Mommy Therapist: Family Counseling

I wondered now, peering through the window at the boy peering over the railing down into the tapir exhibit, how it might have felt to be that tapir. Like, what if I, the tapir, had been lugged out of the brackish water I spent my days in, led through the bland mucky door of my chamber, out into the sterile holding area, out further still into the employee area with its lockers and laminated signs, and then set free into the funny-smelling welcome area. I wondered how it might feel to be that same tapir, wandering back into the indoor jungle as a visitor, traipsing alone along the footpath, dodging children, admiring my freedom, sniffing at signs describing things I had not been taught to understand. I wondered how it might feel to arrive at the railing overlooking my empty bog. Would I feel okay?

Did I feel okay?

Jake, Lily reached across Bryce and put her hand on my knee. I guess I was crying. I was a crybaby now.

"That's my knee," I said.

Everybody was quiet. Mom saw to that, I think. She surely wanted everyone to let me "sit with this emotion," as she'd have put it. What emotion was I sitting with, anyway? I was sobbing, but I still felt free, and clear, and beautiful. I felt like the tapir on the walkway. Lily had her hand on my knee. Bryce had my hand in his. I felt really okay.

"So, Jake," Mom raised a professional eyebrow. "What happens to us now?"

"I don't know, Jennifer," I answered plainly. "I guess I don't even care?"

"I appreciate that you're using my first name so easily today."

"Yeah," I shrugged.

"And when you say you don't care what happens to us, I wonder what you mean by that?"

"I mean," I had to think for a moment. "Um."

I looked at my siblings. They looked at me. My sister's hand was small and a little clammy but warm. My brother's hand had been dry at first, but the longer he'd held my hand the sweatier we had gotten.

"Are you bothered that Lily and Bryce found out about you and me?"

"I'm not," I realized.

"Do you mind that your brother enjoys when you perform oral sex on him?"

"I love it," I smiled.

"So then, what do you not care about?"

"I don't care that Lily didn't say anything to me even though she suspected."

"Wow," Mom raised both eyebrows now. "That's big. Why don't you care about that?"

"Because," I looked at Lily now. I tried to see if she'd let me take her hand. She did, happily. "Because Sis. I think I'd have done the same. I worry about you all the time, how you don't talk and all, and but I don't say anything either. You know?"

She looked at me with a face far too complex for me to explain here.

"I worry all the time," I went on. "Like, I don't understand why you don't talk. I mean," ugh, ecstasy was getting in my way right now, "I'm okay with it. I love you. I love the way you are. But I guess what I mean is I don't understand why you don't talk to me. To me, Jake, your brother. I don't understand why you only talk to Mom. Do you know I haven't heard your voice in ten years? I can't even remember what you sound like! I miss you."

Lily and I were both crying now.

"I miss you, too, Lil," Bryce sobbed. He was crying, too, in between us.

Mom looked on, neutral but engaged.

Lily crawled over Bryce's lap and into mine. Yes the erection was a minor issue, but she just sort of sat sidesaddle on top of it, and then wrapped her slender, clammy arms around me.

She hugged me. I put one hand on her back and hugged her back. The other hand, Bryce kind of needed right now.

Shit. When was the last time Lily had hugged me? It felt primordially good. Big brothers do not simply "get" hugs from little sisters. We must earn such honors.

I could hear a sort of charging-up sound in my brain as Lily's love surged into me. She was refilling a battery I'd forgotten I even had. YES, was how it felt. I hugged her harder still, pressing her tiny frame against me, testing the limits of her skeleton. She grunted involuntarily, but sweetly.

But now, okay, the long, horny cock throbbing away under her ass was getting a little ridiculous to pretend to ignore. Her silky, sexy purple dress, her squishy, flexy butt muscles, and the image, still burned into me, of her having touched herself earlier in plain view of everyone present, were not exactly conspiring to help it go down, either. I gave Lily a gentlemanly pat on the back to signal that I was ready to conclude the hug.

She sat up, directing even more of her weight squarely onto my cock. This was not unpleasant. She bent forward and planted a kiss on my lips, then sat back and checked my facial reaction. I checked hers too. Have you ever pointed a camera at its own screen? We sort of fell into that kind of vortex.

"Lily, can I ask you to return to your seat, please?" Mom asked gently.

Lily climbed backwards off of me, walking her hands down my bare thighs as she dismounted, and stood up and stretched like the cute fucking thing she knew she was. My cock twitched sadly in her absence. Bryce patted it sympathetically. Lily returned to her seat beside Bryce.

