(Part 1 of 2)
I hesitate to post this story. Incest is wrong. I know it, and I never intended what happened to me. This is a cautionary tale. But really I just need to get it off my chest.
My parents were taken much too soon. They were not quite fifty when their car went off the road on their way back from Aspen, Colorado. I was working in the Persian Gulf at the time and while my employer allowed me to travel home for the funeral, we were in the middle of a multi-year project and I was a critical asset. I had to go back. My sister Amy took care of the estate and everything. But it was hard for me to process my grief being so far from home.
Helen and Charles were nerds, and I mean that with all love and respect. They were cool nerds if you believe in such a thing. Helen worked in the marketing department of a sports apparel company. She was a photographer, writer, graphic designer. Our family photo albums were not half-assed productions. Charles was a fantasy artist, specializing in scantily-clad damsels in precarious situations. If you play role-playing games you have probably seen his work. My first loves were the impossibly sexy ladies in his folios.
Their jobs allowed good work-life balance and we spent a lot of time together. Mom and Dad took vacations seriously and they instilled in us a lust for life and also an appreciation for simple pleasures. We traveled the country and the world looking for adventures. But we never failed to stop for the little museums and roadside attractions. They had a lot of life left in them. Like I said, they were taken much too soon.
My family wasn't rich but we were comfortable. With my modest inheritance I felt like I could take a break when my project was finished, work a normal job for a while. I moved back to our home town and since the house was sold I took an apartment in the old neighborhood. Seeing the places we used to hang out made me nostalgic. My parents being gone didn't seem real when I was on the other side of the world. Back home, every little thing reminded me how real it was.
It was because I was living there that I was contacted by the manager of a local bank. Dad had a safe deposit box there that we didn't know about. It had been paid in advance for several years but that was running out and he asked if I wanted to renew. I told him I would collect the contents once I got in touch with my sister who had the necessary permissions to things like that. Amy told me to go ahead, report what I found and we would decide how to split it.
Going through the contents was short and sweet. There was Dad's old revolver, a real working antique. I had been seriously bummed when it wasn't found among Dad's effects. There was Mom's diamond necklace. Amy would love that. I'd keep the pistol, easy peasy. Then there was a small brown paper envelope. When I turned it over to open it I saw written in Dad's handwriting: "Destroy this disc. Do not read." I'll give you some advice. When you get a message like that, listen to it.
The envelope contained a USB drive. I wondered what Dad was hiding. Embarrassing porn? Blackmail material? Nudie pictures of my mom? Ha ha, very funny. Oh, how naive I was. Curiosity got the better of me so I plugged the drive into a secure machine I use for digital forensics. To the old man's credit he had the contents encrypted. The software he used was out of date though and flawed to begin with. I cracked his security in less than an hour. I remember being proud of myself.
The drive contained a gallery of about two dozen pictures, pictures of the most attractive women I had ever seen. Not women... it was just one woman. Though she was dressed and posed differently in every picture, there was no mistaking the honey blond hair, the sleepy eyes, the serene smile. It was my own mother, Helen T_____. What a treasure! Why was Dad hiding these? The pictures were sexy, sure, but not nasty. She showed some leg here, some cleavage there. I couldn't deny it, she was hot. I was so excited with my discovery.