An adult stories – The Tale of the Too Close Twins by RetroFan,RetroFan INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER – When Andrew, a student from Sydney Australia meets fraternal twin brother and sister Shane and Karen who have recently moved from Newcastle they become good friends. Andrew notes that the brother and sister have a twin bond and even some impressive telepathy, but nothing seems amiss until over a year later, when Andrew starts seeing things that are out of place and wondering just how close Shane and Karen really are.
Is it all in Andrew’s imagination, or are twins Shane and Karen really too close for comfort? Find out by reading ‘The Tale of the Too Close Twins’ – an entry in the April Fools Day Story Contest 2024 – and be sure to rate and comment. All characters engaging in sexual activity are 18 or older at the time, and they and the events of the story are fictional, with similarity to real persons living or dead coincidental and unintentional.
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Growing up in the northern suburbs of the Australian city of Sydney, New South Wales in the 1970s and 1980s, I had very limited experience with twins in my formative years.
I was the younger of two boys, my brother Kevin two years older than me. Our Mum Susan and Dad John both had siblings and cousins, which meant Kevin and I had plenty of cousins and second cousins, but no twins in our generation, nor any in our parents’ generation either.
The same was true of our grandparents’ generation – no twins of any type to be seen among a large number of children. There was a set of non-identical twin brothers in my great-grandparents generation, but they were born so many years ago that they had both passed away when Kevin and I arrived in the world in 1971 and 1973 respectively.
When I started primary school there was a set of identical twin brothers in my class, and in the higher grades a set of non-identical twin sisters. One of the girls in my year had identical twin sister cousins but they lived on the other side of Sydney and I never met them, the fraternal twin girls were so much older than me so I never really knew them before they left for high school.
As for the twin boys in my class, they were a classic case of double trouble, always in the headmaster’s office for one indiscretion after another. I think the teachers and administrators at my school were deeply relieved when their family moved to Canberra when the boys were at the end of Year 3. Thinking back about my former classmates, I couldn’t help but wondering whether these twin boys would grow up to be the much-feared bosses of Sydney’s criminal underworld, operating their vast organized crime network out of some seedy nightclub in Kings Cross like the infamous twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray had done in London’s East End in the 1960s. Given that the twins’ antics included running a protection racket against any boys they considered to be ‘poofter’, I could well believe it.
In the middle years of primary school we had a male teacher who was a fraternal brother-sister twin, but we of course never met his twin sister. Sometimes we would encounter twins – for example when we went on holiday to Port Macquarie up on the New South Wales Mid North Coast around this time there was a family staying nearby with non-identical twin boys – but otherwise our encounters with children of multiple births were few and far between.
Among my brother’s friends, my friends and my parents’ friends and their own kids, there were no twins to be seen apart from Pam. She and her husband were friends of Mum and Dad and I often played with their own kids. Pam had an identical twin sister named Linda, but I had never met her.
One year just before Easter I happened to watch a documentary on TV about twins and sat glued to the screen, fascinated by tales of twin telepathy, mostly between identical twins but sometimes fraternal twins too. There were stories of amazing coincidences between twins separated at birth and raised in completely different places and circumstances; a set of twin sisters from England who spoke, ate and walked in unison; and twins who always bought the same gifts for each other with no knowledge of what their sibling was buying.
Another segment was how a twin brother and sister said they always got colds at the same time, even when living separately as adults. Even stranger was a set of identical mirror image twins where one brother fell and broke his left arm at work, while his twin brother on summer vacation with his own family tripped and broke his right arm while fishing at the exact same moment.
Very interested in twins after seeing this, I raised the topic with Pam at an Easter barbeque that weekend, hoping that she had plenty of similar stories with her twin Linda. Pam however had laughed and said, “Sorry to disappoint you Andrew, but I’m afraid none of that happened with Linda and me.”
Pam had then said that growing up that her and Linda – despite being mirror-image twin sisters which tended to look the most similar and have more chance of twin telepathy – had never gotten along well as kids, much less having a twin bond. There were no amazing coincidences, no strange cases of the girls getting sick or injured at the same time, and no telepathy between them. Even now as adults – Linda living down in Melbourne with her own husband and kids – the twins rarely contacted each other.
During high school, the lack of twins in my life rarely entered my mind. So I certainly wasn’t expecting a set of twins to become such an important part of my life, until the day it actually happened with a chance meeting.
It was the week before Christmas 1989 – a Wednesday – and I was on leave from high school for the summer, having just finished Year 10. Like many teenagers, I had a part time job and mine was at a discount department store at a large shopping center in the area where I lived, so this was where I could be found on this grey and humid summer’s day.
Being so close to Christmas and with schools across New South Wales all on leave the mall was packed with people. Some kid ran off screaming and sobbing in terror when he saw Father Christmas assisted by two elves approaching, his mother having to chase him. A short way away a couple who looked to be in their mid-30s engaged each other in a heated argument, having no qualms about airing all the details of their marital problems in front of hundreds of people like characters in a soap opera. Perhaps they should have asked Santa to grant them a divorce for Christmas?
As I anticipated, queues at the checkouts were miles long in the shop where I worked and shoppers jostled with each other for space. When I put on my uniform and caught the bus to work that morning on a typical sub-tropical Sydney day, I wasn’t expecting this would be the day I would meet my new best friend and my new crush at once. Fate however had a different path in store for me than an otherwise ordinary day which I probably wouldn’t have remembered a few months into the upcoming year of 1990.
I was working at the service desk, and first caught sight of them walking through the Christmas crush towards me. A tall, slim handsome teenage boy with light brown hair tending to blonde brushed back from his forehead in the same style I wore my own hair, although my hair color was a contrasting dark brown. He wore a white tee-shirt and a sleeveless open stone-wash denim jacket over the top, and matching stone-wash denim jeans and white sneakers on his bottom half.
The girl next to him was about two inches shorter and exceptionally pretty, and like her male companion wore a white tee-shirt and sleeveless jacket on her top half, although her jacket was purple in color and the fabric not denim. On her bottom half the young woman wore a short purple bubble skirt, with white ankle socks and white sneakers. The young lady’s hair was similar in color to that of her companion although one would say her hair was blonde tending to light brown while for the young man it was the opposite. Her hair was long and was hanging loose down over her shoulders, and on her head she sported a purple floppy hat sometimes called a ‘waif hat’, the front brim pinned upwards with a yellow sunflower, these hats becoming quite popular with teenage girls in recent years.
The boy and girl paused, looking into the department store, then made their way to the service desk, where I approached them. “Good morning, how can I help you?” I asked, smiling and putting on my most professional customer service demeanor.
“Oh hi Andrew,” said the girl, reading my nametag. “Could we please speak with the manager?”
Clearly they must have bought something from the store that was defective and wished to return it for a replacement or refund. No matter, I could help them out with this, and accordingly picked up a form. “Perhaps I could help you in the first instance?” I asked. “Do you have an item that you wish to return for a refund or an exchange? Or if there was some sort of problem I could take the preliminary details before I contact a manager for you?”
The blonde girl smiled, this making her even prettier, and adjusted her hat on her long blonde hair. “No, it’s okay, we don’t have a return, exchange or complaint.” She reached into a shoulder bag she was carrying, and pulled out two large white envelopes.
“My name’s Karen, and this is my brother Shane, and we were hoping to hand in our resumes and ask if there were any jobs going,” said Karen.
“Pleased to meet you both, Karen and Shane,” I said, shaking their hands and taking the envelopes. “I can hand these to the manager, and ask her to contact you if there are any positions available.”
“Thanks Andrew, we both worked at this shop back in Newcastle,” said Shane.
“We just moved down here from Newcastle on the weekend,” said Karen.
“I thought I hadn’t seen you around before,” I said. “So which Newcastle are you from? The one in the Hunter region, or the one in England?”
Shane and Karen looked at me, then at each other, and both began laughing. “I don’t want to seem rude Andrew, but do we sound like we’re Geordies from the Newcastle in England?” Karen asked.
“I can’t even do a Geordie accent,” said Shane. “It comes out as Welsh.”
I blushed and felt my skin going as red as the Father Christmas hat I like all other store workers wore on my head, feeling a fool. Like myself, Shane and Karen obviously had Australian accents, but growing up in the city my accent was more the ‘standard’ Australian accent. Shane and Karen, like many other people from the regional cities like Newcastle, Wollongong, Gosford or Goulburn had the broader Australian accents.
“No, I guess not,” I said, still berating myself internally. This was so much like me. Why did I always get tongue-tied and say dumb things whenever pretty girls like Karen were about? “Sorry, that must have sounded so dumb …”
Karen and Shane again laughed. “It’s okay Andrew,” Karen assured me.
“Yeah, you look like you’re really busy today mate, easy mistake to make,” said Shane. He indicated the store filled with customers swarming around like bees or ants.
“We’d better get going, lots of shops to give our resumes to,” said Karen.
“I’ll make sure the store manager gets these straight away,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by. And good luck with your job hunting.”
“Thanks mate,” said Shane, he and his sister going on their way to the muffin shop across the way and handing their resume to the lady that ran this store, and then onto an electronics store in the shop adjacent to this.
They were certainly pro-active in looking for jobs so soon after moving not only house but cities too, I thought to myself as I handed Shane and Karen’s resumes to the store manager and went to serve an older woman who was trying to get a refund for an inflatable crocodile pool lilo. She had purchased it to amuse her grandkids when they swam in her backyard pool, but rather than entertain them all the blow-up crocodile did was terrify them. All through the busy morning I found myself thinking about Shane and Karen, hoping that their job search was going well.
I found myself speculating upon who was older of the brother and sister, but couldn’t really tell. Presumably they were close in age, two years at most. I also found myself hoping that Shane and Karen would be successful in obtaining part time jobs at the store where I worked. Shane seemed really nice and while his sister likewise seemed really nice too, she was also very pretty, so cute in her tee-shirt, bubble skirt and waif hat.
Karen filled most of my thoughts until lunchtime came around, and I headed to a nearby café I liked where I stopped in dismay. With the mall packed with pre-Christmas shoppers and the time just after noon, the café was packed and no way was I going to get a seat for lunch.
Until I heard a young male voice calling out. “Andrew, hey Andrew, come and sit with us.”
Looking across the crowded café I saw Shane sitting at a table, Karen beside him. Feeling very happy at seeing them, I made my way across. “Thanks Shane,” I said. “As long as it’s okay …”
“Of course it is,” said Karen. “We invited you.”
“Well thank you,” I said, taking my seat at the table and the brother and sister sitting opposite each other.
What happened next surprised me, it was something I had never seen before. One of the waitresses, a middle-aged woman approached our table. “Can I take your orders please?” she asked.
“Thank you,” said Shane politely. He indicated Karen. “My sister Karen would like a toasted ham, Swiss cheese and pineapple sandwich and a strawberry milkshake please.”
Now it was Karen’s turn. “My brother Shane would like a roast beef, cheddar cheese and chutney toasted sandwich and a blue heaven milkshake please.”
The waitress jotted the details down on her notepad, but looked really confused, before turning to me. “And for you young man?”
I think that she was expecting me to order for an invisible girl who sat opposite, but to her relief I said, “Could I get a toasted chicken, tomato and mayonnaise sandwich with a banana milkshake please?”
“Of course,” said the waitress, taking our orders and heading back to the kitchen, casting a confused glance at me and my lunch companions as she went on her way.
Shane and Karen both laughed, and Karen turned to me. “You’re a bit confused about what just happened then, aren’t you Andrew?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes, kind of.”
“It’s the twin telepathy thing,” said Karen. “Shane and I both have it. We can read each other’s thoughts.”
“You’re twins?” I asked. “Actually, I was wondering which of you was older, I couldn’t tell.”
“That would be me by five minutes,” said Karen.
“And as you can see, my bossy and over-competitive sister has never let me forget it,” said Shane, smiling, laughing and attempting to push Karen’s hat to one side on her head, Karen also smiling and laughing as she pushed her brother’s hand away.
“My little brother has never gotten over me being born a few minutes before him,” laughed Karen. “So Andrew, do you have any brothers or sisters?”
I nodded. “Yes, one brother Kevin. He’s two years older than me.”
