The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Knock knock?”

Fran brought up her head at the sudden sound of the voice. From her corner of the accounting office opposite Fran, Kristen also peered out from behind her computer terminal.

“Oh, hi... Tom.” Fran smiled at the curly-haired man who stood in the doorway, and automatically clicked off the radio sitting on her desk in mid-commercial. As she did these things, she looked at her co-worker and suddenly the expression felt oddly brittle, like someone had abruptly slapped a mask over her face.

“Fran. Jim just told me we were playing pass the paperwork again, and that you needed these when I was done with them.” He took a couple of steps closer to Fran and her desk and thrust a pile of papers at her. “All of that trouble we had last month with the Yankovich account?”

“Yanko... Oh! Right! Thanks, Tom.” She took the papers with the caution normally due fragile china and placed them in a bare patch next to her own computer.

Tom hesitated.

“Is.. is there something else?” She stared up at him from behind her glasses, and absently pushed a strand of escaped auburn hair back into place behind her ear.

He shifted nervously and gave them both an odd glance. “Huh? Oh... Nina isn’t around?”

“She had to step out for a minute. Weren’t you two ever able to get together?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Barely. It was strange how hyperactive her senses had suddenly become. “Oh, that. Yeah, we took care of that. It’s something else. Nothing important. Talk to you later. You, too, Kristen.” He nodded to the sandy-haired woman at the other desk. She smiled back silently and he disappeared back into the hall.

“Oooohhh...” To her surprise, Fran felt something hot and sticky slowly unknot itself inside her body, something that had been forming there and getting bigger and bigger without any awareness on her part. “Why didn’t I ever notice it before? That man is so... so...” She shook her head, the gray-suited accountant part of her mind grimly stepping forward and trying to get her thoughts sorted and organized. Then she realized she had spoken aloud, and shot a nervous little glance at the other desk. To her surprise, she saw a reflection of her expression in the other woman’s face. Kristen looked at the empty doorway, her pretty if somewhat plump features displaying confusion.

“Has he lost weight or something? He looks... different.”

“I...”

“He doesn’t have a girlfriend, does he?”

Fran thought again about that almost-half-a-smile of Tom’s. She thought about Nina. Strange shades of feeling came and went in her mind, clashing nastily with each other as they passed in parade.

“Maybe... maybe he does. Now.”

“Really? How are you going to break the news to Harold and the kids?” Kristen’s head swiveled. Her tone was surprisingly vicious.

“Not... not me.” Fran glared back at the other woman, feeling the flush creep around the back of her neck. “But not you either.” Their gazes clashed over the top of their computers and...

Fran blinked and rubbed her eyes for a moment. Her thoughts fizzled like damp fireworks then reformed.

“I... I’m sorry, Kristen. I didn’t mean to...” She looked around. “What were we talking about...”

“I thought that you’d...” Kristen trailed off as well and stared at own screen. Like Fran, she wore glasses, and there was a green glow reflected in her lenses. Fran knew that Kristen was looking at the large green bouncing number 42 which for some obscure reason was her screensaver. “It’s just that...” She shook herself sharply, like someone waking herself up from a creeping doze. “You think poor ol’ Tom finally found himself a girlfriend? Who?”

At that moment Nina walked back into the accounting department, carrying her neatly-squared pile of photocopies, cool and polished as always. Fran made a silent nodding gesture, and Kristen raised an eyebrow. Fran spoke, careful, studying.

“Nina. Tom was just in here looking for you.”

The dark-haired woman turned, maybe just a little too hastily. Was the department’s resident ice princess suddenly just a bit flushed? Just for a moment?

“Oh? Did he say what he wanted?”

“No.”

“Oh. Must not have been too important then.” Nina went on to her desk. The other two women exchanged a final pair of slightly smug raised eyebrows and looked back to their own work. The number 42 vanished, replaced with whole strings of its fellows...

Erika Johanson sat in the chair in her living room and stared at a narrow stretch of the striped blue and green wallpaper, between two paintings. The silence was thick and choking, but better than the endless tick—tick—tick of her grandmother’s old clock. She’d finally stopped the pendulum, because the godawful sound seemed to be slowly chewing into her brain. It had taken a great deal of effort not to just snatch the clock off the shelf and smash it hard to the living room carpet.

