The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Eileen didn’t keep reliving the crash. The hoarse scream of the tires and the sound of everything hitting everything else was in her mind but it didn’t repeat.

She wished it would. It would have distracted her from the quiet moment she lived in now, staring out the windshield at the field, hearing the click of cooling metal, the bits of glass rattling discreetly off the twisted hood. Her own breathing.

Not Andrew’s. No sound from Andrew at all.

As she tried to turn, she passed out.

It had happened before.

She woke again, and there wasn’t the field in front of her. She was on her back, looking up into lights with masked faces, brightness in her eyes, someone’s voice booming irrelevant questions about who she was and how she felt. It’s like TV. She answered the questions, more or less, until they stopped and she could drift. Dimly she hoped they didn’t forget the anesthesia. She drifted away from the sealed shriek cupping another thought: that she’d been hurt so badly they didn’t need anesthesia for the dead nerves.

Like TV.

Oh-oh. Maybe it’s not a medical show after all. God I hope it’s not a UFO abduction exam but why would aliens drop their r’s like that aliens don’t come from New England do they It blurred away.

Her dreams were strange.

. . . she lay in a darkened room under a duvet with smooth skin against her own, a large firm breast in her palm, moving slightly, breath on her cheek that smelled of wine and something pleasantly salty. She was startled to be turned on. The woman alongside her stirred, sighed, exhaled, responding in her sleep to the caress Eileen found herself giving. She eased off slightly to keep from waking her bedmate, and leaned down to kiss her invisible throat. The woman moaned and Eileen felt it through her lips. She closed her eyes to savor it . . .

. . . she was with a group of women, naked and quiet, filing into a parlor. Two masked figures stood guard and she found herself staring at them, afraid and drawn at the same time. Inside, two more in masks watched silently as the women entered, and one of them gestured. Eileen felt a warm pressure inside and sank to her knees, spreading them so the masked ones could see how she dripped to submit to them. She moaned in chorus with the other women as they knelt with her, felled by the same wordless command and heated by the same dirty compulsion. At another gesture everyone’s gaze snapped to a curtain on the far wall, and it slid aside. As Eileen’s eyes widened, her vision greyed at whatever the curtain was showing, and she heard herself joining the whisper of “yes Master yes Master yours Master.” She knew she must now close her heavy, heavy eyes . . .

. . . she was riding in a car with a man. Her trust in him was so deep that it seemed to weigh down on her. She kept thinking of questions she wanted to ask, but before she could even articulate a doubt she felt his calm reassurance washing it away, leaving nothing, leaving her smooth and tranquil. She smiled: it seemed a little like masturbation to keep doing it. She was cheerfully enslaved to the enjoyment, and found herself wickedly hoping for a real opportunity to let it happen, to let him softly overwhelm her will and change her thinking. Stroking her soul like this was even better than flicking her clit, and there was no mess. Suddenly he was agitated, and it broke through her reverie. He started driving wildly and swearing, and she thought she heard other vehicles. But before she could awaken and understand, they were off the road, and she saw something rushing up, and closed her eyes . . .

. . . she was sitting on a balcony, small but breezy, smiling back at the long-haired woman in the other deck chair, raising her glass as the woman raised hers. There was a lovely view, she knew, but she had to take her own word for it, because the woman was lovelier yet, and there was no reason to look anywhere else. It felt like the eye of the storm, a calm place they’d made together, but Eileen’s companion didn’t know the storm was there. She needed to warn the woman that something awful was coming, but she didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t know why she cared so deeply for this woman anyway. More than anything she knew, somehow, that the woman had already been hurt, that she needed no more. She’d want a lie before she heard more bad news, and silence would be better still. Eileen swallowed the dread and tried to keep smiling, but she couldn’t look the woman in the face anymore, however precious that face was. Part of her saw the woman in darkness, her slim neck ringed in studded leather, staring soullessly downward. She shut her eyes . . .

. . . she was running under the moon, hoarse from screaming before she’ d had the sense to save her breath. She looked back across the bare field, starting to feel the cold with nothing but the leather bands and the piercings on her. She saw nothing from the house—no one coming after her, no new lights, no outcry. She didn’t know why that scared her more but she turned to keep running. She couldn’t face another session in the straps. She’d seen the girl who’d been before her in the training, and the girl couldn’t remember her name. Neither could Eileen, now, and as she ran she said her own name to herself like a prayer: I’m Eileen. She didn’t know where she was running, just away, but she was forming a shape in her mind, an angel with small breasts and gentle eyes who’d save her from this . . .

