“You want to tell me about it?” the shopkeeper asked. Millie was already shaking her head, about to say no, but…

…but…

Really, there were only three people who knew about this new side to Millie.

And she felt a real need to tell someone.

“I guess it started the other day,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, but I guess my memory’s been a bit crappy lately, because I think it began when I woke up and I’d had a guy over, but they were gone and I had no idea who…”

The whole strange story poured out, and through it all the shopkeeper listened, sympathetic but also smiling. Smiling quite a lot, actually.

“That’s a hell of a ride,” she said in the end. “So how do you feel about him?”

That left Millie stumped. She stood in silence for a while; the shopkeeper, leaning against a pillar full of impact paddles, waited peacefully. Millie was struck by how companionable the whole atmosphere was.

“I feel like I want to give him everything. But I’m not sure he can… that he’ll…”

“You don’t know how he’d take it.”

“Right.” She nodded gratefully.

“But you still bought a kinky outfit for him.”

“Right.” She grinned. “He loved that, by the way.”

The shopkeeper shrugged. “I usually think of my job as making sure that my direct customers love their new looks. Sometimes their new selves.”

Millie bit her lip. It felt like a rebuke even if she wasn’t sure what the criticism was.

“So, do you?” the shopkeeper asked. “You want to give him everything. But what are you keeping?”

That felt like a really weird way to put it. She wasn’t sure if it was profound or just trying to be. But the shopkeeper put so much stress on the question. The tone in her voice, like it really mattered to her.

“What do you mean?”

“How much of who you are is important enough to you that you won’t change?”

Millie blinked. “I mean, I haven’t really changed anyway…”

“Is that true?”

Millie blinked again. Deep inside her, a memory she hadn’t thought about in a long time stirred.

*

“Could you keep your shit off the table?” she asked. “Some of us use it for eating.”

The kitchen table was covered in Zack’s gear. A laptop computer was plugged into several unusual peripherals. His toolbox was on the table, and it was open, drawers spread out so it took up four or five times the room.

Honestly she had no idea what the rest of the stuff on the table was.

“This shit is the coolest,” he said. Millie snorted.

Zack looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Millie had the sense of a decision being made.

“I can prove it to you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Doubt that. What even is this?”

He held up a chunky pair of headphones. “Most of it’s for my music. I need a good beat before I can mix properly.”

He reached out, turning what had just looked like a tall brushed-steel cylinder to face her. It had a long metal taper attached near the base, with what looked like a small fishing weight soldered to the top.

As he started it swinging, it became clear it was some kind of metronome.

“OK, so you’ve got a beat.”

“Right. It feeds into my computer, here.” He unplugged the headphones, and (admittedly none-too-beefy) laptop speakers picked up the beat, turning the tick of the metronome into a stable, chunky whumpa-whumpa kind of a sound.

“The rest of this is all designed to give me one effect or another,” he said. “It’s all self-designed. But the heart of music is the beat. The heart of anything’s the beat. You know that already, though.”

This was… not the angle she’d expected, but it was one that caught her interest. She sat down across the table from him. “How do you figure?”

Zack shrugged. “I’ve seen you cook,” he said.

She looked over to the oven and the worktops next to it. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s timing and rhythm,” Zack offered. “Like, OK. Last night you had pasta.”

“How do you-“

“There’s always a couple of pasta tubes that didn’t come out the pan when you were draining which end up in the sink. Which, by the way, is gross.”

“Oh, and you don’t end up with coffee grounds everywhere?”

He raised his hands. “Not the point,” he said. “Here’s the point. You ready?”

She shrugged, noncommittal.

“Everything is rhythm,” he said. “So, you start cooking. You set the water boiling for the pasta – that’s this.” He gestured at the metronome. “And then you need to do your other prep. You shift stations. You’re chopping your onions, your garlic.” He hit a couple of keys, and a piano melody started playing over the metronome.

“You get them into the frying pan, warming up, and you dig out your meat. What was it you had last night?”

“Chicken and bacon,” she said. Zack nodded. “Chicken and bacon,” he repeated. “Okay.”

He reached out to another peripheral, hit a switch, and a different, deep bass beat started up. “You’re crossing to another station. You’re getting out that big chef’s knife you spent way too much on, and you’re chopping that. And everything has started moving.”

