There's something about Miranda that seems... odd. I noticed it a few minutes ago, and I think I might have noticed it a few minutes before that, and maybe I even noticed it a few minutes before that but I'm not entirely sure because I keep getting distracted somehow. I keep looking at Miranda, trying to remember what it is I saw that prompted my brain to wonder what was happening with her, and after a while I realize I'm just staring into Miranda's eyes without really thinking about anything and I forget what it was I was trying to remember.

Maybe it's her eyes that I keep noticing. They've got a strangely glassy look to them, I notice, as though all the tiny little muscles that work in tandem to focus the human gaze have all gone completely slack all at once and left them a perfectly smooth and reflective surface. I've heard people describe someone's eyes as empty before, but I don't think I've ever fully understood what that means until I stared into Miranda's expressionless face and felt nothing but vacuous bliss staring back at me. It's the placidity of a cow chewing on its cud, betraying a total and complete absence of thought.

But as odd as that is, I don't think it's the specific oddness I'm looking for. I feel like I saw that already, like I can't stop seeing it as I stare unblinking into Miranda's eyes and nod along with Kathleen's warm, soothing voice in our ears. Something's strange about that, too, but I can only focus my attention on one thing at a time and I want to stay centered on Miranda until I've fully untangled the mystery of what's going on with her. I suspect that would be easier without Kathleen distracting me, but there's just too much happening to think about that right now.

Maybe it's Miranda's mouth? Her lips are gently parted, held open in an expression of slack-jawed bemusement that only furthers the impression of total vacancy in her empty head. I can even see a tiny bead of saliva gathering at the corner of her dazed smile, as though at any second now she's going to just start drooling onto her chest in mellow idiocy, and I'd almost laugh at how foolish she looked if there wasn't something strangely enticing about the picture of vapid indolence she presents. I keep cataloguing unusual things about Miranda, more and more of them the more I stare at her beautiful face, but none of them are what I'm looking for.

I do feel like I'm getting closer, though. If it's not her empty eyes and her slack jaw, those still feel like pieces to the puzzle I'm gradually putting together... or putting back together, more accurately, because I still feel like whatever deduction I'm approaching is one I had before and then forgot. Maybe once I took my mind off it I began to pay more attention to Kathleen's lilting voice in my ears, telling me to... to, um... she, she just told me to....

Never mind. Forget it. I've got to figure out what's going on with Miranda first. Then I can figure out what's going on with Kathleen.

Because Miranda's the key, I'm sure of it. It feels like everything started when Kathleen directed my attention to Miranda, when she told me to pay close attention to her and the way she... she... my pulse quickens slightly, excited by the intimate closeness of the memory that's been so frustratingly elusive, but then my focus slips to that excitement instead of its source and I lose it again. It's odd, I'm not usually this easily diverted, but my mind is feeling very sluggish right now.

That's another strange thing, another piece to the puzzle. As dazed and dopey as Miranda looks right now, staring vacantly into the middle distance and drooling on herself and mindlessly squeezing her bare tits with every evidence of docile contentment in her tiny, placid smile... that's exactly how I feel right now. I keep losing my mental narrative for drifting, timeless stretches before finally reconstructing it to pick up my thoughts where I left off, and I'm not really even sure I'm picking up the same mental narrative I dropped. It all feels seamless to me, but if I'm not thinking when I'm not thinking how do I know what I lost?

Wait. That--I was just thinking something about Miranda, something that almost slipped past me as a casual observation while my attention was elsewhere, but I remember it now. She... she's playing with her tits. Her shirt is off, her bra is entirely missing, and she's groping and kneading her lush heavy breasts right here in front of Kathleen and I as though it was the most natural thing in the world. That... that feels like a huge piece of the puzzle. That feels like something I almost always notice right before I come to the big revelation, even though it's unusual enough to be a big revelation in and of itself.

Because it's not like Kathleen's made any secret of her feelings about us. She's turned it into a joke, telling us she wished she knew how to turn off the part of our brains that makes us so inconveniently straight, and of course Miranda and I both laughed but we knew deep down she wasn't actually kidding after all. It really doesn't seem likely that Miranda would take off her top and show off her tits to someone as transparently horny for her body as Kathleen, let alone jiggle and bounce her big tits in her hands like some kind of vacuous slut. It might send the wrong signal. It might make it look like Miranda was willing to go lezzie after all, like....

Like Kathleen found that off switch in her brain. That's the bit that makes it all click. That's what always brings back the memory, sharp and clear and always in Kathleen's smooth, sensuous voice.

