The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Slavers can’t be everywhere, the therapist had told her.

But his tone had been almost rote, explaining why monsters couldn’t fit under a child’s bed. The calming voice of someone who hadn’t lain paralyzed in that bed watching a monster flow out and up and over, glaring with an alien passion more horrid than glee. Or had endured it so long ago that he’ d forgotten.

Deborah needed him to believe she’d learned to forget that, too, so she’d be certified cured and go out to start reassembling the life that six months of mind-slavery had shattered.

So she hadn’t responded, But slavers can still be anywhere. Not aloud.

Now, though, with nothing but a few inches of countertop between her and the customers, she thought it. Harry’s 24/7 Diner was in a part of the city where all sorts could come in, and did. She looked at crisp executives, raffish construction workers, red-eyed students, and wondered which of them had made a hobby or a business of controlling minds.

Which office tyrant was slowly turning his female staff into miniskirted zombies with something in the intranet. Which hardhat and his buddies had women chained in the garage, starting to believe the endless tapes that told them they liked being there. Which student had fixated on some hapless classmate and was curdling her brain chemistry into obedient bisque with the help of her hypnotized roommate.

Harry’s wasn’t a family place, but right now Deborah would have enjoyed even a clutch of screaming children who hated anything she brought them. It had nothing to do with her own family—she thought of them less and less now, almost as seldom as her owners had let her after they’d broken her. After she left therapy and turned to them, they’d turned away. Families of any disposition that even talked to each other were a pleasantly foreign distraction. But all she faced here were adults, many alone and some too ready to notice her.

Since she’d been freed and treated, she tried not to be noticed. She’d bemused Harry when she wore the uniform he’d given her without alterations to make it less dowdy, but he hadn’t seemed to mind.

Then, bussing a vacated booth one night, she’d seen herself in the darkened window. She looked like a child playing waitress, vulnerable and awkward, cute and forlorn. She actually looked at her nametag, reading it backward in the glass, wondering if it really said Hi! I’m Your Next Victim.

Harry had smiled when she showed up next shift, tighter all around. Bless Harry, that was all he did, too.

But for every controller that liked to prey on the weak and soft, there was one who liked taming a self-confident woman, too. Deborah gave up trying to game it.

Sometimes, she found herself looking through the other end of the microscope. As she inventoried each new customer and wondered if he or she were a mind controller, it occurred to her that she might be the one they were looking at and wondering about.

Even neutrals might play the game as they people-watched. What did they see when they saw Deborah? A victim, surely—but what sort? A mental virgin, or already hooked on trance? Gone in a few swings of the watch, or a fighter who’d take hours under a headset?

In that kind of mood, she almost hoped for someone to eclipse her—perhaps a swanlike office staffer in dark hose by herself, or a giggling covey of high-school girls. Or someone buff and taut, stopping for tea and a muffin after the gym, challenging in her strength. Anyone who’d outshine a dour little waitress and distract the brainwasher who might be sitting right there, sipping coffee or gnawing a roll, menacing nothing and noticing everything, making a list.

Then, wishing the cup passed from her, Deborah would remember that one of them would drink from it instead, if a predator really were watching, and feel dread when the women paid and left, pleading silently for them to make it home. Never knowing if they did felt like penance.

Eventually she’d thought of putting herself out of everyone’s misery. It had taken longer than she’d expected. But she could never find a way to kill herself that didn’t seem worse than just getting through another day. Once she’d poured some tablets in her hand and gotten ready to stare at them for a while, grimly excited that she might swallow them on an impulse before she’d even formed the intent.

But it hadn’t been a while. Before anything else she had a flash of what it would be like to fail—to wake up in a psych ward, trapped behind walls and curtains and restraints, completely at the mercy of people whose job it was to change her thinking, however benign their intent.

Their stated intent, anyway.

She’d put the pills back. Everything else she thought of was messier, and would hurt more.

So there was no choice. She had to manage somehow, and being able to function at work wasn’t a luxury. Work wasn’t a luxury.

She’d found the flowing way of looking without eye contact, speaking without intimacy, and keeping it so that all she did was take food orders, serve them, and ring it up. It was a moat around her once-breached walls too wide to give someone a chance to show her something pretty to look at, to touch her and drug her somehow, just to start a conversation and trap her eyes.

Her tips, when she got them, reflected her success in keeping a distance. Waitstaff survives on being personable, and she wasn’t making any friends, even among the regulars.

She’d slip, of course, now and then. Hostile customers or twitchy ones or obvious players snapped on her defenses in less time than it took to swing the order pad in front of her, but the quiet ones, the friendly ones with no apparent agenda, could take her off-guard when she was tired or especially lonely.

Earlier tonight, she’d cleared away after an older college professor had given a very funny account of his day listening to undergrads explain why their seminar papers weren’t done. Setting his coffee cup on the plate, she looked into the pool at its bottom.

Watched it swirl with the motion, then smooth to show her wide eye gazing back at her.

She’d glanced frantically around, nearly hyperventilating, until the other waitress on her shift, Janie, had asked what she’d lost.

“Oh—this!” She’d bad-acted relief and seized a container of something from under the counter. Piling it onto the dishes, she went back to the kitchen, trying to find a discontinuity in the last few minutes, a gap that would tell her she’d been asleep on her feet with him, hypnotized. She had to do it from memory now—she thought she remembered the conversation, but what if that were just his posthypnotic suggestion?

She’d been looking at what she’d been cleaning and doing while they’d seemed to be speaking, trying to confirm it with tactile memories—straightened the catsup bottles, hadn’t she, while he talked about the student with disk-crash problems? Put the tumblers up from the tray, carefully, while he imitated the patent insincerity of the girl who’d had yet another death in her improbably sickly family?

Or had she just assimilated all that, while she stared transfixed at the dull shine of a teaspoon, after his voice had snared her into gazing at it?

She’d spent the rest of the shift waiting to be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to drive to the campus, or along some unfamiliar route that unreeled in her captive mind, repeating some self-hypnotic mantra until she was deep in trance, outside a door.

None came. If the professor controlled minds, he was on break when he’d stopped at Harry’s.

Or maybe his taste ran only to coeds.

But he’d seemed so trustworthy. She simply couldn’t trust trustworthiness.

Her fiance had seemed trustworthy, and he probably was. But after it had all happened, and she’d taken refuge with Peter when her family disowned her, they’d argued, and he’d glared into her eyes, and she’d never known whether it had crossed his mind maybe if I stare deeper she’ll bend—if I stare hard enough, she’ll break.

But she knew just that thought would be between them as long as they were together. Peter had tried to convince her to stay, but now the paranoia was a closer companion than he was. Was he regretting making her afraid, or frantic that he’d spooked his prey into fleeing before he could trap her?

Deborah was over it enough, now. When she waited on couples she didn’t feel she was looking at them too longingly. She fancied they could tell she envied them each other, the trust and the laughing and someone to reach for in the dark. But she pretended not to care, as the street people not too far from Harry’s affected to ignore passerby instead of panhandling, and they were as relieved about her as she was about the aloof street people.

Maybe she was imagining it all. The couples, the lurking mind-slavers, the other slaves on the hoof. Maybe lightning wouldn’t strike twice: it had blown her life apart already, and Whatever had loosed that bolt on her head might not find her worth afflicting again. Maybe now that she was a humble mouse staying in the wainscoting, the cats would stalk and rend elsewhere, and she could scurry in peace.

When she thought of that, she just focused on bringing the order over, or putting the clean flatware in the containers, or cleaning-as-she-went. That kind of slack-assed optimism would tempt fate, she told herself, if nothing else would.

Once, a pair of women she’d waited on had actually been talking about mind control victims, setting up a support group. She’d felt invisible that day, hearing bits of the conversation, being part of their unnoticed background. The temptation to lean in as she refilled the coffee and say “I know about that” had been easy to suppress, a mindgame she played with herself.

She wondered if she were losing a precious chance as she watched them leave, never knowing she was one of the ones they wanted to help, but didn’t fret overmuch. She didn’t doubt their sincerity. But she couldn’t go into a room where at some point everyone would look at her, and tell them she’d been a slave. That she’d forgotten everything but obedience and lived for the next fuck. That she’d been made to love it. She couldn’t face anyone and say that.

Not again.

2.

Someone new was settling into a booth, and she glanced down the counter before stepping around with a menu.

The customer was a brunette woman with an intelligent, oval face and eyes that looked into Deborah’s so disconcertingly that she couldn’t tell their color at first. She took the menu like a gift, glanced at it in wonder, and then looked back up. “What’s good?”

Deborah blinked. “The special’s good, if we still have any.” The woman smiled at her and ordered a sandwich and iced tea instead. Collecting the menu, Deborah realized she’d seen the woman here before, but she must have been on Janie’s side.

Stepping back from the kitchen ledge after placing the order, she saw the woman looking at her, and smiled back hesitantly when the woman did—looking just as hesitant. Then someone else needed coffee.

The dark-haired woman was working on something, sheets of text and some outlines she spread out on the table. She nursed the sandwich and tea, poring over the material, and while she was absorbed Deborah studied her from the corner of her eye.

