Author’s note: I’m not Kate, and I don’t engage in or agree with incest outside the confinement of my fucked up imagination. ~FT

December 15 th Blog Entry:

I hate to fly when the temperature is below freezing. I don’t care what the reason really—if they have to de-ice the plane before takeoff, the trip isn’t worth taking. And to add to my traveling disdain, I’m surrounded by my family.

You’ve heard me bitch about them before, bloggers. My parents are unkind, arrogant, judgmental assholes and my siblings fair no better. And then there’s me, “Sweet ‘lil Kate who was born with a soft spot in her heart for the less fortunate,” as my mother has always described me. Being open, accepting, and genuine are flaws in my parents’ opinions, and because I can’t for the life of me adapt to their cold-hearted, pompous ways, I will forever be fifteen years old and in need of their constant involvement in my life.

My childhood consisted of gifts, awards, status, and attention, but not the attention I was so desperately seeking. Buying me a car at thirteen because my parents were vacationing in Europe over my summer birthday didn’t mean a thing to me at the time. In fact, my blogging friends, I never even drove that car.

And to add a little insult to my familial injury, I married a younger, snobbier version of my father. Money, position, prestige—none of that matters to me. It never has. In fact, I’d give up anything and everything to be happy, to have love, passion, and hot sex every day without having to ask or compensate for it. And a day doesn’t go by that I don’t ask myself the same three questions; Why did I agree to this kind of a married life? Am I becoming my mother? Should I sneak into the bathroom and fuck myself with the end of my hairbrush?

So, here I sit—in between my parents—listening to my mother go on and on about how hard it’s been on her to have a farmer for a brother. She rambles about the damage his occupation has caused her reputation and I glance at my cell phone and count down the minutes until we land.

Owner of one of the largest dairy farms in Minnesota, my Uncle Henry’s family is by far my favorite group of relatives. In fact, I like them more than my own immediate family. They married as high school sweethearts, and my mother’s older brother Henry and my sweet Aunt Rose had two sons, my cousins Willard and Hank. All four of them have always treated me like I was a member of their loving family, and secretly I had asked for such a wish on every shooting star I had ever seen.

Before I was a foot inside the barn, my cousin Hank—two months older than me and practically my twin in looks—ran to me. “Kate!” he yelled, grabbing me around the waist and spinning me around.

“Hank,” I sighed. I looked him over from head to toe. His long, soft dark hair curled around his collar and ears, and matched perfectly three days of dark facial hair. His bright blue eyes and equally brilliant smile reminded me of my reflection, and I giggled when he scratched his gruff beard with dirty fingers.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said, glancing around inside the massive, open building. Four rows of metal stalls ran from one end of the building to the other, and I could see puddles of water along freshly sprayed concrete. “You just finished milking them?”

“Yes. I’m done for the night.” He wiped down the front of his dirty shirt and said, “I smell like cow shit. I probably need to shower before I do anything else.”

I’d love to watch you shower, I said to myself. “You don’t smell bad to me.”

“That’s because your sniffer’s broken.”

“Yeah,” I quietly said. I had to look away. Hank and I had always been very close. We had spent countless summers together at the farm and we talked on the phone or texted every day. Hank had even taken me to one of my high school dances when no one else had asked me. That night, I pretended that Hank wasn’t my cousin but my boyfriend, and it was then that my sexual attraction for him was born.

That attraction seemed to get stronger each time I saw him. I mumbled, “Yeah, you’re right.”

He pointed at the back of the building. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

I nodded and smiled, and couldn’t help but to visually follow the pockets of his baggy, dirty blue jeans until he turned the corner. I sat down on a lawn chair just outside of an electrical room and heavily sighed. I glanced at the door, noticing the night sky bullying the sunlight, and a memory from my past that had taken place in the same doorway engulfed me.

In my mind, my husband Jake’s deep voice said, “This place smells like fucking hell.”

“It’s not that bad,” I had replied, disappointed that Jake had started complaining the minute the jet touched down in Minnesota.

Standing just outside the milking building, he had acted as if he was going to throw up. “Not that bad? Are you serious, Kate? I’m never going to be able to eat another steak again.”

“Just breathe through your mouth.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. And if you think we’re sleeping out her in B.F.E., you’re out of your mind.”

“But, we have to stay here,” I said. My tone was one of pleading.

“Well, we’re not. I’ll stink for a year if I do.”

“But what will I tell my uncle Henry and—and Hank?”

“Tell them what you told me last night … that you’re on your period and your cramps are so bad, you’ll have to take a sleeping pill to get to sleep.” I had scowled at Jake, which didn’t keep him from adding, “I don’t give a fuck, Kate. I’m getting sick just standing this close to the shit.”

“Kate?”

