Don't Ask, Don't Tell

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3-9 Available On

PLEASE NOTE: This is a preview of this novella. It is available for purchase in its entirety via

Author comment: There is a reader who goes by the name Drunken Dwarf, and who consistently has good ideas. Luckily he passes some of them on to me. After reading Read Dirty To Me, he wrote me a note about an idea it gave him. It's a similar idea, but very different, if that makes sense. Anyway, it was a good idea and it recently popped up in the projects folder whining that it had been too long since its inception.

So, thanks to Drunken Dwarf, here's the story.

Bob

Chapter One

"Bobby!"

Remember when your mother's voice called your name and it had that special tone in it that meant something serious was happening, and that you were part of it, but you didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing yet?

That's the tone of voice my mother called my name in. It's that tone that makes you wonder if maybe you should sneak out and pretend you didn't hear her.

"Bobby!" she called again. There was an added note of impatience in her voice.

I decided that bright and chipper might deflect any anger that was headed my way.

"Yeah, Mom," I said happily. "What's up?"

"I need you to read to Heather."

I opened my mouth to complain, but she held up her hand to forestall me.

"I know!" she barked. "You've established beyond question that participating in the care of your sister is an onerous task that will practically kill you, but your Aunt Betty is having her baby and I need to be there to help her for a week or two. Your father is working on a big project that could mean a promotion for him, so you're just going to have to step up and deal with things. She's your sister, Bobby. She would do this for you if it were necessary."

"Yeah, right," I thought darkly, but I kept my mouth shut. My mother's tone of voice also suggested that this was not a negotiable situation.

"It's not the end of the world, Dear," she said, already selecting things to take with her to her sister's house. "We're reading her Moby Dick, and if you finish that, there are any number of other classics you can start on. It's only an hour or two a day, and it's summer. You have plenty of time to give a little to your sister."

Heather, as is already clear, is my sister. She's a year and a half older than I am, and if you look up pushy, snotty, prima donna sister in the dictionary, her picture will be there as the ultimate representative of that concept.

Well ... it would have been before the accident. When I was fourteen and she had just gotten her license, she went out and smashed up the family car. She was probably texting, eating a hamburger and putting on makeup at the same time she was driving breakneck speed somewhere she didn't really need to go.

Whatever the cause, though, the result was that she was in a coma, and had been in that coma for over six months. Other than the coma she was perfectly fine. When it became clear after a couple of months in the hospital that she wasn't going to wake up, they'd brought her home and she was in her own room. There were tubes stuck in her to feed her and for other stuff I didn't even want to think about, but other than looking kind of pale she looked like she was only sleeping or something.

I felt bad about all this, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking. That's because it had been kind of nice at first. I mean she wasn't screaming at me any more, or telling me ten times a day how stupid I was. There were no more slumber parties where she and her bitchy friends would throw open the bathroom door and run in screaming and giggling while I was in the shower, embarrassing me. Nobody called me ‘pencil dick’ any more.

But after a while it felt all wrong. I mean nobody was screaming at me any more, or telling me ten times a day how stupid I was. And there were no more slumber parties where she and all those other wet dream babes would throw open the bathroom door and run in screaming and giggling while I was in the shower. It might have been embarrassing, but all those smiles could be turned into something else when I was in bed, in the dark. I had a lot of really good jerk off sessions because of Heather and those girls.

After they brought her home I used to go in her room and look at her sometimes, but it was creepy, because no matter what I said, or called her, she never moved at all. I called her some pretty bad things too, because I knew I'd never get another chance. But it didn't make me feel better. In fact, it made me feel so bad that I quit going in there at all.

My parents had done all the research after the doctors delivered the prognosis, which was basically "She might come out of it, and she might not." They had glommed onto the idea that someone in a coma might not be able to interact with the world, but could still be aware of what's going on around them. So they embarked on this whole thing where they got what would have been her assignments from school, and read her the text books and pages of class notes that the teachers sent home. They went over all the math problems, explaining them to her and read her the newspaper every day and stuff like that. My parents were the only people I knew who could routinely answer all ten questions on Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

And they read her books.

