15. The Safeguard
I was standing aboard a boat on the high seas. Sometimes it was a proud sailing ship, sometimes it was a ferry, sometimes it wasn't much more than a kayak. It skipped over the waves adventurously.
"Hey, we should not steer towards that?" I said, pointing up at the huge black clouds that were quickly gathering in the sky.
"Ah well," sighed the Captain as he stood next to me, his pipe in his mouth, "s'too late now. We're headin' into a storm, but we'll be fine."
I wanted to scream "No! We won't be fine!! And if you were actually in the cabin, helming the ship like you should be, we could be avoiding it!" I think I did scream, but he wasn't listening.
The sky turned red around me.
"Ah, that explains it," the Captain said thoughtfully, "we've found the River Styx."
Lightning flashed around us. The storm tossed the steamboat out of the sea, and into the River Styx. We drifted through a desolate hellscape.
"Faaarrrk," I groaned, "I didn't bring a coin to pay Charon."
"Guess you'll have to get off here then," the Captain shrugged.
The kayak, now steady with the calmer flow of the river, came to a riverbank. I quickly hopped off onto an empty patch of white sand, then just as the Galleon sailed away, and it was too high up for me to jump back on, I realised I'd left my jacket behind. Well, shit. That was my favourite one, and I'd have liked to carry it into the afterlife.
"Do you think Cerberus has a Lost and Found?" I said to nobody in particular.
"It's not important," said a familiar voice.
Stephanie was sitting naked on a nearby rock. I approached, grateful for the company.
"It's pretty gnarly in here," I said. "Why did I die?"
"Because you didn't get it," Stephanie replied.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
Stephanie leaned forward, speaking rapidly as she slowly faded out of existence, "Where's the text? Where's the text? Where's the text? Where's the text? Where's the text? Where's the text? Where-"
...
"Whzzz zuh text?" I mumbled blearily as I shook myself back to awareness. Fuck. I fell asleep. Hold on. Fuck. Okay. This wasn't good.
My head spun. I was rapidly approaching full panic mode. Stephanie had gone out to visit various aspiring hypnotists in person, and she had asked me to keep vigilant for her, on the off-chance that something happened. And apparently something had. I'd stayed up all night, waiting for her to check in after her last visit of the day, and I'd fallen asleep before she could. That was an ominous sign.
I reached out instinctively for my phone. 1 new message, and it was from Stephanie.
I began to panic even harder.
That wasn't the text. Where was the text??
Using muscle memory I didn't know I had, I flicked through my phone until I got to-
Oh, that was clever. It was a chat with Stephanie, but not her regular number. She kept a goddamn
burner
phone, just for me? And I never noticed it until
it was time for me to notice it.
I realised that I was acting under the influence of a post-hypnotic suggestion, and my memories finally slotted into place. I opened the chat already knowing what I'd find.
I am acting of my own free will.
Still not hypnotised.
My mind is my own.
I am safe and my free will is intact.
I am not hypnotised.
I scrolled up, to confirm. Every night, at around 10pm, just before I usually went to bed, Stephanie had been sending these to me. I would read it, and then I would
remember to forget.
A memory of Stephanie revealing her secrets under hypnosis surfaced in my brain.
A few other safeguards... I gave you the uncanny ability not to lose your phone.
I had to marvel at her. I was Stephanie's safeguard, and she had made me practically infallible. I couldn't lose my phone, so I could always receive her messages. 'Send a secret message to your emergency contact from your burner phone' was not a command most hypnotists would ever think of, never mind with slight variations in timing and wording, so it was nearly impossible to fake. And she couldn't let me hypnotise her into doing it, that would defeat the whole point, so she'd been consciously remembering to do this every night, for months. The
dedication!
And every night, I could be subconsciously soothed to sleep knowing that Stephanie was safe.
But now. Now I was waking up from maybe the craziest dream I'd ever had. Now my subconscious was screaming at me that something was wrong. Now... I had an empty space where the text from yesterday should have been.
Okay. So. Stephanie had been hypnotised then. By this, what was her name again? Clarissa. A longtime fan of S.H.E., Clarissa had got in contact a few weeks ago to say she'd hypnotised all her housemates to do chores. I figured that would be the end of her ambitions, cause she didn't strike me as a world domination type. But if her ambitions were greater, and Stephanie had somehow fallen under her spell...
it was my job to rescue her,
and frankly, I didn't need to be conditioned into that.
I opened the unread message from Stephanie's normal phone.
Hi Lucy! If you're free, would you like to come over and discuss the future of the podcast? We might have a new merchandising deal.
Nice try, Clarissa. That was almost something Stephanie would actually say. Shame I was already wise to it. Even better, it meant I knew where Stephanie would be without resorting to phone tracking. But it confirmed what I already suspected: having hypnotised Stephanie, Clarissa was gunning for the rest of her harem, starting with me.
