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Today was the day. Every year, Jodi and her husband Walter had a meetup with all their friends to a place that didn't allow children there. In previous years, they sent the children to a friend's house for the weekend, but this year, they were bringing home a babysitter. During the day when their parents weren't home, ten-year-old twins Tamara and Thomas could supposedly take care of themselves, but their mother was clear that it was was Tamara whose job it was to look after her "little brother" Tommy, although he could be trusted to look after his six-year- old little brother Nathan and two-year-old sister Molly. As she often did, Jodi went into her sons' room as soon as she got home from work and closed the door behind her, as she and Walter had already finished packing their bags earlier in the day. Nate and Tommy knew that this was going to be a warning lecture. She worked in HR, and sometimes Tommy wondered if she treated employees like she treated them. "You know what day this is, and you know that this is very, very special for your father and I. I want you to be on your absolute best behavior for Angeline today. She might be only sixteen, but you'll do whatever she tells you. If she says hop, you hop. If she says dance, you dance. Do you understand me?" "Yes, Mommy," Nate and Tommy said together. Their mother could be both very strict and very nice, and her rules were simple. If they listened to her and did what she said, or even if they tried and messed up, she would be caring and rewarding and forgiving. If they didn't, she started taking things away from them, and she had spanked them firmly, in the living room, in front of their sister. That hadn't happened for a long while. They knew how to stay on their mother's good side, and one way was to call her 'Mommy' after she told them to do things. "Okay," she said, smiling. It was a short lecture. "That's all I wanted to hear. I hope you have plenty of fun together." She smiled and opened the door and went downstairs to feed Molly. Angeline was expected to come at six, and she arrived at exactly six, carrying a big pink suitcase through the front door and leaving it in the corner of the room near Molly's playpen. Thomas' eyes bulged. That was their babysitter? She looked like a cheerleader, a very well- developed one in a T-shirt, jeans, and pink sneakers. Tommy and Tamara had sitters before, lots of them, but he couldn't ever remember any of them looking like that. He was only ten years old, not old enough to have a real reaction or quite understand why his pulse was racing on seeing her, and she definitely didn't know why her smile seemed to be focused entirely on him. "Here I am!" she shouted. "Hi, Nate! Hi, Tommy! Hi, Tamara! Hi, Molly!" Tommy sighed inwardly. They were supposed to be Tommy and Tammy, or Tom and Tam, or Thomas and Tamara, but everyone always called him Tommy and her by her full name, and apparently Angeline was no exception. "Exactly on time," Walter said. He was a chief auditor at a bank, and his mannerisms tended towards the professional, at least as far as his children had seen him. "Excellent. But that means we have to leave right now." "Don't worry," Angeline replied, as Jodi picked up Molly to hand to her, a transfer designed to make the toddler comfortable with the new babysitter. "I already know. Leftovers from the fridge the first night, and I'll cook the rest. I've done this before... well, not quite this." She smiled lightly. "Just remember, call if anything goes wrong," Jodi said. "Kids, we love you very much, but we really do have to go now if we don't want to get a speeding ticket." "Bye, everyone!" Walter shouted as he left with his wife. "That was quick," Tamara remarked. Usually, her mother had much more to say, lecturing the sitter almost as much as she lectured her boys. Angeline smiled her beautiful smile, a smile that a part of Tommy wanted to get lost in, even at his age. "That's because they know me." There was an excitement in her eyes. She didn't want to mess around; there was something she wanted to get started on immediately. "And, what's more, they know me so well that I can do something I bet you've never done with a babysitter before," she continued, and when she said the word 'babysitter', she looked directly at Tommy, and he had no idea why. "We're going to look at a photo album," she said, putting Molly back in her playpen. "That's boring," Nate complained. "Oh? You think so? Well, how about this? If this photo album is boring, we'll do what you want today. If it's interesting, we do what I want." "Okay," Tommy said immediately. To him, this bet had no downside, as he had to do everything she told him anyway. "Okay," Nate also added when realizing the same thing. Their parents had a closet with a divider in the middle, and the kids were never, ever allowed to go behind it except in dire emergencies, as that's where the gun safe was. So it was to their great surprise when Angeline made a bee-line for it, pulling it open in one motion. The clothes racks behind the divider were empty, but Angeline focused on the upper shelves. "There's a brown one and a black one, and I'm not allowed to show you the black one. Oh, this is it. Let's go downstairs, I still need to keep an eye on Molly and this might take a while." Angeline sat on the couch, the twins and Nate all at least somewhat curious as to what could possibly be interesting about a photo album, and the question was answered with the very first picture on the very first page. The image had come from a digital camera, printed in very good resolution on an ordinary, laminated piece of paper. Their mother was wearing a business suit, all professional and polished, and their father was wearing a very flouncy pink dress, a thick diaper under some ruffled panties, stockings, a wig, clip-on earrings, and pink heels. He lifted a leg as he kissed his wife with his pink-painted lips. 'Jodi + Walter' was written in a big pink heart just below the picture. They stared in shock as she turned pages, of group pictures of the 'Greater Area Sissies' and pictures of their father in ways they'd never seen him before. Their father, nursing a bottle while laying in a crib. Their father, wearing a baby harness and crawling on the floor, held in check by their mother. Their father, in a playpen with a lot of other men dressed just like him, as the women in the picture cooed over their babified boyfriends and husbands. And they all seemed so happy, even when they were being fed in high chairs or cuddling plush dolls when wearing giant mittens. "This is fake!" Nate shouted after twenty minutes. "Fake? Do you think that your parents have a photo album full of fake pictures of themselves in their closet? I didn't bring this here. You saw where it came from. By the way, all this stuff he's wearing? I bet that came from the back part of the closet as well. That's why it was empty back there." "Then where is it?" Nate asked, not understanding, but the twins did. "This is where they're going right now, like they do every year," Angeline explained. "They brought all this stuff with them. And once they come home, they'll have lots of new pictures to add to the album." She chuckled. "Here, take a look at this one. He is such a cutie, I swear." Walter was curtseying for the camera, silk gloves on his hands, pink heels on his feet, and a blissful smile on his made-up face. Another picture showed him in the same pose from behind, a suspicious bulge on his rear. "What's in his diaper, is that poop?" Thomas asked, a question he never thought he'd ever be asking about his father. Angeline laughed. "The answer to that question is in the black photo album. You're not old enough to see that." Technically, neither was she, but she had every intention of taking a look once the kids had been put to bed. "How did you even know about this?" Tamara asked. "Because," Angeline said, with a big smile as she knew one of them would ask eventually, "this is chronological, so if we go up here..." She found last year's group photo. "Those are my parents, Jacob and Melanie, so I'm what you would call a 'family friend'. By the way," she continued with a subtle smile, "this happens every year in May, and my birthday's in February, just like all of yours. I wonder why that is?" "Eeeeewwww!" the kids all replied, sparking Angeline's laughter, with Molly joining in even though she had no idea what was going on, and the toddler girl walked up to the side of the playpen. "Wanna see!" "Okay," Angeline said, showing the toddler the very first innocent picture. "This is your mommy, and this is your daddy." "Daddy pretty," Molly chirped. "That's right! Daddy is very pretty. And now, we have a couple of boys with promises to keep." They looked at her. "You agreed that if this album was interesting, you'd do what I want. But all I want is for you boys to be just as pretty as your Dad. Well, maybe not quite that pretty." This was the moment of truth. If Tommy started freaking out, or running away, she was going to call his parents and had a few other tricks prepared, but she didn't want to have to force him. Everything would be much easier if he went along with it from the start. Her mother had given her lots of tutelage and instructions for this. You couldn't strictly force a boy into dresses, even a boy as meek as Tommy, not unless you wanted to turn him into a serial killer. No, the way to do it was gently but firmly when appropriate. Shower him with love, withhold the love as punishment. Iron fist in a velvet glove. Melanie had likened it to fishing: hook him, gently pull him towards you, let the line play out sometimes so that it wouldn't snap, and gradually reel him in. "Softly, slowly, catchee monkey", Melanie had finished with, and Angeline held on to every word, smiling, relishing. She was still a virgin, but she was convinced that this feeling was better than sex. "How?" Tommy asked instead of complaining, and Angeline's heart leapt. "Well, to start with, I want you two to go upstairs and put on these tights," she said, opening the suitcase and pulling out a pair for each of them. Tamara's jaw dropped, actually dropped, in incredulity. This didn't even make sense to her. The photo album was one thing, but how could Angeline have possibly known their sizes before coming there? "Take off all your clothes, even your underwear, before you put them on. Relax, I'm not going to see your weiners." Nate giggled when she said 