The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Ok hon, one second and we’ll get that all wrapped up for you.”

“Thanks,” Moira answered softly. She wondered if the older woman could hear the weariness in her voice.

The diner was as nice as you were going to get in a one-horse town like this, but that still left plenty of grease on the tables and the counter. Mottled red-and-white tile coated the floor while bright yellow curtains framed the windows, drawn back to show a view of the town’s main road and a shared parking lot, complete with a boarded-up mechanic’s shop that was covered in graffiti from some ambitious teenagers. It wasn’t where Moira would have picked to eat, but after living on yogurt, carrots, and granola bars for the last few days, she and Emily were getting desperate for a hot meal.

She stepped back from the counter after ordering their food to go and took a moment to stroll around the diner. The main items of decor were old black-and-white photographs of loggers from back when the town was supported by a lumber mill, tracking all the way back to the early 20th century. She looked at those men, sitting on enormous felled logs of oak and pine, posing with their axes in one of the too-few breaks in their work. What a different country they had known than the one that currently saw its most dedicated civil servants on the run.

She had drifted to the back of the diner, where the oldest of the pictures hung unappreciated, when her hackles rose.

“Excuse me,” a voice drifted from the front of the diner. “I was wondering if you could help me.”

Moira was not a spy nor a thief, but instinct made her turn her back anyway. She eased over toward a frosted glass wall separating the front of the diner from the rear dining room, where she felt like she could get a safer peek at the counter.

There he was, right there, in the flesh. Devin Cavenshaw. The man who she was sure had started this whole mess. If she hadn’t known it before, she definitely did now. What the hell else would he be doing in small-town Virginia if not looking for his wayward conquest?

“Sure thing, hon.” The portly woman who had just taken Moira’s order wiped her hands on her apron and opened to Devin with genuine country charm. “What’s the trouble?”

“I’m looking for my little sister. We were supposed to meet up somewhere around here, but I forget where and my phone is dead, so I can’t call her.”

“Mm hmm.” The waitress’s tone matched her pursed lips, both saying ‘I’ve seen it all.’ She had a woman’s natural wariness of a strange man come calling. “I’m afraid I don’t know. What’s she look like?”

“Petite, olive skin, dark hair cut really short, like a pixie cut. A little point to her chin. Very pretty.”

The waitress’s frown deepened. “Is that so. Despite what you’ll see on the TV, we don’t get many folk around here talking about their sister being pretty.”

Devin’s expression darkened. “You don’t have to be like that. I’m just looking for a little help.”

“If I see someone like that, I’ll make sure to tell her that her ‘brother’ is looking for her.” There was a touch of sarcasm there towards the end.

Devin narrowed his eyes consideringly, then cast his gaze around the diner. Moira hid, though he didn’t have a good angle on her either way. What he did see were the dozen or so patrons of the diner who were doing a bad job of pretending not to notice the strange, well-dressed man causing trouble at the counter. Finally he dismissed whatever he was thinking and stalked out the door.

Moira waited until he was across the parking lot before she came around to the front of the restaurant again. The waitress, greying and hardbitten as she was, managed a look of sympathy for her. “I don’t suppose you got a big brother, do you hon?” she drawled.

Moira shook her head, worried. She didn’t know how Devin had found them, but he had. He was clearly no reporter; lump that in with all the assumptions about him that were bullshit. He did have means and ambitions that she couldn’t guess at. She had to get herself and Emily out of this town as fast as possible.

Things had been going much better since three nights ago, when Emily had crashed back into the hotel room after their big fight, naked and panicked and dirty. She seemed to be undergoing some kind of detoxing process, only there were no drugs in her system that they could think of. Nor could any drug produce the effects they were seeing.

“I’m sorry,” Emily had said for the thousandth time, looking at herself in disgust in the mirror. She’d been wearing a plain white t-shirt and sweatpants that Moira had bought at a local store, the only things she knew would fit Emily without the luxury of trying them on. “I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, or you. I just wanted to be with someone, you know? It’s always been my favorite thing, hooking up with boys. With men. That’s how I got through school for god’s sake. And I like it.”

“Did you really?” Moira countered. She’d learned that asking questions was better than making direct statements. Then she could guide Emily where she needed to go. “Can you think of one time that you hooked up with someone for a better grade? Or for special treatment? Or for a pageant win?”

