The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

As soon as they were in the car and away from campus, Carlene’s mood changed. “Thank you kindly for putting up with my track talk long enough. I ain’t staying here past this semester. Already got an app out to Appy State, out in Earnhardt country. This place, if you’ll pardon my language, is a complete shit storm,” she said grimly.

“Your roommate get ‘upgraded’ too?” Jackie asked.

“Alex? Naw, she’s barely there, though. Local kid who wanted to get all the benefits of living on her own and all the benefits of being close to home. Two days in, she was just using the room as a study hall and eating on the meal plan. That ain’t it. You recall that volleyball player I was talking to when we first met?”

“Liz, right?”

“Just so. Now, you might’ve guessed we were from the same neck of the woods...”

“Yeah,” Jackie admitted.

“Well, it’s more than that. I knew her real well from high school. Played like she was a stranger ’cause she was getting on my last nerve and I knew I had to make friends here. Here’s the thing—she followed old Jerry out in Lynchburg. Might not mean much to you, but Liz was as Holy Roller as they come. Wouldn’t even touch herself, much less a boy. Almost quit volleyball because even in the leggings she felt as naked as in that regular uniform. One of those girls who wore all the knee pads and the high socks, y’know? I was the devil on her shoulder—let her have a puff of my cig, make her lick her lips at a shirtless picture of Junior, go to the races, that kind of thing. No beer, nothing like that, but just enough so that she didn’t feel too smothered. She came here ’cause the rumors ’bout what really happened on day 44 caught fire. And this was my first text from her.” Carlene reached into her bag and handed Jackie her phone after finding the right message.

First time for everything! Feel so AWESOME! Wanna come by and show me some tricks to turn? Need you here to teach me!

“Whoa. Sure she didn’t get a sick sense of humor implanted in her during orientation?” Jackie asked.

“Deleted the picture. Didn’t want nobody to get the wrong idea about me,” Carlene replied with a wink.

They pulled into the parking lot, and Carlene looked around before getting out of the car. Her voice was hushed when she continued. “That hussy that came by my room was one of her teammates. She was asking for me and tried to steal my phone. Now, I’m all in favor of a good rebellion and the like, but I know a cover-up when I see one. That ain’t supposed to happen, and they were trying to sweep it under the rug. Maybe I shouldn’t have deleted the picture, but well, I don’t fancy that being the last image I have of her. Called my daddy the next day. We couldn’t waste what he put up, but we started applying right away.”

“Good idea,” Jackie said.

“I know it’s a good idea, that’s why I did it. I might speak slow on account of being from Virginia, and I might come off as a redneck on account of loving cars and cheap beer, but my mama didn’t raise no fool, and I don’t believe yours did either.”

“That doorway... that’s the creepiest thing ever. Actually, second creepiest, now that I think about it. Some punk rock bitch started babbling about Laura, and then threw this at me. Turns out that Laura was spying on me,” Jackie said, pulling out the phone.

“What in the world?” Carlene said when she saw the black iPhone with the Ramones skin and the picture message already pulled up.

“I saw her in class. She mentioned going to Jameson, and she gave me a code to go there and hang out. Like hell am I using it, though. This might sound silly, but that entryway was so bright it looked like Mikala got abducted by aliens,” Jackie said quietly as they took their seats.

“I heard stories. Dribs and drabs, bits and pieces, all kinds of different things ’bout Jameson and Hyatt. Might be we could dig a little deeper with this,” Carlene said, taking the phone and opening up the contact list. “My word, look at these lists. Know, Dead, Ran Away, Gone Mad, Accepted, Omegas, Danger Zone. She was keeping tabs. Dead, ran away, and gone mad seem pretty obvious. Accepteds—was she digging in the high schools?“

“Or it’s the people who’ve accepted what’s going on here, whatever’s going on here,” Jackie suggested.

“Which is one step below the ones who know, even if none of them say anything so’s they can save their own skin. That just leaves these Omegas, whoever they are. Let’s have us a look-see... well, lookie here. Got us a Beth right above a Neve McTavish. I heard that name an awful lot when people were telling me the stories about the center halls were just stories.”

“Interesting—she’s the one who called them Cow and Chicken. Call Beth. She’s more approachable.”

Carlene dialed. “Voicemail,” she reported. “Hi, Beth? This is Danica. I found this, and I reckon it’s yours, on account of it mentioning your sorority? You probably know the number, so call it to get the phone back,” she said, thickening her drawl even further.