I didn't pay that much attention to them when they did all that stuff. I knew they had read her all sorts of books, from Tom Sawyer and Alice Through the Looking Glass, to books by Tom Clancy and John Grisham. As for me - I like comic books, and I had lots of time to read them because my big sister wasn't bothering me any more.

Mom's job was on the computer, so she could do almost all of it from anywhere she could take her laptop. As such she was the one who spent the most time with Heather, often eight or nine hours a day. She even bought a special chair to put in Heather's bedroom so she'd be comfortable as she sat and read and talked for hours.

Mom said Heather deserved to have summer vacation just like everybody else. Mom tried to believe that Heather would be okay, and that some day soon she'd just open her eyes, say "Where am I? What happened?" and then go back to being completely normal. Dad lasted about three months that way, but now I think he was just going through the motions to keep mom's dream alive.

So, at least for a week, I was going to have to take Mom's place, and read to Heather. Luckily it was summer, so there were no classes going on. I had enough of my own homework during the school year to try to take hers on too, especially since she was a year ahead of me. And, thanks to the politicians who care so much about kids they don't know, it wasn't legal for me to work a real job yet. My lawn mowing business gave me minimal spending money, and didn't take all that much time.

I walked in her room for the first time in a long time. It was quiet ... too quiet ... and spooky somehow.

Heather was lying there, like always, her brown hair fanned out on the pillow under her head. I thought of Sleeping Beauty for some reason, and studied her face.

I was shocked to realize she was beautiful. I mean she'd always been the model of growing girl, morphing into teenage even-more-girl, if you know what I mean. I had gotten to see her develop bumps on her chest, and other growing up stuff. Just because I was younger than her didn't mean I was either blind or stupid. I'll never forget one day going in the bathroom and finding the water in the stool stained bright red, obviously by blood, and what seemed like a lot of it. I'd yelled for Mom, because it was pretty clear that somebody had gotten hurt bad. She came in, looking flustered, and when she saw what I was concerned about, she relaxed.

"Your sister is having her first menstrual period," she said calmly. "I'll remind her not to leave the commode like that again."

Then she flushed the stool and left. Just like that.

Of course Heather found out I'd seen what I'd seen, and she apparently decided that was an unforgivable trespass, because she said that if I ever told anybody about what I'd seen she'd kill me in my sleep. She seemed to go out of her way to loathe me even more after that.

Huh. It just occurred to me that I did tell somebody else about that - all of you, just now - and there isn't a thing Heather can do about it. She's still lying there, looking like something out of a fairy tale.

What seems crazy is that, in a way, I wish she was screaming at me for telling that secret. Life's funny, huh?

Moby Dick was lying on the chair, ready to go. There was a book mark near the beginning, where Mom or Dad had left off the night before. Besides reading during the day, they always read some kind of story to her at bedtime, and told her to have sweet dreams and all that kind of stuff.

"Hey," I said in generic greeting to the comatose girl on the bed. I felt stupid immediately.

She just laid there, of course.

"I'm going to be reading to you for a week," I said. It was really uncomfortable, talking to somebody who looked kind of dead. It didn't seem like Heather somehow. And it was really quiet.

"You need a radio in here or something," I muttered. I picked up the book. I sat down and opened it.

I'd read the book in English class the year before, and I still remembered it. Whoever had been reading to her last had stopped at one of the places where Ishmael goes on and on about social justice or human nature or some crap like that. I read a few lines and all I could think of was that I was probably going to die of boredom. Right after my mom left Dad called and said he had to go on a trip, and wouldn't be back for three days. I thought about telling him about Mom going to Aunt Betty's, but I knew if I did, he'd cancel his trip and stay, and Mom had said what he was doing was important, so I kept it to myself. Still, I imagined him returning from his trip to find my dried out husk, holding this stupid book open. Heather would still be alive as all get out, but I'd be worm food, having expired for the lack of the will to live.

I closed the book and looked at Heather.

