The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The house was huge.

Or so it seemed; it was hard to tell for certain. She stood out on the empty street among the clouds of dead twirling leaves and craned her neck back to view the looming bulk before her, built along hard firm lines but also blending with the night sky behind it, making accurate judgments impossible. It twisted against her eyes. One moment, it was an ancient castle, the next, a glittering modern thing, all tinted glass and steel.

This ambiguity bothered her a little, in a vaguely cold and methodical sort of way, but her head was filled with sparkling cotton candy, and it was getting worse, billowing clouds of it, sweet and suffocating.

She had always hated cotton candy.

A stronger wind came up and she floated forward along with the leaves, her bare feet only occasionally brushing against the scratchy pavement. Between the two huge black stones, past the wide moonlit lawns, up the steps to the large wooden door.

It was odd that these details did not waver in her mind like the rest did. The nasty shapes hacked into the side of the stones glowed with sharp brightness. They were familiar, recently familiar, but she couldn’t place them...

Unlike the rest of her numb feather-light body, her hand was heavy, so heavy, but she had to lift it, just had to. She reached with loathing for the black door knocker, a 3-D piece of obscene graffiti, but something worse than having to touch it happened: the door swung silently open, all on its own, and she was sucked inside.

As she disappeared within, she glanced up one last time and she finally realized with a horrible start what the house truly was; it was the old Tillinghast place, from Twin Pines, the housing development just north of the city where she had spent her childhood. She and her friends, no, all of the kids, even the most swaggering of the heroes and the bullies, had invariably walked on the far side of Elm Street when going past the long-abandoned home of the Tillinghast clan, if circumstances forced them to walk there at all...

She started to panic.

Down a long dark hallway with vague and crudely-carved openings off to the left and right. Truly down; it was a slope, steep and getting steeper. Spiderwebs, dust, everywhere. She dropped down, down, down.

Finally emerging into a vast chamber, lit with thousands of blue-tinged lamps and hung thickly with... with stalagamites, or whatever those things in caves were called...

Caves. She shuddered, and her breath started coming in short gasps. She hated being underground, always had; she remembered with sudden vivid clarity a screaming hysterical fit she had in a cave while a young girl on a family vacation, somewhere back east. It was much better now that she was grown, but even so she had always been rather grateful that the accounting office had an actual window, even if it just looked out on the parking lot, unlike many of the cubicles in...

In...

Accounting office? Parking lot? What were these things?

She couldn’t remember, and the panic-stick wound itself tighter around her vitals.

There was still a wide smooth path between the piles of stone droppings, and her body followed it, down, down, down to the center of the room. A last small island, surrounded by a vast black lake, on which floated clusters of lit candles. Things under the water’s surface plopped and splashed wetly.

Although she had learned how to swim, it was, like spelunking, not exactly one of her favorite activities, the same sense of stifling darkness, the walls closing in around you...

And the water was rising, she could see it steadily creeping up the sides of the rocks.

She was at the center of the room, on the island, and it was of course the exact same room in which she had had that childhood panic attack, with one or two important differences.

Her terror went very cold and still, without growing a bit smaller.

At the very center of the room was a throne, a massive thing covered with more of the ugly scrawlings. Clustered close together around the throne were women, several of them. Kneeling and naked, naked except for graceful but nevertheless deeply ugly golden collars which seamlessly circled their necks. Something was engraved on the front of each collar, an unblinking metal eye that saw far more than the two organic ones positioned above it.

She recognized the women, all of them that she could clearly see. Sally. Eve. Fran. Suzanna. Holli. Gwendolyn. Karen. her mother...

-But mom’s de-

The thought was cut off and ruthlessly strangled before it could finish. Her mother was one of the slavegirls.

One of these figures finally looked at her. It was Nina Hollenburg, from work. She was barely recognizable; like all the rest, her hair very long now and thickly matted, her body covered with smeared layers of filth. Her hands were bloody, very bloody clear up to the forearms. She smiled widely at the newcomer, her teeth replaced with a collection of fangs, white and strong and pitiless, a perfect match for the collar. Her eyes were two brown holes tunneled back into her head. She spoke in a flat sing-songy voice.

“Hello, my sister. Welcome at last. You got my message.”

The new arrival stared out from behind the strands of blonde hair that had spilled in front of her face. She couldn’t push them away. She found her own voice, just a whisper.

“Message? What message? Nina, what are you talking about?”

“You see now, don’t you? You see what you have to do? To save us, all of us? To save yourself? To save him?” She held her bloody talons curled up against her chest as she sang.

“Who? Save who?”

Nina did not reply, but her smile grew wider and rotated her head so that her dead gaze was aimed back to the throne. All gazes in the room were pulled in that direction.

Seated there, filling the space, was a man, tall, powerful, majestic without a trace of love or beauty. He had one long booted leg crossed over the other, and he twirled a long cruel-looking pitchfork in one enormous hand with careless muscular ease. The weapon was plated gold, like the collars, but underneath, it was cold hard iron, chilling even from this distance.

She had always hated large, overly muscular men.

