HOSTEL
Chapter Ten — Packing Up
Penelope barely put up a fight.
Rebecca could only see the blonde out of the corner of her eye—her attention was fixed on putting Alice into a trance—but what she glimpsed was remarkable. Penelope’s body seemed to collapse in slow motion, slumping here and there, and then here again, until she was barely standing under her own power. Her sea-green eyes widened, then narrowed, then found a middle ground between those extremes, growing more glassy and empty by the second.
“Nothing but the crystal, so pretty, so sparkly. Back and forth. Watch it swing, baaack… and forrrth. So sleepy. So, so sleepy. It’s been such a long, long day, so tiring, and now you can rest, watching the crystal, drifting on my voice, sleep. Sleep. So tired, Alice. You work so hard alllllll day, and it’s sooooooo exhausting, you need an assistant to help you. Help you to relax. Let me help you to relax. So very relaxed now. Relax. Sleep.”
Alice, while not as much of a lightweight as Penelope, was still on her way to losing the battle. Her pale blue eyes were huge and dim, her pupils dutifully tracking the crystal as it swung back and forth. “Back… and forth… very good, Alice. Back… inhale… and forth… exhale… so relaxed.”
They were standing out in the open, away from the dark safety of the back booths, and a small crowd gathered around them to watch. Fei, still deeply hypnotized and very eager to carry out the suggestion to act as if she were wide awake, did her best to keep the curious onlookers quiet and behaved. Occasionally she would flash them a knowing grin or wink, a perfect assistant to Rebecca’s traveling hypnosis show.
“Deeper and deeper.” Rebecca turned her head to check on Penelope, and found the blonde close to collapse. Her chin hovered inches above her chest, eyes barely open and blinking slowly. Rebecca placed her hand at the base of Penelope’s skull.
“Sleep,” she commanded, and the girl’s head dropped the remaining distance. It bounced once, rolled to its right, then came to rest. Penelope’s fingers pointed straight at the floor, set adrift at the ends of two dangling, sleepy arms.
Someone whistled. Rebecca nearly looked up in anger and panic, desperate to shush whoever it was before they ruined everything. To her relief, Fei was already on the job, holding a finger to her lips and smiling. The whistling—indeed, even the little side conversations—came to an instant halt. This really is a road show now. Gotta give the crowd what they want.
She returned her attention to Alice, whose glassy eyes remained glued to the pendant. Her mouth hung open, as if in shock at being taken under so quickly. Alice didn’t seem like the type of woman to ever let someone else control any aspect of her life. And yet here she was, helpless to stop what was happening to her own mind. Rebecca gave the crystal another little spin, and enjoyed watching what was left of the Irish woman’s resistance sputter out. “Back and forth, Alice. So beautiful. So pretty. Just like my voice, so beautiful and pretty. Eyes so heavy now, so, so heavy.
A twitch. Then another. Somewhere in the back of Alice’s mind, a brain cell was desperately trying to mount a defense. Rebecca moved in for the kill. “No thoughts, no mind. Only my voice, Alice, and the pretty crystal. No thoughts, no mind. Only my voice. Back and forth. So sleepy. Eyes so heavy and sleepy. Drifting into a deep, deep sleep for me. Sleep.”
Alone and surrounded, the brain cell surrendered.
Rebecca lowered the pendant and reached out her hand. The anticipation was positively delicious. “And now, your mind is so sleepy, so blank, so ready to sink into a deep, hypnotic trance. So sleepy, Alice. Eyes so heavy and sleepy.”
Her hand was an inch away from Alice’s half-lidded orbs, waving in front of them like a snake about to strike. “Deeper and deeper.” She could feel the crowd holding their collective breaths, just as surely as she felt the air trapped in her own lungs. Here we go.
Her fingers pressed against soft flesh. “Sleep.”
The ‘trance deepening’ tests were mostly for show. Rebecca had little need for rigid arms and hands tied to balloons; her subjects went deep from the very start, and it took only a few well-chosen words to bring them even deeper. Still, the crowd loved every moment of it. Even Peter, overworked as usual, found time to glance up from his bartending duties to give Rebeca a bemused thumbs-up.
