2008

Kara Kraft’s eighteenth birthday was the 25th of January, exactly one month after Christmas. It fell on a Friday early in the spring term of Meillures Filles, a huge chalet beside a mountain lake somewhere in the Swiss canton of Vaud.

Meillures Filles was an anachronism, one of only five surviving ‘finishing schools’. Kara’s father had sent her there a year or so earlier than would normally be practice, telling her only that he wanted her out of the country where she’d be safe.

In Kara’s opinion as an eighteen year old, keeping her safe had gone from kind intent and concern by a suddenly single father to a club he wielded when he needed her to do something she didn’t want to.

It should have been an obvious argument in his favour; should have been something she could wholeheartedly support. A little under three years earlier, Kara’s mother had stopped coming home one night, had deflected phone calls. Her behaviour had entirely changed and she had gone mostly unseen by her family for over a month.

The offices and laboratory that Doctor Candace Kraft had been alloted at her university had burned down one night, though there were no bodies. Angus Kraft, Kara’s father, had been of the opinion that Candace’s officemate, one Doctor Bimbeau, had to be caught up in this; an old family friend, their connection had turned sour. Candace had become uncomfortable around him.

They saw Candace just one more time, when she used a device to place Kara and the household staff in a trance while Angus was, in his own words, brainwashed and abducted. His liquid assets were given away to Bimbeau, and Candace and the Doctor had disappeared.

Angus was left with a permanent mental instruction not to tell the police, but he had told his daughter. His obsession with keeping her safe started there, and Kara’s understanding of just how wealthy an aristocracy could become had started just a few months later when it sank in their their quality of life hadn’t really changed. Her father had sold off a couple of holdings, but purely to bring in short-term funds; losing their liquid assets hadn’t stopped them earning money just by continuing to exist.

Both of those facts together explained why Kara was now about a thousand miles away from home, sitting at the head of a long table containing her fellow students and some of the staff. It was why the thirty women in the room weren’t just wearing elegant, dry-clean-only dresses but their very finest dresses, suitable for an Occasion, Kara’s revealing that in the last four years she’d been at school, the sports teacher had driven her to develop much more muscle than the Meillures Filles staff thought was appropriate for a woman to display, if not necessarily more muscle than one should have.

They had been wearing these dresses since they came down from their individual rooms to breakfast, just as Kara’s long red hair had been put into a braid which now rested in a coil atop her head, held in place by hairpins, persistence, and enforced decorum. It was now mid-afternoon. In the interim, they had received talks on how to interact with household staff, how to manage them, and tell-tale signs that one of your staff might be stealing more than was ‘proper’ from you by manipulating the household budget. These had come from a retired butler who had worked with English royalty and a household cook who largely worked in Dubai, being headhunted by one Arabian noble after another.

Kara had had high hopes for that second speaker, sensing juicy and entertaining tables of rivalries among the ultra-rich, but they’d remained completely composed at all times and had said nothing impolite.

And at the birthday tea ceremony they were having, no more gossip had been provided. Conversation was relentlessly prim and proper.

Sure, that was what a finishing school was meant to teach, but it was still impossibly frustrating for Kara. The only respite she’d had all day had come from her friend Michelle, although she preferred to be called Mike. Mike belonged to a ridiculously rich Connecticut family who had sent her to Meillures Filles following some kind of incident - it wasn’t that Mike wouldn’t tell people, it was that she rarely told the same version of the story twice - though it usually had something to do with a light aircraft - either as punishment or to get her out of the way.

One by one the students came forward and presented Kara with their gifts; she took each gracefully, because even a party was a lesson. They were being schooled in how one should offer gifts and how one could accept them, within the bounds of high society. At length it was the turn of the teachers, progressing in strict ranks; dance, decorum, etiquette, household management, and eventually the headmaster, for unusually, Meillures Filles was overseen by a man rather than a woman; Monsieur Hofmann had inherited his position, she was told, from his grandmother, with nobody else in the family considered remotely suitable.

