The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Remember…

He tossed and turned on the bed, unable to sleep and still refusing to accept it.

Remember…

The voice in his mind wouldn’t leave him alone.

You must remember me…

He tried so hard to not think about her, but as always, the effort was wasted and it only served to make him think about her even more.

You will always remember me…

He sat upright; the tears flowing freely now down the sides of his face.

The memories would never stop tormenting him.

The memories of the times they spent together, such wonderful times for each of them.

The memories of their exploration, of the wonder of each other, of that magic they found in each others arms.

“Why can’t I forget her?” he asked himself. And, as always, no answer came.

He gave up the fight once more and collapsed back into the softness and warmth of his bed, and let the memories wash over him again, hoping sleep would help.

He held her hand, at least what he could hold of it, as she slept. The constant beeping of the heart rate monitor in the room along with the sound of the respirator helping her breathe were the only sources of sound.

Looking at her all wrapped up in hospital gowns, bandaged from head to toe, a feeding tube protruding from her mouth, a breathing tube protruding from her nostril, it was so hard to see her this way.

He wished he could hear her heartbeat directly instead of the monotonous electronic representation onscreen and that never-ending beeping. The monitor showed a pulse of seventy-eight which seemed a bit high. He waved his hand to the nurse who was in the room filling out the hourly checkup sheet and pointed towards the reading.

“Probably means she’s about to wake up. Don’t worry, Aaron, she’s not in any pain right now.”

Her words were designed to comfort him, he understood that much. But the fact that Trish was in a position to feel pain at all hurt him just the same.

“Ok” was all he could whisper in reply.

He wanted so desperately to feel her again, to touch her and let her know how much he loved her, but the wraps on her hands prevented skin on skin contact.

After the fire, with over eighty percent of her body being second degree burns, with some portions being third degree, the need to protect her skin so it would heal was of utmost importance.

She stirred so slightly the nurse didn’t see it, but Aaron felt it.

Slowly, so slowly, she opened her eyes. She tried to speak, but the feeding tube made it exceedingly difficult to do so without considerable discomfort. She was unable to write anything either because the wraps on her hands made it impossible to hold a pen or pencil.

She looked around searchingly and finally found his eyes when he softly squeezed her hand.

A lone tear began to appear in the corner of her eye, and he hurt even more knowing he couldn’t wipe it away.

“Hello my beautiful lady. How are you doing? Would you like some water?”

She barely had the strength to say or do anything, but she did nod enough to notice.

He grabbed a plastic cup from the tray on the nightstand next to the bed and began filling it with water, the ice long since melted, then took a straw from the tray and bent the head into a ninety-degree angle so it could reach her lips without spilling the water on her.

At that moment he considered that a bath of ice cold water would probably soothe the burning sensation she was feeling all over her body, but the doctors had told him burn victims with her level of damage probably wouldn’t even notice – the nerve endings had been seared away.

The thought made him cringe as he carefully inserted the tip of the straw between her charred lips.

“It’s ok, love, just go slowly,” he said.

Like a baby, she looked at him, as close to helpless as an adult could be, he thought.

Her cheeks pulled in as she tried to create the suction needed to pull the water from the straw into her mouth, but the feeding tube was too large and she couldn’t do it.

Another tear appeared in her eyes, and she started to cry. The emotions and the pain were just too much to keep inside anymore after nine days.

She had been there in that bed for nine days, since the morning of the fire at their home.

She was off that day, and sometime after Aaron left for work a fire had started in the utility room next to the garage.

It spread very quickly through the house, an old Victorian mansion on the outskirts of the city. The age of the timbers the house was constructed of contributed directly to the speed the fire consumed the property. The wood was old and dried out, and the fire needed fuel – a perfect, albeit unfortunate pairing.

Trish had been in her room, just off the top of the stairs. The smoke detector did go off, but the extra few moments she spent upstairs gathering a few personal belongings and their dog, Benji, all worked against her.

By the time she was making her way to the stairs, the fire had spread through the lower portion of the house and blocked her path. Benji jumped from her arms and ran back into their bedroom so she decided to follow him.

She was feeling the effects of not only the heat but also the carbon monoxide levels that were building up. The smoke was there, of course, and continuing to get worse so she closed her bedroom door and blocked it off at the bottom with some dirty clothes.

Their bedroom window overlooked the patio area in the rear of the house. She considered just jumping from it, but the fact that the patio surface was made entirely of concrete gave her pause enough to think – and in that kind of situation, she understood stopping to think can kill you.

Her fear of injury overwhelmed her, and she decided to remain inside the house. There was no rope of any kind around she could use. The sheets weren’t long enough to climb down like Rapunzel rappelling with her hair.

She could see some neighbors already there, but none seemed to have a ladder, and she couldn’t hear their screams over the roar of the fire which had somehow simply failed to register on her consciousness in the previous moments.

And then she heard it.

The door burst open and her entire room was engulfed in flames. Her clothing caught fire instantly, and her first instinct was to try and put out the flames by beating on them.

Once that instinct passed, her second one kicked in – the one that saved her from burning to death.

She ran into her bathroom and closed the door behind her, not noticing the skin flaking off her palms on the back of the door.

She jumped into the tub and turned the knob as far as it would go to the right and was doused with cold water which stung her to the point of knocking her unconscious. The shock was simply too much for her central nervous system to accommodate in light of everything else crashing in on her at once.

As she slipped down into the tub, she could feel the water running down her face even as her world grew dark around her.

The roar of the fire was the last thing she heard, and the coolness of the water in her mouth would be the last thing she ever felt normally again.

The cool water in her mouth only served to remind her of those moments of terror in the tub when her world collapsed in on her.

Trying to cry seemed to cause her more physical pain than not, and the few if any tears her damaged tear ducts could form were almost unnoticeable.

Aaron was now crying himself, trying to be strong but it just wasn’t possible anymore.

After three days in the hospital, Trish had come out of her coma just long enough to tell him what happened and what she had done.

She asked about Benji and did her best to smile when told he had suffered a broken leg from jumping out the window, but otherwise he was fine.

She chatted with him briefly and then slipped back into her coma until the ninth day when she awoke.

She wasn’t able to drink from the straw, so he began dipping his fingers in the water and placed them very carefully inside her mouth so she could softly lick the moisture off them.

Her tongue seemed to be the only part of her that was undamaged, amazingly. Still soft, and now wet once more with the water he was providing.

Oh, the memories of what she could do with that tongue crashed down on him.

“So I take it you like that, lover?” she whispered playfully.

“Yesssss… right there… like that… those quick… Ooooo… darting move—yesssss…”

He could barely speak as her tongue flicked out at the head of his cock, licking the underside back and forth, driving most thoughts clear out of his mind.

Aaron was uncircumcised, a rarity it seemed, and the tiny area where the foreskin attaches to the underside of the cock head on most men can easily be the most sensitive spot on their entire body.

A talented tongue lightly flicking back and forth on this spot is usually enough to send a man into orgasmic orbit – seriously.

“Just something for you to… Remember…

Trish stopped her oral assault briefly just to look at his face, twisted and contorted even as she continued to stroke his cock gently with the baby soft skin on her palms.

She was the one in control; she was the Dominant in that moment.

Their relationship over the years had explored both sides of the equation: his being the Dominant male and submissive slave, and her filling each role as well.

They didn’t have a particular preference for the majority of the time. It just seemed to sway back and forth depending on the moment.

Moments were all they had, and they made a promise early on to make the most of each of them.

And right at that moment, she had him in the palm of her hand, both figuratively speaking and quite literally.

