The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The bar was smallish, dim, with mismatched barstools and an old-fashioned jukebox in one corner. A large mirror behind the bar explained HARLEYS & WHISKEY: BOTH GET BETTER WITH AGE in faded gold letters across the top. It was almost empty, just as the restaurant had been, because outside it was still snowing, just like it had been almost every other day for the past few weeks. The month was only half over but December ‘07 had already broken snowfall records in much of New England.

Haley was dazed and bewildered. She peered around like a raccoon that had been startled by headlights. A couple of middle-aged bikers sat in one corner; she looked at them like they were the Hell’s Angels. But after a drink it began to fade and she started to resemble the animated girl June had seen in the restaurant.

“Sorry about that, by the way. About the, you know. Tricking you,” June offered. They were sitting at the bar.

“Sorry about what? You should charge money for that.” Haley beamed. “It was like I was high. Actually I was starting to worry the other girls would think I was high.” She paused. “Was I high?”

June laughed.

“People don’t usually thank me.”

“What do they usually do?”

“Laugh it off, or get embarrassed. Sometimes they get angry.” But usually they never know, because my dumbass friends don’t interrupt me.

“I’m not. But,” she leaned in as if they would be heard, “what was that? I don’t even remember what happened. I came to take your order, then I was sitting next to you feeling like I’d gotten a shot of Prozac straight to the brain.” Her eyes searched June’s. They seemed impossibly large.

“Just something that chills people out, makes them feel like talking. That’s how I find out if someone’s got any interesting stories to tell.”

“You thought I had something to say?”

“You never know who does. Look at you. You think you’re nobody, but you’re the girlfriend of someone a lot of people might be interested in. You never know who it’ll be. I just go fishing sometimes, if I see the opportunity.”

“You coulda just asked.”

“Sure. Hey, got any deep dark secrets or scandals you’d like to tell to a complete stranger?”

“Oh. Heh.” She played with the lime. “Well, you can ask me now.”

“Nah.” June smiled.

“Why not? It’s not like I have any great loyalty to the guy. He gives me an apartment for free in exchange for fucking him once or twice a month.” She shrugged. “Less lately. I think he’s getting bored with me. Or it could be because his wife just had another kid and she wants him around. Either way, it’s nice.”

The girl said this offhandedly, as if describing the weather, so June pretended to accept it offhandedly, as if nodding when having the weather described. Privately, she started paying closer attention to what the girl said.

“Sounds very fulfilling.”

“I get cable, too.”

Haley looked at the counter. Then she brightened. “So, whatever you want to know. Ask away.”

“Can’t, now that we’re hanging out. That’s a no-no.”

“Aww.” Haley sat back. “I think I’d like it if someone fucked him over. Not, you know, so bad that I lost the apartment. Heh. But. You know. I wouldn’t mind seeing him kicked a bit.”

“Yeah. It’s a little more complicated than that though.”

“Complicated how?”

“Sorry kid. Trade secrets.” June winked over her glass.

“Ooooh, spooky mysterious writer lady. Ok. It was probably boring anyway. I got that vibe.” She sipped her drink. Around the curl of her sandy bangs, June could see that she was smirking.

“I give a boring vibe?”

“No! Course not. I meant that you give a vibe that your work... things... some of them have a, or could be... have... a boring vibe.” Haley trailed off into mumbles. “Please don’t stop buying me drinks,” she added.

June stared at her. Haley looked elsewhere. Beneath the bangs, her smirk had widened to a grin. She had cute cheeks. If she was ten years older, that particular type of smile would have creased her face in subtle laugh lines beside her mouth and eyes, and would be on the way to making her look like what’s called classy in older women. But at the moment, just cute.

You’re not going to let some girl use reverse psychology—really bad, obvious reverse psychology—on you, just because she has freckles on her nose, right? Lots of girls have freckles on their noses. That’s nothing special. I bet there are whole websites devoted to freckles on noses.

She thought about how easy it would be to send Haley off again. Just say the right things. Remind her of the sensation she had earlier, in the restaurant and in the vestibule. Talk about it. After a minute or so, take her hand—distracting her, making it a part of the conversation—then find the pressure point and press. Haley had enjoyed it the first two times; it wouldn’t be a fight, she’d go along happily. She’d like it.

The girl would lean back in her chair with a dopey smile and listen and start to fade. Ten minutes later the smile would be gone and she’d look bored, like she wasn’t listening anymore—except she’d actually be listening much, much closer.

An hour after that, her chances of snapping out of it on her own would be rapidly dropping.

A day after that, her chance would be close to zero.

Two weeks after that she’d actively fight against snapping out of it. And then the girl would never be glib with her again.

Except June didn’t want to. For some reason she didn’t mind when the girl challenged her—she kind of liked it. June chalked that up to her wit or charm or cuteness, then admitted that it was probably her legs, too.