Yes, the silence was better. All was silence.

But gradually, the tall red-haired woman became aware that this was no longer true; the silence had been broken. She let go of the muscles in her neck, let her chin drop so she was looking down towards her feet, which were bare as always when she was indoors.

Willikins was curling his trim striped body back and forth across her ankles and mewing with exaggerated piteousness.

“Oh. Of course.” Her voice was flat but not robotic. Far from it. It sounded, in fact, like she was struggling to keep some intense emotion in rigid check.

Which was exactly what she was doing.

She rose from the chair carefully, ever so carefully, and walked rigidly into the kitchen, the ‘starving’ feline helpfully leading the way to the refrigerator. She opened the fridge door and cold clinical light spilled out into the dark room, across her face. Cold. Chilly. Controlled. It felt nice. She stood there for a second, almost smiling. Then she took the half-emptied can of cat food off of one of the shelves and let the door swing shut with a muffled clunk. Still moving with exaggerated caution, she turned and fished a spoon out of the silverware drawer. Another turn, and she loomed over the gleaming metal cat bowl sitting nearby on the spotless tiled floor. She scooped out a glob of the noxious brown substance and plopped it into the waiting receptacle. A violation of perfection. After the nirvana of the refrigerator light, the sight of the food dripping... oozing... in the bottom of the bowl made her want to vomit. Or scream.

-I can’t hold it much longer.—

-When the hell is she going to get home?—

She turned away, gagging silently at the sound of Willikins greedily pouncing on and slurping up his dinner. She opened the fridge (bliss...) and put the food back on the shelf from which it had come, back into the niche to which it had been assigned. Washed the spoon and rubbed it scrupulously dry with a dishtowel. Clean, precise, metal again. Returned it to the proper drawer, listening to the soothing click of metal against metal. Towel back on the rack, carefully folded. Back out to the living room and back into the chair, feet on the carpet, side by side and neatly aligned. Although the thought produced a fresh surge of nausea, she supposed she should eat something herself. She hadn’t eaten since... when? Yesterday? She had only been drinking her morning tea when...

It had happened. She wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, exactly, but it had happened. Something about... about... Nina?

She couldn’t remember anymore. It all fuzzed and faded away, until a moment arrived when she was looking into a man’s eyes.

Mr. Tom Woodhue.

At that point, everything had snapped back into hideous, vibrant, 3-D, widescreen, Surround-Sound clarity. His name was Tom Woodhue and he was a co-worker of her neighbor Nina Hollenburg and that was all she knew about him. Except that she was going to have sex with him. Had to have sex with him. Starting from the moment their eyes met, her pussy had been screaming and raving and weeping, (literally and figuratively in the last case), louder and louder as the day went on, demanding that she go to him, run to him, crawl to him and spread her legs. Spread her legs wide and feel his massive powerful penis enter her, rip into her, allow her to finally cum. Cum massively. Again and again and again. She shuddered a little, gripping the arms of the padded chair with brutally-scrubbed hands. At first... she had just carried on with her yard work and then her latest painting, a large rather gaudy piece commissioned by a bank over on the Eastside. At first... their upcoming copulation had simply been... a fact of nature. But it had gotten worse with every passing hour. Infinitely worse. Infinitely more... real. The metaphorical earthquake was happening in her backyard and not on MCN safely framed between the car and deodorant commercials. As the day had crawled endlessly by and Tom Woodhue’s face kept swirling up out of the pigments on the canvas, she had finally thrown her paintbrush down and walked away from the easel, leaving the globs of paint to slowly dry on the palette. From that moment on, she had fought a doomed delaying action, one that led her around in tighter and tighter mental and physical circles inside the walls of the prison which now surrounded her. She beat on her punching bag. She cleaned house and then herself for a long while, the mindlessness of scrubbing floors and fixtures and skin good for a few hours. (She had tried masturbating while in the shower, and would have thrown up if there had been anything left in her stomach... the thought of anyone but Tom Woodhue touching her down there... anyone including herself...)

Then she had paced. Tighter and tighter. Around and around. Until she found herself here in her worn-out old armchair, her last refuge since high school against the assaults of an uncaring and hostile world. Fighting the last stand. She was going to have sex with Mr. Woodhue, but even now, she was not going to drive down to Harrison Manufacturing and fuck right there in his office, or his cubicle, or whatever. (Or maybe he worked right on a shop floor or something wouldn’t that be fun ha ha.) She—was—not. She would hold out and get his home address from Nina when the woman finally came back, and then Erika would go to him there.

