15 Days Before Moving Out

Morning calls—as she always does—and I find myself groaning in disapproval at the simple act of waking. No matter how late my eyes flutter open, it always feels too damn early in that short window of time where my conscious and unconscious selves overlap. I’m at my most irritable in this short-lived intersection, but it soon disappears, along with all the memories of whatever esoteric dreams I might’ve had.

Sunlight flitters through the curtains hanging down beside me, still as can be. My eyes strain against the dancing yellow light and I turn my head to face the other side of the room. Oh, more curtains; more light. Something about that seems wrong, given that my bedroom does not border the outside of the house on both sides, but this discrepancy is soon cleared up as my mind slowly recalibrates.

See, it would be a confounding sight were I waking up in my room, but…

“Hannah, are you awake? Do you need some help, sunflower?” That’s my mother—no—my stepmother’s voice, calling out from beyond the curtain’s threshold. Were this really my bedroom, I suppose that would mean she’s speaking to me from outside my window, but I’m beginning to remember. There is no mattress at my back—no sheets covering my prone form as I curl up and reach for the snooze button of my alarm clock. No, I’m not even laying down at all, even if I did just wake up from a deep, relaxing sleep.

“Yes, Stepmother,” I reply, in a droning monotone that sounds absolutely nothing like me. The sound is sobering; it expedites my waking dramatically. I discover—remember—than I am on my knees, sitting on my calves beneath the kitchen table I have eaten meals at since the age of five when we first moved here. Not me and my stepmother, of course, but the family I had long before ever meeting her. My mother, father and older sister. The latter two have since moved on, but I still eat my meals at this table, with my mother and… her new partner, too.

“Good girl, I like you honest. Suppose it only tracks for the late bloomer to take her time coming out of trance.” My stepmother’s voice is dripping with smug amusement she makes no attempt to conceal. She is candid with me because her fingers—and her voice—have pushed deep enough into my head that further pretence is unnecessary; it would be wasteful, and uncharacteristically rote of her, to treat me like just another client. My behavioural conditioning is a thing to be enjoyed, apparently—savoured like a fine sauvignon. I shiver in delight at the fact that by my simple act of slow waking, I have made my better happy.

Wait… what was that?

“Simmer down, girl. I hear footsteps. Kat’s awake, so make yourself a ghost.” Before I can give so much as an inquisitive whine in response to that strange, infantilising spill of speech, I am silenced by a resounding finger-snap that proceeds the woman’s command.

I need to be quiet. I need to be still. Mom cannot know our secret.

The words bounce around my head destructively, laying waste to any other thought I may have. My concerns are smothered and promptly silenced as I remind myself, like a good, obeisant stepdaughter, that I must be silent as a ghost.

Soon, I hear the footsteps too. My mother—my real mother, that is—walks into the kitchen with a soft yawn, moving to boil the kettle while my stepmother greets her casually.

“Hey, honey. Just woke up? I was going to bring you tea in bed, but I was busy giving Hannah a lift to the diner.” Is… no… she’s just lying, isn’t she? I’m right here, at her feet, and I haven’t worked at the diner since she told me to quit. It was more an order than a suggestion, and for some bizarre reason I felt compelled to obey it. Since then, my income has been doled out in the form of an allowance originating from god knows where. Stepmom pays me for serving her, but it feels more like pocket money than genuine earnings.

“Mm, g’morning love.” My mother’s sleepy voice fights to be heard against the whistling of our old kettle. Maybe I should spend some of my allowance on buying a new one. Maybe Stepmother would like that, too… god, what the fuck is wrong with me? The sound of the chair opposite my stepmother skidding against the ground as it’s pulled out from under this table I lurk beneath is another hit of sobering dread, and once my mother fills the seat, nearly touching me with her dangling foot, my breathing becomes haggard.

What’s going on? I was in trance, again, and woke up here. I… I let her hypnotise me because… because I was stressed. Tired? Uhm… I’m not really sure, she’s always so convincing when she calls me over for a talk. But this is wrong, isn’t it? I feel like we’re hiding a secret, in this case with the concealment of my own physical form behind the tablecloth. I start to shake, my mind resurfacing so quickly that it contracts the bends. Dizzy and paralysed, I submit to the abyssal dim that touches upon my ailing mind and slows it, dramatically, until my thoughts string together in single syllable words.

This is wrong. Mom needs to know. I need to get up. I need to wake up and—

Stepmother’s bare foot—which had been hovering in front of me before now as a hypnotic focus—suddenly smothers my face. Like a waterfowl blasted with birdshot, I fall. My shoulders slump and roll forwards; my eyes do the opposite, rolling up and into the back of my skull, and my erratic breathing is conquered by a calm as overwhelming as it is unnatural. She adjusts her foot for comfort, the warm, lightly hardened skin of a middle aged, well-travelled woman spreading over my blushing face. I breathe deep the scent of every single mile she has ever walked and, as the compromised air floods my lungs, resolve to never disappoint this goddess bound by human flesh ever again. I’m under her for a reason. An unemployed college drop-out in her mid-twenties with no experience or common sense has a responsibility to sublimate her willpower against her superior’s wrinkled sole. Sure, she did… kindly suggest that I leave that low-paying dead end job, and I remember my grades being promising before she came to live here too, but if I became too distracted by a gorgeous woman living under the same roof as me to focus on studying, I clearly didn’t deserve that degree in the first place. Dead weight like me should be grateful to have a second, better mommy now.