His skin was red, the mottled swirling red of fire, and his eyes...

She finally screamed, and no sound came out, and he laughed, and it was the laugh, the one that she had dreamed about, again as a child, after one or another of creepy old Mrs. Ganweather’s particularly... vivid... Sunday school lessons. He reached out with the same easy grace and pulled her close and she couldn’t even struggle. Her naked flesh roiled under his diseased touch. The scent of hot brimstone filled the air, even as the icy water surged up around her ankles, foaming around her knees, higher and higher...

The things in the water crept up as well, coiling their streamers around her legs. She screamed again, and this time she couldn’t even open her mouth. He spoke.

“Him, Nina. You have to save him from me. And you know my name, now don’t you, my tender little morsel?”

“Noooo!” A choked wail.

“Only you can save Nina and the others. Only you can save him.” His eyes were getting bigger and bigger, flaming, spinning around and around as the water rose past her mouth and nose, poured down into her lungs and things followed it and she was drowning drowning forever and ever. “You know what you have to do. YOU KNO—”

“—W what I have to do.” She said the words calmly. Quite calmly. She glanced over at the man laying next to her in the bed, a lanky black-haired figure with pale skin and a few too many body piercings, still looking slightly pole-axed even as he slept. She had to struggle for a moment to pull his name from her memory. Angus, that was it. Poor sad Angus. She sighed. At least he wasn’t too muscular...

Muscular? She had been dreaming... what about? She couldn’t remember. A castle, a throne...

She idly fingered her sex for a while.

It didn’t matter. She slipped out of bed, collected all of her scattered things, left the small room and then the equally small apartment without a backwards glance.

She knew what she had to do.

The two of them sat across from each other at Nina’s round dining room table, and they looked at the thing laying between them. The card was now carefully sealed up in a small plastic freezer baggie, but it still somehow brought to mind the image of a loaded mousetrap, or an active land mine. It gleamed like a fang, well-used but not in any sense dulled.

Tom carefully placed his hands on the deeply-polished wood, one on either side of the golden card. The ‘eye’ engraved on the card stared up unwinking into the overhead light, which hung from a short but stout brass chain. All very tasteful, like everything in Nina’s home. Tom’s fingers clenched themselves, as if part of his mind were trying to move the card using telekinesis. He spoke half to himself, half to Erika.

“Leuchtturm.”

“It doesn’t mean anything no matter how many times you say it.”

He looked up at her. The redheaded woman sat with her elbows on the table, her head resting on her curled-up hands. The denuded apple core sat beside her, leaning slightly to one side in a defeated manner.

“Yes. Like I said, I don’t know what it means. But... now that I think about it... it does seem vaguely familiar.”

“Maybe you read it in the book.”

“I don’t... no.” He shook his head decisively. “I’m beginning to think that I’ve seen it around town somewhere. I clock a lot of drive time around these parts for Harrison, buying materials.”

“Is that what you do, at Harrison? I was wondering.”

“Yeah. Well, some other stuff too, but that’s the main thing.” He looked back down at the card again, wiggled the baggie a little with two forefingers.

“And what it is exactly that Harrison manufactures? Somehow, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten around to asking Nina for details.”

“Specialty mechanical components, mostly. We sell mostly direct to corporations, even have had a couple of minor military contracts over the years.” Traces of both pride and irony crept into his voice. “We’re now the biggest producer of self-sealing stembolts in the state. And if that big new contract with HTI comes through...”

“Self-sealing...? No. Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

Tom felt any vestige of his good humor drop away.

“Speaking of making a living... Nina told me, when we were driving to work this morning, that you’re some kind of artist?”

“At the moment, yes. Freelance work for various people. Newspaper ads. Magazines occasionally. Right now, I am... or I was... doing this godawful piece for this bank...”

“A painting, though.”

“Yes. Oil.”

“How good are you? At painting?”

She opened her mouth, obviously to say something snippy, then changed her mind and spoke seriously.

“Total honesty? I’m OK. I’m no master, never will be, but I’m a competent midrange commercial artist. I get by, both in terms of the art and the money. Guess in this day and age that makes me a master after all, doesn’t it? Why do you ask? I assume you’re not just making small talk here.”

He made an ambiguous gesture.

“Just thinking. Or rather, trying to think ahead for once.”

“Spill, Mr. Woodhue. Tell me what bit of nastiness you’re planning.”

At this last comment, he again lifted up his head. Again his fingers dug at the wood. He forced them to lie still.

“Nastiness?”

She shrugged a shoulder, a delightful gesture under the circumstances.

“It only stands to reason. That book dumped a load of black shit into your brain. Now you’re trying to use that fact to your advantage.”

“Do you remember the spiral, Erika?”

Instantly, her eyes started to glaze, and her head began tipping to one side, still resting on her hands. Her lips parted just enough to let the words slowly slip out, slow and perfectly formed. Again his penis sprang to attention.

“Yes, Mr. Woodhue. I remember the spiral.”

“Can you see the spiral, right now?”

“Yes, Mr. Woodhue. It’s pulling me down. Please don’t...”

