The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

IV. 1995

The parking ramp connected to Virginia Commonwealth University Hospital is not yet full when I arrive, so I find a spot close to the skyway doors and park my rental car. Walking through the skyway on my way into the building, I pass a couple of young men in blue scrubs heading the other way, probably night-shift orderlies heading home. They each dangle a cigarette from their lips, and as the doors shut behind them I hear the pop of their plastic Zippos catching a flame.

The lobby is wide, with a grey linoleum floor, peach-painted walls and pillars. The place is empty except for me and a woman in a business suit behind the desk who looks up when she hears my heels tacking toward her. I tell her who I am looking for and she looks the name up on her computer. When it comes up she tells me fifth floor, Building A. “Just take those elevators behind me,” she says, pointing over her shoulder with a ballpoint pen toward a bank of six polished steel doors. I follow her pen and push up on the key pad. Behind me a door to the street slowly opens, and a nurse wearing purple scrubs walks through pushing a tiny old woman in a wheelchair. Watching them enter the hospital I wonder for a second if the old lady is her, but it can’t be, this lady must be at least eighty, bony legs coming out of her hospital gown, shoulders covered by a plaid shawl, her hair a cloud of thin white wisps. A cool morning breeze from the reaches me and I put my hands in my coat pockets. There is a ding and elevator doors slide open behind me. I go in, then peer out to see if the nurse is bringing the old woman toward me but they are gone.

When the doors open on the fifth floor there is a plastic sign mounted on the opposite wall that reads ONCOLOGY and points to the left. I follow the hallway until I come to an oval-shaped area with a nurse’s station in the middle and doorways leading into patients’ rooms. They all had doors but the doors were all open. Two nurses stood at the station, a desk shaped like an O and tall enough for them to work standing up. The nurses stop talking to each other as I approach and look at me. “Help you?” asks the older one, a tired-looking black woman with a topknot.

“I’m looking for Heather Thorpe,” I say. “I was told downstairs this was where she was.”

The other nurse brightens in recognition. “That’s right, she’s in there,” she says, pointing to the doorway all the way on the left. “Room One.”

“Last I checked she was sleeping,” the older nurse says.

I look into the doorway to see if I can see her, but a white curtain blocks my view past a few feet in. “Does she sleep a lot?” I ask, embarrassed that I cannot think of a more intelligent question.

“Her treatment takes a lot out of her,” the younger nurse says. She is young with porcelain skin, an oval face with lovely cheekbones, and auburn hair tied back in a pony tail. “I’m actually going in to change her linens right now.”

“Okay, I’ll wait outside,” I say but as she waves me along as she walks out of the station toward Heather’s room. I begin to follow, then stop and put out my hand. “I’m Ginny, by the way.”

She shakes my hand, smiling politely. “Anne. Heather didn’t tell me she has a daughter.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m—she’s more like a family friend. That’s not a problem, is it?”

Anne flips her hand at me. “Of course not. C’mon in.” As we walk into Heather’s room she calls over her shoulder to the other nurse: “Be back in a minute, Chantal.” She finds the crack in the curtain and sticks her head through. “Heather? Heather? Sorry to wake you, but you’ve got a visitor.” As she talks I am surprised but not repulsed by the generous width of her hips. Her scrubs are purple like the nurse downstairs, and she has black sneakers on her tiny feet. “Is it okay for us to come in? I also have to change your bed.” I do not hear anything from the silhouette of the bed coming through the vinyl curtain, but Anne sweeps the curtain aside, the wheels on its ceiling-mounted tracks buzzing like a toy train and I see Heather laying on the hospital bed. The bed is inclined at the head and feet, and Heather is shockingly tiny under her blanket. “Look who’s here,” Anne says, and Heather tilts her head on her pillow toward me.

