When I was 12 my
father fell in love with a Dutch woman. Her name was Helen and she worked
high-up in finance, my father met her because he was a remote accountant
working directly under her and they spawned some form of connection over zoom
conferences. It morphed into flirtation and soon those two couldn’t stop
sending each other private messages on Skype and it wasn’t long before she had
him relocated to Sydney in an office down the hall from hers. As if a mouse
made their hole next to the cat’s bed.
Helen was an
ex-rower, she was tall, much taller than me or my dad with a full-figured athletic
body that’d aged gracefully into her forties. She lived in a penthouse on the
harbour at the time and welcomed us with open arms. It was a couple of years
before they married and I was yet to go through a proper growth spurt, I hadn’t
surpassed my father’s measly 5’4, and compared to Helen, I had to turn my head
to the side when she took me in a warm hug as her bosom enveloped the top of my
head.
Then I met Helen’s
daughter, Quinn. She was three years younger than me with blonde hair like her
mother. I thought her a little odd at first but in hindsight it was hormones
and a distinct lack of knowledge about girls. I didn’t like that she was almost
as tall as me and our first few interactions were awkward and we didn’t hang
out in our spare time, if anything we would occasionally watch a movie together.
We weren’t close at that age; we were strangers forced together because our
parents were in love.
Soon we moved into
a bigger house to support our new family. Somewhere in Sydney’s North-Eastern
suburbs and I started at the co-ed school that Quinn went to. One morning we
caught the train together dressed in our navy-blue school uniforms, and I was
playing Pokemon Heartgold on my DS and I could tell Quinn kept glancing at the
screen until she was simply just watching. She asked what I was playing and I
told her and she kept asking more questions about it. I showed her my pokemon,
she liked Feraligatr a lot. She asked me why my character was a girl and I
shrugged and said because I like her. In the afternoon I found her waiting by
the school’s front gate for me and we caught the train home together. She told
me she waited for me because she wanted to watch me play again and I found
myself unable to contain my excitement as I went on and on about different
Pokedex entries I thought were interesting. Quinn asked for a DSi XL and
Pokemon Soulsilver for her birthday and those morning and afternoon commutes
became some of my fondest childhood memories. We spent a lot of time together,
huddled under the covers playing in the dead of the night, though she’d often
tease me about having a smaller screen.
Then our parents
got engaged and I started high school. Quinn no longer caught the train in the
morning because she’d joined the volleyball program and had training before
school instead, so naturally we drifted a little without that tying bond and
our relationship moved more into the usual sibling hostilities where we’d argue
over the TV or get pissed at whoever managed to make it into the shower first.
When I hit tenth grade was when Quinn matched me in height and one hot summer’s
afternoon, she came home from practice in her sports uniform drenched in sweat
and we ran into each other in the kitchen. She went straight for the ice-cold
jug and poured herself a glass before greedily gulping it down, I don’t know
why but I couldn’t stop watching her throat bulge with each gulp. She finished
the glass, still panting a bit but looking right at me, her eyes narrowed, and
she stepped closer and I felt the warmth radiating off her body. We were eye to
eye.
“You’re so short,”
was all she said and walked past me and soon passed out on the couch.
One year later on
our parents’ wedding night, somewhere far out in the country, Quinn and I were
lounging beside each other on lawn chairs looking up at the stars, we were
closer those holidays because we’d been binge watching IMDb’s top 100. The
adults were inside still dancing in the farmhouse, the bass of The Police thumped
through the wrap around porch. We were just chatting about random things and
talking about what we were going to do when our parents went on their
honeymoon. Then she asked me if I’d ever kissed anybody and I said no and she
turned around on her chair to face me and asked me if I wanted to try it. It
stumped me because maybe I did want to a little bit but I told her we couldn’t
because now we were brother and sister and we fell into silence.
“It doesn’t feel
like you’re my brother,” she said.
