Chapter 1

 

Everything was fragmented. Nothing had form. There was no sense of time or of space. Images and voices of people I knew floated in and out, sometimes right up next to me, sometimes calling to me as if from the other side of a distant chasm. Scenes that might have been from my childhood, or that might have happened to someone else or to no one played out before me. And then there was a scene that had repeated itself to me countless times, one of a dark road and a pair of lights rushing at me, and then of the world exploding and crystalline shards of glass flying around me.

I might have been lost in it all for a few short minutes. It might have been a lifetime. But at last, at a certain point, it all started slipping away, and I felt myself slowly drifting up as if from the bottom of a lake.

The first thing I was consciously aware of was a ceiling. It was a bare, ugly eggshell white ceiling, but I realized my eyes were open and I was looking at it, and somehow I knew that was significant. Then I was aware of the sound of running footsteps retreating into the distance, and a woman’s voice outside the room shouting, “Doctor! Doctor!”

Things went hazy again after that. When next I was aware of my surroundings, I was looking up into the face of a middle-aged Indian woman in a white coat with thin spectacles and salt-and-pepper hair tied in a bun. She shined a pen light in one eye, then the other, and then looked at me. “Are you back with us?” she said in a thick Indian accent.

“Uh… I think so…” I said, and was dismayed to hear how awful my voice sounded. I blinked a few times, finding my eyelids still felt a little heavy.

“How many fingers do you see?”

I opened my eyes and tried to focus. “Two?” I asked, not a hundred percent sure.

“Good,” she said, putting her fingers down. “Do you know your name?”

“Alex Renquist,” I said without hesitation this time.

“Very good,” she said, sitting back up and allowing me some space. “Your brain seems to be in good shape. I’m Dr. Rapati, I’ve been the attending in charge of your care for… well, recently.”

That avoidance of a specific time frame struck me as a bit ominous. Despite my head aching, I turned it to look around and took in the hospital room that I was lying in. On the table beside me, below the beeping heart monitor, were a number of flowerpots. Some of the flowers looked pretty fresh, but there were one or two pots that looked like they had been there for a while, with the flowers in them starting to wilt. “What happened to me?” I asked.

“What do you remember?” Dr. Rapati asked.

I had to stop and think about that. “I… I remember getting home from school and arguing with my sister… and I think there was a package that Mom wanted her to deliver to Grandma, but…” The evening was slowly coming back to me, one step at a time as I spoke. “My sister skipped out and left on a date… Mom was angry, and told me to deliver it for her, made a big fuss about how she was going to let Kazia have it that night.” I thought some more about it, my memories at that point becoming a bit harder to dredge up. I knew I’d only had my license for a few months, and was eager for opportunities to use it, but remembering how I’d been annoyed with my sister instead of excited for the opportunity on that occasion helped summon the memories more solidly. “I think I remember delivering the package to Grandma…” I trailed off, trying hard to remember anything beyond that point, but nothing came up. “That’s it,” I said.

Dr. Rapati took on a sympathetic look. “You were in an accident, Alex. On the way home, a drunk driver ran a red light and hit you.”

“W-what?” I said, more loudly than before, trying to sit up but wincing when I found how that made my head hurt and flopped back down.

“You were very close to death,” she said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “But you’re a fighter. You should be proud.”

I breathed deeply, absorbing that. I looked again at the flowers by my bedside, and especially at the wilting ones. “How long have I been here?”

Now Dr. Rapati frowned, her look of sympathy shifting to one of supreme discomfort. “Well… we can get to that by and by…”

“How long?” I asked again.

Looking at her eyes behind those glasses, I could see a debate going on in her head. “I’m not sure you really want to know—”

“Yes, I do, please,” I insisted, starting to get annoyed.

Dr. Rapati took a breath, and glanced behind her to the raven-haired nurse whom I hadn’t noticed until now standing by the door. It was as if the doctor was checking for a lifeguard in case this went badly. Then she looked at me, and like someone very carefully stepping on a shaky bridge she said, “Four years.”

