The Joker

The cards spun, danced and flickered through the air as Madam Columbina shuffled them from hand to hand. They arced elegantly as she sprayed them from her right hand to her left, then fanned out as she once again flicked them back from her left hand to her right, but Jo just watched it all without paying much attention. She was thinking more about what Chantal had meant when she'd said, "Anything."

Madam Columbina set the deck down on the shoulder of her artfully tattered jester's costume, and let the cards slide down her arm into her hand. She cut the deck, and it took Jo a moment to remember that she was supposed to be calling out the card she saw to the audience. "Three of clubs," she said hesitantly.

Madam Columbina smiled, her teeth a perfect white beneath a slash of ruby-red lipstick. "I guess my partner hasn't shown up yet, then," she said. "You'll have to forgive Harlequin, folks, he's a bit unreliable." She returned to her display of shuffling.

Jo didn't know what the whole thing was supposed to prove. She'd examined the whole deck when she'd first stepped up on stage, and the joker wasn't in it. Which was obviously the point; Madam Columbina was no doubt going to slip the card back in during the whole elaborate display of whirling, dancing cards, and everyone would ooh and ahh. Nice trick, everybody claps.

Except that they'd also be expecting Jo to...to slump down on her stool and start clucking like a chicken or something, and that just wasn't happening. Everybody knew that all these stage shows just used plants in the audience, with maybe a gullible idiot or two mixed in for flavor. The fact that she had managed to trick Madam Columbina into thinking she was a gullible idiot was about to get her a cool thousand bucks, but it wasn't going to leave her hypnotized, and it wasn't about to leave her doing...Jo remembered that wild, fearless light in Chantal's eyes. "Anything?" "Anything."

With a sudden flourish, Madam Columbina cut the deck again, but this time Jo was prepared. She called out, "Seven of hearts."

Madam Columbina nodded. "And before that was...?"

"Um..." Jo felt a little defensive; she didn't know there was going to be a test. "Two...no, three of clubs."

Madam Columbina nodded solemnly. "Three of clubs, seven of hearts, and we're looking for the joker. Could you keep track for me as they come? I'd take notes, but..." She sprayed the cards in a rainbow arc from one hand to the other. "It's a little hard to hold a pencil while you're doing this."

Jo smiled thinly. She just wished Madam Columbina would show her the joker and get this over with. Then Jo could stick out her tongue at her, walk off stage, and go collect Chantal's money. Maybe she should feel a little guilty, scooping up a thousand dollars for about fifteen minutes of sitting here and doing nothing, but Chantal wouldn't even miss it. A thousand bucks to a trust-fund baby like her just meant deciding between pairs of shoes this week instead of buying all three. (Thankfully, Chantal was willing to pay the extra rent to get them an apartment with plenty of closet space. Having a rich friend was cool sometimes, even if it got on your nerves sometimes too.)

Besides, Chantal started it all. The last two straight weeks, she'd been talking about nothing but how awesome it was that Madam Columbina was doing a show in town, and how cool her act was, and how she was the best stage hypnotist in the business, and how great it had been last time Chantal had seen her, and how they had to go, and how she'd pay for Jo's ticket, and just generally drooling over the woman like Chantal had a total girl-crush on her. ("Anything?" "Anything.")

It just got on Jo's nerves, that was all. That was the only reason she'd said, "I bet she does it with plants," as they were walking into the nightclub, just to deflate Chantal's hero-worship a little. She hadn't meant to start a whole big thing. Which she technically didn't, because it was Chantal who started it with her endless praise anyway.

But Chantal wouldn't let it go. Well, not after making a joke about cucumbers, and saying that she didn't think that was what the poster meant by 'Adult Hypnosis Show'. Which, okay, actually pretty funny. But she didn't leave it at that, and that meant Jo couldn't either. By the time they'd found a table, they were well into an argument about whether stage hypnosis was really real. "All I'm saying," Jo had said, "is that I kind of doubt that it's real hypnosis, the kind that they use in therapy and stuff. I'm betting that she's probably got at least one or two stooges in the audience, and maybe a couple of gullible types, and she's going to milk that for all it's worth."

And that was when Chantal had replied with, "How much?"

At first, Jo hadn't understood. She'd just shrugged and said, "I dunno, maybe a couple of hours...depends on how good her magic tricks are, really."

