The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

It was uncomfortably quiet. The wind had been howling all night, all morning, all afternoon, and now it was nearly night again, and the howling had fallen into perfect silence. After so many hours of sound, the quiet was unsettling.

The power was still on, because they’d switched to the back up generator, but they still had no idea what things looked like on the outside.

Dianne and Casey sat in silence on the floor of the ski lodge. They were over near the stone fireplace, sitting crosslegged on either side of the faux-rustic coffee table. Casey was leaning forward, resting her head on her arms, where they were folded over each other.

Dianne sat back, resting on the floor against the nearest arm chair. Neither of them were looking at each other. The wind had died down about an hour ago, but after sitting in silence for so long, it was as though the two of them weren’t sure how to go back to speaking again.

Once the storm had started, they’d made sure that the lodge was carefully shut up, and the backup generator was on, so the heat wouldn’t go out. They’d quickly given up on speaking. The wind had been too loud, even when intercepted by the walls, for them to hear each other. They’d done enough to make sure the lodge was secure, and then they’d tried the communications radio for awhile, but it had seemed that was down too—likely one of the transmitting towers nearby had been damaged in the course of the blizzard. They’d also both lost service on their cellphones, and so far neither one of them had gotten bars back.

So, they had chosen a comfortable spot, sat down, and waited for the storm to be over. And when the wind had finally stopped, almost a full day later, they had waited again—sure that at any minute, the wind would pick right back up again, as bad as before.

For the last hour Dianne had watched the hands on the big clock above the fireplace move. Every time the second hand moved, she’d braced herself for the first sound of wind again. But finally, when the minute hand moved again, announcing they had made it to the end of the hour, and it was now 7 o’clock, she thought maybe they could trust that the storm was finally over.

She took her eyes off the faux-log crosspiece clock, and locked back to Casey, who was looking down at the coffee table. “Do you think it’s safe to take a look outside?”

Casey’s eyes flickered to her. She stared at Dianne for a minute, as if a little out of practice processing language. Then she blinked a few times, and leaned back from the coffee table, restoring herself to an upright sitting position. “I guess it’s been an hour. We could check.”

Without saying anything more, the two women stood, and walked through the empty lodge hall. They left the corner with the fireplace, moving past the check-in desk to the front door, which they had barred just the previous day. They looked at each other without saying anything for a moment, standing on either side of the door. There was nothing to do but open it— all the storm shutters on the windows had been closed before the storm had started, so it was the only way they could get a visual.

After pausing for a moment, Casey reached cautiously for the door, undoing the heavy lock. She pulled the inward-opening door towards her, giving her access to the exterior door. She looked back to Dianne once more, who gave her a curt, wordless nod, and then unlocked that door too, pulling it inward and giving them their desired view.

Except there was no view for them on the other side of the second door: only a solid, white wall of snow that was right up to the door frame. The snow had been so compacted towards the lodge that there was a vague outline of the exterior door in it.

Casey and Dianne shared another look, before Casey quickly pushed the second door back into place, locking it. Dianne helped her close the inner door again, and together they shifted the heavy lock back into place.

“Well,” Casey said, leaning against the door. “The snow’s at least as high as the first floor of the lodge.”

“We should check and see if the radio is working again,” Dianne suggested. They’d both trained for this situation—the management at the lodge had made all the staff do drills for severe snowstorm readiness. This was the first time in a while they’d had a storm this severe, and it was the first time Dianne or Casey had ever had to deal with a situation like this outside of a drill. But Dianne wasn’t freaking out yet—their training had gotten them through the process of preparing for the storm, even though it had come on unexpectedly. As long as there were steps for them to take, and things for them to do, there was nothing to panic about.

Dianne crossed the floor to the check in desk, stepping behind it. She passed through the door into the back room, where they kept the safe and the cashbox. Then she sat down at the desk, and turned the radio back on. Casey came to stand behind her, as Dianne carefully turned the dial, listening for any active channel. There was only a lot of white noise.

When she’d turned the dial to its furthest point, and couldn’t send it any further, she sighed, and turned the radio back off. Casey had taken her cellphone out, and was already slipping it back into her pocket when Dianne turned back to her. “Still no bars,” she observed.

