G'NIGHT, PIXIE
Russell Hoisington
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This is an erotic fantasy. The characters and the situation are
purely imaginary, and this story is NOT intended to be a guide
for actual behavior. Any similarities between this story and
actual people, or actual events that you should be ashamed of,
are purely coincidental. If it is illegal in your part of the
world to access and read erotic fiction, or if you are underage,
or if you don't like sex stories, then stop now.
This story is copyright 2004 by Russell Hoisington. Please do
not remove the author information or make any changes to this
story. You may post freely to non-commercial (free) sites, or in
the "free" area of commercial sites. That does NOT mean that
they are in the public domain, nor does it mean that I give
permission for you to use them in spam advertising. I reserve
the right to determine what is "spam advertising" by MY
definition, not yours or anyone else's.
Thank you for your consideration.
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One
Storm
Doug Bryant waited in the humid, salty air of the boat's
rocking narrow passageway while Mary kissed their
thirteen-year-old daughter good night. When Mary slipped out of
the boat's tiny cabin, he entered, brushed back Alyson's
sun-bleached brunette bangs, and planted a gentle kiss on her
forehead. "G'night, Pixie," he said as he ran the side of his
index finger down the line of her square jaw. He'd said good
night that way since she'd come home from the hospital eleven
weeks after her premature birth.
Alyson grinned, causing her round apple cheeks to push her
narrow eyes into thin slits, then puckered her lips and made two
soft grunting noises. He pressed his lips firmly to hers, and
for four seconds they softly hummed together, "Mmmmmmmm" and
broke apart with a loud, "MAH!" She giggled, and he pointed at
her hair. "Tomorrow," he said, shaking the finger at her, "you
have your mother trim your bangs. It's too hot here, and you'll
get a heat rash on your forehead again."
"Yes, Doctor Daddy," she said, and then giggled at his stern
face until he broke into a broad grin. "I love you. G'night."
"I love you too, Pixie. Good night." His hand reached for
the light switch beside the door, and he took in one last sight
of her, turning to lie on her side atop the sheets in the warm,
heavy air. She absently scratched below the conical swelling of
her tanned left breast, drawing Doug's attention to the fact that
his Pixie was growing up all too soon. The heart-shaped brown
thatch around her deep young slit was further evidence.
He closed the cabin door and turned to Mary. She saw the
look in his eye. "What's wrong?"
"Hmmm? Oh." Doug seemed to return from somewhere else. He
answered in a soft voice to keep Alyson from hearing. "I was
just wondering how much longer I'd be telling her good night that
way. She's growing up, Mare. Growing up too damned fast.
She'll be your height by next summer. Any day now she'll decide
she's too old for 'G'night, Pixie,' and my world will change
forever."
Mary wrapped her arms around him and squeezed her naked body
to his. They had grown up in a California commune where their
parents never bothered with clothing unless it was necessary, and
the habit stuck. Neither liked being clothed, and they undressed
at the first opportunity. Alyson had inherited that habit from
them.
"Such mortality in one so young," she said with mocking wide
eyes. "But how many times has your life changed forever?"
He looked deep into those eyes and smiled. "Well, the
second time was when Alyson was born. I was seven the first time
it happened." That was when he first noticed the six-year-old
beauty who was to become his wife. They were best friends in
less than a week and inseparable lifetime soulmates by the end of
the year. They experimented with sexual touching when he was
nine and first tried oral sex at ten, but they didn't have
intercourse until he was almost thirteen, despite the fact that
none of the adults cared about what sexual contacts the children
had among themselves. After that they had entertained numerous
partners. Most of the other children in the commune who were
near their ages had been their sexual partners at least once, and
they now belonged to a small swinging club in their suburban
neighborhood. But there was a difference between sport fucking
and loving. Doug and Mary deeply, truly, eternally loved each
other.
"Come on," he said, pushing her toward the steps up to the
boat's main deck. "Let's do it under the stars again."
She grabbed his dick and pulled him along. "You talked me
into it, Mister Smoothie, even if the stars are hidden behind the
clouds."
*****
Alyson understood the quiet words. She couldn't imagine a
time she'd ever be too old for "G'night, Pixie," not even if she
were an ancient sixty and her father were an incomprehensible
ninety. She swore right then and there that she would never be
the one to abandon the ritual.
And then she heard that they were going to have sex--they
were going to "fuck"-- on the upper deck again. She squirmed as
an ache of longing appeared right there in the front of her slit.
Alyson slid her finger between her fuzzy outer lips and toyed
with her clit for a minute. It swelled into a hard little knot
as she gently stroked it with her fingertip.
She had masturbated for years, and her parents knew it. She
never masturbated in their presence, but she knew they were aware
that she did it every night, and that it was why she sometimes
went to her room in the middle of the day and closed the door.
They never disturbed her when she was "Tickling the Twat," as her
neighbor, Timmy Corel, once called it. Timmy was the one who
showed her how boys "Pulled the Pole." Alyson and Timmy had
subsequently watched each other masturbate on several occasions,
but she had never let him touch her, nor had she touched him.
Touching was, regrettably, impossible for her.
When she decided she'd waited long enough she slipped out of
her bunk, quietly opened the door, and eased down the hallway and
up the steps until she could just see along the surface of the
deck toward the stern.
The moon and stars were hidden by a heavy, roiling overcast.
To the west, distant flashes of lightning backlit the tropical
island looming nearby. Her dad had pulled into this broad
sheltered cove when he heard the storm warning. Even though the
storm would pass north of them the waves would be heavy, and he
didn't want them to be caught out in open water.
Although there was no natural light, except for the tiny
amount the distant lightning provided, there was enough light
from the rest of the boat for Alyson to see Mom lying on an air
cushion, legs raised and wrapped around Daddy's waist. He was
resting on his lower legs and hands. This time it was too dark
for Alyson to see the hard spear of his cock slowly sliding in
and out of Mom's trimmed brown bush, but she could picture it
from the other times she had peeked at them.
For a moment Alyson combed her own brown curls with her
fingers and wondered if she'd have a bush like Mom's when she was
older. Mom's was a wide triangle, while hers was almost an
equilateral one. But instead of being a straight line across the
top, like Mom's, hers dipped downward slightly in the middle.
That dip, plus the line where the growth stopped just short of
the junction of her firm outer lips with her thighs, made her
bush look like a heart. Some of the girls in her PE class last
year had accused her of shaving it to get the heart shape. Two
had called it a "merkin," but wouldn't tell her what that meant.
She'd had to ask Timmy, who wouldn't tell her until she first
masturbated for him.
Alyson shoved a finger into her slit, back where her brown
curls thinned to nothing, and into the wetness at the mouth of
her virginal vagina. She dragged the lubricating juices to her
hard, aching clit and began masturbating with serious
determination. She watched her father's tanned butt lift and
drop, lift and drop, sending his sun-browned shaft up into her
mother's lower body over and over, his balls making wet slapping
sounds that Alyson knew were there, but couldn't hear tonight
because of the whistles and moans of wind and the slapping of
waves against the boat.
They were talking in low voices. She was amazed about the
number of different things they talked about while doing it. The
subjects ranged from menus to Alyson's school grades to paying
bills to what they were doing, the latter occasionally using
exotic words or phrases Alyson hadn't yet heard and that left her
wanting to know what her mother was feeling more than ever.
She stopped rubbing long enough to join her middle and ring
fingers and slip them into her hot, tight, wet tunnel. For
almost a minute she slammed them into and out of herself in time
with her father's rhythm, then withdrew them to attack her clit
with renewed ferocity. It must feel like that, only better. She
couldn't imagine how good it must feel to have that long, hard
pole of her father's sliding through her young pussy. She'd had
several objects in it that were similar in general size and
shape. Her favorite was an empty toothpaste cylinder that she
kept in her room. But it just didn't feel like Daddy's cock.
Alyson knew what that big, hard, wonderful thing felt like.
Well, she knew what it felt like to touch, but not what it felt
like in her cunny, where it really counted. When he was really,
really tired he snored. Not very loud, but he snored. When he
was snoring, you almost needed firecrackers to wake him up. A
few of those times she'd been alone with him, and his cock had
grown hard in his sleep. Softly, gently, she'd touched it,
amazed that it was as firm as the toothpaste cylinder, but on the
outside it was soft and velvety and oh-so-nicely warm.
The third time it happened, she wrapped her hand around it
and stroked it a couple of times, trying to imagine the sensation
it would produce inside her pussy instead of her hand. She
became hornier than she had ever been before in her life, and her
other hand shot between her legs, as unstoppable as an erupting
volcano. A volcano was what that hand found when she pushed her
lips apart with her index and ring finger, dipped the middle one
into her hole to wet it, and found hot lava. She dragged the
liquid forward to her clit and came on the third rub. She didn't
wake her father, but she disturbed him enough that he turned
over. She went back to her room and masturbated for three hours,
cumming over and over again as each release left her wanting
more.
The last time she'd held it was a couple of months ago. Mom
had gone with Uncle Peter to settle things after Grandpa had gone
to sleep while driving Grandma down the Big Sur coast. After Mom
had been gone a week, Daddy spent all day working in the yard,
putting in landscaping timbers and big rocks and making a really
nice flower garden in the back corner to surprise Mom when she
returned. He had worn himself out that day. It was the first
time Alyson had ever seen her father exhausted. She had heard
Mom talking about Daddy's endurance with other women. Of course,
Mom was talking about endurance while they were doing it, but
Alyson also knew that while her father wasn't stronger than most
men his size, he could outwork everyone she knew.
But this one evening he was so tired that he fell asleep on
the couch with his back to her, and she couldn't wake him for
supper. When she shook his shoulder, he turned onto his back,
kept on snoring, and grew a boner. Just like that, right in
front of her eyes! She'd seen it happen before, when Mom played
with it, but always at a distance. This time it was at
arm's-length when it began growing wider and longer than its
normal couple of inches, then moved from lying on his leg to atop
his tummy, where it pointed toward his head. It kept growing
wider and longer still until it was over six inches long, and the
head poked out of the skin covering it, the way she was used to
seeing his boner.
She just stood there and fingered herself for a couple of
minutes, letting him get back to deep sleep. When she could
stand it no longer, she gently picked it up and stroked it.
Unable to control herself, she finally kissed it and then licked
it just below the head, the way she'd seen Mom do it. It
swelled, and she grew hornier. Still stroking his stick, she was
trying to decide whether to risk trying to get her mouth around
it when he suddenly came in his sleep. It was the most amazing
thing she'd ever seen. Somehow she kept from finger-banging
herself to orgasm on the spot and, instead, scooped up his hot,
thick cum in her left hand and ran to her room with her pearly
white treasure.
Lying on her bed she deposited her cooling liquid treasure
on her chest, between and below the rise of her tender young
breasts. The aroma was--different. But it was making her little
clit demand attention in no uncertain terms. But first she was
going to answer a question that had been haunting her since the
first time she saw Mom give Daddy head: what did it taste like?
Using her left hand to keep it from flowing away, she scooped
some up with her right index finger and brought it to her mouth.
She opened her mouth, planning to first taste it with just the
tip of her tongue. Instead, she suddenly plunged her finger into
her mouth and stripped it clean with her lips, fantasizing
sucking it off of her father's cock.
Two things happened: first she decided she liked it, and
second her clit exploded with demands that could no longer be
ignored. She wet her fingertip in the cum and used it for
lubrication, massaging it into her clit. She came immediately,
her body jerking with such intensity that she almost lost her
pool. She began alternating between a tiny taste of cum and a
tiny drop rubbed into her clit. When she ran out of her liquid
treasure it was almost midnight and she was so exhausted she
thought she couldn't cum again for a month.
Satisfied as she was, she was still nagged by one burning
question: _What does it really feel like to have that thing
sliding in and out of you?_ Timmy would be more than eager to
show her what it felt like, but she couldn't let him. Both
Crystal Ross and Harmony Sturm had told her how excruciatingly
painful first intercourse was, and as everybody knew, Alyson
couldn't stand pain. Oh, sure, they'd told her that it was
_wonderful_ and _dreamy_ from the second time on. But Alyson
couldn't bring herself to voluntarily submit to that first time
agony. That was why she wouldn't even let Timmy touch her. He
would want more, but she could never go all the way with him.
She didn't want to give him false hopes. Denying him everything
was the decent thing to do, for his sake.
_But what DOES it feel like?_
*****
"The air's getting colder," Mary said, her words broken into
a staccato cadence by the slamming of Doug's pelvis into hers.
"The storm's moving closer."
"We'll be safe here," he said. He moaned and added, "Do
that again." She had clamped her cunt muscles tight on his dick
as he started to withdraw. Mary had to teach the wife or
girlfriend of every man in their swing club how to do Kegel
exercises. Newcomers would fuck her once and then say, "You need
to talk to my wife right now." Melinda Peck was the undisputed
Queen of the Blowjob, but Mary was the Queen of Quims. She was
the one member who consistently was fucked until he came by every
man present.
Melinda had grown up in the same commune and had
automatically become bisexual, the same as Mary. Melinda loved
eating cum, which was fortunate because of her specialty, and
she'd stop blowing long enough to eat the cum from Mary's pussy
between studs. Melinda and Mary were always located near each
other, usually in the center of the main room at the club
fuckfests.
Doug rewarded her by dipping his head to suck on her nipples
while he thrust into her gripping gash. She came seconds later.
Eyes closed, her head lolled to the side. When she opened her
eyes, she was looking toward the companionway. "Our audience is
back," she murmured.
"Perhaps she's looking for new things to try with Timmy.
Got any ideas?" Doug whispered as he switched nipples. "Ooooh,"
he added as she again squeezed his dick.
Mary gave one of her postorgasmic giggles that he found so
appealing. "Poor little thing. Maybe you should invite her over
and show her first-hand so Timmy will...." Her words died as she
looked at his face.
He had stopped thrusting and was frowning at her. "She's my
daughter, Mare. Why would you say such a thing?"
The afterglow faded from her face and she focused on his
eyes, which were almost glaring down at her. This was something
new.
"What's the matter? We've never had any off-limit topics
when we were making love or sport fucking. Remember when you
said you wondered what I'd look like with a python's head shoved
up my cunt? Or what I'd look like after you'd loaned me to a
couple of fraternities for the party entertainment? I thought we
agreed any fantasy goes and nobody would be offended."
Doug rose and shifted his legs until his weight rested on
his shins, but left his shaft buried in her tunnel. "That was
before we had a daughter, Mare. It's my responsibility to see
that nothing bad happens to her. I don't like kidding about it."
Mary blinked at him, trying to comprehend what she'd just
heard. She understood the words, but she didn't fathom his
meaning. Was this because he was a pediatrician or was this
something new that she couldn't grasp?
"What was 'bad' in what I said?"
Doug stared at her. "_What?_ You.... What kind of question
is that?"
Her hips stilled and her arms slid to rest on the deck. "I
guess we do have limits after all."
Doug sat back on his heels, his half-hard erection popping
out of his wife. "I want to protect my daughter, and you
ridicule me? What the fuck is wrong with you, Mare?"
*****
Alyson's finger stilled as she realized her parents were
arguing. Their voices grew stronger, but were still being
muffled by the weather. She thought she heard her father say her
name once, but she couldn't be sure. Had she done something to
cause the fight? Unlike some parents who apparently argued all
the time, hers rarely did. Hearing anger in their voices caused
her stomach to knot in fear. Desire left her immediately, and
she withdrew her finger from her slit.
This was something she could not stand to watch. She rose
slightly from a seated position to a low crouch and began to back
down the steps. As she did the wind suddenly whipped, and a drop
of rain hit between her shoulder blades, as cold as the tear
running down her cheek was hot.
She closed the door of her cabin and threw herself on the
bunk. She was dying to know if she had somehow caused their
fight, and if so, how, but she didn't want to listen to their
quarreling even to learn that. Her parents would be coming down
out of the weather any minute now. She turned to face the wall
and pulled her pillow over her head, covering her ears. That
muffled everything except the rumbling thunder which grew louder
by the minute.
*****
The sudden arrival of the storm ended the argument. Mary
clearly wanted to continue the fight below deck, but dropped it
immediately when she realized Doug was afraid. "What's wrong?"
His wide eyes scanned the northern and western skies. "This
shit isn't passing us, Mare. It's coming right down on top of
us. I'd better go radio in our position, just in case."
Mary's voice caught in her throat. "Just in case?"
