The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Café Prosperosa seemed unusually busy for dinner on a Monday. Townies knew that there were cheaper, tastier places to eat. It was only crowded on Friday nights and Sunday mornings, when people from the suburbs made the plainest plans to bookend their weekends. Shayla often overheard these yuppie couples while washing flatware. We’ll go out to eat at some ritzy metro place on Walnut Street, and then when we’re back at the hotel, we can stop in at that cute little coffee bar.

These bland, unseasoned travellers would go shopping on South Street, to the Kimmel Center for an overpriced orchestral thing, and finally, to show they could just as well enjoy a pedestrian city experience, treat their significant others or families to a frozen custard at Rita’s. The next night will hardly end up with any more risks, perhaps throwing a visit to a historical site in the mix for a digital picture excuse. But before they check out, they often agree that they just have to stop by that cute little coffee bar one more time. The clintele needed to be seen as much as they felt they had to see, and what better way to get noticed than by getting an extravagant meal?

To have this influx of customers at the beginning of the work week was something else entirely. Shayla ambled in almost an hour and a half late to find Nick, her supervisor and manager, exasperated in a hurried attempt to satisfy the line of yuppies and music school students. It was approaching nine people deep, and she could feel the pizza she just ate start to churn along with her embarassment. She could already feel that this would be a long, long night. The sound of blenders, coffee grinders and sinks turned her face beet red as she clocked in, trying in vain to ignore the disapproving gaze of antsy hungry people.

“Listen,” she pleaded, “I’m sorry I’m so late, this isn’t like me, I... had a long night, I guess.” Did she? She couldn’t even remember what she did before her overflowing bevy of softened dreams. A lazy grin seeped onto her face when she considered the hazy men that populated them. Shayla reasoned she was probably a tad repressed, her thoughts a bit backed up since her last boyfriend over ten months ago. Backed up... why was her ass sore? Her eyes glazed over at the question.

She snapped to attention when Nick waved his hand in front of her face, asking, “Can you please change into your uniform so you can start working? I have two mozzarella sandwiches on the grill and about four mocha orders, this isn’t a fucking joke!” The variably miffed demeanor of the crowd turned a bit more sympathetic and amused at the manager’s chiding. Angelo, the fashion photographer who had, on Shayla’s first day of work, scolded her for not putting enough cream cheese on the side of his bagel, giggled approvingly. Nick prattled on, “If you were anyone else, I would have fired your ass over the phone!” Shayla blushed and brushed a dark bang from her forehead and went straight to the cubby underneath the schedule to retrieve her work shirt.

A cash register snapped open as Nick called out from across the coffeeshop, “No, not that one! I’m getting rid of those. See underneath? Next to the cake mixer! The new uniforms for the girls came in, just pick your size!” New uniforms? This was surely a Café Prosperosa headline. Still, anything was better than the too-big black polos they were forced to wear. She reached into the shelf, pulled out a box and opened it. Now she wished that her boss hadn’t ordered new apparel. It was probably Royce, the flamingly gay owner’s idea.

The things were light, flimsy white wifebeater tanks, with the Prosperosa logo (the word in a rustic Italiana font with the two letter O’s replaced with notably bigger cups of cloudy coffee from an overhead angle) emblazoned on the front. At first, she was apalled at how small even the large size was, but decided hastily that they were probably more form-fitting than she’d imagined, and, hell, she didn’t really have a choice. She had to get to work. She grabbed a size small and jogged off to the bathroom to change.

Shayla had come to work in a relatively baggy Daniel Johnston tee, her favorite shirt in the whole world, and was hurriedly assuming she’d just change into a similarly roomy polo, so she hadn’t come equipped with any sort of bra. It wasn’t like she wore one regularly anyhow. She wasn’t endowed there in the slightest bit. She looked in the mirror and adjusted the tight tank. Normally, she was capable of masking her big hips by leaving her uniform untucked, but the wifebeater barely came down to her waistband. She had to get back to work and was determined to ask Nick about the egregious clothing choice when it died down. She had no time to worry about her big butt.

