The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Excuse me, would you mind if I shared your table?”

“Huh?” John looked up from his writing tablet. He had to blink the bright sunlight out of his glasses and eyes-even through the sidewalk’s trees and the awning, the cafe was getting a direct noontime blast. The speaker was a thin man dressed in non-descript grayish clothes. His hair a washed-out version of John’s own brown. “Oh. Uh. Sure. Yes. I mean, have a seat.” John waved his well-chewed pen at one of the empty chairs around his table.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to impose, but it’s a bit crowded here today.” The man seemed almost to collapse into the white plastic chair, much like a dynamited building seen in slow motion. He had already acquired a menu somewhere, and started studying it. John made a non-committal noise, and turned back to his scribbling: “As many as forty-two different varieties of these yellow, leech-like, fish can be found in the coastal waters off...”

“What can I get for you gentlemen today?”

John looked up again, this time at the petite, sandy-blonde waitress. She was pretty, but somewhat spoiled the effect with a rather punkish haircut, and by chewing on a large wad of gum. The thin man spoke.

“We’ll be having separate checks, please. As for food, I’ll have a tuna sandwich. And coffee.”

“All right. And for you, sir?”

John fumbled for his own plastic-coated menu under the spread of newspapers and notebooks, and looked again. “Uh... I’ll have the BLT. And coffee.”

“Would you like french fries, coleslaw, or potato salad?”

“Pardon?”

“With your sandwich.” She snapped the gum.

“Oh. I’ll have potato salad. Thanks.”

“Decaf?”

“Yes, please.”

“Sugar and cream?”

“Just black. Thanks.”

“OK. Enjoy your meal. I’ll be right back with your coffees.” She collected the menus and scooted back inside the cafe.

“Charming girl.” The comment sounded quite serious.

“Uh? Sure.” Again John tried to study what he had already written. Eastsider Magazine wanted the piece by Monday, and he hadn’t been having much luck concentrating on it, even before the man had arrived. The traffic was steady, the other tables were all full of talkers, and birds chirped in the trees. Coming here had been a bad idea.

Something started nagging at him, and finally he looked up for a third time. The thin man was now gazing out into the street with a preoccupied expression. John capped the pen, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt. He coughed, and spoke.

“So... you... eat here often?”

“Hm? No, this is my first time in this establishment.”

“Oh...”

“Is something wrong?” The man inquired politely.

“Well, it’s just that the waitress didn’t ask...”

He was interrupted by his subject’s return with two cups of coffee on a tray. She put the cups on the table, along with a small metal pot of cream and several packets of sugar.

“Your sandwiches should be along right away.”

“Thank you, my dear.” The thin man smiled up at her. She returned the smile and departed. The thin man took a packet of sugar, and... the word would normally be ‘ripped’ it open, but somehow, he made the procedure seem delicate and precise. He poured the now-exposed sugar into his cup, and added a careful dollop of cream. Stirred the resulting concoction.

John stared after the waitress, his thoughts derailed. Something new...

“You were saying?” As polite as before.

“She got rid of the gum.” John spoke the words more to himself than to the other man.

“Yes, such an uncouth habit. And very bad for your jaw muscles.”

John’s eyes fell to the man’s coffee. Streamers of white swirled amidst the brown background like a hypnotist’s spiral. His eyes rose, and he spoke.

“You must have been here before.”

“I must?”

“Yes. How else did she know that you wanted cream and sugar with your coffee?”

The man raised his eyebrows in a mild sort of way.

“Perhaps she was more—”

“And I’ll bet that when she brings you your sandwich, it’ll have your...” John sized the man up. “Your coleslaw.”

The man regarded him back.

“I imagine that it will. But as I said, I have never eaten in this restaurant before today.”

“So, what, you know the waitress? Look, if this is some kind of weird scam between her and you...”

The man continued studying John, flexing his fingers on the cheap paper tablecloth. The digits were extraordinarily long, the fingers of a pianist, or a sculptor. John trailed off, and the world seemed to stand still around them. Finally, the man spoke, sounding almost surprised with himself.

