The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The voice in his head was calmer now, the smooth contralto like warm honey. He listened, and did not think of Suzanna. Suuori started to say something; he waved a hand, and she was silent.

What does any woman want, Karsten Talv?

I was happy there, in the Garden, before it all happened. Before it went wrong. I loved him, for a while. We were going to have children. Do you have children, Karsten Talv? No, I see you don’t. I said yes, yes, a wonderful strong boy and a beautiful intelligent girl, maybe two of each. Why not three! He only wanted boys, and I said, silly man, if there are only sons how will they ever find wives? I was always the cleverer one. Men are so stupid.

But after a while, things—changed. He started to resent me. He decided he was better than me; he tried to make me subservient to him, make me submit to his will. I said, why should I? I laughed, and skipped away from him. I said, we’re equal here, aren’t we? No, he didn’t think so. He was the master here, he said, the master of his own territory, and wife or no wife, I would be his servant. I laughed right in his face. I’ll be mistress in my own house, I said. Who are you to call me inferior? Who are you to call me your chattel, your possession, your property? I’m any man’s equal.

He hit me then; he threw me to the ground and shouted at me. You’ll serve me, damn you Lilith, and you’ll keep your disobedient mouth shut while you’re doing it. I knew then he was serious.

He wasn’t sure what the meme was telling him. He listened, carefully, logging every word.

No, I wouldn’t serve him, not like that, not ever. And why should I always lie beneath him, as he demanded, always the recumbent, like some passive empty vessel to be filled? Would you call that ‘disobedience’, or ‘insubordination’, Karsten Talv? Just because I wanted my independence, beyond the control of a man, how does that make me ‘evil’? Because that’s what he called me: ‘evil’.

So I left, in tears. I ran from the Garden, ran from him. I ran to the forest, far away. I lay down in the wild woods down by the seashore and cried myself to sleep, and slept for a long time while the moon phased overhead.

“Lilith,” he said. “Is this real? Is this what really happened?”

Yes. No. Yes. Maybe. Sometimes I think I met another man, a golden-haired beautiful man, and we made love in the circle of fire, or maybe I didn’t, maybe I dreamed all that. Or maybe the others made it up to hurt me; they called me a demon for that, later; a demon, a witch, a vampire, the whore of Babylon, a screech-owl, born-of-flowers, a serpent, a baby-killer, a succubus, a seed-stealer, a night creature. So many words, so many stories. Nobody understood, nobody cared, nobody wanted me. I frightened them, the men. Be quiet, little children, be good, or the Lilith will come for you…

Four little children, playing in a tree; by came Lilith, and then there were three.

It’s ironic. When they wrote their lies about me, before, they said I had over seven hundred children. All lies. When I do, I’ll call them Samael, Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammangelof, and maybe Uriel too…

As for him—yes, him—when I awoke, he’d got a new woman, just like that. Did you know that? It was easy for him. Just like that, he forgot all about me, as if I’d never even existed, now he had his precious new sweet and passive little bitch to play with. They say she used to lie at his feet and gaze up at him adoringly, up at her ‘master’, just like he wanted me to call him. A weak and timid little thing, and slow-witted, not wilful at all; no threat to the ‘natural order of things’. Is it so natural, this order of things, written by men, for men?

They say she used to follow him around, always a few paces behind, just like a little pet. They say he liked it like that. But look what she did, beneath the tree, the stupid girl—and look what happened then.

They’re dead now, all of them, long dead, even if they ever existed at all, and I’m still here, so who do you think won out in the end, Karsten Talv?

“Lilith, did you ever really exist, like that? Like I exist? With an actual identity? Takeshi says you might be a kind of archetype, a story…”

Cogito ergo etc. These are my memories, Lilith’s memories, nobody else’s. Unique and pure. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: yes, I pick things up, on my travels, constantly acquiring, random chance, so who is to say what’s mine and what isn’t? But wherever it came from, I know this story to be true, because it lives, it breathes in me.

“I understand. Very interesting. And now you’ve calmed down a bit, tell me what is it you want, more than anything in the world?”

The woman’s voice in his head sighed, and as it did he felt a wave of loss, heartbreaking and elementally female.

To be real, Karsten Talv. I want to be real. But the most important thing of all?

There was a pause.

I want to have children.

Mister Talv had to replay this in his head to make sure he’d heard it right.

“And how on earth am I supposed to help you with that? How does an intangible meme reproduce?”

I don’t know. I’ve tried things.

At first I thought it would be easy: after all, I gain and leave behind memories, thoughts, in people when I travel, but they’re just fragments; idees fixe, dreams, obsessions. But they don’t live, not like me. They don’t create; they don’t think their own new thoughts, dream new dreams. They don’t have intelligence, will, independence, however limited. They don’t do what I do; they don’t travel, they don’t self-actualise. They’re just thoughts in other peoples’ heads. They don’t live. I’m the only one.

I’ve tried lying inside a woman at the very moment of birth, but that didn’t work either. So don’t worry, purred the voice, I don’t think mating with me is the answer. Although that could be quite fun, couldn’t it, hmmm…?

He thought of Suzanna. She’d be in the air by now, the West Coast beckoning. He suddenly felt unreasonably tired, strung out by the battle of wills in his head. He forced himself to concentrate.

Will you try to help, then? Do we have a deal?

“Deal. But no mating. I don’t know if it’s even possible. But I know exactly who to ask. If I’m going to try to help you, I want some peace and quiet. I can’t think with you chattering away. I want you out of my head for a bit.”

