Madison’s World Redux: Season 3 Episode 7

“No, Madison, you’re misunderstanding,” Greg said, trying to keep his voice calm. It still felt deeply unnatural, having to explain himself like this to his own daughter. 

Madison rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, all teenage irritation and smug authority. “No, we’ve literally talked about this. You do not get to tell me what I’m misunderstanding. I understand perfectly fine.” She pointed toward the phone on the desk. “What I understand is that my phone is still gross and you’re not cleaning it like I asked.” 

Greg looked up at her, trying not to let his frustration show. “Can we just talk about this in private?” 

The words were out before he could stop them. Some stubborn part of him still believed that if he could just get Madison alone, away from Cindy, away from the posture and performance of authority, he might still be able to get through to his little girl. 

Madison’s expression shifted almost instantly. Not softer. Sharper. More amused. 

“Oh my God,” she said, with a short disbelieving laugh. “This is private. This is my room.” 

Greg’s face tightened. 

Madison tilted her head, clearly enjoying herself now. “Actually, no. You know what? You get one on one time with my phone while Mom and I go relax and do some rotting.” She smirked. “Which, honestly, sounds way more fun for me than whatever this is.” 

Then her tone turned firmer, though the bratty edge never left it. 

“When I come back, I expect an apology, and I expect you to explain what you did wrong and what you’re going to do differently next time.” 

The words hit Greg with a familiar kind of force. 

They were his. 

Or close enough to be. 

Not one of Cindy’s polished little lectures about standards and expectations. One of his own old punishments, the rarer kind he used when Madison’s attitude had crossed a line and she needed to stop, think, and come back with something better than defensiveness. He had not used them often. He had not needed to. 

Madison was using them now with devastating ease. 

And worse, she knew exactly what she was doing. 

Cindy stayed very still inside the habitat, watching the exchange with a tightness in her chest that felt painfully familiar. She recognized the structure of it at once—the forced pause, the demanded reflection, the expectation of a better answer on the second try. Madison had taken one of Greg’s own parental tools and slipped into it so naturally that for a sickening moment it almost sounded ordinary. Except nothing about this was ordinary. Greg stood on her desk beside her smudged phone, reduced to waiting for judgment from the daughter he had once sent to her room for less. 

Madison looked from him to Cindy and seemed to catch every part of that realization at once. Her mouth curved, not cruelly, but with unmistakable satisfaction. She liked this. Liked being listened to. Liked being the one who decided when a conversation was over and what happened next. 

“Mom,” she said, her tone brightening at once, “come on. You earned your time.” 

Madison walked back across her room and reached into the habitat for her mother. She was just about to leave when she paused at the door and looked back over at her dad, still standing on her desk beside the smudged phone. 

“Dad,” she said, her voice turning sharp, “it’s Ms. Wessen. You know better than to ‘Madison’ me after all this time. My Littles know how to address people respectfully, especially their own guardian.” 

Greg looked up at her, trying to steady himself. “If we could just talk about this… we’re working hard. We’re trying to make this work. We should be able to speak to each other like a family. McKenzie doesn’t require this.” 

“McKenzie isn’t here, Dad,” Madison snapped. 

The room seemed to tighten around the words. 

“You are my Little, and regardless of anything else, you are going to address people the way I tell you to.” Her grip on Cindy shifted slightly, not rough, just secure. Possessive. “And honestly? I think spending so much time with McKenzie has started to confuse you.” 

Greg’s face fell. 

Madison kept going, her irritation now sharpened into something colder. 

“You keep acting like you’re hers first and mine second, like being with me is just some waiting room until she comes back for you. And I’m over it.” She rolled her eyes, but there was real feeling under it now. “I found you. I take care of you. You live in my room. You are one of my Littles. McKenzie getting time with you does not somehow make you less mine.” 

Greg swallowed, but said nothing. 

Madison’s expression hardened with satisfaction when he stayed quiet. 

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “I’m going to talk to McKenzie. She’s busy the next few weeks anyway, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe we use that time wisely and let you get a proper reset.” 

She shifted Cindy a little higher against her side, then looked straight at him. 