. . . a shock of ecstasy ripped through her body and she tumbled to the grass in a tangle of bare limbs. It faded, but already she knew what they’d done to her, and she cried out. She tingled in her nipples, her labia, her ears, everywhere they’d marked their ownership with metal. She’d forgotten how they could control their pets through the piercings, and they’d let her loose just to jazz her and draw her back by making her want to come back. Her flesh quivered from the pleasure and she squirmed against the grass. It came back much more faintly, teasing her, then faded . . .

. . . her hands found the piercings and stroked them, trying to coax the dead metal to twitch pleasure through her again. But the metal obeyed other wills, and pleasured her only when it would bend Eileen’s will. They’d made her will so soft now that it wrapped easily around the tiny rings and posts, and she’d learned to like bending . . .

. . . she reached for her clitoris, as the need to climax pushed escape aside. But she knew what she must do to earn orgasm, and flew to her feet. Only when she turned back to face the farmhouse and stood straight like a good girl did they make the lovely metal contacts sing pleasure through her. She began to pace slowly, deliberately, back toward the house . . .

. . . her eyelids drooped when they touched her with pleasure now and then, but she kept her gaze focused on the door. Would it open to let her saunter in? Or would they let her kneel and beg, outside, imploring them to strap her in again and take some more of her mind away? As she prayed they’d let her beg for it, her eyes slid closed . . .

Her dreams grew stranger.

2.

She came out of a dream and focused on her room. Two people were there. The nearer one was a doctor, a grave-faced woman she must have been aware of earlier—she seemed familiar. Eileen relaxed as the doctor checked her pupils and absently stroked her hair.

At the foot of the bed, in shadow, was a woman with long hair. Eileen felt very odd seeing her, and was glad she couldn’t see her well. The woman stared at her from eyes that seemed wet, and it looked as though she were trying hard to keep still.

The doctor noticed. Putting a protective hand on Eileen’s chest, she half-turned. “I told you. She’s not ready—and neither are you. You have to leave.”

The woman flinched. “I know. Please, can I just please tell her—”

“No,” said the doctor, and Eileen felt a strange warmth. The doctor seemed to radiate some primeval power, merciful but implacable, so that even flat denial seemed like an awful kindness. Eileen softened against her hand.

It quelled the woman, too, and though the tears ran freely now she said no more. She stood still, and didn’t look at Eileen.

“It’s not what she needs to hear, yet,” the doctor said, soothing Eileen and the other woman together. “It’s all right. Don’t rush things—be glad that she’s here, she’s alive, and she’ll be better.”

She turned back to Eileen, smiling. “Very soon. And I think it’s all started to come back.”

Come back? Eileen wondered whether she had amnesia, and started trying to remember what she’d forgotten. But if she’d forgotten what she couldn’t remember, then how could she—?

Her head was spinning.

“Don’t try to understand,” the doctor said, very softly, cupping Eileen ‘s cheek. “Not yet. Just rest now. You weren’t awake for most of that time in ICU, but you felt it. You’ve been through something terrible but you’re safe now.”

How long in intensive care?

Eileen faded against the pillow, no longer trying to stay awake.

She had no idea how long she’d slept when she woke again. The doctor was there, with the long-haired woman and another woman, slim in a grey tailored suit, who stood further away.

Eileen looked at them and said what was in her mind, embarrassed that she hadn’t asked sooner.

“Where is Andrew? Where’s my husband?”

The two older women just looked back at her but the long-haired girl dropped her head and made a small, painful sound.

Eileen looked at her and felt herself grow cold. She’d known, since that eternity in the car, but . . .

“The—he’s dead.” The girl looked up but averted her eyes. Her face twisted. “The evil son of a bitch is dead.”

Eileen’s head spun again. She looked at the doctor, but neither she nor the new woman said anything. She knew she should be screaming, grief for her husband and rage for this stranger slandering him. But hearing it started strange thoughts below the surface of her mind.

And suddenly the girl didn’t seem entirely a stranger.

“Eileen.”

She turned to the doctor, already soothed by her tone.

“First, know that you’re safe. This Institute is a place to heal but it’s well-defended. No one will be able to hurt you.

“I’d say Sarah was being a little too emotional, but I can’t disagree with her. There are some things you’re going to need to deal with, and a lot of them come down to some evil people who’ve been hurting you and worse.” She didn’t move closer to Eileen, and Eileen just then really wanted someone close to her. Dread was flowing over her.

At the foot of the bed, Sarah met her eyes and read that need. She was a breath away from leaping up and protecting Eileen in her arms. But she turned to the woman in the suit, and averted her eyes from Eileen again.

