Disclaimer: To have permission to read this, you must be of legal age in your community (and mine), and not offended by male-to-male sexual activity or erotic hypnosis. Otherwise, go away! No resemblance is intended or may be inferred between any of these characters or situations and real life, and I hope to God no such resemblance could exist! In addition, I want to post a special warning to my regular readers: This story is much darker than my usual fare, is, in fact, a horror story, and is not for the romantic or the faint of heart. Also, it contains a good deal of exposition before it reaches either hypnotism or sex. Don’t worry though; the next ones will be back on track.
(a crime story)
by
Joe McNamara, P. I., was in his small office that afternoon trying to catch up on some of the paperwork from his most recent case, when there was a knock on the door. Although he was a skillful detective, with a developing reputation for thoroughness and discretion, Joe, at age twenty-eight, and only two years on his own in the business, had yet to be earning the kind of money that could pay for a secretary (hence the typing) or a receptionist. He quickly hit save for the document he was working on and called out, “Come in then, it’s open.”
The door opened to admit a pretty, but obviously distressed brunette. She looked to be twenty, maybe (maybe a little less), and was dressed in typical coed-casual clothing. Joe’s interest immediately quickened. He was well aware of his weakness for attractive ladies, and this one was definitely prime: petite, slender body with curves in all the right places, sweet, elfin face, and that long, lustrous dark hair – just the way Joe liked them. “Mr. McNamara?” she asked uncertainly, apparently a little taken aback by his youth.
“That would be myself,” he answered, rising from his chair politely. The quaintness of the phrasing drew her attention to the trace of a lilt from his native Ireland that remained in his speech. “How may I help you, Miss…?” Joe gave her a medium-voltage smile – not full-seduction mode, but definitely communicating his attraction.
“I’m Helene Brewster,” she replied, blushing in spite of her anxiety, in unconscious response to the charisma of the handsome young detective, with his lively sea-green eyes, sexy light-brown hair, and extremely well-formed body, then continued determinedly, “I want you to find my boyfriend, David Kennedy. He has been missing for over two weeks.”
“Have you, have his parents been to the police?”
“David is an orphan, but yes, I have talked to the police. They dismissed it because of the letter.”
“Letter?”
“About a week after David disappeared, I got a letter from him saying that our relationship, school, life in general were just becoming too much for him to cope with, and he was dropping out to ‘find himself’. He mentioned a religious retreat up north, and told me not to contact him.”
As gently as he could, Joe said, “I’m afraid I must be agreeing with the police then. It would seem that your lad is missing of his own wishes.”
Now the young woman’s cheeks were flushed with anger, her eyes bright with scorn and the suggestion of tears. “They didn’t understand, and neither do you, Mr. McNamara. They thought I was just some pathetic, clingy, paranoid little bimbo! But I’m telling you, that letter may have been in his handwriting, but it wasn’t from David! I don’t know how that could be, so don’t bother to ask, but I know David, and everything about that letter was wrong!! First of all, David was happy with our relationship; we’d even talked about marriage (and no, I wasn’t pressuring him; he was the one who brought it up, so get that look off your face). Second, he was doing fine in school. He liked his courses, and got good grades without having to work too hard. He’d been admitted to the fraternity he’d wanted to get into, and was having a lot of fun. Third, don’t let the Kennedy name fool you. David isn’t Catholic; he isn’t even agnostic. He’s a genuine rational atheist, and a monastery is the very last place he would ever go for answers about anything! And finally, David is an English major, a writer! He would never use a phrase like ‘finding myself’. He would have laughed at it!” She choked a little. “He would have said something like…” the sob was struggling harder to get out. “L-like, ‘Wh-why? Have I been m-m-misplaced?’” Helene broke down and began to cry in earnest.
Joe offered her tissues from the box on his desk. He was imagining what it would be like to hold her in his arms, and could feel his cock stirring in response, but in the interest of maintaining some degree of professionalism, he forced himself to hold back from comforting her physically. For Joe had decided that he would take the case. Despite his initial skepticism, he was rapidly becoming convinced that only a very great fool indeed would leave this beautiful, passionate young woman of his own free will.
Eventually Helene regained control of herself. Wiping the tears from her face, she said, “I’m so afraid something terrible has happened! I’ll pay whatever it takes, but I want David back. Or…” again she struggled for composure, “If he really does want to get away from me, I want to hear it from him face to face.”
