The Origins of Incest Island

They continued down the path, and Mary became convinced they would stumble into a forbidden pool inhabited by a conclave of water nymphs, or a magical forest inhabited by fickle and flirtatious gods. For a woman who'd never traveled more than 100 miles away from home, even the sky seemed strange and foreign - the air new and exhilarating. Unsure if she'd have another opportunity for solitary exploration, Mary made up her mind to seize the moment.

"Let Martin sulk," she thought.

This was her opportunity to be bold, explore, and even though she had no bathing suit, go swimming. But first, she wanted to meet some of the people Liam claimed as his family. Outcasts or otherwise, she needed to know. Not for a logical reason, such as needing to know the people her children would call "neighbor," but for something deeper and unseen. An innate curiosity that had always been there now propelled her forward.

Though she loved Martin, she'd never known her husband to be social. He was the quiet sort, a contrast to her outgoing personality. To his credit, he'd never inhibited her outgoing nature and she loved him for it. A solitary creature, Martin was perfectly content spending the night pouring over a biography of Catherine the Great as Mary went out with her girlfriends to dance with anyone she found interesting. There was trust in their relationship.

Once through, she'd done more than just dance. She never told anyone.

There's an implicit trust given to those most loved, and what a warped disturbance it can cause, especially as it increases the distance from those who need none. How hard it is for two people to be completely honest with one another, no matter the amount of love. Hidden are those small, personal truths, buried underneath the senseless shame and sense of propriety. It makes existence little more than a battle against our own nature, ever rowing against the current, pushing ourselves upstream further and further away from every instinctual desire.

Some can never bring themselves to row and float freely through life. Others fight back, forever forcing themselves upstream against the unimaginable strain. And then, there are those like Mary. People who find themselves swept away by an opportune wave, an irresistible current, finally unmoored from the repressed instincts they once thought vile. Like Mary, these unfortunate people all know the truth; once they let go, once they finally give in to temptation, they'll never be the same.

If Mary knew that taking the path down towards the village would open her up to a larger world, a liberation which every inch of her being now screamed for her to embrace, she ignored it, keeping this secret from herself. Even as she tried to appreciate the natural beauty of the mystic new world, her every step down the path served to inflame the inner obsession about the wild, forbidden sex she expected to see around every tree, behind every fern or bush. She didn't even know what she was looking for, just that there had to be something amazing out there. In many ways, Mary was behaving like a teenage boy who just discovered nudity in the pages of a National Geographic magazine. Titillated and tantalized, she was still unsure how such a world could exist.

And wished to see more.

She stepped into the clearing with her diminutive Asian escort, but the contrast between her vivid imagination and the rather plain reality struck her as disappointing. Instead of huts, teepees or some other indigenous dwelling, she saw a rustic subdivision of small homes. Up ahead, two roads converged at right angles like a plus sign. Set beside each road, there were prefabricated houses from the second world war, each neatly separated into equal grids. She imagined that someone coming home after a few drinks could easily enter the wrong house by accident.

Not that these homes paled in comparison to their home town in Oklahoma. In many ways, these premade, repurposed domiciles of aluminum sheet metal were much nicer than the old two-bedroom home she and her husband and children shared. And there were so many of them, each with their equally-sized yards, stretching off into the distance beyond sight.

Despite their rustic nature, there was an individuality to each dwelling. They were more than just the cookie-cutter carefully manicured lawns that anyone could find in Better Homes and Gardens. Many of the homes had multiple gardens growing in the front lawns; there was clothing strung up to dry. One particularly scandalous clothesline caught her eye; hanging several pieces of lacy underwear all flapping in the breeze. Mary was shocked. She couldn't believe that someone would hang up such a public display of sex, completely exposed in their front yard for the world to see.

Proctor noticed her discomfort at seeing the garments and spoke casually.

"The island only has two real roads, if you count the ones that don't lead directly to the estate. The dock is the only way on or off the island. Given the proximity, there tends to be little emphasis on privacy. If you'd like, we can turn back."

"Not at all, it just... seems so normal," she said.

"Isn't it?" Proctor's question was more statement that inquiry.

And then the girl caught her eye.

