Antoine held the door open. Rebecca entered just ahead of me, my hand held lightly on the small of her back. Everyone in the little room looked up from their tables at our entrance.
We had come out for a Sunday afternoon lunch. Desert Springs, the only town close to us, had only one small diner just off the main highway. This was a homey place that served good food with slow service and plenty of conversation.
All though I had lived outside of Desert Springs for several years now I did not know anyone who lived in the town. No one who lived in the town knew me, but they all knew of me. My face was rather distinguished, though I was not considered a handsome man, I kept an upright posture, and I looked slightly out of place in my dress and manners. It wasn’t just me, Antoine was even an odder sight than I was to the local eyes, and even Rebecca caught some stares, though I think with her it was more the eyes of lust than curiosity that fell on her.
I enjoyed keeping myself anonymous, and until a few months prior to this occasion had never ventured into Desert Springs. However, after my beloved Rebecca had come to live with me I began to change. She enjoyed getting out and seeing the world as young girls her age were want to do, and so I obliged her by taking her into town for a diner once or twice a month.
Recently I had started taking Rebecca out more frequently. Our relationship had progressed to the point of real love, and I enjoyed pleasing her in anyway I could. I also had some ulterior motives for coming to Desert Springs on this Sunday afternoon.
For one Rebecca wanted to make friends with the locals, and in an effort to do this was planning a Halloween party at my home in the desert. I had at first discouraged her from doing this, but in the end as always I relented. If she was successful in inviting some of the locals out to my home it would provide me with an opportunity to meet them, and also further my work at the same time.
My mind control laser, now free from all strings formerly attached to it by my corporate sponsor, had progressed to the point where I was starting to seek out live test subjects. This small community would prove the perfect spot for testing the power of my invention, and the people living in Desert Springs were unknowingly about to become a part of a mind control experiment of staggering proportions.
My third reason for venturing out to the Desert Springs diner that Sunday had to do with my servant Antoine. He had been a once brilliant scientist who had helped me in the initial stages of my laser development. After becoming more of an adversary than a comrade I had been forced to perform my first mind control experiment on him with disturbing results. He was no longer a foe, but also was no longer a brilliant scientist. Instead, after the laser had been used on his mind, he had become my servant.
Recently Antoine had been developing some violent, nearly uncontrollable tendencies that alarmed me and frightened my beloved Rebecca. I still needed Antoine, and so I would have to keep him on with me, and I would have to keep him under my control. Though I could still command him, this effort was requiring increasing struggle on my part.
As in many aspects of my new life with Rebecca it had been her who had come up with an idea that I was hopeful just might work to subdue Antoine’s increasing disrespect. Her idea was simple and went to the heart of the matter. Antoine needed to get laid.
After all, the big hulking servant was a man, and a younger man than I. He was now dim witted but not entirely with out mental faculties. Rebecca and I had a healthy sex life, and Antoine was aware of this. My carnal experience was also enhanced by the fact that not only had Rebecca been a beautiful and successful experiment, but that same experiment had also been performed on her sister Remy, and now I frequently enjoyed having both girls in my bed.
“May I help you all?” the waitress asked us after Rebecca had found a window seat she liked and the three of us had taken our places.
“I’ll have your chicken fried steak. That’s what we got last time and it was out of this world!” Rebecca exclaimed with her general good humor.
“Now don’t let yourself get fat, my dear,” I chided her.
“Oh Pierre, you’re giving me too much of a work out for that to ever happen. If you know what I mean?” Rebecca said with a laugh.
I placed my order and ordered for Antoine as well. The waitress gave me a suspicious side ways glance as she walked away writing down the orders. If she only knew what I had planned for the little town of Desert Springs she might have done more than just give me a stare.
“Darling,” Rebecca said taking my arm. “Those girls over there at the juke box I sometimes see at the store when I’m buying groceries for us. They seem like nice people. I want to go over and ask them to my party on Thursday night.”
“Very well, do as you think best, sweetheart,” I replied calmly looking about the room at all the people. Yes, what good subjects they would make for me!
