The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Tasya held onto the rope with one hand. She had held the machete in the other until her arm grew tired; now it hung at her waist and her hand hovered near it. She knew that Carol had not been in the cave for all that long; yet it felt like a long time.

The rope was slack. She had given it several tugs, and Carol had responded, and then the rope went slack as though Carol was returning, yet so far she had not.

Tasya suddenly realized that there was movement in the cave behind her. She had been so focused on Carol’s return she had not been paying attention to her surroundings! The machete snapped up with a metallic clink as she whirled.

Two bobbing lights were making their way up the ramp.

“Who is it?” Tasya called.

“It is Wen,” came Wen’s voice. “And Beshaarir.”

A moment later they stood in the edge of the blue glow. They stared at Tasya, the machete, and the rope.

“Carol went in after them?”

“Yes.”

“We came to help.”

Tasya stared back. “To do what? Do you want to go back in there?”

But Wen looked past her, into the cave, eyes widening. Tasya turned.

A glowing, disembodied figure had appeared. Moon-blue arms, and a constellation of dots joining them. Tasya stared.

“I couldn’t find them,” came Carol’s voice. “I cut my way into the blue stuff but it goes way up.”

Her arms were soaked in blue, like gloves up to her biceps. Her shirt was wrapped around her waist and her jog top and bare shoulders were spattered with blue drops.

She looked at Beshaarir and Wen with mild surprise.

“We need to send someone up to the top to radio for help.” Carol’s voice was tired. “We can keep looking but we need... help.”

Behind them in the cave, back down the ramp, someone screamed.

They stared.

“That came from down there,” Carol said, untying the rope from her waist. “Tasya, grab the shotgun and come with me. Wen, Bish, I need you to go back outside. If we don’t come back before dark, get out of the hole and radio for help.”

“No,” said Bish, “I’m coming with you.”

“I need you to stay with Wen, Bish,” Carol said. “One person alone is prey to fate. We have to stay in pairs. And if there’s no one outside there is no one to call for help.”

Beshaarir’s mouth formed a flat line, but she nodded.

Tasya had gathered up the shotgun. The four of them descended the ramp, flashlights playing along the walls and the passage ahead. Carol was in front, glowing.

At the bottom of the ramp was the tall room, with the hole that led outside. Water-cut tunnels led out of the room to both sides, one leading slightly up, and one leading slightly down.

“Which way?” Tasya asked.

They all looked at Carol.

“You scared me!” Kiko said.

“I am sorry,” Surbitsar replied. “I lost my flashlight and I’ve been stumbling around in the dark.”

Kiko stared at her.

When the creatures on the ceiling started to grab people, Surbitsar had beat them off with her flashlight, but then there was screaming and she saw that she could never make it to the entrance. So she ducked into the nearest hole, which had connected to a low water-smoothed tunnel.

Beating the tentacles had broken her flashlight. The blue glow of the monsters lit up the beginning of the water tunnel, but as she crawled along it became darker and darker until she could no longer see at all.

But Surbitsar had never been afraid of the dark, or of small spaces, and if she was careful and did not fall she could find her way back. Using the flashlight she scraped little angular marks into the floor that her fingers could locate.

And Surbitsar crawled.

The tunnel passed under another room of blue glow, but as Surbitsar crawled up into a side tunnel to look at the room, things on the ceiling began to move, so she crawled back down and hurried on.

The ceiling was not low but there was no point in standing; to walk would only mean to trip and fall. Unlike most of the other women Surbitsar was in long pants, so her knees did not become chafed as she crept along the stone.

The water tunnel had entered a room—she could tell by the change in the echoes—that rose steeply up from both sides of the tunnel. Having no sense of where she was in relation to the entrance, Surbitsar decided to turn right and ascend.

There had been blue glow ahead of her, and shadows between herself and it that she had thought were stalagmites. Then, one of them moved.

It turned on a light.

Kiko did not shine the light in her face but held it up between them, lighting their faces like the telling of a ghost story.

“I am sorry,” Surbitsar repeated, “I did not mean to frighten you.”

“It’s okay,” Kiko said. “What is back that way?”

“There is a tunnel in which I had been crawling, and a passage leading up the other direction from this one. What is behind you?”

“Pursuit,” Kiko said grimly. “Look.”