I glanced up, shaking the awful memory from my head. “Sorry, what?”

“Will you hand me those tennis shoes?” he asked, nodding to my left.

I handed the tennis shoes to him and consciously made note not to stare at the small droplets of water that covered his smooth, muscular chest.

“What do you want to do tonight? Mom says you refuse to go to the pub,” he said, not looking at me but on his shoelaces.

I crossed my arms and kicked at the ground. “I get enough … drinking action at home.”

Hank stood up. “How are things at home?”

How are things at home? They’re the shits. There’s more bullshit at home then in all twelve hundred acres here. I’m up to my eyeballs in it and you would be too if you were married to the world’s biggest tool. Stink for a year … like he needs to be near shit to smell bad! Give me a break. If it looks like and ass and acts like an ass, it’s going to smell like an ass. He—

“Kate?”

“Things are fine. The same.” I frantically searched for a topic to change the subject. A lawn mower that had been gutted and it’s motor resting on the counter-top above it caught my eye. “You’re still taking things apart and putting them back together?”

“Yeah,” he said through a youthful grin.

“What have you built lately?”

His smile grew and he placed his hand in the small of my back, turning me and walking me to a small room in the corner of the building. I stepped inside the room as Hank turned on the bright fluorescent lights above. Once my eyes adjusted, I looked around the room. I was amazed. Tools, motor parts, and empty beer cans littered every square inch of the work space that wrapped around the walls. The smell of grease was overpowering and I laughed and pointed at an overflowing trash can. “This room has changed a bit. I think that’s the same pizza box from last year.”

Hank laughed. “Go ahead and mock me, but geniuses don’t have time to clean.” He retrieved a tall object resting against the far wall. On two large, black, rubber wheels sat a platform above a couple of small motors. Hank flipped the contraption on, held the handles, and stepped onto the platform.

“You built a moped.”

He zipped around me and said, “No, it’s a balancing scooter. I built it with two DC motors, the same they use in powered wheelchairs.”

“Wow.”

Hank rode the machine back to the wall, parked it, and returned with something much smaller. “I took the compressor and motor out of an air hammer and made an air-gun.”

I grabbed the long metal object and inspected it. It was oddly shaped, and I strained to see inside the compartment holding the motor. “What does it shoot?”

“Mini-marshmallows.”

I looked up at my cousin. “Mini … marshmallows?”

“It shoots ‘em hard. Wanna see?”

He gave me a demonstration of the gun just outside the room. Like we had done a hundred times as children, we roll-played Army Cadets, leaving a poster board with a hand-drawn target attached to the wall covered in splatters of white fluff. “If I shot you with this, that marshmallow would leave a welt.”

“And how do you know this?” I asked, grabbing a handful of the marshmallows from the bag and placing one in my mouth.

“I don’t. But Willard does.”

We both laughed as we reentered his workshop. Hank returned the gun to the rack where he kept it and my attention once again traveled around the room, landing on a large tarp-covered object. “What’s that?”

Hank glanced in the direction I was looking. He looked at me for a split second before glancing away. His mouth turned down. “It’s nothing.”

The change in him was painfully obvious. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing, Kate. Really. Wanna go get a pizza?”

Hank couldn’t look at me, a telltale sign that he was fighting an internal dilemma. “What’s wrong?”

He finally looked at me. “I don’t want you to see that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not for your eyes.”

“What, is it going to blind me?”

Hank quietly laughed. He shook his head and when I took a step toward the tarp, his smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “Kate, don’t.”

“You just said it’s not going to blind me.” I grabbed the crinkled tarp and whipped it off the large item.

Sitting on the ground at my feet was a contraption I had seen before. Atop four wheels and with handles that mimicked those on a wheelbarrow sat an old-fashioned, freestanding, dairy cow milking machine. It had obviously been modified. The teat-cups, or “suckers” as Hank and I had always playfully called them, were different sizes and attached to the machine by the same long, rubber tubing used on the massive machines just outside the small room. On the back of the machine, in between the two handles, sat an old tractor seat that had the middle cut out of it.

It took a minute for the concept to register. I slowly turned to my cousin. “Is this … well, what have you done to this milker?”

Hank blushed, the embarrassment he felt obvious. He quickly crossed the room and worked to cover his contraption. “It’s what you think it is. I wanted to show Shelly, but now that we’ve split—”

“Hank,” I said, grabbing him and forcing him to turn to me.

He dropped the tarp and without blinking, caught my gaze in a stare. “I made a sex machine, but I’ll never be able to use it with her.”

“You still miss her.”

Hank’s chin dropped to his chest. His mouth turned down and he angrily said, “As much as a guy could miss the woman that cheated on him.”

