The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

New York City! Damn. What can I say that hasn’t been said? Particularly since I made my first visit from New Orleans just a few months after Katrina—never the picture of health, my eccentric hometown was getting by, barely, on life support, that first year after the storm—New York was electrifying. I felt guilty for revelling in it so much, as if I by taking up with a fast, flashy crowd, I was being disloyal to the high-school girl pining for me back home.

I can say—and I think that this would apply to any virgin New Yorker, not just a New Orleanian—that the sense of déjà vu in the early going is constant and overpowering. As if the city itself weren’t overloading enough: Practically every block, every building in it has been seen and seen again, on TV and in the movies. So you, or anyway me, walk around thinking: “What the fuck? Have I been here before? I never been here before. Have I?”

If only this damn report were about me, my design career, my life.... I’d happily write a novel, a trilogy, about those thrill-ride weeks in New York City. From the moment I was met at the airport with back slaps and bear hugs, each day, every hour, was a roller coaster of all peaks, no plunges. I took meetings where the air was thick with creativity and verve, where my ideas were listened to with rapt attention. I met every hot, sharp-dressed, on-the-move twentysomething the city contained, a parade of sexed-up guys and gals who greeted me as one of their own. I must’ve been exuding some heavy new-guy-in-town musk, because visually I barely made the cut in this crowd: I’d spent my last couple hundred on one suit, a well-cut pale gray Armani, which with changes of shirt and tie had to serve me everywhere I went, at work and long-into-the-night afterwards.

Would newbie musk linger in an environment where half of everybody had just landed? Maybe my allure was being a hurricane survivor. Every conversation started and ended with that topic, if my new acquaintance knew from whence I came.

Whatever. The point is, I didn’t give Randall or the rest of the Duke Luke’s crowd one thought. There wasn’t room in my head. They were a Page Seven story from yesterday’s news, yesterday’s Andy.

Until Thursday. Got a surprise on my cell phone, late that afternoon.

“Andy! Dandy Andy!”

My crowd’s lousy with nicknames, but only one person called me that. “Lana? Holy hell.” My design school crony. It’d been since graduation, almost.

“Sweet as candy, twice as randy. Hello gorgeous.”

“Angel honey baby darling dear. How are you? Where are you?”

“Around the corner and up three blocks.”

It turned out Lana had relocated to New York her own self, but permanently, shortly after school. She was doing brides wear for a major chain. “Though I’m seriously contemplating a return visit soon, for a couple of weeks, see if I can help the recovery in any way. The store will give me comp time, so long as these lousy new designs of mine are approved.”

“Why didn’t I know you were here?”

“Because I was mad at you, Dandy.”

“Why were you mad at me, Lanolin?” I swear.

“Because you were mad at me. For no good goddamn reason.” Then I remembered. It was true. Late in our schooling, after we’d done virtually everything together, attached at the hip, Lana and I had had...not a huge fight, better if we had...a tense, over-polite dinner conversation (everything we did included dinner) because she’d slept with, one-nightered with...

“Flint. God. I’d forgotten.”

“That’s good. Not bearing grudges at least. No chips on those broad manly shoulders.”

We would’ve gotten through it if graduation hadn’t been looming. Timing is all. “I’m so sorry, Lanolin. I just always thought, thought...”

“Thought that if I ever did the deed with any animal in the zoo crew, it’d be you.”

“Or the Vandal at least. That I’d understand. But Flint?” Enormous, ugly, almost-twice-our-age Flint?

“He was really quite good in bed, or rather upon the air mattress—”

“—Once you found a paper bag enough.”

“Don’t start or I won’t buy you dinner tonight. Flint and I were...one of those inexplicable things. Not that I regret it.”

I knew Lana, knew there was more to it than that. But I didn’t press. It’d been too long; I’d lost the right to press. Besides, her ‘inexplicable things’ remark was ringing a bell, one I hadn’t heard since Monday night.

Lana knew better than to ask me about Katrina life. She knew all of us New Orleanians were sick of explaining how it is. “So. How’s the old gang? How is Ice Mike? That little dreamboat Carlton?”

“Mostly same old, same old. There is one helluva story, though.”

“Faboo. Dish. I love your stories. I love it when you dish. You should more often.”

“I have to work another two hours at least. Where should we meet to greet and eat?”

“And snipe and gripe.”

You don’t care how much longer I had to work, do you? You don’t care where we ate, or what we had.

Fine. Fuck you. But Lana deserves space. She’s part of the report. A major part.

I’ll tell you one thing, she looked great. Better than great. She still had that rounded cuddly thing going for her, but working like a dog in cutthroat New York had caused her to shed that extra twenty pounds of etouffé and gumbo she ended design school with. Her hair was still pale red, but highlighted and better cut, trimmed with little ringlets that framed a perfectly made-up Kewpie doll face. Bow lips and everything. And still that magnificent cleavage for all the world to ahhh over.

God but being a designer makes me sound like a fag sometimes.

Lana brings the poof out in me too. (Maybe another reason we’d never slept together, desirable as I found, and find, her.) She’s a little weird in temperament. Sharp as a whip, sardonic...a fag hag with no fags. Lana should’ve spent her nights in New Orleans being bought drinks and generally catered to by a gaggle of chorus boys over at Oz or the Bourbon Parade. Instead she ran with the straightest of the straight, somehow making them a little queer under the influence of her vivacious presence.

She still smoked, which in New York means she got a lot of my story out on the sidewalk. It was almost as sweltering as what I’d left behind. It took me many cigarettes to reconstruct Monday night. I hadn’t thought about it, I’d been distracted and drinking: Randall’s proposed cult, Carlton volunteering to be his first follower, their disturbing ‘agreement,’ Flint storming out—

“Poor old Flint. He’s the one who brought Carlton into the crew,” Lana interjected.

“He is?”

“He must feel awful.”

—the manifest changes in Carlton’s personality, Ice Mike’s nasty glee, my helping the kid into his coat as he danced like a harem boy... No. I didn’t tell Lana about that.

