We had buried Grandad a month ago. Mom and I were in his old room going through his things. Whatever else you might say about the old farmhouse, it was plenty big enough and there were lots of places he and Gran had stashed stuff. I sat on the bed surrounded by piles of papers. I don't know why I wanted to organize them. Most of the stuff - tax returns, bank statements, financial statements for the farm - was meaningless after fallout. Some of it we would keep for sentimental reasons: birth certificates, marriage license, that sort of thing. None of it meant anything but we were going to keep some of it anyways.
I glanced up from my place on the bed and saw Mom on her hands and knees inside the walk-in closet. It was summer so she was wearing shorts that had at one time been perfectly decent and serviceable. But three years of hard use and they were thinning and torn. Her beautiful, round, shapely ass hung suspended in my vision and I saw that beneath her shorts she was wearing a thong. It was a perfect picture and I struggled to pull my gaze away.
"What have we here?" She pulled a small box out of the closet and sat back on her heels. While I could no longer see her ass, the show was not over. She wore a tank top that was similarly torn and thinning, and I had a view of her large, rounded breasts glistening with sweat in her plain white bra that did nothing to hide them from me. I could see that her bra was thinning every bit as much as her shirt because her nipples popped through both. If she moved the right way, I could see the outline of her areola, a darker shade of brown on her olive skin.
"What is it mom?" I asked trying not to stare.
She held up a small box to me. "It has your name on it."
"My name?" I got off the bed and took the box from Mom. I was self-conscious that my shorts were also falling apart. We had thought that maybe once I grew a bit I could fit into some of Grandad's old clothes, which is what Dad had done, but for all that I grew it hadn't been enough. I tossed my hair aside, it was easier to tie it up in summer than it was to grow it out in winter and it was partway down my back now, just like Mom and Paris. Dad was mostly bald and he preferred to shave his head summer and winter alike.
I got on my knees beside mom and thought, not for the first time, that we looked pretty alike. I was only a bit taller than Mom. We both had the same auburn hair, hazel eyes and even similar facial features. Mom was curvier and softer than me, obviously, but I also had a narrow waist and wider hips than what was common for guys. The largest difference between my mom and me these days was that she had breasts (C cup I think) and I had a cock (seven inches long and three around, thank you very much). If it hadn't been for the fallout I had the strength, the speed and the build to have gone to national karate competitions.
She held out the box to me. "Well go on. Open it."
It was a small box, like a jewelry box. wrapped in simple brown paper and twine with an old fashion card attached to it. I opened the card. "To Phoenix, from grandmom," I read. "To be opened on your 18th birthday. With all my love and my best hopes and wishes for you."
"Well," Mom said, "your eighteenth birthday has come and gone. Open it."
I didn't say anything I just untied the string and carefully unwrapped the paper. There was no knowing when paper would be useful. The box inside was plain wood with a simple lid. Inside was a key. It was an old ornate key made from wrought iron. I held it up and Mom gasped.
"What is it?"
"That's the key to the cellar," She said. "Your Dad and I have been looking for that ever since Gran died."
I handed her the key. "Here ya go."
"No," she said. "Gran gave it to you."
"Do you want to see what's down there? Supplies maybe?"
"Let's not get our hopes up too high," Mom said with a smile. Then she got to her feet and pulled me up behind her. "But let's go take a look."
Like I said, the farmhouse was huge, and while we had always been able to get into the basement, there was a locked door down there which we had never been able to open. I suppose we could have taken an ax to the door, or a sledgehammer to the frame, but for some reason we never did.
Paris and Dad were out on the back porch relaxing after a hard day in the fields. "What you got there?" Dad called to us as we made our way downstairs.
"Phoenix found the key to the cellar!" Mom called back, her excitement obvious. "Want to come with us?"
"Let me know if you find anything interesting," Dad said. "Paris and I will just hang out here for a bit."
The door down to the basement was in the kitchen. The stairs from there went straight down into the basement but most of the open space required someone to go around the stairs. The locked door was three feet in front of the stairs. The key went in without a problem and the lock turned as though freshly oiled. When I saw what was behind the door, I didn't know what to think.
There was a room that was the size of a large walk in closet. There was a table and two chairs in the center and a pile of boxes on one side. There was a deck of cards on the table in an ornate, open box and covered with a thick layer of dust. Beside the cards was a letter with my name on it.
Mom opened the first box and gasped. "Candles!" she shouted. "Hundreds of candles!"
And not just any candles but the kind that could burn for hours on end. I turned my attention to the letter but chose not to read it right then. I stuck it in my pocket and covered it with my shirt. I don't know why. I just felt like I couldn't read it right then.
"Great!" I said. "Making candles is hard. What else is there?"
We put the box aside and opened another one. "Oh dear." Mom laughed as she looked at the frilly lace lingerie in the box. "As lovely as this is, I'm afraid it won't help us much." She held it up. "Maybe she wanted to give it to you to give to a girlfriend?"
I shook my head. "Because the ladies are just falling over each other to get to me these days." We were on a farm in the middle of the West Virginia mountains. When the car used to have gas, it took us three hours to get to the post office. No one was coming to us. "There are other boxes," I said, "let's take a look."
The other boxes were filled with clothing. Underwear, pants, shorts, tops and coats for both men and women. Unfortunately none of the men's clothes were in my size (they were for Dad) and everything else was women's clothes with most being perfect for Mom and Paris. They both even had some frilly lingerie in their sizes.
"That's disappointing," Mom said. "I'm sorry Baby. Let's look around and see if there's anything else in here that maybe Gran wanted you to have. The cards on the table maybe?"
With the letter in my pocket, there was nothing except the old deck of Tarot cards which I was not going to touch.
"First rule of magic, Mom," I said, "Do not touch the mysterious anything that sits by itself on a table."
Mom laughed and we made our way back upstairs. "Marcus!" She called to the porch, "Come on down here and take a look at this!"
"Is it booze? I could really use a beer." Dad went downstairs. I went to the top floor of the house, the attic that I had claimed as my own the first night we had arrived. There used to be a couple of boxes of Grandmother's clothes in the corner, but we had taken those apart ages ago for Mom and Paris to try and make something out of them. Aside from that I had my bed, a small table and chair, and a chest of drawers that I used for my own clothing. I usually kept a bowl and a pitcher of water on the table with a wash rag so I could clean up in the morning and get the night's grit out of my eyes. Or, as had become increasingly common, dried cum off me and my sheets.
I sat at the table in the last light of day and opened Grandmother's letter.
Dear Phoenix,
I hope you aren't too disappointed with me. If I read the cards right, I am dead, and Grandad is dead, and the world has gone to shit around you. I can't say for sure HOW bad the world is, but it looks pretty bad from what I can see.
I hope I'm wrong.
The cards tell me that you are keeping three secrets. Let me tell you young man, that one of them is no great problem. I'm sure to an eighteen year old man it is a catastrophic thing to be a virgin, but it isn't. I promise you it isn't.
The other two secrets are bigger.