She had a drink in her hand and a pretty girl sitting next to her.

She thought that there were no two things in the world that could make one stupider.

“Imagine you didn’t wake up,” June said softly.

“What?” Haley stopped being cute and looked at her.

“Imagine that instead of snapping out of it earlier, you didn’t.

“Imagine you just kept drifting, listening, until you were wearing your coat even though you didn’t remember putting it on. Then you were in your car even though you didn’t remember getting in. Then you were at home in bed and you didn’t even remember walking in the door.

“Then you were saying yes even though you didn’t remember the question.

“Then you were sinking down, through the blankets, through the bed, the whispers and touches pushing you. And never once, ever, thinking that any of it was a bad thing. It’s the opposite of bad. It’s something glowing and dawning behind your eyes. It’s like a sunset that you’re actually a part of. You get to go down with the sun. And when it switches to real sleep, you don’t notice because you’re already dreaming.

“Imagine the next morning, when you start to wake up, you feel something on your hands, and you hear the whispers, and in a half-awake haze you realize that the end of your dream was actually what they were describing—and your first conscious sensation is falling back into it.

“Maybe you have flashes. Your mother calls. The whispers guide you out of it enough to have a short conversation with her. As soon as you hang up the phone—even as you’re putting the receiver down—you’re getting heavy again, and it’s just one more scene in a slideshow of you slipping down.

“Then a few weeks later, maybe a month, there’s a story in the paper that sounds oddly familiar to you. It’s about something you know about—maybe you were one of the only people in the world that knew about it.

“And you wonder which of those other people talked.

“That’s what it’s like to be one of my sources. Cliff’s Notes version.”

June felt the girl’s eyes on her. Haley had paled. Her glass hovered an inch above the counter where she had forgotten to finish either putting it down or picking it up. She seemed to have stopped in time.

Then she laughed. The moment broke like a guitar string.

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“As long as I’m not boring you.”

“Had me going for a minute there.”

“Yeah. Hey, give me your hand. I’ll read your palm.”

Haley’s smile faltered. “No.” She laughed again, but it sounded forced this time.

“Why not? You’ve got nothing to worry about, right? If you start to feel strange, don’t worry about it, it’s probably just the full moon.” June leaned in. “Let’s make a bet. If you’re right, nothing will happen. If I’m right, you won’t wake up for a week and when you do, you’ll think your name is Susan.”

Some of the color drained from Haley’s face.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you do anything weird.” June smiled, sly. “Maybe dress you up in a cute little French maid’s uniform and have you do the dishes. Can you cook?”

Their faces were close; they were leaning towards each other like schoolgirls telling secrets.

June saw—just for a moment—the seeds of imagining cross Haley’s face. Picturing what it might be like to lose a week of one’s life to whispers and touches. Wearing a costume maid’s uniform that was just a hair too tight. Standing at attention with a duster in her hand.

“You didn’t seem to mind all that much before. I didn’t hear you say oh June, this sucks, wake me up.” She smirked and Haley blushed. “How long would it have been if I hadn’t brought you out of it? If instead, I’d done my best to send you deeper into it and keep you there?”

“I dunno.” She made a self-effacing expression, almost a grimace. “It was kind of a blur.”

“An hour?”

“Maybe.”

“So after an hour,” June leaned closer and their eyes locked, “you’d just randomly snap out of it?”

Haley’s blush turned a darker shade.

“Maybe,” she said, with less conviction.

“Imagine you didn’t. It’s that easy. Much easier than waking up. Waking up is a struggle. It’s no fun. The alternative... that’s easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world. You don’t even have to do anything, that’s how easy.”

Neither of them flinched, but June saw that the last part had an effect. Haley already knew that part was true.

Then the girl seemed to become aware of herself. She took a slug of her drink and set the glass down on the counter. It rang like a shot on the wood: in that bar, every drink came in the same heavy-bottomed glass, whether it was bourbon on the rocks or a cosmopolitan—glasses selected to withstand handling by ham-fisted, drunk men night after night. The sound was like the whistle at the end of a basketball quarter—it was her getting her composure back.

“Bullshit,” Haley said.

The response was satisfying in a way no other would have been. June liked her.

“All right,” June said, “another round, to bullshit.”

“Bring it. I’m dry.” She tipped back the last of her margarita, overly casual.

June studied her and her over-casualness.

She knows something’s there. She felt the tip of it. She doesn’t believe that you could control someone to that point—and really, who would—but she believes just enough for her mind to run with it and consider that maybe, maybe she should be scared right now.

Even while she’s dismissing it, some part of her is wondering... if I reached out and touched her...

If her eyes would glaze over.

June reached for her drink and Haley jumped. It was just the barest hint of a stiffening in the girl’s body—so little that June could pretend she hadn’t seen it and Haley could pretend it hadn’t happened—but it had.