*

Hofmann’s gift was tasteful yet expensive, and Kara imagined these were budgeted for as part of the school fees; a silver wristwatch, a two-piece silver band replacing the usual more flexible strap. It arrived in a tasteful presentation box, and Kara didn’t know what it was until she was in her room after the party had concluded.

Even with her cynical attitude to the item itself, she was touched; which, she supposed, was the lesson she was expected to learn, that a gift given should touch even when the motives were perfunctory rather than affectionate. (From the school that had taught her a cocktail party was an easy way to repay several dozen favours simultaneously, this didn’t seem implausible.)

It also answered another question. At that time in her life Kara didn’t particularly consider herself observant. It wasn’t a trait she’d been praised for, nor was it a skill she’d consciously developed. If, on the other hand, you’d asked her if she paid attention, she’d have agreed wholeheartedly.

She’d certainly noticed a similar - not identical, but similar - watch on Mike’s wrist, as well as on a couple of the other senior students. Celmira, who was not technically a princess but who was nonetheless something to do with Saudi royalty, had had one for the longest, but Celmira was in her early twenties. Nobody had been so uncouth as to actually gossip about it, but Kara had nonetheless come to understand that Celmira had been married, was no longer married, and was at Meillures Filles to learn the refinements the Saudis expected. When Kara had tried asking Celmira herself about her presence, the answer had simply been “It’s like watches. If you want the best, you buy Swiss.”

Kara clipped the band around her wrist, then set the watch into place. It clung to the band; some kind of magnetic link held the two together. The whole thing was snug against her skin, and had the strangely silky texture of the truly expensive.

She reviewed her birthday mentally and sighed. It hadn’t exactly been what she’d wanted; far from it. Some of the gifts had at least been interesting, but she was really missing her friends in Scotland, as well as her parents.

She missed her father, but more and more, she missed her mother. Lately, from time to time, she’d wondered if she’d invented her own dim memory of being placed into trance. If her mother had simply left her father and he had invented a ridiculous story to explain and justify himself. It would do just as much to explain his refusal to call the police.

There was an odd whirring sound from her watch, barely on the level of hearing, especially over the music playing from Antoinette’s room next door.

Kara got up and went to the window of her chalet. Like all the students’ rooms, it was on the east side of the main building, and could be seen from the smaller house outside where Monsieur Hofmann and any visitors stayed. She stood in the window, looking out over the valley, not really seeing any of it, her thoughts entirely elsewhere.

The canton of Vaud was a beautiful place, but it wasn’t somewhere she wanted to be. She was really missing her friends in Scotland, as well as her parents.

She missed her father, but more and more, she missed her mother. Lately,she’d been sure she’d invented her own dim memory of being placed into trance. Her mother had simply left her father and he had invented a ridiculous story to explain and justify himself. People couldn’t be hypnotised.

There was an odd whirring sound from her watch, barely on the level of hearing.

There was a window in Monsieur Hofmann’s house that every one of the students in the Academy knew belonged to Monsieur Hofmann. The light in that room went out.

Kara reached behind her back and found her dress’ concealed zipper. Drawing it down, she let her dress fall from her shoulders and stood in the window, staring out over the valley, in nothing but lingerie, tights, and high heels, not really seeing anything, her thoughts entirely elsewhere.

She turned back into her room, unsnapping her bra and leaving it to fall where she discarded it. Her heels were likewise discarded on her way to bed, each at a different step on her path.

There was an odd whirring sound from her watch, barely on the level of hearing.

Kara lay back on her bed, wriggling out of her tights, staring up at the decorative ceiling of her room, not really seeing anything, her thoughts entirely absent.

She slipped under the covers of her bed in only her panties, her expensive nightie lying within reach but unthought of, and was asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

Kara dreamed.

