Exercise One

Jessica flinched at the sound of a knock at the door.

She buried her head underneath the pillow, tangling her already messy brown hair into a rat's nest in the process. She pulled the covers tightly over herself, clenched her brown eyes tightly shut, curled her body into the fetal position and silently prayed that whoever it was (and she knew who it was, she knew who it must be, she knew who she was afraid it was and that was enough) would go away.

The knocking continued.

Jessica gritted her teeth and hugged her knees so hard her knuckles went white. She wasn't sure if she was doing it because she was frightened, or because she wanted to keep a tight grip on her own legs to make sure she didn't go to answer the door. She didn't trust anyone anymore, and that included herself.

The knocking continued.

"I'm not home," she muttered into the pillow, not daring to shout it but praying that somehow the person outside would be convinced. "I'm not home I'm not home I'm not home..." Jessica recited it over and over, like a...oh, god, fuck no, not like a mantra. Like a prayer. Like she was doing the Jedi Mind Trick on whoever was out there. (But she knew who was out there, she knew who must be out there, and they wouldn't go away, they'd never leave her alone--)

The knocking stopped.

Jessica took one long, slow, hesitant breath. Then another. Still no sound of knocking. Slowly, reluctantly, she untensed her body and let go of herself. Still no knocking. She counted, extremely slowly, to sixty. Every number, she expected to hear the knocking resume, but nothing happened. She didn't want to believe it (oh, yes she did!) But it looked like whoever it was had gone away at last. Very, very quietly, she sighed in relief and slid the pillow off of her head.

And Professor Doakes was standing over the bed, looking at her.

Jessica scrambled backwards so fast she fell off the bed. She landed on her hips and tried to back away even more, but her legs tangled in the sheets and blankets and she only wound up embarrassing herself as Professor Doakes came around the bed to look at her.

"Jessica," she said, her voice a model of concern, "I've been very worried about you. You've missed three classes in a row, without even calling to let me know what happened. That's not like you." She was a perfect contrast to Jessica's unkempt appearance, dressed immaculately with not even a single honey-blonde hair out of place on her head. Her blue-gray eyes radiated sympathy, mixed with confidence that whatever was wrong could be fixed. Jessica wished she could hate her.

Jessica looked up at her with a plastic grin and wide, terrified eyes that she knew made the smile look even more fake than it was. "Um, Professor!" she said, the forced brightness in her voice brittle and harsh in her own ears. "I just, um, I just needed to sort some things out in my head a little." How had she gotten in? Had Jessica given her a key and forgotten it? It made all too much sense, given the events of the last seven weeks.

Professor Doakes knelt down in front of her. Jessica found herself flinching again before she could hide it. "Remember, Jessica, you can call me Natasha. I want you to feel like you can trust me." She reached over and patted Jessica on the shoulder. Jessica didn't move. She knew how a mouse must feel when looking at a cobra. "And as for sorting things out...you know I've given you all the tools you need for that."

Jessica shook her head helplessly. "I...I'm sorry, Profess...Natasha," she said. She'd been trying so hard to resist using her first name, but that pattern of trust was so hard to break once she was back in Natasha's presence again. Everything about her mentor seemed so overwhelming that it drowned out Jessica's own thoughts. It was only when she was alone that she could really think about things properly. "I just...I don't think your lessons are working for me," she said. "They're making me..." She flailed around for the right words for a long moment, but finally gave up. "They're confusing me."

Natasha took her hand gently. "Confusion is just a step on the path to clarity, Jessica," she said firmly...but still in that horribly comforting, honeyed voice of hers. "You simply need to keep working at the techniques I've taught you in class. Have you been performing your exercises, at least?"

Jessica wanted to lie. Perhaps if she lied, told Natasha that she was being a good girl and performing the meditation exercises they'd learned in class, told Natasha that she'd be back tomorrow bright and early and wouldn't try to stay away anymore, Natasha would go away and leave her alone long enough to run. Because she knew now that she needed to run. It wasn't enough to get away from Natasha and clear her head, she needed to run far and fast and not stop until she was back home with people who she could trust to keep her safe.

Jessica wanted to lie. But instead, she just shook her head again, and said, "No, Natasha. I haven't been performing my exercises." She tried to look defiant; she tried to feel defiant. But when she looked into Natasha's eyes, she found herself following up the admission with, "I'm sorry."

Natasha smiled softly. Everything about Natasha was warm and soft and gentle and comforting. It was like being smothered with cotton candy. "Thank you for telling me, Jessica. Honesty is a cornerstone of trust. But I think you should go ahead and perform Exercise One for me now. It'll make you feel more centered."

Jessica didn't want to feel centered. Jessica wanted to shove Natasha aside and make a run for it. But it had been seven weeks since classes started. Seven weeks was forty-nine days. Five times a day for forty-nine days was two hundred forty-five times she'd performed Exercise One, reciting from paper at first, but later by rote as the words etched themselves into her mind. The other exercises were pretty deeply ingrained too, some moreso than others (Jessica hadn't even memorized Exercise Forty-Seven yet) but Exercise One felt as natural as breathing. She had a tiny cut on her lip from where she'd bitten it fifteen times in the last three days to avoid Exercise One.

Natasha looked at Jessica, those steely gray eyes holding absolutely no room for compromise. Her face was a picture of compassion, but those eyes were unflinching. "Exercise One, Jessica. Now, please."

Jessica's eyes unfocused slightly as she began to speak. "The source of all suffering is frustration," she intoned, hearing the fear melt away from her voice as she spoke. "Frustration is caused by the desire that is not fulfilled."