“Mmmmm… wonder what you’d do if I did this…”

And she proceeded to throat him all the way to his balls.

His hips lifted up off the bed, driving his cock as deeply into her mouth and throat as they always did, and he offered himself, almost a sacrifice in some ways, to the pleasure she was giving him.

She knew it was coming – and so would he, very soon.

His mind blanked out as it always did. It was a little gift she had given him during their explorations of using hypnosis for erotic purposes.

Whenever she throated him all the way down, he would enter a trance and his sensitivity to touch would spike a thousand times higher.

It routinely caused him to orgasm more powerfully than he ever dreamed possible, but it also tended to knock him out as was the case this time.

His body, after convulsing with the pleasure he was receiving for several eternally long moments, at least to him, began to settle down on the bed, and the sleep washed over him even as his cock continued to spasm in her mouth.

He never knew about this gift consciously, of course. She kept that memory hidden from him with a well-worded suggestion that she reinforced on a regular occasion, along with many others and the triggers to have them take effect.

Of course, Aaron had many such suggestions and triggers for Trish, also. Some were known to her, as some of his were known to him. But the really good ones, like the deep throat one Trish had just used on him, were special ones they both agreed to keep hidden.

Their original interest in hypnosis came about because of a weekly class in a local community college for erotic hypnosis – using hypnosis to enhance sexual activities. With the flyer in hand and their interest piqued, they both signed up and attended the four classes over the period of a month.

At the end of the course, they spent an entire weekend doing nothing but trancing each individually and mutually, experiencing the most phenomenal sex either could have ever imagined. It was a glorious time for both of them.

After the initial introduction to hypnosis and how it can be used in erotic situations, they continued practicing with and on each other for a few months, trying anything that came to mind. They both decided to get more serious about it so they both took a week’s vacation and spent several days at a prominent school in central Florida learning how to perform inductions, deepeners, and awakenings as well as gaining their certifications.

It was like a crash course in hypnotherapy for them with one additional side-effect:

They were horny as hell the whole time they were there.

Each moment they could get alone became another chance to try something new they imagined.

Another side effect was that if either of them, or both, decided to move into a new career, hypnotherapy now became a definite possibility.

They used hypnosis for many things in the relationship: the heightened sensations and eroticism of sex while in trance of course, patience under stress, calmness under pressure, relaxation under tension, and the enhanced closeness together because of the shared experiences.

One other purpose was a common one when required: pain control.

The pain Trish was experiencing didn’t seem to be affected by the drugs much anymore.

One option remained, so when they were alone once again, Aaron acted.

“Trish, love, look into my eyes… that’s it, such a good girl… deep into my eyes love… look deep into my eyes and drift into them… in my eyes you will find comfort from this pain… deeper now, love… so tired… so sleepy… wanting only to drift and float… now”

Over the years, the inductions used between them could be quick, such as a touch trigger or a single word, but right now Aaron decided her favorite, an eye induction, would suffice.

Her tired eyes glazed over quickly and she surrendered to trance once more.

“Thank you, love… now as your mind drifts and floats peacefully, you find the pain diminishes… the pain fades now, love… it’s simply not important anymore… only my eyes… and calm… and peace… no thoughts… no worries… the pain simply disappears… now”

And with a deep sigh, she let go of it.

The pain was still there, of course, but the hypnosis could basically turn off the way the mind interprets it internally.

He wanted to replace the pain with pleasure at this point, but obviously her body simply wasn’t capable of accepting such a thing.

His hope was that by stimulating the production of endorphins she would relax and focus on simply feeling good for a brief period of time, even in the face of such discomfort and emotional trauma that had been forced upon her, and perhaps her body might have an impetus to begin healing.

He tried to imagine something that would give her pure joy inside, a memory of something from her past, from better times.

He found it.

“Trish, I want you to close your eyes for me… and remember the clouds, love, remember the clouds… drift and float in the clouds once again, my darling… free… happy…”

Trish had never felt so free and happy before.

Her first time on a hang glider was unlike anything she could have imagined. From the moment she pushed off the cliff she was soaring, and not just in a physical sense.

In her mind’s eye, she briefly dissociated from her body and saw herself from the outside looking in. What a wonderful thing, she thought.

The cliff in Rio was so high they literally were among the clouds.

Aaron was only a few moments behind her, on a hang glider of his own. The operator of the hang gliders suggested the “couples model” they offered, with spaces for two adults, but they decided to do it individually first.

Trish looked around her and saw nothing but the clouds above and the ground and the ocean running up against the shore below. It was a perfect day.

So calm and peaceful, she never wanted it to end.

A thermal came and lifted her directly into the clouds, far above Aaron and out of his sight.

For a few moments, fear and terror threatened to overtake her, but the calm and peace returned, and she just floated.

Time was meaningless at that point. She had no cares, no worries, only peace of mind and she feared nothing at all.

And then the clouds began to darken. It was barely noticeable at first, but on the outskirts of her vision, something inside her took note.

Darker and still darker they became.

She wasn’t totally sure of up and down when she was inside the clouds, mostly because of our reliance on our vision to differentiate up from down. But Nature gives us a few redundant senses, so she relied on her sense of balance to decide which direction was down.

She nosed the glider forward and could feel the increase in velocity as a burst of wind in her face. It felt wonderful at first, but the wind became much colder the longer she maintained the dive.

She began to pull back on the glider, to level off, and just then she noticed something else.

The clouds were getting darker again, from all directions and it seemed to be getting worse.

Trish began to feel trapped there, unable to escape the darkness encroaching on her position.

She didn’t know what else to do, so she did what she always did when she was felt alone and scared.

She called out to her love.

“Aaron… please help me… I’m so scared…”

Aaron almost jumped clean out of his skin at the sound of her voice. He had never heard such pain and suffering from only a voice before, and it chilled him to the very core of his being.

“I’m here, love, I’m right here.”

He just wanted to take her in his arms and hug her as tightly as he could and never let go, but right now, that simply wasn’t possible. And that hurt him probably more than it would have hurt her.

“Aaron, so dark… it’s so dark, why can’t I see… where am I?”

He noticed it for what it was: an abreaction, or an abnormal reaction to some intense emotional trauma. Something was going on inside her mind and he wasn’t sure what it was, but he was going to find out.

“Tell me what you see, love… I know it’s hard, but I need to know what you see.”

Her eyes remained closed, so he understood that what she was seeing was strictly internal imagery. But our minds can make emotions physical, and the pain incurred can be just as real as the pain of her injuries.

“I can’t see anything… am I awake? What is happening to me? Please… Aaron… help me…” and then she passed out.

He was about to awaken her when the lapse into unconsciousness occurred and saved him the trouble. Her pulse slowed, her breathing became deeper, and she returned to her coma.

Three more days passed before she opened her eyes again, and Aaron was there as always.

“Hello, my sleepy girl,” he whispered to her as she looked at him.

He still felt that desire to stroke her forehead as he usually did, but the bandages still prevented it.

Some of her strength had returned in this last lapse into a coma, and she was able to finally drink from the straw he gently inserted into her mouth. The feeding tube had been removed the previous night because of choking as she slept.

“How about something to eat, love, think you can do that for me?”

She barely nodded her head but the encouraging look in her eyes was a boost to his morale unlike anything else in the past two weeks.

Aaron reached over and grabbed a jar of vanilla pudding from the meal tray and a plastic spoon. He slowly scooped a small portion onto the tip of the spoon and fed it to her.

She actually lifted her head off the bed to meet the spoon; another good sign.

For a few moments, he allowed himself to do something he hadn’t done for quite some time.

He allowed himself to hope she would be fine.

