Emily, of course, loves to get every opportunity to stay home while both her parents are working- what teenage girl wouldn't? And, to be fair, it isn't like we're REALLY leaving her alone for any extended period of time- my wife still comes home after work, even though she comes home rather late at night.

But, as they say, shit happens, right? Indeed it does. Jessica works at the local hospital. Having worked there for a few years now, her routine has gotten to be fairly, well, routine. It's very rare that she has to deviate from her normal schedule and the hospital has always given her plenty of notice when things had to change. It's fortunate that our particular hospital doesn't suffer from the shortage of nurses that a lot of other hospitals do, otherwise Jessica would probably work a lot harder and have longer hours. In the ten years that she's worked there, not once has she had to go out of town for her job- until now. Apparently there was some sort of re-certification program at the hospital which required Jessica to go to Chicago for a few weeks and brush up on her ER skills. The timing was unfortunate because I had also just been told by my agent that I was booked for a week-long jag in New York to promote my newest book.

This left Emily completely alone to her own devices for a full week. Neither Jessica nor I really liked this development, but neither of us could back out of these obligations to our professions. I had signed a contract to do a certain number of public appearances and Jessica's job as a nurse was on the line if she didn't get re-certified. We didn't really have a choice in the matter, which doubtlessly made our daughter even happier. This was her moment to do whatever she wanted while we were away and she damn well knew it.

We, however, weren't so easily beaten. Both of us assured her that there would be hell to pay if she didn't answer the phone when we called (each of us would call at different hours of the night) or if she somehow got into trouble while we were gone. No parties, no late night dancing trips, no boys. Stay home, watch TV, go to bed whenever you want, wake up the next day and do whatever it is you do during the day (it being summertime, she didn't have school) and then repeat the process until we get home. "Hell to pay" was described a number of different ways and we like to think that Emily fully grasped the concept. We knew that there were literally dozens of ways that our daughter could out-fox us, but when it came down to it, she was going to have to spend time alone on her own terms anyway- she might as well start now. We did not doubt that she would take full advantage of the situation once we were gone, but we liked to think that she would have shown at least a little restraint.

So my wife boarded her plane to Chicago while I drove off for New York and we both prayed that our daughter would be able to stay out of trouble for the week during my absence. The up-shot was that I would be coming home first, and, if there was a problem to be dealt with, I was only a few hours' driving distance away. Jessica can be rather hot-headed sometimes while I usually take the more rational and even-tempered approach to child-rearing. When Jessica punishes our daughter, the punishments usually hurt and are marginally effective; when I punish Emily, it usually COUNTS and is extremely effective.

I kept in close contact with my wife while I was on my book-signing tour in New York. By day three neither of us had reason to suspect that Emily wasn't following our rules on the barest of pretenses, so we were temporarily relieved to think that she just might be trustworthy. We joked a few times about the possibility of silent orgies held by our daughter and wondered if the neighbors might be able to tell us about anything amiss when we get home, but we were still rather hopeful that our jokes weren't based in fact or truth.

On the fourth day of my signing tour I caught a slight break. I had a two-day engagement at a single bookshop, but the shop in question had been audited by the IRS recently and was discovered to be (I swear this is not a pun) cooking the books. As a result, the shop was closed down and my obligation for the public appearance had become null and void while I still got my paycheck for being there. This was great news because it meant that I could go home early, back to my sorely-missed office and my precocious daughter. I didn't even bother to call home and let Emily know about the change in plans, figuring that once I was home the burden of responsibility would be lifted from her inexperienced shoulders and she would then be thankfully free to play as she wished. I figured that she would be glad to see me home.

When I did get home, though, I learned that she would most definitely NOT be happy to see me. I pulled into the driveway and immediately noticed a car parked in my spot that did not belong to anyone in the family. I got out of my car and inspected the newish-looking Honda. The back seat was a mess, there were cigarette butts in the ashtray almost to overflowing, a plethora of empty soda cups from various fast-food shops littered hither and yon and a number of crumpled clothes were scattered on the back floorboards. Peeking out from beneath the clothes were gaming magazines, faded paychecks stubs from Toys R Us and countless receipts. This, I decided, was most definitely the car of a teenage boy.

I went into my home quietly and pricked up my ears to get an idea of what I might be walking into. I didn't hear a single blessed thing, which both calmed and frightened me in equal measure. I didn't know what to expect at that point, so I began a slow tour of my house, room by room. I didn't find my daughter anywhere in the house- not her room, the TV room, the living room, the kitchen... nowhere. And more importantly, I didn't find any teenage boy, either. I saw evidence of their presence inside the house in the kitchen, however- dirty plates that looked at least two days old, a few garments of women's clothing scattered around the house (one of them my daughter's favorite skirt), but still no kids. I figured that they'd gone for a walk or perhaps they'd gone out with some friends of theirs to a movie or something; that I'd catch up with them later when Emily returned home. I shrugged the situation off for the time being and decided to make off for the one place I missed most: my office.

Do I need to paint a picture at this point? Have you figured out where my daughter and her boyfriend were hiding? If not, then I pity your ability to understand the simple concept of foreshadowing. Alas, my daughter and her rapscallion of a boy-toy were naked as jaybirds on my office sofa, Emily posting up and down reverse-cowgirl style on some faceless kid's groin (faceless because she was blocking his face from my view) and watching a porno on my TV. I took in this sight as my jaw dropped open in a perfect "O" and my eyes bobbed up and down along with my daughter. She held her breasts and tweaked her nipples as she moaned and flounced her brunette hair over her shoulders. My eyes drifted further down and I could see that her pussy had been shaven bald and was currently being stuffed by a rather impressive bit of manhood- well, I guess it only looked impressive because her pussy is small that she didn't go down on it completely. Her mouth was agape with pleasure and, when she finally saw me, it snapped shut like a mouse-trap. As soon as Emily's eyes locked onto mine, she froze with rigid fear. Seeing my daughter naked, even at the age of eighteen, wasn't a problem for me. I understand, in a detached I'm-a-man-too sort of way that Emily is going to do these kinds of things. As I've already pointed out, I haven't missed the fact that she has developed a very nice pair of breasts, that she has a trim waist, that her hips are nicely rounded, that she has a nice ass- I know all of this in an intellectual sense, but never did it fully register with me until I saw it all in action. No. Seeing my daughter naked wasn't a problem... it was a disaster. It was a disaster because, for a fleeting moment, I dearly wished that I could be in that boy's place. The realization of that thought caused a very abrupt inner-conflict that I wrestled with while my eyes continued to take in the scene before me.

The brat fucking my daughter on my office sofa didn't help matters any when he grabbed Emily's hips forcefully, pulled her roughly down on top of his groin so that his bat-like pole filled her to the hilt and shouted out, "OH, FUCK, I'M GONNA CUM!" Without hesitation, he began to do just that, and I could actually see Emily's belly ripple when his cock twitched while slug after slug of sperm was ejected into my daughter's body. "AW, FUCK, I'M GONNA FILL YOU UP! I'M CUMMING!" he added proudly.

I let it go on for about ten more seconds, stunned into silence while this kid filled my daughter's womb with his seed and she just stared back at me like a helpless doe, until my paternal instincts finally kicked in. The tumultuous debate going on inside my head came to a sharp end and I felt my jealousy swiftly transform into a parent's rage. "LIKE HELL YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE SHIT! YOU ARE MOST CERTAINLY-THE-FUCK-GOING! GIT OUTTA MY HOUSE OR SO HELP ME GOD I'LL PLANT MY FOOT IN YOUR ASS SO DEEP YOU'LL TASTE LEATHER FOR A YEAR!"

Emily jumped off the boy's spent cock like she'd been hit by lightning, leaving behind a right mess of cum on his lap as she did so. She raced by me without a word (which was smart of her) and went straight to her room. The boy, on the other hand, wasn't as bright.

"What the fuck?!?" the kid shouted as he watched my daughter tear ass out of my office. Then his eyes focused on me, for the first time, and a puzzled look crossed his face. "Who the fuck are you?"

I stalked over to my desk, picked up the family photo which sat on it and showed it to him. I knew the picture well, after having looked at it for years. Jessica, Emily at the age of twelve and me. I'm in the middle with my arms around both of the two most special women in my life. All of us are grinning madly in the photograph because when we took the picture, we'd just gotten the news that my brother Sam had been officially promoted as a mid-level CIA director- something that he had worked hard for since he was in his early twenties. "Ask me ANOTHER stupid question, fuckwit. No. Wait. Let me ask YOU a question: WHY ARE YOU STILL IN MY GODDAM HOUSE?!?" I tossed the family photograph aside, not caring if it broke or not (it didn't), and leaned forward as I bellowed at him. "GET. OUT. NOW!"

The fucking idiot just blinked at me owlishly, like this was the first time he'd ever heard English spoken plainly. "Dude, I'm sorry, man, we were just-"

I smacked my own forehead and looked up at the ceiling, talking to God. "He thinks he has to explain it to me! Oh, my fucking God. Allah, have mercy on me for what I am about to do." I looked back down at the kid even more menacingly. "You, you dumb fuck, have until the count of ten to run for your life. I should warn you that I worked for a few years as a bouncer at a strip club and I've got almost a decade of experience in the military."


A Swiftly Changing World



"Huh?"

"One."

That wizened the kid up a bit. He quickly jumped to his feet and began a frantic search for his clothes. He found his shirt and started to put it on. "Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck," he kept muttering to himself.