“I bet the storm’s still moving through the area,” Dianne said. “It’s probably passed through our town, but it’s probably hitting some of the other towns by now, going through the district. Or maybe it hit them first before hitting us, and no one’s back on their feet yet.”

Dianne stood, and stepped out of the back office into the main lodge area. It was different, all empty like this—the lounge area by the fireplace, the gift shop to the left of the check-in desk, and the dining hall beyond that, with all the chairs still up on the tables. With the combination of complete quiet, and the image of the snow all around the lodge, pressing up against the walls, the high ceiling above Dianne felt imposing instead of spacious.

She was suddenly eager to go sit by the fireplace again—the lounge was secluded, compared to the rest of the open concept room, and you couldn’t see the gift-shop or the dining hall from it. It only gave you a partial view of the check-in desk. And at that moment, Dianne was wishing for anything that could make the space around her feel smaller again.

But Casey’s mind was still on more practical things. “Let’s go up to the second floor, and

see if we can get a view from up there.” She gave Dianne a light squeeze on the arm as she stepped past her. Together, the two of them bypassed the lounge to take the stairs to the second floor. From the landing, Dianne looked back down at the fireplace—and felt a moment of relief. It looked smaller from up here.

They moved down the hallway, ignoring the rooms, until they came around the bend to the maintenance door that opened out onto the roof. Casey unlocked it, and pulled it open, and for a minute, Dianne felt more relief— she could see sky! But as she took a closer look, while Casey held the door open, that feeling dwindled.

From the second level, it was clear the snow had completely covered the building’s first floor, and as far as Dianne could see in both directions without stepping outside, it looked as if the building was surrounded by snow.

And looking into the distance, away from the lodge, was not any more comforting. There was no hint of the parking lot—and it looked like the ski shack, which was only one level, was completely submerged in snow. For as far as Dianne could see, she could only see white—the flags marking the bottom of the ski-lift were gone, and the snow was at least halfway up the steel supporting polls.

It was like the snow had formed a new ground level, erasing all that had been underneath. It was only white wilderness out there, stretching on for miles and miles.

“That’s enough, I think,” Dianne said, stepping back from the door. Casey pulled it closed again, and locked the door tight. She exhaled. “It’s not the worst it could possibly be. Maria told me once that, like a decade and a half ago, they were snowed in so badly it was right up to the second floor roof.”

“I guess there’s nothing to do but wait for the radio to come back on—or for cellphone service to come back,” Dianne said, with a shake of her head. The training had been very clear that in case of such a snowed-in situation, any employees at the lodge were under no circumstances to go outside or try to reach any destination by walking, if getting outside were possible.

The lodge had implemented the policy some twenty years ago, when a group of employees had tried to snowshoe their way over to the nearest town after getting out through the second floor maintenance door. They’d gotten lost on the way, and never reached their destination. They’d been found frozen to death some days later.

Dianne was thinking about her training a lot, right then: going out on the snow was dangerous, because no matter how solid it looked, one wrong step could leave a person submerged above the head with no way back up. With the weight distribution snowshoes gave, it was a bit safer, but then the danger was getting lost, as that group of employees had all those years ago.

The lodge’s employee orientation leader had ground it into their heads: no matter how familiar you thought you were with the surrounding area, if there had been truly extreme amounts of snow—enough to partially or fully submerge buildings—you were in danger of getting lost. If enough snow had fallen to submerge buildings, enough snow had fallen to displace or destroy familiar landmarks, and make even a commonly travelled area into a foreign one.

In case of such a severe storm, the only safe thing to do was to wait for communications lines to come back up, and get a message out to the nearby patrol force with your location, and then wait for them to come and excavate you. Which meant that after a day of waiting out the storm, Dianne and Casey now had an indeterminate amount of days of waiting to look forward to.

They agreed without speaking to return to the fireplace, and both retook their former seats—Dianne, with her back to the base of the armchair, eyes on the faux-log clock, and Casey, leaning forward, with her arms folded on the coffee table.

It was still unbearably quiet. Dianne watched the hand on the clock again. She was feeling less calm about the situation now than she had before. They’d done everything their training had told them to do; they’d executed what they’d been trained to do perfectly. But now there was nothing left to be done, except wait for an unknown amount of time.

