The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Haley was lost, and had lost her parents. It was her fourteenth birthday. The family was at Glastonbury Music Festival, and the music was deafening. It was dark. The crowd grew thicker and rowdier, and then it was surging all around her, and she lost hold of her mother’s hand. There was a troupe of clowns marching through the aisle where her parents had been, and the clowns had big sharp teeth and frightening faces. Haley was calling out Mum, Dad, where are you? Where are you? and then she heard her father say “Wake up, Haley. Wake up.” Someone was shaking her shoulder, an arm was around her, and she opened her eyes.

“Haley, you were bespeaking us.”

“Bespeaking you? But I can’t… I don’t know how…”

“You just did it. You were dreaming, and you shouted out, but it was bespeaking. You’re a telepath. Like us.”

Haley’s parents, Mary and Brian Linney, were kind, mild, quiet people. Mary was a pediatrician and Brian was a librarian. They didn’t mix much with other people in the village. They had a few friends at the Baha’i temple in nearby Banbury, where they attended three times a week. Haley was a solitary child, with a talent for making friends with the village pets and horses. She had never thought there was anything unusual about herself or her family.

Except that Haley’s parents were in the first generation of the psionics who were born after the Viral War of the early 21st Century. They were natural telepaths. As with most psionics, the ability was latent until after puberty. They discovered their talent when they began dating. By that time the Psi Police were getting organised, and public prejudice against psionics was high, so Mary and Brian kept their ability secret. They could project spoken thoughts to each other over very short distances – it was called ‘bespeaking’ – but that was almost the limit of their abilities.

Mary could also look inside another person’s mind, but she avoided doing so. The interior of another mind appeared to her as a chaotic storm of feelings and thoughts: alien, confusing, flavoured with another’s distinctive selfhood. To her it was like a bad light show with a soundtrack by John Cage and the odours of a rubbish tip. She could make no sense of it, and her natural sense of delicacy and privacy made it a distressing experience.

Haley had known that her parents had some kind of psionic gift, but she would no more have questioned them about it than she would have asked about their sexual relations. The subject was implicitly taboo in the family. She shared their secret, and that was that; until the night she bespoke them in her dream.

Haley, can you hear me? said her mother. Haley knew at once that something astonishing had happened. The words had been like someone else’s thought appearing in Haley’s own mind. The thought had the timbre of Mary’s voice, but Mary had not spoken aloud. The non-sound bore the aura of Mary’s gentle kindness, the soft texture of her skin, and the scent of vanilla.

“Yes, Mum, I can. Oh, gosh.”

Haley, can you bespeak us? It was her father. His bespeaking evoked the texture of old books, and the taste of apples, and the scent of rain.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how.” Haley was quiet for a moment. “Did you hear that?”

No, dear, I didn’t. It’s a hard thing to teach, I suppose. Try this. Do you remember what you were dreaming about? Can you recreate the feeling?

Haley remembered the festival, the clowns, and how she wanted to find her parents. She imagined herself back there, panicking, and shouting out Mum! Dad! Where are you?

Her parents winced. Her mother said, That’s good, dear. We heard you. Try not to shout.

Oh. I’m sorry. I think I have it now. Is this OK?

That’s excellent, dear, bespoke her father, smiling. Nice and clear. They practised for a few minutes more, then he bespoke, Now, I think we should probably all go back to sleep. You have school in the morning. We can practise some more tomorrow.

Haley soon discovered that her talent exceeded her parents’. They could only hear each other bespeaking when they were in the same room. But a few nights later, as Haley lay in bed, she heard:

Oh. Brian. Yes. Oh darling.

Oh God, Mary. I love you so. I love it when you lose control like this.

Oh Brian, don’t stop. Oh God that’s so good. Oh God, oh God.

Darling. I could do this for hours. I want you to come and come.

Oh my sweet. My love. Oh god that’s wonderful. I… Brian. Brian. Wait. Stop a moment. Stop. Do you think that Haley can hear us bespeaking?

Of course not. She’s down the hall.

