The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“You cry a lot lately.” Ellie’s head was cocked to the side.

“I know.”

“And you drink a lot.”

“I know.”

“Why?” There was genuine concern there. Happily’s Children weren’t programmed to fake things.

You’ll understand when you’re older was the insane thing that popped into Lane’s head, because it was such a childish question. Instead she took her girlfriend’s hand and said,

“I’m on the rag.”

Ellie giggled, and Lane watched her not do the math. Lane had been on the rag for a full month now and Ellie would never do the math. Ellie was trusting. She’d been that way before, but with more common sense. Now, she would accept anything Lane said as fact.

“A friend of mine is coming to visit,” Lane said to their hands. “She’ll be here soon. She may act strange, like I do.”

“She cries and drinks?”

Lane laughed.

“Yes. So if she says anything that sounds strange to you, I want you to just ignore it, ok?”

“Ok.” The eyes were bovine, loving.

“Good. Now, what do you want to do in the meantime?”

“Wanna play checkers?”

They played checkers.

By the time the door bell rang, Ellie had won ten times. Lane didn’t let her win—she was just good. She had the innate ability to absorb information and patterns, like all of Happily’s Children did. It was an after effect, maybe, of when their minds had been opened up and forced to absorb the things they had.

It was Dana, from her unit. She was wearing a denim jacket. A month ago, Lane would have asked her what decade she rescued it from, but today, she just nodded. She knew that hidden underneath, in the narrow place between the woman’s hips and chest, was a gun and a taser, and probably other weapons.

“What’s up?” Dana looked her up and down. She wasn’t smiling. “You don’t call, you don’t write? You pulling a Salinger on us?” They gripped hands and bumped shoulders.

“Haven’t been feeling well. Come on in.”

“I hope you got the measles or something. Chris is gonna want to know. You been AWOL for a month.”

They went in to the kitchen. Lane got some glasses—the good ones—while Dana leaned against the counter, studying her with a look that was not totally unkind.

“We been doing some shit. Saved two girls this week alone. I did one myself. She was in an elevator, caught by one of those new displays, just standing there. She’d been going up and down, up and down, for hours. I guess everyone thought she was just waiting for her floor.”

“You get her away without anyone seeing?”

“Almost. A couple saw us in the parking lot. A couple like, you know, a married couple. I cracked their skulls.”

“Grats.”

Lane poured them each a shot of whiskey. They drank without toasting. Dana winced. Lane didn’t.

“She’s out at Chris’s ranch now. Gonna be fine.” Dana gave her a meaningful look and held it. Her face was hard. “How about you? How many girls you save this week?”

“I haven’t changed my mind. Tell them to stop calling. Take me and Ellie out of the circle.”

Dana slammed the glass down on the counter. It was heavy and made a sound like a gunshot.

“Goddamnit, Lane, you know how few of us there are left. We can’t be splitting up right now. We need you, and Ellie.”

“We’re out.”

“You’re scared, we’re all scared. That’s a luxury. That means you own your own mind. Those freaks, they don’t know what scared is anymore. They don’t know anything. You should be happy to be able to be scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Right, fine. What does Ellie have to say about this? Or is she one of those good girlfriends who does whatever you say?”

Yes.

“She’s not interested either.”

“Hey Ellie, you in there?” Dana shouted at the living room. She could have walked the three feet and looked, but she shouted.

“Yes!” Ellie’s voice, girlish and cheerful. Dana went around the corner.

“What do you think about this giving up the good fight bullshit? You on board with this?”

“What good fight?” She sat in front of the checkers board waiting for Lane’s move. Blond curls dangled beside her cheeks, corkscrew and straw-colored. She wore a floral summer dress, though summer had been gone for months. Her eyes were a deep and clear and guileless blue and they looked up, curious and questioning.

“Oh, you’re gonna get all semantical on me. Fine, it’s not a good fight, but it’s a fight.”

Ellie’s brow furrowed. She looked to Lane.

“She means the meetings we used to go to, sweety.” It felt like there was something in her throat, having to say that in front of another person.

“Oh.” The blue eyes went back to the game board. “We don’t go to those anymore.”

“No, really? What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me.”

“Then why did you stop going?”

Ellie cocked her head. “Why would we want to fight Happily? She made us beautiful.”

Dana’s face went white.

She looked from Ellie, to Lane, back to Ellie. Her face was a mask of almost comic disbelief.