"Look, the deal is that this guy Ishmael signs on to this whaling ship. It's called the Perquat or something like that, and Captain Ahab is the captain. And he's got a hardon for this white whale named Moby Dick that sank his ship and bit his leg off, so he's out to kill this whale. And so they sail all over the ocean until they find Moby Dick and there's this big battle and they stick a dozen harpoons in him and he sinks two or three ships and in the end Captain Ahab puts the last harpoon in him, except the rope wraps around his neck and Moby Dick pulls him down into Davey Jones’ Locker and the only one who survives is Ishmael."

She just lay there.

"So I'm not going to bore you with reading this crap," I said.

I got up and went to my room and picked a comic book at random. It was a Fantastic Four, and I took it back to her room. Then, for the next hour, I described each panel, and the speech bubbles, and I made sound effects noises and stuff like that. I even acted out some of the scenes. Not that she'd notice that, but I was having fun getting into it.

And the whole time she just laid there like a bump on a log.

When that comic book was finished I sat there looking at her. Nothing had changed. She still lay there with her eyes closed and her pale face was calm. It was eerie and something made me reach out and touch her, just to make sure she wasn't cold and dead. I was startled, because her skin felt really warm. I brushed her cheek with the back of my fingers.

"I wish you weren't like this," I said softly. "I mean you yell at me a lot and stuff ... but I kind of miss it. Not that I want you to yell at me again if you wake up."

I touched her hair. Mom had this thing she could put under Heather's head that let her wash her hair every so often. She'd done that recently and the hair was soft. For some reason I leaned over and took in a deep breath with my nose right in her hair. It smelled wonderful.

"So if you woke up it would be okay," I said into her hair. "I mean you could yell at me once in a while ... just not too much."

She lay there, and I felt stupid.

"Okay," I said, standing up. "I'm gonna go get something to eat, but I'll come back later. Maybe I'll read you a classic Aquaman I got at the comic shop last week. It's awesome."

I looked at her and thought of Sleeping Beauty again, which was stupid, because she got thrown around in an accident, instead of eating a poisoned apple, and she was in a coma instead of a magical sleep.

You know how you think about doing something, and you know it's stupid, but you do it anyway? I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.

Yeah.

Then I took another deep breath of the smell of her hair.

"Your hair smells good," I said softly.

Having demolished a quarter of a loaf of bread, and almost emptied the peanut butter jar, I cleaned up the smears of grape jam I'd gotten on the counter. I was rubbing in time with what was playing on the radio, and singing the lyrics. I whipped up the paper towel and rolled it into a tube and then sang into it like it was a microphone as the song ended, whirling in a circle.

It occurred to me that Heather had missed a lot of top 40 hits. She'd always been singing and dancing around before the accident. It had been very distracting, because she had a nice body, really well developed, you know? Not that a brother is supposed to notice, but it was impossible not to when her boobs were shaking all over the place while she capered around in her PJs. I remember one time she was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing her hair with the hundred strokes she did every night. She could have done it in her bedroom, because she had this big mirror in there, but she always did it in the bathroom, and that meant I couldn't take a shower or pee or anything until she was done. So I was standing there, trying to be a pest to get her out and she was taking her sweet time. She had her chest stuck out and I realized I could see the bumps of her nipples pushing through the material of her PJs. Suddenly I wasn't in such a hurry any more. Of course I got a hardon, which horrified me. I mean she was my sister ... and a bitch to boot!

But thinking of that made me think of her humming some song while she was brushing her hair, and how she'd missed all that music while she was unconscious.

I went to my room and got my Ipod. I did regular downloads from I-tunes whenever I heard something I liked, and that way I didn't have to listen to commercials all the time. I thought about just putting the headphones on her, but I couldn't tell her about the songs or who was singing them if I did that. So instead I made up a CD of selected tunes and took it to her room and put it in her computer. I turned on the speakers and adjusted the volume.

