The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

113B — Part 2

by connie k

Part II

We ran.

We climbed, we walked, we rested when we had to.

B and I had been on the move throughout the night. We needed the darkness to cover us, but I could see B was tiring out too. I figured we had been on the run about eight hours, it was somewhere around 4 a.m. I tried to guess how far we had come. Possibly 10-15 miles or so. It was all guesswork. We may have just been going around in circles.

At one point, we had reached the top of a big hill and could see distant lights. I wanted to head toward them, but we pressed on, not sure if the slavers were there waiting.

We had escaped, set free from the slave camp and Goddess and 8A and the women with their playmates and who knows who else. Freed from assembling those slavemakers with the other slaves whose names—their real names—I never knew.

We had crossed only one road, but we didn’t walk along it to flag a passing car. I knew this was a road they would be taking as they searched for us. Sooner or later, I hoped, we would hit a main highway or a large town, but I wasn’t going to wander around them in the middle of the night anyway. So we continued on.

I kept checking B’s face. She had been given a command and even though it had been given by me—another slave—she followed it dutifully, her eyes concentrating on her task. It may have helped, possibly the real reason why she followed it, that we were a couple. Joined by the rings between our legs. I was tired. Fortunately, our keepers had fed us well, kept us in good shape, allowed us restful sleep. We were able to travel a long way before our bodies told us to stop.

We came upon a thicket of dead trees and bushes with a bed of leaves to lie down on and sleep until morning. It was late summer or early fall, I figured. I wasn’t worried about running into a bear or a bobcat. Nothing could be worse than going back. Or was there?

Goddess was smart. Her slavery was a “good” slavery. She kept her mindless slaves content by treating them well, at least well enough in their own blank minds to keep them from thinking about any alternatives. Even the abuse I knew I received from 8A was just a dream now. Every time she did something horrible to me—and others—I didn’t remember what it was quickly afterward. I just smiled happily and returned to my room and B.

B curled up against me and I hugged her tightly before looking down.

“Sleep time, B.”

The internal clock that had been created in B’s mind had gone off long ago, but we had kept going. Now it was time for a slave to rest.

“Yes, D,” she said, holding me close. “Sleep time.”

My body was tired, but my clock had been smashed. I wasn’t sleepy, I was as wide awake as wide could be. For the first time in months. B slowly unzipped her suit, but I held her hand still.

“No, B. Keep your suit on. It may get cold.”

She looked at me quizzically, but put her arm back around my waist and shut her eyes. She fell asleep instantly.

I kissed her head and smelled her hair. Like a hundred times before it made my nipples stiffen reflexively. It was the first calm moment I’d had since before ... well, before I could even remember. I continued to have flashes of my past, my pre-slave life, but they were still mostly just images torn out and spread wide apart in my thinking so that I couldn’t fit any two together.

What I was thinking about in that quiet moment was what the hell was I going to do? I needed to find safety, find the police, find a doctor. Find someone! Then a horrific, sickening feeling washed over my body like hot, dirty water. My face flushed at the thought—Oh, God! Is anywhere safe?

I had been on that assembly line at least a month or two. Making those damned instruments. Five hundred a day for maybe 100 days. That’s 50,000! B may have been there longer than I had. Thousands of those things being produced.

For mass enslavement.

Maybe the whole world was being zapped by those things. And I was one of the few who knew. Even if I didn’t—still—know who I was yet. Will it just be women? All women? Or was it women first, then men? I was breathing rapidly, my heart pounded. But B slept on even as I began to shake. What do I do?

Looking at B, my slave wife, I forced myself to think about what I had been trying to avoid. What do I do with B? I wanted to believe that I could escape, really escape, make it to somewhere safe or at least keep hiding long enough for a miracle. But I had dragged B with me, an impulse I couldn’t ignore or explain. Now, I feared for her more than myself. I had endangered her even as I set her free.

If we were caught, which I still assumed we would be in time, she would suffer for my actions. If we were rescued what would happen to her? Had I handed her a one-way ticket to a rubber room? Or worse? I knew in that moment what worse was—being separated.

