The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

It started innocuously, as so many things do. A student studying Classics and Philosophy went after extra credit and dug a book out of the university library that no one had yet got around to translating, and she went to a friend with it as soon as it became clear the information within had something to do with psychology. It fitted in neatly with his research, too.

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Sarah.”

It was soft, low; the voice was quiet. Its carefully measured, hushed cadences seemed at the same time seductive and soporific. Even the ‘S’ at the beginning of her name was not harshly sibilant, as it might have been; it was geared almost to enchantment, she felt.

She didn’t scream; she was too shocked. The voice came again, closer this time.

“Sarah, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Who are you?”

It came even closer now, and two points of light seemed to burn in the darkness above her. The voice came from that general area.

“Look at me, Sarah. Look into the lights. Look... into my eyes.”

She nearly panicked; she had automatically looked into the lights when the voice had said to do that. The last sentence was so loaded it could have scared her rigid, but something held her back from that. It kept her eyes fixed on the two points of light.

The lights intensified, became far stronger, like twin lasers boring into her eyes. They seemed to broaden until they entirely filled her vision; in fact, they were being focused directly and precisely on her pupils. And detail in the light appeared; it was green, which she had not been able to make out before, as the light had seemed too bright; only at the edges had the green colour been discernible. The green colour, too, was not entirely even; there were spirals of lighter green mixed within it. She tried to follow their path, but they were revolving slowly; they made her dizzy to watch. The revolutions began to accelerate, building up in speed like a fan when it is first switched on. Her dizzy feeling began to turn into something else; exhaustion. Her eyes almost closed, but she managed to hold them open. A mistake, as it would turn out; but she held them open, nonetheless. She felt...

“Drowsy, Sarah. You are drowsy, drowsy... you just want to go to sleep. You are having trouble keeping awake... your strength is draining from your body. Your arms are beginning to feel heavier, Sarah; they are already too heavy to lift. Now they are as heavy as lead... you do not have the energy to spare to hold yourself up with your arms. Let them drop, let them fall straight... they offer your body no support, Sarah... let them drop...” His eyes burnt into her, charring a message into her brain, and the message was: obedience. She had felt tired before his last speech, but now she was at the point where the only logical option is sleep, and yet something prevented her from sleeping, made her continue staring into the lights, made her continue to allow herself to be enslaved. Her arms were useless, too; she genuinely couldn’t stir them, they felt... leaden. And she found herself fighting an urge to stop propping herself up on her elbows, too; an urge she could resist, as yet, but one which grew stronger every moment, while her mental resistance was converted and her defences weakened. The bed moved slightly beneath her as the stranger climbed onto it. His blazing, entrancing, hypnotic orbs moved closer to her, and moved out of the position where she had been gazing. She knew this, as she knew he had clambered onto the bed and was now poised above her; but it seemed completely academic to her, a matter on which she had no control and no interest; her mind was being invaded, conquered, and creating a void of apathy in her consciousness. Her head had automatically moved to continue staring into those green, bewitching, mind-pulverising lights. Then she lost her struggle, and her arms capitulated, making her sink to the bed. She heard something in the distance, the far distance; her flatmate, in the next room, was stirring. Ashley’s voice came out of the darkness, clear to her assailant but, to her, it sounded like her voice was coming through soundproofing and about three yards of cotton wool. “Sarah? Sarah, what’s happening?”

She wanted to answer, opened her mouth to call out, but the voice returned, the only clarion voice in her world, and her mind compliantly silenced her so that she could hear everything this voice had to say.

“Sarah, did you hear that voice?”

“Yes,” she whispered, softer now than when she had spoken before; a silence due to the obedient awe that had by now been burned almost throughout her brain; a message she had to comply with. The intensity of the light, the brightness, increased a thousandfold; and at the very centre a pit of blackness, the size of her own pupil, opened up and seemed to pull her into it; she felt as if she was falling into a void, a limbo in which she would no longer think, no longer feel; and of course it was true. The voice returned, a note of urgency in it now, and her brain was succumbing faster and faster.

“Sarah, listen to my voice. Listen to my voice, and only my voice. Hear nothing but my voice.”

A pause; Sarah, in that tiny piece of her mind which contained her soul, which had so far survived intact, wondered why he had paused. Then he spoke again, and every time he spoke it sounded more like the voice of God.

“Did you hear that other voice, Sarah?”

“No.”

“No, Master. You will call me master from now on, Sarah. Is that understood?”

...And now the light was through all of her defences, invading her psyche, tearing what remained of her soul apart. For almost a second she remained silent, then her voice replied, still more submissive now.

“Yes, Master.” She could feel her expression change, becoming blank, a canvas upon which her new master could freely paint his dreams. And then the last of her conscious mind died, and an automaton was left lying underneath the intruder. The green glare dimmed slightly; the spiral revolutions slowed, the pit in the centre closed up, and finally the light disappeared. The robot that had been Sarah closed her eyes.

A tapping on the door. It was Sarah’s flat-mate, genuinely concerned now. “Sarah? Sarah, come on, Speak to me.”

Then the voice of God returned to the servant’s consciousness, as it lay with limp body and closed eyes.

It had lost its soporific, sweet edge; now it was cold and calculating. It was still, however, very quiet.

“Sarah, listen to me.”

The Master put a syringe in Sarah’s open hand, in a position where it was ready to use.

“You have a syringe in your left hand. When you awake, you will get up, walk to the door, talk to that girl as if nothing has happened to you, and suggest you both have a mug of hot chocolate in the kitchen. Through this, you will keep the syringe hidden from her. As soon as she turns her back on you, you will inject her” his finger touched a point on her neck “at that point on her neck. You will then remove the syringe from her, place it carefully on the floor, pick her up and carry her to the nearest sofa. Then you will return here to lead me to her. Is that clear?”

Softly, submissively, “Yes, Master.”

“Good. Wake up.”

Her eyes opened. She sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, then stood up. Then the mechanical appearance vanished from her movement, and she walked to the door as if nothing had happened. She opened the door. Ashley was on the other side, eyes wide with worry.

“Sarah, what’s wrong...” she caught a flicker of movement in the dark room behind her friend. “Oh, that’s it. Who’s your friend?”

The motion disappeared instantly. Sarah looked puzzled. “Friend? What do you mean?”

Ashley grinned. “Who is it in your room? What’s he like?”

Sarah frowned. “There’s no one in my room.”

“Oh, come on. I saw him.” Her eyes were fixed on the shadow she had glimpsed.

Suddenly, green light appeared in two points in the shadow, and strengthened, seeming to expand until it filled her sphere of vision. She glimpsed a spiral layer of lighter green within the light, but it began to revolve before she had a proper image of it. She began to follow it’s motion, and was surprised when she heard a male voice. She had lost all memory of Sarah’s ‘friend’. The voice was saccharine sweet and softly lulling, gentle, nearly hypnotic. That was what her writer’s mind would have summed it up as, but then understanding of his position in relation to Sarah began to filter through. It was time to filter out the ‘nearly’.

“Sarah, tell me the name of this girl.”

Ashley would have bridled at ‘girl’ but, somehow, the idea of taking offence at something this voice said was beyond her. It had already, the first time she heard it, gained a position of respect in her mind; in very little time, that respect would turn to obedience.