Lane didn’t let herself flinch. They had to find out sooner or later. Better now, with just Dana, than later, with the whole group, when the social panic might push the moment out of control. A situation like that could get out of her control too easily. Dana alone, she could handle, if she needed to.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dana gaped.

“No,” Ellie said.

“Are you fucking kidding me? She’s one of them?” To Lane.

“Ellie, me and Dana are going to go talk in the other room for a little while. You go ahead and play both sides of the game until I get back.”

“Ok!” Ellie’s hands moved the pieces around with deft, single-minded skill. She won, then looked confused that she’d beat herself.

The light clicks of the game pieces followed them into the kitchen.

“Are you—”

“You already said that.”

“When?”

“About a month ago.” She refilled their glasses and emptied hers. Dana’s remained untouched. She stood with her feet planted wide apart, her hands on her hips. Her right hand rested near her gun and that was not lost on Lane. “It was that weekend I went up north. The mailman got her.”

Mailmen were known for doing random spot checks of the populace. They would flash anyone they met along their route.

“She’s smarter than that. She wouldn’t talk to a mailman.”

“I know. He knocked, then got her through the door, right through the peephole. I don’t know what he was even doing up here; the mailboxes are on the first floor.

“She didn’t have her glasses on. I mean, who would think that something as small as a peephole could... it was my fault. I should have been here. If I’d been here I could have pulled her away from the door. But I was up at Lake Winnipesaukee organizing groups of girls that I’ll never meet again.” She walked to the opening between the rooms and watched Ellie. The checkers clicked.

“A whole month and you never said anything.” Dana reconsidered her drink and drank it.

Ellie won another game against herself and clapped, grinning. Her cheeks were dimpled. Actual dimples, at her age. Lane smiled.

“Good job, sweety. Play again.”

“K!”

She could feel Dana staring.

“She’s got to be put down, Lane.”

“You’re not putting her anywhere.”

“She knows all of our names. Where we all live. When we meet. All of that is in that cute little head of hers, and if anyone asks her, she’ll tell them.”

“I don’t let her go out or answer the phone.”

“It doesn’t matter! What if you get caught too? What if she answers the door while you’re in the shower? What if some programming kicks in that we don’t know about?”

Lane didn’t answer. She was watching the dimples.

Dana’s hand was on her shoulder.

“We won’t kill her. There are other ways. We can flash her enough that she won’t remember any of us.”

“No. I already... I tried to fix her.” Lane turned back to the kitchen. “I thought maybe I could undo it... I gave her the imprinting drug and tried to talk her out of it. For days.

“That’s why she’s like that. Spacey, not quite there, even more than the rest of them. She can’t take any more. She’ll be a vegetable.”

“Laney.” Dana’s hand squeezed. “We’ll make it as comfortable as possible for her. She won’t even know anything is happening.”

Which was, of course, the only possible reaction she could have expected from her unit. It was what they did. They were fighting a war.

Lane turned around. Her gun was in her hand: a heavy, mute punctuation. The safety was off, and it was pointed at the woman across from her. Dana’s eyes went wide. She froze; then, seeming to remember herself, put down her glass.

“Anyone comes through that door with the intention of hurting her and they won’t make it past the L on the welcome mat,” Lane explained.

Dana stepped back.

“Tell me you’re not pointing a gun at me, Lane.”

“You can leave now.”

“This is sick,” Dana spat. “You’re dating a fucking puppet. She can’t even see you. She’s not there. Ellie has left the fucking building. What’s in there only knows how to eat and sleep and say how beautiful Happily made her and, one of these days, undo all we’ve done.”

“Get out of my house.”

“You’re farther gone than she is. This is insane. You’re going to take all of us down with you.”

“Bye.”

Lane locked the door behind her. She went back to the living room.

Ellie looked up, another finished game decorating the board in front of her.

“I lost again,” she said.

Lane smiled. She turned the board around so that it faced the other way.

“No, you won. See?”

Ellie laughed and clapped.

There were about ten voicemails. Lane deleted them without listening, all except the one from her squad leader, Chris.

“Hi Lane. Dana told me what happened. First of all, if she threatened you or Ellie, she was out of line. No one’s going to kick your door down.

“But you’ve got to understand where we’re coming from. I know you do, you were with us for a long time and you’re still free, whether it’s with us or not. So you’ve got to know the danger you’re putting us all in.

“We’ve all lost people in this. All of our friends and family, most of us. Sometimes you have to accept the losses and move on, Laney. I know how much you want her back. We all want people back.

