The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Now, Jackie, this is the new world of college. You don’t have me, or dad, or even Darryl to look out for you. This is the passageway to adulthood. Just like that nice man says on television, it’s door number one, door number two, or door number three, and one of them has the big prize behind it, and the others have failure,” the tallish blonde said to her daughter, wringing her hands and trying to say something intelligent but failing miserably.

“And if you stick with your decision, you have a greater chance of succeeding than with anything else you could have changed to,” Jackie replied, trying not to roll her eyes at her mother’s well-meant advice. Trying to calm her mother down, she hugged her, then turned around and packed the last of her things for the flight to Miami.

Not for the first time, Jackie wondered if her mother was so crazy overprotective of her because she saw her as a younger version of herself. She knew she had all her mother’s looks: golden hair, down to the shoulders, though her mother had to touch it up with gray; blue eyes with just a hint of green; long legs made for high heels; the kind of cleavage that had gotten Jackie one too many softball jokes in high school when people thought she couldn’t hear them. If it weren’t for Jackie’s ponytail, they could be mirror images.

Mama knows best, she reminded herself, though she was usually the one smoothing things out for her younger brother instead of Darryl protecting her. She squared her shoulders, turned to her mother, and asked, “So, anything about Miami that would worry you? Besides South Beach, Latin lovers, and watching fish flop around on dry turf?“

“I’m sure you can handle yourself on South Beach. You’re responsible enough not to party—or at least strange enough things happen on Coca-Cola for you to try cocaine. And South Beach boys... don’t like girls, or so I heard. No, if you must know, the girls there worry me more,” her mother explained.

“Mom! Oh my God! Seriously, I could barely even bring myself to kiss a boy! Why do you think I’d end up with a girl?” Jackie shrieked, turning red.

“No, no, not like that, though I’d love you anyway if that’s what you want out of life. That was the only thing I didn’t like on our visit to Atlantic Coast. Such a divide between the girls and the women. You’d think they’d have their own bathrooms like your old elementary school did for the kindergarteners.”

“What... oh, you mean the ones there to earn a degree and the ones there to earn a hangover and maybe a husband? Yeah, I saw that, but every school has those girls, even in high school. Don’t worry. I’m not there to go drinking and mess around with garbage like that.” Jackie reached into her closet and took out a garnet blouse instead of the orange tank top she’d planned to wear, just to make a point.

“There... seemed to be more to it than that, but I guess you’ll figure that out when you get there. We’ve tried so hard to make sure that you’re one of the haves, but maybe that’s not a good thing down there. They seem so isolated down there... and gosh darn it, I know it’s Miami, but you should wear more clothes than those girls do,” her mother fretted.

Jackie rolled her eyes again. It’s Moral Crusader Housewife Mom again. Psssh, she should see what I packed in the bottom of my bag. She continued putting together her carry-on with her travel documents while her mother nattered on.

“You aren’t marked for the kill like a cheerleader is, or for the chase like the athletes are. Oh, you’ve always noticed but you don’t understand. Just choose your path wisely,” her mother said, kissing her on the forehead.

I shouldn’t have watched The Word and City of Wonder with her last night, Jackie thought, reminded just how fond her mother was of horror movies. A blast of the horn reminded both of them that she needed to get moving, and she threw the last of her things in the bag before running out to her dad’s car. “Bye, Mom! Bye, Darryl! Totally not gonna miss you!“

“Not gonna miss you either!” Darryl shouted, and that was how she knew that he was going to miss her.

As she got in the back seat with her bags, she let her mother’s concerns wash away and let the excitement bubble up in her. Though she wasn’t going to say it in front of her dad, she remembered why she thought it was better to go to school in Miami than staying home in Indiana; she might miss the rolling fields and the friendliness of her small town, but she wasn’t going to miss her mother’s smothering love or the chill of a Midwestern winter.

The more she thought about it, the more she was looking forward to the experience. By the time she skipped up to the ticket counter to check in, the smirk of total conquest was all but pasted on her face. She was ready and she knew it. While other people fumbled with forgotten keys or hurried to get their shoes off, she breezed through security and went right to her gate. Two other girls in Atlantic Coast gear were already there, so she sat down near them. “Hi! I’m Jackie and I just enrolled! Any tips?” she asked with an excited giggle.

