The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

her gaze was fixed on a small wooden framework across the room. Nothing hung from the point of its arch, but the voice she had learned to obey had hypnotized her as it always did, and told her to see her special crystal there.

she knelt in brightness on a towel that protected the rug underneath from her sweat and from the dew that dripped from her cleft. her face was round and pretty and Asian, but the dark eyes were flat now with the daze behind them. her hair was growing out from the short cut she’d gotten last, and there were black roots behind the henna: it had been that long since she’d made choices. her skin was even more golden in the sunlight streaming in, and it shone off the film of sweat as she quivered silently in exertion.

In her instructed mind, she saw the crystal glitter in its light, keeping her deep. By this point in her training she needed very little to deepen her.

she balanced on her heels and her spread knees, keeping her back straight, staring forward. her hands were joined before her, palms up in an offering pose, starting to shake now under the relentless weight of what they held. her face was blank, but panic haunted it, as she struggled not to let go.

she had been told not to let go.

Like anything that voice told her, it was her religion now.

Across the room, a woman at a wide, old desk stopped writing, put the training plan aside, and just looked at the girl as she knelt and stared and tried not to panic. The woman stood and walked over to the rug. The clip of her heels on the floor before it made no impression on the hypnotized girl.

The woman paused to admire the girl’s body, her trained stillness, and the way she kept her grace even under the rising stress. She smiled at the stiff nipples, knowing how aroused the girl was after this much focused obedience.

Looking at the girl’s hands, she asked, “Can you hear Me?”

The girl heard that voice and arched her back like a cat.

“i hear you, Mistress.” The shriek of joy left her lips in a whisper.

“How many are you holding for Me?”

“i hold—” The girl stopped. Numbers meant nothing to her now. she’d been told that. she stared at the crystal that wasn’t there, trying to find a way to please.

“i hold as many as You gave me,” she murmured at last, and the woman heard in that not cleverness but humble acceptance.

“Can you hold it for a while yet?”

The girl slowly nodded, her dark eyes narrowing. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, hoping she could.

The woman looked at her, seeing her come to terms with having to bear the terrible weight longer.

“Can you hold one more?”

The girl’s pretty face contorted, and the woman fancied her scent changed with the terror. Even so, she tried bravely to open her mouth, tried to deny her pain and say “Yes, Mistress.”

“Can you do that for Me?” The woman’s voice was hesitant.

Tears started in the girl’s eyes, blurring her fixation on the crystal that wasn’t there but not breaking its hold on her. she would risk and she would fail, but she wanted to try. she spent strength she couldn’t spare so her answer could be passionate.

“Yes—Mistress!”

The woman stepped closer, and reached to a table behind the girl. She selected a cat’s-eye from the marbles in the glass dish on it and carefully placed it on the girl’s palm, next to the three marbles already there.

A low cry escaped the girl before she choked it down, but she didn’t let go. Her jaws clenched and her stare at the crystal grew wide-eyed as she fought weakness and the awful new mass she held.

The woman watched her, seeing the sweat roll enchantingly down her body, the muscles in her thighs flex as the rest of her tried to help carry the load, the eyes glaze as the girl fell inward in the trance. The woman kept herself still and listened to the desperate breathing.

She watched the girl lose her fight with the four marbles’ weight and start to lower her arms. She saw the fanatical effort the girl made at the end. She waited until she heard the low, hopeless moan and saw the tears well up again.

Quickly she genuflected beside the girl, cupping one hand below the girl’s to support them before they fell and putting the other on her neck under the short hair with its night-black roots.

“you will never fail Me,” she murmured, and looked at the girl’s face as it crumpled into silent weeping at the redemption.

After staying so for a moment, the girl’s hands in hers, she took up the marbles and said, “Release.”

With a sigh, the girl drew her arms down and back to her hips. Her eyes never left the crystal that wasn’t there.

“I am pleased,” the woman said, looking down at her. The girl squirmed a little, surprised as always by the warmth between her thighs when she heard that.

“you pleased Me,” the woman added, and smiled as the girl jerked and gasped on the climax she’d been conditioned to. It was small, but by now it was beyond addictive.

“Would you be astonished to know,” the woman asked, “that they’re still looking for Lisanne Wu?”

The girl stiffened, and suddenly her stare was emptier. When she heard the trigger, she no longer saw even the crystal. Something darker held her mind now, and she was limp in its grip.

“Who—is—Lis—anne—Wu.” It was not even a question.

“Do you know?” The woman asked brightly, interested. The girl’s eyes were still wide, enthralled by the darker hypnosis.

“There is no Lisanne Wu,” the girl said, smoothly and calmly now. She paused a beat and then closed her eyes and moaned huskily through the deeper orgasm that rewarded her.

“Of course not,” the woman said, and walked back to the desk.

2.

Meredith screamed as the door slammed shut and the T-Bird started rolling.

At the wheel, Leslie lifted an eyebrow, but Meredith screamed again and bounced a little on the seat.

“God, Leslie, I can’t believe we’re loose! I feel like I’m fourteen again and sneaking off the estate to see a movie.”

“Yeah, I guessed fourteen,” Leslie said, watching traffic and then grinning. “By high school you tended to scream more, I don’t know, contralto.”

“Rrr!” Meredith started to slap Leslie’s shoulder but just grabbed it and shook it, instead. “I mean it. This is the first time I’ve been able to slip Mother’s bodyguards in—forever. Since that new crew took over. How did you know about that exit?”

Leslie smiled without turning. “I have my ways.”

“Damn, Leslie, I never even thought this would work. Those guards are good.”

“They are,” Leslie said, working her arm back to the floor behind Meredith’s seat. “But you’ve let ‘em lose their edge, girl. You haven’t been testing the fence enough.”

Letting her voice drop to a high-pitched growl, Meredith lay back. “Yaa, dey are soft, dey are chust girly-men. Even de vee-men. No motch for meeee.”

“You still can’t do Austrian.” Leslie came up with two small bottles and handed them to Meredith, who peered at the ten-ounce of soda, half gone.

“Hey, you started without me!”

“Not I. I’m driving, as you see. Just made some room there for the vodka—please observe the unbroken tax seal. Legal and untouched. I gotcha covered.”

Meredith started to pour. “But what about you?”

“Oh, I’ll catch up with you, Meredith. Believe me. But for now fugitive-girl has prefs.”

Meredith raised the mix to her before taking a deep pull. They drove on for a bit.

“Sip?”