“I hope we understand each other, Aaron,” Trish’s Dad said in his most menacing voice. He hoped that and the strength and firmness of his handshake was enough to convince this pimple-faced geek that his daughter seemed to have some fondness for that she was “Daddy’s little girl” and always would be.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Temes, Trish will be just fine. I’ll keep a close eye on her.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” thought Mr. Temes, but kept it silent. If he’d been playing poker at that moment, his attempt at a poker face would have just cost him a big pot to anyone capable of reading that tell.

The look on Mr. Temes’ face didn’t inspire much confidence, that much was a certainty, but Aaron felt it necessary to stand his ground and assure her Dad she would be in good hands.

It was their first date, and Aaron was as giddy as a pig in a poke, as the saying goes. He had dreamed of going out with her for a long time, and when she actually accepted his offer, he stayed on cloud nine from that moment on.

“Daddy, what are you doing to my date?” her voice floated down on them.

In sync, they all turned their heads to see Trish standing at the top of the staircase, resplendent in a black dress, her eyes sparkling at Aaron even as she spoke, rooting him to the spot.

Trish was spectacular, of course.

He wanted to take her to the prom coming up in a few weeks, but unfortunately he wasn’t going to be “the guy.” She told Aaron that the only reason she accepted “that other guy’s” invitation was because he asked first, and honor required her to see it through.

She seemingly glided down the stairs, stepped to Aaron and smiled. Her Dad, of course, was still making his presence known beside them. Aaron could almost feel the stare on his skin.

“Ready to go, Trish?” Aaron asked.

“Sure. Dad, we’ll be back later,” she said, taking Aaron’s hand in hers and heading for the door.

“Oh really, and when pray tell can I expect your presence back in this house, princess?”

“We’ll be back later, Dad. Stop being a fuddy-duddy. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Patricia, I do. It’s Aaron I worry about. You know, Aaron, the boy you’re leaving with? I was a boy myself once, I’m just…”

“Stop worrying, Dad. Aaron is as much a gentleman as you are,” she said.

“That is precisely my concern, Patricia.”

The grin on her Dad’s face was enough to relieve Aaron’s apprehension, to some degree. Not totally, but enough.

“She’s going to be fine, Mr. Temes. I promise. I’d protect her with my life,” Aaron said hoping it was enough.

“You might just have to do that, Aaron.”

The silence in the room was deafening.

“I’m kidding, of course. You two get going. Trish, call us if… well, I trust you. And I love you, princess. Just be safe, ok?”

Her Dad stepped forward and kissed her gently on the forehead and took Aaron’s hand. The handshake was even more painful the second time around, but Aaron decided to not put on a bad show, so he returned the grip as best he could.

“Take care of my daughter, Aaron. She’s your responsibility now. Understand?”

“I know it’s my responsibility, dammit, but I can’t be there, my wife is lying here, possibly never leaving this bed. You do realize that, right? You do realize she was almost burned alive when our house went up in smoke a few weeks back, right? You do realize I couldn’t give a fuck about my job or my career right now, yes? Fine, I’m glad that you’ve been so helpful and understanding in this situation. Goodbye.”

As he ended the call on the cell phone, his anger abated somewhat. He gazed upon Trish’s face once more and forgot about his assistant’s interruption.

“Aaron, you know you’re going to have to apologize for that, don’t you?” she said weakly.

“Yeah, I know. Sandy can handle it, but yes, I have to apologize. Sorry you had to hear that, love.”

“What’s for lunch?” she asked.

Surprised, Aaron suddenly felt hungry himself. “Let’s see the mystery behind door number…” he said, smiling the entire time.

As he uncovered the hospital provided meal trays, he was of course disappointed to see assembly line barely edible sustenance.

“Crap, crap, and more crap. God, how can they ever expect anyone to actually get better by eating this stuff. Look at this, is that lettuce?” he joked as he prodded the green-tinged looking whatever it was.

A soft giggle from Trish distracted him, such a welcome sound to his ears. He turned towards her and pushed the adjustable meal/activity table from directly over her torso. Seating himself on the bed beside her, he was overly careful not to actually add pressure to any particular part of her body.

Seeing a brief tinge of discomfort on her face, he retreated somewhat more to the edge and away. She lifted her left hand off the bed, touching him on the arm. Since he hadn’t been looking directly at her when she did it, her touch caused him to spasm reactively away from her, almost sliding clean off the bed.

She giggled softly as he recovered, then a smile, a small one but enough to expose her teeth. He took it as yet another good sign of her continuing progress of recovery.

“I want to kiss you so bad right now, and it’s really painful that I can’t,” he said. After the words left his mouth, he realized just how incredibly insensitive the words seemed, like rubbing a cheese grater over her skin could possibly be worse.

“I’m sorry, love, I’m… that was pretty stupid of me to say considering…”

Once again, she lifted her hand, this time all the way towards his face. Unshaven for several days, the stubble caught the gauze covering her hand and almost worked like Velcro making it that much easier to keep her hand there. Still no skin on skin contact, but it was something.

He reached up, softly taking her wrist, encircling it lightly with his finger and thumb. It felt good to have her in his embrace, even on such a miniscule scale as that.

“It’s the little things that matter the most,” he whispered, closing his eyes and relishing the moment.

“Well, the hospital bill sure isn’t going to be little, is it?” she asked.

“We’re covered, Trish, no worries. I went home yesterday while you were sleeping. Baby, it’s all gone, all of it. There’s nothing left to work with, we’ll have to start over again,” he said, choking back the tears.

He just wanted to lay quietly on her chest, comforted by her loving arms, hearing her heartbeat and giving himself to her so she could take the world away from his with a few soft whispers.

“It’s ok, Aaron. Everything will be just fine, love. It… it’ll…” and she drifted off.

Seeing her that way, looking as peaceful as one could expect someone in her situation to be, was some comfort to him but nowhere near what he’d hoped for over the past three weeks since the fire.

A sudden beeping on the monitor, one that stood out like a gunshot against the practically hypnotic heart rate beep his unconscious mind had simply filtered out at that point, attracted his attention as he lowered her arm back to her side.

A nurse appeared in the doorway, went to the opposite side of the bed where the rack of monitors was located, turned towards Aaron and, for some reason, froze in place.

He couldn’t understand the look on her face, couldn’t understand why time just seemed to stop as he looked at her, and then he couldn’t understand why she went running from the room.

It took a few moments to realize finally that something was wrong.

He looked down at his wife, and for the first time in days, the heart rate monitor’s incessant beeping reappeared in his awareness. It wasn’t the normal steady beeping, however. It was racing, and it seemed to be accelerating.

The nurse returned with the doctor in charge of Trish’s treatment in tow. He gently but firmly placed one hand on Aaron’s shoulder, turned him to face him and said, “Aaron, I need to attend to Trish. Go outside, please.”

The words had their intended effect, and in a few seconds Aaron found himself in the hallway, pacing like an expectant Father might if he wasn’t in the delivery room while his wife went into labor.

He was having a difficult time concentrating on being relaxed because of the beeping.

“Beep beep beep.”

Feelings return.

“Beep beep beep.”

Breathing quickens.

“Beep beep beep.”

Movement happens.

“Beep beep beep.”

“Dammit.”

He reached over, slamming his fist down on the alarm clock to finally shut it up.

“Oh come on,” Trish asked. “That’s a fine piece of Chinese or Taiwanese technology there, don’t be so heavy handed with it.”

He rolled away from the edge of the bed with one thought on his mind. He was sure if he was quick enough he’d be able to drop her right there on the bed, send her spiraling off into trance so he could ravage her body once more before their day began.

