The Stepford Men’s Association Annual Garden Party at Anvil Road, Summer 2023

There wasn’t much that Dale Coba Jr hadn’t inherited from his father.

[TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS: implied emotional abuse, implied rape (which is kind of a given considering the brainwashing process the stepford wives are put through and the consent issues around that), discussion of disordered eating, self-harm? a gal smashes a mirror with her fist, police brutality, one instance of anti-Black racism, and my somewhat limited knowledge of Resident Evil 4 remake gameplay]

Whew okay, hello!!! After tinkering with the settings and adding read more breaks to certain posts so that they’ll actually fucking show up on this blog, here’s some more extraneous bullshit that came to me recently. Obviously it’s inspired by that garden party scene in the original Stepford Wives movie where Carol Van Sant malfunctions and walks around going “I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe” to everybody (and yes, ‘Helen Van Sant’ is her daughter-in-law who she will never get to meet 🙃), and it takes place long before the events of Welcome to Stepford lmao.

We also get to meet Toni Velasquez! She’s Arthur Hendry’s roommate, she looks like Angelina Jolie in Hackers, I literally named her after Toni Halliday from Curve, and she appears in the script for less than a minute or so but I’ve developed her character a little bit more here. Arthur Hendry also has a very significant role in the script as Zach Taylor’s love interest, and yep he’s related to Ruthanne Hendry from the book. I still need to finish his character sheet but I been slacking

The Stepford Men’s Association Annual Garden Party at Anvil Road, Summer 2023

There wasn’t much that Dale Coba Jr hadn’t inherited from his father. Along with his role as head of the Stepford Men’s Association, he’d also gained the family home on Anvil Road, quite a large sum of money, and free will to do as he wished in regards to the Coba Technique. That last thing hadn’t exactly been negotiated amongst the family, however, as Dale Jr felt that there was much room for improvement with the process. After all, you could only have so many dead women buried in some far-off field or dumped at the bottom of Stepford Pond before eventually arousing the suspicion of the authorities, even if the state police had technically been encouraged to look the other way.

The annual summer garden party had started off without a hitch. Dale’s wife Jean had prepared an exquisite array of hors d’oeuvres, the barbecue grill was set up by the pool, and all the members of the Men’s Association were in attendance, with their wives and families, of course. His brother Darren was in charge of the grill, with some assistance from Aaron Van Sant and Andrew Miller to ensure he didn’t burn the patties to a solid carbon block, which Darren had balked at initially, yet he soon eased into his role as conversation flowed freely. Adam Cornell was there too, his wife Evelyn by his side, clad in a form-fitting summer dress and smiling from ear to ear; John Huntington’s wife Martha was accompanying him for the first time in a long while, her hair immaculately coiffed and suspiciously coil-free; Officer Frank Buckley had brought his wife Sally and their baby daughter Margaret, who was quite calm and agreeable even at such a young age; and, of course, William Everett was socialising freely with the other guests, his wife Rosie in tow, her golden locks gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. William had proved himself a worthy protege to Dale in the past four years, the two of them growing even closer than Dale had ever done with his younger brother, and he expressed this to William by the buffet table.

“I don’t believe I could have pulled this off without your help, William,” Dale beamed proudly, his hands folded behind his back as he surveyed the scene before him. It was every inch the perfect occasion – partygoers talking animatedly, some taking a dip in the pool, children playing happily in their designated play area, beautiful wives and mothers smiling contentedly – a vision of Stepford that his father had worked to achieve for many years.

William took a sip of his beer. “Your father would be proud,” he smiled. “If he could see what you’ve managed to accomplish in such a short time, I think he’d thank you personally.”

Dale nodded with a smile. “I’d like to think so,” he replied knowingly.

Just then, Jean approached Dale with a glass of lemonade. “Mrs Cornell makes such wonderful lemonade,” she smiled, her doe-brown eyes sparkling with appreciation. “It was so nice of her to bring some for us to try, don’t you agree, honey?”

