Emily and her older cousin Tricia were thoroughly engrossed in the hard work of uncluttering the attic of Tricia's home. Organizing the haphazard stacks of boxes and bags, and sorting out the good stuff from the disposable items, made it necessary for Tricia to assess the relative value of almost everything they found. Emily would hold up each uncertain item, perhaps a framed photograph or a box which might or might not contain the board game advertised on its lid, and Tricia would give it an immediate thumbs-up or thumbs-down call. Tricia was a decisive and no-nonsense judge in these matters, for which Emily was thankful because it helped the work progress at a good rate. Order was gradually emerging from the decades of disorder that all attics eventually exhibit if left to their own fate.
Emily was 18 now, and Tricia was two years older. They were both attractive, vivaceous, and fun-loving young women. And they were more than cousins. They had been lifelong friends, the only girls in their generation of these branches of the family. At the moment they were also totally covered in the dust which seemed to puff upward in a small cloud as each new item was dragged from its longtime resting place. When they occasionally caught sight of one another's faces, which increasingly resembled the look of miners emerging from a long shift in the coal pits, they would laugh outright at the sorry sight they made. Both of them were looking forward to a hot shower and fresh clothes when their work in the attic was done.
The attic was in the home of Tricia's parents, Emily's Aunt Vicky and Uncle Ralph, who were away on some shopping errands while the girls labored to make sense of the attic's contents. Emily was very fond of Vicky, her father's sister, and Vicky's husband Ralph. They were equally fond of her. The warm hugs and kisses that she exchanged with thrm whenever she visited them were a delight to her. Uncle Ralph often exhibited an inappropriate intimacy in these signs of familial affection. But Emily always forgave his wandering hands, which always tended to gravitate downward onto her ass, and the slight tonguing that was always part of his kisses, knowing that they were just playful signs of a mature and vigorous masculinity. Not so easy to understand was the similarly intimate nature of Aunt Vicky's hugs and kisses, but Emily loved any kind of naughty recognition of her developing feminine appeal. She often thought that Aunt Vicky was lucky to have an adorable man like Ralph for a husband, but then Vicky was so pretty and sexy that it was no surprise she and Ralph had found each other.
Emily and Tricia had been at the cleanup job for almost three hours, but fortunately the end of the job seemed to be in sight. Emily's arms were beginning to feel tired and sore from moving the heavier boxes around. Both girls needed a chance to get cleaned up and to relax for awhile, and soon.
It was just then that Emily made the discovery that brought the work to a complete stop. She found what would forever be known, in their family's lore, as simply "The Box In The Attic".
Emily had spotted a nearly hidden small carton which had no identifying markings on it but was sealed with tape. She brushed the dust off it, and held it up so that Tricia could make a ruling on what to do with it. Tricia just shrugged and gave Emily permission to open it up and have a look at its contents. Tricia watched with interest as Emily broke the sealing tape on the unidentified carton. The look on Emily's face as she opened the box told Tricia that her cousin had made an important find. In fact, Emily seemed to be a bit stunned by what she was looking at. Tricia crossed the room to join Emily and to have a look for herself.
The box contained an impressive collection of classic old pornography. The dates on some of the magazines revealed them to be mostly from the mid-1900's. Emily had seen lots of print porn before, and this stuff was pretty mild compared to what was readily available on the Internet these days, so that wasn't cause for her stunned reaction to the find. What had caused her to react so strongly to the discovery was what all of the publications had in common. They were all incest-oriented. There were some mostly-photo magazines with names like "Hot Moms" and "Pantie Auntie", some mostly-text magazines with names like "Family Letters" and "Family Secrets", and some paperback books with lurid cover illustrations and titles like "Everybody's Mom" and "His Naughty Aunts".
Emily wasn't shocked that Uncle Ralph had at some time hidden some sexy reading material up here. After all, she suspected that her brother had a stash of his own hidden somewhere in his room at home, too. It was a guy thing, she knew, so the collection couldn't possibly belong to Aunt Vicky. But surely the incest theme which connected the entire collection made its discovery far more embarrassing for Uncle Ralph than it would have been if it was just girlie magazines and such. She looked at Tricia, and was surprised to see that Tricia didn't seem the least bit embarrassed or even surprised by their find.
"I'm sorry, Trish," Emily began, as if finding the box was her fault in some way. "I didn't know ..."
"Not to worry, Em," Tricia said with a reassuring smile. "Every family has its own secrets, and I guess awhile back someone in our family got his or her kicks from incest sex. It's no big deal."
Tricia took a magazine from the box. If fell open to a centerfold picture of a totally naked and spectacularly buxom middle-aged woman assisting an equally naked younger man and woman, perhaps of Tricia's age, to have sex. The picture's caption suggested that the woman was the mother of the younger two, but any family resemblance was not easy to see and the young couple were obviously not as young as the sex-ed setting might have suggested them to be. The picture, despite its tackiness and probable falsities, seemed to have the desired effect on Tricia.
"That's fucking hot," said Tricia, turning the magazine to view the picture in different ways. "Look at the tight muscled ass on that young stud! His prick doesn't show but I'll bet it's a beaut. Sometimes I think that if I'd had a brother I'd make sure he was the one to pop my cherry."
Emily giggled, relieved that the porn collection discovery wasn't going to be a big problem, but this side of her slightly older cousin - that of a sexually-liberated and somewhat foul-mouthed young woman - was one she wasn't used to seeing. This was a side of Tricia that seemed to have surfaced overnight, but it must have been hidden somewhere inside Tricia all along. Emily suddenly felt very immature and naive about the world of adult sexuality, and the two-year gap between her age and Tricia's suddenly seemed a lot bigger than it was. Emily desperately wanted to bridge that gap. She wanted to be a sexually knowledgable and confident woman. Like Tricia. She wanted to make sex a more important element in her life. She'd lost her virginity to a high school boy who, like herself at the time, had no idea about what to do. The experience was far from satisfying, and it answered none of her questions about how good sex should feel.
Tricia continued to study and comment on the magazine picture. "Do you think he's just finished fucking his big-titted mother?", she went on, as if determined to repeatedly shock her cousin with her crude language. "Or do you think she's going to get that hairy twat of hers stretched by her son's cock as soon as he's finished fucking his sister?"
Emily decided that she wasn't expected to answer Tricia's questions, and chose to ignor therm. "Trish ... do you think families ever really get into that sort of thing?", she asked. "You know ... incest, I mean ..."
"Sure, some do," said Tricia confidently, apparently in the know about such things. "And I think it's hot. Surely you must have wanted to jump into bed with your father or your brother some time when you were feeling really horny. God knows I've dreamed about fucking those two often enough. Sometimes I think I'd like to fuck both of them at once!"
Emily was speechless, and she desperately wanted to keep the discussion on a level she could handle. "Well, thinking about it isn't the same as ...", she said.
"It's almost the same, Em," laughed Tricia, and then she turned more serious. "It's just that some families act on their urges and others don't. I feel sorry for those families whose members deliberately hide their true feelings from each other."
"But what should we do about this box?", asked Emily, eager to change the subject and get the work done. Tricia had promised her that a long hot soaking bath or shower awaited her at the end of the work, and she very much wanted to get to it soon.
"We'll give the box to my folks when they get home. They'll know what to do with it", said Tricia.
"Are you crazy?" gasped Emily. "Shouldn't we just put it back where we found it and not let on that we even saw it?"
"Of course not," said Tricia. "I look forward to hearing what they have to say about this collection of theirs."
