######################
You might want to read Chapters One through Four first.
You might also wish to visit my site (click on my profile), where you can find the whole novel in .pdf format, as well as more information about the characters, the world they inhabit, and the author.
This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy. Supernatural forces play a prominent role throughout the novel.
All characters are over eighteen. All acts are consensual.
########################
I wasn't sure what to do. Wait until Brianna ended that illusion, dream, or whatever it was? And then try to stop her from doing whatever she planned to do with all that power?
Perhaps that was a perfectly good plan. But I suddenly realized I had another option.
Super-charged as I was, I could do what Brianna had just done. I could open up a self-contained fantasy world, and transport us all there. A world in which I would be a step ahead of everyone else in figuring out the rules.
Never-mind a luxurious hotel resort. I went for more fantastic.
The world shimmered around me, melted away like wax before a flame. I filled the hole left in its place. What I built in its stead probably bore little resemblance to life out west a hundred and fifty years ago so much as a pastiche born from fictional accounts thereof.
But I felt certain it would keep the others believing long enough to serve its purpose.
#
We stood in the main hall of an old time tavern. My mother was the proprietor. She wore a huge skirt with many layers of colorful petticoats showing beneath. A frilly light blue blouse and leather boots went along with it.
My father stood behind the bar, polishing a glass. He wore a handlebar mustache, leather vest, jeans with a huge belt buckle, and a black shirt with a bola tie.
Aunt Liz and Uncle Jim sat at a table, wearing expensive tailored clothes. He wore a well-cut brown suit and a bowler hat. A full beard covered his gaunt face. Aunt Liz wore a beige dress with a vest of red crushed velvet over it. Atop her head sat a black, beige and red hat with a flimsy beige veil hanging from the brim. The financier and his wife.
My brothers and cousin Mark sat at the bar, wearing grimy, once white shirtsleeves. They hadn't any of them shaved in days. Dirt covered their hands and faces. Miners.
Natalie was up on stage. She wore black leather boots, fishnet stockings, a purple garter, a purple corset trimmed with black lace, a black choker, and black leather gloves with purple lace. A strip of black fabric fell down her backside, the sort that could be found on fancy dresses of that era. But she seemed to have lost the rest of the garment.
My sister's fake tan was gone. But, curiously, her hair was still a mix of her natural medium-brown and bleach-blonde.
Aunt Cindy had a big red feather in her hair and a red feather boa around her shoulders. She wore short black boots with sharp heels, red thigh-high fishnets, black satin panties with red trim, and a black leather corset with so much red lace adorning it that it almost looked like she had a skirt on. Like Natalie, she also wore gloves, though hers were red fishnet like her stockings. These two were clearly prostitutes.
Jack wore a top hat and a torn, faded black suit. He carried a heavy leather bag that rattled as he walked across the room to an empty table. He was too clean to have been a laborer of any kind, but not dressed in a manner that suggested wealth. Doctor perhaps.
It took more effort since I couldn't even see the place, but I then fashioned a small sheriff's office with two jail cells. I pictured Brianna locked up in one of them.
Naturally, I was the sheriff.
I populated the tavern with a few other locals. But they were little more than ghosts. They looked real enough, but if anyone went outside the family, they'd find little reward. Brianna should have thought of that.
Aunt Cindy wasted little time. She made her way across the room, and invited Mark and Todd to have a good time with her. They bought a bottle of whiskey from the bar and the three headed upstairs, shit-eating grins on the guys' faces.
I went over and sat with Jack and made small talk, trying to get a sense of what he knew. He knew who I was, but only as the sheriff of this nonexistent town. He was indeed the doctor. If he had any idea that everyone there, or everyone who was real, was a member of the same family, he didn't give any indication. He fancied the dancer, and was working up the courage to buy her services for an hour. I encouraged him to do so.
When I took my leave of him, I found that Dom and my mother were no longer there. I went towards the back of the tavern, where the stockrooms would be. I heard the scraping of leather on wood, accompanied by soft moaning, coming from one of them.
I pushed the door open. My brother sat on a crate, pants around his ankles, knuckles white as he gripped the shelves to either side of him. Mom was on her knees in front of him.
He looked up at me. "Well shit, sheriff, ain't no crime here, is there?"
Mom turned and looked at me, spit dripping from the corner of her mouth. She wiped a lock of hair from her face. "Please, sheriff. Let's say you didn't see nothing, all right?"
At a loss for words, I stepped back out and let the door swing to. Before I was gone, I heard the slurping sound of my mother resuming the activity I'd interrupted.
So much for thinking I'd won Mom over. But then, she didn't remember any of what had just happened. Nor that she was his mother, come to it. But I guess I'd expected to have left an impression that would still influence her behavior, if only subconsciously.
I took my hat off, scratched my head, and ambled back to the bar. Natalie was no longer on stage. My father, uncle and cousin Jack were all gone as well.
Good for them.
Well damned if I couldn't make them believe whatever I wanted. I strode back and kicked in the door. My mother jumped up, holding her skirts tight around her. Dom scrambled to get his pants back up.