Gratefully, Dale took the glass from his wife’s hand and took a sip. She was right: it was the perfect mix of sweet and bitter, ice cold and perfectly refreshing for a warm summer’s day. “We’ll have to send the Cornells our thanks,” he said as he pulled Jean close to his side, anchoring her there by the shoulder, and pressed a kiss to her temple through her dark brown curls. She’d finally learned how to contour her nose to appear less aquiline from a certain angle, and Dale couldn’t be more proud.

Rosie was calling out from somewhere far off, deep in conversation with one of the other wives, and William left to join her. Watching them leave, Dale silently inched his hand lower to squeeze his wife’s breast, and she looked up at him, understanding exactly what he wanted without either of them saying a word. He slipped away into the house unnoticed, Jean following shortly after.

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Olivia Murray stared into the bathroom mirror as she tried to regulate her breathing. Over the past three years she’d come to hate the sight of her own reflection, starved to the bone and plastered with makeup, like a housewife from an old commercial, her hair grown long enough for her so-called husband – no, her abductor to yank her head back from behind in the bedroom, and she’d had no choice but to watch all of it happen through a cinema screen inside her head. She couldn’t scrub herself raw in the shower after he touched her, she couldn’t gorge herself on Cheetos and Pepsi, she couldn’t use her daily grocery shopping trips as an excuse to hitchhike back to Boston, back to her family, to her mom…

God, she missed her mom.

Olivia had to force herself not to cry. Her makeup would run and she’d be severely reprimanded for it. Taking a deep breath, Olivia stood up straight, swept her hair back over her shoulders, and forced herself to smile.

As she turned to open the door she accidentally walked straight into Mrs Cornell, sending her tumbling to the floor. “Oh dear, I’m so sorry! Are you alright?” Olivia cried, trying to replicate the voice her body used when she wasn’t inhabiting it.

Mrs Cornell blinked up at her as her face suddenly changed. She was no longer Evelyn Cornell, the gorgeous trophy wife of hotshot pharma researcher Adam Cornell, but someone else entirely. “God, I fuckin’ hate it here,” she grunted in a New Jersey accent as she hauled herself up to her feet. “I can’t stand the way those motherfuckers just stare at me like I’m a piece of meat.”

Olivia let out a sigh of relief. Very rarely had she ever gotten the chance to talk to her fellow abductees about anything other than housework and groceries, since they were never all lucid at the same time, and although those moments were few and far between she would hold onto them with all her strength. “I know what that’s like,” she sighed, shutting the bathroom door behind her and leaning against it. “Do me a favour though, just please don’t mention meat around me, I’m soooo hungry!”

“Your guy doesn’t let you eat much either, huh?” said Mrs Cornell as she turned to lean against the wall beside Olivia, before producing a miniature hot dog from down the front of her dress. “Here, take this,” she smiled. “I swiped it on my way up here and I was gonna eat it in the bathroom, but I think you could use it more than me.”

Without a second thought Olivia took the hot dog and ate it quickly. It was meagre and lukewarm, having been concealed next to Mrs Cornell’s boob for god knows how long, but it was still food, and she was so fucking grateful for it she could weep. “Thank you so much, oh my god,” she laughed. “What’s your name?”

“Ellie D’Amico, they/them,” Mrs Cornell – no, Ellie smiled, extending their hand for Olivia to shake it. “You?”

“Olivia Murray, uh… she/her?” Olivia chuckled, a little nervously. “I’m from Boston, if you didn’t already figure it out by the accent.”

Ellie let out a heavy sigh, gazing up at a nearby ceiling lamp. “New Jersey, but based in New York,” they said, almost regretfully, tucking a lock of hair behind their ear. “I was a freshman at NYU, and I was on my way back to Atlantic City for spring break before… well, before this happened.”

Olivia had dreamed of going to college once, before her mom fell ill and she became her de facto full-time carer. She wasn’t sure if she could ever pursue that dream again, even if she made it out of here, since nobody else in her family had been willing to help take care of her mom. “What do you miss most about home?” she asked. “… About before, I mean.”

Ellie turned to face her with a smile. “My friends, mostly,” they chuckled softly. “I miss shitty DIY basement venues and shawarma at 2am, I miss staying up late studying in my dorm, I miss the weed man, my fuckin’ piercings, my mom and dad…” For a brief moment they turned their face away, sniffling as they wiped their eyes dry, careful not to smudge their makeup, then lifted their head with a shaky exhale. “What about you?”

