Chapter 2: A Broken Family

Halfway to the bus stop, Mackenzie fell in beside me. The pale blue sundress flattered her bare shoulders and the soft light of the early morning highlighted the sensual curves and sleek lines of her body. I caught a glimpse of her pale areola through the dress, the rosy buds subtly pressing against the delicate fabric.

I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help myself.

Mackenzie noticed me looking. “Do you like what you see?” Her tone was flat, devoid of flirtation—a straightforward request for information. She was conditioned to seek male approval. This conditioning had been meant for my father, but since his death, its focus shifted to me.

“It’s a nice dress,” I replied, keeping my voice even and diplomatic.

“Blue’s your favorite color,” she stated matter-of-factly.

I was surprised by this. Not because it was a secret, but more that my stepsister had noticed. She could be so oblivious that it was always a surprise when she demonstrated any detailed awareness of her surroundings.

A week after my father’s death, Lillian snapped at Mackenzie over something trivial. Concerned, I suggested Mackenzie go for a walk to give her mom some space. Hours later, when she still hadn’t returned, I went looking for her. I found her on the swings in a park three blocks from our house.

When I asked Mackenzie why she hadn’t come home, she told me that she didn’t know where we lived. Over the next month, this became a pattern; Mackenzie got lost five more times, and I would find her either in the park or wandering down a random side street.

The issue wasn’t her intelligence—she was a smart girl, and my father hadn’t done anything to change that. The problem lay in her inability to grasp why it was important to remember where she lived. I eventually got through to her by reframing our address not as the place where she lived, but instead as where I lived. After that Mackenzie never got lost again.

I looked at Mackenzie’s dress, taking in the way the fabric stretched at her perky nipples. Of course, she’d remembered blue was my favorite color. She’d chosen the dress for me.

I thought back to the thong she’d had on in the kitchen- the same shade of blue. She’d chosen it for me. A flutter of warmth settled in my chest. “It matches your underwear,” I said, knowing it was a thread I shouldn’t tug at, but curious to see how she’d respond.

“No.” Mackenzie shook her head. “I’m not wearing underwear.”

I swallowed hard, silently cursing myself for asking the question.

“I took them off,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. I could feel my face heating, and I glanced away, down at the pavement as we walked.

“You liked them?” she asked, as we approached the bus stop.

I nodded, trying not to betray the growing tension in my pants.

Mackenzie looked at me for a long moment before asking, “Do you want to see?”

My mouth went dry, and I swallowed hard. We were the only people at the stop, and no one else was in sight. I looked at Mackenzie, seeking a clue— some insight into her strange, damaged mind.

She met my stare with earnest, wide eyes and for a moment she looked like the girl I’d met a year before. I tucked a loose strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, tracing her delicate jawline with my thumb. I hesitated momentarily, enjoying the warmth and softness of her skin.

Mackenzie shifted closer and lifted the hem of her dress, hitching it up to just below her waist. She was, of course, naked underneath and her bare pussy looked soft and inviting.

My cock throbbed painfully in my pants. A passing car or pedestrian would see my sister holding up the dress, revealing her tight, round bottom to the world. But she stood close enough to prevent anyone else from seeing the pink, glistening slit of her cunt. That hole was just for me.

“I’m not going to let you use my pussy,” she said, her voice as flat and emotionless as ever.

“Wait, what?” I faltered. Mackenzie had a knack for throwing me off-balance.

“You’re not allowed to fuck me,” she clarified. “You’re not allowed inside my pussy.”

A wave of guilt washed over me, knotting my stomach. “I wasn’t ... I wasn’t trying to...” I stammered.

Mackenzie looked up at me, her expression unreadable as she followed my eyes. “Okay,” she said finally, dropping her dress and taking a small step back. “I thought you wanted to fuck my pussy.”

“I did ... I do,” I replied, trying to gather my thoughts. “I mean I shouldn’t ... It’s not allowed.”

Mackenzie nodded. “You’re not allowed to fuck my pussy.”

