The Time I Died
Chapter Five
Freeport
“It’s a golden August sunrise.”
In Kate’s experience, post-hypnotic triggers worked instantaneously, every time. It always played out the same way. The victim would gasp, or their eyes would widen in surprise, and then the programming would short-circuit everything. Her eyelids would flutter, then slam closed. Sometimes her head would follow, slumping chin-first to her chest. Her surprised gasp would flatten to a frown, her lips parted and slightly puckered. That was how it went whenever Kate triggered someone; she assumed the same of herself whenever someone had a special phrase just for her.
But Michelle DiMera was doing none of those things, Instead of smoothing out into trance, her face scrunched up in confusion. Her eyes were blinking, not fluttering, and she kept them locked on Kate. She looked exactly the way anyone else would look if someone told them “it’s a golden August sunrise” on a chilly fall afternoon.
“A… sunrise?” she stammered, and Kate suddenly felt very foolish.
April 22
“How do you picture it in your mind, Kate?”
“I guess I would drop by her front door, or maybe follow her to a coffee shop. Then I’d introduce myself. I’m sure we’d hit it off. She’s a lot like me, Doctor Stroud. She’s very cute and friendly, very personable. Not that I’m bragging that I’m also really… I mean, you know what I mean. Sorry.”
“I know what you mean, Kate. Go on.”
“She has a nice smile. People tell her that she’s pretty, even when she’s putting no effort into it. She’s getting close to middle age, but you’d barely know it from looking at her. Michael had a type. A couple of types, really, but the one thing we all had in common was that we all had that same look. So, she’s got nice tits and a nice ass. Not porn-sized, but the kind of body even straight girls would pause and ire. She’s thin but never rail-skinny. She stays in shape. She’s probably proud of it, the fact that she still hits the gym on the regular, that she still has the figure she had back in college. Maybe she’s married now. Maybe she has a kid or two. She has a boring job and a mortgage.
In some ways, she’s like me. In some ways, ways she doesn’t , she’s a lot like me.”
“A… sunrise? But it’s not August…”
“A golden August sunrise, yes. Do you that? The golden August sunrise?” Every time Kate repeated the trigger, Michelle sagged a little more, shoulders drooping, eyes a bit more unfocused and glazed. Still, it wasn’t working, not the way it should, and Kate considered abandoning the effort altogether. Just kidding! Just a little Freeport humor!
Just then, the brunette responded with “I’m so warm, and sleepy? Like I need to close… close my, um, eyes for just… a moment…”
“ when we talked about what it feels like to be brainwashed? How one second you’re living your best life and the next second you’re still living your best life, only those two seconds are somehow hours or days apart? It’s the same feeling when someone speaks your trigger phrase. One second you’re doing whatever, and the next it’s like someone’s dangling you upside-down over a bottomless pit, shaking you.
And then they let go.”
“What happens when I say the words ‘it’s a golden August sunrise?’”
“I’m… I’ll go… to sleep. Deep sleep. O… obey.”
Without realizing it, Kate found herself slipping back into her cult cadence, that soft and gentle approach she’d used to send so many girls like Michelle into dreamland. “That’s right. You’ll feel safe, and warm, and relaxed. Eyes heavy and sleepy. The words will always, always hypnotize you.”
“Always… hypnotize me. Hypnotized. I’m hypnotized now, yes.”
Michelle closed her eyes. A soft rush of air escaped her parted lips.
“Normally, Kate, this is the part of our session where I would gently reassure you that hypnosis doesn’t work that way.”
“We both know better, though. Maybe that’s the way it works in the rest of the world, but not in mine.
And not in yours now, either.”
Kate prepared herself to reach out and grab the woman’s phone before it smashed itself on the sidewalk- not that she couldn’t program an excuse for that into Michelle’s brain- but to her relief, the brunette’s fingers retained enough pressure to keep the phone in place.
“What are you, Michelle?”
The answer was exhaled rather than spoken. “A slavegirl.”
