The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

She had grown thinner.

No less lovely, but different, especially in the moonlight. Her cheekbones cast black shadows, and her eyes glittered darkly from deep sockets. He forced himself to look away.

In the moonlight she was beautiful but scary. Beautiful because she was Elle, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Scary because she was gazing at him as if she were an owl looking at a mouse it planned to eat for dinner. Scary, too, because she was all dressed in black, not her usual color when they had been together.

Scary most of all because she was floating in the air just outside the casement window of his second-story bedroom.

With a huge effort, he wrenched his eyes away from hers. His heart pounding, he reached for the curtains.

Louis, said a voice.

He whirled around, but there was no one in the room with him.

Louis, look at me, the voice said again, and he realized it was her voice but a voice without sound. She was inside his head.

He knew what she could do to him. He was terrified.

He turned to run.

Stop, Louis!

His body froze. He couldn’t have moved if he’d been in the path of a train.

Louis, look into my eyes. Turn now.

Slowly, without any conscious decision on his part, his body turned until her eyes caught his and the room began to grow dim around him, until there were only those eyes laying siege to his senses and his will.

Now listen carefully, Louis. This is important. My voice is your thoughts. My will is your will. Nod.

He felt his head nod.

Louis, you want to let me in. Don’t fight it, Louis. Your arms are aching to open the window. Give in to me, Louis. Give in to me now.

Let me in.

As if a rope were tied to his right hand, it rose toward the lock.

He didn’t want to do this. He was terrified that she would pick him up and then throw him away again. He wouldn’t live through that. Already he couldn’t bear to be apart from her; he couldn’t hope to be with her; he couldn’t think of her without pain and fear; he couldn’t not think of her every minute of every day, He wanted to go back to life before he’d met her, before she’d taken his will and put it between her breasts, before her breasts and her eyes and her voice . . . .

He sent his hands a stern command to stop. They reached for the latch.

That’s it, Louis. It feels so good to give in to my will. My will is stronger than your will, Louis, open the window, Louis, give in to me, Louis, NOW, LOUIS! GIVE IT UP! NOW!

The window swung wide open and she swarmed in through it, transfixing him with her eyes and then bearing him back and down to the floor beneath her, and she was naked now, her breasts glowing in the moonlight, the dark nipples erect, her glittering eyes and cruel mouth exulting over him. She straddled him and he was naked now too, she put him inside her and he felt himself falling into her and he knew this was the end of him but he was glad because he did not want to be if he was not with her and he would give her his soul, his body, his self and if it ended him so much the better.

That’s right, Louis, give in to me, the voice said in his head. Let go now, come into me, I own you, your body, your mind, give in to me, let go now, think of my eyes, come to me, my breasts own you, come to me, you can’t hold back, COME . . .

Her teeth sank into his throat as he exploded inside her and he knew this was the end but he welcomed the end because he did not exist without her and then he was no more . . . .

A long blank time later, he woke up in a drab Midwestern motel room. It was on the third floor, not the second, and the “moonlight” was the glare from a parking-lot sodium-vapor security light. The window was closed; in fact, the window did not open, and the air conditioning was droning away, and he had just had a wet dream like a 15-year-old boy.

This was happening to him now almost every night, and each time he woke feeling more lost, emptier. During the day he was all but dead inside and at night she was draining what remained of him as if she really were a vampire, he had given her everything and now he had almost nothing left and the dreams were draining that.

He looked at his watch. 5 a.m. One hour until the motel “breakfast”; five hours before he could do what he had came to do.

He went to the window and closed the curtain. He would not sleep again.

Despite its mysterious name, Mr. Kelly’s Ultra-Magic Boutique and Toy Museum was a very ordinary storefront on a dingy side street, with a medical and diabetic supplies store to one side and what looked like a warehouse—padlocked doors, painted-over windows—on the other. By 9:46, he was outside it, waiting for signs of activity. No one entered, but at 10:05 an unseen hand flipped over the sign on the window. THE SORCERER IS IN, it read now. He hung back for a few minutes to see whether anyone else would enter, then pushed his way in.

He found himself in a tiny front room jammed full of magic tricks. Hanging at eye level was ELBEE’S SQUIRTING FLOWER, shrink-wrapped on cardboard. It had been there so long that the label had mostly faded in the light. Next to it was HUGO THE WALKING DOLL—Professional Ventriloquist Puppet, an oddly repellent little creature with a sharp nose and cheekbones. Across the room was a display marked EXCLUSIVE—GRAND GUIGNOL TOY THEATRES above a list of books with titles like L’Horrible Passion and Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations, each cover illustrated with what appeared to be human beings in various stages of dismemberment. A small puppet theatre bore the sign THE DISQUIETING FURTHER ADVENTURES OF MR. PUNCH. A dustr framed poster showed a drawing of mustachioed men in 19th century dresses and striped hose dancing blankly. “Mr. and Mrs. Flint’s Hypnotic Skirt Dance,” read the caption. A locked case displayed dolls, crowded in upon one another, their blank eyes oddly disquieting as if watching Louis and pleading for help. DANGER! UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES OPEN THIS CASE! read a sign above the latch.

