The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

21.

Tribeswomen screamed. It was almost musical. Dew looked at the Others as they came, sexy and dangerous in their brief safari suits and laced boots. They called cheerfully to each other, and paused to aim tranquilizer guns at their panicking prey.

Sweetberry turned to yell at her group, but not all of them heard her. Some were coming out of the water, some just rushing around in confusion.

Dew stood still. Panic seemed oddly seductive. It was almost like Ritual to lose herself in helpless crying out and running until an Other dropped her with a dart.

She watched four naked fleeing women seem to leap into the air as a net caught them, and they rolled together in it, thrashing and shouting, several feet off the ground.

We are helpless primitives. The Others hunt us and make us slaves. Tribal wisdom seeped out of her mind, flickering with a hypnotic glow of instruction, sapping her will to fight.

It is the way of Tribe.

Sweetberry hadn’t run. She dived beautifully into the pool and swam to the girl who’d been tranquilized on the ledge and fallen. She screamed at another woman, who snapped out of the panic-spell and helped her get their sleeping Tribesister to shore. As they did, another dart hit the water next to her. Then the second woman slumped over the first one.

Dew tried to free herself from the deadly lethargy and help Sweetberry, but her friend was already out of the water. With a last despairing look around, Sweetberry reached for her.

“Dew, we can’t—oh, just run!” She strangled on tears.

More Tribeswoman spilled out from another direction, and even before she saw the safari girls moving deliberately behind them she saw the pattern.

“They’re herding us!” Dew said, and Sweetberry looked touchingly grateful that someone else could still think. There was no way she could know how exciting it was to think of being herded.

Something bit Dew’s ass and she tingled all over. It felt like teeth during lovemaking but she knew it was a dart even as the drug turned her body to lead and her mind to mist. As she floated down there was a body against her and Sweetberry’s face in hers, and she found the time to be terribly sorry for how sad Sweetberry looked.

She woke in the shade, and the light stroking on her skin came from the broad-leafed plant she lay under. After her head stopped spinning, she listened but only heard the waterfall. No one screamed or splashed.

Peering below the leaves she didn’t see Sweetberry lying prone with a dart in her, but as her head cleared she knew her Tribesister wouldn’t have been left there. She heard voices, and slowly slid further out under the leaves to see.

The waterfall clearing looked like a battlefield. Tribeswomen lay all over the place where the sleep darts had taken them down. Half a dozen Others moved casually around, trailed almost robotically by nude women with slicked-back hair, wearing nothing but thin straps of leather. When an Other gestured, her nude slave would squat and tie a tag to a sleeping Tribeswoman.

Dew shivered. That must be what they turned their victims into—what her drugged sisters there would become. She sank down under the plant again and tried not to cry. Sweetberry had hidden her so she could sleep off the dart safely, but all those others out there lay helplessly exposed.

Not all the Tribeswomen were sedated. Dew saw several she’d mistaken for the Others’ robotic slaves—all of her sisters had lost their blue bikini panties, and they seemed listless. They responded to Others’ commands, and one sent them into the jungle, to emerge in pairs a few moments later shouldering bundles of long poles. Dew saw strange glittering on their necks and elsewhere on their bodies, and presently she saw their faces.

Unlike the Others’ blank-faced slaves, Dew’s Tribesisters were smiling blissfully, their eyes shining but unfocused. They didn’t try to talk with each other, and when they were finished with a task they’d just stop and seem to zone out until one of the safari girls set them a new one. Now they joined some of the fetishistic slaves in carrying unconscious captives to one part of the clearing.

Dew wondered what the Others had done to them to make them obey. She was already starting to fixate on their bright ornaments when she realized it. The Others knew every Tribeswoman’s weakness for trinkets, how shiny baubles and cheap beads dazzled their eyes and weakened their primitive minds. Tribal lore said the sinister lure was irresistible, and even now Dew was starting to understand why her sisters weren’t screaming, but just stood there in passive rapture, hearing it click next to their ears and sparkling on their own and each others’ bodies. For now, their dulled wits left them willing to do anything for the women who’d given them their toys.

Slaves let down the net, where all the women caught in it were drugged. More women, Tribe and slave, marched out of the jungle with poles between them, each one with a drugged, naked Tribeswoman bound hand and foot to it like a slain animal. They set their burdens down in another part of the clearing and waited.

With a clatter and strangely hard footfalls, a ponycart rolled up from the forest path. It was light but strong, all metal tubes, and the two ponygirls seemed ready for much heavier loads. They pranced to a stop and went taut, and a couple of Others admired then as the driver hopped down.

“Brought some more binding,” she said, but one of the others, playing with the buttplug of the further pony and swishing its tail, shook her head.

“We have plenty. We can cache it with the unused poles.”

“Stop that!” Laughing, the driver shooed the other woman away as the ponygirl twitched on harness, stimulated beyond her training. The driver soothed her and spoke to her until she stood still again, staring forward as serenely as her tracemate.

“No crotch play until they’re back in their stalls,” she scolded. “It confuses them.”

“None at all?” The Other looked the ponies up and down. “All day riding behind those scrumptious beasts, watching those thighs pump, and all you do is flick ‘em with the whip?”

“Self-discipline.

“How many?” she added, hooking a thumb at the rows of captives.

“How many can you take?”

Proudly, she ran a gloved hand down the thigh of the pony she’d calmed, nodding in approval as the girl kept pose. “Capacity,” she said. “This pair can probably do six, on this cart.”

One of the Others nodded. “Works for me. A few of us got overeager with the darts, but enough of the bitches are awake enough to carry the sleepyheads, if we use the drones too.”

“How many drones will the sweep crew need?” the driver asked, but the three of them walked away before Dew heard more. She looked at the ponygirls, who were close enough to her to see the bewitched intensity of their eyes. One of them looked familiar, but the context made no sense—the girl was laughing and speaking, and wore clothing . . .

