The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The international market in Waikiki was a grotto of tropical foliage that surrounded and filled, and wove a dark green canopy over the shops. The broad leaves lent their color to everything beneath. Tourists like languid tropical birds drifted between the Tiki style hut boutiques, and lingered over the open tables and kiosks of shells and coral, carvings, tee-shirts.

A young, bearded, dark man stood in the shadows near the rear of the market, where the broad leafed plants and surrounding buildings narrowed into a darkening tunnel, above a pool of black water where immense koi drifted like random thoughts. He was not a tourist, to judge by his simple, smoke gray collared shirt and worn blue jeans. Or more to judge by his stillness. He stood straight, with one hand on the bamboo railing, as though he were in fact a Tiki god, staring with blind, carved eyes.

A balcony lounge above him became a center of lunchtime activity, but the foliage offered such excellent acoustic insulation that the loud conversation and pop music was only a jabbering hum to his ears.

The sharp blue eyes and longish nose aimed through the crowded market with a hound’s intensity. Forty feet away, a huge banyan bulged from the side of the market. Garish curtains had been arranged between the clumps and walls of aerial roots to form a little closed space. Over the entrance was an ornately, but slightly amateurishly painted sign: “The Magic Tree / Fortune Teller / Tarot and Palm Reading.”

The man watched as the fortune teller entered her little banyan shop. She wore the ridiculous faux gypsy scarves and bangles of her profession, but beneath all that her face had a lovely simplistic composure like a woman from the paintings of Rubens or Bougereau. The locks of hair that tumbled around her face were night dark, but glowed red in the rare sparkles of light that hit them. The hand that hung out a smaller sign—“Open”—was slim, long, gracefully beautiful.

The still man watched the fortune teller disappear within her tree, watched as a half hour later two teenage girls laughing as they left the balcony bar turned on impulse and entered the shop, emerging sometime later in animated, conspiratorial conversation. Neither the woman nor her customers noticed the constant, still vigilance of the watching man. The woman had three or four more customers over the course of the day, until the evening sun slanting off the ocean lit the underside of the canopy leaves in warm patterns of hot colored light. The fortune teller left her shop and the man left his post in another direction. He walked with an easy, relaxed stride. His long, still vigil had apparently not caused any stiffness in his limbs.

He walked along the broad streets in the eternally warm Hawaiian evening until the fire left the sky a rich violet. Past the glittery new hotels and the older, shabby stores and clubs. Past the stripper bars and the groceries and sundry shops and tourist shops. Past the textured trunks of palm trees, past the tourists and the occasional bums who sleep on the beach and roam the streets, inconspicuous but for their pungent smell. He walked past the noise of a disco and off the end of the street into the plunging sand. Down to the smooth slope of hard wet sand above the rolling, immortal surf. Violet dusk gathering into full night as a few leftover people, mostly couples arm in arm, strode back and forth above the surf. The man stood there for a while, looking into the dark, then turned and walked along the beach, the constellations of city lights, of humanity, flickering and pulsing on his right and nothing on his left but the darkness and the rolling motion of the sea, speaking its immortal word.

Hearing someone moving through the outer curtain, she tossed her paperback novel into her bag behind the velvet draped table. The bead curtain lifted and a young man stepped into the little cave of banyan roots. In the uncertain colored light of the single gypsy lamp, he had an almost effeminate handsomeness, with large expressive eyes and a close cut beard, which softened the intensity of his face. Deep brown hair swept back from his forehead to fall just short of his shoulders.

“Good afternoon.” He spoke with a smile, a soft voice with carefully modulated syllables.

“Welcome,” she replied. She proceeded with the standard introduction about the prices. He removed the appropriate bills from his wallet.

She brought out the cards and riffled them, then offered them to him to cut. He followed her direction, dropping the large cards in three piles on the dark material. She dealt a “V” of cards, the point toward him. A smattering of suits, no pattern, few trumps. No direction. “You are at a crossroads of your life, you are beset by possibilities. Trust your heart, your feelings.” Stock phrases, guessing. I’m too tired, she thought. I see nothing in these cards. I shouldn’t just spout off this flim flam. Noticing the Page of Pence, “You are a student”—safe guess. “You will meet a young girl with dark hair...”

He made some minute noise. Dissatisfaction, annoyance, or amusement. She stared at the cards. The Tower and the Hanged Man, balanced at the end points of the “V.” “You are under a curse, I mean—No. That’s not what I mean.” She glanced up at his eyes which seemed golden, then back to the cards. Flustered, worried she was blushing, “What I mean is that an important task lies before you...” “You are concerned you might not succeed?” She did not want to make the last statement sound like a wild guess, raise the inflection of her voice to make it a question. But that was how it sounded. She heard her own loud breathing. If the man was breathing, his breath must be immensely gentle and slow. She had sharp ears, but even in the little cubby of banyan roots he was utterly silent to her.

He spoke her name, “Charisse,” and she looked up into his eyes, brighter than any human eyes she had ever seen. It did not occur to her that he should not have known her name. He spoke softly. “Look at the cards. Look deep. See how this one is tilted a little; see how the corner of that one is bent. See through them, open yourself. Clear your mind. Now speak.”

