A Taste of Incest - Spirits

Judi stood and walked around the campfire. She knelt next to her brother's outstretched legs and patted his jeans. She needed both hands to unzip him. She reached inside and massaged his quickly-rising cock.

"Yeah, you're a real sucker for me. Or, well, I'm your sucker."

She leaned over and deep-throated her brother as she had at the séances but much more quickly. She pulled him from her mouth and grinned.

"Yeah, you're still okay. Now put that thing away and let's hear the next story."

Jaime sheepishly tucked himself into his pants and took another slug of beer.

Pipe and bottles continued to circulate.

Elena exhaled her hit of Candyland. "Guess it's my turn," she said. "I've got to warn you -- it's not as funny as Jaime and Judi's story. It still creeps me out."

----- ELENA'S TALE -----

My younger brother Esteban's longtime girlfriend Layla had just broken up with him -- and he felt like shit. They were virtually inseparable since grade school. Then she went to college and met smooth, wealthy Hassan, and dumped Steve.

He slipped into terminal moping mode. What a fucking pain.

I hated his hang-dog-ism. Could I fix him? Find him another girl? No, he needed time to recover first -- no good to spread his misery around. Distract him with games or some shit like that? No, he ignored me. Provoke some real-world crisis? Yeah, sure, make things worse for him -- THAT would do the trick, right? NOT!

After a couple weeks, enough was enough. He was hunched over on the couch. I grabbed his ears to focus his attention.

"Listen up, kid." I shook his head. He scrunched his face. I shook him again. "You are the greatest bring-down in recent planetary history. This stops, NOW. You sit here all day, all by yourself, wallowing in blame and self-pity. This sucks. SUCKS. So, we are getting away from here. Breathe some new air. See new things. Think new thoughts. Pull your head out of your ass and smell the fucking petunias."

"Oh, leave me alone. My life is over. Nothing is left. I'll just eat worms and die."

He pinched my hands and freed his ears. I grabbed his head and forced him to look at me. His gray eyes seemed filmed-over with masochistic despair.

"You'll eat something and die but it won't be worms. Look, this is how it's going to be. We ARE getting away from here. You WILL have new experiences. And it starts right now. I called our offices and arranged time off. I booked us into a house on the coast for the weekend. Sure, I know it's Hallowe'en, but you're not fit for any parties, or anything esle, are you?"

Esteban sighed.

"Okay, okay, I'll go with you to bumfuck wherever-it-is. Just stop torturing me."

"ME torture YOU? Ha! It's all self-inflicted, kid. C'mon now, stand up. Remove head from anus. Go sit in the car. You don't have to do fuck-all else, just sit down and shut up. Well, take a piss first, then move out. I'll pack your stuff for you and everything else we'll need. Now GO!"

He rose. He aimed himself at the door. He stood silently. I put my foot against his ass and shoved, not too hard.

He moved slightly. "Okay, okay, I'm going," he whined. I shoved again. He went.

We drove to the coast under cloudy skies. Steve mostly laid against the headrest, eyes closed, mouth slack -- not unconscious, just brain-dead. What a pissant.

I chattered.

"So this house we're going to, it's an old classic, out on its own little peninsula, very private, very atmospheric, and real cheap. I was surprised at the great rate we got. The nearest cheap motel costs twice as much. You'll love it."

No response.

"The website said it has rich European decorations and actual antique furniture and even a ghost story or two. Strange shapes in mirrors and windows, and sounds when nobody's there, stuff like that. And there's the hedge maze where people go in and never come out."

Still no response.

"Then there's the playroom filled with sadomasochistic toys like chains and leather straps and even branding irons and a Procrustrean rack. There's supposed to be a were-wolverine den under the house, right next to the bottomless-pit bat cave ."

Finally, a reaction.

"Ain't no were-wolverines. That's just in X-Men, and he's not even a shape-shifter."

Well, it was better than nothing.

"Look, it's a new environment. We're away from everything tying you to the past. This place has its own past and you can jump off into your future from there. Dump all your bad memories, just like that bitch dumped you."

Another reaction. Esteban tensed and sat up.

"Don't call her that! She's..."

He fell silent, and leaned back, and closed his eyes again.

"Yeah, she was yours forever, and now she's not. That's life. Life fucks you over and then you die. Just don't be in a hurry. She's not coming back, right? Right?"

Again, no response.