But Chantal had kept at her, saying, "Come on, Pussycat, put your money where your mouth is." Even though she knew Jo hated it when Chantal called her 'Pussycat', because she'd always hated that stupid cartoon--

Madam Columbina slapped the cards together and cut the deck so fast it almost startled Jo. "Um, three of clubs, seven of hearts, ace of spades."

"And...?" Madam Columbina said, winking at the audience.

Jo sighed. "And we're looking for the joker."

"That's my partner," Madam Columbina said. "He loves to make an entrance. Or is that an...entrance?" She stressed the second syllable that time, sending a ripple of chuckles through the audience.

Jo grinned too as Madam Columbina went back to shuffling the cards in dizzying arcs, but for different reasons. Jo knew she couldn't be hypnotized--well, actually she didn't know whether she could be hypnotized or not. Probably if she went to a hypnotherapist, and he swung a watch back and forth in front of her eyes or showed her a spiral or something, she could do it. But she knew she couldn't be hypnotized if she didn't want to be, and she couldn't be hypnotized just by seeing a card.

Probably the whole card thing was just a desperation tactic. Jo had let slip that she had money riding on not being hypnotized (not that she was going to be paying money if she lost...she didn't have a thousand dollars to spare right now) and Madam Columbina probably realized that it was pointless to pull out the swinging watch or the spinning spiral. Her whole patter about "Maybe I can't hypnotize you, but my partner, Harlequin, is a much better hypnotist than me. You know, Harlequin, the jester, the clown...the joker?" and the way she'd pulled out the deck of cards and told Jo that seeing the joker would hypnotize her...all that was just her way of stalling, once Jo had come up there and Madam Columbina had seen that 'suggestibility tests' aside, she hadn't picked a sucker or a plant this time. Jo had raised her hand because she wanted to come up on stage for the bet, not because it was 'tied to a balloon' or anything.

You couldn't be hypnotized with a card or an imaginary balloon. You had to be...induced or something. Jo was a little fuzzy on the details, but she'd looked it up on Wikipedia. (And oh, didn't Chantal crow when Jo had said that was where she got her information from. Who knew that Little Miss C Average was an expert on stage hypnosis?) This whole card trick wasn't going to work.

Which meant that unfortunately, Chantal was going to be out of luck on their little bet. Out of luck, and out a thousand dollars. Which meant that Jo wasn't going to have to follow through on her end...which was good, right? Having to be Chantal's personal slave for a month was bound to suck. She'd probably make Jo do all the cleaning (except that Chantal sprung for a maid service...) Or she'd make Jo wash her clothes (except that Chantal had everything dry-cleaned, because she said you couldn't trust Dior to a washing machine...) Or she'd make Jo... ("Anything?" "Anything.")

It was the look in Chantal's eyes that kept haunting Jo, the one Chantal got when she said, "You have to agree to be my personal slave for a month, and do anything I say." That look said, "I'm trying so hard to make this sound like just another one of my smutty jokes, just good old boy-crazy, girl-crazy Chantal making another mock pass at her oldest friend, but I want so badly for you to lose so that I can make you strip naked and fuck me." That was what kept sticking in Jo's mind as she watched Madam Columbina go through her fifty-two card juggling routine. If she lost, which she wouldn't because she couldn't because it didn't work that way, Jo would have to do anything she asked. And when Jo had asked, "Anything?" and Chantal had repeated "Anything," they'd both known perfectly well what that meant.

That was what Jo couldn't stop thinking about. She was watching the cards flutter through the air, but she wasn't really seeing them. She was thinking about all those other times Chantal had made jokes about wanting to get into her panties, and wondering how many of those times that light had been there in Chantal's eyes and Jo had just missed it. She was wondering what she would have done if she'd noticed it before...and she was wondering what her own eyes had looked like to Chantal when she asked, "Anything?" Because suddenly, she wasn't sure.

"Still with us?" Madam Columbina asked. Jo suddenly noticed that she was holding the deck out for Jo to look at. "Or is that my partner in there after all?"

The audience laughed, but Jo was a little too surprised at how lost in thought she'd been to be upset. "Oh!" she said. "No, it's, um...three of clubs, seven of hearts, ace of spades, four of clubs, and we're looking for the joker."

"That's right--tell you what, Jo," Madam Columbina said, beginning to put the cards through their paces again, "next time why don't you do them last to first instead of first to last? Might be easier for you to remember."

