The third glass of whiskey was running down my throat just as the heavy rain ran down the grimy windows of my office. It was a dark damp downpour that drowned the dim daylight of Detroit. Dammit. This was bumming me out. It had been pouring for days, and I was feeling exactly like the weather.

I was brooding over one-and-a-half deskfuls of notes, photographs and evidence containers, spread out in front of me like an orgy of cruelty and bad connections. I took another generous gulp from my glass, hoping it would help me deal with the case – and if not that at least drown the sorrow a little bit deeper.

It had all started with Bobby Simmons.

Homecoming Queen of ’47, valedictorian, head of the student board, debate team champion, alto soloist in the school choir, voted most likely to succeed among girls in her year, and very deservedly headed for Radcliff on a full scholarship. The most pristine and perfect example of academic achievement, class and courtesy, ask anyone.

Vanished.

The boys in the force had taken an interest at first, but like vultures tended to fly away when there was no more flesh to pick from the bones on the ground they had quickly scattered when all the clues had turned out to be hot air and all leads had run into dead ends. They had let it drop and written it off like a bad meal, and that had been it for them. No second thoughts; just another nothing case. Some comments about how she probably found a handsome boy that would take care of her, and then they had moved on.

I hadn't given up on her, though. I took the case after that – and it remained my case when more women started disappearing. The Captain might be an asshole but he played by the rules, and no amount of male whinging was going to get them the case back after it had gotten interesting. This mess was mine, for better or worse. Mostly worse, as it quickly turned out. The boy's behavior had never been gentlemanly towards me, but after that it had gotten outright diabolical.

I emptied my glass, shuddered, then poured another. Being a woman in the force wasn’t easy. As a matter of fact it was damn hard. Especially when you also looked as stunning as Tammy Malone, yours truly.

I didn’t flaunt my beauty, but I didn’t hide it either. As a consequence, I've always had to endure the endless and enduring endeavors of attempted innuendo of my mindless male colleagues. I had quickly quelled the more offensively overt overtures by breaking Sergeant Miller’s nose in my first week of service. He had been to embarrassed to report it, and the worst of it had stopped after that -- but some residual remnant of chauvinism had always kept clinging on, like the grime on the sole of your shoes that you could never quite scrape off.

It was what it was. Some things could never be changed, I knew – and so I turned my attention back on the things that I could change. I surveyed the mountain of case notes that was threatening to spill over the edges of my desk like an overflowing dam about to burst and flood the valley below, and sighed.

Bobby Simmons, Linda Brown, Kendall Mackenzie, Mindy Ross, Barbara Walters, Sarah Metzenbaum. Those were the names on the files strewn out on front of me. There were three more brimming cardboard boxes containing the notes on over two dozen other victims.

So many women. Vanished, gone, disappeared, evaporated into thin air. I had read every report a dozen times over, finding nothing, getting absolute nowhere, every clue tantalizingly close to being conclusive, but never quite getting there. Honestly, I was in over my head – whether I wanted to admit it to my pig stew of colleagues or not. I was missing something. Something crucial.

I would never have gotten to the bottom of this case if it hadn't been for one final clue that had been hidden from me not by criminal energy or clever technique, but by the overwhelming pressure of society and good manners.

And that final clue decided to knock on my door in that very moment.

The rapping startled me. I quickly took another sip of whisky, then put the glass and the bottle on the floor behind the desk.

”Come in,” I said.

The door opened and a young woman tiptoed in like a ballet dancer in a minefield. She couldn’t be older than twenty and she wasn't wearing any lipstick or makeup either, making her look even younger than she must be. The first impression was plain and unrefined, but a closer glance at her fancy shoes and high-quality pantyhose made me certain that she must be coming from the good part of town. It was an unusual sight in the police station. I usually dealt in lowlifes and criminals, be they suspects, victims, or witnesses. Unsavory types that abused the English language as much as they abused their spouses back at home.

She cleared her throat. Her head was bowed and she was avoiding eye contact, as if she was embarrassed. Frankly, she looked like a naughty schoolgirl called to the principal's office. She was even wearing her auburn hair in a childish braid. But my eyes were drawn to another thing about her, and that was that her hands were clutching a small envelope in front of her chest.

”Are you Tammy Malone?” she asked, her voice small and hesitant, and something about her wavering timbre impelled me with the sudden impulse to give her a hug. I might have thought she’d been lost in the entirely wrong building, save for the headscratcher of a fact that she had just found the exact person she'd been looking for.

“I am,” I replied with furrowed brows. “And you are...?”

“You talked to my parents already, I’m Agatha Simmons.”

“You’re Bobby’s sister?”, I asked, slightly puzzled. “What can I do for you?”

