- Incest/Taboo
- Secret No Longer Ch. 17
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Click here[ Dear Readers:
If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.
Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.
Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.
In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]
Chapter 17
Waiting for the Axe to Fall
"You were right, Jannie; you were so right," I said. Several days had passed since the shocking discovery that Fred was aware of Jason's and my misbehavior, enough that I had found a little bit more energy and was getting a little bit more rest. Not much, but enough to help. "You now have my official permission to say I told you so."
"I told you so," Jannie said, affecting a stern scowl for a while before breaking up with a laugh. "Didn't expect that, now did'ja? Eh?"
"The truth be told, no," I said, managing a hint of a laugh myself, "though knowing you, I should have."
"Now it's you that's turning mind-reader, Lin," said she, glancing slyly over her coffee cup.
"If I do, I'll have learned from the Master, Jannie."
"I humbly acknowledge your praise. No, correct that: not humbly at all," she quipped. "And so now, Linda, the doctor is in. Please lie on the stereotypical couch no therapist since Freud has ever used and pour out your soul."
"There's a hell of a lot to pour, Jannie, and it all smells. Better be ready."
"Ready I am."
"It's the waiting, Jannie, the questions. The uncertainty. Sometimes I think I'd rather hear the worst possible news, as long as I can hear it now. This delay is killing me. Killing us both, really."
"Yes, but consider the good side, Lin. All this time Fred is getting over the shock. He's processing it all. He's thinking, Lin, and decisions that are thought out are worth waiting for."
"Then, Jannie, be honest. Do you think that after he had the chance to simmer down and think it all over, that he'll want to come home and try to put our family back together?"
I did not like the time Jannie required to choose her answer, nor did I like the answer once it came.
"Linda," she replied, very quietly and carefully, "I would give a lot for the power to answer that question the way you want it answered. Right now, I am unwilling to even give you odds one way or the other."
I knew she was right, but the words cut through me like ice shards in a blizzard.
"I'll say this much, though, and it may give you some hope. When I think of all the men I know, or have known, and imagine them in Fred's situation, there are only two whom I'd expect to try to salvage the wreck. One is my Sammy. And the other, as you might have guessed, is Fred."
"Oh, please be right about that!"
"Sure, but you'd better be prepared for me to be wrong about that, Linda."
"I'll never be prepared for that, Jannie," I whispered. "Never."
It was after 10:30 PM when the phone rang. It was Jannie.
"Linda, got a few minutes? I'd like to come over."
"Of course. I'll open the back door."
In moments she was seated in Fred's easy chair. I took my place on the sofa.
"Linda, you'll be delighted to know that I'm joining Sammy back east for a vacation in D.C."
"That's great, Jannie," I said, trying to inject a little enthusiasm into the words. She read the effort and seemed to take it as a sign of success at some little game.
"Thrilled, Linda? I can hear it in your voice."
"Uh, yeah..."
She laughed heartily, and I felt better, but still confused.
"What I really mean is, Linda, that I'm going back there to join Sammy. What I hope I can do is, with your help, find some things to say to Fred that will help. Fred has tackled all of this heroically, Linda, nothing less than heroically, and Sammy has been there to help him with that. Now, maybe, I might be able to add something to the process, things that come more easily, or maybe more convincingly, from me than from Sammy, or even you."
"Would you? Really?" I said, greatly encouraged by the idea of her as my advocate, though I had no idea what she might be able to say or do in that capacity that would help things.
"Really," she said softly.
"Thank you so much!" said I, rising to give her an embrace, then returning to my place on the sofa and continuing a bit more somberly, "But then...well...what do you think you can do? I mean, what's the best thing you can do, or say, or..."
"Relax, Linda, we don't have to find all the answers right away. Let's just brainstorm a bit here."
I nodded.
"One thing to work on is helping him avoid catastrophizing. He doesn't know how all this came to pass and what was going on in your mind and Jason's when the avalanche began. The truth is in your favor. If he thinks all this was some coldly calculated intention to exploit his absence for the sake of illicit fun, that is obviously a very serious and harmful misconception. Make him understand how all this kind of crept up on you emotionally and that looks better."
"True enough, Jannie. Go on."
"The better he understands how torn you were between your two drives, the more he'll realize how strongly your love for him was fighting for its side of the war. Remember how you put it that day?"