*

In the dream, Kara was walking the corridors of Meillures Filles, barefoot - only in her panties, in fact - with a slow, measured pace. Her hips rolled with every step, and her full breasts seemed to carry more weight; certainly she held herself differently, back slightly arched, arms limply by her side, in a way that made more of them. She was much more aware of her body than usual, but then, there were so many fewer thoughts to get in the way.

She was not the only one moving along the corridors, either. She had the vaguest of senses that she was being followed; too, Mike fell into step alongside her as she emerged from her own door, moving with the same eerily slow pace, taking her steps in that same swaying, slow stride. Unlike Kara she wasn’t wearing only panties; instead her long legs were fully exposed beneath a short silk robe, her slender body’s modesty protected only by a loose, lax tie of the robe’s belt.

Ahead of them, Celmira stepped out of her room. It turned out the Saudi noble wore only a large, baggy T-shirt to bed, and her body’s shape - and the jiggling of her heavy bosom - were clear to anyone whose eyes fell across them, as Kara’s did. They seemed all to be walking in the same direction, and eventually found themselves downstairs in the reception hall.

This large room was mostly empty, but there were four large, well-upholstered leather armchairs, each in one corner. Kara gravitated over to one of them, Celmira to another, and Mike to a third. Whoever had been behind them was left the remaining corner.

A man was sitting in the chair Kara approached. She couldn’t seem to see his fingers, nor anything identifying about him; she couldn’t even be sure of the colour of his skin. She stopped just a foot away from the chair and her hands folded themselves together behind her, wrists resting against the gentle swell of her buttocks.

The figure reached out and took one of her breasts in a hand, squeezed, and stroked. Kara’s awareness swam as pleasure rolled through her, pleasure beyond what his touch should provide.

He reached out with his other hand, too, and took one of her nipples between each thumb and forefinger. The sensation was clearer than the groping had been, more real than the rest of her dream. It thrilled through her in a way that stood out.

Two simultaneous, gentle downward tugs brought Kara to her knees, the carpeted floor cushioning the sound of her shins hitting the floor but the impact jolted through her nonetheless. She heard herself mewl, a dizzy reaction to the bliss this handling was bringing her. It had not occurred to her to release her own hands, to use her arms to steady herself, to move them in any way; they still rested against her ass.

This was not her first erotic dream, but it was much more focused on key aspects than ever before. The activity in previous dreams had always been vague, unclear, nonspecific. This time it was like she knew exactly what she had to do.

She had no explanation for why her friend and one of the other students had showed up in her dream. Had not considered it. Would find herself uncomfortable when she finally did question it, unwilling to accept the answers that occurred to her.

Before she woke, though, she was suddenly aware that the nebulous figure in the armchair had a cock, and that the cock was hard, and that the cock was inches from her face. Her mouth watered.

Unsure and uncertain, completely inexperienced but with the determination of one who has never failed in an exam, her lips parted, she leaned forward, and she took the cock into her mouth.

It was an unfamiliar sensation, and for a moment she almost gagged. But her tongue found satisfaction in the way a gentle caress could make the cock twitch, and she steadied herself, focused on her breathing the same way she did when playing clarinet, and began to bob her head up and down, exploring the cock’s reactions, alert to any indication that the man the cock was attached to was pleased or displeased, and as she sucked, she learned, and she began to enjoy the sucking for its own sake…

*

The Saturday following Kara’s birthday seemed to get started more slowly than usual. Kara was tired enough to sleep through her alarm; unusually, she was not immediately chivvied awake by Meillures Filles’ instructors, who it transpired had also decided to take their own sweet time to be roused.

She found herself awkward and uncomfortable around Mike for the first time. For all that it had been a dream, Kara was still convinced she knew what the other woman looked like naked, and for Kara this made it difficult to meet her eye. The few times eye contact was made that day, both women looked away sheepishly, which underlined to Kara just how awkwardly she must be coming across.