Joe deliberately made his manner as businesslike as possible in an effort to forestall further emotional explosions. After quoting his fee rates, hourly and for expenses, which Helene accepted without a twitch, and obtaining all of her contact particulars (address, phone, e-mail, and fax), the young detective launched into the necessary preliminary q and a. He quickly established that David Kennedy had been living in the _ _ _ frat-house since the beginning of the semester, and that he had shown no previous tendency to head off by himself, nor did any of his studies feature fieldwork of the sort that might cause absences on short notice. (“I’m sure that someday David will travel a lot,” Helene had answered with bleak pride, “Presenting at conferences, meeting with publishers, maybe even book tours. But there isn’t anything like that yet.”) He also determined that there had been a party for the new pledges at the fraternity, and that the night of that party was the last anyone could recall having seen Kennedy.
“Ms. Brewster, do you have a recent picture of David?”
“Yes I do.” She dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a photo. “I took this myself just about a month ago, right after homecoming. You can take it; I had a lot of copies made just before I went to the police.”
The picture showed a dark-haired young man posed against a background of yellow and orange fall foliage. He was extremely good-looking, almost too pretty to be real, and with his cheerful, devil-may-care grin, and his college guy outfit of university sweatshirt and khakis, he could have been a pin-up cut out from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. He certainly didn’t look to Joe like someone who was in imminent danger of an emotional breakdown. On the contrary, David (at least in this photo) looked remarkably carefree, confident, and uncomplicated. Joe’s investigator’s instinct was really giving him some ugly twinges now. Helene was right. There was something very fishy about this, and it didn’t bode well for the young lad!
Joe ushered his new client from the office, assuring her that he would do his best to find her friend, and then he headed over to the frat-house to begin his investigation, first having changed into his own version of the collegiate look – t-shirt, flannel shirt-jack, jeans, and running shoes. He figured that those frat-boys, who may have been less than forthcoming with the cops, would possibly talk more easily to him, especially if he appeared to fit in; and, dressed this way, Joe knew he was indistinguishable from the real thing.
“Hello, my name is Joe McNamara. I’m a private investigator.” He flashed his license to the guy who had answered the door, beer bottle in hand. “I’d like to ask you a question or two if I may… about David Kennedy?”
The frat-boy looked him up and down, although not in an unfriendly way, and then nodded and held out his hand. “Jeff Kowalski,” he said as they shook. “Come on in.” Limping slightly, he led Joe into the large front room and motioned him to a seat on one of the couches, before lowering himself carefully into an overstuffed easy chair opposite. “Pulled hamstring,” he explained, gesturing to his left leg. “I don’t know what I can tell you that I didn’t already tell his psycho girlfriend, but fire away.”
“You found Helene Brewster to be a ‘psycho’ then, did you? I’m here at her request, and I have to say that I found her story and her reasoning quite convincing.”
“Well, she wasn’t exactly calm and collected when she blew in here. She got all up in everybody’s faces because we hadn’t kept track of what Dave Kennedy was doin’ the night of the pledge party. Hell, dude,’ he said winking, “I was so drunk I wouldn’t have noticed if John Kennedy had come to that bash, straight from the grave! And Dave’s a big boy. He can look after himself. Jeez, he wrote her a letter! She just didn’t like what it said. Well, I say, too fuckin’ bad! Get over it and move on!” Jeff shook his head as if over the unreasonableness of womankind, and then downed the rest of his beer in one long swallow. He got up. “I’m gonna have another. You want one?” Without waiting for an answer, the frat-boy grabbed two longnecks from the mini-fridge in the nearby wet-bar and popped their caps, handing one to Joe before resuming his seat.
Joe took a sip of his beer. “So then, you have absolutely no idea of when David might have left the party, or under what circumstances.”
“That’s right. Like I told you, I was shit-faced. We were doing tequila shots (which, by the way, never again), and I was practically blind by ten o’clock. Somebody parked me in the john, and I spent the rest of the night making delivery rounds on the porcelain bus. When I finally managed to crawl to bed, I didn’t get up again for the whole next day. The only person I saw in over twenty-four hours was my roommate Zach, and that was only for as long as it took me to beg him to leave so that the thunder of his stocking feet wouldn’t make my head explode like a rotten melon.”
