Needle Drop

"May I?" Myra extended her hand, palm out, fingers up, waiting patiently for Paul to place the record on her outstretched fingertips. He was surprised by how difficult he found it to hand over; at least a few of the people he'd spoken to at Seven-Year Studios had offered him suspiciously large sums of money to return the album, and he couldn't help worrying that she might simply smash the brittle vinyl disc against the corner of her desk and tell him to get the hell out.

But she took it carefully, instead, holding it by the rim and examining the small, plain label with the words, 'Session #37 (6751 of 10000) - SBM' written on it. Her eyes went over the tiny nicks and scratches on the grooved surface as if reading the coded information inside them. Finally, she nodded. "Yes, it's one of ours," she said, looking over the black disc at him with quiet interest in her bright blue eyes. "How did you figure that out? We're something of a boutique label, marketing mostly to collectors. We don't generally advertise our wares. And our customers are...." She gave him a small, crooked smile that made the smallpox scars on her cheeks stand out. "Discreet," she finished. "Very discreet."

Paul gave her a nervous grin. "It, um, it wasn't easy," he replied, suddenly self-conscious about the contrast between his gruff Liverpudlian accent and Myra's dulcet lilt. "I, uh, I found it in a used record store in Alameda, but they didn't know what it was there. They bought it in an estate sale, they said. I thought it might be someone's session tapes... you know, from a recording session... so I decided to give it a spin."

That changed something in the older woman's attitude, but Paul didn't know her well enough to understand exactly what it was. But her eyes focused a little more sharply on him, and she narrowed her gaze to study his hangdog expression and his horseshoe mustache. He felt like at any moment she was about to ask him why he looked like John and sounded like Ringo, but instead she merely rubbed her pocked and pitted chin musingly and said, "So you listened to it, then?"

He nodded. "A few times. It's an odd piece, isn't it? Sort of, of spoken word, and...." He frowned, trying to put a finger on exactly what interested him about the album. Now that he was face to face with her, Paul realized that it had to be Myra who recorded the vocals--he would recognize those soft, mellifluous tones anywhere. And certainly, she had the kind of voice that was perfect for just this kind of experimental prose poetry recital; he'd done a little bit of digging in the newspaper morgue, and turned up a 'Where Are They Now?' article from about twelve years back that mentioned her in connection with an old radio show.

But the actual content was... it was odd. No matter how hard Paul tried, he wound up losing the thread of her monologue somewhere around the ten-minute mark. His thoughts got all muddled and tangled up by the elliptical, repetitive nature of her phrasing, and her soothing voice made the whole thing feel more like a lullaby than anything else. But Paul had never heard any lullaby like this. Myra was... she sounded... she, she made him feel.... "You're not how I pictured you," he said at last, his cheeks reddening for reasons he couldn't quite explain.

She chuckled. It was a surprisingly earthy sound, suiting her craggy features more than her silvery voice. "I get that a lot," she says. "Not as much as I used to, if I'm honest. I capped out membership in my fan club, and these days I spend a lot of time with people who are used to my appearance. Like poor Simon." She tapped the initials on the label. "I knew he passed, of course, but I never did find out what happened to his collection. I suppose his family must have sold it off. I'm sorry, how did you say you found out we were the publishers?"

Paul spotted the interviewing tactic--he'd gotten a lot of information out of unsuspecting people with a sudden change of subject--but he let it pass. He wasn't protecting a source here. "Well, I made a few phone calls, wrote a few letters. There aren't that many pressing plants for 78s these days; everyone's using LPs for albums now. It took me a couple of weeks, but I found someone who recognized your labels and gave me your number. After that, it was just a matter of making a pest of myself until I got an interview with the owner."

Myra smiled thinly. She didn't look upset, exactly; despite meeting her only a few minutes ago, Paul was already getting the feeling that it took a hell of a lot to rattle this woman. But she definitely didn't have an expression of unalloyed joy at having her business poked into. "That's an awful lot of work to go to for an obscure record from a boutique label out of Santa Cruz," she said, a smug tone creeping into her melodious voice. "Do you really think that this 'Rolling Stones' magazine you work for is going to be interested in little old me?"

Paul shot back a disarming grin. "You don't look that old, ma'am," he replied flirtatiously. Honestly, she didn't--the smallpox scars made it difficult to tell, but he would have guessed Myra was somewhere in her mid to late forties. "And honestly, I don't know if 'Rolling Stone' will be interested or not. We're only on our fifth issue, and I'm the new boy on staff. To be honest, I'm not sure if anyone there knows my name yet." His blush intensified--he honestly didn't mean to give away something quite so personal to a relative stranger. But something about her soothing tones felt oddly comforting. Like he was back home, sitting in his bean bag chair, listening to the album and letting that sleepy feeling steal over him again....

