The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The scattered masses of humanity, released from the confines of the city centre, spill through the park gates and find themselves room on benches and on grass, with the more urbanised clinging solely to the safety of tarmac. As they tumble, swirl, and stop they form themselves into pairs and small groups and continue in their careful ignorance of concerns other than their own.

You haven’t got anywhere in particular to go, but the presence of others here takes away the motivation to stay. Hovering on the edge of decision, you listen for a moment.

“...and then I said, ‘what’s wrong with chicken all of a sudden’...", “...tomorrow is another day. Just another day”, “Well, Frank’s not the one marrying my daughter, thank the Lord...”

But over all of it the unceasing foghorns of people reporting their position through the magic of satellite relay. And all of them equally confident that they will be with the other speaker within five minutes.

Legs moving without conscious decision, you think that you are leaving; but no, the gates are behind you, and you are walking further into the park.

And what is pulling you in can now be dimly heard. Somewhere from a thicket of trees in front of you.

The snatches of melody congeal like the blood that is being sung about:

The one half runs water, the other runs blood

Two female voices, as clear and ringing as a glass bell, cut through the air to deliver their odd message. Notes intertwine in a complex, mathematically-precise harmony.

You’re not even sure if you enjoy the song, but you do not see the harm in finding out more about it.

At the bed’s foot there grows a thorn

The bells of Paradise I heard them ring

Which ever blows blossom since he was born

The singing grows louder with each step, and then without warning you burst in on a small clearing, surrounded by other human flotsam who have washed up on the shores of this scene.

You push and squirm through other puzzled bodies to see the cause of the unusual music, for the moment ignorant of the fact that you have walked away from the crush of one crowd to join another.

Two women defy the coolness of the summer by wearing simple white shift dresses. Your heart lurches oddly as you half-guess, half-wish that the material covers bare body, with no undergarments. The deep arrows of bare flesh that both women display, scooping from shoulders to cleavage, send your mind racing.

Almost as soon as you have become used to the compelling atonality of the music, the women are speaking together—no, still they are singing, almost as one, it is just not as obvious—and explaining themselves.

“We are going to show you an ancient rite. This sacred water,”

Blinking a few times to clear your eyes, you wonder how you missed the fact that one woman is holding a wooden pail brimming with water.

“...has been taken from the river that used to run through this city. We will take it to nourish the daughters and sons of the trees that used to throng in this wooded, secretive land.”

And behind the words is a strong invitation to come and be involved in the nourishing.

In your imagination, you are already discussing this event with a friend and laughing about it. ‘You’d never guess what, but I saw a bunch of nature-loving half-wits leading some kind of wassail to take mystical water to a magical tree!’. So you are completely surprised to be part of the group, part of the procession, pulled along in a net of fascination pulled by these two women.

“Is that a bucket of half water, half blood?” asks some wag, in rough paraphrase, but it is more muttered than shouted and this tepid burst of discontent disappears. It sinks and bubbles pop and it is no more.

The voice came from ahead of you, and as far as you can tell the asker is swept up in the procession as completely as you. No-one is leaving the group, all bodies are facing forward.

And you are looking ahead yourself to catch another look at these two women, who have captivated with their sight and their sound.

For a moment silence rules. The slop of water back and forth in a swinging pail can be heard.

Down in yon forest there stands a hall

The singing starts again and your head is full of the idea of trees.

The bells of Paradise I heard them ring

There is something resonant to the words in and of themselves.

It’s covered all over with purple and pall

A strong association with royalty, with Kings of men, and it is not surprising that

And I love my Lord Jesus above anything

Strong feelings of love do come from somewhere. It does not feel divine, however, it does not remind you of gospel choirs or of congregations huddled under a tall spire of prayer. It seems to resonate from the earth itself.

You do not have the time to ponder your connection with the song, or the women, or the group, or perhaps the water that is the reason for the journey. You are simply a bubble in the pail and you are swinging in the maiden’s hands. You ripple with her voice.

In that hall there stands a bed

Out of the park, on the road that circles it like a tail-eating Jörmungand, and through a window of some unimportant furniture store you see a bed on display, matching covers for quilt and pillow decorated with shades of grey.

It’s covered all over with scarlet so red

It is covered in red, red so deep and strong that it almost pours to the floor. You can feel the essential life force of it reach through the window and grab you—but the pull of the voices is that much stronger.

There is a lull in the singing. The sounds of honking cars suddenly stopped by this friendly group sharing one purpose barely pierces the community of the silence. All heads have turned back from looking at the bed—where surely they saw the same vision as foretold in the words of the song—and stare forward with some sharedness of purpose.

You are happy to share in this purpose. It is the air and it is the ground and it is the music.

The water sloshes and the group is bound to follow it. Some task remains to be done and it would not do to fail to be present at the completion of the task.

A shiver comes over the separate bodies that make up the organism and joins them for a moment in an electricity of anticipation.

Over that bed the moon shines bright

It is early evening, and the sun is up, but expectant eyes raise as one to stare at the glory of the moon—the face of a Goddess. It glints out in silvered shades from behind a cloud and a murmur rises up.

Denoting our Saviour was born this night

Whether this refers to the Moon is unknown. The fact is that the organism has taken up this song at once and a multitude of voice started on Saviour and the world shifts and falls away.

Now there is just the head which shines in white, represented by two beautiful women dressed in clothes of some sacred office, and the behind that a body which clusters tightly a long and there is some consciousness of being part of this and looking out of it, but that is not so important any more. What is important is that there is a pathway in front of you, a pathway dominated by the glimpses of a daylight Moon, and it sparkles and shimmers with the promise of some miracle.