“I’ve been where you are. I know that look that they can have... sometimes it’s like they’re almost there, you almost connect. Those times are the worst, I know, I’ve been there. That’s why you just have to cut and run. You can’t look back, Laney. She’s not there.”

Pause.

“You’ve got my number, and you know the position I’m in.

“Either the entire group has to pick up and go, move to another city, change our names, everything... or we have to do something about Ellie. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

“You’re not alone, Laney.”

Lane deleted it.

They sat on the couch watching old movies. They couldn’t watch them on the TV, of course—it might flash at any time, like anything electronic. In the early days, when it first started, the evening news had caught an enormous amount of the free-willed. People knew something was up and they turned on the news to find out what it was—even the ones that knew to avoid electronic devices. Turning on the news was such an inbred, knee-jerk reaction that most people never even thought about what would happen. It was where you got the news.

Then the screen would flash a few times, and the anchor would give them the first instructions of their new life.

Lane had a movie projector that they used to project old VHS tapes on the wall. The tapes were cheap, if you could find them. When they went out (which was rare, now), they traveled to the local flea markets where people sold them for 50 cents or even gave them away.

They were watching the original Star Wars trilogy for the third time. It was the original VHS release, so Han shot first. Lane was glad she didn’t have to explain why that was important, because Ellie probably wouldn’t get it.

They held hands.

That had been the extent of their sex life for the last month. It wasn’t that Ellie wasn’t able to, or didn’t have urges—in fact, the exact opposite was true: Happily’s Children, if they were good for anything, were good for a lay. One of their unifying traits was an active sex life. Happily liked her girls to be happy.

But Lane always felt like she was taking advantage of the girl. They’d made love only once since the change. It was during that first week, when Lane had gotten blindly, blackly drunk after trying, and failing, over and over to bring Ellie back to normal. She barely remembered it, and what she did remember, she pushed away. She woke up the next morning sick and shaking, without even a headache, just that feeling of unreality like her eyes were too big for her head, and vomited for most of the day. The shaking was a dim reminder of how close she’d come to alcohol poisoning, but what made her sick, over and over, was how one-sided it had been with the naked blonde that stood over her for the entire day, holding her hair back over the toilet.

“Luke is gonna save the world,” Ellie whispered confidentially.

Lane laughed.

“I think you’re right.”

“Just like Happily!”

Lane didn’t realize she was crying until she opened her eyes and saw Ellie’s floral dress, inches away. Her cheek was pressed against the girl’s shoulder. Ellie was stroking her hair and asking her what was wrong.

Ellie understood the concept of crying, and knew that it meant something was wrong, but she didn’t understand what could cause such a thing. Ellie no longer cried. She didn’t know that it was because Happily’s Children didn’t cry—they never needed to—she only knew that she didn’t cry anymore, and like so many other things, she could not connect with it on a base level.

“Are you upset that Luke is going to save the world? We can turn it off, and then he won’t save anyone.” Simple logic.

Lane laughed and wiped her nose. The tears had soaked Ellie’s shoulder and breast.

“Heh,” Lane sniffed. “I cried on your boob.”

Ellie hugged her.

Happily’s Children understood so few things, but as Lane rubbed her face on her absent girlfriend’s chest, something occurred to her: they did understand love. There were a million things that they would never grasp again, but love, they got that. They loved Happily and they loved each other, really and unconditionally. Ellie had been like that before, but it had been her choice.

Lane’s mind wandered.

Dogs love their master unconditionally, but can they love other dogs in the same way?

Lane thought they could. Why not? There was no way to know—they couldn’t say it, in a way different but similar to the brainwashed—just like there was no way to know if they smiled. But Lane thought they could, and the thought settled in her head, became solid, and then she knew it was true with the blind faith of a death row inmate turning to religion, and then she knew what to do.

“I’m going to the store, sweety. Don’t answer the door or the phone, like always, ok? If anyone knocks or calls, you just pretend the sound doesn’t exist, and you answer by not answering, by sitting still and being quiet. Ok?”

“Ok!”

As she opened the door, Ellie called after her: “You forgot your wallet!”

“I don’t need it, sweety.”

When she walked back in, the little imprinting kit a bulge in her pocket, Ellie was sitting in the same place.

“Phone rang twice. Leia is still Luke’s sister.”

Lane smiled and knelt next to her.