I’m so glad I have her to teach me discipline where before I clearly had none.

“That girl…” Mom sighs, sipping her drink. I hear her doing it because she’s always so loud, unlike Stepmom who is the incarnation of elegance in everything she does. She is class, while my mother is just your average woman in her mid-forties. “I swear she’s becoming more of a teenager by the day, maybe I should’ve pushed her to move out more. Had to open the windows in her room to air it out, I don’t even want to know what she’s been doing in there.”

Studying. No, training. I melt against my stepmother’s warm sole and sigh into it gratefully; it sounds like Mom did not find the stockings. Stepmom gave me those, they help me focus. Focus. Breathe in deep… hold it… and exhale slowly. Focus is good for Hannah.

“Hah. Well, she’s still young.” Perfection speaks, swapping her feet as my cock strains against the tight, denim mini-shorts I’ve owned since I was fifteen. I can’t remember when so many of my old clothes—which had previously been sitting in a box in the attic—returned to my wardrobe, but my Stepmother always compliments me most when I look like this and, well, it’s nostalgic!

“Mm yeah, you’re allowed to be soft on her. But I’m her mother, so—”

“Kat,” Stepmom interrupts, so firmly that I shudder beneath her heavenly sole even though the stern tone was not for scolding me. I’m being well behaved, quiet and still. It’s… it’s Mom who’s acting out. I think.

Something happens, but I’m unable to catch it from my current position in the room. There’s a change in my mother’s demeanour and tone of voice following that simple utterance of her name, and I can only assume her posture has changed also, to complete the transformation.

“Sorry, dear,” she drones out pitifully. “You’re… her mother now, too. Let’s both do our best to… take care of her.” I hear the teacup almost clatter against the table’s edge as it’s placed down. Mom sounds just like I do when I’m blissed out from Stepmom’s hypnosis. Is… is she in trance, too?

“I accept your apology, Kat. Good girl.” Stepmom chuckles, leaning forwards as she speaks in a soft yet commanding tone. I know it well.

“Mmmh…” The other, lesser woman loses herself to the praise. Like mother, like daughter. “Thaaaank you honey…”

I begin to leak into my cruel denim confines. Then, in an instant, the sound of snapping fingers makes the world go dark. I return to heaven, and I never want to leave.

8 Days Before Moving Out

I’m packing my fucking bag. This living situation has gotten so out of hand, and until tonight I’d been complacent in… whatever the fuck is going on here! I know I haven’t been acting normal lately, and I’m certainly not the only one. I should have known something was wrong when my mother, who had never displayed any interest in the same sex for her entire life, suddenly brought home another woman and told me she’d be living here with us. They aren’t even married, but at some point—I don’t remember when exactly, my mind is so hazy as of late—I began to call her ‘Stepmother’. I’m the most sober I’ve felt in weeks tonight, after what I just sat through. Who wouldn’t be? Our typical, boring dinnertime became a circus act because the woman who raised me dared to suggest that it would be madness for my legal surname to be changed to that of my stepmother.

Neither of them so much as turned to check on me during this spat, but in the moment I was more than happy to sit still—eerily passive, as a docile daughter should be… no, I mean… I was in a compromised headspace at the time, as I have been for weeks now. What finally snapped me out of it was Stepmom’s reaction to my mother’s ‘misstep’ in pointing out how fucking crazy she was being. I was still locked in my strange artificial calm, repeating words under my breath that I no longer remember, when my stepmother poured a near-full glass of red wine over my mother’s head for ‘speaking out of line’. I was completely shocked, but my mother, surprisingly, was not so appalled. It was too eerie; she accepted the treatment like a beaten dog, frail and apologetic as Stepmom snapped at her with words sharp as razor blades. Even I was cut; her degrading monologue only served to wake me further with its harsh, sobering sting. My mouth still ran its script, but my mind was fully awake for the first time in god knows how long.

For the rest of the evening until I was excused, my poor mother was demoted from a participant in dinner to a mere serving girl. Her hair soaked and stained a rich and redolent crimson, she meekly poured Stepmom another glass and brought out dessert for us without partaking in any herself. She couldn’t even to return to her seat, hovering behind her partner, waiting on her hand and foot. It was obscene. I was horrified by the delayed realisation that life in this household has become very, very abnormal. Stepmother played footsie with me under the table with an obnoxiously innocent grin, absolutely drowning in her own smug satisfaction while Mom slaved away in the background. I felt sick, distantly recalling all the times I’d kept our secret, and stared at my husk of a mother with a pity that slowly unravelled weeks of ‘training’. Ugh.

