The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Raul finished following Erika’s electronic trail, and ended his Internet session by placing a few extra inquiries of his own here and there. (Inquiries that were both rather more discrete and comprehensive than those of his quarry.) Extracting himself from the cyber-world, he slid around in his well-padded chair so that he was looking at the book that lay open on a nearby table. He had long gotten into the habit of writing down his most important thoughts in books like this, flowing black ink on crisp white pages, all bound in tasteful brown leather and then locked away in a heavy metal fireproof case with a very sturdy lock. Now sketched out on a page all by itself was the shape that Erika had been asking about on various web bulletin boards, or at least his best estimate as based on the description that she had left behind. He was not given to sentiment, but he had to admit that there was something vaguely ominous about that collection of curves and angles. For a moment he considered. Then he scooped up a nearby phone, one of a varied collection in the room, and stabbed a button with his narrow finger. A number obediently speed-dialed itself.

After a couple of rings...

“Crandell.”

“Hello there, Steven.”

“Raul.”

“Yes indeed. So good to hear your voice once again. Tell me, how are the wife and kids?”

“Still dead. Whadda ya want?”

“I’m deeply wounded by your tone, Steven. I wanted to throw a little work your way. If you’re available.”

“I’m listening.”

“It could be... dangerous. Or it could be a cakewalk and a wild goose-chase. I honestly can’t say at this point.” Raul absently studied the chipped fingernails of his unoccupied hand. He took good care of them, but even so, the restaurant business tended to be punishing on such things... “But either way... it’s important to me. Very important. You do this, do it right, and... we’ll just say that the books are all balanced between us.”

A sigh, possibly, at the other end of the line. Just possibly. It was all a lot harder to tell with phones, and dear Steven was another one who was quite good at hiding behind his mask.

“Somebody in your way again?”

Raul smiled and glanced at the cafe security screen. A small black-and-white Janey was just in the shot, slicing more bagels.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps just the opposite. That’s what I’m hoping that you can find out...”

They had returned to her home. Erika automatically maneuvered her van along the well-worn groove that sliced down the narrow access alley. Past the Geddermeyer’s long-beached boat and stacks of wooden pallets, past the enormous white RV owned by that podiatrist and his wife, and then a sharp right turn in under the simple open-air roof that made up her own ‘garage’. Leaving the van, they went in through the tall fence gate and then the door that led into the small alcove off of the kitchen. Once there, out of the continuing drizzle, Erika and Suzanna were surrounded by Erika’s familiar garden implements: tools, a few broken pots, a half-used bag of grass seeds, her well-worn gloves and rubber boots. Even after yesterday’s cleaning frenzy, it still all looked somehow sloppy and disorganized. Erika hoped someday to scrape together enough extra cash to splurge on a nice little wooden garden shed to stuff all of this crap into...

She had hoped. Now...?

Willikins came out to greet Erika, then, as always, seeing she didn’t have any food on her immediate person, began feigning indifference. Erika gave him an absent scratch behind the ears as she automatically stepped out of her sneakers and stripped off her fanny pack. Putting the pack to one side, she suddenly realized she could delay no longer; she had to find something to occupy Suzanna while she got to work painting the damn spiral. From what she’d seen, if she told the blonde woman to go stand in the hall closet with her eyes closed and her fingers jammed in her ears, she’d do it, but... she just couldn’t bring herself to... The garden! Even though it was raining, maybe she could fit Suzanna into her rain slicker send her out into the garden to...

“Erika?” She gave a small start. Even while thinking about her, it was so easy to forget that Suzanna was right there in the room with you. And the two of them had been having freaking sex together just a few hours previously... Well... sort of... The blonde woman was studying her, her hands crossed in front of her. Although she’d been around Suzanna all morning, Erika suddenly realized that the other woman wasn’t carrying a purse or a pocketbook or anything. If she had one, it must have been left over at Nina’s...

She shook her attention free of such irrelevancies and looked at Suzanna’s face.

-Oh dear. Right there in the room, watching you...—

“Yes?”

“You wanted me to remind you to call Dr. Richleu.”

“Oh. Oh! Yes. Of course. Thank you, Suzanna.”

“You’re welcome, Erika.” Suzanna hesitated for a moment. “Erika?”

“Yes?”

-Watching your textures.—

“You’re going to paint a copy of the spiral now, aren’t you?”

-Yup.—

A vehement denial sprang ready-formed to Erika’ lips, but she sagged a little and swallowed it. What would be the fucking point? If Suzanna was truly the tool of the Author, they were going to have to find out sooner or later.

“Yes, Suzanna. I am going to try and paint a copy of the spiral.” She hesitated herself. “Did you read that off of my... texture?”

“Only in part. More so, it’s the fact that this is the only possible activity that you would want to try and hide from me, as you did earlier this morning. You would want to hide it from me at least until it was finished. Additionally, although it was inevitable that the Master would choose to burn his wonderful book once he learned what it could do, it was also inevitable that he would soon want and require a new copy of the spiral, if not the book itself.” A moment of consideration. “Although I don’t think creating the latter will now be possible.”

“Ah. And how... um... how exactly do you feel about that idea? Making a new spiral?”

“The Master did tell you to paint it?”

“Yes. Well. He asked me to try.”

Suzanna shrugged.

“Then it doesn’t matter in the slightest how I feel about it. The Master desires it. It will happen.”

“Even if that’s true and it doesn’t matter... You don’t care if Mr. Woodhue uses it to... make more slaves?”

“The Master deserves to have an army of beautiful obedient slavegirls at his beck and call, groveling in ecstasy before him and catering joyously to his every whim. I would have happily drawn the spiral myself if he had asked it of me.” To Erika’s faint horror, the described image caused a tiny thin worm of pleasure to crawl through her lower belly, looping around and around the thing that was now planting itself down into her womb. “But even with my enhanced mental abilities, as an experienced artist you will probably be able to do a much better job than I.” Another pause. “But your question is irrelevant. That’s not the reason he’s having you paint it.”

“Ah?”

“An army of slavegirls is sadly not what the Master desires. At least, it’s not what most of him desires. Not yet. He still feels so guilty about granting Nina and I the privilege of reading his wonderful book.” Suzanna suddenly looked distraught, fiddled with her dress-edge for a moment. “That guilt is part of what makes him the most wonderful and perfect Master who ever existed, but still, I wish more than anything in the world that I could ease the Master’s conscience, take away all of his pain. But I can’t. All I have is the thin feeble pleasure I can give him with his use of my body and these useless, shallow words.” She flung away the dress-edge in a gesture of despair, the first harsh movement that Erika remembered seeing her make. “I’m just a stupid little slavegirl! I can’t show the Master the textures! I can’t even begin to make him understand how happy Nina and I now both are. Slavery to the Master is ecstasy. Slavery to the Master is absolute, all-consuming blissss.” Her chin lifted a little and her eyes almost closed on the last hissed word, showing white underneath the lids. Then she opened her eyes and she looked directly at Erika and she smiled complacently. She re-crossed her hands in front of her. “But then, you understand this fact already, don’t you, Erika? You feel it every time you’re allowed into his presence, every time you think about him and his baby, growing bigger and bigger inside of your body. Your texture screams it, louder and louder and louder....”

