#smokeysis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

smokeysister · 5 years ago

Text

The Stepford Game: Part 1

(This story features brainwashing, mind control, stepfordization, and unintentional reality warping)

Carrie wandered through the mall, trailing after her friends as they talked excitedly to one another. She was of average height for a 20 year old college student, albeit a bit plain looking. She kept her blonde hair in a pixie cut, and wore the bare minimum when it came to makeup. She didn’t even paint her nails or do anything with them beyond clipping them when they got long. Even her clothes were unremarkable. Just jean shorts, flip flops, and a red crop top. Carrie stuck her hands in her pockets and sighed. Normally she enjoyed mall crawling with the girls, and it was spring break too! But she just felt so listless and bored. Nothing could really excite her. Even her last few dates with her boyfriend, Kent, had ended with her going home early and wondering if she should just end the relationship. But out of the corner of her eye, Carrie saw something that did interest her, at least a little bit. There was a new store, or at least one that she had never seen there before. It looked like an old hobby shop, with dusty windows and old toys and games in the display. Little toy cars and train sets that seemed to be from the 1950s, all made of painted wood and metal. Probably lead paints, she realized with a wrinkle of her nose. Still, the store had caught her attention. All of the other hobby shops and toy stores in the mall had been closed down and replaced by tech stores years ago, so it was an odd duck out. And it seemed to be empty.