Lightning struck a tree atop one of the small peaks on the
island, momentarily illuminating the boat in high-contrast black
and white. Six seconds later thunder shook the boat. As if that
were a signal the winds immediately exploded in fury, driving
cold raindrops sideways from the direction of the island and
rocking the boat.
Doug slapped his forehead with the heel of his right hand, a
gesture that told Mary he had just realized he'd made a huge
error. "We're facing the wrong way. I need to turn us into the
wind. Get on the radio and send our location to Search and
Rescue. Tell them if they don't hear from us after the storm
passes to come looking for us."
The pit of Mary's stomach went colder than the wind-driven
rain. "Doug? If they don't hear from us? Do you really
think...."
"Do it! The location is on the pad next to the chart.
Hurry! I'll turn the boat." He gave her a quick kiss, a gentle
slap on her bare butt, and a shove toward the steps to the lower
deck while he climbed the short ladder to the wheelhouse.
Lightning flared again as Mary started down the steps. The
thunder seemed to arrive more swiftly. She forced herself not to
panic as she entered their cabin, wondering why the boat wouldn't
just pivot about the bow anchor, and switched the radio to the
Search and Rescue frequency. She felt and heard the engine start
as she picked up the pad and looked at the numbers.
_Not again!_ Was that a "6", an "8", or a "0"? For what
seemed the ten-thousandth time she wondered if Doug's handwritten
prescriptions were as sloppy and, if not for the computer
printouts, whether the pharmacies would have to call for a
translation of every one. She decided it was a zero. As she
reached for the microphone she heard a distant roaring sound,
like a diesel locomotive pulling a long train steadily closer.
*****
The rocking of the boat was no longer gentle. Alyson
wrapped her arm tighter around the pillow, squeezing it to her
ear while also using it to keep the flashes outside the porthole
from being visible through her eyelids. She didn't like thunder,
and it was getting so loud she could feel it through her body.
Then she felt a different vibration, that of the engine starting.
And now she felt the electric winch drawing up the anchor chain
at the front of the boat.
She sat up, wrapping both arms around the pillow and
squeezing it to her chest. Claws of something cold squeezed her
heart, making it pound harder against the icy grip. Surely Daddy
wasn't going to try to drive the boat somewhere in this storm?
Another boom of thunder made her jump, and then the boat started
moving, swinging around in a tight turn. Through an increasing
loud roaring from outside she heard the radio in her parents'
cabin. It had to be Mom. Maybe Mom could tell her what Daddy
was doing.
*****
Doug hit the starter button. The engine responded
immediately, and he hit the switch to raise the anchor. Another
bright flash was followed three seconds later by a crash of
thunder. He had to get in closer to the island. It might
provide more shelter if they were closer to it, and if the boat
went down, he wanted to be as close as possible. He would rather
risk washing the boat into the shallows and stranding it than
have it go down. He was an idiot to have anchored out here.
Shortly after graduating from medical school he'd gone
fishing with six other guys. They'd been caught on the open
ocean in a surprise storm. He never wanted to repeat the
occasion, especially not with his daughter and wife present. But
here he was, with a storm headed at them. He should have skipped
their annual cruise this year. Normally Mary's two-week summer
research expedition was earlier in the summer and there was
little storm risk during the subsequent cruise. This year she'd
swapped field sessions with another botanist, one who should be
ending the last day of her honeymoon now. As usual, he and
Alyson had flown to meet Mare in the islands at the end and then,
disregarding the time of year, rented a boat for two weeks of
cruising. _Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!_
"_Damn!_" He had forgotten to tell Mary to get Alyson and
herself into life vests. Mare was always the more level-headed.
Maybe she'd think of it without his reminder. He opened the
compartment under a bench seat and grabbed one for himself.
The roaring from the direction of the island was growing
louder. He engaged the propeller and shoved the throttle open,
spinning the wheel to turn them toward the island. He was
straightening their course when another flash of lightning
illuminated it: a waterspout It had moved onto the island,
becoming a tornado that cut a path across the wide, flat expanse
between the shore and the high hills at the island's center. It
was just moving back to the water again, and he realized it would
move past them to the north. "We're safe," he murmured to
himself with a small sigh of relief. In the next flash of
lightning his blood ran cold.
The whirling fury had snapped off trees as it crossed the
island. A palm tree, some of its fronds still intact, was arcing
toward them. It was immediately lost in the darkness, but he had
understood that it was on an intercept course. He spun the wheel
hard to starboard, turning them toward the waterspout
temporarily. Another flash and he realized his error. Before he
could react the broken end of the tree slammed through the side
of the boat and lodged, its weight pulling the boat onto its port
side. With horror he realized that it had penetrated where
Alyson's cabin was.
Her scream overwhelmed the roar of the waterspout.
************************************************************
Two
Stranded
Doug Bryant lay on the sandy beach gasping for air. Mary
was dry heaving beside him, the contents of her stomach having
been left far out in the water. Alyson was crying on the other
side of her. Mary and Alyson had briefly gone under with the
boat, but had somehow escaped. They broke surface on either side
of another life vest. Mary and he had insisted Alyson wear it.
He'd had to half-drag Mary to the beach against the pressure of
the wind. It hadn't been easy swimming in his canvas deck shoes,
despite his almost legendary endurance, but he knew he'd need
them on the island since neither Alyson nor Mary had any.
Lightning struck another tree on a hill, reminding him of
how exposed they were.
"Come on! We have to get off the beach. Don't stand up or
you'll attract lightning."
They were all too tired to do more than crawl anyway. It
took both of them to stop Alyson's crying long enough to get her
moving. "We need to get back into the dense trees as a minimum.
Maybe we can reduce the chance of being fried. Maybe we can find
some kind of shelter. A cave or something. Come on!"
"Shelter" was just a large fallen tree lying at a forty-five
degree angle against a small rise in the ground. It looked
stable enough, so Doug put Mary and Alyson under it while he
scrounged branches, fronds, small bushes--anything he could use
to build a lean-to wall on the windward side. Mary had insisted
on helping, but he overruled her. "Aly's hanging by a thread.
If we leave her alone she could snap. Just get back under there
and comfort her. Tell her it will be okay when the storm passes.
Please, Mare."
Doug's wall didn't block all of the wind, but it did keep
out over ninety percent of it and effectively blocked the rain.
He had enough material to create a partial windbreak on the
leeward side, then crawled in with the others. The temperature
would have been comfortable were it not for the chilling effect
of the wind and rain. Mary was sitting behind the still-sobbing
Alyson, her nude body wrapped around her daughter's to share
warmth.
Doug's exertions had left him overheated. He had the other
two cuddle around him to share his warmth and to keep himself
from cooling too quickly.
"Daddy...." After six attempts and never getting past that
initial word before breaking down in sobs Alyson gave up.
His left arm tightened, squeezing her to his side. He spoke
in a quiet, gentle voice barely above a whisper. "It's okay now,
Pixie. The worst is over. We'll be safe here tonight, and
tomorrow we can look for something better. Search and Rescue
will be looking for us when the storm clears." He hadn't had the
opportunity to ask Mary if that last was true. But it could wait
until he could ask her out of Alyson's hearing. Knowing the
answer now wouldn't make any difference at the moment.
"Your mom's already asleep. You need to sleep, too, because
tomorrow you'll need your strength. We'll have work to do.
Okay?"
"But...."
"Shhhh! No buts, okay? Worrying tonight won't solve
anything. We'll have time to worry tomorrow, but let's not do
that until we know what the situation really is. Tomorrow things
will probably turn out to be better than they seem to be tonight,
and we'd be worrying about non-problems. Pixies have better
things to do than worry about non-problems. Okay?"
Her tear-streaked cheek snuggled against his left shoulder.
"Okay. I'll try."
He couldn't free his right arm from around Mary, so he
brushed her bangs aside with his nose and placed a gentle kiss on
her forehead as he raised his left hand. He ran the side of his
left forefinger down the line of her jaw and whispered, "G'night,
Pixie."
Her arms tightened about him for a moment, and then she
lifted her tear-streaked face and he heard the two soft little
grunts. He gently pressed his lips to hers for the
"MmmmmmmmMAH!"
She returned her face to his shoulder and sniffed once. "I
love you. G'night."
"I love you too, Pixie." He lowered his arm and wrapped it
around her, holding her to him while realizing he should have put
her in the middle where it was warmest. But her breathing had
suddenly become deep and regular. He suspected she hadn't gone
to sleep as much as she had passed out from exhaustion, the same
as Mare. And the same as he was going to do.
His last thought was the sudden realization that in addition
to the soft handful of Mare's right breast cupped in his right
hand, he had a firm little cone under the fingers of his left.
He jerked his arm down. "Goddamnit, Mare," he mumbled as
exhaustion took him.
*****
While Doug headed for the beach to examine the leaden sky
and take stock of their surroundings, Mary tried to explain the
basics of field sanitation to their discontented daughter.
"Look," she finally said, her shoulders sagging in frustration.
"You don't have any other choice. There's no C-store handy to
buy toilet paper, not that we have any cash on hand anyway. You
can always wash in the surf, you know. Now, scoot! I have to
talk to your father."
"What if I use poison ivy?"
"Your father left a stack of leaves on the log for you. Use
those."
"What if a bear attacks me?"
"Lie to it. Tell it you always root for the Bears to beat
the Chargers. Go on!"
As Alyson rolled her eyes and minced her way to the slit
trench that Doug had dredged with a broken tree limb, Mary
followed the trail back to the beach, looking as she went for
suitable ways to improve their makeshift shelter. She found Doug
standing just beyond the treeline, the two orange life vests
dangling at the end of one arm, staring to the right. The south,
more or less, she assumed.
"Doug?"
"Look at that."
She followed his pointing finger. A small wooden dock,
weathered gray with age, stuck into the water a couple of hundred
yards to the south. "I thought this island was uninhabited," she
said, her eyes now searching the treeline near the dock.
"That's what the chart said. That does look rather old...."
"There!" She pointed. "Right down from that tallest tree
with the broken top."
She waggled her forefinger while he squinted. His lasik
surgery had not been a hundred percent successful because he'd
insisted on going to that jerk McLaughlin instead of to Brilovic
as she'd done. But this wasn't the time to point that out. She
waggled it again and he suddenly grunted as he saw the
debris-strewn clay tile roof and the weathered gray walls
half-consumed by the surrounding vegetation.
"It looks worse than the dock." He looked toward their
makeshift camp. "Where's Alyson?"
"Taking care of Number Two. She's not happy that there's no
Charmin to squeeze."
Doug glanced toward the water. "Well, she can...."
"I told her."
Doug already knew that, just as she knew he already knew.
They could practically read each other's minds after all these
years. But he didn't need to be a mind reader to know that her
next question would be about Search and Rescue. She explained
that she'd just given the coordinates but didn't get a
confirmation before the boat was hit. She saw the look on his
face and stopped talking. "What?"
"That was an eight, not a zero. That's about a hundred
fifty miles difference, Mare."
She blinked at him. "But if they don't find us there...."
"If there's another of these little islands there, they'll
assume that's where we went down, and that's where they'll start
looking for us. If not, then they will assume our bearings were
off slightly and start searching with the closest island, moving
downwind. They may give up before they ever get to this one."
She thought he was blaming her. "Well, I warned you about
your handwriting!" she snapped.
He placed his free hand gently on her shoulder. "What's
done is done. We don't need to be arguing about this, especially
in front of Alyson. What we need to do is prepare for a slightly
extended stay here. That cabin is a good sign, even if nobody
appears to be home. We can try to salvage stuff from the boat.
The water's only about thirty feet deep out there, depending on
exactly where it went down." He pointed along the shore. "A few
things have already washed up here."
"_Where are you?_" Alyson's voice was shrill and shaky.
"_Here_!"
Two more shouts and Alyson stumbled out of the trees before
them. "I couldn't find you," she said, brushing a tear from her
cheek. "I'm going to get lost here."
"You never get lost in the mall," Doug said. "And who's the
one who always knows where the car is in the parking lot?"
She gave him the standard Frustrated Daughter Dealing with
Obtuse Parents look. "_Daddy!_"
"I'm serious. You keep track of the landmarks there. You
just have to do the same here, except they aren't letters on
signs attached to light poles. Just because you grew up in the
city doesn't mean you have to forget everything you learned while
you're out here. You just need to adjust some of your thinking
for the changed circumstances."
"Why didn't you just follow the trail?" Mary asked.
"What trail?"
Mary blinked. "Just what did they teach you at that camp
three years ago?"
Alyson's thin eyebrows pulled down from her bangs in a
frown. "Pottery and archery and swimming...."
Mary interrupted her. "Speaking of swimming, do you want to
go wash up before we check out the area?"
"Yeah." She glanced at the shoreline and back at them.
"Shouldn't you be building a signal fire or something, like they
do in the movies?"
"Sure," her father replied. "How do you want to light it?"
"How should I know? Bang two rocks together or something.
Rub two sticks together. You're the adults. You grew up in this
sort of place. I'm just a city girl." She trudged toward the
water, the onerous burden of being stranded hundreds of miles
away from the nearest Godiva Chocolatier, Pizza Hut, or movie
cineplex, without even her portable MP3 player for diversion,
evident in her posture.
After a dozen paces Alyson turned around. "What about
jellyfish or sharks or something?"
"I meant to warn you," Doug said. "They might be endangered
species. Don't hurt them."
Mary saw the standard Frustrated Daughter Dealing with
Smart-Assed Parents look, but she also saw the first hint of a
smile that day. She went back to discussing plans with Doug
while Alyson splashed and scrubbed in the shallows, no doubt
upset by the absence of her favorite coconut oil-based bath soap.
They had decided to delay diving to the boat until the next day
to let the storm-churned turbid water return to its natural
clarity when they were interrupted by Alyson's scream.
She was pointing southward along the shore. "_There's a
dock down there!_"
*****
"It's in good shape, considering," Doug said as he examined
the boards and pilings of the dock from knee-deep water.
Alyson frowned at him, her narrow eyes squinting as if
looking for signs of another smart-assed parent comment.
"Considering what?"
"Considering its age. Probably hasn't been used in ten
years, right Mare?"
She put her knuckles on her tanned hips and swept her eyes
along it one more time. "That'd be my guess. Which means the
cabin's probably been abandoned that long, too. Let's go see."
Alyson groaned. "Does that mean there won't be anything to
eat?"
Mary pointed inland and shook her head. "Aly, there's
enough edible food in there to feed our entire neighborhood for
over a year, and it's not all 'rabbit food,' either. You have a
lagoon full of seafood, too."
Doug turned to wade to shore and pointed. "There's a
coconut. Probably blew off one of those trees over there during
the storm."
She looked around. "Where?"
He pointed again.
"_Daddy!_"
"He's not kidding, Aly. That's what they look like. What
you see in the supermarket is just the seed. See? Look up that
tree there."
Alyson looked, then glanced around in frustration. She
froze with her eyes fixed on the dock. "There's something
sparkly," she said and started down the gray wooden planks.
"Careful!" her father warned. "The boards look stout
enough, but they might be weak."
"It's right here," she said taking another two steps forward
to stop in front of him and then bending at the waist to pick up
a small, shiny object from between her feet.
Not three feet away and at his eye level, between the flare
of her hips and below the buttocks that were assuming the size
and shape for the woman she was becoming, the sparsely-curled
pillows of her outer labia pushed toward him, as if pursing to
kiss him, and then parted slightly to show him the damp, darker
vestibule of her vagina. The absence of her maidenhead struck
him momentarily, though he was aware of her masturbatory habits
and, in truth, he examined more girls her age without than with
the thin shield of tissue near the back of the opening.
He was sorting the emotions conflicting within him, and also
thinking unkind thoughts at Mary for having stirred those
emotions and unwanted memories, when she straightened and the
unnerving sight was gone. When she held the rough object between
thumb and forefinger for him to see, he peered at it. "I think
it's a gold nugget," she said.
"That's a gold crown," he said.
Through the look of disbelief she said, "Doesn't look like
any coin I ever saw."
"Not a coin crown," he said with a grin. "A crown off a
tooth."
"It came out of somebody's _mouth? EEEEeeeewwww!_" She
jerked her hand away from the offensive golden object. Doug bent
forward and caught it before returning to shore.
"Whoever owns it might want it back. It cost a lot of
money," he explained. "C'mon. Let's check out the cabin." He
grabbed the straps of the two life vests in the same hand as the
crown and led the way.
