The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Nina snapped her head level. There had been a noise, a soft squeak of soles against on the floor-tiles that was somehow different then those that simply passed by in the corridor.

And sure enough, there was someone standing there in the entrance to the waiting ‘room’. It wasn’t Suzanna returning with the food, or thankfully any of the Master’s family, but instead an unfamiliar man. A doctor or something, Nina supposed, wearing a white coat. He had faded brown hair cut short, and a pair of sensible black-framed glasses perched across the bridge of his rather broad and craggy nose. Fairly tall and wide across the shoulders, he reminded her more than a little of Stephen, if Stephen was to wear glasses and was to spend a lot more time outdoors in the fresh air getting some serious exercise. Seeing her looking up at him, the man seemed to hesitate for a moment, then flashed a quick wordless smile and examined the remaining magazine choices spread out on the table, flipping aside one or two that concealed the view of others. He finally picked up a well-thumbed copy of Eastsider and sat down opposite her. All of these movements were clean and smooth; he was clearly light on his feet.

Nina continued to study him for a long moment over the top of her pages, but he gave her no further attention, flipping the Eastsider open and commencing to read.

She confirmed with a careful sidelong glance that he couldn’t see the front of the painting from where he was sitting.

She shifted her eyes back forward, as the machinery in her mind chewed up the options and then pounded them back into new shapes under its endless strings of hammers.

She could attack him. No. That was totally silly. Where had that thought come from?

She could get up, take the painting someplace else...

Again no. There were going to be people milling around anywhere she went in this hospital. And Suzanna wouldn’t know where she had gone.

She could just stay put.

Yes. She would definitely keep an eye on the man, but he really shouldn’t be a problem, as long as the blonde slavegirl didn’t blurt out something stupid when she finally did come back. After she and Suzanna ate, and the Master’s family and (possibly) co-workers had finally come and gone, they would take the painting and present it for the Master’s inspection and approval. Presumably he would then issue them and Erika their collective instructions for the night, but if not they would just take it down and stash it in the trunk of Nina’s car...

As soon as Crandell stepped into the waiting room and the woman looked up from her magazine, he realized he had simultaneously made a serious mistake and hit pay dirt. He shouldn’t have let her see him in any event, and she was wound up even tighter than he had first realized, the nerves coming off her in almost visible waves. If he were dumb enough to try anything here, the whole situation could have really blown up in his face. He should just do a quick fade, disappear and let her forget about him...

But if he waited it out, saw where she was going with that painting, (yes, even though he still couldn’t get a good look at it, it was definitely the painting) saw what if anything was her relationship with the target and ‘Suzanna’...

And somewhere at the back of his mind, a small voice still insisted on whispering...

-She looks so very much like...—

He silenced that voice, made a split-second decision, and smiled at her. (He didn’t speak; no point in letting people see your face and hear your voice if they didn’t need to...) The woman didn’t smile back, but continued to study him with her dark brown eyes as he took a magazine of his own off the table, sat down, and began to read it.

Really read it. This was another hard-earned life lesson that the lovely Miss Mainspring there obviously hadn’t learned; people can usually tell when you’re just staring at the words printed on a page and when you’re actually reading them. OK, maybe they can’t tell with the conscious up-in-front part of their minds, but that slimy reptile that never sleeps at the back of it all, it would pick up the odor of wrongness all the same. And once again, this was the thing to avoid at all costs, until and unless it was finally time to act.

He dismissed Miss Mainspring from his mind and read the article which he had happened to open the magazine to. It was Crandell’s general experience that magazines, American magazines in particular, were only useful as pieces of evidence while on the hunt, or in a real pinch as emergency sources of kindling or toilet paper. On the other hand, he wasn’t a man to pass up a chance to gain new pieces of information; you never knew when something might someday turn out to be useful. So he read and he learned everything he would probably ever need to know about the history and construction of totem poles.

Richard, Beverly and ‘Erika’ stood in the hall outside of Tom’s room, forming a sort of squashed and awkward triangle out of their bodies as the various hospital-types passed back and forth beside them.

There were several minutes of silence; it was sort of hard, under the circumstances, to think of an appropriate way of restarting any conversation. Finally, Richard had a thought, and started shuffling again through all the paperwork that the doctors had forced on him. As he did this, he shifted his gaze back and forth between the two women and he frowned. Hadn’t Bev been talking about weird vibes a little while ago? Above and beyond being married to Bev and knowing her as well as he did, he considered himself to be a pretty good judge of people; it was a talent you sorta had to develop if you ever wanted to set up your own business and keep it a going concern. (He didn’t always nail it, of course; he had hired that moron Riff, after all...) Yes, having cops nosing around was always creepy and upsetting; he’d knew that well enough from having to deal with the fuzz a time or two up at WP, but there was something else going on here, something he couldn’t quite pin down.

Part of it was jealousy on Bev’s part, sure. She had to be reassured, maybe a little too often, about how beautiful she was and how much he loved her, and yes, this Erika chick was a looker, no doubt about that. Beverly had referred to the tall redhead as Tom’s ‘friend’, hadn’t she? And that was fairly impressive all by itself. If she was anything more...