The Others returned, with a dozen drones and trinket-enslaved Tribeswomen carrying the cargo for the cart. After they’d more or less gently lain the sleeping women down, they were ordered back. Dew watched one of her tranced sisters, unable to look away from the pretty, pretty way her pale-green necklace caught the sun. It stupefied Dew.

The woman turned to obey the new order. It was Sweetberry.

Her friend wore a foolish smile now. Her eyelids were at half-mast, and Dew’s first thought was relief that she was past worrying about her group now. They’d used the deadly power the little baubles had over Tribeswomen to erase Sweetberry’s cares as well as her will to resist. Dew remembered the hurt in her face as Dew had passed out, and she wondered if that had been why her friend was captured.

It was enough to make her crouch and cry again. If it had been another Tribeswoman she would have drifted out of hiding, just to look more closely at her wonderful beads, and they would have had her.

She looked around and found another way out of the leaves, into the jungle. She crept quietly, not sure of herself in this unfamiliar area. She finally found the path, and then slipped back into the undergrowth as she heard a group approach.

Two safari girls and a pair drones followed four dazedly smiling Tribeswomen carrying two tranquilized ones under poles, from wherever in the trees they’d been darted.

“I like the blonde.”

“Take her! We have some time.” The second Other watched the trailside, dartgun in hand. Dew tried to become still.

“You’re kidding. I can’t put these on my whole body.” The first snapped her glove in emphasis.

“Char, the sunscreen doesn’t turn your brain off. The livestock here steep themselves in it for days—they’re programmed to touch it up after they swim or sweat or wash it off.” Still alert, the woman grinned and flicked the brim of her big-game hunter’s hat. “Actually, doing it with one of them after she’s basted herself can give you a nice little buzz. Mmmm coconut and pussy.”

“Pervert.”

They walked on.

Dew thought about moving back from the path and waiting. Nearer dark, the Others might be done, and she could slip back to the village. It sobered her—the Others being done meant her sisters carried away for good, drugged or spellbound, to be slaves. But she couldn’t rescue them.

She eased back past some trees, and saw she’d found another clearing. She skirted its edge, drawn to a sunnier part of it before she realized it meant less cover. But she was meters further away from the path, and felt safer. She tiptoed around a clump of trees, and—

The dazzle filled her mind, and she was walking toward it before she was fully aware she’d seen it.

An altar in the sunlight, full of pretty, pretty baubles, sparkling through her eyes into her mind. So many they sucked at her will, making her greedy for them.

Distantly she heard a laugh, but Dew was mesmerized. She went to them. She had to.

22.

Dew’s eyes kept moving over the display, seeing beads and bracelets and little mirrors and plastic flowers and . . . it made her tired.

“Would you like some, pretty girl?”

She was still too stunned by the trinkets to jump, but it almost shocked her into moving when she turned to see a slim woman in khaki short-shorts and boots, standing almost in reach.

The woman’s smile was open and friendly, as if she were genuinely happy her layout had riveted Dew.

“You’d like it all, wouldn’t you? I can tell. It’s all so pretty, so hard to look away from.”

Dew’s head swiveled back to look, but she made herself turn away.

“My friends . . .”

The huntress looked sympathetic. “Ohhh. Your friends?”

“They’re drugged or hypnotized.” Dew wasn’t sure why she was saying it. “You’re taking them—to make them slaves.”

“I’ve been here, all afternoon,” the woman said. “With my pretty pretty things.” She grinned, watching Dew’s gaze drawn back to the baubles like a compass needle.

Dew felt fingers stroking her hair. “Don’t fret, my little native. Every slave loves her toil. She simply can’t think of any other way to be.

“And not every captive becomes our slave. Some”—she ran a finger around Dew’s ear—“we make into housepets. The sweetest, most docile ones.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

“I am Tribe, I am called . . .” Dew twitched. If she gave her Tribal name to this Other, she could be bound in a spell like a puppet.

“So shy,” the woman purred, her gloved hand going to Dew’s breast. “We must give you a pretty thing. Then you’ll flirt with me, and tell me your name.”

Dew shook her head. She was already spellbound, robbed of the sense to run. She might make it to the trees before another dart put her to sleep again.

Trying seemed silly, with all these . . .

“They say,” the Other whispered, “native girls are easy. They give away their favors for a trifle if it sparkles their eye. You’ll sell yourselves for an anklet to dance in. You’ll sell your friends for a pussy toy.”

Dew blinked, trying to think. It was so hard.

“Would this buy me a few minutes of tongue?” Bright pink cubes on a chain swung hypnotically across her vision. “Hmm? With a hot girl attached, to make it lick just right?” She giggled, moving it back and forth to see Dew swing her head to follow it.

“Woops!” It vanished, and Dew blinked out of its spell to gape at the Other.

“Magic.” The safari girl giggled again at Dew’s wide-eyed belief. It excited her that this woman knew how easy she was. A soft-minded primitive, naive and simple to cheat of what her body was worth.

“Here!” the safari girl held up a length of beads with loops at either end. “You want this. It’s so pretty.” She swung it gently like the one before, and laughed at how quickly it captured Dew’s gaze.

“Ooooh,” Dew breathed. Pale green, like the necklace that had cost Sweetberry her soul. It seemed too short to be a necklace, but Dew adored it dreamily. Now she could have one.

“Relax, pretty girl.” The Other’s voice was tender. “Let me put it on you.”

Slowly, Dew nodded, and the Other beamed, proud to have earned her trust. She reached forward. “Look at me,” she coached, and Dew found her eyes before she even thought to fear hypnosis.

The Other worked her thumbs and the end-loops widened, and then Dew’s nipples were pleasurably afire.

She cried out and looked down, and saw the beads strung between the tips of her breasts. She fingered her nipples, trapped in the loops, and moaned with it, but the gleam of the beads enticed her eyes.

