The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Then.

“This… this feels weird. Doesn’t it feel weird?”

Celeste let her head rest against Rebecca’s shoulder. Down below, out of sight, her left hand sought out Rebecca’s right, and gripped it tightly. “Yes, Mistress,” she breathed. Her words and the air that propelled them tickled Rebecca’s ear. “Weird.”

You’re shaking, Rebecca wanted to say to her, but she knew that doing so would only make the shaking worse. Mistresses took care of their slaves. They were strong enough for two. Or, in Alice’s case, strong enough for thirty? That would explain a lot about Alice, really.

Celeste buried her nose in Rebecca’s hair, her jaw pressing down hard against Rebecca’s shoulder. Rebecca smiled and hooked her right thumb over the top of her girlfriend’s trembling hand. “It’s not really that weird. Compared to what we’ve been through this week? It’s just that I never thought it would be over, and now it is.” She glanced behind her at the tall, drafty set of doors that marked the entrance to Alice’s hostel. “When we walk through those doors this time, we’ll never have to come back.”

“You’ll never even think about coming back, dearie!”

Their Irish host swept into the lobby with all of her usual energy and chaos, her attention focused more on a small pile of manilla folders in her hands than on where she was going. She made it around the lobby desk largely on muscle memory, placing her bundle of paperwork on one of the smaller desk chairs and glaring at it until she was certain that it wasn’t going to slide to the floor. “You can’t imagine the sort of record these German accountants require! Every little scrap and every last invoice! I can’t stop for chicken and chips without accounting for every last penny I put into the tip jar, not with this lot!”

“Anyway!” She placed her hands on the check-in desk and looked over her would-be assistants. “As I was saying, dearie, were you to come down this street in five years hence, you’d find yourself appalled at the very idea of stepping foot in here. Or in my club, for that matter. I’m afraid this is the last you’ll see of Hostel Gemütlich.”

Rebecca’s eyes widened. “It has a name?”

“What, the hostel?” Alice looked shocked. “Well of course it has a name, dearie! Everything’s got a name to it. I don’t use it much on a daily basis, because I don’t like the way it sounds, but there’s really no point in changing it. I’ve other ways of making one’s stay a memorable one. Although not in your case!”

“Huh. I never knew.”

Rebecca recalled her earlier discussion about it with Celeste, back when Celeste was still… sigh. It doesn’t matter, idiot. You’d forget the name of this place even if you didn’t get brainwashed. You’d tell everyone it was ‘some hostel’ and shrug, not that they’d care either.

“We’re… um… we’re all ready,” she said, scolding herself for sounding so feeble. This was supposed to be a moment of triumph, not an execution.

Alice, it seemed, picked up on Rebecca’s wavering voice. “Yes, I see that.” She crossed her arms and pouted. “And are you going to make her carry all of your luggage, then? I see that Emily escaped being my slave only to become yours!”

The redhead was still in a deep hypnotic trance. Rebecca had lost track of just how long she’d been under, but it had been hours. She had no doubt that Emily, left hypnotized, would happily haul their things all the way back to America. She was also well aware that she’d already abused her power by having Emily carry most of their belongings from their room to the lobby.

Her friend stood by the door, wrapped up in a stylish winter coat and a pair of not-so-stylish boots Rebecca had, with a few choice trigger words, managed to convince another guest to surrender. Surrounded by their collective luggage, a backpack leaning against her shins, she looked like a mannequin stolen in the dead of night from a department store. A prop for Alice’s lobby, a monument to every beautiful woman who would ever walk through those same doors and take their place among the other puppets tucked away inside.

“Ground control to Major Sanders?” Alice had one hand on her hip, foot lightly tapping the floor. “Have you got everything from your room?”

“Yes, we did,” Celeste pressed herself against Rebecca again, as if trying to climb inside of her body. Anything to get further away from Alice. “Everything.”

“Good. And you’ve made the arrangements for lodging elsewhere?”

“We have.” Rebecca fought the urge to roll her eyes. This was taking longer than it needed to take. One sentence from Alice and they could be on their way, but Alice, true to form, was having too much fun playing with her toys to give them up so quickly. She caught a flash of something in motion out of the corner of her eye and looked beyond Alice, where the pile of manila folders shifted once, then again, before coming to rest between the chair seat and its armrest.

