Status: Part 2 (Patreon)

As concerned as his mom was about their new lodgings, Kyle was loving living in a mansion. His room was completely furnished with a bed and clothes, a walk-in closet, and a state of the art tv and gaming station complete with any game or console he could hope for. In the afternoons he would either hit the gym or explore the town, enjoying the mall, arcades, or skate park before coming home and taking a relaxing dip in the pool. He made friends quickly and was reasonably popular given his good looks and blue-collar capability. Skilled, strong, and full of excitement for his new surroundings, Kyle was a quick pick for a teen romance and had a girlfriend within the first couple weeks of moving to Gideon’s California mansion.

Lucille rapidly became a common sight around the Ashford estate and was treated with the utmost respect and courtesy by the staff. She was a first generation American from an Italian family and had spent many summers in Turin growing up. Her family wasn’t especially rich, but significantly more well off than most middle class Americans with a decently large house and the money to buy Lucille a car for her sweet 16. Upon spending some time with the new transfer student Kyle, she had become as infatuated with his cool, calm demeanor and dashing, farmboyish looks as he was with her energetic, exuberant attitude and exotic, caramel skin and flowing dark hair. The two had hit it off one night after being the last two still hanging around the park, and not long after they were hanging out in Kyle’s new room, much to the giggling approval of his mother.

(1)

“Hey Kyle, where you off to?” Gideon asked one morning just as the seventeen year old was about to leave the house.

“Oh hey. I’m headed over to Lucille’s place. I’ll be see you later, alright?” Kyle said as he finished tying his shoes and jumping up with a charming smile on his face.

“Actually…” Gideon began. “I wanted to talk to you about your contributions to the household.”

The statement caught Kyle by surprise and instantly made him nervous. He turned and faced his new stepfather with an elevated heart rate.

“Uhh…Okay. Is everything alright?” Kyle responded nervously.

“Well… I know that you’re only a teenager and you’re in a new place. You’ve got a girlfriend, a huge number of amenities, and an entire mansion complete with a house staff that caters to your every need.” Gideon explained, flashing his gleaming ring and catching Kyle’s eye.

“Your mother however, is concerned that you aren’t having to work as hard as you used to, and thus the values of effort and a job well done are slipping away from you. That being said, I think that it’s time that you did a little more to pull your weight around the house.”

Kyle was transfixed by the ring. He felt like the world was melting around him, spiraling as it’s colors mixed and distorted. Even as he tried to pull away, he felt drawn in as his ability to resist wasn’t quite taken away, but more like erased as if it had never existed in the first place. It was true, he realized, that his mom had put in tons of work on herself to get to where she was while he’d just been enjoying the fruits of her new relationship. A little help around the house wouldn’t be out of line. In fact, helping the staff with the chores seemed like the least he could do.

“So I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen, Kyle. I’m going to take your mother out for some clothes befitting her new status and station in life while *you* go outside and take care of the gardening in her stead. When we come back, I expect the garden to be cleaned up and for all the tools to be put away properly, understand?” Gideon asked, his tone taking on a sinister certainty.

“…Yes sir.” Kyle said.

“Alright baby, we’re heading out! Thanks for all the help!” Erin called out to Kyle as he dutifully transplanted various pots of flowers into the area outside the servant’s quarters.

(2)

“You sure you’re okay with him doing that?” Gideon probed, testing the status of his latest implementation.

Erin shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, it’s good for him. I had to work for everything my whole life and he needs to learn some life skills of his own.”

“Just what I wanted to hear.” Gideon smiled.

“Oh I don’t know, babe… These are all awfully expensive...” Erin whined, looking around the department store wistfully.

Gideon chuckled at his anxious wife. “Oh please. You know full well that I could probably buy this entire store and barely feel it. You picking out ten or twenty outfits is a drop in the ocean.”

“TWENTY?!” Erin half-shrieked.

“Well yeah.” Gideon said. What, did you think you were just gonna get one outfit and then wear it every day forever?”

“Well I mean, no…But I don’t even know how long I’m even going to be living this way! This is so….Not me.” Said Erin, worry seeping into her face as Gideon moved to stroke her hair, his ring gleaming brightly in her eyes.

