Chapter 2: Coercion

“No.”

“Jadene! You haven’t even heard what’s involved—”

“—I found out that you signed me up for this by watching Sania Woods interviewing Thea.” Jadene interrupted her agent with a sharp, biting tone. Sania? She’d heard rumors about it before I saw her. I know that’s what she was talking about.” Jadene was practically shaking in frustration. If she was holding her phone instead of speaking into a wireless headset her phone would have been at risk. “So let me rephrase this because I don’t think I was clear last time?

“No, and fuck you, Miriam.”

The line was silent for a long moment, but Jadene didn’t hang up. She sat on her couch, still wearing the red cocktail dress, her arms crossed over her chest. The silence wasn’t just a lack of response. It was an oppressive silence that Jadene knew she’d created herself.

I’m a four time best-actress award winning… You can’t pull this shit on me. I don’t care if you’ve gotten me all of my biggest roles, if I’d be nothing without you… Jadene gritted her teeth. You are going to listen to me. Hopefully I won’t need to fire you, because I do respect the work you’ve done for me, but also you humiliated me, so… I can’t mince words here.

“Jadene… Come on. I completely understand where you’re coming from hun, but you gotta know I didn’t intend for you to find out this way!” Miriam sighed before grumbling quietly under her breath. “Nobody’s signed off on anything yet. Thea’s just… she got to see the people the project wanted to recruit. Somehow. I honestly don’t know how she found out they were going to contact y—”

“However she found out, she announced it on national fucking television, Miriam! It’s hard enough to be taken seriously as it is without… without this!” Jadene groaned, slumping limp on the couch. “We’ve been together for how long?”

“I think it’s been fif—”

“That’s why I haven’t fired you, Miriam. Our history that lets me know you can get shit done, alright?” Jadene groaned, shaking her head. Everything about the situation felt miserable. She wanted to scream, and that felt perfectly justified—but she knew that wouldn’t get anything done. She hadn’t come so far by ignoring the big picture. “So you’re going to fix this, alright?”

A heavy silence hung in the air.

This time it wasn’t Jadene’s doing. There was no satisfaction in it. Instead it was just an infuriating silence that hinted at either Miriam’s indecision or incompetence.

Neither made Jadene feel anything but worse.

“…Alright, alright, I think I see a way I can fix this, but to do that I’m going to need you to come by my office and we can work out a way for you to get a statement out tonight and make it clear this isn’t happening.” Miriam paused. Jadene could hear her swallow. “You obviously want to express your side of things, right? We can get it out everywhere, and the time it’ll take you to drive over should be long enough for me to get someone like Sania ready for you. Is that going to be okay?”

She wanted to wait again, to wield her power over Miriam as ruthlessly as she could… but more than that, Jadene just wanted things resolved. Muttering to herself quietly, she gave a nod that no one could see. “That… That should be fine. Even this late it’ll still take me at least twenty minutes. You know that, right?”

“Should be long enough! I’ll get everything ready. Don’t drive too fast. The last thing you need tonight is to get into an accident!”

“…That’s probably good advice.” Jadene took a deep breath, and let it out with a heavy sigh. “Be ready for me when I show up, Miriam. Please.”

Miriam’s sigh was audible over the phone. “I’ll do my best, Jadene.”

Jadene disconnected the call, and rose from her couch. Her television showed a frozen image of the “two” Theas kissing each other.

She didn’t bother turning it off before she left.

As much as the last thing Jadene wanted to do was heed Miriam’s advice when she was so angry at Miriam specifically, she took her time. This wasn’t the first time another performer had thrown her under the bus, or made grand presumptions.

It was the first time any of them had implied she was going to start selling sex dolls—sex dolls of herself designed to fool fans into thinking they were her.

Every time she remembered the idea it upset her.

There were so many factors to consider, and even with the long drive to give her time Jadene felt like she’d only scratched the surface. How had Thea learned that? Why had she felt so confident announcing it? Why hadn’t Miriam contacted her when the news dropped?

By the time Jadene arrived outside Miriam’s office, she’d both calmed down and become more certain the whole thing was one big fuckup. If Miriam can make this go away, then maybe I’ll forgive her for even humoring the idea in the first place. It’s obvious she was going to try convincing me to go ahead with it… but I’m not the kind of woman who wants to fill the world with sex dolls of herself. Maybe that’s okay for Thea, but not me!

