The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Contrary to what most people thought, Morphelia used no plants. The only fake part of her show was her stage name. But occasionally, her commitment to honesty caused problems.

That day’s show had started out as a good example of the problems she could have. The lumberjack-looking bloke was under, sort of, but it didn’t look like she would get much out of him. She suspected that he would snap out of trance as soon as she suggested something outlandish. The scullery maid wasn’t really under either, just playing along. And she’d been forced to send away the dowager, who was completely unresponsive. Morphelia was just becoming desperate when she noticed that the blonde in the front row had fallen into trance entirely on her own.

The troupe had been in the Vessian kingdom for a week, long enough to know the name of the new queen and the circumstances of her ascension. So as soon as the girl said her name, Morphelia understood that there was a royal nose pressed into her breasts. She’d heard of royalty traveling incognito amongst their subjects like this, and though it had seemed to her like an old wives’ tale, the tale was just believable enough that she could believe it when it was limp in her arms. The only other option was that the girl was faking and had given her a joke name, but Morphelia knew instinctually that was not the case. Fakers didn’t collapse as this one had.

The smart move would be to wake the girl up, send her away, and pretend it had never happened. And yet, if she did that, there would be no show. Worse, one dud crowd could ruin an entire city for her, as gossip spread that she was supposedly a fraud. Morphelia had faced these challenges many times before, although this was the first time that royalty was involved. She weighed all of the various issues in play, and made a split-second decision.

“When you open your eyes, you’ll find your name is Amanda,” she said softly into the queen’s ear. “Your name is Amanda, darling, and you work in the castle kitchen. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Gabrielle murmured, her voice still muffled by Morphelia’s breasts. Morphelia felt a not-unpleasant tingle in her nether regions. It had been a while since a subject had unconsciously dived into her cleavage like this.

“Let’s honor the bravery of our newest volunteer!” Morphelia said, now projecting to the entire crowd. The nervous applause that had followed Gabrielle’s collapse grew louder and more robust as Morphelia half-walked, half-dragged the limp woman into the center of the performance space.

“When I touch you on the forehead, you’ll find enough strength in your legs to stand,” Morphelia said into the queen’s ear, “but you will remain in a deep sleep. You will stand on your own after you feel a touch on your forehead, but you will remain in a deep sleep. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Morphelia tapped her forehead with an index finger, and the young woman regained her footing. Soon she stood with torso erect, head lolling forward, breathing slow and steady.

The performer proceeded to the other two volunteers and went through the motions, trying to guide them into a deeper trance until it became clear to everyone involved that there was no show to be had with them. Soon thereafter, it was just herself and the reigning queen of the Vessians, alone in the performance space.

“The young lady may appear to be asleep,” Morpehlia said. “Indeed, I led her into this quiet and pleasant place by invoking the name of Morpheus himself. But as she takes her ease there, deep in the dark, she is alert and aware, and needs but more guidance from me to find her way.”

This was all patter that she had done in a hundred shows or more. What she was really thinking as she vamped her way through it was, Just what kind of bloody show do I do with royalty? She was concerned about doing any piece that involved the subject talking, as this lady had just delivered her coronation address the day before. She was also leery about doing any pieces that involved a waking trance or an eyes-open trance, because who knows how far away one had to be to recognize the gray gaze of de Vess?

Yet Morphelia knew that, if she refused to do any of those pieces, there would be precious little performance with this woman, and that would be a shame. This was the most gifted subject she’d seen in years.

What the hell, she thought. Make sure the most important suggestion worked. Then you just ... wing it, I suppose.

She put her hand on the sleeping woman’s shoulder. “’Twould be so much easier to guide you if I heard your name,” she said. “Lift your head, dear, and call your name out into the darkness.”

The head lifted up, though the eyes remained closed. Gabrielle said, loud and strong, “Amanda Darling.”

Morphelia smiled. The literal-mined ones were always the most fun. “Amanda Darling,” she repeated. Though she’d meant the word darling in the casual sense when she’d first said it, now she vamped seductively on the word, throwing in some titillation for the audience. Her spellbound subject did not notice. “From the stains on your clothes I would say you work in a kitchen, yes?“

Of course this one did not work in a kitchen, but Morphelia knew she was so deep that she would respond to the last word placed into her mind. “Yes,” Gabrielle echoed, her voice flat and without affect.

“On the count of three, you will open your eyes to find that we are in your kitchen. You and I are alone in your kitchen, and there is a horrible mess at my feet. There is a horrible mess at my feet that you must clean up right away. One, two, three.”