“What does he do?” Shane asked.
“As little as he possibly can,” I said, sounding negative and sarcastic when I didn’t mean to. I glanced at where Karen had a small plastic bag from a music shop, the CD she had purchased protruding from it.
“I see you like Milli Vanilli,” I said, indicating the CD cover looking to change the subject away from a potential conversation about an older brother I sadly had no time for. “I do too, they’re so cool, original and talented. This year it was like one moment we’d never heard of them, then all of a sudden they’re everywhere.”
“Yeah, Milli Vanilli are really cool,” said Karen. “One of our younger cousins Amy absolutely loves them, that’s why I bought her this CD for Christmas.”
Shane laughed. “Yeah right Karen.” He then turned to me. “Don’t listen to her Andrew. The CD is actually to Karen, from Karen.”
Karen laughed and gave her brother a good-natured shove. “Ha, ha, my brother is a comedian today.”
Shane and Karen certainly got along well as siblings, I thought to myself as our lunch orders arrived and the three of us continued to talk. As well as being twin brother and sister, they also seemed to be best friends as well.
Truth be told, I was a little envious of them getting along so well. They were a polar opposite from my older brother and Kevin and I, who had never gotten along. Kevin and I were so different, I had always been really studious, into sports and had inherited my parents’ hard-working ethics.
Kevin though was the black sheep of the family, a slack bully who might as well have worn a clown costume at all times considering his antics. He was banned from PE classes, any sort of school excursion or camps and if there was a week that went by without Kevin being sent to detention or time out, I couldn’t remember it.
He and his stupid mates tormented me with practical jokes growing up such as one of them dressing up as a gorilla and hiding in my wardrobe, leaping out at me roaring when I got home from school. It was little wonder that I was such a good student at school, I never got a chance to misbehave. As soon as any teacher asked if I was related to Kevin Stewart, I knew the routine. I would be ordered to the front of the classroom right in front of the desk, so I could be watched at all times and not have a chance to step out of line.
Fortunately for my stress levels and those of our parents, Kevin no longer lived at home but had moved out to share a house with his stupid mates. Their house in Penrith was a long way from us, way out in Sydney’s Western Suburbs close to the Blue Mountains, but for me it was just a little too close. I would have preferred it had Kevin had moved even further west to Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, on the opposite side of Australia’s vast land mass. In fact, why even stop at Perth? It would have been even better if Kevin went much further West than WA, and emigrate across the Indian Ocean to live in South Africa.
But with Shane and Karen Jones, they clearly enjoyed each other’s company as brother and sister and they were interesting to talk to, the time flying by as we had lunch. And it seemed we would be getting to know each other far more in coming weeks, as Karen and Shane like me were starting Year 11 at the high school I already attended. And with Karen wanting to be a geologist, Shane a botanist and myself a vet, so we would be in all the ‘smart’ classes together.
We seemed to share quite a few common interests outside of school such as sports, and I also found out that we were all born within the same week in February 1973 and that Karen and Shane’s parents had purchased their new house just three streets from where I lived with my parents.
Lunch came to an end, we bade each other goodbye and I went back to my job and Shane and Karen to a combination of job hunting and buying Christmas gifts for family and friends. All through the afternoon I kept thinking about the twins, Karen especially, and when my shift ended I could feel the definite start of a crush, there was no denying it.
I emerged from the air-conditioned shopping center into a very humid and overcast afternoon, large raindrops falling and the forecast of a thunderstorm tonight looking very accurate. I was of course used to these conditions as Sydney was sub-tropical, but today it felt more like the Northern Territory capital of Darwin in the middle of the tropical wet season or North Queensland.
My bus arrived and I climbed aboard and looked out the windows on the journey home through the leafy green northern suburbs. It was especially beautiful this time of year with so many trees and bushes in bloom; the blue-purple jacarandas, the bright red Illawarra flame trees, the yellow laburnums, oleanders of a variety of colors plus no end of eucalypts and other Australian plants. All the way, I kept wishing that Karen and Shane would get jobs at the same discount store where I worked, or at least in the shopping center so we could all see more of each other.
*
As it turned out, my pre-Christmas wish for 1989 came true and much sooner than I anticipated. By Friday, Shane, Karen and I were working hard at the discount store, all three of us wearing the white shirts and black trousers of the staff uniform, plus red Santa hats for the festive season, me showing them the ropes. Although this didn’t take too long, with the twins having worked at the same brand of store back in Newcastle, plus Shane and Karen were quick learners.
Yesterday two guys had been fired. One was a surly slack boy who was on his last warning for being rude to customers, telling a woman to ‘get stuffed’. The other was a much stranger case where one of the university-age guys who always seemed kind of creepy had been busted taking female underwear home with him overnight. Needing plenty of staff to cover the busy holiday period, and with Shane and Karen’s resumes arriving just yesterday, the store managers hastily interviewed them and they were ready to go the next day.
We enjoyed working together and I went home with them after a Saturday morning shift, Shane, Karen and I relaxing by playing with their Atari games console, the twins having some great video games I had never played before. I got to meet the family’s pet cat and dog, and then Shane and Karen’s parents, Betty and Ray. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were as nice as their teenage son and daughter, a really pleasant family all around.
Christmas Day 1989 came and went. I didn’t see Shane or Karen that day, they had gone to have lunch with their parents to Newcastle, but they were back in Sydney the next morning for Boxing Day and we made our way into the city to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race, while listening to the first day of the Boxing Day cricket test at the MCG down in Melbourne on Karen’s portable radio. It was a beautiful sunny day, the choppy blue waters of Sydney Harbour reflecting the sunlight. We were among the crowds at Circular Quay not far from the Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge in all its glory dominating the scenery to the West, while behind as the Sydney city skyline dominated the views to the South, the distinctive Sydney Tower higher than all the skyscrapers.
Lots of people were out and about for the start of the race, other crowds filling the Domain, the North Shore across the water and on Goat Island, before the yachts set off at 1pm, going out of Sydney Heads and into the Pacific Ocean to Tasmania, the rough waters of Bass Strait a formidable opponent.
“I’m glad I’m not on one of those yachts, I get seasick,” Karen said.
“We’re all glad you aren’t Karen,” said Shane. He turned to me and laughed. “You know last year Karen got sick on our Uncle’s boat on Lake Macquarie? It was flat calm, but there’s my sister as white as a ghost sitting in a chair, throwing up her guts into a bucket.”
“You’re kidding?” I asked.
Karen was unable to stop herself laughing as she protested. “Hey, that’s not funny. I was really sick that day. I think it might have been something I ate rather than actual sea-sickness.”
“It wasn’t very pleasant for me either, remember I had to share your nausea too,” Shane reminded his sister.
“Oh yes, of course, I was forgetting that,” said Karen. “But I’ve had nausea before when I wasn’t sick and you were throwing up.”
I was puzzled. “So you can feel if each other is sick, or injured? I thought that was normally only for identical twins?”
Shane nodded. “Yes. It sounds far-fetched, but yes, and it can affect fraternal twins.”
Karen put her mischievous smile on her pretty face. “Like when last year Shane was showing off on his skateboard to impress his friends, fell off and hit his head and had to be carted off in an ambulance. I had no idea what had happened, but I suddenly got this almighty headache from out of nowhere.”
“Another time was when Karen and all the other girls had to go for their rubella shots a few years back,” said Shane. “I was in class with the rest of the boys, when I felt this really sharp sting in my upper arm, like I’d been stung by a wasp. It was at the exact moment Karen had her injection.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, very much impressed as we walked around the Sydney Opera House admiring the views before heading home. “So this happens every time one of you hurts yourself or gets sick?”
Karen nodded. “Yes, except of course for the one thing that only affects me every four weeks, which is something guys don’t like to talk about so I think its best I shut up.”
“Good advice, Karen,” Shane quipped, his sister sticking out her tongue and giving her twin a good-natured push.
At work the next day – things busy due to sales between Christmas and New Year – marked a week since I met Shane and Karen, and it was fun working with the twins and their playful banter, the Wednesday flying by. Thursday was another busy day but unremarkable until we were on our lunch break and heard some terrible news.
Up in Newcastle, a powerful earthquake struck the steel city mid-morning, causing a fair amount of damage all along Hunter Street and throughout the CBD. The worst damage at a worker’s club which was completely destroyed. Upon hearing the news on TV in the staff room, Karen’s big blue eyes began to well up, and she burst into tears, sobbing that their grandparents were members of the club and at Christmas had expressly said they planned to visit today for the birthday of one of their friends.
Shane had taken his distraught sister in his arms, sitting Karen down and getting her some tissues to use and holding her as she cried, reassuring her that he was sure their grandparents were safe and well. It was really touching to see a brother putting aside his own worries to reassure his upset sister, and with the distressed state Karen was in, the manager gave him her permission to take her home.
Fortunately nothing bad happened to Shane and Karen’s grandparents – the birthday party had been cancelled when the guy whose birthday it was and his wife got food poisoning so they had gone on a picnic near the Hunter River instead – so Karen was back to her usual bubbly self for New Year’s.
We went to Sydney’s famed New Year’s Eve fireworks display as the year of 1989 changed to the year 1990 and the decade of the 1980s was consigned to the past and a brand new decade – the 1990s – took its place.
Throughout that wonderful summer I enjoyed spending time with my new friends Shane and Karen, and introduced them to my existing circle of friends from high school, the two young Novocastrians proving popular with them and fitting in well by the time school went back in late January.
Our friends were very impressed by Shane and Karen’s twin telepathy, but while I had to admit that they did seem to sense and feel things about each other, I wasn’t totally sold on telepathy in general.
“Come home with us, and we’ll prove it to you, Andrew,” said Karen one afternoon after we got off the bus after high school finished for the day.
“Okay, I said, going into the house with Karen and Shane, where Karen took a pack of playing cards and shuffled them.
“Be prepared to be amazed,” said Shane, as he sat on a chair across the room from Karen, me sitting beside her.
Karen drew a card from the pack, so she and I could see it but her brother could not. It was the Three of Spades, and Shane immediately said, “Three of Spades.”
“Correct,” said Karen, holding up the card and drawing another one.
“Nine of Diamonds,” said Shane. This time he wasn’t right, but he was very close, the card Karen drew was the Nine of Hearts. A similar thing happened with the next card, Shane guessing that his sister held the Ace of Spades, when she had the Ace of Clubs, and the next time Karen had the Six of Hearts, Shane saying she held the Five of Hearts, again very close, before Shane correctly guessed that Karen had a Joker in her fingers.
All the time I looked for trickery between the siblings, such as Karen discretely showing her fingers to reveal the card value to Shane, a mirror so her brother could see the card’s reflection or her mouthing the answer and him lip-reading but there was no evidence of this.
“Okay, you two are counting cards,” I said uncertainly, after Shane guessed three cards correctly in a row.
“No, definitely not,” Karen assured me, shuffling the deck and her brother’s hot streak continued when he guessed correctly his twin held the Queen of Hearts.
This was amazing, and when Karen and Shane swapped places so he would draw the cards and Karen would guess what he was holding, her accuracy was just as good as her brother’s. Again there was no visible trickery by the twins, and Shane like his sister shuffled the deck every few minutes to eliminate the possibility they were counting cards.
At least 60 percent of the time the brother and sister could guess which card the other was holding exactly right, and most other times they were close, like a card of the same rank – most usually the same color suit – or very close, like the Six of Clubs instead of the Nine of Clubs. Occasionally they would bomb out and be completely wrong, but this was rare.
However, when we changed things around so I drew the cards, Shane or Karen could only guess which card I had drawn or get close if one of them was next to me; if the brother or sister moved away then their twin could not guess correctly. And when it was my turn to guess the cards drawn by Shane or Karen I was absolutely hopeless. I got none of them right and only once was I close, guessing that Karen had drawn the Jack of Diamonds when she in fact drew the Jack of Spades. It wasn’t even the right color.
During the year I also got to see the way the twins could feel each other’s pain. One Friday afternoon Karen was playing netball with the girls at school, when she fell and hurt her right ankle. It wasn’t serious, just a minor injury to be treated with an ice-pack, but at that moment Shane and I were on the adjacent football field training for Rugby League, and Shane got a sharp pain in his own right ankle, with no means of him being injured at that moment.
