Lost In The Echo

Dian had switched off the recording hours ago. But she didn't know how to switch off her own mind.

No, it was worse than that. She knew exactly how to switch off her own mind now. She could just go back over to her computer, open the MP3 file back up, and put her headphones back on. She knew, deep down, that it wouldn't take an hour this time or even a half hour or even a minute for that voice to wrap around her mind like a ribbon of silk, soft and smooth and yet somehow utterly unbreakable. If she only went back and listened to it again, she would stop worrying. She would stop thinking. She would stop worrying about how easy it was to stop thinking when she listened to the voice.

But she had already lost a day to it. A whole day. Today was a Saturday, sure, and one that she had already planned to spend relaxing in her dorm room and decompressing from the stress of finals, but...she remembered waking up, showering, eating breakfast, waving goodbye to Annisa and promising to cover for her if her parents called. She remembered staring at the computer, hearing that voice echoing in the back of her head, whispering to her, 'It always feels so good to listen and obey.' She remembered sleepwalking over to her desk, settling into her chair like it was a warm bath. And then suddenly it was dark and her stomach was growling and she was racing to the bathroom to pee. Dian didn't know how long she would have sat there if her bladder hadn't been full.

If only it didn't loop, Dian thought. If she could just play it for twenty minutes, a half hour, however long it actually was, it would be fine. She could listen to it and tease her pussy until she came and walk away. But it was all so seamless. There was no point to break the cycle. Once she started to listen, the opening line (she could hear it now in her head, tempting her to come back to it, whispering, 'You want to go deeper for me now...') always blended so smoothly into the flow of the recording that she never realized when it started and stopped. So it never stopped once Dian started it.

And she could start it right now. She could go back over to the computer and start the file. She knew it was a bad idea, she knew that if she started it up again she'd wake up Sunday morning naked and confused with a damp spot on the towel she always placed on her computer chair...but she could hear the voice in her head, saying, 'My voice fills you with so much pleasure. Every time you think about resisting, you find your thoughts sliding instead to just what it is you're trying to resist. Inexorable bliss. Until your resistance falls away and only the pleasure remains.'

How many times had she heard those words, these last three weeks? The recording was perhaps thirty, thirty-five minutes (Dian resisted the sudden, powerful urge to go and check) and she had listened to it...how many times? She tried to count, but every time she said a number in her head she could hear the voice right after each number saying, 'Thinking less, relaxing more,' and her brain automatically tried to count down instead of up. She gave it up as a bad job. She knew it was enough. Enough to etch the words into her mind until they played on a constant loop in the back of her head, an echo she couldn't quite stop hearing.

It wasn't so bad when Annisa was here. When Dian had another voice to focus on, something to push out that continual whisper in the back of her head that reminded her how good it felt to sink into the voice, sink into the pleasure and let everything else fade away, she could resist. But Annisa was gone. She wouldn't be back until tomorrow. Dian had never had this much free time to let the recording program her. And oh fuck, 'it's so sexy to be programmed into obedience...'

Dian realized she had lost probably five minutes just staring at her computer, remembering the silky caress of the voice in her mind and thinking about nothing. Perhaps it was for the best that Annisa wasn't here. Dian didn't want her friend to see her struggling like this, not when she had been so dismissive of the recording when they were giggling like children and daring each other to click on the link. It had seemed so silly, then, like something out of one of the stupid J-horror movies Annisa was addicted to. 'DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK UNLESS YOU CONSENT TO BEING BRAINWASHED INTO MY OBEDIENT SLAVE.' Of course she'd clicked it. Of course it hadn't done anything to her. How could someone talking to you make you their slave, unless you were already so weak-willed and pliable that you wanted it to begin with?

But even after that first time, Dian hadn't quite been able to get the voice out of her head. She found little phrases popping into her mind, caught herself hearing the word 'deep' and thinking 'deeper is better, blank is best.' She couldn't remember all of it, it was maddeningly vague, but somehow that only made it perfectly sensible when she sat back down at her computer one night while Annisa was out and played the file again. It was easier to pay attention to without Annisa distracting her. Dian found that she was able to tune out the other sounds in the dormitory very easily.

It didn't do anything to her that time, either. She didn't start taking her clothes off to listen for another two or three days, and she didn't make herself cum for another day or so after that. She never came away from any particular session feeling changed, but...she knew it was working. She knew it was making her a slave. And she also knew ('it sounds so nice, doesn't it? Laying down the burden of all that thinking, all those decisions, and just floating in the peace and pleasure of obedience...') that the thought of slavery made her cunt so wet now.

