Consensus, Day 2-3: ESP

"Oops, teehee, try to keep up, klutz.”

A brush of golden blonde hair behind her ear conveyed all the dismissiveness needed for the superior twin. It was like she didn’t want to waste any more of her time dealing with Terri’s presence, even though she had initiated the interaction.

Terri had paused to bend over and pick up a loose sheet of paper that had fallen out of her many disorganized files, only to leave her rear exposed to a devastating unseen attack. Turning the corner around a cubicle, her sister Carrie seized a newly presented opportunity. Shaking her burgeoning hips at a more fervent tempo, she slammed her side into Terri’s far less impressive ass, offsetting the already strained balance of her body and sending her careening onto the floor.

What was once a single paper out of place had spiraled into a blizzard of free-flowing papers thanks to Carrie’s playful little prank on her sister.

Terri said nothing—what was there to say? Her twin sister was as arrogant as she was determined, and the universe only seemed to be rewarding her for it! Even from just a back profile of Carrie, Terri could tell that she looked somehow prettier than she did yesterday! Her endlessly long legs made quick strides back to her cubicle, leaving Terri to recollect her ruined presentation that was due in an hour.

Why was Carrie such a bitch today? Perhaps she was in a bad mood?

According to some gossip, she had a particularly nasty run-in with Howard this morning. Most people knew to steer clear of him in the parking garage, but today he had shown up to the front of the building in a taxicab, breaking his usual rigorous formula. Perhaps karma was compensating her for that? After all, Terri had thought herself mighty fortunate to have not had to cross paths with that monster of a man lately.

But even karma alone couldn’t explain… whatever this was. Longer legs, bigger breasts, thicker thighs!? How had she become a bombshell overnight? Wait… Carrie was probably doing this sexy stunt because she knew Mr. Carob’s judgment was second only to beautiful girls! The more Terri thought about it, the more it made sense. Her sister was not above cheating to get what she wanted.

She needed to confront her sister about this and soon.

~

“Alright Carrie, we need to talk!” Terri’s voice was determined as she stormed into the bathroom, right as her twin was finishing up applying makeup in the mirror.

“Need is such a strong word, wouldn’t you agree?” Carrie replied dismissively, already tired of this conversation. “I don’t think there’s a single thing we ‘need’ to talk about at all.”

“Y-yes there is!” Terri replied, her brain suddenly finding it hard to verbalize resistance, as if Carrie’s mere reply was enough to sow seeds of doubt within her sister’s head. “You’re becoming prettier and prettier by the hour! And somehow, as your identical twin, I’m not seeing any of it on my own body!”

Carrie snorted dismissively. “What, do you think I’m taking some sort of performance enhancer for this look? Because I’m not,” she clasped her makeup kit shut to emphasize her point, adding a poignant clap to her statement. “You just need to accept the facts for what they are, squirt. I’m simply better than you.”

There was that nagging doubt within her mind again. What was happening? Carrie’s statements just felt so… definitive. But Terri couldn’t let up. She had her sister cornered.

“But that doesn’t make any scientific sense and you know it!”

“Ugh, I don’t even know why I’m wasting my time talking to you.” Carrie replied with an eyeroll. “Why don’t you just shut up!?”

Terri was ready to respond, sure of herself that she was onto something, but as she attempted to open her mouth, she found that her lips would not budge. She then attempted to scream in horror, but no such audio left her throat.

The lesser twin began to panic, tapping the skin around her mouth to see if there was something in front of it. While her lips physically could not move, the sheer terror present within her eyes caught Carrie’s attention. The bustier twin raised a sculpted eyebrow in confusion.

“What? Are you stupid or something? Another desperate ploy to waste my time? What’s this mime shit you’re pulling here?” Carrie asked in confusion, before thinking about possible causes of this occurrence. “Wait, did you actually shut up just because I told you to?”

A smile was forming on her face as the idea cemented itself within the sexier twin’s mind.

“Talk.”

Terri’s lips parted effortlessly, fresh air tickling her teeth. She opened her jaw as wide as it would allow and found no unusual resistance.

“Wh-what? What the hell was that?”

“Pfft, you tell me!” Carrie replied, unaware of the burgeoning power developing within her. “You’ve always been a total suck-up, but that was just embarrassing.”

“I’m gonna… I’m gonna go, sis. I’ll talk to you later,” Terri spoke, attempting to hide her abject fear. She wasn’t sure why her body was obeying her sister’s commands, and she wasn’t about to wait around and find out what the extent was.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Terri froze in place as if trapped within a cartoon ice block.

“Shut that door and look at me.” Terri did exactly as she was told, much to the surprise of her twin.

