The Further Adventures of Louis and Elle
Chapter Five—Signing It Over
Louis Wentworth worked in a cozy study on the first floor of the new house he shared with his wife, hypnotherapist Elle Murphy. He had bought the house for her with the first advance from his successful Young Adult Trilogy, THE HYPNOTEEN CHRONICLES. Elle assured him the price had been a good one. He couldn’t entirely remember exactly how much he had paid. Luckily the house was in Elle’s name. She had explained that was for his protection, so he felt good about that. It was a nice house, in a quiet suburb in the western hills of the tri-county area; Louis had a nice view of the cul-de-sac, but there were few noises from the street to distract him from his writing.
It was going well. Having finished the first HYPNOTEEN trilogy, Louis had now begun volume one of the new trilogy, THE CHARCOT COLLEGE CHRONICLES. Hypnoteen (also known as Kate Braid) had graduated from high school and left home for this elite four-year college in the remote New England village of Esdaile Junction. Luckily her sidekick (and somnambulistic superhero) Barrett Blakeney also won admittance. The two anticipated an idyllic four years studying—she as a psychology major, he in ancient Near East archaeology. But by a bizarre coincidence, Charcot College and Esdaile Junction, just like Kate’s home town, are overrun with paranormal phenomena and supervillains, requiring Hypno-Teen to recruit a new band of comrades and do psychic battle with the forces of evil. Studies will have to wait.
The writing had been going well over the past three weeks. Before he met Elle, Louis had considered 350 words a day a good output. After semi-weekly creativity treatments from Elle, however, two thousand words a day wasn’t unusual, and much of the time he could do more. His concentration, his focus, his energy had all zoomed since those sessions—as had his desire to write stories that would please her. In fact, these days, when he worked in his study, he had the half-sensation that she was perched on his desk looking down at him, urging him on. He tried not to look back at her, because—with her sheer black hose, her tight pencil skirt, her near-transparent white blouse and lacy black bra—she would takes his mind off the story. She was his muse, but he had also was the queen of his fantasies and the mistress of his body. The two mixed in an exhilarating if sometimes unstable way.
Louis was rapt in his work one afternoon when the sound of the letterbox broke his concentration. For the last few days, Louis had been, without quite realizing it, listening for that sound, almost as if he was expecting a special piece of mail. He thought he might be expecting something, actually, but for some reason he couldn’t quite remember what it might be. He remembered telling Elle about it—he thought he remembered that, at any rate—but couldn’t recall the conversation in detail.
But for whatever reason, Louis sat up straight on this particular day when he heard the mailbox open; once the carrier had filled the box, Louis got up from his desk in mid-sentence and hustled out to the mailbox to get the mail.
Once he had it, he carried it carefully inside, then began to go through it next to the front-hall table. The second letter was a from his agent. Visible through the window were the words “Pay to the order of Louis Wentworth.”
For some reason that letterhead, those words, struck Louis’s mind like a gong. His eyes lost focus for a moment, then re-focused on something far away; his hands fell to his side, dropping the remaining mail to the rug; holding the envelope in his hand, he walked in a kind of steady, gliding march to Elle’s basement office at the back of the house, where she was busily dictating notes from therapy sessions.
He knocked on her open door; she looked up at him over her glasses. That expression never failed to make him feel weak at the knees—it combined the fond lover with the strict schoolteacher and just a touch of the sexy ringmaster appraising the new performing bear.
Louis hardly noticed the look today, however. He stared into the middle distance with a somewhat glazed expression and held out the envelope. “This came today, Elle,” he said.
“Oh, goody,” Elle said. “We’ve been waiting for this, haven’t we?” She plucked the envelope from his fingers and smoothly sliced it open with an onyx letter opener. Inside was Louis’s semiannual royalty check—one for a sum well into six figures. She was delighted by the amount—Louis’s writing had truly caught on since she had been working with him on his creativity (and incidentally ridding him of the silly avant-garde ideas he had acquired during his graduate studies in creative writing).
She turned the check over, put it face down on the desk, and picked up a ballpoint pen from the cup by the telephone. “Here, Louis,” she said. “Just sign it over to me and I will take care of everything.”
