I know the truth about what happened to Mom. They killed her, Kimmy. They killed her and dumped her body in a hole in the ground and replaced her with a June Cleaverbot.
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Like I already mentioned in an earlier post, when I was comparing the Stepford Wives book and film for my approach to my sequel idea I noticed that the Eberharts have two daughters in the film, but in the source material they have a daughter and a son. I thought “hey that’s weird but wait i can do something with this lmao”, merged these two separate characters together into one trans lady, and gave her a backstory that’d fit with the themes explored by both Ira Levin and myself. I used to write a lot of fanfiction (i still kinda do sometimes) so I guess you could call this glorified fanfiction, except I cannot be fucked to post it on AO3 without the proper context of Welcome to Stepford lmao.
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Stepford, CT, September 1985
Trudging down the staircase with a yawn, Kim Eberhart rubbed the fatigue from her eyes as she headed towards the kitchen. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, having heard some faint knocks and scuffles from the bedroom next to hers, but she didn’t think much of it at the time, figuring it was just her sister Amy waking up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. When she took a seat at the kitchen table, however, Amy was nowhere to be seen.
Her mother, on the other hand, was up bright and early as per usual, already coiffed and made up perfectly as she fried some eggs and bacon in a pan on the stove. Joanna’s brunette hair was pinned up on top of her head in a neat little bun, with a few locks set loose to frame her face, and she tucked a strand behind her ear almost mechanically as she transferred one sunny side up egg to a plate, followed by two crispy strips of bacon. As she crossed the room to open a cabinet and take out the coffee pot, she briefly looked behind her for a second, then paused and turned to face her daughter with a smile.
“Good morning, Kimmy,” Joanna chirped. “How did you sleep?”
Kim couldn’t look her mother in the eye. She hadn’t done it in years. “Ugh, could’ve been better,” she yawned. “Hey, have you seen Pete?”
She hated using that name for her sister, almost as much as Amy hated hearing it herself. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t noticed the way Amy would bristle whenever she was introduced as the son, the brother, and it had taken a lot of subtle hint-dropping on Kim’s part before Amy would finally confide in her that she felt more like an Amy than a Pete, begging her to promise to never tell a soul until the time was right. But even after Amy had come clean she‘d seemed a lot more guarded than usual, as if admitting it had somehow put her in danger, but she’d never say from who. How, Kim thought, could she protect her sister from that danger if she didn’t know what it was?
All the while, her mother had been standing as still as a statue, staring into space for an uncomfortably long moment. “I’m sorry, honey, I don’t think I have,” she finally replied, before she turned to brew some coffee. “Maybe he’s still asleep?”
“Gee, something smells delicious,” a deep voice came from the doorway as Kim’s father entered the kitchen, approached his wife and slipped his arm around her waist, and Joanna turned her head to kiss him on the lips. “Good morning, hon,” Walter beamed from ear to ear.
Kim tried to pretend she didn’t see Walter’s hand sliding down to squeeze Joanna’s ass, almost as much as she tried to pretend for ten years that she didn’t notice the age lines gradually appearing on his face while her mother had remained poreless and wrinkle-free, and as much as she couldn’t ignore all of it she knew that she couldn’t risk mentioning it either. As disturbing as all of this was to her, she still loved her parents and would never go out of her way to upset them. “Morning, Dad,” Kim smiled politely as her father pulled up a chair at the kitchen table.
“Morning, kiddo,” Walter grinned as he took his seat. “You still wanna see that movie this weekend, right? What was it, Back to the Future?”
“I dunno, I already saw it with my friends last month,” said Kim as a plate of eggs and bacon was placed in front of her. “But I don’t mind seeing it again if you still haven’t, Dad.”
Satisfied enough with her answer, her father cut into his fried egg and took a hefty bite, savouring the taste in his mouth for a second. “Ah, it’s no problem, honey, I don’t mind driving you,” he said. “Hey, can you go fetch your brother before this gets cold? He’s really missing out!”
