The Tal

Author's note: All characters portrayed are 18 years of age or older. This is a work of fiction and is NOT to be misconstrued as supporting or advocating incest in real life. Take from it what you will. As far as I know, most of the facts contained herein are fairly accurate or off by only a slight margin.

If you like the story and want me to continue with it, please don't hesitate to vote or post comments in the Public Comments section at the end (which I will monitor closely for reactions).

The story starts off slow, but it all serves as a build-up for something more. Maybe.

Enjoy and be safe.

*****

She was easily the sexiest creature I'd ever laid eyes upon, my wife. The woman who found me at the age of twenty-one, a typical guy in college and not too sure of much about the world around me. The only things I knew, for certain, were pretty simple, lessons I had learned from my parents over the years and which had proven to be true simply from experience. Be generally honest and kind to people. Do not mistake kindness for weakness. Show respect. Trust is a gift, one that should be earned, but once earned, it should be lavished upon those who earn it. Love is a gift similar to trust, and it is infinitely more precious. Honor is a gift, also, but one that is generally given to one's self, through wisdom and consideration. Patience is the key to learning and to forgiving one's own mistakes in life. Do not own the problems of others- you have more than enough of your own to handle, without taking on more than you deserve. Help those who help others. Do not give to beggars. Honest work is work that you can be proud of.

I wasn't the best student in the world, but I passed all my classes. I definitely wasn't the most popular guy at our small college, more like a wall-flower, another face in the crowd. I certainly wasn't rich or powerful. I was nobody, really. Why Katherine chose me, in the midst of so many other fine specimens of masculinity, has been a mystery to me ever since the fateful day upon which we met, the day when my life turned completely around and The One became glued to my hip.

I once asked Katherine, "Why me?"

She had smiled demurely and simply said, "All I ever wanted was a guy who knew himself. Everything else was negotiable. And you know yourself in spades. Other guys spend a lot of time trying to compensate for something, but not you. You knew who you were, what you were about and why you did the things you did. You questioned others all the time, but never yourself. I found that very appealing. And I still do."

That was only a few years ago, and she probably wouldn't have remembered it if I asked her again, but I still haven't been able to figure it out. I mean, technically, she was right: I DID know myself. But, to this very day, it seems that I never really did figure HER out. Then again, I never really tried. I was just too happy that she was with me, that she'd chosen me at all, to even bother dwelling on the question of why. I figured that, as long as I was happy, it was pointless to even wonder why she'd chosen me. And I was definitely happy. Deliriously so.

We had two kids, almost as soon as we'd graduated from college. I had a BA in psychology and she had a Masters in business. David, our son, graced us with his presence when I was 26 and Susan, our daughter, came a year later. After that Kathy and I decided that we didn't want any more children, so I elected to get a vasectomy. It hurt like hell the first couple of days, but once I healed completely, I never looked back. We'd decided on the vasectomy because, if we found that we wanted to have children later on in life, the procedure could be reverse with lower cost and relative ease.

Kathy and I did our best to raise our children with the same good, level-headed principles which had been engendered in us by our own parents. We taught them the best values that we knew and, when we found ourselves clueless, relied on our thirst for knowledge- neither Kathy nor I were afraid of asking questions or getting answers, no matter what the subject matter was. We found that if we kept our minds and eyes open in all things, then our children generally followed our example, which proved to be a wonderful thing within the family. Our kids bickered every now and then, just like all siblings do, but they always made up with each other and never harbored resentment for anything. If they found that their arguments had gotten out of hand, even at the young age of ten and nine years old, they would almost always come to me or Kathy to look for mediation.