“Well, look at you, you’re like a little lapdog. Why don’t you bark for me while you’re at it!”

“Arf! Arf!” came Terri’s best dog impression, before she covered her mouth with her hands out of embarrassment.

“Oh, my, god. You are so fucking pathetic for that. What, is this amusing to you?” Carrie asked as if Terri were a child.

“No! I don’t fucking like this, Carrie! I don’t know what’s happeni-”

“Shut up. I don’t really care. Clearly, you think that doing whatever I say will somehow make me like you or drag a false confession out of me or whatever. Well, it’s not going to work, but you better believe I’ll have fun messing with you!”

Carrie then put a finger and thumb to her chin, musing about what to subject her own sister to next, with Terri unable to move nor speak until commanded to.

“What to do next… what to do next… hmm…” She eyed her shorter, less beautiful sister like a monkey at the zoo, or maybe a circus, ready to throw a peanut at it and watch it do tricks. “Punch yourself in the face.”

Terri heard and felt the cartilage of her nose crunch as her left arm suddenly bent ninety degrees at the elbow and lifted upwards to bash herself in the face with. The usual fear reflexes that would prevent oneself from seriously injuring their body were simply not present, leading to Terri nearly losing consciousness on impact.

She yelped in pain, reactive tears pouring from her eyes in tandem with blood leaking out of her nose. All the while, Carrie burst out laughing as if her twin sister was little more than a gag character in a tv show. “Wow, to think that you’d commit to the bit that hard! I’d almost say I’m impressed… almost.”

Her hand returned to her chin—back to the drawing board for new ways to break her own sister.

“Hmm, stop breathing.”

Terri’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks as she suddenly felt an absence of air within her lungs. She opened her mouth, desperate to take in oxygen, but it was as if she simply couldn’t. There was nothing restricting her other than the simple fact that she could not perform the bodily function.

Carrie watched with delight as her twin panicked, unsure of how to find a way to reaccomplish something that everyone knew how to do as soon as they were born. She fell to her knees, her face turning a shade of purple as her eyes bulged in violent discomfort.

“Alright, that should be enough, you can breathe again.”

Terri took a desperate breath in, coughing violently from overextending herself. Before she could even regain her composure, her eyelids shut tight and would not reopen, leaving her blind as a bat.

“Oh my god, it’s like you can read my mind or something!” Came Carrie’s disconnected voice from somewhere in front of her. “I literally thought about commanding you to close your eyes shut and you totally did it!”

Suddenly, her eyes were open again, right as they had adjusted to the darkness. The piercing glare of the overhead restroom lights pained her retinas.

“Are you sure it’s not you who took some weirdo drugs that allowed you to read my mind?” Carrie speculated, though without a hint of dissatisfaction in her tone. She was reveling in this seemingly random heel-turn of events.

“Alright Terri, quiz time. Out of the two of us, which sister is prettier, more athletic, smarter, and an overall harder worker?”

“You are!” came Terri’s gleeful voice, though she did not will herself to say that.

“That’s right! And is it true that deep down, you’re just an envious, bitter bitch?”

“The bitchiest!” Terri replied with a chipper attitude, though her eyes did not reflect. “It’s true, Carrie, you’re far prettier than I could ever be. I’m just a jealous, ugly wannabe!”

A downright evil smile grew wider and wider on Carrie’s face with every disingenuous word that came out of Terri’s mouth.

“I bet you just want to reach forward right now and grab a whole handful of my superior bosom, isn’t that right?”

“Oh, it so is!” not of her own accord, Terri’s hands then reached forward and gripped as much of her twin’s chest flesh as she could, tenderly kneading the soft skin with expert precision.

“Mmm, you dirty, dirty little perv!” Carrie remarked, her sultry voice berating her twin for the taboo act. “Grabbing the breasts of your very own sister just to get the mere taste of what it would feel like to have titties half as good!”

As soon as Terri sensed control returning to her hands, she yanked them off of her sister’s rack, blushing with embarrassment. Carrie had no sympathies to extend.

“Haha! You’re totally like my little puppet! Fitting too, that ugly face of yours would definitely be the result of a cheap, Chinese company failing to capture my likeness on a doll!”

Terri wanted to shout back, say anything against her awful twin sister’s horrific regime. When that didn’t work, she just wanted to cry. Of course, Carrie couldn’t allow that either. A wave of her finger and Terri was sporting a bright, beautiful smile. Well, as beautiful as a smile could be when compared to Carrie’s magnificence.

“Better keep that positive attitude up if you even want a shot at that promotion later today!” Carrie taunted, flashing her twin a sultry wink as she turned heel and left the bathroom.

