The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

WATERING HOLE

Codes: mc, fd, nc, ff

Disclaimers (if you scroll past, you’ve still read ‘em—don’t blame me):

  • This author is not the same trilby who dwells on AOL; thus, Trilby on AOL should not be held responsible for anything that follows.
  • This work is copyright the author, © 1999. Kindly do not repost or otherwise use without permission and credit.
  • This is adult fiction with nonconsensual sex, mind control, and other immoral and illegal acts both explicit and implied. In real life this would all be very bad. All characters, events, and places are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, events or places is coincidental, etc. All characters are of legal age in all jurisdictions, not that it’s done them much good so far. References like “boy” or “girl” are rhetorical, not technical.
  • If you’re underage, stop reading and get out. (The average fashion magazine these days is probably enough.) If it’s just flat illegal there, ditto (and I’m very sorry.) If you find this sort of thing offensive in general, ditto (and why are you here?)
  • It’s more about mind control than sex. I’m a fetishist: point isn’t using MC to get sex, it’s sex being something interesting to do with MC. So if you only want short zap/long fuckfest . . . see ya. Also, I consider this literature, i.e. with redeeming artistic content, i.e. not “obscene” in the legal definition. (Argue that if you will, but it’s my story, so to speak, and I’m sticking to it.)
  • I disparage no lifestyle. If characters are forced into one, it’s the force that degrades, not the lifestyle.
* * *

Inspirations: This owes a lot to many great MC authors. Not to say any of these people would endorse, like, or even recognize what follows. The ones I’m primarily conscious of are some brushstrokes in the background of Why Now’s “Beta Girls Forever”, which may or may not become apparent, and a theme in JRParz’s “The Agency”. There’s also Sinsub’s “Good Girl”, and more of RC’s work than I can conveniently cite.

* * *

1.

“Your master brainwashed you to be a recruiter as well as a sex slave?” The therapist/social worker, Valerie Joplin, matter-of-factly folded her hands and looked over the desk at Sheila. The words carried across the little office cube, not sounding as odd as they should against the din of the social services center all around them.

Sheila still hadn’t gotten over how good it felt to have someone just accept what had happened to her, but by this point in the interview at least she wasn’t likely to burst into tears again. Maybe. “Yes. I was . . . he had me target certain girls, then approach them. I was to win their confidence, sometimes drug them, sometimes just get them to follow me to where he could grab them—”

She stopped, remembering the face of a secretary—Dana?—she’d met at J.J. Something-or-other’s: A Watering Hole, in an alley behind the bar, struggling in her tan raincoat as one of the Master’s thugs misted her with the tranquilizer. Dana’s eyes focused on her as they dimmed, lit briefly with hope, then despair as the girl realized Sheila had betrayed her. Then horror, as she saw how hot it had made Sheila. Then oblivion.

Sheila looked up at the therapist, the first person she’d talked to who didn’t leer or sneer at her story. Nor did Valerie have the professionally empty face of the usual shrink, which Sheila’d grown too used to since the Master’s place had been raided. Valerie seemed to be hiding neither boredom nor prurience. She took notes—details, she said, were what counted in some ways, and she owed it to Sheila to get them down in one telling.

Valerie Joplin was pretty, too, in a way Sheila had been brainwashed to appreciate. Even now, she could no longer tell how much of it was his conditioning and how much she really might have been a lesbian, before. But Valerie’s casual beauty, too busy to primp and unself-consciously lovely, was just the sort of thing Master liked to take. Valerie cared, too—Sheila could see how some of the things she spoke of had hurt the therapist even as they seared her own memory on retelling, but Valerie stayed with it, helping her.

Sheila realized she might have to try very hard not to fall in love with Ms Joplin.

“I saw Dana again,” Sheila said, remembering the secretary. Valerie didn’t blink at the non sequitur, just letting her talk, but Sheila just thought. Another girl, met this time in a food court at a mall. Shortly after the Master’s tailored drug went into her Diet 7Up, the girl had been entranced and obedient, and Sheila had led her out to the anonymous compact, two young career women done with shopping as far as any onlookers were concerned. Onlookers couldn’t hear the girl’s confused whisper as her anesthetized will spent itself in dazed questions and pleas, or see the blank look on her “friend” Sheila’s face as she guided her toward the car, her last lonely journey as a free woman. Behind the wheel, waiting with programmed patience for her fellow slave to fit the new girl in, Dana—once a secretary, now part of a capture team—stared straight ahead.

“We weren’t all kept in the same place. I’m not sure whether she was still—his slave then, or he’d borrowed her from someone else.” Sheila tried to be analytical, to think about it and get some intellectual distance between her and the memory. “He kept us, me at least, sort of blank a lot of the time. I’d sort of wake up when he’d send me to do something. I was already programmed, I didn’t have to worry about making decisions. One day I just woke up knowing I was to find this girl, this type of girl, at the mall. I was to try several malls to be sure to get what he wanted. When I put clothes on and left the house Dana was there in the car.”

Valerie nodded again. “Did you talk to each other? On the way?”

“We—not with Dana. Sometimes I’d be with another girl on a trip, and we’d be chirping away, back and forth, how wonderful it was to be a slave, and what we were looking forward to when we were finished obeying this command. Sometimes when Master’s men were with us we did it anyway.” Sheila felt warmth on her cheeks. She was crying. “They laughed at us when we did that, and we just loved it. Sometimes we’d start laughing at ourselves. So lucky to be hypnosluts, like whatever poor bitch we were going to . . .

“Dana just drove that day. She was like a robot. I don’t know what they’d done to her.”