“Can I help you?” said a voice out of nowhere.

Louis jumped. Indeed, he nearly ran out of the shop screaming in terror; after a moment as his heart slowed he saw that the speaker was actually a human being sitting behind a couter, his features obscured by a rack of books on mentalism and mind-magic. Once spotted, in fact, he was hard to ignore, being enormously tall (though it was hard to say exactly how tall because he was seated), broad of shoulder with a truly magnificent Mt. Rushmore-worthy head, the long forehead sloping up from wild grey eyebrows and over an enormous expanse of bald pate until it turned down and reached small tufts of matching grey hair above enormous hairy ears.

“I’m looking for—“ Louis began. Then he realized his mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. He cleared his throat and started again. “I’m looking for the Amazing Ray,” he said.

The silence hung in the air for a good deal longer than was comfortable. Then the voice—it was a deep, sonorous voice, with a scratch in it, perhaps from years of breathing the dust of magic shops—spoke again.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Louis Wentworth,” he said, putting a friendly hand out in the general direction of the mammoth figure behind the counter. “I’m looking for the Amazing Ray.”

No hand reached out for his. Peering through the gloom, Louis could see that the speaker was looking at him attentively, but seemed deeply displeased at his existence. “What makes you think such a person is here?”

“Well, I went online looking for him,” Ray said. “I found a reference to him from 2004 in a community newspaper published here in town. It’s literally the only thing I have found anywhere on the Web. He performed at a charity children’s event, folding paper animals. Apparently—“ he choked briefly, whether on the dusty air or the improbability of the entire scene he could not say. “Apparently he was entertaining at private parties and events then, and the article said he could be contacted through this store.”

Silence.

“What do you want with this . . . person?” The more he heard that voice, the more it sounded like church bells ringing for the dead. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head, he thought—a fragment of an old nursery rhyme about the bells of London.

“I think he knew a friend of mine, a long time ago,” Louis said. “I need to . . . I need his help in . . . reaching her.”

Silence.

Bong! went the voice. “Who was this . . . friend?”

“Her name is Elle Murphy,” Louis said.

This time the silence lasted much longer. Louis felt time itself slow down, and his own thoughts stall, then slide slowly as if moving through viscous honey, and he had an image of himself standing there so long that he would be covered by dust and cobwebs until he became a ghostly hob-goblin, a mummified corpse that would frighten any child unwary enough to enter the store.

Then the voice spoke, but it sounded different. “Little—little Ellie?” it said.

“She goes by Elle now,” Louis said. “But yeah, she might have been Ellie when you knew her back in her theater days.”

“Oh,” the voice said softly as if whispering to itself. “Oh—my—God. Oh, my God. Little. Ellie.”

“Yes, she used to talk about you,” Louis said. “She’s living in—“

“Silence!” thundered the voice, and his tongue froze. “Do not speak until I bid you!”

The man who owned the head and the voice now emerged from behind the counter. He was at least 6′5″ tall, and he owned a body to go with the voice and head, a body as huge and sleek as a killer whale, his head almost brushing the low ceiling atop a powerful neck which faded indistinguishably into impossibly broad shoulders and then descended to an impressive belly. Quickly he strode to the door and flipped the SORCERER IS IN sign to MAGIC OVER FOR THE DAY. “Come with me,” he whispered, gesturing with his head toward the back of the store.

And Louis was never seen again, Louis thought as he passed deeper into the gloom. Authorities believe Louis was ground up and served in meat pies to unsuspecting boys.

But in fact, the man simply led him out a back door into an alley, and, with a finger over his lips, gestured that Louis should follow him down half a block, then through a narrow passageway between two buildings onto a small dead-end street at the end of which sat a dull-grey building bearing the legend CAFÉ and the seemingly not-entirely-sincere sentiment WELCOME.

They went in. The place was empty except for a small old woman whose wealth of woolly white hair made her all but indistinguishable from a sheep, or what a sheep would be if it wore a blue sweater and knitted. “Two coffees and privacy, Annechka,” he said, and beckoned Louis ahead of him into a windowless back room.

After a good deal of clattering, a few smashing sounds, and a series of sounds like that of an old-time locomotive getting underway, the old lady appeared at their table with two chipped mugs. “You don’t want cream or sugar,” she said.

