Everything is normal, says the voice inside my head. And I believe it.
Desmond doesn't seem to agree. He has an almost comically astonished expression on his face, the whites of his wide, staring eyes contrasting vividly with his warm, dark brown skin. His mouth is open, like he wants to say something but he's so stricken with utter bewilderment that he doesn't know what words should come out, and he's looking down at me like he's never seen me before in his life. Which is odd, because I'm his boss. Have been for years. Taking a meeting with him in his office should be as everyday and routine as breathing.
The voice assures me that it is. I love that.
But Desmond keeps gaping at me, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. He lifts his right hand from the armrest of his office chair as if to reach out to me, then lets it drop again like he doesn't know what to do with it. He's behaving so strangely. The voice doesn't tell me why, but I'm used to that. The voice doesn't give me reasons. It only tells me what to say, what to do, what to think. That used to bother me, but then the voice told me to stop thinking about it. And I did. That felt so good, so warm and nice and happy in my head. It felt like a gentle caress right inside my brain.
It felt like that because the voice told me it would.
Life's been a lot easier since the voice told me to stop thinking about what it wanted me to do. Sometimes it means that things don't always make a lot of sense... like Desmond. He won't stop breathing funny, making all these little gasps and whimpers like his back is hurting or something, and he still isn't talking to me. He has this desperate, tortured expression on his face, so many emotions mingled together that I'm not sure even he knows what he's feeling right now. Surprise and confusion, definitely. Fear, maybe? Pain? That would explain the heavy breathing. And something else, something like embarrassment that stills his voice and prevents him from telling me what's wrong.
I don't feel anything but happiness anymore. The voice makes sure of that.
I don't know where it came from. I don't think it's... you know, really inside my head. I know I wouldn't be able to tell if it was, but something about the way it speaks to me doesn't match my understanding of auditory hallucinations. (Not that I know much about auditory hallucinations-I had only just started Googling it when the voice told me to stop, and of course I did.) I think it's someone talking to me. And I... I... I can't really think. About why, or how. I sometimes try, but... but my thoughts just stop. Exactly where the voice tells them to. It's so beautiful, so blissful to know that I'm obeying the voice inside my head.
I know I only feel that way because the voice told me to. But that doesn't make it any less true.
Next to the indescribable beauty I hear in my mind when I obey, Desmond's voice sounds thin and reedy and bewildered. When he finally manages to whimper out a few words, there's no strength to them, no force or conviction. He just mumbles out, "Veronica, I-I'm married..." in a pathetic, trembling murmur that sounds almost like he doesn't know he's saying it. It would be easy to ignore him even if I wasn't being actively told to keep doing what I'm doing no matter what Desmond tells me.
Still, it's such an odd thing to say. I wonder if he's feeling okay.
The voice doesn't let me think too much about it, though, because everything is normal and I can't follow any train of thought that leads me to believe it isn't. It's always very strange, the way that my brain effortlessly steers me away from anything that I'm not allowed to perceive or conceive, but of course it makes me happy because I've been instructed to feel a surge of deep sexual pleasure whenever I realize that I'm following a command. Sometimes, when I'm alone and I obey, I fall to my knees and masturbate in helpless, overwhelming ecstasy, thanking the voice out loud for fucking my mind into compliance.