The two-room cabin had been vacant for years. The windows
had no glass--had never had any from what they could tell--but
had wooden shutters on rusty hinges. The door hung by the bottom
hinge, and that snapped when Doug tried to open the door wider.
Sand, dirt, and bird and small animal droppings littered the
interior.
The front had been arranged into a living room on the left
and a kitchen with an office behind it to the right. A ratty
green couch sat along the front of the left wall. A small stone
fireplace was in the wall just beyond the couch. At the back a
wood rocking chair with rattan back and seat sat in a corner past
a bookshelf. A stuffed chair in a gold brocade sat mildewed and
full of holes before the fireplace. A small, hairy face blinked
red eyes from one of the holes near the floor and jerked back
with a squeak.
Another bookshelf sat beside a filing cabinet, a metal desk,
and a wooden office chair on casters in the right rear office. A
few picture frames, one with the glass broken, sat on the desk
and on a wall shelf.
A painting of a battleship hung over the mantel of the
fireplace. Something about the style told Doug the artist was an
oriental. In the bottom right corner he could just make out a
name in apparent Vietnamese. The ship in the painting was the
_New Jersey_. Small battleships, aircraft carriers, and
propeller planes in a variety of scales sat on the mantel. Most
were cast metal, but some were stamped metal, wood, or plastic.
Two aluminum frame chairs with dark green nylon webbing
sat at a wooden kitchen table three feet square. Two others were
folded and leaning against the wall next to the door. Wooden
cabinets formed a small kitchen around the table on two sides.
An enameled metal sink was set into one countertop with two
covered water buckets beside it, the handle of a dipper
protruding from behind them. The cabinets held china, plastic,
and metal plates, bowls, cups, tumblers, pots, pans, and other
cooking and dining impedimenta in a variety of shapes, styles,
and colors. It seemed no two pieces matched. The same could be
said of the knives, forks, and spoons, with the exception of a
set of stainless steel kitchen knives with fine teak handles
inlaid with an elaborate oriental pattern in gold. Matching
steel and ceramic sharpeners finished the set, which was clearly
worth more than everything else in the cabin.
The stove was a small, wood-fired, cast-iron model. It had
been years since Mary had cooked on one of those. There would be
complaints to the chef for a while. Lighting it would be no
problem. Both adults knew how to use flint and steel, and Doug
had been good with a fire bow when he was a teenager.
A search of the drawers revealed one with a few hand tools,
a can with an assortment of screws, and another with galvanized
nails of varied sizes. Another had over a dozen long, tapered,
white objects. "A woman must have lived here," Doug said as he
reached into the drawer to put down the gold crown and pick up
one of the things.
Mary frowned the question as she asked, "Why?"
He held up a candle. "Wax dildos."
Alyson blushed from the tops of her small breasts to the
edge of her bangs, as if she'd been caught using one for that
purpose, while Mary just shook her head and murmured, "You
asshole."
A half-burned candle was stuck in a bottle on an end table
by the stuffed chair. "They must have used those when the
electricity was off," Alyson mused.
"Yeah, sure," Doug said, and then followed her line of sight
to the peak of the roof. Two electric bulbs surrounded by hard
plastic shades dangled from wires that ran down to the far side
wall and passed through it. He crossed to the window and looked
out.
"There's a generator shed out there," he announced. "It's
empty."
The murmurs of disappointment were cut short when Mary
announced, "There's some canned goods in here. Don't know if I'd
trust them after all this time, but maybe some are still edible."
"Good!" Alyson said. "I'm hungry."
"Then you can help clean up the kitchen. You can wash the
dishes."
The square face screwed into a frown. "With what?"
Mary arced a hand upward and pointed over her shoulder.
"There's a whole ocean out there, and sand you can use to scrub
with. But there must be some fresh water here somewhere."
"There's a stream just beyond the generator shed," Doug
said. It's probably the water source."
"Good!" Alyson jumped up and down, clapping her hands. She
hadn't been thrilled about drinking from puddles of rainwater.
Doug watched the tanned tennis-ball-sized cones with their darker
tips as she bounced. They moved with her body, as if she were
all one hard plastic shell, but he knew of their soft firmness
and how they yielded to pressure....
_What the hell am I thinking? Get a goddamned grip on your
thoughts before it's too late, you asshole! You know where this
would go: "Sorry, Mr. Smith, I thought you know that a pelvic
exam was a routine part of a physical after Tiffany reached
puberty, and I swear that I did use a rubber glove. Tiffany must
not have seen me put it on or remove it. Well, I can certainly
understand if you want to find another pediatrician, even though
it was just a misunderstanding. Best of luck to you." And you'd
be losing patients left and right, and perhaps face an inquiry
from the Licensing Board._ He checked the smaller bedroom. A
wardrobe, nightstand, bureau, double bed, wooden chair, and a
folded cot were all that was in the room. The mattress and
linens were ruined. The clothes in the wardrobe and bureau were
mildewed and generally useless except for the pure synthetics,
which amounted to some nylon wet-weather gear and some nylon
socks. Photographs were displayed in frames with glass so grimy
that he could tell only that they were of men, children, an
apparent family group portrait, and in a tarnished silver frame,
one woman. He did not brush the dirt away for fear of scratching
the glass.
He emerged from the bedroom to see Mary clearing away the
countertop and Alyson idly scratching a spot on her left hip
while reading a large book atop the desk.
Alyson looked up as he approached. "His name was Peter
Butler Welch. This is sort of like a diary."
He moved to her left side and brought his right arm up to
give her shoulders a gentle squeeze as he looked at the first
page. It showed Welch's name and a starting date as well as the
coordinates for the island. The handwriting was masculine but
neat and precise, the antithesis of his own. "It's a journal,
sort of like a ship's log. He was a sailor. I found some of his
uniform things in there." He had her turn to the last entry. It
had been made a week short of eight years earlier. Welch was
leaving that morning to take the generator in for repairs and
expected to return within a week.
"He lived here for four years. I wonder what happened to
him," she said in a faint voice.
Doug squeezed her shoulders again. "We'll try to find out
when we get back home. Meanwhile, I'll go check around outside."
"Daddy?" She turned her face up to his and her lower lip
trembled for a moment. "When's Search and Rescue coming?"
************************************************************
Three
Solitaire
Shortly after high tide Doug paused and floated in place a
quarter-mile out from shore, held up by the buoyancy of the salt
water and the two life vests. He was certain that he was in the
area where the boat had gone down. He dipped his face in the
crystalline water and looked around. His diving mask would have
helped, but he could see to the sand and coral of the bottom for
some distance. He'd been searching for almost an hour now and
decided that the boat had been farther out than he thought. It
had been fighting against a strong wind as he drove it toward the
island. Perhaps it hadn't made as much speed as he'd thought.
He was beginning to tire and knew better than to push ahead until
he had rested.
The sun and warm water felt good to his arms and shoulders,
slowly baking strength back into them. He'd used a shovel he'd
found in the generator shed to carve out a large "SOS" in the
sand near the cabin and had filled it with branches and foliage
and non-repairable junk from the cabin to give it contrast from
the off-white sand.
He'd also found a large wooden spool containing almost a
thousand feet of yellow, braided, quarter-inch nylon rope in the
shed and another spool of red. He carried a hundred feet of the
yellow coiled around the second life vest It was more than he
thought he'd need to anchor the vest as a marker buoy for the
boat's location, so he wore one of the razor-sharp kitchen knives
tied to his arm. It rested in a sheath he'd made from some heavy
canvas sewn together with needle and thread from a tarp repair
kit and was tied in place with some nylon twine around the
handle.
He turned to look shoreward. Alyson, a sun-browned spot
against the background vegetation, was standing at the end of the
dock and looking toward him. He waved to indicate all was well.
She waved and sat down. Doug had salvage duty, Mary had
shack-cleaning duty, and Alyson had been volunteered to catch
lunch. The shed had contained two tackle boxes with monofilament
line, but no poles or reels. Thanks to the storm, branches for
fishing poles were in abundance and needed only some trimming
with the machete by the back door.
Alyson was concerned about the time that they might be
stranded until Search and Rescue found them, but she was showing
a brave face. No, that wasn't fair. She was coping with the
situation, probably because neither he nor Mary had shown any
fear. Concern, yes; but not fear. Plus he had told her to think
of the reaction of the rest of her schoolmates when she wrote her
essay on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Her first reaction
had been the standard Frustrated Daughter Dealing with Clueless
Parents look, but that quickly changed when she realized just
what those reactions would be. And it implied that she would be
home by the time school started. Doug hoped that he was right
about the timing.
He turned to float face down, letting the sun warm his lower
back, too. His left butt cheek hurt from the splinter it had
found on the privy seat. He also had a slight, nagging ache just
above his hips. He wasn't sure if it was from the shoveling or
from sleeping on the floor. The adults had given Alyson the
single cot, putting her at a distance from the "crawly things"
that might traverse the floor, and a life vest for a pillow. He
and Mary had curled up spoon-fashion on the bedroom floor
together, using the other life vest as a shared pillow, with torn
mosquito netting crudely draped over all of them, held up by a
piece of the rope.
_Mary_.
One of her odd quirks was that the more physical labor she
exerted, the hornier she became, even when she was too exhausted
to do more than lie there and let him do all the work.
Unfortunately, he'd worked just as hard all day and, while the
concept of a quickie with Mary had certainly had its appeal, his
body and mind were too numb to do more than appreciate the fact
that she was dragging his flaccid member through her wet trench
and massaging her clit with it before he passed out from
exhaustion.
He'd been more in the mood just before he departed for this
swim. His entry into the cabin was greeted by the sight of Mary
on her hands and knees, digging around in one of the bottom
cabinets and giving him a very exciting "brown eye wink," as
Carson Peck called it.
Carson was into anal sex. Mary didn't care much for it,
though she'd let Doug use the back door on special occasions.
Doug usually had to satisfy his occasional urge for it with
Melinda or one of the other wives in the group. Melinda loved
being speared from below while she was giving one of her famous
blow jobs, and she didn't much care which hole the guy used.
_So with all the variety available in the club, why did Mare
have to try turning me on to Alyson?_ He didn't want to think
about that right now and forced his thoughts back to Melinda's
ass.
A pleasant feeling radiating from his loins was Doug's first
clue that he was unconsciously stroking his erection while he
floated. Well, it was his own fault if he was still horny. If
he hadn't thrown that rubber snake from the shed in front of
Mare--_What the hell was a guy alone on an island hundreds of
miles from anywhere doing with a rubber snake anyway?_--she might
have let him use her asshole to reduce his sexual tension.
Instead she had called him an asshole and told him to go drown
himself.
He slowly increased the speed as he remembered how good it
was to do Melinda in the ass, though not as good as getting head
from her. It was also fun putting Melinda as the filler in a
three-man-sandwich. The last time he'd done that, he'd been the
one up her ass.
Mary had been the sandwich filler twice when they were in
their late teens. He'd participated the first time and had used
her pucker door. She was deep-throating Harry Baltz--what kind
of cruel parents would saddle a son with a name like that?--while
riding Tony Kim's pole for all she was worth. Her butt cheeks
would clench together as she slammed down around him and spread
wide as she lifted for another down stroke, inviting him with
that brown eye wink to join in on the fun. He could never forget
how enticing her ass looked if he lived to be a thousand.
_It had looked just like Alyson's._
It was the most violent cum of his life. His face slammed
into the water and he involuntarily inhaled. Despite his choking
and spluttering his orgasm did not abate while his fist continued
to pound his spewing staff. His hips thrust as if he were
fucking the ocean and could not stop their movement. Red sparks
ricocheted across the backs of his squeezed eyelids.
Slowly it ended. Sanity returned, and he began to exert his
own will to control his body. The coughing stopped. He felt his
erection in his fist, still as firm as his body was weak. He
just wanted to sleep for a month to recover, but Boner Boy was
asking for another round. He released the throbbing shaft and
let his face sag into the water.
Long, white strings were floating seaward in the gentle
current, breaking up into shorter filaments as they went. He
looked toward the base of his body and asked the head still
pointed toward his face, _Why aren't you dead after that, you
horny sonofabitch?_
He shifted to float upright and threw his head back to gulp
in air. After a few minutes rest he slowly moved toward the
mouth of the cove to begin another sweep. Less than a hundred
yards later he saw it, sitting at an angle toward its starboard
side behind a small rise in the sea floor thirty, perhaps forty
feet down. The hole in the side was a dark gash clearly visible
from the surface. Debris was scattered about it. The tree trunk
had floated away. _I wonder if the rental fee stops when the
boat sinks. If so, how do I prove when it happened?_
He turned toward the dock and floated upright in the water.
He gave a long, sharp whistle and watched Alyson scramble to her
feet. He held the spare vest at arm's length and swept it from
side to side overhead: once, twice, three times, stopping with
it overhead and then lowering it straight down. She waved and
scrambled to the cabin to tell her mother that he'd given her the
signal that the boat was found and reachable. He was going to
dive to it.
He began breathing deeply, preparing the rope to coil out as
he descended. He slipped out of his vest and clipped it to the
one attached to the rope, the one that would be the marker buoy
to locate the wreck on the subsequent salvage dives. He gulped
air for another minute, then inhaled and held it, flipped
upside-down, and descended. He tied the rope to the wheelhouse
railing with a quick clove hitch, then fumbled trying to remove
the knife from its arm sheath. Taking no chances, he released
the rope and shot to the surface.
He again gulped air while untying the stubborn knot in the
cord holding the knife in its sheath. When he was ready he
descended again, cut the free end of the rope, and swam for the
starboard locker at the stern that held the diving gear. They
had one full tank and one partially full one remaining. It
should be sufficient for them to salvage the boat's contents.
The tanks and other contents of the locker were jumbled and
jammed in place. He freed a mouthpiece and opened the valve on
the regulator. It was one of the empties. He released it and
freed another mouthpiece. He turned the valve and sucked down
air. He pulled out Mary's diving mask. The lens was shattered,
and he released it, too. There was Alyson's yellow, twin-lensed
mask. He grabbed it and then found his own beneath that, under
one of her blue swim fins. A blenny swam out of the jumble,
seemed to glare at him, and swam off with an indignant flip of
its tail. How had it gotten into the locker? He put the mask on
and cleared it. Much better.
He was suddenly aware of just how beautiful the floor of the
lagoon was and took a moment to drink in his surroundings.
Brightly colored fish, angels and butterflies and damsels,
fluttered about, generally ignoring him. A low, narrow coral
reef ran for maybe a hundred feet along a ridge to the northeast.
An impossible-to-describe pallette of living coral polyps, brain
corals, anemones, nudibranches, shrimp, crabs, and fish made it
look as if a paint truck had crashed. A moray eel lunged from an
opening beneath a brain coral and impaled its lunch with needle
teeth, a reminder that danger lurked with the beauty here. Doug
turned his attention to freeing the contents of the locker.
Five minutes later he was wearing his goggles, fins, and the
partially-full tank. The other fins and goggles and the snorkels
were tied together and placed in a sturdy rope-handled pail. He
tried to descend to the cabins to get his medical kit, but the
short hallway was a jumble of broken planks and debris. He
didn't want to become trapped. Reluctantly he backed out and
checked the locker with the inflatable raft. It was locked! Who
the hell had locked it? And where was the key? He checked the
other lockers and the wheelhouse for items to take on this trip.
Two spear guns with six spears. Two of the other six life vests
floating at the top of a port-side locker. They could be used to
help lift the pail. A waterproof flashlight that still worked.
The compass. The signal mirror. Another flashlight, which he
left for the salvage operation. A few other minor miscellaneous
items that fit in the pail.
And all the time that wasn't spent thinking about what he
was doing was spent thinking about his orgasm and the feelings
Mary had awakened toward his own daughter. He was a
pediatrician, by damn, and he wasn't about to resume thinking
about his daughter, or his patients, as sexual objects. _What
the hell was Mare thinking? Or was she trying to say something?
Maybe hinting, perhaps as part of a fishing expedition?_
He was breathing too fast. _Calm down!_ The partially-full
aqualung would be needed to finish the salvage, but if it
wouldn't be enough if he ran this one out of air prematurely. He
clipped the life vests to the pail, cut a piece of rope for
later, and pulled the vests out of the locker. He rose with the
pail. At the surface he closed the regulator valve, removed the
tank, and tied it to a short rope section looped around the
marker buoy rope. He watched as the tank, guided by the marker
rope, descended to the sunken boat, then lifted the mask to his
forehead and peered toward shore.
