The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Mander, Susan, Rita, and Velasquez emerged onto the roof of the Seattle Hotel de San Finzione. Ernst, Contessa Helena de San Finzione’s pilot, was waiting in her helicopter for them as four Ultimados jumped out and ran for the fire doors. Breach charges were being placed as the group ran for the helicopter. Once Susan and the others were aboard, Ernst took off in the direction of the San Finzione Consulate, police and news helicopters approaching in the distance.

Susan regretted that she wouldn’t be able to go along with Sue’s plan to help the women protesting below; which was to see if she could use a bullhorn to convince the men surrounding them to go home. She’d heard that Helen had once used a microphone and sound system to command a ballroom full of people, and didn’t know if she’d be able to do it herself, but figured that it would’ve been worth trying.

As they flew away from the scene, where the Ultimados were entering the stairwells to blindside the Triad hit teams that had been sent after Rita, thinking that she was Helen and had ordered an attack on them; Susan thought that now she wouldn’t want to push anything in that department, since she’d just discovered some new, weird thing about herself. Weirder than the facts that she could control minds and frequently had conversations and meetings with other personalities in her head.

Susan had discovered that one of those personalities, Suzy-Q, had somehow been able to make contact with Helen’s mind and get the information that Susan needed to get out of the panic room that they’d been locked inside a few minutes before. She’d also learned that Suzy-Q had done this once before, when Helen was in surgery and her life was in danger. And now, after Suzy-Q’s kiss, she was remembering all of the other Her’s experiences in Helen’s mind as the building that housed the consulate grew closer.

“Oi,” Mander asked her, after a long silence. “You all right?”

“Hmm?” Susan hmmed. “Oh, yeah. I worked an all-night diner in Tacoma for eleven years. Got robbed all the time. If Triads had gotten close enough, it wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve almost been shot.”

“They were never going to get close enough.” Velasquez said, matter-of-factly.

“I believe you, Marisol.” Susan replied. “And by the way, that thing you did in the elevator was so awesome, gnarly, and radical; that only words from the ’80s can describe it!”

“Gracias. As was your thinking in the room. You were very helpful today, Susan.”

“Thanks.” Susan replied, a bit distantly, thinking. “I get that a lot.” She shook her head, as if clearing the thought. “I’m sorry, I was distracted.” Susan turned to Rita. “Are you ok, Rita?”

“Si,” Rita returned. “I accepted this as part of the job, but then, it happens... I will be fine.”

Susan was able to study her face now and see the differences between them without the makeup. Rita had longer hair, of a light-brown shade, close to Susan’s own; under the short, black wig with curled bangs that she wore when playing Helen. Rita had darker brown eyes, too; without the contacts. Her nose had a different curve than Helen’s with the latex removed, and Rita’s natural skintone was more olive than the makeup that she wore to get Helen’s “always slightly pale from growing up in Alaska” face.

“It’s Helen, so I know I don’t have to say that she’d better be fucking paying you well.”

“Oh, si.” Rita replied. “It is why I carry the wig and makeup with me. La Contessa makes it worth the risk.”

“Yeah, she’s got ways of doing that.” Susan said, as Ernst approached the helipad.

Back at the Equals house, Contessa Helena de San Finzione and Julie Equals sat in front of the living room television, watching news of the attack on the hotel, smoke pouring out of the fire exits on the roof, and sounds of gunfire coming from within. Troy Equals came from the kitchen with a tray bearing cups of hot cocoa and a topical skin patch. A moist towelette and a dry washcloth were also on the tray. Helen smoked, and Julie fought the urge to reach over and grab one.

He set the tray on the coffee table between the two ladies, taking a seat on Helen’s left side. Troy then pulled up her skirt, opened the towelette, and started rubbing the large, purpling patch of skin on the outside of her thigh to remove the Lidocaine cream that Maisson had applied. Helen winced as she picked up her cocoa, watching smoke coming from the roof of the building she owned, where innocents and people she cared for personally were in danger.

“Sorry.” Troy said. “Alcohol.” He dried off the bruised area and peeled the plastic off of the dermal patch. “Reminded Dr. Tenente Maisson that because of your history with cocaine, you’re probably Lidocaine/Novocain Resistant. He recommended a Diclofenac patch; a little stronger, still non-narcotic.”