Curiously, she didn’t have the same issue with Celmira, a woman who Kara had previously largely avoided. After lunch, she contrived to sit near her for the afternoon lessons, and between presentations, the two got to talking. Celmira sparkled in conversation, a delight to talk with and a pleasure, though it was that evening that Kara realised, thinking back, she’d learned absolutely nothing about her. Whether it was lessons from Meillures Filles or hard-earned experience beforehand, not a part of the woman’s history nor her opinion had come out at any point.

Kara was forced to conclude that the other woman felt no kinship to her; she’d somehow thought, with the dream staying fresh in her memory that day, that there would be a bond between them now, though that made no sense when she looked at it logically. Why should Celmira respond to a dream that Kara alone had had?

Saturday became Sunday and in time January gave way to February and moved into March. Kara dreamed no further dreams of erotic service within the chalet. The leaves shed by the calendar took them ever closer to the June date set to complete their finishing course, where this class would end; the older students, many of whom had become rich by their own efforts building and running businesses and found themselves now uncomfortable without the knowledge of how to act in high society, were beginning to get restless.

Over time, Kara forgot her attempt to grow close with Celmira, though the two talked more than they had, and in the end she and Mike were less awkward around each other again, and their friendship finally resumed on its previous terms. Kara’s heart grew lighter as Mike returned to it.

*

Late in March Monsieur Hofmann announced that there would be no instruction the afternoon of April third. Mike and Kara immediately came together to make plans for that afternoon; free time without instruction was a precious commodity at Meillures Filles, where the nearest settlement outside the town was two hours’ travel away, and where even an afternoon browsing in the library could quickly become impromptu instruction should a tutor happen upon you at the wrong moment.

Mike scheduled the use of one of the chalet’s four cars; she cared much more about who drove than did Kara. “It’s not flying,” she said, “but it’s almost as good, sometimes, up in these mountains with nobody else around.”

Mike certainly drove as if she was flying. Kara would sit in the passenger seat, the vehicle’s canvas top down, and feel a mix of adrenaline and fear as the car took corners too fast and almost too wide and hurtled over bumps in the road, passing yards at a time without wheels touching tarmac. The rare sight of another car on the road didn’t dissuade Mike at all - she would maintain speed throughout, almost, Kara thought, as a tacit challenge to the other driver - but that afternoon, while watching the rolling fields of the valley they were plunging down fly past her, Kara was shocked when Mike stomped on the brake, bringing the car to a screeching halt.

Kara’s eyes snapped back to the road, alert for the danger or crisis Mike must have taken action to avoid. When she saw only an empty road, she twisted in her seat, ears still recovering from the deafening screech of brakes pushed to the limit of their tolerance, and saw nothing behind them on the road either.

Only then did she look to her friend in the driver’s seat - or rather, half-out of it; Mike had risen from her seet and was standing, eyes lifted to the sky, transfixed, staring at two helicopters as they made their way back up the valley.

“Mike,” Kara asked, and for all the efforts her boarding school and the finishing school had lavished on it, her Scots accent was always present and, at times of surprise or stress, strong and rough, “would you mind telling me why the fuck we’ve stopped?”

Mike didn’t answer at first. Still looking at the aircraft, what she initially said was “Those aren’t long range models. The school’s about the only thing in range that way.”

It wasn’t until it was clear Mike had been wondering about their destination that Kara realised she’d just assumed they were mountain rescue, but there were none of the right markings. At this range she couldn’t make out what markings were there clearly enough to identify them.

She looked at Mike’s face again, and marvelled briefly at the expression, which underlined for her why the old meaning of ecstatic had carried connotations of religious awe and wonder. “Hot damn,” Mike mumbled. “I’d love to fly one of those things one day. Look at them. Beautiful.”

“Right. But why have we stopped?”

“Oh.” Mike blinked a couple of times, and the joy in her smile went away. Her face clouded over. “No, I just -” She looked away. “I wanted to get a proper look at them, that’s all,” she said, and it wasn’t much more than a mumble. Kara felt guilty that she’d made her friend retreat back inside herself like that.

Lost for words, she reached out and put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. Mike sighed, and some of the tension seemed to dissipate.

