The house is in a suburban neighborhood, one of the upper-middle class areas which somehow still manages to have an irrational fear of urban street crime. Hence, the bars on the windows do not attract an overly large amount of attention. However, the house has still developed into something of a legend among the children of the neighborhood; they speak of it as being haunted, or abandoned, or home to smugglers or pirates or whatever else occupies their attention that week. The sign on the door reads, in simple hand-printed letters, "NO SOLICITORS", and it has been effective--although the age of the door-to-door salesman is dying out, and it is difficult to say just how many people it has deterred. The door, once opened, leads to a small foyer with another interior door; this, too, has a lock on it. One begins to detect the faintest tinge of paranoia, the whiff of isolation left too long and grown wild and tangled, like ivy digging its roots into a long-abandoned building.
Five years ago, Danielle would not have been able to achieve this. She would not have been able to take a job that exclusively involved telecommuting, and she would not have been able to pay her grocery bills over the Internet. She would have had to leave the house to run errands, or perhaps work out, and that would have left her vulnerable. Endangered. As it is, though, she knows she is safe. She occupies her time with small things. Knitting. Jigsaw puzzles. Rarely television; she occasionally indulges, but the thought that a signal might be pumped into her house worries her, and so she prefers to read books. She is not entirely happy, but she is safe. She is certain she is safe.
And then someone knocks on the door, and the rush of panic comes back like it never left, and she flees the living room, not daring to look out the window for fear of catching someone's eye (being caught in someone's eyes, she mentally amends it to.) She runs into the bedroom, and cowers in the corner, and as the knocking continues, slow, measured, and insistent, she remembers...
*****
"Hello, Ms. Stewart. My name is Danielle Spencer; I'm here about the 'personal assistant' job. I saw the ad in the paper." She felt confident as she smiled at the woman she hoped would be her boss, and resisted the urge to pat her hair to make sure that it was still in the bun she'd put it up into before coming here. She knew that she projected a good image--the Young Executive, fresh out of the package, complete with all the accessories. The lame joke suddenly blossomed into a mental image of herself in a box, with "Kung-Fu Grip!" written on it, and she suppressed the urge to giggle. It'd be inappropriate, she thought, which was probably why my mind did it. Some weird stress reaction.
Clara Stewart looked at her appraisingly. Danielle fought down the sensation of indignation; she knew that there was undoubtedly more to the gaze than judging her like a piece of meat. It was just in her imagination. "I see. Then I'll be straight with you right from the beginning. It's a demanding job. I'm a demanding woman. I got to the top of this company through uncompromising dedication and ruthlessness, and I expect you to give everything you have to me. If you can do that, you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. If you can't, I expect you to look for another job. Your friends, your family, your relationships are all going to have to be put on the back burner. I'm going to become the most important thing in your life. Are we clear?"
Afterward, long afterward, Danielle wondered if there wasn't something she did in that moment that sealed her fate. Perhaps a twitch of the eyelid, a flinch of the shoulders, some unspoken signal in how she responded to that speech that made Ms. Stewart decide that she was the one. Perhaps there was nothing. Either way, her response undoubtedly clinched the notion. "That won't be a problem, Ms. Stewart. I just moved to Los Angeles. I haven't had time to make friends yet, and I haven't been in touch with my family for years. I can devote my full time to doing whatever you need done."
Clara smiled. "Perfect." She gestured to a padded chair. "Take a seat. I'd like to test you on a few elementary business skills before I decide." She sat down in a chair across from Danielle, the desk separating them. "One of your primary duties as my assistant will be to transcribe my important meetings. I want to see how good you are at taking notes of conversation." She gestured to a pen and a tablet of paper. "So I'm going to start talking, and you're going to write down every word I say."
Danielle picked up the pen and paper. "Ready, Ms. Stewart."