And of course she
had a point, our parents often made a point of how different we were. My skin
was olive and I had a mop of curly black hair and her skin was fair and she had
straight blonde hair. I had brown eyes and she had blue eyes. We were both on
our side facing each other.
“Can I see your
hands?” she asked.
I held my hands
out to her and she took them in hers, gently rubbing her thumbs over my
knuckles, playing with my fingers and taking a good look at them.
“I like your
hands,” she said. “They’re so soft.”
I blushed and said
thank you and that I liked hers too. She pushed our left hands together and her
fingers just eclipsed mine. “Mine are bigger though,” she giggled and I laughed
too as I threw her hand away.
“I’m not done
growing yet,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’m growing
faster.”
She wasn’t wrong,
in the last year she’d shot past my eye and I found myself looking up at her
when we spoke, eye level with the tip of her nose.
“Imagine how much
taller I’ll be when we’re older,” she said.
There wasn’t much
point in arguing the fact. “How tall do you think you’ll get?”
“Taller than mum
at least. Apparently dad was a giant too.”
Helen was an
enormous woman and I hardly came up to her chest and it made me feel weird to
imagine Quinn in that position, towering over me so surely, having to literally
bend her neck to look down at me.
“I wonder how much
bigger your hands would be then,” I said.
“Maybe you’d
juuust cover my palm,” she giggled at the thought of it, circling on her palm
how small my hand would be. My imagination did the rest.
Our conversation
slowly petered out and at the tail end of the night of our parents’
festivities, we went past all the drunk adults back to our room and pushed our
beds together to lay next to each other and we dozed off to some random YouTube
Let’s Play Quinn put on her iPad, her head lolled against my shoulder, and we
fell asleep like that.
We never spoke
about that night again. I think we both had the realization that we were
technically and legally siblings now and that was the end of it. She was my
sister and I had to love her like that. And I did.
Soon I was in my
final year of school. I was planning on going into physiotherapy and heard of an
exclusive program in Denmark that motivated me to keep my head in the books and
I graduated with the ATAR I needed and after a successful application I was
bound for Copenhagen for the next four to five years. By the time I left, Quinn
was 15 and while I’d actually caught back up to her somewhat as puberty
squeezed out the last of my height, she’d been going through a spurt, and I
found myself staring far up at her again. She’d dropped out of the volleyball
program and blossomed into one of the best upcoming rowers at our school and
was no longer tall and skinny but tall and strong as she so elegantly followed
in Helen’s footsteps. She grabbed me in a huge hug before I left and cried into
my shoulder and told me she’d miss me, and I told her I’d miss her too.
College was
obviously fun but I’m not one to go on about it. I made a lot of friends and had
my flings here and there; I’d been dating a girl named Hazel for the last two
years but we broke up a few months ago which made my fifth year lonely since
most of my friends had moved on from the college by then. And to cap it all off,
going into my final year a virus became widespread and shocked the world into
lockdown. It was easily contagious and appeared deadly in some cases. I took
all my classes from my tiny dorm room and my graduation was slated to be over a
zoom call and by the time I finished my fourth year, the dorms were quiet since
most people had moved back home or were encouraged to stay in lockdown. It was
a sad way to cap off my college life, but these things happen I suppose, every
once a century or so. I decided it would be best if I moved back home for my last
semester which would be online anyway, so I packed my bags and told my dad I
was coming back.
I caught a plane from
the city airport and was excited to see my family again, I’d flown home a couple
of times while I was at college, but I hadn’t visited since I dated Hazel. I
missed dad and I missed Helen to some extent too, but I was mostly thinking
about Quinn. Each time I’d gone home she was taller and taller. She wasn’t so
active on social media but I saw glimpses of her aging in photos, how she
looked more and more like Helen, but she had a softer roundness to her face
whereas Helen was more angular, they had the same thick eyebrows, sky blue
eyes, thin nose and dimples around their warm smile. The most recent photo my
dad had sent me was of the three of them in front of the opera house where he
was sandwiched between both of them, only coming up to their chest. Quinn had
graduated from school at this point too, she’d become the captain of our 1st
VIII boat and lead them to a close second at Head of the River which is the
closest our school had come to winning in two decades. She was such an athlete.
