The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Orrin didn’t provide much in the way of entertainment for his workers. He fairly evidently felt that given that half of us were charity cases he was doing his bit just by putting a roof over our heads and feeding us (or arranging for someone else to feed us), and so aside from setting aside a common area between the bedrooms where we could hang around and chat there wasn’t much he did.

Generally the room was about half full; given that we worked whenever we were needed, sleep patterns were a habit that we never really got into, and so anyone who was on call generally hung around there and chatted, played card or dice games, or read. A screen in one corner shows the interstellar news service feed for anyone interested, while another one on the main wall showed our rota or appointments and our overall stats based on reviews and service periods.

Else was sitting by herself reading when I finally managed to get out of the encounter room and make my way to the common area. She looked up at my approach with interest and shoved one of the chairs so that I could sit roughly facing her.

“So how did it go?” she asked.

I sat down, throwing my hands into the air in a gesture of exasperation as I did. I then had to put them down quickly; Orrin’s generosity in giving us the common area hadn’t extended as far as equipping it properly with furniture, and the chair was recycled from an old ship of some kind with mismatching legs welded onto it, so it never quite seemed to balance.

“Is there some kind of rule you didn’t mention about people not telling you what kind of review they are going to give you?” I replied. “Orrin didn’t even ask them, and when they were done they just got up and left. Actus’ captain said she was going to verify his review after all, but that’s all.”

“Uurak tend to be cagey about things like that,” Else admitted, pulling a package from beneath her chair and handing it to me. “Yours.”

“Thanks,” I replied, pulling open the packaging and starting to finish the remains of the meal I had been forced to abandon.

“In general customers don’t tend to give away what kind of review they are giving you,” Else admitted. “Partly you’re meant to be able to tell without needing to be told I guess. You did this... Hypnosis?” I nodded round a full mouth. “If you did that then I suppose the novelty value was high enough that no one would be able to tell. You’ll have to see when happens when they post the review.”

I swallowed. “How long does that take? You’ve had a verified one before haven’t you?”

“I’ve got two hundred reviews. Three of them were verified, but those were crewmates following up on what they had been told by their fellows, so they were just marking an existing review. Actus hadn’t placed a review in advance, so I have no idea how long it will take for him to enter it and then get it verified. Especially if... His captain?”

“Apparently,” I replied with a shrug and a lump of food in my cheek. “I didn’t exactly see a uniform to prove it or anything.”

“Well, you wouldn’t,” Else agreed. “But I did see Actus on his way out with someone a few wren ago; no uniforms, so I’m guessing a non-aligned merchant or something similar.”

“Is that good?”

“It might be, it might not,” Else replied with a shrug. “Non-aligned ones have a power of their own by the nature of being their own masters, but... That can be a two edged thing, because that can alienate the crews of aligned ships. You’ll have to see what kind of review they give.” She paused, her eyes drifting off to the side and I got the impression that she was actually nervous about something; I’d never seen her nervous before, so that was quite impressive. “How... How hard is it for you to do that? To hypnotise people?”

“Given how quickly Actus, his captain, and you all responded, I’d say fairly easy; almost alarmingly so. Why?” I asked, taking a bite at the final piece of pseudo-meat.

“It felt... Sin, I don’t think that you really understand what you did,” Else informed me. “You managed, with a few words, to get me aroused enough that I was worried about my ability to keep control of myself. I’ve had regular, experienced customers who took nearly a shan to get me to that state. I don’t know whether...” She scowled at me. “Part of me is getting excited just thinking about you being able to do that to me,” she informed me sourly.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to look apologetic and keep my balance on the wobbly chair at the same time. “I can promise not to do it again if you like.”

“Sin...” She sighed. “Unlike you, I’m resigned to working her for a long time. To me sex is just... It’s a thing that gets regularly traded for money. And I suppose... Every time I’ve been aroused...” She tailed off, scowling at thin air rather than at me this time. “Forget it; I need to work out what I’m feeling.” She turned away, shuffling her chair around so that she had a long-range view of the news feed and seemed to ignore me.

I waited a moment, and then gave up. Whatever was getting to her wasn’t something that she apparently wanted to discuss, and seemingly that fact precluded our normal conversations about each other’s worlds.

