The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

TETHER

by trilby else ()

90.

Meredith stood in the gym, staring at her reflection. The Instructress had locked her gaze there after giving her two Magic Hypno Marbles to hold. Now she watching how easily the empty-eyed girl in the mirror balanced the MHMs’ immensities on her palms. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d stopped listening to Mistress ravish her mother out on the terrace. She’d had a shower, but she didn’t know whether she’d been put to sleep since then, or before coming here to the gym to be put through her MHM paces by the Instructress.

She didn’t care. Meredith watched herself, still and blank, and thought she might make an attractive candelabrum for a hallway. It didn’t slip over her thoughts and coat them like a Mistress suggestion, and felt more like her own fantasy, but it turned her on to imagine being so inconsequential here that she could be used for such a trivial task. To be a hypnotized girl with no greater purpose but to stand like that, mindless and decorative. She was already submissive enough to love the idea.

It turned her on more, and made her proud, to imagine Mistress hearing about it. Meredith wouldn’t tell her while awake: Mistress learned everything she wished to when Meredith confessed it all under hypnosis.

Then the Instructress took the MHMs from Meredith and spoke to her softly. Meredith started to hero-worship the stronger slave for how effortlessly she handled the weight that a weakling like Meredith needed trance to support. But then the triggers the Instructress was feeding her took control, and she was lost in the bliss of being programmed.

A moment later the Instructress was fading from her mind. Meredith strode purposefully to the master suite that had been her mother’s, where her mother still slept when Mistress wanted to use her.

The spandex girls she found on the way recognized Meredith as just another of Mistress’ obedient tools and didn’t pay attention to her, the way Mistress had programmed them to leer and sneer at her mother. She was ready in case one of them turned to her and froze her to receive new orders, but the ones the Instructress had implanted were current, and no one stopped her.

The sun was already up, shining into the bedroom through the half-drawn drapes to the terrace door. Both women on the bed seemed still asleep—Mistress reclining on pillows, half-smiling, and Frances curled between her legs, her face inches from Mistress’ cunt.

She’d been kneeling there, servicing her owner, when she’d fallen or been put to sleep, and her ass was still half-raised. Meredith padded closer, looking avidly at how her mother lay. One hand had been between her own thighs and lay limp below her, as if she’d been allowed to masturbate to Mistress’ scent after she’d satisfied her domme. Her shapely ass still bore some marks, and Meredith could almost hear the slaps and the ecstatic cries they’d raised. Her asshole glistened, too, but Meredith couldn’t see whatever—oh. The buttplug, glistening too, had slid out of her, possibly after she’d come herself into passing out.

Meredith leaned forward, put her lips to the cool skin of her mother’s ass, and then sucked in a little. Her mother swayed dreamily and moaned. Meredith nipped her.

Frances made a whispery cry and blinked awake, but even this dazed she was careful not to wake her dominant. Mistress slept on, possibly dreaming of what Frances had done for her last night during and after the vampire play.

If it had even stopped before sleep. As her mother turned, Meredith saw how the hickeys had multiplied.

Frances’ eyes focused on her, and the older woman slid gently off the bed and moved against her, soft and drowsy. Meredith held her, breathing sex and sweat and perfume. She stroked her mother’s back.

“You look so sexy, Mother,” she whispered.

It half-roused Frances, but she was still under the spell of last night, and she didn’t react as she might have otherwise. “Last night . . . ohhhh. God. It was so good.” Her eyes were bleary but thrilled. “I remember dreaming this, when she was giving me her hypnotic treatments. Teaching me how to think.”

Meredith had watched her mother sit passively while Mistress had programmed her to dream it, back when she was just Frances’ lover.

“But now—it’s real! It’s really happening to me! I was really hypnotized, when she just drew me out there.

“And Meredith? Were you really falling asleep too?”

“Yes, Mother,” Meredith lied. “Mistress is a brilliant hypnotist. I don’t even know what triggered me. But it was just so wonderfully evil, to be trying to stay up with you but to be lulled to sleep by the vampire’s power.”

Frances idly stroked her own breasts. “I know. Ohhh. It was so hot watching you just succumb to it. Even while I was obeying the call. And then outside—the things she made me do—and beg for—”

Even in the indirect light, Meredith could see her mother blushing.

“I know, Mother. I heard you.” She watched the blush deepen as her mother realized everyone awake must have. “Leslie and I played with ourselves, listening.”

Frances shook a little and stared at her. “I almost wish . . . she’d done it to me inside. In the main foyer, with everyone lining the banisters.” She looked a little shocked at herself—and then excited that she’d said it.

“But you kept her happy all night long, Mother. You must have been a fantastic little pussytoy. And fell asleep at your post, too.”

“It was so—fantastic. And being so helpless and hypnotized made it so hot.” She gave Meredith an endearingly sidelong grin. “And evil. Alice has been hypnotizing us both to help us and protect us, and I trust her completely, but . . . thinking about her abusing it somehow, while I’m utterly vulnerable to her, trained to let her control me . . .” She sighed, still softly. “Playing that I’m Alice’s willing slave, that she does control me, is almost as good as the sex.”

“Obeying as a slave is better than the sex, isn’t it, Mother?”

Frances gasped and dipped her head, and raised it again. “Yes, baby. It is.” She did a pelvic thrust without really knowing it. “I love to obey her.”

Meredith smiled. “I could tell last night. Being controlled really had you hooked. I saw how wet you were just being a mindless labor unit, too.”

Frances gasped again and looked at her almost desperately. “God. Yes. Ohhh—”

“What?”

Her mother looked at her. “God. I just . . . fantasized. I must obey the staff, and if one of them puts me in a trance and has me watering plants or dusting, maybe Alice will see me doing slave work and just—leave me that way. For hours.” She pinched her nipples and hissed. “Too hypnotized to know what happened to me. Just obeying until someone awakens me.”

She held Meredith’s gaze. “But just dreaming about it makes me almost as hot as serving Alice in the—oh!” She seemed to wake a little more.

“Breakfast!” She looked again at their sleeping hypnotist. “I should fetch it for her. Serve her in bed.” She reached for a wrap to wear, and Meredith saw she’d already been conditioned to choose the most translucent one.

“Mother? What’s that for?”

“But—!” Frances looked down at herself. The marks and sticky gleams proclaimed she’d been strenuously used for a while. She was shaking her head but Meredith could see the idea taking over.

“No need to cover it, Mother. They all know what she uses you for. Let them see how fun you are to play with.” She drank in her mother’s mortified arousal.

“You just spent the night as a vampire’s whore. You’re wearing her mark. What else do you need, when you tell them your Mistress needs a tray?”

Frances gaped at her and put one hand to her throat, and was almost ready to walk naked out the door when Mistress stirred on the bed and turned, her eyes still closed.

Her mother hugged herself as they both gazed at Mistress, who still slept. Meredith didn’t know whether she was really listening to her two slaves talk. She might be blissfully able to sleep for real, safe in the heart of a houseful of women who all lived to serve her smallest whim.

“She’s a goddess,” Frances breathed. “Perfect. I would . . . I would crawl behind her, down every corridor of the company, and plead . . .” She sobbed once and was calm. “Tasting her is like falling under a whole new spell.”

When she turned and looked up at Meredith, her eyes were lidded and strange. “Would you like to taste her, baby?”

Meredith watched her lick her lips. She’d long since been conditioned to Mistress’ scent and taste while commands throbbed in her head, and remembered nights and days when Mistress just used her for a different fuck than a spandex girl could give. For Mistress it had been ride after ride on an increasingly skillful mouth. For Meredith, it had sex-coded the feel of her will eroding, a little more each time.

But this would be different. This would help enslave someone else.

“Yes, please, Mother.”

Frances’ eyes were moist and dull as she drifted against her daughter. Mistress’ taste by itself was doping Frances’ thoughts, mesmerizing her into forgetting she was anything but a sex slave. She put her lips to Meredith’s. She slid her tongue between them and hugged Meredith closer. Their breasts pressed softly together and they moaned along each other’s tongues.

Meredith massaged Frances’ back and her mother moved languidly against her, falling into the kiss and sliding her slick pussy across Meredith’s thigh. She was Meredith’s for the taking—standing up, or sprawled on the floor before Mistress’ bed. But Meredith had not been programmed for that. Only for the kiss.

Mistress’ juice tasted wonderful, as it always did.

Tasting it mixed with her mother’s flavor, on her mother’s hotly sucking mouth, was exquisite.

91.

More from some still-surviving inhibition than any act of will, Frances finally pulled away. But she stayed close to her daughter and gazed up at her, more drowsy than shocked at what she’d just let herself do.

Mistress stirred again.

“Baby—please.” Frances hitched in a breath. “Would you h-hypnotize me now?”

“Mother?”

Frances squirmed. “Please. You’re right—I’m a vampire’s whore.” She was panting, and one hand rested just beside her crotch. “When my . . . undead mistress wakes, she must find her slut in a trance. W-waiting by the bed for commands.

“Like the obedient little hypnoslave she made me into.” She touched the hickey almost reverently.

“Or . . .” Her breathing was more ragged. She looked at Meredith, half-horrified, half-eager. “Or I could—I should let Clare do it to me. Tell her about the sex game and being a slave, and then have her use my trigger to make me . . .”

Mistress would be very happy at the progress Frances had made. Meredith let her mother dream about it for a while. “But once Clare had you under control, Mother, it might be like your other fantasy. She might just program you to go mop the kitchen. You might not . . .”

