SweetestSixShooter

Anemone

🎵

"Hey Ray! Uh, Reagan."

The dirt under your knees is firm, and brown like her hair. The patch of earth around the two trees hasn't been getting very much sun over the last few years, and the grass has dried up.

"I, uh, sorry it's been so long." Your voice perks back up, a hollow that you've practiced enough to carry with dignity. "I meant to get back again on the anniversary, but winters are hard on me. You know."

Your breath hitches over and over, caught on a betrayal that's never been anyone else's but your own. It's not the one you talk about when you say "She's, uh, she's nice. She's nice to me, I um… She reminds me of you. I wish you could meet her." You don't know if that's true.

"She'd like you."

You break hard in the wind, your hair flying around you as your face collapses into your hands. You hate lying to your sister, even now.

You hate telling her the truth, too.

You do have to tell her though. Your voice hardens because this is supposed to be easy. "I have to move. It's time, the lease and everything. They're raising rent." It's just a move. It's just a move. "I'll still come and see you sometimes, I promise. I won't be far. I'll never leave you alone."

"I'm, I'm… I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I-"

'-fucked it all up.'

You're not supposed to say that anymore.

You wrap your hands around the young tree and press your forehead to it, pushing so hard it hurts, like it's supposed to.

You're not supposed to say it.

This is supposed to be your goodbye.

You're not supposed to come back again.

Your head collapses to the ground, and every single tear fights with every single molecule of skin and air they touch on the way to the dry dirt.

There isn't enough space for you to say it with your chest crushed to your legs.

There isn't enough space in a heart that still breaks a little bit all over again every day.

There isn't enough life in you to scream it as loud as it has to be to reach back through time to her all those years ago. The hospital. The apartment. The kitchen. The bedroom. The crib.

It can't tear a hole through time so it tears a hole through you instead, right through your throat and your tortured soul.

Air hisses out your lungs with the force of a hurricane, held one finger's breadth away from the shriek that would make your girlfriend come running from around the corner.

Everything empties out of you in your last breath, and when oxygen comes back it brings the babbling of a dozen incomprehensible "I'm so sorry"s that you lose yourself in.

Eventually the dissociated words stop and you're just staring at the ground, a strand of saliva dripping toward the dirt. You suck it up and lean back to put your gloved hands on her grave.

You aren't supposed to say it again.

You're not supposed to lie, and never to her.

But when the fuck did you ever do right by your sister?

"I love you, Reagan."

Candytuft

🎵

Your butt sinks into the loam, phone cast away, powered off since the winch was driven out of the forest. You lean back against the sapling, and it buckles just a little away from you.

You take a breath and lean forward, draping your arms over your raised knees.

…

You flick a mote of dirt off your shin. Cadence is supposed to have the words for something like this.

She didn't the day you drove up here together.

She doesn't now.

The wind blows your long hair around your face, and you don't touch it until a loose strand pokes you in the eye. You tuck it behind your ear and think about the cut you've been putting off for months.

It's getting cold.

When you pull her gloves out of your pockets and put them on, it puts some words in your head for the first time all afternoon. "Thanks for the gloves, sis." You keep talking even though it feels so fucking fake. "They've been keeping me warm really well-"

You yank the left off and throw it on the ground between your feet. You've been sitting so long that your butt is numb, and it feels like everything else is going numb in the cold wind too, everything except your right hand.

'I fucking miss you.'

Fuck.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there!"

You couldn't have been there. A car accident. A fucking car accident-

You were there in the morgue, for a moment, before you broke, before you shattered. You don't remember anything after that but the lobby, trying to find all the pieces of yourself to put back together and coming up short, coming up missing.

Why.

0.9%. Less than a 1% chance.

There's more than 1% missing from you, left on the asphalt of an intersection your body haunts nearly as often as your mind does.

Why.

You want to collapse back onto the soil, but that would get your hair dirty.

"Why." Your near-emaciated fingers stretch toward the glove on the ground, but they can't quite reach. You'd have to push forward more to pick it back up, so you let them fall, limp and stiff in the cold. You stare at your freezing skin, pinker than hers was under the flour, all those years ago.

Why.

Eventually you fall backwards onto the ground too.

She's supposed to have words at a time like this.

'Okay…'

Why.

You'll never know why.

🎵

Gardenia

You lie in bed, hollow after another attempted date. The ninth.

Arbor lies next to you, the fourth, failed by a mother unable to pick any name but the suggestion her sister thought was a good idea. It feels disrespectful to him, to not give him his own name. Sometimes you call him 'The Fourth' when you're playing with him. He seems to like it, but he likes everything.

The First is just as gone as she is. He went first. Then she was gone before you got around to your plans to get a second dog. He was supposed to be a german shepherd, your sister's turn to pick. Your Second was.

He was too big, but you did your best. Your best friend at work was right to recommend that you get an elderly dog.

3 and 4 were beagles after him. Fit in the bed better, into your puzzle better.

You pet your boy and try not to cry. It's easier than you expect. Reagan's on your mantle, in your heart, and you're still here. Living your life, doing your best, being happy. You think you're happy. The signs say so, smiles, friends, laughs. It doesn't feel like when your love was locked away. It doesn't feel like much of anything.

Arbor's fur feels more like reality than life does.

Zinnia

You lie in an unfamiliar bed, the ninth since. Never a man since her, never a fire since her. There's a body beside you, but not a her. Bites on your neck, hickeys on your thighs. A sealed bottle of gin in the closet at home, a collar on an untouched mantle you don't dust, lying next to a picture from a century ago.

For a girl so sentimental, she didn't take very many pictures. At least not many that she sent to you. You lost the ones that she did take to her phone password.

