There is titillating nudity tension in an implied incest setting, but no sex, in this story. If you are looking for caterwauling and torrenting sex, this is not for you.
***
I am David. We were a family of four. We lived in the English south coast.
At the time when this happened, I was twenty-two. I was in the publishing business.
Mum was then fifty. Being in the Tech sector, she was IT savvy. Although age had stealthily crept up on her over the years, she still looked more than appealing in a lite Rubenesque way.
Dad was fifty-five. He ran a small successful business.
My elder brother was twenty-five. He was a Humanities lecturer in the local college. Related to his academic interest, he ran a freelance photography business providing events photography services and such.
On one occasion, my laptop-PC could not be booted-up. I had an immovable work deadline to meet that night. Shit happens!
Mum assessed my PC. She concluded that the hard disk had crashed. Mum setup her PC for my use. I laboured through the night.
At 4am, I emailed my work to my editor. I was done. I felt tired. And yet, I could not will myself to sleep. This was probably due to my having stared down at the glare of the PC screen for a blast of eight straight hours.
Instinctively, my PC mouse drifted to mum's photo folders. I traipsed fleetingly through the collection. The folder names were typical. Work. Admin. Finance. Family. Events. Travel. Fashion. "Intime" piqued my interest. In time for what?
I clicked.
Mum.
Nude.
Fifty shades.
Various poses and compositions.
My first instinct was to close the window, get outta there quicktime, shutdown the PC, and get to bed. Somehow, an invisible force appropriated my being into slavish mindless submission. I just couldn't not go down that rabbit hole.
I maximized the window, and initiated the slide show. When a particular photo buzzed me a warm tingle, if not a tremor, I was moved to capture the image on my cellphone camera.
Click.
The photos were artfully composed. Collectively, they carried an unlikely aura of professionally rendered, and yet, amateurish homey casual charm. Think the best taken, artistically-nuanced classy nude photos in amateur wives websites that showcase mature allure in good taste. In the photos which featured mum's nipples, and her mons pubis, her feminine bits were revealed tastefully without any hint of lewdness. Show, but tell subtly. Sublime.
It was at the crack of a new dawn when I reclaimed a semblance of my former self. I shutdown mum's PC. I fell into deep coma sleep.
***
The haze lifted.
I was on a pedestal, installed at some kind of town square. A piazza. A surge of people of many hues swirling, milling around the place, ascertaining this and that.
I couldn't move. An imposing force had rendered me immobile. But, I was acutely sentient. An odd sensation. Metaphysical. I became more self-aware. I was both subject and object in the same dimension of being.
I was David. Not the custom me I knew too well, but Michelangelo's David. That of Florence, Italy. Regally proud and yet vulnerably naked.
It was all rather Kafkaesque.
A lady in a breezy pastel summer dress drifted off the swarm of humanity, and stood alone before me. She studied me for a time. Parsed my every contour. Her eyes traced my muscles and sinews, once over, and then again.
She reached out to hold my manhood as if taking its measure. She was pedantic about the task. Gently, she cradled my sac like treasured artifacts. I was of marble. And yet, I sensed the warmth of her hand.
She peeked up coyly, tilting her sunhat a little to take me in. The dusting of freckles at her cleavage thinned out. I could see her face now.
"Mum!" I cried in silence.
A smirk.
***
Fast forward. Three days later.
I had a quiet breakfast moment with mum at the cliff edge of our garden, overlooking a moor of sea.
It was the weekend. Dad was on business travel. My brother was on a field trip with his students.
This was our banter.
Mum: Did you enjoy it?
Me: Huh? Enjoy what?
Mum: Me!
I gazed deep into her smoky gray eyes. I saw clarity. She knew. In the uncanny way that mums knew.
Me: I'm so sorry! I'm a wretch. A creep. You had kindly helped me with your PC, and I violated your trust and privacy. I don't have a good reason for what I did. I'm so ashamed.
There was a deafening pall of silence. The cosmos went on pause.
Mum: What were your first instincts when you opened the folder? Tell me... I want to understand what possessed you to do what you did.
Me: The luring pull of the forbidden. I guess my moral fence just caved in to the beckoning pull of the taboo. This is lame. But, it's the truth.
Mum (reflecting): Thank you for being so honest with me. You would've pissed me off royally if you had danced around in a mush of bullshit. Did it ever cross your mind to tell me about this? To own up?
Me: Honestly, no. It's counterintuitively difficult to do.
Mum: I can understand that... Do you look at me differently now, with the benefit of your new insights?
Me (reflectively): As a mum, no. As a woman, to be honest, yes. I can't help it.
Mum: And how do you reconcile that?
I paused, and pondered over the question. It was an apt philosophical question. A Big Question. Its answer would illuminate the way forward for us. I raised my eyebrows and looked wise.
Me: I'm not sure if there is anything to reconcile. You were my mum, and a woman, before I viewed your pictures. You're still my mum, and still a woman now. I think the only difference is that I now have a heightened appreciation of you, the woman.
Mum: You're too glib smart for your own good. Heightened appreciation, huh? I'm sure...
Me: I didn't mean to be cute.