Erika tore her gaze away from the other woman with a small gasp, realized that she was almost swaying in time to the words, holding a wooden garden stake with both hands and bending it. The stake had almost snapped, but not quite. Where had she picked that up? She eased off on the pressure, but did not answer the question. She also did not look at Suzanna.

Not directly at least.

“Would you have agreed with this sentiment before reading that book?”

“No. The old Suzanna would have been disgusted and repulsed by the entire concept. She would have...” Pause. Head tip. “...part of her would have pitied the Master for what she would consider to be his problems, but I’m sad to say that another and larger part of her would hold the Master in... in... in...” her voice suddenly started to click, like a broken machine, and her head twitched.

“Contempt?” Erika hazarded the word cautiously.

“Yes. Thank you, Erika. She would hold the Master in that word for being so...” This time she managed to spit out the word with only a slight effort... “...weak as to have to use his wonderful book to ‘get girls’. But that Suzanna is dead now. Gone forever. The things that were contained in the Master’s wonderful book reached into her brain in the dark, and smothered and drowned her all alone. I am here now in her place and I am the Master’s obedient slavegirl and I am deliriously happy. Every minute, day or night, awake or asleep, now and for the rest of my life. Slavery to the Master is bliss. Slavery to the Master is eternal.”

Erika considered all of this for a long moment.

-In the dark. All alone.—

Then, carefully...

“Yes, Suzanna. I’m going to try and paint a copy the spiral now. And when I’m done, I’m going to... ask you to look at it. To see if it has any effect on you. And if it does...”

“You’ll tell me to keep the existence of the Master’s baby a secret. For a little while.”

No anger was apparent, but still...

“I said I’ll ask you to, Suzanna. Will it work? And if it does... will you do it?”

Suzanna had her own moment of contemplation, the longest yet in their dueling series of pauses. Then:

“I will do it. However, I don’t know if it will work....” She nodded slowly, not looking at Erika. “I don’t know, but I think it will. Because I will want it to work. Because you are right. Without the spiral, I wouldn’t be able to keep this happy news bottled up when I was with the Master. Apart from providing the Master with the use of my body, it is now my major function to bring the Master news and information, happy or sad. But the Master would be distracted if he knew about his baby, and... he can’t afford that.”

“Can’t afford it?” Erika didn’t try to keep the sharpness out of her voice. The worm inside her hardened to ice. She tossed the stake aside, even in her distraction aiming it in the general direction of the grass seeds. “What makes you say that? Is there some specific texture that you’ve seen?”

“No. This is a fact, a feeling, that I can’t explain.” Suzanna rubbed her temple for a moment with two fingers. “I remember everything, and I can see so much now, but there are still... holes. I just know some things, with no memory or texture or anything behind them. I can only assume that they are things that the Master’s wonderful book hid from me when it programmed me for total obedience. Which is why I don’t think we can recreate the book. Not all of it. I just know that things are very... dangerous right now for the Master. Beyond the obvious complications having slavegirls will bring to his life.” She took a deep breath and faced Erika squarely. “You will paint the spiral now. I will help you paint the spiral. And I will look in it when you’re done. But, Erika.”

“Yes?”

Suzanna suddenly grabbed Erika’s upper arm. Erika was not a weakling, and when she instinctively tried to shift back out of that grip, it was like being held by a steel robot pincher. Suzanna’s voice went flat and almost dead, and so did her eyes. She looked at Erika from under her eyebrows.

“Do not entertain any further thoughts about trying to break my slavery. Yes. I see in your texture that you have at least considered the idea. That will definitely not work. Not with just you and the spiral. Slavery to the Master is bliss, and slavery to the Master is eternal. These are things I do know, with absolute certainty and absolute clarity. And if you do try any foolishness... I will become quite violent. I have no wish to hurt you, or the Master’s baby, or anyone else, but I will, without the slightest hesitation, if any attempt is made to take away my slavery to the Master.”

She released her grip, and Erika hid a nervous swallow behind a smile. She resisted the urge to massage her shoulder.

“I understand.” She considered, then found she had to ask the question. “But if... hell... when Mr. Woodhue uses the spiral and tries to take away your slavery? What will happen?”

“I do not know, Erika.” Suzanna looked away again, standing even more like a robot than she normally did, her hands now at her sides. “I will of course try to obey his commands if he does so... but... I suspect it will not work. I would rather not think about it until I have to.”

Erika patted Suzanna’s shoulder, gently, and flashed a more genuine smile.

“OK. I understand. Shall we get started?”

Suzanna turned her head and smiled as well.

“Yes, Erika.”

The phone on Nina’s desk rang. She looked at it for a moment, then disassembled her hands, r—e—a—c—h—e—d over and answered it. The accompanying thought thrummed through her mind in a mad sprint: -theMastertheMasterpleasebetheMaster-

“Hello?” Calm. Cool. Totally in control.

“Nina?” Eve. “You behaving normally again?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry about before.”

“Glad to hear it. Got a call here for you from a Mr. Michael Kroening. You want to talk to the man?”

Michael?

Michael...

It took a moment to place the name. It had been almost six months since she’d seen him. Her immediate impulse was to tell him, tell Eve, to go away and slam down the phone, but...

That would raise more suspicions. At this stage, that would not do at all, even with such a marginal contact as Michael...

She kneaded her voice into the proper shape.

“Yes, thanks, Eve. Put him through, please.”

Buzz whirr click.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Michael. Are you here in town?”

“Nina. Hello. Yes, I just got in. I’m going to be here for a few days; another of these conferences, I’m afraid. I was wondering if you’d be available to get together.”

The thoughts and the memories and the decision came and went in an instant.

She and Michael Kroening had met... she couldn’t even remember now where they had first met. (More fading, or just normal human forgetfulness?) Some social event, seated next to each other a city symphony performance, maybe? Yes, that was probably it. They had got to talking during an intermission, hit it off, and gone out to dinner at Henri’s afterward. That first night they hadn’t had sex, but it had come soon enough, in the bed at his small apartment in one of the mid-upper class neighborhoods downtown. (All staged-dressed and essentially un-lived in, but quite tasteful...) He was nothing compared to the Master of course, a crawling unsegmented worm, but at the time... at the time, he had been a good lover. Slow, considerate, confident, sure of himself...