"Two. You did that already," I told him as I leaned back against my desk as calmly and ruthlessly as I could. My eyes never left him as he reached for his jeans. "If I were you, I wouldn't waste what little time you have left with getting dressed. You can do that in the car, a few miles from here... if you live long enough to get to your car, that is. Three."

"Oh! Oh, yeah! Do me like you mean it! I want you to fuck me hard!" some girl on the TV demanded. I paid it no mind and focused all of my attention on the boy.

He glanced up at me and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. Good. Arrogant shit. He got just a touch smarter, snatched his shoes and ran out of my office like his ass was on fire (as well, it soon would be if he didn't move more quickly). Seconds later I heard his souped-up Honda scream to life, a sound that reminded me of a toy car on cocaine, and then the very pleasant sound of tires squealing as he left my home, hopefully never to return again.

I returned the family photo back to its place on my desk and opened a window to let out the very pungent odor of sex. With that done, I made a beeline for Emily's bedroom. I didn't even bother to knock and just flung the door open forcefully, which caused it to rattle on its hinges. I saw my daughter sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in a robe and with a look of stark horror writ large upon her features. I just stared at her for a long moment in total silence, almost willing her to dare to speak first. Fortunately for her sake, she knew better.

"You are so unbelievably fucked, young lady, that they will one day in the far future be only barely evolved enough to come up with a term to describe it. You can bet your well-fucked ass that I will most certainly be talking with your mother about this, but first I have some questions and you had better damn well tell me the absolute truth because this shit is serious. And, a word to the wise, keep your answers as short as humanly possible. Here's the first question: do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Emily answered meekly.

"Good. Next question: are you using birth control?"

"Kind of."

"Explain, quickly."

"I have a morning-after pill," she said quickly. "I was planning on taking that."

I grunted. I've done research on those things. Fairly effective, but still somewhat risky over the long-term. "Plan-B or Preven?"

She grabbed her lockbox off her nightstand, opened it up and glanced inside at what I presumed was the pill in question. "Plan-B," she answered.

"Is he a boyfriend?"

"No."

"What's his name?"

"Rick."

"Have you fucked Rick before?"

"No."

"Do you know him well?"

"Yes."

"How well?"

"I've known him since kindergarten. We're good friends."

I didn't recognize him, but that meant very little. Emily always kept her friends away from us for all kinds of reasons, one of them being that we were a little weird what with me being a professional writer and Jessica being a nurse. At least, that was Emily's excuse. "So he IS a boyfriend," I stated plainly.

Emily blinked at that. "He IS a boy," she said guardedly, "and he IS a friend. So, yes, I guess he is *A* boyfriend, but not my BOY-FRIEND."

"You aren't romantically involved with him?"

"No."

"Why were you fucking him, then?"

"His ex-girlfriend said that he had a big dick and I was curious, so I asked him. One thing led to another." The casual way she said that bothered me quite a lot more than I expected. I also got the feeling that I was getting only part of the story, but it seemed like that was the relevant part.

I narrowed my eyes at her cautiously, not sure what my next question would be. On the one hand, I wanted to ask her if her curiosity had been sufficiently satisfied. On the other, I wanted to ask her if it was worth it. I decided to go with the latter, since it had a more menacing tone to it. "Was it worth it?"

"That depends," she answered quickly. She still held the lockbox in her hands, but looked fairly calm for a young woman in her position.

"On what?"

"On what I'm going to lose."

Again I narrowed my eyes at her suspiciously. I know my daughter extremely well and she can be a very devious little minx if given half a chance. She's very smart and doesn't hesitate to use her intelligence when she thinks it'll keep her out of trouble. She inherited that trait from me, I'm sad to say, but the up-shot is that I can spot it a mile away and know better than to play into her traps. "What you will and will not lose, Emily, remains to be determined. Once I have a talk with your mother, we'll see how the lay of the land looks. For now, you're glued to this room. I'll bring you your meals. Give me your cell phone." I held out my hand expectantly.

"It's in your office," she told me. "In my knapsack."

"Very well. It stays with me until your mother gets home- at the very least. We might decide to keep it longer or just have it shut off permanently. As of now, you are in a communications black-out with the rest of the world. No friends, no boyfriends, nothing and nobody. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Nyet. Capiche?"

"Oui, mon pare," she answered in French.

I blinked at her in surprise, but rolled with it and responded in kind. "Vous etes idiot. One, for disobeying us, and two, for getting so blatantly caught. To say nothing of the room you chose do to it in. If you ever set foot in my office again without my permission, I'll chain you to your fucking bed. Comprenez-vous?"

"Yes."

"Good." I turned around and started to leave her room.

"Can I ask a question?" she blurted out.

I turned to face her for a moment and then nodded. "One question. One. You'd better make it a good one."

She was quiet for a moment as she thought it over. Doubtless she had lots of questions on her mind, but she had to figure out which was the most important one for her to ask. Her choice surprised me. "Are you really that angry or are you just being a parent right now?"

"Technically, that's two questions, but I'll let it slide," I said. "Yes, I'm really that angry- you violated my private space, my personal haven. If it was anyone else, I'd have done physical damage. That kid got off lucky because I didn't know if you thought ahead enough to worry about birth control and, therefore, he might end up being the father of my first grand-child, so he had to survive if only to fulfill his potential obligation as a father. There was also the fact that you were on top of him, which means that you were there by choice. If he'd been on top, I wouldn't have known if it was rape or not and would have assumed the worst, which would've prompted me to split his head wide open. As for the second question, yes, I am most definitely being a parent right now."

"Are you jealous?" she quickly asked.

I almost answered that, but stopped myself. She wanted to take the focus off of her and put it back on me. "Bzzt! You've reached your limit. I will suffer your questions no more. Zip it. I'll bring your dinner in a few hours." Without another word, I left and closed the door behind me. With a quick second thought, I said through the door, "I will come back periodically to check and see if you haven't hopped out of your window. If I find you gone, your belongings will be scattered out on the lawn and you will be invited to find somewhere else to live. Consider yourself forewarned. I am most definitely not fucking around on this one. STAY in your room. You're my daughter and even though I'm pissed at you right now, I really don't wanna kick you out of the house just yet because, believe it or not, I do love you."

I didn't wait for an answer and went straight back to my office, back to the scene of the crime. The TV was still on and, now that I had more time to survey the damage, I saw that Emily's clothes were strewn all over the floor. I glanced at the sofa where I had cat-napped so many times before, where Emily had just fucked some teenage boy, and saw a very prominent wet spot. I stared at the spot for several long seconds in silent thought, not sure what to do about it, and tuned out the distinct sounds of sex coming from the television. Cleaning the wet spot up would mean getting close to it and I wasn't sure that I wanted to get a nose-full of my daughter's and some strange boy's most intimate aromas right then. I decided that Emily would pay with her own money to have it cleaned by a professional. Suddenly I heard the soft tones of her cell phone as it started to ring.

I looked down at the floor and quickly found her knapsack. Within seconds, the phone was in my hand and the caller ID announced that Rick was calling. Feeling particularly evil, I answered the phone. "Riiiiick. How good to hear from you so soon. Did my daughter ever tell you about her Uncle Sam? He works for the CIA. I've got your number now. And that means, within a few minutes, I'll have your address, too, as well as a lot more information about you."

"But, sir-!" the boy squeaked into the phone from the other end.

"But nothing, *Rick*. Tell me something, Ricky, are you a father? Are you aware of the fact that my daughter isn't taking birth control? You came inside her. Do you WANT to be a father?"

"WHAT? But she said-!"

"Women say all kinds of things in order to get what they want, just like us men, Ricky-boy. I should know. I'm a father myself and I've been there. I'm telling you, Richard, you've got a hard road ahead of you. Diapers, late nights, teething, jobs you hate just to pay the bills and keep the kid in clothes. Damn, Dick, you've got yourself in quite a pickle here."

"But I-!"

"But-but-but. What's with you, Richie? Afraid to take responsibility, hmm?"

"No, sir! I just-!" 

"Well, I'll tell you how it is, *Rick*. My brother Sam, remember him? The one who works for the CIA? My brother Sam has a sister who had a guy run out on her once, left her high and dry with two kids and all the bills. Sammy found that shit-heel a week later in Tijuana and you know what? That guy is STILL in Tijuana. You know what he's doing there? Well, I'll tell you, Ricky, old friend. He's rotting away in a graveyard, just like all the other corpses down there. Now, I'm just telling you this so that you'll have something to think about until we can find out if you knocked my daughter up today. Remember, *Rick*: I have now, officially, got your number. Comprende, mi amigo?"

There was a very long pause on the other end and I could have sworn that I heard the kid gulp. I could just imagine him stopped on the side of the road somewhere not far away, trying to get his pants around his ankles, and frozen in fear from what I'd just told him. Finally, he said, "Yes. Yes, sir. I understand completely. Sir."

I smiled wolfishly. "That's very good, Rick. I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad that we understand one another. I'd hate to have to say, one day, that I've got a stupid, dead son. That'd just suck. But, hey, listen... nothing's written in stone just yet, is it? You might get lucky. Well, luckier than you already did today with my daughter, you fucking scum-bag. Emily might not get pregnant after all. Which would get you off the hook pretty nicely. But let's not mince words here, hmm? I'm a man who prefers to speak plainly. If, IF you're very, very lucky, Rick, and my daughter doesn't end up pregnant, I just want to make it absolutely clear that if you get within ten feet of her ever again... well... Sam's a nice guy until he finds that his niece might be in some sort of trouble. And you, my boy, officially qualify as trouble in my book."

"Sir? Can I say something?"

"Sure, Rick, but make it fast. You guys left quite a mess in my office here and I'd like to clean it up before it gets too late. I've had a long, long day."

