Amber yawned as she filled a bowl with cereal. Her eyes were only half-open, and reluctant to open any wider. She quietly mumbled incoherently under her breath as she reached into the fridge and filled the bowl with milk.

She was alone, but she could still imagine her mother Megan’s voice in her head with entirely too much clarity.

Breakfast is a legen-dairy way to start the day!

Amber groaned louder, smacking the side of her own head as if to rattle that voice loose. Before her mind could offer a head pun, Amber plopped down on a chair in the living room and flicked on the TV. The news flared to life as Amber shoved a spoonful past her soft pink lips.

Still half asleep, she barely paid attention as they discussed the weather. Amber wasn’t planning on going anywhere, so that didn’t seem very important. Sports didn’t fare any better.

“In more exciting news,” Amber fluttered her eyes, gaining some mild focus a raven-haired newswoman began to speak, “local heroine Thermom once again came to the rescue!” In the corner of the screen sat a picture of Thermom.

Thermom’s short brown hair looked immaculate, not a single lock out of place. Her deep green eyes shone brilliantly behind her orange mask, and the tops of her shoulders in her blue bodysuit were clearly visible, including the mantle of her white cape. As her name might have suggested, she was hardly a young heroine, instead looking experienced—mature.

A quick glance, even of shoulders-up, would tell anyone that she was a shining paragon of justice.

“A smuggling ring dealing in everything from pirated media to drugs has been brought to justice after they began engaging in violence to protect their primary warehouse…” The newswoman continued, her bright, cheery voice lowering momentarily to add seriousness and gravitas to her report before brightening right back up. “We were lucky enough to get an exclusive interview with the heroine herself, and she had this to say!”

Superhero news is always at least a little interesting… Amber swallowed another mouthful of cereal before beginning to chew the next. Dunno how bad I feel that they were smuggling illegal Blu-rays or whatever, but getting violent… That’s worth stepping in.

The still frame zoomed in until it filled the entire screen, showing Thermom standing in front of the warehouse. Several women in all black were bound up nearby. Confidence radiated from her as she spoke in a cheerful, encouraging voice. “These ne’er-do-wells were trying to use our fair city for their nefarious ends, but I think a little time behind bars should help them cool down and reconsider what they’ve done.”

Amber winced, biting down a little harder on her cereal in protest.

Off camera, a reporter’s voice rang out excitedly. “What would you say to anyone else looking to cause trouble?”

Looking straight into the camera, Thermom offered an expression that could only be properly called a shit eating grin. “They should chill out, because this heroine is too hot to handle, and she’s going to make sure your plans are overcooked!”

Loudly groaning, Amber lifted up the remote, switched the television off, and nearly threw the remote across the room before gingerly setting it down.

Puns. Always puns. While she’d only looked half-awake before—more than a little groggy—that had quickly changed. She now looked annoyed, her curly hair somehow seeming even messier than it had before she’d turned on the TV. People call painful humor ‘dad jokes’ but I’ve just got mom… and nothing about her screams ‘dad’ while she’s making those painful fucking puns…!

Amber screamed as a hand suddenly fell on the top of her head, ruffling her hair. “Hey there, sleepy head. Something slowing down the quickest meal of the day?”

Brown eyes blinked incredibly slowly as Amber looked up towards Megan. Her mother was quite a bit taller than her, made more dramatic by her sitting posture. Despite looming over her, somehow Megan had managed to walk up behind her without being noticed. “Quickest… meal…? What… Mom what are you even—”

“Breakfast!”

Amber’s eye twitched, her mouth twisting in horror. She dropped her spoon into her cereal, frozen in place even as her mother tore a paper towel from a nearby roll and began to clean up the mess. To her credit she hardly seemed to mind, her warm, encouraging smile not faltering for even a fraction of a moment.

Even when Amber began to move again, silently moving her lips, she seemed utterly incapable of speech.

“Oh well… no use crying over that little spill, sweetheart!” Megan winked, quietly giggling to herself as she moved to pitch the paper towel into the bin. “But I wouldn’t milk it for all it was worth, either!”

Whimpers, soft whimpers, were all that Amber could manage.

Megan remained nearby, smiling in a way that was both entirely too proud of herself and also full of warmth and love. As much as her mother’s antics made Amber bristle, it was difficult to be genuinely angry so much as annoyed.