Then a few weeks later Karen and I were in calculus class together while Shane was having one of his teeth filled at the dentist. The whole time her brother was in the chair, Karen squirmed in her own chair at school, in discomfort in her mouth from what was happening to her brother. It was distracting and the teacher asked Karen what the problem was. To avoid further distraction and embarrassment, Karen said she needed to use the toilet and asked for the lavatory pass, only returning after her brother finished his dental appointment.
All in all, 1990 was a great year and a significant part of this due to my new friendship with Shane and Karen. I was so pleased I met them last Christmas and that they had become part of my friendship group at school, everyone seemed to love them and it was like they had been at our school all along.
Year 11 was of course had its challenges; there was a lot of study to be done and fitted in around our part time jobs and chores at home, but we worked hard and made it work, and there was a lot of fun to be had as well. Like most active teenagers, we played sports, went to the movies, games arcades and sporting matches, spent time with friends and went to the beach.
And living in Sydney, we were spoiled for choice in this regard. Being from Sydney’s north, we mainly went to Manly or Dee Why, but other times would travel to Bondi in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, or if we felt like making a day of it, to Cronulla in Sydney’s south. Not to mention getting our driver’s licenses, which Karen, Shane and I attained early in the year.
It was actually quite funny when we were still learning to drive, I was with Shane and Mr. Jones at their house helping them with some pruning when Karen returned home with Mrs. Jones having had some driving lessons, L plates displayed on the car. Shane had feigned horror and terror at his sister driving, running away and climbing a ladder to escape, all of us having a good laugh, Shane a natural at comedy.
With regards to the year 1990, the adage about time flying when one is having fun definitely applied, and before I knew it Year 11 was finished and Shane, Karen and I were working hard in the lead-up to Christmas, in our black and white shop uniforms and wearing red and white Santa hats dealing with the busy crowds flocking in for Christmas shopping.
In a rare quiet moment, I reflected that it was now exactly a year since I had met Shane and Karen. While I still had a crush on Karen, I could see that she saw me as a friend, and asking her out on a date would be a really bad idea, so I thought it best to keep my thoughts to myself and not say anything to anyone, which I did accordingly. Whether Karen knew about my feelings for her I could not say, it was best not to go there.
I also thought about the upcoming year 1991, Year 12, the year we would complete our HSC and graduate high school. What sort of year would 1991 be? My optimistic side told me it would be as good as 1990, and maybe even better. I had not the slightest clue about what really lay ahead for me in the coming year.
*
In the past, I had taken pride in the fact that I had been able to sense something wrong was about several people, and my suspicions proven right. One was an older woman who had moved to our street with her granddaughter and grandson of whom she had guardianship. She appeared to be a kindly grandmother and nice neighbor and people liked her, but something about the woman just set my teeth on edge.
Some months later, I came home from school to see police and child protective services at the house. It turned out not only did this woman not have legal custody of her grandson and granddaughter and had taken them from her daughter by force and blackmail, she was spending the child support payments on gambling and behind doors inflicting terrible abuse on the kids, such as hidings with a belt, holding their heads underwater and locking them in cupboards and dark rooms for hours on end.
Several years after this in my later years at primary school, we had ballroom dance classes introduced and they were mandatory. I thought it would be a lot of fun to learn ballroom dancing and eagerly anticipated the classes. However, I was to be disappointed when I met the dance teacher, an instructor who came from a local dance academy.
A man clearly gay by his effeminate demeanor and speech patterns, he was cutting, sarcastic and rude to students who were not picking up the steps as fast as he wanted, such as me. Mostly he was rude to the boys and more positive with the girls who took his classes more seriously, although this could be altered. He told an overweight girl already lacking confidence that if she didn’t lose weight then she would spend her life being useless at everything not just dancing, reducing her to tears.
The boys including myself derided the despised dance classes in the playground, and making fun of and impersonating the instructor and referring to him in terms of endearment such as ‘poofter’, ‘faggot’, ‘homo’, ‘fairy’, ‘gay-lord’, ‘pansy’ and ‘woos’. However, I just sensed that something was off about this mincing sissy, and that behind the homosexual masquerade lurked something far more sinister.
When my cousin Jodie, a year older than me told me one day that the instructor had said she had amazing potential and wanted to give her some private lessons out of school, I had panicked and blurted out, “No Jodie, whatever you do don’t go there. Get dance instructions from somewhere else, anywhere else, but not from him. Stay away from him Jodie, whatever you do. Promise me!”
Such was my reaction that Jodie did as I said, which proved a good thing. About six weeks later the dance instructor was raided by the police, arrested and charged with numerous very serious offences committed against young girls. The appearance of being gay was just a front for being a Humbert Humbert. It was a big story in the media, and I remembered watching the news as this evil predator was found guilty of all offences at trial, the judge throwing the book at him and sending him to jail for more than 15 years.
I sat glued to the TV, watching the prison van leave the Sydney Law Courts and weave its way through the city traffic to the south west of the city and the Hume Highway leading to the NSW Southern Tablelands and the city of Goulburn, the news crew following and filming it.
In Goulburn, one could find the giant ram statue which was much loved – and the maximum security prison – which was much feared, and it was to the latter that the van was heading. I felt much satisfaction that I had known something was off about the dance instructor from the start. He turned out to be a disgusting deviate, a predatory pedophile who was now going to find out the hard way what happened in prison to people who committed crimes against minors.
Years later though and when I was older and should have been much wiser, I seemed to have lost my ability to sense when something was wrong. For it took some 15 months of knowing Shane and Karen Jones to sense that something was amiss with the twins, and their relationship as brother and sister not what it should have been.
By now it was February 1991, the summer school holidays had passed and Shane, Karen and I had recently turned 18 and were in Year 12, our final year of high school. It was a year likely to be filled with much study for our HSC and part-time work away from school, but also time for fun and nostalgia as one part of our lives came to an end with new beginnings ahead next year.
The first two incidents were nothing strange on their own, taken in isolation. One was that Gareth, a handsome red-haired guy and one of our extended group of friends, asked Karen out on a date and she agreed. The date was simple enough and typical of many teenagers, Gareth and Karen went and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and then to a movie within the same complex.
This was on a Friday night, and on Saturday some of us guys happened to run into Gareth and how his date with Karen went. Gareth frowned and shook his head. “Something funny happened.”
“What happened on your date that was so funny?” another friend Michael asked, smiling and laughing, clearly anticipating an amusing story.
“No, not funny ha-ha, funny peculiar,” said Gareth.
“What was so peculiar?” I queried.
Gareth frowned and shook his head. “I was all quite strange really. You know Karen, she’s usually kind of bubbly and talkative, likes to make jokes. Well last night it was like she didn’t want to be there. She didn’t smile, she didn’t laugh, she picked at her food and whenever I asked her something she just gave a one word answer and went back to staring at the walls.”
“That doesn’t sound like Karen,” I said.
Gareth nodded in agreement. “Then before the movie, Karen said she needed to go to the toilet. I waited outside the cinema, five minutes went by, then 10, 15 and when she hadn’t come back after 20 minutes I went to look for her, I was worried. I saw her on one of those blue pay phones, talking, smiling and laughing, and she wasn’t too happy about having to finish the call to one of her friends and come back to me. I asked Karen who she was talking to, and she was very evasive, just a friend and wouldn’t elaborate. In the movie, it was like a replay of the restaurant. Karen just sat in her seat, staring at the screen, she didn’t laugh once, and when I dropped her home she couldn’t get out of the car and back into her house fast enough.”
“Sorry mate, I take it you and Karen aren’t planning your wedding then?” Michael grinned.
“Ah, shut up Michael,” laughed Gareth. “No, I don’t think so.” He shrugged his shoulders and continued. “Still very strange though, it just wasn’t like Karen at all. Oh well, there’s thousands of first dates around the world that don’t work out every day I guess. And plenty more fish in the sea.”
I probably thought about the strange situation with Karen and Gareth’s date more than an average person would, given my unrequited crush on Karen. What Gareth described was odd, and not like Karen at all. What could have happened?
There was of course the simple explanation, that Karen just didn’t enjoy the date for a variety of reasons. Perhaps she was in a bad mood, had a bad day at school or it was her time of the month? I didn’t know about the details of Karen’s periods of course as it was a private female thing, but in school that day Karen didn’t seem to be cranky about anything and she did PE in the afternoon, although she could have inserted a tampon for this class so menstrual problems couldn’t be ruled out entirely.
But if Karen was in such a bad mood, why did Gareth find her talking on a public phone to somebody he assumed to be one of her friends, laughing and joking? It was pretty bad manners on Karen’s part, and she was normally very well-mannered, she certainly wouldn’t behave like that on a date.
Or would she? So far as I knew, Karen had never had a steady boyfriend or even dated, despite her good looks and nice personality. But was it really so unusual? Shane despite his good looks and charming ways like his twin sister had never to my knowledge had a girlfriend or been on a date. And at age 18 I like the twins had never been on a date or had a girlfriend. The three of us had such heavy study-loads for our HSC, not to mention part time jobs and sporting commitments which reduced the time available to go out on dates anyway.
Perhaps Karen had simply accepted Gareth’s invitation to go out on a date as a spur of the moment thing, and regretted it? Then not sure how she should react, was withdrawn and wanted to speak to a friend about something else, hence the phone call.
I was probably over-thinking things, I reasoned, and it was just the simple example of a guy and a girl going out on a date together and things not working out. Satisfied that this was probably the case, throughout the rest of the week I concentrated on school, and largely forgot about it.
On the next Friday, a week after Karen’s failed date with Gareth, I had to get up early to go to the twins’ house before school to finish a rather large chemistry group assignment with them. Neither of their parents were there. They had left even earlier, Mr. Jones to Wollongong for a meeting at the company’s Illawarra division, and Mrs. Jones for an early morning nursing shift.
Shane, Karen and I worked fast and finally finished the enormous assignment – the deadline was this morning – and we grabbed some cereal, toast and juice for breakfast. I had already put on my school uniform before leaving the house and Shane and Karen were wearing their uniforms when I got there so well prepared, but regardless we were starting to run late.
The breakfast radio advised of heavier than usual traffic in our area of Sydney’s northern suburbs this morning, which would affect our bus ride to school. This frustrated Shane, who was cleaning up after the cat had vomited up a large fur-bull on the kitchen floor became even more frustrated as he noticed his sister was nowhere to be seen and time was running short.
“Andrew, could you please tell Karen to get a hurry-up?” he asked. “We’re going to be late for school and get tardy slips the way we’re going, we need to be there on Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time, not Karen Standard Time.”
“Sure Shane,” I said. Assuming Karen was in her bedroom, I walked out to the area where Shane’s, Karen’s and the spare bedroom were located in their house.
Karen’s bedroom door was open. “Karen, hey Karen!” I called out.
Karen soon replied, but her voice sounded muffled and her tone was cranky. “Oh, what is it Andrew?” she snapped back.
“Shane said we’d better head off now otherwise we’ll be late …” I commenced as I went to the door of her bedroom expecting to see her in there, but paused as I saw the room was empty and stopped, feeling puzzled. “Karen, where are you?”
I then heard Karen’s voice again, filled with indignation. “Andrew, I’m on the toilet. What is it?”
Turning around, I noticed that the adjacent toilet door was closed, and felt my skin blushing and going hot. “Sorry Karen, I didn’t know you were in there, I didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s just that the traffic is really bad this morning, and Shane says we need to leave really soon to get our bus …”
“Oh, just hang on both of you, will you?” Karen snapped back.
“Sorry Karen, I’ll just leave you to have some privacy,” I said, backing away from the door and hearing Karen unwinding some toilet paper from the holder as I did so. From the way Karen advanced the toilet roll, it was clear she wasn’t too happy about me disturbing her while she was sitting on the loo.
In a few minutes time I heard the faint sound of Karen flushing the toilet, then the door slam open and Karen going into the bathroom, the taps running as she washed her hands. She came into the kitchen with her school bag, the unimpressed teenager adjusting her knickers through her school dress as she did so, Karen clearly having uncomfortable panties after pulling them up when she finished on the toilet.
