The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Caroline’s email pinged to let her know that she had received a new email to her inbox. She still had notifications turned on for her desktop work computer. Sometimes when she was really digging into a project, she turned her sound notifications off so she could better focus on her work.

She probably should have done that today. Her work was really piling up, and she’d just been in the middle of something. The email alert came as a nuisance, interrupting her train of thought and disrupting her concentration. But she’d forgotten to turn off alerts that morning when she’d sat down to start her day. She’d had so much to do that she’d jumped right into it, without stopping to mute her alerts first.

Now that she’d heard the alert go off, she might as well check to see who had emailed her. Maybe it would be a project update from someone else on her team— or some new information that needed to be included in what she was working on. She might as well check, since she’d lost her focus anyway.

When she clicked on her inbox, leaving her open document behind, she saw that it was not an email from anyone on her team. It was an email from Laura, in IT, with the subject line, “Important Announcement— Click ASAP.”

Caroline wanted to leave it unread for now, and go back to her work. But Laura didn’t send out company wide emails unless it was important. Maybe there was some new software that was going to be installed— maybe IT would be making the rounds today to install it on each computer personally.

If something that disruptive was going to be happening today, Caroline needed to know about it now so she could plan her time around it, and ensure that the disruption to her work was minimized.

Hopefully it would be a quick announcement, Caroline thought, as she moused over to click on the email.

When she clicked the email, and the message opened on her screen, Caroline was surprised to find there was no text in the email. There was only the embedded image of a spiral, and nothing else.

Caroline was so surprised by this that she stared at it for a few seconds. What was this doing here? It didn’t belong. Why had Laura sent a graphic around to the entire office by email, and claimed that it was an important announcement? It made no sense.

Well, whatever the reason, Caroline needed to mouse up to the upper lefthand corner, to minimize the message so she could go back to work. She just needed to look away from that spiral… that was spiralling… spiralling down, and change colours. First it was red, but then it shifted through purple to blue, and now it was green. But it was already fading yellow, and spinning deeper, somehow, the longer Caroline watched it. Spinning— spinning—

Caroline shook herself. She just needed to mouse up and close the message. She didn’t have time to sit here and stare at a spiral graphic. She needed to get back to work, so she just needed to close the message and get back on track.

But closing the message would mean looking away from the spiral. Did she really want to do that? She’d have to look away from it, and it was right in the center of her vision, and her vision was locked on to it in a way that felt comfortable and right. Could she even remember how to look away anymore? She could remember the idea of it, but somewhere along the way from having the idea to putting the idea into practice, she kept getting lost… She tried to walk from one to the other, and found the spiral between her and her end goal… and when the spiral came between her and it, she seemed to fall down it… seemed to fall down it, unable to come back up.

It was not a spiral that spun downwards; it did not start at the top of its little graphic box and spin down, twister like, in vertical way.

It was a horizontal spiral, which meant that at all times Caroline was looking at a flat circle on the surface; but that circle had layers and depths that spun out behind it, on the same horizontal plane. The result was something like standing between two parallel mirrors, and seeing hundreds of reflections stretching on into infinity.

Caroline watched the spiral spin, deeper in behind. It felt like she was being pulled into it, and it kept seeming to extend further back in that direction. Deeper and farther… Farther and farther… and the colors kept shifting, even as the spiral kept spinning. Caroline felt as though she was walking forwards into it, through a tunnel of shifting color, but there was no end. It just kept extending ahead of her, so she had to keep watching.

But the colors around her were disorienting. Was she even walking in a straight line? Had she ever been walking at all? She couldn’t tell if she were sitting or standing anymore.

That wasn’t how things were supposed to be— she knew that much, at least. Caroline tried very hard to concentrate. What had she been doing before she ended up moving through this tunnel of color? The colors danced before her eyes, and the spiral beckoned her to come forward further… further and further… but Caroline stilled herself in it at the place she had reached to try and remember.

She’d been… that was right, she’d been sitting at her desk doing her work. Then she’d opened the message from Laura in IT, and found the embedded graphic of that horizontal spiral spinning inwards, extending back into what felt like the depths of the computer screen, and then some other, strange abstract place where she was apparently standing now.

That meant she was still sitting at her computer, still watching the spiral spin. She tried to convince herself that she was only watching an image. She wasn’t really standing inside a tunnel of color— it wasn’t real. It was only an illusion— only a spiral in a box in a message on her screen.

She tried, but she still felt like she was standing there, within those twisting cords of color arcing all around her even as they changed continuously. She seemed to be… caught.

Well, fine. If she was caught, she could get out again. If at some point her mind had fallen into the spiral and followed it back, then she just needed to climb back out of it again. She had a clear enough head to think for herself again, now. And if Caroline was anything, she was a closer, not a quitter. She’d get back to herself; she’d resolved herself to do it, now, and she was determined.

If the illusion the spiral was holding her in was the image of walking forward, than to get back out of the spiral’s hold, obviously, she’d just have to turn around and walk backward. That was all— easy. She’d just have to walk the opposite way.

Still caught in the spiral, Caroline forced herself to turn around. One step at a time— back the way she’d come, and hopefully, at a certain point, she’d find herself back in body, at her desk, instead of lost somewhere inside her mind, in the spiral’s clutches.