“Morning, mom. I will never understand how you’re such a morning person…” Amber gestured with her spoon as she spoke, growing silent as she lifted up another spoonful.

“Oh I don’t know if I’d call myself that…” Megan tittered as she moved across the kitchen, gracefully plopping two slices of bread into her toaster. “I like to think I’m a rather upbeat person. You don’t see me wandering in all black, huh?”

Just as she said, Megan was not the sort of woman who wore much black at all. As she spoke, tidying the kitchen in small little ways, she wore a bright orange sweater, and a pair of faded-blue jeans. Even the frames of her ice-blue glasses were vibrant.

Amber was midway through lifting another bite to her lips, and froze in place. Her whole body stiffened. “M-mom… H-how…”

Megan didn’t respond, merely humming happily as she opened a banana and took a bite.

“You just woke up…!”

Giggling to herself, Megan swallowed and gestured with her banana as she replied. “Nope! I’ve been up for a while…! I just have nowhere to be today so I was enjoying a little bit of gaming.”

Amber whined again as she finished another bite. “Mom, phone games aren’t—”

“Don’t you call me a phony!”

With another muffled scream, Amber struggled to eat quicker. Much quicker. The sooner I can get through this bowl, the sooner I can hide in my roo— A memory of her mother’s earlier pun about breakfast froze Amber again without even needing to be spoken aloud. Damn it… That’s not even what breakfast means! It’s to break the fast! To eat! To stop not eating! Fuck!

Megan sighed as her toast popped up. Instead of merely grabbing it where it sat, she pulled the lever down faintly, then pushed it up to grab both slices out of the air. “Come on, sweetie. It’s well past dawn, you should really lighten up—”

Endless daggers poured from Amber’s eyes as she turned to face her mother. “Mom…” She took a deep breath. Her mother wasn’t being cruel. Her jokes were painful, and constant—if nothing new—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t at her wits end. Reason had never worked before, but Amber had run out of patience weeks ago. “I want you to listen to me, okay? I understand that you’re very excited. Very, very excited. Every moment you have a chance to use your wordplay, it makes you feel…” Any number of metaphors and other colorful language sprung to mind, but Amber kept all of those from escaping. “It makes you feel very good, but it can also be very… tiring, can’t it…?”

As she listened, Megan slowly spread butter across her bread. Her warm smile didn’t waver. Amber had her full attention, so much so that she rubbed butter into the same spot of bread enough to dent her toast.

“Keeping that up all the time… Every time you throw out another of those puns… doesn’t it just make you feel so… tired…? So… exhausted…?” Amber’s tone lowered in an attempt to put as much seriousness into her words as she could. “Every time you pun, it uses up a little bit more of your energy. With how much you’ve already punned this morning… that has to make you feel pretty sleepy… huh…?”

Megan yawned, her eyes fluttering as her posture slowly slumped. For just a moment, so quick that it was nearly imperceptible, both of her pupils shined with faint, purple outlines. Even if it had been more dramatic, Amber wouldn’t have noticed it.

Unlike Megan who was giving Amber her full attention, Amber was staring down at her cereal.

“Nnn… Now that you mention it, I do feel like I have something in my eye…”

Taking a deep breath to prepare for the worst, Amber composed herself. Against her better judgement, she spoke. “And why is that, mother?”

“Because I feel like I could… could…” Megan yawned again, so much of her overwhelmingly extroverted energy draining away as she pushed through the fatigue to speak. “Like I could go for forty winks…?”

Amber pursed her lips.

Groaning won’t do any good… but at least she… hesitated…? She looked up from her food, watching her mother lazily flutter her eyes. This must be a bad joke. She’s humoring me so I’ll open myself up for something even worse, even… more… ‘clever’. If I don’t put a stop to this now it’s only going to get worse!

Forcing herself to smile—an inauthentic smile as they came but a very sincere smile all the same—Amber looked directly into her mother’s lidded gaze. “Mother, when you talk like that, you aren’t showing me how clever you are. You’re using up precious mental energy, making it harder and harder for you to think about… anything else…!”

Megan’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t make a sound, her mouth merely falling open the faintest bit. Her eyes lost focus, but she still kept a grip on her butter knife.

