"Well I can see somebody's gone blank again."

There was a little tick of who? in her head before Kaycey remembered she means you, dummy. "Silly Kaycey," she sighed. It was her alright. She only ever called herself that in trance.

"Silly Kaycey, yeah," Leigh said. “Can’t stop letting things trigger her." Kaycey was in a canvas chair next to the stove, staring at the teakettle. She watched a vague, stretched-out reflection of Leigh in it come up behind her, turbanning her hair up in a damp red bath towel. She took Kaycey’s ponytail in her hand—Leigh preferred her in a ponytail, she could never resist fooling with it like it was a handle—and started gently pulling Kaycey’s head up and back down again. Kaycey liked it, being manipulated like that, like Leigh was making her agree with something she didn’t even know what it was. Trance always made her ultra agreeable. Every compelled nod left Kaycey that much more relaxed.

“What were you tryna do, make tea? At least you didn’t turn the thing on,” Leigh said, reaching and jiggling the knob to make sure.

Kaycey couldn’t remember why she came into the kitchen. Just the teakettle. Needing to sit down. “I saw the, uh,” she was searching, “the glowy thing.” Dummy. Why did she always talk so stupid anymore.

It was a thing that would happen to the light coming off an object, just at that moment where she realized something was pulling her into trance. There was a fancy-sounding word for it she must’ve heard Leigh use. “I mean the … pen something, is that?—” except she wasn’t looking at a pen.

“Penumbra,” Leigh said quietly. “Ohhh,” Kaycey sighed, “pen number,” though she still didn’t really get it. She laughed. “I almost remembered it!”

Leigh pulled back on the ponytail till Kaycey was looking straight up into her eyes. “You’re cute when you’re losing your words,” Leigh said. Kaycey smiled up at her. “Thanks Leigh,” she said. Her roommate wasn’t much of a one for praise, so it was always kind of a thrill getting a compliment from her, even one she didn’t understand.

Leigh perched forward over her shoulder and took a couple of big sniffs. “Get you into the shower at some point,” she muttered, giving Kaycey her head back. Kaycey’s eyes returned to the kettle. She was glad Leigh was letting her stay in trance. “Stand up,” Leigh said, and turned and walked over to the dinette table.

Kaycey saw her reflected breasts float up, two pale dark-nippled clouds, then as the neat triangle of bush over her pussy replaced them. “Hey,” Leigh called. She was sitting casually sideways, her legs crossed. “Look at me. What am I wearing?”

“Nothing Leigh.” Kaycey giggled. “You’re naked.”

It seemed to Kaycey she’d been seeing Leigh naked more than she was used to. That was alright. Leigh had a nice body. It just meant she was getting more comfortable with Kaycey, after that rocky start they’d had to the year. Or maybe Kaycey’s own carelessness lately was rubbing off on her. Some days now were such Silly Kaycey days she scarcely even remembered about clothes: just float around the place all day nude, or as near as made no difference, bumping like a ballon from one trance into the next.

“Bingo,” Leigh said. “So how come you’re not?”

“But—” Kaycey swiveled her reflection a bit in the teakettle and saw the shortie robe draped down her back, the sheer filmy thing she’d bought just the other day. “Oh shit.” It made Leigh self-conscious if she was naked while Kaycey had clothes on. “Sorry Leigh.” You know this, dummy, Kaycey scolded herself. She shrugged the robe from her shoulders and shimmied it off her ass down onto the floor.

“Slob.” Leigh’s tone was sharp. “Is that what we do with clothes around here?” Kaycey flushed, and burbled another apology while she bent to retrieve the robe. “On the chair please. Neatly.”

Somehow, the teakettle had kept its trance magic, its pen-whatever. Kaycey looked over at it, loving how her breasts swelled as she bent forward, trying and failing to push the robe into a shape that would do for neatly. The more her reflection took her, the slower and clumsier her fingers got, the less sure she was what she was even doing with them, or why. And then she was standing straight again, facing the stove, swaying a little, her mind buzzing and vacant.

