The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

CHAPTER 1

It had to be the new soap. At least, that’s what my doctor said. What else could make me feel this way?

My “issue” began about two weeks into quarantine. The office had kept me on their payroll for that first week, but I got the call on Monday that they couldn’t afford to stay afloat through this whole crisis—especially when nobody knew how long it was all going to go on for. I was alone in my apartment, then, for the foreseeable future. My savings—though I didn’t like eating into them—would be enough to pay rent and buy groceries for a year, I thought, if this whole thing came to that.

I’d been following the story anxiously since January. The girls in the office called me a “tinfoil hat”—goodnaturedly, I think—but I had this bad feeling that the virus was gonna arrive here and wreak some havoc. This was a major city, after all. How many daily flights to Wuhan? It was only a Google search away, and though I had never heard of Wuhan before this, I knew all about it now. My pantry had never been so full.

So here I was, locked indoors with no reason to venture out. Scared to, actually, with what the government was saying. Enough food to last me two months, if my math was correct, and nothing to do. I hadn’t budgeted for work to shut down. In retrospect I felt prepared for all this, but I didn’t exactly think it was really gonna happen.

So a week into quarantine, I twiddled my thumbs. Tried reading Jane Austen, to no avail. Fell asleep to netflix. Cooked infrequently, mostly rice, and wrapped myself up in knots watching the news. What a strange combination of boredom and anxiety—I was too used to working. Without my 9-5, every day felt like a Sunday (and not in the good way!)

And so it was no surprise that I fell into old habits. Back in college, with all that spare-time, I developed a few less-than-savory interests—mostly spurred on by a boyfriend who, in retrospect, was—how can I say this without sounding more stuck-up than I am?—below my league.

But the point stands: while I wasn’t so attracted to him, per se, I was really attracted to the way he could make me feel. Michael was a psych major—like literally every other indecisive twenty year old you know—but his research was concerned with hypnotherapy.

Or at least that’s what he told me, I don’t really remember ever caring enough to read the work he produced for his courses.

But the work he produced for me? That was enough to keep us occupied. I still had them, a rustling through my junk drawer revealed—hundreds of hypnosis files (many of which we never touched, him being more prolific than warranted) on a beat-up jumpdrive. Perfect.

Bored, stressed, and truth be told a little nostalgic, I booted up the first one which sounded like it would take the edge of this whole situation off—“letting-yourself-go.mp3”—slipped on some headphones and fell asleep on the sofa. I surprised myself, sleeping the rest of the afternoon and well into the next morning.

And then I woke up, cracked open that new bar of soap, and hopped in the shower. That’s where this all started: with that goddamn soap!