“You’re making it more difficult for you to focus on anything, making yourself more tired… using up all of that cleverness is going to leave you without a mind left to think for yourself…!” Amber didn’t raise her voice, but her tone was still sharp as a blade.

“I…” Megan yawned again. Her voice was much softer, much quieter. Her eyelids fell lower, as her body slumped lower. Her glasses slid down her nose, making her look even more pitiful. “Don’t… mind…

“Ohh…”

Amber stared as purple flashed around Megan’s pupils again, and a blankness set in.

All of her mother’s peppy energy was gone. She didn’t drop the knife, but she wasn’t buttering her bread either. She merely stared forward as though she were in a trance, her eyes a window into an open, empty mind.

“I… what…” Amber took another bite of her cereal, noticed there were only a few more left, and frowned as she looked between her immobile mother and her food. Whatever was going on, it didn’t feel so immediately concerning that she couldn’t finish the last few bites remaining.

There’s no way that I saw that right. Purple, in her eyes? They’re green. They’re pretty, always made me wish mine were green too, but they’re not that kind of exotic…

 Her eyes stayed on her mother, staring with blank, vacant eyes, as she finished the last few bites of her cereal. She didn’t savor them, chewing only as long as it took to safely swallow without choking herself. Soggy cereal was always a disappointment, and she didn’t want her mother’s bizarre reaction to interfere with her meal.

“What… even… happened…”

Quite unlike usual, Megan had no erudite reply.

She isn’t talking about volts or ohms because I said “what” as though I said watt… Amber rose from her seat, slowly stepping up to her mother. She didn’t turn “happened” into… into… I don’t know, happy…? Amber twisted up her face. It’s not like I’ve got her horrible sense of humor…

Waving her hand in front of Megan’s deep green eyes didn’t earn a response, either.

“Mother…” Amber lowered her voice to an even more serious octave. “You don’t usually take this game so far… but… if you listen to me, and you really think about it… Acting like this, being so… tired, so… so…” She gestured wildly, more and more frustration shaking through her hands. “So… gone… it’s going to start to affect you. You’re going to start to actually be some sort of… tranced-out zombie… open to suggestion, just letting whatever I say go right into your mind with no filter. Then you’ll just be doing whatever I say, thinking whatever I tell you to think…”

Amber paused, crossing her arms over her chest. Unlike her mother, Amber was the sort of woman who wore black—almost exclusively. She wore an oversized, long-sleeved black t-shirt over a pair of black pants more fit for sleepwear than anything else.

Black socks were even wrapped tightly around her feet as one of them tapped at the floor.

“Is that what you want…?”

Purple again surrounded Megan’s pupils, and her eyes slowly blinked. Making her look even more out of it, even less in control of her own faculties, her eyes didn’t even blink in sync. First the right, then the left, and on the second pass their order reversed. Amber stared in disbelief.

This was far beyond the point of farce.

“Is… is that… what I… want…?” Megan mewled, her voice so quiet as though she were shyly whispering in a very important library. “Some sort of… tranced-out… zombie…? Whatever… you… say…?”

Amber looked over her mother again, waved her hand in front of Megan’s eyes… and then smirked. “You know what, if you’re going to keep this up mother…? Yes.” She stepped closer, her finger poking in to the center of her mother’s chest. Their height difference meant that was where her eyes fell if she was looking straight ahead, and she did need to reach above her mother’s large breasts, but it was worth it to make her point. “You’ve made so many puns, and now, after all of that, you’re only going to think, only going to do, whatever I tell you.

“You’re going to be my tranced out little zombie, obedient to my commands as though I cast some spell over you…” Amber’s smirk grew more and more crooked as she leaned more and more into her playfully tyrannical mood. “Some very powerful, unbreakable spell that I cast so long ago, a spell that made it so each pun made you more and more my loyal, helpless, devoted slave that now you have no other choice but to kneel and obey.”

Purple flashed brightly, almost blindingly around Megan’s eyes. There was no denying it this time. Something very strange was happening.

That only became more obvious as her mother fell down to her knees.

“I have… no other choice…” Megan slurred her words as her glasses fell from her face down to the floor with a quiet clattering. “Kneel… and… obey…”