So I pack my bag. I pity Mom, I do… but I need to get out of here and far away from them both. It’s not that I’m abandoning her, I just don’t trust myself to look out for anybody else until I can be sure that those thoughts pushed into my head have truly been purged. I’ve waited until the early morning to make my creeping descent to the landing and disappear into the street before either of my mothers have the chance to notice my absence. I just sat on my bed for hours, thinking about dinner over and over, ready to jump up and hold shut my bedroom door should either of them come to check on me. Feign sickness, maybe.

I’m ready to leave now. It’s not a particularly foolproof plan, but it’s action. That’s more than my pathetic mother has done… I mean, yes, I pity her, but there’s a part of me that also resents her for placing me in this situation in the first place. Her weakness is glaring.

My hand reaches timidly for the handle of my bedroom door, black bag slung over one shoulder. Slowly, the door creaks open, and I step out into the hallway with a lightness in my step that should impress any experienced cat burglar. I only make it two careful steps towards the staircase before I am frozen in place by a silhouette directly before me. She puts my own light-footedness to shame, ascending the stairs like a ghost who haunts this home more than she resembles a resident in earnest.

“Mom?” I whisper, seeing no reason to attempt to hide when her eyes are already upon me. They look so tired.

“There you are, sweetie. I was… worried about you?” Was that a question? I can tell that, unlike myself, she’s still lost under whatever horrid spell this house’s third occupant has put her under; her voice is far too dreamlike. As she ascends the top step and enters the hallway, merely a metre and a half away, I find myself too stunned to stop her reaching for the light switch and illuminating us both.

There, in the glow of filament, I see my mother for what she is. She’s laid bare by the lightbulb’s unflattering, incandescent light, and I almost wish she wasn’t. Her hair is still drenched, and she wears bruises around her neck and shoulders—displayed in full due to the low cut of her dress—wrought from hard suction. It’s only when I look upon her own hickeys that I remember that worn face in the mirror looking back at me before I left my room. Like mother, like daughter, except… isn’t she supposed to take care of me? I’m nothing like her; I didn’t bring that woman here and… and I snapped out of her control the moment things went too far.

“I’m leaving, Mom,” I tell her, more coldly than I had meant to. It’s hard not to feel resentment rising up internally, like bile, at the sight of her useless, placid smile. She’s still okay with all of this, staring at the daughter she helped to victimise. “Don’t go looking for me, okay? You’re… where you belong.” Before Stepmom, things were fine; me and Mom were close, in a sense, but I could tell that she was lonely. Maybe this is okay. She’s smiling, at the end of the day.

“Don’t stay out too late,” she mutters in her stupor, not registering the finality of my words at all. Whatever. I can barely look at her, dripping wet with Cabernet Sauvignon, another woman’s humiliation pet despite the fact she’s not even a real lesbian like… like me. She’s just a worthless pig, playing pretend for pity points. I don’t hate her, because such passionate emotion would be wasted on the woman who sold me to the devil.

Look at that. In the span of just a minute, and a couple of sentences, my opinion of her has dropped at an alarming rate. It almost seems unnatural, but… the lower I see her, the better I feel. It’s like a reward signal in my brain that gives me comfort for shedding all the guilt I still harboured over abandoning her. Now, I’m ready.

“Okay… goodbye, Mom.” Knowing that my confidence might falter if I hesitate for even a second, I thrust myself forwards into her space and brush past her onto the top stair. She carries the scents of thick perfume, rich wine and exertion; it can’t compare to Stepmom’s at all, but I’m glad for it in this moment. That woman’s scent is deadly to my higher thought.

We exchange no further words. I descend the staircase with the most effort I’ve ever taken in simple movement before in my life. In a twisted sense, I have Stepmother to thank for my newfound skill in remaining deathly silent. A sardonic grin touches upon my face, but I make a point to dispel the smile like I’m exorcising the demon that had been possessing me all this time. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I stare out—across the dim hallway—towards the house’s front door. At some point I started referring to this comfortable prison as ‘the house’ and not ‘my home’. Moonlight pierces the door through frosted glass and shines down like a pair of floodlights. I enter its glow in my slow and steady perambulation, letting it wash over me like the pale light can hope to cleanse me of the sickness I have contracted.

I know it isn’t so, when the woman I’ve been searching for clears her throat in the neighbouring room and steals my attention away from the escape before me. Until this moment, I had thought the front door to be my goal… but my destination was only ever her.

“Take a seat, Hannah,” she demands, her voice a numbing kiss; her pretty dulcet words make short work of my ego, unthreading it and restitching it into her grand design.

Naturally, I try to resist the pull, but I am undone. I want to obey her more than I want for freedom, even if the horror plastered over my face is enough to tell any onlooker that I’m not in control of my own wants anymore. Stepmother is the architect of my fate, and so I take a seat with the build up of a light, fuzzy sensation in the back of my head. It caresses my scalp, that buzz. I know the feeling well by now: defeat.

