Obsession Is Such an Ugly Word

Professor Wedgewood pretended not to hear Julia knocking on his door. He had his head down, pen in hand and staring intently at a batch of first-week quizzes, and anyone else might simply think he was too lost in concentration to notice the tall, dark-haired Caucasian woman in his open doorway. But Julia knew better. She rapped a little harder on the door frame, taking her frustrations with her colleague's junior-league mind games out on the unyielding wood as she waited for him to respond.

Sure enough, after about thirty seconds of overwrought frowning and squinting, he looked up with a theatrical expression of surprise behind his thick glasses and said, "Professor Horne! My apologies, I didn't see you there for a moment. Please, come in." He gestured to the seat opposite his desk and favored her with a warm smile. "To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

Julia stalked across the room, pushing the door closed behind her, but she didn't take a seat. Instead, she leaned over his desk, using her height to her fullest advantage to glare down into Professor Wedgewood's expressionless hazel eyes. "You stay the hell away from Anika Chaudhry," she snarled, her voice carving the words into the air in tones of frosty disdain. "You understand me, Philip? You keep right the hell away from her."

Professor Wedgewood's smile didn't vanish, but it definitely thinned a little as he said, "That may be somewhat difficult to do. She's in three of my classes this semester, and I've already asked her to assist me on a research project. To say nothing of the fact that I'm also her student adviser as of last week." His voice hardened into chilly condescension as he continued. "Is this about something in particular, Professor Horne? Or do you just make it a practice to interfere in the academic lives of random graduate students?"

Julia rolled her eyes. "Oh, cut the crap, Philip," she snapped, slapping the desk loudly for emphasis. "It's not hard for anyone familiar with your little indiscretions to notice that Anika Chaudhry is your latest obsession-"

"Oh, 'obsession' is such an ugly word," Professor Wedgewood cut in smoothly, his voice neatly severing Julia's speech as if it was a scalpel. "I prefer the term 'subject of interest'. Anika's a very smart and talented young woman with a bright future in front of her, and I believe that she could greatly benefit from a mentor with connections in her chosen field of study. Unless you feel like I should only assist young white men into the psychiatric profession, perhaps?" His smile remained fixed and bland, but his eyes gave away his anger.

Julia glared right back, her deep brown eyes offering him a challenging stare. "You're assisting your way into something," she said sardonically, "but I don't think it's anything professional. Or do you really think none of us noticed Ava Kittridge? Or Marissa Chang? Or Callie Davenport, or Mina Carriger, or Ebony Cartwright, or Blanca Castillo or Olubunmi Babatunde or Kyung-Sook Park? It's the same thing every time with you, Philip. You find some pretty young girl, someone vulnerable and eager to please, and you twist her around your little finger until she's emotionally dependent on you for every single decision. And then, when you get bored with her, you freeze her out of your life completely and leave it to someone else to sweep up the pieces. I'm not going to let it happen again, do you hear me? Not with Anika, not with anyone. This bullshit ends now."

Professor Wedgewood simply stared back at her, his face an impassive mask of innocence. "My dear Professor Horne," he replied, in tones of wounded dismay, "I simply don't know what you're talking about. I've always been fully professional-"

"You mean you've always been careful," Julia cut in, her own voice doing a bit of surgery on his excuses. "I'm sure you coached your little conquests very well-nothing in public, nothing in texts or emails, nothing that would leave behind any evidence. Your victims are all bright, they're all very good at following instructions, and your specialty is the psychology of emotional manipulation. I have no doubt that you convince them that it's in their own best interest to keep your secrets for you. And by the time it's all over and they've lost their luster, you've managed to convince them that getting dumped is their own fault."