It was easy to walk back after she’d turned. Easy, and also hard— she was still in that tunnel of color, and it was still spinning around her, even if she was facing the opposite way. Each time it spun it made her dizzy. Made her want to collapse, and face the other way. She was starting to feel that she wouldn’t even need to keep walking anymore, soon. If she turned around, and stared into that depth of the spiral, she’d fall forwards into it without needing to consciously move any closer to it or concentrate on it all.

Caroline reminded herself she didn’t want that. She didn’t care that instead of walking she could be falling. She didn’t care that the depth of the spiral was behind her, and that if she saw it again, she’d fall into the center of it and never come back up. She’d set a goal for herself: to get back to herself, and that was what she was going to do.

But it wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be. When the walls of the spiral twisted around her in the arches of their tunnel formation, they whispered things to her. Things she could almost hear, if she really strained for them— things like… she wanted to fall into the heart of the spiral… it would be easy, and it would feel so good when she did it. She only had to turn around and let herself look again… she would fall, and it would wipe out her mind. Clear it to empty… and that emptiness would feel like falling into the spiral forever, even if she wasn’t looking at it anymore. Inside her mind, she would always be falling. Weightless, and falling, and she would never crash back into reality… never have to land… that was what she wanted more than anything, now.

The tunnel spun around her, more dizzying than ever. Caroline kept trying to fight her way back through it to her body again. Its murmured truths were seductive. She had strained to hear them before, but now they were so clear, pressing in around her from all sides. She’d gone from seeking them to actively trying to block them out. She was going back— she’d make it back. She didn’t care what the spiral’s tunnel around her had to say.

But when she did listen to it, when she heard it, at least for the moments the words got through to her, they became true. In that moment, they felt so true she couldn’t remember anything else. Which is why she had to stop listening to them and remember her goal. She was going back, she would make it back into awareness of her body again. And then she would close the message, go back to work, and later on make a complaint with HR about Laura and the email she’d sent.

But the spiral was still murmuring all around her. She only needed to turn and look at the center of it now. It had so much to teach her. There was so much for her to learn about pleasure. About pleasing and obeying— how they were the same thing, and she was meant for both of them. About who she really belonged to— who they were, and why she did. She wanted to learn these things. She loved discovering new information, and if she would open herself to the spiral and give in, it would give all of this information to her. And it would come so easily. As she fell, weightlessly and forever, it would simply absorb into her. No concentration or focus would be required… she only needed to give in, and all the rest would be taken care of.

Caroline was starting to feel more desperate. The whispering from the tunnel was getting louder and harder to ignore. And she was keeping her eyes fixed ahead, on some point in the distance that almost looked like a small white light. She knew if she could just get there, she’d be out of this mental trap and back in her body again. Back in control, instead of standing within the spiral’s control.

But it was so far away. And though she was trying to keep her focus on that singular point, and that singular point alone, in her peripheral vision, she could still see the shifting colors moving all around her. And even entering through the sides of her focus, they were still distracting. She could just stop moving forward for awhile… she didn’t have to keep going right now. It was so far to go… she could stop and rest instead. Stop and rest, and stand exactly where she was, and just focus on the spiral’s rings around her. The way they spun themselves into the walls of the tunnel… the way their colors changed… the way they always surrounded her… so comforting…

She didn’t even have to stop walking right now, she could just let her eyes drift from that singular point up ahead. Just drift slightly to the side… and watch those shifting color rings as she streaked past them on her journey. She’d still be moving forward… she’d be watching them as she left them behind and moved past. It was fine… it was safe… She could do it. She wanted to do it.

It was getting harder and harder to tell her own thoughts from the spirals murmurs. The two were twisting together… just like the spiral kept twisting around her… trying to trick her and send her back… she tried to clear her head again, but her thoughts were getting cloudier all the time and there was nothing she could do.

The more the spiral murmured, the more it twisted into her… until what it was saying seemed true, and she couldn’t tell one from the other anymore; her thoughts, or the spiral’s programming…

She was still moving toward the singular point. If she let her attention drift to the side to watch the spiral tunneling around her… then she would stop moving, and stare at the tunnel’s rings of color… and if she stopped moving to stare, then she would turn back around, stare into the spiral’s very heart, and then fall. And fall permanently— and fall forever— and she wanted that now, wanted each of those things to happen in that order and understood that it had to be inevitable…

Had that been her own thought? Or another dark whisper from the spiral? She tried to separate herself from it— tried to set it to the side, and hold it with detachment. If she could just get a little distance from it, then surely she’d be able to tell whether it had come from her or the spiral… whether she should trust it or not… whether it was true.

But she couldn’t put any space between herself, and it. It seemed to fill her entire internal world. It loomed large there, and she kept staring it in the face, and the longer it sat there, the truer it seemed. She would look from the point up ahead — her former goal — to the spiral’s rings. Then she would stop walking, and stare at them; then after awhile, she would turn— she would see that deep point of darkness. The spiral’s heart; that endless black, and as soon as she saw it, it would take her mind and she would fall so easily…

It was a beautiful progression of steps. She loved it. She wanted it to happen. It seemed so real to her that, in someway, it felt like it was already happening. Or had already happened in the past tense, and she just hadn’t realized it yet. Maybe all this time inside the spiral had ruined her perception of time… maybe she couldn’t perceive things in a linear way anymore. Maybe it had already happened… and she was falling, and the spiral was only telling her about how she fell… but since she was falling she couldn’t understand properly, because her mind was too tied up in the spiral’s snare… since she was falling she could only take the images in, out of order; absorbing them out of sequence, because the spiral had so much to tell her and so much to tell her all at once and she was absorbing it all—

She couldn’t tell anymore— whether she fell, or stood, or walked; couldn’t tell if she was really seeing the singular point up ahead or only seeing the image of the memory of it. If she was really here, or only remembering it. If she was really here, or only remembering that she had been. Were these tunnels of color around her because she was walking past them… or were they around her because she was falling through the tunnel’s center? Was her attention fixed on that singular point of light, or that singular point of black? Was she falling into the bliss of oblivion, and falling through the memory of how she’d gotten it?