Valerie reached across the desk. “Sheila, we’re going to run out of time pretty soon.” Sheila nodded, and took her hand, breathing in before they touched, hoping she wouldn’t moan or embarrass herself some other way. She already knew the constraints on Valerie—the interview was across a desk in Valerie’s little partitioned cubicle because she didn’t rate a conference room, even one of the cramped subdivided ones. Privacy existed because the warren of cubicles was suffused with bleeping phones and cute computer sound effects and gossiping employees. Valerie was Ms Joplin because Sheila’s weird little case didn’t rate an MD, just a social worker, for a few scheduled minutes every few days.

No, not just a social worker, Sheila thought, suddenly squeezing Valerie’ s hand tighter.

Valerie smiled back. “Listen. I run a support group for women who are where you are. Survivors of mind control enslavement.” Sheila shuddered, but she felt better nevertheless, hearing it named aloud. “Mostly we talk. Sometimes we barely do that. It’s just better to be with people who know that what happened is real, that can look across a room at you and say ‘Yes, it happened—you didn’t fantasize it.’ To be with people that believe you.”

She looked almost shyly at Sheila. “Would you like to come?” Sheila blinked, hearing a real hesitancy in Valerie’s tone. It felt odd; after being treated like meat by the Master, then as something between a prostitute and a drug addict by the authorities, Sheila was now being invited, tentatively, as if she were important enough that her declining it would hurt. It might be Valerie’s gently manipulative way of letting Sheila feel she was in control of something—but it felt good, whatever it was.

“Um,” she looked down at Valerie’s desk, a mare’s nest of folders, Post-It notes. Documented hurt. “Don’t you want to, well, screen me or something?”

Valerie looked at her thoughtfully. “Sheila, I already know more about you than I have any right to. I know that even though you’re a writer you’re not a reporter looking for the latest angle on MC, and that you’ve really been through all this. I know what you told the investigators, and the shrinks. I know—

“I know what happened at the hospital when they wanted to hypnotize you.”

Sheila didn’t even look away, just left her eyes staring at Valerie’s left sleeve. It made her sick to remember herself begging, the doctor and the others backing away in horror and disgust as she promised to do anything, anything, if they just wouldn’t put her mind to sleep again. She’d promised in great detail, just to be sure they knew.

“I’m sorry I know all that, Sheila.” Valerie spoke with quiet intensity. “I have no right, and I will never ask to be forgiven for knowing. But it makes it my duty to help you.

“And because of that, I’m bound to protect you, and the others, as well. So believe me, all that testing would have shown if you were a mind controller trying to get in.” Valerie swallowed. “And I will die before I let that happen . . . so I work really hard to keep it from happening.”

They laughed. “So—do you? Want to come?”

“Thanks, Valerie. I’d love to.” She took the flyer Valerie offered her. Its format and wording were neat but elliptical, less attention-grabbing even than a rape support ad. It would mean nothing to anyone she hadn’t personally handed it to. Sheila imagined if one were lost, no one would feel unhealthily curious if they found it. Her estimation of Valerie went up yet another notch.

Valerie was apologizing. “I had to run them off on my computer at home. I ‘m not allowed to use the color printer here for ‘personal’ projects. Also, as you see, we have to beg space for it from a church. Nothing the government will sponsor, and this is too offbeat for the Women’s Center.” She sounded more resigned than irritated.

“Because,” Sheila ventured, “they’re not really convinced we weren’t a bunch of masochists looking for an excuse, and just claiming our minds were controlled?”

They were both standing as Sheila gathered up her coat. “Just so you

know,” Valerie said, looking her straight in the eye, “that kind of tough-mindedness is a very good sign. You’re going to survive.”

2.

As Dr Akers spoke to the survivors’ group, Sheila looked around at the other women in the shadows with her. She barely knew anyone’s name. Tonight her mission was to figure that out, first of all.

It took an effort not to see them first as potential sex partners. After what Master had done and made her do, “lovers” was a term she had to consider theoretical. They were all attractive—naturally, since it was what had drawn their victimizers in the first place. Not all of the women were conventionally pretty, but Sheila’s tastes were fairly wide-ranging, and she’d absorbed a frightening degree of empathy for what predatory dominants liked in their meat.

She closed her eyes. That had made her useful.

Exhaling, she went back to reviewing whom she could remember, name with face, from the last meeting and the meet-and-greet before this one. She realized this was just one way she might bury herself in detail, but that was all right. She’d learned some of the others here did similar things. Not for the first time, she wondered whether Valerie might have started the group to sublimate some demon of her own. All in time. Again, Sheila returned to studying her sisters.

Some of them were leaning forward, interested in what Dr Akers was saying about addictive behavior. A few were sitting back, still uncomfortable that he was there in the sanctuary at all. It didn’t help that he was a tactile, touchy-feely sort of man, probably useful in his own clinical work but very worrisome to this group as his body language constantly threatened a comforting lurch out of his chair to come closer to them, soothe them, break down barriers.

But he stayed put. Valerie had clearly briefed him that these women liked barriers, in fact needed them. She sat by him now in the more brightly-lit area by the door, as if to keep him company but also ready to keep him from an inadvertent lunge. Sheila looked at them, seeing Valerie as a supple she-wolf ready to guard her cubs from a well-intentioned but dangerous bear. She smiled.

Valerie had explained other barriers. The church actually had several locations around the city, and she rotated the meetings as randomly as she could. The church provided volunteers, both inside and around the building, and some of them, she hinted, were armed. Friends Valerie cultivated at the local police precincts were on standby to get units there in under four minutes if they had to call for help. The cops wouldn’t know the details; only that there were women in trouble, and “dirtballs” trying to get at them. There was likely more she wasn’t even telling. Sheila shook her head: somewhere, a terrorist cell was missing the master tactician who’d grown up instead to be Valerie Joplin. Even aside from her floating sexual curiosity, Sheila found Valerie fascinating, more so in any event than Dr Akers’ current lecture.