Of course, he was wrong.

He’d only been imagining the alarm clock was going off, thanks to the suggestions she’d been giving him for the past hour or so in the form of soft whispers into his ear. Having no conscious awareness of it happening always gave Trish the upper hand in such situations.

He believed she’d never expect it coming, and he’d probably be right in most situations, but Trish had always been a light sleeper. She was rarely asleep when he awoke, often reading a book or doing some work on her laptop there next to him when his eyes opened.

This time was no different in most respects, but Trish had been reading some stories online related to erotic situations and hypnosis. She’d always had an interest in such stories since they’d attended the hypnosis seminar that led them towards the school in Florida where they got their certifications.

Of course, not many practicing licensed hypnotherapists would ever admit their predilection towards using hypnosis as a tool for enhanced sexual activity, but that wasn’t the situation between her and Aaron.

She was confident that if those hypnotherapists out there in the world were human, the sheer possibilities of mixing hypnosis with sexual situations and fantasies was simply too good to pass up, even if it had to occur behind closed doors.

But those fantasies are sometimes too strong to contain inside, and so people found ways to share their interests and fantasies by writing and sharing stories in relative anonymity by using some rather creative nom de plumes most times.

She’d found some websites that specialized in not only publishing those stories with the obvious “mind control” slant so often associated with hypnosis, but also some forums where people had a frank and open discussion of the writing in the community and other topics.

She wondered if she had the talent to pen one of her own fantasies someday, and she hoped perhaps she’d find the time. Maybe Aaron might contribute one of his own as well.

But during that reading session, she’d be re-reading one of her favorite stories ever called “Chains” by someone using EESW as their anonymous nickname, and from that moment on when she realized what someone could do with hypnosis, she was hooked. The strength of the mind added with the proper suggestions equaled a reality based in fantasy, more or less.

Anonymity was a necessity for most of the writers in the hypnoerotic fiction community: a great deal of the contributors were practicing hypnotherapists, and so the need to keep one’s true identity was an absolute requirement for fear of repercussions that might ripple back to their working lives.

“How comfortable would I be going to a hypnotherapist, male or female, if I knew that person had fantasies of taking away my free will and making me a sex slave, or selling me to someone as such,” she wondered. “Come to think of it, that could be cool in some ways,” she finished the thought, unconsciously slipping one finger inside herself as she read the words on the screen of her laptop.

She remembered reading some stories from an author named trilby else in the past. From what she gathered in postings at one forum, the writer was male but, if “he” were really a “he,” she always felt like the words were written by a woman. They seemed to get inside the female mind – inside her mind, even – and arouse her beyond anything she thought mere words on a page or on a computer screen could possibly do.

They were hot, really fucking hot she reminded herself even as the memories of her masturbation to those stories brought back some sense of the pleasure those experiences gave. She caught Aaron stroking himself on several occasions to the very same stories, actually, but never revealed the fact to him.

She loved to watch her husband pleasure himself, always wondering what might be going through his mind, what images were flashing past inside even as he reached orgasm and released his sweet thick cream to whatever fantasy the story created and satisfied for him.

This was one of the occasions that she truly felt happy of their choice to pursue the education and training about hypnosis. The story she’d been reading there beside him gave her the idea she had already programmed into his sleeping mind with her soft whispers.

He rolled over as expected, as instructed, only to find himself staring at… Britney Spears?

“What the hell, how… why… where is…” and that was pretty much when his cock basically screamed “Hello!!!” to the world.

Trish had, of course, probed his sleeping self for some fantasy of his that she could have fun with that morning. She asked “sleeping Aaron” if he knew of any fantasies involving someone famous, obviously female and obviously a hottie, that “waking Aaron” desired.

First on the list was Britney Spears. She wasn’t surprised, actually. He had some wallpapers of the blonde “oh I’m so innocent but I’m married” teen-turned-woman pop star. She had to admit, Britney filled out nicely over the years becoming a woman that most if not all men and a considerable number of women would love to get their hands on, their tongues in, and whatever else came to mind in the heat of the moment.

“sleeping Aaron” told her since the first time “waking Aaron” had seen Britney’s first video, “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” that he’d always fantasized about just having her, head to toe, helpless and obedient for him to enjoy as he desired. He’d wanted to do everything to her a man can do to a woman, with her simply unable to prevent it, and most notably: desiring it herself just as much if not more than he did.

Trish felt the same way about it, although she and Aaron had never discussed it as such. Trish had found her submissive side, right there along with the Dominant part of her, long ago in college at the hands of a man she met online in a chat room.

She thought at the time the words onscreen were simply two people sharing fantasies and never being serious about it. But as often happened, she found herself staring at the screen, one hand covering her mouth to keep from screaming out loud and waking up her roommate, the other hand furiously masturbating her slickness into the state which was causing her to need to scream from the intense pleasure in the first place.

After attending the training classes at the hypnosis school in Florida, she realized finally the Dom who she’d been chatting with had hypnotized her many times over using direct and indirect hypnotic suggestions, as well as Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques of speech patterns to influence her surreptitiously – and believe it or not, she was very thankful when she realized the power she allowed him to have over her.

“It could have been worse, much worse,” she thought. She had heard many horror stories about how some men, the Doms, and some rather unscrupulous and just as cold blooded women, the Dommes, would not just use people’s willingness to fantasize and allow themselves to be “controlled,” but also to cause emotional pain and suffering.

Make no mistake: whatever can be imagined in the mind, be it by hypnotic suggestion while in trance or by direct command wide awake, can become a dangerous thing.

Too many times she’d read forum postings at one website where people complained about one specific Dom/Domme only to be dismayed at the knowledge that online, all that’s required to become someone else is a few letters typed on a keyboard and a few clicks of a mouse. Suddenly, the person you recognized using the example nickname of That_Evil_Bastard becomes Your_Best_Friend in a split second.

And the overwhelming majority of computer users are simply unskilled and ignorant of methods to confirm the online identity for those hypno-predators, for lack of a more descriptive term.

Her thoughts about her past faded into the pleasant buzz she was feeling as Aaron sucked on “Britney’s” sweet pussy. Trish had questioned “sleeping Aaron” and tried to get as much detail about how he had imagined the encounter to make it as real as possible.

After re-reading “Chains,” she understood it’s not just the subject’s ability to respond to the suggestions that makes a hypnotic fantasy work well, but the quality of the suggestions which are used to create the world the fantasy will take place in, including all the elements.

So, when “sleeping Aaron” had told her he dreamed that Britney’s pussy tasted like vanilla ice cream, she whispered that into his ear as he lay beside her. Now he was between her legs, hungrily lapping away with his tongue, sucking on her clit and outer lips, and apparently completely convinced that yes, indeed, he was eating Britney Spears like there was no tomorrow.

Such fantasy play was the stuff dreams are made of, and hypnosis made it happen. After several orgasms at the tongue of her deeply entranced husband, she convinced him to roll over onto his back and then straddled him, sliding his stiff hard cock deep inside her. She rode him with wild abandon, enjoying every sensation of the moment even as she knew he was lost in his own fantasy. She was only too happy to provide him with this moment because her loving husband had done the same for her in the past.

Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, you name it she had some form of desire or fantasy about them all – even Bill Clinton once. Aaron commented that she had a very strange yet incredibly erotic imagination, “but Bill Clinton? Slick Willy?” he always questioned.

And she had developed a new appreciation for cigars after that one, surprisingly, although she never smoked. She never could figure it out, but she kept it under control even though she was well aware it was a vibrator and not a cigar that Aaron had driven her insane with. But every time she saw someone smoking a cigar after that fantasy she got that special warm feeling deep inside.