It didn’t matter anymore— whether she was really still moving towards her exit (so far away…) or already falling, because she would fall. Maybe had already fallen… maybe was still falling… but whether these thoughts of falling into the spiral were only imaginings or whether they were things she was really experiencing, that didn’t matter either. Because whether her experience of them was real or imaginary, she was enjoying it more than anything else she could remember. If she wasn’t falling yet, she wanted to… but if she was falling, than she wanted to take this moment as the gift it was: the chance to re-experience the moment of her surrender all over again, as if it were the first time…

She let her eyes drift from the point of light that she would never reach, to the spirals of the tunnel just beside her. She was able to keep walking past them for awhile, but the longer she watched, the more her pace of progression slowed, until finally she was standing still and staring at them. They kept changing color under her watch. Kept themselves going in contant motion, circling around her.

She stared at them. Stared and watched long enough until the only thing in her head was the murmuring of the tunnel which told her to turn around… turn around…

She turned. And saw the heart of the spiral again. So far away and close. A more general blackness and then that point of perfect black at the center that was its deepest point— she saw it, and if she had been outside her own mind, she might have made a vocal sound, but inside her own mind, she did not. She saw it, and the illusion of her standing was dissolved. She was streaking through air, falling into it immediately and forever. She was a blur to the tunnel around her— she was the blur, falling ever forwards, not the rings of color still spinning themselves slowly and shifting their colors.

She was falling and there was nothing inside her but the feeling. And the feeling was weightlessness— freedom— joy— she felt that feeling, and the spiral taught her as she stayed in it. Taught her things she didn’t even need to hear in her head anymore, because she was taking them all in faster than she could think. Absorbing them faster than the speed of reflection.

She was falling, and falling forever.

It was perfect.

laura was walking the halls of the office on the fifth floor. She had a clipboard in one hand, and it held a single piece of paper, clipped into place against it. On that paper, the name of every office employee was listed. And laura had a floorplan of the office layout beside it, and she was walking around with a pen in one hand, checking to see which employees were watching the spiral— which ones were already Goddess’— and which ones weren’t.

Goddess had given her this task to do, recruiting the rest of the office as quickly as possible— and it was laura’s greatest pride to do it. She wanted to do it as well as it could possibly be done, to please Goddess and obey. The only thing she cared about was Goddess’ satisfaction, and Goddess had told her, had spoken with that beautiful look on her face, and told her that this would please her. This was what she wanted, this would satisfy her want— so laura was doing it, and doing it as well as it could be done.

This part of the plan was easy. She was only making an inventory; a task she had done many times as a member of IT, looking through computer equipment even before Goddess had came into her life and given her purpose. And it was even easier to inventory Goddess’ newest thralls than it was to inventory functional versus non-functional tech equipment. If the monitor she walked by had an open email message showing a spinning spiral, then the employee who sat in front of it was Goddess’ thrall, and laura could put a checkmark next to their name.

If the monitor she walked by did not have an open email message and a spinning spiral, then the employee who was sitting in front of it was not Goddess’ thrall yet, and that needed to be fixed, just as soon as laura was done with the entire inventory so that she knew where things stood.

She only had about two more halls to go, and she was going fast, fueled by her devotion to Goddess and her desperation to make happy and win her approval. She was working more efficiently than she ever had before, even though she’d been a good and dedicated worker back then. Goddess gave her truer motivation than anything else in her life ever had, and she was happy to be in the grip of that motivation, in the grip of that obedience, to do this task perfectly and as quickly as she could, so she could please Goddess that much sooner.

She came to the end of that second office hall, her findings dutifully recorded on her checklist. Checks next to the name of each worker who had become enthralled by the power of Goddess’ hypnotic spiral, which had come to them all through laura’s own obedience… or circles around the names of the ones who still had Goddess’ enthralment ahead of them to look forward to.

laura passed down the last office hallway even more quickly than she had passed along its penultimate one. Standing at the end of it, she looked back at her now completed inventory. So many checkmarks… but there were more circles than she was happy with. She did a quick count. Maybe more than half of the office was already enthralled… maybe something like sixty or sixty five percent.

But that still meant that even as many as thirty five percent of the workers were not enthralled yet, and that was unacceptable to laura. She could wait. Eventually, some number of that percentage would click on the email. She could spend the rest of the day walking between the remaining workers, in their shackles of temporary freedom, checking them off as they all eventually got around to opening her email.

But waiting meant keeping Goddess waiting, and that was as unacceptable to her as the remaining office holdouts. She needed to pull the rest of them down into the grip of Goddess’ control… needed to do it as soon as possible, but she needed a plan… she needed help…

She looked back down to her checklist, and was happy to find, when she checked, that her coworker caroline was one of the ones who had a checkmark next to her name.

caroline would help her… she’d want the enslavement of the office to happen too.

laura walked back down the halls the way she’d come to get to caroline’s desk. She’d only have to tap caroline from the shoulder, and rouse her from her trance— enough at least that caroline would be aware of her. Aware enough to help, anyway.

