The alarm went off, blaring out a loud buzz instead of its usual music, and Jay opened an eye blearily and switched it off. 8:00 AM, he thought. Not early, but too early for his tastes. Why had he turned it on, anyway? It was Saturday...wasn't it? Friday night seemed a little hazy now, which probably meant he'd enjoyed himself. He certainly wished he remembered it a little better, though. Coffee and a look at the calendar would help. He fumbled around for his glasses, found them and sat up. Rubbing his eyes a little, he put them on. Vaguely, he noticed a musty scent in the room--perhaps it was time to do a little spring cleaning, he thought reproachfully as he got out of bed and padded over to the calendar.
He looked at the date, and suddenly, a flash of memory hit him. Friday night, out at the bar. A gorgeous brunette in a slinky blue dress--tall, leggy, charismatic, with big brown eyes that were absolutely to die for. He remembered her talking, remembered her being totally fascinating, remembered leaving the bar with her. He also remembered that happened a year ago.
Jay looked at the calendar again. He knew it was a year out of date. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. He tried to remember what had happened that night--anything that had happened during that whole missing year--but it was all just gone. There was just a big, blank, hole in his memory where a year's worth of time used to be. Jay didn't even know what to feel, what to think about that. It was too big to take in, at least before having some coffee.
He reached for the robe hanging from a hook on his bedroom door, and as he touched it, he saw in his mind an image of himself, totally naked. Clothes, he thought. He hadn't been allowed to wear clothes. He remembered the first time she'd told him to strip naked for him--the way he'd eagerly pulled his shirt over his head, practically panting with desire, the way that his hard cock had sprung free of his pants as he pulled them down. He'd been hot, eager, ready for sex, and somehow he'd just never wanted to put his clothes back on again...his hand slid away from the robe, and he opened the door and went out into his apartment nude.
Who was this woman? What had she done to him over the last year, what had she done to him to make him forget, where had she gone, what was her name? Jay looked over at the front door, expecting to see a pile of mail beneath the mail slot, but the floor was bare. How did he even still have the apartment? Did he still have his job, too? Had he been living a whole normal life during this missing year, and just forgotten it this morning?
Coffee. Coffee would make all of this better. He went into his cupboard, and found some Folger's. Not as good as real coffee, but coffee beans wouldn't have kept for a whole year. He poured some water into a kettle, and turned the stove on, then went to the fridge to see if he'd forgotten that he'd remembered to buy milk. Or something.
All that was in the refrigerator was a canister of sprayable whipped cream. Jay wondered briefly if that would work in coffee; then another flash of memory hit him, so vivid it was almost solid in his mind's eye. He was in the bedroom with Matilda (she had a name!), they were on the bed together, with...two other people, one man, one woman. Another couple? No. He could see them in the memory, they had the same dazed, vacant smiles on their faces that he did. Whatever Matilda had done to him, she'd done it to them, too. He was holding the whipped cream bottle (this same bottle, or one just like it?) and Matilda was directing him to spray, then lick it off. Jay remembered spraying it on Matilda's nipples, then slowly, lasciviously licking it off. She'd directed him to spray it onto the pussy of the other woman, then lick it all away, tasting her arousal mingled with the sweetness of the cream. She'd directed him to spray it onto the other man's cock, and...
The memory faded. Jay tried to summon it back up again, but it was no good. He didn't know what he'd done after that, whether he'd actually followed through on what the vision had implied. He knew he would have, though. He could feel, deep down, the knowledge that whatever hold Matilda had once had over him, it was strong enough that he would have done anything she asked, anything at all. The desire to obey was stronger than any inhibitions, any taboos. Jay suddenly realized he had an erection.
The whistle of the kettle brought him back to reality. Jay grabbed a mug from the cupboard, poured himself a cup of water, stirred in a few spoonfuls of instant coffee, and went into the living room with the drink. He looked up at the clock. 9:00 AM. He'd lost an hour, just standing in the kitchen wool-gathering while he made coffee. Still, he thought, looking at the clock again, that meant there were only twenty-three hours to go before--
He heard Matilda's voice, so clear and perfect that he half-turned, expecting to see her in the room. "You're still fighting me, Jay."
"No, Mistress," he said--only he didn't say it, it was another memory, but it was him talking. He heard his voice, sounding monotonous and empty. "I cannot fight you. It's too hard to resist, because obedience is pleasure. I was born to obey, there is nothing but obedience. I cannot resist. I can never resist. It feels too good to obey." She'd done something to his mind, hypnosis or something. That was why he couldn't remember the missing year. She'd blocked it out of his memory.
Matilda had laughed. "And it's good that you know your mantras, Jay, it shows that you're a very good boy. But I've taken you so very deep, Jay, so very blank and deep and mindless..." He remembered the predatory look in her eyes as he'd gotten a hazy, vacant look in his own. "And I know that deep down, there's a piece of your subconscious mind that doesn't want to be my slave. Can you find that piece of yourself, Jay?"
"Yes, My Lady." Jay knew that he was that piece of self-will, that little tiny part of him that still resisted. Part of him wondered if he wasn't still under Matilda's control, if this room wasn't the illusion and the real him was naked in Matilda's bedroom, talking to her...but then he took a sip of his instant coffee and grimaced. No illusion could taste that bad.
But the memory continued to unfold behind his eyes. He was hearing himself speak to her with free will for the first time in a year. "...feels good..." he was saying. "No! It feels good to have free will, too. There are pleasures beyond just physical ones, Matilda. Spiritual rewards that come from following your own will. In the end, that's more fulfilling than being a sex slave." Jay felt obscurely proud of himself for believing that.
"Alright." Jay felt his own past self's shock at hearing Matilda's capitulation. "If that's how you really feel, I won't keep you here. You can go back to your old life, back to your apartment, I'll even throw in financial security as a bonus. Consider it payment for a year of slavery. No need to worry about picking up the pieces of your shattered credit rating.
"However...should you find yourself desiring those 'physical pleasures', should you decide that being my slave is fulfillment enough, should you want to give in to your need, your desire, your lust...you'll have twenty-four hours. Anytime during that first day, you can call me, beg me, whimper and grovel and admit that you were wrong...and I'll take you back."
Jay blinked a few times. So that was it, he thought. He'd been a slave to some...pervert hypnotist. And now he was free. And apparently, he was free with a good sum of money in his bank account, too. On a whim, he decided to call his bank and get his new balance. He picked up the phone and dialed the number without even having to look it up.
"Hello?" Matilda said.
Jay hung up quickly. He should have recognized that he didn't know the phone number of the automatic teller by heart, but something in him still wasn't thinking clearly. Matilda hadn't removed all of her programming from his brain. He took another sip of terrible coffee, trying to clear his head. She was messing with him, that was all. The important thing was that he was free. He just needed to find something to do for a bit. He went over to his computer and booted it up.
Staring at the screen brought back another memory. Matilda, leaving for an evening on the town--that was the night she'd returned with April and added her to the harem. She'd left Jay sitting in front of the computer, wearing a pair of headphones. The screen had displayed nothing but an enormous swirling spiral, the headphones played a loop of her voice, whispering softly into his ears, programming him, sending him deeper into a swirl of arousal, obedience, deep hypnotic pleasure...Jay remembered the pleasure now, remembered that Matilda had conditioned him to feel the sensations of orgasm in his mind, on command. He remembered that the sound file she'd left him listening to had given him orgasms every hour, deepening his conditioning, rewarding him with pleasure, then looping around to the beginning again. By the time Matilda had returned with April, he'd been totally blank and mindless, his cock rock-hard and dribbling pre-cum. He couldn't even remember how many times the file had looped that night.