“Evil people, I’m sorry to say, that include the man whom you remember as your husband.”

“Remember as my—?” Eileen’s protest faded as she started to see some of the dreams. The bits that were emerging were even uglier in wakefulness. She thought about her UFO moment back in the emergency room and shivered as she glimpsed the real source.

All she could remember was lying on a hard surface, her bare skin cold even where the straps held her down. She was pleading, barely able to speak. She couldn’t remember what she was begging them not to do to her.

But she was seeing Andrew’s face, with the exact smile she’d fallen in love with, looking down at her as he told them to do it.

Eileen whimpered on the bed. There wasn’t more to the fragment and she didn’t look. She stared at the doctor.

“What’s happening? What was that?”

“I don’t know,” the doctor said gently. “Different women start to recall different things. And the methods the Masters use differ, too.” She swallowed. “Sometimes what they do is beyond our ability to undo.

“But not with you, Eileen.”

“Masters? Please, doctor, tell me what’s going on. If I’m just going crazy then please—”

“You’re not crazy.”

The woman in the suit didn’t move from where she stood by the wall but her fierce voice carried. For a second Eileen thought the anger was at her, but when she realized it was for her she went lightheaded with relief.

“They tried to make you crazy, Eileen. They tried hard and they’re very good. They’ve had practice. But they didn’t.”

Eileen looked at her, quiet and waiting.

The doctor turned. “Cary, are you going to tell her everything now?” She didn’t seem to like the idea, but she seemed to be ready to defer to the other woman.

Cary looked at Eileen and smiled. It was a wintry smile but looked hard to earn, and Eileen smiled back, grateful that she had.

“You saw her eyes, Joan,” Cary told the doctor. “Whatever that was she just remembered, it was bad. It takes a very strong soul to see that deep, this soon.” She smiled at Eileen again. “She looks gentle, but she’s a fighter.

“Eileen? How much of your life can you remember? Back to your childhood?”

Eileen thought about it. “Everything, I think. The usual lapses, I guess. Was I abused or something, or—?”

Cary shook her head. “Not as far as we know. Your life was as normal, whatever that means, as anyone else’s until you were at college. Do you remember anything about college? Anything unusual or disturbing that happened?”

Eileen looked at her. “I met Andrew there and we fell in love.” They seemed to blame Andrew for whatever it was, but even Sarah held her peace at his mention now.

“Something else?”

“There was—” Eileen froze. She’d never felt this before. The memory was solidifying even as she tried to flee it, and she was desperate for the seconds just before now, when she’d had no recollection at all.

“My—roommate—she—” Eileen was hugging her knees, curled up on the hospital bed, barely seeing the three women with her as she relived it.

It was eerily like the nightmare-flash with Andrew, but now she remembered straining within her own body, helpless under some sort of drug as the room flickered with candlelight. She felt arousal that thinly coated pain—something, hands, fists slid into her as her thighs flopped helplessly apart. She heard a hissed command to open her eyes. The drug that paralyzed her body made her will pliable, too, and she obeyed.

The woman raping her so brutally smiled and said “You’ll forget me soon, breeder, but I wanted to see you seeing me.” Her face glowed and Eileen was too transfixed to plead.

Eileen looked down the hospital bed and saw that face, agonized now, as Sarah looked back at her. She flinched and saw Sarah reflect the pain, but she couldn’t doubt Sarah’s agony now.

She looked at the doctor, Joan. She knew Joan wouldn’t let this girl near her if that horror had been real.

“Sarah?” The girl looked at her, wild with hope. “You didn’t really do that to me, did you?”

Sarah shook her head. “I didn’t ever hurt you, Eileen. I loved you. I never hurt you, not until—”

“Shh.” Cary stepped forward now and put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “That wasn’t your fault, Sarah. You didn’t give Eileen up to them—we’ re lucky they didn’t get both of you.”

She looked at Eileen. “You were kidnapped at college and systematically brainwashed. They implanted false memories—I think you just went through one now, and I’m sorry—and erased whole parts of your experience.

“They paired you off with one of their own, half as a project and half as a reward for other things he’d done.”

Eileen sank into the bed. “They?” she whispered. “Who—why?”

Cary massaged Sarah’s shoulder, but looked at the wall. “Some men don’ t believe in lesbians at all, Eileen. They figure we’ve just never been properly fucked. Others do believe—and want to watch.

“But there are the ones who just won’t stand for it. I don’t know if it’s envy, or fear, or actual hatred. But they have their own heterosexual agenda, and a place on it for ‘our kind.’ Things were bad for a long time.