“But—”

Mistress sat up and rubbed her eyes.

Frances stepped away from Meredith and came to attention, standing in the sunlight from the window to show herself off. She closed her eyes and raised her hands like a paused sleepwalker, or a begging puppy. Mistress looked at her and smiled, flicking a glance at Meredith before looking back at the woman she’d turned into her eager pet.

“Serve me, my slave,” she growled, and Frances’ eyes opened to stare forward. Only one blink spoiled the illusion that she was truly spellbound.

“Yesss, Missstresss . . . what is your command? Your willing slave will obey . . .”

Mistress rose slowly from the bed like a cobra, watching her prey intently. Suddenly she spread her hand and made a dramatic sweeping motion before Frances’ face. “Feel my will stronger over your thoughts and desires, slave.”

Frances blinked as if fighting deep sleep, her hands drifting limply to her sides.

“Stronger . . .”

“Why do you live, slave?”

Undulating for a moment like a charmed snake, her eyes still blank, Frances intoned, “For you to drink, Mistress. My blood, my life, my will, my soul.” Another gesture, and she let her head loll back to show Mistress her throat.

Mistress took her, a little roughly, winning a gasp and a groan of pleasure that hiccupped when Mistress cupped her pussy. Mistress nuzzled her throat, smiling at the bruising, then licked, then kissed.

Frances bucked in her arms and screamed feebly as Mistress bit and fingered her at the same time. She shuddered in the vampiric grip, grimacing with the intensity. Her mouth worked as she tried to plead, or cry out, but only her hips had strength as she rode Mistress’ grip.

The time Meredith had just spent seducing her mother, as well as everything that Frances could now recall of her slave time last night, had primed Frances for climax. She was still hot to trot—as Mistress loosened her hold, Frances tried weakly to hump her hand, then her leg, before subsiding.

Mistress held her so that as her eyes cleared, she saw Meredith watching her. She’d never been used in front of her daughter before, not awake, and the shame deepened her lovely blush. She licked her lips, half in horror, remembering that half-tranced kiss and the mindless need to share her dominant’s honey.

“Yes, Frances dear. Enough of the sex games, for a little while. No more vampires or robotizers.” She grinned as Frances twitched at the keywords, still trapped in her daughter’s witness.

“But I can still play with you. Would you like that?”

Frances looked up at her, nodding the slow nod of a guilty child, and then rested her head against Mistress’ neck. Mistress let her, stroking her hair.

“Yes, please, Alice,” she breathed. “Play with me. I’m your toy.” She closed her eyes and melted against Mistress, whining softly. “I’m your slave.”

Mistress let her writhe, then grabbed her hair and pulled her head back to kiss her hungrily. Frances submitted to it and swung her hips in helpless excitement.

She was still blinking and grinning stupidly up at Mistress when Mistress smiled and said, “It really is the control, isn’t it, Frances dear? That gets you off? Being my puppet addicts you more than being my dildo?”

Frances shivered and glanced back at Meredith, then looked up. Another slow nod—and then the arousal caught her. She slid against Mistress’ hip while gazing at her—a whore from the neck down, and above a confused virgin. “Yes, Alice. I love being your fucktoy, but I adore being . . . " She breathed. “Being your obedient slave.”

“Then tell our pretty young friend, here, which you’d rather have me do to you right now, slave.” Mistress’ voice was a leather glove on Frances’ soul. “Screw you until you forget your name—or hypnotize you until you’re willing to agree you never had one.

“Fuck your body and addict you. Fuck your mind and own you.

“I’ve already trained you to let me decide, slave. But this time, I’ll let you choose. What should Meredith watch me do to you?”

Frances swallowed and looked down, but again the pleasure of showing someone what a slut she was drove her on. She bowed her head a little but still looked up at Mistress.

“Let her see you . . .” She swallowed, and glanced at Meredith.

“Let her see you fuck my mind.” Frances closed her eyes and rode a wave of heat inside. “Mistress.

“Hypnotize me, please. Make me sleep and obey you. Please.”

Mistress smiled and handled her more gently. She stepped back and Frances swayed dazedly but kept standing in her own, letting her mistress gaze at her.

“Then we’ll begin, Frances dear. Open your mind.”

Frances blinked. “Are you going to give me my actual hypnotic treatment—now?” It seemed to remind her again that she was nude, in the middle of sexplay, with an audience.

“Why not, Frances dear? You’ll undergo it anyway. Should I hypnotize you later, while you’re speaking to the servants?”

“But . . .” Frances gazed into her eyes and softened, enjoying the chance to yield to her. “Of course, Alice. You’re right.” She grinned. “You’re my hypnotist—you’re always right.”

“Tell me again, dear, why you want me to put you into a trance.”

Frances stared at her. “I . . . I . . . need it. I crave being helpless while you tell me what to think.” A hand slipped to her cleft, hesitated. She gulped, searching Mistress’ face for a sign she’d pleased her.

“Is that all, dear?”

Now Frances did touch herself. “I’m—a natural submissive? It makes it easier to train me to—?” She squirmed.

“Frances dear, wasn’t the reason you originally asked me to hypnotize you, before, something about helping you not to make the wrong decisions? For your daughter’s sake?” Her mother had barely enough will to move her head at that—before she could look over at Meredith she’d fallen into Mistress’ gaze again.

“To submit to the guidance of someone whom you could trust?” Mistress’ voice stroked Frances, as she gave each word voluptuous play. “Trust with your mind and memories?

“Trust to tell you the right thing to do, and take gently away from you any ability, or desire, to think for yourself?

“Trust to make you so deeply, helplessly obedient to her that you could know you would carry out every command she gave you without any fear of failing?”

Frances breathed deeply, transfixed by Mistress’ gaze, her head bobbing doll-like as the seductive words flowed into it. She kept staring after Mistress fell silent, then shook her head a little without looking away.

“Oh.” She blinked again, as if only now awakening. “Yes. I remember now why I need you to hypnotize me.” She spoke in the low, ecstatic tone of a totally converted cultist.

“It’s to condition me to need to obey you in all things. I need to be . . .” Suddenly Frances smiled blissfully. “. . . I need to be brainwashed to accept your complete control. Never to resist anything you do to my mind or body. Wanting you to do it. Whatever it is.”

Now that she had it right, she kept beaming. “Yes. Submitting to regular hypnotic treatments is training me to go into trance on command.”

“What if I told you to do something wrong, Frances dear? Something terribly wrong and evil?”

Frances didn’t even blink, simpering at Mistress with total adoration. “You are my hypnotist, Alice. When I am hypnotized, right and wrong are what you tell me they are.

“If I am a good subject, that will soon become my truth even when I am not hypnotized.

“I want to be a good subject.”

Her eyes grew glassier as she began responding to the learned phrases as Mistress had conditioned her to. “When you have told me nothing, my mind is . . . empty. Right is—obeying you totally. Wrong is—

“Wrong is impossible.”

92.

Meredith wanted to kneel and touch herself.

She’d seen her mother tearfully break in front of Mistress, pleading on her knees to be tranced for the reasons Mistress offered her now. But Mistress had already enticed her mother to forget, and accept her new desires as the only truth.

Soon, her mother really would think—and do—anything Mistress told her to, without question.

“It’s already too late for me ever to think freely again.” Frances smiled sweetly under her starry eyes. “I’m too deeply enthralled to remember how.”

“Yes, Frances. And what happens when I hypnotize you?”

Frances beamed at her and squeezed her thighs tighter. “I give up my willpower to you, and you control my mind completely. You can do anything you want to me and I will accept it.

“That’s what hypnosis is: total domination and mind control. I know that now.”

“Very good, Frances!” Mistress let her preen, but she was too subservient, and too eager to be put under, to do much. “Now, if you’re ready to begin our hypnosis session, just submit completely to my will and give up your own. Can you do that for me?”

After a shy glance at Meredith, Frances nodded solemnly. “Yes, Alice, love. I’m ready to submit totally. I will obey your every command.” Her eyes were glazing but still trying to focus on Mistress’, as if it would be her own decision to fall into Mistress’ gaze.

Meredith knew Mistress was just playing with her mother, and enjoyed how Frances was reacting.

“Alice?” Frances seemed to be fighting the drowsiness, and almost trying to win.

“Yes, Frances dear? Did you want to stay awake instead and be able to think some more?”

“Oh, no, Alice. I really do want you to hypnotize me. It’s just that—”

For a moment her eyes were as moist as her pussy. “Thank you for doing it do me so personally, Alice. All the time you devote to me while I’m just being a sleepy little drone, who needs to be told how to everything. Molding me, reprogramming me—reshaping how I think and believe—it’s so intimate and so beautiful.

“. . . I love you, Alice. God, I love you so much . . .”

She shook her head and wiped at her eyes, though Mistress had made no move to comfort her. Her satisfied smile seemed to soothe Frances just as much. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ll never be able to repay you for all that personal time you spend, just with me. A thousand nights eating you out wouldn’t even begin—being your bodyslave for the rest of my life wouldn’t—”

“Be still.” Mistress smiled as it silenced Frances at once. “In due time—soon, Frances dear—you will make everything I do with you completely worth my while. You will serve me well, and you will please me beyond your most depraved dreams.”

Suddenly, even as the promise quivered in Frances’ mind and she panted and writhed and stared, Mistress stepped forward and put her hands to Frances’ temples.

