The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Last of the Independents

Chapter 12: Right Back Where We Started From

So break me shake me hate me take me over. When the madness stops then you will be alone

“Break Me, Shake Me” — Savage Garden

“So is this hell, or is it just Iowa?” Bree asked as she went into Sasha’s room.

“First, remember to knock,” Sasha replied. “But it’s... it’s Hollywood. So did Christy take you on the grand tour yet? No, ‘cause you’d still be puking.”

“I’m going tonight,” Bree said, sweeping her hand down the length of her evening gown. “Christy said I’d need to know what to expect.”

Sisterly instincts took over before Sasha could think, and she said, “Your palms are sweaty. Don’t touch that dress until you’ve dried them off.”

“Yes, mom,” Bree grumbled, grabbing a handful of tissues off Sasha’s dressing table and wiping her hands.

“Take some more. You know you’re going to need them. There are a lot of controllers worse than Christy, so that’ll help you understand and accept a little what you got into. But whatever else we both are, i’m still your sister, so don’t be afraid to come to me if it gets to be too much,” Sasha said. She knew she was being overprotective, but she couldn’t help it. Hollywood was a tough test for anyone and Sasha knew how nervous Bree would get at it.

“Thanks, sis. By the way, while I’m here—upload Christy’s videos to the site or not?” Bree asked. Sasha recognized both Bree’s need for approval and her desire to show off her prowess even in the middle of her fear.

“Too slow for most connections. Keep it simple,” Sasha replied with a smile.

“Right, don’t want them getting frustrated and closing the program,” Bree replied with an answering smile. She looked at the clock and yelped. “Gotta go, love you, bye!”

Sasha wished her luck and was ready to kick back with the paper to figure out what they needed to keep an eye on when Melinda burst in.

“No one knocks in this place, I see.”

“Look, are you coming or not? I got the last one, but Christy says she wants both of us there. I guess we’re part security now, too,” Melinda said, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

I miss when things were simpler, Sasha thought. “Gimme... fifteen minutes, okay? Christy’s gotta warn me about these kinds of things if she wants me to go the full nine yards.”

Thirteen minutes later, she was getting into the limo with the rest of the group, with Hank and the security detail getting ready for the paparazzi. Their first stop was a restaourant similar ot the one Sasha had visited on her first trip—maybe even the same location, though Sasha wasn’t sure about that. But the people weren’t the same. Everyone had dolls of some kind of with them, whether it was women with too much silicone or men with too defined muscles; some even had one of each like a matched set of Barbie and Ken. Pretty people with empty eyes sat at their tables and were fed empty food like lapdogs.

When Sasha made that comparison, Christy snorted. “Dogs are smarter.”

“Don’t think we need to count to make sure it’s safe this time,” Sasha said, face pale.

“I warned you the Internet would take off. That’s why we need a good web designer. Have to keep ahead of the pack to keep selling,” Christy said, smiling at Bree. Bree responded with a weak smile, but Sasha saw how wild her eyes were, like prey caged with tigers.

“Hiiiii, my name is Summer! How can I serve you?” the waitress asked with a blinding white grin, bending down to flaunt her freshly minted double-Ds; if they were real, they would have fallen out of her low-cut shirt. The short black skirt didn’t cover much more. She was a piece of merchandise to be asessed and desired, and the blatant nature of it brought it beyond horror into black, black humor.

When Summer had sashayed off, Bree shook her head. “Damn, and here I thought the girls at the Owl Bar were airheads.” Eyebrows went up around the table, but before Sasha could say anything, Bree went on, “One of my boyfriends thought it would be romantic. I didn’t agree! I dumped his ass!”

“It’s one thing to be born an airhead, another thing to have the air pumped in ‘til everything else gives way under the pressure,” Christy said sadly. Sasha cringed.

Hank’s hand fell to his holster. “Peter. Some shit just doesn’t change,” he growled as Peter strolled over with a pair of porn princesses teetering in their stripper heels. “Keep the hoochies back ten feet. I don’t know what they’ve got.”

“Such a gentleman,” Peter said with a mocking edge to his voice. He turned ot Christy and gave her a little bow. “Christy Reed! Welcome back from traveling the world! Heard about your album. Oh, that voice, that voice! Twenty million with barely any label support! Now imagine how much more you could sell with a studio giving you their full backing,” he said, and if his eyes left one girl’s cleavage, it was to look at the other one. They seemed to appreciate the attention from the way they writhed and curled around him.