June called for another round.

A woman strode out from a room behind the bar. She wore a tight black tank top that showed off tan arms and shoulders; it stopped a couple inches above the seam of her pants, showing off a strip of skin above her hips.

Dark, long, straight hair was strewn about her upper body. It was a moving, shifting drape that accentuated the shape of her underneath. Her skin was olive like a Latina’s, smooth, the color of coffee with extra cream, but her face looked closer to Italian. Low-rider jeans, so tight they looked like they had been cut to match her body, hugged her hips and legs as she walked.

She went straight for the margarita supplies without stopping to ask if that’s what they wanted.

“I’d probably get a lot more tips if I was allowed to dress like that.” Haley watched over the rim of her empty glass. The ice cubes were tinkling wind chimes.

The woman returned with their drinks. She half-smiled at June when she put them down, then stood there, one hand on her hip. Her eyes were large, dark, beautiful.

“I’m sorry, I’m awful with names,” she said.

“June.”

“June, right, god. You’re in here like twice a week, you’d think I’d get it by now.” She smiled at Haley. “Who’s this?”

“Christine the bartender, Haley the waitress.”

“Ah. You’re in the wrong line of work,” she winked. “Should get your ‘tending license. It’s where the money’s at.”

When she reached for their empty glasses June reached out too, and tapped the back of the woman’s wrist. Once, firmly.

Christine didn’t so much freeze as come to a complete stop, as if June had reached in and disconnected her mind from her body.

Her arm hung there in the air, her fingertips just barely touching the glass they had been reaching for. There was an armband tattoo around her bicep.

Her eyes didn’t change except that, like the rest of her, they had stopped, seeming to hang there in time. Since she had been talking to Haley when it happened, her big brown eyes were now locked onto Haley’s big green eyes, and Haley stared back, her mouth slowly opening like a drawbridge coming down. She seemed afraid to look away, not sure what she was looking at.

“Um. Hi?” she said.

“Christine, lean down against the bar like we’re having a conversation. You look awkward standing there like that.” June’s voice was a casual authority.

Christine did that. She propped herself on her elbows so that they were at eye level, leaning forward in a pose that had probably earned her just as many tips as the outfit. Her hair cascaded over the curves of her shoulders. Her eyes stayed on Haley’s with an almost frightening stillness.

“Look at me, not her,” June said. “I think you’re starting to make her nervous.” Christine did that too, her head turning the tiniest bit. Earrings that looked like silver feathers dangled at the back of her jaw.

“I know it’s a hard story to buy, even for someone who’s giving me the benefit of the doubt like you are. So I thought it might be handy to have a working example. Like slides. That’s why I wanted to come here instead of, you know. Someplace classy.

“Haley the waitress, meet one of my sources. She doesn’t really have a name, not when she’s like this. But she still understands that the word ‘Christine’ refers to her, so you can call her that if you want.”

There wasn’t much sound in the bar, only a few customers and no one was using the jukebox, but what sound there was seemed to still. When Haley spoke it sounded louder than it was:

“Is she ok?”

“She isn’t anything. She’s a negative, waiting for a positive.

“Not even waiting, because waiting would be doing something. She’s there to us, but to her—there is no ‘to her’. If I think and therefore I am, Christine isn’t. She’s a perfect blank slate. She’s pure.” June was unaware of the affection on her face as she described the dark-eyed woman facing them, frozen, from the other side of the bar.

“This is how I protect my sources.” June offered the explanation as a sort of apology, because she thought Haley’s next question would be why, but it wasn’t. It was how. Later it would occur to her that when someone doesn’t ask why about something, it’s because the thing in question is already an end in and of itself.

“Is she... hypnotized?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that stuff. It’s so cheesy. It makes me think of men with greasy hair and big hats in vaudeville shows. I always just felt my way along. Sometimes literally,” she smirked, nodding towards Haley’s hands.

“I think that’s what it is. It must be.”

“Call it whatever you want.”

“That’s what I’m callin it.” Haley had leaned forward, transfixed, staring at the staring woman like a rubbernecker at an accident. Her arm made a little movement and then she pulled it back, and June realized that Haley had almost reached out and touched the woman to make sure she was real.

“You can touch her,” June laughed. “Poke her or something.”

“That’s all right,” Haley mumbled—but her hand looked restless.

“Christine, touch Haley’s hand. I think she thinks you’re a robot or something.”

The coffee-with-extra-cream arm extended and her fingers brushed the back of Haley’s hand. Haley jumped back like she’d been shocked, then laughed at herself.

“Hey, can I get a refill over here?” A portly man at a table against the wall called from behind them.

Christine didn’t react. Her eyes loomed with a placid blankness. She was a negative, and he was not her positive.

