The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

That afternoon, Jackie went to the bookstore to try and restore some semblance of normalcy to her life. She went through the apparel, debating what cheap souvenir sweatshirt to buy and bring home as a trophy for her survival, then saw a large rack behind the school-branded gear. Thrift rack, the sign read, and Jackie was intrigued enough to take a look. There were sweatpants, loose jeans, an array of t-shirts—and a glittering bronze shirt hanging above a familiar pair of Apple Bottoms.

“She don’t believe in shooting stars...” Jackie whispered. Wild-eyed, she pawed through the rack to see if there was anything else familiar, and towards the bottom there was a large Sneva High class of 2012 shirt—the checkered-flag pattern around the sleeves was unique. Lissy’s. Has to be. Mine’s still at home.

She bought it as a memory and a reminder, but it spawned an idea. She went back to the dorm, where Breezy was blessedly absent, and changed into it. The large showed off more cleavage than she would have expected, but she was still decent and most of her bra wasn’t showing. Then she put on her tightest jeans, grabbed her emergency credit card, and headed over to the student center.

Hey, it’s Jackie. Wanna meet up at the student center after class? she texted Lissy.

Because she had to know. She had to be certain beyond the shadow of a doubt. Maybe everything she’d seen could be explained by a surge of hormones, or a flash of rebellion, or just a case of being too far from home and too close to the wildest of parties. If she was going to change everything—if she was going to accept that this was reality and she needed to run for her life, she had to be one hundred percent sure that Atlantic Coast was frying brains like something out of a spiral movie. She had a baseline for Lissy Olson—it was time to find out how far Lissy had deviated from that baseline, and whether it could be considered to be within the margin of error.

Just in case Lissy—or whatever was controlling her, a little voice in her head whispered—was smart enough to bring the entire dance team for backup, Jackie texted Beth. Testing theories at the student center. Cover my back?

Almost as soon as she was done with the text to Beth, her phone buzzed with Lissy’s answer. YAY! AWESOME! Can’t wait for you to try out! There in 5!

Five turned out to be an overstatement—Lissy was there in two minutes flat, wearing what Jackie could only think of as an exercise bikini in Atlantic Coast gold and orange. Jackie forced a smile on her face as Lissy sat down. “Like, we are totally gonna rock it! This is going to be SO AWESOME! Can’t wait to text coach and get you on the team!” she chirped with a giggle after every exclamation point.

“Just like back home again at Sneva, right? Couldn’t miss that!” Jackie said with a giggle right back at her.

Lissy paused for a moment, and Jackie thought she saw the search engine running behind her empty eyes. “Just like that!” Lissy said after the pause.

“College is so complicated,” Jackie went on. “I totally can’t wait for it to be like high school again. Remember Tommy? And how we used to compete at how long we could ride him before one of us came?” She almost choked on the words—on the blatant, sickening lies. Lissy had been viciously possessive of Tommy, looking sidewise at any girl assigned to sit next to or work with him. I still have that burn scar on my arm from where she threw the beaker at me during junior chem lab because I was his partner and she thought I was a painted Jezebel. Don’t tell me she’s forgotten that! Or the three-day tempest when he got a soccer scholarship in Bloomington? There was all but open warfare in the halls!

“The cat and rooster rodeo! We never did settle it! Silly little boy, he came before either of us could! These boys will be more of a challenge—OMG, this will be so awesome!” Lissy chirped, her broken mind accepting the lies.

Jackie’s heart sank, now that the evidence was in front of her. Wow. They really did break her. She wasn’t bimbo enough before to actually spell out OMG. She shook her head and said, “It’s just like the dean said. ‘Once you step through that door, the old you ceases to exist.’“

“And it is so AWESOME! I mean, being part of Jameson is beyond what anyone can imagine! So, like, are you ready?” Lissy said dreamily, crossing her legs as her programming reinforced itself.

She never noticed that Jackie had gotten up, gone back to her dorm, and immediately started puking.

“Hey! Hey, I need the bathroom! Got a date with a baseball player, from the niice dorms!” Breezy exclaimed.

Just the thought—such an echo of what had happened to Mikala—brought on another bout of the heaves. Breezy reacted with disgust. “Oh my God! Puking before dark? Like, can’t you wait? Maybe you need meetings.”