“I miss my mom,” Olivia said without hesitation. “She’s been sick for a long time, and I was taking care of her… it was tough, but worth it. She spent so many years of her life looking after me, and I wanted to do the same for her. I was heading to the store after work to pick up a few things, and some guy asked if I needed a ride, but after I said no thanks, I’m okay, he grabbed me and put me in the trunk of his car. And… all I could think about was my mom…”

Fuck. She couldn’t cry. Not now. Aaron would know. She quickly dipped back into the bathroom, ripped away a sheet of toilet paper, and used it to dry the tears from her eyes. “Sorry, it’s just… I don’t know how much longer I’ll get to talk to you like this before, well… I turn into her again,” Olivia sniffled. “I’m just trying to make the most of it, y’know?”

Ellie didn’t say a word, just pulled Olivia into a tight hug, holding her close to them and stroking her hair, their chin resting over her shoulder. They both stayed this way for as long as possible, until they were ripped from their own bodies and locked up in the theater again, forced to play the roles of Helen Van Sant and Evelyn Cornell once more, at which point they broke apart, greeted each other politely and went their separate ways to rejoin the party.

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“Jeez, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out,” Jim Winterborough confessed to Darren Coba, who was serving him a burger from the grill. “I’ve been living here for heck knows how long, and I still haven’t found a nice girl yet… it’s kind of embarrassing.”

Darren grinned as he cracked open a can of beer. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, man,” he said as he took a hefty swig. “My big bro should be more than happy to help ya out.”

Jim could have sworn he heard Darren turn away and mutter something under his breath with a bitter expression, but he didn’t think anything of it. He took a bite of his burger, relishing in the savoury taste and thick, juicy texture of the meat in his mouth, then headed into the house to grab a bottle of beer from the kitchen.

He opened the fridge, trying not to look at Jeremy Claybrook, who had bent his wife Susan over the kitchen island and was pounding into her from behind, her hair spilling over the surface in long coppery waves. Jeremy had one hand pressing Susan’s face against the countertop, the other stuffed down the front of her dress, and all Jim could do was reach into the fridge and take out one of the many beer bottles stacked inside for the party. Susan gasped and moaned, trying to reach down between her legs to stimulate herself, but Jeremy quickly snatched her hand away and pinned her wrist down beside her head, and she was sobbing with need as Jim opened a drawer in search of a bottle opener.

“It’s by the sink,” said Jeremy, as if he’d somehow read Jim’s mind. God, it was almost like he was daring Jim to turn around.

“Thanks, Jer, I owe ya one,” Jim said as he popped the cap off the bottle and quickly left the room.

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Maya Kraszewski stared up at the ceiling of Dale Coba Jr.’s master bedroom, her dress hiked up to her waist and her body still sore from the thorough pounding he’d given her earlier. He’d spent well over a decade trying to use her body to make children, but after her last two pregnancies from him had turned out to be ectopic it almost seemed as if he’d given up hope. It still didn’t stop him from complaining, however, frequently lamenting that Maya was “too old” to bear him a child, despite the fact that he was well over twenty years her senior and had relied on Viagra for the past few years to be able to maintain an erection. These days he only used her for his own pleasure as opposed to procreation, which still sucked, but was slightly more preferable than being expected to give him a son. As far as Maya was concerned, the Coba name didn’t deserve to be carried on.

“My name is Maya Kraszewski, I’m from Baltimore, I should have graduated from NYU Law by now, my boyfriend is Marcus Jones, and I still miss him,” she whispered to herself. She’d spent her entire time in Stepford memorising this mantra, and she’d etch it into her skin if she could.

In her dreams, in another life, she and Marcus would be dancing in their apartment kitchen to some R&B song, and he would lift her in his arms and spin her around until she was shrieking with laughter, and then maybe he’d place her on the countertop and kiss her deeply, making his way down her body until— until she woke up crying. Still, Coba would be sleeping undisturbed beside her, safe in the knowledge that she was trapped here, that she could never go back to the life she’d had before.