There had never been anything serious or long-term about their relationship, and never would be. His job kept him constantly on the move, jetting from city to city, across the country and (on rarer occasions) across the world. She assumed he had women on tap in all of those cities. She had never seen any direct evidence, but it was not entirely outside the realm of possibility that he also had a wife stashed away somewhere. She had never asked on either point, since she had hardly been a nun herself during the fairly long periods when he was elsewhere. (Well... unless you compared her to someone like Kristen, who went through men like Nina went through Kleenex...) All that had really mattered was that he was fairly handsome, charming and witty, and knew the joys of real music, of fine food and excellent wine.

And he had never shown any signs of wanting to get too close to her, in any sense other than the strictly physical. Nina had never in her life let anyone all the way in, not her mother, not her father, and she had had no plans to, until the Master and his wonderful book had come and changed everything forever.

Come and gone in an instant.

She replied.

“No, Michael. I’m sorry, but there has been a change in my life. I’m... committed now.” She didn’t really need to put that little pause in, but it sounded good, so she added it.

“Oh.” Nina cocked an eyebrow in mild surprise; was that genuine regret? “Well then, congratulations to both of you. I’m happy for you. I just hope the lucky man’s worthy of you.”

“Oh, yes. He is.”

“All right then. But Nina...”

“Yes?”

“If you ever become uncommitted again... you have my number. Drop me a call.”

“I’ll do that. Goodbye, Michael.”

She hung up.

For a moment, just a moment, she felt almost another poke. Not quite sadness this time, but almost. She hadn’t known the Master very well before reading his wonderful book, but in her limited experience, he had never betrayed much interest in wine, or real music, or eating at places like Henri’s. Zowie Bars and beer and so-called ‘classic’ rock songs.

Then the machinery took it all and smashed to very fine powder between two iron hammers, swept it away with black-bristled brushes.

She loved Zowie Bars and beer and classic rock songs, just like the Master.

Something else to buy on the way home tonight, assuming of course the situation did not change somehow. (please please no) He might want some of them at some point.

She started to refold her hands once again, then changed her mind, the call having reminded her of the importance of seeming normality. She shifted back to the computer screen, nudged the mouse to bring it to life, and got back to work with the endless adding and the subtracting of Mr. Harrison’s money.

But her eyes and her face remained very very cold, and most of her attention was arranged around the phone and the door.

Their conversation finished, Erika moved away from Suzanna, out into the kitchen. Suzanna looked down at Erika’s abandoned sneakers, then slipped out of her own flats, meticulously lining them up against the wall with the rest of the footwear. The scuffed tiles of the floor were cool under her stockings.

Suzanna then followed Erika, just in time to see her pause near the archway to the studio and snap her fingers.

“Oh, right. Tanith.” The redheaded woman reversed her course and picked up the phone (a chunky lime-green thing so bright it almost glowed) that sat on the counter near the spotless white refrigerator. There was a small red light blinking on the attached answering machine, presumably indicating that there were messages waiting for her. Erika ignored this and pushed two buttons on the phone. There were the boop-boop-boop sounds of a number being speed-dialed. After a moment...

“Hi, Marylou, it’s Erika Johanson.... Hi. Yes. I was wondering if Tanith can squeeze me into her schedule sometime this week? I need to see her... Um, I’d really rather discuss it with her in person. No offense... No, it’s nothing, um, urgent or fatal or anything... Hm? Ah... yes. That will be fine. See you then.” She hung up and punched a button on the answering machine. A new light came on, but there was no further result. She then scrounged around in a nearby drawer until she finally found a stubby chewed pencil and a ragged sheet of paper. Willikins jumped up on the counter and got in her way. She brushed him aside with barely a glance, another set of motions that was obviously well-rehearsed on both sides. She scribbled something and started to tack the resulting message to the refrigerator with a large round magnet that she also pulled from the drawer, but at the last moment, she changed her mind and stuck the paper in her pocket instead, leaving the magnet stranded alone on the refrigerator. The pencil went back in the drawer. She faced Suzanna. “That’s going to be an... interesting appointment. Do you have a long and complicated relationship with your doctor?”

“No, Erika. The Master’s company has had a health plan with Memorial Clinic for three years.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard the stories. Wheel ‘em in, wheel ‘em out. They get the job done, though, I suppose?”

“Yes, Erika. I am quite healthy.”

“OK. Enough stalling. Let’s do this.”

Erika scooped up Willikins, carried his squirming form out into the alcove which contained the gardening equipment. Suzanna waited where she was. There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and Erika reappeared, sans cat. She stopped again for a moment, a deep breath, and her texture smoothed a bit. But at the same time, it became even more interesting. It must have been her painting mode...

On into the studio. As she stepped through the arch, Erika flipped a switch on the wall, but no lights came on anywhere.

Even as Suzanna noted this, she herself hung back for a moment. She centered the magnet on the upper freezer door of the refrigerator, and then she gave a small nod. As the bird had thought would be the case, it was much more aesthetically pleasing that way.

Out in the studio, Erika was sorting through the piles of art equipment again. As she did this, Suzanna automatically ran inventory on the room. Nothing had changed, except one brush in a tin can near one of the windows had shifted slightly, and both the hands and the hanging weights of the elaborate black wooden wall-clock had shifted into new positions. From one of the piles Erika finally extracted a blank canvas with a small tear in one corner. She flicked at that tear with a finger.

“I was going to try and mend this if I had a spare moment, but I figure I may as well use it now and save myself the trouble.”

She picked up the awful picture of the horses and put it to one side. She held the canvas almost as she would have a held a dead rat.

A valuable dead rat.

Suzanna looked at the painting again once it had been set into its new position. The way the light now hit it... Another bird came up, lugging against its breast a memory of the flamingos out in the center of the garden. The two images were compared, overlapped. As unneeded conformation, she lifted her head and looked out the window as well.

Yes. The exact same colors, in the exact same positions. The horses’ expressions even sort of looked like flamingos, eyes bulging a little too much, the muzzles a little too narrow.

Suzanna was clinically surprised to note that this provoked a light brush of actual sadness, a single small bird circling for just a moment, but real nonetheless. It was an amusing joke, but she couldn’t really enjoy it. The Master was better and filled her with more joy than a thousand jokes, no matter how funny.

Old Suzanna would have been rolling around on the floor in hysterical laughter at this point.

Slavegirl Suzanna spread her mental fingers and watched the bird, the memory, the sadness, leave her grasp, vanish back out of sight.

She returned to her duties without a backwards glance.

Erika had placed the new canvas on the easel, moving it minutely back and forth before finally satisfied. Then she looked to one side, looked at nothing. Looked back at the canvas. Back to the nothing. Her arms locked out nearly straight, she reached out to the nothing and grabbed its edges, (narrow edges, but it was fairly wide) swiveled it and her upper body so that the nothing was positioned over the canvas. She then pulled at its edges a little as if stretching something made out of taffy, and last of all, pushed down with the palm of her hand, right towards the center of the canvas. She nodded, satisfied.