Kathy and I never picked favorites amongst our children. We loved- and still love- them both, equally. We always told them the truth and hid nothing from them. There was no Easter Bunny, Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy- not because we found such tales to be silly, but because we didn't want our children to put their faith in things which would eventually be discovered to be false. We taught them about God, in general and broad terms, and took them to a wide variety of different religious groups, so that they could draw their own conclusions. The family library is rich indeed, filled with texts from nearly all the major religions, including Wicca, as well as archives of Greek and Roman mythology. Both David and Sue learned how to read at an early age, not because we forced it upon them, but because they were so delighted by the bedtime tales of Ancient Greek Mythology we'd read to them as young children, that they wanted to read the stories on their own, without our help. Both our children shared their parents' passion for truth and knowledge and seemd to have voracious literary appetites.

Most kids with such a thirst for knowledge would have ended up ostracized by their peers. But we'd taught our children not to go overboard with their personal educations. We encouraged them to go out and see movies and make friends. We wanted our children to develop social skills as MUCH as their mental skills. So we, Kathy and I, gently suggested to our children that reading college-level books while they were in junior high should remain a thing saved for bedtime reading. And we explained why- we didn't want them to lose out on having normal, healthy lives with their friends. We wanted them to get out and play sports and go shopping and have dates. We wanted them to explore life as richly and deeply as possible. We told them that kids their age, who often didn't appreciate knowledge for its own sake, were sometimes cruel or judgemental for the wrong reasons, we wanted to protect them from such abuses from their peers. Our children, bright young things that they were, understood and agreed to keep their advanced knowledge to themselves when among their friends.

David, when he was thirteen, showed strong signs of having a passion for science, which my wife and I thought was terrific. The trouble was that his love for knowledge was so great, that he far exceeded his teachers' expectations. The principal at his and Sue's school called us to recommend that he be pushed up a grade. Rather than make that decision FOR David, we consulted with him. We told him that, if he agreed to the offer, he would be in a higher level of learning at school, but all of his classmates would be older than him and that, most likely, he'd find it difficult to make friends in those classes. We warned him that he would be singled out some, but that he also stood the chance of advancing far beyond most students his age. We gave him all the pro's and con's of the situation and allowed him a week to decide on it by himself.

A week later David decided that he could still learn as much as he wanted about science without leaving his friends and peers behind, so he opted not to advance in grade level. Furthermore, he asked his teachers and the principal to keep quiet about the offer which had been made to him- he didn't want his friends and classmates to think of him as any different than they already did. For a boy of thirteen years of age, that was an astounding and mature decision. Not only did Kathy and I back him up on it, we helped him enroll in a special college-level science class that summer, so that he could further his education like a college student without any of his friends or peers being aware of it. As far as anyone knew that summer, he would go to visit his aunt every Tuesday and Thursday. No one questioned it and David did quite well in his studies.

Sue, also, excelled in school. Her area of expertise, we were surprised to learn, was in writing and literature in general. When she was 14, she announced to the whole family one evening that she was a "logophile."

Admittedly, I'd never heard the word before. "What's that mean, Kitten?" I asked.

Sue smiled proudly, glad to know something her parents didn't. "It means I am a lover of words," she said archly. "I just found it last night when reading the dictionary in bed. I saw the word and just fell in love with it. It fits me to a T."

Kathy and I, later that evening, decided to get Sue the biggest dictionary we could find for her fifteenth birthday, which was just two weeks away: the Oxford English Unabridged. I'd seen a copy of it once, in my college library, and can honestly say that if there is a book which can inspire intimidation, the OEUD is it; it's so large that it literally needs its own stand, for it weighs almost 20 pounds. Twenty pounds of paper and ink. Sue loved it like no other gift we'd ever bestowed upon her since birth. Her friends knew about it, of course, because she proudly displayed it in her bedroom and pored over its pages every night before going to bed. But not once did her logophilia serve as a social burden. Quite the contrary! Her love of words led her to be the editor for the school newspaper, which put her in touch with nearly everyone in the school- and *everyone* wanted to be featured in the newspaper.

Kathy and I were so proud of our kids. Deeply proud. Raising them was by no means an easy task- it never is for ANY parent- but at the same time, it seemed so effortless. Everything in our family made sense and was absolutely perfect, like a well-oiled machine, in a sense.