Then I commenced to act like what I thought a DJ would act like. I'd tell her what song was coming up, and who was singing it, and if I knew any tidbits about his or her life, like you sometimes see on the cover of The National Enquirer and like that. I didn't actually know if any of them had hit the charts, or what level they'd gone to, so I just made that part up, starting at "number forty on the hit parade." Around number thirty-five I realized I had a problem, because I could only get like 20 songs on the CD. That was stupid, because I put the things on it I liked the most, which meant when I made another one I'd be making the top 20 songs the ones I didn't like as much. But she was unconscious, and would never know the difference, so what the heck.

I danced while the music played, and did my made up DJ patter and all that. I only felt stupid a few times, but I decided to take the road of being glad I wasn't in her place. That made me feel kind of bad somehow, and when the CD finished I sat down.

"I know you probably can't hear me," I said, "but maybe the music helped. I'm sorry you're in a coma, Heather. I know we argue and bicker all the time, but I really don't hate you. I mean sometimes I get a little ticked off when your friends tease me and stuff. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so hot. And when they come into the bathroom ... I don't know ... I guess it's confusing. I mean you guys call me ‘pencil dick’ ... but you keep coming in there and looking at me. It doesn't make sense. So I get frustrated sometimes. I guess I don't really think you're a bitch, even if you act like one sometimes."

She just lay there.

"So this is really stupid," I groaned. "Here I am talking to somebody who can't hear me, about her hot friends. You're hot too, by the way, since you can't hear me. When I came in here this morning and looked at you I thought of Sleeping Beauty. Cause you're really kind of a babe. I've gotten boners over you more than once, even though you're my sister. But don't get a big head about it. It's only because you're gorgeous, not because of your winning personality. Okay, I'm going to stop talking to the sleeping fairy tale girl now, because this is getting weirder and weirder. So I'll see you later, okay?"

I stared at her for a couple of minutes, and suddenly realized that she was lying there, on top of the covers in her PJs, which buttoned down the front on the top. And under those PJs were a pair of naked breasts. And inside those bottoms was a real, live ... well sort of ... pussy. She was asleep ... right? She'd never know the difference if I took a little peek ... right?

But I couldn't do it. And I couldn't do it precisely because she'd never know the difference. I mean I knew it would feel like I was a necromancer, or whatever they call those perverts who get off on doing nasty things to dead bodies. I shuddered at the thought of touching her like that.

Instead I turned and left the room.

Mom hadn't said I couldn't leave the house. As I thought about it, I knew there were times she'd gone off and left Heather alone. She'd never done that for more than a few hours, but it had happened. Talking to her had made me all weirded out, and thinking about peeking under her PJs had made me feel really terrible, so I went outside and ran around the house until I was gasping for air. I felt pretty stupid doing that too, wondering what anybody who saw me would think about it.

I was still worked up when I went back in. I looked in on her, just in case, and she was exactly the same. I saw her chest rise and fall and my thoughts went back to those breasts. I suddenly realized I was a pervert! I wanted to see them, necromancia or not.

I wandered over to her computer and pulled up an online dictionary. It wasn't "necromancy," though it was close. The dictionary said that was communication with the dead through sorcery. I didn't want to communicate with her ... just look. And she wasn't dead. At least I hoped not.

"I hope you're not dead," I blurted. Suddenly I had this vision of being in her mind ... being in a coma and being able to hear people talk, like my mother was hoping Heather could hear. What would something like that sound like? I mean you're lying there, bored out of your mind because nothing is going on and suddenly a voice yells "I hope you're not dead!" I mean that would freak the shit out of me.

"Sorry," I said, getting up and taking a step toward her bed. "I was just thinking about peeking at your boobs, but I feel perverted about that and I thought it was called necromancy, but the dictionary says that's communicating with the dead and that's why I said I hoped you weren't dead."

I blinked. I was starting to feel like I was going to have an attack of some kind.

"Sorry about wanting to see your boobs," I said. "I'll try not to think about that any more, okay? And if you ever wake up, and you remember all this, I know I'm acting weird, but it's only because I don't know what to do. I really wish you were okay again ... even if you yelled at me."

