Based on the short story
“AN INCESTUOUS SLUMBER”
By D-man

Hiya. This is Matt, your narrator. Sleep-Talking is a father/daughter incest story. Soft of. Not really. Well, kinda. It involves a father and daughter in a difficult sexual situation, anyway. And it’s straight hetero. Maybe a bit of explanation is due.

A week ago, I posted the short story Alternate Mom to SOL. If you read it, you know that AltMom was based on a story called Alternatives that I read many years ago. I rediscovered it recently in Old Joe’s Collection on the ASSTR website. I instantly began an updated rewrite and posted it to moderate applause. (It’s actually doing better than I expected.) Because of this, I chose to go back to the well for a 2nd try.

Alternatives, and An Incestuous Slumber, both appeared in the Incest section of Old Joe’s. I looked for the first interesting title after Alternatives, and chose An Incestuous Slumber. Unfortunately, it dealt with a father who sexually abuses his teen daughter, passed out after a party. I couldn’t work from that.

Rather than go back to the well for a second go, however, I decided to turn the story on its head and make dad a belated good guy, trying to do right by his teen daughter and hitting brick walls at every turn. I don’t know how good a job I did at this. Visualizing as you write, you often see things differently than your readers. I’m not good enough to write a perfectly constructed story. Not even close. I only hope you don’t hate it.

A word of warning: despite the strong sexual content of this story and nudity throughout, nothing directly sexual happens between father and daughter. I’ve started warning readers beforehand when a story ends abruptly without the expected explicit sex scene. That usually results in angry readers and low scores.

Anyway, it was Saturday, July 21, 2018, at 11:15 pm. Garrett was headed home on Kentucky 303 in his Dodge Ram, a Heineken nested between his thighs. He brooded on his daughter Alyssa, hosting a pool party in his absence. If queried on the possibility that he’d ever have sex with his daughter, Garrett would laugh, or punch the bastard in the mouth, depending on who it was.

His wife Sophie was away, visiting her ailing Aunt Jo in Minnesota. She’d left Alyssa home with her dad, both as a guard against Alyssa freaking out over her Aunt Jo’s condition, and because she had a good summer job. Alyssa was 15 years old, a ready-to-be, freshly-minted sophomore at RMHS.

Garrett was 31 years old; Sophie was 30. They’d stood at the alter not a month prior to Sophie’s due date. To everyone’s amazement (and the chagrin of some), the newlyweds made it a full year before separating the 1st time. They’d separated twice more, in 2006 and 2008, but had settled down with age and experience into a stable nuclear family unit. Sophie was 6 months pregnant with their 2nd daughter, Bailey. Alyssa didn’t know what to make of a sister 15 years younger than she.

Saturday night was poker at Gunther’s place. They rotated every week, with Garrett doing the honors the weekend before. If the pool party had occurred a week ago, Alyssa might still be a virgin. Was she a virgin when Garrett found her passed out on the back porch after the party? Only Alyssa knows.

“What the fuck is this?” Garrett demanded angrily.

Calvin laughed. He pointed at his own daughter, Patience, laying akimbo on a couch beneath the west facing windows.

“I got here to pick her up at 10:45. She and everyone else was drunk and smacked on weed. I kicked the other bastards out, told ‘em I’d call the cops if I ever found my daughter stoned to the gills again. There musta been 30 damned kids in the pool, and another 30 in here.”

The room was a wreck, bottles of beer scattered about, blue and red cups strewn on the floor and laying on tables and the coffee table. The place reeked of beer.

“Where’s your fucking cell phone, dude? I called ya a fucking dozen times and you never answered.” Calvin was angry and red-faced, ready to unload on Garrett.

“I plugged it in to charge and forgot it in the truck. Where the fuck is Jamie? She was supposed to chaperone this thing with Constance, or whatever her name is.”

“Constance was fucking wasted when I got here, and Jamie had a family emergency. She couldn’t get hold of you either, dude.” His expression told Garrett that an explosion was imminent. Garrett waved his hand.

“I’ll take care of this, Calvin. When Alyssa wakes up, I’m gonna belt her fucking behind so hard, she won’t sit for a week. I suggest you do the same to Patience there. Kids gotta learn that parents won’t always be around to keep ‘em outta trouble. I gotta good mind to call the cops myself.