Zack smiled. “Everything in life is rhythms. That’s what my music is about.”

He touched another set of keys, set up a drum beat. “Now you’re starting to think about the veg. You grab your peppers, start chopping them back on your veg board. Your meat’s still waiting to go on but you have the timing in your head.

“And all of these rhythms are always playing. Always. But you don’t notice.”

By now, Millie was nodding along, listening to the music, picking his words out above it, and considering her cooking. There were a bunch of different thought tracks going on, and keeping them all going at once was actually kind of overwhelming.

She looked up at him, fleetingly, saw a smile in his eyes as he repeated “You don’t notice. It’s just what you’re dealing with.”

He added a high, electronic bleep of a note recurring over the rest. “You know it’s all going now. It’s all working. So you start thinking about something else, too. You start thinking about what you’ll have for a drink.”

Millie nodded, caught up in the swing of his narrative now, and (though she’d never admit it) grudgingly enjoying the music, too.”

“You don’t notice. Not until everything…”

He reached out with one hand, holding it palm-out, sideways on, just above her line of sight. She was trying to plot out the rest of the meal, keep up with the music, and follow his logic, and now she was also wondering what this was about-

His hand swept downward. All the music cut out at once. “Drops.”

Millie’s mind was trying to follow too many threads. At the gesture, her eyelids followed the hand down. Her head dropped forward. And all of her thoughts dropped out of her head at once, leaving nothing behind.

“Good girl.”

That was a weird thing to say. Zack reached out, put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s OK,” he said. “I know I can be pretty annoying, but I know I’m not the only thing that’s getting to you. Now, Millie, you don’t need to start thinking, you don’t need to do much, but I do want you to do one thing for me. I want you to picture all the things that are stressing you out, and I want you to gather up that stress and just let it go.

“You’ll still know these things need doing, but they’re not going to worry you. Okay?”

Millie’s head nodded fractionally. This didn’t seem like a thing she could do, but Zack was asking her a yes-no question and yes just felt like a better, more accurate answer.

“That’s good. So just let that happen, let the stress blow away, over the next three… two… one…”

Millie sighed contentedly. The weight was off from her shoulders.

“That’s a good girl,” Zack continued. “Now, listen. You and me, we have an… awkward dynamic. And it makes sense, because I’m going to piss people off if they’re not comfortable dealing with me. And you’re too stressed to be comfortable. So we need to change that. So take a deep breath, and as you draw it in, you’re going to feel yourself starting to accept my weirder behaviour…”

Millie did so, sitting up a little straighter and pushing out her chest as she inhaled.

“And as you let it out, let go of the idea you need to be stressed about me.” His hand moved from her shoulder to stroke her cheek. “I’m a great guy, and I only have your best interests at heart.”

She exhaled slowly, letting go of her frustrations.

“In fact,” Zack said, “repeat that.”

“You’re a great guy, and you only have my best interests at heart,” she mumbled.

“I told you you were a good girl,” Zack said, and she could hear the smile in her voice, but it didn’t seem to bother anymore. “But if I’m a great guy and you’re only a good girl, you have room to improve, right?”

There was no arguing with that logic. “Uh huh,” she said.

“Good,” Zack said. His hand drifted down from her cheek to her chest, just above the swell of her breasts. Taking it slow. Being sure. “So you’re going to let me take the lead on making some changes, OK?”

She nodded.

*

Millie’s retelling of the tale had become more and more tentative as she’d got further into it. It was, to be fair, very hard to believe certain parts of it – and it should probably horrify her, although so far it hadn’t.

She looked up at the shopkeeper, wide-eyed. “I didn’t remember any of that,” she said.

“You wouldn’t necessarily,” the shopkeeper said. “A lot of people don’t. And you might have remembered it once, when he hadn’t really crossed the line. But maybe not so much later.”

“But why would I forget something like that?”

“Hypnosis is surprisingly powerful, Millie. Especially if he can get you to do something that underlines it, day in, day out.”

The shopkeeper smiled. “And I know you’re going to have been listening to his music every day. Right?”

She nodded, eyes wide. She felt like she should be horrified, but she wasn’t really sure that she was. “What does all this mean?”