“So when you left, Carlton—”

“Carly. Supposedly just Carly.”

“—was hypnotized and drunk?”

“More hypnotized than drunk. He’s a lightweight. Supposedly not even hypnotized. Supposedly they’d just talked things over and ‘come to an agreement.’”

“He wouldn’t respond when you called him Carlton?”

“No. And he was agreeing to live with Randall. He was agreeing that he’d always lived with Randall.”

She spiked her butt. “Hot. Hot hot hot.”

“You think it’s just bar talk?”

“I think it’s hot. I left the Crescent City too soon. All those months I put in with your pack of losers, I never got rewarded with a night like that. Life is unfair.” She lit another light.

“You don’t think I need to worry?”

“Of course you need to worry. Jealousy is always good reason to worry.”

“Screw you, Lanolin.”

“The two sexiest bulls in the zoo crew finally pair off, and neither one of them is you.”

“They’re both straight.”

“And they don’t even invite you over to watch.”

“I’ve seen how they behave with women, Lana. With you.”

“I’m no test of male heterosexuality. Randall, he’s got to be bi. Carlton is...questioning. Uncertain about everything.”

“Except athletics.”

“Which one did you long to be? Which one did you long to fuck?”

“We’re moments away from breaking up again.”

“Randall is masculine and domineering, but so are you at heart. If you had the nerve to less the nice guy. So I believe you wanted Carlton. The way you describe him, so thoroughly, and how he behaved that night. That endearing lost-puppy thing he’s patented. Yes, Carlton. I think he moves you. Deeply moves you. To protect and serve gets your juices flowing.”

She was amused but kind about it. Still I was pissed. And though pissed, still I couldn’t prevent myself asking:

“Do you think he’s in trouble? Carlton?”

“Naturally. He’s wanted to get in trouble as long as we’ve known him. Now he is.”

“So just leave it alone?”

“Oh, no. Did I say that? No. He’s not...what’s the expression?...not ‘a big boy now.’ He may never be a big boy. And Randall the Vandal is a dangerous man. There’s trouble for the sake of growing up, then there’s trouble for real.”

“I should go back.”

“You can’t. You don’t like Carlton, remember?”

“Just for a weekend. Just to check in.”

“You can check in by phone. That I think you should do. But you can’t go back. Your career is taking off. Worse, much worse, it’d disturb your self-image too much: Flying to the rescue of a pretty, blonde, effeminate rich boy whom you don’t want and don’t like. What would become of your straightness then?”

“Lana, please.”

“Now me? I can go back.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“You ‘can’t let me’?”

“It’s too dangerous, He’s too dangerous. You said it yourself.”

“Hon! Not to me. I’m a big girl now, unlike blondie. Randall likes me. Flint adores me. Ice Mike hates me but only the same as he hates all women and everybody else. Ian will be unconscious.” She spiked the latest cig and turned. “’Pooh to the danger,’ said the stalwart aviatrix, her silk scarf flapping in the wind.” Lana went inside, opening the door with a flourish, to settle the tab.

“Let me think it over,” I followed, tight-lipped. “I may’ve overlooked something.”

“Do that. Think it over.”

I went to the washroom, for the sake of a break in intensity as much as for my bladder. Upon return, relieved and less glum, the waiter was presenting the charge slip, bowing to her slightly.

“But think over something else first.”

“What else?”

She signed. “My toothbrush, shower stall, and little pull-out sofa are very near here.”

I’m not stupid. So I was silent.

“Contemplate making love to me tonight.”

Still silent. Nothing is left unsaid if you don’t say anything stupid. I think.

“We’re here. We’ve changed. It’s time.” Silent, silent, silent...but now meeting her gentle hazel eyes with mine. “Imagine how knowing me Biblically will enhance your masculine self-image.”

New York had done Lana a world of good. I smiled, took her hand, escorted her gracefully to the entrance, which of course opened for her, then stepped aside. She swept out grinning.

Whether you want to know them or not—I imagine not—I’ll share no details of my long-sought night with Lanolin. In tribute to the nice guy whom I still was, then. For this report, it’s only important to note that our exploration of each other was long, slow then fast then slow, deeply interesting, even exciting and fun—though not so much so that either of us wanted to book another such trip—and that my close friend is a very different woman on a pull-out sofa than she is at table. I prefer the woman at table.

In the bright early morn, Lanolin informed that I’d been precisely as she’d expected. We were chatting, I was dressing in my hard-used Armani, when I remembered to ask,

“How did you know I was here? In New York, I mean?”

“Randall called me.”

I stopped halfway through my tie. “No kidding?”

“Yesterday around lunch. I was taken aback too. But he, unlike some close friends I could name, has stayed in touch, though it’s been awhile. He knew I’d want to see you.”

I frowned, shrugged to cover the frown, kissed her goodbye. At the door, I reminded her, “Don’t go down there yet, Lanolin. We took time out for an interlude. But now I’m back to thinking it over.”

“It’s really not up to you.”

“You said I could have time.”

“Just call, Dandy Andy. For godssake.”

Last thing out the door, I got the name and address of her stylist. I got back to my hotel, The Franklin, with less than an hour to spare before I was due at the studio. Still I sat and stared for long moments, turning the cell over in my left hand. Lana was a meddler at heart. Well-meaning, but mischievous; loved to stir things up. This really was none of my business. Or hers.

My moving fingers, for reasons all their own, chose those moments to recall the warm thrill that shot through them when I’d helped Carlton into his coat, that last night at Duke Luke’s. My hands gentle on his shoulders, him swaying to the Seger ballad. He’d blushed up at me, smiled shyly, murmured thank you, giggled...

What the hell. I’d check in. And the simplest way was always the best. I dialed Randall’s home number, his Uptown condo.

A young girl answered before the end of the second ring. “Mithter Awno’th rethidenthe.”