Still with the same blank look, he stepped forward, took the pen, and bent over the face-down check. “Pay to the order of Elle Murphy, /s/ Louis Wentworth,” he wrote and handed it to Elle.
He had never so much as glanced at the front.
“Thank you, darling,” she said with a smug smile. She carefully folded the check in half, then in half again, and rather ostentatiously put it for safekeeping into her lacy black bra.
This action had a curious effect on Louis. His eyes seem to bulge over so slightly out of his head; his face flushed a bright pink; his breathing quickened; beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. As if unconsciously, his right hand wandered up his chest, reached inside his shirt, and lightly brushed his left nipple.
“Elle, oh, god, Elle!” he said in a husky voice. “Oh, Elle, I—aahh!” He closed his eyes and swayed on his feet as a small orgasm swept from the center of his abdomen out to his arms and his legs.
Watching her take his check and put it next to her breasts was perhaps the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
Elle watched him with a mixture of amusement and concern. “Why, Louis,” she said in a tone of great concern, “whatever is the matter?”
“Oh—nothing—I’m—uh—I’m fine,” he said. His mini-orgasm, oddly enough, had made him forget everything that had happened before, and he was a bit confused to find himself in her office. “Isn’t it a little hot in here?”
Elle reached up a hand, tipped with flawlessly lacquered red nails, and fanned herself delicately. “You look a little overheated—why don’t you got to the kitchen and bring back a glass of water?”
Without a word, he turned on his heel and, at a trot, headed for the kitchen, which was at the far end of the house. After a few minutes, he was back with a glass of water. “Very good, drink up,” she said. He raised the glass to his lips, but before he could drink Elle said in a slightly shocked voice, “Why, Louis, you didn’t bring me a glass?” She batted her eyes as if her feelings were hurt.
“Oh, my god, Elle, I am so sorry, here, please take mine,” he said, and gave it to her. She took it gravely and began to drink. “But now you don’t have one,” she said with concern. “Go get yourself one.”
He turned again and trotted back to the kitchen. When he got back with a glass, she took it from his hand and said, “I decided I want this glass too. Good thing you’re not thirsty any more.”
It was a pleasant game; on some nights, Elle would send Louis on dozens of trips to the kitchen, or the basement, or the back yard. It was like playing “Who’s on first?” Louis always looked so earnest, so convinced that he really did want to go get whatever she suggested he needed. She also knew that the more times she sent him scurrying, the blanker his mind would become, until he became simply a kind of radio receiver focused on her will, with no thought or hesitation before carrying it out. That could be put to more important uses, sexual, financial, and otherwise.
But she had other plans tonight. “Sit down, Louis,” she said. “I’m going to drink some of this water. When I take the first sip you will relax and let yourself go blank. When I take the second sip, you will begin to feel so relaxed that you can hardly keep your eyes open. When I take the third sip your eyes will shut and you will fall into a deep hypnotic sleep ready to obey my every command. Now—ahh!” She drank the first sip. His eyes lost all focus and his face seemed to sag. “Mmm—that was delicious. I’ll have another!”
His eyes were at half-mast now, as if he could hardly keep them open. His hands fell to his side and his muscles drooped, as if he was about to fall out of his chair.
“I don’t know why I am so thirsty today,” she said. Then she took a third sip and his body went limp in his chair. He was dead to the world.
“That’s a good boy, Louis,” she said. “You’re now in a trance, ready to obey my every suggestion in deep hypnosis. Say, ‘Yes, Elle.’”
Without stirring, he said, faintly, “Yes, Elle.”
“Every word I tell you becomes the absolute truth the moment I say it.”
“Yes, Elle.”
“All you want is to do what I say.”
“Yes, Elle.”
“You want to tell me anything I ask you.”
“Yes, Elle.”
“You want to tell me all your secrets.”
“Yes, Elle.”
“You want to give me control of all your fantasies.”
“Yes, Elle.”
“Good boy,” she said, and snapped her fingers next to his ear. “Deeper, Louis, deeper, as deep as you need to go to give yourself completely to me.”
