The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Remember that this is an interrogation. Knowing him, you’ll see that his intentions never changed, just his way of doing things,” Collins warned as they parked in front of the unassuming ranch house, a simple place that looked like it had never left the Depression and could belong to any family. The only marking that this was the right place was the familiar sight of a long-legged redhead with Kim on her backpack, walking away from the house with a cookie in her mouth, empty-eyed and completely bewildered as she returned to the dorm.

“That’s the thrall I’ve been telling you about,” Claudia said.

“That cookie is 100 proof, minimum. His wife’s recipe. Students who have questions, or who are just overwhelmed by the standard rigors of college, are welcome for a dose of hard reinforcement from Isaac himself. The door’s always unlocked. Just ring twice. If he’s not there, Nick’s there; if Nick’s not there, Isaac is. Granted, if it’s Nick, you leave with a brownie instead of a cookie. That’s his wife’s recipe. Maybe while we’re there, I’ll ask if she can send some to Rhonda. She’d like them. The baked goods keep people from breaking under Isaac and Nick’s power. Secondary altered mental state is the scientific principle. We just called it the only booze allowed on campus,” Collins explained as they rang the bell four times.

“Well, hell, Matt Collins, my favorite check of my balance! You got your answer looking at me- my balance ain’t nothing no more. Ninety-five and I’m still taking sacks. Maybe I oughta get my old helmet out of storage. Signed by Red Grange himself, don’t you know? Come on in! Four rings isn’t just for a refresher course, or to see if I’m so old-fashioned that I wouldn’t let you remarry to a girl so... young,” the old man on the other side of the door said. In person, he was even shorter than he had seemed on the billboards, when he was surrounded by his players.

Claudia had a sudden memory of the first time she had seen The Wizard of Oz with her family, of seeing the Wizard in his throne room, mighty and furious- and of little Toto pulling back the curtain and revealing what lay behind it. But Michaelsson was no Oz; trickster though he was the charlatan he had proven to be, he had the power to back up his schemes. Even under inches of refracted glass, Claudia saw the glitter of his clear blue eyes and knew that he could kill in a second- and that he knew it. Her guard was up as she and Collins went into the house.

Schizophrenic was the only word Claudia could think of to describe the décor inside the house. Half of it held the trophies of a ninety-five-year-old coach’s football life, scattered like something out of a bachelor pad: awards, championships, posters, footballs, memorabilia, pictures, and jerseys were framed on the walls, piled on the bookshelves, and stacked on the tables. Half of it was decorated in Middle American Overbearing Grandmother, with pictures of flowers on the wall, porcelain figurines with impossibly huge eyes sitting on lace doilies, and quilts in soporific pastels folded over the back of every plastic-covered seating surface but one. Michaelsson sat down in that one, a worn brown armchair that was almost the same shade as Claudia, but likely much older. “So what brings you here to question the crazy world we live in? Is it those bitches in Detroit? Excuse my language, young lady, but sometimes you have to call rabid dogs what they are, and with their machines and their plastics and their sticks, they’re no better than beasts. Forcible rape is not control. Control is control. Shameful, shameful creatures. Good thing they don’t dare to come within a hundred miles of me. No one’s that dumb. Even they know that suicide is more shameful than the fresh hell they create. Please, please, sit down, you’re making me feel even shorter than I am. Don’t worry about the furniture, Maude keeps everything neat as a pin.”

He made no move towards his glasses, keeping his hands tight against the arms of his chair. Just as ostentatiously, Claudia kept her hands away from her gun. He raised a hand, and she moved hers to the butt of her gun. “Smart woman! Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain!” he said with a smile, dropping his hand back onto the arm of his chair. “But I have nothing to fear. I’m ninety-five years old and still coaching football against controllers smarter than me. Given these days, maybe Iowa’s got a shot at saying they’re more ethical than me.”

Claudia and Collins both raised their eyebrows, and Collins said, “Why would you say that? They still control, they just go seeking a mate, and if they destroy behind them...”

“So be it,” Michaelsson finished. “Oh, yes, it’s why we never lost to Iowa, even during the worst of years. Noble, yes, but not ethical, just like I’ve lived a long time but am not immortal. If you’re wondering what the secret is to that, it’s the herring. Most of us are from Scandinavia at some point in our heritage, you know. Herring does wonders for a long life. You should try it, Matt.”

Claudia kept her face neutral leaning towards disinterested, not wanting to show to Michaelsson that she could see how much of a charmer he was; if he hadn’t been born with the ice blue eyes of a vampire, he might have been able to make it in the control community anyway.

“Red showed us your files on Cleveland. How long, Isaac? That’s all. How long. He’s dead, and you’re ninety-five, as you keep reminding us, but how long?” Collins asked, losing more patience than he would have liked.

“Given that he needed the small parts, not very at all! Oh, look at your little spitfire, about ready to put a bullet in my head for finding a little levity before I discuss my deepest shame. I’m proud of you, Matt. You trained a real beauty there. I know a few of my kids got jumpy, thought they had to be heroes and protect me, and quelled a couple of your people, but you’ve both been young college students, right? Didn’t you do stupid things in college? Don’t answer that, Matt, I think I’d have to discipline you if you tell me ones I don’t already know. I guess I should be proud that I instilled enough ethics in them to know that Geoff’s passing wasn’t natural. No, they knew how shameful he was. Wish they’d told me earlier. The moment I realized the truth, he was gone like that—” he snapped his gnarled fingers, though it took a couple of tries for him to be satisfied with the sound. “It’s in the records. You’ll even find that I told him not to resist the Eighth Circle’s breakage. He had to accept his shame and realize that it was so serious that it had to devour him whole to make any part of this whole again.”

