HOSTEL
Chapter Eighteen — Settling the Bill
She stood outside the door for a good five minutes, giving up a dozen times and turning to walk away before being drawn back, irresistibly, uncontrollably. A hand rose, slowly, lifted by the same invisible balloons that eventually dropped her into trance on stage. This time the balloons curled her hand into a fist, and popped, dropping her arm hard against the door. Knock. Lifted, dropped. Knock. Again. Again.
The door opened, and a man in a robe peered at her with studied curiosity. “Hello there,” he said. He looked her up and down, trying and failing to read her body language. He settled for looking confused.
“Hi.” She fell silent, too afraid to say anything else. Wondering if it was too late to run away.
“Umm… hi again?” After a moment his eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh! Are you the A/V girl? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the lighting for tomorrow’s show. It was a little bright on stage tonight. Sometimes people find it hard to go into trance if they feel like they’re under a big spotlight.”
“I’m not… not her. I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m just here to… see you?”
The confusion gave way to a broad grin. “Ooohhh. That. I’m afraid the old stereotype of meeting your hypnotist in his dressing room isn’t a real thing. Sorry. No student reporters and no brainwashed coeds allowed, especially not someone your age. How old are you, anyway?”
“Eighteen and a half,” she said, with more than a hint of pride.
“Yeah, not even close. Sorry. Besides, I’m married.” He held up his hand for emphasis. “Three plus years now. Also, I’m old enough to be your sorta-youngish uncle. So…” He placed his hand on the door and curled his fingers around the edge. “Have a good night, anyway. Thanks for volunteering, I always—”
“No.” Her voice was firm. Confident, even. “I don’t want to be hypnotized. I want to learn how.”
The curious look returned. “How to hypnotize people?”
“Yeah.”
Snort. “Well, shit. I guess that’s the other stereotype, isn’t it? Ha!” He looked at her. Looked into her eyes. “What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“The guy. The guy you want to hypnotize, so you can jump his bones. What’s his name?”
She matched his gaze. “Missy Clarke.”
Most men his age—most women, too—tended to react with surprise when she told them that she was into girls. To his credit, and to her relief, he didn’t bat an eye. “Is she hot?”
“Smoking. I can’t even.”
“Lemme guess, head cheerleader?”
She shook her head. “The opposite. She’s a total science nerd.” The butterflies in her stomach quickly turned into rocks. She was increasingly self-aware of how ridiculous she looked, bothering Robert “The Great Trancini” Mancini in his own dressing room when all he probably wanted to do was to put on his street clothes and go back to his hotel. In a moment he would lecture about how you couldn’t hypnotize anyone against their will, and that it was all just a fantasy, and that she should give up that stupid dream for good. Then she would have no choice but to go home, dejected and sad.
“Missy was in my bio class this year,” she offered, as if that made any difference.
He pulled the door wide open, and stepped back. “That’s good. That’ll make it way easier to put her under. Smart girls are the best subjects. That scientific curiosity they have? Perfect for this.”
“What?” Her eyes widened. This was not the answer she expected. “But…”
“Oh, it’s true! The more curious a person is, the easier it is to get them to focus on your voice and your induction. Tell you a little stage secret. Sometimes the best people to hypnotize are the people who don’t think they can be hypnotized. They want you to throw everything you’ve got at them, because they think it won’t work. What’s your name, kid?”
“Rebecca.”
“You can call me Robert. So here’s another little secret.”
He motioned for her to enter the room, and she did, well aware that crossing the threshold probably meant crossing some very big lines as well. She took a seat on the tattered couch and waited for his promised little secret.
Robert closed the door slowly, taking care not to make any noise. After a moment, he locked it as well. “So, the thing is, people are always going to tell you that you can’t hypnotize someone into doing something they don’t want to do. I tell all of my volunteers on stage the same thing. Every class you take—I assume you’re going to college in the fall?”
She nodded and leaned forward, unsure if this was actually happening, or if she were still on stage in a trance. “Uh huh.”
“Well when you get there, take a whoile bunch of psych classes. Make it your major. You’ll learn a lot. But what you won’t learn in those classes is that what I tell people on stage is a lie. You really can make anyone do anything, Rebecca. You just have to be good enough.”
“Anything?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Like getting someone into bed?”
He held up his ring again. “Three plus years, remember? She’s the best subject I ever had. The hottest, too. When do you start college?”
“Um… in seven weeks. Seven and a half. September 4th.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Sweet. That’s more than enough time to get you started. We start tonight.”
Up. They were going up. Up, up, up.