I gestured to the chair across my desk, inviting her to take a seat. She closed the door and sat down timidly, like a small bird perching on a fountain. In truth, 'timidly' truly was the word describing everything she seemed to be doing. She looked as if she was about to speak, then instead looked at her feet – timidly. 

This wasn’t easy for her, I could tell. I had been in situations like these before with witnesses. She knew something but was afraid to say and it was on me to ease her into it, lower her guard, make her comfortable.

“I’m sorry about what happened to Bobby,” I began. “Everyone here is doing everything they can to find her.”

I stood up and walked around the table as non-threateningly as I could. It was harder than it should have been after the whiskeys I’d had and the sturdy boots I was used to wearing. In my mind, I pictured myself onboard a ship tumbling in the midst of a raging storm, and I wondered how the girl felt to have come here all by herself, possibly without her parents knowing, bearing a secret like a stray bullet lodged in her chest.

“You are very strong," I said, doing my best to sound as womanly and soft as I could after years and years of teaching myself to be tough and firm around the boys. I would have tried to think of my mother and channel some kind of matronly love that I remembered from my childhood, but that drunkard piece of work had never said a kind thing to me in my life. Like so often, I had to do this all by my lonesome.

"I can’t imagine how hard it must be," I continued. "But I promise you that we’ll find Bobby. I promise.”

I slowly extended my hand and laid it on her forearm. She watched me with big puppy eyes, but didn't pull back. Her breathing was slow and heavy. Controlled.

“Now, Agatha," I said. "You came here on your own, which was very brave, and I can tell that there’s something you want to tell me. Something to help me find your sister.”

She nodded, and her face finally showed something like resolve.

“I promise you that nothing you tell me will get you or your sister into trouble, you understand?”

She nodded.

“I found this in my sister’s room," she said timidly. "I knew she had a hiding spot.”
She held out the envelope she’d been clutching like it had been her own child. It looked worn, like the paper inside it had been taken out and put back in many times. 

I took it.

“She had a lover,” Agatha said, words flying out of her like she’d gotten them out as fast as possible so she wouldn’t have a chance to take them back again.

I almost snorted. That was it? 

“A girl.”

Oh.

”It’s in the envelope. It’s love letters. They are… dirty.” 

Her cheeks were crimson. She kept talking, words spilling forth in a flustered flurry.

“Mom and Dad don’t know. No one knows. It’s been going on a while now. I told her to stop it. Girls aren’t meant to do that. It’s wrong! It’s unnatural!”

The words stung like a punch to the gut. A familiar pain that I had learned to deal with but which never quite went away. She hadn’t meant to insult me of course, but that honestly made it worse. I could take a thousand slights from ugly men with ugly souls, but hearing that ignorant hatred with such innocence and concern in her voice twisted it like a knife.

I had to press on – gently.

"You know more, don't you?" I asked as gently as I could. "It's okay. You can tell me."

“They were meeting, in secret. Out in Grosse Pointe. I can't believe she would do such a thing... abandon her morals like that... her decency... I...”

Agatha trailed off. I squeezed her arm, maybe too hard. She felt cold, as if she'd been walking to the station without a jacket. Part of me wanted to shake her. Wake her up to how naive she was.

Instead I kept the mask on.

“Agatha, you did the right thing telling me this. I know this wasn’t easy.”

”What if they took her?! What if she’s fallen in with the dykes?! What if they turned her into one of them?” she screeched ignorantly.

Again, the sting.

“There is no such thing,” I replied, trying to keep the acid from my voice. “Some women just get confused in their heads. There is such a thing as women taking young girls.”

The words tasted bad and bitter in my mouth, but this was not the time to challenge her views on sexuality, I decided.

“But the fact that your sister had contact with someone we didn’t know about is big news. I promised you I’d find Bobby. And those letters might just be the final clue. Thank you, Agatha.”

Agatha stayed a while and I did some more talking to reassure her and calm her down, but my mind was already wandering down the twisted alleys of sinister implications. Before long, I thanked her again and sent her home.

When I was alone again, I took a long moment looking out those grimy windows. Raindrops were still erratically running down the panes like scared little people inexorably being pulled toward their doom. Sometimes they lingered, or changed paths unexpectedly – but ultimately there was only one way to go: Down.

Hell, I needed another drink. The glass and bottle were right where I left them like a pair of good little dogs. I sighed, poured a glass, took a sip, sighed again – and read the letters Agatha had given me.

Sometimes, in the line of work as a detective, there are cases that grab you and don’t let you go. Cases that hit too close to home, that feel particularly personal. When you knew the victim, when the deed was particularly cruel, when you could relate to the one who did it more than you related to the victim. This was one of those cases. As I read the letters I felt a deep and familiar sadness stir in me, like a worn-out scratchy record playing the same sad tune for the four hundredth time. A familiar refrain with quiet lyrics and wailing trombones, put into words on paper. The young woman who had written these letters had written them in secret, because being found out meant that you might spend five to fifteen years in prison and the rest of your life in shame, shunned by your friends, by your co-workers, by your family. She had signed the letters only as “J”.

