The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Gail arrived promptly at the convention center for the video game con that day. She was excited to attend. It was a big important one; Gail was even a fan of much smaller cons. But she was a big fan of conferences like this one especially; she’d attended many that were similar, and she was well familiar with the convention circuit, and there were many familiar faces that recurred across conferences, most of whom were at least acquaintances, some of whom were even friends.

Gail had marked this conference down for herself specifically, though. Her very favorite character of all time, Ciera the shadow huntress, was set to be the star of her own new video game. Gail knew both Ciera and her video game would have their own dedicated booth; this was the main reason for her visit. She was very eager to see it.

Ciera also already had her own comic—Gail owned every issue that had ever been put out—and she’d been featured as a supporting character in both auxiliary comics by the same creator and as a supporting player in other video game franchises centered on other main characters.

Ciera was finally getting her own video game—she would no longer be an ancillary character, and if the video game itself sold well enough it might create interest in doing a tv series adapting Ciera’s central comic—or even a movie. So Gail was eager to show her support for Ciera and her franchise, such as it was and such as it might be.

Plus, Ciera’s new video game was going to officially be released live for the very first time at this con—the very first copies ever sold, apart from pre-orders, would be sold right here, and that was one more reason Gail had come. She wanted to buy a copy of the game the second it became available—and that meant getting it here. Even the pre-orders were only going to be sent out today; it could still take them days to actually arrive in the mail; so Gail was getting the game sooner than she otherwise would have by buying it here first thing as the con started and Ciera’s Hunt, the game, became available for the very first time.

The only people who might get the game at the same time as Gail, or slightly earlier, were the people who had pre-ordered digital downloads, but Gail was okay with that. If she’d gotten a digital download, which would have become available today, as it was release day, she wouldn’t have been able to come to this con in person if she’d gotten a digital download. And she’d been so excited to do that that she was arriving in the morning right as the con was opening its doors for the day, along with crowds of people equally invested as her in other franchises. She was arriving so early because she hadn’t wanted to miss any part of that day’s event. Clearly the other early attendees had felt the same way.

In fact, Gail had been so excited to come that she’d actually dressed up as Ciera. Ciera’s story was set in a post-fall-of-civilation overgrown forest. It had overgrown, in part, a fallen city; it was a grimy, gritty, dangerous forest, partly still affected by ancient pollution, full of part-mutant, part-seemingly-supernatural creatures that Ciera was in a life or death ongoing struggle with as she vied with them for resources and simultaneously tried to find other remaining humans.

Gail thought she’d gotten the costume pretty close to right; a short gray makeshift skirt that hitched higher on the right leg—gray to blend in with the shadows of the forest, and with the very creatures she hunted, and a similarly gray top that was made of loose gray cloth, tied at one shoulder and held up by that one point, the draped fabric wrapping around her body to rejoin at the same point from behind as from in front. The bottom of the top’s front came to a natural point which rested just below the belly button, and slanted up as a v from that point. Light easy cloth for navigating in.

Then Ciera had a gray leather belt buckled around one upper arm to hold her quiver of arrows in place. And of course she had a bow she’d made herself from the gray wood of the trees of the overgrown Shadow Forest. She also had gray flat sandals that tied tight to her feet so she could easily run and dodge in them. And Ciera always wore her dark hair in a brand down the left side of her head—pointing at her full quiver of arrows, since she wore the quiver on that side of her body, that arm.

Gail had replicated the costume perfectly. Some of the other people arriving had dressed up as other video game characters—but no one else had dressed up as Ciera, Gail noted proudly—priding in being the only one.

Once Gail was actually on the floor of the convention center, she made a direct line back to the booth dedicated to Ciera’s game, moving past all the other available booths, not so much as looking at them as she was passing them by.

When Gail reached the booth display she’d come for, there was a cutely dressed booth attendant sitting behind it.

“Hello,” the attendant greeted her cheerfully. “Welcome to the booth dedicated to Ciera’s hunt.”

The booth attendants eyes glazed for a second, and then widened in belated realization. “You’re dressed as Ciera! That’s so fun!”

The booth attendant considered Gail a minute longer. Then asked, “Can I interest you in our interactive exhibit?”

There were two tents behind the booths; just small enough to fit a few people at a time, and in the designated booth space between Ciera’s hunt and the other two neighbouring booths on either side of it.

The other people stopping by the booth were going into the tent on the right—Gail peeked in, glimpsing through the flap as two more people entered. It looked like they were test playing the game in there.

The booth on the left was almost directly behind the booth attendant; there would be no entering through it unless the booth attendant stepped aside and allowed it to happen.

“Do you mean the test playing that’s going on in there?” Gail indicated the second booth to the right with a pointing of her finger.

“That’s the game sample exhibit, for the general public,” the booth attendant said brightly. “The interactive exhibit is only for very special fans like you. Look at all the care you’ve taken in dressing yourself up—Ciera would be so proud of you! Would you like to see our interactive exhibit?”

The intonation of this last sentence was identical to what the booth attendant had said before. The effect was eerie.

“You deserve it!” The attendant encouraged.

Gail looked around her at the tent in behind—the leftward one. She hadn’t even known that this booth had an interactive exhibit. It sounded great to her.

“Yes, I would like to see it.”

The attendant moved to the side of the tent just behind the booth—then moved the curtained opening aside and held it for Gail so she could pass inside.

