The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

TETHER

Inspirations: Among others, there’s something owed to a concept about decision that Celestial Fu discussed in EyeofSerpent’s “Tapestry: Worn Edges,” the assistants in thrall’s “Willing Subject,” and an image from the end of Tabico’s “Hot Oil.”

* * *

53.

Meredith stood hypnotized in the gym, waiting quietly while the Instructress worked on Leslie.

She enjoyed the familiar emptiness in the place where her will would have been when she was out of trance. She saw herself in the mirror, just like Leslie in the matching black and yellow gymwear—colorcoded like the inferior versions of the Instructress they were.

Leslie assimilated her new routine and repeated it in a monotone, then waited to be told to begin. The Instructress snapped her fingers. Without blinking Leslie started working the machine, pressing mechanically against the pads, staring into the narrow dreamplace where the Instructress’ voice had put her awareness. Meredith wished briefly that the Instructress had deepened her and set her to that kind of mindless task, but she knew she had a more exciting function to perform.

She waited without moving for several minutes, until the gym door opened and her mother walked in.

“Go to her, slut,” the Instructress murmured. Meredith obeyed silently.

Her mother was dressed for a workout—she wore a half-sleeved leotard and top that Meredith recalled her wearing when she’d tried aerobics. She’d worn it with tights then, but her legs were bare now. She’d put on a little weight but none of it was badly placed, and her body was trim but delightfully soft-looking as she stepped tentatively away from the door. She looked apprehensively at the Instructress, but Ms Davitz was watching Leslie, as though evaluating the entranced girl’s performance.

Frances turned as Meredith came to her, and her face brightened with relief.

“Oh, hi, honey.” Her hair was gathered in a chignon. She looked like a novice dance pupil, nervous and pretty. “I realize I should have made an appointment with her, but this was just an impulse thing . . .”

Meredith remembered her mother deep in trance last night, moaning as she touched herself while Meredith planted that impulse and sealed it with joy.

“I know, I know. She works for me. But I’m still not one for imposing on staff. You know, if you hurry the chefs they swear in some other language and . . .” Frances sighed.

“But there is something—commanding—about Ms Davitz.” She breathed in. “Isn’t there?

“And I’ll need that. I don’t know how I got started wearing skirts that short, and I like it, but I need some discipline to stay in shape.”

She blinked and looked at Meredith. “Speaking of discipline, Meredith, didn’t you get”—she swallowed and blushed—“um, hypnotized? Today? You seem so awake.”

Meredith enjoyed how it felt to stand quietly and answer. “Yes, Mother. I’m very deeply hypnotized right now. Ms Davitz said it bothered you before, seeing me so deep. So she reprogrammed me to be able to interact with you while I’m under training.”

“Reprogrammed—you.” Her mother looked into her eyes and her own dimmed for a moment. “Um. Right. Just that you seem a lot more like yourself than yesterday.” She looked over at where Leslie still moved like a reciprocating machine, the slide and clank of the weights almost inhumanly regular.

“Am I interrupting your training, honey?” she asked, a little abashed but also trying to change the subject.

“No, Mother.” Meredith found the words in her mind. “I finished my routine, and Ms Davitz put me into cooldown. I will resume it when she tells me to.”

“Oh.” Frances moved her hands self-consciously to her thighs, fidgeting with the leotard’s high-cut openings. “Would she, Ms Davitz, insist on designing some kind of prog—uh, schedule for me first, or could she just start me on something else?”

Meredith blinked slowly and serenely. “I do not know what Ms Davitz will decide, Mother.

“Before you begin, would you like me to hypnotize you?”

Frances shivered and her mouth worked, as the sudden need to submit kissed her clit. She held still for a moment to fight it, and Meredith vaguely admired her self-control.

“That way,” Meredith suggested, “you could begin your workout already in trance. You’d be completely receptive to Ms Davitz’ instructions.”

Her mother’s eyelids drooped and her nipples hardened visibly under the leotard, but then she rallied. “No, thank you,” she whispered with effort.

Meredith kept smiling at her, and Frances already seemed to be regretting her choice to stay awake. Her face cleared a little as Meredith heard footsteps, and then the Instructress was with them, looking at Frances with a feline smile.

Frances seemed momentarily relieved. Perhaps she was imagining how she’d have faced the Instructress’ formidable presence if she’d let her daughter mesmerize her into helpless suggestibility. But that presence itself was overcoming her.

“Ms Stevens. How nice. I see that you have decided to join us to be . . . conditioned.”

“Yes, I . . .” Her mother’s wits seemed to desert her as she stared at the trainer. Meredith had seen her mother terrify a roomful of company officials, but right now Frances seemed acutely conscious of her relatively scant costume, the other woman’s stronger body. Being conditioned by her. Her eyes shifted to Meredith, remembering that the woman had her daughter hypnotized now, in front of her.

“I’d like to start something low-key,” she said.

“I understand, Ms Stevens. Something to fit your schedule.” She looked Frances’ body up and down, and her gaze was at once appraising and quietly lustful. Frances felt it and blushed, but Meredith could see her mother responding to it, straightening and tensing.

The silence grew, with only Leslie’s robotic rhythm on the exercise machine to break it. The Instructress looked at Frances’ soft curves in the lycra not quite as a piece of meat, and not quite as a potential fuck.

Meredith’s pussy twitched. The Instructress was looking at her mother like a slave merchant inspecting new merchandise.

Frances yielded to the pull of the silence. “Will we need to plan something—?” She seemed to sense how much weaker it made her sound, but she couldn’t help herself.

