The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I didn’t expect a knock at my door. The pandemic thing had been going on for a few weeks already and the city was kind of a zombie dead zone. I only left the building to buy soup and cigarettes, and only with a scarf wrapped around my head like a mummy. I wasn’t afraid of dying. But I definitely wasn’t trying to catch the thing either. So many people were sick. And I was just waiting it out in my apartment like everyone else. I’d been laid off at Bar Away, the trendy Brooklyn dive bar I’d been working at for 6 months. I was kind of half-doing a yoga video I’d found on youtube when I heard the knock. Just a gentle tap tap tap.

It was the first of the month, but I didn’t think Vincent would be coming by for the rent yet. It was still before noon. I had never seen him in sunlight. I was a little startled and unsure what to do. I mean, the Coronavirus doesn’t knock three times, right? I wrapped the yellow scarf that was hanging on the doorknob around my face mummy-style. I put on the fake leather winter gloves my grandmother gave me. She gave me the same kind of gloves practically every year, she must have bought a pallet of them from Filene’s Basement twenty years ago. Her closets must be filled with these cheap-ass gloves. But they were pandemic-worthy for my little doorknob problem. I put the chain on the door and opened it a crack.

There was a middle-aged lady with a mask on on the other side. Her brow was creased with concern. Possibly she was expecting a zombie to emerge from my apartment! She held a clipboard close to her face. I figured she was maybe a Mormon or something. They showed up every once in a while and I’d usually banter with them in a neighborly way.

“Is this Apartment G7?” she asked, half-yawning. She had bangs that were possibly designed to protect her eyes from our current plague. She had a blue pen uncapped behind her ear and another hanging from a string from the clipboard. It swung a few inches down from the metal clamp.

“No, I’m G9.” I said, officially. “G7 is around the bend to the left.”

She scowled beneath the mask. I could tell. Her eyes narrowed. The lights went out in both of them.

“This one’s yours!” she called out while peering down at her clipboard. I wondered who she was yelling toward. The hallway seemed empty.

“What’s this about?” I asked her, leaning against the inside of the door. My legs crossed. I looked down. There was soup on my yoga pants. I did not feel nervous, I felt put-upon.

She muttered almost-just-to-herself. “Census.” She kind of hissed out the s’s.

“I filled it out online already,” I said, shifting to close the door.

She turned and didn’t look up. “Tell him,” she told me as she turned and started walking the wrong way down the hall.

I waited for him. Whoever he was. I felt like having a cigarette. But I was far from the window I’d assigned for indoor smoking. I waited for a while. The hallway smelled like Fabuloso, that wonderful purple floor cleaner chemical smell.

He slowly ascended the stairs to the right of my front door. There was something familiar about him, even with his mask on. A floppy sort of brown haircut that was almost held-up by this big pair of aviator glasses. He wasn’t thin. Sort of stout, with kind of a wrestler’s body. He could have been a member of the Hipster Mafia. If Hipsters had a mafia. Hipsters should have a mafia. He wore these black plastic gloves on his hands. Instead of a clipboard, he had an expanding folder under his armpit.

“So, you filled it out online?” he asked. His voice seemed familiar, too. As if he’d ordered Rolling Rocks from me every Thursday night for a month. I shifted again slightly and just kind of mutely nodded through the door at him. I swallowed nothing quietly to myself. Beneath the yellow scarf I bit my lip.

He looked at me kind of sideways. Out came the folder. He twisted the brown elastic expertly over and peered inside.

“Is this Apartment G7?” he asked, not looking up.

I put my gloved hand to my scarf-wrapped head. “No, that’s down the hall to the left.”

He kept looking down. And then he looked right at me. Lifting his glasses onto his floppy-haired forehead. He looked right at me. It was the first time in a month I’d made eye contact with someone. It felt like someone had touched me. That hadn’t happened in a month, either.

“This is Apartment G7. Isn’t it?” he asked firmly. His eyes were a deep, unwavering brown. Maybe one of them was green?

“Yes,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. Maybe agreeing with him would make this go quicker? I felt a little nervous, like when a roller coaster is climbing toward the top of its big descent.

“I just have a few questions for you, miss.” he said. His eyes had moved to my body. Through the chained door, I felt like he got a good look. I was very still. I may have cleared my voice.

“Do you live here alone, miss?” he asked. He didn’t seem to have a pen. The air in the empty hallway seemed to be swirling that clean purple scent into my apartment.

It took me a second to think of the answer suddenly. I felt clear and present but suddenly unsure.

“I think so,” I said. My boyfriend had moved out three months ago. He wasn’t coming back. I’m not sure why I only thought I lived alone. I was sweating a little. Not from the half-yoga.

He grinned to himself under the mask, I’m sure of it. He fished out a piece of paper. It was yellow. “What does this look like to you?” He handed me the paper.

I stood up straight. Holding the paper back from the door with my gloved hands, I looked down quizzically at the piece of paper. “I don’t know,” I said. The paper seemed hot to the touch. Or possibly I was hot.

“You’re holding it upside down,” he said. Still surely smirking.

I turned the paper counterclockwise and something happened. Like when a key fits perfectly into a lock. Possibly I dropped the piece of paper. The next thing I knew it was gone. Whatever was written on it, mathematical equations? Glyphs? An inventory of my every thought and secret? Possibly there had never been a piece of paper in the first place. I looked up to meet his gaze.

“Can you count down from 10 for me, please?” He asked sweetly, but firmly. I was wet.

“I think so,” I said, uncertain. I’m not sure how deep into the countdown I got. My breath was changing. It was becoming hard to speak above a whisper. Or a moan. I’m not sure what this had to do with the census, but I was too young to remember the last one. I could feel my nipples rising out through my sweatshirt. I sort of wavered back and forth like a plastic bag caught in a tree. Were my eyes open? I don’t know.

“You’re going to have to take those gloves off, Ms. Blank.” When he said my name, which wasn’t my name, the roller coaster inside me was definitely on it way down. Going a thousand miles an hour. My knees felt weak. I tore the gloves off.

He took a Sharpie from his pocket and gently reached through the door. I’m not sure if I could move or not. I didn’t move. I felt things building inside me. Nervousness. Arousal. I felt him take my knuckles. He was writing on my hands. It only took a minute. A long, breathless minute. I hadn’t felt anyone else’s skin this whole pandemic.

When he was done I looked down at the backs of my hands. He had written the letters Y O U R S on the knuckles of both hands in large firm uppercase letters. I gasped. To myself. To him. To the swirling purple smell that coated the air.

“Whose hands are those, Ms. Blank?” he asked me.

I scrunched up my nose slightly. “These are Yours.” I said. The Fabuloso smell seemed to be coming from inside my own skull. I licked my lips beneath the yellow scarf. Something familiar was coming on. Something that always made me cry. But the tears were on a page further into the book.

“That’s right, Ms. Blank,” he said. I felt a long drop of sweat trace my sternum down. “Is it alright if I count you now?”

“Yes!” I said. It was a soft, firm yes.

“Ms. Blank, you count as zero.” I cried out. He could have carried me off anywhere. I sank to my knees behind the chained door. He looked down at the marker-stained hands. They suddenly rose above my head, suspended by a long invisible bungee cord.

“Zero,” he said again. I felt tongues tracing out the zero around my nipples, around and around my pussy. The round zero echoed out over and over. I was as empty as a bottle.

I woke up later on the floor behind the chained door, atop the gloves.