Trying to hide my shock, I make myself touch her foot through the blanket. “Hello, Heather.” After all, I knew that she has been sick for a while, that the cancer had come back and spread from her esophagus to her stomach. Still, this is the first time I have seen her in three years, and I cannot believe that this frail woman with oxygen tubes in her nostrils once ruled my mind as completely as if I were her trained lioness in a circus act. This is the woman who hypnotized me over and over (with her necklace, her eyes, the arch of her back in a strapless evening gown, her fingers massaging my clit and tongue probing my asshole until I could not stand it, the tang of her juice on my teeth) until slavery was as natural to me as breathing. The woman who stole four years of my life, encoded a hideous, obsessive love of slavery and enslaving others into my core.

Heather opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She sucks in air and tries again. “Ginny,” she says, and smiles. Machines monitoring her pulse and breathing hang from their poles, beeping just out of cadence with each other.

Anne has pulled a fresh set of sheets from a shelf built into the wall next to the bathroom. “I’ll just be a minute, y’all,” she says as she takes down the railing from the left side of the bed. She pushes a button on the side of the bed until the mattress straightens out, then begins untucking the sheets from the mattress. As she reaches across to untuck the other side I again notice the contrast between her slim, delicate chest and waist and the firm roundness of her ass. Maybe she played softball in college. Heather’s eyes close as I watch the bell-shaped nurse briskly do her work. There is a chair in the corner near the window but it does not feel right to sit while Anne is in the room. So I stand at a respectful distance from the foot of the bed and watch.

“Are you from around here?” I ask.

“North Carolina, originally,” Anne says without looking up. She tilts Heather onto her side with one hand and slides the ends of the new sheets as far underneath as they will go with the other. “A little bitty town outside Asheville. I followed my husband here.” Lowering Heather onto her back, she hustles around the bed and lifts her the other way so she can retrieve the sheets. She glances at me over her shoulder. Her eyes are a light brown, almost topaz. “How about you? Norfolk, right?”

“That’s right. A suburb, actually. My dad was in the Navy.”

“Really? Mine too. I mean, he was before I was born.” Anne picks the old sheets off the floor and bundles them into her arms. “He always—”

There is a knock at the door. “Annie?” Chantal says. “I need your help in Seven.”

“Oh, of course, sorry,” Anne said. She grins at me, her arms full, and curtsies a goodbye. “I’ll be back in a little while, Heather.” The nurses leave, Anne dumping the sheets into a hamper next to their station. They walk behind the desk where Chantal shows Anne something on a clipboard. As she listens Anne scratches absently at her upper arm, revealing a small egg-shaped birthmark over her tricep.

“Lovely, isn’t she?” I flinch at Heather’s voice and turn to find her watching me alertly.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“A little too heavy for me, of course. I love my slender girls, as you know.” Her voice is dry but stronger than before. “But I remember a few you used to bring over had figures like that.”

“Stop it,” I say, careful to keep my voice down. “She’s not that heavy.”

“Couldn’t you just see yourself going over there and making her forget that husband of hers? At least for a few days.”

“No, I can’t.” But as I watch her walk out of view of the doorway I am planning it already. Taking her aside in an unoccupied room for a few follow-up questions, dangling my crystal pendant in front of her trusting foolish face as I quietly shut the door behind us.

I feel Heather’s teasing smile behind me. “I think you can imagine it.” A peaceful wave flows over me, and I blink, trying to shake it. The fantasy is so good and it has been so long since I have hypnotized a woman and it is getting so hard to keep my eyes open. “You still wear that necklace I gave you, don’t you?” she asks but it is not really a question. I can almost feel Anne’s skin against mine and I just want to watch her eyes go dim in the diamond as her breathing slows into waking sleep. Take her by the hand into the bathroom, lean her against the wall, pull her pants to her ankles and nibbling my way up her thick toned thighs until my tongue reaches her panties damp with need, she’s so lost in the dream I weaved for her, she’s begging to surrender. But I cannot do that, not anymore, and my fist slams against the bed railing with a loud pang to snap me out of it. Heather gasps, is the surprise in her expression genuine or more theatre for herself? It does not matter.

I grip the rail and turn to her, glad for the ache in my left hand. “Listen, you goddamn monster,” I hiss. “I only came today to ask you for one thing, and then you can rot in the ground for all I care.”