That young woman who dared to love another woman. Only that daring had nothing to do with it. Daring would imply choice. That young women who had fallen in love. That young woman who wrote secret love letters in the cover of night.

That woman had once been me.

I of all people should have had seen it earlier. The connection.

Something none of them had.

None of them had boyfriends. Most never had never had one. Those that had, hadn’t lasted long.

Once I had known what I was looking for, things fell into place, like I had put together all the edges of a puzzle and the rest was filling in the missing pieces. No apparent interest in boys, short haircuts, girls clubs. The signs were there, all over, some more obvious than others.

A terrible thought occurred to me, like a violent drunkard stumbling into a bar a minute before closing time, knocking over bar stools in my mind.

Don’t tell the Captain.

The problem with drunkards was the way they tended to tell the truth.

If I told my boss, two things were going to happen: First, the lives of all of these girls would be ruined. The boys didn’t care about discretion if it came to that kind of thing. They would gossip and confront the relatives, or even see it as their duty to inform their good Christian fathers and mothers of the shocking indecency of their daughters. After all, the missing girls would need help to 'get their heads straight' if they were ever found. Second, everyone would wonder how I had known to look for the signs. They might be ignorant pigs, but at least some of them were good detectives. They’d make the connection, and then I’d be out of the force. 

It shouldn’t have mattered. Saving the girls was more important. Should be more important.

Still, the drunkard in the back of my head ranted on as he lay on the floor next to the toilets, too heavy to be dragged out.

I considered my alternatives, and found only one. Another old tune, another scratchy record; it was time for another solo album.

I looked at the final letter addressed to Bobby, the most passionate and explicit of them all. There was an address written down at the end, after promises of deep kisses and much more intimate and intense ways to use lips. I called the operator and asked about the address, and it turned out to be exactly like Agatha had said. Residential, Grosse Pointe, owned by a holding company I had never heard of. Suspicious to say the least – but still a long shot. If the kidnapper lived there, surely they would realize that the letters would implicate them. There was no way anyone would be that sloppy and just count on the fact that the letters would be too embarrassing to present to the police.

Then again, there was no underestimating the stupidity of some criminals.

A long shot was better than nothing. It certainly beat off showing my hand to the Captain and jeopardizing my career and the reputation of the victims for no reason.

The drunkard in my mind was singing unintelligibly, and my mind felt thick with emotions and whiskey and a million case notes. This was the first lead in weeks, and there was no one that would know how to handle it other than me. It had to be me.  

I took my gun, jacket and hat and went for a drive.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to what looked like an impressive mansion nestled between unremarkable suburban homes. It was the kind of castle rich people with need for privacy built themselves; set far back, surrounded by trees and high fences, virtually invisible and lost in the sprawl unless you actively went to peek between bushes and fenceposts like a creep trying to get a look down a woman's cleavage. And just like with with some sets of breasts, there was no hiding the sheer bulk of the estate no matter how tight the fences and how tightly woven the treeline. It must have occupied at least two, maybe three lots. Some might call it land grab, even.

I got out of my car and approached the entrance. A big iron gate was blocking the way, and there was nothing else but a featureless steel doorbell. Beyond the gate, a driveway led up a small hill to the rectangular building, built in a hard, angular European style that had been washing over the Atlantic in the past decade. From here I could see the huge windows and featureless concrete walls. It looked like someone had haphazardly stacked building materials and painted them white.

I checked the address again, but this seemed to be the right place. No matter how well-off her family was, I couldn’t quite picture young Bobby Simmons in a place like this. 

I rang the doorbell. There was no name. Only the address.

After a moment, a female voice answered. “Yes?”

“This is Detective Malone, Detroit PD. May I ask you some questions?”

There was a short pause. Then an unpleasant buzzing sound, as the gate slowly swung open by itself.

I was greeted at the door by a foreign woman, some Chink or Jap in a flower dress. I couldn’t tell and didn’t care. It was obviously just the help.

“Hello,” I carefully enunciated. “May I speak to the head of this household?”

The woman showed no sign of being affronted as she smiled at me and extended her hand in greeting. “You are speaking to her, madam Detective” she said in a crisp British accent.

I blinked in surprise, then shook her hand. If she’d seen my apprehension, she didn’t show any distaste at all. Her smile was wide and genuine. She had very soft palms. She was very good-looking, in the way orientals were, with very smooth skin, a broad, stubby nose and round cheeks. Her sleek black hair was elegantly braided into a bun that – despite being neatly done up – seemed to have some sticks poking out of it.

“I’m… sorry,” I managed. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman laughed. Her laughter was a pleasant, musical, but also unrestrained and childlike, giggly. I caught myself beginning to like her against my better judgment.