Imagine spending the rest of my life doing fucking paperwork for fucking Alice! “So, are you going to say the words, or do we say them, or…”

“Before that, dearie, as this is the very last time we’ll be seeing one another…”

Rebecca gave in to her urge. The resulting eye roll felt like a victory lap.

“…I’m actually a bit sorry to see you go. You’re the only person in this business I’ve ever met who had even the slightest bit of competence and cunning. The two of you, really. You nearly beat me at my own game. Now, my granda would roll his eyes even more thoroughly than you, Rebecca, were he to hear me admit this… but fair play, dearie.” She glanced at the ceiling, perhaps expecting her grandfather to be hovering overhead, his ghostly face scowling with disapproval. “You put up a fierce fight.”

“I love you, Mistress,” Celeste whispered. “I love you so much.”

Rebecca leaned into the brunette. “So damn much.”

Alice sighed, loud enough to draw their attention, which Rebecca suspected was the whole point. “And now,” she began, making their departure as theatrical as possible, “it’s time for the three of you to listen to me very carefully.” She eyed the sleepy redhead. “Including you, Emily. Listen carefully to me.”

“Yes, Alice.”

Celeste’s grip tightened, threatening to turn Rebecca’s hand into a diamond. She considered squirming free, or asking the brunette to let go, but decided against it. Any moment now. The moment seemed to take forever. She could hear the sound of her own heartbeat, her breathing, Celeste’s breathing. Alice’s breathing. The clanking radiator. A toilet from somewhere far down the hall, flushed by some guest who was also waiting, though she didn’t know it, for Alice to speak some very special words.

Passwords. We sell passwords here, Reb-

“Carnations in spring open their petals.”

The manila folders slid to the floor like calving icebergs.

Now.

Celeste opened her eyes.

Her lower back hurt, sending little stabs of throbbing pain into her nervous system at regular intervals. The hypochondriac teenager she’d once been would have chalked the pain up to kidney stones or appendicitis, but grownup Celeste traced the cause to a less exciting and less dangerous culprit; she’d fallen asleep on the couch again.

Then she remembered why she’d fallen asleep on the couch, and not in her own bed. She was on her feet in seconds, thankful that she’d kept her clothes on. Even very deeply hypnotized subjects sometimes managed to shake off their programming after a good night’s sleep. It rarely happened, especially now that Celeste knew what she was doing, but freak accidents were a fact of life and-

“Morning, Celeste!” Zoe’s voice sang out from the kitchen. From their relative positions, the blonde could see Celeste, but not vice-versa. Clinking glasses and water from the faucet provided clues as to what Zoe was up to.

Celeste let her heart fall back into its usual place. “Morning, Zoe.” More enthusiasm. Don’t let her worry. “Morning, Zoe!”

She emerged from the kitchen with mugs in her hands. Bitter citrus- Earl Grey’s beloved Bergamot- filled the living room. Zoe carefully set one of the mugs on a coaster in front of Celeste and sipped from the other. “I grabbed some tea from your cabinet. Hope that’s okay. I need caffeine in the mornings or I get stabby.”

Celeste chuckled at that. Her face lit up with a broad smile, and Zoe followed suit. The blonde took another long sip of tea, seemingly impervious to the heat it was giving off, her nose crinkling adorably just above the mug.

Celeste let the moment carry on for as long as she could. She reached for her own mug and let the tea warm her up, her eyes never quite leaving Zoe’s body. They enjoyed teatime in silence.

“Did you sleep well?” Celeste finally broke the silence. Her not-so-inner hypnotist was eager to test the results of last night’s work. She picked up her mug and, on the pretense of carrying it to the kitchen, moved into the entry space that was part foyer, part kitchen, part living room. She took another sip before setting the mug at the very edge of the nearest countertop.

“How are you feeling,” she added, her voice full of motherly concern. “Good, I hope?”