Then Dr Akers said heartily, “But as we know, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis.”

The reactions were varied, but they were simultaneous. Sheila heard gasps, a choked sound, a humorless laugh, and somehow clearly over all that someone said, “Oh, horseshit!“ A woman in the second row was crying quietly, less a sound than the gentle shaking of her shoulders.

It was all too much for Dr Akers, who stood up and held out his hand, clearly horrified at having caused all this when he’d been trying to heal. Valerie was on her feet.

A woman stood in the front row, which Valerie had told them all could stay empty during Dr Akers’ visit. A few of them, braver or just more confrontational, had volunteered to sit there, partly to avoid making the male shrink feel more like a pariah than he already was.

“It’s all right,” she said in a clear, high voice. She moved into the brighter circle by the chairs, meeting him halfway and diverting him from his foray toward the weeping woman. Even from here, Sheila could admire her straight posture and willowy frame, with carriage like a dancer. Valerie looked at her, almost glowing with pride.

“Doctor, my name is Joyce.” She shook his hand, and he seemed relieved she ‘d taken charge. “We all know you’re trying to help, and you are helping. Thank you.

“But what you just said is wrong. We know—we all know—better.”

Dr Akers nodded, looking confused. He thought enough to settle back on his chair, and traded nods with Joyce as she returned gracefully to her own. Sheila sighed, watching her move.

A woman near Sheila had stared at Joyce as she spoke, and now said into the uncomfortable silence, “Umm, Doctor? When you talked about how ‘enabling’ applies to sexual addictions, is there a checklist or something, that we could . . . ?” She didn’t say her name, but she’d thrown Dr Akers the lifeline he needed, and Valerie glowed again.

Sheila felt a pang. This is a support group, she thought. They even help the healthy.

Dr Akers took the lifeline, and the rest of the session went smoothly. When it was over, he was even able to override his courtesy-reflex, enough to stay nailed to the chair until Valerie stood and led him out. They clapped, and meant it.

Peeking back in, Valerie said, “I’ll walk him to his car. I know we have discussion next, but I think a break’s in order, yes?” There was more applause, and as the door closed someone turned the lights up, now that they didn’t need the shadow to shelter in. Sheila pitched in to help shuffle chairs back to the usual loose setup for meetings, then headed over to see if the ice had melted around the soft drinks. By the cooler the others left a space around Joyce and the tall girl who had cried, her tanned face incongruous under the tear-tracks. She looked like . . . a skier, Sheila thought, watching her bring a happier expression back by sheer force of will as Joyce spoke to her quietly. Kit—that was her name. The smile suited her wholesomely pretty features; the strain it put on Kit to keep it there fit her less well.

Sheila walked up to them and smiled, looking down into the cooler before plunging her hand in.

“Mostly unleaded,” Kit advised her, already trying to pass on the comfort she’d gotten, and Sheila winced dutifully, hoping they’d miss or misread her blush. It was bad enough they were both beautiful, but they were so damned brave, too. She could barely think. Turning to the cooler, she briefly considered sticking her head in just to cool it off. A muscular but naive skier and a gravely beautiful ballerina—were they a couple?

God damn Master for doing this to my head, she thought. She tried to think of some other, nonsexual, way to consider the two women together. Maybe as the strongest and most vulnerable of the group, respectively: Kit had been so wounded at Dr Akers’ casual disbelief in her and the others’ mental rape that she’d wept, and Joyce so much in control she’d deflected the blow without hurting its giver. Sheila felt better now. Being able to make that distinction—instead of just imagining them in bed together—was somehow important to her, as though she’d really learned something.

She gritted her teeth in both frustration and embarrassment, letting them think it was the shock of the cold water as she reached for something non-diet and fished out what turned out to be a can of cola, some very cheap generic supermarket brand. She thought of making a snide comment, and then saw that it had been all someone here could afford to bring for the snack table. It brought back the realization that some of these women hadn’t come all the way back from the depths, that they were in bottom-echelon jobs trying to climb out of the virtual graves their masters had put them in. Not everyone, she thought, could be a freelance writer, and there was just no polite way on a resume to account for three years as “mind-controlled sex slave”. How many could sell their stories, and who’d buy—but Sheila had a sudden certainty that none of the women here, none of Valerie’s proud brave people, would ever sell their pain, no matter how desperate they were.

I’m one of them, she thought. They’re letting me be one of them. She didn’t feel worthy.

She gripped the can tightly. Tears were starting, and she didn’t especially want them to flow. Then they had to flow, as she felt a warm, strong arm go across her shoulders. Kit leaned closer. “You don’t have to hold it in.” Sheila found herself helplessly turning, leaning in toward this girl’s body. “I mean, you can if that’s what you want.” She sounded so young. Through her daze of lust, Sheila realized Kit was trying to assemble the right things to say that she’d heard from Valerie and others, getting it wrong but doing what she could. A blurry glimpse past Kit’s shoulder saw Joyce withdrawing, letting Kit handle it. Worried but proud, just as Valerie had been proud of Joyce before.

Breathing deeply of Kit’s clean, shampoo-and-soap scent, Sheila knew she was young, maybe just out of college, and wondered who’d taken her and for what. She felt guilty for that and held Kit tighter, feeling her athletic arms tighten in return. There was no awkwardness. Had Kit’s master trained her for girl-on-girl as well? Or was she so innocent she had no idea when a woman was hot for her?

She stopping arguing with herself. She leaned into Kit’s shoulder for a moment, until she could breathe easier.

