HOSTEL
Chapter Seven — Like a Local
She sat in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and doing her best to ignore the happy, animated conversations of the girls around her. It was hard to be a curmudgeon in Alice’s hostel, where everyone got the best night’s sleep and had the most enjoyable stay of their lives. More than one prospective new friend approached with a smile on her face, only to be defeated by Rebecca’s raised eyebrows and skeptical glares. Alone and grumpy, she settled for gazing into the black circle of coffee in front of her, watching tendrils of steam slowly rise up and vanish into thin air. Just like Olivia.
“Hey! Other Rebecca!”
The redhead yanked out a chair and threw herself into it before Rebecca could even look up from her mug. “Hey! I saw you last night but you left before I could come over! Did you and Celeste do anything fun?” Her brown eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Hey, Other Emily.” Rebecca’s tired voice was a sharp contrast to Emily’s bubbly enthusiasm. “No, we were both feeling worn out, so we kind of called it a night.”
Emily squirmed in her chair. “You two are so cute together! I wish I could find a guy who would look at me like she looks at you. Le. Sigh. You have any plans for the rest of the day? Or tonight? Petra and Olga want to hang out at the club tonight. I know it’s getting kind of old going there every night but… wanna come?”
“Maybe. I’ll see if Celeste wants to go.” Rebecca eyed the kitchen door, expecting Alice to stroll in at any moment. To put all of the girls into a trance with a wave of her hand and a cheerful hello dearies. “We might just stay in,” she added. “Play it by ear.”
Emily’s smile faded. “So.” She looked at Rebecca with matronly concern. “What’s going on? You’re on vacation, you hooked up with a hot girl, you’re in an amazing hostel… why so glum?”
Rebecca opened her mouth to answer, but froze, unable to think of anything to say. I just watched a girl’s mind get erased. Also, you’re deeply hypnotized, Other Emily. We all are, all of us here. Alice brainwashed us all into serving her. But none of those things existed to anyone else in the hostel.
Besides, she was free—at least within certain liberally-applied confines—to do whatever she wanted. She could hypnotize the redhead in an instant, take her back to her room, have amazing sex. This Emily was nearly as beautiful as her own, with the same red hair, the same great tits and legs and ass, the same happy-go-lucky demeanor. Just a few hypnotic sentences and she could have a brand new girl in her bed.
Instead, she shook her head and tried again. “It’s just… I dunno. This trip just didn’t turn out the way I expected it to turn out, you know?”
“Hey, it happens!” Emily’s smile was back, warm and sincere and very much welcomed at a time like this. “We all have some down days when we travel. It’s stressful.”
Rebecca tried and failed to imagine the girl across from her ever being ‘down’ about anything. “Yeah, that’s true,” she admitted.
“So. Let me tell you what I would do, and what I always make my Rebecca do, when we’re feeling like crap. One, we feel like crap. Rebecca’s really good at that part, hee!” She winked and grinned. “Then, we go out and party. Bar, club, local library, doesn’t matter. We get out and you know why? Because holy shit, you’re in a totally different country! Like, how lucky is that, right?”
Rebecca smiled. In spite of everything, she smiled. “Ok, then what?”
“Then, once you’ve had a good drink and gotten laid, you figure out what’s bothering you and you just deal with that head-on. Take no prisoners! Or, you do what I do, and you make your friend hypnotize someone into thinking that they’re a chicken. It always cheers me up! Seriously though, do the first one. Not the second one.”
Wait, did she just say… “Wait… your Rebecca is into hypnosis?”
“She’s like, crazy good at it! Like, she waves her hands and you’re all I AM IN YOUR POWER MASTER, I’m not kidding! Then I make her turn people into chickens, or I make them make out with someone.” She shared a guilty look with the stunned Rebecca. “I’m kind of a bad influence. But… wait. Waaaaaait a fucking second!” Her eyes widened into saucers. “Do not even tell me that you know how to hypnotize people! OH MY GOD do not, Rebecca! I can’t even handle that weirdness, it’s too much for one trip, please please please tell me the truth!”
“I don’t,” Rebecca lied. “No chickens for me.”
Emily’s shoulders slumped in what was either a sign of relief or disappointment. “Seriously, that would have been too fucking unreal, if you’d been a hypnotist too.”
“Not yet. Maybe I should buy a book…”
“Ohmygod please do, that would be hilarious! It’s so much fun!”
Rebecca’s eyes darted to the door again, just in time to see Alice saunter in. The older woman made a beeline for their table.
