The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I glanced in the rear-view mirror while I was stopped at a traffic light, and I thought idly, look at that idiot behind me, grinning like he’s won the lottery. Then I realized it was me I was looking at.

Well, I kind of did win the lottery, didn’t I?

At home I collected yesterday’s mail and let myself in. I sat down on the couch and leaned back, thinking about yesterday and today, every detail. When I looked at my watch again, almost two hours had passed. I had no idea if I had fallen asleep or had just been lost in my memories. I was almost afraid to move, for fear of losing the feeling.

But I had to pee, so I got up. I saw myself in the bathroom mirror and I was still smiling.

After I washed up, I made a sandwich, then tried to remember that scene from Singing In The Rain where Gene Kelly dances down a rainy New York street, and without the least embarrassment I tried duplicating what I could recall of it. I felt that good.

I did some cursory house cleaning and took out the garbage. When I came back, it was about time to call my mother. She expected a call about this time, and if it didn’t happen she convinced herself that I’d been in a traffic accident and was lying on the asphalt somewhere, bleeding out. She was a nice woman, but tended towards the dramatic.

So I called and told her about my week, asked about the family, the usual conversation. And, like she was following a script, she paused at the end and said, “So. You seeing anyone?”

I knew she was expecting, and would be frustrated by, my normal answer, “Nobody serious, I’ve gone out a couple of times, nice women, but no sparks.”

So when I responded with, “Actually, yes,” I could almost see her ears perk up over the phone.

She probed and begged, implored, beseeched, but I would only say, “I like her a lot, she likes me, she’s smart and beautiful, but it’s early days, so that’s as much as I’ll say for now.” She kept at it for a little longer, but she knew when she was defeated.

Later, I called Liz. It was a little strange, talking on the phone for the first time, but we got over the awkwardness soon and talked naturally.

“I’ve been writing like a madwoman since you left. It’s like someone turned on the faucet and the words pour out. I can’t really type fast enough. I haven’t decided if it’s any good yet. I’ll stop soon and read what I’ve done more closely. I’m close enough to the end, Sam, that I think I won’t give you any more to read till it’s done.”

I could understand her reasoning, and said so. I told her about my weekly phone call to my mother, and her stock question. Liz laughed out loud when I told her how Mom had reacted when I mentioned her.

“She doesn’t know anything, not even your name, but she’s desperate to see me married so she’ll keep poking at it.”

“Well, you’re right, it’s early days, but I’d like to meet her some time.”

We talked about that for a little while, then we said goodbye. Before we hung up, she said,

“Sam, it’s important for me, from a work standpoint, that we keep our relationship quiet. Nobody should know, we should act as we always did around each other at work. Okay?”

I understood her position, so I agreed, and we said goodnight. I read a book until bedtime, then dropped right to sleep, trying to decide which memory of the naked Liz I liked best.

I’m going to skip some big chunks of time here, jumping ahead as needed, because the details become less important as time goes on.

On the Wednesday after our first weekend together, Liz showed up in the cafeteria at snack time looking businesslike in her white blouse and gray suit with pencil skirt. Except now I was able to visualize what was underneath it. It made snack time much more enjoyable.

We chatted in a friendly way, like business associates, and she said, “Sam, here’s the last chapter of the book. Why don’t you wait till you get home before you read it, then we can talk tonight. I want to get your thoughts before I give this to Deb Morrow.”

I said I would, though I was a little surprised to hear her add this caveat. She finished her tea and got up to leave, and this time I was able to mentally remove the skirt and imagine her bare ass walking toward the elevators. I had to sit for a couple of minutes till my erection went away.

After work I got takeout for dinner and brought it home. I sat at the table and while I ate, I read her last chapter.

I’m not an emotional guy, but I could feel the tears welling up as I got toward the end. Why did she do that? I had to stop for awhile and walk around, before I could come back to it.

Around nine, I called Liz. She said hello, then she was silent.

It took me a few moments before I could organize my thoughts. “Part of me was shouting at you, ’No, no, don’t do that, she’s a good person, she shouldn’t die.’ I was a little angry at you, Liz.

I told you on the drive out that I had grown to like these characters, that I wanted nice things to happen to them, and I especially liked Rebecca.

“When you killed her off, I couldn’t understand your reasoning, especially considering how hard it hit the other characters.”

I paused while I caught my breath.