“It’s a good thing it’s lodge policy to close all the storm shutters every night after closing,” Casey mused, staring down at the grain of the coffee table as she spoke. “We never would have been able to close them, just the two of us. When we see Monday’s crew next, we should thank them. Or when we see management next, we should thank them too—we would have been screwed if the windows had been unprotected.”

Dianne didn’t want to think about that. “We never should have come in yesterday, anyway,” she said, her voice short. “It’s the doldrums of winter—there’s no guests booked to stay for at least another three weeks. We definitely didn’t need to come in—when they closed up Monday, that was it for this week. No one was scheduled to come in until next week.”

Casey yawned. “Don’t complain now. You liked the idea as much as I did.”

It was true. At the time when Casey had suggested it, Dianne had very much liked the idea. She and Casey had been scheduled to come in the following Monday, but no one else. They were often scheduled together, because they got along pretty well. Through the parts of the winter slump, when the weather was unpredictable and the tourists were scarce, it was lodge policy to run as it if was on semi-offseason. They would send just a few people in, once or twice a week to do basic maintenance work, or inventory. Usually the work only took a few hours, but management paid for a full day. It was one of the easier parts of the job; putting a half-day in to do slow work, and then locking up again and going home early.

But Casey had had the brilliant idea to go in Tuesday the week before and do the inventory then. She’d had some event she’d wanted to go to instead of working on the Monday, and had suggested they go, do the inventory early. And then, on the Monday they were scheduled, Dianne could just stop by for twenty minutes or half an hour to make sure everything was in order, and then take the rest of the day off. And Casey had offered to return the favor—the next time they were scheduled on a lone shift together, they could tackle the work early again, Dianne could have the scheduled day off, and Casey could stop by for 20 minutes or so to check the lodge.

It had seemed like a great idea at the time.

But now they were snowed in, and stuck, and until the communication lines were open, no one knew they were there. They hadn’t expected the storm—it hadn’t been in the weather forecast. They’d just been finishing up the inventory with the radio playing in the storage room. Then, the music station had interrupted regular play to give a special weather bulletin—they’d only had time to hear that a freak storm was about to hit the surrounding area, including the town where they both lived, 30 miles away. And then the radio had cut to static, and they’d prepared for the storm as best they could.

And now, they had no choice but to wait indefinitely in the storm’s aftermath.

Dianne’s anger had subsided for the moment, and she was back to watching the clock. After another few minutes of silence, she spoke. “Are you hungry?”

Casey met her eyes this time. “No—I’m still feeling wired from sitting out the storm. You?”

Dianne shook her head. She felt the same way. The adrenaline was suppressing her hunger, for now at least. They didn’t need to worry about food, anyway. There were enough emergency rations for a month in the kitchen. And since the generator was self-sufficient, as long as they didn’t turn it off, they had heat.

“I’m not hungry,” Dianne said. “I just thought it would be something to do, going to the kitchen and getting a bit of food. If you were, I mean.”

“Sorry,” Casey said, still looking at Dianne from where she was resting on the coffee table. “What are you thinking about now?”

“Nothing good,” Dianne contributed. Casey raised an eyebrow, prompting her for more.

“I’m thinking that maybe it will be two weeks before anyone comes up to check on the lodge—Julia and Matt will announce a temporary closure, they’ll assume we’ve gotten the message and that we won’t come in on Monday, so the next time someone shows up will be the Monday after next. And then, if we’re still here, and still alright, maybe they’ll fire us for trying to switch work days around without telling them.”

Casey frowned. “Still here and still alright?”

“Oh, I’m also thinking about how some people have been known to go crazy in less than a week, under the conditions of solitary confinement. So maybe by the time anybody shows up, we’ll be crazy. Or maybe, after going crazy, we’ll both suddenly decide to try walking the 30 miles back to town and then get lost out in the snow.”

Casey rolled her eyes. “Do I have to slap you? What was the second instruction in the training, after the whole ‘wait to be excavated’ thing?”

“Don’t panic,” Dianne said, not without annoyance. “I don’t see how you can be annoyed with me. I told you I wasn’t thinking about anything good, but you wanted to hear it.”

