( The following story would have perhaps found a better audience in Erotic Horror or Non-human, but because it contains incest as a main theme it must be placed here. If darker stories are not to your taste then this story will not be for you. Still, I hope you enjoy it. All characters in the story are over 18.) - MST
My name is Eric, and I love a woman dead for almost a century.
And she will be the death of me and of my soul.
I was a very young man when my father bought the old abandoned Valentine Manor. I still can remember the odd smell of it the first time we entered. A damp musty smell that made my mother fussy about mold and mildew. I was apparently the only one who caught the faint hint of perfume. Least ways when I mentioned it they dismissed what I said.
But then my parents did a lot of that.
My grandfather was a hands-on construction worker when he was younger, and a business owner of a large construction company by the time I came along. Growing up with that for his example it's not at all a surprise that my father loved to restore old buildings. Or at least the idea of doing it.
Mom not so much.
The Valentine Manor took years of work, tons of money, and almost brought about a separation of my parents, if not a full divorce. She simply could not see till it was nearly finished the luxurious dream home that my father could picture that century-old mansion becoming. For me, it was simply a huge playground full of dangers both real and imaginary. A delight of sensation for both the eye and the hand. Dark rooms that had not seen the light in decades were opened up and aired out. Old relics of the last century were uncovered almost daily. Some interesting, most less than that but still cool to see.
I was there when Dad's workers tore into a plaster wall and found a door hidden behind it. I was there and being completely in the way as they forced that door open and revealed a small room full of the most curious items. The bedposts were wrapped in rotted cloth stuffed with straw. The walls are similarly padded. Large metal rings on the ceiling and the walls. Heavy metal shackles on the bed and broken ones were strewn about the room at random. There were great tears in the wall padding as if some huge bear or wild cat had clawed at the walls in anger at being confined.
Mother took one look at that room and ordered it dismantled, destroyed, and forgotten. Dad was almost as curious as myself but wished to keep his already disgruntled wife happy so he gave the order.
Angry that such a fabulous playroom was taken away from me before being properly enjoyed, I gave it one last look around and was about to leave when I saw the corner of a book sticking out of a hole in the wall stuffing. I snatched it and ran.
Sure that I had discovered a book of evil Fey magic or perhaps the mad writings of Abdul Alhazred, you can imagine my disappointment when we got back home for the night and I looked into it only to discover it to be nothing more than a girl's diary. For whatever reason I put it on a shelf in my room with a few other oddments that I had gathered from the Valentine Manor. It was quickly forgotten as more relevant things like entering high school and trying to date girls became a part of my young life.
Years of work slowly passed there at the old manor house but when the last nail was hammered and the last bit of wall painted the old home was everything that my father had promised my mother it would be. And more. A forgotten jewel from an age of elegance, it now lacked not a single modern convenience, while keeping its eclectic charm.
Mother was satisfied if not completely happy.
Father was bitten by the restoration bug, and would soon be buying up other old homes similar to this one and would - with his dad's help - found his own company to restore those derelict once-treasured homes.
This had him travel across the country a lot, which did seem to make Mom happy.
Odd.
** ** ** ** ** ** **
Sitting in my room, my heart broken by... well, heartbreak, I was contemplation extremes. Things that begin with M!
Murder, malice, maliciousness... okay, mostly murder.
My girlfriend of a year Dora Fenbacker had decided that - even given my access to nigh unlimited funds to buy her gifts - she no longer wished to date me. In fact, she even went so far as to replace me with another guy four months before deciding to break up with me. That part stung. That my friends knew of this and didn't tell me hurt more. That my mother didn't seem to care that I was contemplating an early career as a serial killer over the breakup stung even worse.
Dad wasn't home to care or not. Not that he really would have cared.
My parents were like that.
Sitting in my favorite reading chair by the window, looking at the rain making the glass cry, I tried to not cry myself. But it hurt. The betrayal of it hurt. Fora had been a friend through my junior year, then "my girl' through most of my senior year.
Leaning back, I bumped my back into my bookcase. I gave thought to doing what I have always done when the world becomes too hard to deal with. Pulling out a book and vanishing into some other world. Tolkien's Shire, or Lewis' Narnia. Tumble down the rabbit hole after Alice, perhaps. Or maybe take to the skies of Pern to ride a dragon against thread. Anything other than this bland colorless world of reality.
I absently bumped backward again.
From the bookcase, a small book fell to the floor. Looking down, I didn't immediately recognize it. Leaning over, I scooped it up and flipped open the featureless leather cover.
"Ah, this old thing." I was about to absently stick it back on the shelf when a photo fell out from between the pages to land on my lap. Picking it up, I looked up the most beautiful young girl I had ever seen. The picture was black and white, framed in a fancy white border. The image had faded a bit and some ink from the pages had faintly imprinted the words "madness grows" across her dress in gray faded letters. It was her face that drew me to the image. She seemed to be looking at whoever took the picture, but to me, it felt like she was looking not at the camera but at me. Here, now at this moment, looking at me. Her eyes seemed to follow me as I moved the picture. Turning it over, I saw that someone had long ago written a name and date on the back.
Victoria Valentine, 1934.
"Wow..."
Picking back up the book from where I had laid it aside, I was about to simply put the photo back inside when the words on the diary page drew my eyes.
~ "I celebrated my eighteenth birthday tonight masturbating with Mamma's broom handle. I will have trouble keeping the smile off my face tomorrow when I see her using it. She will never know!"~
Reading that line over and over a couple of times, I often looked back at the old photo and then back at what she had written. I saw at the top of the page was written the date February 14th, 1934.
"So you were eighteen, just like me," I said to her beautiful image.