“WHAT?!?” I blurted, and tried to sit up straight all at once. The pain hit me hard this time, and my head flopped back onto the bed with a thump as I groaned and put a hand to it.

“Take it easy,” Dr. Rapati said. “You’re awake, but you still have a lot of recovering to do.”

“We’ll call your family,” the nurse said in a high, lilting voice, giving me a pasted-on smile. “I’m sure they’ll be overjoyed to see you awake!”

“Get some more rest,” Dr. Rapati said, pressing a hand on my shoulder again, a little more forcefully this time as she stood up.

She and the nurse turned to walk out, while I stared up again at that ugly white ceiling in utter disbelief. Four years??? I’m 20 years old????

 

I must have fallen asleep again, for how long I don’t know. The next thing I was aware of was opening my eyes at the sound of the door opening. When I looked up, it was immediately to see the red hair and tear-streaked face of my mother, with my father’s tan complexion and short beard appearing just behind her.

“Hey, Mom,” I croaked.

Her hand slapped over her mouth, and her eyes became blurry with tears. And in the next moment she was flying at me, engulfing me in a crushing embrace. “My baby!” she blubbered. “My baby’s back! I have my baby back!” Her words were barely discernible through her happy sobs.

“I’m glad to see you too, Mom,” I said gently. I was relieved to find my body didn’t hurt as much as before, or what she was doing to me would probably have been unbearable.

When she finally pulled back to cup my face and look at me, I saw Dad sitting down on the other side of the bed and laying his hand on my arm. He was a lot more subdued, but I could in fact see the traces of happy tears on his face too. “We never gave up hope, son,” he said. “But it’s still hard to believe this is real. You’re really back with us!”

“Looks that way,” I grunted.

And then I looked to the foot of my bed and saw who else was there. My older brother and sister, Victor and Kazia, were slowly stepping in and looking at me. Looking at them was the first time I could really believe that four years had actually passed, because Kazia especially looked a lot different than the last time I’d seen her. She was no longer the 18-year-old she had been then, her skinny body having filled out and her once pink-streaked pigtails had been traded out for a more respectable light brown bob. Victor hadn’t changed as much, but I still could believe that he was 24 now, with his James Dean hair and motorcycle jacket. What struck me the most about them was how close Kazia was to tears. Over me. Something I never would have believed before.

“Hey bro,” said Victor, who once upon a time would barely have given me the time of day.

“Hi Vic,” I said.

Kazia officially broke down. To my surprise, she rushed around the side of the bed and shoved Dad aside so that she could bend down and hug me, something I didn’t remember her doing since I was in preschool. “Alex!” she sobbed. “It was all my fault! It was supposed to be me driving that car! And I went on that stupid date at the last minute…”

“And then it would’ve been you in here,” I said hoarsely. “And you aren’t half the fighter I am. You would’ve been dead in a second.” She sat up and laughed through her tears, and playfully slapped my shoulder.

“Good to hear you can make jokes about it,” Dad said, smiling.

Kazia sniffled a bit and said, “If it makes a difference, the guy I went on that date with turned out to be an asshole.” Dad and Victor both laughed at that.

“Alex!” a chipper voice said. I looked to the door and saw my 17-year-old—no, 21-year-old now—cousin Sarah Jean stepping into the room with a gigantic smile, her slick blonde hair shining almost as much as the silver helium “Get Well” balloon she was carrying. Stepping in behind her was her older sister Brandi—she would have been 23 now—who had a similar shade of blonde hair that was cut shorter, and whose smile on seeing me was almost as brilliant.

“Hey, Brandi, Sarah Jean,” I greeted them with what energy I had.