This started up a stream of thought which had already cut a well-worn channel into the landscape of her mind, like puss flowing from a wound. Why did Mr. Woodhue have to have an unlisted phone number? Confirming this fact had been one of her other delaying tactics. She’d even logged on and tried to find it via the net, with no luck. She could be waiting at his house right now, waiting for him to get home, standing by his front door, watching him walk towards her...

She could see what was going to happen next, but it brought no pleasure, no relief, coming to her as if she was reading the information off of a faded decades-old newspaper headline: ERIKA HAS SEX WITH TOM WOODHUE. For the five hundredth time, she killed the scene, wiped it from her mind, knowing it would be back soon, very soon.

Then, abruptly, a new, horrible, thought surfaced from somewhere deep in her mind, something that hadn’t occurred to her before, that maybe she hadn’t allowed to occur because it was just too ghastly.

What if Nina wouldn’t give her the address?

-She’s going to give it to me. In the same way I’m going to have sex with Mr. Woodhue, that stupid little tightassed twit is going to give me that address. If I have to beat it out her, I will. Gladly.—

And if she doesn’t know the address? Even after you beat her?

Erika twitched, still staring straight ahead.

-Then I’ll. I’ll. She has to know it. She’s his goddamn co-worker. She has to know. His phone number. His address. A key to get back into the building so I can get into the payroll department files. Something.—

And if she doesn’t?

-I’ll drive down in the parking lot of Harrison fucking Manufacturing and sit there in the fucking car and wait until morning, all right? Will that make you fucking happy? I’ll sit there and wait for him to arrive. Until morning. Hours.—

She was almost able to moan.

Another scene. Sitting behind the wheel of her battered old gray van, seeing him drive into a parking lot in... some car. That car he and Nina and Whatsherface had gone off in this morning, maybe. As good as any. Him parking, getting out, the sun bursting out from behind the clouds, her already running to him, tearing off her clothes, tearing off his clothes...

FLASH! ERIKA COPULATES WITH TOM WOODHUE!

A car engine pulling to a halt. Two of them, from the sound of it. She snapped out of her fantasy sharply and realized that this is what she’d been listening for, listening for the last four or five hours. Still moving slowly, she rose and walked to the window, pushing the curtain aside just enough to see out. No need to turn off the light in order to see into the gathering dusk; she’d been sitting in the growing dark ever since the sun had started down.

Yes, the cars had stopped in front of Nina’s. One was the car from morning; a car that she’d seen in front of Nina’s once or twice before, now that she thought about it. Two people were getting out of it, but even though one of them was Nina, her gaze only flickered over them, zipping back to the other car... This car was unfamiliar. Typical brown econobox. The man getting out of it, however, was very familiar. She’d had all day to study his features, his stance. One last clinging shred of dignity held her back, kept her from running out the door and throwing herself on him. Throwing herself at his feet. -You’ve waited this long,— she snarled at the bright wet thing that throbbed between her legs, getting larger and larger now that He was in range. -You can wait until he goes inside. I am not doing it out on the front walk.—

Yes you are, that same hatefully calm voice came back. If that’s where he wants you to do it, that’s exactly where you’ll do it.

She screamed silently at that voice, clawed at it with chewed-off mental fingernails and went to put on her shoes.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Thomas J. Woodhue was in a very bad mood. The day had not gone well. Or it had gone all too well; it depended on your point of view. Nina hadn’t been a problem; after one last long kiss in the car, he’d sent her off to the accounting department and he hadn’t seen her again all day, even during his brief visit to that part of the building. They had told Harrison that the ‘emergency’ with Suzanna’s father had turned out to be mostly a false alarm, and all was well on that front.

The problem had been with Suzanna. She had tried to follow his instructions, he knew that, but every five minutes he had looked up from his desk, she had been gazing at him, an expression of... dreamy lust... he supposed, her work laying untouched in front of her. It may have been that it was simply a case of having to work near him, but...

