The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I stepped through the shimmer into what appeared to be some kind of underground cave. The floor, walls, and ceiling were made of rough, unhewn stone, and a soft drip drip drip of water from a stalactite... or a stalagmite, I could never keep them straight. We appeared to have teleported several hundred miles from the city; caves of this size and composition weren’t found along the Oregon coastline, that’s for sure. Curiosity pierced the layers of dread and despair that cocooned me. I’d been brought here with the promise of answers, but every step I took forward only filled me with more questions.

“Where are we?” I asked aloud, following Chrome and Siphon deeper into the dimly lit cave. My voice echoed back at me strangely, almost taunting me.

“A very good question,” Chrome mused. “You know, I’ve been here a few dozen times over the fast five years, and even I don’t know. Still, it doesn’t matter. Just a little farther, and you’ll have all the answers.”

Not an answer, but I held my peace, for the moment. Either my eyes were adjusting to the dim light, or we were nearing the light source. Turning a corner, I blinked in surprise as the natural cave walls gave way to smooth polished stone. The interior looked very much like the sitting room of an old English castle, complete with tapestries, an huge scarlet rug, and suits of armor. My jaw no doubt dragged across the ground as I openly gawked; for whatever reason they’d built a castle out of an underground cave, the recreation was remarkable.

“This must have cost a pretty penny,” I muttered softly, still following behind my erstwhile ‘guides’.

Light flooded the room, and I gasped, covering my eyes. “Indeed, the price for creating all this was high,” a deep booming baritone voice spoke from across the room, “but not the kind measured in money.”

My eyes again adjusted to the brightness of the room, and after a moment or two I was able to glimpse the speaker. A tall figure sat several feet away, resting comfortably on what I could only think of as a throne, sitting in the middle of a raised stone dais at the far end of the room. He wore a black suit of fine leather, complete with matching boots, gloves, and cape, all of which contrasted starkly with his white pale skin. He had jet black hair, and sported a goatee, nicely trimmed, I noticed as we drew closer to his location. He held a large glass of wine idly in his left hand, not drinking from it, probably just as part of the image he portraying for my benefit. He looked very impressive, but I was just too done with all of this to be impressed.

“Ah, Mrs. Frasier, welcome to my humble abode,” he said, grinning widely. “So nice of you to join us.”

“You can skip the pleasantries,” I said simply. “I’m tired. Metal Arm here promised me some answers if I came here, and that’s all I want. You can stop the Bela Lugosi impression, as well... those fake teeth are a little over the top.”

The dark figure grinned wider, and a shudder ran through me as his teeth—no, FANGS—grew longer, lengthening before my eyes. “Oh, they are not fake, my dear. They’re quite real. I admit to being a bit of an Anne Rice fan in my youth... just LOVED ‘The Interview With the Vampire’. When I got the chance, I decided to remake myself into the vampire Armand.” He shook his head. “First, and last time I made such a major overall change in myself... fun for a few thousand years, but really just a waste of energy and resources.” Rising to his feet, he gestured to eastern wall, and a portal appeared. “Enough about me. If you’ll follow me into the Game Room, I’ll be happy to tell you anything you wish to know.”

Okay. I was a little off balance here. Actually, really off balance. Hell, to be honest, I hadn’t been anything CLOSE to being on balance since the day before my dad had died. The man who had supposedly masterminded my downfall, who presumably had the answers to all of the questions plaguing me, had just admitted to being a freaking VAMPIRE... saying that he’d remade himself into one several thousand years ago, after a fictional character written by an author in the last two decades.

This is one of those times when I can really relate to Alice tumbling into that damned rabbit hole.

“Will you be needing us any longer, Sir?” Chrome spoke up then, causing our vampire host to pause. “We brought Omega Girl to you, as requested, after all. Unless there’s something else you need us for, I’d like to return home to my apartment, and check on my girls.”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Chrome,” he replied, dismissively, “by all means, go. You served your purpose, I am most appreciative. You can drop the body right there, on the floor.” Maddison heaved a small sigh of relief, dropping Dougie’s lifeless corpse on the hard stone floor.

“And... um... to the matter of... compensation?” Chrome added tentatively.

“Rest assured, once I am finished with my... guest, I shall see to it that you get what you have coming. Now then, you know the way out.”