“And nobody else saw anything, either?”
“Nobody said they saw anything. But that chick was so crazed that basically all any of us was trying to do was just to get her to go away before she went totally ballistic and started scratching and biting and breaking things! And of course we didn’t say anything to the police. We all figured that if Dave wanted to disappear himself, it was none of our business to stop him. Anyway, the letter had come by then, so the cop was mostly just going through the motions.”
“If you want to hang around and talk to the rest of the guys yourself, they should be back before much longer. The Brotherhood’s out playing flag football against the Omegas. The only reason I’m not with ’em is this leg; the Doc says to stay off it as much as I can, and there’s nowhere to sit at the field.” Then, noticing that his own bottle was once again empty, the frat-boy said, “Get you another brew?”
“Faith, the lad can suck them down then, can’t he?” Joe thought to himself, as Jeff got up and limped over to the bar again. Aloud he said, “I think the one will do me nicely, thank you. But I will take you up on your offer to allow me wait here for the others’ return. And in the meantime, might I trouble you to show me David’s room?”
“I don’t know… The stairs are pretty hard for me right now. I try not to do ’em more than twice a day. And anyway, we really ought to wait until Dave’s roommate gets back. I’m sure Chuck won’t mind taking you up, and that way he can show you which stuff is Dave’s and which is his. That’s not something I’d be able to tell you.”
Joe was just about to accept this graciously, when suddenly the room seemed to tilt sideways. What the hell?? He blinked and shook his head to clear it, but the dizziness only increased. Jeff’s face swam before his eyes as though viewed through a heat shimmer. “Dude, you don’t look so hot. Are you okay?” The frat-boy’s voice echoed weirdly in Joe’s ears, but he didn’t sound solicitous at all. In fact, he sounded amused. The detective tried to stand, but his body wasn’t following his orders. The empty beer bottle slipped from his suddenly strengthless fingers, and as his awareness was obliterated by a rising tide of black, Joe’s last conscious thought was, “What a mug’s trick. And I fell for it!”
Joe returned to consciousness slowly, feeling sick, disoriented and very weak. He cracked his eyes open, but the light made him want to throw up, so he shut them again quickly, without really taking in any of his surroundings. His mouth felt as though it were stuffed with cotton, and when the detective tried to moisten his lips, he discovered that this was more than just a feeling. He was gagged with a cloth! His reflex attempt to reach up and remove the cloth revealed that his hands and arms were bound behind him. “Well, you might have expected that, boyo” Joe thought with exasperation. A quick flex of his legs ascertained that they were tied as well, apparently to the legs of the chair in which he was slumped. The detective didn’t quite feel ready to try opening his eyes again yet (with the gag in place, if he vomited it could prove fatal), so he concentrated on his other senses. Smell: nothing to go on there. Obviously he was indoors, but the room had no distinctive odors. Hearing: more promising. Joe was aware of the faint sound of birdsong, but no traffic noises, either vehicle or human, so he must no longer be at the frat-house, or anywhere else on campus, for that matter; he must be somewhere outside the city. Well, that only made sense. If you’re going to abduct people, you need privacy. You can hardly stash them in a busy neighborhood full of observant passers-by.
Finally he decided he had to risk opening his eyes again. Immediately, the nausea rose up again, clutching at his throat, but fortunately it gradually subsided to a tolerable level and Joe was able to look around him. As he had guessed, the window next to him looked out onto a suburban or rural lawn of some size, bordered in the distance by trees and a wooden fence. He quickly drew the conclusion that there were no nearby neighbors; his captors couldn’t have risked parking him by a picture window if there had been any possibility at all of someone looking in. The room was empty of furniture except for the chair to which he was bound, and there were no decorations on the walls, nothing that could be turned into a potential tool or weapon. He had already been aware, from the feeling of air against his skin, that his clothing had been removed. Only his underpants and socks remained. But as he looked down at himself, the detective was met by a disturbing revelation. Someone had reached into his boxers and drawn his penis and balls out through the fly. They lay there in his lap in full view, as though on display. Joe’s skin crawled. This wasn’t kidnap for ransom then; it was something much, much creepier. He was wriggling his hips, trying to find enough leverage either to loosen his ropes, break the chair, or, at the very least, to persuade his sex organs to slip back down inside his shorts, when he heard the sound of a door opening behind him.