“I’m sure you know a lot ‘bout full backing. From the looks of what you got on your arms, I didn’t think you were producin’ those kinds of songs anymore,” Christy all but sang to keep anyone from strangling Peter. The thought crossed Sasha’s mind that that also meant no one could stop Christy from strangling Peter, and she wasn’t sure if that particular effect was intentional or not.

“Oh, didn’t know you liked blondes that much! These two beauties are Creamy Carly and Dreamy Dolly. Porn’s my side business, you see. Lets me try more experiments in the record biz. Besides, making porn stars is fun! It’s amazing how easy it is to code a site to suck someone in. Turns out spam is a bimbo’s favorite food after all,” Peter said with a leer.

“Just don’t pick up any viruses. Or am I too late? There’s an awful lot of screamin’ coming from the bathroom,” Crhisty fired back. Even as frozen as everyone was, Sasha and Bree both managed to let out giggles.

Peter looked closely at them. “Oh, your cute little publicist is back! And—oh, now I see the resemblance. Or hear it, I should say. Only sisters giggle at the same pitch. You naughty girl! Sisters? One of my favorites. Are they both for keeps, or are you just running the new acid test on the publicist.” At Christy’s glare, he smacked himself in the forehead and said, “Oh, that’s right, you were busy in arenas. The Japanese came up with it, I think, or at least put the finer touches on it. You get them to fuck a family member, so you know they’re so down under they don’t care who it is they’re screwing. I love to see a pair of sisters fucking each other like hookers on the street. It does my heart good to see such loving families!”

His eyes hadn’t gone off Sasha and Bree since he had come to his conclusion, and Sasha was glaring at him just as intently. Oh, to be a vampire right now, she thought darkly. Behind her, she could hear Hank trying to get his gun out, and she bared her teeth at Peter in defiance. She trusted Christy to have her back, but it wouldn’t hurt to remind him that she could do her own damage.

“I don’t make bimbos and I don’t make whores. I make help. Let Carrie ring in your ears if you want a bimbo between them. Bounce her boobs off a wall—I hear she likes that now, since they’re sno nice and bouncy—but don’t tell me your sick fantasies,” Christy growled.

Peter took the hint and walked away. Christy took a deep breath and sat down, and only when she and Hank were both sure that Peter was gone did their conversation return to something resembling normal—except that Bree said nothing, either there or for the rest of the night. Sasha couldn’t blame her. Things had gotten worse since her trip. The velvet rope was more like a heat seeking missile, looking for pretty bodies to make into empty bimbos, and the techno music was that much harder to fight off. As over the top as Hollywood had been before, it was a nightmare now. And Sasha kept looking over at Bree, wondering when Bree was going to break, but her little sister said nothing, staying quiet and taking everything in.

That kind of observation from Bree was so out of the ordinary that Sasha wasn’t surprised one bit that Bree ran into her room five minutes after they were back at the mansion, throwing a t-shirt on over her beautiful gown. “I can’t do it! I thought I could, but there’s no way I can! I’m letting Christy down, I’m letting you down, but I have to get out of here!” she wailed, running towards Sasha’s arms, then backing off.

“It’s a lot, and Peter’s a piece of work, but Christy will protect you. I was curled up scared for most of a week after my introduction, and it wasn’t half as bad as what’s out there now. Internet’s to blame, you know. Subliminal code and other crap. And they’re getting better with surgeries, too. But that’s not Christy, and she’s not going to let that happen to us. She’s the good one here. Don’t let your fear get in the way,” Sasha said, reaching out to put a hand on Bree’s shoulder. She could hear Bree’s heart pounding, hear Bree’s breath coming faster and faster in desperate gasps, and she was ready to race out of the mansion and put her hands around Peter’s throat for terrifying her little sister like this.

“I’m not afraid! Not all of it. It’s... it’s... I like being out. A lot. You might have seen it. I don’t know. Maybe not. But when that sicko came by with those... those... blow-up dolls... and talked about incest being the final test for how deep you could go, I knew I wouldn’t be safe here!”

“Calm down, Bree, you’re not making any sense,” Sasha said.