The man shook his head as his lackey left. “Good help really is so hard to find,” he muttered softly. “Still, he accomplished his part, and brought you to me.”

“I see. But why did you have them bring D...” I started, then paused, closing my eyes. “Why did you have them bring a dead body back with you?”

The strange man pointed a hand towards the body, which immediately began to glow brightly. Before my eyes, Doug’s body began to change, the green glow leaving his skin, his features melding back into a human form once more. A large cloud of pulsing green energy rose from the body, moving to gather in the vampires’s outstretched hand, before being absorbed completely into him.

“Just think of it as recycling,” he said, turning towards the doorway again. “Long ago, I gave him a Gift, one that enabled him change his destiny in a way he never could have foreseen. As he is now dead, he is no longer in need of my energy, so I merely took it back. Now then, if you’ll follow me...”

I glanced back at Doug once more, the Doug I remembered from so long ago, before the accident. His face was calm, his eyes closed. His coloring was good, not even pale as you’d expect from a dead body. He didn’t look dead at all. Aside from the fact that his chest wasn’t moving, I almost expected him to sit up and open his eyes at any moment.

Yeah. That would be something, wouldn’t it? I thought dimly. And the fact that I practically twisted his head one hundred-eighty degrees wouldn’t be nearly so damning.

Following my host through the portal into the next room, I was again caught fully off guard. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, having stepped through a shimmer of light in the city and appeared inside a cave, then inside a medieval castle, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t this.

“Welcome to my study,” he said grandly, bowing slightly at the waist. “It may seem a bit... theme-oriented, I suppose,” he said, gesturing to the myriad number of chess boards set up all about the room, “nevertheless this is nexus from which all of my grand plans and schemes have sprung into fruition.”

“So, if really wanted to get revenge against you for all of this crap all I really need to do is knock over a few of your chessboards?” I replied, mildly irritated. Frankly, I was seriously weirded out by now. I was officially Lacie in Wonderland now. Instead of giant playing cards and the Queen of Hearts, I was getting a post-modern vampire with a giant collection of chess pieces.

And he still hadn’t answered a single question about what this was all about.

“Alright,” he said with a sigh, turning to face me. “I suppose I should... cut to the chase. You came here for answers, not the guided tour. I’m sorry, its just that its been so long since I’ve had the chance to interact with anyone directly that I’ve gotten a bit rusty.” He gestured to the air again, and a chair appeared behind him. He sat down. “I’m going to tell you a rather long and involved story, and when I am done, I will answer any questions you might have for me. All I ask from you is that you listen without interrupting... and keep an open mind.

“Now... where to start? Hmm. I suppose the beginning would be the best place... but what IS the beginning? That in and of itself is a monumental question. In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, Genesis 1:1, the very first sentence of the Bible. It goes on and on to describe what happened next, how the universe itself was shaped, how man and all the creatures of world were brought into being, yadda, yadda, yadda... but it doesn’t go into detail on exactly HOW He created everything. Theologists are more concerned with the WHY rather than the HOW, and scientists while interested in the HOW, are basically just GUESSING, using theories and hypotheses to try and explain WHY things work the way they do as a basis for HOW it was done.

“Fast forward a bit to MY beginning. My name is Jeremiah King. I grew up in a world completely unlike this one... a world in which super powered beings and maniacal mad scientists exist only in fantasy writings and the magic of movies and TV. In the world in which I lived, Omega Girl is a web-based story written by some horny internet geek, where the only times people wear long underwear outside the house is on Halloween, and where Super Tuesday refers to the upcoming political elections instead of day of the week we celebrate our favorite hero or heroine.

“I was something of a nerd back then, too damned book smart yet too socially awkward to really fit in with my peers. I suppose you could say I was a bit of a loner growing up, keeping mostly to myself, more at home with a book or a computer keyboard in my hand than with an actual person. You probably think you know where this is going... but no, this isn’t a mind-control story from the internet. I didn’t grow up to become a mad scientist, bent on getting back at all those hot young women that snubbed me growing up. No... I grew up to become an archaeologist.”

He gestured to the wall behind him, which slowly slid open to reveal the largest jewel I’d ever seen in my life. Behind the wall, glistening with a bright red light, stood a perfect red ruby easily eight feet tall, the base of which seemed to be fused to the stone of the floor. Staring into its brilliance made me lightheaded, and caused my head to throb, so I averted my eyes.