“I think… one of the, um, hardest things about all of this, about ing things, about getting all of my memories back… it’s not just ing the things that I did to people. It’s ing just how fucking good it felt to do those things.”
“It’s worth pondering that for a second, Kate. You say that you felt good doing bad things, like hypnotizing people, or ordering them around.”
“I did.”
“But can you truthfully say that? Just as much as those other girls were forced to believe what they were told to believe, and like what they were told to like… that was you, too. Someone made you think that it would feel really good to control those women, and bring them to Michael. Or to do all of the things you did for Decker, for that matter.”
“Oh, not with Decker. He made me feel nothing. I was nothing under him, just a robot following commands. But with Michael? What he had me doing? I can still feel it in my bones. The thrill of the power trip. It feels electric, like the first time a guy you like kisses you. And when you take control of her, tell her to do something and she does it? It’s as good as sex. You feel like you’re having sex. I’ve taken this random girl and I’ve literally erased her. Suddenly she doesn’t have a job, or a mortgage, or kids, or a spouse. She has nothing but obedience, and it’s the only thing she wants or needs. Obedience to Michael. Obedience, for the time being, to me.”
“And who am I?”
“You’re Kate.” Michelle’s eyes closed again as she spoke, reopening at half-mast, focused on nothing in particular. Her voice was flat, almost bored. “You will take me to our Master. I will obey.”
You will take me to our Master was itself a trigger phrase, one aimed at Kate, designed to reinforce programming she no longer had. It was meant to turn her into a robot tasked with delivering the girl she’d just tranced to Michael as quickly and quietly as possible. Even now, three thousand miles and years away from that Kate, she felt it tug at her, a muscle memory not quite forgotten.
She pictured herself standing in a Lassen County parking lot, dazed brunette by her side, the two of them trance-marching their way towards Michael’s prison cell. “I must take her to our Master,” she’d tell the befuddled guards.
It was a ridiculous notion, and it was enough to shake whatever ghostly tendrils of suggestions still wrapped themselves around Kate’s brain. She blinked herself back into full awareness. “You’re going to come with me, Michelle. You’re going to obey me without question, until we reach our Master.”
“Yes, sister Kate.”
“I mean, sure. Sure. I’d like to think that I would snap my fingers and bring her out of it straight away. Maybe I would. But what if I didn’t?”
“Why wouldn’t you? Knowing that it was something you yourself had been through?”
“Ah, but there’s the rub, Doctor Stroud. Decker was wrong about so, so, so many things, but he was right about one. It’s really easy to convince yourself that you’ll be a benevolent mind controller. You won’t drop them into trance just because you feel like it! Oh, maybe you will now and then, but not all the time! And you certainly wouldn’t start thinking about brainwashing a whole bunch of other women. Oh, well, okay, maybe brainwash one or two.”
“And three, and four and five?”
“Don’t forget Three and Four and Five’s cute friends! You might have to drug and brainwash their boyfriends, too, just to get them out of the way. And then it turns out that one of your new slaves has an important boss. Well, she could certainly be useful. And so it begins.”
“You become Decker?”
“Maybe you become even worse than Decker! You stop being yourself. You throw away everything you’ve ever believed in. Everyone becomes nothing more than a tool to you, something to use, never someone to cherish or love. You become incapable of love. A cold-hearted bastard. You’re a danger to everyone around you.”
“I trust you, Kate. I trust that you wouldn’t become that person.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Maybe you should.”
They slipped into the Hyatt through a side entrance, Kate’s right arm wrapped firmly around Michelle’s unresisting left. To anyone watching, they were just two close friends, one a little more tipsy than the other, walking and slightly staggering back to their hotel room after an early happy hour, two conventioneers in a hotel filled with them.
Be discreet.
You’re goddamned right I’m going to be discreet. Kate scanned the floor buttons, before ing that she wasn’t the one staying here. “Take us up to your room, Michelle,” she commanded.