Jean Coba was the name he’d given her. Jean Coba was the prison she’d been locked up inside, barely able to do anything but watch through a screen as her body submitted to his every whim and will. Jean Coba would be the name on her gravestone if he had his way. She couldn’t let that happen, no matter the cost.

Maya sat up slowly, carefully, wincing from the ache deep inside her, then swung her legs onto the floor and stood up off the bed. She made her way into the en suite bathroom to clean herself up, and as she caught a glance at her reflection in the mirror she felt sick to her stomach. Her face was still garishly painted in some sick approximation of a vintage sex symbol, like a cross between a fifties housewife and a seventies porn star; pastel eyeshadow all over her eyelids, eyes lined in black and lashes coated in mascara, cheeks heavily blushed to mimic an expression of arousal, lips painted a frosty light pink and topped with gloss—

Before she had a chance to stop herself, Maya was slamming her fist into the mirror with a scream.

After the initial shock wore off and she’d wrapped her hand in a towel to stop the bleeding, Maya gazed at the shards of glass in the bathroom sink, at her image reflected there, fractured and disjointed, and she suddenly realised she had the perfect weapon at her disposal. She just had to wipe all this shit off her face first.

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“William, honey, I think Jacob’s getting a little cranky,” said Rosie as she held the fussy toddler close to her side, balancing him carefully on her hip.

William Everett paused mid-sip, lowered the beer bottle from his lips, and turned to face his wife with a cold, steely glare, one that said “we leave when I say we leave” without him even having to open his mouth. From her seat in the theater, Rachel Martinez watched helplessly, then rose from her seat and screamed with fury as her body smiled, nodded in understanding, and went away to calm down little Jacob elsewhere. “FUCK YOU! GO FUCKING DIE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! I HATE YOU!” Rachel howled, running to the screen and beating her fists against the image of her abductor, of this monster who’d stolen her away from her life, from her friends, from the girl she loved more than anything in the world, and forced her into a life of servitude and degradation in the name of traditional family values. Somehow he found new ways to disgust and horrify Rachel each day; how could he have forced her to carry these poor kids to term for him, only to brush their needs aside and treat them like pests? What the fuck was his problem? As Rosie sat down on a chair by the pool, bouncing Jacob on her knee and murmuring to him soothingly, Rachel sank to her knees on the floor, sobbing until she couldn’t breathe.

Her children never asked to be born. The least she could do was make sure they never turned out like him.

Rosie was pointing out all kinds of unique and interesting sights to Jacob, in an effort to distract the kid from how tired and grouchy he must have been feeling, when suddenly there was a commotion from somewhere nearby. It took her a while to register the noise, much to Rachel’s frustration, but soon she turned her head to see Dale Coba Jr., the head of the Men’s Association, with the woman he’d kidnapped and brainwashed yanking his head back and holding a shard of glass mere centimetres from his jugular vein, her eyes wild with fury. Rachel sat up and took notice, her eyes glued to the screen all the while.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” the woman snarled, pointing the glass shard at some of the men who had attempted to approach her.

One of the older men, a red-faced doughy guy of about fifty, folded his arms and tutted disapprovingly. “C’mon, Jean,” he said, “you know that’s no way for a lady to behave.”

“MAYA. My name is MAYA, shithead,” she growled, maintaining a tight grip on Coba’s closely cropped hair. “I should’ve been studying law and getting my pussy ate by my boyfriend, but you scum-sucking freaks couldn’t let me have that, could you? You just couldn’t fucking stand that he was Black and I loved him, huh?! ADMIT IT!!”

God, if only the rest of the women here were like Maya.

“Jean, stop this,” said Coba, eerily calm and coolheaded as ever – now I know where William gets his shitty attitude from, Rachel thought to herself. “That was no life for a woman like you to be living; in a squalid apartment above a convenience store, being manhandled by some mad brute. Your place is here, and you know that as much as anybody else.”