Reaching for a napkin, she pulled back but stayed in the circle of Kit’s arm as she wiped her eyes. “Thanks.” More deliberately she looked into the other girl’s eyes—they were gray flecked with gold, and Sheila wondered morbidly what the light in them had been, whenever Kit’s master hypnotized her—and said, “I mean it, Kit. Thank you.”

Kit smiled bashfully. “You’ll do it for someone else pretty soon. We all depend on each other here.” She looked tentatively into Sheila’s eyes, then away, and for a moment, the wholesome skier-girl seemed to age, remembering some part of her own slave-hell.

“We’re not alone anymore.”

3.

After a month, Sheila had let herself be drawn into the group’s social round. She found chances to spend time with Kit, and Kit probably thought it was purely for company—Valerie had explained that survivors frequently paired off platonically to deal with things more privately. They didn’t talk much about “before”, outside of group meetings, but it was good to be around someone else who just . . . knew. Beyond that, there were sparks between her and Kit, Sheila felt, and shuddered at how sure she was about it. Master had trained her to sharpen her gaydar to an almost superhuman level, letting her find every potential victim she could for him. But it was part of Sheila now, and she accepted that even this could have its upside. Besides, even while quietly lusting after her, Sheila enjoyed the younger woman’s enthusiasm and openness. Kit was wonderfully easy to be with.

But gradually she’d expanded to the others. No one forced it, of course, but the ones she’d grown close to, Joyce and Kit, Sandy and Marlene, had made it clear she was welcome at the ladies’ lunch, or the mall expedition, as it might be. Her reluctance didn’t prompt them to try harder, but she found they were that much happier when she said yes.

“Kind of like Valerie was, too,” Joyce commented as they crowded around one of the absurdly small tables in yet another Watering Hole, insulated in the happy-hour crowd much as things had been in Valerie’s little cubicle. Sheila was trying to get over her terror of such places, as guilt about how she’d hunted here became fear that she might become prey in her turn.

The “proper authorities” had found Master, but Master had had a lot of friends.

“Like Valerie?” Sheila grasped at the distraction.

“Yeah!” Kit nodded vigorously, somehow enunciating around a chicken wing. “We invited her for lunch one day, and first she’s like, ‘What, is something up?’ We were all, no, we just want to have lunch with you! Then we thought maybe she had this therapy thing, like she couldn’t mix socially, or something. But that wasn’t it.” She colored a bit and looked over at Joyce, but Joyce just nodded and let her tell it. “She was—she thought she wasn’t part of us. We’d been through it and she hadn’t, and that made her less than we were.”

Sheila sipped her drink and considered that.

“But, we owe her everything,“ Kit said, furiously trying to outrun the emotion Sheila was getting to know all too well.

She put her hand on Kit’s arm. “If I’m like Valerie,” she said, “then Valerie thinks you guys are something special. And she’s humble enough not to take for granted that special people want to hang out with her.” She took a breath, and let it out. “I never take it for granted.”

Kit smiled, and looked into Sheila’s eyes with childlike directness. “No, you don’t. Maybe . . .” She blinked away whatever she’d been about to say. She grinned again.

“Excuse me,” she said, “this always happens.” She stepped away toward the restrooms. Even in the crowd, Sheila saw eyes following Kit, male eyes but not exclusively, and was relieved not to be the only one quietly drooling over her. Then she tensed, wondering who might not be content just to drool.

“I’m giving her two minutes,” Joyce said behind her. “Then we both go looking.” When Sheila turned back Joyce was grinning. “Standard procedure. If we lose the table, tough shit.” Neither of them talked about losing Kit. Nor did Joyce even hint that she wanted to know if Sheila remembered what techniques an abductor might use, back when she was a slave/abductor herself and used them.

Sheila was glad. Partly because she wanted to forget. Partly because Master had indoctrinated her on hunting women in groups: all or nothing. If one separates and isn’t leaving, leave her alone—or else use her to draw the others to where they can all find themselves stunned or gassed, or staring at a hypnotic strobe display they never expected to find . . .

“Sheila, I’m in older sister mode.”

Sheila turned back, and blinked at Joyce’s change of subject. “Huh? Hers or mine?”

“Yes.” They laughed. “Been talk about you two, and of course you’re oblivious. I just wanted to tell you that I think she wants you as much as you want her.” Joyce looked at her without embarrassment, and she realized again how much of a leader the group had in Joyce, who could talk like this and not have it be rude. Sheila wondered, not for the first time, how someone as strong and self-confident as Joyce could have become someone’s mental serf. She’d never spoken of it; many in the group did not.

Now, she saw Sheila’s uncertainty and dealt with it. “Kit likes girls, too. For real, and since before she knew why certain things and people made her tingle down there. In fact, that was . . .” Joyce trailed off, but Sheila had long since guessed that someone who’d coveted Kit’s thoroughbred body had not cared that Kit had even less interest in his dick than in him. Had perhaps been set off by that. “Anyway, she’s got an idea about you, too, but she’s been holding off, trying not to scare you.”

Not scare her off, Sheila understood. Just trying not to hurt her. Typical of the group, and of Kit herself. Caring first and wanting later.

Sheila was suddenly glad to get it out. Somehow, having someone else know what she was feeling for Kit was both scary and very encouraging. “We’re all walking wounded, though. Vulnerability on two legs, and a relationship can be just another problem. Hard enough to deal with even when you’re not an escapee from . . . Do I really want to buy that much risk for myself? Or especially for someone I really . . .” She teetered on the edge, and Joyce politely chose that moment to look down at her sweet-and-sour meatballs.