He felt so good inside her, underneath her. These were the times when her Domme side reared up and took control of him, so she went with it. Looking down at her obedient yet strong husband, she sang clearly and distinctly even as she drilled her dominance right into his open willing eyes:

“Fuck me baby, one more time…”

“One more time, give me three hundred… ready? CLEAR!!!”

Her body lurched off the gurney once more. Several times in succession they’d tried to resuscitate Trish using the defibrillator. They didn’t want to cause any more damage than necessary, but after cutting off the bandages on her chest area, the doctor was saddened to see that both of her breasts were beyond any and all recognition.

He felt that if he applied too much pressure he might break her considering the fragile state she was in. But then he realized to get the shock into her system to restart her now silent heart, he’d have to risk it.

“One more time, make it three fifty… ok, ready? CLEAR!!!”

Once more her tortured frame lifted into the air, the spasms lasting for a second or two after the paddles were removed. Each shock provided a blip or two on the heart beep monitor, the regular “beep beep beep” having long since disappeared.

Aaron stood in the doorway of the room, witnessing the agony his wife was experiencing even if she probably wasn’t consciously aware of it. Tears streamed down each side of his face; he’d long since given up trying to clear them away and keep his cheeks dry.

He didn’t know what was happening at that point, couldn’t fathom what had gone wrong considering how well Trish seemed to be doing. But he implicitly understood that life, any life, can change in an instant.

He’d called Trish’s parents earlier when this situation first flared up; they were already enroute . Not looking at the clock when it began now became an issue since he couldn’t actually recall how long they’d been working on her, trying to bring her back from whatever place she seemed destined to be going to.

“Aaron!!!” a voice called out. He turned to look at the doctor in the room, still hunched over Trish, when he heard it again. “Aaron!!!”

He turned to face John and Emily, Trish’s Mom and Dad – his adopted parents by marriage. Emily was already in tears, as expected. John was, as Aaron understood from his demeanor, putting on his “Dad face,” trying to hold back the emotions but being relatively unsuccessful in his efforts.

Aaron gave Emily a long hug, finally happy to have someone he could wrap his arms around that might understand how much he missed it since this whole thing began. Over the din of the alarms and the chattering happening in the room only a few feet away, for a few moments Aaron felt peace.

“Aaron, what’s happening, does anyone know?” John asked.

Pulling back from Emily, he then stepped directly into John’s space, stared into his eyes for a single moment, then hugged him as well.

That was enough to open the floodgates for John, and he embraced his son-in-law with as much strength as he could even as the tears simply flowed. He’d never hugged Aaron, not once, so he knew he needed to make up for lost time.

Aaron was crying also, and after a minute or so the two men separated, both trying to wipe away the tears they’d shed before anyone would notice two grown men actually showing emotions.

Shame on our society for making it practically a taboo.

“I don’t… It all happened… so fast… she was speaking to me and in mid-sentence she just… I thought she’d simply fallen back to sleep, I didn’t even notice the alarm on the monitor, not even when the nurse came in to check. When the doctor came in, he told me to wait outside, and I’ve been here ever since,” Aaron said, turning his head to look back into the room once more.

“Ok, let me see what I can do, stay here,” John said.

Before he even left Aaron’s side, Dr. Cassidy was there in the doorway.

“Aaron, I’m sorry. We’ve been trying to resuscitate her going on twelve minutes now. She’s been flat lined the entire time. No response I’ve seen in our efforts has shown me we can do anything at all. I know it’s hard, and I know it’s been a possibility, but she’s gone.”

Aaron was already falling to his knees when John caught him under the arm with one strong hand, the doctor grabbing his other. They eased him into the chair outside the doorway. Aaron’s field of vision narrowed to nothing more than the tiles on the floor underneath his shoes. Shiny as they were, they weren’t reflecting anything useful for him to focus on.

“What the hell happened, doctor? When we saw her yesterday she seemed to be doing better, much better than last week’s episode, can you give us something to work with?” John asked. Emily took the seat beside Aaron and wrapped one arm around his shoulder, prompting him to lean on her, which he did as he simply collapsed into her, sobbing uncontrollably.

“I can’t say for sure right now, John, but if I had to stake my opinion on it based on what I saw when we removed the chest bandages to use the paddles, I’d say pulmonary edema, that’s fluid in the lungs. I noticed a fairly severe infection when the bandages came off, something I didn’t see on yesterday’s charts or tests. While it’s still far too early to say, I believe the pressure in her lungs was just too much on her already weakened heart to stand. I’m… I’m sorry, John, I wish I could give you more---

John cut him off: “I know, I know you do, and thanks, for everything you’ve done and every minute you tried saving my baby girl. Thank you,” he said, shaking the doctor’s hand and patting him on the shoulder even as more tears came.

The doctor returned to the room as John turned to face his wife and son-in-law.

After a few minutes of short pacing, Aaron turned to face John and asked, “What now?”

The look of uncertainty in Aaron’s eyes provoked John into action.

“We do the only thing we can realistically do, son. We say goodbye to our daughter and your wife.”

He then extended his hand to Aaron.

This time, the handshake was a congratulatory one to welcome him into the family.

John didn’t even try to crush his hand as he’d done that first night they met in Trish’s living room where John did his best to make it known clearly that his little girl was beyond precious to him.

This time, it was the handshake of a father-in-law to his son-in-law just after the vows were spoken and the rings were placed on the hands of the couple of the hour. Aaron took his hand, gave it the strongest squeeze he could muster, and smiled.

John smiled back in a way Aaron had never seen before, knowing that, somewhere under the surface, the smile was hiding the pain of losing his baby girl. It’s one of those moments when a man – a father – comes to grips with life’s most important lesson:

Things change, because life is all about change. Life is fluid, and moving. Death is static, and unmoving.

They danced, they laughed; they had a wonderful ceremony. In the end, however, when it was just Aaron and Trish leaving in the limousine, Emily and John had tears of both great happiness at their daughter’s new life and tears of great sadness now that their baby girl had “grown up” and was someone else’s responsibility in a way.

Life had been good to them in many ways: they were blessed with their daughter, healthy and happy from birth, smart as a whip, independent as they both were, talented musically and artistically, and someone they were both very proud of every day of their lives.

But now it was just them, for the first time since Trish’s birth. Of course, a lot of parents hope for that day, a time when they can be together as the couple they were when their relationship began.

And make no mistake: both Emily and John were very happy to now have their home to themselves, which would actually be the first time ever since they bought the home and moved in after Patricia was born.

But it wasn’t that home anymore; it was just home now, for them alone. It was a play on words that brought a chuckle to John as the limo drove away.

Emily asked him what was funny.

“We’re going to be home alone now. Together, alone. Get it? See how ridiculous that sounds?” he said.

She playfully punched him in the ribs several times, smiling the entire time she did so.

“So what’s on the menu tonight, my husband, my love?” she asked as her smile turned into a wicked evil grin in the blink of an eye.

“Well, we old folks need our sleep, love. Perhaps we should spend some time in bed tonight. And then tomorrow, and then the next day, and the next,” he replied, drawing out the response to milk the moment for all it was worth.

“So, what you’re saying is that you wanna fuck, right?” she threw back at him.

He wasn’t often surprised or shocked by his wife of forty years, but every once in a while she could get the best of him.

“It’s elementary, my dear Emily.”

Several mornings later, tired and basically worn out from the sex, they both stood on the deck of the mountain cabin they’d decided to retreat to after the newlyweds were safely away.