“Carrie? Why are you lagging?” Vivian asked. She was Carrie’s best friend, ever since they were little kids. If Carrie was unremarkable and plain, Vivian was anything but. She had ivory skin, with heavy black and red makeup that never seemed to leave her face. Her straight black hair hung down to her shoulders, and she was always wearing black leather and lace. Silver studs dotted her chin, cheeks, and nose, and she had large black gauges in her ears. She wore a black band shirt, which advertized one of the endless list of heavy metal bands she listened to, and which showed off her sleeve tattoos. She had ripped jeans and combat boots to complete the edgy look. And of course, she always looked dour and grumpy. “Huh? O-oh, I was just… Looking at something,” Carrie mumbled. The other girls turned around and joined her, looking the store up and down, with varying reactions. “What is this place?” Linh asked innocently. “Who cares? I gotta head to the apple store and get a new phone!” Mariah complained. Linh and Mariah were Carrie’s other closest friends. Linh was tall, asian, and had long black hair that reached all the way to the bottom of her back. She was wearing an oversized purple t-shirt that hung off of one shoulder and a pair of black and white gym shorts, as well as a pair of glasses with thin wire frames. Mariah was the shortest of the bunch. She was black, and wore her hair in bright, multi colored dreadlocks. The most athletic of the group, she wore a blue basketball jersey and a pair of mesh shorts, as well as some worn out sneakers. “Can we look inside first?” Carrie begged. She wasn’t totally sure why she wanted to check it out, but it… Well, it called to her. “Please?” “I’m with Carrie. It could be fun!” Linh agreed. “I don’t really care one way or the other,” Vivian said with a shrug. “...Alright, fine!” Mariah agreed. “But we’re going to the apple store after! I promised Mark I’d text him tonight when I need a ride home.” “I told you, my mom could give you a ride if you needed,” Linh offered. “Sure, she’s got work early tomorrow morning, but I could probably convince her if we really need to.” Carrie felt a pang of sadness when Linh mentioned her mother. Linh’s mom was always busy with work, ever since her dad had left them. As a result, Linh was just about always at home alone, or spending her time at their houses, but Carrie knew that she missed being able to spend time with her mom. But as much as she’d like, there wasn’t really anything Carrie could do to change that. “Let’s go inside then,” Carrie said, trying to shift over to the less serious topic. She walked into the store, and the other three followed after her. The inside of the shop was just as musty as the outside, and it seemed as though nobody had shopped there in years, if not decades. In fact, the only person inside, aside from themselves, was an old man behind the counter, keeping watch over an old metal cash register. “Talk about old,” Mariah said, wrinkling her nose. “I dunno,” Carrie said. “I think all this old vintage stuff is kinda cool.” “I was talking about the guy,” Mariah snorted. She looked down her nose at an old train set from the 1930s and rolled her eyes. “So what do you sell here?” Linh asked the owner. He was a short, stocky, warm old man, with thick rimmed glasses and a forest green sweater vest. “Oh, old toys and games, mostly,” he explained with a friendly chuckle. “I don’t get too many customers, but whenever I do, they always manage to find something to enjoy.” “I somehow doubt that,” Mariah snarked. If her remark offended the old man, he certainly didn’t show it. He just kept on smiling fondly, as though he were talking to his grandchildren. “I have to agree with Mariah,” Vivian said, speaking up for the first time since they had entered the store. “I haven’t met anyone, our age or younger, who has even a passing interest in a game that doesn’t involve a CPU.” “Ah, people can surprise you!” the man claimed. “Why, just last month, I had a little boy come in with his mother. Just like you say, he wasn’t interested in anything other than his fortnights or call of battlefield, but then he found this little wooden car, over on that wall. The second he laid eyes on it, he couldn’t think of anything else. He begged his mother to buy it for him, and then he ran right on past the game store down the way, because he couldn’t wait to get home and play with the car.” “Suuuure he did,” Mariah muttered under her breath. She gave up on even pretending to be interested in the store’s contents, and so she stayed by the front entrance and leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed. “I can believe it,” Carrie said, smiling at the old man. “There are still people who like this old vintage stuff. Collectors, you know? They’ve gotta start somewhere.” “I guess…” Vivian agreed, tentatively. Linh, however, seemed to be fully on Carrie’s side. While Linh and Vivian looked at a few old toy soldiers, Carrie wandered off, towards the back of the store, where there was an array of board games stacked in a pyramid. At the very top of the pile was one with a name she didn’t recognize at all. Even the brand on the box, the people who made it, didn’t ring any bells. Milton Bradley they were not. But the cover of the box is what caught her attention, as well as an odd name, which clashed with the date that it was made. “The Stepford Game?” she asked nobody in particular. Wasn’t that story from the 1970s? But the game, from it’s production date to the scene on the cover, dated the game to the early 1950s, roughly twenty years earlier than that horror film her cousin showed her. But the box seemed so interesting, so unique. It had an idyllic image on the cover, showing a group of six housewives chatting on a patio. They were all different races, which seemed surprising, given the era. But they also looked so happy. Genuinely happy, too, not that fakey happiness that old advertisements always involved. Carrie didn’t even have to think twice about it. She was going to buy the board game. Like the old man said in his story about the little boy, she was transfixed. She knew that it was now or never, somehow. If she walked out of the store without it, she would never find this piece of history ever again, no matter how hard she searched. She picked the box up and hugged it close to her chest as she raced back to the counter. “I’ll take this, please!” Carrie said with an eager smile as she set the box down on the glass countertop. “Huh? Really?” Vivian asked, looking up from a pack of baseball cards that the man had been showing to her and Linh. “Oh, cool! I haven’t played a board game in ages!” Linh said. “We can play it back at my house tonight!” Carrie nodded enthusiastically, happy that her friend was down with trying it