The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

She’d had enough. The noise from the apartment above was becoming intolerable; muffled shouts, bumping and banging, hammering and groaning and screaming, and once the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. What the hell?

It had only been last week that the new neighbours, the Malatestas, had moved in, and Alexa hadn’t even met them yet. And suddenly, tonight, this.

She was alone in her bed. Unaccountably, at this strange pre-dawn hour, she found herself missing Jeffrey. She missed Robert, his brother, too, although they hadn’t spoken in years following the affair. She missed James, who never would leave his wife, even though she knew all about Alexa. More than anything she missed Nick, her ex-boss, a wonderful and all too recent lover; but he’d resigned and taken his family to the West Coast in a desperate bid to repair his marriage, and he was lost to her now.

She missed all her men, all her impetuous dreams, but they passed in the night. They always did.

The alarm clock said one thirty in the morning. Alexandra Korrigan put the pillow over her head and tried to sleep. No dice. She didn’t understand it; restless and fretful, she’d taken a fistful of sleeping pills already, surely enough to sleep through anything. But now she was wide awake.

For a moment, there was silence, and the hope of sleep rose like the thrill of an impending kiss; but then, from above, came something like the grinding of gears, a clash of metal on metal, and an unmistakable shriek, an animal cry of pain that actually echoed through her apartment, or possibly just in her skull.

Alexa dressed hastily, huffing with irritation, unlocked the door and padded upstairs in her socks.

Gingerly, she put her ear to the door of the apartment above. The doors of the building were heavy and soundproofed—as, supposedly, were the floors—but Alexa could still hear something in there. What was that? It sounded like a distant roar; a tiger, or a mountain lion. A sound like nothing human.

She steeled herself, stood up straight, and rapped on the door of number thirty-three. The sound echoed briefly in the tiled corridor.

Behind the door, a sudden silence. Then Alexa heard something shuffling slowly inside; not quite like footsteps, but like something crippled dragging itself towards the door.

The door opened.

From inside number thirty-three, two faces peered out at her, puzzled.

The woman was a petite brunette, about Alexa’s height, but fuller-figured. She was very pretty, although her hair was all over the place. She stood there, wild-eyed and panting. Her hand gripped the side of the door; her knuckles were white, and her nails were very red. Alexa saw her blouse was torn, ripped open at the front as if by claws, exposing the swell of her breasts. The man—her husband?—stood a head taller, dark haired and chiselled.

He had a split lip, and blood ran down his chin. There was something wrong with one of his arms, Alexa thought; it dangled at his side, the hand at a strange angle. He quickly put it behind his back, but Alexa thought she glimpsed two of his fingers were missing.

“Yes?” said the woman, looking puzzled. “Can we help you?”

“It’s past midnight,” said the man. “Is there a problem?”

Alexa gathered herself. “Yes, there is. I live downstairs, and—“

“Hello!” interrupted the woman, with a sudden sunny smile. Her teeth were very white. “How lovely to meet you. We hadn’t expected to meet you until tomorrow. I’m Francesca, and this is my partner, Paulo.”

Paulo shot out his good hand, grinning. “Hello, woman downstairs. So there is a downstairs, after all! There is a woman! I was wondering if it was true, or just another fool’s errand. How wonderful. Yes, I am Paulo.” The slightest trace of an accent. “We’re both very pleased to meet you.”

Alexa shook their hands, confused. “Alexandra Korrigan. Call me Alexa. Yes, well, likewise, but I wonder… you see, you’ve been quite noisy. As if there’s a, ah, fight going on up here?” She eyed the blood running down Paulo’s chin. Noticing this, he licked his lips. His tongue was long and pink.

Francesca’s pretty brow crinkled. Alexa saw she had a tiny bruise on her forehead, concealed under the foundation. “A fight, you say? Noisy? Oh no. No-no-no-no-no, nothing like that at all. Isn’t that right, Paulo?”

Paulo looked at her blankly, and then seemed to collect himself. “Absolutely not. We never fight. We can be quite passionate though, sometimes,” and he leered at Alexa, eyeing her up and down. She felt a smouldering flush creeping into her cheeks, a familiar gust of sexual instinct rising in her. He was very attractive indeed.

