The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

(AUTHOR’S NOTE—This story is based on a real promotional stunt that old-time traveling mesmerists used to promote their shows in a strange town where they’d play only one night, using some susceptible local that people knew to demonstrate the power of hypnosis. It’s well described in Ormond McGill’s NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STATE HYPNOTISM.)

Howdy, stranger. Sure, I’d be pleased to have you join me. Pull up a rock and set a spell. No, there aren’t any actual rocks here in the front window of Hunter’s Mercantile and Feed Store. Grab you a chair. It was a figure of speech, though to tell you the truth if I close my eyes and listen right I can about hear the sounds of a rushing stream, birds in the tall trees, maybe the sound of the wind on a nice summer day. That’s the nice thing about fishing in the front window of the Mercantile: it’s always a good day for fishing, and Mr. Hunter don’t mind. Word has gotten around about the guy in the window, and people come in from the country just to see me and then maybe buy some flour or sorghum or even penny candy before they leave.

So, how did it come about that I spend my days here in the window fishing? Well, thereby hangs quite a tale, like the fellow says. It started a few years ago on a cold winter’s day, the kind of day when idlers like me come in and buy a bottle of Moxie and spend the afternoon sitting by that old potbelly stove, swapping lies with folks they’ve known all their lives. There are worse ways to spend a winter afternoon—and, as I have discovered, better ones as well. At any rate, we were sitting around the backroom toasting our feet and listening to Mr. Bandler tell for the 18th time about the time he saw Bigfoot up on Grinder Mountain, when in walked a woman we’d never seen before. And when I say walked in, I mean she made an entrance. I don’t know exactly what it was, but every man in the place turn to look at her and kept right on looking until she spoke. She commanded the room.

“Gentlemen,” she said. “I am traveling through your town and I could use a little help with something I have to do. Who wants to help me?” Well, as you can imagine, every man’s hand in that room went up like a balloon was tugging it, and she looked around with a kind of a smug smile that suggested she had expected no less, and she looked at each of us as if she was looking at which horse to buy, until at last she came to me, and she said, “I reckon you’ll do.”

Well, I didn’t know what she wanted but I did know that it would be a pleasure to spend some time was such a fine-looking woman and furthermore that for some reason I definitely did think that she ought to have whatever she wanted and do whatever she chose. She reached out a hand and I took it and she said, “Come on over here to the front window—don’t worry, Mr. Hunter told me I could do whatever I wanted in his front window, and you need to be here, as you will see in a minute. So move two chairs up here so we’re in full view of the people passing by and let me explain to you what’s going to happen next.”

We sat in the chairs facing each other and she said, “In this part, I need you to look at me for a few minutes. That won’t be so bad, will it?” Well, I don’t know if I mentioned what a fine-looking woman she was—not stick-skinny like the models in the Saturday Evening Post ads, but solidly built, plenty of curves, and just generally, well, lush. I looked her up and down, grateful for the opportunity, until she said, “OK, that’s enough, eyes up here and look at me right in the eye.”

Which I did, and when I did, all of a sudden I felt just like a deer on Grinder Mountain that somebody hit with a spotlight. Her eyes just held me in place. At that moment, I really didn’t want to do anything except look at them, so I didn’t mind.

She started in to talking, and I can still remember every word: “Let me tell you what’s going to happen now, as sure as night follows day. In a few minutes I’m going to tell you what to do and you’ll do it because it will be what you want to do because what I want is what you want to do, whatever it is I want, and your friends in the back room and the people walking by on the boardwalk will look at you and they’re going to laugh. And you’re going to find that you don’t mind one bit because you know you want to do what I tell you to do and you have to do what you want to do because what you want to do is whatever I want you to do. And the reason for that is that, to be completely honest, what I want matters and what you want doesn’t matter. And that’s just fine with you because mattering is so hard. What matters is what I want. I want you to keep looking. Sure, you can try to look away, but you can’t, can you? You just want to keep looking, you just want to keep listening, you just want to do what I tell you and nothing else matters except what I say and what I want. Let me explain to you how I know that. There’s a reason I picked you to help me when I came into that backroom. It’s an air you have about yourself as if you were a bluetick hound who has gotten lost in the woods and is waiting to hear his mistress’s voice. It’s the look of a man who was born with a saddle on his back and needed a woman to ride him. A man who needed to belong to somebody and do exactly what she told him to do. I can tell that’s who you are by your body posture, by your face, and I can tell you it’s nothing to feel bad about. You live alone, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“In my travels,” she said, “I see a lot of men who have been waiting their whole lives for someone to come along and take charge of them and give them orders and allow them to serve, and when I do that it makes them very happy. For you, my friend, obedience is your freedom. You want to be owned. In fact, it makes you happy. I can tell by that big dopey smile that’s spreading across your face. Don’t try to hide it.” And after she said that I did feel myself smiling a big dopey smile and I didn’t know whether she had spotted the smile coming and told me it was coming or she’d told me to smile and so I smiled, but it didn’t really matter because I was so happy, and listening so hard for whatever she was going to say next.