I zoomed in on a photo she’d sent me after the race, of her and her best friend
posing with their silver medal, my eyes were drawn to the round swells of
Quinn’s breast as they fought for space in her tight zootie but I quickly
chastised myself for even having such a thought. I hadn’t grown any since
finishing school and I couldn’t really wrap my head around what it would be
like to face Quinn now.
I let my mind
wander about other things for the rest of the flight and when I landed in
Sydney I caught the train home. It was a ten-minute walk from the station to
our house and I trudged up the hill with my suitcase before I paused in front
of our white gate catching my breath and looking upon our two-story home with
its sloping grey tiled roof. It was a hazy afternoon and the sky was starting
to glow above the house with a soft lavender tinge. I knocked on the door and
waited.
There were excited
footsteps inside and they loudened as they approached the door and it swung
open to reveal Quinn beaming down at me. She was dressed casually in a tank top
and exercise shorts and her blonde hair was tied in a spiky bun.
“Bailey!” She
shouted and pulled me into a tight hug upward, only my toes touched the ground.
“Awwww I missed you,” she said into the top of my head and pulled me
tighter.
By this point I
had levelled out at a paltry 5’5 and it seemed like she had at least a foot in
height on me as she pressed me deep into her chest. She wasn’t only taller now,
she’d filled out all over, with broad shoulders like Phelps and a frame I
wrapped my arms around like she were a tree, I felt the powerful muscles in her
back tense as she hugged me harder again. She smelled like the Quinn I knew and
it immediately flooded me with nostalgia and summer afternoons.
“I missed you too,”
I said, our hug coming to an end.
Now that we stood
apart, I gave her a once over, mostly out of reflex because of her stature and
those trunk legs pulling her shorts tight, but it was long enough to where
she’d noticed and had her hands cocked on her hip and smiled down at me smugly.
“Whatcha lookin’
at punk?” she teased.
“It’s just, you’ve
grown a bit,” I matched her smile, I knew I shouldn’t let my eyes linger like
that. She’s my sister.
“Only a couple of
inches, I was taller than you last time.”
“Not this tall!” I
gestured up at her.
“I don’t know…
maybe you shrunk,” she flashed me these wide playful eyes and spun on her heel
and beckoned me. “Come on, come in. Mum and dad are still at work.”
She’d grown more
confident with age and had a sureness to her I hadn’t really seen before. And
god help me but I couldn’t help watching her big ass sashay inside, chewing the
seam of her shorts. I was replaying those words, maybe you shrunk, the
thought of only being as tall as her knees, having to ignore the enormous
presence of those long and powerful legs, her butt blotting out the sun. It was
obvious she took care of herself and probably frequented the gym, but I
couldn’t look at her like that, I couldn’t think about her like that. She’s my
sister.
I lugged my
suitcase behind me and followed her inside. It was similar to how I remembered,
a bunch of shoes and heels by the foyer which opened up to varnished
floorboards and a high ceiling, the living space where the dining table and
kitchen and its marble island were to the left and lavish leather couches were
to the right facing the wide-screen TV, toward the back wall was the spiral
staircase that lead upstairs to the bedrooms, there were a bunch of posters and
artwork on the white walls, Helen was somewhat of a collector. Quinn made her
way to the couches and flopped onto one and patted the space next to her.