But the jealousy wasn’t all of it... Acting on a sudden impulse, he left off the paper shuffling, silently reached out and took hold of Bev’s hand. She gave a little jump of surprise, then smiled and moved closer to him, tearing the triangle apart and replacing it with... something different, a wall springing up between them and the other woman. Richard spoke.

“Tom’ll be all right. Everything will be fine.”

“Yes. I know.” Bev moved a little closer, and he shifted his arm so it squeezed for a moment the familiar and comfortable place around her shoulders.

“Erika?”

Erika hadn’t seemed to have heard him, but continued staring up and down the hall, her jacketed arms crossed tightly in front of her body, as if looking for someone or something. He repeated himself a little louder.

“Erika?”

She jerked and finally looked in his direction, smiling guiltily.

“Huh? Sorry. I’m just a little preoccupied.”

“I can understand that.” He flipped the papers until he found the piece he had been looking for, and extracted it. “I was just going to say, if Tom’s going to stay with you, you’ll need this. It’s the prescription they gave me for his painkiller.”

“Oh. Thank you. I’ll make sure it gets filled.” Erika took it, folded it carefully in half, and secured it in one of the pockets of her coat. She zipped the pocket shut with a jerk.

“So. How did you and Tom meet?”

Erika shot a glance at Beverly, and the corner of her mouth twitched upward. Then she sighed in a overtly phony sort of way, took a step closer to them and spoke in a low serious voice, looking straight at Richard.

“That’s it. I’m tired of the secrecy. I’m tired of all the lies. That story I told you before, Beverly, it was utterly untrue.” Another sigh. “Tom and I work for a top-secret government agency that operates out of a bunker deep in the Rocky Mountains.. We’ve both been living double lives since we were recruited by that Agency directly out of college. Our very first mission together was in Europe, when we were assigned to break up a murderous terrorist ring operating out of the eastern European republics.” She let her eyes go glassy with remembrance. “I’ll never forget the moment we first met. It was in a warm summer evening in Hamburg, under the full moon. I was staying in a hotel on the banks of the Elbe, and Tom came repelling down the side of the building, closely pursued by the ninja mercenaries the terrorists had hired to deal with us. We fought them together, standing back to back on the room’s patio, until their black-clad bodies were piled around us in a ring. We’ve been partners and lovers ever since, traveling the globe together, battling the forces of tyranny and evil, wherever they rear their ugly head.”

Richard and Bev stared at her. Then Bev put her hand over her mouth, her sure-fire indication that she was trying to keep from giggling. She wasn’t quite successful in this attempt. Richard felt a smile tugging at his own lips, and finally he had to let out a snort or two.

“You want to know what’s really scary?”

“What?” Erika looked at him poker-faced, her gaze like diamond drill-bits.

“I could almost sorta believe it.” He sighed and shook his head. “My brother... I love the guy and all, but he can be a strange one sometimes.” He gave Bev another gentle squeeze. “And it’s not that he votes for Dummycrats, like you were saying to Phibeson. Well, that’s part of it, of course. But... Sometimes it does seem like he doesn’t live in the real world. I dunno.” He studied Erika carefully, but saw nothing new that he hadn’t seen before. “So did you just lie to those two cops in there? Are the two of you more than friends?”

Erika finally looked away, and her voice was soft.

“Yes. Well. No. I didn’t exactly lie. I’m not sure what we are. I’m not sure there’s a word invented yet in the English language for what Tom and I are. But yes, we’re more than friends.”

Richard nodded.

-Well, well. Way to go, little brother.—

Bev spoke, still smiling a little.

“Why Hamburg, though? Wouldn’t Paris have been more romantic?”

Erika shrugged and quirked another smile herself.

“Cuz I’ve been there. I’ve been to Paris as well, actually, but it was in a motel room in Hamburg, on the banks of the Elbe one summer night under a full moon, that I—”

She abruptly cut herself off.

“Yes?” Bev again, now getting that look she sported when she was feeling concerned about Justin, or one of her charges at work.

“That I came to certain realizations about myself. About my life.” Erika swiped at one of the jags that made up her hair. “I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have said anything. It’s something I haven’t told Tom about yet. And... now that I think about it... I’d like him to be the first member of your family to hear it. It’s important to me.”

“I guess understand.”

Erika re-folded her arms, hugging herself.

“I don’t see how you could. I’m not sure I do myself.” For just a moment, the tall confident woman was gone, leaving something frail and woebegone, swaying in a high wind. She wiped at her eyes with her jacket sleeve. “Look, would you two excuse me for just a moment?”

“Is anything wrong?”

“I just need to go powder my nose.” She straightened up, and threw her shoulders back. “Isn’t that what a girl’s supposed to do in these circumstances? I’ll be right back.” Not waiting for any further reply she stalked off down the hall, moving purposefully, all traces of weakness washed away. They watched her go.

Richard looked down at Bev.

“So. What’s the verdict on Tom’s new friend, teach?”

Bev didn’t return the gaze but spoke very slowly, frowning a little in concentration as she looked at something invisible somewhere further down the hall.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t like her very much when she first came into Tom’s room, but now...” She shook her head, then leaned it against his shoulder. “I guess we’ll see...”

Just then, a man came up. Distracting their gaze from Erika. He was skinny with long brown hair, and he was carrying a shiny helium balloon on the end of a string. The words ‘BETTER YOU THAN ME’ were painted on the balloon in bright cheery letters. He looked vaguely familiar, but Tom couldn’t quite place him.

