better, the pair leaning into each other, thighs spread wide as the creature slowly bounced along the desert road.
“Where do we go, Lot?” asked his wife after a time.
Lot looked about him. The donkeys led the way. He did not lead them. Where? Gomorrah? No, too many would know. The priestess-Segor? Admah? Zeboim?
None of these were good ideas. He needed a city to hide in. The priestess would forget. He was sure of it. Already, she'd exacted her revenge. The people of Sodom's saw the day's events as a novelty. Sport. Something to focus their bewildered heads upon after such a festival.
But they'd return to the dancing girls soon enough. The harlots in the temple. The painted ladies. Lot knew them all. Knew that depraved, indifferent city, so focused on individual goals and achievements.
The memories of such men were short.
But he would have to avoid the priestess. Much had changed. His earlier choice remained the best option.
“Zohar!” he said finally.
“Zohar?” asked his wife. “But that's-”
“I said, 'Zohar.' The angels told me so. These beasts will get us there. Have you forgotten in whose presence you stood today?”
Lot's wife interpreted his words slowly. Zohar. Yes. A smaller city. Perhaps one in need of a wine merchant. Or they could run a stables. Or… something else. Far from the armies of Chedorlamer. Farthest spot away on the plain. She wandered off.
Lot pondered. How to control them during their ride together? Lot knew the limits of inebriation. It wore off. This wine controlled them. Would continue to. But any minute, his wife would look to him again. That glance in her eyes-his failure. He could not bear it. And to destroy her now… would leave him alone before too long.
He walked ahead, head down, watching the shadow of his two daughters against their donkey.
Her nagging grew incessant. With every passing moment, it seemed Lot's wife covered up a bit more, and looked to him less. How far? She asked again. Where would they eat? What of husbands for their daughters? Were they truly angels? Would angels sacrifice themselves so?
“Don't look back,” Lot advised her. “Don't look back.”
But she must look back. Thinking always of the effort she'd spent, making their hovel a comfortable one. Sweeping out the filth and insects that had marked their dreary existence away from the fields.
She must look back. Lot saw her about to. He raced ahead to strike.
“Don't look back!”
Lot's wife collapsed with the force of the blow. Their daughters moved forward, asleep now on the donkey, holding each other.
There would be no escape from her tongue, thought Lot. Even her silence would incriminate him, shame him, dishonor him.
He drew up his wife, felt her groggy head in his hands. Holding her slowly, almost tenderly, he brought her to rest against a rock formation, bleached white by desert sands.
“Don't turn back!” said Lot one last time, and twirled his wife around so that she faced the stone. “Do not disobey!” he added. Then he smashed her skull into the wall. Once. Twice. Again. The blood flew out. His wife moaned for an instant, then stopped. She stood perfectly still, not breathing, balanced on an outcropping of stone.
For a moment, Lot looked down. He remembered better times. Before, they had been tender towards each other. Until the ill-luck started. Brought on by her and her cursed, impure family.
He pulled her not-breathing head back one last time. “Don't look back!” he whispered fiercely into her ear, then smashed his wife again into the stone. Her face wedged into the rock. The neck pressed back, arms limply at her side, still she remained upright.
Lot looked at her a final time. Spat at the ground. Turned to capture the donkey. His daughters lay far ahead.
He didn't know, finally, who first suggested the idea. The trio pressed on to Zoara. Lot's explanation, that their mother looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, was accepted without comment. The cities of the plain were destroyed for them all. Each realized that, though the means of destruction was perhaps unclear.
It was the Eldest, thought Lot, who'd planned it. Her brain, feverish with desires. So late to marry. So ripe. She must have it. Now.
The trio had reached Zohar, refilled their jugs of water and traded some of the goods found in saddlebags for dried meat. The beautiful dates of the city could be had for a pittance, so they'd stocked up. Months of provisions. And into the caves they'd started, the father and his two daughters.
Knowing what was to transpire, Lot elected passivity in the cave. He lay himself down on the rock, a bit of bedclothes for a pillow. Aside, the last of the wine jug. Lot feigned drunkenness. But apart from a single glass of regular wine with his meal, he'd not tasted a drop.
He heard the Eldest make her way-first pulling back the makeshift curtain Lot had placed over their side of the cave. Then a splash of water. Another. Clothes rustled to the ground.
She approached.
“Father?” she whispered.
Lot said nothing. The girl waited for a time. Lot grew impatient. Rolled over with a moan. His loincloth opened. Magically. The girl climbed nearer.
“Father?” she asked again. Still a whisper. She looked him over now. Slowly.
“Mother was cruel to you, Father,” she said finally.
Decision made, she grasped him. Held him in the palm of her hands. She stroked, slowly, with the tip of her fingers, running from the base to the circumcised head. A drop appeared. She bent down, tasted it. Lot moaned. She reared back, almost spitting him out. Waited. Lot, earnestly, flexed his muscles. The tip of his cock pointed towards her. Expecting.
The girl bent again to the shaft, gripping it fully, as she'd seen so many men do after they'd had their fill of wine. She moved her hand up and down. Delicately. Poorly. Lot winced, said nothing.
“For our line, Father,” said the girl. There was no way he could find another wife. Or three. She believed it now. “For our line.”
The Eldest stood up. Lot saw her firm, bare breasts by the light of a torch. She dropped her thin skirt to the floor, stepped towards him once again. Kneeling down, she tried to take him in. All the way in. It didn't work. The virgin entrance was too narrow. Dried by fear.
Lot took her to himself. Crushed her against his chest. He felt the edge of her nipples press against him, round, full, so much like her mother had been. His right hand swept to her mound, running about it in circles, pressing up against the tip.
Now she moaned, for the first time. “Yes,” she said, slightly. “Yes, father.”
Lot continued his strokings. Her heart beat faster against him. “Yes, father.” He felt the slit loosening, water seemed to drip out. The moment was right. He drove himself into her, feeling the band burst, and himself all the way in. “Yes, father. Give us our line!”
Lot held nothing back now. Furiously, he swept his daughter to her back. He threw himself against her. Again, and again. Driving from his mind the nagging visions of her mother. Driving the shame away. “Yes! Father!” cried his daughter. She bucked beneath him, spread her legs like a harlot, then wrapped around. His motion was limited Still she writhed below. “Yes! Father! Our line!”