She heard Sarah’s answer only dimly.

“Her name is Ashley Mackenzie, Master.”

The voice’s owner smiled. Ashley wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew. Perhaps it was the extra trace of silky persuasion in his voice when he next spoke, perhaps it was some sort of extra-sensory perception. She tried to look at his face, to see it; she was sure it would be in the light now, and she wanted to know what sort of man had such an enthralling voice, but she found she couldn’t; some inner compulsion kept her gaze focused down that whirling green tunnel. But eventually the Master reached her mind; it had been delayed by the soporific waves assaulting her body, the dullness Sarah’s voice had seemed to have since Ashley knocked on her door, and the quietness it had picked up somewhere after the green glow entered her conscious. But now she realised Sarah had said ‘Master’. She suddenly realised that the man whose powers now assailed her was not nearly hypnotic, but the thing itself.

Suddenly, she felt a hand on her breast. The Voice (it had achieved the capitalisation only a moment ago) returned to her consciousness. “Excellent. Sarah, switch the light on in your room. You will see a thin tube of transparent plastic, about two inches long. It will click onto the syringe casing covering the needle. Replace it on the syringe, then put the syringe in the small bag it lies near.” The hand began to caress her breast, sliding over it, smoothing the thin fabric over it. But it, too, began to grow vague and distant, as Sarah’s voice had.

“Yes, Master.”

Ashley could sense Sarah carrying out her orders. She did not know how, but she had an exact mental image of Sarah and her activities. She tried to use this power to ‘see’ her enslaver, but could visualise nothing but static. It puzzled her that she had never had this power before, but not for long. She was too tired to-

“Ashley, can you hear me?”

She tried to stay silent, she really did; but her mind was already half her new lords. “Yes.” The voice sounded completely subservient, and Ashley marvelled at it; she had never sounded like that before. It was seldom, indeed, that any idea stirred her from her single-minded way. She marvelled that she could be overwhelmed so quickly, then the heavenly Voice that she could not even dislike returned to her.

“Can you feel your body, Ashley? Does it appear to have shut down in exhaustion, to be registering nothing?”

Again she tried to deceive, and again she was over-ridden. Her voice once more meekly returned; and it was true. She did feel nothing. “Yes.”

The Voice became even more smugly self-assured. As indeed, her emotional centre informed her, any being so perfect, so truly deserving of obedience and deference, had every right to feel. She guessed, correctly, that he was trying to invade her mind through her emotions. Well, it wouldn’t work, she told herself. And then, with a sigh of adoration, she admitted it would.

“Interesting. You cannot even sense your body’s state of excitement. Well, that is certainly something I had not expected, though it may be useful at some point. Although I’m not sure how... Listen to me, Ashley...”

The voice began to speak what she realised immediately was the truth. It told her she was sleepy, and she was; it told her she wanted to obey him, and she did. And then, she acknowledged his mastery over her; she accepted with equanimity a command to address him as ‘My Lord’.

And finally, sheer mental power tore through her carefully-constructed defences. Ashley’s eyes went blank and spiritless behind the bright green trance-wells of her Lord’s eyes, as her face, too, became the blank canvas that Sarah had become so recently.

She never felt his hands slide under her arms to keep her upright, before the green rays blinked out and she slipped into unconsciousness. She slumped down and he nearly dropped her, but just managed to keep his grip. She still visualised her surroundings, now with perfect clarity; she could even see the face of her Lord. She didn’t hear what he said to Sarah, or if she did she had no conscious memory of it, but she did watch Sarah as she lifted Ashley up, steadied her, and carried her into Ashley’s room. Ashley remained at least nominally unconscious, but she saw everything as the automaton that had once been her friend removed her pyjamas and dressed her in clothes their new ruler had brought with him; attire more suited to their new status. She observed as Sarah then unveiled with a complete absence of selfconsciousness, before dressing in her own uniform, then went to summon their Master. She watched as Sarah re-entered the room and sat down beside her, followed closely by their master, who sent Sarah back to sleep, so that Sarah’s prone form lay alongside Ashley, dressed in what was essentially a French maid outfit. Her own outfit was substantially different. Then every sense, even her new-found ESP, deserted her as her entire mind, such as it now was, was concentrated on the questions her Lord asked her, and ensuring complete truthfulness in her replies.

“Ashley, what is your full name?”

“Ashley Louise Mackenzie, My Lord.”

“During the period of enslavement, did you notice any unusual sensation?”

“Yes, My Lord. I noticed that even though my eyes were completely taken up with the hypnotic rays, I could see what was happening around me.”

“Really? Had this ever happened before?”

“No, My Lord.”

“Can you do anything but visualise?”

“I do not know, My Lord.”

“I see. What is your age?”

“Twenty-one, My Lord.”

“What is your IQ?”

“One hundred and forty-three, My Lord.”

“Excellent. Now listen to me, Ashley; when you wake up, you will desire to do whatever I tell you to without hesitation or question. You will do anything you are commanded to do with total thoroughness, and you will then report to me. You will be your old self, except for these conditions. Is that understood?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Wake up, Ashley.”

Her eyes opened, and suddenly she could once more think. But she did nothing but think, lying prone on the bed, face upward, but with a mental image of the room that included everything, even Sarah, lying to her side and completely out of her normal field of view..

“Ashley, tell me which of Sarah’s breasts I am covering, without looking at Sarah to see.”

It was completely obvious to her, thanks to that second picture. “You are covering neither breast, My Lord.”

“Good. And now?”

“The left breast, My Lord.”

“Excellent. Sit up.”

She instantly complied. Her Lord handed her an old leather-bound book, its spine cracked from frequent use, and its pages yellowed with antiquity. She took it, and looked at the cover.

The Secrets of the Mind

The gold lettering on the cover seemed to predate printing. She wondered how that could be. The only idea she had was that the letters had been embossed into the cover by some other method, some spiritual rather than physical method. Possible evidence pointed to it; her enslavement by a method undocumented in the history of hypnosis, and the fact that she had suddenly developed psychic powers, triggered no doubt by her enslavement. She thought all this, but it did not interest her; she could study anything she was told to, and yet never be interested in one single thing, unless she was told to. She was sure she had been given this book for a reason. She was equally sure that her Lord would tell her what the reason was. She was not disappointed. “Ashley, I want you to read this, and learn everything you can about empathy, with particular reference to empathy with people in other places; everything about making them experience what you experience; everything about locating people remotely; and anything that will enable you to create mental static preventing anyone from recognising us when the static field is in place, any camera from recording our images accurately, and any investigator from detecting material evidence of our previous passing, such as fingerprints. Also everything about telepathy, both transmission, reception, and inducing transmission and reception in others. You will then know how to perform such techniques, for this book explains it exactly. You will forget any other information in the book, except perhaps information on strengthening your mental power using other people’s minds. You will do this in the kitchen. You will first take the phone off the hook, and you will neither sleep, eat, nor leave the room until you have found everything I have asked you to learn. You will notice no interruptions. When you have finished, you will close the book and stare directly forward, at a point level with your eyes, until I say the phrase ‘Have you succeeded, Ashley?’.” She watched her Lord as he said all of this, and she knew he was right. It seemed more her duty to do as he said than anything imposed from outside. It didn’t seem to her to be her Lord’s will but her own that she would do this. The Voice returned. “I will then tell you what to do. Is that clear?” And she felt like she had been the one to decide to say “Yes, My Lord.” Then she got up and left for the kitchen, clutching the book.