out. “C’mon, Viv, play it with us?” Carrie asked. It didn’t take much encouragement. If it made Carrie happy, Vivian was willing to do just about anything, no matter how hokey. Vivian gave the box one last suspicious look, but then she sighed and relented. “Alright, I’m in. It’s gonna be weird, but whatever. Weird is my middle name.” What she didn’t admit was that the image of the happy housewives on the cover seemed almost… interesting? She didn’t have the faintest clue as to why, but Vivian had a hard time avoiding looking at them, no matter how many times she forced her gaze away. “That’s the spirit!” Carrie said. “So, um, how much do I owe you, sir?” she asked the man. “For that one? Just $5.” “Wait, really? Even Monopoly costs, like, $20, and that’s new. This has to be worth more than that, right?” Carrie asked, shocked at how cheap the offer was. “Everything here goes for the original sale price, dear,” the old man said with a smile. “And in 1952, that board game was $5, so $5 it is.” “Alright, awesome!” Carrie said as she handed the man a five dollar bill. “Seriously, mister, thank you so much!” “Thank you, my dear! Have a swell time!” “Believe me, dude, we will!” Linh said with a laugh as she threw her arms around Vivian and Carrie’s shoulders. Carrie picked the box up and hugged it close to her chest again as the three headed to the exit, where Mariah joined them. “You’re forcing me to play that dumbass game with you, aren’t you?” she asked, dreading the answer that she knew was coming. “Yes, yes we are,” Carrie insisted with a bright and cheery smile. She had a wonderful feeling about this game. She hadn’t been this excited in a long, long time. ********************* “Mom! We’re home!” Linh said as the four girls climbed out of Vivian’s black Tesla. Her mother was sitting on the front porch, typing away on a laptop. “Mhm. There’s some leftover pizza in the fridge if you’re hungry. But try to be quiet tonight, okay? It might be my day off, but I still have to review these case notes, and I don’t need any distractions,” Linh’s mother said coldly. “Right. Sorry, mom. We’ll try not to cause too much noise,” Linh said, looking a bit crestfallen for a moment, before she put a smile back on her face and led the others inside. They headed straight up to Linh’s bedroom, on the top floor of the house. She was the only one of the group who lived at home year round, since she lived close to their college, and so her room looked, well, lived in. The bed wasn’t made, and there was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, which Linh shoved into a closet to deal with later. Meanwhile, Carrie set the board game box down on the white carpet, in the center of the room. Vivian sat to her right, Linh sat to her left, and Mariah sat across from her. Carrie opened the box and set the top off to the side, then pulled out the game board. It was set up to look like an idyllic 1950s suburban neighborhood, with white picket fences and green hedges separating rows of identical houses. The starting point was the local grocery store, and the ending point seemed to be a lively barbecue in someone’s backyard, attended by the whole neighborhood. There was also a small speaker set into the center of the board, though it didn’t seem to have any buttons connected to it. Carrie grabbed the rulebook and started skimming through it, reading aloud for everyone to hear while they all picked out a character piece to represent themselves. The tiny plastic figures were all identical, being little housewives with poofy skirts and beehive hairdos, but they were set apart by their colors. Vivian grabbed the black piece, while Linh grabbed the purple one, and Mariah grabbed the blue one. Vivian picked out the red piece for Carrie, knowing that it was her favorite color. “The Stepford Game. Two to eight players. Roll the dice, yada yada, pick up cards from the appropriate piles… Always read the card out loud… Event spaces, chore spaces, reality spaces, and wardrobe spaces… Fail a chore challenge, get a punishment… First to reach the barbecue wins, but the game doesn’t end until everyone arrives. Sounds simple enough, yeah?” “Yep. So who goes first?” Vivian asked. She still couldn’t believe that they were actually playing this thing. The things she did to make Carrie happy… “It says that we have to roll for turn order,” Carrie explained, after finding the appropriate rule. Carrie got a six, Linh got a five, Vivian a three, and Mariah a two. “Okay, so I go first!” Carrie said with an eager grin. She was hoping that she’d be the first one to get a turn. Carrie shook the dice in her hands and then rolled them along the carpet. She got a four, and so she picked up the little red housewife piece and moved it to the fourth spot, which was marked as a wardrobe space. After double checking the rules to make sure she was supposed to do so, Carrie took the top card off of the wardrobe deck and looked it over. The card had a drawing of a woman’s hand, with long, perfectly manicured nails, which were being lovingly painted. There was also text on the card, which Carrie read for the group. “Fresh Coat of Paint. You spent the afternoon taking care of your precious little digits, and now you’ve got a lovely manicure and a new coat of paint to go with it! Keep good care of those nails, dearie!” A second after she finished reading the card, the speaker in the center of the board played a happy jingle, and Carrie felt a little tingle on the tips of her fingers. When she set the card down, she noticed something peculiar. Her nails, which had been cut short and unpainted just a second ago, were now long, perfectly manicured, and colored cherry red. Her eyes went wide with shock, but she played it off as if nothing odd had happened, and set the card aside, then folded her hands in her lap. Nobody else seemed to notice the sudden change, but she had to wonder… What kind of game had she bought, exactly? “Alright, my turn!” Linh said as she snatched up the dice and tossed them again. A three. “One, two, three… Reality space? What’s that mean?” Linh asked once her game piece landed on the tile. “You’ve gotta draw a reality card,” Carrie said, reading from the rule list. “Here you go.” She picked the top card from that deck and handed it to Linh, who began to read it aloud. “Like Mother, Like Daughter: Being a housewife runs in the family. You grew up with a mother who is the spitting image of a 1950s sitcom housewife, and you’ve always wanted to be just like her when you grew up.” Suddenly, the lights in the room dimmed, and everything was swamped in a strange darkness. The hair on the backs of the girls’ necks stood on end, before the lights flickered back on and everything went back to normal. “Well of course I want to be just like my mom!” Linh