“It’s better than sitting here in silence, isn’t it?” Casey countered. “And anyway, there’s no way it’ll be two weeks before someone gets up here. Maybe it’ll be two days. But you they’ll want to make sure nothing was damaged in the storm. And the radio will probably be working in a matter of hours. And Julia won’t fire us for doing our inventory early—you know how easy-going she is. If anything, she’ll scold us for assuming there wouldn’t be a storm just because it wasn’t in the forecast, and then give us a ‘thank you for not dying and being a liability’ bonus.”

Dianne exhaled. “I know that. But it’s just... too quiet. And I feel like—I can physically feel the snow sitting up against the walls of the lodge. It swallowed the first level whole—and it would swallow us too, if it could.”

“You’re just thinking a lot of really negative thoughts,” Casey said, with a shake of her head. “Those are bad thoughts to be having right now, while we’re stuck here waiting. Get your mind off them and onto something else—we could play I Spy, or something.”

“No thanks,” Dianne said, shaking her head. “I know the mood I’m in, that won’t help.”

“Or 20 questions,” Casey counter-offered.

Dianne shook her head again, but she did think of something else this time. “You seemed pretty calm for that first hour after the storm died down—were you really?”

Casey’s eyes widened. “Oh. Yeah, I was pretty calm—I’ve got kind of a mental relaxation technique I use.”

“Going to your happy place?” Dianne interjected.

“Something like that,” Casey said. “Anyway, I just use the technique on myself, and I can get through just about anything. The time just bleeds away. It makes waiting much easier. I got through most of the storm that way too.”

This technique, whatever it was, sounded like music to Dianne’s ears. “Is it the kind of thing you can teach to another person?”

A look came over Casey’s face that Dianne didn’t know how to interpret. She’d worked in close quarters with her for several years, over the course of many hours, in busy rushes and on slow days, but none of her previous experience with Casey gave her any clues of interpretation for her current look.

“It can be... It’s kind of personal.”

“Oh,” Dianne said. “Sorry.” She lapsed back into silence.

“I mean, it really can... I had a phase in college when it was like my party trick. Like, people would ask me to do it to them, and I would, and the other people around would watch. It was a big hit. But I kind of... had to stop. I haven’t guided somebody else through it for a long time. I just do it myself now.” Casey’s brow was furrowed as she spoke, and her teeth worried at her lower lip when she fell silent again.

Dianne didn’t know what to do with Casey’s strange story. She’d thought she knew Casey pretty well, but this particular story was one she’d never heard. And she and Casey had talked a lot about their lives before the ski lodge—she’d thought she knew all the stories. It was at least partly interesting, and it was doing a lot to distract her from her anxiety spiral, so Dianne pressed on.

“Like... what was it?” Dianne tried, carefully. “Or, if you don’t want to share too much about it, what was it similar to? And... why did you have to stop?”

“Yeah, I think it’s a better if I don’t say too much,” Casey said, sitting back from the coffee table again. “I’ll just say a little and that’s it. It was basically just like a guided meditation thing. That’s how I got into it. I did a lot of meditating, guided and not, got good at it, and then I could show other people how it worked. And then I had to stop, for reasons I’d rather not go into, and that’s it.”

Dianne frowned. It was a little more information, anyway—but it had made the whole thing sound more mysterious, and not less. “People really stood around to watch you guide their friends through meditations at parties?” Dianne had been to a meditation retreat or two in her day—and she knew it was definitely not something that would make a hit at a party.

Casey shrugged. “You had to be there.”

Something about the story was not adding up, but it seemed Casey had shared all that she was going to. “Well, fair enough. I’ve never been any good at meditation. But clearly you’re good at guiding yourself through it, anyway. Maybe you could show me how to do it? It would make the waiting go faster. Or, if nothing else, keep me distracted from negative thoughts.”

That look was back. Dianne took it in more carefully this time. It was like—a shadow had crossed Casey’s face. Yes, that was a fitting description for it. The oddness of it, mixed with their surroundings, made it strike differently this time. It wasn’t just confusing as it had been the first time she’d seen it on Casey’s face a few minutes before. With the silence around them, and the snow piled up outside, their complete and total isolation... this time it was a little, well, unnerving.

Casey spoke after a minute’s pause. “I don’t think you want me to do that, Dianne.”