“No, thanks. I mustn’t. I mean it. That one’s just for you. Welcome back to the non-security guarded real world for a little while.”

Meredith leaned back on the seat again, holding the bottle on her lap. “I’m trying not to, but I’m remembering what those guards are for.”

Leslie glanced at her. “It’s been six months since Lisanne Wu was—disappeared.”

“Was abducted. I know we agreed Mother was going overboard with security but she’s still going to be worried sick about this.”

Swearing at a truck that wouldn’t slow and then lunging out after it onto the state highway, Leslie kept looking ahead. “We’re still on Plan A. Call her from your cell when we get where we’re going. For the twenty minutes or so it’ll take us to get there she can live with worrying a bit.

“Look. You’re going to be 21 in a few months. You’ll graduate and you’ll start at Warner Phipps with the rest of the commoners, and she’ll have to deal with not being able to watch over you all the time. This is just practice.”

Leslie reached over and squeezed her hand. “Or so someone was telling me recently.”

“I know . . .”

“Oh, drink up! Now you’re discouraging me.” They laughed, and Meredith drank, and she tried to worm their destination from Leslie. That went fruitlessly on for a while, as Leslie grinned at some of Meredith’s sillier guesses.

Meredith didn’t mind, really. The vodka was giving her a warm buzz and just being here in the car with her oldest friend, off on an adventure, was the important thing. Leslie had helped her find freedom so often, taking on the risk and the planning, and she’d helped Meredith learn to be braver as they’d grown.

Leslie kept checking out the mirror.

“Problem?” Meredith whispered comfortably.

“Um—no.” Leslie seemed to shiver. “Just a van. I . . . have to let it pass.”

Meredith accepted that, turning idly to see the large gray thing roll slowly by. The windows were tinted and Meredith was suddenly afraid of something behind them, something Stephen King behind the blandly normal exterior. Leslie looked at it as it went, shivering again.

It pulled over in front of them, matching the Thunderbird’s speed.

Oh god.

As Meredith’s heart constricted, she turned to Leslie without a word. Something paralyzed her and she couldn’t manage more. We can make it. I’ve seen her drive. My friend can make us fly. Please god Leslie fly us out of here.

Leslie seemed riveted by the van’s darkened back window, and Meredith struggled to look.

In the window, like something floating up from dark water, a sign appeared and hung there: some sort of spiral design, mostly black and white but with some blurring that could have been color, that made it seem to spin. Leslie sighed deeply, almost a sob, and as she glanced back Meredith almost thought she’d shut her eyes for a moment.

Leslie kept staring at the spiral, keeping pace behind the van.

Leslie! Pull out and floor it! We can—

The van’s turn signal blinked on. Leslie flipped her own down, and they rode, both vehicles blinking together.

“Leslie?” Meredith whispered. Her body was sluggish, and even the fear was moving through it slowly, but it was already tickling her mind. It fed on itself as she realized the only reason she wasn’t screaming her lungs out.

She’d been drugged.

Leslie.

Leslie didn’t look away from the van as she followed it into its turn. She looked as though she were trying to. But she only sighed and gripped the wheel tighter.

Meredith was more terrified than she’d imagined. She’d had nightmares about being kidnapped, everything her mother had warned her of and the worse things her mother had tried to shield her from.

But it had never been her best friend doing it.

Her mind kept slipping off that. Falling back onto it.

“Leslie?” She tried to keep the sob out of her voice. Tried to move.

She thought to look out. They’d left the state highway and were driving down an empty country road. No one around.

What if there were? Who could she count on to help, if Leslie would do this?

She tried to imagine what she’d done to make the other girl hate her. She was almost nauseous as Leslie put the T-Bird through some slow but tight turns over gravel and sand, still locked onto the tail of the van.

She kept trying to wake up from the nightmare. It kept being reality.

The van’s brake lights blinked once, twice. They slowed and stopped, in a large empty lot behind an unmarked building. There was nothing around but empty fields, sparse trees.

Leslie stared at the spiral in the van’s window, shivering again. Her mouth opened.

Maybe it’s a joke maybe she’s really taken it too far but it’s OK because—

No. Leslie didn’t play jokes. No one would drug her for a joke.

“Leslie!” Meredith tried to scream, to break Leslie’s fixation on the damned little sign as they sat behind the van. Leslie flinched but kept staring. A whisper from her reached Meredith.

“. . . must . . .”

The van’s doors opened.

From either side, people stepped out. Women, dressed identically. Meredith stared at them, thinking they were some sort of team—short-shorts and zippered sleeveless tops, black with yellow trim. Spandex over improbably fit bodies. Hair short or tied back. Wraparound sunglasses.

Trying to intimidate. Succeeding.

Meredith thought she’d hit bottom, but new fear started. This might not be about ransom at all.

They stood at attention, a pair on either side of the van, facing the T-Bird but seeming to look past it over the bare meadow beyond. Meredith thought of bizarre sports-team rituals, sorority initiations, cults—nothing fit with Leslie.

Leslie didn’t fit with this. She sat rigid, held by the spiral as though it had hypnotized her.

Meredith considered that—anything to keep from seeing evil when she finally looked into Leslie’s eyes again. But how could the little placard have taken control of Leslie’s mind? She’d just seen it for a moment when it drove by, hadn’t she? No one was that easy to entrance, and anyway hypnosis didn’t work that way.

Did it?

Something had paralyzed Leslie’s will, the way her drug had paralyzed Meredith’s body.

One of the women seemed to take the lead. She stepped forward and Leslie straightened. She reached to her waist and then dramatically arced her arm back up and out, past her face, holding something cupped in it by her shoulder. Leslie twitched, then turned off the engine and rested both hands on the wheel.

Meredith listened to her own panting as she fought the drug, trying to move.

The other women approached the car like oiled automatons, and their impassive faces under the opaque shades made Meredith feel even colder. They stood on either side, and the leader extended her arm.

She tried again. “Leslie—” Her friend shook again but kept looking forward.

The leader opened her hand and something bright dropped down, stopping short and swinging.

Back and forth.

A pocketwatch.

Even then Meredith wanted to laugh at the cliche, but Leslie’s rapturous sigh as it snared her gaze killed that urge aborning.

“Leslie! Don’t look! Don’t let them hypnotize you any more!”

“Hypnotized,” Leslie intoned. Her voice made Meredith’s skin crawl—she sounded turned on.

“Leslie!” Fear and the drug made it an inconsequential squeak.

The doors unlocked.