“All the time. Whenever I could.”

“No. Name something specific. Tell me about it. All the details you can remember.”

That had brought Emily up short. She’d tried and tried, but every time she named off a professor or a boss or anyone else, she stopped short, realizing that she didn’t actually remember when or where they’d gotten together. It was just a vague sense of the memory, not the memory itself.

They’d both been confused by that, Emily most of all. Moira couldn’t guess what had gotten into her system to scramble her mind like that, but it was potent. Chances were that without Moira’s stubborn guidance, Emily would never had caught on to the fake memories at all, or the fake desires that came with them.

Moira had linked Devin Cavenshaw to those changes and brought it up to Emily. The timing worked out, as did his odd behavior in the office. But Emily hadn’t wanted to hear it. She was convinced that Devin was her friend and only wanted the best for her. Moira had eventually given up on that; going after the source would have to wait until Emily was closer to normal once again.

Looking out of the plate glass window at the front of the diner, though, Moira realized they might not have that kind of time. Not here, at least. She had to get back to the hotel and get Emily out of here before Devin found the end of whatever trail he was following.

“You want some help? Sheriff ain’t but twenty minutes away,” the waitress offered.

“No, thanks. I appreciate it, but I’ll manage.” A sheriff would start out by talking to Devin, and Moira suspected that talking to Devin wasn’t a good idea for anyone’s health.

The waitress shrugged and disappeared back into the kitchen. Help was one thing, but butting in where you weren’t wanted was another.

Moira looked around the restaurant and quickly spotted what she was looking for: a lean bear of a man in a plaid pullover, enjoying a massive plate of sausage and eggs by himself, a trucker hat on the table next to him. Moira slid in across the booth from him. He looked up mid-bite, surprised.

“Howdy,” he said around a mouthful of sausage.

“Hi,” Moira started. “Could you help me?”

He swallowed. “Maybe.”

“My ex-boyfriend is stalking me. I’ve been trying to get away. He found me here, I don’t know how, and I don’t think I’ll be able to leave without him seeing me. I need him out of commission.”

The man looked where she pointed, to Devin out in the parking lot, talking intently on the phone. “Had a falling out, did you?”

“You could say that.”

He chuckled to himself. “I don’t know what’s going on with this town, but I like it.”

Moira didn’t know what he meant by that, but it was a good sign. “I have money.”

“Not the kind of payment I’d prefer, but makes sense that’s what you’d be set on.” Moira was glad for that. She wasn’t about to prostitute herself for a bodyguard. “Tell you what. I’ll finish my meal, then go put him on the pavement. Once that’s all said and done, you can pay me and get on the trail. Fair?”

Moira nodded, as did the trucker across from her. Her attention wavered between Devin and her new mercenary for a painful couple of minutes, waiting for her companion to finish his breakfast at leisure. Devin didn’t leave, though, animated as he was on the phone.

Finally the big man laid down some cash for his food and stood up. “Stay here,” he instructed Moira. “Won’t take a second.”

He swaggered out the front door and into the parking lot. It was an overcast day, and everything had a greyish pallor to it. The big man’s plaid shirt contrasted against both Devin’s black suit and the slate color of the parking lot.

Moira had feared what would happen if her agent talked to Devin. She needn’t have worried. The trucker walked right up behind Devin and sucker punched him in the back of the neck. The phone at Devin’s ear went flying as Devin himself ricocheted off of his Maserati. He crumpled to the ground. For a moment Moira was afraid he might be dead. Her hired gun certainly looked like the kind who could kill with one punch.

That must not have been the case, though, as he gave Devin a swift kick to the stomach. The big man was saying something, but from this distance Moira couldn’t tell what. Devin didn’t try to rise, but just lay there, a hand snaking into his pants pocket. The big trucker pulled back for another kick. There was a brief whining sound, like a jet engine powering up, only at much lower volume.

Stars exploded behind Moira’s eyes. She leaned over the side of the booth and vomited on the floor immediately, dimly aware of the sounds of others doing the same. It was like the world’s worst migraine had suddenly taken hold of her. She crumbled out of the booth, crawling on all fours. She couldn’t see, tears filling her eyes. She couldn’t hear, the world numb to all sound. She wondered if her eardrums had ruptured.

