I, Johnathan Wagstaff, adjusted the printed calendar on my desk, then got up and pushed the couch ever so slightly to the exact correct angle.

The closed drapes in my brand new psychiatrist’s office were illuminated by the setting sun … which was pretty impressive since it was 11:13 am and my office in this dreary commercial park had no outside facing windows. In reality there was a set of very expensive lights behind the curtain to give the office the look of a darkened Manhattan psychiatrist’s office at the “magic hour” right before sunset. I had done extensive research and knew that style of shrink’s office calmed patients.

Or at least calmed them more than the drab concrete walls I had covered up with lots of bookshelves and other “fancy shrink” knick-knacks.

The most important piece in the room was, of course, the couch. Almost a parody of a therapist’s couch, the large, soft, leather couch was raised at one end with a divot for the patient to rest their head in. It was incredibly comfortable. Extremely relaxing.

And that was just if the couch was exactly what you assumed it was. In fact, it was the end result of almost a dozen years of research. It was a perfect mind control device.

The truth is, hypnosis is basically bullshit. Sure some people can be put in a very relaxed state where they are more agreeable than they normally would be. In some very rare cases they might even be able to be induced into doing things they might not otherwise. But those cases are where they want to do something, but they habitually don’t: like quitting smoking, or watching their weight. It’s never something that the person actually doesn’t want to do.

Anyone trying to control the mind of someone through hypnosis was going to have their work end in failure. Anyone except me.

Early in my time as a graduate student in University, I realized several disparate attempts at changing people’s behavioural temperament — failures by themselves — could work together to create an almost instantaneous suggestive state.

Alone, the simple chemical gas developed to change the smell of potato chips to make people eat more of them didn’t do much of anything if the person didn’t like the chips to begin with.

Alone, the binaural audio designed to calm people before going into the dentist didn’t do much more than lower heart rates.

Alone, the targeted spine massage designed to keep people sitting longer didn’t do much but loosen muscles.

Alone, the flashing light sequences designed to make you want to buy more things in TV commercials, well, didn’t actually do much of anything.

And alone, traditional trance techniques did little but get people in a suggestable mood.

But together the results were shockingly dramatic. The combination, which I happily dubbed “The Wagstaff Technique,” was so dramatic that a person hit by it literally believed every single thing they heard was true.

The biggest danger wasn’t that they wouldn’t take a directive, but that the statements given to them wouldn’t create a sort of psychosis.

Psychosis was the reason The Wagstaff Technique wasn’t getting billions out of some Pentagon black budget. When my research partner Harry Trumbman and I had tried the technique for the first time (using Harry as a subject), it was immediately obvious to me that it was effective.

I also knew that there were two obvious choices:

One: Make a lot of noise about what had happened: release the research and the evidence very, very publicly, and make sure that every single person in the world knew about the technology so that it could become heavily and (lets face it) correctly regulated.

Two: Follow the research through normal, quiet academic channels and have it get black bagged by the government lickity split. This would probably end in a 50/50 chance of me ending up either as the head scientist in some sort of area-51 with an untold number of men-in-black looking over my shoulder or in an unmarked grave with a bullet in my head.

I quickly chose option three: Make the whole thing look like an abject failure. The fact that I had sort of broken Harry’s brain along the way wasn’t intentional, but probably helped my case that the research not only was a dead-end, but was dangerous to boot.

I had told Harry both that “the project didn’t do anything” and to “forget everything about how the project worked as if it never happened.”

At first it seemed like Harry had just woken up dejected that everything we had worked for was for naught. But then it became very clear that not only could Harry seemingly not remember large portions of the past year, but ALSO large portions of his entire university career were missing. In order for him to forget how the project worked it meant forgetting a bunch of other stuff as well.

And that was before the realization that “the project didn’t do anything” and “the project seemingly erased large portions of your memory” are contradictory ideas that continually caused distress for Harry every time he thought about them.

I probably could have fixed things if I could have gotten Harry on the couch again, but by the point where it became obvious how badly he’d been messed up, the program had already been judiciously mothballed by the department and Harry had been taken away by his wife and family to another state for mental care.

And I had been left with just my specialized medical degree and the blueprints to a machine that very much worked.

A year of getting my psychiatrist’s license paired with using my parents’ inheritance in my off hours to build a new prototype outside of university control and I was ready to really see what this thing could do. Because the other thing about me to know was controlling Harry and destroying him was the most exciting thrill that I ever experienced.

I looked back down at the calendar on my desk: “11:15am: Mary Simpson: Age 19: Behavioural issues.”

If I was being honest, Mary Simpson probably didn’t need my services.