I left my suitcase
by the stairs and sat on the couch next to her. She asked me about my flight
and the last two years, and I opened up to her about Hazel and why we’d broken
up and she comforted me and said that it was her loss anyway. We briefly
discussed how crazy all this virus stuff was, but it was all anyone ever spoke
about these days, so we moved past it, and I asked her about school and what
she was up to now and she told me before the lockdown happened she was in her
first year of a business degree and was rowing for the University of Sydney. By
this point I’d gotten comfortable and had my back against the armrest with my
legs laid out, my feet almost touching Quinn’s thigh as she lounged into the
corner of the couch with her long legs stretched out on the floor. She was
telling me some stories of her early clubbing experience and was fiddling with
the bun in her hair, in doing so both her arms were lifted and my wandering
eyes glanced at her biceps and I couldn’t believe the definition and thickness
of her arms. So when her story was over I asked her how often she went to the
gym and she laughed and I immediately felt embarrassed.
“What makes you
ask that?”
I blushed like an
idiot. “I- it’s, I mean. Look at you,” was all I managed in my flustered state.
“Oh you mean these
puppies?” She flexed her biceps and what I’d thought was defined and full
before exploded into a bundle of powerful muscle. “What you wanna feel ‘em?”
“No, that’s not –”
She interrupted me
and shoved my legs off the couch and scooched over so we were right next to
each other and her huge bicep was flexing in my face. Her overbearing size
dented the cushion and pulled me into her gravity slightly.
“Come on touch
it,” she said. “I’m pretty huge huh?”
I timidly poked
the solid flesh and she wrapped her other over my shoulders and flexed her arm
against my cheek and when I tried to push her off she locked her arm around my
neck in a headlock. I started to squirm in her vice grip and she just laughed
at me.
“Well I can tell
who hasn’t been going to the gym,” she said and flexed again and her
bicep flared against my cheek and squished my face into her left tit which I
felt fully through her thin tank top. My face was beet red.
“Get off me!” I
heaved against her arm and it only made her laugh harder as she manhandled me
and jostled my body against hers, cleanly lifting me from the couch at times,
it made me feel a lot smaller than I was. Eventually she let me go and I
cowered into the corner of the couch. “You’re so evil,” I said.
While my face was
red from exertion and laughing, she started poking me in the rubs until I was
giggling uncontrollably and smacking uselessly at her huge mitts yelling at her
to stop. Her fingers dug into my sides and sent me into another hysterical
round, I had no escape from the armrest and I sunk further and further into the
couch as she loomed over and continued to tickle me.
“Stop! Quinn stop!
Please!”
She went on for a
few more moments until I was properly squealing. “Okay, okay, I’m done,” she
said, holding her hands up but still with a mischievous smirk as she hovered
above. “I forgot you were so ticklish.”
“I can’t take it
anymore.”
She sat back on
the couch and I caught my breath.
“But what if…” she
began, and I saw her toes and the plush, wide balls of her feet come into view
and before I could react her toes attacked my side and I burst into a fit of
giggles again. Her feet were so huge that when she dug her heel in, her foot
almost reached across my stomach and with me slunk down so low into the couch
it felt like she could just trap me against the armrest with her feet and
easily hold me there. And I proved my theory when I tried to push them away and
she easily overpowered me and threw my hands off and squashed my arm to my side
with one foot and she plied my weight against the armrest, the dense ball of
her foot, slowly, but heavily playing on my chest.
“Stoooop,” I
wailed as another round of tickling began, her toes wiggling back and forth
against my ribs. I was dying, I was hysterical.
I did the only
thing I could think of and leant forward and bit her foot and she yelped and
yanked it away.
“You little bitch!”
“Please!” I held
my hands up in defense. “I’ve had enough. Seriously,” I said between panted
breaths.
“The audacity,”
she scoffed. “You have to kiss it better first.” She raised her long foot, so
it was right in front of my face, there were fading teeth marks on the side.
“I’m not kissing
your foot.”
“Do it.” She moved
it closer.
“Quinn…” I met her
narrowed challenging eyes.
“Doooo iiiiit~”
she started wagging her foot in circles, getting closer and closer to my face.
Her toes playfully scrunching.