The clever trick of my captors. Of Goddess. Dependency. I realized I would never have tried to escape, even with all of my mind back in my head, without her. I couldn’t have. And I didn’t know why.

The first flashes of sunlight through the trees woke me. B was already awake, still clinging to me. I had managed a couple of hours of sleep. It had to be after six. Time to wake, eat and have sex, then join the others for exercise and additional programming. But not today.

Here we were in some distant forest in some unknown part of the world. I kissed her forehead and B began to grind into me. Morning sex. It’s odd the things you think about when you can’t think clearly. I knew we had to keep moving, needed to find food and water. Needed to be rescued. Instead, I leaned into her and we began to make love.

Somewhere in the middle of our lovemaking ... I remembered my name.

* * *

Our pace had slowed considerably. We stopped running. We took more breaks. We hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for 24 hours and it was starting to take a toll on us. Worse yet, it didn’t feel like we were getting any closer to civilization. We had crossed one road and passed one small town. Other than that, we didn’t see anything. No power lines, no truck tracks, no hiking trails.

It had been overcast all night, so I couldn’t even pretend I was following the stars to keep us in one direction. The sun rose behind clouds and I steered us away from it, hoping by some chance we would run into the Pacific. But I couldn’t smell it in the air. I could smell rain.

It poured. A deluge. We were soaked through our silver bodysuits in seconds. We needed to find shelter. I was about to tell B we needed to start running again when she stopped suddenly and lifted her head skyward, her eyes closed. The look on her face was so ... happy, it was as if she had never felt rain on her skin before.

“B? Are you okay?”

“D,” she said, looking so lovely with the rain cascading down her face, “where am I?”

“We’re going home, B. Do you remember where you live? Where you were born? Do you remember your name?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but B had spent a full day away from the camp. She missed her session in the room. Missed her orgasm reward. Missed whatever fun and games Goddess would normally have played at her expense. B shook her head, not having an answer for me. Still, I could see she was questioning. Starting to think for herself.

I’m not sure what made me think of it, but I wanted to make love to B again, right there. Not because there was just a little more of the woman peeking out behind the slave. It was just the opposite. I thought this situation would be a whole lot simpler if B just continued to go along with it. And maybe, if it was remotely possible, I could keep from caring more about her the less “human” she was. If she just stayed a slave.

I cursed my selfish, stupid self. I blamed my sudden insanity on fatigue.

I took her hand and we started running through the rain. There’s something to be said for luck. We had been lucky all along. Luck found us again. We reached a road. It was rural and empty, but as we fast-walked alongside it I could see a couple of other side roads intersecting it. There had to be houses close by.

Headlights suddenly appeared and I pulled B back into the bushes. A white van zoomed past. Dammit! They were still searching for us, even here, still close. I regretted trying to travel in one direction now. They could guess how far we had traveled and obviously where. Just not exactly where.

I felt a sting on the bottom of my foot and looked down. We had run for miles, climbed hills and over rocks, but all it took was a shower of rain to dissolve our silver slippers. There was no choice now. We needed shelter immediately. There was no way we could continue through the wilderness barefoot.

We reached one of the side roads and turned down it. The rain had let up and I could see two houses through the gray. It was after midday, so if our luck held, someone would be home in one of them. We cut through the trees and approached the first house away from the road in case it was being staked out.

There was nothing. No cars, no lights. At least we’d be able to break in, maybe find some water and dry clothes and wait for the owners to return. And we’d be saved.

I had no idea what I was going to say as I knocked, but it didn’t matter. No one was home. Or had been for awhile. it was more like a hunting cabin. I smashed the plate-glass window on the back door and broke in. No running water, no electricity, no gas. But there was bottled water in the warm fridge and a few canned goods.

We feasted on cold chili, mushrooms and soup. There was only men’s clothes in the closets, but we managed to find a few tees and sweatpants and socks. B was shivering and I threw a blanket over her. There were candles and matches, but I made sure to cover the windows with blankets before lighting them. Then we slept.