Richard and Bev glanced at each other.

“This Tom Woodhue’s room?” The man looked back and forth at their expressions. “What? Geez, wha’d I miss now?”

Tom sat in his bed, one hand curled now against the scratchy blankets, the other curled tight around the small black box, squeezing his sweat into its texture. He tried to let the shiny steel-baring part of his mind spin and whir uninterrupted, so much like the various machines to which his body was currently hooked.

Peeping and humming.

-Someone cut my brake line.—

-Someone tried to kill me today.—

It was possible that it was a mistake, as Detective Sanchez had said. Brake lines do sometimes get damaged all on their own. He suddenly remembered that it was a faulty brake line which had helped kill the Woodhue family’s dog Sparky all those years ago.

-But somehow... somehow, it makes sense. It comes as little surprise-

Why did it make sense?

Was it the Author trying to kill him? Anything was possible, he’d certainly learned that in the last two days, but-

But...

“Mr. Woodhue?” Detective Sanchez’s expression had not changed in the slightest, and Tom pulled the majority of his thoughts back to the conversation at hand, even as the cogitating part of him wanted to tell the two cops to just bug off and let it think in peace; it was hovering right on the edge of something vitally important...

“Yes. Yes, I understand.” Sanchez seemed to expect something more. “Someone may have tried to kill me by cutting my brake line.”

The detective didn’t nod or anything, but was evidently satisfied, and he continued.

“If the department’s final test results reveal that this is in fact what happened to your car, it may have merely been a random act of vandalism.” Sanchez methodically flipped to a new page in his notepad, and produced a rather tired-looking pen from somewhere, which he clicked to life with a thumb.“But still... Did you see any suspicious individuals in the vicinity of your car when you last returned to it before the crash? Anyone acting oddly?”

“No.”

“And where was the car parked at the time?”

“Um...” Tom shook his head. “I can’t remember exactly. One of those short side streets off of Basset. I’d have to go back and look to be sure. It was near Rodney’s Used Books, which was the business I was visiting. Gummer Street, something like that, is where it is.”

“Yes, I know the store. And the crash happened soon after you drove away from there?”

“Yes.”

“Had you been away from the car long enough for the brake fluid to leak out?”

“Well. I suppose. I don’t know much about the inner workings of cars. It was over an hour.”

“Can you think of any reason why someone might wish to hurt you in this way?”

“No. No one. As far as I know, I don’t have an enemy in the world.”

Sanchez continued to study him, giving nothing away.

“Have you had any arguments or disagreements with anyone recently? No matter how minor or trivial they may have seemed to you at the time?”

Tom seriously thought about this question. He had those suspicions lurking in the back of his mind, yes, but it would be bitterly ironic if it turned out this had all happened because he had unknowingly cheesed off some random psycho at a gas station six months ago. Nothing came to mind, except... “I accidentally spilled a little coffee on a co-worker yesterday. He didn’t seem too upset.”

“No one has been following you in recent days, making any threats? Either verbal or written?”

“No.”

“You haven’t had any problems at work?”

Some new part of Tom’s mind piped up, sorely tempted to reply ‘Nothing major apart from my newly enslaved co-worker waiting for me naked in our office yesterday morning. Or did you mean what happened today, where another one tried to rape me?’

If only to see if Sanchez’s expression would change.

But after a glance in Detective Dunmayer’s direction, and seeing her expression again, he refrained. Or at least went off on a slightly different tack.

“No. Well. There’s only one other worker in my department at Harrison, and she called in sick today.” A hesitation. “And just to be completely honest,” (Hah!) “This accident... or whatever it is... will probably result in my looking for a new job soon. I’ve come to realize that I need to find something to do that I’m better at doing. I’m not really the greatest materials purchaser in the world.”

“I see. What is this co-worker’s name? The one who called in sick today, not the one you spilled the coffee on?”

“Suzanna. Suzanna Marie Taylor. Bill Harris was the man with the coffee. I don’t know Suzanna’s home address or phone number off hand, but she lives here in town. Up in Pangborn Heights. That couldn’t be important, could it? That she was sick?”

“Probably not.” Very bland, but Sanchez scribbled a short something in the notepad as he said this. “Still, do you know what the problem was?”

“Um, no. I didn’t hear any specifics. Oh... there was one other thing I forgot to mention. She... Suzanna... had sort of a bad scare yesterday; she heard that her father had been in some kind of accident. I drove her over, but it turned out to be nothing.” For a moment, Tom hadn’t been very sure if he shouldcomplicate things for him and Suzanna by mentioning these incidents, but since various people at work had heard about them, he decided it was better to do so.

Still... What was that Twain quote that Professor Barett at State had always liked so much? About telling the truth? Something to the effect that you never had to remember anything if you did so?

“I’m sorry to hear that Ms. Taylor’s week has been so traumatic.” Another scribbled note. “Do you feel that you and she get along in the office?”

“Yes. Absolutely. We’ve always worked very well together. As well as I could. If... when... I do go looking for a new job, I’ll miss her.”

“Mm. You will have to forgive my additional rudeness, but we must now turn our attention to your personal life. You aren’t married?”

“No.”

“No significant attachments?”

Tom considered, and realized he had no idea what a true answer to this question might be.

