Hey all! If you’re a patron, you can download the three short stories I wrote this month based off suggestions and requests a couple weeks ago. Below, I have one from last month for everyone to read.
Midlife Crisis
Is this what a midlife crisis is? Les had always imagined them to be something…else. In TV shows, the men in crisis are always so…exuberant. Buying new cars, divorcing wives and dating younger women, but for him it just felt like a crippling depression and a growing confidence that everything he had done in his life had been for nothing. He didn’t want a car, or a boat, or some young thing–he didn’t know what he wanted, but after turning fifty this year it seemed like it had just now dawned on him how…miserable he is.
He should be happier, right? He’d been married to his wife for over twenty years, he had a beautiful daughter who had just gotten married the year before after what felt like an endless courtship, his career was right on track, but there was a hole in his chest all the same. It was a hole he’d always felt his entire life, and it had started aching over the last few months and it refused to stop. But this–he had to stop doing this. He couldn’t keep crying like this.
He wiped his eyes in the restaurant bathroom, hoping they didn’t seem too bloodshot. He and his wife were currently driving to go see their daughter, Kate, and his son-in-law, Gabe, and had stopped to get some food, but he’d…god, why was he crying like this so often now? Everything just felt like too much for him to handle, but there was no one he could talk to about any of it.
“Bad life, eh?”
Les gave a start, and in the mirror he saw a trucker had entered the bathroom without him noticing. “Just, uh, tabasco in my eye.”
“You can’t lie to me man, I’ve been there. I can see it,” the man pulled something out of his pocket, a golden coin, walked over and pressed it into Les’s palm. “This will help. It helped me, it’s helped lots of people before me too. Just pass it on once you have what you need.”
***
He didn’t know why he kept it. No, Les knew why he kept it–it was because he couldn’t get rid of it. He’d tried to junk the worthless coin, only for it to keep showing up in his pocket every time. He done his best to forget his strange encounter, and instead focused on enjoying time with his daughter…but when they arrived, both he and his wife could sense something was wrong. It was a few days later, on the back patio alone with Kate, that she finally told Les what was wrong.
“I think Gabe is cheating on me,” she said, choking back tears, “I…think it’s been going on for a while, before we were even married.”
Les just listened, stunned, as she recounted all of the clues and hints that had led her to this conclusion, and how things only seemed to be getting worse, how he was almost more…open about it, like he was daring her to try and do something about it. She was at a loss, and Les was too. He’d never gotten the feeling that Gabe was the sort of man who would do that, and his first instinct was to disbelieve it. Still, it was clear that something was upsetting Kate, and that tugged at his heart and only complicated the feelings he was wrestling with himself. In the end, he had nothing to offer in the way of help, but she seemed to appreciate him listening if nothing else.
It had to be wrong–he…liked Gabe. He liked Gabe more than any of the other young men Kate had dated before this, and he…well, he doubted Gabe felt the same way, but he considered him to be the son he’d never had. The feelings were complicated, though, and mixed in with the rest of the mess he was in. He covered it all up with a smile through the rest of the evening, finding himself looking over at Gabe, at his wife, at Kate, one hand slipping into his pocket and fiddling with the coin. It was hot, hotter than it should be, and he found himself getting…angry. Angry at Gabe, angry that he’d cheat on his family with…who knew who. He was going to cry again, wasn’t he? He excused himself before it hit and went to the bathroom, locking himself inside, tears falling, coin gripped in his hand.
It was even hotter now, hot enough to feel like it might burn him, but he couldn’t release his fist as hard as he tried. He just…wanted everything to work out. He wanted what he could never have, what he’d wanted for his daughter, what he’d only realized he’d wanted once it was too late. Everything shuddered, or maybe it was just him. The tears subsided again after a few minutes, and he went back out to rejoin the dinner, pretending everything was normal, like they all were.
“Would you join me for a cigar after dinner, sir?” Gabe asked him, catching Les off guard.
“I didn’t know you smoked, Gabe.”
The young man looked at him a bit oddly, “Well, I didn’t, until you showed me, sir.”
Many people had addressed him as “sir” in his years, but never had it sounded like it did when it came from Gabe. He agreed, and while Kate and her mother washed up, the two men went into the garage. It felt natural, letting Gabe light his cigar for him, watching him kneel down in front of him, hands shaking as he unzipped the fly of Les’s slacks, pulled out his hard cock, and started sucking on it, blowing his own smoke over it. Les was terrified, and yet…and yet he wanted this, didn’t he? No–this was…kind of what he wanted, but not really. The coin–had it done this?
But he didn’t want to hurt Kate…and somehow, she knew. Knew that her father and her husband were fucking behind her back, but he didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to hurt anyone. But this–Gabe, he was so handsome, such a good young man, and he would be a much better man for his daughter if he was under Les’s control. So he could become a better husband, and a better father as well…a man more like him. The coin was hot again against his leg, and once more the world shuddered.
The door to the garage opened, and his wife entered, unsurprised by the sight of Gabe sucking her husband’s cock over cigars, and set down a couple glasses of whisky. “Thanks, Evelyn,” Les said, giving her a peck on the cheek.
“I know what you and your boy need, honey.”
“You always have.”
“You two going out tonight?”
“What do you think boy, think you’ve earned a night out with daddy at the leather bar? I’d like to see your…technique. Make sure you’re pleasing my little girl. No cumming though–you save your seed for her, understand? I need an heir.”
“Yes sir, of course sir,” Gabe said, cock leaking in the chastity device he wore for his master and wife’s sake, sucking a bit harder now, eager for a night out on the town with his father-in-law.
August Suggested Stories Ready for Download! | Wesley Bracken on Patreon
Bracken's Corner 