* * *

I was staring deeply into B’s eyes.

We were standing face to face, although I couldn’t tell I was even standing. The soft scritch behind my ear from Goddess had melted my mind and my body felt as if it was shrinking down and pooling at my feet.

Goddess gracefully moved behind B. She placed Her hands on top of B’s head, but Her eyes were fixed on mine. She slowly ran her hands down her head ... along her temples, over her ears and down ... down her neck and spreading across her shoulders.

“Let it all go, 113B,” Goddess said in a way that made me moisten no matter how wrung out I was. B’s eyes closed from the words and her touch. “Emptying out, falling, dropping ... inch by inch and thought by thought. All the way down, until your are half of what you were, half of what you are.”

I could feel, then, the piercing in my labia. I had been sliced and stapled for a gold ring. I looked at B and down. Her pussy was inflamed from arousal and the matching gold which newly hung from her right outer lip.

Half. Goddess was emptying B in half. A sensation, stimulating and deadening at once, covered my body. What is half of nothing? It’s what I was too. What B was becoming. Goddess had emptied my mind first, but only half. Half-thoughts. And half of what 112D was. As I stood there staring into 113B’s eyes, I could almost see her as split in half as I was. One side of her dreamed away.

Goddess’ caresses had rested at B’s elbows, so she started again ... her hands like a cracked eggs slowly dripping down B’s head. Her eyes fluttered even while they were closed. Goddess pinched her fingers around B’s earlobe and B let out the loudest, deepest moan I had ever heard. She came.

It’s hard now to even talk about. What Goddess did to us. She had taken half of me away and filled the gaps in my thinking with nothing but Her. Now, she was emptying B just enough to fill the rest of her ... with me.

“112D will be your Advisor, 113B. You will obey her. Serve her. Care for her. You are now ... her slave ...”

* * *

I woke up to the sound of an engine. I quickly blew out the candle I had left burning and peeked under the blanket covering the window. It was a van. The slavers. They were heading toward the second house. I knew it was just a matter of time before they came here, noticed the broken window and found us.

I woke B up and we hurriedly pulled on the three pairs of socks we’d found in place of shoes.

“We have to go, B. Hurry!”

We were outside in less than a minute and pushed our way back through the trees which paralleled the main road. Then we stopped. I took a deep breath.

“B, I need you to listen to me very carefully and obey. We need to split up.”

I told B what I planned to do, what I needed to do and what she needed to do. Then I repeated it ... “Listen and obey.” And her response: “I will.”

The second time I went through my plan with her, B’s face changed from being focused on my instructions to one of sadness and fear, softening her eyes. I had been so caught up in my fight to regain who I was that I forgot that B had been nearly two days away from her programming—the flashlights and the commands and the sex—and she was fighting the same fight I was. She was trying to figure out who she was. And, beyond that, I could see her trying to make sense of the feelings she had for me—her slave wife. Forced together and now glued to strongly together that it was no longer something that could be managed. It just was.

“D?” she said quietly. “I don’t want you to go.”

I threw my arms around her and we held each other tightly. This wasn’t a programmed response, not the perverted dependency Goddess had pierced into our minds. It was love and friendship and intimacy as real and as true as any I had ever felt. I knew that.

I also knew this was the only chance we had for one of us to be rescued.

We reached the main road, but stayed hidden in the foliage. I gave B one of my pairs of socks and the last bottle of water. I told her exactly what she needed to do again—wait an hour after she saw another van and walk up the road to find a ride or an occupied house. I was going to head in the opposite direction.

I was going to head back down.

I kissed her hard and tried to smile. Her face looked much younger, almost childlike, wide-eyed and fearful. I kissed her again, stood up and headed out. She grabbed my hand.

“Kristina. My name is Kristina.”

* * *

I walked back. Must have been two hours. But I knew where I was—a road sign with the state of Washington around the Route 763.

It was still evening so someone had to come down this road sooner or later. With every step, however, I grew more and more worried about B—Kristina—alone and half-awake. I worried that she would be lost and never found.