'weiners'. The boys hurried up the stairs to Angeline's delight, and she pulled out a pre-arranged armful of items from her suitcase. "C'mon," Angeline told Tamara, her voice sounding just a bit conspiratorially sinister. "By the time we're done, he'll be such a perfect little cutie, he'll put even your dad to shame." As Angeline was pulling out items, Tommy was helping put his little brother's tights on. This wasn't the first time Tommy had worn girl clothes; it wasn't even the first time he'd worn tights. He could remember times when his mother had dressed him identically to his sister, one time both of them wearing matching pink shirts; there was also the time that he remembered that Tamara hadn't wanted to wear a dress to some dumb social function at Mom's job when they were eight years old, and so she had talked them into swapping places, treating it like a prank as she put him into Tamara's tasteful dark blue dress. Tommy had cared less about the fact that he was wearing a dress than how absolutely boring everything was and how much he wanted to be playing instead. When they got home, she'd thanked Nate and Tamara for being good but showered her oldest son with love, congratulating him on not giving the secret away. (He didn't want to talk to anyone there anyway, and neither did his sister, so that was easy enough.) Angeline knocked on the door, and Tommy opened it. She was expecting the boys not to have done as she'd asked and was relieved that they did. "Well done!" she complimented. "It looks like somebody's done this before," she added, and Tommy felt too embarrassed to reply. "Okay, Tommy. Hold out your arms in front of you, and keep your legs together for me." He did, and, smiling, she put what looked to him like half of an ordinary light green summer dress, the back being missing, over his outstretched arms. He was thinking how weird it was to have one in two pieces when she demonstrated that it was one piece, the two halves meeting together in the back with a zipper and a tough, tricky button that went through the zipper's hole. The garment was stiff in ways that Tommy was not expecting, the tight fabric keeping his knees together and some boning keeping his torso straight. He gasped as he realized how he was restricted. (On hearing the gasp, Angeline recalled how she had asked for a corset for him, but her parents had been firm: No breathplay, not anything like breathplay.) "Is this my dress?" Thomas asked quietly, and Tamara chuckled. "No, sweetie, this is called a slip, it's just something that people who wear dresses also wear sometimes. This kind gives them proper posture without any effort and helps them to walk more sweetly," she said, running her fingers through his long hair. His mother had told him that he'd never have to get a haircut if he didn't want to, and she liked his hair the way it was, so he kept it that way. "Where's mine?" Nate asked, just because his brother had one. Tommy almost said that Nate wouldn't want one, that this was confining and didn't let him do anything, but he felt very vulnerable and kept quiet. Angeline laughed aloud. "No, you're too little to have one of those." She thought he'd be cute in a hobble slip as well, but her parents weren't going to make one in his size and he might have really hated it to the point of screaming and crying. Besides, it was better for Tommy to become accustomed to the idea that his little brother was able to do things he couldn't, and Angeline enjoyed the idea that Nate would help his sissified brother with basic tasks that the older boy couldn't do anymore. As much as he belonged as a helpless little doll, Nate would be for some other girl to completely sissify at some point in the future. "Don't worry. When you're Tommy's age, I'll get one for you as well. But I do have something for both of you to wear." She pulled out matching sets of wide, frothy petticoats, which she belted around their waists. "Now, here are your dresses," she said, a great big smile on her face. Nate's dress was a frilly, calf-length, light green frock of puffed sleeves, soft ruffles, and lace that lightly rested on his petticoats, and she effortlessly pulled it over the little boy's head as he eagerly put his arms up, willing to play the same fun game that his dad played. "Tamara, can you zip him up for me, please?" Still amazed at what she was part of, Tamara did what she was told, zipping up the back and understanding how the button and zipper worked. He'd need her help to get it off without tearing it, she was sure. Thomas put his arms up in the same way that his brother had, knowing that it was always better to anticipate what his caretakers wanted, like his mother had taught him. "Keep your arms down, Tommy," she said instead, and she pulled a lime green dress over his head, then helping get his arms through the armholes. It looked like it had puffed sleeves, just like his brother's, but after she zipped him up, he could tell that these sleeves were full of fairly solid padding and that the dress was boned just like the slip was. He couldn't move his shoulders much anymore, keeping him from lifting his arms up too much or reaching out too far. He was about to say something or ask why when she gushed "Oh my God, you are so absolutely adorable!" and kissed him on the forehead, the very first time a female not in his family had ever kissed him. "Okay, both of you sit on the bed," she instructed, and Nate climbed up onto his lower bunk while Tommy sat next to him. The lower bunk was Nate's and the top one was Tommy's, because their mother was afraid of the younger boy falling off, but Tommy knew that he was a lower bunk kid now, at least while he was wearing his dress. Climbing was one of the many activities that had just become off-limits for him. "And the final part for now, shoes to match your pretty dresses," she said. She started with Nate again, putting a pair of low-heeled light green Mary Janes on his feet and strapping the finicky buckles. Again, Tamara came to wonder how she'd gotten to know their sizes. Did she just guess? Who would have told her? Then, she put a similar pair on Tommy's, the buckles just as finicky, only his had three-inch heels. "Tam, I'm taller than you now!" Tommy noticed when he stood up on his toes, feeling a bit weird and uncomfortable and trying to make light of things. Sticking her tongue out a bit, Tamara rose on her tiptoes as well in her socks, closing the gap, and Tommy realized that the difference was that she could stop tiptoeing and he couldn't. He looked away nervously, chewing his lip. "Oh, Tommy," Angeline said, gently patting him on his padded sleeve and gently pulling him towards her, "what's wrong? You've got nothing at all to worry about, I promise. You're just dressed up, that's all. Are you afraid of people finding out?" He reluctantly nodded. That wasn't quite what his fear was, his actual fear was something he'd have a hard time putting into words, but it was close. "No one is going to know unless you want them to, I promise," Angeline told the boys, smiling. "Although, Tamara, have you recorded any of this?" "I haven't recorded anything," Tamara said truthfully. She didn't understand why she would. Who would she ever show something like that to? That would just make her friends think her family was weird, and her by association, and she'd just learned that her parents really were weird. Besides, her mother had always told her that she needed to keep her "little brothers" safe, and showing pictures of them in dresses to anyone was the opposite of that. "See? Your sister's not going to blackmail you." Angeline almost sounded disappointed, and Tamara just looked confused. Blackmailing Tommy would be as pointless as taking a shower in a rainstorm, as he did everything she told him anyway. Being the tattletale he was, he'd immediately run to their parents or possibly even teachers - he was that kind of kid. Even if she carried out such a threat and sent pictures like that anonymously, they were still of her brother and it'd still mess with her reputation, and it wouldn't take a genius to figure out who took them. Besides, she didn't want to do that and couldn't imagine a scenario in which she would. "On the other hand," Angeline continued with a big smile, "if you'd like me to take pictures of you, ask politely and you can start an album just like your father's." The boys didn't say anything, Nate because he still thought photo albums were boring in general and Tommy because he was anxious. "If you don't want to, that's fine." Let the line play out sometimes. "Besides, your faces haven't been made as pretty as they can be yet. Most people who wear makeup have vanities just for that, but we'll have to use the bathroom," she said, leading Tommy out of his own room by the hand, as he minced along in the tight slip, swishy, petticoated dress, and weird-feeling heels that made him feel like he was tiptoeing everywhere. "Why do you keep saying 'people'"? Tommy asked. She smiled, pleased that he'd asked the question as she'd had the answer prepared. "Because that's the right word when it doesn't matter if they're boys or girls. Some people wear dresses and makeup to look pretty. Your father is one of them. Today, so are you boys." Angeline absolutely loved the modern approach to gender. She could teach him to mince, curtsey, twirl, play with dolls, and spend his days being her very wonderfully helpless and cute little princess, and she would keep calling him a boy and he would be perfectly confident that she wasn't turning him into a girl, never realizing that those were just words. He still looked a bit nervous, this was all so new to him, so she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, and he saw down her shirt, and he knew he was being allowed to see something most other boys his age could only dream of. "Have you done this before, Tamara?" Tamara shook her head. "See? Your sister is not a person who wears makeup. Fortunately, I am. Watch carefully, Tamara, you might want to do this yourself one day." She obviously didn't mean that Tamara should apply it to herself - she meant apply it to him, or maybe some other boy in the future. The first thing she did was wash their faces and hands vigorously before applying considerably less makeup than she was wearing. She didn't want to make them overdone or garish; if they looked in the mirror and saw clowns, it'd ruin the effect. Instead, she used very light foundation, blush, and lip gloss, all of it made