While You Were Sleeping
On what turned out to be the last night Jack ever went bowling with his friends, nobody played all that well, but Jack was definitely off his game. Afterwards, as usual, the group adjourned to the pub just across the road from the bowling alley. Around twenty minutes later, when their numbers had thinned a little, and there was less risk of provoking derision by showing concern about someone else’s well-being, Mike asked the question that had been on his mind for the last hour or so.
“Are you all right, Jack? You’re not usually so quiet, and I’ve never seen you bowl that badly before.”
Jack gave a start. “Sorry, just having trouble focusing. I’ve got this earworm that’s been bothering me for days.”
Hugh, who was seated next to Jack, leaned away from him, regarding his ear with suspicion. “Earworm? That’s not contagious, is it?”
“Not an actual worm, you muppet. It’s a tune that’s got stuck in my head, and I can’t shift it, no matter how hard I try.”
“Yeah, that sort of thing can be annoying,” agreed Mike. “Look, don’t try this until I’m out of hearing range, ’cause you can pass earworms on, but sometimes singing along with it does the trick.”
“I thought about that, but there aren’t any words to sing. It’s this sort of new agey, ambient, trancey thing that comes and goes in waves, and it’s always there in the back of my mind, making it hard to concentrate on anything else.”
“Oh, instrumentals are easy to deal with.” Mike cupped his hands over his mouth, deepened his voice, and pronounced, “Nothing can stand before the might of the Imperial March from ‘Star Wars’.”
Without dropping the Darth Vader impersonation, he started to chant the tune, quickly joined by Hugh and Gavin, their impromptu rendition drawing disapproving glares from several of the pub’s other patrons.
“Doesn’t help if that’s the tune you’ve got stuck in your head,” pointed out Gavin when they were done, “but the way you described the one that was bugging you, it certainly wasn’t that.”
Jack shook his head. “No, it isn’t from ‘Star Wars’, or anything else I recognise. And that hasn’t got rid of it, but thanks for trying.”
“If it’s that resilient, I definitely don’t want to hear it,” said Mike. “And you said it’s been going on for days?”
Jack nodded glumly. “It’s even got me in trouble at work. I keep mistyping things ’cause I can’t concentrate properly, and then the figures don’t balance and I get yelled at.”
“All of a sudden I’m up for a bit of Stormtrooper-massacring action,” said Hugh. “Any of you guys want to join me for an all-nighter on the Xbox?”
Nobody took him up on the offer, but the conversation never returned to Jack’s troubles, and before long everyone went their separate ways.
The sound of the alarm made it through the layers of fuzziness, bringing Jack to a state of partial wakefulness, and he fumbled around until he managed to switch the thing off. With a groan he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, and as he gradually became more conscious of his surroundings, he also became aware that that blasted tune was still swirling around inside his head. And that there was a big damp patch on his pyjama trousers.
“Oh, not again!”
All right, so he hadn’t had any action since the break-up with Janice, but all the same, at his age, he shouldn’t be getting wet dreams. Or if he was, they should be better than the ones from the last couple of nights. Not that he could remember much about them—just something about a woman telling him to do stupid stuff, and him doing it.
To his surprise and mild alarm, this vague recollection caused his prick to swell into an erection more impressive than he could remember having had in months. He shambled to the shower to deal with his hard-on, to wash away the traces of his nocturnal emission, and in a vain attempt to clear the cobwebs from his mind. It was going to be another bad day, he could tell.
Jack welcomed the weekend. No need to get up for work, or at all, for that matter. But after a few hours of lying semi-conscious, his pyjama bottoms sticking to him, the same tune fogging up the disconnected thoughts that tumbled around his brain, something crystallized into clarity. A phrase that he’d heard in last night’s dream. And maybe not just that one.
It wasn’t the sort of thing that he was likely to think up by himself, so maybe he’d heard it somewhere. Possibly even the same place he’d picked up the earworm. And if the phrase could give him a lead to wherever that was, perhaps he’d finally be able to dislodge the wretched tune and start to get his life back into order.