I saw headlights approaching. A red pickup was heading toward me and I waved for it, nearly in the middle of the road. I heard a horn and had to jump back as the truck zoomed past me, the honk blaring at me even after it had passed. No Good Samaritan there.

My wait for a ride didn’t last long. In the opposite direction, a white van drove toward me slowly. I stopped. Those damned vans were like ants. Everywhere. I was at least 20 miles from the camp, the prison, and they were only a truck horn away from me the whole time.

Two people got out of the van, strangely enough one was a guy. But it was the woman who approached me.

“Slave 113B?”

“No,” I answered, almost insulted she couldn’t tell us apart. “This is 112D. 113B is gone.”

She just stared at me. I was waiting for an instrument to be raised or, at least, handcuffs. Instead, she just stood there, not really looking me over but not looking away either. I was about to make a wiseass comment when a second van pulled up. Two women got out. One was 8A.

She walked straight up to me and gave me that familiar sneer. “Goddess misses you, slave 112D. I missed you.”

“113B is dead, Advisor. She fell. I don’t remember exactly where.”

“I see,” she said, still sneering. “Goddess is pleased you are unharmed.”

She lifted the device in her hand and I almost shut my eyes, yet I knew 8A would find a way—a more unpleasant way—of zapping me. So I looked at it.

Wang! It’s hard even now to describe what it looked like as the flashing, multi-colored lights hit my eyes. They swirled. They turned everything off.

The only part of my brain that worked could feel my sweatpants being yanked down and 8A’s fingers pressing into me. My nipples pulled. There was no real sensation, just acceptance, until even that faded. I was a tiny boat that had sprung a leak—sinking around the nothingness of water which filled me as I dropped until I was completely covered ... and under.

* * *

The lingering effects of the mind-zap from 8A’s flashlight still clouded my thinking as I sat in “the room.” How long I had been blanked out I couldn’t say, but it felt like it was a long time. Six hours maybe? I was kidding myself. It could have been six weeks.

My arms were strapped down but my legs were free. A large disk instead of the video monitor dangled before my eyes. I looked for 8A and her sneering face, but I was alone. I had willingly surrendered myself to the slavers. That decision never felt so wrong.

“You will not be punished,” a voice said softly in my ear. Her voice. Goddess. Commanding and teasing at once. It should have calmed me, what she said, but it didn’t. I knew some kind of punishment lay ahead, whether either of us looked at being mindfucked that way.

“Where is B?” I knew Goddess knew that B was still alive, not dead in the woods somewhere.

“Mmmm,” Goddess purred. I couldn’t be sure if it was a sound of pleasure, approval or surprise. “She’s still free, as of now. But it shouldn’t be much longer. I’m afraid you won’t be seeing her again in either case for quite some time.”

The reality of my decision to leave B behind hit me like a brick between my eyes.

“It ... it wasn’t her fault. I took her with me.”

“I know that, slave. But she has been contaminated and will need to be reprocessed. As you will be shortly.”

Goddess was disarming with her precision and coldness. Still, there was an underlying current of security which flowed into me. I’d felt it before even if I had no conscious memory of it. I can’t explain the contradiction even now. For as much as I hated this woman and what she did to me and B and hundreds, maybe thousands, like us, I wanted her to fuck my mind and body and leave me an empty shell for her to fill with whatever she desired as a result.

“I don’t know where she is.”

There was a long, deafening silence. I imagined Goddess mulling over whether what I said was a lie or the truth. Then I realized it didn’t matter. She’d know everything I knew soon enough.

“Eyes forward, slave. You will now be reprocessed.”

I heard a low hum in my head like feedback from an amplifier. And before me, the circular wheel of the large instrument began to spin. A giant flashlight. I won’t be waking up from this.

“Wait! I have one last thing to say!”

After a long moment, the sound shut off, but the wheel continued to spin, although the light had not been turned on.

“Yes, slave 112D?”

“I won’t remember. I won’t remember anything and B will be gone. But ... please, don’t remove my wedding ring!”