A bit confused, I turned to look at the news service feed. I still hadn’t sorted out in my own mind how I felt about it. It was a window onto strange things and new worlds, but... It was a news channel, and apparently the stuff that made it into the news hadn’t changed hugely from one side of the looking glass to the other.

Currently it looked like some kind of political scandal of some kind was being discussed. Hardly thrilling stuff at the best of times, and when I didn’t even understand the context of it, it didn’t help. I gave it a few wren, but nothing they were showing made sense.

I was about to head out for a walk, which was the nearest thing I had to a hobby at the moment, when there was a bark/ shout from the screen where our stats were shown. All of us looked around; such things are about the best form of entertainment that we had after all, and even I had fallen for the bread and circuses aspect of it without meaning to.

It was a couple of Gythen arguing by the looks of it; one male and one female. I didn’t recognise them beyond that I had seen them both around before and that their clothes showed that, like me, they worked for Orrin. I couldn’t make out what they were arguing about since they kept slipping between what sounded like French and German, using one of the strange trade languages that had turned up.

Not wanting to follow the herd and give into the cheap entertainment of watching people argue, I got up to go and was halfway to the door when someone shouted behind me: “You!”

I looked around more by reflex than anything else, wondering who was being shouted at, and found the male pointing at me and stalking over very determinedly.

“Me?” I looked around hurriedly in case I was standing in someone else’s line of fire, but apparently he did actually mean me.

“You,” he confirmed, coming to a stop just far enough away that I wasn’t feeling threatened by his proximity, but was definitely not happy with his attitude. He was a bit taller than me and in the slightly shapeless jumpsuit that we all wore didn’t look much bulkier, but there was a hint to his movements that suggested a lithe strength which I didn’t want to get too close to. In passing I noticed that behind the scowl he was actually quite good looking, in a pretty-boy kind of way. “You have taken my business.”

“Uh... What? We’re both in the same business, aren’t we?” I asked, unsure of what he meant.

“You have a verified review from two Uurak,” he insisted. “Uurak are my business.”

“I know I have a verified review,” I told him. “I don’t know what kind of review it is, they wouldn’t tell me.”

He growled at me, which somehow managed to not sound as silly as it should have given the over-large mouse ears and so forth, and lunged forward and grabbed the front of my jumpsuit.

I didn’t know how to react to that, or even if I should do. The situation made no sense to me, and was happening so fast that I was too confused to even try to fight back at this point. I stumbled forward as he dragged me closer, my hands scrabbling somewhat ineffectually against his as I haphazardly tried to get myself free.

Somehow, Else managed to insert her arm into the way, pushing me back a bit and facing him. “Darnael, you know the rules,” she said sharply. “No violence, or you pay.”

“He has already cost me customers,” the apparent Darnael snapped back sharply. “A verified review, of the highest praise, recommending him to other Uurak. How am I meant to compete with that?”

Else’s eyebrows went up at that, and I was a bit surprised. Verified reviews carry weight, but a verified review that carried a species wide recommendation..? “Just that?” I asked. “Nothing more specific?”

“They recommend you to all Uurak,” Darnael confirmed, leaning closer to my face and snarling each word. “I am merely recommended for those who cannot get into the Ebon Star Path. You are recommended even for those who can get in there,” he added with a bit of spittle.

“Darnael, he won’t touch them physically,” Else butted in before I could comment on that. Even she seemed to be hurrying to catch up with the turn of the conversation though. “If they want actual contact then they have to go to you. What he does is untried.”

“Untried, but successful enough to earn him a verified review already,” Darnael snapped back. “How many more customers do I let him take before I must say uncle?”

“You do the same as the rest of us,” Else told him firmly, shoving him back a bit as she did and breaking his grip on me. “You keep taking the customers you can get and hope for good reviews. Now be off,” she instructed him sharply.

He glowered at her, then snarled at me sharply before turning abruptly and stalking back across the room to the screen.

“What’s with him?” I asked, not risking taking my eyes off him yet in case he came back. My heart was beating hard and bits of me felt cold from the adrenaline rush and crash.