"Yes, sir. Uhm. Listen, sir, your daughter is a good friend of mine. I wouldn't do anything to-"

"Stop right there," I interrupted. "You're going to say that you'd never do anything to hurt her. But the fact of the matter is, you shit-head, you popped your rock into my little girl's womb. You didn't even give any consideration to the possible exchange of STD's- and let's NOT call my daughter's integrity into question on that score, shall we? I'm thinking about you here. If Emily DOES get pregnant, her whole life falls apart pretty damn quick and, so help me God, if she gets left holding the proverbial short end of the stick, you'll be lucky to walk again. What you've done here, Ricky-boy, is you have put yourself and my daughter at risk, on two different fronts. And that's a damn crying shame. If you're a man who believes in God, I'd say that you had better start praying like the world is about to end. Because if my little girl ends up pregnant or sick, it'll take an act of God Himself to keep you safe from me." With that I hung up the phone and then shut the damn thing off. I was through talking to that idiot.

That was when I heard a very familiar voice, a voice I'd heard not twenty minutes before, coming from the TV. "Fuck! Fuck me like you did my mom!" the voice cried out.

I looked up at the screen and saw, much to my horror, that the owner of that voice was none other than Polly, my brother's daughter, my niece. A picture of Sam and his family, Polly at age sixteen, was on a bookshelf, right behind the TV. I occurred to me that Ricky-boy had probably recognized Polly in that picture when he was looking up at me while searching for his clothes. That was probably why he hauled ass out of the house- he didn't want to wait around for my discovery of this fact. There she was, my beautiful niece, decked out like a porn star. Wait. No. She IS a porn star. The actor fucking her was extremely well-hung and he was fucking her like mad. I just stared at the screen with my jaw hanging open.

Sweet little Polly, who bounced on my knee countless times when she was an innocent little girl, was bent over on her hands and knees, taking it doggy-style from her partner while she watched him from over her shoulder. Auburn hair, steel-blue eyes, young athletic body, soft face with elfin features- Polly. The camera moved from her face to her pussy without a break, making it unquestionable that she was truly and honestly getting fucked.

"RAM IT IN!" she cheered the porn actor on gleefully.

The look of pure, unadulterated sexual abandon on her face was so alien to me, but it so dearly resembled how she looked just before cracking up from laughter. I recognized that look because she loved me to make her laugh every year at Thanksgiving with one of my funny stories that never saw the light of publishing day. The camera moved away from her face and back to her cock-filled pussy, where the guy's pole was gripped tightly by the inner-folds and glistened wetly with her juices. As her hips rolled from the pounding he was giving her, I could see that she shaved her pussy down to a landing strip and when her asshole came into view it was clearly a hole that had seen some action more than once.

Polly Ann Goddard, a young lady not much older than Emily, was a porn star. A fuck-slut. A cum whore. A cock knocker. My mind processed this fact, but I still couldn't seem to warm up to it, like being told that your goldfish set the house on fire. I just stared dumbly at the screen in a weird combination of horror and intrigue. I didn't even register the fact that I was developing an erection.

"Oh, fuck, baby, I'm gonna cum!" the guy groaned.

"Yes!" my niece crowed. "Yes, Daddy! Do it! CUM INSIDE ME!"

I forced my eyes away from the screen when the actor began to deposit a rather healthy quantity of sperm into my niece's cunt for the video camera and I began to look for the box that the video came in. Laying on the desk next to the DVD player was the case proudly titled "Cum Drippers #18: Taboo Fantasies of Porn Stars." I picked the case up and looked at the back. Whoever had designed it had been kind enough to place small thumb-nail pictures next to each of the starlets featured in the video. My eyes fell upon the pic of Polly, who lewdly held her ample breasts up for the camera and was licking one of her nipples, and I found her stage name: "Miss Begotten." How quaint. She named herself after a fictional email address in one of my first books.

"Ooooh, yeah," Polly told the video camera, "I just love it when my pussy drips cum like this. Thank you, Daddy." I didn't even look up when I heard the off-screen director ask her how it tasted and she said, "Oh, it's, mmmm, fantastic. I can't wait to try some from my sister's pussy next time."

I suddenly, absurdly felt compelled to invent a time machine, go back in time and prevent myself from writing that damned story. In some strange way I was responsible for giving my niece her porn-star name. Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.

Then, out of nowhere, another thought rolled into my brain like a thunderclap: my daughter had been fucking her friend while watching this video. My attention was pulled away from the DVD clamshell box when I heard my niece's voice once again. Apparently, her scene had been put on a continuous loop and it was starting over again. My mind rocked and reeled with the realization that not only was my daughter probably aware of the fact that her cousin was featured on this video, but she had been fucking right along with her cousin's featured scene!

I turned off the DVD player with a jab of my thumb and marched back to Emily's room with the clamshell in my hand. Once again, I didn't even bother to knock as I opened her door. Emily was still on her bed, but this time she was laying on top of it and filing her nails.

I tossed the clamshell to her like a frisbee and said, "What the hell is this?"

She put down her nail file and picked up the DVD case casually. She glanced at both sides and saw her cousin's face on the back. "It's a porn video," she said.

"You're not so young that I can't put you over my knee and beat that ass of yours till it's black and blue, Emily. Do NOT get coy with me! Answer the fucking question!"

Emily rolled her eyes as she sat up and placed the DVD case to her side. "Well, what do you expect me to say? You asked what it is. That's obvious: it's a porn video. But what you want me to acknowledge is that cousin Polly is starring in it, right?"

"Bingo."

She shrugged indifferently. "Okay. I acknowledge it. So what?"

By that point, I'd had it and cut loose. "YOU WERE FUCKING A BOY ALONG WITH YOUR COUSIN AND YOU ASK ME SO WHAT?!?!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

Emily never lost her cool, though. "I was not fucking Polly. I was fucking Rick."

I looked upward and counted down from ten. By the time I got down to one, I had regained most of my equilibrium, though I still dearly wanted to throttle my little girl for being such a superb smart-ass. "Let's start over here, from the top."

"Okay," my daughter agreed amiably.

"My niece, your cousin, Polly Goddard is on this video. True?"

"True."

"You were watching her scene while you were fucking some boy in my office without my permission and after your mother and I had made it expressly clear that you were not to have any guests over at the house while we were out of town. True?"

"Yes," she answered promptly.

"Okay. What we have here is this: premarital sex, unprotected sex, breaking explicit rules, invasion of my privacy, using my personal property as a sexual aid, and now the sexual aid in question is bordering closely on incestuous."

"Wait! What? Incestuous how?" Emily demanded, as though I had somehow affronted her with a false claim.

I took a step closer into her room and pointed at the DVD case. "You saw that she was on that video, yes?"




A Swiftly Changing World



"Yes."

"You recognized her instantly, yes?"

"Of course. We grew up together."

I took a deep, calming breath and continued. "When you realized that your cousin, whom you know almost like a sister because she's the closest in the family to your own age, is now a porn star, what went through your mind?"

Emily thought it over for a brief moment and then it all came pouring out of her, like a dam had broken, and the words came out in a wild rush, "Well, at first I was kinda freaked out. But then I realized that she's allowed to have her own life just as much as anyone else and if she wants to make her living in porn, it's her business as long as she enjoys it. But I didn't know if she actually does enjoy it and I wanted to be sure, so I asked Rick to go halfsies with me, to buy the video. He doesn't know that she's my cousin, by the way, I just told him that I liked what I saw in the pictures and wanted to see more. So we brought the video back here and I watched it on your DVD player because the other one's broken. Anyway, I know her pretty well and if she wasn't enjoying it, then she'd have a better career in other kinds of films because she sure fooled me- it looks like she loves it. And seeing the scene got me excited, so I watched it again. And I got more excited, so I watched it again and before I knew it, I was kinda hooked... and horny. I didn't want to admit it out loud, but I liked watching my cousin have sex like that. It was kinky and hot and nasty and... and... taboo. I wanted to enjoy it, too, and Rick was there and there was that thing his ex-girlfriend had told me and he would have to be an alien if he didn't have a hard-on, so I asked him to show me what it looked like and then..."

"...one thing led to another," I finished for her. Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck, squared.

"Yeah," my daughter answered meekly.

"Well, I hate to break it to you, honey, but if watching your cousin have sex got you hot and horny, that's borderline incestuous. Next time you see her, you'll see her as a porn star, a sex object, and not just your cousin." At that point I didn't want to break it to her that Rick was probably now aware that "Miss Begotten" might be related to us. "And then there's the matter of the scene itself," I added.

Emily blinked owlishly at me. "What about it?"

"The symbology alone speaks volumes, Emily. In MY office, watching a porno scene where a girl fucks her father. It was set on continuous playback. You said yourself that it turned you on."

Emily gave me a wolfish smile. "Well, at least I'm not the only one. Not anymore." With a slight gesture my daughter pointed out that a very obvious erection had formed behind the confines of my pants- you couldn't have missed it from orbit.

I had absolutely no ready response for that, so I turned to leave again and, just before I closed the door behind me, I looked back at her. "You're still grounded." Yep, that's me. The dad with the snappy come-backs.

------------------------------------------------

I went back to my office and picked up the cordless phone that sat on my desk. It was relatively early in the evening and I knew that Sam would probably be at home by then. I was not disappointed when he answered on the second ring. The second he picked up, I said, "Thank God you're home, bro. We need to talk."

"Duncan? What's wrong? Who's in trouble? Are Em and Jess okay?"

"They're fine, Sam. Well... Jess is, but Em's in some hot water right now."

