Serendipity - Version Bravo

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | Epilogue

Chapter Thirteen

Hannah had, at one time, had a job that required her to travel a lot. And whenever she came close to Oklahoma, she stopped in to see me. She stayed, in fact, in Caitlin's room. So I had given her a key, all those years back. And when her job changed, and she didn't leave California any more, she had just kept it.

I had been driving Caitlin back home for several years now, and the stories she told her mother when she got back, about the things we'd done, and the places we'd seen, made Hannah wish she could be there to do those things and see things too.

So she had taken some vacation and, to surprise us, hadn't told us she was going to fly out and bum a ride back with us. She took the Red Eye and her flight arrived at Will Rogers World Airport at four in the morning. She wasn't about to call me up at that hour and ask me to come get her. So she rented a car and drove it to my house. She stopped along the way for breakfast, which was why she didn't walk into the den of iniquity my house had become until seven-thirty.

I would learn later that, when she opened the door and slipped into the house, the first sensation she experienced was an odor. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it smelled familiar somehow. Then, on her way to sneak into my bedroom and jump on the bed and scream "Good morning!" she saw the naked bodies, all balled up together on the mattress on the floor. Her first thought was that the bodies were dead, but there was no blood.

She recognized instinctively what had happened, most likely because the bodies were clearly naked. The "moment of confusion" dragged on as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that three of the bodies were female, and only one was male, but all this happened very quickly because she got around to recognizing two of those bodies.

Surprise was what she had in mind. But she got the surprise, instead of delivering it.

That's when she screamed.

And it wasn't "Good morning!"

Then it was our turn to be surprised. That part of her plan worked flawlessly.

There was what can only be described as "a burst of activity," though it wasn't very productive activity, at least initially. A choir of sorts was formed as Hannah kept screaming, and was then joined by the musketeers. This impromptu production would have fit very well into a program in a gallery somewhere, where The Scream, by Edvard Munch, was being displayed.

I don't remember for sure, but I might have screamed a little bit too.

But screaming can only go on for so long before lungs run out of breath, and vocal cords require some rest. Maybe the initial shock wore off, or was replaced by a different kind of shock as Hannah realized what her daughter had been doing.

Ashley and Emma, of course, were mortified. Suddenly they were just teenagers again, girls who had been caught inside the car with the steamed up windows when the local cop had knocked on them with his flashlight. They didn't need to be told to get dressed. The problem was that they couldn't find their clothes.

Meanwhile, Caitlin and Hannah were yelling at each other. Caitlin wasn't even trying to find anything to put on. She was too busy defending her turf. If asked, she wouldn't have put it that way, but that's what she was doing. She had already made certain decisions that neither her mother nor I were aware of, and one of those was that she would forever more have access to me as her lover. That was obviously in jeopardy. Throw in the "Why are you spying on me?" thing that kids always misinterpret parental concern for, and she was ready to go to the mat.

You're all adults. At least you're supposed to be. If you're not, stop reading immediately and do your homework. And most of you adults have children.

I don't have to tell you why Hannah was upset.

Their raging argument, in fact, gave Ashley and Emma a chance to find their clothes and get "decent" again. And it was at this point that a fascinating thing happened.

Both girls felt the urge to immediately vacate the house and get away from the raging bull that was Hannah. But they knew that, if they went home at this time in the morning, questions would be asked, and the last thing they wanted was for some other adult to take interest in the events of the previous night. Plus, one of the musketeers was under attack.

So they stayed!

And that turned out to be pivotal to the de-escalation of the situation.

Around that time, as things happened, Hannah remembered there were two people she was supposed to be yelling at, and turned to me.

"And you!" she shouted.

This moment was also pivotal, but for different reasons.

I was naked. It was early in the morning. I hadn't had a chance to go to the bathroom.

And folks, let me tell you, stark terror doesn't do anything at all to make morning wood go away.

So there I stood, the brother she'd known for thirty-two years, except that now I had clearly turned into a satyr, because it was obvious I had gone all night long ... with three sexual partners ... and I was rampant again ... obviously because a new potential sexual partner had just come in the door.

