Sending

My name is Mallory, and I have no free will. I hate to break it to you, reader, but that means that you probably don’t either. But of course, it’s more complicated than that.

When I was twelve, my friend Corey and I came home to find my dad and Aunt Deb ransacking my bedroom: searching through drawers and bookshelves, under the mattress, the whole deal.

“Dad...,” I began to say.

Dad was furious. “Corey, we have some family business to deal with. Please leave.”

“Yes sir,” Corey said, giving me a confused look which I returned on his way out.

“Mallory, you need to tell me everything you’ve been hiding from me. I mean everything!” Dad said. Aunt Deb kept quiet.

“Daddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him.

That just made him madder. “Don’t you play games with me!”

“Daddy, honest! I have no idea what’s going on!” I insisted, worry creeping into my voice.

He unfolded his laptop and showed me a couple seconds of a video. There was a girl - high school or college age - up against a wall, naked, having sex from behind with some guy around the same age. She was yelling, encouraging him with lewd talk. The girl’s face looked just like mine, and her hair was done in box braids just like I’d always done for as long as I can remember. But she definitely didn’t have my body.

“Daddy, that’s not me,” I said, shaking my head.

“I know my baby’s face, and I know my baby’s voice,” he argued.

“I would never!” I protested. “I’m going to have a white wedding, just like Mom wanted. And on video? Ew! Anyway, look at that girl, and look at me!”

I was twelve; my body was basically rectangular. The girl in the video had curves and curves and curves. Curves on her ass, curves on her chest, curves on her waist. Her bra probably had D-cups - not that she needed a bra. Her breasts were like big firm round mocha-colored fruit. Even her lips: they were definitely a woman’s lips.

Dad shook his head. “Bodies look different in clothes, in different positions. That’s your face Mallory. Now you’d better explain.”

“I swear! I have never done... that! I’m a virgin and I’m going to stay that way until my wedding day. I promise! I even have proof - you know, down below.”

Dad gave Aunt Deb a look. She gave him one back that seemed to say, “Really?”

“Please. Put my mind at ease,” he said.

So then Dad left the room, and I almost died of embarrassment as Aunt Deb verified that my hymen was intact. She was a nurse, though, so I guess it could have been worse.

“They have software that can put anyone’s face in a video,” Aunt Deb suggested when my dad came back. “Maybe it was that school photographer that gave Mallory a bad feeling a couple months ago.”

Dad seemed to mostly accept my innocence. Mostly. “Is this one you?” He asked and put on a new video. This one was seemingly the same girl, with my face, sort of swaying to music and taking her clothes off outdoors.

“No, dad,” I told him.

Just because I was committed to staying a virgin doesn’t mean I wasn’t a horny little monster. I thought about sex all the time. Sometimes I would think about all the boys at school - even the ones I didn’t like - and picture them naked, on top of me, thrusting and giving me orgasms - whatever the hell that was like. So naturally I was intrigued by the short clips my dad had shown me, and wanted to see more. I snuck onto my dad’s computer that evening and copied down the URLs.

The man and woman in the sex video were in their underwear when it started. There were clothes on the ground. I think they might have been costumes because the colors were so bright and there were logos, but of course, all jumbled up like that it was impossible to tell who they belonged to.