Jo nodded, but in her head, she was already back with Chantal. Tonight, she knew, she'd be fantasizing about losing the bet. Jo could almost hear Chantal's voice, trying to be smug but actually all husky and thick with arousal, whispering, "On your knees, Pussycat." And Jo would whimper and fall, the stupid nickname somehow sounding less stupid when Chantal growled it out in her bedroom voice, and Chantal would pull up her skirt and Jo would--

The cards caught her off-guard again. This time, Jo swore Madam Columbina did it on purpose, cutting them quicker than the last time to throw her off. "Three of--" No, wait, last to first this time... "Um, six of diamonds, um..." It was hard to reverse the list once she'd already made it in her head. "Four of clubs...ace of spades..."

Madam Columbina was already off and shuffling again as Jo tried to finish remembering the list. Images of Chantal's pussy kept intruding on her mind as she said, "Seven of hearts, three of clubs, and we're--"

Madam Columbina cut the deck again. "Jack of diamonds, six of diamonds, four of clubs, ace of--" Jo didn't even finish before Madam Columbina shuffled the deck again, this time giving it nothing more than a simple bridge shuffle and showing her the bottom card. "Ace of spades, um, seven of--" No, that was wrong, the ace of spades was in there twice now, she had to try to break the whole thing down card by card instead of a list now. It was "Jack of diamonds, six of...of..."

Madam Columbina gave the deck a sharp rap, and showed her the bottom card again. "..." Jo's mouth hung wide as she stared at the card, her voice trailing off into silence. All the other cards floated through her head in a dizzying whirl, the list now just a chaotic muddle in her head as she gaped at the joker.

It wasn't like the usual joker in a deck of playing cards. This one was a detailed painting of the face of a capering jester, leaning right up to the edge of the frame as though he had just noticed Jo and wanted to get a good, close look at her. Jo found herself leaning forward to look closer, even as the rest of her brain tied itself in knots trying to remember what card came next and her clit throbbed like it wanted to hypnotize her all by itself.

"That's right," Madam Columbina said, but Jo didn't pay her much attention. She just kept staring at the joker. It was just so fascinating. It seemed to loom in her field of vision, like it was just getting larger and larger with every passing second. Madam Columbina was saying something about that, about how the larger it got the more powerful it became, but it was hard to really think about what Madam Columbina was saying. It was hard to really think about anything at all. Thinking just led her back into confusion, and when she got confused, it got so hard to think, and it seemed like the only answer was just to stop thinking and stare at the joker some more.

And the more Jo stared, the easier it became to just stare. Jo felt like she was floating, like the card was all she could see and all she could think about. When it was this big, she could see that his eyes were like crazy spirals, endlessly drawing her in, and that made so much sense to her. That was why she couldn't take her eyes away. She was just watching the spiral, that was all. Everyone knew that spirals drew your eyes down...and down...and down. She could just watch the spirals in his eyes, focus on them completely, and let that take up all her attention while Madam Columbina talked.

That's why he had a partner. Harlequin was just a playing card, he couldn't talk. So he just drew all her attention in, while Madam Columbina explained what Jo needed to do. She understood perfectly now. "I am hypnotized," she agreed, not even remembering exactly what she was agreeing with but knowing that Madam Columbina had said...had said something. She'd been talking all this time, but Jo couldn't remember what she'd been saying because remembering felt too much like thinking and thinking just led her back into confusion. It was just easier to listen and agree right now. That was all she wanted to do and all she needed to do. And if all she needed to do was listen, she realized, she didn't need to have her eyes open at all.

Jo's eyes fluttered shut. The last thing she saw was the Harlequin's smile.

*****

"I was not!" Jo said, flinging the door open and stomping inside. "I keep telling you, I remember everything that happened up on stage!"

"And I keep telling you," Chantal said, stomping in right after her and closing the door, "it doesn't matter whether you remember it or not! Amnesia isn't a requirement for a hypnotic trance! You can be totally hypnotized, and remember every single thing that happened to you afterwards. Know how I know? Because I saw you do it twenty minutes ago."