said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She’s always been my role model!” Suddenly, a voice called out from the other room, and then Linh’s mother poked her head in to see how the girls were doing. “Are you girls having fun?” she asked in a voice as sweet as apple pie. Her hair was freshly permed from a trip to the salon that morning, and she was wearing a bright red shirtdress, with a ballooning skirt pushed out by several petticoats, and a white apron tied around her waist. In her hands, she held a tray of chocolate chip cookies. “I baked you some treats, in case you were hungry!” “Thanks mom! You’re the best!” Linh gushed as she took the plate off of her mother’s hands and set it down on her bed. The four young adults all began munching on the cookies with blissful smiles on their faces. Linh’s mom really was the perfect housewife! No wonder she wanted to get married and become a homemaker herself. It was all she ever talked about! Carrie was so happy that her friend had such a caring, doting mother. Even Vivian and Mariah liked Linh’s mom, even though she was so old fashioned. “Your turn, Vivian!” Linh said, handing her the dice. Vivian tossed the dice onto the carpet, and came up with a six. She moved her little black housewife piece six spaces, and ended up on a wardrobe space. Following what Carrie had done earlier, she grabbed the top card off of the pile and looked at it suspiciously. The card had a drawing of a cartoon housewife on it, with natural red hair tied back in a high ponytail. “Dye Job: You spent a day at the salon, and now you’ve got a brand new style. Being a redhead suits you, doesn’t it?” The little speaker on the center of the board played a jaunty little jingle, and all the girls watched Vivian with wide eyes, surprised by what they saw. A wave of light orange-red color swept across Vivian’s hair, from the top of her head down to her shoulders, until her jet black hair was gone, and she looked just like a natural redhead. Even her eyebrows changed color to match! And once that was done, a black ribbon seemed to appear out of thin air, and tied itself around her hair, pulling the bright red locks up into a ponytail, identical to the one on the card. “Uh… Did everyone else just see that?” Mariah asked, unable to break eye contact. It was just too bizarre. “I think she looks nice! You make a cute redhead, Viv!” Linh said with a giggle. “Yeah!” Carrie agreed enthusiastically. “It really suits you.” “No, seriously! Her hair just changed color!” Mariah exclaimed, pointing at Vivian, who was blushing a bit. “Well, yeah, it did. But it’s cute!” Linh giggled. “Maybe it’s a magic board game?” Carrie proposed. The idea had been swimming around in her head since her turn, when her nails had transformed. She took a deep breath and held up her hands for everyone to see. “My nails changed too, after I drew my card. See? They were normal before, but now they’re manicured, just like the card said,” Carrie explained. Vivian looked a bit relieved, seeing that she wasn’t the only one who had been affected. “Magic?” Mariah asked, baffled. “You think you bought a magic board game?” “Do you have a better idea?” Vivian asked. For her, the idea of a magic board game wasn’t absurd at all. She was Wiccan, and so magic was perfectly normal in her mind. “Old games like these, someone might have cursed it or something.” “So we’re playing a cursed board game, and you’re all just… Fine with that?” “Well… If you find a magic board game, why not?” Carrie asked. “It’s like something out of a movie!” “I guess…” Mariah said. Still, she wasn’t sure this was the best idea. “But if this game goes all Jumanji on us, I’m out.” “My only question is why nothing happened to Linh,” Vivian said, looking at their unaffected friend. “Carrie’s nails were painted, and my hair changed color, but Linh’s card just said a fact about her life. Right now, that’s the weird part.” “Well, it is a reality card, so maybe it knows something about the players, and is saying it?” Linh offered as an explanation. It made about as much sense as anything else. “But seriously, though, Vivian’s hair is SO. CUTE. I love it, Viv!” “Um… thanks, I think?” Vivian said. She could feel the change as it occurred, the tingle that swept across her whole body, wherever she had hair. But she wasn’t upset by the transformation, for some reason. Logically, she could just dye it black again if she really wanted to. And really, it just didn’t bother her. “My turn, then,” Mariah said as she grabbed the dice and rolled, scared of what might happen. With any luck, she’d get a reality space like Linh, and she’s just get a card that talked about how she nearly flunked her statistics course. But no, she got a one, and groaned in frustration. She moved the blue housewife forward one space, onto a wardrobe tile. Vivian handed her a card, which Mariah read out in a worried tone, cursing her poor luck. “A Gift From The Hubby. Your husband bought you a pretty new dress, and it would be terribly rude not to try it on for your date night!” Again, there was a cartoon housewife on the card, though this one looked more like Mariah, with long dreadlocks and dark brown skin. She was wearing a fancy, low cut evening dress, made of a seafoam green satin, with a full skirt and a sheer silver shawl. Once again, the speaker on the board played its jingle, but this time the effect was much more pronounced. Mariah’s clothing vanished in the blink of an eye, but she was only nude for a split second before the outfit from the card had entered the real world and wormed its way onto Mariah’s body. “What just happened?!” Mariah asked, alarmed. Carrie and Vivian were both similarly shocked, but Linh just smiled and patted Mariah on the lap. “What a gorgeous dress! It looks just like the one my mom wears when she goes out to dinner with daddy!” “Yeah, b-but what happened to my jersey?!” Mariah exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Girls, seriously, this game, i-it’s not normal! Just look at what it did to me! What it did to Vivian’s hair!” “I don’t really mind my hair…” Vivian mumbled, missing the point entirely. “Mariah, calm down, okay?” Carrie pleaded, placing her hand over Mariah’s. “I’m sure this’ll all go back to normal once the game is over, okay? That’s what the rules say, at least.” “Really? You’re sure?” Mariah asked, still very uneasy, and not at all comfortable wearing the fancy vintage dress. She sat down slowly, her petticoats rustling as she awkwardly sat down cross legged on the floor. Her skirt flounced upwards, and ruffly petticoats poked out from beneath it’s hem. Clearly, she wasn’t used to sitting down in dresses. “Yeah, I’m sure. Like I said… The rules say this is all temporary,” Carrie lied. She couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