-No. The book’s effected them in different ways. Nina’s been able to scrupulously stick to her instructions, from the moment we all walked out of her front door this morning. The more time that passes, the more it appears that Suzanna has had a large chunk of... something... rubbed out in her brain....—

And then there were those strange looks and vibes he was getting from people... especially the women...

And the whole question of the book’s author...

His mind clicking and whirring along on newly-polished bearings, Tom realized that something would have to be done.

But all of that could wait until tomorrow. Right now, he was going to have one night of wanton carnal fun. This was why, after quick stops at his and Suzanna’s apartments for various important items, personal and otherwise, he had come back to Nina’s with his two new slavegirls; he expected to be making a lot of noise and it would be better if there were no...

His thoughts cut off. He had automatically set his legs to following his two slaves up the walk, onto the porch, and into the house. Now they all stumbled to a halt in the hallway.

“Eww!” Suzanna wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

Tom pushed gently past them both, automatically pulling the door shut behind him.

“I don’t know. Stay here until I see.” He walked cautiously down the hallway and into Nina’s compact but tidy living room. A reflection of its owner, really.

Or its former owner...

The smell was coming from the fireplace; it was obviously the remains of the book that was causing the eye-watering stench, but what...

Again he came to a mental and physical stop. The fireplace now contained a bubbled blackened mass that had started to push up against the small glass doors before dying and cooling.

-My God... we could have burned down the house..— Tom stared, then remembered the girls and spoke aloud.

“It’s OK... I think. Come on in.” The two women immediately moved to join him . He noted absently both had put down the burdens they had been carrying and were once again removing their clothes, even as they joined him in staring at the mess in the fireplace. He started to tell them to stop but then frowned and gave a mental sigh and dismissed the matter. Why bother? He redirected his attention to the fireplace, pulling open the glass doors to get a better look. As the doors swung aside, the black crud gave a tired sigh and started to collapse back in on itself, shrinking to about half its previous height...

“The book say anything to explain this?”

“No, Master.” A chorus.

“Why am I not surprised. But maybe that’s what always happens when you burn a leather-backed book...” Tom stepped closer, and stared at the charred remains. Something about them... He bent over to get a closer look...

There was a knock at the door. Tom jerked and looked in that direction. He glanced at the two now-naked women next to him, who now ignored the sound and the fireplace and everything else and stared back at him hopefully, their nipples erect and pointed at him like the tips of four relentless guided missiles. He noted absently that while Suzanna’s were bigger, Nina’s were far more elegant. Nina pulled off the clip that held her bun together, and once again her hair spilled down. The clip joined the rest of the stuff on the floor.

“Twice in one day. Geez.”

“Master?”

“Never mind. You two stay here, out of sight. I’ll go see who it is.”

He stalked back to the front door and yanked it open. Only as he did so did he wonder why he hadn’t just ignored it.

Erika Johanson stood stiffly under the dim porch light, her hands clenched at her sides. Even in the weak glow, he could see a rivulet of sweat roll slowly down the side of her neck, dripping out from under the attractive jags of her auburn hair. When their eyes met, she sagged microscopically, and her hands relaxed, or perhaps tensed in a new way.

“Oh, crap. Ms. Johanson. I don’t suppose that you...” He studied her expression and sighed, out loud this time. “No, you couldn’t come back later. Come in.” He stepped aside and she crossed the threshold on long stiff legs, dancer’s legs, not looking at him, but staring straight ahead, her gaze burning... or maybe freezing... or maybe both... a tunnel through the air down the hall towards the living room. Tom closed the door behind her and this time deliberately locked it and turned off the porch light.

They walked back into the living room, unspeaking. Suzanna and Nina were exactly where he had left them. Erika’s withering blue-green gaze flashed over the two other women, seeing them, categorizing them, dismissing them. She faced him and he sighed for a third time. His brain sighed, but his penis snapped eagerly to attention.

“All right. Let’s get this over with. Nina, Suzanna, please go sit on the sofa.” The two women moved to obey, and stared at him with wide eyes from their new position. “Very good. Now both of you, go to sleep. Dream about happy things.”

Their eyes instantly flickered shut and their heads lolled over, so that they were supporting each other. They looked very pretty sitting there, peaceful and relaxed. Tom bent over and pulled a small flat white square from one of the bags on the floor. He managed a smile, then turned back to Erika.