“You are...” Darkness, dark velvet around and within the lattice of cards, filling her mind. A wave of presence, of personal power, pouring upon her from this person. Charisse had only sensed this power from a few of her colleagues, those she considered the best at the craft. But this was stronger. All the cards formed a single statement of this person’s identity, but she could not make words for the hieratic image she saw. “Who are you?”

“The top card. It is the Magician.”

For a long minute she had no idea what he meant. Then she reached to the side, lifted the card from the top of the pack. A figure in a robe, a serpent for a belt. One hand reaching up, the other down. Now her eyes were frozen on the face of the bearded man.

“Let us work together. We could do better than either of us working alone.” He rose, stepped around the table. “A customer is coming.” He stood by her side, one hand lightly on her shoulder.

A blond woman in her thirties entered and sat down. Charisse heard her voice speaking the standard welcoming phrases automatically. Without discussion of price or exchange of currency she shuffled the cards and offered them to be cut. She gradually realized that the woman did not see the man who stood silently, like a stone statue, behind Charisse’s shoulder. She dealt and looked down at the layout.

“When you leave here, leave the International Market, turn left, and go four buildings down the street, then enter the building on your left. There you will meet someone who will be very important to you.” An entire world lurked in the shadows between the cards, in their weblike patterns. She could see everything. She felt a vertiginous giddiness. “On your way home, stop in Las Vegas. Caesar’s Palace, the roulette table on the right when you enter the main casino door. Play the red numbers...”

A pressure on her shoulder, almost forceful enough to push her off balance. It seemed to communicate: You’re playing with it. Stop it. Look deep and speak only the truth.

Charisse hesitated. “I—I’m sorry. That’s not what you came here for.”

The woman, who already looked surprised, gave a concerned smile. “Well, you are telling my fortune. That’s what I am here for. In fact, I am surprised you are so specific. Most psychics are so vague no one can ever say they were wrong.”

“Yes, but,” Charisse shook her head. She looked hard at the cards, then deep into the face of the woman, finding her quite pretty. “You have a great gift to create beauty.”

The woman visibly tensed.

“You must not give up your art. It is what you do best. It is what you were born to do. Stay in school, continue to study it. Perfect your craft. That professor was wrong. He was attracted to you, frustrated it wasn’t mutual. That is why he said those terrible things.”

The whirling power ceased and Charisse fell back into herself, into her chair. She noticed that the woman before her was as pale as flour. “Those who can’t do, teach,” Charisse joked lamely.

“How could you know?” the woman whispered, her eyes glassy.

“It’s the truth. How could I not know.” Charisse smiled. “Trust me. And trust yourself.” Pause. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

“Thank you,” she stammered, rising, stumbling back.

“Remember, fourth door on the left,” Charisse called.

Charisse watched the beaded curtain swinging behind the woman. The bearded man was staring down at her. She looked up, shaking with confusion and excitement.

“Good,” he said. “And good night. I will return tomorrow.” He held her quivering chin in his slim fingers, and bent to kiss her. His lips were cool and firm, and the kiss sent a shiver down her spine that made her body go soft and warm. She tried to speak but no words came. He was gone, moving out of the banyan root cubby in a single swift gesture.

Charisse sat for a long time, shaking and petrified. Finally she gathered up her things with halting gestures and half ran to her apartment.

It took three days for the word to spread through the city. Charisse would come to work to find a long line of customers already waiting. None of them noticed that the person at the head of the line was always the same, still, bearded man. Charisse would greet the customers warmly and they would react as though she were a celebrity. She had few repeat customers, and raised her price to $150 for a ten minute reading. Nonetheless, she soon found it necessary to move to a spacious rooftop. She read cards in a comfortable, high-backed chair, the trade wind cool through the loggia windows, stirring the luxuriant tropical plants. Her customers sat before her, a massive carved table between them. Downstairs, a secretary made appointments a week, and soon a month or more in advance. Frequently, some nondescript person would walk in and ask for an appointment, and immediately the intercom would beep. Charisse or Tomas’ quiet, cultured voice saying that the person could not have an appointment. The person, who was inevitably someone from a newspaper or magazine, or one of those television programs that investigates the paranormal, would be graciously sent away.

After a year they moved to Los Angeles, and Charisse felt her power blooming in the hot air that was charged with human business and human misery. Los Angeles air that was smog and Pacific brine, eucalyptus and gunpowder and jet exhaust and sweaty hair. Tomas appeared irregularly. Much of the time, Charisse worked without him, using the power as he had taught her and making enormous amounts of money. Substantial sums were paid to him, in cash, but Charisse had more than enough even as her tastes became more lavish. Tomas did not share in her personal life, and never visited her at her eleventh floor apartment (though Charisse’s intuition told her he knew its location, and perhaps even passed by it on the street). She did not know where he lived, or know anything about what he did when he was not at her rooftop studio, sitting in a big chair like hers but off by the windows, screened by foliage from the customers. When at the studio he would sit in that chair, looking out the window, helping her with her craft in a subconscious way.

Tomas did not pursue Charisse romantically. Charisse had as much as assumed that their first meeting, the gift of the power, was an enchanted form of seduction. She expected that she would end up giving her heart, her body, in return for the gift. But this did not occur. Tomas did not touch her, did not express interest in her, never even engaged her in the kind of small talk and conversation that most people share. He seemed to prefer the silence that made others uncomfortable. If night had fallen when he was leaving, he would step up to her, say “Good night” in that precise way he had of forming words, and kiss her on the mouth once. Then he would turn and leave, not rushing, but moving so swiftly he seemed almost to disappear into the darkening air.