“We can prepare it as we go,” the Instructress told her smoothly. “The girls needed more direction and control than you will. I think I can approach your program differently.” Frances swallowed at “your program” but nodded and said nothing.

“But first, if you feel sufficiently relaxed, we can begin with your hypnotic induction.”

Frances looked at her half-afraid, as though the Instructress were already staring her into trance. Then she shook her head and blinked, laughing nervously. “I, I, actually, I’d prefer not. To be hypnotized.” The Instructress smiled at her and said nothing. “Really, I’d—not.” Again she’d let a pause bend her into speaking. She knew how much the other woman was getting to her.

“I assure you that it’s quite safe,” the Instructress said in a soothing voice. “I am an eminently qualified hypnotist.”

She reached over and stroked Meredith’s upper arm as Meredith stood passively. “And both the girls find it a very pleasure-filled experience. They look forward to being hypnotized at least as much as they do to the workouts.

“Don’t you, Meredith?”

“Yes, Ms Davitz.” She closed her eyes and opened them to smile at her mother. “Really, Mother. It’s so easy and it feels so good. There’s no reason to resist hypnosis.”

“Thank you,” said Frances, wide-eyed and breathing faster. “But . . . I don’t . . . want it.” She swallowed again. “Please.”

“I see.” The Instructress folded her arms. “I won’t try to put you into a trance against your will, Ms Stevens.”

Frances stayed as she was, hands by her sides, possibly starting to wonder why she was still there.

“Has your mother been under hypnosis before, Meredith?”

“Yes, Ms Davitz.” Meredith heard her mother gasp. “I have been hypnotizing her.”

“Meredith—?” Frances was startled, but not enough to break pose.

“I see.” The Instructress smiled even more. “Did you condition her to obey any triggers?”

“Just a minute!” Her mother was frowning now, and there was a rapid pulse in her throat. But she was rubbing her thighs together, and her hands were limp beside them. She wasn’t moving. “This has gone quite far enough!”

Neither of them acknowledged her. Again, only the cadence of Leslie’s hypnotized exertions on the weight machine filled the gym.

54.

“Yes—Instructress.” Now Meredith could let her own hypnotist’s rising dominance wash over her. The truer title felt good on her tongue. She saw her mother’s eyebrows loosen uncertainly to hear it.

She thought of the words that could send Frances instantly to obedient sleep, but now there was something else in her head that stopped her. It felt even better to obey this block than to obey the Instructress.

Then, there was just an empty place in her head. She tried to think of the trigger, but she’d forgotten it.

Then she forgot trying.

“I conditioned her to fall into trance when she sees the amulet I hypnotized her with.”

Frances’ mouth opened indignantly, but her eyes narrowed. With her conscious recall of the earlier trances wiped from her mind, she probably thought this was just more of a bad joke.

The Instructress regarded Meredith. “Is she programmed to obey only your voice, when she goes under?”

“My mother has only heard my voice while hypnotized. But she was not forbidden to obey other voices.” Now Meredith smiled a little. “And when she is hypnotized, she is very obedient.”

Frances made a small sound and stared.

“Does she fall directly into trance?”

Meredith paused before answering to hear the skin-soft sounds as her mother’s hands still fluttered next to her bare thighs. “No, Instructress. Part of her training is to submit to hypnosis when she knows her controller wills her to. She is part of her own deepening.”

The Instructress did not praise Meredith. They both knew Meredith had only been the mechanism for this technique to bend Frances’ will.

“It seems to have been effective. Is that transferable, too?”

“Yes, Instructress.” Meredith looked dispassionately at the sexy woman who trembled before them. “She is compelled to respond when she sees the amulet.

“Whoever controls the amulet controls my mother.”

“Meredith!” Even in her daze, it shocked Frances as her daughter so calmly revealed the key to her mind. Then Frances’ eyes changed again, as she finally caught sight of herself in one of the wall mirrors. A small, softly-curved figure in a brief pastel leotard. Submissively at attention while two taller, younger women in black and yellow discussed how easy she would be to control.

“Baby?” Her voice was lower now. “Something’s—happening. Something’s wrong. I need to run but I . . . can’t. Something’s stopping me.”

She looked up. Meredith saw a spark of calculation in her eyes, faint behind the thickening drowsiness and fear. Her mother had realized her strength had been subverted. She was desperately pleading her weakness instead, to rouse Meredith’s feeling for her.

“Instructress, she is trying to break my obedience.” Exposing that pathetic little plan, Meredith could almost taste Ms Davitz’ cunt in reward.

“Meredith! No! Please!” Her mother actually moved one foot back, seeing that the fight for her daughter’s mind was already lost.

“She no longer hears you, Ms Stevens.” The Instructress’ voice was silken.

“She won’t hurt me,” Frances said, standing straighter as she rose to the challenge.

“Meredith? Whom do you obey?”

Meredith looked at the Instructress. “I obey only you, Instructress.”

“I wish to control your mother now. Trance her and give her to me.”

Even as Frances tensed, Meredith had the little stone out and whirling on its chain. Her mother saw it and tried to turn away. Meredith held her breath.

But she’d trained Frances well. The passive bliss of being controlled was so much sexier than escape, and it seduced her now. In two spins of the little stone she’d lost her chance to break free.

Her eyes widened, glassily reflecting the spinning amulet, and her body lost its stance. Slowly, as she fought the fascination, she stood still, helplessly focused on it.

“Noooo,” she sighed. “I can’t—let—this—hap . . . pen . . . toooo . . . mmmm . . .” She blinked but she was still transfixed. Tears started in her eyes but she couldn’t close them.

“She resists it,” the Instructress commented.