Surbitsar stepped past the Japanese girl to the stalagmite—there had been one, and Kiko had stepped around it—and looked down the hallway, which had ceased rising and now sloped down again towards a softly glowing room.

They were hard to understand at first, but then they resolved into creatures, strange monsters with three short legs and an upraised tentacle with a flattened end. They approached slowly, methodically.

There were more than twenty of them.

“What are they?” Surbitsar hissed.

“I have no idea, but they fell from the ceiling of a room after I passed through, and they are certainly pursuing me.”

“Pursuing us,” Surbitsar said.

Kiko smiled wryly. “Can we escape the way you came?”

“Perhaps. There was another passage that rose, leading the other direction.”

“Then let’s hurry.”

The tunnel was surprisingly long.

Carin and Maria hurried along; a fast walking pace seemed to outstrip the movement of the starfish. In fact, they kept catching up to them. Whenever they did so, the starfish would stop, and move their arms around, but Carol and Maria were quick to look away and keep moving.

The little blue ovoids—were they eggs? If not, what purpose did they serve?—kept the tunnel illuminated, but now ahead of them the blue glow intensified. Carin had been seeing blue for so long now that everything was starting to seem monochrome.

Then there was a room, hemispherical, the ceiling covered in the blue ovoid things. In the center was a stone well or fountain or something, and on the far side of the room was a set of stairs.

“Stairs,” Carin said.

“A good thing,” Maria replied.

They stopped at the edge of the room and looked carefully at the ceiling, but saw no tentacles, just blue eggs as in that very first room they had crossed before the attack. Nor were there any starfish in the room, although one they had just passed was moving towards them again.

Maria grabbed her hand and they walked quickly into the room.

As they passed the stone basin in the center Carin saw that it seemed to be a well, with bright blue light coming up out of it. Just then a starfish crawled up out of it, and raised and arm. Carin looked away.

Suddenly something fell on her.

Carol led the way down; the slope was almost but not quite too steep for walking, and she kept thinking that she ought to stop and rope them together. As it was she had hung the machete at her side and sheathed the knife, holding only the flashlight and using the other hand for balance and as a stop if she fell.

Aside from their flashlights it was dark. She had no idea if the scream had come from this direction or the other, but a hasty decision had been necessary. And, if anything, Carol was heartened that at least one other woman had escaped the clutches of that blue... thing.

What the fuck was it, anyway?

Why hadn’t it attacked Carol when she chopped at it?

The floor abruptly leveled off. Not just leveled off, but became actually flat. Carol stepped gingerly into the room and looked around. It was another carved chamber, rectangular, with intricate carved images on the walls. They had entered through a squared-off doorway, and there were squared-off doorways in the center of each of the other four walls.

This place was fucking huge.

There was also a crack running across the middle of the room, through the room, breaking it in half, lifting the far side four inches from the level Carol and Tasya were standing on, and leaving a gap of almost two feet. It girdled the room, running jaggedly up the walls and across the ceiling.

She shared a look with Tasya, who shrugged.

Carol approached and shined the flashlight into the gap. It reached down out of sight, narrowing only slightly as it descended. But at least the floor was not sitting precariously above a cavern. Fall into that and you’d wedge. Somewhere.

Carol hopped across the fissure and crossed to the doorway on the right. A dark tunnel stretched away. The same for the tunnel on the left.

Tasya had stopped to examine the wall carvings, which entirely covered the walls in repeating friezes of human figures. “Hey,” she said. “Look at this.”

Carol looked at the images under Tasya’s flashlight beam. There were strange pear-shaped creatures with tripod legs and masses of waving hair, and amongst them were women with thick crosses drawn across their bodies, head to groin.

“Christians?” Tasya asked.

“Not bloody likely,” Carol replied.

Something flickered in the corner of her eye and she spun around, whipping out the machete.

It was a white light, coming up the passage beyond the doorway opposite the entrance.

Carol clutched the machete. She glanced back and saw Tasya raising the shotgun.

“Hello?” Carol called.

“Carol?” came a voice from down the tunnel.

“Kiko?”

The light came closer, rising up a tunnel, and then Kiko and Surbitsar scrambled into the room. They looked at Carol with a crazed mix of relief and wonder.

“Carol! What are you doing here? Did you see the things?”

Surbitsar pointed at Tasya. “Tasya, you got away! Where are the others?”

