Author's note: This is just a little idea that occurred to me. No significance beyond that.
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Hala kicked her door shut behind her, and managed to place her bag and keys on her table before she let herself collapse onto her couch.
She rubbed her temples with one hand. Jesus, she needed about half a bottle of wine, an instant meal (or even a bag of chips, if microwaving was going to be too much trouble, which, ya know...) and then twice as much sleep as she was going to get.
Taking a deep breath, she levered herself upright before she congealed onto the couch, then frowned and rubbed her temples again. Something was making her head feel funny. And she felt warm. Not flushed, exactly, but warm-and-relaxed warm. She tried to stand, and felt dizzy. She took a deep breath, and tried again.
She woke up to her alarm, lying in muddled confusion for a good ten seconds before she snapped into proper consciousness and grabbed at her watch to turn the bloody thing off.
She was in her pyjamas, in bed, and it was time to get ready for work. She stared at herself in astonishment, then tried to recall the previous night.
Nothing.
She didn't feel as though she had managed to get any wine into her at all, so she could hardly blame being drunk. Just how tired had she been?
But she felt strangely relaxed.
She scrambled out of bed, then winced as bits of her twinged. She felt a bit odd, but not unpleasantly so. She shook her head, then sniffed herself cautiously.
Shower. Need a shower.
She was halfway to the bathroom when she staggered and nearly fell as her mind was suddenly full of a vivid, detailed image of a woman—herself—seen from above, naked, hogtied, on her back, gagged, cunt obscenely visible, nipples clamped.
Hala gasped, reeled, and managed to get to the doorway before she fell. What the fuck had that been about? She frantically tried to think, but nothing else came to her. On suddenly shaky legs, she took a step into the bathroom.
She felt herself suspended off the ground. She was naked but her body was criss-crossed and wrapped by ropes that held her up. Her arms were folded uncomfortably behind her, one leg bent sharply backwards, her breasts wrapped at the base so they were hard and swollen with blood, and her head was pulled sharply backwards by her hair, which seemed to be connected to a thick hook in her arse, so every time she moved her head, she fucked herself in the arse. A rope pressed hard between her cunt lips and against her clit, and she had just enough movement to rub along it, which made the hook in her arse move. She was wriggling, trying desperately to fuck herself until she came.
Her legs buckled, but she managed to turn her fall into a controlled collapse so she ended up sprawled but unhurt on the bathroom floor, heart hammering in her chest, pussy creaming and nipples tight.
Oh, Jesus, what the fuck? *What the actual fuck?*
She crawled to the bath, to grab the edge for more support.
What was...
She desperately bit down on her exclamation. What was the right order, now...
"Have to remember to grab coffee on the way into work," she said out loud. "So that's two cappucinos, a latte, and a double shot long black, no sugar."
She held onto the edge of the bath, heart hammering in her chest, for nearly a minute.
Her phone rang. It was not her usual ring, but it sent a message her legs did not ignore.
Stumbling and reeling, she managed to propel herself off the floor, out of the bathroom, and to where her phone was, amazingly, on charge next to her bed.
"Hala."
She listened.
"I haven't forgotten. Two cappucinos, a latte, and a double shot long black, no sugar."
Whatever the voice on the other end said made her legs fold until she was sitting on the edge of the bed, when her legs stopped obeying her.
She very carefully put her phone on the bed, clasped her hands between her knees, then tried to control her shaking.
###
The security team took ten minutes, and let themselves in with no fuss, announcement, or damage to her door.
The security chief—Jordan, she remembered his name was. She had seen him once or twice, and he had a hard, fiercely competent face it was hard to forget—nodded at her, then gave flickering hand signals to his team. They were all dressed in regulation suits, carrying regulation briefcases. The woman wore low high heels. Their suits were so well-tailored that Hala could not see any bulges that might suggest weapons.
"Are you ready, Hala?"
Whatever had stopped Hala's legs working, let them move again.
She meekly stood up. She meekly put her hands behind her back for the cuffs. She shuddered as the hood was placed over her head, but did not try to flinch away. She was not expecting the collar to be closed around her neck, or to have a moment of disorientation before the collar and hood were removed in a secure medical room.
###
"What prompted you to use your security phrase?"
Hala squirmed in embarrassment, but the doctor waited patiently for her, with an expression that was not unkind but was unrelenting.