She wore a trim business suit that flattered her figure—maybe a bright junior executive hard at it even this late at night and still sleek. Deborah wondered what she was working on, trying not to wonder how it felt to work in an office, with documents. Responsibilities. Competence. Being, sometimes, the one they came to because they had to, because she was the only one who knew how.

It was enough to make her forget, for a moment, the sort of predator that hunted in offices. The sort of predator who’d mindfucked her so that now no one thought she was stable enough to be given a desk job.

That kind of wolf was bad enough. There were also the jackals who’d smiled very widely at the interviews before she’d given up trying, who’d been so very understanding about her mind control ordeal, who were so very eager to have her experience in their service. It radiated off them in sickening warm waves, as they already saw themselves finding some way to exploit what stronger predators had done to her and trigger her back to her knees, whether it was reactivated conditioning or just inherent sluthood that dropped her.

She looked at the dark-haired customer, prettily intent on her work. Back at her office, did a pair of unblinking eyes watch her in her office from a disregarded cubicle, waiting for the rigged screensaver, the doped coffee, the topical hypnotic on the keyboard and mouse, to capture her mind? Leave her helpless and receptive after the door closed and the mumbled commands began to drone into her ear again?

Or maybe that was just Deborah’s own way out of the workforce.

Damn it damn it damn it! Wasn’t she supposed to be numb by now?

“Deborah?”

She looked over at one of the regulars, Phil, seated strategically near the pie tower as usual. He’d learned early on that she didn’t warm to “Debbie” and she tried to be as nice to him as distance allowed.

“Hi, Phil. Which pie tonight?” It was Wednesday, so it would be blueberry if they had it, but he liked to be asked.

He pointed and she slid it out, and as she worked and he chatted, she became aware that his eyes kept shying away from hers, lighting more comfortably on the curve of her breast in the uniform, or her thighs under the skirt.

Phil was a mapper, then, the sort of man who’d already broken her down into body parts and watched carefully as each one, at some time or other, was exposed or outlined, and could imagine what it looked like. He’d seen her self-effacing clothing for the defense mechanism it was, and now he wanted to know what she was defending. She’d dressed to repel suitors, and found one.

She made herself smile and serve his pie and freshen his coffee and step away. She’d been mapped before, at the first and only place the temp agency had sent her just after the hospital, an office sunny and bustling and utterly unlike the place she’d been enslaved. Mr Metzler hadn’t been a mind controller, just someone who thought temps were toys and didn’t need brainwashing to be docile.

I didn’t love that job, she thought grimly. But I still miss it. Then and now, she forced down the memory of what she could have done, in the life her master had stolen from her, if someone had harassed her this way. Now, an ex-fucktoy of record, she’d just tried to find a way to get terminated that wouldn’t poison her for later postings. But Metzler had been angry enough at her refusal that he’d blacklisted her with the proverbial vengeance—the temp agency had fired her over the phone and she’d never gotten the full story on what she’d supposedly done.

Farewell to all that happy horseshit about lawsuits, too.

Deborah was still at others’ mercy, here, for all that Harry himself was a fair and hands-off boss. She thought about doing something else, but she couldn’t afford school. God—she couldn’t even go out and sell herself for real. She remembered the moves, the way to stand, the things she’d say and come close to saying, but the mindset that let her do that convincingly, and attract men and get off on being their object, was gone. That, at least, they’d cured her of.

She didn’t want to think about the ones who’d enjoy her more if she were hesitant and ashamed.

But she wanted, just then, to get away from Phil. He’d still be eyeing her like a radar operator, watching her contours appear, but she didn’t want to look back at him while he did. God, it was like being felt up on the subway and being glad the light was out. She kept herself from ducking all the way out into the kitchen, not wanting to be obvious.

She was bringing the coffee over to the table on autopilot, and the brunette looked up just as she remembered there was no cup to refill. She’d already brought the check. She smiled and tried to keep it light, but her mouth was too dry for something like Now I know I’m almost done for tonight!

The woman smiled back, and somehow it was bracing, as though she understood. “Happens to me a lot, too,” she said.

“Bringing coffee too often?” Deborah asked quietly, holding the pot, feeling Phil’s eyes delicately tracing her hips from behind but suddenly not caring as much.

The woman looked at her for a beat longer. “Something like that. A lot like that.”

Deborah remembered other things about the bright junior exec trip, even before the brainwashing, about how you didn’t need a nametag and an order pad to be a half-decorative servitor. Maybe she shouldn’t envy this cool-mannered, warm-eyed woman anything but her salary—and maybe not even that.

“Some coffee’s a good idea, though,” she sighed. “I need an excuse to stay here and finish.”

“It’s okay,” Deborah said. “Just stay. It’s slow, and Harry doesn’t mind.”

The woman smiled thanks and went back to her papers, and Deborah got ready for the next shift.

A while later she saw Harry at the register, and traded wordless nods with the woman as she paid and left. Clearing the booth, she found barely any mess, and a tip that was just short of unreasonably large.

Shelly, from the next shift, came in then, calling greetings to everyone, and Harry looked over at Deborah, mock-waving to tell her she could leave. Finishing up, she looked around to make sure she wasn’t leaving them anything to be taken care of, then slipped in back to change into jeans and a sweater. She seldom went anywhere but home after she finished, but there was something important in not going home in her uniform. It rested over her arm as she walked out, smiled at Shelly, looked for Harry but didn’t see him.

Felt Phil’s eye-radar tracing the way the jeans shaped her, and made herself look away from the door and smile at him as she passed him and tell him goodnight.

Then she was sitting in her car, taking her first loose breath in hours. She turned the key. Nothing happened.

She felt very cold. The car was one of the few things she’d been able to recover from her life before, both a necessity and a familiar emotional anchor, and she couldn’t afford to replace it. Or fix much more than a burned-out bulb in it.

Unable to deal with the whole disaster, she focused on how to try getting it started. She was at the limit of her car knowledge already, so it’d have to be someone else. She got out and headed back to the diner to see if Harry could help, or if Janie was still there. But Harry was on the phone by the kitchen when she looked in from outside, and Janie must have left just after she had—her motorcycle was gone.

At the counter, Phil saw her through the window and turned to look at her curiously. She let her gaze go unfocused and pretended not to see him, turning toward the streetlights, putting it off, hoping Harry would finish and she could talk to him.

The city was bright, down the deserted avenue. As she looked at the lights and saw the glow above them, hiding the stars, she wondered if there were just a wire loose in her engine. Unplugged and set aside so she’d get nothing when she turned the key, and have to come inside and ask for help.

So she’d walk back out, needful and off-balance, let someone get her alone and talk to her. Drug her, show her something mesmerizing, just hit her and bundle her off to his basement.

Maybe Phil was so obvious tonight, mapping her, because he was only minutes away from not having to wonder what Deborah looked like naked. Still smelling the engine he’d disabled.

Or—Harry? Phil had just been sitting there, she’d seen him, but Harry could have been anywhere. On the phone now, calling whom?

She knew it was paranoia but she couldn’t fight it, only stand there and let the fear roll over her.

Deborah wondered if she should just run. But if he chased her and caught her somewhere dark . . .

“Hi.” The dark-haired woman still had her portfolio under one arm. She stood tentatively on the sidewalk, feet primly together.

She looked back at the diner, and her eyes widened as though she shared Deborah’s sense of menace from it. Her voice was firmer and very serious as she asked, “Do you need a ride?”

3.

Her name was Joy.

Deborah looked across the booth at her, glad that she’d made herself ask the woman to have a drink with her, by way of repaying her for the ride. When Joy had said, “I’d love it,” and Deborah had known she meant it, she felt in the pit of her stomach how long it had been since she’d actually talked to someone.

After they’d ordered, Joy said, “I know some people you can call for your car, whatever’s wrong with it,” she said. “They keep mine going.”

Deborah sighed. It was much more likely that Phil was just a customer who undressed women with his eyes, and Harry the ideal employer he seemed to be, and her car problem just an inevitable breakdown. Her free will was safe, but her savings would be toast. And taking favors, even from someone as pleasant as Joy, bothered her.

“You don’t need to tell them I sent you.” Deborah looked at her, wondering if she’d been that obvious. “They’re honest whether they know you or not. I keep telling them I’ll send them business, so you’re helping me pay them back.”

The tray was on the table before Deborah registered the pair of stemmed glasses and looked up at the waitress.

Joy said, “We didn’t order those.”

“They’re compliments of the gentlemen next to the bar.”

Deborah’s gut clenched painfully.

Anywhere. Anywhere. How was she going to explain to Joy and not sound like a fruitcake? Or tell the truth and get that look?

If she didn’t, how quickly would the two of them be sitting stupefied by the drug, trailing off from trying to say how odd they felt all of a sudden? Unable to resist when the men came over and started preparing them?

Joy met her eyes and then looked up at the waitress, not even glancing past her toward the bar. “Thank you, but please take them back. We’d like what we ordered.”

When the waitress blinked, Joy’s tone softened. “Not to put you in the middle, but this is not a good night.” She inclined her head to Deborah without looking away from the waitress. “Guys are not exactly on my friend’ s A-list, tonight.”

“Got you.” Deborah felt guilty at how swiftly the woman took it in and joined their side. “I’ll take care of it.” The stemmed cocktails vanished with her.