Kiko was babbling. “Do you know how to get out? We have to hurry, there are things after us. Why are your arms glowing blue?”

Carol hung the machete on her belt and grabbed Kiko’s shoulders.

“Kiko. Are there any more down there?”

“Any more? Oh, of us. No, it’s just Surbitsar and me.”

“Were you the one who screamed?”

“Scream? Oh yeah, I did, Surbitsar scared me when she came out of the dark—”

“Okay. Calm down. It’s just a short climb back out. Bish and Wen are up there waiting for us.”

“So we are missing only Milly, the professor, Maria, Carin, and Katy,” Tasya observed.

Surbitsar was waving her arms. “We have to go. There are... things coming after us.”

Carol stared at her. “Things?”

“Three legs, one arm, glowing blue. Dozens of them. They move slowly but they are following us. You can probably see them down there.”

Carol stepped past Kiko to the passage they had emerged from. Sure enough, forty or so feet away and down the tunnel, a mob of pale blue... things was coming into view.

“We need to go,” Surbitsar said.

“Good thing they’re easy to see,” Carol observed.

Tasya screamed.

Something had grabbed her, a thick pseudopod reaching up out of the crevasse in the floor. Carol was shocked to see that although it was a dusty blue it was not glowing at all, and then she realized that the break in the room was erupting in pale blue non-illuminated tentacles.

Cursing her own stupidity she started to scream at Kiko and Surbitsar to jump over the crack while they still could, but Tasya started to fire the shotgun and the sound was deafening in the tiny room.

The blood—or whatever—from the things in the crevasse did glow. Suddenly the room was covered in glowing blue paint as liquid splattered upward in pale blue eruptions from Tasya firing down into them. Carol might have been screaming or might not—she couldn’t tell—but she grabbed Kiko and thrust her forward, towards the other end of the room and through the waving arms.

Pseudopods from the crack in the wall suddenly lashed around Tasya and sent the shotgun flying; her screams were thin and tinny through the ringing in Carol’s ears. She looked to Surbitsar and saw her leaping across the chasm after Kiko. Carol took one look behind, saw that the glowing things were entering the room in thick ranks, and ran and dove.

She cleared the waving pseudopods but things were emerging whole from the crevasse now, the critters, three legs and one arm, and one of them had Surbitsar by the ankle. Carol struck at the thing with the machete and almost severed it, so she struck again and rolled away as an arm lashed out at her.

Tasya was gone, buried in tentacle, still in the room but barely visible for the blue flesh entangling her. The tentacles seemed to be pulling her into a spread-eagle position, but Carol could only scramble backwards out of the room as the monsters advanced on her.

The sound of the shotgun reached the entrance of the cave.

Bish jumped. She and Wen looked at each other.

“We must wait here,” Wen said.

Bish fingered the machete she had laid on the rock floor, and nodded.

The shotgun fired again, and again, and Bish prayed that whatever fight was going on, that Carol and Tasya were getting the upper hand.

It was Carol, and Tasya. Among the hardest girls Bish knew. They would be fine.

The gunshots stopped.

Fingers tight on the machete, Bish waited.

Suddenly there was scrambling inside the cave, and Kiko scrabbled her way out of the hole. A moment later, Surbitsar fell out after her.

“Kiko!” Bish shouted.

Kiko leapt to her feet and ran to where Wen and Bish stood at the entrance to the cave. She kept looking over her shoulder, fearfully.

“Kiko, what’s going on? Did anyone else escape?”

“They got Tasya,” Kiko said.

“Who did?”

“These things, these four-armed things, they were following us and then we met Carol and Tasya but there were more things, only they didn’t glow, we didn’t know they didn’t glow but they came out of the walls and they grabbed Tasya, and she fired the shotgun, my ears are still ringing...”

Bish tuned her out; Surbitsar was approaching more slowly, moving sideways so she could stare at the hole. What was Kiko babbling about? Four-armed monsters? Other than the ceiling tentacles?

Carol would know. Even if Tasya had been grabbed Carol would have cut her way out.

The blue, fleshy thing that appeared at the hole behind Surbitsar wasn’t Carol.

Maria rolled over and over but the creature would not let her go.