The phone rang, and I ran to answer it, relieved to have an excuse to leave her room. It was my dad.

"Hey Sport. Your mom around?"

"No, she had to go help out Aunt Betty. I guess she went into labor."

"Oh," said my dad. "So you're batching it? When did this happen? Why didn't your mother call me?"

"I'm taking care of Heather," I said, feeling guilty. So far all I'd done was read her a comic book, play her some music and lust after her like a necro-whatever-it-was.

"You okay with that?" he asked, sounding concerned. I got the feeling what he really meant was that he wasn't sure if he was okay with that or not.

"It's no big deal," I said. "I'm just reading to her, like you guys do."

"I'm proud of you," he said. "I'm going to be gone longer than I thought. Things are working out even better than we hoped, but it's going to result in longer negotiations as the contracts are written up."

"Oh. Okay."

"You going to be all right? I can come back if you need me to."

"Oh, I'm fine," I said.

"You have enough money?"

I didn't understand at first, and told him about the twelve-fifty I had in the bowl on top of my dresser.

"Didn't your mother leave you money for food?" he asked.

I told him she hadn't said anything about it, wondering how I'd get any food anyway. Both cars were gone and I was only fifteen. I wouldn't get my license for another four months, which seemed like four years to me. I could ride my bike to the store, but I couldn't carry much back.

He told me to get a pencil and paper and, when I had them, he gave me his credit card number and another number he called a security number I might have to have if I ordered pizza or anything. Then he gave me dire warnings about not using it for anything but emergencies. I wondered why he'd given it to me in the first place if I wasn't allowed to use it for anything. And was pizza an emergency? I mean he was the one who mentioned pizza, right?

"Just use it if you get in a bind," he said. "And you have my cell number. Call me if you need anything, okay Sport?"

"Got it," I said. Then, just in case, I added, "Use only for pizza and other emergencies."

"Right!" he said in his hearty voice. "I'm proud of you, Bobby."

"I'm proud of you too, Dad," I said, thinking of all the other pizza-like emergencies I might suddenly have. He was already gone, though, which was probably good, seeing as how what I'd said sounded pretty stupid. I looked at the paper with the numbers on it that represented many more choices than I'd had only five minutes ago.

Things were looking up!

I couldn't get Heather's breasts out of my mind. I had no idea how to spell what I was looking for, so I just Googled "sex with the dead." Good old Google. And good old Wikipedia. After reading through that I felt a little better. At least I was sure I wasn't a necrophiliac. I didn't want to have sex with dead people at all, much less for any of the reasons listed. I did want to have a reunion with a loved one - Heather - but not that kind of reunion. I felt better, but I still wanted to see her boobs.

I couldn't think of a name for that. I didn't think it was incest, because that's like a lot more than just looking, right? So finally I just typed "looking at your sister's boobs" into Google to see what happened.

Well, it became clear right away that pretty much everybody says it's a no-no and not to do it. But there were some really interesting questions on that page that nobody ever answered. Like "Why do I want to see my sister's boobs?" I mean that's a legitimate question, and having ten people say "Just don't!" doesn't help explain the desire. So I went to page two of the responses, and followed some links, and pretty soon the tone of things changed drastically! Instead of the "Just say no" people I found a whole raft of sites where they not only encouraged you to look at your sister's boobs, they suggested sucking them and fondling them and ...

I realized I had a boner. But that was okay, because I was, for all intents and purposes, looking at porn on the computer, even though there were no pictures, and I always got a boner from looking at porn on the internet, so that was normal. Even if my sister was involved ... kind of. And it was interesting, because I never knew people like this existed. There were whole clubs of people who got off on incest and invited people to come to nude camps to engage in incest where nobody could screw with you about it and stuff like that. Except your relatives. They could screw with you. They were supposed to screw with you. Get it? Ha ha.

I felt a lot better about myself after reading all that. I mean all I wanted to do was maybe take a little peek at this or that girly part, and that was nothing compared to what these people said they did. I was even proud of myself for only thinking maybe three times about using dad's credit card to see the pictures you had to pay to see on those sites. Of course I didn't. Still, it would have been pretty cool to see what a naked sister and brother looked like together. But I didn't, because there was pretty much no way I could think of to make that into an emergency.

