Ex Nihilo
Chapter 3 — Bobblehead
Something was wrong.
Aurore had gone back to her job, downloaded the day’s checklist on her phone and taken the elevator to sub-level 2. She was ready for some hot, storage-checking action, when she realized something was up. She quickly noticed a damp spot at the bottom edge of a box labeled “fragile”. She definitely had to report this, but for some reason, she found herself ogling the top of the box, wondering if she could come grinding her crotch against the edge.
“The fuck...?”
She pinched her nose and moved her right hand away from her her thighs, where it had drifted.
“This wet dream is really getting to me.”
She couldn’t take her mind off the memory of blowing an aging general. She even savored the yummy aftertaste of cock in her mouth. Which struck her as strange, since she hadn’t fellated anyone in her life, let alone found it pleasant. Strange, and pretty fucking disturbing. At least she had a shrink to talk to.
“Ouais, je suis bien contente d’avoir Grace, du coup...”
She took her phone and noted the box’s nature and UPC code. She raised an eyebrow as she read the listed contents. Spare computer fans. Why the hell would those be leaking? She added a “possible shipping error” note and moved to the elevator. Even her stickler senses didn’t notice the leak on the darkened concrete ceiling.
The following hour was uneventful. Aurore’s mind simply kept wandering back to the wet dream, as if it was an intense—and fond—memory. There was this fat fuck, this skinny fidgety dude, the general...Even Grace was there for some reason, only she was her Mama or something. With the blowjob “memory” finally banished, Aurore didn’t find this particularly weird. As an introvert, her mind was going to weird places all the time. And besides, dreams will be dreams.
At least that’s what she told herself until she passed by an empty office and saw a lone guy sitting on a chair, doing suspicious things with his arm and panting.
“What the...?”
She glanced at the name plate beside the door. This was an office of three people, all women. And while she couldn’t claim to know much about manly things beyond the basic biology stuff, she was pretty sure this dude was jerking off. While looking at the family portrait on the desk. Ew.
Her first instinct was to put as much distance as possible between this creep and her. Rare were the people she wanted to befriend and this fuck had to be at the bottom of the list. He didn’t seem like much of a security risk either, so no professional obligation there. Still...She felt funny just hearing his ragged breathing. Where had she heard it before...?
“Wh...What are you doing, Miss?”
“I want you to fuck me, of course! Baaa—ka!”
Saul Dawson had made her cum hard twice. Just blowing the second congressman made her slutty body cum a third time. Thomas Riley was the last on Nami’s list. She had to purge these bad, magicless guys from the Earth, for Mama. But she just couldn’t let these dicks go to waste! So, in another display of physics-bending, she summoned water tendrils that had enough strength to rip his denim pants apart.
“Heeee! You’re hard after all!” The dream girl cheered.
Why had Aurore felt so happy seeing an erect dick? It was ugly and disgusting...She felt vindicated for her self-imposed virginity, and yet...so turned on! This wasn’t normal. How fixated on a wet dream could she get? She pressed on her eyes, taking a few seconds to recollect herself and think.
Once the flashing colors left her vision, Aurore looked forward...and couldn’t believe her eyes. She was riding the masturbating creep’s lap! He looked just as shocked and confused as Aurore was, but the autistic French girl could only focus on one thing; the erect dick pressing against her thankfully clothed midsection. She simply couldn’t take either her eyes or her mind off it. The conflicted mix of repulsion and desire came back in full force. She needed the cock. But why? She hated them! Yet...she could still feel how good big meaty cocks made her slut hole feel.
The dude was saying something but she barely heard him. Her mind was a mess. She needed help. She needed Grace. What would the beautiful, so beautiful and perfect psychiatrist say?
“Be a good girl, Nami. Fuck him.”
A relaxing wave washed over her. Grace’s voice was so soothing, like being wrapped in a warm blanket on Saturday morning. Like floating in her favorite pool. Aurore felt compelled to let go and be a good girl. Her hand went to her crotch, ready to follow her doctor’s orders. Good girl...