They had fallen from the ceiling; they must have been hidden among the eggs. Six of them, maybe more. One of them had Maria’s legs bound up together, another was clinging to her left arm. The third was trying to pin her right arm but Maria had somehow kept it free.

If only she had a knife!

She stopped rolling and looked up, dizzy, to see the glowing hand-flap of one of the creatures; she clenched her eyes shut. Bunching up like a ball, she leapt hard into the wall, back first.

The wall grabbed her.

Maria tried to jerk away but she was caught. Two of the creatures had their arms in the wall somehow and had thrown their other arms around Maria.

Her free right arm was pulled up and away, and held fast.

She risked opening her eyes. Nothing was being held in front of her face.

Carin...

Carin sat quietly on the floor, staring placidly into an outstretched arm. Her face was blank, her eyes wide.

Her eyes glittered with blue glow.

Then, slowly, she stood up. Her eyes never left the hypnotic arm of the creature.

“Carin!” Maria shouted. “Carin!”

Carin began to take off her clothes.

Maria stared.

Slowly, in a trance, Carin unbuttoned her shirt, let it fall. Unzipped and dropped her shorts, her panties. Unclipped her bra.

She stood nude except for her boots, staring wide-eyed at the creature on the floor in front of her.

Then she slowly got down on her hands and knees.

One of the other starfish crawled up onto her back. It lowered itself down, two arms reaching around her sides. Its lower arm reached back above Carin’s buttocks, then began to quiver. As it did so, the tip of it flattened out, becoming lens-shaped.

Maria couldn’t look away.

The arm quivered a moment longer, then slapped down between Carin’s legs.

Carin moaned.

“Uh!” she grunted. “Uh! Uuuuhh-hh.”

Maria tugged at her arms but they were held fast.

Guttural sounds of pleasure continued to slip from Carin’s open mouth as her breathing accelerated. Her eyes never left the glowing arm in front of her, but her brows clenched and her eyelids flickered as she came.

The creature bound to her back had extended its fourth arm above Carin’s head, and now it too was vibrating and flattening into a pointed oval. Carin whined as the gripping flap between her legs continued to work.

Then the one above her head slapped down, gripping her completely atop the crown of her head, the point coming down just above her eyebrows.

Carin came again.

Her mouth hung slack. Her breathing was soft panting.

The light from the arm in front of her eyes dimmed, and Carin’s eyes closed. Her face slowly drooped down toward the floor.

Then it came up again, and her eyes opened.

“Carin?” Maria pleaded.

But Carin’s eyes remained glassy. She stood up slowly, then turned in place to face Maria head on.

Nude, glistening with sweat, Carin stood motionless, hands at her sides. Her face was impassive, her eyes unnaturally wide. Smooth blue flaps held her atop her head and gripped her crotch, and blue arms clutched her ribs just under her glistening breasts.

A glowing arm slid in front of Maria’s eyes.

Well, at least she could see—by her own god-damned glow.

Carol sighed. She was dripping head to foot in a fresh application of glowing blue goop. Her arm ached from swinging the machete.

They had just kept coming. Pouring out of the room without caring—or even noticing—that Carol had hacked the limbs from their predecessors. Forcing her backward by sheer numbers; grabbing at her ankles or wrists. Step back, slash, step back, slash—they weren’t intelligent at all, but they were ridiculously tenacious.

And there were a lot of them.

One of them had finally gotten a hold of her machete arm, kept her from slashing, and although she cut it to bits with the knife the creature had managed to jerk the machete free, and it had fallen to the floor beneath the approaching horde.

Leaving Carol with just the knife.

She had scrambled away, back up the ramp, just in time to discover that more of them were now coming down the other direction. They had already filled the high-ceilinged chamber; the hole out was blocked.

So Carol took the only other path out and headed back up towards that first alien room, with the silhouette carving of the woman spread-eagled on the floor.

They followed her up to the egg chamber. Rather than head into the room with the dangling ceiling, Carol took the other exit.

And here she was. In a dark tunnel with three exits, glowing like a god-damned Audi dashboard. Monsters behind her and who knows what ahead of her.

She kept her anger warm. It kept her from thinking about Katy.

With luck, the others would be smart enough to get out and call for help.

“We must leave the sinkhole. We must call for help.”

Bish whirled to face Surbitsar. “We can’t just leave them all in there.”

