Annabelle giggled nervously as she stepped into the soundproof booth. “I’ve never done this before,” she remarked, glancing over her shoulder at the shop attendant. “Actually, I thought these, um, these novelty recording studios were more of an American thing - in like, the eighties or nineties.”

“They were,” Kenneth nodded. “But we thought we’d set one up here for a couple of weeks - just as a fun Christmas thing, y’know? A novelty, like you said.”

“Mmm.” It had quite bemused her to encounter this man as she and her two friends wandered through the shopping centre, halfway through buying Christmas gifts for their families and friends. With charming nonchalance, he’d encouraged them to come to his sparsely-decorated little store and let him record them singing festive tunes, as a bonus gift for their loved ones. Her friends, intrigued and amused by the idea, leapt at the opportunity. Annabelle had been noncommittal, but once they’d paid for their turns, she’d said ‘fuck it’ to herself and gone for it too. It was a bit of seasonal fun, it wouldn’t take up much of her time, and she didn’t exactly have to empty her purse for it.

She’d struggled for a minute to decide what to sing - ‘Christmas Lights’ by Coldplay? It was her favourite, but everyone else she knew found it too melancholy. ‘All I Want for Christmas’ by Mariah Carey? Nah, her ego wasn’t that big. In the end she said ‘fuck it’ once again - she’d belt out a bit of Shakin’ Stevens.

The walls of the booth were completely covered in black curtains, and red and green lights shone from the ceiling, switching around intermittently, which created a nice festive ambience. Placing her handbag on the floor of the booth, Annabelle picked up the headphones plugged into the wall, and sat down on the stool in the middle of the chamber. She shot once last look at the other two booths in the opposite corners of the shop, inside which her friends were already singing their little hearts out, unseen and unheard by anyone else. Then Kenneth closed the door of her booth, which made a small click as he shut her inside.

As she slid the headphones on, she could immediately hear a low thrumming sound. It wasn’t anywhere loud enough to deafen her, or even annoy her, but it was noticeable. A few seconds later she heard Kenneth’s voice speaking softly in her ears. “You alright in there, love?”

“Yeah, I’m OK,” she said into the microphone hanging from the ceiling. “There’s a bit of a weird sound coming out of these, though.”

“Ah, rats, it’s started happening with those ones as well...” She thought she could hear the grimace in his voice. “We’ve been having that problem all day, I’ve ordered replacements but they won’t get here ’til Monday. Just try and ignore it. Once the music starts, you should barely notice it...”

“Alright. It’s not bad, anyway.”

“OK. Starting up the music for you in a couple of seconds...”

She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. Moments later, the familiar opening bars of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ began playing in her ears, along with a chorus of ‘ooh’s. Suppressing a giggle, she began to sing. “Snow is falling, all around me... Children playing, having fun... It’s the season, love and understanding... Merry Christmas, everyone!” She couldn’t resist doing some jazz-hands-esque dancing as she sang the verse, and then air-drummed along to the four beats that followed that last line.

The thrumming sound persisted, but she found she was able to ignore it, just as Kenneth had said. It soon faded into the background, almost blending in with the music. The red and green lights washed over her, making her feel warm and cosy even though they couldn’t be generating any real heat. As she continued to sing, she found herself getting more and more into it, caring less about having silly fun and more about doing the best performance she could. Her movements slowed, her dancing forgotten, as her attention was increasingly devoted to the singing.

She smiled lazily. I’m so glad we decided to do this, she thought dimly. It was a good idea... I love singing... We should come back tomorrow...

We... we? Who else... was there anyone else... “Room is swaying, records playing, all the old songs we love to hear...” Who did I come here with? Where is here? “All I wish that every day was Christmas - what a nice way to spend the year!”

Where am I...? What... Who... Ooh, pretty lights... Music... The music... Sing... I have to sing... The next line’s coming up, I have to sing... sing my best... “We’re gonna haaaave a party tonight... I’m gonna find that girl underneath the mistletoe, we’ll kiss by candlelight!”

By the time she’d reached the last chorus, Annabelle couldn’t remember coming to the shop and paying for the privilege of recording herself singing. She couldn’t remember visiting the shopping centre and buying presents for her loved ones. She couldn’t even remember her own name, let alone those of her friends, and she certainly couldn’t remember that they were with her.

But she remembered every line and every note of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. She was word-perfect, and her voice never wavered once. The only thing in her brain was that song, and she performed it to perfection. There wasn’t enough of her left to be proud of that, or wonder why she was doing it at all.

