Chapter 4

FLASHFORWARD: After more teasing in the living room Beverly and Erica manage to get a short reprieve upstairs to discuss what just happened while the JTP call their mothers and ask to stay for dinner. The JTP wanted to stay and watch what happened next!

“What the hell?” Erica had a churlish expression of disgust on her face. She was still naked except for her pink headband and leg warmers she had worn downstairs.

Erica and her mother didn’t have long before they would be expected to return to the kitchen. Adam explicitly ordered Erica to help with dinner, and she hated cooking. Ironically, she had been more willing to get naked than she had to lift a finger domestically around the house.

“What do you mean?” Beverly asked coyly. There could be a hundred reasons Erica was upset. “Are you thinking about quitting? Confronting Adam in front of Barry and his friends and telling him this mind control was nothing but a joke we were playing on him?”

“No,” Erica answered emphatically that the contest of wills between them was NOT decided yet. She HAD, in fact, been intending to throw in the towel.

However, once she saw that her mother didn’t seem freaked out in the least by parading around nearly naked downstairs, she promptly changed her mind. She would not be the weak link that breaks. It also dawned on Erica that if she tells everyone that this was a prank on Eric, it would mean she was admitting she jammed her own thumb up her ass to play that prank.

What she didn’t realize was that Beverly was both excited about the game but equally mortified. If Erica had been willing to give up right then, Beverly would have also been ready to call it a draw and a worthy effort for them both. Erica said she was definitely not giving up. That only stiffened her mother’s resolve to continue the charade as well.

“Okay, then what is it?” Beverly looked annoyed at her daughter.

“I think we need to establish some more ground rules,” she said.

“We have an entire signed contract!” Beverly reminded her daughter about the rules they mutually agreed to abide in the first chapter of the story. “You aren’t going to renegotiate them now!” Beverly insisted.

If anyone was going to renegotiate the rules, she was the one who would be doing it. “I could have been a lawyer! So I think I know a thing or two about iron-clad contracts!” She said.

Erica rolled her eyes. She had heard her mother brag about possibly being a lawyer many times. “Yes, you could have been a lawyer if you attended law school, studied real hard, passed the bar, and began practicing law,” she sighed.

“Damn straight!” Beverly agreed while missing the sarcasm, possibly by accident but more likely by intention.

Erica very quickly laid out the problem she was trying to solve at the moment. The two of them weren’t on the same page about how the mind control worked and how they needed to be on the same page at all times.

Erica said she wanted to keep their stories straight because didn’t want to add to her humiliation by having the rest of the family find out she did all these embarrassing things as a joke. In the back of her mind, she also wanted to see how far this charade was really going to go. She was willing to go as far as her mother would.

“For this to work, we’ve got to be on the same page!” Erica said.

“It doesn’t work at all,” Beverly chuckled that it wouldn’t work anyway. Beverly was starting to lose faith they could pull it off. She wanted to make it work but she saw some of the same problems that her daughter did. There were too many loose ends and unknowns and it was driving her bananas.

“We could pretend the tea fried our brains and come out like Frankenstein,” Beverly suggested an alternative approach. She moved her arms lethargically and pretended to need constant supervision.

“No, that would get old quick. Adam wouldn’t be able to micro-manage us like that,” Erica dismissed the idea because she had the same idea as well. “We’ve already started with the Stepford Wife Approach,” she said.

They had both watched a 1970’s movie called “Stepford Wives”. It centered around an idyllic community where all the wives behaved joyfully submissive to their husbands. The husband’s had replaced them with Robots. They were both doing their best imitation of those obedient puppets. Naturally, they did it with their usual Goldberg sarcasm at the same time.

The girls had cobbled together a few common assumptions about how Adam’s mind control worked on them they could agree upon. Erica reminded her mother that Adam was a special kind of nerd. “He is the kind of geek who picks apart movies for plausibility. He will ask questions about how if a Transporter can split two people into two distinct personalities, then why don’t they make infinite Captain Kirks to serve on starships,” she said.

“It is just a dumb TV show. Who cares how it works?” Beverly shrugged.

“Yeah, but our life isn’t a TV show,” Erica looked off in the distance at an imaginary camera she pictured filming their lives and turning it into a TV show. “Adam is going to see right through our bullshit.

Beverly said there was no way they could predict all the things her devious youngest son could think up to trip them up. They might make a mistake. Erica and Beverly just wanted to cover off on the most obvious ways it could happen. They were confident they could out maneuver Adam if they anticipated some of the things he would do or say.

Erica agreed and said that they would have to use their common sense, but they need an Establishment Clause. She explained that meant that if one of them pretended the mind control worked one way, then the mind control rules had to work the same way that for both of them. It had to follow the same consistent internal logic, or Adam would figure out he was being played and play them right back.

