Chapter 1

“So, there you are, stranger!” I heard Michelle say to me as I reset the pieces on the chessboard.

“Fancy a game of chess, curly girl?” I teased Michelle about her curly, jet-black hair, which I actually enjoyed.

“Yes, and you know that you like my curls, don’t you? Why else make such a big deal about them? Face it, Dan, you’re into me, just like you’re into my sister! The only difference is that you’re dating her and not me. That’s easy to fix, though,” Michelle taunted me, which I took to be a joke, nothing more.

I wasn’t the poster boy for fidelity, having slept with Lisa’s friends Mary, Christina, and Jennifer a couple of times each. I even bedded my first cousin, Deanna, more than once. Then again, I knew that Lisa screwed her buddy Jonathan as a kind of friend with benefits. This was despite his long-standing relationship with Angel, who also slept with me now and then. I knew that Lisa was still friendly with her ex-boyfriends, Shawn and James, and sometimes wondered if she was perhaps intimate with them now and then. Part of her appeal for me was that a sluttier girlfriend was less likely to mind my interest in others.

The rest of Lisa’s attraction for me was that she was a big, plump girl with chestnut hair and playful brown eyes. She was larger than life, gregarious, enjoyed the company of men and women alike. I wondered if she was bi. Oh, well, I thought, she was sixteen to my fifteen and Michelle’s fourteen. She was very mature in some ways for her age. We were all teens back in 1992, living in a small, out of the way town in rural West Virginia.

Everyone knew everyone else, including my Aunt Molly, who raised me now that my parents were killed in a car wreck. I even helped out in her malt shop along with Deanna and Molly’s boyfriend Curtis (who was black, much to the chagrin of some locals), as well as my younger cousin Erin. I called him “Uncle Curtis,” despite his lack of marital status, as he lived with us and shared the master bedroom with Aunt Molly as they had done for years. I didn’t know why they hadn’t married, other than perhaps difficulties with family over their interracial romance, nor did I know why they had no kids together. I assumed that they were monogamous, but never asked such prying questions.

I often wondered what drew Lisa or Michelle to me. If I had to guess, though, it was my maturity. I wasn’t some silly boy like most of my classmates. I already had ideas for how to reform a lot of things and fix the world’s problems, even back then in the early 1990s. I also questioned the faith of her minister father, which had to be at least a little intriguing to her. Almost nobody in that part of the Bible Belt dared to doubt the Bible openly, at least, but I did. I minded my own business and didn’t nose into other people’s.

I even personally considered what I did with each partner my business and theirs, not the other partner’s unless something happened to indicate otherwise to me. That was a controversial viewpoint, as I knew, but that was how I felt. It was also why I had no issue with Bill Clinton’s alleged adultery with Gennifer Flowers and other womanizing that was a frequent topic of argument in town. I mostly kept that particular opinion to myself, especially since no one would listen to a teenage boy’s views. Whatever I said was likely to be dismissed. I didn’t personally like Clinton much, but that was more because I thought him corrupt, just as I knew Bush to be.

“Hey, Earth to Danny Boy!” Michelle laughed at me as I had been engaged in deep thought, “it’s your move, babe!”

Michelle’s braces shone out of her mouth in the dim, dusty light of the library of the private Christian school that both of us attended. I knew for a fact that I only attended due to my parents’ wishes, as both of them had been teachers there. Dad taught fifth and sixth grade, Mom third and fourth. Everyone knew everything about them, including Dad’s persistent philandering and Mom’s drinking problem, but they had continued teaching both school and Sunday School, a fine example of evangelical Christian hypocrisy if there ever was any. Of course, it was tuition-free still thanks to them, which was a nicer, more charitable act that I could respect. Too bad it came with propaganda about Creationism vs. evolution and crap like that.

“Oh, okay,” I made the best move that I could without letting on that chess was on the back burner of my mind.

Michelle laughed and busted me, saying, “Clearly, you were distracted. Checkmate.”

Damn, I thought, looking at the board. She was right. I was checkmated and I knew it. I blushed a little and she giggled as she reset the board without even asking me. Once again, I had the black pieces, she the white. Michelle made another move before waiting for my response, at which point I noticed her scent, a very fragrant one. She had to be wearing some kind of perfume, right? She licked her lips and rose to give me a “wet Willy,” much to my frustration, but at least she ran to the bathroom to wash her finger afterward. I rubbed my right ear out of irritation, but she laughed some at that.

“Maybe next time, I’ll use my tongue, honey. And maybe not in your ear,” Michelle joked.

“Yeah, please not my ear!” I commented, not considering the alternatives.

“Okay, your wish is my command,” Michelle told me, getting up again to plant a lip lock right on my mouth and slip me a good amount of tongue.

“Holy smokes, Michelle! What are you doing, kissing a heathen like me?” I joked.

“If you’re good enough for Lisa to rebel with, why not for me?” Michelle told me, adding, “if you win this game, you can do whatever you want with one part of me, but just one. If I win, I get the same right. Deal?”

“For how long?” I asked her, but she didn’t seem to hear me.

I failed to contradict her in my distracted state, but luckily, I proved more than a match this time around, frustrated as I was with her little games. I was eager to beat her, especially since she kept playing such teasing games with me. What was her motive for all of this, anyway? Sibling rivalry? I got along with everyone in her family, despite being a known unbeliever born to “saved” parents.

Perhaps they just assumed that I would “surrender” to Jesus and my parents’ ways eventually. Maybe they were all in a rush to “save me” themselves through what was called “missionary dating,” never mind that their church preached against that. Maybe they hoped to catch Aunt Molly and Uncle Curtis, too, not to mention Deanna, who already professed faith in Jesus despite her incest with me. I didn’t know much, just that I was one of the few who wasn’t a hypocrite about things, other than Aunt Molly and Uncle Curtis.