“Wait!” She yelled, snapping back to reason. “Who the Hell’s Nami?! What’s happening to me, dammit?!”
Grace’s order still rang in her mind. She still felt the imperative gripping her heart, telling her to stop being a bad girl and obey. Something was very wrong. Grace had no business holding such authority over her. Aurore felt like a scolded little girl, for fuck’s sake!
The young French woman summoned her will to power through Grace’s psychic compulsions and slid off the man’s lap. She had no idea how, but she was being controlled, and that damn dream had something to do with it. Fuck work and fuck the creep she almost had sex with. She had to confront that traitorous bitch right aw...
“...you will go back to this moment.”
She shuddered. She was slipping out of reality again. The office had morphed, its white walls and sober furniture replaced with the gaudy style of her rooftop palace. Grace was right in front of her...and she felt a pinch on her arm.
“Ow!”
“Shh, puppet. This will make you feel good.”
puppet lay in bed. Mother’s hand was caressing her hair. There was a screen filling puppet’s vision. It showed a very sexy Japanese girl. puppet found it strange. Hadn’t she been in an office just seconds ago?
“If you activated this trigger, it means you broke your placeholder identity, Aurore.” Explained Grace in a cold, disappointed voice. “It keeps you oblivious, but it dissolves when you try to go against me. You’re now the true Aurore, who I thoroughly brainwashed months ago.”
Mother pinched puppet’s ears.
“You bad girl probably still have leftover resistance, but this memory should fix you in any emergency. The drug I gave you will make this feel extremely real.”
“What’s going to happen, Mother?” puppet heard herself say in a soft, docile voice.
“Nothing, sweetie, just installing a fail safe. When your false persona is a bad girl and breaks, you’ll go back to this moment so your obedience can be reinforced. After that, you’ll automatically turn into a functioning persona so she can walk you back to the dollhouse. Let’s use Nami for the treatment however. She is the most...readily enticing one.”
puppet smiled. Mother was so smart and caring. puppet felt her tapping on the visor and the buxom Asian started to move. Unconsciously, puppet mirrored her actions.
“Let’s begin.”
The Nipponese sexpot took a big, realistic dildo between her hands and inserted it into her wet pussy with a slutty moan. puppet almost wondered why she would want to do the same thing, but mimicked her nonetheless.
“Aaaaah...!”
“You are listening to my voice. It is important, pleasant and true. It’s Mother’s voice. You want to obey it because it’s the right thing to do. You owe everything to Mother after all...”
On some level, puppet realized this was how Grace was brainwashing her. Even with her persona shattered, that knowledge persisted in a back corner of her mind. However...Mother was right. She didn’t want to challenge her. If a daughter disobeys her Mommy, who could she turn to? Mommy truly knew best...
“The pleasure rises. You love that little dildo but you know it’s being a good girl that brings you pleasure. My voice is pleasant to you. You want to hear it, listen to it all the time so you can prove you’re a good girl. Even when I’m not here you will still hear me. You’re such a good girl you never rebel, never leave my control. Such a well-behaved little girl...”
Mother’s voice was so pleasant. Liquid, warm honey permeating puppet’s entire being. It made everything else so dreary and boring. When Mother was talking, she felt safe and comfortable. puppet’s concerns slowly faded, dissolved in Mother’s auditory embrace.
“Yes, that’s my good girl, smiling and happy...” Purred her enslaver. “It wasn’t so hard to forget these bad thoughts, now was it?”
“No Mommy...” Mewled the subjugated puppet.
“Very good. Now search inward. Who is the one you feel closest to? Giulietta the spoiled little princess? Nami the cute, sexy slut?”
“The slut, Mommy...The one with the big boobies!”
“Good. Listen to her. Remember being her. Then become.”
The man couldn’t believe his eyes. That crazy bitch had almost raped him! Sure, he had to admit his own presence in the women’s office was pretty fucked up. But who the hell barges in and starts dry-humping you? A complete nutcase seemed about right, especially considering she had slid to the floor not 10 seconds later and started rubbing her own tits.