“Am I fuckin’ Harry Potter here, Troilus? Does everything have to be about my past and do my plots rely heavily on other people not knowing Latin?”

“Drink your cocoa, Petalouda.” Troy told her, recognizing Helen attempting to play off how worried she was about everyone downtown. “Tried to make it the way you like it.”

Helen picked up the cup and sipped. It was wonderful. The right recipe, the right ingredients, the correct temperature, the technique handed down to Troy from The Master; he’d even made it for her unrequested when they came back to the house, and brought it to her, so it had been made with just as much love as the Original. He saw her smile stop short of the point that the drink used to bring to her face when the man who’d first made it for her had been alive to do so. Troy understood why, and accepted it.

Since his parents and Propappou had died, there had been certain foods that Troy occasionally missed, but couldn’t bring himself to order in restaurants, attempt at home, or ask Julie if she would make for him; because no one would ever get them right again. Someone could certainly make pancakes with Bisquick and cook up homemade syrup from one of the various flavored extracts in the pantry; coconut being a particular favorite, right there on the stove alongside the pancakes. Someone could top the stack with a perfect fried egg, the yolk unbroken so he can dip his pancake bites that always absorbed the syrup in just the right way into it, and fry up a couple of strips of bacon perfect for dunking in the syrup, but it would never be his mother’s. Just like the cocoa he’d made for her was wonderful, and tasted just like Propappou’s, but would never entirely be right, because there was no more “right.”

On TV, the news continued re-phrasing the few pieces of information they had on the incident: That shots had been fired and sounds of explosions had come from the upper floors of the Seattle Hotel de San Finzione, that there was speculation that it may have something to do with an attack on a Chinese delegation a couple of hours earlier, that Contessa Helena de San Finzione was supposedly staying in the penthouse while attending STRANGERS, and that there was no word on her condition, but a helicopter had been seen from a distance leaving the hotel in the direction of the building that housed San Finzione’s Seattle Consulate. The only thing the ambassador told the press was that the Consulate was closed for the rest of the day, and no further comment would be given at this time.

“I have to make an appearance now.” Helen said as her phone rang with the ambassador’s tone and she looked in her purse for it. “Everyone’s going to be asking where I am. Twenty bucks and a loose-lipped janitor will tell the press that I’m not at the Consulate, and then they’ll start wondering where or who I might hole up with in Seattle. FUCK!” Helen set down the cocoa and dug with both hands in the purse until she produced the phone. “I might actually have to GO to STRANGERS now!”

“After all this,” Julie said. “I’d think they’d cancel it.”

Helen stood up to answer the call. Her left leg buckled a little as she stood, but she recovered. She grabbed her cigarettes and headed for the back porch as Troy sat closer to his wife.

“They won’t.” He told her. “All that money and power for the city and state to risk pissing off? They’ll declare martial law and gas people out of their homes like last time before asking the delegates ‘Hey, would you mind keeping the shooting down a bit?’”

Helen came back in from the porch and her call, still smoking, trying to walk off the pain in her leg.

“Everyone made it to the consulate safely.” She told her oldest friends. “They’re shutting down the airport, so it looks like Susan, Velasquez, and Mander will be bringing Rita back here in a cab, instead of a consular car, since I can’t send her home. You’re right that this is the safest place for her. We’ll send someone for the other car. I’d been planning to hand all the titles over to you when we left, anyway, Troy. I figured you’d know some good local groups to donate them to.”

Troy nodded.

“I can think of a few. But please, put them in some long-term parking until I sort it out. Having them take up both sides of our street seems to be dangerous.”

Helen stuck her tongue out at him as she grabbed her cocoa and took a seat on his other side, since he’d taken hers to sit with Julie.

“How are you doing with the team upstairs?” Helen asked, referring to her Ministry of Intelligence’s team of hackers that she’d put Troy in charge of earlier, and whom he’d been working with via Skype on his library computer when Julie’s question earlier brought him out to talk to them.