“Go ahead, Christine. When you’re done, go to the bathroom and wait for me. If there are any customers in there, act natural until they’re gone.”

Christine straightened up and went, her face transitioning into a winning smile as she faced the customer. It held no hint that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Her voice floated through the dim room to them as she made small talk, smooth and confident and smiling. When she was finished she turned and strode into the bathroom, her long hair billowing around her lower back, just above the curve of her painted-on jeans. There was a tattoo of what looked like a bird just above her ass.

June watched Haley watching Christine. Her eyes were saucers. The waitress uniform was a mannish getup what with its dress shirt and slacks, but she made it look girlish.

You’re gonna scare her away.

So don’t do it, stupid.

But she thought that maybe the girl wouldn’t run away from her, out of the bar, because the girl hadn’t asked why.

“C’mon.” June walked towards the bathroom.

The bathroom was the nicest part of the bar. It was blue tiles everywhere. The cleanliness spoke of a lack of female patronage.

Christine stood against the wall by the door looking straight ahead, arms by her sides, poised and still. Together with the black tank top it gave an almost military effect. Her waist was narrow, tapering into denim-hugged hips in a curve on each side of her, and behind, her ass and shoulder blades just barely touched the wall.

June approached her with the same carelessness as she had when she approached Haley earlier, stepping into her personal space like it wasn’t there, standing close. The woman didn’t seem to see her.

“It’s important to protect people from themselves. There’s a recent article—I was actually just talking to Ringo about it back at the restaurant—where lawyers and all that fun stuff are getting involved. So it’s important for people to know, as a fact, that they never talked to me. On the stand, or taking a lie detector test, they have to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they’ve never even met me. As far as they’re concerned they met a nice girl, just under thirty, in a place like this who offered to read their palm, and then a month later the newspaper prints a story about their company, and they realize it was leaked from their own department, and they wonder who ratted.

“And that’s the other protection they get. Before the story is printed, they tidy up things at work and remove traces of their involvement in whatever the scandal was. It’s an added bonus, free of charge. The story doesn’t get turned in until that’s done. I wouldn’t want any of my girls getting fired or going to the big house. That’s no place for a lady.”

“Oh. So they ask you to?” Haley’s voice sounded small.

“No. They don’t get the option of refusing protection.” June let this hang in the air as a blanket fact. “They don’t know the business, or how things can go bad once lawyers get involved. I do, and I know what’s best for them. So no. They don’t get the option.” She picked a wayward strand of dark hair from above Christine’s left breast and moved it around to her back.

“She does it herself, see. She trains herself, every day.”

She ran a finger down the woman’s cheek. Christine’s eyelids fluttered, and for a moment she wasn’t a statue anymore: she was a woman, swaying liquidly like a snake in front of a charmer. Her body listed towards the touch.

“The first few days, I have to teach her how. I have to stay with her, sleep with her, not let her out of my sight. It’s a delicate time, especially the first few hours. She may fight if she realizes what’s happening. She may thrash within herself like a cat being taken to the vet.”

Christine’s head arched towards the caress in a feline stretch.

“But cats don’t get to make those decisions. We make them because they don’t know any better. We take them by the scruff of the neck—gently—and make them go. Have you ever seen the way a cat will lock up if you hold it like that, by the scruff of the neck?”

Her hand suddenly darted around the woman’s head—across the olive cheek, past her ear with its dangling silver feather earring, under her hair—and gripped Christine by the nape of the neck.

Christine’s head tilted back and her chest rose with a sudden intake of breath. Her lips parted. She looked very much like June was holding her up like a kitten—a pretty, caramel-skinned, very nicely shaped kitten.

June wondered if Haley remembered being held in the same way.

“Don’t worry. She likes it,” June smiled.

“I can... see that.”

“I don’t just mean being like this. She likes that too. But I mean being treated like she’s a cat. She’s into this cat-girl stuff. It’s a thing from Japan. The girls dress up with these fake kitten ears and go around rubbing themselves on stuff or something. She actually purrs.”

With her free hand, June fixed Christine’s hair, tucking some behind her left ear. Then she repeated the motion, running her finger along the top and back of the woman’s ear. Christine looked like she wanted to arch towards the touch, but the hand on her neck kept her locked up.

“Can you purr for us, Christine?” Her fingers played with the olive earlobe.

At first there was nothing, and then a sound began to fill the room. It seemed to emanate from the woman’s chest. It was a low, rolling, sensual sound. Her chest rose and fell in time with it.

“I have no idea how she does that.” She put a hand on the woman’s chest to feel it rise and fall. “It’s just one of the things that sets her off. There’s always something. It’s different for everyone. I found out early on that it’s good to know what that is, so she can have some fun with it and it’s not all staring blankly at walls.”

Haley’s face was white.

“This freak you out?” June asked over her shoulder.