“I think you maybe know better than me,” the shopkeeper said. “How does it make you feel?”

Millie opened her mouth to answer, and… didn’t. Because there wasn’t an answer. Nothing clear, anyway. Her head was a whirl.

“It seems… wrong?” she said at the end, and the shopkeeper nodded. “But Zack’s a great guy.” She blinked. Tried to let that statement stand on its own.

“And only has my best interests at heart,” she added, when she found she couldn’t.

The shopkeeper smiled. “I know you’re saying that. But do you feel that?”

Millie’s expression, for a moment, seemed almost trapped as she tried to figure out what the answer might be.

“It’s important to me?” she tried.

The shopkeeper tilted her head to one side, studying Millie. “I’m not trying to mess with you, hon,” she said gently. “But you look like you need some help figuring this stuff out, right?”

Millie nodded tentatively. She’d been having such a good morning before this…

“So for me, and maybe I’m biased, but the big question isn’t whether he had a right to do what he did to you. That’s a problem, sure, but it’s happened, and he’s in your head, and the first question is whether or not you should be trying to break free.”

“Of course I should…” Even to herself, she sounded doubtful. “Shouldn’t I?”

The shopkeeper grinned. “Of the two of us, I’m not the one who can decide that. Here’s the question, as I see it. Are you better off being your own woman or do you prefer losing control? Because those are your options right now.”

Millie swallowed. The problem was, both of them sounded good, and she had no idea which sounded good because it was her, and which sounded good because, either over her life or in the past few months, she’d been retrained to think that way.

“How do I know?” she asked in the end.

The shopkeeper shrugged. “For me it was a gut decision.”

“Y-you’ve gone through this?”

The shopkeeper smiled. “Zack Sinclair has done this four times to my knowledge. I was the first of those. Maybe his actual first. Maybe not.”

A faraway look in her eye, she continued, “I didn’t really get into the whole submissive sex toy thing. But I did discover I really loved this kind of outfit.” She stroked a leather cuff on her right wrist with her left hand. “We had a hell of an argument, but he calmed me down, eventually. By the time I worked out what was happening I had enough triggers in me that he could basically spam my brain back to peace of mind.”

Millie bit her lip. She was only too aware that shouldn’t sound appealing. “That’s why you think it’s more important to decide if I stay with him or not.”

The shopkeeper nodded.

“What happened to you?” Millie asked quietly.

*

“Sure, OK,” she said. “Hypnotism sounds kind of cool. Give it your best shot.”

Zack grinned.

“This isn’t your first time,” she said, watching his reaction. He nodded.

“I’m not great,” he said. “But I’m more than good enough to have myself some fun.”

“You mean have us some fun.”

“I mean… ideally, sure.”

He smirked. She rolled her eyes. And he leaned forward, reached out, caught her chin in his hand. Held her head steady. Met her startled eyes.

“You’re ready for this,” he said. “Your defences are down.” His voice was a purr. “You’re OK with that, too. You’re already realising your eyes have locked on.

“In a moment you’ll realise you can’t even look away. And that’s the moment where you realise hypnosis is more effective and more real than you expected.

“And you’ve got this idea that eye contact makes it stronger. So you’re going to be left locked on, bound into eye contact, with stronger and stronger effects. And what’s more, the idea’s hot.”

He smiled. His hand released her jaw, but her head didn’t so much as wobble. She started to smile herself. She felt like she couldn’t help it.

“Now, I’m going to keep talking,” Zack said. “You don’t need to listen. I’m talking to the part of your brain that pays attention anyway. You’re going to have more fun if you don’t know.”

She whimpered, and Zack actually looked hurt. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m a great guy. And I have only your best interests at heart.”

*

“He’s been looking for a live-in sex toy,” the shopkeeper said. “That wasn’t me, or any of the others I know of. At best, he had us for little holidays from our lives.”

“And he didn’t tell you any of this?”

“He didn’t tell you either,” she pointed out. “I’ve said to him before he’d have an easier time not trying to sneak it past you. But he’s kind of an asshole.”

“So why haven’t you reported him?”