Tomas’ kisses stimulated and aroused Charisse. She was intensely curious about this strange person who had transformed her life, and her sexual attraction blossomed with her power. More than once when he kissed her she pushed her body hard and amorously against him, tried to put her tongue in his mouth. When she did this he drew back, not roughly or as though offended, but merely politely, almost tenderly breaking her embrace, and leaving in his impossibly swift way.

His hand pressed into her waist, he stepped close. She let her eyes close, let her lips become soft and full to receive his goodnight kiss. It did not come.

“Charisse I have a house in the mountains; I would like you to go there with me. Let us get away from this work for a while.”

She opened her eyes, surprised. She bit down on the delighted reply she was about to make, forced herself to be guarded. “I don’t know, Tomas. You’ve never even taken me out to dinner.”

“What has that to do with it.” Not phrased as a question. “You have about two months of appointments. We should not disappoint those individuals. I will inform Jennifer not to schedule anything else. When we have worked through your existing appointments, we will go.”

“If I agree to go,” Charisse tried to make it sound more reserved than she felt.

“Of course, Charisse. It is a beautiful valley in the Rocky Mountains. We could get to know each other better.”

“A tempting offer,” she said slyly. “I’ll decide.”

“Good night.” He kissed her, the same simple, intense, maddening kiss as ever and then he was gone before she opened her eyes.

Salt Lake City airport was anonymously modern ugly. But soon behind them and Charisse’s spirits brightened as they lunched in an excellent seafood restaurant down town. Tomas disappeared and minutes later pulled up to the curb in a four-wheel drive utility vehicle. They drove north on the freeway past gothically hellish refineries, then into open country that was a patchwork of rural and suburban. Once off the freeway they turned east through the low sprawl of Ogden and into the canyon, close between massive crags of dark rock, thick with scrub oak, stands of elm in the valleys and thick evergreens on the high slopes. At the top of the canyon they crossed the top of a dam above a broad blue reservoir dotted with boats and water skiers. North through the little, quiet, secluded town of Eden and later the far more secluded Avon. Going into the high country with the mountains on either side and the valley lush, beautiful. At last Tomas opened a locked gate and they drove onto a dirt road, winding higher into the mountains that now seemed to hang above them, drawing them up into the high pass. Tomas’ little vehicle handled well on the bumpy road, but Charisse was still feeling fatigued and uncomfortable.

In the high country, tall spruce and firs shaded the dirt road on the downhill side, the valley far below and away between their dark boughs. The uphill side of the road was more sparse, trees interspersed with bunches of manzanita and outcroppings of tumbled rocks. The boulders were huge and broken, moved and shaped by the titanic forces of earth and ice. They were reddish with iron ore.

“Is that the house?” Charisse asked, seeing a peaked roof, tall dark glass rising above a bare wood deck. Tomas nodded and she felt her weariness lift, or at least relax a little. The vehicle bounced along below the house, then switched back up a steep slope and came before it. Charisse stepped out and immediately the cool, alpine, pinesap air refreshed her. Tomas lead her up a rickety wooden staircase to the door, and let her into a room that was shadowy, with the still air smell of a home that has been empty for months. Tomas opened the tall blinds, and afternoon sunlight hit the pale gray carpet. The house brightened and awoke, light reflecting off walls and ceiling and tasteful, simple furnishings of chrome and pale wood.

Charisse stretched, “I think I’ll take a nap.”

“You will feel better if you take a walk. Go out in back. I will unpack the food.”

Charisse nodded, stepped down the short corridor to the back door and crossed a smaller deck. A dusty trail lead through tall blond grass and low scrub oak in a stand of elm. She walked up the trail, climbing obliquely up away from the house. The elms ended abruptly and she was crossing a sloping, alpine meadow. Despite the lateness of the season, wildflowers of gold, purple, and fiery orange filled the meadow, and a drone like a massive electrical transformer was everywhere. Charisse realized it was insects, the accumulated sound of millions of tiny wings. The breeze was cool on her face, though the afternoon sun was hot and golden on her shoulder and back.

When Charisse returned an hour later, everything was in order. All the windows open, the house had lost its stuffiness and scent of disuse and was beautiful, embracing the sunlight and the mountain air. Blood red steaks defrosted on the counter. Her mouth watered.

“Charisse.” Tomas stood up in surprise, dropping the split fire log he was holding.

She stood in the doorway in a filmy white peignoir, her dark hair brushed loose and full. Beneath the open peignoir she wore a negligee cut in a low, steep, plunge between her breasts and high on her hips to emphasize the length of her legs. Lacy white stockings reached to her thighs. The white lace accentuated her tanned skin in the firelight.

Charisse stepped up close to Tomas and smiled shyly. “If you aren’t attracted to me, I am going to be very embarrassed getting dressed up like this.”

Tomas slid one hand under the peignoir to press the small of her back, the other cradling the nape of her neck. Their mouths and bodies came together and the kiss was long, deep; Tomas’ tongue caressing Charisse’s and drawing it into his mouth. Charisse felt her arousal mounting, felt the stiff lacy fabric between her legs grow damp and scratch against her swollen, opened labia. She was on tiptoe, pushing, rubbing, forcing her sex against the bony point of his hip. Tomas’ mouth tasted of the dusty, strong red wine they had with dinner. His tongue was animated, slow, stimulating her tongue and the roof of her mouth and the insides of her cheeks.

