Open-Minds

Mom's stare was too much for her and Shauna looked at the hand gently rubbing a palm over her ankle.

The tightness of her chest eased slightly, yet knowing that her confession she was about to make would bring that tightness back, with a vengeance. "Every time I get within three feet of him, all I want to do is throw myself at him and rip his clothes off."

Shauna looked closely at her mother. Her eyelids narrowed slightly as something in the recess of her mind suddenly found a voice and she said, "Us showing them both our boobs was a test wasn't it?" Once the accusation was out there, her eyes rested once again on the bed as she said, "And I failed."

It was the silence that made her look once again at mother, who was shaking her head. "We both learned a great deal from that holiday, young lady. I now know that my son is as well-endowed as his father. I also know what you smell like when you're in heat, and other than a few minor physical traits, you are just as I was at your age."

Caroline's smile grew and the reddened cheeks of her embarrassed daughter took hold.

"I promise I won't tell Andrew. That, my loving daughter, is your job. Your father, though, is a different matter. He needs to know so we can both protect you if it all goes south."

Now caught up in the realization of this conversation and the implications of dad becoming involved, the look of pity and loathing that his own daughter could even think such thoughts suddenly dawned on her and she freaked out. Pulling her legs away from her mother, trying desperately to place as much distance between them as her bed could provide. For the first time in her twenty years of life, she was now desperately afraid of her mother and the fear of her father's disapproval sent her over the edge of despair.

*******

When Shauna's eyes opened, her eyes welcomed a familiar sight: the contours of Mom's chest snug in her bra, and just seen through the white blouse she was wearing, moved up and down with her breathing.

"Do you feel better now?"

The tears once again came back in floods. "Please don't tell Daddy."

A hand appeared, holding a tissue, Shauna took it with thanks and dried her eyes before she blew her nose.

"Andrew phoned while you were out of it. He's staying with his friend tonight, no doubt playing X-box all night. When your father gets back, we sit him down, we talk and I do mean talk, young lady. Do you honestly think your father would ever look on you with anything but love in his eyes?"

Shauna lowered her eyes to the bed and shook her head. "No, Momma. I'm sorry."

The tissues were used in abundance that evening. Truths were shared about the secrets in their daughter's head, the love for her brother, the realization that the holiday in France had now tipped the balance and nothing short of a tsunami was going to stop their daughter's finally admitting to her brother that she was his.

In an effort to stave off the inevitable, her father offered to send his daughter to England. It would keep them apart just long enough for them both to get an education. After seeing the logic in what her folks were saying and a few questions for them both, Shauna agreed.

No matter how she tried, she just couldn't get Andrew to talk to her, to see the value of both having space apart. So many times she wanted to express her love, only to know that he would use that against her and ask her to stay, just as she knew that she would if he ever used it.

*******

With my sister's explanation over, she kissed my cheek and left for England. I wasn't supposed to find out, but while my sister was in England, she rebelled, against us all. Thank God it was only alcohol and not drugs that played the largest part in her rebellion. Mom disappeared for a few weeks, and the fact she remained tight lipped on her return lent some truth to the suspicion that she went to England to sort out her daughter.

Four years and no phone calls, letters or visits later, it was as though she had simply walked off the end of the earth. Mom did keep reminding me I had a sister. It seemed Shauna could write to and phone Mom, but forgot I existed. My sister came back with her new husband; he was a hit amongst Mom's social circle. The English accent was so "quaint," I'm told. Dad set him up in business using some of his contacts, and Shauna and her husband settled down to married life in an apartment in town. The rumors started barely six months later.

Mom was the first of our family to hear them and told Dad. He didn't even ask, just stuck a PI on him and waited a week. As Shauna was reading the PI's report, Mom and Dad were packing her stuff and bringing her back to the house. Dad waited for the Englishman to return to their apartment after a "business" meeting, and handed him a plane ticket home and two black bags with his clothes, since the locks had already been changed on the apartment.