She appeared to be only a few years older than Mary's daughter, Bethany. She lay in the sun, on one of the cheap plastic lawn chairs that decorated many of the lawns. It took Mary a second to truly notice how casually naked the young girl was, but when she did, she stopped breathing. The girl's small, pert breasts pointed absently up towards the sun, angling to each side as she lay on her back.

If she noticed Mary, the girl didn't make any effort to hide. She wore a large white sun hat, a few strands of red hair popping out from under it. The hat's brim hung over one of her eyes - the other was covered by her dark sunglasses, the kind that Mary had been seeing in all of her fashion and celebrity magazines. Mary focused on the girl's nudity and realized, if not for one of her slightly crossed legs, she would've been able to see straight up the girl's sex as she sunbathed.

There was a paralyzing sort of shock that kept Mary gaping like an Easter Island statue as she gazed at the open display of nudity. She hadn't seen a girl that age naked since she was in high school herself. But instead of being mortally embarrassed, or charmingly indifferent, she felt something else. Something she couldn't quite place or name made her want to talk to the girl. She felt desperate to engage the young woman and decided it must be academic. Yes, that was it, she only wanted to ask her how someone could reach this point of comfort and calm about exposing their body.

The idea of being attracted to another woman was completely foreign and mysterious to her. Truth be told, it had never entered her mind. In recent years, Oklahoma had been caught up in the moral panic over gay men in California and those other "liberal" parts of the country. Though Mary knew about lesbians, the idea had always been startling to her. As a teenager, she'd practiced kissing with a few of her female friends. An act she undertook with an innocence common to girls her age. At the time, she'd dismissed it as her friends had - harmless fun that would help them please their future boyfriends.

Looking down at the naked girl with rapt attention, Mary told herself that her newfound interest was merely an expression of anthropology, or at least it's equivalent. She knew her struggle to rationalize her interest in the naked girl was an oversimplification.

Yes, in the past, she might have believed it, but this was something else. Faced with something completely new, something tantalizing yet forbidden and forced out of the public consciousness like some sort of plague, Mary placated her curiosity by indulging her intellectualism.

"Who is she?" Mary said.

"A resident," Though Proctor spoke clearly, he barely noticed the naked girl. His focus resided solely with the slack-jawed woman in the sundress next to him. "We can talk to her if you would like."

The first steps to acceptance start with small trembling tiptoes

"She won't mind?"

"That depends entirely on what you wish to say," Proctor said. "Though I doubt you'll find anyone more friendly."

Somehow, Mary managed to muster some small semblance of courage, screwing herself to the sticking place with each step forward. It was impossible to say when the woman first noticed her. She was peering down into a book, an old paperback Mary had never heard of, Time Enough for Love. On the cover was an older man next to the nearly naked goddess from another universe.

Mary found the cover appropriate, this girl also seemed from another universe - a beauty previously unknown to mankind

Here she was, a middle-aged, certainly attractive, but a traditional, stereotypical suburban dream mother. Mary worked hard to present an all-American image. The French-tipped curls of perfectly presented blonde hair; her carefully selected sundress from the finest store she could afford. She represented the ideal image of her era - a look borrowed from the sultry, perfumed magazines that alluded to the sex lives and escapades of the rich and famous. Those lucky few could play a different, more glamorous game. Their existence at once devious and decadent and completely apart from the world below them. They could be admired and worshipped from afar but never fully accepted by the moral majority.

To take that step forward took courage. Mary moved towards this other, radically different person who seemed so open and yet so vulnerable in the way she displayed herself. The girl, so much younger, seemed a complete and confident woman standing - well laying, apart from any commonly held convention. And that made her someone worth seeing. Mary mirrored the other woman's courage, enough at least to draw her into the other woman's presence.

Mary drank in the girl's exposed body, her beautiful curves, her tanned and bronzed bosom. She tried to think of what she might say to her, but the words wisped and wafted over her head, escaping into the stratosphere. The only thoughts that came to Mary's mind were, "she's naked, she's naked" and "oh my goodness! Did I ever look anywhere close to that amazing?"

Once it became obvious that the young woman had noticed her, it was too late for Mary to do anything other than to continue walking closer, looking down at an uncomfortable craning angle. She had to say something; it was becoming unspeakably awkward and the need to speak, to break the tension, burned behind the back of her neck.