“He’s augmented,” Else explained, not moving back to her seat but standing by me and watching Darnael as well, though her gaze a bit more calculating and thoughtful than mine. “Penis and vagina for variety with customers, plus his arse; he’s good with Uurak because the augmetics can handle the physical stress better than regular skin can. So he’s effectively the only non-Uurak here who can regularly take Uurak as customers. Lor’talp don’t like augmetics like that as a rule, and Gythen tend to think it’s a bit strange, so he’s somewhat limited to Uurak customers.”

“And he thinks that I’ve taken them all off him?” I asked, slightly incredulous.

“Whatever you did with Actus was apparently good,” she replied with a shrug. “You make yourself scarce while I check the board,” she told me. “Be back here in a shan and I’ll see what I’ve found out, but no sooner; Darnael will need time to cool down.”

“I was going for a walk anyway,” I told her. “I’ll be back later.”

The bazaar ran down most of the length of South Pier, occupying the top three floors. It even had a skylight of sorts running that length as well, and if I’d been able to I would have tried to find somewhere to stand so that I could admire the view: it wasn’t much more than stars and the upper tiers of the Core, but it was the only view of outside that I had access to.

Unfortunately, standing around like that wasn’t an option; whatever time of day you were down there the bazaar was generally busy, with the stalls run in shifts by different members of the same family and the customers being anyone not currently working their shift. There wasn’t anywhere to stop and contemplate the view, and I honestly didn’t think anyone else would understand if I tried to explain the idea to them.

With the size of my debt I couldn’t afford to do much more than window shopping. Don’t get me wrong, a debt doesn’t stop you spending money up to a certain point: the only people who won’t accept payment from someone already in debt are the shipping and passenger companies who control your only way on and off the station. Everyone else is more or less in the same boat, with about half of the population working off some kind of debt.

I was willing to extend it a bit though; an idea had occurred to me while I had been walking to the nearest part of the bazaar, and I hadn’t managed to convince myself that it was a bad idea by the time I got to the stall.

It was a fairly cheap stall, run by an old Lor’talp who looked like he was suffering from multiple age-related conditions. His clothing was layered but ragged, apparently assembled around his huddled form from multiple sets of discarded clothing; I was fairly sure I picked up a flash of a similar red to what I wore in there somewhere, though the top layer was mostly the purple used by the station admin mob.

He looked at me blearily as I stopped and looked over his stock. “Well? Are you here to admire or to buy? I’m busy and I don’t have time for people messing me around.”

I smiled a bit at the crotchety old man routine; we’d spoken a couple of times and I was fairly sure it was just an act, but not sure enough yet to push my luck too far. “I’m buying,” I assured him, looking around for what I wanted. Mostly it was a collection of knickknacks and bric-a-brac that he or someone else must have picked up all over the station and then tried to do something with: bits of wire braided into a wristband were alongside a broach made out of dud LEDs and a tool belt made from crudely sewn material forming pockets.

“Oh? You’re paying with money I hope,” he said sharply, with perhaps a hint of a smile. “I’ve no need for your kind of services at my age.”

“I can afford it,” I reassured him, finally discovering what I wanted; he packed and unpacked everything in seemingly random orders whenever he set up his stall, so nothing was ever in the same place twice, and it had taken me a moment to work out where it was. “This,” I said. “It isn’t dangerous or anything is it?”

He scowled at me, then at what I held: wire had been stripped of its coating and braided into a long loop, and from it he had managed to hang a lump of some kind of crystal like rock.

“Why would that be dangerous?” he asked sharply.

“Not knowing where the rock comes from?” I suggested. “I’m sure some of the stuff here should have radiation warning signs on it.”

“Pah!” he barked a scornful laugh. “No, that’s safe. Dead crystal that came out of the computer systems after that crack-shatter a couple of weeks ago. Couldn’t even get any data of it to sell,” he added, slightly disgruntled. “Got a decent amount of stock out of that crack-shatter mind,” he continued more thoughtfully, gesturing at a few more pieces.

“Glad to be of service,” I muttered. “I’ll take this then. How much?”

We haggled a bit, more for show than anything I think, and I let him get a bit better price than he originally suggested; what can I say, I’m a sucker for charity cases sometimes. He took payment from me and told me to get lost so that his other customers could get at the stall. As I walked away I glanced back and saw him huddling down inside his layers of clothing once more, seemingly intent on sleeping the rest of the shift through.