“But when I came back to it, and I read through to the end, I saw what you were doing, I think, how it changed the vector of everybody’s life, and made them better in the end. Part of me still hates that you did it that way, and another part admires what you did.”

She didn’t say anything. After a while I thought I heard her crying. “Liz? What’s happening?

Are you okay.”

She choked out, “Wait.”

It took her a couple of minutes. She coughed and cleared her throat. “So, does it work?”

I thought about it. “Deb Morrow may be a better guide on this, but I’d say, yes, it works. I didn’t like that you’d done it, but I can see why you did it. Her—I’m not sure of the right word here—her directive throughout the book was to help others work through their problems, clear the obstacles, and her final gift, through her death, was to smooth the road for the other primary characters. It was a hard ending but, damn, really powerful.”

“Sam, I struggled with this. I like fairy tales as much as the next kid, and part of me wanted them all to live happily ever after, but life’s not always like that. So I took the rougher road, the one with more meaning.”

“Give it to Deb, the whole thing. Let her read it over the weekend, see if she concurs. Liz, you’re really good at this. I can see this grabbing people, making them talk, not just about the ending, but about the characters and their lives. Go get some sleep.”

We said good night, and she blew me a kiss over the phone.

That next weekend, we went out to dinner and a movie on Saturday. Over dinner she said, “I did what you said. I printed the whole thing out, two copies, in fact. I put the file on a thumb drive and went to a copy shop and had them do it.

“I’d called Deb already and told her I was bringing her the whole thing, and asked her if she could wait a little later for me on Friday. She sounded really excited, and she did wait for me. She said she’d read it over the weekend and we’ll talk again on Monday. Sam, I’m really nervous now, wondering if I did the right thing with those characters.”

“Liz, she’s really smart and she knows what readers are looking for. If it’s not right, she’ll talk to you about it and suggest changes. But I think you did the right thing. Don’t worry about it till Monday. As far as you know, you’re done. Your first book. And all those people who were so superior to you in your writer’s group? They’re gonna be walking around telling all their friends,

’Oh, yeah, Liz Conway, we were in writer’s group together, good buddies, I showed her a few things.’”

Liz laughed at that, picturing the scene. “I think I do need to write up some of these things that happened when I was learning how to do this. They’ll make good stories, and maybe other writers starting out can take some comfort from them. And maybe they’ll learn to recognize some of the types that frequent these groups, and learn how to deal with them.”

We spent the night together later, and it was just as spectacular as the first time. And we did get into a discussion about the toys in her night table, and that led to show-and-tell, which led to more fucking.

Sunday I recuperated, and I needed it. On Monday, I went down for my afternoon snack, and Liz came in shortly afterwards. I don’t think anyone else would have noticed it, but she was hurrying. Still in control, still careful not to show too much excitement, but hurrying. She didn’t even stop for her usual cup of tea.

She sat and looked at me. “Sam,” she said, “listen to this. Deb called me at lunchtime. I’d told her that was the only good time to reach me. And she said... Let me see if can reproduce this, get her phrasing. She said,... ’Conway, you clever little bitch, you did that on purpose, just to make me cry, didn’t you? Well, it worked, and I’ll never forgive you for it.’

“Sam, she said basically what you said, that even though she hated that Rebecca died, it changed everyone’s life for the better. Oh, and she said this, she said, ’Your book is going to rip out everyone’s heart and stomp on it. There’ll be book clubs crying all over America, and they’ll love it.’

“Sam, she wants to set up some editorial meetings where we go over the book, page by page, and decide on what changes are needed. I don’t know how we’re going to do that if I’m working, but we’ll figure something out. She’s excited, Sam, and now I’m excited.”

“And that has me excited. I’m really happy for you, Liz, and I’m thrilled that I get to watch this happen to you.”

And we skip some more time here. Deb and Liz worked out that they’d meet after work twice a week for a couple of hours, and they hashed out some changes, mostly painless, but with a few heated discussions. In the end, the changes were made. She let me read it once through, the revised version, and I had to agree that it read better, it flowed easier.

The lawyers carelessly dropped a couple of contracts on the desk while Liz and Deb were working and told her to sign those when she got a chance, but Liz remembered what I’d said, and she found a good lawyer through Jane Connolly who marked up the contracts and ripped the company lawyers a new one, and made them prepare a new contract dealing only with the hardcover and paperback versions of this book, all other rights held by Liz. The lawyers glared, they cajoled, they threatened, but in the end Deb said, “I want to publish this book. Make it happen.” And it did.

