Late on Tuesday night, after Camilla had finished committing incest with Agape, he used his psychic powers to put himself completely to sleep; a deep sleep would put that whole sordid affair out of his mind...for a while, at least. He wasn't yet ready to confront his daughter with his awareness of her surreptitious lewdness.
In his dream,
he saw Collette in the mansion, now burning, with the sight of groups of naked lovers engaging in group sex all around him and his ex-wife.
"I'm so sorry, Aga," she said. "Camilla's always been a bad girl."
"She wasn't before our divorce," he insisted. "I'm sure her seeing you and your swinger friends over the years since our divorce is what made her what she is today."
"It was more than that," she said. "I tried to control her. I thought putting her in an all-girls Catholic high school would make up for what she'd seen all those early years. I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. She's out of control."
Behind her, Agape could see a group of men in grotesque masks laughing eerily at him.
*****************
On Wednesday morning, he woke up sitting on his living room chair, where Camilla had left him. His lap was wet with her remaining come: in her wasted state the night before, she'd forgotten to clean him up properly. With this mess, he could at least prove his case against her, and stop her lies and denials once and for all.
By separating and distancing him from his feelings and moral judgement, that 'psychic window' he'd created to watch her fucking him the night before was still protecting him from the emotional pain of what she'd done. Nonetheless, he would have to remove that window, and face his trauma: being jaded and emotionless about what she'd done was as wicked an attitude as the deed was. Apathy was a totally unacceptable reaction to his unwitting incest with her. Apathy was a terrible emotion to begin with. As horrible as it would be to feel their shame with all his emotions unrestrained, he still had to confront his feelings...he had to
have
feelings about what she'd done, or else he wouldn't be human.
First, he called the English faculty at York and told them he was sick, and wouldn't be able to teach his classes that day. Then he went up into his bedroom, sat on his bed, and meditated.
He visualized smashing the 'glass' of that psychic window; it took all of his bravery to do so. After a minute of intense concentration, the barrier that had been protecting his ego from his moral judgement was shattered, and he felt his shame flooding all over himself in an awesome tsunami. The eyes and mouth of Agape were agape with the horror of it all.
"Oh, my God!" he screamed. "How could she do that to me?! Why?
Why?
" He was wailing, sobbing, and shaking all over.
Camilla woke up in her bedroom with a start at his crying. She covered her nakedness with a bathrobe and ran into his bedroom. Already, she correctly sensed what the problem was, but she wasn't at all willing to admit her fault in it.
"Daddy," she said, coming up to him. "Are you OK? Try to calm down. Whatever you do, don't think despairing thoughts, or be afraid. Whatever the problem is, we can make it better." She brought her hand up to his shoulder.
"Don't touch me!" he yelled. "
Never
touch me!"
"Yes, sir," she said timidly, backing up with fear, and knowing exactly what he meant by that.
He took a minute to calm down. Then he looked her in the eyes and said, "Camilla, I know what you've been doing with me."
"Wait, Daddy, do you mean when you saw Candice on top of you last night? It was--"
"
Don't lie to me!
Stop pretending you're innocent. Admit what you did. It was you, not her."
"Wh-what you saw...was a dream." She was crying.
"Come on, Camilla. That lie is getting so old. I'm wet all over my lap. None of it is me. It's all you, and you know it."
"Let...let me explain. I--"
"Ever since you returned to my life, I've been developing...some kind of strange power. Suddenly, I can cure my own hangovers in a heartbeat, just by wishing them away. You once cured a hangover of mine, I remember, by simply tapping me on the shoulder; the pain was gone in seconds. This mental anguish you've caused me, though, it won't go away so easily."
"It would if you stopped thinking of it as a sin. Open--"
"Ridiculous!" he snapped. "Without the need of this power, I've suspected that you were doing what you were doing, but I kept hoping my suspicions weren't true. Now I can't deny it any more."
"Daddy," she said in sobs, "This power can heal your shame, too."
"I don't want it to! We
should
be ashamed of ourselves, otherwise, we're not human. But this power, it allows me to...read minds, it seems, or at least sense people's thoughts. I sense that you can, too. I can influence people's thoughts...I
know
you can, too, but I don't know how we can do this. This power is...sexually transmitted, isn't it?"
"You can do good things with it, though..."
"That's how I got this power, didn't I? You passed it on to me through your...oh, God, ejaculations?"
"Oh, Daddy,..."
"Tell me the truth, dammit!" he shouted.
"Let me explain,..." Camilla said, shaking.
"Tell me!"
"
Yes!
Daddy,
yes!
I love you, Daddy. I've always loved you. These things inside me made me love you even more, though. I--I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. I'm in love with you. I know it seems sick, but..."
"
Seems
sick? It
is
sick!" he cried, his face drowning in tears. "You're in love with me, but you have lesbian sex with Candice, right in front of me? You took a man up to your bedroom a month ago and had sex with him, and you've been 'in love' with
me
the whole time, the last man on earth you should be in love with?"
"I--I can't control myself," she said, also with a face drenched in tears. "These things, they make me always want sex; I starve for it every day."
"What are 'these things'?" he asked, now no longer crying.
"They're in our blood, tiny, microscopic black ovoid things."
"Bacteria? A virus of some kind?"
"I don't know," she said, calming down and no longer crying. "A doctor I know in Vancouver who also has them in his blood thinks they're aliens from another planet."
Agape rolled his eyes and said, "I don't know what planet
I'm
on right now."
"Daddy? Can I have a hug?" She timidly approached him.
"No," he said firmly, putting out his hand and psychically creating a force field to block her.
"Just an innocent hug, Daddy. Please? Nothing sexual."