for young children. "Don't wipe your faces, don't even put your hands to your faces," she told them. "This is kids' makeup, it's easy to wash, so it'll smear really easily." Then she found a pack of ten rainbow-colored press-on nails, gently lifting one of Tommy's hands. "Are those going to be stuck on him?" Tamara asked. "Not really, not these kind. These are a starter brand for children who have never worn nails before, so if you put any pressure on them, they'll pop right off. So Tommy needs to be very careful that this doesn't happen," she finished in a no-nonsense voice - iron fist in a velvet glove - and he nodded submissively. She had never seen such a perfect boy in her life, and her pulse quickened as she thought of how much fun she would have with him, particularly after he reached puberty. She wouldn't do anything overtly sexual with him, of course, not until he was old enough - but that was part of the thrill, the teasing she could do, and him helpless to stop her, even if he were willing to. Patience. Softly, slowly catchee monkey. There was more reeling to be done later. She patted Nate lightly on the shoulder. "And as for you, little guy, we have just a little bit of this." She had pocketed a small bottle of mint-colored coloring. "Don't worry, it's not real nail polish. It's just like the makeup, it'll come right off if anything touches it. So it's all up to you to make sure it doesn't. Don't let it wipe on anything and keep your fingers away from your mouth," she instructed as she brushed it on his fingernails. Nate nodded. To him, it was all a silly, weird game. He'd feel differently if he were told that this was girl stuff, Angeline was sure, but he'd just been shown his dad and older brother having stuff like this done to them and still being called males. "And now I have a couple of bracelets for you," she continued, putting a pair of well-fitting, color-coordinated bracelets around Nate's wrists, "and a couple for you." She pulled out a pair of oversized, sparkly bangles that were wider than even his upper arms. "They're too big, they'll fall off," he softly complained as she put them on him. "Not if you hold your arms up, Tommy," she gently chided him. "I'm sure you can make yourself comfortable." She was thinking that he would put his arms up in a pony or sissy pose, or keep them folded in front of him, but instead he kept his hands on his upper chest, one palm above the other, and she almost jumped for joy, exalting in just how incredibly demure and cute he was making himself look. "Do I have to stay like this?" he asked quietly, a well of sensations rising up within him as he looked at himself in the mirror and seeing how she'd adorned him. Everything she did made him feel weaker, more vulnerable. He couldn't raise his arms or lower them, he couldn't bend or twist very much, he couldn't run at all or even walk very well, and she could do absolutely anything she wanted with him, right in front of his sister and little brother. And she was so very beautiful and giving him such close, personal attention... "Silly. I'm not going to make you wear them forever," she said, an enormous smile on her face. "But for now, you can stay just like that." She finished their looks off with pigtails for each of the boys, bright green scrunchies in their hair that made them look very sweet indeed. Tommy looked in the mirror again and saw nothing but a pretty little child wearing a very pretty dress, and he smiled just to see what it would look like, and the child in the mirror smiled back at him. "See, Tamara? What did I tell you? They're taking to it like ducks to water. This is normal for them. Like father, like son. Okay, boys. It's time for dinner." "Can I even walk down the stairs?" Tommy asked quietly. "Of course you can, Tommy. Maybe not like you're used to. Don't worry, I'm right here." Nate was able to hop down the stairs in his Mary Janes, but Tommy held on to Angeline's arm as he slowly walked down the stairs sideways, putting both heeled feet on each step as he took them one at a time, feeling very dependent and small. Maybe other boys would have ripped and tore at the clothes, violently struggling and screaming for help, but he was the kind of boy who did what his mother told him and went along with his babysitter's decisions because he didn't want to be punished and because it was just so nice being so close to her. If she decided that he was going to be a cute and dependent child, then that's what he was going to be, just like his dad was. "Potty! Potty!" Molly yelled as she saw them. Thomas started mincing over to her immediately, wondering how he was going to carry her up there in this. "Oh, are you the one who usually takes care of her? That's wonderful, you are such a good boy. But Molly, today, your brother gets to be taken care of instead. Tamara, how about you take Molly to the potty and then to bed? I'm sure it's her bedtime about now." Unless Angeline was right about this all being normal for them - a concept that was still bothering her - this was the first normal thing that Angeline had told her all day, and so she immediately went to do it. "Tommy, Nate, you two go sit at the table. I'll bring you your food shortly." Nate took big, swishy strides and sat on his chair, the one with the booster cushion on it, and giggled at how slow his brother was. Tommy took short, dainty steps, his heels clicking on the floor, to carefully sit next to his brother, his hands still demurely at his chest. He couldn't do anything dressed like that, but at least he wasn't expected to, and being doted upon by such a beautiful girl was giving him indescribable feelings that he didn't know how to voice. When Tamara came back downstairs, Angeline had already placed glasses of tea on the table in front of the two boys, with curvy straws to drink it with so that they wouldn't mess up their lipstick so much. She'd put plenty of sugar in it because she didn't think they'd like the taste otherwise. "Is that tea? Can I have some?" Tamara asked. "Well, I just used the last two teabags from the pack, let me see if there's any more up here. Oh, here we go," she said, pulling a teabag from a half-full carton of Earl Grey. And some sugar... there you go." Tamara was nervous and had the idea that maybe she'd do something to the tea, but she'd effortlessly made it right in front of her and so she was a little bit relieved. Angeline then went to warm the leftovers in the microwave, the turkey noodles they enjoyed, and a wide smile grew across her face as she watched Tommy delicately eat his food, making sure not to pop off his nails or let his pretty bangles fall. Both boys took small bites, attempting not to smudge their lipstick, leaving only a little of it on their curvy straws and eating some as well, although she forgave them for that because they were trying so hard to be such good children. Besides, as she reminded them, the little kids' lipstick was totally non-toxic. "Okay, boys," she said once they'd all finished, "before it's time for you to go to bed, I think we can enjoy watching you give us a little dance session," she said, smiling at Tamara a bit. "I can't dance in this," Tommy complained loudly, the first time he had spoken up. Angeline gave a light, girlish giggle. "Of course you can. I'll show you a simple one." She led him by the hand into the living room, his brother and sister following, as he took the delicately mincing steps that he was quickly beginning to become accustomed to. She popped a DVD into the player, and the family big-screen TV started playing some Disney Junior songs with rhythmic beats. "Dip, twist, and twirl," she told him, showing him the limited movements he could make to the childish music, and he followed along. It wasn't much of a dance, but it was easy, and she spent the next few minutes complimenting the boys when they did well and lightly correcting them when they messed up. Tommy was such a natural at this, a born sissy, and she almost squeed out loud as she watched him wiggle. Tamara, her emotions rising, felt her heart beat in her chest as she understood just how unbelievably easy it was for Angeline to turn them into putty in her hands. As Tamara continued to watch the scene play out in front of her, her brothers being made to dance like puppets to little girls' TV tunes, her growing sense of deep wrongness, anxiety, and fear started to overwhelm her rational thinking. She was, on the whole, a sensible girl. She didn't believe in monsters or ghosts, the way some other girls at school did, but she also hadn't believed before that a babysitter would come in and do that thing that she'd seen some evil women in half-remembered shows do, that thing where they hypnotized a guy and made him fight his friends, what was that called? Oh, right, the word was seduce, she knew that Angeline was seducing him. She didn't really understand all that stuff in the photo album, those were all adults anyway, and she didn't believe what Angeline had said about this being normal for him. She couldn't see her brothers like this anymore. She knew, with the absolute certainty of a preteen, that this had to stop. Angeline's focus was entirely on the boys, so she didn't notice when Tamara snuck upstairs and opened the door to her parents' room. They had given her and her brother the combination to the gun safe only a few months ago. Just in case, Dad had said, while Mom frowned. Thomas had been allowed to touch the Chekhov double-barreled pump-action shotgun (Company motto: They Should Have Seen It Coming!) only once, a single inaccurate shot while being held by both his father and mother, and it had made his ears ring and he never wanted to touch it again. Tamara had fired a few shots, but it made her shoulder hurt. They received lengthy lectures about gun safety and that they only had permission to open it if both something had happened to their parents and there was a bad guy in the house. Tamara's reasoning was simple. Something had happened to her parents: they weren't there. There was a bad guy there: Angeline. Therefore, it was okay for her to enter the combination and pull out the gun. Her father had told her that sometimes just hearing the loud CHK-CHK sound of shells being loaded into it would scare the bad guys away, so she waited until she left her parents' room to put the shells in and chk-chk the gun. Angeline looked up at her, staring uncomprehendingly. Tamara sucked in a breath of air; well, Dad had only told her that it might work, not