7 comments/ 58123 views/ 75 favorites The Apple Falls Near By: nightshadow Author's note: This is a VERY long story. Over 31,000 words long. It's not some silly piece of stroke material (although, yes, there IS sex in it). It's a love story, of sorts. If themes of incest and inbreeding bother you, please don't read further. If you're not intimidated by such themes, however, please read on. If you've read my stories before then you should be aware that I frequently involve cervical penetration in my sex scenes. I KNOW this is not a common sex act and is not usually achievable. This is erotic literature, okay? Just relax and enjoy the story - THAT is why I wrote it, for the enjoyment of it. As always, please feel free to leave comments, most especially supportive feedback or critiques. And, one last thing: just because I write about it does NOT mean I endorse it! Incest is against the law in most countries and states- THIS IS FICTION ONLY. Now... I sincerely hope you enjoy the tale I've spun. Time to read on... ***** As I lay in this darkness, cut off from the world around me, I think about the only thing I can: my life. I'd like to say that it was full of adventure and danger, that I proved my manliness to the rest of my species through feats of heroism and daring. I'd like to say that I thwarted foes and foiled evildoers. I've always been a fan of super heroes and dashing warriors for God-and-Country. I always wanted to be like them. Alas, I am only a man of modest means and, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, hardly worth a second look. Conrad Atwood, nobody you'd look at and think of as especially powerful or important. The truth is, though, that the world scarcely notices me because my affluence hides me very well. I am, after all, the inheritor of extreme wealth. I don't earn the income I'd been raised with, not a penny of it, but I don't flaunt it, either. Certainly, I used it, but not in a flamboyant manner. I'm not one of those egocentric rich men who gets off by rubbing his wealth in the faces of those who don't have it. I'm the furthest thing from a show-off that you could imagine. No, truth be told, I'd like to keep as much distance between the world and myself as humanly possible. Because my manliness is proven in my progeny. I guess, for me, it all started from the moment I was born in 1973. The family fortune kept my birth a fair secret from the rest of the world. Oh, I have a birth certificate like everyone else, but my family likes to keep prying eyes away from us, so a few salient facts about me were- shall we say?- "fudged." From the moment I drew breath, I was showered with love. My mother Rose kept me safe and my father kept US safe. We lived in a secluded but comfortable house outside of town. It wasn't so far out of town to make things difficult for us, but far enough away and isolated enough that it would take many decades before the town's growth would overtake us and force the family to move elsewhere. A food delivery service had been arranged, paid for by the family fortune in a roundabout manner, making it unnecessary for us to bother with such things on our own. All we did was fill out an order for what we needed, left it in the post box at the end of our very long driveway every Tuesday, and the items appeared there a day or two later. For as long as I can remember, this happened without fail every week, regardless of weather or circumstances. I never investigated the conditions of the arrangement and simply took it as a given. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned most other people didn't have a similar arrangement of their own, that my family was unique. Growing up as a boy, we had no visitors. Nor did we have any staff. Mother took care of everything around the house while Father worked in seclusion and secrecy in the barn on our property that had been converted into a lab of sorts. Apparently, Father was an inventor of some kind. The family fortune, apparently, came from a series of inventions that his grandfather had made back when Thomas Edison and Nikolai Tesla were causing the US Patents Office to have kittens. My great-grandfather was apparently a very crafty and ingenious fellow indeed whose patents and inventions kept an obscene amount of money pouring into our coffers since the early 1900's. For the sake of my family's devotion to secrecy I won't divulge what those inventions and patents were. Suffice to say that they are still in use more than a century later and some of them are integral parts of every American's daily life. Don't trouble yourself about it; it isn't really germane to my story anyway. So where was I? Oh, yes. My childhood. It was filled with knowledge and learning and exploration. You'd think that I was kept hidden from the rest of the world, but that isn't quite accurate. When I was very, very young, yes. I was sequestered from other children until I was old enough to understand that our family had certain boundaries that we didn't want crossed, that there were rules for how we interfaced with the outside world. It was shortly after I really came to understand these rules and family policies, all of them drilled into my mind by Father and Mother, that Father passed away suddenly. Illness did not take him; an accident of weather and happenstance did. His death was not gruesome or horrific, as far as I can tell (his funeral WAS close-casketed), but Mother insists that its suddenness took her by surprise. And so it was that my mother, now a heartbroken widow, resolved to ensure that I would receive the education that Father could not supply directly. With his lessons in how to comport myself firmly seated in my young and impressionable mind, Mother saw to it that I attended school in the city. She had warned me that it was a different world out there, a lot more complex than the one I knew at home, but that I would always be safe there and a watchful eye would be kept upon me at all times, unseen but vigilant. While growing up, I was uncertain of how she arranged this, but I can attest to it: not once was I harassed or troubled by bullies or troublemakers, even though, as the archetypal "new kid", I should have been by all rights. I saw other kids receive their fair share of headaches from such characters, but whenever they caught sight of me, they always mysteriously turned away as though just being in close proximity to me might somehow cause them to melt in agony. The resentment in their eyes when they saw me was obvious and worrisome, but they never acted upon it. I once mentioned it to Mother and she simply nodded approvingly, as though it was exactly as it should be. Having seen what some of those other kids had to endure, I did not rail against the mysterious protection- "never look a gift horse in the mouth", after all. My early years in school were lonely, sure, but they were also blessedly absent of scars or unwanted fights. I think that if the protection hadn't been there I might have made more friends and had a more normal experience around other kids, but I didn't come to that realization until much later in life. Don't get me wrong- I wasn't a total pariah; I DID have a few friends growing up, but there was always a sort of distance between us and I sometimes found myself giving them a good bit of misdirection about my family life due to the rules I had to follow. But, all in all, I suppose that it could have been worse. I never outright lied to my friends (Father had taught me that telling