"Oh? What'd she do this time?" he asked. "And how much is it going to cost you?" I could hear the humor in his voice on the other end. He thoroughly enjoyed the stories I told him about my daughter's latest escapades. He also thoroughly enjoyed reminding me that I was just as much a pain in the ass when I was her age- maybe not as overtly troublesome, but there had been times when I'm sure Mom and Dad were ready to give me up for adoption.

I steeled myself for what I was about to tell my brother and then let fly with the entire story. I didn't leave out a single detail and when I came up to the part where it was his daughter on the DVD, I waited for his response. For several long seconds there was nothing but silence, so I prompted him. "Sam? Did you hear me? It was Polly, for chrissakes! You there?"

"I'm here, Duncan."

"Well?"

"I want you to do something for me, Duncan. Bring both your daughter and that video here. Tonight. I'll tell Beth that you're coming." I was astonished at how amazingly calm he sounded. I would have expected him to flip completely the fuck out, but he was cooler than a fan.

"Sam, man, I'm not sure that this is... well... I don't think Beth should see this, bro. It's just... well... I've seen some of it and I'm not sure that she'd like seeing her daughter like this."

"She won't be watching it," my brother told me. "She'll be out of the house and won't argue the matter. Be here at eight. And don't forget to bring Em. I've got to go now, Dunk. I'll see you soon." And without another word on the matter, he hung up the phone. I glanced at the wall clock and saw that he'd given me just over an hour to get there.

I know my brother pretty well. If there's one thing where he and I differ, like night and day, it's our tempers. He can snap easily and overreact like you wouldn't believe. I, on the other hand, tend to take things step by step and save my wrath for those truly special occasions, like today. Most of the time, however, I usually have the world's longest fuse and simply plan my revenge for a cold, cold day in the future. But Sam just goes for the throat and won't let anything get in his way. His calmness on the phone just then had me extremely worried. I only prayed that I could speak with him before he made any irrational decisions.

I went back to Emily's room and knocked on the door to get her attention. "Get dressed," I said through the door. "We're going to visit your uncle."

"To tell him about Polly?" she asked from within her room.

"I already told him," I informed her. "He asked me to bring you and the video over."

There was a thoughtful silence and then, "...Why?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Emily, but taking into consideration the news that he's just received, I don't think it'd be a good idea to disappoint him. Get dressed. We're leaving in twenty minutes."

"But I haven't even taken a shower yet, Dad!" she complained.

"Then you better hurry up, kiddo. He wants us there by eight o'clock."

I went back to my office once more, got the DVD out of the player and put it back into its case. I spent the remaining fifteen minutes or so straightening up my office. When I dropped my daughter's discarded clothing at her front door, she opened it up and quickly kicked it into her room. When she turned around, she looked up at me with nervous eyes. I was glad to see that my daughter was now dressed and looked like a normal teenaged kid. Her hair was still wet from the quick shower she'd taken and she smelled clean. I deemed this to be a vast improvement from the last time I'd seen her.

"Ready?" I asked.

She slung her knapsack over her shoulder and said, "Yep."

"You're remarkably relaxed for someone in your position," I observed. "What am I missing? What else did you do while we were away?"

Emily just blinked her eyes up at me as innocently as you please and said, "Nothing. With the exception of today, I followed the rules to the letter. I swear it on the graves of grandma and grandpa."

That was good enough for me. Emily loved both my parents, who had died when she was eight, with absolute conviction. When they passed away in the same year, Emily was devastated and didn't eat for almost a full week. She wouldn't invoke her grandparents unless she dearly meant it.

I nodded at her gravely and said, "Okay. I believe you. But that still doesn't change anything. Fact of the matter is, you DID break the rules, even if it was only for today. Now... I'm no idiot, Emily. I've known for some time now that you're sexually active. As a mature parent, I accept that fact and even expected it. I ALSO respect it. You weren't going to stay a virgin for the rest of your days, no matter how much I wanted you to." I sighed deeply as I looked down at my daughter, who remained thoughtfully silent. "You're not a kid anymore, I get that. But... please. In the future, be more careful. And, for Christ's sake, pick a smarter partner. That Rick kid is a bonehead."

A wry grin crossed Emily's lips and it suddenly bloomed into a full smile. "He's not as dumb as you think, Dad. If you give 'im half a chance, he might even surprise you. He's actually one of the smartest guys I know. You just caught him a bit flat-footed, that's all. And thank you for saying that, about me not being a kid anymore. In the future I'll try to be more... uhm..."

I held up a hand to interrupt. "I don't want to know who you'll be screwing or when you'll be screwing them, Emily. That's not what I'm after here. I just want to be assured that you'll be more responsible and respectful of our boundaries."

Emily nodded and said, "All right. I'm sorry, Dad. Really. I am. And not just because I got caught. I'm sorry about the whole mess. And I'll tell you something, Dad: as rough as you think you've had it today, just imagine how weirded out I was at the fact that you saw me not only naked, but also having sex. That's just.... it's..."

"Subject change," I said quickly. "Your uncle's waiting for us." I held up the DVD. "Put this in your knapsack, will you? I feel kind of weird holding it. You bought it, you carry it."

----------------------------------------

The trip to my brother's house, which was just on the other side of town, was fairly quiet. Emily and I were still a bit self-conscious about what I'd seen when I came home and I don't think either of us was ready yet to really discuss it. She asked if Jessica knew that I was home early (which caused me to mentally kick myself for not calling my wife) and we talked briefly about some of the places I saw in New York, but that was pretty much it. The rest of the trip was shared in silence. By the time we got to Sam's house, which is a fairly large estate, the silence between my daughter and I was almost palpable. We got to the front entrance of the house and we still hadn't said a word.

Before I rang the doorbell, I held out my hand. "I think I'll take that DVD back, Em. Sam might want to.... uhm. Hell, at this point, I don't know what he'll want to do with it. But he asked me to bring it and I think I should deliver it personally."

Emily simply nodded in agreement and produced the case without a word.

I rang the doorbell and we waited for a few seconds until it opened. I expected my brother to answer the door, but I was suddenly surprised to see Polly framed in the doorway. Her eyes went wide and she flung her arms open.

"Unka-Dunk!" she cried cheerfully. Before I could even respond, she leaped across the threshold and grabbed me in a happy embrace while I stood stiff as a board, not sure what to do or how to respond. When she let go of me, she regarded Emily and scooped her up in a warm embrace, too. "Oh, I'm SO excited to see you two!" she said into Emily's shoulder. "SO much has happened lately! You'll never believe! Oh, it's so good to see you!" She let go of my daughter and stood back. "So what brings you here, anyway? Does Dad know you were coming?"

I cast a quick glance at Emily, who just shrugged at me in bewilderment, and then I looked back at Polly. For a fraction of a second I thought that Polly's clothes had somehow magically disappeared and my mind forced me to see her completely naked in the doorway. I blinked away the mental mirage and, mercifully, she was clothed again. "Uhm, yes," I answered. "Your dad actually asked us to come by."

Polly's eyebrows arched up in surprise. "Really? Funny. He didn't mention it." She shrugged it off, though. "Oh, well. Daddy's always running one scheme or another. Maybe he just wanted to surprise me. Or you. Or all of us. Who knows?" she asked cheerfully. "Anyway, come in!" We followed her inside the house and as she closed the door behind us, she said, "You JUST missed Mom, by the way. I think she went to go out with some friends or something. I don't know, really. But she said she wouldn't be back until late tonight. And the twins are still away at school."

I smiled at Polly congenially, not sure of what I should say to her. Part of me wanted to just blurt out that we knew what she was doing for a living, but the more sensible side of me was certain that such a confession might cause more trouble. So, instead, I said, "It's a pleasant surprise to see you, Polly. When I spoke with Sam, he didn't mention the fact that you were in town. Last I heard, you were going to college in California. What brings you home? Spring Break isn't for a few months."

Polly giggled and said, "Oh, that. I dropped out in the second semester. L.A. is just SO fast-paced. I was working at this place on Santa Monica Boulevard and met some people. Next thing I knew, I was taking acting classes and getting modeling jobs. I blinked twice and suddenly I was getting actual acting jobs and making all kinds of money. I'm actually on hiatus right now, in between movie projects. And," she leaned in conspiratorially, "I'm getting filthy rich!"

My mind was clicking along at a quick clip, certain that I'd be able to get her to admit the fact that she was working in the porn industry without even making it known that we already knew. "Really?" I said with as much sincere interest as I could muster. "Well, what kinds of movies are you acting in? Horror? Drama? Sci-Fi?"

"Porn." I turned around and saw my brother Sam standing in the doorway, holding a small glass of whiskey in one hand and a handful of DVD's in the other, like they were playing cards. I could see that at least two of the DVD's had my niece on the cover. On one of them, she was provocatively dressed in a see-through nightie and, on the other, she was completely nude with her hands seductively shoving her plentiful breasts up at the camera while licking one of her own nipples. "She's a porn star. Aren't you, Birdie?" he asked his daughter with a fatherly smile.

Polly didn't even bat an eyelash as she said with gusto, "Yep! And a damn good one, too!" She took my daughter by the hand and said, "C'mon, Em. I think our dads need to talk for a bit."

Emily speechlessly looked at me like a deer caught in headlights as her cousin dragged her out of the hallway to somewhere deeper inside the house. She was probably as stunned as I was and couldn't yet figure out how she should respond to this sudden turn of events. Neither of us knew what to expect when we got inside the house, but THIS certainly hadn't been conceived of in either of our minds.

