Chapter Text
“Come on, Liz, you aren’t actually going to install a super sketchy program on your mom’s PC, are you?” She rolled the thumb drive over in her palm, considering the moral and ethical implications of her plan.
Elizabeth Clairmont (who really much preferred to go by Liz) didn’t hate the woman who raised her. Didn’t resent her one bit. By all metrics her mom was an outstanding woman who had done more than right by Liz. They had a great working relationship—which was the problem. A working relationship. Liz wouldn’t ever stand to be called a momma’s girl—the very idea ran anathema to her alt/goth identity. (Okay, she didn’t brood darkly enough to be a true goth, but wasn’t shallow enough to be emo, though admittedly she just really liked black and purple and wearing heavy makeup and writing depressing poems and wearing chains and heavy belts and chokers and—) She was getting distracted.
Elizabeth Clairmont was not a momma’s girl, but she still felt neglected. Her mom was awesome, and Liz admired her a ton, but how many mornings had she sat at their kitchen table alone, with a breakfast of bland buttered toast and room temp OJ?
Still, were her feelings of neglect and abandonment enough to justify infecting her mom’s computer with probably a virus? No. Her frustrations carried the rest. In the two years since she graduated college—double majoring in Computer Science and English—Liz had failed to get a job. A real job, one that could justify the tuition her mom had paid. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying on her part—the job market was abysmal, she couldn’t even land a job working IT help desk.
And her mom understood that and had told her (in one of their rare conversations, when her mom had the day off and wasn’t rushing out the door) that she was happy to help her daughter in what ways she could, and that so long as Liz kept applying, she was sure to land that interview eventually.
Which of course only made Liz feel like even more of a burden. She felt aimless, lost and, more than anything else, frustrated. She didn’t want to be supported. She didn’t want to be looked after. She didn’t want to be taken care of, like a pet or obligation. Liz wanted to be pampered.
She plugged the thumb drive in. A command prompt flickered—there and gone in an instant—as the program installed itself. She retrieved the thumb drive, turned her mom’s PC off, made sure to put everything in her mom’s home office back the way it was, so there was no sign that Liz had been there, and then scuttled off to her room.
Though it wasn’t like she needed to rush. Seven o’clock meant her mom wouldn’t be back for another two hours. Her mom was an incredible woman, but very predictable.
“Hey mom,” Liz said, surprising Jessica Clairmont. Her daughter didn’t normally greet her when she got home—unsurprising, and not at all disappointing, because Jessica knew she worked late hours. Or even just a lot of hours—Beck Dell Books, her independent publishing house, rested almost entirely on her shoulders, and the day-to-day management of the nation’s number two indie women’s book publisher required she make sacrifices at home. Sacrifices she and Liz both bore with dignity and grace.
“Hello Elizabeth.” She knew her daughter went by “Liz” with her friends, but the nickname had never sounded right coming from a mother’s mouth. If it made her sound cold and distant, let it be. Better distant than one of those moms trying too hard to be hip. “You’re up late.”
“Oh, you know,” she said, over a bowl of nine o’clock cereal. “Got hungry. You ate at work, right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to go right to your office, right?”
“Yes. Elizabeth, is there something I should know?” Jessica leaned on the kitchen table, scrutinizing her young, inexperienced, just twenty-four-year-old daughter. Had she done something with her hair? Those purple highlights were new. They suited her, though it wasn’t Jessica’s place to comment. Nothing caused a girl more insecurity than a mother’s compliment. Liz had midnight black hair—a gift from her no-good father, whose only positive contribution to this world was Elizabeth and whose name was not spoken in the Clairmont household. “Do you need to talk to me about something?”
Liz looked surprised. Did she really think her mother couldn’t read her face? Around a spoonful of cereal she said, “Nope, just checking. Business as usual, right?”
“Business as usual,” Jessica said, puzzled by her daughter’s behavior. She wondered if she was having boy trouble—but no, her Liz didn’t really date, did she? And last time it had been with that nasty, nasty girl—Courtney? Casey? Jessica had made a point not to memorize her name. “I’ll be in my office if you need me,” she confirmed. On her way there, she undid the top button on her blouse. Had she gone up another size? In her forties?
Jessica booted up her PC, ready to read through the rest of the manuscripts she hadn’t been able to finish while at Beck Dell. It wasn’t strictly her job to review submissions, but what was the point of running a publishing house if you didn’t get first look at what could potentially be the next great feminist novel?
Normally Jessica could plow through a good hundred-plus pages before she absolutely had to sign off and go to bed, but tonight the words were swimming within minutes. She must have been overworked. She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, and tried again, focusing on one word at a time.