"Good," Clara said. Danielle quickly jotted down the single word, but when Clara sighed, a sinking feeling took up residence in her stomach. "No," Clara said, and Danielle took care to continue writing even as she was being lectured. It never hurt to impress the boss with dedication under fire. "You've obviously had very little experience taking dictation before. You write with your hand, but with your eyes, you watch my face." Danielle immediately looked up. "You watch my lips as they form the words, and you let your hand just write automatically. You just let the hand continue to write as you watch my lips very closely, picking up each word as I speak. The words just flow through your brain straight through to your hand. After a while, you won't even think about the words, you'll just let them flow straight through to your hand and write them down. They'll just go straight through your head, from my lips to your hand, from my mouth to your actions, and you won't have to think of a thing.
"But you must also learn to pace yourself. You must learn that when I speak very fast, your hand will get tired. Your hand will get tired and exhausted from writing so fast, and it will feel so tired, so weary, so exhausted." Suddenly, Clara let out a wide yawn, and Danielle found herself yawning in return. "I'm sorry," Clara said, "but talking about being tired has made me feel sleepy. Very sleepy. I feel very sleepy. I'm feeling so sleepy, but I'm still talking, and you're writing the words 'I'm sleepy' with your tired, tired, hand. If I repeat them, you'll write them again, over and over, and over...I'm sleepy, I'm sleepy, I'm sleepy..." She yawned again. Danielle yawned back. "I'm sorry to keep yawning. I know that yawns are contagious. That when you see a person yawn, you want to yawn too. It's a proven fact. Seeing a sleepy person makes you sleepy too. You're writing down 'I'm sleepy' with your tired, tired hand, and you're watching me yawn sleepily, and now you're probably yawning without any help from me." Danielle tried not to yawn; it was rude. But she was so sleepy all of a sudden, and she couldn't help herself. "And now you're probably having trouble watching my mouth, watching my lips as your eyes get so sleepy, and your eyelids start to droop, and you keep writing as I say 'I'm sleepy', 'I'm sleepy', 'I'm sleepy', and it's so hard to control the pen with your tired, tired hand, and so hard to see my lips with your droopy, sleepy eyes, and now you're finding that if you just close your eyes, you can just hear my words in your head and picture my lips in your mind and you can sleep and keep writing and the words just keep flowing, from my lips to your actions, from my mind to your body, and now you're having so much trouble writing with your tired, tired hand that the pen falls from your hand, and now you can't write, so you have to act out whatever I say, letting it flow from my mind to your sleepy sleepy body, just acting on my words, not thinking at all, letting your mind shut down as your body acts out my words, just drifting comfortably as you relax and act out my words, picturing my lips telling you what to do..."
Danielle was sprawled in the chair now, her head lolling back into the padded headrest, her legs slightly spread, her arms limp at her sides, the pen and paper dropped to the floor and forgotten. She was smiling faintly.
"Danielle," Clara said, "you're going to let your hair down now. You're going to let your hair down out of its bun, let the hair free, because you don't want it bound up tightly, you want to let it flow down, loose, relaxed, just like you are right now, loose, relaxed, obedient..." Danielle reached up slowly and unsteadily and freed her honey-blonde hair, letting it fall down over her shoulders. "Very good, Danielle!" Clara said. "You're making me so happy, now, and you know that's good. You know you want this job. You want to be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. And that means making me the most important thing in your life. The most important thing. The most important thing." Danielle nodded muzzily, never opening her eyes. "I'm giving you the job, Danielle. You have the job. So that means that I'm the most important thing to you. It means you give everything to me. Everything. Everything." Danielle nodded again, and this time her head fell forward onto her chest. "Good..."
"Now, let's take off those clothes."
*****
The knocking continues. Danielle puts her hands to her ears to block it out, wondering if it's perhaps some new form of induction. Perhaps the knock is meant to be like the tick of a metronome, slowly taking her deeper, relaxing her...
It's not working, she thinks wildly. I've never been more panicked. I can't breathe, ogod I can't breathe...
She begins questioning her judgment. Perhaps it's just a Girl Scout who's too young to know what "NO SOLICITORS" means, or a Jehovah's Witness who thinks that it doesn't apply to them. Perhaps it's the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, come to give her a giant novelty check. She should go and check. She will go and check. She's going. Right now.