“Why hello, dearies!” Alice had changed into jeans and a smart black sweater that matched her dark tresses. “So good to see you all mingling. Sometimes I worry I haven’t enough activities planned to get the guests to meet one another.” She took up a position behind Other Emily and crossed her arms. For once, she wasn’t carrying any paperwork.
“We’re just talking about our doubles back home,” said Rebecca. “Emily’s Rebecca is a hypnotist.”
“Oh! Well that is simply fascinating! We’ll have to invite her over to Berlin to do a show! See, these are the very sorts of things we need to have more of here. Get the girls out of their rooms and socializing, having fun. It can’t be all museums and nightclubs, can it?” She looked down at the redhead in front of her. “Oh, Emily, weren’t you going shopping today?”
Emily stiffened as her eyes glazed over. “Yes,” she said. “I’m going to go shopping today.”
“You should get going, dearie. Wouldn’t want to be late. I left some suggestions on places in your room. You should take a look at those and decide.”
“Yes, Alice. I should look at those and decide.”
“Off you go then, dearie! Chop chop!”
Emily rose from the chair and and pushed it back. “I have to go, Rebecca.” Her voice was flat and calm. “I have to go shopping. It was nice to talk to you. Goodbye.”
Alice took Emily’s place in the chair as the redhead drifted out of the kitchen in a daze. “She’s a lovely girl, that one.”
“Who loves shopping, apparently. Or… I mean, that’s a trigger phrase, right?” Rebecca eyed the other girls in the room, but no one seemed to pay her any attention. “What does it make her do?”
“Well, go shopping, for one.”
Rebecca frowned.
“Never mind that for now. I came to apologize, dearie,” said Alice. Like Emily, her face was full of concern. “I really mean to do so. I’m sorry. I can see how that business with Olivia seemed harsh and cold. Broke my heart, it did, it really did! I had to do what’s best for her. People in this business can be cruel and violent, Rebecca. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want you to become like them, either. If you’re going to be a mind controller, I want you to learn to do it the right way.”
Silence fell over the table. At the counter, three stunning young women chatted in broken English, attempting to make plans for the evening. Beside them, the auburn-haired girl from the previous day sat alone, reading a book. Rebecca swung her attention back to those piercing blue eyes, and a face that patiently waited for her response. She took a deep breath.
“Show me. Show me everything. Tell me everything.”
Tell me everything, Em. You’re completely relaxed, and completely honest with me. Because you trust me. Do you understand?”
“Yessssss… I underssstand.” Emily was sitting at the foot of the bed. Arms, legs, and head all pointed directly to the floor, and her words were slightly muffled behind a curtain of red hair. “Trussssst you.”
“Tell me everything you know about Roger Thorpe.”
“He’sssssaguy. In my classss.” Her head bobbed up slightly at the mention of Roger’s name. Rebecca gently pressed down until Emily’s head was as low as it could go.
“That’s right. So very sleepy, Emily. Sleepy and listening to me. Roger Thorpe is a guy in your class.”
Another faint head bob, this time from left to right. “Roger Thorpe isssss... a guy. In one of my… class.”
“How do you feel about him?” She knew what the answer would be.
“I don’t… remember?”
“You will remember now, as you listen to me and obey. You think that Roger Thorpe is cute and funny. You’ll ask him out on a date. Nothing serious.”
“Assssk him out... on a date. Nothing ssssserious.”
“Deeper now, Emily. Deeper and deeper.”
“Yeeesss…”
Rebecca had never been to Alice’s private quarters. She was briefly surprised to learn that Alice even had a living quarters here in the hostel. Even though the woman spent nearly every waking second of the day—and a good portion of the evening, too—either here or at Club Trabant, she somehow pictured Alice as a commuter. The kind of woman who wrapped thing up at work and took a train back to the suburbs, where she drank wine and watched TV until the early morning hours. A normal, everyday Alice who shopped for groceries and did crossword puzzles.
But it was not to be. That Alice didn’t exist. The only Alice in the world was the workaholic one who was forever obsessed with hypnotizing and brainwashing half of Europe. Rebecca felt a little sorry for her. It was a lonely, stressful life. No wonder she wanted an assistant.
The two of them stood for a while in what passed for Alice’s living room, before the older woman gestured to a stylish black easy chair in the corner. Rebecca settled into it until her arms, perched on the chair’s sides, were level with her chest. She felt like a starship captain about to zoom off into outer space. To boldly go where no hypnotist… oh, fuck it, let’s do this. “Alice, this place… it’s more than just a hostel, isn’t it?”