To Rebecca, it felt better than sex. The student—if you could even call her that—was now the master. The thought of having Alice under her control was so wildly unexpected that her body didn’t know quite what to do with it. Her pussy stirred to life and tingled with that old, familiar sense of anticipation and excitement, but even that part of her seemed confused by the sudden change in events. What is this, her pussy seemed to ask. I was expecting Celeste… who is this woman?
“When I count to three, I will cut the string, and the balloons will float away. Float way up into the air, carrying away all of your thoughts and worries, leaving your arms to fall back to earth. As they do, you will fall ten times deeper into this wonderful trance. One, two… three.”
Two arms dropped in unison. Rebecca gave Fei a quick wink and turned to her admirers. “And what should we do next to our two lovely volunteers?”
“Make them into chickens!”
The crowd giggled with approval. Rebecca searched for the source of the suggestion, half-expecting Emily to be at the center of it. Make them make out with each other! But the culprit turned out to be a newcomer, a short girl with an impish grin and a projecting voice. “Make them go cluck cluck cluck,” she demanded. “Like a chicken!”
This was normally where Rebecca would roll her eyes and poke a guilty Emily in the ribs, or beg the audience for something that was at least a little less clichéd. This was a whole different story, however. Putting Alice under… making sure that she really was under… the chicken cluck was the perfect test. She couldn’t imagine Alice faking her way through something that degrading. Just like Emily used to say… if they cluck, they’re fucked.
Instead of rolling her eyes, Rebecca chuckled and smiled. “Okay! Chickens it is! Alice, Penelope? You’re listening very carefully to my voice. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Rebecca.” Two gloriously dull, sleepy voices. “I can hear you,” Alice added. Rebecca’s pussy ached. Celeste was going to get spectacularly laid tonight.
“When I say the word ‘chicken’ you will forget that you are in this club, that you are in front of a crowd of people. You will imagine being alone, feeling safe and happy. You can be safe and goof around, because no one will see you. Anything you do will be your little secret when your hear me say the word ‘chicken,’ and you’ll realize that what you really want to do, more than anything, is to act like a chicken. Acting like a chicken, safe and happy, until you hear me say the words ‘chicken scratch.’ When you hear me say the words ‘chicken scratch,’ you will drop back down into this deep hypnotic trance. Do you understand?”
The blonde responded immediately. “Yes, Rebecca.”
A thin smile spread across Alice’s placid face. “Yes, Rebecca.”
“Good. When I snap my fingers, you will open your eyes, still deep in trance, eyes open. You won’t remember being hypnotized, and you’ll think that I lost my bet. When I say the word ‘chicken,’ you will act like a chicken.”
She held up her hand and waited, soaking in the admiration from the crowd, the intoxicating beauty of the two mesmerized women in front of her, the overwhelming sense of triumph after such a perilous journey. There was still work to be done, but it was going to get done.
I can fix this.
She snapped her fingers.
They climbed the stairs to the hostel in silence, a slow-moving train of hypnotized captives and one very nervous controller. Only when they reached the lobby was Rebecca able to allow herself a moment’s peace. She briefly marveled at Alice’s good fortune in being able to lead her victims through the open streets without ever once encountering a cop or a concerned citizen. Then again, perhaps Alice was fully prepared to handle a cop or a concerned citizen. Perhaps one of them had ended up down in the basement at some point.
“Fei?”
The pretty Asian girl looked down at her new mistress. “Yes, Rebecca?”
“Take Alice and Penelope down the hall and take a right. The door you want is 223. Have Alice unlock the door and take you inside. Have them sit down and then wait for me. Understood?”
“Of course, Rebecca. I’ll take good care of them.” She took the two mesmerized women by the hand and gently escorted them to Alice’s apartment.
Rebecca felt her heart begin to slow down to normal. There was still a chance that Alice might snap out of it, but she had taken both women as deep as possible. Almost as deep as Emily had gone when—
Oh shit, Emily.
She turned and made her way back to her own room.
“Rebecca! Oh my GOD REBEEEEECCCAAA!!!”
The redhead launched herself at Rebecca, wrapping herself around her friend while propelling both of them backwards through the door and into the hallway. Only when they collided with the opposite wall with a loud thump did she finally release the other girl from her grasp. “OhmyGOOooooood I missed you SO MUCH Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Rebecca’s first instinct was to reach for her sore back. She drew a hand across her shoulder blade, wondering if this was what it felt like to be tackled in the Super Bowl. Few professional players had the same energy reserves that Emily always seemed to have in spades. Emily… Emily? “Emily! Holy shit, Emily! You’re… you’re back?”