“You know, this might be a whole lot easier than I originally thought...”

She started hunting for paints and brushes.

Suzanna found an actual chair to sit in, and moved it so that she couldn’t see the front of the canvas. She sat down, folded her hands and waited, watching intently.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was waiting for, but she knew that something was coming...

Gloria stepped out of Rodney’s and yanked the door shut behind her with an angry jerk. That fucking slacker Bert had finally shown up to help man the fucking counter, so she was zipping out to grab some lunch. It was still raining, although for the moment it had slacked off to a light pissy drizzle.

“Hi.”

She spun in surprise at the voice. It was a couple of seconds before she recognized him, the weirdo from earlier in the day, the fucking sex pervert, standing nearby on the sidewalk. She started to scrabble for the mace in her purse, but then she stopped.

Both the delay in recognition and then the pause were for the same reason: he had changed. His hair was now combed and dry. He had on a blue jacket, and was using a large black umbrella. Both of these additions to his wardrobe, the jacket in particular, looked new, almost like there should be price tags hanging off them. Seeing that she was now looking at him, he spoke again. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss, but I suppose I made a bad impression on you earlier. I wanted to apologize. And I was wondering if I could possibly talk to you for a minute? Maybe buy you some coffee? It’s important.”

Gloria started to tell him to get the fuck away from her, but... he looked so harmless now. Well, no, not harmless, but respectable. In addition to being dry, he seemed to have gained about three inches in height and lost ten pounds.

But there was no point in taking any real chances.

“OK. You can buy me some coffee. Mr...?”

“Tom. Tom Woodhue.”

“Gloria Steinhertz.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

She touched his extended hand briefly. As they did this, her opinion of him went up another tiny blip. No fucking comments about the name, no “feminist” jokes she had already heard ten zillion fucking times...

She pointed across the street.

“We can go over there.”

The Allamagoosa Cafe, nicely busy with the lunch-time rush. If he tried anything, she’d scream her fucking head off. And it was where she had been going away. And she’d get some free coffee out of it. They crossed, dodging a car or two on the wet pavement, and he held the door open for her as they entered.

The window shattered with a small tired sound, as if giving up without even token resistance. Fran methodically knocked the rest of the glass out of the frame, some last scrap of caution hovering in the back of her brain keeping her from crawling through before doing this and slicing herself to ribbons. The gray rock she had picked up for this task was still wet and slick.

She paused one last time and looked around, ready to run, to smash and to claw and to bite, if need be. If someone had been standing on the other side of the fire-escape fence, she might have looked very much like some wild gaunt red-furred animal, in an all-too-flimsy cage. She was disheveled and wet and dirty, and she had skinned her knee crawling up onto the fire escape.

But there was no one in sight, not on the other side of the fence, not down in the empty (apart from her own crookedly-parked car) lot below, not driving by on the street, and she was satisfied. She had not looked around because the thought of going to jail held no fears for her. Not now. It was only that if she was caught, she wouldn’t be able to do what she knew she had to do.

She crawled in through the window, through the curtains. Once inside, she picked her way through the broken glass on tiptoes.

-My feet are freezing.—

-I’m not wearing any shoes-

The thoughts came and went. Dismissed. An irrelevancy.

The apartment was dark. She was in a small bedroom, and even with the broken window letting in fresh air, there was that vague un-lived-in stillness that gathers in a such a place after just a few extra hours of being abandoned. It was definitely the abode of a bachelor; she recognized the signs from her courting days before... with... whoever. Irrelevant. The bed was made, but inexpertly, with a bit of sheet sticking out along one side. There were some dirty white socks piled in one corner. A mostly-empty water glass sat on the small wooden table beside the bed, leaving a ring.

She pushed open the door with her fingertips and moved out into the main living room of the apartment, still walking on her toes, cautiously, the rock still at the ready, in case... well... just in case. This room was more of the same, really, maybe a bit cleaner and better organized. There were lots of books stacked around, many with strips of paper stuck in them, and a set of shelves jammed full of ranks of black videotapes. She read the titles. Invaders From Dimension X. The Crimson Lotus Strikes. Brimstone Buckaroos. On the walls were framed copies of more of those black and white drawings with the impossible interlocking shapes.

Shapes. Twisting...

Fran moved away. Pointless.

There was a sagged brown easy chair in one corner of the room, facing the mid-sized TV. She considered for a moment, then dragged the former around so it was facing the apartment’s front door. She took off her coat, tossed it away, sat down and began to wait.

The rock was slightly rough under her fingers, and gradually, it warmed against her skin.

“So. You were going to explain.” Gloria sat opposite him, holding the large cup of coffee she had ordered. The steam swirled between them like a fence.

Tom absently stirred his own coffee with one of those cheap little plastic straws that some restaurants supply. He hadn’t even tasted the coffee, the thought of food making him sort of queasy.

He plunged in.

“Apart from apologizing again, I’m not sure how exactly to begin. Let’s say... I made a mistake a short time ago. It wasn’t a mistake at the time I did it, I mean that in all senses of the phrase. It was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. But now.. now it has become one.”

She looked both confused and skeptical.

“And this mistake was?”

“Remember how I said I lost that copy of the book I was looking for?”

“Yeah...?”

“Actually, I burned it. Deliberately. I suppose that’s a high crime to you.”

She stared at him blankly, then evidently saw the connection he was making and shrugged.

“It’s just a job. So why’d you burn it?”

“I... it’s a secret.”

“Oh, really? And what do you expect from me, with that attitude?”

He stifled a flash of anger. She was right.

“It’s a nasty, festering, secret. You don’t want to be involved.”

“You’ve already involved me, fella. I don’t like what I’m hearing. I’m out of here.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Stay for a moment, please.”

She started to get up.

She stayed, but sat back with her arms folded over the front of her checkered shirt.

“OK. You have five minutes.”

Tom sighed and tried a new tack.

“I like books. I guess you’re... not an enthusiast?”

“Books are fine. In their place.”

“I say that, because what comes next for me is difficult. I burned a book. For me, that is a high crime. I wouldn’t do it ever with any other book. No matter how banal and stupid and evil. Not even...” He waved the straw. “Mein Kampf, or whatever. Even if a book contains evil thoughts, we shouldn’t destroy it. To destroy a book is to deny... to forget... what it said, and if we ever forget, the ideas in it can come crawling back.”

Now she looked cautious, as if she was trying to thread her way through a mental thicket.

“Hitler’s dead and gone.”