Someone on each side opened them, and Meredith felt the breeze and smelled the country air.

The leader held the swinging watch over the hood while the spandex girl beside her opened the Thunderbird’s door and stood back. The leader drew back, letting the watch slow to hang down and then spinning it. She moved it and Leslie turned to her left to follow it, turning slowly on her seat to swing her legs to the ground and go out to them.

This time she didn’t flinch at Meredith’s cry.

The leader lured Leslie out to stand at attention before her, and from where Meredith slumped numbly in her seat she saw Leslie’s profile, beautiful and so blank, transfixed by the spinning watch.

When the other hands reached in and took hold of her, Meredith screamed very quietly, and heard herself start to whisper “Oh god Leslie they’re—!” before she realized Leslie wasn’t listening. Couldn’t listen.

The other spandex girls were strong and careful as they carried Meredith between them to the van, and something about their care scared Meredith almost as much as seeing Leslie hypnotized. She thought about hostage training her mother had insisted they get, about bonding with her captors and saying her name and making herself a person instead of a target, harder for another person to kill.

She realized it would be a waste. She wasn’t being abducted by persons at all.

These girls had no emotions to engage. They were even more brainwashed than Leslie was, and if someone could make Leslie do—this—Meredith knew they were beyond hostage psychology, too.

She jerked in surprise as they laid her tenderly on the carpeted floor of the van, but was too limp to move. Her head was just inside the door, and she could turn it, just enough to see, sideways, as the leader finished instructing Leslie and led her back, holding the watch like a carrot before a donkey.

Meredith saw her friend stop, standing calmly with their enemies. She heard the leader’s voice, breathy and icy at once.

“When you reach the report site you will awaken and remember only the programmed events.”

“When I reach the report site I will awaken and remember only the programmed events.” Leslie’s voice was quiet and subservient—so unlike her. “I will obey.”

“You will now prepare the new slave for shipment.”

“I will now prepare the new slave for shipment.” Leslie nimbly climbed into the van and turned to kneel beside Meredith, looking down into her eyes. One of the spandex girls gave her a folded cloth and another opened a bottle. Meredith coughed at the sweet odor.

This wasn’t happening.

“Leslie,” she whispered quietly, still not quite believing. “Please don’t—!”

Leslie didn’t blink as she reached behind Meredith’s head to hold it lightly and rested the cloth over her mouth and nose. It was too much—Mere dith was suddenly so lonely now—and she started to cry. With each sob she gasped in more of it but she didn’t care now.

The stranger’s face that looked like Leslie’s receded before her tears could blur it.

3.

Meredith woke and immediately froze, feeling herself bound and lost in the dimness. There were sounds and smells around her but as subdued as the light.

The chill and the odd pinch of the leather on her skin told her she was nude. She was tightly bound, but she could feel cool air that told her they ‘d left much of her open to view.

Or touch. Fear kept her quiet again.

Someone walked from the side of the room, and she stiffened, too frightened to think about the echoes, what they meant about the room.

They still don’t know where Lisanne Wu is. Or if she’s alive. Is she here?

“You’re not in any immediate danger, Meredith.” The voice was female and low and very calm, and Meredith felt herself responding to it. “Though you do look marvelously hot there, trembling in your bonds.”

Meredith froze again. Even the air on her pussy menaced her now.

“Worry not, Meredith. Just a comment on the lovely view—I’m not planning to rape you. I have a whole stable of women for that. It’s not why you’re here. And you’re bound, that securely, largely so I can be sure you’ll be calm and do nothing to hurt yourself until we’ve have a chance to talk.”

It was spinning her mind in circles, but Meredith clung to the evenness of the voice. It sounded sane, even sincere. Please god.

But there was a stable of women—? Robots in spandex, and she liked to fuck them. Make them like it . . .

Sane and sincere. Sane and sincere. Please god.

“My name is Alice Holloway.” Meredith winced until it hit her that it was probably an alias. Please let it be an alias.

“I’ve kidnapped you, obviously, and I’ll be holding you until your mother pays me what I ask. That scares you, I see.” Meredith listened, wondering why the confident tone was soothing her even as the words were confirming the worst. “But there really isn’t a need to be.”

She realized the woman—Alice—was walking into her line of vision and shut her eyes. Fear was back in her like an inhaled breath. Why didn’t she blindfold me?

“Why did you close your eyes, Meredith?”

Meredith found it hard to speak. It had felt safer to lie passively; she’d almost been able to kid herself that it wasn’t happening to her. Now she had to participate, like being called on in a class where if she failed she’d be killed.

Did Lisanne get the answer right?

“I don’t want to see you. What you look like. That way I c-c-can’t—”

“Shhhh. Shh. That won’t be a problem for us, Meredith, not now and not after I’ve let you go. I promise you that. But leave them closed, if you’d rather.

“I’m a professional. That means first of all that I’m doing this for money, and you know as well as I do that when it’s for money, you want to do it right. Your future employers and clients at Warner Phipps will appreciate that you know that.”

It was like being lowered into warm water by cold gentle hands. She knows all about my future plans. But—she means to let me have a future . . .

“Second, it means I know how to do it right. This is not the first time I’ve taken a girl and held her, or the first time I’ve made a profit well above the overhead.

“Third, Meredith, it means I’m not especially inclined to hurt you or frighten you unless I need to. I want you to cooperate, and I really don’t care what motivates you to do it as long as it’s reliable. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Meredith whispered.

“Do you want to cooperate with me?

“Think a bit, Meredith. Some young women in your position might want to make a fight of it, for pride’s sake. I’m prepared to humor that, up to a point, because unless it affects how much effort I spend keeping you and using you—for example, documenting your health for your mother to know you’re alive—I don’t care how heroic you want to be.”

Meredith shrank a little inside. She wasn’t even thinking of doing anything brave, but somehow hearing that it wouldn’t have mattered felt worse, even as it gave her an out.

“I want to cooperate,” she said, barely getting it out. She breathed in, surprised at how her chest almost spasmed with the tension, thinking she needed to say it again, louder.

“It’s all right.” Alice stepped closer. “I heard you, Meredith. Thank you.

“Please, now. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Meredith felt trapped, obligated. Fingertips touched her head, so much like her mother that she almost started crying again. “Trust me, Meredith.”

Meredith breathed. Suddenly she saw it as something she could do, a way to meet Alice halfway.

She opened her eyes.