Her eyes got wider.

Her neck looked like it had been snapped.

He hesitated maybe just a fraction longer than absolutely necessary before replying.

“Could you paint me a copy of the spiral?”

“st... I... No.” She shook her head, just a little, but spoke firmly.

“No?” He frowned. “Why not? It’s too complicated?”

“No.” Again her forehead crinkled. “It’s rather frightening... simple... actually. The problem is... I can’t... think...” her head gave an odd little twitch at the word... “and see the spiral... at the same time. I need to be... able to think... to paint.”

“Ah. I see.” He tapped his fingers together for a moment, thinking. “OK, then. Erika, listen very carefully.”

“Yes, Mr. Woodhue.” One of her hands was moving; it slipped down out of sight under the table. She was rubbing her naked sex, lightly, gently.

“In a moment, I’ll snap my fingers, and you will wake up. And when you do, you will be able to see the spiral in your mind, quite clearly, but looking at it will not... I repeat, not send you where you are right now. It will have no effect on you whatsoever. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Mr. Woodhue.”

“Good.” He lifted his fingers, then hesitated. “Oh. One more thing, Erika. From now on, you won’t fall into the spiral when someone just mentions it. Unless it’s me who does so, in person, and you want to, need to fall into the spiral. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Mr. Woodhue.”

He snapped his fingers.

Erika flinched sharply and sat up straighter, blinking a little before she spoke. She glanced down at the hand that had been stroking her body, as if puzzled.

“Man, that’s a weird sensation! But so good...” She shuddered and took a deep breath. “We’re gonna have to try it sometime after smoking a joint or two...”

He ignored these comments.

“Can you see the spiral, Erika?”

“Yes.” She promptly pointed at an empty patch in the air, off to one side, about head-height. “It’s right there. Do you need me to go down into it, Mr. Woodhue?”

“No, not right now. Now can you paint a copy of it?”

“I...” She looked at the empty spot, thoughtfully, tipped her head. She flicked at the spot with a finger, as if idly setting something to spinning. “Yes. I think so. I won’t be able to just whip it out overnight, though.” A pause, and another Erika Gaze, sharper as the effects of the spiral faded once again. “Just what are you going to do with it, once I’ve painted it? Why do you want it back, immediately after destroying the original?”

“I’m beginning to see that destroying the book... was both vitally necessary and a terrible mistake. We’re flying blind here, without any real resources. The book was a terrible temptation, but...”

“Are you recreating the damn thing?”

“Recreating?” He looked startled.

“I paint the spiral, and...” She hitched a callused thumb over her bare shoulder in the general direction of the living room. “The photographic memory twins out there recreate the text?”

“No! No. Absolutely not.” He stared at nothing, looking slightly horrified. “I really wish you hadn’t thought of that.”

“Sorry.” She quirked her mouth, but her eyes showed bits of genuine pain.

“It probably wouldn’t work anyhow, since the book was obviously lying to them in places, and if they tried to rewrite it... But that spiral... I have one or two ideas about using it... that may solve more than one of our problems.”

“Problems? Just how many problems do we have? Apart from LEUCHTTURM?” Indicating the card.

“Well, the most immediate one is carrying on with earning a living while we dig for info. We need find an explanation for this thing, and that’s probably going to take time and money. And Suzanna...” He shook his head.

“What’s wrong with her? Apart from being a brainless ditz?”

He glared.

“Oh. She wasn’t always like that?”

“No. That was a large part of the reason that I love... that I loved her. Not just that she was beautiful. She was smart and she was funny and she was caustic. She didn’t take any crap from anyone.” A pause. “A lot like you, actually. I think maybe you’d have liked each other a lot. And then this damn book comes along and casually takes all of that away from her. Maybe if I have an actual physical copy of the spiral again, I can... I don’t know, undo at least some of the damage. I don’t think even with a full copy of the book I could have fixed all of it, but I should have ripped that one page out of the book before burning the rest.”

Erika shrugged again, dubiously this time.

“It’s worth a shot, I suppose. But getting back to the L-Word again...” She tapped the card with a fingernail.

“Yes?”

“I do other things besides paint to pay the bills sometimes.”

“Like?”

“Like Internet research.”

“Really. Are you any good at it?” No humor whatsoever.

“Why do you keep asking me that? Yes, I’m good at it. Well....OK... As long as you remember that ‘research’ doesn’t mean ‘hacker’, and you aren’t planning to crack into the Pentagon’s mainframe or something. Although I know a couple of people who might be able to help us with that sort of thing as well....” She folded her arms, and went on in a more clinical tone. ”And if our author friend lived a long time ago, and was trying to be cryptic or something with this card business, then he couldn’t possibly have known how easy it is in these technological days to unearth these useless bits of trivia if you really put your mind to it.”

“All right then. Tomorrow...” He trailed off then resumed. “As I said. Back to earning a living, for all of us. Except Suzanna. After what I saw today... she probably won’t be able...” He made a complex noise and drummed his fingers. “Anyway. Despite what you said about finding information, we’re going to need money. Lots of it, probably, before this is over. For now... tomorrow... as soon as you finish the bank thing, or have a spare moment, or however it works in the painting business... start looking into this. At least find out what Leuchtturm means. It sounds... what... German?”