He sagged slightly further in the chair. His mouth was curving upward in a smile of mindless bliss.
“Now, Louis,” she said. “You told me about your crush on the receptionist at the counselor’s office. You told me you would imagine her and touch yourself, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Elle,” he said.
“You want to tell me, because it’s secret and you want me to know all your secrets, don’t you?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“Was that the first time you began to masturbate?”
“No, Elle.”
“Tell me about that. What did you think about in the darkness?”
“I looked at magazines.”
“Magazines with pictures of naked girls?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“Did you keep them in your room?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“And you’d run back to your room at night eager to get under the covers and look at them?”
“No, Elle.”
“No?”
“I tried not to look at them.”
“Oh, did you? But you couldn’t resist?”
“No, Elle.”
“Tell me about trying to resist.”
“I knew what I was doing was bad. But after I turned out the light, the magazines would start to whisper to me. ‘Hey, big boy, you want to look at us, you can’t stay away can you, we own you, give it up . . . .’”
“And soon you’d give in?”
“Yes, I couldn’t resist.”
“No, you couldn’t, could you, silly boy? The right woman can do anything with you, can’t she, Louis?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“And that’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“Well, listen, now you’ve told me your secret, I own the secret. And that means I own part of you—more and more of you with each secret you tell, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Elle.”
“Now listen carefully, Louis. When I snap my fingers, you will open your eyes. Your collection of magazines from those days will be there in front of you. You’ll pick them up and then give them to me knowing I will own them and you will never see them again, do you understand?”
“Yes, Elle.”
SNAP! She snapped her fingers again by his ear. His eyes fluttered open and focused on something—something invisible—on the table in front of him. Slowly, as if with a great effort, he reached out and picked up an invisible pile of magazines. “Here, Elle,” he said. “Take these.”
Solemnly she accepted the invisible gift. Then she said, “Thank you, Louis. Now I have a present for you.”
He looked steadily at her, a bit like a trained dog waiting for a command from his trainer. “Here,” she said, holding out another invisible burden. “This magazine is for you.”
With a confused expression, he reached out a hand. “It’s a magazine, Louis. It’s hundreds of pages.” She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “And every one of them is of me, Louis. They are the sexiest pictures in the world and all of me. They are every fantasy you’ve ever had, hundreds and hundreds of pages. They own you, they call to you at night. They are the sexiest pictures you will ever see. Go ahead, open it up!”
He made a motion of turning a page. His mindless smile broadened, then his mouth fell slightly open, his eyes crossed, and his breathing quickened. After a minute, he began to drool.
“What is the picture, Louis?” she whispered.
He had trouble speaking at first, but after clearing his throat several times he said in a husky voice, “You are naked except for a pair of green heels. You are on your hands and knees and you are looking at the camera and your expression is very . . . powerful . . . .” He sighed slightly and squirmed as if he were suddenly uncomfortable.
“What is my expression saying?”
“It’s—it’s saying, ‘Look at me, little man. I won’t have any trouble with you. I am your superior, I am your master, you cannot resist me, you will do whatever I say . . .’”
“Stand up, Louis.”
He rocketed to attention.
“Take off your clothes.”
Buttons flew.
“Lie down on the rug.”
Once he was on his back, she loomed over him. “Look at me, Louis,” she said.
His pupils dilated. She was naked except for her heels. “Louis, look at me. Look at me. You can’t look away, Louis. I won’t have any trouble with you. I am your superior, I am your master, you cannot resist me, you will do whatever I say . . .”
She lowered herself onto his erection. “I am better than you, I am stronger than you, I can do anything I want with you, you are my bitch, Louis. Say it!”
“I am your bitch!”
“My body is more powerful than you. My breasts are more powerful than you. You are powerless to resist me. You are whatever I want you to be. Louis, when I snap my fingers you will be my little girl, you will be my bitch, I can fuck you any way I want, three, two, one—“ SNAP! “I am your master, little girl, say it.”
“Yes, master.”
She took her forefinger and slipped it into his mouth. “Blow it, bitch,” she said. “Suck while I fuck you.”