“We’ve got one dirty transaction to work with: His payment to Morgan’s widow. We’re not going to touch it or risk her losing it; and it’s a damn short trail, however, it’s something to start from. Not a Rosetta Stone, more like I’ve learned one letter of his alphabet. I had them checking into vice funds when I left.” Julie looked confused, so Troy continued. “The kind of investments that I don’t touch, hon: Arms, drugs, prostitution; in the places where they’re legal. Plenty of money to be made if you don’t give a fuck about having to live on this planet with other human beings. He also said he’d acquired a couple of your works recently.” He turned back to Helen. “Her last showing was right before all this happened, but since we presume he was telling the truth about not knowing who we were until we came to see you, it would’ve had to be a private sale aftwerwards.”

“I didn’t see him in Spokane.” Julie said. “I can see if he signed the guestbook, and you’ve got all the receipts for all the sales, Master.”

“He wasn’t there,” Helen commented. “If he had been, someone would have introduced you. An old technology billionaire doesn’t go to an art showing to NOT get photos of himself with the beautiful, talented young artist. Fuck, I’ve probably been to parties with this prick! Or at least, Rita has.”

“No!” Julie sat up as the thought hit her. “It would’ve been you. I’m sure he was another handshake and that phony ‘delighted to meet you’ smile you use on talk shows to you. But if he saw you Do What We Do and effortlessly seduce someone completely unattainable; or if it was one of your ‘working parties,’ and he overheard you negotiate some impossible business deal over the course of a dance, maybe he starts thinking about those ‘silly rumors about you.’”

“He likes to profit from misery.” Troy closed his eyes and thought. “But what’s the point of fucking the world over if you can’t rub it’s nose in it?”

“True.” Helen agreed. “But there’s so many ways to do that... hell, he could just provide the phones and still claim to be ‘profiting,’ but that’s not the kind of ‘vast criminal empire’ to ‘need protecting’ with something like Springheel; much less kill me over it, or risk The Elders’ wrath.”

“Come to think of it, yeah.” Julie said, finishing her cocoa, and taking Troy’s empty cup to the kitchen with hers; raising her voice as she went, to continue the conversation. “I mean, I know my fears are weird and all.”

Troy opened his eyes. Helen looked directly at him before answering.

“Losing your husband? Losing TROY? Not a weird fear at all, Sunflower. Completely relatable.”

Troy looked away, remembering the conversation he’d overheard earlier about her wanting him to be the father of her child. One of several important subjects of conversation that needed to stay on hold until Whyte could be dealt with.

“Stop making him blush in there!” Julie shouted from the kitchen over the faucet as she rinsed out the cups. “But, yeah, you know what sounds to me like a perfectly good fear to have?” She returned from the kitchen. “Pissing off a bunch of guys that Contessa Helena de San Finzione calls ‘The Elders,’ and whom she respects enough that she hasn’t said anything particularly insulting about them since they first came up.”

Troy took in his wife’s words.

“You have to respect someone to fear them. Whyte doesn’t respect People, Mistress; he respects Money. You two heard him talking about Trans-Universal. Did no one else get a ‘gay come-on’ vibe? For everyone’s jokes about money turning me on, I could practically feel the creep undressing me with his eyes over the phone while he talked about it. Everything was about me being a multi-millionaire, you being a trillionaire; he’s shooting for quadrillion. If he looked into my money, he certainly looked into Julie’s, too. Her ‘on paper’ worth didn’t even merit a mention. I’m sure he’s nowhere near you, though. If he had La Familia de San Finzione money, he wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity to brag.”

Julie’s phone rang. She recognized the tone.

“Oh, damn, Denise! I should’ve called her first!”

Denise Cole was a young friend of theirs, still in high school, whom Julie had met one day when she and Troy were walking around Wright Park in Tacoma. Julie had helped Denise with some personal issues, learned that the girl had an interest in art, and started mentoring her. After prank-calling Helen, Julie learned that Her First Girlfriend had been someone whom Denise admired before knowing of their relationship.

Helen’s issuing Denise a Royal Commendation for taking care of the Equals household’s plants and mail while they were in San Finzione had caused her admiration to blossom into hero worship. Julie should have known that as soon as she’d heard the news that Helen was in danger, Denise would call her. She answered the phone.