“Yes, Instructress.” It turned Meredith on almost painfully to spin the amulet and watch her mother’s mind dissolve. And to say, “But she is weak-willed. When I give the amulet to you she will obey you, as I obey you.

“She has been very easy to train.”

Frances was shaking her head, and by her hips, her hands were balled into fists. She was mouthing “must . . . resist . . .”

But her head was moving more slowly now, and as Meredith let the amulet swing a little her mother’s gaze locked on and followed. Her fists were loosening. She was no longer aware of the tears.

“She is weakening,” Meredith whispered to her own hypnotist, exulting at how vulnerable her mother looked now. “Soon she will succumb, and you can begin to take cont—”

There was a loud crash behind them. Meredith and the Instructress both turned to see Leslie, dazed and unhurt but still hypnotized. She’d slipped off the paddles and let the weights slam down.

Frances gave a quiet little shriek and stood for a second, hands to the sides of her head, and forced her gaze away from the amulet. Staggering, she turned and struggled toward the door.

The Instructress looked at her without concern. “She is susceptible. Go now and hypnotize her. If she sees this trigger so soon after breaking trance she will fall helplessly back into it. Bring her when she obeys. I will tend to the other slut.”

“I obey,” Meredith said, and walked calmly after her mother, enjoying how the older woman’s ass moved under the leotard.

The corridor outside that led back out of this wing was deserted. Frances was next to a wall, bent over like a winded sprinter.

Meredith let herself start to pant too. “Mom! Mom—are you—? What happened?”

Frances looked up, her eyes clearing a little. “I . . .” She looked around. “My god, I thought I dreamed it.

“Honey! Are you all right?” Her eyes narrowed. “Whom do you obey?”

Meredith stared at her with concern. “Who do I what? Mom? Are you OK? I was in there and Ms Davitz put me into my workout trance and I was doing my assigned routine, and then you were there and Leslie was—”

“God, it’s like a nightmare I had.” Frances seemed in shock, and to have forgotten for now any need to keep running. “When I first found out she was using hypnosis on you.

“She’s got you brainwashed, Meredith. Somehow. And you were telling her you’d been hypnotizing me and I can’t remember it but you must have because I couldn’t move . . .” Frances held her head again. She looked up. “She’s already inside our heads. Meredith, you’re helpless against her, and I’m helpless against you. She can make you control me, and if she gets you to listen to her again we’ll—we’ll—”

Frances looked away in horror, but her nipples were rock-hard under the bodysuit. “We’ll spend the rest of our lives in hypnotic slavery.

“God. And here I am babbling about it!” She reached for Meredith’s wrist, and looked back at the doors to the gym. “Where is that witch, anyway? Why isn’t she coming?”

Meredith brought her free hand up in front of her mother’s face. “Because she sent her hypnotized slave instead, Mother.”

She opened her hand and let the amulet drop into Frances’ wide-eyed stare of dismay. For a moment it caught her and her face began to go blank. But then Frances turned her head away like a child refusing medicine, squeezing her eyes shut. “No! You won’t do that to me—”

“I don’t need to, Mother.” Meredith smiled at how last night’s programming had kept Frances from even thinking of fleeing her now. “Because . . .

“You’re hypnotized now, Mother. Obey me.”

Frances jerked to attention like a puppet whose strings had been pulled. For a moment a tiny frown creased the space between her eyes, as her fear helped her resist, but her obedience was too strong. Her stillness became trance.

“Yes. I’m deeply hypnotized now.” Each syllable drove it deeper, made it truer. “I’m ready to obey you.”

Meredith stood straight herself, watching her mother wait with hypnotic patience for a command.

Her own mind was empty of commands now. Other than the one she obeyed by waiting quietly for her hypnotist.

After a while the doors opened and the Instructress strode out. When she came to the two Stevens women, standing like wide-eyed sentries, she said, “Report, slave.”

“Yes, Instructress. She is under hypnosis now and ready to be programmed.”

The Instructress let her wait and she was happy to. She watched as the stronger woman paced tigerishly around them, drinking in how tenderly appealing Frances’ body was. She reached for one of the still-rigid nipples but did not touch.

“Lovely.”

Shall I program her to please you, Instructress? Meredith almost came from the cruel elation that brought. But she was a hypnotized slave herself, and had not been told to speak.

“Are you ready to obey me, Ms Stevens?”

Frances’ eyes lidded for a second but widened again. The heat of having something to respond to had jolted her from the numbing warmth of just standing braindrained.

“I’m very deeply hypnotized,” she murmured. “Hypnotized girls obey.”

The Instructress laughed and stroked her cheek. Frances gasped but did not otherwise react.

“Slave. Blank her to what we say.”

“I obey, Instructress.” Meredith stared into her mother’s eyes and spoke softly, and in a moment those empty eyes closed in sleep as her mother’s head nodded down.

She turned her head. “As commanded, Instructress.”

“Look into my eyes now, slavegirl, and sleeeeep . . .”

. . . Meredith blinked, tasting more than hearing the countdown she’d been programmed to wake herself with. Frances stood before her, asleep as she’d been told to. The Instructress had implanted new commands in Meredith’s mind.

She stepped to her mother and embraced her, pressing their bodies together and putting her lips to the hypnotized woman’s ear.

“Think of the amulet now, Mother.”

“The amulet is in my mind now.” It was an erotic murmur against her throat. “I see only the amulet. The amulet will control my mind.”

“Listen and obey, Mother. I will tell you what you remember.