I looked back at my brother, who had placed his dealer's hand of DVD's on a table next to the front door, and asked, "Just what the hell is going on here, Sam? You KNEW about this?"

Sam turned wordlessly away and I followed him into his study. As he closed the double doors behind us, he said, "Of course I knew, Duncan. I work for the CIA. I'm a spy. Don't you think something like that would come to my attention?"

I just blinked at my brother in astonishment, not sure of what to say or what to do. I was completely turned around at that point, like a man lost at sea. "Well... aren't you a little BOTHERED by this? I mean, Sam, your... YOUR DAUGHTER IS ACTING IN PORN!"

Sam went over to his private bar and poured me a glass of what he was having. Normally, I don't drink alcohol, but this was one of those occasions where I didn't hesitate. Frankly, I needed a stiff drink right about then. As he handed the glass of whiskey over to me, he said, "At first I went ballistic, pretty much as you'd expect. Completely apeshit," he added with a chuckle, like it was a fond memory. "I found out six months ago, after she made her debut. One of the guys in the L.A. office brought it to my attention. I just couldn't believe it. I mean, my first impulse was to go straight out to L.A. and drag her back home, right out of that place."

"And?"

"And, so I went. I got there, full of piss and vinegar, ready to do exactly that. I didn't even tell her I was coming, I just showed up at her apartment. She and I had a long talk about it and, in the end, I realized that I couldn't stop her. She wasn't doing drugs, she wasn't being coerced into it, she wasn't out of control in any way. She was making an extraordinary amount of money doing something that she..." he shrugged with resignation and sighed. "Well, she likes sex. Always has, I guess. I mean, you know. She's had more boyfriends than I can count, going through them at a rate of one per week. So she found a profession where she could satisfy her cravings and make a decent living doing it."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, to say nothing of who I was hearing it from. "But what about AIDS and STD's?" I asked. "Isn't she at risk in that profession? I mean, Sam, remember John Holmes? He died from AIDS when we were teenagers!"

Sam looked at me with surprise as he made his way to his desk and sat on the corner of it. "Oh, come on, Dunk. You're a writer. SURELY you know that the porn industry is one of the most protected entertainment industries out there- largely BECAUSE of John Holmes' death. They test their stars on a monthly basis. The big studios will share their stars from time to time, so everyone knows everyone and everyone's clean. They don't fuck people outside the business, either. It's all insulated against the outside world. Very strict. There's a system in place within that industry and risks are extremely low. If someone so much as sniffles on the set, they're confined to their house until all kinds of tests are run to ensure that they don't have something serious. While those people fuck around with each other, they DON'T fuck around with their health. Actually, there probably isn't a healthier bunch of people on this planet. Lots of exercise, the best doctors, trainers, dieticians... a porn star is not a person, man, they're a product and those people take CARE of their products. Idiots don't last long in the business. They get strung out on drugs and bullshit. But the people who have serious potential to make an awful lot of money get special attention. No drugs, no late-night parties. They get treated like consummate professionals and," he added with a tip of his glass, "women RULE that industry, top to bottom. Polly is actually at the top of the food chain there." The twinkle of pride in his eyes as he said that almost floored me.

I helped myself to a seat in my brother's study and took a very large swallow of whiskey. The liquid burned my throat, but I was so mind-blown that I barely even felt it. When the liquid finally cleared my gullet, I whispered, "I don't fucking believe it." I looked up at my brother. "And.... you're OKAY with this?"

"Well, what am I gonna do?" he asked with a shrug as he sat in his own chair on the opposite side of his desk. "Stop loving her? She's my daughter, Duncan. Right or wrong, I can't stop being her father or stop loving her. And, to be honest, she's a lot safer than if she was working the streets. At least this way I know she's safe."

I looked my brother in the eye and asked, "Have you... seen...?"

Sam simply nodded. "Of course I have," he told me. "Every single scene, even the ones that were cut. As a director within the CIA, I was able to put some pressure on the studios. I made it clear that I would allow my daughter to work for them if and ONLY if the family was given full ownership and rights to any material not used for public consumption."

"WHAT?" I asked in disbelief. "WHY?!?!"

"Misuse of her likeness," he said matter-of-factly. "I don't want some rogue fuckwad using my daughter without her permission. I also made it clear that if they don't play by my rules then I would see to it that many of their best and brightest would befall some very hard times. They agreed to the terms instantly. Like I said: those people take care of their product."




A Swiftly Changing World



"Jesus Christ!" I breathed. "Sam, she's your daughter! You're talking about her like she's some sort of... piece of meat or- or a bargaining chip. She's your fucking daughter!"

"Precisely," Sam calmly replied. "She's my FUCKING daughter and I'm not going to suffer her to be used or abused by anyone if I can help it. If she gets tired of fucking for the cameras and wants to get out of the industry, I'm not going to have her perpetually haunted by her career for years and years, like a bad ghost. Anyway... to answer your original question, yes, I've seen her work. I actually watched her on the set when I was out in L.A. that first time."

"You WATCHED her on the set?" I was almost beside myself now with disbelief. How much more absurd could this get? I didn't want to know, but at the same time, I did. "Fuck, Sam, I ACCIDENTALLY saw Emily screwing some kid today and I don't even know how to talk to her about it. How in the fucking hell can you stand there and WATCH your own daughter having sex in front of God-only-knows how many strangers? And you! You're in the CIA, for Christ's sake! Won't this affect your career in some way?"

Sam shrugged indifferently. "Only if I go for political office. And, really, I don't have any intention of doing that. I'm happy where I am in the agency. You know that. I get to make a difference without having to get neck-deep in the bullshit. I do my job and as long as I'm doing my job, nobody really gives a shit about what my daughter is doing. Sure, I caught some hell for a few days, but once the novelty wore off and a bigger scandal involving someone else came along, nobody gave it a second thought. Didn't even hit the news services." He picked up one of the DVD's on his desk and held up for me to see. "I brought her into the world, Duncan. Me and Beth. And you know what? We're proud of her. She's NOT some Hollywood cliché. She's got her shit together and she's taking good care of herself, for the most part. Believe it or not, finding out about this has actually brought the entire family closer together. We didn't hide it from the twins and we've all seen her videos. To be honest, we've all been chomping at the bit to tell you about it, but we never could really figure out how to break it to you."

I held up my hands in surrender at that point. "Whoa! Hold on! Hold on! Wait a minute, for cryin' out loud! Let me process this, PLEASE!" Sam fell silent as I just sat there and thought about all of the information he'd just dropped on me. My mind was awhirl with all kinds of new and seemingly alien facts about my brother and his family. I couldn't seem to make heads or tails of it all. The twins, Becca and Bill, had been told? Beth knew? They wanted to tell ME?!? What the hell for? And why COULDN'T they tell me? And what was Polly doing with my daughter somewhere else in the house?

I stood up. "I just realized that Polly and Em went off together," I said as I rose to my feet. "Maybe I should go check-"

"Sit down, Duncan," Sam told me. The tone of his voice was stern, like he wasn't about to let me out of that room just yet. "She's fine. Polly is probably explaining the whole situation to her, just like I am with you. Let them be." For the life of me, he sounded just like Dad at that moment, and no longer my older brother. There was a sense of authority to his voice that made me stop in my tracks and really listen. "Sit down," he repeated from across the room. "It's okay."

I obeyed him and sat back down in the chair slowly, heavily, and tried to catch my breath. I had the feeling that things were moving too fast, that I'd somehow lost control of my world without noticing and that things had changed in some fundamental way that I couldn't understand. After a few seconds of breathing, I found myself laughing hollowly. "This is just too fucking surreal, man," I said to no one in particular. "Between New York and here I somehow crossed into the Twilight Zone. That's the only thing that makes any fucking sense. I'm in the Twilight Zone, right?" For some reason I found myself staring at my shoes, looking for signs of pixie dust or something other-worldly which might tell me just how I'd come to this point in my life.

"No, Dunk. The world is still the same place it ever was," Sam said evenly. "It's always been fucked up, confusing and absurd. And if you think what you've just heard is strange, my brother, you've only heard the half of it. I've seen and done shit that would make your hair stand on end. This is nothing, man. The tip of the iceberg."

At that I looked up and eyed my brother carefully. "You mean... there's more, don't you? What aren't you telling me, Sam?"

Sam took a deep breath and asked, "How much of the truth do you think you can handle? All of it? Just enough to keep you from going insane? None of it? Before we continue this conversation, Duncan, I've got to know just how far your mind can go."

As a writer I'd heard and seen some pretty weird shit, too. Maybe not as much as my brother, but I wasn't some spring chick, either. But everything I'd seen and heard in the past, in the pursuit of research for my stories, had involved other people, people I didn't intimately know or care about. There was always a sense of separation from it, so that I could always go, "Wow. That's fucked up" without feeling personally involved. But now I was in one of those fucked up stories, locked into a situation where top was bottom and left was right. But I had enough mental discipline to be able to keep that barrier in place, to maintain my center balance, no matter how fucked up my life had now become. Besides, what was I going to do? Flinch at the truth? What kind of writer would I be if I did that?

I took a long, deep breath and nodded slowly. "Okay. Hit me. Tell me everything. It's your show now."

A wisp of a smile formed on my brother's lips, almost wolf-like but not quite, like he was sure that I meant what I'd said but was still doubtful that I could prepare myself for what I was about to hear. Nevertheless, though, he let it rip. "Not only have I had sex with Polly, but the whole family is into it, Duncan. My daughter's career opened all of us up to a whole new life. Beth's in on it, too. All of us, you hear me? When you called earlier, wanna take a wild guess where Polly was? She was posting on my lap, bro. And Beth was licking us where we were joined. She actually sucked my cum out of our daughter's cunt when we were through."