Then the two of them could work on getting that thirty five percent down. Hopefully, they could even get it all the way down to zero.

The office was weirdly quiet today. Debby had been working there for some time, and she couldn’t remember a day as quiet as this one. It seemed like everyone was keeping their heads down and focusing on their work.

Debby had to admit, it was nice. Usually the office environment was a lot more chaotic, and noisy. Some days, it was hard to even get anything done at all. But not today— Debby had gotten more done in a few hours than she finished in some weeks. She was hoping the lull would keep up; she was excited about the chance to finish even more, still.

There hadn’t been many interruptions from coworkers, either. No one had come around to ask her any questions, or ask her advice, or ask for her help on some supposedly brief task that would turn out to take up the entire rest of her day. That was a nice change too.

In fact, Debby went the whole day without hearing from anyone. She barely even got any new emails that day to her inbox— just one from IT, but she figured it could wait. She’d read it at the end of the day before she left for home. She was on a roll, and she wasn’t giving that up for anything.

The only interruption that came, a few hours later, was the arrival of Caroline to her desk. Debby couldn’t remember exactly what it was that Caroline did. She didn’t work in HR— Debby didn’t think, but she seemed to coordinate with them a lot. She always seemed to be involved with office presentations and conferences and team building activities… maybe Caroline was the HR liaison from corporate services… something about that sounded right to Debby… But whatever it was she did, she was well-suited for it. She was friendly, and open, good at setting people at ease in Debby’s experience. And very organized; good at directing lots of people in connection to those kind of corporate events. Whether they were presentations, conferences, or team building.

And since Debby had already gotten so much done, she didn’t mind taking a break for a minute to talk to Caroline. She was so far ahead she had the time to spare.

“Hi Caroline,” Debby said. “Are you making the rounds to announce a new upcoming corporate event?”

Caroline smiled. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“So when is it planned for?” Debby asked.

“This one’s a little last minute,” Caroline said, with an apologetic twist of her mouth. “We’re holding it today. It just came down from the higher ups. It absolutely has to be today— so we’re holding it in conference room 12, in half an hour. I’m going around on foot to let every know— it’s such limited time that I can’t afford to just call around, in case someone’s away from their desk. Tell me you’ll be there?”

“Of course I’ll be there, Caroline,” Debby reassured her. “It sounds important.”

“Great,” Caroline said, and Debby noticed at that moment she was holding a clipboard. As she spoke, she looked down to her list and checked off Debby’s name.

Debby could see part of the list beyond her name— some rows of names above hers, and some rows of names below; most had checkmarks beside them. Some of them had been circled first, and then checked off, like hers— but there were more checkmarks than not.

“Looks like you’ve got just about everyone,” Debby noted, cheerfully.

Caroline smiled. “Yes, Debby. We do.”

Then Caroline turned to keep walking away from Debby’s desk. “Remember,” she called back. “Conference room 12. Half an hour. Be there.”

Debby showed up to conference room 12 five minutes early on the dot. Caroline had stressed how important this last minute meeting was, and Debby didn’t want to give her any added stress by showing up to it late.

When she got there, she found the chairs had already been set up in rows inside, and many of her coworkers were already there. By a quick estimate, she thought there were probably already about fifteen or twenty people in the room; though it looked like there were chairs for maybe thirty or forty in total.

Debby took a seat in one of the empty ones, and joined the others in watching the door to see who else was going to turn up. She alternated this with checking the time on her watch; but it seemed like she was the last one to arrive.

When the five minutes were up, and no one else had come in, Caroline came through the door, and shut it behind her.

“I guess that’s everyone we’re going to get. We don’t delay the meeting for them, so we’ll just get started without them. Corporate has a new video they’re desperate for everyone to watch. A nice orientation video. I’ll just start it playing for you, and you can all enjoy,” Caroline concluded.

She picked up the clicker for the overhead projector.

Debby had been through this many times— Caroline’s opening speeches and introductions were a staple of these kind of meetings, but it had been a long time since the company had put out a new orientation video. Debby was actually interested to see what the video would be like.

Once Caroline had the controller in her hand, she clicked one of the buttons as she pointed it at the projector, and simultaneously turned off the light-switch with her other hand.

The room went dark at the same time as the image on the wall came to life. Debby had expected a narrative video with actors— or maybe even some familiar faces from around the office. But what was projected on the wall ahead of them was just an image of a colourful spiral, spinning.

Debby frowned. How was this supposed to orient them? How could it possibly give them any training on company policy? There wasn’t even any audio that went along with it. Just a simple spiral, taking up the entire opposing wall, spinning and changing colors as they all watched it.

Debby was ready to stand and complain to Caroline; but she heard the conference room door open, and close, and that left her to conclude that Caroline had left the room. She couldn’t actually look over and check, though— she couldn’t seem to look away from the spiral that was projected on the wall.

It was just so… huge. It filled and even exceeded her vision— it was like she couldn’t take it in all at once. There was simply too much there. She felt foolish for thinking of it as simple before. It was complex. The rings that made the spiral up and kept spinning it down were made of dozens— hundreds?— of many individual lines of color, and they were all in a constant transformation of shade, moving from one to the next and never stopping or staying at only one.