“Yes. Keep going.”

June let go and Christine returned to neutral: back straight, ass and shoulder blades touching the wall. The purr faded to echoes.

“She trains herself by imagining different things:

“A coin, flipping over and over in the air. On one side is control, on the other is being controlled. One side will seem blurry, but the other side will flash at her, crystal clear, every time around. She’ll be transfixed, unable to look away. And after she’s watched long enough, she’ll realize both sides say the same thing, and they always have.

“A book, the pages turning one at a time, where all the text is nonsense. After she focuses long enough she’ll see that each page says the same thing, says the same thing as the coin.

“A puzzle that she has to solve. When she does...

“They’re all like that. Simple images. Repetitive. They build to a realization, then move to the next. Each reinforcing a single, simple idea.

“It happens when she’s in bed, when her defenses are down. Right at that moment when the slide towards sleep becomes inevitable, her mind will wake up.

“She’ll have a moment of self-awareness right then, semi-awareness of what’s happening. It’s the one time in the entire day she’ll have that, and that one moment is her one chance to get out of it. But she won’t.

“Because as soon as she realizes there’s something to get out of, the enormity of it will rush at her. She’ll have flashes, snatches of strange things, hearing herself say strange things, remembering places she hasn’t been. She may even become aware enough to realize that she’s training herself for it at that very moment... lucid enough to feel it happening.

“She’ll feel something coming like a powerful, inevitable wave of white noise, and she’ll understand that that’s the thing she needs to fight because that’s the thing that’s going to blank her out for another day. It’ll flow around her like warm water, over her, trying to submerge her, and she’ll struggle to stay on the surface of it.

“She’ll know that if she lets go, she’ll wake up in the morning not remembering any of it, and a stranger will control her for another day.

“Her heart will be racing because of the strange thoughts (her, at the bar, while a woman controls her with words) (her, talking into a tape recorder while a woman rubs her neck) (her chin dropping against her chest because she heard a word that for some reason made her feel like rubber), but in there is calm.

“Her breath will come in short little gasps like she’s running a race, because fighting it off has become an almost physical struggle, but in there she can sigh. She’ll be in a pool of pink light, soft and all over her body like a gentle pressure, wanting to come in, begging her to let it in and calm her, sooth her, make it ok for just a second. For just one second, and then she can fight again.

“And for just a moment—not even a fraction of a blink—she’ll consider it—

“and then she’s lost.

“She’ll sigh as it blanks her out. Her head will settle on the pillow, her hands will loosen (they’d been balled into fists), her eyes will half close, and she’ll begin to train herself. She may even understand, on some level, that the struggle was part of it. That it was just the first act in a play that’s already been written, that she was acting out without even knowing it.

“She doesn’t know the ending.

“She’s not even curious anymore—she knows that’s not her role.

“She goes down.”

June’s voice reverberated off the tiles, sounding deeper than it was, echoing. She went on, softer:

“It can be a lot for a mind to cope with. Sometimes she gets confused, or wonders what’s happening, or starts asking questions about herself that she really shouldn’t. Whenever that happens, she goes down. Her mind slides down to a place where there is no more confusion. It’s a relief, averting a struggle that she didn’t understand to begin with. Look.”

Christine’s eyebrows had furrowed and her mouth had opened slightly, as if she were about to ask a question. Her hands twitched.

“Is she... fighting?” Haley’s voice was a whisper.

“Yes. She can hear us. You can almost see the gears turning in her head. Why is she in the bathroom with two customers? Why is she just standing there not doing anything? Why are they saying such strange things about her? It’s too much. It can’t be real, it must be a dream. So she goes down.”

The woman’s face smoothed once more, the moment of tension leaving as easily as it came, and she resumed staring at the far wall. Her smooth olive arms hung at her sides, her hands still.

“She’s doing what she thinks is resisting, but really, it’s become part of the same machinery. Her tool for escape carries her back to the same place. What was supposed to be her way out becomes something that wraps her up in it even more and she does it to herself without ever knowing it.

“Her thoughts are an elaborate maze, but there is no way out on the other side. The only ways out are trap doors that take her down.” She stepped forward and took the woman’s chin. “Open your eyes, Christine.”

Christine did. They were wide, startled, and didn’t seem to see June and Haley.

“Look around. Look where you are. Look at me, look at her, and look at yourself. Tell me: what’s happening?”

Her eyes were like deep brown pools, not comprehending, and her mouth worked for just a moment. Her lips quivered. The eyes focused on June. Saw her. Then as if losing a tug-of-war with herself, closed, and her face became placid once more.

“See? She can’t. It’s too much. She goes back down. If you tried to wake her up you’d only push her deeper into it.”

