"That's a very interesting decoration," Leonora said, gesturing to the antique key that hung from a bright red ribbon on Kara's bedroom wall. "Is there a story behind it? Does it go with anything? Does it unlock the secret treasure chest in your grandmother's attic?" The tall, curvy brunette reached out with pale, slender fingers that looked as though they should be playing a piano solo at Carnegie Hall and lifted the gleaming bronze tip away from the wall. She tilted it back and forth ever so slightly, studying the glint of light that reflected from the surface with an equally fascinating sparkle in her own hazel eyes.

Kara wished she had an interesting answer for her--she was feeling just a tiny bit awed by Leonora, by her grace and her beauty and her impeccable sense of style and the worldly-wise way the older woman carried herself. She wanted to be able to say that the key on her wall went to an old workshop in her father's basement where he made intricate clockwork toys for the wealthy and famous, or to a hidden room in her best friend's palatial mansion where the family held their secret rituals that Kara alone of all the outsiders had been invited to. Something exciting. Something as exciting as the woman who'd simply dropped into her life one day while she was window shopping at the Statement Boutique.

But the key was really so boring that Kara barely even remembered it existed most days. "No, it doesn't go to anything," she replied, dejection creeping into her voice. "It's just a cheap souvenir I picked up on a trip to Philadelphia." Her mind was already sliding off of the topic before she even finished the sentence, dismissing the little metal bauble to focus her attention back onto the intimidatingly gorgeous Leonora. Just watching the graceful, precise way her fingers curled into the ribbon and lifted it off the hook made her feel a little bit smaller by comparison.

"Well, even a key to nothing must have a story," Leonora teased, her voice gently conspiratorial. "Where did you get it, who were you with, what were you doing?" She swept across the room to join Kara on the bed, tugging the key through the air behind her at the end of the ribbon. "Did you find it at a flea market? I'm told there's a lovely one out in Berwyn if you're willing to make the trip." Once again, Kara felt a little bit smaller in comparison to the leggy brunette, and not just physically--Philadelphia was the farthest she'd been from Manchester in her entire life, but it was probably the least exotic of Leonora's travel destinations. Not for the first time, she wondered why the wealthy older woman had taken a shine to a flat-broke college student who was scraping by on tuition assistance and three jobs. The 'grand tour' of her apartment had taken all of five minutes.

"I... no, it wasn't a flea market," Kara muttered, her gaze sliding away from the key as if embarrassed by its very existence. "It was...." Her deep brown eyes went distant for a moment, thinking back to the wonderful memories of the trip--the long train ride, fascinatingly new and different compared to the usual rote functionality of airports and airplanes. The Museum of the American Revolution, a chance to get right up close to the history she'd been studying for the past several months. Giggly movie nights with Beth and Barbara, a chance to reconnect with her old friends after nearly a year away from each other. So many warm, happy memories... but her so-called souvenir brought back none of them. "It was nothing," she finished weakly, giving a dismissive shrug that sent her long curly hair bouncing for a few moments.

"Oh, it can't have been nothing," Leonora scolded playfully, holding the key up to the light between her thumb and forefinger. "It's a key, after all. Keys have to unlock something, even if the something they unlock is nothing. A key to nothing unlocks nothing, and you might just find that makes it the most valuable key of all. Don't you agree?" The bizarre, bewildering statement made Kara's eyes cross trying to think about it, but it was probably something very clever and profound that she wasn't getting. Leonora was like that.

The silence stretched out for a long, awkward moment as Kara stared at the key that Leonora was gently twirling between her delicate fingers, hoping against hope that she could dig up something from the back of her brain to elicit the older woman's interest. She always felt like a silly, clumsy puppy around Leonora, constantly eager to please despite her deeply felt immaturity, and it would mean so much if she could say something clever right now. Or even anything at all. "I... um...." she mumbled, feeling her light brown cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. She glared fiercely at the souvenir, willing it to give up its secrets.

"Just think about it, my dear," Leonora cooed, her voice filling the silent gap between Kara's hesitant thoughts. "Imagine this key sliding into a lock that doesn't exist, turning to open up the door to nothing and letting all the emptiness out. Wouldn't that make it such a magical key after all? Wouldn't you love to see that key do its work? Wouldn't it be so exciting to find out that the reason you don't remember isn't that there's nothing to remember, but that there's nothing... a whole world of nothing, right there in front of you... waiting for you to remember it?"

That--that didn't make sense. Nothing wasn't a thing; that was what made it nothing and not something. Kara couldn't remember nothing, that was the same as not remembering anything and she already didn't remember anything about the bronze key that Leonora was holding loosely between her fingers. She didn't have any memories because the memories weren't there, not because they were locked away behind some... some imaginary door to nowhere inside her head. She opened her mouth, trying to find the words to explain it all, but it all felt so clumsy and jumbled in her brain that she couldn't even speak. Kara just sat there, staring slack-jawed at the polished metal, bewildered and confused.