Everyone probably needs a little bit of therapy of course, but in the realm of 19-year-olds in the midst of the first year of college, Mary was shockingly well adjusted. At least that’s what I was getting from the first ten minutes of her surprisingly bubbly session.

Mary being in session with me was the result of a favour from a colleague at from university. Angela Simpson, 49, had been my project advisor when everything had gone south, and had felt badly when I had been drummed out of academia. In turn, she offered up her daughter Mary as a first client for my new practice.

It didn’t hurt that I had set it up in a way that I was actually charging half of what my bill said, so Angela got to pocket the other half of the health-insurance payout. Yeah, Angela wasn’t so bad.

Mary was now talking about her life in the dorms and how taking a gap year to Europe really helped her get ready for living in a small room with another person. I stifled a yawn. I made a lot of appreciative “uh huhs” as she continued on.

Mary was a dirty blonde on the volleyball team — got a scholarship for it — and her long legs reached near the end of the couch. She must have been at least 5′11″, maybe taller. She was covering a tight, athlete’s body with a pair of snug, but not obcene, jeans, and a grey, unisex t-shirt that had an outline of some sort of robot on it. It was either very nerdy or one of those “fashion brand” appropriations of being nerdy. From the angle I was sitting at, I could see that she was wearing a bra with an underwire, probably somewhere between a “B” and “C” cup.

Mary was coming to a point in her monolog where she was talking about the “boy she was seeing,” and she was starting to pause a little bit more between thoughts. I saw my opportunity.

“Mary, I’m going to start some relaxation massage techniques in the chair while you talk,” I smiled as I said this. “Let me know if this is distracting at all, it’s the first time I’ve tried this.”

Mary smiled back. She knew as well as her mother that her therapy sessions here were as much a favour as actual therapy. She was probably getting a little bit of the kickback from her mom.

“Sure thing, happy to help!” she replied.

I made a few adjustments to the app on my laptop that was connected to the chair via WiFi. I started the back massage element of the chair.

“Oh, that actually feels really nice!” she said, sounding half surprised.

“Okay, then,” I continued, “I’m going to flip on a few more relaxation elements in the couch.”

“Sounds good Doctor W!” Mary replied before cozying into the couch even further. Her head was now firmly in the divot at the top of the couch, right between the two sound and scent emitters. I flipped them on as well. Then pressed a button and a directed light stealthily mounted on the ceiling flashed three times in about a quarter of a second.

Mary blinked, inhaled the scent and clenched her teeth against the binaural audio that was now shaking her skull below the level of human perception.

Then she continued as if nothing had happened.

“So Trevor, the boy I’m seeing,” she paused, “I will NOT call him my boyfriend, I can do better than him for a first boyfriend … he’s getting a little bit clingy.”

This was, of course, exactly what I expected. When the couch had affected Harry he had continued on as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t until I started saying things that obviously weren’t true, and he believed me absolutely, that I knew something was up.

Mary was waiting expectantly for me to reply. It was clear that she wanted me to give my two-cents on Trevor. And I needed to experiment a little.

“Mary, your here at these sessions because you trust me,” I started. This statement was already likely true to an extent, but now it was an absolute in her mind.

“Of course Doctor W,” she said, “why would I be here if I didn’t?”

This was good. I was phrasing this carefully for three reasons. First just in case the couch wasn’t working, second because I didn’t want to do anything to surprise her to leave the couch in the middle of a session, and thirdly because I knew what happened to Harry. There was a real chance I could break her brain if I wasn’t careful.

“Since you trust me, you will tell me all of your thoughts and details about your life totally truthfully, without holding anything back. You will feel no shame or trepidation when you do so.”

She turned her head and looked at me a little bit funny. Moment of truth. It wasn’t something totally out of line for a therapist to say, but it certainly wasn’t subtle, and probably an odd thing to assert in a session that was mostly for show.

“Okay Doctor W,” Mary said with a smile, “I’ll give you every unvarnished detail.”

“That’s good Mary,” I said as I smiled back. “You know now that you’re here that you can feel completely comfortable with anything that happens in these meetings. Every technique I’m using, and everything I ask you to do is completely normal and good. Because I’m the one doing it. And just like I know you’ll never talk about what happens in these sessions with anyone else, I won’t either.”

Now THAT was a real stretch if this was all above board. Just the way that I phrased it was completely off, and it would set off at least a couple red flags for anyone hearing it. Unless, of course, you believed it was true, utterly.

It also didn’t ask her to change any of her perceptions retroactively: something that got me in trouble with Harry.

Mary smiled at me.

“You know, that’s right Doctor W,” she said. “I really shouldn’t hold anything back here.”