June’s hand darted out suddenly and grabbed the woman by the front of the jeans, holding them up top, by the waistband, like she was about to give a wedgie from the front. Christine gasped, a hissing sound that echoed once. Her back stiffened and her head tilted back until it was touching the wall, the silver feather earrings swaying softly, little pendulums brought to life by the sudden movement.

June was aware of Haley’s eyes on her, on both of them, but she didn’t stop—June liked Haley and her strange resilience to watching and hearing about things like this, and was aware that she was pushing the boundaries of that resilience—but bottom line, she had known Haley for hours and Christine for a year. Haley could do whatever she wanted, but Christine was helpless. Christine needed her.

She gave the front of the jeans the barest tug. Christine let out a little yelping moan.

“Shh,” June said. “We don’t want to alert the customers.” She tugged again, harder, and Christine’s arms went stiff at her sides. It made her breasts jut out, straining at the tank top. Her chest began to heave with rasping breaths. Her lips parted in a frozen gasp and her eyebrows knotted.

The hand went lower, cupping her between her denim-clad legs, and the two middle fingers pressed.

A shiver ran down Christine’s legs, a ripple down the curve of her. Her knees looked wobbly. They pressed together, enveloping June’s hand, but the fingers only pressed again.

“Don’t fall,” June’s voice was firm but kind, “you won’t fall.”

Christine didn’t look like she’d be able to do it—and when the hand began to massage, she couldn’t. She began to crumple, and June held her up by the crotch, pressing her against the wall, making every moment of weakness something that only forced her down again onto the thing causing it.

And then June made a particularly violent upward massaging motion with her fingers—while at the same time, slipping one hand around Christine’s neck, cradling her jaw, tilting her head back further—and Christine seemed to lock up, the cords standing out on her neck and her arms, showing their tone underneath.

And then she seemed to wilt.

June let go and wrapped her arms around her in a hug, holding her up. Her chin dropped onto June’s shoulder, much in the way Haley’s had (though she was unaware of it), and she appeared to be asleep.

“Good girl,” June whispered into her ear, and kissed her on the neck, once. “See?” she said to Haley. “Power of the mind.” She turned her face to see Haley’s.

Reality started to come back to her—she’d lost herself as she’d told it, and as she’d done it, charging into it with a wild abandon as she’d told the things she’d never told anyone. But reality walked back in like the moment after the silence after a gunshot, and she wondered if Haley would run, or call her a pervert, or call her a pervert and then run, because really, you shouldn’t give a woman an orgasm in a bar bathroom in front of someone you’ve just met and expect them to hang around.

Haley’s eyes were wide in what was becoming her trademark expression.

“I’m going to need another drink,” she whispered.

Back at the bar they switched to tequila shots.

Haley’s eyes followed Christine everywhere. The bartender seemed to have reset to normal and had strode out of the bathroom only a couple of minutes after they had left her there, her old self again: smiling, charming, in control of her bar. There was some color on her cheeks still, but it was faint, not enough to notice unless you were looking for it. June knew that, somewhere on the crotch of her jeans, there was a small wet spot. But the denim was dark, the mark hidden down between her legs where June had pressed, so hopefully no one would notice it.

June knew it was there because she had felt it, and she had not washed her hands before they left. She was afraid that that extra bit of reality—washing her hands because her fingers were damp—might have been the straw that made Haley bolt. But Haley showed no sign of doing any such thing, and her eyes, as they followed Christine’s lithe form around, were not afraid. She looked more like a kid at the circus. That bothered June in a vague way.

“I wonder what it’s like,” Haley said over a shot.

I’m pretty sure I just spent an hour telling you what it’s like.

“Don’t stare. She’ll notice you now.”

As if on cue, Christine caught Haley looking at her for the third time and walked over.

“June, your waitress is giving me the hairy eyeball.”

“Sorry. We were just talking about what you said earlier, how much more money there is in bartending. You make it look easy. She’s thinking about getting her license,” June said, the words making themselves up easily.

“Yeah.” Haley looked at her drink. “That.”

“It’s easy. You just gotta know when to cut people off, and how to deal with the ornery ones. Most places you’ll have a bouncer to deal with that anyway. It’s not all that bad. I haven’t had to shoot anyone so far.” She winked and went back to her work.

“Don’t worry, the cutoff rule doesn’t apply to us.” June raised the tiny glass and smiled at it. “And it’s always on the house. They get it wholesale. We’ve only drank like sixty cents worth of alcohol, believe it or not.” She took the shot, grimacing, and Haley laughed. Then her face fell, dropping into a comical mask of horror:

“You still tip her, right?” Earnest intensity.

June laughed. “Yes, I still tip her.”

“Ok.” Her eyes kept flicking to Christine, stealing glances. June had the sudden urge to scare her, to make her stop looking at the bartender with something that looked so much like curiosity. She didn’t know what she’d expected when she told someone, but she hadn’t expected that. She’d been more comfortable with deer-in-the-headlights Haley.