Bryce, I noticed, was hard again. I wondered if Lily was hard, too. Or wet or whatever. Get off my case. I was high.

Mom stood and brought us each our own water bottle. Wow! My own water bottle!

I'd sort of neglected to consider how horribly parched I was. I think Lily and Bryce had, too. For the next minute or so, the only noises in the room were the three of us gulping and chugging, and the plastic of the bottles crackling as we vacuum-sucked them empty.

Mom sipped her own water bottle.

"Can we kiss?" Bryce asked nonchalantly.

"Consensually, sure," Mom nodded.

Bryce looked at Lily. Lily shook her head no. Bryce looked at me. I shrugged, then nodded. We kissed. Our mouths were extra wet and still very freshly chilled. It was erotic as fuck.

Bryce shoved his big stupid tongue in my mouth like he owned the place. My own tongue was like, okay whatever babe, fuck me hard. We wrestled this way in the dark of each other's mouths. His tongue was rougher than Mom's, his taste buds coarser or something, and his spit was, I don't know, manlier? I'm sure my own still resonated with his cum. He clearly didn't mind.

His hand drifted up my thigh and down into my crotch. A few searching fingers poked clumsily into and then began grazing and caressing my cock. He pulled me harder into the kiss, and I pushed eagerly in. I moaned around our tongues. He sort of grunt-laughed, too, his breath billowing into my mouth, pushing into my throat. He took my hand with his free hand, trailed it across both our thighs on its way toward his own cock. The pig. I guess we were doing this?

He started jerking me off. I started jerking him off. Twin-sync.

Our tongue-wrestling became kissing, became pecking, and then panting, and finally moaning and groaning, our mouths still sort of pressed together but haphazardly. His tongues still darted out here and there, licked my face, or thrust back into my mouth for a quick taste of me (and him). Our teeth would clack occasionally from his recklessness.

Was I supposed to cum? I was having kind of a hard time getting close. Bryce was doing wonderfully enough. He was a little rough, but he'd obviously had practice. Why wasn't I getting close? And how about while Lily her incredibly cute butt planted on my cock. Shouldn't I have come at some point there? Or the instant Bryce had shot his load into my throat, after I'd been dry humping the floor that whole time?

"Now wait a minute," Mom interrupted.

"What?" Bryce and I asked in breathless unison. We each relaxed our cock-milking motion, but didn't let go of each other's cocks. Bryce's cock whimpered in my grip.

"I appreciate what I'm seeing," Mom affirmed. "But I want us to pause and just sit with this for a moment, okay?"

"Can we keep, like—" Bryce joggled my cock in his fist, "—while we 'sit with this'?"

"How about we don't," Mom replied. "I want us to sit with this feeling: the feeling of the chase, rather than the feeling that you're chasing."

I sort of swooned. Mom could be so fucking articulate. Like I always said, the skillfulness of her tongue, its sheer intellectual bandwidth, was something that really did heighten making out with her. Or getting head from her. Gosh, I really was lucky, wasn't I?

Bryce was fun to make out with too, in a rough 'n' tumble sort of way. Kissing him was like wrestling in the back yard. At any moment I half-expected him to trap me in a half-nelson. Shit, I wanted him to.

"So, how is this feeling?" Mom asked.

"Uhh, it's great?" Bryce laughed.

"I'm not complaining," I echoed.

Lily gave Mom the A-OK gesture. She was sitting with her legs folded under her, with nothing on display but her general adorability.

"I'm hearing positivity," Mom nodded. "But I'm curious if we've thought about tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?" Bryce asked. When he spoke, for whatever reason, it heightened my attention to his hand on my cock. Probably because it distracted him from it.

"Tomorrow is tomorrow," Mom answered matter-of-factly. She spoke with her hands, now, for added effect. "Tomorrow we wake up sober and capable of worry. We will have to reckon with fear, anger, and shame. Tomorrow, the grand wheel of emotions resumes turning. This worry-free feeling you two are enjoying will be gone. I want to make sure we all understand this, even while I urge us to enjoy the present. Can we do both?"

"Jesus," Bryce said, still rock hard, but as close to bothered as I'd heard him in the last hour.

Wait, what time was it?

