Prequel Part 2: Hysterical Paroxysm
* * *Caitlyn walked out of the testing room and stood there in the hall, blinking and coming back to herself. The thing that happened when she looked at a question—she didn’t have a name for it, but it was represented in her mind by a sort of combination of the words poof, tingle and knowledge—that thing had happened every question, and there had been a lot of them.
But she’d aced it.
She wasn’t sure what time it was or how she’d gotten there, but she was positive that she’d aced it.
There was a touch on her arm and she drifted up through the fog.
Lexi.
“Hey genius,” she said. “Were you a genius?”
“I think I nailed it.”
“Yeah you did. Let’s get out of this hole.”
There seemed to be some unspoken agreement that they were going to spend the rest of the day together, which Caitlyn was fine with. Lexi was fun. She made boring things fun.
Halfway to the exit Lexi nudged her shoulder and said: “Ugh.”
“Hm?”
“Those guys.”
Two seniors were at the other end of the long hall, loitering under the red EXIT sign. They were looking at Lexi. Of course.
“The one on the left keeps asking me out. It’s pretty much a joke at this point but just watch, he’ll find something to say.”
He waved. “Lexi!”
“Wanna mess with them?” Lexi whispered. Her eyes twinkled with danger.
“Heh. Sure.”
“Just play along. Follow my lead.” She waved at the boys. “Darren! I called you last night! Where were you?”
“...you did?” Darren said. His grin faltered.
“Yes! We were having a slumber party and I wanted you to come over but you didn’t answer!”
“It’s true,” Caitlyn said.
“We had a pillow fight and we braided each other’s hair and then the air conditioning wouldn’t work so we had to sleep in just our panties.”
“It was hot,” Caitlyn said.
“And since there weren’t any boys around we had to practice kissing on each other.”
“Gotta learn sometime,” Caitlyn said.
“But Darren. I have a problem.” Lexi bit her lip and looked up at him through her eyelashes. “I think I liked kissing her better.”
“I moisturize,” Caitlyn said. She smiled. She felt like a talk show sidekick.
And then Lexi leaned over and kissed her.
Right on the lips. There was no tongue but it wasn’t just a peck, either. Her lips were soft and tasted like bubble gum lip balm.
Caitlyn’s eyes went wide, which ruined the joke but she couldn’t help it. Darren and his friend wore the same expression. Lexi’s eyes were closed.
And then it was over. Perfectly innocent. The song I Kissed a Girl was popular at the time and there was a lot of that going around. It didn’t mean anything and it was nothing to blush about.
Caitlyn’s face turned red.
She was supposed to say something witty at that point—she was the Talk Show Sidekick—but she couldn’t think of anything.
Lexi looked at Darren and pouted.
“If only you’d been there!” She sighed. “Oh well. Have a nice life.”
She took Caitlyn by the hand and they brushed past the boys and through the exit.
Darren and his friend watched them go, then watched the doors after they’d closed. The long sterile hall got quiet. When he’d finished picking his jaw up off of the floor, Darren said, “Now that’s just cruel.”
“See, you’re really funny, but I bet no one knows it on account of you never say anything,” Lexi was saying. They were back at Caitlyn’s house, in her room. Her mother wasn’t home; being a realtor, the weekend was her busiest time. Her father was in Thailand that month. Or maybe Hong Kong. She wasn’t sure.
Lexi was trying to convince her to go to a party to celebrate her victory over standardized tests.
“You’re gonna knock ‘em dead. If you’re still nervous when we get there, well, I’ll just get you drunk.” Lexi winked.
“Can’t we just go to a movie or something?”
“No. It’s time someone took you out and showed you off. Come on, look at you.” Lexi stood behind her in the dresser mirror. “Look at those legs. Poor little Japanese girls would kill for those legs.” She was referring to the fact that Caitlyn was above average height and had longish limbs.
She went to her bag, rummaged in it for a moment, and came out with a pair of stockings, a white silk shirt, and a short, pleated skirt, made of blue and green plaid.
It was a Catholic schoolgirl outfit, except that the skirt was markedly shorter than regulation length.
“Oh, no,” Caitlyn laughed. “Not a chance. Ever.”
“Just try it on.”
“I can’t pull off that outfit. You can. I can’t.” And then she pictured Lexi in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit and then she thought about baseball.
“I think ya can. Come on. We don’t have to go to the party if you don’t want to. We can go to the movies so no one will see you. But you are wearing this. " She knelt down and began to untie Caitlyn’s sneakers. Undressing her just like tailor would. Caitlyn looked at herself in the mirror, felt stupid, and looked at a pile of junk on the dresser instead.
Her left foot was lifted. The sock came off. Then the right foot.
“Off with these.” Lexi stood and unbuttoned her jeans with the efficiency of a Hollywood costume designer.
Lexi’s hands on her waist, like pale darting fishes.
The jeans came down and she stepped out of them. Her lower half was exposed to the air, all except for her rather workmanlike underwear, which was a faded blue.
“This too.” Lexi took her T-shirt by the waist and drew it up over her head. Caitlyn raised her arms and felt it peel off.