All you have left is the amusement park. You went back once. Took a flight and everything.

She wasn't there. She wasn't in the forest either. Not really. Her plot was there. A tree of her own, beside your mothers'. You found the marks she left there, the initials. The plus. You held your thumb on it for a long time. You wanted to be down there, with her, holding your other half forever like your mother got to. You'd give anything for that.

Give anything except that last thing, the thing she made you keep, making you swear to live your best life with her last breath. But whether she knew it or not, it ended when hers did. You have to keep going because she wanted it for you. But you don't really want to.

Arbor's collar is a foot beneath your shins now, dusted and freshly buried with her. As close as you could get with the sprouting roots.

You'd have named the second dog Jack, like you wanted. But he wouldn't have fit the collar. No dog ever would. Just like nobody would ever fit the ring.

You barely fit the one she gave you anymore. It nearly slips off when you do dishes. Someone at a bar pointed at it and flirtatiously asked you if you were married. You didn't know how to answer that, and that gorgeous stranger found someone else to go home with that night.

You sit in that old apartment parking lot, listening to the rain pour on the windshield of your rental car and not seeing anything but that door on the second floor. Wishing you could walk back through it, back into that night of anger and misery and self-hate, those days of mistreatment and tension and pain. Anything to see her again.

She told you that it was okay, that she wanted you to move on and find someone new, and that besides, it should be easy, you're aromantic, did you even lose much in the end?

You've said that word to a few people since, when people at bars and clubs wanted dates instead of hookups.

But you don't want someone new.

You want your sister back.

We can all be proud of Cadence managing not to instantly melt into a puddle 😊

She blushes when you get close, she warms up when you touch her. She warms up a lot more when she touches you. Not every time, not when she's sad about something, as long as that something isn't you. Maybe that's why you've found shelter in taking care of her, that's when it's the simplest.

All those little, simple touches, the being there for each other, all the contact between you that panels all the walls in your mind and makes you feel not alone.

Those aren't simple for her. They're not small details, they're… too big. Enormous. More to her than what they are to you. What you feel like they ever could be.

"It's not your fault."

You try to figure out how to admit it, to take the blame, but the realization of your fault is just so loud-

How could I have known-

How am I supposed-

What do I even-

The thoughts get shorter and shorter and they touch less and less of the walls, and you're left without a direction to follow.

She cracks your heart in half. "So what? I still can't be fixed. I'm broken."

You did it to her again. A year and a half ago you broke her, and now you spent so much time over the last five months helping mend, fix, patch up, heal, salve, restore, comfort, invigorate-

And you broke her all over again.

You try to save it, the words barely coming out. "You don't need to be fixed, Cadence, you're not broken."

You're going to cry. For the first time in a year and a half you're actually going to really cry, because you fucked up your big sister, your tender, heartfelt, earnest, vulnerable sister that has always looked to you for comfort and care. And you fucked her up again.

And now it's backwards. Muscle in your heart cinches an inch, constricting your blood flow. A long time ago, she kissed you and then you broke her. And now you broke her and she's going to try to kiss you.

You can see it in her eyes as she looks up at you, she's an open book.

🎵#1

In an instant Cadence's lips connect with yours, and you weren't taken by surprise this time. Pushing through a pound of hesitation, you kiss her back.

And feel nothing. A void blares in your mind, a cavernous space inside you in the place where all of Cadence's feelings seem to be spilling out.

You rehearsed this kiss together a year ago, and your mouth and hand remember their lines with excruciating detail, but that's not who you are now. Instead of confused anger and shock, all you can feel now is change, and it carves something out of you.

You might have given your sister another hollow kiss if she had tried for it, but she quickly pulls away. "I'm sorry!"

You don't want Cadence to be sorry. You just don't want her. Whatever this was supposed to do for her, or whatever it did do, it only happened to her, and you can see her starting to implode already, drops of blood around the edges of an emotional black hole.

Her voice wordlessly sparks with fear and she pulls away frantically, scrambling so fast that she collapses off the bed backwards. Your heart leaps in concern for her safety, but you can still feel the pressing, inert weight of nothing all over you, keeping you in place. She gets up on her own, and she's starting to sob by the time her eyes meet you again, rubbing her elbow and staring at you with a blood red face of anguish. You know how she responds to physical pain, and it's not this. Her tears pour over her faster than gravity should allow, clearly boiling away months of recuperation while she waits for you to give her the final execution notice.

The phrase 'it's okay' makes one pass through your mind without finding a hold on anything that could turn it into voice.

You don't hate her. You thought you did the first time, after a month spent getting only a few fitful hours of sleep per night. The melatonin helped once you started taking it, and then there was the cold. You thought that was the hate, or that maybe all the loud in your head when you thought about talking to your sister again was the hate.

But here, again, across a chasm, you just feel the ghost of needles, and you don't have anything real for her. Just one word, because you know you have to say something, even though it's nothing. "Cadence…"

At once she bursts open. "Reagan I'm sorry I'm so sorry I didn't mean to I didn't want to I'm sorry please I didn't mean to I can't help it-" Her eyes shoot wide at admittance of failing her promise not to do it again, and she slaps her hand to her mouth, shrinking away from you further.

You take a breath as though to speak, but your chest hitches hard on that nothing again, and you just let out a noise of disappointed frustration. She immediately starts babbling again "I'm sorry I'll go I'll just go it's all my fault it's all my fault I always screw it up-" as she snatches her keys off the dresser and rushes to the front door. Through a pool of melted glass you climb off the bed to follow, but you only get past the T junction in the center of the apartment by the time she rushes out the door in socks, shoes in her hand as the door slams behind her.