“FUCK YOU!” Maya shrieked, pointing the shard back toward Coba’s neck. “His name is MARCUS. We were in love, you piece of shit, and you’ll NEVER know how it feels to be in love because YOU’RE the fucking brute, and there’s an endless fucking VOID where your heart should be! YOU’RE ROTTEN TO THE FUCKING CORE, DALE COBA JR, JUST LIKE THIS SHITHOLE TOWN THAT DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING JEWISH BAKERY—”

Suddenly, after some unseen signal from Coba, about five to seven cops including Darren Coba and Frank Buckley had ambushed Maya and were wrestling her to the ground, pinning her down with their knees and roughly cuffing her wrists behind her back. She struggled against their collective grasp, screaming her lungs out, and Rachel’s heart sank as she watched it all unfold on the screen before her. If this was to be her punishment for escaping, then why should she even bother trying? Not to mention she couldn’t leave her children alone with William Everett. Darren Coba was hauling Maya to her feet, his face twisted in a cruel smirk as his brother approached her calmly, a syringe held in his hand.

“I’d hoped you wouldn’t make me have to use this, Jean,” Coba sighed with regret as he injected the needle into Maya’s neck and pushed the plunger down, “but it seems you’ve left me no choice.”

Rachel could have sworn she saw Maya looking in her direction, her expression pleading and urgent, before the sedative kicked in and she went limp in Darren’s grasp. He hauled her unconscious form carelessly over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and his fellow officers went back to their earlier business, knocking back brews and chowing down on burgers like nothing had happened.

“Take her to the mansion and put her in the basement,” Coba instructed his brother. “I’ll deal with her once the evening’s done.”

While Maya was shoved unceremoniously in the back of a squad car, like she was just a dead weight and not an aspiring law student who loved and missed her boyfriend with every fucking ounce of her being, Dale Coba Jr turned to face the crowd that had gathered around him. “Nothing to see here, gentlemen,” he announced casually, his irritation skilfully concealed. “Feel free to rejoin the party at any time.”

As Rachel watched the crowd disperse Rosie was suddenly distracted by Jacob tugging at a lock of her hair. “Hi, sweetheart,” she cooed, tickling his cheek until he was giggling. “Should we go look for your brother?”

As Rosie took her son’s tiny hand in hers and kissed it gently, Rachel couldn’t help but be relieved that at least somebody in this town was capable of anything other than abject cruelty.

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Sometime after 10pm, Toni Velasquez stepped through the door of her apartment, letting out a weary sigh. This wasn’t the first time she’d been hired to mix and serve drinks at those fucking Men’s Association parties, and she swore on her abuela’s grave that tonight would be the last. Sure, the pay was pretty good, but the company fucking sucked – the men were all leering assholes and the women, well… the less Toni had to say about them, the better. She dropped her backpack to the ground and kicked it into a corner, then made her way into the living room, where her roommate and best friend Arthur Hendry was sitting cross legged on the floor in front of the couch, still trying and failing to beat Krauser in Resident Evil 4.

“Yo,” Toni announced as she flopped onto the couch. “How was work?”

Arthur didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Eh, same old,” he shrugged. “You?”

Toni sighed heavily as she pulled out her phone. “Fuckin’ sucked, dude,” she said, scrolling aimlessly through Instagram. “I know I’m literally the only mixologist in Stepford who doesn’t suck ass, but I am never doing another one of Dale Coba Jr’s fuckin’ parties ever again. No wonder your grampy ditched those assholes.”

“Oh man, tell me about it,” Arthur snickered, finally losing his concentration just long enough for Leon to get shanked by Krauser right before his eyes. “Awww no, dude!” he wailed as the all too familiar phrase YOU ARE DEAD seeped blood red across the TV screen, and Toni couldn’t help but laugh her ass off, knowing full well that she’d completed the game before Arthur and this wouldn’t be the only time the poor guy would have to face off against the Major.

Arthur put down the controller and threw his hands up in defeat. “I give up,” he chuckled as he rose to his feet and plopped himself down on the other end of the couch. “I’m done with Krauser and I’m done with his fuckass hat. The hell even is that, a beret? If he wants to be French so bad, why’s the dude hanging out in Spain?”

This remark earned him a hearty cackle from Toni. “You gotta parry, dude, you gotta learn how to parry—” she began, until something on her phone suddenly caught her eye.

It was a video from the Men’s Association party, of Dale Coba Jr. held hostage by his wife, a shard of glass held tightly in her hand and pointed firmly at his throat.

