The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

It was the first real session of Valerie Joplin’s mind-control survivors’ group since Joyce had lost her family.

Anita had gotten there early, but so had everyone else. Valerie had arranged it at a new meeting place, a yet-be-leased conference facility in an industrial park that was still “growing”, and didn’t mind someone paying for the space. Anita hoped Valerie’d found an angel to cover the cost. It was too easy to think of her dipping into her oft-raided savings to buy them a safe huddling-place for an evening.

The entire group had shown up tonight. They all needed to know. No one had seen Joyce or even Valerie since it happened; they’d apparently gone underground, aside from some cryptic messages to Valerie’s friend Marlene. For some, it was their dependence on Valerie, and though they’d borne it without complaint, they’d missed her badly. But most of them were there for loyalty, to show Joyce and Valerie, and each other, that they were all for one and one for all.

Joyce’s old Mistress had taken her daughter, and left her husband’s tortured body on her hallway floor for her to find.

It braided together the oldest fears they shared, the vengeful owner and the strike at loved ones, and the guilt at Thank god it wasn’t mine made them pray more intensely that Joyce find her daughter Amanda in time. Before the Mistress turned Amanda into someone else.

Anita had discussed the rumors when she met with some of the others now and then. More now than then, lately: no one had the nerve to claim Valerie’s role and call them all together, but they all needed the company and came together more frequently. They worried about their friends taking on an enemy this dangerous and real. They told each other it wasn’t a TV show, that it was very risky.

They wished they knew how to help, or were brave enough to try.

Some had, apparently: Joyce’s young friend Kit and the newest woman to join them all, Sheila, whose discreet but unmistakable passion for Kit had given everyone something to gossip warmly about. Couples weren’t uncommon in the group, and love was something everyone here prized more highly now than before. The “Twins” had dropped out of sight, too. Everyone cheered for them and worried a lot.

Now everyone waited, and a few distracted themselves with the puzzle of why this one thought that one was bringing the snacks. Signals had crossed somehow. It seemed too absurd to be an issue at a time like this, but most of them knew how draining things could be even in the midst of friends and comrades: blood sugar was your friend, too. And it just felt better to share food as well as words.

Oh, well. They’d ordered out before. One or two of the die-hard optimists thought that might mean there was very good news coming, special-occasion feasting news. Anita wasn’t superstitious, much, but she wished they hadn’t spoken aloud.

She wandered over to where Marlene had discovered a neat feature of this facility: a whitenoise generator built into the sound system, which could help secure a room against eavesdropping. It was impossible to tell whether it was on, and neither of them could puzzle out the instrumentation. Anita got dizzy trying to decide what sound was ambient and what was actually coming from the machine.

But that was all the distraction the whitenoise generator appeared to offer, so she wandered off again.

Valerie and Joyce finally arrived, with Sheila and Kit in tow. They looked grave and tired, though Valerie seemed even more frayed than Joyce. Everyone gave them room, but a few tried to talk to the Twins.

Anita tried talking to Kit, remembering a big, friendly athletic girl whose sensitivity to others sometimes made her hurt as much as they did, but now Kit was closed, distant, almost hateful. Anita felt cold as she thought of what happened to soldiers in war, and wondered what Kit had seen, or had to do, as she helped look for Amanda. What she might have had to tell Joyce. How much she must detest the . . . Mistress.

Anita thought of embracing her, not even trying to speak anymore, but something told her not to.

She heard someone gasp, and saw Marlene looking across the room at Joyce. Anita looked, too, at Joyce standing there, calm and poised, and saw what Marlene did. Joyce was not celebrating, and she was beyond uncertainty now. She knew. There would be no good news.

Amanda was gone. Whether that meant dead or brainwashed, she wouldn’t be back.

So they all knew now, but no one did anything. Anita felt her throat tighten, glimpsed others barely keeping themselves under control, but she heard no weeping. She stood straighter.

Even now, Joyce was holding them together, with the bearing of a gracious princess. No one could lose it now, not when Joyce herself carried grief like that. Women began to approach her now, but it was not a rush of keening mourners. They came alone, quietly, sometimes not even speaking, just making themselves known to her, drinking a little of her almost inhuman serenity.

Feeling abashed, Anita went to Valerie instead, finding her similarly insulated by the other women’s deference, in her case at her obvious exhaustion.

But more approachable. “You look like you could use a week in bed,” Anita ventured when she came near. Valerie glanced up at her with an odd expression, and smiled.

“A week in . . . bed? So could everyone here.” Anita wasn’t sure if she meant sex, but it sounded like something else. Whatever it was it was harsher than Valerie had ever been before. Then her expression softened, and she looked into Anita’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Anita. It’s been very, very hard.

“But I’m so glad you all came for us. So glad.”

Anita touched her shoulder and Valerie covered her hand, her flesh feeling almost feverish. Anita worried for a moment if Valerie had come down with something in the stress of looking for Amanda. “Can we do anything?”

Valerie’s eyes seemed to focus, and her smile widened. “Yes! Yes you can. If you can help Sheila get the refreshments out of the car, that would be great. We figured that people might not think of it with all this.”

Suddenly thrilled to have a role, Anita leaned down and hugged her. Valerie hugged back tightly, and Anita’s heart leaped as she felt that Valerie, no matter what, was still strong and still in control. Yes. They would make it. They would all make it.