At last the music stopped, leaving only that pulsating rhythm in the background. Annabelle remained sitting on the stool, staring blankly ahead, her posture slumped, the ghost of a smile on her face.

A couple of minutes later the door swung open, and Kenneth stepped inside. He waved a hand in front of Annabelle’s glassy eyes, snapped his fingers a couple of times, took her by the chin and slowly tilted her head from side to side, and rubbed and squeezed her large breasts through her Christmas jumper. She gave no reaction at all. Nodding with satisfaction, he wiped away a string of drool that had trickled out of the corner of her slack mouth.

Picking up her handbag, Kenneth took it out to the front of the shop, placing it on the floor behind the counter next to her two friends’, which he’d already gone through. Rifling inside, he found her purse and went through its contents. He diligently cut up her debit card and chucked it in the bin, and pocketed the cash, pleased to see it amounted to over a hundred pounds, which would go towards his commission. He chuckled when he read her name on her driving licence. “That’s a coincidence,” he said to himself as he binned it, along with any other identification she had. “Almost like it was fated...”

Next, he gathered up all of the girls’ shopping, which they had entrusted to him for safekeeping before entering the booths, and took the bags out to the back room of the shop, placing them on a large tray marked ‘Returns’. The products could be sent back to the very shops in which they’d been bought earlier today, and the refunds would go towards Kenneth’s commission. Between the cash in their purses, the refunds, and the little money they’d each paid him in the first place, he was making a tidy sum from each customer. The company he worked for had no problem with this - their profits from the sales of these girls would far surpass his, after all. And well-paid employees were loyal, discreet employees.

He brought a red L-shaped hand trolley back with him to the main room, wheeling it into Annabelle’s booth. Standing behind her, he slid his arms around her, nestled under her heaving bosom, and hoisted her to her feet. Her head lolled and her arms hung loosely, but once her feet were on solid ground they moved reasonably well as he pushed her forwards, manoeuvring her towards the cart and lying her back on it. He secured her in place with leather straps - one around her chest and upper arms, another on her tummy, and a third across her shins - and then tilted the trolley and began to push it back to the back room.

The storeroom contained nearly a dozen other girls, including Annabelle’s two friends. They were all lined up across the back, each one standing motionless behind their immediate predecessor, the first facing the blank grey wall. Kenneth used to stand them side by side so he had the pleasure of seeing all their zombified faces, but soon ran out of room. Having them lined up in a queue with only a couple of inches between them saved valuable space. Wheeling the trolley over to the back of the line, he unbuckled the straps and lifted Annabelle off by the armpits, standing her behind one of her companions, whom he had brought in here only a few minutes earlier. Annabelle swayed a little before settling in place, her sightless, hooded eyes gazing at the back of her friend’s neck.

A door on the back wall opened into a corridor, which led to a fire exit out into a secluded side street behind the shopping centre. Later that night, well after closing time, a lorry would pull into that street, backing up right to the fire exit, and employees of the company would use the secret passage to cart the brainwashed girls out, one by one. With the vehicle’s width concealing the door, no passing pedestrians would be able to see what they were doing, particularly in the pitch darkness of the December evening. Each girl would be placed in a crate (with sufficient air holes), and they would all then be transported to the company’s local warehouse, to undergo the rest of their conditioning and then be stored away until they were sold.

His task done, Kenneth returned to the main shop, turning the sign on the door back to ‘Open’ and drawing the thick black curtains covering the front window. Within minutes, a family of two harried-looking parents and their excitable primary-school-age children were approaching the shop. Sensing potential customers, Kenneth remembered to flick a switch under the counter, turning off the binaural software running through the music system. The company wasn’t interested in abducting middle-aged people or kids, only gorgeous twenty-somethings with decent voices.

He briefly wondered if all the other employees in the various novelty recording booth stores they’d set up across the UK were having as much success as he was - or if they got quite as much job satisfaction as he did. True, it wasn’t as if he got to do more than feel up any of the hypnotised beauties that fell into his clutches - the company’s clutches, that is. But the money he earned was more than enough to make up for that, and the rate he was going, he’d soon have earned enough to purchase one himself. He quite fancied the latest girl, Annabelle - he liked short, curvy girls, and her dark crimson hair was an added bonus. He was sure he wasn’t the only person she’d appeal to, though, and it was more than likely she’d be sold quickly.

But that was OK. The company was bound to have more girls that took his fancy. Acquiring gorgeous young women, erasing their minds, and reducing them to simple products was an area in which Estro, Inc. excelled...