Tomas twisted his body elegantly, pulling Charisse off balance and supporting her in his arms. Continuing to kiss her he lowered her gently to the wooly, shaggy rug before the fire. She sat back, her smile now lascivious as she stretched her legs and rubbed her thighs together, the lacy material of her stockings making a faint scratching. She unbuttoned the peignoir at her bosom, and let the filmy fabric sheet back and puddle around her wrists as she leaned back on her arms.

Tomas knelt beside her and began to unbutton his shirt. Abruptly, Charisse moved forward, pushing his hands away and undoing the buttons herself, putting her face into the opening of the fabric and kissing his chest, feeling the firm skin and sparse, wiry hair with her lips and tongue. Tomas grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back, forced his tongue hard and deep in her mouth. His free hand squeezed her breasts aggressively. He pushed the straps of the negligee off her shoulders and she slipped her arms free, pulling the negligee down around her waist and offering him her breasts. Tomas pushed her down flat on her back and fondled her upper body, caressing her shoulders and breasts and sides and belly. He took her nipples in his mouth, one and then the other, sucking them long and hard enough to hurt.

The light pain set off all kinds of fireworks of sexual excitement inside Charisse. She lay back, limp and languid, overwhelmed and unable to move, to speak, listening to the ragged sound of her breathing and the soft, hurried sounds as Tomas removed his clothes. His hand pressed the skin of her thigh above the lace stocking. Her body responded on reflex, her thigh and hip rising and pushing against his hand the way a cat pushes against the hand that pets it. Tomas’ hand moved up between her thighs and stroked her sex through the soaking lace of the teddy. He popped the two snaps of the negligee and pulled it out of the way, then Charisse’s labia were pressed hot and moist against his smooth firm palm.

The hand left her, left her open and exposed to the air, aching for touch, for penetration. Charisse could not see clearly but she felt and heard her lover positioning himself over her, between her wide spread legs. Her bottom was lifting itself off the rug with the tension of her sexual need. Tomas’ hands clasped her waist and he pulled her down, the hot knob of his penis blundering into her labia. He directed it inward and thrust hard and deep. Charisse felt him fill her and stretch her inside, felt her body respond and thrust against him. He lay down on top of her, her naked flesh pressing up to meet his firm body. Charisse rubbed her face in the soft scratchiness of his beard and burrowed into his neck, licking and gently biting over his collar bone. His lovemaking had a driving rhythm that sent pounding waves of pleasure up her spine and down her legs.

After long minutes of steady lovemaking, he pulled gently to the side and she rolled with him, onto him. She drew her legs up and pressed her hands to his chest, feeling his small male nipples tight against the palms of her hands. She tilted her pelvis back and forth, grinding her sex around his penetrating organ. The intense sensations of this motion absorbed her, and she moved harder and faster, feeling her climax building within her belly and pelvis like a ball of golden fire. It burst over her in a trembling rush, tensing every muscle. She came down and started to pull herself off her lover’s big, hard sex which was uncomfortable in her overstimulated vagina. Tomas’ hands again clasped her waist and he yanked her down hard as his pelvis thrust up, deep, hard, hurting her. He began to thrust hard and fast. It ached, stabbed; she whimpered. Then she orgasmed again without warning. She shouted as the climax short-circuited her brain. She was pushing hard against him, now, digging her fingernails into his stomach, fighting him as if it were rape, even as she knew his continued aggressive lovemaking was going to give her another orgasm. She came a third time and a fourth and then she was lying on top of him, her spent body trembling and shivering as she gasped and his arms held her tight, squeezing the shock and terror out of her. His cock felt scalding hot against the skin of her heaving belly.

Charisse controlled herself with difficulty. Staring at the gleam of firelight on a wine glass helped. She realized that the glass was half full of dark liquid. “Mmmmm.” She lifted herself awkwardly off her reclining lover and started to crawl toward the coffee table. Suddenly his arm went around her from behind and he pulled her back. His cock bumped against her buttocks. She started to protest but her body betrayed her, her back bowing so her buttocks were thrust toward him prominent and open. His hand was between them, his fingers slipping over her anus and vagina. Tomas penetrated her from behind, his thighs slapping against hers as he thrust. He pushed her down flat on her belly on the rug, lying on top of her, holding her shoulders and thrusting. It was pleasurable, though she was becoming a little abraded, but she enjoyed the sensation of his sexual tension within her, feeling his thrusts become more intense and hectic. He groaned and she felt the sudden trembling thrust and hold, and the gush of warmth inside.

After a minute he slipped off, gently withdrawing. He picked up the glass of wine and drank, then offered her the small amount that remained. She made an affected pout at his selfishness, then raised herself up on her elbows and took the sip, feeling it cool and dry in her constricted throat. She smiled at him, played with the stem of the glass between her fingers. She noticed he was staring at her bare bottom, accentuated by the white lace of stockings four inches below it. She wiggled slow and lasciviously, enticing him, showing off her buttocks for him with her back arched.

Tomas reached over and slapped her, hard, across the bottom. It stung and tingled, the tingling sensation reaching to her sex. Charisse made a purring moan deep in her throat.

