"I really don't think this is such a good idea, Rae," Nan muttered anxiously as she watched her girlfriend fiddle away at their neighbor's front door with a piece of bent wire. She glanced up and down the fifth floor hallway, convinced that at any moment someone would spot them and they'd be arrested or worse, but the denizens of this run-down apartment building apparently knew better than to get curious and it was only a minute or two before Rae managed to pop the cheap and shitty lock that probably dated back to the Truman administration. She made it look so upsettingly easy that Nan just knew she was going to have nightmares tonight about Colin returning the favor while they slept.

Assuming he wasn't in there right now waiting for them. Rae said she checked on her way in and the lights were all out in his apartment, but Nan wouldn't put it past him to be just sitting there silently in the dark, staring straight ahead with that creepy little smile on his face and thinking of... of whatever he thought of. "I don't think it's a good idea to just wait around and see what he's going to do next," Rae snapped back in a harsh whisper, pushing the door open and stepping inside. "You know what happened to Lita."

Nan nodded, even though she didn't know what happened to Lita and that was the whole point. Lita lived a floor down from them, throwing noisy parties that went on until well past midnight and kept the two of them up late until they wound up gatecrashing every Friday night out of sheer emotional self-defense, but her apartment had been dark the last two weekends in a row and the last Nan or Rae had seen of the boisterous Latina woman was when they came into the lobby just in time to see her getting onto the elevator with Colin. And as the doors closed, he gave them that smug little smirk of his. And Lita, well....

Lita didn't register them at all. Not a wave, not a smile, not even a guilty shrug to admit that she was about to hook up with Nan and Rae's extremely handsome but somehow incredibly unnerving neighbor. She just stood there, looking straight ahead in a thousand-yard stare as the elevator doors closed with a menacing clank, and even though they spent the rest of the night taking shifts at the peephole neither one of them saw her leave. They couldn't prove anything, they didn't have the kind of evidence that would convince a cop to search the place even if the cops came down to places like this looking for people like them, but they both knew it in their bones. He'd done something to her. And he didn't feel like the kind of guy who only did something once.

And since they didn't make enough money even combined to find another apartment, that meant finding out what the fuck was up with Colin before they learned the hard way. Nan followed Rae into the shadowy interior of the small, dingy apartment, the back of her neck tingling with every step. "Check the closets," Rae whispered, tucking the piece of wire into the back pocket of her faded blue jeans and padding down the halls with a drifting silence that was as always both faintly concerning and incredibly reassuring. "Colin feels like the kind of guy who would stash a girl there." 

Nan wanted to ask if that was personal experience talking, but bit her tongue. She still couldn't quite figure out how she'd wound up with a girlfriend who so perfectly embodied all the cliches about butch lesbians, right down to the side shave and the leather jacket and the juvie record for assault, but she had to admit that if she was stuck navigating the world of big city poverty it felt weirdly comforting to be doing it in the company of a big strong woman with abs for days and all kinds of borderline illegal skills. It made her feel a little bit more courageous, and she needed that right now when she was opening up a hall closet to look for a downstairs neighbor who vanished mysteriously over a week ago.

Lita wasn't there, though. Instead, Nan found a wire rack with a whole collection of shoeboxes on them, maybe fifteen or twenty, and a pair of suitcases that were too small to contain a body. She opened them up anyway, just in case they only contained part of a body--a thought that made Nan's body surge with so much adrenaline backwash she thought she was going to float clean out of her own skin and astrally project herself back into her bedroom--but they were empty. "Clear here," she murmured, her voice low and hushed but somehow still too loud in the quiet of the apartment.

"Clear here too," Rae murmured from the bedroom as Nan darted to catch up, her hush much more practiced and confident than Nan's hoarse, timid wheeze. "Jeez, motherfucker's got even less closet space than we do. Okay, next step is to look for evidence. What's in those boxes?" Nan blushed furiously, embarrassed to admit she hadn't even thought to look, and she almost tripped over her own feet in her haste to get back to the shoeboxes she'd simply breezed right past. She grabbed the closest one she found, fumbling it badly in her panic and sending it toppling to the floor with its contents scattering everywhere.