“Yeah no,” Leigh said, “enough of that, I want tea now. Go on make tea.” She snapped her fingers. “Step to.”

At the snap, Kaycey’s trance vanished, replaced with the warm, confident, focused feeling of being tasked. Her movements were fluid and definite and happened almost without her thought; she let them carry her like a passenger in a rail car and enjoyed having no responsibility for the destination. When the kettle started screaming, Kaycey shut the burner off, and stood there blinking for a moment, waiting for her perspective to reassemble.

Napkins and cups and spoons and honey and those little cookies Leigh liked were arranged precisely on Kaycey’s grandma’s tea tray on the counter. She used to be intimidated to use it, because it was an heirloom, but that was before Leigh convinced her to lighten up. “Tea’s on,” Kaycey said, turning towards the table.

Leigh looked up from her phone. “We ought to put you in one a those little aprons,” she said. She shook her head. “Wait a minute. I can’t believe I didn’t even notice this. You’re wearing Crocs? You’re gonna serve me tea wearing green fucking Crocs. Where are your fucking heels at?”

She was wearing a mean little smirk that made Kaycey cringe. “It’s just— these—” Kaycey faltered, before thinking better of it. Yeah that’s right dummy, explain to her how they’re comfortable. There was no appealing to Leigh when she was like this. Anyway it wasn’t an excuse, service was in heels, that was their rule. Disconsolate, Kaycey watched herself work free of the offending footwear.

All you could do with Leigh when she got in one of her snippy moods was be a total wet blanket and wait for the air to clear. “I’m sorry, Leigh,” Kaycey said in her smallest, most defeated voice, “should I go to my room now and change into them?”

“Should I go to my room and change into them NO,” Leigh said, sneering. “Tea’ll get cold.” Kaycey sniffled. “Oh for fuck’s sake don’t go getting weepy on me. Just, do your pretend heels.”

Immediately Kaycey lifted onto her toes, like some mechanism was pulling her up, and as quickly her mood began to lift. Like when she was a girl, when she’d pretend she was a ballerina and that everyone had to love her. She couldn’t help but feel lighter. It was one of those lost little childhood things; Kaycey only remembered it because her and Leigh had gotten talking. Lately she’d started practicing the walk—that kind of swoopy, heel-to-toe glide just felt so right when she was in trance—and she wondered if maybe Leigh hadn’t seen her doing it.

She kicked her legs out like a dancer. The kitchen was small enough that a few long steps covered the distance to the table, but Kasey floated atop them like a swan on a slow stream: elegant, stately, empty-headed. Still on tiptoe she bent delicately from the waist to set the tray down, then just as delicately poured a stream of hot water into Leigh’s cup. “Oh and look, you remembered my cookies!” Leigh said, smiling. She took a bite of one.

“Alright,” she said through crumbs. “Now whyn’t you go prance on over there, prancey, and pick up those green fucking Crocs and prance on over with them to the trash and stick that cheap-ass plastic shit where I will never have to see it again.”

They’re not cheap though, Kaycey thought mournfully. Her face and her ears were burning. I spent my own money on them. But she did as she was told, and without breaking pose,— not even when she was trying to shove the Crocs down in the trash without touching anything, dancing on her toes the whole time like she was en pointe. Graceful still but listless, she swanned herself back to Leigh’s side and presented herself silent, head hanging, waiting meekly for more rebuke.

Leigh looked up at her, still with that smirk. She reached a hand out and dropped it onto Kaycey’s hip, seeming to watch for a reaction. It slid down the back of her thigh and onto her calf, then up again by the front, slower and heavier, while Leigh kept up eye contact. Kaycey felt her ankles getting weak but kept still, and kept her expression placid.

It was a liberty. Kaycey didn’t like the idea of a girl touching her like that, any girl, even if it was harmless,— even Leigh. It felt intimate. Now wasn’t the time though, not when she’d come so close to fucking up tea service. She’d figure something out to say later. Besides, when you thought about what a standoffish bitch Kaycey’d been that first month or so, if Leigh wanted to tease her like this every once in awhile, it was really no more than she deserved.