“Danica?” Jackie said with a raised eyebrow.

“Like I’m giving my real name to anyone I don’t know and don’t trust? If it’s a trap, then who’s Danica? She’ll see Laura’s number, and that should be clue enough.”

As if to punctuate her sentence, the phone buzzed with a text. Who did Sue give this to? Don’t be afraid, “Danica”, we’re friends. But don’t answer from campus.

We’re @ Hialeah. 2 of us, Carlene texted back.

We’ll be there for the feature.

That was that until the feature, when the phone buzzed with We’re at turn 2. Sure enough, there were two black hoodies in the otherwise vacant turn grandstand, and Jackie and Carlene approached. “Couldn’t have been turn 4, noooo,” Carlene grumbled under her breath.

Jackie recognized the larger girl as Beth, but the other figure was unfamiliar.

“Hand me the phone,” Beth said, hand out.

“So you can get rid of it right ’fore you get rid of us? Do you think I was born yesterday? Who’s your friend?” Carlene snapped.

“They know enough,” the other woman said, and both she and Beth lowered their hoods. The stranger was an older woman, gray threaded through her jet black hair, lines at the tilted corners of her eyes. “Professor Mae Chin, psych department. Tell me what you’ve seen. Not what you’ve heard from other people, not the ghost stories and the urban legends, but the evidence of your own eyes.”

“One of my high school friends is on the volleyball team. She went from Holy Roller to sending X-rated pictures in less than a day. I don’t care none for the details. I’m leaving after this semester—just tell me how to get there,” Carlene said.

“I was the one who got Laura’s phone. She tried to have me visit Jameson. And my roommate got ‘upgraded’ to Jameson after calling it the Asshole Country Club. And one of my friends from high school joined the dance team and tried to recruit me hard the first day,” Jackie said, her hands shaking as she listed the situations.

“Good. Keep an eye on them. You still have much to learn. It’s a coin flip whether either of you will make it to the end of the semester. You’re both very high risk. If you survive, you can rush Omega and take my classes next semester if you stay. I suggest you leave if you still can at that point,” Mae said. She gave Beth a nod and left the section.

“Do not tell me I’m missing a dirt track outlaw feature just for a sorority rush, or I swear to the sweet baby Jesus I will not be responsible for my actions this evening,” Carlene told Beth.

“We’re not asking you to rush. Not now. Omega is for the final survivors. You two are still being hunted. We take you in now, we risk innocent people. Jackie, Laura knew you were a prime target. She was trying to scare you off the plane and make you uncomfortable with the school. She wasn’t one of us. Not yet. She would have been if she’d survived. You were a stupid risk, and she knew it. Neve still thinks you’re too risky.”

“And what am I, chopped liver? Y’all didn’t even consider me?”

“You’re less of a risk, but still a risk. If they put you near the doorway like you told Neve, you’re marked prey. You both fit the profile—maybe not the same profile, but you’re both right up their alley, and I’m not just talking about the hair. They’ll fuck with your head. You see how they behave in public? Well, inside it’s an orgy that would make the Romans blush. They still absorb what the professors teach—there isn’t much left in there to get in the way. But they’re there to make the school money. The boys take high-travel risky jobs. A lot of field work for Lockheed, Halliburton, that kind of thing.”

“It pays big money, and we’re all into that,” Carlene said, half-singing the words.

“Something like that. The girls—well, the athletes follow the boys’ path, for the most part. The others, if they’re lucky, get married off. If not, they get auctioned off. You name the disposable sex worker subtype, there’s probably a healthy Atlantic Coast presence there.”

“So we have to prove that we can resist, but if we don’t we’ll end up strippers or worse? This is not the kind of challenge I wanted from college,” Jackie said.

“They raid your memories. One way or another, you walk through that door, you’re not going to be the same person you were before. They’re sex-crazed zombies, not bimbos.”

“’cause there’s a world of difference there,” Carlene interrupted.

“They have their own form of craft. We’re not talking about a cheap spiral movie here. This thing feeds on itself. That’s why Sue ran off after she handed over the phone. By now, she’s probably on the highway somewhere in South Carolina. If they think you’re giving away the secret, you’ll get it worse than anyone else there, just to prove that you can’t resist. We don’t know exactly what goes on in there. We don’t have all the pieces. We have some of the pieces, and we see the results—fully controlled and can’t think of anything but sex.”

“So Liz...”