She looked across at Joy, who smiled modestly. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Deborah, but I sensed you have a very big issue in there somewhere. I think that took care of it.”

“You were convincing enough to scare me,” Deborah told her.

Joy nodded. “Sometimes I scare myself. I feel a bit bad, and I think we may have touched a nerve in her. Thinking we’ll get this next round on the house. But her tip will be big, and in cash.”

Deborah felt relief washing over her, and wasn’t sure why. She was feeling a bit sorry for the hapless pair who’d sent the drinks over, probably as har mless and innocent as whatever ailed her car.

Slavers can be anywhere. Not everywhere.

Like Joy, she’d pointedly not looked at the men who’d sent the drinks, and didn’t look now. She wondered if the waitress had communicated her fictional grievance, or if they were nursing the rebuff by reassuring each other she and Joy must be lesbians.

She was about to joke about it to Joy when she saw the other woman smile at her, and she thought about it again. Maybe she’d been fleeing hunters for the last hour, while someone else who wanted her for something warmer and sweeter was right here.

It looked like warmth in the way Joy looked at her and looked after her, but it could be heat.

Deborah wondered how she felt about that.

She felt protected, anyway.

Their drinks arrived, and the way the server brought them made Deborah trust them, that she’d poured them herself and guarded them well.

“Joy, I—thank you.”

Joy smiled, and it made Deborah warm where she’d just felt terribly cold a few moments before. “You’re very welcome, Deborah.”

Deborah had felt attracted to women before, and when she’d been brainwashed she’d been used with and by other women. It was only one of the many things she’d felt unable to explore now, and she was startled to find someone before her, apparently interested.

It felt so, so much different from a customer’s interest. Or—Phil’s.

She wanted to make the connection. Joy seemed so self-assured, but maybe she was quivering inside, worried about scaring Deborah off and afraid of not taking the chance at all. Deborah looked at her, letting herself see how pretty the other woman was. But she didn’t want to guess wrong, either.

She put her hand on the table, not quite halfway. “I’m very lucky I met you.” Her voice wasn’t as steady as she needed it to be, but before she could even worry, she saw Joy’s eyes brighten, and Joy reached over and took her hand, squeezed it and released it.

“Both of us, Deborah.”

Joy swallowed, and seeing her suddenly vulnerable softened Deborah powerfully. She was certain about it now, about both of them, and there was a mad impulse to lean across, as Joy’s eyes widened, and kiss her and say “Me too.” But she let Joy speak.

“I’ve been—coming to the diner for a while. I sat in other people’s sections. I saw you and I didn’t know what . . . I didn’t want to risk being part of a bad night for you.”

Deborah looked at her.

“I’ve seen you with the people you wait on, and the ones you work with. I’ m not spying on you, just—” She paused as Deborah nodded slowly.

“—noticing. There’s something that makes you the only person in the room, sometimes, do you know what I mean?” She swallowed again, her eyes bright, not looking at anything but Deborah.

“Then I saw you looking at that guy that always gets pies and . . . looks at you.”

Deborah shut her eyes, stunned that it felt like that. Just a customer ogling a waitress, nothing earthshattering or even new, but it was as though Joy knew what it meant to her. That Joy saw it too, though, made her feel watched over.

Joy kept talking, her voice softer and more passionate with each word. “I’ d wanted to talk to you but I didn’t know what to say in there, it all seemed so inane or too much, but I knew when you got off and I made myself go back, to say something. Anything.

“And then I saw the way you looked in at them, the way you didn’t want to go back in.”

She looked at Deborah. “You were so alone. I had to.”

Deborah took her hand, realizing she didn’t care if the drink-buyers saw it. “I’m glad you did.” She wet her lips. “I’m glad you did, Joy.” She kept holding Joy’s hand.

She thought, and spoke. “I wanted to kiss you, a little while ago.” Joy’s face lit up. “I wish I had.”

Joy looked disoriented at how quickly they’d gotten here, and on her powersuited persona it looked so endearing that Deborah remembered the night she’d seen herself in the oversized uniform. Maybe now I have a “victim.” There was a slight edge to that, but she didn’t let go of Joy’s hand.

Joy was looking at her now, strong again and letting her feeling for Deborah start to shine out of her. “I’m so glad it didn’t kill that part of you, Deborah.”

“What?”

“I saw the way you looked in at them tonight, and when you said your car wouldn’t start it all fell together. The way you are with customers, the little things you do when no one’s looking, to see if you’re still awake.”

Deborah felt naked, and wasn’t sure if it made her warm or chilled. She couldn’t look away from Joy’s eyes, and didn’t even notice.

“You’ve been under mind control.” Joy’s voice was low and reluctant. “You do your job well but it’s not the job you would have picked—and I’m certain it wasn’t what you used to do.”

Oh god. Deborah’s insides began to dissolve again, but she was too sad to run. Hunters. That’s how she knows. Hunters can read the signs and smell the blood. They’re not all male, not hardly. Just my own owners. Oh no.

Watching me. Waiting. My car. She did it, not poor creepy Phil. Oh but it was feeling so nice. Oh—

“—god.” Joy’s hand was gentle on hers. “No, Deborah. I’m not trying to enslave you.”

Deborah started but she didn’t pull away. She looked desperately into Joy’ s eyes. She wanted that to be true but she almost didn’t care—either she’d found someone to be close to, or she’d soon be too mindfucked to worry about it.

But she did care. After all these days and months alone the thought of lying with someone, anyone, skin to skin for no other reason but love, was a wild cry deep inside.

“I was a slave, Deborah. That’s how I know. I saw how you look at other people, and I remembered. I know that look and that fear. And I couldn’t bear it anymore.

“I wanted to help you, Deborah, but more than that I wanted to look into your eyes and see that you were still there. Because I knew I wanted to meet the woman behind them.

“Needed to.”

Deborah felt herself breathe. As her own eyes blurred, she looked into Joy ‘s and saw nothing but caring and hope.

She thought about kissing Joy after all, but she didn’t know what would follow, and most of it she didn’t want to do in public. Crying was the least of it.

“That woman’s still here, Joy.” She blinked until the blur was gone. “It’ s been a long time for her, but she’s here.

“And she’s very happy, now.”

4.

Deborah couldn’t tell if Joy’s apartment on the side of the clifflike tower block were really as big as it looked or if it were the way Joy had arranged things, but it seemed much larger than her little efficiency. A dark bronze eagle on a granite pedestal mounted guard at the balcony doors, wings spread as though about to lunge out over the city, and Deborah started to envy it its flight and the size of its world.

But I don’t want to kill bunnies to live.

They sat curled at opposite ends of the sofa, and Deborah enjoyed the silence, wondering whether Joy had thicker walls or just quieter neighbors. A nasty little feeling started to rise in her, as she took in how pleasant it was—somewhere to look forward to being at day’s end, not just a dark little bolthole.

She wondered how they’d be sitting if she’d taken Joy home instead. She tried not to think of Joy’s soft voice suddenly obscured by a shout from below the floor, and didn’t feel much better thinking of the way her dim lamps let her decorate the bleak walls with shadow.

But she knew that Joy would be wonderful to look at, even in that light. Here and now she admired the way Joy’s legs caught the light from the window, the city and its skyglow. She basked in the certainty that Joy was enjoying her, too. She reached for her glass and sipped.

“Tell me,” she said, looking back into Joy’s eyes. “Tell me what happened to you.”

Joy didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she held out her hand along the cushions.

Deborah shifted nearer and took it up in her own. Joy’s hand felt cold and she cupped it with the other one, and Joy leaned back.

“I knew the one who enslaved me,” Joy said. “He was a friend, then a soulmate, then a lover. That made it so much worse because unless he had me really tranced out I could remember what I’d felt for him. What he’d felt for me.

“What he said he’d felt for me. Even when he was telling me what he’d done to my mind, even when he was . . . hurting me, I kept thinking some part of him cared. That he’d spare me.”

Deborah ran her hand lightly up Joy’s arm and held her elbow. Joy leaned her head back but kept looking at Deborah.

“Later I realized—and people told me—that it was all me, projecting those feelings. He was . . . a monster, a complete psychopath, something that could reflect feelings and pretend to care because he had no real idea what caring was. Or what it cost. It was a hook he had in me before he enslaved me in other ways.”

Her hand tightened on Deborah’s. “In a way I’m glad. If I’d really known how alone I was, while all that was happening . . .

“It started—we were playing a lot of BDSM and hypnosis seemed like another way to do it. Something he could do to me in public, to control me, with no chains or straps to give it away.” She closed her eyes, and Deborah held her arm gently, picturing it raised over her head while Joy lapsed into trance. But somehow it sounded as though that wasn’t the way she’d been put under.

“He could take me to subspace so fast . . . and when I was there, he used orgasms to train me.

“By the time he started using the drugs I was already conditioned against resisting them. After that he was programming me to accept the injections.”

Joy opened her eyes. “There’s a point when it isn’t hypnosis anymore, Deborah, and by the time he was laughing at me I was long past that. I was forgetting what it was like to think for myself.

“One of the times he did let me think, he showed me something on the Internet. He’d written a story about what he’d done to me. He said he hadn ‘t written the ending yet but that already people I didn’t even know were playing with themselves reading about how he’d destroyed me.” She closed her eyes again, and now her face crumpled. She didn’t make a sound, but Deborah slid against her and held her.