I say it again: What the hell? Randall the Vandal has no kids. I don’t think. He’d spoken ruefully, between tokes, of a years-ago ex up in Chicago, apparently long-time and live-in, but I’m pretty sure that relationship resulted only in slamming doors and broken dishes, not progeny. A visiting niece?

“Um... yes, thank you. Is Randall—”

“May I take a methage, pleeth? Mithter Awno ith not home at the moment.” Even adults don’t offer to take messages nowadays. A well-mannered child. Definitely not any fruit of Randall’s loins.

“Yeth... I mean, yes, thank you, miss. My name is Andrew Robine—”

“Andy! Ith thith Andy? Oh, how wondewful to hear your voith. Darn. I thould’ve been able to tell.” Then the ‘little girl’ giggled in a way I’d moments ago recalled savoring.

My god. “Carlton?”

Silence on the other end. “Carlton, is this you?”

More silence, then, a rainswept voice: “I’m vewwy thorry, thir. You mutht have dialed the wong...”

I remembered just in time. “Carly? Carly. It’s me. Andy.”

He squealed. “Andy! I wath right, I wath right! Goody.”

“Hello, Carly.”

“Hi! What wath that dumb thing you wewe thaying, Andy? It made no thenth.”

I took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter...sweetheart. I was just, just startled by something, a noise, here in my hotel room. I’m...staying at the Carlton.”

“The what?”

“Never you mind, sweetheart.”

“Oooh! You called me thweetheart. Twithe! Yooooo’we in tho much twouble!”

I’d heard someone else call him ‘sweetheart’ that night. Randall? “I am not.”

“’Kay, you’we not weally. And you have a hotel woom! Ith it big? Ith it nithe?”

“Very nice, Carly. Very swanky and hip.”

“Oooh. I with I could thee it.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“Well...well, you know. Milord and me, we have loth and loth of thingth to do.”

“Things like what?”

“His cult, thilly. Milord’th cult. We have two new membews alweady.”

I didn’t dare ask who. Here it was only Friday. Gone less than a week: Carly was lisping like a girl waiting for her adult teeth to come in, and Randall’s cult membership had tripled.

“And Helen ith gonna leth uth yooth Duke Luke’th for our theremonieth.”

“Ceremonies?”

“Uh huh.”

“When will Randall be back, Carly?”

“Pwetty thoon.”

“Is he, is he treating you well?”

“Of cowth! He ith Milord. Evewwything he doth ith wondewful.”

Despite my shock, I began to warm up to our little chat. I tossed together a vodka tonic. “Can you talk for a little while, Carly? Until Randall returns?”

“Andy! I can talk even aftew he geth back. I can talk ath long ath you want.” More giggles.

“Really?”

“Weally. Milord told me to expect yow call.”

“He did, did he?” Why?

“Yeth thir! And you know what elth he told me, Andy?”

“No, sweetheart, what?”

He cooed in my ear. “Milord told me to be extwa-nithe to you. He told me that you, Andy, you awe vewwy vewwy impowtant to him.”

I sat down at that. I sipped. And sipped again.

“Andy?”

“I’m here, sweetheart. Just taking off my shoes.”

“Ohhh. Thee, if you wewe hewe, whewe Milord thayth you thould be, I could do that fow you. Then I could matha- mathath- wub yow feet.”

“Next time, Carly. I’ll be back real soon.”

“I hope tho! What do you want to talk about?”

I swallowed hard then downed my drink, ran my hand through my hair then let it flop into my lap. I must get a first-rate haircut while I was in New York. Something that said ‘mature’ and ‘go-getter’ simultaneously. “Oh, just silly stuff. I’m just silly, like you said. Like...” The lithping? No. Hold that question. “What did you do today, Carly?”

He must’ve shrugged. “Thame as yethewday, pwetty much.”

“Which was what?”

I’ll have to summarize. Carly slept on a cot near the foot of Randall’s bed, awakening with the dawn to the sound of his own musical “alarm clock” that, given his description of it (“humming and vibrating up ‘n’ down, up ‘n’ down”) must’ve been trance-inducing in purpose, I have no doubt. After making a simple breakfast for them both and serving it to Randall, still in bed, the two would adjourn for a face-to-face (“nose to nose”) conversation in Randall’s “secwet woom”—I didn’t ask—talking until they were, once again, in complete agreement. (“My vewwy favowite pawt of the day!") Which answered one big question: I may not know much about hypnosis, but I do know that trance states fade with time, especially with sleep. Randall was re-inducing Carly every morning.

And every night. After a busy day for Carly, filled with simple scheduled activities—exercise, lessons, lunch, naptime, playtime, grooming—some with Randall, some with professionals he trusted (“I got a keeno hairstyle yesterday! I got feather bangs”) the two of them would dress to the nines and hit the Quarter or Frenchmen Street at night, to scout cult recruits. Back for bedtime, they’d review the day’s activities, reaching, again, a new and deeper agreement. His description of that sounded like a bedtime story. “Then Milord tuckth me in night-night and turnth out the light. I alwayth dweam about him.”

So far as he remembered, this was what Carly’s daily life had always been.

During a particularly complicated passage, all about his exercises, I uh-huh’ed, uh-huh’ed at Carly while I side-called, using the phone in the suite, my studio. Manfully explained to the new boss that I’d met an old friend last night for sushi, come up cramps and shits, must’ve been the shark, but I could certainly make it in unless it’d maybe be okay to put in extra time tomorrow, Saturday, and...oh, you’re sure, Mr. Harrington? He grumped about an important client meeting this afternoon but concluded that he could have his girl email me the notes afterwards. Saturday was acceptable.