“I’ll have two large nonfat mochas and a slice of that banana cream pie,” a stalwartly handsome black gentleman ordered. As Shayla bent down behind the condiment island to retrieve the skim milk from the fridge, she heard the slightest catcall. When a louder whistle whinnied as she was stirring cocoa powder into the drink, she fidgeted with the impossible tank again and pretended she didn’t hear anything. She poured herself a cup of drip coffee too, and rang the man up, generously sipping the slightly odd-tasting stuff as she did so. It was spicy.

“That’ll be $7.56,” drolled the barista.

“Can you give a me a sweet discount, angel food?” he asked. Shayla shook her head. She wasn’t clocked in for more than five minutes and she was already getting propositioned? The day started to feel longer and longer.

“What did you just call me?” she demanded.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” The man’s attitude took a sharp turn and a big smile erupted on his face. “I mumble a lot. Can I have a slice of that angel food cake, too? And I think you forgot my banana pie, creampie.” She was probably just still in the process of adjusting to her shift, but she could have sworn he just tossed another innuendo at her. Still, she didn’t want to risk getting reprimanded by Nick, so she just smiled and bounded from one area of the café to the next, procuring the guy’s desserts. When she skipped back from the freezer, her nipples were jutting sharply forth underneath her new uniform, big and brown and obvious to everyone but herself.

“Okay, can I get you anything else, sir?” she asked.

The chiseled man paused. “I think I’ll be mighty fine with those nips,” he intoned matter-of-factly, at which she almost shot four feet in the air, spooked and humiliated by her unbeknownst display. She couldn’t even contort her facial muscles into any sort of angry mold, in fact she could barely manage a look of meek confusion.

“Those Cheese Nips right there, to the left of the Junior Mints.”

Shayla gave the guy a condsiderably apologetic smile and smacked herself playfully on the forehead. “Riiight,” she began, ringing him up, “sorry, I don’t know what’s going on with me today. I—” Without provocation, the man grabbed her hand and pulled her close to him. His breath smelled like cinnamon. He handed her a business card. Without giving her a chance to read it, he leaned in to her ear and dulcetly whispered.

“I’d rather know what’s going on with you, tonight. Come by my club by 11 and I’ll get you three free drinks,” letting that last word clink off of his lips like a diamond-encrusted champagne glass.

“B-but I probably won’t get out of here by 11:30 at the earliest!” Shayla wondered for a second why she was acquiescing so easily to the demands of this man who had been saying some pretty off-color things to her. But these worries faded away with the pace of her work as she looked out to the line in back of him, stretching now into the foyer of the adjunct hotel lobby. Nick rushed to answer a phone that had been ringing for what seemed like forever.

“Come to my club at midnight and I’ll let you have five free drinks, then,” he wagered, and suddenly the thought of getting her sauce on for free was very tempting. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of you, anyway.” Before Shayla could decipher exactly what that meant, the man disappeared into the street. At the thought of not even getting to know his name, she quivered, a warm jacuzzi-style current bubbling from her nipples, now tenting her slight uniform even more, to her coccyx. He had left her a ten dollar bill in the tip cup, though. She couldn’t argue with that!

Shayla turned around to look at the card discreetly. It was black with white typeface, and advertised the words “BIG BOUNCERS” and nothing more. Suddenly she felt all eyes on her butt, and instead of trying in vain to tug her shirt down once more, simply smiled and slipped the card into her close back pocket and flicked her heart-shaped ass up ever so slightly. The pain that she woke up with was now a soothing warmth, though still throbbing. She caught herself staring at a picture of Sophia Loren on the wall when a city councilman called out, “Excuse me, are you working here or what?”

The rush ended at about a quarter after seven, and Shayla sidled over to the sink to help Nick wash the overloaded pileup of dishes. She was on her fifth absentminded cup of joe when she felt compelled to ask her boss about the stuff.

“What’s in our coffee now?” she asked curiously.

Nick seemed bemused by the question. “What do you mean? You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it, it’s just leagues ahead of our usual house blend. Is there.. cardamom.. or something in it?” Shayla licked her lips. She could still taste the tangy remnants of her last sip, sticky with the sluice of honey she religiously dolloped in every cup she drank. There was something kinda pleasant about it. It made her feel like making out.

“It makes me feel like making out!” she blurted as a bubbly nonsequitur, then immediately regretted it, flush with fear that she might lose her job. “I mean.. I don’t really feel I can make it out!”