Everything was still black, a smothering darkness that covered even her own feet. She stumbled several times on the stairs before her legs finally found the right rhythm. Step. Step. Step. It was the first night at the hostel all over again, watching Emily’s sexy ass sway in front of her as they climbed up, up…
Emily. That had to be it. Emily was taking her to the waterfall, the pretty, pretty waterfall from her memories. Sometimes waterfalls were high up in the mountains, and you had to climb a trail to see them. Relieved, she tightened her grip on Emily’s hand and let the redhead lead the way. Emily’s so smart. I love her. She’s so nice to me.
Then her brain filled with thoughts of the waterfall, with all of its rainbows and swirls. Even now, in the dark of night, she knew that they could find it. They would strip naked before it, with their hands roaming each other’s bodies, letting their passions burst into flame before slipping into the cool, refreshing waters of the little pond at its base. The pond would have a little beach, of course, and she’d lay there next to Emily for a while, watching the mesmerizing waterfall together while holding hands.
Emily, beautiful Emily, hair wet and pulled back, droplets of glistening water dripping from her perfect tits, begging Rebecca to reach out and fondle them. Beautiful rainbow colors washing over their wet, mindless, sexy bodies as they embraced, Rebecca’s mouth nuzzling on Emily’s ear, gently moaning as they-
“No. No more climbing.” Another tug, stronger this time, causing her to stumble again. She caught herself just in time. “Here. Come.”
Her uncertainty vanished as quickly as it had formed. “Lead the way, Emily,” she mumbled, confident that they would reach the waterfall any moment now. Best friends, lovers, our dorm room all over again, the pretty, pretty colors. I can’t wait.
She heard a door creak open, somewhere close by in the blackness. “Why… why is there a door in the woods?” A cabin? But Em, the waterfall…
Emily guided her to what felt like a sofa and pushed her down into it. She opened her mouth to protest. “Em… wait…” This isn’t where I want to go!
Her friend crouched in front of her. “Let’s see if this works.”
Snap.
The dark room turned to white. Everything turned to white, the kind of whiteness that atomic bombs made, and she braced herself for the inevitable rush of wind and pressure that would sweep her into eternity. How… a nuclear war in the woods? How, Em? I’m so sorry!
“Oh, sorry about that dearie! I’m shining the torch directly into your face, aren’t I? Let me put this down on… there. There we go, much better. Now please keep quiet. We’re safe as long as we don’t make too much of a fuss.”
Rebecca looked around. The woods were gone, and so was Emily and the cabin. In their place was a sofa, a cold dark room, the faint clanking of steam pipes, and a pair of glacial blue eyes observing her with concern.
She had many questions. As always, she went with the most obvious one.
“Alice?”
It didn’t take long for a door to open. Then two, then three. The sounds of girls in the hallway encouraged others to join them. They compared notes—not that anyone knew what was going on—and gathered supplies. The two French girls dug through their luggage and came up with two oversized candles, originally meant to be souvenirs for the folks back home but instead pressed into service as emergency lighting. Petra found a very old-looking box of matches in the kitchen that, to everyone’s surprise, still managed to produce a flame.
Few girls left, even when everyone realized that the power outage was limited to the hostel itself. None of them heard the whispered commands in the back of their heads, ordering them to stay and await further orders. Ordering them to be available at all times. Programming them to be, like the candles, ready for service at a moment’s notice.
Instead they gathered in small groups—in the kitchen, in the lobby, in their shared bedrooms—swapping stories or huddling around movie-playing laptops and smartphones, blissfully unaware of the chains in their minds.
“This doesn’t look like your apartment,” said Rebecca. She swiped Alice’s flashlight and, before the latter could protest, swept its beam in a lazy circle around her surroundings. The furniture, what little there was of it, was mostly covered in ghostly white sheets. The air smelled of dust and mildew, as did the sofa she’d been rudely dropped onto by her would-be rescuer. Rescuer? Is that what… “Alice, where are we? What happened just now? What’s going on?”
“Well.” Alice puffed up with pride. “It seems that you were about to be enslaved, Rebecca. Fortunately I was there to pull you out of the fire. The lights were an excellent distraction, don’t you think? They’ll never figure out this old East German wiring. Took me long enough to figure it out myself!
“This one?” Edwin twisted his body as far as he could, fully aware that parts of it were already starting to go numb. His fingers scraped against bare metal again, this time hard enough to leave a top coat of skin behind, and he cursed. “MANDY! This one?”
