Nazanin

"Welp. You did. So come on," she said, checking her watch. "I wanna go grab lunch."

"Waffle House?" I asked, every time.

"No," she said, every time.

"What's wrong with Waffle House?" I asked, every time.

Chapter 10

It was a long few days of driving to get to Helena, Montana. A pleasant if mind-numbing majority of that was spent bearing west across South Dakota.

Naz finally let me take the wheel for a bit, so long as I stayed in the slow lane and cruised at the exact speed limit. She also refused to leave the cabin to hang out in the back of the camper while I drove, insisting instead on babysitting me from the passenger's seat. She had inherited Mom's worrywort gene, try as she might to distinguish herself from the woman she secretly adored.

Almost as if to convey mercy, Naz dressed a shade more conservatively. She wore a pair of gray soccer shorts and her favorite tye-dye pullover two days in a row. Neither of us showered during this two-day haul. Our mutual stink became more than a little much, but it also took on a homy, umami quality after we got used to it.

"What's this jagoff up to?" Naz wondered as a semi pulled gradually ahead of us, changed lanes in front of us, and then slowed down.

I was rolling the windows up, just to give my brain a break from the wind. It was a gusty day.

"Should I go around him?" I asked.

"Mmm, let's wait it out. He might be getting off."

Sure enough, he exited a minute later.

"Are these the Black Hills then?" I asked.

We drove quietly toward some pretty, green-gray hills.

"Maybe?"

We were both in the throes of road trip brain. Beautiful vistas came and went, usually by surprise, and while this was appreciated every time, it was seldom enough to distract either of us from the endless busywork of navigating interstate traffic.

But the pretty, hilly vista that appeared now, in what might have been the Black Hills, was different. It just kept going, and getting somehow prettier. The sky stretched out epic overhead, a shiny cloudy ceiling visible for miles as it wrapped over the horizon. Cloud breaks shone like holy rays. Amoebic blobs of sunlight crawled up and down great somber slopes that looked like they'd been dunked headfirst in gray blue fluff.

For a lovely stretch, we were the only vehicle we could see on the road. We wove along frictionlessly between foothills and through vast green dales, thinking similarly rambling, introspective thoughts and muttering, occasionally, our stuporous observations to each other.

"Feels like we're driving through a screensaver," Naz murmured.

"Huh," I agreed.

"It's so pretty," she said.

She rolled both our windows down again after a while, cranked up the tunes, and put her feet up on the dash. I noted that she'd painted her toenails white. With the oven-hot pummeling wind came back that old familiar deafness.

We crossed the Wyoming state line in the dark. We got into Sundance around midnight, refueled, restocked the fridge with gas station refreshments, and finally parted ways to our separate beds.

"Hey," Naz called out in the dark, a few minutes after we'd each turned out our lights.

"What?"

"I'm having fun with you."

"Okay," I loosed a little laugh as I laid looking up at the ceiling.

She didn't say anything else for a while.

I gazed now at the vent in the ceiling, at the exquisite grid of dots poked into it.

"Hey?" came her voice again.

"Yeah?"

"I love you, Bro."

This raised the hair on my neck and arms for some reason.

"I-love you, too, Sis."

"You excited to see Shan tomorrow?"

"I guess so. Are you?"

"I can't waaait," she yawned.

"Yeah?"

I supposed we were both still coming down from a serious case of road trip brain.

"So... good night?"

"Yep. Sleep tight."

Chapter 11

"Whoa," I yawned, poking my face into the windy ruckus of the cabin and seeing mountains for the first time in my life. "Mountains."

I don't think Naz heard me.

Naz had woken up early and begun driving again without waking me up. I had only just now come to on the rumbling pullout, drenched in sweat and geographically disoriented.

The majestic horizon distracted me, and so I was a little unprepared when I glanced down and processed what Naz was wearing.

Naz was driving barefoot again in nothing but a white sports bra and yoga shorts. The bright white spandex hugged her dark tan flesh and caused the soft musculature of her armpits, hips, and thighs to bulge inward near the elastic. The contrast between her dry, stretchily contained, neon white shapes and her sweat-damp naked brown shapes was almost too much to bear. She had camel toe, for christ's sake. Bright, white camel toe.

The morning wood I'd been attempting to suppress since I woke up rallied with a vengeance.