“Ms. Johanson?”

He led her into the bedroom and closed the door behind them.

They stood for a moment in the middle of the bedroom floor, looking at each other like two people about play a championship chess match. Then Erika took hold of the bottom of her grubby gray sweater with crossed arms and both hands, and pulled off the garment in almost a defiant fashion, the large black letters ‘ESC’ disappearing in the folds of fabric. She wasn’t wearing anything under it and her small nicely-shaped nipples were already erect and quivering. (Even better than Nina’s...) She dropped the garment on the floor and kicked off her sneakers with a couple of practiced motions. Again, there was nothing underneath the first layer. While Tom began unbuttoning his shirt and pulling off his tie, she undid her paint-stained jeans, and let them fall to the ground as well. Her sensible cotton panties quickly followed.

She crawled up on the bed that Nina had half-made before they left in the morning, and she lay down on her back.

She spread her legs wide and stared at the ceiling, not moving. He was aware that her hands gripped at the blue and purple checkerboard blanket like talons.

Tom stood at the foot of the bed, slowly pulling down his trousers. Even now, looking down at the sight before him, his penis was the only part of him, mental or physical, that was even remotely enthused about the situation.

So he covered the organ in question with latex and followed its eager lead up onto the bed and into the waiting target.

What happened next was wonderful, in an utterly hollow sort of way.

It went on for quite a while.

“So what happens now?”

Tom studied Erika standing very straight by the window, drumming his fingers nervously on the fabric of his pants, which he had slipped back on after they had finished. It was the first words that either of them had spoken since he had invited her into the bedroom. She hadn’t looked at him as she spoke, but continued to stare out of the window into the darkness of Nina’s fenced backyard, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. He didn’t reply for a moment.

“That’s entirely up to you, Ms. Johanson. I’m sorry this happened. You have no idea how sorry. I didn’t mean for it to. If want to leave and never come back, I certainly won’t try to stop you.”

She shot another of those deadly laser-like glances at him, then returned to her study of the darkness, or perhaps her own reflection.

“I just had the most intense sexual experience of my life in there. And that’s saying something. I’ve done it with some real pros.” Still looking out the window, she pointed back towards the bedroom, the sleeve of Nina’s extremely ill-fitting silk robe reaching only as far as her forearm. She re-crossed her arms and continued flatly. “And it was all exactly like I knew I it would be, even before I came over here. And now... Every time I look at you, hear... your voice, it feels like I’m going to melt... down there. And I want to... go back in there... with you again, right now. I want this so badly it hurts. I... I have to struggle just to stay calm... to form coherent sentences. I thought... assumed... prayed... that it would get better after I... did it... with you, but it hasn’t. Not at all. I’ve never come close to feeling this way about anybody I’ve done it with. Ever. Do you have any idea how frightening this is?”

“No.”

“And now you say I can just walk out of here.” Erika took a deep breath. “You... I... I think I would do anything you asked. Anything at all. If you just promised to...” She obviously had to force herself to say the word, and force herself she did. ”fuck me again afterwards. No. If you just let me touch you. Listen to your voice. Be in the same room with you. That’s how badly I need you. Most men in your position... they’d...” She let her head slowly tip forward until her forehead was resting on the glass. “I don’t know what they’d do. But you say I can just walk out of here.” She swallowed. “And you mean it. If I walk out of here now, you’ll never bother me again, never ask anything of me...” She broke off, and Tom realized the tall redheaded woman was crying. She looked at him again, her gaze and tone suddenly vicious. “Why couldn’t you have just been a total bastard? Then I could maybe hate you for what you’ve done... what’s been done. Whatever it is. And maybe I could work up the strength to walk away. But no...” She made a small snuffling noise. “You had to go and be a fuc... a goddamn decent human being.”

“Erika... I...”

“Shut up! Just... please just don’t say anything. Every time you open your mouth, you just make it worse. Oh God... so much worse.” The tears had already dried up. She pulled the drapes shut with a single sharp yank, turned away from the window and methodically unknotted the robe. It slipped off her thin well-toned body and puddled around her feet, adding to the strew of clothing already spread across the floor. She walked across the room, her head up, her back still straight, walking past the two sleeping women without a glance. Tom looked up from the chair as she stood over him for a moment. Then she slowly knelt down before him and looked him in the eye.