“NO.” Her voice was muffled and distant. “I think I found another panel over here. I don’t know what those switches do. Come here and try these.”
“God. Dammit. Fuck. Fucking fuck.” He inched his way out from under the table and slammed the panel door shut with a loud clang. “We should have won the Cold War when all of these shitty East Berlin apartments burned to the fucking ground.” Rising to his feet, he brushed past the mesmerized Emily, following the tiny glow of Amanda’s phone flashlight. She was on her hands and knees, attempting to pry open another panel. Celeste stood next to her, blank and frozen in place.
“The breakers could be upstairs for all we know, Mandy. Let’s grab what we can and go. We can…” He dropped down to his hands and knees, wincing as the dirty floor made contact with the fresh cuts in his fingers. “Let’s program one of the girls to burn the place down. Take what we can and burn the rest. We’ve got the girlfriend, that’s enough.”
“And I told you from the beginning, I’m not leaving here without the two people we came for! If we don’t find them, they’ll sure as hell come find us! Is that what you want to get from this? A couple of choice cuts and a price on your head? Think, Edwin. Christ!”
“What about her?” He pointed at the brunette. “Maybe she knows something.”
“I’ve never shown you this part of the building, Mistress Rebecca. We’re on the top floor. It’s owned by an Austrian family that’s probably not even aware that they own it. I had an eye towards expanding our business and… well, it didn’t take Peter much effort to break the lock for me. I’ve done nothing with it since then, really. There’s always something else to do!”
“They’re just going to follow us upstairs, though. Why didn’t we go out the front door and get the hell away from them?”
“Mistress,” said Alice. Her blue eyes drifted from confident to worshipful as she seemed to fall back under Rebecca’s spell, her programming gaining control of her mind and resetting her will. “We can leave if you like, dearie. I’ll happily obey you. But I’m afraid we’ll lose track of Celeste and Emily if we leave, for reasons I’ll explain. Shall we leave? I’m certain that they’ll never get the lights back on, not before daylight.”
Rebecca moved an inch, then another. Run for fucks sake Rebecca run. Her mind drifted back to that first day, to her first conversation with Alice. If she’d only found the strength to run then, out the door and out into the streets, getting away from this evil hypnotist and her silky, lilting, seductive voice. Then none of this would have happened.
But Emily would still be her slave, she reminded herself. Celeste, too. And I wouldn’t be here to save them. To make them realize who their true mistress was.
She laced her fingers together. “No,” she finally said, trying to will her voice into sounding braver than she felt. “No, we shouldn’t run. Not without Celeste and Emily.”
“Remember, Mistress, they’re not yours at the moment. They’re both deeply entranced, Emily particularly so. I suspected that we had a mole in our ranks, but as I’ve been rather… occupied, I hadn’t time to decide which of the girls it was. I suppose we both know the answer to that question now.”
“But Celeste is still under my control,” Rebecca protested. She thought of the confused girl in the basement, torn between two masters. And, more chillingly, of Emily—deeply hypnotized and betraying her best friend without the slightest hesitation. “I… I think they tricked her into thinking that the older woman is me.”
“Hypnotized her, Rebecca. If she believes that, there’s nothing you can do right now to make her not believe it.”
“Gah! This place is filthy! Edwin, help me up.”
Amanda took Edwin’s outstretched hand and rose to her feet. She turned to Celeste, face dripping with scorn. “You. The girlfriend. Listen to me and obey. Where is Rebecca right now?”
“I… don’t understand?” She looked at Amanda. “You’re right here, Rebecca. You’re standing right here in front of me.”
“You told her,” Edwin whispered. “The voice. When she hears—”
“I know! I know what I did, Edwin!” She pressed her palms against her face and exhaled. “Celeste. Where. Is. Alice? Aaaalllliissssss. Where would she go?”
“I… I’m sorry, Rebecca, I just assumed you would know? If she wasn’t at the club, she might be in her apartment? Maybe? Did you look there?”
“Where is that? Her apartment. Where is that?”
“On the second floor. I mean, the same place it was yesterday.” Celeste faced what she assumed was the direction of the cellar door, peering through the darkness. “Either that or she’s trying to get the lights on, right?”
“Obey. Take us there. And turn on your phone flashlight, we’ll need it.”
“Yes, Rebecca. But I… I stepped on my phone. I can’t see where it is. I think I broke it.”
Amanda bit her lip. “Oh, you stupid! You’re—”
Edwin pushed between the two women. “Whoa, whoa! Come on, Mandy. You grab her and I’ll grab the other one.” He turned until his flashlight located Emily, standing exactly where they’d left her.
