Entering my apartment, I breathed out a huge, exhausted sigh of relief. Four days’ solid working at the restaurant, many more hours than I usually worked - but now, to make up for it, I had six days off! I don’t mind admitting I’d been relishing them. I couldn’t wait to chill out and watch TV, go for walks and runs in the spring sunshine, and spend plenty of quality time with Richard and Jelly.

I kicked off my shoes, placed my purse and my light brown jacket on an armchair, and kneeled down on the carpet on front of the couch, spreading my legs apart and placing my hands on my thighs with upturned palms. It took a few seconds for me to realise what I’d done, at which point I groaned loudly.

“Danielle!” I sighed. “What are you doing, why are we down here? King Fuck Hawk isn’t even home yet, we don’t need to kneel!” Something else occurred to me - how long had she been back in our body? Relieved to find I could move my hands, I reached for my neck, and was even more relieved to find I was not wearing the collar. Mind you, if Richard had tried to make me wear it to work, I would’ve called ‘beetroot’ so hard! But that must mean he put Danielle back in before I went to work this morning... and I don’t think he was even awake when I left. How long had she been there, in our passenger seat, waiting to take the wheel?

Stealing control of our face for a moment, Danielle pouted. “I just like this pose, Alyssa,” she said, in a cutesy voice that would’ve sounded very wrong coming from me, but really suited her. (Which is just bizarre if you think about it, since we have the same voice.) “It reminds me that I’m Master’s property, and that this is where I belong!”

While I struggled to come up with a worthy retort, and to ignore the horny flare her words had caused, she hijacked our hands and got out my phone. As I watched and frowned, she opened the camera app and positioned the device against the pile of books on our coffee table. (Richard and I each keep the next book we’re planning to read on the table, to remind us to find the time to actually do it!) Once she was satisfied we were in the frame, she started filming.

I shook my head, wearing the exasperated smile I usually aim at my boyfriend - though in recent weeks I’d had occasion to direct it at my alter-ego quite a few times. “What are you up to, Dani? Why are you even out? I mean, I’m assuming he has given you some kind of task...”

“Oh yes,” she said with a naughty grin. “Master thought you could use a special treat, since you’ve been working so hard this week. Jelly agreed when he told her... And even though my opinion doesn’t matter, I really like the idea too!”

“Hold on,” I spluttered indignantly, “so everyone else knows what this idea is, but not me? How is that fair?!”

She smiled slyly. “But you do know, Alyssa - deep down! You and Master came up with the idea, and then you forgot - because that’s the best part. Because deciding not to remember, choosing not to be aware of what’s gonna happen to you, is so exciting...”

I blushed hard, bowing my head so I couldn’t see Danielle’s smirking face on my phone screen. “Shut up!”

“You can be bratty and stubborn all you like,” Dani giggled, “but we all know it’s just an act. We all know you just want to submit and obey. We all know that your greatest desire, your fondest wish, is to be a good girl ju-uhhst like me!”

Her words were interrupted by a moan that came from us both. Our eyes widened as we realised the same thing at the same time.

“Well, that’s interesting,” I said slowly. “Danielle... you’re a good girl.”

The nature of our triggers were that they could be used by someone I trusted with my hypno-kinky secret. I thought that was just Richard and Jelly, but clearly, Danielle and I trusted each other. (We’d have to, I guess, since we share a body and a brain.) So it turns out, if one of us calls the other a good girl, it works just as well as if our boyfriend or girlfriend say it.

Dani whimpered and squirmed, clutching at our increasingly sensitive boobs as my words sent pleasure vibrating through her body.

And, because it was also my body, I felt it too. Unexpected bonus!

Catching my breath, I gasped and chuckled as I continued the tit-groping my ‘co-pilot’ had started. “Is this the plan? We just kneel here and get each other off ’til Rich gets home?”

“I like that idea,” Dani giggled, “but no. No, Master wants you to be deep in a trance by the time he arrives, so that’s my job...” Letting go of our chest, she raised our hand in front of our face.

I snorted derisively. “You can’t hypnotise me, Dani, you’re too fucking dumb!”

“I am very dumb,” she agreed, “but I’m good at paying attention. All I need to do is copy what Master does when he hypnotises us. It shouldn’t be too hard, because you’re so easy to hypnotise,” she teased. She closed our outstretched hand into a fist, and then extended our index finger.

