Where else could one breathe clean air, catch fish in an unpolluted lake, fish without chemicals, fish from water you can swim in. These questions and hundreds more he would patiently confront Carrie with, but she was still unconvinced.
It saddened Sherry, because she knew that at the final point, their father would never permit them to leave. He had learned to need them. To depend on them. They would sign his death warrant should they leave. Sherry knew that. She had almost, in her own way, made peace with the fact. It was a beautiful place to live. And it was so easy, so simple, so undemanding an existence…
She heard him coming down the hall again, his gait a little less steady.
When he came into the room, she could tell by the slightly out-of-focus stare in his eyes that he had taken the drug. She had no idea what drug. Once, he'd confessed that it was some kind of extract from a mushroom, varied according to his own special formula. He claimed to have bacteria in petri dishes working overtime to produce the stuff. Sometimes she worried about him, worried that maybe he was taking too much of it.
But the poor dear, it was the only real recreation that he enjoyed. And it seemed to be the only way he could arouse himself…
"Come to me my dear," he said in the characteristically thick voice of his drug induced euphoria.
"Would you like me to finish this Chopin Etude, Daddy?" she asked, knowing that he would show no interest.
As expected, he simply shook his head and held out his hand. She rose from the piano bench, carefully folded her music and stacked it in a neat pile, then she turned to face her father.
It was easy to understand how someone, male in particular, would find her an appealing sight. That this male happened also to be her father could perhaps be forgiven in light of the fact that until recently, the young woman standing before him had been the one and only woman to cross paths with Lucus Simpson for close to ten years now. In the early years when it had been necessary to rely on his considerable intellectual powers merely to avoid detection, it had often been necessary to exist right in the midst of the very people who would have screeched for his capture in the shrill tones of hysteria so typical of the general uncomprehending populace.
Hide where they'd least expect it!
And he'd done it with his usual success.
Except he knew that there would be less and less safety for them. Eventually, whether or not by design, something would slip. He was, after all, no fool. He knew the law of averages, he could calculate odds. A chance meeting (remember, according to chain-letter enthusiasts we're never further than five people through a chain of acquaintance from anyone else in the country), some connection of links totally beyond the powers of prediction, and it would be over.
At its peak, his case had been a national story, and when one spoke of the peak, one spoke actually of three separate events, spaced apart by six weeks or so, that assured Lucus Simpson of initiation into that select circle of the near-famous, the nefarious and the infamous whose names trigger a spark of recognition in most of the populace. And if the trigger's sharp enough, it can even conjure up details of the case itself.
Would they remember?
He wondered.
There certainly was enough to remember.
"SIMPSON THE BABY-RAPER says fearful wife"
Headlines of a similar nature filled the hinterlands and the cities, with enough follow-up reports on national news to keep him up nights worrying about that one stray fool who'd actually remember…
And he'd had no doubt that somewhere, someday they would meet. No matter that there had never been a single shred of evidence against him that would stand for a moment on its own support in a court of law. No!
Never mind the fact that not a single eyewitness raised a voice against him.
Ignore his record of brilliance, of dedicated service to his profession, the long list of credits, his awesome credentials.
Who among the mad mob could recall any of those?
But the lurid details… the pictures of those poor children… The anguished cries of heartbroken mothers… The circumstantial evidence…
He knew there was no shortage of morbid ghouls spread across the entire land who soaked up precisely such facts as a way of life almost, trying to season the bland stew of their own dull existence with the blood and sweat wrung pitilessly from the pages of magazines, tabloids, non-fiction thrillers…
He had no stomach for it, and knew that ultimately the final disappearance would be necessary.
It had happened, precisely for the same reasons that he had managed to slip away unnoticed in the first place.
There were still a few, a very select few who believed in him, who knew of him, of his work, who even now were ready to lend whatever assistance they could manage.
No, Lucus Simpson was not without friends.
But he was without human contact. He had planned it that way, structuring his life so that it became a closed box, a sealed jar, a self sustaining system.
Their terrarium needed no attention now.
There were no outsiders.
No one to recall old nightmares.
No one to betray, no one to lie.
No men to prey upon the two jewels of his daughters, no one to soil the perfect life he had fashioned.
He had kept them pure. He had kept them unsoiled.
He had kept them for himself.
Since she'd been aware of her body, Sherry had regularly been called upon to ease her father's tensions.
"I'm tense, daughter, yes, I'm tense indeed. Ease the tension in my loins girl, come to you father and ease my pain."
He would whisper it to her in her sleep, he would call to her in the afternoon from the porch as she played in the yard, he would read to her at night and at the close reach his arms out to her: in short, she was at his command whenever he felt need of her.
It wasn't a conscious decision on his part.
It simply evolved into the custom.
Tradition starts with a single act.
The act had been placing her small hands on his swollen cock, letting her squeeze it, pull on it, jerk it until the fountain of white jism spurted forth and coated her arms, her chest just beginning to blossom with breasts.
She stared wide-eyed.
"What happened? What did I do to you Daddy? Are you bleeding?"
She was petrified.
"Easy little girl, easy," he'd laughed, gently, calming her as only he could.
The bond, forged almost at the moment of her awakening awareness was never something grafted onto her from the outside. It was from the start something interior, something organically fused to her own developing personality, something that was innately her.
By the time she had sufficient analytical powers to try and make some sense of the situation, objectivity was beyond her.
It was a bond that could be questioned, liked, disliked, approved of or disapproved of, but never broken.
She was a part of him.
And it was a bond she accepted in the center of her soul with welcoming pleasure.
The ritual was always the same, although lately he had begun taking more and more of the mysterious drug that he prepared in his laboratory.
"Purely by accident, purely as a result of tripping and stumbling into some previously unsuspected part of my mind, I have invented the first genuinely authentic aphrodisiac!!"
Sherry remembered well the day he had proclaimed that discovery, and remembered as well the first test of the substance.
It was then that he discovered the psychedelic properties as well.
Mild, but nonetheless real.
Once a week, he would treat himself to an excursion, and always accompanied by one of his daughters. In the past year, their sexual tasks had slowly merged with his drug experiences so that now, they knew that they would usually be called upon to assist. Which meant that as soon as their father's brain cleared enough from the first rush, he would develop a massive hard-on which would take most of the night to wear away.