Adam felt guilty about controlling his mom and sister. He still went ahead and did it, though. Erica and Beverly had no guilt at all about pretending his mind control worked and tricking him. They were, after all, the ones who had to obey his orders.

Neither of them wanted anyone to know they were playing a trick on Adam, but neither of them felt an ounce of guilt about it. Beverly felt Adam might be angry with her or not be able to trust her but she planned to point out he was the one who tried to control her thoughts!

She gave an example about how, when she gets asked a tough question she can’t answer, she pretends to enter a dream-like trance. “You start explaining why you are naked as some sort of teachable lesson about accepting your fat thighs or something,” Erica said.

“I never said I had fat thighs!” Beverly insisted. She knew exactly what her daughter was talking about now. She had noticed it too. She was making excuses and backpedaling, and Erica was blanking out and ignoring the question. Erica said her idea was best because it was the simplest.

Beverly DID feel she had teachable moments too numerous to list. She was teaching Adam to be more assertive. She explained that to her daughter.

“If someone asks you why you are following Adam’s orders and you say it is to teach him to be more assertive what happens when he finds out? He’ll realize there is no mind control and he is being taught a valuable lesson,” Erica scoffed.

“We wouldn’t want that,” Beverly smirked. “What are you going to say if Adam orders you to tell people why you are doing what he told you?” Beverly asked her daughter what the solution should be. It thrilled Beverly to brainstorm with her daughter like this.

“Yeah, he has done that before. I don’t want to confirm that it is because he told me to do it,” I said.

“I think everyone knows you did not hug me so sweetly because you wanted to,” Beverly summoned some tears to guilt her daughter into feeling bad about showing her mom enough affection.

“We were ordered to stand nipple to nipple,” Erica reminded her mother that it was no simple hug. She ignored her mom’s attempts to guilt her into feeling bad. Beverly did that so often.

“Yeah, but my nipples are much higher than yours,” Beverly smiled and rubbed her strawberry silver dollar sized nipples. “I thought it was nice spending time close that,” she said.

“You would,” Erica replied. She got back to the question they were trying to answer. “I love you, Mom. You know that! The fact you’d do this with me. It’s crazy but I feel like it is bringing us closer,” she said.

“Yeah, titty to titty closer,” Beverly teased her daughter and said she understood what she really meant. Beverly accepted her daughter’s offer of genuine affection and beamed with approval.

Erica smiled and said had a suggestion to their problem with being asked why they were doing such outrageous things.”I think if we get asked why we decided to do something Adam told us we can pretend we don’t know why we are doing what we are doing. If he asks us too explicitly say we need his permission, we’ll say that we do but not why we need it,” Erica said they would just bluster and hope for the best...

“Done! I am just as confused as everyone else why I listen to my son and not my smart daughter,” Beverly annoyingly pulled Erica’s cheeks.

“You CAN listen to me if you lose our bet,” Erica reminded her mother that she was her slave for three weeks. She also said that she’d continue any rule that Adam already had for her during that time.

“You wouldn’t!” Beverly was aghast that her daughter would even joke about continuing her humiliation if she lost.

Erica pulled her own cheeks and jiggled them to simulate her mother’s annoying habit of touching her face. “I would be a lot more creative at making rules than Adam, and I know you aren’t really under mind control!” Erica assured her mom she was serious about continuing her mother’s nudity after the three weeks was up.

“Meanie-Butt!” Beverly stuck her tongue out at her daughter. She would prefer matching t-shirts with their faces and names on them instead of matching garter belts. She wouldn’t continue Erica’s nude assignments, but she would definitely take advantage of three weeks of her daughter’s undivided attention.

“Also, you can’t leave me hanging out there! You left me out there in the living room alone!” Erica sounded hurt that her mother wasn’t there for her. Beverly knew it was not genuine emotion, though.

“You hid in your room while I made the snacks,” Beverly reminded her and said that she would have been down there, but Murray dragged her upstairs for some boom-boom.

“Gross!” Erica didn’t want to hear about her parent’s sex life.

“He really gave it to me! Unclogged my pipes like Drano and then washed me up like Mr. Clean,” Beverly insisted on giving a few more unwanted details.

Erica rolled her eyes and said, “I think we need to agree that unless Adam orders us out of the kitchen or living room that we both need to hang out. No cheating!”

Beverly agreed but scoffed at the idea of cheating. She pointed out it was frequently Erica who ran off and hid in her room.

Erica said that Adam closed that loophole by forbidding her from shutting her door.

“He told you to go straight home and undress, and we found you at the mall,” Beverly reminded her daughter that she and Adam caught Erica in the food court hanging out with friends. She knew Erica was being sneaky and trying to avoid hanging with her daughter. “Shame on you for cheating at this game! It was your idea!” Beverly said.