Frances’ eyes widened and she stared up, sighing, going rigid like a rabbit looking up at the owl.

“Sleep!”

Frances’ face went slack but she kept staring, as if Mistress had drained her will with the touch. Her eyes stayed open and fixed on her hypnotist’s as she whispered, “I am deep asleep.”

“Obey!”

The second command reached Frances’ sexual core even as deep as she was, and her hips twitched as if she’d felt it on her clit. But her voice was low, humble, chastened. She recited her lesson. “I obey.

“My thoughts are nothing. I have no thoughts.

“My will is nothing. I have no will.

“I am a hypnotized slave. I exist to do what I am told.” Her breathing was slow now, and she gazed calmly up at her owner, utterly tame.

Mistress lowered her hands and stepped back, smiling at Frances, who gazed placidly back at her. “Your reality is what I tell you, slave.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Frances nodded as though her head were in thick syrup. “My reality.”

“You have no need to know, no need to think, no need to be. Just accept and obey.”

“Yes, Mistress. Accept and obey.” Frances’ eyes half-closed as the phrase opened a subroutine Mistress must have implanted in an earlier session. “Nothing is real but Mistress’ voice in my mind as it changes my thoughts.”

Her eyes opened with the same blank stare. “What are my thoughts, Mistress?”

“I am standing before you, slave, and staring into your eyes. You know what that does to you.”

Frances’ eyes went glassier. “Yess . . .”

“You are helpless to look away even if you wanted to, and you can no longer even imagine wanting to.”

“Help . . . less . . .”

“I am placing a truth into your mind. A simple truth for a simple slave. Each time you hear me say it, you will repeat it.

“Each time you repeat it, it will become more true.

“Each time it becomes more true, it will become more a part of your mind.”

Frances stood very still, looking like someone lost in a religious vision. “Truth. I will repeat. Part of my mind.” She closed her eyes as the commands took effect. “I will accept and obey.”

“Here is the truth: you exist only to obey me.”

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress,” Frances said clearly. She paused, staring into space and seeing Mistress’ eyes.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress . . .”

Mistress turned to Meredith and smiled. “Go test your mother’s trance-state for me, slave.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Meredith stepped close to Frances, almost touching her as they stood together. Her mother’s soft, firm recitation excited her, as did the way each repetition seemed to leave her more utterly convinced. This truth would be burned into her brain. Even when she was awake, Frances’ world would really revolve around Mistress’ commands.

Meredith cupped her mother’s breasts and hefted them slightly. Frances gasped but didn’t break her rhythm, and kept staring past her daughter even as her breathing sped. Meredith flicked the stiffened nipples lightly with her thumbs and Frances twitched, but even now she stayed locked in the illusion of Mistress personally deepening her.

Turning, Meredith posed beside her mother. “She is completely entranced, Mistress. She knows nothing but what you will her to know.”

“How does that make you feel, slave?”

Meredith looked into her eyes. “Seeing my mother helpless in your power is better than being licked, Mistress.”

“Ahh. Is it better than kneeling to lick me?”

Meredith smiled. “Whatever pleases you more, Mistress, is what is better.” She didn’t ask if Mistress wanted licking right now. Toys never asked. Even if they always wanted.

For a while they stood there, watching the oblivious woman enjoy a dream of her owner’s totally focused attention.

“She’s almost ready,” Mistress said. “Almost brainwashed. Almost mine.”

She grinned at Meredith. “You’ve made great progress too. You were a perfect slave even before you left my care, and now you really belong to me.”

“Yes, Mistress. I belong to you.”

Dawn started to break behind Meredith’s eyes.

Seeing Mistress’ enjoyment hummed preorgasmically through her. Realizing her mother was just a pretty object to be enjoyed was secondary. She still loved her mother, but she worshipped her hypnotist.

She did belong to Mistress. She’d been completely conditioned. The girl Mistress had kidnapped had been quietly destroyed.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress.” Her mother chanted mindlessly.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress . . .”

Meredith tested a thought: what if it pleased Mistress to sell her mother to some slavers, right now? There was a bitter tang, but mostly just pussyglow as she imagined prancing toward them to deliver her mother, leading her by her chain.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress . . .”

“You’re so enslaved to me that you’ll help me do what I want to her.” Mistress didn’t even need to come to Meredith and caress her. “I’ll enjoy the novelty of having a lackey who’s at least partly conscious. Spandex girls obey like machines but they’re so . . . mechanical.”

Mistress didn’t sound too wistful. “I could process her to be like them, but that could show up if someone examined her. So I’ll finish training her to love being my slave, and you’re going to help me.”

“Yes, Mistress. I’m going to help you.”

“Do you remember wishing your mother could be hypnotized, so she’d feel peaceful and safe?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Why do you want her to be hypnotized now?”

Meredith felt something part moistly inside her at how easy it was to answer. “So she will be your creature and live to please you, Mistress. Just like me.”

Mistress looked Meredith up and down, stroking her arm. “Come to bed, slut.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Meredith let Mistress take her hand and push her gently onto the sheets. She rolled onto her back, waiting for instructions on pleasing, and saw her mother gazing right over her.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress . . .”

Mistress laughed, inches from Frances’ face, but the hypnotized woman just looked raptly at the space in front of her own eyes. The dream-Mistress she’d been instructed to see was more real to her spellbound mind, and she chanted faithfully. Mistress said, “You’re a divine fuck, Frances dear, but I do enjoy seeing what your daughter’s learned, too.”

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress.”

Mistress sneered and got onto the bed, gesturing Meredith to where her mother had lain, between her spread thighs. “I have some new instructions for you. But for now, slut, just do what you do best. While I enjoy this.”

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress . . .”

Meredith bent to her task, and the scent of her controller wiped everything away, even the vision of her mother standing above her, obliviously sending herself deeper. She didn’t need the chant, since her mother’s newest truth had long since become her own.

“I exist only to obey you, Mistress . . .”

93.

The early afternoon was warm and quiet. Bikinis tangled beside them, Meredith and Leslie sprawled on a blanket beneath a tree, gazing down at the main house from the gently-sloping hill behind it. Both girls smelled of long, languorous sex.

On the terrace, Meredith could see the scrap of silk that had been her mother’s nightie up until the vampire seduction. She wondered if her mother were still indoctrinating herself beside the bed. After Mistress had used Meredith and then programmed her, she’d sent her away without waking Frances.

She rolled and slid onto Leslie, tightening her thighs against Leslie’s hip and swallowing her girlfriend’s happy squeal with a deep kiss. Meredith humped her and came, imagining her mother’s bruised throat against the thigh of the woman who was enslaving her.

The woman who owned Meredith now, body and soul. Meredith came again, sending Leslie into orgasm too.

After a few minutes they moved apart. Leslie rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand. “Wow.” She was almost too breathless to say it aloud.

For a moment she just grinned and admired Meredith’s body. Stroking Meredith, she put a fingertip to Meredith’s mound and made a little circle until Meredith squirmed. Then she brought it back to taste, sucking it dry.

“Guess whose,” she smiled.

Meredith smiled back and shook her head. “It was a great idea,” she said. “Coming out here.”

Leslie looked a little less happy. “I like walking around nude and all, outside and around the new help, but they’re a little . . . creepy. Like they’re really, I don’t know, brainwashed or something and there’s nothing behind those eyes but . . .”

Meredith grinned. “Playing robot-slaves seemed to make a certain girlfriend of mine pretty hot to trot afterward.” She watched Leslie wriggle, aroused by what Mistress had let her remember. “So why does it bother you now?”

It felt oddly nice, and it made Meredith so much more useful to Mistress, that she remembered most of what had happened to her. She knew Mistress had brainwashed Leslie into helping kidnap her. Leslie spent weeks in trance, alongside some of the spandex girls who waited on them now. But her programming sealed those slave-memories away. Leslie had no conscious idea she’d been enslaved.

“We were playing, Meredith. It was hot and weird and evil-fun, but a whole house full of girls who seem to be playing robots all the time . . . I mean, they’re perfectly subservient, but they’re intimidating? You know? Like they might overpower me and take me to some secret room—”

“And turn you into,” Meredith said ominously, “one of them!”

Leslie giggled, but it faded quickly.

“I haven’t asked you.” Leslie was looking at the blanket, now. “But you haven’t said, either. You and your mom were there all night, telling . . .” She looked up. “Firing the staff. The real staff.”

Meeting her gaze, Meredith began to count. Soon she’d avert her own, to look as upset as Leslie thought she was.

Meredith knew the other girl was basically just a persona Mistress had trained her slave to wear. Poor Leslie, she could still think, if not really feel. She thinks she’s real, and free. And she loves me.

“Poor Meredith,” Leslie said more quietly, and reached over to take her hand. “That must have been hard.”

“It was. But Alice put us both into trance beforehand.” It was easy, too, to refer to Mistress by her name again. Leslie was spending more and more time in deep hypnosis herself, but when she was awake like this, Mistress didn’t want her to know how controlled Meredith was.

Meredith liked showing that off to others, even if it was only to her mother when Frances herself wasn’t lost in trance. It was like wearing a collar and fetters and nothing else. But it was always hotter to obey Mistress’ will.

She squeezed Leslie’s hand. “We were both pretty deeply hypnotized. I just remember everything feeling very nice.”

“She does that a lot, Meredith.”

“What?”

“Hypnotizes both of you. Especially your mother. I mean it’s almost like she’s Ms Holloway’s puppet, sometimes.”

