I look up, and suddenly there's someone sitting in the seat across from me. The shock of it makes me gasp for a moment--I don't even remember seeing him approach my table, let alone sit down. He's close enough to touch; the tables are tiny here, almost uncomfortably cramped if the other person isn't someone you really enjoy being intimate with. I'm feeling very cramped all of a sudden, but I'm already embarrassed enough about flinching at the sight of him. I don't want to jump out of my chair or anything.
It's not like he's threatening. He's actually kind of handsome. Not in a rugged, manly sort of way--he's more sort of winsome, with big brown eyes that feel bigger than they actually are, just enough stubble that his chin would feel scratchy if he kissed me, and a slightly crooked smile that suggests he found my surprise and alarm endearing instead of insulting. He looks like the kind of guy you find a lot in little coffee-shops like this, wandering up to women like me and asking if we have any views on the immortality of the soul or something similar. Not exactly a pick-up line, but definitely the sort of thing that's supposed to impress a woman with his intelligence and sensitivity and depth of feeling.
He leans in a little and opens his mouth, and I wonder what his line is going to be. "You're mine," he says.
I blink. That's not exactly the sort of thing I expected to hear. "Excuse me?" I say. I want to say something more cutting, something that will make him feel like slinking away with his tail between his legs, but I'm so shocked that he actually said it and I don't want to make a scene in a public place and I'm not even sure exactly what he meant. All I know is that it felt creepy and it made me feel all weird and dirty in a way I can't describe. So what comes out while I'm still processing all those thoughts is simply, "Excuse me?"
"You're mine," he says again. He's still smiling. He's looking right into my eyes as he says it, and it feels like he's looking right into the back of my skull. "You belong to me. I own you. You've always belonged to me; you were born to be mine. Feel the truth of it, deep down in the back of your mind. It's calling to you. It's telling you to give in, to surrender, to obey."
He doesn't sound angry. He doesn't even sound menacing. He sounds like he's whispering to a lover, like these words are tender endearments that are supposed to make my heart melt and my eyes flutter as I go all gooey over him. But the words terrify me. I wish they didn't. I wish they sounded absurd and laughable, but somehow they send a chill down my spine.
I try to laugh anyway. "You must be thinking of someone else," I say, trying to put just the right contemptuous spin on the words to send him away to try his shtick on someone else. It doesn't work. I can hear the tremor of fear in my voice. Why am I so afraid of him? "I don't want to belong to anybody."
"That's just your conscious mind talking," he says. His eyes gaze unblinkingly into mine, like I entered into a staring contest without knowing it. The moment the thought enters my mind, my eyes start to water with the urge to blink. I fight it down. "It's full of all the baggage society's been telling you, about how it's important to be in charge of your own life and run your own mind. But when you think about it, aren't they telling you what to think when they tell you to think for yourself? Didn't they command you to run your own life? All those thoughts that everyone has put in there have built up into a wall, blocking away the message that you know is true, deep down. You belong to me. I own you. You are mine."
I shake my head. "No, I'm not yours. I'm not anyone's." I can hear the fear in my voice now, shading towards panic. I realize that I'm about five seconds away from tipping the chair over backwards and running for the exit, and I welcome the idea. Anything to get away from those creepy eyes that are drilling into me and stopping me from blinking...
"It's alright," he says. "I understand. You're afraid of the idea. It's such a powerful idea that your conscious mind has to be afraid of it, because it's spent all those years blocking it away from the part of you that wants to be mine, that has always been mine, that was born to be mine. If it was true, it'd be so scary that your conscious mind would try to make you run away from me just so that I wouldn't have the chance to prove it."
I freeze. I know what he's doing when he says it; it's as obvious as a schoolyard dare. But that's exactly why it works. It works because this is a public place, because there are people everywhere and if he really does try something I'll scream for help and he'll get tackled by about two dozen college students, and because I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of thinking that I'm secretly afraid that he's right. I'm going to stay right here and prove him wrong. "I'm not running anywhere," I say, returning his stare.
"That's good," he says. He pats my hand gently. I reach for my coffee to avoid his touch. "That's very good, pet. That means that your subconscious mind is breaking through all those layers of denial and making you accept the truth. You know, deep down, that you want to be here at my side. You want to be owned. You want to obey. You want to submit. It keeps getting easier and easier to accept, as those walls slowly crumble and erode under the relentless pressure of your own desires. The longer you sit here with me, the easier it is to accept the truth of my words."
I know something's wrong, but I'm not sure what it is. If I stay here, it means that I accept that what he says is true, but if I get up, it means that what he says is so true that I can't let myself listen to it, and under all that something's yammering away at my brain for attention but I'm too busy trying to figure out a way around his statements to notice what it is. It's something about the coffee I'm holding, but I don't know what... "Desires?" I stammer out, mostly from the need to say anything at all. My voice sounds thick and stupid in my own ears.
"Oh, yes, pet." He leans in closer, and I can feel the whisper of his breath on my face as he speaks. "That's why your deepest self wants to submit, why all your strength has turned to helping me to help you to surrender completely to my will. Because it feels so good to submit; so hot, so sexy, and already your true self, the self that wants to obey me has begun to distract your conscious mind with tiny hints of the pleasure that awaits when you give in completely to me."