Nick just looked at her cockeyed and pretended he didn’t hear what he just thought he heard. “Well, it’s not our usual house blend. Royce bought a couple dozen cases of the beans from some import company. It’s called Ugandan Priestess.” Shayla was amused at the name, it conjured up all sorts of tribal, carnal iamgery. “La Colombe, Bucks County, and The Last Drop haven’t been made privy to it yet. All the big boys are gonna be chomping at the bit when they find out all their customers are switching over to our coffee.”

“What makes you so sure?” Shayla asked as she tossed another mug into the dishwasher, even though she knew she didn’t need to ask. She was contemplating filling an empty milk jug with the stuff.

“Well, for starters it just tastes fucking good, and it’s actually rumoured to enhance coordination, blood flow and concentration. Why do you think it only took us two minutes to clean all those dishes?” She hadn’t thought about it at all, but he was right. Shayla felt like she had a bottomless well of energy. “Why don’t you dust those empty tables?” Normally, she would have shied away from a chore like that, but she felt like taking up his demand like a superwoman cleaning machine. Plus, she could resist the chance to suck up to him after her horrible showing earlier.

Nick finally put on some music, some Muzak station playing freestyle-dance hits from the early 90s. “Take Me In Your Arms” by Lil Suzy was blaring out of the speakers. It certainly was different than the innocuous coffeeshop fare he usually had on. Shayla couldn’t believe Nick would be playing something so cheesy. “What the hell are we listening to?” she asked, practically jogging between tables. Her face felt hot. She couldn’t wait to tear her pants off when she got home and just lounge around in her underwear.

“This is the only station Royce is paying for now,” Nick admitted, “something about going along with what the owners of Big Bouncers are doing.” Shayla chuckled and practically skated over to the register. She took a napkin and wiped sweat off her face and collarbone. “Are you feeling okay? You look beet red.”

“I’m fine,” Shayla said, “I’m just a bit flushed, you know? Could you tell what the hell Big Bouncers is? This guy—”

“Randall?” Nick asked, like everyone knew who he was.

“Is that his name? Well, I’m assuming you saw him hitting on me earlier. What’s his deal? Is he perverted?”

Nick was taken aback by the question and looked insulted. “He’s never been anything but perfectly nice to me. He doesn’t flirt with any of the other girls.” He searched for more words on that subject and couldn’t find any. “Big Bouncers is just a new dance club, Randall’s their bartender I guess. He tips well, so whenever you go there you should return the favor.”

Shayla considered it for a moment. “I don’t think I’m going there anytime soon.” Just a minute ago, she was relishing the idea of getting out of her work clothes (especially her sweaty new tank top), but she secretly was becoming increasingly interested in this Big Bouncers place. It had such a funny name. “Why is it called Big Bouncers?”

“Well, it’s kind of a gimmick bar. It’s converted from one of the longest strip malls in the mid-Atlantic. I haven’t been there, because I’m not the best looking dude and I guess it’s not really my thing to go out dancing, but from what I’ve heard, there’s like twenty-five smaller rooms to pass through before you hit the actual dancefloor. But the thing is, you have to impress the bouncers at each door. Some nights, you’ll get entry all the way through like eight rooms at a time, supposedly, but I’ve heard on the first night, you’re lucky if you get through the first.”

This all seemed rather peculiar and exciting to Shayla. She took a huge gulp of a fresh cup of Ugandan Priestess. She held her gaze in rapt attention of Nick. “Unless, did he give you a card?” Shayla almost squealed in delight. Why was all this talk turning her on so much? She started to walk away quite coquettishly until her supervisor called her out. “I saw him give you one!” Without warning or thinking, Nick bumbled for her back pocket. He didn’t have time to realize what he did or apologize for it before Shayla took his hand and placed it right back down, cradling her butt. She put her arms around his neck, and smooched her startled boss. Her entire body pulsated and flickered. The rhythms of a Stevie B song egged her on. It was the most wondrous sort of danger. It felt like it would never end.

Until a busty blonde girl wearing what looked to be an X-Small Prosperosa tank flounced in two feet behind them, waving. “Hi! I’m Emmie! It’s my first day! Which one of you is Nick?” Shayla just rolled her eyes and ran straight to the drip coffee. She wanted to just pour the spigot straight into her mouth, no matter how scalding hot it would have been. What the fuck just happened there?