Looking at her girlfriend, Meredith smiled. Leslie trusted her a lot, to speak like that.

“She’s helping Mother so much, Leslie. Mother’s really relaxed now, and it’s much easier for her to deal with decisions.”

Leslie drew herself up to sit. “I know, Meredith. But it’s like she’s been—well—tamed, or something. When I first met her, especially after you were kidnapped, your mother was strong. Scary, even.” She swallowed, and blinked. “When she finally welcomed me, and forgave me for—everything, it meant so much.” She shook her head before Meredith could reach for her.

“You know, it’s kinky to think about having the new servants brainwash me into joining them.” She looked at Meredith. “But, you know? I think if Ms Holloway wanted to, she could just call me in one day and hypnotize me and I’d walk out as maid Leslie.

“And she could do it to you, too, lover. And your mom. Three wide-eyed maids—maybe programmed to do anything Clare tells us.”

Meredith could see real concern, but not too much. She casually reached down and stroked herself. “That would be evil-fun. Obeying Clare.”

Leslie smirked. “Right up until—huh?” She gaped at the house.

“What?” Meredith lay against her and followed her gaze. Someone was walking across the lawn, toward the hill. Even from here, Meredith could see pale skin and the gleam of silver on chest, loins, feet, hands, and the way the arms hung straight down by the hips instead of swinging.

Her mother was playing robot again. Her skin glistened with sunscreen. She must be dripping to be doing this outside.

“My god,” Leslie breathed, and it was hard to tell what she felt, seeing Frances do this.

Frances marched in a straight line not quite toward them—but directly to a spandex girl in work gloves who was landscaping. They watched her stop, and while the voices were too faint to understand, they could hear the trembling monotone. The slavewoman pointed uphill to where the girls lay.

Meredith couldn’t make out her expression or tone, but she dampened to think of what her mother was feeling, not just parading around like this in front of the new help, but including them in the sexplay. Mistress seemed to have programmed many of her spandex girls to sneer.

Frances held still but rotated her head toward them, then faced forward again. Pivoting as sharply as the silver boots let her do on the grass, she stalked up the hill toward them. Meredith saw that her costume had changed.

She still wore the silver boots and opera gloves. The swimcap, with its odd lobe holding the webcam, still tightly framed her expressionless face. Her extravagantly silver eyeshadow and lipstick were just as they’d played before.

But Frances no longer wore the top and hotpants. From knees to neck she was bare, and her silver was a less than minimalist bikini in bright metallic bodypaint that displayed everything. The circles that cupped the front of her breasts looked like a wider version of a stripper’s pasties without tassels, ringed in what might be dark eyeliner to contrast further with her fair skin. As they swayed with her steps, Meredith could see the silver had been detailed with lines that looked like circuitry.

Where her thighs met, Frances had been painted too—the folds of her pussy gleamed at the apex of an inverted, dark-outlined silver triangle. Above the shining cuntlips was more faux circuitry.

Meredith felt Leslie gasp. She knew. Not all that gleamed on those lips was paint.

“What’s she—doing?” Leslie was breathing faster. Mistress had let her remember the earlier fembot scenario as a sexy dream, and she didn’t know what to think about her lover’s mother as its wide-eyed incarnation.

They stood as Frances approached. Her mother looked erotic and ridiculous and vulnerable, and scary in a very inviting way. Nearer now, they could see her eyes, fixated in hypnosis and arousal.

“God, she’s so hot,” Leslie murmured. “And she wants to play! This is so cute.”

Frances wore no belt, leaving the sweep of soft defenseless skin to curve uninterrupted between her electronicized sex and chest. Strapped to her left upper arm, its headset wire curving up to the swimcap, was the cellphone that controlled her. A tight necklace of steel links collared her without even trying to hide the hickeys from last night’s vampire game.

Frances halted a few steps downhill and braced to attention, staring between them. She swiveled her head to look at each, then looked at nothing again.

“Fe.males lo.ca.ted.” Her quaver made her faint trembling noticeable. The pleasure must be driving her out of her mind. Meredith loved how it made her painted breasts move, a little.

“Fran.bot a.waits com.mand.” She blinked, almost imperceptibly, as Mistress instructed her through the phone.

“Fe.males will at.tend to in.struc.tions and o.bey. Con.trol.ler in.structs fe.male Les.lie to re.port to gym.na.si.um.” Meredith saw her mother’s hands, flat by her hips in the silver gloves, twitch as she was allowed to jerk out the extra three syllables. “In.struc.tress will im.plant fur.ther com.mands. Fe.male Les.lie will sleep and o.bey.

“Con.trol.ler in.structs fe.male Me.re.dith to ac.com.pa.ny Fran.bot. Fe.males will ack.now.ledge com.pli.ance and o.bey at once.”

Watching her mother perform made Meredith hot, too. Partly to draw it out, she asked, “Um, accompany you where?”

“Fran.bot . . . Fran.bot . . . Fran.bot is not pro.grammed to res.pond.” Frances’ hips moved slightly with the thrill of having to ad-lib. Then she stiffened, getting help.

Or something. Meredith wondered if Mistress might be letting Clare be her mother’s control voice.

“Fran.bot com.mand buf.fer is not op.ti.mized for com.plex tasks.” Under the painted eyes, the pale cheeks burned. “Fe.male Me.re.dith must ac.com.pa.ny Fran.bot. Fran.bot brain will be drained en.route and up.loa.ded with des.ti.na.tion.”

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply before reopening them. “Fe.males will ack.now.ledge com.pli.ance and o.bey at once.”

Leslie folded her arms but then thought better of it, feeling less naked than the toy-woman who confronted them. “I don’t think so. The Instructress is hot but all she wants me to do is work out. I’d rather stay here with my—”

Frances shivered but kept her hands bladed by her sides and never even looked at her. “Fe.males will ack.now.ledge com.pli.ance and o.bey at once.”

“Nope.” Meredith glanced at Leslie and then back at her mother. She wondered how long Mistress had made her mother strut around like this, possibly chanting inane questions at the spandex girls.

“Fran.bot re.ports. Fe.males re.fuse to o.bey.” She paused, as if genuinely unable to process more than a couple of ideas at once.

“Fran.bot is not pro.grammed to res.pond. Fran.bot a.waits com.mand.” Frances soaked up their gazes, listening to her next instructions. Or maybe to silence, as whoever pulled her puppet-strings left her on display.

Suddenly, she stiffened and her eyes grew even wider for a moment.

“Hyp.no.tize.”

Keeping her right arm at her side, Frances extended her left toward them. “Hyp.no.tize.”

“Oh, god, Meredith, look out!” Leslie’s playacted fear sounded almost real, but she didn’t run. Both girls tried to block the strobing, bright even in the sun.

“Hyp.no.tize. Hyp.no.tize. Hyp.no.tize.”

“Leslie, I . . . can’t look . . . away . . .” Meredith let her arms sink.

“Can’t fight . . . Meredith . . . must . . . looooh . . .” She heard her girlfriend pretend to succumb beside her. Hands by their sides, they blinked while Frances kept her glove leveled.

“Hyp.no.tize.”

She lowered her glove, then swiveled her gaze to each girl again before looking forward.

“Vic.tims hyp.no.tized.” Even locked into her role, Frances’ eyes kept drifting to the nude girls standing passively before her. “Re.sis.tance des.troyed. Vic.tims will now o.bey.”

94.

They took it as a cue. “We will obey,” they said together, in the same defeated, sleepy—deeply aroused—tone. Meredith wanted to jump Leslie again, but she was happy enough to stare at her nude, painted mother instead as her left arm swung mechanically down again.

“Fran.bot o.beys,” she responded to something new in her headset, then stepped stiffly up the slope and stood almost between them. Close enough to smell each other’s arousal, they faced each other without moving while the breeze kissed their skin, like an honor guard at the change. The girls, playing hypnotized, waited quietly, and Frances listened for her next order.

Her head traversed to face Leslie. “Fe.male Les.lie must re.port to gym.na.si.um. Fe.male Les.lie will sub.mit to In.struc.tress con.trol. Fe.male will ack.now.ledge com.pli.ance.”

“Yes, I must . . . report,” Leslie moaned. “I . . . will submit. To—control. I will obey.”

Frances rotated her head back to default before turning to Meredith. “Fe.male Me.re.dith must ac.com.pa.ny Fran.bot. Fe.male will ack.now.ledge com.pli.ance.”

“I must accompany Franbot,” Meredith breathed, squeezing her thighs together. “I will obey.”

Frances was facing forward again. “Fran.bot o.beys,” she responded to whatever command had come over her headset. She raised her left hand. Without looking to the side, she snapped her gloved fingers before Leslie’s eyes.

“Oh!” Leslie said brightly, and stepped off the blanket, past Frances, so Meredith could see her but stay in role. “I feel so . . . strange. I must have drifted off for . . . for . . .

“I . . . have to go now, Meredith! I must go to the gymnasium.” She smiled and strode down to the house, past the watching landscaper, without a backward glance at her playing-hypnotized girlfriend.

Meredith waited, close enough now to be tempted to stroke her mother’s painted skin. She could hear Frances panting. The way they stood, she could see her mother’s face, the zombie stare and the silver lips full and closed behind the curve of the headset’s mouthpiece.

“Fran.bot o.beys.” Frances turned to look into Meredith’s eyes. “Fe.male will fol.low and o.bey.”

