The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

But, you say, surely twenty-year-olds cannot run away from home: they’re adults. I would agree, a twenty-year-old does not run away, he strikes out on his own—but note I wrote ‘he’! A girl must pass directly from father to husband, without dropping in between the two. The world is simply too daunting for a girl without a chaperone.

‘When Lacey went missing, my husband was quite, well, quite, um, worked up,’ says Mrs Thwack, the runaway’s mother. Mrs Thwack is a middle-aged woman, who can only manage eye contact with the porcelain doll on the tea table. ‘My husband went straight to the police, but when they told him that an adult leaving her parents did not a “missing person” make, he, well, he spent a night in gaol.’

‘He’s often violent?’ asks Eugenie, leaning over the tea table towards Mrs Thwack.

I tell Eugenie to shush, but Mrs Thwack stammers an assurance, ‘No more… forceful than needed. And his boisterous did work. The police found Lacey.’

‘Only thing to shut him up,’ says Eugenie, yelping when I slap her on the wrist. Honestly, there’s being free and easy around clients, and then there’s letting your tongue run loose. I can’t say I find Eugenie’s manner unattractive, but it’s just not professional.

‘My husband,’ says Mrs Thwack, ‘well, you can’t make him angry—I mean, you can! You can easily make him angry. Don’t make him angry. I don’t want Lacey making him angry.’ She almost manages to look me in the eye, by staring at my nose. ‘Mrs Leashem, I’ve heard of your services. Whatever you do, it would always be better than, than my husband’s anger.’

‘Have no doubt about my services,’ say I, standing up from my arm chair. ‘Better than your husband’s anger? Why, better than a spinster’s flat, better even than a shrew’s marriage bed, and certainly better than a runaway’s life.’

Mrs Thwack tells me her daughter Lacey would be in the stable, tending to her bicycle. (A woman with a bicycle! It’s worse than I thought.) Leaving Eugenie to converse with Mrs Thwack, I enter the stable, empty of horses, occupied only by an upside down bicycle, and a girl. I say ‘girl’, but her riding trousers and vest protest otherwise. I will have to strip her naked ensure she has breasts and hips. She sits on a crate as she holds a wrench to the bicycle’s massive front wheel.

Approaching from behind I say, ‘I’ve never seen a bicycle up close!’ And with good reason: just touching one of these devices can turn a woman’s womb upside down.

‘Who are you?’ She doesn’t even look at me. She oils her wheel and gives it a spin.

‘Mrs Leashem.’ I look for a seat, but there is only hay-strewn ground. I stand. ‘Your mother told me to speak with you.’

She glances at me. ‘So you’re the “counsellor”?’ She spits in the hay, chuckling. ‘I expected more of a hag. Or, least, a girl older than me.’ She spins the wheel, finds it stiff, oils it, spins again, and smiles. ‘I don’t need no counselling, I don’t need no parents, I don’t need no husband. All’s I need is this bicycle and the job I’ve got lined up at that carpenter’s in Manchester.’ She sighs. ‘Job I’d have right now if dad hadn’t thrown a tantrum.’

A feisty one, not one where I could just look into her eyes and whisper a few soporific syllables. I would have to speak her language, so she could understand my meaning.

‘Entirely apt,’ I say. ‘You don’t need no counsellor, no dad, no husband.’

She turns to face me, squinting. ‘What—’

‘Many parents want me to alleviate their girl’s maladies—but you know parents.’ I smirk at her. ‘They often smother the children they embrace. One busy-body told me to stop her daughter going to the beach—indecent, she said!’

I laugh, and so does Lacey. I do not tell Lacey that that daughter now cannot stand the stench of salt water.

‘I came,’ I say, ‘to see whether your mother’s concerns were reasonable. Obvious answer, because you don’t got no problems.’ I walk to her bicycle, and ask if I could touch it. When she agrees, I spin the wheel, neither slowly or quickly. ‘What you desire is freedom. Eminently understandable! And the most basic freedom is freedom of movement.’

Spin, spin, spin, spinning the wheel at a constant speed, the spinning spokes forming a gravitational centre that have already drawn in Lacey’s eyes.

‘Bicycles are a boon to women,’ I say. ‘We can ride further and faster than walking, and at far less expense than a carriage.’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I just go riding.’ Her posture relaxes, as her eyes flicker, now rolling with the spinning wheel, now resting on the still centre.