The fins made it easy to rise higher out of the water. He
whistled and waved. He watched Alyson stand, wave, and then turn
to shout something at the cabin. She was sitting down again as
he stopped kicking and sank to float alongside the pail and the
life vests. He unclipped the one vest from the marker and
slipped it on. He took the compass from the pail and used it to
get a bearing to the shack and another to the northernmost of the
inland peaks. That would make it easier to get to within
sighting distance of the marker buoy. He attached a snorkel to
the mask strap and pulled the mask and snorkel in place. He
headed toward the shore at a leisurely pace, observing the life
happening in the watery world around him and telling himself that
there would be no more notice of his daughter's blooming
sexuality.
*****
Mary released some of her nervous tension when Alyson
shouted that Doug was on his way back. He looked athletic, sure,
and he was stronger than he looked. His endurance--well, just
ask any of the women he'd partied with about his endurance. But
accidents can happen, and at thirty feet down accidents easily
become fatal. The nervous tension slowly gave way to sexual
tension. She had to be the weirdest woman she knew. Everything
made her horny, even being scared by that damned rubber snake.
She thought of the candles in the drawer. They'd been useful a
couple of days earlier. No, she'd just wait for Doug.
She dipped a drink of water from one of the covered pails
and looked around. The cabin had been filthy, and a great deal
of work remained to bring it up to acceptable standards, but she
could see visible signs of progress. Most of the grime was gone
from the kitchen now. She looked down between her breasts at her
body and legs. No, the grime wasn't gone. It had just been
relocated. She needed to be dipped in the cove herself. Not
that dirt bothered her. She'd been raised around a few people
who thought cleanliness and hygiene were signs of moral weakness.
She scratched a bite on her leg. The mosquito netting had a
huge rip in it that made it virtually useless until she could
repair it. Or she could have Alyson do it. Alyson wouldn't
complain about the chore if it kept the bugs from biting her at
night. Her daughter truly was a city girl, complaining about
every little inconvenience and deathly afraid of the slightest
pain. _Good thing Doug found the splinter in the outhouse seat
rather than Alyson the pain-o-phobic._
_That's not fair_. She'd watched Alyson sobbing gently to
herself once or twice, but her daughter really was doing her best
to put on a brave face for her parents. She really was trying to
cope with their situation and really was trying to do it on her
own, without bothering her parents who obviously had their hands
full. It wasn't Alyson's fault that she hadn't been raised with
the same degree of independence that her mother had been.
Sure, she'd whimpered and complained when she'd been
assigned Go Catch Lunch detail, but it had been habit and her
heart hadn't been in it. She'd known it was important and did
her share. Maybe this was a good learning experience for the
girl.
She stepped to the door and leaned against the frame for a
moment, watching Alyson sitting quietly at the end of the dock
with her fishing pole tucked under her left arm. No music player
and headphones. No gaggle of friends to talk to. No television
for diversion. Just alone with nature and herself.
_Uh oh_.
Mary actually felt herself blush as she turned away. She'd
finally realized what that small, steady movement of Alyson's
right elbow had meant. Wasn't it strange that she could gangbang
a half dozen guys and their wives in a group or perform with her
husband for her daughter's voyeuristic curiosity, yet she was
embarrassed watching her daughter masturbate?
No. It wasn't strange. Masturbation was a private thing
for Alyson, and even in communal families like theirs, where
almost everything went on, one learned to respect the privacy of
others. Her embarrassment was from her intrusion on that
privacy, not from Alyson's actions.
She suspected Alyson would never know what it would be like
to beat four boys in a peeing contest when she was sixteen, let
alone defeat two other girls in a screwing contest when she was
fifteen. She couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a
bad one. City living--"civilized living" Doug called it--sure
had screwed up her mind.
Mary dipped another drink of water and sat down to decide
what she wanted to tackle next. Thirty seconds later she had her
answer as she finger-drubbed her aching clitoris with a staccato
rhythm. She dipped it into her flooded tunnel, which couldn't
have been any wetter if every man in the club had just cum in
her, and dragged more lubrication to make her task easier. She
wished Doug had been able to drill her the night before, but she
couldn't blame him for being too tired. She had been too tired
to just roll him on his back and ride him. Of course, he might
not have let her with Alyson in the same room. He'd certainly
become eccentric about the girl, the oddest he'd acted since
those inexplicable three months a couple of years earlier. And
sending him diving without a quickie first because of that rubber
snake had punished her more than it had Doug.
She gave a mental shrug and dragged up favorite memories of
some of their swing parties. Two minutes later her legs
stiffened and rose from the floor as her back arched and her head
tilted back. Her body convulsed, and again, and a third time,
at the end of which she began shaking as if she'd grabbed a high
voltage wire. In another moment she went limp and gasped for
air. That might hold her until Doug returned. If not, she'd
deal herself another game of sexual solitaire.
*****
The fish had been hooked just as she heard Daddy's whistle
saying he was okay and returning. Alyson shouted the news to Mom
before lifting the fish to the dock. She lifted the stringer
from the water and then removed the hook from the struggling
fish's mouth. The stringer already had two fish on it. Its third
snap wasn't just rusty, it was corroded and looked as if it might
snap if the fish put much strain on it. She opened the fourth
snap and ran it in a gill slit and out the fish's mouth, then
dropped the free end with its three fish back into the water.
She'd discovered that if she lay down on the dock, she could
reach the water to get the fish slime off her hands and did so
again. Her hands reached just into the water this time. The
tide was going out.
She sat up again and brushed herself clean. The rough wood
of the dock made her nipples itch if she didn't brush away the
wood flakes and dried salt. She dangled her feet in the air
above the water off the end of the dock and picked up the pole.
She sure was glad that Daddy had found those plastic worms. She
could thread real worms onto a hook if she had to. She'd done it
lots of times. But they were squirmy and icky and smelled bad.
And they made her hands smell bad, too.
She brought the pole around and lowered the bait into the
water, anchored the pole to her side with her left arm, and began
slowly moving the bait with her left hand. She had other uses
for her right hand.
She ran her fingertips gently over her sun-browned nipples
again and slid them down her sweating body to the heart-shaped
thicket of soft, brown curls and below. Well, there sure wasn't
anything _else_ to do out here, and it was an opportunity to be
alone and work off some accumulated irritation. Daddy was
swimming back and couldn't watch her. Mom was scrubbing stuff in
the cabin, and if her mother did look out, Mom would see only her
back. If she were careful she could do herself without
attracting attention.
She slid her middle finger down the crease between her
folds, past the brown curls sprouting near the front to the bare
area around the opening up into her body. Something made her
recall Timmy Corel asking, "How come you got pussy hair in front
and none around your hole, but Rachael Lopez has got just the
opposite?"
That had led to a big fight over whether Timmy had told
Rachael, or anybody else, what they had been doing. Or worse,
whether Timmy had told people lies that they had been "doing it,"
the way Mom had told her some boys would lie to each other,
trying to impress each other.
The memory reminded her of the fight her parents had had the
night of the storm. She didn't want to think about that,
especially since she might have been responsible somehow. Maybe
they had seen her and were arguing over whether--or how--to
punish her. She hadn't thought of that, but she didn't want to
think of it now, either. She just wanted the release while she
had an opportunity to have it. She forced her mind away from the
problem while she slid her fingertip to wiggle on the spot above
her button. A tiny sigh escaped as the pleasure hit.
But Mom was trying to get Daddy to do her last night, right
there on the floor beside her cot. Or it had seemed that way, as
best as she could tell. She couldn't very well sit up in the cot
and look, could she? But Daddy had been too tired. Or she
guessed he'd been too tired. Maybe it was because she was in the
room? Memories of their argument started creeping back in and
she forced them away.
Mom sure did enjoy sex. If it felt as good as fingers, Aly
knew she would, too, once she'd gotten past the agony of the
first time. But she just couldn't bring herself to endure that
fierce pain, no matter how good it might be afterward. She
wondered how long the suffering lasted, days or hours or perhaps
just minutes. A second would be too long for her, she knew, and
that's why she could never go through with it.
Why was she wasting time thinking about this again? She
might not have another chance for another few days, except in
that smelly old outhouse. She shifted her thoughts back to what
it would feel like if she had already endured the terrible pain
and were able to have sex now. She felt the moisture inside her
cunny increase and knew she was well-lubricated now, ready to
receive a real, live, honest-to-God boner.
She thought of Timmy Corel and his erection. She wondered
once more if it felt like her father's pole, hard but with a
soft, warm outer covering. Timmy's was about the size of her
middle two fingers together. She moistened them individually at
the mouth of her cunny, then held them together and eased the
pair into herself in a series of small pushes until the palm of
her hand pressed against the swollen folds. She wet the edge of
her thumb in her juices and slid it between the hard pebble of
her clitty and one of the folds so that it would rub when she
began stroking her fingers into and out of herself.
Pleasure washed through her in waves, and in no time she was
grunting with the rhythm of the thrusts. The upper end of her
tunnel ballooned then, so that it no longer squeezed her
fingertips, while the first inch or two tightened its grip on the
intruders.
As her body tensed and her toes curled she began thrusting
harder and faster. She was vaguely aware that her elbow was
waggling about wildly, but she was almost there and wanted the
sweet release more than anything else. She felt the roughness of
the boards of the pier against her calves as her legs tried to
draw up under her. Any other time that would have irritated her,
but now she ignored it. And it happened.
As her legs tried to straighten against the pressure holding
them to the pier, her body tried to snap back out of its forward
curl. It was like trying to straighten out inside a hollow metal
ball and just as futile. Her body compressed and then tried to
straighten again. And a third time. The fourth time it happened
the ball shattered, and her legs shot out and her spine arched in
the opposite direction. A massive shudder caused her feet with
their clenched toes to bounce, and again, and again as her body
went rigid, trembled, and then went as limp as washed-up seaweed.
She wiggled the fingers deep inside her cunny and vibrated
her thumb against her hard little clitty, trying to squeeze every
last bit of pleasure and relief from the moment. Her lungs
resumed working, and she gulped air between bursts of giggles.
She felt the smile on her face bulging her round cheeks further
outward. Two more tremors rippled through, and then she was
still except for her heaving chest, her slowly thrusting fingers,
and her barely wiggling thumb. The purring sound in her ears
turned out to be her humming when she exhaled. It was the best
release she'd had since she masturbated with Daddy's cum.
And sex, fucking, was supposed to be even better than that.
Why, then, did it have to be so excruciating the first time? A
gentle rain began, and she lay on the rough boards thinking about
the unfairness of life.
************************************************************
Four
Secrets
The first week passed in an organized chaos of digging,
diving, and dirt displacement. By its end the cabin had been
made generally livable. Doug had patched the leaks in the clay
tile roof, ending the drips that accompanied the daily afternoon
showers. All had cleaned the grime from its interior. The
shutters were functional, thanks to new nylon rope hinges, and
could be closed in case of another storm. The mosquito netting
had been repaired and draped over the bed. Doug had used the
nylon rope to weave a mattress support over the bed frame. The
old mattresses were relegated to the pile of flammables that
would be the signal fire. He had made a new mattress from the
small ones in the sunken boat. Since the repaired netting wasn't
large enough to cover both the bed and the cot, they all slept in
the bed. Doug insisted that Mary sleep in the middle.
He had dug a new privy pit and moved the outhouse over it.
He also fastened a plastic toilet seat from the boat into place
to preclude the discomfort of finding another protruding
splinter. Alyson, of course, was unhappy that the only toilet
paper found had been on the spindle and had dissolved into a
soggy mess. Mary's joke about having no Sears and Roebuck
catalog went completely over her head, resulting in the standard
Weirdo Parents Contemplating Their Ages while Shaking Their Heads
at the Uncomprehending Daughter situation.
The outhouse was a source of philosophical diversion for
Doug. Welch had put no door in the opening between the bedroom
and the rest of the cabin, indicating not only that he lived
alone but also that he didn't have visitors. Yet he'd put a door
on the outhouse. What did that say about the mind of Man?
Doug had made a raft from limbs and small tree trunks to aid
in the salvage operation. The second day of diving he'd used the
raft to carry a crowbar from the generator shed out to the wreck
and had pried open the emergency locker. He had two inflatable
life rafts and the wooden raft to complete the salvage operation.
His timing was excellent: the second lung ran out of air as he
was bringing up the final load.
He had salvaged the remaining canned food from the wreck.
Mary had already found bananas, coconuts, papayas, breadfruit,
yams, and taro root. That plus what they caught from the sea
would easily sustain them for two or three months. By then Mary
would have identified more edible plants, if they were still
stranded. He didn't want to think about that possibility, but he
was a pragmatist.
All had deck shoes to wear now, making exploring of the
forest easier. All salvaged clothing had been washed free of the
saltwater in the stream, dried, and packed away in three plastic
or nylon suitcases for later use. Doug had found his medical bag
and one first aid kit. The other kit had broken loose and
floated away. Mary commented that if Alyson had to be stranded
on a tropical island, she could do worse than be stranded with a
botanist and a pediatrician. Doug laughed for Alyson's sake, but
privately he worried that he wouldn't have adequate medications
for any of them when the need arose.
Early in the morning of the fifth day a small plane had
passed a few miles north of the island. That was when Doug
discovered that using a signal mirror wasn't as easy as it
seemed. He practiced with it for several hours until it became
as easy as tying his shoes. Nobody had thought of the signal
fire, the pile of flammables inside a wooden stockade and covered
by a nylon tarp, until over an hour after the plane had passed.
The plane had not been equipped with pontoons, indicating among
other things that it did not belong to Search and Rescue.
A squall arose on the ninth night. Doug guessed that it was
after midnight when the thunder awakened him. Alyson was
terrified. Doug couldn't blame her. During the last storm she'd
avoided death by mere seconds, only to be nearly drowned moments
later. She wanted to move between them where she would be safe.
Mary looked at him as if she thought he would protest, but he
merely nodded, then got up to close the shutters to keep out the
blowing rain.
When he returned to bed, Mary was spooned around Alyson, who
was shivering. "Honey, would you get a sheet for us?" Mary
asked. They hadn't needed any cover until now, but the breeze
drifting through the cabin had a chill to it. He grabbed a sheet
from the wardrobe, ducked under the mosquito netting, and spread
it over the bed before slipping under it.
Alyson was crying softly. A second "G'night, Pixie" helped
calm her, and she soon drifted off to sleep as the storm waned.
He reached over her to wrap his arm behind Mary for a hug,
pulling himself into a temporary full-frontal squeeze with
Alyson. Mary whispered, "I love you."
"I love you, too, Mare." He relaxed his hug and began
sliding back.
Mary's arm clamped down on his forearm, halting him after
only a few inches of withdrawal, leaving Alyson room enough to
breathe, but little more. "I need your touch, too," she
whispered.
He was a long time returning to sleep, and not because of
the storm outside.
A full bladder half-awoke him shortly after dawn, as usual.
It had caused an erection, as usual. As he slowly stretched his
way to consciousness and tried to work the kinks out of his
muscles without awakening the others, he felt his boner slip into
the indentation between the cheeks of Mary's ass. He slowly
humped her crack twice and decided to see if he could slide it
into her while she slept.
That was one of the great things about Mary. Even sound
asleep it took only a little stimulation to get her wet enough
for a man to enter her. Frequently she awoke in time to cum and
then drifted back to sleep with a satisfied purr, sometimes
before his own orgasm. It was a delightful mix of intercourse
and masturbation that he found strangely appealing.
He humped upward one more time until his balls were against
her lower cheeks and reached for her treasure box. There was a
sheet in the way. That was curious because they rarely ever....
His eyes slammed open. In the dimness of the shuttered room
he remembered. Alyson had turned over in the night and was now
backed up to him. It was his thirteen-year-old daughter's ass he
was humping, not his wife's. He shoved himself backward and
landed on the floor. The impact stung but caused no physical
injury.
The noise awakened Mary and Alyson. Mary accepted his
explanation that he'd rolled out of bed. She got up to open the
shutters on her side of the bed. Alyson repeatedly asked if he
was okay and if she had pushed him out of bed. He had to quiet
her instead of stopping Mary. He tried to hide his erection, as
if his betrayal would be erased if nobody saw the physical
evidence.
Alyson had seen his morning piss-hards many times, and it
took a few moments before he realized she thought he was holding
it in pain rather than trying to hide it in embarrassment. It
was then that he noticed Mary standing there trying to control a
smirk. He felt the heat as his face flush deep crimson and saw
Mary lose her struggle with the smirk that grew into a grin.
