Several Weeks After Rematch

I was walking in the woods with Mom and Sandy. The trees twisted and gnarled along our path but we kept going. Eventually a shadow emerged from the trees. It was Evan. Mom and Sandy dropped to their knees, crawling over to suck his dick together. I tried to stop them but shadowy hands held me back. Evan smirked and snapped his fingers. Olga emerged from behind Evan, pulled a gun from her hip, aimed it at my head, and pulled the trigger. It was over. He had won.

The abrasive blaring of my alarm yanked me from my nightmare. I was in my childhood bedroom. Slowly, my heart calmed itself as I remembered the truth. Evan would never hurt me or anyone else again. That didn’t stop the occasional nightmare from seeping in, though. A part of me wondered if I’d ever be able to fully get past it.

I walked downstairs to find Mom in her robe, eating a slice of toast while reading something on her phone.

“Morning honey, good sleep?”

I shrugged, “Could’ve been better.”

“Still having nightmares?” she asked with trademark motherly concern.

“Yeah, but I think it’ll stop soon,” I answered, trying my best to convince myself of that fact.

“Well, you’ve been through a lot. Don’t be afraid to take a break now and then. I can’t imagine what that scene must have been like…”

You were there… I thought to myself, knowing that she couldn’t know that. It quickly became apparent that my demeanor had changed after the incident. My friends and family noticed immediately. I ended up telling them I’d witnessed a fatal car accident, at least that way my nightmares made some sense. Dr. Mallory recommended I see Ms. Holbrook about it, but I had to politely decline. Somehow I didn’t think therapy with Ms. Holbrook would help take my mind off of Evan.

“Morning!” I heard Sandy say from behind me as she entered the kitchen. “Hey Mom, could you make me some toast?”

“Sure thing, honey!” my mom responded, putting two slices in for my sister. I still found it strange to see them acting normal in the same room, but hopefully that feeling would also fade with time.

“God, did you see this?” Mom said, referencing an article on her phone. “Apparently Christophe Boltchek is being investigated by the FBI after an experiment maimed his son.”

“Jeez, poor guy.” Sandy added. I was torn between the relief that she didn’t recognize Evan and the frustration that she had any amount of sympathy for him. Sandy plopped down on the seat next to me. “Could I get some tea too, Mom?”

“Of course, sweetie!” Our mom answered, putting on the kettle. “Wasn’t Christophe Boltchek’s son the one you played in that chess match a while back, Nate?” Mom inquired.

“Yeah…” I responded, put off by my family’s manufactured cluelessness. At least the memory wipe was sticking. “Poor boy, I hope he recovers well,” my mom added. I felt a twitch in my eye, but let it slide.

As Mom handed Sandy her tea, Sandy made another request. “Mom, can you drive me to school today?” Mom smiled warmly. “Of course, dear.”

“Don’t you need to go to work, Mom?” I asked.

“Well yes, but Sandy takes priority,” she replied.

Sandy grinned smugly. “Yeah Nate, I’m important if you couldn’t tell.”

“Right, of course,” I said, fishing through my backpack and pulling out my headset. Mom and Sandy shot me a confused glance as I put it on and pulled the mic down.

“What’s with the headset?” Sandy asked.

“Both of you, stand at attention,” I directed. Immediately, Mom and Sandy shot to their feet, their faces going blank and their arms falling slack at their sides.

“Mom, why are you doing everything Sandy says?” I asked.

“I was instructed to always obey her without question,” she responded neutrally.

I sighed. It seemed like I had been deprogramming Mom and Sandy nonstop since the incident. It was a good thing Olga told us to keep the devices in, Evan had given them lots of sneaky commands that lingered even after the memory wipe. I guess my mother’s obedience to Sandy had been a lingering relic of the master-slave dynamic Evan had forced on them.

I had to carry the headset with me pretty much everywhere I went to pin down all various leftover commands Evan had left on my loved ones. Just in the past week I’d had to stop Sandy from sending nude selfies to Evan’s defunct phone number every morning, stop Mom from requesting spankings whenever she made a mistake, and stop both of them from practicing tag-team blowjobs together in the evenings. It was as exhausting as it was disturbing.

“Sandy, why are you ordering Mom around?’

“Because I realized she always did what I said and wanted to see how far I could take it.” Of course. I loved Sandy, but she could still be a brat when she wanted to.

“Alright, listen up. Mom, you no longer have to obey Sandy. Whether or not you do what she says is entirely up to you. You will both forget that Mom agreed to drive Sandy to school and wake up in ten seconds,” I directed, hastily shoving the headset back in my bag. Not long afterwards Mom and Sandy sat back down as if nothing had happened.