Her Lord watched her go, and sighed. Then he looked back at the peacefully sleeping Sarah, oblivious to everything. As she would remain; she didn’t have the IQ of Ashley, nor any talent for psychic powers. So he had a concubine as well as a new tool. No need to have the concubine think for herself, even within the narrow constraints he had set Ashley.

“Well, Sarah,” he said. “We’ll have a while to ourselves now.”

It took Ashley almost twelve hours of continuous reading to finish the book. At the end of it, she could do any of the things she had been commanded to research, but she would do nothing until told to. She closed the book and fixed her gaze on a spot on the wall directly opposite and level with her eyes. It was entirely blank, but her gaze never wavered until, two hours later, her Lord entered the room and spoke. “Have you succeeded, Ashley?” It was no surprise, however, to her Lord that the answer readily came. “Yes, Master.” Her eyes blinked involuntarily, watering. She opened them again and saw clearly that her Lord was standing directly in her line of view. “Put the book on the table.” She complied. Her eyes followed him as he walked around the table until the table was directly between them, when he sat down. She watched, and she felt nothing, thought nothing.

He snapped his fingers. She no longer watched what was happening, no longer sensed. Her eyes seemed covered by a thin sheen, glazed by some outside force. Her master smiled at that.

He opened his mouth but paused before speaking, collecting his thoughts. “Ashley, I am going to use you as a great tool—perhaps best described as the world’s greatest Swiss Army Knife. But I don’t want a flawed plan—as you would be able to appreciate, were you able to appreciate anything. So I’m going to use my resident, 143-IQ, advisor to check the plan. When I next snap my fingers, you will have all your normal faculties, your intelligence, and your curiosity. But you will not be able to attack me, you will not feel any dislike for me, and you will want to help me, to refine my plan as if you were to be the one to benefit from it. You will therefore be inspired to ensure that the plan is flawless, foolproof. Do you understand?”

She did not hear her voice, not know she was saying it. It was only after the complete trance she was in was subtly broken that she realised she had responded.

“Yes, My Lord.”

He snapped his fingers again. She blinked. The glazed eyes, which had looked more like lifeless glass marbles than the eyes of a living creature, lost their blank sheen and became lively again. Ashley was back; almost. Emotion was there, and knowledge, and all the things that come with intelligence applied, not wasted. But the emotions were controlled, actions were completely unavailable; it was freedom within very severe limits. She waited for her Lord to speak. At length, he realised this was the case, and spoke.

“What do you think of your new clothes, Ashley? Would you ever have worn these without being commanded to?”

She considered. She was wearing a tailcoat, in a way, taken in tightly—slightly too tight, it had been made for Sarah—around her breasts. It was buttoned up over the stomach, and ended abruptly at the waist, except for the two pointed tails at the rear of the coat. At the opening of the tailcoat was a stiff, cardboard clip-on white tuxedo-type shirt which fitted neatly into the opening of the tailcoat, stiff and pre-formed like a plastic bib. The cardboard form was covered, however, by white shirt-type cloth. Around the neck, a high white collar; around that, a black bow tie. Below the tailcoat, a solid black silk slip. And under that, stretching down her legs, a pair of almost opaque, inky-black tights standing in for the normal trousers a butler might have worn. On her feet was a pair of stiletto heels. The effect, she realised now she was allowed to think about it, was highly erotic; the tight cut of the jacket emphasised her considerable breasts, while the taut tights and otherwise bare legs also looked attractive in the extreme. Though she could not see them, she was sure the slip and tights made the most of her buttocks, producing an entirely more than satisfactory picture. Her curly brown hair was tied up expertly in a bun; perched rakishly on the bouncy, exuberant curls was a sheer black top hat. It was not something she could ever have dreamt up as an outfit, but she had to admit it was a superb choice to highlight her figure. In her controlled emotional state, in which her Lord’s pleasure was paramount, the outfit was something she viewed with great affection. The thought fleetingly crossed her mind that her Lord must have had a sex-starved life to dream up such an outfit, but she still liked it. And she was compelled to say so; her Lord had asked.

“I like it very much, My Lord. It is fitting for my new role.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you perceive your new role?”

“I am to be your sex slave, am I not?”

“In part, yes; I will admit that. But you are also to be so much more. And it is to discuss that I have bestowed part of your personality on you once more. You are also going to help me carry out my plan.”

“Your plan?” It was her turn to raise her eyebrows now; a capacity to mock, even to mock her Lord, had returned with her curiosity. Her voice sounded amused. “And what is your plan? Do you wish to rule the world?”

He laughed; she revelled in the sound. She could not help it. Smiling, he spoke. “No, of course not. Why would I want to rule the world? Too much responsibility.”

“Responsibility? When you could just make everyone want to do it the right way, end war, end starvation, put a stop to all crime?”

He looked surprised. “I don’t know why I’d want that. For a start, I don’t care about crime as long as it doesn’t affect me—which, with these powers, it won’t. I also think I might not be averse to a little crime myself. No one will mind—because, between the two of us, no one will be able to remember anything happening. Wars don’t affect us here, we have a nuclear deterrent. We don’t get attacked anymore. And ending starvation would mean less food to go around where we are. Sound fair enough to you?”

She swallowed, surprised, and nodded. His logic was impeccable. Of course, she though with what would have been a hint of irritation had she been capable of irritation, she would have nodded in any case.

“So, what is your plan?”

He smiled. “It’s very simple, really. All I want out of life is sex—which is Sarah’s fault for ignoring me completely when I asked her for a date, at least in part. And to be able to live comfortably with a minimum of work—which is why I told you to learn what you just learnt. To do that, I plan to have Sarah and yourself, and, of course, some other girls if they catch my eye, for sex slaves, as you put it. You can now make people and TV cameras unable to see me—and you. This makes robbery extremely easy, when combined with an ability to hypnotise people into helping you. So I can take anything I want to take. But there are a few problems with this. First, I don’t want anyone else trying to muscle in on the action. So I have to prevent other people learning the secrets in that book, either through the book itself or through working them out. They can be kept away from the book relatively easily with your abilities alone. To prevent others discovering them for themselves, I propose to kill off the experts in the landscape of the mind. And I’m going to do this through you. You don’t mind, do you?”

Stupid question, she thought. How could she mind? “No, My Lord. Of course not.”

He smiled again. She thrilled as she realised she was pleasing him, even though she knew she couldn’t help it. He opened his mouth again. “So you are, in a manner of speaking, going to be my assassin. But you aren’t going to be killing anyone—Sarah, come here and sit down, would you?”

“Yes, Master.” The voice sounded leaden to Ashley; blank, devoid of any emotion, completely featureless. My God, she thought; I was like that until he gave me back my mind. And I might be again.

Sarah walked into her field of view and took a seat alongside her Lord. Ashley looked at her dispassionately; it would have been distastefully, but she was incapable of negative emotion. Sarah was almost completely naked; a thin, almost completely transparent slip the only thing protecting her modesty. While she was walking to the table, her breasts wobbled slightly, unsupported. She sat down, a completely blank expression on her face. Ashley was what now passed for horrified in her new mental state. “You’ve turned her into a zombie!”