She knocked on her agent’s door, clearing her throat before calling out through the wood. “Miriam? I hope you’re read—”

The door opened, and before Jadene could do anything a spiral was filling her vision.

It spun in such a slow rhythm, but something about the way its colors shifted and the way it moved held her rapt. Her lips parted as though she were going to speak, but no words came. Instead, her jaw dropped, and her eyes hooded. Why am I… just looking… at this… spiral…?

Why does it feel… so… empty… so… I… can’t… think… can’t… must… I…

Jadene groaned, a quiver making its way down her spine.

She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t remember why she wanted to look away. The only thing she could do was stare at Miriam’s phone as her eyes filled with that spiral, and the spiral siphoned away her thoughts and mind.

It was only moments before she stood slack in front of Miriam’s doorway. Her cocktail dress slid down her shoulder, revealing so much more of her breasts as her posture slouched. Her eyes were staring past Miriam’s phone, seeing the spiral but only processing blankness, emptiness, a complete and utter lack of independent thought.

“Come inside, Jadene.”

“Yesss, Miriammm…”

Jadene sounded like she was dreaming, moving forward as the phone screen withdrew as though an invisible leash were wrapped around her neck. Speaking didn’t rouse her from her hypnotic trance. If anything it seemed to make her slouch more.

The door closed behind Jadene, and Miriam let out a sigh of relief.

“You really weren’t supposed to find out like this. We were supposed to have more time to make you understand what a lucrative opportunity this was, but now… Now we can’t let you hold things up. The contracts have already been signed. Your likeness, your personality, all of it… they’ve already been sold.” Miriam shrugged. “But that’s fine. Sensual Simulacra, the company we’re partnering with…?

“They have a solution for ‘difficult’ talent like you.”

Miriam Boyce’s brown eyes were full of stubborn determination. She looked perfectly professional dressed all in black, without a strand of hair out of place in her pageboy haircut. Her black-framed glasses were perfectly set on her nose.

Her only trait that didn’t scream ‘serious professional’ were her green-painted lips.

Jadene didn’t respond.

She couldn’t.

Her gaze was still trapped in the spiral that actively sucked away every thought as it tried to form in her vulnerable mind.

“You’re going to help me work this out, because we just can’t reverse course at this point.” Miriam’s lips curled into a smile. No compassion or understanding lurked in her eyes. There was only a cold, calculating certainty. “You can’t stop this. You can only help me move things forward.”

“I… help you work… this… out…” Jadene mewled pitifully. Her voice sounded so soft, distant, and quiet. In her mind she could barely comprehend the words as she spoke them. The real world felt so far away, and any time she began to understand what was happening it slipped away like files deleted before she could access them. “I can’t… stop this…

“I can only help you… move things… forward…”

“Excellent.” Miriam smiled, and moved closer to rest a hand at the small of Jadene’s back. “Then there’s a little presentation I want you to watch…”

Jadene moved as Miriam nudged her, and soon landed down in the chair in front of Miriam’s computer. When the phone pulled away from her vision, something else grasped it just as tightly.

“Watch…”

“That’s right. Watch.” Miriam smoothed Jadene’s hair, and reached down to adjust the strap of Jadene’s dress. “This presentation will help you start to process the shift in your professional plans. You’ll see. It’s just smart business to diversify.

“That includes diversifying who makes decisions for you.”

“Smart… business…” Jadene sighed as she watched the spiral on Jadene’s monitor interspersed with flashing images of women kneeling, women pulling away their clothes, women with empty eyes, women with open mouths, and so much more. “Decisions… for… me…”

Miriam watched silently, adjusting her glasses as Jadene’s hand reached up under her skirt to stroke her quivering cunt.

Jadene tossed and turned in her bed. She kept dreaming about the interview with Thea, only Sania wasn’t at Thea’s home. The interview was at Jadene’s, and she was the one who brought out a duplicate of herself.

Even in the dream, seeing her so identical, so precise, such a perfect replica, it set her pussy ablaze and ruined her panties. She couldn’t stop herself from kissing the lifeless robot.

Before she knew it, she was grinding their breasts together, fondling her ass, all but fucking this lifeless automaton in front of Sania. She’d known the talk show hostess for years, but she’d never felt so free to have sex with an appliance in front of her—not even an appliance that looked like another person.

An appliance that looked like her.