He went online in incognito mode. The phrase wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted in his browser history. It took him a few attempts before he managed to spell all the words correctly, but at last he entered, “take your place as my submissive slave”.
One hit. A website belonging to a woman who went by the title of ‘Mistress Mesmeratrisha’. Warily, he clicked the link.
The photo of an attractive brunette with piercing dark eyes, appeared in the centre of the screen, further links fading into view below it, and the music in Jack’s head grew a little louder. No, it wasn’t just in his head now. It was playing on the website. One question answered, several new ones raised.
Clicking through, Jack discovered that ‘Mistress Mesmeratrisha’ was a professional hypno-domme—a term with which he was not familiar, though he could probably have figured out what it meant even without the profusion of ads for hypnotic videos and MP3s targeted at submissive men and women.
Jack blinked, and shook his head, which did nothing to disperse the mental haze. If not for the evidence provided by the music, he would have sworn that he’d never visited this site, or any similar one, before. It wasn’t the sort of thing he was into. At least, he didn’t think it was, but the twinges of arousal he kept getting at the sight of titles such as ‘Craving My Commands’ and ‘It’s Good to Grovel’ did suggest otherwise.
Then another title caught his eye: ‘Memory Melter’. Another wary click led Jack to the description, which was what the title suggested. Mistress Mesmeratrisha claimed to be able to make people forget things. A disclaimer in capital letters warned that the recording should not be used as a substitute for therapy when dealing with psychological trauma, but customer testimonials at the bottom of the page supported the assertion that Mistress Mesmeratrisha could erase almost anything from a willing subject’s mind.
Could that be what had happened? Had Jack come here in the past, and then for some reason got Mistress Mesmeratrisha to make him forget about it? He had to know.
The last of the links read ‘Contact Mistress’. He clicked on it, and began slowly typing in the box that opened up for him, explaining about the earworm and the harmful effect it was having on his life, asking if he had ever purchased any recordings from her, and very respectfully suggesting that if he had used her Memory Melter, it didn’t seem to be working as it should, and he would be most grateful if she could do something to correct whatever had gone wrong.
Once he’d finished the message and corrected all the misspellings (sending something flawed to Mistress Mesmeratrisha just seemed wrong), Jack hit ‘Send’ and closed the browser window. It took him some time to summon up the effort to return to bed.
From that night onwards, the dreams became more vivid. The woman in them was now clearly identifiable as Mistress Mesmeratrisha, which only made the lack of any response to his message all the more frustrating. He sleepwalked his way through work, and barely responded when warned that if his performance didn’t improve drastically, he’d be out of a job.
And then, on what was supposed to be bowling night, only Jack couldn’t be bothered to go out again, there was a ring at the doorbell. At first Jack ignored it, but the visitor was persistent, and eventually he was able to overcome his ennui enough to make it to the door and open it.
At the sight of Mistress Mesmeratrisha on his doorstep, he fell to his knees, mumbling apologies for having kept her waiting. She asked him to let her in, and he shuffled out of her way.
Once she was inside, she closed the door. “Oh, do get up.”
Jack stood, but kept his gaze downcast.
“I’ve been doing some investigating since I received your message, and I think I know what’s happened, but I need to check. Now, where do you sleep at night?”
Jack led the way to his bedroom, cringing at the thought of Mistress Mesmeratrisha seeing the state it was in, but unable to disobey her instructions. She noted the position of his bed, peered through the window, looking up and down the street, and gave a nod.
She carried a slim black leather handbag. Snapping it open, she took out a mobile phone and called a number. Someone picked up at the other end. Jack could only hear her end of the conversation that followed
“Is that Gordon?
“Take your place as my submissive slave.”
(While the instruction was directed at the Gordon on the other end of the line, Jack couldn’t resist the compulsion to kneel before Mistress Mesmeratrisha again.)
“Have you been listening to my recordings every night, Slave-Gordon?
“Tonight I need things to be a bit different, Slave-Gordon. Firstly, instead of one of my recordings, I want you to listen to some music. You can choose what. Pick something, and tell me when you’re ready.