Stepping back, she almost saluted, basking in Valerie’s smile, and wove through the others to find Sheila. She found her with Kit, and riding the encouragement from Valerie she didn’t mind that the Twins’ body language was distant too, not as if they’d broken up but as if they barely knew each other.

“Valerie said to help you unload the car,” she said, and Sheila nodded, brushing her hair back. She looked at Kit. “Valerie has spoken, lover. Let’s go get it.”

After they had everything inside—suddenly the workforce grew as other women seized the chance to help—Anita found herself agreeably crowded out of playing waitress and took her bottled water and bag of crunchy things to sit next to a couple of the others. Rabbit food in a while, she told herself. Need preservatives now. She watched someone try to bring Joyce something, saw Joyce’s calm refusal that still left the other woman feeling good for having offered, and looked away while her eyes were still dry.

No one did much of anything except munch and schmooze for a while, but Anita admired Valerie’s instincts: after a while everyone seemed so much calmer, and the emotion in the room had subsided without a big, draining cloudburst of tears. That might still happen, Anita thought, thinking too that she may have caught some of Joyce’s serenity, but for now they were together.

“Everyone?” Valerie called softly.

Anita looked up. Joyce was sitting by the side wall of the room, nowhere near the front, so it was unlikely Valerie was going to address Topic A right away. Sheila and Kit were still bustling quietly away near the snacks table, but Anita was content to leave them to it. So were the other erstwhile helpers, she saw, grinning to herself. She finished the water quickly, but she was still thirsty. After a prudent trip to the adjoining bathroom (she could get used to meeting in conference facilities) she got another one, smiling at how many of the others seemed in the same fix. The tension was . . . flowing out of them more gently then she’d expected.

Valerie waited until everyone was back sitting down and looking.

“There’s something very important that we all have to face tonight. It’s painful, and frightening, but we can do it because we’re all here together.” She lowered her voice and looked out at them, and grew paler, as if she were frightened, and Anita felt the warm ripple as every woman there leaned forward, trying to will their courage to her. “Are you with me?”

“Yes, Valerie.” The massed whisper hit harder than a shout. Valerie seemed to shake as it touched her, and closed her eyes. They were nearly glazed when she opened them.

“Thank you. All of you. It really . . .” She looked over at Joyce for a moment. “I need you to know this is only possible because of everything we’ ve all been through together.” Valerie closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Because you trust me.”

2.

. . . wait. No . . . wait . . .

Anita’s sleep was uneasy.

Partly she was uneasy about sleeping at all. She tried to work out why, but she couldn’t really seem to think. She tried to open her eyes.

Her eyes were open.

But she was asleep . . . She felt a deep need to sink deeper again, to forget this attempt at thought. More than a need.

A compulsion.

A desire. Her pussy felt it. Behind it was a warm, blank feeling of well-being, and she knew both the blankness and the little kisses of joy would continue as long as she . . . stayed . . . asleep.

She was asleep. She was dreaming. She dreamt of Valerie, standing in front of them all, smiling. No, leering, her eyes alight, almost mad.

And beautiful, in a way Anita didn’t think herself capable of seeing another woman.

Anita was uneasy again, and from a place inside her that was much closer to the surface now than usual, she drew a ration of stronger fear and paid more attention.

Valerie was there, and there was a very large TV next to her, with a pulsing . . . dark . . . compelling . . .

Anita closed her eyes. There was a rhythm still booming in her head, and it almost swayed her to open her eyes and look again, very deeply. But the fear was stronger now, and it kept the seductive joy at bay long enough for her to know the rhythm was a sound, separate from the image that even now pulled at her, softly demanding that she open her eyes and . . . just . . . look . . .

Anita fought her lethargy, reflexively at first and then with vague alarm as she realized how deeply relaxed she remained. Something was wrong. She felt more and more that she was in hideous danger and just couldn’t see it coming.

She needed help. She thought of Valerie.

Valerie had been talking to them about something, as they all sat comfortably around. Something about relaxing instead of resisting. Anita had found herself falling into the pauses, waiting for Valerie’s soft, almost-whisper to stroke her again. She glimpsed the others around her, all still and listening, and felt safe, as they all relaxed and listened to Valerie.

Forget your weakness, forget what your body couldn’t do, forget your body, forget yourself . . .

No . . . wait . . .

She couldn’t stay asleep.

Not asleep.

Hypnotized? (pleasure pleasure pleasure)

Valerie was hypnotizing them? So strange . . . Why? Something Valerie had found to strengthen them all? Fighting the hypnotists with their own weapon. Valerie wouldn’t hypnotize them in order to harm them, so it must be something . . .

But Anita’s thoughts were too sluggish now for anything like devil’ s-advocacy, and the little jolts of joy were tickling her mind out of any train of thought it tried to form. She dropped straight through to disbelief.

Valerie would never hypnotize them at all, without asking.

So what was this?

Around her, she saw the rest of the women all staring up at Valerie or sitting quietly, asleep.

When she looked back at Valerie, she tried to speak, but the pleasure was back inside her, and it had her now even as she tried halfheartedly to fight it, making her soft and damp and compliant, as if it were an abusive lover who still knew just . . .

The room lights.

where

The room lights were blinking.

to touch her

It was brighter now.

to make her want to

“Remember when you were controlled.” Valerie’s voice was strong, and her ideas slid easily into Anita’s softening, moistening mind.

“Remember submitting.” For this moment, Anita wasn’t afraid; she was turned on. The more she realized that she was being controlled now, that Valerie was subjugating her, the more it excited her.