“What… did you do to me?” My bag slips free from my shoulder as I begin to slump in the dining room chair, staring across the table at the woman who apparently never retired to bed. She’s right where I had last seen her, sipping at a glass of red with an unfriendly smile that makes me shrink into my seat. Is she upset? Disappointed? Why should I fucking care?

I do, though. I care more than anything. This pit in my stomach at the thought of letting her down feels more intense than any feeling that comes to memory. It’s the pinnacle of my emotion, punctured at the end of her sharpened stare. My will is nothing but a perforated muscle that no longer has the strength to flex.

“Come now, girl. Don’t act so hard done by. You’ve been complacent in this every step of the way.” The woman, whose name I no longer recall—who has only ever been my stepmother—produces a chuckle that runs right through me as she retrieves a small plastic container from her bag, cylindrical in shape and no thicker than her thumb.

I can’t sit up. I can’t leave. I need to behave for Stepmom. It’s the rules—part of my behavioural conditioning. I shouldn’t have to hold fast to such silly demands, but I consented… she made me, I think, but still…

“You look confused. Did you enjoy the thrill of thinking you could leave of your own accord, by yourself?” Her grin is nasty; I can’t help but sigh against its assaulting shimmer. To feel those glossy lips against my skin would send me straight to heaven. When did I start crushing on her, I wonder? I understand why she made Mom think she was gay.

“I uh… Whatever. I’m leaving, okay? Because… you’re making me think weird. I’m going somewhere you can’t reach me, and I’m gonna clear my head… and…”

“Hannah.” The word shuts me down in an instant. My lips purse tightly and I stare at her like a silly little girl frightened of her godlike parent. “Listen to yourself, honey. You’re talking like a bratty teenager, no older than sixteen, acting out for attention.” The words make my cheeks unbearably hot, because I realise there’s some truth in what she’s saying. There always is; Stepmother is so smart…

“I-I’m not your—”

“Look at yourself. You’re dressed in the clothes I chose for you. I’m willing to bet you don’t even remember your old fashion sense, before me. Dressing like a slut to impress your Stepmother, then resisting my advances like you’re not the seductress homewrecker going behind your poor mother’s back. Such tight, revealing clothes. It’s obscene.” Without even realising that I’m falling under her sway by listening and obeying so freely, I do as she tells me and stare down at my outfit. Oh. I’m wearing a neon pink tube top and matching miniskirt, with black fishnets leading down to heels I’m shocked I descended the stairs so easily in. I’ve had practice lately, even if I don’t really remember it. I look like myself from a decade ago, going to my first ever house parties, trying just a little too hard to be noticed.

“You look like a drunken slut, except… you’re dead sober.” The woman wets her lips, topping up the glass of wine she’s been casually sipping from as she tortures me with speech. I’m not sober, because just her words are intoxicating enough to have me melting in my seat, cock stirring unpleasantly. Please don’t get hard, I beg it, letting the embarrassment of that likely outcome degrade my will to resist her even further. I’m overstimulated already, and we’re still feet apart. “Let’s fix that, okay? My conditioning’s holding strong, but I don’t think I can pull you into trance while you’re so worked up.” Her words should be empowering me, telling me I have more agency here than I realised. They don’t instil me with newfound confidence over my unearthed autonomy for one simple reason: her vicious, cherry smile. In truth, her honesty in giving up this information is terrifying. She knows that even with some slack, a leash is still a leash. I know it too, feeling glued to my seat and convincing myself through faulty logic that I can’t leave, not yet. That it’s not my fault for wanting to see where she’s going with this.

Perhaps this resignation is why I pretend not to see what happens right in front of my eyes, plain as day. With a nonchalance that suggests no wrongdoing at all, my stepmother twists open the small plastic cylinder and empties the contents—a colourless liquid—into her glass of wine. Her eyes are on mine the entire time, like she’s goading me to call her out. Like this is just a game. The winning simper she gives me for saying nothing tricks me into thinking I passed the test, forgetting that I should be feeling panicked.

“Drink up, daughter.” With a proceeding action I really should have predicted, the woman slides the glass across the table close enough for me to reach. I take the glass into my hands before I can stop myself, but find the will to pause against such a troubling sentence. Not the command, but the address.

“S-Stepdaughter, you mean…” I grow hard to the sound of my own stupid voice, stripped of adulthood and left to simmer in the humiliation of that specific deference unique to adolescents.

The woman clicks her tongue, causing me to grip the glass’s stem tightly in fear. “Unlike you, I do not stutter. I said what I said. And I told you to drink, didn’t I? Well?” She sounds too impatient to challenge, so without daring to question her I let it go. I lose my voice entirely, staring down into my full-bodied reflection like I’m looking over the edge of a steep cliff. If I drink this, I know what will happen. I don’t know how exactly, but I’ll become hers. More definitively than before.