"Crap, help me pick it--" Nan's words dried up in her throat as she saw what had fallen out of the shoebox into the small hallway between the bedroom and kitchen. It was photos, tons of them, each one of a different naked woman. Some of them had their eyes shut, others wore that same thousand-yard stare they'd seen on Lita the night she disappeared, but all of them were completely nude and somehow... empty. Nan didn't even know what she meant by that, but the second she saw the array of pictures it felt instantly true--something about their slumped poses, their vacant expressions, they could almost pass for realistic mannequins instead of people.

"What the fuck....?" Rae murmured softly, reaching down to pluck a photo at random from the scattered heap. It had a name written on the back, 'Liz Benetti', along with a date and time that Nan recognized from about three years ago. Rae flipped over another picture to discover this one was of 'Kari Wimbledon', taken a couple of years earlier and a couple of hours later. That led to 'Anna Temple', and 'Seong Min Park', and Rae would have probably looked at every name in the pile if Nan wasn't there to snap her out of it.

"Come on, come on, come on, we gotta clean these up and go," she hissed, glancing back at the gently closed door in terrified anticipation. There was no way Colin wouldn't notice this; a guy who kept a shoebox full of pictures of naked and semi-conscious women had to have an equally creepy system for organizing them, but they could at least try to make it less than fully obvious someone had broken in. Far, far too late to do anything about it, Nan realized neither one of them was wearing any gloves. Not that Colin was going to call the police on them, but she wouldn't put it past him to find a way to get prints off them anyway. Already she was trying to figure out who they could couch surf with until they scraped up enough cash to put down a deposit on a new place, and how long it would take them to get their shit together and get the fuck out before he got back.

Then they heard the thump.

It wasn't a loud thump, it wasn't the sound of someone struggling, but in the deathly quiet of the apartment even the slight thud of a body sagging bonelessly up against a wall gave off enough noise to be heard clear as day. Rae looked back at the bedroom, her hands still clutching a double fistful of photos, and muttered, "Shit, the closet." She shoved everything back into the shoebox as fast as she could and thrust it roughly into Nan's arms before dashing back into the room she'd left only moments ago. Slamming the box haphazardly back into place, Nan quickly followed.

Once they knew what they were looking for--once they knew they were looking for anything at all--the false back to the closet was easy to spot. They popped it off in a matter of moments to reveal a small storage space, really not much wider than a woman's shoulders, and inside... well, of course it was Lita. She came tumbling out as soon as they removed the boards, so deeply insensate that balance wasn't even a notional concept to her, naked and limp and wearing what looked like one of those virtual reality helmets Nan and Rae wouldn't be able to afford if they worked a thousand hours a day.

Rae was down on her knees in a heartbeat, tugging it off and snapping her fingers to try to rouse Lita from her stupor, but it was no good. The prone woman stared straight ahead with a vacant expression on her face and a trickle of drool leaking from the corner of her mouth, and when Nan and Rae tried to lift her she was nothing but dead weight in their arms. She had a pulse, she was breathing--albeit slowly--but in all the ways that mattered she simply wasn't there. Nan helped haul the limp body upright, supporting it between the two of them, and turned to leave... only to let out a startled yelp when she saw Colin standing in the doorway behind them.

"I know what this looks like," he said, his voice calm and steady. "But really, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all."

Rae shrugged Lita's arm off her shoulders, leaving the much smaller Nan struggling to keep the semiconscious body from falling to the floor, and pulled out a knife. But Colin only held out his hands placatingly. "You really don't want to do that," he murmured smoothly, his measured tone as soft and slick as warm butter. "It's not going to look good for you if I call the police and tell them there's a woman in my bedroom with a switchblade, and I can assure you that by the time they arrive Lita will be wide awake and perfectly willing to tell the cops that everything we've been doing was consensual." Nan didn't believe that was true even for a second, but she didn't doubt he had the ability to make Lita say and do and maybe even think whatever he wanted her to. A hundred half-remembered myths about hypnosis popped into her brain, and suddenly she believed every last one of them.

"Uh huh?" Rae snarled derisively, still holding out the knife. "And the boxes full of photos in the hall closet? What are you going to tell the cops about those?" She looked terrified, more frightened than Colin's height and physical presence could explain. Nan could tell her girlfriend must have put two and two together regarding Lita's limp and insensate vacuity and come up with an answer pretty similar to hers--Colin had some kind of knack for hypnosis, something he'd used on dozens of women, and he was between them and the way out. And neither one of them even knew what to look out for, much less how to stop it.