So off to pre-press it went, then to printing and distribution, and while that was all happening we decided to move in together. We found a larger apartment, eliminated duplicate furnishings we had, and found ourselves cohabiting, quite happily.

It was impossible to keep that secret for long, and once the rumor was loose, it spread everywhere fast. I was aware of the looks and whispers behind my back, and I could hear the occasional word “Conway” over the crowd noise. The best part was the glares from all the other males, executives included, who were certain that they were the ones who were going to breach the walls of Castle Conway.

Some time later her book was published, and I was touched to find that she had dedicated the book to me: ’To Sam, who talked me through the dark places and cheered me on.’ She could have dedicated it to her parents, a teacher, anyone, but she chose me, and I was really moved by it.

We had a little publication party in a local bar, and the reviews were almost completely enthusiastic, some going farther and calling it a modern classic. That brought on a complication, because now she was in demand, book signings, readings, interviews on radio, TV and in print. There was no way to handle all those commitments and still keep working. Liz looked into taking a leave of absence, but in the end it made more sense just to resign, which sent the executives at RBP into a blue funk.

Her touring expenses were covered by the publishing company, an advance on royalties, and the downside of her popularity was that she was spending a fair amount of time on the road. Away from me. And whatever they say about phone sex, it’s nowhere near as good as the real thing.

Perhaps six months later, I drove her down to meet my mother, who was almost giddy at the prospect, and fortunately they hit it off. It turned out that she had gotten Liz’s book from the local library and loved it, but hadn’t made the connection that this was the same Liz Conway that I was seeing.

When the realization dawned on her, her mouth fell open and I thought she was going to beg for an autograph like a teenager. They got on well, despite that, and when I left my mother pulled me down to her level and whispered, “Oh, I like her!” That was good, since I did, too.

I finally met her parents, too, and they seemed very nice, Dad was a little stand-offish, wanting to figure out if I was good enough for his daughter, but it was clear that he no longer had a say in the matter, so he finally decided I was okay after all and I could keep seeing her. Her mother was friendly, and took a liking to me. It may have been Liz using my title, Doctor Sam Halloran, that sealed the deal.

Some months after that, I told her, “Liz, I love you and I love living with you, why are we doing things halfway? I can’t see ever being with anyone else. Will you marry me?” She must have been thinking about it over the previous few months because she hesitated for only a moment, then said yes. So we did. I asked Frank Wisowicz to be my best man, and she asked the woman from Accounting that she often ate lunch with to be her maid of honor. Her name, it turned out, was Anisa. No wonder I could never remember it.

And during all this, I kept doing my research, running my experiments, homing in on treatments. Art and Ted’s brainchild was eventually successful and is now in clinical trials and doing well. I was surprised and honored that they had added my name to the patent application because it was my idea that gave them their initial approach. When that drug is approved, I’ll start getting royalties.

Clark added his name, too, because he was the research director and that’s one of the perks, to claim you’re an author if people who work under you publish something.

I was also able to use Art and Ted’s receptor hook idea in my own brainstorm about craving suppression in diet medications. And it, too, is now in clinical trials and seems to be doing well, with no significant side effects. Diet drugs are huge moneymakers, so the executives are thrilled and now look kindly on me when I want to follow up on an idea. I added Art and Ted to the patent application, and, reluctantly, Clark, too. When the drug gets FDA approval, more royalties.

Dr. Clark, I discovered through the grapevine, has been secretly lunching with executives from other pharmaceutical companies, who foolishly see these new drugs as the fruit of his creative genius and want to use his acumen to further their interests, so it is entirely possible that there will be a new research director before long.

And hypnozamine? Hardly ever use it anymore. I did apply it once while meeting with a real estate agent, and later with a banker for a mortgage application, when we were looking for a house in the suburbs. The real estate agent was thrilled to be able to help a young couple buy the house of their dreams so he went out of his way to talk the seller’s price down, even if it reduced his commission. And the banker felt he was fulfilling a civic duty to assist us in purchasing the house by obtaining a very favorable loan rate for us.

So we’re in our new place, that we love, I have a relatively short commute to work where I have the freedom to follow my ideas, and Liz is halfway through her second book in the little study I built for her, and will keep doing publicity events for the first book until the baby bump becomes an impediment.