“I will follow,” Meredith told her, “and obey.” When Frances swung around, she walked after her mother back down toward the house. Neither of them glanced to the side, and Meredith enjoyed her share of the landscaper’s stare, even as she knew the woman was just another of Mistress’ puppets playing a role to mindfuck Frances.

She was happy enough to watch her mother’s naked, booted form from the back, as Frances made her robotic way back to the house. Her posture was superb and her arms stayed down. Whoever had costumed her had even detailed her back—crowning her asscrack was a little lined-silver triangle, a tiny version of the one at her cleft.

It stopped, and the booted legs came together. They were at the house, and Slave Thirty, wearing wraparound shades, was at the door. She looked at both naked Stevens women, staring forward in pretended trance, and asked, “What is it, Ma’am?”

Frances might have been looking at her, but her head didn’t move. “This u.nit is Fran.bot. Fran.bot o.beys the Con.trol.ler. Fran.bot was pro.grammed to lo.cate tar.get fe.male ren.der fe.male com.pli.ant and bring to Con.trol.ler. Fran.bot must en.ter struc.ture to de.li.ver fe.male com.plete pro.gram.ming and o.bey Con.trol.ler.”

“Really, Ms Stevens? Franbot?” Thirty looked Meredith up and down. “Is this the target female?”

“Af.fir.ma.tive.”

“She looks a little dazed. Actually, she looks a little like you do.” The spandex girl grinned and waved a hand across Frances’ fixed gaze. “Is she a fembot like you? Franbot?”

“Fran.bot used the hyp.no.ti.zer on com.mand to in.duce o.be.di.ence. Con.trol.ler ro.bo.tized Fran.bot.”

The cell at Thirty’s hip bleeped and she keyed it on.

“It’s all right, slave.” Even the scratchy sound carried Mistress’ authority. “My robot’s brain is too limited to keep up a conversation with a thinking being. Even a brainwashed one.”

Meredith watched her mother shiver and hold pose. She recalled Mistress saying something like that to Frances before.

“I’ve only had time to upload her with some simple responses. Franbot is just programmed to obey, not to react. For now, let her pass.”

“Understood, Mistress,” Slave Thirty said crisply.

“It will take a moment. Your questions filled her buffer.” Frances twitched and held still.

Then she went rigid again, and Meredith wondered what sound Mistress played in her ear to “drain” her.

“Fran.bot o.beys.” Her mother marched inside to obey the voice she heard without glancing at the spandex girl. Meredith followed.

Mistress was controlling Frances like a toy car, walking her from place to place, stopping her, making her do right-angled turns. Meredith watched her mother let herself be Mistress’ puppet in her own house, stalking wide-eyed past the stares of the new servant women, before Frances was impelled to lead her down an empty corridor to the first-floor sunroom.

Mistress sat in a wing chair holding the cellphone that controlled Frances, with a laptop on a nearby side table displaying what Frances’ webcam saw. Clare stood at her elbow, in fishnets and a see-through apron. Meredith thought the maid had been left hypnotized, but she turned alertly as they entered. Seeing them sleepwalk in put a predatory smile on her face, and her gaze lingered on Frances’ robot costume. Meredith wondered if she’d helped paint it on.

Frances came to attention before Mistress and stared over her head.

“Com.mand se.quence com.ple.ted, Con.trol.ler. Fran.bot com.mand buf.fer emp.ty. Fran.bot a.waits com.mand.”

“It’s so easy to empty, isn’t it.” Mistress’ voice shimmered with disdain, affecting regret that she’d made such an obedient but brain-limited drone. From here, Meredith could see her mother’s silvered nipples get stiffer under that scorn. The triangle between her thighs flashed faintly as her pelvis responded too.

“But I see you got excited after all. Ask the maid to clean you.”

“Fran.bot o.beys.” Frances took a couple of steps toward Clare. “Maid-u.nit. Fran.bot re.quires clea.ning. O.be.di.ence caused a.rou.sal res.ponse.

“Please wipe Fran.bot.”

Clare looked down at Mistress, who nodded. She took a cloth from the table beside Mistress’ laptop, which soon showed her oncoming figure as she stepped into Frances’ trapped gaze, the webcam’s field of view. She stood very close to her nude, painted employer, and slowly dabbed the cloth between Frances’ thighs. Frances mewed and shuddered but held still. Even when Clare balled the cloth in her palm and slid one, then two fingers between Frances’ shining pussylips, Frances stayed as motionless and quiet as a robot without orders should.

When she’d grunted and peeped through an orgasm, Mistress snapped her fingers and Clare returned to her side, wiping her fingers on the cloth without taking her eyes from Frances’ face.

“Stop playing now, Frances dear.”

Frances loosened a little and glanced nervously at them all, suddenly shy in her paint-and-little-else. She felt Clare’s steady stare, and it drew her own as if about to hypnotize her again.

“It seemed less suitable to have a robot thank her, dear. So now you’re you again.”

“Yes, Alice.” Frances swallowed. “Thank you very much for wiping my cuntjuice, Clare.” When the maid only nodded, she babbled on. “I just . . . I become so very excited when I’m a robot, I mean when I’m playing a robot and I have no will and just obey . . .” She nodded pleadingly.

“That will do, Frances dear.” Mistress watched it silence her, then patted her own thigh. “Come and sit, now. You have something to tell your daughter, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, Alice! Thank you!” Frances minced quickly over to the chair in her silver boots, almost bouncing in them in her eagerness as Clare scornfully gestured her aside and draped a towel over Mistress’ legs. When the maid nodded permission, Frances smiled gratefully and sat on Mistress’ lap, back straight, beaming down at Mistress.

Mistress smiled at her and very deliberately parted Frances’ thighs. Frances closed her silvered eyes and sighed languidly. Her painted breasts swayed slightly near Mistress’ eyes, as though Frances were a lapdancer trying to interest a customer.

Then Mistress stroked Frances’ back and she straightened, eyes suddenly brightening as her head swiveled toward Meredith. If her mother hadn’t put on a mechanical smile, Meredith would’ve thought she’d been turned back into Franbot. She didn’t look so much like a dancer anymore.

She looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Meredith,” she cooed, “with Alice becoming so important in my life, we’ve discussed many ways that life needs to change.” She blinked, and then the smile was real and rueful.

“Well, not so much discussed.

“Actually, Alice just hypnotizes me into an obedient trance, and when she wakes me I know everything she suggests is true beyond question.

“But of course it all is true.” The smile was dollish again. “And one part of it is about how I—we—will keep raising you, Meredith. In many ways you’re still just a girl who needs to be controlled and guided.”

Meredith stepped forward and knelt with her knees apart, looking up at both of them. She raised her hands behind her head in one of the slave poses Mistress had taught her. “I understand, Mother. Before, I thought I could think for myself. But Mistress’ hypnotherapy has helped me realize that I do need control.

“I need to be an obedient daughter.” She moved her arms, offering her breasts more obviously, and both women stared at them. Clare did, too.

Frances gaped at her, until Mistress ran a fingertip along the unpainted undersides of her breasts. “Ohhh. Oh!” She shook her head. “I keep losing my train of thought when I’m not in trance.

“Yes. We decided that Leslie is just not a suitable companion for you.” She looked pleased to have been able to say it, and looked expectantly at Meredith.

“I understand, Mother. But why not?”

Frances blinked and shook her head. “I—Alice just told me she was . . . not suitable.” She smiled again, then frowned and looked down. “Alice? I’m sorry. All that matters is that you told me, but why—?”

“It really is getting harder to think.” Mistress ran a soothing hand up Frances’ flank. “This is because when we first spoke . . .”

“Yes, I . . .” Frances shook her head slowly. “I think I . . . yes, I actually . . . defended Leslie, didn’t I?” She smiled at Meredith. “I have no idea what nonsense I must have spouted. But it didn’t take long to remember that Alice does the real thinking around here.”

“Not long at all,” Mistress agreed. “You’re a very fast learner now.”

Frances stared more blankly. “Alice explained to me that Leslie is just a cheap golddigger trying to get her hooks into you. She’s been brainwashing you into her thrall with sex and emotional bonding.” She blinked again. “And . . . and . . .”

A helpful stroke along her back made Frances look more than ever like a kinky talking doll. “And once we wean you from her influence, darling, we will introduce you to a better sort of woman. Someone who appreciates how to use the sex and compliance you have to offer.”

Frances smiled down at her kneeling, spread-thighed daughter. “Alice has offered to present you to some friends of hers—and even some friends of mine, darling!—who she knows could really enjoy you. And provide nice gifts, if you were a good girl for them.

“And I do need you to find someone you can live for and love and obey, to be as happy as I’m going to be with Alice. I must find someone like that for you.

“Someone—suitable.”

95.

After Mistress dismissed them, Frances struggled bravely with her desire to spend the rest of the day marching jerkily around the estate in her bodypaint. Mistress wanted her to be ready for other things, and she at least needed to wash the silver off.

They made it as far as the main foyer before Frances begged her daughter to trigger her. Meredith left her in trance until she was dry and dressed again. When Frances awakened to find herself in a pleated tennis miniskirt, sleeveless top and heels, she just smiled gratefully, nodded at Meredith’s own tank-top and shorts, and led her to the terrace.

The mesh babydoll she’d worn to play vampire-bait last night was still draped on one of the stone railings, and Meredith took it up before Frances could reach it. As Meredith lifted it to her nose, Frances stared at it as if mesmerized, reliving how she’d stood here and let Mistress strip it from her under the night sky. She seemed relieved when Meredith put it aside.