“Perfect,” the Other said. “Let me show you.” When Dew looked away from the beads with effort, the Other had picked up something square and flat. “Here, wait, let me get the sun right.” After stepping around the table, she deftly flipped the flat thing to show Dew.

It was a mirror, and Dew saw herself, a glassy-eyed topless woman with a Tribe collar and a vineleaf armlet—and beads on nipple loops. She felt it dampening her.

“Yes. You have just the tits for it, pretty girl. Hmm . . . you are Tribe, and you are called . . .”

“Dew,” she said without thinking. It took a moment for the eyes of the girl in the mirror widen.

“Wait, but—”

FLASH

The girl in the mirror was blinking and Dew stood stunned, her thoughts seared out of her head.

“What was—”

FLASH

Her eyes felt tired, and seeing herself that way reinforced it. It was as if just having to shut her eyes was working in reverse to make her drowsy and—

FLASH

It was the sun. The Other was moving the mirror to dazzle her, but Dew’s spinning head was filling with Tribal lore about mirrors and the potent, mind-snaring spells they could cast on an unwary Tribeswoman in the hands of someone who knew.

She tried to look—

FLASH

“Watch.”

FLASH

“Sleep.”

It was hypnotizing her, and she couldn’t fight it.

FLASH

“Watch.”

FLASH

“Sleep.”

Maybe the Other was a witch and had already captured her soul.

FLASH

“Watch.”

FLASH

“Sleep.”

It was too hard to think as she was hypnotized. The strobing flashes pulsed through Dew’s mind too fast for thoughts to—

FLASH

“Watch.”

FLASH

“Sleep.”

. . . Dew watched the blank-eyed girl with the nipple beads and knew she was hypnotized. The flashes had stopped. She watched and slept. Her eyes stayed open.

“What will you do now?” The voice was soothing over her tired mind.

“I will obey your every command,” Dew said. The mirror was gone and she just stared where it had been, still seeing the enslaved Tribeswoman. Seeing herself under the spell made its power over her so much greater.

It felt so nice to be hypnotized.

There was a command, and she shimmied out of her bikini. It settled on her foot. She left it there.

“Such a lovely, tasty pussy, Dew.” Laughter. “Too bad your sisters couldn’t see it all the time—they’d have been lined up to lick you.

“Look at this.”

Dew blinked and saw a delta of beads shimmering before her eyes. Even under hypnosis, the flickering refracted light beguiled her.

“Now, they won’t want to look away.” She felt something circle her waist, and then the bead-fringe was cool against her loins, a mockery of a covering.

It felt so nice to be hypnotized.

There were fingers in Dew’s cleft. She tried to respond to it but the hypnosis harnessed her mind like a ponygirl.

The fingers withdrew. “Go to the table now, Dew.”

Dew obeyed. She stood at attention, aware of the seductive glitter but no longer in control of herself. There was no control left to lose by looking at it again. The mirror was behind it now, and at each musing command she took up another bauble and put it on. Finally there was a tiara with hanging “jewels,” and she was crowned.

She looked like an incredibly low-rent idea of a dancing girl, and her spaced-out expression made it stranger, but still sexy.

“Very good, pretty Dew. You remember what you must do for me now?”

“I remember.” She stared at the tarted-up dancer who had her eyes. “I am to lure out the other Tribeswomen who are hiding. They will see all the pretties. I will . . . I will . . .”

“You will obey, Dew. There’s no more that you need worry your empty little head over. Once they see your wares, they’ll be ours.

“Like you.”

With trinkets in both hands, Dew was led to another part of the clearing out of sight of the Other’s display. She was posed before a larger mirror set on a tree, enthralled by her own reflection.

The Other reached under the fringe. Dew gasped as more beads slipped past her labia. Came as they were withdrawn.

Then Dew felt them warm and slick in her asscrack, seeking entry now that she’d lubed them. She watched herself take them in the ass. Something kept her from orgasm this time.

A second set went into her pussy to stay.

It felt so nice to be hypnotized.

“Obedient Dew.” The Other laughed as that word made Dew squirm, and as squirming worked the beads inside her and rattled the ones adorning her.

Squirming turned into slow, languorous dancing.

There was no music, and the beat was her heart. The lovely shifting hardnesses in her kept goading her to swivel for relief, but just stoked her fire as she did. She was a ponygirl, endlessly fucking herself on her own tail, kept on that sexual prong to use her writhing for others’ ends.

Dew didn’t think of that, or of much. She just moved before the mirror, slowly and sensuously, watching the slutty dancer in the cheap jewelry shake her ass in slow motion. The rhythmic click of her many beads broke up any nascent thoughts.

It felt so nice to be hypnotized.

Then she wasn’t alone.

“Dew! It’s—”

“Shh! She’s—someone’s done something to her. Bewitched her.”

Dew writhed and clicked, panting, unable to want to look at them, or to stop.

“There aren’t any Others near. We can bring her.” One of them moved next to the mirror. Dew saw a motionless curvy redhead in a blue bikini, beside her own writhing naked image. She kept moving, trying to see the concerned brown eyes start to glaze.

“No! They’ve cast a spell over her—she’s in their power. Oh!”

“She’s covered with . . . with . . .”

“Don’t . . . look. They . . . they . . .”

But both her Tribesisters were caught now as Dew’s silent dance waved the mesmerizing baubles before them.

In the bottom of her mind, Dew tried to warn them of the Other, but the thought was impossible to think. The Other had bought Dew with the beads between her nipples, and thought for her now.

It’s a trap.

I’m a trap.

It felt so nice to be hypnotized.

Dew bucked a little and came, and it just drew them deeper.

“We . . . must . . . resist . . .”

“Try to . . . think of Tribe . . .