“I’m Detective Tammy Malone. Mrs…?”

“Miss Seo,” she corrected, again without a trace of indignation. I wondered if she was some sort of ambassador. She looked into my eyes with an open smile as if to reassure me that I hadn’t just made another gaffe.

“Miss Seo,” I replied. “I’m here to ask you If you have seen this woman.”

I produced a photograph of Bobby. She took it from my hands without looking at it. Instead, she kept regarding me. The way she looked at me was at once distressingly disarming and captivating. Her gaze promised undivided attention and demanded reciprocation.

“I don’t like to hold conversations on my doorstep, Detective Malone. May I invite you in and offer you some tea?”

She turned her back and went into the house before I could even answer.

“I… I prefer coffee,” I stuttered and found myself inside the atrium, meekly closing the door behind me. This woman had somehow completely put me on my back foot. The weirdest thing was that I couldn’t even get myself to be mad at her. I followed her like a slacker of a schoolgirl as I wondered if she liked tea because she was British or because she was Asian. I was still adjusting to the fact that she wasn’t just a foreign maid – but part of the job was seeing people for what they were, even if it spat in the face of the way things usually went.

The building looked much more inviting from the inside. The large windows might look garish and grotesque from the outside, but I had to admit that they made the space feel even more airy and spacious than it already was, and even on an overcast day like today, the interior was bright and oddly inviting in the soft light. It almost felt like a greenhouse, and there were indeed a lot of flowers sitting in planters and pots all over shelves and countertops, giving life to the place and making it less stark and much more inviting. Much more... feminine.

“The girl in the picture is one of the missing girls, isn't she?” said Seo as I stepped into the kitchen area. It couldn’t be called a proper kitchen. It was open to three sides. Some steps were leading down to a spacious sitting area that surrounded a large television set.

“You know her?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice. Maybe I could regain the upper hand in this damn conversation. It was ridiculous enough as it stood.

“From the newspaper,” said Seo as she poured water into a stainless steel teakettle and placed it on the stove.

“So you didn’t—“

“Why don’t you take a seat, Detective?” interrupted Seo, indicating an upholstered bar stool next to the granite counter top.

“So you didn’t know her personally? Never saw her around here?” I said as I sat myself down. I noticed that I had taken off my trench coat at the door, which felt weird. It must have been force of habit.

Seo looked mildly surprised. “No. Why would I know her?”

She took two steps towards me. From some people, it would have felt like a challenge. From her, it felt like taking interest and being engaged. Again, she was fixing me with her gaze. Her eyes were almond-shaped, with that weird upper eyelid that these people had. 'Epicanthic fold', the coroner had called it once. Her Irises were too dark to tell them from her pupil, which made her eyes look huge. She wasn’t really slit-eyed at all. I kept being surprised by her air of elegance and class.

I realized I was staring at her. I blinked, then awkwardly cleared my throat. I produced the final letter that had mentioned this address.

”We discovered correspondence between Bobby Simmons and an unidentified third person only known as ‘J’”.

I held up the letter and watched her reaction carefully. Looking into her eyes, to see if she would betray something.

There might have been a twitch. Or maybe she just blinked. I continued.

“In their correspondence, your address was mentioned.”

I looked carefully. Nothing. 

“Curious”, she said. 

”Indeed. You are taking this very calmly, Miss Seo…”

“This ‘J’. Who is she?”

And then I knew I had something. “Bobby’s lover,” I said, watching her reaction like a hawk. The water had started to boil, and the kettle was whining on the stove. Seo turned to pour the hot water into a French press, looking as elegant and innocent as anyone could look – as if she hadn't just unknowingly revealed her hand.

My voice was serious as I asked the followup.

“So, Miss Seo. How did you know I was talking about a woman?”.

Seo turned around. She said nothing. Instead she just looked at me. I expected to see her grasping for straws. Instead she just stared back.

”You told me.”

I was confused for a moment. No. I hadn’t told her, had I? The way she was looking at me, the confidence she radiated. No. I hadn’t.

“I…” I began. I found myself looking at her in puzzlement.

“Yes, you told me”, she insisted, and took a few steps towards me. Her tone was friendly, almost saccharine, like a housewife talking to her beloved husband in a sickeningly romantic movie.

I suddenly felt oddly small. I was a fine cop. I knew how to do my job. This was strange. Usually I was the one asking the questions to watch the suspect carefully, watch them tangle up in the sticky spiderweb of lies.

But when I watched her, I didn’t feel like the spider. I felt like the fly. She was so unreadable.

She was standing in front of me now, watching me as I was watching her. Her eyes were huge. She was so close. I could smell her perfume, sweet and bright and floral.