The eyelids fluttered open, and Morphelia was struck by their color. That shade of gray was the sort of thing that you only saw once in your life, and then only if you were lucky. At first the gaze was hazy and distant, as Morphelia had planned—she’d only told the girl to open her eyes, not to wake from trance, and a subject this good would find the difference without being told.

Gabrielle/Amanda’s eyes lit up with recognition, her jaw dropped, and she froze. For a moment Morphelia thought the whole game was up, and that she might well be spending the night in irons (or worse). But then the younger woman looked down at her feet, and Morphelia understood what was happening from the times she had played this piece with landed gentry before. Their response was always the same: they froze because, despite the powerful compulsion they felt to start cleaning the mess, they also had an unconscious understanding that they had never cleaned a floor in their lives.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, m’lady!” the faux-Amanda cried, and fell to her knees. Seeing no cleaning materials available, she took the hem of her own dress and began scrubbing the hard-packed dirt with it. “I’ll have it up in no time, no time at all!”

The audience roared, and Morphelia knew that she had them. Hypnotizing a person was like hypnotizing the audience as well, in a way: suggesting that they lay aside their hardened beliefs in plants and fakery, and accept if only for a short time that the oddities on stage were entirely possible. That first blast of boisterous laughter not only signaled that no one had identified the queen, but was also a welcome sign that she had succeeded in shattering their cynicism.

Quite the cloud of dust had gathered at Morphelia’s feet. The audience’s laughter was beginning to abate (it was, after all, a one-note joke). The entertainer crouched in place and put a reassuring hand on the younger woman’s shoulder.

Gabrielle looked up at her, the eyes wild and desperate. “M’lady, it’s not coming up! I don’t know why it’s not coming—”

“Sleep,” Morphelia said gently, and touched the girl between the eyes with her thumb. The gray eyes rolled up to whites and she went limp, collapsing on her side in the dirt. Let’s hope Her Majesty didn’t pay queen’s prices on that dress, Morphelia thought.

Morphelia did the unbendable-arm piece, bringing back the lumberjack-looking volunteer to show that, indeed, a cataleptic arm could not be moved by the strongest force. She did the eating-garlic-thinking-it’s-an-apple piece (always a crowd pleaser), and then transitioned that into an improvised Snow White piece where faux-Amanda took a bite of the “apple” and it put her to sleep. She had the jesters bring out the sawhorses for the body-stiff-as-a-board piece, and Amanda’s rigid body held up so well that Morphelia was even able to stand upon her belly like a platform.

Then Morphelia had a new idea for a closing piece, something she had considered in the past but rejected as too dangerous. Only with a subject as receptive as this one would it work. She would never get a better chance.

Morphelia looked over to Rolf, the knife-thrower, in his place beneath the troupe’s standard. She made one of the troupe’s surreptitious hand signals. I need you.

Rolf’s eyes went wide. Me?

Morphelia firmed her eyebrows and glared at him. Yes, you! Now!

“You have been too kind, Vessia,” she said, turning her attention back to the crowd. “And too kind to Amanda Darling as well. Truly the dark places in her mind hold powers great and mysterious.”

As the applause rained down, she looked over to see Rolf gathering his kit. “Amanda has been hidden so deep in Morpheus’ chambers that my final demonstration shall prove no challenge,” she said. “Please welcome back a man you have seen before: Rolf of Germania, master of the blade.”

More applause came down, but Rolf showed no acknowledgement of it or change in expression, as was his stage character. “What are you doing?” he muttered under his breath, his bushy beard and years of practice allowing him to do so without giving sign to the audience.

“Same piece you always do,” she muttered back in kind. “No blindfold.”

“You’re fucking mad,” he muttered, but he drew a knife and held it up to his left eye to examine it, which was the go signal. If he’d been unwilling, he would have done anything else.

Morphelia went over to Amanda (the queen had performed so well in the role, the hypnotist had begun thinking of her by the fake name), who stood erect with her head lolled forward. She looked like she could rest in that position well into the night, if left undisturbed.

The performer took her subject’s arm and walked her over to Rolf’s throwing board. There was a person-sized outline drawn on the board in charcoal, and Morphelia was delighted to see Amanda fit almost perfectly into it.

Like it was meant to be, she thought.

She put her hands on the entranced woman’s shoulders, pushing firmly until her back was pressed flat against the throwing board. “Amanda Darling,” she said, projecting her voice to the crowd once more, “you may find that this board has been covered with glue. Covered with glue from head to toe, and your body and your clothes stick fast to it. You find yourself stuck fast to the board and you can. Not. Move.”