“I will tell you. It is not a scam. Not in the sense you mean, at least. I have never been in this restaurant. I have never seen our waitress before today. But I do... know her. Because... I have access to... the ultimate scam, you might say. Access to a power. As far as I know, it is unique in all of the world.”

“A power.”

“Yes. A power to see... inside.”

John shifted cautiously, feeling his hiking shorts stick to the plastic chair seat. He said something that, somehow, was only partially true.

“I don’t understand.”

The thin man curled those fingers around his cup, stared at the diminishing swirls, frowning.

“You know, now that I come to think about it, I’ve never had to... never tried to explain it to anyone before. I’ll have to demonstrate. Demonstrate further. Please, pick a woman walking past.” He indicated the street. “Any woman.”

John looked out into the street, cautiously keeping the man visible with one corner of his eye. Finally, he nodded.

“OK. Fine. Her.”

The woman was of medium height, nicely curved if not exactly voluptuous, and very blonde, much more so than the waitress. She was wearing a trim little business jacket and skirt, and clicked up the sunny street with a intense expression. A slim black purse was slung over one shoulder. She was talking vigorously on a cellular phone, and had just walked past them.

“Ah. An excellent choice.”

The thin man drifted out a languid hand, pointed a finger in the general direction of the woman’s back.

She jerked to an abrupt stop, stood still for a long moment, then said something into the phone and snapped the device shut with a sound like one of her own footsteps, She stowed the device in her purse, did a sharp but graceful pivot in her black high-heeled shoes and walked without haste back towards the cafe tables and the two men. She stopped by their table, hands at her sides, sky-blue eyes looking at nothing above her upturned nose.

The thin man untangled himself from his chair, and sluffed his way around behind her. She continued staring straight ahead, her face expressionless. He looked at John over her shoulder.

“When you look at... this person... you see an attractive young woman. Yes? That’s what I also see, of course.” He took a few strands of her long golden hair, and twirled them appraisingly between his fingers. He groped for words, his tone abstracted. “But I can also see... a mind. A brain. Yes. That’s almost literally how it appears to me. I can... I can... peel back a woman’s skull in some way that is... is almost physical. Strip away her defenses, and see an actual brain hanging there unsupported in space. Soft. Pink. Moist. Utterly malleable. Like a lump of glistening wet clay. It’s...” He blinked slowly. “You know, it’s actually rather revolting, now that I come to think about it. But at the same time endlessly, utterly, fascinating. There is something about all of those minds that just begs to be... touched. Molded. Shaped.” Mimicking the woman in front of him, he looked at nothing for moment before continuing. “And for as long as can remember, I have had the power to do just that. Some days... many days... I go out for a walk around the town. Whatever town I happen to find myself in at the time. I walk until I find a beautiful woman in the street. Some days I don’t find one. Some days I only find a cafe with a pretty waitress, and have a delightful meal. But if I do find a woman that appears... appropriate... I take her back to my suite... and spend hours with her. Just... just... kneading her mind. It’s all so wonderfully... therapeutic.”

As he said this, John had an abrupt mental flash. He could see a scene, every detail standing out in flashbulb-captured clarity.

(A long, deep, tub, filled with white frothy bubbles. Surrounded by dozens of lit candles of various shapes and sizes that fill the darkened air with their mingled intoxicating scent. An exotic-looking dark-skinned woman is there, lighting a last candle with a long match, as the tub finishes filling with water. She straightens up, her well-toned body naked and flickering in the candlelight. The dying match slips from her fingers towards the stone floor, and she stands as the blonde woman stands, motionless, silent, hands at her sides. Her expression empty. The thin man appears in the scene, out of the dimness, and gets carefully into the tub, his body rickety, sitting with his back against the end’s creamy curve of porcelain. Only after he is fully settled does the woman come back to life, carefully turning off the tap and joining him, her thick black hair floating everywhere, an erotic oil slick in the water, She leans against him, the back of her head pillowed against his scrawny chest. Her body melts beneath the foam, boneless now. Her eyes close, her exquisite face no longer blank, but still utterly calm and placid. All ten of his fingers spread wide, their sensitive tips begin drifting slowly, so very slowly, across her water-slicked skull... working their way down inside the skull...)

