Chapter 13

Hannah had, at one time, had a job that required her to travel a lot. And whenever she came close to Oklahoma, she stopped in to see me. She stayed, in fact, in Caitlin's room. So I had given her a key, all those years back. And when her job changed, and she didn't leave California any more, she had just kept it.

I had been driving Caitlin back home for several years now, and the stories she told her mother when she got back, about the things we'd done, and the places we'd seen, made Hannah wish she could be there to do those things and see things too.

So she had taken some vacation and, to surprise us, hadn't told us she was going to fly out and bum a ride back with us. She took the Red Eye and her flight arrived at Will Rogers World Airport at four in the morning. She wasn't about to call me up at that hour and ask me to come get her. So she rented a car and drove it to my house. She stopped along the way for breakfast, which was why she didn't walk into the den of iniquity my house had become until seven-thirty.

I would learn later that, when she opened the door and slipped into the house, the first sensation she experienced was an odor. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it smelled familiar somehow. Then, on her way to sneak into my bedroom and jump on the bed and scream "Good morning!" she saw the naked bodies, all balled up together on the mattress on the floor. Her first thought was that the bodies were dead, but there was no blood.

She recognized instinctively what had happened, most likely because the bodies were clearly naked. The "moment of confusion" dragged on as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that three of the bodies were female, and only one was male, but all this happened very quickly because she got around to recognizing two of those bodies.

Surprise was what she had in mind. But she got the surprise, instead of delivering it.

That's when she screamed.

And it wasn't "Good morning!"

Then it was our turn to be surprised. That part of her plan worked flawlessly.

There was what can only be described as "a burst of activity," though it wasn't very productive activity, at least initially. A choir of sorts was formed as Hannah kept screaming, and was then joined by the musketeers. This impromptu production would have fit very well into a program in a gallery somewhere, where The Scream, by Edvard Munch, was being displayed.

I don't remember for sure, but I might have screamed a little bit too.

But screaming can only go on for so long before lungs run out of breath, and vocal cords require some rest. Maybe the initial shock wore off, or was replaced by a different kind of shock as Hannah realized what her daughter had been doing.

Ashley and Emma, of course, were mortified. Suddenly they were just teenagers again, girls who had been caught inside the car with the steamed up windows when the local cop had knocked on them with his flashlight. They didn't need to be told to get dressed. The problem was that they couldn't find their clothes.

Meanwhile, Caitlin and Hannah were yelling at each other. Caitlin wasn't even trying to find anything to put on. She was too busy defending her turf. If asked, she wouldn't have put it that way, but that's what she was doing. She had already made certain decisions that neither her mother nor I were aware of, and one of those was that she would forever more have access to me as her lover. That was obviously in jeopardy. Throw in the "Why are you spying on me?" thing that kids always misinterpret parental concern for, and she was ready to go to the mat.

You're all adults. At least you're supposed to be. If you're not, stop reading immediately and do your homework. And most of you adults have children.

I don't have to tell you why Hannah was upset.

Their raging argument, in fact, gave Ashley and Emma a chance to find their clothes and get "decent" again. And it was at this point that a fascinating thing happened.

Both girls felt the urge to immediately vacate the house and get away from the raging bull that was Hannah. But they knew that, if they went home at this time in the morning, questions would be asked, and the last thing they wanted was for some other adult to take interest in the events of the previous night. Plus, one of the musketeers was under attack.

So they stayed!

And that turned out to be pivotal to the de-escalation of the situation.

Around that time, as things happened, Hannah remembered there were two people she was supposed to be yelling at, and turned to me.

"And you!" she shouted.

This moment was also pivotal, but for different reasons.

I was naked. It was early in the morning. I hadn't had a chance to go to the bathroom.

And folks, let me tell you, stark terror doesn't do anything at all to make morning wood go away.

So there I stood, the brother she'd known for thirty-two years, except that now I had clearly turned into a satyr, because it was obvious I had gone all night long ... with three sexual partners ... and I was rampant again ... obviously because a new potential sexual partner had just come in the door.

