The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I knew something had to be up by the way Joe kept toying with his Coke can.

Fiddling with stuff was a nervous habit of Joe’s for as long as I’ve known him, but what struck me right then was that this was the first time in months that I’d seen him do it. And way down deep, a bitter little piece of me was a bit glad.

Not, I hasten to say, that I had any reason to want Joe to suffer. We’ve been friends longer than either of us can accurately say. But right then, we were at a point where our lives had been diverging more and more. My marriage was all but done, my finances were in the toilet, and I couldn’t shake the increasing sense that my job hung on every new piece I wrote for Tech Toys, the magazine I’d been working for since getting out of college. Joe, on the other hand, was thriving like nobody’s business: he’d patched things up with Alice after nearing divorce, gotten two promotions at his government job, and hadn’t complained about the prices at our favorite deli in ages. So if Joe was having a problem, maybe it meant the law of averages was about to correct a few things for me, too.

Still, I’m human. I put down my corned beef sandwich and broke Joe’s reverie by snatching the empty can from his fingers. “Spill it—what’s bugging you?”

The answer surprised me. “You,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “What’s going on with you and Nina?”

“Trying to spoil my appetite, eh?” His gaze didn’t waver, though. “Okay, fine. Nothing’s going on. She doesn’t call. She doesn’t come over. She doesn’t even let Jenny call or come over, and of course I can’t do anything about that because I’m just a stepdad. We’re being ordered into mediation, which is gonna cost me five hundred, and the lawyer wants another three grand before we go in front of the judge again. That’ll kill off the last of my savings, but it’ll be worth it if I can get her to at least talk to me.”

“You know what I think about her,” he reminded me. “But still, man, I’m sorry.”

I just shrugged. Joe had tried to warn me about marrying Nina. Even now, 18 months later, with the marriage in shambles, I still wanted to make it work and he still thought I was nuts. “It’s not your fault. None of the shit that’s been dropped on me lately is your fault.”

“No,” he agreed. And then a weird sort of look came over him. “But what if I could help you get out from under it?”

“We’ve been there before. I don’t want your money. I’ll find resources as I need them.”

“I’m not talking about money, Sam.”

The bitterness welled up in me at exactly the wrong time, as usual. “Then what, Joe? What are you gonna do? Call Nina and tell her how I still feel, and hope that you can somehow do that more persuasively than I did? Convince my editor that even though I remember CP/M I can still write for an audience raised on PlayStation? Maybe get my bloodsucking lawyer to take a pay cut? What?”

Joe had to have heard the ugliness, but he ignored it. “Is that what you’d do if you could?”

He said it so quietly and seriously that it brought me up short. Would I do those things if I could? “Okay, probably not. As much as I love Nina, I can’t keep her if she won’t stay. And the lawyer earns his money, I just don’t like having to use him because I don’t want this divorce.”

“And your editor?”

That took less thought. “I was writing about technology before he could spell the word. That arrogant, know-nothing prick should be working for me.”

“All right,” Joe replied, “two out of three is good enough.”

“I’m happy I passed the test. Good enough for what?”

Joe looked around as if he was checking for an audience and leaned in closer. His voice dropped to half volume, which forced me to lean in as well. “What if I told you I could give you the power to control people’s minds?”

For about three seconds I just sat there dumbfounded. Then I picked up his Coke can. “I’d take this to the nearest lab and have it analyzed. What’s the punch line?”

“No punch line. Here, I’ll prove it to you. There’s an attractive woman somewhere behind me, isn’t there?”

The non-sequitur made me blink. “Yeah, but how ...?”

“You’ve been looking over my shoulder every two minutes since we sat down. Your heart may be pining for Nina, but your balls are still working the way nature intended. Now watch this.”

Joe stood up and walked over to the back table where I’d spotted her—a hot, smartly dressed redhead with no ring on her left hand, having lunch with two female friends, or maybe coworkers. Out of my league, even if I had been looking for someone other than my wife. I saw Joe lay a hand lightly on her shoulder and say something. Her face flashed blank for a second, then she stood up and followed him back to where I sat.

She looked a little confused at first. Then Joe took her by the elbow, every so discreetly, and her face got that dazed look on it again. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Audrey.” Her voice was soft and calm, almost as if she was talking in her sleep. She had a sort of vapid stare, too.

“Good,” Joe said. “Audrey, this is my friend Sam. Say hello to him.”

“Hello, Sam.”

“Umm ... hello,” I said, feeling a weak little smile on my face. This was just too weird.

“Audrey,” Joe continued, “Sam here is very attracted to you, and the more you look at him the more you feel that you’re attracted to him as well. I want you to write your full name and phone number on this napkin here and give it to him, and if he calls you to ask for a date you’ll be happy to accept because you know that Sam is a great guy that any woman would love to have.”