As my cousins ran to join Victor at the foot of my bed, their parents appeared in the room behind them. Aunt Cassie, Mom’s younger sister, was an athletic woman with short, sand-colored hair, who cupped her hands over her smile as she looked at me. Uncle Perry was a stocky man whose platinum blonde hair had the exact same combed-to-the-side style that I remembered, and who was trying his hardest to smile at me in a casual, “fancy seeing you here” kind of way. “Oh, Alex, it’s a goddamn miracle!” Cassie blubbered.

“Come on, we knew he’d pull out of it!” Perry enthused, though he fooled no one.

“We missed you so much!” Sarah Jean declared.

“Yeah, totally! Sarah Jean totally thought you were gonna die!” Brandi put in.

“No way, I never thought that!” Sarah Jean shot back.

Victor turned his eyes upward and hesitantly put in, “I do seem to remember you crying, ‘He’s gonna die, he’s gonna die, he’s gonna die’ over and over about fifty times.” Sarah Jean shoved him.

“So, four years,” I said inwardly, trying to make it sound like this wasn’t mind-blowing to me. “Guess I got a lot of catching up to do. Anything changed around here?”

I’d said it partially in jest, though I expected them to answer it honestly, with explanations about current events, the political situation, what the new tech trends were or the hot new movies, whatever. What I did not expect was for them all to go uncomfortably quiet as they looked at each other, with Victor, Cassie and Perry getting awkward grins and Kazia and Sarah Jean having to fight nervous giggles, and Dad clapping a hand on Kazia’s shoulder and giving her a look that seemed to be a warning.

“Well, naturally,” Mom finally said. “You’ll… we’ll get to those eventually.”

I raised an eyebrow curiously. She had obviously deflected the question for some reason, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why.

“The important question,” Mom went on, “is how are you feeling?”

I scoffed. “Like shit,” I muttered. I half expected Mom to get on my case for swearing like she always used to, but she seemed too overcome with her relief at my recovery to care. In any case, it was true. I still ached in a lot of places, and while I could feel my legs—and kind of wished I couldn’t—what I couldn’t do was move them.

A troubling thought occurred to me at that point. Thus far I’d been so preoccupied with the shocking revelation that I’d missed the last four years that I hadn’t stopped to wonder what kind of long-term damage I may have sustained. What if I never walked again? What if there were complications that hadn’t been noticed yet?

As if in answer to these thoughts, Dr. Rapati entered the room at that point, and looked around at my assembled family. “Okay, a little crowded in here,” she said in friendly warning.

“Aw, you can’t make us leave yet!” Sarah Jean protested. “We just got him back!”

“I know you’re all happy to see him,” Dr. Rapati said kindly, “but Alex still needs time to fully heal. So, you can have a few more minutes with him, but then you’ll have to let him rest.”

“Doc, come on, I’ve been resting for four years!” I complained.

“Yes, and if you strain yourself too much too fast, you’ll risk a relapse,” Dr. Rapati said. “I don’t think any of you want that.”

Mom looked utterly horrified at the prospect, and clutched my hand in both of hers as if she never wanted to let me go.

“Just a few more minutes,” Dad nodded to the doctor. “We can accept that. As long as he’s back.”

 

The next few months were a grueling slog through surgeries and physical therapy. I was sedated, cut into and stitched up several times as they rebuilt my shortened leg ligaments, and I endured the tortures of my trainer pushing me past the point of endurance to learn to walk again. It didn’t take long before I came to hate those bars they had me leaning on while I fought to put one foot in front of the other and not collapse, either from fatigue or the pain from my most recent surgery.

I slowly got caught up on what was happening in the world and where my friends had all gone. A lot of them came to visit me over the course of my hospital stay, to tell me how lucky I was to have missed the last four years of madness, or to ask if they could write about me in their college science thesis paper. Oh, and of course to express how glad they were that I was back.

The girl I’d been briefly dating at the time of my accident dropped by at one point to catch up, and told me that she was now going steady with some Psych major at her university, and to express how heartbroken she’d been when my accident happened and how she regretted what might have been. I hugged her, told her that I wished the same, and we parted on good terms.

