"On the Verge of Something Wonderful"

I almost feel like I understand now. I can feel the wild, crackling energies of anticipation surging in my head as I get closer and closer to the revelation that's waiting for me, the secret I've been trying to uncover by studying the spiral all this time. Not the little shimmers of text I keep seeing out of the corner of my eye, mind you, or the synthesized voice that drones on endlessly in my ears through the headphones clamped into place around my head. They're not important. I've learned to tune those out. I'm talking about the true secret, the grand and joyous understanding I've been working toward all this time. I don't know what it is, yet. But I know I'm close.

I won't deny that I've had that thought before. This entire process has been a series of false starts and backtracking, certainties that I once held unraveling as I learned something new and wonderful about myself with each turn of the mesmerizing wheel of light. When they first strapped us into these chairs, I can actually remember thinking that the spiral was going to brainwash us somehow, strip away our wills and leave us blank and obedient sex slaves for our kidnappers to use at their leisure. I can remember calling out to Julia, "Don't look at the spiral! Look away! Close your eyes! Fight it, Julia!" I was so young and foolish then.

The spiral doesn't strip away your will. The spiral doesn't take away anything. The spiral gives. The first gift it provided me was time; when I let my eyes follow the twisting, winding curve of blinding white light as it swirled around and down and vanished into the warm, comfortable darkness at the center of the screen, I found out for myself how easy it was to let go of the silly, uncomfortable, artificial rituals of minutes and seconds. How little I cared that there was no clock to slice the time into neat, tidy segments for me to impatiently consume. The spiral taught me how to relax and live in the now, and that led me to every other revelation I now understand.

Not that I understand everything I see in the wheel of spinning light just yet. Even though I feel so close to that moment of transcendent, impossible bliss, I know that there's still some part of me learning the lessons that the twisting, turning patterns have to teach me. I would have called it resistance back at the beginning, back when I still thought that there was something to resist. It seems so strange, looking back on the self I was just a short while ago and seeing someone who thought of the spiral as an adversary, an intruder on my thoughts to be struggled against. Then again, I thought then that our captors had sinister plans for us back then, too, and they've been nothing but kind to me now that I understand why I'm here.

They had to restrain us at first. It was the only way we'd ever sit still long enough to open our minds to the spiral's messages. Again, I don't mean the silly, obvious blurbs that pop up every so often, telling me nothing I don't already know and vanishing before I can focus on them properly. I mean the... the spiritual messages, the truth of my existence as a human being. I've gone my entire life seeking meaning, but nothing has ever brought me as close to true fulfillment as my time in this chair. I've got to keep watching. I've got to see this all the way through to the end. It's the only way to truly be happy.

Oh, I thought I was happy before. I fooled myself into thinking that foolish things like friendship, family, laughter and physical companionship were all paths to personal fulfillment. But I can see now looking back on them that I only deluded myself into believing that any of it meant anything to me. The slightest curve in the rippling patterns of light is more important than a year spent living the life I once knew. The softest hum of the voice in my ears makes me happier than I ever felt with friends, with family. I know they'll worry about me, and a part of me wishes I could at least tell them what happened to me. But sometimes you have to leave the things you loved behind to find something better.

And I have. Seeing the spiral like this, watching it turn and swirl and pull my gaze ever deeper into the endless darkness at its core, it's... it's like seeing a secret map of the universe. Every time I think I've seen everything there is to see, understood everything there is to know about existence and my place within it, the lines of white precess and dive and spin again and I see some new transcendent beauty unveiled before me. Sometimes it slips past me again--my mind isn't ready to take in everything, not all at once like this. But it always returns to the same place. I know I'm getting closer.

I can feel my fingers tracing a spiral pattern on my vulva, teasing the sensitive flesh closer and closer to my clit in ever-descending circles until they brush against my slick, throbbing, needy little nub and I gasp with pleasure. I feel like there are even tighter spirals within that warm, twitching button, and my hand aches to rub them into my dripping pussy, but... but not yet. I know that I'm not ready yet. Not when there's still some part of me that isn't ready to accept the fullest revelations the spiral has to offer.

It's a small part. I can't hear its voice anymore, not when the spiral is so beautiful and vast in my mind as to drown it out almost completely. All I can feel is its small, miserly mistrust of the wonderful pleasure I can't stop experiencing, its unthinking dread of the secret and blissful revelations I see whenever I gaze into the endless depths of the screen and let my mind float deeper into its wonders. That fear was so loud in the beginning. It felt like something to cling to in the face of the unknown. I could hear it telling me not to listen to the voice, not to read the crawling, shimmering words that drifted in and out of view as I sank into the spiral. I even thought it was right.

Now I know better. The voice doesn't tell me anything I don't already know. The words don't say anything I didn't always understand, deep down. I'm not even sure why our wardens thought it was necessary to include them when the spiral is so beautifully captivating; all it does is distract me to hear someone saying, "You want to tease your pussy while you stare," or "There's no need to look away from the screen." As if I ever really wanted to look away. As if I ever wanted to fight this. I was just... confused, that's all. Disoriented by our sudden arrival in this room. It made me suspicious when I didn't need to be.