#stepfordization #50s housewife #1950s #housewife #smokeysis

58 notes · View notes

smokeysister · 5 years ago

Text

The Stepford Game (Part 2)

(This story features elements of brainwashing, mind control, physical transformation, stepfordization, and reality warping)

Carrie still couldn’t believe what was happening. It all felt like her wildest dream had been brought to life. She had bought some old board game, one about 50s housewives trying to make their way to a barbecue, but once she and her friends started playing it.... Well, it seemed as though the game was magic. Or cursed, as her best friend Vivian called it. Whenever a card in the board game was drawn and read out loud, it affected reality. First, Carrie’s short, unpainted nails were made cherry red and given a perfect manicure. Then Vivian’s jet black hair was swept up into a beautiful red ponytail, tied up with a cute little bow. The last change so far, as far as anyone was aware, was Mariah’s basketball jersey and shorts being stripped off and replaced by a gorgeous satin green evening dress, along with an elegant shawl. Mariah wasn’t too happy about it, but Carrie found herself staring at the ensemble with a mixture of jealousy and, well… A fair bit of lust!

She had always sort of enjoyed the 1950s housewife aesthetic, deep down. She didn’t much talk about it, since it was odd to most folks, but Carrie often had dreams of being a doting housewife, living in a suburban paradise and caring for her dream husband. And seeing her friend lose her sporty clothing and be forced to wear such a pretty vintage outfit… Well, that stirred something in Carrie’s loins. Meanwhile, Linh, the fourth girl in the group, was still looking exactly the same as she did that morning. But as the only girl who landed on one of the Stepford Game’s “reality spaces”, her own history, the very fabric of reality, had been altered, and nobody could remember the way things used to be. As soon as she read the card out loud, Linh’s workaholic, cold hearted mother was transformed into the perfect sitcom housewife, straight from the 1950s. Linh, who originally longed for her mother’s affection, had now grown up being doted on by a regular June Cleaver! And she wanted to be a housewife now, just like her mother. But now it was time for Carrie’s second turn, and she held the dice with bated breath. What kind of space would she land on? Would she get a pretty 1950s style dress, like the one that Mariah was huffing about in? Or would her drab blonde pixie cut be transformed, like Vivian’s hair had been? Would she get a reality card, like Linh? Or would she land on the third type of space, the mysterious “chore space”? She took a deep breath, rolled the dice, and moved her game piece along the board as everyone watched in anticipation. “Chore space,” Carrie said slowly. She glanced around the circle, and met the eyes of each of her friends. Mariah looked worried, Vivian looked curious, and Linh, well… Linh looked like she was having the time of her life. Linh hummed happily as she handed the top card from the chore pile to Carrie, who then read it out loud for all to hear. “Scrub-A-Dub-Dub. Your husband is on his way home, and you forgot to wash the dishes! No time now to run the dishwasher, you’ll have to scrub them all by hand! Better hurry!” When Carrie looked up, she blanched. Just a second ago, she had been sitting on the floor of Linh’s bedroom. But after reading the card, she was standing in what seemed to be a classic 1950s style kitchen, but one of the walls was missing. Where the wall should be, there was instead a wall-to-wall window. On the other side was Linh, Vivian, and Mariah, still in the bedroom, and watching her with wide eyes. Before anyone could say something, there was a loud buzzing noise, and the clock on the wall started ticking down. Below the clock was a sink filled with dirty dishes. They must have been stacked up three feet! And on Carrie’s hands were a pair of thick, pink rubber gloves. Without thinking, Carrie dashed over to the sink and turned the hot water on. She began scrubbing dish after dish with soapy water, silently praying that she would finish them before her time ran out. She hadn’t checked the rules to see how the chore challenges worked, but she remembered seeing something about a “punishment” if someone failed. Dish after dish, Carrie scrubbed off all the dirt and grime, then set them on the other side of the counter to dry. She could feel herself start to sweat, and her forehead went clammy. She didn’t even have time to check the clock, but she could hear the girls on the other side of the window cheering her on. Or, rather, she could hear Linh cheer her on while Mariah and Vivian watched in fearful silence. Eventually, Carrie heard Vivian whisper “come on, hurry up!”, and her nerves started to fray even more. And that’s when Carrie slipped up. She grabbed another plate, the very last one in fact, and started to scrub it, but once it was clean, it slipped right out of Carrie’s hands and fell onto the floor, where it shattered into a million pieces. Carrie stared in horror at the shards that littered the floor, and then the buzzer went off, and the door to the kitchen opened. “Honey, I’m home!” It was Kent! Her boyfriend? But what was he doing here? How was he a part of the game? Magic. Of course. It was a magic game, and she was in a fake little kitchen set, so naturally there would be a fake husband too. And he just so happened to look and sound like her boyfriend who she was on the rocks with, albeit wearing a suit and tie, with a briefcase in hand. “What’s this, then?” Kent asked, looking at the broken dish, and then giving Carrie a stern look. “Carol, what did you do?” “I-I’m sorry?” She stammered. Carrie glanced at the window, where all three of her friends, even Linh, were looking worried. “I lost, didn’t I?” “You made a mess!” Kent exclaimed, exasperated. He stuck his hands on his hips for a moment as he thought about what to do, and then he grabbed Carrie by the wrist. He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and bent Carrie over his lap. No matter how much she struggled, his grip was just too tight, but not painfully so. But then he brought his open hand down on her bottom, and Carrie gasped as a loud “smack” rang out. “Oh, hell no,” Mariah said. “Carrie? Carrie are you okay?” Vivian asked. “Oh, he’s spanking her! That’s what daddy does whenever mom breaks a dish!” Linh said with a giggle. Carrie, however, stayed perfectly silent as Kent’s