Focusing on the words. Focusing on the screen. The words weren’t moving, the screen was. So subtle she couldn’t even say it was for sure, that she wasn’t just imagining it, that she wasn’t just overworked, that she shouldn’t keep staring, staring was bad for her, those swimming words and shimmering screen couldn’t be good, why wasn’t she looking away?
Sink.
Jessica slumped forward, shoulders rounding, tension bleeding. The manuscript was gone, replaced by flickering flashing words speaking to her from the central depths of a whirling swirling spiral.
Stare.
Jessica stared. The blue-light filter on her glasses doing absolutely nothing to filter out the new light invading her brain. Blue light strains your eyes and keeps you awake.
Relax.
The pink light spilling out of Jessica’s computer screen did the opposite. Her eyes fluttered sleepily, never quite closing, never quite freeing her from the flickering words as she slipped into a state of placid acceptance.
Click to continue.
The words pulsed, their meaning less important than the photonic payload they carried to Jessica’s wide-open occipital lobe. The self-made CEO shifted in her faux-leather seat, sinking, staring, and relaxing. She drew the long, controlled, even breaths of a deep sleeper.
Click to continue.
Slowly, moving as if through water, as if the mere act of placing her hand on her desk were an ordeal, Jessica fumbled for her mouse. Her head lolled forward as she groped around blindly, staring up at the brilliant pulsing pink screen through heavy lashes, giving her computer a fantastic come-hither look without intending to. Her hand bumped her mouse and she snatched it, understanding that she simply had to do what the words on the screen told her to.
Click to continue.
Her cursor circled the flashing words like a lover’s stroking hand, and she clicked. And gasped, quietly, as her computer screen burst into even deeper color.
Click to go deeper.
Click.
Click to drop deeper.
Click.
Click to consent.
Click.
Across the house, rinsing off a bowl, Liz jumped because her phone buzzed. The sketchy companion app to the sketchy program she had installed on her mom’s PC told her she was ready. Her mom was under. Liz wanted very badly to sneak a peak to see what exactly “being under” looked like, but the app’s README had been explicit—don’t fuck around during the first trance.
And far be it from Liz to question the anonymous author of an anonymous brainwashing app she had found hidden away in a dead thread on a fetish board. Er, a writer’s forum that tended at times to trend in directions that were a little risqué. All writers were perverts, Liz was convinced. All of them. The pros were just better at hiding it—some of the time. How many NYT Bestsellers were former fanfic writers, again? Double digits, at least. Probably more, they just didn’t confess to their dark past.
So Liz did what the README suggested and bolted to her room phone in hand, landed on her bed with a bounce, grabbed her laptop, and flipped it open. She booted up the control app and there she was.
Jessica Clairmont, forty-six years old, TRANCED. That was an interesting picture of her mom—had the program hijacked her webcam and taken a candid profile picture for the app? It was her first time seeing her mom so. . . out of it. She was actually drooling on herself. Liz stifled the strange thoughts she had seeing a woman so in control of her life rendered impotent, and focused instead on her not-quite-a-grand-scheme-but-definitely-still-a-scheme: getting herself the maternal attention she knew she needed. Deserved might have been too strong a word—her mother had always supported her in the ways that absolutely mattered. Liz had never missed a meal—or if she had, it was always by choice or due to circumstance. Still, though. The Clairmont household was cold. All Liz wanted to do was nudge the thermostat up a few degrees.
Liz stared at the blinking cursor in the command field, summoning the last bit of courage she needed to execute on a plan that was well past the point of no return, having broken into her mom’s office and planted malware on her computer, and entered the two sentences she hoped would worm their way into her mom’s vulnerable subconscious:
Good mothers love their daughters.
Loving mothers aren’t afraid to show it off.
Liz wasn’t asking for much. She knew, intellectually understood that her mother loved her. But knowing wasn’t enough for her anymore. She wanted, just once, to feel a mother’s love. Her mom worked hard and took care of her, Liz got that. It was unreasonable for her to expect more, when most daughters didn’t even have what she had now. This whole escapade was her being a spoiled brat. She got that, too. But she was only human, completely fallible, and some nights she cried herself to sleep with bitter tears of inadequacy, because her mom was amazing and she—she wasn’t. Despite her best efforts, Liz wasn’t special. She couldn’t land an interview, hated working part time, and felt like a leech.
She just wanted someone to tell her it was all going to be okay. Liz checked to see the commands had been received, closed her laptop, and got ready for bed, keeping the moping to a minimum. Starting tomorrow (ideally, if this thing actually worked the way they said it did) things would be different. Starting tomorrow things would be better.