Wrong choice, bitch.
I didn't bother replying; no need to let them know when I'd be showing up. But if I
was
going to show up, I might as well be prompt, in case Clarissa got bored of waiting and decided to take Stephanie somewhere I didn't know so well.
It was a short hop across the city to get from my 'I'm still roleplaying a starving uni student,' apartment to Stephanie's much swankier one. She must've hypnotised someone in order to get it, right? We're all on the same page about that?
I parked in the guest spot that I'd come to think of as my own, and took the lift up. I kind of wished it would take longer, so I could think some more about what I was walking into. I needed to free Stephanie from Clarissa's control, but how? It wasn't as if I could make some kind of moral argument--everything Clarissa was doing was something I'd done myself, and I'd played a part in teaching her how to do it. As far as I should care, what Clarissa did next was between her and her slave. But... but what? What was my angle here?
Meanwhile, Clarissa would want to get me under her thrall as well. Could she do it? She'd managed to get Stephanie after Stephanie had promised me to keep her guard up all day. Would I fare any better? Could you seduce someone if they knew you had sinister motives?
At the very least, I could count on Stephanie to resist her programming if Clarissa was actively hostile to me. Guess we were both taking the diplomatic approach.
Aaand fuck, Stephanie's door was right in front of me. I'd already run out of time to think. Okay. Deep breaths. Negotiate Stephanie's freedom without giving away my own. Piece of cake.
I opened the door cautiously, to find that Stephanie and her mysterious seductress, Clarissa, had converted the living room couch into some kind of makeshift massage table. Clarissa was all but naked, with dark red hair streaking wetly down her back, and a towel covering her ass, fresh out of the shower. Stephanie was kneeling over her, massaging her back, kissing up and down her spine with complete devotion. I was unprepared for just how much the sight filled me with anger, which I quickly had to tamp down. Calm and composed was the aim of the game here.
As she heard the front door open, Clarissa sat up, and I got a good look at her for the first time. A
very
good look. She wasn't shy about strangers, then.
"Hiiii!" she grinned, waving at me. "You must be Lucy!"
"Yep, that's me," I said, as casually as I could. I shut the door behind me, but left it unlocked.
"This must be a bit of a shock for you!" she said. "But as you can see, your Mistress Stephanie is now my hypnotised slave!"
I'd known that well in advance, obviously, but I was caught off-guard anyway. I'd been prepared to look upon the face of evil when I came into Stephanie's apartment, and the face of evil simply didn't look like a petite, beaming redhead who said 'hi' with multiple 'i's and waved at you with her whole arm. Where was the evil laughter? The whips and chains?
"I noticed," I said, stepping further into the apartment. "I'd appreciate it if you released her."
Clarissa blinked, "Okaaaayy, you're not surprised at all, fair play. I don't really feel like releasing her, though. I mean can you blame me? She's got all this knowledge of hypnosis, and she gives a hell of a massage." She winked. "Veeery eager to please."
"Thank you, Mistress," Stephanie mumbled, as she curled up in Clarissa's lap like a cat. Her voice was as blank and submissive as I'd ever heard it.
She was winding me up a bit, I knew that. But something about this was disrupting my composure. I felt like I could grind my teeth down to a fine powder if I wasn't careful.
I'd waited too long to speak, and Clarissa continued, "Actually, what I really feel like doing is hypnotising Stephanie's harem so that everyone's under my control. I get the Mistress, I get the slaves as well. Seems fair, right?"
I snorted. At least she was up-front about it. "Buy me a drink, first."
Clarissa bit her lip, and I suddenly realised that I was talking to someone who was a big fan of the podcast--maybe the actual biggest, going off this evidence--and I'd just offered to let her buy me a drink.
"I could and I would," she husked, "but I think I'll let Stephanie break the ice between us." She glanced down at Stephanie. "Slave, give her the trigger."
Stephanie raised her head off Clarissa's lap, looked right at me through glassy eyes, and sighed, "Lovely Lucy."
I'd been expecting this, from the moment I'd walked through the door. My body instinctively tensed, a slight shiver down my spine... but that was it.
I held Clarissa's gaze. "Her triggers don't work when she's hypnotised," I retorted. "Nice try, though!"
I found it incredibly satisfying to see Clarissa so visibly taken aback, "Oh, shit, really? Woowww, okay, there goes that idea."
"What can I say?" I smirked. "Stephanie plans for everything."
"Y'know what, I should've expected that," Clarissa conceded. "Alright, guess we'll have to get to know each other the old-fashioned way."
I looked her up and down. There was still not a stitch on her. "How old-fashioned are we talking?"