double spanked her again. And again. And again. It went on for what felt like an eternity, but Carrie didn’t resist after that first whack on the ass. Each slap that he brought down on her bottom made Carrie heat up just a touch more than the last, and she was already blushing as red as a beet. She had never fantasized about being spanked before, but right then and there, Carrie realized just how wonderful each additional stroke felt. Down in her pants, she felt herself growing slick, and it took all of her willpower not to moan with pleasure. But eventually her punishment came to an end, and when Carrie opened her eyes, she found herself sitting on a sore bottom, back in Linh’s bedroom, with all eyes on her. If it was possible to blush any brighter, she would. Meanwhile, Carrie’s red game piece moved back two spaces, without being touched by anyone, just the game’s magic. “Carrie… Are you alright?” Vivian asked, grabbing Carrie’s hand to show her concern for her best friend. “Y-yeah, I-I’m fine,” Carrie said, still coming down from the high of being brought so close to, well… To reaching the top of that hill. “Let’s just keep going, okay? Linh?” “Oh right, it’s my turn now!” Linh said. She rolled the dice, and moved her tiny purple housewife forward another three spaces, landing on the same wardrobe piece that Vivian’s black piece was resting on. A wardrobe space, which led her to draw a wardrobe card. “Sunday Best. It’s a Sunday, and you know what that means! Time to head on over to morning mass, and be sure to dress nicely when you go.” Just like every other time someone drew a wardrobe card, the tiny speaker in the center of the game board played a happy little jingle. And this time, just like when Mariah’s clothing was altered, Linh’s outfit vanished before their very eyes. For a brief moment, the 19 year old Asian girl was left nude, totally exposed for all her friends to see, before a new outfit began to appear on her body. First, a set of vintage undergarments appeared to cover her shame. A bullet bra, panties, garter belt, and stockings. Then, a white blouse with a peter pan collar covered her upper half, while a deep purple skirt wrapped around her bottom, with its hemline reaching her calves. Finally, a matching purple sweater went on over the blouse, and a cross necklace formed around Linh’s neck. “Ahh, this is just the sort of thing that I’d love to wear to mass!” Linh squealed happily, marveling at her new outfit. “I didn’t know you were religious,” Vivian noted. “Well, I’m not, really,” Linh admitted sheepishly, tugging at her skirt. “But it’s still a really nice outfit! It’s sort of like what my mother wears when she goes to church. I wouldn’t mind going more, honestly.” “It really suits you, Linh,” Carrie gushed. Like with Mariah, Carrie felt a rush of both jealousy and lust at the sight of Linh wearing the sort of outfit you’d see a 50s housewife wearing. She looked so demure, so pure, so innocent… And the arousal from her earlier punishment certainly wasn’t going away now! “Thanks, Carrie!” Linh said, giving her friend a quick hug. “So I ended up in some frou frou ball gown and she’s looking like a church girl. Great. Really fun game, Carrie,” Mariah huffed, crossing her arms and pouting. Unfortunately, her outfit negated any impact her grumpiness may have had, and Mariah ended up just looking a little silly and adorable. “Hey, she didn’t know any of this would happen!” Vivian spoke up, rather angrily, in Carrie’s defense. “And need I remind you that she was just spanked in front of all of us! If anyone has a right to be embarrassed right now, it’s Carrie. It’s an old dress, you can deal.” Mariah fell silent and looked down at her lap, sufficiently shamed. Vivian grabbed the dice from Linh and rolled for her turn, pushing through the awkwardness and keeping the game going. She just wanted to get it over with, and hopefully avoid any more unfortunate scenes that night. She moved her piece along the board, and wound up on another chore space. Everyone but Linh exchanged awkward, worried glances, as Vivian accepted the chore card from Linh. “Laundry Day. Your spouse needs a clean set of clothes, so don’t delay! Take good care of the laundry, and try not to end up with pink socks!” When Vivian looked up from the card, she found herself in a similar predicament as the one that faced Carrie earlier. The three walled, almost 1950s sitcom looking house set was the same, as was the giant window for her friends to watch her through. But rather than being in a kitchen, Vivian was trapped in a small laundry room. There was no ticking clock, but she was faced with a mountain’s worth of dirty laundry. Vintage frocks, stockings and undergarments, blouses… All things that one would expect a 50s housewife to wear. But mixed in among them, Vivian discovered as she sorted out the whites, were articles that likely belonged to other members of the supposed “family” she was doing this laundry for. Fitted suits, pencil skirts, ties of varying colors and styles, things that most likely belonged to her own false spouse, like how Carrie had a false version of Kent. The fact that she was currently single didn’t seem to matter to the game. And on top of that, there was also an assortment of small dresses, bobby socks, and cloth diapers. So she was doing laundry for a baby, too. Luckily, Vivian didn’t have to work with a time limit, and she had more than enough experience in washing her own clothes. She figured that the game cared more about her skill and knowledge in how to properly sort and wash the clothes than her speed at a simpler task, like Carrie got. In fact, time didn’t seem to make much sense at all during her little challenge. The instant that she put a load in the wash, it was all ready to move over to the dryer, without even a minute’s wait. She was grateful for that, at least. Otherwise, with the amount of laundry she was tasked with handling, it would take half a day to do it all, if not longer. But once she finished with the last of the drying, Vivian found that she wasn’t back in Linh’s bedroom, not yet. She looked at the window, to the others watching her, and hoped that they might have an answer. “You’ve got to fold them, silly!” Linh explained, rolling her eyes. “Right. Makes sense,” Vivian muttered to herself as she turned back around and started work on getting everything folded and divided up by who the clothes belonged to. As the time went on, she began to realize that the monotony of the chore wasn’t boring her. If