Liz woke up early. Or rather she had never really managed to fall asleep. It was like she was twelve again on Christmas Eve, kept awake by a brain that couldn’t stop simulating all the different gifts she could get. Only this time Liz knew what was under the Christmas tree without any need for snooping. This time her Christmas list would be followed to the letter—supposedly.
With such simple commands, Liz didn’t expect a full one-eighty from her mother. She was hoping she’d join her for breakfast, at least. “Join your daughter for breakfast” would have been a really dull command so Liz had opted to go with broad strokes love language instead. She poured herself a second bowl of cereal within twelve hours—reminding herself she needed to eat better—and sat down to wait. It was a not-so-bright and bleary five-thirty in the morning, which meant that any second now—
She heard her mother before she saw her. Neither Liz nor her mom were morning people, but that didn’t stop Jessica Clairmont from getting up and out the door before six every day. Liz wondered when her mom found the time to sleep. As she heard the shower turn on, then off exactly five minutes later, Liz prepared herself for disappointment. What had she been expecting, that overnight her mother would transform completely into the kind of doting, maternal presence Liz was increasingly self-aware about needing? She chewed her cereal and then winced—an unsoaked corn puff scraped the roof of her mouth.
After spending the last few days working herself up to the stunt Liz let her doubts take over. Why did she expect the thing to work? Why did she expect anything other than her perfect mother to march into the kitchen, impeccably dressed as always in one of her sexless pantsuits, to cooly tell her to stay out of the office and not touch her computer again, please, before she hurried off to another busy day at work, leaving Liz to fire off another three to five job applications so she could continue to get ghosted by employers who were allegedly looking for exactly someone like her, a young professional woman with a college degree. Employers who evidentially were not, actually.
Her tongue probed the sore spot. No bleeding, just tenderness. Teach her to under-milk her cereal, she supposed. “Morning,” she said, hearing her mother enter behind her.
Liz wasn’t ready for the hug.
Baffled, she tried to remember the last time her mother had ever hugged her. Not since high school. Maybe not even since middle school. Jessica Clairmont was not a hugger.
And yet there she was, hugging her daughter, a bit awkwardly, from behind. It was certainly a novel sensation. Liz almost spit out her cereal, but settled at just coughing and gagging. “You good, mom?” she asked once she finished her sputtering.
“Elizabeth, am I a good mother?” was her answer. Liz fought the urge to twist around and stare at her mom—she was standing behind her with her hands resting on Liz’s shoulders and her mother’s voice was so neutral she couldn’t tell if it was an earnest question or an accusation.
“That’s a heavy question to ask me over corn puffs,” Liz said, taking another spoonful and chewing it methodically to buy herself time to analyze the situation. Her mom wasn’t gripping her shoulders, just resting her hands. Squeezing, yeah, but more like a massage than an interrogation. Jessica Clairmont wasn’t exactly an expressive woman, and a single night’s brainwashing wasn’t likely to change that, so maybe Liz was in the clear? Good mothers love their daughters—that was the prompt she had given her mom. Either she was about to get busted hard, and grounded as an adult—sued? Did you get sued instead of grounded when you made your mom angry at age twenty-four?—or the suggestion had taken root, in which case the best answer had to be something like:
“To be perfectly honest, you’re a pretty good mom. You could be better, but I could be a better daughter, too.” And it was the truth. She was a good mom, but could be better. According to her prompt, the way to be a better mother would be—
And there it was, another hug. Liz felt her mom’s chest press against the back of her head and tried not to think too much about that.
Liz failed spectacularly as her mom walked into view to sit opposite her.
So, something to mention about Jessica Clairmont, something no one who ever met her would need to have mentioned, because it was so evident, and something that further fed into Liz’s murky feelings of inferiority, impotence, and underachievement:
Jessica Clairmont, forty-six-year-old CEO of Beck Dell Books, had enormous breasts. Growing up, Liz’s classmates had always, always commented on her mom’s figure, calling her, among other things: a fox, a MILF, a cougar, a babe, a bimbo, a slam piece, a dairy cow, and the milk truck. Liz had always been so fucking embarrassed by her classmates’ comments, but it wasn’t like she could just ignore the fact that, yes, her mom had enormous, back-straining, titanic tits.
Liz would sooner have been struck by lightning than ask her mom her size, but one time she had checked while doing their laundry and had been shaken to her core to learn her mom wore an L-cup bra.
And that had been before Liz graduated high school.
Her mom’s boobs were still growing bigger, well into her forties.
And the reason Liz couldn’t avoid thinking about her mom’s gigantic boobs was because, in a stark deviation from her professional norm, Jessica Clairmont sat across from her with the top five buttons of her shirt undone.