I did; I could almost replay it verbatim:
"The horrible thing about all this is that there are two opposing passions burning inside me now. No way do I love Fred any less, and no way would I ever willingly indulge myself against him. I swear that to you and myself right now. So then, what is the other? I suppose I could say it a couple of ways, but perhaps the best one for our purposes right now is to say that the second passion is this frantic need to find some way to be able to...hell, I'll say it dirty; maybe that will help...I want to find some way to fuck Jason without hurting Fred. There. I've said it."
"That's how it went, Linda. And that's how it stands. You tried to find a way. You failed, because there wasn't one to find, so you tried to play a game with time, have the fun and then walk away from it before he was even home again."
"If I had only seen how stupid it was to even imagine I could get away with something like that..."
Jannie continued as if she had not heard me. "And he should know that my own hands are not clean in this matter."
"You shouldn't blame yourself, Jannie," I remonstrated, "And also think of this: If you do put yourself up as the snake in our family Eden, he may take that as you just fibbing to shift blame away from us, like a very noble gesture, but a phony one nonetheless."
"Don't worry about that, Lin," she quickly responded, "I can tell it to him clearly enough that he'll keep things in balance."
"Good."
"You've been selling yourself a big pack of lies for all these weeks, Linda," she said, not accusingly, but factually, "and the truth came crashing down on your head the moment you stopped buying. He needs to know that, too. He needs to see exactly how you tried to make yourself believe you could put the truth of your life, family, marriage--and Fred himself--into a compartment and put all this fun you've been burying yourself in into another compartment and then keep them completely insulated from each other."
"That's a good summary of it, Jannie," I murmured, "If he can understand that, there's hope."
"If he can understand that, I believe there's more than just hope, Linda," she replied, raising my hopes, "The point is, will he understand? He may not. I'm not trying to be discouraging, just realistic."
I nodded agreement.
"Next thing: Like we were saying a while ago, this is really a two-pronged problem. There's the adultery and there's the incest."
The bluntness stung, but I would have wished nothing less. With it came crisp, sharp focus, things seen, and spoken of, as they were.
"Fred will have to resolve both of those things in his own mind and heart. Now, as I see it, if he's struggling with both of them at the same time, he's spreading his emotional energy thin. If we can encourage him to deal with them as two separate things, it might help him get a better grip on each of them."
"Makes sense, Jannie. Go on."
"So now, Linda, I'm going to propose something, something a bit radical. It might help; it might not, but I don't think it can make things worse. But you have to be one hundred percent behind it or I won't try. If you have misgivings, any at all, we should forget this one."
"There you go again, torturing me with suspense."
"Maybe, Lin, but hear this one out carefully."
Thus Jannie began describing her idea, hesitantly, uncharacteristically so, intent on making sure I had no qualms about it, while also adding my own thoughts to the process. Her first disclosure was a shock to me, although only for moments. My own experiences ensured that it would not remain so for long.
Gradually, an approach developed. We had no intent nor wish to manipulate or mislead Fred; we only sought the best way to bring him the truth and help him consider what we thought were the best choices.
Interestingly, a little experiment in Sammy and Jannie's own personal and sexual lives would be bundled automatically with the plan.
"Linda," Jannie finally said before departing for her home, "in the end, the real power behind all of this is love. Trust in that and, one way or another, things will turn out well. Maybe not the way you want them to, but well nonetheless."
"Bless you again, Jannie. Have a nice flight!"
Jannie was halfway home when I called out from the door.
"Oh, and Jannie! Don't get so involved in all this that you and Sammy forget to take some real vacation time too!"
"Not a chance, Lin, not a chance!"
(to be continued)
- COMMENTS
mattenwalmost 2 years agoIt's funny to read that the biggest cheaters always bring "love" into play. They require their partner to love them enough to overlook their cheating, but fail to realize that their lack of love for their partner is what turned them into cheater. Because if I really love a partner, I don't cheat and most importantly, I don't commit incest!
Anonymousabout 16 years agoI think both Linda and Fred are quite redeemable. I'm not really sure that Sammy, Jannie are though, it depends on how the author chooses to develop them. Jason is completely irredeemable though, through his words and actions he is completely and utterly disgusting. The marriage of Fred and Linda could be saved if Linda comes to her senses as I believe Fred truly wants to forgive her as indicated in the previous chapter, but he will also need help from someone other than Sammy and Jannie, unless of course they decide to truly be friends instead of conspirators. This could be a great story if the readers are able to identify with or at least like some of the characters, as of this chapter none of the characters seem real or likable with Fred and Linda being the two closest to being likable.
jeriusabout 16 years agoI also agree with the comments made below, but I don't think that Janine is that innocent (and less of a quagmire). In Ch 5, when she seduces Jason in front of Linda and Jason and his mom have their first sexual contact, it's all under her guidance. She is the one responsible for the breakdown in Linda's moral compass. Looking forward to seeing what comes next.