She stopped yelling. I think it's a good guess that, for a moment, anyway, she had no idea what to say.

"Mom!" said Caitlin into the silence. "Can I please explain?"

Hannah's eyes seemed to drag themselves away from my erection, and her face turned to her daughter.

"You think you can explain this?"

"Yes! If you'll just listen to me."

She looked back at me and her eyes went straight to my boner. She stared at it as if it might suddenly grow and wrap itself around her. I think she was just overwhelmed at that moment, by a situation she would never have even dreamed she'd walk into.

"Do you have any coffee?" she asked, suddenly.

Nobody said anything at first, and then, of all people, Emma said, "I'll go make some."

Hannah tore her eyes away from my manhood and to my face.

"Would you please go put something on?"

"Um ... sure," I said, finally covering my cock with both hands.

"Thank you," she said.

It was surreal. She was screaming one minute, and saying please and thank you the next.

As so much had changed in the last week or so, everything changed again. My world had turned on its side, when the girls decided to experiment. Now my world turned another ninety degrees, until everything was upside down.

Hannah wasn't the only one who didn't know what to say. And I think that was part of the reason things calmed down. There were only two directions things could go. Hannah could storm out, go to the police and have me arrested for molesting her daughter.

Or try, anyway. As I mentioned a while back, all three girls were above the age of consent in Oklahoma.

But that didn't mean she couldn't cause problems for me.

That direction was what I'll call "up" in this situation. The only other direction was "down."

But not going "up" didn't mean that things were easy. Again, I think it was Kat, fighting for what she perceived as "hers" that moved things forward. Her intent was to convince her mother that what had happened was not a bad thing. To that end, she pulled her mother to the kitchen, shooting me a look and mouthing "Get dressed!" at me. I went to the bathroom first, to get rid of the offending erection Hannah had stared at. When I came out, Ashley and Emma were in my bedroom, sitting on the bare box spring on my bed.

"What should we do?" asked Ashley, whispering.

"You should probably go home," I said.

"No way!" said Emma. "We have to see what happens."

"You may not like what happens," I said, pulling on some shorts.

"It wasn't rape!" argued Emma.

"I don't think that will be the issue," I said. "Whether it was rape or not, how do you think your parents would feel about last night?"

"They'd kill me," moaned Emma. Ashley wasn't saying anything.

"Well, that's what's going on in the kitchen."

And, just like that, both musketeers went to the rescue, leaving my bedroom, obviously headed for the kitchen.

"Wait!" I called. "I don't think that's a good idea."

But there was no one to hear me.

Have you ever felt like a prisoner in your own home? That's what I felt like. There I was, in my bedroom, with half of my bed. Where was I supposed to go? I felt like Hannah was suddenly the warden, and I needed permission to move around the institution.

I stood there, irresolute, dithering quietly. I had this sensation that, as long as I stood there very quietly, the lion in the other room might not see me, and I'd not get eaten. That was stupid, of course. She could (and eventually would!) find me any time she liked.

I didn't hear screaming, but that could be interpreted two ways. One of them was that Hannah had taken her daughter and left. If that happened, the other two might leave with them. I could be alone in the house, for all I knew.

I finally moved, walking to the bedroom door and sticking my head into the hallway. I heard voices.

Eventually I decided to go clean up the scene of the crime. Maybe removing the evidence might help me somehow. It was like being in an alternate reality. I "snuck" to the living room, trying to be as quiet as I could, and wrestled the mattress up onto its side. It waved and wobbled, and was unbelievably heavy as I started trying to drag it back to my bedroom. Pillows scattered everywhere, and a pile of used condoms was revealed on the floor.

The condoms were worse than the mattress, so I laid it against a chair and gathered up all the incriminating latex. For some reason I felt like a homeless person must feel when, while digging through trash cans, runs into the remains of somebody's sexual activity. The DNA inside the damn things was mine, but I held the handful of limp, wet, collapsed tubes at arm's length as I tried to think of a place to ditch them.