“When he told me that I started frigging myself.” It was a whisper in Deborah’s hair. “I begged him to film me doing it and put it up with the story. It was all I wanted.

“He told me the site was text-only and I cried.

“He laughed, and that made me happy. It made me orgasmic. But he was already getting bored with me.

“He used me to find him another girl. By then I was so deep that I would have given him my own sister, but he wanted to avoid attention, so I seduced a stranger. A saleswoman in a lingerie shop. He didn’t have to waste time making her fall in love with him—he just started her on the drugs and hypnosis as soon as I got her home. I got to be the dungeon slut. I helped strap her down and listened to her plead and go incoherent when he started conditioning her. I licked her . . .

“He started another story on the Internet. About her.

“He said he was moving to a site that let him count hits. By then she was kneeling and obeying triggers like me, and he started doing things to us based on how many hits our stories were getting online.”

Joy was shaking and Deborah was starting to wish she hadn’t asked, not this soon. But she held Joy close and listened.

“I wasn’t keeping track of time but there was a day when I realized he wasn ‘t using me for sex very much, just punishment. He’d use the crop or the cane and I’d be screaming and coming and asking him not to stop and he said I needed to get more hits.

“He did things to me that he never did to her. He seemed to despise me more for letting him get into my head. He—we had ambushed her and she was brainwashed before she knew what hit her, but I’d let him do it. And he really was in my head, so I despised myself too.”

“Don’t,” Deborah said, because she had to say something. “Don’t.”

Joy relaxed and kissed her cheek. “Thank you. I learned that, too, when I was freed. I know it wasn’t my fault for trusting him.

“But thank you.”

They stayed on the sofa. Deborah held Joy and cautiously explored how good it felt to comfort someone, to be holding a beautiful woman who wanted her, to know someone else knew what she felt like.

To have someone to feel sorry for. That was mean but it was true, and she atoned by turning Joy’s face to hers and waiting for Joy to open her eyes and focus on Deborah’s. She smoothed Joy’s dark hair from her forehead and kissed her on the mouth, tasting lipstick, and wine, and something else that made her head swim. She tasted Joy.

She felt Joy losing herself in the kiss and held her more tightly, to keep her found.

They rested, forehead to forehead.

“I’m so glad he doesn’t have you now, Joy.”

She was surprised when Joy flinched, but didn’t loosen her hold. She waited.

“I didn’t escape him. I wasn’t rescued.

“He programmed me to kill myself. I was very obedient by then and I tried very hard. I almost did it. Someone stopped me and it took a while not to hate them for making me disobey his will.

“I found a group. A survivors’ group. A whole roomful of people who all understood . . . but then . . .

“He got me back. Later.” Joy’s eyes were glazed, as though the memory were pulling her away from Deborah from deep inside, and Deborah leaned in to kiss her again and bring her back, dazing herself with another taste of the other woman. Joy blinked gratefully.

“Something had changed. I was more terrified of him than submissive. I did escape, then.

“I haven’t seen him since.”

Deborah wondered if she was safe from him now, and found herself picturing his return.

Putting herself in front of Joy. Dying to keep him away. It felt better than anything she could remember.

Joy’s mouth found hers, this time.

She realized she was crying, knowing the pretty woman she was holding had been through that, had almost not made it through that. It was Joy who comforted her, now.

“Oh, Deborah.” Her whisper was soft by Deborah’s ear. “You didn’t have anyone, did you?”

Her family hadn’t gone into denial about her sex-slavery—they’d just gone into denial about her. Deborah pictured them again, each one in a different part of the house as though being with her were something they’d agreed to do only in shifts. The last thing her grandmother had said to her echoed faintly in her head again, in that cold hateful voice that sounded nothing like Grandma. Now she couldn’t even remember what Grandma had sounded like, before.

She cringed and Joy held her tighter.

She swallowed, not wanting to recall it, much less speak of it. “I had therapists. Deprogrammers, shrinks. I’m not even on medication anymore.”

“No, Deborah. Not caring for you. Caring about you. No one.”

“Talking to the therapists was bad, but it was like an exam.” Deborah wondered if Joy had seen it that way, and found herself hoping not. She hoped she was speaking only for herself.

“Or an autopsy. You’re naked under fluorescent lights but they don’t care. You’re a cadaver that moves, and speaks, and they’ve heard it all before.

“They gave me a reference to a group, but I couldn’t . . . I thought of sitting there with other people. Telling them what happened to me, how I felt when it was happening, how much they made me—” She was stiff, every muscle taut, and she felt Joy’s hold grow careful, but Joy didn’t let go.

She knew Joy sensed what came next, and wanted to tell Deborah not to make herself say it. But Joy was letting her decide.

It was almost unbearable that someone respected Deborah that much. That Deborah was in her arms.

“How much they made me like it.” Now she felt the pull of memory she’d seen take hold of Joy before. She remembered knowing how deep the violation was going, how evil it was that she was being taught to juice at the thought they were stealing her will, and—getting damp, just as they wanted.

The idea of telling other women that, even knowing they’d been through the like of it, was still beyond her. All of them still bleeding from what had been done to them, and hearing her still getting wet about it.

But just knowing that someone knew it now, and that it mattered because Deborah mattered, made the lonely time behind her seem more like a desert than ever.

She kissed Joy again and rested for a moment in the hollow under her jaw, feeling the soft skin against her cheek and eyelid, feeling Joy’s pulse race.

She pulled back a little and looked at Joy. “No. I didn’t have anyone. Not until now.”

5.

Deborah tried to cry out, to call Joy’s name, but by now she could only whine.

She lay limp on the bed as Joy’s mouth gently withdrew from her pussy with a farewell plume of warm breath. Joy’s hair was cool across her belly as Joy kissed her on her ribs and she twitched, just at the threshold of being tickled before Joy relented and moved up to suckle on her right breast.

Deborah’s nipples were still sensitive from what Joy had been doing to them before, but Joy was careful of them, and Deborah started to dissolve. She used what little strength was left to her to move her hand toward Joy’s body. The storm of orgasms Joy had loosed through her had paralyzed her, and she couldn’t even turn her head to see what she was doing: her hand quested blindly for warmth and smoothness, and found them with dew where Joy ‘s thighs met.

Her touch made Joy moan softly and the heat and vibration on the breast still held captive in Joy’s mouth drew another whine from Deborah. Her hand loosened and fell away from Joy’s warmth, and somehow, from the depth of pleasure Joy was inflicting on her, she found a way to regret not even being able to stroke Joy.

Joy, purring around her nipple, didn’t seem to mind.

Then Joy was lying atop her, her pussy inches from Deborah’s, and bending to kiss her. She pulled away to worry at Deborah’s ear, her throat, the corner of her eye, sometimes with her lips pursed around a hint of tongue.

Deborah felt things slow down, and looked up into Joy’s eyes. Joy had stopped and was holding her very tenderly, and just lay with her, stroking her. Deborah relaxed in her arms, almost floating. She was tranquilized, but she started to feel something close to pain.

It was a very sweet pain. It was the way Joy looked at her, exulting at how she’d pleased Deborah, happy just to hold her now. She moved her head to Joy’s chest and kissed her high on one of her breasts, tasting the skin going cool under Joy’s delicate sweat. She thought of leaning down and suckling but right now she just wanted to stay as she was.

She might be in love with Joy but even that was more than she could think of. She loved Joy right now, and she was sure Joy loved her right now. Dimly she knew the sex had gone to her head, but what was conquering her was this, now. The touch and the warmth and Joy just being here with her.

Curled against Joy, warm in her, Deborah started to cry, easily and without sorrow. She felt too good to do anything else. Joy kept holding her, and she might have cried too.

Later, Joy rolled her gently onto her belly, taking care to keep her head on the pillow, and Deborah lost herself in the sudden quiet pleasure of letting Joy’s hands control her. She wondered if Joy was preparing for something else, maybe a delightful assault on her ass, and whined again as she felt fingertips stroke her there.

But then there were Joy’s lips, painfully delicate on each asscheek, and the breeze of the sheet being drawn up. It was like the end of a massage. Joy even rubbed her through the sheet, and leaned close to her.

“You need to sleep,” she whispered, and kissed Deborah’s ear as though she couldn’t help herself. Deborah relaxed under her touch, and just let go. She tried to murmur “Yes” but couldn’t. She basked in the way Joy looked down at her, the way Joy’s hand felt on her even when it was still.

After all that time alone—this was worth the wait. She wanted to tell Joy, but Joy seemed to know.

Deborah woke before she knew she’d slept. She was alone, curled up on her side, and she found the sheet rearranged over her. She found a soft toy nosed into her breast, unrecognizable in the dark of the room, and melted as she pictured Joy putting it there to keep her company while she slept.

She held it for a while, then put it gently on the pillow and slid out of bed. She felt rested, aglow with well-being, and strong enough to seek out the woman who’d brought her there.

It felt good to stay nude, and wonderfully free to walk that way through Joy’s space, into Joy’s view. She padded quietly into a hall, looking for light, wondering what Joy was doing. It occurred to her that Joy might be busy with something while letting her sleep, but the bond they’d welded in bed—and before—told her Joy wasn’t likely to be able to concentrate on much else.

