Amy knew exactly where she was when she awoke. The white room was the only world she'd ever known. There were things beyond it that she'd known once but she couldn't seem to call any of them to mind. She wondered how long it had been. There was no way to keep track of time in the white room and her master usually took her to be altered while she slept. Sometimes it was minutes between closing her eyes and opening them. Sometimes it was days.
A soft voice was whispering in her ear, just barely loud enough to hear. "Happy girl. Good girl. Eager girl. Obedient girl." The mantra repeated. "Happy girl. Good girl. Eager girl. Obedient girl."
She pushed Grace off the white bed onto the thick white carpet on the floor. "I am not you! I'm not . . . I'm not his slave!"
Grace pulled herself back up onto the bed groggily and made a pouting expression.
"You were trying to brainwash me," accused Amy. It sounded stupid. Of course Grace was trying to brainwash her. That was the point.
"I wasn't!" protested Grace. "I was just talking in my sleep."
Amy couldn't stop herself. "Shut up! Shut up! I'm not you. I'm not going to turn into you. Get out! Leave me alone!"
There was a click behind the blank white door that made both of them look toward it. A clean shaven man in an expensive suit, their captor, stepped through, framed momentarily by the light behind him. He placed a silver tray with a glass dish on the dressed. "No yelling," he said. "Either of you."
"Sorry," said Grace.
"Sorry," said Amy. She blinked. "Why did I . . ."
"Come here, slave girl." The man picked up a slice of reddish-yellow fruit from the glass dish. He pressed it against Grace's lips when she reached him and she gulped it down. The second offered bite was accepted in the same way. He rubbed her head. "You are a very good girl." A wide smile spread across his face. It was an expression Amy had never seen on him before, not one of diplomatic smiles he often wore or even a predatory grin. Just a happy smile. "I should have told you Amy would yell at you when you woke up. She can't help it right now." As he fed her the last few bites an almost imperceptible tension went out of Grace's body. A tiny tremor ceased. Her breathing evened out.
"Why do you do that?" asked Amy. "You take care of her."
"She's my responsibility," said the man.
"You could beat her senseless and she'd love you just as much."
He regarded her evenly. "Do you make a habit of violence for the sake of violence?"
Amy straightened her back like a lazy student under a schoolmaster's gaze. "You could do nothing."
"That would be . . . cruel."
Amy frowned at him. The man barely seemed human standing there in shadowless white room in his business suit. She could just about see Grace's mind wrapped around his fingers like so many gossamer threads. "You love her." The words escaped before she could think better of them.
The man's eyes flickered away from hers and settled on Grace. He touched her face delicately. "I want people to be happy."
"Whether they want it or not?"
"Yes." He placed the glass dish on the dresser and held up the mirror smooth tray. "I find that people appreciate the guidance. No one ever says happiness makes them unhappy. Come here, take a look at yourself."
Amy made her way over to him and examined her reflection. As weary as she felt she looked pretty. Her skin was clear. Her hair had been washed, combed, and trimmed. Her new lips were supple and unless she made an effort they stayed slightly parted. She touched them unconsciously. Immediately a thousand different images of how best to use them flashed into her mind. She took a step back in surprise and the movement caused a jiggle in the wonderful breasts she'd been given a lifetime ago.
It was awful. She kept expecting him to make her a trashy slut but every change was tasteful, almost elegant, as if it had been plucked from her own idealized self image. With clothes on she'd look more pretty than sexy. The change was insidious. If he had been giving her grotesquely whorish features it would have been easy to hate him. As it was she saw her mouth curve up into an appreciative smile. In the back of her mind a voice was telling her that there was something terribly wrong with her to be thinking that way. It insisted that he was manipulating her mind the same way he'd done to Grace. She forced it to shut up. She liked being pretty. It was better than it sickening fear that came when she was alone in the room.
"There's more we could do, you know," said the man, putting down the tray. He brushed a hand across her cheek. "Skin. Hair. Nails. Everything can be adjusted or improved." His hand drifted lower. "Everything."
Amy was frozen in place.
Her captor's fingers paused at her belly then rose back up. They reached her lips and two of them pushed easily though. "We can do all kinds of things you'll enjoy. You could make a beautiful lady."
As his fingers fucked her mouth Amy felt as unladylike as she could imagine. He brought his other hand to her breasts and she sighed with pleasure. She wanted to let go but the ever present complaint from her old self returned louder than before. "N . . ."
"What was that?" His fingers slipped from her mouth.
"No . . ." She stumbled away from him and fell onto the soft white carpet. "What did . . . what . . . You did something to me. Why . . ."
"I took away your inhibitions," he explained. "Your first response always comes through." He put a hand on the small of her back and drew her closer. "Making yourself unhappy will be hard with all those pleasant thoughts in your head. Those effortful responses will be smothered by all the soft happy thoughts you have."
"No . . . this isn't . . . not me . . ."
"They're your thoughts," insisted the man. "They're your emotions. All I did was take away some interference from your conscious mind, a bit of self deception. With a enough concentration you can hold onto those angry thoughts you say you want to have." He turned her head up so that their eyes met. "Think. Tell me why this is wrong."
She shuddered. "It's brainwashing. It's . . . you're controlling me. You . . . I . . . you want me to . . . to be a slave. I was . . . kidnapped." The words came easier the longer she struggled to use them. "You're a monster. You just want a . . . just want a toy. I should be free."
"That's right, Amy, that's what you believe."
She became very aware of his arms around her.
"Say it again. Tell me this is wrong."
"It's wrong," she said, the fire of her independence restored. "You can't do this."