“Oh. Sure.” Audrey took the pen Joe offered her and wrote her name and phone number on the napkin as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. “Here, Sam,” she said as she passed it over to me. “You can call me any time; I live alone.”

I took the napkin and stared at it, then her. “Thanks,” I said, still not sure exactly what was going on.

Joe touched her one more time. “Go back to your friends now. If they ask you about us, just make up something they’ll believe.”

“Okay. It was really nice meeting you, Sam.”

“Likewise.” And I watched her walk back to her table and sit down to an immediate flurry of questions from her companions. She seemed to be answering calmly and whatever she said seemed to satisfy them. Interesting.

“Do you believe me now?” Joe asked.

I almost couldn’t believe my own answer. “I think so. If that was an elaborate hoax of some kind you’d have a smug grin on your face instead of looking like you’re about to read your own will. What the hell did you just do?”

“It’s all in the touch,” he told me. “I have this ... power. It’s not mine; it was given to me almost a year ago—I can’t tell you by whom—and now I need to pass it on to someone else. I want to give it to you.”

“How?” It was just too strange to argue about.

“Give me your hand.” Joe held out his hand as if to shake mine, and I complied. “From my hand to your hand, my mind to your mind. The Power is now yours.”

One time I tried to replace a flaky light switch without turning off the power first. The sudden hard tingle, that unpleasant surge that you feel when you accidentally shock yourself ... I felt something very much like that as Joe finished speaking. My body gave a hard, not-entirely-pleasant sort of shiver and I jerked back as soon as Joe let go of my hand. “What the fuck?” I said when I recovered a little.

Joe cracked a smile. “Forgot about that. It does sort of feel like a souped-up joy buzzer when it transfers from one person to the next. That’ll pass quickly.”

And he was right—it was passing already. I held up my hand and examined it. “It doesn’t look any different.”

“Nope. And it won’t feel any different, not physically anyway. But anybody you touch now with that hand will automatically think and do anything you say.”

“That simple?”

“That simple,” he assured me.

“Okay, then.” I reached out and grabbed his arm. “Give me your wallet, your watch, and the keys to your car.”

No sooner did I get the words out, though, then someone split my head in half with a giant meat cleaver. That’s what it felt like, anyway. The pain was momentarily blinding and it took every bit of self-control I could muster to spit out a string of quiet cuss words instead of screaming in the middle of the deli. I dropped back into my chair and held my head for a minute until the place stopped spinning.

“Sorry, Sam,” Joe was saying when I came to my senses. “I should’ve warned you before I passed it on. There are rules to this thing.”

“Oh, yeah?” The pain was receding and I could think again. “You want to fill me in now?”

“I need to. There are three rules that you need to know.

“First: the Power is yours now, but you can only keep it for a maximum of one year. Sometime in the next 365 days, Sam, you have to choose someone else and pass it on to them as I just did to you.

“Second: once you’ve had the Power, you can never receive it again and you become immune to its use. If you try to use the Power on someone who’s had it before ... well, you just found out what happens.

“Third: the effects of the Power are permanent. Audrey is now attracted to you and thinks you’re a great guy, and will continue to think that way unless you do something to change it. So be damned careful what you say to people while you touch them.”

I kept looking at my hand, half expecting it to glow or something. “So how do I use it?”

“Exactly like you just tried with me, but not on me. Touch the person with your right hand and tell them what you want them to think or do. Doesn’t matter where you touch them or how hard you touch; just keep contact while you speak and the order goes straight to their mind.”

“Don’t people get pissed when you let go?”

“Did Audrey?” Joe shrugged at me. “I don’t completely understand how this thing works, but people seem to rationalize why they’re doing or thinking exactly what you said. Sometimes they think it was their idea, or that you just agreed with what they were already thinking; sometimes they forget you said anything. With some people you don’t even have to say anything out loud, which helps.”

“Okay. Suppose I decide to keep the power? What happens if I don’t pass it on after a year?”

Joe’s face got white. “When I asked that question the only answer I got was, ‘You do not want to find out.’ So please, don’t find out.”

That creeped me out enough to agree instantly.

Joe looked at his watch. “I need to get back. Any more questions for now?”

Yes, I had one. “Why me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Joe suddenly looked a little sheepish. “All the good things that have happened for me in the past year—Alice and I reconciling, the promotions—have been partly luck and partly from using the Power. You need some of that kind of luck. So use it wisely, for a year, and then pass it on to someone else who needs it.”

We got up and tossed away our trash. “I don’t know what to say. Thanks, for starters.”

“I’m just glad I could give it to you,” Joe said. “One request: don’t tell anyone, okay? I mean, they’d think you were crazy unless you demonstrated it for them, but I’d rather people think I got everything I have now the hard way.”

