Magnus and His Family (Chapter 1)
Kathryn M. Burke
Kristen knew that her father, Magnus, was not happy.
Magnus Larsen was a big bear of a man, well over six feet tall, with a barrel chest, thighs like stovepipes, a bushy blond beard now streaked with gray—he was in his mid-forties—and twinkling blue eyes that could turn hard and cold when he was angry. Of course, he almost never directed his anger toward his only daughter, and for that Kristen was immensely relieved. In fact, she thought her father a huge teddy bear, and couldn't imagine why many people seemed a bit afraid of him.
Well, to be honest, she was just the faintest bit afraid of him too, for like so many men of Scandinavian origin he was inclined toward silent brooding and glowering, as if he had stepped out of a Henrik Ibsen play or a film by Ingmar Bergman. But most of the time—especially when his glance fell upon his daughter—his eyes would brighten and his face would become transformed into the very quintessence of warmth and geniality. She was loved, and she knew it; but she also knew that there were other things that were troubling Magnus, and they all stemmed from her parents' breakup two years earlier.
Her mother, Imogen, had suddenly decided to leave the household. That very act had stunned both Magnus and Kristen, since Imogen had for more than twenty years been a devoted, even subservient wife to her husband. It was as if, in the England of
Downton Abbey
days, a housemaid had taken it upon herself to tell the Lord of the Manor where he could get off. Imogen had, of course, made no particular scene; that wasn't her way. She had simply concluded, for reasons that no one in the household—not Magnus, not Kristen, nor Kristen's older brother, Paul—could understand, that her cohabitation with her husband and children had simply become impossible. Paul, who was then eighteen and about to begin his freshman year at Lorimer College, one of the many institutions of higher learning in the Boston area, had gone with her—not necessarily because he had preferred living with his mother rather than with his father, but because he could not afford to live on campus in a dorm.
And now Kristen was facing the same situation. She had just turned eighteen that summer, and was looking forward to attending a college of her own—not the same one as her brother, but Manhattan College, one of the few all-girls' colleges left in the entire United States. She too felt the need to remain at home and commute to the college, not only because her father's job as an independent contractor didn't exactly allow for room and board at an expensive private school, but because she couldn't bear to leave her father all alone.
In the two years since her parents' divorce, Magnus had gone on virtually no dates with women of his age. God knows it wasn't that he was an unattractive man: his rugged bearing was matched by his intelligence and sensitivity. Here was someone who looked like a lumberjack but who could appreciate both the poetry of Sylvia Plath and the musical programs offered by the Boston Symphony. That, in Kristen's eyes, would seem to be an irresistible package to the high-powered women who were in such abundance in this great old city, and who were perhaps a little tired of the effete academics, nerdy techies, and other less-than-masculine men of the #MeToo age.
And yet, it was not that Magnus didn't have success attracting women: Kristen easily detected any number of females giving him the once-over when the two of them ran errands here and there. It was simply that Magnus himself, seemingly stunned by his wife's departure, had made no effort to find another mate.
That filled Kristen with immense sadness. A man so full of life and vigor as Magnus Larsen shouldn't be alone.
Of course, she was there to keep him company—but that didn't count. Or did it?
It wasn't that she herself had a lot of experience with men. At her eighteenth birthday—where, rather absurdly, she had persuaded her father to let her host a slumber party with half a dozen of her girl friends, all of whom were going to different colleges around the country—she had listened wide-eyed as one girl after the other had told of her various intimate involvements with boys. She couldn't tell if these accounts were true of mere fabrications to enhance each girl's sense of her own attractiveness; some of the stories seemed pretty hard to believe, involving sexual gymnastics of a sort that made Kristen think whimsically that the girls seemed to be conceiving of sex as some kind of Olympic sport. But at least she had learned something of what makes the male ego—and the male organ—tick.
Exactly when she would have any use for that information, heaven only knew.
Then came the time when she had come home early one Saturday afternoon from a shopping trip at a nearby mall, to pick up a variety of things she would need for the college term that began in less than a week.
She had entered the big house where she and Magnus now lived; and at first she thought the place was empty, even though Magnus had not mentioned he was going anywhere. Then she heard a strange, unidentifiable sound emerging from Magnus's bedroom upstairs. Was he taking a nap? Was he snoring or wheezing or grunting in his sleep? She hadn't recalled him ever doing that. Surely he wasn't ill? Magnus was such a robust specimen that he almost never got sick, even with a mild cold.
As she padded upstairs and crept toward his bedroom, she saw that the door was slightly ajar. The room was dark, although a certain amount of sunlight filtered in through the curtained windows. What she saw stunned her into a silent statue as she found herself unable to tear her gaze away.
Magnus was lying on the bed, supine. He was naked.
She had never seen her father naked—why would she? That really wasn't allowed, was it? Oh, sure, sometimes he walked around with a towel around his midsection after he had come out of the shower. On those occasions she had gazed raptly at his immense chest, covered with thick fur, and those incredible muscular legs that seemed twice as big around as her own. He would walk by her casually, then wink at her as if exchanging some secret code or signal that only the two of them understood. But in fact she didn't understand at all what he was trying to convey!
But this was different. It was not only that Magnus was naked. It was that his hand was firmly attached to his thick, hard member, pumping it up and down. His eyes were closed fast, and there seemed a kind of frown or scowl on his face. He actually seemed to be in some kind of pain.
The sight of that immense organ sent a shiver through Kristen. She had never seen a cock before, except fleetingly in certain R-rated films; and as she stared at it, her mouth suddenly went dry and she licked her lips without thinking. The grunting sound was clearly coming from deep within Magnus's throat, and it was getting louder by the second.
Then, without warning, a thick white substance shot out of his cock.
Kristen almost cried out in surprise and alarm, but fortunately clapped a hand over her mouth to silence herself. As she watched in amazement, the initial burst of fluid was followed by several other ones, some of them seeming to shoot a foot or more in the air before landing heavily and wetly on her father's belly.
Without conscious thought, Kristen realized that she had to conceal the fact of her presence. She dashed toward the front door of the house, opened it, closed it with a bang, and then cried out as exuberantly as she could, "I'm home, Daddy!" She made a pretense of shuffling loudly through her various packages, which she had dumped on the living-room couch. She even tried to whistle nonchalantly, although in her mind the dry whistle came out in a kind of nervous quaver.
In a minute or so, Magnus emerged from his bedroom and came downstairs. His ruddy complexion was even ruddier than usual, and he was wearing nothing but a thin robe. It was not unusual for him to wander around the house in a robe, but in the past (as Kristen now remembered with a blush) he would at least wear some underwear—sometimes she could see it being exposed through the folds of the robe. But now it was abundantly obvious that he had nothing on underneath that robe—and, as she shiveringly glanced at his midsection, she thought she could see a bulge making itself evident.
As she stood stock-still in the middle of the room, Magnus walked up to her and gave her a big hug. "Hello, dear," he said in his unmistakable bass voice. "Glad to see you're back."
It was not her imagination: she felt some rod-like substance of flesh or gristle rubbing up against her jeans as he enfolded her in his hairy, muscular arms. And she could have sworn that that bit of flesh gave a little quiver when he sought to give her a fatherly kiss on the cheek—but instead ended up planting a wet kiss on the side of her neck.
She managed to wiggle out of his grasp, admonishing him: "Oh, Daddy, go get dressed!" Then she all but ran upstairs to her own bedroom, right next to her father's.