“There is someone in my life. It’s not Suzanna, if that’s what you might be thinking. She and I have never been more than friends. As for the other woman... oh, hell. Her name is Erika Johanson. You’ve already met her. She’s the tall redhead who was here in the room when we arrived. She wasn’t lying to you when she said she was just a friend. It’s... just hard to say at the moment exactly what direction our relationship is going to take.She’s never given me the slightest indication that she wanted to cut my brake line, though.” Another urge to stifle; his hand wanted to creep up and rub at the cheek that Erika had slapped.

“Ah. And before you met Miss Johanson, you have had no recent relationships that... ah... went sour?”

“No. No ex-girlfriends or ex-wives lurking around anywhere. None that I’m immediately aware of anyway. No children.”

“That you are immediately aware of.”

Tom blinked. That was almost a joke.

“No. None that I am aware of.” Again, he looked at Detective Dunmayer. If she hadn’t spoken that one bombshell of a sentence, Tom would have begun to suspect that she was a prop that Sanchez lugged around with him, to be placed in a corner and provide a little atmosphere during his interrogations.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what she was.

Sanchez closed the notebook, stashed it and the pen away. He took the tape recorder, turned it off, put it away as well.

“All right. I believe that will be all for now. We won’t take up any more of your time tonight, Mr. Woodhue. As I said before, you’ll have to fill out a complete accident report at the station. And make arrangements for your car. Detective Dunmayer and I will of course be touch with you in any event, if and when we learn anything further.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

From yet another pocket, Sanchez extracted a business card and passed it to Tom, who took it with his free hand.

“I realize this may not be possible, but please try not to worry too much at this stage. This may all still turn out to have been an accident. Even so, on our way out, we will ask hospital security to keep their eyes open tonight, and we will have an officer come by in the morning to check on you. You will be discharged then, I assume? Your injuries do not appear to be too serious, fortunately.”

“Yes. That’s the plan.”

“Good. If you think of anything else that might be useful, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. And may I have your home phone number?”

“Uh, sure. Here.” Tom fished around in the box that held his possessions, and extracted one of his own Harrison cards. He borrowed Sanchez’s pen and scribbled his home number on the back of it, giving both back to the detective. He retrieved Sanchez’s card from the blankets and fingered it, not looking at it. No reading, after all... “I’m just sorry you got dragged into this.”

-You have no idea how sorry. For everyone concerned.—

“It’s our job, Mr. Woodhue. Talk to you soon.”

He and Sanchez shook hands and the two officers departed. Dunmayer brought up the rear. As she passed through the door, she looked at him again, one last quick glance over her shoulder. She tried to keep it the same as all the rest, but unless Tom was mistaken, there was now a definite strain of puzzlement present that hadn’t been there before...

Erika trudged back down the still-endless corridor in the direction of the elevators, back across the desert. The first part may have been a total off-the-cuff fabrication, but what she had said just before leaving hadn’t been a lie at all; part of her did indeed want, desperately want, to find a bathroom somewhere and try to masturbate herself into that orgasm that she had repressed before. She would definitely have to powder her nose after that...

But the rest of her mind knew that such things were pointless.

-More than friends indeed. I can only orgasm now when I’m with Mr. Woodhue. When I’m in the same room with him. Then it becomes easy to orgasm. So easy. Especially now when he.. he...—

The thought drifted away. She had a more immediate problem to deal with.

Suzanna. Where had she disappeared to?

An eternity passed. Erika passed a long-haired man carrying a helium balloon on a string. Mountain ranges rose and fell, and the continents and constellations shifted into new positions. She arrived back in the general area of the elevators, and did a slow methodical scan off in every direction. The way she had come, the nurse’s station, the elevator doors, and...

She looked down the other hall, the one that ran away from Mr. Woodhue’s room. She was sure that Suzanna had stepped off the elevator with her, so the blonde woman had to be down here somewhere...

Had to be...

There was a corner there, just a few steps down the hall, and she went to it and poked her head around it.

Revealing a small waiting room of sorts, with all the usual things that you find in such places, up to and including bad paintings and two people reading magazines, one seated on either side of the low center table. The first of these people, the nearest, was some doctor or something whom Erika barely glanced at, because the second was Nina.

And, Erika saw with a large and immediate gush of relief, leaning up against the dark-haired woman’s chair was the painting. Nina hadn’t noticed her, and she was tempted to just slip away, but she still didn’t know what had happened to Suzanna.

So she came into the waiting room and spoke.

“Hi, Nina.”

Nina blinked and looked up from her reading. An odd expression flitted for a moment across her face, but then she flashed a smile and spoke cheerfully. She tossed the magazine onto the table in front of her as she spoke.

“Erika! Hi!”

Erika went to her and gingerly perched on the seat next to her. Had something changed about Nina? She suddenly seemed different somehow...

“You’ve... um... seen Suzanna?” Erika flicked her gaze in the direction of the painting.

Nina looked as well before answering, her gaze perhaps lingering a little longer.

“Oh yes. She came in a little while ago, and I asked her to go get some food down in the cafeteria, since I didn’t get a chance to eat before I heard about the accident.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Are Tom’s family still here?” A pause, and Nina looked at the man opposite before going on. “Suzanna said she didn’t want to intrude while they were visiting with him.”