“You told me about a woman known only as ‘J’, who was Bobby Simmons’s lover,” she explained innocently, with a little shrug and a nod of her head. Her nose wrinkled in a way that made her seem oddly cute. She gingerly placed two empty porcelain cups on the counter next to me. She watched me intently, waiting for my response.

Yes, that’s what must have happened. I wasn’t really on top of my game. I shouldn’t have had that last glass of whiskeys.

I shook my head and my mind seemed to clear a bit as my confusion lifted. I had told her.

“I’m sorry, Miss Seo,” I sighed. “It’s been a long and stressful investigation. I shouldn’t have come today only to inflict you with my personal exhaustion. I should get going.”

I wanted to get up, but Seo gently placed a hand on my shoulder.

“No,” she said.

Her smile was honest and inviting. I should have been mad. Instead, I sat back down.

“I’m making coffee for you. If you don’t want to be rude, you better stay and drink it,” she said through a smirk, playfully. 

She leaned onto the counter, watching me intently. The way she constantly eyed me was starting to make me uneasy. Still, it was hard to look away for some reason.

”I have the utmost understanding and respect for what you do,” she said “And doing this job as a woman, no less. It must be so hard. Poor girl.”

I didn't know if she was talking about me or about Bobby. She extended a hand and placed it on my arm. I pulled away, but managed an awkward smile.

“I… thank you, Miss Seo.”

“Call me Jun.”

“Thank you, Jun,” I said, then blinked, slightly confused, like a train of thought had departed in my absence. Something about her name. It was strange. So strange. How had I ended up in this situation? I felt like a cat that had climbed up a tree and was now unable to get down. I’d come here to question Jun, now I was having coffee with her. This didn’t make sense. I had questioned a thousand witnesses before; another worn-out record. Same old song, same old refrain. White lies and little tells and buttons to push and contradictions to observe – but not with her. With her, the record kept skipping. The tune was unrecognizable. 

Maybe this just wasn't that kind of conversation, I wondered. Maybe this wasn't an interview anymore. Maybe it had never been. It was clear that questioning her was not the play, and it really would be nice to just... talk over coffee, with someone that wasn't a cop or a criminal or my hairdresser. I hadn’t had girl talk in years.

“I mean it,” Jun insisted and returned to the French press, where the water had turned a dark brown. She pressed it down.

“I know how hard it is for women to stand their own. Our mothers lived in a time when we couldn’t even vote – and it hasn't gotten much better now, has it?”

“No, it hasn’t,” I agreed, and years of harassment and discrimination weighed on my words, dragging them out of me in a deep sigh before I could even think. With some difficulty, I thought of something else to say.

“What do you do for a living, Miss Seo? Jun? Is there no Mister Seo?”

“You don’t seem to be all that surprised by that notion, Detective,” she said. She was close to me again, pouring coffee for us both, and for a moment I found myself just... watching her. She wore a white and floral silk dress, with a buttoned collar that stood up around her neck. Irritatingly, I noticed the way her back curved when she poured the coffee. The way her dress slid across her body in a way that made all the other curves of her body impossible to miss. She almost seemed to bend over unnecessarily. God damn it! She was a damn witness, or suspect. She certainly wasn’t someone I should feel attracted to!

I pulled myself together with a deep sigh. I shrugged with my eyebrows. “I was just wondering how you can afford a place like this on your own."

“You also didn’t seem all that bothered by Bobby having a woman lover,” she said instead of answering. I had no reply to that. Instead I simply looked at her, waiting for what she was about to say next.

She took a sip of coffee before she continued. “I think that this is just another wrong that this society is inflicting upon us. So many people unjustly persecuted, don’t you think? Love is like a flower, I like to say. It grows wherever it grows. It gets no say in where its seed was planted. Rip it out, or deprive it of fertile soil, and it withers and dies. And wouldn’t the world be a more beautiful place if all flowers were allowed to bloom?”

She took my hand. I swallowed. This time, I didn’t pull back. 

I looked into her eyes, and I thought – wished, hoped – to see in them understanding. And for a moment, I was certain that it was there.

“Yes,” I said, nodding breathlessly. My mouth felt parched. I didn’t dare to take a sip of coffee, for fear of ending this moment. In the back of my mind, there was a small thought telling me that this was strange, wrong, happening way too quickly.

It felt unimportant. Her presence was too imposing. Her eyes too beautiful. Her gentle smile too inviting.

“Look at me,” she said, and I did.

I felt like I was in a dream. There was a short moment when I remembered why I had come here; the letter, the address, the oriental woman, a stranger, a possible suspect. It felt distant, flat, like a scratchy song playing in another room. Then, there was only me and Jun. I stopped wondering why this was happening and simply did what she told me. It was so much easier.