“Then, a decade or so ago, things got much worse. They discovered working mind control, and now if they can get their hands on a woman they can make it her agenda. They reorient her and they make her despise what she was, without even being able to remember that she was.”

Cary did look at Eileen, now. “That’s what they did to you. They mindfucked you. They made you forget the truth and remember, instead, what never happened. Even now you probably ‘feel’ straight, but—”

“I don’t really feel sexual at all right now,” Eileen whispered, wanting to curl up into herself.

“Let her be.” Sarah was quiet, looking intensely at Eileen as though the other women had disappeared.

“Yes,” Cary said, much more gently, and drew her hand across Sarah’s hair. “As it should be. Sarah’s why you’re here, Eileen, instead of still with them. She never gave up on you. She kept after us to rescue you.”

Eileen looked at the long-haired girl, wondering what she should be feeling. She wished she could respond to the yearning she saw.

“I don’t remember you. I’m sorry.” She meant it.

Sarah looked back at her. “I don’t care, as long as you’re free.” She stood up and walked out of the room. Cary followed her, and Doctor Joan leaned over Eileen.

Eileen barely felt the exam or heard the doctor’s quiet advice to get some rest. She just thought about Sarah.

Sarah did care if Eileen remembered. Eileen fell asleep, trying very hard to.

3.

Despair found Eileen in the shower, when she looked down and saw how thick her bush was.

She’d always kept herself bare down there, and the first thing she thought of now was Andrew playfully mentioning “yardwork.” He’d liked her cleft smooth, too, and she’d kept it that way. But she’d liked it that way herself, hadn’t she?

They were telling her the man who’d touched her there so tenderly had really considered that his own property. When she’d writhed and begged and screamed under the restraints, and finally succumbed to the brainwashing, he’d been selfish enough to find a few extra seconds to tweak her helplessly open mind into making her want to shave herself like a harem girl. A smoother fuck.

It had taken her this long, a coma in the ICU while her bush grew out, to know that much.

She leaned against the tiles, half out of the warm jet of water, and cried.

Then she dried off and slipped into the comfortable flannel tunic. She stepped back out to the bedroom to wait for Joan to come by for her hypnotherapy.

Eileen looked out the window at the trees. This was a safe place, they ‘d said. Hidden, and guarded, and designed to be defended. The Masters, the men who’d enslaved her and so many others, couldn’t reach her here, or stop Cary and Joan and their colleagues from prying the slave-thoughts from around her mind.

She still wasn’t clear on what was happening outside this place. The shadow war between these women and the mysterious Masters who preyed on them was still beyond her ken, really. It was hard to believe there were women outside there who’d trained to fight, who were ready to stop a bullet for her, or kill and die before they’d let anyone come to drag her away from here, back to slavery.

She saw a number of patients, some in tunics, others wearing even less in the warm air, moving about the parkland and gardens. There were some white-coated doctors, too, but what she noticed was that many of the women were in couples. She wondered whether they’d met here, or if lovers stayed here with their SOs as part of the therapy.

Eileen thought of Sarah, and wondered if the warmth in her would heat up to something more. She was trying to get used to the idea that she’d shared a bed with the other girl, that they’d fucked and played and lain with each other.

She wished she could remember. She didn’t want to count too much on the hypnotherapy, but she had to start somewhere.

Hypnosis was a caress compared to how hard the Masters had bludgeoned her mind, but it was the delicate first step they could take to deprogram her. When Eileen was hypnotized, they could train her to help them from within herself.

It frightened her deeply that she couldn’t even sense what the Masters had done to her. She hadn’t missed the quiet glances Joan and Cary and the other therapists had traded, when not a single memory seemed to spark up.

Somehow she was deeper than the other women they’d rescued. She tried, but couldn’t remember whatever the Masters had been doing to her to reinforce her obedience. Now that she’d been rescued in the confusion after the accident, she wasn’t exposed to it, but her conditioning still controlled her.

That demonic flash of Andrew consigning her to the brainwashing had been the only conscious one. Even in dreams, his face smiled at her when she thought of it. But it was worse to see him smile, with the table and restraints waiting for her behind it. Erasing—whatever she’d been, that they’d taken from her.

Erasing Sarah, who had never forgotten her. Who seemed to have put her own life on hold as she fought to save Eileen.

Joan came in. Her frown wasn’t even reproachful when she took a look at Eileen and said, “You may not be ready for trance yet.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you thinking about?” Joan didn’t seem to mind digressing.