Francesca slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Oh, Paulo. Don’t embarrass Alexa. We’re just doing a bit of remodelling. Rearranging a few things.”

She was bemused. The couple seemed too pleasant to be making all that racket on their own. A teenager, perhaps? Or some gigantic pet? “Okay, but you shouldn’t be doing that in the middle of the night. It’s not fair on the neighbours. So does anyone else live here?” she asked, peeking round the door.

They looked at each other. “Well yes, since you ask, there is another,” said Francesca. “But she’s not here. She’s just gone away for a while. Anyway, we’re super-sorry, isn’t that the expression?”

“Yes,” said Paulo. “Super -sorry.”

“Okay,” Alexa said, feeling slightly mollified by their bonhomie. Perhaps they just didn’t know how sound carried. “No hard feelings.”

Paulo and Francesca looked at each other, their heads turning in a strangely symmetrical movement, and then turning back to look at her.

“Would you like to come in for a drink, Alexa?” Francesca said. “A peace offering? No argument, please.”

“We won’t take no for an answer,” added Paulo, beaming. “We really won’t.”

Well, she thought, why not? It was Saturday now, after all.

The apartment shared the exact same layout as the one below. She stepped through the front door into a wide parquet hallway, and then into what she knew would be the living room.

Alexa had never seen anything like it. The rest of apartment thirty-three was completely trashed.

The furniture was all over the place, much of it broken or overturned. The drapes were in tatters; there were great jagged holes in the plasterboard walls. The Maltestas moved through this chaos as if oblivious. Paulo retrieved a bottle, miraculously intact amidst a pile of smashed debris. He rummaged amid the wreckage for some glasses. She must have been mistaken about his hand, thought Alexa; it looked fine now, all fingers present and correct.

She glanced at Francesca Malatesta, questioning.

“Excuse the mess. We’re in limbo at the moment,” she said. “The tesseract, you see. It’s quite large.”

“The tesseract?”

“An extension to the apartment, you might say. Behind the red door. We’ll show it to you later. Eight rooms.”

They must have bought the apartment next door as well, thought Alexa.

Paulo was handing her a drink of some sort, a viscous red liquid. She sniffed at it, testing. “What is it?”

Out of the corner of her eye Alexa caught Francesca looking at him, her expression unreadable.

“Something from our homeland,” said Paulo. He was relaxed now, smiling. He showed her the bottle; the label was indecipherable.

She was interested. “From Italy?” she guessed.

“Not exactly, no.”

She took a sip on her drink. It was delicious. The warming sensation in her stomach spread quickly into her arms and legs, comfortingly pleasant.

“It’s very nice. Where, then?”

Francesca smiled at her, and took Alexa’s arm. “Nowhere important, honey. Come on, let me show you the rest of the apartment.” She guided her back towards the hallway.

“Sure.” She took another long sip of the drink. It warmed her all over. “This is delicious. What did you say it was?”

“Oh, just a little something nice and relaxing. It’s called phlegethon.” At least, that’s what it sounded like to Alexa. “You can’t get it here.”

She led Alexa through into another room, trashed to smithereens, just like the first, and then another, and another. Chaos everywhere.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” she said, indicating a pile of smashed wood that might once have been a dining set. Not trusting herself to answer, Alexa just nodded. Yes, lovely. Just beautiful, Francesca.

“Now, let’s go sit down in the living room and get to know each other properly.”

When they got back to the living room, Paulo had tidied up as best he could, righting the sofa and clearing most of the worst of the debris into one corner. They sat. Alexa instinctively wondered how long they’d been together, these two. She looked at Paulo, and he grinned at her brazenly. She felt the familiar lightness; the opportunistic stirrings of attraction in her belly, the everyday craving of lust.

“We’re not exactly married,” said Paulo, seemingly reading her mind. “But close enough.”

Francesca leaned across, interested. “So, tell us all about you, Alexa. Do you have a boyfriend?”

Without really knowing why, Alexa told the Malatestas all about herself.