“Umm—baby, I realize what I said in there about Leslie may seem a little abrupt. And I know your feelings for her are very real.” She looked at Meredith sadly. “And I love you too much to want to think anyone could really be with you the way she is and not start to fall for you, even just a little.”

Meredith smiled. “But Mistress told you that she did. So it must be true.”

“Yes.” Frances’ eyes glazed. “It must be true. It . . .” She shook her head. Away from Mistress’ presence, she was still unable to fight the need to submit and obey, but it was her own softened resolve that obeyed.

“Don’t worry, Mother. I suppose it should make me sad, to realize the girl I fell in love with is just using me, and controlling me.” Meredith spoke with almost sedated calm, and saw it soothe her mother.

“And I did know what she was doing to me. Part of that was making me like it. She totally dominated me in bed, I lived to satisfy her, but then she gave me orgasms—to reward me. If Mistress didn’t already have me under her hypnotic treatment, just like you, Leslie would own me right now.”

She smiled. “But we both know Mistress is the most powerful hypnotist around here.” Her mother smiled too.

“Anyway, Mistress kept me from falling under Leslie’s control, and I’m OK with what happened. I’ve accepted that I’m a suggestible, weak-willed girl. I’m just grateful someone with a stronger will, like Mistress, cares enough to control me.

“Besides.” She smiled and put her hands behind her head again, making her mother blush. “I meant it. I want to be an obedient daughter. If you—and Mistress—tell me to think something, then that’s what I must think.”

Smoothing the pleated miniskirt over her thighs, Frances looked relieved. “I’m so glad. Alice said you’d accept it.”

“It’s easy enough to see for someone who’s been awakened from the spell, Mother. Leslie brainwashed me, something like Capaldi brainwashed you.” Her mother winced. “I know. We both just have to face it, Mother: we’re natural slaves. It’s our fate to be the willing thralls of stronger women, and we nearly belonged—forever—to a pair of very ruthless ones who had us happy to be on their leashes.”

She stepped over and cupped her mother’s bare shoulders. “But we’re lucky, Mother. We met Mistress. She’s a stronger dominant than either of them, and she broke their power over us.”

“She saved us,” Frances murmured.

“Yes. We’re still going to be slaves—but we’ll be her slaves, thinking only the thoughts she gives us. Doing as she tells us to.”

Frances smiled up at her, eyes welling. She tried to speak, but then leaned forward and hugged Meredith tightly.

When she was calmer, she looked out at the grassy hill where she’d stalked out to find the girls, and strobed them into play-trance. “I wonder what she’ll do. With—about Leslie.”

Meredith studied her mother’s profile. Frances’ throat still wore the bite-bruising proudly. She relaxed, letting the implanted compulsions keep her still while they sorted out what she knew. Then they took control.

Yes: her mother was primed for it. “Maybe we can help our Mistress,” Meredith said, as if thinking aloud.

“Baby? What do you mean?”

“Oh.” Meredith looked as though she’d really surprised herself. “I was just . . . thinking . . . if we did something to deal with, um, Leslie.” She shook her head. “I’m sure Mistress has a plan for that. If she even needs us to do something, we’d probably end up being most useful by doing it under hypnosis.

“She’d never expect us to be able to do anything ourselves.”

She was too well-trained to react as she heard Frances breathe faster.

“No, that’s right. But—it would be so wonderful, Meredith! If we could show her we’re really hers, that we’re devoted enough that we can do what she wants without needing to be told.” Frances’ eyes were shining. “We can show her how committed we are that she will be the only influence over us.”

She saw Meredith’s skepticism. “I know, baby. The most important thing she’s done for me is helped me surrender and let her stronger, smarter mind do my thinking for me. And—” She sobbed once.

“And, this morning, that woman—that beautiful, wonderful goddess I belong to—spent hours just working with me, hypnotizing me so deeply, training my mind.” She almost glared at Meredith through the tears. “I know it. You saw her put me into trance, and then I didn’t even know you were there. I was alone with her, and she did that for me.”

Meredith remembered Frances chanting blankly while Mistress fucked her daughter. It was bonded to the feel of Mistress’ inner thighs on her face. She nodded.

“So you tell me your idea, Meredith. And we’ll show Alice she chose her . . . slaves well.”

“Yes, Mother.

“Well, since Leslie’s really just been fucking me for money, a lot of money, I guess that if she didn’t have her whammy on me I’d just think she was a whore.” She smiled at her mother’s shock. “Well she is, Mother. Thanks to Mistress’ hypnosis and now your guidance, I know that everything I felt for her was just part of her brainwash. So I don’t hate her—I just don’t feel anything.”

“Then what—?”

“I thought let’s—release her back into the wild.” She looked Frances in the eye. “She’s susceptible to hypnosis too. If we put her into a trance and tell her to forget being anything but a hooker, she’ll wake up knowing only that. She’ll believe . . . hmm. That her name’s, oh, Chiffonne, and a kinky mother and daughter picked her up on the street last night and brought her back here to abuse them and play with them.”

Frances made an “O” with her mouth and her eyes were as round, but she was rubbing her breasts.

“She’ll make us drive her back to her patch downtown in a limo, while we beg and plead for her to stay and spank us. She’ll sneer at us and take more money and get out of the car—and then she’ll forget ever being here, or fucking me, or being a pretty social climber named ‘Leslie.’

“Chiffonne will just prance away and start turning tricks for herself until a pimp brands her ass.”

“Baby, that’s—that’s—I thought you—”

Meredith smiled calmly. “It’s easy when a hypnotist like Mistress cleanses my mind of bad influences.” She leaned forward and kissed Frances lightly on the lips. “In fact, we should do something like this even if Leslie really loved me.

“You and I need to be devoted only to Mistress. No other attachments to distract us.”

Frances was still reeling from her daughter’s ruthless idea, and turned to stare again at the estate grounds.

“How will we hypnotize her?” she whispered without looking at Meredith.

“Well, she’s helpless against Mistress or the Instructress, but we’re nothing like them.

“But I do know a spiral pattern, not even a spinning one, that puts her into a very deep trance. Once she’s obedient, she’ll believe whatever we tell her is the truth. Then she’ll really be Chiffonne, and ready to do anything she’s told.”

She gently turned her mother’s chin toward her. “This is how you can show Mistress what good slaves we are. That we’ll do anything to remove a rival controller.”

There was a spark of her mother’s old fire in the eyes that looked back at her—utterly devoted now to pleasing her hypnotist. “Then let’s hypnotize the greedy little bitch!”

Meredith found the spiral-pattern tray where Mistress had told her it would be, and they walked on to the suite. She remembered the shopping trip to Gossamer where Mistress had revealed herself, and allowed Meredith to remember who owned her. One of Mistress’ other slaves had put Leslie to sleep in seconds by just showing her the tray. She could already see the other girl’s face going blank.

Leslie was already there, lounging in a lime-green thong and demibra that hid nothing. She smiled as the Stevens women entered, looking them over and clearly liking what she saw.

“Hello, Leslie.” Frances stepped forward. “Meredith has something you just have to see.”

Meredith smiled and began to turn the tray toward her girlfriend. It felt wonderfully evil to do it without hurrying.

Leslie rose gracefully, poised like an alerted doe. She read their body language and sensed the threat from what Meredith was hiding. Before they could do anything, she smiled at Meredith.

“Metronome.”

The trigger dropped Meredith to her knees. Trance spread through her like a slow orgasm.

The tray’s spiral side still faced toward her. She was deliciously paralyzed—it would be so simple to turn it, and then speak a command into her girlfriend’s hypnotized mind. So easy, and then her mother could . . .

But her girlfriend had hypnotized her first.

“Baby?” Her mother’s alarm licked sweetly at her. So did her inability to answer. Or to do anything but stare up at her lovely, hypnotic governess. The word had made her a complete slave.

“Oh god, she’s hyp—!” Frances turned toward her, trying to get to the spiral.

Regal in her lingerie, Miss Leslie just turned, smiling. “Mindless slavebitch.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Meredith saw her mother freeze. “I have no mind. I will o.bey.”

Miss Leslie was dangerous and beautiful as she paced over to them. She smiled down at Meredith, making her think of spankings and endless lessons on an imaginary piano.

“What would that have done to me, Meredith?” Her voice was irresistible, and her words dismissed the might-have-been.

“It would have hypnotized you, Miss Leslie,” she answered meekly. Her mother whimpered a little, not too deeply entranced to realize what Miss Leslie could make them do now.

Miss Leslie knelt in front of Meredith and smoothed her hair. “I think you both need some quiet time in front of a special screensaver,” she cooed, “listening only to me.

“But first, you want to tell me everything.” She nodded, as if giving permission, and Meredith dripped with how delicious it was to fall into her own trap. She could feel Miss Leslie’s hypnosis bridling her mind. She would reveal everything, and love it.

Miss Leslie would be very angry. What she’d tell them to think, when she had them helplessly open, staring into the spinning lights . . .

Almost climaxing with helplessness, Meredith began quietly to confess.

96.

Chiffonne and the other hooker frenched each other again. Miss Leslie, the rich pretty trick who’d picked them up downtown, laughed once more.

The laugh stroked Chiffonne’s pussy, and it was really nice. Miss Leslie hadn’t specifically told them to do it, but she’d done something to their heads after getting them to look into her eyes earlier. Now they had to deep-kiss every time they heard . . . something.