“Oh. Everything. Like that this is like one of those sex stories you read on the Web—except after the accident I’m supposed to be the one who can control minds, dammit.”

“Feeling cheated?” Joan was genuinely pleased she could joke about it. “Sorry. That only works if you’re male, under twenty, and not too bright.”

“Oh.” Eileen shook her head. “But seriously . . .

“I know you said I have to start small but I keep wondering who I was. What I lived. Maybe being hypnotized can help me focus on one part of it.”

“We can talk about that, if you’d like.”

“Thanks.” Eileen sat blankly for a moment, almost ready to ask Joan to start putting her under again. “How much of what I think I remember—? I mean, how far back—?”

Joan cocked her head. “Do you recall high school?”

Eileen thought back, realizing she’d just braced herself for some scary gap, a year of nothingness, but there was plenty there. “I think so.” She smiled. “Math class. I liked it. I was a nerd before it was cool.”

Joan smiled with her. “How about Lonnie Harmon?”

Eileen frowned. “I—sort of. We were in some of the same classes. We had PE, and the gymnastics—” She looked up at Joan. “She was gay. She came on to me. I was . . .”

Joan looked back at her and nodded. Joan was lesbian, and the woman at this safe place were, and they said that Eileen herself was, and it suddenly felt very wrong to finish the memory.

“I turned her down. I wasn’t very nice about it.”

“What do you remember?”

Eileen closed her eyes. “The gym. There was room to spread out and stretch and no one else could hear us, what she said.” She saw Lonnie again, straight and lithe in the leotard, hair pulled back from her smooth face, the playful hazel eyes.

Eileen considered how pretty she’d been. Lonnie must have grown into a beauty. Her graceful thighs . . .

She opened her eyes in time to blot the way Lonnie’s face had changed, when Eileen had ended her shocked silence and spat her answer back.

It occurred to her that a beautiful lesbian like Lonnie might have met someone like Andrew, too. Had Lonnie had a Sarah to fight to free her from his control?

Eileen’s cheeks were hot as she tried to meet Joan’s eyes. “She was just trying—”

“Eileen, she was your girlfriend for two years.”

Eileen sobbed once, but didn’t cry. Suddenly it felt wonderful that she must have said yes after all to those hazel eyes, that she hadn’t made Lonnie regret finding her attractive.

“I don’t remember a thing.” She blinked. “Is she OK? Did anything happen to her?”

“She’s very well, thank the One. She’s underground now—not with the Institute but with a group we’re allied with.

“She remembers you, very fondly.”

Eileen shut her eyes again and bore down, trying to reach beyond that svelte teenager offering her heart and find something. Anything. But she couldn’t even remember having lunch at the same table in the cafeteria.

“She said dancing with you at the prom was the sweetest time she’s ever had.”

Eileen heard her voice catch, but she didn’t look, because just then she thought, she thought—someone firm in her arms, breath soft on her shoulder, a forgettable pop song booming out of so-so speakers becoming a symphony as she swayed under the lights with someone, someone . . .

“I’m just imagining it,” she whispered. With a deep breath, she put it aside. If it were true she’d remember it later.

“I came out in high school? I can’t imagine being that, well, brave.”

Joan was wiping her eyes. “Neither of you was, according to her. You helped each other to be.”

Eileen shook her head. “God. God. I wish I could remember being with someone like that, even if—” Even if I can’t picture sex with another girl? But it wasn’t so hard, considering how the lycra had followed Lonnie’s slim, straight shape.

“All I remember is a bunch of forgettable boyfriends.”

Joan’s eyes narrowed, but Eileen’s were, too. They were both angry, as Eileen realized she’d been cheated out of remembering this magnificent girl at the edge of her awareness, and programmed to believe in them instead.

“How did they do this to me, Joan? I can’t remember anything!” Suddenly she was afraid. Maybe her conditioning really was deeper than the others’ and she’d never find what she’d lost.

“I have to say that whoever brainwashed you, Eileen, knew what they were doing. They were very thorough. I’ve never dealt with someone whose memory has been wiped so clean.” Joan’s voice was confident even as she said that, but the words still frightened Eileen. “It’s as though your real past, the women you’ve loved, the woman you truly were, never existed, and this heterosexual screenplay they’ve contrived was your life—they certainly trained you to believe it, down to the bone.”

Eileen lowered her head.

“Eileen, look at me.” She obeyed. “Some of the solutions we’ll use are as drastic as what they did. But they couldn’t destroy who you were and what you lived—all they could do is bury them deep and train you to stay shallow. We will give it all back to you again.”

