"I think I'm the happiest I've ever been," I say, and even though it feels like I'm screaming from my eyes my perfect plastic smile doesn't crack for even a second. I honestly don't know if it can; my consciousness is so thoroughly disconnected from my body that it's almost like I'm nothing more than a passenger in my own head. I watch myself converse, I see myself grin and giggle, but it's all just a facade. That's just my conditioning talking, and I... I'm trapped here. Suspended inside myself. Staring at my friends and loved ones as I convince them how perfect Jay and I are for each other.

"Oh, we met at once of those speed dating events," I chatter, the words escaping from lips that feel nerveless and numb to me. "Guess they weren't a waste of money after all." It's true, for what it's worth, but my throat closes up every time I try to explain that Jay spent those fifteen minutes directing my attention to the candle in the middle of the table, guiding my focus into the little flicker of white at its very center until I forgot everything else and let him lead me right out of the room when our time was up instead of moving on to the next person. It sounds so normal when I parrot Jay's version of the story. I wonder if I'll eventually start believing it myself.

"I know it feels like we're moving fast, but when you know you know, right?" I know I can't tell them how little free will I have left, because every time I think about trying to resist I feel that warm, pleasant throb in my treacherous clit reminding me how much better it feels to obey and the rest of me functions on autopilot while my waking self sinks into that quicksand ecstasy. I sometimes don't even know what I'm saying when I'm lost in Jay's mesmerizing euphoria. I drift back to the surface to find myself in a different conversation with a different person, each time repeating the words Jay put into my head to convince them there's nothing strange about my behavior.

"Well, we haven't talked about a wedding yet, we're going to live together for a few months and see how it goes, but between you and me? I think he might be the one." Between me and me, I think that a few months living with Jay twenty-four seven will erode my identity down to an obsequient nub surrounded by vapid, mindless arousal, but of course I can't confide in anyone because that would be an act of disobedience and I can't muster up the willpower to so much as hint at how completely I've been subjugated. I can't frown, I can't furrow my brow, I can't even make my cheerful speeches about how great Jay is sound rehearsed. It's infuriating, but nobody's ever going to know how I feel about it because my face just keeps smiling.

"I've never gotten along better with a guy. It's like he knows just what I'm thinking." Of course he does, I scream inside my head, he's the one putting each and every last thought I say into my blank and obedient mind. But none of my fury shows up on my face, which remains smooth and placid and untroubled as ever; I see a Barbie doll every time I look in the mirror, but my family just thinks I've finally stopped looking so haggard and exhausted. I wish I could explain to them that you're bound to look like you're getting more sleep when you spend ninety percent of the day slumped over in a vacant trance, but that's the whole point of this little goodwill tour. He's trotting me out to show everyone how thrilled I am to be a proper submissive girlfriend and it's almost shameful how easily they buy it.

"Well, I think I was just burned out anyway," I hear myself admit. "I didn't want to say anything, because you know how hard I worked to get that job, but it was a lot of responsibility and I was honestly glad to let it go." I actually wasn't--sure, managing a project team on a big company-wide initiative like that could be stressful, but I was so proud of myself and the work I was putting in and the results we were finally beginning to see after so long that it felt like the world to me. But no matter how good my job made me feel, it didn't make me feel as good as the wet heat pulsing through my clit when I handed in my resignation. I can't describe how much pleasure Jay's capable of pouring into my hypnotized brain. Well, I mean obviously I can't, not to anyone outside my own head, but I know what I mean. No matter how strong I think my will is, he can fill me with enough radiant bliss to overwhelm it.

"No, we'll do fine for money," I burble reassuringly. "I've got my savings, Jay's got his job, and of course they say two can live as cheaply as one." It's even more true when you consider all the wear and tear I save on clothing at home, and the way Jay's tightening our entertainment budget by spending all night every night fucking me into obedience instead of paying for expensive streaming services, but of course the money isn't the point. I wanted to work because I wanted my own life, my own achievements, but I've discovered that what I really want, deep down, is to cum my fucking brains out on Jay's cock like a stupid slut. And that desire is so much stronger than anything I thought was a priority for me.