Does she know?
"Go on," she said. "Go pee."
As he slipped out the back door he heard Alyson ask in a
quiet, worried voice, "Is he hurt?"
"Only his pride," Mary said in a normal voice before she
opened the other shutters.
_It's not my pride, it's my honor_, he thought. He worried
that concept all the way to the outhouse and halfway back, when
Alyson stepped out the back door to go relieve herself. She
hadn't been aware what had happened. He forced himself to act
natural. _It's hard to be natural when you're trying to appear
so_, he realized.
"I didn't get a chance to say good morning," she said,
standing on tiptoes, tilting her face up, and holding her arms
out.
"Good morning." He puckered his lips as he bent down. They
had no "G'morning, Pixie" routine, but occasionally, in odd
situations such as these, they did the four-second humming kiss.
"Now," he said as they broke apart. "The day's finally off to a
good start."
She frowned and rubbed his cheek with her hand. "Shaving
day," she announced.
Doug smiled at her no-nonsense command tone. "Just for
you," he said The number of disposable razors was limited. He
was trying to stretch the supply by shaving every third or fourth
day and reusing them, since he had no idea how long they'd be
stranded. He'd been beardless for so long that he found even the
idea of a beard uncomfortable now. "Want to explore today?" He
jerked his head toward the forest beyond the outhouse.
Her brown eyes brightened. "Yes! I'm tired of cleaning and
fishing." She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down for a
quick kiss. "Thank you."
He tousled her hair. "We all need a break."
He took two steps toward the cabin before she stopped him.
With her head down she spoke in a soft, hesitant voice. "I love
you, Daddy. I'm sorry I made you fall out of bed." Before he
could think of a response she turned toward the privy, her head
still down.
He moved quickly to the cabin and through the small bedroom.
His wife was cutting up the fruit for their breakfast. "Mary!
What did you tell her?" His tone was accusatory.
She looked up, down long enough to slice another banana into
four sections, and back to him. "I told her you'd awakened in an
amorous mood and forgotten who was lying next to you until it was
too late."
"_You didn't!_"
She put the banana pieces on the platter and turned to place
it on the table. "No, I didn't. I told her you weren't hurt
except for your pride." With the platter in place she looked
back at him, fingertips poised on her hips. "I thought you heard
that."
He pointed toward the rear, his hand showing a slight
tremor. "Alyson.... She just said.... You must have said
something else to her. What was it?"
Mary shook her head and looked as if she were trying not to
laugh. "Oh, Doug." She stepped around the table and squeezed
him tightly. "She's thirteen years old, Doug. She's not a baby
any more."
His body stiffened in her arms. "So what was it you said?"
he asked with a quiet voice cloaked in suspicion.
He felt a small chuckle ripple through her as she rubbed her
cheek against his shoulder. "That's my point. Nothing. She's
quite capable of thinking for herself. She's been blessed with
intelligence genes from both of us, and she knows how to use
them. You certainly gave her enough clues."
"Clues?" He gently took her shoulders in his hands and
pushed her upper body back until he could look her in the eye.
"What clues?"
She gave him the standard Patient Wife Dealing with Clueless
Husband look and shook her head. "Maybe she only got those genes
from me. I tell you what." Her right arm relaxed, and she
brought that hand around to grasp his flaccid love tool and
stroke it. "You get this thing up again because I need it.
Right now, right here."
"_What_ clues?"
*****
Alyson sat with her nose wrinkled. Even with the gaps
between the rough, gray boards providing ventilation, the
outhouse smelled worse than the bathroom at the _Cleft of Venus_
bookstore. Alyson knew how that one smelled because Annette
Grolsch was doing one of the attendants there, and he'd let them
in the back door to look around before it opened one morning. The
bathroom had been so filthy she'd been afraid to sit on the
toilet seat. Instead she'd hovered above it to pee. But at least
it had toilet paper and not plant leaves.
She was glad Daddy had picked fresh leaves from the bushes
behind the drafty little building. She could just imagine using
half-dried leaves and them crumbling and her getting poop on her
fingers. _Yuk!_
She wiped the best she could and then left for a quick
cleansing dip in the lagoon. As she stepped out the door her
mind drifted back to her father. She still wasn't over the hurt
of being relegated to the far side of the bed. They used to play
a game to see which of them would sleep in the middle until she
got her own room. Occasionally there were times, such as camping
trips, when they'd all sleep together in one tent and they'd play
odd/even, or rock/scissors/paper, or some other quick game to see
who got the middle.
As she passed by the kitchen window she heard her mother
exhaling in short, explosive bursts, a sound that could mean only
one thing. She glanced inside. Mom was facing the bedroom and
leaning forward with her head down, resting her hands on top of
the table. Daddy was standing behind Mom, his head tilted back,
grasping her by the hips and slamming his long, rigid pole up
into her, over and over in almost a blur. Alyson got an
occasional momentary glimpse of the glistening tanned shaft.
Mom's head snapped back, her eyes squeezed shut and face
pulled together in a grimace as a sound tried to fight its way
out of her throat. When it finally rushed out, Mom's eyes popped
open. They seemed to move sideways toward her, but then her head
dropped again and they vanished behind a curtain of fallen hair.
Maybe Mom had seen her? She started for the water again and
discovered that she had to remove her fingers from her crotch to
walk. She didn't remember reaching for her clitty, wasn't even
aware that she was rubbing it with a fingertip, but did realize
that she'd been enjoying the feelings spreading out from it.
Maybe _that_ was it! Maybe Daddy wanted Mom in the middle
of the bed so they could do it while she was asleep. They never
had any time alone together. Maybe if she'd disappear for a
while every day, give them time to do it in privacy, then she
could sleep in the middle once in a while. Or Daddy could. She
always felt comfortable and safe when he was next to her,
protecting her from ghosts and animals in the dark, even if they
were just lying back-to-back. Just his touch made her feel safe
and loved. She missed that feeling. She missed it even more
than she missed all of her things back home put together.
She waded into the blue water south of the dock until she
was thigh deep and then lowered herself into the water. She
washed her butt and then scooped sand to scrub her hands and
fingers clean. She washed her body, arms, and legs, spending a
few extra seconds on her clitty, then dipped her head under and
scrubbed her hair. After she was finished, she would wade to
where the stream flowed into the lagoon and rinse the salt water
out of her hair.
She'd give almost anything for some of her coconut oil-based
bath soap and shampoo. But she'd give up that if she could just
sleep next to Daddy more often. It hurt her terribly to think
that she might have been the cause of the argument on the boat,
and now he didn't want to be next to her because of that. Maybe
he'd seen her watching and had said something to Mom, and they'd
argued over how to punish her. Or maybe Mom had seen her
watching and that had started the argument.
It was very possible that Mom had seen her this time, too.
A chill swept over her and churned her stomach as the realized
that she might have just started another fight. What if they
were going to yell at each other again, and it was all her fault?
She didn't hear any yelling in the house, but maybe they'd
already started arguing and just hadn't gotten loud yet. Hot
tears streamed down her cheeks and cold worms wriggled in her
stomach. She wanted to throw up.
Were they going to punish her now? Would they make her
sleep on the cot, where she couldn't snuggle with either of them
and feel safe on this awful island? The mosquito netting didn't
cover the cot, too. Would she have to lie there, alone except
for the bugs crawling over her and biting her all night long?
Did Daddy fall out of bed this morning because he'd found her
next to himself and was so disgusted with her that he couldn't
wait to get away from her?
Did he....
"Aly?"
She jerked and spun her head around. She hadn't heard Mom
wading toward her, but there she was just a couple of yards away,
the inside tops of her legs glistening with slime that had to be
Daddy's stuff, and her face twisted in concern. Or was it maybe
anger? Alyson turned her head back toward the opening in the
atoll and tried to wash the tears from her face.
Mom knelt to her left and wrapped a warm, loving arm around
her shoulders. She guessed Mom wasn't the one who wanted to
punish her. Maybe Daddy would make her sleep on the cot in the
main room now, not even in the bedroom. She exploded in tears,
turned, and buried her face in her mother's neck, her body
shaking with her sobs.
Mom's arms wrapped around her, the upper hand lifting to
stroke her wet hair. "It's okay, Aly. They'll find us soon. We
won't be here much longer. Maybe just a few more days. We'll
manage that long. We could last a lot longer than it will take
them to find us. Okay? We'll be fine." It was the same quiet
comforting that Mom had used when Alyson was a scared child.
Only this time Mom didn't understand how the cold worms were
wriggling away. She had to get the guilt out of her system.
"It's... not... that," she said, gasping for breath between
each word. "I'm... I'm... so... sorry!" The grief exploded and
her whole body shook with her crying. It was a minute before she
could answer her puzzled mother's question.
"I'm sorry... I watched you... and made... made you... fight
and... and made Daddy... mad at me!"
She squeezed Mom's body tightly, as if she were afraid that,
now that it was out in the open, Mom might get up and leave her
alone out here in the water. But instead Mom squeezed her
tightly, too. "You didn't make us fight, honey. Do you mean the
other night on the boat? Before the storm?"
Alyson nodded her head, unable to control her crying long
enough to answer.
She felt a gentle kiss on her shoulder. "Honey, you didn't
cause that fight, I did."
Alyson fought for control and sniffed. "Then... then
why's... Daddy... mad at me?"
"Aly, Daddy's not mad at you. What makes you think he is?"
"He doesn't let... anybody but... you... sleep... in the
middle." She had tried to keep her voice normal, but the last
had come out in a high-pitched squeal. Her body began shaking
with her crying again. She felt Mom's body begin to shake as she
joined her daughter in her tears.
Only...
Mom wasn't crying, she was laughing. She was trying to hold
it back and couldn't.
"I'm not laughing at you, Aly," Mom said in a giggle fit.
"Honest. I'm laughing at your father. But you do have it all
wrong."
She got her crying under control and looked up. Mom's eyes
were half-closed in laughter, but Alyson could see love and
caring and honesty deep within them. She couldn't get the words
out, but Mom understood.
"One of his arguments was that you were too grown up now and
wouldn't want to sleep next to him. He wouldn't listen to me."
The thought was enough to make her start crying again.
"Daddy... thought I... didn't love him... anymore?"
"No! Oh, no, honey. He was looking for an excuse, and that
was the best he could think of."
"I don't... understand."
"Do you know what really happened this morning?"
Alyson nodded. She dipped a hand in the salt water and used
it to wash away the salty tears. "He had a bo...--uh, an, uh,
erection. And he fell out of bed and hurt it, but he didn't want
me to know, so he tried to hide it. I guess he thought I'd worry
about him."
Mom used a gentle fingertip to push back a wet rope of hair
that had fallen down Alyson's forehead. "Remind me to trim your
bangs when we go back to the cabin." She dropped her hand and
smiled while Alyson nodded. "You're partly right. He did have a
boner and he did try to hide it, but not from you because he hurt
it. He was trying to hide it from me."
Alyson wasn't all that comfortable discussing sex with her
mother, but she wanted to know--_had_ to know--why Daddy was
acting so strange. "I don't understand," she admitted with a
shake of her head.
Mom smiled at her, as if telling her not to be nervous.
"Aly, when do you think he got that boner?"
Alyson's eyes shifted to the cabin, the dock, anywhere but
to Mom's eyes. "Well, he sometimes wakes up with one."
"Honey, men usually wake up with one, especially if they
need to go pee. It's the way they're made. So he woke up with a
boner. What do you think happened next?"
Alyson frowned at the center of the dock. "I guess he tried
to get up without waking us and fell out of bed and then hurt it.
But, you said he didn't hurt it."
"So if he didn't hurt it, why did he hide it? This time of
all times." Mom waited while Alyson thought about that, then
hinted, "What was different this morning from all the other
mornings?"
Alyson thought a little longer. Mom was always doing
something like this instead of just answering her questions.
After a minute she shrugged. "Other than me sleeping in the
middle, I can't think of anything."
Mom raised her eyebrows, cocked her head slightly, and
nodded toward Alyson. It meant, _That's the right answer. Now
what?_ Alyson thought a few moments longer. Her head snapped
toward her mother. "You mean he wasn't awake all the way and
thought I was you?"
Mom smiled. "He won't tell me, but I think that's what
happened. It embarrassed him, and he thought that by hiding his
boner I wouldn't guess what had happened. Of course, that's the
one thing he shouldn't have done if he didn't want me to know."
Alyson wondered if she were being accused of causing the
problem. The boner. "Mother, I didn't do anything, honest. I
was asleep...."
"Honey, you're not listening or thinking again. I said he
usually wakes up with one, he wasn't awake, and he thought I was
next to him. I didn't say you did anything, because you didn't
need to do anything. He did it while half asleep, and then he
woke up to find himself playing with one of your boobies or your
butt or your pussy."
Alyson blushed at the last word because Mom had never used
it with her before. "However," Mom continued, "since he was
trying to hide his boner it's most likely he was humping it
against your butt, though he might have been trying to fuck you
with it."
Alyson's face felt like it had suddenly sunburned, and she
couldn't look at her mother's eyes. At the same time she felt
her clitty throb with the demand for attention at the thought of
her father's big, beautiful boner sliding across her butt or
between her folds and up into her eager body. Except....
"Mom, he didn't! Well, maybe he rubbed it on my butt while
I was asleep. But he didn't put it in me. Honest!" The words
tumbled out in a rush. "There wasn't any pain at all."
Mom gave her the oddest look. "Pain?"
"You know. The first time," she murmured, lowering her
head and watching the water splashing between the small cones of
her breasts as her face heated again.
Mom moved from kneeling to a seated position beside Alyson,
but the odd look remained. "Honey, that won't happen because
you're not a virgin any more."
"Yes I am! Honest! I've never done it with anyone before,
I promise!"
"Yes, but you've...." Mom's eyes grew wide and her mouth
gaped like a fish's. "You haven't? You've never done it with
Timmy?"
Alyson shook her head. "No! I promise, Mother. Honest!"
"Well, I'll be dipped in shit." That had been one of
Grandpa Gorshin's expressions. Alyson never heard Mom say it
except when she was really and truly surprised. "We thought you
had."
"No! I'm still a... virgin." She didn't mean to hesitate
on that last word. They had thought that she and Timmy had done
it? Did that mean they were disappointed now or that they had
been disappointed before? When Mom had told her that they didn't
care if she had sex as long as she didn't end up diseased,
pregnant, or over her head emotionally, had they been ordering
her to...to _do it_?
Mom smiled. "I don't know why I'm surprised. Your father
and I were slow starters, too. But, honey, even if you haven't
had sex with a boy, you busted your cherry--lost your
hymen?--some time ago. You probably lost it to one of your
homemade dildos."
Alyson was about to admit she knew what a "busted cherry"
was, but the last sentence astounded her. She felt her eyes go
wide and her mouth sag despite her efforts to prevent it. "You
know about those?" Now her face was so hot she expected to see
steam rising.
Mom wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her
again. It felt really warm and loving. "I wish I'd had that
toothpaste cylinder when I was your age. Of course, by then I
had your father for relief. And most of the other boys in the
commune."
Alyson squirmed with the discomfort of the sudden tack of
the conversation.
"I'll bet," Mom continued, "those candles in the cabin
aren't as good as that cylinder, unless you're using more than
one at a time."
_Those too?_ "How.... How did...."
"When you're a mother, you'll know everything, too." Mom
smiled. "Actually...." She paused for a second while her hand
moved under the water and then rose above it. She showed Alyson
a short, curly brown hair. "This is thick and coarse. It isn't
what I found on a candle day before yesterday."
Alyson wanted to duck under the water and bury herself like
a clam.
Mom hugged again. "It's okay, honey. Actually, while you
were fishing and Daddy was working on the signal fire, I was
getting one for the same reason."
"_Mommmm!_" She put on her best Shocked Daughter Dealing
with Disgusting Parents look. She couldn't _believe_ Mom was
telling her this!
Mom just laughed. "If it makes you that uncomfortable, I'll
change the subject. But I'll get you a vibrator after we get
back home. You'll like that whenever you don't have Timmy
around."
A thousand thoughts collided in her head. _A vibrator?_
Thinking about that must have been what caused her to lose
control of her tongue. "I _can't_ do Timmy. I'm afraid of the
pain." _Damn!_ She hoped that she had said the words too softly
for Mom to hear.
She hadn't.
That odd look was back on Mom's face. "Pain? Honey, you've
already lost your cherry. What pain are..." Her face turned
positively purple. "Has Timmy tried to hurt you? Has he?"