The roaring was loud, and she realized it was a voice, many voices, coming from all around her. Without hearing words, she knew they were telling her to obey, to surrender, to give up her will.

Valerie was telling her to remember how wonderful it had felt when she’d been a slave.

Anita obediently began to remember.

Painful death.

It was what her first Master had almost done to her. That was what submission meant to Anita.

It was the fear reservoir she’d been tapping since the trance had started her remembering her slavery, even before Valerie’s hypnotic guidance. It was enough of a shock to make her close her eyes, writhe in her seat, groan loudly enough that for a moment she couldn’t hear the seductively calm voice.

The pleasure came back but Master had used that, too, to control Anita into trying to kill herself, and the dread that carried was blotting everything else out.

She made it for another moment. She still needed someone to tell her what to think, but she was barely, just barely able to choose who . . .

She could ask Valerie. She knew beyond question that she could utterly trust Valerie. Valerie wouldn’t . . .

Valerie! What had happened to her in all this? Anita’s brain was operating so slowly, as though it had been shut off and had to start again at a lower speed. She felt so stupid. She forced herself to think, but it was still so hard, as the voices were telling her.

Screw the voices. Think.

There was something awful here, and Anita was so afraid when she knew that that she nearly fled it, gave up and accepted the strange relaxation. But something inside her, close to its limit but still working, wouldn’t let her. ”Think. It’s what no mind controller can bear for you to do.” Valerie had said that once.

Oh my god. Oh my god!

Anita screamed, a weaker sound than she thought she could make, but it was enough to rouse some of the women.

So very few of them . . .

She had all the allies she was going to have. She drew another breath and yelled. “We’re being brainwashed! Fight it! WAKE UP!”

It got them going, but no one knew where. They needed a leader. They needed Valerie, or Joyce. Anita looked around, and found Valerie up near the TV. She squinted to keep from being captured by its flicker, and Valerie obligingly moved away, looking Anita in the eye again.

She was smiling.

It was so reptilian that Anita wasted breath screaming again.

“Doors!” someone cried hoarsely, and in their places around the room the women who could still think turned clumsily. It would have been funny in other circumstances, and Anita felt a sudden urge to laugh, to see this pathetic effort for the farce it was—

She snarled to herself to drive off the lethal thought, praying no one else was snared that way.

Looking to see if anyone on her feet was faltering, she felt a breeze of horror on her skin as she saw so many of her friends sitting quietly, passively letting the flashes wash over them, flow into them. Not even aware of her and the others. Wide open and receptive . . . willingly mindfucked. Subliminally date-raped by someone they trusted.

Date-rape drug. She thought of the bottled water, of everything that Valerie had spent time making sure they consumed, drugging them for this, and was sickened.

She leaned down to the woman nearest her—Marlene, her face almost a stranger’s in its blankness, the dark hypnotic flicker from the TV reflected on and inside her eyes.

“Marlene!” Anita saw no reaction and grabbed her shoulders, finding her limp as a dishrag. She squeezed and shook her, blocking her from seeing . . . It. “Marlene! Wake up!“

Marlene stirred, and her wide eyes lost focus for a moment. She stared at Anita’s belt buckle, and then, slowly raised her gaze.

“Marlene!“ It was hard to keep the panic out of her voice. Marlene stared at Anita now, and her lips were moving. Anita watched them, and realized they were in a cadence with the roaring she’d been hearing. Trying to think was like sewing with numb fingers, and it took time. She watched Marlene’s lips.

Cadence. The roaring was the sound system. The “whitenoise generator.” Subliminal commands, atop the drugs and hypnotic suggestions. They were drowning Marlene’s will even without the TV image to focus her. Everyone’s will. Her own will, while she stood here gazing at Marlene’s lips.

Cadence. Marlene’s lips, in synch with the sound, were mesmerizing Anita as she watched. She shook her head and then shook Marlene again, who wasn’t even seeing her. Suddenly she felt an unreasonable anger, and it was easy to pull her hand back and slap her friend.

Regret scalded her instantly and Anita covered her mouth, but Marlene didn’ t react.

Marlene was lost.

Anita stepped back, looking at her. “I’m sorry, Marlene! God help me, I’ m sorry!“ She turned away.

3.

She’d wasted time. She closed her eyes as she turned away from the friends too deeply hypnotized to rescue now, as she left them behind, trying to use the tearing guilt to keep herself awake. She heard weak shouts.

The others had stumbled to a halt. Kit and Sheila barred the door, frighteningly outlandish in lewdly-cut black bodysuits and knee boots, standing stiffly like a pair of . . . robots. Sheila held some sort of evil flashlight, but it was their taut readiness, their bright-eyed strength, that took the heart from Anita and the others. The Twins were somehow already slaves, immune to the subliminal brainwashing, and they hadn’t spent the last hour tranquilizing themselves with doped snacks.

They looked ready to die, and more than happy to kill.

One of the women flinched and turned, instinctively seeking another way. Anita was grimly sure that any other doors would be very tightly secured. Three others followed her, but Anita couldn’t bring herself to try to stop them and force past the robotized Twins.

This was insane. Even drugged and more than half-hypnotized, the ones that were left should be able to overwhelm them. Before Sheila used that light, whatever it was . . .

Someone screamed.

