The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Chapter Eight

“So this is the world of dreams,” Michael said. “It’s not really what I expected.”

“A lot of people say that,” Julia replied, “including me when I first came here. I’ll ask the same thing of you as my teacher did of me, ‘what did you expect?’”

Michael gazed around at the new world he found himself in and considered his answer. He, like Julia, was standing on a near-invisible surface, which appeared to merge into the surrounding air so that it was difficult to work out exactly what ‘ground’ was. Above them there was no sky, only a vast expanse of grey, fading into black in the far distance, broken by innumerable spheres of mirror silver that floated serenely through the ‘air’.

This was Michael’s first visit to the higher dream worlds. He had spent a week clamped in ‘training wheels’, as he referred to it, stuck in the near Astral plane. Julia wanted to be sure that he understood the basics before letting him go further. He had used the time to ‘improve’ Lucy, and had discovered that the way he wanted her was not as far from what she was as he had thought. After a few nights work making dream suggestions, Lucy was a complete slut with exhibitionist tendencies, a strong liking for bondage, and a strong bisexual nature. She was currently asleep in Julia’s bed having been exhausted by Julia and Michael’s demands upon her.

“I don’t know, I guess,” he replied. “What are the silver balls?”

“Dreams. Dreamscapes to be exact. Whenever a normal human enters dream sleep, they create a dreamscape here. Look up there!” She pointed upward to where two spheres were moving toward each other. They touched, deformed slightly like two soap bubbles, and then merged together to form a slightly larger single sphere. “When two people have similar dreams, their dreamscapes tend to attract each other and, when they meet, they join to form a single dreamscape with both minds in it.”

“There must be cases where different dreams hit?”

“Yah. Generally they just bounce off, but in some cases, where someone has a very strong sleeping mind, they mix and the weaker dream is consumed. That can be the stuff of nightmares.”

Michael’s mind was working. “Okay, so if similar dreams attract each other, and a lot of people dream about sex, for example...”

Julia grinned. “Well done. Yes, there are some really big dreamscapes devoted to very common dreams. They tend to persist as well, because there’s always someone sleeping, and having that kind of dream. Some of them are very old. There’s a dreamscape of an orgy that we’re pretty sure has been going since at least the Greek Classic period, and there’s a nightmare dreamscape that probably first emerged back in the Palaeolithic era.”

“Wow! Can we go visit some?”

“Curb your enthusiasm, youth,” Julia replied, grinning at the happy puppy she was trying to train. “First we need to get some of the basics sorted out. Now if you want to go up to look at one of these dreamscapes...” She stopped, gazing up as Michael glided into the air. “Okay,” she said, “so you seem to have worked that out on your own.” With a thought she glided up after him.

Michael was hovering beside one sphere when Julia reached him. Close up the mirroring became transparent and you could see what was going on inside, even if it was a little misty. In this particular case a balding, fat, middle-aged man was surrounded by beautiful, mostly naked Las Vegas showgirls, complete with feathers and heavily exaggerated silicon breasts. Michael shook his head. “I hope I never start having dreams that tacky,” he remarked, and then floated off toward another dreamscape.

The second dreamscape Michael looked in was quite different. It was dark and the interior appeared to be composed of alleyways and side streets. There did not seem to be anyone in the dream, but Michael realised that there had to be. “There’s no one there,” he said, hoping to provoke an explanation from Julia.

“She’s hiding,” Julia replied.

“From us?”

“She doesn’t know we’re here. You can’t see out from inside; in fact there doesn’t seem to be an outside once you’re inside.”

“Then who’s she hiding from? And where is she?”

“Think, Michael. Use your abilities.”

“’Use the Force, Luke’?” he said, grinning. Then he relaxed and let his mind sense the sphere. He could feel another mind, weak, but there. She was hiding in a pile of cardboard boxes at the end of an alley. As Michael discovered her, he also discovered the reason for her fear. A male figure, part of her dream it appeared, was stalking toward her. “She’s terrified,” he said and, without thinking, pushed through the barrier and into the dreamscape.

“Michael! No...” But it was too late, he was inside. Julia waited outside, watching to see whether he would need help, and hoping she could provide it.

There was a sound of rushing air and then Michael was standing in the alley near the boxes where the woman was hiding. The dark figure was not yet in this alley, but he would be soon and Michael guessed that it would be a bad idea to meet him. He stepped forward, reached into the boxes and grabbed the woman’s arm, pulling her out.