“Beshaarir, someone must call for help. You can stay or you can go; I will stay or I will go. But two of us must climb the ropes and take the radio and call for help.”

They were hurrying through the bushes. A light rain had started to fall, barely more than a mist but thick enough to begin soaking their clothes.

The monsters were behind them. They moved slowly but they had emerged from the hole in the rock one after another until there were dozens of them, their light blue flesh appearing to fade as they crossed the chamber to the entrance.

Bish had hoped, for some reason, that the sunlight would stop them, that they were cave dwellers and even the faded light of the late afternoon would, maybe, cause them to burst into flames or something. But no, they had just walked right out, moving slowly after the four women as they backed away from the cave into the foliage.

In the sunlight they no longer seemed to glow, they were simply light blue colored creatures.

Wen pointed out that they should go back to the camp, and the ropes, or else the creatures might cut them off from escape. So the four of them had turned away from the cave and hurried back across the lush floor of the sinkhole.

“You and Kiko got away,” Bish said pointedly. “That means that Katy or Ginger or Maria might have too.”

“That is true,” Surbitsar replied, “and irrelevant. We need to call for help. There are only four of us here. Two people must climb the ropes and two people must belay them. After we have called for help we can take additional steps but if we do not call for help no one will.”

Bish started to reply but clamped her mouth shut. Surbitsar was right; the fact that Tasya or Carol or someone might need rescue now, and not later, wasn’t justification enough to get them all caught.

Caught and—what? Eaten?

“So who goes up first?” Wen asked.

“Who knows best how to use the radio?”

That had to be Kiko. “Kiko,” Bish said sullenly.

“Then we send Kiko up, followed by Wen. Beshaarir and I must decide whether to ascend or to attempt some sort of rescue.”

They pushed past the last of the bushes, dripping wet, and into camp. As Carol had foreseen, the semi-cave had remained dry, and their bedrolls and specimen bags and reference books were just as they had left them.

Surbitsar continued to take the lead. “Wen, Kiko, get your gear. Bish, get the radio, put it in the bag, and let’s go—those things are probably still following us.”

Wen and Kiko scrambled to pack their things—Wen had barely unpacked and Kiko was a highly organized person, so it only took a moment—and Bish carefully re-wrapped the radio, unhooked the battery, and put it in its waterproof case. Surbitsar hovered around the edges of the camp, machete in hand, waiting for the monsters to arrive.

But they hadn’t come by the time everything was ready. Now in their rain ponchos, bags packed, Kiko and Wen led the way back through the heavy foliage to the bottom of the ropes. Locating the ropes was trivial: the thin yellow cords were visible from everywhere in the sinkhole, stretching those dizzying hundreds of feet up to the surface.

They emerged from the vegetation at the base of the small scree slope where the ropes came down. Bish didn’t see the ends of the ropes at first, so she looked up to find them and followed the yellow lines down; they had been gathered up and taken to one edge of the scree. Apparently when the last women had come down they had secured the ropelines to something.

But she had been there when Carol tied the ropes off, and she didn’t remember them being swept so far to the side.

Wen had stopped where the scree met the cliff and looked around. “This is wrong,” she said. “Carol and I secured the ropes here. Did someone move them?”

“They come down over there,” Bish said, pointing just around the corner.

They walked around the corner; the ropelines were tied down there, secured by rocks.

Ginger was standing in front of them.

She was naked. Totally naked. Her big breasts were covered, like the rest of her freckled skin, in thick drops of condensation. Her nipples were taut, contracted and hard. She stood at attention, back erect, staring blankly past the women who had just come around the corner.

There was something on her. Blue flesh embraced her around her ribs, two snug arms, and there was a flat blue curve cupping her sex like a stringless bikini bottom; her reddish hair poked out around it. Atop her head was another flat curve of blue, cupping itself down around the top of her skull.

They stared at her. Ginger looked back at them blankly.

“none may escape,” she said. “all must obey.”

Do not panic—get angry.

Tasya’s grandfather had told her that. And he had defended Leningrad from the Germans. Panic and despair were useless, he had said. Only anger will stiffen you. Only anger will keep you fighting.

Snarling, Tasya tugged at her arms.

The creatures held them tight.

She was held flat against the wall, arms out, legs out, spread open. The creatures moved past her, up, out of the room.

Why did we assume they all glowed? Stupid!