“I see. Yes, that was probably for the best.” Erika wasn’t sure if she should be grateful to Suzanna or try to strangle her the next time they met. “They are still here, but right now, a couple of police officers are with him. Interviewing him about the accident.”

“Oh. I hope they won’t take too long.”

“I’ll have to get back to them. Richard and Beverly; they are probably going to be wondering what happened to me before too long. You can hold down the fort here?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Talk to you later, then.”

Erika stood up again and left the room. Then she noticed a sign pointing towards the bathroom, and followed it.

OK. Maybe she couldn’t get herself off, but she could still go pee, damn it.

And powder her nose.

Suzanna arrived at the entrance to the cafeteria and scoped out the scene. A large square of a room with banks of suspended panels forming the low ceiling. A series of watercolor landscapes lined the red-gold walls (the paintings weren’t great, but were still a major improvement over the ones back up in the waiting room), and scattered here and there among the tables were the various components of a collection of large potted ferns. In total, it wasn’t much better than the lobby had been... but it was a little better. At least here people were eating, and not just waiting, bored and/or suffering; that evidently made a major difference. Food, even hospital cafeteria food, is one of the great pleasures of life.

Suzanna turned her attention to the crowd the occupied the tables, soaking in all the textures, looking for any trouble. There was nothing of immediate concern, but she noted with a mild flicker of surprise that she recognized three of the faces at the tables. One was a tall blonde man, name unknown, whom she had seen six months and five days ago in the produce department at MegaFoods filling up a paper sack with mushrooms. (He was eating with... his wife, yes, definitely wife, an equally tall and equally blonde woman.) Second, back in a far corner alone at a table was a nurse named Carlie Gould who worked at Memorial Clinic. And the third... she was a lanky woman sitting at one of the nearest tables and talking to a totally unfamiliar face, a short black lady with a very frizzy hairdo.

Tammy Knowles. Tammy had been another of Suzanna’s co-workers at Parmenter’s, and they had been friends, but Suzanna hadn’t seen her since she (Suzanna) finally had had enough of the job and quit. Like her dinner companion, the freckled brown-haired woman was wearing a drab two-piece uniform and a laminated badge on a long strap around her neck, that seemed to indicate she was a nurse’s assistant, or something similar, down in the lower levels of the hospital pantheon. The birds were surprised; they would have never guessed in million years that Tammy would have the dedication and ambition to get a job like that. Still, the two women’s textures both seemed bright and cheerful enough, and Suzanna was happy for Tammy. She would have gone over to say hello...

But she had been assigned a mission to perform.

And so, she turned away.

On the other side of the room, there was a desultory line of people, most of them carrying his or her own plastic tray. This line slowly snaked its way by the various food and beverage selections that were on offer in a jumbled row of glass cases, the whole thing looking like fossilized museum exhibits.

Suzanna pried the top tray free from the waiting stack and joined the end of the line, standing behind a man who sported a scraggly goatee. (He was quite satisfied about something, but the birds couldn’t tell much more than that.) They all crept forward, and gradually people filled in behind her. After various salads and pasta selections, the sandwich counter finally loomed into view and Suzanna gravely studied the various selections stacked before her in their little triangular plastic coffins. They all looked terrible, but since this was what Nina ordered, she had to try and make the best of a bad situation. Maybe Nina wouldn’t make Suzanna actually eat hers... Finally, she sighed and took two turkey-and-cheese combinations, and moved on. A few steps down the way there was a glass-fronted case filled with various cold beverages, and she took a can of soda for herself, carefully arranging it in the proper place on the tray. Then came the hot beverages, and a Styrofoam cup of instant tea for Nina, the little white bag methodically dipped one, two, three times. Last of was the dessert section; unlike everything else on display, many of the various pastries and mousses actually appeared to be eatable. Suzanna calculated how much money she had left, and was mildly tempted to take a package of Zippos, but of course Nina didn’t like junk food. Suzanna sighed again and selected two Fuji apples instead. She added three paper napkins from a metal dispenser and proceed to the cashier, a slouching Korean man barely out of his teens whose textures were sour and prickly, a long-pickled cactus stored in a jar under fluorescent lightning. Suzanna gingerly poked Nina’s money in his direction and got back some change, which she quickly placed in its appropriate place on the tray. She left the cafeteria, went back down the hallway against the flow of incoming diners, back to the door to the stairs, carefully holding the tray level. Through the door, up the stairs, back and forth eight times, to the fourth floor. Hipped the door open.

Down the hall.

Back into the waiting room.

Nina was still there, and she had been joined by a man in a white coat and glasses, whose texture-

The Ninabird reacted with blinding swiftness, exploding back into the light and grimly clamping a collection of mental claws around Suzanna’s various muscles, to keep her from screaming or trying to hit the man with the tray. All in the same motion, she scooped up the rest of the birds and jammed them into a tiny soundproof cage in a far distant corner of the sky, locking them in and swallowing the long black key. One of them managed to slip somehow through the cracks of her clutching talons, a mad tiny thing made of glowing yellow feathers that circled high up into the endless blue, around and around, screaming a single thin note of panic over and over.

-Killer!Killer!Killer!—

She ignored it. She shaped her (physical) mouth into a smile and pointed it in the direction of the Killer and he gave it back to her.

It was a very impressively constructed smile; it almost completely drowned out his texture.