I’d seen him a dozen times at least before now, and as far as I knew, I was the only customer he’d ever had.

My plan was vague at best, and suicidal at worst. It depended on a lot of variables that I couldn’t control, and a variety of things that were nominally under my control but really weren’t, such as my nerves and the butterflies in my stomach.

I assured myself that I wasn’t looking for trouble, or even for Darnael. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to come after me again; station policy on physical injury was firm and strict: the injuring party paid full payment for medical costs, full reimbursement for time lost from work, plus twenty percent, plus another twenty percent to the station. Given medical costs as they were, that could bankrupt someone fairly easily, and even out on the ends of the piers security was good enough to at least get an idea of who was involved in the trouble even if they couldn’t specifically tell who started it.

So I wasn’t looking for him, or hoping that he would jump me. I was still out for a walk, keeping clear of him so that he had a chance to cool down. And obviously I had just bought the necklace because it looked nice.

I could rationalise it all I wanted, but when I was wandering around a quieter area rimward of Orrin’s place and noticed that I was being followed by someone in a red jumpsuit, I was almost relieved that things were going to be resolved, one way or the other.

From previous excursions I knew enough to find an area where no one else would be around; half of this area was unused because it was technically an ablative armour section in case the defence systems didn’t hold off a big piece of space junk. No one wanted anything too vital being used that way, so everyone kept their distance normally, unless they needed to come out here.

Darnael caught up with me somewhat unexpectedly; apparently Lor’talp are cat-like enough to be quiet on their feet when they want to me. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, and then pushed me back up against a wall.

“Else isn’t here to protect you now, runt,” he hissed. Apparently cooling down hadn’t happened and he’d just had a pressure build-up instead. “So I’m going to tell you a few rules.”

“Look,” I said, holding my hands up in what I hoped was a peaceful gesture. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Then you do what I say,” he snarled back sharply.

I twitched my hand enough for the necklace to fall loose, the wire still wrapped around my fingers so that I didn’t drop it. His gaze flickered to it instantly, and he frowned.

“What is this?”

“This? Nothing,” I told him, not even managing to pretend to mean it very well.

He shoved me harder into the wall, banging my head against it a bit and making me wince. “Tell me what it is.”

“Okay, okay... It’s to do with what I did with Actus,” I told him, desperately forcing myself to slow down and sound calm despite the thundering of my pulse. “Just take a look at it,” I told him, holding it up so that he could see it. “Just watch it hanging there for a moment and you’ll begin to understand what’s so special about it.”

He was frowning, still holding me tight but a dubious gaze focused on the crystal. At this point, I knew that I was committed.

“You see, this is something special,” I told him, slowing my speech down even more and softening my tone into something calmer and more relaxing. “Whenever people look at it they find something special inside it... They just need to slow down, to breathe softly... Just to focus on the crystal...” He still looked sceptical, but his breathing was, without him seeming to notice, slowing down a bit. “And the more they focus the more people find that they can just relax and pay attention to the crystal properly... Making out all of the details... Looking for that special thing inside it...

“Just try to do that now... Take a slow breath in... Hold it... And let it out slowly...” Honestly, I don’t know if he was even conscious at this point; he was still scowling, but like Actus he seemed to be almost desperate to respond on some level and was already falling. I just had to hope that we weren’t interrupted before I was done. “Feeling yourself relax even more now as you take another slow breath in... Hold it... And let it out slowly... Focusing on the crystal as you look for that special thing inside it... Focusing on my voice as I show you how to find that special thing...

“And as you continue to breathe slowly... Focusing on the crystal... Focusing on my words... You might find that your body starts to go limp... Loose and limp... Just hanging there, held aloft like the crystal... Unable to fall, and unable to lift yourself...” His expression hadn’t changed still, but his hands loosened their grip and slipped down my front, falling limp at his side. “And it feels good to simply focus on the crystal and focus on my voice... So good to not have to worry about anything else as I guide to you that special thing inside the crystal...