"Good morning, Little Bro!" she shouted above the wind.

"Morning," I shouted back. "Where we at?"

"Montana!"

Dry yellowy stretches of hilly, sparsely coniferous countryside billowed up and down for miles in all directions. Far away, they butted up against a jagged, snow-spattered line of honest to God mountains. These mountains disappeared and reappeared as we wound past sinusoidal dips and rises in the immediate Montana topography.

"We getting close?"

"Sorta. Few more hours."

The majority of Naz's bug bites had resolved. She had an array of little moles and marks here and there, like any human might, but was back to being otherwise direly unblemished.

I tore my gaze away. I scratched my scruffy chin.

I decided I had better get cleaned up and make myself presentable for Shan.

"I'm gonna' go clean up," I shouted, ready to get away from the effect my sister was back to having on me. "You need anything up here?"

"You making coffee?"

"Sure am. You need another fix?"

"Yeah, hook a girl up," she handed back her empty coffee cup.

"Aye-aye."

I brewed a pot, and handed Naz's cup, full and black, back up to her. One last unhappy look at the evil obviousness of my sister's nipples through the soft white sports bra. A cursory glimpse to the slight asymmetry of her camel toe. I resigned to masturbating while I was in the shower.

Afterwards, I enjoyed a few minutes of clear-headed respite. I shaved carefully, minding the texture of the road we were traveling on. I made faces at myself in the mirror. I splashed on aftershave.

I picked out my least road-trippy looking outfit. I really hadn't planned to dress remotely nice at any point on this trip. But I took my sweet time laboring over the right look.

I checked myself in the mirror outside the bathroom door. Did I look sexy in everything I wore? I peeked into my shorts and considered trimming my pubes.

The stovetop clock in the kitchenette told me I had over two hours before we arrived in Helena. Plenty of time for a trim. I headed back into the bathroom and, using an attachment on my electric razor, tidied myself up over the toilet. I'd sort of gotten used to the dirty-clean stench-scent of the bathroom by now.

I stepped back out into the camper half an hour later and, peeking to make sure Naz couldn't see what I was doing, pulled my shorts down to inspect my handiwork in the mirror. I had a weird thing for admiring my own cock in the mirror. I wasn't perhaps the best or fairest judge, but I happened to think my junk looked delicious.

My balls still harbored a few stray curlicues. I plucked these as I stood there, painfully but fastidiously. On the remote chance that Shan and I somehow wound up consummating our years-long crush on each other, my cock and balls would be making the very best first impression they knew how.

I found my usual seat at the diner table beside the kitchenette, opened up my sketchpad, and began drawing the Black Hills from memory. I may have added a somewhat sensuous, anatomical quality to the already voluptuous landscape.

I only stirred from my hyper-focused state when we slowed to a stop at the first red light we'd seen all day. I realized I was hungry. I paused my drawing. I stepped carefully through the camper toward the cabin as the vehicle started moving again.

I found my seat next to Naz and buckled in.

"You smell," she sniffed, raising an eyebrow over her aviators.

"Aftershave," I confessed.

Naz shot me a quick, judgmental look. She knew who I was trying to impress.

"This is Helena?" I asked.

"This is Helena."

Helena was a quaint touristy downtown with all sorts of little shops and cafes, nestled in the heart of a cozy green crater of pine forest and cliff-faces. It was a cloudless evening, and the sun was just starting to think about setting. One whole side of the basin was shady blue while the other side sizzled off-white.

An ornate showstopper of a church with two twin Notre Dame style bell towers poked out above all the other buildings in town, still very much in sunlight. I wondered if this was a churchy part of the country. Us Persian-looking folk weren't always 100% welcome in the company of church folk.

But I soon noted a somewhat reassuring measure of ethnic diversity. A smattering of multicolored pedestrians mingled among the whities poking in and out of storefronts, waiting at crosswalks, and feasting outside of popular eateries. I even spotted one woman in a sari and finally let myself relax into the passenger seat. My stomach gurgled.

"We stopping for dinner by any chance?" I asked, ogling another passing restaurant patio whose eaters were gorging on bison burgers.

"We're almost there. Shan said they'd feed us."

"They?"

"The ... people she's staying with," Naz answered a little too carefully.

"Oh?" I looked at her uneasily. I'd been conditioned to worry whenever I got the sense Naz was hiding something. "Who's she staying with?"