Dianne was taken aback by this answer. It struck her as bizarre—it was not the kind of answer you would expect to that line of questioning. It certainly wasn’t in line with how Casey typically behaved. There was something about it that made her feel she was talking to a stranger. And that was unsettling too—she thought she knew Casey the best out of almost all the people in her life, and better than a lot of people in Casey’s life knew Casey. Having someone so familiar become a stranger, even for a moment—especially given the circumstances—made her that much more nervous.

The shadow passed, and Casey looked like herself again. But the impression stayed with Dianne as Casey spoke again. “I’m just uncomfortable doing it, I mean. That’s why I stopped, I just... got uncomfortable. So, I can’t show you how to meditate, even if it would make things easier on you. So let’s drop it, okay?” There was a slight edge to Casey’s last sentence, and her casual smile was a little too tight.

“Sorry, Casey,” Dianne said. “I guess there’s no hope of you changing your mind?”

Again, Casey looked shook by the question. “I... might change my mind. But even if I did, a-and I helped you meditate... I’d probably still feel a little uncomfortable about it. And if I didn’t during—I’d definitely feel uncomfortable later. So... I think we’re better off forgetting about this, Dianne. And talking about something else. I don’t think you’d really want me to change my mind.” The shadow crossed her face again.

Dianne had tried to keep her cool, and act normally through this strange appearance of Casey’s apparent doppelgänger. But this was too far, and she couldn’t let it go by. “Casey, you make it sound like a threat. It’s a guided meditation, for fuck’s sake. I’ve been to a guided meditation retreat before. There’s nothing threatening about guided meditation.” She was saying it partly to call Casey out on her weird statements—but she was also doing it (at least a little bit) to reassure herself—just to hear the words out loud.

“You’ve been to a guided meditation retreat before,” Casey repeated, not addressing Dianne’s primary concern. “But you’re no good at meditation.”

“Well, yeah,” Dianne said, hesitant, but glad to have what seemed like a change of topic. “You can probably imagine, knowing me”—(okay, she was definitely appealing to her shared history with Casey to make herself feel more comfortable now)—“I have a hundred thoughts in a minute, and one thought leads to another, and I just can’t maintain focus—”

A sound escaped Casey then that really shook Dianne. It was brief, and it was over before Dianne could be sure she’d heard it. But it was definitely a muffled cry, abruptly suppressed for... some reason. She didn’t see how what she’d said warranted that kind of response.

Carefully, as if she hadn’t been interrupted, Dianne went on. “You know—” she tried again. “I just can’t get my mind settled enough to actually meditate, even with someone else guiding me through it. I went to that one retreat, and then said, never again. By myself, I’m even more hopeless. Even free meditation videos don’t seem to work on me. It’s just the way I’m wired, I think. My mind moves too fast from thought to thought.”

It was a seemingly innocuous statement, as far as Dianne could tell, but it was clearly having an effect on Casey that Dianne couldn’t exactly interpret. She was breathing normally, but her breaths were awkward and stilted, like she was forcing them to stay even. And at Dianne’s concluding statement, Casey visibly swallowed. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but couldn’t make anything come out. She settled for swallowing again. “That’s—”

But then she stopped herself again. “Dianne... let’s... talk about something else... now...” To Dianne’s ears, Casey’s voice was a little thin. There was a slight waver in it.

The change of topic Dianne had been longing for a minute ago. But now Dianne’s morbid curiosity had the better of her. If what she was saying had this affect on Casey, and if Casey had started to say something, only to stop herself—it would only take a little pressure from Dianne to get her to spill whatever her secret was. And all the strangeness would be explained, and Casey could go back to being the Casey she knew, and Dianne could feel comfortable with her again.

“What were you going to say?” Dianne asked. “Just now, before you cut yourself off?”

Casey shook her head. “I really think we should change the topic, Dianne. I really, really—” And Casey went on speaking, but Dianne was not listening, because she noticed that Casey’s fists were clenched in her lap. Her knuckles were white.

“Come on, Casey,” Dianne cut in. There was a slight flush to her cheeks that told Dianne she was close to breaking. “You almost said whatever you were going to say. You might as well come out and say it.”

Casey bit her lower lip. She sat, frozen, saying nothing. Her knuckles were, if possible, even whiter than before.

And then, Casey exhaled. The tension seemed to go out of her body, and she unclenched her hands. “You’re right, Dianne. I’ll just say it. That’s because you clearly need one-on-one guidance.”