only part of the truth or wording the truth in specific ways was always preferable to telling lies whenever possible), but I always felt alone in keeping my family's identity so secret. The years went on and I grew older. I grew smarter, too. And stronger. I played soccer in middle school and, when I turned 16, took over Father's lab, turning it into a workshop of my own rather than seeing it go to disuse. I believe that Mother was initially upset about that, but when she saw that I was spreading my creative and intellectual wings in there, she decided to let it go. While a brilliant woman in her own right and in her own way, she had no use for the lab and allowed me to do as I wished in there as long as I came in for dinner and kept it clean. I never did make anything of note in there, but I had a lot of great fun tinkering with things and learning how they worked. Some things I did make with my own two hands, which worked according to my own designs, but they all amounted to just re-inventing the wheel. I was not destined to follow in my father's or great-grandfather's footsteps, it seemed, but I still learned a lot about all manner of things from the time I spent in that workshop. What I couldn't figure out from empirical knowledge, I gleaned through Father's library. One could make the argument that I learned more in that re-tooled barn house than I ever did in school... and I wouldn't disagree a whit. That is not to say, however, that I didn't learn a lot in school. I learned history and literature and science and math- all of the subjects that the other kids learned. I soaked it all up like a sponge, always thirsty for knowledge and forever thrilled by the challenges in understanding how it worked. The teachers loved me for that, I think, but my peers did not. The already small pool of friends I had grew smaller as I grew older. By the time I was in my senior year of high school, I honestly had only one real friend left, and our relationship was tenuous at best- we got along amicably enough until his eye got turned by a certain girl and I drifted into the background of his life, becoming someone he would nod to as we passed in the hallways and share small banter in the two or three classes we shared. I think he is now married to that young woman who'd turned his head and they have a couple of children. I did not feel upset about how my last and only friend in "the real world" had so easily drifted away from me; he was my friend and I was happy for him that he'd found a girl he liked. And that brings me to an interesting point about my youth: girls. Did I notice them? Certainly! I'm as red-blooded as any male alive! When I was a young man, I was just as intrigued and fascinated by pretty girls as any other guy. But the interest, I must admit, was only superficial. I recognized their youthful beauty and their charm, but the truth was that I went home every day to the most beautiful woman I knew existed: my mother. She taught me, whether on purpose or by accident, about the kind of woman I should want in my life. I wanted a smart, dedicated, calm, elegant, wise woman. The girls I went to school with, while very pretty, were nowhere near as refined as my high standards required. So I contented myself with looking, but never really approaching. Some of them approached me, a few very forward in their advances, but I always saw through their attempts and shrugged them off. Their weak performances of shoddy manipulation and flirtation were ungainly and awkward and without grace. I was never cruel in rebuffing them, but I was always clear in making them understand that none of them were the kind of woman I was looking for. They lacked the sophistication required to hold my interest. Most were shot down gently and even seemed to appreciate my kind and poised way of turning them away; a small few of them were even less graceful in accepting my rejection than they were in pursuing me. I think some of my fellow students, both boys and girls, thought that I might be gay, but I know for certain that I perplexed virtually all of them. I simply had no interest in having a temporary relationship with a girl who would ultimately disappoint me or be disappointed BY me. I mean, what's the point, right? On the day of my graduation, however, one of my fellow male students said something that struck me as very odd when he saw my mother in the audience, at first not knowing that she was my mother. We were standing on the stage, waiting for our names to be called so that we could receive our diplomas and walk into the world as legal adults. "Man, check HER out! Whoever's sleeping with her, he's one lucky son of a bitch!" I just turned to him, only slightly annoyed by his crassness. "That woman happens to be my mother. And she's a widow." The boy blinked at me in surprise and then nodded. "Makes sense now," he said casually and even actually smiled, which replaced my annoyance with confusion. "What makes sense now?" I asked cagily. He pointed at her. "I mean, LOOK at her!" he said. "Your mother, on a scale of one to ten in hotness, is like a fifty! She's off the charts hot! NO WONDER you never had a girlfriend, man! You bring some girl home and she'll feel like chopped liver compared to her. Hell, you probably saved yourself more grief than you'll ever know by not dating any of the hags in our school!" I looked around us and noticed several of our female schoolmates giving him dirty looks. "The girls in our school are anything but hags," I said placidly, which earned a few appreciative smirks from the ones who looked ready to claw the other boy's eyes out. He just smirked and said, "Maybe, but none of them is like your mom." And that was when I had a sort of epiphany. I fell silent as my mind began to turn with thoughts inspired by this exchange. I cast my gaze out into the audience, looking directly at my mother with new eyes. She saw me staring at her and gave me a small, demure wave of support and love, a wisp of a smile on her ruby red lips. In that instant I found myself looking at her objectively, as a woman, and realized that what the other boy had said as absolutely true. Her large, firm breasts; her curvy hips; her well-toned legs; full, brunette hair that had natural ringlets; plump, kissable lips; beautiful blue eyes that look almost like still water; her pale, unblemished skin; her short stature that was perfectly proportioned; her thin waist and dainty hands. She wasn't dressed provocatively, but every pore of her being screamed "I'M A MILF!" before the term had even been coined. My mother was, far and away, a significantly more attractive woman than any of the girls standing around me on that stage. In every way I could conceive of, she was an absolute goddess in comparison to them. How had I not noticed this sooner? And, as attractive as she was, why was it that she did not have suitors banging down our front door? I could not remember a single instance where some man who was not my father came calling on her. Not even a lawyer or vacuum salesman. All these years, since my father's death, she had been alone and devoted herself to nothing but my upbringing. We got along very well and spoke about a great deal many things in the privacy of our own home, but I suddenly realized that, what for all that she had taught me, I knew virtually nothing about HER. For the rest of my high school graduation ceremony I was locked in a brooding, pensive silence. I scarcely recall even shaking my principal's hand as he