“I came across that on my first dig in Giza,” he continued. “Destiny, or blind luck, however you choose to rationalize it, that singular jewel literally changed my life. Three of my crew, including myself, were caught in a cave-in. Half-buried under a ton of rock and sand, only a few minutes worth of air, and yet, at the time, I remember feeling almost... calm. Tranquil. After all, my life hadn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries thus far. No, I didn’t want to die... but if I didn’t have a choice in the matter, dying in the pursuit of knowledge seemed at the time to be most noble way I could go so. Noble... hah! I was a fool back then... but a lucky fool. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to notice a faint red haze coming from the wall in front of me. My legs were crushed in the cave-in, but I could just reach out to touch it. It wasn’t rock, it was crystal, some kind of jewel, buried far beneath the sand and stone. A ruby of immense size.

“I remember laughing then, thinking it was a bitter irony to find such a treasure at the point of my death, with no way to enjoy it. As I pressed my hand against that cool hard surface, I thought to myself, ‘What I wouldn’t give to be able to just escape this tomb, right here and now.’ And low and behold, the crystal reacted! It felt my desperation, my need, and acted upon my will. There was heat... and a blinding red flash of light... and when I blinked again, I was lying face down in the sand, above ground, just outside my tent.

“I was amazed... amazed to be alive, and out of the tent, of course, but more amazed by HOW it had happened. In that brief contact with the jewel, I had connected with it, gleaned a small bit of knowledge from it, and sensed the overwhelming power it represented. This jewel was a piece of the universe itself... a sliver or shard of the EVERYTHING that was, before God, or the Big Bang, or whatever, created what is now. Within its facets lay the power of creation and destruction itself... the ability to remake reality into whatever a person wished it to be. Now that I was alive and safe, I was bound and determined to claim that power for myself.

“Easier said than done. I’d wished to be free of the tomb, but I was still in bad shape. My legs were utterly crushed, and useless; my spine had been damaged as well, so I didn’t feel any pain, but I was pretty sure that I needed to go to the hospital right away. I was basically stuck there until the rest of my crew returned from the dig site, but knowing that three of us had been trapped in a cave-in, the would be there working non-stop trying to rescue us for hours on end. I wished briefly that I was back home in the States, at my father’s clinic that I so used to hate going to as a child... and to my continued surprise, I suddenly found myself there, lying atop an examination table in my dad’s old office. It dawned on me exactly what I’d wished for at the time: to be able escape the tomb right then and there... instantaneously. The crystal hadn’t merely transported me to safely—it had given me the ABILITY to escape confinement myself!

Using my newly granted power, I took myself in for medical care, then transported myself back to the dig site. The crew had managed to partially unearth the cave, enough to discover the crushed remains of my two comrades. Pretending not to have been away from camp when it happened, I decided to shut down the site and send them all away. alone once more, I re-entered the cave where I found the jewel, just where I’d left it.”

He paused in his narrative, glancing at me, as if to gauge my reaction. “Well, you don’t look completely doubtful, which is good. I suppose in THIS reality, incredible occurrences like this happen pretty often so its easier to take all this with a grain of salt. Suffice it to say, I spent the next several years testing the limits of the jewel’s powers, remaking myself, and the world around me, at my whim. As it turned out, there were only two. The first I found out when I tried to remove the gem from the cave—that the jewel was permanently, immovably stuck to the ground at its base. The ground around it was as unbreakable as the jewel itself—yes, the thought did occur to me to snap off a small piece to carry around with me rather than having to always come back to it. Not wanting to spend the rest of my life in an Egyptian tomb, I had the brilliant idea to simply warp the earth’s location around the stone, in essence moving the entire world around the stone itself. That’s when I discovered the second limitation of the jewel.

“Like any reaction in nature, activating the stone’s power required a catalyst... energy to jumpstart the reaction. The bigger the change, the more energy was required. LIFE energy, in my case. Moving the stone to a move private location drained my life force to dangerous levels, and by the time I’d recovered enough to realize what had happened, I found myself in the body of a wrinkled up old man. Slowly recovering my strength, I managed to reverse most of the damage done, giving myself a new body, an immortal body, so that I wouldn’t accidentally unmake myself. A smart move... but alas, not smart enough, because when I had the idea of going back in time to discover more about Ancient Egypt, and how they learned of the stone, the effort drained me even worse. Had I still been human, I would have died from the effort; looking back on the experience, I almost wish I had! My vampire body turned to dust, completely devoid of any energy or sustenance. I was still ALIVE, in that my mind, my spirit, or whatever, was still present, but there was nothing of me there, BUT my mind.”