He blinked heavily, his round-lensed glasses magnifying his look of owlish confusion. "I, um. I just thought it was... there was something odd about the album. I, I was curious about it, I suppose. Still am. It... it didn't make a lot of sense to me." Paul's gaze turned inwards as he tried to remember the contents of Myra's monologue, but all he came away with was a few snippets and fragments. Something about holding on to, to... something, not releasing, waiting for... for... for what? He felt like he should recall more, but at the same time he felt oddly disappointed in himself for even retaining those tiny little bits of understanding. It was all very strange, and, and--

Paul shifted in his seat, hoping Myra didn't notice his sudden erection. The last thing he wanted was for her to get the wrong impression about him.

She smiled over the album, and Paul caught himself wondering just how wrong the impression she had really was. She wasn't conventionally attractive--even without her pocked and pitted cheeks, she had a beaky nose with an unmistakable tilt to it where it had been broken and set ever so slightly out of joint--but every time he looked at her, all he could think of was that beautiful, dulcet voice coming out of her mouth. "It's because it's part of a series," she murmured soothingly, and it took Paul almost a full ten seconds to realize what the hell she was talking about.

She set the album down, walking over to the cabinet against the side wall. There was a hi-fi on top, and the shelves below it were filled with ten-inch records identical to the one he'd brought along to the interview. "You were listening to Session #37," she mumbled off-handedly, flipping through the collection before pulling out a disc in a nondescript white sleeve that reminded Paul of the Beatles' latest release. "Each session builds on the last--they're written in the expectation that the listener already has all my previous releases, and has been listening to them for the, uh, appropriate amount of time. You're confused because you didn't experience it in the proper context, that's all."

She straightened up and took the disc out of the sleeve, placing it gently onto the turntable before plugging in a pair of headphones. "Here," she said, walking back over to him and plopping the chunky headset over his ears without so much as asking him his opinion on the matter. "This should make everything much more clear." She doubled back to the hi-fi and turned it on, sending the needle automatically into position on the outermost edge of the album. Paul heard a tiny hiss of analogue sound as it skated over the blank space at the beginning of the record before Myra's lilting voice came through the speakers.

"Hello," she said, as her present-day doppelganger sat down in the chair next to him. "Welcome. For some of you, this may be the first time you've heard the sound of my voice. For others, you may already be intimately familiar with the experience of listening to me and following along with my words. If you're new, don't worry. You'll soon understand exactly what's expected of you. For now, simply relax, allow your eyes to focus on anything that captures your attention, and let yourself go. Everything's going to come easily and naturally to you, I promise."

Just then, Myra leaned forward and set a strange little device into motion on her desk, almost as if she could hear her recorded self and knew exactly when to give Paul something visual to catch his attention. He almost looked at her in bewilderment, but the odd contraption had such an unusual, fascinating action to it that he found himself unable to stop staring. It was a series of shiny silver balls, each one suspended from a pair of strands, and every time the one on the far left collided with the group, the one on the far right sprung away. Only to return, knocking into its companions and sending the left one into its own movement. It was so distracting that Paul almost missed what Myra was saying on the record.

"If you're here, it's because deep down, some part of you wants to experience the peace and the pleasure that I offer. Maybe you remember my radio broadcasts, maybe you're someone that I've spoken with over the phone or in person, or maybe you simply need a little space to relax and one of your friends recognized that need and put this album on for you to listen to. However you arrived here, you're safe and welcome to let my voice and my words guide you into relaxation. It's okay to allow me to take charge for a little while and give up all that tension, all that stress, and unwind your mind and your body into comfortable, drowsy bliss."

Paul felt an oddly familiar sense of vertigo stealing over him, as though he was falling backwards even though his body remained perfectly still. It reminded him of all those times he listened to the record--the other record, he clarified for the benefit of his own surprisingly muddled mind--and got lost in the repeated, elliptical references to peace and relaxation and pleasure and sleep. It all got so tangled and confused, and even though Myra promised him that this one would make more sense, all he could think about was the way his eyes glazed over and went unfocused whenever he tried to concentrate on her words.