“I came back early!” Emily was all smiles and sunshine, as if she’d never been hypnotized in her life. “I mean, I wasn’t going to spend the entire trip away from my wing girl, right?” The redhead paused, or at least tried to—built-up energy and emotion coursed through her in waves, keeping her bouncing and rolling on her feet. Finally, her inner dam could hold no more excitement. “Surprise! I’m baaaaaaaack! Wheeeeeeee!!!”
Now it was Rebecca’s turn to tackle, and she threw herself into it, squeezing her best friend as hard as she could. Emily. My Emily. Freed Emily. Back to normal Emily. “I can’t believe you’re here right now! I just… oh Em, I missed you so much. I… I’m just so glad you’re here with me. This has been one hell of a trip!”
“Ha ha ha, that I’ve heard!” Emily pressed the palms of her hands into her chin. “Sooooo…” Her head and hands swung back and forth in playful judgment. “I heaarrrrd that you were very, very busy this week. With a special lady friend? Confess, heathen!”
“I’m a witness! I’m a witness!” Celeste appeared in the doorway. She had swapped out her club clothes for shorts and a tight t-shirt, and Rebecca eagerly stared at the brunette’s lovely curves. The burning lust from the club returned to her in spades. “Hey there!” Celeste beamed, looking just as aroused as Rebecca felt.
A finger jammed into her gut. She turned to find Emily laughing at her. “Stop gawking, Colonel Sanders,” said the redhead. “You’re making me feel awkward.”
“What have you been up to this whole time, Em?” She was curious to see what Emily would remember. Something about castles, most likely. Unless Alice had fed her a different story than what she’d programmed into Emily’s mind.
“Well, you know me! Castles, forts, little towns! Next time we come back here, I’m going to take you with me. There was this cute little town… Langelsheim? Longelshem? Cute little cafes with great food. Even you would love it. Celeste, you’re gonna love it too. Imagine the three of us, tearing this country up!”
“Hold that thought, Em.” Rebecca wrapped an arm around Celeste and steered her back to the door, enjoying the feel of her cool skin against her own. Why anyone would choose to wear shorts and a t-shirt in such a freezing place was beyond her. “I have to ask Celeste about something real quick.”
Emily threw up her tiny hands. “Oh, shit! I’m sorry! I can get my own room, let me go check in, and then—”
“Nope, it’s okay. We’ll take one bed and you can take the other,” said Rebecca. Celeste sighed happily at the thought of it, and the two of them left Emily behind as they walked arm-in-arm into the hallway.
The hostel came to life as they made their way to Alice’s apartment. Here and there a door would open, releasing a roomful of pretty young women all dressed to kill and ready to party the night away. At least that’s what they’ll remember doing. Rebecca wondered which of them carried the special password that, at this very moment, was being sold a few blocks away.
“Hey, Rebecca! Come out with us!” Two pairs of hands reached for Rebecca and Celeste, briefly catching around their intertwined arms and dragging them to a stop. “Come out with us! It’s my last night in town, and I haven’t had a chance to hang out with you guys.”
Both girls were beautiful, of course. I wonder if Alice sells triggers two at a time? Rebecca gave their offer some thought. This was the best time in the world to kick back with a celebratory beer, but it was also the worst possible time, and she shook her head. “Sorry, I have to… you know, work never ends around here! Alice has me working all hours now, and I don’t want to let her down.”
“And she’s dragged me into it, too,” added Celeste with a weary pout. “Everyone’s got that one boss, you know?”
To their mutual surprise, the girl responded not with a knowing wink, or an understanding nod, but by stiffening and staring into space. Her friend followed her lead. “I understand, Rebecca,” she said. “You’re very busy. You need to help Alice. You will let us know when you are ready.”
Wordlessly, the two women turned and marched down the hallway like robots, snapping out of their trance only as they made the final turn into the front hall. Then they were off into the night, laughing and shouting and having the time of their lives.
Rebecca sighed. Here was more programming that she would have to undo. Or have Alice undo. Or…
“We could grab Emily and catch up with them, Rebecca.” Celeste tugged at her arm. “The boss is away, and the mice will play? Maybe? Unless you really plan on washing floors or whatever all night.”