“You need time to settle back in and remember whose Little you are. Then, later, maybe you can learn how to appreciate time with McKenzie without forgetting that it’s time I’m allowing you to have.” 

The emphasis landed exactly where she wanted it. 

Madison tilted her head, the bratty edge returning just enough to make the whole thing feel even more personal. 

“Because right now? You’re acting spoiled. And I really don’t like spoiled Littles.” 
 
 

Madison walked out of her room, making sure to pull the bedroom door shut behind her with a firm little click. Greg could still hear her voice for a few seconds after that, drifting faintly down the hall as she talked to Cindy in the bright, casual tone she used when she was pleased with herself. He caught only fragments, but it was enough to picture the scene anyway. The living room, probably. Madison liked to stretch out on the couch when she wanted to “rot,” as she called it, with Cindy tucked close beside her like some reward she had earned. 

Then even those sounds faded. 

Greg stood alone on Madison’s desk beside her phone. 

For a moment he just stared at it, the moist towelette still lying unopened at his feet. 

He couldn’t believe her. 

Or maybe he could, and that was the worse truth. 

With a sharp, tired breath, he bent and dragged the towelette toward himself, wrestling it open with both hands. The wet cloth inside was enormous from his perspective, more like a damp rag than anything meant for a single quick wipe. He pulled and adjusted it until he had enough of an edge to work with, then turned back toward the phone. 

He hated how large it looked. 

Even after months, the proportions still had the power to disorient him. Madison’s phone did not look like an object meant to be held anymore. It looked like part of the landscape—sleek, dark, and smooth, its screen stretching upward like a polished wall. The case wrapped around it in thick protective curves, and the charging port at the bottom might as well have been a piece of machinery. Smudges streaked the glass in cloudy arcs from Madison’s fingers, and faint orange residue from Cheeto dust lingered along one side where she had apparently scrolled while snacking. 

Greg set the damp cloth against the screen and pushed. 

The surface resisted in a way that was oddly humiliating. He had to put his back into it, bracing his shoes against the desk for leverage as he dragged the moist towelette across the glass in slow, broad strokes. The cloth left temporary wet trails behind, and in the sheen he could see his own warped reflection moving over Madison’s fingerprints. 

He scrubbed harder. 

Across the middle of the screen first, then along the top edge where foundation dust and skin oil had collected near the speaker slit. He worked in careful lines, going back over areas that still looked smeared, then changing angles and pressing with both hands to polish away the worst of it. The phone gave off the faint chemical smell of cleaner mixed with Madison’s lotion, something sweet underneath the sharper scent of the wipe itself. 

When the main part of the screen was done, he moved to the edges. 

Those were worse. 

Grease and dust had gathered in the tiny seam where the case met the glass, and he had to wedge the corner of the towelette in with both hands, pushing and twisting until it caught. He dragged the cloth painstakingly along the groove, inch by inch, lifting out little streaks of grime he would never once have noticed in his old life. Then he repeated it on the other side, jaw tight with effort, shoulders already aching. 

By the time he reached the volume buttons, he was sweating. 

The raised little ridges along the side of the case took frustrating precision. He had to fold the towelette down to a narrower point and rub around each button separately, then scrub over the buttons themselves to lift away the skin oil Madison had left there. The power button on the other side was worse still, set just deep enough that he had to brace himself and scrub in small circles to get the damp cloth into the recess properly. 

Then there was the charging port. 

Greg stared at it with immediate resentment. 

Cheeto dust had somehow made its way there too, caught in the corners of the opening along with lint from Madison’s pocket or hoodie. He crouched, bunched the towelette into a tighter edge, and pushed at the port with maddening care. Too hard and the cloth bent uselessly. Too soft and it did nothing. He worked slowly, dragging out tiny bits of residue and wiping them away, then going back in again until the dark opening looked clean enough that Madison might not complain. 

Might. 

That was the word that governed everything now. 

Not done. Not finished. Not good. Just clean enough that Madison might not complain. 

Greg sat back on his heels for a second and looked at the phone again. 

He couldn’t even use it. 