“You like that?” he asked playfully. She stared at him, panting, not knowing how to answer.

He drew closer and struck her buttocks again, then again, then three or four times in rapid succession. She put her hands over her bottom protectively, but he grabbed her wrists and pulled them up, crossed, onto her back, twisting her arms to the point it became painful. He held both her wrists in one hand, pushing down so her chest and face were pressed into the rug. With his free hand he spanked her, a dozen or more hard strokes that made her gasp. He rested his hand lightly on her hot, reddened ass, then slid down between her thighs to rub her sex. His fingers bobbling her swollen clitoris caused shockingly intense sensations to run through her.

“Oh. Yes,” she panted. “Yes. More, please.”

He laughed, tightened his grip on her wrists and spanked her again, twenty or thirty times so hard that she had to shut her eyes tight to keep the tears from pouring down her face. Her buttocks throbbed and hurt, the pain translating into intense lust. When he released her she pounced on him, pushing him back, clamping her mouth on his penis. She sucked deep and hard, feeling the velvety head slipping into her throat, threatening to choke her, tasting it, tasting her own sexual flavor covering it. He pulled her off by the hair and threw her onto her back, dropping the weight of his body onto her and penetrating her. She came in seconds. After her orgasm, he stopped pounding and thrusting, and made love to her with languid, affectionate motions. They kissed again and again.

At last he withdrew without orgasming and lay close beside her. “Let’s go to bed,” he said quietly.

“I can’t walk,” she murmured.

He picked her up, one arm under her knees and one arm around her back as she clung to his neck. He lay her on the smooth percale sheet, helped her pull off her stockings, and snuggled down on top of her, covering them both with the puffy, warm covers. He made love to her in that gentle, languid way until at last they both came together. Curled against him with his arm around her, Charisse let herself drift below the surface of sleep, sinking deeper into warmth and oblivion.

Cold. Terrible cold. No pain, no shivering; too cold. Yellowness. Yellow glow, Charisse lying on an immense block of what seems like yellow ice, a surface like tough polyurethane, draining all the warmth and animation from her. She is conscious, aware, but cannot move, cannot cry out, cannot even move her eyes to see where she is. Her thoughts come slowly. Only the most primal part of her mind is aware, crying out to her to survive, to escape. It pours adrenaline into her system, which aches and hurts in her rigid, frozen limbs. She wants to get up and run but she cannot. Minutes pass, perhaps hours, perhaps days. The huge yellow blocks and slabs puzzle her. She knows she is lying on one, that it is frozen, a bright buttery yellow, almost glowing with its own light in the shadowy room. Finally she can move her eyes to the right, then the left. Dark concrete walls beyond the strange yellow things. A door, lined in faint light, too high—it must be at the top of a short set of stairs.

Charisse’s head turns slightly to the side, she pulls herself up, away. Now she is really cold, no longer completely frozen and aware of her body’s sluggish life, near death. She cannot afford curiosity. She crawls off the table and along a floor of dry, sterile, packed dirt, or perhaps just concrete foundation that has been allowed to become grimy. She still cannot shiver, and the blocks call to her in a strange way. She is tempted to slither back onto the immense yellow slab, surrender herself, die and be completely frozen.

The stairs are wood, rickety. She claws her way up them, onto her knees feeling the stairs, opening the door which is low, perhaps five feet high. She stumbles out into thick grass which brushes her bare legs and pokes the bottoms of her feet. Gray light, pre-dawn, everything shadowy, indistinct. The back porch and door of the house. She crosses the wood deck in stilted, slow steps and catches herself, leaning on the door knob. It is not locked. Down the little hall to the living room, a few dull red embers in the fireplace. Start a fire. She knows she does not have the energy. She lifts a corner of the big wooly rug and drags it with infinite effort, sinking into the puffy couch, pulling it over her, wrapping in it like a cocoon.

“You certainly are a late sleeper, Charisse. No wonder you did not open your ‘Magic Tree’ until 12:30.”

Charisse opens her eyes. They are sticky, gummy. The morning sunlight in the house’s tall front windows sears them.

“Why did you get out of bed? I woke up and you were not beside me?”

She groans. “I was in the ... the basement. There were these ... things.”

“This house does not have a basement.” His voice was light, amused. Perhaps even loving.

“I—uh...”

“A dream, Charisse?”

“Yes.” She stares down at the Southwestern pattern of the rug that covers her. It feels stiff and scratchy against her bare flesh. Her sinuses thaw and she is suddenly aware of the pungent, sage smell of sausage. Ravenous hunger and giddy nausea compete in her belly.

“Would you like some coffee?”

At the thought of black coffee the nausea in her wins over the hunger. She sits up, the blanket slips from her tense shoulder. “A glass of milk. Please.”

He brings it, tiny dewdrops already forming on the cold glass.

Several sips of milk and her stomach quiets. Demands food. She drinks more milk and its coldness and purity drive out the last of the queasiness. She walks to the table, feeling her legs growing quickly steady and strong beneath her. It is difficult for her to turn away from her sumptuous breakfast to her room to grab her robe and slip into it. She belts it as she sits down. Rolls. Jam. Fried eggs, perfectly cooked. Sausage patties with flecks of sage and parsley showing. Orange juice.

Tomas waits for her to slow down, then he speaks in his quiet way: “I am going jogging later. Would you like to join me?”