A rising tide of exasperation starts to color into staticy frustration as you search for your own keys and throw on shoes to follow your sister, still having no idea what to say to her. As soon as you pull them out of your jacket pocket and reach the balcony, your hands hit the railing as you watch your sister back out of her parking space and leave the lot, too fast to be safe around the absent pedestrians.

Your emotions turn rigid and shadowy around the edges of your heart once she rounds the corner behind a building, and you don't realize how hard you're clutching your keys in your hand until the tines of the apartment key dig into your bones through your skin. You withstand the brisk air for a long time, just staring at the spot that the consonants of Cadence's license plate disappeared, then you turn and slowly slot the pointy brass into the lock, turn it in the already unlocked door, and stand for a long time there. Longer than you can even register.

At some point you're inside without realizing it, and you find your phone and sit down on the bed to open the text log with your sister, feeling a ghostly image of you telling her that she'd had a drink and that she can't be driving lingering in front of your eyes, but your fingers don't find the screen. She'd only had half a glass of champagne, and then she was right there again, both of you right where you were a year ago. But in this awful parody, the emptiness in your head isn't from a scrambled head that can't put together words, it's from a vacuum in your heart that you can't fill. All you can write is [Cadence,], and then you set the phone down for a long time.

She didn't mess things up, they weren't ever going to go right in the first place. She's still the same Cadence as she invisibly became when things changed for her all that time ago. Always fated to try again, even in the face of the life you've worked to build together all over the last months.

And you somehow thought that it could be different. That you could come back, that you could stay, that you could find each other again. That you could be sisters again. Like you were always supposed to be.

The cold in your heart on that rainy night made you want to turn around at every highway exit on the way here, but you had nowhere to go, and neither did the heat submerged under the ice. Below that sheen of anger was a deep vulnerability at seeing her again, and it tore at you to witness what you'd done to her, what she'd done to herself. You stayed cold with her for a while because being hot would hurt you both, and eventually the ice melted little by little, with wine and proximity and held hands. You relaxed, you got close and you let her get close because you wanted to trust her again. She said she wouldn't do it again, and you believed her.

And then she did it again.

And you let her. An extra moment of indecision and apprehension, and then you were too late to stop her and she reached out in exactly the wrong way all over again.

You know now that you'll never get her back. The sister you want. That you used to need. There's nothing left between you but this mess, the violent back-and-forth wave pool of her emotions crashing around your deep-seated need for things to stay still.

Coming back was a mistake. One you can't undo. You had nowhere else to go.

You don't now either.

You both talked about what she feels. You put it on the table, spread it out on the bed to address, but she couldn't take a step past its edge without everything bleeding through.

You pick up the phone again, and don't have any words again. None that will help, none that will fix this. Your head spins for a moment with all the memories of the last months as they start to wash down the drain, and your mind pulls out of your head for a second to watch you texting a cold [Come home.] to the sister you used to hold so dear.

You're back in your mind when you walk across the apartment and set the champagne to the same fate in the sink, you're back in your body when you sit down on the couch.

You're not much of anywhere when you lie down on your side, staring at an apartment you just referred to as 'home' without really meaning it.

You're in a dull simulacrum of half-sleep when the key sounds in the lock, your mind long since finished scripting the final moments. The end of an endless hallway, a key locking a door that never should have closed. The last moment of a life that froze in place a year ago, slammed on the brakes six months ago, torturously pushed on the gas with the parking brake still on four months ago, one that finally started to idle comfortably three weeks ago only to finally run into a telephone pole.

The sound of brass on brass is a burning friction in the silent space, replaced by silence for what seems like an eternity. Eventually the door slowly cracks open, and your sister's pale face peers around it, clearly looking for you and not seeing you lying on the couch, focusing instead on the sounds and reflected lights of the TV in her bedroom that you didn't even recognize as being on over the last hour.

She turns toward the kitchen as she tentatively creeps inside, and as soon as she closes the front door behind her you say "Hey." in a thick voice, tasting the last vestiges of champagne on your breath that make you sick with association.

Cadence jumps and squeals, stumbling into the table beside the door and knocking your keys to the floor as she drops her own. She clutches her heart for a few harried breaths, then she speaks, still short on air. "Ray! You're, still here."

You nod and sit up, then look across the room, watching flickering shadows for a moment. She quietly pulls off a jacket she must have already had in her car before she left, and then she sits down on the couch next to you, full of fear. A day ago, she'd have sat close, maybe taken your hand. Right now she just sits like a glass statue, poised as though to speak, unaware that she's about to shatter.

You can feel your eyes burn under a fresh wave of pressure to be warm to her, to turn and scoot closer, take her hand, force it into your throat and say it right into her eyes, to be good and show her that you're doing this because you care, so so much.

But that's the mistake you've been making. For months. Years. Maybe forever.

So when you turn, you move back an inch. She probably noticed the nature of your movement, or maybe she was just already going to say "I'm sorry…"

Her eyes dip to her lap, but before you can speak she lifts to stare into your eyes. "It was a mistake. A really, really bad mistake. I can do better, I promise." The crack at the end of her sentence is a structural fault that you can hear echo all the way to the endless bottom.

You stare at her, stonier than you wish were possible for you, wishing you could find the gentleness that you know she needs, but the sand is cold, and it slips over your open fingers. "This isn't working."

A breath hitches out of her and she deflates, and as you watch her search your eyes, you can see the moment it hits, when her heart breaks again. Quietly this time, and the fault lines spread through everything she was planning to say when she returned. You let her take her time, because even in the face of how you expect this conversation to go, you still futilely hope against hope and everything you know to be true that she might have something left to say to fix this.

But, in the end, she creaks out "O… o… okay…" with the hopeless malaise of a body cooling into the sedation of death.