“That text was as good as a deathbed confession. They didn’t switch her phone right away, so it slipped out. Not the first time or the last time one of them got... distracted. Jackie, as for your buddy from high school—”

“Buddy is such a strong word,” Jackie interrupted.

“They thought a spot on the dance team would get you in the door within seconds. Same reason Laura approached you. They thought you would be easily lured in like your roommate was, with promises and allure. That’s why you’re across from the door. Look, I get it if you don’t believe me. Most people didn’t. Try returning Laura’s phone and see what happens.”

Jackie took a deep breath, already preparing herself for the challenge. “So why are we high risk, and why am I the riskiest?” she asked after a long pause for thought.

“You’re hot,” Beth said bluntly. “Why do you think I hit the BK and the DQ? Soon as I figured that out, I made myself as unattractive as possible. Don’t bite my style, by the way. I think they might be on to it and they’ll just throw you in the gym.”

“And is Neve really that... Neve?”

“Neve has a younger sister, Catriona. Or she did. She always thought she should have told her, no matter the consequences to the rest of us, and... well... you see the results. And just for the record, she’s not my girlfriend. I stay near her to make sure she doesn’t completely flip her shit like Sue did. Making me even less attractive is a pleasant bonus. They wouldn’t bother trying to use me. I’m a senior. They’d just break me.”

“What about what’s-her-name, the professor?” Carlene asked.

“Professor Chin? She knows how some of it works, I think, but she doesn’t dare tell anyone. I don’t know if she designed it, or part of it, but she knows an awful lot about the doorway and how the structure works. More than any of us, that’s for sure. My guess is that it’s some kind of hypnosis chamber, but there’s no way for us to find out, nor do I want to.” Beth paused and looked around again. “Obviously we were never here, and Carlene was just here to see sprint cars. But I’m here for you if you see a trap or think someone is in danger. Good luck.”

With that, Beth walked away, and Carlene and Jackie shared a long look.

When Jackie returned to her dorm room, her new roommate was already in place as if Mikala had never existed. The Kanye posters were gone, replaced by Hope Solo and Mia Hamm. Instead of Mikala’s stereo and high-powered speakers, a little dock sat on the dresser with a beat-up iPod producing pop music. Jackie counted seven teddy bears and two stuffed rabbits on the bed and desk; she could barely see the lavender sheets on the bed.

A tiny blonde, shorter than even the RA, popped her head in, and Jackie blinked away afterimages from the bright blonde bleach job. “Hiiiii! Are you Jackie? I’m Breezy! Like, I am so glad to be with you! I got stuck with some Latin chick who wouldn’t even speak English! Like, hello, this is America, Charlie Brown! And she was a junior, and she kept bringing her boyfriend in! Like, hello, I can’t sleep in the lounge all night!”

My God. Did she even breathe? Oh, please let her end up in Jameson. Who am I kidding? They moved here because she wouldn’t last a week. I can survive, Jackie thought. “Nice to meet you.“

That Friday, Jackie finally saw an opportunity to test Beth’s theory about Laura’s phone and stuck it in her backpack. She took a deep breath and sat down near the clique kids. Smiles and excitement greeted her, and Jackie’s stomach churned with fear. A flurry of come-ons from the guys and tryout offers from the girls came at her so fast that they drowned each other out. Like getting me to join them is at the top of their list or something. I wasn’t even this popular at Sneva!

Then Laura arrived, and this time she was the one in fishnet stockings, only made decent by a leather micromini and a cutoff shirt that clung so tight that it was tearing from her nipple piercings. A pit opened in Jackie’s stomach, but she soldiered on, “Hey, Laura? I think you left this in your old dorm room. Thought you’d want it back,” she said, showing Laura the phone.

Laura didn’t show any sign of recognition. “Ummm... lemme check. Nope, got my phone. Thanks, though! You’re sweet. Wanna come hang out with me? I’ll text you a code to get in,” she said, pulling a dark purple Droid out of her purse.

“Nah, but I take it that you and that other chick are making it big, just from your looks. Sheena really is a punk rocker now, huh?” Jackie quipped as one more test.

“Who’s Sheena? Sounds interesting. I’m Laura and I do a little with the garage bands,” Laura said.

Jackie put on a brave smile, put the phone back in her purse, and walked to her normal seat to text Carlene, then sat through the lecture, only half her mind on it.

There was a response when she came out of the lecture hall and went into the bathroom. 100-lap modifieds feature at Hialeah tonight.

I’m going to know more about race cars than my dad by the time I get out of here, Jackie thought, but the thought came with a smile.