His tongue displayed remarkable talent as he ran it over and around her finger. “Suck it, bitch! Suck it! Now come!”
He arched his back and screamed and she felt him come inside her. She touched her breasts and in a few seconds she came as well. With a sigh, she sat back, then rose to her feet.
“Louis, you are going to sleep for ten minutes. Then you will wake thinking you have been looking at a naughty magazine. You’ll feel guilty and go hide the magazine in your study, then you will clean up the room and shower, dress nicely, and then come downstairs ready to do exactly as I say. SLEEP!”
His eyes fluttered shut and his breathing deepened. She got up and stood over him as he glided into a deep sleep.
“You know, Louis,” she said as if to herself, “that was just page one.”
Then she went upstairs to her bedroom. She undressed to her underwear and sat at her vanity table. Carefully she applied a skillful minimum of makeup—deep dark eye shadow and blood-red lipstick. She slipped on a pair of thigh-high fishnet stockings with seams up the back.
From her closet, she picked out a black cocktail dress. She accentuated it with red 3 ? inch heels and a pair of red carnelian earrings.
Had there anybody to see her, the watcher would have had to admit she looked like something from most men’s book of forbidden fantasies. The blood-red lips and dark eyes spoke to the yearning for a vampire dominatrix; the red heels were savage, and the earrings spoke of danger. The dress at first seemed modest—it fell to just above the knee and had a high neck. But it was so perfectly fitted and cut—it was a designer dress Louis had INSISTED on buying her on a trip to Las Vegas—that, even though it didn’t seem tight, it anyone watching by imperceptible steps to imagine the body underneath it. On top of all that, she walked with a sexy swagger, as if she were still relishing her conquest of the man who lay helplessly unconscious on the office floor.
She went to the couch in the living room, crossed one stockinged leg over the other, and took stock of her life. It had been a very productive day, capped with the nice check that secured their income for the next six months or longer. She took Louis’s money without a second thought—after all, it made him happier to give it to her than spending it himself could ever do. She enjoyed the pure dominance of knowing that he gave it to her without even wanting to know how much it was. But she was a scrupulous businesswoman—much better at investments and accounting than he ever could be, poor boy. She put a good share of the money in trust for him, and some for herself, so that each was protected if for some reason they lost the other. In addition, each of them was now insured for a tidy sum. (He was insured for a bit more than she was, but that was only fair.) In addition, she paid all the joint expenses from a joint account to which she contributed, and gave Louis a nice allowance he could use on things he just for some reason HAD to buy for her. Louis lost nothing by completely submitting to her will, and gained both peace to do his writing and the thrill of yielding to his mistress.
Louis yielded gladly and fully—not because he was a weak man who could not live on his own, but because he was a strong one who knew what he needed. He was brave (he had helped rescue Elle’s mother from her hypno-captivity in Ukraine, for heaven’s sake!). He was intelligent, witty, kind, attentive, and persistent. He gladly handled all details of the housework—shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry. He was a good cook. (Once a month or so, Elle insisted on cooking just to prove a point, and both she and Louis gamely pretended to enjoy the resulting meal.)
He was the hypno-husband she had been looking for, and living with him was like bathing in warm, soothing water. She had found him, caught him, and molded him to her liking. But she knew that she, too, was lucky to have him, and she enjoyed him every day.
Twenty minutes later, Louis came downstairs. He had changed into a deep blue shirt that matched the color of his eyes and a pair of rust-colored corduroy trousers—very Charcot College English prof. He looked, it has to be said, very handsome—and a little confused.
“Elle, I am sorry,” he said. “Time got away from me. I need to start dinner.”
“Oh, no, darling,” she said, waving a red-tipped hand. “I thought we’d go to Greene’s tonight for dinner and drinks.”
He smiled like a kid hearing that school had been canceled. “Wow! That’s great,” he said. “But I know you usually don’t like to go out during the week. What’s happened?”
“It’s a special occasion,” she said. With a Giaconda smile, she reached between her breasts and caressed a small square folded piece of paper. “I—uh—came into some money today.”