Eileen swallowed. “I’m ready to try.”

“Ready for some constructive hypnosis now?”

She sighed. “I’m not very relaxed, I suppose.”

Joan smiled. “They like to say that smart people, like you, make better subjects. And it’s true, more or less, but it may not mean you make easier subjects. People like you tend to have a problem clearing your mind, and it’s almost like the hypnotist has to wait to get your attention among all the ways your mind’s talking to itself.

“You tend to be very self-conscious and even when you’re thinking about not thinking, well, you’re thinking, aren’t you? So the best way is just to go with that flow, to talk about thinking and just let you learn to think about not thinking, to let the thoughts I speak gradually become part of the thoughts you’re thinking, until the thoughts I speak gradually become the thoughts you’re thinking.

“By now you’re not thinking anything but the thoughts I’m speaking, and even when I stop speaking . . .

“The thoughts . . .”

Eileen blinked slowly, luxuriating in the silence in her mind, utterly at peace. She could hear Joan’s voice in her mind, quietly repeating how not to think, so much more reasonable than whatever she’d been thinking before Joan had helped her to stop thinking. There was nothing else.

I’m hypnotized, she marveled.

“Yes, you are, Eileen. Deeply hypnotized.”

She can read my thoughts! It was so neat.

“Yes, I can, Eileen. After all, they’re my thoughts. I just lent them to you.”

Eileen smiled at that and at Joan’s warm chuckle. She wanted to turn and look, but she realized she had no reason to do that. Or to do anything but stare blankly ahead. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at anymore, but it didn’t matter. If anything did, it was staying tranquil and listening to more thoughts.

“Eileen, it’s so good to see you smiling. Thank you.

“Now you’d like to slip even deeper. You’re thinking of how deep you can go, and going . . . deeper . . .”

4.

Eileen led Sarah over to one of the benches in the Institute park, and drew her down, keeping her hand even when they sat. She looked at Sarah again, enjoying how the tunic looked on her.

Sarah had moved into this clinic-fortress a while after Eileen’s awakening to be near her—sleeping in a room of her own—and she’d put aside her own clothing to dress like an Institute patient, so she and Eileen could be on the same level. She wouldn’t be a familiar face, not until a lot of deep, probably painful deprogramming brought Eileen’s memory of her back from the mass grave Andrew and the others had dug in her mind. But she was terribly sweet, and terribly earnest, to want to do that.

Eileen almost wanted to meet her pre-Andrew self, the aware lesbian, the Eileen who’d loved Sarah as much as Sarah plainly loved her, and who ‘d earned devotion like this.

Now they joined the others taking their ease on the Institute campus, and Eileen looked at Sarah again. Sarah blushed and curled her legs up underneath her, laughing shyly as Eileen watched what that did to her thighs. “Like what you see?”

Eileen swallowed and looked back at her face. “Yes. Yes I do. I’m not sure I understand why, yet, but yes.” I wish I could remember her!

“I’m not the prettiest one here,” Sarah sighed, and when she looked around Eileen looked with her, feeling a bit disloyal. Many of the women were wearing less than they were. One pair of couples in pastel bikinis were stretching out on a large blanket. Eileen watched as an a slim black woman gazed into the eyes of the woman with her and slid her tunic off, and she’d worn nothing underneath. The women did nothing but sit and talk, and it was so erotic that Eileen had to look away.

She looked back at Sarah, and realized she hadn’t answered.

“It’s OK, Eileen. I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”

Eileen squeezed her hand. “I want to give them to you. I want to remember. I want to!

“It’s just so hard. I get glimpses, things I think may be us, together, but then there’s nothing but—him.” She clung to Sarah’s hand like a lifeline. “They took you away from me. I’m sitting here, touching you, and I’m farther away than ever.”

Sarah winced, and Eileen read her posture. Sarah was literally holding herself back from leaning over and wrapping her arms around her.

“Sarah?” She could barely hear herself. “Do you want to hold me?”

Sarah closed her eyes. “Yes. More than anything. But Joan and Cary said to go very slowly.”

They’d told Eileen that, too. The frightful effectiveness of the treatment she’d undergone, and how completely the Masters had blanked her mind, meant that however female-oriented she was in her true self, she was still, in many ways, a convinced hetgirl. Trying too hard to connect sexually with another woman could be more strain than either one could bear.

“And you’ve been manipulated enough,” Sarah said with endearing ferocity.

Eileen nodded to herself and leaned forward.

“Wait!” Sarah’s eyes pleaded, too. She didn’t look like she’d be able to push Eileen away, and dreaded trying to.