There's no fixing this.

"I'm sorry, Cadence." You take a big breath and let out half of it. "Coming back was a mistake. I shouldn't have. I'm sorry." Even after rehearsal those last two words bring a hush to so much of what you believe to be you. The next words are harder. "I love you. But you know this isn't working too."

Dozens of different millimeters of change worm around your sister's face, eyebrows pulling slightly closer together, lips pursing and turning further into a frown, head dipping a few degrees, shoulders drooping.

It's still your turn to speak. "I can't watch this happen to you over and over again." Cadence looks down, and her hands clench in her lap.

You can hear the tiniest vibration of vulnerable emotion in your voice. "I wish I could make this work." You really do. "You're my sister. You always will be." Your last breath leaves you with nothing left. "But that's all you'll ever be to me."

Her lungs are just as empty as yours when she quietly agrees, eyes still pointed down. "Yeah…" It seems like she's stopped speaking, but you have no heading to follow for this terrible moment, so you just stare and wish your care weren't a curse for her.

She surprises you by speaking again. "I know. I should have always known." She takes a fortifying breath and digs a furrow into her leg with her index finger. "I guess maybe I always did." You can see from the slim view of her quivering lips that she'll continue.

You can hear the echo of years in her voice. "It's obvious, right? I'm just a sister. Just a weak and pathetic big sister that doesn't know better than to fall in love with her little sister because she's stronger and smarter and less of a failure."

You start to speak, to tell her that she's not a failure, but she glances up at you and shakes her head emphatically, so you fall silent and wait while she looks back at her hands and brings herself to it.

She finally lifts her head. "Thanks for trying."

The tears, glittering bright in her eyes even in the dark, might as well be blood for how much they send spikes through your heart, ripping everything you ever thought you were right out the back of your ribs.

You've seen this expression on your sister before. A dozen times, after bullying and her first breakup. She's pretending to be strong, holding up the paper-thin facade that she used to let down with you alone so she could heal. You, the one person she had left, now the last and most painful stitch on a canvas telling a tale of hurt, her quiet sobs now the final refrain of a song of goodbye, the story and melody of her life each laid to final rest by her dear sister. The most important person in her life, her greatest source of love and comfort and protection, rendered into nothing.

Every ounce of pain she shows you still manages to reach right through everything you rehearsed to pull threads of emotion harder than they should be able to after everything. You want to offer one tiny little touch to soothe her shattering heart, but you know that the hand you hold out to her is a gift of barbed wire that will tear skin on both sides.

Cursed as the gesture may be, it still crushes your heart into dust when she shakes her head and moves away a few inches.

You've lost your tongue, and mouth, and throat, and lungs, and nearly your spine all to the void, and you just stare as she turns to lean off the couch, hunching over her knees as she hugs herself. "Do you think it could have been different if we weren't sisters?"

You sift through dozens of words, each impossible to say. Her breath hitches in an uneven pattern, half-sobs twitching her body eight times before she looks at you with red-rimmed eyes of inwardly directed resent, only visible because she's never been able to hide how she feels from you properly. It hooks a fishing line on the closest words and pulls them out of your mouth, more formal than you might have managed if you had a thousand years to figure out how not to hurt her. "No. I don't think it could have. You're my sister. You've been my best friend, always. That's the only thing I ever wanted." She sighs, and a shudder shakes her as she exhales.

You have to keep going. "I do love you. You're mine. I've always wanted you beside me." She smiles, just a little bit, but it makes the tears burn brighter. There's a light in that tiny smile, maybe hope.

You've been giving her too much of that.

"And I think that's bad for you."

A sob breaks hard out of her mouth, and she yanks her legs up to curl into the edge of the couch you bought with old vacation savings so you could be close to her again. You suppress the urge to put a hand on her knee. "I'm sorry I made this so hard for you." It's getting easier to apologize now, as you near the end, but she still spites herself at you. "It's not your fault, you didn't make it hard…"

You shake your head, but you're not going to argue, not now.

You've been edging toward it for minutes now, but you can still feel the cold air plummet past you when you step off the edge and say "I think I should go."

Her eyes burn into you for a long time, and then she finally nods, lips quivering and barely holding back her anguish. The jerkiness of the gesture screams that it's crushing everything in her to finally agree, and it almost pulls the last of your humanity out to cast into the void in your heart.

You stand up into the surreal truth of the moment, and she asks in a timid voice "Are you going to take the couch with you?"

Such a mundane question to ask at the end of the world. You shake your head. "I threw away the old one."

There's almost a humor in her voice, a safety valve opening on a high-pressure tank already leaking gasoline. "It was shitty."

"Yeah."

"I don't want it. I don't need a couch."

A ghost puts resolution into your words. "I'm not taking it, Cadence."

She knows better than to argue with that voice.

She stares at you while you collect your things, not moving an inch. Her eyes focus through their glaze when you occasionally look at her, but there's no words left in the miles between you.

You finally pause beside the door with your bag and hold out your hand to her, because of course you do. You can't stop trying to touch her. You'll always hurt her, because that's what you do. She doesn't take it, so you put it on her shoulder instead. A moment's pause, and then she leans her head onto it.

You're the first to say it. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye. I love you."

You give her a gentle squeeze, and then you let her go.

🎵#2

You sip a cinnamon mocha on the patio of your second favorite coffee shop and watch the leaves fall around you. In your lap, a handful of old texts.

Timings for a lunch you offered once months after everything ended, one that she agreed to, but then canceled at the last minute.

A happy birthday. A thanks.

A message from you relaying an invitation to a cookout your cousin called you about. She said she might go. She never asked if you were going to.