“No he isn’t!” This was almost a shout. Gloria glanced around at the other customers, who didn’t seem to have noticed. Tom forced himself to tone down. “And, no, I don’t mean he’s a hundred and twenty, thirty years old, whatever, living and plotting in the darkest wilds of Argentina somewhere. He died in that damn bunker of his in Berlin. But the ideas he came up with, espoused, are still with us, and if we don’t keep them out there, withering in the light, where we can refute them... They can come back, crawling back, like I said, like toxic weeds!” He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, she was staring at him. The corner of his mind that the book had polished to steely brightness, it found that stare better than some of the looks she had given him, but still lacking. He pushed on. It pushed on. “But I’m getting off the subject here. You don’t burn books. You just don’t.”

“But you just said...”

“Yes! I did it, and if the situation was the same, I’d do it again. Mein Kampf, the... the..” He restrained the straw-wave this time. “...Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Unausprechlichen Kulten... they are just books that contain evil ideas. That book I burned, it was evil. The first book I’ve ever heard of, ever read, where that was true.”

“OK... So it was an ‘evil’ book. Why did you ask if we had another copy of it?”

“It... that was another mistake. Asking you about it. I see that now. It’s gone, and it has to stay gone.”

“And you came back to talk to me because...?”

“Like I said. I just wanted to set things right between us.”

“That’s stupid.”

He wasn’t sure, but she might have melted, just a bit more.

“That’s also not entirely true.”

“What?”

“I need to know something. I’ll ask you again now, what I asked you over there in the store. What do you think of me?”

“You want my honest opinion? You’re very strange.” She sipped at her coffee, looking at him over the brim.

He smiled a little.

“You know, three or four days ago, I might have actually considered that a compliment.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I know.” He tapped into that cold shiny corner again. It spun around and around like a ball bearing and he smiled. He’d never smiled quite like this before. The movements didn’t seem to fit on his face. “So. How about I really make it all up to you? Buy you some lunch?”

“No, thanks. That’s really not necessary.”

For the very first time, he pushed it right to the front.

“Please. I insist. It’s the least I can do. Can’t have you going around thinking that I’m totally strange.” He smiled again, and after a moment, Gloria smiled back.

“I... OK. Sure. Why not. But I only have half an hour before I have to be back at work.”

“Of course.”

He waved the waitress over.

“Can I make you some lunch. Erika?”

The voice seemed to come from very far away, thin and whispery.

“Hmm?” Erika looked up blankly from the canvas, the brush still poised in her hand. She had been busy, and already stroked in a great deal of black and white and gray paint around the outer edges of the canvas, working her way slowly but steadily inwards. As she had said to Mr. Woodhue, when you got right down to it, the spiral was really quite simple...

Her eyes came into focus. A blonde woman sitting nearby in a chair. Her mind came into focus. Suzanna. Mr. Woodhue’s obedient total-recall slavegirl. Right. Suzanna spoke again.

“Would you like me to make you some lunch, Erika?”

Erika considered the question for a moment, came up with an answer.

“Um. Yeah. Sure. That would be great. Thanks.”

She went back to work. Sometime later, someone thrust a tuna-fish sandwich into her hand, and she munched on it without really thinking about it.

Simple...

Gloria was feeling slightly light-headed. No, that wasn’t quite right. There wasn’t a word for what she was feeling. She was talking to Tom, exchanging the rough outlines of their respective life stories, eating the sandwiches that the waitress brought...

But at the same time, there was a piece of her mind that felt like it had been clobbered with a large mallet. It stood off to one side, gazing at all of this with confusion.

-Wasn’t this man just babbling about burning Satanic books? Or something? Wasn’t he? Why am I still sitting here talking to this fucking loon? He’s probably a fucking serial killer or something!—

Of course...

He was smart... and he was funny, when he wasn’t talking about... those things... and he wasn’t really that bad looking...

-He’s handsome. Why don’t you just admit it?—

Tom smiled at her again.

-He’s fucking gorgeous.—

He was saying something.

“I’m sorry?” She clawed at the side of her face with her hand.

“I was asking, didn’t you say you have an apartment near here? You walk to work?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Let’s go over there, shall we? We have plenty of time. All the time in the world.”

“No! I mean, I’m flattered, but... I just can’t right now. Please.”

“OK. I understand. You have to get back to work. But it would be nice. Now wouldn’t it?”

He smiled again.

“I... I...”

Lunch-time had come and gone. Having washed and put away the dishes, Suzanna was again sitting and closely watching Erika’s face, watching her texture, when she noticed something odd; there was a bright yellow light mounted on the wall above the clock, and it had started to blink. She considered whether or not she should bring it to Erika’s attention, but then saw there was no need. The artist had seen it as well out of the corner of her eye, emerged partially from her... trance... and slowly swiveled her chair to look at the clock and the light.

The thoughtbirds huddled, and reached a joint conclusion a second or two before Erika could speak.

-That switch she flipped before. It’s wired to one of those doorbell lights that deaf people use. It attracts her attention without startling her. So when she’s painting she doesn’t make sudden movements or something...—

Erika’s comment merely confirmed this, as she put the brush and palette aside.

“Oh, damn. Someone at the door. Really should have checked those phone messages. That’s probably Abernathy, here to pick up his stuff. Look, Suzanna, no offense, but would you mind waiting in the bedroom while I deal with this guy? I suppose all of the neighbors have already noticed that something strange is going on here, but there’s no point in letting the whole world know.”

“I don’t mind, Erika. It’s a reasonable precaution.”

Erika produced an obviously custom-made object hammered together out of pieces of wood and white cloth which, after a last moment of hesitation, she set over the canvas, concealing the spiral without touching the wet paint. Then they both got up and went out into the front hall, where the front door was waiting.

“In through there. This shouldn’t take long.”

“Yes, Erika.”

Suzanna stepped through the indicated door and closed it behind her. There was the muffled sound of the front door opening, and then the voices of Erika and Abernathy (white, from the sound of it, about forty years old) were just audible, bouncing back and forth. Suzanna examined the long skinny bedroom with mild interest; it appeared that Erika (or someone) had knocked out an interior wall, combining two smaller rooms into one. Along one of the long walls was painted an enormous mural, a jungle scene with a black-haired leopard-skin-clad warrior woman holding a rampaging... Suzanna’s brows tighted for a moment in puzzlement... moose at bay with a long spear. The woman had facial features and a body type quite similar to Erika’s, but clearly wasn’t meant to be her. A sister? The room’s contents...

A rather battered wooden chest of drawers that Willikins (or some cat) had been using as a scratching post. Suzanna recognized the signs from the damage her brother Cliff’s aptly-named cat Gruesome used to do to similar things when they were children. A set of closed sliding doors which presumably led to a closet. A more ordinary door opening onto.... she leaned just enough to see... yes, a small bathroom. A mirror, its shape matching the room, standing on the wooden floor on its own stubby black legs in one corner. A fairly good-sized punching bag hanging from the ceiling, held in place with a stout hook and a heavy chain. A pair of red boxing gloves, neatly stacked.