She sighed. “Like you, I have some fondness for him in my head that might not be my idea exactly. I’m not sure how much of what’s in here,” she gestured toward her forehead, “hasn’t grown out of something he said.”

Millie blinked.

*

She was standing, topless, her arms hanging lifelessly by her sides, her eyes unfocused, her body unmoving. Zack had just finished removing her bra; she heard it drop to the floor, but could not tilt her head to follow.

He leaned forward, planted a kiss first on one nipple, then the other. Millie didn’t react. Didn’t think to. Didn’t think.

Zack chuckled. That didn’t seem like it was an instruction, so she ignored it.

He straightened up, cupped her bare breast in one hand. “Weird to think this is the first time I’ve had the chance to see these,” he said, but that also didn’t seem like an instruction, so she ignored it.

Zack started circling her. “You love my music,” he said. “You can’t help listening to it.”

That seemed like an instruction, so she opened her mind wide to accept it, and she repeated it.

“I love your music. I can’t help listening to it.”

Zack was grinning wider.

“I can set up my gear anywhere.”

“You can set up your gear anywhere.”

“I could leave anything lying around and you’d be fine with it.”

“You could leave anything lying around and I’d be fine with it.”

That earned a laugh, which again, was not an instruction and could be ignored.

“I could leave your clothes lying around and you wouldn’t even wonder how they got there.”

“You could leave my clothes lying around and I wouldn’t even wonder how they got there.”

A part of her was squirming inside her unmoving form, but she didn’t know whether it was good or bad.

“Even if you can’t admit it to yourself you think I’m hot.”

“Even if I can’t admit it to myself I think you’re hot.”

He came to a halt in front of her after that one, eyes searching hers. He seemed satisfied by the emptiness he found, and planted a deep, passionate kiss on her, before circling again. “You want to be hypnotised again and again, but you don’t want to remember.”

“I want to be hypnotised again and again, but I don’t want to remember.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being brainwashed. It’s the best.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being brainwashed. It’s the best.”

“You want to fuck and be fucked until it’s completely normal.”

“I want to fuck and be fucked until it’s completely normal.”

“You want to find your best way to be.”

“I want to find my best way to be.”

*

Some of Zack was much easier to read in his orders than other aspects. Millie still didn’t feel she understood him.

She wasn’t convinced she could defend his actions. She was pretty sure she couldn’t. But like the shopkeeper, she didn’t want to complain, and like the shopkeeper, she didn’t know if that was her idea or his, or something of hers grown from seeds he’d planted.

“How long ago did he try this with you?” she asked.

“Almost four years now,” the shopkeeper answered. She nodded, then went on to answer the question Millie hadn’t asked. “Anything he put in there that’s stuck, it’s part of me now. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I just know that it’s not changing. I’m not interested in explaining all this shit to a therapist. Can you blame me?”

Millie smiled slowly. “I guess not.” She couldn’t imagine it. Unless the therapist was cute, and might take advantage…

Fuck.

It would be really useful to know if that came from her completely or was partly Zack’s influence. If that was just how she thought, deep down, she should just go call him Master now like she wanted to.

She became aware that the shopkeeper was looking at her, had in fact asked her a question, and that she hadn’t even noticed it. She’d been away in that fantasy. She shook her head, steeling herself, preparing to deal with the problem at hand.

“Tell me why you left him?”

*

The best thing about what was happening to her was the feel of the collar around her neck, the soft red linen lining within the heavy black leather, the reassuring weight of the buckle at her throat. The high-heeled boots, the stockings rising above them halfway up her thighs, the cupless basque in purple satin, bound with steel and cord, these were all good, felt good on her, felt part of who she was.

But the collar was the thing that resonated, the thing she was happiest to wear.

Bent double over her kitchen table, eyes dull with docility, she humped back against her now live-in boyfriend as the dinner continued to get cold. She had one duty, and it overrode everything else.

She was programmed to love this. Programmed to enjoy it. And it pleased Zack, who was a great guy, and only had her best interests at heart.

And yet her mind was wandering, concerned that their food was growing cold. And yet the collar was the most interesting thing about it.

Zack was still delighted, which was her primary duty and goal.

She should not be tiring of this. And yet.