Members of my family came to visit me on an almost daily basis. Usually not all at once this time, but all of them showed up multiple times, including a few who hadn’t been there that first day. Grandma was finally driven down to see me after the first week, and some of my distant cousins came by for a visit a few days later. But mostly it was the crowd who had been there the first day, especially Mom. She would frequently sit back and watch me while I struggled through physical therapy, giving me silent encouragement from the sidelines. It helped, and sometimes I would push myself a little harder just to not let her down.

Dad occasionally helped too, in a less gentle way, as he tended to clap his hands and say, “Push, push, push!” whenever I collapsed while walking along the bars. It encouraged me to get up again, sure, but it didn’t endear Dad to me as much.

I did at least like the parts when my family would gather in groups and push me around the hospital grounds in my wheelchair. More often than not with food and treats they’d brought me. It made me feel a bit like royalty. I particularly liked the way Kazia was going out of her way to be nice to me, having never completely gotten over blaming herself for my accident. It turned out she’d taken up learning to bake, and the cookies and cupcakes that she would spoil me with were just heavenly.

I didn’t know what I’d have done if I didn’t have my family helping me through this. I may have taken their love and support for granted before, but I really learned to treasure it as I worked through my recovery.

And yet…

In spite of all this, every now and then I couldn’t help but feel like there was something they weren’t telling me. If two of my family members were there watching me during physical therapy, I would sometimes look over and see them taking turns whispering in each other’s ears, and when I later would ask them what they had been discussing, they would dodge the question. On a few occasions my therapy would finish for the day, and when my trainer wheeled my chair over to join them, they would suddenly stop a conversation when they realized I was no longer across the room.

Members of my family would also often wait by my bedside while I slept, and sometimes I would wake up to find them having a hushed conversation in the corner before they noticed I was awake. When I would then speak to get their attention, they would immediately shift tone to say hi to me and drop whatever they’d been talking about. And again, any questions I asked about what they had been discussing would be met with “Nothing,” often accompanied by some curious looks between them.

I would sometimes notice them looking at or touching each other in ways that seemed a little odd or too friendly. There was a time when Mom and Dad where wheeling me around the grounds, and I looked across the yard to see Victor leading Kazia somewhere with his arm wrapping around the small of her back. There was a time when several of us were sharing a meal in the commissary, and Brandi and Sarah Jean started whispering something to each other and giving Victor a strange look, and then moments later the three of them excused themselves from the table and disappeared for the next hour, and when I asked where they’d gone the family showed a suspicious lack of concern.

However strange this all was, I tried my best not to think about it and just focus on getting better. The last thing I wanted was to look a gift horse in the mouth when I was alive and awake and had a family who supported me after what I had been through. After two months I was able to get around reasonably well with a cane, and even able to walk halfway across a room without one. I was looking forward to finally being discharged and seeing the world again, and to finally be able to go home and sleep in my own room.

That day finally came during the last week in July. The family all gathered and insisted on taking me to a big fancy restaurant to celebrate, giving me the seat of honor at the end of the big, long table and allowing me to order whatever the hell I wanted. Sitting with a full belly after that, possibly having made up in one sitting the sheer amount of weight I had lost while comatose, I decided the next place I wanted to go was our local park, to get some sun and open air and grass under my feet.

Once we got there, I found myself not only appreciating that, but also the summer clothes the people around us were in. Looking around at the girls in slim-fitting, short clothes as they relaxed in the shade or played frisbee or walked their dogs, I was reminded of some other things I hadn’t done in four years as I fought not to drool. I’m rather ashamed to say, my own sister and cousins were included in that group; the light halter and short shorts that Kazia had on left very little to the imagination, and calling the top that Brandi was wearing a bikini top would have been generous. When I caught myself ogling them a bit more than I should, I averted my gaze—only to raise a curious eyebrow when I noticed the way Uncle Perry stepped up and started stroking Brandi’s back as they admired the sun and sky.

