A Cure For Clinginess
By AbolethLasher
Part 2
I was caught in a tug of war between my guilt and my curiosity. The experiment had been successful, but I knew if I had more nights like last night, I’d be able to get it to do way more than suppress memories and alter mood.
In the end, my guilt won out. I didn’t use the machine again the next day, or the day after that. For a whole week, I actually managed to talk myself out of using the device.
Luckily, I had managed to recharge with my one personal day, and being with Ariel didn’t feel smothering like it sometimes did when she got really clingy. We just hung out, watched shows together and fucked every night. It wasn’t half bad.
But then Tuesday rolled around and Ariel was outraged to learn I had made plans for a guy’s night that night. She was insisting that I either take her with, or cancel and spend the night with her.
I’m not proud of myself, but I did tell her I would cancel. I asked if she’d be willing to help me with a quick diagnostic test with my device before we settled in and watched a nice movie together.
She was all too eager to help out, so soon she was in the helmet, and looking up at me with those big, happy eyes of hers.
I considered giving her the exact same commands as last time, but I remembered being forced to sleep on the couch. I decided to go a different route. The commands I typed this time translated to:
FORGET You are my girlfriend.FORGET Your obsession with me.FORGET Your emotional dependency on me.FORGET You love me.MOOD Happy
This time, I’d let her remember we were friends with benefits at least. She’d remember fucking me in the past, and hopefully that would mean I could swing sleeping with her tonight.
When the bar reached 100%, gone was my adoring, obsessive girlfriend Ariel, and in her place was my friend and roommate Ariel. She had no problem that I was going out with my friends tonight. In fact, she was a little confused by the fact that I ran it by her one more time.
“Why would I care who you’re meeting with, Joel?” she said, shaking her head. “It’s none of my business.”
The night out with my friends was fun. We did bar trivia, and got second place.
All through it, they were teasing me about Ariel, and wondering where she was.
“I’m surprised she let you out for the night,” my buddy Frank said.
“Oh, she’s not that bad, guys,” I insisted.
They all exchanged knowing glances.
When I got home, it was late, and I went to the bedroom.
I knocked.
There was shuffling inside, and Ariel answered the door wearing a hastily thrown on robe. I could see hints of her underwear peaking out beneath it. God, she looked so sexy in that moment.
“Hey, Ariel,” I said. “I just got back from trivia, and I was wondering if you were up for a little roll in the hay tonight?”
She considered it for a moment, before sighing and shaking her head.
“No, Joel. I’m just not in the mood tonight, you know,” she said, wrapping her robe tighter.
“Oh,” I said. Somehow, I hadn’t considered this possibility. She fucked me practically every night—I sometimes wondered if she had a stronger sex drive than me sometimes. “Well, do you want to hang out for a bit at least? Talk.”
She smiled at me.
“Alright, let me through something a little less revealing on, and join you in the living room,” she said. She closed the door, and soon emerged in a t-shirt and pants.
God, on a model like her, even that looked incredibly sexy and enticing.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “What have you been up to, recently?”
Ariel paused for a second. “You know, I can’t remember doing a whole lot recently. Just work, I guess.”
“Well, what did you do tonight?” I asked.
Ariel lit up. “Oh, it was actually a ton of fun! I called Sally up, and we talked for hours! I honestly can’t believe I haven’t seen her in months! We used to hang out all the time.”
I shifted uneasily. Ariel had spent less and less time with her friends ever since she started dating me. I was Ariel’s top priority, and she had let her friendships wither on the vine for the past few months.
Ariel shook her head. “That reminds me! You’re not going to believe what Sally said to me. Come on, guess!”
I shrugged.
“She said that she and I hadn’t been hanging out because I’m totally in love with you!” Ariel said, giggling. “Can you believe that? I mean don’t get me wrong, you’re amazing in bed. But I’m so happy I can do this no strings attached thing with you, and not catch feelings, you know? Like, it’s so nice to have something uncomplicated, after all my fucked up relationships.”
It felt like a slap on the face. I know why she was saying it—my device had erased her memories of course, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. She was talking about our relationship like it meant nothing to her. Like it was something she could stop and start on a dime.
Ariel looked at me concerned. “I didn’t say anything to hurt your feelings, did I?” She bit her lip.
“No, of course not,” I mumbled. “We’re just friends with benefits, like you said.”
Ariel shifted uneasily. “Joel, you remember what we said when we started this thing, right?”
I nodded. “If either of us catches feelings, we’ll tell each other—”
“—and then we’ll stop immediately,” Ariel nodded, finishing my sentence. “You don’t have feelings for me, do you Joel?”