“Not really. But an unwilling sex slave is pointless, so she has no will of her own. She isn’t emotionless; she just has only positive emotion, with very specific triggers. For example—” his hand reached out and a finger traced a pattern around Sarah’s breasts. Her face lit up; she seemed to go into instant arousal. Her body trembled lightly. The Voice continued. “You see? Sarah is not quite a zombie, though I admit she is close. In any case, positive emotion has to remain, since it would otherwise be difficult to make her aroused. But the triggers for such emotion can be redefined and specified as precisely or vaguely as you want. She is completely fixated on me now, and, when not aroused, she is indeed a zombie. As indeed are you. I would be careful here, Ashley, or you will not be able to emote yourself. I can make you examine this plan with complete absence of emotion, if I wish. But I would like to use you from time to time for conversation; a life consisting of order and reply will become boring, whatever the rewards. And that requires emotion. Consider yourself warned. Now, to return to my plan—I assume you still wish to hear it?”

“Yes, My Lord.” Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine not wanting to hear it.

“Good. Now, I do not know the foremost psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and so forth. And nor, I suspect, do you. We can start by eliminating all the staff of the department at your university, of course; such an establishment as this would use only the finest as instructors. But after that we will have no real guide. However, the British Medical Association and others of its ilk around the world will no doubt contain the names and addresses of that country’s foremost experts. You know how to project clouds of uncertainty about you, which are useful to a life of robbery, and just as useful to us in this endeavour. You will be able to enter the buildings where the Association is based past whatever security they may have and, if necessary, put their security out of action. You will then, using a telepathic link to Sarah here—like a two-way radio system—report to me everything you are asked to tell me or think you should tell me. I will be able to send messages back to you through Sarah, and send the hypnotic beam into Sarah’s eyes and out through yours into anyone we need to hypnotise. If necessary, I can speak to anyone with you using your voice. Once inside the Association offices, therefore, we will be able to find someone who will be a willing guide and provide us with the information we seek, who can then be made to forget about it entirely. After that, maintaining the same telepathic link, you will visit the experts I wish to kill, and I will hypnotise them through you, trapping them as surely in thrall as you are. Then I will make them write a suicide note—believable in every way—and, if necessary, fabricate some reason for their suicide. Next, they will transfer all of their money into a numbered Swiss bank account, from which the money will travel over a long, complex route, to my account. After the money has left their account, I will order them through you to commit suicide and to continue attempting suicide until they succeed, should they fail. Once we have done this to everyone likely to duplicate any part of our ability, we can relax. Do you see any flaws in the plan, Ashley?”

She thought about it, but not for long. Flaws that were not fatal and easily rectifiable—such as the discovery of the address of each Medical Association—aside, there seemed nothing wrong with it. The money from each of the experts would more than pay for the travel costs she would incur in her task. She therefore answered.

“No, My Lord.”

“I am indeed glad to hear it.”

Ashley walked toward the office doors of the British Medical Association, dressed in the twin of the outfit she had worn when first inducted into her Lords service. The only difference was the absence of the top hat and white faux-tuxedo, and the demure white kid gloves on her hands now. And yet no attention whatever was afforded her; at the ticket office, the mindlessly obedient clerk had handed her the ticket without any emotion whatsoever, before she left his sight and his mind returned, the memory of the last few minutes of his life—not gone, for it had never been stored, at her express command. As he blinked at the next customer, he remembered nothing about his real last customer, merely an impression of bright green oblivion between his ‘last’ customer and the old lady standing before him now, her weight supported on a walking stick. The queue behind Ashley knew only there had been a person standing in front of them—they could not describe her, or even know that she had been a her. This would have puzzled them, had they been able to think about it. On the train, no-one had looked at her; all that had happened was that every passenger had, without consciously thinking about it, avoided sitting on any of the four seats, one of which Ashley occupied, that surrounded the table at which she sat. The taxi driver who had driven her to the offices of the Association had seen her for almost half a minute before he looked around into blinding, entrancing green... yet as he now drove away from the kerbside, he wondered why he had left his place in the queue at the station without a fare. And now, the pedestrians walking past her seemed only conscious of a figure against whom they must not brush. The door had no obvious defences, no sentinels, human or otherwise, but when she tried to open it, it was locked.

In her flat, Sarah sat motionless in a chair. Attached to her head was a strange device looking like a cross between the inside of a computer and a drunken alchemist’s proudest experiment, from a design in the arcane book. A lead ran from it to a television screen beside her, which their master was scrutinising with interest. It displayed Ashley’s view. Her thought messages came out of the speakers in her voice; to reply, he had merely to speak to Sarah and the message would silently relay to Ashley, who would hear it as her Lord’s voice. Her Lord was looking at Ashley’s reflection in the glass doorway. Perhaps the girl would notice it herself, but she had her orders. She was much too interested in the successful completion of her orders to do anything about it. So he spoke. “Ashley, your bow tie is on crooked. Adjust it.”

He watched her hands come up to tweak the tie back into place—the tie on her otherwise bare neck—as her voice filtered through the speakers, though her mouth remained closed. “Yes, My Lord.”

Ashley made the adjustment, looking down on her tie and beyond that to her breasts, semi-revealed now the card tuxedo was gone, the taut tailcoat producing a Grand Canyon of cleavage; and she remembered when the tux had been removed for the first time, almost immediately after she told her Lord there were no flaws in his plan.

He had entranced her with another snap of his fingers, and her mind had been reprogrammed the way Sarah used to reprogram her computers before the stranger had invaded her room at dead of night. Like the computers, she had no idea how she had been reprogrammed; but her mind ran along different sets of instructions nevertheless. When she had awoken, she still had her own emotional range, or an emotional range she felt was her own—it seemed unduly dependent on her Lord, but she had some control of what she felt, unlike the Sarah automaton. And he had still concentrated his interest in Sarah, which had created a mini-jealousy in Ashley. But Ashley had still been useful to him; before they returned to the bedroom, he had slid the bow tie over the cardboard collar and let it hang around her neck as he reached behind her neck and unclipped the white tuxedo. He had removed it from her chest, revealing that unbelievable quantity of cleavage, before producing a bag of sugar-coated cola bottles; sweets from a pick and mix somewhere. He had handed her the bag. His voice had been completely level, under perfect control, as it issued her orders. “Fill your cleavage with these.”

One by one she had deposited the sweets in the warm crevice between her breasts, some of the sugar rubbing off onto her skin. She continued until the bag was empty, emotionlessly—a sign that some reprogramming had taken place. Then he had risen, and ordered her and Sarah to follow him. He had led them back to Sarah’s room, where he picked Sarah up and threw her lightly onto the bed. She offered no resistance. He had then ordered Ashley to go to the side of the bed, next to the small reading table at the head. When she reached it, he compelled her to kneel. She had knelt down beside the bed of her Lord, his sex slave, her friend, lying naked but for the slip—a slip that seemed to emphasise her nakedness. They had stayed in those positions for neither knew how long. With her mind’s eye, Ashley had seen her Lord walk out of the room and return shortly afterward—though he could have taken an eternity and returned to find them in that pose. He had sat between the kneeling Ashley and the prone Sarah, and he had held a pendant—one of Ashley’s pendants—in front of Ashley’s eyes, twirling it between thumb and forefinger for perhaps half a minute, as her eyes locked onto it and went blank. At the same time, her mind’s eye closed. Before she lost consciousness, the last thing she remembered was his fingers brushing against her breasts as he extracted a sweet...