Clearly I had gotten Karen offside by disturbing her while she was sitting on the toilet by the dirty look she gave me when she entered the room. “Karen, again I’m really sorry I bothered you while you were…”
Karen cut me off with a sigh. “Andrew, it’s okay, it was just a misunderstanding. Let’s just forget it happened, okay?”
This was a relief, Karen seemed really pissed and in a shitty mood, pun not intended, as I had bothered her while she was on the loo. “Thanks Karen,” I said.
Being such a nice person, Karen didn’t hold a grudge and by the time we were on the bus and on the way to school, and she was laughing and joking with Shane and I as though nothing had happened. Apart from making a mental note not to disturb Karen while she was using the lavatory again in the future, I would have largely forgotten the incident.
Except for what happened a week later which was the catalyst that gave me the first real sign that something about my best mate and my crush in the form of his twin sister was not quite right.
The day and the evening were nothing extraordinary, a sunny morning across Sydney that turned overcast and humid by noon and rain by the evening. Mum and Dad were having a dinner party for their friends at home that evening, so to be out of the way I was sleeping over at Shane’s place, again nothing out of the ordinary, I had slept over there many times in the past.
By chance, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were away that night, they had gone up to Newcastle overnight to see Shane and Karen’s grandparents. Evidently they trusted their teenage son and daughter not to throw any wild parties while they were away. Had they seen what happened a few years ago when my parents had the misguided notion of leaving Kevin in charge when they went to the Blue Mountains overnight, I think they might have had a change of thought on this theory, over 500 drunk teenagers turning up at our house after Kevin’s stupid mates invited more friends, and so on and so on until the police were called to break it up.
However, things were far tamer in the Jones house this evening. With rain falling outside and the occasional flash of lightning and distant roll of thunder, Shane, Karen and I sat in the Jones family living room, all three of us as well as the dog and the cat glued to the television.
After an Australian soap, we watched a popular teen drama about the trials and tribulations of rich kids growing up in a Californian town with a five digit postal code starting with 9 and which by chance counted a pair of brother-sister twins in its cast of characters. When this show finished we turned on the VCR and inserted a video tape we had hired from the local video shop.
It was a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ science fiction comedy about how some slacker surfer dudes more through luck than actual competence prevented an alien invasion in California. Throughout the movie Shane and I laughed at the actual comedy and at the unintentional comedy from bad acting, cheesy dialogue and terrible special effects. For example while the movie was set in California, the fact that one scene showed the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean clearly indicated that the movie was filmed on America’s East Coast, and we were in fact watching the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean.
Sitting across from us, Karen who was dressed in a white tee-shirt, a navy blue pleated skirt that came way above her knees and had bare feet shook her head and said, “I’m worried about you two, if you keep watching this crap you’re going to lose a lot of IQ points.”
“Yeah, like you haven’t been laughing too,” I pointed out, while still laughing.
Shane also laughed. “I lose IQ points, so do you Karen,” he pointed out to his twin sister. He then turned to me and said, “It’s true, Karen and I have exactly the same IQ.”
“We’ve taken a few IQ tests, and the results have been identical every time,” said Karen to me. She then turned to Shane. “That’s why you shouldn’t watch junk, it makes me dumber too.”
When the movie came to an end, Karen reached for the remote control and pressed stop followed by rewind, the VCR making its typical whirring sound as the tape was wound back to the start. Karen jumped out of her seat, her pleated dark blue skirt temporarily going up to show that she was wearing pure white knickers tonight. Seeing my crush’s underwear made me feel a tingling in my groin and I reminded myself that I had to behave, her brother was sitting right here.
Fortunately my view of Karen’s pretty white teen panties only lasted a second or so, which meant that my erection died on the vine and I was able to stand up without embarrassment at the front of my shorts. We tidied up, made sure that cat and dog had enough food and water in their bowls and the like, then it was time for bed, we all had work at the shop tomorrow morning.
I was sleeping on a fold-out bed in Shane’s room, something I had done plenty of times before. Wearing a tee-shirt and boxers I got in and got comfortable, but then I could feel how thirsty I was so got up to go to the kitchen and get a glass of water.
Shane and Karen were still up, and neither brother nor sister seemed to notice me in the darkened house as they walked down the hallway together when Karen stopped outside the toilet door, reached inside and turned on the light. “I just need to go to the toilet,” she said to Shane.
Her twin laughed in response. “Have fun, Karen.”
Karen also laughed. “I don’t know about fun, Shane.”
She stepped into the lavatory on her bare feet, turned on the light and closed and locked the door behind her, and I was able to hear the sound of her putting down the toilet seat to sit on it. It was as the door closed that I noticed that Karen held two things in her hands. One was a packet of sanitary napkins and the other was a container of wet wipes.
Obviously Karen was on her period. I thought back to earlier in the evening and how I had seen Karen discretely rubbing her tummy at one stage, no doubt to relieve her menstrual cramps. And thinking about it, I had heard a faint rustling noise from between Karen’s legs when she stood up. Obviously this was the sound of the teenager’s period pad moving around in her knickers.
I expected Shane would just go on his way, so I was very surprised when he remained outside the toilet door, engaging his sister in conversation as she sat barefoot on the toilet, her pleated skirt up around her waist and her knickers with a sanitary napkin attached down around her ankles. This was weird, really weird, and I thought Karen would mind given she got pissed at me recently for unknowingly disturbing her while she was on the toilet.
It seemed though that Karen didn’t mind her twin talking to her while she was using the toilet, even though she was currently menstruating. She and Shane engaged each other in conversation as though they were simply sitting next to each other, the brother and sister laughing and joking.
Obviously they didn’t think I was around or that I was asleep, and with the house in darkness plus the floorplan of the hallway I could stay concealed and watch was happening. I couldn’t believe what I was observing, perhaps I had fallen asleep and was dreaming all of this? But I wasn’t dreaming, I was wide awake and all of this was happening for real, and Shane and Karen kept right on talking through the door as she continued to sit on the toilet.
My mind tried to rationalize this. Shane and Karen were brother and sister, they had grown up together. Perhaps this was normal for them, maybe they always talked when one of them was using the toilet and the other was outside waiting to go? But Shane wasn’t waiting in line, if he needed the toilet he could just go and use their parents’ bathroom. And this would have always been the case, there was only the two of them. It wasn’t like in the old days, where families had lots of kids and just one lavatory creating long lines in the morning.
Did other brothers talk to their sisters while they were on the toilet? I didn’t know, I had one brother and no sisters. I’d never observed this in my cousins where there were boys and girls in the same family, but until tonight I hadn’t seen it with Karen and Shane either. And I couldn’t go around guys who did have sisters about this, I would be thought a weirdo and get punched in the face at best, have the police called on me and a date in court as the most likely outcome.
The most bizarre thing is that Shane would have heard everything that Karen was doing while she was on the toilet, and Karen would have known this. Shouldn’t at least one of them – most likely Karen as she was the one using the loo – be freaked out by this?
From my hiding spot I could hear Karen urinating when she first went into the toilet, but Shane would have heard his twin sister peeing in far greater detail. Karen was taking ages to go to the toilet, obviously she was having a poo as five minutes was now approaching ten and she was still nowhere finished. I couldn’t hear her pooing from where I was, but Shane would have been able to hear his sister’s shit splashing into the toilet water each time she moved her bowels.
I could hear her unwinding toilet paper from the roll each time Karen wiped her bottom, at one stage using the last of the toilet tissue from the existing roll and changing it over for a fresh one. All the while she and Shane just kept right on talking and laughing. And Shane would be able to hear each time his twin gave a practical demonstration that pretty girls do fart as she got rid of her wind out of her back passage into the bowl.
Then there was the small matter of Karen’s period, and Shane would be able to hear the rustling noises of his menstruating sister as Karen changed her dirty period pad for a clean overnight one to wear to bed. It was also strange, and also found myself pondering just how long Karen was going to be on the loo.
Finally after twelve minutes, Karen flushed the toilet, the sound of the cistern refilling audible in the house late at night. The lavatory door opened, and Karen stepped out on her bare feet, turning off the light, the dim hallway light the only illumination now. She carried with her the packet of period pads and the wet wipes, and also the empty toilet roll, with something white stuffed inside. I assumed it was her used period pad.
As Karen walked towards the bathroom adjusting her panties through her skirt, Shane followed her. “What took you so long?” he asked his sister. “I thought you’d fallen in there, or a redback spider bit you on the bum.”
Karen laughed. “Just one month Shane, I’d like to transfer the period shits from me to you so you can see what I go through every 28 days and why I take so long on the toilet when I have my period.”
Shane feigned indignation and repulsion. “Oh yuck, I don’t think I’d like that very much.”
“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Karen. The twins went into the bathroom, and I could hear the taps running as Karen washed her hands pretty thoroughly. They came back out and Karen this time carried with her the empty toilet roll and this time a new toilet roll, which she placed on the toilet cistern.
“Lucky I used the last of the toilet paper from the first roll,” said Karen, indicating the empty cardboard tube with her napkin stuffed inside. “I forgot to take a sanitary bag in with me, so this came in handy.”
“Um Sis, I hate to be the one to remind you, but you forgot something else,” said Shane, waving his hand over his nose.
Karen sniffed the air and recoiled. “Oh shit!” she exclaimed, grabbing the can of toilet freshener and spraying it around liberally to cover her toilet smell. “How could I forget that, I was the one sitting on the toilet over ten minutes gagging at my own stench.”
The twins continued to laugh about how smelly Karen’s poo was, before Karen said, “I’d better take this to the outside bin.” She turned to leave, but had a bout of period pain through her uterus, stopped and clenched her abdomen, grimacing.
“How about I take this out to the bin for you?” Shane suggested to his sister. “You look like you need your bed.”
“Are you sure?” Karen indicated the cardboard tube containing her used panty pad. “It’s pretty gross and smelly.”
“No problem at all,” Shane said, he and his sister bidding each other goodnight, Karen heading to her bedroom, the barefoot teenager again clutching her crampy tummy on the way.
I was in bed by the time Shane returned from the wheelie bin after disposing of Karen’s period pad, feigning sleep. But while Shane immediately went into the world of nod after getting into his bed, it took a long time for me to fall asleep after what I had seen.
*
Shane and Karen were up before me the next morning. Upon waking to the sound of light rain outside, my mind was still analyzing last night’s events over and over and over again. I must have been tired, I reasoned. I was misinterpreting things, I had always known the twins were close, perhaps talking through the toilet door was something they did without thinking having grown up together, and not realizing an outsider would see it as odd? And in any case, they didn’t know I was there watching them, they thought I was in bed asleep.
And not having any sisters myself, perhaps it was normal for Karen to be so open about her periods with her brother? Okay, probably not, but that twin bond thing again, and all families were different. But what of Shane volunteering to take his sister’s used period pad out to the bin? Well he was just doing her a favor so she could go to bed and lie down to relieve her girls’ problems. If he had volunteered to take some food containers out to the bin to save Karen the job, I wouldn’t think anything strange was going on. I mean, it’s not like they were making out, and it wasn’t like Shane had actually gone into the lavatory with Karen and stood over her while she was on the toilet, she had closed the door. All of this was due to my imagination getting things wrong.
It took only a second for my assertion that nothing odd was happening to be broken. Like me, the twins were in their nightwear, Shane wearing boxer shorts and a tee-shirt as I did, while Karen wore an over-sized tee-shirt over panties, her legs and feet bare.
Karen’s panties this morning were white bikini-briefs. How did I know this? She was bent over feeding the cat, her ass thrust in the air and her tee-shirt had ridden up to show off her underwear. Karen’s bottom I had to admit looked pretty good covered in the soft white cotton of her knickers, but between her legs one could see the unmistakable oblong bulge of Karen’s period pad, the sanitary napkin having been in place around Karen’s pussy overnight for her to bleed into.
Shane for his part was sipping orange juice while looking directly at his sister’s ass, and it was hard to draw any other conclusion than that he was perving on Karen’s bum, her panties and the shape of her feminine hygiene protection. As soon as the twins heard me approach, Karen immediately straightened up so fast she looked like she might throw her back out, and Shane within a split second was on one of the kitchen stools, as though he was trying to hide something, perhaps a bulge at the front of his boxer shorts?