Alice Holloway seemed tall, and wore comfortable clothing—a loose blouse and slacks. Her face was friendly, and as Meredith found herself falling into finding it attractive, she wondered what she was doing, letting her abductor soothe her.

She was seeing her abductor, recording her description. She was believing Alice’s promise that it wouldn’t matter. She actually felt dizzy when she realized how the woman was playing with her mind—Alice was using the hostage name game on her, disarming Meredith’s defenses by seducing the fear, making herself a person with an identity, someone Meredith could trust and like, just when she desperately needed to. Meredith found herself grasping at it, even if it was about using her.

Then she thought again about spandex girls, stiff and robotic and inhuman, everything this woman wasn’t, and went cold as the answer became clearer—about how what she saw wouldn’t matter.

Meredith swallowed. To be a slave, brainwashed to obey for the rest of her life. She wondered how she’d look in the spandex shorts, and how aware of that she’d be, by then.

“You’re going to make me one of them,” she whispered before she realized she was thinking aloud.

“One of them?”

“The spandex girls,” she said, and the woman’s laugh confused her.

“Mmmm. Spandex girls. I do like that, Meredith.” The smile stayed, seeming to prove the words. “Thank you.

“No. That’s not really what I have in mind.” She stroked Meredith’s hair, and it felt so genuine that Meredith relaxed further to it, letting her eyes close and then opening them again.

Alice stared into them, and Meredith let her. Alice raised her hand, almost like the girl who’d hypnotized Leslie, wanting her to see it. Then she reached down and across Meredith to touch Meredith’s left breast, grazing her immobile biceps beside it. Meredith gasped and then relaxed at the delicacy of the touch. It pleased her.

Part of her was waiting for something worse—a slap, fingers cruel around the nipple, worse—but then Alice cupped it, still gentle, looking away from her eyes to gaze at her other aureole. Meredith breathed under her touch, and let her breath out quietly.

“Women are prettier, when they’re bound,” Alice murmured with absorption. Meredith’s fear returned, faintly, but now it almost felt good. She felt Alice’s palm settle onto her nipple and mewed, sucking in her breath as she felt it rub gently in a circle as her fingers lightly kneaded the breast. Alice smiled at the sounds.

“Prettier still, when the bonds are in their minds.”

Alice took her hand away slowly, with a fingertip’s farewell to her nipple. “I plan to hypnotize you, Meredith, but it’s really to make things easier for you. Just another tool to keep you where I need you to be, like these straps but more convenient. I accept your word that you want to cooperate, and I believe you’ll try. But it’s asking a lot of a young woman to be able to do that, all the time, under the very real stress that this kind of situation will create.

“Hypnosis can help you stay calm, it can keep the passage of time from getting to you, and if you’ve been programmed to behave, seeing what seems like a chance to escape won’t tempt you into inconveniencing us all.

“Think of it as a long, involved medical procedure, Meredith. I bet you’re in the group that asks for general anesthesia and ‘wake me when it’s over,’hm?”

Meredith laughed, and it felt so good. The woman laughed with her.

“I could keep you bound or chained, I could lock you in a little room and risk you going stir-crazy, I could marinate your mind on drugs. All of those create complications and risks.

“None of them is as simple and easy as a woman who’s been hypnotized to be quiet and well-behaved.”

Meredith was very still then.

“What is it, Meredith?”

She swallowed, and tried to speak, but her throat filled and her eyes blurred again. She touched her tongue to her teeth, trying to say it. She couldn’t.

“Leslie,” Alice said. “Yes.” She waited while Meredith breathed, got control of herself.

“What did you do to her?”

4.

The woman looked at her. “I conditioned her, Meredith. She was my best access to you, so I took her, bent her mind and conquered her will to ensure that she’d do what I needed her to. It wasn’t your friend who gave you to me: it was my slave who did that. Outside of trance she’s the Leslie you know and trusted, and loves you dearly—but when I summon her, she obeys.

“Leslie is a tool. You’re a prize. That’s a critical difference. I don’t need to break you or make you do anything but behave, so I don’t need to do to your mind what I did to hers.”

“Is she—like them? The—”

“The spandex girls?” The woman smiled but didn’t laugh. “Not quite. They are completely brainwashed. They have no identities now other than being my slaves. They have no way to think other than as I program them, so they would do anything I instruct them to do. Right and wrong are absolutes in my voice.”

Meredith was reeling, and giddy with relief that the woman didn’t plan that for her. Now that it was safe, she found her mind morbidly picturing herself at attention in the tight clothing, on display with others.

No way to think. Anything Alice instructed her.

She sheered off but the idea was still powerful. “I felt that when they took me,” she said.

“Mmm. They can be subtler than that. You’ve met a couple before this and not known it. I can program them with cover identities and they perform well—they were all smart women when I enslaved them and I didn’t dumb them down.”

“You wanted me to see your control,” Meredith said. “You could have made Leslie just give me something to knock me out and then I never would—have—seen . . .”

Alice nodded. “Very good, Meredith. I know how hard it was to pretend to be that matter-of-fact.” She smiled as though recalling something, and then she was caressing Meredith’s breast again, just as carefully as before, smiling down into her eyes now, seeing the soft pleasure displace the disquiet.

“But you’re right.” She spoke even as Meredith simmered in the feeling, gradually pulling her hand away. “And that’s why I let you see Leslie becoming obedient, too. You know how loyal she is, how much she loves you. Imagine how much it took to turn her, to make her give you up to kidnappers, even in deep trance.

“I did it. You know it.

“So, from where you are now, if you trust me and open your mind to me, it should be no trouble for me to keep you tranquil and compliant and no trouble for a couple of spandex girls to tend.” Alice smiled at her, and in the middle of everything Meredith found she could be a little embarrassed to have coined the name.

Then she pictured some of them standing at attention when Alice told them, and her laughter being the only sound as they stared, awaiting command. All the relaxation started leaking away.

“If my mother doesn’t pay . . .”

Alice didn’t rush to insist she would. She looked at Meredith thoughtfully, waiting for her to complete the idea.

She went past completion. “If I’m hypnotized I won’t make a scene when you kill me, will I? Because I’ll be too relaxed?” She was starting to cry again, even though it felt like she was violating the agreement they’d been reaching.

The sorrow receded in the way Alice looked at her. “Meredith, when I hypnotize you, you won’t have to endure that kind of thought. That’s another reason this will be better for you. I really don’t think an intelligent, cooperative girl like you is an escape risk, but there’s no reason to let you stew in terror for however long it takes. This way you just bliss out until it’s time to go home.