Those words just hung in the air like a nuclear weapon which had been launched from my brother's desk directly at my forehead. And, as you might guess, they had the same effect as a nuclear missile, too. I just stared dumbly at my brother as though he'd grown a second head right in front of me, my mouth once again hanging open in a perfect "O" while my mind feebly tried to assimilate what I'd just heard. After several long seconds of silence, I finally managed to find my voice and said the first thing that came to mind: "You're fucking kidding me."

Sam cocked an eyebrow at me and smiled even more wolfishly. "You think?"

"Yes, I think!" I said quickly. "It's a joke. A sick, twisted, humorless joke, but it's still a joke. There is no fucking way you'd do that. None. Fuck your daughters? Beth go along with it? I'll fucking believe it when I see it!"

Sam quietly pulled open a drawer of his desk and withdrew a remote control. He tapped a few buttons on it and a panel of the east wall of his office slid away to reveal a large flat-screen television. "I thought you'd never ask," he said archly, like he was expecting it. "Take a look."

The TV screen immediately came to life in the middle of what was obviously a sex scene. Obviously because the people on the screen were naked as jay-birds. Sam was fucking Becca from behind, her sizeable breasts swaying with the force of each of her father's powerful thrusts. Becca had her mouth stuffed with her twin brother's cock while his head leaned back and his mouth hung open in ecstasy. Beth and Polly were next to the trio, twisted into a position remotely resembling a sixty-nine, hungrily sucking away at each others' pussies. The camera didn't move, it was probably on a tripod, but it captured all the action clearly. The tawdry, incestuous sex scene went on for several seconds, moans and groans and words of encouragement well recorded for posterity, until Sam turned the TV off again and the panel slid back into place.

"Convinced?" he asked.

"Holy shit," I breathed. "Holy fucking shit. You... they... she... holy fucking hell, Sam, what the fuck have you DONE?"

Sam shrugged. "Aside from enjoying the best sex of my life? Not much else but work. You?"

I stood up then and pointed at the false wall panel which hid the TV. "Why the fuck would you show me something like that? Jesus Christ, Sam! It's... it's... it's against the fucking LAW! You're in the CIA, for fuck's sake, Sam! You can't fucking DO that!"

Sam slanted his head to one side in disagreement. "Actually, Duncan, that's where you're wrong. Y'see, in the state of Rhode Island there is NO legal punishment for incest. None. Not a single law against it, no consequence. It isn't even legally defined. In this state it might as well not even exist. So, no, I'm not breaking the law. And why would I show you something like that? Well, to be perfectly honest, Duncan, Polly's had the hots for you for years. Tonight, after I got off the phone with you, she damn near squealed like a stuck pig when I told her you were coming over and why."

"But she said that you hadn't told her we were coming over-" I protested.

He cut me off. "Duncan. She's an actress, remember?"

"Oh," I said stupidly.

My brother and I sat in his office for another few seconds of silence while I gave some serious thought to a lot of things. Finally, I blurted out, "Sam, really, I can't. Okay? First, it's just... this is too much for me right now. It's all coming at me WAY too fast. Secondly, I'm married and I love my wife and... I've never cheated on her and I never will. Polly... well, Polly would be... well, I just can't do that. Not to my wife, not with Polly."

"Who's asking you to?" he asked pointedly. "Frankly, I don't think it'd be a good idea, either. I'm just telling you why I've decided to let you in on the truth. The way I figure it, the more you know about what's going on, the easier it'll be for you to ignore any advances my daughter might make towards you."

"Huh?" Okay. The idiot within still had the reins.

"Duncan, what me and my family are doing is what WE are doing. You're my brother and you deserve to know the truth, but that doesn't mean I'm at all gung-ho about the idea of you getting in on our action here. You wanna partake in incest? Fine. You've got your own family. Do with them as you wish. But you ARE my brother and I love you and I don't want you to feel uncomfortable around us in the future, okay? So I'm coming clean with you. Yes, my family and I fuck each other. Often and well. But aside from Polly, whose business it is to fuck other people, we don't let anyone else into our little circle. The twins aren't seeing anyone and Beth and me... well... the way we see it is, having sex with our children, who are all of legal age, is kinda like having sex with each other, since we both created them and I won't mince words: sex with just me and Beth had gotten kinda stale over the years. This, believe me, has definitely spiced up our relationship in ways we never imagined. So we don't qualify it as cheating on one another, and more often than not, it's a family event when we do it. Oh, there've been a few times when I've had one of my daughters bent over the kitchen or bathroom counter, and I'm sure Bill's fucked his mother and sisters by himself more than a few dozen times, but we usually have our fun together and enjoy each other as a whole family- except when Polly's in LA, of course."

"Of course," I repeated stupidly. I shook my head to let the dust inside rattle around a little more and then came to my senses. "So, what? Is that it? I came all the way out here so you could tell me how fun it's been fucking your family? Okay, Sam. Fine, good. Thanks for the 411. I hope you have fun and don't knock any of the girls up. So why did you ask me to bring Emily, too, anyway?"

"A couple reasons, actually," Sam answered calmly. "First, I doubt you'd be willing to leave her home alone, after the stunt she just pulled. Secondly, just what, exactly, do you think she and Polly are talking about right now, hmm? Sports? Boys?"

At that point I told the idiot within to go take a fucking hike and the lights started to turn on in my head. "Oh, shit! You mean... Jesus, Sam! Your daughter is telling Em... EVERYTHING??? What the fuck, man? You didn't even clear it with me first, you fucking asshole! She's my fucking daughter!"

"I'm sorry, Duncan. I couldn't think of any other, easier way to do this. Fact of the matter is, we didn't want Emily armed with only half the truth. A teenage girl armed with only half the truth is a disaster waiting to happen. Who knows what she might or might not say to the right or wrong person? Nevermind the fact that, like you, she IS family and deserves to know the truth. The WHOLE truth. So, while I'm telling you, Polly is telling her. And that's all. No seduction, no practical hands-on training, just talking. I made it very clear to Polly that she is not to touch Em in any way, just talk to her and tell her the truth, answer any and all questions with complete honesty."

"Well, fucking great, bro! Thanks a lot!" I shot out. "While you're at it, here-" I dug into my jeans pocket and fished out the piece of paper which had my wife's hotel phone number on it. "-why don't you call my wife and tell her, too? I'm sure she'd just love to hear all the little details."

"Actually, Jess already knows," Sam said blandly.

At that I totally lost it. "WHAT?!? HOW THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN?!?"

Sam shrugged indifferently. "Pretty much the same way I found out. Somebody at her hospital had seen one of Polly's videos, recognized her from the family pictures that Jess has pasted on her locker... she called me almost as soon as she found out and I told her everything."

"When?"

"About a month ago."

"Why didn't she tell ME?"

"She really didn't know how. We talked about it a lot, but couldn't figure out a safe way to tell you. We even thought of engineering a way for you to find out on your own, but... well, Life is what happens when you're making plans, right?"

I narrowed my eyes at my brother coldly, not at all impressed with the cavalier attitude he had about all of this. It didn't even cross my mind that while I was just now learning about all of it, Sam and his family had the benefit of almost half a year to get used to it. But my mind was still playing catch-up and logic wasn't a top priority right then. "If I find that you've fucked my wife, Sam, brother or not, CIA A.D. or not, I'll fucking kill you."

Sam held up a calming hand and said with absolute deference. "I promise you, Duncan, I've never touched Jess inappropriately. None of us has. She's as devoted to you as you are to her, and for that you're one hell of a lucky man. All the more reason I'm glad that you married her. At first she was more than a little surprised, but she's a nurse and has seen worse. Ultimately she respects our decision and has agreed to keep it a secret. Polly's career, yes, does make things a tiny bit more difficult for us, but not so much so that we feel the need to stop. Jessica hasn't told anyone, not even you, because, well... we couldn't all agree on how to tell you. But if we were able to figure out a way to do it without pushing you away, we'd have given her the green light a long time ago."

Looking into my brother's eyes I could tell that he was being honest with me. That, at least, helped to calm me down some. For the briefest of moments I was actually worried that he and his family had somehow seduced Jess away from me. Perhaps it was an irrational fear, but considering the news I'd gotten that day, I figured that anything remotely rational was subject to closer scrutiny. Having gone from discovering my teenaged daughter fucking her friend in my office to learning that my brother's family was steeped knee-deep in incest... well, it had taken one hell of a toll on my Believe-O-Meter.

A knock at Sam's office door interrupted us. "Daddy?" Polly's voice said from the other side of it.

Sam tapped a button on his desk and the door unlocked itself and slid open. "Yes, honey?"

Polly came into the room with my daughter closely on her heels. Emily looked... well... she looked the way I probably did, like the world had been suddenly turned upside down and she didn't quite know what to make of it just yet. Em glanced at me, her eyebrows high on her forehead, as if to silently say, "Can you fucking believe this?!?"

Polly stopped in front of her father's desk, her hands clasped behind her back. "I told Em everything, like you told me to. Are you and Uncle Duncan through, too?"

Sam looked at me for a moment, seemingly appraising me in some way that only a CIA-trained operative can. "Yeah, I think so, honey. Thank you." Then he addressed his niece. "Emily, do you fully understand everything that Polly told you?"

Emily looked from her uncle to me and back again. "I... I think so, yeah. I just... I just can't believe it. It's so... amazing."

"What, precisely, did she tell you? Just so that I know that we're all on the same page here."