Those eyes. Like two black pearls, reflecting something that must be somewhere around us. Those two black pools in the middle of that beautiful face. She was always looking at me, with those eyes. And I realized that from the moment I had first seen them, I had fallen deeper and deeper into them. Now, I couldn’t look away. I had crossed some threshold and there was no turning back. It didn’t bother me, so I didn’t question it. I usually would question it, but it wasn’t important anymore.

That last thought crossed my mind and was gone. After that I just stared, and nothing else mattered. There had been things I’d meant to say and do, but they had become small things.

“You are beautiful,” said Jun. The words flowed into me like the warm coffee that had existed in another world, far in the past. They warmed me as they entered me. It was true. Of course, I was beautiful. And having Jun say it felt so good, because she was beautiful, too. 

“Say that you are beautiful,” she said.

I replied without thinking. The words came effortlessly, light as flower petals dancing in the wind.

“I am beautiful,” I said and my voice was as thin and light as the petals and it felt good to be tiny and light.

There was a smile, and I became happier.

”Yes, you are beautiful, and you are lost. Say that you are lost.”

“I am lost,” I said and the words barely registered. Everything was those eyes and that smile. I felt tiny and lost. This was so strange. So very strange.

“You are lost. You are lost and helpless.”

“I am lost and helpless,” the words came all by themselves and echoed in the blackness of her eyes. Everything was so big now and I was lost and helpless.

“You are beautiful.”

“I am beautiful,” I repeated, because repeating was what I did.

“You are lost and helpless.”

“I am lost and helpless.”

I was beautiful. I was lost and helpless. It was a warmth and coldness, flowing through me, everything there was. I thought nothing else. Beautiful. Warm, hot. Good. Lost, helpless. Cold, alone. Wrong.

Words flowed out of me all on their own as these truths roiled within me. I repeated, and repeated, and there was nothing else for a time.

...

I felt hands on me, gentle and loving and intimate and warm. They were so far away, beyond everything else. I was repeating Jun's words, because repeating was what I did. I had been repeating and repeating and repeating, because repeating was what I did. But there was the sensation of touch now, and through the daze and fog and swirling mantras new words came to me.

“Behold the beauty you will become.”

The blackness of her eyes that filled my world receded and my words stopped flowing. There was more, now. I saw a face. Jun. Beautiful, like me. I had a presence again. I was standing on distant feet, in the middle of a big space. Couch. Armchair. Television. Recognition sailed through me without casting any nets. I was simply there, and my thoughts were waiting for more words to flow through me.

“Behold the beauty you will become.”

There was another woman. I recognized her as Bobby Simmons. She was nude but there were no words inside of me that told me what to think about it, so I simply looked at her – and she looked at me as she undressed me.

There was nothing else to notice, nothing else to think.

I was nude.

I was beautiful.

I was lost and hopeless.

“You are deeply hypnotized,” said Jun, and again, her eyes were my whole world. She had taken off her flower dress. She was just as nude I was. It made me feel safe. We were all naked. We were all beautiful.

“You are deeply hypnotized,” she said.

“I am deeply hypnotized,” I repeated, because repeating was what I did.

”You are beautiful, helpless, and lost.”

“I am beautiful, helpless, and lost.”

“You will become a hypnotized, obedient slave.”

“I will become a hypnotized, obedient slave,” I repeated, because repeating was what I did – but those were new words, and they felt strange and wrong. The words were sharp and unwieldy and they didn’t come out easy. The smile of my world wavered with Jun, and her voice became firmer, reminding me of the truth.

“You are helpless and lost," she said.

“I am helpless and lost,” I said effortlessly because it was true, and the thought swirled around me, all through me and all through the entire world. 

“Because you are lost, you must change. Become something other than lost. You are lost and you want to become found. Are you not lost?”

”Yes, I am lost.”

“You are helpless.”

“I am helpless.”

“Helpless, lost women do not know what to do. You are helpless and lost.”

“I am helpless and lost.”

“Do you know what to do?”

“No,” I said because I was helpless and lost and I didn’t know what to do.

“You need to be told what to do because you don’t know what to do. You need to be told what to do.”

“I need to be told what to do,” I said and the words were light and thin in my mouth and the thoughts joined easily, like eager dancers on tiptoes, hands outstretched. 

“I need to be told what to do,” I repeated the words, again, and again. 

“Yes, you need to be told what to do, because you have no will of your own. You have no will.”

”I have no will,” I repeated, and the words were big and round, but light. They were big bubbles that filled me and the thoughts made sense. I needed to be told what to do, so I must have no will. I had no will. The words flowed and the thoughts flowed with them.

“Yes. You have no will and you will do what you are told. And because you do what you are told, you are a slave. You are a slave.”

“I am a slave,” I repeated and the words floated like leaves on the ocean of thoughts that filled my world. I was helpless and lost and I would do what I was told. I needed to be told what to do and would do what I was told because I had no will. The thoughts held hands inside of me as they danced and made the words fly.