“You’ll be inside a quiet little bubble in time, connected to nothing else. While you’re in it, under my control, nothing outside will bother you. When your mother meets my terms, and I awaken you to leave me, the bubble will vanish—pop—and everything in it will be gone. No face, no name, no fear, no blame. So you won’t be having nightmares about all this, either.”

Meredith felt her exposure intensely, but she was feeling warm as she let her kidnapper soothe her and take charge of her.

“Before you start worrying, too, Meredith, it doesn’t mean that I’ll electroshock you into feeling pain or having a seizure if you try to remember. I’m blowing a bubble for you to float in, not a vault of pain. What I’ll do to you under hypnosis will just help you find reasons, pleasant ones”—she grinned—“even seductive ones, to think of other things.”

Alice put her hand gently on Meredith’s ribs. Meredith gasped and almost started weeping. She wanted to thank Alice, wanted to so badly it hurt, but part of her couldn’t make herself say that to someone who’d . . . who’d . . .

Her mind opened under the pressure and she heard herself. “I’m sorry, Alice. Ma’am. I’m sorry, I believe you, I really do. but I’m still very very frigh—”

Alice left her hand on Meredith as she cried, wiping her tears with the other and a scented handkerchief, then stroking her hair. Meredith ached for her to lean down and whisper in her ear, to take her in her arms, and it didn’t even feel strange. But Alice didn’t do that.

After a while Meredith realized that she wasn’t crying, and felt wonderfully washed out and spent. The bindings were almost comfortable as they held her.

“Sorry about that,” she whispered, and Alice grinned wryly.

“I’m not really in a position to blame you for being upset, am I?”

Meredith felt warm as she grinned back, and then warmer, as her pussy began to heat under Alice’s gaze. Noticing that, now, in the glow of Alice’s amusement, it almost felt good to be open to her that way, and being helpless under her control was . . .

But it made her think about Leslie looking down at her in the van.

“What will happen to Leslie?”

“That, Meredith, is not for you to worry your pretty little head about. Just remember—another thing professionals do is to take very, very good care of our tools, and she’s a finely crafted one.

“But hush now.” Resting a hand gently on Meredith’s flank again, she looked down at her. “I’m going to undo your bindings, Meredith. I know you want to cooperate and be a good girl for me, and I want you to be able to give yourself to me, for the hypnosis, without being constrained.”

Meredith relaxed as Alice skillfully touched her here, there, around. She felt Alice’s competent hands and, once, a cool, firm inner arm against her thigh as Alice reached below the surface she lay on to undo something. She savored the sudden looseness as each part of her was released from the bonds, and compared it to the way the rest of her was still pent and bound, waiting.

Her body felt the way it did after a massage, and she realized the more she was freed from the straps the more willing she was just to lie here.

She tried to think of Lisanne Wu again but it was easier to let the dark thought go and forget.

Alice paused now and then to stroke her and feel her, and smiled, sensing her passivity. “You’ll be perfectly safe if you drift off to sleep once the hypnosis begins, Meredith. Two of my spandex girls are outside, programmed to protect us while I hypnotize you.”

Meredith thought about the taut-bodied girls mounting guard, and understood that Alice was telling whatever resistant part of her remained that even if she somehow escaped Alice’s grip (and her eyes) there were two of the mindless slaves waiting to catch her for their Mistress.

She writhed with knowing that she’d rather see it Alice’s way. That they were there so that nothing could stop her giving herself to Alice’s control.

God, she was so dizzy.

Alice’s hand was on her belly now, the second-softest part of her, and she knew she was getting wet, and she didn’t care. The bonds were gone and she was still Alice’s captive. Not even leather covered her now, and all of her was naked to the air, to Alice’s warmly hungry stare, to Alice’s touch.

Anywhere Alice chose to touch her.

This wasn’t happening.

Mmmm. And after she’d been under Alice’s hypnosis, it would never-have-happened.

Alice would put her to sleep and pop the bubble, and then—no face, no name, no fear, no blame.

So free.

Meredith looked up at her captor, and being this woman’s prize suddenly rolled up her body like a wave. She’d never dreamed she had this submissive depth in her, but she was too deep in it to think about it.

To think about more than falling up into Alice’s eyes, seeing them glow with the joy of taking her.

Has she already hypnotized me?

Meredith was already melting with wanting Alice to take her body, and then ravish her mind. She opened to it.

She looked up into Alice’s eyes, balanced for a moment atop the latest wave of need. She remembered what Leslie had said in trance to the girl controlling her, and there was no pain in the memory now. Just more need.

Alice rested one hand with agonizing delicacy on her cleft, and stroked Meredith’s ear with the other, looking down at her.

It made it so hard to speak—to think—but there was so little she needed to say.

“Alice?”

“Yes, Meredith?”

“. . . I will . . . obey.”

“Of course you will,” Alice said, and her certainty thrummed through Meredith’s body. “Begin now.

“Look into my eyes.”

5.

Meredith blinked. She was awake. Someone had snapped fingers in front of her face.

Someone chuckled to her left. She tried to turn, but she could only stand still, facing forward, feeling the sound below her waist. It felt nice not to be able to move. She knew she was still nude and that made it even nicer.

“Morning, Meredith.” Alice’s voice was in her head, dripping satisfaction. “Look at me now.”

Meredith felt her head turning but enjoyed keeping her body at attention. She saw Alice with folded arms, looking hungrily at her. Her heart sped up.

“I’m hypnotized now, aren’t I?”

Alice smiled. “Oh, yes, Meredith. Very.” She stared at Meredith, and Meredith looked back at her, thrilled just to stand and be seen.

After a few moments Alice laughed, and raised her eyebrows, as though inviting a question. Meredith laughed softly back, unable to think of one but glad to amuse Alice with her empty-headedness.

“Do you, ah, want to know how long you’ve been in a trance, Meredith?”

Meredith blinked. The question made a certain amount of dry sense, but she knew it really held no interest for her at all. How long or how deep she was under was Alice’s business, after all. She was the subject, not the hypnotist.

“Umm—not really, Alice. But if you want me to know—”

“No, Meredith. I don’t want you to know. I want you to go to sleep.”

The click of fingers that woke her this time was closer to her face. She tried for a moment to recall that sense of actually fading as Alice’s command had closed her eyes, but the dark of her eyelids merged with the dimming of her thoughts. Then Meredith remembered her place and emptied her mind.

Alice might tell her something. Alice might tell her to do something.