There was faint yellow light from the living room, and she crept to the hall’s end.

A single candle burned on the coffee table and Joy sat on the sofa where they’d talked, staring raptly into the flame, her eyes wide and her face blank. She was nude, and her skin was golden in the light, her posture erect and attentive, her hands palm-up on her thighs.

Beyond her on the inner wall, the bronze eagle’s shadow loomed in the light from outside, but Joy’s gaze was leashed to the candle, and she looked as though anything could slip into her open mind and own it. The passing thoughts of a dreamer a mile or a continent away could flicker in her eyes and make her their thrall in less than one of her slow, even breaths.

Deborah swallowed. Her lover was hypnotized, and she didn’t know how she felt about that.

She was damp again, anyway. Joy had been in control back there in bed, and seeing her helpless now in trance was getting to Deborah in a way she was a little afraid of.

Then her mind found a space between throbs in her pussy: if Joy were hypnotized, someone had probably put her under, and they might still be here. She had a sick moment wondering if Joy were just bait, if her master had recaptured her yet again and used her as he had before, to lure victims for him to take. Even mocked her by letting her remember her escapes, her horror at what she thought she wasn’t doing anymore.

No. That had been real in there.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else around, but they could be controlling Joy some other way. She thought again about dying to protect Joy, and wasn’ t surprised to find the feeling warmer than ever. She stepped over to the sofa, glancing at the windows but seeing that they were too high and far from other buildings for anyone in any of the other glittering towers to be watching them.

Joy didn’t even blink as she came near.

Deborah looked down at her, enjoying the lines of her in the soft light. She looked at Joy’s cleft that she’d only been able to touch before, and was startled to see and recall that Joy kept herself smooth there. Her smooth pussy was wet, too: arousal shone in the candlelight, and Deborah thought of kneeling to it, waking Joy with her tongue.

But she sat beside her instead, barely aware of the feel of the fabric on her skin as she tentatively reached for Joy. She put an arm around her shoulders, and then put her left hand into Joy’s, cupped limp on her thigh. Joy’s breathing changed but she didn’t move, and Deborah gazed at her profile, seeing her completely captive to the flame’s fascination.

She leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Joy. Please come back to me now.”

Joy took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and when she opened them she turned and smiled drowsily at Deborah. “Of course.”

After they kissed she said, “Sorry if I worried you. It’s something I don’ t usually do if there’s anyone around—not,” she added, “that there’s usually just anyone around.”

Deborah just smiled. Nice to know she was special—but it still would have been nice to think of Joy with a lover. Nice to think of someone pleasing Joy, even if weren’t her.

“Part of the hold my master had over me was that I do like being hypnotized, all apart from what he did to me with it. The therapists used that in deprogramming me and some of the women in the group shared it. So now—I just do it, sometimes. When I feel bad, or when I feel good.

“When someone makes me feel good,” she said, so Deborah would know.

“It’s safe, Deborah. I was induced by a woman I trusted deeply and completely, and she taught me how to control the trance. I can’t be put under this way against my will, and no one else can take control of me, even when I’m very deep.”

Deborah remembered Joy in trance, still and soft, and felt a chill even so. “Did you know I was here?”

Joy smiled. “I could believe I knew when you woke, but I’m imagining that. I did know it when you came in and saw me, and it felt good to stay relaxed and in trance while you came to rouse me.” She seemed to realize how Deborah had felt, doing it.

“If it had really scared you, seeing me that way, I would have known. I would have come out of it for you.”

“Thank you.” Deborah kissed her again.

Joy’s eyes were bright as she took the kiss, and they didn’t leave Deborah’ s afterward.

“Deborah . . . would you like to try it?”

6.

Deborah looked into her eyes, and saw only a desire to share and to give her pleasure, again.

“Let you hypnotize me?”

Joy nodded.

Deborah thought about it, being under Joy’s control, and instead of frightening her the idea was a gentle quiver in her cunt that stayed there, humming.

She wanted to say it. “You blew my mind before, when you controlled my body. If I let you control my mind—” She was smiling, but there was no way to keep the heat out of her voice.

“It’s less about my controlling you than your letting me control you, Deborah. It’s what hypnosis—can be. What it used to be.”

“A woman you trusted put you into a trance.”

“Yes.”

Deborah felt it in her nipples now, the one touching Joy’s arm and the one stiffening in the candleglow. “I’d like a woman I’m falling in love with to do it to me.”

Something indefinable crossed Joy’s face, and Deborah drifted toward panic that she’d said something wrong. But Joy reached to stroke her cheek. When she said “thank you” she could make no sound, and Deborah knew she’d been searingly right.

Deborah looked into her eyes and took her touch. “I should just look into the candle, now, and relax. Shouldn’t I?”

Joy just looked at her, hearing the submission deepening her whisper.

Deborah didn’t turn away from her. “When may I do that?”

Joy smiled, and something about her changed. The woman helpless under the flame’s spell was now the lovely succubus who’d turned Deborah to ecstatic pudding with her mouth and fingertips.

But instead of telling Deborah to gaze and relax, Joy half-rose to bend over the coffee table, as if she’d suddenly yielded to an urge to worship the candle. Close enough to kiss the flame, she waited, poised on her arms, so lovely that Deborah gasped, and then blew it out. Her golden body was silvered now in the light from the city outside.

When she looked at Deborah in the new shadow, her eyes were cat-glints, more riveting than before. “I have something different to hypnotize you with.”

She stood and Deborah gaped up at her. She held out her hand, drawing Deborah to her feet and leading her gently around toward the windows. At the darkened end of the balcony, the glass doors were reflective enough for Deborah to see them, one nude silver woman leading another hesitantly to the light. But she looked away at the real Joy before her, zoning on how the silver flowed, happy to be led.

They stopped a pace from the glass doors and Joy moved behind her, fitting her body against Deborah, hugging her but with infinite care, as though joining pieces of a fragile puzzle, and Deborah understood her role was to be still.

She looked out at the nightscape, and noticed that there was another reflection, in the shadow of the column halfway along the balcony. She saw Joy’s head before she felt it settle next to hers on her shoulder, Joy’s breasts soft and cool against her back, Joy’s hands cupping a breast, spread on her groin—touching nothing, and everything.

It looked like a vampire winding around her spellbound prey, and Deborah saw her own nipples stiffen as she knew she’d be still for that, too, if Joy wanted her. Joy felt her tremble and kissed her neck.

“Shh. Relax.” Joy’s voice pulsed as her hands did, lightly pressing Deborah. “Look out at the beautiful lights.” Deborah obeyed. The humming in her cunt was spreading to her head and owning her whole body. She was trapped in how those hands had controlled her before.

“Look at them, Deborah. Try to find one and concentrate on it. It’s hard, isn’t it? But you’re trying, for me.” Deborah made herself nod, slowly, and whined softly when it earned her another kiss. Her eyes blurred as she kept trying to find one. There were so many and it was too hard to choose.

“Too hard to choose,” she murmured. She realized she’d said it, thought it, because it was Joy’s thought. She moved in Joy’s hold, mutely begging to be stroked, but she kept looking at the beautiful lights.

“So many lights, Deborah. I looked out at the pretty lights once while a woman’s voice spoke to me and I lost myself there. And there . . . and there . . . and . . . there . . .” Her voice kept the rhythm but grew fainter, and Deborah felt her hearing start to blur as her vision was doing. The lights on the buildings and rooftops and towers lost their shapes and started to ripple.

“See them . . . that one . . . that one . . .”

Deborah was following Joy’s whisper down into silence, melting into her body, relaxing. She knew if Joy let go she would fold down into a puddle of trembling flesh at Joy’s feet, and she was happy to do it, or not to.

“As I listened and saw the lights,” Joy told her softly, “I was hypnotized. It was so easy to listen, too hard to choose.”

“Too hard to choose,” Deborah repeated, and felt another reward.

“As the lights hypnotized me, the voice chose, for me.”

“Chose . . . for me . . .”

“Yes, Deborah. And I will. As you keep looking . . .” Deborah drifted off again, following the soft, soft guidance from light to light to light to light.

“I was hypnotized and I had to obey,” Joy said. “The hypnotized must obey.”

“The hypnotized must obey,” Deborah repeated, feeling the thrill even before Joy’s finger praised her. She knew it was the control itself that was turning her on, but she was falling into what Joy’s touch had done to her when she’d surrendered her body in bed. It felt too good to resist—not like before.

“You will obey the sound of my voice.” It was a command, but Joy issued it so gently that Deborah trembled.

“I will obey the sound of your voice.”

“Your will is soft now and under my control.”

“My will is soft now and under your control.” Deborah couldn’t think of anyone else on earth who should control her will.

Not even herself. Not with Joy’s warm arms on her skin, Joy’s warm words wrapping her thoughts.

“You have no will, now, and no desire to do anything but what I tell you to do.”

“I have no will, now, and no desire to do anything but what you tell me to do.” She was so relaxed in Joy’s hold that she could barely speak now, but she had to respond.

“You are deeply entranced now, Deborah.” Joy’s whisper was deep and slow, each syllable tapping her mind like a fingertip. She was feeling the other woman’s voice now more than hearing it, and relaxed to know she didn’t need to hear to obey.