So Rebecca got up and went to talk with her friends, leaving Antoine and I alone at the table awaiting our order.
“See any nice looking young ladies in here, Antoine?” I asked.
“No, I don’t,” came my servants grim reply.
“Well how about those girls over there?” I asked pointing at two girls eating hot fudge sundaes at the counter.
“They’re fat!” Antoine said in a raised voice. And he was right they were.
“Well come now, don’t be too picky old boy,” I told him, trying to ignore his outburst because they were becoming more frequent.
“You can do better than that, Dr. Koenig,” Antoine said, lowering his voice and looking down at the table. He was right, I could do better than that, but in Desert Springs we might have rather slim pickings when it came to attractive young females.
“Well, look at the young woman in the corner over there. She’s very attractive,” I said, talking to Antoine as if he were a child. In a way that’s what he was, a two hundred and sixty pound child.
“She’s much older than me. I want some one young and soft,” Antoine said, and I shuddered to think what the big lummox would do with someone young and soft, but pushed the thought to the back of my mind as I continued to peruse the restaurant.
“Well now Antoine, I can not change a person’s appearance, or make them younger. I can only change their mind. This is a powerful tool, but you may have to accept the fact we are living in a rather small community, and therefore our quantity of young unattached females is rather small.”
“But you have Miss Rebecca and Miss Remy, Doctor,” Antoine reminded me in his deep, sluggish voice.
“That’s altogether different,” I answered not wanting to discuss my female companions with my servant.
The waitress came back to our table and poured coffee for the two of us. Antoine looked down at his cup, and was brooding over his fate. I politely thanked the waitress and she gave me that side ways stare again, as if she could read my mind and knew all of what I was planning for the little town of Desert Springs.
Some might think me a mad man, and I suppose I was going a bit mad with my power just then. Controlling another persons mind is really the ultimate power. As I looked out the window of the restaurant I saw two cars backing out from their parking slots simultaneously and almost hit each other, each backing into the other, both drivers blaring on their horns, neither wanting to yield. Obscene gestures were exchanged and there was shouting out the car windows.
The world was full of hate and violence, and if you say any differently I would tell you that you have never really lived or are too young to know any better. Yet I thought I might be able to change all of that. Even if just on the small scale of Desert Springs I was determined to try.
But my plans were long range, and this chapter will not attempt to cover all of what I did to the people of Desert Springs.
Rebecca returned from her visit with her friends over at the juke box. I saw at once her face was long, and the disappointment evident in her.
“What’s the matter, darling?” I asked her.
“No one wants to come to my Halloween party, Pierre.”
“Oh well why not, my dear?”
“Something about our place being spooky! How silly can these people be?”
“Well isn’t that what Halloween is all about – to be spooky?”
“No,” she said, and I think she had to hold back the tears. “They meant our house is spooky all the time.”
“Oh my goodness! Why on earth?”
“That’s all right,” Rebecca said snuggling up close to me in the booth. “It’ll just be the three of us on Halloween, and we’ll have a good time all by ourselves.”
“There are four of us, Rebecca. Don’t forget Antoine,” I said looking over at my servant as he held his head down to the table still in a funk over not finding Miss America in the small roadside dinner.
The dinner was served by the wary waitress. We were a glum group as we ate our dinner. I tried to keep some conversation going but was mostly unsuccessful.
“I’m sorry if I let you down,” Rebecca said, picking at her main course.
“You have never let me down, my love,” I reassured her. “My plans for this village are perhaps best served outside the festivities of a Halloween party. Don’t worry, I will get to them soon enough.”
“I just want us to have a good Halloween and for Antoine to finally get laid,” Rebecca said and I laughed at her words, but more at the way she said them.
“Why don’t we have one of those sundaes for dessert? I’m sure the roguish food will make us all feel in higher spirits.”
*****
So we had the sundaes, but they didn’t work. We returned home about a half hour after sunset, and Rebecca and Antoine were still feeling poorly. The old house seemed like a heaven to me, but at times I think was more like a prison to my beloved Rebecca.