Emily blushed bright red, but stood her ground. "Well, basically, she told me that you and Aunt Beth, Becca, Bill and Polly are... uhm... fucking each other, that you commit incest. Lots."

Sam nodded sagely. "And how do you feel about that, Emily?" Em glanced at me again, I presume doubtful if she'd have permission to fully speak her mind. Sam noticed the look and added, "Don't worry about your dad, sweetheart. At this point, obfuscating the truth is a lost cause. Speak your mind. How do you feel about the fact that your cousins, aunt and uncle have sex with each other?"

"Honestly?" my daughter said slowly. "Well... it's..." And suddenly the dam broke within her. "It's fucking hot! I can't believe it! Dad," she said to me, her words spilling out in a blur, "Polly showed me some videos of her and her family and, ohmigod, it's SO fucking cool! I mean, holy shit, Dad, they do it ALL! It's, like, the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life. Dad, I'm sorry, but I almost lost it when I saw Uncle Sam cum inside Becca. She's, like, so TINY, almost as small as I am, and he's so... WOW. Dad, you have GOT to see some of the stuff they do! It's incredible!"

Sam held up a silencing hand. "That'll do, Emily, thank you. Suffice it to say, you approve. Thanks." Then he regarded me. "Bro, I don't expect you to give your seal of approval. And, frankly, I'm not asking for it, even though it'd be nice. But I AM asking for your respect. Respect for our privacy and respect for our choices. We aren't hurting anyone and we aren't fooling ourselves. And we aren't imposing our lifestyle on anyone else. This is us and we're happy. Please respect that and don't... don't hate us for it. But I have to ask you, man to man, how do you feel about this?"

I looked down at my feet again and took several long seconds to think it through. Finally, I nodded my head slowly. "It's fucked up, confusing and weird as shit, Sam, but... well... it's your family and if you feel that you know what you're doing, I won't get in your way. For now, that's the best I can come up with. Sorry if it isn't what you'd hoped for, it's not a ringing endorsement, but I can't really tell you how I feel about it just yet. Lots of things, really. Jealousy, doubt, anger, surprise... and, yeah, just a tiny bit of temptation. At this point, I can't decide if what you're doing is right or wrong, but... well, it definitely seems like you're happier for it, so I guess I can't really knock it, can I?"




A Swiftly Changing World



"No," Polly blurted out, "You can't knock it if you don't try it."

She might've well as knocked me out of my socks with a feather. I stared at her blankly, at a complete and total loss for words. The fucked up thing is that, at the end of the day, she was right.

----------------------------------------

The ride home was pretty much the same as the ride to my brother's house, mostly uneventful and filled with thoughtful silence, until about the halfway mark.

"So... Mom knows, huh?" Emily said abruptly.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, once again reminded of the fact that I hadn't called her yet to tell her that I'd come home early. "Yeah, it appears so."

"And she approves?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't really know, honey. Your uncle said that she respected their decision and that she tried to help them figure out a way to tell me about it, but he didn't really say if she approved or not."

"Hmm," Emily said sagely and then fell silent. A mile later, she piped up with, "I'll bet she does."

"What makes you think that?" I asked awkwardly, not entirely certain that I wanted to know.

"Well, I'm not an idiot and I'm not deaf, okay?"

"Okaaaay," I replied cautiously. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well, Polly said that they told Mom the truth about a month ago, right? And I seem to recall that, just around that time, Mom was jumping your bones like crazy when you guys thought I was asleep. I mean, I don't mean to pry, Dad, but... well... I know that you guys still do it an' all. And it's been kinda regular over the last few years. I mean, just from what I've heard. I don't know what you guys do when I'm not home, so I could be dead wrong. But, like, I remember, about a month ago, when Mom kinda sorta jumped all over you every chance she got and, uhm... wasn't really quiet about it, either, like she wanted to make enough noise for me to hear or something, y'know?"

The news that my daughter was so keenly aware of my sex life was more than a little disturbing, but the real sad fact was that she was absolutely right. At just around the same time Jess had been told about my brother's incestuous activities, her libido seemed to skip the dial right past ten all the way up to fifteen. Sex with my wife had always been good, but never had I seen her so easily turned on at the drop of a hat, not even when we were newlyweds, and that point in our marriage was by no means dull. As fucked up as it seems, my daughter's astute observation of the facts did indeed make it apparent that Jess not only approved of my brother's choice, but wanted to get our daughter's attention, too. During that period she did an awful lot of talking, extremely loud moaning and more than her fair share of aggressive fucking, more so than I'd expected from her. At the time I was dumb enough to not really question her sudden appeal for sex, but now that Emily had said it, the evidence seemed to fit the facts admirably.

And then, completely out of the blue, I recalled one of our escapades during that time. Specifically, I remember Jess trying her hand at a bit of role-playing. At first it weirded me out, but I tried to roll with it, if only just to make her happy. She kept calling me "bro" and referring to herself as "Sissy." I didn't find it jarring enough to argue the point that she and I aren't siblings, so I just kept pounding her as hard as she told me to. "Fuck Sissy's pussy hard, bro!" she'd said a few times. "You like that? You like fucking your little sister's cunt, huh?" All I could think to say when she said those kinds of things was, "Oh, yeah, baby. Yes!" God, I'm a fucking retard sometimes. Typical fucking male: once the dick goes in, the brain shorts out and all bets are off.

"Holy shit," I muttered, "I think you're right."

"So where does that leave us?" For an eighteen-year-old girl Emily can ask some pretty damned sagacious questions sometimes.

I shook my head, pushed the gas pedal a little harder and said, "Right now, I-95 and Westminster."

"Have you spoken to her yet, Dad?"

I chanced a glance at my daughter, not sure if that was a loaded question or not. "No, I haven't." I reached into my hip pocket, withdrew my cell phone and handed it to her. "Go ahead. Now's as good a time as any. Just press send, it's the last number I called."

She held the phone to her ear for a moment and then said, "Mom? Hi. Yeah, he is. Came in earlier today. No, we're in the car. Oh, uhm... no, we just left Uncle Sam's house. Polly's there. Yeah, she seemed like it. Uhm, Mom? Can you hold on a sec? Thanks." She looked at me as she covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "Well? Should I tell her that we know?"

I took a deep breath as I kept my focus on the traffic in front of me. I let it out and sighed, "Yeah. Sure."

"Yeah, hi, Mom? Yeah, uhm... listen, Mom, Uncle Sam told us about Polly. Yeah. About her job in LA. Yeah, it's kinda cool, I think. But, Mom, well... we know about the rest of it, too. No. I kinda found out about her on my own and Dad caught me watching one of her videos." At that I heard a fair bit of squawking from my wife's end, which brought a small smile to my face. Sometimes I really dig it when my daughter rats herself out- saves me a whole lotta work. "Yes, Mom, I know. I know! Okay, no, I didn't know that. No. Uh... no, in Dad's office. Uhm, at a store. With a friend. A boy." More loud squawking, much to my delight. "Sorry, Mom. Yeah, he went apeshit. I'm grounded for, like, I dunno how long, he didn't say. No, he's driving. You know how he is about driving and talking on the phone at the same time. Yes, I know, I'm sorry. Listen... when I was over at Uncle Sam's, Polly and I were talking about this and, well, it seems to them that this is perfect, y'know? Like, how ya'll were trying to figure out how to tell Dad and stuff? Well, this kinda did the trick, didn't it? Yeah, I know and I said I'm sorry, like, a million times already and I MEAN it, but... Mom, I did it and I can't take it back, can I? No. So... uhm... putting my fuck-up aside, Mom, I'm really calling to find out... uhm... when you talked with Uncle Sam about all this, uh... what was your reaction?"

I took our exit ramp, my ears raptly attentive to the soft warbling that came out of the cell phone which was pressed tightly to my daughter's ear. I wanted desperately to yank it away from her and hear what my wife had to say, but I DID have this sort of personal thing about talking on the cell phone and driving at the same time- I personally feel that it's just about the most dangerous and stupid thing a person can do short of driving drunk. I don't do it unless it's a real emergency. If someone calls, that's what I have voicemail for, y'know?

Emily's conversation with her mother went on. "Really? You did?!? Oh, wow, Mom, I had no idea! WOW! He doesn't? Oh, shit, Mom... uhm... don't you think that's something you should tell him? What? Are you crazy? I can't do that! No way! Oh. Oooooh. Wow. Really? You think so?" Out of the corner of my eye I could tell that she was looking at me in some way which, had I been fully aware of it, should probably have made me more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. "Whoa, Mom. Are you absolutely... SURE? Oh my God. He DID? So you don't mind it? That's just... that's amazing. No, Mom. No. Well, yeah, I guess so, sure. Uh... heheh, yeah. Well, I think that, after today, it's anyone's guess, really. No. Yeah. Oh, yeahhhh. I forgot about that, good point. Well, we're almost home now, Mom, I think I should go. Yeah, I love you, too. I will. Yes. Yeees, I know. I promise. Okay. Love you, too. Bye."

Emily turned my cell phone off and placed it inside her knapsack. "Mom says she loves you. So," she said conversationally, "do you want the full version or the Cliff Notes version?"

"Fifty words or less will do," I answered stiffly.

"Okaaaay. She approves of incest. She fucked granddad, like, tons of times before she met you. And she wants me to fuck you, or you to fuck me, whichever works best, but I'd rather you fuck me, if it's all the same to you, Dad. Oh, and she's really pissed that I disobeyed the rules, too."

