“I love you, Lars,” she whispered. “I always have.”

Words, whispered with shaky voice.

Words, almost drowning in the roaring sea of thunder.

Words, painfully proven by the tight wetness that surrounded me.

Words.

The truest words.

Haunting, cursed words they were, but nonetheless, I knew them to be true.

I always have.

My name is Lars. Lars Winter.

Where shall I begin? How do you begin to tell a tale, that, as far as you can remember, has no real beginning? For me, there was no start to Sarah’s love to me. It always has been there. Lurking. Suffering. Hidden like a stain on a shirt, a stain you can’t seem to wash out, so one day you’re hiding it in the closet, and another day you cover it up with a shiny new jacket.

But no matter what you do, it’s always there. Always has been. Always will be.

I was about ten years old, when I really noticed it for the first time. I just had joined the athletics club of our school. Sarah was there. For every training. For every competition. Always cheering me on, always being supportive.

Like she always has been. Always will be.

It was the finale of my first competition. I was part of the runners team. Middle-distance, eight-hundred meters. We had trained for weeks, got in shape as much as we could, but the other team was good. Very good. Everyone was on the edge, nervous. Especially me, since I was the only new runner on the team.

None of us got a medal that day.

None of us, except for me.

I gave it my all, running as if hell was chasing after me.

In the background I could hear Sarah’s voice, cheering me on. Despite the considerable noise in the hall, she stood out. Like she always did.

I had been training for weeks.

I had to prove myself.

My older sister believed in me, was cheering me on like a maniac.

There was no way I would loose.

Never.

My heart was pounding. My breath stung my lungs like knives. I gained ground, barely, inch for inch.

And I reached the finish-line.

Third place.

Not exactly an overwhelming victory.

But I won.

“Go, Lars, go!” I heard Sarah scream in the distance, cheering ecstatically.

When I stood on the winner’s podium, receiving my bronze medal, her gaze met mine.

I saw pride in her eyes, the pride of an older sister. The excitement of the event, of the victory.

But behind it, hiding like a thief covered by a curtain, laid something else. Her blush was a hint to red, her smile a bit to sweet, and her gaze an idea to intense.

I was still to young to read the signs, to see the warning signals.

But that day, suspicion crept into my mind.

And the number of signs grew by the day.

An awkwardly long hug here, an inappropriate joke there. Nurturing a discomfort, that grew into suspicion. But no certainty, not yet.

Not until I fell in love myself.

Her name was Jessica. Jessica Lin. Long black hair, almond eyes, a terrifyingly smart mind, and a smile, crafted by the gods.

Whenever I looked at her, I blushed.

Whenever she talked to me, I turned into a thirteen-year-old, stuttering idiot. Of course, my crush went nowhere. But, and that’s the important part, in my endless naivety and trust I told Sarah about it.

At first, she was just the usual perfect older sister. Listened, gave advice, comforted me. I was happy for her support, happy to have an older, more experienced sister, who could help me navigate the sea of puberty with its unclear deeps and stay clear of its many cliffs.

But there was also the now familiar discomfort, a growing suspicion in the back of my mind. A suspicion, only fuelled by the sobbing noises I could hear coming out of her room every night.

And then, when I mustered all my courage, finally confessed to Jessica, and inevitably got turned down. As I was laying in bed myself, crying and crying over the loss of someone I could never have had from the beginning. It finally clicked.

And I realised the truth.

Sarah was in love with me.

Furthermore.

She always has been.

It was hard to deal with this knowledge, and to keep it a secret. Confusing. Painful even. But at some point, it just became the reality of our siblings dynamic.

We both kept our secrets, both hidden in plain sight. Hidden like a stain on a shirt, a stain you can’t seem to wash out, so one day you’re hiding it in the closet, and another day you cover it up with a shiny new jacket.

Her jackets name was Kyle.