Ouch. That wound’s still fresh, I thought, reminding myself to be as kind and supportive as possible.

Hank retrieved the tarp. He mumbled under his breath. “And now you think I’m a freak.”

“No I don’t,” I practically yelled. Hank whipped up and the moment our eyes met, I smirked. “I don’t.”

We smiled simultaneously, the mutual respect and concern for each other evident in the way our minds worked together. We knew what the other was thinking. I wanted him to explain the contraption as much as he wanted to explain it.

Hank grabbed a set of four teat-cups. “I modified every one of these suckers.”

“Wow,” I said. I pointed at the largest one. “That’s huge.”

Hank chuckled haughtily. “That sucker … that’s for me,” he boasted.

“Oh, for your … middle finger?” I teased.

Hank held his hand up, exposing his long, thin fingers, and playfully shook his head. “You know what digit it’s for.”

My face flushed. “You think it’s big enough?”

Hank’s chuckle grew into laughter and I instantly felt better. I pointed at a sucker that wasn’t shaped like a regular teat-cup, but that of a cucumber. “What does that one do?”

“You can guess what it does,” Hank teased. I nodded and he said, “It vibrates … hard. Don’t know if you’d be able to handle it.”

“I bet I could,” I boosted, the playful competition that we always seemed to share surfacing quickly.

“I know Jake could … up his ass.”

“Yeah,” I huffed. I hated it when my cousins teased me about my husband. Even as much as I agreed with them, I felt guilt-ridden each time they badmouthed him in front of me.

Hank rambled. “I ask myself the same questions every single day. … Why is she with him? Why did she marry him?”

I looked down, the logic behind his angered statement undeniable. “And what do you think the answers are?”

Hank exhaled loudly and said, “I think you were stupid to marry him back then and you’re stupid to stay married to him now.” The volume of his voice increased. “Hell, you’d be better off with me, your blood relative, than that mother fucker.”

“That’s a little harsh,” I said, unable to look at him.

Hank didn’t respond and a familiar feeling of fight-or-flight consumed me. Habitually, I turned and sprinted toward the exit at a panicked pace. I was too focused on my retreat to notice him following closely behind me.

He grabbed me by the arm and whipped me around to face him. “Stop running, Kate!”

“No!” I snapped, thrashing back and forth to release his hold.

“No, you stop running and hiding from your problems … and from me!”

Tears rolled down my cheeks, painful, shameful tears that cooled quickly against my red-hot cheeks. “I don’t want …”

“I know what you don’t want,” he said as he pulled on my waist and pinned my body against his. “Tell me what you do want.”

I looked up at him, looked deep into the eyes of my cousin, and shivered. The look in them was familiar but still new, and I could feel my heavy eyelids blink hard once. “I want … I want …” I stammered. I had to divert. “Well, what do you want?”

Hank moved in close to me. “I want you to be happy.”

I could smell him, the soap that had cleaned his skin just minutes before and the wetness to his hair. “I’m happy right now.”

Hank looked at his arms, left to right, and asked, “Right now? In my arms?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know why.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Look at me, Kate,” he said, slightly pushing me away. “What kind of sick fuck thinks about family the way I think about you? What kind of sicko wants his cousin?”

“You’re not a sick, Hank.”

Hank turned. He glared at me with a look I had never seen from him before and for a second, I thought he was going to explode like Jake did with a similar look. Instead, Hank startled me when he reached out for me again, grabbing me and slamming his body and his lips against mine.

Our mouths meshed together, our lips, and our tongues, and the wetness and warmth of the kiss caused me to spin. I was lost. Risky, forbidden passion took my mind to a euphoric place. Just when I was sure to mentally collapse, his voice rescued me.

“Kate.”

I leaned back and slowly opened my eyes. Hank was staring at me, his eyes red and watery, and I could feel the turmoil within him. “I shouldn’t have kissed you," he whispered.

“Yeah, that was—” I stopped myself, unable to describe the lustful desires of my heart or the lack of reasonable surety of my mind.

Neither of us said anything for a minute. Then, at the same time, we spoke.

“Can’t we just—”

“I don’t think it’s—”

Hank paused and pointed at me. “What?”

“You first,” I stammered.

“Can’t we … just once, pretend that we’re not related? Just for tonight, I’m a man and you’re a woman and we want each other. Nothing more than that.” He leaned into me. “Please Kate? Pretend with me, just this once.”

My bottom lip quivered and I bit it to keep it still. I didn’t recognize myself. I couldn’t. I wanted Hank. I wanted his arms around me, his lips kissing mine, his body against me and his dick inside me. Suddenly, with a little coaxing from the churning desire deep within my core, my mind relinquished the fact that he was my cousin, and I looked at him for the first time in my life as just as man.

“Yes,” I whispered with...