“That’s good, Slave-Gordon. Now, almost everything else has to be exactly the way it usually is. Set things up just like you always do, and when you’ve done that, let me know.
“Excellent. But tonight you mustn’t leave it as late as usual. You need to start listening to it right now.”
Almost immediately, the lyrics of ‘Killer Queen’ became audible through the wall the bedroom shared with the neighbouring house.
Her voice became harder. “Stop now.”
The song cut off.
“Slave-Gordon, what do I always say about listening to my recordings? How are you supposed to do it?
“But you’re not using headphones, are you?
“Then you should have got replacements. I am very angry with you for disobeying me like this, Slave-Gordon. As soon as this call is over, you must go online and buy some new headphones. And you may not listen to any hypnotic recordings, not mine, not anybody else’s, until you have those headphones and are using them to listen with. Do you understand?
“Not sorry enough, by the sound of it. I also want you to go to my website and buy the ‘Extreme Chastity’ series. And when you do get the new headphones, those recordings are the only ones you are allowed to listen to until I tell you otherwise. Is that clear?
“No, you’re not supposed to enjoy being punished this time. You’ve done a lot of damage, and I have to put it right. Now I’m going to hang up, so you need to get buying, but keep your phone handy. I might not be finished with you, yet.”
She rang off and turned her attention to Jack. “I’m very sorry. This shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. You must have overheard my recordings in your sleep when that idiot played them next door, and they’ve obviously had a very potent effect upon you.”
A shudder visibly ran through her. “I must admit that I find the idea of such a responsive subject… pleasing. And to have inadvertently enslaved somebody…” She licked her lips. “But I have to act like a responsible adult, so I’m giving you a choice.”
She reached into her handbag and took out two CDs in plastic sleeves. “Now, do you own headphones? Don’t worry, I won’t get cross with you if the answer’s no.”
Jack nodded and, at her urging, got up and retrieved them from the clutter on his bedside table.
“And something you can play one of these on? That you can plug the headphones into, of course.”
It took Jack a little longer to get a CD-player set up and the headphones plugged in. Once everything was ready, Mistress Mesmeratrisha held out the CDs to him, one in each hand.
“All right, if you listen to this disc,” she indicated the one in her right hand, “it will remove all of my programming from your mind. Every trigger that’s been implanted in you will be erased, and it’ll set up, in essence, a mental firewall that will prevent you from being affected if you do ever accidentally overhear another of my recordings.”
She glared at the wall between Jack and Gordon’s houses. “Not that that will happen again if I have any say in the matter… And you know what? I do.
“And listening to the other disc,” she raised the one in her left hand, “will take you deeper into trance than ever before. It will make you mine, completely and irrevocably. You will leave your old life behind and come to live with me as my special slave. I will take care of you, and you will devote yourself to serving me, pleasing me, loving me and worshipping me.
“So…” she bit her lower lip. “Which disc would you like to listen to?”
Without hesitation, Jack took the disc from her left hand.
“I’m so happy,” she whispered, and the pleasure Jack felt at hearing those words almost overwhelmed him.
“Now take off your clothes, put on the headphones, lie on the bed, and start listening.”
As Jack started to do as directed, Mistress Mesmeratrisha removed her panties and hit redial on her phone. Gordon picked up within seconds and began to speak. By the time he paused, Jack was lying naked on the bed, his penis already erect, and still growing bigger as he surrendered his will absolutely to his Mistress.
“No, Slave-Gordon, you are not forgiven yet. This is the next stage of your punishment. You’ve never bought any of my cuckold recordings, have you?”
She knelt over Jack and slowly lowered herself onto him, taking his length inside her.
“Well, this…” she gasped in pleasure, “…is a very special live performance, just for you. Pay very close attention to it. And as you listen to me fucking my newest slave, know that this could never have happened if you hadn’t disobeyed my instructions.”
With that, she began to ride Jack, driving both him and herself towards a spectacular orgasm while Gordon helplessly listened to every thrust and moan and cry until she was satiated.