It was overwhelming if Debby tried to look at the whole thing; like trying to look up and stare directly at the sun. She could already feel the image of the spiral like it was burning into her retinas; like she would already be able to close her eyes and watch it keep spinning there.

But when Debby would try to only look at one part of it, it would sort of… pull her in. She’d start out looking at one ring of the spiral, but if she watched it long enough, it would lead her down to watching the next… then the next ring down after that… and the next ring down after that… until she couldn’t remember where she’d been trying to look, or how her eyes had ended up where they were.

It was making her feel strange. She didn’t like it— Debby kept a clear-head on her shoulders at all times, and that was how she liked things to be. She didn’t mess around with substances or altered states of consciousness and she never had. She didn’t even really like drinking coffee. So if something was messing around with her ability to concentrate, she had a problem with that.

She remembered, dimly, that she wasn’t the only one in the room watching this “orientation” video, as Caroline had called it. She wondered how her other coworkers were reacting to the image in front of them— she wanted to turn and actually see their expressions in reaction on their faces.

But did she really want to turn and look away? Did she really want to look away from that spinning? Didn’t it feel kind of good to watch… wasn’t the strange feeling it created in her kind of nice, especially since she’d so rarely felt anything like it before?

That was more of that strangeness, Debby recognized. Yes, she did want to look. It took a lot of concentration, but Debby managed to shift her eyes off the spiral to the audience that she was a part of.

She turned to the side to look down her row; she could only see a few chairs in, because it was a straight row, and the people further down were blocked by the people closer to her. But the few that she could see were all staring up at the spiral in front. None of them had looked away like she had; none of the people she could see even looked like they remembered that they were the only ones in the room. They were all staring at the projection, mouths open, jaws slack, and the spiral danced in their eyes.

Debby swallowed. It was a disturbing image— they all looked… so blank. Like there was no though left in any of their heads except that spinning image. It was in their eyes, and the colors of the projection were so vivid that they streaked onto the faces of the audience, too. Debby didn’t have to be looking at it to know when the spiral had changed colors again, because when it did, the colors streaking across the faces she was watching changed too. Now they wore masks of purple light… now red… now blue… now green… now gold… now orange… now red…

But none of them seemed to know that their faces were showing the spiral’s colors. None of them even reacted when the spiral changed its colors. They all kept that still, staring expression as they looked up at it.

Debby turned away from the row beside her to look behind, at the people one row back. She could see a little further down that one, since she was a row, but she found the same thing, only more vivid. There was only so much you could see, from the side of somebody’s face, but looking back allowed Debby to completely take in the faces of those behind her.

Their expressions were the same, only it was even clearer now. Their eyes all stared past her; no one had reacted when she had turned around. They were only looking at the spiral, and they were staring at it with a fixed focus that contradicted the rest of their expressions. The looseness in the mouth; gaping mouths all open, with just the first spottings of drool. None of the starers even seemed to know they were drooling.

Debby caught herself staring at the open mouth of one woman. She watched as a bead of drool formed at the corner of her mouth— it formed very slowly, but Debby watched each step of its formation. From its first beading, to its adding moisture, its growing, and then finally she watched as it spilled free and trailed down from the woman’s mouth to dribble from her chin. Even when it dripped from there, and even when more drool followed its track in a stream, the woman didn’t react. She kept staring with that obsessive focus, kept sitting in that slack, vacant way— and the colors kept washing over her features.

They were washing over the whole room, really. The spiral spun, and it spun over everything in the room. It was pulling things into; the attention and the eyes of its audience. But it felt like it was calling more than that; calling things forward in its watchers. If any of them drooled, it was because the spiral was drawing it out of them. It could do anything— it was bigger than the room. It could summon things that wouldn’t have come otherwise— it controlled everything that it looked down upon, had total power over everything in this room…

And Debby was in this room. Which meant that soon she would have to look back and watch the spiral like the others… she’d thought looking away would make her safer, and when she’d found herself able to look away, she’d imagined that she’d be capable of standing up and leaving the room with that same power.

But now she knew that she’d been wrong. She couldn’t stand and leave now. There was no escaping it… she hadn’t been looking at it directly, but it was so powerful that seeing it indirectly, in secondhand washes of color, and in the expressions of her coworkers—had been enough.

She was as caught as they were. Hadn’t she sat and watched that woman drool, watched as patiently as they all watched, as that woman had watched even as Debby watched her. She’d waited for the bead of it to form, and run— who knew how many minutes had passed in that time, and she had sat and stared.

Just like she’d stared at the faces of the ones beside her— watched the spiral wash its colors over their faces— she’d stared at that display for countless minutes too.

Debby was still able to direct her eyes for the moment, though. She looked beyond the row directly behind her— if she looked between the chairs, she could see a few rows further back, but there was nothing new to see there. Eyes open, fixed and glazed. Mouths hanging, jaws hanging, drool forming, multiple times over, one person to the next. A reflection of the spiral in each watching eye. And the colors.

The colors were washing over everything— washing everything out, maybe even washing out the thoughts in the minds of everyone seeing them. They bathed the room, and the people in it; they were bathing Debby too, and had been, ever since she had come in here. She just hadn’t seen it before.

She looked back to herself— looked at her own hands, and held them out. The colors were bathing her too. Now she was green— now blue. Now she was yellow— now orange. She couldn’t even remember what she’d looked like underneath before. Who was she, underneath? She tried to remember but there was nothing there. Or nothing strong enough to stand steady under waves of barraging color that were trying to sweep everything away. There was nothing strong enough to withstand.