Anita spun and almost fell from the dizziness, but she saw that another of the fetishistic robot-women had appeared from the side of the room, holding one of the

oh no god it was JOYCE

Four women had run from the door, and two of them cowered on unsteady legs as Joyce stared emptily at them. One kept calling her name, more and more desperately, and the look on Joyce’s face was so alien that Anita had to look away yet again. There were too many things here she couldn’t face. She couldn’t afford to go insane.

The other two women who’d run were oblivious to Joyce, now. They’d looked at the TV, and now they stood slackly and began slowly to pull off their clothes.

Sheila’s eyes found Anita’s, and by now Anita was paralyzed. She felt herself softening inside, and she lost the eagerness to flee, waiting. But Kit leaned forward and pulled the nearest woman to her, forcing her to her knees, and Sheila’s gaze swung to the nearer prey. She grinned and stared at the woman for a moment. The woman grew still, transfixed, and Anita suddenly realized she wasn’t as afraid for the woman as she should be.

She envied her.

Sheila leaned down and said, slowly and voluptuously, “Sleep and obey!” She and Kit grinned fiercely at each other as they watched the woman slump limply when the command hit her brain.

Anita fought guilty arousal, and turned away, looking back at the room.

She gasped.

During the slow-motion standoff at the door, the rest, the women who’d succumbed, who’d been continuously hypnotized since it began, had stood, stripped, and now waited like statues, still gaping at the TV. Before she thought better of it, Anita looked to see what it showed now, and saw only a glimmering darkness. She couldn’t decide whether it was spinning. Receding. Blinking. . . . and . . . knew she couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . .

More effort, just to let her head droop. It was harder now to manage to evade the mesmeric attraction, harder to keep in mind why she should bother. It was starting to seem silly to bother. Not just silly, wrong.

She looked up, somehow turning her head away from the TV. The sight of her friends mindless and naked was erotic enough—she found herself fixating on one plump blonde whose name entirely escaped her, who stood gazing calmly at the dark image that was flattening her mind.

Fighting the urge to follow her gaze and find peace and meaning in the same place, Anita came up with something else: she knew this woman, knew her name and must remember it. They were already losing their identities, and their selfhood with them.

Beth Anne. That was her name.

“Beth Anne!” she called out, more to keep herself focused on it than to reach her, but she was still demoralized when Beth Anne ignored her.

Sheila didn’t. Anita saw her out the corner of her eye as she turned back, having walked from the door past Anita, apparently thinking she’d been hypnotized at last and just receiving commands. Sheila smiled at her, and unlike Valerie’s leer before it was hideously genuine, a pretty woman greeting a good friend.

“Not behaving,” she said pleasantly. “You’re the last person in the whole room who isn’t obedient to Mistress.”

“She will be,” said Kit as she took hold of Anita from behind. Anita shivered as she heard that she was the last. Or was it hearing “obedient”? She pulled against Kit’s grip, but more because she knew she had to than because she expected to free herself. Kit didn’t seem to notice.

“You’re lucky she’s holding you up,” Sheila commented, “because as sleepy as you are by now you’d probably just fall right . . . down . . . to the floor.”

Anita shuddered as the drowsiness hit her. She felt the warmth of Kit’s face against the back of her head as the taller woman leaned down and nuzzled her from behind.

Kit spoke, and Anita felt it dance on her skin, hum through her skull. “Tell her my eyes are hidden now.”

Anita repeated it without thinking, feeling like a soundboard and exulting in the mindlessness.

Sheila nodded and winked at her. “Good girl, Anita.” She raised the oversized flashlight and pointed it at Anita’s eyes. “Close them anyway, slave kit.”

Anita saw a flash.

Anita stared at a painting. At a corner of a painting. She knew she had to look at just that, and was trying to feel that it was unfair that she wasn’t allowed to look at more of it. But she was losing her grip on what the point of that was—what the point was of doing anything but what she was told.

She realized that she didn’t care what the painting was. She just wanted to look at the corner.

“Turn.” The corner disappeared from her mind as she obeyed. Joyce stood in front of her. Sheila and Kit stood at attention side by side behind her. All three were completely nude except for their collars.

“Undress.” Joyce’s voice was low, reasonable. Anita realized how much she needed to obey her voice even as she began to take off her blouse and slide out of her jeans. She barely heard the cloth hit the floor, and even the sound of her belt and jewelry was muffled.

“Submit to them,” Joyce instructed her, and walked away. She looked at the other two, who came over to her. Deep inside she felt afraid, but had nothing to connect it to. Their touch as they took her bra and panties relaxed and excited her at once. They took her arms gently and just led her.

It felt nice.

Anita was practically sleepwalking. She had no idea where she was, and where she’d been—a meeting room?—was dimmer by the moment. She tried to think, to reclaim her mind, but she couldn’t concentrate. The only thing that reached her in the trance was the warm knowledge of the nude women guiding her, controlling her. She wanted to feel them against her own skin, the clean-limbed muscularity on one side, the voluptuous softness on the other.

No . . . they were for each other, not her . . . weren’t they? But what kept her from trying to touch them was just the delicious passivity she was feeling. Easier to relax, accept, submit.

They were helping her settle onto a couch or a bed she didn’t know they’d brought her to. The shorter, softer girl whispered to her, telling her that she would be still, that she would enjoy everything that happened, that she must obey.

Anita whispered it back: “I will be still . . . I must obey . . .”

It pleased the girl, and she told Anita she was good slave material. Anita almost cried again. The taller woman was fitting her head with various attachments, which were all very comfortable.