“Ah ha! Now see, dearie, I was waiting for you to come to this conclusion on your own. I knew you would.” Her blue eyes bored twin holes into Rebecca’s own. “Tell me, what was it that let you know? Surely it wasn’t me dealing with poor Olivia, was it?”
“No,” said Rebecca. She folded her hands in her lap. “It’s just common sense. There’s what, twenty girls in this hostel?”
“Thirty, most days.”
“Thirty girls in this hostel. All in their twenties, all very good looking, all totally hypnotized and under your control. But why hypnotize all of them, and not just Madison Cooke and Elke and the other horsemen?”
“I could just be hypnotizing them to keep them docile and happy.” Alice sat back in her chair. She was clearly enjoying this game. “What makes you think there’s more to it than that?”
“Because you’re not just hypnotizing them. You’re… what was it you said the other day? You’ve got them programmed. When we took Celeste downstairs, before you put me under… you were doing something to her. Brainwashing her. And then Olivia. So there’s got to be more to it.”
Alice leaned forward with anticipation. “And? What’s the more to it, Rebecca? You’ll think I’m an odd duck for asking, but this is important to me. What’s your best guess?”
Rebecca placed her hands over her eyes, tapping her forehead as she thought about it. “You program them. Emily goes out shopping. Celeste falls in love with me. The French girls make out… you said that Olivia got caught up with a guy…”
Alice was positively giddy. “Think you’ve got it, dearie.”
Rebecca puckered her lips, trying to expel the word that came to mind. “Pros… prostitution?”
“EXACTLY!” Alice beamed. “Oh, I knew you’d figure it out. I knew I’d never have to painfully explain it to you. See? Great minds think alike, Rebecca.” She held up her dainty teacup and thrust it forward. “Cheers!”
Rebecca didn’t feel all that clever, or proud of herself. “So, a brothel. You’re running a brothel.”
“Well I don’t keep them all around just for accolades and adulation, now do I? These girls all work for their supper. There’s a demand for high-quality call girls in this city, Rebecca. None of that rubbish with the needle tracks and the venereal diseases, there’s plenty of that as it is. Good, clean, beautiful girls with sexy foreign accents and a certain desire to do anything they’re asked to do. But, see, that’s the brilliant part. This isn’t a brothel in the slightest! Anyone coming here would see exactly what these girls see themselves—a lovely and affordable place to spend the evening, nothing more.”
“And that’s all they’ll remember.”
“Exactly. In fact, Rebecca…” Alice narrowed her eyes. “I haven’t the slightest notion of what you’re talking about. Now, say these girls were to go, oh, shopping for the day, and a certain man or woman were to say a certain phrase to them? A phrase that they’d paid a different person in a different place good money to learn about? Well, I can’t do anything about that, dearie. I’m not the morality police!”
Alice laughed, sending little bits of tea spilling out of the top of the cup and onto her jeans. “Ow! Ow!” She swatted at her legs, trying to brush them dry. “I’m a clumsy slob, Rebecca. Don’t hold that against me.”
A raised eyebrow. “I’ll try to overlook it.”
“That’s the spirit! Now, do you have any questions?”
As always, Rebecca had a thousand questions. But this time, she knew exactly which one she wanted to ask first. Had to ask first. “If you want me to be your partner, Alice… I mean, a full partner in all of this… am I supposed to sell girls, too? Not just hypnotize them, but sell them? Like a pimp?”
Alice leaned forward until she threatened to topple over. “We don’t sell girls here, Rebecca. We sell passwords.”
“Excuse me, miss?”
She spun around. “Oh! You surprised me! Sorry, yes? Can I help you?”
“It’s a lovely day for a roll in the hay.”
“I… mmmmm… yes, master. I hear and obey.”
“You’re going to go with me now, right? Wherever I want?”
“Of course, Master. I await your command.”
“Alright, dearie. Which one do you fancy?”
Rebecca watched the three hypnotized guests walk back and forth in front of her, smiles painted on their otherwise blank faces. “I feel like I’m at the world’s weirdest fashion show, Alice.”
“Nonsense,” said Alice. She stood at the end of the row, gently turning the girls and sending them back in the opposite direction. Across from her, a mesmerized Juliette played the same role. “You’ve been imagining a moment like this ever since you bought your first pocket watch. Now, pick your favorite. Bit like a gameshow, isn’t it?”