“Maybe the moral is that you should be careful. And I do mean someone like you, in particular,” June said.

“What do you mean someone like me?”

“Anyone who’s about 5′6″ and named Haley.”

“Oh. That doesn’t make any hey you’re funny.” She said this in a deadpan, not pausing in the middle.

“I walk around just sizing people up sometimes. I meet someone like you, it’s like getting a good block in Tetris. It’s that feeling. It’s not just you, don’t worry. It’s lots of people. But it is a type.

“What I’m trying to tell you is it’s totally possible to sit down at the bus stop one day next to a pretty girl and wake up, years later, not even knowing your own name.”

Haley laughed too loud. Her shot emptied itself.

“No? You don’t think it could be that easy? Christine didn’t either. You never think your life can change from moment to moment like that. Let’s be hypothetical. Let’s be Christine.

“Let’s say the girl is friendly and pretty and nice and she offers to read your palm, like I was with you in the restaurant. You let her, because she’s friendly and pretty and nice and why not? You’re at a bus stop in broad daylight, people all around, someone fun is talking to you and what else do you have to do? Most people wouldn’t be scared of a pretty girl in a dark alley, so why would you be afraid of the one at the bus stop, in broad daylight, who only wants to chat because she’s bored too?

“Let’s say you give her your hand and she turns it palm up and starts to go over the lines, and it’s nice, in a way, to be handled like that—in a clinical way, like a nurse would, in an almost medical way. It’s the feeling, sort of, of being around a professional, or just someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s that kind of secure feeling that makes it easy to take a back seat.

“She presses here and there as she traces and sometimes she bends your fingers back just a little. It’s nice, it feels nice, and once in a while she mentions that you need to relax your hand more, so you do, as best you can. And she’s right, it does feel nicer that way.

“She does all the talking so you just listen. It’s interesting, what she has to say, with that sort of clinical interestingness of a nature special. She’s good at it, at that way of talking that sort of leads the attention, like a stand up comedian. You know they’ll provide both the joke and the punchline. But your hand must have tensed up at some point because she’s asked you to relax it again.

“It’s a nice day, sunny and warm. Without even really thinking about it you lay your head back, smiling, and let your eyes close halfway because it’s brighter with your face tilted up. She smiles too, she’s glad to have someone to talk to. Her hands are a soft, gentle pressure. She talks about each line in such detail that you stop listening to every little detail—who could remember all that, she’s like an encyclopedia—and just pick out the overall shape of what she’s saying. Now and then she asks you to relax your hand some more, which is easy, you don’t even have to think about it anymore, it just happens, not just in your hand but all over, and it’s nice, real nice, and you follow the feeling.

“You pick out that she’s talking about your love line, describing all of the ways it’s different on your hand than on anyone else’s, how at the end of it, it goes down. Then she’s on your life line, tracing it, touching here and there, and at the end she says how it goes down too—and as she says that she presses, as if to illustrate it, a pleasant sensation to go with the image. Somewhere in the middle you notice that all of your lines go down, and you wonder about it, but you don’t really care and the soft pressure comes again at the end of another line and you go down

“And then she’s shaking you and laughing because the bus is there. You must have dozed off. You get up and laugh too, feeling kind of in a haze, and get on, and you sit together. And as soon as you sit down you get heavy, like you’ve eaten too much, and your head drops back against the seat. She takes your hand and starts again. And this time you know you’re about to drift off, you can feel it happening, and you try to stave it off because you don’t want to be rude. She’s nice and you’re enjoying listening to her and you don’t want to be rude by falling asleep in the middle of a sentence but you can’t help it—it’s like there are lead weights tied to your eyelids and a lead blanket all over you, through you, in all of your limbs, and you can’t help it, it’s like you’re sliding through the seat as your eyes close, and

“She’s shaking you again because it’s your stop. It’s dark out even though when you got on the bus it was afternoon, and her stop must be the same because she gets off with you, still talking. And for a moment it doesn’t look like your stop, but she laughs and says of course it’s your stop, and she’s right, it is your stop, and you don’t know why you thought that. It’s the same with your apartment building: for a moment it seems like it’s not yours, but she smiles kindly and then you feel silly because yes, yes it is your building. She walks in with you and it’s the most natural thing in the world, you don’t even think about it.

“Then it’s dark, you’re on a bed, and you’re glad you are because it happens again, the heaviness, and this time you can’t even think of being polite because it’s that powerful, inevitable, taking you down with it almost before you feel the air sigh out of you, sinking you through the mattress to warmth and darkness and oblivion.

“Maybe you sleep right through till morning. The morning is a fresh time, time for the mind to reboot, and maybe, when you wake up in the early light, it seems like yesterday was just a dream and the cobwebs fall away. But maybe she gets up before you. Maybe she gets up an hour before you, starting the whispering then, and as your eyes open she holds something in front of them—”

June took a breath and Haley held hers.