“. . . but so . . . pretty . . .” The other woman, an Asian woman with short hair, drifted between Dew and her reflection. Dew knew her name—Cloud—but thought of nothing but how her Tribesister’s hips were dreamily starting to sway in time with hers. The wit was fading from Cloud’s elegant eyes as they fixated on the beads over Dew’s cleft, that swung as one with Dew’s dancing.

The redhead moaned, and looked down at her feet. Breathing hard with the effort not to let Dew entrance her, she moved to Cloud and took her shoulders.

“Cloud—resist, Cloud. We made it past the nets and the darts, wake up, Cloud, please!”

Cloud was already hypnotized, so she didn’t struggle as the redhead started dragging her away.

A command sounded in Dew’s mind. She opened her right hand. Two bright-blue bracelets rattled on the grass to curl shining like snakes. The redhead gasped and froze. She was tempted.

Dew swayed, and let a necklace dangle from her hand.

Cloud sighed, utterly in the beads’ thrall, sagging against the redhead. The redhead moaned again, but only mouthed must resist now. She sank slowly to her knees, as Cloud settled with her.

Dew kept dancing. When the redhead crawled to her and took the swinging necklace, the anguish was gone from her face. She was smiling foolishly when the safari girl knelt to whisper to her.

23.

Nancy’s eyes were open in the near-dark of the conditioning chamber. She looked at the small bright spot and stayed blank, perfectly comfortable on the hard chair. She wasn’t tied to it. She had been told she would sit there until told to rise.

Nancy had been told to listen to and believe the voice while she looked at the bright spot, and because she knew she was very deeply hypnotized, she had done that too. Listening to the voice had hypnotized her even more, and that made her pussy warm.

After it had hypnotized her for a while, the voice had asked questions, and Nancy had answered promptly and meekly, happy to please. The voice had told her she was pleasing, and let her have one of many orgasms.

Then she had been still, as it hypnotized her some more. She thought there may have been more questions. Her mind seemed to remember more truths. Her body felt soft with more orgasms.

The door opened, and the conditioning chamber was a closet again. Nancy remembered being placed here, being told to forget it was anything but a place to brainwash her, obeying that command as soon as the door closed and she saw only the bright spot.

Now, light from the bedroom fell on the clothes and other things moved out of the way, and washed out the little circle from the penlight behind her that had bound her gaze. There was no bright spot now, but Nancy kept staring at where it had been, a space now as blank as her mind. She hadn’t been told to look anywhere else.

Headphones she’d forgotten were lifted from her ears. It was strange, without the hiss she hadn’t really noticed before. She realized the voice had already stopped whispering absolute truth into her mind, but was too passive to miss it. It was erotic to wait and be empty, and know she had no will to fill herself until told.

A hand entered her vision holding a leash and a clip, and then it was cool on her throat. The click and light pressure told her she wore a collar now, to attach it to.

“Stand now.” Audrey’s voice. “Come out.” Nancy tingled. She must obey Audrey’s voice. The real voice, the one that had taught her as she stared devoutly at the bright spot, had told her she must. She knew the real voice was in Audrey’s mind, and Audrey obeyed it too.

Now she stood and followed the leash to Audrey. The other slave had brought Nancy out of trance but was still deep in her own. The babydoll was gone, and Audrey wore only a sheer half-apron that barely covered and did not conceal the soft, shaved Y behind it. That, and lace wristlets and a tiny lace maid’s cap, and heels that made her legs look even longer and prettier.

“Follow,” Audrey said, and Nancy padded after her on the leash. It was the same room where she’d awakened, and Audrey drew her the same way toward the parlor where Rusalka had questioned her. There was no athletic girl in jeans guarding the landing, but Nancy barely noticed. It was too exciting to see the strip of belt sloping down from the collar, to where Audrey’s hand held it. Her leash.

The rest of Rusalka’s harem—fully dressed—were waiting in the parlor, looking at her with interest. They seemed to take Audrey in stride. Nancy recognized Bianca from the club, but the other woman didn’t greet her, only smiling and running her eyes up Nancy’s body. Maybe Rusalka had hypnotized her to forget meeting Nancy.

Nancy knew she was still hypnotized. She had no will to speak, or to move unless Audrey told her. She just felt very comfortable and mildly aroused to be a naked and leashed display for them.

Audrey led her to a wall sconce mounting an unlit lamp, and turned to loop the leash’s other end around the metal, looking at it with her dreamy focus before turning to Nancy. Nancy looked back into the calm, entranced eyes.

Audrey lightly palmed the side of her breast, heating her pussy much more than stroking her nipple would have. “Stay,” she murmured, and as Nancy came to attention she realized that she would, now. The idea of slipping the leash no longer existed.

The others murmured too, among themselves, enjoying one hypnoslave controlling the other.

A smiling dark-skinned woman in a white pantsuit passed Bianca a little bell, holding it carefully to keep it silent. Bianca accepted it and then rang it once.

Audrey stiffened, still looking calmly in front of her.

“Audrey will serve now,” Bianca said, and rang the bell again.

The other slave pivoted and minced to a sideboard. Blank but alert, she efficiently served coffee and tea to the clothed women, lovely in her absorption. Her eyes slid over Nancy unseeingly, since Nancy was less than the others and triggered no service reflex. When she was done, the tray back on the sideboard, she faced Bianca and came to attention again.

They were all hypnotized too, Nancy knew. Everyone here belonged to Rusalka. She wondered what they’d been told about her before coming, but perhaps they’d been told nothing—just bidden here.

“You’re even more beautiful with your clothes off,” Bianca said, and Nancy blushed. “How deep are you under?”

“I have no will and no thoughts,” Nancy heard herself intone. The women looked pleased, and Audrey stayed blank.

“She’s juicing,” someone said. It made her wetter still.

“Tell us what you think of Audrey,” Bianca said, and Nancy trembled at the command.

“She is lovely,” she said, trembling harder as the other slave didn’t respond. “Pretty and mindless and vulnerable.”