‘And those rides were so freeing,’ I say. ‘Riding without a care, without a thought, grasping peace and relaxation, your wheels spinning, unstoppably spinning.

Spinning spokes reflect in her eyes.

‘You see yourself riding, don’t you, Lacey?’

‘Yeah…’

‘You are riding by yourself, to where you, and you alone, choose to go. Your father told you to stay at home, to let him take you in his carriage to meet your fiancé—he told you to never do something as silly as ride off on your own. But you’re going to show him, aren’t you? You’re riding to Manchester, Lacey. But where are you right now?’

‘Country road…’ she mumbles.

‘You ride along a country road, the only sound the rustle of the leaves and the click of your wheels, the only sight the road ahead and the hills on either side. No mummy or daddy to be seen.’

A smile grows on her as I weave this fantasy of independence.

‘Day turns to twilight turns to night. Those hills, which seemed to promise infinite freedom on all sides, now rise above you, bounding you in. The country road vanishes into the night. You squelch your wheel into the wet grass. Lost. You set your bike against a tree and check your map in the dim, dim moonlight, squinting, straining your eyes. You do not hear the grass crushing beneath footfalls, do not hear the branch cracking right behind you, do not feel the wolf’s breath on your neck.’

Lacey’s breathing grows haggard. Her glassy eyes shimmer with fear.

‘But you soon notice, the heat of the wolf’s body, the stench of its breath. You spin around, but too late, it lunges. Its paws push down on your palms, as its tongue slathers over your face. (What a pity you wear no cosmetics. Such a taste would put it right off.)’

Lacey cannot wipe the sweat flowing from her forehead and neck. I almost feel sorry for her, but then I recall that this terrifying fable is only meant to save her from actual horrors—I merely administer inoculation.

‘Despite the dark, you see a massive silhouette, more massive than the wolf. It holds the wolf aloft by the neck, before walloping its gut, kicking it in the backside. As the wolf whimpers away, so you whimper. The giant saved you, but you are too scared to move. The giant scoops you up, cradles you in its warm chest, so warm, so safe.’

Lacey’s breathing steadies, her sweat dries, and she looks more tired than relaxed.

‘Looking up at your saviour, you recognise him: your father! Your father trekked all the way through the countryside to save you from your short-sighted silliness. What do you say to your father?’

‘Thank you, daddy,’ Lacey slurs. I tell her that isn’t enough. ‘Sorry, daddy…’

‘Mere words are not enough, Lacey. You entered this mess because you believed you knew better than your father—because you disobeyed him. What will you do from now on?’

‘Obey daddy....’

‘You will obey him, trust him, follow him, until he gives you to your future husband. Do you understand?’

‘Yes…’

‘Very good,’ I say. ‘In a few seconds, you will wake up. You will only remember I told you a very interesting fairy-story, which made you rethink all your silliness.’

I stop spinning, which dizzies Lacey so much she starts swaying around to compensate. I count her to wakefulness. She stands up, but almost falls backwards.

‘My fuck,’ she says. ‘I never done thought of it like that. Daddy just wanted me safe.’ Mixing on her face are the fear of a future she narrowly avoided and shame at the filial ingratitude that almost lead her to that future. ‘I have to obey daddy.’ The words strain from her mouth, like a mathematical conclusion which the calculating economist despises but cannot refute.

‘Then,’ I say, ‘go to, and prostrate yourself.’

With the reluctant eagerness of an atheist just converted to Christ, she enters the House of her Earthly Lord. As she dashes through the living room, she steals her mother’s attention from her conversation with Eugenie. Mrs Thwack’s face is a good deal more ambivalent than I have right to expect—I have saved her daughter, doesn’t she know! Eugenie’s face, on the contrary, is anything but ambivalent: it contorts in fear. I inform Mrs Thwack of my good work, which so exhausts her with relief that she retires to her room. Our work done, I pull Eugenie’s arm towards the door, but she remains seated, and pulls at my arm to hiss in my face.

‘Mr Thwack is a beater,’ the words steam through her teeth.

Patting Eugenie’s head, I say, ‘What have I always told you, Eu-Eu, “A spanking a day keeps the wife under sway”.’

Eugenie sucks air in and out, face hard and thoughtful. She stands up. ‘There’s spanking, and then there’s bleeding.’