Chiffonne had seen people hypnotized in clubs, but it’d never happened to her. It was really nice, though. She really liked being hypnotized. Or had Miss Leslie just told her to like it?

She tried by reflex to remember she was really someone else, that she lived here. But colors swirled in her head and a voice smoothly wiped the thoughts away.

Except for the thoughts she was supposed to think. About being an eager streetwalker picked up by a slumming rich girl.

Things were pretty fuzzy. Miss Leslie kept fucking Chiffonne and the other prostitute, an attractive older one named Fancy, and Chiffonne was forgetting all her rules. She never came when she was working, and she always kept track of time, and she always remembered she was in control.

Except this sassy rich girl had her coming her brains out, and she barely remembered the limo pulling up to the curb. And every time Miss Leslie smiled and held her gaze, Chiffonne juiced and grinned and wanted to say “Yes, Mistress!”

Chiffonne thought Miss Leslie had promised to fix their minds again so they wouldn’t stay like this. But when she said it, Miss Leslie had laughed in that sweet cuntfingering way and made Chiffonne wish she were lying.

No . . . she had to . . . show something to . . . no. She was supposed to forget that, and she had. It was harder and harder to think about anything but the pretty pretty colors and the voice in her head.

She had a moment to herself when Miss Leslie rode Fancy’s mouth. She almost tried to think, but instead she imagined Miss Leslie keeping her chained somewhere in this big mansion for sex, using those hypnotizing eyes of hers to make Chiffonne behave, if she tried to leave or anything. Pretty soon Chiffonne would be a very well-behaved girl.

Then she saw how Miss Leslie stared down at Fancy, as the older women ate her out. She ordered Fancy to play with herself and watched the other whore obey. Chiffonne wondered if Fancy were as hypnotized as she was, because she seemed to really like getting it on with this woman. Maybe she was dreaming of life on a chain here, too.

But Miss Leslie was getting tired of them. She was gorgeous and rich, and she could have any women she wanted, alone or in groups. She’d picked up a pair of cheap hookers for a thrill, and if the thrill wasn’t gone, it was going. No way was she about to keep trashy sluts around.

But Chiffonne wasn’t trash . . . wasn’t . . . she . . . mmmmm . . . so dirty . . .

Chiffonne thought of how her ass must have looked in her shiny dress as Miss Leslie’s big black car cruised up. Being the particular piece of trash she decided to rent for a while.

She looked over at Fancy, still on her knees. The older woman’s makeup had smeared and her face gleamed with Miss Leslie’s honey, and she still gaped up at the rich girl with a silly smile. Maybe she was even more hypnotized than Chiffonne was, or just more in love with pussy. But Chiffonne realized she didn’t even remember if the other whore had already been in the car when she’d walked up to the window, or if they’d picked her up after.

“Fix your makeup,” the girl suddenly said. Both whores leaped to their feet and fumbled for their purses, then hesitated before stepping to the bathroom until Miss Leslie impatiently gestured permission.

They stood together before the polished mirror like two cheap dates at an exclusive club.

No but this room it’s she knew it she’d been in . . . she’d . . . The spinning patterns were too strong for her. Her mind went blank and then filled only with what it was supposed to know.

They looked cheap and unworthy of this clean, classy bathroom. They belonged in a dive. The glass should be grimier, the light dimmer, the walls scrawled with ads for other girls. There should be thumping music from the bar outside, and other girls like them shoving their way to the mirror.

The mirror . . .

Chiffonne herself was a parody of the kind of party girl Miss Leslie really was—she was squeezed into a shiny rubber minidress that tried to look like a cocktail dress, then stopped bothering. The hem was far north of her stocking tops.

Fancy was a cartoon of a street hooker. Her rounder body was squeezed into a pink leather halter top and vinyl hotpants that matched the black calf boots and showed off her thighs—and some of her butt—in the coarse-meshed fishnet hose.

They both looked sexy, for real, but Chiffonne felt a chill at how little they belonged there. They were nothing but whores, paid fuckmeat, and when they were worth what they were paid, they were smeared like this with discount-store cosmetics and better women’s come.

They’d gotten this better woman to come all over them. Now it was time to go.

Still looking low-rent hot, but a little more presentable, Chiffonne and Fancy left the glamorous bathroom. Miss Leslie was a sophisticated coed in tight jeans and a men’s shirt, and her smile basted them with her contempt. She held out slips of paper, and Chiffonne took hers.

The first word blurred her mind and sent a really nice quiver through her clit. Chiffonne was hot and receptive when she read the rest: “You will believe this is really the cash for fucking you.”

It was hypnosis. She knew she was being fooled, and she’d been dumbed into letting it happen this easily.

And into liking it. Oh yes. It felt soooo gooood to know she really was getting fucked.

“Thanks!” she said, echoing Fancy’s gratitude, and Miss Leslie shivered their pussies again with another of those laughs.

“I promised you a limo ride back to your . . . whatever they’re called.” She folded her arms. “So it’s back to the big shiny car now, ladies.”

“Oooooh, the limo!” Fancy turned to Chiffonne, Christmas-morning giddy, and Chiffonne felt herself helplessly catch the mood as they squealed and hugged. “The other girls will go nuts when they see us get out of it!”

Looking into Fancy’s eyes, she saw frantic puzzlement at who the other girls even were, but the older prostitute shook against her with the pleasure of blurting it out.

Miss Leslie smiled cruelly. “But first a little proper business.” She pointed at Chiffonne’s precious paper-no-it-was-lots-of-money.

“You know, you weren’t really that great. I’ve had better for free. But . . . since you’ve never ever had anyone better than me . . .” She made a spell-casting gesture and both whores sighed, feeling the power wash over them. It focused on Chiffonne first and she fought a little, before remembering it made her wet to submit instead.

She was staring into Miss Leslie’s eyes, ignoring Fancy’s nervous questions.

Dimly, she heard Miss Leslie’s voice, musical even in scorn: “I’m changing her mind, you stupid bitch. Now shut up and wait your turn, and I’ll make you just like her.” Then it was back to the sweeter music that made her think differently.

Next thing Chiffonne knew, she was blinking at Fancy. “Of course we want to give her a freebie. Hell, the way she made me feel we should be paying her!” She glanced nervously at the rich girl. “Except, um, she’s not a hooker like us.” Miss Leslie just smiled.

“But she just hypnotized you into thinking that!” Fancy looked angry but a little excited too. “She’s going to send us out of here with nothing.”

Chiffonne blinked like she was snapping out of it and Fancy looked hopeful, like maybe they could force Miss Leslie to give it back.

Then Chiffonne just grinned foolishly. “Yeah, I know. She’s got me totally hypnotized and I won’t even remember. She do you yet?”

Fancy looked fearfully at the rich girl smirking at her, and suddenly seemed aware she was a slut in tiny shorts and garish makeup who didn’t belong here. “Please.” Her voice was small. “Don’t do that to me. Don’t make me forget—”

“I’ll make you remember,” Miss Leslie purred. “You’ll remember wanting to fuck your way to some money.” Her eyes lit with hate, still transfixing the prostitute. “You’ll remember that just having your body to offer means you’ll do as you’re told, from now on. You are what’s between your legs, and you’ll always remember that.”

“When you talk with the other whores you’ll want to brag about this rich bitch you both did, and how the sex was so great you didn’t want her to pay.”

She raised her hand. “You won’t understand why they’ll laugh at you. Not for a while.

“Now look into my eyes, golddigger.”

Fancy went still as she obeyed.

Chiffonne waited quietly, juicing to hear what Miss Leslie ordered Fancy to think. It was so bad that she’d been made to think the same things, and Miss Leslie had her so hypnotized that even watching it happen to Fancy wasn’t waking her up.

It was funny how Miss Leslie could let her know she’d been bewitched into giving up how-much-was-it-well-a-lot but still also think she’d wanted to. And when Fancy woke up she’d think so too.

N-n-nooo . . . she mustn’t let herself be taken . . . out of here . . . this house . . . once she was . . . spinning . . . patterns . . . so pretty . . . better to obey than to think . . .

God it felt so good to be fucked.

This was as good as it would get, too. Miss Leslie would dump them back into sleazeland to give blowjobs in alleys. Neither would get inside a house like this again soon, if ever, even as rented pussy. Players like Miss Leslie usually spent their money on a better class of playmate.

Maybe Miss Leslie made those playmates forget the fee, too.

Then Fancy was nodding and grinning like a bobble-head toy, and they were all walking out past the strangely robotic servants.

Chiffonne looked at them and wondered why she thought, vaguely, of asking them for help. She didn’t remember seeing them before when Miss Leslie brought her and Fancy in—of course she didn’t remember that, either . . .

They wouldn’t even blink at a pair of cheap hookers walking out the front foyer.

How did she know they wouldn’t?

But the more Chiffonne fought to think, the better it felt to lose. She started to think she’d orgasm right here on the marble tiles—it just felt so fucking hot to be taken out of here and thrown away like a used dildo. To know somehow she wasn’t, but that she was letting someone dupe her into playing along.

The door was open, the car was running . . .

If she got in, she’d be Chiffonne, when she was kicked out of it downtown . . .

Someone . . . didn’t want . . . that . . . to happen . . .

Her heels clicked on the tiles, like a metronome. Her thighs scissored under the high, tight rubber hemline.

Pretty colors swirled in her mind. Chiffonne wanted it to happen.

97.

“Cut.”