If I don’t, however, what will happen instead? If I resist her, fight this, I’ll be back at square one; with a disappointing, weak mother who can’t stand up for her youngest daughter and weeks of wasted training, down the drain.

“Hannah.” Mother—I mean, Stepmother—snaps. The harshness of her voice lays waste to my thoughts of disobeying her, or merely stalling as I was. “Drink.” This time, she finishes her sentence with a sound that pounds me like a right hook to the face. I’m too disoriented to make any coherent sound, feeling concussed by that resounding finger-snap which has me bringing the wineglass’s rim to my lips without thinking of the consequences. The rich liquid coats my tongue and I swallow back the liquid with reckless determination. Anything to stop Perfection from being disappointed with a runt like me, I think, before the backwash of clarity returns.

Then, I choke. My eyes start to water as I cough up the drugged wine and clutch my throat, still twitching hard against my skirt where—thankfully—my stepmother cannot see. A small, pathetic puddle forms on the dinner table I have eaten at for almost two decades, sneering up at me. It is failure, in its purest form, and I am its poster child. I feel smaller than ever before, staring up at the woman I have disappointed with pupils thin as pinpricks. I’ve never felt so small in my entire adult life, but then, the night is still young. Actually, it’s already starting to get light out, the sun spilling into the room and showing me something warm and unexpected.

Her smile is radiance. She isn’t disappointed in the slightest. My chin slick with spit and wine, tears streaking down my face, she returns my horror with delight. The morning glow behind her appears as an angel’s halo, but she’s no messenger of heaven. The woman reminds me of her true nature as she gently takes the glass from my hands, eyes once again affixed to mine with purpose, and pours the liquid all over the carpet.

At first, I’m confused. My eyes trail downwards to the freshly stained floor and only then do I realise what she has done. I lick my lips instinctively, before clutching my head with shame that I’ve let this get so out of hand. I need to leave. Why did I just try to drug myself for her in the first place?

“If the medicine is too bitter to swallow back in sips, perhaps this is a better delivery method, hm?” The woman giggles like a girl half her—no—half my age, like this is all just fun and games. Like my entire future, my identity, isn’t on the line. Her big toe raises up into the air and blinds me with light glinting from her perfectly painted nail. She had me give them a fresh coat only yesterday; blood red, like a true seductress. I think back to how amazing it had felt, cradling her foot in my hand as I worked diligently, and silently, until my duty was fulfilled. Service feels so right, it’s a rush like nothing else. Especially when it’s for family.

“I’m… not. I’m…”

“You’re not strong enough to resist. It’s alright, Hannah. The time for theatrics is over, we staged that escape attempt together, you and I. It was necessary, for the stubbornness inside of you to part ways with any and all attachments to my Kat for good. It’ll be easier next time when you’re doing it for real, girl. Just be happy you won’t have to do it alone.”

“I’m… not strong enough to resist?” is all I can think to reply. The rest of what she said was far too complicated for me to grasp in this ailing mental state, and I’ve yet to even properly consume the fucking drug she’s referring to as ‘medicine’. I’m not stupid, I know what’s happening here I’m just… not strong enough to resist. Not anymore.

“That’s right, sunflower. Good girl. You know, you’re just like my Kat. The two of you have to be the most malleable subjects I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Blame her for this, Hannah. I know you have been, and you’re right to do so. She melted in my chair wantonly, inappropriately, because she has a fetish for falling, and once I learned of your existence I knew I had to have you. On your knees now, daughter.” Another loud snap and the head rush takes me. The high tide of her authority washes over the beach that forms my mind, cluttered with a mess of lingering resistance, and once it pulls back in there isn’t anything left but wet, uniform sand. I do as I’m told quickly, because if I’m not strong enough to resist then why bother with the pointless stalling?

I drop to my knees a sad sack of worthless flesh. At least I still have my name, I think, before remembering that tonight’s dinner table discussion had been about just that. Changing my family name to Stepmother’s… I was so upset and shocked about it earlier, but why? As I crawl across the seeping wet carpet towards the object of my innermost desire, I ask myself rather earnestly why I wanted to keep the same name as that poor excuse of a guardian.

Hovering in front of me, in all its heady glory, is my stepmother’s right foot, marinated in Cabernet Sauvignon. It looks unbelievably tempting. My eyes flick up to hers, cautiously, and find a smile kind enough to warp all of my remaining reason. “Go ahead, Hannah.” The permission is all I need. My hips wiggle in perverse delight as I cradle her ankle reverently and bring my face close to that honey skin.

“Mmgh…” My tongue flattens against the tops of her toes, letting the medicine seep into the traitorous pink muscle as I shuffle even closer. I’m as low as I can physically make myself without going completely prone, lapping up alcohol and god knows what else like a dog receiving her treat. She tastes like pure class. Being at her feet like this is the greatest pleasure I’ve been able to experience throughout these past, foggy weeks. Every time I would get confused and start questioning Stepmother’s perfect logic, she would delight in bringing me low and I would share her mad catharsis gladly. It just felt right. I was fulfilled while on my knees, in my place, breathing in her scent like a good bitch.