She stopped yelling. I think it's a good guess that, for a moment, anyway, she had no idea what to say.

"Mom!" said Caitlin into the silence. "Can I please explain?"

Hannah's eyes seemed to drag themselves away from my erection, and her face turned to her daughter.

"You think you can explain this?"

"Yes! If you'll just listen to me."

She looked back at me and her eyes went straight to my boner. She stared at it as if it might suddenly grow and wrap itself around her. I think she was just overwhelmed at that moment, by a situation she would never have even dreamed she'd walk into.

"Do you have any coffee?" she asked, suddenly.

Nobody said anything at first, and then, of all people, Emma said, "I'll go make some."

Hannah tore her eyes away from my manhood and to my face.

"Would you please go put something on?"

"Um ... sure," I said, finally covering my cock with both hands.

"Thank you," she said.

It was surreal. She was screaming one minute, and saying please and thank you the next.

As so much had changed in the last week or so, everything changed again. My world had turned on its side, when the girls decided to experiment. Now my world turned another ninety degrees, until everything was upside down.

Hannah wasn't the only one who didn't know what to say. And I think that was part of the reason things calmed down. There were only two directions things could go. Hannah could storm out, go to the police and have me arrested for molesting her daughter.

Or try, anyway. As I mentioned a while back, all three girls were above the age of consent in Oklahoma.

But that didn't mean she couldn't cause problems for me.

That direction was what I'll call "up" in this situation. The only other direction was "down."

But not going "up" didn't mean that things were easy. Again, I think it was Kat, fighting for what she perceived as "hers" that moved things forward. Her intent was to convince her mother that what had happened was not a bad thing. To that end, she pulled her mother to the kitchen, shooting me a look and mouthing "Get dressed!" at me. I went to the bathroom first, to get rid of the offending erection Hannah had stared at. When I came out, Ashley and Emma were in my bedroom, sitting on the bare box spring on my bed.

"What should we do?" asked Ashley, whispering.

"You should probably go home," I said.

"No way!" said Emma. "We have to see what happens."

"You may not like what happens," I said, pulling on some shorts.

"It wasn't rape!" argued Emma.

"I don't think that will be the issue," I said. "Whether it was rape or not, how do you think your parents would feel about last night?"

"They'd kill me," moaned Emma. Ashley wasn't saying anything.

"Well, that's what's going on in the kitchen."

And, just like that, both musketeers went to the rescue, leaving my bedroom, obviously headed for the kitchen.

"Wait!" I called. "I don't think that's a good idea."

But there was no one to hear me.

Have you ever felt like a prisoner in your own home? That's what I felt like. There I was, in my bedroom, with half of my bed. Where was I supposed to go? I felt like Hannah was suddenly the warden, and I needed permission to move around the institution.

I stood there, irresolute, dithering quietly. I had this sensation that, as long as I stood there very quietly, the lion in the other room might not see me, and I'd not get eaten. That was stupid, of course. She could (and eventually would!) find me any time she liked.

I didn't hear screaming, but that could be interpreted two ways. One of them was that Hannah had taken her daughter and left. If that happened, the other two might leave with them. I could be alone in the house, for all I knew.

I finally moved, walking to the bedroom door and sticking my head into the hallway. I heard voices.

Eventually I decided to go clean up the scene of the crime. Maybe removing the evidence might help me somehow. It was like being in an alternate reality. I "snuck" to the living room, trying to be as quiet as I could, and wrestled the mattress up onto its side. It waved and wobbled, and was unbelievably heavy as I started trying to drag it back to my bedroom. Pillows scattered everywhere, and a pile of used condoms was revealed on the floor.

The condoms were worse than the mattress, so I laid it against a chair and gathered up all the incriminating latex. For some reason I felt like a homeless person must feel when, while digging through trash cans, runs into the remains of somebody's sexual activity. The DNA inside the damn things was mine, but I held the handful of limp, wet, collapsed tubes at arm's length as I tried to think of a place to ditch them.