“I... take her mind apart... no... that’s not right... I don’t damage it. That would be sacrilege, a defilement of the creator’s high art. Just... carefully open it up. Much like poking around inside a well-tuned car engine... just seeing how it ticks.... seeing her deepest, darkest, secrets... her most vivid fears and fantasies... feeling how her thoughts... throb ...slower and slower... as I go deeper and deeper... take her deeper and deeper... Putting my mind-fingers in among all of those soft, warm, twisty ridges, so delightfully different with every woman... and squeezing... ever so lightly... it takes so little effort... so little pressure to change things...” As in John’s vision, all of his fingertips were now resting lightly against the back of blonde woman’s skull.

She started twitching, her face remaining blank.

“Some days of course... I then have sex with my guest...”

(A wide, intensely white bed, under dark wooden beams. More candles burn. The thin man is half-lying, half-sitting, propped up on a large mass of pillows, almost exactly the same position he occupied in the tub. A small foil wrapper, precisely opened, lies beside him on the sheets. He smiles at an amazonian woman with long, kinky, brown hair, mounted on him, going up and down, slowly, endlessly, her fingertips resting on his sharply-defined ribs, her face, deep brown eyes, wide lips, tipped back and hopelessly lost in ecstasy, his hands on her ample breasts, his fingers deep in her mind, deep, squeezing...)

“... But not as often as you might think, perhaps. It all depends on what treasures I find inside a woman’s mind. Only if I find a... a good one, one who is truly alive and aware and vibrant... do I take her physically. And then as I do, I look at her brain... watch the orgasms ripple through it...” He gave a weak cough.

The blonde’s eyes rolled up inside their sockets. The twitches became spasms. Her full lips parted slightly, and an expression of intense need flitted across her face. Her hands remained limp and dangling at her sides.

“It’s... almost impossible to describe what that looks like. There is this... light... and it oozes up, shines out between the ridges and folds. No... no. Not light... it’s too solid. A glowing liquid, maybe. Thick and potent, but somehow also airy... And I can follow the rivulets down inside... find the pools that feed them... stir them up... drink from them....” He abruptly extracted his fingers from the blonde woman’s head, and stalked back to his seat. Her eyes re-focused, and her body became still again, her face once again expressionless. The thin man glanced at her, and she reactivated, walking around the table, and sliding easily into one of the two remaining empty chairs. She sat with her back straight, and crossed her black-stockinged legs, the very picture of cool elegance.

“It’s all actually quite addictive. For both of us. I usually have to erase her memory of the day entirely, when I’m done. She would suffer otherwise. Want too strongly to stay with me. Forever.”

Their waitress suddenly reappeared, and wordlessly set a thin glass of white wine in front of the blonde woman. Vanished as abruptly she had arrived. The blonde took a sip, and then casually opened her purse and extracted a pack of cigarettes and a trendy gold lighter.

The thin man looked at her in mild annoyance. He flicked a finger, and her wrist gave a quick snap, sending the white and green pack spinning out into the street. It landed in a shallow mud-puddle, and was promptly run over by a passing truck. She put the lighter back in her purse and sealed it away. Took another sip of wine. Her expression never changed.

“And then, at the end, whatever the end may be that particular day, I take the opportunity to correct any... problems I have found during my explorations. Like all the rest, it’s so easy. Just minutely straighten a ridge here, ever so slightly deepen a crevice there. Clear away the neurosis. The pointless phobias. The lingering pain. The various... addictions. For example, Miss Adams here will never smoke another cigarette. Will never want another cigarette. The cravings...” He made a slow, tiny, circular gesture with one finger. “...are gone now from her mind.”