Dianne stared at Casey. That was what she had been keeping back? Like the rest of this interaction so far, it made no sense. She felt like she and Casey were speaking two different languages. “What?”

“The group led meditation, and your own attempts at meditation didn’t work for you because you need a tailored approach.” Casey paused again, but her breathing was steady and flowing. When she spoke next, her voice was pitched a little lower than before. “Someone to show you how to do it, and to design a method with you, and your unique limitations, in mind. Whoever led your meditation retreat clearly wasn’t very good at their job. It seems... like you need someone who knows what they’re doing, to show you how it’s done.”

Dianne felt more than ever that Casey was talking over her head. And the weird, lower pitch to her voice was only adding to her confusion. Why was Casey being so intense about all this?

“I mean, it’s not that big a deal,” Dianne said, just managing to hold back nervous laughter. “It’s only meditation. It doesn’t matter if I can do it or not, it just isn’t for me.” It was a pretty obvious attempt to backtrack the conversation, but Casey didn’t seem to notice at all.

“No, you’re right,” she said, clearly not having heard what Dianne said. “You have a really unique perspective—your mind works in a very specific way. The number of thoughts, the speed of thoughts, the way you can think several thoughts at once.”

This, Dianne was not surprised to find Casey knew about her. She often spoke in a stream of consciousness manner, especially when she and Casey were alone. But something about the way Casey was using information from their normal relationship now, when everything was so strange, bothered her.

She opened her mouth to interrupt, but Casey talked over her. “You think in a different way than most people do. It makes you... It makes your mind really fascinating. But obviously, what works for other people won’t work for you. And if you had someone who knew you really well... who knew your mind really well, they could help you find something that would work for you—only you.” The last of Casey’s statement was pitched even lower still. Her words were all smoothed out, and her tone made Dianne shiver. And there was something about the way Casey was looking at her—like she was looking through her, and not at her.

Dianne was more confused than ever. “You’re taking this whole thing really seriously—I know I asked you to show me how to meditate, but I don’t think I’m interested anymore. Let’s just change the subject, okay?”

“No, I think it’s a really good idea,” Casey said. Her voice had returned to a more normal tone, but there was still a strange edge to her words. “I am really good at guiding people through meditation. Leading them to find their inner peace, inner sanctuary, whatever you want to call it. And I think I could really show you.”

“But... you haven’t since college,” Dianne tried. “And you said it would make you feel uncomfortable.”

“I changed my mind,” Casey said, with a shrug. She moved closer to the coffee table between them, then changed her mind and stood. She stepped around it, and instead came to sit across from Dianne, on Dianne’s side of the coffee table.

Since Dianne already had her back to the chair behind her, she couldn’t put more distance between her and Casey. At least since she had her legs stretched out in front of her, Casey couldn’t be directly across from her. But she had settled for sitting on Casey’s right side, cross legged, and as a result she was much closer than she would have been if she’d sat down right in front of her.

“I’ve got to tell you Casey, you’re kind of freaking me out right now—I really don’t see meditation in my future.”

Casey put her on Dianne’s arm, in a way that was usually comforting and friendly. But like everything else now, here in upside down world, it held a weird charge. She let her hand linger there, and didn’t draw it back right away. “I know that—but I think I know something that will work for you. You can let me know after— but I think it will really work.”

“Okay, Casey…” Dianne said, uncertainly. “I guess… go ahead…”

“Well, you wanted more information about when I used to do it back in my college days, right?” For the moment, Casey’s voice was still cheerful.

Dianne eyed her. “Yeah, I was curious.”

Casey smiled, and gave Dianne’s arm a squeeze. “So we’ll talk about that then. You learned something about me you didn’t know, you had questions, and I’ll answer them. Just like normal, right?”

Dianne was still watching her carefully. “Right.”

“Like I told you,” Casey said, and her voice dropped back to that smooth tone from before. “I got into meditation— when I was in high school. I was really stressed all the time, and I needed to do something about it. So I looked for any tips or tricks to help me. And I started meditating.”

Even with the smooth tone of voice, and the slower cadence of speech, the content of what Casey was saying was a lot less strange than before, and it was easier to relax a little.