~

Terri tried her hardest to dampen her face of abject terror as she walked towards Mr. Carob’s office for the fated interview. Paranoid eyes looked every which way for any sign of her sister. The lesser twin didn’t exactly believe in her ability to nail this promotion—Mr. Carob’s preference for beauty was often the deciding factor—but she had to try.

With fortunately no sign of Carrie in sight, she stepped into the assigned meeting room.

“Ah! Ms. Sadler, glad you could make it!” came a cordial greeting from the lead manager, Mr. Manix. He and Mr. Carob were sitting side by side like judges in a beauty pageant, clicked pens ready to scribble notes about noteworthy achievement to review alongside a large, competitive workforce.

“Glad to be here, I’m really stoked to have been considered for the position!” upon seeing Mr. Manix, she was believing that sentiment more and more. He was a far more… objective measurer than Carob was. That is to say, he wouldn’t let a woman get away with murder just because she was drop dead gorgeous. Terri was a hard worker, maybe she actually had a chance.

“Fantastic, let’s begin with your review.”

Stellar marks across the board, as to be expected. Of course, they weren’t about to tell her how she stacked up against any of her coworkers, even her sister. That was just another piece of self-doubt to chip away at her during the interview.

“What are you willing to do for this position, Ms. Sadler?” Mr. Carob asked. Though his disposition was often that of a desperate, horny man, this question was remarkably neutral. An easy one, Terri knew exactly what to say to keep the suits happy and a grasp on her morals.

“I’d be willing to suck you off, Mr. Carob. But no more than that.”

…That was not what Terri meant to say. Her eyes were pinpricks, her heart skipped several beats. Manix had never looked more taken aback in his life, while Carob looked cautiously intrigued.

Carrie, that fucker! She was somewhere nearby, totally sabotaging the interview for her own sister!

“Um-er, that… what I meant to say was…” Terri began doing a bit of damage control. “ T-that was merely a joke that didn’t land. Um… haha…?”

She had to play along. Revealing something along the lines of “help, my insane twin sister is literally controlling my movements with her mind” would be a surefire promotion killer—as well as a one-way ticket to the mental asylum.

Carob looked embarrassed. Manix looked anything but amused, scribbling a quick note on his paper without taking his tired eyes off of Terri.

“Yes, perhaps comedy is not your strong suit. Please, continue with your real answer to that question.”

Terri felt her face suddenly contort from a terrified, nervous one to an overconfident, lustful one. “Sorry, Mr. Manix. I should have said that I’d suck you off too. It’s rude to leave someone else out of such an offer.”

Mr. Manix’s face was frozen as if someone had just defecated on his porch with him watching. Terri’s eye contact was forcefully broken away from his face, only to stop before a smug Carrie, waving with a trill of her fingers from outside the office window.

“Ms. Sadler!” Manix shouted, recalling Terri’s attention. “Is this entire position some sort of joke to you? Because this is proving to be a gigantic waste of Mr. Carob and my time!”

Only now did Carrie relinquish control of her sister’s body, putting her even more on the spot than before. “P-p-please, Mr. Manix! I-I don’t know what came over me! Just give me one more chance. I’ll be the hardest-working assistant manager that there ever was!”

She was not only begging to Manix and Carob, but to the universe as well. She had entrusted in karma, believing from a young age that it would ensure her success. Why was it failing her now? What had she done so wrong and her sister so right?

Surprisingly, it was Mr. Carob who managed to give Terri another chance, convincing his associate. He probably just really wanted that blowjob. The poor blonde couldn’t believe she was about to admit this, but at this point she’d do it just so that the hell that was this interview would finally be over.

The rest of the Q&A was without interruption from Carrie, but fate’s die had already been cast. Just two interruptions was enough to completely dash Terri’s chances, she knew that much for sure.

“So… how did I do, y’know, overall?” the smaller twin asked, biting her lip nervously.

“Well, we’ll consider it. Good day, Ms. Sadler.”

That… was less than hopeful. In fact, those were the exact words to look out for when someone didn’t get a promotion. She left the office dejected and more than a little pissed off. Why was Carrie acting like this? Terri had always believed that her sister was just a little misguided—once she saw that there was more to life than climbing to the top, she’d quit this whole ‘superior’ shtick.

But now the bustier twin was doubling down on her mentality, somehow even more bitchy and assholish than before.

Speaking of bitchy and assholish, Howard Grove was on pace to cross paths with her.

Not wanting to deal with any more bullshit today, she deliberately took a longer route so she wouldn’t have to interact with him. She nearly slipped on a poorly-mopped section of the floor, but it was worth it in her eyes.

Without the interruption from Terri, Howard Grove would instead bump into Carrie right as she left the interview she had just nailed.