“Mmm. Vulnerable. We know.” There was open laughter, hard to characterize as friendly or cruel. “We’re a sort of sex cult, you see, and little Audrey has transgressed. She’s resisted some truths of sapphic obedience, so our teacher has her under discipline.

“She makes a perfect little servant, doesn’t she? I don’t even think she remembers this is her house.” They laughed again, and Audrey stayed posed like a doll.

The telephone rang, and Audrey went taut, as if any bell could trigger her. She walked slowly around the parlor to a telephone table and lifted the handset. Standing straight, she stared wide-eyed at the far wall as if she saw a special bright spot of her own.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded lower, confident, fully awake. “Yes, this is she. May—” Audrey’s eyes closed and she bowed her head, keeping the phone by her ear as the caller put her into trance.

Nancy shivered, knowing it was Rusalka. How had Audrey stayed awake even that long, hearing that voice?

The others watched avidly. Bianca and the woman next to her slid their hands deftly under each other’s skirts without ever looking away from Audrey as Rusalka’s voice controlled her. They watched Audrey nod, and her lips moved. But the whisper was too soft for anyone but Rusalka to hear.

Audrey hung up reverently and then stood still, opening her eyes slowly as she came out of it. The other women watched her now with envy. Blinking, she looked at them as though she’d only now realized they were there. She stepped gracefully back toward the sofa, and even more gracefully went to her knees before Bianca.

Smoothing her skirt, Bianca beamed at her, and then leaned down indulgently. Audrey arched her back, doing wonderful things to her muscles, and leaned up to whisper in Bianca’s ear.

Bianca closed her eyes, now, and straightened where she sat, the smile fading as her right arm floated up to shoulder height. The others looked at her and at each other, looking a bit more subdued.

Audrey moved sinuously back and away from Bianca, and then looked gravely at the woman next to Bianca who’d been masturbating her. The woman grinned at her and squirmed, but waited passively and leaned forward when Audrey leaned up.

Then she too was settling back, eyes closed and arm floating. There were whispers now, but mostly panting, as Rusalka’s slaves waited, nervous and docile, for the sleepwalking doll to whisper them all to sleep. Audrey flowed to her feet and stalked among the clothed women who had become her prey.

She went to two of them, on another couch, from behind, leaning down to nuzzle the black woman who’d passed Bianca the bell before, when they’d turned her into a serving maid. As Audrey triggered her, her seatmate grinned bashfully at the others, as though Audrey were a stripper who’d slithered off her platform to offer a public lapdance.

Then her bashful smile was gone and she sat entranced, her arm as weightless as her banished thoughts.

A woman with boyishly-cut black hair looked wildly around at her hypnotized, posed companions, and seemed to be trying to remember she wanted to flee, or resist. She sputtered, “But—but I—don’t—” as Audrey slid up her lap and nearly tongued her ear. As she succumbed, the black-haired woman groaned as if she’d just come.

The last woman left awake just looked solemnly up at Audrey, locking eyes with the other slave as Audrey stared her down, kneeling in front of her. She nodded, and leaned back as if offering her neck to a vampire. Tenderly Audrey followed her backward and whispered what their Mistress willed her to. In a moment her last victim was sitting attentively upright, asleep with her arm raised.

Audrey stood. She passed a glance across Nancy that thrilled Nancy with its indifference—even a mindless pawn sensed Nancy was completely under control. Audrey swung her chained gaze across the room of Rusalka’s hypnotized followers, making sure of them all. Then she blinked and minced over to the sideboard, opening a panel.

Taking out a small dinner gong, she turned, faced the room, and struck it.

As it echoed coldly, the other slaves rose together. Lowering their arms, they opened their eyes to stare unseeingly before them, and began undressing. They moved carefully and folded everything where they’d sat. The room was liquid with the sound of cloth, fabric on skin, and the slow but quickening breath of women.

Nancy watched as they finished making themselves as naked as she was, and made a small wanting sound. None of them were collared, as she was. But now each of Rusalka’s women wore a royal-blue garter on her right thigh, and nothing else.

Audrey waited dispassionately as they stripped. When they were all at attention, she struck the gong again, and the new trigger impelled them to move purposefully around the room, moving furniture and lighting candles. Soon they were kneeling, in the open space, bodies smooth and golden in the flickering light, while Audrey stood empty-eyed and Nancy waited, still leashed and highly aroused.

Some time passed, and then Nancy heard a door open, felt a slight draft. She was the only one here who knew it. She mewed with it. As deeply as her time in the closet had brainwashed her, these women were deeper still, their minds and wills totally in Mistress Rusalka’s power. She was what passed for free, here.

Rusalka glided in with a glassy-eyed Krista in tow. She smiled at Her candlelit slaves as they knelt.

Nancy’s world shifted.

Devotion to Her ran hot in Nancy’s blood now. She knew she must do anything Rusalka commanded, anything She wished. It wasn’t like love, nothing so dignified and sane. It made Nancy glad that she’d surrendered love. She knew it was the hypnosis, Rusalka’s own voice tunneled through her mind.

But that just made it better.

She worshipped Rusalka.

24.

Krista and Nancy waited for the elevator in the garage of Nancy’s building. Krista was moving in.

No one else was around. Still reeling from the last hypnotic session with Mistress, Nancy drowsily wished there were someone to see her.

She wore red and white polka-dot hotpants and a white tube top and boots. She carried a duffel of Krista’s in either hand, and Krista’s backpack behind her. Krista’s hands were free. Nancy wanted to kneel and kiss them, but she was unsteady enough on the six-inch heels with her load.

Her gaze was fixed and blank, and she was deliciously unable to do anything. Someone seeing her might think she was a careless party girl, or even a streetwalker too silly not to get high at work. She really just looked like a thoroughly hypnotized woman, but no one would know that.

Krista, who was much deeper in Mistress’ power, looked quite normal and alert. She turned to Nancy and said, not for the first time, “Zombie time.”