She couldn’t remember— couldn’t think about anything but the color, but maybe that was alright. Whatever information she was missing, maybe the spiral could tell her. Maybe the spiral could tell her lots of things, if she would look back to it now.

She could keep watching it reflected in the faces and in the bodies of the audience members. But it was secondhand. And second rate, too. And even when she watched those waves of color come and cover everything… there were still things held within them. Underneath them. People, objects. And the presence of those things diluted the colors just slightly. If she was staring straight at the colors, they’d be complete and undiluted by anything. She could see them in their purest form— see the spiral in its purest form, and not in its secondhand reflection— wouldn’t that be better?

The spiral could tell her who she was now, since she couldn’t remember herself. Debby had the feeling that it wanted to. It wanted to share that information with her; it had many things to share with her. About who she was, or who she would be next— and everyone else in the room was clearly smarter than her, because they’d already been learning their lessons deeply for many minutes, taking them direct from spiral in its purest form. All while she’d been wasting her time taking it in its diluted form.

She could learn her lessons now. She wanted to. She wanted everything the spiral could teach her. She wanted to know who she was. She wanted to know anything that the spiral would tell her, because everything the spiral told her would be truth. Truth with a kind of heavy certainty to it that had been hard to ever find before coming into this room. Debby wanted things to be simple now— because they already were.

The spiral controlled everything in the room— the spiral knew everything that Debby wanted to know, and would tell her about it.

Debby turned back around in her chair to watch the spiral spinning properly.

laura and caroline stood together outside the closed door to conference room twelve. Inside, Goddess’ latest thralls were realizing the reality of their new existence, but that wasn’t important to either of them in that moment. The thralls in there were accounted for— taken care of, no matter how long the process of hypnotizing them actually took. Every one who came out of there, when the time was up, would be completely enthralled and completely brainwashed. laura and caroline had other things to worry about.

laura was holding the clipboard, scanning down the rows of names with her pen, and caroline was leaning close and following with her eyes.

They had almost everyone now— but even though both laura and caroline had gone desk to desk to send all the holdouts to the conference room, they still hadn’t gotten every single person.

There were still seven names on the list that were circled and not checked off.

They’d just finish a recount of the office names, and when they reached the end of the paper, laura let the other sheets fall back down to cover the last. She sighed.

“Who’s left?” caroline asked. “I only counted seven circles— did I miss any?”

“No, I counted seven circles too,” laura grumbled. “How did we miss them?”

caroline shook her head. “I’m sorry laura. There were some people I just couldn’t find. They weren’t at their desks, or anywhere. And a few said they would come, and just didn’t show up.”

“I checked with HR,” laura said. “No one called in sick today, or left early. Everyone is here, somewhere. Only seven of them…” she frowned as she tried to concentrate. Goddess was counting on her— Goddess had asked for every single employee to be recruited, and with caroline’s help, laura had almost done it. They were just seven short.

“I’m sorry I didn’t track them down—“ caroline was starting to apologize again, but laura raised her hand.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve got a plan for those last few.”

She looked back down at the floor plan on the clipboard. “There’s no way they can get out of it this time.”

When Eleanor got back to her desk, she was surprised to find Laura already sitting at it, fiddling with something on her computer.

Eleanor had brought her mug of coffee back with her from the kitchen, and was still holding it in her hand as she stood above her desk. Laura still hadn’t looked up and seen her, so she gave her throat a good clearing.

Laura looked up at her when she did that, and gave her a smile. “Oh, hi Eleanor. I’m just coming around to everyone’s workstation and installing a new software program on their computer. It’s a quick installation, but once it’s installed, I’ll need you to boot the program up for me to make sure it’s working properly.”

Eleanor looked back at Laura, unimpressed. “And why are you doing this exactly?”

“New policy,” Laura said. It was a vague explanation, and Eleanor was unimpressed with that too. “Our company leadership thinks this new program should be part of how we do business from now on; and they wanted it installed right away.”

“How come I haven’t heard about this before today?” Eleanor asked, as Laura turned back to her computer and went back to whatever she’d been doing before.

“It was a last minute decision,” Laura explained as her eyes scanned the screen. “They were considering a lot of different options, taking in a lot of information; they wanted to make sure they made an informed decision, and a right decision. But once they’d made it, they wanted it implemented right away. So here I am.”

Laura looked back to Eleanor, and gave her another smile. “It was all explained in the email I sent this morning. Did you read it?”

Eleanor felt a little caught out. “No, I didn’t read it. I thought it might be spam. You did a seminar just a few weeks ago on spam email— you told us that spammers sometimes spoof company email addresses, and not to click on anything marked as urgent unless we’d double checked that it was a correct email address, and not a spoof. Or else we could compromise network security.”

“Good remembering,” Laura said, but Eleanor was getting a sense of hostility from her. “Did you check the address to make sure it wasn’t a spoof?”

“No,” Eleanor said, tightly. “I didn’t have the time.”

That wasn’t entirely true. She just hadn’t felt like it. Eleanor wasn’t all that keen on her job, and she tended to enjoy finding places and times where she could slack off without getting caught. And it was always a good idea to have an excuse on hand in case she did.

“Too bad,” Laura, and turned back to Eleanor’s computer to finish up. “If you had, you would have known all about the policy change and the software install. You wouldn’t have been caught by surprise.”

