The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Paige took a sip of her red wine, and glanced down the bar from her position on the barstool. There was only one other person seated at the bar: a woman, who noticed Paige looking, and gave her a small quirk of the mouth in acknowledgement. They were the only two people at their end of the room— the bartender had disappeared back into the staff only area about a half hour before, and had yet to re-appear.

Near the bar there were tables, and booths, but these were empty too. On the far side of them, there was a dividing half wall, and presumably restaurant style tables for food service, but judging by the lack of ambient chatter, these were empty too.

The only sound was a vague rumbling from the kitchen, perhaps of a running dishwasher.

Paige looked back from the woman to her own glass of wine; where her eyes had mostly been since she’d stepped into the hotel bar several hours before. She wasn’t surprised that the bar was mostly deserted. It was getting too late at night for anyone else to frequent: already well-past midnight, and one am— well on the way to two in the morning.

And if throughout the night Paige had wondered more than once why the other woman had nothing better to do than sit alone in a hotel bar, like Paige— well, the wine kept Paige’s head fuzzy enough to keep those thoughts at bay.

At first when Paige had sat down at the bar after first coming in, she’d wondered if the other woman would come over to join her. But that hadn’t happened, and the longer Paige sat in the emptied room the more that woman seemed more like just one more piece of furniture in it. She could go minutes without even noticing or thinking of her anymore. She was receding into the background.

But the other woman suddenly surged into the foreground— from the corner of Paige’s eye, she saw movement. The woman was standing— to leave?

No, not to leave, Paige realized, as the woman walked down the bar to the empty seat beside her. To join me.

Why now, at quarter to two? Why not when Paige had first sat down?

“I’m Darcy,” the woman introduced herself. “Do you still have enough wine there?”

Paige had asked for a top-up before the bartender had disappeared, and her glass was still more than half-full. And it was still only her second full glass of the night.

“Yes, I have enough,” Paige replied. “I’m Paige.”

Darcy gave her a nod to acknowledge her introduction. “That’s for the best. I doubt we’ll be seeing our bartender friend again for the rest of the night.”

Paige frowned. “How can you know that?”

Darcy gave Paige a smile that threw her a bit. “I quite like this bar, Paige. It’s open all night, but no one else hardly ever comes in. And every night at around one in the morning, Timothy slips in the back, and doesn’t re-emerge until six in the morning. Personally, I think he tucks himself in a corner back there and sleeps sitting up for a few hours. But that’s just an educated guess.”

It seemed Darcy was drinking red wine too. She punctuated her statement with a further sip.

“So I often come to sit. I like the solitude. And as I said, not a soul comes in to disrupt me. Usually. Tonight, you came in. I wanted to wait and see if you would leave before Timothy made his disappearance: then, when you didn’t, I wanted to see if you would leave after his disappearance. But he’s been sound asleep for a solid forty five minutes by now— that is, if I know him like I think I do, and here you are. So at last, I have decided to reward your stubbornness. Clearly, you are someone worthy knowing, to still be sitting here before. You must like the solitude too.”

Darcy’s voice was pensive, which belied her rambling speech. It was hard to believe the other woman was putting any thought into the words that poured out of her. While she had been speaking there had been a kind of comfort in the chaos; Paige herself was not much in the mood to talk, and it had seemed Darcy was more than able to hold up an entire conversation by herself. But now, at last, she had finished speaking, leaving the silence for Paige to fill. Paige didn’t mind the silence— she had sat in it for almost four hours. But now, it was coupled with Darcy’s dark, waiting eyes. That made it a little more uncomfortable to sit through.

“I do,” Paige answered. “I like solitude too.”

“But I’ve never seen you here before,” Darcy returned, quickly. Her eyes still held that expectant look.

“I only recently moved to town,” Paige volunteered. “I’m staying here while I look for a place. I thought it was a nice bar, I like solitude, here I am.” She wondered if Darcy would interrogate her further and demand all the details of her life. She felt very strange when she realized that Darcy had gotten all those details out of her only by giving her that look.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet a creature of nighttime loneliness like myself,” Darcy said, tracing the stem of her glass with her fingers. “As I said, I would have come over earlier, but I was curious to see how long you were willing to sit alone. And, I preferred to wait for Timothy to leave. I find conversation more satisfying when it is not being eavesdropped on.”

“You like to have private conversations,” Paige noted.