“Arthur. Dude. Someone posted this from my job,” Toni said as she handed Arthur her phone.

She’d been there, witnessed the whole thing, and she certainly didn’t need to watch it again. Still, she could see it reflected in Arthur’s glasses as he watched silently, his eyes widening the longer it went on, and by the end of the video his jaw had practically fallen off.

“Oh my god,” he gasped quietly as he handed back the phone.

“Yep, that was my day at work for ya,” Toni huffed, stretching out her long legs across the couch and planting her feet firmly on Arthur’s lap. “You know what was really fucked up about it, though? The fact that basically no-one was on her side. Like, she must have felt… I dunno, trapped.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows, his curiosity piqued. “You think maybe she had an affair?” he said.

Toni closed the Instagram app on her phone and checked her emails. “I’unno, maybe,” she shrugged, finding no new unread messages but still flipping idly through her inbox regardless, “but I’m gonna be honest with ya, dude, I don’t blame her. I mean, the Cobas have, like, zero chemistry, it’s like watching Man of Steel.” After a short chuckle from Arthur, she continued. “Every time I watched all those skeezy old Men’s Association creeps with their smokin’ hot young wives, I just got this feeling that, like… they didn’t even like their wives, let alone love them. Y’know what I mean?”

“Straight people,” Arthur smirked wryly as he leaned back on the couch, folding his hands behind his head.

Despite the difficult subject matter Toni barely restrained a giggle, the sound escaping her lungs like air from a balloon. It was true that Stepford wasn’t exactly the Castro, so naturally anyone who just happened to be queer seemed to gravitate towards each other in the name of solidarity, and there were a few LGBTQ-friendly spots in town if you knew where to look, and you didn’t mind being intimidated by particularly hostile Men’s Association members who hated that one small part of Stepford didn’t belong to them. Toni and Arthur were no exception, having befriended each other in high school after an unsuccessful attempt to set up a GSA. Still, she’d seen far too many sapphic women going back into the closet after moving to Stepford over the years for her to put it down to sheer coincidence.

“Oh hey, was Mrs Everett there?” Arthur piped up.

“You mean Tradwife Barbie?” Toni snorted as she crossed her ankles on her best friend’s lap. “Dude, she never goes anywhere without her husband, you bet your ass they were there. And they brought the kids.”

“I’unno about that, she comes into my work without him. Maybe it’s like a safe space for her, who knows?” Arthur mused, flipping his locs over his shoulder. “Better her than those dudes from the Men’s Association who show up without ordering anything and just give me death glares the whole time. I’ve asked my boss to do something about it, but she says it’s out of her hands since they’re technically not even doing anything.”

Toni thought back to something she’d witnessed at the party; Mrs Everett had approached her husband by the buffet table to ask for help with one of the kids, and he’d just glared at her silently, like she was some unwanted pest, until she slipped away to sit by the pool, left to comfort their youngest son all by herself. God, even she couldn’t help but feel bad for the girl. As Toni expressed this to Arthur, she added, “Someone’s gotta do a welfare check on her and those kids, man. That can’t be a happy home they’re living in.”

Arthur let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, like, I know it’s none of my business, but I get the feeling Mr Everett just takes from her, y’know what I mean? Not just in the bedroom, but maybe we should unpack that while we’re here.”

“Oh, dude, I don’t think he’s ever even gone down on her, let alone made her cum,” Toni groaned. “Shit, I’ll head over there right now and do it – call it public service, y’know?” After a brief pause, she finally added with a cheeky grin, “Hey, you think Mrs Everett’s ever eaten pussy before?”

Arthur spluttered with incredulous laughter until he had to remove his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes. “Holy shit, Toni, you’re unbelievable,” he wheezed after he’d finally caught his breath, “you’re lucky I love you for it. Wanna smoke a bowl?”

God, where would Toni be without him? “Thought you’d never ask,” she grinned as she swung her legs onto the floor and got up off the couch, heading toward the open plan kitchen where she kept her stash box. “Yo, you match with anybody yet?”

“Nah, I’m starting to think I’m the only gay guy in Stepford who’s still single,” Arthur replied as he took out his phone, pulling up a dating app. “But I’unno, I hope I’m wrong.”

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