that it would work, and the bad person was still here. Geared by the few times he'd been allowed to play such video games, Nate's six-year-old mind was very simple on this topic. There was a gun, and when you didn't have a gun, you ran away from guns. His skirt fluttering, he ran as fast as he could in his Mary Janes into the dining room to hide. Angeline continued to stare, mind blank, a deer in the headlights. Thomas realized what his sister was aiming at and tried to quickly step back from Angeline, but encumbered by the hobbling underskirt and the awkward heels, he fell on his rear and his bangles fell on the floor. Tamara was panicking desperately, her hands clenched, putting more pressure on the triggers than she should have as she aimed as best she could at Angeline's head, rushing towards and down the stairs to get a better shot and make sure that Thomas didn't get hit. Why wasn't the bad girl moving?! "Run away or I'll turn your face into sushi!" Tamara screamed, because that sounded like a cool movie heroine thing to say, but she was terrified - what if Angeline really was a monster, the kind of monster that shotguns didn't even work on, what if she was going to turn into something else, or use him as a shield, what if the gun didn't fire, what if, what if... Angeline tried to make her brain work, she knew this was a bad situation, but her mind was in fragments. Her primary worry had been that Thomas might have gotten angry or scared, and she had well- developed plans for what he might do. She had thought that Thomas' twin sister might need some education on how to treat him, and she'd gathered that Tamara wasn't as into this as she was, but the idea that his twin would object to this at all wasn't really considered. The idea that she would completely freak out and actually point a firearm at her, or that was even a possibility at all, wasn't remotely in the list of things that Angeline thought that she might have to be worried about that day. Tommy was also having a hard time understanding, he couldn't even imagine how much trouble his sister would be in, but he couldn't tell his sister to put it down, any more than he could have told Angeline to stop treating him like a sissy. "You're holding it wrong," he said instead, being helpful as he'd always been taught to be, and Tamara realized that he was right; instead of holding it out in front of her face, she put the stock to her shoulder, right eye looking down the barrel, just like she'd been taught. Angeline stared at him in shock -- was he encouraging his sister!? -- and a vision appeared in her mind. The latest common Reddit meme was of a group of Kenyan funeral celebrants that were shown as dancing to a tune by Astronomia, usually after some accident or bad decision. She wondered how many memes would be made about her if she were actually blown away by a panicked ten-year-old girl. She glanced towards her suitcase in the far corner of the room, and the dancing Kenyans grew more visible, the Astronomia playing louder. "I'm leaving right now," she said, running towards the door, unlocking it in haste, throwing it open, and running as fast as she could to her car. She slipped inside the car in one quick motion, slammed the door, pushed the button, and ignored the beeping seat-belt alarm as she reversed out of the driveway, turned abruptly, and floored the accelerator on her way out. Tamara pointed the shotgun at her the whole way, only closing the door - and locking it, forcefully - after the car was out of sight. Nate was sobbing and sniffling, urine running down a leg of his tights as he shuffled out of the dining room. Tommy tried to rush over, but his slip and dress got in the way, and as he reached for the back, his fake nails being pushed off by his exploring fingers, he realized that he wasn't supposed to be able to take it off by himself. "Tam, help me," he asked, and she did, managing to slide the button through the buttonhole and the zipper, pulling it down harshly, doing the same thing with the slip Thomas pulled off the clothes and then tried to pull off the shoes, but the small buckles were difficult to open, and the last rainbow nails were flung off his fingers as he finally managed to undo them. Throwing the shoes as hard as he could into the wall, he rushed over to his little brother and managed to get his clothes off as well, Tamara staring at the door. Her phone rang then, a small jingle in the tense room, and she answered immediately. It was her mom, of course. "Come home, just come home, please just come home," she was crying into the phone, before her mother could say anything. "Are all of you safe?" her mother asked desperately, confused. "Did anyone get hurt?" "We're all okay. She's gone, I think. Please just get here as soon as you can," Tamara blubbered into the phone. "You stay right there and don't do anything," Thomas overheard his mother say firmly. "We'll be home in an hour and a half. You just stay right where you are. I'm going to hang up now and call again later. You stay right there. Do not leave the house. Do you understand me?" "We're not going anywhere, Mom," Tamara replied. "Okay. I have to drive now. We'll be home in an hour. I'll call later." Her voice was cracking with panic, and she hung up. "Nate, listen," Tommy said, pulling off the boy's soaked tights, then using the tights to wipe him as much as he could. "You know those video games on my computer you're not allowed to play?" There were only a couple. His parents had locked down his computer just like his phone. "Go up there and play all of them but don't leave our room. Okay?" Nate nodded, and ran, naked, up the stairs. Thomas was certain that Tamara wouldn't have done this without a reason and got the idea that his sister knew something he didn't. He was sure that the reason had to be in that suitcase, and he ran over to the far side of the room and threw it open. He fished through its various compartments, pulling out a pink garment, and his eyes went wide. "The police!" he abruptly yelled. "Is she going to call them?" Tamara replied, not seeing any flashing lights. In her panic, the idea that pointing a gun at her babysitter might be illegal hadn't entered her mind. "No, that's what I mean, she can't call them, just look at this stuff," Thomas said, pulling out clothes from the suitcase to show her. The first item was a dress, the second a pair of mittens, the next a pair of booties, a pacifier with a strap around it, a diaper cover with a chain through it, and what looked like a bonnet with built-in headphones, only with more straps and locks - all of it in his size. His parents had given him and his sister "the talk" a while back, and while they never discussed how much they were into it, they told him what fetishes were, and what pornography was, and that pornography involving children was highly illegal, and he concluded that locking baby clothes sized to fit a ten-year-old constituted child pornography. The police would have questions for Tamara, he was sure. He was even more sure that they would also have many, many more questions for the person who had brought the clothes. "She'll get in way worse trouble, she's not going to call them unless she's special needs," he added, using his school's euphemism for 'retarded'. When he said the words, he realized that these clothes were designed to turn him into a special needs kid. Experimentally - he just had to know - he briefly put on one of the mittens over his right hand. It was very well made, very soft inside and out, yet with a stiff layer to make him unable to grasp anything. Tamara wasn't really listening or looking at that point, as she realized that the house had a back door, and a garage, and even windows that Angeline might be able to get though, and she furiously ran to secure the house. Tommy's mind roiled. What if Tamara hadn't come down the stairs with that shotgun? Would Angeline have made him wear this stuff? Or would he have asked to wear it? He pulled the mitten off, letting it fall to the ground, and picked up a bootie. It was rounded on the bottom and had what felt like springs inside. He put his hand in there, rather than his foot (which he abruptly noticed was still in the tights). He pushed on the springs by pressing his hands together, and what felt like little screwdriver heads pressed through the stretchy sole fabric and into his palm. If he tried to walk in those, he would be painfully pricked. He let that fall to the ground as well. A mad desire welled up in him to put all of the locking clothes on before the parents came home, suckling on the pacifier and crawling around like a cute, vulnerable little baby, letting them see what she'd intended to make of him, but he kept looking instead. He unzipped a compartment near the top of the suitcase and found a wrapped plastic bag marked 'Nytol' with some crushed blue powder - he'd seen the ads - along with teabags in a box marked 'Diuretic Blend'. Panic, long-delayed, hit him as he figured out what he thought was the plan. Angeline would let him and his little brother dance after drinking the tea and then say that they were tired from dancing. They'd fall into a deep sleep and pee themselves. Then she'd tell them what babies they were for peeing themselves, and probably put him in the rest of it as well. (Just him, he realized with slight relief - there weren't any locking things in her little brother's size.) He didn't know if puking would work at this point, it'd probably been too long, but as his sister came back from making sure the doors and windows were as sealed as they could be, he ran up the stairs, screaming that they'd been drugged, and Tamara realized that there was something in the tea, just not in her tea. He yelled for Nate to join him as he ran into the bathroom, and almost shoved his whole hand down his throat trying to make himself puke; both dinner and (fortunately) some tea went back up his throat as he felt like he was choking. He urinated as well, trying to get every drop out of his bladder before the tea hit him for real. Wait, where was his little brother?! He ran into his room and saw his brother sitting on his chair in just his underwear, curled up into a ball. He hadn't even made it into a game lobby before falling asleep. "Nate, wake up," Tommy said urgently, shaking him, afraid that his brother might not be able to do that, relieved when the little boy did. Tommy saw that the scrunchies were still in his hair and the bracelets were still on his