"No!" She didn't know how to get out of this one, so she
finally decided to tell all.
"Aly, the pain is from having your hymen ruptured, and some
girls barely notice it. Unless the boy tries to enter you when
you're dry, there's not any other pain."
"But Crystal and Harmony said...." She stopped and felt the
frown pull her thin eyebrows together.
Mom made a weird smile with half her mouth and nodded.
"Crystal and Harmony. Uh huh. But nobody else has mentioned it,
right?"
"Well, no. But Crystal and Harmony said that everyone else
would...." _Oh!_ She didn't know whether to feel angry or
embarrassed for being such a fool. She settled for being the
most embarrassed she'd ever been in her life. She could be mad
later when she saw the two witches. Her sudden tears flooded her
already wet cheeks. She tried to turn her head to hide her
crying.
Mom wrapped her arms around her and said in a soft, gentle
voice, "I wish I could tell your father about this because he
keeps insisting that boys play much rougher than girls. But I
won't. It'll just be our secret. Okay?"
Alyson's throat was so tight she was sure she sounded like a
mouse. "You won't tell anybody?"
Mom chuckled. "When I was twelve I was as flat as desert
pavement. Melinda Coldwater, Mrs. Peck, was already growing
tits. Hers were twice the size yours are now. God, how I wanted
to have boobs too. So Melinda told me the secret of how she made
hers grow. 'Lollipop,' she said, 'it's very simple. You just
catch a female mouse, milk it until you have half a teaspoonful,
and drink it. Works every time.' I think I threw up before it
ever reached my stomach."
Alyson couldn't help laughing, but she felt terrible for
doing so. Fortunately Mom joined her. Aly was curious. "But
you're still friends?"
"And you'll still be friends with Crystal and Harmony. You
know, not long after that happened I finally realized that
'Lollipop' was another name for 'Sucker.' I sure was that day.
But Melinda has never told anyone else, so only the three of us
know. If I ever tell your secret, then you can tell mine.
Okay?"
Alyson smiled and nodded. "But now you call her
'Lollipop.'"
Mom released her and stretched like an awakening cat.
"That's because Melinda is a world-class cocksucker. But I mean
that in the good sense of the word."
That was the second most embarrassed Alyson had ever been.
************************************************************
Five
Exploring
Clean-shaven Doug dumped the bowl of hot water down the sink
drain, where it flowed through the new bamboo pipe to a sump in
the sand beneath the cabin. It was better than dry shaving, but
some soap would have enhanced the experience. Mary had already
trimmed Alyson's bangs. "Are we ready?" he asked after putting
the razor in a cabinet.
Mary and Alyson moved to either side of him and stroked his
cheeks and neck. He felt the fingers of both drag over minute
rough spots. Something was different between those two, but he
couldn't identify what was different, much less guess why.
"I don't know," Mary said with a frown. "What do you say,
Aly?"
Alyson put on the standard Patient Female Dealing with a
Hopeless Male look, complete with Put-Upon Sigh. "If we have him
do it over, we'll never get to go exploring. I guess we'll just
have to live with him."
"I guess."
The two began giggling. Doug wondered if he should go check
the level of the bottle of rum he'd found in the file cabinet,
but Alyson rose on her tiptoes and each of his women kissed a
cheek. And both rubbed their tits on his arms. He quickly
corrected that thought: Mary had rubbed her tits on one arm, but
Alyson had merely brushed her tits--her breasts--against the
other one. Somehow that correction made things worse instead of
better. _I wouldn't have noticed at all if Mare hadn't started
prying._
All wore deck shoes and belts with sheathed knives. Aly's
belt was leather. Doug and Mary wore cloth-wrapped nylon rope
with small pouches attached. They gathered the three canvas
"shopping bags" Doug had made to replace two rotted ones and
trekked out the back door, pausing on the porch for Alyson to
retie one of her shoes while Doug retrieved the machete from a
wall peg. When all were ready they disappeared into the trees
beyond the outhouse. They followed the wide, shallow, freshwater
stream for a hundred yards, then crossed it on stepping stones
that Welch apparently had put in the water. They followed a path
Doug had explored across the gently rising, undulating ground to
the wide empty space where the tornado had cut across the island.
The space was empty only by comparison. It was littered
with shattered tree stumps and debris from the powerful storm.
Brightly colored birds chased insects across the expanse. "Watch
your step out there," he cautioned. "You can twist an ankle or
ram a piece of wood through your shoe and your foot if you aren't
careful. And we don't have adequate medical facilities."
They stood silently for a few moments, awed by the might of
the winds that had devastated this section of tropical forest.
Those same winds had thrown a tree through the side of their boat
a quarter-mile out to sea, over a mile from this location.
Because of the open area they could see the nearby steep
foothills looming like miniature mountains several hundred feet
into the western sky and blocking their view of the higher peaks
beyond. Alyson dubbed the path of destruction "The Tornado
Freeway."
Doug led them across a path he'd marked to the trees on the
far side. After that point they were in unexplored territory.
"Be careful," he said.
"I will, Daddy."
He knew that. Fear of getting a splinter would keep Alyson
alert. His remark was really aimed at the winner three years
past of the Braeden-Seaforth Award for Botanical Research.
The winner gave him her usual sidelong "I know what I'm
doing" look.
"I'm open to suggestions," he said, looking into the thick
tropical forest fanning one hundred eighty degrees before him.
"Up."
Doug and Alyson turned to Mary, who was shading her eyes and
peering at the canopy above. She looked at Alyson for a moment,
said, "Yeah," and reached into her "shopping bag." She brought
out a length of nylon rope with a loop at one end. She whirled
it overhead and whipped the end forward, causing it to wrap
around the trunk. She marked the spot she wanted and knotted a
second loop at that point.
Mary kissed the others, took a loop in each hand, and
started walking up the trunk, shifting the rope upward as she
went.
"Daddy, what did she mean by that?"
"Why are you asking me?"
Alyson chuckled. "Yeah." They found a comfortable log and
watched the pretty birds darting about while others sang strange,
lyrical songs from the trees.
Mary returned with a wide smile and a spike of pinkish
flowers with small white and yellow spots fastened behind her
left ear. She reached into the bag and pulled out a similar one
plus a short length of thin vine. "Bromeliads," she explained
and with a deft touch wove it into Alyson's hair behind her left
ear.
Doug gaped at her. "You went all the way up there for some
flowers?"
Mary glared at him. "It's for your daughter," she snapped.
He saw how delighted Alyson looked and felt the total fool.
"And she looks quite lovely with them," he said with what he
hoped wasn't a sheepish smile. "So do you."
"While you're trying to talk your way out of trouble, look
in the large can in the bag."
Doug withdrew a large clump of moss protecting three beige
eggs the size of small chicken eggs.
"Tomorrow's breakfast," she explained, finishing the braid
and using the vine to keep it from unravelling.
He hesitated, wondering if they were just yolks and whites
or almost developed birds. "Um, Mare, what if these aren't...
fresh?"
Mary took the can and crammed the moss into place. "Gee,
Doug, I guess I never thought of that, since I've never spent
weeks at a time in a place like this learning anything. I just
laid around and watched tropical television while everyone else
did all the work."
"Sorry. I guess I wasn't thinking."
She shook her head and looked at Alyson, who hadn't moved.
"It's finished, honey."
Alyson jumped up and down with glee. "Daddy, can I see the
mirror?"
He removed the signal mirror from a pouch and handed it to
her.
"Oh, Mother! It's wonderful! Thank you!" She gave her
mother a big squeeze, then turned the sprig toward Doug.
"Prettiest pixie I ever saw," he said as she threw her arms
around his neck. She was still jumping up and down, and the feel
of those firm little cones brushing against his chest stirred
feelings he didn't want stirred. When she stepped back and
handed him the mirror he noticed her nipples were erect. He
immediately diverted his attention to carefully putting the
mirror back into its pouch, sandwiched between two thin strips of
protective wood.
When he finished he looked toward Mary. She pointed and
said, "Produce is this way."
*****
When they reached the embankment the clouds had begun
gathering and they were ascending a moderate slope. The area
looked as if someone had sliced vertically through the earth and
pushed everything on this side down seven feet. It ran as far as
they could see to either side. "Turn back now?" Doug asked.
"We have another hour," Mary said. "Let's see what's higher
up."
Doug backed up to the embankment, squatted, and laced his
fingers together. "Pixies first," he said. Alyson grinned and
put one foot in his hands, steadying herself with her hands on
his shoulders. He straightened his legs and lifted with his
hands. She also straightened and used her hands against the dark
embankment for balance.
As the heart-shaped brown curls passed his face his nose
caught a faint hint of her feminine fragrance. He wanted to look
away, but it wasn't safe to do so. _If Mary hadn't made that
horrid suggestion, I wouldn't have noticed_, he thought, as if
trying to convince himself. _But what if I had? I damned sure
noticed Tiffany Smith's_.
She lifted her leg to place her foot on the top of the
embankment, bringing her plump outer labia into view. As she
placed her foot on the upper bank they parted to show their moist
inner surfaces and the mouth of her vagina. When she put her
weight on the upper foot that mouth opened. He tried to tell
himself it was the same thing he'd seen when he gave her a
gynecological exam a year earlier, but even for a nudist this
view in a tropical island setting was far more erotic than the
same view in a clinical examination room. Her pheromones weren't
helping, either. _Damn it, Mare!_ Alyson straightened her leg
and rose from his hands. Her open slit winked shut and then
vanished as her legs came together.
He looked at Mary. She was grinning at his dick, which had
swollen enough to indicate four o'clock instead of six. "Want me
to take care of that before you go up?" she asked, circling her
lips with her tongue.
"No," he snapped. _For God's sake, I'm a pediatrician!
Can't she understand that? She has to understand that. She must
be digging. She must have heard something from someone, somehow.
She must have!_
She shoved a finger into her slit and rubbed a few times,
cooing at him, but gave up when he ignored her. She shrugged.
"Your loss."
He helped her up the embankment and handed up the shopping
bags and machete. Mary fastened one rope around a tree and
dropped the end over the edge. He used it to walk up the
vertical wall, accompanied by gentle applause from his audience.
He bowed, then took the machete to hack a blaze mark into the
side of a tree.
A hundred yards later a dip in the land directed the flow of
a stream toward the southwest. A small yellow-striped blue
lizard sat atop a mossy log and watched them settle beside the
stream before scurrying away on urgent lizard business elsewhere,
just as the afternoon shower began. The overhead leaves provided
impact protection from the shower. The water that pattered on
them was cool and comforting after their exertion. They drank
from the bubbling stream and seated themselves on a broad mossy
patch a few feet from the water.
As Mary doled out the fruit and nuts onto napkin-like cloth
squares for a quick lunch Alyson looked around at the picturesque
wooded glen. "Daddy, this is beautiful. Can we come back here
some day?"
He flicked his eyes to Mary in surprise and found hers wide
and staring back at him. "I don't see why not. Do you really
like it?"
"Yeah. I wish we had some place this pretty back home. It
makes the campground at the lake look blah. _Eek!_" A six-inch
centipede crawled from beneath the lizard's log and scurried
toward her in a flutter of legs. It turned aside and went up the
slope to disappear under a pile of decaying leaves, but not
before she had rolled sideways and jumped into Doug's lap.
"_Daddy!_"
Both parents laughed. "Now that's a centipede with one
amazing sense of comedic timing," Mary observed.
Doug agreed and then noticed the warm, moist heat where she
was sitting on his thigh. _Warm and moist like Tiffany's. Damn
it! What the hell's the matter with me?_ he wondered. _Mary's
got me thinking of my own daughter as a sex object, and I said I
wouldn't do that anymore_. He gave Alyson a slight nudge. "I
think it's safe for you to get up now."
The sudden look of hurt in her narrow eyes surprised him.
"Yes, sir," she said as she rose. The formal response was
another surprise. She shuffled head down the few feet to the
edge of the stream and stood there in the rain with her back to
him, her shoulders trembling.
_I swear, I'll never understand women_. He glanced to Mary.
She was unexpectedly glaring at him and starting to rise. When
she was upright her eyes softened as they shifted to Alyson, and
she moved beside her daughter. She put an arm around Aly's
shoulders and spoke to her in a soft voice. The sound carried to
Doug's ears, but not the words.
His daughter said something, then tilted her head back to
let the rain land on her face. She washed her face with her
fingertips while Mary returned to sit cross-legged beside Doug.
"We still have about six hours until bedtime," she said in a
quiet voice.
Doug knew very well how to translate that: "_You still have
about six hours to fuck up some more_."
"What did I do?" he asked in a whisper.
She gathered the corners of one cloth and handed him his
lunch. Her eyes turned as cold as her whispered voice. "This
time you chose to reject her when she needed you."
_Reject her? This time?_
"Honey, your lunch is ready when you are," she said and
began eating in silence, letting Doug think about her words.
Alyson nodded, wiped her eyes, and returned. She took a
seat on the opposite side of Mary from himself. It had appeared
to be a deliberate destination, chosen after she started walking.
The mossy ground stopped where Mary was sitting. Alyson perched
herself on another log, took the makeshift cloth bag, and also
ate in silence.
Doug wanted to speak, but he was afraid that anything he
said would make things even worse since he didn't understand the
problem. The brief rain tapered to a stop and still he didn't
know. He was so deep in thought he didn't notice the sound
before the other two stood and rushed into the stream, peering
upward.
_Airplane engine_.
He scrambled to his feet and rushed into the stream,
fumbling for the signal mirror. But the sun was still behind the
clouds. He looked to the small gap nearest the sun and tried to
calculate whether it would expose the sun in time for him to use
his mirror. A small single engine plane with pontoons crossed
the gap and disappeared.
"Do you think he saw the SOS sign?" Alyson asked in a
hesitant voice.
"Possibly," Mary said, trying to will the plane to cross the
gap again.
"But not likely," Doug added. "Unless there are gaps over
the beach. He's already past it and probably won't be looking
backward."
Mary's head swiveled to gape at Doug, unable to believe he'd
said that, and then to Alyson, expecting to see her in tears.
"Oh," Alyson said softly. Her shoulders drooped slightly as
she relaxed. And that was all.
*****
They spotted a patch of mushrooms just before the Tornado
Freeway. Mary pronounced them not only safe but wonderfully
flavored. While they added some to their shopping bags a large
butterfly with metallic blue, black, and gold wings floated
around a tree in front of Alyson. She whispered to the others to
not move and watched as it landed on her arm. Its tiny feet
tickled as its proboscis uncurled and tapped her arm, sipping her
sweat for the salt. Her eyes widened in delight and a broad
smile spread, making her apple cheeks even more prominent. She
watched the butterfly turn a circle, open and close its wings for
a few seconds, and launch itself to rise in a shaft of sunlight
and disappear overhead.
"Wow!" she whispered and spent the next minute in immobile
silence in case it returned.
*****
A bright red four-inch feather lay atop a small bush. Doug
put his shopping bag down, plucked the feather, and held it up in
the hand with the machete, straightening and smoothing it with
the fingers of his free hand. "There," he said, turning to
Alyson. "Would you like it as a necklace or an arm band?"
She couldn't have looked more pleased--or more surprised, he
noted--if he'd said she could learn to drive and have her own car
as soon as they returned. "Necklace?"
"Done. We'll wash it in the stream first, in case it has
mites."
Her pert nose wrinkled. "Okay."
Movement on the trail behind Mary caught his eye and he
shushed them. "Turn very slowly and look about ten feet down the
trail," he whispered.
A small mouse sat on its haunches and studied them in
return. Mary and Alyson glanced sideways at each other and
started giggling. The mouse scampered off when they doubled over
in laughter.
_I swear, I'll never understand women_.
*****
Doug had seen Mary obstinate before, but by comparison she'd
been as pliable as pottery clay. This time she was as firm as
the fired ceramic. She locked her fingers behind his neck and
pulled his head down until they were eye to eye in the waning
light. She spoke slowly and very distinctly, as if to a
misbehaving child. "You are sleeping in the middle tonight, or
you're sleeping on the cot, and that's final."
"But Alyson...."
She gave him two heartbeats to think of the words. "Alyson
what?"
He blinked, wondering how to put it. "She doesn't need to
be sleeping next to a man at her age. She probably doesn't want
me sleeping next to her."
Her eyes told him that wasn't the right answer, not by a
long shot. "Doug, I didn't marry an idiot. Don't turn into one
now."
"What do you...."