It was not a question.

The big man drank half of his cup at one swallow, so Louis shrugged and took a good sip.

“My god!” he yelped. “Oh, my god, my tongue!”

“Sorry,” said the giant. “I should have warned you. Not everybody likes it as hot as Annechka makes it.”

Louis wiped tears of pain from his eyes. “Ith okay,” he said thickly. “I wathnt ready, thath all. Tho—so—tell me, are you the Amazing Ray?”

“Thou sayest,” said the man. “Now you tell me about Ellie Murphy.”

Even though in appearance and manner the odd giant was about as comforting as a Balrog from LORD OF THE RINGS, Louis soon found him surprisingly easy to talk to. He was listening so attentively, with so oddly kind an expression, that soon the entire story spilled out—how he’d met Elle, how they’d fallen in love (or, though he didn’t add this qualification, maybe only Louis had fallen in love), how she’d told him her story, how he’d written it down—

“So you are that Louis Wentworth?” said the man.

“You’ve read my books?”

“I’m just finishing the second. It gets good about halfway through.”

“Yeah,” said Louis. “I get that a lot. Anyway—when she read the story she just . . . freaked out and threw me out of the house. And that was it. We haven’t spoken since. I can’t sleep, I can’t write, I can hardly think any more, I need to talk to her—”

“Haven’t spoken?” the untidy eyebrows climbed laboriously up the massive brow. “Why in the name of Merlin de Bleys not? Why don’t you call her? Why don’t you go over and surprise her with a bouquet of flowers?” After a second, he added more softly, “She used to . . . like flowers, I recall.”

Louis blushed and looked away. “Yes, she still does,” he said. “Well,” he started again. “She told me not to, so I can’t.”

“Really? She was angry when she spoke,” the man said. “Why not pretend you didn’t hear that part?”

“You don’t get it,” Louis said. “I can’t. She said to me, ‘Listen carefully. This is important’—and that means I have to obey. I have no choice. Listen, I tried to call her. I kept putting it off and then finally I sat down with my phone and when I got her number from the phone directory I accidentally erased it. I couldn’t remember it. I put the phone down and went looking for it. I knew it had it written down. Eventually I found it, so I went back where I’d been and the phone was gone. Finding the phone again took me half an hour—turns out it had been in my back pocket all along. I sat down with the paper and the phone and I kept dialing the wrong number. I think it was the bus station or a hospital but the fourth time I called they threatened to call the police. Finally I dialed the right number. I got her voice mail and when I tried to leave a message I couldn’t remember my own name, I didn’t know what I wanted to say, I couldn’t say a word, I just hung up. Then I wrote out what I wanted to say with her number at the top of the page and then I dropped the phone and it broke and when I bought a new one the next day I couldn’t find the paper. And then—“

The giant raised a palm to stop him. “I get it,” he said. “She gave you a post-hypnotic suggestion.”

“Well,” Louis said. “Yes, I guess she did.” He blushed. “I seem to be easy to hypnotize, it’s kind of embarrassing—“

“Why?” said the giant. “You are an artist. You are intelligent, you are imaginative, you can give yourself to a story. True artists can access trance easily. Just remembering Elle, you are halfway in a trance, aren’t you?”

Louis nodded. Then he realized he’d lost his train of thought. “Elle . . . yes, so anyway, I can’t call, I can’t go by. I went to her friend Juliet but Elle must have said something to her beforehand because Juliet hung up on me. I went to her apartment and she wouldn’t come to the door. Then I remembered Elle used to talk about you. She called you Uncle Ray. So, anyway, you’re my last hope.”

The big man’s face broke into a dazzling smile. His eyes were focused on the middle distance. “Well, well,” he said. “Little Ellie was paying attention all those years. Good for her!”

“Yes, good for her!” Louis said, suddenly jolted from the mysterious lethargy stealing over him. “She’s smart and beautiful and nice and fun to be around and I love her so much I can’t really go on like this and for God’s sake please help me find some way to get her back. Please! Can you for a moment focus on my problem?”

The big man covered the bottom half of his massive head with an equally massive hand. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I see. We do need to focus on you, Mr. Wentworth. Focus indeed. You need to focus as well, just for a few moments. I need you to tell me a few things and I think your answers may help solve our problems. She hypnotized you. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes,” Louis said. “As I said, it’s a little embarrassing, but that’s how we met, she hypnotized me at a party—“

“Of course she did. And how did that feel? Focus, now.”

Louis’s eyes drifted up and to the right as he called up the memory. “It felt … good. I felt my face flushing as she talked to me, and then it was as if the world was slowing down—“

“Tell me everything, Mr. Wentworth. Focus deeply.”