At that moment the blonde would have looked right at home in a luxury hotel advertisement, her hair and body wrapped in white fluffy towels, her smile and cheekbones impossibly perfect. “Like a million bucks,” she said, in a voice that sounded like it was worth ten times that. “I was so drunk last night… it’s all a blur after I left the bar, but I’m not hungover at all! I…” She sucked in her lower lip, making for a cute pucker face. “Mmm… I didn’t throw up or anything, did I? Or embarrass you? Sometimes when I get really, really drunk…”

The look in her eyes told Celeste everything she probably needed to know about what Zoe was like when she got really, really drunk. “No, you were fine,” she said, her voice calm and soothing. Zoe was programmed to remember getting wasted at the bar, and only now did Celeste realize that she’d been a little sloppy with the memory-crafting. To Zoe, apparently, wasted meant shitfaced. “No barfing, no arrests, no falling down. I’m glad I could be your port in a storm, Zoe.”

“Can I buy you breakfast or something?” Zoe found the clothes she’d mindlessly discarded hours before waiting for her in a neat pile at the edge of the coffee table. “I can call Kayla and have her pick me up.” Scrunching down instead of bending over- no doubt to avoid letting her towel slip, or to give Celeste a view of her exposed ass- she scooped all of them into the crook of her arm and turned to face the hallway. Celeste stood between her and the bathroom.

“Is that your roommate?”

Kayla was not Zoe’s roommate, but Celeste knew that. Zoe spilled everything she knew about the cute, athletic junior, egged on by the fingers that kept her on the brink of orgasm for the better part of an hour. Kayla was pretty and smart, with dark brown eyes that would soon be wide open and ready for instruction. Ready to look upon their Mistress in the way that Mistress Rebecca deserved.

“No, we were roomies freshman year, but she’s got her own place now.” Zoe drew closer, shuffling her load of clothes from one arm to both. “She plays midfield on the team. You’d like her! She’s cool! I think she’s from New York, or… Pennsylvania?”

She expected Celeste to step aside, but the brunette remained where she was, blocking the hallway. Zoe came to a sudden stop. She hefted her pile of clothes and lifted her chin in the direction of the bathroom. “Just gonna go get dressed and then—“

Celeste struck quickly, before either of them had time to think. “Sleep, Zoe.”

“Whaa… nnnnnnnnnn…”

Zoe’s clothes, and her towel, fell to the floor.

“Twenty three euros, bitte.”

Rebecca was usually a credit card girl, especially while traveling, but cash meant speed and speed meant less time indoors. She fought the urge to simply throw the money in the clerk’s general direction while grabbing her purchase and fleeing. Instead, she laid the bill and coins on the counter with one hand and picked up her new hat with the other.

No, not her hat. Not exactly.

The clerk was either not into girls or very dedicated to one special woman in his life, Rebecca decided later. He paid no attention to her or to the gorgeous, spaced-out redhead standing next to her. Maybe he was just cynical. Maybe he was no stranger to mindless thralls passing through his store. Berlin certainly had enough of them.

“Twenty and three,” she announced. She nudged Leslie to the door. “Danke! Danke Schön!”

The clerk muttered something in response. Rebecca ignored it, happy to be outside again and away from close inspection. She tugged Leslie to a halt and steadied her, yanking the price tag from her hat before fitting it on top of Leslie’s head. “There,” she said, feeling a little better about herself. “Now you won’t freeze to death.”

“I won’t freeze to death,” Leslie agreed. Leslie was nothing if not agreeable. “I will obey.”

I’m glad that she didn’t say that stuff in the store. Mistress had been less than happy about Rebecca’s stop, especially after Rebecca herself made the biggest fuss about spiriting Leslie to Edwin’s flat without drawing attention from the public. Are we done shopping now?

“Yeah. You can talk out loud, you know. It’s not like I’m stopping you.”

“I’m still mad about Edwin,” said Mistress. “I’m mad that we came up with a good idea and made a good case and he still… after everything you said…”

“Because people here are crazy, that’s why.” Rebecca took Leslie’s hand and held it loosely in her own. It felt like the right thing to do, as if she would be able to pull the redhead away from any dangerous mind controllers lurking about. Of course, one of them had already gotten to her. More than one, now. “Edwin lives inside this bubble where everyone is an evil genius brainwasher, and he wants to fit in. He wants to be the LeBron James, not the Carlos Boozer, you know?”