I was overwhelmed
by this overbearing attitude of hers and I ducked under and launched myself off
the couch, leaving her to laugh at my daring escape, clearly my bite didn’t
hurt that much. I was feeling quite strange after getting tossed around so
easily by her. There were occasions in the past where we fought mano a mano, it’d
been somewhat of an even match (Quinn would probably refute that) but after
seeing how she’d so easily pushed my weight around like I was some kind of
ragdoll made me feel a way I couldn’t parse. Even atop the couch I could tell
she was a big girl, how she took up almost an entire cushion with those milky
thighs, her shorts ridden up in her messing around.
“Now you owe me.”
She poked her tongue at me.
“I don’t owe you
shit.”
“You know I could
just force you, right?”
“Whatever.”
Something was
going on inside of me and I had to get out of there. As I walked around the
couch to leave, Quinn turned around, so she was leaning over the back of the
couch, wagging her big butt behind her. “Don’t sulk you big baby,” she said.
“I just need a bit
of R&R,” I weakly smiled at her. My face hurt like I’d been laughing too
much and was probably flushed a deep red.
She pouted. “Fiiine,
fair enough. Sorry if I was annoying you.”
“No, no. It’s
fine. I’m just tired is all.”
“Well, you go rest
then,” she said and turned back around to face the TV and sunk into the couch.
“I’ll get you when dinner’s ready.” She flicked the TV on and opened Binge.
I grabbed my
luggage and started to haul it upstairs. I heard Quinn shout after me when I
reached the top of the stairs. “It’s good to have you back Bails!” That made me
smile and I walked down the carpeted corridor and opened the door to my room.
It was left mostly as I’d left it, my bed was made with navy sheets and my
walls were covered by album covers I liked. There was a Totodile plush on my
dresser that Quinn had gotten me for my 16th birthday. I collapsed
in bed and stared at the aircon vents on the ceiling. I was trying to think
about anything other than what I couldn’t stop thinking about. Quinn. She was all
I could see when I closed my eyes. How I felt the skin on the back of my neck
fold when I took in her enormity as she loomed from the doorway for the first
time. How she’d so easily buried me in a headlock and held me against her warm
body, she had softness to her but when she tensed those muscles, I felt the
work she put in rise to the surface. Those soft, broad padded feet of hers,
worn golden with callous from how often she was on her feet, I looked down at
myself and remembered how one foot could almost cover the width of my torso. I
felt a stir in my pants, and I rolled over and growled into my pillow. Was it
because I was lonely? Was that why I felt it was okay to fantasize about Quinn?
She is your little sister, I told myself that over and over again. She is your
little sister. And again, she is your little sister. At which point another
part of me became fed up. Stepsister, actually. I felt my ears go hot. And
she’s not exactly little. And she’s fucking gorgeous. Now was that so
hard to admit?
But I couldn’t do
it. It felt too wrong. I distracted myself on my phone until I passed out
drooling on my pillow.
*
I woke up in a
jet-lagged daze to Quinn leaning in my room from the doorway, knocking on my
wall.
“Hey sleepy baby,”
she said.
I mumbled
something in response.
“Dinner’s here.”
Her voice was warm.
“Mmm,” I rolled
over yawning as I sat up in bed. “I’ll be down in a sec.”
Quinn disappeared
and I heard her footsteps thud downstairs. Eventually, after pulling myself
from bed, I tiredly made my way down too and was greeted by my dad and Helen as
they both rose from the dining table to greet me. It was all hugs and kisses
and it’s always funny to go from hugging dad, who is one of the few people I
know that are shorter than me, to then hugging Helen who is among one of the
tallest people I know. Her and Quinn at this point. I sat across from Quinn
next to dad and we were having takeaway Thai that night since they worked late.
Much like my discussion earlier with Quinn we went over everything that’d
happened in the last two years and by the time we were finishing our meals,
conversation had dulled slightly, so Quinn spoke up. She looked at Helen and
said, “Bailey was surprised how tall I’d gotten.”