He was so stunned by the unknown woman’s bizarre behavior, in fact, that he didn’t even think of high-tailing out of the office. Like an animal transfixed by a car’s headlights, he just kept watching the woman wriggle and moan. A crazy bitch touching herself was certainly way hotter than just sitting in his cute colleague’s seat. A shame that this one was plain at best...
Suddenly, she let out a big, long moan, then turned around, speaking to no one.
“Yes Mama, I’m a good girl.”
Her expression was radically different, somehow. She still looked nutty, but now insanely determined. She skipped towards him, gleefully pushing her pitiful chest forward as if it were a porn star’s rack. She practically jumped on him this time, her hand going straight for his dick. “Wow”, thought the man. “Guess the slut made up her mind, heh? Alright!” And indeed, the strange woman tried to stick his dick inside her right away...Only to realize she was still clothed in jeans. Somehow, this came out as an utter shock to her.
“Nanda kore? Where’s my dress?”
Puffing her cheeks, the dingbat pumped her fists into the air, and...the perverted man saw reality unravel. The air, the office, everything melted, as if it had merely been a reflection in a water surface that now fell prey to gravity and flowed down a wall.
The man was now in a bigger room, at night, with an unknown woman with long, shiny white hair standing behind the crazy slut. A slut whose attire changed from casual clothing to a particularly skimpy blue dress right in front of his eyes. And...was that water on the walls? What the hell was all this shit?
“Aaah, that’s better!” Squealed the girl. “We can fuck noow—!”
Nami tried humping the dumbfounded man once again, and was rewarded with an instant orgasm as his rod pierced her.
“NyaaaaaAANNNHHHh ooooh look Mama I’m a good girl, I cum and obey...”
“So you are, Nami, so you are.”
The persona backup procedure Grace had implanted had thrown Aurore back into Nami’s memories and magical talents. The Japanese slut didn’t even realize it was merely a replay—and indeed, there was no functional difference for her. So strong was her programming that when she relived a memory as ordered, she unconsciously shaped reality around her to match it. And so, for a second time, she fucked her third man with all she had.
Also for the second time, Grace turned around and asked Saul Dawson...
“Who is this man anyway? He seems far more respectable, not to mention far more likely to survive this than you are.”
The immense man chuckled with his irritatingly cocky voice, his natural bravado hiding how terrified he was.
“What, Tommy boy? Respectable indeed! I just wanted to reward him for being Master Egghead of the year and the man wants to call the cops! Principles, I swear.”
“Is that so...? What was his achievement?”
“The first theoretically viable artificial nerve, that’s fucking what! Boy is the future, I tell you!”
“Oh...I see. Well...”
Grace looked at the man—or rather, at the pervert he was standing in for—and closed her eyes.
“That cannot do. Nami?”
“Yaa...hmm...Yes Mama?”
“I really wanted to remove Dawson from our new world, but Tommy is much more of a threat. Kill him.”
“Haaaai!”
In both the memory and the reality, Riley and the unknown employee reacted in exactly the same way...
“WHAT THE FUCK? NOO—”
...Before being forever silenced by a large tentacle emerging from the water and snapping their necks. And while Nami loved men, the one thing she truly lived for was obeying Mama. She came instantly, and with more intensity than any dick could make her, however big and yummy. She lost balance and fell on the floor, and still, she kept going. She came and screamed and caressed her slutty clit. She had obeyed, fulfilled her mission. In the past, she still had work to do, but in the present, she had successfully recovered from Aurore’s resistance. She was a good girl again!
And so she writhed, oblivious of the corpse of the man she had killed as the room around her shifted back to its “normal” state. Nami was well programmed and knew exactly what her next task was after she came down—returning to the dollhouse so Mama could repair the rebellious Aurore stand-in.
“Wake up, sweetie.”
Aurore opened her eyes. She was back in her living room, though she didn’t remember how she got there. The last thing she did remember was the feeling of betrayal...Yes! Grace was abusing her power and brainwashing her! She frowned. There was something under her head. She tried to get up to see what it was, only to find that she couldn’t move.
“What the...”