Anonymousabout 16 years agoFrom reading this story through a couple of times I believe Fred and Linda are redeemable characters even if they are deeply flawed, Jason however from his actions and words seems to be irredeemable and is the true villain of the story.
Sammy and Jannie are a bit of a quagmire as they seem to be more interested in establishing a sexual relationship with Fred and Linda than to be merely good friends(but I may have missed something). From the authors statements I believe Linda has had some sort of emotional crisis that can be rectified and I believe from the statements Fred made to Sammy that he is truly trying to understand and forgive his wife. It will take a few more chapters to get the characters sufficiently developed to continue with any meaningful relationship (IMHO), and I do hope everything will work itself out for the main characters. Erotic stories don't always have to end badly for the main characters and I believe this story can end well for most of the characters except maybe Jason, unless I've missed something.
Anonymousabout 16 years agoI agree with the author that vindictness for it's own sake is not called for. In all of this Jason has had no attention, he was the one peeping on his mom and Janine, he then entered into an affair with Linda...all accecptable as it's an incest story. However, he then decides, now that she is in his clutches, to exacerbate her infidelity by passing her around his friends. His statement that 'you were a real hit' which he says proudly just shows how little respect he has for his father, his parents marriage and ultimately his mother, who he views as a trophy or party favor. Will Linda or Fred come to the same conclusion when all the facts are laid bare? His lack of remorse just underlines that, he turns ashen that they were caught, and quite cheerfully claims that Fred won't throw them out....is he that stupid or just arrogant? I hope that the next few chapters will also address this
ShadowWriterCaabout 16 years agoAuthor<p />
It looks like I have dug deeper holes for the "bad" characters than I intended. Trying to make the scenes of their sexual depravity good and hot may have backfired. Throughout all this I wanted to avoid painting anything of significance as all black or all white, but maybe that wasn't quite how it turned out.
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It all hinges on Linda's mental state during that time. The Linda before Chapter 7 would never have come close to succumbing to her later temptations, even though near the end she found dealing with them painful enough to ask Jannie for support. However, the Linda after Chapter 7 was by no means helpless.
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She, like every human being, was caught between her convictions and her desires. But she had suffered a psychic trauma (of, admittedly, my invention) that shifted the center of her strength radically, and facilitated an suppression mechanism which, though involuntary, was not invisible or beyond her ability to override by conscious choice, though enough of that to be painful to her. That's where her humanity is defined, in that middle ground, where the point of balance between her responsibility for her choices and the stress attending them is found.
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There would be no story if it were otherwise.
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It's true that I drove her use of the suppression mechanism very hard, partly for the scenes themselves, and partly to make her inevitable crash stronger. That may have made her come off irredeemable. The crash begins in chapter 17 (this one), but because the chapter is occupied entirely with her conversation with Jannie, there's no inner dialogue. Look to Chapter 20 for that to begin.
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As will be stressed repeatedly in the next two chapters, somewhere between flatly excusing her and flatly condemning her is a region of multiple gray areas, all calling for careful and dispassionate review, and it will be up to persons--one in particular--to get past extreme emotional stress and become that dispassionate. I'm not saying if he succeeds totally, partially or at all.
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It might be interesting to note that Fred was meant to be a fairly minor character. It's when the story evolved to where so much of the story came to impinge directly upon him that it became necessary to elevate his prominence and do some catch-up on his development.
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Stay tuned.
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(Note: Readers eager to see Linda stomped into the mud are advised to forget the rest of the story. Never will I ever glorify vengeance in a work of fiction. She may get her family back; she may end up on the street; but it will be consequences, not vengeful retribution, that determine that.)
Anonymousabout 16 years agoIn longer stories character development is a must, as is none of the characters are likable or identifiable. The story still has potential as you are definitely talented, I truly hope you can pull this one out. I agree with the comments below to the extent that the wife really comes off as a slut who only cares for herself and the husband comes off as a complete idiot, the friends seem to only want to involve the couple in some sort of perversion of marriage and finally the son comes off as a selfish,perverted shit. But as I've stated the story is far from hopeless and I believe you can still turn it around. Please take your time and make the characters a little more human and the emotional impact of the events that have already transpired a little more real(or at least as real as fiction allows). After reading the authors comment I'm looking forward to see how this truly messed up marriage turns out.