“I’m not drunk, you squeaky, bleach-addled, little bitch. Cafeteria undercooked their chicken,” Jackie said. I should probably save her life. Do I really want her to end up like Lissy? On the other hand, her iPod’s better than mine and those earrings are really cute.

“Sure. If you’re puking to stay thin, one, it’s not working, two, they have meetings for that too!” Breezy shot back

Jackie rolled her eyes, washed her mouth out, and headed out to meet Carlene. Breezy poked her head out into the hall and screamed, “What about your barf?”

“Clean it up yourself if you want the bathroom so badly!” Jackie yelled back. Because it’s better than helping lead you to your grave. Well, that probably gives you another week before another of the pretty boys from Hyatt comes calling. And for that week you have to live with me after calling me a fat, bulimic, drunk. Maybe having your mind wiped will be the better of the two options, she thought, a cruel smile curling her mouth upwards as she dodged the redhead in leather pants bounding through the doorway for the night’s Friday floor party.

“They really are dead,” Jackie reported to Carlene when they met up at the student center. “I quizzed Lissy on high school and asked her about the times we shared with her boyfriend.“

Carlene raised a spectacularly expressive eyebrow. Jackie explained, “She wouldn’t let a girl within ten feet of him without flipping her shit. She kept that boy under lock and key, to the point where the handcuffs in her purse might not have been just for kink. There’s nothing left but preprogrammed and sordid responses. Reckless, I know, but I had to be sure that this wasn’t some ghost story or some elaborate freshman hazing. I brought him up by name. I wore her senior class shirt. Nothing. Just. Nothing.“

“How’d you get your hands on that?”

“They sell the old clothes and shit in the bookstore, those sick bastards. I saw some of Mikala’s stuff there too. No more. That’s it. I quit. Out the door, not up the stairs. I’m done here after this semester, and I don’t care how.”

“Been talking to Beth and Neve. They cool it after the third week. Now, we’re at risk ’til the end of the switchout period, and then they ramp up again near finals to get the initial training done during winter break. Then spring semester, they just hit the transfers hard the first week, and that’s it. Double-checked with the professor, too. Same thing. So we survive this weekend, we’re in the catbird’s seat. Been looking for a ride or a pit gig for a little cash, too. Done midgets, can race outlaws, maybe even get a touring or modified... Lord forgive me, I don’t want to glaze your eyes like that, we been avoiding that. Guess we should let ’em have our roomies so we can room together...”

“That’s murder,” Jackie said sharply. “I had a chance. They lured Breezy—I didn’t tell you her name is honest to God Breezy? Same way they got Mikala—cute athlete with a pick-up line that doesn’t quite scream ‘horny rapist pig’. Well, I was already sick from what happened with Lissy, so I stormed out and made her clean it up. Not that she didn’t have it coming after she implied I was drunk and bulimic. Maybe it didn’t work, and I don’t know if I care whether it did. I’m not going to hand her over, though. Backscatter says that Caligula would walk in and think there was too much sex going on. She’s got it coming, but I’m not the one who’s going to give it to her.“

“And you can’t just drop out. Your folks wouldn’t believe you any more than mine would. Daddy would have me locked up in the funny farm if I came home early. Transfer if I can keep my aid, yep. But we put in too much work for me to drop out. So, you and me against the world? Remember, we got Beth and Neve, too,” Carlene said.

“Those lunatics? Don’t you see? They’re prisoners as much as everyone else. Yeah, they’ll graduate free, and maybe they’ll forget and find love, but fighting it hurts the other way, and you end up just as changed as if you’d walked through that door. I don’t even know what happened to that girl Sue, but that phone shows that that’s why the sick stuff. They have to drive those who resist so crazy that they either give in or are so bonkers no one can believe them. Look at Neve. She’s gonna pay for some therapist’s Jag when all is said and done.”

“So you and me against the world?” Carlene repeated, putting an arm over Jackie’s shoulders and drawing her into a hug. Something about it—the warmth and softness of Carlene’s body, the scent of her perfume, the sound of her voice—was soothing about it, and Jackie felt the tension run out of her.

“Yeah. You and me and two more months to survive.”