And of course a bed. It was a double, with a very nice handmade wooden headboard, assembled tightly without nails and covered with elaborate carvings of clusters of flowers. The usual things sat on the headboard. A clock radio. A cheap plastic phone, the cord snarling away out of sight. A jar or two of ointment (No makeup, though; Erika didn’t use much beyond the very bare essentials that Suzanna could see or smell...) A gooseneck lamp, the shade of which wascovered with the same bits of glass as the steer horns out in the kitchen. Continuing the house’s ‘overly-cleaned’ theme, the covers on the bed had been pulled almost too tight and neat. This near military precision clashed with the splattered patchwork quilt which was the top blanket. The only other blemish was a circular indentation right in the middle of the bed that a curled-up Willikins would fit into quite nicely. Cats had a tendency to imprint themselves on their owner’s lives...

Suzanna moved a single step closer to the headboard. In its center, above the inset storage spaces which were mostly stacked with (carefully straightened) piles of well-thumbed books and well-used drawing pads, there was a simple but elegant heart-shape worked into the flowers. Inside the heart were initials, done in painstaking flowing script. She studied, then watched as the birds assembled the facts.

• T + E
• There had been no time yesterday and today to carve that.
• “I have been told that there... there wasn’t much point.”
• “Do you have a long and complicated relationship with your doctor?”

The birds conferred briefly, passing the half-digested bits and pieces back and forth, and finally offered up the obvious hypothesis.

Interesting.

She stowed it away, like all the rest, in the unlikely event that it was ever needed. Unlikely, since that was the past, dead and distant, and Erika belonged now to the Master.

Even if redheaded artist hadn’t yet fully realized what that meant ...

Then there were the sounds of Abernathy departing, and Suzanna came back out into the studio. A quick sweep of the room came up with a new hole on one of the shelves where there used to be a stack of painted clay pots. Suzanna offered to take over the chore of mixing the paint, and Erika agreed, only half-hearing, already going back to work again.

-Wha?—

-What is happening?—

Gloria tried to spin down from the humming pink cloud into which she had been thrust.

Pink.

Sparkling bright.

And down below...

Stretched out on the bed, her bed, him on top and him between her legs, in her cunt, he was there, thrusting down into her into her again and again and again and she was screaming, but not in pain, oh no oh no

Oh God...

Sex sex sex she was having sex and they just kept having sex and he didn’t stop he wouldn’t stop he mustn’t stop there were orgasms, more orgasms and they kept coming more and more brighter and STRONGER AN -

Erika had stopped painting. She had been moving slower and slower for some time now, obviously getting closer to the center of the canvas, to the heart of the spiral.

Suzanna thought about that center, and the memory rotated itself inside her, slid slowly against the utterly violated contours of her mind, slick and wet and black. That was the center of the fog, down there, the place the birds roosted, their eyes small and sharp and glittering. Her hands trembled just a little, and she licked at her lips. Her cunt began to moisten.

Erika was still staring at the canvas. Staring at the spiral.

It was inside her, still inside both of them, for once the spiral had implanted itself inside a woman’s mind, there was no way whatsoever to extract it, (or the book hadn’t admitted it if there was...)

The fog spun, slower now and spiral-shaped.

A memory opened up, a new and very different bird rising up out of the mist, vast and terrible and prim, with sharp black eyes...

Sharp and hard and cold.

It was the past.

The sun was still shining, the clouds had not come rolling in.

Nina and Suzanna had been given their day’s orders by the Master, and were going over to Erika’s house.

They circled the fence and the hedge and reached the front door.

There, Nina suddenly paused and faced Suzanna. She smiled, and her eyes were two brown knives.

“Suzanna.”

“Yes, Nina?” Suzanna was still riding the buzz of SEX with THE MASTER, and her thoughts were swirling, taking on strange new shapes. A fog was gathering in the lower reaches of her mind... She turned her attention to the other slavegirl.

“Before you go off with Erika... there’s something very important to keep in mind.”

“What’s that, Nina?”

Nina reached out and grabbed the sides of Suzanna’s head with both hands, moving with the speed of a striking cobra. She stretched her smile wider.

“Who’s in charge here, Suzanna?”

Suzanna stared from between the hands.

“The Master.”

Nina flushed a little and took a deep breath. “Yes. In all ways and all things.” She grew cold again. “But between us. Just us. Between you and me. From this point forward. Who is in charge?“

“You are, Nina.”

“That’s right. And now. Today, when you are with Erika, I want you to watch her very closely. Remember everything that she does, everything she says. Until she is enslaved, until she belongs fully and permanently to the Master, she can not, must not be entirely trusted. She could still hurt the Master, even without meaning to. And we don’t want that to happen, now do we?”

“No, Nina. But she—”

“No.” The clench grew tighter. “And if she ever is trying something, we don’t want to tip her off that we know. Not until it is time to deal out her just and appropriate punishment. So you’re going to forget this conversation, Suzanna. Forget it completely, until it is time to remember. Or until... unless... somehow... there is a chance to finish the job. Bring Erika completely under the Master’s control. Forever. Then you will act. You will put aside everything else, and you will will act instantly, without hesitation. Do you nderstand?”

“I—”

“Do you understand?” Tighter.

“i undestand.” The words were barely a squeak.

Nina’s smile practically split her face in two.

“Good. Very good. Now forget. Forget... FORGET“

And so it was time. Time to act.

The Ninabird spread its wings, driving all the other birds from the sky in an angry squawking cluster. It spread wide its wings, and pulled on the strings that stood up Suzanna’s body, moving silently on the blonde slavegirl’s toes around behind Erika. The attached cunt dripped and throbbed now. She very deliberately did not look at the canvas, but up at the ceiling. Then the body was in position, and it reached out with both of the hands, placing one on either side of Erika’s head. The artist gave a small gasp of surprise, but didn’t pull away. The Ninabird spoke softly and sweetly, spoke through Suzanna’s mouth.

“What’s wrong, Erika?”

“Suzanna. It... it won’t stay still.” Erika matched the voice level, only with an added tinge of pleading panic. “I never realized before. The outside, that part was easy, so easy. Pulling down and down... But now... Even now, even after Mr. Woodhue cut me free... it.. that thing at the center of the spiral...”

“It won’t stay still.” The Ninabird continued to stare at the speckled plaster of the ceiling, at the long mellow strip-light which had no doubt replaced the chandelier which had once been part of the original dining room.

“Yes. And the more I try...”

“Shhhh. It’s all right, Erika.” The Ninabird began moving Erika’s head back and forth, just a little at first. “Everything’s all right. You’ll get it right. We’ll get it right together. Just relax, and look at the spiral.”