“I needed a lot of practice at first. I had the same problems you did— keeping focus, keeping my mind clear of intruding thoughts. But eventually, I got the hang of it. And then, I started getting good at it. I got to this kind of state— it felt like everything was on fire, but in a good way. Or everything was electricity, and I was turned as bright as I could be. Really intense ecstasy is probably the best description. And I could meditate, and achieve that state, and let everything burn for hours. Or let everything shine for hours. And then, afterwards, I’d feel this really intense rush of euphoria. It was like taking a drug.”

Dianne felt herself getting drawn in by Casey’s story. She had learned forward from her backrest, and Casey had moved a few inches closer to her too. The story was sweeping her up— it was definitely distracting her from all of the surrounding circumstances.

“So, obviously after this, I wanted to do more research on meditation. To see if anyone else was talking about these kind of mental states. And I learned that people definitely were. These were varieties of a thing called trance—“ (and the way Casey paused just before she said the word, and made Dianne wait for it—and the way her lips formed around it—) “and there was science behind it. There were different kinds of trance, and each kind had its own associated brainwave pattern, and through meditating, and practice, it was possible to achieve all kinds of altered states of consciousness.”

“I used the really focused, concentrated state strategically after that. I practiced it, so I could slip into it on command. And then I would intentionally trigger it whenever I had to write a test, or study, or do an assignment. My grades jumped, and my performance improved impressively.”

“But it was that second feeling— the euphoria, that I kept coming back to. That I started doing just to relax, or just for fun. And I realized it could really make the time go by. Like I said earlier, I use it whenever I have to wait through things. But I wanted to get more control of it— refine it. I practiced until I could trigger it on command, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to be able to play with different varieties of it. Really intense variations, where it was all consuming— and more muted ones, just to get into a calm state, and make time pass more quickly.”

“Obviously, with all my free time in high school, I got really good at this, and making variations on variations on variations. Eventually I got to a point where I felt I’d done everything I could do, and then I kind of lost interest.”

By now, Dianne was hanging on Casey’s every word. She’d completely tuned out the room around them, and she felt like she was standing with Casey, inside the story she was telling. She didn’t notice that Casey’s hand was still on her arm.

“But then, I went to college. And everything changed. Hanging around with my friends, eventually the topic came up. Weird tricks people could do— like, double-jointed people bending their fingers back, or those people who can get their tongue to curl inwards. And I couldn’t do anything like that, but I could trigger an altered state of consciousness; and so I told them that. And I showed them— and they were impressed. They wanted me to do it on them, or at least show them how to do it. It completely revitalized my former interest in it.”

“I explained to them that I needed practice, that it took time to figure out how to do it to yourself, let alone someone else. But they were happy to play along, and be good sports. It wasn’t all we did. Just kind of a running project they were helping me with. We all agreed it would be fun if I could trigger someone the way I could trigger myself.”

The content of the story was becoming more engrossing to Dianne by the minute. She’d moved even close to Casey.

“It started with guided meditations, since that was how I got my start on my own. Leading people through vivid imagined landscapes, or through various body sensations. Every time, it was like a fascinating discovery, and I was getting better at it. Pretty soon I figured out how to recreate my altered mental states for them; and I realized it was even easier to trigger another person than to trigger yourself— you could just assign a word to the state you wanted them to have, and then every time you said it, they’d go right into it.”

“My friends were pretty thrilled about this— like I did, they found the really intense focus came in handy, and the euphoria was a fun high without any of headache of using actual substances. And I kept practicing— and then it really did become my party trick. If my friends and I were at a party together, they could all take turns triggering themselves, or each other, and people were really fascinated by it. Or, people would sit down, and I’d see how long it’d take me to create a mental state in a person I’d never worked on before. And that was an even bigger hit.”

Dianne was breathing in Casey’s words now, and not the air. She was with Casey, standing in the crowd at those parties, watching the story unfold. The room was invisible to her— and her own identity was slipping away from her. She was only an observer to the story. The story was everything.

“And I did more research again, and realized there was a name for what I was doing— and had been doing all along. A name that worked every better than “meditation.” I was hypnotizing people, and I had started by hypnotizing myself.”

Dianne thought she had heard the word before, but didn’t think she’d paid much attention to it. It wasn’t enough to kick her out of the story— nothing was. Nothing was more important than what came next.