I checked Mom's fancy minimalist therapy clock. It had been only 45 minutes. I had gone from terrified, to fully revealing Mom's dark secret, to mutual masturbation with my twin brother: in 45 minutes. I made a mental note to give myself a high-five later.

"So?" Mom said quizzically. "What do we plan to do tomorrow?"

"Are you asking if, like, we plan to keep jerking each other off?" Bryce wondered. He really could sound impressively dumb. If Mom decided to continue seeing him one-on-one as a client, he'd have a hell of a time. I gave his cock a single gentle pump in my fist.

"Not quite. Rather, I'm assuring you that when you and Jake wake up tomorrow morning in your bedroom—and I would urge you two to resist the urge to sleep in the same bed tonight—you will, I promise, feel badly about how today unfolded. I want for us to expect this now, ahead of time, so that we can prepare mentally, and emotionally, for what we plan to do."

"Jennifer?" I raised my free hand. "If I may?"

"Sure, Jake."

"You raped me twice a week, every week, for the last I don't know how many months. I never had to wait for any tomorrows to feel the consequences of that. I can tell you that rape and incest, yeah, it's really fucked up. Really really fucked up. I dreamed every night, every night, that someone would find out, like Bryce or Lily, and but instead of helping, they would be disgusted by me. My whole dream I would just chase them around trying to apologize, and like, keep us from falling apart. Every night for months I had this dream."

The room was quiet again. Bryce had let go of me.

"And then I wake up and reality is somehow worse. Reality is my mom is raping me. Reality is nobody knows, and nobody can find out."

Tone is a difficult thing to convey in text, so let me explain to you reader, that despite all this heavy drama and use of italics, I delivered this monologue actually rather chipperly. Because ecstasy.

"I like where you're going with this," Mom nodded thoughtfully. "Please, go on."

"Bryce," I continued, apparently needing to continue. I looked at Bryce.

"Lily," I said. I leaned forward, acknowledging my sister.

She blushed at me. Waved hello. Um, okay. (Shit, did she have a crush on me all of a sudden?)

I cleared my throat. "Right, so. My point is. I think Mom's—I mean Jen—is talking about reality. She says tomorrow, but she means every day from now on. And I suppose, sure, maybe she'll let us try ecstasy again someday? I mean, none of us would say no to that, right?"

"More please," Bryce said politely to Mom.

Lily snapped her fingers once in agreement.

"Right. So Jen, for the record, please drug us again at your leisure."

Mom raised an eyebrow. "Get back on topic," she advised.

"Right, sorry. Thing is, guys, we can't count on her doing that again anytime soon. Or ever. You guys don't know her like I do, okay? Once she knows you love something, she's never going to let you have it again." I looked to Mom again. She was making the exact same face as before. "So we need to understand, even while we're in this—" I pointed at my naked cock "—state of mind, that from now on we are victims of something. Okay? You guys are like me now. Mom is planning to abuse us. This is abuse. About which, um, I guess I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I can't feel it right now with the drugs, but it usually sucks immensely, being abused. Living with this twisted family secret. But gosh. I'm also really, really happy to welcome you to the club. It's the shittiest club imaginable. But at least neither of you will be the only member like I was. That was... That was rough."

"We're victims?" Bryce asked. "Of what exactly? Sorry, I zoned out."

Lily shook her head and slapped him on the arm.

"Well, incest is technically illegal, for starters," I tried. "So technically, we're victims of each other."

Bryce shrugged. "Fuck that. I like incest, dude." He started pulling at my cock and watching my face squirm with distracted delight. "And yep, you do too."

"R-right," I chuckled bashfully. "But there's also the sexual abuse component. You said it yourself: Mom did wrong. She did a crime. Today, right now, we're too high to give a shit. But tomorrow, we will give more of a shit than we know what to do with. Tomorrow we'll understand that Mom really is a monster, and that our family is now fucked."

Lily shifted in her seat, unfolded her legs and stretched them out over Bryce's lap and mine. Sweet heavenly fuck, her feet were cute. I could smell them: sweetly acrid, like a fruit-forward vinegar. Before this afternoon I was not a foot guy. In this moment, I was Lily's foot guy.

"Lily," I tried.

She squirmed, letting her skirt ride up just a tiny bit. She played her toes into my thigh, squiggling them playfully. She looked at me. Yes?