handed my diploma to me, I was so engrossed in my thoughts about my mother. After the ceremony, I distractedly bid a small number of schoolmates I was on good terms with goodbye and wished them well in their future endeavors. When I'd shaken my last hand and given my last wan smile to someone I doubted I would ever meet again, I went to my mother who was waiting a short distance away, looking as lovely and patient as humanly possible. She wore a ghost of a smile on her lips, but her eyes were filled with pride and joy for my sake. When I stood before her, I simply nodded and said, "I think I would like to go home now, Mother." For a fraction of a second a look of concern flashed across her face, but it disappeared just as quickly. With a simple nod of understanding, she turned and slipped her arm into mine. "Of course, dear," she said. "Home it is." The trip home was had in silence while I continued to brood and got lost in my thoughts. What that boy said had troubled me deeply. Mother, of course, recognized that I was thinking deeply and didn't disturb me the whole time. When we got inside, however, she closed the front door behind us and said, "If you'd like to join me in the kitchen, I made you a graduation cake. We don't have to eat all of it, but I'd like you to at least have one slice with me." Still swimming within my own mind, I numbly nodded to her and followed her into the kitchen. Sure enough, there on the table, sitting beneath a glass cover, was a small chocolate-iced cake with the words "Congratulations, Conrad!" elegantly painted on it. I sat down at the table while she cut the cake, removed a slice and put it on a plate for me. When she placed it in front of me and I stared at it stupidly, she finally had had enough. "Okay, Conrad," she said sternly. "Out with it. What's eating you?" I continued staring at the cake for a few seconds, gathering up the words and questions I wanted to have answered and took a deep breath. "Mom, are you single because of me?" Mother blinked at that question in surprise. "I... what?" Then I told her about the conversation I'd had with the boy at the graduation ceremony and the thoughts I'd had as a result. The whole time she was studiously silent and let me have my say, let me ask my questions, until I'd gotten it all out. When I was done, she just stared at me with this most peculiar expression on her face. Without a word, she simply got a slice of cake for herself and took a few bites, chewing on it pensively. Every once in a while her pink tongue would slip out and lick icing from her lips, which drove me crazy now that I was aware of how sexy she really was. I couldn't tell if she was upset or amused or sad or what. I'd never seen these expressions before, not on her. I watched her eyes, which seemed to move in several directions for a few moments, until she finally looked directly back at me and put her fork down, her piece of cake only half-eaten. Still, however, she said nothing. "Well?" I prompted her. "Am I right?" My mother stood up slowly, never taking her eyes from mine. When she was completely on her feet, she said, "Stay here a moment, please. I need to get something. I'll be right back." Without another word, she turned and left. I waited in my seat at the dinner table for several long minutes until she came back, now holding a thick photo album in her hands. She gently pushed our plates of cake aside, set the book down on the table in front of me and sat back down across from me. "Open it," she said. As I flipped it open about midway through, I saw a lot of black-and-white photos, most of them pictures of her or my father, sometimes together and sometimes alone. They looked very happy. "I don't understand," I said after leafing through the pages for a few moments. Mother reached across and flipped the pages back. She stopped at one page that had a picture of her when she was very young. I'd guess that she was about the same age I was then, when the picture was taken. Father was in it also. Conner and Rose, 1972, the picture was titled. I looked up at her blankly in confusion. She nodded to the picture. "Take a close look there," she said. "What do you see?" "I see you and Father," I answered immediately. "Before he died." "Look closer." I looked down. "Now, look at me." I did so. My confusion was still writ large on my face and she noticed instantly. With a roll of her eyes she said. "Do it again. Look at the picture and then look at me." "I get it," I said blandly. "In the picture you're younger and now you're older. So what? How does that answer anything?" Mother, however, remained stoic. "Now... look at your father," she told me. And so I did. And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I looked back up at her quickly. "He was older!" I announced. She nodded. "Now I want you to turn the pages back even further. Go back through the years. Keep your eyes open. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure it out." The Apple Falls Near I did as she instructed. As the years rolled backwards in the album, both she and my father got younger and younger. When she was at about 15 years old and he about 30, another face suddenly appeared in the pictures. It was another woman. A woman closer to Father's age. I continued turning the pages further and further back in time. Mother grew younger with every image, as did Father and this other woman. There were more images of this strange woman and Father, fewer of Mother. More and more years peeled back until it was clearly evident that this woman was actually my grandmother- their wedding pictures said it all. I'd never known her. I didn't even know that she existed or what she looked like. I'd never thought to ask, I guess, and Mother had never bothered to inform me... until then. I then turned the pages in the reverse direction, going back forward in time. They were all happy and loving in every picture, that much was evident. When my grandmother stopped being in the pictures, there was a look in both my father's and mother's eyes that I hadn't noticed before. It was a look of strained happiness, of pain that was slowly abating and only being assuaged by their closeness and love. A few years of them being alone, however, and a new look filled their eyes. The happiness had returned, only now it was just them. Mother was older in those pictures, about 18 years old perhaps, and when pictures of me as an infant began to appear, I could see that the love in their eyes was a love that they shared for each other. The penny finally dropped and I slammed the book closed in shock. I did not jump up from my chair or fly off into histrionics; I simply stared at my mother in stunned silence as the full import of what those pictures had shown me sank in. We stared at each other for a very long time in that silence, her watching me think and me thinking about how I should view her. Finally, she broke the silence. "I've been wanting to tell you this for a long time, Conrad, but I never could figure out how to say it. I think, now, this is the best way. Your father, Conrad, was also MY father." She took a pensive breath and waited for me to blow up. When I did not, she exhaled slowly, clearly in relief. "THAT is why I never dated anyone after he... after he left. For all my life, he was the only man I ever knew and loved. I loved him from the moment I was born, I loved him when Mom passed away and I loved him when I came of age to know the touch of a man. For all my years, he was my father, my