“I guess. And what, may I ask, are you going to do?”

“I have a couple of ideas I’ll pursue... during my lunch hour, I guess.”

“Fine. Be cryptic yourself, if you want.... Oh... hey... I just remembered... I think Nina told me that she took a couple years of German in high school. And even if she didn’t, we could ask—”

“No.” Very flat.

“Oh. Well, then, let’s go next door to my computer and do the Web-search thang” (She put a twang in her voice for the word) “right now; it’ll take about 30 seconds with a search engine. Unfortunately, that eye-symbol” Another tap on the card... “...is going to be a bit harder. Looking up words on the net is easy. Images without any text can be a lot more... hit and miss.”

“Well, do what you can.”

“OK. Let’s go next door.” She hopped up, a motion that was somehow both gangly and athletic, and she started towards the bedroom to retrieve her clothes.

“No.” As before.

She stopped like the word was a brick wall into which she had crashed.

“Why not?” She placed her hands on her bare hips, which she then shifted into an argumentative stance. “And why not ask—”

“I’ve been dumb about this, all of this. Too dumb. Come on and I’ll explain.” He got up as well. He carefully took the baggie, slipped it into the pocket of his pants and led her into the living room, to Nina and Suzanna on the couch. They stared up at him, as worshipping and hopeful as ever. Even so, for the first time he truly noted that there were differences in their expressions, especially around the eyes... He lifted his hand and lowered it again as he spoke.

“Girls. Sleep.”

Exactly as before, their eyes shut and heads tipped over. Suddenly their expressions were quite identical, wiped clean.

Tom and Erika went on into the bedroom. Tom again led the way, continuing on into the small attached bathroom. There he reached around Erika, closed the door behind them, turned on the water in the sink full-blast.

“What’s all this about?” Erika had managed to snag her clothes en route and was putting them on as best she could in the cramped space. There was the faint smell of lilac-scented air freshener discretely emanating from somewhere, a pleasant change from the lingering book-stench. “You can’t possibly think that someone has bugged—”

Tom sighed and leaned against the bone-white porcelain rim of the sink.

“Suzanna and Nina know we found something in the ashes. That’s all that they are going to know; we are keeping them strictly out of the loop about all of this. The search, painting the spiral, everything.”

“Why?”

“Because we can’t trust them. At all. This is very hard for me to say, but... as I said, I have to be smart about these things from now on. Or we’re all going to end up...” A frustrated wave. “As I was saying before, I have to squarely face the fact that I have no idea what all that book really programmed the other two to do, what extra nasty little booby traps are now lurking down inside their brains somewhere. I’m worried now about even letting them out of my sight...” A glance at the wall beyond which (more or less) was the living room... “...they may think they’re my slaves, they may even want to be my slaves, but at the end of the day they aren’t. They are the slaves of whoever wrote that book, body and soul, and they will do what he wants them to do, even if he’s thoroughly dead and buried. For the moment, for whatever reason, what he wants is for them to do is love me and obey me. But maybe he also wants them to spy on us. As long as they are here, the house is bugged...”

Erika had finished pulling on her jeans. Now she paused and spoke, very carefully.

“I see. Apart from that, you do realize they’ve both already had plenty of time alone to do... whatever. I mean, what was Suzanna doing all day Sunday?”

He gazed at her, very steady.

“I believe she said she was breaking up with her boyfriend. But your point has not escaped my consideration.”

“And you do remember that you read the damn thing too?”

His gaze did not waver.

“Yes. And even though I didn’t read the whole thing... it means that you can’t trust me either. At all. Ironically, you’re the only one of us now who is anything close to being a free agent.”

“You know that’s not really true.” She spoke sadly, but without bitterness.

“Well.”

“Well.”

“We all carry on as best as we can. Tomorrow, go see what you can learn in a quick sweep at least.”

“Why not now?”

“Two reasons.” He turned off the water with a sharp twist of his wrist. “First, we aren’t taking any more chances than we have to. The house isn’t bugged... I hope... but... Don’t use your own computer for this.”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Woodhue! To look up a single damn word on a search engine? Now you’re just being paranoid! Even the frigging FBI can’t do that yet. They want to, but not—”

“Yes.” He cut her off. “I am being paranoid. Quite intentionally. So do what I ask. Please.” He opened the door and stepped back into the bedroom.

“OK, fine.” Like Suzanna earlier in the day, her head disappeared for a moment as she pulled on her sweater, doing a deft juggling act with the sneakers she was holding as she did so. “I’ll go ask my friend Ursula up the street. I’ll tell her that my...”

“NO!” He spun sharply and jabbed a finger, his voice low but firm. “No friends. And especially no female friends! That goes for the other people you mentioned a minute ago, whoever they are, unless we have absolutely no other choice. We’re not dragging anyone else...” The corner of his mouth turned down. “Anyone we don’t have to into this. Go use one of those cybercafes, or go over to the library. I think they have public terminals available.”