Ashley suddenly appeared. I hadn't seen her come into the room and she scared the shit out of me. She was holding the waste basket that was usually under the sink in the kitchen.

"Put them in here," she said, her voice completely normal.

"What?" I was still rattled.

"I'll help you clean up," she said, in that kind voice people often use with children.

"What's happening?" I asked, looking toward the kitchen.

"They're talking," she said.

"Talking?"

"Yes. You know, moving their lips while sound comes out? Communicating?" She frowned at me.

"Just talking?"

"Yes. Now, let's get this cleaned up before she comes in here again. Come on. I'll help you."

She moved the trash can under my hand, which was still straight out away from my body. I unclenched my fist and the condoms dropped into the can with a sound that made me shudder. Ashley set the trash can down and went to one end of the mattress. She stood there, patiently.

I finally got moving and together, the mattress wasn't so hard to move. We got it to the bed and laid it down. There was a stain on the side where Emma had been lying after I spurted in her. Ashley saw it too.

"Maybe we should turn it over," she suggested.

We did, and the evidence of my attempt to make babies with Emma was hidden.

"You can make it up later," she said. She reached for my hand and pulled me back to the living room. The living room was "decorated" with cups, and half-eaten bags of chips, and an open container of dip. Ashley's and Emma's bras were still lying in a pile in front of the couch. Ashley snatched those up and disappeared towards my bedroom. I idly wondered if she'd put hers on, and then go get Emma from the kitchen to also "get decent." I was almost painfully aware that I hadn't noticed Ashley was braless. But then, things weren't normal ... were they.

When she got back I actually looked. It was hard to tell because she had on her blouse again, and it had a colorful pattern on it.

"I do not believe you," she said.

"What?" I was confused.

"All this happens and you still stare at my boobs?"

I thought for half a second about telling her what I'd been thinking, but decided it would take too long and wasn't worth it. I think I was beginning to have some hope that the world wasn't coming to an end. At any rate, I used a standard response.

"I'm a man," I said. "What can I say?"

She snorted, and I think it was her calm demeanor that finally calmed me down too. She'd been in there, in that room, with Hannah. She was still in the house, for that matter, meaning Hannah hadn't screamed at her and Emma to get the hell out. Ashley wasn't tense and scared, and while I didn't understand how that could be, her body language communicated with my brain.

We didn't say anything else as we stacked cups, and rolled packages closed. Ashley squinted at the side of the open dip. I had no idea where the lid was.

"Refrigerate after opening," she read aloud. Then she dropped it into the trash can, on top of the condoms.

After that, there was remarkably little left to do, in terms of putting the living room back into its original non-sexual condition. We had been too busy having an orgy to mess things up any worse than I've described.

Now we stood, me holding a stack of cups in one hand, and a bag of Lays ridged chips in the other. Ashley was holding the Tostitos Scoops, the Cheetos, and the pretzels. The top cup was the one I'd dumped everything into, and it was full to the brim. I held it carefully, to avoid spilling it.

"What now?" I asked no one in particular.

"This stuff goes in the kitchen," Ashley pointed out.

"Hannah is in the kitchen," I pointed out.

"You're going to have to face her sooner or later."

"I vote for later."

"Hey," she said, her voice completely normal. "You're the one who got us into this mess. Man up."

"I'm the one?" I gasped, my eyes feeling like they might burst from their sockets. "I'm the one who caused all this?"

She shrugged.

"If you hadn't been so hunky and sexy, we wouldn't have all fallen in love with you."

"Oh give me a break," I groaned.

"Well, it's true," she insisted with a straight face.

"You are the one who wanted to experiment, as I recall. And you're the one who wanted to move the schedule up."

"We only wanted to experiment because you were so irresistible," she pouted. "And I only wanted to move things up after Kat got you to take her cherry."

"Caitlin did not get me to take her -" I almost said cherry, but at the last second opted for a less juvenile word. "virginity," I finished. "She didn't get me to do anything. She crawled on top of me and, without my consent, I might add, snuck her way onto me!"

I blinked. That hadn't come out quite like it had sounded in my mind.