“Yes, sister Kate.”
The brunette tapped her convention badge against the and selected the seventh floor. Mercifully, the elevator dinged open right there and then, and Kate quickly hustled them both into the cab. She didn’t exhale until the doors slid closed.
“Whew. Okay. We’re in. Okay okay okay, hopefully housekeeping isn’t on your floor.”
Michelle looked so pretty standing there in the elevator, eyes locked onto the glowing ‘7’ button on the , seeing nothing else. Her chest strained against her leather coat with each calm, measured breath. She smelled like roses. Kate had a sudden, ridiculous urge to kiss her, full on the lips, tongue and all. They were away from prying eyes. Michelle was deep in trance, programmed to accept any suggestions Kate gave her. Programmed to never, ever resist. Her lips… those wonderful, blowjob-delivering lips… beckoned. Moist. Shiny. So kissable.
That’s Michael talking, not you!
“Fuck! Wait… no, don’t fuck, Michelle. No fucking, not yet, okay?”
“Okay,” Michelle responded, another reminder of just how weird this day had gotten. An hour ago, Kate had been a normal woman picking up a normal prescription from a normal pharmacy. Now she was asking a hot stranger to please not fuck her senseless in this hotel elevator.
“I swear, if that asshole ever gets out of prison, I am going to… ugh! Okay, let’s recap real quick. If we do run into anyone, what are you going to tell them?”
“I will tell them that we are old friends from college, and we just went out for a couple of drinks. It’s been so much fun!” Even in trance, her eyes twinkled. “I’m having such a great time!”
“Mmmhmm. You’re going to having a great time with me. The memories will be a little fuzzy, but details don’t matter. Just that wonderful feeling. Lighter and happier, even as you sink even deeper. Happier and deeper, Michelle.”
“Happier,” the brunette sighed. “Deeper. It feels so good to be so deep.”
An awkward silence followed. With nothing else to do, Kate took Michelle by the hand, and ed her in staring at the glowing buttons. Two floors to go.
“Wow. I mean… wow.”
A part of Kate cringed- it really wasn’t appropriate to be fawning over Michelle’s top-floor suite, not now, anyway- but damn if it wasn’t a fantastic sight. It was much bigger than the suite James booked for their anniversary. This suite had multiple rooms, including a little kitchenette, and it faced the river and the orange- and red-leafed valley beyond.
The view was, in the end, a moot point; Kate’s first act was to move to the windows and yank all of the curtains closed.
“You got all of this on points?” She couldn’t quite let it go.
“Yes, sister Kate.”
“I gotta get on that same program.”
“Yes, sister Kate.”
Kate rolled her eyes. Sexy or not, mind control was a pain in the ass sometimes. “Come here. Come over to me. Sit down on the bed.” She patted the mattress. “Obey.”
The bed frame was unusually tall, and Michelle was not. She crossed her legs and let her feet dangle above the floor. Her left heel came loose and, with the next dangle, clattered to the floor. Michelle pressed her hands into the mattress to steady herself, arching her back to push her tits forward.
Kate sat next to her, letting her feet dangle as well. For once, even her inner self didn’t like hypnotizing pretty girls. “I’m so sorry, Michelle,” she said. She meant it.
“You’re so sorry,” the brunette nodded. “I understand. I await my Master’s commands.”
“I know. How… I guess there’s no way to ask this without asking it. How do you feel right now, Michelle? You can tell me exactly what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking. Do it now.”
“I feel wonderful. I am in the spiral’s center, and I can see The Truth. It’s wonderful, sister Kate. Do you see The Truth, too? It fills our minds, bodies, and souls with purpose. With Master’s purpose. I see The Truth now, and I am ready to obey Master without question. As we all should.”
“He’ll… um, he’ll be here soon. Right now you’re going to wait with me until he gets here. And you’re going to continue to answer all of my questions and obey all of my commands.”
“Yes, sister Kate. You are Master’s voice until he commands us both.”