“There we go, child. Nice and calm. This was always going to be the outcome, since the moment you turned away from the front door. You knew that, didn’t you?” Her confidence is a hailstorm, pelting me into submission. I nod eagerly, taking her big toe into my mouth like a practised whore and rubbing my erection between my thighs. After a while of this, as though to prove her point and sink the final nail into the coffin she’s trapped the old Hannah—Kat’s burnout daughter—inside of, the woman pulls her foot back and gestures over to the bag I had packed to leave with. “Go on,” she says, ignoring my weak little whine, “bring it here and show me.”

My bag? Why? As the drug she spiked her wine with begins to take effect, my pupils going wide as saucers and my saliva building faster than it should, I decide that it’s too late to question her. I move across the stained carpet on all fours, drooling like a feral animal, until I reach the black rucksack I had prepared for my escape. I seriously thought that I could get away.

“Open it,” Stepmother demands once I’ve returned to her. I stare docilely at her swaying foot, swallowing back the pooling saliva and nodding shyly. The sound of a zip being ripped open impatiently fills the room, and from the black bag’s maw spills out…

Stockings. Dozens of pairs, crinkled from use. The nylon pours out of the bag like entrails; at least, the horror on my face is the same as if they had been. Is that really all I packed? Stepmother’s hosiery?

“Do you see now? You were never planning to escape from me. My influence is all you have to cling to now, Hannah, since your degree, career, and familial ties have all been dealt with.” Dealt with? That sounds so sinister, and yet, coming from a pretty voice like hers it still sounds right. She is just, even when she’s dismantling a woman from the ground up. She’s right, is all. I have no choice now but to cling to her for dear life.

“S-Stepmom, I—”

“Just Mom is fine.”

I swallow, feeling dizzier than I had when last giving blood. My face must be deathly pale, the sweat hugging my skin cold and my fingers digging into my juvenile clothing. It’s becoming harder to get a hold of myself, to remember that I am a woman in my early twenties—that I don’t have to obey this woman like her word is law. It’s too difficult to convince myself of this because just one peek downwards tells me what I really am: a dopey teenaged slut, kneeling at an adult’s feet. Not just any adult, but…

“Yes, Mom.” The word feels so naughty on my tongue, but the taste is not so bitter. In fact I think I feel relieved after saying it. My safety net is secured; I am no longer in freefall. The woman rewards me with her foot, lifting it to my face and nodding sternly. I pick up where I had left off, cleaning the extremity with my tongue without an ounce of shame in the act. The more I lap, the less I can think; rationally, at least. My eyes dull, my jaw hangs, and my cock throbs with an aching need I’d see to right away were it not inappropriate to jerk off in front of my mother.

“Do you want to touch yourself, daughter?” Her smile is a hanging guillotine knife, her foot the pillory. I couldn’t pull away if I wanted to, and I no longer have wants of my own—only impulse and obedience.

“Yes! C-Can I? Please?” I forget my prior hesitation in a quick, pathetic expulsion of breath and spit. The only reason I’m not touching myself right now is because I don’t have her permission.

“Do you think you can ask more politely?” The bevelled blade curls cruelly, but I see it as another kindness; it tells me that I’m satisfying her. Amusing her. Maybe if I keep her happy, she’ll let me cling to her forever.

“Uhm.” I bite my lip. The room is spinning. Only her foot, dangling benevolently from her ankle, centres me—stops me from spinning away into an ocean of dissociative thought. I take a breath, staring up at her while cradling my anchor gently. “Can I please touch myself, Mother?” It was easier to call her that the second time. The third will be completely natural.

The woman pulls her foot away, prying it from my surprisingly weak grip, then brings it crashing down into my stomach. Her kick is forceful enough to expel the breath from my lungs and cause me to lurch over involuntarily, gasping in shock.

“On second thought, polite doesn’t suit you. Kat’s daughter was polite, impersonal. She greeted me like a guest, showed respect like any one of my clients would. I thought I wanted your respect, but… to strip away that discipline, lay you bare… a pathetic, wretch of a daughter. All mine, all over me, but… free. I think I like that. If you choose to be mine because you’re following your heart, that’d really do it for me, Hannah.”

“Wh-What?” I’m wheezing, holding my gut as I try to sit back up, only for her next kick to connect with my cheek and send me collapsing onto my side with a sharp little yell.

“I’m freeing you. I’ve spent my life making people better, trapping them inside of routines meant to keep them grounded and responsible. All I want to do with you, my lovely daughter, is make you worse.” Lust compels her and she does nothing to hide it; in that sense, she’s freeing herself, too. “If you want to pleasure yourself then you should beg me for the privilege. Shamelessly.”