"Because you were irresistible," said Ashley, smugly.

"Apparently so," came the very dry, very stern voice of my sister.

Ashley and I turned to see Hannah standing in the entryway to the living room. Caitlin was standing right behind her, looking past her mother at us. Emma was at the end of this lineup, peering past the others. We hadn't realized they were there. I wondered how much they had heard ... Hannah had heard. I had basically confessed to having sex with her daughter. Not that that was going to be a big surprise any more.

"See, Mom?" whined Caitlin. "I told you he didn't seduce us. It was our idea!"

Hannah looked over her shoulder.

"And that makes it all fine and dandy?"

She looked at me.

"Get those into the kitchen before you spill something and make a mess," she said.

I should have dumped some of the liquid into one of the other cups. That would have made it easier to get to the kitchen. But I didn't think of that. So I carefully, with bent knees, in slow motion, started to do what she had told me to do. As I got even with her, she reached for the cup. I thought she was helping me.

Instead, once she had it, she doused me with a combination of left over diet Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and Raspberry tea.

She threw it right in my face. It splashed all over me and some of it rebounded and hit her too.

"I am so pissed off at you right now," she growled as she did it.

"Mom!" said Caitlin, her voice typical of a teenage girl displaying embarrassment over her mother's behavior.

I opted for instant submission.

"You're right. I'm sorry. I don't know what else I can say."

"You have no idea," Hannah went on.

"You're right," I said again. "I can't even begin to put myself in your place."

She fumed silently, until I couldn't stand the silence any longer.

"What do you want to do?" I asked. "I'll do anything you think needs to be done."

"Be careful what you offer," she growled.

"Mom!" Now there was a warning note in Caitlin's voice. Hannah looked over her shoulder at her daughter.

"Don't worry. I should cut his balls off, but I'm not going to."

"Mom!" gasped Kat.

"Maybe we should go now," said Emma, her voice very soft.

Hannah's head turned and her eyes fixed on Emma.

"You must be Emma," she said, sounding so normal it was surreal. I wondered what had gone on in the kitchen. Emma had been in there. Ashley too. But it sounded like these were the first words Hannah had directed at her. Her head swiveled to Ashley. "And you must be Ashley."

Ashley shrugged. Don't ask me why. Then she said, "Hi," in a voice that sounded only ten years old.

"Caitlin has told me so much about you I feel I should know you."

Ashley either smiled or grimaced. I couldn't tell which it was.

"But I obviously don't know as much about you as I thought I did. She looked back at Kat. "Any of you."

Then Caitlin did something that amazed me. Her shoulders straightened and I could just see the confidence flow into her from somewhere. I'll never forget how she looked at that moment. What she did next was pretty memorable too.

"Mom, I explained it to you. I know you don't approve, and I know you don't understand. But the fact is that things happened and they can't be made to un-happen. We need to find a way to move forward. I won't let this destroy our family. It's too precious. Nobody got hurt. You need to figure out what you're going to do, so the rest of us can figure out what we're going to do."

Hannah spun.

"Nobody got hurt? Are you sure about that, Caitlin?"

"Yes! I'm telling you nobody got hurt. Ash and Em are right here. You can ask them if you want to, but I know what they're going to tell you. They're going to tell you that Uncle Bob did something very nice for them. He answered all kinds of questions we couldn't have gotten answered any other way."

"What about me?!" yelled Hannah. "Did it ever occur to anybody that maybe all this hurt me?"

"Why?" yelled Caitlin back. "How could what we did possibly hurt you?"

Hannah didn't answer. Instead she turned to me again.

"I am so pissed off at you right now!"

And then she stormed out of the front door.

It wasn't so long ago you were reading about how the three musketeers and I were frolicking happily, having a sexual romp through life and living it up on an emotional, social plane.

So you'd have thought that the four of us would have banded together, to succor each other in this time of distress. I mean it hadn't all been just sex. There had been some real, emotional bonds formed between me and the girls.

But the human condition tends to cause us to center on ourselves, and our own problems first, and helping out the other guy later. Maybe I'm getting cynical in my "old" age.