Hallucinations of red dripping from blue shivers me. ‘Well,’ I say, mastering myself, ‘extreme misbehaviour calls for extreme punishment. Why else did we send criminals to Australia?’

Eugenie yanks me closer, her nearly yelling, ‘That man does not need an extreme situation.’ Her throat chokes on her rage. She tells me what she extracted from Mrs Thwack, a tale which could fill a prohibited novel.

‘If that were true,’ I say, trying to convince myself of the ‘if’. ‘If that were true, the police would surely—’

Screaming from upstairs kills my response. Eugenie stares at me, Lacey’s screaming serving as every counter-argument Eugenie would need.

When the screaming refuses to die, I try to pull Eugenie towards the door. ‘Who are we to question a father’s expression of discipline?’

She wraps her arms around me, holding me back when I try to escape without her.

‘Why is this so difficult for you?’ Eugenie scolds. ‘Why can’t you accept that that is not right?’

‘If, if,’ I say, ‘Mr Thwack exceeds the limits of advisable husbandry, what can I do?’

‘How do you solve all your problems?’

She can’t be suggesting… My breath races, as oxygen hisses from my brain. My drying lips try to withhold my blasphemous words, ‘Mesmerise a… man?’ It’s too much. A man’s mind is sacrosanct, seat of reason and morality; to alter it would be to deface his God-given conscience. We must treat men with the dignity they deserve as men. I tell Eugenie this in broken words.

‘Treat Men as men?’ Eugenie says. ‘Just like we treat women as women, but you’ve been making sure women live up to their womanliness—make him live up to his manliness.’

‘But I’m a woman,’ I say, my husband’s lessons crawling up to my conscious mind. ‘Change a man? Would I correct a doctor on surgery?’

‘If I went to the doctor with a sore throat,’ she says, ‘and he tried to saw off my leg, I’d bloody well correct him!’

Upstairs, a door slams. Choking sobs swell down the stairs, followed by Lacey, naked and crying. Although she rushes to the stables, I see the blue bruises on her torso. Her father stamps down after her into the stables, haranguing her to beat her bicycle into shards with a shovel. Oh, God! I’ll have to mesmerise a man. But, but, you can hardly call Mr Thwack a man. He isn’t like Mr Leashem, who adores me like the family puppy; Mr Thwack kicks the puppy.

‘You’re right,’ I tell Eugenie.

She sighs with relief. ‘Next question: How? He doesn’t seem like the lay back and relax type.’

I tell her not to worry as Mr Thwack stomps back into the living room. In one hand, clenched so tight the tendons nearly break through the skin, he holds his belt; his other hand hoists up his trousers. He smiles, but like a wild animal bears its teeth, suggesting death rather than mirth. He stomps past us, sending ripples through our tea cups. If blue-bruised Lacey did not occupy my mind, I would have abandoned my plan at sight of Mr Thwack.

‘Mr Thwack!’ I call.

Like a wolf hearing a snapping twig, he snaps his stare to me. ‘Who’re you?’

‘Your wife commissioned me to counsel your daughter.’

‘Oh. Right, yes. Thank you. You’ve been paid?’ He speaks waveringly, as though he has no conception of how to speak to a woman he has no dominion over, who he may even owe something to.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but—’ I rush to put myself between him and the stairs. ‘I have a request.’

‘Money’s not enough!?’

‘I would not dream of taking more from you, especially as all I have done is make your daughter defer towards you as she always should have.’

He laughs. Finally, he has found a sensible woman!

‘And I request only,’ I say, stepping closer to him, so I can stare up his chest and into his eyes, ‘that you make me defer towards you.’ I do not let him consider my request. I must speak to his lust before his conscious mind can summon whatever half-formed clump of conscience he possesses. ‘Sir, sir, just the sight of your wife, so docile, so timid, and the sight of your daughter, so compliant towards you, aroused in me all my unwomanly lusts. Oh, my husband—good man! Too good!—he never possessed that threat, that force, that would remind me I am his woman.’

While speaking I pressed my body into him, feeling his hardening… assent. I can tell my suggestion has worked on at least one head. He looks to Eugenie, who tries to wink coquettishly.

‘Since you ask so nice,’ he says, straightening his back, clearly intending to barrel out his chest, but only revealing his drooping belly.

In his bedroom, Mrs Thwack lifts her gaze from her knees to her husband and me and Eugenie. She rises, tripping as she approaches her husband. ‘Why are they here?’