Back to the child. Through cautious questioning—it’d be mean to alarm him, given his state of mind—I determined that Randall had made Carly forget the address of his efficiency apartment, his hometown, his ability to read above maybe the third grade level, his surname, the names and faces of his parents, his fondness for competitive swimming (or physical competitiveness of any sort, as Carlton his most interesting quality), and his girlfriend Charlene. Also his ability to pronounce the letters “S” and usually “R,” unless the latter was appearing in “Milord.” (Much later I learned that this was an at-home twist of Randall’s. In public or amongst others, Carly spoke softly but normally.) In compensation for these losses—of which he was all unaware—Carly had developed fascinations for, and beginner’s knowledge of, hair and make-up, fashion, skin care, birds and insects, Nickolodeon, and housekeeping. And magic tricks.

All of which begs two questions: How had Randall learned to do this? And at what point does a hypnotic state stop being the result of suggestive manipulation and become just who a person is?

If this ever was true hypnosis. Both of them still call it “being in agreement.”

I’m wandering, aren’t I? I got to admit: At this writing, recalling this chat—the first of way too many—I feel guilty over the “stupid pussy” hostility I expressed for Carly at the start of my report. Sure, we weren’t close while he still went by Carlton, and we’re no longer close today. What happened with Ian saw to that. But there was a time, several weeks, when I felt warm-and-fuzzy toward the stupid pussy. Starting with this call. Carly can’t help who he is, not any longer.

Who among us can? I mean, look how I turned out.

Back to business. There was one major surprise: Carly didn’t mention any sexual services being part of his chores. Fact, his busy schedule wouldn’t seem to allow much time for polishing Randall’s pole, or the taking of said pole up his cushy backside. (Have I mentioned his throw pillow backside? One couldn’t help but notice that ass. Grandmothers and alley cats noticed that ass.) The Vandal was straight, purportedly, whatever Lana thought—just the biggest control freak I’d ever met, kind of an orientation all its own—and I doubt Carly would have been too embarrassed to mention the dirty parts. He’d answer anything. So maybe sex really wasn’t part of the deal: It would’ve been like kiddie porn on Randall’s part. Yet the whole nature of this transformation was so erotic...! “And just how old are you now, Carly?”

“You don’t know alweady? Big thtupidhead.” He giggled.

“Hey! Who you callin’ a stupidhead?” This time he snorted and whooped, which made me heart beat harder. Carly was a springtime cavalcade of bird calls. I couldn’t believe I was talking to him so playfully. I don’t even like real children.

“I am twenty. Twenty and three-quawtews.” So he hadn’t had his age revised to match his revised mind. Interesting. Hard to credit he was just three years younger than me. I felt weirdly older than I was, like I was my own dad or something. Again I examined my face, my hair, in the bed table mirror.

“And are you...?” I began pouring another vodka. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“Andy!” I could just see his hand fly to his mouth.

“You said we could talk about anything, Carly.”

“But Andy...!”

“You said Milord...your Milord...wants you to be extra-nice to me.”

“I know, but that’th thuch a mean quethtion.” Now I saw him straighten up, childishly indignant. “I mean, ithn’t it obviouth? Jutht from the way I dreth?”

I hadn’t thought to ask that age-old phone sex question: ‘What are you wearing?’ It would’ve been simpler, but even more perverse. “Remember how far away I am, Carly. I can’t see you.”

“But Andy, I’m weawing what I alwayth weaw. You wemembew.”

Usually tight stonewashed jeans, sorta tight, and a light cotton hoodie, time was. “I thought...thought maybe the color had changed.”

“Nope. Nope. Thtill white. Puwe white panteeth.” Not crotchless, God forbid. “Oh! And my collaw, of cowth.”

“Collar?”

“It’s vewwy pwetty. Gold and shiny. It geth kinda itchy, but I look vewwy pwetty in it. And Milord’s wing ith with it!” He giggled and cawed.

I was rattled; I didn’t stop to question the “wing,” like I should’ve. “Your panties. Do they have a front, Carly?”

“Yeth. Yeth. Of cowth. Milord wanth me to look pwetty...Andy?”

“Of course he does.” I heard the question in his voice. He wasn’t being flirtatious.

“So there ith no back. No back, Andy. Shee. Thtupidhead. My...what’th back thewe, that ith wath pwetty, Milord says. I agwee.” He was just being himself, his new improved self. Carly, not Carlton. Never had been Carlton. Hotter than if he’d been trying on purpose to get me hard. My Armani slacks were tenting.

I know I’m straight. Ian’s blowjob was a drunken fluke—that loser is as lonely as Randall is domineering—and not all that memorable except for the scrape of his stubble against my balls. And Carly doesn’t count as male, not any longer.

“Your pure white panties, they expose your soft smooth cushy ass—”

“Thtop thwearing.”

“—to the world. I’m sorry. Your...fanny?”

“My tuth, tuth...my heinie.” I could swear I saw him shaking it.

My throat was dry. I daren’t pour a third, not before noon after a long night. “Nice.” I did see Carly shaking it, just for me. “All you wear is just the gold collar and the panties, the pouch I mean, nothing—”

“And theeth big bandth awound my ankelth. Thoth awe, um, gold like my collaw.”

“Those are called...shackles, Carly.”

He tried. “Thackelth?”

“Aren’t they hard to wear? They must be heavy.”

“Well, they are. But I don’t weaw them all the time.”

“You don’t?”

“I have to go out thumtimeth. I have to clean. And Milord ith teaching me to danth. There’th a big teth thith afternoon, on the danthing. I hope I do good.”

My left hand having crept into to my crotch—my hand really has its own agenda this morning—I struggled to remember where our little chat had started.

“Meaning...meaning what? That you’re a girl, Carly, yes? A girl or a—”

He was upset, again. I so wanted to apologize. “It meanth I am Milord’th. Like I’ve alwayth been. You, yow a boy. And tho ith Ithe Mike, and tho ith Flint. Othew people awe giwlth or boyth. But I am Milord’th, jutht hith, ‘kay?” Sexless. Neuter. Always had been, defined only in relationship to his Lord and Master. “’Kay!”

I couldn’t let it pass. He sounded so mad, so hurt. “I know what you are, Carly. Really I do. I was just teasing you.”