I stared at her like a deer in headlights. In spite of everything, in spite of the clinginess and my own shady dealings with the device, I did love her. I was willing to work to make our relationship work. That’s what this was, wasn’t it? Trying to be there for her, by getting a little space for myself every once in a while. Setting boundaries?
I tried to make myself believe that’s what I was doing.
“N-no, of course not!” I said, unconvincingly. “I just consider you a friend, that’s all! You’re just a very sexy friend who I live with, and sometimes we fuck. Why would I want anything more with you?”
Ariel looked at my face, as if searching for something. Finally, she sighed and said. “Joel, I think we should take a break from this… thing we’re doing. I still want to fuck you, but I think it would do you a bit of good to cool down and have some time to think things over.”
“O-oh, okay,” I said. I was confused, but I wasn’t worried. If this was anything like last time, Ariel would remember our relationship tomorrow, and none of this conversation would amount to much.
“I’m going to bed,” Ariel said. “Don’t follow me.”
She stood up suddenly, and closed the bedroom door a little harder than strictly necessary.
I was left in the living room, sitting on the couch alone.
Oh well, I knew the drill at this point.
I was woken up by noise in the kitchen of the apartment.
I looked blearily around, and saw Ariel there, she was making a green superfood shake. I smiled, rolled out of bed, and hugged her from behind.
“Hey, babe,” I said, kissing her on the neck.
Ariel went rigid in my arms. She pushed my hands away, and took a step back from me.
“What are you doing?” she said.
I looked at her in alarm. “What do you mean?”
Ariel looked angry. “I wasn’t joking yesterday—we need to take a little break from the friends with benefits thing.”
I raised an eyebrow. Friends with benefits? Not boyfriend and girlfriend?
“I-I’m sorry!” I said. “I forgot.”
“Well, don’t forget,” Ariel said sternly, then her gaze softened. “I’m trying to be kind to both of our feelings here, you know. I’m sure you weren’t lying to me last night when you said you didn’t love me, but I need to be sure. And I want you to sort through your feelings as well. When we can both be honest with ourselves about what this is, I’ll be happy do roll in the hay with you again!”
My heart was beating fast. More than six hours had passed, and she still didn’t remember our relationship. Didn’t remember being my girlfriend.
I tried to remain calm. Tried to tell myself that I hadn’t used the device much on humans, and still needed to figure more about it out. My actual guinea pigs had had varying lengths of memory suppression as well—maybe Ariel was just taking longer than usual today.
“I understand,” I said, trying not to show how worried I was. “Why don’t we do breakfast together?”
Eating breakfast was pleasant enough. I like hanging out with Ariel, and without her being obsessed with me, it was like she was rediscovering some of her interests that didn’t involve me. She mentioned she was going to hang out with Sally tonight.
I nodded.
That would give me time to work on the device. Even if Ariel was stuck forgetting in her current state, I knew with a little bit of work I could force her memories to come back.
I went in for a hug, as I left for work, but she gave me a look, and I stopped midhug.
We left for work without hugging or kissing.
When I got back from the office, I went straight to my device. I poured through all the data from the two times I used the device on her, trying to learn everything I could.
I went back through the guinea pig data.
I found something interesting, that I hadn’t really noticed before.
It seemed random how long the guinea pigs forgot, but they tended to forget for two hours, give or take an hour. If we were scaling that to humans and thinking about the six hour duration for Ariel before, then maybe it was something like 12 hours give or take six hours? Which meant that I should be worried until 18 hours had passed.
I was worried anyways, but I continued to work experimenting on the guinea pigs over and over again and was finally able to find what I thought was responsible for the varying lengths. Sure enough, with the setting applied I could make a guinea pig forget a maze for exactly one hour.
Then I received a text.
Hey, babe <t3 Hanging out with Sally, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Wyd?
I smiled. Ariel was back.
And now that I had some control on the length of time, I could try to keep her amnesia from bleeding over into the next day from now on.
Just finishing up some work
I texted back.
I miss you, babe! I just told Sally that I was feeling tired, and I’ll be home in about 30 minutes.
I sighed. Ariel’s friendship with Sally would just continue to deteriorate if we stayed together, and she stayed obsessed with me like this.
That was the last thing on my mind when Ariel came home. The whirlwind of emotions was over. Ariel and I fucked like we usually did, and I was so thankful for every moment with her!
I knew I was going to need to learn the ins and outs of my device if I was going to keep using the device on Ariel like this.