“Then I read everything I could about that. It was supposed to be really difficult— taking lots of years of study, and many hours of practice, and I realized I was far above a normal skill level. And I’d kind of stumbled into it without meaning to. But I learned that you could do more with it than just trigger another state of consciousness in a person— in an altered state of consciousness, subjects were more susceptible to suggestion. And you could suggest people do things. Or make people think things, or forget things, or perceive things that weren’t really there. And my party trick got even more popular.”

Casey paused then— and the shadow was back, but Dianne was too far gone to properly notice it. “And doing so much of it was changing me. It wasn’t just fun anymore. There was a thrill in having that kind of power… in seeing people melt for me. Watching their eyes glaze over… their jaws go slack… knowing they would do anything and everything I said; that, until I restored them to normal consciousness, I had complete control of them. I stopped doing it as a party trick— I started doing it in private instead, to see how far people would go to follow my suggestions, when they were alone with me. To see how far they would go to obey.”

The words were slipping into Dianne’s mind too fast for her to keep up with, and Casey’s voice had become a flowing liquid, a hum beneath Dianne’s skin, but somewhere, distantly, there were alarm bells even in the confusion.

“And I did a lot of hypnosis in private— and I found myself more and more obsessed with it, more and more affected by the sight of others succumbing to my control. And I knew I had long ago crossed the line, and that everything I was doing was so beyond ethical… and I knew that if I kept doing it, I would never stop, and I would take things even further than I already had. And so I gave it up. And I have never done it since.”

At the clear end of Casey’s story, Dianne partly came back to herself. But partially restored awareness was enough to remind her of the fear from before— and to realize that Casey was so close to her now that her knee was brushing Dianne’s upper thigh. Her face was only inches away, and Dianne wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She wanted to move, but she couldn’t. Her breath was hitched in her chest— and Casey finally let go of Dianne’s arm, but it was only to bring her hand up to stroke Dianne’s cheek.

Dianne shivered again, and the fear was back entirely. She was alone with Casey, and Casey was a stranger, and that shadow was still clear on her face. “I haven’t even been tempted to hypnotize another person for a long time. I’ve really behaved myself. But you’ve tempted me tonight, Dianne. Asking me so carelessly if trance were something you could teach another person— not even understanding what you were asking. And then pushing and pushing for more information… and then describing yourself, your poor overactive mind, unable to relax into trance.”

It was Dianne’s turn to swallow. There was a hungry look in Casey’s eyes and it was impossible to mistake for anything else. “And I knew I could give it to you… And I could just picture you with glazed eyes, and a loose jaw, and just the first traces of drool. I always thought you were pretty, Dianne— but I know you’ll be even more beautiful in trance.”

The sudden switch to present tense sent Dianne’s fear to a fever pitch. “You’re… you’re going to…”

Casey gave a smile that matched her hungry eyes. “Yes, I’m going to put you into trance, Dianne. And we’re going to do all kinds of things together. It’s inevitable, now. I tried. I tried to abstain, but you pushed me. You just had to know what I stopped myself from saying. I stopped myself from saying it because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back from taking you any longer. I told you you wouldn’t want me to change my mind, but you didn’t listen. Tell me now, Dianne. Do you regret that?”

“Yes,” Dianne confessed, and surprised herself. She hadn’t meant to admit that, but it had just slipped out of her.

Casey’s smile sharpened; like it was the exact answer she’d been hoping for. “Do I know you, or do I know you? The only thing that puts your mind to rest is if you can find an interesting enough distraction for yourself. My story certainly did the trick. I’ll have you back into trance again in no time. And don’t worry— if you want me to, after, I can make you forget any of this ever happened. But in the meantime…”

Casey’s face was directly in front of hers, her lips only inches away from Dianne’s. “I’m telling you the story again, Dianne, but you don’t need to hear the words— you remember how it felt, you have an excellent memory. You feel it again— you’re so engrossed by everything I’m saying. You’re hanging on every word, floating in the thoughts I’m laying out for you…”

And Dianne was. The fear was far away again, and Casey was saying the most interesting things anyone had ever said— and she wanted to listen, and when Casey gave her advice she wanted to do it, because nothing felt as good as this feeling, and nothing mattered if it wasn’t this feeling of euphoria.

And Casey advised her— “Kiss me.”

And so Dianne did.