She began to scream almost instantly and Michael had to clamp his hand over her mouth. “Do you want him to find us that easily?” he hissed at her. “Come on, before he gets to this alley.” He began dragging her toward the alley entrance, his hand still over her mouth. He could feel the stalker getting closer, but concentrated on ignoring the rising panic that was threatening to stop him moving at all. Panic was part of the dream, he realised. Her terror was trying to overwhelm him. He had to keep moving. He turned left at the mouth of the alley, and then left again. The alley turned right after a hundred yards or so and dead ended. “Damn,” Michael hissed and turned back.

It was too late. The woman screamed into Michael’s hand at the site of the dark figure coming toward them from the way they had come. The man had no features; his face was a dark shadow, a pitch-black mask. He had to be eight feet in height, and heavily muscled. In his right hand was a knife the size of a short sword.

Panic filled Michael’s mind like a cloud and he backed up rapidly, dragging the woman with him. He felt a door knob press into his back and reached for it. The door opened and he pushed her inside. He slammed the door and found a key under his fingers. The lock clicked shut just as the stalker slammed into the wood. Breathing hard, Michael backed away. The man hammered on the door for several seconds. They heard the thudding of the knife against the panels. The door was solid oak, however, and the man had no chance. Eventually he stopped.

“He, he’ll be looking for another way in,” the woman said to Michael through the darkness. The room was black as a coal cellar at midnight and Michael had almost no idea what she looked like or what was in the room. He felt for a switch beside the door, found one, and suddenly light filled the room.

They were standing in a single roomed apartment. It was shabby, but clean. There was a bed, an easy chair, and a small cupboard. To Michael’s left was the makings of a kitchen without the walls to close it off, to his right, through a door, he could see a bathroom. There were no windows, and the only door was the one they had come through. That suited Michael fine. With the stalker gone, he was regaining control of his mind, starting to think.

When they had first gone into the alley, the door had not been there. He was sure of that. It had appeared because they needed it. He suspected that the woman would not have found it, indeed she would not have moved from her pile of boxes until the stalker had found her. So the door had been his doing. It made sense, this was a dreamscape, and he was a lucid dreamer. He should be able to change things if he could control the emotions that this place provoked. He turned to look at his companion.

She was standing in a corner as far away from him, and the door, as she could get. He had to do a double-take at the outfit she was dressed in, a white halter top designed to show off her ample cleavage, red hot pants and black, knee length boots. He recognised it as the uniform the waitresses wore at a local bar, but he could not understand why someone would dream themselves wearing it. The woman herself was black, attractive, with cropped hair and a curvaceous figure. She looked to be a few years older than Michael, but he would have happily dated her if he could have got the chance. The only thing that marred her appearance was the twin streams of tears running down her cheeks, taking her mascara with them.

Michael went to the bathroom, returning with a damp cloth. He handed it to her. “Here, wipe your face.”

“Th-thanks.” She used the cloth, wiping away the black stains. Then she looked up at him. “Why are you helping me? No one helps me.”

“I... don’t understand. Who are you, and who’s the walking shadow with the knife?”

“My n-name’s Kelly. He’s the Stalker. He comes every night since the first time he caught me. He won’t leave me alone. Every night he comes and... and...” She broke into tears again. Michael took her in his arms and allowed her to sob into his shoulder. Unfortunately, he was a teenage boy and not used to comforting crying women. After a while, however, her tears subsided. She looked up at him. “He comes every night to rape me. All I can do is hide, and he always finds me.” She looked away, as if disgusted with herself. “The things he does to me... It’s worse every time. I d-don’t think I can take much more...”

Michael let out the breath he had been holding. He was not the best educated psychologist in the world, but he had watched a few documentaries and he could feel the emotion Kelly was giving off. She had been raped for real, he guessed, on her way home from work. Now she blamed herself for the things her attacker had done, and this phantom version was her way of punishing her for allowing herself to be raped in the first case. Standing here like this, with her breasts pressed against his chest and the bare flesh of her back under his hand, Michael was having a hard time not getting a hard on. Cleaned up, Kelly was a very attractive woman and Michael could guess why her attacker had picked her, but Michael had been brought up to believe that rapists were utter scum. He pushed Kelly away from him so that he could look into her eyes.

