Author's Note:
This is a three-part series containing mind control, serial recruitment, pantyhose, incest, male and female bisexuality, and group sex. Some these aspects won't appear until later chapters (for instance, Part 1 only features women). If any of these offends you, please go elsewhere.
*****
"The rain was slapping against her office window when Gina's phone rang.
"Mom?" came the voice on the other end.
"Hey, Laura. What's up?"
"Where are you? I thought you were going to pick me from play practice."
Dammit, what the hell is wrong with me?
Gina thought. Looking at her watch, she realized that she was supposed to be at Laura's high school over half an hour ago but had lost track of time. As usual.
Files and legal memoranda extended before her, a desert of paper that reached from her computer to the pictures of her only child on the far side of the desk. Nothing was exactly due tomorrow (this litigation would go on for years) but the work had to be done, and there was so much of it. Sometimes, Gina felt like she was drowning in it.
"Honey, I'm so sorry. I was just backed-up at the office."
"Yeah," Laura said, "you always are. Nice priorities there, Mom."
The words stung because they were true. Gina was an attorney, and a good one, so her instinct was to immediately counterattack. "Your father's gone now. Do you understand that?"
"I know."
"Your princess act doesn't work on me," Gina said, hating herself as she spoke. Laura had always been a princess to her husband, now just a memory. Even the word "princess" was like a stiletto, stabbing through the armor of Laura's teenage indifference.
"I know," Laura said again.
"I'm all alone now. It falls on me to support us. To support you. If I'm not making my billable hours, then I can't pay for your private school or your prom dress, much less your college tuition when you graduate this spring. I'm here late every night because you are my priority, so don't you dare imply, say, or think otherwise!"
"Sure."
They were silent for a moment. Already Gina felt the anger leaving her. It had been more a function of stress than anything Laura had said or done. She wanted to make it up to her daughter who, until the loss of her husband, had truly been her best friend. "Look, honey, I'm sorry, for being late. I can be by the school in fifteen minutes." Just as she said that, lightning streaked across the sky followed by a volley of thunder. "Weather permitting," she added, hoping her daughter would appreciate her small attempt at humor.
Laura didn't. "It's fine. I'll catch a ride home with one of the other girls."
"No, I can be right there. I'm packing up now."
"Don't bother. I'm 18. I can find my own fucking way home." The click of the call terminating was as unforgiving as the fall of a guillotine.
Gina put the phone back in its cradle. The storm outside fit the tumult she felt inside her as she took stock of her life: she was a successful attorney, and mother of a beautiful daughter. And she had been the dutiful wife of a wonderful man named Doug, until she'd been widowed last year.
Home, once a peaceable kingdom as charmed as the rest of her life, wasn't very pleasant anymore. She and Laura, far from relying on one another more as they mourned Doug's loss, had drifted to the point that, despite how similarly lovely mother and daughter may have looked, they were little better than strangers.
Then there had been the loneliness that seemed to eat Gina from the inside out. She missed her man touching her legs, filling her with himself. She missed giving herself to someone she loved, giving her lover pleasure. The absence of that feeling amplified the emptiness that Gina felt every day when she returned to her broken, unhappy home.
She opened her eyes, looked around her big office, then by chance down at her legs. They were shapely, encased in sheer black pantyhose. There was also run in them.
Typical
, she thought. Typical of all the things that were ruined in her life, from the large things like her family, to the small like her stockings.
Her concentration spent, there wasn't much point in staying at the office. She looked out the window. The storm seemed to be slackening, at least for the moment. As good a time as any to make a break for her SUV a couple blocks away.
She packed up her bag, and headed out, pausing only a moment at the ladies room's full-length to see precisely how strung-out she looked.
Standing before it, she took stock. Her face thin yet soft, untouched by the weight of years. Time had been similarly merciful to her body, helped by a daily routine in her basement home gym. The only thing keeping the reflection she saw from being beautiful was that she was so unhappy.
Her black coat was medium-weight, perfect for the autumn chill, in stark contrast to her red and black Spanish-print skirt. That skirt, it seemed light enough that the briefest of gusts would lift it up.
She had been showing a lot of leg today, but why not? She still had it, or so the lingering eyes of interns and junior associates told her. It was nice, being desired.
Aside from the unhappiness she wore on her face, the only other flaw was the run in her hose. It had grown even on the short walk to the bathroom, the white scar of her skin showing in the black nylon's otherwise perfect, synthetic embrace. She was Asian, and her fair skin accentuated the run. Everything darkened by her conversation with Laura, the tear in her hose seemed proof that the universe was aligned against her.
In the years to come, however, she would look back at that moment, and thank goodness for that run in her black nylons. She would think about how it could have gone so differently, if not for that run.
How sad it would have been not to become a slave, not to become an enslaver of others.
* * * *
On the main street of the small New England suburb of Arclight, Gina realized this had been a bad idea.
For a moment, the storm had seemed to slacken. It had turned out to be trick: no sooner was she thirty feet from the firm's door than the skies opened up again. The wind grew stronger, threatening to lift up both her skirt and her umbrella. Her car was parked at a nearby lot, but her shoes and the stocking-covered feet they enclosed were getting wet, the chill spreading up her legs.
"To hell with it," she said to herself. She was going to get out of the monsoon.
The shops along the street were local affairs catering exclusively to the small, wealthy and liberal enclave of Arclight. Not a chain store among them.