“Feeling really good at this release... No tension... No worries... Just the crystal and my voice... And you can trust my voice to guide you down and to show you this special thing inside the crystal... Relaxing even more and feeling so good... Letting all of those good feelings come to the surface now...” His scowl shifted, slowly becoming a slightly silly lopsided smile. His eyes were a bit glazed over, and I was sure he hadn’t blinked in nearly a minute.

“Just letting me guide you along... All of your thoughts being shaped and guided by my words... All that matters is the crystal and my words... Everything else is just so far in the background it doesn’t matter at all now... My words shaping your thoughts immediately and instantly... So natural just to follow my words as they guide you to the special thing inside the crystal...

“And now you’re starting to get an idea of what that special thing is,” I told him, trying to make my voice a bit firmer. “You can see yourself inside the crystal... You can see yourself kneeling, waiting for instructions... And it’s so good seeing yourself like that... You get a really amazing feeling from seeing yourself kneeling and waiting for orders from me, don’t you?” He nodded slowly, and my gaze flickered down long enough to see that yes, he was indeed enjoying seeing himself like that.

“So how much better will you feel when you are in that position for real?” I asked.

He drew a breath in, seemingly about to speak, but all that emerged was a kind of soft, pleasurable moan. That would do...

“So go on now, get into that position,” I instructed.

He kind of flopped down to his knees, hitting the deck with them a bit hard but never taking his gaze off the crystal or even seeming to notice the impact. His expression was one of disconnected pleasure, not seeming to care about anything except the good feeling that he was getting.

“And now you’re down on your knees, watching the crystal, just like the crystal shows you that you should be, how natural is it to obey my instructions?”

“All that matters,” he said, slurring a bit. “Crystal and your words...”

“That’s right, they are all that matters. And they matter so much that even when you are fully awake and can’t see the crystal you are going to obey any instructions that I give while you are watching the crystal. My words, my instructions, they become your reality so totally that even when you can’t see the crystal any instruction that I give you while you are looking at the crystal remains real, remains true, remains your reality...

“So now I’m going to give you some instructions... Firstly, any time I show you this crystal and tell you to look inside it, you will immediately see yourself once more inside the crystal, kneeling and waiting for instructions. And when I take the crystal away you’re going to forget having ever seen it, but any instructions that I gave you will be entirely real for you, even though you won’t be consciously aware of having been given them. You understand?”

“Obey when watching crystal... Forget when not watching crystal... Still obey...” His gaze was locked onto the crystal, in the same manner that I had seen when I’d hypnotised one of my friends to be a puppy at a party and showed him a chew toy; for a moment that chew toy was all that mattered to him, like there was nothing else in the whole world.

“That’s right. And the next instruction is that you’re still upset about how I might be taking business away from you, but you’re going to look for clever ways to make use of it. Ways like insisting that Orrin get the two of us working together because you know that I don’t like actually having sex with the customers while you’re fine with it, so it makes sense for us to work together. With you being in charge of what happens of course,” I added quickly. “You understand?”

“Find ways... Make the most of... You not liking sex with customers...”

“That’s right. You want to make the most of what I can do so that you can make a profit from it yourself,” I told him. “And the last instruction is that...” I paused, not entirely sure where I wanted to go with this. Part of me had wanted various things as the third instruction ranging from hearing him call me master to doing something as a revenge for having come after me, but now I came to actually give voice to them that part of me had run and hidden in a kind of abject fear.

“No,” I corrected myself, “it’s just those two: obey when watching the crystal, and find ways to make use of what I can do so that you can profit from it. You understand?” That was safe enough: I could put him back under if I needed to, and he would do some legwork to make sure that I wasn’t unemployed.

He nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the crystal still.

“That’s good. Now in a moment I’m going to put the crystal away, and when I do you’re going to stand up, completely unaware that you have ever seen the crystal or anything that happened while you were watching it, and then carry on from where we were just before you saw the crystal.” With a quick motion I slipped the crystal into my pocket, his gaze following it the entire time until it was out of sight.

At that point his expression shifted a bit, a sense of loss entering into it as the thing that had captivated him was suddenly taken away. Without seeming to think about it he stood up, his expression shifting from loss back to the same angry one that he had had up to the point where I showed him the crystal.