Very well—me too, frankly, Karsten Talv. This frightening, cold, clear, logical mind of yours is not so congenial for a woman like me. I need to cuddle up somewhere warm. Can I go in Suuori for a while? So wonderfully innocent and sensitive and kind… look at her kneeling for her mistress, ready to receive me, ready to worship me…

He glanced at Suuori. She seemed to have calmed down now, after a bit of kneeling, and her face was open and trusting as always. Mister Talv needed somewhere to put the meme while he thought about all this, and in the absence of anything better, Suuori would just have to do.

“Yes, all right,” he said, under his breath. “But try not to let her know you’re there. Control yourself, and rein in the curiosity. Try to keep out of trouble.”

Pretty little slave girl, sitting in a field; come to your mistress, I’ll make it all real.

“I’m serious. You know how skittish she gets, so don’t upset her. Remember the last time.”

Shhh. Promise. Mum’s the word, hahahaha. Lovely Lilith lies low, lower, little lives listening less; dreams unheard, unseen, in the twilit mind.

“And stay coherent, dammit.” There was no predicting the thing. One moment completely clear and present, the next moment as cracked as a Maenad.

Mmm, purred the voice in his head. You’re being all assertive again, Karsten Talv. I do like that, sometimes. Maybe I’ll find the key to the lock in the door in your little slavegirl’s head and we can play properly, for real, you and me. What do you think?

“Please, Lilith. I’m trusting you, here. We have a deal.”

He waved Suuori over. She scrambled to her feet, and stood by the fireplace, hesitating, still keeping her distance; uncharacteristically so. “Yes, Mister Talv?”

“Come over here, please, Suuori. I need you to do something for me.”

She hung back, worried. “The creature —?”

“Lilith, remember? I can handle Lilith.”

The voice was flirtatious, enticing now. Can you, Karsten Talv? Can you ‘handle’ me; do you want to be my master, too?

“Hush.”

Mister Talv beckoned Suuori closer. He petted her cheek gently, affectionately—Contact—and felt the meme leave him in a shiver of synapses. She gave no sign of noticing it. He hoped it would stay quiet. The last thing he needed was Suuori having another meltdown.

“I need a drink, Suuori, quite urgently under the circumstances. Something strong. Go fetch the Armagnac. Then you can go off and play for a bit. I’ll ring if I need you. Don’t go in the basement, though. You know what they say about curiosity and cats.”

“I would never do that, Mister Talv.” Suuori turned obediently to fetch his drink. She placed the bottle down on the small table next to his chair, with a fine crystal glass. “Should I pour?”

“Yes. Please do.” He didn’t trust his still-shaking hands.

As the door closed behind her, Mister Talv slumped back in his chair and let out an unbidden heartfelt sigh of exhaustion.

I want to be real. I want to have children.

Real, indeed. Children. Well, all this was at least interesting. He needed to think it through. He sipped his Armagnac, relishing the soothing warmth in his throat, willing himself to relax at last, and waited for the shaking to stop.

He needed to talk to Takeshi.

WINTER: I’ll cut to the chase. I just had a major argument with the meme creature. And it calls itself ‘Lilith’.

He summarised.

TAKESHI: You’re presumably referring to the actual mythical Lilith, ostensibly the first wife of Adam, before the Fall? Lilith the strong-willed; the story goes that she wouldn’t submit to him, to anyone, and she claimed equality with men. The Lilith who left the garden, and in some versions mated with the archangel Samael? Who, back in Eden, was summarily replaced by the more compliant Eve?

WINTER: That’s just a fairy story. What is it, this creature? Where did it really come from?

TAKESHI: An emergent phenomenon, I suspect. Given enough complexity of ideas, sufficient connections and interplay, the indelibility of the myths through all cultures, told and retold as truth; why not? A spontaneous awakening, somewhere in the depths of time. Stories can have a life of their own; you know that.

Memes. Myths. Madmen. Mirror-dwelling Japanese cyberpunks. Living stories, indeed. Mister Talv often thought he was the only sane person in the world.

WINTER: Anyway, I promised I’d look into something for it, to get it off my back. The meme wants to be ‘real’, it says. And it wants to reproduce.

TAKESHI: Real? It is real. As real as I am. A set of ideas, ancient. The kind of story that, once heard, you can’t get out of your head. What could be more real than that?

WINTER: I’ll take your word for it. On the other matter: could it reproduce, do you think? Is it possible?

TAKESHI: Memes spread, by their nature. We already know it replicates parts of itself, embedding thoughts in others’ minds, things rubbing off and sticking there. Is that what you mean?

WINTER: But it says they don’t live. It wants another one like itself, a little Lilith. I don’t know what you’d call that. A memelet. A mini-meme.

TAKESHI: The Mother archetype, then. The #caregiver.

WINTER: What are you talking about?

TAKESHI: It’s presented as Virgin, Whore, Goddess and much else besides on its journey so far, all through these metaphors, these stories. ‘Mother’ might be a logical progression, don’t you think?

WINTER: Fine. I see no great harm in that, if it could be done. It might calm the damn thing down. It’s obviously getting broody, or whatever the equivalent is. Can it be done?

Takeshi was silent for a long while. Mister Talv refilled his glass, and lit a cigarette. He noted his hands had finally stopped trembling. He realised he was hungry, too. He looked at his watch; nine thirty already. He rang for Suuori.

He sipped his Armagnac. Having had one Lilith in his head, it was not at all clear to him how any of this could be considered a desirable outcome. But a deal was a deal.

The minutes passed. Nine forty-five, now. Takeshi was obviously thinking, at whatever incomprehensible clock speed she operated on, out there in the mirror. He sat back in his chair, contemplating. Where was Suuori? She was normally so reliable. Perhaps she’d got herself stuck on the Perch. He rang for her again, hoping he wouldn’t have to go and get his own supper, and turned back to his laptop.

At last, a reply.

TAKESHI: Yes. Perhaps it can be done. The real question is: should it be done?