“Yeah, well, you cheated too! I’ll bet as soon as we left for school you put clothes on?” Erica shot back.

“No!” Beverly denied the accusation like it was unthinkable. Then she agreed with a smirk that she spent an hour with her toy unwinding before getting dressed. Beverly explained, “Why stand around naked all day if no one is going to be home? Besides, I had to get the mail and go shopping!” she said. She pointed her coffee klatch of fellow moms frequently came by and wouldn’t understand.

“I had to wear a slutty outfit at school ALL day in front of all my friends. You should have to be naked at home!” Erica insisted.

“What is the big whoop? No one is here to see me,” Beverly insisted. She suddenly realized the same case could have been walking around her house naked all these years in comfort instead of getting all dressed up to clean house alone. This was different because she couldn’t get dressed if company came over and she was concerned her friends wouldn’t understand the charade she was playing on her son – they would probably be horrified.

“They are the Bevolution! You named your group after yourself. They will do whatever you tell them. Heck, they’ll probably think it is a new aerobics trend and want to do it with you,” Erica said.

Beverly huffed but she realized that Erica was right. Her friends pretty much did do what she told them. She was still worried that a delivery driver or neighbor she couldn’t bully into believing anything she told them would stop by. The next door neighbor Bill was unemployed and frequently stopped by the house.

“Look, let’s just say that Adam has one of his Ferris Bueller flashback moments where he wants to re-create that sweet Matthew Broderick movie,” Erica said. Erica had a well-establish crush on Matthew Broderick and John Cusack. “If he came home early from school and caught you not following his orders, then he’d realize that we were playing him all along,” Erica said.

“He caught you not following his orders at the mall!” Beverly reminded her daughter.

“I thought we agreed that the mind control wears off the further away from the house we are? You are IN the house,” Erica argued that would make no sense if she was caught disobeying an order.

“I am ALWAYS in the god-damned house, Erica!” Beverly replied angrily and added, “I am a housewife!”

“Tough titties sucks to be you,” Erica smirked. If her mom got the worst of this bet, that was just how the cookie crumbled, and Erica was okay with it.

Beverly thought about it and mentioned the establishment clause. She told Erica that when she took Adam for Ice Cream, he told her to lift her shirt and flash the Ice Cream parlor attendant.

“Relax, there was hardly anyone else in there,” Beverly said. Then she explained how Adam insisted on watching her try on all the sexy outfits in the dressing room she bought Erica at the mall. Beverly used to watch ADAM try on outfits in the mall and then make him walk out into the store in his underwear to pick out different sizes. Beverly knew it was payback but she enjoyed the time with her son anyway.

“Gross! You already wore all my stuff?” Erica turned up her nose in disgust.

Beverly didn’t deny it. She said she looked much better than Erica in the headband matching leg warmers. “I make it work,” Beverly did a cute Aerobic pose.

Erica rolled her eyes and scoffed. She folded her arms in front of her.

“Ah! You covered your boobs! Adam told you that is a no-no!” Beverly teased her daughter playfully. They were off the clock as far as she was concerned.

“Yeah, what is he going to do? Spank us?” Erica said. She and her mother chuckled for a while at the thought of Adam’s tiny hand trying to make an impact on their plump derrieres.

Erica did think about a time once when she was spanked and got turned on. She pushed those thoughts out of her head and back to the matter of hand.

“You know Adam made you buy those leg warmers for me because the brunette that looks just like me on the cover of his dirty magazine was wearing them?” Erica had found Adam’s Penthouse when she snooped through his room in the past. Barry knew about it as well.

“Oh honey, you aren’t that hot,” Beverly teased her daughter. She built up her sons and told them they could have long careers as doctors who were also models. She liked to tease her eldest though, and that was a form of affection between the two of them. Erica could give back as much as her mom and more.

“Well, you see who he bought them for,” Erica smirked triumphantly and asked what else she used to bribe Adam.

“Bribe? He ordered me to buy him things. I couldn’t deny him,” Beverly shrugged that she had no choice and feigned outrage that her daughter dared to question her integrity.

Alternate scenario,” Erica held up a finger and described a situation where Beverly waited for Adam to get home and then made her son THINK it was all his idea that they splurge at the mall.

“Okay, that may have been more accurate,” Beverly admitted that she had totally bribed her son. She was trying to buy his affection and make him feel guilty about ordering them around. If he apologized in the first three days, she automatically won.

“What else did you buy him?” Erica insisted that Beverly list off all the purchases that day. She was jealous Adam had a shopping spree more than she was upset over her mom’s attempt at bribery. Erica would have done the same thing in that situation but she wasn’t willing to admit it.