Then, the Voice. “Just lie still, little one. you are obedient to Me, now, but I will bring you deeper. you will give yourself to Me.” Anita felt the wonderful promise, wanted to beg for it now, but the passivity was over her.

Pretty lights began to pulse in her eyes, and the Voice to whisper in her ears, and between deep breaths she was gone.

4.

. . . Anita stood naked in a room, in a line with half a dozen other women. She was posed and comfortable, showing off the lines of her body. She ignored what was in the room, and couldn’t have said what sort of room it was, or where she was, but had no worry about it either. She looked at the others on display, and was glad to be put with such pretty women.

Brisk clicking of bootheels on tile, and she watched Kit and Sheila stride in, still in their sleek costumes. They led a pair of men and a woman into the room, and they looked at the nude women with interest.

“We understood bidding wasn’t until later,” said the woman, looking at Anita. She quivered.

“No, Lady,” said Sheila primly. “Mistress wills that the bulk of the catch be left as free-range stock. Otherwise the disappearances would be unmanageable. She has not opened bidding on this lot. These are all owner redemptions, like yours.”

The woman looked at Sheila, plainly trying to reconcile the crisp attitude with the sex-toy outfit. One of men with her looked equally confused, but was more forthright. “How much are you?”

Sheila looked distantly pleased. “i am sorry, Sir. i am not included in the resale lot. Do you wish to make Mistress a separate offer for me?” Anita began to breathe faster as she watched.

He looked at Sheila for a long time, and raised a hand to hold her left breast, kneading it gently through the soft lycra. Sheila stood still, breathing more deeply but still evenly, smiling just as gently back at him. He dropped his hand. “I don’t think I could afford you,” he said huskily.

Turning abruptly to two of the nude women near Anita, he snapped, “Fine. So here they are again.” They stared at him placidly, a pale girl with the well-knit body of a swimmer and a zaftig caramel-skinned woman. Anita knew they must have been on the same kind of couch she’d been on, looking at the pretty lights.

He glared at the woman. “When we get them back home, this time I set the dosages. I don’t like paying finder’s fees for my own damn property.”

She glared back, and then turned to Sheila. “How long before they’re ready for us to begin treatment again?”

Sheila stood straight and closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and smiled. “They are ready now, Lady. You can begin reprogramming them whenever you wish.”

A cough from the other man drew his companions’ eyes to him. “I want to hear them scream.”

The first man sighed and the woman reached for the pocket of her long coat.

“Sir?” Sheila stepped delicately toward the first man, her face wreathed in eagerness. “If i may?”

He gestured, less gracefully than she, and she walked to stand in front of the two nude slaves. Raising her hands, she snapped her fingers in front of their faces and stepped back again.

Anita watched her two companions awaken and look around. She watched them focus on the three new people.

Only the swimmer howled, a lost animal sound that made Anita flinch at the noise but left no other feeling in her. Except . . .

The darker girl made no noise, but her mouth was open, and she shook as though she were being electrocuted. Anita was bothered by how the soundless scream distorted the woman’s friendly round features. And . . .

When the man who’d coughed nodded, the first man nodded to Sheila, who beamed at him and stepped forward to touch each woman on the cheek. Anita heard her murmur “Sleep now,” and she watched them sag where they stood, as though Sheila’s hand were what kept each of them on her feet.

Leaving them back in their trance, she turned to the man. “Sir, we can provide clothing for transport, if—”

“We have some in the cars,” he said. He kept looking at her. “Damn. I wish I could afford you.”

“Thank you, Sir!” She had the bright impersonal joy of any service worker, but he seemed to believe it.

Sheila spoke softly to the slaves, who looked blankly through her and nodde d. Then they followed their owners out. Anita blinked, and finally it turned over in her mind.

Master would be here. He would buy her back from Valerie.

She closed her eyes, imagining how she’d feel, if she could feel, knowing that she’d told Valerie everything she could remember about the bastard. Enough to find him, convince him, talk business.

Whatever they’d done to her under the pretty lights wasn’t wearing off, and she stayed calm, but it was a bottled-tranquilizer sort of calm: she knew how frightened she would be, but didn’t feel it.

Yet.

Anita tried to review. Master had thought he’d gotten rid of her. His last command to her controlled mind had been to kill herself, and she’d done her best. Would he pay, as the . . . people . . . just here had paid, to recover her? Wouldn’t he just—?

Leave her for someone else to play with? Someone who knew enough to contact him?

Right.

Anita tried to rationalize. But there was no way. If Master had refused to buy her back, she wouldn’t be here with the “resale lot.” She wondered where else she’d be instead, imagining wretchedly that she might prefer it there. No. He might find it worthwhile to pay for her, just to kill her himself, but he was coming.

She wondered how long she had to live. She didn’t dare wonder how she was going to die.

Maybe he’d leave her in this half-trance, and get it all over with quickly.

No. He’d told her to entomb herself alive in a construction site. Master was not about getting it all over with quickly. He’d conditioned her but left her conscious: he liked nonconsensual scenes, and he liked not having to work around restraints and their mountings.

I’ll try not to scream, she told herself.

And then he was there.

He swept in, all in his black, seeing her immediately. Sheila and Kit came purposefully behind him, and Anita felt absurdly safer with them there. She stood rooted, feeling him look her up and down.

“Is she ready?” he snapped without looking at them. All business, Master, and always ready to treat menials by their station.