For reference, her mom usually dressed as conservatively as an American politician. Pantsuits, pantsuits, pantsuits. She looked good in them, of course she did, but pantsuits have the remarkable quality to smother anyone’s sex appeal. Venus herself would be drab and blocky in a pantsuit. Liz had long suspected that her mother’s pivot to pantsuits had been at least partially in reaction to the attention she drew from Liz’s classmates, teachers, bus drivers, general faculty, and other parents.
Her mom had shed her pantsuit like a cocoon and Liz was not mentally prepared at six in the morning to process her mom’s enormous boobs resting on the kitchen table, unfettered and free in a blouse that must have had the structural integrity of the Golden Gate Bridge. The half-dozen buttons that weren’t undone were fighting valiantly against the surging tide of MILF meat bearing down on them and Liz, stunned, surprised, and helpless, couldn’t keep her eyes from plunging down her mother’s grand cleavage canyon to its unfathomable depths.
“So you think there’s room to improve,” her mom said seriously, which jerked Liz’s attention back up to her face—she had meant to check her mom’s expression before anything else, hadn’t she, but she hadn’t expected—and then she finally realized it had worked.
Her mom wasn’t upset.
She was genuinely concerned.
It was exactly the mental trap Liz had hoped to set. Her mom was a chronic overachiever—she didn’t have to spell out for Jessica Clairmont to want to be a good mother in her hypnotic commands. That Jessica Clairmont wanted to be a good mother was a forgone conclusion. Liz had merely supplied a simple, easy framework by which to judge how good of a job she was doing.
Good mothers love their daughters.
So if Jessica Clairmont wanted to be a good mother, there was one important thing she needed to do.
“Oh, shoot.” Her mom never swore, no matter how agitated. “It’s late! I need to get going,” she said, standing up with a jiggle that made Liz’s eyes pop out of her head. “I’m sorry Elizabeth, I really wanted to have breakfast with you this morning. I’m going to talk with some of my people at work about reducing my hours—starting tomorrow.” She paused, eyes growing distant. “My work is getting in the way of being your mother.” She refocused. “So I’m going to make some changes. I’ll be home by four tonight—order out and we’ll have dinner together. How long has it been since we did that?” she asked with a shadow of a smile. Jessica Clairmont wasn’t a big smiler.
“Sound great, Mom. You good with Chinese?”
“Chinese sounds perfect. Oh, one last thing before I head out.”
Liz’s mom kissed her just a little too long on the mouth.
“I love you, Elizabeth! Back by four!”
And then she was gone, leaving her not-goth daughter and master manipulator stunned at the kitchen table, with a scraped-up mouth and soggy cereal.
After finishing her breakfast, Liz began to pace around the house her mother had bought in her twenties and paid off in her thirties.
“What was that?” she asked aloud, because she needed to make it real, make sure she wasn’t losing her mind. “What the fuck was that?” Liz had worried her mom would no-sell the sketchy mind control program and scold her, ground her, do something commensurately nasty to Liz for what Liz had tried to do to her.
Instead, the sketchy mind control program had worked, and Liz had been flashbanged by her mom’s giant boobs and full-on lip-kissed. She couldn’t get the sensations out of her mind. First, her mom’s boobs pressing against her head. Then, her mom’s lips pressing against her own.
“Holy fuck,” she said, realization finally dawning. “Good mothers love their daughters. Good mothers love their daughters. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, what did I do?” Liz had written the commands with enough wiggle room for her mom to fill them out. She trusted her mom to make the judgement call that she wanted to be a good mother, because that’s how her mom was. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Had she given the program undeserved benefit of the doubt? Had she behaved like a naive fool, releasing a jinni from its bottle in exchange for wishes, assuming the spirit would interpret her requests in good faith? Or was it her mom’s fault? Had Liz underestimated—or failed at all to recognize—her single mother’s loneliness, such that when her psyche was dismantled and exposed to the word “love” she’d interpret in the romantic sense rather than familial?
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” she cursed, wearing a track into the hallway’s hardwood floor. Maybe she was getting ahead of herself. Maybe she was misinterpreting her mother’s awkward attempts at motherly love. So far she had only exhibited mild skinship and a kiss. A kiss on the mouth, yeah, but it wasn’t like her mom had slipped her any tongue or anything. There was no guarantee Liz had, in a moment of weakness and want, implanted in her mother’s mind the idea that it was natural for her as a mother to romantically pursue her daughter.
No guarantee of that. After all, Liz had wanted her mom to be warmer with her and more intimate. Mission accomplished, so why was she reading so much into touches and kisses?