“You know who the kids were? Somebody had a keg, from all these plastic cups layin’ around. I’d like to prosecute the bastards who brought it here. They had to be 21, or had fake ID’s.”

Calvin shook his head. “I ain’t getting’ into that. I’ll think damned hard about taking a belt to that one though—” He gestured disgustedly at his daughter. “God knows what all they got up to before I got here. Get the door for me, will ya?”

With Patience belted safely into the back seat of Calvin’s crew cab, he shook Garrett’s hand and swatted him on the arm with his ball cap. “Good luck with that one in there. Let me know if you take a belt to her, tomorrow. We’ll compare notes.” Chuckling darkly, he climbed behind the wheel and steered the Ford F-450 down Garrett’s gravel drive. He tooted twice at the road, and was gone.

“I’ll never trust you again,” he muttered. “As if any 15-year-old can be trusted.” He was 15 when he’d knocked up Alyssa’s 14 year old mother.

Shrugging off the mess out back until morning, he went inside and spent half an hour straightening the porch, stacking the empty plastic cups and tossing them into the recycle bucket along with the empty bottles. He wondered idly if the boys responsible for the clandestine keg had taken it with them. He’d make ‘em pay hell tomorrow getting it back, if they hadn’t. He briefly considered getting a keg-beer of his own, but had Heineken in the garage fridge. If the bastard kids hadn’t raided the thing. They hadn’t.

During the cleanup, Alyssa hadn’t stirred. She lay on the loveseat with her right knee elevated, and her left knee kicked off the edge of the cushion. She wore a light blue skirt with white trim, and a blue and white short-sleeved top, tied at the waist. He’d covered her with a quilted throw to keep from seeing up her skirt. He’d noted something funny with her shirt, and suspected her bra was undone. Wondering who unsnapped the damned thing made his lips compress to a thin line. It sure as hell wasn’t Calvin.

Satisfied with the clean up, if not happy—he wasn’t happy about anything tonight—Garrett went to the garage and grabbed a six of Heineken from the fridge. The bastards had drunk the two 6-picks he’d had on ice in the kitchen. He checked Alyssa again, making sure she had a clear airway and breathed freely. Aspiration was a leading cause of death among drunk teenagers. They vomited while passed out, and then choked on their own vomit. He wouldn’t let that happen to Alyssa.

“You need to wake up,” he said. He didn’t shake or touch her. He wanted to see if she responded to a voice command. She didn’t stir, didn’t even vary her deep breathing.

“Alyssa? Alyssa, wake up!”

His second, more authoritative demand garnered no more response than his first. He sighed, knowing he’d have to haul her into a sitting position and force her awake. “Fucking blows,” he muttered. Chugging the rest of his beer, he banged it down on the table and prepared to sit her up.

To her credit, Alyssa had never been drunk and/or wasted before. She was a pretty good teen, in all. At 5’8” tall, and 125 pounds, she looked just like her mother, with long hair. Both she and Sophie were brunettes, with flawless complexions and hazel eyes, both flecked with gold.

Alyssa had smashed her nose in a skateboarding accident at 12, and required reconstructive surgery to make it right. It was hard to tell, but Garrett noted the imperfections every time he’d glanced at her. Look close, and you could spot the lines along her nose where the plastic surgeons had reattached it the one side. He spotted them now.

“Let’s get you sitting,” he said. Reaching down to gather his daughter up, he spotted the corner of a plastic baggie protruding from beneath the love seat. Curious, and ready to mouth curses if the baggie contained what he suspected, Garrett retrieved the bag by the corner and scowled. The bag contained 3 neatly rolled joints.

“God dammit,” he muttered. “These better not be yours, Alyssa.” They possibly weren’t. Calvin had busted up the party and chased everyone off the property, so the joints could belong to a classmate or friend. Possibly someone had tossed the bag under the love seat in a panic, expecting cops to descend on the place any moment. Calvin was a deputy sheriff, after all. He opened the bag and took a whiff. Cannabis, for sure, and potent, from the smell of it.

