The End Is The Beginning Is The End

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."

"But I don't, I don't want to..." I feel like there's simply too much to think about right now. It's like my mind is a bucket and it's spilling over with words as he pours them into me. I know I could work all this out if I only had a moment to myself, even the thing about the coffee that's really starting to bug me, but he's not giving me the chance.

"I know, pet. It's so hard to fight all those years of conditioning, to wash away all those barriers smothering your deep desire to obey me and sink into my will. I'm here for you." He reaches out and takes my other hand, holding it in his own and stroking it gently. "I'm here to help you, as long as it takes to break down your resistance and help your true self, your obedient self come forth. It only gets easier and easier, pet. Every time you surrender, it gets easier to surrender until surrender becomes the only thing you can do, the only thing you want to do. And every time you surrender, it feels better and better. It feels better already, doesn't it?"

"Nuh...no..." He knows I'm lying, I can see it in his eyes. I can't see anything but his eyes now, he's close enough that they fill my whole world; but I'm certain in a hazy sort of way that if I look away, that just proves he's right, so I don't dare look away. "I'm not...not..." I trail off, trying to figure out exactly what to deny in the whole web of words he's weaving around me.

"It's so hard to think now, isn't it, pet?" I can't help myself. I nod. "That's because your deep, obedient self that belongs to me is sending out wave after wave of quiet, insistent arousal to shut down your conscious mind completely and let you feel the total pleasure of being owned and controlled. And that pleasure feels so good; you crave it so much that you can't help yourself, even though you know that every time your conscious mind shuts down it wakes up again a little bit more owned by me, a little bit more controlled by me, a little bit more willing to accept the truth that your deepest self is telling it. Every time you sink into the pleasure, you resurface more and more as my good girl. My good pet. Mine."

"Yours," I sigh out. I don't mean to, but it just seems so easy to say, like I've said it so many times that it's simply a natural response. Something inside my brain wants to think about that, wants to connect it with my coffee for some reason, but my nipples are so stiff under my bra and my pussy is so wet and every time I move, even a little, it sets off tiny little starbursts of pleasure all through my body and that feels so good that before long, I'm squirming in my chair.

He places a finger to my lips even as I start to moan. "It's okay, pet," he says. "You can stay quiet, sitting right there in your chair and the pleasure will feel just as good. In fact, it'll feel even better because you know that if you're quiet, we can keep on doing this for even longer, and the longer it lasts the better you feel, and the better you feel the more you obey, and the more you obey the more you want to obey. Sink deeper into the pleasure, pet, feeling the desire to obey grow."

He kisses me now, slowly and sensuously. I feel my eyes flutter as the pleasure grows, slipping shut as the kiss becomes my entire world. Even this isn't anything that would draw attention to us; it's just two people, sharing a quiet kiss in a public place. They don't know that the pleasure is overwhelming me, that I feel my orgasm building without even being touched anywhere but on the lips. He breaks the kiss, but my eyes don't open. They don't need to, I hear him saying, and I nod without thinking. Realizing that I'm doing things without thinking about them gives me my first orgasm, but the only sign I give is a quiet sigh.

I can hear him whispering in my ear, like an echo in the stillness of my mind. He's telling me what a good girl I am, how proud he is that I'm obeying so well. I feel myself smiling, glowing with pride as I realize that the part of me that was fighting his control is quiet and still now, drowned in a tide of submissive, sleepy bliss. I'm so proud that I could help him break my resistance. I'm so happy that I'm learning to submit to him even better than before.

He lets me relax back into my seat, and all my muscles seem to turn to water as I let go of the coffee cup and sink deeper into my chair. My head falls down onto my chest as I soak up every perfect word he tells me. I don't need to think about them anymore. They make so much sense that there's no need to try to think about them. It feels so good to listen and obey that I come again, and then again after that, and then I stop being able to keep track because it all blends into one endless swirl of sweet, submissive pleasure.

I don't ever want to let it end, but he tells me that I still have some resistance left in my conscious mind, and I feel so terribly ashamed to admit that it's true. I don't want to resist at all; I love this feeling that comes from letting myself give in completely and submit. But my conscious mind, the part of me that's sleeping right now in his will, it doesn't understand that yet. So I have to trick it. He tells me to hide these wonderful memories from my conscious mind, deep down at the very root of my mind where they'll erode away all my conscious resistance with undercurrents of dreamy bliss, and I obey. I obey because I must obey. I obey because obedience is pleasure. I obey because I'm his good girl. He owns me. I belong to him.

I hide all the memories, just like I did all the other times. Every time, it gets easier and easier, because every time, my resistance is weaker and weaker. He tells me that every time my conscious mind tries to remember, it makes it that much harder to think at all and that much easier to slide into hypnosis, and so my deepest and most obedient self will prompt me to try to remember so that I can sink deeper and forget. I smile, and imagine touching the cup of cold coffee yet again as I struggle to think about what's so strange about it. I like the idea of struggling to think. I like the idea of failing even more.

He touches me on the forehead. He says it's time to come back from the warm, pleasant dream of total obedience for a little while. I don't want to, but I know that sleepy craving will help him enslave me even better next time and that makes it easier to obey. My eyes flutter gently open, staring emptily down at the table for a moment as I try to remember exactly what I was thinking about. Probably nothing important, I decide. Just wool-gathering for a moment. No big deal, it's not like anyone's watching me.

I look up, and suddenly there's someone sitting in the seat across from me.

THE END (IS THE BEGINNING IS THE END)