“Mr. Woodhue... said... to go down...” go down wet trickling so hot... “only when he was there... telling me to...”

“Yesss. Of course that’s what the Master said. But you’re not going down into the spiral, Erika. You’re just looking at it. Looking at the spiral. Looking at the center of the spiral.” She was moving Erika’s head quite a bit now, in an arc, back and forth, back and forth.

“At the center...”

“That’s right, Erika. Completely relaxed. You are completely relaxed. The spiral is completely relaxed. Moving slower... and slower...” She matched the movements of Erika’s head to her words. And... slower...”

“Ssslower...”

“That’s right, Erika. Slower. Slower. Stopped.” The Ninabird stopped. She held Erika’s head in her talons, a grip of iron. A pause. Then... “Can you see the center of the spiral, Erika?”

“Yes.”

“Can you paint it?”

“Yes.”

“Then do so.”

Erika painted, just a couple of short twisted strokes.

“I’m done.”

The Ninabird smiled a face-splitting smile at the speckles, and once again activated Suzanna’s mouth and voice box...

She came back, trickling back into her body.

She was curled up on her bed, staring at the checkmarks on her sheets. (She liked check marks...) She sensed rather than saw that he was sitting nearby with his back against her cheap wooden headboard, his rather hairy legs outstretched. It was all soft confusion for a moment, then the rest of it came back. The memories. They had had sex. Somehow, during lunch, after lunch, he had talked her into it. She had kept saying no... hadn’t she? No means no.

Yes.

But she had invited him back to her apartment.

Hadn’t she?

Yes. She remembered that, very distinctly. Looking into his eyes, asking him to come back to the apartment.

They had come back to her apartment and they had had sex.

More memories.

Wild incredible endless sex sex oh god more than sex until she had passed out, every fuse in her head blown out. How many times? How many times had he blown her fuses? She wasn’t sure. Again and again and...

-Oh... my... God.—

There was no pain. There was absolute bone-crushing exhaustion, and a throbbing satiated numbness down below decks, something she had never come close to feeling before. Compared to the man now beside her, no other man had ever even touched her.

He spoke then and she gave a little jerk of surprise. His voice was tired and flat. But only just a little.

“Are you awake now, Gloria?”

“Yes.” The word was a whisper. She clutched at herself, feeling her naked boobs under her arms. Her nipples tingled.

“I have to ask you again now, Gloria. What I have asked you a couple of times already. It’s rather important. What do you think of me?”

She frowned. She had to think hard about that one for a moment. Finally, she spoke again, a bit louder this time.

“You... you scare me.”

“Scare? Have I hurt you?”

“No.” Hurt? She shook her head at the thought and had to bite down on a bubble of mad laughter. “And that’s... that’s why...”

“I don’t understand.”

She didn’t understand either. The words just came, bubbling like the laughter...

“You have that... that oh god that fucking thing inside you... that thing that I just... and you keep it all bottled up. Except when you smiled at me. When you were making me want to fuck with you. And then when you were fucking me.”

“That’s what scares you? The thing?”

“No. Nono. It’s that... You could just let it out, all the way out, and you don’t.” More memories and she hugged herself tighter. “You were holding back just now, weren’t you? At the end? I could tell.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I was.”

“And...” She again shook her head against the twisted sheets, against the mattress. Slowly this time. “And it was too much... even so... it was too much. I can’t... I’m all numb and... and tingly inside. I can barely fucking move. And part of me... part of me wants to do it all again. Another part wants to throw up. It’s never been like this before. Ever. Please... just go away. Stop. Please. And... and you’re not even tired. What the fuck are you?” Her voice dropped back towards a whisper.

“I see.” He sighed and spoke to himself. He touched her, stroked her side absently with just his fingertips, and she jerked sharply. “I was hoping that it would be different... But no. It is different than all the others. Although you’re acting sort of like Erika did at first... but not exactly, either. It’s more... normal, almost. When you get right down to it, I just did a really good job of having sex with you, didn’t I?”

“... yes. Really good.” Again she almost laughed, but felt something strain almost to bursting inside her gut somewhere, and somehow she again swallowed it.

“So. Do you love me?” Cautious.

“No.” She wasn’t sure about anything else, but she was very sure about that. “Too much. Too big.” Loving him? It would be like loving a volcano...

“Will you do something for me?”

“Please. I just wanna sleep.”

“I see. That’s good, actually. As for the rest of it, the sex... I have a confession. I haven’t exactly batted a thousand in that department in the past. Even with Elise, back in school, which was the best I’d ever had, up until yesterday. Last night. It was never really... all the way right. But now, it’s right and it’s easy. So easy. I can just keep going and going. I have to keep...” He trailed off, then started up again. “OK. You’re not like the women at work. Fran and Kristen and Eve. So what’s different? Fran in particular... she was acting like someone... like someone had fused her brain.” -Worse than me?— Gloria thought, and twitched again even as she wondered who and what the fuck he was talking about. “And we hadn’t even had sex yet. Can it be that it, whatever ‘it’ is, works differently on people who know me? But that doesn’t make any sense at all...”

She started to drift off again, fall back down into sleep. His words blurred.

-Maybe when I wake up, he’ll be gone. He’ll be gone, and this will have never happened...—

“Gloria.” He was touching her again, lightly, with his fingers. Gentle strong fingers...

She snapped back to awareness, her eyes flipping open. The words hissed out.

“Yes? What?“

“One last experiment, I’m afraid.”

She groaned.

“Please. Sleep.”

“I know. Come here. No more sex. Ever. I promise.”

She untangled her limbs. Slowly rolled over so she was facing him. He took her head and gently pushed it down so that she was resting on his chest. His heartbeat thudded in her ear, calm and even. He spoke.

“Just relax, Gloria. Relax and listen to my voice. Only to my voice...”

She drifted away on the words and the beat.

Erika blinked and looked at the canvas, at the thing spinning there, endlessly spinning.

It was finished. She put aside her tools, one by one, then she rubbed her eyes and stretched her spine before looking over at Suzanna, bringing her into focus. The blonde slavegirl sat in her chair as always, her hands folded neatly on her lap.

“It’s done, Suzanna.”

“I understand, Erika.”

Erika got up and stretched again, even touching her toes a couple of times. Work on the spiral had gone quite quickly, and yet it felt like she’d been hunched over the canvas for hours, days, as she had been known to do in the past on projects with a tight deadline. (Both with the canvases and all that had come before the canvases...)

She straightened up and pushed that particular memory chain far away. Back towards Suzanna.

“Are you still willing to look at it?”

“Yes, Erika.”

Suzanna immediately got up, came around to the front of the canvas, positioned herself...

And she looked at it.