"She's not coming back, and you're not going back. There's nowhere back there for you to go. If you stay where you are you'll only drown yourself in pain. You can't go back and you can't sit still, so you might as well move forward, right? Fuck, you're a programmer -- it's only applied logic. Use your fucking logical head."

My brother snorted but said nothing.

"So you'd rather whine and snivel and cry and crawl up your navel and play with yourself from the inside, right? What a wussy! How'd I ever get a brother like you? You're from some different genepool. Maybe they found you under a cabbage. Maybe your head is a fucking cabbage."

I reached over and slapped his cheek. He sat up and glared at me.

"That's right, wake up. You can go commit hari-kiri after the weekend. Until then, you're stuck with me and our little retreat. Get used to it."

I refueled at the last town before the turnoff through the coastal mountains to the remote house. The directions I printed from Google Maps were not the clearest. I asked the Quik-E-Mart's clerk about the route.

"You're going WHERE? The old McTavish house? Why you want to go THERE?"

"Umm, well, I rented it for the weekend, and..."

"A weekend, huh? Well, maybe you'll last that long, and maybe you won't. The place is haunted, you know that, right?"

"Sure, the website talked about ghosts and weird sights and sounds, and..."

"And I bet it didn't tell you 'bout the McTavishes and why they ain't there no more."

"Well, no, not really..."

"Let me tell ya," the fat woman said, spewing a stream from her tobacco chaw into a spittoon behind the counter and wiping her mouth on her plaid flannel sleeve, "it's just a damned place. I mean DAMNED, like go-to-hell. And all because of jealousy. You got a couple minutes? I'll tell ya the story."

I leaned against the counter. Might as well hear the local legend, I thought.

"It was nigh on fifty years ago. Melinda McTavish was going to marry herself a rich guy, Dylan Davis, heir to the Davis Dynamite fortune. She'd always been real, real close to her brother Morgan. Morgan never got along with Dylan -- thought he was too pedestrian. The McTavishes had been old, old money, but their family went broke, so they needed the Davis money.

"Yeah, Morgan and Melinda were close. Maybe too close. Morgan felt Dylan was a tawdry interloper. And Morgan was jealous, so very jealous of him.

"Dylan Davis built his fiancée the big fancy house on the sheer clifftop with formal gardens and hedges and grottos and everything." She unloaded another brown stream into the spittoon.

"But Dylan was... oh, a bit twisted, sexually. Into funny sex games, I dunno, we hear rumors but they're not for repeating. Something about Dobermans... Anyway, Morgan thought Dylan was playing too weird with Melinda, besmirched his sister's honor. So Morgan challenged Dylan to a duel.

"Morgan didn't stand a chance. Dylan had trained with firearms since he could walk. Hey, his family made explosives! The guys strolled out past a grove of oaks to the dueling grounds with their seconds. Melinda stood watching from the house's widow's walk. She heard two shots.

"When she saw one figure walk out of the oaks, and the figure was Dylan, Melinda knew her loving brother was dead, dead, dead. She screamed -- and she threw herself over the railing, down to the surf-swept rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

"Except Morgan WASN'T dead. He missed, and Dylan's shot went through his shoulder. Dylan walked away in satisfaction while the seconds bandaged Morgan, who emerged from the oak grove just in time to hear his sister's scream and see her plunge from the house. He ran to the clifftop and saw her body on the rocks. He yelled, and jumped after her. The next big wave washed their bodies away. They were never found."

I shuddered. Damn, that was a tragic tale!

"Dylan left and never returned, never went into the house again. Took his damn Dobermans with him. His family trust owns it and pays for maintenance and tries to sell it, but nobody ever stays longer than overnight. People talk, say they see and hear ghosts calling to each other, searching for each other, opening doors and windows and secret panels, pushing furniture around, the works.

"Yeah, nobody stays beyond overnight. At least, nobody is ever seen there a day later. Maybe some just run and no-one sees'em. And maybe... some can't leave."

Ah, now that was a good ghost story! Very traditional. Lonely, lost spooks. Haunted house. Vanishing visitors. Didn't I hear that one in Girl Scout camp when I was a kid?

"Thanks, but we'll give it a try," I said, gathering my purchases: rotisserie-roasted chicken, canned food, wine, local maps.

"Got any next of kin we should notify?" the clerk asked.

I shrugged and threw her a business card.

"Call my office if I'm not back in a week, okay?"

