Maggie wasn't thinking about anything.
Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone.
She just listened to the soft, emotionless voice, and watched the landscape as it drifted past. She felt numb inside, detached from her surroundings...nothing felt real anymore, and although she heard the voice speaking to her, she didn't react at all.
It was all just too big to take in. She'd trusted this man with her life, with her mind, with her soul, and to find this out... She couldn't think about it. Her mind veered away from the concept. She just listened to him as they drove, letting the words drift through her ears while trying not to let her mind think about their implications.
"It started back in '82," Burke said. "I was a college student back then, but I wasn't a very good one. That wasn't due to any lack of intelligence on my part, you understand. I was very smart about a lot of things. Unfortunately, staying off drugs wasn't one of them.
"I was connected to a lot of the right people on campus, and it was an easy step to move from using drugs to selling them. I made a hell of a living at it, and if my grades suffered, who cared? I made more in one night selling coke and speed to college students than most psych grads made in a week. I kept taking classes-there were a few things that interested me, mostly chemistry and a couple of psych courses-but for the most part, my days consisted of going from party to party, house to house, with baggies of weed and balls of hash and leaving with wallets full of money.
"The chem classes were what got it all started, I guess. I was always looking for ways to increase the potency of the stuff I was selling. I'd find new stuff to cut the pure drugs with that was cheap, but that made the high more intense. Helped me stretch the pure stuff that much further, for that much more money. It wasn't the safest thing to do, but I wasn't trying the new drug out myself. I was giving it to some kid and watching him to see if his eyes bled or he puked up his guts." He paused. "I think you can probably tell by this point that I wasn't a very nice person by then.
"Anyhow, one night in '85 I was at a frat party, mostly providing dope to frat boys, when I found a girl who wanted something a little stronger. I'd been working on a mix of cocaine and barbiturates, with some other stuff thrown in, so I gave her a shot. She sniffed it up, and then she sort of went...blank. Her eyes rolled back up into the back of her head, so that only the whites showed, and she just sat there, not moving.
"I kinda freaked. Asked her if she was alright, if she could hear me. She said yes, but in this distant, vague tone. Like I was bypassing her brain. Funny, but seventeen years later, and I can still hear that voice in my head as clear as a bell. I'd taken some psych courses, like I said, and some of the hypnosis demonstrations had stuck with me, so I kind of had a clue as to what I'd stumbled into. I did some standard tests, had her raise her arms, forget her name, that kind of thing...after a few minutes, I was pretty sure that she was in a deep trance.
"So I had sex with her. Nobody noticed-it was a frat party. A guy takes a girl to a room, she looks a little out of it, hey-who's not doing that? Afterwards, I tested some post-hyps... mostly that she wouldn't remember the sex, that she'd want more of the drug, that she'd tell any pretty friends she had about the stuff.
"Then I went into prostitution. Nice little side business to my drug deals-just give the girl a dose of the blow, and suddenly, I've got a nice little sex kitten for the night. In the morning, they don't remember a thing-sure, they wonder why they're sore, and maybe it nags at them, but life goes on. I get all the money they collect from turning tricks, and life goes on for me, too. Once or twice, a girl woke up in the cells wondering how she'd gotten there and why she was under arrest for solicitation, but that wasn't my problem. They all had rich parents, they could buy themselves out of it, and my name was never mentioned. They couldn't mention it. They didn't remember it.
"That lasted me a long time...probably until about '92. I used the time and the money to study hypnosis, to refine the drugs...I'd gotten good enough that I didn't need the drug at all anymore. I could just use my eyes and my voice, and women would go under for me. I'd invented variations on the drug; I was selling guaranteed aphrodisiacs to college boys who wanted their girlfriends to put out, I was selling term papers soaked in a mild euphoric that made the professors love what they were reading, I had three girls whose brains I'd burned out permanently that couldn't think past a fifth-grade level and thought my dick tasted like cherries. I thought I was brilliant. Real 'King of the World' type stuff.