Professor Wedgewood's smile flattened into a thin smirk. "I have no doubt, Professor Horne, that you strongly believe what you're saying. It's certainly very easy for a professor of psychology to overestimate their capacity to read body language, to impute motivation to insignificant gestures and unspoken glances until you've written an entire story in the span of a single pause. But unless you have something more substantial than your intuitions about my character to discuss, I think we're almost certainly done here. You can take up your concerns with Miss Chaudhry herself if you want to warn her of my 'sinister predations', or whatever you believe me to be capable of."

Julia snorted. "Oh, yes. Because nothing convinces a nineteen year-old college student to stay away from a charismatic older man like a condescending lecture from someone she barely knows about his 'bad boy' status on campus. Just because you're the expert on manipulation, Philip, that doesn't mean the rest of us are totally clueless on the subject. Do you really think I'm not aware of the ways that you could twist that to make yourself look like the victim? Do you think I don't know how forced teaming works? It wouldn't even take five minutes before she'd convinced herself that she seduced you to prove me wrong. No, Anika doesn't need to know about any of this."

Professor Wedgewood steepled his long, expressive fingers together and glared coldly at her. His expression remained set in a bland, minimalist smile, but Julia felt sure she had struck a nerve. "Then what?" he asked. "Do you plan to make a complaint to the Board of Regents? I assure you, Julia, I'd be more than happy to have this entire discussion on the record. I think it would be good for both of us to have your feelings about me out in the open, where they could be held up to close scrutiny by professionals."

Julia felt a tiny flicker of apprehension at the implied threat, but she pressed on regardless. "I'd have to be a fool to do that, given their findings after what happened to Kyung-Sook Park. I don't know what kind of hold you have over them, but there's no way that they would give any kind of complaint about you the attention it deserves. They seem perfectly willing to rubber-stamp your activities with a wave and a smile, Philip, and I've already told you. I'm done with that bullshit. No, I think sunlight is the best disinfectant here. Let's see if a little public attention to your collection of girls makes the Board of Regents think twice about covering up for you."

His expression didn't change, but Julia could tell she'd struck a nerve. "Oh, I'm sure you're spinning your wheels already, trying to think of some kind of threat to silence me, but... you have to admit, Philip. It is an awfully long list of names at this point. How sure are you that all of those girls will keep quiet to protect you? I know you did a wonderful job of twisting their brains in knots, but I know a few very persistent journalists. If you want close scrutiny, Philip, I'm sure they'd be happy to provide you with all the professional attention you could possibly want."

Julia thought for a moment that she had him backed into a corner, but Professor Wedgewood only chuckled sorrowfully. "And what would you tell them, Julia?" he asked, his tone more pity than anger. "That I have some sort of sinister hold over the minds of almost a dozen young women? That I'm having affairs with them so secret that there's absolutely no evidence of any kind that they're even happening? That I've managed to hypnotize the Board of Regents into complacency and silence? Listen to yourself, Julia. Listen to the way you sound. I don't wish to diagnose, but you have to admit, you're not sounding particularly rational here."

Julia tried to push down the sense of impotent frustration that welled up inside her gut. She just had to keep pressing, she told herself. Professor Wedgewood was a cool customer, but everyone had their breaking point. "It wasn't me who brought up hypnosis," she said, forcing herself to keep her voice steady and even. "It's interesting that you couldn't help mentioning it, though. You're a certified hypnotist, aren't you? In addition to an expert on emotional and psychological manipulation. And I believe that several members of the Board of Regents are former patients of yours from your time in clinical practice. You wouldn't be engaging in anything as hoary and discredited as a Freudian slip, would you?"

Professor Wedgewood's laugh was harsh and cut short instantly, ringing like a crack of thunder in the small room. "Oh, really, Julia! How paranoid do you wish to sound, here? Do you really want to dredge up tiresome cliches from late-night movies and bad television shows? You know perfectly well that hypnosis isn't some kind of magical power that overwhelms the weak-willed and gullible. I can't use it to make anyone do anything they don't already want to do. Not the Board of Regents, not my students, and not you." His voice took on the bland, didactic tone of a lecturer as he settled into what was clearly a more comfortable topic for him.