And then she was in her bra and panties, in front of her bedroom mirror, the same mirror she’d looked into when she was six years old and wearing overalls, and then twelve years old and dressing like Britney Spears, and then sixteen and wearing sulky goth clothes, and now now.
Perfectly innocent. She’d been around other girls in her underwear dozens of times. But this time she felt naked. She resisted the urge to cross her arms over her breasts. That would be a weird thing to do. People did that when they felt the need to cover up and there was no reason to feel a need to cover up because nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Lexi took her left foot and rolled the stocking over it, grinning up her leg. She rolled it up Caitlyn’s calf, past her knee, up her thigh. It ended high up, just a couple inches above where the skirt would fall.
Then the right leg. Her hands were expert and businesslike. They were not cold. They touched her only as much as they needed to but were not shy about it.
She tugged the stocking into place, inches below Caitlyn’s sex.
Perfectly innocent.
But then Caitlyn’s mind did something that was entirely unwelcome. It was one of those thoughts that just happens, one of a million in a day.
She imagined Lexi’s hand slipping upwards. Just a few inches.
Her face turned red.
She looked at the dresser. There was a ceramic unicorn on it. She’d gotten it for her eighth birthday. It was no help. She looked at her jewelry box. She’d gotten that when she was ten. It was well-made, antique, some kind of dark polished wood, maybe mahogany. It was no help. She looked in the mirror, saw her own face. It was blushing. Her neck was too. No help.
“The only difference between average and devastating is a look in the eye. Period. The people that you think of as gorgeous aren’t any hotter than you. They just make you think that with a glance, a smile, an ‘accidental’ touch. Seducing someone is the easiest thing in the world.” Lexi fastened the skirt and then stood there for a moment, looking over her work in the mirror, her wrists resting on Caitlyn’s hips.
The blush wouldn’t go away. It got worse the more she thought about it. The air in the room was suddenly too thick to breathe. She had to get out.
“I’ve got to... I’ll be right back,” Caitlyn heard herself say, and then she was rushing out of the room, to the bathroom, closing the door behind her and bracing her hands on the sink.
Bubblegum lip balm.
She turned the sink on just because it was there and rinsed her face, then dried it with a towel and looked at the edge of the sink. It was made of porcelain and it didn’t do anything. She liked that.
The door opened behind her.
“Are you all right?”
She cleared her throat. “Yeah, I just... I didn’t really eat breakfast, and I’m a little hypoglycemic, and... bleh. Heh. I’m ok.”
Please don’t come in.
Lexi came in.
“Did I push you too hard with this studying stuff? I thought maybe I was, but you were into it and you’re so smart. I thought we had the chance to do something great and I just went for it. And hey, it’s just one day, but it’s a score you have forever, right?”
“Yeah, of course, no, no, really, I just need some sugar.” Her face turned crimson. “I mean something sugary. To eat.”
It was like a bad movie.
Lexi stepped up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re shaking.”
“Yeah, that happens. I’m going to go downstairs and...”
Lexi’s pale arm came around her head and held something in front of her eyes.
The coin.
Little, round, golden, perfect.
Caitlyn started again, in a smaller voice: “So I’m going to go downstairs and—”
“Your eyes are here.”
Silence filled her head like a gunshot.
She was grateful for it. She was confused. She let the dull and faraway sensation wash over her.
Her eyes were there.
“Relax,” Lexi said into her ear. “You know, as recently as a century ago, doctors would have said you were experiencing ‘female hysteria’. They thought that a woman’s craziness came from her uterus, and if she started to act strange, that meant that the craziness had spread up into her brain. True story.”
Caitlyn’s mind was in her eyes and her eyes were on the coin. She listened with only half an ear.
“Do you know how they used to treat women for hysteria?
“To get the craziness out of her brain and back down where it belonged, the treatment was to... massage her uterus until she experienced something called ‘hysterical paroxysm’. The signs of that were that she would get extra moist down there, and have a bit of a spasm, and sometimes even moan. Once that happened she was safe from her crazy vagina. For a while.”
Lexi’s hand slipped around her hips and came to rest on the waistband of the skirt. Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat.
“Eyes here.”
Her eyes were there.
“Try to relax, ma’am.” Lexi’s lips touched her ear, smiling. “You have a dangerous condition. You need to be treated, or the madness could become permanent.”
She felt Lexi’s hand snake under the waistband of the skirt, then into her underwear.
Her mind was in her eyes and her eyes were on the coin. Her mind was in her eyes and her eyes were on the coin. She became aware that she was breathing heavily. She tried to keep her focus. Her mind was in her eyes and her eyes were on—
Lexi’s fingers.
Lights went off behind her vision. She heard herself make a little weak noise, felt her hips rock.
The touch was gentle at first. Maddeningly light, almost a tickle. It teased her, massaging in slow circles.
Her mind was in her eyes and her eyes were on the coin.
Then it was not so gentle and not so slow. The little slow circles became little fast circles and then big fast circles. Her hips tried to grind into it and tried to get away from it at the same time. They were not in her control. She was not in her control.