“Then she talked to me but I can’t remember what she said, and then I couldn’t stand . . .”

“You felt relaxed?”

“Yes.”

“Focused on her voice?”

“The way you are focused on my voice now?”

“ . . . Yes . . . .”

“And drifting into relaxation, letting go of everything that would hold you back from perfect relaxation, letting your thoughts drift and your best memories appear and disappear the way they want to because they don’t bother you, you just watch them come and go like shadows as you float into the relaxation Ellie gives you and nothing matters and you are drifting through white clouds as soft as cotton as I count backwards from ten, Ten! Your eyelids feel heavy, they just want to close, relax your muscles, if only you’d close your eyes you’d feel so much better . . . .”

Louis began to lose track of the voice. “You’re trying to hypnotize me,” he said. “You can’t . . . .”

“One! There NOW, you are fast asleep . . . .”

Louis slumped in the chair, eyes closed, seemingly dead to the world. “Now focus, Louis,” said the voice. “Everything I tell you is true. I want you to take a box and put all your memories and feelings about Elle Murphy into that box. You can take them out again later but right now chase down all the memories, all the feelings, and put them in the box one by one, because in the box they can’t hurt you, in the box you keep them safe and you are safe and you won’t feel pain, you will remember Elle Murphy as someone you once knew and loved and may see again but you will go on with life, you will sleep at night and wake refreshed, you will write with great skill and assurance, you are a powerful and successful writer and everyone is eager to read your stories and you will remember Elle but it will not stop you from living or writing or meeting new people and you will write for Elle because she is your muse and she will never leave you. Now, Mr. Wentworth, when you have put the memories in the box, raise your right hand.”

Louis’s eyes moved back and forth behind his closed eyelids. After a few minutes, his right hand floated into the air.

“Very good,” Mr. Wentworth. “Now open your eyes and tell me the information about your flight home.”

Louis’s eyes popped open. “I’m due out tomorrow morning on the 8 a.m. flight.”

“Give me your wallet,” the man said. Louis handed it over without a tremor. The old man smiled to remember other times he’d taken wallets from unwary subjects—without any intention of returning them. Louis would be luckier.

He pulled out an old-fashioned flip phone and called a number. “Hi, Hermia. It’s me. I need you to rebook this passenger on the next flight to his home town.” Strong gave the details of tomorrow’s flight, then listened for a few minutes. “Yes, that’s just time to get to the airport, that will work fine. Is there a change fee? Okay, here it is.” Smoothly he read Louis’s credit card number. The phone buzzed and the man wrote down a few characters on a scrap of paper. “Thank you, my dear. A pleasure as always.”

He rang off, then turned to Louis, still sleeping in his chair. “Mr. Underwood,” he said. “In a minute you will open your eyes. A car will be waiting to take you to the airport. You will be riding for some time but you won’t think anything of it. You will see nothing when you look out the window. When you get to the airport you will check in using the confirmation number on this piece of paper. Once you are aboard the plane, you will fall into a deep sleep and all my suggestions will become deeply fixed in your mind because you know they are best for you and you will be happier once you have given up any resistance to them. ANNECHKA!” He raised his voice but Louis did not react at all. The old lady appeared. “Tell Chang Yu I need him to drive this man to the airport. Have him bring the car around in front of the entrance.” He pressed a few bills into her hand; then, when she didn’t move, he pressed a few more. Then one extra. “But that’s ALL,” he said. “Now, go, time’s wasting.”

The giant and the sleeping man sat side by side for a few minutes. Then the old woman spoke in a thin, spidery whisper. “Is waiting Chang Yu.”

The giant nodded. “All right, Mr. Wentworth. You are waking up! Your eyes bright and clear! Your car is here, Mr. Wentworth, have a wonderful trip home.”

Louis rose and walked out of the room without a glimpse back. Raymond Strong watched until the old car carrying Louis chuffed out of sight. Then he rose and headed for the door himself.

“Not so fast,” said the spidery whisper. “Two coffees $6.43.” She blocked his path, putting out her hand.

“After what I just gave you? Count the coffees as the cost of doing business.”

She didn’t budge. At last he rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket. He put exact change on her palm. “But no tip.”

He did not return to the store. Instead, he walked three blocks south to a busy thoroughfare, then turned east. In the middle of the second block he found it—an old fashioned pay phone, probably the last one in the neighborhood. He picked up the receiver and punched in ten digits.

The call was answered on the second ring. “8-4-6-7,” a toneless voice—not clearly human or machine—responded.

“This is Strong, code Mike Kilo Uniform Lima Tango Radar Alpha 100167,” the giant said. “I need a meeting. It’s urgent.”