“You came down here and saw how the Instructress had turned Leslie and me into puppets, doing our mindless workouts. It turned you on so terribly much, and you couldn’t decide which was sexier—watching two hot young women helplessly obeying another and completely ready to be pleasure-slaves, or letting their hypnotist enslave you and turn you into another mindless droneslut.

“You thought of that nightmare, both of us helpless in a hypnotist’s power, but you know it is a wetdream instead. You almost started masturbating as you watched us.

“You fantasized about being discovered watching, about the evil mind control bitch using your own brainwashed daughter to trap you and make you into her obedient slave. Now you do need to masturbate, Mother, and you will, when you return to your room.”

Meredith stepped back, seeing her mother taut in her trance-attention but reeling from the programming. Frances’ nostrils flared and her lips moved. Meredith smiled to see that her mother had surrendered completely to her new orders and was silently repeating them to herself. She wasn’t struggling, just terribly turned on.

When she snapped her fingers, her mother opened her eyes and looked blankly forward. On Meredith’s command, she pivoted and walked back to her room. Meredith watched her go, still enjoying her ass.

When Frances was gone, she went back into the gym to report to her hypnotist.

55.

“Mom? It’s all right.” Meredith smiled in cheerful exasperation as she watched Frances fret over the table.

Frances looked up. “Do you really think so?” She looked so vulnerable Meredith wanted to hug her and not let go. Then she looked down at herself. “God, I can’t believe I wore this!”

“Mother!” Meredith looked at Leslie, who was smiling at Frances with the same kind of amusement. “You look perfect.”

“Gorgeous,” Leslie said, and Frances turned to her. Frances wore a dark miniskirt with dark hose and high heels, and her blouse was shimmering white, giving her soft, petite contours a pearly glow. The collar was high and chaste. She looked like an old-fashioned schoolmarm bewitched by the piano teacher.

“As in the drop dead sort, Ms Stevens.” Leslie’s smile softened, with sympathy and with real desire. “I mean it. You’re beautiful.” She looked at Meredith and then back. “I can see where my girl gets her looks.”

“Oh, Leslie,” her mother breathed. “You’re a jewel. I just . . .”

Alice Holloway was coming to visit, and Frances’ sunny anticipation was dissolving in a dozen frantic worries. It really was as though her mother was about to have a date with Alice, and Meredith would have kidded her about it except that it was too real, and her mother too yearning. She may not have admitted it to herself but she really was smitten by another woman, and Meredith refused to make it harder for Frances to deal with.

She also had to admit that thinking about being wooed by Alice Holloway made her own head spin. She wondered about the soap-operatic possibilities of vying with her mother for the same woman.

She thought about Alice choosing both of them—

“Hey.” Leslie was next to her and leaned in to French-kiss her back to reality. “Mmm. Someone tastes like she’s thinking bad thoughts. Tell me more.”

Frances had stepped away and was fretting to one of the maids, who was doing her best to calm her.

Meredith left her head against her lover’s and murmured, “You know, I’d sort of like to see Alice just take Mom in her arms and do a tango dip and plant one on her. I think all this nervousness would just vanish.”

She felt fingers along her spine and slid against Leslie. “Feel nervous?” her girlfriend said. “Need it to vanish?”

But then one of the other staff was on her way to the door, and Meredith pulled Leslie with her to rally to Frances. Frances looked up, and her blouse shimmered prettily as her breathing sped. “She’s here.”

Meredith hugged her, and her mother moaned into her shoulder as the tension discharged. “I should go to her. Greet her. Not send a maid—”

If you had more time, you could dress as a maid. Meredith didn’t say it, and picturing it made her breathe faster too.

Then Frances recovered herself, and turned resolutely and went out to the parlor.

Meredith followed her, and seeing Alice sent the same throb through her body that she’d felt the other day at lunch. What was it about this woman that was so magnetic? Whatever it was, it magnetized her again as the woman’s stare reached into her.

She knows. Oh god, she knows she’s got me. And Mother. And—

She’d been oblivious to Leslie for a few moments, but when she turned to her, Leslie’s eyes were wide, and she nodded slowly, as though recovering from a blow.

She noticed the maid, still bright-eyed looking curiously at them and then smoothly hiding it. The maid looked at Alice with the same distant regard she showed all guests, ready to be seen but not heard. Alice’s presence didn’t seem to affect her. Meredith wondered how Clare would have responded to Alice, if she’d been the downstairs maid.

Alice stepped forward. “You must be Leslie!”

Leslie sighed and drifted toward her. “Yes. I must. I mean—” Alice took her hand and brought it to her mouth, and Leslie’s arm went limp. She seemed about to wilt, too.

She’s snared Leslie. Meredith felt faintly horrified and very wet to see her girlfriend falling under Alice’s sway. She realized that right then Alice could have Leslie, take her away from Meredith, and Leslie would just smile sleepily and let herself be taken.

And I’d watch. I’d stand here serving them, wearing nothing but an apron, holding the tray with champaign flutes and vibrators, smiling and waiting. Alice could make me do that while she fucked my lover away from me. She could make me glad she did.

When Alice freed Leslie from the kiss Meredith was almost disappointed.

“I’m so very happy you invited me here, Frances,” Alice said. “It’s as wonderful as I’d imagined—the grounds, the house.” She looked at Frances, and stopped speaking, watching Frances slowly freeze in her gaze.

“You look lovely, Frances. You’re a pretty woman, but today—you just shine.”

Meredith watched her mother blush, and she thought she saw her hips move. Then Frances recovered enough to breathe her thanks, and grimly pushed herself back into the role of hostess.

She managed to instruct the maid to show Alice where she could freshen up, and then sagged against one of the chairs as though Alice’s attention had been all that kept her standing.