“You still don’t get it, but that’s okay, you shouldn’t get it, you’re not me, you’re not that fucked up. Please, promise not to judge me, not too much, but when that... when Peter talked about not recognizing your own sister, just picking her up and fucking her like you were told to... I wasn’t scared, and I wasn’t sick. I was...” Bree trailed off, face bright red. She squirmed, and Sasha saw a drying stain on the back of Bree’s skirt that she hadn’t noticed in the dark of the night clubs. Despite all her intentions she put the pieces together: why Bree was so skittish around her, wanting to be comforted, not wanting to be touched, why she was so hesitant to say what she felt, the elevated heartbeat and rapid breathing. Bree went on. “All night I was just fantasizing about letting go, becoming nothing, just a wind-up doll, point and click and suck and lick and fuck. It was exciting, but enough of me stayed in place that I was terrified of what was out there and what it did to me.”

Sasha turned green. “Christy would never do that to us! If anything, you’re safer with Christy! Don’t let her know. We met a few of those—people like you, I mean, the ones who want to be controlled—and she’s a little freaked out by them. I think I understand where you’re ocming from, though. You were a little bit of a flake before you met Christy, and then you started focusing on your work, and now you might be even more of a workaholic than I am, and that’s saying something. These last few months were good for you. And yes, I know how deep you go, and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be seen as your meddling big sister. But, well, that’s why you agreed to stay, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. A little. Mostly.”

“Before we go any further down roads I don’t want to travel, you don’t actually...”

“Melinda will kill me if I try anything,” Bree said, sounding like she was quoting something. “No, sis, I’m not harboring any incestuous desires for you, not of my own free will, but that’s the point. I know I’m a person and not a thing with Christy. But... you remember when you sneaked me into Cheerleader Melissa? I think you know what I would have rather been. But what kind of sickos are out there? If I’m that close to thinking this way around someone who doesn’t do that, how close would someone who does that get me? I can’t risk it.”

“I’m glad that woke you up, but I don’t know if it’s better in Chicago anymore,” Sasha said, truly concerned.

“It can’t be worse. It’s been fun, no doubt, but someone’s gotta look out. Don’t worry, I’ll keep up with Christy’s albums, but I can’t stay in this town without seeing myself in one of those tight dresses, and...” She broke down again, and this time she let Sasha pull her close for a sisterly hug.

“Tight dresses don’t suit you. Now, stripper heels, if you don’t all on your face, they could work,” Sasha said, trying to calm her down through humor.

Bree looked up and brushed her hair back with a shaky smile. “You’re too kind. That’s a change in you, by the way. Not the kindness, the darkness in your sense of humor. That’s Christy’s. Didn’t know if you noticed it, or if you thought there was anything different about it. Saw it even when I was working sixteen hours a day on autopilot and sleeping the other eight. But that’s okay. I lose myself, and I know that now. I don’t know how to tell Christy that—no, I don’t want you to do it for me, I’m going to do it myself. No copping out. But I though tyou’d like to know why and how and what,” she said, the last few words coming out in a rush.

“It’s okay. I get it. But Melinda’s the one you need ot practice on first,” Sasha pointed out.

“Don’t remind me. I ju st hope she doesn’t try to seduce me with one of those confidence lectures. She means well, but I think she’d be like Peter if she didn’t have Christy behind her and you next to her to keep her from going over the edge.”

“Scary thing is, I go further than she does since that day. She has limits. She’s a good friend. I understand why you’re worried, but she’s a good friend,” Sasha said with a smile—but there was something in that smile that made Bree back off.

A week later, it was finalized. Christy made Bree wait to make sure she wasn’t acting out of panic, but that was useless for everyone concerned. Everyone could tell that Bree was too weak-willed for this to work. Sasha stayed out of it, but was proud of her sister for realizing her own weaknesses.

“Stay away from strange guys with stranger jewelry,” Sasha said at the airport.

“I know, I know,” Bree replied, fending off Sasha’s worried gestures. “I’m my own woman now, no matter what the branding says.” She swept a hand down her Christy Reed t-shirt to demonstrate. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with an airplane seat and a few loops of the last album.”

Sasha watched her as long as she could, then turned away. Christy put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re takin’ it well. I... I told you no secrets. I could have shut her down with a single note, but that would be wrong, ‘cause she was right. She likes letting go, and I knew that, but she saw how far things had come. Already lost too many to rival controllers. She did the right thing for all of us. But you have to help Melinda get a new web designer. It’s only fair. Our last one was your sister, after all.”

Sasha knew that Christy was right. Part of her wondered how much of Christy rubbing off on her was really as natural as Bree had thought, but she shook it off and let Melinda grab her by the hand to drag her off to what she knew was going to be a wild night.