The redhead rolled her eyes, but the plus-size brunette smiled and looked at her thoughtfully. Jackie offered a little smile. The brunette turned back to her friend and said, “I can tell the difference, Neve. First taste of freedom, that’s all.” Her attention turned back to Jackie, and her tone hardened. “Direct flights from Indy are a good hint. So, you want advice, propaganda, or the truth?”

Jackie was taken aback, but didn’t want to let it show. With a shrug, she said, “Mom gave me advice, and I have my admissions packet to get in the door for propaganda, so I guess you can tell me the truth.”

“Don’t bother, Beth,” the redhead snapped. “She’s not worth it. Look, pretty—” and the word was spat out so harshly that Jackie didn’t even think of taking it as a come-on—“you step through that door, down that ramp, and onto campus, you won’t be back here again. You think you will, other people might think you will, but you won’t. Pretties like you never do.”

“Well, gee, thanks. The blonde’s not from bleach and I carried a B-average, but hey, you think what you want,” Jackie said.

“You don’t know a thing, kid. This is the real world, and maybe you can learn, but if you don’t, you’ll end up knowing nothing. C’mon, Beth, let’s get some BK before getting on board the hearse.”

“Fine. I just wanted to be nice,” Jackie said, unnerved but unbroken. She reached into her carry-on and took out a mirror to fix her hair just the littlest bit. The reflection shifted, and she saw Beth sit down next to her.

“So, uh, never mind Neve, okay? She’s... had a rough life. You asked for the truth, and I don’t see a reason not to give it to you. Look at the corner near the boarding area. You see that little clique. Don’t be like them. Don’t talk to them, don’t sit near them, don’t get involved with them. You’ll make enough friends by yourself. They’re... not worth the trouble,” Beth explained.

Jackie looked at the fancy golf shirts and tight khakis on the boys, the short shorts and revealing tops on the girls, and everything clicked when she saw the girls’ impossibly high heels. “Don’t swim in the shallow end or I’ll hit my head and end up an idiot. Got it,” she said. To prove her point, she waved off one girl in a denim miniskirt way too short to be a good idea on a plane. The girl jangled as she strutted away—bet TSA felt her up all the way to make sure she wasn’t carrying—of course, she looks like she’d enjoy it, Jackie thought.

“You’re a good kid. Try to stay that way. That’s what college is really about,” Beth said before walking off to the BK. In the distance, Neve was in full rant mode. Jackie shrugged and took out her paperwork to make sure there were no mistakes.

“Hey. Cow and Chicken try to scare you back home?”

“What the hell, do I have a neon sign on my forehead saying ‘talk to me, I’m enrolling at Atlantic Coast?’” Jackie snapped. “And seriously? Cow and Chicken? Rude and outdated!“

The black-haired girl in the Ramones shirt reached back to scratch the back of her neck nervously. “Sorry. It’s just that this is the only flight of the day to Miami for anyone who doesn’t want to switch through O’Hell or battle Midway, so all the kids who went to Atlantic Coast to see rolling waves of something other than grain are gonna end up on it. Hi, I’m Laura, by the way. And Beth Lieberman and Neve McTavish are campus legends. When they aren’t eating BK they’re eating each other—or scaring incoming freshmen like you. They’ve been here forever, and they’re both a little wacky.”

“Okay, well, they just didn’t want me diving in the shallow end. Don’t have to tell me that twice. You needed beauty and brains to get where I was at my high school. Neve seemed like a total bitch, but Beth was okay,” Jackie said, realizing that she’d found someone she might be able to talk to without feeling like she was at movie night with her mom.

“Yeah, they do that. They think they’re everyone’s mom or something,” Laura said as dismissively as she could manage.

The cool clique lined up in a military perfect line to await the first boarding call, the boys positioning themselves to stick their hands in all sorts of inappropriate places without the flight attendant taking offense. “So are they that bad?” Jackie asked, pointing at them.