“I didn’t know,” Leslie said in a small voice. “I mean, she obviously had both of you spellbound, but . . .

“But I think she could make you want to do anything. Just for her. It’s scary.”

Meredith gasped. Leslie’s thoughts echoed her own.

They were silent, and then Leslie shivered. “Except she could probably make me like it even if it scared me. Doing what she wanted.”

Meredith held her close. “If she told me to come with her, just to be hers, I would.” She wanted to sympathize but it came out sounding like a fantasy, and she felt Leslie’s heart gallop. There was heat between her thighs at even the thought of being led off on Alice’s leash, and the dirty pleasure of admitting it to the woman she loved. “I’m sorry, Leslie, but—”

“No,” Leslie gasped. “No. She’d smile back at me and I’d thank her on my knees just for . . .”

They looked at Frances, and she looked back at them, ecstatic and terrified. That leash might be fitted for her. She tried to laugh. “Maybe I shouldn’t have left that maid alone with her. She might not remember she’s our maid when she returns.”

Meredith looked at her. “Maybe when Alice tells us she’s not, we’ll believe.” Her mother blushed more deeply and looked out the window.

“Maybe,” Leslie whispered, “she’ll choose one of us to be her maid.”

Meredith pictured them all on their knees, lost in pleading to Alice. “Or maybe she’ll just take a harem.” She pulled away from Leslie and went to her mother.

“Mom. I’m sorry. She just has that effect, you know?”

Frances looked at her, nodding slowly and smiling. “Yes. I know.”

Dinner was a blur. Meredith recalled snatches of it—moments when she was able to be fascinating, other times when her mother or her lover came out with something valuable. Each of them came to life when Alice turned to her, and the others waited quietly, happy that Alice was being pleased and amused and waiting their turn to please her again. Everything revolved around Alice’s attention, and that was as it should be. The women didn’t compete, but just tried to reflect Alice’s light when it was turned on them.

Then Alice would speak, and Meredith remembered nothing but a blissful hum, and glimpses of how sappy and blank her fellow-worshippers became.

Now, though, everyone seemed more like herself. Things seemed a little clearer. Meredith felt a little more awake, and when she glanced at Leslie, or her mother, she could remember they were—there, not just figments of Alice’s imagination.

Frances looked fragile and pretty as she said something to Alice about needing to relax more.

Alice smiled at her. “Frances.” Her mother stopped speaking instantly. “I think you need to be hypnotized.”

“Hypnotized?” Frances blushed and stiffened, and darted a glance at her daughter. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

Alice actually seemed pleased that Frances resisted the idea, but said nothing.

“The girls have been hypnotized—they seem to do their entire workout in trance. That trainer, Ms Davitz, has them taught to go under on her command.”

“You’ve seen them while she has them hypnotized?” Alice looked at them. Meredith squirmed under the tablecloth, embarrassed and excited to have that sweet blank time discussed.

“Yes. They’re so focused.” Frances paused, hearing the tremor in her own voice. “They’re asleep to anything else happening around them.”

“Does that worry you, Frances? The safety?”

“I—no. It’s—”

“You’re a person very much in control, Frances. I can see how you’d be hesitant to surrender your will to another.”

“Surrender my—?” Her mother frowned a little. “No, I understand it’s not like that. Hypnosis isn’t mind control, and the subject doesn’t just become”—she swallowed and looked down and moved in her chair—“just a willing slave of the hypnotist. Obeying—”

“Does Meredith seem that way, that obedient, when you see her under this woman’s hypnotic spell?”

Frances blinked at “spell” but lost her concentration in Alice’s calm gaze. “I, uh, yes. I mean no, she’s not some will-less drone.” Blinking almost consciously, she freed herself and looked at Meredith, who found herself looking levelly back. She was certain they both remembered something else—that Frances had stood beside her and compared her with a robot, while she stood deliciously trapped in an exercise routine.

“Not a drone.” The repetition weakened her point. “But she seemed so . . . tranquilized.” She looked at Meredith in silent apology. “Liked she’d been tamed.”

She forced a smile. “I suppose I would have liked to have been able to hypnotize Meredith like that, when she was a teenager, so I could control . . .” The smile faded and the apologetic look seemed more intense.

Alice turned to her and Meredith felt herself orient on the stronger woman at once. Alice just looked at her and she submitted meekly to the inspection. “Yes, Frances. I can see that.

“I think Meredith could definitely be a good hypnotic subject. As would her lovely friend.” Meredith shivered and felt herself simper at Alice, and she heard Leslie sigh. “Both of them bright, receptive, able to respond.

“Under the right guidance, they can be taught to trust others to make decisions for them, when decisions are too hard.”

“Decisions are too hard,” Frances said, and then covered her mouth. “No. Not too hard.”

“Frances.” The voice was stern but kind, and Meredith saw it melt her mother.

“Yes, Alice.”

“Let me help you. So much is troubling you, and you need only to relax and trust in me to make it all go away. You’ll have only peace.

“Let yourself be hypnotized.”

56.

Her mother sat straighter.

“I can’t.”

It was quiet but it sounded more like she used to. Meredith would have responded to the resolve in it as to a cool head-clearing breeze. Would have, if she weren’t so deep in the humid swamp of wanting to be Alice’s toy, or to watch others be made that way.

“Decisions—are what I’m for.” Frances spoke firmly. “What I do. People rely on me to think and decide.”

She was breathing fast, and seemed to be trying to convince herself. “I can’t, mustn’t, just melt and let someone else tell me. What to think.”