"She's adapting remarkably well to being stranded here,
don't you think? 'Can we come back here some day?' This place
has memories of missing death by seconds, almost drowning, being
lost in the forest, being stranded with no idea of when she'll be
rescued, no contact with her friends, no pizza, no music, no
toilet paper, none of the things she's accustomed to, and yet she
still wants to come back to it. I'm not a pediatrician, I'm just
a mother, but I find that pretty fuckin' unbelievable, don't
you?"
He hadn't thought about it, but he had to agree she was
right. "But so what?" he added.
His wife's glare softened into a look that, in other
circumstances, he'd have said was one of pity. Her voice was
little more than a whisper. "I was just wondering whether she
wants to come back despite the fact, or because of the fact, that
this is the place where her father rejected her."
Doug shook his head and blinked, trying to make sense of
feminine logic. "You keep saying that I've rejected her."
She released her fingers and let him straighten. "That's
because you _keep_ rejecting her. As soon as the centipede
leaves, you don't ask her if she's ready to get up. You don't
even ask if she's okay. You just eject her from where she felt
safe, protected by someone she thought loved her, as if she's a
squatter on your land."
He was aghast at the implication. "Mare, that's not...."
Heat began creeping into Mary's voice as she raised an arm
toward the lagoon. "She was out there crying this morning
because she couldn't guess what she'd done to make you so mad at
her so that you wouldn't let her near you at night. She's
probably out there crying into her diving mask, trying to guess
why you'd rejected her again this afternoon, and thinking that
I'm an idiot for telling her you still loved her."
Mary wasn't making sense. "But I do love her, Mare! I even
made her that necklace out of the feather to show her." He
pointed to the table where the just-completed object lay next to
the small toolbox and Alyson's bromeliad sprig.
The heat in Mary's voice was offset by the cold in her
glare. "She's not a materialist, Doug. While she accepts
objects as _signs_ of love, she doesn't equate them _with_ love.
All the complaining about what she's missing is mostly an act,
you know. You saw the true Alyson just before you rejected her
this afternoon."
Doug fought to keep his voice steady. Mary would listen if
you reasoned with her, but not if you argued. "Please stop
saying I rejected her. Please."
"You won't let her sleep next to you for comfort or
reassurance except when it's storming and she's scared half to
death. And then when you finally do give in, the first thing you
do when you wake up and find her there is fall out of bed trying
to get away from her, simply because you had an erection and
humped her butt before you woke up enough to know what you were
doing."
He was surprised to feel the color draining from his face.
He rather thought that he'd have blushed himself to death if Mary
ever found out. _Oh, my god!_ he thought. _Aly was awake and
felt me do it!_ He wanted to run into the woods. "I wasn't
awake," he protested.
"I said that."
"I didn't know Aly was awake."
"She wasn't."
_Then how...._ He frowned at her. "_You_ were awake?"
"No."
He shook his head, trying to align the pieces of the jigsaw
puzzle. Nothing made sense except the thought that she was again
on a fishing expedition. "Then how did you know I humped her
butt?"
"Because I used _my_ head for something besides an ear
separator today, that's how."
He'd been afraid that would be her answer, though he
couldn't put the pieces together. He started to ask but noticed
it was growing dark outside. Alyson would return from skin
diving at any moment.
"Mare, it's not proper for a thirteen-year-old girl to sleep
next to a grown man."
"Really? When I was thirteen you didn't complain about all
the grown men I slept next to, even when they were buried in my
twat up to their balls. Or when I was fourteen, or fifteen,
or...."
"She's my _daughter_." The thought hit him like cold water.
_She's not fishing. She knows. She's trying to use Alyson to
trap me into admitting it. The Investigating Committee of the
Board must have reopened the case, and now she's working for
them. She's trying to get me to prove the allegations. She took
the side of those nosy, interfering bastards! She wants me to
lose my license! Well, it won't work._
Mary was blissfully unaware of the turmoil boiling behind
his eyes. "One of those men was _my father_. Okay, fine, look:
if you want to grow conventional morals, we can talk about that
after we're rescued. But," she jabbed his chest with a
forefinger, "goddamnit, you _owe_ her an explanation. You want
to say she's your daughter? Then treat her like she's a human
being with feelings and intelligence and not like she's your pet
fucking dog!"
Doug sighed. No, he hadn't given Aly any explanation. He'd
have been confused himself under those circumstances. Now he
understood Alyson's actions as well as Mary's "You're right. As
soon as she gets back I'll have a talk with her."
Mary emphasized each word with a finger jab. "You're. Not.
Listening. To. Me." Her eyes searched his as if seeking a spark
of intelligence. "Tomorrow. Tonight you take the middle of the
bed because she needs to be next to you even more than she needed
it during last night's storm. Understand?"
He sighed. "Not completely, but it can wait. Okay?"
_"Not completely," my ass! You'll see. I'll play your game
and nothing will happen. It will be your turn to wonder and
doubt for a change. You won't have anything to give the
committee for proof._
Mary threw her arms about him and squeezed, turning her face
up. He glued his mouth to hers and returned the squeeze as bare
feet slapped across the front porch and stopped in the door.
"Do you want me to go back to the beach and let you be
alone?"
"No," Doug said. "I want you here with me." Mary's gentle
tightening of her arms about him told him he'd said the right
thing for a change. He looked up to see her clutching her mask,
snorkel, and fins in her right hand and something small in her
left. "What do you have there?"
"Look!" she said, dropping her diving gear by the door. In
her open hand rested a two-inch red-and-white shell spiraled
about its long axis. "It's the most perfect one I've ever seen."
"So it is," Doug agreed. "You know, that necklace needs a
weight at the bottom of the feather to keep it from tipping
over."
Alyson's eyes sparkled in the twilight. "You finished it?"
He indicated the table with a flick of his head. "I
wouldn't want to keep my Pixie waiting."
She looked, gave him a quick kiss, that landed mostly on his
chin, and turned to pick up the necklace. She held the ends of
the nylon thong together behind her neck and let the feather rest
against her chest. "Can you put the shell on without hurting it?
If you can't, I'll find another shell. I don't want to damage
that one."
"Maybe," Doug said, starting to position the shell against
the bottom of the feather. He froze when he saw that it was
between her firm tanned cones and their erect nipples. "Um...."
Mary's head tilted down, and she stared at him from under
her eyebrows. _She's waiting for me to fondle them,_ he
realized.
"It's too dark to tell now. I'll see about it first thing
in the morning."
"Okay!" Alyson bounced on her toes in glee, and Mary raised
her face to give him a gentle smile. Apparently he'd stumbled
into the right thing again.
*****
From the middle of the bed Doug watched Alyson wiggle her
head into the pillow and grin so broadly that her round cheeks
threatened to push her eyes shut. "G'night, Mom," she said and
puckered to receive Mary's kiss. "I love you."
"Good night, honey. I love you, too," Mary said as she rose
from her knees. "Don't let the mosquitoes bite."
As Mary adjusted the netting and went around to her side of
the bed, Alyson turned a beaming face that seemed to glow in the
reflected moonlight to her father. Doug thought he heard a tiny
giggle, as if she were happy.
His right hand brushed aside her trimmed bangs. He kissed
her forehead, then ran the side of his index finger down her
square jaw. "G'night, Pixie."
She grinned even wider, puckered, and made the two soft
grunts. He pressed his lips to hers.
"_MmmmmmmmMAH!_"
"G'night, Daddy. I love you. Thank you."
"You're welcome," he said, wondering if he were being
thanked for the necklace, sleeping in the middle, or something
else. But Alyson was happy, and he didn't need to know right
now.
He still hadn't decided how he was going to sleep. He
finally opted to turn onto his right side and wrap his upper arm
and leg over Mary. He'd keep his dick safely and innocently next
to Mary all night if she'd let him. To his relief, she didn't
object. He felt Alyson spoon up behind him. She threw her left
arm over his chest and wiggled into a comfortable position. He
felt a warm dampness as she kissed him between his shoulder
blades and whispered, "I love you." Her breathing became slow
and regular in mere seconds.
*****
Doug sat at the table, resting his chin on his left fist and
clutching a glass of coconut milk in his right hand. Alyson was
right. Any attempt to attach the shell to the necklace with the
tools and techniques available would surely damage it. He rose
and took it to the mantel. It would be safe there until they
were rescued.
_Rescued. That better happen soon. I don't know how much
longer I can go without somehow slipping up and giving Mare the
evidence the Committee needs. Goddamnit! It was OVER with. WHY
did the Committee have to reopen the case? And how did they
manage to bring Mary in on their side? I always thought she was
on mine through anything. Or was that it: she's pissed because
I never told her what was going on?
She thinks that because of Tiffany that I'm a threat to
Alyson! Doesn't she realize that I never touched Alyson and
would never hurt her, no matter how much I thought about her back
then? I usually thought about Aly while I was fucking away, but
I never acted out my fantasies for real.
Tiffany couldn't see what I was doing, so she doesn't even
know that I used my tongue instead of my finger on her clit once.
So Mary can't know that. She can't even suspect it.
Or can she? She knows how I love to eat pussy. Maybe she's
hoping to learn that. Those bastards on the committee would love
it, especially that old fool Hodgson. I'll bet he was the one
who reopened the case. He must have learned that I was consulted
on his malpractice case.
_
He heard Mary enter and realized his fists were clenched,
his teeth were gritted so tightly his jaws hurt, and he was
breathing so hard he was almost snorting. He forced himself to
relax and then turned as she dripped her way through the door and
took a seat at the table, reaching for his half-full glass. _Act
normal_, he warned himself.
"If I dripped water through the house like that, my wife
would kill me."
She grinned. "Think you married the wrong woman?"
"No." He nodded to the door. "How'd it go?"
Mary drank half the remaining coconut milk in one pull and
wiped her lips. "The bromeliad had an extremely quick burial at
sea, and now she's looking for a replacement shell."
"Well, I hope she...."
The prolonged, sharp scream from the lagoon wasn't one of
fear but one of pain.
************************************************************
Six
G'Night
Alyson was lying at the edge of the water, holding her left
foot and screaming. Her breakfast lay splashed on the sand
beside her. Her deck shoes sat a few feet inland. While Doug
examined Alyson's foot, Mary washed the vomit from the girl's
lips, cheek, and chin.
"Small puncture wound," he said. "Inflammation setting in.
Something protruding. Honey! Alyson! Where did it happen?"
He had to repeat the question. She managed get out that it
happened a few feet seaward from where she lay. He left her with
Mary and waded out. It was easy to spot, but the waves were
erasing the disturbance in the sandy bottom. He poked with the
toe of his shoe for a moment but found nothing. He returned and
knelt beside Alyson.
"I'll carry her," he said, scooping her into his arms. "I
need hot water--as hot as she can stand. Maybe a pint for now
but also put on the larger pot to heat for later."
Color drained from Mary's tanned face. She started running
back to the cabin. "Fish or shell?" she called over her
shoulder.
"Fish, I think." He moved as quickly as he could without
dropping the screaming girl while Mary raced on ahead. He wasn't
a religious man, but he thanked every deity he could name that
he'd married a woman who was able to control her motherly
emotions and who could both think and act in an emergency. Even
when she guessed what had probably happened, she kept her head.
She'd seen her share of life-threatening emergencies while on
research expeditions, but this was her daughter, and still she
kept a cool head even though her guts had to be in the same icy
knots as his own.
He'd certainly seen his share of children in pain, but this
was Alyson, his Pixie, and her cries for him to stop the pain
were shredding his soul. You'd think years of medical school and
pediatric practice would inure him somewhat and that he'd operate
on autopilot, but putting one foot in front of the other now
required conscious effort.
Alyson's stomach heaved again as he reached the door, but
she had already emptied it. He turned sideways and eased her
through the door.
"Couch," Mary said, emerging from the bedroom with his
medical kit. She placed it on a crate used as an end table and
opened it. "There's only four," she said, her voice quavering,
as she removed a morphine injector.
"It will have to do, Mare," he said as he lowered Alyson.
"I didn't plan on being shipwrecked."
Mary comforted her screaming daughter as best she could
while he injected her and then removed tweezers and a small
magnifying glass from the kit. He tried to immobilize her foot
long enough to check the wound and was about to ask Mary for help
when Alyson suddenly heaved again and then went still.
"_DOUG!_"
He gave the girl a quick check. "She fainted. Maybe she'll
stay out until the morphine kicks in. Are you okay?"
"No." She wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. "But
I'll manage. I'll see to the water. I haven't put the large one
on yet."
Doug gave her a grim smile. He wanted to hold her, to
comfort her, to tell her that their daughter would be fine. But
Mary had been in these waters before and already knew better.
And he had a patient to treat. Mary bent to kiss him before
crossing to the kitchen and returning with a folding chair. She
kissed him again and left a hand on his shoulder for a moment, a
plea in her brimming eyes, before returning to the stove.
The porch roof now blocked the rising sun from entering the
room. He fished a small flashlight from the kit, turned it on,
and sat in the chair, placing her foot on his knees. He held the
flashlight in his mouth, lifted the foot, and examined the wound
through the magnifying glass. He switched the magnifying glass
for the tweezers and removed a dorsal fin spine from the wound,
then switched back to the lens. A second puncture wound had gone
unnoticed four millimeters from the one with the protruding
spine. She had received a double shot of venom. The second
wound appeared to have no broken spine in it, but the area around
the wounds was red and swelling rapidly.
He moved the lens over the extracted spine. _Intact._ He
had removed all of it. He put away the equipment and checked
Alyson's pulse. His diving watch was in the bedroom, but there
was no question that her pulse was rapid and felt strange. He
reached for the stethoscope, snapped the earpieces in his ears,
and placed the pickup between the small, tanned, upright cones.
He listened for a moment. Minor arrhythmia had already begun.
The only good news he could think of was that she'd had a tetanus
shot two years earlier. Small comfort, that. He removed the
stethoscope from his ears and let it hang by the earpieces around
his neck.
Mary's quiet sobs stole into his thoughts, making it harder
for him to maintain his professional attitude as he cleaned the
wound with alcohol and a swab. His vision blurred, and hot tears
rolled down his cheeks. He should have warned her to wear her
shoes while wading, but none of the three wore them. He didn't
think the risk was great enough. He didn't know those fish
inhabited these waters, or that they would be in the sand away
from the rocks. Unless it was a dying one that had washed up
near shore. He thought about that to get his mind away from the
real issue for the moment.
Mary approached unnoticed. She put the hot water and a
clean cloth on the floor at Doug's feet. "Do you think this will
help if she's already unconscious?" she asked as she sat on the
edge by Alyson's head.
He shrugged. "Can't hurt. Well, I didn't mean the pun.
God _damn_ it! I wish I had some antivenin."
"Maybe the heat will...." She shot to her feet. "Papain!"
Doug frowned at her.
"Papain. Meat tenderizer can relieve mosquito bites and bee
stings by breaking down the injected proteins. It's papain. You
use it for psoriasis and removing dead tissue and...."
"I know what it does." He regretted the harsh tone but said
nothing more, letting her speak.
"There are green fruit on some of the papaya trees. What if
we use the papain from the latex on her foot? Would it help
break down the proteins in the venom?"
Doug looked at the small foot resting on his knees. "Well,
I--what the hell? The worst it can do is remove the tissue
around the wound when it starts necrotizing."
Mary grabbed the shopping bag with her tree climbing gear.
"It's about a quarter-mile to the papaya trees. I won't be gone
long."
"Mare, watch out. I can't care for her alone if you injure
yourself." That wasn't exactly true, but he didn't need two
patients, and the idea of increased risk to her daughter might
cause Mary to be a little more cautious.
"I'll be careful." She raced out the door. Doug wondered
just how Mary would define "careful."
He tested the water. It was uncomfortably hot but not
enough to burn. He dipped the cloth in it and wrapped it around
the injured foot. The heat would help make the pain bearable,
and maybe it would help dissipate the venom. He wasn't sure that
the papain would help given the depth of the venom injection, but
Mary needed some hope. And, if he could get the papaya latex
into the wound, maybe it could help destroy some of the venom.
He held the hot cloth in place, looking with blurred vision
at the toes peeking out from the wet bandage. He lifted the foot
and kissed each one. When was the last time he'd done that?
_When she was a baby_, he supposed. "Pixie, I'm doing all I can
for you, but you'll have to help," he whispered. "Hear me? You
have to help. I can't do it alone."