“Teathing ithn’t a vewwy nithe thing to do, Andy. I thought you liked me.”

“I do like you, Carly.” I stared at him in my mind. “And I think you’re very pretty, Carly. Super pretty.” He squealed and forgave me. “I always have.” With those words his squeals became purrs.

Remember: Two drinks in twenty minutes. “Do you ever touch yourself down below, Carly?”

Long pause. Then puzzled: “Down below whewe?”

“Under your panties. Inside the front of your panties?”

He sounded too shocked to be mad again. “Why would I want to do that?! Icky.”

I can’t reproduce our entire conversation. I mean, I won’t. The churning mixture of disgust, awe, and arousal that I felt, then and now.... My stomach won’t let me record it all. Not before dinner.

I think we were quiet awhile. I breathed and watched my hand moving on my crotch, a tarantula on the prowl, nearing its prey. It sidled inside my fly.

“Andy? Hey Andy?” He sounded like a child who’d just captured a moth, wanted to show it to me first.

“What...” thickly, “is it, sweetheart?”

“Milord wanth me to be extwa-nithe to you.”

“I know, li’l darling, I know.” My hand twitched. My cock twitched back. “You must obey him.”

“I alwayth have.”

“Yes. That’s what you two agreed on.”

“Yeth. Tho, tho... Do you have one of thoth webcam thingth?”

“Not in my hotel room.”

“Then how ‘bout a pictuwe phone?”

Arousal won out. Surprise. I was 24, unattached, decent-looking, alone and in demand New York City, slightly smashed, hard as a rock. Harder than I’d gotten using Lanolin. (Bad joke.) By the close of my and Carly’s little chat...long little chat, that...I’d ejaculated ropes of cum. Twice. Upset stomach or no.

Yes, yes. I’ll get back to it, perv. Later.

I never did ask Carly about the lisping. Doesn’t matter. Given what I did know, he probably wasn’t aware he was doing it. Or believed he always had done.

Though the “wing’ and the “secwet woom,” now... Those were real oversights.

At this point, your humble chronicler must cut and paste another document into this report. If I’m to relate the key events in roughly chronological order, anyway. And also make time for a cold shower. What follows is the transcript of a recorded statement from Ice Mike, taken just a week or two ago.

I’d say “Enjoy,” but with Mike, that chill bastard—“Ice” was no fluke—that’s impossible. Unless you’re another nihilist.

“Is this fucker on? Yes? OK. Or not, OK. Who the hell cares what I have to say?

“Unhunh. Bossman cares.

“Yes, I’ll tell the goddamn truth. Why wouldn’t I? Heh. Hold on a sec. Lemme finish this.

[belching sound]

“Yeah. Another sounds good.

“Why it took four fuckin’ days, ‘til fuckin’ Friday, to convince The Vandal I don’t know. What’s the point of having your very own little slave boy if you can’t use him, or her, or it—it! yeahhh—to do your good buddies a favor once in awhile? My place, it’s a pigsty. I’m a guy. My place is always a pigsty.

“Oh, right. You’ve been over, you’ve seen it. Not a sty, you say? No dust on the furniture. No smears on the glass. No hairs in the sink. Eat off the floor and all that crap. Ya think?

“Well, fuck you. I’m a little anal, all right? You mind? Everything has to be perfect. Never is. By my standards it’s a hole. I got high standards. That’s why I get teed off with everybody on the planet who doesn’t have them, standards, which may I say is everybody on the planet. That’s why I wanted him to lend me the slave boy. The slut could just scrape clean every inch of my place with a toothbrush and an ice pick, polish my oak furniture to a high gloss with a shammy wrapped around her fanny.

“Fine. I won’t call Carly that. It. ‘It’ is good. Though ‘slut,’ now, that’s where I got my other big idea from.

“Oh, you know. Some yada-yada bullshit about deepening his control before he let it out to play. Though he refused, still, to call a spade a spade. Called it—get this—“cementing their agreement.” Whatever. The kid was so anxious to have a big-daddy mindfuck from Day One that The Vandal, he had him from hello. Heh. Must’ve grown up boo-hoo fatherless. Heh.

“Some people are just like that, I guess. Looking for someone, anyone to take charge. That don’t mean you do it. Most people can’t control themselves, much less each other. Life’s kinda hopeless that way.

“The other idea? Once The Vandal agreed to lend it to me, I got it in my head to push. Just a tad. There was this Saints-Falcons game that Saturday, see, the next day. Big game, lots of buds coming over. So it could, you know, stay. Overnight. Stay and, ah...work the party. Heh. Once it had the place shipshape. It’d take it all night to fine-tooth comb every room anyway. Why not have it work the party while it was there?

“Work, play. All work, no play. Heh. You get my drift.

“Baby, I don’t care where I stick it, long as it’s warm and it’s tight. And wet. And if it’s not that, wet, I’ll make it wet.

[laughter]

“Besides The Vandal, you mean? Just Flint. Not Ian. Got no use for Ian. Who does, that lush? Drink you outta house ‘n’ home. The rest of the guys I had over that Saturday were guys you don’t know.

“Yeah, sure. I got other friends. Friends, anyway bastards who’ve seen my face more’n once and will stuff their faces with my food. What difference does it make what they’re names are?

“Goddamn. Ryan, Damian, Cole, TomTom, Alan. Oh, and Helen, your basic token 21st-century cooze-at-the-big-game. Gotta have one now, hollering ‘n’ booing louder’n any of the men. No offense.

“Yes, that Helen. Can we move on? I’m not some fuckin’ tour guide. ‘And over here we see the large pizza, your basic mozz-and-pepperoni. A true modern classic...!’

“One of us has got to get a life, baby, and it’s not me.

“Sure, why not? Crack another for yourself, too.

“You’re good, baby.

“It did an amazing job. Fuckin’ amazing. It tweezered crumbs out of my toaster, which I could’ve seen myself in to shave once it elbow-greased it clean. My whole place might’ve passed for the sterile room on the critical-care floor.