But… the other night, when she was dreaming, she was so loud, we heard her from here. What if she’s more sensitive than we are?

The bespeaking stopped, and there was a murmur of low voices from her parents’ room. In the morning, the family breakfast was a very quiet affair, and Haley’s parents would not look her in the eye.

Haley had another ability. She discovered it when she was fifteen. She and her mother were having one of their rare arguments, over whether Haley could go to a late-night club with friends. Haley shouted, “Mum! You’re being so unfair! You have to let me go!” Mary felt a strange pause inside her mind; and then she said, quietly, “Of course. I see. You’re right. I’m being unfair. I have to let you go to the club.” Mary stood there dumbly for a moment; then she blinked and recovered. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean... Oh. Oh goodness. What you just did, don’t do it again. There’s something you need to know. I’ll ring your father. We have to talk about this right away.”

Mary knew at once what had happened. Her teenage daughter had the Control ability: she could discover the centre of free will in another person, and suppress it. Like her mother, Haley could see inside another’s mind; but Haley understood more of what she saw. Somewhere in that flickering confusion was a structure—it appeared to Haley like a tiny rotating wheel—that represented their volition. Haley could seize that wheel, and stop it from turning. The person would be passive, compliant, and receptive to whatever was asked of him or her, until Haley released her hold.

Haley’s parents told her that using Control was a wicked thing to do. “It’s immoral to force another person to do something. In an emergency you may use your Control to stop an attacker or a thief, but you must ever, never use it for personal advantage. And never tell anyone, even another psionic, that you can do this. It’s our secret. Some people would say you’re a witch, or report you to the Psi Police.”

A few weeks later, a school bully pushed Haley up against the lockers and put his hands on her. In a panic she struck out at his volition, and shouted “Stop it! Leave me alone!” He backed away from her and stood quietly. Then she released her hold on him, and his jaw dropped. He stared dumbstruck, then practically ran down the hall. After that he and his friends avoided her. Whispered conversations stopped when she walked into a room. Her friends dropped away.

The habit of secrecy made Haley reticent and shy. She was a good student, and she had a few boyfriends, but she was unable to tell them her most important personal datum, and the relationships, though physical, never developed into serious attachments. The only other psionic in the school, as far as she knew, was her PE teacher, Angela Deegan. Ms Deegan had approached her one day after gym class. “Haley, could you stop in my office for a few minutes? Before you go to lunch.” They sat in the small office. Haley knew that Ms Deegan had been a gymnast, and had won a Silver at the 2036 Olympics when she was in her teens. Haley, are you a telepath? Haley gasped and started to stammer a “no”, when she realised that Ms Deegan’s lips had not moved. Can you hear me? Haley tried to pretend that nothing had happened, but Ms Deegan spoke: “I know you’re telepathic, Haley. It’s OK. I’ve known it since the first day I saw you in school. You walk around, fizzing with telepathy, and you think that no one can hear you.”

“I… I keep trying to find someone else. I bespeak people all the time, but no-one hears me. You’re the first other psionic I’ve met. Except my… uh…”

“Except your parents. It’s OK. I know. I ran into them at the last Parents’ Evening, and I heard them bespeaking each other. You three keep it all very secret, don’t you.”

“My parents told me not to tell. They said the Psi Police…”

“That was sensible of them. It’s foolish of you to go around bespeaking strangers. You’re lucky I found you. So, you can bespeak. What else can you do?”

Haley was reluctant to mention Control. “I can look inside minds. A little. Most of the time it doesn’t make any sense. Nothing else. Um… if you don’t mind my asking, what are your abilities?”

“You may ask. Although ordinarily it would be considered rude. I can bespeak, and read minds a bit, and…” She looked at a pencil on the desk. The pencil stirred, rose a metre, executed a lazy somersault, and settled gently back to the desk. Haley stared. “Oh come, Haley, you’ve seen telekinesis on TV, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but I always assumed it was fake.”