But only almost.

And what that texture now flashed, now that he was looking at her...

The yellow bird screamed louder, its orbits becoming even more wobbly and erratic. Emotions weren’t exactly the Ninabird’s forté, especially ones like fear or doubt, but she was still glad that with the rest of the birds stuffed away she could only read a fraction of the things that the ‘other’ Suzanna could.

The Killer turned off the smile and went back to reading his magazine.

The Ninabird walked to the table. Put down the tray in front of her creator with a clunk. Sat herself down, kept her back straight. Crossed her legs.

“Have any problems?” asked Nina (Nina the accountant) as she scraped up the change from the tray and stashed it away in her purse. This task completed, she unfolded one of the cheap napkins and spread it meticulously across her legs before picking up her sandwich.

“No.” The Ninabird took the other sandwich, and ever so carefully took hold of its clear plastic wrapper, between finger and thumbnail, and peeled it slowly away. As she did these things, she methodically listed her options.

-We can’t just sit here.—

-I could just let the rest of the birds loose. Let them start screaming after all.—

She framed the yellow thing in the glowing red gun sights of her interior gaze. It showed absolutely no signs of losing energy or volume.

-No. Not yet. It may very well come to that before this is over, but not yet.—

Discarding the wrapper onto the tray and extracting half of the sandwich, she took a bite. Chewed it to careful pulp. Swallowed. The bird that would have truly appreciated or hated the taste of the thing was also locked away out of reach, but still, it was almost exactly as bad as Suzanna had expected.

“Erika was just here. She says the police are talking to Tom about the accident.”

“I see.”

-Policemen. Go burst in on them? Tell them about him? No. He hasn’t actually done anything yet. To us. Here.—

She opened the pop-can, looking very deliberately not at the Killer but instead at one of the seascapes on the opposite wall. A tall rocky shore with the white and red finger of a lighthouse poking up in the background.

-Use the painting on him? No. We still don’t actually know if it will work on previously unexposed people. Can’t test it on him.—

She sipped at the can, and the colored sugar water went gurgling down her throat.

-Attack him? No. He wouldn’t break a sweat. And again, those policemen are right there. I would end up dead, or in jail, unable to serve the Master...—

“Suzanna? Are you all right?”

The Ninabird blinked and flashed a small internal smile of triumph.

-Ah. Yes. Of course. Perfect.—

“Actually, I don’t feel very well at all.” She calmly put down the can. She slipped the remaining sandwich back into its case, unfolded her legs into the upright position, reached over Nina and took the painting. “I need to go find a restroom.”

“What? Suzanna, come back here!”

The Ninabird ignored her, rose, and left the alcove, heading down the hall in the general direction of Room 423, holding the painting in a tight two-handed grip. She could see the Master’s relatives standing there down the hall in front of the room’s door. Monty Kelsey from the IT department at Harrison had joined them, and two other people were coming out of the room, a Hispanic man and a Caucasian woman with hair as dark as the man’s. The police, presumably. None of them had seen her yet, and she stopped.

The sound of heels coming up fast behind her. She tensed. No, not the Killer, but Nina.

The other slavegirl caught her arm, and the Ninabird stopped. Turned away from what she had been watching.

“Suzanna, what are you d—.“

Whatever she saw on the Ninabird’s face caused Nina to trail off and stare. The Ninabird spoke, her voice a hiss.

“You can’t see the textures. That man back there. All that pain, all that anger. Whatever happened to him, it was horrible. And he took all of it, and he made it into something even worse.” Away from the Killer’s immediate presence, she risked regurgitating the key, opening the Birdcage door just a crack, finding the right bird and extracting an appropriate metaphor from it before slamming the door shut again. “Like torturing feral sewer rats down in the basement until they are rabid man-eaters, three feet long. And he’s here because of us. He’s following us. He’s following Tom.” She glanced back the way they had came. No sign of the Killer, but he was still there, she knew it. He hadn’t gone anywhere. “He probably won’t try anything here. There are too many people around. But he might. And as soon as Tom checks out of here, he’ll be following us.”

Nina stared, her mouth working.

“But—”

“We don’t have time for this, Nina.” They were close to the elevators, and just then the nearest door opened, disgorging a tall thin bald man in a sweater and a short fragile-looking blonde woman wearing a feathery yellow (KILLERKILLER) jacket and skintight jeans. Otherwise, the car was empty, and she stepped into it, pulling Nina after her. She extended a finger and punched 12, the top floor of the hospital. A man, not the Killer, not the policeman, started to get in after them, and the Ninabird snarled at him:

“Take the next one.” Like Nina before him, the man glared and started to speak, then saw her expression and stepped hurriedly back. The doors shut and the car slowly started rumbling upwards. The Ninabird turned back to Nina. “We don’t have time. So for the moment, I’m taking over as Tom’s main assistant.”

“Taking over?” Nina recovered herself in an instant and her gaze went steely. “We had this conversation already, Suzanna. Or have you forgotten?”

“I remember all of my conversations far better than you. And as you say, you had that conversation with Suzanna, not with me.”

Nina took a step backwards, and her hand was sliding into her purse, her eyes now somewhat worried, but still sharp and cold as well.

“You? What are you? The author of Tom’s wonderful book...”