It could have been any length of time before she regained consciousness, her cleavage now empty of the sugary bottles but dusted with sugar. The room smelt strongly of semen, Sarah lay completely exhausted and nearly asleep beyond her Lord, and her Lord lay sweating next to her, nude. In front of her eyes was the pendant again. She realised part of her programming had been to make her react in that way to the pendant, and she could not help approving. As soon as he saw she was awake once more, he had tugged on the cord suspending the motif on the pendant, gathering it up into his hand. He had placed it on the bedside table alongside which she knelt. He told her to take off her stilettos; she did so. Then she was ordered to climb on top of him, straddling him, and to undo the buttons of the tailcoat and take it off. She held that position, leaning slightly toward him, until he had licked off all of the sugar that still clung to her breasts. She did not even move, despite the waves of arousal rushing through her... But her body was excited, and showed it.

It stayed that way until he finally did have sex with her, twenty-four hours later.

Mind over matter, she couldn’t help thinking. But it was his mind over her matter.

Ashley remembered this because she still had her own mind—after a fashion. But it did not affect her mission, and she had quite specific instructions about that.

She rang the doorbell.

After a wait of almost a minute, someone came to answer the door. As soon as it was open, her Lord began to fire his hypnotic beams into Sarah’s eyes. Ashley felt them begin to arrive in her brain, ready to be used on this receptionist.

It was because of this that the receptionist was greeted with the unusual opening gambit “Look directly into my eyes.”

And it was probably because of her surprise at these words that she actually did, and thereby sealed her fate.

One more hapless victim saw bright green pinpoints widen until they filled her field of vision. This time, it was not the Voice of the hypnotist that spoke; but it was the words of the hypnotist and the mentally-assisted sonorous Voice of Ashley.

The view on the TV screen was that of Ashley’s Mind’s Eye, her normal eyes being taken up with output rather than input. An optical character recognition and speech synthesis system connected to the TV and programmed obediently by Sarah read her name badge: Miss Cynthia Matthews. Then the electronic voice announced:

“Miss Cynthia Matthews”

The hypnotist spoke. And, at the other end of a mental communication beam, Ashley parroted his words to the astonished receptionist.

“You are tired, Cynthia. You are extremely tired. You only want to go to sleep. But first, you must do something for me. You must do something for me. You want to do what I tell you. Do you understand me, Cynthia?”

Already bound up in the powerful mental web generated in combination by the hypnotist and Ashley—a totality of mental energy greater than that generated at any one point by the average human being—Cynthia replied as she was compelled to. “Yes.”

“Good. You hear nothing but my voice. You sense nothing—nothing at all, but what I say.”

The intensity of the mental field made the hypnotism far stronger, the struggle to gain a hold in the victims mind shorter. Neurones were failing throughout the brain, before having new patterns burnt into them and being given a kickstart. These new, obedient neurones were more efficient than the original neurones controlled by Matthews as a result. Invading mental commands rode the efficient slave-neurones deeper and swifter into the brain, overwhelming the normal thought patterns of the conscious mind and heading deeper, driving steadily into the hindbrain and the subconscious therein. Cynthia was therefore over-ridden in her urge to deny this. Her voice sounded distant, almost silent.

“Yes.”

The Voice of the woman before her, on the other hand, was here and it was close—and it was irresistible. The reply she got was imperative, and bound Cynthia Matthews to the combined mind of Ashley and her Lord still more closely. “Yes, Mistress.” Cynthia stumbled over the reply, but at that moment a surge of invading mental power yet greater than anything she had been exposed to before over-rode the last few neurones loyal to the independent mind of Cynthia Matthews. She was no longer Cynthia Matthews but Cynthia Matthews, Slave. She replied in the dull monotone her conversion demanded. “Yes, Mistress.”

The green light died away. She blinked, and saw for the first time the face of her Mistress. Emotionlessly, numbly, she waited for her orders.

“Let me in.”

She gave way; let her Mistress walk past her, acting as if she owned the Association offices the way she owned Cynthia.

The hypnotist sat back and relaxed. Sarah blinked, too, as the hypnotic beam left her eyes. Ashley had instructions for all that was likely to happen during what remained of her mission. He had nothing to do but watch.

Ashley expanded her mental distortion field to encompass Cynthia as well and the two became, to any observer, nothings. No one would recognise them or question their activities. Even the security cameras focused on them would yield no clues; they would be fogged and useless. As would any prior footage showing Cynthia on her way to the door. Then she told Cynthia to close the door and lock it. She complied. Then she turned back to her Mistress to await instructions.

“Take me to the psychology section.” Cynthia nodded and mutely led her Mistress, not to the records of psychologists, but to those actually at work in the Association offices.

The hypnotist sat up. He had not expected this, but it was a massive stroke of luck. Each psychologist would be effectively on their own; that would make killing them a lot quicker. Ashley’s mental voice emerged from the TV speakers.

“My Lord, what should I do?”

“Ask your slave what status these psychologists have in their profession.”

“Cynthia, stop.” She halted obediently and turned to face her Mistress, her face still completely blank as she waited for her Mistress’ speech. Ashley said “Tell me how well regarded the psychologists you have here are.”

“She is the best in the world, Mistress. She is widely regarded as the only psychologist capable of assembling a clear picture of how the human mind works.”

In his lair, the hypnotist snapped out a question. “Is anyone comparable to her? And is there only one psychologist here?”

“Is any other psychologist even nearly as good as the one you speak of? And is she the only psychologist here?”

“No, Mistress. She is by far the best psychologist. And yes, she is the only psychologist in the BMA offices. She is our resident expert. Her duty is to vet our employees and ensure they are sane.”

The hypnotist smiled. “Ashley, we can deal with all of our problems at one fell swoop. Order your slave to lead you to this psychologist. Find out her name, and then we can eliminate her.”

“Tell me her name.”

The fatal reply came in a dull monotone, the informant unaware that she was signing the death warrant for the named. Not that she could have cared even had she known.

“Doctor Alice Bennett.”

Ashley halted Cynthia before Dr Bennett’s door. She ordered her slave to sit down in one of the chairs that lined the opposite side of the corridor.