Somehow, she managed a few of the simplest words.

"Uh. Hi," Mary muttered, her eyes drifting down to her own shoes.

In an instant, the girl dropped her book down to her stomach, pushed herself up to a sitting position, and in doing so, revealed every inch of her body. Mary felt as though she was gazing at the epitome of perfection - a transcendent goddess with breasts that seem to curve and slope in exactly the right proportions. She stared openly at the girl's nipples with a sense of comparable jealousy and a secret hint of something more. The naked girl sat up without any shame, her legs spreading to offer a perfect view of her vagina. Behind her trimmed bush hid a sex that Mary had never known.

Except briefly... for one moment, one night... when she and a girlfriend had gotten a little too drunk and never spoke of it again. Most of that evening was little more than a blur, a fuzzy blotch on an otherwise blameless life.

Without a moment's pause, the girl stood up and offered her hand. Mary immediately noticed how her breasts, though much smaller than her own, seemed to bounce with the friendly gesture.

"I'm Riley," the girl said. "I imagine the good doctor is giving you the newbie tour?"

"Newbie tour?" Mary asked.

"Dr. Proctor loves breaking in the new girls!"

She caught a withering look from Proctor and immediately fell silent.

"As you know, Riley," Proctor said sternly. "I am not a doctor."

"You might as well be," she said. "You have what, six months left on your Ph.D.?"

"In anthropology," Proctor said. "The addition of a few initials on letterhead is hardly a transformative brand."

"Whatever, be modest," Riley said. "Other than the old man, Doc here pretty much ran the island."

"I would hardly say that."

Riley pulled her arms together and clasped her hands in front of her vagina, squeezing her legs together. The fluid, alluring movements accentuated her already perfect breasts. Were it not for her brazen nudity, the coquettish pose might have created the illusion of a shy damsel in distress.

"Oh, but please doctor. Whatever would we helpless ladies do without you?"

Aiko seemed unimpressed by her feigned display of fragility.

"Somehow, I think you and the missus will continue on just fine without a man."

Though both seemed comfortable with each other as Riley seemed with her own body, Mary found it hard to focus on their friendly banter. Riley's hands dropped to her waist as she talked and Mary couldn't believe the girl wasn't rushing to grab some sort of garment. Instead, Riley made the same gestures a clothed person would, brushing her bangs away from her eyes where they hung ever-so-slightly over her right eye. When her arms moved to cover her breasts, it wasn't a deliberate act of modesty, but rather her natural, off-hand posture.

"Let's not forget our etiquette," Proctor said. "We are ignoring our guest, who came here with the express purpose of meeting you."

"You mean you came all this way to see little old me?" Riley's playful smile was disarming.

Mary started to speak, managing only to stammer, then deferred to Proctor.

"Not you in particular," he said. "Rather the denizens of the island. You must remember, the Bloom family has been estranged for some time."

The words seem to strike them in the face and created an almost somber sense of sadness - one neither Riley nor Proctor had experienced, which pained them nonetheless. From their reaction, Mary knew Liam must have spoken openly with his neighbors about his familial regrets.

Proctor cut through the silence.

"As a personal favor, I would appreciate it if you shared some of your story with Mary. No more than you're comfortable with, of course."

"Right, you want to hear it straight from a siren of the Isle of Lesbos!" Riley laughed at her joke. "You'll find that that's a bit of a tradition here, Mary. The secrets that most people spend their entire lives trying to hide from the rest of the world, we put right out in the open. If someone's going to reject you, why wait until you've spent years bonding with them?"

"Do give her more than that," Proctor said patiently. "She is married to Liam's brother and they've inherited his estate. Also, please keep in mind that Mary and her husband had no idea about the institute until just a few months ago."

In that moment, a noticeable change came over Riley. She didn't quite cover up instantly, it was too late for that. But Mary could see her move her arms across her breasts, barely hiding those beautiful pointed nipples. Riley's hands clenched into interlocking fists and moved to cover her garden that moments before she'd displayed as proudly as a prize-winning rose. Still, the change was unmistakable. Riley appeared mortified to have introduced herself with such inhibition to someone as prim and proper as Mary. Someone who, for all she knew, might determine her future.