“I have a surprise for you,” was all Rebecca offered in return.
“Ooh, I like surprises!” The brunette’s cheeks flushed a lovely shade of red, and she drew closer. “I want you to surprise me.”
“You’re going to like this one,” said Rebecca.
“So that’s Emily, huh?” Celeste trailed behind Rebecca as they made their way to Alice’s apartment. “She seems nice. And she’s pretty! I can see why you like her.”
Rebecca laughed. She paused to let Celeste catch up, and they resumed their walk side-by-side. “Em and I go back a long time together. She’s very much into boys, trust me.”
“Well, good. I’d hate to have to compete wth her, ha! She’s super cool. We got to talking about travel and stuff while we waited for you to come back.”
“You guys were talking…” Rebecca thought about the zombie Emily that had mindlessly shuffled out of Club Trabant’s back door less than two hours before. “Okay, how?”
The brunette’s eyebrows darted up in response. “How what?”
“Don’t ‘how what’ me, you know what I’m talking about!” Rebecca let out an exasperated sigh. She waited for Celeste to figure out the obvious, only to grow even more unhappy when the brunette offered only a blank stare and another set of raised eyebrows. “Emily. How long has she been out of trance? What snapped her out of it?”
“OH!” Celeste immediately brightened. She swelled with pride. “That was me! I snapped her out of it. I didn’t think it would work, but it did!”
“Think what would work?” Curiosity replaced anxiety in Rebecca’s gut. That, and a creeping sense of… jealousy? Jealousy, indeed. She was the master hypnotist, the one who could put even Alice into a trance, and yet here was a girl who had only just learned hypnosis breaking her best friend out of the mental prison that Rebecca had accidentally created. An untrained amateur. “What did you do, or say, or… I’m really curious!”
“It’s… okay, you’re gonna laugh.”
They maneuvered around another crowd of partygoers. “Promise I won’t. Seriously, Celeste, whatever you did… I need to know. Nothing I tried on her worked at all!”
A guilty grin crept across Celeste’s face. “Okay, there was this show I used to watch…”
“No.”
“Uh huh.”
“You de-hypnotized Emily from something you saw on TV?”
“Yep.”
They were nearly at Alice’s door, and Rebecca slowed to a crawl. She needed to hear this one. “I need to hear this one,” she said.
“So do you remember this show called The Action Force?” Celeste paused for a second, hoping for an affirmative response. Getting none, she reluctantly continued. “Okay, so it was this cheesy 90s show that used to come on after Baywatch. Like, every other episode was about hypnotists or mind control or whatever, and in this one episode, this girl got hypnotized and they couldn’t shake her out of it. So then Livvie decides to—”
Crash.
Rebecca’s eyes widened. She stared at Celeste, who stared back with wide eyes of her own. They both turned to face the door, and Rebecca reached for the handle. “Shit! I forgot to tell Fei to leave it unlocked. Fuck! I… whew, thanks, Fei.” She swung the door open and walked inside.
Celeste followed. “Wait, who’s Fei? What’s… oh. Oh shit!”
“I’m sorry,” Fei looked down at the floor in shame. “I was trying to grab a mug from the sink and it slipped out of my hands.” She held up a broken shard for emphasis. “I’ll clean it up,” she concluded. “I promise.”
“That’s okay, Fei.” Rebecca’s eyes were focused entirely on the sleeping Alice and Penelope, both still resting comfortably in their respective chairs. “Have they moved at all since I left? Did they… say anything? Move?”
“No, they’re still out like a light.” Fei opened a random cabinet door and peered inside. “Do you think she has, like, a broom or something? I feel really bad about the mug.”
Rebecca covered the ground between them, catching the Asian girl by surprise. “Fei,” she said, raising her hand. “Sleep for me.”
“Buuhhhhhhhhhnnnnn…” Her eyes slid closed.
“Sleep, Fei. Sleep. Deep, deep sleep.” She motioned to Celeste, who opened the door to Alice’s bedroom. “You’re going to lie down and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Dark and deep. Dark and deep. So sleepy, Fei. Sleep.”
“Sleep…” she murmured as she shuffled towards the bedroom. “So ssss… ssssleepy.”