Kate sighed. Not goddamn likely. “Great job, Kate! Great fucking job!” She slapped her dangling feet together, over and over. “Oh, I’ll just try out the trigger phrase, see if it really does work. Oh, wait, it did! Do I snap her out of it? Do I send her on her way? Nooooo, I bring her back to her room, because I’m scared and I’m stupid and there’s the part of me that just… can’t…”
Bzzt Bzzt Bzzt Bzzt
Kate normally kept her phone on vibrate, but the abrupt buzzing beneath her- she’d dropped her phone onto the bed without realizing it, and now it was somewhere near her left leg- and the spectacularly bad timing combined to scare the holy hell out of her. She jumped to her feet, forgetting how high the bed was, clawing at both her phone and the puffy blue comforter as she unceremoniously tumbled to the floor.
“Ow.”
April 29
“This is a big day, Kate. Are you ready for this?”
“No.”
“That’s pretty declarative. You’re still not ready to talk about Decker, are you?”
“I’m sorry. I keep trying to psych myself up for it, every week. I know we’re getting close to that part of my life, and I know I need to, but I’m not ready. Whew. Deep breaths, right? Deep breaths.”
“Always that he can’t hurt you, Kate. You’re safer from him than you are from Michael Oliver, and you’re very safe from him. Decker is dead, and we all know that for a fact.”
“He’s dead until I close my eyes at night.”
“You’re still having the nightmares?”
“You know, in all this time… ever since I started to everything, I’ve never had an honest-to-God nightmare about Golden Dawn. Dreams, flashbacks? Sure. But with Decker, it’s always a nightmare.”
“How often do you have those nightmares?”
“Once a week, sometimes two. Maybe more. Sometimes I wake up screaming, and James holds me until I calm down. I’ve never met a man who could do that. When I was younger, if a guy tried to hold me like that, I would flip out, squirm away, bitch him out. With James, it’s like a shield. Maybe a little cave I can hide in until the weather blows over. You’re married, Dr. Stroud. You know.”
“I do, Kate. We’re both very fortunate.”
“I guess my point was that when I wake up like that, James doesn’t ask what I was screaming about, or why. Maybe those nightmares were about Decker, too. Maybe they were about something I don’t at all, not awake, anyway.
But in my nightmares, he’s alive, and he’s controlling me. He makes me do horrible things to James, to Claire, to people I know. And in the nightmares I’m not even hypnotized. It’s just me doing all of these horrible things… fuck. I… I really can’t. I can’t today, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Kate. At the end of our session I can give you some advice that might help with those nightmares.”
“I keep telling James to bonk me unconscious with a cartoon hammer and he won’t do it, the butt.”
“What would you like to talk about today instead, Kate?”
“Um… maybe Grant Street? No, no, how about Claire? We didn’t get a chance to talk about her last week.”
Freeport
“Ow. Fuck, that hurt!”
The tumble from the bed was more embarrassing than painful. Kate rolled herself into a sitting condition, the smell of the oh God who’s done what on this floor carpet filling her nose. Michelle’s feet dangled before her. The buzzing continued. Kate pawed at the sheets, unable to see her phone, but to her relief it chose that moment to free itself from the bed and emulate her fall. She caught it mid-dive with both hands and brought it to her face without glancing at the screen.
“YeahthisisKate,” she managed.
“Whoa, you sound out of breath, girl. Is James giving you an extra-special workout? Are you two looking for an extra couple for a foursome?”
Kate shook her head. She was still a little dizzy from the fall. A not-small part of her wanted to end the call immediately, but she forced herself to be Casual Kate for the time being.
“Okay Claire, that’s like the third time you’ve mentioned a foursome. Are you that bored with Steve already?”
“What can I say? I’m adventurous! Not that I’ve brought it up with Steve. Or James. Or, well, anyone but you. But anyway! What are you up to? On the run from drug dealers? Human traffickers? What’s the Katetime movie of the week today?”