“I’d kill you, you know, no matter how decent you are. If I thought it would do the slightest bit of good.”

She lowered her head.

“But it wouldn’t. I can tell. I know. So. Like your two little playmates over there, I imagine, everything I have, everything I am, is yours. It’s not like I have much damn choice in the matter. But... but I don’t know how long I’m going to last, feeling like this... all... of... the... time. I just don’t... know.”

“Erika. Look at me.” She shuddered and raised her eyes again. Tom gingerly reached out with both hands and placed his fingertips on her cheeks, her temples. She moaned slightly as they came to rest. “I don’t know if this will help, but there’s something I’m going to try. I can’t imagine it will make things any worse. Do you want me to try and help you?”

“Please. Yessss... Anything...”

“O.K. I want you to think back. This morning, Nina...” a slightly guilty glance in that direction... “...brought you a book to look at. It was an old, leather-bound book with faded golden writing on the cover. Do you remember?”

She shook her head slightly between his fingers, staring at him.

“She showed you a picture of a spiral. Or something sort of like a spiral. Do you remember?”

“A spiral... no... I...”

“A spiral that didn’t seem to have a center, but was bottomless all the same. And the more you tried to find the center, the more the spiral pulled you in. Pulled...”

“Pulled... me... down...” Her eyes began to glaze slightly. His cock stirred. “Yes... Couldn’t... couldn’t resist... couldn’t look away... then I wasn’t able to... want to look away...”

“That’s right. Now do you remember the spiral now? Can you see it?”

She nodded between his hands, her lips slightly parted.

“Go down into the spiral, Erika. Down further and further. And... um... listen to my voice. Only to my voice.”

Erika’s eyes defocused entirely.

“Good. That’s right..” -I hope.— “Deeper and deeper into the spiral. Deeper and deeper...” Tom gently repositioned his fingertips on her soft skin, then continued, his Adam’s apple twitching. “Can... can you hear me, Erika?”

“Yes.” Her voice was suddenly quite calm, even slightly abstracted.

“What does the spiral make you want to do, Erika?”

“It... I want to find the center.” She spoke not with confusion, but earnestly, and like someone carefully picking her way across a minefield. “I have to... I need to find the center.”

“The center?”

“Yes.” Her head again bobbed a little amidst his fingers and in contrast to her measured words, her eyelids fluttered a little, showing white underneath. “The center of everything... I have to find it... and... Nina told me.. She told me what the center was.”

“What did Nina tell you, Erika?”

“She said... Tom... Mr. Tom Woodhue... he’s the center... And when... as long as... he touches me... looks at me... speaks to me... I’ll be at the center...”

Tom groaned, shook his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, they were as icy as a pair of mild brown globs can manage to be on short notice and with little training. Even his having read some of the book didn’t help much.

“Listen carefully, Erika. This is very important. Maybe the most important thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life. Nina was mistaken. I... uh... Mr. Woodhue is not the center.”

“He isn’t?” Erika’s brow crinkled, but her eyes remained glazed.

“No, Erika. You are the center. Erika Johanson. Each of us is the center, each of us has the center inside of ourselves. You have to find it there, not in someone else.”

“But the spiral...”

“The spiral doesn’t know where the center is. Remember? Nina had to tell you. Only Nina didn’t know either. Only you know. Because it’s inside of you. Where it’s always been. Do you understand?”

“I... Yes.”

“Good. Remember all of this, and come back up out of the spiral now. Come back, Erika. Come on. Wake up. All the way up” He lifted his fingers away, and she blinked, her eyes refocusing. She closed them for a long moment, and took a deep breath, lifting her face towards the ceiling. Then she lowered it, and she looked at him.

Her eyes shone with a luminescence that was almost physical. Tom groaned again, and copied her movement of staring up at the ceiling.

“It didn’t work. I should have known that I...”

He felt her hand on his knee, and looked down again.

Erika was crawling up towards him, smiling. It was a smile he’d seen before recently...

“No! Oh, no! It did work!” She breathed rapturously. “It’s gone! The craving is gone! I... I can think again! It’s all so clear now!”

“What is...” She slapped him, hard.

“That was for the pain. Whatever you said, whatever you meant, you were somehow responsible for, at the beginning of all this.”