Helen heartily
laughed and dad was smirking too. “How tall would you have been last time
Bailey was here?” Helen asked.
“I think I was
just over six foot,” Quinn said matter of factly and looked at me, twirling the
last of some pad thai onto her fork.
“And what about
you Bails?” Dad asked.
“I don’t know I
don’t measure myself.”
“I feel like you
were only up to my chin,” Quinn said.
“Wow you’ve got
such a good memory.”
She poked her
tongue at me.
“We must have
photos from the beach trip,” Dad said excitedly and pulled out his phone to
start looking through his pictures, he loved taking photos on his phone.
“That was years
ago honey,” Helen said. “Get up you two I want to see.”
I could tell Quinn
was hiding the satisfaction she got from making me compare my height with her
in front of our mum and dad and she flashed me these wide eyes and a delighted
smirk as if to say ‘gotcha’ and she pushed her chair back and rose. Helen had
always found the height disparity between me and her daughter hilarious and
often referred to me and dad as their ‘little men’. I wasn’t going to cause a
scene over some lighthearted ribbing, so I stood up and Helen immediately
clasped her hands together and cooed at the sight of us.
Quinn and I stood
at the end of the table and she wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled
me into her, she was still wearing the casual wear from before and I leaned to
the side so my cheek didn’t collide with the side of her boobs but she just
pulled me tighter and smushed me against her soft tank top covered flesh, which
didn’t exactly leave much to the imagination. The rest of my body was easily
outsized by her too, the curve of her hip dug into my stomach below my ribs and
I felt her massive butt rounding out the back as she kind of wiggled into me
slightly as if she was really trying to feel how much smaller my body felt
against hers. Of course, it was mostly for Helen’s amusement it seemed as she
happily clapped and aww’d at drastic the difference in our height as grown
adults.
“Last time I
checked I was half an inch over six seven,” Quinn said proudly.
“That’s my girl,”
Helen said.
I looked at dad
and he shrugged. “Sorry about the genes son,” he smiled.
“Thanks dad,” I
said.
“Now go
back-to-back,” Helen made a little spinning motion with her finger.
Quinn and I
complied and I felt the plushness of her butt spread across my back, wider than
my back as she backed right into me. She looked down at me over her shoulder
and giggled. “Aren’t you supposed to be my big brother?” She wiggled her
butt into me, pushing me off balance.
“That’s too
precious,” Helen said, then to my dad. “Quinn’s leg is almost as tall as
Bailey.” She was exaggerating of course.
It began to feel
weird with all this attention on my lack of height and I stepped away from
Quinn and sat back down. Quinn sat down too and was trying to catch my eye but
I wouldn’t look away from my empty plate as I poked it awkwardly with my fork. Mum
and dad started to talk about work and I felt Quinn kick my foot under the
table, finally I gave in and looked at her and she pointed at me and then
pinched her finger and thumb together and mouthed ‘so little’.
That was too much
and I got up and used my jetlag to excuse myself. I left my family at the table
and rushed upstairs to my room and jumped into bed, face down in my pillow. I
closed my eyes and tried to sleep but it was no use and my mind kept settling on
visions of Quinn. And a war of attrition started as I lectured myself but then
reassured myself and soon the reassurances took over as I thought about the
warmth of Quinn’s body as she held me against her hugeness, she liked to tease
me about my height in the past but there was something about the way she did it
now that was driving me wild. I knew why she drove me wild, it wasn’t a secret,
but she was my little sister. I was her big brother. I was supposed to
be her big brother, but how could I honour myself with such a title when compared
to Quinn. She made me feel less than her with her sheer presence and eventually
the lines blurred between little sister and big brother, and I settled on big
sister and my hand snaked its way into my pants. She’s my big stepsister.
And what do you
know, the next morning I woke up ill.