“Fuck fuck fuck.” And really, outrageously provocative wardrobe choices. Loving mothers aren’t afraid to show it off. That one was definitely Liz’s fault. She had allowed herself to be a little too flippant with the wording on the second command and, first command aside, she definitely knew how her mom (or the program) had interpreted it. She had meant for the second command to inform the first, to encourage her mom to be more outwardly affectionate, because she knew her mom loved her, she just wanted to see it expressed (if that was the case, why was she so hung up on the kiss?) more clearly.
But that intent had been completely glossed over. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe the command informed her mom’s touching and kissing that morning. But it was also pretty fucking evident that “loving mothers aren’t afraid to show it off” had been interpreted to also mean “a loving mother is an exhibitionist,” which was a big fucking problem.
Growing up with everyone around her telling her what a MILF her mom was, Liz had developed something of a complex. The young Liz had been made acutely aware of her mother’s overflowing sex appeal. And because that was her mom, she walled off all those thoughts—because who thought about their mom like that? It was weird! Liz didn’t want to be weird! And when her mom had made the switch to sexless pantsuits, Liz’s compartmentalization had grown easier, effortless, automatic. Lazy and less rigorous. Once again, her mom’s overperformance had given Liz room to slack off, and this morning she had come face-to-face with a terrible reality.
Her mom was hot. Really, really, really fucking hot. “Fuck.” Liz’s mom was a fox, a MILF, a cougar, a babe, a bimbo, a slam piece, a dairy cow, and the milk truck. She was everything everyone had always told her, and more. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Liz slammed her fist against the living room doorframe. And more. She was under Liz’s hypnotic control. Liz had been able to change how her mother dressed, after six years of pantsuits, in a single night, with just two lines of text.
How far could she take it? How far would she take it? She had started out with the best of intentions—but what if her intentions changed?
“No. No,” Liz said loudly to the empty house. “She’s your mother. Absolutely not. You’re already taking advantage of her. No further. Not one bit further.” Liz checked her phone to distract herself. It was already past noon. Her mom said she’d be back by four, and Liz was on the hook for ordering out. She resolved to fire off at least one job application during the intervening three hours. She was not at all going to entertain the unworthy thoughts forming in her head about turning her mom into some kind of personal slut for her exclusive use. Not for a single moment of the next three hours.
Having failed completely (like always, fuck) Liz sat on the couch staring at her phone, willing the final minutes to tick by. Zero applications sent. She looked with anxiety not hunger over dinner, arrayed in plastic takeout tubs on the coffee table, her very own Manchu–Han imperial feast, as if she needed to make sure that she had at least succeeded in following her mom’s instructions.
Funny, that. Liz had brainwashed her mom, but Jessica Clairmont still called all the shots. Liz tried not to let the idea fester, but failed again. Why was she the one waiting anxiously, following orders, playing along? Why wasn’t she in control?
Liz knew the answer. Her self-flagellation was rhetorical. She wasn’t in control because she had hesitated to take control. Her mom was proactive, a go-getter, a thing-doer. She accomplished. Liz was reactive, a hesitator, an overthinker. She fretted. Just like she was doing right now—she wasn’t even planning, just sitting there obediently waiting for mommy to come home and tell her what to do.
“I need to grow up,” Liz said, still not hungry but annoyed enough to rip apart a crab rangoon and swallow half with barely a chew. The gravity of what she’d done to her mother fed her anxiety, and that anxiety fermented into frustration, anger, loathing. She knew it was happening—but what was she supposed to do to slow the doom spiral? If she had robust coping mechanisms she wouldn’t have brainwashed her mom.
Fuck, did she need therapy?
Keys in the lock jolted Liz out of her emo mindset—the rangoon’s uneaten half sailed through the air and she dived to catch and consume it before oily crumbs or cream filling soiled the couch. Wiping her mouth clean—why?—Liz did her best attempt at Good Daughter, sitting up straight on the couch. No, no, that was too formal—she slumped on the arm rest. Not like a couch potato, but the lovable goth daughter—lovable in what fashion?—she was.
And then she pretended not to notice her mom come home at exactly four o’clock. Didn’t look up as she heard her walk over, drop her briefcase in the hallway, and join her in the living room.
“Wow!” her mother said, with uncharacteristic excitement. “Great job, Elizabeth. Oh, it all looks so good.” Liz could tell—she was pretending not to look at her mom, and her mom was pretending to look at the food. Both their attentions were really focused elsewhere.
“Take a seat?” Liz offered.
Her mom answered too quickly.
“Ofcourse!” Almost one word. Then, as if aware she had betrayed something, “Very kind of you to offer, Elizabeth.” She made a ladylike show of sitting—though Liz didn’t think she needed to arch her back that far or stick her butt out quite so much.