"Jake, I appreciate what you're trying to say," Bryce said, groping me again. "I really do, bro. Tomorrow and forever we are going to hate ourselves for—" he suddenly leaned over and kissed, tongued, the head of my cock, then kept his head down there as he spoke, "—this. And especially if it goes further than this, gosh, who knows how, like, traumatized we'll be." He made a melodramatic moaning sound as he rubbed my cock all over his lips, his cheeks, his forehead. He got little smears of my precum in his eyebrow and on the side of his nose. "Sooo traumatized," he croaked, "ohhh."

"Right, like I said—" I struggled, trying to stay cool as I watched my twin dab my cock like a makeup brush all over his face. I have to admit, each little feature felt different, so the whole gag was distractingly interesting. His eyebrow on my cock, his nose on my cock, his ear on my cock. But I felt compelled to be stoic. Bryce giddily playing with his very first cock, mine no less, made me feel like I had to pretend to be the cool one while his guard was down. Then Mom spoke up.

"Like he said," she picked up where I left off. "I am an abuser. I abuse Jake, sexually and emotionally. He is also not incorrect about my cruelty. I freely admit, I enjoy mistreating the ones I love. I'm being nice today because, first of all, I'm feeling nice today, watching my children all get along so well. But also, because I was not lying when I said I intended to moderate this session to the best of my ability."

"Mom?" I asked.

"Jennifer," she reminded me.

"Shit, sorry. Jennifer?"

"Yes, Jake?"

"Why did you pick me?"

"Pardon me?"

"Why was I the only one you picked on all this time? And why did you choose today to—" Well, Bryce was now actively sucking my dick, and being noisy about it on purpose, "—do this?"

If Mom was going to allow this, then I was going to put my hands on Bryce's head and joined the up and down rhythm, adding playful pressure here and there to let him know I was having fun. He chuckled, then gagged mid-chuckle, then grunted to let me know he was okay. Bryce liked a good challenge. Which was great for me. I ran my fingers through his hair, like he'd done for me.

Mom sat back and cocked her jaw to one side. This was her impressed face. I had asked a good question. That's right I fucking had. This question had tormented me. Hurt me. Raped me.

"I like that question," she smiled.

"I'd love an answer if you have one." It's easy to act confident when someone is giving you oral sex.

"The truth, honey? Is that I saw you as the most receptive to therapy."

"Receptive?" I repeated, sincerely confused. And possibly about to cum. Jesus, Bryce.

"There's no point in denying that I did it for me," she stretched now, arms way up, legs way out, toes splayed. Then she recomposed herself. "I'm a monster. Does it ... help you to hear me say that?"

"I—" Did it? "I don't know?"

"Well, I am a monster, and an awful mother to boot. This much is moot. You know better than anyone."

"I do," I said, feeling something in the pit of my belly where rage typically burbled, but it was as though someone had thrown open the window, scrubbed everything clean, and was now drawing a warm bath.

"Another unfortunate, irrefutable truth is that I am sexually attracted to you, Jake. And to you, Bryce. And to you, Lily. I do not choose to be, but I am." Mom put a hand to her breastbone, splayed her fingers, and looked momentarily fascinated by something we couldn't see. "Wow, my heart is beating fast right now." She laughs. "I'm nervous, you guys!"

"Are you alright?" I asked, also laughing. The warm bath in my belly was a bubble bath. Possibly large enough for four.

"I believe I am, yes. I'm just so anxious all of a sudden. My body insists that I address this anxiety." Mom looked suddenly purposeful again. "I need to hear from all three of you, now that I've told you about my sexual attraction to you. This is something that I've kept hidden for so long: please, tell me where you stand."

"We're high on ecstasy, Mom," Bryce said, taking a breather from my cock to massage his cheek muscles. "You know you're welcome to join me over here."

"Bryce, I appreciate you. But I need you to be serious for a moment. I have just told you that I am sexually attracted to you. Tell me where you'll stand on that tomorrow," she insisted.

I noticed she had missed Bryce's misuse of "Mom." She was nervous.

"Bryce, sit up man. Listen to Mom. I'm too distracted to cum."

"Shit," he sighed, but sounded relieved, and sat up rubbing his neck. "I was enjoying myself. For the record."

"I know you were, you big sexy fuck. You were trying to upstage me."

"Why wouldn't you cum for me?"

"Boys," Mom interjected.

"Because Mom is telling me things I never knew. This is stuff I have wondered—no, needed to know about for a long time." I looked intently at my handsome brother. I put my hand on his stupid face. I wiped my precum out of his eyebrow, and off of his nose.