"If I waggle my fingers and say, 'Look at my sparkling sapphire ring', for instance," he continued, matching word to gesture, "I can't force you to comply. I can draw your attention to the way the light catches its surface and describe each tiny rainbow that glints off of every facet in a way that makes it sound compelling and worthy of your full focus and attention, but it's still your own will controlling your gaze. Even if I suggest a magnetic attraction between your eyes and the gleam in the center of the stone, pulling your stare back to the gem every time you begin to look away, you're still making up your own mind to keep watching. That tug in your head, the feeling that keeps your concentration riveted on the pretty sparkling light... that's all you. Just like Anika makes her own decision about where to spend her time."

"Anika isn't making her own decisions at all," Julia responded, keeping her voice tightly controlled and her gaze firmly fixed on the desk and away from Professor Wedgewood's fluttering fingers. "She may think she's choosing for herself, but you've subtly proscribed her field of options until the only choice she really has is to follow along with your suggestions. That's what manipulation is, Philip. You've created a situation where she believes the only reasonable thing to do is what you want her to do. Just like all those other girls."

Professor Wedgewood sighed, as if listening to a patient who was unable to make that last important breakthrough. "Listen to the power you're ceding to me," he said calmly, his fingers still automatically continuing their slow, sinuous wave through the air. "First I had the power to make cunning, inescapable thought-traps to ensnare one person in my nefarious web. Now you're claiming I've bent almost a dozen women to my will. Does that seem reasonable to you? Or does it sound more like a product of disordered thinking, a paranoid misconception of the limits of hypnosis as a tool of persuasion?"

Julia felt a flush of heat on her cheeks, and her averted gaze seemed like an increasingly awkward precaution in the face of his measured, reasonable denials. "I know the limits of your persuasive ability quite well," she snapped, her discomfort increasing with every passing moment. She knew she should simply leave now-she'd delivered her threat, and it would fall on Professor Wedgewood's head if he didn't want to respect it. But she couldn't help wanting to leave a scratch in that implacable demeanor of his. To make him admit, if only between the two of them, that he was the monster she recognized behind his smiling mask of a face. "I also know that plenty of people abuse hypnotic and therapeutic techniques to produce psychological dependence. Don't try to pretend you're not capable of influencing someone into following your suggestions, Philip."

Professor Wedgewood looked at her quizzically, his eyebrow quirking in surprise. "It sounds like you're afraid of me, Julia," he replied. "Is that why you won't look at my ring? You know it's a hypnotic focus, you know I've used it for years on my patients... are you really that worried that I'll somehow use mesmerism to affect your behavior?" He held out the ring a little closer, his fingers still fluttering like a butterfly in the air. "I suppose it makes sense. You've convinced yourself that all of these young women are under my spell, you've decided that poor Kyung-Sook became obsessed with me because I shaped her mind to that end, and you've even incorporated the board's findings into your delusion. Naturally, they're all in my power too. It's no wonder that you're too frightened to even glance in my direction."

Julia continued staring at the desk, her blush now spreading over her entire face but her eyes still remaining resolutely fixed on the polished wooden surface. "I know what you're trying to do," she said, "and it won't work. You're using transparent typecasting to try to convince me to look at your ring, planting a suggestion that looking away is an admission of hypnotic susceptibility. I'm not falling for it, Philip. I remember the board investigation, and I talked privately to Cindy Samson before they released their findings. She changed course almost literally overnight after talking with you, Philip. So did two other board members. And their reasoning was almost identical."

Professor Wedgewood shook his head slowly, sadly. "Do you really believe that, Julia? Do you really, honestly think that I'm capable of exerting hypnotic control so powerful, so irresistible that even professionals in our field of study could be taken into trance against their will? That I could bend someone into violating their professional ethics, mesmerizing them with my sparkling, hypnotic ring and smoothing away their objections to serious misconduct? Are you really concerned that I could do that to you, right here and right now, if I showed you this gem and told you to sleep?"