arms, pulled them off, and threw them to the floor, before pulling off his own scrunchies and throwing them similarly. "She gave you something to make you sleep and pee." "I wanna sleep," Nate replied. "If you're asleep nothing's happening." Tommy understood very well why his scared little brother wanted to be in a very safe place where nothing was happening. "Okay, well, you still might pee, so let's get your underwear off and get you on the toilet..." Tommy realized both that his brother would fall off the toilet and that he still smelled like pee and poop. "No, I'll give you a shower, and then you can sleep in the tub." "I'll drown!" "I meant an empty tub." Tommy just noticed the blinking light on his phone, texts from his father, a couple minutes apart: --- are you ok? answer please --- --- She drugged us I think were ok Washing off nate --- were his replies, and he set the phone down, walked Nate into the bathroom, and got the showerhead to a good temperature before he started washing his little brother off. He realized that he was sweating and shaking himself, and so he hosed himself off as well, treating every single blink as the effects of the soporific, his breaths coming out ragged. What was Angeline doing to him, why had her mother let her do that to him? She knew everything, of course she knew, she'd set it all up! His mother always wanted him to be like that. She'd made Thomas little all his life, gave him lots of praise and affection for acting girly, and then she brought in a cute babysitter and told him to do everything she said, and after Angeline had dressed him up and made him into a little baby, he was going to be perfect little Tommy forever, a boy who wore dresses and diapers. "Tommy, is Angeline evil?" Nathan asked as his big brother washed the makeup off his face. "I think so, maybe," Thomas answered. "Maybe her parents are." Saying it, he realized that he no longer trusted his mother anymore in the slightest and that he thought of her as an enemy, a plotting villain from the movies who lived in his house. "Maybe our parents are." "So Tammy's not going to jail?" "I don't think Tammy's going to jail," Thomas replied, vigorously scrubbing his own face. "Some other people might." Contemplating possible futures, few of them completely realistic and none of them good, he meticulously dried Nate off before laying him back down in the tub, went to his room and put on the most big-kid clothes he had, a plain white T-shirt and corduroy pants with pockets (which, he realized with fresh eyes, were nowhere near big-kid enough, not like the other kids, not like he should have had), picked up his lame phone (he'd have to get it unlocked after this, at least he could still call 911), and went back downstairs. His father had texted him again - 'I know what she did' - and he didn't reply. His sister was still staring at the door. "It's not all her fault, and she's not coming back," he explained. "Mom brought her here, she knew what she was going to do. It was supposed to happen. And you stopped it." Thomas had never loved anyone as much as he loved his sister in that moment, and probably never would. "No way, Tom. Mom always tries to protect you! She tries to keep you out of trouble!" To her, 'protect her innocent twin brother' and 'send a babysitter to sissify him' were in direct opposition. "This is her protection," Thomas replied. "Angeline's not a demon. Don't you remember the pictures she showed us?" She'd thought that was just Mom and Dad stuff that Angeline had happened to know about. She was a 'family friend', after all. "She was getting me ready for when Mom came home. She's just doing what Mom said, too. She just thought you'd help." "Help, why would I help, I wouldn't help turn you into a..." Tamara started shaking a bit, thinking, remembering the times Thomas had previously worn a dress, the differences in how they were treated. There were some things that her mother had said to her on occasion, some she didn't really agree with and others she didn't quite understand, stuff about how Thomas was more like a little girl than a boy. She'd thought that this was just stuff that she said when she was angry. He was right. Holy crap, he was right, no wonder she'd known their sizes and everything else, she'd just been in denial about it, not wanting to see the obvious. "Mom kind of already did, didn't she? That's why everything's like this with you and her, because that's how Dad is. It was going to end like this." She looked at the tight, restraining dress and slip, still on the floor, and at the locking baby clothes tossed out of the suitcase, and her world view started to change as much as his had. She was more convinced than ever that he needed protection; she had just drastically changed her opinion of what he needed protection from. She started shaking and crying, and then he started shaking and crying, and the two of them squatted on the floor and huddled close together, arms around each other, the shotgun still lying beside them, and Thomas stopped fighting the drug and fell asleep. "Tom, wake up," Tamara said, jostling him, and he groggily remembered that he was drugged and forced himself into wakefulness. Retreating towards the direction of the suitcase, getting as far from the door as possible, he had the very fleeting, dreamlike thought that the shotgun on the floor had two barrels and he had two parents. As soon as they opened the door, his parents took one look at the scene, and both of them sucked in breaths of air. Tamara squatted on the ground, upset, next to a shotgun. The odor of urine permeated the room and clothes were scattered around the floor. Thomas was on the far side of the room next to a suitcase with pink clothes next to him, the sort of pink clothes that Walter had worn before, and a look on his face that had never appeared there before. "Nate? Molly?" Jodi asked in panic. "Molly's upstairs sleeping, Nate's In the empty bathtub, probably peeing in his sleep," Thomas answered from the far side of the room. He had to urinate very badly as well but held it in with anger. His parents looked over at him. He was avoiding them, why was he avoiding them? Jodi didn't understand. Thomas didn't do anything, it was Tamara who'd gone crazy. "Tamara," Jodi began, trying to turn 'mother' back on and only partially succeeding, "I understand that you were scared. But what you did was very, very bad, bad enough that the police might get involved. If-" "Mom, she can't call them for the same reason a drug dealer can't call them!" Thomas shouted. Jodi blinked, looking at her son. He never dared to interrupt her. What had gotten into him? Angeline was supposed to ease him into the gentle, classically feminine lifestyle that he belonged living. What on Earth had happened here? "Tommy, Nytol and some herbal tea aren't those kinds of drugs," his father replied. "I'm not talking about that," Thomas replied, the reminder making him force himself more awake, fighting off the effects of something he wasn't even sure was still affecting him. "Here, catch!" He tossed his father one of the booties, and his father caught it. (He abruptly, apropos of nothing, realized that this was the very first time he had ever caught anything thrown by his son.) Walter recognized what it was immediately. He'd been wearing booties just like it in the photo album; a pair was sitting in the trunk of the car right then. If this hadn't happened, he would probably have been in a crib and wearing them as his wife cooed over him. Instead, he turned to her in puzzlement. "Did you know that they'd made this?" Angeline's parents made such things and sold them online. Due to the combination of materials and the time they took to make by hand, a pair of such booties was worth a couple hundred dollars at least, which is how much his own pair cost. He glanced at the suitcase and guessed that it held at least a thousand dollars' worth of handmade goods that Angeline's parents would certainly never want to see again. Being a sissy was not cheap. For Angeline to come that well-prepared also meant that she'd had a very thorough idea of what to do with them, an idea that a sixteen-year-old probably didn't think up all by herself. "They were only to be brought out in very special circumstances," his wife replied, and he threw it back to his son. She walked up to Thomas- he retreated away from her- and told him what she'd been planning to tell him the whole way home. "She wanted to diaper you and take care of you, so you could enjoy the experience. That was all. Tamara, you could have just called us if you thought something was wrong." She'd never even considered that, being in the grip of fear. "There was no reason for you to bring out a gun!" "You should feel lucky she had the gun. If she didn't, she would have had to use a knife. But she's too small to threaten with a knife, she would have had to use it," Thomas replied, feeling like he had to say that, that it would protect his sister somehow. His parents stared at him. "You be quiet," Jodi said angrily, needing to reassert her authority over this family. "Tamara, I thought that you were more mature than this. Now I'm going to have to punish both of you." "You punish her for this or ANYTHING and I'M calling the cops!" Thomas screamed at his mother, loud enough to make Molly cry upstairs. "And I'll show them this, all of this!" He pointed to the locking clothes, pulled his phone from his pocket, and pantomimed dialing 911. "Then we'll see who gets punished!" "Jesus, Tommy!" Jodi shouted, aghast. He'd never dared to yell at her before, let alone threaten her, especially not with something like that. She still just couldn't understand how everything had gone so wrong so quickly. Walter inhaled sharply. He could imagine what would happen if Thomas carried out his threat. He'd that it would be Jacob and Melanie who would be in the most trouble for making those, but he knew that this might very well end with him losing custody right along with his job and could even involve him and his wife both spending time in jail, and Walter knew very well what happened to men like him in jail. "Nobody's calling anybody," Walter said with as much authority as he could muster. He figured that if he hadn't been there, if it had been just Jodi with no father, Thomas, or maybe even Tamara, would have already done it, and all four children would have been on their way to foster care. "Neither one of you is doing anything except going to bed," he continued, picking up the