A happy birthday.

A gentle breeze blows past you, too warm to be right for the season. You're overdressed, languishing in a long jacket and a pair of grey gloves, sweating slightly but not really feeling it.

A new text sits in the box at the bottom of the screen, one you've wanted to send a dozen times, but it's just a draft.

[I love you.]

You'll never send it.

You won't hurt her anymore.

"Come on, what's the golden rule?"

"Do unto others as you would have them-"

Electricity lances through the skin between the two terminals of the shock collar around your neck. Your sister's wicked laugh is so shrill in your ears that it's nearly as debilitating as the shock. "No, no, puppy, wrong again!"

You know what sentence Fade wants, the light bulbs surrounding its placard in your head are sparking and flickering on and off. A stupid edgelordy joke she picked up back in middle school to mock your strict adherence to your moral code and never dropped.

But fuck that.

Unbidden, you repeat it again: "Do unto others as you would have them do-"

Fuck! Your teeth bit into your tongue at the shock this time. You stare up at your big sister with obvious loathing. You're trying, you've been trying to hold to your beliefs for ten minutes, but the sparks in your head keep obscuring your most core moral tenet, and the fresh blood in your mouth tastes as red as her hair.

It was a joke at first. A bet where you'd have to wear a shock collar for a day if your big sister could bed your 'mutual crush' at the house party first. You didn't even come up with an alternative prize if you won instead, because your sister was your real crush, and you magnificently 'blew your shot' by spilling your drink all over the white dress of the target right when Fade walked by.

A wandering partygoer looking for the restroom caught you touching yourself outside the door while you listened to them fuck, and your sister laughed your beet-red face out of the building when she returned to the kitchen and heard what you'd been doing.

You still got what you wanted even with the embarrassment. She put the collar on you and the first shock gave you enough masturbation material for a month, but the fact that it made you moan and go red in the face was enough evidence for your sadistic sister to realize that it wasn't a 'punishment' for you. She immediately kicked the power setting on the remote up past the threshold that felt good, and she hasn't shown you an ounce of mercy since.

A headache is starting to pound in you, and there's a pressure building to just make her stop, no matter what it takes.

You'd be turned on by the smoky way she intones "One more tiiime, puppy, the golden rule. I know you know it." if your brain didn't ache. Maybe you're still turned on by it anyway. The blood in your head hurts, the blood in your neck is terrified of electricity, and the blood between your legs is telling you to listen for a totally different reason. "Do unto others as-"

She twitches with the remote and you flinch, hard. You look up at her gleaming hazel eyes, and… fuck.

"Do unto others… first." Your gaze dangles down onto the floor as one of the strings of your moral net frays and snaps.

"Gooood puppy!" Fade swings one foot up from where she's been dangling them off the dining room table and jabs you in the nose. It sparks tears in you, and they're watered by the fact that she's right when she says "And now puppy is going to do unto Sephora and shoplift the Dior makeup she was 'too broke' to buy her big sister for her birthday!"

Fuck you Fade-

It's fine, it's Sephora, it's all overpriced garbage anyway.

Fuck you Fade-

Do unto others, do unto fucking capitalism, it's fine, fuck Sephora-

"Can I help you find something?"

Your head jerks away from the products you've been staring at with dread. "Oh! No, I'm just comparing shades."

"Let me know if you need anything!"

Fuck, that's bad, someone saw me.

One pitiable wage-slave's seen your face now, and the building has enough security cameras to make a bank vault blush. You have two choices:

Stuff $260 worth of disgustingly overpriced designer makeup in your bag and burn $20 to buy some trash to avoid suspicion…

Or stuff everything in your bag and leave without paying at all, so that you can fill your gas tank enough to not take the bus to work tomorrow.

Fuck.

You yank the $20 out of your wallet and pray to whatever gods are listening that someone is off sick tomorrow and you can make decent tips in their place.

You dump the paltry contents of your purse right on Fade's lap when you get home, and of the five bottles cascading over the couch, she picks up the decoy with disdain. "What's this, Lawless-"

You snatch it away. "Not that one." She greedily picks up another bottle, and a grin immediately lights her face. She croons "Gooood puppy!"

If it were 'Good girl' maybe I wouldn't hate you-

"Disgusting puppy gets its disgusting treat!"

She turns to stand off the couch and snags a finger in your collar to pull you in for a kiss. You startle and jerk backwards. "What was that?"

She smirks. "I know what you want. You weren't outside that door for Zane."

You go crimson. "I…"

If she already knows, then-

"Can I have another?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Damn."

"Hmmm…" She puts a finger to her lips and makes a comical thinking expression. "Well, maybe if you get me something else, then I can put up with your sick sister fetish." Dread flickers over your mind before she continues "I want the bottle of Dom Pérignon from the top shelf at your work."

Black and green label, so high you'd need a ladder to get it down. "No. No way." You could wait tables somewhere else if you got caught, but what actually matters is that "Davin's bartending, he would be on the hook if that went missing."

Fade cocks an eyebrow and a hip at you. You shake your head again. She points the remote at you, and you quickly protest "He's a good guy, he doesn't deserve it, he helped me pay to get my car towed last month!" You still haven't paid him back.

Your big sister takes a step forward and pokes the remote into your chest with a growled warning "Puuupppy…"

You smack the remote away from your chest. "No fucking way I'm not-AH!" Your knees hit the floor hard, and your hands blithely try to coax some air back into a throat that got shocked empty.

"Bad puppy! You made up for my birthday, now you're going to get me something I actually want!"