”I am a slave,” I said, but the words were cold and bitter on my tongue even though they came easily. They were snowflakes, not rose petals. Still my voice was devoid of hesitation as I repeated.

“I am a slave. I am a slave,” I said, and the thoughts cut through me like the terrible truth they were, but my voice felt sour and harsh, and somewhere far away Jun noticed and smirked grimly.

“Slave Bobby, on your knees,” she said. “Between the slave’s legs. You must help her.”

“I am a slave,” I repeated the awful conclusion that was the morning star at the end of the long chain of truths that lashed through me.

Then, there was warmth.

Legs. And warmth between them. 

“I am a slave,” I kept repeating because repeating was what I did. As I said it, the world filled with sunshine. I had a body, and when I spoke, that body was filled with joy.

“I am a slave,” I said and there was pleasure. Down in my cleft, something warm and wet caressed me and it felt wonderful. 

I kept repeating, because repeating was what I did. Each time, I was rewarded with sweet ecstasy that rode from my lower lips up through my body and all through my thoughts.

There were pale memories of past pleasures, and they shifted and faded because they were wrong, because I was a slave and slaves had no will and remembering felt wrong and being a slave felt good.

I repeated, and repeated, faster and faster. The thoughts became warm, then hot, first like embers, then like a firestorm. I felt myself building, bucking, riding the tongue between my legs.

“You are a slave. Being a slave turns you on. I makes you moist. You need it. You are an obedient slave, because slaves are moist and need to obey and it makes them get off. You need to obey.”

”I need to obey,” I repeated and the words escaped me like birds from a cage, I said them and they joined the truth in the flutter that filled my world.

“You are a slave. You need to obey.”

“I am a slave. I need to obey,” I repeated and repeated. I was moist and needed to come. I needed to get off and I was close.

“When you come, it is because you are an obedient slave. You are a slave.”

“I am a slave. I am a slave,” I repeated, because repeating was what I did. The words were sparks and embers, flying in the breeze, weighing nothing at all. They were effortless and so warm and beautiful.

I was on the cusp. I needed to come. To come, I needed to be an obedient slave. The thoughts swirled through me, filled me. 

I stopped repeating, because I understood that repeating wasn’t what I did.

“I am a slave.” I said, not because I was repeating, but because I was a slave.

I was a slave. I obeyed. I came.

There came the part where the Captain screamed at me because I had been drinking and missing work. It was followed by the part where he took my badge and my gun for grossly mishandling the case. After that came the part where I would once have gone rogue to solve the case on my own terms, everything else be damned. 

But I was a slave now – and that made things much more simple.

So instead, I took the single box that was supposed to contain my personal effects, filled it with all pieces of evidence that could lead people to my mistress, and calmly walked out of the police station, ignoring the catcalling and whistling around me as I left for the final time.

On the edge of town, I burned the everything that was able to catch fire and tossed the remains into Lake St Clair.

On Lynch road, I waited in the car like I had been instructed. When Agatha came home after school, I approached her and told her all the lies that Mistress had prepared for me. She didn’t want to come, but Mistress had prepared me for that too, and supplied me with all the instructions I could need in such a case. I had no trouble cuffing her and putting her in the back of the car with a rag in her mouth, and I made sure that it looked like she hadn't been home at all. Another slave was already planting false evidence elsewhere.

We arrived at Mistress Jun’s house twenty minutes later.

I shoved her into the living room. Mistress was waiting, as were slave Bobby and the others.

“Slave tammy,” Mistress greeted me and my world filled with sunlight. “You have pleased me with your obedience.”

I had completed my task. I had obeyed. The joy of obedience entered me through my pussy and filled me up. I bucked and gasped as the conditioned orgasm rewarded me for being a good slave. I felt light and warm as the trance overcame me and I slipped back into simple obedience. No false persona, no clever thoughts. Just the hot core of obedience that mistress had made me forge in the fire of my orgasms. 

“Bobby!” The girl Simmons shouted, as she noticed the slave that was her sister.

Slave Bobby didn’t react, of course. She hadn’t been told to pretend to be something other than an obedient slave. Obedient slaves didn’t think for themselves.

”Slave bobby, slave tammy. Hold her.”

I did what I was told, the need to obey pulling me forward. I held the girl, waiting for new ways to obey, or to simply serve Mistress by continuing to restrain her.

“What the hell?!” cried the girl. She was confused and angry, but the only important thing about her was that I hold her. Mistress approached her.

“Look into my eyes,” she said, closing in until she was inches away from the girl’s face. 

“No! Why?!” the girl screamed back. But she looked for a moment. I could see it. For a short moment, the wrinkles on her brow relaxed just a bit, before she returned to screaming and thrashing.

”Bobby! Let me go!”

None of her screams would reach past the windows. 