Rebecca guided her to the bed, which no surprise was untouched and made up for the day. She lay the taller girl on top of the bright blue comforter and slid a pillow under her head. “Rest, Fei. Rest.”
“Nnnn…” Fei sank into the end with a happy sigh. “Ssssssleeeep.”
Rebecca rose from the bed and spun on her heels, coming face-to-face with Celeste. She dodged to her left and Celeste dodged to her right, their bodies colliding with a brief head butt and a multitude of apologies. Rebecca rubbed her forehead as they both watched over Fei’s peaceful, lumbering body.
“Holy…” Celeste bit her lower lip and scrunched her face. “Holy shit. Holy… holy shit. Did you hypnotize them? All of them?” She waved a hand over Fei like a stage magician. “Did you… Jesus, Rebecca, did you hypnotize Alice? What’s going on? Why are they all in Alice’s apartment? Is this the surprise? Because I’m not sure if I like being surprised like this. What do—”
“Shh, hey,” Rebecca said. She kept her voice low and conspiratorial, even though Fei’s loud clattering was evidence enough that none of her hypnotized thralls were going to snap out of trance anytime soon. “Yeah, I did. At the bar. Alice let me. This is Fei—Alice hypnotized her—and the other girl is Penelope. It’s… kind of a long story.”
“Yeeaah… sounds like it.” Celeste reluctantly let Rebecca lead her out of the bedroom and back to the kitchen area.
“First, Alice hypnotized Fei,” she began. “Then she challenged me to hypnotize Penelope. So I put them both under, and brought them back here.” The last part felt good to say, and she smiled. “I did it, Celeste. I hypnotized her!”
Celeste did not seem nearly as happy. “But why? Are you going to wake her up?”
“No! I…” she paused to glance at the two sleeping women. “I’m not. Look. Remember what I told you? Alice hypnotized you.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“And then I hypnotized you so that you could do whatever you wanted, even if Alice didn’t approve.”
Celeste’s eyes dimmed. “Yes, I liked that part,” she purred. She leaned in for a kiss, and Rebecca obliged.
“Mmmm.” smick “God I love you. That’s why we need to do this. If Alice finds out about the changes I made to you, she will brainwash you again and take you away from me forever. Reprogram your mind and make you forget all of this ever happened. Forget that we ever happened.”
She gestured to the Irish woman. “Unless we reprogram her first.”
“What are you going to do, Penelope?”
Her entranced prey gently swayed back and forth. “When I leave the hostel, I will wake up. I will remember nothing. I will go… straight back to my hotel room… I will fall into a deep sleep. I will not remember you or Alice. I will not remember being hypnotized. I cannot be hypnotized.”
She licked her lips. “I must… I must obey.”
“Good.” Rebecca placed her hand on the blonde’s knee. “When I count to three, you will stand up and walk out of the room. You will obey.”
“Yes, Rebecca. I must obey.”
“One, two, three.”
Penelope rose from the chair in one smooth motion, her hands dropping limply to her sides. She took a few short, deliberate steps towards the door before the life began to flow back into her tired body. By the time she slipped out into the hallway, her movements were animated and lifelike.
Celeste was there to catch the door before it slammed shut. “So what about Fei?”
“We’ll let her sleep it off. Alice will remember hypnotizing her when she comes out of trance. It’ll help her to accept our new programming.” She was sitting on a chair stolen from the kitchen, facing Alice. “I don’t know how deep she brings the girls. I don’t… she wouldn’t let me remember much about when we did it to you.” The word you left a bitter, guilty taste in her mouth. “But maybe we can trick her into undoing it for us.”
“What are we doing this for?” The brunette wrapped her strong, toned arms around Rebecca’s upper body, giving her breasts an extra squeeze for good measure. “Why don’t we just send her straight to the police? ‘Hello there, my name is Alice, and I’ve been brainwashing the girls in my hostel.’ Sounds easy enough. You just sent Penelope off, right?”
Because I can fix it. “There’s got to be thirty or forty girls under her control. We can’t free them all, but at least we can have her free the girls that are here now. Take away their trigger phrases and their compulsion to obey Alice… and me. Make it so that they can’t be hypnotized by anyone else. Before anyone else can swoop in and collect them.”
“And then we call the police, right?”
Rebecca didn’t answer.
“What’s your name?”