“Not a doctor. Nurse. Cancer ward. You didn’t know? Bossman didn’t tell you anything? Aw, he probably don’t know himself. I swear none of us pays attention to Word One that anyone of us belches up. Doesn’t give me much hope for this tape.

“And it had fun too. That was the best part. For me personally, even more than the results. I never seen anyone enjoy cleaning like I enjoy cleaning. More, even. Supernaturally more. After awhile I just sat and stared at it while it did its thing. And I’m no faggot either. Not like ole fatso. Heh. You seen him lately?

“Not that it even looked like a guy. Or a bitch. It looked sexless, like an angel or some goddamn fairytale, um, Hobbit thing. A fairy. An elf. You could watch Carly with drool running out of your mouth and it wouldn’t prove a thing about what gets you off ‘cept that you ‘preciate the, you know, the beauty. The real thing beauty. Like I do. I got standards. I didn’t drool, you know?

“It danced. It actually took all that scrubbing and vacuuming and polishing and turned it into one peaceable swaying motherfucker of a dance. Pirouettes, goddamn me if not a few of those little...leaps, whatever those are called. It was beautiful.

“Beautiful. Not a word I use lightly, baby. Or ever. Always smiling. Its blond hair flowing around like underwater, its skin all moist and shiny—looked like he’d been shaved stem to stern, too; The Vandal is a hoot—blue eyes huge and lit up and staring. You know what I just thought of? A dolphin! Those cooing noises it made.... That and the weird music The Vandal sent along with it, for it to work to, that shit sounded all underwatery too....

“Hunh?

“Yah. Sorry. All of it was practically hypnotic. Beautiful little shlut.

“Sorry, shorry. Jeez. Just shlipped. But I got my reasons. You’ll shee. Heh. How much tape is there?

[belching again, then yawning]

“Maybe thish one should be my last until we’re done.

“Yeah, yeah! Hypnotic, rrright. Reminds me. That was The Vandal’s one condition, afore he’d agree to loan me Carly like I had needed him to. Needed him to? Goddamn me, I’d had nooo clue. What it was I really needed. Who cares about thish place, really? When there’s real beauty to be had?

“Nooo way, shit. I mean really, baby: Shit. Not ‘get hypnotizhed.’ I can’t go under, anyway, ever, not if I swallowed a fistful of downs and stared at Carmen Electra’s heaving knockers by candlelight. No. Learn how to hypnotizhe.

“That’s what The Vandal said. That he needed help. My help. Whoever needs my help, except the fuckin’ dying? Ashholes who get to check out of this hellhole. Anyway...! Shplained how he was off to a pretty good start ‘n’ all, but how could he expect to collect and maintain control over an entire group of worshippers by himshelf? He needed a right-hand mindfucker, and me? I was the right man for the job.

“My attitude, I suppose. My philosophy. Perfecto. I just had to learn how to do it.

“Boshman joining us soon?

“I suggested we shit down and I start practishing with pocket watches and pendants and whirling discs and crap after the gang left, after the game, but he said he’d be too wiped by then to teach me anything. So it, the dolphin elf, was halfway through cleaning the living room Friday when The Vandal arrived for my first leshon. Late, like usual, his power thing, but the fucker apologized, which usually he didn’t. I was shitting—sitting!—on the sofa, shtaring at the dancin’ dolphin—elf! whatthefuckever—enjoying the show. Even the music wasn’t bad, though now when I think on it, it seemed too slow and low for even a goddamn elf to dance to. Maybe that’s why it shwayed so much, so light, tossed back and forth by wishps of music.... Whatthefuckever. Let’s say I was in a ready-to-listen frame of mind.

“The Vandal? Why for? Why the hell for do you want that on this for?

“Baby, I want to get to the game day party. You weren’t there. Never has been a party like that. Here I am, I got the ball, I’m driving up the middle of my story, heading into the end zone, you want me to stop cold to describe The Vandal to you? You got a tape recorder, bitch; get yourself a fuckin’ camera too.

“Boshman. Bossman bossman, big deal bossman. Awright awready. Gimme another.

“Christ.

“Awright.

“Lessee...

“Got it.

“Only gonna shay this once, baby. Check your settings.

[notable change in tone, deeper and slower:]

“The Vandal is a god. Not God, there is no ‘God,’ but a god. As close to divine as this hellhole world will ever know. He is our mighty, black-haired, black-eyed warrior god who other men follow through the wilds, follow through fire. I agree that it is an honor to be chosen by him for anything, including licking out the shit from his anus or the jam from between his toes, much less to stand at his right hand. It is a blessing to be looked at by him, spoken to by him, thought of by him. In fact, he may have thought me up, and I might cease to exist if he ever forgets me. I can’t look at him directly, I have to sneak peeks. I would go blind. But he can see me, know me with just a glance. The only reason I would ever agree, and I do agree, to stand rather than kneel in the presence of The Vandal is because he wants me to. And he does want me to. At his right hand.

“I don’t know why. I don’t need to know why. I only need to agree.

“When he entered and saw me on the sofa, staring at his elf, he understood instantly. He sat down beside and began to speak. He explained myself to me, and I had to agree. He told me how right I was. That I had always been right, and how much he had admired me for it, when being right had meant being alone. Until him, that is. The Vandal admired me. That’s my proof that he made me up, because it’s impossible for him to admire me unless I am his creation, as his elf is his creation, as everything he creates is perfect. We are all in agreement on this.

“He told me how right I am about life, that life, the world and everything in it, is meaningless. Except him, of course. How the only sane way to deal with the meaninglessness of it all is to try to control it. Control it until one can leave it behind. Which I have agreed to do when The Vandal decides it is time.

“And he explained to me that the key to control is hypnosis, and the key to hypnosis is focus. That had been my mistake, my weak mistake, thank you The Vandal for showing to me and correcting my weakness. I lacked focus.

