The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

An Immodest Proposal

Back in April, 2011, J.A.W. held a contest over at the MC Forum, asking us to engage in some creative wordplay as we wrote an erotic mind control story. I couldn’t resist this invitation; below is the story I wrote for this contest. Please don’t let the cannibalism tag scare you away; I had people say that I could have gone much more “over the top” with that tag. (But now I can honestly say that I’ve got all but the Star Trek and X-Files tags on my stories). This story is a work of fiction and any similarity to the events or characters portrayed here, and real events or people, is completely coincidental. I welcome comments and criticism. My email address is .

Chapter 1

“I saved you a seat,” called out Chandra as she saw Vanessa walk into the classroom.

“Thanks.” Vanessa walked quickly to the desk that Chandra had indicated, put her backpack down between her own seat and her friend’s, and sat down with a relieved sigh. “The prof here yet?”

“Not yet.”

Vanessa reached into her bag and pulled out a pen and a pad of paper.

A guy sitting behind the two co-eds leaned forward and said, “So... D’you girls believe stories they tell about this class?”

Vanessa turned around and smiled at the guy who had struck up a conversation. “I don’t know. I’m just glad that he’s later than I am.”

Chandra joined in. “It certainly looks interesting. I’ll say that much.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. By the way, I’m Justin.” He reached forward to shake the girls’ hands.

“Vanessa.”

“Pleased to meet you, Vanessa. And you are?”

“Chandra.”

“Enchanté”

Chandra giggled as he kissed the back of her hand.

After a moment, Justin glanced down at his watch. “Ya know what I hate? I hate it when the teachers can’t even make it to their own classes on time. I mean, it’s not as though they’re coming from someplace off-campus. Half the faculty have offices in this building. I mean, what the fuck?”

Vanessa nodded her head. “Exactly! What the fuck!”

“I don’t care if this is the most interesting chemistry course this school offers. It doesn’t look good when the instructor’s late on the first day, ya know?”

Chandra and Vanessa scowled, staring at their new friend.

“What? Was it something I said?”

Chandra said, quietly, “Um, Justin. I don’t know how to tell you this, but this isn’t Chemistry.”

“Wait? What?”

“It’s Linguistics. Linguistics 249. The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Words,” said Vanessa.

“Oh. Well, I feel sheepish,” Justin said. He stood up, picked up his satchel, and hoisted it over his shoulder. “It was nice meeting you two.”

Vanessa said, “Nice meeting you too,” trying to suppress her own laughter.

Justin walked slowly towards the door, turning sharply on his heels before he actually left the classroom. He hit one of the light switches on the wall and the front half of the room was plunged into semi-darkness.

Turning to face the class, he said, “All right, class. I’m Professor Justin Wells. Welcome to Linguistics 249. Your official course manual calls this course... I’m sorry, Vanessa. What do they call this class again?”

Vanessa blushed, both at having been put on the spot like this and at the antics of their professor who had apparently pretended to be a student. Instead of answering, her thoughts drifted to whether or not anyone else in the class hadn’t believed him to be another student.

“Vanessa? Don’t be shy!”

“Oh, sorry, professor. It’s The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of Words.”

“That’s a nice course name, but I prefer the much simpler...” He retrieved a small black remote control, clicked it once, and a PowerPoint demonstration appeared on the white board at the front of the room.

The title slide had a single word on it: WURDZ.

“I’ll start you guys off with a simple question,” Professor Wells said as he looked around the room. “Does anyone see anything wrong with this title?”

There was a low murmur throughout the room before Chandra said, “You spelled it wrong.”

“Oh. All right. Does anyone else think I spelled it wrong?”

A few people raised their hands, and the class gradually came to the consensus about the typo that appeared in large letters before them all.

“Why do you think I spelled it wrong?”

A guy sitting a few rows behind Chandra and Vanessa called out, “It’s spelled W-O-R-D-S!”

“Oh, I see,” said Professor Wells, feigning ignorance and suddenly giving the air of someone who hadn’t realized the information he had just been provided. “But why?”