“Thing is,” Sheila said, leaning close to be heard, “I’m not sure I—really—like girls. I mean, I do, but it may be something I didn’t used to feel. I’m still not sure which of the memories are real. I don’t want to get into something that could break down if I . . . change.” It was true; she didn’t want to have a relationship going if she found herself defaulting to straight. She remembered the special emphasis Kit gave to not being alone, and knew how quietly lethal it would be for a lover to change away from Kit.

But she was also worried that the reinforcement, sexual and emotional, that a relationship would give her might change her default, and take her further away from the heterosexuality Master had dimmed to make her his hunting bitch. Especially if she was making love every day with, well, Supergirl . . .

She wondered if Joyce could read that meaner truth in her eyes. Joyce just looked at her. “Sheila. Be with each other. It doesn’t have to be forever, but it needs to be now. Not as in right away, but as in the present, the life you have to live before you get to forever. What you and Kit each need—now—is, goddess help us all, the love of a good woman.

“I almost wish it could be me, but it can’t.” She didn’t move, but Sheila knew she’d just brandished her wedding ring. Joyce had been enslaved while married, and instead of shipping her off to serve them in some distant brothel it had pleased her masters to leave her there, sometimes whoring for them in her own bed. It had been her husband and daughter that had saved her, and what she felt for them burned so brightly Sheila couldn’t bear to think of it.

Sheila also thought she recalled hearing from someone that Joyce’s owner had been female. She’d been feeling an almost superstitious awe of Joyce’s owner, and tried to turn away from it now. She didn’t know whether the woman had used Joyce personally, but either way . . .

She considered Kit, not just the frisky jock goddess but the loyal young woman trying always to be generous and honorable to merit the company of the gallant women around her. Just as Sheila was learning to. There was a warm feeling deep in her belly that she realized had been there for some time. If I go with Kit and get “stuck” as a lesbian, would that really be a bad thing?

Then she thought, No. The true question is, Isn’t Kit more than worth the direction of my life, no matter what happens?

“Only one way to find out,” she realized she’d said aloud, and Joyce started to nod but checked her watch first.

“Not captured!” Kit chuckled as she slid in to rejoin them, and when Sheila turned to look at her, saw her, realized she was here again, everything went over Sheila like gasoline igniting. The warmth enveloped her, and she stared at Kit almost in pain.

I would die for her. Right here. I would not mind. Sheila had never been so sure of anything. Or so happy.

“Whoa. Somebody feels the love,” Kit said, seeing that something was happening to her friend. It hit Sheila still harder as she realized the girl said it as a joke. She didn’t know.

“No,” Joyce said, her eyes flicking between them as she tried to watch Sheila’s meltdown and Kit’s oblivious cheer at the same time. “I mean yes. Really feels it.” Kit shifted those clear gray eyes away from Sheila to look at her in puzzlement. “Like in The Godfather. The book.”

Kit blinked, and got it. “The thunderbolt? Oh, my, God.” Her eyes lit up as they swung back to Sheila.

Sheila closed her own. She’s smart, too. Thank you, God!

“Guys?” Joyce slid her hors d’oeuvre plate noisily forward across the available inch of bar table. “Half the bar is waiting for you two to start necking. Let’s just leave.”

They walked Joyce to her Volvo and kissed her on opposite cheeks. On a weird wavelength, they both turned as she shut the door and called out, “Thanks, Mom!”

As the Volvo pulled out, the window slid down. “Elder sister, dammit! Elder sister!

4.

They were in Sheila’s apartment. Kit lived with two other women, both of them straight, and while they were cool about her in theory, Kit wasn’t eager to examine practice. Sheila thought Well, if she likes it here, she can move in. Hope they’re cool with that!

All the same, she’d suggested this first, only hearing about the roommates when Kit agreed. Maybe it was that she hoped for Kit’s gushing response, and Kit didn’t disappoint her. Maybe it was seeing Kit in her home, making it more than it had been just by being there and filling it with her laugh and her good-girl scent and the air she moved. Sheila managed to get inside and lock the door, and was going to look around and think of her hostess duties, offer a drink.

But she could hold out no longer when she saw Kit standing heroically at the window, marveling at the view, achingly beautiful in jeans and t-shirt. Then Kit turned to ask about some landmark or just ask for the bathroom, her face alive with . . . simply being Kit . . .

It just slew her.

Kit pivoted and came to her quickly as she stood paralyzed, and when she felt Kit’s arms around her she wondered why she hadn’t fallen. She found the strength to hug back, and then slowly, deliberately, they kissed.

After a long, long time, Sheila found Kit had safely navigated them to the couch. Sheila hadn’t noticed. Content, she found Kit’s mouth again and lived there for another long, long time. Eventually she felt Kit’s hand stroking her back as she rested against the girl’s chest and listened to the strong ski-trained heart beating. She heard Kit’s voice and felt it through her ribs, giggling quietly as Kit said, “You think way too much, Sheila. But if this is what it does to you, well OK.”

Blinking, Sheila felt a need to pull back. She couldn’t just submerge herself in her lover (lover—yesyesyes). Not now with all their clothes still on, anyway. She thought of them undressing each other, but that would be too much self-control. “Let’s slip—”

“—into something oh yeah,” Kit said, the need starting to thicken her voice, her hands sliding down to the braided belt on her jeans. Sheila stood and grinned down at her.

“Bed’s even nicer.” She pointed. “In there.” She smiled at Kit’s look. “Pace ourselves.”

This far away from Kit’s body she felt she was thinking more clearly, and felt the need to move more slowly. An orgasm delayed was an orgasm more intensely enjoyed. There was a way she had to do this. “Since we’re going for speed not style, we can striptease later when we have time. I’ll go get the wine, and some—”

“Oh, just wine.” Kit stood, trying to think better of her impatience. She gave up. “Whatever,” she said urgently, and was gone into the bedroom.