“No thanks. I—I would really like a long hot bath.”

He nods.

Feeling fully awake and the cobwebs of nightmare dispelled, Charisse turns off the faucets, drops her robe at her feet. The white porcelain gleams. So smooth, perfect, hard. Drip. Drip. Pause. Drip. Long pause, silence. She is alone in the house. Except that she knows he can be utterly still and silent sometimes, almost invisible. Inaudible at any rate. Her heartbeat is going faster and faster. She does not want to lie down in that bathtub. She reaches down for the drain plug but her hand stops just short of the water’s smooth surface. She shudders. She cannot make her hand enter that water.

In her bedroom, she pulls yesterday’s crumpled clothes off the bed and dresses quickly. She laces her slim hiking boots and goes out. Doubles back to the kitchen to scribble a note, “Went out back hiking. Be back by lunch. Love, C.” She picks up her long, fuzzy jacket for protection against the coolness of the September morning and goes out the back door. The screen door bangs shut behind her. She steps off the deck onto the beginning of the dusty trail.

Charisse feels a sudden dread of looking back at the base of the house to see if there is a door. She frowns. I will look back, she thinks. No. That’s ridiculous. I will not indulge such absurdity. She deliberately does not look back as she walks up the trail. She comes out onto the sloping alpine meadow, surrounded again by the almost sub-audible collective drone of insects. Cloud shadow and bright sun alternate as she ascends the slope and follows the trail which curves around its crown and down through pines on the far side. Nearly out of the pines, she comes to a clearing with a dirt road leading out in twin ruts to her right and left. The smudge of a long dead campfire is surrounded by irregular rocks. There are scraps here and there, a red plastic shotgun shell trampled into the dirt, its brass butt splotched and tarnished. Deer hunters’ camp, Charisse thinks.

The sun is high and bright through the pine needles and she takes off the coat, bundles it up and sticks it in the crotch of a bough. She looks both ways along the road and guesses that the way to her right would eventually lead back to the paved road above the town of Avon. Given that it winds through the mountains, it could be twenty miles or more. She walks for perhaps an hour before she begins to feel fatigued. She stares for a while at the deer tracks pocking the dust, then turns back toward the house.

As she reaches the house, she looks along and beneath the wooden deck at the concrete foundation wall. There are no doors in it that she can see.

Cooking pasta always makes her feel like a little girl. She is humming as she cooks, humming to herself as she and Tomas eat the dinner. She becomes aware that her sex parts are slightly sore. Additional vigorous lovemaking tonight will be painful. She is in a mood where the thought of such pain is arousing. She thinks of the spanking Tomas administered to her, begins to fantasize about being tied to the bed.

She stands next to Tomas, rubs his shoulder. “Are we going to have a night like last night?” she asks.

He stands, puts his arms around her waist. “I believe we are,” he says in his carefully modulated voice. “Yes, we certainly are. Go to sleep, now, Charisse.”

Her body is soft, limp, relaxing in his arms. Dozing. No! She shakes herself, her head. Her eyes open wide.

He speaks firmly, “Sleep.”

The word hits her like a blow. Haze fills the room, fills her mind. She cannot move. She cannot feel her body. She is drifting into a wonderful, deep sleep.

Fighting, desperately. Weakly. Her eyes open. “No...” she manages to murmur, to moan. He is holding her face in both hands. His hands are smooth and warm on her cheeks. He is staring gently into her eyes.

“Yes, Charisse. Now. Sleep.”

Her eyes close obediently.

Nothing. No sound, no light, no motion. What—? The single word is all the thought that can muster in Charisse’s still mind. The word, moving through emptiness, as though spoken once over hours. Then there is stillness and, though conscious, no thought or mental activity. At last a small part of awareness struggles free: Are my eyes open or closed?

Darkness only, but not absolute darkness. Open, then. Darkness, black but tinted brown. Her eyeballs are still frozen so her gaze is straight up. The faintest shadow of light at the edges of her vision. It is like when one watches stars from a wooded glen, but can still detect the smeary faint glow from a surrounding city. But the brownish darkness overhead is not the wholesome indigo of the night sky. The faint light at the corners of her eyes is not reflected streetlights, but an unnatural goldenrod. There is absolutely no sensation in Charisse’s frozen body, but she is aware of the slab of yellow ice beneath her as if she were merging into it, her flesh decomposing, becoming part of the weird, blood plasma colored ice.

Enough of her mind has not yet thawed to the point where she can feel fear. Thought is an effort, the slab commands her to subside her resistance, to be still and frozen body and soul forever. She resists and pulls herself free one synapse at a time. Some primitive circadian part of her senses that she has been here much longer this time, that the process of awakening and escaping is far slower.

Charisse opens her mouth but cannot wet her lips with her dead tongue. Her eyes gradually begin to make halting, irregular motions, showing her the dark cement room, the oblong blocks of frozen yellow, slightly translucent. Her faint motions bring sensations of agonizing cold through her nerves. There is no pain when she stops resisting, but the adrenaline is flowing now. She is terrified, senses that to remain would be to sink into deeper coma and death from hypothermia. The basic will to survive keeps her moving despite the pain in every finger, arms, legs, abdomen where it seems her frozen viscera will crack and splinter inside her as she bends, twisting irregularly off the slab to collapse on the floor. The floor of dirt or concrete, cold and brutally hard against her bare flesh, but not the life-draining cold of the slab.