They’d laughed, they’d cried, they’d made love every minute possible. In some ways, it was a bonus honeymoon for their long-standing marriage even as their daughter was celebrating hers with her new husband.

John hugged his wife tightly from behind as the sun came up over the mountain lake the back of the cabin overlooked.

“We did a good thing bringing Trish into this world, love. If nothing else I ever do means anything to anyone, I’m content knowing that she did make the right choice. I still can’t believe what a man that pimple-faced geek turned into. He surprised me that night, and many times since.”

He nuzzled into his wife’s neck just above her shoulder as she moaned her approval.

“Of course we did, honey. And I knew from the beginning she would spend her life with Aaron. It was so plain to see, but I guess you men are blind to affairs of the heart – unless it’s your heart that’s opening.”

She spun around, capturing him with a deep passionate kiss, from the heart and soul.

“So,” she asked, “what’s for breakfast?”

“Two eggs, over easy, with lightly buttered toast, jam or jelly, grits or hash browns, bacon or sausage. Yeah, right, and I’m the Godfather,” Aaron said emphatically.

Trish just laughed a hearty laugh at the way he always put things into perspective.

“Come on, slugger, what’s wrong? Doesn’t that sound like a good meal to you?” she asked.

“Of course it does, but we’re talking about hospital food here, it’s not like the stuff they bring me will have any resemblance to anything on that menu card whatsoever.”

He tossed the card back onto the meal/activity table and pushed it towards his feet. The wheels on the table, for whatever reason, decided not to cooperate and jammed, causing the table to stop without warning and leaving all the contents that were on top now lying on the blanket covering his leg. The other one was in a sling, hanging over the bed, wrapped in a freshly put on cast.

He’d broken it skiing at the mountain resort near his parent’s cabin. Trish had told him his reckless behavior would catch up to him at some point and she was right. He hated to admit whenever she was right about something, much like most men hate it whenever their mother’s were spot on accurate about the woman they’d marry – “you’ll marry the first woman you lay.”

Aaron’s Mom would have most likely said the same thing to him, but she and Aaron’s father died in a car accident when he was nine years old. He spent his formative teenage years with his adopted parents who nurtured his talents and taught him respect for women that was always there in the forefront of his relationships with them, of which there weren’t many to speak of.

He always ended up putting women on a pedestal, treating them as objects to be simply admired – or worshipped, depending on you point-of-view. It also made him a very lonely young man, since because of this perspective on women he simply found it nearly impossible to talk to them in any social context.

But something about Trish was different. She talked to him, taking the pressure off him whenever they were together. He merely spent time answering her questions, it seemed, so it became more comfortable. But it merely masked his desires for her, to be with her, help her, care for her, basically to love her from afar.

Trish knew this, of course. She’d always been a looker since her early teens. Boys would never stop asking her out on dates, and it was very rare that anyone succeeded. If she’d been vain about any of it, she’d have ended up the prototypical prom queen, cheerleading captain, and anything else the guy’s dreamed of as the perfect “chick” in high school.

Aaron kept his distance, focusing instead on book learning, not leaving much time for social interaction until Trish decided to break him out of his shell. She came to that decision when he offered to help her with something that needed to be done – a project for one mathematics class, math being her weak point in her studies – and he’d never once hit on her, made any moves towards her of any kind. She considered his behavior during the entire project to be downright chivalrous in nature.

And she wanted to know why this one guy, who was so obviously alone, seemed to be completely disinterested in her, hottie that she was.

So she did what any red-blooded American girl would do in the situation: she asked him out, Sadie Hawkins be damned. She didn’t need to wait for some special dance at school to make the move; she just walked up to him right there in the hallway at school and flat out asked him to go see a movie over the weekend.

If no one had paid attention to Aaron in high school before, all that changed when Trish walked into his life and took control in that moment. As she turned and walked away, with the stuttered and almost incomprehensible “ye… ye… yes” for an answer from the awestruck pimple-faced geek, Aaron suddenly felt the whole world was staring at him.

They were, at least as far as his world extended in the four directions the hallways extended from his point in the center of the intersection.

What followed was a series of cheers, hoots, whoops, and hollers, followed by countless pats on the back congratulating him for snagging “the babe” that all the guys wanted. He wasn’t blind to this treatment however, so he made sure at the first possible opportunity to get into a restroom so he could look for the “Kick me” or “I’m stupid” sign someone had surely taped to his back in the commotion after Trish changed his world forever.

Unbelievably, there was nothing on his back. He turned to face himself in the mirror, remembering the old saying about man staring into the abyss and seeing only his own reflection. In those kinds of moments, when life presents you with the chance to take one path of the other, lives are created and lives are destroyed with the flip of a coin.

He chose the right path that day by saying “ye… ye… yes” and he knew it. He just wished he’d been more confident for her in that moment. But he promised himself that he wouldn’t let her down again.

Ever.

He smiled at his reflection in the mirror, and for the first time in his life, he actually felt happy.

The reflection he was seeing in the mirror wasn’t smiling anymore. He couldn’t find anything to smile about, knowing his wife was going to be buried in a few hours.

The memories were there, lots of them. Very rarely did he have anything negative in his history with Trish to stop and consider. Perhaps he truly was the luckiest man alive: even when he tried to find the bad in something like their time together, he was simply stuck and couldn’t do it.

So he wondered why now, why staring at himself in the mirror, if everything in their lives together was so good, so overwhelmingly positive, why couldn’t he think of one, why couldn’t he find just one memory to hold onto?

Sadly, the answers didn’t come to him, and he simply shrugged off the attempt to get ready to leave for the funeral home.

He made breakfast, went into the living room and turned on the TV. John and Emily had a humongous flat panel plasma display in the living room, something they’d won from a casino in Las Vegas on a junket trip there in the recent past. John had just sat down at a blackjack table when all of a sudden he heard Emily scream. When he arrived at her side, she was in tears: she’d hit some kind of jackpot that paid out a considerable lump of cash and the TV was a bonus for whatever came up on the slot machine.

Aaron remembered his own TV, now nothing more than a big lump of molten glass at the local landfill.

He couldn’t find anything of consequence to watch, feeling the world at large can take care of its own problems while he dealt with the loss of his, it seemed.

Trish’s parents had offered him the use of their home since Trish died. He tried desperately to say no but he couldn’t find the heart or the strength to look either of them in the eye and say no to them. Knowing they had lost their daughter, he realized they needed someone to care for – and he was family, after all.

He hadn’t been in the home for a long time, so he didn’t explore too much other than the guest room he was staying in at night and the kitchen and living room area. But for some reason, since Trish was gone, he felt a desire, a need to go take a look in her old room. Something about memories kept flashing across his mind, his need to remember something becoming stronger with each passing moment.

At the top of the stairs the hallway split left and right; he knew Trish’s room had been on the left side of the house the one time he tried to talk with her from her window at 4AM. John wasn’t too happy about that, he realized now. Perhaps that’s when he decided I wasn’t worth his daughter’s time. “But then again…” Aaron wondered.

He opened the door to the room and remarkably it seemed to be in exactly the same condition it was the last time he’d been in it, almost 9 years prior. There was that one single time after the prom, when she came home early only to find Aaron sitting on the front porch waiting for her.

He had to tell her something that night, and he’d summoned the courage to do it after seeing her at the prom dancing with “that other guy.” He ran home after that, unable to keep his emotions in check any longer. He considered what happened next as Fate slapping him directly across the face and he knew he’d never forget it:

When he got home, his adopted parents were watching “Back To The Future,” the sci-fi time travel flick about the teenager that ends up going back to the late 1950s and almost dating and having sex with his own mother.