Jo tossed her coat on the couch. The whole ride home had been like this, with Chantal insisting that she'd won the bet and gloating about making Jo "pay up" in tantalizingly non-specific terms that had made Jo's pussy really want to go ahead and throw the argument. But she wasn't going to give up on a thousand smackers just because she'd finally figured out that she was bi-curious, not when she knew she was right. "Look, I remember exactly what I was doing, and all I was doing was just...going along with it, that's all. But I decided to do that all on my own, and I could have stopped anytime I wanted to."

"Oh, really," Chantal said, with a disconcertingly smug look in her eyes. "So you just never felt like not doing what Madam Columbina wanted to, then. You just felt like repeating everything she said, you felt like singing like Madonna, you felt like having an orgasm without being touched--"

Jo shivered involuntarily. "I, um...she has a sexy voice, I'll give you that." Her cheeks felt hot as she remembered her legs going all rubbery when she finally stood up, all those toe-curling orgasms leaving her shaky on her feet as she left the stage. "But that, that was just...just fun. It all sounded like fun, and so I went along with it." Jo knew she was blushing furiously now, and she hoped Chantal thought it was in embarrassment. "That's all that happened, though."

Chantal sat down in an armchair, looking for all the world as though she knew exactly what that blush was about. "And when you did the strip-tease for the guy in the third row?"

"When I what?" Jo caught the mischievous look in Chantal's eyes. "Oh, ha ha, very funny. Real mature, Chantal. Look, can we just drop it? You're obviously never going to believe I wasn't hypnotized, I obviously know I wasn't, so let's just call the bet off, okay? Otherwise we're going to be arguing all night."

"No, we're not," Chantal said. "Because you were hypnotized, Jo. It doesn't matter whether you admit it or not. I

know

you were."

Jo glared down at Chantal. She'd given her a chance to let it drop, but... "Oh, really?" she said. "So you're, what, telepathic now? You hooked me up to an EEG or something? What makes you so fucking sure?"

Chantal reached into her purse. "This," she said, holding up a playing card.

Jo's gaze locked onto the spirals in Harlequin's eyes as her breath left her in a soft sigh. All her anger and frustration melted away like ice under the warm summer sun, leaving her dreamy and relaxed...and wet, Jo realized. She was very wet.

"That's right," Chantal said. "Good girl." Jo shuddered in pleasure, the praise somehow seeming so much more direct and real to her now. It was like she was more focused on Chantal's words, like they sank all the way into her brain and wrapped themselves around her thoughts, and she didn't have to think about them at all. She just had to listen and agree. That was so much easier than thinking. She couldn't remember why she'd ever tried to think about what Chantal was saying at all.

"On your knees, Pussycat," Chantal purred, and it sounded even better than Jo had imagined, because she really couldn't resist it. As soon as she heard the words, she just dropped down as though all the strength had gone out of her legs. The card was even closer to her eyes now, drawing more of her attention until she felt like her whole world had narrowed down to the spirals and Chantal's husky, sexy voice, and Jo thought that felt just perfect.

"Closer," Chantal beckoned, and Jo crawled right up to the edge of the armchair. This close, she could smell Chantal's arousal, and it made Jo's clit tingle in anticipation. She wondered if she'd ever really wanted to resist Madam Columbina at all, or if she was just looking for the excuse to lose. Then she decided that wondering felt too much like thinking, and thinking just led her back into confusion, and she let her body sag down until she was slumped in Chantal's lap staring at the card and inhaling the scent of Chantal's pussy.

She heard Chantal's phone ringing, but the words Chantal spoke when she answered seemed distant and unimportant. They weren't commands, so Jo could just let them drift through her head without thinking about them as she heard Chantal say, "Worked like a charm. Thank you so much, you have no idea how long I wanted--"

Jo wanted so badly to close her eyes, but Harlequin just kept drawing her in with his endless spirals. "...no, she thought you were using plants in the audience, so I made a bet that you wouldn't pick her." Jo felt the fabric under her cheek move, as Chantal pulled her skirt up so that Jo's head rested on her bare leg. Jo could just see glimpses of Chantal's panties in her peripheral vision, but the joker was between her and the sight of Chantal's pussy, and the joker just drew all her attention in.

"Ha! No, she didn't think I was a plant. She didn't know I volunteered when I saw your show that first time." That almost sparked a thought in Jo's head, but she just felt too dreamy and sexy and relaxed to think, so she let it go. The joker was too interesting to look at. "Well, I wasn't about to tell her! I wanted her up on that stage, remember?"