The Land of Faerie
Chapter Two: Guarding the Queen
by Argos
The GPS knew the way to her house; I just followed the prompts. I felt wide awake. Hyper alert, actually—totally focused on driving, seeing danger before it appeared. Not much worry about where we were going or what we would do there. That wasn’t my business. It’s very relaxing to have only one thing to think about. Very relaxing to know that someone else would make all the decisions. Very relaxing to be the chauffeur to someone more powerful than you. I enjoyed the drive. She rode in the back. I heard her chatting on her phone, but I was not allowed to understand a word. I didn’t speak English unless a sentence began with my name. Her words just sounded like rain on the roof. She had a great voice but if she wasn’t talking to me then it wasn’t my business.
The house was nice. Not showy. Just a good-sized bungalow on a cul de sac in Henderson. It was well shielded from the street—a lot of privacy, clearly. I pulled up in the driveway, jumped out and opened her door.
What was I doing?
That thought occurred to me from time to time but when I tried to really look at it it tended to float away. It was a thought and it might have been my thought but it wasn’t her thought and her thoughts were more important than mine. Not just to her but to me. I really felt fine but I didn’t matter much. Which was very freeing, like not knowing what would happen once we went inside.
We entered the living room. “Sit,” she said, pointing to a low ottoman next to a sectional sofa.
I sat.
“I’m going to change my clothes,” she said. “Take a good look at this spoon I’m giving you. It’s very interesting. Look at it carefully. I think it’s smooth. Tell me if it is.”
The spoon was shiny. It was silver. It was round. It had an oval bowl and a long handle. It was plain otherwise. But it was smooth. It really was. Shiny, too. Very shiny. It was shiny on one side. It was shiny on the other side. It was smooth on the other side. It was smooth on the first side. Oval bowl. Long handle. Shiny. Shiny. Shin—
Fingers snapped in my ear. “That’s very nice, sugar,” she said. “Now put down the spoon. That’s right. The spoon is gone. There is no spoon. There never was a spoon. There’s just me.” She’d changed into a silk robe; under it, a lacy nightgown. She had on high heels. Very high heels. Very sexy high heels. Very sexy red high heels. “Up here, sugar,” she said with a slight fond laugh. “Look away from the shoes. Look up at me. Look at me. Look in my eyes. You can’t look away.”
Her eyes caught and held me. I couldn’t look away. “You need a little training now,” she said. “Don’t you agree? Say yes.”
“Yes.” I had no idea what she meant by training. In fact at the moment I had very little idea what I mean by “yes.” She told me to say it, I said it.
“Okay, Dane,” she said. “Now, watch my hand. Keep your eyes on my hand. When I bring my hand down and say ‘Sleep,’ your eyes will close and you will go back into that deep hypnotic state you were in before, but even deeper. Do you understand?”
Nod.
“Okay, then. Sleep!”
She brought her hand down and my eyelids slammed.
Velvet. Earth. Space.
“Eyes open! Wide awake feeling great!”
There she was.
“Watch my hand! Sleep! Ten times deeper!”
Night.
I don’t know how many times she did that but by the end of the “training” I knew this was the new normal—that wherever I was, whatever I was doing, no matter whether in person, by phone, by text, even my snail mail, she could put me into deep hypnosis at any time. If she said, or texted, or emailed, or wrote “Sleep!” I would go blank, go limp, and wait for suggestions. Every suggestion would take root in my mind. It would become true. It would become urgent, and when it was time to follow it, it would grow until it was the only thing I knew or cared about, until it filled my mind and I couldn’t think about anything else but following it.
She woke me a final time. “Listen carefully,” she said. “You’re going to tell me about yourself. All about yourself.”
I’ve had women say that to me, but I’d never had a woman actually mean it, until that night. She really wanted to know everything. My name. Where I lived. Where I’d grown up. How I liked my parents. Where I’d gone to school. Who my friends had been. What I had wanted to be when I was young. It was like an initial therapy session. I found her questions easy to answer. I wanted to tell her anything she wanted to know. I wanted to turn myself inside out like a purse and offer her anything inside me.
The questions took on a more particular focus. Had I liked girls in school? When did I first notice them? Had I had a crush on any particular girl? Why did I like her? What did I do when I thought about her at night? When was my first kiss? When had I gone further? What things did I do with girls in high school and college? What things had I not done? What had I dreamed of doing but never dared to ask for? What things did I dream of without knowing it myself?