“I know, but… you saw it. We saw it. In his eyes. He knew we were right and he just… ugh!”

The U-Bahn came into view, a welcome sight for both of them. If anything, the wind had picked up since Edwin’s apartment, and now they were forced to walk straight into it. Leslie’s new knit cap was probably the only thing keeping her out of the Unfallstation with a bad case of hypothermia.

Can you imagine? Mistress smiled. Oh, don’t worry about the blank stare, Doctor Klaus! Leslie’s just a brainwashed slave, that’s all. What? No, not my slave! I was just dragging her around town from one mind controller to the next, ha ha!

“At least we’ll be out of the wind. I knew that hat was a good idea.” Rebecca tapped her jeans, just above the front pocket that contained her wallet. “Twenty-three euros, though! Do you think we can charge Alice for that?”

“You can ask her.”

They reached the U-Bahn entrance. Rebecca took the stairs two at a time, practically dragging Leslie behind her, happy to be even slightly warmer. She pulled off her gloves and looked around for a ticket machine. “Another four euros,” she said, hunting around in a jacket pocket for the needed change. To her dismay, she came up two euros short; the extra three coins had gone towards Leslie’s hat. “Dammit. I don’t think we have any small bills left.”

“Hey, Leslie,” Mistress said. “Do you have any cash on you? Change?”

“Yes, Rebecca.”

The redhead reached into her jacket and produced a cute little pink wallet, handing it to Rebecca without saying another word. Rebecca flipped it open to find a neat stack of euros, all arranged in order of value, mostly twenties and tens.

Jackpot! Damn, Leslie’s kinda loaded. Maybe we should keep her.

“Har-har. Celeste would be fucking thrilled. ‘Hi, honey! Brought home a hot girl that I’m gonna fuck instead of you!’” Rebecca plucked a five note from Leslie’s wallet and began to hand it back to her, before changing her mind. She snapped it open again and, after some dithering, settled on a ten note as well. Slave Leslie didn’t care about cash, but Real Leslie would probably notice too many missing notes. Five, ten, even fifteen euros were easy enough to miss- an extra coffee or beer or ticket purchased and forgotten, no big deal- but anything more than that invited questions that Leslie wouldn’t be able to answer. Questions that Alice might see fit to erase permanently.

Mistress plucked their tickets from the machine. “Hey, at least we get to ride together, right?”

“Which one of us is living rent-free in the other’s head, though?”

Beep. They moved through the turnstiles. “I don’t want to think about it. Let’s talk about it later over a beer or eight.”

They made their way to the far end of the platform, Rebecca standing as far from the edge as she could, her back pressed up against a dirty wall. The memory of Celeste climbing down onto the tracks still haunted her. “We came so close to losing her, Mistress. So fucking… it was all my fault.”

“Amanda’s fault,” Mistress replied. “And we can make it up to her when we get home. Again and again and again until one of us collapses from exhaustion.”

“Mmm.” Rebecca smiled. She felt the cool whooshing breeze that accompanied the sound of an approaching train. Chasing off the unpleasant memories of Celeste’s near-suicide, she found herself confronting something else instead. Something worse, because unlike the U-Bahn incident, this wasn’t safely in the past.

“Mistress,” she mused, as the train came into view. “What are we going to tell Celeste about us?”

“I am so sorry. I mean it.”

Celeste looked up in surprise. Whatever was going on between Kayla and Zoe had taken an odd turn. Was Kayla one of the worker bees surrounding Zoe last night? She tried to match the pictures from Zoe’s phone with her memories of the crowd of women at the bar, and came up short. Then again, one of Zoe’s friends had probably spilled the juicy details to everyone in their social circle by now. Bees definitely knew how to buzz.

“What?” Zoe held her phone away from her face, scowled at it, then brought it back to her ear. “No, Tara’s a drama queen. Don’t believe anything she says. We just got into a stupid argument, and then I felt bad about it so I left.”

More words. Nodding. Nodding, Celeste decided, was a very good sign. It meant that Kayla wasn’t angry.

“This girl let me crash at her place. I didn’t want to walk home and the ride shares were all doing that premium pricing thing. I’m not gonna spend fifty dollars to go back to my house! So she… what? No, she’s really cool.” She glanced over her shoulder at Celeste and smiled. “She’s new here. Her roomie’s out of town, and I slept in her spare bed.”

