|
Simon Whitely knew the tears would roll any moment down his cheeks, smudging the mascara his stepmother had just brushed onto his lashes, because once again he found himself in a punishment costume. He ached with shame in front of the closet mirror as she looked over his shoulder to brush through the sides of her own brown beehive, her jaw set with hard, stepmother resolution as she checked that he was suitably chastened and miserable. "Lift your chin," she ordered. "Turn your head to the side, now the other side. A girly boy like you should be checking how pretty you look with pretty bangs and sweet teen make-up."
Simon had to do as Jessica said. Since she married his father and entered his life, each day had become a misery of obedient service and crushing humiliation. Right now his father was upstairs doing the housework - in his maiding uniform, his punishment for being unable to satisfy his new wife in bed the night before. It was becoming a frequent arrangement, which told Simon either that his stepmother was extremely demanding, or that his poor Dad was too weak and couldn't match up.
A bit like Simon himself. "That's what wimpy boys get for being so effeminate," she cried, making him jump, and the tears did begin to flow as his nose filled and the sobs began to make the little frills round his blouse collar tremble at his cheeks. Why did he have to suffer such an agonizing daily life of shame? Why did she choose such awful clothes to punish him in: a little girl's white blouse with puffed sleeves at his shoulders and a pink and white gingham skirt. "Well I can tell you this, my boy," she went on, stepping into the pleated skirt of her apple green suit and sliding it up her slip, "your life is about to change because I've had enough of all this male pretending, from you AND your father: as far as I'm concerned, Simon Whitely, you are a girl."
The boy burst out crying. What misery! For a nineteen-year-old! To be dominated and controlled by his stepmother, and made to dress in such demeaning costumes. His tears meant that he almost missed the ring of the door chimes. Oh no, surely not someone who will come into the house and see him like this! "Stand at the mirror," she said, "and practise holding your hands sweetly with your skirt held out in your fingertips."
|