I'll tell you what didn't happen when Hannah stormed out of the house. What didn't happen was that there was no huddle to determine how best to calm her down, to placate her, to help her understand that what had happened was positive, rather than negative.

To seduce her, in a manner of speaking.

Oh, I don't mean sexually, of course. If plans were lined up waiting to be used, that one would be plan ZZZ. But convincing someone to leave their current platform of beliefs and come over to your way of thinking is a form of seduction.

That's what didn't happen.

Instead, as I mentioned before, we tended to reflect on our own problems.

"My folks are going to just kill me," whined Emma.

"I am so dead too," groaned Ashley. "What if I'm pregnant?"

"What if I'm pregnant too?" gasped Emma.

"I hope I am pregnant!" said Caitlin, stubbornly. "Then she won't be able to keep us apart!"

"Calm down," I said sternly. "Nobody's pregnant." At least I sure hoped nobody was pregnant. The world was topsy turvy enough as it was, without that particular hot potato being tossed into the mix.

"Wait," said Caitlin, looking at Emma. "How could you be pregnant? We were careful all night long."

Emma actually blushed.

"Not exactly," she admitted. "I was the only one who didn't know what it felt like, so I woke him up early this morning."

"Emma!" groaned Caitlin.

"Well it wasn't fair," argued Emma.

"Girls!" I said, again sternly. I guess I thought sounding stern would make me seem more adult, and less like the seventeen-year-old in me who had gleefully mounted three girls in one night. "This isn't helping."

"Nothing will help," sighed Caitlin.

"Maybe not, but this will blow over," I said. "She can't stay mad forever. This time next year it will all be forgotten."

"Next year? I have to wait a whole year before things can get back to normal?" Caitlin's voice communicated tragedy.

"Caitlin, honey," I said, soothingly. "You always go home, and it's always a year before you come back."

"Yes, but that was before I knew how wonderful it was to sleep with you. I mean I hoped it would be wonderful, but now it's different. Now I know it's wonderful."

"I feel the need to point out that you probably wouldn't have come back next year anyway," I said. "I mean you're a senior. You're going to graduate and go to college, and meet a nice young man. In a few years all this will be is a fond memory." I said what was, to me, obvious. But the look on her face was one of building thunder clouds. "At least I hope it will be fond," I added, uncomfortably.

"Are all men idiots?" she asked, staring straight at me.

"What are we going to do?" moaned Emma. "I know she's going to call my parents and tell them what happened."

"Maybe," I said. "But what if she does? You are a big girl now, Emma. And your parents know, even if it makes them nauseous, that someday you'll become sexually active."

"What if they kick me out?" she asked. "My dad is like that, you know. He's always telling me that when I turn 18 he's going to remodel my room and make it into a sewing room for Mom. What if he decides that because I wanted to act grown up, he's going to treat me that way?!"

I minored in philosophy in college. I thought it would get me women, because they'd assume I was a deep thinker or something. I was young. And guys have tried much nuttier things than that to attract women.

But I had gotten to be a deeper thinker because of that course of study, and the philosopher in me thought about how much time could be spent discussing what Emma had just said. I didn't think she'd be up for such a discussion, though.

"If they kick you out, you can move in with me," I said, figuring that would calm her down. I didn't think she was going to get kicked out.

"Can I?" The drowning victim grasped desperately for the life ring I'd just thrown her.

"Now wait just a fucking minute!" snapped Caitlin. "You can't live with him!"

"Why not?" asked Emma. "I love him."

"It's just a crush," I said, as warning klaxons started going off in my brain.

"No ... I believe I'm the one who loves him," said Caitlin, her voice full of danger.

"We all fucking love the fucking son of a bitch," growled Ashley, and all three of us turned to stare at her. Potty mouth during sex was one thing, but Ashley never used that kind of language outside of bed.

I think she looked a little surprised at herself, but she obviously had the floor, so she used it.

"It doesn't matter who's in love with him. What are we going to do about your mother?" She looked at Caitlin as she uttered the last few words.