“Sometimes it is, and sometimes not. What you just saw was real. I can move anything within arm’s reach, up to forty or fifty kilos. My mother could levitate paper clips, and my father was a receiving telepath – he was a private detective – so I have a combination of their abilities, but stronger. Psi abilites seem to be growing with every generation. Let’s talk about you some more. What defenses do you have?“

Haley looked puzzled.

“Defenses. Mind shields. To stop other psionics detecting you. Haven’t your parents taught you anything?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Haley looked abashed. “I don’t think they know about that. They don’t know any other psionics. They’re… self-taught.” She thought of the night she overheard them bespeaking as they made love. “I wish they did have shields,” she said, blushing. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

“You need more training than I can give you. If it’s OK with you, I’d like to arrange for you to have some tutoring. With Elena Warchafski. You have Maths with her, don’t you? So you have an easy cover story. She can teach you about how to keep yourself better disguised, and she may be able to introduce you to a few others like us.”

Haley fixed on the way Ms Deegan said “us”. There were other telepaths. She had found two. She wasn’t alone. She burst into tears.

Ms Deegan found her a tissue, and after she had stopped snivelling, Ms Deegan said, “Haley, you mustn’t tell anyone about this conversation. It has to be secret. If people found out about us – well, very bad things could happen. We could both be outcast, or jailed, or worse.”

“I know, but I don’t understand why. I haven’t done anything wrong. And I didn’t ask for this gift, it just happened. Why are people prejudiced against us?”

Ms Deegan thought for a moment. “You know that I’m a Lesbian, don’t you? And that Elena Warchafski is my wife?” Haley nodded. The days of prejudice against homosexuals were long gone in England. Several of Haley’s classmates, boys and girls, were gay – or thought they might be. The Prime Minister was gay. It just wasn’t an issue. “Well, it might surprise you to know that fifty years ago, Elena and I wouldn’t even have been able to marry. If the school governors knew we were gay, we might have lost our jobs. A hundred years ago it was illegal. So back then, gay people stayed… invisible. Every gay person knew a few others, but mostly it was a secret from the world. You understand?”

“I think so. But why? There’s nothing unusual about being gay.”

“Because of fear. Many people, maybe most people, are afraid of life. So they pick a minority group to blame for their fear. Blacks, Jews, Arabs, gays, women. Different century, different minority. Now it’s psionics. So you and I, and your parents, have to stay invisible. I’m trusting you. If people find out about Elena and me, we will certainly lose our jobs. And if people find out about you, well, a lot of parents will want you to be expelled from school. I hope the school authorities would defend you, but you can’t count on it. Understand?”

“Yes. Of course. Please, you can trust me.”

“Good. Now, we were talking about your abilities. I’m not much of a telepath, but I can tell that there’s something you want to ask. And it’s awkward for you. What is it?”

Haley reddened. “Well, it’s, um, the pencil. What you did. Telekinesis. I know you were, are, a gymnast. Can you, that is, did you ever…?”

“Did I ever use telekinesis to improve my performance?” She gave Haley a hard look. “I think that’s one of those questions you aren’t supposed to ask, Haley.” She sighed. “You know what’s happening these days, don’t you? The Psi Police investigating the Olympics, random tests of athletes, bans on professional sportsmen and sportswomen for using telekinesis, accusations that fans are moving the ball, that telepaths are spying on coaches; it’s madness. Fifty years ago it was drugs, now it’s psi.”

“But when you won your Silver, wasn’t it different?”

“Yes, it was. I was fifteen when I won at the Olympics. My ability hadn’t developed yet. I didn’t even know what telekinesis was. Two years later I met Elena, and she showed me what I was. Then I began to wonder, when I did all those flips and handstands for the Olympic judges, is it possible that I was using the ability without knowing it? That it was starting to show itself? I don’t think I’ll ever know. I vowed then to keep my ability under control, and never use it in competition. But by ‘39 the sports authorities had cottoned on to telekinetics, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they discovered I was psionic. So I gave up competitive athletics.”

“That’s a shame.”