Ashley suddenly appeared. I hadn't seen her come into the room and she scared the shit out of me. She was holding the waste basket that was usually under the sink in the kitchen.

"Put them in here," she said, her voice completely normal.

"What?" I was still rattled.

"I'll help you clean up," she said, in that kind voice people often use with children.

"What's happening?" I asked, looking toward the kitchen.

"They're talking," she said.

"Talking?"

"Yes. You know, moving their lips while sound comes out? Communicating?" She frowned at me.

"Just talking?"

"Yes. Now, let's get this cleaned up before she comes in here again. Come on. I'll help you."

She moved the trash can under my hand, which was still straight out away from my body. I unclenched my fist and the condoms dropped into the can with a sound that made me shudder. Ashley set the trash can down and went to one end of the mattress. She stood there, patiently.

I finally got moving and together, the mattress wasn't so hard to move. We got it to the bed and laid it down. There was a stain on the side where Emma had been lying after I spurted in her. Ashley saw it too.

"Maybe we should turn it over," she suggested.

We did, and the evidence of my attempt to make babies with Emma was hidden.

"You can make it up later," she said. She reached for my hand and pulled me back to the living room. The living room was "decorated" with cups, and half-eaten bags of chips, and an open container of dip. Ashley's and Emma's bras were still lying in a pile in front of the couch. Ashley snatched those up and disappeared towards my bedroom. I idly wondered if she'd put hers on, and then go get Emma from the kitchen to also "get decent." I was almost painfully aware that I hadn't noticed Ashley was braless. But then, things weren't normal ... were they.

When she got back I actually looked. It was hard to tell because she had on her blouse again, and it had a colorful pattern on it.

"I do not believe you," she said.

"What?" I was confused.

"All this happens and you still stare at my boobs?"

I thought for half a second about telling her what I'd been thinking, but decided it would take too long and wasn't worth it. I think I was beginning to have some hope that the world wasn't coming to an end. At any rate, I used a standard response.

"I'm a man," I said. "What can I say?"

She snorted, and I think it was her calm demeanor that finally calmed me down too. She'd been in there, in that room, with Hannah. She was still in the house, for that matter, meaning Hannah hadn't screamed at her and Emma to get the hell out. Ashley wasn't tense and scared, and while I didn't understand how that could be, her body language communicated with my brain.

We didn't say anything else as we stacked cups, and rolled packages closed. Ashley squinted at the side of the open dip. I had no idea where the lid was.

"Refrigerate after opening," she read aloud. Then she dropped it into the trash can, on top of the condoms.

After that, there was remarkably little left to do, in terms of putting the living room back into its original non-sexual condition. We had been too busy having an orgy to mess things up any worse than I've described.

Now we stood, me holding a stack of cups in one hand, and a bag of Lays ridged chips in the other. Ashley was holding the Tostitos Scoops, the Cheetos, and the pretzels. The top cup was the one I'd dumped everything into, and it was full to the brim. I held it carefully, to avoid spilling it.

"What now?" I asked no one in particular.

"This stuff goes in the kitchen," Ashley pointed out.

"Hannah is in the kitchen," I pointed out.

"You're going to have to face her sooner or later."

"I vote for later."

"Hey," she said, her voice completely normal. "You're the one who got us into this mess. Man up."

"I'm the one?" I gasped, my eyes feeling like they might burst from their sockets. "I'm the one who caused all this?"

She shrugged.

"If you hadn't been so hunky and sexy, we wouldn't have all fallen in love with you."

"Oh give me a break," I groaned.

"Well, it's true," she insisted with a straight face.

"You are the one who wanted to experiment, as I recall. And you're the one who wanted to move the schedule up."

"We only wanted to experiment because you were so irresistible," she pouted. "And I only wanted to move things up after Kat got you to take her cherry."

"Caitlin did not get me to take her -" I almost said cherry, but at the last second opted for a less juvenile word. "virginity," I finished. "She didn't get me to do anything. She crawled on top of me and, without my consent, I might add, snuck her way onto me!"