We spent a few hours there, sitting on blankets, eating more junk food, and wandering around with me limping on my cane while my family hovered around me. As we were walking, I saw a couple of guys come jogging by, and felt a sudden urge to follow suit. Bracing myself, I handed my cane to Dad and asked, “Hold this?”

He took it agreeably, but not without a concerned look. “You want to try walking without it?”

“Something like that,” I said. I took a step. Then another. Then another, and another and another.

And then I was running.

I couldn’t believe how good running felt, but when you haven’t been able to do something as simple as running in so long, it takes on a new meaning when you suddenly can again. I raised my hands in the air, letting myself feel freer than I ever had in my life as the wind whipped past me. This was wonderful!

…For a minute or two.

Then my legs started screaming at me in protest. I ran a few more steps, and then I collapsed like a ton of bricks.

My family was upon me in seconds. “Darling! Are you alright?” Mom asked, swooping down to inspect me.

“I think that fell into the category of overexerting yourself,” Dad said with a shake of his head.

“Totally worth it,” I groaned, despite the pain lancing up my legs. Obviously it was going to be a while before I did that again.

Mom fussed over me a little longer, and then it was decided that they should fetch my wheelchair. I tried to protest at first, but when I tried to get up with my cane and found even that to be unbearable, I accepted.

My legs were still aching that evening when we returned at last to my home, the place I had been longing to see. If it weren’t for the pain, it would have been a magical moment. Still, I appreciated it, despite my inability at that moment to get up and dance. The house was almost just as I remembered it, save for a few mantle decorations that had been changed around. I wanted to take some time to really bask in the moment, but my legs were still hurting, and besides, I was tired.

Aunt Cassie’s family waited in the living room while my immediate family wheeled me to my room. As I shifted in my chair a bit and winced at how my legs were aching, I finally relented and said, “You know what, I think I might try some of those pain meds the hospital gave me.”

“You sure?” Dad said. “Those are pretty strong. The doctors said they’d knock you right out.”

“Kinda the point right now, Dad,” I said as they wheeled me up to my bed. “Right now I think being out like a light all night is exactly what I need.”

Victor got the oddest look on his face as he craned his head to look at Mom. “Out like a light all night,” he repeated in a low voice. Mom shot him a cautionary look back, and then seemed to soften a bit when he lifted his eyebrows. What that was about, I didn’t know, and thought it would be pointless to ask.

They gave me the pills I asked for, and I downed one of them with a water bottle. They helped me out of my wheelchair and tucked me into bed, making me feel a bit like a child. Mom cradled my face in her hand as she gazed down lovingly at me, something she didn’t normally do with Dad and my siblings standing right behind her. “It’s such a dream come true to have you back here,” she said softly. “You have no idea how much we missed having you here.”

“We’ll discuss it in the morning, Mom,” I insisted.

“Yeah, and warn us next time you feel like competing for track, little bro,” Victor said. “We’ll know what to do.” There was a small chuckle at this.

“Sure, whatever,” I groaned.

Mom slowly, almost reluctantly got up. “Sleep tight,” she said, just like she used to when I was a kid. Before they all left, Kazia came over to my bed and, to my endless surprise, bent and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I watched them all go as the drowsiness from the meds set in. They turned off the lights, cast one more look back at me, and shut the door as I drifted off into a deep sleep.

 

I sometimes wonder what might have been if those meds really had kept me out like a light all night that night as we’d expected. What might have been if I hadn’t woken up some time a little after midnight with the powerful need to pee. As much as my body still wanted to lie there and go back to sleep, my bladder sounded an even more urgent call. Damn false advertising, I thought. Gonna have to complain to the pharmaceutical department!