She twisted in my grasp, but I held on, because to let go would mean disobedience and disobedience was unthinkable because I was an obedient slave and I had been commanded to hold her.

She met Mistress’s gaze once again, eyes resting on hers for just a moment before snapping shut. 

Mistress was patient.

“What do you want? Why are you doing this?!” the girl screamed, then she looked again. Longer this time.

Mistress was patient.

Before long, the girl was still. 

“You are honest,” said Mistress.

“I am honest,” the girl repeated, as she had been doing for a while. She was deeply hypnotized. Her eyes were wide open, her mouth slack. She hung limply in my hands. I was still holding her because every second I held her was a second I followed the need between my legs. I was no longer holding her back, only holding her up. I had obeyed, and the orgasm had followed. Now, as I held her, I was allowed to be aware of what happened next. I was soaking wet like the good obedient slave that I was.

“Who do you think of when you touch yourself at night?”

”Peter Halloway from school.”

“A boy. How disappointing. Does anyone besides you know of the letters?”

“Bobby and Detective Malone and the girl who wrote them.”

“Do your parents know?”

“No.”

Mistress carefully considered Agatha Simmons, as if trying to decide what to do next. I tensed, sensing that I might need to obey her soon. But Mistress just stood in silence, and no command came.

“Replanting a flower takes great care,” she finally muttered to herself. “But sometimes it has to be done.”

“…has to be done.” the girl mumbled mindlessly. She was still deeply entranced and knew to repeat what she was told.

Mistress smiled.

“You are beautiful,” she said.

"I am beautiful," said the girl.

It was true. 

Agatha repeated Mistress’s words for hours, learning the truth word by word. Slave bobby and me took turns licking her pussy, and it felt good and hot to help her see what she was and what she needed to do.

Finally the girl stopped repeating, and slave agatha started obeying. We undressed her, and found her wet and ready to be used. She smiled when Mistress commanded her to take her to bed, and screamed when Mistress told her to cum, and obediently knelt at the feet of her owner as she was being told that she would never set foot into the world again. She did not protest. She did not flinch. She simply accepted her owner's wishes with a smile and a demure 'Yes, Mistress'. Like all the other missing women before her, she had become part of the harem and would never be anything than a beautiful obedient slave; a flower in a walled garden, thriving and blooming only for the pleasure of her Mistress. 

She was the last one. Mistress had stretched her luck as it was taking as many girls as she had, and even with the size of her estate and the number of her residences across the country she had more than enough little flowers to decorate her life with.

We all came and went as Mistress decided to put us in the back seats of cars and on board of private planes, and I would often spend weeks without knowing the taste of her lips – but she always returned, and there was always ways to obey, and always other slaves to share my obedience with. We were flowers in a bouquet, and Mistress loved rearranging us and picking us one or two at a time and appreciating our beauty. I met all the other missing girls, and got to see them obey, all of them so incredibly beautiful. I loved them so much. They were such pretty obedient slaves, just like I was, and I knew how beautiful and happy that made us.

Sometimes, when Mistress wasn't around, I caught myself thinking back to who I used to be before I had obeyed. I wasn't drinking anymore, but thinking back had the habit of making me crave a glass of something hard. I caught myself looking out the window when it rained, following the raindrops with my eyes and imagining them as little people going through their chaotic lives, and wondered about all the cases I might have solved if Mistress hadn't abducted me. Lives I might have saved.

I hated it when my mind wandered like that. It was that drunkard at closing time again, screaming nonsense, refusing to be thrown out of a bar that would never open again. I was a slave. I had to obey.  

Sometimes the bitter truth at the end of an investigation is not what you thought you wanted, but what you actually needed to hear. And in this case the only the only thing that was bitter about the truth was the fact that I had wasted so many years trying to be someone I was not. I had been a prisoner in my own life, shackled by society and laws that were never meant to treat me fairly. I had been a raindrop on a gray windowpane, dancing down towards the ledge with all the others without knowing where the wind might blow me.

But not anymore.

I cleaned the kitchen, and dusted the cabinets, and licked the pretty pussy of the slave that was staying with me. She returned the favor when she was done, and after that we showered and made a nice roast for dinner. We fingered each other while watching TV until the broadcast ended, and went to bed in our respective quarters. A few days later, Mistress came by with slave bobby. I loved slave bobby. She was the first slave I had known, and it always felt special when I got to serve Mistress by her side. She licked me while I was between Mistress's legs, and we spent another two days together as a party of four before Mistress took me along and left the other two behind.

I didn't know where she was taking me, and I did not wonder. When Mistress was there to command me everything was so much easier. No wandering thoughts. No drunkards in my mind. Just my beautiful body, and my beautiful owner, and kisses and commands and total obedience. She was the sun, and her flowers bloomed whenever they were in her presence.

We were beautiful.

We were all so beautiful.