“Mom, can you drive me to school today?” Mom scoffed.

“No way kiddo, you can take the bus like normal.”

“Ugh, fine,” Sandy pouted. Things were slowly getting back to normal. Slowly.

“Checkmate.” I declared, moving my knight into the winning position.

“Aww, not again!” Abby bemoaned. “I swear something’s been throwing me off my game lately.” It was nice being in our chess club meetings again. Unsurprisingly it took me some time to get to a point where I wanted to play chess again, but having Abby and Denise back to their normal selves helped make the process a bit more smooth. Admittedly there were still times that I would flash back to them worshipping Evan’s cock or stripping in front of a crowd of other thralls, but those moments were growing fewer and further between.

Denise walked in, phone in hand. She seemed upset. “Guys, did you see the news about Evan Boltchek?” Abby jumped in before I had a chance to say anything.

“What is it, did something happen?” The concern in her voice was hauntingly familiar. “They say something went wrong in his dad’s lab and he’s in a coma!” Denise reported, her voice laden with concern.

Abby gasped. “Oh no, Evan!”

I felt my chest tense up. I had hoped never to hear his name on either of their lips again. He was gone, why would they care what happened? What…

I pulled the headset out of my bag, for the second time that day. “Both of you, stand at attention.” Immediately my friends snapped into a trance, Denise’s phone slipping out of her limp hand and onto the ground.

“Abby, why are you so upset about Evan being in a coma?” I questioned.

“Because Denise and I are his biggest fans,” she said in a robotic monotone. Shit, Talia and I removed their obedience to Evan but not their adoration of him. With Evan gone that trigger never would have come up until now.

“Denise, is this true for you as well?”

“Yes, Abby and I are his biggest fans. We constantly fantasize about him.” I sat down, taking deep breaths to calm myself. Even in a coma, Evan still had his talons in my life. It still wasn’t over.

“Hey, sorry I’m late I was… just…” Talia said as she entered the club room and saw her friends standing in a mindless trance. “Shit, you found another one?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, “Seems they still think they’re big Boltchek fans.”

Talia nodded. “I guess it makes sense that one never came up until now. Why do you think they only just announced his condition?”

I shrugged. “For the PR, most likely. I bet they wanted to prepare before their stock prices took a hit. ‘Billionaire puts his son in a coma’ isn’t the kind of headline that reflects well on a company.”

“Yeah, that would make sense.” Talia said. A brief silence falling between us.

“Hey Tal, while we’re alone, I wanted to ask you something.”

“I mean, we’re not really alone,” Talia said, gesturing to our oblivious friends, “...But continue."

My nerves were shot, as they had been many times lately, but for once it was for a good reason. “So, you really pulled through for everyone with the whole Evan situation, and… you really pulled through for me. You’ve done that a lot lately. Actually, it’s gotten to a point where it’s hard to imagine you not being there for me. Hell, thinking about you was what got me through some of the worst of it.”

I paused, letting the tender moment sit in the air. Talia said nothing, letting me collect myself. Her face was impossible to read.

“I was wondering, do you maybe want to be a bit closer than friends?” I said, surprised with my own bluntness.

Talia blinked, then blinked again. “Really? After all this time you choose now?” I looked into her eyes, her face still unreadable.

“Yes. I want us to be together.”

Talia let out a small, enigmatic chuckle. What did that mean?

“I mean you don’t have to, I just tho—”

Before I finished my sentence she had leant forward and planted her lips on mine. They were soft, softer than I could have imagined. After a few blissful moments she pulled back.

“I’ve been dropping hints for years, you brilliant moron,” she said, a light blush on her cheeks, “But yes, yes I want to go out with you.”

I’d had a feeling she would say yes, but I still didn’t anticipate just how real it would feel. I could feel myself grinning from ear to ear in spite of my desire to play it cool. I guess there are some things you just can’t plan for.

“So, you gonna…?” she said, gesturing to the mindless Abby and Denise.

“OH, right,” I said, snapping out of my haze and pulling the mic to my lips, “Abby and Denise, you are no longer fans of Evan Boltchek. You have no strong thoughts on him, and never did. Return to normal in ten seconds.” With that, Talia took her seat as our friends snapped out of their own trances.

“Talia! When did you get here?” Abby asked, surprised at Talia’s seemingly sudden appearance.