I couldn’t stand it any more, I had to interrupt. “Alright. If that’s true, then how are you standing here, now? What, did someone just happen to come along and dump a few quarts of blood onto your remains?”

King smiled. “Actually, that’s it, exactly. It seems I landed in the middle of the early Dynastic period, circa 3000 B.C. A civil war was brewing, and my ‘resting place’ just happened to be a few feet below the battlefield. It took a little while before enough blood seeped through the dry sands to nourish me, and an eternity before I could literally pull myself back together again, but slowly and surely I regained my strength. I had had a long time to think during the process of reforming my body from the sands, and I came to the conclusion that despite all that had happened to me since finding this jewel, what I really and truly needed was more power. I needed to find a way to access the jewel without having to draw on my own life’s essence every single time. I suppose its true what they say: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I was corrupted, I admit it. The gem had given me the merest taste of its true power, but in order to wield it, I would need power of my own.

“Your power, Omega Girl.”

Suddenly, his insane story seemed a lot less crazy. There was obviously a lot going on here, a lot that wasn’t being told. Of course, I hadn’t come here to here the life’s story of some vampire, after all, but having stared at the giant jewel for only a second or two told me that it was much much more than just a giant paperweight.

He stood up then, moving to stand in front of the giant full length chessboard that covered the far end of the room, moving one of the person-sized pawns forward. “When I finally emerged from the sands a few thousand years later, the primitive peoples of that time believed me to be a god, and worshipped me as such. It was ironic, in a way. I’d gone back in time to discover how the Ancient Egyptians accomplished such monumental marvels for their time period, only to find out that I was the one responsible. Using what I knew from my research into that time period, I set myself up as the god Osiris, even temporarily remaking myself with a jackal’s head.” He chuckled. “You’ve been worshipped as a hero and a savior in your time, Lacie, but let me tell you, few things compare to the adulation of godhood from an entire nation of people... to know that you’ll be remembered as such from generation after generation for thousands of years down the line. If I hadn’t been already addicted to power before, I was certainly hooked now.

“This time, however, I decided to invest in knowledge instead of pure power. I used the gem’s power to see, to learn, to increase my knowledge, and my capacity for knowledge. I learned to stop thinking linearly, to see the connections behind the obvious connections... I learned about cause and effect, how something as simple as a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can have drastic repercussions on the other side. I rested, gathering my power again, even using my ‘servants’ as well, even so much as lending the pharaohs of the time access to the jewel to build the monuments, and their kingdoms, all the while helping to prime the pump with their own life essences. Finally, when the time was right, I used all of the energy I’d gathered to send myself, not through time or space, but across dimensions... into another entire plane of reality. Into THIS reality.

“In my knowledge seeking, I’d discovered the fact that the universe as we know it, is but one of many... a multiverse, I believe is the proper term. For more than two thousand years in Egypt, I scanned the infinite number of worlds for a being with the power to tap fully into the stone, to wield its complete and total power... until I found YOU. Your powers... the energy you give off is extra-dimensional... a unique kind of quasi-energy that shouldn’t even exist in ANY reality. I thought at first to simply take you, bend you to my will as I had countless others... but it seems that you are one of the Blessed of this world... whether part of the universal design, or somehow gifted by the supposed ‘gods’, you are immune to the powers of this jewel! Therefore, the only way I could get the power I crave from you is to alter the situation, and push you into a corner where you would not only would you NOT fight me, but actually be gladly willing to give up your powers to me.”

I shook my head, trying to take it all in. “So,” I said after a long moment when he didn’t resume talking, “basically what you’re telling me is that you ruined my life... put me in these impossible situations... basically bent reality itself around me... all to bring me down to my lowest point, a point where not only would I not fight you, but WILLINGLY give up my powers to you... because I had nothing else left to lose?”

He nodded. “That’s essentially it, yes. Life itself is like a game of chess... there are only so many moves available to you. Having watched you, studied you, learned what you think and feel, I was able to manipulate you, if not directly, then indirectly, bringing you to this point. So, now, you have a choice to make.”