For the first few years of our children's childhood, Kathy stayed home and mothered them. She was their first teacher and taught them well to love knowledge. During those first few years I started a small psychology practice downtown, had my own office and gained a solid foundation in clients. There was never a shortage of people with deep personal problems (some of which you would NOT imagine!) and I took great pleasure in helping people as a counselor and confidant. My passion for my work served me well, for almost 90% of my business was generated by word-of-mouth.

When the kids went on to pre-school, I moved my practice to the house and Kathy went out to start her career in hotel management, a field that she'd taken a keen interest in back in her college days. So Kathy traveled a lot while I stayed home with the kids. When the kids were actually in school, which afforded me a quiet house, is when I saw my patients, so while my workload had diminished, I was still able to make a decent living. My family was provided for, my kids were healthy and happy and my wife had freedom to follow her own dreams.

During our children's pre-school years, Kathy worked her hotel management job all over the country for weeks or months at a time and saved her money. The income from my psychology practice was more than enough to keep the roof over our heads and then some, so I fully supported her socking the money away. And it wasn't just for selfish reasons, either. We knew that, once the children moved on to junior high, I would want to take my practice out of the house again, so Kathy would eventually have to stay at home more often. So the money she saved would go towards another house local to us, one that she could remodel and use to start her own bed & breakfast.

Life was perfect and idyllic in just about every way my wife and I could imagine. By the time the kids were in high school, Kathy had her bed & breakfast practically running itself and my own practice had made me quite rich, as my rates had gone considerably higher and my reputation carried with it an air of respectability in the local community, which meant that my clients had problems of a more mundane variety. The growth of my practice meant that I was able to take on fewer clients and still make a handsome living, most of which was invested in stocks and bonds over the years. I guess you could say that we lived as upper-middle-class Americans, but our lifestyle was far from extravagant or materialistic, even though my children and wife never wanted for anything. We enjoyed our few luxuries, but mostly we were content to have our needs met and just be a happy, loving family.

High school for our children, I knew, would be fraught with trials and tribulations. Kathy and I knew that, no matter how blessedly mature our children were, there would still be hormones and social issues to deal with as they got older and more independent. When both David moved into his Sophomore year and Sue was a Freshman, I had closed my psychology practice for good so that I could watch the children more carefully while Kathy hired a manager for her bed & breakfast, which allowed her to be at home more, too.

Our children had grown up to be in perfect health, I'm happy to say. David, in spite of his love for the sciences, had also developed a deep appreciation of soccer. And Sue doubled her responsibilities as the high school newspaper's editor along with service on the cheerleading squad. David, with his althletic and toned body, had grown a short mop of brown hair, brown-gold eyes and, even though he wasn't Adonis in the looks department, he had his own charming way about him. The girls liked him, that much was clear, but he never became cocky or selfish. Sue, however, was the social butterfly and had the looks to match her social skills- she was a knockout young woman with a wonderfully toned body from all the cheerleading practice and a sharp tongue, due largely to her love for words. Sue, when edgy, could whip her sandy-blonde hair behind her shoulders and stare down just about anyone with her piercing blue eyes of steel, looking both wonderfully beautiful and terribly frightening at the same time. She was outgoing and vivacious while David was cool and charming. Their grades, I am also happy to report, were nothing short of stellar. Even in late adolescence, their love for knowledge never abated and they still stuck to the childhood habit of reading an hour before bed, ranging on topics from evolution to chaos theory to science-fiction. Nothing to them was taboo or forbidden, when it came to knowledge; they read anything they could get their hands on which might stimulate their powerful minds.

And thus begins the story: how our perfect, wonderful, ideal family came to consider and even welcome incest in our lives.