"The truth, of course," Colin responded mildly, his hands still outstretched in a perpetually calming gesture. "They're former romantic partners of mine, the photos are souvenirs of our time together, and if you look up any of those names you'll find that they're all alive and well and perfectly happy to say they asked me to take those pictures." Nan didn't doubt that was all true, and somehow even more terrifying than if he'd made them disappear--she pictured dozens, maybe even hundreds of women wandering through their lives with tiny cuckoos inside their heads, colonizing their thoughts and making them believe they still had free will when they were Colin's to claim any time he wanted. She watched him with agonizing vigilance, desperate to anticipate whatever he was going to try to do to hypnotize them before it happened.

"I really think you have the wrong idea about me," Colin said soothingly, his fingers gently and repeatedly brushing the air downward in a silent attempt to convince Rae to lower the knife. "I'm not trying to do anything coercive here; I just enjoy bringing women pleasant, comfortable experiences and I believe that sex is best appreciated when one person takes charge and guides the other into peace and relaxation. And that's most easily and fully achieved when I can direct your focus--subtly and simply at first, but more overtly as we continue--so that you can let go of your negative emotions and sink deep into a state of attentive, calm awareness. The more you focus, the easier it becomes to listen and obey."

Rae's muscles trembled with the intensity of her grip on the knife, and Nan's whole body now shuddered as the weight of Lita's body dragged her down, but she was too terrified to so much as glance away from Colin now. "I know you're feeling very anxious and upset," he said, his voice still smooth and measured and his hands repeatedly pressing downward as if to calm a classroom of rambunctious children, "but that energy isn't sustainable, I promise you. The longer you try to hold on to that nervous tension, to keep your body racing with adrenaline and your minds in a state of constant vigilance, the deeper and harder the crash will be when you finally get a signal that it's okay to relax, relax, relax. It's like a rubber band, really. The more tension you put into it, the bigger the release when it lets go. You can just imagine that snap--"

He rapidly lowered his hands, and Nan had just enough presence of mind to realize how completely and totally she'd fixated on them before the signal went deep into some atavistic portion of her brain and she felt her consciousness simply disengage. She heard the clatter of a blade hitting the floor, and the heavy thud of a body falling along with it, and then the wave of exhaustion she'd been fighting off with a tide of stress energy finally hit and she felt her legs go wobbly underneath her. Before she even knew it, Nan was slumping to her knees as her breath went out in a long, helpless whoosh of air.

"There we go," Colin cooed, his hand on the back of her neck almost before she knew it and moving her head in a smooth, rotating motion that made her feel dizzy and passive and strangely drowsy all at the same time. "That's it, that's a good girl, just letting all that tension out and feeling so much relief to simply relax, relax, relax for me. Deep and peaceful, enjoying the release and loving the way my voice guides you now to even stronger pleasure, even more blissful sleepiness as your muscles unwind and go limp. That's right, all the way down to the floor, nice and blank and empty, not even really listening now because it's so much easier to sleep and obey. Good girls. Good girls." A tiny sliver of Nan's mind couldn't believe she'd succumbed that easily. But it was drowned out by the part of her that was simply so happy not to have to worry any longer.

The details got kind of vague and drifty after that. Nan vaguely remembered her fingers moving of their own volition to take off her clothes, and she thought she recalled hearing her own voice mumble out, "Ann Castamere," in response to a question she didn't notice being asked. But mostly it was just a fog of pleasure, warm and comforting and sensual all over, convincing her to relax and let go and do what she was told like a... a good girl. Being a good girl felt so nice and soothing and happy that she didn't want to think about anything else right now. She didn't want to resist, and neither did Rae. Rachel. Rachel Carmichael. The flash went off against their closed eyelids, but Nan didn't need to worry about it.

And then the helmets were going over their heads, as Colin settled them onto the couch and allowed them to finally play with themselves the way it felt like they'd been craving to for absolute ages. They'd have to go into the closet for a while when he left, but that was only for a little while. Lita was almost ready to go back to her old life, and she'd fought him so much harder than Nan did. Soon they'd be back in their apartment, happy to have such a good friend and a good neighbor... and they'd be even happier to forget the control Colin held over them. Until it was time for him to tug on the leash in their minds and let them know who truly owned them at heart.

THE END