Perhaps that was a perfectly good plan. But I suddenly realized I had another option.
Super-charged as I was, I could do what Brianna had just done. I could open up a self-contained fantasy world, and transport us all there. A world in which I would be a step ahead of everyone else in figuring out the rules.
Never-mind a luxurious hotel resort. I went for more fantastic.
The world shimmered around me, melted away like wax before a flame. I filled the hole left in its place. What I built in its stead probably bore little resemblance to life out west a hundred and fifty years ago so much as a pastiche born from fictional accounts thereof.
But I felt certain it would keep the others believing long enough to serve its purpose.
#
We stood in the main hall of an old time tavern. My mother was the proprietor. She wore a huge skirt with many layers of colorful petticoats showing beneath. A frilly light blue blouse and leather boots went along with it.
My father stood behind the bar, polishing a glass. He wore a handlebar mustache, leather vest, jeans with a huge belt buckle, and a black shirt with a bola tie.
Aunt Liz and Uncle Jim sat at a table, wearing expensive tailored clothes. He wore a well-cut brown suit and a bowler hat. A full beard covered his gaunt face. Aunt Liz wore a beige dress with a vest of red crushed velvet over it. Atop her head sat a black, beige and red hat with a flimsy beige veil hanging from the brim. The financier and his wife.
My brothers and cousin Mark sat at the bar, wearing grimy, once white shirtsleeves. They hadn't any of them shaved in days. Dirt covered their hands and faces. Miners.
Natalie was up on stage. She wore black leather boots, fishnet stockings, a purple garter, a purple corset trimmed with black lace, a black choker, and black leather gloves with purple lace. A strip of black fabric fell down her backside, the sort that could be found on fancy dresses of that era. But she seemed to have lost the rest of the garment.
My sister's fake tan was gone. But, curiously, her hair was still a mix of her natural medium-brown and bleach-blonde.
Aunt Cindy had a big red feather in her hair and a red feather boa around her shoulders. She wore short black boots with sharp heels, red thigh-high fishnets, black satin panties with red trim, and a black leather corset with so much red lace adorning it that it almost looked like she had a skirt on. Like Natalie, she also wore gloves, though hers were red fishnet like her stockings. These two were clearly prostitutes.
Jack wore a top hat and a torn, faded black suit. He carried a heavy leather bag that rattled as he walked across the room to an empty table. He was too clean to have been a laborer of any kind, but not dressed in a manner that suggested wealth. Doctor perhaps.
It took more effort since I couldn't even see the place, but I then fashioned a small sheriff's office with two jail cells. I pictured Brianna locked up in one of them.
Naturally, I was the sheriff.
I populated the tavern with a few other locals. But they were little more than ghosts. They looked real enough, but if anyone went outside the family, they'd find little reward. Brianna should have thought of that.
Aunt Cindy wasted little time. She made her way across the room, and invited Mark and Todd to have a good time with her. They bought a bottle of whiskey from the bar and the three headed upstairs, shit-eating grins on the guys' faces.
I went over and sat with Jack and made small talk, trying to get a sense of what he knew. He knew who I was, but only as the sheriff of this nonexistent town. He was indeed the doctor. If he had any idea that everyone there, or everyone who was real, was a member of the same family, he didn't give any indication. He fancied the dancer, and was working up the courage to buy her services for an hour. I encouraged him to do so.
When I took my leave of him, I found that Dom and my mother were no longer there. I went towards the back of the tavern, where the stockrooms would be. I heard the scraping of leather on wood, accompanied by soft moaning, coming from one of them.
I pushed the door open. My brother sat on a crate, pants around his ankles, knuckles white as he gripped the shelves to either side of him. Mom was on her knees in front of him.
He looked up at me. "Well shit, sheriff, ain't no crime here, is there?"
Mom turned and looked at me, spit dripping from the corner of her mouth. She wiped a lock of hair from her face. "Please, sheriff. Let's say you didn't see nothing, all right?"
At a loss for words, I stepped back out and let the door swing to. Before I was gone, I heard the slurping sound of my mother resuming the activity I'd interrupted.
So much for thinking I'd won Mom over. But then, she didn't remember any of what had just happened. Nor that she was his mother, come to it. But I guess I'd expected to have left an impression that would still influence her behavior, if only subconsciously.
I took my hat off, scratched my head, and ambled back to the bar. Natalie was no longer on stage. My father, uncle and cousin Jack were all gone as well.
Good for them.
Well damned if I couldn't make them believe whatever I wanted. I strode back and kicked in the door. My mother jumped up, holding her skirts tight around her. Dom scrambled to get his pants back up.
"Come along quietly now, Dom. We know it was you what burned that barn down."
"What the damned," he started to say. But then it became true. I felt it. "Who squawked? I got a right to face my accuser, ain't I?"
I pulled my gun on him, until I had him in cuffs. But he didn't really resist as I hauled him across town to the jailhouse.
Brianna smiled. "Brought me a present, have you?"
I stumbled. Innocent comment. Didn't mean she knew anything. Couldn't have torn through the veil already. "You know how to bend steel now?" I asked.