Tasya tried to kick, but her legs, like her arms, were held so tightly not even a centimeter of movement was possible. The upper tentacles of the creatures wrapped around and around, and their fleshiness absorbed her sudden jerks. Each animal was small but they were all tangled together, holding her, holding each other, like the plastic monkeys that her friends’ children played with.

One creature, softly glowing, stopped in front of her. It raised a tentacle, atop of which was a wreath of tiny tendrils, all wriggling. All sharp-pointed.

It pushed the tendrils against her chest.

They writhed against her flesh, and the large tentacle to which they were anchored slid downward. It took a moment before Tasya realized that the little ones were cutting her clothes, flaying them, leaving a tattered swath down her midriff, neck to...

...to crotch, and around underneath, and Tasya snarled and bucked as she felt the tiny wrigglers rubbing her sex as they shredded her shorts and her underpants.

Her clothes fell open.

She screamed and pulled her arms with all her might—nothing. But she would not give up. What was flesh could be beaten.

The particular creature in front of her had disappeared back into the throng. Now Tasya felt something pushing its way up between her and the wall, and she tried to flex out and then back to batter at it, but with it pushing her torso out from the wall there was little enough room to swing in.

Two of its legs, smooth and curved, slid around Tasya’s ribs, beneath her breasts, catching her in a pincer. The thing meant to hold onto her!

Tasya gathered her energy for another assault.

Something slapped up over her sex.

Outraged, Tasya looked down—a softly glowing flap covered her pussy, and came to a point in the middle of her neatly shaven hair. She could feel it all along her sex, between her legs...

...it was moving. Pulsing.

Flexing.

A rush of arousal, instinctive and unwelcome, shot up Tasya’s spine. Rape! She tried to bat the feeling down but the thing cupping her was no rudely rutting man, no careless aggressor—it was playing her, manipulating her with soft tongue-like things that plucked and teased, and despite her horror it felt oh so good.

Tasya twisted her hips an iota left, an iota right, to no effect. The stroking continued.

Her fighting energy was dwindling, sapped by each spurt of pleasure, each involuntary sex-fired twitch.

Tasya groaned.

Part of it suddenly slithered up inside her and swelled, filling her, and stroking even there inside her sex, stroking and plucking, and Tasya’s anger was eclipsed by the brighter fire of her pleasure. She could not fight it, could not resist it, could only barely hear her own grunts and moans as it manipulated her sex like no lover ever had.

The jolts came, tingling up her spine, and then she was coming, coming, snapping her head back, crying out, all thoughts of resistance vanished along with all other thoughts.

As the orgasm ebbed Tasya went limp.

It began to play with her sex again.

She was as helpless as before, and her initial dismay was quickly snuffed out by the rising pleasure. Her pussy responded the way it was built to, and its ecstasy overwhelmed any response Tasya’s brain might prefer. She rose, higher and higher, giving up on any resistance and giving in to the pleasure, feeling it, feeling it...

She didn’t notice when the blue flap slapped down tightly over her head, and when the orgasm whited her mind something new was already inside it.

Ginger stood in front of the ropes, naked, water beaded all over her skin. On her back, the creature was seated firmly, its arms holding her torso like a hug, its tentacles cupping her brain and sex.

“all must obey,” Ginger stated.

“What the fuck,” Bish said. “Ginger, Professor, snap out of it.”

Ginger turned her head to look at Bish. “all must obey,” she said in a flat voice. “none may leave.”

The four shared uncertain glances.

“Professor,” Surbitsar said. “Step away from the rope.”

Ginger turned her head slowly to fix her wide eyes and blank expression on Surbitsar, but said nothing.

Something blue dropped from above, and Wen screamed.

Bish looked up, yelled, and leapt backwards. A creature landed where she had just been standing, sending small rocks scattering. Bish lost her balance and fell back, landing on her ass.

They were coming out of the cliff.

Surbitsar had stepped back and now dodged out of the way as another one dropped where she had been standing. Kiko, at the back, was edging backwards into the bushes. Above them, a dozen small holes were ejecting the blue monsters, who leapt down onto the rocks around them.

Wen had one on her shoulders and was on her knees screaming, arms flailing, unable to stand on the slippery rock scree—and then another one slid out of a hole in the rock and fell on top of them both.