Sheila went into a sort of dream as she slipped off her clothes, moistening as she let herself feel what it was like to strip in her living room, with a woman getting naked next to her bed. She padded softly into the kitchen in the nude to get down the glasses, taking care to keep track of which was which as she got the wine from the fridge. As she carried it all on a tray into the bedroom, she was suddenly reminded of being a serving slut for Master, swaying her ass as she brought refreshments and then became one. But she didn’t feel even the slightest urge to slip into slave mode even as a game: she warmed to the truth of bringing something to share with her lover, her equal, before they shared each other.

Kit was sitting on the bed when she came in, and Sheila stepped to the chair on that side, pulling it a bit closer to face Kit. She set the tray on the floor and found Kit’s glass and poured for her, then poured her own. They started to do the linked-arm routine but stopped, suddenly feeling solemn, not wanting to waste this in mockery. Then Kit set her glass down behind her on the night table, leaned forward, and put a gentle but lingering kiss on Sheila’s lips.

“I love you.” Still on a wavelength, they said it together.

Sheila felt almost sacramental as she raised her glass and looked over it at Kit, who raised her own. They nodded and drank deeply.

They set them down, and Kit blinked at her. “Sheila.” She took a deep breath. “Baby, I really have to either cry now, or else fuck your brains out.”

Sheila looked at her. “Time enough to cry. Not now.” She crawled onto the bed and stared at Kit, watching the girl lean back as she moved up between the tanned, muscled legs she’d only dreamt of before now. She found an old surgical scar near one knee, and turned her head to kiss it, brushing it with her lips and tonguetip tenderly, as though it were still sore. Kit lay back on the pillow, sighing deeply as she gave herself up to it. Sheila kissed her way down the thigh, slyly glancing at the down above Kit’s pussy as though sneaking up on it. She left the thigh and leaned over the pussy, feeling the hair in the hollow of her throat for a moment as she bent down on her way to taste the skier’s taut abdomen and belly. She heard Kit’s breathing, faster and then slower, and a strange, drowsy humming as the girl relaxed further.

Kit was an outie, and Sheila found herself staring at the little nub, transfixed, as it rose and fell, rose and fell, softly over and over. A numbness crept over her as she just watched it. As though she’d been counting, she felt herself finish and look up, and Kit’s eyelids were fluttering slightly but hanging over her eyes. Only then could Sheila look away from Kit’s body, so strong but now so helpless in sleep, and see the discreet red blinking of the phone light.

She rose smoothly off the bed and went into the living room for the other phone. She picked it up and moved to stand where she could see into the bedroom, and watch Kit as she slept.

“Hello?”

“Time to remember what you are, sheila.” The voice was like nothing else in her world. Its effect transcended the words. Her love for Kit was like a flaring sun, but this was like the endless night of space itself that swallowed the light of all suns forever, and even as she remembered loving Kit, she saw how little it really mattered.

“Mistress,” she whispered.

5.

Just the privilege of being able to say the word aloud, instead of only in dreams, counted for so much more than any “love” she thought she felt about the slave lying drugged on the next room. But she was not alive to enjoy worship. she had tasks.

“Mistress, Your obedient slave girl has brought the new pawn home and dosed her, as You willed. she is asleep now. i have obeyed all my programming and await Your will.”

Mistress’ voice reached into sheila again. “you have pleased me, slave. When I tell you to, you will hang up the phone. When you know you have done that, your next programming sequence will activate.”

sheila put the phone down. she didn’t really want to stop hearing Mistress, but that sort of thing had been eliminated early in her training. It was greater joy to obey than to seek pleasure. Besides, she thought, standing for a moment to let the new programming fill her mind again, Mistress could still see her. her memory of the cameras and microphones installed in this apartment had resurfaced with the knowledge that the whole place was just part of the undercover legend Mistress had devised, not really hers at all. she smiled at the absurdity of a slave having, or even being allowed to use this much space, this many things, for her “own”, and thought of her little sleeping tube at Mistress’ house.

she started for the bedroom, but then she just stood, spreading her arms palms-up, proud of the responsibility Mistress had charged her with, proud of being selected to be on her own so long, grateful for the tube she slept in. she couldn’t go without saying it.

“Thank You, Mistress!” she almost sobbed, then wiped her eyes and got to work.

her next task was a reward in itself. she went to the altar hiding in plain sight as a table in the bedroom, her eyes sliding to the hawk sculpture Mistress had favored her with as a private symbol of Herself, a focus for worship. she sank to her knees and stared at it, murmuring the wordless prayer of the rabbit under the raptor, waiting for the talons to sink into her soul. Crawling forward, she leaned to kiss the talons, then opened the drawer to find the innocuous-looking choker and pulled it out. Bowing to the floor, she collared herself, feeling again the undiminished stab of rapture as she gave herself up yet another time.

she stood and admired what she saw in the mirror: Mistress’ slave girl, naked and pale, the Owner’s mark clear and dark on her vulnerable neck. Ready to obey. Already obeying.