Doors interrupted the wall at regular intervals, on Ashley’s left side. On the right side were the chairs where those awaiting an appointment with the great sages of the Association sat; vacant at the moment. A prior study of the appointments book at the desk showed that Dr Bennett was at present unoccupied, and alone. An interview with the suddenly amiable and informative secretary who sat in a lair just before the corridor where Bennett worked and jealously guarded the book had revealed that Dr Bennett was in her room. Ashley—the real Ashley, the Ashley persona that remained, though bound to her Lords will—remembered him with wishfulness. And yet she knew both that her Lord would never allow her to keep him, had in fact already issued the orders that would bring him out of his trance once she was out of his sight for a second time, with no memory of his enslavement, his forbidden garrulousness, or even of her approach, and that her programming made sex with her Lord far more satisfying than anyone else could ever be. She remembered the first time he had taken her, a day after he had aroused her with his tongue caressing the sugared surfaces of her breasts. She remembered the agony, the delicious, delirious agony of waiting, her body still excited, for the day before he finally inaugurated her into his harem, with a smile of lust on her lips; remembered the passion with which he had taken her, and she him, with only an increase in her lust. It had been the greatest sensation she had ever known, and even as she had hated him for leaving her that way for a full day, she lusted after him and loved him for prolonging the lust, and then he had slid inside her and her pent-up energy had been released and had given him ecstasy which had sparked greater energy in him and in turn ignited her own ecstasy, the two fires feeding on each other and growing, ever growing until they fell apart and she knew peace again. No, the receptionist could certainly never do that to her. He had reprogrammed her, both to create more fire in her for his own pleasure and to bind her to him in another way; for without being his slave, she could never be put into such a state again, and everything would seem paltry in comparison. Even as she reflected and suspected it might not have been anywhere near as good as she remembered, she knew that that was true but further knew she would kill to feel that way again; as indeed she was about to.

As she was about to.

She shook herself back to the present and to the problem of Cynthia. She snapped her fingers, sending Miss Matthews into the trance she knew well and yet not at all, the trance in which reprogramming of the human mind was not only possible but simple. Yet Miss Matthews had to be given orders and brought out of the trance, or someone might snap her out of it and uncover the truth, the truth which, if asked, she would parrot back to them. So this trance was not the solution to her problem. But it was a step in the right direction... there was no need for the hypnotist to tell her how to deal with this situation; the 143-IQ Swiss Army Knife had already got a plan in mind, based upon the plan her Lord had suggested when he dropped her pendant between her breasts, as the best hiding place her costume afforded.

“Listen carefully, Cynthia. When you resume operations, you will be your normal self except for one thing—if you see a pendant being held before you, the pendant item swivelling as it rotates, you will focus on it and sit still. If you then hear a voice counting down, your mind will shut off completely. You will cease all activity except breathing until the same voice, accompanied by the same pendant, counts from one to ten. You will not respond to any other stimulus.”

The language seemed absurdly technical to Ashley, but it certainly worked. She was sure it had worked on her, and she knew it was going to work on Cynthia. Her Mind’s Eye made sure that she was not surprised by anything during the work; now she fished out the pendant from between her breasts, held it ready before Cynthia’s eyes, and snapped her fingers again.

The luckless Miss Matthews returned to semi-consciousness; she felt no inclination to obey Ashley’s orders, for she had not been given any such compulsion this time, but suddenly she saw the pendant before her, the item rotating and twisting before her as Ashley rolled the pendant chain between thumb and forefinger. She focused on it instantly and suddenly found she couldn’t tear her attention away from it. And there was something else, too; she felt... dozier than before. She kept her eyes on the spinning quartz pyramid on the end of the silvery chain, and she wondered why she couldn’t look away. It wasn’t as if it was particularly interesting; it was soporific. Before she saw it, she had felt energised and ready for anything; now she felt drowsy, ready for nothing... except for something, some signal her hindbrain insisted would soon arrive. It was not disappointed. She dimly heard a woman’s voice coming from somewhere in the mist surrounding the pyramid:

“Ten... Nine... Eight... Seven... Six... Five... Four... Three... Two... One...” Cynthia’s vitality disappeared from her eyes. Those windows into the soul were vacant; no one was home, suddenly. Ashley gathered the pendant up the same way her Lord had done when he had used it on her, having finished her countdown, and opened her eyes once more; she had been afraid of being caught in the same stupor as Cynthia, and had taken the only step she could to avoid being snared. She would have closed her Eye as well as her eyes had she known consciously how it was done; but she did not. She had seen Cynthia slip under the influence, her mind depart, no doubt forever; she knew she had killed a fellow human being, yet she felt no guilt, no pangs of conscience; they were drowned out by her feeling of having done what she had to for her Lord’s plan and for her own safety. She was sure that her Lord would take steps to avoid her ever feeling such sensations; a man generous enough to program greater enjoyment into his servants would no doubt care for their psychological balance in any other ways.

In any case, she was going to kill again in a moment; Dr Bennett, in the room behind the oak-panelled door, probably had not heard her do what she did to Cynthia. She would be unprepared. She would be an easy target, however good her understanding of the human mind. It was certain she could not cope with mental power from Ashley’s Lord, reinforced by Sarah and by Ashley. Ashley looked up and round at Bennetts door. She smiled; a plan was coming into fruition that would please and protect her Lord. By protecting her Lord, it would protect a lifestyle on which she was already dependent. Double benefit, but it made her smile both for her Lord and for herself.

Dr Bennett looked up as a thud sounded outside her door. What was going on? The noise repeated, harder this time. It couldn’t be anything violent, surely, she thought. Outsiders could never penetrate so far, which left only the staff of the Association. And she had screened them all herself; she knew her reputation and, more importantly, she knew for herself her ability. She knew she hadn’t made a mistake. So what did that leave as the source of the noise?

Was it likely she had not been informed of maintenance work going on in the building? It was impossible to be absolutely certain, given the vagaries of the staff... vagaries she had ruled inconsequential, but which might now be proving to have consequence after all. It was unlikely they would not tell her, however, and assurance was made doubly sure by the thought that any repairs would surely have been heralded by the arrival of repairmen, in their vehicles, before she arrived. Yet it rankled with her that she had not been informed of anything that might be going on, despite the unlikeliness of such a situation; she was, after all, the chief reason that those employees were employed. Such an idea might well be expected to make them more careful not to offend her than any of the other scientists in residence. And yet, as she thought, she realised it might do the opposite; it might inspire some deep-down hatred of her, some distaste they wouldn’t even be aware of, that would hardly translate even to her, were she to be regularly analysing them under hypnosis and recording their statements to study further later. And as she had merely interviewed them once at the beginning of their career—thoroughly, but before any such hatred might have originated—she would quite possibly have overlooked it.

So maintenance work was a possibility, but not a high-probability one. What else might that have left? Perhaps the plumbing had developed some sort of problem. It was quite possible, she realised. It would explain the absence of repairmen so far; the damage would not yet have been reported. Should she report it?

She decided not to; there was no logical reason, and she prided herself on her logical approach to problems. No doubt someone else would notice it. If there had been no reaction within, say, an hour she would have to do something about it, but for now she could return to her book. It was already a sizeable book, detailing all she had so far learnt of the mind and its workings. Many other books had dealt separately with different parts of the mind, and psychologists before her had published theories of the mind in totality. But none were quite as hers; none advocated a return to the notion of the four Humours—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Indeed, much of what she had studied since her rather run-of-the-mill doctoral thesis—in which her suspicions, founded even before then, had not been declared for fear of jeopardising that precious piece of paper—had brought her back to the conclusion that the ancient philosopher-scientists of Ancient Greece and before had known more about the mind than they had passed on, and far more than the present-day experts in the mind field had unearthed in their lifetime of study, a lifetime devoted to the mind where those earlier sages had studied all around them and made great advances in every field to which they applied themselves. And she had spent much of her working life wondering why this should appear to be the case, and why such advances in mental study had been removed—censored—from the books that had passed down to us when this had certainly not been the case with any other province of science. Why had they allowed only the bare minimum of their psychological knowledge to filter through to us? What danger could there be in the understanding of the mind? Surely all it could do was help to avoid psychopathy, and... and perhaps other benefits we could not even imagine.