It is a long crawl to the door, longer to grind it open. Slanting pumpkin color sunlight intrudes from Charisse’s left. But isn’t that the west? she thinks vaguely. She stumbles through the grass, onto the deck, through the door.

He is sitting at the table, a savory smelling dinner on the plate before him and in a pan on a hot pad. A clean plate is opposite in her chair. He raises his glass of wine. “Awake at last, Charisse? You slept almost the entire day. Come and eat.”

“Wh—what is it? What is it in the basement? What are you doing to me?”

He sighs as if bored.

“What is that yellow...”

“Sit down.”

She sits in the chair, the wood of it hard against her bare bottom.

He ladles up the Yankee pot roast, carves a thick slice of French bread and sets it beside her plate.

“Eat.”

She eats, tearing at her bread and wolfing down the meat. He gives her a dish of mixed vegetables which she devours.

Yellow. Cold. Darkness. No motion, not even breathing. No thought, not even sorrow or regret or fear. Thought takes longer this time. I am dead, Charisse thinks. A long, slow thought that enters her empty, frozen mind and hangs in space for a time, only to gradually break apart into other thoughts: No. I am not dead. I am dying, but I can fight it and escape. Emotion thaws: A sick, frustrated rage that her captor has not simply tied her down to the block of yellow ice so that she cannot escape, so that she will only have to struggle once, suffer once, then surrender, succumb, die and be done with it. How maddening that she is permitted to crawl away, only to fall asleep or be hypnotized and find herself here again. Sisyphus, that is what it reminds me of—Charisse knows that by simply indulging these random thoughts she can remain conscious yet postpone the pain of the escape process. She will escape. Her mind will thaw further and she will feel the terror, the sense of doom, the need to survive despite the pain.

It could be hours, even days later that she moves. Each time it is harder to fight, to crawl with immense effort and patience from the slab. There is no pain until she resists, until she refuses to be completely frozen and still. Her body, her mind, rebel against the tentative, unsure will to live and to pull away from the life-draining plasma ice. Thinking is a lesser form of rebellion against the ice than moving, but the thoughts are nonetheless frozen and stilted in her mind. What is this? She thinks vaguely. What is happening to me? Do I know? Pause. Is this familiar? Why does it seem familiar. Pause. Hours, days perhaps pass without motion or thought, yet she is, if not conscious, at least aware of the passage of time. So close to complete freezing of her life, so little warmth, selfhood, is left.

Dreams. The realization is faint but it gives her an uncertain focus. As a little girl I dreamt of this. I had nightmares about being in a coma or a morgue, being frozen on a yellow death slab. I never knew what those dreams meant, those recurring nightmares when I was four or five. Could he have known, could Tomas have picked this out of my subconscious? Or is it the other way: As a child I dreamed of this because I am a fortune teller, a psychic. As a child I foresaw... She keeps herself from completing the thought: Foresaw my death. No. Foresaw...this.

In the dreams, she could never wake up until she forced herself to resist the seductive power of the yellow ice that encased her body and drained the warmth and life energy from it. She remembers that now. How she was only allowed to awaken from the nightmares when her dream self escaped the darkness and the cold yellow slabs. Only then could she return to the shivering, aching reality of her bedroom.

Thought is freer now, though motion is still impossible. Her will is gradually coalescing around the image of the little girl in the dream, the necessity of escape. She moves her eyes, a little, seeing darkness, irregular yellow shapes, bloblike in the tenebrous, frozen air. Is my mouth open or closed? With that thought she finds she can move her lips a little. Fingers twitch, then an arm. She reaches, out into the empty air beyond the slab. She cannot roll over at first, but only wriggle, maddeningly slow.

At last she has pulled herself off the slab. Now the pain comes, the terrible shivering, the awful sickness and stabbing agony in every cell as it longs to return to the slab and frozen oblivion. Charisse does not even have the strength to crawl on hands and knees, but must squirm toward the door—hours it seems to cross ten or fifteen feet of space—her naked body prostrate in the ice cold dirt.

Outside it is dark. Starlight, but no lights from the house which is a towering wall of shadow above her. She does not want to enter the house. She wants to run away. She crawls across the little clearing but only as far as the first tree. She is still too numb to really feel the pine needles against her knees and the palms of her hands. She curls up, the hard, rough bark against her cheek, the sweet acridness of sap in her nostrils.

Charisse dozes, sees a dancing amber light. It shines right in her eyes in a stab of brilliance. Tomas helps her to her feet and walks her back into the house, sets her before the dancing orange of the fire. He disappears for a moment, comes back with a gooey peanut butter sandwich on soft wheat bread. Charisse’s body demands the food and she eats it, then sits on the rug by the fire. Gradually her body revives enough to tremble. Tomas sits behind her in a chair, not moving, not sleeping.

The next morning, Tomas fixes bacon and eggs, sets the plate on the floor by Charisse. “Eat.” The hunger is like nothing she has known before. She eats with her fingers, smearing them with the bacon grease and getting bits of egg around her lips. “You are a mess, Charisse. Go wash.” She climbs the stairs like an automaton and showers while he watches. She steps out, hearing the faint drip of water from her body on the linoleum. Without comment or introduction, Tomas fondles her breasts. She stands, letting him do it.