"I have no idea," said Kat. "She's acting funny."

"Gee ... you think so?" I asked, sarcastically.

"No, I mean it. I've seen her mad. I've seen her really mad. But I've never seen her mad like this."

"What does that mean?" asked Ashley.

"I don't know," said Caitlin, frowning. "It's hard to explain. I've just never seen her act like she's been this morning."

"She's never found out her brother was porking her daughter before," I pointed out.

"That sounds so crass," objected Caitlin.

"None the less, that may be how she's thinking about it," I said.

"What about me?" asked Ashley. "If my parents kick me out, can I come live with you too?"

"Nobody's living with Uncle Bob!" shouted Caitlin.

"Why not?" asked Ashley, unfazed by Caitlin's outburst. "You'll be in California. What do you care?"

"Because he's mine!" she shot back.

"Like your mother is ever going to let that happen," snorted Ashley. "I know we talked about it and all that, but we also talked about all of us having his baby. You still think that's a good idea?"

"What?" I felt like I'd been hit with a cattle prod. "What are you talking about?"

Ashley waved one hand at me like I was a bothersome fly.

"We used to lie around at night and talk about how cool it would be if we all had your baby and got to raise them together and all that. It was just girl stuff."

"No it wasn't," said Caitlin. "I meant it when I said I wanted to marry him and live with him."

"And you think that will ever happen now? Come on, Caitlin. We have to grow up some time."

"But I love him," said Caitlin, who was suddenly tragic again.

"Me too," said Ashley, calmly. "I love him so much I let him bust my cherry. But right now all the love in the world isn't going to solve the problem. We have to figure out what to do about your mom."

"I don't know what we can do," moaned Kat.

"One thing we can do is to convince her that the other parents don't need to become involved in all this," said Ashley.

"Well, you can stop worrying about that," said Hannah's voice, as she stepped out of the kitchen, giving all four of us a near heart attack.

Her presence was so powerful that all four of us stepped away from her. It was only a shuffle, and we only went six or so inches, but all of us moved.

"How'd you get in there?" asked Caitlin, confused.

"The back door was open," said Hannah.

"What are you doing in there?" asked her daughter.

"Listening to the four of you."

"Why?" That came from both Emma and Ashley, and it was said as if they practiced saying it together for hours.

"To see what you would say when I wasn't in the room," said Hannah. "I wanted to see how you acted ... normally." Her voice suggested that the word "normal" wasn't her first choice. The philosopher in me got that.

Her pronouncement was met with silence.

Which wasn't normal for this particular group.

Which proved that her thought process was sound.

"I'm not going to tell your parents," she said. "As Bob said, you're over the age of consent, and what you do with him is none of my business."

"How about me?" asked Caitlin, hopefully.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Hannah.

Caitlin started to argue, but her mother held up a hand to stop her. She looked at me.

"We need to talk."

I swallowed. I didn't want to do that. But I'd said I'd do anything, and if that meant endure a verbal caning, then so be it. In fact, if that was all that happened, I'd be lucky.

"Okay," I said.

She looked at each of the girls pointedly.

"Alone," she said.

Again, it was silent. I wanted to believe that the musketeers preferred to stay there to defend me, and that their silence was a symbol of resistance to abandoning me.

"Where should we go?" asked Emma, suddenly, and it was clear that's what she'd been thinking about the whole time. My welfare hadn't even been on the menu, much less chosen.

"Girls your age love the mall ... isn't that right?" asked Hannah. She said it gently, but she couldn't have put more emphasis on the age of the girls if she'd rented a billboard announcing each one's birthday.

"The mall doesn't open until ten," said Ashley, completely missing the point.

"You can stand there and wait," said Hannah, her voice dangerous.

"Mom -"

Caitlin was cut off by a slashing hand.

"I'm pretty pissed off right now at you too, young lady. How about you just do what I say for now."

"Yes, Mother," sighed Caitlin.

"Thank you."

She stood, obviously waiting for the girls to leave. She glared at them, which got them moving. Three minutes later I was alone in the house with my sister.

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