“No.” The Ninabird lifted the painting, glaring over its top edge. “I don’t know anything more about that evil fucking bastard than you do. And really, I’m still Suzanna. More or less. I still love Tom.” She realized something, another surprise. “Maybe not exactly same way you and the others do. But I still love him, and want to help him any way that I can. I’m changing, just like you, but I started my existence as a collection of the pieces of Suzanna that got... sheared off and locked away by the programming when she read Tom’s wonderful book and was made into his... oracle. Drive. Ambition. Authority. I can’t do everything that the ‘other’ Suzanna can now do, and the reverse is quite true as well. You set me loose, let me out of the cage that Tom’s wonderful book put me in, when you told to me to watch for a chance to program Erika. To try and forget things. It seems that even the author didn’t always get everything exactly right. But now... what am I becoming now?” She asked the last question to herself, not to the other slavegirl.

“But I didn’t—”

“Be quiet, Nina. Look at the spiral.”

“I- I won’t—”

Nina was now backed into the corner of the elevator.

“Look into the spiral, Nina.“

Nina’s eyes dropped, and looked at the spiral. The Ninabird shifted the painting back and forth, back and forth, just a little, twisting the spiral, pulling the other woman’s gaze deeper.

Nina’s eyes went slowly blank, and her shoulders drooped.

The Ninabird’s sex throbbed again, but like all the other distractions she ignored it. It would probably be easy enough to make Nina into Slave #2, to go along with Slave #3. Easier even than it had been with Erika. But no. They were in an elevator in a busy hospital. Someone could board at any time.

And somehow, it just wasn’t right.

Why?

It was so fucking frustrating, not having access to all that wonderful clarity, locked away on the other side of that thin door, so thin...

The door bulged threateningly, and the Ninabird wrenched her thoughts away from it. She made a decision. She was good at that, if nothing else.

“Damn it. This isn’t going to work. We need the Oracle back. We need all the other birds back in the sky. We’re getting further apart all the time. So I’m going to have to go away, and let the other half of Suzanna take over again. And you’re going to have to question her, Nina. Tell her to explain, and then take her fucking advice and act. Do you understand?”

Nina swayed a little, as if the Ninabird’s words physically impacted against her.

“I understand.. to ask Suzanna.. I don’t understand... what you are ta—”

“Yes. Never mind. Just do it.”

The Ninabird lowered the painting, and the cage exploded into twisted fragments, the rest of the birds pouring out in a colorful rush.

They pushed her back down into the darkness, and she went without resistance.

Nina blinked and focused.

What?

Where were they?

It came back to her. They were in the elevator. Suzanna had suddenly changed, and forced her into the spiral, and ordered her to..

She did a sharp turn. Suzanna was staring at one of the walls, holding the painting tightly in her hands, breathing heavily, her face flushed.

“Suzanna!” Nina snapped her fingers. “What just happened here!?”

Suzanna came back from wherever she was, and her gaze was now filled with the familiar washed-out spaciness. When she spoke her voice was high and breathless.

“Oh God oh God oh...” She took a deep breath and got control. “There was someone else here, wasn’t there? After that... after the waiting room, I don’t remember exactly—”

The car stopped and the doors slid open; they were at the ninth floor. Nina saw Suzanna turn the painting away, and they stood silently side by side. A skinny grizzled-looking maintenance man sauntered into the car. He was sporting a healthy mustache heavily streaked with gray, and he was dressed in a baseball cap adorned with the letters EGH, a checkered shirt and some jeans. In one hand, he held the handle of a large metal toolbox. He lifted an eyebrow at seeing the painting’s backside. Nina smiled at him brightly.

“Delivery.”

“Uh.” The man nodded. “Hope it’s better than some of the crap they’ve got in this place. That damn bird they strung up down in the lobby, thing always looks like it’s about to go for your neck.” The man pushed one of the other buttons and the car started up again. Nina and Suzanna stood in the back of the car and silently fidgeted until the man’s floor came, (eleven, one below the top) and he was gone again without a backwards glance. No one got on to replace him, and Nina immediately resumed the conversation, keeping her voice low.

“You don’t remember?! What do you mean, you don’t remember? You remember everything! I know, I was like you, until...” She trailed off and the machinery hummed, both inside and outside of her head. Inside, there was suddenly a picture, a photograph mounted where one hadn’t been before, a mug shot of that man back in the waiting room, and it had a symbol stamped on his forehead, something halfway between a bull’s-eye and a question mark. “Until I changed.” Having said that, she forced herself to stand and wait until the car arrived, and they had to get out. This floor was different from the one they had left, evidently dedicated to hospital administration offices instead of actual patient rooms. There were polished wooden doors leading off here and there, and a woman sat behind a large reception desk (again made of wood) not far away. Spiritually if not physically, she was a close twin for the first woman back down in the main reception area and she looked at the two of them in a way that was half ‘may I help you’ and half ‘scram’. Nina forced a smile.

“Oops. Sorry. Wrong floor.” She herded Suzanna back into the car, and then thumbed ‘7’, and they started back down. “Fine. You... the other you.... told me to tell you to explain. So explain.”

Suzanna blinked, and again turned the painting so the front couldn’t be seen by anyone entering the car as she started to recite.