friend and my husband and he was ALWAYS there. Until he wasn't. "I thought about seeing other men, but realized that I couldn't bring myself to do it. First, yes, there was you to consider, but not in the way that you might think. Your... OUR father loved us both very, very much and the short time that you got to spend with him was special. I didn't want your memories of him to somehow be supplanted by new memories of some other man. And the memories I had with him were just as precious. I found that I had no interest in brining another man into my life. The one who made me and who'd also made you... he was man enough. And then there was you, in a whole other sense. As you grew older, you became the man in my life, son. Take another look at those pictures if you like, the ones where he and Mom are younger. You'll see yourself in those pictures. You are like him in so, so many ways that, at times, it's almost like he never left at all. You never knew him in the way that I did, son, but you know him in the way that you are, in the way that you live. He shines out through your eyes and actions on a daily basis. So... in a way, he never really left us. So why would I even need or want another man, when I had him... and then you?" I let that sink in for a moment and then finally found my voice. "How... how did it begin?" I asked. Mother closed her eyes in concentration. She didn't speak for several seconds and then it all rattled out of her. "When I was just getting into my teens, Mother started getting sick. It wasn't like your normal illness, either. She began feeling weak and drained, like just a few hours of being awake for everyone else was like being awake for days on end for her. She couldn't lift as much, move as fast or think as clearly. Everything about her was... slowing down, I guess. Father and I didn't know what to make of it until she started having fainting spells. She'd be standing up, talking to us about one thing or another, and suddenly she'd just collapse in a heap. Father took her to the hospital in town for a few days of testing. I was here, all alone for those few days, not knowing what was happening. When they returned, they finally had an answer for what was wrong. It was cancer. "You have to understand, back then, it was the 60's. In those days, cancer was a dirty word. No one spoke it, like just saying the word would somehow inflict you with it, like the very mention of cancer would strike a loved one down. People died from it left and right. Doctors knew what it was, but they had no clue how to treat it, let alone fight it. It was like that new virus they're talking about in Africa, the one that caused that scare in Reston, Virginia last year. Ebola. The going theory was that being diagnosed with cancer was a death sentence. Out of thousands, only a handful survived, and no one knew how or why. Frankly, it scared the hell out of everyone. When Mom and Dad came back with the news, it was like all of the life and laughter and happiness in our home had been replaced by everything cancer-related in a matter of days. Pain. Doubt. Fear. Those took up residence here while all the good things seemed to have gone on vacation. "It took about a year for Mom to finally die. We tried our best to keep her comfortable, but back then our options were kind of limited. Being rich didn't seem to make a difference where cancer was concerned. Medical science simply hadn't caught up with it enough to matter for ANYONE. So Mom just... slowly wasted away to nothingness. By the end, I think both Dad and I were just glad that it was over for her. We hated seeing her in pain and not be able to do anything about it. It was a few months before she passed, though, when she had finally become bedridden, that she brought both of us into her room and talked to us. She told us that she loved us both deeply and she could see the effects her illness was having on us. She didn't want us to suffer any more than we wanted her to suffer. Dad was at his wit's end and I was at a loss for words. But she kept on talking. 'I want you two to be there for each other,' she told us. 'Whatever happens to me, I want to know that you will always love and support each other through everything. You've both been a gift to me and, eventually I will pass on. When that happens, I NEED for you two to learn how to be a gift to each other.' I'll never forget those words for as long as I live." Mother took a deep, calming breath as she collected herself. A couple of tears escaped the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away before they could trace down to her thin, delicate jaw line. Then she pressed on. "So, when she passed, we were glad for her sake, but Dad and I were just a wreck. Due to... the way we live, all we had to rely on was each other. It took us a few years to manage it, but we did our best to honor her wishes. With her gone, I was the woman of the house. I picked up where she left off. At the beginning of her illness, after we found out that it was cancer, she began teaching me how to manage a home and gave me the reins when she couldn't do it anymore. By the time she passed, I had everything down to a science; she was a very, very good teacher. So that part of it was easy. But, as with me, Dad couldn't bring himself to take a new woman into his life. His heart just wouldn't let him do it- and, believe me, he tried. The results were disastrous, so he stopped. It was just him and me. I was coming into my late teens when I realized that Dad seemed restless and distracted all the time. I didn't understand it at first, but the light bulb in my head finally turned on. By the time I was eighteen years old, I had figured out that, even though he couldn't bring himself to date other women, he was still a man with needs. Sexual needs. And I was the only woman around. "And he was the only man in my life. I was so busy with taking care of the house and looking after him that I didn't really have anything even remotely like a social life, forget about a love life. HE was my life. And I was genuinely glad of it, don't think otherwise for a second! So I got to thinking. In almost every way but one, I was living with my father as his wife. We ate our meals together, which I cooked, I did his laundry, we had conversations, we... well, to be honest, Conrad, we lived pretty much the way you and I live. "Just before she died, Mom gave me the photo album that's sitting in front of you. She, however, didn't give me any kind of explanation. She was too weak at the time and I was probably too young to really understand anyway. At the time, all I saw were just some old pictures of what I guessed were family members. It wasn't until my eighteenth birthday that I found myself looking back through that album and started noticing... peculiarities. So, finally, I asked Dad about them, about the people in them. And, a lot like the conversation you and I are having now, Dad told me HIS story. And the story of his twin sister, whom he loved more than the moon and the stars, the sister that he would eventually take as his wife and have a beautiful daughter with." And that caused my mouth to drop open. "You mean... wait, let me get this straight... your mother and father were actually brother and sister. They had you. Then your mother died, leaving you and your father alone. Then you and your father had ME? So that makes you, what? My mother AND my sister?" Mother stared at me with a bland look. "Well, yes. That about sums it up." "But he