The preacher’s voice didn’t fit Michaelsson’s small body, which was Claudia’s first hint that he was trying to charm them; she knew that if they weren’t careful, his next move would be for his glasses. Stone cold, she said, “He didn’t point me to C for Cleveland. He pointed me to Q for quarterbacks.”

“We know about Red. We can shrug it off as an act of panic, confusion, misinterpretation, something like that. Maybe if the rot didn’t run so deep, we could let everyone think you saw Red showing signs of madness and delivered a mercy kill. But how long, and how many, Isaac? You’re a genius in your field. You should know what we’re talking about,” Collins snapped.

“Enough to make sure the honor returned, because without honor, so goes success. The success returned because the honor was there to provide a solid foundation for it. Now they all know that no act will ever bring us shame. I could go into detail- I’ve got copies of my files here- but gosh, Matt, you know I just can’t read a thing with my glasses on,” Michaelsson replied.

Claudia drew her gun, finally having enough of the shadowplay and threats. “Stand down,” Collins said, and she backed off just enough to obey the order without giving up her readiness. Collins turned his attention back to Michaelsson, a look of distaste on his face. “Let me help you. You won’t have to guess my name. You already know it.”

“The light of truth is the hottest burn known to man. So I filter it through my glasses. I have the light, I have the key, and I make the shadows. The shadow puppets keep the honor high and make sure no one gets confused by unknown and discomforting truth. What shame would it be if the light burned away all the good and left nothing but evil behind?” Michaelsson asked, his voice low, part ordering, part cajoling, part pleading.

“Your most shameful waste,” Collins bit back before storming to his car and taking off for the rest area. Once they were well away, Collins said, “I’ll have every good search team here within seventy-two hours. I have enough public clout as national champion Matt Collins to hold the gates of hell for that long, but no longer. Long enough for bones to be broken, not brains. Marion, your team will organize a strike on Michaelsson tonight. I’ll set the bait. Make it clean, make it random, but make it known. What he’s done is too despicable for those who know not to know.”

“But we don’t know a quarter of anything, sir. Shouldn’t we try and get more information from him?” Claudia asked.

“Exactly the problem. That’s his executable offense, and he knows it. He knows he’s guilty, and only he and God know everything he’s guilty of, but he won’t give up what he had worked for all his life. He thinks that it’s bigger than he is, and he’s not entirely wrong. But the stink of his arrogance and his pigheadedness permeates it too much for it to last. Be ready for a long battle when this goes. You need to be perfect. One mistake and we fall to either of the fourth acts of shame. Your team’s seen what one angry, confused, presence controller lashing out can do. Imagine thousands more. All those alumni... all those Class 1s with good jobs and sterling reputations... billions in combined revenue will come down here like a ton of bricks on both sides. But we cannot let the flawed system he created go, because it will only get worse. And you thought Ram was trouble?”

“He destroyed his chance to come out clean. He cares more about the success than the honor, doesn’t he?” Claudia asked.

“And most of all he cares about the appearance of honor,” Collins added.

“That’s why he retooled his system. And why his son would be more corrupt than anyone. So we have to destroy enough of the Michaelsson name that Nick can’t just take the throne.”

“Bingo,” Collins said as they pulled into the rest area and met the rest of the unit.

“Cut it close,” Rhonda said, holding out her watch. “Are we going in?”

“It’s not that simple, but that’s the ultimate endgame, Wilson. I’ll work on the exposure, both to the control community and the Great Lakes community. You’ll need to make it clean and not premeditated. The angry mob that follows will be too busy chasing its own tail to find you, while your record of being here will be long erased by the computers. I can do enough on the inside to keep the controllers at bay,” Collins said.

“Thank the Lord for that,” Brenna said. “Shouldn’t we just dope him, though? At his age, that might seem natural, then you can take over and throw the skeletons out of the closet.” She gritted her teeth with every word.

“Poisoned umbrella? How Russian. At ease, Brenna. You fought it enough to at least know we need to kill him, but we can’t trust you to pull the trigger. The programming from Michaelsson’s books is too much of a risk. So are any failsafes Elena might have put in there. I will not send you in there and watch you turn the gun on yourself. Rhonda, this is your tag,” Claudia said with steel in her voice.

“I get it. Least I’m not tryin’ to stop you. Counted heads? Cheryl had to take the car and drive Cynthia outta here to get her back to base and to the Pink Room. She tried to start a fight.”

“That might be a sign of—”

“With Rhonda?” Brenna interrupted.

“That’s a suicide trigger if I ever saw one,” Rhonda said with a wink, but her tone was strained.

“I did notice, and assumed that all of you were putting the mission first,” Claudia said.

“Meanwhile, to flush him out, Marion and I will be in the football building, collecting evidence. We have the passcodes. Once we’re done, we’ll trip the alarm.”

“Draw him in,” Claudia said with a wicked grin.

“Won’t work. Too many secret passages,” Brenna taunted, but she pulled her hair hard to get her thoughts back under her control, even as her programming compelled her to twirl it around her finger.

“Don’t say it, Claudia. Little things like that you only learn from the inside. That is why she stayed, to give us that information,” Gianna said.

Collins nodded. “He always enters through the passages, but he always leaves through the front. It’s one of his power trips, and slightly less messy than peeing on things. You get to be his age, you don’t change. Lucatelli, Howard, I’ll want you to stay together and patrol the perimeter. Distract and deflect, but do not otherwise engage. Howard, use whatever you learned on the inside to make yourselves seem harmless and friendly. If you manage to convey the impression that you’re leaving, that will help with the aftermath.”

“Yes, sir,” the four chorused, and the plan was on.