Laura typed just a few things more, then pushed Eleanor’s chair back— Eleanor could see she’d messed with the chair’s position, and readjusted it. Then she gestured at it. “Well, take a seat and boot the program up for me. I just need you to check and see if it works, and then I can move on to my next stop and get the installation going there.”

Eleanor set her mug down, and took her chair, grumbling internally about the fact that Laura had thrown it out of its natural position when she’d readjusted it.

“This one?” Eleanor asked, circling the new black icon on her desktop with her cursor.

“That’s it,” Laura agreed. “Just give it a click, and it’ll open right up.”

“And why do I have to do this?” Eleanor asked, as she clicked the icon. “Why can’t you?”

She watched as a little white box opened. It displayed a loading bar, and she watched that too, as the bar progressed within that white box, closer and closer to 100%.

“You’re going to be the one using the software at this workstation; and using it frequently as part of your work going forward,” Laura reminded her, in a too-chipper voice that was getting on Eleanor’s nerves. “So you should be the one to test it out and learn how it works.”

The loading bar was at 75%, and still ticking over.

This was just one more thing on a weird day. It had felt practically deserted around here, all day long, even though everyone had been present in the office. It had been quiet— and Eleanor’s supervisor hadn’t come to check up on her, or bust her for not working harder, even one time.

At first Eleanor had enjoyed this; much easier to slack off if no one was looking for you. She’d deliberately blown off reading the email, even though she’d guessed it was an important announcement about something like this. She’d felt emboldened enough to do it because she’d been so free all day long, with nobody coming looking for her or bothering her to do things.

She’d spent most of her day circulating between empty conference rooms, kitchen areas, stairwells and bathrooms. No one had bothered her— no one had found her. She’d only decided to go back to her desk with her mug of coffee because it was almost four o’clock, and she’d been hoping to duck out two hours early. She’d figured if she left a full mug of coffee there, people would assume she was still there even after she was gone. She’d hoped they might even think she was working overtime that evening, and had just stepped away for a minute.

It was a trick that had worked for her in the past, and she’d hoped it would work again. It was only her rotten luck that Laura had been sitting there when she’d gone back to leave her mug and pick up her things to go.

She’d avoided everyone else successfully until Laura had caught her at her desk. And she’d had the feeling for part of the day that Caroline was looking for her. She’d overheard her telling a few of their other coworkers about some important meeting in conference room twelve at around three o’clock. Eleanor had made herself scarce while Caroline had done her rounds with her little clipboard. Then she’d made herself even scarcer when she’d heard Caroline asking people about her specifically. Had they seen her, where did they think she was, where should Caroline look for her, and so on. She’d successfully dodged her, and had made it past three o’clock without having to be in that stupid conference room meeting. But the whole thing had been strange.

The whole day had been strange, and was coming to a strange ending. And Eleanor had enjoyed her day of slacking off and doing no work— at least partly. But she’d also had a growing sense of discomfort about it. Not because she felt any guilt about slacking off— she never did. But because it felt like things were… off.

Deep down, she knew that she shouldn’t have been able to get away with hiding out all day the way she had. People should have been looking for her— her supervisor should have been looking for her. The fact that no one had come looking for her, (except for Caroline, which didn’t count, because she’d been trying to make her go to that meeting) was wrong.

It shouldn’t have been so quiet all day long— and there shouldn’t have been a weird three o’clock meeting, and there shouldn’t have been a new software installation. Things were off; it was all unnatural, but there wasn’t really anything Eleanor could do about it just now.

She was hoping once she’d proven to Laura the software worked that she could still leave early and end the day. To tell the truth, after a certain point in the day, she’d wanted to leave early to get away from the weirdness of it all, and not for the sake of leaving early. Part of her was hoping if she left and came back tomorrow morning that everything would be back to normal, and the strangeness of today would all be forgotten.

The loading bar reached 100%, and a window opened on Eleanor’s screen. It filled the entire thing; and Eleanor expected to see a menu of options to select from, or a first time use wizard to guide her through the program.

But once the window opened, the only thing it contained was… a spiral of spinning colors.

“This is the program?” Eleanor asked, in disbelief. But it didn’t quite come out right. She’d lost her momentum somewhere part way through… and now she was watching the spiral spin… watching the colors spin themselves into the spiral’s shape, and change themselves over to others as they went.

“Enjoy,” Laura said, and Eleanor thought she heard the sound of a pencil ticking against paper— they’d gotten her on their clipboard after all, though she’d avoided them all day, and checked her name off, after all— and then she heard Laura’s footsteps fading away, leaving her alone with the spiral for company.

Eleanor tended to be a paranoid person. She had to be, in order to guess when people were looking for her and when they weren’t. In order to guess when she was going to get in trouble and when she wasn’t. She’d been like that even when she was young; she’d been slacking off for years at all levels of school before she’d ever ended up in the workforce.

And that paranoia had served her well over the years; she’d never been caught doing anything that got her in so much trouble she had to be kicked out or fired. She was feeling a bit paranoid now, as she watched the spinning, but she had a feeling that her feelings were justified this time.