Choices. It always comes down to choices, doesn’t it? Do you turn left or right? Do you go forward, or back? Do I fly forward and beat this fucking vampire creep into a wet stain on the stone floor... or—

Or do I just give it up?

I mean really. At this point, after EVREYTHING that I’ve been through... all that’s happened, what would be the point? Sure, I discovered that I have a masochistic streak a mile wide, but even THAT has its limits. What was the point in continuing, anyway? I was pretty sure everyone hated me now. Everyone that I loved was gone. So what if I gave up my powers to a self-professed power hungry madman? What was the worst that could happen—he’d destroy the world?

And did I even care anymore?

No I realized with a start. I really DON’T care anymore. Let him do what he wants. Let him try to conquer the world. It’s not my fight anymore anyway. Let Patina or Psyche, or Silver Girl try their hand at him. I sighed softly, feeling more tired than I’d ever felt in my entire life. No... not tired. Weary. My soul and spirit felt thin, as if it had been simply worn down to virtually nothing.

I had a choice to make. And this time I was making the choice that was best for me.

Standing in front of the giant crystal, I kept my gaze on Jeremiah King to avoid being drawn in too quickly. “I have only one condition,” I said after a moment, preparing myself. “When all this is said and done, I want you to use your ‘almighty powers’ to give me back everything you’ve taken from me.” I glanced at him sideways. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

He chuckled darkly. “No, not at all. Frankly, I was expecting something more dramatic from you as payment, like thirty pieces of silver.” I winced slightly, as he turned to face the crystal, hands outstretched. “For this to work, you need to face the gem, stare deep into it, and will your power into it.” He grinned evilly. “I’ll do the rest. Trust me.”

Not that I trusted him as far as I could throw him, but having come this far and finally made the decision, I wasn’t about to change my mind now. Besides, what did I have to lose anyway? Sighing deeply, I turned to face the giant crystal.

The red seemed to pulse lightly, faintly, throbbing... almost like a human heartbeat. I blinked, averting my eyes again as a reflex as a wave of dizziness swept through me. “No,” King’s voice spoke beside me, echoing strangely in my head, “don’t turn away. Stare deep into it... let the gem pull you under its sway. Remember... you have to will it your power. You must willingly give it up for me to give you what you truly desire.”

Resisting the urge to resist, I forced my eyes back to the gem. The pulsing seemed to intensify, almost strobe-like now. The dizziness swept over me again, but I forced myself past it, trying to stare deeper into in, letting it suck me in. My stomach rolled, and the ground seemed to shift underneath my feet, but I gritted my teeth, determined now. Slowly... ever so slowly, the dizziness passed... the ground grew solid again... or rather, everything else in my world became as shifting and formless to match. The red pulsing light seemed to be coming from everywhere at once now, surrounding me, penetrating me...

A soft sigh escaped my lips as I felt some sort of barrier around me give. I felt suddenly weaker, vaguely aware of the sensation of my energy being drawn away... being drained from me... a soft yellowish glow mixing with the red, sapping my strength, drawing it out of me in droves but replacing it with... mmmmm... the best description would be liquid pleasure being poured slowly into the top of my head.

“Yesssss,” King hissed softly next to me. “You’re doing it. I can feel the crystal’s power increasing... power flowing into me! More! MORE! Let yourself go even more... let the crystal take from you... take all that you have to give... until you are completely empty!

“Empty...” I repeated back softly, letting my essence flow forth even faster. Empty? No... he was wrong. I was filling, not emptying.... filling with a kind of hollow pleasure I hadn’t felt since my complete enslavement at the hands of the Mind Five. A strange kind of dichotomy that, to be so empty, and yet so full at the same time...

No... I don’t... what... what is this? What’s happening to me? I feel.... feel... no, I don’t WANT to feel this weak! I need to be STRONG!

I ignored the other voice in my head. My own voice... and yet not mine. She thought something was wrong... but nothing this good could EVER be wrong. The sparkling shining red pulled at me, and I relented, letting it draw me in deeper. Anger bubbled up from the other voice, only to be sucked away in the red... rage dissolved... frustration dissipated... even fear melted away like a mist in the sunshine...

“Good, very good,” King’s voice rumbled, vibrating inside my mostly empty frame. “Let EVERYTHING go... all of you... let the crystal draw you in completely!”