Glancing at Kit’s slack-limbed form, she checked the clock, now conscious of having looked before for a time check, when Kit had emptied the drug-smeared glass. Mistress had planned for the other girl’s body mass and metabolism, and sheila knew the slave would be awake soon, though still deeply sedated. she opened a drawer and put aside “Sheila” clothing she’d never worn or would ever wear and took out the restraints, securing them to the hardpoints under the bed and then carefully binding Kit’s wrists and ankles. she sat on the edge of the bed, sucked two fingers to wet them and reached in to Kit’s pussy, her old fascination with it just an incidental memory as the tide of obedience to Mistress carried her past the temptation to play for her own pleasure. her fingering now was calculated, and she watched impassively as Kit’s breathing sped up, her head began slowly to move back and forth, and the little sounds began to escape her lips.

sheila gently masturbated her, feeling the smooth skin of Kit’s leg against her chest and arm but not letting the arousal affect her, watching for the eyelid movement and breathing pattern she’d been programmed for. When she saw it she drew her hand away, ignoring Kit’s mew of protest, and went again to the drawer to take out the pendant that had lain under the choker.

she went to stand by the edge of the bed and waited, hands behind her back, the pendant’s chain excitingly cold against her asscheek. The stone tapped her upper thigh twice before hanging straight, and she hid, behind her greater obedience to Mistress, from even the thought of it swinging seductively back and forth. That would be for Kit.

Kit blinked awake. “Ooooh. Ohhhh. That was—unh?” Even drugged, her reflexes were there, as she tried to sort out the recent frigging from the ongoing grip on her arms and legs. Her muscles flexed attractively, but her struggle against the bonds was slow and weak, like a lovely dream. Forcing her eyelids up she turned to sheila, gradually trying to make sense of it.

“Baby?” she whispered. “Umm—I’m not really ready for this. Please?” Kit ‘s eyes dropped to the collar on sheila’s throat. It registered through the fog of drugs and preorgasm, and when she looked up into sheila’s eyes again, her own eyes were trying to widen.

sheila “remembered” Dana in the alley, learning her betrayal as they put her to sleep. she knew now all the memories of serving her “Master” had been poured into her by Mistress and Her other slaves. There had been no alley. But this time it was real. sheila stepped forward, feeling the air kiss her newly-moist pussy.

The pendant tapped her thighs again, and she pulled it up to keep it from swinging out too soon.

“i know you’re not ready,” sheila purred. “It is Mistress’ will that i make you ready.”

“Please, Sheila.” Kit’s speech wasn’t slurred, but it came in a weary little whisper. “Please tell me this is a game.”

“Of course, love. It’s a game. i’ve been . . . oh, let’s say, enslaved by a beautiful dominatrix who wanted to recover a runaway slave. She programmed me as a robot with false memories about being brainwashed by a man, to seduce my way among the runaway’s friends.” she watched Kit’s confusion. “It’s OK, Kit. Kittycat. It’s sooo much fun. And as long as it’s not some man doing it, as long as it’s femdom, what harm can there be?”

Kit closed her eyes, perhaps praying it was a dream, and her pull against the bonds seemed almost subconscious. Without opening her eyes, she said quietly but clearly, “This really isn’t a game, is it? Sheila?”

“Not for us,” sheila said, avidly watching the strong, brave girl immobilized by belts and drugs and sheila’s own complete treachery, trembling with gratitude for this faint, sweet taste of what Mistress must feel, taking prey. “But for Mistress . . . if you’re deer hunting, why not go to the watering hole where all the wounded does gather?”

“My g—” Kit choked on it, and shook a little as her features crumpled into a mask of grief. “Oh my god,” she said in a very small voice. “Oh, Sheila. Poor Sheila. I’m sorry . . .”

sheila blinked, suddenly realizing Kit was crying for her, too. Kit still loved her, even knowing she’d been someone’s pawn and betrayed her. Mourned her as she stood there ready to complete Kit’s own enslavement. Something glimmered faintly inside the beautiful blackness Mistress had made of sheila ‘s soul. Perhaps a sun that had warmed her before.

sheila remembered the thought I would die for her . . . had it been her own?

A novel idea came to her. Nothing was keeping Kit here but the drug and the bonds. sheila could just get her loose, and they could dress and find Valerie and then—

she closed her eyes. The faint light within her was brightening. Oh, Kit! Thank you, my sweet beautiful—

Then, like a fingertip tapping her clitoris, there was an even sweeter image: Kit on her knees, worshipping Mistress, pleading for the collar, begging for the chance to bring Her others, Joyce, Valerie . . .

her ecstasy spiced with a delicious grief of her own, sheila felt the light snuffed out inside as she brought the pendant out for Kit to see, raising it so none of the motion could swing it yet.

she hung it over the other girl’s eyes and licked her lips as Kit tensed in her bonds and fought helplessly against its fascination.

“It’s up to you, slave kit. Do you want to be hypnotized, and obey Mistress forever?”

6.

Kit fought so hard.

Bound, nude, aroused, tricked by the woman she’d just learned to love, she still tried to resist. sheila stood over her and watched approvingly as the girl kept her eyes averted and shut tight.

“If you look at the pretty pendant, Kit,” she promised in a low voice, “you ‘ll be allowed to close your eyes in deep, restful sleep for as long as you want. Mistress will tell you what you want.”

In reply, Kit sobbed, and sheila saw the gleam of tears leaking from under tight lids. In her own depths, sheila felt loss stab at her. Inside, the artificial Inner Sheila that Kit had fallen in love with, who’d fallen in love with Kit, was caged and screaming, her sobs echoing her lover’s. slave sheila observed that her alter ego was too intent on Kit’s agony to realize she was herself a figment of Mistress’ imagination.

For now, slave sheila realized Kit was, perhaps unconsciously, trying to distract herself from the pendant’s quiet mesmeric lure. Another stab, as Inner Sheila cried for a lover whose only escape was into grief, because grief was safe. Grief wasn’t going to hypnotize her.

It was helping deepen slave sheila’s obedience, though. she smiled and settled to the bed, letting her bare hip rest against Kit’s. The girl tensed further, but all sheila did was reach over and dip her fingertips in Kit’s tears, then touch them to Kit’s pussy.

Kit moaned.

Resting her hand on Kit’s tight belly, sheila began gently tracing circles on it, still keeping the pendant over Kit’s head to ambush her gaze.