anything, it was actually rather relaxing, just devoting herself to one simple task. And the smell of the clean clothes was rather enjoyable. She had never really noticed that before, but it was. There wasn’t anything about the task for her to complain about, and Vivian smiled to herself as she got into the rhythm of folding the various dresses and skirts and diapers, and setting them off to the side so that she could start on the next article. She had gotten off easy on the chores, she figured, but that wasn’t a bad thing at all. Once she set the last toddler’s dress aside, as neatly folded as everything else, Vivian heard a little ding, like the sound of a tiny bell being rung. When she looked around, she found herself, finally, back in Linh’s bedroom, with the other girls watching her. Carrie seemed relieved that Vivian had avoided being punished like she was, while Mariah breathed a sigh of relief and started looking for the dice. Linh, however, was busy fawning over Vivian’s appearance. “Gosh, those earrings are so cute, Viv!” Linh gushed, touching Vivian’s ear delicately. Vivian reached up and felt her earlobe, and understood what her reward for winning the challenge had been. Her gauges were gone, and the large hole they created was fully healed up. In their places were a pair of large pearl earrings, as smooth and cool as she always imagined pearls must feel. “Oh,” Vivian said, not sure what else to even say about the change. She should have been mad, just as upset as Mariah was about the changes, if not more. She had paid a lot of money for her various piercings, and to have two of them replaced ought to feel like a violation. But instead, she didn’t mind it at all. In fact, she felt almost happy about it. Thinking on it, the gauges were something she’d probably grow to regret someday, while a nice, classy pair of pearl earrings was something she couldn’t go wrong with. Even if they did clash with the rest of her appearance. But there wasn’t any time to think about that, since Mariah was already taking her turn. “Two spaces,” Mariah noted. She moved her game piece along the board, and breathed a sigh of relief when she landed on a reality space. “Reality space! Okay, you demon game, what fact about my life are you going to predict?” “Biblical Name. Your name is Mary. It’s the only name you’ve got, so don’t wear it out!” Mary stared at the card after reading it, confused. The other three looked at her as she slowly set the card down. “But my name isn’t Mary,” she claimed, getting defensive. “My name is Mary! Er, wait, what? My name is Mary. Mary. My name is Mary!” “Yeah, we know what your name is, Mary,” Linh said. “No! This isn’t right. I know that my name was something else, but whenever I try to think of it, my brain just says… Mary.” Mary started to get even more worried. The harder she thought about it, the more her original name seemed to elude her. She tried to spell it out inside of her head. It started with an M, and then an A, followed by an R… And then a Y. M-A-R-Y. “I-I think that these cards don’t tell us facts about reality,” Mary realized, finally. “I think that they change reality, just like those other cards change our appearance!” “But my card didn’t change reality,” Linh told her, growing somewhat annoyed by her friend’s little scene. “My mom is a housewife and I want to be one too. That’s how it’s always been, Mary. And I don’t remember you ever having another name!” “Neither do I,” Carrie agreed, and Vivian nodded her head. “You’re Mary. What other name would you have?” “I think you both might be right,” Vivian said. “I think that Mary knows she had a different name once, but we can only think of her as Mary. So whatever her name used to be doesn’t really matter, since it’s gone entirely now.” “But… But that’s my name!” Mary exclaimed. Even so, her outrage was subsiding. She just didn’t have it in her to keep arguing when even she couldn’t recall what her old name was anymore. The only name she could think of as her’s was Mary, and there was nothing she could do about it, and so she sank to her knees and folded her hands in her lap as she sniffled her tears away. Linh patted her on the shoulder sympathetically, but even Mary knew that she must have sounded ridiculous. The game was really starting to get to her. “Just take your turn, Carrie,” Mary told her, pushing the dice in the blonde’s direction. Carrie nodded and shook the dice in her hands, filled with a mixture of excitement and fear as she rolled them. She couldn’t wait to see what came next, even if it was a bit intimidating. “Wow, Carrie! Two chore spaces in a row!” Linh noted once she saw where Carrie’s game piece landed. Carrie drew the chore card and read it with bated breath. Would she fail this challenge, like she did the last one? Would she… Would she be spanked again? In front of her friends, as they watched a man bend her over his knee and treat her like a misbehaving child? What was this game doing to her, making her all hot and bothered at the thought of something so shameful? Or had she always wanted that sort of thing, but just hadn’t realized it? “Changing Time. Your baby needs a changing, and any mother worth her salt knows how to change a diaper! Can you do it in time?” Carrie shut her eyes as the world around her shifted. She could feel the air change, and her nose picked up the scent of... baby powder? When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a nursery, standing by a crib. Another smell cut through the first one, this one much more foul. Carrie wrinkled her nose in disgust, and then she heard a loud, piercing cry coming from the crib. She didn’t even waste time looking at her friends through the window in the wall. She had a challenge to win! Thankfully, Carrie had experience with babysitting from back in high school. Changing a diaper and calming an infant down was no issue at all for her, and she didn’t even need to pay attention to the clock on the wall as it ticked downwards. Her time wasn’t even halfway up when she finished, and a happy little chime played. And just like that, Carrie was already back in Linh’s room. But to her brief confusion, everyone was staring at her, just like when she had been spanked. Mary was, as usual, somewhat horrified and disgusted. Vivian was shocked. Linh, of course, was excited as she could possibly be. Then, Carrie realized that there was a weight in her arms. Something heavy, warm, soft, and… squirming? She looked down at what she was holding, and her own eyes went wide with shock.