Morphelia put two fingers until the girl’s chin and tipped her head back until it touched the board. Once it did, the limp heaviness of her head was gone. The muscles began to work again, pushing the head back against the board that she imagined she had been stuck to.

Morphelia stepped away from the board, moving out of the throwing lane and taking in the entire crowd with her eyes. “When you saw Rolf throw before, his volunteers wore blindfolds,” she said. “This was for their protection. Even if you tell someone not to move, they can’t help but flinch when they see the knife coming. Ironically, that flinch can move their body parts right into the knife’s path.”

She stared out at the crowd and saw that they were rapt. Not a non-believer in the square. “But Amanda Darling will not flinch,” she said in a low voice. “She is in a place so deep, so hidden, that it is beyond fear. Beyond pain. Beyond any awareness of the knife itself.”

That was the theory, anyway. In practice, the quick-and-dirty induction that Morphelia performed at the start of her routine had never taken someone so deep that she could be sure they would not awake with terror. Deep enough to believe that a piece of garlic was actually an apple? Sure. Deep enough to remain unaware of a knife being thrown at one’s head? Not until this woman. And even then...

It’s going to work, she told herself, and then repeated one of her mentor’s cardinal rules. Hypnosis is about confidence. It’s going to work.

“Amanda,” she called across the performance space. “On my count of three, you shall open your eyes. You shall open your eyes even as you remain in a deep, deep sleep. Eyes open and deep asleep in one, two, three.”

Amanda pulled her eyes open with some effort. Rolf saw them, and in that instant, he knew. Even as hazy and distant as her gaze was, Rolf knew that color and what it meant. He glanced over at Morphelia, which was a break in character, but no one in the audience seemed to notice.

Morphelia set her eyebrows again. Do it!

And so he did.

Rolf’s routine involved eight passes. The first seven were slow, measured throws of six-inch knives: one inside each ankle, one outside each wrist, one on either side of the neck, and one at the crown of the head. During Rolf’s regular routine, the ankle and wrist throws were played as jokes: the master of ceremonies would claim that he was aiming for the neck, and Rolf would “miss,” bringing nervous laughter out of volunteer and crowd alike. But this time, there was not even the attempt of a joke. The crowd watched somberly as each of the seven strikes hit home, and the entranced young woman showed no indication that she even saw the throws.

Just as in his regular piece, Rolf turned away, as though the show was over. But the crowd knew it was not, for they had already seen his eighth pass once before, and they drew in their breath. Rolf spun on his heels and began to unleash his four-inch daggers, one after another after another, fifteen throws in as many seconds. After it was over, “Amanda Darling” stood in the center of another person-shaped outline, this one composed entirely of knives embedded in the throwing board.

The gray eyes registered no emotion.

The crowd erupted.

Morphelia went to her and immediately dropped her back down with a touch on the forehead, before anyone other than Rolf spotted those eyes. She leaned in close, lips nearly pressed to the girl’s ear, so that she could be heard above the crowd’s thunderous response.

“When I count to three,” she said, “the show will be over, and you will wake. Your body will no longer stick to the board, and none of my suggestions will have an effect. You will remember your real name. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” came the monotone reply.

“One, feeling your eyelids become lighter and lighter. Two, the strength returning to your arms and legs. Three, you are awake.”

The eyes did not flutter open, as most people’s did, but flew open, as though launched by a catapult. Gabrielle inhaled sharply, gasping for air, after her breathing had been slowed and suppressed by trance. Her entire body started, and the crowd saw it: they began to roar even louder, offering encouragement, throwing coins in the custom of a city where traveling players could not sell tickets. Cheering for her.

Or, rather, cheering for whomever Amanda had been.

Morphelia had steeled herself against an angry or indignant response, but she saw something else entirely on the younger woman’s face. Gabrielle stared at her, mouth hanging open until she had the royal awareness to cover it with one hand, eyes wide with an emotion that Morphelia could not describe. Shock and horror and pain, all mixed together in some odd combination—

And then Morphelia put a name on it: betrayal. Not betrayal from the entertainers, but betrayal from herself. She had gone into the square carrying the biggest secret in the kingdom, and had surrendered that secret to a total stranger as quickly and easily as laying her head down upon a pillow. Gabrielle could understand what had happened, but could not understand why, and the betrayal this caused was lancing her in the very soul.