“You mean ‘The Girl Who Had to Go Downtown to Pick Up Her Meds and Mail a Package’?”
And hypnotize a random stranger?
Shut up. “Four out of ten, not recommended.” Kate looked up at Michelle’s feet, imagining the motionless, blank-eyed beauty attached to them. “Today’s been… kind of a day, actually.”
“So I was right. Human traffickers.”
“Claire!”
“I’m KIDDING, you goof! Do you have time to talk about it? I’m actually free tonight, Steve’s got his bowling league. Wanna go grab drinks at Porto? It just reopened.”
“Can’t, I’ve got…” Oh shit, shit shit shit James! “I’m supposed to… shit, Claire, I can’t. I’m doing dinner with James.”
“Well don’t get too excited about it.” A pause. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk? You sound worried. Doctor Claire’s always available for appointments, you know that.”
Kate rose to her feet, unsteady legs wobbling, hand pressed against the side of the bed for .. She looked at Michelle, then wished that she hadn’t. “I know.”
2018
“Claire. Three, two, one. Sleep for me.”
The blonde’s eyes fluttered and slid closed. The fork fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor.
“Repeat your instructions about the day that we were held at gunpoint.”
“I will nothing important about that day. It will always be a blur to me. I will trust you when you tell me things about it. I will always trust you without question.”
“Claire, you can’t lie to me. You will tell me the truth. Do you want to anything about that day?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head ever so slightly. “Don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“I want to focus on Steve, on my future. It’s not… s’not important to me. What happened.”
“Then you’ll continue to nothing about it, until you are ready to . Then you will ask me about it, and I will tell you—honestly—what happened. I promise.”
“Yes, Kate. You will tell me.”
“I keep waiting for Claire to ask me about it.”
“It?”
“You know… it. IT.”
“About what happened to you at your house? With Decker?”
“That… for starters, yeah. But everything else that happened before that day, too.
In my head, I’ve always imagined that one day she’d call me up and say ‘hey Kate, I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. I’d like to know,’ and then we’d sit down with a bottle of wine and I’d… well, I’d tell her everything. The drugs. The hypnosis. The brainwashing. The things I did to her. The things I nearly got her into.”
“And that’s still your plan. But, you also told her that she had to be ready for it, Kate. That ultimately makes it her choice, not yours.”
“It was a flimsy post-hypnotic suggestion! I made it flimsy on purpose! Like when Alice told me that I’d free myself when I was ready. And instead of freeing herself, she… she’s…”
“She tells you that you just have to let the past be the past.”
“Exactly!”
“I think that you’ve done everything that you needed to do there, Kate. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you should be proud of yourself. You gave your best friend the free will that no one ever thought to give to you. And you protected her emotions, instead of destroying them.
You spoke earlier today about erasing women. How you could and would crush their thoughts and identities with a trigger phrase. Not only did you do the opposite with Claire, you’ve also held true to your promise to tell her the truth when she’s ready.”
“But she’s not ready! She’s never ready! She’s my best friend, and I love her, but… look at me! I have nightmares all the time! I’m scared, I’m lost, I’m confused, I’m in therapy! She’s none of those things! She wakes up and… she’s happy, and we hang out, and she’s happy! We have fun, and she goes home and goes to bed, and she never wakes up screaming because she just dreamed that she shot her husband in the face! I… fuck!”
“Deep breaths, Kate. Take a moment to focus on breathing.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m… I didn’t mean to start yelling. It’s just that… deep breaths, calm, deep… I wish I could be that blissfully unaware, you know? It’s easy to let the past be the past when that past is behind a curtain and you can’t see it.
And it makes me resent my own best friend. That’s Decker for you, huh? Still ruining things from beyond the grave.”
2018
Claire shook her head slowly, as if she were underwater. “Hyp… hypno… don’t want to be… hypno…”
Kate lowered her voice and pulled Claire’s head to hers, just two friends enjoying a secret conversation. “But you’re already so deeply hypnotized, Clare. You’re already falling under my spell. I’m going to take you deeper now, Claire, deeper into trance. You’re going to make an excellent slave. A mindless, hypnotized slavegirl.”