The brother and sister greeted me cheerfully, a little too cheerfully, as though they were trying too hard to make things seem normal and that I hadn’t seen something I shouldn’t have. I just played along, not giving anything away, and we all got dressed for work, all of us having a morning shift at the department story.
Outside the persistent drizzle had died down, and Karen and Shane approached me. “Andrew, we just need to take the dog for his walk,” Karen said. “You know while the rain has died down.”
“He’s going crazy for his walk,” Shane observed. “We’ll be about ten minutes or so.”
This was true about the dog. The Jones family had a blue heeler, and he was pacing up and down while whining and barking until he got his walk.
“Okay, have fun,” I said, as Karen put the excited dog on his leash and left the house with her brother, leaving me alone in the living room. I would have gone with them, but the dog had some funny hang-ups, and one of these was that while any four members of the Jones family was allowed to walk him, nobody else was allowed to accompany them on the walk, this making the dog very upset. So I stayed back until the twins returned and we all caught the bus to work.
Again, the thoughts of something been amiss with my friends and their relationship as brother and sister continued plaguing my mind to the point it was becoming an obsession. In something similar to an out-of-body experience, I found myself going out the back door and onto the patio, and opened the wheelie bin, looking inside at the empty cardboard toilet roll tube that contained Karen’s used sanitary pad.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was dumpster-diving, extricating the cardboard tube from the wheelie bin and extricating Karen’s pad, which she had rolled into a cylinder face down to stuff into the tube. The pad’s adhesive underside stuck to my fingers as I unrolled it, and I found that Karen had placed three other objects in the tube as well.
These were the peel-back strip from her new pad and two wet wipes she had used to wash herself after she finished on the toilet. Without being too gross and giving away too much information, it was obvious by the staining patterns on the wipes which one Karen had used to wash her front bottom and which one she had used to wash her back bottom.
I stared at Karen’s period pad, amazed at how much blood there was on the soft white stay-dry cover and within the absorbent filling. She certainly had a heavy flow during her monthlies that was for sure. And again before my conscience could stop me, I lifted the napkin to my nose and sniffed the red blood-stains, the musty feminine smells from between Karen’s legs of pussy and period going up my nostrils and into my brain, giving me an instant hard-on. I sniffed the rear of the pad where it would have made contact with Karen’s anus when she was wearing it.
So busy was I enjoying the stains from Karen’s pussy on her used feminine hygiene product and getting high on the smell of vagina that it was only the sight of another pussy – this one a feline pussy in the form of the Jones family’s black and white tuxedo cat – glaring accusingly at me with yellow eyes out of the laundry window that broke me out of my trance.
Suddenly, I was furious and disgusted by myself and my erection instantly subsided. What the hell was I doing, what sort of sick pervert was I, getting my rocks off sniffing the dirty period pad of any girl, much less my best friend’s twin sister who in turn was my best female friend and secret crush? Talk about a breach of her privacy. Some friend I was.
Repulsed by my own behavior, I hastily returned the pad, peel-back strip and Karen’s soiled wet wipes to the empty cardboard tube, threw it back in the bin, and rushed back inside, washing my hands after handling objects no doubt filled with bacteria.
The cat again stared at me, letting know with her eyes that if she could speak English, she would tattle on me to her owners. My conscience was also giving me hell. True, something didn’t seem quite right about Shane and Karen. But I didn’t know the full story with them. I did know the full story about myself, and that was that I was a pervert who went around smelling the soiled period pads of a female friend he cared deeply for.
*
Over the next few months, I found myself thinking about two things. One, no more sniffing period pads and being a perve; and two, the hope that Karen’s oddly failed date with Gareth and my peculiar observations of the twins when I spent the Friday night/Saturday morning at their house were just random events and not a sign of something more sinister beneath the surface.
I was successful about the first goal and didn’t do anything wrong with Karen or any other girl. But as for Shane and Karen? Well the events of Karen’s date and the sleepover were just two in a long line of strange incidents with the twins that made them seem even weirder and me convinced that something funny was going on.
There wasn’t one big incident that proved beyond any shadow of doubt that Shane and Karen were up to no good as brother and sister. It was just a whole lot of small things. Sometimes I would ponder if it was me looking for things and misinterpreting innocent events I witnessed? But no, if anything I was looking for normal events to convince myself that my friends were a normal brother and sister with a normal relationship who were part of a normal nuclear family – mother, father, son and daughter along with the cat and dog – where nothing remotely odd ever happened.
The school swimming carnival was a good example. Shane was clearly interested in his sister’s fine barefoot figure in her bikini. With her nice midriff with a flat tummy and cute naval on display, the wet fabric showed the shape of Karen’s ample young breasts and her nipples at the top. Her bikini bottoms were no different and one could see the shape of Karen’s front bottom and her back bottom in the garment, the outline of her vulva very clear.
For her part, Karen seemed no less interested in her twin brother’s fine masculine figure in his own swimwear, his firm chest with curls of light brown hair a testament to his fitness. But Karen looked here much less than she looked at her brother’s crotch, his manhood covered only by a pair of black speedo bathers, the shape of Shane’s penis and testicles clear in the fabric and showing what a well-endowed young man he was.
And when Shane won a backstroke event, his sister’s overly enthusiastic reaction in cheering him on during the race and her elation at his victory was more like that of a girlfriend than a sister. A few weeks after this strange fan-girl reaction to Shane’s swimming victory, I got to see that this was not one sided, when Karen was playing netball.
A talented netballer in wing attack position, Karen was dominant in this game against another local high school team, Shane and I along with other spectators watching from the sidelines. However, while understandable that Shane would cheer on the school netball team in which his sister was playing, his attention was so intently on Karen that it was more than a little creepy. It was like Shane could not see the other six netball players from our team nor the opposing team and that the only thing that held his focus was his sister.
I’d heard of parents getting overly involved in their kids’ sporting matches before – ugly parent syndrome – but ugly sibling syndrome? Was that something that even existed?
Things just got stranger and stranger. At the school formal for Year 11 and Year 12 held at a city hotel neither Shane nor Karen had a date – well neither did I – but sort of went together. Karen wore a pretty lilac dress, matching the color of Shane’s bow tie and cumber band exactly and Shane escorted Karen in like they were boyfriend and girlfriend rather than brother and sister.
The two rarely left each other’s side during the night – I saw them gazing into each other’s eyes on more than one occasion – not to mention Shane sneaking sly glances down the front of his sister’s frock at her ample cleavage. They even danced together – not slow dancing obviously as this might have attracted attention – but regardless at the school formal the only people the twins danced with were each other.
Shane and Karen’s creepy behavior at the formal got me thinking about how one rarely saw one twin without the other. They would only go out in a group of boys and girls together, and even when they did one was reluctant to leave the other’s side. Like at the movies when we went as a group, Shane and Karen sat next to each other. They would sit next to each other whenever we ate out, even grabbing a snack at the shopping center food court or a fast food outlet. How could I have missed this before?
More and more things began to mess with my mind. For one of the girl’s in our group’s 18th birthday we went to a karaoke venue in Newtown, and Shane and Karen sang a love song together. It didn’t have overtly sexual lyrics thankfully, nor did they hold hands or stare into each other’s eyes, but regardless it was a romantic song that a brother and sister should probably not be singing together.
The lack of dating interest of the good-looking Jones siblings filled my brain so much it turned to a fixation and then an obsession. I also began to notice jealousy from one twin when an outsider flirted with the other. We went to a football game at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Moore Park and a guy about our age was trying to flirt with and make a move on Karen. Karen clearly wasn’t interested, but it was noticeable that Shane was not impressed. Not like a brother protecting his sister from unwanted attention, but more like some random guy was flirting with and trying to get into his girlfriend’s panties, rather than his sister’s panties.
It was a similar story at Bondi Beach one afternoon, when a young woman attached herself to handsome Shane, sparing no effort in trying to seduce him. In fact so full on was she that if a guy had behaved like that with a girl, then he might have to do a bit of explaining to the police, and to a judge as to why he should not be subject to a restraining order. One could tell Karen was seriously pissed, like Shane was her husband and some home-wrecker was trying to steal away her husband. Jealousy rather than concern was her main emotion.
Even though the three of us were still as good friends as we had ever been and they were never impolite, sometimes I now felt the adage ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd’ when we spent time together as a trio. It was like I was intruding on my best friend’s time with his girlfriend, rather than his twin sister.
All of this was becoming quite distracting for me, not really good when I had to study so hard for my HSC to get the high grades needed for acceptance into university and the veterinary medicine course. Plus it caused physical distractions too. At Manly Beach I saw Shane and Karen purchase one ice-cream and eat it together, one twin holding the cone up to their sibling’s mouth to take a lick, and then the other doing the same. So distracted was I by this that I wasn’t looking where I was going and walked into one of the many Norfolk Island Pines that lined the Manly beachfront. And given the massive size of these trees, it was a pretty big thing not to see!
Then there was the school trip for Geography, to Watson’s Bay in Sydney’s exclusive Eastern Suburbs. There were plenty of interesting things to see here, the city skyline and the Harbour Bridge in the distance across the sparkling blue waters, and the magnificent cliffs and rock formations that formed the Gap and the southern side of Sydney Heads, ocean-going craft heading out into the Pacific.
As the field trip came to a close, I happened to notice Shane and Karen standing at one of the look-outs admiring the view of the cliffs. They turned to walk back and get on the bus to go back to high school and it must have been a subconscious thing, because their hands joined, and they were actually holding hands.
Shane and Karen must have realized their mistake because the brother and sister only held hands for two seconds at most before they quickly pulled away from each other, looking around nervously to see if anyone else had seen. I had already turned away so they didn’t suspect me, but as the bus returned to the city through the Waverley area before driving across the Harbour Bridge to return to the Northern Suburbs, I just couldn’t get the image out of my mind. Their instinct was to hold hands, how often did they do this when alone and nobody else was watching.
Other days however there was nothing strange at all to see, and Shane and Karen behaved like the way a normal pair of 18-year-old twin siblings would interact. Like on the Saturday of the Easter long weekend, when I went with Shane and Karen and their parents to see their relatives in Newcastle, and we all then went up the Hunter region’s coast to Port Stephens for a barbeque lunch near Nelson Bay.
Shane and Karen were perfectly fine around their relatives, and were fun-loving teenagers to their younger cousins, playing beach cricket and other games with them. A perfectly normal day out. It was these days where I would question myself more than others. Was this all in my mind? Perhaps the stress of my final year’s study load was getting to me, making me see things that just weren’t there? Did I perhaps have an undiagnosed mental illness, like schizophrenia?. Nobody else seemed to notice anything odd among our other friends, although even if they did, they would be in the same boat as me. How could anyone realistically talk about suspicions that a brother and sister might be too close for comfort, especially given the lack of hard evidence? Once one said something, one could never take it back either, which was another good reason to say nothing.
My parents often commented to me how much they liked Shane and Karen, how responsible and nice they were, and what good taste I had in friends. I think this was a barely concealed dig at my older brother and his awful choice in friends throughout his life which continued to the present date.
Just recently a panic-stricken Kevin had awoken us in the middle of the night begging for money. Apparently Kevin had recently drunkenly reversed his uninsured crappy car into the car belonging to one of his mates’ older brother, a big guy who looked like a gorilla. And a man with the same levels of tolerance for suffering fools as a gorilla so it seemed. He had taken to stalking my brother and sending him threatening notes every day with decreasing numbers upon them, indicating the number of days remaining before he beat the shit out of Kevin for damaging the car and failing to come up with the cash to repair it.
I thought getting his ass kicked might do my cretin of a brother some good, but Kevin was the least of my problems. Everything with Shane and Karen was so distracting. One Saturday morning I caught the train into the city to attend a seminar for students interested in studying to be vets. The location of the seminar was near Hyde Park, but I was so consumed with my thoughts of my best friend and his twin sister on whom my crush still lingered that I didn’t look where I was going and took one wrong turn then another and another.