was your father!" Mother smiled sweetly, almost wistfully. "Oh, honey, no. He was so much more than that. Son, he was the love of my life. Like you are, now." "But you're not having sex with me!" Mother shrugged indifferently. "It's not like I hadn't given the idea some thought," she said casually. And that brought me up short. My mouth worked up and down as I fought for logic to settle back into my head. Her words had jarred me completely. When I got my mental balance back, my brilliant reply was, "What?" "Conrad, have you not been paying attention to what I've said, after all? Let me recap: my father and I fell into a loving relationship that brought you into this world. Since his passing, I haven't been with another man. YOU have been the only man in my life, since your- OUR father died. You look, walk, talk and act every bit like he did. You are, practically speaking, his clone. You've seen the pictures yourself. You could be him, at the age of nineteen, maybe twenty-one. Have I thought about seducing you? Certainly! But I haven't. Because no matter how much you may look like your- dammit, OUR father, you are NOT him. You never will be. And it would be unfair for me to try and seduce you just so that I could satisfy my own selfish desires. And, make no mistake, son, a woman has needs every bit as much as a man does. I haven't been with another man in the fourteen years since our father's death, but it has been by no means easy." "But it's incest," was my lame comeback. And it didn't come out in the heated, impassioned and disgusted manner most others would say it. Coming out of my mouth, it sounded more like confused recognition of a fact. Like someone would see something astounding and then say, "But it's science." Mother was unflappable. "That's the word, yes." "Isn't it against the law?" "In most states, yes," she answered. "It is in this one. Which is part of the reason you were raised as you were. Our father was no fool. He knew that what we were doing, what our family has been doing going back for several generations, would have Society running at us with torches and pitchforks. Your great-grandfather's wealth has made it possible for us to hide from Society, to carry on as we always have without intrusion or interference." "So, what? You expect me to pick up where Dad left off?" I asked incredulously. Mother didn't miss a beat. "Do you want to?" "I- what?" "It's very simple, son. Do you want to pick up where our father left off? I promised myself that I would not seduce you. To my way of thinking, that would be too much like taking away the choice and free will to make your own decisions. I will not lie to you, however: if you decide that you desire me, I won't turn you away. Tonight, for the first time in your life, you've taken a moment to see me as every other man sees me. You said so yourself, that you could not deny what your friend said about me, that I'm beautiful. You think I don't know that about myself? Father made sure that I understood just how attractive I am. And, if that wasn't enough, other men have made it very clear, too. We don't get out into town very much, but when we have, didn't you ever notice how other men would stare at me? I certainly did. I don't flaunt it, I don't actively TRY to accentuate the beauty that comes to me naturally, but I am supremely aware of it. And it's been very, very tempting for me to just go out and get my rocks off with some dolt who just thinks I'm beautiful. But I haven't and I won't. Because, at the end of the day, I love our father too much." "But with me it's somehow okay?" Mother's gaze softened. "Absolutely. Yes." "How?" I asked in bewilderment. "How could it be okay to take your own son to bed, but not another man?" And then she hit me with a truth that I'd known all along but didn't have the courage to face on my own. "Because I love you... and I know that you love me. And if you're going to have sex with someone, with ANYONE, you should love that person completely FIRST, before you even so much as touch a hair on her head. No one will love you as much as I do. And no one will love me as much as you do. It's just that simple, son." She stood up, walked over to me and planted a soft, loving kiss on the top of my scalp, the way she'd done countless times as I was growing up, the way any mother would kiss her son good night. "Keep the album for a little while if you like," she said from above me as the synapses in my brain fused. "And finish your cake. If you want to come join me in bed tonight or tomorrow night or any night in the future, you're welcome there and I will teach you all that I know about all the things I couldn't teach you before." She gave me another kiss, exactly like the first and then walked out of the kitchen. When she passed through the doorway, she said over her shoulder, "You're a man now and a man has to choose his own way. Our father taught us both that." As you might imagine, I didn't sleep much that night. I lay awake well past midnight, thinking about the implications of what I'd just learned about my family. She'd said that incest had been going on in my family for many generations. The implication was that all I'd ever learned about incest must be totally wrong. With my grandmother being the only exception I knew of, we had no history of illness or... defectives in our family. If anything, we were the exact opposite of the image held by Society of what an inbred family might look like. The males were all hale and hearty, leaning towards Adonis-like, while the women (from the pictures I saw in the family photo album) all appeared to become more beautiful with every generation. It was like sex appeal was being bred INTO us rather than out of us. I was reminded of Hitler's personal mission of creating the "perfect" race- blonde hair, blue eyes, fit to tackle bears, that sort of thing. He had used a breeding technique called "eugenics", which is basically selecting the most ideal human beings possible and mating them in the hopes that their offspring would result in something closer to his ideal. Sometimes he would even resort to inbreeding as part of his experiments and, while it shocked the world, his efforts had some merit in a purely scientific sense. The thing with inbreeding, however, was that you had a limited gene pool. If that gene pool has members in it who have a tendency to get sick more frequently than others in that gene pool, then inbred offspring will tend to follow that particular genetic trend. Therefore, you'd have to cull the sickly family member from the gene pool, so that they don't pollute it. Ideally, the only people in that gene pool would be perfectly healthy individuals with no genetic faults whatsoever. The trick, though, is that once you reach homeostasis within an inbred gene pool- that perfect zone where all offspring meet whatever criteria you're looking for- you can't let others into it. Otherwise, you risk having it polluted again. This realization opened my mind up to a whole new slant of thoughts and questions. Was my family part of a similar "experiment" or were they even aware of what they were doing? If they WERE aware of it (and how could they not be if they've been at it for generations?), what were they working towards, if anything? I'd met only a handful of my family members over the years- purported cousins, aunts and uncles whose names I could barely remember- but none of them seemed particularly nefarious or dastardly, certainly not evil by any stretch of the