“No,” I said. “It would be wrong.”

“Because my pussy belongs to Daddy,” she agreed.

“No,” I said. “It’s about consent, and what you want. And I’m your brother, so you shouldn’t be showing me your pussy.”

Mackenzie looked at me, her brown eyes wide and confused. “Why would it matter what I wanted?”

“It matters because you’re a person, Mackenzie,” I said firmly, trying to convey the importance of this concept.

Mackenzie thought about this for a moment and then shook her head. “I’m not a person,” she said eventually. “I’m a fuckdoll.”

“No, you’re not, Mackenzie. That’s wrong. You deserve to be treated with respect.”

“Respect means obeying Daddy,” Mackenzie said matter-of-factly. “Respecting his authority.”

Fuck my father, I thought. He’d always been an asshole but what he’d done to our family was beyond forgiveness.

He’d called it a blended family. I’d have a new sister and, for the first time that I could remember, a mom. Nothing else would change, my father had promised. Of course, it hadn’t worked out that way at all.

I was eighteen when my father married Lillian, and she and Mackenzie moved into our house. Mackenzie was also eighteen, a few months older than me. Like me, Mackenzie was set to start her freshman year at the local college in September. We’d gone to different high schools, with Mackenzie attending a performing arts school, so we hadn’t met before our parents introduced us.

At first, things in our new household were mostly normal. But then, my father started disappearing for days at a time, never telling us where he went.

Lillian confronted my father and they had a huge fight where she accused him of cheating on her. I stayed in my room, but I still heard their yelling from the other end of the house. The next few days he and Lillian were constantly at it, and it seemed to me as though their marriage might not last even two months. And then, for no discernible reason, their arguments suddenly stopped. My father was still gone for days in a row, but this no longer seemed to upset Lillian. Lillian was happy.

A few months later Mackenzie started to change. She became quiet and withdrawn. She had been dedicated to ballet for years, but she abruptly stopped dancing and withdrew from her friends. We weren’t particularly close, having not known each other long, so I didn’t dwell too much on her sudden transformation. Lillian must have noticed, but as far as I know, she didn’t say anything. Nothing seemed to bother Lillian by then. Lillian was happy.

In those final weeks of my father’s life, the house fell into an eerie quiet. His absences grew more frequent, leaving an unsettling emptiness that centered on his office—a room that had always been off-limits to me.

While Lillian moved through the house with quiet contentment, the silence of the place seemed to deepen Mackenzie’s isolation. Increasingly, my stepsister kept to her room, only emerging for meals or brief trips to the bathroom. On the rare occasions my father was home she’d sometimes join him in his office.

Lillian overlooked her daughter’s decline because it was impossible for her to do otherwise. I can’t claim the same excuse. I was simply selfish, a teenager preoccupied with thoughts of my future. I dreamed of college and the freedom that awaited me. I fantasized about life in the dorms—new friendships, late-night parties, and maybe even the chance to meet a pretty girl.

While I liked Mackenzie and Lillian, I’d only known them for a few months and I’d be moving out at the end of the summer. No matter how much my father had insisted otherwise, they weren’t my real family.

And then one day my father killed himself and everything fell apart. In the weeks after his death, I learned the truth about what he’d been doing when he went missing for several days at a time. There were eleven women in all, and each of them was beautiful. The story made the national news, and we had reporters camped out on our lawn for months. My psychotic, asshole of a father had somehow developed a serum that allowed him to alter the minds of his victims turning each of the women into mindless sex slaves.

As clever as he’d been, the authorities had somehow figured it out and my father had killed himself just days before he would have been arrested. The women were being treated, but much of my father’s work had died with him, and so far their conditions proved impossible to reverse. Without my father, they were incapable of living independently. Many of them suffered from nightmares, severe mood swings, and crippling depression. The lucky ones ended up back with their families. The less fortunate of them, those who were more far gone or who lacked a family to go back to, ended up institutionalized.