Morphelia saw her pain, knew it for what it was, and then saw that Gabrielle knew that she knew. For a few seconds they were in a hall of mirrors, both women seeing and understanding the other. Then Gabrielle turned and hurried away into the crowd, ducking her head and pulling at the green shawl to hide her face.

Before she could think to go after the younger woman, Morphelia was seized from behind in a bear hug. She was lifted clean off the ground and squeezed hard enough to make her ribs creak. “What the hell were you thinking?” a familiar voice growled into her ear. “What the hell was she thinking? What the hell is going on?”

“The lady has an adventurous spirit, and she sleeps easy, Rolf,” Morphelia said. “We’d have been fools not to do it. Now put me down!”

He did as she bid, and when she turned to look at Rolf, she saw that he was pale under the beard. “Kings and queens would kill for this secret,” he said. “What if she was spotted?”

“She wasn’t,” Morphelia said, “or else the Guard would have already been called. Don’t worry so much! Let’s collect our bounty and plan for the party afterwards.”

They found a pub called the Blind Goat.

Joel, the reedy man with the powerful voice who acted as their master of ceremonies, claimed that the day’s take had been the best they’d ever done. Morphelia had no idea how he determined this, as every kingdom that they entered seemed to have its own unique coins. She was happy to take his word for it, though, because everyone in the troupe was assigning responsibility for the monstrous haul in one direction.

“Where’d you find her, Mor?” one of the twin jesters, Lap, asked. “You finally gave in and used a plant, like I said you should, right? Where’d you find her?”

“Never met her before,” Morphelia said. She reflected that it was easier to keep a secret when you didn’t have to lie in order to do so.

“Come onnnnnn,” Lep, the other jester, slurred. Morphelia found them easier to tell apart during the after-parties, as Lep was far worse at holding his liquor. “Gonna tell us you found the miracle subject just outta the blue? An’ she didn’t even wanna come up at first?“

“You picked her up in the street this afternoon, Mor?” Jens the Yuggler (he actually spelled it with a “y”, the same way his first name was pronounced, and insisted on being called by the performing name even away from shows) asked.

“Oh, I bet she prowled the pubs last night and used her feminine wiles,” Rebecca, the Irish lass from the singing trio, said. “You know what they say about Vessia.”

“All the children of the isle of Lesbos came here when they moved inland,” another singer piped up.

“I don’t know how many times you want to hear the same thing,” Morphelia said. “I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”

“Ah, what the hell,” Jens the Yuggler said, raising his pint glass. “Even if Mor told you her secret, she’d just make you forget it. I say we drink a round to our mystery lady!”

“To Amanda Darling!” Rolf thundered, but he shot Morphelia a look as he did so.

“To Amanda Darling!” the others cheered, then drank their glasses dry.

As Joel turned to order another round, Morphelia’s eyes passed by chance over a nearby window. Dusk was approaching outside, but there was no doubt about that bright green shawl, hovering over a barely visible female form in an alley across the street.

“Excuse me, lads,” trying hard to maintain her level of joviality. “The Mistress of Slumber needs some air before she returns to drink you under the table.”

This brought a bawdy cheer from them, as she knew it would. Soon each of the men would be exaggerating and challenging each other’s abilities to drink someone else under the table, and hopefully noticing nothing about where she went once she was outside.

Morphelia pulled her own shawl — black, of course, to match the dress — tighter around her body, and ambled across the street as if she was about to take a walk around the block. She pretended not to notice the woman in the green shawl beckoning to her, only stepping into the alleyway at the last minute. She was not at all surprised to see the gray eyes of de Vess staring back at her.

“What are you doing!” Morphelia hissed. “It was only pure luck that I saw you! You could’ve been waiting out here all night!”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Gabrielle said. Again Morphelia was struck by how sheltered she must be, if she couldn’t simply walk into a bar and ask for someone. “I need to know what you did to me.”

“I did nothing,” Morphelia said. “Some people want to be in the show. That’s you.”

“It is not me!” Gabrielle retorted. “I made no move to join your little affair, and you took advantage of me! I was bewitched!”

“No,” Morphelia said, allowing her voice to go cold. Accusations of witchcraft were a serious thing for those in her profession, even before you considered that they were coming from a queen. Such claims had to be dealt with harshly. “I take advantage of no one. It is you who seeks to take advantage, to have all the privileges of royalty yet ignore the risks of such stunts as it suits you. If you had been recognized in that square today, do you think you would have been in danger? No! The Guard would have leapt to your aid without thinking. It’s we who would be endangered, by the riot that might follow.”

Gabrielle looked away. “On that, you may be correct,” she said. “I did not consider as I should have.”