“OK, Mr. Woodhue. You’re the boss. I like to hang out at ClickAway over on Blair sometimes anyway, so...” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as something evidently occurred to her. She tapped the heels of her sneakers together and pursed her lips. “Just out of idle curiosity, what was the second reason? For not going over to my place right now?”

“Hmm? Oh yes. The second reason.” He smiled, and pushed the rest of the world and its associated problems far into the background. “When I first came here tonight, I had certain plans. And despite all of these constant interruptions...”

“Well, excuse me for breathing.”

“...I still fully intend to carry out those plans. After tonight... we all may never get another chance.” He raised his voice, aimed it out of the room. “Suzanna. Nina. Wake up. Come in the bedroom please, and bring those sacks.”

Erika looked out the door, evidently watching Suzanna and Nina do the things that their master had ordered them to do.

“Plans.”

“Plans.” He took the sneakers from her and tossed them up and back, one over each shoulder. They hit the carpeted floor with a pair of muted thumps. He hesitated. ”You don’t have a boyfriend... or... er... a girlfriend, or something, floating around, do you?”

“I have you.”

“Oh. Well, good. In that case, which do you want, the top half or the bottom?”

“Top or bottom of what?”

“Me. Despite what you were saying before, I’m not a total saint.”

“Ohhhh...” She half-lidded her marvelous eyes, and lifted her chin a little. She slowly reached out and traced patterns on his naked shoulder-blades as the other two entered the room lugging the sacks. “Well, then... I’ll have the top. You two...” A glance at the other women... “...will just have to share the bottom.” Still using both hands, she pushed his unresisting form back down onto the bed. Then she took up a position in front of him, and once again pulled off her sweater.

But she did it rather differently this time.

Rather more slowly.

Then Nina and Suzanna joined her, all three of them in front of the bed for a time, and then on the bed, all of them never taking their eyes or their minds from him, not even for an instant.

She felt her eyes open, and she let her gaze swim back into focus. She studied the ceiling of the bedroom. There was the familiar starfish shape of that old waterstain in the plaster which they somehow never got around to fixing. After a while, she idly started fingering her nipples, which were large and pointy; she was rather proud of them, actually. Usually they were also very sensitive, but now...

She remembered.

After they had finally finished, she had fallen abruptly asleep, and she been dreaming about something. She couldn’t remember what exactly... a house? A palace? Under the bright sun, rising up, and within, a figure sitting on a shining throne, surrounded by... by...?

It didn’t matter.

She glanced over at Herold, who lay beside her, snoring contentedly. She smiled, and traced the familiar lines of his face with a light fingertip; she knew very well, of course, what it took to wake him, and she drifted just below that minimum.

It had been nice, very nice.

And she still loved him, and the children.

But Mr. Woodhue...

She let the thoughts run along in her mind, dropping a snowball down a mental hillside and seeing what sort of avalanche it created...

Mr. Thomas Woodhue...

She knew what she had to do.

Gradually, she fell back asleep.

Erika swam slowly back into consciousness, rising up through the warm layers of clean tropical water, gently spinning around and around as she did so. Gently breaking the surface, it was a long moment before she could sort out where she was.

She was lying on a carpeted floor, on her stomach, staring at a twist of tangled bedclothes. They meant nothing to her

Finally the memories started dribbling back. She and Mr. Woodhue and... and the other two. They had been having sex. Incredible, perverted, kinky sex, doing things she would never ever have agreed to before, sex with toys... and other things... more toys, but all a bit untraditional.... all pulled from those sacks like some wonderfully endless conjuring trick. They had all been quite creative... Sex that went on for hours and hours, with a force that she had never experienced before, not even when...

At the end, she had been kissing him and licking him, all over the upper half of his body while the others (presumably) worked on his penis, finally reaching the mouth, and kissing him in the mouth was like kissing a live electrical wire better even somehow than having his penis inside her and she hadn’t been able to stop or to cum and the pressure had kept building and building until finally...

Finally?

It was like it had been the book. (She absently glanced at the spiral which hung serenely in the air a couple of feet overhead. That was now quite clear and vivid, but the rest...)

It was all blurred and tangled up and delicious.

But she knew that something had finally triggered her, and that she had finally come.

And come and come and come, right off the bed, onto the floor and into overloaded oblivion.

She rolled over and sat up in one quick motion. Yes. She had been lying on the carpet next to Nina’s bed. She had fallen off and been blacked out for God-knows-how-long. She looked at the bed.

Mr. Woodhue was there. As she stared at him, a giant invisible hand came down, gentle but irresistible, pressing her down, down, until she crumpled and her chin was just resting on the edge of the mattress and she was staring up at him. He was sitting up now, his back propped against the headboard. Suzanna and Nina were there as well, one on either side, sprawled out, unmoving and boneless like discarded rag dolls.