"I had... visions," she said, haltingly.
The doctor's expression said quite clearly that Hala was expected to be precise.
Hala blushed scarlet, and looked away. "I saw myself in bondage," she muttered. "Then the second one, I felt myself in bondage, with... Um..."
"Have you ever experienced any BDSM situation in your real life?"
"No!" Hala shook her head violently.
"Have you ever had any desires, or fantasies about BDSM?"
"No!"
"But the second vision felt real?"
"Yes," Hala whispered.
The doctor nodded. "I am going to need you to describe the second vision for me in detail," she said. "You will probably experience sexual arousal while reliving it, as a consequence of whatever programming or indoctrination you have undergone. You need to understand that it is a programmed response, not a natural response. Do you understand?"
Hala thought back to speaking her safety phrase, then to how helplessly she had sat, limbs locked in place, while waiting for the security team. She had never felt more terrified than then, while locked inside her own head.
"Yes," she said in a low voice.
"Then begin," the doctor said.
Hala managed to fix her gaze on a minute scratch in the table's surface. "I was hanging off the ground," she began. "I had ropes all around my torso and arms and legs. I was upright, and my arms were tied up behind me..." She hesitantly held her arms behind her back, to illustrate.
She felt a flush of arousal that made her cheeks burn first with lust, then with shame. She trembled, feeling a sudden tightness in her body, throb in her groin and tingling in her breasts. She barely managed to suppress a gasp. The doctor had been right.
Hala struggled to catch her breath, then forced herself to continue. "My left leg was straight down, my right was tied up behind me. There were ropes around my breasts." She had to stop for a second to struggle for breath. Her face was burning. Her breasts were remembering the sensation of being engorged with blood. Her nipples were tight. She was only wearing her pyjama top still, so her nipples were screaming their presence.
"I had a rope... Um... Over my, uh, vulva. It was tight. And there was a metal hook in my... my anus. I think the hook was tied to my hair."
Hala did not even notice that she was still holding her arms behind her back, nor that she was frantically rubbing her thighs together, trying to get the cotton of her pyjama pants to rub over her clit.
"I was... I was..."
She could no longer see the doctor. She was not seeing anything except the memory. She was gasping for air, her hips rocking urgently in the chair.
The doctor pressed a switch.
Hala felt as though she had been dropped into ice-cold water. The shock was so great she yelped and jumped, then froze in horrified embarrassment as she realised what she had been doing.
The doctor was writing some notes in what seemed like shorthand, head down.
Hala whipped her arms around in front of her and clamped her hands between her thighs. Her face was burning and her body would not stop shaking.
"We discovered the equipment in your apartment," the doctor said. "It was not capable of delivering this amount of conditioning in just one night, so you must have had several nights, or at least one session elsewhere."
Hala froze in horror.
The doctor looked up at her. "How has your social life been lately?"
Hala shook her head. "I've been going from work to home, then back to work, every day for a week," she said, the admission sounding pathetic to her own ears. "I went out with the girls on Saturday, but I had to leave early because I was feeling unwell. I was in bed sick all Sunday, and I've been getting over it still. I've been staying at home reading."
The doctor gave her an inscrutable look. "What have you been reading?"
"I've been going through Agatha Christie again," Hala said, instantly.
"Have you?" the doctor asked.
"Yes, I've been..." Hala's answer tailed off. She stared at the doctor. The words had marched out of her mouth, but she couldn't remember deciding to say them. She couldn't remember having done the reading. Oh, she could remember Agatha Christie, and hold up a discussion of any of her books. But she hadn't read any for months. But she hadn't noticed that until the doctor challenged her.
"We believe," the doctor said, quietly, "that you met someone on Saturday night who began the process of your induction."
Hala could only stare at the doctor open-mouthed.
"You spent all Sunday in your apartment," the doctor continued remorselessly, "yet you were not alone. We have security footage to confirm that at 5am on Sunday morning, you returned home with a man. An hour later, tradesmen arrived carrying large boxes. They left three hours later, being careful not to be noticed. The building's normal monitoring systems all suffered glitches during this period, and detected no movement at all. Only our systems remained online."
Hala felt panic threatening to choke her.
"Saturday night, plus Sunday, plus three nightly sessions, would be about right for the level of induction you appear to be displaying."
Tears blurred Hala's vision.