"Oh, I am so sorry Mrs. Bloom. You must think I have absolutely no sense of decency. This is... well, there's not many people around at this time of day. Most go out to the ocean or into town or work, and nobody really minds if I show a little skin."

She paused for a second, and then leaned in as if whispering to a fellow conspirator.

"Actually," she said. "Most seem to encourage it."

It was Mary's turn to feel like the interloper. She felt as if she'd intruded on someone's private property and was somehow asserting the right to drop her baggage on their lawn. She immediately began bending over backward to apologize. Not just because she felt she'd violated some strange, exotic custom; she genuinely wanted to hear the girl's story. Riley was the first person Mary had met other than stuffy, stolid Aiko Proctor and she wanted to know everything about her.

"No, please. This is your home. I understood what I was getting into, you'll just have to forgive me if I... uh..." Mary found it impossible to tear her eyes away from Riley. "If I... stare a little. This is just all so new to me."

The words came out so nervously, Mary was sure she'd only made things more awkward. But Riley beamed in response.

"If I didn't want anyone to stare, I wouldn't work so hard at being a looker!"

She was that. With a smile, Riley placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. Mary's eyes wandered and she noticed the naked girl's long red hair, flowing down almost to her waist. Mary's gaze continued on to the slight angle where Riley's legs connected to her buttocks. Riley, now on full display, posed as though she was modeling an invisible clothing line.

"Well, it shows," Mary said earnestly. "I would kill for your body."

"Well, I would commit a series of war crimes for yours," Riley responded. "Any military tribunal would look at the size of your breasts and agree I had no choice."

"Scale it back a little, Riley. She's new and married," Proctor said.

Mary wondered what Proctor meant. Was Riley a lesbian? She was so young! Mary thought back to her period of experimentation during high school. She and her girlfriends had practiced kissing. There'd also been some heavy petting under the bed covers, but nothing more. Now, Mary found herself wondering what more was possible than the few frantic fingers she'd known, experiences brutally shoved back into the dark recesses of her brain.

"But I love the new ones!" Riley bounced with glee, her breasts heaving ever so slightly with the excited motion. "So, Mrs. Bloom. How long are you here?"

"Oh please, call me Mary. Three days." Mary tried not to blush as she peeked at the naked girl's body.

Mary wondered if she would get used to this. She wasn't like Martin, able to disappear into books endlessly without any human interaction. Realizing that they'd lapsed into silence, Mary struggled to speak. It was as though she was the one without any clothing on. The conversation continued to stall until Riley recognized Mary's discomfort.

"It's a little overwhelming at first, I know," Riley said. "It was a month before I could say two words to anybody." Mary smiled at the supportive statement and Riley continued. "Listen, why don't you come over tonight? My partner, Aubrey, is going to make spaghetti. I'm sure your husband would love it!"

"Oh, I'm quite sure he wouldn't!," Mary laughed.

"Well, come over anyway. I promise we'll be wearing clothes. Besides, I'm sure you have questions for us that the good doctor doesn't need to hear!"

"I'm not sure if I can." Mary's statement betrayed her desire.

With a motion that showcased her firm, swaying breasts, Riley shrugged in response.

"Consider it a standing invitation, then. Dinner at seven," Riley said.

"Thanks. Maybe I'll see you then."

Chapter Five: The After Dinner Show

"Okay, so I have to ask, and I hope I'm not being rude, but how'd you end up on the island?" Aubrey asked.

"I already told you, hon," Riley said. "She's Liam's sister-in-law. "

Though most people would have considered Aubrey to be a stereotypical lesbian, Mary had never really been exposed to such a person, not in rural Oklahoma. Aubrey was older than Riley, at least ten years her senior, but that wasn't what Mary found shocking. Mary stared in polite awe at the woman's extreme haircut. Aubrey's bright blone hair was cut short, in what another person would know as a pixie style, stopping below her neckline and combed to one side, giving her the appearance of a butch punk rock princess. Unlike Riley, Aubrey talked in an aggressive, almost antagonistic meter that made Mary feel self-conscious and awkward throughout dinner. So much so that she barely picked at her plate.