“I know. I had my Silver, and I could have won a Gold in 2040. These abilities we have, Haley, they are as much a curse as a blessing. Well, that’s enough for now. Make an appointment to see Elena.”

Haley found Elena Warchafski intimidating. Ms Warchafski (her students would never call her ‘Elena’) was the stern and dynamic head of the Mathematics department. She was in her late forties, as tall and blonde as Ms Deegan was petite and brown. Haley was a good student, and so had escaped Ms Warchafski’s iron wrath toward the lazy or slipshod; but Haley had never been infected with the teacher’s passion for what she called the “icy aesthetic purity” of mathematics. When she met Ms Warchafski for the first of their tutoring sessions, however, she found that the older teacher was gracious, encouraging, and tolerant of Haley’s mistakes.

Haley’s first mistake occurred almost as soon as she sat down. She tried to see into Ms Warchafski’s mind. She gave a little push, expecting to get in. Nothing. She gave a harder push. It was like trying to climb a glass mountain.

Ms Warchafski was looking at her with amusement. “So, Haley, is this how you greet your elders? By trying to invade their minds?”

Haley was astonished and embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know… how could you tell?”

“You have a lot to learn. So, you’re a mind reader as well as bespeaker. Let’s see what else you are. I’m going to examine you. Just hold still for a few minutes. You’re going to feel what it’s like to have someone look into your mind for a change.”

At once Haley felt the older wonan’s presence inside her mind. It was strange. She kept catching the tail ends of Ms Warchafski’s own thoughts. OK, prefrontal cortex, conscience and morality… well-integrated. Baha’i, eh? Funny religion… What’s this fantasy about… aha! … and a mild father-fixation from the... doesn’t like cheese? …irregular… Random images from Haley’s memory flashed unbidden across her mind. …something hidden here… ah! A controller. Silly not to have told me…

It was disturbingly intimate. Haley was pretty sure she wasn’t gay, but there was something uncomfortably erotic about having Ms Warchafski rummaging around inside her mind. She wondered about Ms Warchafski and Ms Deegan, and what she had overheard her parents doing. Did the two teachers look into each others’ minds when they… they… Haley tried to suppress the thought, to think about anything else. She thought about… continued fractions. She would ask Ms Warchafski about them, to change the subject. She opened her mouth and tried to say something, but no words came.

“Hold on, Haley, I’ve taken control of Broca’s area for a moment. There. Alright, you can speak now. I’m done. You wanted to know whether Angela Deegan and I use telepathy when we make love, didn’t you?” she said, matter-of-factly.

Again, Haley could not speak, but this time from embarrassment.

“Oh, it’s all right. You need to know some things that they don’t cover in your Sex Ed class, and your parents are too shy to tell you. Yes, psionics use telepathy erotically. Most just bespeak, but some can project physical sense data – real or imaginary—into the other’s mind as well. Angela’s mother could broadcast erotic sensations across a ten-metre diameter. I saw her do it once in a crowded courtroom, just as they were sentencing her. It was very amusing. If you ever find yourself a telepathic boyfriend or girlfriend, you’ll probably try it too. Just remember that it’s a perfectly normal part of intimacy.”

In the sessions that followed, Ms Warchafski taught Haley the art of protecting her mind from intrusion. All psionics possess the ability to do this, but it must be trained. Separate shields are be constructed and maintained for each of the senses, as well as for thoughts and emotions. An unshielded psionic is liable to have a telepath eavesdrop on their mind at will; to become the thrall of a controller; or to be subjected to sensory hallucinations by a projector. And the Psi Police, though few, are eager to identify psionics unwary enough to broadcast their bespeaking instead of focussing it.

Haley learned quickly, and after a few months Ms Warchafski said, “Haley, we’re done. That’s all I can teach you, to the limit of your abilities. You’re about to apply to universities, I know. You want to do English Lit, is that right? I’d like to make sure that you’ll go somewhere there is a community of other psionics. I’m going to speak to an admissions tutor I know at Cambridge. Would you like to go to Cambridge?”