So reluctantly I picked up my cane, pushed myself out of bed with a groan as I fought through the drug-induced fatigue, limped to my door and across the hall to the bathroom. Thankfully my legs were feeling a bit better now, so I was able to stand and do my business without things becoming difficult.

It was only when I had relieved my immediate problem and emerged from the bathroom again that I heard it. Voices coming from the other room. Voices that sounded like… moaning. Voices shouting things like, “Oh, fuck!” and “Oh, Daddy, yes!” And I heard what sounded very distinctly like flesh slapping on flesh.

I stood there frozen, leaning on my cane as I looked toward the living room where the sounds were coming from. Like a moth drawn to a flame, I found myself limping toward the sound down the hall to where it opened into the room.

What I saw nearly sent me right back into a coma on the spot.

My family were all gathered there, with their discarded clothes strewn carelessly about the room. Victor sat slumped back on the love seat, with Mom mounted on his lap with her back to him, her heaving breasts shaking with every bounce, her eyes closed and mouth open as she focused inwardly on the sensations of her son’s cock inside her. Aunt Cassie was kneeling between their spread legs, giving me a full view of her round ass as she licked and sucked Victor’s balls. Kazia was down on all fours on the floor, with Dad kneeling behind her, drilling her doggystyle as she threw her head back and howled in delight, her breasts swaying with each thrust. Uncle Perry was kneeling on the couch between the spread and raised legs of Sarah Jean, thrusting down into his daughter. Brandi straddled her younger sister’s face, while Sarah Jean gripped her sister’s thighs and lapped at her pussy, and Perry leaned forward to kiss and suckle Brandi’s breasts.

“Mm! Yes, Sarah Jean, right there!” Brandi moaned, throwing her head back. “Oh, yes, suck my clit, sis! Ahhhh!” Sarah Jean only moaned in reply, her mouth muffled by her sister’s pussy.

Cassie released Victor’s balls to hiss, “You gonna make your mama cum, Victor? You gonna fill your mom’s pussy with your hot jizz? I think she wants it!”

“Yes, fill me, Victor!” Mom cried. “I want my son’s jizz! I want it deep inside me! I want to cum with your seed inside me!”

“Yeah you do!” Cassie cheered, and started licking Mom’s clit.

“Oh, Daddy, harder!” Kazia screamed. “Don’t stop! I’m gonna cum!”

Cassie turned her head to look at her, hissing, “Yeah, cum for us, you little slut!” Then she looked up at Mom and said, “You want to see that, Beth? You want to see your daughter cum on her daddy’s big cock?”

Mom opened her eyes and glanced that way. If she’d looked just a few degrees higher and to the left she would have seen me standing there. “Oh, yes, fuck her Dave! Hunnhh!” she cried between gasps of pleasure. “Make our baby girl explode! Ahhh! Yes!”

Kazia went stiff, ceasing her back and forth motions as she shrieked in orgasm, while Dad pulled back hard on her hips, gritting his teeth. “That’s it, baby!” Dad grunted. After a moment, Kazia collapsed forward onto the floor, her ass sticking up in the air and her hand cupping her convulsing pussy as her body spasmed and she continued to gasp.

“Oh, let me taste that!” Brandi chirped. She climbed off Sarah Jean’s face and scampered across the room, dropping to her knees so she could slurp Dad’s cock into her mouth, sucking Kazia’s pussy juices off it.

Sarah Jean was left to focus solely on her own pleasure, looking up at her father and rubbing her clit as Perry drove down hard into her and grabbed her shaking breasts. “Oh, Daddy!” she whimpered.

“Fuck, I love my little girl’s pussy!” Perry grunted. “So tight! Unh!”

Brandi had just said “Fuck me now, Uncle Dave!” and was getting in position to let Dad mount her missionary style, when Mom finally glanced in the right, or maybe wrong, direction. Her humping motions on Victor immediately ceased as her eyes went wide and she gasped, “ALEX?”