Julia's eyes burned, now, but she didn't trust him not to find some way of twisting the conversation into an induction if she let them close even for a moment. She felt a knot of dread in her stomach, a growing sense that somewhere and somehow she'd let events get out of her control, but she didn't know how she could have done anything differently without falling into another one of Professor Wedgewood's conversational traps. She wanted to sprint out of the room, but she had an irrational terror that if she acknowledged his power over the situation, he would forever have a hold over her simply by reinvoking it. "...yes," she said at last, as the silence stretched into an agonized eternity that could only be broken with an answer.

Professor Wedgewood's smile became warm again, just for a moment. Julia could see it out of the corner of her eye. His voice filled with approval and praise, as he said, "Good, good," almost cooing to her like a teacher speaking to a prize student. Then he slapped the desk, his ring coming down exactly in the center of her field of vision, and said, "Sleep." And Julia's eyes slammed instantly shut.

After that, Julia's perceptions of events became confused, hazy. She heard Professor Wedgewood speaking to her in soft, steady tones, coaxing her further and further into the depths of the blue gem that floated in her mind's eye until all her other thoughts fell away. She found herself fantasizing-and it must be a fantasy, she was sure of it-about pulling her skirt up, her fingers hooking into the hem and drawing the fabric slowly and hesitantly along her thighs until her panties were fully exposed to her colleague's view. She felt a vague, misty sense of arousal and embarrassment mingling into intense, helpless desire as she squirmed out of her underwear and began to tease her wet pussy in front of him.

Somehow, the pleasure became tangled up with Professor Wedgewood's voice, ebbing and flowing with the intensity of his praise. He asked questions, questions about Anika Chaudhry, and the sensations of powerful ecstasy surging through Julia's clit deepened every time she answered. She could hear herself, whimpering and pleading to be allowed to cum, begging Professor Wedgewood for release, but at the same time it seemed so impossible that she could be reduced so thoroughly to helpless obedience that she found it all too easy to sweep the moment away into a blank void where memory held no purchase. Professor Wedgewood gave her permission to forget, and Julia embraced it gratefully the moment her climax ended.

She didn't need to think about what she was doing. She didn't need to remember the power Professor Wedgewood held over her. It was easier just to pretend, even to herself, that she was still the same strong-willed woman she'd always been. She could relax, convinced that the professor had heeded her advice and promised to behave professionally around Anika. Her suspicions could join her memories of this evening in the void at the back of her mind, lulled into silence by the voice deep in her subconscious that reminded her how much pleasure she felt every time she obeyed her new master.

Julia embraced the suggestions eagerly, relieved to be free of the lingering guilt she felt at surrendering so easily to the bliss of obedience. Professor Wedgewood's control freed Julia from responsibility, and that freedom addicted her to his control. The seamless, inescapable perfection of the loop sent her spiraling deeper and deeper into trance, deeper and deeper into masturbatory bliss until her mind simply blanked out into pure oblivion, and she knew nothing at all for a little while.

When Julia awoke, it was with a confused and mazy smile on her face. "I, I'm, um... glad. We had this talk," she said brightly, covering her momentary disorientation with cheerful confidence. She couldn't remember the details of their conversation, but she knew it had gone very well. She'd gotten everything she wanted. Professor Wedgewood had listened to her concerns, and responded like a true professional. Julia was absolutely certain of it.

And Professor Wedgewood certainly didn't seem to be too upset with her. "I am too," he said, rising from his desk to take her hand. "It's vital to make sure that we don't have any lingering problems, don't you think? Just to make sure everything is finally smoothed over once and for all. Consider it something of a test?" His words momentarily confused Julia, but she didn't have long to think about it as Professor Wedgewood reached out and gripped her wrist. He tugged her forward with one hand, showing her his ring with the other and saying, "Sleep, Julia." And with a sigh of inexpressible bliss, Julia sank into his control once more.

THE END