The bright lights shined in my eyes and the colored disk began to spinnnnnnn ...

* * *

It’s funny the things I remember after having my soul stolen a second time and locked away somewhere in the empty void of mind-controlled slavery.

All those days on the assembly line were condensed to moments, images—like staring at a painting of it, never changing until we were herded out like lambs.

I still have no memory of all the different things 8A, my Advisor, did to me. Before or after I ran away. I just knew they were all bad. The weird yoga classes in my memory were no different than watching an exercise video alone in my living room, following the commands completely detached.

Yet I remember making love with B. Not every second, but pretty close. In the shower, on the floor and the hundreds of times in that tiny bed in our tiny room.

Strongest of all, however, is my memory of that day I spent with Her.

I had been processed again—reprocessed—but this time I was aware of my surroundings, not oblivious to them. I knew I was controlled, but my awareness was allowed to run free. Maybe She liked the diversity. Playing with a mindless slave had to get kinda boring at some point. So She let me know what was going on, although I was powerless to stop it. Powerless to say no.

I could see on Her face a mix of amusement and curiosity. I was Her lab rat running through a maze in my own head and she was looking to see what would fix and hold in the way I responded. The way my body reacted to Her.

I was kneeling below Her as She stared down at me, observing where my eyes went or if my body trembled as I knelt there long enough to feel the strain on my knees and back.

I was in Her bedroom, 20 times bigger than my slave quarters, yet not fancy. It was just a bedroom with a bed, a vanity, a couple of long couches and a small desk. Behind the desk were mounted video monitors—more than a dozen—Her eyes ever watchful on the compound and inside some of the rooms.

She ran her fingers deeply through my short hair and Her nails grazed along my scalp. I shivered. My neck stretched up to increase the sensation. A sensation I felt all the way down to my toes. I was a live wire. I knew if I were to feel a lick at my earlobe or a pinch to my nipple I would cum like I had never cum before. Even now, I can’t say what my initial reaction was to the realization of what I had been turned into.

I was Her sextoy.

“You’ll be returned to the factory for the time being, slave. But eventually you will be moved into quarters down the hall. Does that thought please you?”

Now I knew what happened to 113A and 112C. They were part of Her harem of fucksluts. As I was now. It’s possible She didn’t know that it was an act of God, a lightning strike, 20,000 volts and a fraction of an amp that broke Her spell. She may have thought I had the strength of will to shatter Her programming and wanted to completely soak my mind in a new directive that I couldn’t resist. That of a slut.

Or She might have just liked the way I looked.

“Yes, Goddess.”

She spread her legs slightly and dropped my chin just low enough so that I was staring right into Her open flesh.

Above that, Her bush had been shaved so exactly and carefully that it looked as if it had been tattooed into her skin. Her hairs curled in a circle, round and round into a spiral. It was obvious She didn’t do it Herself. One of Her toys must have spent an hour trimming every hair perfectly so that as I looked at it I nearly fell headfirst into the coils of fur.

“Breathe, slave,” She said. “Breathe me in deeply. Long, slow, deep breaths in and out. In and out.”

It was wide and moist and dark red. Thick from endless attention. It literally glistened like an open mouth begging for a kiss.

I breathed Her in. It wasn’t sweet like B’s or odorless like the older woman whom Goddess had mind-zapped after my servicing her. It was ambrosia. There’s no other way to describe it. Its scent made my nipples hurt from need, my own pussy cried a thousand tears just inhaling it.

“Focus on My gift, slave. Gaze into My womanhood and lose yourself.”

She didn’t need to tell me. I wanted to. I don’t even think I blinked. I kept breathing Her in, staring at Her open, wet maw of a pussy. It was all and I was nothing.

She touched my nose with Her finger and ran it upward slowly, along my forehead and across my scalp. All the way back to the base of my skull. I squirted. I felt the splash against my knees and orgasmed just from Her touch.

I stared harder, if it was possible, and breathed deeper. She made my eyes beg before touching my nose again, drawing a line with Her finger all along my scalp and stopping at the back of my neck. I squirted again, climaxing with a hot stream of fluid that could just as honestly been my soul turned to cum.