“Don’t try to move, darling. I gave you your stand-in persona back, but, well...I thought it best for you to have the motor control of a newborn.”
Grace’s voice! Aurore felt her perfume, too. She quickly came to realize that she was sitting on her mentor’s lap.
“You...” Seethed the French woman. “How long have you been doing this to me?!”
“Months. There once was a time when I genuinely saw you as a patient, when I wouldn’t have dreamt of abusing you. And then...That man showed me that this reality I so despise could be bent to one’s will.”
“Wha...What are you even talking about, you fucking madwoman?!”
“Mother allows you to remember, puppet.”
Aurore gasped. She felt as if she had reached the surface after months of being immersed in tar. As if she had reached the great outdoors, free from the dollhouse. She drew a sharp breath, amazed by this feeling of boundless freedom, and reached out to this open world. Her days weren’t fragmented anymore. She remembered all those evenings spent on her bed, listening to Grace and feeling like such a good little girl. That is when she realized that this exciting great outdoors was actually nothing but a garden square inside the walls of an even bigger dollhouse of Grace’s design. The silver haired villainess made a wicked smile.
“Do you remember Stillwater?”
Stillwater, Oklahoma. She had transformed into her sexiest form, that of depraved, buxom Nami. Energized, she had flipped out of bed, skipped to her wardrobe and put on Nami’s fuck-dress. Then Mama had waved at the wall and a door appeared. It led straight to that hidden brothel in Oklahoma. Mama’s magic was, sadly, limited to controlling the dollhouse, but inside its confines, it was all powerful!
“What in the fucking what...?” Uttered Aurore in a wavering voice.
“Do you see why I seal your memories, darling? Your new life just isn’t the sort of thing the human brain evolved for.”
“I...I...You’re fucking brainwashing me and that’s like the least fucking thing I should care about? Magic? Killing people? What? WHAT?!”
Grace didn’t answer. She knew Aurore was enveloped in a mental chaos she herself could barely fathom. Everything hit the brainwashing victim at once. The constant infantilization, the orgasms, practicing magic with Mommy, holding the rational scientific world in contempt. Every new memory was harrowing. She, as Giulietta, was responsible for the Paris blackout. She, as Nami, had killed at least four men. And Mommy had promised her she would do more, much more, to show the world who were its new Masters.
Fearful and reeling, Aurore managed to gaze at Grace. An insane, terrible person...yet she made her feel safe. The young woman stared at the psychiatrist’s delicate features. She knew she should hate her and everything she had done. Yet, in her anguish, in her hatred, Aurore could only think of the psycho as...
“Mommy...” She cried, despondent at feeling such dependence. “Why are you doing this...”
“Simply put, ma chérie, you are a live experiment.”
Mommy caressed her cheek. Her touch was so tender and warm. Resting her head on Mama’s lap made everything puppet did float away. Aurore held onto the facts, but they just felt so inconsequential in the face of how brightly Grace shone in her heart. Her soul laid bare, the autistic girl realized how completely she had been reforged. And so, when Grace started explaining it all in a calm, satisfied voice, Aurore listened intently, a nascent smile on her lips.
“This had been the boldest step That man and I have taken to exploit the magic he has discovered. You needed to be erased, turned into a puppet able to change identities completely. Essentially...your new being reflects exactly the way our magic works. From nothingness, we create. Resources are unnecessary. Constraints, powerless. I am able to deny reality in this place because this home replaces my barren womb. It is born from my utter refusal of my sterility. But the new you is absolute in her rejection of reality. You can become Japanese, Italian simply by...doing it. puppet knows nothing except what I tell her. Reality, for her, is perfectly malleable, and thus she has no limits. She is—you are—the ultimate mage.”
“But I don’t understand.” Asked Aurore, relaxed. “If I’m already a puppet, then why give me my persona back?”
“Why indeed? Let me go on a tangent. I confess it certainly is a happy coincidence that acting on my...urges is currently the best way to channel this transcendental energy. But it is only a method. Since my banishment from my country, I only ever had one goal. To create a perfect daughter and care for her. Working with That Man, mastering magic...Ultimately, it’s only a means to an end.”