Yes. I needed... to let go completely.

No! Fight it! Don’t give in to this! Stupid goddamn bitch! Fight!

All of me...

Stupid weak-willed slack-jawed cunt!

And let the crystal...

FUCK!! NOOO!!!

Draw me in.

My vision shimmered slightly... I felt weightless, as if I were floating. Staring directly into the crystal now, I was surprised to see my reflection shining back at me. Or rather, reflections, plural. Three of me, one of them Me, as I stood now, as Dark Star, ink black hair and eyes, glaring with an evil smirk... Me, as I once was, Omega Girl, golden hair, golden skin, blue eyes, whose only darkness was the black costume I wore... and finally me, the real me, a normal young woman, dark brown hair, brown eyes, pale white skin, clad only in jeans and a blouse.

Three facets of myself, shown in three facets of the gem, each as vivid and real as the next... but as I watched, the first two began to fade, drained away by the all-consuming, ever present red... Dark Star fighting the hardest to remain, but finally succumbing, leaving behind only a thick black puddle of darkness which slowly faded, burning away under the power of the gem’s unforgiving light.

“YES!” King’s voice boomed, echoing inside the room like thunder. “I HAVE IT! THE POWER... ALL THE POWER OF CREATION ITSELF! IT IS ALL MINE!”

The red light that had so invaded every cell of my being abruptly dimmed, and I sagged, feeling suddenly weak and empty. The gem itself seemed to have lost much of its sparkle, as if it too was as drained as I felt. I turned my gaze away from the crystal, glancing back at King once more... only to avert my eyes, whimpering slightly. The man... vampire... being, or whatever he had been before, had changed.

Physically, he hadn’t changed at all. His body remained the same as it had been moments ago when I’d last looked his way, and yet, that a fundamental change had taken place was easily evident. In school we’d once studied the theory of evolution, and how mankind, though far advanced in many ways from animals still had vestigial memories, behaviors, and instincts from our bygone days as cave dwellers. Nearly all of my classmates were naturally skeptical about that particular theory, myself included—the idea that we’d evolved from lemurs or monkeys or something, that millions of years ago our ancestors were scurrying around on all fours, running from hungry predators, surviving and evolving only because we were smarter than our competition? Ridiculous... and yet, now, only inches away from a being that less than a minute ago had evoked only a mild curiosity, I felt a deeply ingrained instinct within me to run... to get the hell away from Him as fast as I possibly could.

Or to fall on my face before Him and beg for mercy...

He laughed, no doubt highly amused by my reaction to His new power. “OH... YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW GOOD THIS FEELS... THE SHEER MAGNITUDE OF THE POWER I NOW POSSESS!” He turned his gaze to me again, and again I whimpered, hiding my face. “YES... YOU ARE RIGHT TO TURN AWAY FROM ME NOW, GIRL... FOR NOW I AM A GOD! I AM POWER INCARNATE! AS MIGHTY AS YOU ONCE WERE, THE BEING I AM NOW COULD HAVE DESTROYED YOU WITH A MERE THOUGHT!” He laughed again and the entire room shuddered. “AH... BUT I BELIEVE WE HAD A DEAL. YOU WANTED ME TO RETURN TO YOU EVERYTHING THAT I HAD TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU. VERY WELL.” He raised a black gloved hand towards me. “POWER OFTEN COMES WITH A PRICE, MY DEAR, A VERY STEEP PRICE... BUT IN THIS CASE I AM MORE THAN HAPPY TO PAY IT!” His hand began to glow with the same soul-searing red of the gem.

“TAKE NOW YOUR JUST REWARD!”

The red enveloped me. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Time ground to a halt as I hung there, paralyzed, frozen in a state beyond pain, beyond pleasure, beyond anything I had ever experienced before. Just... beyond. I felt myself fading, eaten away by the implacable energy that had become my world, bit by bit, piece by piece. From out of nowhere an image popped into my head: Jeff Bridges, from the movie Tron, being digitized by the giant laser into the ENCOM mainframe. As my last bit of self faded from existence, I wondered idly how it had been for him, feeling every bit of himself sucked away, pulled apart... wondered what thoughts had gone through his mind as all that he knew, all that he was, faded away into..

Nothingness.