“It isn’t your fault, Kelly,” he told her. “You didn’t ask him to attack you.”

“I brought it on myself,” she said, sadly. “My momma always said that working at that bar would come to no good. Dressing like this... it’s asking for...”

Michael cut her off. “You only ask for it if the words come out of your mouth, Kelly.” She stumbled back from him, surprised at his anger. He was surprised himself. He turned back to the door. “I’m gonna find that bastard and...”

The door explored inward to reveal the Stalker standing behind it. He raised something and Michael felt a sudden, sharp pain in his chest. The world faded to black accompanied by Kelly’s screams.

Outside the dreamscape, Julia let out a wail of terror herself. He had gone in without waiting to be told what could happen, and now he had taken a shotgun hit to the chest. If he died in there...

Disregarding her own advice, Julia pushed through the skin of the dream and found herself standing outside the ruined door of the apartment. She was more experienced than Michael; she knew to expect trouble and how to prepare herself to deal with it. She looked down at her right hand and a .38 revolver appeared in it. She eased back the hammer, took two deep breaths, and lunged through the door.

She saw Kelly, blood sprayed over her white top, kneeling on the bed with her hands behind her head. She turned, seeing Michael’s body lying crumpled against a wall. There was a perfect ballistic splatter mark formed of his blood all the way up the wall behind him. She carried on turning, raising the pistol into firing position as she did so, to see... the empty kitchen.

“Drop the gun, an’ kick it over to me,” said a voice from behind her. “Do it now, or I’ll blow your brains all over the other wall.”

Slowly, Julia allowed the gun to fall to her side, eased the hammer down, and dropped the weapon to the floor. Once that was done she turned to see the shadow figure standing in the doorway of the bathroom. A pump-action shotgun, the one she had seen him use on Michael, was aimed right at her. She pushed her foot up against the pistol and kicked it over to the Stalker. He dropped to one knee and picked up the gun. The cylinder was popped open and checked, then slammed shut. “Good, fully loaded. This’ll be much more useful for what I’ve got in mind.” He looked Julia up and down, and she got the impression she was not going to like what he had in mind. “Git up on the bed, beside the black pussy. On your knees an’ put your hands behind your head.”

Julia walked over to the bed and climbed up beside Kelly. She knelt beside the black girl, upright, not on her haunches, and put her hands up behind her head. The Stalker walked around to look at them. He prodded Julia’s arm with the barrel of the shotgun. “Push your arms back, pussy, like she’s doin’.” Julia complied, the action pushing her breasts forward, which was how he wanted it. The gun rattled between her knees. “An’ spread your legs wider.” Julia had dressed her dream self in a scarlet silk mini-dress tonight; spreading her legs much wider was difficult, but she complied as best she could, stretching the fabric to near breaking point. The Stalker shook his head. “Not good enough. I’ll help you.” He reached behind his back and produced the big knife he had been carrying earlier. He placed it at the hem of Julia’s dress and slipped it upward. The razor edge parted the stretched silk easily, slitting the dress up to her waist. Julia was not wearing panties. “Now spread ‘em!” She widened her legs, giving him a good view of her neatly trimmed pussy.

“Okay,” the Stalker said. “I’m gonna fuck you both, an’ I’m gonna cut you,” he indicated Julia, “so you’ll remember me good. First, though, I want some entertainment. I heard tell of these big city pussy shows where you can watch two pussies getting’ it on. I never been to one, though, so you two pussies can put on a show for me.”

Kelly shook her head violently. “No! You can’t mean you want me to...”

“I’m afraid he does, dear,” Julia said. “I think we’d better...”

“No! Not that. I won’t do that.”

The Stalker walked over to stand in front of Kelly, raising the shotgun to her face. Kelly stared at it, mesmerised, her mouth slightly open. The Stalker pushed the barrel of the gun between her lips. “Open wider,” he commanded, and she complied, not thinking, and he pushed four inches of cold, metal gun barrel into her mouth. She gagged. “Now suck on it, pussy. Suck on it like you’re gonna suck on my cock later on. Suck on it, or I’ll pull this trigger an’ I’ll just have one pussy to play with.”