So she said, “Now you just keep looking at my eyes but I’m going to tell you that your friends have all gathered around the front window and some of the folks in town to shop have stopped and are looking in the front window and in a minute they’re going to laugh at you and that’s going to make you really happy. In even thinking about it striske you as funny. You’re starting to laugh now—it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard of. You’re enjoying that they’re laughing at you and it’s just tickling you to death and you’re laughing so hard—now, don’t fall out of that chair but you just can’t stop laughing no matter what—laugh! I said, laugh! That’s right, LAUGH!”

Stranger, I wasn’t sure I could breathe, but then she yelled:

“STOP! Stop now! You can’t laugh, you can’t speak, you can’t move. You know folks are laughing at you and that makes you really proud. You are proud you can obey me so quickly and completely. You’re proud that my will is stronger than yours. You’re proud that my will is your will, in fact, you’re proud you have no will. You never wanted a will and mine is so much better. All that matters is my will, and that makes you feel proud. OK, you can move again, get comfortable in that chair and take this fishing pole I give you because I think today is a day you ought to be fishing. In fact, you are fishing. You’re at the most beautiful fishing hole in these parts. You hear the wind rustling in the trees, you feel the breeze on your face, you hear the birds and you have got to catch some fish. Catching fish is your only job for the day and you will stay right here until you catch some. Time will go by, but it won’t bother you, it’ll just be a few minutes and at the end of that time some folks are going to come and get you and take you to where I am and I’m going to let you help me some more. Wouldn’t you like that?” I was nodding. “That’s right,” she said. “All you want to do is what I tell you to do. You are my little puppet, and it feels wonderful. And you are going to enjoy spending a little time fishing, because you know that I want you to do it. You know I know what you’re are doing, and so you don’t mind if I ignore you.”

She put that bamboo pole in my hand and right away I knew I had some serious fishing to do. Other stuff was going on around me, but I didn’t pay attention because I had a job to do. They told me later that she put up a sign in the window that said, “You are witnessing a demonstration of mesmerism by Madame Morpheus. The volunteer in the window believes he is fishing in a pond. Madam Morpheus performs at 7:00 PM at the Town Auditorium. ONE NIGHT ONLY! Tickets are still available.”

Now I know now that I sat here in this window for five hours until just about 6:45, though at the time it didn’t seem like any particular amount of time. But at 6:45, three guys from the Volunteer Rescue Squad showed up with a stretcher and told me that Madam Morpheus wanted me to lie down on it and go to sleep. That seemed like a reasonable request, so I did. I know now they carried me in the ambulance to the town auditorium, where a big crowd was waiting to see the show, and put me and the stretcher up on the stage. To tell the truth, I still don’t know how she got the Volunteer Rescue Squad to be part of the show, but as I think my story suggests she was a very persuasive person. At any rate, I heard her voice telling me to wake up and take a bow because I was so proud of having been such a good volunteer.

So, naturally, I did. Then she had me sit in a chair at one end of the stage and watch what was going on and she told me that I would enjoy being ignored by her because that that meant she knew I was obedient and that made me very special. Then she called out for volunteers in the audience, and I imagine some folks had some hesitation because they had seen what she could do. So she did the same thing she had done with me, walking through the audience pointing to people and ordering them to go up on the stage. I don’t know how she knew who to pick, maybe they all had invisible saddles on their backs, but everyone she picked obeyed at once.

Now, she faced the volunteers and gave them pretty much the same talk she’d given me. It was right impressive because she didn’t have a pocket watch or a spiral or any equipment at all, and she didn’t make passes with their hands and tell everyone they were getting sleepy. All she did was have them look into her eyes and explain that her will was stronger than theirs and that they would have a wonderful time following her every suggestion, because every word that she said became the truth the moment that she said it. Honestly, stranger, it took her about two minutes to put that whole group into a trance where even I could see they would do anything she told them . Then she had them do a lot of silly tricks. I was still sitting over in the corner, and I was very proud that she was ignoring me, because that meant I was special. But toward the end of the show she created what she called the Hypno—Circus, and each volunteer was an act: two of them were clowns who ran around the audience going “Honk Honk,” as if they had bicycle horns. One pretty girl was the tightrope walker who had to walk with great care to keep from falling. Another—in fact it was that loudmouth Herb Flint, who always liked to boast about his strength—was the strongman, and she gave him a papier mache “dumbbell” that had “200 lbs” painted on it, but clearly didn’t weigh more than a pound or two. And she told the “strongman” that he would try and try but would not be able to lift it. He couldn’t. Every now and then she would go over and pick it up easily and hand it to him—at which point he’d have to let it fall to the stage because it was too heavy for him. Another guy was the lion tamer, and she turned the girl next to him into the lion, who kept growling as he cracked his imaginary whip in the air—well, you get the idea.