Everyone in the classroom looked around at each other, unsure of how to answer this question. Finally, a young woman in the back of the room called out, “But that’s the way the word is supposed to be spelled!”

“Ahh! That’s how it’s supposed to be. The convention of spelling! Of course. But isn’t this class about the use, misuse, and abuse of words?” He paused for a moment and added, “Now. You all knew exactly what I was saying with this title page in spite of the spelling convention, right?”

The students started nodding slowly, with a few members of the class mumbling, “Right.”

“So I just misused the word ‘words’ and you still understood what I was saying. One thing you’ll learn in this class is that sometimes it’s not as important ‘how’ you say something as long as you can convey the proper meaning of what you’re trying to say. Now. Would anyone disagree with me when I say that the way it’s presented here, as W-U-R-D-Z, is probably closer to the actual pronunciation of the individual letters than the convention I knowingly defied?”

A few students shook their heads but everyone remained silent.

“This is because the written language changes much more slowly than the spoken language. The human tongue is naturally lazy and tends towards things that are easier to pronounce. The written language is much more disinclined to change because,” he gestured towards the girl who explained the spelling convention, “there are conventions in written language that we are all somewhat bound to uphold.

“In this class, we’ll be talking about using, abusing, and misusing words. When and why it’s done, how it’s done, and the consequences of doing it. We will be defying conventions and, as a part of a class experiment, we’re going to see how—if at all—we can influence change in the language. So there are a few things we need to be mindful of.”

He clicked on the remote in his hand and the PowerPoint slide changed to read “Words are metaphors.”

“First,” he said loudly before returning to his normal tone of voice, “Remember that all words are metaphors for whatever concepts they represent. If a language needs a word, it will likely either acquire the word from another language or just invent it on its own. The English language is particularly good at doing both of these things. Over time, the meanings of words can and will change.”

He looked over the classroom and saw his students scribbling down his message. He smiled broadly and paused until the pens started to slow down. He clicked the remote again. The next slide said, “Nothing is off-limits.”

“Second! We must be willing to embrace taboos and shatter conventions. We cannot do this unless we embrace words we might not like. Knowing where a word comes from and why it exists must be the first step. Let’s use an easy example. Think of the name ‘James’. That’s a good, formal name, right? But the familiar version of the name is ‘Jim.’ Can anyone think of an offensive word that underwent this same vowel shift? Long ‘A’ to short ‘I’?”

There was a low mumble throughout the class but either no one knew, no one wanted to hazard a guess, or anyone who knew was too afraid to admit to knowing.

“All right. I’ll say it. The Spanish word for black is ‘negro.’. And the ‘E’ of that word is the same vowel sound as what we saw in ‘James’. So there was a familiarizing vowel shift from that, that gave us the word ‘nigger’. Of course it’s a hateful word today but at its heart, I don’t think it always was. It was almost a friendly word when it first started out in the language.”

He clicked on the remote again and the next slide appeared on the screen. “Minimize ambiguity.”

“Finally! An important point that bears making in terms of the actual study of language is that, as long as you can express what you actually mean, the words themselves become secondary. You can say something using five words or fifty words. As long as your meaning isn’t lost in the words, they’re both correct.”

He turned the lights on and faced the classroom, smiling broadly. “So let’s have fun with this! That’s about it for today. Please pick up your syllabus for this class up here on my desk on the way out. My office location and hours are at the top of the syllabus, but I would like to warn you that my office is fairly small, so I don’t think I can actually receive more than two students at any given time. More than that, and you’ll probably need to wait outside the office until the student in front of you leaves.

“So, without further ado, have a great week everyone! I’ll see you all next week.”

The students all stood up and filed out of the classroom, picking up copies of the syllabus on their way out. When Vanessa and Chandra approached his desk, he smiled at them. “I hope you two didn’t mind my little ruse at the beginning of the class. I like to do that kind of stuff, especially when we talk about defying convention.”

“Not at all, Professor, or, should I say, Justin?” giggled Chandra.

Vanessa nodded her agreement.

He laughed. “See you two next week, unless you want to talk to me in my office before then.” He winked at Vanessa as he picked up his satchel and walked out of the room.