“Erin. Of COURSE this isn’t you. This version of you never got a chance to even exist given the lousy upbringing you had. But now you’re with *me*. You’re *rich*. You can have anything and everything you want at the snap of your fingers. This is the *new* you. Not Erin Lyzel, the poor farm girl who was abandoned by her parents and raised by a couple of old layabouts, but Erin Ashford, wealthy beauty about town. Doesn’t that sound like a bit of an obvious upgrade?” Gideon said, holding his hand under his chin while Erin gazed sleepily at the symbol of their union.

“No..I wasn’t abandoned..” Erin mumbled, feeling her memories melting away from her like cotton candy in the rain.

“Then where were they? Did they go to your graduation? Were they there when your son was born?” Gideon interrogated softly.

Erin knew he was being horrible. But no matter how wrong and uncharacteristically cruel his words were, she found herself unable to disagree with them. Her parents were never around when she was growing up and it was getting harder and harder to remember why that was.

“My parents were…didn’t they die?” She asked him as if he would know better than her.

Gideon smiled, his ring gleaming in the light of the store.

“No. They left you with a pair of old folks who sat around watching tv and talking about the good old days while you did all their work for them. That’s how you became such an independent person, and that’s why we agreed your son needs to stop mooching off of us and learn some skills of his own. Now enough fretting over other people’s problems. You asked me to buy you new clothes and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Gideon’s smile was sweet and confident. Charming. Certain. It was everything Erin needed it to be in that moment. She felt safe with him. She knew her adoptive parents were lazy deadbeats no matter how much she loved them. Still, they did raise her after her own actual parents dropped her off on their doorstep and ran away. If they could see her now, married to an incredibly rich man and living in a mansion they’d probably have a sudden and remarkably vigorous interest in rekindling their relationship with their only daughter. At least Erin *thought* she was their only daughter. Who knew how many other babies they had that just got dropped onto doorsteps for someone else to raise? It was a constant irritation for her to think about and she generally tried not to think about it. Erin shook her head and took a deep breath, trying to snap herself out of a shitty set of memories that she would rather not get lost in during her big shopping date.

“Alright then. And you’re sure you don’t mind if I get what I want?” She said, her eyes now scanning the racks like a curious animal sniffing around for food.

“Erin, I want you to get EVERYTHING you want.” Gideon said, eyeing his wife’s slimmer figure and generous bust. She was looking good, but there was plenty of work to be done before she was completely suited to both his preferences and her new station in life. The next step was getting her to dress herself more appropriately.

A new sense of eagerness washed the fear and concern from Erin’s face. She may not have been planning to stay at Gideon’s mansion for very long, but she did owe it to him to at least give the lifestyle a fair shake before they went back to her old, more humble and down to earth home.

(3)

Gideon was pleased with the results of their excursion to say the least. Once Erin had picked up her first couple outfits, a sort of hunger seeped into her eyes and soon she was grabbing item after item whenever she saw something she liked. In the end, she was gushing apologies to a smiling Gideon as he strode out of the store holding bags that contained a total of twenty six outfits and 4 new, high quality bras.

Among those items was a dress that he insisted she wear out of the store was a red dress that he said brilliantly complimented a sapphire necklace that Gideon had simply picked up at the jewelry department as they were leaving. Her apologies continued all the way to the restaurant they were having lunch at and only ended when her anxiety began to get the better of her in a different way.

“Oh my god Gideon, I’m really, really overdressed for this place!” She buzzed, worriedly looking over her shoulder at the other diners only to look away when they caught sight of her.

“I would have taken you somewhere where your dress would be proper attire but I just sort of assumed that that’d be a little too rich for someone of your blue collar roots.” Gideon teased. It wasn’t meant to hurt or offend her, but it WAS intended to make her want to disavow her humble upbringing in favor of a more affluent one.

“I was just trying to be considerate, but that doesn’t mean I am going to miss out on the showing the world how stunning my wife really is. But of course, if you really feel uncomfortable we can go to a nicer restaurant.”

Erin smiled sweetly, brushing a lock of dirty blonde hair out of her face as her eyes shone with love and adoration for the love of her life. Despite her moderate discomfort at looking like she was going to a celebrity gala and not the equivalent of a mall-based Claim Jumper, Erin was beaming with joy that her sexy, rich husband was so into her that he wanted to show her off to the whole world.

“Maybe next time.” She said, love radiating off of her. “For now this is just right.”

(4)