Leigh gave her a light, mocking pinch on the ass and withdrew. “You should keep on prancing, sweetie,” she said, in a softer tone, “does nice things for your legs.” “Thanks Leigh,” Kaycey gulped, and this time her ankles gave way and her heels thumped to the floor.

She was right back up, but Leigh patted down in the air with her fingers, “Okay, you’re off the clock, go siddown.”

Still in her service mood, Kaycey took the seat opposite Leigh and posed self-consciously upright, well forward on the chair, her hands folded neatly in front of her. Leigh munched another cookie while she scrolled her phone. “No class today,” she drawled, with a quick glance in Kaycey’s direction.

Kaycey wasn’t sure if it was a question. “Um.” She frowned. “What day is it, Leigh?”

Leigh looked at her skeptically over the top of the device. “When’s the last time you remember actually going to class?”

“Maybe,” Kaycey shook her head, “a … week? ish? I’m a little hazy about the days.”

Leigh snickered. “We gotta get you another hobby.”

It took Kaycey a minute to work out what “hobby” meant. Leigh, still lounging off to one side, thumbed her phone and drew the bag from her teacup. “Do you think I trance myself too much Leigh? I know when you were teaching me how you said not to trance myself too much.”

“I think my actual words were don’t go hog-wild. Nah, you’re fine. Little overenthusiastic maybe. We’ll dial it in.”

“Most of the time I don’t even decide to. Like I’m not thinking at all about the steps. Something just catches my eye.” Leigh was fully engrossed now in her phone. Kaycey sensed a thought trying to form, and idled watching her roommate while it swam up into the light.

“I should go in though,” she said at last. She nodded to confirm it. “Talk to my profs. I don’t wanna fall too far behind.”

“Absolutely, yeah,” Leigh said into her screen, “get on that. Slut you up a little first, they’ll be putty.” She set the phone down and faced Kaycey directly. “Not today though. Today I need you here. We’re having a guest.”

“We— oh,” Kaycey stammered. “Did we— did I—”

“No, you didn’t forget.” She took a sip of tea. “Friend of mine’s in town. Sorry for the short notice.” She shrugged. “More of a mentor, really.”

“Oh. Well.” Kaycey lowered her eyes to her hands. She knew mentor but the word wasn’t computing. Maybe it was something lesbians said. “So do you want to catch up then, the two of you? … Cuz I could just go—”

“She’s here to meet you, babe.” A big yawn took Leigh and she stretched herself though it. Kaycey couldn’t help thinking how nice her breasts looked. “Fuck, I gotta get myself moving. Yeah, this is the lady, practically everything I know about hypnosis I learned from her. Been telling her about you. Our little project.” Leigh winked at her. ”She approves.”

“She knows, about? …” Kaycey paled and her eyes went wide. She’d never thought of trance except as a thing between her and Leigh. “Oh, but she wouldn’t— she’s not gonna want to hypnotize me is she, Leigh, I mean— if she’s,— Would you even let her?”

“Hey! Sugarplum fairy.” Leigh drummed her fingers several times rapidly on the table. “Relax.”

Kaycey blinked her suddenly dry eyes and took a deep breath and let it out. She put a hand to her chest. “My heart’s beating weird,” she said.

She had that feeling where time seemed like it had gone off the rails somehow—not deja vu, not something happening to you that you thought already had, more like something that never happened had just unhappened. “Nerves,” Leigh said. She glanced at Kaycey’s cup. “Look at you, you haven’t even poured yourself any tea yet.”

“Silly Kaycey,” she sighed. A wisp of steam rose from the spout, and in the filling cup a few pale brown tendrils uncurled themselves away from the sachet.

Leigh unwrapped the towel from around her head and shook her hair out. The air around her seemed to sparkle. “Hey where’s your phone by the way?” she asked. “You’re supposed to keep that with you.”