Painfully, she crawled across the tile toward the back door of the diner. All around her, the other customers and staff groaned and wept in their seats, or on the floor. Some of them were begging an unseen listener to make it stop. Moira couldn’t think straight, but even in this state she knew that wouldn’t help. Whatever this was, she had a suspicion of where it was coming from.

With gritted teeth, she pulled herself up on the edge of the counter. The whole world seemed wavy, as if she was in the middle of a mirage. Out in the parking lot she saw Devin rise from the pavement holding his gut. The trucker was flat on his back, writhing in pain like everyone else. Out in the road, several cars had crashed.

Devin kneeled over the big man and yelled something that Moira couldn’t hear. Even through the pounding in her head, she knew what must be happening. Devin was questioning the trucker about why he had been attacked. That would point back to Moira in the restaurant. That meant that any second, Devin—apparently unaffected by the madness pulsing through the area—would be in here looking for her. She had to get out.

Moira summoned every bit of strength she had and stumbled toward the rear exit of the diner. She shouldered her way into the kitchen. The line cook was flat on the tile, the skin and sleeve of his arm smoldering from where he had braced himself against a gas burner. Knocking dishware off the shelves, she lurched through the room and out the loading door in the back.

Every step she took made the pressure in her head minutely easier to deal with. She picked up speed. There was wetness on the side of her head. Blood, running out her left ear. The rear parking lot sloped down to a dry creek bed. She hobbled to it and kept walking, careful not to fall on the uneven stones that surrounded her.

She didn’t know how far she had to run, but she kept going. It was a couple of minutes before the migraine truly subsided into something that was merely excruciating instead of incapacitating.

She ran farther.

It was twenty minutes before she finally stopped. She was in excellent shape, but even so she was a mess, exhausted from her mad flight away from the diner. She didn’t know what the trucker had said, or even if he’d said anything. She didn’t know if Devin was after her. But she couldn’t take any chances.

She arrived at the hotel an hour later, having circled around through the woods, taking care not to be seen by anyone. It pained her; she wanted to get to Emily as fast as possible and warn her about the danger. But she wouldn’t do anyone any good if Devin caught her first.

At the edge of the hotel’s parking lot, she surveyed the scene. That Maserati was nowhere to be seen. All the cars were ones she recognized from the previous night. There was no sign of alarm anywhere.

Moira took out her cell phone and dialed the hotel’s central number, then hit the extension for their shared room. A moment later the phone picked up.

“Hello, this is Jessica Lovis,” Emily’s voice said.

Moira breathed a sigh of relief. It was the fake name they’d worked out in advance if anyone called or knocked. Emily wasn’t under duress. “Emily, it’s me. Start packing up. We’ve got to go.”

Emily had come a long way since being dragged out of her office days before. She didn’t argue. “Ok. I’ll get ready.”

Moira hung up and walked briskly across the parking lot, making her way to the room. She wished she’d had the forethought to call earlier, from the woods, but she’d been so scrambled that it hadn’t occurred to her that she could.

She found Emily already mostly packed, her flimsy clothes stuffed into her suitcase. Moira was already packed up. She went to grab her suitcase, then cursed as she stumbled and stubbed her toe. She grunted in pain and frustration, shaking her head to clear it.

“What happened?” Emily asked, all business.

“Devin’s here. He’s looking for us. It’s time to leave.”

Emily froze, fear on her face. “What’ll happen if he finds us? Do you think he’ll try to… do something to me again? Mess with my head?”

“Seems likely,” Moira barked. She stuffed the last of her things in her bag and grabbed the car keys. “Let’s go.”

They made it out to the car in record time, eyes peeled for any sign of trouble. In a flash they were out the driveway and onto the main road, heading sound. Moira would call the hotel later and say that they’d checked out.

Emily wrung her hands in the passenger seat. “How did he find us? What does he want?”

Moira explained the scene at the diner. “He definitely has some way of screwing with people’s heads. Whatever he did when he was attacked was like a bomb. I don’t know, a psychic bomb. I could barely move. What he’s been doing to you has to be like the pocket knife equivalent of that.”

Emily nodded, clearly concerned. “It’s so bizarre. I liked him so much when he met. I can’t believe he’d want to hurt us. It can’t be true.”