“Freja.” She smiled. He was cute. A little tall for her tastes, but very cute. “What’s your name?”
“Um… du vil adlyde. You want to obey.”
The word rattled around her empty mind. Obeyobeyobeyobeyobey. “Yes, Master. I hear and obey.”
“Come with me, Freja.”
Brief memories of a flashing screen, a spinning, irresistible spiral. Lust. Fuck. Horny. Serve. Cum. Suck. Fuck. Obey.
She slowly unzipped her coat and reached up to her chest. “I await your commands, Master.” She undid the top two buttons of her blouse and hovered over the third, ready to continue if desired. Sex. Lust. Wet. Hot.
“Let’s go, Freja,” he said.
Her arms fell to her sides as she followed him to his hotel.
“What is your name?”
The word oozed out of her like melting butter. “Allll…ice…”
Even with all of the lights on, the basement looked like a sinister dungeon. Damp stone walls, covered here and there with crumbling bits of East German concrete, made the place look like a horror movie set. Cords and cables snaked off to whatever unsafe, inadequate outlets existed to serve them. Only in the very center of the room, where Alice now sat in her uncomfortable metal chair, was there any sense of cleanliness.
“Do you remember what she did to you?” Celeste hovered at the edge of the overhead lamp’s circle of light, afraid to come any closer.
“Not any of it,” said Rebecca. “You either, I’m guessing.”
“No. Maybe Emily?”
Rebecca shrugged. It was highly unlikely.
“My thoughts, too. Shit, at least I have thoughts! Which one of us goes first?”
“You’re going first.” Rebecca sank down and winced as her knees rubbed against the concrete floor. “No question there. Alice, you can hear only the sound of my voice. Isn’t that nice? My lovely, relaxing voice. Deep in trance. So very deep.”
“Yes, dearie. I hear only your voice.”
“How did you brainwash me?” She looked up at Celeste, still waiting at the edge of the circle. “How did you brainwash us? Program us? Is there a machine?”
“Of course, Rebecca.” Alice’s words were calm and dreamy. “I have a light show. My pretty little light show. You’ll do everything I say after that. Think what… I want you to think.”
“That must be what the monitor is for.” Celeste wheeled the cart and its ancient, bulky monitor towards Rebecca until the power cord reached its limit. “Should I just turn it on? See what happens?”
Rebecca surprised herself with a chuckle. “Turn it on and look right into a hypno-spiral? Yeah no, we’d better ask Alice first before we go exploring.”
“When this is done, I still want you to hypnotize me.”
“You’re serious?” She can’t be serious. “I mean, after all of this is said and done, I’m hanging up my pendant and never looking back. This… my whole life has been like this, Celeste. I mess with people’s minds, and I make mistakes. I let Alice hypnotize me, and then I messed with your head. It’s wrong. I’m done with it.”
“Am I a mistake to you, then?” Celeste took a few steps back, a wounded look on her face. “Is that all I am to you? A mistake to be fixed?” Even in the low light, Rebecca could see the tears forming in her eyes.
“No… Celeste… this…”
“Because I thought we were in love, Rebecca. I thought that we were going to leave here together and start… Jesus, I don’t know, maybe start a life together! If you’re just going to have her wipe my brain and send me back to Troy like none of this ever happened? I can’t, Rebecca. I can’t do that.”
“Alice,” Rebecca began. “You will tell me how to start the video. Where is it located?”
“I will tell you how to start the video. It’s playing on an endless loop. I just shut the monitor off when I’m not using it. I want to… have to save electricity. Too expensive otherwise.”
“Very good, Alice.” She tried to ignore the hazel eyes she knew were burning into her back at that very moment. “I’m going to start the video, and you’re going to watch it. You will let the video brainwash you."
“Yes.”
With a slight groan, she rose from her knees and reached for the monitor. Before she could aim it in Alice’s direction, Celeste grabbed the cart with both hands.
“No,” she said.
Rebecca took a step back. She tried to remember the last time Celeste had ever challenged her. “I need to do this, Celeste.”
“I love you. Don’t you see that? You told me to act like I wasn’t under Alice’s control, and here I am, doing exactly that! Do you see me running away, Rebecca? Do you see me running down the street in a blind panic, because holy shit, I got brainwashed? On my vacation? I stayed because of you. I stayed because I love you. You can’t take that away from me!”
