OK, let me tell you about this time when I asked Richard for a brain break. By which I don’t mean ‘breaking my brain’, I mean ‘giving my brain a break from being broken’... That was confusing. Anyway! I wanted a few hours of freedom and clarity of thought, without acting on any ridiculous suggestions and without Danielle doing any sneaky shit. I’ve requested breaks before this one instance, and since then too, and Richard, Jelly and Dani have always respected my wishes. My triggers have been put on pause, my ability to perceive the world was restored to normal, and my alter-ego retreated into the quiet space at the back of our head. (It’s never been for very long, though, by my own choice - I haven’t yet had a break for longer than a couple of days. I just like being a mindfucked plaything too much!)

This time, however, was different, for a couple of reasons. First of all, Richard revealed that he’d given me a trigger that would speed up the process. “Think of it like a reset button for your brain,” he explained, as he led the way from our bedroom out into the living room. “Except that it’ll only reset it temporarily, until you want all your conditioning put back in place.”

“That sounds good to me,” I said breezily. “Also sounds like it’ll save you a lot of effort, putting it all back in!”

He grinned at me, but then abruptly frowned, peering at me with a puzzled expression. “Wait... something’s not right...”

I stared back at him, nonplussed. “What? What’s the problem?”

His perturbed gaze suddenly transformed into an epiphanic look. “Of course! Why aren’t you squeezing your boobs?”

“Huh?”

“Well, you know you’re supposed to when you talk,” he said, his tone gently chiding. “It’s rude not to.”

I blinked in astonishment.

Then I reached up and started to grope my chest, as I apologetically replied, “Oh yeah, right! Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That’s alright, love,” he chuckled, as my hands fell back to my sides again. “No harm done.”

I almost immediately had to put my hands back on my breasts, because I needed to speak again. I was wearing a red-orange bikini and denim dungarees - it was a fairly warm day in early June - and my thumbs kept missing the edges of the bikini and making skin-to-skin contact with my tits. Can’t say I minded much.

“OK, so how does this work?” I asked, biting my lip as I fondled myself. “Where is this reset button?” Once I finished talking I just left my hands where they were, to save time in case I needed to speak again.

“It’s on the end of your nose.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course it is.”

He sniggered. “It just seemed like the most convenient place to put it, that you wouldn’t touch accidentally!”

“Fair point - I don’t make a habit of playing with my nose.” I playfully scowled at him. “Unless you make me.”

“Alright, so, stand here,” he said, gesturing in front of the couch. I did so, and he circled round to the other side of our coffee table, standing directly in my sightline. “Now, put one index finger on your nose, and keep it there. You don’t have to press it hard, just lightly.” I complied, gently squishing the tip of my nose with the tip of my finger. “And put your other arm down by your side...”

I was doing as I was told, and yet I didn’t feel any different. But then, it was always so hard for me to tell whether there were any hypnotic suggestions influencing me. Was it working...? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t play with my tits right now - my hands were otherwise occupied - so I had to stay silent. It’d be impolite not to.

“Now, you might not feel like anything’s happening yet,” he said, as if he was reading my thoughts. “And that’s because I made it a delayed reaction, so even if you did press it accidentally - like, if you itched it or rubbed it or whatever - it wouldn’t reset you.”

I nodded. That made sense.

“Also, your posture needs to be straight, and you need to be looking up as far as you can, without rolling your eyes back in your head.”

Admittedly I had been slouching a bit, but upon hearing this I straightened up. Lifting my gaze away from him, I stared up at the ceiling. Raising my eyes that high instinctively made me open my mouth.

“OK. And now you need to just stay like that for a bit. When the reset’s complete, you’ll hear a light ‘ding’, like a microwave.”

I couldn’t really respond, so I just kept looking up, my finger pressing my nose, my jaw relaxing a little more each second.

I stayed in that pose, oblivious to how dumb I looked, waiting for my brain to go ‘ding’... while Fuck Hawk giggled to himself, and took photos of me from various angles, and then wandered over to his laptop and got back to his scriptwriting, leaving me there.

The reset button was actually a good idea - as were the precautions Richard came up with to stop me from setting it off by accident - and now I have it as a real trigger, as does Jelly. (Minus the staring up at the ceiling, because looking up that high for that long can get uncomfortable - not something we anticipated beforehand.) But I sure as hell didn’t have it then. The only suggestions working on me then were the idea that I wanted a brain break when I actually didn’t... and the fact that at that moment, I was even more of a credulous dipshit than my alter-ego. (I mean, the ‘groping when I speak’ thing must’ve been a clue.)

He wasn’t pausing my triggers. He just wanted to see how long his gullible girlfriend would stand there silently booping her snoot, with an ahegao-esque face and drool trickling out of her gaping mouth and down her chest (naturally), before she realised she’d been thoroughly rused.

It was twenty minutes, and I didn’t even figure it out on my own. When our eyes started feeling really strained, Dani took pity and told me what he was doing. That’s right, I had to hear it from the dumbass. You have my full permission to point and laugh.