Authors Notes: This story is a little longer than my typical stories, but I didn't want to break it into separate chapters. I'm sorry if you can't make it all the way through without shooting your wad, but I'd appreciate you going to the end and voting anyway. PLEASE! As always, comments are more than welcomed and constructive feedback improves future stories! All characters are at least 18-years-old.
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I met the entire family one night 12 years ago in a little tavern on the edge of town. I was 30 years old at the time. Ronnie and Cheryl Bestul had noticed a stranger sitting at the bar by himself eating fish on a Friday night. In this small Wisconsin farming town of around 300 people, strangers are rare, so they had introduced themselves along with their adorable and quite precocious red headed twins, Victoria and Veronica. I immediately liked them and explained that I had just bought the old Peterson farm about 10 miles north of town. I told them that I was not going to farm, but instead work from home. As a professional technical writer, all I needed was a phone and an internet connection. I had grown weary of the hustle and bustle of New York City, and had picked the Peterson place because it was so isolated and quiet. I loved the old two story farmhouse built in the classic Victorian style so common to the mid-west prairie. The house had been updated through the years, but it still had some old-world charm like a wood burning stove on each level for heating. "Heck," I told them, "a single guy just doesn't need a lot to survive."
I had been raised in the south, but shortly after getting my Ph.D. in Biochemistry I was hired by a big publishing firm in New York. It was great for a single man of 25, but I soon became disenchanted with the rush of the big city. As an only child, when my elderly parents died, I had no family left, and although I was surrounded by millions of people, I felt alone in the city.
My initial inclination was to move back south, but a serendipitous week-long snowshoe holiday with friends to Wisconsin made me fall in love with the state. I loved the down-to-earth friendly people, the slow and steady pace of life so common to rural areas, and most of all, the beautiful Wisconsin outdoors. The next summer, I visited again to make sure that I wasn't kidding myself, and found that I loved the place even more than before. I arranged with the firm to work from home with the agreement I would return to New York at least on a quarterly basis, and bought the Peterson farm the very next month.
The Bestuls and I became fast friends, and Ronnie and Cheryl invited me to their house for every holiday, ensuring that I never had to spend time alone. We grilled out on weekend nights when it was warm, went camping together in the fall once the mosquitoes had died, sat by the fire and laughed during the winter, and even took vacations together in the summer. It was like the family I never had. But when the twins were only 15-years-old, tragedy struck. Ronnie died expectantly one day while milking cows. There had been no warning at all.
Of course, Cheryl and the girls were devastated. I continued to be friends with Cheryl, and although there had never been even a hint of romance between us before Ronnie's death, after about a year we decided to get married. The girls seemed to take it all in stride, and they even called me 'Dad.' We sold their farm along with all their milking herd and they moved in with me. My house was bigger, and the twins could have had their own bedrooms, but I guess 16 years of having a constant roommate and companion led them to share a bedroom in the new house as well. The twins were very close and spent most of their time together.
By then the twins were driving. Our two precious daughters, who had been great students without any issues at all, met some college boys shortly thereafter, and became complete hellions. The 4-year satellite campus of the University of Wisconsin was known for being a party school, and the girls took advantage of their good looks and the many miles of lonely county roads to get into all kinds of trouble. They stopped helping out around the house, started drinking and smoking, and their grades suffered. After a particularly troublesome visit with their high school guidance counselor, Cheryl and I felt like it was time to put an end to their rebellious ways.
"Well, that was fun," Cheryl said to me in the most sarcastic way possible. She reached up to her right and pulled the seatbelt down and across her chest. Cheryl had magnificent boobs that were accentuated by the belt pulling the fabric of her shirt tight as it lay across her chest. At 36-years-old, she still maintained her figure, but was very curvy and quite the woman.
"I know, huh?" I responded. "Baby, we've got to do something before one or both of them end up dead or meth-heads or...whatever."