“Ssssslaaavve… nnnnnooo… don….t”
“Let your eyes close now, Claire. So sleepy and tired. Deeply hypnotized. Ready to hear my voice, and hear my instructions, and to follow them completely, like a mindless, hypnotized slavegirl. A beautiful, brainwashed slavegirl.”
“You want to punish yourself, Kate. It’s a very human thing to want to beat ourselves up. To expect severe punishment for every misdeed. Now, a narcissist would be the opposite- they never expect punishment because they never see themselves as being wrong- but that’s not why we’re here today. I mention that because you can see that trait in Decker, and to some extent, in Michael Oliver as well.
And I think the theme of our sessions lately has been that you’re about as far away from those two as a person can be, morally.”
Freeport
“I know.”
Michelle looked up at Kate with puppy dog eyes, open and innocent, probably wondering if Kate was on the phone with their Master and if that meant he’d be arriving soon.
“Well hey, I won’t keep you from your hot date with your hubby, but I wanted to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone yet. You ready?”
Oh Claire please nothing big I can’t handle “I’m ready… I think. You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“The way we go at it, probably one of these days!” Claire laughed. “No, seriously, this kinda ties in to that. Ready?”
Kate forgot about Michelle for a moment. She let her excitement run free. “You got the job?”
“Say hello to Director Claire Jenkins! Can you fucking believe it? I mean, I can, because I killed both of those interviews, but can you fucking believe it? I’m going to run the place! It’s not official yet, so you can’t tell anyone, but I trust you with my fucking soul.
“I’d like you to consider another possibility, Kate. Another option. Another Kate, if you will.”
“With Claire?”
“Yes. What did you tell Claire, when you deprogrammed her? I’m guessing you can recall it by heart.”
“That she would that Decker was this psycho stalker guy who was trying to kill me and James, and that he cornered her at gunpoint and forced her to take some powerful psychedelic drugs. Got her looped up as part of his plan to kill all of us. I told her that she wouldn’t anything about me hypnotizing her, or Decker’s brainwashing conspiracy, or my brainwashing conspiracy.”
“And that you’d never hypnotize her ever again. Couldn’t hypnotize her, in fact.”
“Yeah. I wanted to be sure she was safe.”
“That’s a very important point, and I’m glad you mentioned that just now. Because I suspect that the reason that shoe you’re waiting for hasn’t dropped, Kate, is i’m because Claire’s subconscious has no intention of ever letting go of that shoe. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because she doesn’t need to.”
“I don’t understand. Is it avoidance?”
“Claire doesn’t have nightmares because you rescued her from one. She doesn’t harbor any suspicions because there are none to be had. You took away her free will, and you’re right, it wasn’t just because you were also brainwashed. You did it on your own, for your own benefit. But also, Kate… when you were giving her orders, it was to protect her as much as it was to protect you. Just like Doctor Kapoor, who, I should add, is also extremely grateful for you and for what you did.”
“You’re trying to make me a hero again. I swear, I’m not! I did what I had to do, but… I’m not heroic. I did what anyone would have done.”
“Most people, even good people, would have run away. Or put their faith in a police department unable to help them. Or, like in my example of the creep on the city bus, they would have surrendered. Instead, you gave seven women their lives back. You put a rapist behind bars for thirty years, with no chance at parole. Most people would consider that to be heroic.”
“Fine. I guess it was a little heroic. But I had help from James, and Claire, and Dr. Kapoor.”
“Heroes rarely work alone. And that’s the first time you’ve said the H word. I’ll mark that as a very positive development!
But to answer your question, Kate, you gave Claire a chance to make a choice that day. The choice between fake memories and true ones. Now you’re worried that she’s going to make that choice someday, and you worry what that choice is going to mean for you.