There had to have been some reason that the best time for any rational human who wanted to be encouraged to think to live was back in the days of the Greek and Roman Empires.

She reread what she had written so far today.

...I have become convinced that the system of Humours used by our forebears—blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm—is the nearest we have so far come to a working model of the mind. Of course, the causes of these humours are not those listed above—but I am unsure that they were ever meant to be taken literally, or at least not while those who devised the terms were still studying the mind. I strongly suspect that those who devised the system of humours knew far more than has come down to us. The question of why they would do such a thing is the sole problem with this theory.

After all, we know that had the Greeks thought of steam as more than a useful tool, and had they considered other avenues in greater detail than they did, Nero could have fiddled in the pearly glow of electric lights. It is logical, perhaps, that they could have made far greater strides in analysis of the workings of the mind than they appear to have—and perhaps, they have merely not allowed such information to come down to us.

Put like that, it seemed like some sort of conspiracy theory...

The sound repeated again, far louder this time. This time, she caught something on the extremity of her field of vision. She looked up where the motion had come from. Had the door really shaken?

She looked at it. The sound repeated again, with slightly less force. The noise was irregular. It probably wasn’t the plumbing. In fact, almost certainly not, since a little line of yellow had appeared at waist height on the brown door. It looked almost like the door was being attacked, knocked open—kicked open?—from the outside.

She whirled around and headed for the desk, aiming to put its reassuring bulk between her and whatever lurked outside the door. At the same time, an analytical section of her mind screamed how illogical this was. She snapped back at it that the assault on the door was illogical, and she picked up her desk telephone with quivering hands.

Trapped in a room with some sort of purposeful lunatic on the other side of the door, trying to get in... it was hard, even for someone as carefully-controlled in her mental habits as Bennett, to stay away from panic. She wasn’t doing too well, and she knew it, and that wrenched her mind in yet another way. She tried to stay collected, and now she knew what ‘collected’ really meant. It certainly wasn’t within her reach.

Outside the door, Ashley decided kicking it wasn’t working well enough. Even when she had paused for a long run-up, the kicks weren’t penetrative enough.

She turned around and picked up a chair. “My Lord,” her thought beamed back, “order me to break the door down with this chair. I do not think I am strong enough otherwise. But with the force of your order behind me, I believe I can do it.”

In the observation room, the hypnotist nodded. It seemed logical. “Break the door down using that chair, Ashley.”

Ashley blinked; when her eyes opened, they were glazed over. She spun around, leapt into the air, and brought the chair down double-handed onto the door. The door gave out before the chair did, due in no small part to the driving energy propelling it.

Ashley blinked again and the mists cleared.

Dr Bennett shakily punched in the number for the security man—the security man still sitting entranced staring into space a short distance up the corridor. She wondered detachedly why she wasn’t getting an answer. Then she heard a voice.

“He can’t answer.”

She looked up. Ashley had suppressed her aura of distraction so that the hypnosis would take effect faster. So Dr Bennett saw an attractive young woman standing in her doorway wearing a tight-fitting black outfit cut low around her ample breasts, with white gloves adorning her hands, a mass of ginger curls pinned close to her skull, and a bow tie tied around her naked neck. To say she was surprised would be an understatement. She watched as the woman entered, poised, calm, where the great student of the mind quaked. Ashley tossed the chair aside. Bennett’s gaze turned to follow it, then flicked back to the woman. Ashley slipped into the chair opposite Bennett, the desk between them. She gestured to Bennett’s own chair. “Sit down.”

She complied. “Who are you?”

Ashley ignored it. “What are you writing?”

She reached across and picked up the manuscript. She read through, by coincidence, the same extract Alice Bennett had read just moments before. She replaced it on Bennett’s desk. Bennett didn’t know what to make of it. This woman had burst in using remarkable force, only to sit down quietly and read part of a work on psychology. There was something there that didn’t run true, as if she wasn’t quite in control of herself, sporadic outbursts of violence stemming from a troubled nature. Yet she seemed calm enough now.

Ashley looked up. “You know something? You’re pretty close. It holds together.”

“What?”

“Missing a few pieces of the puzzle, though. For example—”

“Ashley. Do not tell her anything. That’s a direct order.”

Ashley blinked again. Her eyes, normally clear, had clouded over. They quickly returned to normal after she blinked again, quickly. She was dimly aware the woman had said something. “What?”

“I said, how exactly can you be so sure?”

Ashley smiled. “Because I’m a victim of what they didn’t tell us.” She leant closer, reached out, grabbed hold of Bennett’s shirt, and pulled her closer. “And you’re about to become one,” she breathed. She smiled at Bennett’s panicked expression. Green pinpoints emerged in the centre of her pupils, widening all the time, as the hypnotist started to put Bennett under remotely. Ashley laughed harshly. She could enjoy this, given enough practice... She delivered her line with relish, actually enjoying the role she was playing—and why not? “Look into my eyes.” Bennett blinked. Unfortunately, she opened her eyes rapidly and the green beams did not unfocus in time to save her. They stayed centred on her pupils, enlarging until they filled her entire field of view...

“Alice,” came Ashley’s voice, boosted by her Lord and by Sarah and gently chiding, “that was bad of you. You shouldn’t blink. You should just keep looking straight into my eyes and relax yourself... relax...”

And Alice Bennett did, though she could not understand why or how she could relax at such a moment.

She tried to analyse what was happening, but it was beyond her theoretical knowledge. She wondered how the green light was being produced, and then wondered how she could think of something like that at a moment like this. Yet she seemed only to be interested in abstract theory, at a moment when her knowledge of the mind should be concentrated on the matter in hand if she was to avoid hypnotism—for such was clearly her fate. And then she realised that this was exactly the point; it was clearly the first place the hypnotic effect had attacked, to ensure that she didn’t—didn’t—she wasn’t sure. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t remember. Oh well, it didn’t matter, an insidious voice in her mind spoke up. Just keep concentrating on the revolutions of the green spirals and she’d be fine. How did she know that? It didn’t matter, came the answer. She didn’t have any other solutions to the problem that faced her.

“Relax, Alice.”

And yet she didn’t feel as if there was a problem. She felt completely relaxed. She felt like nodding off to sleep. She felt-

“Drowsy, Alice. You are drowsy. Just let your mind go blank... let your mind go blank... soon you won’t have to make any difficult decisions for yourself, Alice. You can leave your entire life up to someone else, to someone better qualified at running them. You’ll even be able to die without worrying about it, since it will be for your own good. Is that all right for you, Alice?”

Very softly, indecisively, and wondering why she was indecisive now—she had never been indecisive before, and this was a perfectly normal situation, one in which she could relax, wasn’t it?—came the reply. “Yes.”

And the reply to that was perhaps unnecessarily sharp, yet she didn’t feel it was; she felt somehow that it was in the natural order of things.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Dully, surrendering her control, she spoke.

“Yes, Mistress.”