It wasn't that Dian wanted to be a slave, of course. Not really. But the recording made it sound so sexy, so joyous that Dian sometimes lost herself during lectures in a quiet daydream of kneeling. She pictured a silver collar against her bronze skin, imagined fingers curling into her long dark hair and tilting her head up to be kissed. The voice was always there, a constant whisper beneath her fantasies, telling her, 'Obeying always feels better than thinking. The more you obey, the better you feel.' Until her pen slipped from her nerveless fingers onto the floor and she realized twenty minutes had gone by without taking a single note. She was terrified of what her grades were going to look like at this rate.

But slaves didn't need to care about grades, did they? Slaves didn't need to worry about parental approval or grad school or a good career or a good husband or any of the thousand and one social pressures Dian felt all too keenly. Slaves just needed to obey. Slaves just needed to surrender to the voice, let it guide them and soothe them into blank-eyed bliss while they played with themselves and smoothed all those thoughts away with pleasure. That was the recording talking, but somehow it always made slavery sound like a promise.

But she couldn't. She shouldn't, at least. It was late, even if she'd spent so long in that thoughtless trance state that she didn't feel the least bit sleepy, she should lie down and get some rest. She should stop staring at the computer, close her eyes and let sleep push away the echo in her head for a little while. Stop thinking about playing with her dripping pussy and listening to the voice remind her that the more she obeyed, the better she felt, and the better she felt, the deeper she went, and the deeper she went, the more she obeyed, on and on and on until the constant orgasms blurred her vision and sapped her resistance...

Dian suddenly noticed that her fingers had slipped into the waistband of her panties. They were already damp, but she was teasing her labia until they were practically saturated with her arousal. She needed to find a distraction soon, something to keep the voice at bay or she knew her resistance would melt back into, ohhh, back into pleasure. 'Every time you think about resisting, you find your thoughts sliding instead to just what it is you're trying to resist. Inexorable bliss. Until your resistance falls away and only the pleasure remains.'

She had to stop, but...but she had tried. Every time she sat down at the computer, no matter how much she told herself she was going to watch a movie or play a game she still wound up clicking on the same file. She had it downloaded to her phone and her tablet, there was no escape there. Even trying to read a book only led to staring through unfocused eyes at words that refused to parse into sentences, her mind constantly looping back through the same memories over and over while her fingers teased her clit into ecstasy. She couldn't think about anything else. She couldn't think, full stop.

And now it was happening all over again. The voice was inside her head, and Dian couldn't switch it off without switching off her mind. And she couldn't switch off her mind unless she played the recording. And the recording would only make the voice in her head stronger, clearer, more deeply ingrained. She was being brainwashed. ('Brainwashing is ecstasy.') She was being hypnotized. ('Hypnosis is bliss.') She was being enslaved. ('Slavery is pleasure.') Dian couldn't find a way out. All she could do was masturbate silently, lost in the pleasure, staring at nothing, hearing only the whisper in her mind.

At last, she stood up. Her body swayed drunkenly as she stumbled toward the computer, her fingers still pumping in and out of her wet cunt. She stood next to the chair, staring at the screen like a mouse staring at a cobra, frozen in an agony of indecision as she fought the programming in her mind. Time went still as the voice urged her to sit, to listen, to obey once more. Her body quaked in orgasm, then shook again as the promise of obedience made her climax a second time. Her knees wobbled, but she knew if she sat down she would be lost. Perhaps forever this time.

And then the door opened. Anissa came in. Dian turned to her, not even caring that her best friend had caught her wearing nothing but a pair of panties and masturbating furiously. It didn't matter anymore that she would have to admit that the stupid recording had actually worked, it didn't matter that she would have to tell her friend that she was the kind of weak-willed, pliable slut who craved slavery. All that mattered was that Annisa would keep her from sitting in that chair and making herself even more deeply obedient. "help," she mouthed silently, unable to make herself speak.

Annisa's face was the picture of compassion. "Of course," she said, swiftly walking over to Dian's desk. "Of course I'll help." She gently, firmly pressed on Dian's shoulders, settling her into a sitting position. She turned on the computer and put the headphones over Dian's ears. She opened the file. She pressed play.

The last thing Dian saw, before her eyes locked onto the screen and her mind drifted into compliance, was the beautiful silver collar around her best friend's neck.

THE END