Helene, the tall French brunette. Lauren, the auburn-haired girl from the kitchen. Petra, the athletic blonde. All marching back and forth in the nude, oblivious to everything except Juliette and Alice, the ‘bumpers’ at the ends of their parade route. None of the three girls particularly set Rebecca’s private parts on fire, cute as they were, and she allowed herself to imagine a deeply hypnotized Jessica marching in their place. That, she’d choose in an instant. Out of these three… “Helene,” she finally spat out. “Let’s try Helene.”
“You do fancy the brunettes, don’t you?” Alice chuckled and smiled at Juliette, who provided a blank stare in return. “Girls, you may stop now. Stand in place and listen to me.”
“Yes, Alice.”
“Yes, Alice.”
“Oui, Alice.”
“Lauren? Petra? You will both go back upstairs and go directly to your rooms. As soon as your room door closes behind you, you will awaken and remember none of this. Go.”
“Yes, Alice,” they responded, almost in unison. They slowly made their way to the door and pulled their robes from the coat rack next to it. Alice waited for them to shuffle out, and for the heavy steel door to clang shut, before returning her attention to Rebecca.
“Now. This is what all the fuss is about. The hostel, the club, myself, you… it all revolves around this. Take these two. I picked up Helene and Juliette last December, when they came to town to do a bit of holiday sightseeing. They both spent a day and a half in this very room being utterly reprogrammed into my service. Not that either one could possibly tell you such a story. Helene? Dearie? Tell Rebecca about your trip to Berlin last December.”
“Oui, Alice.” She pivoted to Rebecca. “We flew to Berlin to see the Christmas markets. It was wonderful! We had a wonderful time. We stayed in this wonderful hostel! It was so comfortable. The owner was so nice! She—”
“Enough, Helene.”
“Oui, Alice.”
Rebecca frowned. “She loves to say the word ‘wonderful,’ doesn’t she?”
“I blame myself for that.” Alice crossed her arms and pouted. “Not that anyone’s noticed up until now, thank you very much! But last year, I was still working from a script I’d picked up. It worked well enough—you can see that here in front of you—but I’ll admit that it was a bit unimaginative. Now, here, take this.” She handed a sheet of paper to Rebecca. “Third line down. See where it has her name? Say the line next to that. It’s her trigger.”
Rebecca held the sheet out in front of her like an actress rehearsing a play. “Spring is loveliest in—”
“Not to me, to her! I want you to see how she reacts to it. This is what we make, Rebecca. This is our product! Now, give it a go!”
Rebecca turned to the mindless brunette. “Helene, spring is loveliest in the fall.”
Helene’s eyes rolled into her head as her shoulders fell slack and her body shuddered. For a moment, Rebecca feared that she had given out the wrong command, or that the poor girl’s brain had finally melted down after one too many switch-flips. She opened her mouth to ask Alice about it. Just then the brunette seemed to recover, and stared at Rebecca with an uncomfortable intensity.
“Yes, Mistress. I hear, and obey.”
And there you have it, dearie!” The Irish woman clapped with excitement. “She’s yours for the next two hours. Normally they carry an alarm clock with them, but that’s really more for the client than for themselves. They’ve got the countdown going in their heads, you see. In exactly two hours, she will stop whatever she’s doing and inform me that the job is complete.”
“What happened to ‘oui Alice’? She’s saying yes to everything now.” She looked at Helene. “You’re saying ‘yes’ to everything now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mistress. I await your command.”
Rebecca threw up her hands, confused.
“Look, it’s quite simple. I’m not a walking dictionary, Rebecca. When I program their minds, I need to get proper feedback to know it’s worked. In English! Heavens! Next you’ll be expecting me to learn proper German!” She turned to Helene and snapped her fingers. “Sleep, Helene.” The brunette’s head dropped instantly.
“I thought I had two hours,” said Rebecca. She made an exaggerated smirk for emphasis.
“Oh, I do love it when you’re saucy, dearie. Is there anything else you’d like to know? Is there anything you’d like to add? This is about it as far as things go. Girls come to the club, or book a room thanks to our horsemen. You and I will hypnotize them and bring them down here to be brainwashed. They’ll spend their vacation here, then we’ll program them with fake memories and a desire to return, and wait for the next batch to—well, speak up Rebecca! What’s on your mind?”
“I…” Rebecca began. “I honestly don’t know, Alice. Controlling a girl like Celeste is incredibly hot. You’re right, it’s something I’ve dreamed of. The power I have over her, the look in her eyes when I trance her, when we’re in bed together…”
“Surely there’s no ‘but Alice’ to the end of that?”