And she certainly didn’t need to sit so close to Liz that their thighs squished together. The couch had plenty room.
“Uh, mom? It’s going to be hard to eat like this,” Liz pointed out, demonstrating by elbowing her mom—where else?—in the tit. Jessica Clairmont gasped and blushed, as if she genuinely hadn’t realized the logistical nightmare of trying to dine in the proximity of bigger-than-L-cup boobs.
But she didn’t move away. If anything, Jessica Clairmont leaned into Liz’s elbow, buttons straining as her tits threatened to swallow her daughter’s arm whole. She looked like she wanted to say something—her lips pursed thoughtfully, but stayed firmly pressed together as she tried to find the right words. And just as Liz began to fear she’d be crushed between arm rest and mother’s breast: “I don’t get to spend much time with you, it makes me feel like such a bad mother, Elizabeth.”
“You’re not a bad mom!” Liz protested, panicking as she realized just how heavy her mom’s boobs were. There was a very real risk she would suffocate if she didn’t right the ship. “Really. You’re a good mother.” She realized her mistake as soon as the words slipped free.
“I’m a good mother?” Jessica Clairmont, CEO, repeated dreamily. Her breathing hitched. Nonchalantly, Liz’s mom unbuttoned her blouse. Totally. She sat on the couch next to her daughter, pressing against her, wearing slinky slacks, expensive pumps, and a black lace bra that simply must have been bespoke. She mumbled something under her breath and Liz knew what it was, because she had put the sentence in her mother’s mind to begin with.
Loving mothers aren’t afraid to show it off.
For Jessica Clairmont, stripping was a show of affection.
“Man I’m starving!” Liz shouted. “I think I’m gonna keel over if I don’t get some food in me! Let’s eat!” That seemed to work—her mom blinked, then nodded.
“I can’t let my daughter go hungry, I really would be a bad mother then, wouldn’t I?”
“Mhmm!” Liz said around a mouthful of lo mein. Swallowing, she continued: “You eat too, mom! You still have to do some work in your office tonight, right?”
Her mom hesitated. “I can skip it. I’d prefer to spend the time with you, Elizabeth. I want to reconnect.”
Liz pushed a plate of General Tso’s chicken into her hands. “We’re reconnecting right now! Eat, eat. Work-life balance means you do both, just at appropriate times. Right now is mother-daughter imperial feast bonding time. It’s totally fine for you to go work in your office later. That’s what a good mother would do, even!”
“That’s what a good mother would do?” That dreamy tone.
“Yup. Bond now, work later, I’d call that balanced.”
“I have a wonderful, thoughtful, intelligent daughter.”
“Really? Where?” Liz snorted and her mom laughed with her. That was. . . really nice, actually. This whole scenario was really nice. And it would never have happened if Liz hadn’t brainwashed her mom. The sight of her bra-bound boobs reminded her of that fact, constantly.
Without the brainwashing, there would be no bonding time.
Without the brainwashing, her mom wouldn’t love her like this.
Brainwashing her mom was good for the both of them, because when was the last time she’d heard her mother laugh?
Chinese takeout never tasted so good.
Liz wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“I’ll handle cleanup,” Liz said when they were both full. The mother and daughter pair had made a decent dent in the imperial feast, producing a small plastic mountain that would need to get rinsed off and recycled, while the leftovers would have to be consolidated and fridged before they could stink up the place.
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” her mom said, picking her blouse off the couch like it were a discarded gym towel and not essential attire. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.” She said that funny, as if she hoped Liz would need her.
And maybe she would. Liz had no intention of handling cleanup—at least not right then. She made token efforts to stack the empty trays and shuffle the leftovers until she heard the office door shut. Then Liz sprinted to her room—slipping once as she rounded the corner, socks on hardwood, and careening into the wall. She took the hit hard on her shoulder and rushed on. Her own door slammed shut soon after her mother’s and Liz all but pounced on her bed, throwing her laptop open so quickly the hinge creaked a warning, but how could she control herself?
She was going to mind control her mother. Again. This time knowing full well the consequences. She checked the manager application.
Jessica Clairmont, forty-six years old, TRANCED.
Her mom was under. Time for next steps.
Liz slept amazing. After last night, how could she not? Yeah, she had originally been super stressed about getting caught by her mom, and then she had fretted if what she was doing was okay, but she ended up in a really good place. Brainwashing her mom was good for the both of them. Liz got the motherly love she yearned for (and might still need therapy to address, she was being objective in regard to her mental shambles), and Jessica Clairmont got to spend more quality time with her daughter. Liz’s only outstanding concern was a desire to sit in on the next brainwashing session—she kinda knew what was happening in her mom’s office, but seeing it firsthand might awaken something in her.