Erika couldn’t see Suzanna’s face, but Nina’s was pointed in Erika’s direction, half-concealed by the atypically messy spray of dark frizzy hair. Her equally dark eyes were open wide and her lips slightly parted, but there was a ghastly switched-off quality behind it all, and for a horrible moment, Erika was absolutely sure that her neighbor was dead. Then she saw movement, the slow, very slow, rise and fall of breath.

Nina breathed, but she did not blink.

Erika felt her skin crawl, all over her body.

-That was me just a moment ago. I was lying like that on the floor. My eyes open and empty. Discarded. Crumpled up and carelessly tossed overboard.—

The vibrant wet heat started to form in her cunt again, and she tore her eyes away. It was like ripping physically free of something...

She rolled her eyes back towards Mr. Woodhue; that was all she could do; the hand was still holding her very firmly in place. The man in the bed was absently fingering Suzanna’s hair and looking grim as he stared off into space.

A beautiful glittering word formed in Erika’s mind, accompanied by a chorus of angels, and it took all of her strength to push it back down into the darkness; it was huge and weighed tons. She methodically strangled the angels to death, one by one, and buried the corpses in unmarked graves. If she thought it even once, truly thought it, she was...

Doomed.

The thought came to her, just as it had before during that first moment out in the yard, falling out of the sky. She—was—doomed. She was still just performing delaying actions, and the circles were growing tighter and tighter.

But she had to go on fighting. She had no choice in the matter.

She swallowed and spoke, a tight whisper, her rather sharp chin digging into the mattress.

“Mr. Woodhue sir?”

“Yes, Erika?” He didn’t look at her. Very carefully, he did not look at her.

“We can never ever do that again, Mr. Woodhue sir. You and me. Until...” Another glance at the others... “Until the end of this. If there ever is an end.”

“I understand.”

She went on, not really hearing him.

“Because I see now... every time we do it... I’m going to start feeling and... and acting.. and thinking... more and more like them, Mr. Woodhue sir. I can’t help myself. I know what you said before, but... you were... were” She gagged, having to make a conscious effort to spit out the word. “wrong. Now, it’s not the book or the spiral or anything else. It’s you. You’re different. In so many ways now. And if you want me to remain... a...” She made a shuddering hiccupy sort of laugh. “a free agent...”

He nodded, and still did not look at her, for which she was bottomlessly grateful. If he looked into her eyes right now...

“Get out.”

Again, it was the only thing he could have possibly said, the only tone of voice he could have possibly used.

Which of course in the end only made it worse.

The hand released her, or rather, effortlessly scooped her up and started propelling her towards the door at near-running speed, pausing only long enough to let her once again scrabble around and snatch up her clothes.

As she pulled the door shut, there was noises behind her. She glanced backwards at the wooden panels, and she knew that Mr. Woodhue had reactivated Nina and Suzanna, and put them back to work.

Had he reactivated her as well, or had she come back on her own?

Her knees gave out like strands of spaghetti. She knelt quietly on the floor amid Nina’s and Suzanna’s clothes, huddling down in herself, and she cried for a while, the tears trickling and silent. Oddly, when she was done, she felt quite a bit better.

And the warm glow was still deep in her stomach.

After wiping her eyes dry on her sweater, she took a deep breath and once again put on her clothes. She started to leave the house, but something drew her instead to the fireplace. She stared down at the clump of ashes there, then a small snarl crossed her face.

“If we ever catch up with you, whoever you are, you better hope that Mr. Woodhue gets to you before I do.” She spit on the ashes, quite accurately.

As she walked slowly back along the cracked sidewalk to her own home, the glow of the rising sun was just starting to spread itself across the eastern horizon. There were also clouds scuttling past, headed inland from the sea. It was hard to say which would win out in the end.

Once again, slavegirl Nina was ecstatically fulfilling her function. She was pleasing and pleasuring her Master. While his other slavegirl Suzanna took over kissing him, Nina was wrapped tightly around her Master’s cock. And it truly was Nina which was wrapped there. Not just her body, not just her mind, but her soul, nearly every particle of her being, bent like a piece of iron around a gigantic anvil. At this moment, that piece of hard fiery meat was the only thing she thought about, nearly the only thing that existed in the entire universe. She established the same slow steady rhythm as before, it was what her Master liked, what her Master wanted, what her Master needed. Once again, the hot red fumes rose and melted her thoughts like butter under a blowtorch, flowing them into new orgasmic shapes, a factory furnace of the mind.

Nearly.

Even now...

There was one last corner of her mind that didn’t melt, that was quite flameproof and sealed behind thick crystalline walls, clear and flawless, the factory’s master control room, situated high overhead with a commanding view of the entire situation.

It was partly that her Master liked having her be all cool and methodical, it turned him on, which turned her on, quite literally, but also...

Also...

When one certain packet of instructions had first entered her mind from the pages of the Master’s glorious book, it had approved mightily of what it discovered already there, and slickly merged with it, intertwining and improving and enhancing. Now the resulting gestalt whirred forever onward, clean and methodical, expertly constructed of polished brass and heavily-oiled gears. (It/she was quite aware that there was no similar corner in Suzanna’s brain. At this moment of fulfillment and purpose, slavegirl Suzanna’s brain was entirely violated and empty and devoured.)