But then I had a boner to deal with which, while it wasn't an emergency, was very demanding about being dealt with. I looked over at Heather and went to my own room, to my own computer, where I had my favorite story site bookmarked. I did a search for cheerleader stories. I'd already read most of them, but there were two new ones, so I picked one of them and started stroking slowly. That story turned out to have been written by a third grader who spelled it "chearleader." The other one wasn't much better. I was looking over the titles of the ones I'd already read when it occurred to me that there might be stories about incest on this place too.

So I did a search for "incest."

There had been 18 titles listed in my search for "cheerleader." When the screen came up on my incest search, there were 25 titles listed on the first page and it said it was 25 of 1,934 listings. My jaw dropped.

After looking at a few pages I realized there was a lot of different kinds of incest, some of which was pretty weird if you ask me. I mean I knew some eight-year-old girls, and none of them were even remotely like the little girls in some of those stories. And like ewwww, who'd even want to do that with some stupid little girl? Grandparents were out too. That was just too weird. And while I liked my mom, thinking about seeing her boobs just made me feel icky. So finally I refined the search to brother/sister incest stories, and culled out a lot of the other stuff.

When I think about it now I can't believe I even did that. I mean I was like everybody else. I knew incest was wrong and horrible and perverted and all that. But reading about people who disagreed with that was really interesting or something. I'm not stupid. I know you can't believe everything you read on the net, but there was so much of it ... so many sites. At least a few of them had to be legit.

I started looking through the new list and this time I looked at the scores, figuring that higher scores might mean that at least the story was written by a highschooler, like me, instead of somebody who couldn't spell necrophilia. There was one by this author who thought he (or she - how was I supposed to know?) was a lubricant of some kind. Maybe he was thinking about creams used to beat off with. My best friend Marty Coonce had to use something like that to beat off with because he was circumcised. I wasn’t, and everything on me worked nice without having to have extra help. Anyway, I pulled up one of his stories, because it had a pretty high score.

Wow.

I realized my cock had been forgotten while I read. I solved that problem and went back to a couple of places that had gotten my heart pounding. I'd never had sex before with anything except my hand. If I ever did have sex I sure hoped it could happen like this oily guy had written it. I spurted on the second spot I re-read. Then I read the other spots, trying to get my cock to stiffen up again because I just wanted it to keep going. I clicked on the author's name and it took me to a bunch of pages of stories. His profile link was there too. He was a guy and his pen name was about leprechauns instead of lubricants. Who understands adults? And he was old too! He was even older than my dad! I couldn't believe some old guy had written what I just read.

An hour later I had a new bookmark in my list. I didn't care if it was perverted any more. I had never gotten off so quick and so hard before. And the old dude had some stories that weren't about incest too, so I didn't feel like either he or I were quite as perverted as before. I mean I didn't really want to fuck Heather. I still wanted to see her boobs, but that was all. I wasn't ready to have sex. I wasn't as mature as most of the brothers Lubrican wrote about. And he said they were all made up anyway. But it was fun to read.

I looked at my watch and about crapped. Three hours had gone by! I ran to check on Heather, but she was exactly like I'd left her. I knew how to change the bags on the machine she was hooked up to, so I did that, and then checked where the needle was in her arm, like mom had showed me how to do. It looked fine. She looked fine. I touched her face again and she felt warm.

"I love you," I said. Then I felt guilty because I thought of loving her like the boys in Lubrican's stories loved their sisters. "Not like that, of course," I added. I realized I was blushing, and felt really stupid. "I'm going to get something to eat. Then maybe I'll read to you some more."

I left her room. I ordered a pizza.

Then I went back and pulled up the Lubrican bookmark again. It was still too soon to get hard again, though my cock was interested. Which was probably good, because it would have been awkward if I'd been whaling away at my stiff peter when the girl delivered the pizza.

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