“Tell me about Trevor then. What makes him ‘clingy’?”

“Well, last night he asked me to shave off all my pubic hair!” Mary exclaimed. “Like, dude, I’m just throwing you a blow once-in-a-while because you have a big dick and can fuck okay. Not great. Okay! Why should I shave for his pleasure?”

I was taken aback. Even though I knew it would work, it was still shocking to hear her tone shift so completely so quickly.

Yet. Still this could be something that a forward young woman might tell her therapist. Even if it was a therapist she just started with and who she had mostly known beforehand as her “mother’s friend.” Now was the last, true test. Something she would never normally do.

I flipped off the couch controls. If the truths I had laid out landed correctly, I wouldn’t need it for the next part, and I didn’t want to say anything that might accidentally break her brain.

“Okay, to really get a good idea what we’re talking about here, I’m going to need to see your downstairs situation. Since this is happening in the session, this is a normal therapeutic technique to physically assess the situation.

Mary nodded, then stood up and pulled down her jeans and her panties. Then she sat and turned fully toward me with her legs spread.

I let out a little gasp, hopefully quiet enough that Mary didn’t hear it.

Mary was shockingly, erotically unshaven—a rarity for a young college girl these days, and the sight of it hit me like a physical blow. It wasn’t just a little patch; it was a full, thick bush of coarse blonde hair that grew wild between her thighs. It was significantly lighter than the hair on her head, a dense, untamed muff that completely swallowed her mound. The sheer volume of it was staggering, a raw display of animalistic sexuality hidden beneath her clean-cut athletic clothes. Buried deep within that heavy thatch, I could just see the pink, glistening meat of her slit trying to peek through. The outer lips were barely visible through the tangle, hinting at the sloppy heat waiting inside. It was a filthy, primal sight—a dirty, hairy cunt on a polished girl—and it made my mouth water. This was somewhere I could assert control.

“You know,” she said, “it’s good that we’re in this session! Normally this would be very embarrassing for me!”

I coughed and cleared my throat.

“Yes, well I think I’ve seen what I need to see,” I said. “You can put your pants back on now.

“Having such untamed pubic hair is pretty unusual these days. So why do you leave it unkempt?”

She seemed a little bit taken aback by that, so I quickly added. “This isn’t a value judgment, more I want to know your reasoning.”

Seemingly content with that framing, Mary leaned back into the couch. I quickly flipped the device back on.

“Well, I guess I just never saw the point? I’m not really into bikinis, and it isn’t like boys said no,” she replied.

I smirked at the earnest confidence of that.

“Okay, the way I see this is that there are two separate issues here,” I continued. “But before we get to that, let me ask you another question: do you enjoy receiving cunnilingus?”

I said it very casually, but this was another test. I had given no reinforcement to any of the blanket statements from earlier about everything in the session making her feel comfortable and being normal. Then again, she had just pulled down her pants in front of me.

She laughed. “Yeah getting my pussy eaten is great!”

“Good, then the two issues as I see them are that firstly Trevor seems like a bit of a goober. You shouldn’t change anything about yourself because he asks you to,” I smiled. Hopefully they didn’t get married or anything. “Second is, completely separately from Trevor being a goober, if you like ‘getting your pussy eaten’ then it’s just polite to keep yourself mostly shaved down there. You hadn’t realized that before now, but you’ll need to make sure its shaven if you want to enjoy cunnilingus going forward. In fact, right after this session you need to make plans to get it done.”

“Wow Doc, I never thought of it that way,” she exclaimed. “You’re right, I should get right on that.”

Of course, normally in a session stating things like that so directly and commandingly — not just telling a patient to shave themselves, but to do anything really — would have been off putting. But since the truth of my words embedded itself in her brain as absolute, she was much more amenable to it. It was the truth after all.

I was still being careful though. I could have just told her “you will go home and shave your pussy” and she would have done it, because it was true so she needed to do it. But it would have caused her much mental anguish because she wouldn’t know why she was doing it. Her brain would have had to go into overdrive reasoning it out, and if that was too far, it might have broken.

The rest of the session was fairly mundane. I didn’t want to push things too far in the first session. I was a scientist after all, despite the fact that I was obviously using this technology for nefarious purposes. I needed to see how someone would react to the couch using as few variables as possible.

As the session ended, I confirmed that Mary would be back next week (I even gave her a few couch-nudges to really lock that commitment into place) and ended our first session.

“Wow, Doctor W, that was great,” she said as she got up and moved toward the door. “Honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to get out of these sessions, but this feels really helpful!”

“More than you know Mary,” I said to myself as she exited. “More than you know.”