The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The Passageway – Chapter 2 Arriving on the other side.

Jackie had forgotten how beautiful the campus was, strewn with palm trees, with views of the water from nearly every angle, the sun bright and dazzling off the modern glass buildings. She lined up for orientation and waited as the upperclassmen went by. The gym was more like an arena, with sections marked off for freshmen, sophomores, and transfers. She aimed for the freshmen, deciding to settle in early so that she could introduce herself to a few people and hopefully have better luck than on the flight from Indiana.

She almost crashed into a pair of blondes in tight jeans who were having an intense conversation. “You be careful now, Liz. I hear a lot of them don’t even finish. Guess y’all get spoiled rotten in there.”

“Don’t fuss, I’ll be fine,” the slim one in the red t-shirt said. “What do you think, hon?”

With a start, Jackie realized the girl was talking to her. “What? Sorry. I was just looking for dorm assignments. Either of you with Jackie Morris? That’s me. Hi.”

“Hi, yourself. Don’t tell me you weren’t looking for a friend, either. How you think we ended up talking like this? Carlene, by the way, and she’s Liz. Lucky devil got the gold card for being in volleyball,” the taller blonde explained in a thick, slow drawl. Jackie had to take a moment to process the words.

“You sure about that luck? I heard some stories... but I’m starting to think they just want to scare us so we don’t flame out freshman year,” Jackie said.

“Yeah, well, you two go on and get lectured. We get to go straight to the dorm and unpack,” Liz said, her drawl not quite as thick but still present. “Think y’all get assigned after the lecture, but they want you to check in first. Something like that. Didn’t pay attention once I realized I didn’t have to.” She beamed and flashed the gold ID card before heading off with her stuff.

“So, like I was saying, I’m Jackie. I’m from right outside Indy. You?”

Carlene’s eyes lit up. “You like Sprint then? My whole family’s into racing. Used to drive a little bit myself. Big brother went to trade school—he races demo on the weekends. He’s mighty good at crashing. I realized there might be a little more to life than going fast—like figuring out how to go faster!”

“Jeff Gordon is ours and you can only borrow him,” Jackie replied, knowing just enough to carry the conversation. Carlene seemed like someone she could talk to—not too weird, down to earth, funny, friendly, well-endowed—whoa, there, Jackie, where’d that one come from? she thought, putting the brakes on that train of thought in a hurry.

“Aww, shoulda known. Well, ’round my parts we still call it Winston Cup, like real racers, but I can teach you. Speaking of Winston, wanna step outside?” Carlene asked, offering Jackie a cigarette.

“That’s really nice of you, but...” Jackie trailed off, looking for a polite refusal.

Carlene smiled knowingly. “Pretty city girl! Ha, no wonder you like Jeffy. I’ll be back in a few.” She followed a few other smokers to the designated smoking area on one of the balconies. Jackie went back to wandering around the freshman zone.

“JACKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!” came a familiar shriek. Jackie braced for impact as Lissy bounded up to her. “Well, first of all, that punk diva wouldn’t even look at me, except to say that I was, like, bound to be a whore just ’cause I like short skirts and Molly is, like, totally awesome. And second, you know why Molly’s totally awesome? She invited me to dance team tryouts! Said I can sleep with the football team that way!”

“Right. Because you’re not a whore,” Jackie deadpanned.

“Pssh! I mean, like, in their dorm! With the other dancers! So I can totally blow—blow this joint!” Lissy said, giggling with triumph before strutting away with the rest of the VIP students.

And if there is a merciful God, that’s the last time I am ever going to have to deal with Felicity Olson, Jackie thought, continuing to wander until an announcement came over the loudspeakers to line up by last name. She joined the rest of the Ms, fended off bad come-on lines, got her room assignment, then found a seat, waving Carlene over to join her.

Carlene looked a little less confident than she had before. “Dang, these places are seventeen floors tall? Only thing I ever saw that tall was the water tower and the bank building downtown. Makes me kinda nervous,” she said.

Jackie mostly muffled her laughter. Toned, muscled, tough enough to drive a race car, and hot as hell, and she’s afraid of heights? she thought, quickly following that with Why does being hot as hell matter? “Actually, they’re 20 stories,” she said. “Think about it this way—you can see all the way out past the beach from up there.“

Carlene smiled back, her hazel eyes crinkling up at the corners and her face softening. It made her look more girlish, as if her racer attitude and rough demeanor were to let her be taken more seriously as a person instead of as a spectacular set of breasts. If I don’t pass out from trying not to inhale the cigarette smoke, I think I’ve got a friend, Jackie realized. “So what are you in for?” she asked.

“Engineering. Go faster! And do it without getting your fool self set on fire!” Carlene said, and they were off exchanging notes—engineering had lots of math, and Jackie’s math major would be welcome in a lot of engineering disciplines.

Finally, the dean got on the mic, and the room went quiet as he began his speech. “When you walk through that door, your life as you know it ceases to exist!” he thundered, and despite herself Jackie gasped, remembering Laura and the urban legend. It started to fit with the behavior of the cool kids.