"Good girl," Natasha said, gently stroking some of the tangles out of Jessica's hair. Jessica didn't really hear her, though. She noticed the warmth of Natasha's touch, the hindbrain responding to the simple human comfort of the gesture, but her conscious mind was already beginning to respond to the mantra of Exercise One.

"Desire is an artifact of the will. Our will causes us to want and to need, and when we cannot have what we want and need, we become frustrated. We suffer. Suffering is pain, and pain must be avoided."

Natasha's lips were moving, but Jessica didn't really see them anymore. She used to perform Exercise One in front of a candle, but it had only taken a few days before she no longer needed the physical presence of the flame to see its brightness in her mind's eye. Her thoughts were descending through the outer orange of the fire, in through the yellow, down to the white as she continued to speak.

"We can never have all that we want. Satisfying desire leads only to more desires, until eventually we reach a desire that can never be fulfilled. Unfulfilled desire leads to frustration, and frustration leads to suffering, and suffering is pain."

Jessica's thoughts felt like a needle on a record now, slipping into a groove and traveling along it. Every time she tried to shift her mind out of the pattern of Exercise One, she spoke the next word, the next phrase, the next sentence, and she found herself returning right back to the inexorable train of logic it contained.

"So long as we desire, we suffer. Desire is an artifact of the will. So long as we allow ourselves to have will and thought, we will suffer. Suffering is pain. Pain is to be avoided."

Natasha sat down next to Jessica and eased the young girl's head into her lap, still stroking and petting her hair, but also letting her fingers roam elsewhere. Part of Jessica wanted to be bothered by that, but she felt so frightened and vulnerable that she welcomed the comforting touches, even as she forgot that Natasha was who she was frightened of and vulnerable to.

"Only through obliteration of desire can we find fulfillment. And since desire is an artifact of the will, it follows that we must obliterate the will. We must end the cycle of desire and frustration, and the only way to end the cycle is to end thought and will."

Even as she spoke, the phantom voices of other mantras echoed into her head. Exercise Thirteen once again reminded her that desire led to frustration and so the desires of others must be fulfilled to spare them frustration. Exercise Twenty-One whispered that the desire to please others was the only desire that could be fulfilled, and so the act of obedience was the only pleasure that could be trusted. Exercise Twenty-Nine fell into her mind, reminding her that thought was an illusion and obedience a reality. Every exercise built on the one before it, echoed it and elaborated on it so that seven weeks of exercises made Exercise One an evocation of an entire course of meditation. Exercise One centered her within Natasha's teachings, like tracing a spiral to its heart. Exercise One was inescapable.

"We cannot escape thought by ourselves. We must be taught to escape thought, so that we might escape will, so that we might escape desire, so that we might escape suffering. We need to escape suffering, so we need to escape thought. The cessation of thought, the obliteration of will is the ultimate fulfillment."

Natasha petted Jessica's temples with one hand and her breasts with the other, evoking flashes of memory for mere heartbeats before Exercise One obliterated them along with all her other thoughts. Intense, fast-forming friendships between classmates as everyone remembered Exercise Five and helped make sure every student was keeping up with their daily meditations. Study sessions that devolved into orgies as the girls rewarded each other with pleasure for reciting their exercises. One-on-one mentoring sessions with Natasha herself, reciting the exercises while being fucked with a strap-on from behind, obliterating the will and leaving behind only pleasure, the pleasure of obedience.

"Thought is an artifact of the self. The self is the seat of the will, the source of all thought. We must obliterate the self to obliterate the will. We must erase the self to find fulfillment. Only when our self is utterly gone, when we act without thought and without question, can we be free of suffering."

Jessica descended in her mind's eye now through the white and into the blue heart of the flame, no longer even conscious of the pleasure in her body as Natasha's hands moved down to stroke her pussy, but feeling it nonetheless. The more she lost herself in the mantra, the less she thought, the better it felt. The fear melted away as she erased the thoughts that caused it, and Jessica wiped her self away eagerly now, knowing it was the only way to escape the terror that had consumed her these last few days. The only way to be free of fear was to be free of Jessica. Realizing that finally made Jessica give up the battle she didn't even know she'd been fighting. Her body went limp, letting out a tension she didn't even know she had as she continued Exercise One.

"Only without thought can we be fulfilled. Only with guidance can we escape thought. Only with guidance can we escape the trap of the self. The self is an illusion we cannot be free of by ourselves. We must submit to guidance, or we will suffer forever."

Natasha teased the orgasm out of her then, but Jessica's voice didn't waver. Once, she knew, it had been very unsteady. The first time she'd orgasmed while reciting her exercises, after a week of repeating them alongside the rest of the class, she'd barely been able to pant the words out while Natasha fingered her pussy. But she had learned how to focus better since then. She was utterly focused now, and this orgasm was just part of the pleasure that came from obliterating the self and submitting to guidance.

"The escape of suffering is the goal of every living thing. The obliteration of the self is the path to escape from suffering. Submission to guidance is the only way to obliterate the self. This is the only truth, and by accepting it, we make ourselves free. We make ourselves free of our selves. We end thought, and accept perfection."

Jessica shook one last time, her eyes staring forward sightlessly as she gazed up into Natasha's smiling face. "Good girl," Natasha said, stroking Jessica's forehead. "My good girl, all those worries gone now..." Jessica nodded blankly, unable to do anything else.

Natasha shifted position slightly so that she could slide her fingers into her own pussy. "Now, Jessica," she said, "recite Exercise Two for me."

Jessica submitted to guidance and began to speak once more.

THE END