Before I knew it, I was in a shady area between Surry Hills and Redfern in the city’s south, only the sound of some rappers performing up the street with their huge radios breaking me out of my own world, miles from where I should have been. Hurrying away, I hated to think how many busy roads I had crossed without looking on my way here.
Whenever Shane and Karen behaved normally for a few days in a row, I would think that my observations had been products of my own imagination and things would go back to the way they had been before. But this was never the case, and inevitably something odd would happen between the brother and sister and send me back to square one.
Even things that seemed fine before now seemed creepy, like the twin telepathy. I had been impressed by Shane and Karen’s accuracy with predicting which playing card the other was holding. One night their parents had a party, and got their son and daughter to impress their guests, this time with a street directory of Sydney and the regional towns of New South Wales where one twin would point on the map to a location and the other twin, their back turned would guess where the other was indicating.
This time Karen would accurately guess that her brother was standing on the banks of the river in Parramatta, and Shane would guess that his sister was pointing to the giant ram statue in Goulburn. Shane would guess correctly that Karen was pointing to Newtown’s main street, while Karen was quite correct that Shane was indicating the Bankstown area.
Again like with the cards, when the twins were not accurate they were usually close. For example when Karen indicated Cronulla on the map, Shane said she was at Coogee, which wasn’t too bad given both were beachside suburbs starting with C. Then when Shane chose Kings Cross on the map, Karen guessed Kingsford, again very close in name. Then when Karen was indicating The Rocks on the map, Shane guessed his sister was in Woolloomooloo, an adjacent inner-city suburb.
In the past I would have been impressed, but having seen just what Shane and Karen could be like, their telepathic ways were now un-nerving. If they could do this for a fun party game, what telepathic messages could the twins exchange about their secret and hidden desires?
But I didn’t need to speculate on this, there were plenty of other things to see that shouldn’t be happening. On the observation of deck of the Sydney Tower one afternoon, Shane looked to be enjoying the spectacular views of Goat Island, the Bridge, Circular Quay and Sydney’s iconic ferries heading to and from Taronga Zoo and Manly, but in reality he was enjoying the view of his twin sister’s bum – Karen’s rear end looking pretty good in her tight stone-washed denim jeans.
It was a case of rinse and repeat at a lookout in Katoomba another day. While seeming to be admiring the iconic Three Sisters rock formations among the vast forests of eucalypts that made the Blue Mountains, Shane really seemed to be loving the sight of Karen bending over to tie her sneakers, and showing the shape of her bottom through her shorts, her panty lines visible through the fabric.
Then there were the many strange incidents with Karen’s underwear, which soon became too many to count and recall accurately. One afternoon we got off the bus after school, me walking home one way and the twins the other to their own house. I turned to look in their direction, and noticed that Karen’s left bra strap had slipped down onto her upper arm.
Shane also must have noticed, as he reached across and fixed his sister’s bra for her, pushing it back under the cover of her school dress. I could only shake my head. Surely what Shane should have done if he noticed that his sister’s bra was showing was to tell her so she could fix it herself?
Then there was the small matter of Karen’s panties. I enjoyed it one day in Pitt Street when Karen made the mistake of wearing a short loose skirt on a warm but windy day, and a gust of breeze got under the hem and lifted it up to show everyone she was wearing light blue knickers that day. It was normal for me to like seeing this due to my crush on Karen and that we shared no DNA – but not nearly so normal for Karen’s brother to enjoy the same thing.
At school some of the classrooms were upstairs, the stairs open which meant that if boys discretely positioned themselves underneath and glanced upwards they could see up the school skirts of girls descending and the panties they were wearing. I saw Shane doing just this one day, pretending to be tying his shoes, as Karen walked down with her friends.
I tried to tell myself that it was the panties of Karen’s pretty 18-year-old female friends that Shane was trying to see and his sister’s pink knickers just collateral damage in this. Yet it seemed more likely that it was the pink panties that Karen was wearing that day that Shane wanted to see, and the knickers worn by the other girls the collateral damage.
At their house, I saw Karen emerge from the toilet one afternoon after school having changed her knickers, the teenager on her period and having had a menstrual mishap, bleeding through her sanitary pad and onto her underwear. It didn’t bother Karen that Shane was right there beside her as she got a bucket of cold water to wash out her blood-stained panties that he could see her menses all over the lemon-colored cotton fabric of her pants.
Just like it didn’t bother Karen in the supermarket when she brought a packet of regular adhesive panty pads, a packet of overnight adhesive pads and a box of tampons, the sister teasing her brother not to piss her off next week, Shane fooling around acting scared.
It also didn’t bother her that Shane knocked on the toilet door when she was in there to ask if she had fed the cat rather than waiting 5 minutes for her to finish. Nor did she find it odd when they arrived early at school one morning and Karen asked Shane to hold her bag when she went to the toilet, and Shane stood close enough to the ajar external door to hear Karen in her stall unwinding toilet paper from the roll every time she needed to wipe her bottom.
I saw Shane in situations where he looked to be perving on his sister’s knickers on more than one other occasion. Calling into their house one morning before a shift at work on Saturday morning, Shane was trying to make it look like he wasn’t looking into the back garden perving at Karen as she hanged her underwear out on the line to dry.
Karen always wore pretty bras and panties, pastel colored cotton bikini briefs in white, pale blue, pink, green, lemon, mauve and apricot. Some of her white knickers had patterns such as flowers, stars, polka-dots, seashells and butterflies, or cartoon animals like green frogs, blue dolphins and pink unicorns. The purity of Karen’s teen panties made them so hot, well they were hot to me as I liked her. But to her brother?
I don’t think Karen would have been concerned about her twin brother looking at her knickers on the washing line. As well as up-skirting his sister at high school, I had seen him doing it on the way to Taronga Zoo, Karen wearing a short skirt and Shane just that right distance behind to see his twin’s knickers. Karen had sometimes sat opposite her brother wearing a skirt or dress and whether she was doing it on purpose or without thinking she would allow her knees to drift open, giving her brother a glimpse between her legs and the cotton panty fabric that covered her crotch.
Another Saturday morning I was again at the twins’ house on laundry day, and this time Karen was putting her underwear into the machine, the teenager unconcerned that her brother was right beside her and could see her cunt stains on her double cotton panty saddles. And of course Shane was such a gentleman when Karen dropped a pair of white panties with pink and purple flowers, he bent right down and picked up his sister’s knickers for her.
While all these incidents involving Karen’s panties I chalked up to yet another of the increasingly long list of things wrong with the twins, they paled in comparison to what would happen in the April school holidays. Mr. and Mrs. Jones had gone to Adelaide for the week for some sort of work event that Ray Jones had described as a ‘junket’, taking his wife with him and leaving Shane and Karen at home in Sydney.
This particular day Karen was rostered on at work covering another girl who was sick, but Shane and I had the day off. It wasn’t a very nice day weather-wise, intermittent rain and an early taste of winter in the air, so Shane and I stayed inside. We were being squares and studying during the morning, but in the afternoon were planning to play video games.
Mid-morning we were working on chemistry, when the doorbell rang, and Shane went to answer it saying, “Andrew, that really good chemistry book from the library is in my room if you wanted to go and grab it.”
“Thanks Shane,” I said.
I turned to go into Shane’s bedroom, but paused when he answered the door and I heard him say, “Oh hello Mrs. Angelino, how are you?”
Mrs. Angelino’s reply, in a strong Italian accent, indicated that things were not so good. She couldn’t find the cat, nor could she find her husband’s favorite shirt for him to wear to work today.
“Well, why don’t I go and help you find your cat and Mr. Angelino’s shirt?” Shane asked, going with the elderly neighbor to her house across the street.
Going into Shane’s bedroom, I thought about Mrs. Angelino and how Shane was going to help her find her cat and her husband’s shirt. The only problem was that both Mr. Angelino and the cat were both long since deceased, and Shane was humoring her when she was on one of her trips back to the past.
The poor lady had dementia and I had seen Karen and Mr. and Mrs. Jones also assist her in the past when she came over looking for help to find something, usually the cat. She lived with one of her sons, daughter-in-law and their young adult kids, but they all had to work, and unfortunately sometimes Mrs. Angelino would get confused and go wandering around the street, looking for her late husband and equally late cat.
I thought about how Shane was going looking for a cat that had been dead many years, inadvertently startling the very much alive Jones family cat that had been sleeping on Shane’s bed when I entered his room. It was then my turn to be startled as the cat responded by growling at me, then opening her mouth and hissing.
“Sorry Puss,” I apologized, getting the text book, before stopping and going rigid as I saw what was on the floor, partially obscured by the duvet that covered Shane’s bed.
It was a pair of knickers. White knickers with different colored polka dots. A pair of panties that I had seen Karen pegging out on the line, putting in the washing machine as her brother stood by and which covered her private female areas when I took the chance to up-skirt her at school as she descended the stairs.
Now Karen’s knickers were in her twin brother’s bedroom, just near his bed, slightly covered by the duvet. What the fuck? I tried and failed to convince myself of a simple explanation – the cat or dog had taken a pair of Karen’s knickers and brought them into Shane’s bedroom – then left them there when they were done playing with them. Had I seen not a single aspect of Shane and Karen’s weird brother and sister dynamic, I would have thought this the likely explanation.
However after everything else these past few months my mind went to other places. Had Shane taken a pair of his sister’s knickers out of her laundry basket and brought them in here to smell? Possibly, but if he had and Karen didn’t know about this, wouldn’t he have snuck into his sister’s bedroom when she was out and sniffed her knickers there, especially given their parents were away for the week? If he was panty sniffing his twin sister’s dirty knickers, wouldn’t he have been more careful to replace her pants when he was done?
Probably, but I didn’t know if these were Karen’s worn knickers or clean ones from her underwear drawer. With trembling fingers, my curious hands picked up the white cotton bikini briefs from the floor, and my erection made my underpants and the front of my jeans very tight at touching the soft feminine cotton that covered Karen’s pussy and arse.
One look at the double cotton saddle told me that these were knickers that Karen had worn, I could see her creamy colored feminine stains. Like with Karen’s soiled period pad some weeks earlier, I lifted her knickers to my nose, sniffing the panty saddle. My cock throbbed as I absorbed the musty smells from between Karen’s legs, the girly smells of her pussy driving me insane with desires and thoughts of getting into her panties for real.
I sniffed the back panel of the panties where they would have gone between the taut cheeks of Karen’s hot teenage ass and made contact with her anus, wishing I could see her perfect bare bottom for myself. My fingers massaged Karen’s panty saddle, me thinking about how if I could be an inanimate object for 24 hours, then a pair of Karen’s knickers would be my choice.
Like when I smelled Karen’s used sanitary napkin, a crisis of conscience and a fear about getting caught put a stop to my panty-sniffing and I returned her knickers to where I found them, slightly underneath her brother’s bed. My hard-on went down as how I thought about how I was a perve for sniffing my friend’s dirty teen panties, it was far worse if her brother had been doing the same with his sister’s underwear.
Collecting Shane’s chemistry book I turned to leave, then stopped and looked at what lay on the bedside table. It wasn’t anything sexy, it was an orthodontic retainer. This would have been fine had Shane worn a retainer, but he did not. Somebody else who lived in this house however did wear a retainer.
Shane and Karen and their parents had told me that growing up in Newcastle, Shane had perfect teeth often earning glowing praise from the kids’ dentist. It was a different matter for his sister, however, Karen’s adult teeth coming through all wonky and crooked, leading to extensive work by an orthodontist and years of braces between ages 11 and 15.
Karen’s braces were gone by the time I met her, but she still had to wear her retainer every night. What the fuck was it doing on her brother’s bedside table? Coupled with her panties left on the floor, it made me wonder; where the brother and sister sharing the same bed while their parents were away in Adelaide? If so, what did the twins get up to with each other as night fell over Sydney?
Mental images filled my mind, and when Shane returned from helping the elderly confused neighbor, it took all my effort to act normally as we continued studying, then played video games after lunch. It was raining outside mid-afternoon when Karen returned from work, and Shane and I were glued to the television screen as we played Atari.
Karen feigned indignation. “Well this is a fine thing. I’ve been working my bum off all day, and I come home to you two slackers sitting on your bums playing computer games.”