“No. This is right.” Eileen treated herself to how Sarah felt against her, and the added pleasure of Sarah’s delighted yielding against her. “I don’t remember this,” she said. “Yet,” she added, and felt Sarah kiss her gratefully under the ear.

“But you’re here for me now. I owe you the same.”

Sarah just hummed happily against her and Eileen let herself like it, looking through lidded eyes at the other languid women sunning themselves or lost in each other. It felt wonderful to be wrapped in the arms of one herself.

“More than that,” Sarah whispered. “You’re in the midst of a bevy of attractive women and it’s making you hot.” It was as if she’d read Eileen’s mind, but even so it seemed to rouse Sarah. “Or at least making you intrigued.”

Eileen gently eased back and looked Sarah in the face, and managed to hold herself still long enough to say, “No—making me hot is right,” before she smiled into the amazed eyes and took the kiss. Sarah shook against her. Eileen enjoyed that, too.

At least that part of her therapy was progressing. She was liking girls more every day.

They held each other and looked out at the others, unnoticed.

“I envy you one thing, at least,” Sarah said.

“What?”

“Feeling this for the first time. Discovering how women feel.”

Eileen looked at her. If she’d lost this woman before, it wasn’t remotely worth it to rediscover this. She thought of saying so but just kissed her again, and relished the arousal. Maybe she’d suggest they move into one room, soon.

She looked around at the others again. “Are there are lot of, um, couples here?”

Sarah nodded against her. “Yes. The Institute does a lot of rescues like ours, and when a pairing survives, they usually encourage them to stay together and go off to live somewhere, under the radar. Even if they volunteer to stay and help.”

Stay and help . . . Eileen tried to imagine how she’d do when it was her turn to join this fight. Cary had told her the accident they’d pulled her from had happened when they’d come out in the open to rescue her from Andrew, who’d been taking her somewhere else, to do something to her Cary didn’t think she was ready to hear, even now. Eileen wanted to think she could volunteer for service like that, but she wasn’t sure.

“Some of them are sole survivors,” Sarah said more quietly. “When the Masters take a woman, sometimes they just kill her partner, or they brainwash her into something without much mind left. If they’re afraid of her, or if they just don’t find her attractive. Sometimes it’s part of how they break the one they want to keep—making her watch her lover die, and maybe later, when she can’t resist new thoughts, programming her to believe she did it herself.” Sarah held her closer. “But many of them endure that and outlast it. They meet other widows here and fall in love. Joan did that, and when she could remember her medical training again, she stayed on with her new SO, to work here.”

“Is she—with Cary?”

“Oh!” Sarah buried her face in Eileen’s breast and laughed. “Oh, that would be something. Demeter and Athena under the same satin sheet, oh god. No.

“Cary hasn’t been controlled, and she doesn’t seem to sleep with anyone, very often. Sex is not that big a thing, with her. Sometimes I think it’s the fight that turns her on.”

Eileen watched the sunbathers as, one by one, they seemed to drift off to sleep, their bodies sprawled across the blanket like delicately brushed kanji on a silk scroll. “Speaking of turn-ons . . . does everyone but the doctors always go around this, well, undressed?”

“Not that you’re objecting,” Sarah muttered.

“Huh-uh.” “Actually, yes. Part of what they do here is get you—us—back in touch with who we are. Which is, among other things, being lesbians. Looking at women in their skin and loving it. After months or even years of having I-desire-only-men-and-cocks drummed into your minds, a little fem-eros goes a long way, and a lot of fem-eros goes . . . mmm . . .” Sarah trailed off as Eileen tasted her ear, and found it good.

After a while they relaxed and sat side by side, and Eileen thought of a dream like this, a warm breeze and her long-haired lover to share it with, no need to do more. It’s coming back! I’m coming back! But she said nothing, letting the spark catch in her without blowing on it so hard it went out.

Soon enough, she’d find a balcony with a view, and share it with Sarah—again. She’d know what it looked like then.

But she remembered—or imagined—writhing on midnight grass, forgetting escape to chase an orgasm she already knew was denied her.

5.

“What?” Sarah clutched her closer, bringing her back to the garden and safety. They kissed, and Eileen made herself relax into it.

Sarah watched and licked her lips as Eileen felt her own breasts and closed her eyes. Then she said softly, urgently, “Oh—let me, Eileen.”

“No.” Eileen kept her eyes closed. “They had me pierced. They had little—things—on me to stimulate me. I don’t remember much but I do remember that. How they . . . felt.