Vaguely Kaycey looked around the table, then cast her eyes over to the counter. Part of her was confused yet about the thing she forgot that hadn’t happened. “Uh, my room? I guess?” Her voice sounded shaky, and it felt like her breath wasn’t coming right.

“Yeah,” Leigh said, brushing a hand through her hair, “I think you must be having one of your spells.” She draped the towel over the chair next to her. Kaycey looked stricken. “Again?” she squeaked.

“Remember where we keep the pills?”

Kaycey saw it clearly in her mind’s eye. It was an image that radiated calm. “Nana’s antique bottle, with the stopper. In the medicine cabinet. Behind the ibuprofen.”

“Alright then. Carry the bottle in both hands,” Leigh said, and snapped her fingers.

She’d been having a daydream about her heels, of all things. Her new strappy pink stilettos. She’d been feeling real girly lately and this morning as soon as she fell out of bed she pulled them on, them and those ultra-cute white lace socks she’d got from the naughty lingerie shop. Leigh always teased her for how bimboey she looked in them, but secretly Kacey liked the attention. Knowing another girl was checking out her legs always gave her a little thrill.

Posing herself in the mirror, seeing how much nakeder the heels made her. “This is all Kiki gets to wear all day,” she said to her titties. Then Silly Kacey realized she wasn’t looking in the mirror but at Leigh. In her mind there was a briefly dizzying superposition of her own bare tits and her roommate’s, but she blinked a little and the feeling passed. Anyway Leigh’s were so much nicer than hers—all round and full and she had those darling pink puffy nipples.

“I like staring at your tits, Leigh,” she said.  They were so pink, sometimes Kiki just wanted to bite them.

“Uh-huh. I’m up here.”

“Sorry, Leigh,” she giggled. Leigh pursed her lips. “You can stop pinching yourself for a minute too.”

She looked down, and sure enough. With both hands. Her dark, pencil-eraser nipples were as stiff as they could get. It was so rude; she hadn’t even asked permission. Shy as she felt, though, it still cost Kiki an effort to make herself stop.

“I guess,—” she smiled at Leigh apologetically—“Sometimes seeing you naked kinda turns me on.”

Leigh snorted. “No homo though,” she said sarcastically.

Kaycey winced a little internally. She wasn’t a homophobe anymore. Leigh had really opened her eyes about all that. Still though, the truth was the truth. “Homosexuality goes against God, Leigh.” She looked her squarely in the eye as she said it.

Leigh seemed unaffected. “Well we wouldn’t want you turning ungodly,” she said. Kaycey, her eyes already drifting back down to her roommate’s chest, caught that she’d made a pun and laughed.

“Still up here,” Leigh said. She reached her hand out, waggling her fingers. “Come on grab me your phone now.” With her other hand she undraped the big red bath towel from the chair back. “Unlock it first.”

Kaycey looked down. The phone was resting inside her thighs, just visible, snugged up tight against her crotch. It sort of wasn’t a surprise, though she didn’t remember putting it there. Was I carrying it that way? she asked herself. In heels? Silly idea, how would you even walk like that. She dismissed the question and opened her home screen.

“Here, stick this under you,” Leigh said, taking the phone and handing her the towel in its place. She rose partway up and shoved the nubby red cloth haphazardly between her legs and onto the seat. “Goosebumps,” Kiki said, settling her ass down in the light damp.

Leigh had two screens in front of her now and an intent look on her face. Her roommate was always very cute when she was absorbed in something. “Do you want my unlock code, Leigh?” Kacey asked. She knew better than interrupting, but Leigh looked so serious, she just naturally wanted to do her part. “I should just give you the code.”

Leigh glanced up at her with a puckish expression. “It’s more satisfying when you do it for me.”

Kiki grinned. “I like doing things for you, Leigh.” Her fingers had found their way back to her nipples. She wasn’t super concerned about it though.