*

The shopkeeper sighed. “We just… didn’t fit,” she said. “So we had an argument, which was… hard. Offering a different opinion was an effort of will. I was conditioned not to raise my voice, either. But we got there.”

Millie offered a sympathetic smile, which was hindered a little by the fact she still couldn’t imagine contradicting Zack’s opinion. It didn’t just feel wrong, it felt impossible.

The shopkeeper took a deep breath. Shrugged. “I actually like the guy. I did before the conditioning, and I still do, in a different way, now. We parted company and he kept trying. Currently he’s trying you.”

Millie nodded slowly. “And you’re not going to tell me what you think I should do, because you can understand why I’m having trouble myself.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got to decide for myself.”

A nod from the shopkeeper.

“I don’t want to decide,” she said at last. “I want to not know. If I never realised I could just be changed, twisted, and eventually I probably wouldn’t notice. It sounds like he was a lot less subtle with you.”

The shopkeeper laughed. “Sure. But that sounds like a decision.”

“No, I-“

“You’re preferring the idea of not noticing, having the choice taken from you.”

Millie’s mouth went dry at once. That wasn’t how she’d seen it at all.

“But… I do know.”

The shopkeeper tilted her head to one side and looked thoughtfully across to Millie. After a moment, she raised her hand, extended one finger, held it before Millie’s eyes.

“Zack’s been hypnotising you a lot, right?” she asked.

Millie nodded, studying the fingertip, wondering what on earth that might have to do with anything.

And then the shopkeeper dropped her finger, and Millie dropped too.

*

She walked back into the flat. As the door clicked audibly shut behind her, she came helplessly to a halt.

Her hands reached up to shrug her coat from her shoulders. Arms daintily moving behind her, she heard the ‘thrump’ of the material landing on the floor. Like the click of the door, this had been fashioned into a command. It began the next step of her compulsion.

She moved forward into the flat proper. As she did, she caught sight of her new wardrobe, bought at the culmination of her negotiation with the shopkeeper.

The deep, dark red of the leather collar was everything to her. With a sombre maroon tint to her high leather corset, and barely thigh-length red leather boots with the hint of stockings protruding above them, her body send a message she couldn’t bring her waking mouth to speak. She felt delightfully less like a person, and so much more like a toy for enjoyment. Especially with everything between the base of her corset and her stocking tops bare and on display.

Which was perfect. Toys never suffered from attacks of conscience. Toys didn’t worry if they were doing the wrong thing. Toys didn’t have to stop and wonder whether their ideas belonged to them, or if they’d been put there by someone else, or if they were a fusion of the two.

She moved through the flat, looking for Zack.

She was conscious now that this might be the first time since he’d showed her his music that she held the power in this relationship.

That her decision was the decision that would finish all this.

She found him in his room, the door wide open, clothes strewn around. An urge to serve him demanded that his clothes be picked up, taken, and wished. But she had more important compulsions at present.

Millie approached him, his back to her, headphones in place, as he worked on his music at his computer in his boxer shorts.

She wanted to settle to her knees, but it wasn’t her place. So instead she drew level with the side of his desk, stopped moving forward, and turned to face him. A quick flick of her head sent a stray hair back behind her ear. Her heels came together with a soft clap of leather against leather, right foot pointed forward, left turned to one side. Her arms went backward, her wrist clasped by her hand in the small of her back.

She knew the impact she would have. She simply waited for Zack to become aware of her motion, and her presence, and to look. Waited for the expression she was sure her appearance would provoke.

It didn’t take long. A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye and he looked her way, then looked up, his jaw dropping.

Millie smiled.

“Are you ready to be my Master?” she asked.

Confusion, panic, and caution warred with delight on Zack’s face. “I… what?”

“Your friend gave me some help,” she said, her voice becoming a delighted, shivery purr. “I’ve made up my mind. And I want you for my Master. But we’re going to have to be honest about that.

“You’ll call all the shots. But you have to tell me how you’re going to change me.”

She waited for a moment. “If we have a deal, Master, you can tell me how you want to have me. If not, I’m just going to blow you. I don’t have a choice.”

Zack swallowed. He stood. “Bend over my bed,” he instructed.

“Only if you’re ready.”

“Then… yes. Yes, I definitely am.”

Millie smiled, and woke up, and began to obey.