Chiffonne froze. Surrendering to the trigger, her eyes closed too quickly to see the rich girl and the older whore go to sleep on their feet beside her.

Meredith opened her eyes a moment later. She knew what Mistress wanted of her now, and turned to her, smiling gratefully. Mistress had really had her believing both that she was Chiffonne and that she’d been brainwashed into thinking that—both were lovely and neither were necessary to make her a convincing puppet in this shadow play for her mother’s benefit. Her smile deepened as she saw the other two, still hypnotized.

Her mother looked foolish—and lickably sexy—in her hotpants and makeup. With her eyes closed, the eyeshadow and mascara were even more blatant, and she was responding to long conditioning by stiffening while in trance, Franbot in drag.

Mistress looked her over, and Meredith wondered if their hypnotist were thinking about using her mother, leaving her as Fancy and seeing what kind of slut she made. But she didn’t hesitate long, moving in front of Frances and snapping her fingers.

The dusted eyelids fluttered and Frances looked at Meredith, then Leslie, then herself, lifting her hands to her mouth as she cried out soundlessly. Then she looked at Mistress and started to cry, taking a step toward her before stopping.

“Oh my god—Alice—I was about to—”

“I know, Frances dear.” Mistress’ patience was boundless.

“But I didn’t—” Frances sobbed, feeling the guilt physically. “I couldn’t even remember you, lover. All I knew was being a whore. I didn’t . . . she just wiped all that away . . . I’m sorry, Alice. Letting her take you away from me inside my own mind—”

“Shhhh. Shh.” Mistress still didn’t touch her, but her power over Frances was already enough to soothe her. “You couldn’t help yourself, Frances dear. You have barely any will.” She gestured at Leslie, standing limply asleep beside them. “You’re soft putty in the hands of even a halfway competent hypnotist.”

Meredith watched her mother believe that anyone could have been mindwiped by a few minutes of computer graphics. Mistress had prepared her well.

“But I—”

“Forget.” Mistress made a deliberate pass across Frances’ face, and the older woman swayed, feeling her owner’s will sweep through her. “My power over you is nearly total, and the only influence in your mind now is mine.”

“Only . . . yours . . .” Frances gazed drowsily at the air where Mistress’ hand had been.

“Yes. You are tranquil now, and able to think the thoughts I give you.”

“Tranquil now.” Frances blinked and slowly came back to herself. She smiled lovingly at Mistress. “Thank you, Alice. I feel so much more at peace, now that I’m back under your control. It almost makes that worth it.”

“But you see how close you came.” Mistress smiled as Frances blushed and looked down—then blushed more deeply and snapped her head back up at the sight of her fishnetted thighs. “This,” she said more sternly, “is what happens when what, Frances dear?”

“When I try to think for myself,” Frances murmured. Slowly she smiled. “I don’t know why but it feels—nice, inside, to know that.” She frowned a little, as if unused to it. “It’s just like what I let Capaldi do to me. It’s like I didn’t learn anything at all from that.”

Looking back up at Mistress, she squared her jaw. “I don’t know how I got this second chance, but I will learn, Alice. I will not ever try to think on my own like that again.” Now she looked at Meredith and winced. “And I’m supposed to be raising my daughter properly, under your guidance, teaching her to listen and obey—and instead I let her turn my head with this idea of . . .”

Meredith grinned at her, and they both let the absurdity lighten things up. “. . . of a pair of mindless handpuppets like the two of us, trying to hypnotize a skilled predator!” They laughed sheepishly, and Mistress smiled.

Leslie still stood with her eyes closed, and even now Frances looked at her a little nervously, stepping closer to Mistress without knowing she did.

“I’m sorry, Mother.” Meredith went to her and took her hand. “Maybe I really wanted her to deepen my slavery to her.”

“You’re your mother’s daughter, baby.” Frances pulled Meredith to her, then looked thoughtful. She kissed her lingeringly on the mouth, and when they eased apart she kept her lips close as she spoke. “We really are a line of subbie girls, and we want to be abused. I don’t know how I’ve fooled myself all these years, but I can’t fight the truth.”

She turned to Mistress and held Meredith closer. “Alice, I know it’s a lot to ask. I might not even ask it, just for me—” She squirmed nicely against Meredith.

“Well, yes I would. I’d do anything to be your bitch-slave, Alice.

“But I need to be sure you protect my daughter, too. You’ve had both of us hypnotized for a while, and it’s been the best time of my life.”

“Your reason for living,” Meredith breathed in her ear.

“My reason for living,” Frances parroted, and then blinked, before smiling.

“But I need to go deeper, Alice. Maybe not to be your painted roboslave 24/7”—she gasped anyway—“but . . . I need you to control me totally. So there’s no chance at all that I can make a mistake like this. So I have no choices, just whatever decisions you’ve programmed me with.”

She stared at Mistress. “I need your wish to really be my command.”

Mistress nodded. “I understand, Frances. I think my hypnotic treatments are really helping you know what you are and what you must do. What did you have in mind?”

Frances looked around at the servants. “Make me into one of those, Alice. Please. Put me through your brainwashing machine and dress me in tight black and yellow and just let me go around all day with only your voice in my head.” She hugged Meredith tighter, her eyes shining in their rings of mascara.

“If you cleanse my mind, then I’ll never be the silly fool who’d let some social-climbing bitch hypnotize her into destroying herself.” She didn’t bother to look at Leslie. “I’ll just be one of your perfect, unquestioning slaves.

“Please.”

Mistress gazed at Frances until it started to hypnotize her by itself. Meredith felt her mother relaxing against her, her breathing slower and shallower as she lapsed into trance.

“No,” Mistress said, and Frances just gaped at her, slack-jawed, taking a few moments to understand. The garish makeup made her stupefaction even more pointed.

Then she cried, brokenly, like a small child, not even pleading. Meredith held her, but Mistress quelled her with a touch.

“I have something else in mind for you, my dear. I want you obedient but aware—you’ll be utterly mine, but you’ll know it, every moment, awake or asleep.” She smiled as Frances melted against her daughter with relief.

“We’ll just get you cleaned up,” Mistress said, and turned to Leslie. “And dispose of other things.”

Frances looked again at the sleeping girl who, her programmed mind firmly believed, had almost enslaved her forever. But she trembled.

“She looks so lost, Alice. I feel . . . do we need to . . . ?”

Mistress laughed. “You are such a bottom, Frances dear!

“I’m truly amazed you didn’t start pulling a train at board meetings long before this. Any free woman would want this girl’s stuffed head on her wall, but you want to kiss her better.”

Frances’ trembling turned into aroused squirming against Meredith.

“Even asleep, even helpless under my domination, Frances, the slut still has you in her power.” Mistress seemed to be gloating, and she watched this turn Frances on some more. “If I walked away and let her wake up on her own, in less than a minute you’d be dancing on her strings again. She’d have your tongue up her ass and your mind in the palm of her hand.

“You don’t even want to be angry.”

“Noooo,” Frances whined, her thigh flexing against her daughter’s. “I want . . . ohhhh . . . god . . . please . . .”

“Don’t worry, dear. I’ll take care of you presently.” Mistress looked at Leslie and her face hardened. If Meredith didn’t know Leslie was at least as programmed as she was, she would have worried for the other girl. Mistress pointed dramatically.

“Slut. Wake.”

Leslie straightened and opened her eyes, fixing them on Mistress. She looked terribly sleepy, but under Mistress’ spell she would obey without thought until told to sleep.

“Strip.” Leslie undressed with a sexy indifference, gaze still frozen on Mistress. When she was done she stood at attention.

“Your mind is blank. You must obey.”

“My mind is blank,” Leslie agreed. “I must obey.”

“Report to Slave Thirty in my office. Tell her you have plotted against my fucktoy and defied my will, and that now you are to be brainwiped and processed for use. You will obey that slave until my voice again commands you.”

“Yes,” Leslie murmured. “I must obey.” Her eyes stayed wide as they swung away from Mistress, and she paced dutifully away.

“Brainwiped?” Her mother’s whisper was warm against Meredith’s shoulder. Her tremor might have been concern, or excitement.

Mistress looked at her, smiling evilly. She brought her hand up and swung it like a magician’s before Frances’ face. “Forget,” she intoned.

“Forget,” Frances breathed, sagging against her daughter. In a moment she straightened and blinked.

Mistress was still smiling. “You make a really cute prostitute, Frances. Trashy definitely suits you.

“Maybe, soon, I’ll hypnotize you into thinking you are one, and take you out on the town. Something like you two were going to do to . . . what’s her name. Let you out of the limo and see what you can pull in.”

Frances gasped, and Meredith could feel her heart race.

“But for now I’ll just make you Fancy again.”

Frances stepped away from Meredith and posed a little, cocking her hip and smiling at Mistress. “Want a date, lady? I’m a lot of fun on—”

“Not for me,” Mistress told her. “You have another customer. And you’ll really want to please her.” She snapped her fingers. Clare clipped over in high heels, looking even more trance-glazed than the spandex girls she now toiled with.

“Tend to Frances.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Clare seemed oblivious to how her employer was dressed until Mistress triggered her.

She was smiling when Mistress told them they’d both know who they really were, but it wouldn’t matter.

Then the cartoon prostitute was trying to entice the fetish maid to follow her to her suite, breathlessly promising all the ways she could please a woman, reciting her repertoire to see what the girl wanted to do to her.

TO BE CONCLUDED (NEXT SECTION)