Garrett hadn’t smoked pot in 8 years, Sophie, even longer. Parents needed to set an example for their kids. He and Sophie seldom drank anything stronger than beer, and kept no liquor in the house for Alyssa or hers friends to experiment with. She’d sworn only a month ago that she didn’t smoke weed. He had no reason to disbelieve her until tonight. “Who’s is this?” he asked her slumbering form.

He pitched the baggie onto the lamp table by Alyssa’s head and bent again to raise and position her in a sitting position. She had started to snore, the unmistakable version of snoring that only a drunk makes. Make that someone enormously drunk, he thought. All sitting her up would result in was her flopping back to the cushions again, sliding forward off the love seat, or keeling forward and smashing her forehead on the coffee table. She deserved the last, but might break her delicate nose. Besides, the coffee table was overlaid with glass.

“You know what?” he said angrily. “If you’re gonna keep me up all hours playing watchdog, I’m gonna smoke one of those fucking things.” Grabbing up the baggie, he yanked it open and picked out a joint. “Your friends don’t like it, they can suck my cock. That don’t apply to you, if they’re yours. I’ll reserve a good hide-tanning, for you.”

He kept matches and an assortment of lighters on the mantle to light fires in the fall and winter months. Grabbing a purple Bic butane, he stuffed the baggie into his shirt pocket and went to the porch door; he wouldn’t smoke marijuana inside the house. Leaving the door open to hear better, he grabbed a plastic chair and sat it facing the screen door. Alyssa lay perfectly in view. Too perfectly, as the throw he’d laid over her didn’t cover her below mid-calf. He jolted upright and stood. Alyssa wore no underwear.

“Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck!” he swore. Burned on his retinas was the image of his daughter lying splay-legged, her smoothly shaven genitals clearly illuminated by the lamp at her feet. “Fuck!” he spat, turning around. “For God’s sakes, Alyssa! What is wrong with you?”

Fuming, wanting to hurl the lighter and joint into the darkness, he kicked the chair aside, shielded his eyes with the joint hand and grabbed open the door. Eyes averted, he stomped to the love seat and yanked the throw down to her ankles.

“God dammit,” he muttered. He hadn’t seen his daughter’s bare pudenda since she was 8 years old, and that was a blunder, then. Not that he was to blame for this fuck-up; he couldn’t possibly know his daughter wore no underwear. “Fuck,” he muttered again.

Had she fucked on the couch? In front of all her friends? Had she just not bothered putting on panties when she got dressed? He was now certain her bra was undone under her shirt, too. Was she responsible for that as well? Or was the somebody who removed her underwear responsible. “God dammit,” he muttered.

Stooping, he glanced beneath the futon and then dropped to his knees to see all the way underneath. He discovered a couple missed plastic cups and a beer bottle, but no girl’s wayward underwear. Angrily grabbing the discards, he chucked them toward the kitchen door and checked under the coffee table, and both lamp tables, and then behind the love seat. “Fuck. Fuck-fuck-fuck, Alyssa.”

He stared down at her, angry and disturbed. If someone took advantage of her after she became intoxicated and unable to give consent—she was 15! She couldn’t give permission in any fucking case!—then she’d been raped. She’d appeared clean and dry when her saw her that instant, but that meant nothing, really. Sophie often gave no clear evidence of sexual intercourse after the fact, and she was clean-shaven, also. He was perverted, even drawing up the memory. “Fuck,” he muttered again.

Turning, he stomped to the kitchen and down the hallway to the stairs to the 2nd level. Alyssa was in no immediate danger, and he’d only be upstairs for a minute or two, tops. He stopped with a hand on the newel post, regardless, listening. He could just discern her stentorious snoring. He ought record it on his iPhone just to torture her with later. God knows, she deserved it. Bounding up the stairs two at a time, he reached the 2nd level and made for her bedroom.

She was a slob. All 15-year-olds were slobs, he knew. Snapping on the overhead light, which Alyssa used to locate stubbornly concealed items, or when vacuuming, which she did every 6 months, Garrett gazed around her cluttered room.