“When we read Tom’s wonderful book, it assigned roles to each of us, using whenever possible facets our existent character. It took a day or two for those roles to fully emerge; I don’t know if this was intentional or not on the part of the Author. In any event, I have been made into an oracle, a processor of information. You have been made into an... enforcer. You know things that you didn’t know before, don’t you. Dangerous things. Ways to hurt people?”

“Yes. I do. I thought that I was just remembering things that I half-heard somewhere. My grandfather, he was—” Nina waved a hand and dismissed the thought. “No, that’s not important now. You’re saying that the book put that information in my mind?”

“Yes. I believe so.” Head tip. “And I’m almost positive that if Tom had allowed Erika to finish reading his wonderful book, to be properly programmed, she would have become... something else. A leader, I think. The one directly under Tom who gives the day-to-day orders to you and I, freeing him up to worry about any big problems.” Suzanna released her grip with one hand long enough to rub her temple. “She may still become this. Eventually.”

“What big problems?” Nina felt the sudden urge to pull the gun out of her purse and blast something, anything.

“Problems like that horrible... thing in the waiting room.” Suzanna shuddered. “He knows even more about hurting people than you do. Like the other half of me said... he’s here because we’re here. Because I’m here. He’s very good at hiding his texture, but even so, it was all over him when he looked at me. I don’t know why or who sent him. The Author, or the police, or someone...”

“Maybe no one sent him.”

“No.” Spoken with absolute leaden authority. “He’s not that type of monster. He doesn’t go around hurting people because he enjoys it. Things like him are always sent.”

The car reached floor seven and the door opened. Suzanna’s words had made Nina half-expect to see the man standing there, waiting for them, but there was no sign of him, only a small shriveled-up individual in a wheelchair, which was being pushed by a burly sunglass-wearing man, his muscular arms covered in tattoos. The four of them silently swapped places, and the car doors slid shut. The floor was set up pretty much like the fourth, with a nurses’ station and hallways leading off. Nina selected one of the latter entirely at random and marched down it, trailing Suzanna in her wake. It didn’t take long to find another waiting room, this one a little larger than the first, with colorful abstracts on the walls. The only occupant was a heavyset balding man wearing a set of blue overalls, asleep and gently snoring in one of the chairs.

Nina looked at the man, looked back at Suzanna, her eyebrows raised inquiringly.

Suzanna barely glanced at the man.

“He’s harmless.”

They installed themselves in a couple of chairs. Nina spared a look around. You’d hardly know that anything had happened. “All right. So, I have to make the decisions. For now.”

“Yes, Nina. If you want me to be around to read textures for you, and to remember things.”

“OK. Will he... the other one... try anything here in the hospital? Whatever it is that he wants from us?”

“I don’t think so. Like I said before, there are just too many people around right now. But when we leave for the night... go home... He might do anything. I didn’t actually see his texture long enough to be any more sure.”

“Could we use the painting on him?”

Nina said this with a bit of a struggle.

-Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.—

“Tom doesn’t want us to.”

The words twisted in Nina’s head, bits of machinery tightening themselves down, clashing against each other. There was pain.

“Yesss... but if it was a choice between that and dying, I think.. I hope he would understand. If we did... if we got Tom’s permission, would it work?”

“Insufficient data to say. It certainly works on us, but we have been exposed to the original. This copy hasn’t been tested yet on anyone else.”

Nina sat.

The machinery pounded, twisting tighter, other pieces now balancing and weighing facts and options, like stacks of slick gold weights.

A data-card was spat out, covered with marching rows of numbers, like a horde of little black ants.

Ants going off to war.

Nina stood up, and Suzanna looked up at her, blinking a little.

“Fine. You say I’m the Enforcer. You say it’s my job to act. So we’re going to act.”

Arnold dunked the mop into the bucket and swirled it around for a moment, whistling idly through his teeth as he did so. Finally he extracted the dripping cleaning implement and slopped it down onto the hall’s floor tiles, sending out the usual pray of soapy water. He began to push it back and forth, back and forth, in time to his tune. As he did so he changed the whistling to words in mid-line:

“—turned around and gave me a wink. She said I’m gonna make it up right here in the sink” More water. Slop slop slop. “It smelled like turpentine and looked like Indian ink. I held my nose, I closed my eyes. I took a drink.” He broke off and gave his hip a little thrust before going on. “I didn’t know if it was—”

A door popped open and Arnold broke off with a start. People coming out of damn near everywhere tonight. What was the fun of being a damn janitor if you couldn’t have the place to yourself?

A man appeared, his suit in disarray; Arnold vaguely recognized him as one the daytime Harrison stiffs; someone from the sales department or something. The man saw Arnold and gave a small but very noticeable jump. He then plastered on a smile, and suddenly in spite of his disarray, he was Mr. Smooth.

Yup. Definitely sales.

“Oh. Hi there. You didn’t just see...” He trailed off, his fingers automatically straightening his tie.

“Yeah, man?”

“Nothing. Never mind. I just had the damnedest dream.” The man wandered off down the hallway towards the front door, following the path of the tall scary-looking chick in the overalls who had gone by before. Arnold watched him go, then shrugged and returned to his work and his song.

“Crazy, man... ‘I didn’t know if it was day or night. I started kissin’ everything in sight. But when I kissed a cop down on 34th and Vine,” Hip. “He broke my little bottle of... Love Potion Number Nine...’”