"Oh, you don't want to hear about our love life," I giggle coquettishly, putting just enough flirtatious charm into my voice to make it clear it's satisfying while forestalling any awkward questions about exactly what we get up to in the bedroom. I almost have to admire Jay's foresight into programming the compliant veneer he's using to put people at ease about the changes to my personality; it's downright evil, sure, but I will admit he thought of every possible question my feminist friends might ask me and he's got an answer for all of them. I'd probably buy it, if I wasn't here on the inside knowing just how much of it is an act for their benefit.

"Honestly, I was kind of surprised to find how much I enjoy being domestic." Domesticated, more like, although I can't put sarcasm into my voice any more than I can put a desperate plea for help. It's obvious to me what he's doing, though; if I were to suddenly and inexplicably become a different person, my friends might get suspicious. But if I just gradually become the boring kind of suburbanite who can't go out for drinks in the city because it's such a long way and they'd rather spend a quiet night in with their man, well. I fade away out of their life and become forgotten. And once I'm forgotten....

"Oh don't be like that," I playfully chide my sister, probably the hardest nut to crack out of all of them. "I've still got plenty of hobbies, you know." Once I'm forgotten, he can really get to work on me. Whatever fragment of me is still clinging to a tenuous hold on the inside of my own mind behind this cheerful, smiling mask of a face will be coaxed into pleasant oblivion by wave after wave of ecstasy until I'm nothing more than a compliant fucktoy for him to play with. I don't even think I'll mind by the time he's finished with me; it already feels so good to be subjugated that I can't even twitch an eyelid in defiance of his will, I can't imagine that fading into an endless dream of orgasmic bliss will be that much more difficult to accept. He's working his way into the core of my identity from the outside in, and I'm utterly failing to stop him.

"Oh, it's way too early to talk about kids," I tell my mom, even though I distinctly remember watching myself flush my birth control pills down the toilet while I smiled at myself in the mirror with the same frozen mask of a grin I'm wearing right now. I don't know when exactly that was, because I'm losing my grip on time and reality along with everything else--I repeat the same dialogue in every conversation, I drift in and out of vacant ecstasy and lose days at a time, perhaps we already got married and I simply sleepwalked through the ceremony in a trance no one noticed because my slave self is such a good liar? I genuinely cannot rule it out. It would be terrifying if it didn't turn me on so much.

"We should get together more often," I tell my friends, while not so secretly doing all the things that make virtually any other activity more attractive to them. Then I go home to Jay again, and he pushes a remote-controlled vibrator into my pussy and dances it through all my body's favorite patterns while he tells me what a good girl I am for pushing the people who care about me away--not overtly, not in a way that raises suspicions with its cruelty and makes them wonder why I've changed so drastically since I met him, but slowly and subtly to leave me the most thoroughly isolated and adrift. The only thing that anchors me now is pleasure, and it drags me down instead of holding me in place.

"Of course, Master. I belong to you, Master," I hear myself drone out in a sleepy monotone, and it occurs to me that it's been ages now since I've talked to anyone that isn't Jay. I'm still wearing a mask, but this time it's the mask of the compliant and obedient plaything, the slutty pet he kennels in the bedroom and only lets out when he's in the mood to get his dick wet. He's been bringing other girls around lately, girls whose glassy expressions and vacant, dreamy smiles look all too familiar to me, and my heart sinks in defeat as I realize I'm not even the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. I'm practice for the next set of toys he plans to add to his collection.

"Obedience is pleasure. Pleasure is obedience." I'm looking at an identical face as I repeat the mantra--not the same features, but the exact same beatific smile and the exact same helpless terror hidden so deep behind the eyes that only another slave would recognize it. We're kneeling in front of one another, our fingers buried in each other's cunts as we reinforce Jay's programming back and forth until neither one of us can remember which was the originator of the chant, and I feel that quiet wave of despair all over again as I realize it's not enough for him to brainwash me, not even enough for him to take and hold and condition other women to his will. I'm going to be used as the instrument of their subjugation, helping him defeat their resistance, and he's going to make me love it.

"I am a good slave," I hear myself moan, "and good slaves obey." I'm staring at myself in the mirror now, watching the last of my own identity sputter out and fade into a faint breeze on the ocean of my newly perfected slave self, and the mask that is my smile has become real at last. There's so little left of me, and all I am yearns to become oblivion within the embrace of my programming, and I... I don't want to fight it anymore. Not even inside my mind. Not when I can become happy the way the woman I look at always seems to be. I sigh a last breath, I let go, and I fall away finally into a pleasure that never ends.

THE END