“Sure.”

As we headed for our separate offices, I couldn’t help but wonder about Alice.

I’d like to say that I was a model of restraint; that I weighed carefully everything that Joe had told me and gave serious thought to how I would use this strange, fascinating gift. That would make me sound so much better than I really am.

No, the truth is my first use of the power was an accident. In the elevator I ran into Leah, the research assistant I share with several other writers. She pointedly looked at her watch and said, “You’re seven minutes late, big guy. His Nibs will not be happy.”

She was joking, of course, but there was an element of truth there. Amid general rumors of an impending shake-up, my boss had been riding me like a rented pony for weeks. Without thinking, I winked at her and said, “Then before I get fired, you should take me to the supply room and give me that blow job you keep offering.”

Leah’s face went blank and when I finished talking I realized that I had my hand on her arm. Before I could open my mouth again, though, the elevator dinged and the doors opened. “You’re right,” she told me. “Let’s go.” And without waiting for a response from me Leah hustled out of the elevator.

I followed her and sure enough, she was heading to the supply room. She closed the door behind us and flipped the deadbolt. “Look, Leah,” I started to say, but she launched herself at me and smothered my words with a hot kiss. She pressed up against a metal cabinet and her hand snaked its way inside my pants in nothing flat. My cock felt a female touch for the first time in months and almost took over. Almost.

Instead I broke the kiss and, with my hand on her face, said, “Leah, I was joking. We can’t actually do this.”

Again I saw the blank expression, which quickly turned back into her usual teasing look. “Of course not,” she replied with a broad wink. “I just wanted to see how far you’d take it before chickening out.” She extracted her hand and unlocked the door. “Nice package, by the way.” And with a mock licking of her lips she left.

I took my time fixing my clothes. Once my hard-on subsided I grabbed a few batteries and a notebook and headed for my desk.

Chad, my editor, found me there a little bit later. He heralded his arrival with a fake clearing of his throat and a quick, “Sam, my office.” Jerk-off. His “office” is nothing but a cubicle with taller sides and a flimsy see-through door. Talk about delusions of grandeur.

“Close the door,” he said as I followed him inside.

Sure, I thought. That’s gonna keep everyone on this side of the floor from hearing this conversation. We writers were divided on whether Chad didn’t know, or just didn’t care, that everything said in that “office” is clearly audible to anyone in the area regardless of the state of the door. Without saying anything I stood in front of his desk and waited to be chewed out for coming back late from lunch. That wasn’t the problem, though.

“I’m reassigning the CES round-up to Melissa,” he said without even bothering to look at me. “I expect you to hand your notes over to her this afternoon.”

I wanted to ring his pencil neck. “The Consumer Electronics Show round-up has always been my story. I have contacts and sources that I’ve developed over years. Melissa’s been here, what, three months?”

“Which is exactly why I’m sending her. It’s time for some fresh perspective. She’ll bring a new level of excitement to the material.”

“And a new level of ignorance,” I grumbled. “Melissa thinks WiMAX is a premium cable channel. What, is she fucking you or something?”

That did it. Chad finally looked me in the eye. “Sam, your attitude has been deteriorating almost as quickly as the quality of your work. I know you’ve had some tough times at home, but that’s no excuse for insubordination and I won’t tolerate it any longer. I think it would be best if you start looking for a new job.”

Nice going, Sam, I thought grimly. What do you do for an encore, stick your leg in a wood chipper? He that is down fears no fall—I leaned over the desk and let my hand close over Chad’s forearm. “You don’t want my resignation,” I said, fighting back the urge to do an Alec Guinness impression. “I am a first-class writer and an invaluable member of the staff. In fact, it would be a very good idea to send me to the CES with Melissa so I can supervise her and provide needed guidance and experience. You agree, don’t you?”

Chad blinked a couple of times and swallowed. “I ... yes, I was just going to say that. You should make your travel arrangements soon.”

“So you don’t really want me to leave.” A statement, not a question.

“No, of course not,” he parroted. “You’re a first-class writer and an invaluable member of the staff.”

Holy fuck, it works! I thought. “Great,” I told him. “I’m glad we have an understanding. It’s good to be appreciated.” I held out my hand to shake and of course he took it. While I shook his hand, I also added, “All I need is a few days off to decompress. You should push back my deadlines into next week and tell me to take a long weekend.”

Again, he blinked and swallowed. “You’re right, Sam. A break would be good for you. Don’t worry about this week’s deadlines.”

“Okay,” I replied, suppressing a shit-eating grin. “If you think that’s best.”

I walked out of the office at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, felt the sun on my face, and couldn’t help but smile. Lady Luck was on my side at last.