“He just put that in your head,” Moira countered. “He’s not your friend, not really.”

“He’s such a good guy, though. You don’t know him like I do. He’s really smart and caring and he just wants the best for me. He wants the best for everybody.”

Moira grimaced. Devin had really gotten to Emily. He was in her head and planned to stay. At the very least she had to hand it to him; it did take someone really smart to pull all this off.

“Where are we going to go?” Emily asked.

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to ditch the car at some point. Buy a new one. We’ve still got enough cash from my accounts to float for a while. If we could somehow get your family to wire us some money, that would go a long way.”

“Of course. Once we can figure out a safe way to do it.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Moira ran one stoplight because she didn’t want to stop, and ran another because her agitation made her just miss it completely. She was still feeling some lingering effects of that psychic bomb.

“Devin said something to me the other night,” Emily broke the silence. “When he was at my place.” Moira hated the idea of that man violating her friend, but she bit her tongue. “I just remembered it for some reason. He said he only wants the best for me. He said that I can trust him, that we can all trust him. He wants us to be happy and he knows what’s best for us.”

Moira looked sidelong at Emily, who was gazing out the window at the countryside like Rapunzel out her tower window. She didn’t know where her friend was going with this. “Ok…”

“There was more.” Emily made a show of remembering, tapping her finger on her chin. “We can all just relax and not worry about things so much. We spend so much time relying on ourselves, but sometimes we just need to find someone who can handle things for us. And he’s that guy. We don’t have to worry when he’s around, because he’ll take care of things. He’ll tell us what needs to be done.”

Moira listened carefully, trying to suss out the point behind all of this. The scenery shot past in stark contrast to the understated tone of Emily’s words.

“Emily, Devin’s trying to change you. He’s trying to turn you into something you’re not. Something… dark. Weak.”

“But see, that’s my point! It’s ok to be weak. It’s ok to not know what to do. He’s there to help. He just tells me what’s best and I go do it. It’s like I’m his, what do they call it, the mafia. His enforcer. It’s great. It’s so great just to be told what’s right and what’s wrong, and then go with it. You don’t have to think for yourself. You don’t have to worry. Just listen to what Devin says. You can trust Devin.”

“You sound really sure of yourself.” Moira was surprised by that. The last couple of days had been one of the most trying times of Emily’s life. Nothing had made sense, her mind mixed-up goop of emotions and ideologies. Now, though, she was speaking with the deep-seated confidence of a priest. That had to be a good thing, right?

“I am sure, Moira.” Emily squeezed Moira’s hand, a friendly gesture that helped peel away some of Moira’s stress. “I’ve never seen so sure about anything. I hope at some point you can see it, too.”

In a strange way, Moira hoped the same thing. As bizarre as Emily’s recent transformation had been, there was something enviable about the kind of confidence and joie de vivre that had come with it. With the exception of the first few days of their flight from Washington, she seemed impervious to the stresses of the world. She was every bit as dedicated to her chosen mission as she always had been—albeit with a seemingly different mission—but now she actually seemed happy to be pursuing it.

Had all that come from Devin? Moira had had no trouble of thinking of Devin as an evil man, manipulative and greedy as they come. In her imagination, he certainly was all those things. But here he was actually making her best friend, the woman she admired most in the world, happier even as he worked whatever twisted wiles he had on her. Had that been necessary to his plans? Or was filling Emily with this perverse joy something he had done as an act of benevolence?

And if it was, could he really be so bad?

Emily was still prattling on about how great Devin was, and Moira listened attentively, trying to pick apart the logic in her friend’s analysis of her great benefactor. It would be great to have someone like this mythical Devin around; anyone would be lucky to have someone like that, who always looked out for them and helped them become their best self. Moira wasn’t so sure anyone like that could exist, but Emily certainly did, and she had the edge of experience with Devin.

“You know what?” Emily declared. “He could probably just tell you better himself.”

A red flag popped up in Moira’s head. “What? No, Emily, he’s who we’re trying to avoid.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding. Devin is a good friend, he would never want to hurt us.”

That was probably true. People as a general rule didn’t want to hurt others for no reason. Did that mean that if Devin was trying to hurt them, he had a good reason? “No. We can’t do that. We’ll get help from someone else.” But if Emily was right, who would help them better than Devin?