“Oh my gosh, Carrie! Did the game give you a baby?” Linh asked. She practically flew over to Carrie and started fawning over the infant that Carrie had been saddled with. Carrie’s initial surprise faded fast. The more attention that she paid the baby, the more she seemed to know about it. She was a girl, eight months old, her name was Alice, and her father was Carrie’s boyfriend, Kent. She knew that just a second ago, she was a childless young woman. She had always practiced safe sex! But she also knew, without a doubt in her mind, that this precious little girl was her’s. This must be what Mary felt like, with the game changing her name. She knew, logically, that the game had changed a facet of her life, but that didn’t change that this was her life now. And so she hugged Alice close to her chest and sighed happily as the baby cooed at her “aunty Linh”. “This is the game, isn’t it?” Mary asked, her worries bubbling up again. “This game keeps screwing with our fucking lives, and we can’t do anything to stop it while we keep fucking playing it!” “Mary, stop that!” Carrie hushed her. “No cursing around the baby. Linh, why don’t you take your turn, okay?” “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But we can’t just keep ignoring this,” Mary insisted. “This game is messing with our heads, with our bodies, and now with our lives too! We need to quit while we’re ahead, before it, I dunno, makes Linh pregnant!” “Oh, Mary! That would be so amazing!” Linh gushed, her head filling up with thoughts about the prospect. “Okay, bad example, but still!” Mary moaned. She pointed a finger at Vivian as she continued. “What if the game removed Vivian’s intelligence or something? O-Or made me LIKE this?!” “Do you really think the game could completely change someone like that, Mary?” Linh asked, incredulous. The idea that someone could have their own thoughts and desires warped by the game was ludicrous to her. “Anyways, you can quit if you want, but I’m having a lot of fun!” “So am I, actually,” Carrie agreed as she stuck a pacifier into her new baby’s mouth. “I haven’t had this much fun in years.” “I’m staying in if Carrie is,” Vivian said. She didn’t admit that a part of her wanted to see just how deep all of this could go, and what else could change. Would she be the next one to end up in vintage clothing? Or would it be Carrie? Could someone else end up becoming a mother, seemingly out of nowhere? A small, determined part of Vivian desperately wanted to experience whatever the game had to offer. “...Fine,” Mary said, after a lengthy pause. “But if anything happens to me, it’s on you guys. Take your turn, Linh.” “Okie dokie!” Linh said with a giggle as she rolled the dice, eager to see what would happen to her next. “Two, three, four… Oh, yay! Reality space!” The young asian woman excitedly reached for an appropriate card and cleared her throat before reading it aloud to the group. She couldn’t wait to see what would happen, or rather, to find out if the game could really change something about her life like it did to Mary and Carrie. “Getting Your MRS Degree. You tried to give it the old college try, but college was just too smart for you! It’s okay, though. An aspiring housewife doesn’t need a degree to clog up her brain.” Linh nodded her head. That made sense to her. After all, she had dropped out of college after just one semester, once it became apparent that she was far too dumb to make it in academia. “Wait, but… But aren’t we all on break from school?” Mary asked, looking around the circle for confirmation. Carrie and Vivian nodded their heads. That was true, obviously. “Well yeah, you guys are,” Linh said. “But I dropped out during our first year, remember? I’ve been helping my mother around the house ever since, at least until a boy sweeps me off my feet and makes me his housewife!” “But Linh, what if that’s just the game messing with your life? Like how it changed my name, or made Carrie a mom!” Linh shrugged her shoulders. “Does it matter? I don’t really care about school anyways. I just want to be a housewife!” “I guess…” Mary said, admitting defeat. Did it really matter if it matched Linh’s own desires? Odds are she’d drop out eventually anyways, regardless of if the game had made it happen early or not. “See, Mary? This game isn’t making any of us grumpy except for you,” Linh told her, gently touching Mary’s shoulder. “If you try to enjoy it, like we are, you might have some fun!” Mary didn’t say anything in response. She just kept on sulking, trying to convince herself that Linh was wrong. It was a hard argument to win, though, so she kept quiet and waited for Vivian to roll the dice and let whatever change that’d come happen. Wasn’t like she could stop it, even if she tried. Could she? “I got a five,” Vivian mumbled, before picking up her little black housewife shaped game piece. She dragged it along the board over five spaces, moving right on past Linh’s piece, and ending up on the next reality space. Her heart rate picked up as she realized what that meant for her. Up till now, she had gotten by with minimal changes from the game. Just her hair and earrings had been changed, while Mary, Carrie, and Linh had all experienced massive shifts in either their wardrobe, their life, or both. But now her life was going to change, possibly forever, all due to the whim of a card in some old, possibly cursed, board game. It was terrifying, but also exciting. Why was she excited by the prospect of the game radically altering her very life? All she could do was draw the reality card and see what awaited her. “Clean As A Whistle. You’re not sure what these “body mod” things are, but you’ve certainly never had one! No siree, your body is a temple, and no tattoo needle or piercing gun has marred your beautiful skin.” Vivian looked down at her arm as the lights dimmed, and while her stomach turned, she could see the tattoos fade away, until there was just unblemished, ivory skin. She raised a hand to her face and felt around as her piercings seemed to sink into her skin, and then vanish entirely. Even her new pearl earrings vanished by the time that the lights came back on! And when the room went back to normal, Vivian found that she couldn’t remember ever sitting down to get a tattoo or piercing. She didn’t have the faintest clue as to what that experience felt like. She shuddered at the thought. It must be so painful, all just to have some ugly image ruin her skin! Thank goodness she had never gotten any kind of body modification before. “So… Let me guess. Vivian used to be covered in tattoos or something?” Mary said, looking Vivian up and down. Vivian nearly gagged at the very idea! “Vivian with tattoos? I can’t even picture what that’d look like,” Carrie admitted. The thought of her friend getting a tattoo was frankly absurd. Vivian always hated tattoos! She wouldn’t even sit down to get her ears pierced, no matter how much you paid her. “Viv with tattoos? Oh wow, that’d be a sight!” Linh laughed. “Can we just move on, please?” Vivian asked. “I don’t really like all this theorizing. We all know how I feel about the subject.” Still, Vivian felt that Mary must have had a point. Considering how the cards worked, she must have had some sort of body modification done to herself in the past, even if the idea disgusted her now. Did the game really change something so drastic about her, even down to her feelings on something like that? She couldn’t stop wondering...

#Stepfordization #brainwashing #50s housewife #mind control #smokeysis

52 notes · View notes