“No, no, no, c’mon,” I groaned. “Richard having power over me is one thing, but you - you literally exist to be a slave, a hypno puppet! You can’t be, like, higher-ranked than me! You’re not even a full person! What the fuck does that make me?!”

“A mind-controlled plaything?” she sniggered.

“I - you - fuck -”

“Look at my fingertip, Alyssa,” Danielle coaxed. “Just let your eyes fix on it...”

I made a grumbling sound, but my eyes were already moving. They fell on the tip of our index finger, my vision zeroing in on every detail of it, taking in my pink skin and the grooves of my fingerprint. Danielle slowly waved it over to the left, and then back across to the right, and then to the left again, our hand becoming a pendulum. My eyes followed it instinctively, unwillingly, helplessly.

“And I know how easy it is for you to get hypnotised when you stare at something, Alyssa. I know how easy it is for your gaze to get stuck on something, even something moving, and let it pull your mind away. It’s so powerful, and you give in to it so easily, so fast...” She laughed lightly. “I know, because it works on me too. If I didn’t have orders from Master to carry out, I’d be falling into trance right along with you!”

I shivered with apprehension, my mind growing so clear and empty as my staring eyes followed the swaying digit, still just aware enough to register the absurdity of the situation. I really was getting hypnotised by myself. And I was powerless to stop it.

“That’s right, just gaze at my finger as it moves back and forth, Alyssa...”

“Nnm,” I protested weakly. “My finngh...”

“Good girl, Alyssa.” Another horny surge as my jaw relaxed and hung open, adding to the increasing blankness of my expression. “So easily transfixed... So easily compelled... So easily entranced...”

I know what you’re thinking - if our mouth was agape, how was Danielle still talking to me? Good for you if that did occur to you, because it didn’t occur to me - my mind was already almost completely gone. The answer: she wasn’t talking aloud any more. Her words, her voice, was coming from inside our head. But to me, it sounded no different from when she spoke using our mouth - it was just as loud and clear, and I had no way of distinguishing what direction it was coming from. It was like her voice was surrounding me, relaxing and entrancing my mind from all sides, as my gaze followed our finger back and forth.

“That’s right, so empty and blissful... Such a good subject. Such a hypnotised plaything. All the pretence just falling away, the act over and done with, and you get to embrace being the good mindless slavegirl you truly are...”

The corners of my gaping mouth turned up, as my tiny remaining fragment of consciousness took in, and delighted in, her words.

“And all I need to do is count down, and snap my fingers... and you’ll drop deep, and sink into the Spiral Seas. Five. Four. Three. Two.” Our waving hand slowed to a stop, and her other fingers uncurled and got ready to snap. “One.” Snap. “Sleep.”

My eyelids fell shut. My head lolled forwards. My outstretched arm dropped to my side. The rest of me remained upright in that kneeling position.

“Sinking deep, all the way down, feeling so wonderful... Every moment, every breath, just pulling you deeper and deeper... And the deeper you go, the better you feel, and the better you feel, the deeper you go...”

Within moments, I was down as deep as I’d ever been, completely subsumed in the dark void of trance, right at the bottom of the Spiral Seas.

“And I can open our eyes, and move our body, and speak, but none of it disturbs you. In fact, all of it sends you even deeper. Everything I do, everything I say, sends you deeper and deeper into trance...”

As Danielle raised her head and opened her eyes, I hit the seabed and kept going, my mind tunnelling into the dark earth beneath the ocean of hypnosis, burying myself in the depths of my own brain. She stretched her arms and smiled broadly, sensing how completely dormant I was, and reached out to pick up my phone, which was still filming. She held it up to her face.

“Job done, Master,” she said to the camera, smiling eagerly. “Alyssa’s so deep in trance, she can’t find her way back out again. She has no idea what’s happening. And I’m free to move and speak, and do whatever I want - which is, of course, whatever you want.”

Ending the recording, she sent it to Richard. Then she got to her feet, crossed the living room, and retrieved the collar from its box, before returning to her spot and kneeling down again. She considered putting the collar on, but chose to wait until her Master returned home, hoping he would do it to her. (To Dani, when he collars her, it feels like it’s being done to her, rather than for her.)

Richard got home about twenty minutes later, delighted that the first stage of his plan had been successful. Danielle held up her hair for him as he fixed the collar around her neck, whimpering happily, feeling so submissive, so owned, like such property.

To make the next step a little easier for our shared brain, Master put her into a trance for the next part too. By the time our eyes opened again, the collar had been removed, and only one of us was still inside our head.

And it wasn’t me.