She did it again and again and again. I was a faucet of lust and She turned the knob off and on with every slow, seductive stroke against my head. Between my eyes, over my forehead and along my scalp. After God knows how many times, She did something else to me. Up the bridge of my nose and back, all the way back, the light touch of Her finger plowed a deep trench into my brain until She reached the back of my skull.

And pressed.

I moaned. A hundred, no a thousand, orgasms rocked my body so hard that I shook and spasmed to the point of almost losing focus on the drooling pussy before my eyes. I didn’t need to look down—I couldn’t look at anything but Her—to know that a puddle had formed between my trembling legs.

I didn’t even touch Her. I just breathed and stared and came. Until I passed out.

* * *

Kristina had done everything I told her. She hid and waited. A white van passed. An hour later, she began walking up the road looking for just the right kind of vehicle to come along. She did as she was “commanded.”

She had managed to get a ride from two teenage boys coming home from the movies, who stopped to pick up the gorgeous blonde hitchhiker in the tee and sweats, thinking they had struck the mother lode. But they quickly realized from her manner and exacting requests—plus the fact that they were just two regular kids out for the night—to leave things at small talk ... and took her to the nearest hospital.

I knew of none of this, of course. I was now 278C, back on the assembly line at station 12, not 23. Every day for eight hours I screwed in the tiny yellow and red bulbs into the instruments, then replaced them on the conveyor for 101B to do the same with the blue and green ones.

101B. My new mate. As with the others, I didn’t wonder about what happened to 101A, why they weren’t partnered. Everyone had a part to play. 101A was probably gone, or dead, but more likely serving Goddess in some other capacity. Maybe another fuckslut.

And in the evening I would lie in bed with 101B after heated, mindless, meaningless sex. I had no idea how many days I had been back. It may have only been one or two. I had been rebrainwashed to serve Goddess and the unknown others who ran the camp.

An alarm went off. I was conscious of the sound only because it was out of the ordinary, like the flickering lights from the storm that had freed me. Although I had no memory of that freedom. Or of 113B. I still screwed in the bulbs on instrument 224, but Goddess had left me aware enough to know that something was going on.

This was different. There was activity, hurried movements from the Advisors who circled the room. The conveyor belts stopped and we were all ordered to move quickly out the second door, not the one that led to the compound. We all submissively obeyed.

Once outside, we were herded into trucks and vans. No reward orgasm today. I had instinctively clutched 101B’s hand as we sat together on padded benches in the bed of a large truck, which sped out of the camp so quickly the 16 of us inside were jostled around like rag dolls. I can still recall looking at 101B’s face, blank and unfocused, with her mouth half-opened as if wanting to speak but unable.

I don’t know how long we were on the road but the brakes slammed, throwing us together, then we moved in reverse, then forward. Then stopped again.

The last thing I remember, remember as 278C, was sitting on the wet grass nearly hypnotized by the flashing red and blue lights atop the cars which had blocked off the road or pulled up alongside a few of the trucks.

Twenty trucks. Two hundred women. And 101B sitting next to me just as blank as I must have looked. Maybe 300 yards from the Canadian border.

* * *

I ate as if I had been starved. Slept as if I had never slept. Different rooms full of different faces asking me questions which I can’t recall even now. The work they did to put my mind back together.

I had a recurring dream. Of a girl standing before a full-length mirror in a sharp, navy blue suit. She was going to her first day of work at her new job. Thinking how lucky she was to have survived the job interview with her meager resume and wild haircut and being selected for this very special position.

She didn’t even need to drive to work. Someone was going to pick her up for some kind of special orientation, she had been told. Climbing into the back of the van, seeing the other eager, nervous faces there.

A video screen had been mounted inside and they were all told to watch it, study it, fix their eyes upon it—the company video. The chance of a lifetime ...

My eyes opened. I saw her golden hair curled on her shoulders, her bright blue eyes and a smile which spoke to me of a distant love and profound relief.