“Yes, you were really working hard, scanning barcodes on the checkout all day,” laughed Shane. “Imagine if this was ten years ago, and you’d actually have to do some work and manually key in the prices into the till?”
Karen and Shane engaged in some light-hearted banter, but there was a definite flirty edge to it, more like a husband and wife or a boyfriend and girlfriend were teasing each other, not a brother and sister. Still, given a pair of Karen’s knickers were on the floor next to her brother’s bed and her dental retainer was on his bedside table, the twins appearing to flirt to each other might be the least of the problems in this house.
*
School started back for the second term, and two weeks in it was the camp for Year 11 and Year 12. Our high school always had great camps. Last year we flew to the Gold Coast Airport where we had bicycles hired. We then spent a week cycling around the New South Wales Tweed Coast, across the border up the Gold Coast, into the Hinterland and to Mount Tambourine (which really tested our legs), then up to Brisbane via Logan and the Redlands Bay area, flying back to Sydney from Brisbane on Monday after seven days of cycling.
This year we weren’t going nearly as far, but the scenery would be just as spectacular and obviously far less expense. Our destination was the beautiful area along the Hawkesbury River, where the far northern suburbs of Sydney such as Hornsby, Asquith and Palm Beach became the New South Wales Central Coast and its pretty towns of Gosford, Wyong, Woy Woy and Erina among others.
Departure was the Monday following Mother’s Day, and we would return the following Monday. As I got on the coach, I saw Karen and Shane sitting next to each other, and thought about how this time last year when we went to Queensland, the twin brother and sister seemed so normal.
Shane and Karen however were not at the forefront of my mind at the moment, I was thinking mostly of the teenager who got on the bus alongside me. This was my cousin Jodie’s younger brother Toby, who was born a year after me.
One glance at his facial features and posture and as soon as one heard him speak gave away the fact that he had Down’s syndrome. Toby of course was not in the mainstream Year 11 class, he was in the Special Education unit. Normally the special education students would not participate in the school camps or similar activities, but Toby had been absolutely fascinated by Jodie and I getting to go to Queensland last year and kept saying that he couldn’t wait until he was in Year 11 and could go on camp too.
This eagerness was turned up past ten as school started again for 1991, and the school camp dates and destination revealed. Toby took to counting down the days, talking incessantly about how he was going to camp and writing stories and drawing pictures in anticipation.
Such was his enthusiasm that nobody could stand to break his heart by telling him that special education kids couldn’t go on the camp. Instead there was a conference with school officials, the special education teacher, teachers supervising the camp, my aunt and uncle and myself. There we discussed how Toby’s disabilities and limitations could be managed if he was allowed to go on camp with the rest of the Year 11 and 12’s.
If the camp was the same as last year it would have been out of the question, as Toby simply couldn’t have kept up with the cycling involved and struggled to ride a bike anyway, but this time while the activities were physical in nature – some cycling, bushwalking, horse-back riding, caving, orienteering and other sports – there wasn’t the same consistent physical demands as last year. So Toby would be able to undertake some limited participation, but what of his mental needs?
Jodie and I had long looked out for Toby – as opposed to my asshole brother Kevin who would bully him at any chance that availed itself – and with Jodie having graduated at the end of last year, I put my hand up to be Toby’s chaperone for the camp. It was all agreed, and Toby was going on camp, with me as his minder, and accordingly we sat next to each other on the bus. I would be the George to his Lenny, although this wasn’t the first time.
Toby like many other intellectually disabled people had a special interest, and for Toby it was guinea pigs. He absolutely loved them, and would read books and talk incessantly about them for hours. His family kept guinea pigs along with rabbits as pets, and while Toby wasn’t allowed to touch them unsupervised he would look after them under the direction of his father, mother and sister.
Most notably though Toby had a stuffed toy guinea pig which was called ‘Mr. Guinea Pig’, which he carried everywhere and talked to as though it was alive. This happened on the bus on the way up the freeway, Toby going on and on about how much he was looking forward to camp and how much Mr. Guinea Pig was looking forward to camp, asking the plush toy its opinion, and apparently it was too.
Other students looked over, some clearly irritated and others wishing they had gone on the bus following us, but were polite enough not to say anything. I felt embarrassed, but my conscience reminded myself to be grateful for what I had – I was going to become a vet and was good at sports – and my cousin was just playing the bad hand life had dealt him my giving him an extra 21 chromosome.
We arrived at the camp and it was as beautiful in the pictures. The river and lake waters sparkled in the sunlight, the smell of the eucalypts filled the air, with these trees interspersed with huge Norfolk Island pines and other stands of European pines. The birdsong of kookaburras, magpies, currawongs, willie wagtails and cockatoos filled the air. In the bush, one could see kangaroos, wallabies and emus, a koala sleeping up a nearby stand of blue gums and water birds like black swans, ducks, seagulls and ibises flying around the waterways.
Most of Monday morning was spent getting organized at the campsite, the boys and girls allocated to their separate dormitories. The rangers who worked in the area came by to see us and they seemed to be friendly enough, but the caretaker – well he was hardly what one would call friendly.
I suspected the caretaker when at school had started the day with he and his classmates singing ‘God Save The Queen’, only they weren’t referring to Elizabeth II but Victoria. The grouchy, decrepit, doddering old man would shuffle around complaining about ‘bloody kids and teenagers messing things up’, clearly not appreciating that his bread and butter was school groups. When the girls complained that they didn’t have enough toilet paper in the ladies, he grumbled and complained as he got more loo paper for them that it was a waste of time; that the girls would just use it anyway, and he would have to do the same thing the next day. Wasn’t that kind of the point of toilet paper?
Toby didn’t really help things when he rushed at the caretaker before I could stop him and threw his arms around him, declaring that ‘Mr. Guinea Pig wanted to kiss him’. The caretaker was not impressed to put it mildly, going on his way back to his cottage grumbling about ‘spastics and retards’ and slamming the door shut.
Activities got us out and about on Monday afternoon, Tuesday and Wednesday and out of the caretaker’s way as he went around complaining about the great personal sufferance he was enduring. It wasn’t us so much, there was another group from a high school in Campbelltown that were causing trouble in the adjacent area, but we were all the same in the caretaker’s opinion and were all responsible for making his life miserable. Hadn’t this man heard of something called retirement?
On Thursday morning we were awake early, as we were heading for a wildlife park not far away. Also up early was the caretaker, who was up a tree near his cottage sawing away at some over-hanging branches, swearing and sweating as he did so. The rangers had also arrived for their regular twice daily patrol, our buses arrived and everything was in order, until there came an ominous cracking sound as wood split, an elderly man screaming and then an almighty crash that caused all of us to jump.
The rangers ran towards to where the elderly caretaker had fallen out of the tree and was sprawling on the ground. “Don’t cut the bloody branch you’re sitting on Cecil, you stupid old bastard!” yelled one of the rangers, before they knelt to examine him. The lead ranger then yelled out, “Get an ambulance, now!” The trainee ranger ran to obey the order, an ambulance with lights flashing and siren blaring turning, departing with the caretaker aboard just before our buses left.
Toby held tight to his soft toy guinea pig during the journey. I had tried to convince Toby that perhaps Mr. Guinea Pig would be happier to stay back at the camp as the wildlife park contained lizards, snakes, crocodiles, and birds of prey as well as the marsupials, animals that guinea pigs did not like for obvious reasons, but my cousin insisted despite my best efforts.
At the wildlife park to my dismay the unruly students from the other high school were there too. Most of the time they were laughing about the caretaker falling out of the tree this morning, but they also did observe my cousin and sniggered, using charming terms such as retard, spastic, slow learner and mongoloid to describe him, mocking him for carrying a soft toy at his age, Toby smiling and waving to them in response which made them laugh more. Sometimes it was hard to save Toby from himself.
Returning to the campsite around 5pm we learned the caretaker would be in hospital a few days following the fall this morning and they didn’t have anyone in the meantime to cover, the ranger giving the supervising teachers his contact number to call if they needed anything.
Night fell, the daytime birdsong replaced by owls hooting in the forests and we were getting ready for bed. The moon was high in the black skies, the starlight brilliant and the Southern Cross shone brightly, me so observed at looking at the constellation that I jumped when I felt a hand tap on my shoulder.
Turning around, it was my cousin Toby, clutching his soft toy guinea pig. “Toby, you scared me, what are you doing?” I asked, my heart racing.
Toby grinned at me. “Sorry Andrew, but hide and seek, hide and seek!” He pointed around excitedly, this was one of his favorite games.
“Okay Toby, but just one game because it’s getting late,” I said. “You hide and I’ll find you, but stay out of the bush in case there’s snakes.”
“Okay Andrew,” said Toby, hurrying off to hide as I began counting to fifty. When I finished counting I set off in search of my cousin, readily finding him hiding near the trees that the caretaker had fallen from this morning. He wanted to play another game, but I was firm telling him tomorrow, we had to go to bed now.
Walking back, we reached the dorms and I noticed something was wrong about Toby, his stuffed toy was missing, and I asked my cousin. “Where’s Mr. Guinea Pig?”
“He play hide and seek too,” said Toby. “You not find him.”
I sighed, knowing that there would be a carry-on later if Toby was separated from his soft toy. “Toby, this is really important, but you need to tell me where Mr. Guinea Pig is right now, so I can go and get him.”
At first Toby was reluctant, saying he was giving the game away, but I was firm and patient and found out that my cousin had hidden his plush toy inside a cupboard in the ranger’s house. I was firm but not cross when I told Toby that he shouldn’t have gone inside the old man’s house, even though the door had been left unlocked. Escorting Toby back to the dorms, I said I would retrieve the toy guinea pig and be back soon.
Opening the door to the caretakers’ cottage I turned on the light and looked around. It was tiny, basically just one room combining a bedroom, lounge room and kitchen, with a bathroom off to one side. Looking around, I found the cupboard which was floor to ceiling and large enough to walk into and went inside.
Toby had hidden his toy guinea pig behind the vacuum cleaner. I retrieved it and turned to leave, when I heard some voices outside and the door start to open. Oh shit! Was it teachers, or the rangers? I didn’t want to get busted for being in here, and in a reflex action shut the cupboard door. The door was comprised of slats that allowed one to see out but not in when the door was shut, so I had a perfect view of the one room and into the bathroom.
The door opened, and it wasn’t the rangers nor teachers that stepped inside, but rather my friends Shane and Karen. At first I was relieved and was about to step out, knowing that I risked looking foolish, but then I paused. I had a reason for being here. What the fuck were the brother and sister doing here? I stayed put, watching to see what was going to happen.
While my special needs cousin took up much of my attention this week, it hadn’t stopped me seeing the creepy brother and sister doing creepy and inappropriate things with each other as usual. Sitting and walking next to each other, having to fight the urge to hold hands. Karen wearing stirrup pant leggings during team building games last night that showed off her bare feet, as well as the shape of her bum and pussy, and bending over in her brother with Shane clearly liking what he saw.
Last night we had gone to a restaurant near Gosford for dinner, and Karen had worn a tartan mini-skirt, a skirt so short it barely covered her underpants. Karen actually got reprimanded by one of the female teachers supervising us about her skirt length and subsequent lack of modesty. It didn’t seem to bother Karen who discretely walked in front of her brother when he was sitting down, bending forward ever so slightly to allow her brother to see her white knickers.
And it was only me who was there to observe another odd occurrence between the twins when we went hiking near the Colo River. Karen had gone to the toilet, she and Shane talking through the door like I had seen them do at home. But while the lavatory at the Jones house afforded Karen some privacy, this toilet in the bush provided very little. It was open at the bottom, and I could clearly see Karen’s lowered blue denim shorts, pink panties and white socks and sneakers as she sat on the toilet. Shane would have seen far more, and he would have been able to hear Karen’s private toilet noises from her bottom and every time she got toilet paper to wipe her ass, this going on for five minutes before Karen flushed the toilet and emerged to wash her hands.
Karen was again wearing blue denim shorts tonight, along with a white shirt and white socks and sneakers, her hair in loose pigtails and a cap on her head. It was quite warm for May today, so Shane like me was wearing shorts, a tee-shirt and socks and sneakers.