Well, something other than what had already been awoken by eating takeout with her topless mom.
Liz considered rotting in bed for the rest of the morning, but she had to put the finishing touches on her work last night. So even though the sun wasn’t up, she rolled free from her sheets, brushed her hair, and went to the kitchen to ambush her mom. She wondered if that was why this was so easy—her mom’s daily rituals, her strict personal schedule. Did that make her receptive to new rules? Or was brainwashing a universal mental solvent? She was curious, but ultimately it was a moot point.
She was no scientist; she was a girl taking advantage of her mother.
“Oh, good morning, Elizabeth,” her mom said, surprised to see her daughter awake so early two days in a row. Signs of a rally?
“Good morning mom. You aren’t going to work today.”
“What?” Liz watched her mom’s cheeriness mix with confusion. Her brows pulled together in an attractive concern. “Elizabeth, of course I’m going to work today. I can’t just—”
“You’re going to call Beck Dell and tell them you aren’t coming in today,” Liz cut in smoothly. She had her hands resting on the table, fingers laced.
“Elizabeth,” her mom said, with a patronizing chuckle. “I know I said I want to spend more time at home with you, but I can’t just take off whenever I want—”
“Mom, what is it that successful mothers do?” Liz asked. The question struck her mother like a hammer, and Jessica Clairmont stumbled, catching herself heavily on the table, sudden sweat dripping from her chin.
“Successful mothers must obey their daughters,” she intoned, panting heavy.
“That’s right!” It was Liz’s turn to patronize. “And everyone knows how successful you are, mom. Which means you must obey.”
“Must obey,” she droned. Liz stood up and helped her mom sit. Mirroring yesterday morning, she stood behind her mother with her hands on her shoulders, gently massaging the resistance away.
“You must obey,” Liz reminded her once more. “Because you’re so successful. You’re a successful mother, and you must obey.”
Her mom moaned—actually full-throat moaned—and Liz massaged her shoulders with some more enthusiasm. Sending orders to her mom through a command prompt was fun and kinky, but so far detached from the reality of it. This was incredible. Her invincible, accomplished mother—moaning and squirming in her seat.
“Call work. Take the day off,” Liz instructed.
The workaholic in her mother railed against the idea. Liz felt it in the way her muscles tensed. Jessica Clairmont never missed work, never called out sick. She was perfect in every way. And now Liz had turned that lifelong success against her—if her mom always succeeded, then Liz would piggyback off that success and turn it into something that served her.
Literally.
“Anne, I won’t be coming in today,” her mom said over the phone. “I’m very sorry. It’s a family matter. No, nothing bad. My daughter requested I stay home today and I must obey.”
Oh, that was probably not good. Her mother was moaning into the receiver. Poor Anne must have been so confused. “Hang up,” Liz ordered.
“Sorry, Anne. I must obey.”
“That’s a good mother.” She felt her mom shiver at the praise, and rubbed her shoulders more. “Now, turn your phone off and give it to me. Then join me in the living room.”
“Take your top off,” Liz commanded, smugly lying on the couch where, just last night, they had shared such a nice, normal mother-daughter moment. Well, except that her mother had been topless then, too.
“Is something the matter, Elizabeth?” her mom asked, unbuttoning her blouse as instructed. It wasn’t like taking her top off involved a whole lot of work—like yesterday, she had barely done up any of the buttons, and like yesterday her breasts bounced free as if they had been waiting for this release. “Asking me to stay home—that’s most unusual. Of course I have no problem with it, it’s a request from my daughter, but this is the first time you’ve ever asked me for something like that. Naturally, I’m concerned,” she said, tossing her shirt aside and standing before Liz with her humungous breasts barely contained in a lace bra—today’s selection was lavender.
“Your pants, too. Take them off,” Liz ordered.
Jessica Clairmont obeyed, because she was as successful mother and that meant she had to obey her daughter. She pulled her belt free and tugged her pants down over her hips—that took a bit of shimmying. Her age was catching up with her, and she had begun putting on weight around her hips.
Liz noticed, and noted that it was just like her mom to accumulate pudge in the sexiest possible way. That MILFy chub accumulated in all the right places—padding out her hips, gifting her a demure belly that demanded squeezing, and adding a softness to her thighs that Liz couldn’t match. In part because she did too many squats. Or maybe not enough?
Jessica Clairmont had been stripped of her shirt and pants and stood before her daughter in bra and panties, and she was concerned. “Is it relationship trouble? I know I might not seem like the best source of advice, but your mother used to be quite the hot item,” she said with a touch of humor. “Though if it’s girl trouble I might be slightly out of my depth,” she admitted.
