A Mysterious Morning

Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.

*****

The orange sun peeked above the hills of Fappingham, giving pink and gauzy light to the mists upon the fields. The birds cheeped and flittered about, greeting the sun in a most unthreatening way. It seemed to be, thought Reginald, a superlatively peaceful morning. From afar, from somewhere, the lyrical air of Beethoven's Third Symphony whispered, played far away on a recorder with a reedy, amiable melody. The unseen woodwind squeaked and flatted a note, ruining the moment; and the music stopped.

Reginald predictably began every day with a review of yesterday's events. His condition, polyphobia, a perpetual companion, required him to ruminate over memories before arising from bed. He had to recall what had occurred the day before, both the best and the worst of it, to arm himself against the coming day's vicissitudes. "Yesterday's horrors have kittens in the dark," oft said his grandmother when he was young. He was left to drift off to nightmare of snarling, tiny black creatures crawling away from some dense and impenetrable blackness in the corner of his room. Polyphobia runs in families, his weary psychiatrist would remind him. His grandmother was daft.

Eyes closed, he clutched at the edge of the blanket. Always summoning his attention first was the sense of smell, a keen herald of possible horrors nearby. He sniffed. He wrinkled his nose like a rabbit. Nothing awful startled him. He had a god-awful taste in his mouth. That was not uncommon when he awoke. A right glass of whiskey at bedtime gave flight to the horrors, at least until sleep. But the taste in his mouth was unfamiliarly nasty, and his attention prodded it, seeking recognition and memory of this baleful taste.

He had been to the pub yesterday, just before closing, and had his usual nightcap, "three fingers of Jack," an American whiskey. An unfamiliar stranger smiled at him and said, "Say, me name's Jack too!" in a conceivably flirtatious manner. Reginald stared at him like a rabbit until his smile fell off and he slowly backed away, ending the terrifying incident.

As taste and smell offered nothing particularly novel, and sound told of a charming May sunrise and terrible musicianship, Reginald decided to give a go at the chief inquisitors of the senses and opened his eyes. Beyond the window, a salubrious morning was unfolding, pleasant and unthreatening. His gaze found not-entirely-unfamiliar bedroom, not his own. On the bedstand was a plastic squeeze bottle of "Liquorice-Flavoured Intimate Lubricant," which perhaps explained the ghastly absinthic taste haunting his mouth.

Next to the lubricant dispenser was a most curious and bothersome thing -- a dildo. He lightning-quick surveyed his personal apertures and discovered no evidence of recent stretching. That was a relief. He poked at the dildo slightly with his finger. It tilted on its base. A little more push made a loud click, and a small lozenge-shaped candy appeared in the bin at the base. A candy dispenser. How... indescribable. He grasped the sex toy about the shaft, to put it back out of sight, and the pressure of his hand caused it to shoot another lozenge-shaped candy out of the tip, ricocheting off the lampshade with a small, audible thud. He set the hellish gadget back out of sight. A backscratcher offered no surprise or threat; he ignored it.

Polyphobia is a dreadful burden to its sufferers. So much of the world is inherently terrifying, and events can provoke a day of serial nightmares, fears after fears unending. This horrid condition seemed to run in families. Many found that alcohol dulled the terrors enough to engage in the common human activities, including occasionally sex. One must be vigilant when drinking; the morning after stretches out full of terrors both remembered and unremembered, to rub salt into the wound of the usual hangover. The moment of awakening was the most fearsome of the day.

Reginald slowly drew his attention to his back, which was surprisingly warm. He usually slept starkers, in the buff, in his birthday suit; cold was an unwelcome bed-buddy. He had attributed the warmth to being under the blankets, and perhaps a ray of sunlight. An alarming thought struck him -- what if this warmth was due to another being in the bed, likely a human? He froze. He reached over to the nightstand and picked up the backscratcher. He gently poked it at the heap of blankets behind him, being unwilling to look. Nothing at all reassured him that there wasn't another person in the bed. It had the expected firm give of an individual wrapped in blankets.

His poking provoked no response. He turned slightly and noticed a small bit of pink showing where the blanket had fallen aside. There was, indeed, the possibility that there was a dead person lying next to him, but he checked his impulse to scream. Don't corpses chill off rather quickly? If it were dead, it must have happened most recently. He poked at the pink spot once, and again.

Suddenly, the blankets were flung over his head, and a painfully loud scream went off mere inches from his ear, which inspired him to scream equally loudly, although somewhat muffled by blankets. The blankets were snatched away, to show the face of his daughter Susan looking into his eyes. She screamed again. He screamed once more, his volume unrestrained by blankets. The noise ricocheting about the bedroom was like a troop of colobus monkeys sighting a stalking jaguar. Susan screamed again, this time a bit more from terror than surprise. He thought, aha, that's why I recognize this room, it's Susan's -- but what emerged from his mouth was yet another scream. As both dad and daughter suffer from polyphobia, they do not take surprise gracefully.

A loud thudding came from beneath the bed, and a snarling voice howled out, "Shut up!" The downstairs neighbor was expressing her dismay. Susan's neighbor sounded like Grendel's mother yowling in a smoky whiskey voice. "So sorry for your loss." Reginald intended to say; he merely just screamed again. The thumping on the ceiling continued.

The two simmered down enough to remember their language skills. "What are we doing here?" Reginald asked Susan. "I don't know!" she shrieked; her screams now informative. A warning thump followed from the ceiling below. They both lay on their back, pulled the blankets up to their chins, and stared at the ceiling in confusion. Susan would occasionally turn to glare balefully at Reginald. He stared at the ceiling and did not return her gaze.

Susan, youngest daughter, twenty-something, had her own flat like the rest of the grown children. An introvert like the rest of her family, she greatly preferred the absence of friends and the lack of suitors. His daughters were moderately attractive. Susan was shapely, a bit turfy about the bum but overall, able to fetch attention if she wished, which she didn't. Why she awakened with another human, not only in her flat but in her actual bed, also starkers, dismayed her; and that it was her dad, bewildering. Her day was absolutely ruined.

-to be continued-