He grabbed the front of my jumpsuit again pushing me against the wall once more and scowling at me. I realised that this was one of the flaws in my plan: I’d changed his attitude about what he wanted to do to me, but not with regards to what he thought of me in the here-and-now...

“Now you listen carefully,” he hissed at me, his voice low and threatening. “I’m not going to be put out of business by you: I’ve had to work hard to get myself a secure place with good reviews, and I’m not going to let you take that away from me. So I’m going to make sure that you work for me; when Orrin tells you that we’re working together, there had better not be any complaints. And when we’re working together, I’m in charge, understood?”

I nodded quickly, feeling genuinely threatened by him and wishing that I dared to reach down and get the crystal out again so that I could make him stop. I didn’t dare to though; he looked like he could revert back to violence at any moment, despite my instruction that he should be aiming to make use of what I could do.

“And for starters,” he said, pushing me firmly against the wall and then stepping back enough to undo the groin of his jumpsuit, “it’s stupid that you’re so afraid of having sex, so I’m going to teach you a lesson and make sure that you know who’s boss.” His penis came out of the hole, still erect from his time under though I doubt he realised that was the cause, and I got an idea of why Else had said that some people were nervous about it: my first customer had been a Gythen like Darnael, and Darnael’s penis was nothing like a natural one.

It was a pearly white, about the same shade as the walls of the encounter rooms at Orrin’s. Though it was erect I could see that the texture of it looked about right to probably feel natural to the touch. The sack hanging underneath was the same colour and material, and drawn up so that his testicles were almost wedged in either side of the base of his penis rather than actually hanging beneath it.

I tried to draw back; this had definitely not been a part of the plan, and I really didn’t want to hang around for it. Fear froze me in place though, making even moving towards the crystal impossible now.

He grabbed the front of my jumpsuit in one hand and started to work at the zip down the front with the other. “You might not be excited this time,” he told me, “but when I’m done with you this will be the best thing that ever happened to you and you’ll be begging for more.”

There was an urgent bleeping from the pager on my wrist, and I nearly collapsed in relief at the interruption. Right now I would take anything over what Darnael had planned.

He grabbed my wrist before I could look at it, checking the screen himself and hissing in disapproval. “Interfering kitten,” he muttered, hastily covering himself up again. “Don’t forget who’s in charge when we get put to work together,” he hissed at me before turning and hurrying off.

I just stood there, nervous tension holding me in place so that I didn’t even dare to move in case he came back and carried on, relief at the reprieve mixing with terror that it might only have been postponed, and I realised, once again, that being in control only works as long as people give you a chance to actually take control...

“Sin!”

I started and looked around sharply at the call, and found Else hurrying down the corridor toward me. She looked concerned and slowed down to a stop just short of where I stood.

“Sin? You okay?”

I didn’t really answer; part of me knew that given time I would definitely have the situation entirely under control, while another part of me was practically weeping in fear at what had nearly happened, and I knew that most of my expression probably showed the latter state.

“Damn it, I tried to call you,” she told me, and I remembered Darnael looking at my pager; he had claimed it so thoroughly that some part of me hadn’t actually considered that the message might even be for me. I looked down at the message it was showing: “Darnael got past me, following you, I’m tracking—ELSE.”

“He, uh... He’d already found me,” I told her, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “He... He told me that he was going to get Orrin to pair us up so that I wasn’t losing him work...” That was true, and I didn’t want to be thinking about the rest of it.

Else is perceptive though... “This,” she said, reaching up and doing up the jumpsuit’s front zip which I realised was undone halfway down my chest, “was not done by you...”

“It’s nothing,” I told her, not exactly convinced in my own mind.

“Sin...”

“I’ve got it covered,” I said, more sharply than I intended. “Just... Just leave it.”

She frowned at me, not convinced in the slightest, but nodded slowly. “Okay... You need to get back around people, and stay where Darnael can’t get you on his own.”

I nodded, not daring to speak on the subject, and followed a bit meekly when she pulled me into motion.

We got most of the way back before I dared to speak, pushing myself towards a topic that I had been considering alongside my plan for curtailing Darnael, and in a vaguely similar vein.

“Can I... Can I ask you a favour?”