Shaking, Kelly closed her lips around the barrel and began to suck. “Yeah,” he encouraged, “that’s what I wanna see.” She closed her eyes and tried to make believe this was her boyfriend’s cock. He was engrossed in Kelly’s display, and Julia thought she might manage to do something. She could summon up another pistol, have it appear behind her, and then grab for it. The key was that the two dreamers could not be allowed to see it appear. There was an internal logic to dreams which could not be broken under most circumstances. Michael had managed it in the extreme panic of being trapped earlier, but Julia would have to work with the dream. She glanced down, and that was all it took. “Don’t you be twitchin’, pussy!” the Stalker snapped, aiming the pistol at her with his left hand. “You pull that dress off while I watch your pussy friend, an’ then you can get started.”

Julia reached down to the cut hem of her dress and pulled it upward, peeling the silk off her body to leave her naked apart from a pair of three-inch stiletto shoes. She dropped the silk rag onto the floor and returned her hands to their position behind her head, thrusting her breasts out as far as she could. The Stalker pulled the shotgun barrel out of Kelly’s mouth and stepped in front of Julia. His shadow-face shifted into what she suspected was a grin, and he slid the barrel up between her legs and began stroking it between her cunt lips. “Maybe I should just fuck you with this cannon,” he said.

Julia was getting wet, and there was no point in denying it. She walked into dreams to find dangerous places for sex in relative safety, and now she had dived right into the most dangerous situation she had ever been in. There was a real chance he would kill her when he was finished with her, and when you died in your dreams... The situation was making her hot. The barrel of the shotgun rubbed slickly against her clit and she had to stifle a moan. “You could always do that later,” she cooed.

“Damn right!” He turned, moved quickly to the easy chair, and sat down, the pistol resting comfortably in his lap. “Now you undress that black bitch an’ fuck her good. I bet you know how to do that don’t ya?”

“Yeah,” Julia said, turning toward Kelly, “I know how to do that.” The black girl looked scared now. “Don’t worry, Kelly, you just let me do the work and we’ll be fine.” She reached out and took the hem of Kelly’s top in her hands. “Lift your arms.” Kelly responded, and Julia pulled the top over Kelly’s breasts, up over her head, and off. She tossed it aside and cupped one of Kelly’s large breasts in each hand, stroking the undersides of them. “You have beautiful breast, Kelly,” she breathed, and bent down to take one of the dark brown nipples in her mouth. Kelly let out a little gasp as the lips touched her flesh, then a soft groan as she felt Julia’s tongue teasing her nipple. The nipple swelled under Julia’s expert ministrations and Kelly began to relax into the pleasure. Julia swapped breasts and another groan escaped from Kelly. Julia pulled away and said, “Lie down.”

Kelly stretched out on the bed and Julia pushed her legs together. She hooked her fingers into the top of Kelly’s hot pants and pulled them down her long legs. Underneath was a white cotton thong which Julia pulled down next, dropping it over the side of the bed to join the hot pants. Now Julia began stroking Kelly’s thighs, sliding her hands up them, brushing the insides with her finger tips. Kelly groaned louder, and spread her legs out of instinct. Julia slipped between the long, ebony limbs and lowered her face to their junction. Kelly let out a gasp of surprise as Julia’s tongue snaked between her pussy lips, sliding up to find her clit. The black girl’s hands reached out to curl into Julia’s hair, pushing her hard against the source of such intense pleasure. Julia slid first one, then two fingers into Kell’s cunt, pressing up to find the girl’s G-spot. The sudden grunt of pleasure told her that she had found it. Kelly spread her legs wider and began to hump Julia’s face.

Over in the easy chair, the Stalker had his pants open and was busy with his hand wrapped round his surprisingly white cock. His eyes were glued to the action on the bed and he failed completely to notice the slight stirring of the corpse lying against the wall.

Julia slipped her other hand between Kelly’s legs and began stroking her index finger up and down the crack in her ass. The skin was slick with sweat and cunt juices, the stimulation of the finger made Kelly buck her hips more. Then Julia placed her finger against the pucker of Kelly’s ass. “No!” Kelly yelped. “Not there.” But Julia’s tongue was making her receptive to things she would never normally have countenanced. “Oh, God, yes, fuck my ass.” The Stalker’s hand pumped faster, and Julia pressed her slick finger into Kelly’s anus. There was a moment’s hesitation, a slight tightening of the muscles. Julia’s tongue worked faster for an instant and, with a loud groan, Kelly relaxed again. Julia’s finger slipped inside and Kelly began to pump onto the two points of penetration.