As you try to put your thoughts back together, you wonder why you ever had a crush on her. She's such a bitch. It's fucking over, you're done, this has gone too far-

You lift your head, and, well, fuck, there it is. Plaid schoolgirl skirt, white top, no bra, like she's trying to seduce her teacher. It wasn't ever about her personality, and you fail to keep your eyes out of her skirt - white panties, like a god damn pinup.

"Puppy." Your throat instantly seizes up in fear, but it relaxes at the offer of "You get this, and you can look."

You wait too long, and she points with the remote again, so you stammer out "Fine! Fine, fuck."

It's the end of your shift, and you got lucky that you picked a stylish enough shock collar that it could pass for a chunky choker. No complaints from customers, and you only had to deal with a friendly ribbing from Davin before he clocked out early. You reach around and try to pry the lock off again, but within moments the anti-tamper feature shocks your fingers.

Fuck! If I tell anybody I'll seem like a fucking moron and she'll deny it and hide the remote, and if I keep going I'll be a hypocrite that fucks over someone that doesn't deserve it.

Your brain starts to grope around for justifications, hard.

He already helped with the tow and he didn't even ask me to pay it back, he's probably got enough to cover it. He'll be fine.

You can feel murmurs of decay in your chest as you head back inside and check for witnesses. The closing waitress is rolling silverware and watching an ASMR video on her phone, and your manager will be locked in with frozen fish for another twenty minutes. Lucky.

As quietly as you can, you shuffle the ladder out from next to the beer fridge and climb.

Your 'prize' is filthy with dust, and you climb down carefully without leaving any marks three hundred dollars might be enough for your boss to check for fingerprints. You stuff the illicit item in a paper bag and the ladder back where it came from, but a set of bottles catch your eye in the fridge. Your neck buzzes with a phantom electric shock and your head swims with shadowy thoughts.

If something's going to go missing, it'll be less suspicious if it seems like things just got inventoried incorrectly…

An invisible force stops your hand before you touch the door.

He's already going to be in trouble, this will just make it worse.

But… he's probably going to try to throw somebody under the bus for this, and it might be me, so I might as well get something to help me forget all this. If Davin's going to blindly try to fuck me over anyway, then I might as well get to actually drink some of what I steal.

"Puppy!" Your sister rushes to you the second you're in the door to yank the bottle out of your bag while you fumble with the handful of soju bottles left and try not to drop any of them on the floor.

With zero gravitas, Fade rushes into the kitchen and you can hear the cork on the bottle immediately pop. You follow her and crack one of your own drinks while you watch her root around in the low freezer for ice cubes far in the back. Your eyes trace up her gorgeous legs, envious that she's kept her tone since quitting gymnastics, up to her ass, admiring the curve and thinking of what your hands and teeth could do to it, and-

There it is.

Unguarded- or, basically. Though you'd rather stick your fingers into the waistband of her tight shorts, you could reach right into her back pocket and take the remote for the shock collar.

You take two steps forward. "Hey Fade, grab me some ice too, I want to share." She wiggles her ass. "I'm not sharing." You continue stalking forward while she shuffles bags of frozen vegetables out of the way to try to find more cubes. "You're going to be wasted."

"As if, my tolerance is super high."

You manage to pinch the little device out of her pocket right as she stands up, and you dance backwards out of her reach with it held in the air. "Fucking finally, you bitch. I never should have given you this."

She throws her ice into a glass and rolls her eyes. "Give it back." Your indignation at her certainty about its return could etch you into Mount Rushmore. "No. Why would I?"

She rolls her eyes again and her whole head too, then she suddenly darts a hand out and tries to snatch the remote out of your hand. Not quick enough, and you laugh. She puts on yet another dose of dramatic exasperation and painfully flicks your clavicle. "I guess you don't want your treat then, stupid puppy."

That makes you freeze - smothering your self-loathing all the way home pushed the reward out of your mind too. "What treat?" Fade pouts and holds her hand out, but you don't move. "What treat? You never said what it was?"

She waves in the air dismissively and pulls out her phone to flash the screen at you: a picture of herself, nude above the waist and making an exaggerated ahegao expression that instantly makes various indiscrete places on your face and body flush with intense blood flow. "This is your treat, I was going to send it to you." You lick your lips, and she shuts the screen off on her phone and points. "Give it back first."

Fuck.

That picture was unbelievably hot, and you only got to look at it for a tantalizing second. "Show me that you're about to send it. Draft the message." She sees something in your eyes, so she swipes to unlock and queues the text up. You take yours out to confirm, and she plucks the remote away as soon as it dings. Your eyes greedily rove over the picture - black choker, dual braids, she even put eyeliner, eyeshadow, and mascara on for it.

Hot damn, you need to get somewhere private-

"Fuck!" Your phone leaps out of your hand when she buzzes your collar again, and it clatters to the floor. Before you can complain, Fade pushes you against the wall with an intensity in her eyes totally separate from the disdain she held you in moments ago. "I knew you'd take it, you fucking pervert. That's disgusting. I bet you were smelling my dirty panties for years before that party."

You stammer out "I, never went through your laundry-"

She steps back. Zap. "Liar!"

"I didn't!" Fuck, did you? Was that just something you imagined doing? Considered doing? It's getting hard to feel out the lines between what you think you did, and what you actually did.

While you try to figure out which of the fractal mirrors in your head is showing reality, she pours a full glass of her expensive alcohol and callously throws it back without seeming to taste it. After a few moments you decide, you definitely didn't perv on your sister's dirty laundry, you just thought about iiiiiiii-

Your eyes roll back in your head at the gentler electricity running through your neck, and you slump back against the wall and moan. This is the 'joke' you wanted when you let your sister collar you, and she was supposed to laugh genially like she is now, and not like the psycho she's been lately.