Celeste nodded and gave the blonde a thumbs up.

She says hi, Zoe mouthed. “I mean, I’m not in a hurry. I just… what? No, like I said, it was my fault. Emily was right. Yeah, I know lacrosse…” She looked at Celeste again, this time helplessly, hoping in vain that somehow the brunette could join the call and defend her. “Kay… Kayla, it’s cool. She’s cool. Don’t… yeah! I got this.”

Her helpless look faded quickly. Confident Zoe took its place. “So you can swing by? Ohmygod, you’re a fucking rock star, you know that? Okayiloveyoubye!”

She turned away, briefly distracted by her phone, giving Celeste a chance to let out the breath she’d been holding for what felt like hours. Kayla, it turned out, was the only one of Zoe’s female friends who didn’t have an all-day engagement to attend to. Granted, Zoe’s male friends were probably just as easy to hypnotize, but what would Mistress do with a boy?

No, that wouldn’t do at all. Mistress needed to be worshipped by beautiful women, only the best of the best, the hottest girls with minds bent and shaped until they could serve that very purpose. Not a harem. Harems were beneath her Mistress. This was more of a V.I.P. Club. An exclusive gathering of beautiful women, Zoe and hopefully! Kayla, and maybe some of the others from their circle of friends. Anyone that caught Mistress’s eye, of course.

But that was it. Not Zoe’s roommate, not the two college girls who lived down the hall, not the pretty-but-not-pretty-enough girls in Celeste’s classes. Just a few slaves. The best slaves.

“So, that was Kayla.” The blonde pirouetted to face Celeste, her calf muscles bulging impressively as she remained balanced on one foot. “She’s just gotta run some errands real quick before she can come grab me.” She straightened her leg and brought her foot back to Earth, before curling the other behind her back and catching it with her hand. “It sucks that your car won’t start, Celeste. There’s a place on McKinley that sells car batteries and stuff. Oh! I mean, if Kayla’s got time I can have her take us over there!” Her pretty face brightened as a new plan formed in her head. “Can I buy you a new battery? I mean after all you did saving my ass from freezing…”

That gave Celeste an idea for yet another implanted memory, and she set it aside for future use. “That would be awesome, thanks!” She leaned against the wall and watched Zoe stretch, wondering if Kayla would be just as flexible. Up. Flex. Down. Flex. Curl. Flex. I could watch this all morning.

“Zoe,” she said, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Shouldn’t you get dressed?”

The blonde looked down at her lovely, exposed body. “If you want me to, sure. But I don’t mind. It feels nice to be naked.” Up. Flex. Down. Flex. “It’s so relaxing, you know?”

“And why is that?”

She stopped flexing. “Um… it’s… uh… oh! It’s because I’m deeply hypnotized!”

There was something about those words, the way they happily spilled out of Zoe’s pretty mouth, the utter innocence of it all, that made Celeste feel very good in all of her most important places. “That’s right. You are very deeply hypnotized right now. Is that odd or strange in any way?”

“Nah.” Zoe went back to flexing. “I’m actually very easy to hypnotize. Someone told me it’s because I’m naturally smart and curious, so I immediately drop into a deep hypnotic trance and obey all of my commands.” She stretched with a happy “mmmmmm,” her eyes rolling into the back of her head before closing. “I’m so very open to suggestion when I’m deeply hypnotized.”

“Oh wow!” Even though Zoe’s eyes were closed, Celeste put on her best ‘fake surprise’ face. “You’re so lucky I found you when I did, then! Someone at the bar could have hypnotized you and turned you into their mindless sex slave.”

“Mindless… mmmm… yes… I would have to obey them without question. I’d fuck them all night long… cuz so deep and open to suggestion… obeying is my only purpose when I’m deeply… deeply hypnotized.”

“Well, now you’re safe from that. Do you know why?”

“Yes. Because now only you or Mistress Rebecca can hypnotize me. I’ll fall into a deep and mindless trance for you, but no one else.”

“Good girl. Zoe, open your eyes. You’re still deeply hypnotized, but for now you’ll act as if you are awake. Do you understand?”