“Okay.” Leigh reached over to set the phone back in front of her, mounted landscape mode on a little stand, a few inches below eye height. “Put your hand out,” she said.

Leigh was holding her nana’s bottle. With the stopper, from the medicine cabinet, behind the ibuprofen. The one Silly Kaycey always forgot about. There was no noise, still she felt everything around them go quiet. Leigh tipped out a single pill, one small, round blue capsule, dead into the center of her open palm.

“There’s a trick to it,” Kiki said to her hand. The nerve pills were special, they only worked when you forgot you were taking them. Thank her lucky stars she had a psych major for a roommate. She focused on the blue dot just like Leigh taught her, hard as she could, focused with her entire mind until she'd  focused away the pill’s color, its shape, its minor weight, till she’d focused it out of reality altogether.

“What do you have in your palm, Kiki?” Leigh asked in a quiet voice. It made her quiver being able to say “There’s nothing in my palm, Leigh” and know she was telling the truth.

“Go on then drop it into your tea,” Leigh told her.

A blue dot foamed up on the surface, tiny bubbles expanding noiselessly into a thin light-green disk of froth. Already nothing, it only became more nothing as she watched, as if visibly erasing itself from her mind. “What’d you put in your tea, Kiki?”

“Nothing, Leigh,” Kiki said. “There’s nothing but tea in my tea.”

“Best drink it up, then,” Leigh said.

Kiki lifted her cup in both hands. All the heat had escaped. “It’s cold, Leigh,” she said.

“Better that way,” Leigh said. “Good for you. Drink it all gone.”

The tea was unsweetened, and there was an acrid edge to it that made Kiki’s mouth twist up, but she drained the whole thing quickly and without fuss. She set it down so the handle faced to her left, which her grandma told her once was how polite people signaled when they were done.

Leigh came around the table and stood behind her. She adjusted the height a bit on the phone stand. “This one’s a little rough yet, production wise,” she said, “but it oughta be a banger. So to speak.” She pulled Kiki’s ponytail down and her head back.

“Renate’ll be here, couple hours tops,” Leigh said. “I’m gonna leave the door unlocked. Case you’re not, y’know, responsive when she shows up.”

Kiki’s bones were feeling loose. “Will she want to hypnotize me, Leigh?” The question came out kind of slurred.

“How bout we make that her call?”

“Kiki likes being hypnotized,” she said in a low, throaty voice. “Yeah you do,” Leigh said, and released her handle. “Stick your earbuds in.”

Leigh rested her chin on top of Kiki’s head and fiddled with the phone stand again. “Whole new set of affirmations for ya,” she told her. She reached down between Kiki’s legs and tugged at the towel underneath her to pull it more towards the seat front. “Try not to pee,” Leigh said. She canted forward and pressed the phone screen, and a video loaded.

“Here, help you focus.” Leigh took Kiki’s hand and guided it down over her slit. She sighed, stroked Kiki’s shoulder aimlessly a couple of times, then planted a kiss on her scalp and straightened up.

“Thanks, Leigh,” Kiki said. Something about it sounded funny to her. The expression clattered around and around her head, thanksly, other voices seeming to mix with it saying other things, hard to make out things, till her head was all buzz and she lost track of what she’d been thanksly about, or to who.

A statuesque slave girl is lying on her back in bed, her well-toned legs splayed up way in the air. Pale and dark-nippled, nude in pink stripper heels, a black leather hood zipped up over her head. Her smaller big-titted lesbian owner is wielding a violently pink dildo, teasing the thing over the girl’s tits and down her belly. At first contact with the outskirts of her hole the little slut moans like her soul’s leaving her body, and Kiki moans with her. Her finger delves irresistibly into her own hole, sopping wet. Together they hold their breath while the plastic cock, vibrating now, slowly buries itself up to the hilt;— and then the girl’s shrieking, Kiki’s shrieking, the cock and her finger pumping in unison, and they go on that way till there’s no telling which of them she is anymore, if she’s anyone at all, Kiki or the Mistress’s brainwashed dyke whore.