gun, "and Tom, if you pee yourself, there won't be any diapers. Jodi, let's go upstairs, put this away, check up on Nate, deal with Molly, and talk this out rationally and we can decide what to do." The kids' father, always the peacemaker, always the conciliator. Jodi shot the twins a look full of threat and vengeance, that once everything had settled down, they were in for the worst time of their lives. Thomas tried to kick himself into gear. Think, he had to think what to do, he couldn't just go with anything anymore- then he exhaled, walked over to his shaking sister (he was shaking too, he realized), and whispered in her ear. He'd realized that he needed to keep this stuff, he needed leverage or his mother would do something to them (he didn't care what happened to him at that moment; he was far more worried about Tamara), he should have already done this. "I'm going to take all the locking stuff and hide it. You take the keys, keep them separate, make sure she can't actually use them if she finds them. Throw the rest of it away, and we'll say that we threw all of it away." Tamara hugged him. "Tom, that's the best idea you ever had," she agreed. Thomas gathered all the locking clothes in his arms after piling up the keys, praying to something that his parents wouldn't hear him after they were done dealing with Molly and closing their door, or leaving their room for any reason. As silently as he could, he pulled on the bottom drawer of his dresser, the one full of his white briefs, and lifted it to get it all the way out. There was a gap between the bottom of the drawer and the actual bottom of the dresser. He'd discovered the potential hiding spot a while ago but never had anything to hide in there, and congratulated himself for thinking of it so quickly. He looked back downstairs, seeing that Tamara was carrying the whole suitcase out, and, angrily fighting his urge to urinate, he stood at his parents' door, planning on distracting them if they opened it before she came back from the dumpster. He listened in on their conversation: "They're terrified, Jodi! They're only ten years old. Put him in a dress? It doesn't matter what Angeline, you, Jacob, or Melanie intended, you know what effect all this had on not just him, both of them. We'll be lucky if both of them don't have flashbacks from just seeing a dress!" Silence, for a bit. "This will be with them for the rest of their lives." "More than you'll ever know. She was supposed to help him. That's all I wanted, for him to have the life you have, the life he deserves." "I wanted that too! The idea made sense, okay? He'd know Mom and Dad were into it, but it wouldn't be Mom and Dad pressuring it on him, he'd be brought into it in a safe environment by a beautiful young girl instead. But you didn't talk it over with Tamara, and there were things you didn't tell me. I'm not blaming you or anyone. I'm just saying, it didn't work out. That's what happened, and we need to learn to live with that." Tamara came back in, silently closing and locking the door. "Well, let me tell you what you need to learn to live with," Jodi replied hotly, walking to the bedroom door, and Thomas slipped back into his own room. "He'll be having sex sooner than you will again." She opened the door and saw Tamara at the foot of the stairs. She looked over the railing, suspicious, and saw no suitcase. "What did you do with the stuff?" "I threw it away," she admitted instantly. "It's in the dumpster. Where it belongs." She wanted to draw her mother's ire, taking it on herself so he wouldn't have to suffer. Thomas saw his sister about to receive his mother's fury and had to redirect it towards himself. "You want some help getting it out of there, Mom?" Thomas asked from his open door. "I'll call for some, you want some?" He held up his phone. "I wonder which one's going to be Exhibit A?" "I never should have given you that," she spat out. "Okay!" she shouted angrily. "Okay, that's it, all that time and effort, it's all gone now. I wanted to help you and what'd you do? You refused me and threw it back in my face. She was going to be your wife, did you know that? By the time she was out of college, you'd be old enough to marry her, and you would enjoy the same fulfillment your father did. But nope! Tamara, you decided to interfere because you thought he wasn't being treated like a regular boy, even though we know he's not. His life is headed down a dark path now, and both of us can watch it happen. Maybe Nate will turn out better." Thomas was ready for all this to be over, he just wanted to let the exhaustion and drug win and go to bed, but hearing his little brother's name made something snap within him. "You aren't doing shit to Nate," he snarled angrily, the first time he had ever sworn at her, not caring about punishment or trouble, not caring what she thought, not caring anymore at all. "You do anything like this to him ever again and I swear to God I'll kill you in your sleep." "Not by yourself you won't," Tamara shouted from downstairs, to protect him more than anything else. Whatever happened to them, to their family, she and her brother were going to go through it together. Wailing, Jodi opened the bedroom door and slammed it behind her, and Thomas finally went to go pee, noticing that his parents had given his brother a pillow and blanket as he slept in the tub. Tamara shook her twin awake the next morning. Nate was in bed, and Thomas realized that he had completely slept through his brother being brought in, which worried him quite a bit. Tamara assured him that their parents hadn't done anything else, but the twins needed to get downstairs so that they could carefully watch them making breakfast. Walter had anticipated this - it was what he would have done at that age - and he had told his wife in his very serious voice, which he very rarely used with her, that she should just accept stuff like this until their children trusted them again. He'd even gone as far as to ask his children which slices of toast, bacon, and eggs they'd wanted from the pans, and he poured fruit juice out of a communal pitcher that they all drank from. The twins sat very close together at the table, across from their parents, and Tamara whispered in Thomas' ear, "I hope they haven't built up an immunity to iocaine powder." Thomas gasped, remembering the scene, but then he made a subtle gesture towards Molly. Jodi was feeding the one child who still entirely trusted her, giving her a sippy cup of fruit juice and some carefully mashed-up eggs. His parents weren't crazy enough to risk drugging her. Once he was done eating, his father tapped him on his shoulder and asked to come with him to Thomas' room. "Don't worry," Walter quietly said as they walked up the stairs, "I think you already know that you and Tamara aren't the ones in trouble here." "First of all," he said as he closed the door, "I fished the suitcase out of the dumpster last night. The Nytol and tea are totally gone, down the toilet." Thomas felt like he'd made a mistake. He should have asked Tamara to cut the clothes up first, actually, he should have been chopping some up and hiding the rest long before his parents got home last night. Then again, it was all just evidence at this point. "I know you have the stuff that isn't in there. I'm not asking you where, and I won't go looking for it, I'm just saying I know you have it." Thomas didn't reply, and Walter didn't tell him that he already knew where it was without having to look. Thomas had been loudly overjoyed the first time he found the under-drawer compartment at the age of five, and the rest of the house didn't look disturbed; it was the only place that made sense. Walter also didn't tell him that Thomas did not need to be holding physical evidence to ruin his family. If he or Tamara started talking to authorities about this (hell, even if Nate did, and that thought had terrified him), Angeline's name would come up, and her parents' names would come up, and their membership in the Greater Area Sissies would come up. They all knew by then, he was sure, and the only reason none of them had blabbed was because they would Become Involved as well, which was known as a "career-limiting move". Even if he and his wife were able to systematically erase every bit of physical evidence from the entire house, they certainly couldn't erase everything from everyone else's nor any text message history from the telco - and that was if his wife knew how to lie properly. He was a chief auditor, after all; he'd caught very smart embezzlers and other white-collar crooks with far less evidence than what a state investigator would uncover here. He was quite certain that if he wanted to keep his family in one piece, his children had to know that they were safe, and if having those locking baby clothes in his bottom drawer made Thomas feel more secure, then he was very welcome to them. He inwardly cursed Angeline's parents as he had been doing for a long while: 'God damn it, what were you thinking sending her here with that shit in that damn suitcase?' He also cursed himself, as he often did, for being a complete sissy in more ways than one. "Thomas... I'm not going to try to excuse what she tried to do last night. I just want to say that if that one night makes you do something we'll all regret-" "One night? You think this is about one night?!" Thomas interrupted, and his father let him talk. "Mom was preparing me for that night my whole life! You want to help? Unlock my phone, and my computer. Like Tamara has." That was among the very least of the things Walter was prepared to accept as a demand. Ashamed of himself for allowing his son to be treated the way he was and feeling like the least mature person in the house, Walter immediately went to work. He was the one who locked them in the first place, at his wife's command, and it would take him minutes. "Okay. If you talk to anyone about what happened. I'm just going to say it: We're going to lose custody. Not just you and Tamara, but Nate and Molly will be in foster care as well." "That's the only reason I didn't already do it," Thomas spat out, and Walter, knowing that his son understood the situation, had nothing else to say. Walter had once been dressed up in baby clothes and called Walty-poo by a dozen people, his wife among them, and he had made some minor mistake, or nothing, it didn't matter, and his wife had spanked him in front of all of them. He had been made to politely ask, in the third person and with