*******

My folks were there for the celebrations at the end of my final year. Shauna looked like she was hiding behind Dad the entire time I watched her. Dad held his daughter's hand right up until they all stood in front of me. Mom grabbed mine and they pushed both our hands together; when I looked at Dad he glared back. I think he had reached his own limit over the supposed stupidity of both his children.

"She's your sister. When she listened to your mom she didn't listen properly; instead she had a bad case of the stupid's. Now it's time for the both of you to get your heads out of your collective asses and get on with life. She is and always will be your sister; it's time for both of you to stop this; mistakes have been made, on all sides. It's time to start afresh, Andrew."

As the tears welled up in her eyes, Shauna just managed to mumble the word sorry before she buried her head into my neck and cried. Our folks went off and mingled while we sat on a bench and made up. The bonds we forged that afternoon became even tighter over the next few weeks. Mom told us that they had booked us into a suite of rooms at a resort hotel for a week, some fifty miles down the highway, so we could both just calm down and tell each other about our lives over the last four years.

They were taking the company jet back and would wire us tickets on a commercial flight in ten days, leaving them at the desk of the hotel, ready for our return.

Their plane went down a few miles outside a town called Sweetwater. Hikers who were out that day said they heard a plane, and all of a sudden, the engine sound changed and they heard a crash. It never made it over the mountain range. There were no survivors. The police found us in the dining room of our hotel.

To us, it felt like our folks gave us both more than just a second chance.

*******

We knew each of the crew had family and wanted them to know that they mattered, to us at least. Shauna and I asked and were welcomed at each of the funerals for the crew, before we buried our folks. Four funerals in the space of two weeks take their toll on you. We held onto each other throughout, even more so when some members of the families looked at us. You could see it in some of their eyes, even when they refused to ask it. Had it not been at the insistence of both Mom and Dad that their children spend time together at a resort and catch up on the years apart, we would have been on that flight home.

Our parents' funeral made the society page. The parasites, more formally known as friends of Mom and Dad, wanted to speak at the church. I refused. When they tried to change my mind, I told them I would make it a closed funeral if they opened their mouths again. Just to push the fact that I meant it, we both talked to the funeral people and they had an alternative plan ready, all they needed was twelve hours' notice.

I stood first and spoke. I had no speech prepared, since I doubted reading it would have been possible, knowing the mental state I was going to be in. Once finished, something made me stand to one side rather than return to my seat. Shauna came and gave her eulogy of our parents while holding onto the podium. She seemed to deflate when she had finished, and I was glad I had remained by the podium. I held her up all the way to her seat; she would have never have made it on her own.

The reading of the will was just as hard. We found out the financial worth of our folks, and that, other than a few charities that both our folks held dear, we were the sole beneficiaries. Among many things, the will stated that both our names were on the deeds to the house and the safety deposit box at the bank. Both of us had to agree before we could sell the house, if that's what we wished. At the time, we both looked at each other and thought that an odd request. Returning to the house, we quickly figured out why.

It felt strange going into our father's study. Unless invited, it was a no-go zone for all the family while we grew up. The wine cellar was the other one. Our folks were collectors of wine; it was perhaps Dad's only vice. Although the lawyers had all the original paperwork, Shauna and I had to still work our way through our father's study. We shredded thousands of documents, mostly from when they married. Our father meticulously kept every letter and receipt. Every topic had its own file, dated by the month with an index at the front. If the IRS ever came knocking, they wouldn't stay long, such was the perfectionist that was our father.

The wall safe in Dad's office gave us our first clue of why we went to boarding school. Our folks had an alternative lifestyle. Shauna pulled a DVD from the safe and we watched Dad video Mom going into the cellar. What we both watched was her lifting one of the bottles and the wine rack slowly and silently sliding apart to reveal a room that made us both gasp. Shauna stopped the DVD, and we both looked at each other. In that unspoken way we had around each other, she put the remote down and stood. I followed her.