"And the more you relax, the more you let those muscles loosen up into limp, lazy immobility, the better you'll find that your body feels. And the better your body feels, the more your mind relaxes into deep, drowsy peaceful contentment. Your eyes simply look at whatever catches your attention most, your gaze drifting until you find something so soothing and fascinating to capture your heavy, sleepy stare, and it's just so easy to let go for me and feel better and better with every passing moment." Paul caught himself nodding loosely, only vaguely aware that the Myra speaking to him wasn't the Myra who sat in the chair right next to him and gave his forearm an affectionate little squeeze.

"And the better you feel, the more you relax, and the more you relax, the better it feels. It's so easy to follow the spiral inside those words, around and down, around and down, going deeper into peace and contentment and drowsy, comfortable bliss for me. Every loop takes away another layer of thought, leaving your mind smaller and slower and simpler and happier to simply accept my words inside your head. And it all feels so good." Paul's brow furrowed as he tried hard to think about what the Myra on the album was saying, despite the lazy undertow of pleasure that threatened to tug his mind right back down to the same blank and empty state he experienced when he listened to her other session. He was... she, she was....

She was hypnotizing him. That was what was happening. That was what the album was doing to him. It hadn't quite worked with the other one, not the way it was supposed to, because that one was intended to reinforce an existing hypnotic trance. But this one was meant to capture a new subject, lull them into a state of deep and defeated lassitude that would give Myra complete control over their mesmerized mind. And Paul was listening to it right now. Staring at nothing, slumped in the chair, zoning out to the sound of her soothing voice and receding into the depths of his own brain. He--he needed to--

He reached up to pull off the headphones, but it was a gesture without any real strength. Myra easily pulled his arm back down to his side.

"We both know that you want to feel good, that you enjoy that warm, drifting pleasure that fills your whole body right now and makes you so sleepy and suggestible." Paul heard himself whimper, but it was a quiet sound, barely audible over the white noise hiss behind Myra's lilting voice. It almost sounded like it was someone else whose cock was throbbing inside his jeans, some other person coming to a helpless awareness of just how aroused and needy he truly was. He really wanted to cum, Paul slowly realized. He really, really wanted to pull out his cock and stroke it until he released his heavy load and milked his balls completely dry for Myra.

"It's okay," she purred in his ears, even as his hand reached down almost absent-mindedly to fumble with his fly. "That pleasure, that need, that ecstasy you feel when you follow the sound of my voice and do as you're told like a very good subject, that's all you really need to think about right now. All those other thoughts do is confuse you and muddle up your sleepy head and distract you from what you really want to do. And what you want to do, what you love to do, what feels so absolutely perfect to do right now is listen and obey. Go ahead. Let yourself do what feels good right now. Let yourself touch. You have my permission."

Paul let out a grunt that he could hear even over the sound of Myra's voice as he took his cock in his hand and started to stroke. It felt so wonderful, so intimately familiar, and Paul realized with a start that he'd done this every time he listened to Session #37, and every time he simply forgot that he'd spent the whole time jacking off for her. It seemed almost ludicrous to imagine forgetting something so hot and sexy and overwhelmingly euphoric, but already the revelation was fading from his brain as he listened to Myra's words and lost himself in the moment. The past didn't matter. The future didn't matter. All that mattered was how good it felt to pump his cock for Myra.

"You're going to give yourself to me, aren't you? You're going to let that pleasure build, relaxing your mind more and more as you feel better and better and better and you're just going to lose yourself in sweet, sleepy bliss as you surrender to my will." Paul could feel his balls tightening, feel his cock straining with desire, but still something held him back. His muddled brain recognized the sensation, remembered that aching tension at the base of his shaft and the warm delight he experienced when he followed Myra's instructions and obeyed instead of letting it loose. He--he needed to wait. He needed to wait for permission. He needed to wait for permission before he could release because he remembered Myra telling him to, and the Myra he was listening to now was a different Myra but his confused, cobwebbed mind couldn't tell which of the hypnotic women was the one he needed to obey.

Until the real Myra, the one sitting next to him, pushed away his hand and began to pump his cock with a firm, twisting, sliding grip that effortlessly milked the orgasm out of him. Paul's eyes rolled back in his head behind fluttering eyelids as weeks of pent-up sexual tension let go in an explosion of fountaining jets of hot, sticky cum, spilling all over his lap and Myra's hand and emptying him out into warm, sleepy, post-coital bliss.

"You want to listen and accept my deep programming now," the voice on the record continued, but Paul was too relaxed to pay it any real attention anymore.

THE END