“Yes, Sir,” Sheila said, so submissively that Anita would have thought she was mocking him, if she weren’t suddenly so aroused at the way it sounded. Then she caught herself thinking of Sheila as a free woman, entitled to her own reactions to people. Sheila was probably programmed to mold herself to whatever the customer did, with Kit to protect her if it got out of hand.

Anita caught herself having morale, and her shoulders sagged very slightly as she remembered, again, what was happening.

Master said, “she’ll respond to triggers?”

“Yes, Sir. i just need to disable the handling controls in her mind, and she will be yours.”

“Handling controls?” Master was quite particular with his methods. He’d once shown Anita the story he’d posted on the Web, describing how he’d enslaved her and broken her. “I specified I didn’t want any of that ‘full service’ nonsense!”

Sheila seemed to come more to attention, staring up at him in wide-eyed earnestness. “Yes, Sir! Your instructions were very clear. Mistress programmed me Herself to execute them. This was only a light indoctrination to keep her docile while she was moved. We did not implant any articulated command sets.”

He shook his head. “Just dose her with—oh, never mind.” He seemed to remember he was arguing with a hypnoslave. “Turn her on and let’s get on with it.”

“At once, Sir.” Now she came to stand in front of Anita, and smiled up into her face as she reached up to touch it lightly. Despite herself Anita responded, and found Sheila’s eyes to be a wonderful place to rest: not deep hypnotic pools engulfing her, but sun-warmed shallows to wade in.

“This man is your Owner, anita. When he touches you, you will remember that you must obey him. There will be no thought in your head but that. you will lose all desire to do or think anything but what you are told.

“you will remember how it was when you obeyed him before. you will be that way again. you will be that way for the rest of your life.”

Anita quailed at that, but in the trance Sheila held her in, it was a quick twitch and breath. She couldn’t even tell if Sheila noticed.

The rest of your life. Anita was losing her coherence again, but she could still wonder which meaning of that phrase scared her more.

Sheila was stepping away, and Anita felt desperately bereft of her touch and scent, her voice.

Master grasped her neck.

She was in his hands.

5.

Master had taken her from whatever place the others had brought her to give her back to Him, accepting the clothing they’d provided. Dressed like a whore in a glowing lime minidress and anklestrap CFM shoes, Anita had clung to him as they left, not even able to tell if it was a bar they were leaving so she’d look halfway normal acting that way.

It was only after the car had started moving that she realized that she didn’t want to look normal. She wanted to look different, insane, in danger of her life. Like someone needed to intervene. Or call the cops.

She tried to look out the window, seeing only darkness under the glow from a nearby city. What city? What night was it?

She felt so displaced. Her pussy was damp, and to keep the juice from the Lexus’ upholstery he made her sit on a plastic sheet that irritated her skin. Her arousal was the way it had been before, before he’d tried to make her die and she hadn’t, but the fear was stronger. She didn’t know whether he knew it, whether he could tell why she was panting and sweating, or whether he cared.

Sheila’s voice had told Anita that it would all be the same, and since her obedience to Sheila’s voice was automatic, she believed it. Her submission to Master was the same.

But it wasn’t.

He was going to kill her or hurt her very badly, and she vaguely remembered a time, long before any of this, when she would have called that wrong, but more to the point now, as she floated along, almost giddy with the helplessness, the fear was growing. It was as if the old proportions had shifted, and the drift of pussy-daze she’d spent weeks lost in, before, would now be the rare reward to keep her hooked, and the frightening interludes with the toys would become her lot until . . .

She remembered the day she’d tried to bury herself alive.

With his last instructions pulsing in her brain she’d gone to a construction site before dawn, stripped nude, and crawled into one of the hollow spaces in a concrete shape that would be part of the foundation in a few hours. Feeling the cold, almost polished inside surface against her skin, her knees almost up to her chill-stiffened nipples, she slipped on the ball gag and then manacled her wrists and ankles. There was no key.

In her head, Master laughed, and between her legs the imagined sound made her moist. He’d linked her fear to her arousal with uncharacteristic precision, and the more she writhed and tried to think of a way to call for help, tried to build enough resolve to crawl or roll her way back out, the more she slipped into the orgasmic haze that made all that seem pointless. Master had kept her aroused and sleepless for longer than she could reckon to weaken her for this, and she was just too horny to pass up the false promise of imminent climax to focus on trying to stay alive.

Anita never asked what had made the construction worker come down and look inside. Master had programmed her to hide the discarded clothes in a dumpster and she’d obeyed that command to the letter, so she couldn’t credit her subconscious with leaving them out as a clue, some covert action on her own behalf. Whatever it was, he’d gotten over the shock of the naked woman in handcuffs and the pussy-scent spicing the air in the little space where she curled in her irons, and he’d even tossed his vest over her before calling his buddies down to help.

Master had so thoroughly trained Anita that it took her almost a week in the hospital to figure out what that simple act had meant about how people could treat her, and then it took her a day to stop crying about it.

. . . don’t bury me again . . . please not till I’m dead . . .

Anita realized they were pulling down a side road, but couldn’t tell whether it went through trees or fields. She’d let time slip by, and wondered bitterly whether she’d miss those minutes or be glad she’d let them go.

There was a building, a cabin, in the headlights. Her heart sank. He wouldn’t need a building if he were just going to kill her. No. He’d want a place to keep what he’d paid good money for. A place to play with it.

