Home of the Governess

 Sorry for the lack of a caption last week. I have been horrendously busy with work.

Detective Finn Collier ducked under the police tape and strode into the crime scene. If seeing ten police cruisers parked outside the old mansion on the hill had seemed surreal, things were just about to go to whole new level of weird. He spotted his partner, Detective Pam Larsson, talking to a crime scene photographer and walked over. “What do we have here, Pam?” he demanded. “Kidnapping? False imprisonment?”

“Looks like it,” Detective Larsson nodded, “Fifteen vics so far. All like this...or worse.” She glanced at the two figures standing in the corridor, both in short maids' uniforms and heels, their arms bound behind their backs and ball gags stuffed deep between painted lips. “Poor guys...”

“Guys?!” Finn's eyes went wide. “You mean...”

“Men?” Pam nodded, “yes, all of them. Some have been here quite some by the looks of things. These two are some of the newer additions by all accounts. Their transformation seems to have been mostly cosmetic. Hence the bonds, I guess. Some of the guys further into the house are nowhere near as lucky. They are much further gone. Psychological conditioning, we think. Probably drug induced too.”

“Good Lord...” Detective Collier gasped. He eyed the desperate look of the blonde maid before him and immediately wished he hadn't. He tried to avert his gaze but only succeeded at staring at a pair of glossy legs in fishnets perched on open toed heels instead. He was having a hard time thinking of these poor men as lucky. “Who would do something like this?”

“We're pretty sure it's a woman,” Pam said consulting her notepad, “judging by the strapons we found in the sex dungeon. Oh right, that's a thing too. There are also hypnosis tapes we found with a woman's voice on them. Thirties or forties by the sound of her voice. Some of the officers are calling her the Governess. There's a large dressing room full of outfits like these and...others. We're trying to track down who bought them, but nothing so far.”

“Okay,” Finn scratched his head. “How about in the meantime, we get these poor guys out of them?”

“Oh, they are much too far gone for that. Some of these men have undergone serious mental conditioning. It's going to take some of them months, maybe years, of therapy to reconnect them with who they really are. Not that we even know who they are yet. Even these two,” Pam pointed at their prissy welcoming committee, “seem to be deep into hormone cycles. They need to be weaned off and will still have curves for a very long time. In the short-term, our focus needs to be on finding the Governess. Because someone who does something like this has an obsession. They aren't just going to stop because we found some of their maids...”  

ChickStarter

 

It began as any other quiet Friday morning. At least until the media trucks pulled up outside and reporters started hammering on our door. We assembled in the hall at the bottom of the stairs as we always seem to do in a crisis, that is except for my sister who hovered timidly on the upstairs landing above us. My Mom has always had a bit of a sixth sense for our guilt and lasered in on her immediately while my Dad and I looked on open-mouthed.

“Sylvie, what is going on?!” she yelled. “Why is every news crew in the county seemingly intent on breaking into our house?”

“It was just supposed to be a joke...” My sister's face was a mask of fear. She was a year older than me but I had never seen her look like such a scared little kid. “It just got out of hand, that's all...” She gulped as my parents folded their arms in unison. “I started a GoFundMe...for Gabe,” she looked at me, “I said he wanted to live as a girl and needed money for clothes and makeup. I was just being silly. I set a target of a hundred bucks but I didn't actually expect anyone to donate. Except they did... It went viral and people gave almost fifteen grand. People gave so much the local news started emailing me. They wanted to do a piece on Gabe...”

“What?!” My Mom turned crimson and looked like she was about to explode. “Are you insane?!” Another loud knock on the door cut her rant short. “Well, young lady, it looks like you going to have to go out their and explain. And then you are going to spend the rest of the day reimbursing people.” Their eyes locked and something unspoken seemed to pass between them. I practically heard a penny drop as my Mom realised Sylvie hadn't bought her new BMW with the tips from her overtime shifts after all. “Right...” her eyes darted around the room as she frantically tried to think of what to do. “Okay, I'll deal with you later,” she snapped at my sister. “Right now, just find something for your brother to wear while we figure out what to do about this mess you've created!”

So that's how I ended up standing outside my own house dressed as a girl while an army of photographers snapped pictures of me and reporters tried to shove microphones in my face. I'm pretty skinny so I fit easily into the polka dot dress Sylvie picked out for me and the wig she had from a stint in the school drama club plus a bit of makeup completed my makeover. I tried to keep my eyes glued to the ground that I wanted to swallow me up and the one glance up I did take was met with the gleeful smirk of my sister. Thankfully, my Mom fielded most of the reporters' questions. I suppose she was worried I would expose the scam. After about fifteen minutes of my humiliation, a well-dressed woman from a local network came over.

“I understand your GoFundMe raised nearly fifteen thousand dollars,” she smiled, ”my channel would be willing to match that if we can have exclusive access to your son's...errr...daughter's journey.”

Now I didn't exactly see dollar signs in my Mom's eyes, but I saw enough...enough to know that this morning wouldn't be the end of my nightmare, not by a long shot...