“Come with me.” Alice walked away and now Meredith could move. It seemed right to stay a pace or two behind Alice, and she enjoyed the chance to look at the other woman. She barely paid attention to where they were other than a sense of corridor and just concentrated on Alice. Something vague flavored it, something about not remembering where she was for later, but just watching Alice’s rear flex as she walked was so much more fulfilling to think about.

Then Meredith felt her left hand float up and over and back, slack-wristed, until she was holding the back of her head, and her right hand was on her hip before she noticed it. She still couldn’t look away from Alice, but now Alice was her balance referent as she started walking in tiptoe, one foot pacing in front of the other.

It was a post-hypnotic suggestion, and she was utterly helpless to disobey.

Meredith moaned, very quietly.

It wasn’t even scaring her not to have control of herself—just making her wet as she realized the pose she was burlesquing. Alice heard her start panting, and looked over her shoulder. Alice’s eyes shone with lust but even so they widened and she started laughing, which just moistened Meredith further. Under the derision there was astonishment.

“I had no idea you’d be that into it when I implanted it, Meredith.”

Meredith nearly came. She was even more of a slut than her hypnotist had programmed her to be.

But she didn’t come, because she had to obey the compulsion until she was released.

Alice stopped and Meredith paused, exaggerating a modeling pose with her hands still in place, and before she knew it she was vamping Alice for real, trying to bend and squirm within the confines of her programming to earn that lust-light again.

This woman abducted me, and I’m trying to seduce her. It was like a pinch in the midst of her bliss, but it was too weak. It just spurred her on, made her feel dirtier . . .

“Behave.”

Meredith came smoothly to attention, and the lust and the shame were suddenly as remote as a freeze-framed video in her mind. But she still glowed in her bones from how they’d turned her on, and when she couldn’t form words she still beamed adoringly at Alice.

. . . Do it again!

Please . . .

Alice stepped to her and reached to her throat. “You’re going to forget this, soon,” she said, and touched Meredith in the soft place below her ear. Meredith trembled.

“You look hot even without leather bindings,” Alice said quietly.

“The bonds are in my mind,” Meredith made herself say, and juiced to hear it leave her lips.

Alice nodded. “Just so.” She smiled. “You may acquire a taste for spandex, yourself.”

They stared at each other, hearing ragged breathing.

“Turn around, please.” Alice’s tone was instantly cool and Meredith felt like the lover who’d lost control first—protected by her other’s strength. “Enter the room behind you. There’s something you need to see.”

Meredith pivoted to obey, but then she gasped. Before she could even register the door she saw the PATTERN on it, and it was the only PATTERN and . . .

. . . her thoughts spilled out into it and as its complexity sucked her in it scattered her wits too far apart for her to gather them. Each thought, each separate syllable, each word whose meaning leaked away now, slid down a separate whorl and spun away from view into the distance of PATTERN . . .

“. . . Meredith.” Alice’s voice was gentle and close, and Meredith blinked awake. They stood together, Alice’s body warm in its clothing against Meredith’s skin. Meredith gaped at her as her mind reassembled.

She leaned down to rest her head on Alice’s shoulder and Alice let her, embracing her.

Something’s happened to me.

“The mandala is for your protection, too,” Alice murmured, and Meredith nodded against her blouse. “There are places inside here where no slave may go, and this ensures that anyone who does will be entranced and unable to enter. I wanted to make sure you were imprinted with it.”

Imprinted. Meredith knew the mandala had done something very powerful to her, inside. She didn’t question how, or wonder what Alice had done to her mind when she was in trance to program her for it.

She stirred against Alice, trying to gather her thoughts, but they receded as though they floated in water each time she tried.

And Alice’s body on the other side of the warm soft cloth was sooo distracting.

For a moment, she knew Alice could think perfectly well—no one was hypnotizing her into docility to protect her—but she admired the other woman mindlessly. It was easier. It was so much hotter. A few breaths and strokes later, even the doubt had gone. She was weak and Alice was strong.

Alice was reassuring her. “It’s all right, Meredith—every girl who sees it for the first time after I’ve prepared her mind finds herself responding like that.” Meredith subsided at once, tranquilized by Alice’s tone.

“This was just a test—the other mandalas here are harder to find, and I’ll have that removed once I reprogram one of the slaves to resist it. You’re already programmed to see the prior warnings and avoid them automatically, just like the other slaves. A girl really has to try hard to get far enough to be hypnotized by a mandala here, and of course none of my girls would think of trying.”

“Neither will I,” whispered Meredith, and Alice stroked her back before stepping away from her.

“I know. You’re a very cooperative girl, and you’re one of my most obedient subjects.”

Obedient. It rang deep inside Meredith and the echoes played across her clit. Obedient.

“I’ll be sorry to let you go.” She smiled and Meredith’s bones melted for a moment.

I’ll be sorry, too, when you—

Before she could be shocked at herself Alice spoke again, softly. “You’re going to forget this, soon,” she said, and touched Meredith in the soft place below her ear.

“Feeling more obedient every moment, aren’t you, Meredith?”

Ohhh. “Yes, Alice. So much more—obedient.” The word was so erotic she could barely say it aloud.

“The mandala does have that effect on some women’s minds. I knew you’d be very susceptible.

“There’s another housekeeping detail like this. The mandala protects small areas within. Outside, there’s the perimeter, which keeps us in and the rest of the world out. I doubt I’ll be letting you outside—you’re an indoor pet—but just in case, you’ve been trained to stay inside and not to try to leave.”

Meredith stood dazed for a moment. Oh, yes. Alice had kidnapped her, and she mustn’t try to escape. It was hard to imagine wanting to, right now, but it was kind of Alice to protect her from that anyway.

“Give me your wrist, Meredith.”

“Yes, Alice.” Meredith twitched her thighs around the little comelet that burst in her as she became pleasing, lifting her arm gently so she could take it. She thought for the tiniest time of just repeating that phrase, to give herself the obedience reward, but as the idea wiped itself from her mind she was glad to see it go.

She existed for the orgasms, not they for her. They were part of how Alice made her behave.

All Meredith should do—all she really could do—was to be as attentive as her dreamy little mind allowed, and await the next chance to obey her.

Alice was strapping a pretty plastic watch to her wrist. She let it fall to her side when Alice let it go, feeling pleasantly more naked now that she had the purple band on her.