imagination. Some of them definitely seemed a bit odd, but what family members don't? Were my cousins sexually involved with each other or their parents? How many generations does this go back? If I didn't feel comfortable with it, would I be disowned and have to never return to my family? Dozens more questions filled my head and I desperately wanted to have them answered, but I was not about to go marching into my mother's room and start rattling them off. First of all, I didn't want to get her hopes up, thinking that I was there to have sex with her. Secondly, she'd raised me to have good manners and it would just be plain rude to wake her (if she was indeed asleep by that point) with such probing questions that even she may not be able to answer. And thinking about her, about the possibility that she might expect me to accept her offer if I did just barge into her room, got me to thinking in a whole different direction. I was still a teenage boy, mind you, and still prone to hormonal influence. Having realized just how gorgeous my mother was and thinking about her in a sexual context, I naturally had an involuntary reaction. It was with morbid, but not altogether unexpected, surprise that I developed an erection, thinking about my mother. I was still a virgin, but I was not totally unaware of what happened beneath the sheets when the lights went off and a man and woman were in bed together. I'd read any number of books with sex scenes in them (Heinlein says a lot without revealing much) and even though we didn't get out much, I saw plenty of movies growing up. I knew just enough about sex that it was a mystery without being a totally alien concept. I knew what went where and why things felt good when done in certain ways; I knew what the ultimate purpose of sex was (to make babies) and that it felt good in order to make us WANT to make babies; I knew why things were sexy and appealing; but I had absolutely no frame of reference. I hadn't even kissed a girl yet, unless you count kissing my mom goodnight when I was a child. I'd discovered masturbation in my early teens and had gotten good enough at it, but the fantasies I used to accompany my masturbatory sessions were probably tame by normal Society's standards. But now, armed with what my mother had just told me, my fantasies suddenly took on a whole new and different tone. I wasn't just thinking about "some" woman in my sexual fugue, but about someone very specific, someone who would be a willing outlet to my sexual urges and even encourage me, someone who would welcome me with open arms and teach me all I ever needed or wanted to know about sex: my own mother. Who was also my sister. And, now that I think about it, she was also my aunt and cousin, too. The Apple Falls Near Dear Lord, my family tree was a telephone pole compared to anyone else's weeping willow! With a touch of guilt and confusion, I did what any teenage boy would do in that situation: I jacked off. It didn't take long and the output was epic in comparison to previous sessions. I cleaned myself up and, as you might expect, I soon drifted off to sleep. And dreamed of doing things with my mother that I could only infer from literature and film. The next morning I woke to the smell of breakfast being cooked downstairs. Saturday morning breakfasts were a regular event in our home and I would often spend weeks looking forward to them. That morning, however, I was faced with a fine mix of anticipation and dread. I had no doubts that the food would taste delicious because it always did, but I knew that my mother would be down there, waiting for me. I wanted to see her and didn't want to at the same time. The problem was that, during all my years growing up, mother would dress rather scantily while she made breakfast. I'd never really noticed it before because, well, she was my mother and I hadn't thought to view her as a sexual being before. But now that the cards were on the table, as it were, every little thing was suddenly amplified. I would go downstairs and not see my mother, but a very fuckable woman in her mid-thirties wearing a thin chemise, no bra and lacy panties, all wrapped up in an apron. I'd have to decide if I was drooling over a plate of eggs, sausage, biscuits and bacon or if I was salivating over my mother's hot body. My stomach helped me make my decision. I begrudgingly got out of bed, donned a pair of boxer shorts and trudged downstairs to what would most certainly be an awkward breakfast. I entered the kitchen and, as had been the case for every Saturday that I could remember, my mother was at the stove, her back to me, draining the grease off the bacon. Her apron was open in the back and I stopped cold in the doorway. As I stood there to either admire the view or work up the courage to announce my presence (I couldn't decide which), Mother moved to her right a bit, pushed herself up on the countertop and reached up to the cabinet above her. She was trying to pull down the grease jar that she kept there, but she was far too short. She attempted to get a little higher by swinging her right leg onto the counter, but she was still only able to swing the cabinet door open. She tried valiantly to touch the slick glass of the jar, which made her wobble with the strain. My eyes drifted upwards from her taut left calf and up until my gaze fell upon what may arguably be the most perfect pair of butt cheeks known to any man on the planet, spread slightly and barely revealing the mound of her womanhood from behind. The globes of my mother's ass were round and supple and firm, without a trace of age or scarring. A man could stare at that butt for days and simply admire it the way he would a Rembrandt, longing to hold it in his hands while- When Mother started to move with a sudden jerk, I yanked myself out of La-La Land and focused on what was happening. The grease jar was tilted precariously on the edge, threatening to topple over, and Mother couldn't get a decent grip on it. She was just barely keeping it from falling, along with herself, but she wouldn't be able to hold that position for long. Without even thinking, I rushed up behind her and grabbed the jar. In doing so, I pressed my body right up against hers from behind, startling her for a fraction of a second before she realized that I had come to her rescue. "Oh, thank God it's you, Conrad, I almost-" she breathed as she started to relax and let herself down from the counter. As she did so, however, we both felt something surprising: the panty-clad lips of her pussy mashed hard down on the shaft of my erection (which I wasn't even aware I had at the time and I certainly wasn't aware that it had become tumescent enough to poke through my boxers!). "Oh my!" she gasped. We both looked down in shock. She was back on her own two feet, but protruding from her groin was about three inches of my swollen member, poking between the gap of her thighs as though she'd sprouted a short but very thick penis. Even as realization struck, I felt myself throb with longing as I also noted the sudden warmth that surrounded the top side of my shaft. With a start, still holding the grease jar in my hands, I all but jumped backwards and gave a yelp of embarrassment. "I am SO sorry, Mom!" I squeaked out as I put the jar on the table behind me swiftly. As soon as I was relieved of the burden, I started to cover my groin with my hands. Mother turned around to look at me and her eyes immediately went to where the movement was: my crotch. My hands were big, but hardly big enough to completely hide my throbbing member from her view. The top portion of it peeked out from between my wrists and she simply stared for a thoughtful second while I waited balefully for a response. Then she shrugged. "No harm done. Thank you for catching that jar." Frozen where I was, I just looked at her in shock. "No, I mean, I'm sorry about-" "I know what you were referring to, son, but you hardly need to apologize. From what I briefly saw, you should be proud. I knew you'd be big like our father, but I didn't expect it to be THAT big. Incidentally, what were you doing with an erection, anyway? You've never come in here with one before." Now she leaned back against the counter just the tiniest bit, a position which had the unfortunate effect of thrusting out her ample bosom. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure she did that on purpose. "Sorry," I muttered. "I'll... I'll go take care of it." Mother cocked a delicate eyebrow at me. "You sure you don't want me to do that for you?" I let loose with another squeak and bolted back up to my room. As I fled, I heard her shout after me that breakfast would be ready in five minutes. I'd "taken care of" my erection in less than three. I came back down, wearing jeans and a t-shirt this time, with a hang-dog expression on my face. I said nothing as I sat at the table and Mother began to fill my plate with food. It smelled delicious and I wanted to say as much, but I was afraid that my voice would crack or that I would say something inappropriate instead. Mother smiled sweetly at me, fixed her own plate and we began to eat in silence. About halfway through our meals, however, Mother finally piped up. "It's not that big a deal, son," she said casually. "I mean, it's big, but... it's okay. Dad used to wake up with what he called 'morning wood' all the time. It's perfectly natural for a boy, a MAN your age." I looked up at her and was momentarily speechless. I swallowed nervously and nodded. "I... I'll try not to let it happen again." Mother waved it off. "Think nothing of it. If it happens again, then it happens. Like I said: it's perfectly natural." She went back to her food, took a few more bites and then put her fork back down. "But I must know. Was that because of me?" The teenager in me burst through and I rolled my eyes. "You're the only woman here, Mom. Yes, it was because of you. And because of the conversation we had last night. And because I'm sitting on a launch pad of hormones! But, mostly, yeah, it was because of you." I put down my fork in exasperation. "Would you like me to be totally honest, Mother?" "Always," she replied blankly. I've come to learn over the years that the "blank" expression on her face indicates that she's giving her full and undivided attention to whoever is talking. "Fine," I said. "The truth is, I came in here totally soft, expecting breakfast. But when I saw you reaching for the jar, I found myself admiring you from behind. I'd never done that before, just stopped to admire you. You looked incredibly sexy at that moment and that's where the erection came from. I couldn't control it and I wasn't even aware of it until you-" "Almost took it inside of me," she helpfully supplied. "Thank God you were wearing underwear!" Mother picked her fork back up, picked at her eggs and muttered, "YOU thank God if you want, I'm gonna have a few words with Him when I die." I just stared at her open-mouthed for a moment, my meal forgotten. "...what?" She dropped her fork again and looked me square in the eye. "Look, son, accident or not, that was the closest thing to sex I've had in almost a decade and a half. You want to be thankful that it didn't slip inside me? Go ahead. And, yes, part of me is thankful, too. But a much bigger part of me feels really damn cheated right about now!" I blanched at that. "I... I'm sorry," I said ashamedly. Mother took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out with a sigh. "I know you are, Conrad. And I know it wasn't something you could control. It's not your fault. It's no one's fault. It just... happened. And I don't mean to take out my frustrations on you. Honestly, I don't. It's just that... well, if we're being honest here... last night's conversation had an effect on me, too. Maybe I said some things that I shouldn't have. Or maybe I didn't say enough. I don't know. But I DO know that you shouldn't feel ashamed or pressured about anything, period. But it's difficult for me, too. I look at you and I see a man. But I think of you and I know that you're my son and that you're still maturing. Sometimes I forget that. And this was... this was one of those times. My body didn't really know the difference between you as a man and you as my son. All it knew was that there was a hard piece of familiar-feeling flesh nearby and in that brief bit of contact, well... the pump was primed, as they say." She sighed again. "Conrad, this is not your problem; it's mine." "Then why do I feel so..." I stopped as I groped for the proper word. Finally it popped out. "Shitty?" We didn't cuss in the house. The worst it ever got was the occasional "damn" or "hell," but beyond that I had been raised to be very guarded with my speech. And I'm sure that it wasn't because my mother was a prude, either. She just taught me "cussing is the first resort of a simple mind." I kind of took that one to heart. She let it go, however, and didn't reprimand me for using the cuss word. I guess, in light of the discussion, it fit into the proper context. She just smiled wanly at me and shook her head. "I honestly don't know, son. I can tell what you're feeling, but I can't tell you why. I have some ideas, though." "Well, I'm all ears, because it's beyond me," I replied. "You say that I have nothing to feel bad about, but every fiber of my being feels exactly that. So what do YOU think it is? Because I don't like feeling this way when you say I shouldn't." "Guilt?" she offered. When she saw my perplexed expression, she explained. "I think I've made it very clear that I'm lonely and missing the feel of a man, our father in general and you in particular. So when our... when our genitals came into contact, however brief, I think your mind registered it and you reacted with fright. But, in doing so, you realized that you were depriving me of something you knew I wanted. I know you love me and you don't want to be responsible for leaving me wanting for anything if you can help it. Hence: guilt." I blinked at her a couple of times in stupefaction. That was a possibility I hadn't considered. And, in a strange way, it made sense. I just hadn't expected it. So I nodded. "Maybe you're right, Mom. But if you are, this isn't just something you alone have to work through. I've got to work through it, too. Because... because I don't like feeling guilty about you feeling lonely." "Well, like you said, Conrad. I'm all ears. Because I don't know an easy way around the issue." I took a deep, pensive breath. "There is one easy way around it." She raised a curious eyebrow expectantly. "We could, I mean, we might make... we could have sex." "Get it out of our systems?" "See what it feels like, yeah." "And what if we like it?" I gulped down my heart, which felt like it was beating a thousand times a second. I couldn't believe that I had just suggested to my mother that we have sex and she didn't slap me! "If we like it?" I asked stupidly. "Yes," my mother answered calmly. "What if we find that having sex