Inside, there wasn’t much room—and there wasn’t anyone else there, even though there were plenty other people in attendance out on the actual floor of the conference, and even though there were people in the other tent. It looked like she was the only special fan—she was the only one who had bothered to dress up with this much care, after all.

There was a screen inside the tent, though—and a set of headphones to go with it, despite the limited space.

Gail went nearer to the front of the tent. Once there, she put the headphones over her ears, and sat down in front of the screen.

The headphones played a soothing tone. Gail kept waiting for there to be some kind of speech; or maybe for whatever speech there was, which may have already been there, to become more prominent. Soon enough she stopped worrying about that, though. Then she was only more concerned with listening—soon it was all she could think about, how nice the listening was, how much she wanted to listen.

Then the screen came to life, but the soundtrack through the headphones had not changed at all. The screen was displaying the character that Gail loved so much—Ciera—but the image of her was kind of offset, and the footage was not constant—flashing—so quickly that Gail couldn’t tell if there were other images in between the shots of Ciera moving, jumping, fighting, shooting her handmade bow.

And the lulling sounds—and the flashing half-images… they seemed to leave an impression on Gail’s mind, but nothing more could be made of them… she was becoming disoriented… dizzy… she realized she wanted to stop looking at the screen… stop listening to the headphones… they were disorienting her… she wasn’t sure who she was anymore. She was confused. Was she Gail… or was she the character that she was watching, the character she knew everything about, so much… had she known all this before coming in here, or had she since learned it, after engaging with this exhibit? Was she Gail? She couldn’t be sure… she felt more like the character than ever.

A few more minutes of watching had her sure. She wasn’t Gail. She was Ciera, and she always had been Ciera. She was so proud of herself—proud of everything she was, proud of everything she’d done. She would carry that pride with her always.

She was Ciera. She came from the Shadow Forest—it was her job to hunt and fight and struggle with the shadows that lived in the forest. She was their huntress, and she was totally dedicated to her purpose.

Her purpose was telling her now that she needed to leave this small tent and go back into the exterior space.

It seemed natural to her to come to a standstill just outside the tent she’d left behind her, next to the other girl there. Her natural habitat was the Shadow Forest, those gray half-polluted woods, but her mind did not question her location. It seemed natural and right that she be here; every time the thought of her strange location even tried to enter her head, it slipped from her mind before it could fully form itself. There was nothing to question; there was nothing strange, nothing to wonder about—everything was normal, everything was fine, she belonged here. The fact that there were boundaries in her mind, places she couldn’t go, things she couldn’t think of, limitations that couldn’t be circumvented—it was all normal for her.

All she felt as she stood there was pride. She was Ciera, Shadow Huntress—and she was happy to tell stories of her life—her backstory, her origin, anything and everything; all experiences she’d ever had to whoever was interested.

Whenever the girl beside her was speaking, Ciera found herself zoning out—smiling—listening to something in her head that she couldn’t quite hear—waiting until more people came to talk to her and hear about her life. They all seemed so pleased to hear the exploits she boasted of; the daring situations she’d escaped barely unscathed—the times she’d nearly met her death—she had endless stories for their questions.

When there was a question she did not understand, or which posed some problem for her, it was no concern. Then she found herself zoning out again, and smiling faintly—this was normal too—perfectly so—she was so happy just to be here, speaking of all her accomplishments and showing off the bow she’d made herself to interested parties when they came asking to see it.

The day grew later; Ciera recognized the afternoon light coming in from the high windows in the room—this lighting was some of the best to hunt by when she was back in the forest; but she finally registered something the girl next to her was saying.

“Thanks for attending right to the end of the day!” She called out. The things that didn’t make sense to Ciera slipped back out of her mind as soon as they were heard. “As a thank you, we’re holding a raffle for all the visitors who came to our booth today. If you checked in with us, your name was entered into the raffle, and the winner will get the prize of some special time spent one on one with Ciera.”

Ciera understood this, and as soon as she heard it, knew it was something that she wanted as well.

The other girl turned the crank which spun the compartment that held all the names; then opened the cage door to it, and gestured Ciera towards it. Ciera understood intuitively what she needed to do; she reached in and took out a name, and read it when the girl next to her smiled her into doing.

“Jacob S.,” Ciera announced.

The man stepped forward from the small crowd which had collected around the booth. “I didn’t really care about this raffle,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. He seemed surprised to have won. “But if I’ve won some alone time with Ciera, I won’t say no.”

“Perfect!” The girl chippered. “Everyone else, thank you for coming!”

Ciera took hold of the man’s hand and the two of them walked through the strange room—went through a door which a distant and forgotten part of her mind knew to be the women’s restroom door—and in to a stall.

Ciera was leading all by instinct—she had, on occasion in her travels, found another person here or there in the woods; sometimes this person had been a man, and Ciera had taken advantage of the companionship; fucked any man she came across while he was there, because so much of her time was spent alone and she never knew how long it would be before she found another companion again.

The man—Jacob, she vaguely recalled, seemed to understand it was companionship she was looking for—and looked as interested in being with her as she was interested in being with him. The coupled satisfyingly against the stall—Ciera failed to notice its anachronism, its out of place nature; she was only grateful for something solid and standing to lean against as she moved with Jacob. She’d been out in the wilderness so long—along—had been all over the Shadow Forest, alone. It was nice not to be alone, at least for these moments. It was nice to be with somebody.

When they were both satisfied, they parted way. Ciera returned to the tent. Perfectly herself—happy to be herself.