“Thank you for the beautiful—” Meredith heard the beep and her mind went blank. She realized the watch was before her, that she’d lifted her arm to hold it across her chest. As she tried to rouse herself it beeped again, and the drowsiness washed warmly back over her. Meredith fought the lethargy and forced her eyes open, trying to look at Alice as always, but each new beep made her body loose and her eyelids heavier.

Alice’s arms were on her shoulders. “Wake up now, Meredith. Wake up for me.”

The command helped her focus and hold off the need to sleep.

“Thank you, Alice. I don’t—understand. I’m so . . . very . . . sleepy.”

Alice’s smile hummed silently through her loins. “Yes, you are, Meredith, so sleepy now, but my obedient girl will stay awake for me, won’t she?”

“Yes, Alice!” she breathed. Her own resolve was a joke, but to obey Alice, she could do anything.

“As part of your brainwashing, I’ve conditioned you to the beeptone. When you hear it you’ll automatically become drowsy, with an irresistible compulsion to surrender to a deep sleep.

“Approaching the perimeter it will activate the watch, and it will beep you. If you’re just lost, you’ll realize you’re being triggered and move away. If you don’t move away, you’ll just be beep-triggered until you do fall down and go to sleep. That way, even if you forget to be a good girl you won’t be allowed to go where you shouldn’t, and you’ll train yourself not to try.”

As Alice stared into her, Meredith squirmed on the gaze as though it were Alice’s fingers in her pussy. “I want you to be safe.

“And obedient.” A smile, as she watched the word do its work on Meredith.

She reached for Meredith’s ear again. “You’re going to forget this, soon.” And touched.

“But you’ve been learning so many lessons and rules, and I’ll bet you’re not just an obedient girl but a very sleepy one by now, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Meredith whispered, reminded.

“Then you may,” Alice whispered back. “Sleep.”

6.

Meredith sat comfortably on the hard chair and waited. There was a window beside her but she didn’t look out. It was enough to know there was a pleasant view there, and that it made her sleepy.

She didn’t quite remember when she’d awakened from the trance Alice had put her into, but she supposed that was part of what happened when you were hypnotized.

She was definitely hypnotized, too. She’d never felt this utterly calm before, this ready to be reasonable. Even beside feeling obliged to Alice for giving her this wonderful, safe way to help her pass her captivity, she felt she could comply with anything Alice suggested.

Mom might want to ask her how she entranced me, she smirked to herself, and then smiled more brightly when she realized she’d just thought about her mother in this place but hadn’t just sobbed herself off the chair in homesickness.

It was working. Thank you, Alice!

Meredith lowered her head and started a bit—she’d forgotten she was nude. It occurred to her that it served a lot of purposes to be nude. She’d be a bit shy about escaping and maybe getting into worse trouble with people who’d “help out” a naked girl. She couldn’t easily hide anything like a weapon, laughable as that would be for her, so the slavegirls guarding her wouldn’t do anything drastic if . . .

It eluded her, but she didn’t worry about it.

She was also really aroused to be nude in captivity, and it showed. Her nipples were taut and her crotch was damp. It might explain some of the very kinky fantasies she thought she could remember since the time Alice had first hypnotized her.

I didn’t really strut for her like some bad stripper, did I? God, in the dream Alice’s laugh had been so—ohh. She almost wished it had been real, but it was so very, very hard to remember now. She wondered how much she’d blurted out while Alice had her entranced.

She hoped Alice didn’t take it personally. Meredith didn’t think she was more than bi-curious at most, and she wasn’t eager to discover that getting bound and abducted and held in real life were a turn-on for her.

Oh, well. Alice had said, hadn’t she, that she was a professional? She wouldn’t let herself get caught up in her latest victim’s kinks, even if the victim was losing herself in them. She’d know about them—Meredith’s mind was as naked as her body, now that she’d opened it to let Alice protect her—and they might amuse her, but Meredith felt oddly safe about that.

She looked at her hands folded loosely in her lap, and saw the purple plastic on her wrist. Just seeing it there, quietly binding her, ready to put her to sleep if she misbehaved, gave Meredith a little jolt, and she grinned at it. Oh, Alice, did I say anything while I was under the spell? Do you have any idea what I dreamed about how you gave this to me?

“Captive.”

She snapped upright, seeing a young woman at attention in the doorway.

A spandex girl, sexy and scary and looking at her with complete absorption and no feeling. Meredith had no idea if this girl had been one of her abductors, maybe the one who’d hypnotized Leslie, and warm horror touched her as she wondered if it even mattered—if Alice’s slaves had been brainwashed into some kind of hive-entity, interchangeable.

The girl saw her stare and ignored it.

“Mistress wills that you come with me.”

As she rose to obey, Meredith noticed that the girl was in an even briefer costume, a bikini in the same black-and-yellow color scheme. It left even more of her olive skin and athletic shape visible, but it still carried a swarm-insect feel. She was a supple wasp.

The girl pivoted neatly when she saw Meredith followed and led her down a hallway. Meredith felt an odd impulse to pay attention to her surroundings, but then she realized that’s what Alice put me in this hypnotic bubble to avoid.

Anyway, it was better to let the spandex girl’s ass mesmerize her.

No face, no name, no fear, no blame. Where had she heard that?

Then they were in a room where another of the supple wasps stood in an identical bikini by a camcorder on a tripod, staring ahead. Meredith wondered where Alice was, but didn’t worry. She knew she could just obey Alice’s well-programmed slaves and settle back for the ride.

The first slave stepped to the second and snapped her fingers. The second slave blinked out of her trance and turned to a worktable by the tripod. The first led Meredith to a chair in front of the camcorder. Meredith stood still in front of it, with no desire to sit until she was told.

Then she saw both girls come to attention as their eyes widened, and Alice came in, smiling broadly at Meredith. Without looking away from her Alice snapped her fingers, and the two slavegirls resumed whatever tasks they were doing.

“Sorry to disturb your contemplation,” she said, sparing a glance to notice that Meredith’s nipples were very hard now. “But it’s time to make a tape for your mother so she can see the goods are intact.”

Meredith liked being “goods.” She waited.

“But—please sit, now—I imagine she’ll be upset, so part of what I want to do is help her be calm.

“Do you feel calm, Meredith?”

Meredith, looking up now at Alice, was very aware of how soft and open she was as her captor looked down at her, and it excited her a lot. But she looked into herself and realized she could please Alice with an equal truth.

“Yes, Alice. I’m not worried about anything.”

“Why not, Meredith?”

“Because I’m in the bubble. I’m hypnotized.”