For the next two years we did everything within reason to try and get the girls to shape up, but nothing we did seemed to work. We took away their car, their cell phones, grounded them for weeks at a time, but still they were constantly getting into trouble. To put it mildly, it was hell.
Then came that night in April of their senior year in high school when the sheriff's car pulled into the driveway around 1 AM and scared us half to death. As usual, it was way past their curfew and we were waiting up to ground them again. Cheryl and I thought that the girls had been killed...or worse. We were so relieved when the deputy opened the rear door and the girls spilled out, obviously quite drunk.
"Girls," I said as calmly as I could, "get cleaned up and go to bed. We'll talk about this in the morning."
Cheryl led them into the house and I shook hands with the deputy, Jeff Olson. "Jeff, what's going on?"
"Wayne, I'm sorry about having to bring the girls home, but I caught them out by the lake drinking. They're only 18, but they're adults now in the eyes of the law, and frankly, I really should have hauled them over to the drunk tank for the night." The deputy shook his head slowly. "Hell, Wayne, since they lost their father I know they've had a hard time. But, and I'm serious mind you, this is the last time. They're adults now and they need to learn one way or the other that there are consequences to their actions."
"Jeff, I really, really appreciate you doing this for us...for Cheryl...for the girls...hell, for the memory of Ronnie." I paused to regain my composure. "And, I read you loud and clear about this being the last straw. I'm not sure what we're going to do, but we will somehow try to get through to the girls when they sober up."
When I got back into the house, Cheryl was sitting in the living room with her face in her hands, big tears rolling between her fingers. She looked up at me with real pain in her face. "Wayne, what the fuck are we going to do? I know we should just kick them out of the house and tell them they are on their own, but..." she sobbed, "I lost Ronnie. I just can't lose the girls, too."
I sat down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. I pulled her into me and she placed her head on my shoulder.
I let her calm down a bit and then I said, "Well, we've tried everything...except...I'm not sure how to say this." I was really nervous. "I've got an idea, but it is extreme."
"What, Wayne? What?" She picked her head up and looked me in the eye.
"Cheryl, what extremes are you willing to endure to try and get the girls to shape up?"
"Anything," she said. "Anything."
"Cheryl, I'm serious. I really need to know that you'll back me up no matter what it takes...how far I have to take it to get through to them."
"Wayne, I love you and trust you completely. I know you love the twins, too. We've tried everything I can think of to try and discipline them, so if you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it."
"Okay, but hear me out before you decide. I'd like to try some serious discipline. That would include grounding and hard chores of course, but would also include spankings and other penalties designed to break them down and humiliate them. Once we get them under control, we can slowly build them back up, giving them more and more of their freedom back, of course, assuming we are successful."
Cheryl sat quietly for a full minute deep in thought. Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded her head. She then nodded her head more vigorously and hugged me tightly. "We've done everything else. Let's try it. I love you."
"I love you too, baby. We need to be on the same page at every step. If you ever disagree with my course of action, pull me to the side and tell me in private. We have to be a wall of unity or this will not work."
She hugged me tighter. "I'm your wall."
"It's going to be hard," I said. "Even awful, maybe...probably."
"I know. I'm ready."
We made plans for the first couple of days, and then headed up the stairs. Cheryl went up first, and I headed to my study. I pulled open the top left drawer and pulled out the skeleton key that fit every interior door in the house. It had come with the old house, and I'd thought I'd never need it. But, tonight, it was just what the doctor ordered. I climbed the stairs and put my ear against the twin's door. There was no sound. They had passed out. I placed the key in the door and locked the door shut.
The next morning Cheryl and I were in the kitchen. As was our custom, I was wearing blue striped pajama bottoms and Cheryl was looking particularly sexy in the matching top that buttoned up the front. Her shapely legs were visible up to her mid thighs, and her big, shapely butt looked delicious while she made us breakfast.
She turned to me and asked, "When do you want to wake the girls?"