“Sorry,” Mike said. “We should…”

Mike fell silent, staring back up the way they’d come. Kara’s head swam. They stayed there for several moments, unmoving, the only sound the strange soft whining of their watches.

Looking at Mike as she had been, Kara had time to dwell on her friend’s strange behaviour. Freezing into place as if a stage magician had placed her in a hypnotic trance. Which was absurd; there was no such thing as hypnosis. Unusual behaviour always had another explanation, and unusual behaviour, by definition, was unusual. It didn’t happen often. It could be ignored.

The car wasn’t moving, Kara realised without thinking. It needed to move. It needed to carry them both back to Meillures Filles. But it was still and silent, the only sound the strange soft whining of their watches.

Looking at Mike, Kara thought there was such peace on her friend’s face, a peace and acceptance that could barely be encountered outside of hypnotic trance. Which was absurd; there was no such thing as hypnosis. Unusual behaviour always had another explanation, and only other people ever had unusual behaviour.

Mike sat back down in her seat and put the car into reverse. A quick turn later and they were heading back to the chalet, both with their eyes on the road, saying nothing. The whine of their watches had dwindled to nothingness, but would have been drowned out in any case by the roar of the engine. Mike was driving at speeds higher than those she’d employed on the way out; she was, Kara realised without thinking, racing the helicopters.

Racing would have been futile had the passengers in those craft been in a hurry to reach their destination, but their progress was leisurely, as if they were sightseeing on their way up the valley. Kara might have had any number of thoughts about that, if she’d been thinking at the time.

Once at the chalet, she and Mike progressed wordlessly to their rooms. When Kara walked past Mike’s door and her friend turned away, there was a brief moment in which Kara wondered what was happening before her thoughts stilled away once more.

In her room, lying on the bed, were a number of articles of clothing. Kara was already disrobing before her door had finished swinging shut.

On first went a pair of glossy black opaque tights, and above that, a black cotton pair of panties that serviced to provide a figleaf of modesty to her below the waist. Next was a white pleated dress shirt, cut to stop just above the panties’ waistline, and generous enough in the bust that Kara could breathe easily wearing it, while tight enough around her bosom to show off just how well-developed her figure was.

As the watch whined, unthinking hands tied a black bow tie around her neck with a skill she had never learned. Kara’s eyes were not on her body, nor the mirror, and only fleetingly at her clothes; mostly she stared directly forward without registering what was in her eyeline, and certainly without thinking about it.

She wrapped a red silk cummerbund around her waist, covering the top of the panties and the bottom of the dress shirt, and tied it off behind her back. A black tailcoat came next, cut at the front so that when it buttoned below her bust, the cummerbund was still visible, but the two tails ran down behind her thighs to end at the point of her knees. A pair of white cotton gloves were pulled over her hands.

Lastly, she stepped into a pair of black stiletto heels that were waiting beside the bed. At no time did Kara’s mind stir enough to wonder where this outfit had come from, why it fitted her, or what she was doing wearing it.

She stood motionless in place, staring unseeing into space, swaying very slightly, for some time afterwards. It wasn’t until her watch whined again that she turned, rotating on one heel, to face her door.

Emerging from her room, she walked with the same slow, hip-rolling swaying walk she had adopted in her dream. Mike’s door opened at the perfect time to fall into step with her; the two of them, dressed identically now, continued to walk the corridor, and another door opened up ahead of them and Celmira emerged.

Celmira was not dressed identically to the other two. Clad in figure-hugging, semi-transparent, sparkly grey spandex from throat to ankle, she was barefoot. Above the throat she wore a headscarf, her hair wrapped below it. Even without thinking, Kara recognised the glassiness in her eyes as something unusual. Even more unusual than Mike’s behaviour, which definitely invited comment.

Kara and Mike walked behind her, in step with her. If it wasn’t for the outfits and the body language, an observer might have guessed they were guards escorting a prisoner to their court date.