The truth is, Kate, she’s already made the choice. She’s already used the opportunity you gave her. And she chose the Kate that she knows, and loves, and respects, because that is the real Kate Pendleton.”
“Oh my God, Claire! I’m so happy for you! When do you start?” Kate sat down on the bed, choosing a spot close to the headboard, far away from Michelle. “I’m sorry, everything’s such a hectic mess right now, something unexpected came up and I’ve got dinner plans tonight, otherwise I’d take you out to celebrate!”
“Next month, because paperwork, and also, you can scratch those take-me-out plans. I am gonna take you out and treat you to whatever your little heart desires, Kate Pendleton. Do you know how far I would have gotten if it hadn’t been for your encouragement? Nooooowhere, that’s where. They asked almost every question you guessed they would ask me in the second interview, so thanks to your psychic powers, I nailed every single question and scenario they threw at me. If you worked here, this would have been your job. So… dinner at Romanesque? Ooh, no! Le Central! Then we’ll hit the clubs and pretend we’re 25 again. Deal?”
“Oh, God, I can feel the hangover from here.”
Claire laughed, loud and long. “Ha! That’s a yes, then. I’ll text you some dates. And Kate?”
“Yeah?”
“You are literally the best person in the entire world. I don’t know what I’d do with my life without my best friend. So thanks for being my best friend, always and forever.”
“That means a lot,” said Kate. She was blushing. “And I needed that. Especially today, trust me.”
“Well I won’t keep you! Do your thing, survive the crazies, and stay away from those unmarked vans! Don’t make me Rambo Rescue your ass. Even though I would!”
“We’ll talk soon. Congrats on everything, Claire.”
“Oh! Tell James I said hi! Okaybyeeeee!”
The call ended, leaving Kate alone with her thoughts. Conversations with the loud, boisterous blonde typically magnified the silence that followed, and Kate could feel it now, pressing against her skin like a blanket.
She looked around the room. There was nothing left to do but what she came here to do.
“Okay, I’m going to need you standing for this. Give me your hand, Michelle.”
The brunette obliged, allowing Kate to pull her up from the bed and into the center of the hotel room. Her skin was warm to the touch and flushed with arousal, her breaths shallow and eager. Even deep in trance, she knew what to expect next. Or what she should expect to happen next. Kate frowned. She was no longer in the mood for sexy times, no matter how pretty Michelle looked, no matter how soft her skin, no matter which little leftover fragments of hypnotic programming screamed at Kate to go go go!
“Perfect. Stand right there.” She released Michelle’s hand, which lingered a moment before succumbing to gravity.
“Yes, sister Kate,” said the brunette, with a hint of a pouty whimper. Normally, Michael Oliver would have taken over at this point, and Kate would have trance-marched herself back to her own bedroom. But that was several lifetimes ago.
“You’re going to have to bear with me, Michelle. I’ve never done this before. Well, I have, kind of, but not like this. I’ve never tried to clean up someone else’s mess before. No, don’t say anything. Just stand there, blank and obedient.”
Michelle did as she was told, taking the time to arch her back so that her chest pushed forward. Her hands pressed against her thighs. She stared at the TV set, which was turned off.
“The one nice thing about hypnotized girls? I can talk to you all day long, just working out my thoughts in real time. I’m going to need that right now, because I’m about to do something I haven’t done in a long time. Something I swore I’d never do to anyone, ever again.”
She circled Michelle until she was facing her, looking directly into her glazed, empty eyes. “I’m going to brainwash you. I’m going to take complete and total control of your mind, and you’re going to help me make that happen. Do you understand? You can answer me.”
“Yes, sister Kate. I understand.”
Kate shook her head. “I’m not sister Kate anymore, and you’re not sister Michelle. That’s lesson number one. Aaaannnd… since we have a lot of lessons to get through, and absolutely no time to do them all, let’s get started.”
She bit her lip. “I really can’t believe I’m actually going to say this, but here goes.
Michelle, take off your clothes.”