The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

They know.

That’s what the voice in my head had been whispering ever since I pieced it together. Sitting where I was sitting, looking where I was looking, it seemed so obvious. Every other student on the wooden risers was paying attention to the lesson at the front of the room—at least, that’s what I would’ve assumed if I was paying attention to that lesson.

No, you could’ve seen it easily if you knew where to look. That girl over there with the black hair whose name I used to know, she was passing a note to the boy with red hair, and the boy behind him was snickering about something and whispering to his friend, and his friend was glancing over at me. At me.

They know. They totally know. Everywhere I looked around the classroom, somebody was doing something that made it clear as day. The only question in my mind was how. How did they find me out after only a month? How could all of them be knowing it all at once? How was I so stupid as to think I could get away with it?

And how did I not notice everyone staring at me?

“Ahem.” I wheeled about at the sound, turning my tunneled vision and sinking gut to the imperious gaze of Professor Hernst. Well, at first it seemed more imperious than it really was. He looked more annoyed than anything. In stiff competition with tiredness, bags around his eyes, more dull droning just itching to dribble out of his lips. “Miss Apophenia?”

Immediately I grimaced. The only people who could call me Apophenia were my parents, because they were huge nerds with high expectations and I loved them too much to do more than grumble about it. Anybody else who tried usually caught a fist, or worse.

I would have normally said at least that much out loud, but this time I was too occupied with clearing my throat, strangling the insults and threats before they could claw their way up from my gut. Everyone was staring at me. It doesn’t matter if they know. Just say something, you idiot. The voice was at least being more helpful than it usually was; I finally managed to squeak out a “Yeah?”

Professor Hernst rolled his eyes. And all around me I heard chuckling, whispers and giggling. More dancing quills, more folding paper, more grimy notes on perfect parchment passed into pristinely clean palms. “Do you have an answer, Miss Apophenia?” he asked, his voice as monotone and endless as my bunkmate’s snores.

“It’s Phenia.” My lips moved before I could stop them, and then there were even more stares turning my direction. Save face, save face, save face! I took a breath to compose myself. “I, er, didn’t exactly hear the question?” I offered with something like a smile.

“Well that much was obvious,” some girl jeered from a few rows behind me. Now the class was breaking into open laughter. And Professor Hernst, old as he was and tired as he was, just lacked the force of personality necessary to keep a room full of students from systematically destroying his lesson plan. He just sighed and shook his head, but mercifully, the school bell began its toll.

The room was empty within what seemed like seconds, leaving just me, scrambling for my bag and papers, and just the sound of giggling in the hall, and just Hernst’s words as he strode up to me. “Please, miss Arrageste,” he began. I went stiff and cringing at the surname, but he took it as nothing more than young-adult embarrassment, as he softened his voice. “I had simply hoped that you could demonstrate Dmitri’s Voltaic Corollary, for the rest of the class?”

I stared at him, breathing hard, my fingers inching toward the wand that still rested on my desk. And I was about to speak, to explain myself, before someone from the next class came in, and took a seat. Pale robes, blue like mine, with skin like wet sand, dark hair and spectacles. Darker eyes. Looking at me.

I grabbed my wand and shoved it into my bag. “Sorry, I don’t know it,” I said hastily.

“But miss, at my office hours you—”

“Sorry,” I said through gritted teeth, cramming the rest of my books into the bag before storming off. But not too quickly. I still felt eyes burning into my back, and the voice was still whispering. If they don’t know yet, they’re going to.

That new refrain at least had some comfort attached, when I really thought about it. Everyone was looking at me, but everyone was looking just as much at everyone else. If they were looking at me, it was probably for a normal reason: like that my robes were messed up, or that something was on my face, or that I tripped in the middle of the hallway and dropped all of my things.

Brushing myself off, I scrabbled about on the floor for my textbooks and journals, lest one of the other students’ feet come stomping down on them without a care. My self-image mattered way less right then than my studies. I nearly had them all in, then reached for the last page—

But a gust of wind took it away, flattened it against the wall. I dove for it, but again, the wind caught it and sent it flying to the other side of the hall. And just as I was about to chase it down, they blew up and smacked onto the ceiling.

And then I saw the blonde. Or, I saw her feet, then her blue-and-gray robes, then her sickening little smile and three little toadies all gathered around me, boxing me in. I coughed out a mouthful of dust and dirt and rose to my feet warily, while the blonde looked me up and down like a piece of meat. “So, you’re first-year too, huh?” she said, chewing the words slowly. Heavy accent, sounded like… well, it sounded like she was rich.

I tried to smile a little, but none of the cohort returned it. “Um, yeah, I’m—”

“I don’t care,” the leader said.

“O-oh.”

The four of them snickered all around me. “So like… you’re in our way?” one of the cronies griped. Different richness, same annoying, nasally taste. And eerily, same color hair. Like, her hair was exactly the same color. So was the hair of the one on my right, and the one behind me, and… all of it curly, too. The same curls.

While I felt for a lock of my longer, straighter, far-less-lustrous hair, the queen of the bunch snorted at me. “Are you gonna move?”

“Uh, I was,” I began to explain, “but my paper’s…” I turned my head up to see, and now the page was doing twirls and spins all over the high ceiling. “Doing… that…?”

When I looked back down, the main blonde was even closer to my face, looking at me like I was stupid or something? But I recognized her, finally—she was in my class on magical technique. “Uhh, hellooo in there?” she said through cherry-red lips. And I recognized why I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“You’re Mollian Pritchard,” I murmured.

That got a smug grin out of her. “So, you’ve heard of me?”

