Of all the things Matt Dawson thought he would do that Wednesday morning upon, having his tongue stuck on the water cooler was not one of them. He had arrived early to catch up on some delayed paperwork so at least no one was watching. Well, no one except his boss who had the same idea and was standing right behind him, happily chirping on the phone.

“What worked?” He thought. Surely that couldn’t have been anything else other than a freaky accident unless... no, what were the odds of that?

Karen? As in Karen Donovan? Oh, shit! He had gotten rid of her ages ago, or so he believed. Every man has an ex-girlfriend in his life he would rather forget, and she was his, a cute brunette who spent most of her college days studying hypnosis, NLP, and other conditioning techniques. He had been her unwilling subject on multiple occasions, his thoughts rewired to accept the strangest things as true. He felt a sudden pang on his ass cheeks as he remembered the moment, she told him to insert a butt plug for her amusement. It was the first of many, much to his shame. As the months went by in their relationship, she discovered more and more layers of a closeted sadism dying to get out and when it did...

“Is that so?” Melinda laughed. “I never thought he would be the type to do that but... Yes, he’s still frozen. It’s hilarious, really!”

How were they talking on the phone? How had they met? What would she tell Melinda next? Would he be able to fight the programming from taking over again? Probably not seeing such a simple trigger had already caused so much damage. Was he doomed to become a hypnotic puppet again?

“Unfreeze!” Melinda commanded, and he fell backwards, like a turtle flipped on its shell. “Now freeze again!”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea,” Melinda laughed again as if she had read his mind which, given the whole situation, perhaps wasn’t that far off from the truth. She turned his way and tapped her left foot on the floor. “Unfreeze, stand up, and follow me, pet!”

Silence. All ideas fading from his mind. Pets had no thoughts. The gift of consciousness was reserved to humans and Melinda was the only one in the company. Pets followed their owners and obeyed their commands. It would do as it had been told.

Melinda sat in her favorite chair and opened her legs far and wide, the silky voice of the hypnotist on the other end of the line, prompting the inevitable outcome.