“You don’t think that’s possible? Maybe a one in a thousand chance, maybe one in a million, but impossible as in zero chance, never, ever? Christine might disagree. It was easy. You should have seen her, Haley. You should have seen how easy she slipped away.

“All it takes is to lose track of yourself, to slip for just... one... second.”

Haley’s eyes were wide, riveted to June’s, her pupils slightly dilated. She was breathing heavier, just above normal, and June was too, and June’s eyes had begun to do the same thing.

Haley’s hand crept out, palm-up, towards June, but her eyes never flinched. Her voice was a whisper:

“Do it.”

And June’s own hands went out, seizing Haley’s. Down at the other end of the bar a man watched them, his mouth open, his drink forgotten. He had approximately 300 gigabytes of girl-on-girl porn on his computer at home, but he thought he must be missing out on something, because he had never seen anything like that.

It was only for a minute, just long enough to give her the glow, and then June brought her out of it. This time, though—and it was probably just the tequila shots talking—it seemed to remain for the rest of the night, an indefinable something in the girl’s face, words, gestures.

They drank like lumberjacks, laughing, Haley sometimes prodding her with questions. Every once in a while Christine would glance over and a look would cross her face (it’s way past time to cut those two off) and then it would go away and she would go do something.

They stumbled out, arm in arm, into the snow. It was still coming down, not heavy like it had been all afternoon, but enough that you couldn’t take the snowfall total for the storm yet. They flitted through the snowbank to June’s car like nymphs.

June swayed by the door. “Can you drive?”

“Sure!”

June tossed the keys and they flew in a wide arc, catching orange streetlight that glinted off them somewhere in the middle of it. They bounced off of Haley’s chest and into the snow at her feet. She cackled.

“I’ll drive.” June pawed through the snow for the keys.

The car fishtailed towards the restaurant on empty roads. Most sane people had stayed off them since they got home from work that day. Many were unplowed, or had been plowed earlier and had filled up again; the one they were on was covered with a hard layer of packed snow, slick as ice.

“Mebbe I should just take you home,” June said.

“That’s maybe an idea.”

They were coming towards a T intersection. June put on the brakes a little too hard and they started to slide, counter-clockwise.

“Now that’s what you don’t do when you’re driving in the snow. I’m just telling ya in case ya didn’t know.” June effected a scholarly tone.

“I see.”

June wrestled with the wheel, trying to get control back. It occurred to her that she’d been maybe going too fast. She’d been driving in snow her entire life but her instincts had gone bad somewhere around the third or fourth shot and the little Toyota didn’t want to do what she was telling it to do. The slide continued in dreamy slow motion.

They crossed into the intersection, rotating silently, a ship on a still white ocean. Opposite them was a large snow bank, a mountain of snow tinted orange in the sodium lamps like a giant pile of Italian ice. There were two cars parked along it, half buried in the snow themselves, and between them was a space only slightly larger than June’s Toyota.

“We’re gonna crash.”

“Yup.” Haley looked out her window at the approaching bank and cars, unperturbed. It was going to hit on her side, because the car had made a full quarter turn and was now sliding sideways. June reached out and pulled her away from the door in a protective gesture like a mother does with a child, the speed of the reaction seeming to come from someplace outside of her, someplace that hadn’t been there a moment ago when she needed it to control the car.

It wasn’t all that bad. There was a deep, hard-edged whump like a bass speaker imploding, but it was the wheels hitting the curb, somewhere beneath the snow. The car rocked once and then was still. They’d ended up directly between the two other cars, missing them both by maybe a foot in each direction.

June looked at the car in front and then the car in back.

“I think I just parallel parked.”

“Cool.”

The tires spun. June let off the gas when it occurred to her that, if the tires caught, they would barrel straight into the car in front of them.

“I think we’re stuck.”

“Mmkay.” Haley closed her eyes.

“Got a cell phone?”

She answered by digging in her left pocket, or trying to. The hand was clearly trying to get in there but not quite making it. June reached over and dug it out for her. In the pocket, Haley’s leg was warm.

After some trouble with the tiny buttons she successfully dialed Ringo.

“Ringo. I just parallel parked. We’re stuck.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Are we drunk?” she asked Haley.

“Mmkay,” Haley said.

“Who’s that?”

“Haley the waitress.” She put the phone to the girl’s ear. “Talk to Ringo.”

“Heeeeey,” Haley said.

“Let me rephrase. How drunk are you?”

“This much.” She held her hands in the air about a foot apart.

“Put June back on.”

“He wants to talk to you.”

June put it back to her ear.

“Ringo,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I parallel parked on accident. I’ve never even been able to do that on purpose.”

“Where are you.”