“Sure thing, Dad,” said Kim as she stood up from the table and headed back upstairs.
As Kim reached the landing she saw that Amy’s bedroom door was still open. Funny, she thought, I didn’t notice that earlier, so despite her conscience telling her that she should respect her sister’s privacy she tiptoed towards the door and knocked gently.
“Amy, you up?” Kim kept her voice low as she leaned closer to the crack in the door.
The silence that met her was almost too loud for her to ignore. “Is everything okay?” she asked again, feeling almost foolish for even trying, and after a few more seconds of deafening silence Kim slowly eased the door open and tiptoed into her sister’s bedroom. To her surprise, Amy was nowhere to be seen, her room in more disarray than usual and a few of her belongings missing, but Kim thought nothing of it until she saw a piece of paper folded up on the desk. Her curiosity piqued, Kim walked over to the desk, unfolded the note, and started to read.
Hey Kimmy. I hope you’re the first one to find this note and not Dad.
If you’re reading this, I’m already on my way back to Manhattan. I don’t know how I’m gonna get there or when, but I do know that I can’t keep living in this town with everybody seeing me as a boy. I’m sure Dad is suspecting something, but the less he knows, the better, right?
I know the truth about what happened to Mom. They killed her, Kimmy. They killed her and dumped her body in a hole in the ground and replaced her with a June Cleaverbot. I can’t keep on pretending that… thing that lives with us, that cooks and cleans and picks us up after school is her anymore, and I know you feel the same way, even if you’ll never say it out loud. She’s not the only one they did this to either. Whenever I look around at all those women at the supermarket, looking picture perfect as they browse the shelves, all I can think of is that they’re wearing the faces of women who are dead now. Did you ever notice that they’ve never aged a day since we moved here?
I think I know why Dad’s group is doing all of this. They’re acting out some fantasy of a 1950s nuclear family, of a patriarchal head of the household, his quiet and obedient wife, and their 2.5 kids who behave exactly how they’re expected to based on what the doctor said when he slapped their butts and said “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”. I’ve got a feeling they won’t stop with their wives either, and that anything they see as a threat to that fantasy has to be killed and replaced with something that conforms. And I can’t let that happen to me. So I’m heading back to New York to live as my true self, and to pick up where Mom left off. I brought a bunch of her old cameras that I found in the attic, and I hope that wherever our Mom is – our real Mom – that she’s watching over me, and she’s proud of me.
If Dad asks where I am, just make up a really good excuse. I’d do the same for you in a heartbeat. You’ve been the best sister I could ever ask for, Kimmy, and I’ll always love you until the day I die. Hopefully that won’t be soon.
With a smile to hide the fear away,
Your baby sister Amy
Fuck.
Kim felt like a piece of her heart had been ripped straight out of her chest. God, how was she going to explain this to Dad? She knew Amy had been anxious about something, if that wasn’t obvious enough, but she had no idea that her own father and the group he belonged to could ever be the cause of all of this. She was frozen to the carpeted ground of her sister’s bedroom, caught in stasis, unable to tell if the world around her had begun speeding up or slowing down until it stuttered to a complete stop. For the first time in her life, Kim didn’t know what to do.
She was about to replace the note back on the desk when she heard a rattling sound, like something was taped to the back of it. Turning it over, Kim saw that the item was a cassette tape; The Head on the Door by The Cure, which had only been out a few weeks. Of course, why wouldn’t it be? Ever since she’d taken a bus to Norwalk just to buy the album at Sam Goody’s, Amy had been listening to that song Push over and over on her stereo for days, and it nearly drove Kim crazy, but right now she felt like she could break down and cry knowing what that song meant to Amy, that she‘d left behind one of her most treasured possessions for Kim to remember her by. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Kim folded up the note and slipped it into her pocket along with the tape, then silently turned and left the room.
Amy’s right, Kim thought as she went back downstairs. The less Dad knows, the better.
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