She did. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath, then resumed her morning stretches.

“I’ve got a great idea, Zoe. You know what would be awesome?”

The blonde stopped and tilted her head. “What?”

“When Kayla comes over to pick you up, we should hypnotize her and put her into a deep hypnotic trance, too. Wouldn’t that be kinda cool?”

Zoe didn’t have to think about it. The answer was obvious. “Yeah! That would be pretty cool.” She walked into the kitchen and dropped into the chair next to Celeste. “Can we do that? How do we do that?”

“By listening to my voice, Zoe.” Celeste reached for Zoe’s hand and took it into her own. “Look into my eyes. Hear only my voice. Go even deeper for me now, and listen carefully.”

“Careffffff…” The light faded from her eyes, and she became an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

Mistress frowned. “I forgot how shaky this train always is.”

She gave Leslie a gentle push, just enough to put her upright again. The redhead responded with a dreamy, distant smile. “It’s hard to believe there was a time when we would have sold our soul to have a hot girl fall into our lap like this. Jesus, where does Alice find them? She’s almost as hot as Jessi—”

“Jessica? Shit, I forgot all about Jessica. I hope she got back to Australia okay.” Rebecca suddenly felt very protective of her one-time dream girl. “She was hot as shit, but…”

“…she’s not Celeste.”

“Yeah.”

Another shake sent Leslie careening into them. Mistress rolled her eyes. “I know. And I know you know that I know. She’s… she’ll be okay with this. She loves you, and she loves me. And we both love her.”

“I don’t want to scare her, Miss. What if she thinks we’re crazy? What if she feels bad that she made this happen? I don’t want to scare her.”

“She’s smart, Rebecca. She used to study this stuff. She’s fairly obsessed with hypnosis, right?” Mistress glanced around the car to confirm that they were out of earshot, then continued. “Here’s what we’ll say. We’ll look her deep in the eyes, right?”

“I miss her eyes. I miss looking into them.”

“Alright. We look her in the eyes and we say ‘Hey, Celeste? There’s Rebecca, and there’s Mistress, and we reached out and found one another. But we love you and you love us, and we’ll still be an awesome couple… I mean, I guess not really a couple, it’s really more like a threesome… but that’s okay! Because now we can do hypno role-play without all of that sneaking around bullshit, right?”

“She’s gonna be embarrassed that she tried to hide it from me. And to be honest I’m a little mad at her for it.” Thoughts of a bawling and red-faced Celeste immediately filled their head. Rebecca cringed. “You know how sensitive she can be.”

“So what? We can just hypnotize her and program her to—“

“We’re not Alice.” Rebecca crossed her arms. “A slave with free will. That was the plan. That’s what I promised her. That’s already a compromise for me, Miss.”

“Fine. So then we take her out to a beautiful restaurant, and we lavish her with attention, and we wear that sexy-ass dress that Missy bought us. And then she’ll forget all about her guilt, no hypnosis, just good old-fashioned seduction. Deal?”

Rebecca smiled. That would work. That sounded better than anything else in the entire world. She gave Leslie another nudge as their train rounded a corner.

“Deal.”

Celeste bit her lip. This is stupid this is stupid this is stupid. What if it failed? What if she was rusty? What if Zoe was just a natural somnambulist? What if Kayla wasn’t? Maybe it was better if she held off for now, until Mistress got back home. Then Mistress could decide on whether to enslave Kayla. Mistress could hypnotize anyone, so if she really wanted to brainwash Kayla, she could just…

“No,” she scolded herself. “This… THIS… this is an opportunity, and it’s too good to pass up.” She checked her handiwork one last time, glancing again and again at the front door. “And if it doesn’t work, it wasn’t meant to happen, right Zoe?”

Zoe flashed her a dazzling smile. “That’s right. You’re always right, Celeste.”

Making convincing sleeper agents wasn’t easy, but Zoe hadn’t been lying when she said that she was extremely easy to hypnotize. Aside from Rebecca, and maybe Alice, and of course Celeste herself, there was no one on the planet who would ever look at Zoe and deduce that she was anything other than her normal, slightly bitchy self. Hell, she even looks impatient.

As if on cue, Zoe piped up with, “Do you want me to get the door, Celeste?”