“B ...”

I lunged forward from the hospital bed and hugged her tightly, feeling her arms close around me. I heard her sigh, matching my own, and I closed my eyes wanting only the sensation of her arms, her breasts against mine and her breath upon my neck.

I didn’t want to let go. Ever! But her hands pressed against my shoulders as she laid me back against the pillows, he face suddenly sad behind the smile and maybe even a little embarrassed.

“Margaret, I never thought I’d see you again. I never thought. I prayed so hard.”

I wanted to hug her again, but something held me back. Like a wall was between us. It wasn’t just a wall. It was the real world. I could see the face above me wasn’t the face of 113B. Not anymore. It was the face of Kristina Keenan. The woman inside I didn’t know at all.

We looked at each other hoping the other would say something. There was still a connection we both felt, but it had been torn by time and memory. The bond we had shared and would never forget. And never remember.

She turned slightly toward the other person in the room who stepped forward. I didn’t even look, keeping my eyes on her neckline, her ear, her cheek.

“Margaret,” she said. “This is Paul. My husband.”

The words didn’t sink in, not right away, as my eyes moved to the handsome young man at the foot of my bed smiling nervously. I felt Kristina’s fingers leave my knee and saw them clutch his hand.

“Hello, Margaret,” he said. “Thank you for saving my girl. It was a very brave thing you did. I’m so happy you made it out of there too.”

Out of there. My girl. Her hand. My husband. Paul.

“Hello, Paul.”

Only they could tell you what the look on my face was like. I don’t think I was smiling. But I wasn’t sad either. Strangely enough, I wasn’t thinking that my wife was really the wife of someone else. Or that I was free. Or not even about the girl in my dream looking back at me. The woman I was and was again.

No. What I was thinking about was Her.

“We can come back later. If you want? You look tired.”

“Yes!” I blurted it out more than I had meant to. “Yes. I’d like that. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

We all smiled.

“I’m happy for you, Kristina. Paul.”

I ran my hand up and down her arm supportively. As she rose from the bed, she nodded to Paul, who gave me a quick wave before leaving. Kristina waited for him to go.

Then she looked at me as if she wanted to say a million things but they were out of reach. She slowly pulled on the thin chain around her neck and my eyes widened at what I saw dangling from it. Her ring. Our ring. Around her neck. In that moment, as if in fast motion, all those hours of lovemaking showed in her eyes.

Her eyes began to fill.

“I’ll let you get some sleep.”

She turned quickly and hurried out without looking at me again. I knew she wouldn’t be back.

I stared at the ceiling. The memories of my life were all falling into place. Remembering who I was. Remembering other things too. I reached between my legs and under the hospital gown I wore. My fingers stroked it slowly. There was only one there. On the right. It hadn’t been removed or replaced.

Goddess hadn’t remarried me. Maybe I hadn’t been back long enough. Maybe She honored my plea out of some perverse act of generosity. Maybe She thought I’d be easier to control this way. I didn’t know.

I bend at the waist and twirled the ring in my fingers, looking for the inscription I knew was there. Reading it, I felt myself sinking, quickly and deeply. Half in shock, half in the familiar grasp of my slavemind. I forgot who I was. There was only one thought in my head as it emptied out across the bed. I read it again.

112D-GODDESS

I hadn’t been married to 113B, although she had been linked to me. My future slave to her future Advisor. No. I was Hers.

“Please don’t remove my wedding ring!”

* * *

The authorities had shut down the camp. All the women there freed. But it was the only one they found. I knew there were more. And as the days and weeks went by, I was given periodic updates from various people who still came by my new apartment to ask more questions. Questions that would never be answered.

Never. Because She had gotten away.

The men in the suits assured me that it was just a matter of time. That She would be caught. That the slave ring would be destroyed. I would just nod and smile and thank them. And got on with my life.

Yet there are nights, as I sit up in bed fighting the flashes of memory of all that had been done to me, when the truth glares back at me from the shadows.

They will never find Her.

But one day, She will find me.