The light disappeared. Bennett wanted to blink, but couldn’t. Ashley—Mistress—smiled at her, a lopsided grin on a beautiful face. Her eyes glittered brightly, confidently—one might have said joyously. In truth, Ashley was on a high; hypnotism, she had discovered, gave you a buzz, even if you were only a channel for it. She stood up.

“Stand up, Alice.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Obediently, quickly but without haste, Dr Bennett stood. She continued to stare blankly at Ashley. Ashley studied her; she was forty, but had clearly once been beautiful in her way. She hadn’t bothered with makeup that morning, but had tied her brown hair into a bun; it wasn’t greying yet, either. Or she had dyed it. Businesslike suit, with softer colours than usual; designed to relax but show who was in control, Ash thought.

Blue eyes, as blank as the rest of her face. Even her body wasn’t displaying any signals one way or the other; she stood, face a study in blissful ignorance, arms hanging limply by her sides, legs planted firmly side by side, she was telling Ash nothing. Perhaps a greater study of body language could have told her what Bennett was declaring—possibly declaring loudly—but she didn’t have one and there was no point in thinking about it.

The hypnotist snapped his fingers. The signal was picked up by Sarah and transmitted at the speed of thought to Ashley, who immediately blinked. Her eyes were suddenly glazed over, covered with a strange sheen. She was back in the reprogramming trance, awaiting instructions through the mental ether.

Alice Bennett watched blankly, dispassionately observing the change in her Mistress without the slightest hint of interest or inquiry.

Ash’s instructions came swiftly, and a second finger-click caused her to return to action. Now her face had lost its smile, replaced by a purposeful expression. She had her orders to carry out.

“Follow me.” With that she turned abruptly and stalked out of the room. Bennett followed her silently, under the deepest compulsion it is possible to use on a human being.

Bennett, though a different height and ordinarily a different stride to Ash, matched her pace exactly. She had been told to follow Ash and was going to follow her orders exactly; she would not run the risk of catching up and overstepping or of falling behind; to match the pace of her Mistress exactly was the method of doing this that required least thought on her part, so this was the method she chose. Ash looked back and noticed this. For a moment her purposeful veneer vanished and the real Ash shone through. She cartwheeled forward and watched Bennett through her mind’s Eye. As soon as Bennett reached the point Ash had cartwheeled from she duplicated the manoeuvre. Ash smiled to herself.

They walked past the glassy-eyed young man Ash had admired not so long ago.

After they had both passed from his sight he suddenly blinked, looked around for the girl he’d seen just an instant ago, but she seemed to have gone. He sighed and tried to remember what she looked like, but couldn’t manage it. An overriding impression of green was all that remained. He looked at his watch and suddenly realised it was a lot later than he’d thought. How did that happen? Had he just been daydreaming?

Then he blinked. And suddenly... Daydreaming? Daydreaming about what? He shook his head.

Ash turned to Bennett. “Do you own a car?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Where is it?”

“It is in the car park at the rear of the Association building, Mistress.”

Ash smiled humourlessly. “Excellent. Lead me to it.”

Bennett blinked. “Yes, Mistress.” With that, she set off down the corridors. Silently, efficiently, Bennett carried out the wishes of her Mistress.

Bennett led Ash to a recent-model Ford hatchback. She stopped immediately before it and said “Here is my car, Mistress.”

“Do you have the keys with you?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Ash walked in front of Bennett and held out her hand. “Give me the keys, slave.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Bennett wordlessly produced her keyring from one of the jacket pockets and deposited it in her hand. Ash smiled and snapped her fingers. Bennett’s eyes suddenly blanked out; the already soulless sheen of her eyes replaced with a totally lifeless glaze. There seemed to be nothing in there at all; not even the soul in thrall that there was. It was as if her entire essence had been photographed and the photograph put in place of the real thing; a still, frozen image and not a real thing. She saw nothing and felt nothing.

Ash turned away from her and unlocked the car. Then she opened the boot. “Are you claustrophobic, Alice?”

“No, Mistress.”

“No. Good. How about the dark? Does darkness scare you, Alice?”

“No, Mistress.”

“Better and better. When you reawaken, Alice, you will climb into the boot of your car and curl up so that I can close the boot with you in it. If you see a pendant in front of your eyes, you will focus on it to the exception of all else. If you then hear my voice count down from ten, you will gradually enter a trance from which the only way of awakening is to hear my voice count from one to ten. The trance will be complete by the word ‘one’. Is that all understood?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Ash smiled to herself, and snapped her fingers. The new layer of lifelessness vanished from Bennett’s eyes. She found herself walking purposefully forward to the rear of the hatchback. It was an incredibly tight squeeze to fit herself into the boot, but she managed it.

Ash shut her eyes and fished the pendant from her cleavage once more. A questing hand located Bennett’s open eyes and the pendant was duly suspended in front of them. Ash started the countdown. “Ten... Nine... Eight... Seven... Six... Five... Four... Three... Two... One..” Knowing her slave would now be dead to the world, as dead to the world as Cynthia, sat outside Bennett’s splintered door inside the building, Ash carefully replaced the pendant. She opened her eyes, reached up, and closed the boot firmly.

Then she walked around to the driver’s door, got in, and drove off. She was stopped by the gatekeeper on her way out.

Ash watched as he stepped down from the booth and lumbered over to her. “Look into my eyes...”

The Times, Obituaries, 14 April 2000

Dr Alice Bennett, MA (Cantab.)

This Cambridge educated psychiatrist, of the greatest eminence in her profession, died yesterday under mysterious circumstances. Having driven a steel hook such as was once used for hanging game in the stately homes of this country into the ceiling above her stairwell, she was handcuffed, the handcuffs hung over the hook, and, suspended thus, the arteries around her ankles were slit. She was literally bled to death...

The Times, Page 4, 21 April 2000

Police investigating the death of renowned psychiatrist Alice Bennett have today declared her death an apparent suicide. No other fingerprints could be found on the blade that opened her arteries, and she still clutched the blade in one hand. No sign of forced entry could be found and her alarm system—which has a direct link to the nearest police station—was active at the time her body was discovered by a cleaner last week.

Detectives assigned to the case are at a loss as to how she managed to cut herself, but can see no other explanation...

Ash’s Lord laid the paper down on the breakfast table and looked across at her. She was busy, it seemed; busy staring blankly at—he looked over his shoulder to see—yes, currently in her line of vision were Sarah’s naked buttocks, but Ash couldn’t help that. Her head was fixed in that direction and Sarah merely happened to be occupying that space at the time as she cooked her Master’s breakfast. He returned his attention to Ash. “It seems you have made quite a stir.”

“My Lord?”

“The killing. They can’t figure out how she did it, but they’ve concluded that she did it. Which is good, because that’s the truth. My congratulations.”

“Thank you, My Lord.”

“I am curious, however. I told you merely to make her kill herself. Where did you get the idea from?”

“In the Iran-Iraq war, deserters were executed by being bled to death, My Lord. Their blood was used to keep the fountains of blood flowing.”

“What a fountain of useless trivia you once were. Ah, well, it matters not. Have you prepared my mid-morning snack?”

“No, My Lord.”

“Then kindly do so.”

Her eyes freed from their fixed gaze, Ash rose and went to the kitchen cupboards. Opening one of them, she took out a jar of cola bottles and opened the top. Once more, she began to fill her cleavage.