“This’ll be your punishment,” he muttered. “Cleaning it blindfolded and then sleeping in the bathtub for a month.” If he hoped to discover evidence of recent sexual activity, he was out of luck. Her bed was always unmade, and she had a week’s worth of underwear scattered about the floor. He saw no indication that she had fucked a boy upstairs, and then migrated back down to the porch to continue smoking and drinking. Frustrated, he jammed the lighter and joint into his other shirt pocket and snapped off the light.

She hadn’t moved. Her snoring was louder, if anything. Leaving her be, Garrett grabbed a 2nd throw off the back of the couch and draped it over her chest, pulling it up to her chin. It bothered him about her undone bra. It galled him, in fact, knowing someone other than she had unfastened and left it undone as he raped her.

“I hope that didn’t happen,” he muttered.

Returning outside, he up-righted the chair, and then replaced it entirely. He’d cracked the leg, kicking it over. Dropping onto the seat, he fished out the lighter and joint and lit up.

This was not your grandfather’s Oldsmobile. The first inhalation he explosively expelled and then broke into a violent coughing fit. Bending over, he coughed into his hand, holding the lighter and joint away in the other. “Holy fucking shit!” he choked. “What is this shit?”

Appalled, continuing to cough, he stared at the smoking joint, wondering if it was marijuana at all. He almost dropped it to the patio and ground it out with his toe. His throat and lungs burned.

“Is this marijuana?” he croaked. Sniffing he decided it smelled like marijuana. Clearing his throat to suppress the coughing, he placed the tip directly beneath his nose and smelled again. It was marijuana. Was it laced with something? PCP? LSD? Meth? “Fuck,” he muttered. “What am I doing?”

He took an experimental 2nd hit, a shallow one. This time he didn’t cough or choke. Still harsh, the smoke remained in his lungs until expelled. “If you smoked this shit, I don’t blame you for passing out,” he croaked. Already, he felt the effects of the THC and other intoxicants in the weed. It was the fastest acting joint he’d ever smoked. “Holy fuck, this is potent shit.”

He half-filled his lungs, choked but held it in, and pulled in air behind the smoke to dilute it. This only made him cough, and he suffered a 2nd coughing fit sitting there, this one less violent, however, and shorter. The instant he was able, he filled his lungs, and then pinched off the crown between his fingertips. This weed, you didn’t waste, he thought.

He shuddered convulsively, head to foot and fumbled the lighter. “Holy fuck...” Holding up his hands, he counted 8 fingers and 2 thumbs. It was impossible to be this high, this soon. Weed simply didn’t work that fast. He whipped his head around at the sound of a twig snapping in the woods beyond the pool.

“Someone there?” he yelled.

The pool was above-ground, 4’ deep x 12’ wide x 16’ long. The contractor was an in-law, and gave Garrett and Sophie a steep cut on the teak decking and labor to install the pool. He walked out on the deck now, gazing into the deep woods. “Anyone there?” he challenged. Raccoons prowled the night woods, along with tomcats and sometimes, black bear. He relit the joint and took another hit.

Hearing nothing, he returned to the chair and stood with his foot propped on the seat and finished the joint. Letting nothing go to waste, he popped the roach into his mouth and extinguished it between his molars, then swallowed the remainders. He considered lighting the 2nd of the three, but decided against it. This weed hit hard as a Mike Tyson punch.

Inside, he quietly closed the door. He needn’t have bothered. Alyssa couldn’t possibly hear anything over her snoring. Chuckling, Garrett nudged her shoulder. That interrupted her for a moment, but she immediately started again. He couldn’t leave her like this; he wouldn’t leave her like this.

“Alyssa. Alyssa, wake up, honey.” She refused to stir, snoring loudly. “You have to wake up, darlin’,” he muttered.

In the kitchen, he opened the fridge and pulled a bottle from the 6-pack and spun off the lid. The weed had him seeing a little tunnel-visiony. Now the effect altered to fish-eyed, like peeking though a door-hole. He raised his right hand and concentrated on the blood vessels on the back, snaking beneath the skin. Alyssa always claimed his veins grossed her out. Sometimes, they grossed him out too. So did the snaky veins on his huge cock.

Whoa, he thought. Where did that come from? Embarrassed and taken aback, he crossed to the kitchen door and checked the porch. Alyssa hadn’t moved, nor altered her snoring.