We found the house. It was goddam imposing. A jet-black and navy-blue three- or four-story Victorian (depending on where you started counting floors) lurked at the edge of a sheer ocean cliff above deadly rocks. Wild-looking hedges and gardens had gone feral. The sun setting behind thick dark clouds left the whole place in shadow. Yes indeed, it sure LOOKED like a haunted house!

I dragged Steve and our stuff inside. We explored and found all the living space we needed on the ground floor: two bedrooms and baths, kitchen and dining, parlor and billiard room and well-stocked library. We unpacked and explored further.

Museum-quality black-oak furniture filled the rooms. The upstairs rooms looked mothballed with everything covered in protective sheets. That was okay; we did not need the space, not just for the two of us.

We climbed to the roof and its widow's walk. The landward sides overlooked the hedge maze, the overgrown formal gardens, the carriage houses and guest houses and other outbuildings. The ocean side looked straight down the sheer cliff and its deadly rock base. Melinda's jump looked all too easy.

A stack of seasoned logs fed the greatroom's massive fireplace. I resisted an urge to light oil lamps. I threw together an easy dinner of roast chicken and cob-corn, potato wedges, deli-counter cole slaw, and red wine. Lots of red wine. We needed the wine. Well, *I* sure did.

We ate and drank and almost talked a little. We gazed into the blaze till late. I said goodnight to my little brother. I donned flannel pajamas and crawled into my bed.

And I heard things and saw things. Things that were not right, not normal, not human. Not just things going BUMP in the night, but that howled into the night, into the empty black sky, the far reaches of the uncaring universe. Into Hell.

I do not frighten easily, and Steve is not exacty the Rock of Gilbralter, protection-wise. But I was SCARED. I ended up in my brother's occupied bed.

Steve's pajamas were thin cotton. His socks were thick. His attitude was... dismissive.

"No, of course I don't mind. Just shut up and let me sleep."

Fat chance. And, not my fault. The things I saw and heard earlier followed me in. And they dove inside me, and inside Esteban.

Ghosts.

Spirits that took us.

Spirits that filled us with their agony and their love.

I saw Morgan first. Wiry like a runner, handsome as a leopard, he looked like an advert for the CIA (which did not exist when he was born). I knew this was Morgan because I was already possessed by Melinda.

I saw Melinda's face, not mine, reflected in Morgan's eyes. Esteban's eyes. The eyes of Esteban possessed by Morgan. I saw Steve's consciousness held captive behind the terrible reflection of Melinda's stunning immortal beauty hovering in his masculine eyes. My brother and I were trapped inside our own bodies.

I could not move. Oh sure, my body moved, but Melinda pulled the strings, not me. I could tell Morgan moved Steve's body. Damn! I could not even scratch my nose.

"Morgan, finally," Melinda whispered, "we're together finally! After all those years, all those people, none of them the right people. Oh Morgan, we finally have the right people! We need never part again."

My hackles would have risen if I'd had control just then. What was she saying?!

"My darling sister, yes," Morgan rasped, "together at last, with the right bodies. All those others were wrong. None of them were brother and sister. We were not compatible, like transfusions with the wrong blood type. No wonder they all died or went mad or fled!"

"Yes, dear brother. Our love can only survive when we're of the same blood, the same heritage. None of the others were close enough. We had to reject them all. But THESE two..."

I saw the desperation in Steve's consciousness. What would they do to us, with us? But, like me, my brother was trapped and impotent.

Melinda embraced Morgan and kissed him. A lover's kiss, not a sister's kiss. Morgan stroked Melinda's face and neck while their tongues danced a genetic ballet. His hands moved down her body, and hers found his. Hands drifted over taut skin and tight muscles, into creases and spaces, and back to faces. And then to buttons.

The ghostly siblings undressed each other. My brother and I could only witness the mating ritual. We could not speak or protest or interfere. Lovemaking proceeded.

I could feel but not control my body. I felt his lips on my face, my neck, my breasts... oooh, what his tongue and lips did to my breasts! I felt my hands on his biceps, his hips, his butt, and then his swelling cock. His magnificient cock. I felt his mouth worship my breasts forever while his fingers eased inside me, teased and probed me, drew patterns around my clitoris. I screamed silently.

My silent screams ran off-scale when his deathless tongue craftily replaced his tidy fingers at my immortal pussy. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck...

I heard Melinda scream to the leering, laughing stars, the obscene voyeur galaxies -- those insane gods, gibbering and chanting and mirthlessly, mindlessly tittering.