Rebecca stared straight into those hypnotic blue eyes. “But, Alice,” she said, ignoring the Irish woman’s predicable groans. “I just picked out a woman like a… like a… lobster. It doesn’t feel hot or sexy to me. It’s not something I’ve dreamed about doing. It just feels… wrong.”
Alice groaned again, louder this time. “You disappoint me, dearie! I’m offering you a chance here, Rebecca! Look at Helene and Juliette here, completely under our control. Beautiful, ready, willing… this is what your power can do! This, Rebecca! Real results! Real profits! Was I not right before about you, when you swore up and down that you weren’t into controlling Celeste’s mind? How do you feel about it now, after having a go at it?”
“But, this is diff—”
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life hypnotizing girls into making out with their friends? Waste your tremendous talent on cheap party gags? Well, I don’t want that for you! I don’t just want you to be happy, Rebecca. I want you to be successful! You’ll come to like this business. I know I have. I dare say you’ve earned a little happiness.”
Rebecca eyes Helene’s tall, fit body. The girl hadn’t moved an inch since being dropped back into trance. Her mind was a blank slate.
”Your mind is open and empty, Emily. Open and empty to me. Blank and empty and relaxed. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Rebecca.”
“You’re as deep as you can possibly go, Em. As deep into trance as you can possibly go. Deeper than ever before. Blank and empty and open to my commands.”
Rebecca knew how to lead her subjects into a deep trance, but whether anyone could really ‘go deeper’ was really a mystery to her. Was there really a difference? There seemed to be—Emily looked positively catatonic, sitting in the thrift store chair and mindlessly watching the endless twists and turns of Rebecca’s crystal. “Listen to me, Em. You will listen and obey. Do you understand?”
“Yes...” The word seemed to ooze out of her. Something done entirely on instinct, like an arm muscle yanking a wayward hand away from a hot stove. Rebecca admired her own handiwork. If this was instinct level, she could do almost anything to Emily’s mind. Make her unafraid of heights. Mold her into the perfect straight-A student. Turn her into a devoted slave.
No. Never. Never again. No more of this. It was time to fix things. “How do you feel about me, Emily? How do you feel about Rebecca Sanders?”
Her lips curled into a faint smile, even this deep in trance. “I love Rebecca Sanders. I am madly in love with Rebecca Sanders.”
“No.” She bit her lip. “No, Em. You are not.”
“I am not.”
“I’m not a madwoman, Rebecca. If this isn’t the life for you, you don’t have to take it. We’ll get you back into trance and replace all of this with some memories of Checkpoint Charlie and schnitzels as big as your head. Meet up with your friend at the airport and have a nice long flight back to the States. I’m just asking you to think it over. For one day. That’s all I ask.”
“For one more day?”
Alice spread her arms wide. “All I ask, dearie. Think it over.”
Celeste peered over her battered copy of The Fault in Our Stars as Rebecca stormed through the door and began rummaging through her backpack. “Hey, sweetie! I missed you! Where have you been?”
“I met with Alice,” she responded, as she yanked out spare socks and rain jackets from the depths of her pack. “We chatted for a little bit. Hey, Celeste, can I ask you something?”
The brunette dropped her book onto the mattress and leaned forward. “Anything for you, Rebecca. As long as we have sex afterwords. I’m dying for a good fucking!”
Rebecca ignored her. She found the notepad she was looking for and hastily began to put words to paper. “I don’t have the best handwriting, but I’ll try to be legible for you.” A pause, followed by more writing. “I had an idea, and I think it might work, but I’m going to need your help for this.”
“I obey your every command, Rebecca. You know that. I love you so much, I’d… well, I don’t even know what I wouldn’t do. Start World War III for you, I guess. Unless… unless you really wanted me to?”
Rebecca made some final notes, then tossed the entire notepad to Celeste. It landed with a soft plop at the brunette’s feet. “I’m going to get settled into bed, and then you’re going to read that to me. And use this.” Her hand reached into her jeans and closed around a familiar object.
Celeste looked up from the notepad. “I can’t do this, Rebecca! I have no idea how!”
It was too late. Rebecca had already kicked off her shoes and propped the pillows on the spare bed. She lay against them and patted the edge of the mattress. “Please, Celeste. I need you to try. Come here.”
“Yes, Rebecca. I’ll try.” Reluctantly, she climbed out of her own bed and kneeled next to Rebecca’s. She held the notepad in one hand and the crystal pendant in the other, swinging the latter in front of Rebecca’s determined eyes.
“Okay.” She gave the pendant a slight twist. Facets of light washed over Rebecca’s face. “Watch the crystal, Rebecca. Watch, and relax. Listen, and relax…”