“You can touch me.” Her voice shakes. “Do you want to make love?” She steps forward. Then she goes down on her knees. “Please. You can have my body. I’ll do anything you want. Just please... Please...” She bends forward. “Please don’t...” Her lips brush his shoe as she pleads, “Please don’t put me down there again. Please don’t put me down there again.”

Tomas watches her, standing perfectly still and silent. “Goodbye, Charisse,” that odd, emotionless way he sculpts words with his mouth. He turns and leaves, swift, silent. Charisse curls up on the wet bathroom floor, sobbing.

When thought and vague feeling return, replacing the vague feeling of years passing in glacial immobility, Charisse feels oddly comforted. The inevitability and finality of this end. She is, again, in darkness and melded to a block of frozen yellow ice. It drains her life; she senses how close the process is to completion.

Yet this is not the end, really. Her body responds, a twitch, a fingertip, an eyelid at a time. The animal will within her will fight and draw her away from the lackadaisical horror of remaining in this place of draining death. Even as the panic reaction sets in—familiar now, in its pattern—Charisse notes coldly the sluggishness. Each time she is weaker. Clearly, this is the last. If she should now escape, and sleep, and wake up here—or not wake up—she will not be capable of another resistance. Any brief effort to rise will be aborted and subside, her life will sink and quench like a flame that has lost its fuel. She will be eternally a frozen and incorruptible relic desiccating in the darkness.

She pulls free and falls to the floor, feeling the hard, painful grit in the darkness. Instead of crawling to the door, she lies still, breathing, feeling the cold stale air slide in and out of her tired lungs. At last she rises to hands and knees, then gently, arthritically, stands. Since this is her last chance, she must make good her escape. Leave this house, this sorcerer who has possessed her, leave her craft and return to the warmth and sun of Hawaii.

Charisse puts her feet one by one on the rough wooden steps. She pushes the door, out into the yard where morning sun filters the trees. The air is cold on her naked body and the September sun yields no heat to her. The futility, the sheer improbability of escape is vaguely annoying. Resignation fills her. She is bothered by the delay before inevitable death, and turns like an automaton toward the porch. She will enter the house, throw herself at his feet, beg to be placed back on the bed of yellow ice so that the travail of survival will at last be ended. She nearly does it. Then her steps turn, a few degrees at a time, toward the path that leads away across the meadow (now drying grasses, no late sego lily and daisy blossoms and the transformer hum of insect life). Since failure and death is inevitable, it makes little difference and she may as well struggle to escape. I will try, she thinks. There is no harm in trying.

She awakens further and wants to run, flee like a deer from the hunter, but she cannot. A slow-motion escape from the house, Charisse’s steps are infinitely slow and plodding. Minutes seem to pass between each footfall. The absurdity, the futility of effort, threaten her. At any moment he will quietly walk up behind me, put his arm around my waist and drag me back. Or he will speak to me and hypnotize me and I will go back. She says such things to herself but nonetheless does not stop. But he does not come and she steps on, her legs gradually gaining strength under her. She rounds the crown of the hill, and down into the trees.

It must be past noon, now. She stands, looking at a long dead campfire. For a time she gazes about stupidly. Now what? At last she remembers, takes her coat from the fork of the tree where she bundled it long ago—weeks? She does not know. As afternoon progresses, a cool wind is making her shiver. She is desperately hungry and the empty pain beneath her sternum is in itself almost sufficient justification to return to the house. She slips her weak arms into the sleeves of the coat, feels its reviving warmth around her. Should she, against all odds, some day reach other human beings, beg their help and protection, she would rather be wearing the coat than be stark naked.

It is a long walk in bare feet, but the sandy soil of the road ruts is soft and sun warmed, and rocks and twigs stab her soles only occasionally. She is striding fast now, hunger and fatigue cannot compete with the lingering terror that drives her on. Long rises and falls of the road, hills and valleys. Five miles, perhaps. Ten? Somewhere ahead is the asphalt road. Little traveled, but surely ranchers in pick-ups must roar along there every day. She will seek their help. She has no fear of them. Nothing a mortal man could do to her could equal the horror of what is behind her. The road is somewhere before her, invisible in the landscape, lost in the valleys that are becoming shadowy. The sky before her takes on a rich color, the sinking sun radiant and flaming.

Charisse knows she will not find the road, will not be rescued tonight. She must leave the dirt track she has followed so that he will not find her. She turns south at an oblique angle. Off the track, the matted prairie grass is sharp against her bruised feet. The ground is uneven and there are more stones. Once she steps on prickly pear and cries out from the shock. She presses on, through thickets and scrub oak that tear her arms and thighs and face. She flees across the wilderness while the sun drops from afternoon gold to evening orange, to a great ball of bloody flame that drops beyond the far indigo hills. The sky stays lit for an hour more, while she covers another few miles, zig zagging now, hiding her trail. She stumbles down into a valley of pines.

There is motion under the dark pines. A deer, she assumes, she hears the pound of hooves and the rustle of branches as it dodges away from her. Its gamey fragrance is in her nostrils. On into the dark, driving her strained body through the shadows and the splashes of uncertain moonlight. She trips, rolls, lies back on the pine needles. Exhausted. Normal tiredness. The half moon floats above her through the pines. Safe, she says to herself. He can’t find me. There are miles of wilderness in every direction. He doesn’t know which way I went. Gasping, she cannot stay awake.