And I screamed when Melinda shifted around into a 69 atop her brother, my brother, our brother. My brother's cock in my mouth. My brother's tongue at my clit. My brother's heart at my heart.

Do mortals possess souls? I do think so. Where are those souls located? They are mapped inside our auras, I am sure. And how do they enter and leave mortal bodies? I think I know now. I think I sucked Morgan's and/or Steve's soul into me through his penis. I think he sucked my soul, our souls, away through my vagina.

Soul-sucking did not drain us -- it filled us.

I felt filled with souls, with my own and Melinda's and Morgan's and Esteban's and more. Other spirits rode in while mouths kissed genitals and sucked souls. I heard echoes of old souls, souls who came to this house and tried to escape, who could not break free. More trapped souls, like Steve's and mine.

He brought us to climax more than once. We sucked him to the brink, and then slowed, and took him to the brink again, and back, over and over, an endless cycle of stimulation, temptation, and desperation.

We shifted again and I screamed once more. We opened my legs. He lay on me and entered me (smoothly!) and filled me. In. Out. In and out. In-out-in-out-in... Our brothers' cock inside us, pumping in an immortal rhythm, forever and ever, world without end. Love without end.

And yet, everything ends. Maybe it begins again. Maybe SOMETHING begins when something ends. Our eternity ended with a bang. Not the Big Bang... well, probably not. Not in this universe, anyway. Is every bang a Big Bang in the quantum froth of the multiverse? Does every action create a new universe? String theories say so.

Our eternity ended with a bang, an ejaculation, a spewing of molton matter into a willing recepticle. Their sperm shot into me. I hungrily drew it in and cherished it. I was on The Pill? No matter; magical sperm are more potent than hormones. And more potent than mere sensation. Melinda and I climaxed to consume universes. Esteban and Morgan filed the void with new universes. And I was fertilized -- a goddess.

I felt it happen. I felt gametes merge into zygote and cleave into blastomeres and gastrula and beyond. Embryogenesis sped on a madly accelerated time scale.

Was that merely a distorted sensation of our intertwined selves? No. All those souls trapped within us freed themselves by following the flow into my womb. All those souls filled the new embryo, whose name is Legion.

And I mean ALL those souls! Melinda and Morgan screamed together in an ecstatic harmonic chorus of joy and joining. They joined together, and joined all the other souls, and flowed into me.

And Esteban and I were alone together, unpossessed by spirits, all on our own -- and locked in a lovers' embrace.

Our eyes locked together. I locked my legs around his back. I locked him into me. We rocked together, again and again, while the grandfather's clock next to the great room's fireplace chimed midnight, Hallowe'en.

We slept entwined. We woke with the dawn, my brother's erection still inside me, still pumping fruitless sperm, still joining us into one inseparable being.

We eventually rose and cleaned and dressed and ate and talked and kissed and undressed and fucked and fucked yet again. We spent the day in bed, and the night, and the next day. We only left for bothersome biological necessities. We spent the whole long weekend loving each other forever.

I drove into the same Quik-E-Mart the morning we left. The fat old tobacco-chewing gal jumped when Steve and I walked through her door.

"What?! You're back?! Did you actually stay in the McTavish place, or did you sneak off to a motel?" She eyed me suspiciously. "You had more sense than to stay there, didn't you?"

"We stayed, we saw, we conquered," I laughed. Steve picked out snacks for our ride home... or, to what had been home. "Guess what? We scared the ghosts away! I can't tell you more now, but just wait, we'll be back -- when we buy the place."

You've heard the cliché, "she looked at me like I'd grown a second head"? Well, she did. Exactly like that. I laughed again.

"The curse is broken. The ghosts are gone. Nothing to see here, move along."

We drove off to a new beginning.

-----

A cold bottle of Colt Malt found its way to Elena's hands. She drank deeply, wiped foam from her mouth, passed the bottle on, and leaned back against her brother and lover Esteban. Their daughter Tyra slept in her father's arms.

"The Davis trust was glad to dump the place at a really good price. We got the deal of the century. And it cleaned up pretty nice. The gardens are trimmed and the hedge maze doesn't eat people. Usually," Esteban said. "We turned it into a B&B. It still has the reputation of being haunted, so we've set up a mini-son et lumière rig to provide nice, safe ghosties and ghoulies and things bumping in the night. The city folk LOVE it! Each room has its own haunting. All quite organized, yes."

Sara took the next hit of Candyland. Smoke dribbled from her nostrils.