“Okay.” Rebecca let out a breath she’d forgotten that she was even holding. “You win. You stay. But we need to free Emily and the other girls. It’s… I don’t trust anyone else to do it. I don’t know anyone else here, Celeste. Someone else might be tempted to keep them under mind control, even the police psychiatrist. I’m not going to have YOU get deprogrammed by anyone but me. That’s final.” She stared into the brunette’s eyes. “I love you, too. I’ll always love you. I’ll be your lover. I won’t be your master.”
“Fine, then.” Celeste crossed her arms.
“That’s like the universal symbol for ‘not fine at all,’ babe.”
“Oh, I’m your babe now?” Her hard gaze softened. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. You… that was wrong. I’m sorry.” She released her grip on the stand. “Let’s just do this. Where do you want me to sit? It’ll have to be the floor. I didn’t see any other chairs down here.”
“Well, first I’m going to use it on Alice, and then…” A thought occurred to her. “Wait, I have a better idea. Wait here.”
“Are you going to grab a chair for me? It’s okay, I’m not going to even notice the floor once I’m hypno—”
“No, no. I’m going to grab a test subject. Hang on. Sit tight and I’ll be right back down.”
She rushed out of the room without waiting for a response.
Emily?
“No. No no no no no.” Rebecca huffed up the old staircase, exhaling another “no” with each hurried step. “Not going to risk that. I can’t risk that, not after what happened in the bathroom.”
She reached the top of the stairs and slipped back into the hostel. Her doubts followed closely behind. Whether Alice could undo her own brainwashing handiwork—indeed, whether Alice had even considered such a possibility—was a complete unknown. Whatever ‘test subject’ Rebecca chose was going to be exactly that—a girl whose mind she risked melting into slag.
Emily? Fei? Helene? Some other girl? Were any of them really more ‘disposable’ than the others?
She jumped in fright as the big door slammed shut behind her. Things had quieted down quickly; most of the guests would be out partying by now, reducing the pool of potential subjects. Victims, Rebecca.
“Shut up,” she scolded herself. “I know what I’m doing.”
One of the Horsemen? No, they were all gone; Madison Cooke had checked out just that morning, on her way to Paris to unwittingly recruit more hypno-slaves for Alice. If there were anyone worthy of sacrifice, it would be the vapid New York socialite. Would anyone even notice the change if Alice accidentally fried her brain?
Rebecca shook her head. If only. To have those soft brown eyes staring helplessly into hers, those wonderful million-dollar boobs at her fingertips, those cute ears waiting to received whispered, powerful commands… You will be my devoted slave, Madison. You will sacrifice yourself for me. You’ll do anything for me. Anything. Anything for your one and only mistress. Obey.
Yes, Rebecca. I will always obey. My mind and body belong to you.
Come with me, and… oh for fuck’s sake, Rebecca! Stop daydreaming about that shit! This is fucking serious!
She rubbed her eyes and groaned. Between the scene in the club, the sight of Celeste’s beautiful body, Emily’s unintentional groping in the hallway, and the fantasy of a mesmerized Madison Cooke at her command… every last molecule of her body positively ached with pent-up desire. She attempted, once again, to cram it all into the darkest corner of her mind. Think about baseball. Think about… politics? Ugh, that helps! Emily’s uncle with his boxer shorts and back hair…
She was almost back to normal and ready to track her prey to the kitchen when the lobby door creaked open behind her. She considered ignoring the newcomers—what was the point, anyway? The hostel was closing. For good.
“Sorry,” she announced. “We’re closed. No rooms! Try another spot!”
Silence. Then a shy, sexy voice followed, trailing her harsh words like a moth caught in a gust of wind. “I… h…hey, its Rebecca, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she responded. She spun around, feeling annoyed. Who the hell?
“Hi… I don’t know if you remember me, but… I’m sorry, are you okay? Is this a bad time? I can… I can come back, you know. Tomorrow, or whenever.”
That soft, beautiful face. The dark hair that cascaded over her shoulders in a way that even the most talented Renaissance artists would have been challenged to replicate. Those eyes, impossibly beautiful and blue. So, so blue. Rebecca fell into them immediately, and her mind emptied. It was like being hypnotized, only a thousand times more powerful.
A single word finally staggered from the bottom of her mouth.
“Jessica?”