Whenever she tells me how I should be, I’m taken by a tingling sensation in the back of my head that feels like my brain rewiring itself in real time. I spit red onto the carpet already stained crimson and nod sluggishly. A smile spreads across my face, not all too different to Mother’s; where hers is an angled blade, poised to decapitate the young woman named Hannah, mine is a lusty red smear vandalising my former self.

Laying on my side, spiralling, I stare up at her, grateful and desperate. “P-please! Please Mommy, ahahaha… c-can I touch myself? Please! I wanna… wanna get myself off so badly… I know it’s gross of me… but… god… feels too good.” I’m rutting my hips into the air, leaking into my panties without even moving a hand down there. All I can think about is how turned on I am, nothing else registers. At first I thought she had spiked the wine with some sort of science fiction obedience drug, but now I’m realising it was something much simpler: an aphrodisiac. That’s all it took to make me like this, apparently.

“No, you little cunt.” No? But… but I begged and everything! Just as I think to whine in disapproval of the unfairness, the woman stands up from her chair and turns me over onto my back with her left foot. A high-heeled shoe presses down against my lower abdomen, just above my pelvic area where my cock twitches dramatically with need. “Make no mistake, I only want to free you so I can enjoy putting you in your place myself, over and over again. I cannot abide a boring pet, let alone a dull daughter.”

“A-ahhh… please!” I squirm beneath her like an insect, feeling nine centimetres of heel digging into my flesh and making me want to hurl. It hurts so good though… the other one never made me feel like this. “Pleasepleasepleaseplease…”

“You’re disgusting.” She says it like a compliment, making me blush. Before I can think to beg her again, I manage to ejaculate merely from the friction of my underwear and skirt, painting my crotch impressively from such little stimulation. I’m too overwhelmed, repeating her words like they’re gospel.

“I’m… disgusting…” My voice is so light. I’m completely gone, basking in that post-orgasmic bliss like I’ve just discovered religion.

“What are you, Hannah?” asks my mother, looming over me. I am comfortable in her shadow. When she snaps her fingers, my heavy breath stills and gives way to unnatural calm.

“I’m disgusting.” I repeat, blankly.

“What else?”

“I… I’m your daughter.”

“Good. That’s good. I’m all pent up now… go ahead and enjoy yourself with my hosiery, I’m going to fuck my girlfriend.”

The words give me pause. Mom’s going to go upstairs and have sex with her girlfriend, leaving me down here alone. I’m so jealous I can barely contain myself, but I’m also too tired to protest. I’m still in trance right now, but I can think clearly. Well… if you can consider this clear-headed.

“Okay… thanks for uhm… I don’t…” I don’t know what I’m trying to thank her for, but I feel so grateful all the same. She’s essentially ruined my life, am I supposed to thank her for that?

“You’re welcome, sunflower. You’re mine now, forever. Alright?” She beckons me into an upright sitting position with one commanding finger and plants a soft kiss against my forehead, like a seed. She’s ruining my life. She’s taken everything, and I fucking helped her. I’m so happy I could cry. I’m her sunflower.

“Y-Yes, Mommy!”

“Gross. Clean up after yourself before you go to bed. Love you, sweetie.” Mother stands up straight and slips out of her shoe, leaving both behind for me to make good use of. She doesn’t need to spell this out anymore.

Then, she’s gone. I hear Kat moaning through the walls while I enjoy another orgasm against my mother’s lingering heat.

Moving Day

“I’m calling the police.” Kat is acting delirious as ever. After a week of seething jealousy over her relationship with Mom, I can’t pretend to feel anything but smug right now. Mom’s leaving, and she chose me over this hysterical older woman. Kat’s just being a sore loser right now, but still, I cannot pity her. The past eight days were designed to make such a feeling impossible for me to access. I’m starting to figure out how Mom’s mind works now. Her manipulation, the way she primes you with one thing to accept or ignore another when the time comes, is an artistry I adore more than I detest. I can see why it’s wrong, but why would the devil’s daughter bemoan evil?

“And tell them what, love?” Mom’s arm snakes around my waist, pulling me close. I bite my lip and lean my head into her body indulgently, gorging myself on her expensive perfume like a materialistic slut. “That your therapist hypnotised you into becoming a lesbian and seduced your daughter into leaving home with her? Do you think they’ll clap me in irons after such a tale, dear?”

Kat’s face drops. She realises she has no legal argument here. I’m a grown woman, I can leave home when and with whomever I please. Her false bravado turns to an ingratiating simper, more pathetic than my own expression when I’m begging for attention. It’s almost impressive how pointlessly sycophantic she becomes, tugging on her ex-girlfriend’s sleeve. Here, her true colours come out. I watch coldly as the woman humiliates herself.

“Please, Diane. I… didn’t I do everything you asked? Why… why did you… I don’t understand.”