"No. Lots of things I know how to do with a good, thick pipe. But these bars have got me good and caged in. For now," she said. "Still, nice to have some company. Ain't that right?" she asked Dom. "My favorite cousin too. Very considerate of you. I'd almost think you want to make this easy for me."
Well, shit.
For his part, Dom had no idea who she was or what she was talking about. He raised an eyebrow at her quizzically. "Sure, ma'am. Sure."
I took his cuffs off and tossed him into the cell adjacent to hers. He rubbed at his wrists silently, eyeing Brianna up and down. Quite approvingly.
Brianna laughed herself silly, her high-pitched voice almost piercing. "Don't think yourself overly clever, Frank. You may have made things a bit more interesting, but there's only one way this is all going to end."
I shrugged her words off as I left the sheriff's office. She was just fucking with my head. There was nothing she could do from behind those bars.
#
Shortly after I got back to the tavern, people started to come back to the main room. First Aunt Cindy and her entourage, then Natalie and hers. Mom went and took a seat next to Mark, offering him a drink on the house. Aunt Liz pulled her husband to the side and began to upbraid him. Dad went back behind the bar, looking a pleased with himself as could be. Todd eyed the bar. But Aunt Liz came over to him, took him by the hand, ordered Jim to follow, and headed for one of the rooms upstairs.
I approached Natalie, who was sitting with Jack and Aunt Cindy. The latter two were sitting all but cheek to cheek, holding hands and whispering to on another, while Natalie pretended to be part of the conversation. But as I approached, my sister turned to look up at me. Meanwhile, Jack and Cindy didn't take their eyes off each other.
Nat either had much nicer breasts than I'd given her credit for, or her corset was doing a bang-up job. Probably both. And without the fake tan, I had to admit she was looking damn good. How had I failed to notice just how pretty she was before? She had the cutest little nose, big brown eyes, and the thick brows I was so obsessed with. I still didn't really care for the hair, but I had to admit that it had a certain appeal.
"Yes, sheriff? There a problem?" she asked.
Taking my gun and badge off, I draped them over the back of a chair. "Not in the least. Didn't come to talk to you as sheriff. Came to talk to you as a man with a big old dick that needs some relieving, and a pocket full of money to make that happen."
She didn't bat an eye. "Well Jack here wants another go round. Threesome, this time. And he's already paid."
Jack finally broke his eyes away from his mother long enough to briefly flick his eyes in my direction. But he didn't speak a word before going back to their intimate little conversation.
"Well, I ain't go no problem with groups." I said.
Natalie smiled. "Funny. Me neither. Prefer 'em, really. Long as Jack don't mind, we've got no problem." She laid a hand on Jack's shoulder. "What do you say, stud? I'll give you some o' your scrip back."
"Sure," he said. "Just as long as I got 'em both to myself for at least some of the time."
Jack nodded to me and poured us all a round of whiskey.
Natalie reached under the table and ran her hand up my thigh. Her eyes bulged when she reached my erection. "Goodness me, you weren't lying, were you?"
I smiled. "No bigger than it needs to be to get the job done right."
"We'll see about that," she said, her eyes wide and a grin on her lips.
After finishing the shots, Jack announced he was ready and the four of us went upstairs into one of the minimally appointed bedrooms.
Natalie immediately ordered us to undress. Herself, she only took off her panties, draped them over Jack's head, and unzipped her corset a bit so that she could to fold the top down and let her breasts hang out. Everything else stayed on. The same went for Cindy, who also gave her panties to Jack. She did lose the feather boa, though.
Jack inhaled deeply from each pair before placing them on the table.
"Just sit there and wait your turn," my sister said to me before she got on her knees and took our cousin in her mouth.
Meanwhile, Cindy ran her hands over Jack's thighs, played with his balls, tweaked his nipples, and played with Natalie's breasts.
Natalie's goal seemed to be to overwhelm her man with ecstasy. She used her tongue, her cheeks, the back of her throat, her hands. She sucked Jack's balls into her mouth. It was hard to say if I was witnessing the efficiency of a professional who aimed to please her customer, or a genuine desire to satisfy. After all, she hadn't been playing the part of a prostitute before, and Dad and Uncle Jim had described more or less what I was witnessing.
One way or another, Jack didn't last long.
My sister swallowed every drop of our cousin's jizz. After she licked her lips, she patted Jack's cheek and made room for Cindy to take over. From the look of it, Cindy was not aiming to make her son pop as fast as possible, nor to tease him mercilessly, but something in the middle. She stopped every so often to make out with Natalie.
Fuck, what a sight. I started stroking myself faster and faster.
A few minutes later, Jack nutted again, depositing a fresh load in his mother's mouth. She and Natalie snowballed his cum back and forth before Cindy finally swallowed it. The two women then took Jack by either hand and led him to the bed. Natalie sat on Jack's face, facing Cindy, who straddled his hips and guided his stiff dick past her welcoming folds.
I grabbed one of the pairs of panties off the table and filled it with my seed.