'I know you don't believe me, Em, but I really do have her hypnotized. Just look at how empty she is, how totally relaxed and mindless she's becoming. The more you watch, the more you'll notice that helpless relaxation, that deep desire to please and obey. There's nothing in that relaxed, open mind but the desire to please and obey, Emily, and the closer you look into those blank, mesmerized eyes the more you'll see it. Nothing but deep trance, total peace and pleasure defeating every attempt to think. Doesn't it look so nice, Emily?'

It does. It does look so nice, and I slowly realize that as incredible as it is discover that Kathleen holds that kind of power over Miranda's will it's still not the thing my mind keeps groping for and rediscovering and then forgetting all over again. It's important to know that Kathleen's hypnotized Miranda, and it's even more important to understand that she can use that hypnotic power to numb Miranda's inhibitions and make her do blatantly sexual things in front of her closest friends. But I know there's another layer to all this, and if I can just tune out Kathleen's distracting voice and focus my attention fully on Miranda I just know I can figure it out.

Because... because it does look so nice, what Miranda's doing to her soft, voluptuous tits right now. I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eyes, the constant knead and squeeze and bounce and grope and jiggle of a woman who's suddenly discovered the erotic power of the female breast on a level that only hypnosis can allow, and it's not just that it looks wonderful. It feels wonderful, too. I can feel a sympathetic tingle of pleasure and arousal every time Miranda tweaks and pinches her stiff nipples, and it makes me wish I could play with my big titties the same way--

No. No, that's not it. That's not it at all, and I finally begin to feel the last piece of the puzzle snap into place as I slowly, sluggishly realize the pleasure isn't sympathetic and it isn't imagined. It's physical, and it's very very real. I'm playing with my tits right now, my hands moving to grope and squeeze in the exact same mindless rhythm as Miranda, and somehow I never even noticed. Was I just that focused on my friend's eyes, or the slack and vacant part of her lips? Did I somehow get caught up in the excitement of the moment and lose track of what my own body was doing?

There's a part of me that wants to believe that, to pat myself on the back for a job well done and stop worrying about it so I can go back to staring helplessly into Miranda's eyes and teasing my tits to greater and greater heights of pleasure. But I think I've done that before. I think that might be why I keep getting distracted and losing the plot, why I can't seem to rouse myself from this strange stupor that grips me. Because... oh. Of course. Because I'm hypnotized too.

The moment I realize it, everything else becomes so much clearer. The heavy feeling in my eyelids, the way I keep forgetting to blink for long stretches because I'm just so fascinated by Miranda's dull and vacant stare. The sluggishness of my thoughts, how they keep trailing off into blissful silence for long, timeless stretches before I finally begin to think again. The slick, wet warmth spreading under my fingers as I play with my tits. Even my inability to concentrate on Kathleen's mesmerizing voice makes sense to me now--she's lulled me into a trance, using Miranda as a focus, and I got sucked in before I even knew what was happening to me and now I can't escape.

I really can't escape, I know that now. I've been staring into Miranda's eyes for ages now, each of us deepening the other's surrender, and a casual observer wouldn't even be able to tell us apart as we kneel in front of Kathleen and sink endlessly deeper into obedience. I'm so helplessly drowsy, my mind captured in abject lethargy, and every time I think I've figured out what's happened to me Kathleen is right there to sap my will away with her mesmerizing voice and lull me back down into stupefied ecstasy. That's what I keep forgetting, again and again and again. That I'm Kathleen's hypnotized plaything and she's gradually turning me into a submissive lesbian just like Miranda.

And it feels... ohhh, it feels so fucking good. The moment my mind begins to focus on the pleasure, I know it's a mistake--this is why I keep forgetting, because every time my distracted thoughts turn toward that relentless ecstasy it becomes increasingly difficult to pay attention to anything else, but at the same time it's just so irresistibly wonderful to concentrate on the tingling in my tits and the euphoric bliss of surrender to Kathleen's will and allow myself to simply stop thinking about the reason my whole body is quivering in ecstasy like this. I have a faint, flickering recollection of dropping to my knees when it got to be too much for me and then even that vanishes.

This is how she got to Miranda, I tell myself, desperately trying to summon up some sense of urgency that will allow me to penetrate the stultifying fog of arousal and relaxation that threatens to obscure my thoughts altogether. This is what she did to her own friend, numbing her mind with pleasure until she finally found that off switch she's been joking about all this time. She turned Miranda into a lesbian fucktoy and she's going to do the same thing to me, and I have to... have to pay attention to Miranda, to the way she... she... oh, oh fuck, I, I'm losing it, I can feel it slipping out of my empty head, it's--Miranda--

Miranda. There's something about Miranda that seems... odd, I realize, and I happily tune out Kathleen's soft, cooing tones for a little while longer so that I can figure out exactly what it is.

THE END