“I told you we should have brought a gun,” she hissed.
“You can’t just buy guns in this country, Mandy… oh fuck it, never mind. Emily! Follow me. Now.”
“Yes. Master.”
“They’re new to the business, Mistress, but not to me. Edwin used to be a nightclub hypnotist, can you believe it? We would sometimes end up at the same places at the same time, looking for the same targets. Of course, I would get to them first, because he wasn’t very good. Or any good, really. How that man made money on stage…”
Rebecca pressed her hands together, then pulled them apart. Together, apart. Together, apart. Anything to keep from thinking of what was happening to Celeste and Emily while she and Alice hid in this loft like fugitives. “Who’s the woman? Amanda? Is that his wife?”
“Can’t say I know much about her. I’ve never seen her before tonight. She’s a right nasty one, from what they tell me.”
“They.” Rebecca had an idea who ‘they’ were, but she waited for a response.
“The contacts I work with, mostly. You don’t…” Alice feigned shock, and gasped. “You don’t think I’d steal their girls, would you? Oh Mistress, I’d never, I promise you. I’ve got standards and principles and most of all, taste! Their girls are trouble, on drugs mostly, willing to let themselves be hypnotized for a ‘study’ so they can get quick cash. You can’t hypnotize those demons away, Rebecca. I’ve tried.”
“So they came here to raid us? Alice, we need to do something quick! All of my girls… Jesus Alice, they’ve got Celeste! Emily! My best friend and my girlfriend! I’m not just going to sit here and wait until they’re gone. Let’s go downstairs and kick their ass and take back the hostel!”
She rose from the sofa, only to find Alice pushing her back down again. The Irish woman held the leverage and was surprisingly strong. Rebecca reluctantly let herself be pushed. “Alice. I command you to help me rescue Celeste. Now!”
“Oh I am, Mistress! That’s why I’m not letting you down there. Now there’s two of us and four of them. You’ve got to count Emily and Celeste as theirs now, dearie, and that’s just the start of it. Celeste knows all of the same keywords as you, which means she can turn all of your slaves into theirs. We can save Celeste and we can save everyone else…”
“But Alice…”
“…but we simply must do it the right way! And that means no charging into battle!”
“Then I command you to find a solution,” she said. “Right fucking now, Alice. If they walk out of here with Celeste, I swear to God I will murder them and you. I’m not going to lose her.”
“Yes, Mistress. I’m trying, you see! Just give me a moment.” Alice joined her on the sofa. “They’re hungry. That’s their weakness. That’s what we’ll exploit.”
“You said they were new. So they steal a bunch of girls and reprogram them all at once.”
“I believe someone else did something quite similar most recently, do you think?” Alice’s grin was nearly as bright as the flashlight on the end table.
“You are my slave, Alice. Don’t ever get snarky with me again. Get us out of this mess.”
Alice’s haughty glow snuffed itself out in an instant. “Yes, Mistress Rebecca.” Her eyes closed and reopened. “They’re small fish in a small pond. How does one get to be a big fish? By eating the other fishies. The bigger, the better. If they knock you off, Rebecca, and take control of all of us—if they take over this hostel… they’ll be the big fish. And they know it. Can you see where I’m going with this?”
Rebecca did. “They’re not leaving here without us.”
“Exactly. We’re the rabbits, dearie. And I know just which rabbit hole to lead them to.”
“Take Celeste upstairs to Alice’s apartment. Have her drop every girl you find along the way. She’s got their codes in her mind. Celeste, I want you to do whatever Edwin tells you. He’s a friend of ours and you trust him completely.”
“Okay, Rebecca.” Celeste placed her hands on Edwin’s chest and smiled. “Edwin, it’s so nice to see you! I’m so glad you’re here. We need to find Alice and turn the lights back on.”
He faked a friendly smile. “Good to see you again too, Celeste. Do you know where Alice is?”
“Let’s go upstairs. I bet she’s there. Hey Rebecca? I’m taking Edwin upstairs to look for Alice, okay?”
“That’s very good, slave,” said Amanda. “I’ll stay here with Emily.”
“Mmm,” the brunette cooed. “You’re so sexy when you command me like that, baby. Let’s make out before we get these lights back on, okay?”
“Off you go. Hurry. Listen to Edwin!”
“Okaaay!”
Amanda waited for their footsteps to fade away.
“Emily. You have no mind. You have no thoughts. You are an instrument.”
“I am an instrument,” she droned in response.
“Let’s find you a weapon.”