ShadowWriterCaabout 16 years agoAuthor<p />There are some very good points raised here. One is that I've neglected to some degree the feelings and thoughts of characters within and among themselves that did not specifically pertain to the outcome of the story, but which should have been included to make the characters more real, more human and more interesting, which would have improved the story over all. (I'll mention that the story has changed directions radically over the course of its writing, and in fact, was really only going to be a little two- or three-chapter romp until ideas and very gratifying feedback came along, for which I am very grateful. I can't retract and rewrite earlier chapters, but that's really part of the fun of it, though sometimes frustrating when I have to find ways (sometimes hokey) ways to get myself out of a jam.) There are some exceptions, though, which I'm surprised to see did not come across, particularly Linda and Jannie when they reluctantly end their affair, when Linda's shift from appalled to intrigued by the idea of sex with Jason frightens her, and chapter 7, where she is terrified at losing control (and is the one place where Jannie gets right in her face).
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About other matters raised: most of these, and their consequences, are exactly what are about to be raised in the following two chapters (Sir, were you looking over my shoulder...? :-) ) while Linda's issues are going to take center stage in the chapter following that. Posting times have been running on the order of a week, but they'll show up.
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I do question one of this person's comments, that Linda shows no emotion when informed she and Jason have been caught. First she passes out, cold. That's pretty emotional. After that she's in a kind of partial shock, only half-conscious of the further conversation, and in the end is in mortal fear of what will come later. It's too early for tears. (Which is another little quandary of mine; how to get emotional intensity across without making it come off a soap opera.)
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Something that rather mystifies me is how many comments seem to overlook Linda's psychological changes from chapter 7. I have tried to stress, more and more, how after she had been torn apart by the forces of right and wrong within her mind for a long time, she snapped, and gave in to one side, the bad one (the other way, there wouldn't be much of a story!), and grew adept at suppressing the moral objections from within her mind, referring to a metaphorical wall, which will figure into a later chapter. I'm not sure how I could have made that clearer, and helpful comments on that will be appreciated.
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I'll just mention cognitive dissonance and the different (and contradictory) coping mechanisms for it. Linda's is (roughly) a case of this happening, but in the extreme, pathologically so. (I also plead mercy if this isn't strictly accurate. I am not an expert in the field, and this being a just-for-fun creation by a non-writer, I can't justify the time for hours of research.) I believe this is realistic. Part of the suggestion came from the case of Deacon Brodie (the real-life inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde), modified from a continuous oscillation between the two contradictory states to a case of a single switch, persisting for a matter of weeks, and then crashing back, leaving the character worse than appalled at her own behavior.
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Also, frankly, too many chapters without some good sex can annoy readers, and I don't blame them. This is Literotia. ;-)
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Finally, I very greatly appreciate the kinds of comments I'm seeing here, even strongly critical ones like this one. These are thoughtful ones, encouraging and helpful. Those "this a buncha bullshhit--yuou suck" comments can be tiring.
Anonymousabout 16 years agoThis story can be summarized by the following points;
1. Linda is having an affair with Janine (adultery 1) 2. Fred uses his son for his own voyeuristic pleasure (dumb!) 3. Linda, with Janine's help, embarks on a consecutive affair with her son (affair 2) 4. Linda, at her son's encouragement has sex with boundaries with Jason's friends...while stating her 'greater love' of her husband (adultery 3) 5. Linda consumates her third act of adultery....didn't take long for the 'boundaries' to vanish 6. Fred discovers her affair with their son, and overhears about her group sex session. 7. Fred feels responsible for her infidelity!!! (really dumb) 8. Fred forgives Sammy when he finds out they knew of the incest from the start (wow! what a great friend!) 9. Linda happily accepts that Janine and Sammy should use a mixture of truth and sex to make Fred a willing cuckold, and even tells her to make sure her and Sammy have some time away from Fred to enjoy themselves (Isn't the reason for their visit to see him...or to vacation?) 10. Linda has shown not one iota of remorse, at any point...she knew Fred discovered her affair with Janine, and now with Jason.....zero emotion...So where is the love?
The writing style is sensitive, the story has no emotion.
Plays, books and stories are meant to interact with the audience...monotones are not very inviting.
Hope the next one is better
ryu77about 16 years agobut I'm having a bad feeling Fred is gonna get manipulated into accepting all of this.
Well hear me author: if this marriage is going to survive, THERE HAS TO BE NO MORE SECRETS between Fred and Linda. I wonder if Linda will tell him all, but with I'm expecting, she won't; like the four some with Jason, Carol & her brother, the party. etc.
Nah, she won't tell him.