When you run out of breath you look down from the ceiling to see her with a hip cocked and a smirk on her face. And hell, is she biting her lip? "You like that?"

You nod.

"Are you a good puppy?"

"Yesssss" Hell, if she'd been this playful, maybe this could have actually been fun.

In the center of your hazy vision she steps back another foot and, to your excitement and shock, undoes the fastenings on her shorts and lets them fall to the floor. Before you can even stammer out a question, she makes her demand: "I want Haile's first place gymnastics trophy."

You go pale and your mouth snaps closed. There's no way you're stealing your best friend's trophy after she trained so hard that she was out sick for two weeks after the competition. "What? No way, what the fuck is wrong with-"

Shock! "Bad puppy!" This one was way too strong to be fun, and you have to fight through teeth that are starting to chatter with jumbled nerves. "She earned that, you don't know what she went through-"

"I earned it! I'm better than her, the judges just picked her cause she's anorexic!"

"That's, not true, she worked hard and she deserved it-" The collar sparks hard, but then it evens out into the 'fun' range again. As your vision goes hazy and golden, your sister slips her fingers into her panties. Your mouth drifts open, and you're a notch from drooling.

"Get it for me and you can touch."

Pleasure drunk, you start to stammer out "N,n-uh, no…"

Fade starts to slide her fingers in and out of herself while she tweaks the dial on the remote to hurt you more. Something that frayed in your mind at screwing over a coworker starts to completely tear, and you can hear every fiber of the paper coming apart as the pain increases. It's hard to resist justifying what you're going to agree to.

The competition is already over, she already won, who even looks at trophies, fuck-

"Okayyyy…"

Your best friend's unlocked back door opens as silently as ever, and when your fingertips find the polished marble columns of the trophy in her room, the anticipation of touching your sister is evaporated by an ache deep in your chest that carves through your heart. Tears start to wash down your face as you hear your own voice echo:

'Every step away from your values takes you further from the person you think you are.'

You can still feel the rain pouring through your hair the night your best friend showed up at your house sobbing. You held her close until you were both soaked, and when she finally told you that she'd cheated on her boyfriend, you pulled that line out. You meant it. You'd never said it before, but you've lived by it every day since then because it's true to you.

So has she. She confessed her mistake to her boyfriend, and… against all odds, they worked it out. Stronger than ever. He was the one who nursed her back to health after the gymnastics collapse. He's the one she meets every day after school. He's the one she's going to marry.

He's the one who stands beside her. Her best friend.

Not you any more.

Because you helped her make amends.

Your fingers clench around the trophy, and the glue holding the marble to the base feels ready to crack.

She's going to leave you someday. She's going to walk down that aisle and he's going to put a ring on her finger and he's going to take her away to Germany and you're never going to see her again.

Do unto others first.

You stuff the trophy in your backpack and zip it up, but then you notice a handful of crumpled five dollar bills sticking out of a purse on the dresser.

Fuck it. She never paid you back after your phone fizzled out in the rain that night.

Fuck you Fade fuck you Fade fuck you Fade fuck you-

"Yes, yes, yes yes yes yes, puppy!" As soon as you're in the door your sister pushes you onto the couch and plucks the trophy out of your hand. Little sociopathic laughs bubble out of her while you stew in resentment at being made to act so reprehensibly. Her eyes drop back to you, and she tosses the prize onto the couch. Your heart and stomach are lanced by spikes of painful excitement when she climbs onto you, straddling you with your face six inches from her chest. "Trashy puppy gets its filthy treat!"

Your breath is thin as you lift your hands and slide them under her shirt, but she leans back and smacks one hand away, her other lifting the remote into the air. "Bad puppy!"

The shock burns that wicked delight at punishing you into your brain, and both your hands drop to your sides. You complain "What?"

"Did your big sister say you could get under her top?" She tisks and wiggles a finger in your face. "Stupid, stupid puppy." Her smirk could curdle the calcium in your bones when she grabs one of your hands and lifts it to her breast over her shirt instead. You raise your eyebrows and wait for her to shock you about it, but she actually looks vaguely excited. Tentatively you squeeze, and she wiggles the little black remote, but she doesn't press the button. You wait too long, and she squeezes the back of your hand to make you grope her properly. Her eyes are locked on yours, and with the way that she bites her lip, you can't help but feel your blood rush at the idea that she's enjoying this too.

Paranoid of another zap, you slowly lift your other hand to her chest and start to knead both sides in symmetry, and her breaths start to turn steamy. It isn't until she starts to push her chest forward in time with your squeezes to get you to inflict more pressure that you start to think that maybe, just maybe, this is going somewhere. Her eyes drift shut for a small moan, and you drop one hand down to her exposed thigh and squeeze there. She cracks her eyes open to smirk at you again, but then she closes them again and starts to moan louder.

You can already feel the potential electric charge between the terminals against your throat when your fingertips brush under the fabric of her skirt, but instead of moving them further up, you tuck them around to gently cup her ass. She reaches up and pokes you in the nose with the remote, finger right on the button, but after a second of staring she laughs and lets her hand drop beside her.

Pressure is starting to build in you that you're sure would earn you mockery or even a shock if you let any noise out, but you can't help but start to pant to match her as your face goes blazing hot and your eyes start to go hazy from arousal. You already got zapped for trying to tuck under her shirt, but you're already under her skirt, so if you slipped your hand under her panties…

Your heart skips a beat and your hand ceases its travel as soon as she speaks. "Are you having fun, puppy?"

Fuck, is 'yes' the right answer? It's obvious, but does she want me to say that?