It was Carlene’s turn to ease Jackie’s fears. “You scared by one of them motivational speeches? Please! He just means we ain’t little kids anymore. Yeah, he could be a touch less dramatic, but if he were doin’ that, he wouldn’t be speechifying properly,” she said in an almost motherly tone.

Jackie remembered the ghost stories, but decided to save them for a late-night get-together at some point when midterms were getting to them and they’d made friends to swap the stories with.

As they headed out to the dorms, Jackie got a closer look at what Laura had meant by the passageways. All the buildings were connected—five towering skyscrapers with all the academic facilities, then four twenty-story buildings, then two grandiose thirty-story buildings at the very back of the campus. She was sure that there was enough room to house all twenty-five thousand students and then some. Sky bridges linked all the buildings in intricate patterns, but the two in the back were especially grand, coated in marble with gleaming gold roofs. It looked like they had their own set of amenities—dining hall, rec rooms, laundry, everything—from the peeks she could sneak through the thick hedges and over the high walls.

Her dorm was on the 18th floor of the building closest to the center buildings, but the significance of that didn’t sink in until she saw the first of the connectors on her way up, sealed off by a metal blast door with an electronic lock like a bank vault. “Don’t even think about it without an invite pass,” one of the upperclassmen warned her. “You better be one of them to set foot near there.”

Jackie rolled her eyes and headed upstairs to her room, right across from the passageway doors. The rooms in this building were even bigger than in the building she’d toured—plenty of room for two, and only two, judging from the beds. She unpacked her bag and got comfortable on the bed, pulling out her phone to let her mom know she was okay.

OMG I love it here!!! I love it here!!! I love it here!!! the text on the screen read. Jackie didn’t recognize the number, but the area code was familiar. Oh, she realized. Lissy. Drat.

Quickly, she texted back, So do I, but I’m going to wait until my first class before I get excited. That out of the way, she started to dial her mother, but the phone rang before she was halfway through the number.

“Oh my God, you don’t get it! This dorm is SOOOOO AWESOME! You should sign up for tryouts, and then they’ll let you in! You need to see this, Jackie! Like, totally need to!” Lissy squealed.

“I’m sure you can show me,” Jackie said, disconnecting and trying again to dial her mother.

Again, the phone rang while she was dialing. “Nuh-UH! You gotta earn it, but just sign up for dance or cheer! They’re so awesome—you don’t even have to make the team, just try out! Molly is SO cool about it! We can totally even room together!” Lissy yelled.

Gosh, doesn’t that make me want to put an ice pick up my nose. “Let me see if I can balance class and lunch first before babysitting you. Go enjoy your new friend, okay?” She hung up again and tried dialing again.

The phone rang again, and this time Jackie let it ring while entertaining gruesome thoughts of throwing Lissy out the window. “What do you want?” she demanded on the third ring.

“Can I, like, come over and tell you why you just HAVE to do this? Because you totally do, because it’s totally awesome!”

“Okay, fine, if it means you will stop stalking me. Let me call my mom first? Like I’ve been trying to do the last three times you called me?” Jackie didn’t wait for an answer before hanging up and finally getting through to her mother. “Hi, Mom, I—hang on, there’s a landline in here and it’s ringing.”

“Your friend is at the passageway,” announced a computerized voice on the landline. “Your friend is at the passageway. Your friend is at the passageway. Your friend—”

Jackie hung up the landline and said into the cell phone, “Hang on a sec? Lissy Olson has been stalking me non-stop since we got here, and I have to go distract her with something shiny.”

The blast door opened in a burst of blinding light and emitted Lissy, who launched herself at Jackie with a shriek of “HIIIIIIIIIII!”

Jackie slipped out of the borderline sexual harassment and said, “Um, hi.” Once she had safely backed away and reestablished some modicum of personal space, she got a good look at Lissy’s new outfit: gold hot pants that looked like they’d been sprayed on, tennis shoes with high cotton socks, and an Atlantic Coast t-shirt cut so that the whole world could see she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Lissy twirled proudly. “Dance team clothes! Been really busy! So busy! Very busy! Tryouts are Monday! You gotta do it! You need to do it! Life in there is SO fucking awesome! You have to come with me! You have to! You just have to!” she said, drawing breath approximately twice in the middle.

And I thought she was dumb as a box of rocks before. I guess being around her own kind makes her even dumber. Well, cheerleaders are supposed to be dumb, so she’s ahead of the curve there, Jackie thought.

“Wow. All this over actual meat in the caf and maybe a pool? You do have simple tastes, Felicity. Maybe I’ll see you in class,” she said with a smirk.

“Um, like, okay?” Lissy stood there and stared as Jackie walked away. Jackie watched the dismissal slowly make its way through Lissy’s brain until it hit with a petulant pout. Lissy went to the blast door and keyed in a code. The door swung open with another flare of bright light that Lissy stared into for a few moments before walking through it.

As Jackie went back to her room, she heard an unfamiliar voice singing. “She don’t believe in shooting stars, but she believe in shoes and cars...” The voice turned out to belong to a light-skinned black girl wearing ass-hugging jeans and a glittering bronze shirt, who was singing along with the stereo she’d set up on the opposite side of the room from Jackie’s stuff.