Things had been weird all day— and quiet. And when she’d passed near conference room 12 earlier, she’d though she’d seen colors flashing inside. Now that she had this spiral as a clue, things were making a little more sense. It seemed like Laura and Caroline were trying to make people watch this… for some reason. If they wanted people to watch it so bad, it probably did something to them that wasn’t good. It was probably going to try doing something to Eleanor that wasn’t good, so it was important for her to be on her guard. Clearly, the spiral had been playing in the conference room meeting… and it must have played for just about everyone else at some point throughout the day. Maybe the spiral had been in the email Laura had sent out…

Well, Eleanor would show them. Whatever the spiral had done to all the others, it wasn’t going to do it to her. She could sit here and resist. Sit here, and stare at the spiral and resist— she would sit here, and prove it.

Something about that sounded wrong. If she was sitting here, and watching the spiral, wasn’t that what Laura and Caroline wanted. If she was watching the spiral, wasn’t she giving it a chance to work on her mind and do… whatever it did? She didn’t want that, right? So if she didn’t want that, she shouldn’t be sitting here.

But she was sitting here… the way Laura had told her to. If she was sitting here, did that mean she secretly did want to watch the spiral? That did sound like her.

As a person, she tended to self-sabotage. She liked things that were bad for her; slacking off and jeopardizing her job (and to a lesser extent, her career) was only one example. She knew the spiral was likely to be bad for her— so maybe, for that reason, she already liked. And maybe she did want to sit here and watch it, because it would be a bad thing to do.

Eleanor frowned. It was giving her a headache to think about. It was so hard to think at all, when there were so many pretty swimming colors moving right before her eyes. She liked bad things… liked to do bad things, like slack off and self-sabotage in that way, and in others… watching the spiral was bad… that must mean she liked doing it… that must mean she wanted to do it.

And she’d listened when Laura had told her to sit down. Why had she done that? She didn’t usually listen to authority figures. Had some part of her suspected that Laura would try and get her to do something bad and decided to do it just for the sake of it? Had she suspected all day long that something like this was going on, and only refused to think about in detail, or admit to herself?

She couldn’t find any answers. But now as she watched the spinning happening onscreen, she thought that she remembered feeling something when Laura had told her to sit down. Laura had told her to sit down, and she’d done it… she’d obeyed, that had felt good, even though it had been bad to do, the way dangerous things always were.

She’d obeyed… obeying was bad, because it meant she was giving up her own freedom, which she valued over just about everything else. But the fact that it was bad made it feel good… it felt good to watch this spiral right now, even though she suspected pretty strongly that it was doing something to her thoughts, making her want to keep on watching as it messed with her head.

It was changing her, doing to her what it had done to all the others and she was letting it, because she’d already been changed that much. And the more she thought about it, the more she thought about how bad it was that she was still watching it… and then watching it just felt even better.

She stared at the spiral with more focus. It would change her even more… and that would be bad, but it would feel good…

She settled in to watch for even longer.

laura ticked the last name off on her list. It had been a good plan. For the last seven who had temporarily avoided Goddess’ control, she’d gone directly to their workstations and put the installed the spiral and its program directly on their computers, and left it open and spinning. For those of the seven who had still been away from their desks when laura had stopped by, it hadn’t mattered. By leaving the spiral opened up and spinning on their screens, it meant that when they eventually came back, they would see it, and be caught.

But for three out of the seven laura had been lucky enough to find them at their desks, and they’d believed her stories about new software and policy changes. They’d let her put the spiral’s program on their computer, and had dutifully opened it up when she’d told them. And then as soon as they saw it, they were lost to grip of Goddess’ brainwashing. She’d ticked their names off; and had walked back past the desks of the other four.

She’d found three of them had since returned, and found the treat she’d left waiting for them. All three had sink sank down to sitting, and gone on watching the spiral spin. She’d ticked their names off too.

The last holdout had been Eleanor. And after she’d gotten the program installed, laura had decided to stay at Eleanor’s desk and wait. She was the last one; and laura had nowhere else to be, and no rush to get there. She’d been told to get every employee— Eleanor was the last one. Sitting and waiting for her to make sure she was caught too was the best way for laura to obey. So she’d waited.

Besides. She’d heard rumors that sometimes Eleanor tried to slip out early. Which meant that she’d have to come back to her desk eventually— her coat and her purse were still there.

In the end, Eleanor had been as easily caught as the rest. And now, laura had checked off every name on her clipboard. Which meant she’d stepped into the stairwell, and was on her way to the seventh floor, to tell Goddess so.

It was a bit of a climb to go up two flights of stairs, which was why most people usually took the elevator to seven instead. But laura had been closer to the stairs than she had been to the elevator, and she wanted to get up to Goddess as quickly as she could to tell her the good news. In this case, the stairs had been the faster option.

When she got out onto the seventh floor, she found Goddess still there, in the midst of enjoying the attentions of one of her other slaves. laura thought it was one of the slaves Goddess had already had before she’d taken laura, too, but she didn’t remember the slave’s name, and it wasn’t important to her.

“Goddess,” she said. “I have obeyed perfectly, and recruited every member of the office staff. You may check the list yourself— they’re all yours, for however you’d like to use them.”

Goddess stilled the other slave with a touch of her hand, sat up, and took the offered clipboard from laura. laura watched in breathless excitement as Goddess’ eyes tracked her work, name by name, page by page. Every single name had been checked off— every single one was Goddess’ thrall, and now, Goddess knew it.

When Goddess had read to the end of the list, she looked back up to laura, and gave her a radiant smile. “You’ve done well, laura-slave. This was exactly what I hoped for.” Goddess set the clipboard down on the floor, and then looked back to laura.

“Come here,” she instructed. “You may reward yourself between my legs.”

laura was only too happy to oblige.