“They controlled me. I let them.” She felt Sarah’s hand soft on her shoulder, and one of the easier memories was in her mind. Andrew, smiling down at her, stroking her and calming her.

She went cold, seeing how her programmed trust in him stayed in her thoughts. Embedded there by piercings. By other things Joan didn’t let her remember when she woke from the hypnosis, things that had left Joan shaking.

Embedded by smiling Andrew whom she’d sworn to love, forsaking all others. Forsaking Sarah. Forsaking Lonnie. Forsaking others, perhaps, that were still lost in the depth of her mind, under the dreams of screaming and sucking and falling asleep staring at nothing.

“They don’t control you now, Eileen. You’re free. You can hate them and you can love—who you want, but they don’t own you anymore.”

Eileen looked at Sarah now. “You weren’t ever their slave, were you?” It sounded like an accusation and she caressed the other woman’s cheek to take the edge off it. “Free since birth, and loving women nearly as long.” She won a smile.

“What I mean is, even if I can’t reach the important things where they buried them, I know how it felt. That’s near the surface. Cary said it might be that they’d need to dip me back into slave-memories like that, like dancing under the metal, if I started to get too uppity in my ‘straight girl’ persona. So I’m remembering that first.

“They made me like it, Sarah. I hated it and I hated them and I despised myself but—I loved it. I think after a while I begged for it.

“I’m afraid they may still have a hold on me. They may not need the piercings to control me. If they could reach me somehow, tell me to remember how good it felt to crawl, to obey them and submit—they could make me do things, here.”

Sarah looked at her and shook her head. “There’s no way they could do that, Eileen. Joan said you didn’t have anything on you or in you when you got here. They checked. And there’s no other contact with the outside. No way for an ‘innocent’ message to ping your brain.”

She leaned forward and kissed Eileen as though she couldn’t help herself. “Besides—you know, now. They can’t fool you, and you’re not alone. Not while I’m alive.”

Eileen looked at her, suddenly furious that she’d known someone like this—and had that taken from her.

“I’m going to remember,” she said. “I’ll do anything they need. Hypnosis, whatever they have. I’ll go so deep I’ll have to listen to Joan’s commands through my navel, but I will remember.”

Sarah was smiling at her but then she stopped, and looked very deeply into Eileen’s eyes, as though she were calling her bluff.

But she shook her head at what she saw there.

“Eileen . . . that could hurt you if you press too hard.” She didn’t say it could break your mind but she clearly thought it.

“Maybe I’m selfish. But I don’t want to lose you again—for good.”

Eileen looked at her.

“I’d love you to remember, Eileen. I’d love to talk about what we had, and know you can see and feel what I do, not just love a story you can’t recall living. But . . .

“But learning you again—I could do that. Especially if it means not making you risk losing yourself. Getting lost in the nightmare in there.” She put a fingertip to Eileen’s temple gently, as though it were tender.

Kissing Eileen again, she said, “Safety isn’t cowardice.”

Eileen rested her head on Sarah’s shoulder, and closed her eyes as Sarah rubbed her back. “I can’t leave it. I might remember something about another woman they took. Something about a place. Even something about how they could just erase everything I knew.

“But that’s not the only reason. It’s mine. I want it back. What I had with you, what I was doing with my life. Good days and bad days and bad hair days. It’s mine and I want it back.”

Sarah pulled away and blinked at her in wonder. “It’s you, all right.

“That’s just what the Eileen I knew would say. And want.”

It made Eileen dizzy. It was equilibrium when she’d been spinning since she’d awakened—a place to start from, suddenly, when she’d been in a void.

The Eileen I knew. The Eileen that she’d put her life on hold for, that she’d never stopped loving and believing in.

Eileen was looking for her self, and Sarah had been guarding it faithfully.

“I love you,” she said, feeling the heat in her bones as she watched Sarah’s eyes light up. “I shouldn’t be saying that yet, but I need to—”

“I know,” Sarah said, and claimed her mouth again. She broke the kiss but left their lips together. “The Eileen who used to say it to me before isn’t here, yet. But I’m happy to hear it from the one I’m loving now.”

Eileen stayed close to her, Sarah’s face filling her vision.

She thought of the balcony.

But when she tried to conjure that dream, all her mind gave her was a memory of trailing along behind a man. He wore leather and he held the slim chains that yoked her nipples. But the chain was slack—the orb he held in his other hand chained her mind and she minced quickly behind him to keep it in her crosseyed gaze, too quickly for the metal strands to tighten.

She tasted obedience, and her tongue licked out and out, craving more.