I marvel at the way my daughter is able to take the facts so well in stride. It's definitely a trait she inherited from me. Unfortunately, however, the limits of my mind had been fully taxed by the day's events. I was still unable to completely expunge the mental image of my daughter's shaven pussy stuffed with Ricky-boy's penis and having her tell me, in no uncertain terms, that she wanted me to have sex with her just about did me in.

I pulled over to the side of the road then and there. When the car came to a full stop, I just stared at my daughter for a long time. Her bright blue eyes stared back at me, as though she were looking into my head and trying to decipher its contents. To this day, I'm not really sure if I was thinking or if I was simply too stunned to have any coherent thoughts.

"Well?" she asked.

I continued to stare at her.

"Dad? Hello? Earth to Dad? Simple question here. Fuck me or not?" Still I said nothing. Emily huffed out a big sigh, rolled those blue eyes of hers and went on. "Okay. We've got two weeks till Mom comes home, so we can do it all we want, just you and me. Like I said before, Dad, I'm not an idiot. I know how you've been staring at me since I was, like, sixteen, okay? I know you think I'm pretty and I know you love me. Now, what you don't know is that, aside from the fact that you're my dad, I think you're pretty hot, okay? Not Tom Cruise hot, but hot in a very cool way. So, yeah. If it was up to me, yeah, I'd fuck you, okay? God, I've masturbated at least a million times while you and Mom were going at it, wishing that it was me and Mom's just told me, word for word, 'If you want to have sex with your dad, it's okay by me. I can't throw stones when I live in a glass house and Lord knows I've fucked my own father more times than I can count long before I ever met your father.' Direct quote. So I'm asking you, Dad: do you want to have sex with me, your daughter? Yes or no?"

And then the words just came out, way beyond anything I could possibly control even if I had wanted to, which I didn't. "What the fuck. Yes, Emily. As soon as we get home, your father is going to fuck you silly and sideways."

"Promise?"

"Sideways, upside down, doggy-style, reverse cowgirl... oh, shit, honey, the moment I saw you with that boy earlier today, I was ready to rip his head off, not because he was fucking you but because he'd gotten to you before I could. There. I said it. Yes, I've watched you since you started growing those-" I indicated her bountiful breasts. "-and, right now, I just don't think I have anything left in me to say no. God help me, I might regret it tomorrow, but tonight your cute little ass is mine!" With that, I grabbed the steering wheel and, swear to God, floored the gas pedal through our bucolic little Rhode Island neighborhood, speed limits be damned.

Emily just stared ahead, her eyes eating up the road almost as fast as the wheels of my car, and said, "Oh, this is gonna be SO fucking cool!"

----------------------------------------

By the time we got to the house I'd had a few moments to collect my wits. Did I really want to have sex with my daughter? I couldn't deny it. Yes, I did. But so much had changed for me in that single night. Could it be possible that I was simply getting caught up in all the craziness? Okay. One could make the point that everything had not changed in that night, but that I had only become aware of changes which had occurred over a long period of time and in the past. But it was all still so damned new to me. Was I making the right choice, as a father? I highly doubt that society at large would see me as a candidate for Father of the Year, but in this day and age it's almost impossible to say that any family is "normal." Every household has its exceptions and unique situations. But it still boiled down, for me, to whether or not my promise to have sex with my daughter was in her best interests or mine. Who was I trying to gratify here- her or me? And there was the issue of my wife, who'd given explicit approval for this unlawful coupling.

When we were stopped at the side of the road I was ready and more than willing to follow through with my promise, but now I was having second thoughts. Now I was wondering if I'd be making a mistake. As a man and husband, I still couldn't reconcile the fact that I was about to cheat on my wife, even though Emily had told me that I'd been given permission to do this. So when I shut off the engine I decided to hold out for a little bit longer, if only to actually hear my wife say what she'd told our daughter. Yes. That was it. I needed to hear directly from the source that what Emily and I were planning to do was truly approved of.

Emily swung open her door to get out and said, "I'm gonna go in and change into something more comfortable. You comin', Dad?"

My hands were still on the steering wheel, the seatbelt still fastened. I looked at her slowly and said, "I... I think I need to speak to Jessica, honey. Things are moving extremely fast for me and I need to... slow down and talk some things out first. I'm not breaking my promise, sweetheart, but... I just need some time to adjust. Okay?"

My daughter took a deep breath and eyed me pensively for a moment before she said, "Okay, yeah. I can understand that. Uhm... when you call Mom, is it okay if I listen in?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "At this point I seriously doubt that you'll hear anything surprising, so sure, you can listen in."

A few minutes later I was in the master bathroom, taking a hard at myself in the mirror. "This is major," I told my reflection. "I mean, really, really major. If you do this, you can't go back and undo it. You understand that, buddy-boy? The whole fucking ballgame is gonna change and there are no do-overs." My reflection said nothing back at me as I studied my face scrupulously, scrutinizing every line for some hint of a reason why I shouldn't go through with this.

Emily's voice came from the door of the master bedroom. "Dad? You in here?"

I paused for just a heartbeat, taking a last glimpse at my features in the mirror before answering, "Yes, honey. I'm here. Come on in. I'll be right out." I turned on the faucet and quickly splashed some cold water on my face. Once I had dried myself off, I opened the bathroom door and looked into the bedroom. Emily lay on her side, in her mother's spot on the bed she was conceived on, her long brown hair haphazardly scattered on my wife's pillow. She was wearing a very revealing piece of lingerie, a cream-colored nightie that opened from the front like a sheer robe, which showed off her cleavage admirably. Underneath the nightie were a matching set of bodice and panties, which were also almost see-through. In the light of the room I could see the slight bulge of her mound, just a hint of it, and her areolas were quasi-visible, too. Her head was resting on her hand, her elbow dug into the mattress to support the weight, and her left leg was bent and crossed over her right in a seductive manner.

"I ordered pizza," she told me with a sly smile on her face. "We haven't eaten yet and I figure if we're going to do this, it's best to do it on a full stomach." She paused to really look at me and asked with genuine concern, "Are you okay, Dad?"

I blinked a few times and then found my voice. "Oh, uh, yeah, honey. I'm just... wow, you look beautiful."

At that she positively glowed, looking more like a full-grown adult woman rather than the hot and horny teenage girl she was. "Why, thank you, Daddy."

"You're more than welcome, Em." I took a seat on my side of the bed and looked down at her. God, I wanted to attack her right then and there, but my misgivings still bubbled around inside me. I didn't want to rush things. "So... what kind of pizza did you order?"

"A large with all the meats, light sauce, just the way you like it."

I cocked a surprised eyebrow at her. "You've been paying attention, eh?"

She cast an almost scornful look at me. "I've been living with you all my life, Dad. You'd think that, after eighteen years, I'd learn a few things about you here and there."

"Good point," I conceded. "So how long did they say it'd take to get here?"

"About thirty minutes. Apparently it's a slow night."

I nodded and picked up the phone. "Good," I said. "That should give us enough time to have a more... complete conversation with your mother." I dug out her phone number from my back pocket and dialed.

A moment later my wife's voice came over the line from somewhere in Chicago. "Hello?"

"Hi, honey," I said. "We're home now. I'm putting you on speakerphone." I tapped the speaker button on the phone base and put the phone back in its cradle. "Jess, before any of us does something we might regret later, I wanted to talk this out with you first."

"Mm-hm," my wife replied. "So you put me on speakerphone, which I guess means that this is going to be a family discussion, yes?"

"Well, I figured that keeping our daughter in the dark about any of this would be a moot point."

"Hi, Mom!" Emily piped in. "Dad's got cold feet."

My wife chuckled and said, "Well, can you blame him, honey? I doubt that he woke up today thinking, 'Hey! I'm gonna catch my daughter watching her cousin on a porn tape, find out that my brother's entire family is fucking each other, then learn that my wife has had sex with her father and THEN be told that it's okay to do the same with my own little girl.' Give the man a break, Emily. He's older than you, which means he's had more time to develop lots more hang-ups."

"Hey!" I protested. "I'll have you know that my hang-ups are just fine, thank you. And I'm not necessarily hung on this particular thing. It's just... I wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page here. Okay?"

"What's to discuss, Dad? I thought we went through all that in the car. Sex with me, yes or no?"

I ran my fingers through my hair, mildly noting that if I kept it up I'd probably end up bald by the end of the night. Which would have been a tragedy since I kind of prided myself on having a full head of hair at this stage in my life. I heaved a great sigh. "I wish it was that simple, sweetheart."

"Well, Duncan," my wife said, "it kind of is. What more do you need, honey? A map and instructions? I thought I made it pretty clear: I won't be a hypocrite. I screwed Dad. Who am I to throw stones if our daughter wants to do the same thing?"

"But that's just the thing, Jess!" I answered. "I am, officially, the very last one to know about all of this stuff. Your dad, Sam's family, Polly's career... everyone else has had more time to adjust to this than me!"

"Whoa!" Emily butted in. "That's not entirely true, Dad. Yeah, I found out about all of this stuff before you, but that was only by a few hours, tops. And I learned about Uncle Sam and the incest stuff the same time you did. Remember?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Well, it's different with me."

Both my daughter and my wife asked at the same time: "How?"

"Well, for starters, you're a teenage girl. I've yet to meet a teenager, boy or girl, who doesn't have sex on the brain at least once in every waking hour."

Em grimaced at that, chagrined. "Good point."

"It's a hell of a good point," I said. "Listen, honey, taboo things for the teenaged mind... well, they kind of don't exist. I mean, intellectually, I'm sure, some things are simply not done. But when it comes to sex you're all at least willing to entertain the notion of something new, even if you aren't ready to try it. I mean, why on Earth would you want to have sex with me in the first place? What's so different now than from last week?"