Julia lifted her head for a second, fighting Kelly’s hands. “Slow down for a second, girlfriend.” Her head dropped back down, but, Kelly stopped bucking so much. Julia worked two more fingers into Kelly’s pussy, and a second into her ass. “Good,” she breathed, “now lift your legs up and take hold of your knees. Let’s give him a real show.” Kelly’s legs swung up and she caught them behind her knees, as instructed, pulling them down, and spreading them wide so that the Stalker now had a good view of Julia’s hands. Julia worked her thumb into Kelly’s cunt, alongside her fingers, and then slid the whole of her hand in up to the wrist. Kelly let out a shriek of pleasure mixed with pain, and then Julia’s mouth went to work on her once more, and all Kelly could do was buck her hips against her partner’s fist and fingers.

Kelly’s vision blurred and she felt the first signs of an approaching orgasm growing in her belly. “Um gonna cum,” she moaned. “Fuck, fuck, fuck me harder.” Julia sucked hard on Kelly’s clit, lapped her tongue over it, and sucked once more. Her arm pistoned in and out of Kelly’s soaking hole, and she worked her other fingers in Kelly’s anus. Suddenly, Kelly stopped moving, her body stiffening completely, arms straining to remain holding her legs in place. Then she was a thrashing mass of black flesh, unable to control the sudden, massive pleasure of an orgasm the like of which she had never felt before. Julia did her best to hold onto the bucking bronco she had created, and tried to ride out the storm.

In the easy chair, a fountain of cum erupted from the lap of the Stalker. The sight of Kelly cumming under Julia’s tender tortures had driven him right over the edge. So it came as quite a shock to him when he heard a click on his left and looked around to see the barrel of the biggest handgun he had ever seen staring back at him. “When they’ve finished,” Michael told him, “I’m gonna blow your fucking brains out.”

“Y-you’re alive,” Julia repeated.

“You’ve said that about a dozen times,” Michael said. “This is just a dream, I can’t die here.” Michael was sitting on the edge of the bed beside two women dressed only in footwear, holding a .44 Magnum automatic on the Stalker, who remained seated in the easy chair. Michael had not, yet, shot the Stalker, but he had every intention of doing so as soon as Julia had finished telling him off. Apart from anything, there was blood all over the nice, clean, white shirt Michael was wearing; his own blood.

“Oh, but you can,” Julia replied. “Have you ever heard that legend about dreams where you’re falling? Normally, you fall, but you never hit the ground, right? Supposedly, if you land, you die in your sleep.”

“I know that,” Kelly supplied.

“Right,” Julia nodded. “For most people, there’s no real chance of death in their dreams. If they are about to die, they wake up. We’re different, especially when we enter another person’s dreamscape. If we die here, our minds die, and our bodies are left as lifeless shells.”

“You know that phrase ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you?’” Michael asked. “Good thing you didn’t tell me that before I came in here.”

Julia looked at him incredulously. “Are you trying to say that the reason you didn’t die is because you didn’t know you were supposed to?”

“You have a better explanation?”

“Well, no...” There was no better explanation. Well, maybe... No, that was just a fairy story. “Yeah, I guess you must be right. So, now you know, don’t do it again!”

“I’ll be more careful in future,” he promised. “Now let’s see who this jerk-off is.” He handed the gun to Julia and walked over to the Stalker. He grabbed the man’s face at the hairline and pulled down, ripping away the shadows that masked his features.

“Th-that’s Mickey!” Kelly cried out. “He runs the bar I work, um, worked at. He fired me, over the telephone, after I couldn’t come into work for a week after he raped me.”

Michael took the Magnum back from Julia. “Is that right? Well, let’s see if Mickey can die in this dream.” He pulled the trigger. Mickey let out a shriek, throwing his hands in front of his face... and then evaporated into nothingness right in front of them.

“He woke up,” Julia said.

“Well this won’t be the last that creep sees of me,” Michael replied.

Chapter Nine

“Ooo, yeah, that’s good.” Lucy was working her way toward heaven, perched upon Michael’s cock. He was lying on Julia’s lounger, in her back yard, with Lucy straddling his hips. Her feat could reach the ground from here and he had to do no work at all as she slid up and down on his shaft. She was facing his feat, and so could not see his face. It was a good thing, as she might have been displeased to see that he was not really paying attention to her fucking him. Michael was still trying to work out the best thing he could do to pay Mickey back for his nightly depredations of Kelly’s sanity.