I thought Karen looked pretty cute in her denim shorts, and evidently her twin brother did too. From my hiding space I observed the siblings check that all the curtains were drawn tight, and the two of them go and sit on the caretaker’s bed.
“You look so hot tonight Karen,” observed Shane, stroking one of his sister’s pigtails.
“No hotter than you, Shane,” said Karen, stroking her brother’s thigh..
I watched intently, my body absolutely rigid as the siblings looked at each other, then kiss. It was shallow at first, on the lips but still inappropriate for a brother and sister, before their lips locked and they went into a proper French kiss, the brother and sister rolling back onto the bed, the twins rolling around together while making out, and their hands all over each other.
Shane had a clearly raging hard on in the front of his shorts, something Karen also noticed and clearly liked. The pretty teenager massaged her brother’s erection through his shorts, before sliding her hand up the leg to play with her twin’s penis even more. For his part, Shane slid his hand up Karen’s thigh and into her shorts, playing with her pants and causing her to giggle at her brother’s touch.
While evident just by looking at Shane that he was sexually excited, it obviously wasn’t as clear with Karen given she was a girl. However, if one was to put their hand down Karen’s knickers and between her legs then one would no doubt end up with sticky fingers.
On the bed, Shane and Karen stopped kissing and separated from each other, not because the brother and sister had a crisis of conscience that what they were doing was wrong, but to catch their breaths and to take off their shoes and socks.
Shane looked around. “Are you sure we should be doing this here? We got lucky with the caretaker ending up in hospital, but I mean if we get caught …”
Karen reassured her brother as she removed her socks so was now barefoot. “We’re safe, we made sure we weren’t followed. Plus you make me so hot that I couldn’t have held on until we got home anyway, I’m so horny for you I could explode. I can’t wait to give you a head-job.”
“You’re not kidding that you’re horny Karen, you make me so hot,” agreed Shane. “Why do I have to have such a hot and horny twin sister?”
“And why did I have I had to have such a hot and horny brother who likes to get into my knickers?” said Karen, she and Shane again kissing before falling back to make out once more, Shane fondling Karen’s tits through her tee-shirt and Karen running the teenage toes of her bare feet up and down her brother’s legs.
After more making-out, Karen and Shane removed more of their clothes, their tee-shirts and shorts and the peaked cap Karen had forgot to remove from her head. The twins were now in their underwear, Karen wearing a white bra and white panties with small blue flowers, her brother a pair of red underpants, Karen stroking her brother’s erect cock and his balls at the front. Shane for his part put his hand down the back of Karen’s knickers, touching the cheeks of his sister’s bottom.
Shane’s hands went to Karen’s tits, fondling her ample young breasts through her bra, turning on Karen so much that she put her hand between her legs, rubbing her pussy through her panties. Karen though didn’t need to touch herself in her private female area for long, her brother’s firm masculine hands soon moved from her boobs, down her flat tummy with the cute navel and to her pants.
Karen’s pretty face showed her delight as her brother put his hand down the front of her panties, having a good rummage around in her knickers touching her up on her pubic mound before pushing deeper into her panties and touching her pussy. Karen gasped in delight to her brother’s touch to her vagina, the teenager making out with and stroking Shane’s erection as the twins again made out.
Soon Karen and Shane decided that their underwear was getting in the way, so Shane took off his underpants, freeing his huge erection that throbbed in desire for his twin sister’s teenage twat. Karen reached behind herself and removed her bra, exposing her bare breasts.
It was Shane though, who removed her knickers, taking them down and sliding them down Karen’s legs and off over her bare feet. “Stop doing that, you great big perve!” Karen giggled, slapping Shane in mock indignation as her brother sniffed the damp cotton panty saddle of her knickers. Karen squatted next to him, her legs wide apart showing off her hairy pussy to her brother but unknown to her me too.
Karen’s pubic hair grew in a wonderful triangle of curls all over her feminine mound, blonde tending light brown like the hair on her head. Below this her pretty pink vagina was all on display, and further down I could just see her tight little anus, this separated from Karen’s vulva by a strip of sensitive skin.
My view of Karen’s hairy pussy vanished as she turned around in her full state of nudity and instead showed me her bare bottom. Shane put down his sister’s knickers and the naked brother and sister writhed together, spooning and touching each other in their most private places.
Karen jerked off her brother, playing with his cock as she masturbated him, the fingers on her other hand moving to his scrotum to tease his balls. Shane’s eager hands moved to his sister’s breasts, to her pubic hair, between her legs and deep into her pussy to pleasure her clitoris. His other hand went to the firm white cheeks of her bare bottom, and my eyes went wide as he pushed a finger up her anus, Karen squealing with delight at having one of her brother’s fingers up her bum and in her rectum, the hot tight walls of Karen’s bowels presumably closing around the digit.
“Now what’s 23 time 3?” Karen asked teasingly, as she and her brother separated from each other and he lay back on the bed.
Shane grinned. “My favorite number.”
“Mine too,” agreed his sister.
Karen straddled her brother on the bed, one bare foot each side of his torso, facing his feet, her bottom over his face.
Shane looked up and laughed. “Hey Karen, I can see your crack.”
“And I can see a nice big cock I want in my mouth,” said Karen, as she lowered her fanny down and sat on her brother’s face, squirming her pussy around so her vagina was in the right position for Shane to eat her out.
Shane wasted no time in doing just this, putting his tongue into Karen’s pussy while his sister leaned forward and eagerly took his dick into her mouth, almost gagging in her haste to suck her brother’s dick. I watched the siblings going 69, Shane eating out his sister’s pussy with some trips by his tongue to her asshole as well, while Karen couldn’t get enough of blowing her brother, sucking his cock nice and hard, licking it with her tongue to increase her sibling’s pleasure.
I got the impression that the twins could have gone 69 all night until they came in each other’s mouths, but they were clearly keen to go all the way. They stopped their oral session and Karen removed from the pocket of her shorts a condom, which she unwrapped and slid onto her brother’s erection. Making sure it was in place, Karen then rolled over and spread her legs wide, keen for her brother to mount and fuck her.
Shane didn’t waste a second in mounting his twin, pushing his big condom covered cock up his sister’s tight 18-year-old pussy, before leaning forward to kiss again. They began to fuck, Shane pounding Karen’s cunt nice and hard with her legs flying around and her toes clenching in pleasure. Other times going slow and sensual, grinding his cock against her pussy, the twins’ pubic hair intertwining, Shane leaning forward to kiss his sister and his chest hairs tickling her bare breasts.
Not spoiled for time and taking a risk to do this, Karen and Shane came at the same time. Karen screamed in delight as her clitoris sent her orgasm through her vagina and into her back passage, her pussy juice drenching her brother’s groin.
Shane also screamed out in delight as deep up his sister’s vagina, his cock sprayed a tidal wave of sticky white semen, captured by the condom and preventing it from spraying up past Karen’s cervix, with sperm eagerly swimming up her birth canal, uterus and fallopian tubes keen to find an egg released by Karen’s ovaries in her current monthly cycle.
I watched as Shane withdrew from Karen’s pussy, the brother and sister sweaty and breathless as they separated and then kissed, Karen removing the condom from her twin’s cock and eagerly drinking the semen like he had cum in her mouth, swallowing it with glee.
Shane was impressed. “That’s so hot when you do that Karen.”
“That’s why I do it,” said Karen. “Plus this condom prevents me getting pregnant at 18 and giving birth to not only my son or daughter, but my niece or nephew at the same time. I’d become a new mother and an aunty on the same day.”
Shane grinned. “Same for me, I’d become a father and an uncle at the same time. And if we did have kids, they would literally only have one set of grandparents.”
Karen looked surprised. “Hey yeah, they would, I’d never thought about that before. But it wouldn’t be good if you knocked me up. We’d need good health cover, the kid would probably have webbed feet, be an albino and have cystic fibrosis, diabetes and hemophilia.”
“Yeah, and we’d need to move to Tasmania,” said Shane, he and Karen laughing. “But if I had sex with someone else, it could never be as hot as with you, Karen. I can feel your orgasm as well as my own when you cum.”
“Same for me,” said Karen. “When you fuck me and you cum, I can feel you inside me but also feel your own orgasm. I could never get sex as good as that with any other guy.”
The brother and sister sat naked and holding hands, exchanging a light kiss before Karen looked at her watch and said. “We’d really be getting back before they miss us, but not before a quick shower.”
Still holding hands, Karen and Shane made for the small bathroom, me watching Karen’s bare bottom on their journey there. I thought they might close the door, but left it ajar allowing me to see the siblings showering together, Karen’s triangle of pubic hair filled with suds and bubbles as her brother touched her up on her twat and stroked her bum. For Karen’s part, she pulled back her brother’s foreskin and washed away the residual cum.
Drying off and hastily getting dressed – Karen nearly tripped over in her haste to get her knickers on and up – the siblings removed the condom and wrapper which was the only evidence of their incestuous encounter and left the cottage as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened between them.
Still in the closet, I emerged trembling, clutching Toby’s soft toy guinea pig. Going to the front door, I stole a quick glance to make sure I was alone and then snuck away, taking cover when I saw Mr. Harris, one of the supervising teachers stop Shane and Karen on the path.
“Shane and Karen, what are you two doing out and about so late, it’s nearly lights out,” he demanded gruffly.
Karen’s pretty face was a picture of innocence. “I’m really sorry Sir, but I dropped my retainer and Shane was just helping me find it.” She pulled the retailer case out of her shorts pocket as evidence.
“That’s true, we really needed to find it,” Shane added.
“Okay, but go to bed now, the pair of you,” ordered Mr. Harris.
“Yes sir, sorry sir,” said Shane and Karen in unison as they went their separate ways, Shane making for the boys’ dorms and Karen the girls’ dorms.
Mr. Harris also intercepted me as I tried to sneak by him. “And what are you doing out so late Andrew?”
I showed him the toy guinea pig. “My cousin lost this and I was worried he would be upset if he didn’t have it during the night, so I came and found it.”
The teacher sighed. “This seems to be an epidemic tonight, first the Jones twins and now you. And your cousin doesn’t seem to be very upset, he is sleeping soundly in his bed like you should be. Get to bed, Andrew, right now.”
“Yes sir, sorry sir,” I said, heading for the boys’ dorms and to bed, where I knew I would be having a sleepless night and very strange dreams haunting my sleep, not now but for the term of my natural life.
*
Maybe it was seeing for myself the direct evidence that Shane and Karen’s close relationship as twin brother and sister that turned creepy and to actual incest but I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and relaxed more. I probably shouldn’t have and others may have acted differently, but this was me.
I never spoke a word of what I saw that night to anyone and was able to interact normally with Shane and Karen at school, at work and at home as friends as the year 1991 passed by, high school ended and the next phase of our lives began. Despite having such a huge thing in my head it didn’t affect my grades, and I blitzed my HSC and was accepted to university on the long road of study to becoming a vet.
Karen and Shane also did well and were accepted into the same university to study for science degrees. During 1992, our first year of university we continued working together part time and would see each other for lectures and tutorials, preliminary science units the foundation for the veterinary medicine course.
We saw less of each other through 1993 and 1994, different units and the like, plus Shane and Karen resigned from the department store where we had first met, and got part time jobs waiting tables at a restaurant. My friends and I were growing apart as we got older.
At the end of 1994, Karen and Shane graduated their bachelor’s degrees and had some exciting news. They had been accepted for post graduate studies in England, and always keen to do the overseas thing, jumped on a plane in early 1995 to spend the next three years living, working and studying in the UK. For me this was not an option, I still had years of study and practical training ahead of me to qualify and practice as a vet.
Initially I kept in touch with the twins through a couple of phone calls and sending cards and letters, but as 1995 came and went followed by 1996 and 1997, the realities of busy lives thousands of miles apart had kicked in and we lost touch completely. As 1998 came around, I speculated if Shane and Karen had moved back to Australia, but if they had they didn’t contact me, and I had lost contact with their parents too, Mr. and Mrs. Jones moving away to Sydney’s southern beachside suburbs near Wanda and Cronulla in 1997.