That was the part that still struck something raw in him every single time. The device was there in front of him, larger than his torso, humming with access to the whole outside world—calls, messages, maps, news, people, choices—and it may as well have been dead stone. It was not in Little mode. Without that adjustment, the screen was functionally sealed to him. His touch registered too lightly, too erratically. He could smear the glass. He could clean it. But he could not make it answer him. 

He had tried, of course. 

In the first weeks especially. More than once. More than a dozen times, if he was honest. Pressing with both palms, jumping to put extra force behind a fingertip, trying different parts of the screen, different angles, trying desperation disguised as problem-solving. Nothing worked. If a device was not switched for Littles, it was simply closed to them. Another door. Another lock. Another ordinary piece of the world quietly removed. 

No phone a friend. No secret call for help. 

And even if there had been, who would he have called? 

The thought came and stalled there, as it always did. 

McKenzie, maybe. 

But even imagining that made his stomach sink. He could picture it too easily—Madison finding out, hearing his voice on the line, seeing the proof that the first instinct he still clung to was to reach past her and toward McKenzie. She was already in one of her moods, sharp and possessive and too alert to every hint that he might think of her as second best. She had always been sensitive to that, even before all this. Sensitive to being compared. To being overshadowed. To feeling like McKenzie came first in some invisible ranking she had never agreed to but always felt. 

He should never have said McKenzie’s name. 

That was the mistake. 

Not because it was wrong to want to see her. Not because his feelings for McKenzie were untrue. But because invoking her in that moment had touched the one part of Madison that was still all raw teenage pride beneath the authority. He had made her feel secondary, and Madison never took that well. 

Greg pulled the towelette back across the screen again, polishing now, working away the last damp streaks until the glass shone in the desk light. 

As he scrubbed, the thought that kept returning to him was the one he least wanted to look at directly: 

being Madison’s Little. 

Not visiting her. Not depending on her in passing. Not waiting out some temporary stretch of her control until McKenzie had more time. Truly being hers in the full sense Madison meant it. Living under her moods, her pride, her pleasures, her corrections. Belonging to a girl who loved him, yes, but loved him in a way that never questioned itself, never doubted the hierarchy at the center of it. 

Just like Cindy. 

He loved his wife. He loved both his daughters. But the idea of sinking fully into Madison’s care turned something over in his chest that felt dangerously close to panic. 

Because Madison’s idea of harmony had always come with conditions. Even as a child, she had been brightest and sweetest when the world bent the right way around her. She loved affection, loved praise, loved closeness, loved being understood—but what she wanted, more than almost anything, was alignment. Agreement. Validation. People being with her, on her side, in her rhythm. Opposition never merely frustrated her. It offended her. It made her feel abandoned, diminished, pushed aside. 

And now she had power enough to build a life where disagreement did not simply wound her. 

It submitted. 

Greg leaned forward again and worked the cloth carefully around the camera lenses on the back of the phone, wiping each black circle clean, then polishing the metal rings around them until they caught the light. He cleaned the case corners. The bottom speaker holes. The glossy Apple logo in the center. Every part of it. 

Because if Madison came back and found a streak, a smudge, a crumb of orange dust she thought he had missed, she would notice. Of course she would notice. This was her phone. The center of her social world, her entertainment, her routines, her attention. She lived through it half the time. Being told to clean it had not been random. It had been personal. A petty little act of service chosen precisely because she knew he would understand that. 

Greg sat back at last, exhausted again, the towelette limp and dirty in his hands. 

The phone gleamed beside him, spotless now, reflecting the desk lamp in a hard white line. 

He looked at it for a long moment, then lowered his head. 

Beyond the closed bedroom door, the house was quiet. Somewhere out there Madison was stretched across the couch with Cindy tucked into her orbit, feeling pleased, feeling justified, maybe already deciding how long to let this lesson last. And Greg, alone on her desk with aching arms and a cleaned phone, understood with a fresh wave of dread how little separated punishment from ordinary life anymore. 

That was the real danger. 

Not the moments when Madison was openly angry. 

The moments when she was simply being herself. 

And alone in the hush of her room, Greg realized that what frightened him most was not that Madison might force him into being her Little. 

It was that, piece by piece, day by day, she might get exactly what she wanted. 

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