As in Kara’s most memorable dream since she’d arrived in Meillures Filles, they came to the end of the corridor and swept on down the wide curve of the wooden stairs to the ground floor without breaking step. Kara’s head was upright at all times; her eyes faced forwards at all times; she was not used to stiletto heels. Descending the stairs should have been an accident waiting to happen. Yet, because she could not think to second-guess herself, her body’s instinctive memory of the dimensions of the building carried her downstairs without incident.

Kara would remember the presence of Monsieur Hofmann, eventually. He was standing in the centre of the big room, beside five other men the details of whom were not clear in Kara’s mind at any point, perhaps because she had never seen them at a time she was capable of active thought. What little crept back to her suggested headdresses and long, loose garments; a scent of cloves; perhaps a neatly groomed beard.

Celmira approached the group of men. Mike and Kara came to a halt at the base of the stairs. With synchronised, unconscious motion, they wheeled to their left and made their way over to a low table, where they found two circular silver trays waiting.

Each tray had three empty brandy glasses and a small silver cigar cutter. Beside the trays were a glass jug of gently-steaming water, an empty jug of the same size, the most expensive bottle of cognac in the chalet, reserved for special occasions, and a small box of expensive cigars.

As mechanically as the action of their watches, the two impromptu mindless waitresses warmed each brandy glass by rinsing it quickly with the water, then returning the water to the empty jug. They then poured six identical measures of cognac. Each woman picked up three cigars, tucking them one by one into the breast pocket of their tailcoats.

They turned as one and approached the six men, where glasses of cognac were distributed. Kara felt hands casually on her ass, on her tits, stroking the inside of her thighs. Her mouth set itself into a warm, affectionate smile, and her thoughtless head filled with a happy, obedient fog.

She and Mike stayed in attendance, offering cigars and chopping the ends with their cigar cutters once accepted. If one of the men opened his mouth, they would gently place the cigar within. Monsieur Hofmann took care of lighting the cigars.

The men were talking about money while shooting glances at Celmira. Kara heard different numbers, different amounts of money, and without the ability to think, she couldn’t tell, but she felt vaguely as if the values were getting higher.

One by one the indistinct men subsided and drifted away from the conversation, until there were two left, who seemed deeply irritated with one another. One of the others wandered back purely to grope Kara, who found herself inexplicably turned on by it. She stifled her moans as best she could, but could not muffle them entirely. Still, Monsieur Hofmann had yet to shoot her a disappointed look, so what she was doing couldn’t be too bad.

The louder of the two men who remained threw up his hands and stomped away from the gathering. The other cackled and rubbed his hands, and Monsieur Hofmann produced, from within the pocket of his waistcoat, a small black object, about two inches along, a half-inch wide, and a quarter-inch deep, with two small red buttons on it. He handed it to the cackling man, who pointed it at Celmira and pressed one of the buttons.

Immediately, Celmira brought her hands together, palms and fingers pressed against each other, under her breasts, then lifted her arms slightly, presenting her breasts as if they were an offering, before settling jerkily to her knees.

Kara had considered Celmira’s eyes glassy before, but they seemed now completely empty. The cackler said something, and Celmira responded with the first words Kara had properly understood, words she could understand without needing to think: “Yes, my Master.”

The cackler left, Celmira rising from her knees to follow, head bowed, three steps behind.

One by one, the other men spoke with Monsieur Hofmann, who shook hands with each of them in turn. Kara watched, unthinking but not forgetting, as her tray and Mike’s tray filled up with empty cognac glasses.

Once the men who were not Hofmann were gone, they turned, and they left the trays on the table where they had found them, and they made their way upstairs.

Kara stripped nude just inside her doorway, made her way to the bed, and slept, waking to consider the events of the previous afternoon, for the longest time, a dream. She had woken with her own clothes strewn on the floor - not something Meillures Filles approved of - but of the other outfit there was no trace.

Of Celmira there was abruptly no sign to be found, anywhere in Meillures Filles, but it was not done to ask, and so any attempt to ask was ignored.