She whimpered. She couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud, and he sounded so sane she would have cried, but she was sliding into shock. She wasn’t sure whether he’d followed her train of thought or just liked hearing her whine, and now she didn’t know if she cared. Her higher brain functions seemed to be trying to escape her head before—whatever it was—happened.

“Stand straight,” he said, and she was getting out of the car, deaf to the noises of the country night, standing and not collapsing only because her Master commanded her to, in a tight eager whisper though they were entirely alone out here. She obeyed when he ordered her to the cabin, and waited for him to open the door.

Inside it was bare and stale-smelling, but there was a fireplace, its flames rearing up in the draft as Master impatiently shut the door, swearing when it took another push to close and stalking to another room for something. When there was no command from him she instinctively moved toward the warmth.

There were things near the fireplace.

She looked away from them before she could be sure. Don’t think don’t think don’t think . . .

He told her to strip, and didn’t wait to watch, moving to the fire. She peeled the dress off quickly, getting more frightened. He hadn’t been this way until the end, when he’d decided to get rid of her. He’d already targeted another girl, and Anita wished she could look back on at least trying to warn her, but she’d just cowered as he’d gone on about how the other girl would serve him better.

Then she realized he’d probably taken that girl, used his drug-induced hypnosis, and . . . maybe he’d gotten tired of her and sent her somewhere to die, orgasming her life away. He might have another girl now, maybe even a harem.

He didn’t need Anita as a sex slave.

Don’t think don’t think don’t think . . .

It worked. More time had passed. Master told her to sit on the high-backed chair in the middle of the floor, and it stayed rigid as she did. It was bolted down. Oh no. Loops of leather hung on either side of the wooden seat, and he told her to slip her hands through them. The loops were loose, and didn’t bind her.

His voice did. He used an old obedience trigger, and she gripped the leather, unable to let go.

She quivered, feeling the thrill of being his puppet, thinking of how she was dripping onto the porous wood she sat on. She watched him turn away to the fire. Turn back. Come toward her, around the table between the chair and the fireplace. She looked away from the things on the table.

He had to use both hands, since it was nearly a foot long.

It glowed orange, and even backward she could read it.

FUCKWHORE

She gripped the leather and held still as she’d been told. His programming was still there, as every body-level spasm toward flight warped itself into humping herself against the seat, and her mind flickered toward the joy of letting Master do whatever he wanted.

He paused, inches from her. She knew. He wanted her to ask him for it.

She took a breath full of burnt metal, and waited for the pleasure to betray her.

But the fear was working too well, and her jaws clamped shut. Part of her knew this was insane. She needed to run let go of the chair and get the fuck out of here right now right now but he was still waiting, not moving until his slave obeyed her programming and begged to be branded, once the pleasure, his pleasure, ate the last of her will from the inside like a worm.

But his pleasure was weak. It had been bothering her since he’d taken her back.

She yearned for the pretty lights, for the intensity of obeying the Voice that had taught her. For making beautiful little Sheila happy with her. For the dream-climaxes that had gone on for days. That was pleasure. That would make her worship and obey. Valerie’s pleasure.

Compared to that . . .

A balance tipped inside Anita’s head. The orgasmic high fled her body with frightening speed, and she was a ball of panic. She almost curled back in the chair and used her still-tight grip to lever herself to kick at him, but an island of thought in the sudden flood of panic told her no the iron will burn you. She held still, shaking, staring at him, her jaws welded into one.

He saw something happening to her, and backed away to put the iron back in the hearth before dealing with it.

Anita didn’t scream, quite, but she never knew what the sound was. She was deaf to it as she came up off the chair and drove herself against the table, throwing it over and slamming its bulk against Master as he tried to slide out from between it and the fireplace. His mouth might have emitted a command, but Anita could neither hear nor understand speech.

Master didn’t make it, and Anita couldn’t tell how much of the sound he made was rage and how much was pain. All she could think was

door

Not locked. She tore her hand on the bar as she ripped it from the hooks. Opened.

Anita ran.

6.

“Do they fit?”

The sheriff’s deputy still looked sidelong at her, as if she were still as naked as she’d been found. Anita nodded, remembering to smile faintly over the top of the coffee mug she nursed. “Yes. Thank you again. This really helps.” She squirmed a bit in someone’s spare uniform, lent to her by one of the female deputies.

Her smile softened, widened, almost became real as he turned away, clearly finding her fetching in the oversized clothing. At this point, she found his tentative sexual interest charmingly normal.

She felt sleepy, and after the last few . . . whatever it had been, feeling the need to sleep from simple fatigue was almost a novelty. It didn’t strike her as funny at all. She still had a lot to do. She had to destroy her life before the sun set again, and that might be stretching it.

Anita felt sorry about lying to all these nice people.

She hadn’t been thinking of cover when she finally collapsed, and the people driving home from shopping had seen her skin against the dark ground on the highway verge. She was still in shock when they bundled her in the new down comforter (guilt about that pricked at her, but little else did) and drove to the police barracks.

Shock soon gave way to very grim calculation. She dearly wanted to sink to the ground and sleep, and being pampered in a hospital was tempting, but in her core she knew she didn’t dare.

For now, she felt free of everything. The adrenaline rush felt as if it had nearly killed her, but it seemed to have washed everything else away for now. Master was a dead spot inside, the pleasure and the terror just ash. The other, Valerie’s pleasure . . .