"People," Naz waved a dismissive hand. "I'm sure they're wonderful."

"Right," I nodded again. I decided to change tack and address the elephant in the room. "Are you ... going to change when we get there?"

Naz looked down at her body, then back at the road, then over at me, then back at the road.

"Let's see what the dress code is first," she arched an eyebrow at me.

Once again, I got the sense she knew something I didn't.

Naz cocked her jaw and gave me a sidelong glance. "You want to know something?"

"... What?"

"I think you like the way I'm dressed."

"Wow," I scoffed, but turning instantly beet red.

"What? Am I wrong? Have you not been staring relentlessly?"

We were driving now up a two-lane road through an evergreen wood. The scent of pine through the windows was sinus-clearing. I wish I could say it was dizzying so that I could have an excuse to dissociate from my nearly naked sister's line of questioning, but instead it was profoundly grounding.

"You think I look delicious in this outfit. So I'm wondering. Why would you ask me if I wanted to change?"

"Sis, you tell yourself whatever you need to to feel better."

"Pfffft," she snorted. "How about I tell you instead?"

"What?"

We braked at an ornately painted wooden structure on the side of the road. Just behind it, a lumpy dirt road veered up into the woods. Naz peered at it, momentarily distracted from her assault, as she was apparently about to attempt this narrow turn.

She pursed her lips, shook her head, and said fuck it.

"We're basically here," she put the gearshift in park. "Let's level with each other before you go trying to pretend to be normal around Shan."

She pulled off her aviators, folded them up, and tucked them into the visor overhead. "Because when we get to Shan's, well, you're going to wish we'd leveled with each other.

"Okay ...?" My heart rate suddenly jumped up to faster than I knew it could.

"You-" she pointed at me for some reason, "--think I'm-" she pointed at herself now, "--hot."

I shook my head.

"Yes you do."

I shrugged indignantly, feigning confusion and disgust.

"Fuck you. Yes you do."

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn't defensibly say no. She'd seen how I saw her I handed her my drawing of her. Instead of speaking, I just opened my closed my mouth.

"Ye-e-es," she said patronizingly and nodded like she was talking to a child. "Nod with me."

I nodded.

"There we go! And now let me blow your mind. I-" she pointed at herself again, "--think you-" she pointed at me now, "--are a fucking snack." And she slowly nodded again while pointing her finger at me to also nod. I nodded. Yes, she mouthed.

"Yes?" I mimed.

"So. There we have it. Now, let's level with each other."

"That wasn't? L-leveling with each other?"

"Not quite," she braced herself. She wrung her hands in her lap. "Here's the thing, Bro. Here it is. So, yeah, I actually know that you..." she swallowed nervously, then she gestured uncomfortably, first at her body, then at my crotch.

"Sis, what are you-?" I made a face and shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat as both our gazes fell to my admittedly obvious boner.

"I'm trying to figure out HOW to tell you this. Can you shut the fuck up a second?"

"M-maybe let's get to Shan's first, and then you can tell me. Whatever it is. Maybe after we eat?"

"So you. You don't take a lot of photos do you," she said accusingly, almost angrily.

"Uhhm." I puzzled at this. "I don't? Why? What does that have to do-?"

"Give me your fucking phone."

"What, no. Why?"

"Just give it here, fuckwad. There's something I have to show you," she still sounded nervous, like she was amping herself up for something. "And no, before you get all weird, I don't care if you have any dick pics in there. Like. On the contrary," she smirked, more to herself than me.

"I don't," I answered eagerly.

"GIVE IT," she barked.

I unlocked my phone and handed it to her.

"Thank you," she moved a piece of hair out of her face as she peered down at my photo app. When she found what she was looking for, she tapped it open. It began to play. It was a video. She winced at whatever she saw, and made a nervous noise. I flinched at this. What video of mine was so important all of a sudden?

Naz steeled herself and held it up to show me.

"Here," she tapped it and started it over from the beginning. "You were supposed to find it on your own. But, well. Here we are."

My eyes might have widened. My lips might have parted. My mind left my body.

My bushy, sparkly candlelit pubes were the first thing my eye landed on. The camera was trained on my naked, unconscious form on the highly recognizable rug of the shaman's garage. All the lights were off, but several candles had been lit in a circle around me. There was my Fresca.