Bish scrambled to her feet; the creature that had tried to drop on her had risen onto three arms and was reaching for her with the fourth. Bish looked in a panic at Surbitsar.

“Get them off Wen,” Surbitsar yelled, gesturing with her machete. “Before—”

Ginger’s arms locked around Surbitsar from behind and lifted her from her feet.

“all must obey,” Ginger said. “you must obey.”

Surbitsar yelled and kicked, but Ginger held her in the air and ignored the kicks as more of the creatures dropped from the holes in the cliff and drew near them.

Bish darted around the creatures; maybe she could pry Ginger’s arms loose. Surbitsar was still kicking but her thrashing was weaker; the older woman had a lot of banded musculature in her naked arms, and she was squeezing for all she was worth.

Bish had dropped her machete, and was momentarily glad for she could not imagine hacking into Ginger even possessed as she was; she fumbled for something, anything, and came up with the stupid little squeeze-torch that Katy had given her. More from nervous energy than anything else she pumped it hard in her hand as she circled around.

Ginger was turning, keeping Surbitsar between herself and Bish. The creatures were almost on them, so Bish dove, twisted, fell, and struck Ginger in the ass with the stupid little flashlight.

The plastic shattered, as did the bulb, and there was the tiniest of sparks.

Ginger dropped Surbitsar like a sack of potatoes.

Bish, smarting from falling on the rocks, looked up at Ginger’s naked body and the blue thing that clung to her back and cupped her sex. Ginger was staring vacantly, eyes blank, mouth hanging open.

Surbitsar kicked and sat up; she looked at Bish and the two of them started to scramble backwards from the approaching creatures.

“What did you do?” Surbitsar gasped.

“I don’t know! I shocked her, I think!”

“With that?”

They had gotten to their feet; the creatures had stopped where Ginger stood, half a dozen of them now crowding around her. She continued to stare mindlessly, drooling a bit.

Ginger twitched slightly, then violently as though bitten. She shivered, and slowly rotated to face them. Her mouth closed.

“none may escape,” she said. “all must obey.”

“Stay back!” Bish responded, waving the broken flashlight. “I’ll shock all of you motherfuckers!”

Ginger and the creatures pressing around her legs did not move, either toward or away from Bish and Surbitsar.

Behind them, Wen groaned.

She was just visible past the wall of blue flesh. Three of the creatures had gotten underneath her and were pushing her waist and ass up into the air; others held her wrists to the ground, and still more held down her calves and ankles.

One of the creatures had settled onto her back.

There was flickering movement between Wen’s legs. Bish realized it was tiny little tentacles clustered at the end of one creature’s arms, and realized a moment later that scraps of cloth were flying out past it and fluttering to the ground.

Above the weaving tendrils, the creature on her back had raised a hand-sized flap of blue, pointed at one end, poised in the air like a blow waiting to strike. It began to vibrate.

“We have to save her,” Bish gasped.

“How?”

Wen groaned again, and just then the flap slapped down between her legs, the tentacle curling around between the cheeks of her ass.

Wen screamed. Gasped.

Then she moaned.

Ginger was still staring at them, eyes blank. Bish waved the broken torch at her, but neither she nor the creatures beside her moved.

Wen moaned again, and it was not a moan of pain.

“What are you doing to her?” Bish demanded.

“the minder is mounting her. it will control her until she has become a slave,” Ginger responded.

Bish and Surbitsar looked at each other.

Wen grunted and they could see her body jerking.

She was coming.

“It’s raping her!”

“humans brains are opened with sex allowing the minder to take control. your brains will be opened with sex. do not resist. submit.”

Bish waved her torch uselessly. Wen was moaning again, and now there was no fear in it, only helpless pleasure. Above Wen’s head where her forehead lay pressed to the ground, a second diamond-shaped flap began to shake like a snake’s tail.

“Stop it,” Surbitsar begged. “Stop.”

“submit, surbitsar,” Ginger said blankly. “all must obey. you will obey. kneel and submit to your minder and you will become a slave.”

There was a sharp cry, and the minder’s flap slapped down on Wen’s head.

“wen will now obey,” Ginger said. “now you must now submit.” She took a step forward, and the creatures moved forward with her.

“Run?” whispered Surbitsar. She was holding a rock.

“Run,” Bish replied.

They ran.