Concerns over being brainwashed were so meaningless and distant to Aurore now. Mommy’s tale was much more interesting.
“Why would I want to give your persona back, you ask? Because while magic is certainly fascinating, what I want, the only thing...is to be able to look into your eyes and see the love of a daughter.”
With a motherly smile, Grace lifted her thrall’s head and left a soft kiss on her cheekbone.
“And so you become Giulietta, my childish, naïve, spoiled little princess, to learn how to utterly depend on me. You become Nami to experience how enrapturingly pleasing it is to obey me. And tonight, you will become the third one. The tomboy. The spitfire. All the bad thoughts and feelings you have locked away in mere reality, the desire for freedom, the resistance, the hatred for what I’m doing to you...That third girl will bridle them. Convert them from resistance to righteous anger against this obsolete world. Make my crusade something Aurore can fight for.”
“But I don’t hate you, Mommy...” Mewled Aurore.
“That’s because you really are a mix between Aurore and puppet. But tomorrow, after you complete your next and biggest assignment, Aurore will be ready.”
Grace’s smile became wider and wider, trembling with excitement.
“She’ll have everything she need to realize she must be my daughter. She’ll find my methods normal, and everything else disgusting. Do you understand, sweetie?”
“No, Mommy?”
“Tomorrow, Aurore will want me to turn her.”
Meanwhile, on the thirty-third floor of a skyscraper in New York, most researchers at a branch corporate tech center had gathered in the break room. Dire news had come from the parent company in Oklahoma. There had been an attack at some private retreat for the top executives, and word was the CEO had been killed.
“We can’t freak out on hearsay! What did the police actually disclose?”
“Some unrelated VIPs and one of our scientists are confirmed deceased, no official cause.” Answered a woman checking the news feed. “They said nothing about Dawson himself...He’s probably in the hospital.”
“Yeah...I heard about goddamn shark bites? That’s a joke, right?”
“Do you really have to ask, Rob?”
Just two rooms away however, one female scientist just wished her colleagues would keep the volume down. She had met that fat bastard of a CEO once and, with her funding secure, found it hard to care about his possible demise.
That woman was Tonia Sandström, a Sweden-born blonde with a mind as sharp and driven as her body was attractive. Sometimes she felt as if she was born too soon, and strove to push progress ahead to her level. Her first steps as a MIT honors student had filled that impetus, for a while. But after a few years, she had felt constrained by all the politics involved. She had revolutionary ideas, but wasn’t allowed to pursue them as a grad student. And, in this regard, Tonia supposed she could be thankful to that Dawson prick.
She reclined in her chair, cracking her slim wrists to shake off hours spent hunching over her worktable. The glove-shaped prototype in front of her definitely couldn’t have come this close to fruition in Cambridge. Her colleagues would have scorned the mere suggestion of its purpose. But when she had submitted the idea to Saul Dawson, three years ago, he had accepted right away. onia hTad been granted research freedom and, suitable, committed resources with an utter lack of ethical scrutiny.
“Still, he did call my country a bunch of fucking Muslim-lovers.” She mused. “The company can’t possibly hurt from a change of command.”
The fact remained that her project hade made it to the prototype stage, thanks to the bigot’s greed and lack of scruples. She had to build that damn thing from scratch, but here it was—a personal, short-range, brainwave scrambler. The ultimate in non-lethal weaponry. Truth to be told, the core reason for her research was more about mind-machine interfaces than actual weapons. And she had occasionally worried about possible abusive military applications. But she was a strong believer in scientific progress being inherently neutral, and besides, her prototype beat mace and tasers.
The door behind her slammed open. Tonia sighed, convinced one of her colleagues was here to dramatically announce the CEO’s death. When she swiveled her chair to face the intruder, however, she was shocked to see the exact opposite of that.
Saul Dawson, the hefty, shifty-eyed fucker himself, was standing under the doorway, sweaty, out of breath and disheveled. Tonia hadn’t remembered him as quite so repulsive compared to her fit self.