He was smart. Good looking, even I could see that. He was an honest dude with principles, had been in love with Sarah for years, was just her age. As he finally confessed to her, he was walking to their meeting point with the face of a man going his last walk before an execution. He thought he had nothing to win here, but nonetheless, his sense of honour demanded for him to come true.

But to his, and even more, my surprise, she said yes.

This way, they became a couple.

Kyle was a good guy. No, not a “good guy”, a genuinely good guy, who wanted nothing but the best for his girlfriend and everyone else around him. He joined my athletics club, probably to get closer to me. I didn’t mind. I liked him. Okay, I would have liked basically anyone who made my sister happy, and also diverted her attention away from me. But even with all of this considered, I just really liked him.

We became friends, and so me, Kyle and Sarah started to form the trio, that the people would jokingly refer to as “The three Musketeers”.

One for all.

And all for one.

We spend almost every day with each other. I didn’t mind their lovey-doveyness at all, just the opposite. I was grateful, grateful, to finally see my big sister happy. I could hear how happy he made her almost every other night, when I could hear unmistakable moans from her room instead of heartbreaking sobs.

Looking back, that must have been the happiest time of my life.

But it wasn’t meant to last.

The signs were everywhere. Despite Sarah’s happiness, despite her love to Kyle, I could see the cracks in the foundation of their relationship. Or better, hear them. One fateful night, the night after my eighteenth birthday, when the moans coming through the wall suddenly sounded suspiciously like “Lars”.

I was lying there, in my bed, still a little tipsy from the party, from my very first beers. And I heard Sarah moan my name in lustful moans. Once. Twice. Trice.

It scared me. Scared the shit out of me.

But I would lie if I’d say it didn’t give me a rock-hard boner.

I pretended, that nothing had happened. Like I always did. And I also pretended this the next time this happened. And the time after that. And the time after that. For two more long years, we all pretended, lied to ourselves, in order to preserve the oasis of friendship and love we had found. And maybe it would have worked, if it wouldn’t have been for a certain honest dude with principles.

Unlike Sarah and me, one of the Three Musketeers wasn’t willing to keep lying to himself.

Kyle broke up with Sarah.

Broke up with her on their anniversary.

I was sad, but I understood Kyle, and didn’t blame him. When he quit the Athletics club and gave me his last goodbyes, I wished him all the best, and I meant it.

But Sarah was mortified.

I tried to support her, tried being the perfect little brother I knew she needed. I was the shoulder she could cry on. I listened, tried to give advice, despite my fairly limited knowledge on the subject. After all, I never had a girlfriend myself. Sadly, Jessica Lin didn’t turn out to be a fluke.

One night me and Sarah sat down with a couple of beers – more accurately, a couple of dozens of beers. We talked for hours and hours on end, and ended up both joking and crying and laughing and cursing about our miserable love lives. Our parents went to a cruise that week, so we had the house for ourselves.

Long, long after midnight, Sarah went upstairs, swaying dangerously. I wanted to follow her, but then I stopped myself to close all the windows in the living room. I could see a thunder storm approaching in the distance. A storm that had built up its force for an awful long time, and was about to discharge.

It was a stormy and dark summer night. The rain was falling outside. Hammered against the roof. Tipped and clicked against my window.

And then, the first lightning bolt ran across the nights sky.

The thunder followed it seconds later.

But I was lying in bed, sleeping, snoring even. I was more drunk than I’ve ever been in my life, and so I was oblivious of the greater storm that was still to come.

I dreamed about being on a ship. On a ship on the stormy sea. The ship was navigating the roaring ocean with its unclear deeps, trying desperately to stay clear of its many cliffs. The waves were shaking me up and down, back and forth, in an ever increasing frequency, until they were shaking me so hard that it started to hurt.

In my dream, I saw my ship heading towards a cliff. It was chalk white against a sky black with clouds, hard, and seemed to reach into the lightning-lit outlines of the heavens.

The ship crashed against the cliff.

I woke up, still slow in my mind and way to drunk.