“’Keep your focus on it,’ he said of his elf. ‘Focus on it so you can control it with your mind.’ We practiced my focus. We practiced my control. After awhile, with the words of The Vandal with whom I agree in all things, I could make the elf move where and how and I wanted him to move. ‘Now draw it closer,’ said The Vandal. And I did, slowly, so slowly, I had so much to learn, but he was patient and I learned. It came closer. It knelt before me.

“’Now narrow your focus,” said The Vandal. ‘Focus on its face.’ This close, kneeling before me as I want to kneel before The Vandal always, almost between my legs, his elf was nearly as hard to look at directly as he himself is. So beautiful, his every creation. Except me. I focused on its face. Its hair. Its mouth. I couldn’t focus on its eyes. I tried. I couldn’t.

“’That’s all right,’ said The Vandal. ‘Lower your focus. Narrow your focus. Make your focus a laser of control.’ I agreed. It was then I noticed for the first time, this close, that the elf wore The Vandal’s ring around its neck. The ruby ring. There, below its collar, between its breasts. ‘There?’ I asked The Vandal. ‘There,’ he agreed.

“I burned all of my focus, every bit of will my weak mind possessed, on that ruby ring, blood red against the pale gold of the elf’s skin. It swayed in and out, in and out, so that the ruby was in constant gentle movement, precise and beautiful like his dance, but so much tinier, so much more delicate. ‘Focus on the ring,’ said the Vandal. ‘The ring is the key to your focus which is the key to your hypnosis which is the key to your control of the world and everything in it which is all of it meaningless yet is still the key to you. The world is meaningless. You control the world. You are meaningless. The ruby is the key to you. Agree?’ I had to agree.

“’To control the world you must control yourself you must control the ring. Nothing else matters. Nothing ever matters. Nothing has ever mattered. You may as well not move. You may as well not speak. You may as well not think. Or see, or hear, or taste, or be. Only focus, only focus. The ring knows that you are like the world you now control, that you and the world are nothing and so are perfect as you are. For me. Nothing. To me. Nothing matters.’

“The Vandal taught me this. He took the ring from his elf’s throat and wrapped it around the crown of its head, so that it could lean forward and take me in its mouth without my losing focus. It sucked as me as endlessly and delicately and intricately as it had danced. I was always almost about to shoot, about to shoot, as The Vandal stepped above and behind me, laid hands on me and continued to instruct me. It took him a long time. And took it a long time, its lips tight and light and slow, up and down my shaft. Too long. I was ashamed. I would never shoot until I understood. When I shot it meant that I finally, finally, I knew and I agreed.

“His hands touched me... His hands are a warrior’s hands....

“I am no longer ashamed because we have agreed to refuse me meaningless feelings, the only ones that matter are my feelings for The Vandal, but that day, with that golden elf in the golden light between my legs and his voice, only his voice, in my ear and in my mind, and his hands on my body, everywhere on my body, he had to teach me again and again because I was weak and am, I was ignorant and am, I am meaningless as is the world which I can now control, for him, in his name, meaningless except for what meaning he grants me by allowing me near him. To serve him. I focused on the ruby nestled in that honey field of hair and listened until I knew understood and I agreed. And shot. And I shot. And with my juice on its lips, in its mouth, I was free.

“And then... Then The Vandal took the ring from the hair of his elf, which no longer smiled but lay exhausted between my feet, stood magnificent and mighty, and put it on my hand. Slid it onto the third finger of my left hand. A token of him. Of our agreement. Of my freedom and control in service to him. My leader, my god, my mate.

[silence]

“What?

[voice as before:]

“Hey! Speak up. I don’t hear you. Baby.

“Micah. Christ on a crutch. You don’t know my job, then you don’t even know my name? What the fuck does the bossman do all day? Play with himself? Heh.

“Yeah, I still work the hospital graveyard. The Vandal, he needs access to stuff, you know? I’m on duty tonight.

[sound of hand clap]

“Hope that answered your punk question. Which was, what? Fuck, I forget. Gettin’ old. Too many brewskis.

“Lemme talk about the game. And the wild-ass party that went with it. It’s getting late, baby. After we wrap maybe we could, y’know, have dinner together?

“Hunh?

“My ring? This old thing? Heh. Gift from a bro.

“Well, he’s a weird motherfucker. It is something, isn’t it? A turn-of-the-century poison ring, he claims. Biggest fuckin’ ring I ever saw. And the darkest red. Just look at it.

“Just look at it. Watch how the glow of it moves even when I hold my hand still.

“The glow of it, focus on the glow...

“Look at it... look...

“...I mean...

“no thing

“allllll...”

[silence. Then Lana’s voice:]

“End tape. I hope this satisfies you, ‘bossman.’”

And that was all she wrote, or rather transcribed. Helluva thing, her getting sucked so deep into this.

Savvy Lana. Great interviewer. And real poise too, putting up with Ice Mike’s misogynist mouth. How could any man talk to a female that way? I never would. Girls are special creatures.

I’m back from my quick shower, enjoyed a quick whack all over the porcelain, grabbed a quick bite too. So, better. I feel better.

All of this, Ice Mike’s statement, happened later the same day as my big little chat with Carly. Busy day for the stupid pussy. (Scratch that.) I guess he passed Randall’s dance audition with flying colors. Needless to say, Ice Mike—Micah!—never got to record the erotic adventures of the big Saints-Falcons game. That passage you’ll get from another perspective. (Oh, guess.)

Because he went dead. He’s pre-set, you get it? To the ruby ring. The Vandal buried that trigger deep and permanent, only has to reinforce it once in a great while. It’s much simpler than what he’s done, doing, to my Carly. All Micah has to do is look closely at that blood ruby for more than, say, five seconds, and his asshole nihilism—which he believes, absurdly but perfectly, is a manifestation of his own hypno control—swells and overwhelms him. Turns him into zombi. No thought, no action, nothing. Why bother? Our own walking dead, all systems down except automatic ones like lungs and heart. Oh, and Micah the nothing-matters-so-I’ll-just-stand-and-stare zombi can obey orders, in service to the Vandal, whom he worships like my Carly does, and to his small but growing cult. He makes a good bodyguard, although he’s grown thin and quite pale.