“I—”

She silenced him with her lips. The kiss went on for eons, her hands entangling themselves in his hair, her naked body pulsing against his chest as the rest of the world stood silent and still. They hadn’t kissed before; they had simply done what they both knew they were going to do. This was unexpected and far, far more pleasant.

Tom finally broke off with a strangled gasp.

“But you just said...”

“And this is for the rest of it. I don’t need to have sex with you anymore, Mr. Thomas Woodhue. I just want to have sex with you. Whenever, wherever, however, you desire. I want to do whatever you tell me to do. You’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. I know I’ll never meet anyone better. And so I love you.”

“You don’t even know m...”

She kissed him again, while her hands struggled with some success to peel off his pants again. His penis emerged into the light, as ready now as it was just a short time before. They broke off again as she worked the pants off his hips, further down his legs.

“You... you know... Erika... this really is not helping my god complex at all...”

She lowered herself onto him, pulling his penis up into her now-eager body, whispering, even hissing, through her kisses.

“Shut up, Mr. Woodhue. Please just shut up...”

This time it was wonderful, in all senses of the words.

“That hurt.’ Tom moved his jaw back and forth, listening for cracking sounds.

“I work out.” She ran a finger down his cheek. Her head was tipped to one side, her smile soft and dreamy. Satiated.

“Obviously.” He fell silent for a moment, then spoke thoughtfully as he again studied the ceiling. “The spiral.” He sat at an angle in the chair, with the weight of Erika curled up in his lap, her legs still tangled up with his.

“What about it?”

“I think I understand now. Well... a little more than I did. I didn’t see how the book could effect you so profoundly when I didn’t give you a chance to read any of the actual text. The spiral is the key to everything. That spiral must be what breaks you. The rest of that book is... was... just... supplemental information. Teaching the reader how to be a good slave... or a good... well... effective master. There’s a... a connection between me and Suzanna and Nina now that is almost telepathic. One that I don’t feel with you at all, Erika. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Mr. Woodhue.”

“Can’t you call me Tom?”

“Do I have to? It wouldn’t be appropriate.” She traced the lines in his forehead.

Tom shook his head slightly, unintentionally pushing her finger away for a moment. “No, of course not. You don’t have to, I mean. And it’s better than the alternative, I suppose. I imagine your memory isn’t affected, either?”

“My... memory? Nnno. I don’t think so. What exactly happened this morning’s still a little hazy, but...” She frowned for a moment. “Should something have changed?”

“No. Like I said, that must have been in the rest of the book.” Tom smiled slightly. “I suppose I’ll have to teach you that keen slave position as well.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” He gave out one last, body-deflating, sigh. “Well, it’s been fun, Erika. You have no idea how much fun. But now we’ve got something to take care of.” He suddenly thought again of Fran and Kristen and other problems, and new doubts came swirling up. “Maybe more than one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Tom wordlessly pointed at the lump in the fireplace. Erika looked at it, and sniffed, the smell obviously registering for the first time in her mind.

“Ugh. I ask again, what’s that?”

“That’s what caused this whole mess to begin with. Could you please get up?”

“Aww. Spoilsport.” She brushed her lips across his, uncurled and slid off his lap. He got up as well, and looked at the other two women as he pulled his pants up once again.

“Girls, wake up.”

Suzanna and Nina both raised their heads and blinked a couple of times.

“Tom? What’s going on?” Nina asked, glancing at Erika nervously and half-covering her more intimate parts with her floating hands. Suzanna just looked at him blissfully.

“It’s all right, Nina. Erika understands now.”

“That’s a vicious lie.” Erika spoke the words humorously. “I still don’t know what the hell is going on.”

“Erika, Nina and Suzanna feel like you did, but it is all... better integrated... into their minds. I’m guessing the text of the book, the rest of the pictures... among many other things... conditioned them to feel good about it.”

“Oh. I think I see. And you did all of this with a book? That’s what the spiral was in? Like I just said, it’s still so vague...”

“I didn’t do anything, except buy the damn thing in the first place.”

He explained what had happened in the last three days and then what they knew, and what he theorized, about the book and its author.

“The guy must have been... a real charmer.” Erika commented once Tom finished. Her eyes went somewhere far away for a moment.

“Yeah, I imagine so.”