“You know, some people find cigarette smoking to be erotic.” John’s voice seemed to come from someplace very far away.

“I don’t.” For the first time in the conversation, there was a trace of real passion in the thin man’s voice. “It’s a filthy, disgusting, habit. Far, far, worse than most people realize. It should be banned. Every last wretched tobacco plant uprooted and destroyed. The damage it does... to the mind... the addiction... it fills up all of those wondrous twists with this... black, toxic, sludge.” He coughed again and then seemed to calm down. “In any event, it is always the first thing I fix in my partners, when I encounter it.”

Again the waitress appeared, this time carrying the sandwiches. She deposited them, and made another of her now-trademarked silent exits. John looked at the thin man’s plate. Sure enough, along with a tuna sandwich and a dill pickle, a small dish of coleslaw.

“What about... men?”

“Hmm?” The man carefully dug a spoon into the dish, scooped up a small mouthful of white and green and orange. “I don’t think they should be banned or uprooted, if that’s what you’re asking.” He chewed as if he was afraid his jaw might shatter.

“No. Can you do all of this... with... to... men?”

“Ah. No. I can see men’s minds... usually read their surface thoughts...” The spoon tilted down in his hand, its bowl tapping to rest against the tablecloth. He squinted at John. “For instance... your name is John... John McReathy... you are some kind of writer... when I interrupted you, you were working on an article about... marine animals for... for...” He started sweating slightly, until he gave up and sagged back. Rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “It is like your.. our... minds are made of rough, scratchy, concrete, instead of soothing... clay.” ‘Miss Adams’ gave a noticeable twitch at the word ‘clay’. Two other young businesswomen at the next table abruptly broke off their conversation and looked over at the thin man, although he had not raised his voice. “I can only see the surface, and I can’t get inside. I don’t know why. Although I have sometimes speculated that my subconscious mind doesn’t let me. It doesn’t want the body attached to it to have sex with men, so... I don’t. I can’t.” He flicked a finger again, and the two women blinked in unison, went back to talking. He resumed, thoughtfully.

“And that’s what I forgot to say before. And it is really the most important part of all. I said it was easy. Usually it is. But... some women are like men in that way. To a certain degree. With a woman, the... clay... is always there. But in some particularly strong-minded women, it is hidden behind a hard outer shell. Like the crust of a loaf of bread. Real bread, you understand, not that atrocious white paste you can buy in the supermarket. I can’t just reach out and take them. With those, I have to find the cracks in that shell. Worm my way inside.”

“And you always... succeed?”

“Oh, yes. Always. In the end.”

(The thin man, standing behind a tall slender woman, her skin almost coal black, her eyes very wide, her expression half rapture, half naked horror. Although the horror is fading now... She kneels on the hard wooden floor of his suite, under the dark beams, and slowly, so very slowly, undoes her bright red and yellow blouse. Popping one button free, then the next, and the next, her fingers almost as long and graceful as the ones that are resting on her skull, amid her curly, close-cropped hair. That are slipping through the widening cracks in her shield. Intertwining with the inviting pink softness and warmth underneath...)

“Some of the cracks are very minute. But they are always there, and I always find them. And once I get in... those are the best ones of all. Their minds have been... protected from the elements? Yes. An apt metaphor. Their ridges always have the most... complex... and fascinating... textures. No weathering. And it feels like... It’s like slipping your penis into a virgin’s tight, willing, sex. Knowing that you’re touching something that has never been touched before. That the mind in question, even if it never consciously remembers, will measure everything that comes after by the yardstick that is you.” He picked up half of his sandwich, turned it a couple of times in his hands, but didn’t take a bite. A glop of mayonnaise dripped to the plate below. “And the pools of such women are always so much deeper. Almost bottomless. When I drink from them... replenish myself... They’re the only ones I’m ever tempted to keep.”

“Tempted to... You don’t have a... a harem... or... something? Someone? With that power...”