Nancy whimpered and swayed in her heeled boots. Mistress had told her about zombie time, back at Audrey’s house. Mistress brought her harem back out of their dreams, and their obedient gazes were warm on Nancy as she’d submitted to Mistress’ induction again. It had felt even more like Mystery Queen, by the time the audience was openly enslaved too.

Then she’d forgotten audience and Mystery Queen and everything but her Mistress’ voice.

Mistress had told her about zombies, so Her old-but-new slavegirl could comprehend what was being done to her.

Nancy was not yet Her zombie, but the process was continuing. For now, it was just a trigger Krista had been primed to whisper to her from time to time. It stunned Nancy each time.

Mistress had programmed Krista, before bringing her back to Audrey’s house, since Krista was key to what She planned for Nancy. Nancy didn’t know how much more of it was masked from her, to be remembered only in later trance, but what she did know excited her.

Nancy was going to disappear, as quietly as other QLR converts back before the catastrophe at Dormignonne. While she systematically destroyed her life, Krista would control her day to day, posing as her new dominant girlfriend. Nancy would have to obliterate herself faster than the others, and more noticeably. But that would be simpler to do if everyone saw her as Krista’s baby-dyke toy. If anyone glimpsed Mistress’ zombie underneath the toy, they wouldn’t know what they saw.

No one would interfere.

The elevator arrived, and they had it to themselves. As they ascended, Nancy stayed at attention. Maybe Krista would fondle her. It was late, but there might still be someone around who’d see when the door opened.

“It’s dangerous,” Krista said, “in elevators. A girl like you could find herself with the wrong person, and they’d hypnotize her into obedience by the time the doors opened. You’d have no chance. They’d tell you to look up at the numbers above you, now.”

Nancy raised her head. She’d seen it in the movie and now she let it become real.

“Focus on them, how calming they are. Hypnotizing you.” Krista’s voice was firm and soothing. “Each number blinks and darkens, awakens and sleeps. The tone sounds and cleanses thought. Each number follows the last. Hypnotizing you.”

“Hypnotizing me,” she whispered.

It was very erotic to be taken this way. Nancy thought of dreaming Krista was a stranger who’d caught her off-guard and would now lead her helplessly away. But she had no will to dream.

“As the numbers grow, so does the depth of your trance. The tone sounds and cleanses thought. Each number follows the last. Hypnotizing you. Soon they will control you, and you will go only where they wish, do only what they please. You will obey and forget—forget what they made you do if they let you go, forget who you are if they keep you as a slave.

“Each number follows the last. Hypnotizing you. Think of nothing else.”

Krista was so much more dangerous than a stranger.

“Easy to look away but easier just to keep looking. So easy to follow them and think of nothing else. Hypnotizing you. Each number blinks and darkens, awakens and sleeps. So easy to follow them. Think of nothing else. Hypnotizing you.”

She stopped but Nancy kept looking, feeling her eyes tire but enjoying the sensation of not looking away. She luxuriated in the pretend-blankness.

The light stayed at 15, and the doors hummed open.

She blushed and continued to stare at the light, enslaved to it as long as it glowed. A man breathed, chuckled and swallowed it.

“Is she—OK?”

She actually thought she could hear Krista smile, but her domme said nothing.

“Hypnotizing me,” she whispered again, and moaned in arousal, still hearing his gasp.

The moan silenced him. Krista giggled and whispered “You’re impossible!” with eerie sincerity. Nancy wasn’t programmed for that and kept staring. The man punched the button for 17.

On Nancy’s floor, Krista told her “There are no lights over the door.” They vanished and Nancy forgot thinking they’d been there. She kept gazing up at the smooth unlit space over the door until she felt Krista’s hand on her head, leaning it to face forward again. She stared out the doors as they opened. She held Krista’s duffels. She waited.

“Zombie time.”

It thickened in her, like burning syrup. Obediently she let it sink her a little bit deeper. She waited.

Krista let her wait until the elevator buzzed, another robot mindlessly urging them to leave the car. The discordant noise glanced off Nancy’s hypnotized concentration. It might get someone’s attention, but the corridor seemed empty. Krista led her out.

Even in the serenity of her trance, Nancy’s heartbeat accelerated as they approached her door.

Zombie time.

In the humid dimness of Nancy’s thoughts, Mistress’ teaching was cool and bright. One line of voudoun lore, She’d explained, recognized making zombies not as necromancy but as drug-induced brainwashing. The same drugs that made the victim deathlike, so even those who’d loved her turned away, also suppressed volitional centers of her brain. Depending on the victim and dose, they might even destroy them. When the zombie woke, its will was truly gone, open to control. It imprinted permanently on the one who raised it.

Krista took her keys, reaching under the waist of the hotpants, but no one was out in the corridor to see. She opened the door.

As Nancy had stood entranced, Mistress had explained the zombie’s reduction to a perfect slave was not done. A key step was to lead it past the house where the person it no longer was had dwelt. Facing that past would extinguish its memories, and all feelings other than absolute obedience. The zombie would become a blank slate for its new owner to fill as they chose.

Before her rescue and deprogramming, Nancy had left and returned to her place daily with no conscious awareness she was a slave. This time, her whole body vibrated with knowing she was becoming Mistress Rusalka’s zombie.

Nancy awaited the command. First, Krista hissed “Zombie time.” After seeing Nancy quiver and go deeper, she said, “Cross the threshold, slave.”

Nancy stepped forward, seeing and smelling her apartment but utterly numb to it. She was more aware of the other slave behind her, of the burden she carried. Of all the skin she showed, Mistress’ to enjoy and then to display in a whorish costume.

“Look around, slave.”

Nancy swiveled her head from side to side. Things came into focus because they were part of the command.

“What is this place?”

Her heart raced. It was like the day they’d called her. They’d flicked off the illusion of free will they’d let her have to make her easier to control, and as she’d stood here, putty in the hands of a call-center drone, she’d seen everything as though underwater.