“He was evil.” Nina spoke up, and Suzanna nodded gravely. Both were still sitting on the couch, hands folded now in their naked laps. Erika frowned.

“You can say that and still be Mr. Woodhue’s slave? It’s because of this author person whoever he is that...”

Nina shrugged. “Mr. Woodhue is my Master and I love him. The author isn’t and I know what he was like. What more is there?”

“I see, I guess. So...” Erika faced Tom. “What happens now? You said we had something to take care of? Besides having sex again?” She grinned and gave her naked hips a cheerful little shake.

“Yes, unfortunately...” He walked over to fireplace and knelt down on one knee. Erika came to stand behind him. “Just before you... um... came over, I was going to check something here...” He took hold of the poker from Nina’s polished rack of fireplace tools, and gave the blackened mass a careful jab. The tip of the poker easily cracked a thin crust and tapped against something with a distinct metallic clank. The two of them gave a little jump. Tom gave a few more pokes, further crumbling the book’s remains and establishing that the object was a rough rectangle measuring a few inches on each side. He fished around with the poker’s hook and the thing finally popped into view, ripping free of the surrounding matter and clattering to rest on the tasteful gray bricks of the fireplace. The remains of the book deflated the rest of the way with a defeated-sounding sigh, leaving a sad little pile of quite ordinary-looking ashes.

They stared down at the thing before them. It was a small metal plate, looking sort of like a oversized gold credit card, except that some of its angles were off, as if it had been crudely chopped out of a larger piece of metal.

Erika placed her hand on Tom’s bare shoulder and in testament to his newly-hardened nerves, he gave only a little twitch. She spoke, her voice almost a whisper.

“Was that inside the book?”

“It certainly wasn’t flopping around loose. It must have been sewn up inside one of the covers.” He nudged the plate with the poker and the object slid across the bricks slightly, making a faint and quite prosaic scraping noise.

“But what is it?”

“I have no idea.” Still using the poker, Tom slid the card to the edge of the bricks. He put the poker back and took the fire-tongs. The tong’s grabbers clicked neatly around the card, and he lifted it closer to their faces, turning it back and forth. Even after being in the fire, the plate shimmered a little in the tastefully recessed overhead lights. One side was clearly blank. On the other...

Something was etched there, but with all the soot and clinging scraps, it was impossible to say exactly. They exchanged a wordless glance, and went into the kitchen, to the sink. Suzanna and Nina remained behind, sitting on the couch, watching them go, then sitting quietly and looking off placidly off into space.

Still being very careful not to touch the object, Tom scrubbed it with a brush that Erika had scrounged from under the sink. As he scrubbed, he heard an unexpected noise from behind him and he turned. Erika, still naked, was crunching into an apple she had swiped from a nearby bowl of fruit. She swallowed and returned his gaze without flinching.

“Hey, I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Uh. The symbolism struck me, that’s all.”

He went back to work. It took longer than he would have suspected, even applying some of the household cleaner he found in the same cabinet as the brush. Finally, the thing was clean, and the two of them looked at it together as it lay in the bottom of the sink amid the last few soap suds and leather scraps. After a while, Tom took the apple from Erika and took a few bites from it.

There was a symbol carved into the metal, an esthetic collection of circles and triangles, the overall result being vaguely eyelike.

And beneath the symbol, a single word, carved in stark angular letters:

LEUCHTTURM

Finally Erika spoke.

“What’s that mean?”

Tom took another bite of apple, chewed for a while, swallowed.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“But we’re going to find out, aren’t we?” She stared at him with wide eyes.

“Oh yes. Most definitely. We are going to find out.”

The children had finally been corralled and subdued for the night. Fran and Harold crawled into bed. Fran lay for quite a while, silently staring up at the ceiling. Her thoughts fizzed. Then she gently took Harold’s novel away from him, and as he protested, calmly turned out the lights.

As they did it, several times, she fantasized about doing it with Tom.

Doing it with Mr. Woodhue.

Kristen went to the apartment of male acquaintance of hers who had been trying for weeks, in a pathetically earnest sort of way, to get into her pants. She practically raped him, thinking all the while about doing it with Tom.

Doing it with Mr. Woodhue.

Doing it for Mr. Woodhue.

It was the best sex the four of them had had in years.