Then she turned to me.

She explained to me that I was the ringmaster and it was my job to keep the audience interested in the fabulous circus acts in front of me and that if I didn’t succeed the circus would have to fold and so I had a big job to do. Then she told the volunteers that the more I announced the more enthusiastically they would perform. Well, stranger, I’m actually not much of a public speaker but never in my life have I been quite so eloquent as I was during the next few minutes, directing the public’s attention to my acts and reminding them that this circus had performed for the crowned heads of Europe, and pretty soon that stage was hopping! You never saw a bunch of people making bigger fools of themselves and enjoying every minute.

And then, suddenly, she shouted, “STOP! FREEZE!” and damn if every one of us didn’t turn as stony still as if old Medusa had looked us right in the kisser. I don’t know about anybody else, but I couldn’t have moved without her permission even if the theater had caught fire. And while we were frozen like that, she gave a little talk to the audience about the wonders of hypnotism, and then turned to us and explained in a reasonable tone that we had had a wonderful time on the stage tonight, that we love to being hypnotized, that anytime in the future that she saw us she could put us back under with a snap of her fingers, and that each of us knew that she was their best friend whom they adored. She added that after the show, none of us would remember what we had done and would assume our friends were teasing us when they told us what fools we had made of ourselves. We would go home feeling good, go straight to bed, fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow, sleep all night and wake up feeling wonderful and only then remember what a great time they had had in her show and what they had done and how much they admired her and wanted her to hypnotize them again.

I don’t remember the walk home or getting ready for bed. That time is just a blank but I ended up right where she told me to be . I didn’t sleep all night, though. At some point, something woke me. My bedroom was filled with moonlight, and damn if I didn’t see a dark shape on the ceiling that turned into Madam Morpheus herself and that shadow descended slowly until she had me pinned on the bed. “Look me in the eyes,” she said. “Don’t look away. Don’t look away. You can’t look away.” At this point it was deer in the spotlight again, of course. “You belong to me, you will always belong to me, you will think of me every night and you will be ready for me when I come back.”

Now stranger, you seem like a man who has been around and knows what the world is like, aso I can tell you the part of the story I don’t tell to ladies and children and I hope it won’t shock you but the fact of the matter is she just about devoured me in that bed and put me inside of her and after a while she came so loud that you would have thought the Bangor Limited was running through my bedroom, and then she snapped her fingers and I came so hard I just about lost consciousness. I mean, I was seeing stars and hearing bells. And after a minute or so she touched me on the forehead and said, “sleep!” And I did. I didn’t wake up for a long time—not until late enough in the morning that they’d stopped serving breakfast at the diner, and when I came out people will begin to ask me what it had been like and some of them laughed and laughed at me, which of course made me very proud.

But here’s a funny thing: they told me that after she had sent the volunteers home, she gave a lecture about hypnosis and put the Mayor in a trance, told him he was stiff and rigid like a board, and stood on him. And by that time the 10:42 to Montpelier was due in, and she went to the station (followed by a bunch of admirers) and got on that train and rode it away round the bend and that was the last anyone saw of her.

Now you and I know that can’t be true, right? Long after 10:42, she’d been in my bedroom driving me pretty near out of my mind. I remember every moment—the moonlight in the room, the smell of her perfume, the weight of her as she glided down from the ceiling and landed on me, and—well, you know the rest. Not only that, but when I looked at the newspaper that day, it said that the moon was not full—in fact, it was the dark of the moon. You and I know that’s not possible either, because the moonlight filled that room—it was so rich and thick that I could have floated away on it if she hadn’t pinned me to that bed. And as you can imagine, I wanted her to come back and float down from my ceiling again.

So, anyway, that’s how I started fishing here in the front window of Hunter’s Mercantile. After that night, it’s the only thing I want to do. Old man Hunter doesn’t mind, because I’ve gotten to be a local sight. People come all the way over from the next county to laugh at the crazy man fishing with a bamboo pole and a string dropped into a washtub. And when they laugh at me I feel proud, because she told me I would feel proud. I feel what she told me to feel and I think what she told me to think. I remember what she told me to remember and I’ve forgotten what she told me to forget. Why would I want to think for myself? Like she says, obedience is freedom.

Now I am sitting here every day because one of these days she’s going to come back to town and she’s going to find me sitting here just like she told me to and I just know she’s going to take me away with her on the 10:42 to Montpelier and it’s all going to be worth it.

Meanwhile, like I say, there are worse ways to spend my days than fishing here in the window of the Mercantile.

What’s that you say? Do I catch anything? Sure I do.

You’re the fourth one today.

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