What did I just write? “Worships like my Carly does.” No. Not exactly. The very different natures of their obedience, their submission....That’s been the most fascinating aspect of tracking Randall’s progress. How one must customize the trance state to its victim.

I meant subject. Maybe the shower and the cum and the bagel with shmear, a habit I picked up in New York, didn’t help as much as I thought.

“Nothing matters?” Fuck Micah. Everything matters. Every damn little detail. Which attitude I suppose might lead to nihilism also, I guess, if one were to follow it to its logical conclusion...!

No way José. No line of thought should ever be followed to its logical conclusion. That way lies madness. And death, literal death. Just ask...

I get ahead of myself. What time is it?

Carly! Dammit. I forgot. I promised to finish reporting my chat with my sweetheart Carly. What she did, it’s obvious in retrospe—

She? I typed ‘she’?

Yes, dammit. I am the typist here. So as far as I’m concerned, Carly is “she” in this term paper from here on out.

I don’t want to finish it now. I swear, if Micah’s “bossman” were anybody else, I’d say fuck it. To go back into that mood, that cascade of feeling for her...

Dammit.

Just keep it simple, Andy, because what you really don’t want, even more than you don’t want to write more tonight, is to see this chapter, incomplete, staring at you in the morning. You got other things to do in the morning...

What she did, naturally, my Carly, was go into another room, maybe the secret room, to rehearse her dance routine for Micah with me, via cell phone camera. Not the best medium. It took her awhile to get the hang of it; even then she kept slipping in and out of focus. (There’s that word again. Poor bastard.) But hell if Carly didn’t put her heart into it, smiling like she was a candidate for beatification and cooing all the while.

I’m feeling it again. Damn it to hell. I held my breath and memorized her hips, her breasts, her fingers and feet, her eyes—her eyes!—her hair, her lips... and damned if I didn’t lick my own lips, man. I already knew her heinie. All of her, glycerine smooth. Every inch of Carly was in enchanted motion just for me. Not one of those inches looked less than lovely. As “pwetty” as I’d envisioned, during our revelatory conversation before. And damned if she didn’t tell me as much in motion as she did in words. More even. So much more. So basic and fundamental.

Now you’ll really think I’m nuts. Was nuts. But I knew that dance wasn’t just for Micah’s sake, or even for Randall. My Carly was giving her all to please me. Me. Sure, maybe she’d been told to do so, “agreed” to do so—and why the fuck was Randall so concerned with me, anyway?—but such determined desire to please me had to also arise from deep within her. From her pure heart. Mustn’t it?

Sure it must. Like I said: Ropes of cum. Lousy picture or no. Twice. Like I’d never come before. The second one left me gasping and weeping as if I was having an old-man heart attack.

Without words she was telling me how much she loved me. Maybe she didn’t know it yet herself. Sure, sure... Maybe Carly worshipped the Vandal, but what the hell did that mean? Girls can also worship shoes, or chocolate. She loved me.

“Did you,” gasping herself, “Did you like that, Andy?”

Once she was spent, really ready for her naptime before getting picked up to go to Micah’s—so I’d learn later—I tried to play it cool. Still no reason to disturb my sweetheart, or frighten her. And girls, especially girly girls like Carly, prefer boys who are cool. I did praise her performance to the skies, though, and promise to call her every day, “if she wanted me to.”

“Thwell! Wondewful. That’d be weal wondewful, Andy.”

“I’m glad you’re glad.”

“Yeth I am! Milord will be happy happy too. I get to tell him!” Fuck him sideways.

She just needed time. “Sleep tight, Carly. Have loads of fun this afternoon.”

“Nighty night. Hey Andy! Can I even thay that when the thun is out?”

“Sure you can.”

“No I can’t! Thtupidhead!” She shrieked with laughter. Poor overtired little one. “I thould thay, um, ‘Thee you on the flip thide.’”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite, sweetheart.”

She grew quiet. “I like heawing that, Andy. A lot. Thank you.”

Finally disconnecting, breaking her spell, I started with shock as I realized two things more in my fresh-cleared head. Both would prove as momentous as my realization of Carly’s budding love for me, mine for her...

The first, more mundane: I’d have to take Lana up on her offer to check out the situation until I could return. Carly must be protected. Little did I know what I was getting Lana into. (Not that it would’ve changed my mind, if I’m honest.) Or that Carly wasn’t the one who was endangered.

The second, the bolt of insight: The reason Randall had no sex in Carly’s routine? Because he wasn’t turning her into his maid, his slave, his pussy bitch, his toy Lolita.

He was fashioning Carly into his talisman. His familiar. His new poison ring. She was to be the locus of his power, the object through which he could best exert control.

The dance clinched it. I knew standing there, examining myself in the mirror—new inside, the same outside, but not for long—remembering the dance in every cell, trying and failing to care about the risk I’d placed myself in at my big new studio gig, worrying over my look for her upon my return—I’d have to hit the gym as well as Lana’s salon—I knew that Randall might just as well have been in the room with her for all of her show, a gigantic invisible Vandal, who grasped Carly by the nape of her neck to swing her smooth golden body back and forth, back and forth, before my enraptured eyes.

Maybe I should ask the stylist to make my hair a bit more on the faggot side than on the professional side. I mean, look at boy bands. Little girls like cool boys who look like pansies. And Carly didn’t even have sex. Yet.

That I could simultaneously know what Randall was up to and still not feel my love for my Carly disturbed or diminished even slightly proves what a fine piece of work he was doing with her. Like someone else we know would say, when he can speak at all: What did it matter? What did anything matter?

There. Fuck it. Now I’m heading to bed.