“Good girl. Now, I think your mother might be even more upset if she heard that I was keeping you under hypnosis, even if I explain. In fact, I think you’ll forget all about being my hypnotic captive when I return you or whenever you speak to outsiders, or else you’ll have a tedious few months of ‘deprogrammers’ trying to undo my fiendish web of mind-enslavement.” She laughed and Meredith grinned up at her, putting her hand between her legs at the words.

She was using the arm Alice had put the sleep-watch on, and when she felt the plastic on her thigh she came, quietly. Her eyes narrowed but never left Alice’s face.

Alice watched her and nodded. “Listen now. I’m going to put you under again, so you don’t blurt anything out. You’ll be very calm, and maybe that will help your mother be calm, too, so she can receive my instructions.

“Here’s something to wear, too—I think your mother would agree you’re a lovely girl but I think she’d be nervous if she saw I let you go around bare-assed, hmm?”

Meredith grinned at her and shrugged the oversized gray sweater over herself. The wool itched pleasantly and she felt even more indecent, bundled from neck to belly, and nude below.

Alice’s fingertip on her chin raised it and then there were Alice’s eyes.

Meredith thought she heard someone’s soft, ecstatic sigh.

But by then she was hypnotized again.

7.

The camcorder light was on and words were in her head. They left her mouth like a procession of believers. She heard her mouth greet her mother and felt nothing. She heard herself say things about her abductors that made no sense to her but left her thoughts as soon as they left her lips.

She recited some orders and amounts and directions, and was intrigued by how aware she sounded.

She held up a newspaper and then read from it, the date and some features, and looked up and said goodbye.

The light went out.

One of the spandex girls took the newspaper and then slid the sweater back off to let her go nude once more. Meredith sat limply and raised her arms.

Alice smiled and touched her nearer breast, and Meredith almost came again—not from the sweet bite of the static discharge, but from the look in Alice’s eyes as she did it to her.

She stayed seated, not being told to do anything else, and as her mind drifted she felt a delayed loss. This was as close as she’d get to her mom for a while and, in a way, she’d slept through it. She wondered if, while she’d been calm, she’d somehow let her mother see that she loved her.

It hurt, because as she tried to crawl back into the bubble she realized her mother was going through this without one. There was no one to hypnotize Mom, and tell her what to remember . . .

“What’s troubling my obedient girl?” Alice’s voice was just soft enough to wick the tears from her. She was too calm to sob, and too happy being near Alice, but it still hurt.

“I just—she’s probably going crazy. This is driving her crazy.” The tears stopped, at least.

“I studied both of you before I chose you for my captive, Meredith. I sincerely doubt your mother’s capable of going crazy. Not even if she tried.” Alice’s tone was admiring, and it made Meredith feel so much better that this woman she trusted so much liked the one she loved more than anything.

“She’s thinking about Lisanne Wu,” Meredith murmured, not even sure where the memory had come from. She looked artlessly at Alice. “Did you kidnap her, too?”

Alice looked back at her, then reached for her ear. “You’re going to forget this, soon.”

Meredith rode the little hum, like a shy cousin of the comelet she earned with obedience, and waited for Alice to tell her.

“Yes, Meredith. I took Lisanne some time ago. The Wus are quite wealthy, though not in your mother’s range, and they’d have given everything they owned and then killed their friends and plundered them, to get her back.

“But they did some things I specified they shouldn’t. They wanted Lisanne back that badly, and they didn’t trust me.” Meredith couldn’t conceive of not trusting Alice—but the Wus had never looked into Alice’s eyes. “Now they’ll never see Lisanne again, and if they’re in denial about that, your mother isn’t. She’ll pay me what I ask—and do nothing else.”

Alice reached for her, this time resting a hand on Meredith’s shoulder. “Slip back into the bubble whenever you want to, Meredith. This is what you don’t need to think about.” Meredith tried to sort out the gentle pressure, and the avid look.

Alice’s soothing tone was massaging her brain again. She could almost see the convolutions smoothing out under Alice’s soft, irresistible force.

The disquiet was still there, and Alice watched it in her.

“But—Lisanne. Is she . . . ?”

Alice shook her head. “As far as I know, she’s still alive, and her training’s perfect. I doubt they’ll have cause to kill her.”

Meredith sat, relaxed. This was striking bitter chords inside her, but she was learning she’d become deaf to that music.

“I did say I was a professional, Meredith. Recall what I said about money when we first spoke. If I were to kill a girl I took, her value would be nil.

“My slavegirls are programmed for various functions. Hot long-endurance submissive sex is only one of them. It takes a long time to prepare a girl fully, to break her will, reindoctrinate her, create the compulsions she’ll obey when she’s not obeying my voice directly, train her in the other skills I need to run what I do.

“But it’s a lot simpler if a girl is a temporary acquisition, and if all I want her to do is fuck on command and imprint on another owner.

“If for whatever reason someone’s ransom value ends or stops being worth the trouble, then I’ll recoup my costs and some of my lost profit by selling her to a slave broker.”

Meredith stared at her. The soothing voice belied the awful words—or was it the other way round?

“By that time, Meredith, she wants it. After I’m done conditioning a girl to sex and obedience she’ll look forward to it—more than you do now to that desk at Warner Phipps. Makes her fate not just bearable but addictive.

“It also sends her value sky-high. Obedience sells, and brainwashed obedience makes a seller’s market.” Alice was looking at her intently.

“I’m not sure how useful it is to talk about ‘Lisanne Wu’ now—the girl who used to use that name can’t recall it. She’d assure you there was no such person, when her mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied. But she gets off on doing her best for whoever she obeys, and her best is very, very good now.”

Meredith thought of all that empathy and kindness and for a moment saw it as the pretty gleam on the edge of a scalpel. Alice might be a professional, but . . . but . . .

She thought again about seeing the spandex girls committing a felony under hypnotic control.

Leslie betraying her and not even wanting to stop. Looking into her eyes and chloroforming her and saying “I obey.”

Leslie, getting aroused as the lead spandex girl stole her mind with the watch. The way she’d said “Hypnotized . . .”

Leslie.

She looked at Alice, and believed Alice could make her glad to be sold as a sex slave. She wondered if she’d dream about that when Alice returned her to the bubble. She didn’t really wonder where her hand would be when she dreamed.

Alice saw that in her eyes.

Alice smiled.

“You’re going to forget this, soon,” she said, and touched Meredith in the soft place below her ear.

Meredith came.