Everyone suddenly stopped what they were doing. Most of them looked straight at Mom, and when they saw where she was looking, they all turned their gazes in my direction. The orgy came to an immediate, crashing halt as everyone stared at me.

“Oh, shit!” Kazia said, pushing up from the floor and putting a hand over her breasts as if that would hide anything.

I gaped at them all, my mind whirling as I tried and failed to make sense of what I had just seen. The world seemed to have turned upside-down and backwards… in fact, it really did, as the room seemed to be moving in all directions. I couldn’t feel the floor underneath my feet. Then I couldn’t feel much of anything at all. I tried to breathe, but the air didn’t seem to be coming in.

I was faintly aware of Mom calling my name, sounding as if I was hearing it from miles away. I hadn’t noticed myself falling, but I realized all of a sudden that I was on my knees, my cane dropping away with a thump that I heard as if through a bad phone connection. And then through my swimming vision I saw Mom rushing at me as the edges of my world went fuzzy, and then black as the air left me.

 

“…istake doing it while he was in the house with us! I can’t believe I let you talk me into it!”

“Mom, come on, he said himself the meds would keep him out all night!”

“Obviously they didn’t! And we should have considered that possibility!”

“Yeah, we really should have, Beth. I should have considered that too, but I was thinking with my pussy again.”

The room around me slowly coalesced into focus as I heard my family’s voices around me. I became aware of the ceiling, and realized my head was cradled on something soft. As I regained my senses, I realized that I was lying on the couch with my head resting in Mom’s lap, and I looked up to see that she had donned a robe and was tenderly holding my head in her hands. I darted my eyes around, and saw everyone gathered around the room, having put on either robes or pajamas, or in Uncle Perry’s case just his boxer briefs.

Sarah Jean’s eyes met mine, and she called, “Hey, he’s awake!”

Everyone looked at me. Mom bent down to meet my eyes with a tender expression. “Alex? Honey?”

The memory of what I had just seen before everything had gone black came rushing back to me, and I practically leaped out of her arms, shrinking back to the edge of the couch as far from her as I could get as I stared at her like she had grown a second head.

Dad was at my side in a second, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, take it easy, you don’t want to pass out again.”

“What… how… you… what the fuck?” I sputtered.

“All excellent questions,” Perry said.

“I’m sorry, Alex, that wasn’t how we meant for you to find out about this,” Mom said. “I knew it was a bad idea for us to do this now, while you were just down the hall, but we took for granted that you would sleep through it.”

“And besides, we were in the mood to celebrate,” Kazia offered in a small voice.

“Celebrate,” I repeated in a dull voice. “What, you never heard of baking a cake?”

“We did tell you some things have changed in the last four years,” Dad said with a half-smile.

I spat out a humorless laugh. “I was thinking Victor had a new girlfriend, or Mom’s job had changed. But this?”

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you since you woke up,” Victor said. “Not exactly an easy thing to bring up in conversation, you know.”

“The thing is,” Cassie said, “we never really planned for the contingency of having to tell you about it. Because… well…” She trailed off, not wanting to say it aloud. We all knew what she meant.

“Don’t get us wrong,” Perry put in. “We were all hoping you’d come out of it one day, but the more time that went by the less likely it seemed. For all we knew, you were lost.”

“It was to the point that the hospital was telling us we should say our goodbyes to you and let them take you off life support, but your mother wouldn’t hear it,” Dad said.

“And thank God for that!” Mom added.

“But I woke up two and a half months ago!” I countered.

The family looked at each other uncomfortably. “Yes, yes you did,” Mom said. “But you see… we were kind of… afraid to tell you.”

“Afraid,” I repeated.

“For a couple of reasons,” Dad agreed. “And what just happened is one of them. The hospital said your condition was still delicate, and we were worried it would be too much of a shock for you.”

“And there’s another reason,” Mom said, frowning as she looked directly at my face. “The way you’re looking at us now. We were also worried about that.”