Wait... polished? Kara blinked hard, the glints and gleams of light still sparkling in her eyes even when they were closed. She knew a little something about old bronze from her work restoring historical artifacts--the professors didn't let her practice with anything really valuable, not yet, but she'd polished enough tarnished metal to know that a year hanging forgotten on the bedroom wall should have left a patina of oxidation on that key. It shouldn't shine like that. Not unless she'd done something to clean it. But she hadn't given the souvenir a second thought... had she?

"Feel the key turning, pretty girl," Leonora intoned, letting it drop from her fingers to dangle at the end of the bright red ribbon. "Feel it unlocking all the nothing in that lovely little head of yours. There's so much nothing inside of your mind, so much emptiness just waiting to be released, and you've just been waiting for the right person to take hold of the key and open you up. Haven't you?" The way the polished metal swung at the end of the strip of cloth felt deeply, intimately familiar to Kara, but she couldn't quite place the reason why. She had other things on her mind right now. Things like--like nothing. Like the nothing that apparently replaced the very real memories of actions she must have taken and things she must have done.

"Now that the door to nothing is open, darling girl, you're finding nothing everywhere you look. There's nothing inside that empty head. There's nothing to resist my will and my soft, soothing voice." Leonora's voice was familiar, too, Kara realized. Not just from their afternoon outings together, with Kara quietly awestruck by the elegant woman sipping espresso across the table from her, but from... from something else. Something wonderful. Something that made a delicious, inexpressibly joyful void inside her head exactly in the shape of the key Kara couldn't stop following with her glassy eyes. She sighed, memory entering her mind exactly as thought left it.

"There's nothing between those pretty legs," Leonora purred seductively, putting her hand on Kara's chest and giving her the gentlest push. Kara fell back onto the bed, her eyes rolling back into her head as the vertiginous sensation made her whole body go utterly limp. "Do you want me to fix that, pretty girl?"

Kara discovered, to her astonishment and delight, that she very much did. She spread her legs, mewling softly as the older woman flipped up Kara's skirt to uncover a smooth-shaven pubic mound absolutely unencumbered by underwear of any kind. Memories unveiled themselves in the helpless submissive's brain, memories of instructions delivered to her on the patio at the cafe where Kara's waking self only remembered innocently drinking cappuccinos and chatting about her plans for grad school. She'd taken her panties off right there in public. Where anyone could have seen her. She'd handed them across the table to Leonora and thanked her for the chance to demonstrate her obedience.

A long, dexterous tongue slid into the nothing between Kara's slick labia, filling her empty cunt with pleasure the same way the key filled her empty mind with hidden recollections. It wasn't chance that had led Kara to that happenstance meeting with Leonora at the clothing boutique that day. She'd responded to a text that she deleted upon reading, a text that went straight into the nothing in the back of her mind that Kara couldn't possibly unlock without the key her Mistress possessed. Even when the key was hanging on her bedroom wall, Mistress owned it... the same way she owned everything behind that door in Kara's imagination. The same way she owned Kara herself.

Leonora's tongue pushed deeper, opening up all the bliss that Kara's drowsy mind was capable of, and she heard herself moan and whimper in thoughtless ecstasy as she felt her first orgasm hit. She knew she was capable of so much more, though; her Mistress always pushed her to the absolute limits of her capacity for pleasure every time they fucked, right back to the very first time on the train that Kara's conscious mind was so rapturously oblivious to. And every climax addicted her that much more thoroughly to her Mistress's control, and her Mistress's control was slowly but surely transforming her into the beautiful slut that Leonora wanted her to be. It made Kara cum just thinking about it.

Someday, she knew, the nothing behind that door and the something outside of it would become one and the same. Kara's conscious mind knew nothing of Leonora's programming, and she couldn't possibly resist a control she didn't even know she was fighting. The spontaneous impulses, sudden urges, and inexplicable desires that already tugged her deeper into her Mistress's orbit would gradually resolve themselves into an aching need to kneel and submit to the beautiful, graceful woman who always seemed so poised and confident and perfect, and Kara would discover that there was no longer any need to lock her secret self away. The key Mistress used to unlock her surrender was a promise of that day's arrival.

"T-thank you, Mistress," Kara heard herself gasp, practically sobbing in ecstasy as her fingers tangled into Leonora's long dark hair and her hips rode the older woman's face into deeper realms of pleasure. "Thank you, thank you, oh fuck thank you...." Kara's tangled mind wasn't even sure what she was grateful for most--the constant orgasms, the warm and comfortable safety of submission, or the promise of a life free from the exhausting struggle to simply get by. Kara didn't have to think when she was with Leonora, she didn't have to question herself or her priorities or her dreams or her goals or her decisions. She only had to obey. And Leonora made that so blissfully easy.

"You're welcome, pretty girl," Leonora murmured, in the moment when she took her mouth away from Kara's cunt just long enough to shift position. Then Kara felt something warm and wet settle against her face, and she found herself unable to speak for a while.

THE END