“Hey, Denise.” She said, getting up to leave the room. “Yeah, she’s ok. No, she wasn’t even there. Look, it’s a long story…”

Troy and Helen looked at each other. Their train of thought had been interrupted, and the moment had become silent once Julie left. Helen eventually broke it.

“So, did you hear everything Julie and I were talking about?”

“Only the louder parts.” Troy replied. “I was already coming down the hall when Julie said that last thing.”

“You know I wouldn’t ask this on an impulse, Troy. Any more than I would expect you to answer on one. Yes, it’s a recent idea; since my brush with death, so I do factor in that I might just be wrestling with fears of mortality here.”

“That’s not how you work, Helen. The fact that it’s to the point of us talking about it, means that you’ve taken time out and given it serious thought. You’ve certainly discussed it with Maria.”

Helen chuckled and replied with a smile.

“She volunteered to propose to Stavro and start getting on it the next morning. I told her no.” Helen chuckled again. “All-Powerful Athiesmo, I actually forbade my great-granddaughter, the fucking PRINCESS, from marrying the man she loves! I mean, I don’t remember if I used the words ‘I forbid it,’ but shit; time to start having intense conversations with my mirror and offering her apples!”

They laughed at that for a bit before Troy replied.

“Ok, so that’s Maria’s take. Julie made hers fairly clear; yours is obvious. The only reasons I can think of not to right now are that it is, indeed, a matter worthy of serious contemplation; the fact that it’s a decision that affects our whole family, which includes Susan, therefore, she deserves a say; and the fact that I overheard you telling Julie that your time was last week.” Troy thought for a moment. “Sorry, I can’t think of a non-gross and/or weird way to ask you to keep me posted there.”

Helen thought about that, too.

“I could have Maisson text you.”

“Maybe having it come from your doctor might take the edge off, sure. There’s still the question I asked you on the lawn, too.”

“Yes, there is.” Helen nodded. “That, too, is something that should wait until I can talk to Susan. I hope she’s not too tired, seems a lot of people need to talk to her.”

Julie was still on the phone with Denise when the cab pulled up. Mander paid while everyone else got out. Susan ran toward her front door as Velasquez led Rita into the Green house.

Troy came to the door. Susan almost didn’t register it in time and would have stumbled into Troy if he hadn’t noticed she wasn’t slowing down and got out of her way.

“Sorry, Troy!” Susan said, coming to a stop when she saw she’d nearly plowed into him. “I just… Helen’s ok?”

“Yeah,” Troy said, slightly confused, as if trying to figure out how Susan would have known Helen had been in danger. “She’s in the living room.”

Susan ran into the room. Troy followed. She’d stopped in front of Helen, who’d stood to face her.

“So, are you all right?” Susan asked.

“Yeah.” Helen responded. “But damn, what about YOU, Susan?” Julie walked in from the office hall and stood at the top of the railing. “It’s Susan, right?”

Susan got a look on her face that said that she was reading volumes into Helen’s simple two-word question; a look that mirrored Julie’s earlier question of “How would you think to even ask that question.” It was replaced a moment later by a look that said “Oh, right. My deepest secret revealed itself to you without my permission, so of course you’d know.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s Susan. It’s so much to take in… I don’t even know how to feel about it. I know it’s not something you did; I’m pretty sure it’s not something I did.” She looked over at Troy and Julie. “I know they never told you about them, and you didn’t know Suzy-Q existed until she came to you. Hell, I can see that Julie’s confused about why I’d even tell you about Suzy-Q to begin with, just like Troy’s been confused about how I knew you’d been in trouble.”

“That IS something that confuses me, Susan.” Troy replied. “But it’s not the biggest thing. Of the many things confusing me right now, the big one would be what’s confusing Julie right now.”

Susan looked up at Julie. “Why are you so confused, Julie?” Julie seemed to be processing the question. Helen’s eyes lit up half-a-second before Troy answered Susan.

“She’s confused for the same reason that I see Helen has just caught on to. Because Julie knows French, but not Italian, so she hasn’t fully understood what any of us have been saying since you came home. Helen has been replying to you in Italian, and so have I, because you’ve been speaking Italian since you walked in the door, Susan.”