“And you have not considered the dangers you are taking by being out at dusk,” Morphelia said. “All kingdoms have their rabble whose company is unwanted after dark. Even yours, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t call me that,” Gabrielle said, her voice sullen.

“You should go,” Morphelia said. “Back to the castle with you. You had your day in the street, and no one found out. Do not push your luck further.”

“But I must know!” Gabrielle said. “What did you do? What power do you have, to turn my bones to jelly and reveal my best-kept secrets? Tell me, I implore you!”

There was no regal command in the girl’s voice, only desperation and misery. To hear it, Morphelia felt her coldness melt. This girl’s mother had died only days before, after all.

“No magic power, m’lady,” Morphelia said. “’Tis a trifle. A trick of the eyes.”

“The eyes?” The queen cocked her head, confused.

“The eyes, indeed,” Morphelia said. “Look at my eyes.”

Gabrielle looked. It wasn’t difficult, even in the growing gloom: Morphelia’s pale face stood out, a bright moon in the night sky. Her eyes were a dark blue, apparently focused on a spot a foot or so behind Gabrielle’s head.

“Focus on my eyes,” Morphelia said, “and breathe deeply.”

As she let out her breath, Gabrielle noticed how the world around and behind the circus performer’s face began to blur.

“Your waking mind may not recall what happened this afternoon,” Morphelis said in a low, even voice. “But somewhere, deep inside, you remember what it was like to sleep for me.”

At the mere utterance of the word sleep, Gabrielle’s eyes began to blink. Soon they were fluttering, like the regal flags in a strong wind.

“Your eyes are so heavy, so weak,” Morphelia continued, “but your legs remain strong. You can stay standing strong and erect even as you sleep.”

The queen’s head lolled forward, and her body began to sway forward with it, even as her legs remained locked. Morphelia put her hands on the younger woman’s shoulders, steadying her.

Morphelia considered what she could do, to prove to this young woman that the trance was as much in in her head as in the Mistress of Slumber’s voice. These royal types were prudes, she thought, always telling the world that they were as pure as the driven snow. One kiss would suffice.

“On the count of three, you will lift your head, and open your eyes,” Morphelia said. “You will be overcome with a desire to kiss me. One, two, three.”

The idea was that the girl, chastely awaiting her charming prince, would resist the suggestion. She would wake up, slap Morphelia’s face, and they would both be done with the whole affair. But that was not what happened.

Instead the newly crowned Queen of Vessia lifted her head, the gray eyes as distant as yesterday’s rain clouds. She put her palms on Morphelia’s cheeks and kissed her without hesitation. The kiss was weak, as kisses go — undoubtedly the sheltered royalty had not learned to use her tongue in the ways that Morphelia had learned in Paris — but the younger woman was enthusiastic, tasting Morphelia’s lips again and again.

After a few seconds of enjoyment, Morphelia realized how dangerous it could be for her, to be snogging entranced royalty in this way. She pushed back on the younger woman’s shoulders, breaking the kiss. “When I snap my fingers, awake and alert,” she gasped. “Wide awake now.”

She snapped her fingers. Gabrielle’s eyes, which had closed for the kiss, fluttered open with considerable effort. She was confounded. “What?” she said. “What happened? Did you put me to sleep again?”

“I did,” Morphelia said. “Some people go under easier than others. You just have that sort of mind.”

Gabrielle put a finger to her lips, still looking confused. Perhaps some taste of Morphelia was still there. “I feel strange.”

“Go back home, Your Majesty,” Morphelia said. “You’ll feel normal in the morning.”

“I don’t think I will feel normal,” Gabrielle said. “There’s nothing that quite feels like this, and I don’t even remember what happened.”

“Regardless, m’lady, we have no more left to discuss.” Morphelia turned, ready to leave this foul alley and return to the Blind Goat.

“One more thing,” came Gabrielle’s voice from behind her. “What is your name?”

The other woman turned and cocked an eyebrow. “You doubt Morphelia, Mistress of Slumber?”

“Please,” Gabrielle said. “I was born at night, but not last night. I know a stage name when I hear one.”

In that moment, Morphelia knew that she was not done with this woman, and did not want to be. The girl had suffered a painful loss a few days before, had spent this day in complete mental turmoil, and yet was quick with the quip. She wanted to know more about this youthful queen, and what made her mind work.

“Prudence,” she said at last, and turned to walk across the street.

“Prudence,” Gabrielle murmured, as she watched the black-clad woman return to the pub. Then she went into the street herself.