She woke with a start, her body drenched with sweat and her thighs slick. The first thing she did—after pulling her hand away from her thighs—was to reach for her phone. She counted every second as she waited for an answer, forcing her other hand to grasp the sheets.

Don’t touch yourself, Jadene. That dream isn’t what you want. That’s not you.

“Dene, how can I help—”

“I know you convinced me that it was a good thing, that sexifying my career now would help me slide into cougar roles and stop from that period where I can’t get any roles, but I… I’m not comfortable. I can’t do it.” Jadene sighed, shaking her head. Everything had made sense before she’d gone to bed. She’d agreed it was a smart business decision, even beyond just how much Sensual Simulacra was going to pay her for every model shipped. “Please understand.”

“Of course I understand, Dene. How could I not understand?”

“Thank you, because I think if I had to—” A tone rang through Jadene’s phone, and her hand released her sheets as her body slumped. Her words died on her lips as her eyes stared off at nothing.

Every breath quivered through Jadene’s body, redirecting the rivulets of sweat as they stained her curvaceous body.

When the tone finally ended, Jadene’s eyes fell shut.

“I understand that you’re not ready for this… but you can’t stop this, Jadene. No one can stop this now. The only way out is through, and you want to get through this, don’t you?”

“Get… through this… want… want to get through… yes… get through… this…” Jadene groaned, her eyes rolling back into her head. “I… want… to get through this… I… can’t stop this… can only… help you… move things… forward… must… help… can’t… fight…”

Her free hand was already moving down under her sheets, playing along the slickness between her thighs with a rhythmic precision more appropriate for a computer than a woman gripped by desire. Images flashed through Jadene’s mind as her fingers flicked at her clit, and her loud moans were enough to make Miriam wince on the other side of the call.

“That’s right. Touch yourself, and remember that this is the best thing for your career. Sex dolls are your future, Jadene. Sex dolls are going to be the way you keep yourself from being forgotten. Being sex positive is fine and all…” Miriam sighed. The sound made Jadene moan—that or her fingers pinching her clit. “But you don’t just want to be sex positive. That won’t sell sex dolls. You want to be hot. You want to be desired. You want people to want to fuck you, and to tell them that they can—if they have enough money.

“If they have enough money, they can own you, and that’s fucking hot.”

“They can… o-own… own… meeee…!” Jadene’s voice cracked as she arched off of her bed. “Fucking… hot…! Want to be hot… desired… people… to fuck me… fuck me… fuck me…!”

“That’s the can do attitude I’ve come to expect from you!” Miriam’s grin was audible in her voice. “So why don’t you make yourself cum, and if you have any more worries you can call me back later? How does that sound, Jadene? Doesn’t that sound sexy? Doesn’t that sound perfect?”

“C-c-umming… cumming and… calling you… calling you… s-sexy… perfect…!” Jadene’s toes curled, and her thighs clenched tight around her hand as she soaked her fingers and her sheets. “Yessss Miriaaaaam…!”

“Good girl.

“Keep in touch!”

The line went dead, and the phone fell from Jadene’s hand as the other between her legs helplessly shuddered. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, but she wasn’t seeing the smooth white surface.

Her mind was full of images of herself in the red cocktail dress from the gala, only the straps were down over her arms. The hem was hiked up past her thighs. One hand was groping at her breasts, and the other was teasing alongside a glittery, sparkling thong. Just enough clothing so people can’t see everything… so people want to see more… so people want to fuck me more…

I want everyone to want to fuck me…

They can own me… if they have enough money…

“Yessss…!” Her voice was a low hiss, and moments later she was stroking herself again with the same firm insistence as before. “I want everyone to want to fuck me… I want everyone to fuck me… Can’t stop it… can only… only way out is… through…!”

Jadene thrust her fingers deep inside of her cunt, imagining what it would be like if she were thrusting them inside of her own sex doll. How much would it sell to have a sex tape with my own fuck doll? How many awards could I win if I got down and dirty with my own robotic duplicate for everyone to watch? No one’s ever made that movie before—definitely not a four time best-actress winning… Ohhh…!

She came again, her mind feeling so perfectly blank as pleasure shuddered across her body and melted away at her once firmly held resistance to the idea.

How would it feel to be a sex doll… fucking all of my fans… being owned by my fans…? Jadene moaned, pinching and tugging her nipple until it was taut between her fingers. It would probably be so simple… so easy… so… perfect…

Jadene drifted back to sleep, lost in fantasies that had once been nightmares.