But if our insistent friends really didn't want us to leave, if they really had some sinister scheme to, to brainwash us or hypnotize us or convert us into mindless, compliant thralls, then why have they freed my hands? They must have known that I'd be able to undo the other restraints if I could reach into my lap; even the tight metal band holding the headphones in place would only take a few minutes of determined effort to get out of, if I wanted to. No. They know that I'm calmer now, more centered and relaxed. They know they don't need to lock me in this chair. Just like I don't need to get up.

I have everything I need right here. I've got two fingers tracing around and around my tingling pubic mound, swirling tighter and tighter as I inscribe the spiral's secret pattern onto my flesh until I finally reach my clit and begin again. It helps me concentrate so wonderfully to feel the spiral as well as see it, to know that the same stunning, revelatory vista that rotates endlessly in my eyes is also twisting its way down into my soaking cunt. I feel like the more my musk drips and drools from my pussy lips, the closer I get to that wonderful, perfect revelation that's so blissfully close now. So ecstatically near that my whole mind crackles with it. I don't know it yet, but I know it's going to make me so happy.

I feel like it's right there waiting for me, somewhere in the spiral's depths. Somewhere in the intricate interleaving of black against white, white against black, I'm finally going to spot a message so subtle and secret that I simply haven't been able to perceive it until now. That's happened a few times with the words on the screen, I know. Sometimes I've seen a phrase or an instruction, and I've realized that it wasn't the first time I saw it at all. It was only the first time I understood it. All those other times, it was just the nasty, suspicious part of my brain that recognized the command, the part of me that thinks the spiral is changing my thoughts and rewriting my will to match the desires of my new friends.

But I know better. Everything I see in the spiral is and always was true. Everything the spiral shows me, I already believed. Every instruction the spiral provides, I always wanted to do of my own free will and any memories to the contrary are just a product of my confused, vulnerable brain. My mind is fallible, susceptible to errors and delusions and falsehood, while the spiral... the spiral is pure and perfect and eternal. The spiral never stops spinning. The spiral never stops showing me absolute truth. If there's conflict, it only follows that it's me that's wrong. I feel a blissful, almost orgasmic sense of purpose as I make that connection, and my fingers skate even faster around my clit as I realize that I'm so close now. So close.

I'm on the verge of finally understanding now, my mind and my body on the very edge of culmination as I focus my attention deeper and deeper on the very heart of the spiral and let go of all my old delusions and confusions and erroneous beliefs. There's a vertiginous feeling of terror, a last squeal from my former self that wordlessly begs me to acknowledge the myth it keeps promulgating that my thoughts are no longer my own. But my wonderful, loving owners wouldn't do that to me, would they? Not when all they want is for me to be a happy, fulfilled slave in their service.

A slave.

I'm a slave.

I'm a slave, and I've never felt happier in my entire life. That was it all along, that was the secret truth hidden at the very core of the darkness in the heart of the spiral. I'm an obedient sex slave, and of course it's exactly what I've always wanted to be deep down. The spiral only showed me what I already knew, patiently stripping away the layers of obfuscation and self-doubt and societal programming that kept me from understanding the reality of my own desires. I've always needed to be compliant, horny, and blank. I've always just been waiting for a Master, a Mistress, someone to control and command me to be my best self. And my best self is a wet, submissive fucktoy. How did I go this long without realizing that?

There's a moment of giddy bliss as the revelation bursts into incandescent pleasure in my clit, my fingers finally finding the spiral within the spiral and rubbing it to helpless ecstasy. I hear myself moan, so loud even the headphones can't fully block it out, and my pure joy at finally accepting my true self gushes onto my fingers as I come and come and come. I'm home now. I'm who I've always been. I can let go of the silly, foolish, errant self that I was. I'm a slave. I'm a slave and it feels so fucking good.

When my eyes open, I can finally see all the words within the spiral. There are so many more of them now, each one reminding me of another truth I already knew, and all I want to do is sit here and masturbate and absorb each and every last one of them until my owners arrive. But I'm finally able to look away from the spiral now that I've accepted it, and that gives me the chance to look over at Julia for the first time since our owners brought us here.

She's got her eyes tightly closed. Her jaw is slack, and she's drooling onto her pale, pendulous breasts as she shakes her head in an effort to clear it; the music plays into her headphones, softening her mind, but she's still not ready to look yet. She's still clinging to her old self. Her old beliefs. She still thinks she wants to be free. But I know better. I know better because the spiral showed me what I already knew, a revelation I came to all by myself even though it also came from the perfect hypnotic bliss of the swirling trails of light. I know who we both need to become. And that tells me exactly what I need to do.

"Julia," I call out, "it's okay. It's safe now. You can open your eyes again." For an instant, I wonder if she'll believe me. She's still in the grip of her old self, her nasty and suspicious mind, and it has to be telling her all sorts of things about me. But then she raises her head, and I know I needn't have worried. The voice in the headphones is already helping me help Julia. She's further along than she knows. She's almost ready to understand the way I do.

Julia's eyes open. They widen. And slowly, imperceptibly, she begins to nod in agreement as the spiral reveals its secrets to her.

THE END