Then the shaman appeared in frame, naked, and knelt down by my head. He told the camera person-Naz, presumably-to confirm something I couldn't quite make out. A second later, my hairy, flaccid junk was center-screen.

The shaman's hand reached into frame, grabbed my limp cock, and gave it a quick jiggle and a squeeze.

"Flaccid," he confirmed, glancing sternly at the camera.

Then he muttered something else, and the camera panned up to my face, stopping a little haphazardly when it was directly over me. Naz's bare feet, recognizable in an instant, entered the frame on either side of my head.

"The door is open," said the shaman with unpretending mysticism. And he placed his thumb and forefinger on my closed eyelids. "Show him first," said the shaman, and the camera tilted dizzily upside down, flashing past much nude, tan skin: my sister's naked body. Lit from below, shadows above her breasts and clavicle flickered and danced. What had happened to her pretty dress?

"Now back to me," said the shaman.

Speaking first at the camera, and then down to my slumbering face, the shaman explained: "Leo. Know this. I have already opened a door that both of you have only ever known to be shut. This door will remain open until such time as either of you wishes it closed again. Should it close, it will remain shut forever. I will not be able to open it a second time. And if it should lock before the Summer Solstice, then your brother will be well and truly lost.

"Now, LOOK," the shaman barked, and as the camera came down close to show my face, he pried my eyelids apart. My unconscious eyeball gazed up, un-seeing. The camera person then stood back up and angled the camera toward herself just far enough to show that, indeed, she was standing above my face with her legs parted. I could see the trapezoid shape in which my sister trimmed her pubes. Then she twisted at the hip, the screen wobbling for a second, so she could center the lens on my junk again.

My jaw dropped a little.

"BEHOLD THE ABSENCE OF SHAME!" the shaman wailed proudly. Like a horny magic trick, my cock stiffened rapidly on its own. I was reacting, presumably, to the unconscious sight of my sister's naked pussy.

"Oh my god," I heard Naz, off-camera, suppress a lusty laugh.

"Okay, go ahead and shut it off," the shaman spoke. "He'll be up soon. We should get everything back in-"

The video ended. The final frame was oddly similar to the first, the only difference being the state of my cock.

"Welp," Naz sighed, turning now with her knees off the side of the driver's seat, her bare feet bouncing nervously on the carpet between us. "There you have it."

"There I have ...?" My voice was strange in my head. I felt upside down. What the hell had I just watched?

"You don't remember passing out, huh?" she shrugged. "Well, you did pass out. There's the proof, if you wanted it. And while you were out, wellll," she bit her lip, seemed to need to dare herself to say this next part, then finally said it, "we miiight have participated in a little bitsy part of a ritual to bring our brother back from the dead."

"Itsy bitsy." I nodded blankly.

Then I nodded some more, and looked out the window at the big painted wooden monstrosity looming beside the dark dirt road we were about to turn onto. "Well, let's keep a move on, Naz. We don't want to keep Shan waiting."

"Leo," Naz said, and slapped her hand onto mine. She gripped it.

I flinched, violently, back to reality.

"Heyheyhey," she soothed. "It's okay. It's just me."

I did not want to look at her. Instead, I stared longer at the awful wooden structure out my window, noticing for the first time how fresh the paint looked. It looked like it had been painted just that morning. Pale yellows, greens, reds adorned eerie white designs.

Naz slapped the back of my hand. I jumped, spun my head around to look at her. She was leaning forward across the cabin at me now, seated side-saddle on the edge of the driver's seat, studying my face anxiously.

"Listen. I'm sorry about the video. The dude said it would be better to let you find the truth on your own than if I tried to tell you."

"Okay?" I said distantly.

"So much for that, though, right? But I have to admit, now, in hindsight, like. How on earth could that have been better? I mean. I guess you could have just like masturbated to it right away, instead of waiting for me to give you some space. But. Hey. Wake up. Look at me. Quit acting like this."

She slapped me, and then grabbed me hard by the chin. She was smiling wildly at me now, as if some great yoke had been lifted from the most virile part of her.

"I feel like you're missing the big picture, dingus. Because if you did see it, you'd be acting very, very differently."

That slap had put a couple neurons back to work.

"The shaman cast a spell on me," I muttered in monotone, my audible shock still just as odd to my ear as to Naz's.