Lexi was whispering in her ear, describing a sensation that was rising up through her, wet and red and moist, and she heard a high keening sound and only partially recognized that it was her own voice.
She was being played like an instrument.
The thought had a sudden power—like she was some helpless object that had no choice in the matter, being tuned like a car radio—and an inevitability, and that last thing, the inevitability of being tuned like a radio that has no say in the matter, overcame her and she felt herself twitch and then twitch again.
The whispers in her ear changed from exciting things to calming things.
“There,” Lexi husked, stroking her hair. “All better. Though I must warn you, repeated treatments are often necessary.”
Perfectly innocent. She had a condition. Symptoms were caused by pretty girls with Rogue-hair. Luckily there was a cure, and it didn’t even hurt.
Her body slumped.
When her vision cleared she was reclining in the world’s biggest, comfiest easy chair. It was two sizes too big and that was awesome. It was floating down slowly.
Lexi was sitting in her lap, light as a kitten, kissing her neck and playing with her hair. Her ass was, if such a thing could be possible, better than ice cream.
“Can you tell me where we are?”
“We’re... in a chair,” Caitlyn said.
“You’re adorable.” Lexi kissed her. “It’s just true. You are freaking adorable.”
The chair reclined and then they were in her bed. She thought that this might be reality, but it didn’t feel any more like reality than being in the chair or on the beach or on the escalator. They were all becoming the same thing.
“I think I’d like to keep you this way forever. Can I try?”
“Uh huh.” She didn’t know what Lexi was talking about and she didn’t particularly care. She was feeling Lexi’s body move against hers under the sheets, and thinking, in an absent way, that it was a very nice feeling. Only hours earlier thinking the same thing gave her a sharp stab of guilt. Not any longer. Lexi had made that go away. They had walked through a tunnel made of negative thoughts and when they came through the light at the end, all of those stupid and silly things were gone.
Then the bed was gone and she was alone, drifting. Lexi was asking her to give up all control over herself. Every last bit. Asking her to be as empty as a telescope that only thought what it was pointed at. That was the phrase she used: a telescope that only thought what it was pointed at.
It was a concept that Caitlyn grasped instantly. She wrapped her hands around it and was at home with it as if it had always been there.
Lexi punctuated the request by sliding two fingers into her. Her mind filled with sticky red light.
Time passed; she wasn’t sure how much. She thought it may have been hours, because after it was over her body was tired, as if she’d been walking for a long time.
She was standing. Lexi was undressing her. It was oddly intimate, being undressed and dressed by someone else. She held her arms up when she was supposed to, felt the shirt peel off. She was a mannequin, perfectly docile and passive. The thought excited her but it didn’t show on her face.
Something slid up her legs and against her crotch, and she became aware that she was wet, but that was becoming normal. Then her left arm was lifted and something cool slid up it.
“Open your eyes,” Lexi said.
Caitlyn did, and her breath caught.
She was standing in front of the full length mirror. The girl in the mirror didn’t look anything like her. She almost entirely naked, except for a pair of silver panties and a silver arm band around her left bicep. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, as tightly as possible. It was sleek and shiny. Her arms were by her sides and her shoulders were back, making her smallish breasts jut out and giving a statuesque definition to her upper body. Her face was expressionless except that her lips were parted slightly because she had just gasped.
She looked like the servant of some ancient sultan, poised and still.
The last item was a thick, polished steel collar around her neck. She could feel the weight of it. It was not from a costume shop. It was the real thing. Lexi stood behind her and slightly to the side, looking at her through the mirror.
She became aware that something was attached to the collar in the back, something heavy and metallic and cool that hung down between her shoulder blades. She couldn’t see it but she had an idea of what it was.
A chain.
As if sensing her thoughts, Lexi gave it a tug.
“I’ve had this collar for years and never knew what to do with it. I didn’t even know why I bought it at the time. I was like fourteen and I just knew I needed to have it. So I brought it home, tossed it in the closet, and never really thought about it again, until last night.
“Then I knew exactly what to do with it.
“When I saw you in the library I didn’t have this planned, honestly. I kept expecting you to come out of it on your own. When you didn’t, I wanted to see if I could keep you under for another five minutes, and it turned out I could. Then another five, then ten... you always went deeper. Your mind always goes down, not up. You weren’t faking or role playing. You really were there. Are there.”
She pulled the chain again for emphasis. Caitlyn’s back became straighter, but otherwise, she didn’t react. Her mind was in her eyes and her eyes were on herself in the mirror. Everything that was not an order was background noise.
“It’s important for you to think about this, because you’re something special. You’re especially vulnerable. And I’m not going to help you snap out of it. I’m going to do the opposite. Because it turns out that having a starey-eyed girl hanging on your every word is... intoxicating.” Her voice wavered on intoxicating. “So if you want to go, you better. If you don’t I’m going to do my very best to turn you into that gorgeous thing you see in the mirror, full time.
“I am going to make you forget who you are.”
She paused, presumably to give Caitlyn a chance to react, but Caitlyn didn’t. Her eye didn’t so much as twitch. In her mind she was a marionette, floating above a stage, soft ropes tied to her, moving her.