“Of course, Frances.” Alice sat back a little. “I do understand. It takes a very strong person to hold on to that. Giving in and letting someone else take control can be like a siren song, so very seductive, and luring you even as your attention wanders.”

She paused, and even her silence was graceful and compelling. Meredith saw her mother lean almost imperceptibly toward Alice, her eyes widening a little. Frances needed to keep hearing more from the other woman, and the need came off her like heat.

Alice smiled, running her eyes over each anguished contour. She let the silence go on.

Then she said, “Well, it’s probably better if you can see it demonstrated, before deciding to allow yourself to submit to a hypnotic induction yourself. I think a little help from our two young hypnotic pioneers would be useful.” Alice’s glance ran over Meredith like fingertips and she saw it tweak Leslie too.

“Are you girls willing to let me put you into trance so Frances can watch?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Meredith almost climaxed from the harmony as they answered together. It was as though they were agreeing to have sex right here on the dinner table. This was worse, and better. They were going to be hypnotized, here, in front of her mother. Reduced to helpless trance to seduce her into submitting to it too. How lucky that Alice wanted only to coax her mother into letting herself find peace.

At Alice’s gesture, they rose and walked around the table to stand between Alice and Frances. Frances looked up at them and seemed to tremble, and Meredith smiled down at her.

“Girls.”

Her attention swung to Alice, and as she felt the smile slide from her she lost track of who it had been for.

“Frances, I’m going to put Leslie and Meredith into a hypnotic state now, so you can become comfortable with the process of letting yourself be hypnotized. Have you seen their trainer actually induce them?”

“No,” her mother almost whispered, startling Meredith into awareness of her presence again.

“Well, she’s very likely trained them to go into trance for her with some very simple trigger, but she may also go through an induction each time.” Frances’ eyes grew wider and she licked her lips to hear about her daughter being trained.

“She may find it useful to lead them through it again to reinforce their willingness to accept her suggestions and guidance. The process of submitting to her hypnosis may help put them into a more receptive mindstate for instruction.” Alice described this in a low, pleasant voice that was softening Meredith’s bones.

“Of course, I don’t know what method she uses . . . and it’s possible the girls don’t remember either. Do you, girls? Meredith?”

Discussing her surrender in front of her mother was like quietly stripping naked, but much more arousing. Meredith felt her heart slamming in her chest. “I think it was—she has this shiny whistle and she had us look—”

“Leslie?”

“I don’t know.” Leslie shook her head. “There was a countdown. Wasn’t there? She counted to us. Or—we counted for her. And then . . . we were, were . . .”

The girls looked at each other, a little embarrassed but strangely satisfied to be that unaware. Now Meredith felt like the Instructress herself was stroking her on the butt, pleased with her blankness.

“That’s all right.” Alice smiled. “Some subjects respond that way. Your Ms Davitz is a very skillful hypnotist, and she’s persuaded these two to let her into their minds.

“She seems to have tailored her method so well to both of them that just the thought of it can paralyze them. Although it probably means that I won’t be able to duplicate her effect precisely.”

“I thought that didn’t happen,” Frances ventured. “Hypnotic amnesia has to be—”

“Some subjects want to forget,” Alice soothed her. “They don’t dwell on the mechanics. They find it more fulfilling, and pleasurable, to let themselves focus on falling into rapport with their hypnotist. And on how they can best accept her suggestions.

“In this case, it sounds like whatever she did to put them to sleep, she’s conditioned them to go under rapidly.” Alice peered at them, seeing their vulnerabilities moist on them as they stood passively looking down at her, and Meredith savored it. It left her just an object, standing nude while an expert mapped her body for each place to touch her that would make her orgasm, scream, sleep, obey . . .

“I suspect she’s helped both of them to become more generally suggestible, so they’ll instinctively respond to any kind of hypnotic cues, whoever offers them, by opening themselves to trance. Since she’s got Meredith and Leslie that well trained, Frances, watching them slip into a trance may be faster than what you’ll experience. But it can still be instructive to you.”

Then Alice stood, and turned to Leslie. “Relax, Leslie.” Leslie actually seemed to go limp as she stood. Meredith saw the effect Alice had on her lover and wanted to be her.

She put her hands on Leslie’s shoulders. “Look into my eyes, Leslie. Look deeply into my eyes and hear only the sound of my voice.”

Leslie stared into her eyes, trapped in them and already looking blank. Leslie’s body grew slack and her eyes widened but never left Alice’s.

“Hearing only my voice, trusting only my voice, believing my voice.”

Alice talked to Leslie about relaxation and focus but the innocuous words blurred in the low music of Alice’s sound, vibrations that bent their way into every cell of the girl she was hypnotizing. Meredith watched her lover relax and focus as she was told to. Becoming Alice’s girl with each instructed breath.

Meredith was helpless to do anything but wait to be possessed in her turn.

She was dreamily aware that her mother was watching as Leslie gave herself to Alice, and as she let Leslie be taken. She heard nothing from Frances—even her breathing was quiet.

“Your mind is ready now for hypnosis, Leslie. You feel as relaxed and trusting, now, with me, hearing my voice, as you do when your trainer puts you into trance.” Alice was nodding now, slightly, and Leslie moved her head slowly in response, agreeing to the commands as they grew more specific. As Alice pushed them into her head she seemed to stiffen, standing straighter while still firmly in Alice’s invisible grasp.

Leslie’s breathing was deep, slow, and perfectly in time with the pulse of Alice’s chant.

“You want to be ready to receive instructions so that you can obey them perfectly while hypnotized. I know that you will be a good subject, Leslie, and that you will become deeply hypnotized when I tell you to. I know that you will obey me.