Part of the mechanism kept the attached slave-body pistoning along in exactly the required fashion. Another part ran constant razor-sharp analyses, every sense quivering and alert, watching for threats to her Master.

Any threats.

It turned its attention to Erika Johanson.

Vast and cool and unsympathetic, it rewound time and clicked freeze-frame, studying the image of the tall redheaded woman kneeling with her chin pressed into the mattress..

She was falling deeply in love with the Master. That much was clear. But she was also very bright and resourceful, and love is not slavery, far from it. The Master had chosen to delay the inevitable by taking his glorious book away from Erika before the process had run its course, and of course the Master in his wisdom and majesty could do no wrong, but...

People, especially women, who are falling deeply in love sometimes do things.

Dangerous, irrational things.

Erika Johanson was not a slave.

And she knew the Master kept slaves.

She would be watched very closely, until that day when she was totally and eternally enslaved to the Master’s will. In all ways and in all things.

And if she ever actively threatened the Master...

Click.

Buzz.

Whirr.

Gears turned. Wheels spun. Knives flashed.

(And locked even further down, behind not crystal but layer after layer of the thickest lead shielding, a short string of commands, already executed and already entirely forgotten...)

The Master came inside her once again, and for a moment, in the resulting explosion, even the machinery trembled and missed a beat, before resuming its function...

Suzanna snapped awake with a little start. She never forgot anything anymore, but at the same time, now that she had been forever enslaved to the will of the Master, it was so wonderfully easy to drift off into the warm soft haze... This was different than usual, sharp and hard and cold. She worried about it for a moment, then it faded and was gone.

She looked around, and reoriented herself with what was going on. She and Nina (and Ms. Johanson) had engaged in SEX WITH THE MASTER (fireworks! marching bands!), again and again and again, and then she had been given her various Instructions for the day. The instructions had made her sad, but she would of course obey.

And while being with the Master, loving and pleasing the Master, was her first and only purpose, it was sort of nice to let the heavenly fumes clear a little for a bit from her brain, think just a little again.

Strictly within the established parameters, of course...

Yes, the Master wasn’t here...

She and Nina were standing in front of Ms. Johanson’s house, wearing their itchy old clothes again, and Nina had just rung the doorbell. There was a wait, and Suzanna listened the birds begin to stir and chirp in the nearby trees. Finches, mostly. The door opened, and Ms. Johanson was there, and she had colorful stains all over her hands. She and Nina talked for a while. Suzanna didn’t really listen to what they said.

Well, that wasn’t really true. She was listening, and if anyone at a later date asked her what they had said, she would be able to recite it back, letter-perfect, but it was more interesting to look at the...

There was no word, really. Even before, in her horribleawfulterrible (but admittedly.. well... smarter) pre-Master existence, she would have been hard-pressed to think of a word.

It was much more interesting now to look at the texture of words. Nina was being polite and smiling, but it was clear that she didn’t like Ms. Johanson. Or something. The Old Suzanna had often thought that Nina was a little too tightly-wound for her own good, and that had been one additional reason that Slavegirl Suzanna had been glad that Nina was whom the Master had wanted. Now it appeared it hadn’t helped, or not enough. She sighed internally. It wasn’t her problem. Nothing was her-

“Do you understand, Suzanna?”

In a split-second, she rewound the conversation, reviewed her instructions... blah, blah, called in sick, stay with Ms. Johanson today, do what she says, blah blah...

“Yes, Nina.”

“Fine. We’ll see you tonight.”

We. The Master. SEX! (Trumpets! Dancing naked in the streets!)

“Goodbye, Nina.” She turned her attention back to the woman in the doorway, who stood aside, a bit grudgingly perhaps.

“Well, you may as well come in.”

“I know that...” Outside, we’re outside, get it right or everyone will get mad... ”Tom asked me to stay with you, but I don’t want to be a bother...”

“Oh, get in here, you little twit.” There was no real anger behind the words, so Suzanna ‘got in’.

It was an interesting house. Nina’s place was always so... she scrounged again for a word... sterile. Ms. Johanson’s home wasn’t dirty or anything, (in fact, at the moment it felt oddly overly scrubbed, and the smell of household cleaner was sharp in the air...) but there were lots of books, (that was a nice change; Nina had never been much of a reader beyond her various accounting books) and interesting objects cluttered around on tables and hanging on the walls. With a small tremor of intellectual pleasure, she put her mental finger on it: although Ms. Johanson had both more and more interesting stuff on display, it was Nina’s house which was the museum, to be dusted and polished and admired, but never truly to be lived in...

Suzanna scoped out everything as they walked together into the living room.

“You have a very nice home, Ms. Johanson.”

Erika’s texture was a combination of pleasure and annoyance.

“Suzanna, please call me Erika.”

“OK. Erika.” She slid the proper word into the proper mental slot. Then she pointed at a grinning wooden mask which sat on a stand on a nearby table. “Is that African?” It was strange what connections she could make in her brain now, when she was given a little space to think...