It was like that now. Even to turn her head was something slow. Memories faded. Sentiment for this place was being sucked into zombie time like air into a fire.

It fluttered her between her legs to answer, “It is the apartment where Nancy Sheppard lived.”

“Who is Nancy Sheppard?”

She groaned and closed her eyes. Last time, her brainwashing had made her need to ask.

“Mistress Rusalka’s zombie,” she managed, and waited again.

Krista ordered her to the bedroom, and she stood still by the bed, not quite staring at herself in the mirror. Here, she’d posed and danced as a Tribeswoman, and now she was here, controlled by a Dormignonne hypnotist, no longer playing. That memory was close enough to this that she could see it through the screen of zombie time.

Krista took the duffels from her and set them down. Nancy stood like a packhorse, letting the other slave unload the backpack. When she was told to, she slid the tube top off and tossed it to the dresser.

She knelt, close enough to kiss Krista where her thighs met in the tight denim of her jeans, and held still as Krista brought the rhinestone collar down in front of Nancy’s eyes. She held it there, and for a moment Nancy was Tribe again, mindless before sparkly things. But her mind worked. People would see a collared submissive who was trying to be tasteful, but only looked cheap.

She kissed it and squeezed her thighs together as Krista slid it on.

Rising to her feet, she looked into Krista’s lean, lovely face, and only then she remembered kneeling here before to beg someone else for their collar. Even in zombie time it stung her, a little, and she wanted to lean against Krista and cry. Or surrender to a deep kiss and let Krista lead her to bed.

The other slave’s eyes flickered. Mistress had programmed Krista to pay close attention to what Nancy was feeling. Awareness like that might have made Krista the perfect girlfriend, if it hadn’t been about training her to keep Nancy docile.

Now she stared unblinkingly at Nancy, and her lips parted. Nancy trembled.

“Peremptory nebula.”

Krista watched as Nancy went rigid. She remembered revealing this was her disarmed QLR trigger, among the other secrets she’d happily poured out under hypnotic questioning. Mistress had laughed and rewired it to her new obedience. But even that memory faded in the pure thrill of being activated.

She stared back into the other slave’s eyes and reported, “I must obey.”

They stared at each other, inches apart, minds empty of anything but obeying Mistress Rusalka.

Krista, under Mistress’ programming, recovered first.

“Begin orienting me, slave.”

Nancy repeated her obedience, and Krista led her through the things she needed to know about this apartment. Vaguely Nancy realized it was nothing like two friends getting settled. Krista was reciting a checklist inscribed in her mind, and the implanted need to please her drove Nancy to recall things about the apartment she’d forgotten she knew. She watched Krista absorb it all. Krista would remember whatever she needed to in order to do as Mistress had programmed her.

She finished. There was no small talk. She stared into Krista’s eyes, tranquilly awaiting the next command.

The bell rang, and neither woman blinked. Nancy relaxed and let Krista take control.

Krista leaned forward and kissed her, possessively, nothing at all like the tenderness Nancy was already forgetting she’d wanted before. When she leaned back she was in character, aware and grinning, smug that she’d snared a hot woman like Nancy as her besotted sub.

Glancing at the top where it’d landed, she turned Nancy and nudged her out of the bedroom. Aware she was topless and collared, Nancy felt exposed, then realized she liked it. It didn’t matter who was at the door. Nancy the submissive slut needed to meet people.

She opened the door with a plastic smile.

It was Beth.

25.

Her girlfriend only blinked when she saw how Nancy answered the door. Nancy watched Beth’s pretty, freckled face work as she found something complimentary to say—and she could see Beth was turned on to see her slutting like this. But Beth went even paler when Krista stepped into view and laid a casual hand on Nancy’s ass.

“Hello, Nancy.” Beth’s voice was surprisingly even.

“Hello, Beth,” Nancy said, leaning against Krista’s hand and sighing a little. She didn’t feel cruel toward Beth, really, but she knew submissiveness to her new dominant lover would promote Mistress’ goals. Pleasing Mistress rang her chimes more than anything else now.

“Hello, Beth!” Krista was cordial. Mistress had force-fed her what She’d drawn from Nancy’s mind about Beth. She was too controlled for missteps, either. Beth seemed to sense how formidable she was and the hold she had over Nancy. But Beth probably thought they were rivals for her.

Krista invited her in, and Nancy saw the hesitation, but Beth sought her eyes and decided.

“Love to,” she said, and they moved aside. It angered her that Nancy let Krista take charge like that. Maybe she’d also thought Nancy’s collar was just part of a game.

Krista offered the chair Beth usually took, and settled on the couch opposite. Nancy let her programming keep her at Krista’s side, then sink to her knees at Krista’s feet. She stared mildly at Beth, watching the emotions roil behind Beth’s light eyes.

Krista patted her head. Nancy closed her eyes, turning at once to gaze up at her. Krista smiled down at her, a bit sadistically.

“How have you been?” Beth asked, and Nancy turned back to her, more slowly.

“She’s wonderful,” Krista said. Beth didn’t look away from Nancy. “Aren’t you, girl?”

Nancy turned again to her domme. “Yes, Krista.”

“This is a little sudden, Nancy,” Beth said, never one for small talk in a crisis. “I’d like to talk about it with you.

“If I hurt you badly I’d like at least to apologize.”

Nancy turned again to look up at Krista. Her domme grinned impishly at Beth.

“You just want to see if I’ve got her on drugs, right?” she laughed.

“I want to talk to my lover,” Beth said with ominous calm. “If we’re not lovers anymore, I want to hear it from her.”

“You weren’t a very compelling one. Or so I understand.”

Nancy hurt, knowing what she must have sleep-spoken. She turned and saw Beth flushing but otherwise impassive. It was as though the two of them were playing poker for her, and thinking of herself as often-handled stakes on a green felt table cut the pain with arousal.