Anita was wistful, but she had no desire just now to fall back into the other woman’s hands. She was lucky they’d only given her “handling

controls”. Like an expired temporary user’s password to her free will. Maybe she could rely on her own mind, for now. What did they say? If you can still worry about being crazy, you’re still sane? Maybe if the mind control really lasted . . . she stopped that, before she thought about control that lasted.

What worried her was getting into the bureaucratic system as a victim again. She’d been there before, after the construction site. It made her easy to find, and she had no idea who was looking for her.

Valerie had friends in the police. How long had she been planning this?

As Anita recovered, more quickly than she let on, she figured out what she had to hide, and composed her tale for when she was ready to talk.

Nothing about the group. She didn’t think anyone would have called the police. Something Sheila had said during the first purchase about Valerie not wanting to draw attention.

Nothing about Master. She hoped he wasn’t riffing on Jeffrey Dahmer and sheepishly asking cops and ERs about his “overexcited sex partner”. She wondered if his triggers might still work if he did track her down, to hypnotize her again in a crowd of cops, draw her to him smiling and then leaving. Less said, less chance of seeing him.

Not a carjacking, because her car was either at the office park or somewhere one of Valerie’s slaves had driven it.

The deputy listened gravely to her story of being abducted at gunpoint from the courtyard of her apartment building, driven out here, stripped and robbed, and running away while the abductor had his pants down for the next step. She amazed herself by agreeing to the rape kit, too, just to ensure she hadn’t traumatically forgotten something, and when he realized what they ‘d just said, he apologized. He took down the description of someone she’d seen on a persistent repeat of Profiler and the girliest non-description of a car she could think of, and he was a very good sport as she tried lamentably to describe the spot she’d been driven to.

Now and then, Anita found herself believing it, and had to suppress how good it felt to manage something well. Even if it was lying to the sheriff’s department.

Then Deputy Klein asked to speak to her. Anita looked up at a young woman who seemed to have stepped off a recruiting poster, wholesome and active, and all sorts of thoughts went through her head. The least odd was She must last forever in bed.

The worst was Has she ever met Valerie? Been alone with her?

Klein was talking to her about the availability of help and services, earnestly trying to convince her to seek it if she needed it. She was about to explain that she hadn’t actually been raped, when she realized that Klein was talking about mind control.

The male deputy looked at her too, and she couldn’t tell if he were curious, horrified, or horny as he wondered if she’d been a victim.

“It doesn’t usually come up out here,” Klein said. “But we wanted to be ready, in case someone decides we’re a quiet part of the county, a nice place to do that.

“There’s a woman we usually refer people to. I can put you in touch with her.”

Anita thought very fast. A simple No might work, but what if they decided to check? Were there rules on what consent meant when they thought free will was compromised? If she needed “intervention”?

If she answered wrong, they could bundle her gently into a cell and call Valerie.

If she said No too vigorously, they’d be certain she was brainwashed, and they might even tie her down.

For her own good. If she started raving about Valerie Joplin being the queen bitch mind-enslaver, god only knew . . .

If Valerie got her back, would she sell her to Master again?

To someone else, who just—wanted to hear her scream?

No, to convince them, Anita had to do something else.

She suddenly remembered her second meeting at the survivors’ group. It was someone else’s first, Janine’s, and a couple of the others brought her forward after a break. Without any ceremony, she told her story, dry-eyed and precise: hers had been a pair of her high-school students. The details sounded fairly mild, but then it usually did at first, when someone else was describing it.

But when the others nodded, shared experiences of their own, asked questions, she suddenly burst into tears. “You believe me! You believe me!” It was all she could say for a long time.

It had wrecked Anita too.

“Mind control?” Anita asked Deputy Klein now. “Saw it on that show, the ones claiming someone made them go out and work the streets. Hypno-hookers or something?

“I didn’t believe them.”

Klein frowned. “It’s something real, Anita. Very real and very

dangerous.”

Anita swallowed. If this turned into an issues discussion, fine. It would stop being about her own head. “Look, I know there are lots of points of view.” She swallowed again, trying hard not to see Janine. “But I think that stuff is blown way, way out of proportion. I don’t know why. It’s just another excuse people have.”

She saw the deputies trade a look. The man’s face was closed now, and Klein looked back at her.

It was easy enough to be conciliatory. “Look, I’m sorry. I know there may be some people who really do—”

“That’s OK, Anita,” Klein said matter-of-factly. “I was wrong to insist.”

Everyone was polite, but Anita knew she’d just burned her bridges with these two. She didn’t dare think about how much she could have said if things were different. How two string honest allies like that . . .

It almost caught up with her then. She almost let herself soften and open up to them, tell them how thoroughly she did believe. Not belief: knowledge. She almost asked them for their help, as the memory of Janine’s face pierced her clean through and she needed, so badly, to think of going back and saving them, Marlene and the others. Even poor Sheila and Kit.

Joyce . . .

But she knew they’d say anything to calm her down, forgive the put-on skepticism she’d just hidden behind.

Then call Valerie.

No.

They’d have to dislike her if she were to have any chance of making it. They said there’d be a car in a bit, to take her home to town, and left.

Alone in the empty office, Anita fought the need to cry. She risked a short prayer to her friends: Sisters, please forgive me. I didn’t deny you three times but I denied you. I needed to do it to live, and I think I’ ll have to do worse.

I do believe you. All of you. I love you.

Then she stopped, and sat down to wait for the car, and began to plan what she’d need to take from her apartment in a few hours, when she left her current life forever.