“Yes, it is.”

“Where did you get it?”

Erika appeared embarrassed, and shrugged.

“Africa.”

Suzanna felt her eyes go wide.

“You’ve been to Africa?”

“Yes. Among other places.”

“Wow.” Suzanna looked around again. “The only interesting place I’ve ever been was Hawaii. And that was when I was six. And I got stung by that stupid jellyfish while I was swimming. You’re so lucky.”

Erika’s texture flashed another smile, hidden behind a pokerface.

“I suppose. C’mon.”

They passed into the kitchen.

The kitchen. Suzanna had another thought. Like before, it was a wonderful feeling, watching these ideas form, all sparkly and glittering as they rose out of the soft warm mist like clockwork birds made of silver and gold, precious gems...

“Would you like me to make breakfast? I’m a pretty good cook.”

Texture of surprise.

“Uh... sure. I personally can burn water if I set my mind to it, but if you’re willing... that would be nice. Feel free to use whatever you can scrounge up.”

“OK, Erika.”

“I’ll be in my studio. Over there.” Erika pointed through an open arch, over which was mounted a large pair of steer horns, carefully decorated with lots and lots of tiny bits of colored glass. Sixteen colors, at least... “I have a painting to finish.”

“OK.”

“And if Willikins bothers you for food, ignore him. He’s a insatiable glutton.”

“OK.”

Erika disappeared out of sight. Suzanna didn’t bother asking who Willikins was; no doubt it would become clear in time if it was important.

She set to work, humming a cheerful little tune as she did so.

Suzanna casually carried the two plates and two glasses and the silverware through the arch. (Nine years, three months and five days ago she had finished her stint as a waitress at Parmenter’s, before moving on to better things, and she of course now remembered how to balance all the stuff...) The room beyond had been originally built as a dining room, she guessed, but now it was ‘the studio’, with various artistic things scattered around. Even with her new overflowing memory-banks, only some of the items were identifiable; various easels, a disused-looking potter’s wheel half-covered with a tarp, racks with paint... Three large windows looked out on a recently-planted vegetable garden inside a tall wooden fence. The garden was artistically arranged around a center circle of grass, in which was a stuck a good-sized flock of yard flamingos, painted several different colors, none of them pink.

Willikins was a striped cat, she had learned. He had turned up, in the manner of all cats, as soon as she started frying the bacon she discovered in the refrigerator. (Along with lots of other stuff; that along with the garden made Suzanna suspect that Erika was perhaps being modest about her cooking...) As per instructions, she ignored him as he threaded between her legs.

Erika turned from her work and smiled. She put her palette down.

“Mmm. Smells good. I’m afraid that I don’t often have people over for dinner, as you might have guessed. We’ll have to rough it.” She took a stack of canvases off a nearby flat surface. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you, Erika.” Suzanna passed over the plate and the glass and some silverware. They ate in silence for a while, balancing the plates, sipping the orange juice. Willikins sat in a nearby sunny patch to wash himself and to sulk. Finally, Suzanna swallowed and asked:

“Erika? Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What are you painting?”

“This.” Erika casually shoved her bare feet against the floor and rolled her wheeled chair aside to give Suzanna a clear view of the large canvas. It was a scene of several horses, of all different colors, frolicking in a flowery meadow. It was awful. Even though it was done with competent artistry and a fairly keen eye, it was still awful.

“What do you think?”

For a moment, Suzanna was torn. But very soon now Erika would be joining her entirely as one of the Master’s slaves, and fellow slaves must be absolutely honest with one another...

“I’m very sorry, Erika, but...”

“It’s horrid, isn’t it?” Erika spoke a certain ghastly cheerfulness.

“Yes.” Suzanna hesitated, then took the plunge. “Why...”

“Because a certain bank manager with very little taste and a lot of money asked me to.”

“Oh. What will you be working on next?”

“Um... that’s a secret. But you’ll get to see it when its done.”

“OK.” Suzanna dismissed the matter from her mind. She watched with almost scientific curiosity as it vanished back into the mists.

Texture of relief. Erika took the last bite of bacon off her plate and tossed it deftly into her mouth. She patted her stomach and stretched.

“Ah. That was really good, Suzanna. Thanks. Now then, I have to let this sucker dry for a while, and you and I have to go out and do some stuff today, so let’s get cracking.”

Once again, Suzanna wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the patted stomach, and something clicked into place, a scent, a shape, something.

A texture.

Whatever the name was, it was there, and it now shone out like a gigantic searchlight, so bright she wondered how she could have possibly missed it before. She looked up and smiled widely.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t notice before, Erika. Congratulations!”

Texture of confusion.

“For what? Finishing the painting?”

Suzanna giggled.

“No silly.” She pointed at Erika’s stomach. “You’re so lucky. You get to be the first.”

“The first what?” Erika’s voice had suddenly gone very cautious. Her texture became almost unreadable.

Suzanna gave her a friendly little smack on the arm.

“The first to be blessed with one of the Master’s babies, of course.”