“You will sleep now, while I speak to your mind.”

Joy was inside her head now, and in her pussy, too, the way Joy’s breath had been before. Joy was taking her the other way, now—not a humid storm of orgasms but an endless quiet plateau of nearly-there. Deborah might be dreaming the tiny fingering that was maddening her down there, and she was ready to endure it forever.

Joy’s fingers on her pussy. Her whisper in her mind. She relaxed, opening pussy and mind. They were both Joy’s, now, as was she.

Deborah didn’t know if that was her thought or Joy’s command, but she knew they were now the same.

I’m hypnotized. She moaned to know it.

Joy said something and Deborah’s mind gently stopped. The lights were equally fascinating, equally pretty. Her mind floated between them like a balloon, not touching anywhere now, drifting and detached.

I’m perfectly safe, she told herself. Joy is with me and we are one. I will obey and come to no harm. It felt right. It was right. Deborah was free of doubt.

I will remember and return. She waited to be told what she would remember.

7.

She was in her office, staring at the monitor, absorbed with reaching under her skirt and playing with her pussy, trying to remember what was wrong. Everything seemed so right: she could barely remember when she’d known her Masters as men she’d been working with, and her days and nights were a continuous blur of being fucked and being programmed. She knew these were her heart’s desire and her true calling, because that was one of the iron echoes that boomed through her awareness.

At first the echoes had slammed over her attempts to think, attempts she remembered only faintly now, with the same distaste that she could no longer recall feeling for fellatio.

Now, even though she didn’t think much anymore, the echoes kept playing in her head when there wasn’t a more specific command or lesson being burned in by the hypnotic software.

It was hard to think, and it was more fun anyway to frig herself and dream of fellating one of the Masters. Masturbating made everything else pall, and even without it, she couldn’t think of two things at once.

Usually just thinking even one thing gives me trouble, she recited in her head, and giggled.

Hearing herself giggle sent her thrusting madly against her own fingers, but orgasm eluded her.

She didn’t mind, really. Orgasms never happened without a Master, and she was alone in this room for now.

“Can we talk?”

Or maybe not alone. She looked over to see her friend Joy standing by the desk, smiling at her. She didn’t wonder why Joy was there. Anyway, her jaw dropped: in a tight red latex microdress that barely covered her crotch, Joy looked as hot and fuckable as any other woman at the firm who’d been Fixed, but she didn’t look Fixed. She looked as aware as a Master. It made her look hotter, in a scary kind of way.

“Deborah?”

She winced. Sometimes they tested her. She hated that sound, and it almost spoiled the way the frigging felt, but her attention span was too sawed-off by now and a gasp later she’d forgotten.

“Sorry—what’s your name, again?” She looked up. Joy was still smiling. She must have said something before, but this new question was enough to handle.

“I’m Debi!” she chirped. She could almost see it in brain-broiling orange on the screen. It made the frigging sweeter for a moment, but the moment passed before she could think to say it again and again and again.

The screen. Her eyes swung back to it. What they were leaving of her mind had never turned away from it. She no longer remembered when it had shown anything else but the spirals and the commands, when she did anything more than look at it and obey.

“Debi? Can we talk?”

She looked up again, almost distracted by how sexy Joy looked in the latex. “I’m too stupid to talk,” she explained quietly once the correct bright-orange truth had surfaced in her mind. Maybe Joy would want to play with her instead.

“Hmm. We are talking, though,” Joy said.

She nodded, too awed by the complexity to answer. It was easier to look back at the screen . . .

“What are they doing to you, Debi?”

“Brainwashing me,” she said, feeling it happen. “Would you like to look at the screen?” In her mind there was a program she was supposed to submit to, around any attractive women she knew, to make them look and obey and return with her to the Masters, but for now she was just being friendly.

“Will it hypnotize me, Debi?” Joy’s voice was quiet but eager.

“It will hypnotize everyone,” she intoned, and was even closer to coming. Proclaiming the Masters’ power always did that to her.

She kept looking and seeing. Text meant nothing to her now, unless it said “Debi,” but the orange words were different. They meant everything now. They melted her brain where they hit it and sank into the holes that made. It hurt but she needed more of it.

“How does that feel, Debi?” There was something unfamiliar in Joy’s voice.

“It hurts,” she whispered. “Like when I was buttfucked the first time.

“But I loooove it. Like when I get buttfucked—anytime.”

“Ah,” Joy said, and the new note in her voice was clearer: she was sad. For Debi.

Why?

“If I look at it, Debi, and we’re both hypnotized to obey them, what will they make us want to do?”

She smiled and edged forward against her fingers.

“Fuck.”

She said it and tightened inside, and it hurt more. It hurt much worse. Something was wrong.

No—something had always been wrong, but there had been an exciting blunt wetness in her head that hadn’t let her care. Now it was drying and shrinking and the wrongness—

“Oh, god. Oh, god.” It didn’t sound like her.

“It’s all right,” Joy said, and her voice came from close behind Debi. It felt as though she were holding Debi close, and for some reason that was the only thing that was keeping Debi from screaming. Debi didn’t try to figure that out.

“I can’t look away,” she said, feeling more orange truth dropping onto her brain with each flicker of the screen. “I—want this. I love this. I—fucking—love this.” She was shaking.

“It turns us on,” Joy said, and her voice was husky now, as well as sad. Now Debi hurt for her, too, and like a cock up her ass it made her want more. She looked at Joy and saw her nipples arrowed behind the latex, her belly muscles stretched below.

“If we could run away—” Joy closed her throat before she could moan.

“—we’d come back,” Debi gasped, the misery and arousal higher than she could stand.

“—we’d . . . crawl back,” Joy said, and then her voice was behind Debi again.

“Sleep,” she said, and her hand passed down over Debi’s face. Debi’s eyelids drooped as the orange truth and the screen and the latex vision of Joy faded into a dream of pretty lights.

Deborah blinked out at the city beyond the balcony and felt Joy behind her, gently nuzzling her neck.

“I’m sorry,” Joy whispered.

“No,” Deborah whispered back. “You know. You know what I was.”

“What they made you, Deborah. Not what you were.”

It was what she’d heard from the therapists, but now she believed it. Joy had been in her mind, and she knew Joy had been there too, in that place where you wanted to be stepped on and you licked the heel. Joy was holding her, had not let go, had risked her own addiction to be with her there in the memory. To rescue her before it ate her again and the orange acid digested her will.

She wanted Joy to hold her forever.

She looked at their silver reflection and thought of being a statue, two nudes entwined, for everyone to see. Everyone could know she belonged to Joy. She remembered Joy’s relentless focus on pleasing her when they’d made love. She wished she could be facing Joy in that sculpture but Joy had wanted her facing out to be hypnotized, and it felt warm and powerful to accept Joy’s will in that. In other things.

“Joy.”

A kiss. “Yes, Deborah.”

“I will do whatever you want me to.” She swallowed. “If you want me to step off the balcony and fly out to the beautiful lights to greet them for you I will.”

Joy squeezed her and she felt new hot wetness against her ass where Joy’s pussy stroked her. She heard Joy’s breath catch as she tried to speak.

“I know, Joy. I’d just fall. I’d be dead. But I want to do it if you tell me to. I will do anything you ask.” She didn’t know if Joy still had her under hypnosis. She didn’t care.

“I’m not worthy of that,” Joy murmured against her shoulder. “But someone told me how it feels to hear it. I didn’t ever know.” She leaned against Deborah and the tears were warm on Deborah’s neck. “Thank you.” She breathed and Deborah waited, relaxed in her arms, comfortable for the first time she could remember.

“Sleep, Deborah.”

Deborah’s eyelids drooped as she instantly obeyed the trance trigger, and she felt a smooth, warm lassitude anoint her. The submissive drowsiness was sensual—she felt as turned-on as when Joy had been inducing her before. Joy stepped away, and her hypnosis anesthetized Deborah from the pain of breaking contact with her smoothness and heat. Blissful in the trance, Deborah loved her for taking such care of her.

Joy took her hand and led her back to the sofa and Deborah went, docile and quietly juicing. A match snapped alight and they were golden once more by candlelight.

“Awaken, Deborah.”

They were sitting side by side, and Deborah was still so blissed that she was content with that. Part of her was still entwined submissively in Joy’s hold, and it was almost like the hypnotically guided memory, when Joy had stood before her and whispered from behind at the same time. She knew she was smiling idiotically at Joy and she didn’t care.

“How do you feel?” Joy asked, still looking a little concerned at what she ‘d led her to relive.

Deborah thought about it. Then she stopped thinking, and just let herself answer.

“Will you be my mistress?”

She put her hand over her mouth, but even she wanted to offer even her embarrassment to Joy and didn’t look away.

Joy swallowed and had her arms around her without seeming to move. She kissed Deborah under the ear and held her until she could sit straight again.

Then she slid off the sofa and knelt at Deborah’s feet.

She kissed Deborah’s knee and then her thigh. She gazed with yearning on Deborah’s cleft, but settled back on her heels instead and looked up at her.

“Joy? Why are you kneeling?”

“It’s a proper posture for me to assume before a free woman, Deborah.” She smiled faintly.

“You’re a treasure, beautiful and bright and strong. I’d love to have someone like you and call her mine.” She hesitated, and looked hurt. “Oh, Deborah, I wish I could.