“No, why do you... what did they tell you?” Laura asked with sudden alarm.

“Neve thought I was going down the jet way to disappear forever, and didn’t seem too broken up about the idea of it. Beth just told me to avoid the cool kids at all costs like they’d kill me or something if I crashed their clique,” Jackie said, ignoring some of the beckoning and all of the wolf whistles.

“Thought it’d be something like that. Every school has ghost stories and wild rumors—look at all the stuff you hear about Northern State—but those two believe everything. That’s why they’re called Cow and Chicken. Rumor is that Beth started eating everything in sight after her freshman year, and Neve wouldn’t talk unless you poked her with a stick. I mean, that’s just what I heard from the upperclassmen last year before orientation, they were already spewing about the passageway. But look, it’s just an urban legend. There’s so much more to Atlantic Coast than that! It’s a great school! Don’t believe the stories!”

“I have to hear them before I know what not to believe,” Jackie pointed out, intrigued but a little scared at the same time.

“It’s silly...”

“Then I’d rather hear it from you than from some senior trying to scare me,” Jackie pointed out.

“Well, we’re really not supposed to talk about it because that gives the story credence, but we’re not at school, so screw it. You toured the dorms, right?”

“A little,” Jackie said.

Laura nodded. “So you saw all the bridges connecting all the buildings, right? All the main halls and the campus buildings use the same card—except for the special dorms where the athletes, cheerleaders, Greeks, and so on live. You know, the special folks. Our cards won’t let us in there, but their cards let us in our dorms, so they’re always around to advertise games or boast about their parties or gather girls up for rush. So you can imagine how jealous people get about that. So the rumor is that the ones in the special dorms are, like, some kind of sex-crazed zombies. Crazy, right?”

Yeah, so crazy you’re turning white and you started whispering as soon as Harajuku Barbie over there started looking at us, Jackie thought, glaring at the platinum blonde in the plastic minidress, who pouted viciously before falling into line and seeming to delete the scene from her memory with a pop! of bright pink bubble gum that matched her knee-highs. “Crazy,” she said aloud to reassure Laura.

Just then she saw and heard the stampede of latecomers—those stuck at security for forgetting about their keys, their shoes, or their modesty. Some of them were her fellow freshmen—she recognized the wavy black hair and heart-shaped face of Lissy Olson, one of the girls who tried to be her rival in high school. To make a point that this was college and she could totally be the bigger woman here, Jackie went over to talk to her as they boarded.

“So, like, I heard they had really posh dorms, even for the freshmen. Like, your suite even has its own bathroom and everything,” Lissy said with a flip of her hair.

And this is why I didn’t talk to Lissy on a regular basis in high school, Jackie thought as she looked over the plane. The cool kids were all in business class, or whatever they were calling the seats that actually had legroom; the boys were comparing lad mags and the girls were copying the poses, despite the flight attendants’ repeated requests to sit down. As Jackie observed the scene, one of the boys tried to reach under a stewardess’s skirt, but the woman dodged gracefully.

“God, I am, like, so jealous of them up there!” Lissy pouted, her eyes flickering between the short skirts and the ripped boys.

“Y’know, I heard stories about them,” Jackie said. “34, 35, 36A.”

“Lemme guess, from Sabrina the Teenage Witch over here?” Lissy asked in something that was apparently supposed to be a whisper, jerking her head towards Laura in the window seat.

“Her name’s Laura, and she’s more punk than Goth, so tell her how you keep your hair so dark and you’ll be just fine,” Jackie said, popping in her gum to keep her ears from popping before they left.

Fortunately for her sanity, the flight was uneventful. The cool kids could be heard all the way in the back, were it not for the endless chatter shared by Lissy and the girl in the plastic minidress, who hung off the back of her seat whenever the “fasten seatbelt” sign was off to keep giggling mindlessly at Lissy. Poor Laura. Good thing I’m two rows over, my brain would be melting out my ears by now if I had to sit next to either of them. Jackie thought as she shrugged off the wierdness and smiled at the new life awaiting her at the end of the flight.