“Oh, oh, oh,” Lucy said, nearing orgasm.

“Oh my God!” The voice was Michael’s mothers and he sat up to see her standing in the gateway into the yard. “Michael, what are you...” She gasped again as Julia walked out of the house carrying a tray of drinks. Julia was naked apart from a pair of ear rings.

Anger flared in Michael’s mind, along with embarrassment and fear. His thoughts about Mickey combined with his desire not to be discovered fucking Lucy by his mother. “Mom, don’t see this,” he said.

His mother staggered backward, blinked a couple of times, and then squinted at the yard as though having trouble seeing it. “What am I doing here?” she said. Then she closed the gate and walked away.

Julia looked at him, amazed. “How did you do that?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Michael replied. He bucked his hips up to start Lucy off again, but she climbed off him.

“Can’t start again just like that,” she breathed. “Your mom gave me a hell of a shock.”

Despite the fact that he had no real interest in sex right now, this irritated Michael no end. “Julia, you fuck me then.”

“No, Michael, I want to talk about...”

“Get down on your knees,” he hissed. His anger was getting out of control and he had no idea why. Julia froze, and then put the tray down on the patio table. She dropped to her knees, her eyes slightly glazed. “Down on all fours,” he growled, and she complied. He walked around behind her and pulled her legs apart.

“P-please, Michael, don’t do this,” Julia whimpered. He jammed his cock into her and she cried out. Luckily he was still lubricated from Lucy’s pussy as Julia was quite dry. He pulled out again and jammed himself into her. Out, and once more in.

This was no fun. “You will like this,” he hissed. “You want to be fucked.” Julia let out a growl of desire. “Tell me you want to be fucked.”

“Oh god, Michael, fuck me. I want you in me. Fuck me now!”

Satisfied, Michael began pumping into her. Her body responded instantly, lubricating her to make his thrusts easier. She began moaning and mewling under the hammering he was giving her cunt. A minute later he came, felling her vaginal muscles pulsing around him as she orgasmed with him. He pulled out and collapsed, spent, onto the warm slabs of the patio.

He looked up into the horrified face of Lucy. She was standing over Julia, who was curled into a ball, sobbing. “W-what did you do that for?” Lucy asked. “I just wanted a minute’s rest. I’d have come back. Y-you didn’t have to rape her.”

The word hammered into Michael’s mind like a bullet. What the hell had he just done? His face flushed bright red, his mind screamed for escape. He grabbed up the trunks he had worn to walk to Julia’s house, struggled into them and ran. He did not stop until he was in his own room with the door locked shut.

Michael stayed in his room for the rest of the day, not even emerging for his evening meal. He was mortified by what he had done. He was no better than Mickey, a man that Michael despised.

As the sun set, Michael heard a sound and turned to look where it had come from. There was nothing there, just shadows in the corner of the room. Except that the shadows seemed to shift as he looked at them. Was there a figure standing there? A woman?

Michael sat on the bed and did his best to concentrate. His heart was pounding in his chest. He felt as if he was about to throw up. Slowly, his mind and perceptions shifted into the astral world, and there was Julia, waiting for him. She was dressed in a typical short, white dress and matching calf-length boots. There was a sad sort of smile on her face.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said.

“Julia... I’m so...”

She cut him off before he could continue the apology. “I’m not interested in how sorry you are, I think I know that. We’ll discuss why you did it later. I need to talk to you about what you did.”

“It was terrible...” She stepped toward him and placed her index finger over his lips. He stopped speaking.

“Michael, you did something to me that I can’t bring myself to forgive you for at the moment.” His heart sank, but she kept speaking. “I don’t think you quite understand how... impossible what you did was!”

He had thought of many words for it: disgusting, unconscionable, criminal. ‘Impossible’ was not one of things he had thought of. “I... I don’t understand,” he said.

“Okay, there are maybe three of our kind in the world right now who can affect waking minds. There’s an Israeli woman who spent thirty years in Mossad. If she concentrates so hard her ears bleed she can make a single person kind of forget she’s in a room. She has to stand stock still and she can’t have any attention drawn to her or she’s fucked. You changed your mother’s perceptions of a scene that most have really shocked her so that she couldn’t see any of us and didn’t remember the event.