Emily echoed her thoughts. “No one knows what to do better than Devin. We’ll call him and talk to him, and he’ll help us figure all this out.”

Emily reached into the back seat and grabbed Moira’s phone out of her purse, then started dialing. Moira looked at the phone, her face pinched in worry. “Emily, this is a bad idea.”

“It’s a great idea, Moira. You know you want to talk to Devin. He’s the best man I know, and he’s the best man you know, too.” The phone started ringing. “Doing what Devin tells you to do is always the best idea.”

Moira didn’t have a rebuttal for that. Emily had great judgment, and she couldn’t be wrong about something she felt this strongly about. Moira was glad they’d have an opportunity to listen to what Devin had to say.

“Hey you!” Emily bubbled into the phone. “Sure, sure, we’re fine. We’re just pulling into a roadside motel, the Briarside Inn. Just a few miles from where you got punched earlier. Ok, great, see you soon!”

Emily pointed off the road as they were about to pass the motel she’d mentioned. Moira got the hint and pulled in, parking right near the front office. It was a cute place, done up in a faux-log cabin style. A carved wooden black bear guarded the entrance. Now that Devin knew where to find them, this was this place to be.

In mere minutes they had a room near one end of the motel. Emily was happier than Moira had seen her since they left Washington. She practically gushed about how great things were going to be now that all her favorite people could finally spend some quality time together.

“You’re going to just love Devin once you get to know him,” she assured Moira. She opened up her suitcase and started selecting an outfit from the skimpy, colorful offerings that had been the only options in her closet back home. She ditched the plain t-shirt and sweats with relish. Underneath, her lacy bra and thong were out of place after the lounging apparel. “Hell, you’re going to love him the instant you see him. You’ll just love him.”

Moira had never had that reaction to Devin before, in their brief interactions, but she trusted Emily. “I’m sure I’ll love him,” she agreed, mostly just to reassure her friend that she was on board. She was having a hard time standing up, so she lounged in the room’s single armchair instead of matching her friends exuberance.

Emily took a break from changing clothes and came over to crouch by Moira. Her tone softened. “Hey, listen. I know you’ve been worried about him, but there’s no reason to be. He’s amazing. He helped me learn all these great things about myself. I’m sure he’ll help you, too.”

“You really think he’d want to help me, after what I did?” Though her vision was a bit blurry, she noticed that Emily had something in her ears. They looked like hearing aids.

“Absolutely! He told me so when we were talking earlier.”

Moira blinked, slow and heavy. “Earlier? Like, on the phone?”

“No no no, silly.” Emily went back to her suitcase and held up a skirt for consideration. “When he came by the hotel this morning, while you were at the diner.”

A dull alarm rang in Moira’s head. Devin? With Emily this morning? But that would mean…

“What did he tell you, Emily? This morning?” There was a distant feeling of something like betrayal, but it couldn’t come from Devin. He was a good guy. And it definitely couldn’t come from Emily.

“Oh, we had a great talk. His friend Maddy helped him find us. He was really worried about us, you know. We talked about why I ran away and how you must have been feeling and how silly he’d been not to make friends with you, too, the way he made friends with me. And he made me promise that I’d try to talk some sense into you today. And I did! I wasn’t sure if I could, but he said it would be easier if I had his spare cell phone on me. I guess he was right about that, too!” She sounded so proud of herself. “I’m telling you, it was great.”

Moira reflected on that. All of that sounded totally reasonable. Good communication was the key to fixing up the kind of misunderstandings that they were experiencing right now. Simple, mature discussion was the difference between adult relationships and childish ones. If Devin had gone out on a limb to settle the disagreements that he and Emily had been having, then he really was a stand-up guy.

“I’m so happy for you,” Moira told her friend.

“I’m happy for us,” Emily countered. “Now you can be friends with Devin, too!”

Moira did feel happy about that. Sure, Emily had been going through a strange phase that started alongside her friendship with Devin, but surely that wouldn’t happen to Moira. She was quite happy with her own sense of style and her own moral compass. Maybe Devin would even see reason about some of the suggestions he’d been giving the Congresswoman.

Everything was going to be just great. Moira agreed about that. She felt very agreeable overall today.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

TO BE CONTINUED…