“It might be girl trouble, actually.” Liz considered it. “Kneel.”
Jessica Clairmont knelt in front of her daughter, carefully tucking first one leg, then the other, beneath her plump ass. Her breasts nearly rested in her lap—they would, if her posture slackened, but she understood intuitively that Liz wanted her sitting up straight. “Can you tell me about her?”
“Well, she’s older than me, for starters. Like twenty-some years older. So that’s a problem.”
“Age is no barrier to love,” her mother told her, though she added: “but that is a staggering age gap. Dating someone that much older than you is sure to come with a power imbalance.”
“Oh, there’s definitely a power imbalance,” Liz said, smirking. “Anyway, not only is she older than me, she’s also just—better? Better than me in every way I can think of. She’s smarter, more successful, taller, her boobs are bigger.”
“She makes you feel inferior,” her mother inferred, shifting her hands on her lap. Her knuckles brushed against the underside of her tits.
“Inferior, that’s the word. Yeah, drives me crazy. What do I have to do to be her equal? To impress her. To make her stop and say, ‘Woah, Liz is amazing!’”
“I think you’re amazing, Elizabeth.”
“Mm. Mom, how big are your boobs?”
“What?” Jessica Clairmont jumped, and her huge boobs wobbled like overfull water balloons.
“Tell me your cup size.”
“P-cup,” she stammered out. Liz was impressed. Not at the exact measurement, she knew they were fucking huge. Her mother was embarrassed. “Can we please focus on this girl—no, I guess she’s a woman, this woman you’re having troubles with? Are you dating?”
“No, and that’s actually where I was thinking you could help me, mom.”
She perked up at that. “Of course! Anything for my beloved daughter.”
Liz rested her chin on one hand, an indolent emperor of old reborn with purple highlights and ear piercings. “I need experience with a woman twenty years older than me who has P-cup boobs.”
Her mom’s eyes widened. She was brainwashed, not stupid. “I mean—I think I understand, but—we couldn’t—I’m flattered—I love you but we’re—”
“There’s just one problem. This girl, she’s super slutty. I’m not sure you can pull that off.”
“Elizabeth, I won’t be pulling anything off,” her mom declared from her place on the floor. “This is too much. Elizabeth, I love you dearly, more than you know, but this is a boundary I cannot—”
“So you’re saying there’s no way you’d be a slutty mommy for me?”
Jessica Clairmont’s nipples stiffened as if a struck by lightning. Her hands clenched and her mouth fell open.
“Oh, did I forget to mention that? She’s a total MILF. Like crazy. MILF meat all over the place. So yeah, no wonder she’s such a slut.”
“Suh—slutty,” her mom stammered.
“Yup. And wouldn’t you know, I’ve heard this saying recently—are you familiar with it? It goes something like slutty mommies do as they’re told.”
“Slutty mommies do as they’re told,” Jessica Clairmont repeated as her nipples dug into her purple bra.
“Yup. And forgive me for saying this, mom, but I can’t help but draw the comparison. This lady I’m after, she’s in her forties, she’s super successful, and she has P-cup tits. She might as well be you. And she’s a total slut. So that’s got me wondering if you aren’t a slutty mommy yourself.”
“Noooooooh,” her mom moaned in protest. She wasn’t a slutty mommy, she couldn’t be. Slutty mommies did as they were told, but Jessica Clairmont wasn’t a slutty mommy so—
“I mean, it’s easy to test, isn’t it? All you have to do is let me fondle your tits. So long as you aren’t a slutty mommy, nothing will happen, right? But if you were to, say, squeal girlishly and cum super hard from having your daughter fondle your tits, well that’d just about clinch it. If that were to happen, there’d be no denying it, would there?”
“You want to fondle my tits?” Liz’s mom repeated, slowly.
“It’s not about what I want,” Liz explained. “It’s about determining whether or not you’re a slutty mommy who has to do what I tell you. Right? It’s a simple test, that’s all.”
“A test.” Jessica Clairmont had always passed every test. Surmounted all challenges. All she had to do was let her daughter fondle her tits without squealing and cumming and that would be that. Matter settled, case closed, not a slutty mommy. “Okay.”
“You consent?”
Memories of flashing pink lights played back in Jessica Clairmont’s mind. “I consent.”
Liz’s hands lashed out like hunting vipers, fingers instead of fangs sinking into her mom’s immense bust. They sank, and sank, and sank into the pillowy expanse of her mother’s boobs, until they could sink no more, at which point they squeezed.
Jessica Clairmont, self-made indie publishing giant, definitely would not squeal girlishly and cum super hard.
There was no way she was a slutty mommy.
There was no way she would do as she was told.
She had to set an example for her daughter to follow.