We traced our own mother's footsteps and found the playroom behind the wine rack. In the center of the room was the biggest bed either of us had ever seen. It had to have been specially made and built in that room. There was no way that bed could have made it down into the cellar, otherwise.

The floor had the plushest carpet. I watched Shauna as she scrunched her toes into it. Her eyes gave her away long before her face followed. Around the bed, in no particular order, were bean bags of all shapes and sizes, and off to one side was an enormous thing that could only be described as a goldfish bowl over half-full of wrapped condoms. I don't think either of us slept for the next three days as we pored over the DVDs Dad had of Mom and themselves.

Both our folks were swingers. We counted thirty discs of Mom with other men and women, another twenty of them both with those same people, some of whom we recognized, others we didn't know. The thing about watching so much about the people you thought you knew is that you become inured to it all. Add to that the fact we were dipping into the wine from the cellar, and it became a lethal mix. The alcohol took away our ability to stop being voyeurs into our parent's most private part of their lives.

This was our folks we were watching, having sex with other people. It was also about Dad recording our mother, his own wife, with other men and women. At one stage, Shauna got up and left the room. She came back about half an hour later with something in her hand.

"I found three of these in a drawer on Mom's side of the bed."

Her hand opened to reveal a collar, the silver letter C standing proud in the middle of a ribbon of black. Caroline was our mother's name, and when we went back and skipped over a few of those DVD's, we realized that she wore one of these in each of them.

We both left the playroom and went back to our folks' bedroom, pulling drawers open and finding their secrets. In total, we found twelve items that were also in the playroom, so we knew that they didn't restrict their alone time activities just to the playroom. We felt like we were looking at our parents in a whole different light, and that thirst for knowledge became all-consuming with us. I don't think either of us slept for the next three days as we pored over the DVDs Dad had of Mom and themselves.

Adding to that fact, we drank more and more as day turned to night and our own inhibitions lowered to a dangerous level. We should have put it all down and walked away, but we just couldn't. That thirst for knowledge, the times we each pored over dates and events in our own lives, looking for even glimpses of this that we had both missed and our exhausted minds coming up blank. We were totally devoid of answers to the questions that screamed from our souls.

*******

Our own need to understand why our parents would do this to each other fed on itself. Other than Shauna, Mom was the strongest woman I knew, and yet we watched Dad film his own wife with two other women. At the end of an hour, both women were exhausted as our own mother just glowed and seemed to look around the room for more. The smile never seemed to leave mother's face throughout those events. Yet both her son and daughter looked on via a DVD of that event, and wondered if she was a nymphomaniac.

The man we called Father: a man who doted on his family, yet he recorded via hand-held and other cameras his own wife having sex with other men and woman. This was a couple who walked down many a street hand in hand, kissed in public and ignored us telling them to get a room. How could this same man watch his own wife become airtight with the three men standing around her as he himself took on the wives of those same men?

"What does this do?"

When I looked over to my sister and saw what she has in her hands, I tried to frame my answer as best I could. It also reinforced my belief that Shauna was an ass virgin. The butt plug in her hand was foreign to her, and she sure took a really close look when I told her its name and what its purpose was. The stunned look on my sister's face was quickly canceled out when she finished her glass of wine and reached for the bottle to fill it once again.

"That's got to hurt like a bitch."

"Judging by the look on Mom's face I would say differently, but I'm not the one with one of those up my ass."

The courage of our own stupidity and the help of alcohol that lowered her inhibitions continued that night as more wine simply accelerated both our downwards spirals. The wine would disappear from one bottle, and we would move onto the next.

Shauna's brow creased when I finished telling her how it was supposed to work and the effect it was supposed to have on her body, since the one in her hand clearly came with a remote control.

As my sister stared at me, the pause became longer, but eventually she asked, "How do you know all this stuff?"

The shrug of my shoulders came first, as I realized I had outed myself; I might as well be honest about it.