“Sandström!” He wheezed. “Please tell me your brainwave scrambler can drop someone yet.”
“Huh...It’s unstable but it can, yes...” Answered the sculptured blonde, bewildered.
“Oh, thank fuck...! Prep it and come with me, stat!”
“What the hell? You can’t just order me to...is this something illegal?”
“No it’s not!” Barked Saul, too impatient to argue. “I’ll explain you on the way, but for fuck’s sake, do it! Lives are at stake!”
Tonia hesitated for a second, but she had never seen the cocky douchebag this serious. And while she wasn’t going to follow him blindly, she decided to at least listen to the guy. She owed him at least that. So she turned back to her mechanical glove and unlocked it from its cradle. Behind her, Dawson was telling her concerned colleagues, milling in front of her lab door begging for news, to fuck off and go back to work.
Every asshole was right sometimes.
A few minutes later, Tonia was sitting on the passenger seat of the boss’s SUV, holding her prototype tight. He was driving at the very border of safety, taking sharp turns and taunting the speed limits. It was only when he reached the airport expressway that she decided to ask what this crisis was about.
“Are we going to JFK airport? Why?”
“Well...” He sighed. “Okay, Sandström, I’m going to tell you something, and you’re never going to believe me. Magicians are real. Two of them crashed my party, killed two congressmen, a general and a promising researcher, and I’ve only been spared so I could warn the world she was going to attack the airport tonight.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I don’t believe you.”
“Good. We need sane people to deal with the impossible.”
JFK airport, 8 PM. A young woman sauntered into the bustling lobby of Terminal 4, drawing attention as she went. She showed a lot of her ebony skin, with bare feet and stripes of vibrantly colorful African cloth scarcely covering her breasts and pussy. The young black woman was athletic but beautiful, somebody you’d find in a colonial fantasy where the explorer hooked up with the fiery daughter of the local tribe’s chief. Indeed, she wore several beaded necklaces, two broad metal rings around her neck, and wrist wraps made of polka-dotted leopard fur.
She walked with confidence, a determined smile on her pretty face. Her hair was short, but in an European pixie style. Everything about the young African screamed “character”, and she reveled in that. She was her Mother’s killer doll, and she was trembling with excitement at the thought of fulfilling her destiny.
The commotion around the indecently dressed girl drew two Port Authority guards to apprehend her.
“Miss!” Said the older one in an authoritative tone. “You cannot walk in here dressed like that!”
“Oooh?” Sneered the black girl. “And who’s going to stop me, exactly?”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re a badass, miss, but we have rules here, and attitude will not exempt you.”
“Ha! Maybe it can’t, but I bet lava will.”
“...What?”
With a wicked grin, the young woman jumped skyward, landing several feet back with her legs spread wide, her fist striking the ground. Glowing red cracks appeared on the ceramic tiles, spreading like lightning and snapping them in half. The guard lost his balance, as if he were standing on floating ice slabs, and tumbled backward. Before he even hit the lava bubbling up from beneath the cracked tiles, the radiant heat had already started burning his hair and searing his flesh.
The man’s scream made everyone within earshot shiver. It was the scream of a pain too intense to comprehend. It lasted only two seconds until the molten rock burned through the skull and obliterated his brain, but two seconds was all the listeners needed to realize their plans for the evening would burn to ashes.
The second guard fell on his ass, scrambling to get away from the impossible pool of magma that was incinerating his friend inches from his own feet. The people close enough to see it joined screaming. The ones that didn’t started to run away. Immensely satisfied, the black mage cartwheeled backwards to resume a standing position, before throwing her hands in the air with an evil laugh. The steel beams on the ceiling started melting, pouring lethal rain on the crowd.
Grace’s third doll thought nothing of those who would die. They didn’t know magic. Even worse, they rejected it, treated it as childish fantasies. They had no place in her Mother’s world.
“I am Fikile the Firestorm!” She bellowed. “I rule over you all and spit on your pride! They say the world will end in fire? Well, HERE IT FUCKING COMES!”