a mewling baby-talk voice, to be allowed to crawl across a crowded room and fetch his own locking pacifier in his teeth before he was locked in his crib for the night. Never before had he felt as utterly emasculated and humiliated as he did in that room with his son. After completely unlocking all of his Thomas' permissions and gaming platforms, even buying him World War Z on Steam, he led Tamara into her room to tell her the same thing, and she'd wanted to talk to him just as much as Thomas had, and she'd understood the situation just as much as he did. He did not talk to Nate. Letting the six-year-old know just how big of a deal this was would have been counterproductive. Satisfied that his family wasn't immediately about to destroy itself, he said that they were all going to the zoo together - it had just re- opened after the long pandemic-related closure - and, fortunately, no one complained or argued. They were mentally exhausted, all of them except Molly, and the adults and twins were in tacit agreement that she had not seen nor understood very much of what had happened last night. They rode in silence in a while. "Jacob and Melanie think we're all crazy," Jodi said out of nowhere. "Good!" Thomas immediately exclaimed. "They're right," Tamara added. Walter glanced at his wife at the passenger seat and shook his head. It wasn't the time for that. They got to the zoo before opening time, and they were surprised to see so few people there. This was reopening day, after all, the first time it had been open since the pandemic, but most people still didn't feel comfortable in public spaces. Jodi didn't seem too concerned, and Walter did not care at all. Children were almost never affected, and he valued his and his wife's lives very little at that point in time. He almost wished it would kill him. The first place the kids went was the gift shop, but Walter had no problem in buying them what they wanted: a stuffed tiger ("Hobbes!") for Nate and a smaller, cuddly elephant for Molly, and matching, overpriced red T-shirts for all four of them, which they went to the bathrooms and changed into immediately. Then Nate had spotted the wolf exhibit he wanted to see, his mother not stopping him from running off after it, and the twins ran after him, and other than an admonition of "Stay in the zoo!", neither Walter nor Jodi had anything to say. They did, of course, stay in the zoo, although seeing trapped animals made Thomas' heart uneasy. This was a modern zoo, with habitats rather than mere cages, but did the animals know they were stuck? Would they have objected if they had known and been able to? Or, were they like he would have been if Tamara had not intervened, forever to stay where his mother and Angeline put him, forever on display as a pretty little doll- boy, and accustomed to it all? He was musing on such things when he got a text from Angeline. --- Hey. First of all, I'M SORRY. I went WAY too far way too quickly. I was never going to actually hurt you. The whole thing was planned out by my and your parents but you probably know that already. (They don't know I sent you this. Please don't tell them.) I know you were enjoying some of it, but I totally screwed it up, and I did NOT mean to treat you the way I did. Please accept my apology for everything that happened last night. Can I meet you at your house tomorrow, just to talk? All my love, Angie --- For a moment, it was actually tempting to accept this invitation from a very beautiful girl, right up until he remembered that she was the very beautiful girl who'd bound, manipulated, belittled, and drugged him and his little brother. "Check what Angeline sent me," he said, holding up the phone so his sister could see. Tamara screwed up her face in astonishment and disgust. Was Angeline completely out of her mind? "Tell her to go to hell!", she whispered loudly. 'Do you want to get shot that bad?' he texted back instead, to his sister's approval, before realizing his mistake. '*badly', he added, and Tamara started giggling heavily, her sides contracting. Her brother was definitely the kind of boy who grammar corrected his death threats. There was no reply, and there wasn't ever going to be one. He wished Angeline had been different, that his mom and dad had been different, and his thought process was interrupted by Nate, who had run down the path into the aquarium. A vision floated through Thomas' mind of his little brother being kept in a hobble skirt so he couldn't run anymore, and his gorge welled up in his throat. When they caught up to him, they saw him staring at the seal exhibit, hoping that one would come nose-to-nose with him. Thomas looked to make sure no one was around, as there was something he needed to say. "Tam," he said quietly, "if they'd just... oh, woah, check that fish." A long barracuda floated three feet from him. "Anyway, if they'd just told me," he continued, sniffling a bit, "If they'd just all got together with me and asked, 'would you like to wear dresses like your dad', and didn't try to mess with my mind or drug me or anything, if Mom had just let me be my age, if they'd just been honest like they always told me to be... I think I might have been okay with it." His mind was a mess of emotions. He hated it, and loved it, and hated himself for loving it, but he hated his parents and Angeline most of all and wished they were on the inside of the barracuda tank, and that was not going to change any time soon. His sister put a protective arm around him as they went around the aquarium (Nate got to see the seal he wanted, and he named it the Seal of Approval), only letting him go when they were out in the daylight again. It was a fairly decently sized zoo, but they went through it twice, and then they got back together with their parents for lunch at the exorbitantly priced cafe. Nate made a childish comment about eating burgers at a place where they had animals, and then Thomas had said that this was a zoo, so what animals did Nate think the burgers came from, and the little boy laughed so hard he almost choked. And then Walter, not wanting to be back in the house at that moment, offered to take the children to a local museum that had also just re- opened, and they had readily agreed. Walter was relieved to see his wife at least pretend to get into the swing of things. She made polite comments about exhibits, pointing things out to her children, and as they ate out at a buffet for dinner, the only comments she made were gentle, motherly admonitions for her children to eat healthy foods and not to let their eyes get bigger than their stomachs. Nate looked like he wanted to start a food fight, but she simply put her hand on his and shook her head, and he accepted that. There was no yelling on that trip and no arguments of any kind, and Jodi didn't say much to her husband or her children at all. Of course, they could never have known what she was writing in her mind. The moment she got home, she went directly to her computer and began to type. Walter would go along with it was the process was in motion, she was very sure; he'd never been a problem when she put her foot down, and the point of her plan was to keep her family from being broken up. Walter was right that her children held all the cards, which was why it was up to her to change that in a way that she knew would benefit them in the long run. Quickly and accurately, she typed up the email to Priscilla, the organizer of the Greater Area Sissies: --- Dear Priscilla, I deeply apologize for my children's conduct. I had only been thinking of my son when I set up the meeting with Angeline and I did not realize that my daughter might have some issues as well. I know that you are upset with me and my husband for what occurred and that you have every right to be angry. However, I believe that we can settle this issue in a constructive way. If you are willing to assist and provide space, I believe that the Greater Area Sissies have the resources, tools, and ability to provide guidance and care for our older children in a safe and secure environment where they can be allowed to live as young, cared-for children, rather than remain at risk of hurting themselves or our family in the presence of harmful influences, and I think we can both agree that some time in diapers and dresses is better than the path they are on now! I would be willing to pay as much as is required for this service. With love, Jodi --- She was delighted to get a reply within half an hour, but she was less delighted to have read it. --- What is WRONG WITH YOU you?????? You obviously have no idea how much trouble you might be in, and you certainly don't have any regard for how much trouble you and Jacob/Melanie could get the rest of us in!! You've destroyed us this year, maybe forever,... People here are terrified that they're going to lose their kids!!! I had three cancellations NOT COUNTING JACOB/MELANIE AND YOU!!! SAFE, SANE, CONSENSUAL. Have you forgotten those? You know that I am in favor of children being allowed to explore their identities in a SAFE, SANE, AND CONSENSUAL way (as well as being non sexual). I had thought that Jacob's stunt with his MINOR daughter was borderline, but now I know it was about to go way over. Get on your knees and THANK your daughter for doing what she did. You and a lot of other people could be in PRISON right now if she didn't stop it quickly. We could be on CNN, can you imagine the headlines, I can!!! What you have just proposed in your last E-mail is so far over the line in disregarding basic SSC that I can't even see straight. If I didn't know you, I would say this was a joke or roleplay. I can't believe I need to spell this out for you, Jodi: Sissification, BDSM, or ANY other fetish must NEVER be used as a punishment for minors, regardless of ANY acts they may have committed. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THEY DID!!! IT IS CHILD ABUSE!!! Existing Residential Treatment Centers are already bad enough!! If you knew what you were asking for, you would not be asking for it,!!!! No one is going to establish one to sissify your MINOR son or daughter,not me or anyone else. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you have not taken any concrete steps towards this and that most of what happened yesterday was the result of a mistake by Melanie and Jacob's MINOR daughter. If you commit any acts of this or any similar nature towards anyone who is not 18 years of age I WILL call Child Protective Services and i can't imagine they wouldn't press charges,. I am currently considering whether to call them now. Respond immediately if you understand,. _____________________ Princess Priscilla the Pink Principal Domme, Sub, Sister, Lover. Queen of the Greater Area Sissies "The only things holding us back from the stars are ourselves." --- Jodi stared at the screen for a couple of minutes, her eyes unfocused. She looked at all the disconnected commas and suspected, correctly, that Priscilla, who she had respected for a long time as a paragon of submissive, if switchy, males, had deleted a lot of vulgar insults when composing that email. But Priscilla had always approved of what she was trying to do over Tommy's life, they'd talked about all the other times before, she'd even told her a little about she hoped that Angeline would take good care of her little boys, so why the massive overreaction?! It did not take Jodi long to make a guess as to why: because those were spoken conversations, and this was an email that might one day be read by someone else. Jodi's gut wrenched as she realized that someone she thought was her friend was cutting ties and throwing her under the bus. One more friend lost. Why did everyone hate her? Was what she was doing so bad? Was it so wrong to want to give her sons the life she knew they deserved, and stop her children from acting out in a compassionate way? Was wanting to teach her children how to be kind and gentle so terrible? She was starting to get the idea that maybe, just maybe, she was the one with the problem. She realized that the email had not been an idle threat; she had to send a reply immediately, or she really was going to be in for a world of trouble, and she typed very quickly: --- I deeply apologize. I did not know that Jacob's daughter was going to take things that far. In my last email I was emotional and not thinking clearly. I understand the rules of SSC and I will not attempt to use sissification or BDSM on any of my children. Jodi --- The terse reply came back in a few minutes: --- Message received. Seek therapy, Jodi. Your children might need therapy after this as well. The meetup is canceled. No one is in the mood to talk about anything else. That means refunds for everyone, even you and Jacob. Give the money to your children. I just got done convincing Herbert not to refer your crazy email to the DA's office. You're welcome. Never, ever communicate, in any way, with any of us again. _____________________ Princess Priscilla the Pink Principal Domme, Sub, Sister, Lover. Queen of the Greater Area Sissies "The only things holding us back from the stars are ourselves." --- Despite the lack of telltale commas, Jodi was very sure that there was more than one deleted expletive that time. She knew Herbert; he'd been in the Greater Area Sissies for years, and he was some kind of lawyer in his professional life. And now he was treating her like a criminal, too. Everyone was, even her children. Slowly, the tears welled up, and she contemplatively looked at her husband, who was busy taking pictures of the gun and its safe in order to sell them online at fire sale prices. He had to get rid of it. There were at least three people in that house who might wind up using it on him and his wife, and one of them was himself. Looking at what had become of her, her husband, and her children, Jodi cried herself to sleep, and her husband, having been forwarded the email chain by Priscilla, did not comfort her. The next morning's breakfast went the same as the previous day's, only with Jodi listlessly going through the motions. Even Molly could tell that she was simply done. She kept watching the clock, even as she finished the laundry, and she dully told her husband "I'm taking the kids shopping," once it reached 10:45 and she'd get to the mall when it opened. Her husband closely looked at her. "Just... shopping. The mall, Walmart, K-Mart, whatever they need. We've got an extra three thousand dollars lying around." Walter nodded and said nothing. She managed to pull her son away from WWZ (Nate watching eagerly) and her daughter away from Stardew Valley when she told them where they were going, and, fortunately for her severely battered mental health, they readily agreed. They all wore the freshly washed zoo shirts they had worn the previous day; even Tamara dressed Molly in hers. For Thomas and Tamara, those shirts represented triumph, and Nate just liked the shirt. As Jodi drove, Thomas, in the front seat, was looking at the windows and occasionally glancing at the parking brake. If she made a wrong turn, he would yank it, possibly causing an accident, but one look at his face showed that he was long past the point of caring. Walter had been right: she really had lost all her children's trust. She pursed her lips and forced herself to remain calm. It wouldn't do for her to start crying while going forty miles an hour down the expressway. But she did drive them to the mall, safely and directly, and as she parked the SUV in the space, she said, "Listen. You have three thousand dollars for all four of you. Don't spend it all on video games. This isn't just for stuff you want. Think about what Nate needs and what Molly needs." She didn't trust herself to do it, anymore, and almost cried right there on realizing it. "I just want a bike," Thomas said immediately. Her mother had never bought him one that didn't have training wheels. She'd kept on telling him 'you have a bike' even after he'd outgrown it and Nate had started using it. Before two days ago, he'd never understood why she did things like that. "I want one too," Tamara added. She hadn't been interested in biking, but she was very interested in staying by her twin's side. "Okay, then that's where we'll go first." One of the mall anchors was a sporting goods store, and it was the season for it. The bicycle salesman knew his craft, and he'd also noticed that the family was stressed out, but Jodi worked in HR, and pretending not to be upset in front of strangers was a skill she'd mastered a long time ago. They got identical black bikes and Thomas learned what he'd need to unscrew the training wheels on his old bike that was now Nate's. Those went into the SUV before they went to the local Gamestop, and they found three Switch games, one of which was Diablo 3. Under normal circumstances, the clerk would have said something about that last one being an M-rated game, but he'd seen a lot of families come and go over his time working there, and he had the very acute, very correct impression that they'd all been through much worse things very recently. Knowing when to keep his mouth shut was why he had been made assistant manager. Then they went into the Target for clothes, and Jodi chewed her lip in silence as Tamara actually helped her brother pick out decent-quality boys' stuff, with dark colors and cool symbols and plenty of pockets, then picked nearly identical things for herself - her body wouldn't be 'junior miss' shaped for a couple of years - and then she went to pick for Nate and Molly as well, and the selection was such that the little boy was able to look just like his cool older brother, whom he saw as the ultimate pinnacle of humanity by that point. There were roller shoes there as well, and Nate wanted them just like the twins did. Jodi stepped forward with a concerned expression, but a single, narrow-eyed look from the twins made her back off. She didn't have the right to call herself their mother anymore. As her children slowly rolled through the aisles in their new shoes, talking about the stuff they didn't have and what Tamara thought her brother ought to look like, an overwhelming wave of guilt washed over her. Why had she done that to him? Why had she even wanted to do that to any of them? Pretending to want to try on something herself, she picked up a shirt from the women's section, went into the fitting room, and quietly sobbed in shame. The kids didn't even touch their new video games when they got home. They were too busy playing outside with their new soccer ball in their cool clothes, as Nate tried to teach himself to back-flip on soft grass (he almost got it once!) and Molly explored the backyard in her brand new overalls. Then the three older kids learned how to bike, the hard and slow way, after Walter had dislodged the training wheels from Nate's bicycle. They fell over and got dirty, but what did they care? They were children. Monday. Tamara and Thomas' parents were at work by the time they got up, as their parents really didn't want to wake either of them up anymore, and they were still a bit sore from running around and learning how to ride bicycles all day yesterday. The distance learning coursework was easy, just as Friday's had been, and the twins got it out of the way quickly; the only online class would be later that afternoon. And then Molly asked to go potty and Nate asked Tom how to play Fortnite, but it wasn't long at all before he got the hang of the basics and Tom was just watching rather than offering advice. A few minutes later, Tamara knocked on his door gently. "Hey, Tom, you want to play Diablo 3?" she asked, smiling. "Sure," he replied. "And do you want one?" she asked, still smiling, and he gasped looking at what she was holding. She held patterned pink and lilac tights, lightweight, matching frilly dresses with lots of ruffles around the skirts and big hearts on the chests, and matching Alice headbands in each arm. These were from the suitcase, surely meant to be worn with petticoats or other restrictions underneath, but he would not be wearing those; he wouldn't even be wearing shoes, as why would he want to wear them indoors? Thomas blinked a few times in surprise, but this wasn't someone trying to confine him or drug him or control him or turn him into something he wasn't, this was his sister, someone he loved and trusted very much, and she was giving him the opportunity to do something he wanted with her. Smiling, blushing a little bit, knowing that she would never make fun of him for it, he accepted the pink set and went into the bathroom to change. When he emerged, the pink heart prominent on his chest, the Alice band gently snug on his head, and the light silk fluttering below his comfortably tights-clad knees, she came out of her room as well, wearing the matching lilac set and giggling just a little bit. She buttoned up the back of his pretty dress, and he buttoned up hers. Hand in hand, safe and happy, the twins bounded down the stairs to have fun together.