“You gonna lay low and run? Heard it before, but it’s a good plan and I don’t blame you one iota. Just stay away from them, then. Sit in the last row. Do what you can to lower your desirability to them. Don’t eat anything you didn’t see prepared. Hell, I’d only pee in your own suite,” Neve explained to Jackie in the back of an off-campus BK. “The RAs are decent people, and they have to keep a brain. At this point, you can commingle with anyone in your building. The round-up’s just about done. Then it’s all clear until finals. But remember, it only takes one slip. I’d be friends with your southern fried sweetheart, but the pretty girls have this tendency to go after the ones I like. Don’t sneak out too much. Stay on campus. They don’t mind if you don’t know. If they think you know too much, they’ll go after you even during the break. Dean’s right about that—once you step through the doorway, you cease to exist.”

“So stay away from the hunters. I get it. Even parking in their lot could be dangerous,” Jackie said, taking her bag and her purse and heading back to the doom. Breezy shot her a death glare and turned up the bubblegum pop. Jackie just grinned and turned up the alt country station on her radio. This combination of blaring music and silent treatment had done wonders in their relationship.

As the weekend passed, Jackie watched the action. The hallway lightened and darkened with each opening of the door. Things were picking up during the end of the switchout period. The halls looked like something out of a rickety train, with the lights cutting in and out. With the door open, Jackie could see the reflection; it gleamed brighter with someone going in than coming out. Each time, she remembered Mikala, silhouetted against it like a puppet with her strings cut before stepping through. Each time, she whipped her head around and glared at Breezy, imagining her the same way. Each time, she returned her attention to the screen of her laptop and continued her research, or what she fooled herself was believing was research, as she delved into dirtier and dirtier stories from the Gray Matter that purported to be totally true.

There were eighteen of them when she got bored of counting, eighteen girls who to her relief weren’t her and to her dismay weren’t Breezy. Breezy noticed her looking and noticed her mocking smile and said, “Cheer and dance tryouts just finished. Lots of moving around. Maybe we can each get our own room. That would be nice. You fucked yourself, and I don’t mean what your hands are doing under that blanket. You blew my chance for Jameson, and I’ll never forgive you for that. Although, since fish tacos seem to be your favorite food, I’m starting to wonder if you just want me to yourself. Ain’t happening. Next time, clean up your own puke. Thank you for being a bitch.”

“You’re welcome, pipsqueak. We both just do what comes naturally,” Jackie said with a smirk.

The next day, Jackie decided to satisfy her morbid curiosity and watched as girls came out of their rooms in her hall to head to the other side. She knew they had no idea what would happen when they left the door behind, but most of them looked so spaced to begin with that they wouldn’t notice. Smirking, she tripped one girl just to see if she’d wake up, but the girl popped right back up at her and said, “Don’t be jealous cuz I got invited and you didn’t!” before continuing on her merry way to ruin.

All told, she recognized three girls from her floor and a couple from other floors, including a few boys from the connecting male dorm. As it turned out, boys trying to walk with an erection wasn’t as sexy as she thought it would be. There were others arriving as well, some going out to recruit unsuspecting fresh meat, others looking for the best parties. Most looked like they were headed to Hyatt for a frat party for the ages.

Jackie just sighed and tried to guess who was going through the door and who was just looking for some fun. She didn’t know or care about any of them, except that they weren’t her, and that meant that she had survived through another day of the heavy recruiting rush.

Weeks passed, and as promised, things died down. The cliques were their cliques, and everyone else just went on with their lives around them. Breezy changed, becoming withdrawn to everyone, not just Jackie, and her bleach job started to fade to a light brown. Jackie figured she’d found out something about what really went on in Jameson and Hyatt, but didn’t care enough to bother asking, and still hoped that one of these days she’d come back to find the RA cleaning out Breezy’s stuff the way she had once cleaned out Mikala’s.

For her part, Jackie stayed as far away from the popular people as much as she could, but she still wondered what they were, and if she was making a mistake. She saw the emptiness in their eyes, and she hadn’t forgotten the way Lissy had been broken, but in many of them she saw craft and thought, not the kind of zombie in the spiral films her mom liked so much. Maybe there was something more to the endgame than a need to fuck, suck, and obey.