“But no one can be mine.” Deborah looked at her. She saw Joy’s shaven pussy gleam with new honey in the window-glow.

“I own nothing, Deborah. I am something owned.

“I’m a slave.”

8.

Deborah swayed slightly, looking at how lovely Joy was on her knees. She knew what she’d heard, and knew that if she weren’t wilted and spent from hours of sex and hypnosis in Joy’s power, she’d be . . . in quite a state, anyway.

When Joy had her flashing back to the way her controllers had kept her brainwashing herself in the office, she’d nearly screamed, and only Joy’s touch had kept her steady.

Now, Joy was saying . . .

A dream was evaporating around Deborah, leaving cold and dark behind. Suddenly, being nude in a room with her lover was being naked behind the locked door of someone she’d met that night.

She fell back against the sofa. The bliss was falling away from her so fast she could almost feel it skin her.

But she was confused and tired and very sad, and she looked at the door, barely able to wonder if she’d make it that far if she ran, right now. Or who might be waiting behind it for her.

Finding Joy out here, hypnotized, after they’d made—after Joy had fucked her. Had Joy planned it, watching Deborah writhe and squeal and waiting until she saw Deborah was submissive and malleable? Or had her owner activated her later?

Joy was just a tool. She knew she was a slave, but it didn’t change that someone else could decide what she did, what she thought, how she felt about it. Deborah was in no position to blame her.

She knew she should be running—maybe for her purse and clothes, maybe for a weapon, maybe just for the door to try her luck bare-assed out there. But she couldn’t make herself. Why bother. She’d needed what Joy had given her, so very very badly—not just pleasure she hadn’t felt in longer than she could recall, but eyes that wanted her without coveting, hands that sought her for her own sake.

If there was really no such thing, what was out there to run to? Another chance to be taken? The next lorelei that sang her into thrall might not be as pretty as Joy, or even pretend to be as kind.

She looked at Joy, hurting so badly that her voice was perfectly calm.. “I ‘ve been alone, all night, haven’t I?”

Joy flinched, but didn’t leave her knees.

“No, Deborah.

“. . . I’ve been with you.”

She didn’t sound like a zombie. She sounded like someone who’d just been stabbed in the heart by her heart’s desire.

“Is someone taking me?” Deborah wanted to feel bad for the stab, but she was too frightened now. Her lack of will to run was part of what frightened her.

Joy nodded. “My Mistress has wanted you for some time, and She’s decided that She’ll have you now.”

Deborah was very disoriented now. She got through each day telling herself that she was too obscure, that the hunters could find other prey. But now someone had been stalking her—her—and sent a slave for her?

She’d been a little minnow skulking around the coral, dodging the barracuda, each day a victory if she was still her own mistress by its end—never seeing the shadow overhead of something else, huge and saurian, a prehistoric nuclear sub with avid yellow slit-pupil eyes and so, so many teeth.

Stalking a minnow. It made no sense, targeting her out of the multitude, but it didn’t have to. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you.

Was Joy just keeping her distracted so the hunter-the huntress—could take her? It made no sense. They could have taken her anywhere they wanted. Waiting in her car, even in her apartment—screams didn’t bring much but banging on the wall from neighbors.

But it was poisoning what she’d thought she’d had with Joy, more so as she thought about it.

She sank back. It hurt too much for pain, but Joy just knelt there and seemed to hurt with her.

“Do you want to do this to me?” she asked, not sure if she weren’t trying to draw some blood.

“I asked to, Deborah. I’m not like some of Her slaves—She’s been experimenting with letting some of us have some willpower.”

“If you submit to her.”

“Yes.” Joy’s breathing caught, and Deborah gasped with her. It wasn’t just seeing Joy aroused; she could feel the undeniable seduction of it all being that easy. Just I’m yours, and peace forever.

Peace and wonderful sex.

She tried to think of a reason not to want it. “Why did you ask to—seduce me?”

Joy’s breath stopped in a different way. “Mistress showed me what She knew about you, about what you’d endured. That you’d had to do it alone.

“She said I could bring you in gently, and that if you—”

Deborah looked over at the window and shivered: something bright backlit the bronze eagle and from where she sat it was just a black silhouette, watching her with invisible eyes. She thought of going limp in its talons, aloft in the clouds.

She thought of Leda and the swan, from an old poem . . . feathered glory, loosening thighs . . .

“If I submitted willingly, she’d be—gentler?” Joy nodded, eyes wide.

“So—this was the most bent kind of sympathy-fuck I could have found?” She shocked herself with her own quiet venom, and she saw Joy felt worse for her than for herself. She realized she didn’t want to hurt Joy, but was too tired now to flip her feelings again, so soon.

Quietly, she explained, “I’m just sick of being so wounded. I can’t even relate to anyone. Even a friend could be setting me up, much less a lover.

“Now, the first time I actually go to bed with—” It was absurd, and she was convinced she was laughing, until she felt Joy’s hand on her thigh and couldn’t see her through the gold-lit tears.

Joy came no closer, but Deborah could feel Joy’s breath on her skin. “Deborah, when She takes your mind, no one else can take you. It will be the last time.”

Deborah blinked until she could see the other woman. “Are you like that, Joy? Just a robot, with nothing left for anyone else to take over?”

Joy did lean forward this time, and kissed Deborah delicately on her mons. “Not quite. She’s interested in how—unprocessed women think.”

Her voice roughened. “She’s conditioned me very powerfully, Deborah, to ensure She remains the only One I obey, and to make sure I obey properly.” She closed her eyes.

“God, just thinking about the reinforcement can, um . . .” She flushed beautifully under her gold. “What She does to me, to us, is—very effective. I don’t think any woman could resist for long. I won’t lie—if I were offered a night with you, or an hour under Her programming, I’d . . . beg . . . for Her treatment.

“And Deborah, I would kill and die, for a night with you.”

9.

Their eyes met, and Deborah was finding Joy’s passion for her as real as it had felt before.

Deborah could smell her, too, and almost said so. But she nodded.

She put her hand on Joy’s, and almost lost it to see how relieved she was.

“Joy?”

“Yes?” Her lips were so near, and so moist . . .

“. . . What if I say no? What if I’d rather go back to my miserable little life, where no one owns me?”

Joy kissed her knee, eyes closed, before looking back up. “Then I’d know I was right—you’re a stronger person than I was, with that choice. And I’d be honored to have served pleasure with such a free woman on the last night of her freedom.” She said it without a trace of threat—just admiration.

Deborah found herself wishing she’d had more time to know her—to talk about how someone like Joy had been caught up in this. But . . .

“Last night of—she’s going to take me either way, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Deborah. Mistress takes what She wants.”

“Will—you take me that way, Joy? If?” She felt herself getting wet. It would be terrible, for someone she was falling in love with to be the one who put the last collar on her soul—but by now opening to Joy’s betrayal seemed as hot as opening to her tongue.

Joy’s face froze for a moment and then her nostrils flared and her eyes closed as they rolled up. Deborah felt a moment of aroused panic as she wondered if Joy had just been triggered—but that close to her cunt, Joy was smelling her humidity now, and couldn’t help herself.

She was panting, but the heat seemed to help her focus. “I’m programmed for that kind of hunt, Deborah, but not this time, unless She overrides me. There are others, with that command in their minds. Programmed for you.”

Deborah thought about her last free thoughts dripping off her like sweat in another horizontal eternity with Joy, and felt herself starting to slip. She grasped for something.

“When she’s done with me, I’ll be programmed, too. Ready to be turned into a robot, if she wants, and sent out to wait for the next woman that . . .” doesn’t get snared in your lovely bare pussy “. . . says no to her?”

Joy nodded, and Deborah was appalled at how much the idea dampened her. She would just become what she feared, what she cursed her Masters and their like for being, but in the arousal there was something else. I want to do, not to be done to. I don’t always want to be the one losing the good fight.

After all that, the hidden shame was arousing her, too. She dripped, helpless to stop thinking it. She considered the eagle again—its freedom, its power. Even the falcon that perched on her owner’s glove and hunted on command was feared and admired for her deadly beauty. She thought of what that way cost, the little despairing cries, the thin sound of a spine snapping. She’d been living in that swooping shadow for so long.

If she surrendered to Mistress and fell under her spell, she could cast that shadow, instead.

I wonder—what bunnies taste like.

She closed her eyes. She didn’t know whether there was a Mistress at all, or whether she just used Joy as a pretty lure, a decoy whore, and had tricked a series of women into giving themselves up, melted by Joy’s supple beauty and vulnerability. Even if all was as Joy said, Mistress might decide Deborah’s purpose in life was to be a footstool, or a streetwalker. Then the spiral would spin or the subliminals would flicker until Deborah understood that was the Only Truth, and she’d end her life as prey that wanted to be torn.

But it sounded as though Mistress could make it feel good, whether she ate bunny or died as one.

She looked down, and felt herself melting. Joy was so gentle, so aware, so real. Deborah realized she was dangerously close to not caring—that Joy was someone she’d be as happy to be hurt by as to be cared for.

She did care, though. And something told her Joy did want her to feel good, not for any agenda but because Joy cared about her.

Deborah slipped some more, and very deliberately stopped hanging on.