“Yes, exactly,” Darcy agreed, and gave Paige another smile. Like the earlier smiles Darcy had so far given her, this one was sharp— its wattage was too bright, and Paige felt off-balance for a few seconds as Darcy kept beaming it at her. “It’s so much easier to relax and say what you really think when you don’t have to worry about being overheard.”

Paige felt that she still didn’t really understand Darcy. There was something about the woman that was slippery. It was hard to grasp what she really meant, or intended. Hard to understand why she had come over, why she was now sitting and talking to Paige. Nothing that Darcy had so far said had clarified this. In fact, the longer Darcy went on talking, the more confused Paige felt.

But at least Paige saw an opening in Darcy’s last statement. “And what do you really think?”

There was a delighted look in Darcy’s eyes, as if she’d been hoping Paige would ask that exact question. “Nothing in particular,” Darcy said. She spoke the words very deliberately. “I’m not thinking of anything at the moment— my mind is blank. But the wonderful thing about conversation is the way it can put new ideas into your head you never would have thought of yourself. And when there is no one around to listen in, you can let those ideas out without being afraid of judgement.”

Paige could feel that she was frowning again. There was something about Darcy’s answer that was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She’d been expecting something else… waiting for it even… but now she couldn’t remember what. What Darcy had just said was hanging closely around her. That was how conversations were, wasn’t it? You sat there, void of ideas, and then as you spoke to someone… or they spoke to you… ideas came to you, and then you built new ideas out of those, and on and on…

Paige shook her head. She’d zoned out for a second, and Darcy had gone on talking. She blinked hard, and then opened her eyes wide for a second, before refocusing on Darcy.

“…just so nice to be able to sit and speak openly like this, and you’re such a good listener, Paige. You sit and listen so well, just taking all my words in…”

Paige felt that same feeling of washed-out confusion rising back up inside her again. It was going to swamp her, and knock her back into confusion. She’d zone out again, lose her focus again. She could feel it starting to happen. Somehow, the words Darcy spoke were doing this to her. Or maybe Darcy really was putting ideas in her head, and Paige had sat mindlessly waiting for her to do it…

She shook her head again, more forcefully this time. It felt harder to drag herself back to awareness than the last time. Probably a bad sign, she thought. She had to make Darcy stop talking; then the feeling would stop spreading in her and overtaking.

“Darcy,” Paige forced out, and to Paige’s relief, Darcy stopped, and waited for Paige to finish speaking. “What are you doing… what are you doing to me? What’s — what’s happening to me?”

Paige had repeated herself more than she’d meant to, but she hadn’t been able to get either sentence out fully on the first try. She’d tripped over the words, had to regroup. It seemed suddenly so hard to speak. She didn’t know if she could do it again.

Darcy didn’t seem bothered but Paige’s stilted speech. She watched Paige patiently as Paige struggled through her words, and then, with a patient smile, gave Paige a pat on the hand.

“Don’t worry about it, Paige dear,” she said. “I’m just drawing you into a nice, deep trance for me.”

The words were like a shock of cold water, but they weren’t enough to pull Paige out of the sinking tiredness dragging her down. A trance? And what was Darcy going to do with her once she had her in a trance?

“Actually, it may be more correct to say I’ve drawn you into a trance, and now I’m just taking you deeper,” Darcy added, thoughtfully.

“But—“ Paige struggled. “What are you going to… to do to me?” It was becoming more and more of an effort to speak the longer she went on.

Darcy smiled again, and it knocked Paige’s mind out of focus again. “Nothing now… if you really don’t like trance, or me then I don’t have much interest in you. But I’ve given you something to think about… tucked a lot of words up inside your head for you to reflect on. If you do decide you want to see me again… or feel like this again…” Darcy slipped a card along the bar, slipping it beneath Paige’s fingers. “Give me a call.” Then Darcy gave one more smile, and stood to exit the bar.

Paige sat at the bar for awhile after Darcy left. It was only becoming more difficult to concentrate; Darcy’s departure had done nothing to improve the situation.

But eventually, Paige gathered herself enough to curl her hand around the card, and stand. On shaky legs, she made it back to her hotel room, and passed inside. The crumbled card fell from her hand to the entry table, and her purse slumped onto the floor.

She staggered forward, more drunk from Darcy’s words than the wine, and collapsed onto her bed. She wasn’t even coherent enough to think to turn off the light.

She drifted into a half-sleep… but even as she dozed, somewhere her mind was turning over things that Darcy had said, even if she couldn’t quite remember what they were.

Maybe she would give Darcy a call in the morning…