"My roommate at college, he liked watching porn when he was between girlfriends. He had one heck of collection, from couples to multiple partners and even the odd BDSM movie that amused him." With a shrug of my shoulders, I even admitted, "And they amused me, as well."

Shauna just looked at me and giggled. She would have known that I would have been right alongside my friend watching those DVD's, that was for sure. He was also very free with his magazine collection, as well, something I perused on the occasions when my study work all seemed to blur into one sentence.

Looking at the plug again, I think I put into words what we were both thinking. "It seems our mother liked a little pain with her sex, occasionally.

"Show me how it works."

Even when I looked at my sister, it was clear her own curiosity had gotten the better of her. The only way I figured she would back down was to call her bluff. After all, not even she could mean what she was saying at the moment.

So I shrugged and said, "Okay, take your blouse and bra off."

My sister tossed the plug up into the air and let it land in the palm of her hand, and then the lights came on, a grin touched her lips and those eyes of hers became very much alive. "If this goes in my ass, how come I'm showing you my tits?"

I took another sip of my drink, mostly to ask myself that very question. It was then I lost the ability to speak as I watched my own sister drop her blouse on the floor; her bra following seconds later. She didn't even see me stare because she had once again picked up the butt plug, before handing it to me while she finished undressing. I had seen both Mom and my sister topless when we took our family vacation in France.

Dad and I suspected something was going on, because the girls were very in cahoots with each other on the plane over to France and again in the hotel. Although neither of us suspected what the next three weeks of our holiday would be like. It sure was hard work trying not to talk to the chest of each of them when we talked to Mom and Shauna.

*******

Shauna looked at me, expecting me to demonstrate the plug's use. My sister stood in front of me naked, and I just stared at her totally naked form. Her breasts were a known factor; the shaved pussy was a new commodity and she just stared right back at me. That voice in my head was shouting that I needed to stop this, that this was my sister I was about to inflict this on, and yet another mouth full of wine assisted that same voice's demise.

Its death was complete when I put my glass down and turned to see Shauna kick her panties over to the rest of her clothes, climb onto the couch in our folk's room and press her tits against the back-rest of the couch. I was rooted to the spot, looking at the most beautiful sight known to man. That ass of hers would fail any description other than the word, perfect.

When I looked in the drawer, the lube sat right next to the four vibrators of various sizes. Shauna and I had watched Dad use all of these on Mom in some of the DVDs we had already watched, and in that unguarded alcohol-induced moment, I did wonder if Shauna could make the same noises. The sane part of my mind should have stopped us both right then, but the wine and just looking at my sister leaning against the back of the couch waiting to experiment with Mom's toys sank the last vestige of hope either of us had of coming away from this unaffected.

For some reason I gave her ass a slap. My sister giggled and looked at me. "Andy, why?"

"Why what?"

"Why didn't they think to include us in all this?"

Instinctively I shuddered. I didn't have an answer. "I can only guess, and second-guessing Dads and Mom's minds at the best of times has been a challenge for us both throughout our lives, Shauna."

For some reason, she looked at her hands and then nodded.

"I'm twenty-three, Andy, you're almost twenty..."

Where she was going to go with that conversation stopped when she suddenly drew breath as the lube hit her rose; she tried to watch but couldn't get a good look. The frustration started to mount within her, the creasing of her eyebrows simply confirmed my thoughts.

"You want to watch?"

The flush of her cheeks gave away her answer just as her eyes did when she pulled them away from her ass and looked at me before nodding.

"Well it's going to be uncomfortable, but I will be as quick as I can."

With my hand held out towards her she got the message and held on tight. I pulled her up onto her feet, we both walked to the bed and I made her lie on it. Her legs rested on my shoulders and my hand went to her ass, lifting her when I could and placing a pillow under her. She automatically went onto her elbows, her eyes now mesmerized at looking so closely at her most intimate parts.

"Andy."

I looked at her.