“Joy, I never thought it would be this easy, or—” she put her hand out to cup Joy’s cheek, and felt it burn “—delightful to buy a life without pain.”

Joy trapped her hand and kissed it. “Oh, Deborah . . . there’s pain there, too.”

“What—kind?”

Joy looked into her—really into her. “Deborah, when I said you weren’t alone tonight, I meant it. Making love to you was beautiful, and part of it is because . . . I think I really do love you.”

She saw it rock Deborah and smiled, kissing her palm again. “Or I could. She may even let me. But even though I know I’m trying to ease your hurt, give you the best chance at happiness I have any way to grant—I’m also betraying you to a slaver. I’m a brainwashed pawn seducing you into being brainwashed yourself.

“I’m setting my love up to become something owned. That—hurts.

“And that’s the simple kind of pain.” She blinked. “But even when I’m hurting, even like this, I know it’s for Her, doing Her will. And so it’s all right.”

Deborah looked at her. “She’s—broken you.” She believed it, as she said it, but she believed the love that shone from Joy’s eyes, too.

“Yes.” Joy whispered it.

Deborah looked at her.

She slid off the couch, spreading her thighs to straddle one of Joy’s as she knelt against her, almost unable to swallow with how lovely Joy’s astonished face was as she neared it.

Kissing Joy deeply, she held her very close and made brief love to her ear before she whispered into it.

“I forgive you. And I’m glad you asked—Mistress—to be the one.”

10.

As they’d driven, it had seemed like they could go on forever, warm together in the car, with the destination something abstract. Deborah was happily losing herself in the pure now of being with Joy, and letting the future take care of itself.

But as they slowed into the sodium-orange brightness of the empty industrial park, she realized they were here, wherever here was. Where I stop being me for the last time.

Joy turned to her and took her hand. “Don’t be afraid, love. There won’t be any pain. There’s a—device She’s programmed us to use. It induces trance instantly and there’s no pain at all.” She felt Deborah’s tension. “You don’t even fall down,” she said, and they laughed.

“Have you felt it?” Deborah asked, mock-suspicious.

Joy’s pleasured sigh was not mock-anything. “Yes, Deborah. It’s—mmm. I’ m hypno-addicted, remember, so I may be biased, but it feels good. You lose all desire to resist, and with a little coaxing from a well-trained captrix, you lose the desire to think for yourself, too.

“I’ve used it, too.”

“On . . . ?”

Joy sighed again. “On anyone my Mistress aimed me at, Deborah. On women She wanted for Her own, and on others who tried to interfere.”

Deborah thought of her lover as some kind of slave-huntress, Mistress’ trained peregrine with the hood inside her mind, entrancing helpless women or stilling their desperate struggle with this—thing. But Joy had asked to put that aside, and instead treat her to a night of being held and licked and cherished, and a choice at the end. Not much of one, but the best Joy could offer.

She waited until Joy slowed for a ramp, and leaned over to kiss her. Neither of them said anything.

Joy took them up a couple of empty levels, and as they rolled toward a thick interior column flanked by an SUV and another car, Deborah realized again they were here and she was about to meet Mistress’ other kind of slavewoman. It felt absurdly like the last moments of a trip to meet the SO ‘s family, no more wondering or chances to back out.

It reminded her painfully of her own family, when they’d found their way to deal with what had happened to her.

It was easier than facing that last shred of paranoid nightmare. That once she’d lured her here, Joy would revert, the light in her eyes going out like swamp-phosporescence as she consigned Deborah to something and someone much crueler . . .

Deborah relaxed, and trusted.

Joy stopped the car.

People were getting out of the other vehicles.

Joy spoke her name softly, and she looked at Joy desperately. Joy took her head and kissed her. “Deborah. It will be smooth, and easy, and painless, and I’ll be with you. Just relax, and submit.

“I promise.”

She kissed Joy back. “I believe you, love. Thank you.” She saw the way Joy looked at her. “I won’t embarrass—”

It sounded so trivial. “I won’t dishonor you.”

Joy looked suddenly as though she were in great pain, but wonder surpassed it.

“Deborah, I need to tell you something. Most of what I told you before you—offered yourself to me and I had to tell you I was a slave, was true. I did belong to a man, and he used me as I told you. I mainly just left things out—such as the way Mistress came to own me.

“But one of the things that has been contrived is my name. I took ‘Joy’ for tonight because it’s very close to the name of someone I loved and still do. I wanted to say it before, when I came out to you as a slave—if you’d wanted to curse me, I didn’t want it to be her that you said it to.”

The others, Mistress’s slaves, were still and patient out there in Deborah’ s peripheral vision. She waited, letting the moment and herself belong to her lover—whoever she was.

“Her name was Joyce. She was one of Mistress’ slaves. One of Her best, most obedient, most dangerous slaves. Mistress gave me to her as a—pet. In the midst of everything else, she cared for me. Protected me. She—”

Deborah saw something familiar and wondrous in her eyes. “She did for you what you’ve been doing for me.”

Her lover had to stop, but she could nod.

They waited, and so did the others.

“Mistress controls my body, and more of my mind each day. But Joyce will be Queen of my soul until I don’t have one anymore.” Something was keeping her from crying, barely. Deborah was starting to know what it was.

I won’t dishonor you.

“Deborah, I think I know how she felt, now, and for that—if I were free—I would give you anything.”

Deborah looked at her. “I think you’ve already given me what I need. More than I ever dreamed I could have, anymore. But if I could ask one thing . . .

“What’s your real name?”

“My name is—Anita.”

Deborah looked at her. “I love you, Anita.

“Will I miss you? When they—hypnotize me?”

Anita breathed before answering. “I don’t know, Deborah. I don’t know what She plans for you; perhaps She’s waiting to see, Herself. She’ll want to know you before She chooses how to change you.

“But if She makes you forget me, it won’t hurt. I’ll just fade from your thoughts.”

Deborah didn’t say anything about that never happening.

“But I’ll still think of you, Deborah, and you’ll make me happy when I do.” She closed her eyes, and Deborah leaned to kiss her once more.

“Time, isn’t it?” Joy—Anita—opened her eyes and nodded.

They left the car, and Deborah looked at the slaves, aroused despite herself. There were three of them, all in dark leotards and boots. Two held large flashlights like weapons, and the third stood at attention, wearing a headset.

Deborah felt the cold grey eyes of the taller, stronger-looking one on her, and looked nervously to Anita for cues. Anita smiled at her, and said, “Undress.” She opened her jacket.

Deborah undid her belt, realizing why Anita had kept her from putting her underwear on before they’d left.

“Slave Anita.”

Anita pivoted as her skirt dropped, and faced the tall slave, at attention. Deborah felt exposed, wondering if this were the last way she’d see her lover. Perversely, it made her want to be naked sooner, and she lost her shirt and began shimmying out of her jeans.

“Yes, Controller?” Anita sounded excited but subdued, but not quite hypnotized.

“What are you doing?” The tall slave’s voice, like her face, seemed young, but her coiled-spring stillness and her pitiless stare made her seem—something else. Deborah started to wonder again about ending up robotic. About whether all that about Mistress’ curiosity were all the Anita-bot was programmed to believe so she could dupe the next victim convincingly.

Anita blinked. “Controller, I promised to be with her through it.” She looked over at Deborah, and smiled a very un-brainwashed smile. “She won’t be alone for it.”

The Controller looked at her, and for a moment Deborah wondered if she’d swing the light-weapon up and zap Anita into obedience. For another moment, she wanted to watch it happen.

Oh, I’m lost and fallen, all right. But then, so is the lover I want to see lose her willpower. Whom I may not remember an hour from now.

Then the Controller turned to the slave in the headset just as a red light blinked on it. As Deborah felt a chill at the impression that an eye had just opened to look at her, the slave closed her eyes and kept still and asleep until the light went out. She blinked awake.

“Mistress speaks,” she said, in a husky drawl. The Controller and the third slave—and Anita—went taut with focus, and Deborah stiffened with them.

“She approves of this. Slave Anita is to be induced and processed with the prey.”

“i must obey,” the Controller said.

Anita seemed to rouse herself and looked immediately at Deborah, reaching for her and stepping around the car, away from her discarded suit. Deborah stepped out of her jeans and went to take her hand.

“This is it.” Deborah looked into her eyes.

She tried to think of something to say.

“Like the candle,” she said, only then remembering why. She smiled as she saw Anita remember, too.

“Please. Command me. Make me look.”

Anita took her hand, and stared into her eyes. “When I tell you to, slave Deborah, gaze into the inducer and give up your will.”

“I must obey,” Deborah said, trying to keep her voice even. “Mistress.”

Anita’s eyes flared, and her voice was shaking with effort, too. “There is only one Mistress.”

Deborah locked eyes with her. “There is only one Mistress.” She breathed deeply. “Please thank her for me, slave Anita.”

Anita nodded sharply. “Look and obey, slave.”

They looked away from each other, and held hands very tightly as they stood and faced forward, together.

There was a flash.

Shimmering on her eyelids, Deborah thought she saw afterimages of Anita, candle-golden and smiling at her. She wasn’t sure, because her eyes might not be shut, just staring open. But before she could be sure, she stopping thinking, and the commands began.