“Sleep now, Leslie.” Leslie looked solemnly up at Alice, and then her eyes slid shut. She stayed as she was when Alice released her. “Open your eyes and wait.” Leslie obeyed, staring forward.

“Are you awake now, Leslie?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I am deeply hypnotized now and waiting for instructions.”

“Good.” Alice turned to Meredith, and Meredith almost fainted.

She stayed upright, in part because fainting would close her eyes to Alice’s. She needed, more than anything, to fall into them now—for her mother to watch Alice take her, to see how effortlessly Alice could do it.

Her girlfriend was a motionless statue now and Meredith felt her mother’s anxious, envious gaze like sunlight. She wished she were naked to it, but it was enough for Alice to be looking at her, the reassuring smile so easy to see as that of a cobra watching its bird fall still.

“Relax, Meredith.” Meredith felt it go through her, trembling as Leslie had.

Alice touched her shoulders. “Look into my eyes, Meredith. Look deeply into my eyes and hear only the sound of my voice.”

“Only the sound of your voice.” Arousal tightened her whisper as she obeyed, and as the world started to shrink to Alice’s eyes, the sound the world made was Frances’ gasp. Meredith squeezed her thighs together, and stared, and listened.

“Hearing only my voice, trusting only my voice, believing my voice.”

Meredith felt herself nodding.

Then there was only the utter truth of Alice’s voice, and the bliss of being hypnotized by it.

57.

She heard Alice’s fingers snap because she had Alice’s permission to. She remembered nothing of her trance because she had no desire to. Meredith’s thoughts were that clear as she woke, and shared a smile with Leslie as the other girl came out of it with a similarly tranquilized look.

“That was wonderful,” she heard herself murmur.

“Yes. Thank you.” Leslie sounded equally subdued as she looked longingly at Alice.

Alice nodded at each of them and then turned to Frances.

Frances sat uncomfortably in her chair, eyes flicking from daughter to daughter’s girlfriend. She was blushing furiously and breathing harder now, clearly turned on. Meredith waited for Alice to make the offer to hypnotize her again, a low-pitched half-command that her mother would kneel to before she submitted. But Alice waited for Frances’ need to recede.

Frances swallowed. Her voice was steady when she risked it. “I do wish I could have learned to do that,” she said, looking at Meredith and then away. “So many tumultuous-teen arguments could have been avoided.”

Alice laughed. Meredith thought about growing up being regularly hypnotized into good behavior. She pictured herself reporting to her mother in a school uniform, imagining the kilt a good deal shorter than Frances would likely have programmed her to want.

Now, beside the dining table, she stiffened theatrically and raised her arms zombie-fashion, staring wide-eyed at the far wall.

“I have enjoyed all the brussels sprouts, Mother,” she declared in a monotone. “May I now destroy some more rock albums, or am I to resume work on my extra-credit proj—?”

She broke off as Frances exploded into giggles, more frantic than the weird humor warranted. Alice kept laughing, and Meredith joined them. She saw Leslie had broken up too, but her lover’s glance was hot. She sensed how wet the fantasy had left Meredith.

“Would that be the only way to get her to like brussels sprouts?” Alice inquired.

Frances was almost trembling from the released tension. “Heh. I’m not sure even hypnosis could make Meredith eat them.”

“I have a moral problem with them,” Meredith said. Leslie helpfully made an index-finger cross and nodded agreement.

Frances had gathered herself. “I also invited you to share our spa here, Alice. If you’re still in the mood—oh, did you even bring a swimsuit? Because—”

Alice savored the blend of grace and sudden shyness. “Definitely, Frances! You made it sound so seductive I couldn’t resist. Just the Jacuzzi . . . I made it a point to bring something to wear. Where may I change?”

She stared at Frances and Frances seemed to freeze, as if feeling a mental command to invite Alice to join her in her own bedroom.

Meredith found her voice. “Oh, come on to our room!” They looked at her. “I mean, rooms.”

Her mother seemed both relieved and disappointed when Alice agreed that was a capital idea, and Leslie looked half-tranced again. As Alice moved to the door, Meredith paused by her mother and whispered, “Now’s your chance, Mom. You know she’s scoping you out. Wear something really hot!”

“Will you stop!” Frances hissed, but her blush was back and even the whisper had a catch in it. She started what was probably a joke about wishing she did have her daughter trance-tamed, but the excitement silenced her and she just made an off-with-you fingerflick, smiling at Alice.

Meredith led their guest to her own suite, making junior hostess comments about various items of decor on the way, and wondering why Leslie said nothing. Alice was polite and interested, and Meredith felt an absurd gush of pleasure—almost as though she’d learned a trick and was performing it well.

Her pussy still hummed from the experience of falling under this woman’s power. In moments she and Leslie would be stripping in front of someone who’d hypnotized them with ease before, and could probably send them into trusting sleep again before their underwear hit the floor.

Or had Alice whispered triggers into them as they’d stood helplessly before her, too quietly for her mother to hear but ringing like cathedral bells in their trance-molded minds? She almost broke step, imagining their charismatic guest hypnotically ravishing her and Leslie once they were alone with her in the suite, and then erasing it from their pliant memories before they sashayed to the spa . . .

In the suite, reality seemed to return and she was already trying to choreograph who’d use which room to change, when she looked at the computer.

Clare sat there with the headset on. She was completely absorbed in the obedience-training sequence Leslie was using on her this week.

At least she was dressed, although the demure maid’s uniform still looked odd on someone using a family computer. Meredith tried to think of how to break off the program, wake her, and still get her out without making this even harder to explain to Alice.