I scoffed. “Can you blame me? I just pulled a fucking Rip Van Winkle, and I wake up to catch my family having a goddamn orgy! What the actual fuck!?!?”

“I guess we owe you an explanation,” Dad sighed, pulling up the ottoman to sit down. “If you’ll give us that chance.”

I had no response other than to stare at them all. They took that for assent.

“Your brother and sister were the ones who started it,” Mom said, looking toward Victor and Kazia. “And as strange as this may sound, it actually started over you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

Dad looked at my siblings with a grimace. “Maybe you two had better explain this part.”

Victor and Kazia looked at each other. Kazia took a breath and began, “Well, you see, those first few weeks after your accident, that was absolute hell for us. We were all drowning in our grief, especially with me feeling responsible for it. I started looking for ways to numb the pain. I went to bad parties, I drank a lot, I did some… you know, shit…”

“Mom and Dad started worrying about her, you know,” Victor continued. “They started talking about being afraid of losing another child if she didn’t stop. So one night they sent me out to pick her up from one of those parties she’d snuck off to, I dragged her away from the bender she was on and drove her home. Once I got her alone, we talked a little bit, and then she just broke down and started crying like a baby. Just letting it all out. And I held her while she soaked my shirt in her tears… and then, suddenly we were kissing, and one thing led to another…”

As he trailed off, Kazia quickly picked it up again. “The thing is, it helped! We both felt better after that. I mean yeah, we still missed you and all, but it didn’t hurt as much. So, you know, we kept doing it. It became our thing.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “And how did the rest of you get involved?”

“We’re coming to that,” Mom said.

“We kept it a secret at first, just the two of us,” Victor went on. “But one day Brandi and Sarah Jean were over for a visit, and… Brandi found…”

“I found one of Victor’s shirts in Kazia’s bed,” Brandi explained. “Kinda put two and two together.”

“So they confronted us about it, and we confessed,” Kazia said.

“And you were cool with it?” I asked my cousins.

“Not at first,” Brandi said.

“I was!” Sarah Jean contradicted her.

Brandi gave her sister an annoyed look, but continued. “The important thing is, they explained what they were doing and why, and that it was what they both wanted, and it got us thinking about it. After a while, Sarah Jean and I started playing around with each other, just to try it out. And we liked it. So we started joining Victor and Kazia, having foursomes and stuff.”

“Yeah, and then Dad caught us,” Sarah Jean said rather bluntly.

“What?” I said.

“That’s right,” Perry said. “I walked in on them one day, not unlike what you just did. It was at our house, and they were in the basement. They didn’t know I was at home, and I chose that moment to bring my laundry down, and I found them going at it. They were just down there on the basement couch, Victor fucking Sarah Jean doggystyle while Sarah Jean was eating out Kazia, and Brandi was kneeling beside them all, pulling out Victor’s dick to suck on.”

I was simultaneously disturbed and aroused by his attention to detail.

“And you know the crazy thing?” Perry continued. “I didn’t feel angry or disgusted or anything. A little shocked, sure, but I didn’t feel any of what I thought I should feel. It just turned me on.”

“Yeah, at least until I looked up and saw you,” Brandi said.

“That’s right,” Perry agreed. “That’s when the shit hit the fan. There was a lot of freaking out and panicking. And just our luck, Cassie happened to be just coming home at that moment and heard all the screaming, so, the cat got out of the bag pretty quick.”

“So, there were a bunch of discussions and lectures,” Cassie picked it up. “I told your mom and dad what their kids were up to, and they grilled your siblings pretty hard.”

“Needless to say, we were a long way from happy when we found out what your brother and sister were doing,” Mom said. “But when they explained to us why it started, that it had been their way of coping with their grief for you, well, we were a bit more understanding after that. Because, if we’re being honest, we were pretty desperate for a way to numb those feelings ourselves.”