Preamble:
There is nudity, exhibitionist and voyeuristic tension, incestual sex in this story.
In Chapter 1, in a hotel room setting, mature couple, Ethan and Em, enlist the help of their son, David, to take intimate photos of them to memorialise their fiftieth birthdays cum thirtieth wedding anniversary.
In Chapter 2, the playful champagne-fueled photoshoot frisson leads to the dad taking simulated intimate mum-son photos for a lark. As it is late, the son stays overnight in the room.
This chapter is on the morning after the photoshoot.
***
A mellifluous rising musical tone marks the new dawn.
It is David's cellphone.
David is a nocturnal beast. Not a morning person. Certainly not at the crack of dawn on a Saturday. But, David has a symbiotic, almost telepathic relationship with his cellphone. An uncanny bond. His eyes flicker open at the first chime of his cellphone. He quickly quieses the cellphone so as not to wake his parents.
The message reads: New development on Shanghai deal. Details in email. Need you there pronto.
David texts: No rest for the wicked. Noon flight. See ya.
David rises in a dissonant daze from the sofa bed, shaking off his pall of sleep. He makes his way to the washroom, passing his parents who are soundly asleep. He pauses at the bed to inform his parents that he has to go off, to attend to work matters.
The quilt is gathered in a clutter at his parents' feet. They are naked. His dad lies flat on his back, snoring in deep coma. A night person. His mum grafts herself over his dad. Her right leg drapes over his genitals, as if clambering on him in suspended animation.
David scans his parents. His eyes laser into his mum. In her position, each of her arse cheeks are proffered with distinct expressed personalities, like individually sculpted orbs. The underside of her lady parts is exposed.
Where one expects to see a lurid flowering of petals on this mature form, there is, almost surreally, a pristine minimalist gash. And then, less elegantly, but just as sensually compelling, a puckered anus, delineated by a faint imprint hint of oily o-ring. Barely six hours ago, David had entered this private nether universe, and left his visitation evidence there. This thought gives David a twitch.
This image before David can pass off as an art class perspective posterior study of a young woman, of youthful body lines, except for the light Rubenesque thighs and hips. A confounding concoction of mature and the cusp of womanhood. It is in this pleasant aesthetic frame of mind that David ponders adoringly over this body sculpt work that is his mother.
Sensing their deep transcendental sleep, an emboldened David bends down to appraise his mother's nether charms at the level of detail she deserves. How pretty her lady parts look. He is glad that she is giving him the privilege of seeing her most intimate charms again, albeit implicitly, this time, in the crystal clarity of early morning light, without the restraining tension of bashfulness of the night before, even though she doesn't know it. Or, does she? His parents have probably decided that given the chill nudity in the photoshoot of the night before, their sleeping nude is not a big deal.
David remembers that his mum is an early morning person. And a pin drop light sleeper. But, maybe on this new dawn, she is sleeping off her champagne. She is a light drinker. And she drank copious volumes last night. Her vulnerability to champagne-strawberries pairing.
David has to muster all his will to resist running his fingers through her vaginal slit. He imagines the sensation of caressing her delicate inner folds. The thing about women with minimalist exteriors is that there is a sort of layered mystique to be peeled, which adds to the allure, maddeningly rationing the sensuality.
David has to capture this moment. He takes a close-up photo with his cellphone. This is the least that he must do, even though it is so wrong on many levels.
A resounding click in the still room air!
Oops!
He forgot to mute his cellphone. Is that a fleeting flutter of his mum's eyes? Did he see the whites of her eyes?
But, she appears to be serenely asleep as before. An animation of rapid eye movement. Par for the dreamland course. He hopes...
His mum moves. David recoils in mortification. Will he be caught out? She turns to the other side, facing David, coiled, knees bent, right leg ahead of left, arse orbs dramatically trussed and cocked up.
Davids decides that he is skating on thin voyeur ice. He is a flicker of an eyelid from being caught out. It is one thing to study his mum with artistic intent in a champagne-fueled photoshoot. It is quite another to ascertain his mum like a museum treasure artefact. And he has a noon flight to catch.
He doesn't have the heart to wake up his slumbering parents. They are naked. It is different if they are under the quilt cover. In the glaring morning light, they may be embarrassed. He will message his parents later on his early departure. Much as he likes to linger to contemplate his mother's maternal charms, David wills himself away from the epicentre of the sensual maelstrom, to the washroom. He gazes back at his mother for a final lingering look. He deliberates on whether to take another cellphone photo of this refreshed perspective view of his mother's charm. No! He has to move on if he is not to miss his flight.