Mr Thwack walks past his wife. ‘Stay in the kitchen for an hour.’ Ooh, someone overestimates their endurance.

When his wife leaves, he says, ‘So, which’ll go first?’

‘Me, me,’ I say, ‘but…’ I tuck my chin to my chest, and glance away, willing a blush to my cheeks. ‘May you please turn around as I… disrobe. Oh, I know you must see me denuded, but to denude myself as a man watches, it is, it is too intense.’

Smiling he turns around. Eugenie advances, prodding into his back a knife she has for self-defence. He swivels round, but she pushes the blade, forcing from him a fleck of blood and a squeal.

‘Mr Thwack,’ I say. ‘It is in your interest to remain absolutely still. My assistant has a knife, and I a gun.’ That is a lie, but even a beast knows it would be foolish to risk death to confirm my threat. ‘Eugenie, restrain him.’

With the boiling compliance of a man who knows he is no match for a frail girl with a pistol, Mr Thwack does not resist as Eugenie ties him to his bedframe using his own belts. When done, Eugenie comes to my side. The absence of a gun in my hand makes a groan erupt from his very gut, as rebellion courses through his limbs. He learns, with as much dread as his wife and daughter, just how sturdy his belts are.

‘Now, now, Mr Thwack, calm yourself,’ I say. ‘Or don’t.’ I walk to his beside. ‘Either way, I shall calm you.’

Hours pass as I erode his waking mind, finding cracks in his fury, which I sand wider and wider until all anger, all restlessness, all free will flows out. Mesmerising him is like intimidating a roaring dog with whispers; but like a roaring dog, he wears away his throat, wastes his vigour, till my whisper resounds. Mr Thwack’s yanking and writhing cease, his limbs sagging in their restraints, as his complaints dwindle to grumbles before his jaw lulls open, his eyes finally drifting shut, and his mind spreading open. When finished rewriting all his desires and beliefs, I make Mr Thwack beckon his wife. She cracks open the door, only for Mr Thwack to bound up to her, ready to embrace her—but he pulls back.

‘Oh, sweetums, deetums, peetums,’ he says to a confused woman, ‘I can’t hug you when your looking at me like the beast I am. No, sweety-peety, you remind me of my first puppy, who I kicked everyday, and so ran whenever I tried to cuddle. I loved that dog, but never deserved it.’ He gets on his knees and begs her. ‘Oh, my holly-molly, please forgive me.’

Mrs Thwack stands paralysed over her husband. Is this reality or a test?

I walk to her side. ‘Mrs Thwack, I know you feel not at ease, far from safe, not very relaxed. But just breathe in and out, in and out, and let me explain how life will be in the Thwack household from now on.’

Mrs Thwack is so yielding that even this patter can sink her into hazy-eyed trance. Her demureness deserves the gentler lord and master I have given her. I tell her that her husband shall treat her better from this day forward, but, should he revert to tantrums, she needs only scold him with, ‘Are you man or beast?’ and he will cool. I tell her to teach this trigger to her daughter as well. With that, I have modelled a healthy household: the father and husband reigning as King, but the wife and daughter now possess the plebeians’ veto.

As I and Eugenie stroll home, I remark, ‘You know, Eugenie, I never believed men could be mesmerised. It makes sense, I suppose. It just never entered my head as a practical possibility, men’s minds being as mouldable as women’s. I must inquire with my husband.’

‘No!’ Eugenie yelps. ‘I mean, there’s no reason tell him anything about this.’

I grab Eugenie’s arm and stop, ‘Are you suggesting I conceal the truth from my husband?’

Eugenie’s mutely flapping lips answer me, but before I can scold her, she argues, ‘Sometimes lying is best—Hear me out! Men are very smart, but you can’t expect them to understand everything. Years ago, I—my male cousin… Eugene… he got into a fight. Fights. Now he could have told his father, but his father didn’t understand the honour, the stakes, the grit involved. If my… cousin’s parents knew about the bruises beneath the shirt they’d just be worried—for no reason whatever.’

‘Those are parents’ attitudes towards a child. Mr Leashem will surely understand.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ Eugenie asks. ‘What if he comes to undo your “mistake”.’

My hand which grabbed Eugenie now holds onto her for support, as my knees liquify. ‘If, if he asks me directly…’

‘You won’t tell him.’

Hanging in her arms, I look up into her eyes. ‘I won’t tell him.’