“No no, I got it! Just, um, keep watching the video and I’ll let her in.”

“Okay!”

Celeste reached the door just in time to prevent another round of furious finger-rapping, opening it to find a small mountain of jackets, scarves, and other winter gear standing before her. Kayla’s cute nose, red from the cold, provided the only proof that there was a human beneath all of that wool and yarn. “Hi,” Celeste said, her cheery tone mostly masking her nervousness. “Are you Kayla? Come on in!”

“Thanks,” said Kayla, although she was barely audible through her scarf. She shrugged her way past Celeste and into the hall, pausing to get her bearings before heading towards the kitchen and its tile floor. Dropping into an open chair, she began to take off her snow-caked boots.

“Hey, Kayla!” Zoe remained in the living room, eyes transfixed by the TV screen. “Thanks for coming by!”

“No problem, chief.” Kayla pulled off her hat and brushed strands of dark, damp hair from her face. “I’m sorry I’m late. There was a… oh, never mind. Today’s just been a total clusterfuck.”

She peeled off her jacket, giving Celeste her first glimpse of the glorious body from those phone selfies. It looked promising. “Thanks again for taking care of this crazy bitch last night.”

“No worries,” Celeste laughed. “It’s totally cool. My roommate went home for the weekend, and besides, it was fucking freezing last night.” She thought about Zoe’s earlier idea. “Cold killed my car battery, again!”

“Yeah,” added Zoe. “Is it okay if we take Celeste to Discount Battery? Do you have time?”

Kayla opened her mouth to respond, but said nothing. Her eyes darted to the television, which was just visible from where she was sitting. “What the hell are you watching, Z?”

“Oh, this? It’s a cool relaxation video. What was it called, Celeste?”

The official title of the video was Entrancement Entertainment Presents: Taking You Deeper 7, but a younger Celeste made sure to discard that name- along with the original DVD case and any incriminating packaging- the moment it arrived at her old apartment in Troy. To anyone other than herself or Mistress, it was just ‘that cool relaxation video.’ Especially to someone as deeply brainwashed and programmed as Zoe.

“I don’t remember what it’s called officially,” Celeste lied. “But it plays soothing music, and the screen shows all these waves of colors, kind of like a screensaver.” She let her voice drop into a familiar, practiced cadence. “Sometimes when I get stressed or worried… it’s just something to watch. Not even really watch, really. Just out of the corner of my eye, it’s playing the whole time, making me calm and relaxed.”

“It’s so relaxing,” Zoe added, just as Celeste programmed her to say. “So peaceful. I feel so calm. No stressed at all. So relaxed.”

Kayla’s eyes dimmed perceptibly as she tilted her head to her left, trying to get a better view of the screen. “That’s cool,” she said, in a voice that was above a whisper but well on its way to becoming one. “Pretty… um… cool?”

Celeste nodded. “Really pretty. I like that it’s so beautiful. Like a beautiful rainbow after a soft, soft rain. Even when I’m not watching it, I can see the colors in my head. Swirling around, such a calm feeling, calm and peaceful.”

“Yeah… it’s… uh… we should… uh… probably… get… get…”

Just a little more. “Eyes so heavy, Kayla. So relaxed. So sleepy. You’ve had a long day and it’s so nice to just sit for a second and relax. Let all of your worries fade away. So sleepy. So heavy. So relaxed.”

Kayla tried to look away from the screen, perhaps realizing, too late, that it was doing something to her. Hypnotizing her. Celeste could see her facial muscles twitching and falling still, again and again, mounting brief stands of resistance before being snuffed out. She sagged against the back of her chair, sending her jacket sprawling to the floor.

“You’re so tired, Kayla. Relax. Sleep.”

Her eyelids fluttered rapidly. “I’m jussssst… I’m gonna closssse… eyesss…”

“Close your eyes and rest. Sleep.” Celeste touched the top of Kayla’s head, just enough to brush aside her hair and connect with her scalp. Just enough to gently guide the brunette’s head towards her chest. “So heavy. So warm and safe. Close your eyes.”

“Close my eyes,” Kayla mumbled, before doing so.

Celeste motioned for Zoe to join her in the kitchen.