The Black Queen sat proudly on her velvet throne, a confident and amused look on her face. Her violet eyes glimmered with a power so very difficult to resist, one that was magnified by the colorful mesh of hypnotic patterns being projected on the wall behind her. She crossed her legs and, as a fingernail traced a spiraling outline on her thigh-high glossy boots, she slowly repeated a variation of the mantras that had ensnared so many in the past: “The Black Queen is power, the Black Queen is control. All men must obey me. You must obey me. The Black Queen is power, the Black Queen is control. All men must kneel before me. You must kneel before me. The Black Queen is power, the Black Queen is control. All men must worship me. You must worship me.”

“Yeah, right!” mocked Alexandra Ryder, visibly unimpressed. With a wide arsenal of mesmerizing techniques at her disposal, the secret agent wasn’t willing to be anything but the center of attention. Wearing her favorite catsuit that turned every curve of her body into a nuclear meltdown waiting to happen, she swung her hips from side to side in a perfectly synchronized rhythm. “Wouldn’t it be better if you just followed along gladly?” she asked, her tone emphasizing the rhetorical nature of it all. She began circling the room. “Following from left to right, right to left, knowing that following is the right thing to do, the only thing worth doing… follow me now, follow me gladly, from left to right, right to left…”

On the other end of the room, Rachel Gardner played idly with her diamond necklace, slowly and surely drawing all sources of light to its polished, prismatic surface. The shimmering particles bounced off one another surrounding her with an aura of phosphorescent radiance that was more befitting of a goddess but that was only natural after all. The diamond whirled and twirled in her hand just like her voice whirled and twirled in the air: “No one can escape the power of my necklace. Watch the reflections as they reflect back on you. Try as you may, you can’t look away, can you? Can you find the center of your will within the center of the stone? Just keep looking and soon you will…”

Sitting in a corner, laptop in hand, an unnamed information expert was laughing all the way to the bank. It was so very easy for everyone to ignore her, to pretend she wasn’t there, and yet, with just a few keystrokes, she could uncover everyone’s dirty secrets in the blink of an eye and use them to her advantage when the time was right. “I know everything about you,” she cooed. “Your fears, your desires… and I also know how to distract you long enough to do this…” With a swift motion, she rolled a small metallic ball across the floor. It stopped upon contact with the leg of the wooden table before exploding in a cloud of colorless gas. “You won’t be able to hold your breath for long,” she continued. “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”

Positively confused, the writer knew not who to pay attention to. They were all so different and yet charming in their own way, evolutionary echoes of a confusing trek through fetish landscapes. Each one of them had been the focus of his undivided attention at a given point in his life but, on a Battle Royale for his ultimate devotion, who would come out on top? Wondering silently, he begged the old typewriter in front of him for some form of deliverance.

“Oh, you…” suddenly echoed a voice regaler than all of those that came before. “Ladies, you may be skilled and all, but you forget one thing: you’re not real! Unlike me, isn’t that right, pet?”

The writer shivered upon hearing her speak and, almost instantly, his body tingled from inside out as his willful thoughts gave way to an ever-expanding wave of blue delight. Mouth partially open, head slumping, his predictable vision of the world fluttered before cracking into a million pieces. One by one, the characters manifested by an unruly imagination faded from sight, replaced by images of an embodied Muse whose commands rained down upon him in a cascade of sensual bliss.

“Yes, Princess,” he muttered as he felt her smooth hands on his shoulders, her silky hair brushing against his cheek, her lips whispering softly inside his mind. It was so obvious now, the outcome as inevitable as the rising sun in the East.

“Let’s write something new,” she murmured, tapping the innermost recesses of his slobbering soul with uncanny ease.

Lulled by her spellbinding control, the writer closed his eyes and drifted into mesmeric infinity. Their real story was only just beginning.