“i’m not commanding you,” she said softly to Kit. “i’m just a slave girl. i command no one. i just obey, because i must obey. Soon you’ll enjoy the same kind of bliss, as a slave girl. It’s sweet and simple. i just obey. i must obey.

“i’m just offering you the joy i know—surrender to our Mistress’ power. i just obey. i must obey. you don’t have to do anything but look, and relax, and listen. Obedience is natural. i just obey. i must obey.”

Kit turned her head a bit further away, a gesture. Then she spoke, and sheila smiled: Mistress had told her that interaction was a mistake, the beginning of rapport, entering a pattern that the stronger side—the hypnotist—controlled. Fighting would be easier and faster to subdue than silent endurance. Kit’s inexperience had caught up with her for the last time.

“I won’t submit.” The girl’s chin trembled, but it set resolutely. “My mind and my soul are mine.” It was a counter-mantra that Valerie had taught some of the women in therapy. “I won’t give them up.”

What Inner Sheila had felt at the meeting, about the women’s bravery, still echoed inside slave sheila, but slave sheila felt Mistress’ hold on her warping it deliciously into even more abject submission. she felt the sheet under her thigh dampen, as what she was about to do to Kit made her wet.

“But Kittycat,” she whispered, “you did give them up. you surrendered your mind and will to a master and he addicted you to it.

“you were a weak girl then and you’re weak now. Nothing has happened to make you stronger, and little wounded does like us will never, ever be strong enough to resist when a Mistress calls to us. i was helpless when Mistress took me, and now, i just obey. i must obey. Why not say it with me now? i just obey. i must obey.”

“I won’t,” Kit said through clenched teeth, but sheila heard the effort it took.

“Think of how good it will feel, Kit. i just obey. i must obey. Think of giving up, giving in, giving yourself away to your Mistress. Nothing to do but obey. Just obey. i just obey. i must obey. No need to think . . .”

sheila heard Inner Sheila’s pleas reach a crescendo, and had to close her eyes for a moment to ride out the joy of destroying Kit’s will instead.

“Besides,” she said in a voluptuous murmur, “you don’t have to imagine how good it will feel to give your soul away, do you?

“You just have to remember.

Kit’s pretty face twisted again, as the shame and the old addiction that had washed over the shame rose again, and her mouth worked. “I . . . can’t . . . please . . . please god . . .” The tears flowed. “Sheila . . . baby, I’m sorry . . .”

slave sheila suddenly had trouble swallowing, but it passed. Kit was shaking now. She opened her mouth, and sheila almost knew what she would say, because she heard Inner Sheila, sunk down defeated in that cage within her, trying to say it too. I’ll never forget you . . .

But they would, when Mistress willed them to, and they’d enjoy it. There was nothing left.

“you’re being hypnotized,” sheila said more firmly, and Kit’s head turned slowly, her eyes opening to the light from the pendant, drawn to it. The girl’s breath hitched and sheila saw her nipples pop erect. sheila started to swing the pendant at the slow, inexorable pace Mistress had taught her, right after programming her to stay free of its power herself, just this time.

“Remember how helpless it makes you,” she cooed, and the vague smile on Kit ‘s face told her that Kit was on her way, that all the freedom and strength Kit had won back was going, dripping out of her like the juice from her pussy. sheila could scent it now.

“Pretty pendants have the same effect on me,” sheila whispered. “Just seeing one between Mistress’ breasts can entrance me as it goes back and forth, back and forth. It helps me stop thinking, my mind is just so blank and i like that because then i just obey, i must obey.”

“Nnnno,” Kit said, shaking her head in denial, but that only kept her following the pendant, her eyes glued to it, wider and wider, unable to do anything but follow it back and forth, back and forth.

“I . . . am . . . not . . . a . . . slave . . .” Just putting the words together seemed so hard—and she was letting the pendant’s hypnotic rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, control how she said them.

“i . . . am . . . a . . . slave,” sheila assured her. “i just . . . obey . . . i must . . . obey . . .”

Kit’s breathing was ragged, as it had been while sheila caressed her, before the drug slowed her down again. Before sheila was awakened to her duties. sheila knew she wouldn’t need to undermine Kit’s resistance with a few strokes to her pussy—Kit was getting hot on the hypnosis alone. Her trapped gaze at the pendant was yearning, open, needing.

sheila swung the pendant more slowly now. “Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . i just . . . obey . . . i must . . . obey . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . i just . . . obey . . . i must . . . obey . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . i just . . . obey . . . i must . . . obey . . .”

Kit was caught and began obediently to repeat: “yes . . . yes . . . must . . . obey . . .” She trailed off but still followed the pendant as it swung over her, her beautiful face stupefied by its spell of blankness.

“ . . . goodbye . . .” Kit breathed it out as if she didn’t even know why. sheila felt something cool tap her thigh and roll to her groin, and realized she’d just wept again. she waited, almost expecting Inner Sheila to answer, but there was nothing.

sheila saw herself now, sitting naked and collared over another naked girl, quietly wiping away the last of her will, and for a very brief instant she felt horribly cold, as if she were floating exposed in the empty, lonely, hateful sun-swallowing darkness her Mistress made. For an instant she realized—

“i just obey,” she told herself, and it was true, and it was warm. “i must obey!”

“yes . . . yes . . .” slave kit, joyfully tracking the pendant, agreed with her. Answering a question sheila no longer remembered asking herself, she saw that slave kit’s eyes, under deep hypnosis, were wide open and wonderfully limpid, gold flecking the gray like baubles on a pale dancing girl.

The two slaves said it together. “i just . . . obey . . . i must . . . obey . . .”

TO BE CONTINUED