feels so good that we don't want to stop?" "Th-then, I, uh, I guess..." our eyes were locked on each other's at that point and a hundred horses doing the Foxtrot couldn't have diverted our attention. "I guess we, uh, keep doing it?" "You don't sound certain of that, son. Are you sure it's something you want to try? In order to get this... distraction out of our systems, that is. I mean, one or both of us could be VERY distracted. It might take having sex together an awful lot before we're over it." My right knee started shaking uncontrollably. Part of me wanted to jump up and run to the bedroom with my mother in tow while another part of me was in absolute disbelief that we were even discussing this. "An awful lot?" I squeaked. Mother smiled wolfishly, which was an altogether new look on her. It was hungry and seductive and made my temperature rise a few points. "We might never tire of it, actually," she said with a hint of huskiness in her voice. "And there's another thing to consider." "W-what's what?" "I could get pregnant." My voice cracked again at that thought. "You could?" Mother nodded. "Absolutely. I haven't taken any birth control since Dad died. Haven't needed to. And I know you don't keep any condoms in your room. Last time I checked, my cycle started two weeks ago, which puts me right in the window for ovulation. If we have sex, son, there's a very, very good chance that you could make me pregnant." "S-s-so I'll pull out," I suggested lamely. Mother shook her head. "Your first time? I wouldn't hear of it. And, since we are being so honest and open here, the feeling of a man cumming inside of me sends me to the moon. So whenever we had sex, Dad would cum inside of me. Every time. Frankly, I've come to expect it, that feeling deep inside of me. It's as much a part of sex to me as everything else. Really, it's a miracle that you were the only child we had together. You wouldn't want to feel guilty about denying me that feeling, would you? Because then we'd have to do it over and over again until we purge that awful guilt." "Over and over again?" I said dumbly. "As many times as it takes until you're free of guilt... or until you get me pregnant. And maybe a few times after." "Would... would you want that? F-for me to get you pregnant?" Mother closed her eyes dreamily and said, "Oh, yes. Absolutely, yes." When she reopened her eyes and fixed them on me, the look of hunger in them was even bolder. "The very thought of it is so very exciting, isn't it? The son I made with my father, having sex with me and making another child within me. Oh, that's very, very much in keeping with the family traditions, isn't it?" I nodded, swallowed and said, "Pictures don't lie. That's what the family album shows." Mother pushed her plate to the side and leaned partly across the table, her ample cleavage on blatant display in my peripheral vision. I glanced down at her bosoms and could see that they were just as flushed with desire as the ruddy cheeks on her beautiful face. When I looked back up at her, I saw that she was still smiling. "So... the only question is..." She licked her lips like she was about to devour a meal a hundred times more satisfying than the breakfast she'd just cooked. "...when and where do we start?" "Whenever and wherever you wish, Mother," I said with a hoarse rasp. I felt faint but ready to take on a hundred thousand warriors all at the same time. I'd never experienced arousal like this. Girls had flirted with me, sure, but what my mother was throwing at me was a whole other level of advanced that girls my age couldn't fathom. I was helpless in her gaze and ready to spit ten-penny nails if she'd asked me to. Mother cocked a playful eyebrow at me. "Here? Now?" Her voice was hopeful. "S-s-sure," I answered with a confidence that I didn't exactly feel. My mother reached up to toy with one of the straps on her chemise. It gently slipped off her shoulder and with a quick glance downward, I could see that more of her cleavage was on display, the very top of her right areola clearly visible. The hard nub of flesh just beneath it, her nipple, was protruding against the fabric and its size and shape was unmistakable. My mouth involuntarily watered at the tantalizing sight. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather do it in a more normal place your first time?" she asked. "Like a bed? Mine is plenty big enough. And I happen to know for a fact that it's very good for making babies in. After all, YOU were made in that bed." My brain was in a fog. I couldn't concentrate on anything to save my life. If someone had asked me to put two-and-two together, my answer would've been "banana" or something equally unrelated. The ONLY thing that was coming through my mental haze at that moment, however, was a single word: NOW! That came through like an insistent cannon shot. I shook my head slowly at her and forced my eyes upwards against to meet hers. "Here and now is fine," I said, my pulse quickening as though I was in a marathon. "I-I don't think I'll last long enough to make it upstairs." Mother affected a look of sympathy. "Aw. Is my young man already so close?" She loosened the strap on her other shoulder so that now both areolas were visible. "Will I even have enough time to get naked for you?" I took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. "Mother, if we wait much longer, the point might be moot. I can barely think straight right now. Either we're going to have sex right here and right now, or I'm going to have a mess to clean up in about thirty seconds if you keep talking like that. It's taking every bit of self control to not just-" "Maybe you should." "Should what?" "Lose control." So I did. As I stood up, pushing my seat away from me suddenly, the sound of it scraping across the linoleum floor, I reached for the hem of my shirt and yanked it over my head. As I started to unbutton my jeans, Mother rose out of her chair as well and reached under the hem of her chemise. "How do you want me?" she asked as she pushed her panties down to her ankles and kicked them away from the table. I looked down at her mound, the place from whence I came into the world. The hem of her chemise danced just above it, but revealed everything to me. She was clean shaven, which didn't surprise me for some reason, and her lips looked very swollen with desire. I don't know where it came from, but a certain sort of bearing came over me and I suddenly felt completely in control. "Exactly how I found you," I told her confidently as I pushed down my jeans and underwear simultaneously in one, swift motion. "Bent over with one leg raised." When I stood up straight my mother was staring at my groin now, her eyes wide. "Dear God," she breathed, "it's bigger than I imagined!" I gripped it as I started to move around the table to her side. "I wasn't kidding, Mother," I said with a growl in my throat. "I'm not going to last long!" She immediately complied and leaned over the table with one leg resting on the edge of it. As I got behind her, I could see that she was more than ready for me. I'd seen a few adult magazines and I knew exactly what to do. I grabbed my shaft, almost squeezing it painfully, and aimed it at the hole I'd come out of 18 years before. "Be gentle at first, son," she gasped when she felt the crown of my swollen member barely touch her outer folds. She looked back at me, her right cheek pressed against the wooden table top and her eyes wild with lust. "It's been a long time for me."