But turning from the deeply-hypnotized maid back to her guest made her forget about Clare. Leslie was standing rigidly at attention, focused on Alice. It was completely different than when Alice had put Leslie under at dinner. It was more like the control they’d both let the Instructress have over them, but that was only a faint echo of how chained Leslie seemed to be now.

She really did look like a robot—if robots could need like that.

Alice smiled at Leslie, and at Meredith’s worried look. “It’s just her brainwashing, Meredith. Part of the basic slave set. All of my ‘spandex girls’ are programmed to go into fixation on my presence when unobserved. Unless I de-trigger them.”

Spandex girls triggered something in Meredith, but she lost hold of it, with what felt like practice.

“And I had no plans to de-trigger this beauty. I’ve been looking forward to seeing her do this all evening.” She looked over at Clare and just smiled, not looking surprised at all. Then she looked back at Meredith.

“But this doesn’t make sense to you until you’re triggered, Meredith. It’s hard to see through the bubble. Let me pop it for you.

“Always feed the hand that bites you.”

Meredith’s arousal jolted her as she remembered and rejoiced and felt her will disintegrate, all at once. The voice that had wormed into her mind through phone calls and online, that had spun the bubble of protective amnesia around her mind and turned her mind itself into bubble-mist, was in her now.

She snapped to attention nearly as stiffly as Leslie. The lovely agony of lunch yesterday and dinner today, yearning to submit to Alice without really knowing why, was gone. She remembered whom she belonged to.

“Mistress,” she gasped.

Alice acknowledged it with a little bow, and then regarded them. “Undress, slaves.”

They obeyed instantly, and Meredith felt like a passenger as her body patiently slid out of clothes she wanted to rend from her to be naked sooner. Watching Leslie disrobe in her deeper, soulless stupor calmed her a little, as it promised depths that Alice would drop her to in time.

Then they were nude at attention before her, and this time Meredith felt a need to kneel and worship Alice openly, even if the only witnesses were her brainwashed girlfriend and Clare, lost in whatever the computer was making her see and hear. But she just quivered and felt her juice run. Just like the last time she remembered/forgot when Alice had seen her twitch like this, devoted but paralyzed, in the dressing room at Gossamer preparing to whore for her, Alice was gracious to her slave. She knew what Meredith felt, without needing to hear the slave whimper it to her.

So the pleasure of just standing, unable to do anything until told to, was pure and intense.

Alice turned to Leslie. “Attend to Clare.”

Leslie pivoted and stalked over to the maid, leaning over her to see where the program had her. It looked intimate, a lean nude teacher checking a uniformed student’s progress, and Meredith gasped at the heat that came with knowing both girls were too obliviously deep in their different trance states to be really aware of each other.

Leslie looked at the screen with bored intensity, already brainwashed beyond its capacity to captivate. Its normally enthralling patterns probably made no impression on what Alice’s spandex-girl mindwipe had left of Leslie’s will by now. The thought made Meredith’s heart ache faintly, but the thrill in her pussy to see her lover so enslaved was nearer and sweeter.

Leslie’s breasts slid into Clare’s hair as she reached past either side of the maid’s head to type in the override. She rested her palms on Clare’s shoulders and looked down, seeing the other girl blink and waver as the aborted hypnotic program freed her sluggish thoughts. She seemed to count, and then plucked the headphones from Clare’s head, setting them down with her left hand while sweeping her right slowly down over Clare’s face. The maid’s eyes fell shut and her head bowed as she went to sleep.

“Awake now, Clare.” Her task completed, Leslie came to attention again behind the girl. She didn’t react as the maid raised her head and shook it vaguely, disoriented from not having been through the complete sequence. Just two days of it had already conditioned Clare.

The flatness of Leslie’s voice also seemed to perplex the sleepy maid, and looking around to see her hypnotist naked and robotically posed seemed to jolt her out of the aftertrance. Alarmed, she turned the other way to see Meredith equally unclothed and unresponsive, and then took in the glamorous stranger.

Clare uncoiled from the chair like a small leopard from a treelimb, almost stalking Alice, face taut with fury. Even just emerging from the indoctrination that was teaching her how to control Meredith—and do other things Meredith didn’t need to know—she’d realized or guessed that Alice had both of the other girls under her spell, and she was defending her territory. Meredith’s admiration was deep, but swallowed up by the pleasure of seeing another pretty girl about to challenge Mistress in a battle of wills.

Clare hissed something to Meredith, and part of her spasmed helplessly. It was a trigger, but in Mistress’ presence it was less than nothing. She felt a delicious guilt at being a tool failing in her lesser lady’s hand, but that, too, just made her wet.

It only made Clare angrier. She stopped a few steps from Alice, as though belatedly realizing her danger, but shook with the need to close and fight. “Let her go! She’s mine!” The leopard was a cub, but she didn’t shrink from the lioness.

The lioness looked pleased. “I think when we’ve spoken a bit, Clare, you’ll realize and enjoy that she is as much mine as you are.” Alice’s smile widened as she watched the sound of her voice stun the other girl. It had trained her through the computer as it had been training all of them. Before Leslie had roused her, Clare’s mind had just now been helplessly open to it while the screen’s patterns stupefied her. Hearing it aloud made her thoughts as leaden as her limbs.

“Noooo . . .” It was more a question than a denial by the time the maid forced it quietly out.

“You do remember, dear?”

Clare was swaying a little now, blinking and trying to drag her eyelids up. The fierce joy she’d been trained to feel about having her employer’s daughter as an obedient playtoy was hard for her to let go of, even facing Alice.

“Remember . . .”

Alice smiled.

TO BE CONTINUED