“I’m going to watch TV for a while, baby. You should stay in the next room. It’s not good for you anymore.” I fried your brain trying to fix you.

Ellie’s eyes went wide.

“You never watch TV!”

“I know. But I want to watch the news, and then maybe the other channel, the special channel. I may be a long time. You play checkers with yourself in the bedroom, or solitaire, ok?”

“Ok!” She bounced off the couch, hugged Lane, kissed her cheek, and bounded into the bedroom. Lane watched her go. Ellie used to be like that before, except it had been her choice.

She sat in front of the television Indian-style and opened the imprinting kit, laying the contents out on the carpet before her. There was a syringe, some cotton swabs, some alcohol and a little instruction manual, which was usually not needed, because the voice would tell you what to do once you saw the flash.

Maybe the two things will balance out. You can’t possibly get father away from communicating with her. It can only get you closer.

You’ll love the master more, like a dog. But who’s to say a dog can’t love another dog? That’s one of the only things they really do understand. They know what loyalty is. The loyalty is to the master first, but after that, who? The thing they sleep next to is another dog.

Maybe the next time she looks at you, she’ll be able to see you.

She turned on the TV. When the pulse came, she stopped thinking, but she’d done that the moment her fingers touched the dial anyway.

Lane’s eyes opened.

The second most beautiful thing in the world was leaning over her.

It had blonde curls, and a smile, and its eyes were deep and blue and guileless. It wore a floral summer dress even though it was October, and its hands were stroking her hair. Her head was in its lap, laying loose between its soft legs, and her face was pressed against its stomach. It smelled like joy.

She. It was a she. Lane remembered its—her—name: Ellie. Then she remembered what that name meant and her insides turned warm.

The most beautiful thing in the world was Happily, of course. She was to be obeyed and loved above all others, even the ghosts in the books that the old religious men used to read. But after Happily was this, the second most beautiful thing in the world, and Lane felt it as a physical sensation that started in the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands and ran through her to some place in the center that was not an actual place but felt like one: the place that connected all things.

She felt her former love for this girl mingle with something new, something that radiated from that glowing center of the sensation. It was magnified, multiplied, and Lane felt herself understand: Happily ordered her children to love each other. Happily made the word unconditional real. Marriage vows could be broken, promises whispered in the back seats of cars or in sweaty beds or airplane bathrooms could be broken, but Lane understood now: her mind was owned, forever, and she was grateful, and the side effect of that bond was this bond, which had been there before, but only as a shadow of this.

Lane grinned from the tips of her ears and stretched, slipping one hand beneath the soft thigh and settling into it like a pillow.

“I had to pee,” Ellie explained. “You were out there for so long. I was going to try to just sneak by to the bathroom but then I saw you here and you weren’t moving and I got worried, and you didn’t say I had to stay in the bedroom, you only said I should, so I came and held you because you were laying all funny.”

Lane turned her head and kissed the stomach through the dress. Ellie cocked her head. It made the curls on one side bounce around.

“You look different.”

“Happily made me beautiful,” Lane smiled through the thin material.

The big blue eyes turned to saucers.

“You told me she already had!”

“I know. I was lying. I was afraid of you knowing.”

Ellie cradled her head.

“It’s ok. Happily forgives you.”

Lane didn’t ask if Ellie forgave her too. She didn’t have to. If Happily did, Ellie did, by extension. The black and whiteness of it was simple and pure.

She reached up and tangled her fingers into the curls, then leaned up on one elbow, pulling Ellie’s face down towards hers. Ellie grinned. They kissed. The lips were warm and soft and Lane heard herself whimper because she’d never felt anything like it, not even in their former lives, not even in those first few months of exploring each other, not even that time that Ellie had grabbed her and hit the stop button in an elevator and pressed her against the wall while the security cameras watched.

“Does this mean you’re going to start kissing me again?” Ellie looked down at her when the kiss broke. Lane rested her head against the girl’s chest and listened to her heart, feeling Ellie’s breasts against her neck and chin.

A fire began to radiate out from that indefinable center of sensation. She’d never felt anything like it, not even in dreams where need was a red and all powerful thing.

She dove onto the girl, getting mostly bottom lip in her blind hurry to feel the soft again. Her hands found their way under the loose dress and pulled it up over legs, stomach, chest. Ellie giggled as she fell back, but the sound changed to a gasp as Lane pressed against her. The second most beautiful thing in the world writhed beneath her on the carpet.