Epilogue:

I sat up with a scream, panicked, feeling trapped, tied, tangled up. I had been captured, I was sure of it. Everything was still fuzzy and confusing, but I knew I was someplace unfamiliar, someplace dangerous, and that I had to get away. I had to escape! I had to—

“Honey!”

I froze. Light filled the room, and I closed my eyes, wincing at the sudden brightness. A strong hand gripped my shoulder, strong yet gentle, alien yet strangely familiar. Sensations returned in full force as my addled brain struggled to interpret what was happening. I was naked, completely bare, my arms and legs tangled in something soft... silky... bedsheets? Yes. Bed. I was in a bed. But who’s? A smell... familiar... Axe Unlimited body spray, mixed with the scent of Aqua Velva aftershave. And... that voice... but no. It wasn’t... it couldn’t be...

“Honey? Are you alright?”

My heart thudded tight and fast in my chest like a kettledrum. My eyes were still closed, not to avoid the light now, but out of fear... fear that I would open my eyes and find that this was all a dream, that the person I thought was there, who I wanted to be there, was only a dream, another figment of my imagination.

It’s not him... it can’t be. He’s gone... dead... disappeared off the face of the earth... but... it sounds and smells so much like him...

“Lacie, darlin’ wake up! Open yer eyes!”

I obeyed, opening my eyes, unable to stand not knowing any longer. My breath caught as I saw my husband, my love, Eugene Frasier, lying right beside, worry and concern marring his otherwise handsome face. He looked just as he had the last time I’d seen him, as if no time had passed at all. Tentatively, I stretched out a shaking hand to touch his face... and sobbing, pulled him tight against me. Squeezing him tightly.

“I... I thought I’d... lost you,” I managed between sobs.

“Easy, mo duinne,” he murmured softly in my ear, caressing the small of my back. “It’s okay. ‘Twas just a bad dream, nothing more.”

A bad dream? A nightmare? I didn’t understand what was going on. I now remembered clearly what had seemingly happened just a few moments ago, being bathed in the scarlet light of Jeremiah King’s new power, thinking myself dying, destroyed by his betrayal. Darkness... then I awoke to find myself here, with my love thought lost beside me. Was I truly dead? Was this the afterlife?

“Mommy? Are you okay?” a soft young voice called from my left.

“Daddy? Why is mommy crying?” a second voice asked a moment later.

Two young children stood at the door to what I could only assume was my bedroom. The boy, looking all of five years old, had an arm around his younger sister who tightly clutched a small Winnie the Pooh doll. Both of them were wearing pajamas, looking as if they’d just awoken from a night’s sleep, no doubt from my screaming when I first awoke. My heart, which had seemingly stopped at the sounds of their voices simply melted in my chest.

They were beautiful. Beautiful, darling children. And, somehow, through some twist of fate, they were mine.

“It’s alright, Jimmy, my boy,” Gene said reassuringly. “Mommy just had a really bad dream that scared her, that’s all. Everything’s fine. Just take Katie Ann with you and go back to bed.”

Jimmy. My son, named for my father, James. And Katherine Anne, named after Eugene’s mother. The memories popped into my head as soon as I heard the names, and suddenly I knew what was happening. In gratitude for what I had given him, King had rewritten my reality, twisting time and space, sending me to a world where I had the family I’d always wanted, always dreamed about! Minute by minute, I was assimilating more and more into my new reality, the old one fading more and more into a dimly remembered dream as this new wonderful dream became my reality.

Katie Ann pulled away from her brother and walked into the room. Holding up her doll, she said, “Here, mommy, you can sleep wif’ Pooh tonight. He’ll make sure you haf’ good dweams tonight. Okay?”

Tears burst anew from my eyes, and I leaned down to pick up my daughter, simply basking in her presence, and the knowledge that she was really real. “Th... thank you, Pumpkin,” I said after a moment. “It’s okay now. I’m fine. You and Pooh run back to bed, okay.” Kissing her cheek gently, I set her back on the floor and watched her and her brother go back to their rooms. I stared at the open doorway for a long moment, simply letting myself get used to the fact that I was, finally, a mom.

“Honey,” Gene asked after a while, still concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Turning to him, smiling gleefully, I kissed him deep and hard, holding him as if I never wanted to let him go again. “I’m more than okay, baby,” I whispered finally breaking the kiss. “I’m better than I’ve been in a long long time. I’m finally home.”