“There’s also an eighty year old guy in Vermont who can tweak people’s unconscious actions a bit. He uses it to get girls to bend over in front of him, or sit with their legs open so he can see their panties. He’s in a wheelchair, practically immobile; it’s the only way he gets any thrills at all. You, on the other hand, took over my mind, forced me to do something I didn’t want to do, and even made me enjoy it.”

“I’m sorry, I...”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “The point is, no one with your experience can do what you did. The last time this kind of thing was possible was back in the Dark Ages.”

“Huh?”

“Back then people used to believe in magic more. They would believe that sorcerers could control the minds of men, or summon demons, or turn people into frogs. It weakens the barriers between the real world and the astral so things that happen in the astral affect reality more easily. We need to find out how come you can pull stunts like this now and there’s only one person I can think of who can help us.

“However, she’s gonna have to wait. We have someone to help.”

“Kelly!”

“Yep. When she dreams tonight, old Mickey will be back for more unless you stop him.”

Michael got up off the bed. “Then I’d better get to it,” he said.

Kelly was sitting on the bed in the apartment looking very nervous when Julia appeared behind her. Once more, the black girl was dressed in her Mickey’s Bar uniform. “Hi, Kelly,” Julia said.

Kelly jerked around to see Julia standing there. “Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Don’t you worry. We’re here, and when Mickey turns up...”

As if on cue, the door crashed open and the shadow figure of Mickey the Stalker was standing there. “Hello, pussies,” he growled. “We’re gonna have fun tonight.”

“Oh yeah,” Michael replied, “we sure are.” He was standing behind Mickey, holding the Magnum to the back of the shadow’s head. “The difference tonight, Mickey old pal, is that this isn’t Kelly’s nightmare...” The world twisted around them without warning. Suddenly they were in Mickey’s Bar, and Mickey was tied, spread-eagled and naked, to the pool table. “...it’s yours.”

“Did you have to strip him?” Julia said, grimacing. “God he’s an ugly son-of-a-bitch!” She glanced at Kelly. “Hey, Kelly, you worked here, right? Maybe you could get me a drink? White wine would be nice.” Kelly nodded and went off behind the bar, returning with a tall, cold glass. “Thank you. Now what should we do with tubby here?”

“I have an idea,” Michael replied. His hand came up holding the long knife Mickey had used on Kelly. He stepped up to the pool table and rested the edge of the blade under Mickey’s balls. “What do you think?”

Julia smiled. “You are a sadistic genius,” she said.

Michael pulled the blade sharply upward and Mickey screamed until Julia got sick of it and stuffed a bar towel into his mouth. She leaned over him. “Now, listen to me you fat wanker. This is just a dream, so my friend hasn’t really cut off your tiny little dick. Thing is, when you wake up, it’ll be just like he has. You won’t be able to get it up, and I doubt you’ll have much interest in sex anyway.”

Michael leaned over, holding the severed prick in another towel. “I can put this back on, but I don’t really think I want to. I might be persuaded to do so if...”

“What? Mickey cried, spitting out the towel. The tears were making his ugly face even puffier. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“I’ll come and glue this back on, if you go to the police and confess to all the rapes you’ve committed. Oh, and before you’re put away for a good long time, I want you to sign your bar over to Kelly, as a gesture of good will.”

“No, I won’t do it.”

Julia looked up at Michael. “Maybe you should just make him eat his cock?”

“No!” Mickey wailed. “Okay, okay, I’ll do it.” He started blubbering again, so Julia stuffed the towel back in his mouth.

Julia and Michael walked over to where Kelly was standing. “He won’t bother you again,” Michael told her. “You wanna keep a hold of this?” He held up the towel containing Mickey’s privates.

Kelly grimaced. “Yuck, no! He’s a lot less frightening like that. To think I used to be terrified of him.”

“I guess we’ll be going,” Michael said.

“I’ll walk Kelly home,” Julia said. “You need to go see Lucy. She was very upset this afternoon.”

“Oh, err, okay. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

Julia leaned over so that her mouth was beside Michael’s ear. “I still haven’t forgiven you, and you need to spend some time with Lucy. Oh, and Kelly here owes me a really good tongue bath.”

Michael sighed and, with a sad smile, faded out of the dreamscape.

“Now then, Kelly,” Julia said, “which way to your bedroom, I mean, apartment.”