“Oh, no. I have one guest a day, if any. Anymore would be a... distraction. I live alone. I go to sleep every night and I wake up every morning alone. I always have. I always will. It is... part of what I am.” He gave a crumbled sigh. “Unless... until... you may not believe this, Mr. McReathy, but it is my most fervent hope that someday I will... happen across a woman whose shield is flawless. Whom I can’t reach unless she lets me reach her. I have been searching for such a woman... the whole world over, it sometimes seems. If I ever do find her, I will woo her as other men must. I will woo her, and I will marry her, and my days of... this... will finally be at an end. I won’t... need...”

John’s mind fizzed.

“Why... why are you telling me all of this?”

The man looked out into the street again, frowning. He still held the sandwich.

“I’m not entirely sure. Like most things connected with my... talent, I don’t understand it fully. Don’t understand it at all. For instance. This entire conversation. I was going to join those two young women there for lunch. But then I saw you, and I just knew that I needed to talk to you. I needed to explain...” He shook his head.

Another vision formed in John’s head

("...replenish...")

He couldn’t quite decide if it was glorious, or appalling, or both. He forced himself to ask the question that came with that vision.

“How... how long have you been doing this?”

The thin man shrugged, an infinite shrug. For the first time, John realized the man’s hair was much closer to grey than brown. In fact, it was almost colorless in the bright sunlight, and thinning.

“Years. Decades. Or so it sometimes seems. Maybe—”

He abruptly broke off, and snapped his gaze up the street. The sandwich finally slipped from his fingers. John turned in his chair.

The woman was fairly tall, swathed in black: clothes, tennis shoes, hair. Her face had a hard, angular cast to it, and she walked much as Miss Adams had walked; aggressive, assertive, confident.

But there was something more. John stared. Unlike Miss Adams, there was something down behind the woman’s blue (not sky blue, the blue of ice, of relentless crushing glaciers) eyes that matched the features arranged around those eyes.

Something cold and hard and impenetrable.

Something made out of concrete.

The thin man uncollapsed himself from his chair. He swallowed heavily.

The woman walked past them. She glanced in their direction, her gaze flickering without pause over John and Miss Adams and the thin man.

Except, no, with the thin man, there was the tiniest of pauses. One of her slashing eyebrows twitched. Something softened behind her eyes a little, for a moment. The concrete didn’t crack, there were no cracks, but it opened from within. Just a hair. Just enough to show what was underneath.

She deliberately looked away. She walked on.

Moving as a man asleep, the thin man fished a slim wallet out of his grey jacket pocket, and dropped a scattering of bills on the table.

“Where are you...” John trailed off. He knew the answer to the question. The thin man walked away from the table, following the dark-haired woman, out of John’s life. Out of his own life, perhaps, and into a new one.

John watched the two figures disappear from sight. Then he sat, and listened to the cars zoom past, further flattening Miss Adams’ cigarettes and blowing the remains down the street. Listened to the two women chatter at the nearby table. Listened to the sparrows chirp in the trees overhead. Listened to his brain fizz. He polished his glasses with his frayed handkerchief. He sipped at his own coffee. Took a bite of BLT. A bite or two of potato salad. All quite tasty, but somehow...

Unsatisfying.

He looked at Miss Adams. She continued to sit as she had throughout the conversation, carefully posed, not looking at him, or at anything in particular. Occasionally she would take another taste of wine.

He looked at Gina Harcourt Adams, 32-year old account executive for Briggs and Company.

He looked at her mind, her brain, floating unsupported, unprotected, in the space above her shoulder-blades.

It was pink, and soft, and utterly pliant.

It begged to be touched.

It begged to be carefully opened up, and examined.

It begged to be fixed. The cigarette addiction was gone, but some of the sludge remained. And he could see where the other flaws were. The old pockets of pain, the useless clinging anxieties. The chemical imbalances. It would be so easy. It would just take a little gentle kneading, a little push here, a little pull there...

And then...

He stood up, and stood Gina’s body up as well.

He paid his bill, and they left the restaurant.

He took her back to his apartment.

That night, he slept alone.