“And what’s that?” Heather asks, totally unafraid of me, of course, but it is all coming out now, I cannot stop now even if I lose my nerve.

I lean over the railing and smell powder and shampoo. “Take it away. Make me not want to control women’s minds anymore. Undo what you’ve done to my brain.”

She reaches for a control pad with a thick beige cord running off the bed. “Is that all?” she says. She pushes a button on the pad and with a robotic hum the top part of her bed lifts her closer to me. “First of all—” but she is interrupted by a coughing fit that lasts a full minute. As it breaks off, she pulls a tissue from her side table and dabs at her lips. I find a trash basket under the table and hold it up for her. I see the red bright blotch on the tissue as it lays crumpled on the bottom of the basket. “First of all, that is no way to ask anyone for a favor.” Her hair, while flattened and crumpled by bed rest, is still thick and dyed a deep mahogany, making me wonder what sort of treatment she is on. “Honestly, Ginny honey. First I’ve seen of you in three years, and you come to me in my deathbed to call me names and make your demands. I know your mother raised you better than that.”

“Don’t talk about my mother.” Her eyes flash, sensing a weak spot. During my four years as Heather’s concubine, even wrapped in the cocoon of her control I sometimes wondered if, back in their sorority days of formal dances and all-night bull sessions in the bedroom they shared, she had practiced the same magic on Mother as she did on me. If Heather had ever lulled Mother into trance, listening and dully agreeing to everything she was told. I never had the nerve to ask, or maybe Heather hypnotized the question away if I did. But that does not matter either. “And it’s not a favor. It’s a chance for you to do one right thing before you die.”

“Why would you want to give up controlling women anyw—” Another coughing attack curls her body around the fist she presses against her mouth. “Because it’s wrong?” she says when she gets her breath back. Now I can hear the tumors tearing apart her throat, and the wheeze as she sucks a thin string of air into her charred lungs, and I realize that she fears her impending death. Maybe I have a chance. She leans back onto the bed and shuts her eyes.

“It is wrong,” I say, trying to sound gentle. Taking another tissue from the box, I blot the sweat from her forehead. Heather is falling asleep again but I need this from her before I can leave. “We’re not born to enslave or be enslaved. I’ve tried so hard to resist. Haven’t hypnotized anybody in three years but the need is still so strong.” I find her hand through a film of tears and grip it not too softly. “Please.”

Heather smiles without opening her eyes. She tilts her head at me and rasps something I do not quite catch—what was it, daffodils? I want to ask her to repeat it but suddenly it is not important, a wave of relaxation much larger than earlier crashes into the space behind my eyes and floods it, washing away my confusion and fear like a child’s sandcastle built too close to the shore. My eyelids flicker, eager to hold the feeling in, after all I have nothing to fear now, I have asked Heather for help and she is helping me, it is all right now, all right at last, no more having to resist the evil urges inside me. No more resistance. The iron gates to my secret garden are pale blue under a low-hanging moon. I go in, run my toes through the neatly trimmed lawn, no more resistance, the daffodils yellow green red sway gently to a breeze only they can feel. No more resistance, I lay among them, ready for a rest, the soil is cool and soft with dew, the flowers loom over me, their satin petals embrace my skin, my face, no more resistance and they cover my eyes yellow red yellow all I see is color mixing together. Spiraling. Almost asleep, I greet the spiral with a drowsy nod and watch it spin as a voice from the center of my head whispers something very important.

When I wake up I am back in the parking ramp, walking toward my car. I am so excited I have to stop myself from running the rest of the way. At last I am at peace. It is like I told Heather, we are all born to enslave or be enslaved, some of us both. Once learned, who could resist such a wonderful, obvious truth? I unlock the door and slide in, knowing that I will never see her again, for an excellent reason that I cannot recall but do not want to try. That night on the red-eye flight back to California I dream of an army of women in obscenely small uniforms marching in perfect formation through the night, three columns a mile long. They chant my name over and over, their eyes ablaze with purpose.