Gradually some themes emerged. I’d forgotten the principal’s secretary when I was in ninth grade, for example. She wore a slim pencil skirt and high heels. I used to try to get sent to the principal’s office so I could watch her as she typed. She must have noticed me looking at her legs and shoes. First she asked me to move some supplies for her. Then she got me to stay after school and run errands for her. By the end of the semester I was picking up her dry cleaning and mowing her lawn. My friends laughed but I didn’t care.
“She sounds delightful,” Kate said, almost to herself.
I nodded.
“Look at me again, sugar,” she said. She asked me about some movies. Had I ever seen THE WOMAN IN GREEN? Yes, Hillary Brooke was sexy. What about THE JUNGLE BOOK? Kaa was sexy. STIR OF ECHOES? Ileana Douglas was sexy. TRANCE? Rosario Dawson was sexy. THE CRAFT? Robin Tunney was sexy—schoolgirl uniform and that love-smitten boy following her around.
What about shoes? High heels were sexy. How sexy? Very sexy.
“How do you like mine?” She stretched one ankle. I was sitting on the low ottoman; she was above me. Her ankle and shoe moved up and down in front of my face.
I nodded.
“Well, kiss them. sugar—go ahead!”
With a small guttural growl in the back of my throat, I threw myself on the rug and pushed myself as low as I could as if trying to push myself down through the floor.
Now I have a tip for my male readers. Here it is: if you happen to be hypnotized by a beautiful woman, never mind why, and she asks you to kiss her foot, never mind why, don’t fight the urge to comply. It’s probably no use, for one thing, and, for another, it’s definitely fun. It’s fun in a way that kissing a woman, foot or elsewhere, isn’t when you’re not hypnotized.
Be honest, now. You may be the most romantic man on the planet, and you may be kissing Helen of Troy, but no matter how into it you are, there’s going to be a part of you that’s considering how well you’re doing as a kisser; you’re thinking about your next move; you’re wondering whether you’ll score and whether she’ll enjoy it if you do.
But that night there was none of that. I was just kissing her foot. I had no other agenda than kissing her foot. I wasn’t even thinking about any other part of her. I would have been content if she told me to keep doing kissing her foot until the end of time; I would have been content if she told me to stop kissing and look at the spoon again.
But after a while, after her foot had been thoroughly kissed, after she it was time for a change, she said, “Now move up, sugar. Slowly. Do a good job. Show me what you can do.”
I moved up slowly. Ankle. Shin. Knee. She tasted great. I wanted to kiss and keep kissing and move up, thigh, and hip and then between her legs and she grabbed my head, twined her hands in my head, and showed me exactly where to kiss.
“Now, handsome man,” she said. “Spell O-B-E-Y with your tongue! Yes, like that! Again! Yes! AGAIN!”
On the final Y I heard her shout, “Oh, yes! Yes, YES!”
There was a brief period of silence. I knelt there on the rug and thought about nothing. Or maybe I thought about the spoon. Or maybe that’s the same thing.
After a while I felt her patting my head. it felt good. It meant I had pleased her. “Now, we need to talk about tomorrow, sugar,” she said. “You go to sleep now, I will talk to your unconscious mind. It’s all right, just sleep down there.” She blew lightly on my forehead, and I toppled backward onto the rug, out like a light.
I was in the velvet darkness watching the tiny circles rise and fall from the earth. There was a voice in the background and it was important but I didn’t need to pay attention. I was sleeping.
I think I dreamed about a spoon.
“Open your eyes,” she said. “Are you thirsty?”
I really was. I nodded.
“Let’s get you some water. Come into the kitchen, sugar.”
I followed her. Once we were there, she took a jug out of the fridge and poured some into a bowl, which she set on the floor.
I knew what to do. I got down on my hands and feet and began to drink.
“Oh, yes, such a good boy!” she said, ruffling the fur on the back of my neck. “You’re my Great Dane, you’re my pet, you guard and take care of me, don’t you, who’s a good boy?”
I heard a click. Something went around my neck. “There’s your collar and here’s your leash, Dane! Come on—let’s go to bed.”
I padded after her on all fours.
When we got to the bedroom, she stretched out on a queen-sized bed. But she didn’t pat the space next to her. Instead, she said, “Come here, sugar, let’s get the leash off you.” The collar, though, stayed on. “Now,” she said, “when I snap my fingers you’ll get up, take off all your clothes, and go curl up in your bed.” Her fingers pointed to a huge, plush-looking dog bed at the foot of the bed.
She snapped. The clothes came off. I am not sure the shirt was ever wearable again, but very quickly I was slipping into my bed. She stood up and threw a cover over me.
“ When I snap,” she said, “you’ll fall into a deep sleep and dream doggy dreams until morning.”
Dogs don’t have worries. They dream nice dreams.