“Okay, champ, you beat me. Now, you can pick whatever part of me that you want to be yours, but I deserve a fair shot at some part of you. Just remember to choose well,” Michelle winked at me, leaving me hard, but unsure of what to expect.

“Very well. I want your ass. Since you’re going to play it that way. You never told me if this was supposed to be permanent or not, and I let it go, so if you didn’t want it to be, this is your chance to back out, but whatever length of time applies to your bottom also applies to whatever you might win, if you win this time. Same rules? If I win, I get another part of you? What are we going to do, best two out of three here, or just quit while we’re ahead?” I dared Michelle.

“Actually, I meant for life, so enjoy owning my butt. It’s all yours now. Permanently. I can put that in writing if you like. It’s not legally binding, but it’s a matter of personal honor. You won my booty fair and square and I intended it for life. I will expect the same from you, so to be fair, I will surrender my tush whenever. I’m quite literally your booty call, babe, from this day until my dying day,” Michelle swore to me, much to my utter astonishment.

“What about if or when either or us both of us get married? I’m not really cut out for a truly monogamous marriage, but if I married Lisa, she might conceivably assume that I’m suddenly Mr. Faithful. Unless I actively disabuse her, that is, which I might well have to do, especially with this deal of ours. It’s only fair to her. I know that she’s been cheating on me, just as I have on her, but this is very likely to make things a bit more confrontational, since it’s her sister,” I observed.

“Hey, why tell her? She likes the cat and mouse, the little games of looking the other way. Just conveniently leave the words ‘forsaking all others’ out of your wedding vows. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, I think. I’m not gonna tell, not you or the prospective hubby, especially since you’re quite literally the backdoor man here. If you win my pussy, though, I might have to tell him if I think that I might be knocked up with your love child. Then I guess that I’ll learn what kind of man I have on my hands then,” Michelle snickered at that.

“He might get angry and tell Lisa,” I remarked.

“We can burn that bridge if and when we get to it. Hey, maybe you can do Amber some time. I love David, he’s my brother, but I suspect sometimes that he’s a bit ... strange about things and hero worships you. I think that he’d probably get a kick out of you boning his girlfriend. He’s exactly your age and so is Amber, I might note. And you could use a little blonde ambition now and then, aside from Mary, that is,” Michelle suggested to me, much to my shock.

“You don’t think that he might be ... you know ... bi, do you?” I asked Michelle, trying to keep from revealing my interest in her brother, in case that was too much for him and hurt our friendship.

“Oh, he could very well be. I think that would excite both of you, wouldn’t it? A devil’s threesome, or devil’s triangle, or so I’ve heard it called. Just rumors about that kind of thing. The two of you having a blonde sandwich together, an Amber sandwich, to be precise. Maybe you’d like to fuck Missy, too. She’s my best friend, after all, and she’s the principal’s daughter. I’m bi myself and I wouldn’t mind eating her out,” Michelle winked at me now.

“You’re a wild child for a preacher’s daughter, you know,” I commented as we played some more chess, it being the very last day of school before summer started.

“I learned from the best,” Michelle alluded to her big sister and elder brother, being the youngest teen of the family (there were two sisters younger than her), “besides, the best wild ones are often preacher’s kids. We have more reason to rebel than most.”

“Wow, just wow,” I shook my head in pure amazement now.

“Yeah, well, if you can keep a second, I’m not a virgin, anyway. I’ve been screwing the youth pastor since my fourteenth birthday. I wonder if Robin suspects that her hubby has been dipping his wick in me,” she referred to Pastor Mike and his wife.

“Since you’re bi, you should try to seduce her, too. Get her on side,” I joked.

“Hmmm ... not the worst idea. She is rather cute. If she is intimate with me, jailbait that I am, she can’t blackmail or leave him, can she? She certainly couldn’t take him to the cleaners. Maybe you should seduce her as well,” Michelle stunned me with just how wild and wanton she could be.

I briefly blacked out and found myself in a weird space between this world and whatever else was there. Where was I? I didn’t know, but it was bizarre for me. Things had gotten pretty crazy.

“Hey, Dan. What do you think?” a voice asked me now.

“Who are you?” I asked the voice.

“You could call me your guardian angel, spirit guide, ascended master, fairy godmother, whatever. Point is that I’m kind of a gadfly for you. You wanted a do-over, so I gave it to you. The price is higher than you might have expected in one sense, but let’s be honest, the only real cost to you is that your parents both died sooner, rather than Dad first and Mom later. You were never going to have them around long-term, as their marriage was literally toxic to them and they couldn’t let go of it.

“We changed a few things up, so your mother was an alcoholic and your father was a sex addict or whatever, but they both wanted release from this life and misery. It was a strange and painful way to give it to them, yes, but they had an outlet for their pain and they’re both free from it now. This was best for everyone, rather than two unhappy parents who would have made you miserable over time. Your mother insisted upon driving that night, despite your father trying to get her to pull over and hand him the keys.

“The fight caused them to ignore the railroad crossing signal and get smashed by that freight train. They were both killed instantly, couldn’t have felt any pain for long. They’re now in a kind of limbo, but feel no suffering. Don’t worry for them. There’s no Hell awaiting them, though no Heaven as they believed, either. Odds are, they’ll be sent back to Earth eventually, in brand new bodies. Reincarnated. Not a single memory of their past, though admittedly there will be traces. Both will fear trains greatly, that can’t be avoided for this life at least.