But strangely, I could still feel the waves rocking back and forth my ship.

I saw a face hoovering over me. It was as white against the dark room as the cliffs in my dreams, illuminated by the same lightning. The face of my older sister.

“S…Sarah?” I asked. An involuntary, inexplicable moan escaped me.

Then I realised it.

Heard the shaky whisper of her voice.

A voice, almost drowning in the roaring sea of thunder.

My shaft, almost painfully surrounded by a tight wetness.

“Sarah! What are you doing!” I yelled. I did grab her arms, but my grip was shaky.

I couldn’t believe it. I never would have thought that she would be going this far.

I was getting my first fuck by my big sister.

My grab, as weak as a child’s.

“Mmmmh,” moaned Sarah. “Mmmmh, Lars, Lars…”. It were the same moans I have heard for years coming through my bedrooms walls. And if I wanted or not, hearing them now, not through a concrete wall, but out of the cherry lipped mouth of my sister, just in front of me, bouncing on my rock-hard cock…excited me.

And I could feel a familiar, tell-tale impression of tightness in my lower regions.

I tried to push her off, moaning involuntarily, as she was still fucking me hard.

Her pussy tightened. I could feel the orgasm getting closer.

“Sarah…stop…please, please…stop,” I begged, moaning.

I could feel my cock twitching inside her. I was getting closer and closer.

She was leaning forward, so that my forehead was touching hers. Her hands grabbed my shoulders, pressed me on the mattress, into the pillows.

“Cum for me, little brother,” she whispered. Her voice was now finally void of all pretending, all hiding. Void of all the lies she had kept telling herself, over and over again. It almost sounded freed from a weight. I could feel her excitedness, her arousal, both in her voice and in the tight, wet depths of her pussy. “Cum inside your big sister!”

Her head, her cherry lips came closer to mine.

She kissed me.

My big sister stole my first kiss, right after she stole my virginity.

I bucked my hips, moaned into her mouth. Desperately, I tried to push her off.

My heart was pounding. My breath stung my lungs like knives. I managed to push her head to the side, gasping for air. Started to push off her body, barely, inch for inch.

But Sarah was full of desperate strength as years of lust, decades of unrequited love of an older sister finally broke free.

She pushed me back, one last time.

Her hips dropped for one last, lustful, desperate thrust.

“No, no!,” I screamed.

Then I came.

Inside of her.

My sperm flooded her wet, fertile pussy. Spilled through her cervix. Into her womb.

No condom in its way to form an impenetrable barrier.

No pill, that would have stopped an egg cell from forming.

My sperm found what they desired. What they needed.

A ripe, fertile egg cell.

A single of my sperm cells penetrated its walls.

Sarah came.

She came and came and came.

She cried out my name, and her love for me.

Loud, louder than the thunderstorm outside.

Again and again.

Decades of unrequited, frustrated, incestuous love, freed in an instant.

Then she collapsed.

My big sister on top of her little brother, who she had raped.

Whose virginity and first kiss she had stolen.

Whose child would now be growing in her.

The brother she had always loved.

The brother, that always had loved her.

But not in the way she wanted.

She desired.

She needed.

She kissed me one last time. This time it was tender. A kiss full of love, a kiss that was as well an confirmation of this love as it was an apology for it.

“I love you, Lars,” she whispered. “I always have.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was scared of the words I’d say if I opened my mouth, so I kept it shut.

She got up. Walked through the dark room, only illuminated by the thunderstorm outside. Walked with steps that were supposed to look confident, but couldn’t hide her shaking.

Opened the door.

Went through it.

Closed it behind her.

She was gone, and I was lying on my bed, alone in the dark.

Years passed by my inner eye. Years, in which she tried to betray her feelings. Years of hiding, of lies, of a love that was forbidden, that was doomed to fail, that was maybe even wrong.

But nonetheless, love.

“I know,” I finally whispered to no one but myself.

“I always have.”

And I cried.