She convulsed with another attempt at vomiting. He wiped
his eyes and listened to her breathe. No apparent aspiration of
what little fluid was in her stomach. He had to turn her on her
side in case she wasn't so lucky the next time. When that was
done he reached for the stethoscope. Lungs were clear, the heart
arrhythmia.... Was it worse, or was his imagination working
overtime? He moved the pickup and listened. And again. And
again, trying to memorize the sound for later comparison. Modern
medicine, he decided, made doctors too dependent on graphs and
displays and read-outs and too removed from their own senses.
His great-grandfather could differentiate diphtheria from
whooping cough halfway from the door to the patient's bed based
solely on the smell in the air.
He slowly became aware that the edge of his hand was resting
against her left breast and yanked his hand back. _What if Mary
had seen that? She might think I was fondling Aly when she
wasn't around, even though I haven't. She'd know for sure that
I'd fondled some patients. Especially Tiffany, that sexy little
bitch who just had to mention to her mother that she'd had a
pelvic exam during her physical. Mare will tell Hodgson, divorce
me, take Aly away, and let me lose my license, all out of spite
because I never told her about the investigation. And she'll
probably marry that old fool as thanks for telling her about the
investigation. I should have listened through Alyson's back, and
by damn! that's what I'll do from now on_.
"I'm sorry I touched your breast," he whispered to her
unconscious form. "I didn't mean to." _What if Mare had seen
that? How could you have been so thoughtless?_
He sat back and felt the cloth. It was cooling. He dipped
it in the hot water, wrung it lightly, and wrapped the foot
again. He used one hand to help trap the heat and stroked her
ankle and calf with the other, whispering words of encouragement.
He suddenly realized that his attempt at comfort could also be
misconstrued as fondling and moved that hand to also help contain
the heat of the cloth. _How could you have been so thoughtless?
Watch what the hell you're doing with your hands! Mare wants to
marry Hodgson, and you're going to give her to him gift-wrapped._
He was removing hot water from the large pot when Mary
returned. While he told her that the situation was unchanged she
removed one green papaya fruit from the bag and put it on the
kitchen table. With her belt knife she scored the skin and
watched the white latex ooze forth. "Teaspoon," she said, and he
handed her one. When she had collected several drops she said,
"Another one," and swapped with him. He took the first to Aly.
Swelling had closed the wound. He spread the sap over the
swelling while he thought. When he was finished he took the
morphine syringe and spoon to the stove. He rinsed the spoon in
the hot water and handed it to her. "Get me some clean sap," he
said. "Don't scrape the outside of the fruit with the spoon.
I'm going to inject it into the wound. Let's try to avoid
secondary infection."
"Take another fruit and rinse it first," she said, "but I
don't think secondary infection would be a problem."
She let the latex drip in the spoon while Doug cleaned the
syringe. It seemed to take forever, and she twice brushed a tear
away on her shoulder. Neither said anything. Both knew it was a
gamble. Neither wanted to risk not trying, especially Doug. Aly
was the only thing that would keep him from losing Mare to that
bastard Hodgson. Doug checked on Alyson when she again
dry-heaved. Her pulse seemed fainter, the arrhythmia more
pronounced. He kissed her forehead and whispered for her to keep
fighting.
Alyson opened her eyes, looked at him, smiled weakly, and
closed them again.
*****
Doug replaced the plastic over the wound and wrapped the
swollen foot with the hot bandage. The plastic kept the water
from removing the latex. Mary had washed the few late-lunch
dishes and returned to take the water container for a hot refill.
He looked up into Mary's anxious eyes. "Some necrosis around the
wound, but the papain is dissolving the dead tissue. Her
breathing is erratic, heart arrhythmia is slowly increasing, the
body tremors are beginning, but she's quit trying to vomit. I
wish to hell I knew if that last is a good sign in light of the
others."
Mary nodded and turned to take the water container to the
stove for a refill. He looked at Alyson and was startled to see
her looking back at him, quietly crying. "I'm not going to make
it, am I?" she sobbed.
His first instinct was to tell her everything would be okay.
She would know he was lying and wouldn't trust him after that.
He had to tell her the truth, but how much?
"Sweetheart, I...." The buzzing noise high outside finally
penetrated his consciousness. He bolted for the door. A small
twin-engine plane was up and to the north. He raced to the
signal pyre, tore away the cover, doused it with generator fuel,
and grabbed Welch's lighter. He struck it aflame and shoved it
into the signal fire, ignoring the small starter torches because
there wasn't time. The fuel roared to life, singeing the hair
from his arm and igniting the rest of the pyre. Flame and white
smoke boiled forth. He had the signal mirror out in an instant.
At first he thought he'd been too late, but the plane banked
left and began descending. It stopped turning when it was on
line with him. It overflew him, turned over the sea, and began a
return path. _No pontoons_, he noted. _Just wheels. It can't
land_.
Doug stood by the SOS in the sand. When he was certain he
could be clearly seen he grabbed his chest, fell over, and rose
to his knees, pointing to the cabin, where Mary stood on the
porch, watching. The plane banked as it reached him, circled
over the lagoon briefly, and then headed toward him again.
Something dropped from the plane, a flutter of bright yellow
cloth marking its descent. It landed near the outhouse. The
plane circled while he fetched it. It was a soft-drink can with
masking tape holding a signal flag to it. On the tape was
writing:
"U HAVE MED EMERG? 1 YES, 2 NO"
Doug raced to the SOS and scratched a large "1" in the sand
beside it.
The plane circled the lagoon for another three minutes, then
returned and dropped another can.
"S/R COMING. LO ON GAS. GD LUK."
Doug waved. The plane waggled its wings and began climbing
to the northwest.
"Mare! They notified Search and Rescue. They're coming."
Mary looked relieved. "I guess your uniform helped after
all. I was afraid they wouldn't believe you."
"Uniform?" Doug looked down. He'd forgotten he was naked.
"Let's tell Alyson."
*****
Doug knelt beside his weeping daughter. "Pixie, Search and
Rescue is coming. You just hang in there, okay?"
Her narrow eyes reflected overwhelming sadness. "My stomach
hurts," she said, and then heaved up a small amount of liquid
into a plastic bowl. Doug wiped her mouth. Her body shook and
she gasped for air. "I don't want to leave you alone," she said.
"Honey, we don't want you to leave us," Mary said, her
throat choking on the words. "You have to hold on until they
arrive. Okay?"
"I don't know." Alyson heaved again. "I'll try." She
closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Doug patted Mary's shoulder. "We better dress now, while we
have time."
_Search and Rescue has to make it on time. They have to!
Without Alyson, I'm going to lose everything, not that I'd want
to live without her anyway._
*****
Alyson's eyes opened. "I'm sorry," she said.
Doug turned from staring out the door and Mary, who had been
half-dozing with Alyson's head in her lap, looked down.
"Don't be sorry, honey, " Mary said. "It was an accident.
It wasn't your fault."
"I mean I'm sorry I'm going to leave you alone."
Doug knelt beside her and took her hand while Mary took the
other one. "Don't say that, Pixie. They should be here soon."
"But I know. I don't know how I know, but I do. I'm so
sorry that I'm going to leave you alone, and I'm sorry that I'm
going to be without you now." She dry heaved again and fought to
regain her breath. "It's almost time. Honest!"
Mary tried to argue. When he'd been in medical school, Doug
had seen too many patients who knew when the moment was near.
"I'm sorry it had to be like this, Pixie. I wanted you to have a
long, full life, full of all kinds of happiness." He wiped his
eyes. "I'm so sorry that you're going to miss out on so much."
Mary's eyes blazed at him. "_Don't tell her that!_ Honey,
it's going to be okay. Just hold on a little longer. Please!"
Alyson gasped for air. "Thank you for trying to make me
feel better, but," she gasped for air again, "but don't pretend.
Please? I had... I had a fun life, better than lots of kids
could ever hope for. I got only... only two regrets."
Doug forced the word through his constricted throat.
"What?"
"I'm sorry that I'll leave you alone, and that I'll never,
um, I'll never get to know what, um...." She looked at her
mother with sad eyes. "You know."
For a moment Mary was lost. Then: "What it's like to be a
woman?"
Alyson sobbed and nodded.
Mary's voice grew excited, as if she had found a way to
delay the inevitable. "Would you like to find out while there's
still time?'
Alyson looked at her father and then her mother with a faint
smile. "Can I?" she whispered.
While Mary cried and nodded assent, Doug suddenly
understood. "MARY!"
Mary's face grew as violent as the storm that had stranded
them. "It may give her reason to hold on longer. And if not,
it's your daughter's last wish and, by damn, you _will_ grant
it." Her eyes added the unspoken, "Or else you lose me, too."
But that look was unnecessary. _If Aly dies, she will tell
Hodgson what he wants to hear even if she has to make it up, and
then she's going to run off with the incompetent bastard just to
punish me for failing to save her daughter. She wants to marry
him anyway if Aly lives, so she'll damned sure do so for spite
when Aly dies. She wants to make me suffer, and she's going to
do so either way.
I might as well do it. Maybe it will keep Aly alive just
long enough. Search and Rescue's team will know what I did. It
will be obvious to their doctor in only a few moments, but it
won't matter. The main thing is that Aly might live. They'll
haul my ass off to prison with the help of Mary, Hodgson, and,
yes, myself. But Aly might live. Nothing is more important than
her living. They'll teach her to hate me while I'm in prison,
but she'll be alive. I can live with prison if Alyson lives.
Mare would have to share some of my possessions if I just lost my
license, but if I'm in prison, she and Hodgson can have it all.
But I can live with that if Alyson lives._
As Doug removed his shorts he worried that performance
anxiety would prevent an erection if the dire circumstances did
not. Silently cursing himself for giving in to his secret
weakness, even though it might help Alyson, he eased Alyson's
white shorts over her hips and down her legs, putting them on the
table crate with his own. Mary's eyes flicked from his to the
heart-shaped curls and back. _She's waiting for me to convict
myself._ Doug dipped his head and kissed the thatch. Alyson
parted her legs. Her musky aroma began inflating his wretched
tool, almost against his will.
He kissed his daughter's slit and felt her shudder, a
movement distinctly different from the chill tremors which had
been racing through her body, as he ran his tongue along her slit
and then pressed it into the hot, moist folds. Alyson was
already wet and growing wetter, something he thought was
impossible under the medical circumstances. He toyed with her
button for a moment and then withdrew his tongue.
Lust temporarily replaced the nausea in her face. "That was
great!" she murmured.
Mary reached for his growing member and pumped it expertly.
_Helping put the key in the prison door because I'm not putting
it there fast enough_, he thought. It was fully erect in
seconds. His emotions flickered between anticipation and
disgust, the latter directed at himself because of the former.
Alyson dry heaved and gasped again.
Doug placed the head in the entrance of her tunnel, then
slowly eased it inward. He realized that some of the heat he
felt was fever, but she was as tight and as warm and as wet as
Mary had been the first time he did it to her. He was surprised
that she could lubricate with her fever. When his pubic bone
crushed against hers and his balls felt the heat of her
bubble-butt he asked, "Are you okay? It's in now."
"Ohmigod!" she gasped. "Oh, Daddy, I wish we'd done this
sooner. It's wonderful! It doesn't hurt!"
_Sooner! Has Mary talked Aly into helping Hodgson and her
with their scheme? No. Aly had met Hodgson and didn't care for
him. Unless it was an act. Or unless Mare has somehow converted
Aly's opinion of the man. She'd have to do so before she ran off
with the bastard. She might have converted Aly's opinion, but
she'd never have turned Aly against me. Aly's the one true
friend I have in this world because I never touched her like I
did the others. She's sick with the poison and doesn't know what
she's saying. She'd never say that if it weren't for the poison.
Mare's little scheme would have backfired! So she's using her
dying daughter to make it work because she knows it would have
backfired anyway! That bitch!_
He began slicing in-and-out of his daughter's slick tunnel.
He knew Alyson usually came quickly when she masturbated. He
hoped she would peak soon because he was disgusted with himself
for two reasons: one, because of what he was doing to his own
daughter, and two, because the tightening deep between his boner
and balls told him he was enjoying it and would soon cum himself.
_What the hell? I've already convicted myself and given
this conniving bitch to Hodgson on a platinum platter. I'm going
to be convicted of raping my dying daughter and Mare's going to
tell them it was my idea and she couldn't stop me. This will be
the last time I ever have sex with a female because I'm going to
die in prison. Shouldn't I enjoy it if this is the last time? I
can live with that if Alyson lives. But if she dies...._
Alyson's free hand shot behind his neck and pulled his head
downward. She kissed him, hard, on his lips as her narrow eyes
squeezed shut and her body began shaking. And then she came.
The throbbing of her tight, hot sheath was enough to send him
over the edge. He began slamming into her, fighting with himself
not to slam too hard, and then he gushed.
When it was over his erection subsided immediately but
stayed within her body. He forced himself to smile at her, which
was easy enough to do whenever he saw her looking at him, and
leave himself in place, though he wanted to withdraw his invading
member in self-hatred over the incriminating and convicting
incest he had committed. _How could Mary have hated me enough to
force me into this, simply because I never told her about the
charges? How could she have gone along with Hodgson? How could
she have used her own daughter like that just to get back at me?_
Alyson choked and gasped for a moment, then smiled, though
tears coursed down the side of her face. "Now I have only one
regret. Thank you, Daddy. And thank you, Mom, for not telling."
_"Not telling." What had Mare been keeping from him? What
had she done, brainwashed her own daughter? It couldn't be true.
Could it?_
A convulsive dry heave caused her to clamp her vaginal
muscles and squeeze Doug from her body. Doug knew he should be
relieved that the disgusting act was over and hated himself for
the momentary pang of regret. Mary didn't notice the raging
glare he briefly directed her way as he sat on the floor beside
the couch to hide his disgusting member from his innocent
daughter's eyes. _Aly was still innocent. It was Mary's fault,
not Alyson's, that I defiled my own daughter. Alyson is still
innocent, even if Mary isn't._
_Even if I'm not._
Alyson's voice was weak. "Daddy, can I have my necklace?"
He blinked. "Of course." He used the opportunity to pull
on his shorts, then brought the bright feather necklace to her.
The sight of it momentarily chased away the sadness that had
crept back into her features. Mary lifted Alyson's head while he
tied it around her neck. He adjusted it on her chest, carefully
avoiding any contact with her body through her yellow seersucker
blouse.
"Thank you," she whispered. She gagged, then said, "Keep my
shell safe for me?"
Mary sobbed around the words, "Of course we will, honey."
Doug wondered if Mare meant that, or if she'd throw it away
just like she'd thrown her daughter away.
Alyson gasped for air and then said, "I love you, Mom." Her
face grew sad and puckered for a kiss.
Afterward she puckered her lips, looked at Doug, and made
two weak grunts. Blinded by his tears he lowered his lips to
hers. "_MmmmmmmmMAH!_"
Alyson gasped for air. "G'night, Daddy. I love you."
Doug ran his index finger down the line of her wet jaw. He
couldn't tell which tears were hers and which were his.
Doug was barely able to force the words through his
constricted throat. "G'night... Pixie. I... I... love you."
Alyson smiled, almost happily. She slowly closed her eyes
and struggled to inhale.
She exhaled with a spasmodic cough.
And struggled to inhale again, taking in a shallow breath.
And exhaled...
...struggled for another breath...
...exhaled.
*****
The rescue medic froze in the cabin doorway and threw an arm
out to stop the others. He placed his equipment on the floor and
shook his head as he slowly moved into the living room, taking
great care to place his feet in the clear areas. He noted the
fish spine and the open medical kits, glancing at the contents of
the latter without touching them. He examined the girl's injured
foot, checked her eyes, and automatically felt for a carotid
pulse, though he knew it was too late. He knew from the fish
spine on the table. Again watching where he placed his feet he
checked the man, who was lying with his upper torso on the couch
and one arm draped over the girl, and woman lying on the floor a
few feet away. He grunted, glanced about in bewilderment, and
reached for his radio.
"Copter Four this is Medic Four. Shut it down and notify
the authorities that we have a female, approximately fifteen, who
appears to have died from stepping on a venomous fish; one
female, approximately thirty-five to forty, with a knife
protruding from her back and the blade apparently through her
heart; and one male, approximately thirty-five to forty, who
apparently bled to death from the stump of his severed penis.
The remainder of the organ appears to be inserted into the
woman's mouth. We will secure the scene and search the immediate
area for any survivors."
Copyright Russell Hoisington 2004
************************************************************
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