“Sorry, I kinda snuck in. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Hey, has anyone seen my phone?” asked Denise, before spotting on the ground nearby. “Huh, must’ve dropped it. By the way, did you guys see that Evan Boltchek is in a coma?” I was getting sick of hearing Evan’s name so much, but at least I knew he would be out of the picture permanently soon enough.

“Oh weird, I wonder what happened?” responded Abby, mercifully without the adoration she’d shown the first time she heard the news. Things were returning to normal.

“It’s gonna feel weird thinking about him while I practice my blowjobs tonight,” Abby continued.

“Totally,” Denise responded, “I wish I was allowed to think about somebody else when I touch myself.

Talia winced, shooting me a pained glance. I sighed, pulling out the headset I had just put away. Clearly we’d have to keep the devices in a little longer to iron out the rest of Evan’s stray commands. The only solace I took in the process was knowing that he was suffering for everything he did. In spite of everything, I knew deep down that I’d be okay. I had plenty of people who cared about me, and now I had someone special who knew the whole truth at my side as well. Some day soon, Evan would be nothing more than a distant memory.

Evan laid on the hospital bed, completely immobile. He had been for some time. How long exactly? He had no idea. He was watching a rerun of Seinfeld on the wall-mounted TV. He’d seen this episode 452 times now, the hospital reran it every two hours or so. Jerry and George try to sneak into a limo and accidentally end up at a neo-nazi rally. It was funny the first time, but the jokes had long since worn thin. Now every joke served as a painful, lingering reminder of his impotence. His powerlessness.

Evan’s body still hurt often. But that pain was nothing compared to the loneliness. Once a day a nurse would come in to check his vitals, then leave. No conversation, no nothing. Some of them were attractive, but they never showed any interest in him. Evan found himself missing Sandy. She was so very sweet when she was his, and she was so good at pleasing him. He wondered if she ever missed him. It was possible, right? Maybe her time spent under his thrall had rubbed off somehow. Perhaps one day she’d come to find him, realizing just how much happier she was at his side.

Suddenly the door opened. That was odd, the nurse wasn’t due to arrive for a few more reruns. “Right this way, Mr. Boltchek,” he heard a voice on the other side of the door say. Mr. Boltchek? Sure enough, in walked his father, Christophe Boltchek. Evan hadn’t seen him in months. He wanted to greet him, but he couldn’t even move his eyes. Christophe sat at the foot of the bed, letting out an exasperated sigh.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Evan. I let you have one, just ONE, of my women, and you nearly bring down my entire goddamn company!” Evan couldn’t see well, the nurse hadn’t given him his eyedrops yet so his vision was blurry. However, his father’s tone made it abundantly clear that he was not here to check on his son's well-being.

“Not only do you steal my devices, but you modify them without permission. You use them to turn one of my most intelligent slaves into a glorified personal assistant. Christ Evan, you didn’t even erase her memories! If you had just told this woman to forget her old life at ANY POINT, she would have had no idea what happened!” Christophe shouted, flailing his arms in frustration.

“But no, you let her break free. You let her beat you into a coma, and now I’m staring down the barrel of at least a dozen lawsuits and a PR crisis like the world has never seen. I never thought much of you, but I never imagined you could do quite this much damage!” Christophe shouted, slurring his words. Evan wanted to sit up, shout back to his father that Olga wasn’t the one that beat him, that there were other people who knew about his devices, but he was a prisoner in his own body, his wants were meaningless now.

“All you had to do was stick to your stupid fucking chess matches, and everything would have turned out fine. But no, you just had to go and think you could be me,” Christophe pulled a flask out from his coat, taking a long, deep swig. “You’re a fucking disgrace, Evan. A goddamn loser.” The words clung to Evan, lingering on his chest. He could say nothing to defend himself.

“You know,” Christophe began, slurring his words, “I could probably cure you. I’m pretty sure we have the tech for it.” Evan’s hopes were raised for the first time since he could remember. Could this hellish existence of his really end?

“But I won’t. You’re of more use to me like this. This way, you can’t harm the company’s image. Not to mention the pity points I get in court for my poor comatose son.” Christophe mocked, spilling his drink on Evan’s bedsheets. Christophe coughed, stowing his liquor back in his jacket and standing up to leave. “Just wanted you to know,” he said before exiting the room, leaving Evan alone again.

On the TV, Jerry and George spotted a limo driver for the 453rd time. Evan wished he could think about Sandy, or Denise, or Abby, or any of the other women who should have been his. But he found his mind could only dwell on Nathan Greene.

He could only think about the man who’d beaten him.