The song is sung again and all the voices know it, there is one mind and one voice. The voice is still as fragile as glass; it still clatters sharply against the rude concrete imposition of the modern world. The difference is that it is a whole glacier of glass, and as parts crumble the bulk still moves and it seems that it could go on forever and carve the landscape anew.

This song, sung enough, could bring back the secrecy of the past. A shaded world where tall trees shivered on lines dropped from heavenward hooks and people, rude and small, worshipped the most majestic of them as slow and deliberate Gods.

There would be nothing better than to keep singing the songs until its glaciers rolled out to all corners of the land and destroyed the thin veneer of civilisation that tried to obscure an essential truth.

The voices swell and the glacier grows and in reflection it shows distorted images of the joined individuals who make the group. Everybody sees themselves in the mirror of the music and yet does not see themselves—there is no self to see. They hear their own voice but it is the voice of everybody, and it does not matter which voice is which.

The music has been pulled out of throats by one mad hand so many times that all are raw, but this just makes the sound even more fitting. Feet throb in time with thrills of pain and it seems some distance has been covered, but the destination is unimportant, and this lack of questioning is the new normality. And still another difference is the ground, which is grass; and the walls, which are living; and the ceiling, which is the clear and ringing song of the sky.

And the sun has gone almost completely from it.

You start to wonder—how far have I walked, and where is it that I am going, and why am I here?, but it is too late. The organism throbs yet again, each individual cell pulsing and getting ready to act in some new way. You are sucked back into the group as a fresh frenzy overtakes.

The world opens out its hands and displays one of its many moist clefts of secrets. Here is a space cleared by the grinding of a glacier, and here is the moon calling with the voice of multitudes, and swaying in the middle is a sign that the sky can be pierced if only you push your faith hard enough from the ground and stretch-stretch-stretch upwards. The Moon itself has reached down to make this place a temple for Her worship.

The tree is a poplar tree, branches pointing upwards, and every single spurt of its growth has the one aim to thrust strongly at its aim.

It is the Masculine to the Moon’s Feminine, and the group is here to chant and watch as a communion between them is enacted. The first of many for some time, so many that they go beyond the comprehension of numbers.

A hush settles over the organism as it reaches what must be the end.

The two women separate themselves as the head and they sing the final verse.

At the bed-side there lies a stone

And the men—and, strangely, they are all men—flock to the stone which has worn smooth in waiting for this moment so long. It is the height of a table and it is about as flat.

Which the sweet Virgin Mary knelt upon

And one of the women clambers up and kneels, while the other takes the pail to the tree.

This verse is repeated and repeated, sounds bouncing back and forth between the stone and the tree, and the echoes make the distance between them seem as impermanent as the thin veneer of air between Earth and Moon.

The Moon winks down and demands some kind of judgement, some kind of absolution, and the song loses its words and just a rough sketch of melody remains.

The sweet Virgin Mary is no longer kneeling, instead she writhes naked on the stone, and the men at the bed-side mutter with understanding at what they must do.

There is a memory of The one half runs water, the other runs blood and there is an understanding of giving of your own self.

The water sloshes on the tree, a gush and a splash and drips and we are all together in delivering the same sequence.

The Moon shines down and illuminates the stream running from the roots of the tree, the stream fed by the woman’s ever-spilling pail, as she gives freely of the fertility to the hungry ground. And the men give their fertility, naked and glittering in the air, combined with the women in natural union. And one woman, a symbolic woman, writhes in front to receive the gifts.

The sounds rise and combine and sound like all the moans of all the world.

In time with the rise and fall of the memory of the song hands move, rising and falling and producing friction, and the air is pierced with symbols of trees, totems of the Masculine, in order to produce each and every one a sign of fertility.

The woman waits to receive it, the symbolic woman, the writhing woman.

The song now is just voiceless moaning, the dripping of the water from the pail, the rush of a river that runs from the tree and under the stone and around the whole world, a silvered river of the Moon’s light.

With a final cry the Moon watches as the water runs half and something else half, each and every one first gush then splash and then drips. The woman writhes in the half water, writhes in the half not water, and this will ensure that the Moon blesses us for the next year.

The Moon reaches down and achieves a pagan communion with each person. Each person has been touched and is now part of a group that will feel a need to do this again.

The pail is empty, and the darkness falls, and eyes light up with a realisation of separate individuality.

You blink.

In your hands still beats an expression of your own connection to this world, and thrown from it the strands of your own blessing. They coat the woman in front of you.

Part of you wants to scream, to make threats, to call the Police and make denunciations.

But this part, the part that can think in words, is deep inside, a nut inside a kernel, and that kernel is one a tree, and that tree is ruled by the Moon, and that tree is part of a secret forest, and that forest wants nothing more than to push against the world you used to belong to, to tumble it down and crush it beneath its roots, and come back fully.

The woman with the pail is kissing each man in turn, and when kissed the men slink off individually and return to whatever lie they have been living for however many lifetimes.

The woman without the pail is exhausted by the weight of the seed on her. It sticks her to the stone and she implores the Moon to give her the strength to move.

The leaves of the forest rustle in the wind, and the forest’s voice offers you a reward: be this way forever so that you can partake again of these rites. And the pull of desire is strong enough that you act with haste to quiet your own complaints.

And you plan how you can bring the river crashing through your own home and the minds of the people you meet so that, next year, the celebration can produce a torrent.