The scene unfolding before him in the movie as he walked into the living room was the one where George McFly finally took the woman of his dreams into his arms and kissed her.

Just a kiss it seemed, there on the screen, but to anyone that’s seen the movie it was the perfect kiss, the one that made Lorraine Baines realized this was more than some geek with a crush on her. She’d just witnessed him punch the lights out of the school’s most notorious bully, saving her from being molested, and now this man was kissing her passionately, with a purpose and desire she’d never known.

It was the ultimate geek/nerd fantasy come true, even if it was just a kiss onscreen in a movie.

But sometimes, inspiration comes in strange forms.

Aaron took that kiss as inspiration, and knowing he couldn’t make it back to the prom in time, he did run full bore all the way to Trish’s home non-stop. Oh how he would have loved to have done a McFly on “the other guy” and taken Trish in his arms, in front of everyone that made up his life, and kissed her into being his forever.

He ran up the steps of her home, skipped the doorbell and hammered on the door itself till Mr. Temes – John – opened it up, thinking someone was breaking in.

Aaron, are you insane? Have you gone completely crazy?” he asked, flustered at having his movie interrupted, the same “Back To The Future” that Aaron’s adopted parents were still watching.

“Is Trish home yet, Mr. Temes? I have to talk to her, please.” The desperation in the young man’s voice was unmistakable, but not unexpected. John had seen the look in Aaron’s eyes when Trish first appeared on the stairs on that first date, felt this young man trying to impress him with the lackluster handshake he gave his all, and in that moment he realized just how painful it probably was for Aaron to not be “the guy” that night while “the other guy” was.

Calming himself, taking the high road, John already knew what was coming. He took a deep breath first and said:

“Aaron, she’s not home yet. Would you like to come inside, we’re just watching a movie. You’re welcome to join us if you like. We’ve got some pizza and sodas also, why not come on inside and wait for Patricia?”

Aaron, while dumbstruck at the invitation, was entirely too anxious to sit still so he replied: “No, that’s ok, and thanks. Can I wait out here for Trish?”

John noticed the marked difference in Aaron almost immediately, and stuck to the high road:

“Sure. If you need anything, just come on inside.”

And with that he smiled and closed the door. Aaron was practically beside himself by that point, unsure of how to handle what had just occurred, so he did what anyone in his situation would do.

He started pacing back and forth, right there on the porch. It didn’t last, of course, and after about twenty minutes of it and a few nervous smiles from both Emily and John from the window, he finally relaxed enough to sit on the steps, both feet tapping away like mad.

He ran over the scene in that movie so many times over the years. “A courageous act of defiance in light of inevitable doom,” as Aaron described it. George McFly’s character was the perfect prototypical geek/nerd.

He was tall, lanky, with a big nose, a nasal voice, a brain at school, a crazy imagination and totally dumbfounded with how to deal with the raging hormones all young males suffer from and that most mysterious thing of all: women.

Aaron sympathized with the character quite well, having been in situations that were similar to those portrayed in the movie. Bullying, fights, being stuffed in a locker – just the attempt was enough, he never actually fit. All of it hit home when he saw that movie the first time and had a dream of his own: that someday he’d be George McFly and someday he’d knock the wind clean out of that bully and someday he’d take the girl into his arms and… well… he’d kiss her.

What happened next was still just the dreaming part, but he believed the kiss could be a reality.

When he looked up from his reverie and saw Trish standing there before him, a curious look on her face that blended into the most wonderful smile after a few seconds, the belief became a reality.

Aaron stood up, covered the few steps between them, took Trish his arms, and kissed her.

Inside the house, Emily witnessed it as it happened, from the moment Aaron stood to the moment they kissed.

“John, come here, quick,” she whispered. John ran over, placing the bowl of hot popcorn on the coffee table before stubbing his toe on the side table.

“OW!!!” he yelled, only to be hushed by Emily’s whispers and waves. He finally made it to the window only to completely forget about the pain as soon as he realized what “that pimple-faced geek” was doing.

“Son of a---

“Don’t even say it, John. Did you see that boy’s face a few weeks ago when they went out together? Did you really look at him when she walked down the stairs? Yes you did, love. You know how I know that? Because I was looking at you when she walked down; I wasn’t looking at her, and not at Aaron. I wanted to see your reaction to his reaction. You know that reaction, John, you know it quite well, don’t you?”

He hated to admit when his wife was right, as most men did, but when she’s right, she’s right. He looked out the window once more, held his wife tightly and whispered in her ear.

“Yes, love, I knew that look when I saw it. I know the feeling quite well, as you recall. He was basically just a mirror image of me from so many years prior when I first watched you walking down those stairs at your parent’s place. I know he loves her, I knew it for sure when I opened the door earlier, but… I… well would you look at that.”

Emily turned to look out the window as John’s hint told her to. Aaron and Trish separated for several seconds, almost glowing there in the light from the porch. In the blink of an eye, Trish reached up with both hands, grabbed Aaron from behind the neck and pulled him into a deep passionate kiss.

“THAT’S MY GIRL!!!” John tried to yell quietly and failed miserably. For him, any doubts about whether his baby girl might love this young man – even for some unfathomable reason he just couldn’t get – were laid to rest at that moment.

Emily elbowed him in the ribs, and this time the pain in his toe flared back to life to remind him it needed attention. He hobbled back to the sofa to look at his toe while Emily stayed at the window. After another minute or two, the young couple in love pulled apart once more, and this time when they came together, it was in a hug.

Trish opened her eyes and saw the light from the window. She saw her Mom take a step back into the light, saw the look of happiness on her face for her daughter, and all was right with the world for everyone involved. Emily walked away from the window as Trish hugged Aaron even more tightly.

Of course, when she found him there waiting for her, she already knew what he was going to say, but she never told him as such. It was better to let him take charge of the situation and run with it, all the way to the wedding chapel, so to speak.

Years later when he had the chance to tell Trish exactly why he was waiting there on her porch when she got home, he was rewarded with another deep passionate kiss. She had never asked him about it or pressured him to explain; it was something she was pretty sure he’d reveal in his own good time.

After the explanation, they went out and got the DVD of the movie, watched it together – with pizza and sodas - and then made love all night knowing Fate could be fickle most of the time, but for them it seemed to be kind.

That movie was also one of John’s favorites, Aaron learned years later. They even loaned Trish’s parents the DVD on occasion, who were still unaware of the significance it held for her daughter’s life and happiness with the man she had chosen to love.

As the memory of those times washed over him, he found himself seated on Trish’s old bed, with one of her portraits in his hands, a few tears finding their way down his cheeks once again.

The final curtain was drawing closed on his wife’s life, even though she’d already been gone for three days. After talking with Emily and John about it, they all agreed that it would be best to remember her as she was before the fire, and not have a final memory of her after some mortician’s assistant had tried to fix or cover up the damage from the fire that her face suffered.

The portrait Aaron held in his hands was one of his favorites, and he was grateful in no small degree that he had it once more considering the original existed only as ashes now in the charred remains of the home they made together. So many things lost, he contemplated. So many things that only exist as memories now…

That feeling returned once more, flickering across his mind, not something he could grasp onto or hold long enough to make it out, but there nonetheless.

“Dammit, I wish I could figure out what that is, or remember---

“You will remember me, love, always. You will always remember me, my love for you, our love for each other, and you will be strong when I’m gone. Promise me this, my husband.”

“I will remember,” he responded, calmly, quietly. His breathing was slow and deep, his head resting against her chest, his eyes closed as her faint raspy whispers filled his relaxed mind.