David was a grown man now, just turned 19 years of age and finally out of high school. Most kids in his position, with his intellect, would have elected to go straight to college right out of high school, but not David. He chose to take a year off, to work a job like a normal person and appreciate some of the hardships of young adulthood. He shaved, drove a car (which I had bought for him on his 18th birthday- a sensible, fuel-efficient vehicle, a Honda Prelude), went on the occasional date and generally enjoyed himself to the fullest. When his friends came into town, to visit during college breaks, he hung out with them and pretty much had fun. If he ever came home drunk, neither Kathy nor I knew about it, but we knew that he'd tried alcohol on a few occasions, like most kids did at his age. We knew he didn't do drugs- he was far too active and self-respecting to do that.

On one particular night, though, he'd admitted to trying pot once and told us that he didn't really care for it. We didn't punish him for the experience, but neither did we praise him- we decided to simply accept his admission with equinimity and calm.

"I mean it," he said after we'd simply said okay. "You won't hear of me doing that stuff ever again. I'm sorry I did it at all."

Kathy looked at me and silently allowed me to take the reigns. "And WE meant it when we said okay," I told him. "Listen, Dave. You're an adult now. You're going to make decisions on your own, with or without our guidance. Are we glad that you didn't like it? Sure. Do we approve of you having done it at all? No, not really. But we trust you. We raised you and we're pretty certain you've got a good head on your shoulders. We DO appreciate you having the balls to come and tell us, though. But don't expect us to jump up and down for it. Considering the topic of discussion here, I'd say we've got mixed feelings about the whole thing. All I can say is that we trust you and hope you'll be good to yourself. We want you to be safe and happy." I paused for a minute and played the speech back in my head and then added, "Thank you for telling us, David."

David was quiet for a moment and considered that. "So... you're not angry?" he asked pensively. Doubtless he'd heard of other kids getting read the riot act for similar offenses.

I shook my head. "No," I said. "We're not angry. We're just glad that you didn't like the stuff. If you HAD and then tried to hide it from us, THEN we'd be pissed off. But, as it stands, I don't see any reason to get upset. You tried it, as most kids your age do, and you found that it wasn't for you. That's good news. Nothing to get up in arms about." I paused again, for effect. "Is there?"

David was quiet for several long seconds and then said, "Well... there IS this small matter of an ex-girlfriend of mine...." His face became very grave. "How do you guys feel about abortion?"

My jaw, I think, hit the floor and all I could do was stammer. Kathy, I'm pretty sure, was in no better condition, for her mouth had dropped open into the shape of a perfect "O."

Dave, however, brightened into a smile. "Gotcha."

And that was the last of it. A significant crisis in teenage development, averted by a joke. I heaved a sigh and fell back into my chair with relief. I had been totally suckered in. "That...." I started.

"-was NOT funny," Kathy finished and she threw a pillow from the couch at our son.

David laughed himself silly but caught the pillow without any effort. All the commotion brought Sue out of her bedroom, to see what the noise and laughter was about.

"What's going on?" she asked. "I'm trying to study for a math exam." She had that look of exasperation on her face, one which made her look beautiful and impatient at the same time. As a Senior in high school, Sue's marks in every course were fairly strong except for math- an area of study which required her more stringent attention.

David apologized for us. "Sorry, Sue. I was just telling Mom and Dad about smoking pot last week, how I didn't like it."

Sue didn't bat an eye at this news and only shifted her stance, stared at her brother with disbelief and incredulity. "Yes? And? This was funny how?"

David smiled. "Oh, that wasn't funny at all," he said. "THAT part was pretty serious. They're not pissed, but that wasn't why we're laughing. You see, after Dad told me that they weren't upset, he asked if there was something they SHOULD be bothered about and I led them to believe I'd knocked an ex-girlfriend up. They SO bought it!"

Kathy let loose with another pillow and, this time, nailed our son square in the forehead while he continued to laugh at our expense. "Bought it?!" she cried. "I damn near had a heart attack!" Even so, she couldn't wipe the smile from her own face and began to laugh.

Sue joined in the laughter. "Oh, come off it, Mother," she said between giggles. "You're too young to worry about heart attacks just yet." She sat down on the floor at David's feet and elbowed his knee.