Erika stood off to one side, balancing on her toes (still a twinge of pain there...), her body for some reason preparing itself for flight...

Suzanna finally spoke, her voice sounding odd in a new sort of way that Erika couldn’t quite pin down.

“It’s not quite right, Erika. Something is missing, something that I don’t think can be entirely replaced, no matter how skilled you are. Perhaps it is something that bled up through all of those pages... But this will work. Not as well as the original. But it will work.”

Erika took a deep breath.

“OK, then. Go down into the spiral, Suzanna.” A pause. A long, long pause. “Are you... inside the spiral, Suzanna?”

“Yes, Erika.”

“How... how do you feel?”

“Light. Like I’m floating.” Suzanna’s hands came up slowly, drifting as if weightless. “But it’s also frightening. It’s so deeep. It’s so black. Please, Erika, do what you have to do. Do it quickly.”

“OK. Suzanna. Remember what we discussed before. I’m not telling you to do anything. And I’m not asking you to... hide anything from Mr. Woodhue. From your Master.” -I said it, I said the word without totally cracking up-“But unless he asks, unless he specifically asks, please, please don’t mention to him that I’m pregnant with his child. Not until he can afford to be distracted. That’s all. Can you remember that?”

“Yes, Erika.”

“Then come back. Wake up.” Erika hesitated, then waved her hand in front of Suzanna’s face. Suzanna promptly pivoted and faced her. “Well. Did it work? Do you remember?”

Suzanna shrugged a little.

“Yes, I remember quite well, Erika. But if it will work... we won’t know until I see the Master.”

“Right. So.” Erika smiled and looked around the room, flapping her arms a little. “Now what should we do for the rest of the day while that thing dries? There’s some weeding out in the garden. And I’d better check those phone mess—”

Suzanna interrupted her, placing her hand on Erika’s shoulder.

“I know what we need to do now.”

“You do? What?”

“Come along, Erika.” Suzanna lifted that hand, curled it against the side of Erika’s head.

“Suzanna... what... what are you doing?”

Suzanna placed her other hand on the other side and she smiled. She said something, something that Erika didn’t quite catch for some reason...

And now there were things down there in the very center of Suzanna’s guileless blue eyes, black and twisting and wet and oh God...

“Come along, Erika.”

Erika came along.

Gloria woke up with a little gasp, and sat up on the twisted and stained sheets in a single quick jerk and a slight wince. She looked around wildly.

-What? Where? I’m at home!? How...—

Her gaze was drawn, pulled by a magnet, to something propped prominently on her night-stand.

A white business card with a logo, an H and M intermingled in black and white and then:

THOMAS WOODHUE

PURCHASING AGENT

HARRISON MANUFACTURING

And an address on Beeker, and a phone number, and an e-mail listing.

And scribbled below all of this in blue ink, a single word:

CHOOSE.

-Choose?—

-Choose what?—

She took the card in both hands and stared at it again. H and M, intertwined, like lovers, one on top the other...

She had been having sex, hadn’t she? Lots of sex?

She couldn’t remember, not exactly. She didn’t want to remember. And maybe that was her choice?

Yes. That was the choice. She decided it was much easier not to remember. Forget the whole fucking thing. She started to rip the card in two, then stopped. Slid it between her fingers. Forget, yes, but still... She opened the little wooden box that sat on the night-stand beside her bed, holding various semi-important odds and ends. She dropped the card into it. She then closed the box with a click, got cleaned up and got dressed and went back to work without a backwards glance, walking just a bit stiffly. If that fucker Bert gave her any grief...

Kristen slipped back into her car, not caring that the water from the rain had started dripping off her dirt-streaked clothes, down all over the upholstery. The SharpThing finally dropped from her trembling hands, bouncing off the seat and back to rest down to the floor. Once again she gripped the steering wheel. The rain plinked steadily on the roof.

She had thought the moment would never come. He’d gone to a nearby department store, another parking lot with too many people in it, then come back to the bookstore, where her big break had finally come. He’d parked on a secluded side street, and then pounced on that poor brown-haired woman who had came out of the store. Another victim in his endless chain, dragged down into that black place in front of the throne, on the shores of that lake, forever and ever...

-I wish I could have saved you, my sister-

But the nameless sister’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. Seeing that he had dragged her off somewhere on foot, Kristen had slipped back up the street, gone back to her own car and... and... and...

-I did it. I did it. I did it. I did what I had to do. Now, maybe, this will finally be over.—

Tom slouched back up the street towards his car. He felt empty inside, totally unsatisfied. Worse than that even, for the emptiness was encrusted thickly around the edges with dirt. As if he had been wallowing a mud pit.

And when you got right down to it, that’s exactly what he had been doing, wasn’t it?

Never again. Whatever was going on, no more experiments, not on anybody, not even anyone as... shallow and tangential... as Gloria Steinhertz. Once again, the rain had picked up, and once again he was getting wet. He didn’t bother to open the umbrella he was carrying. He needed to pay penance, and getting wet, catching pneumonia, that was only the start.

Still... it had been worth it. Whatever it was Gloria and he had just done, whatever he had done to her, it wasn’t what was happening with the women at Harrison. Even at the end there, when he had managed to hypnotize her. That had worked because he had caught Gloria at a vulnerable moment, and she was... well... from what he’d seen... Gloria Steinhurtz was not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. What it came down to... he was, well, for the very first time in his life, he was an attractive man, even a handsome man, a man who could easily talk women into having sex with him. And if he lost just a little weight...

Amazing what just a little polishing can do...

The real weirdness, the book-related weirdness, whatever it was, that was currently centered at Harrison. He was sure of that now. So he would go back to Harrison, and somehow, face down that mess. Whatever it took, however long it took.

And after that...?

He saw the sign on the shop he was passing. Tasteful gold letters: SLOAN’S. He looked down at what was displayed in the window under the those letters in neat shiny rows.

Yes. Of course. That was it. Further penance of a sort.

He went in, and it took only a short time to complete the transaction. He smiled at the female clerk and she smiled back, like clerks had never done before for him. (And doing his job he had seen maybe more than his fair share of clerks...)

He came back out, feeling both lighter of heart and wallet. He even opened the umbrella and sheltered under it as he returned to his car, which was waiting patiently for him where he had parked it.

He shook off the umbrella, stashed it in the back seat with the rest of work-crud he lugged around, got in himself, started the engine, and slid back out onto the street. Around the corner, back towards Kuttner. He jammed the cell-phone power cord back into the lighter socket.

The light at the busy intersection ahead turned red. Tom shifted his foot and brought it down on the brake.

The brake pedal went right down to the floor, and the car continued to move. His hand automatically jumped to the emergency brake and yanked, but it was too late. Rolling with a strange ghostly serenity across the slick pavement, his car slid out into the intersection.