“Didn’t pay attention to her needs.” A finger slid along the top of Nancy’s collar, and without taking her eyes from Beth she arched her back. “But I’ve taken care of that, Beth. Nancy was searching for someone to control her, and now I will.

“Won’t I, Nancy?”

Nancy turned. “Yes, Krista.” She tried to sound enslaved, but not brainwashed. “You’ll control me.”

“I’ve already started retraining her,” Krista said. “There are some directions I think her life shouldn’t have taken, and Nancy is accepting that.” She didn’t bother with another demeaning prompt. “We’ve agreed she needs a new career, for instance. Something that lets her be the submissive she is, openly and naturally.”

Beth’s eyes widened in alarm. “Nancy, you need to be safe. Are you?”

Before Nancy could try to answer, Krista’s voice silenced her. “Nancy was a little resistant at first—not disobedient, just nervous.

“But I know some very effective ways . . .” Krista brushed her hand across Nancy’s nipples. Nancy jerked slightly and gasped but never looked away from Beth. “. . . to make Nancy, well, receptive to new and better ideas.”

Nancy was becoming aware how easily she was watching this stab at Beth. She didn’t even wonder why Beth didn’t just walk away—even this deep under Mistress’ control, Nancy knew Beth loved her and wouldn’t leave her, especially not in the clutches of what she thought Krista was.

But Nancy was numb of any desire to soothe Beth’s pain. Even as it bothered her, her mind knew that as a sign that she was obeying Mistress, and the old feelings for Beth were only stirring sleepily within her, easy for her new submission to stun back into quiescence.

And it turned her on, hard, to kneel as a collared slave before someone who loved her.

“I know you want some private time with my girl, Beth. For closure.” Krista was more businesslike now, though venom still threaded her words. “That’s only fair. And I’d rather you did hear from her that she’s moved on.

“But you’ll need to humor me first. Part of Nancy’s training is getting her priorities straight.

“Nancy, which is more important, pleasing me or cleaning up your past affairs?”

She turned. “Pleasing you, Krista.”

“Good girl.” Krista gently drew Nancy’s head to lean against her thigh for a moment, and Nancy smiled contentedly as she knelt back up and looked at Beth. “See? I don’t want to confuse her when she’s been such an apt pupil so far.”

Beth looked across at Krista. Her expression said Whatever, with no response to watching Nancy rewarded like a pet.

“Can Nancy get you something to drink?”

It was a trigger, priming her to play servant, and Nancy rose smoothly to obey. She nearly preened as she let Beth see the whole enslaved length of her.

Beth leaned back and crossed her legs. “Sure. Since I guess we’ll be chatting a while.”

“Great! What would you like her to get you?”

“Nancy knows what I like,” Beth said. She was talking about Nancy in third-person, as Krista was. She wondered what Beth was trying to do.

“Really? Let’s make sure. I’ve been working with Nancy to help her filter out nonessential details.

“Nancy?”

“Yes, Krista.”

“Do you remember?” There was no sound at all from Beth. Beth thought she was dealing with two free women, so she thought this was about how Nancy felt.

“Yes, Krista.”

“Good girl. You know what I want. Run along.” She flicked a finger at Nancy’s ass, and Nancy clipped away on the high-heeled boots to obey.

Run along. It was a secondary trigger, for dealing with selected guests. Nancy felt herself sliding into an automated response.

In the alcove where she kept the liquor, she took down the glasses. She made Krista’s Cuba Libre first, wondering dimly whether it was really what Krista liked—if Krista even made decisions like that now. It didn’t matter. Nor was she making it before the guest’s just to submit to her domme. She just did what her programming impelled.

When she reached next for the Scotch and water, as she had so often when Beth had been here, she felt only a slight, almost pleasurable twinge. The memories of good times, forgetting drinks to become intoxicated in each other, all faded into trance as the act of making the drinks triggered her again.

She waited until she heard Beth and Krista fencing quietly with each other. Then she reached for the flask she’d been programmed for. Another slave had put it here while she’d been Rusalka’s captive, as they’d checked her out.

She stopped. I’m going to drug Beth. She loves me, but my Mistress wills it.

Nancy thought about it.

I am a hypnotized slavegirl. I obey my Mistress. I will drug her.

She was back in the deep water, kept upright by the pressure on her fragile thoughts. It made everything so light and easy to lift.

Drugging her lover only made her wet. She lifted the flask and poured a cupful into Beth’s drink.

Mistress had told her what it would do. The slavers had used it on Nancy and the others on Mystery Queen, later in their conditioning, when the sunscreen and hypnosis shows and subliminals had rendered them more passive and unquestioning. It wouldn’t knock Beth out, but she’d become very docile, even much more suggestible than usual.

Beth hadn’t been softened, like a Queen Lines passenger being slave-processed, but she’d still be easy for Krista and Nancy to handle. Nancy wondered if Krista’s programming would make her hypnotize Beth once the drug took effect, but it wasn’t Nancy’s place to think about it.

As she paced back to the others with the tray, actual obedience to her programming was more erotic even than imagining Beth’s lidded eyes focusing helplessly on whatever Krista’s whisper told her to.

She came close to Beth and bent at the waist, and Beth stoically took her glass. She thought of Audrey, sleepwalking through her own house to serve other women, and adopted her mincing step as she went to Krista, served her, then set the tray down and resumed her spot at Krista’s feet.

“Aren’t you having anything?” Beth was addressing her again.

Nancy was already lost in obeying Mistress, and her programming tightened now. She looked up in awe as Krista smiled at Beth, dipped a finger in her rum and Coke, and then held it out. Nancy sucked it dry and settled back.

“To true love,” Krista said, raising her glass.

“To true love,” Beth said.

Nancy didn’t watch Beth. She looked only up at Krista, wondering if she’d receive another taste.