You may be a stupid puppy, but you're at least trying not to be. "Yes?" Much to your chagrin, she leans back and steps off the couch. She seems to be delighted by the disappointment in your eyes, and she gestures with a finger for you to follow her as she stalks backwards across the room. Completely entranced by the possibilities in her smoky stare, you stand and follow. She finally reaches a spot where she can point down the hallway. "I want grandma's watch."

No.

Your grandfather gave her that when he turned 18 because he couldn't afford a ring. It's the thing that kept her believing that he'd come back after his parents sent him away for dating a girl two years younger. She spent the whole funeral staring at the timepiece in her hand instead of listening to the eulogy. She's forgetting things more and more these days, but the one thing she never misplaces is that watch.

The workers at Sephora probably gave your picture to the police. Fuck 'em.

Davin's probably going to throw you under the bus for the missing alcohol. Fuck him.

Haile's going to leave you for a man she betrayed. Fuck her.

Not your sweet grandmother, not her most cherished possession-

Shock! Shock!

You waited too long and she gave you a double tap. Your eyes are clumsy getting back to open and focused.

"Puuuuppy…"

You try to grab at the loose gravel of your remaining fortitude and start to shake your head-

Shock!

It goes blank for a moment. A few moments. You can't count, you're an etch-a-sketch with no magnets.

When you're back, you're staring into her eyes, and she worms her way into your mind.

It's fine, right? It's for her, for your big sister? It's okay? Your grandmother is going to die anyway. Probably even soon, maybe. You might as well do this now before she goes and dies on you.

Through a throat still trying not to spasm, you force out "O-… okay. I'll do it."

"Aha!" Sparks burst in her eyes almost as loud as they did in your head a moment ago. It's almost more torture to see her delight in your suffering than the suffering is itself, but her validation feels so good.

But you need more. You need the reward. Now.

…do unto others first…

You dart forward and smash your lips against your sister's. Before your eyes close you can see hers flare, and an instant later you can feel the electric shock kick in-

"Ah!"

Fade yanks her bright red face away from yours, both your mouths stinging viciously from where the electric current jumped from you to her. Though it's a fresh place for the pain, you've been adjusting to the torture for a week, and it's totally raw for her. Burgeoning tears threaten to spill out of her wild eyes, and she starts to stammer and gesture her remote at you. "Bad puppy! Bad pupp-"

You dart forward and kiss her again, just in time to make her zap herself through you. The fuzzy pressure in your head is being catalyzed by the electricity, and the pathetic whimper from your big sister pulls a voracious smile onto your lips. You can see fear bloom in her eyes at your expression, and when she limply tries to lift the remote to point at you again you close the space between you and push her roughly against the wall, pinning the remote between your hand and hers above her head.

She didn't manage to press the button this time, and you lean in for another hard kiss, this one delicious from the softness of her trembling and swollen lips.

Another. She stays still for it.

Another. There's something in her breathing…

Another. She twitches.

Another. She kisses you back.

You snicker at her. "You liked it this whole time, didn't you?"

"No-ah!" You didn't leave her enough clearance between your faces, and she whimpers again at the shock when she presses the button again.

Your lips are starting to go numb, but you murmur into her hers "You liiiiked it." just close enough for the threat of the shock to keep her trigger finger chaste.

"I didn't like it…" Her voice wavers, and it's clear enough that she's lying for you to consider it consent. Another kiss you wish your lips were more sensitive for, and she kisses you back immediately. All the hair raises on your body, and a tingling sweeps through you. You could have had her this whole time, all you had to do was do unto her, first.

Your body is lined with ecstasy as you start to slip your hand under her shirt, and her gasp is so delicious after days of being her playtoy. Your fingers rove over her bra for a few moments, then you slip them under the band to inch toward her breast.

Some vestige of emotional energy flexes in her, and you pull back for a second to let her say "No, bad puppy…" Her finger twitches over to the shock trigger, but you hold yours between her fingertip and the button, then lean in and reply so closely that your lips are physically touching. "Are you sure you want to do that, big sister?"

You can hear the last vestiges of dominance crack in her voice. "No…" She flexes her hand open and the remote is yours. You laugh into her mouth, wicked in your own right, but quiet and self-satisfied.

Finally free to separate the threat of your lips from hers, you move past her face to her ear. "Who's a good puppy now?"

"Y-… you…"

"Your little sister is a good puppy? And she gets to do what she wants to her big sister now?" You slide your hand up and over her breast in the crowded space under her bra with the tiniest of squeezes as a promise.

"No…"

You lick her earlobe and press the button at the same time, and she practically shrieks in your ear at the shock. Though the pain from both sensations is stark, you're starting to enjoy being a conductor to torture your sister with. She tries vaguely to wriggle free when you start to squeeze her breast in earnest, but all you have to say is "A-a-aaahhh" in her ear to make her go still again.

Free to indulge yourself, you coax hesitant moans from her with her breast and nipple, play at her throat with your lips and tease her gently with teeth, and then your hand dips down to her waist. She shakes her head with another fake denial, but from the way that she's shuddering and panting at your touch, you know you've won. You snag a finger under the elastic of her skirt and yank it down to pool around her ankles, and the squeak she makes at the exposure puts a ticklish delight in your chest.

God, I should have done this so much sooner. She was just begging for someone to dominate her.

You pull her off the wall and gently push her onto the couch, and her lack of resistance and the wet spot on her panties show you that she's ready for the next step. You turn the safety of your collar on with the remote, then unlock it and dangle it off a finger as you stalk toward her. "Faaaaade~"

Her eyes fill with apprehension as you reach around her neck to fasten the collar on her, anointing her with a kiss on the lips as punctuation that she doesn't return. You lean back and wiggle the remote in the air. "What's the golden rule, puppy?"

Dread and paleness spread across her face. "Do unto others first."