She had used a trigger on Aaron to get him to relax because he was so agitated. After he was under, she had him join her on the bed, even though it became excruciatingly painful at times because of his size and weight. But she accepted the pain of the moment because she needed to do this for him, knowing her time was short.

“You will be strong, Aaron. You loved me as well as any man can ever love a woman, but when I’m gone you must go on with your life. It’s what I want, love, it’s what will make me happy when I’m gone, to know that you continue on, remembering me but not being haunted by me. Will you do this for me, love, will you continue on, with the memories we have created in our lives, reflecting on them at times when you need to, but not allowing them to rule your life?”

With a soft sigh, Aaron said, “I don’t want you to go, please.”

She expected resistance, but pressed on.

“Aaron, if you love me you must remember me but not live for me when I’m gone. You must go on, my husband. Suffering and pain aren’t something that can keep you alive. Memories, and happiness, love, and support, those are the things you must live off of. Can you understand?” she asked.

“I understand, but… I can’t live without you,” he whispered.

“Yes, Aaron, you can, you will, you must. You told me long ago that you once reached a point where you made a decision to never let me down or disappoint me, at least not willingly. If that’s true, and you still intend to keep that promise, you have to live for yourself, please.”

The “please” part actually caused a reaction from Aaron, unexpected as it was but it happened just the same.

He began to cry.

She couldn’t cry with him, unfortunately, and so she took charge once again and used his pain to teach him what she’d been trying to teach him.

“Aaron, that’s not fair,” was all she had to say.

He instantly stopped crying, unsure of what prompted it.

“Do you understand why?” she asked, her own tears never to flow again.

“No, I… don’t…”

“I can’t cry for you, husband. I can’t, and you know that, yet you cry for me so easily and it’s simply not fair to me.”

In his trance, the logic of the statement didn’t dawn on him since trance logic works in reverse of what is typically said. He was dimly aware that something was wrong but he couldn’t quite grasp it yet.

“Sit up and look at me Aaron, remaining deeply relaxed as you do so, open to my words.”

He sat up carefully, shifting his weight so most was off the side of the bed, supported by one leg and one arm with a hand pressed against the mattress. He opened his eyes slowly then turned his head to focus on her face.

“Do you see me, love?” she pleaded.

“Yes.”

“Do you see the damage to my eyes, to my eyebrows I used to spend so much time keeping thin? The eyelashes on which I wasted so much money to make more beautiful, now singed together in a clump? Do you see what’s happened to my lips, how cracked and charred they are now, to the point where I can’t even kiss you anymore, my loving husband? Do you see what I have become?”

His eyes darted to each feature she spoke of, in quick succession. He took her in, all of her actually, and even in his altered state realized this wasn’t about him, it’s about her, and it had been since the moment the fire started.

He realized how selfish he’d been even though outwardly he seemed to be caring for her. And in this realization, he grew more ashamed of himself with each and every “beep beep beep” he heard as it marked the beating of her heart lying before him.

“Now close your eyes for me, darling, and relax.”

Aaron closed his eyes as Trish spoke softly.

“Remember me, Aaron, exactly as you saw me that first time. Remember my face, remember every detail about me, my hair, my eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, my lips, my nose, the light on my face, the sun in my hair, all of it. Remember me this way, forever. That is how you remember me, how I want you to remember me, not like this, not the way I am now, damaged beyond most recognition, even for you.”

He found it easy to remember her that way, so beautiful his heart simply skipped a beat – or two – when he first met her. So breathtaking, so angelic to his teenage eyes, so absolutely out of his reach that he dared dream of her, placing her on that imaginary pedestal he kept in his mind.

Choking up, he pictured her on that pedestal, perfect in all the ways he loved her, all the ways he desired her, all the ways he loved her.

“Let that memory stay with you, love, for that is the woman you loved, that is the woman you will always love, that is the woman you will always remember.”

“what the hell is…? Trish?” he asked out loud, and after a few moments he realized her only presence was the portrait in his hand. He remembered what she had done, what she had asked of him, his promise to her.

“I will remember you, my wife, my love, my friend.”

He cried a little at that point, something he had to do. He kissed the portrait once softly and lay it down on the bed as he stood up to look around once more before leaving.

He could almost feel her there, in that place. He would have the memories of the one time they spent there, briefly after the prom when he finally kissed her in front of her house. They came in, found Trish’s parents on the sofa, acting like nothing was amiss, grinning from ear to ear as the young loves made their way upstairs to talk about what was sure to become and adventure for the both of them.

Nothing funny happened that night, of course. If nothing else, Aaron always had been a gentleman and always would be, even after her passing. Not to say that he didn’t want her, just as much as she wanted him, but their first coupling would come later, after school was finished, at the mountain cabin one beautiful night when all was right with their worlds.

After the funeral, Aaron rode back to John and Emily’s to gather some of his belongings up to move to the apartment a colleague from work had offered him. After packing up his stuff, he made his way to Trish’s room once more to claim that portrait and several other times he would cherish forever.

He returned downstairs and showed Emily and John the portrait, told them he’d have several copies made and he’d return the framed one to them. He went to get his bags when a knock was heard at the door.

He came out of the guest room to see John standing in the foyer with a pizza and some sodas, smiling.

“I once invited you into my home for a movie, a pizza and some sodas. You turned me down at that point, something I hadn’t expected, but when you did it made me realize just how fond of my daughter you were. I mean, a pimple-faced geek like you was turning down a movie, free pizza and sodas? Come on, even I could see the writing on that wall.”

They all shared a good laugh at that one. Emily smiled at John, knowing he had it in him somewhere, and happy to see he’d finally accepted Aaron for who and what he was and had become.

“I know it’s been a tough few weeks, especially with the funeral today, but, you have a family, Aaron. You’ve had one since the moment I realized you loved my daughter when she came down those stairs.”

He motioned with the pizza box to the stairs, and all three of them turned in sync, all of their imaginations remembering Trish in that moment so long ago, taking the breath right out of Aaron, changing John’s perceptions of Aaron, and Emily being happy to know her husband just might be more perceptive than she’d imagined.

“I’ll stay, but only if I get to pick the movie,” Aaron insisted as he dropped his bags by the staircase.

“Anything you want,” John said as he made his way to the couch, making sure not to stub his toe on the side table as he seemed to do more often than he cared to admit. Emily dashed off to the kitchen for plates, napkins, and some glasses.

Aaron stepped over to the DVD rack, thumbed his way down hoping to find the movie that started it---

“Bingo,” he exclaimed rather loudly.

“Got one, I take it,” John questioned, flipping the pizza box open as Emily made her way back to the living room.

“I seem to recall you like ‘Back To The Future’ right, John?” Aaron asked, already well aware of the answer.

“Yeah, a long time ago, I could have been mistaken for George McFly, believe it or not. Emily here will back me up on that, I think,” he said, preparing himself for the obligatory elbow in the ribs she seemed to unconsciously have at the ready at any given moment.

This time, his wife stepped over to him, looked deeply into his eyes, and offered him a soft kiss and a whispered, “I love you, my husband” instead.

“I love you, my wife,” John replied.

Aaron, witnessing the exchange for what seemed to be the first time he’d ever heard John express emotions in that way, waited for the right moment.

When it came, and they realized he’d been waiting on them, Emily sat down next to her husband, and Aaron spoke.

“This time, instead of watching the movie, I have a story I’d like to tell you both, if you’ll let me. It’s about a pimple-faced geek that got the girl of his dreams, much like George McFly.”

It was a night filled with tears, sadness, joy, and with many happy memories of the woman that they would always remember.