Mom scowls at the tight grip on her arm, but does nothing to pull away. Her words are her greatest weapon, and so she opens her mouth to speak her poison. “Why did I remove all of your triggers, and weeks of conditioning, just to leave you in this house alone, robbed of your only family? Because you deserve it, and because I get off on acting like I’m above you. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake, I’m afraid, from one deplorable bitch to another. You’ve always bothered me, Katja. You’d sit in my chair and blather on about dead-end dates with men you hate while being unable to accept how aroused my hypnotherapy made you every time I pulled you under. That stubbornness made me want to push harder, prove that you were full of it… ah, but when I learned you had such a lovely daughter, my plans changed. You were all too willing to serve her up on a silver platter for just another hit, don’t pretend otherwise. Hiding it was for her sake alone.” I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently when I would remain still and silent to conceal myself, I was—in reality—neither of those things. Looking back, I find that rather funny.

“I… then… take me with you?” The moment Kat says these words, a giggle escapes my throat before I can stop it. The woman stares at me in shock, while I cover my face with one hand bashfully. When I realise that Mother isn’t upset with my outburst, I decide to voice my opinion daringly.

“No means no, lady. Mom chose me, so pipe down. I’ll be the one she calls into bed when she’s lonely now, okay? She… loves me. Right?” I tilt my head up, staring at that mature smile she wears in spite of this squabble. She really is above it all.

“Oh, you’re being so cute. That’s right, sunflower. I’ve always desired someone like you; young, cute and vulnerable. Someone isolated enough that upending their life and stealing them is only a matter of how many weeks, not months, it’d take me. When Kat told me about you during therapy, it started to become all I wanted her to talk about. She didn’t even realise that most of the sessions were dedicated to talking about you. No, that’s not quite right; she didn’t care. So long as she could get her hit of trance, the addict was satisfied selling out her family like it was nothing.”

And now she has the gall to complain about two fully grown women making their own choices? My lips curl into an impish grin as I drink up the horror on the other woman’s face gleefully. “That’s awful,” I reply, knowing that I’m being just as bad.

“Hannah, you—”

“It’s not Hannah anymore.” I cut her off before the woman can make a fool of herself any further. Perhaps it is lingering sentiment that makes me spare her the humiliation. I see fit to correct her quickly, as though this is a point of pride for me. “Mom renamed me.” This is where my correction ends. I do not think to give this woman my new name.

“Go ahead and call the cops on me if you like, Kat. But we’re leaving. Isn’t that right, sunflower?” Fingers spread through my hair and ruffle it, exciting me more than they should. I’m wearing clothes that haven’t fit my body properly for years and acting like I’m not old enough to claim full independence. I wonder if the cage of infantilisation she has trapped me inside of to keep me under thumb—reducing my behaviour and attitude to that of clingy teenaged whore—is a fetish of hers that goes beyond simply being a means to and end, but I don’t need to think too hard about it. Thinking never got Hannah very far. I’ll be Mom’s jailbait slut if that’s what gets her off; her pleasure is more important than my dignity.

“Yes, Mom!” We’re going to our new home. This time, I packed more than just stockings. This time I’m serious.

“Good girl,” Mom states proudly, before turning her head. “Goodbye, Katja.”

Taking her lead, I glance at the third wheel, the loser, and say it too.

The outside air is refreshing. It is the perfect foil to the stuffy, oppressive air of the house we just walked out of. Now that we’re alone—if you can call this public neighbourhood sufficient privacy for such a claim—my tone changes. I had some decorum in the house, but now I’m exactly as mother likes me. Free and needy.

“Can you fuck me when we get home? You promised!” I press my body into hers as we walk, hanging off her arm like a prize. I’m half her age, maybe less, but I like the idea of being my Mom’s secret trophy girlfriend. That’s a bit of an oxymoron, but we’re an unconventional sort.

“You can wait that long, sunflower? I’m impressed.” Her lips paint my neck with a dark red transfer, blending in with the red hickeys that already line my collar.

“Ooh… I-I can… in the car?” I’m so nervous now; the smug from earlier has been excised by the reality that I might be able to be with her properly soon. I want to be a good daughter, and an even better slut. It’s all I have left to me after she took everything else. Thank you for ruining my life, Mom.

“From the backseat? That would be impressive.” She teases me expertly, causing me to pout like a little kid before realising she isn’t being serious. “No, you’ll have to wait. I’m not going to take your virginity until you’re good and ready.”

“W-Wait… how long?” I’m practically grinding against her now, not caring who sees. I’m half erect and pleading. I love her so much.

When the devil smiles, I fall silent and stare. My future flashes before my eyes; one in which I’m left pent up and needy for a longer time than a slut like me can bear. One in which my mind is just a little narrower, each and every day. One in which I dye my hair for her, dress in more revealing clothing, and beg so much for her touch she needs to beat the brat out of me every night. A future in which that firm hand feels better than the sex I covet. In which I worship her feet like they’re the only thing in this world that matters in that brief moment of single-minded devotion.

As I imagine this future laid out before me… as I dream of the life I’m walking into, at her side… I feel it all set in stone. I hold her hand and she squeezes tightly.

And I know that I’ll never again be anything more than hers.