“And your father is the arcanist—no, the lead arcanist Gabriel Pritchard?”

The lines around her eyes went a little slack, and that grin was for a moment plastered on, dissatisfied. “And you’ve heard of my daddy.”

“Of course I’ve heard of him!” I marveled, and for my own moment, I forgot all about the fact that I was surrounded by a bunch of bullies. “I’ve read his lectures, I have at least three manuscripts of his in this bag alone, and I’m at school with his daughter?”

Mollian groaned, her fingers still twisting her wand that was curling around and around a springy loop of her hair. “If you’re looking for an autograph, you have to go through the same channels as everybody who…”

But by that point, I wasn’t listening. The star-struck feeling faded, and my eyes were glancing up to the ceiling, down to the wand, up to the ceiling, down to the wand… “You’re doing that,” I realized.

“Hmmm?” Mollian was oblivious for a second, then she looked up and gasped in faux-surprise. “Oh, goodness!” She flicked her wand, and the parchment sheet came fluttering slowly down. “I have to be so careful with my magic,” she pouted, putting a tightly gripping hand on my shoulder. “You see, it all just comes so effortlessly for me.” As that smug grin came back to her lip, her toadies all tittered and began to disperse. “Ta-ta for now, darling.”

And I couldn’t see her go, because magically or otherwise, my sheet flattened itself over my face, and I was left flushed and fuming in the silent corridor.

So that was about the worst day I’d had so far. And I’d had a pretty bad string of days at Lady Sionamuid’s Academy for Young Sorceresses and Sorcerers. Made new enemies, made a fool of myself (three times), and drew way more attention onto me than I should have. I dropped into my bed, folded my hands behind my head, and exhaled.

They know.

Well, they at least knew I was an idiot. I’m not an idiot, and I didn’t want them to think I was, but that was better than them knowing that I didn’t belong. But I was sort of already ensuring that outcome, with every single move I made.

I groaned. The problem with that was that my bunkmate’s snoring drowned out my groans. What I needed was quiet. What I needed was a plan.

So, shuffling my bare feet into ill-fitting slippers lettered with two crimson A’s, I crept out of my dormitory brandishing only a wand and my fuzzy robe for protection. Not that either would help much: spellcasting in the halls and dormitories was expressly forbidden, and any spellcasting at all after curfew would set off who knows what kinds of alarms. Or the wards. I’d heard some of them would knock you out as soon as you even breathed a mystic syllable, or they’d trap you in an electrified cage until morning, or if you cast in the wrong places, they’d just kill you on the spot.

So you could say I was keen on staying quiet. I’d snuck out from the boarding wing before, so I wasn’t too scared, but every squeak on the floor made me wince and freeze for a solid minute before moving on. I figured I would find a balcony, watch the river and the moonlight and try to come up with a way to get out of this mess, and that’s exactly what I did.

The only problem was, somebody was already on the balcony. I flattened myself against a column, peeked out slowly… they didn’t see me. Thank the gods. The silhouette was just sat there, turning pages in a book—but hang on, the pages were flipping on their own. They were casting spells after curfew? That demanded some explanations. I kept low and slinked closer, mindful of my slippers, squinting to see the figure’s features while the moon drifted out from behind the dark clouds…

Blue robes, just like mine. Dark hair. The silver glint of spectacles. My eyes bulged open. “Holy shit,” I said aloud. “You’re that guy.”

That guy yelped, got up, fumbling the glasses off his face and back on again all while the tome he was digesting slammed itself shut, whizzed up into the air and flew through an open window. “Y-y-you’re not supposed to be here,” he said, stomping a foot on the ground, making his slipper squeak.

And, idiot that I was, I froze up, mouth open but lacking the words. Did he just mean the balcony? Or… did he know? I was about to find out—I had a great line ready and everything. But then he stabbed his wand towards me, and I stumbled back with my hands up. “D-don’t do anything rash,” I said, trying to placate him into putting the magical focus down.

He shook his head several times, the tip of the wand shaking as he inched closer. “No. No, no, no, no no. I am far past rash right now. I am sitting squarely in messed-up territory, miss, I have gone way past rash tonight!”

“That’s fine!” I agreed, eyebrows up and hands beckoning downwards, “You know, that’s really fine, mister, uh, what’s your name?”

“Carlisle,” he replied automatically. Then he slapped his forehead with a groan. “Oh, gods. Oh gods I really should not have said that.”

“No no, Carlisle, it’s fine, you should just—”

“I should just do this.” He cut me off, leveling the wand at my head with his arm fully straight. His eyes were wide, panicked, and he looked as scared as I felt. But the point of the wand wasn’t shaking anymore. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really, honest-to-gods sorry about this.”

“H-hey,” I started, suddenly short for breath, “sorry about what? You don’t have to do anything. C-Carlisle, listen to me, you can just put the wand down and we can—”

“No.” He shook his head firmly. Gaining resolve, not losing it. “No, no we can’t. But trust me, I’ve been practicing! Well, it’s only been a few days, and it’s only been on myself. Well, and a rat, b-but I felt so bad about that one that I undid it instantly.” He shook his head again, and smiled, and then I got even more afraid. “Trust me,” he said. “You won’t feel a thing.”

“Carlisle, hey,” I pleaded, beginning to sidle back towards the open balcony doorway, “I don’t want to feel anything, especially not anything bad, so, so can you please just let me—”

I woke up. I sat up in my bed, rubbing my eyes blearily with two fists, and yawned loud enough to echo in the shared bedroom. The others were out of bed and gone, so I must’ve slept in. But that was fine, and it made sense. Because it was just an ordinary day.