He hadn’t spoken aloud ... had he? “No,” he muttered, “I only thought that to myself. About my huge veiny cock.” He snorted, which failed to awaken Alyssa, also.

Stepping down, he leaned against the door frame and sipped the beer. “Are you really mine?” he asked his comatose daughter.

He’d never cheated on Sophie when together with her. Both had seen other people during the 3 unbearable separations, but Garrett slept with only an 8th grade girlfriend the 1st time, and no one after. His exception was Alicia Parker; Sophie’s was Garrett’s best friend, Ronny Bartlett. She’d slept with him repeatedly all 3 times. Garrett hadn’t spoken to Ronny in 10 years.

He’d first dated Sophie a week following her 14th birthday. She’d been house bound before that, grounded by her helicopter-parent mother. They had sex only twice in 6 months; once unprotected, the 2nd time with a condom that slipped down his erection the entire time. Neither time did he ejaculate inside Sophie’s vagina.

Sophie didn’t agree to exclusivity until she’d missed a period. She’d been erratic due to hormonal issues since starting at age 12, and didn’t worry until her 2nd missed period came and went. Following the 3rd, she bought a test kit, and told her mom. Everyone assumed Garrett was the father. The problem was, Alyssa looked nothing like him at all.

As a child, Alyssa evinced nipples unlike he or her mom’s. Sophie’s nipples were big and protuberant, her areola dark, almost purple in color. Though not conclusive, Garrett had standard issue male nipples with quarter-sized areola. His best friend at the time had strangely inverted nipples, however, the same as Alyssa. She had his small ears and unattached earlobes, pigeon-toed walk, and, until smashed flat and nearly ripped from her face, his nose. A paternity test would tell for sure, but Garrett loved Alyssa fiercely; discovering another man fathered her would kill him.

“A good parent protects their children,” Garrett avowed. “Doesn’t take advantage, doesn’t exploit or abuse them. He also doesn’t call into question their love. I love you, and I know you love me.” We just don’t tell each other very much, he thought.

Wanting another beer, Garrett returned to the fridge and dropped the empty into the recycle bin. Twisting off the cap, he downed half the contents, aware the pot had his throat furiously dry. That always happened when he smoked pot, just usually not this fast. He fished out the plastic baggie.

“I’m not done with you yet,” he rasped, throat raw from all the coughing. “Let’s you and me and lighter mosey out to the patio for a little smokey. Whatdaya say about that, weed?”

Weed voiced no objection at all, but Garrett couldn’t fathom where Lighter had got off to. Patting his pockets all the way to the fireplace, he filched a replacement lighter and headed out back. Alyssa snored peacefully on the cramped futon. Garrett noted that her overlapping throws had begun to slide off her left side, but looked in no immediate danger of leaving her uncovered. He’d momentarily forgotten her lack of panties and cocked legs. He’d regret not adjusting her throws soon enough. He’d regret it a lot. But not for the reason you think.

Retaking his seat, Garrett stretched out and lit the joint. He’d got used to the weed’s harshness, but still inflated his lungs carefully and pinched off the crown. He counted slowly to 30 and slowly blew out.

Please tell me the panties were a fluke and no one took you for a ride tonight, he thought. He glanced in, and watched her chest rise and fall as she snored. The throw covering her raised right knee had crept far enough left to leave it half-uncovered. The throws looked stable enough to finish the joint, though. He’d fix them when he went in. He relit the joint.

Jonny Burkholder and Jeremy Matthews, friends from high school and college, were ruled out as fathers by simple blood tests following an accident. Asked to provide blood, neither was found be the child’s biological father. Jonah Markham found out through a paternity test demanded by the suspected father. He didn’t want that happening to him. Except in proof-positive cases with DNA paternity testing, however, a father is always left faced with a sliver of doubt.

He sat up straight. Why are you thinking that, asshole?

Angry and frustrated, he inhaled sharply and filled his lungs. Holding it a 30 count, he exhaled and immediately sucked in again.

Fucking slow down! he berated himself. This time, he held the smoke in 45 seconds before blowing out, coughing. Pinching off the stub, he checked Alyssa on the love seat. No change; the throws hadn’t slipped farther.