“Ah, I see you’ve rejoined us, Mr. McNamara.” The detective couldn’t twist far enough to see who had entered, and he didn’t recognize the voice, but only a moment later a man stepped into his line of sight. He was unremarkable, a serviceably handsome fellow of medium height and weight, blond, with a small, neatly trimmed beard, dressed like a junior executive or small businessman, in jacket, slacks and tie. His age could have been anything from mid-twenties to mid-forties, but was probably near the center of that span. “I must admit I’m a little relieved. I’d feared that Jeff might have given you too much, and you’re really too good-looking to waste.” Seeing Joe’s grimace of distaste at that remark, the man continued, “You should be grateful that you’re handsome enough to bother with. Otherwise you simply wouldn’t have been allowed to wake up at all. Young Jeff was merely obeying his conditioning (which, I have now come to realize, contains some rather unfortunate oversights). He, like the rest of his fraternity (and, I might add, a number of other such organizations around the world), is programmed (in addition to scouting potential recruits for us) to take care of anyone who refuses to accept the cover story concerning one of our disappearances. But apparently it was not made sufficiently clear in his mind that only those who had uncovered some substantiation of their suspicions were necessary to eliminate. In your case, it’s too late to repair the error now, and your presence here puts us all in a somewhat difficult position. Obviously, I am not able simply to let you go. You mustn’t be allowed to jeopardize operations in this country. They’re far too lucrative, and there are too many powerful people who wish them to continue unhindered. And I have no particular personal interest in killing you… not when so many others might be willing to pay handsomely for that privilege. So I have decided to put you through our training program, just as I have young Kennedy.” He smiled benignly, as though he were discussing some attractive job opportunity instead of issuing these disturbingly sinister statements, and then began to undo Joe’s gag, saying, “I have a few questions I need to have you answer. I trust you won’t waste your energy or my time in yelling for help. Believe me, no one who might hear you is able to care.”
His mouth now free of the cloth, Joe searched for any speck of moisture to loosen his parched tongue. “Where am I? And who the hell are you?” he croaked.
“Oh, Mr. McNamara, I am disappointed. Surely you should have realized by now that I’m not going to tell you where you are; and in a little while it won’t matter anyway. As for who I am, call me Doc. It will do as well as anything. I’m in charge of this particular facility, and will be in control of your training program. Now, please answer the following questions: Are you currently in any form of significant relationship? By that, I mean a relationship with someone who will immediately notice your absence.”
Joe just stared at him mutinously without saying a word. Shrugging philosophically, Doc reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small black plastic box, with a little white dial, a red push-button, and two short metal prongs. He touched it to Joe’s neck, and suddenly the young detective was in agony, the recipient of a severe electric shock that made him feel as though every single synapse he possessed were filled with molten metal. Joe tried to scream, but was unable to draw enough breath to manage more than a despairing whimper. The device was withdrawn, and he slumped exhausted in his chair. Only the bonds kept him from sliding to the floor.
As though nothing had happened, Doc repeated, “Are you currently in any form of significant relationship?”
Sullenly, Joe muttered, “No.”
“Very wise, Mr. McNamara,” Doc said quietly. “That little gadget has other, stronger settings. Now, you live alone, then? No family, no house-mates?” Again the detective answered in the negative. And so it continued, Doc asking questions, all designed to give him a clear picture of what would be required to successfully make Joe disappear, and what risk factors would need to be neutralized, and the detective answering in monosyllables, trying to give as little information as possible without earning another disciplinary shock. Viewed in this clinical fashion, Joe realized that it really wouldn’t take much to make him vanish. What little family he had were all still in Ireland and weren’t accustomed to hearing from him more than once or twice a year at most. He didn’t have a particular girlfriend at the moment, and when Helene had walked into his office, he’d been between cases. No one but she would notice his absence until the bills weren’t being paid at the end of the month, and the police had already written her off as a paranoid crank.
The questions now began to take a more personal, and increasingly bizarre direction. “What is your sexual orientation?”
Remembering that his privates were still exposed, Joe growled, “I only like women.”
Unfazed, Doc persisted, “So you have never had any form of sex with another man? Not even when you were younger? Or drunk? Never thought about it? Never even had a dream about it?”
“No, damn it! That’s disgusting!”
“Have you ever been hypnotized?” Doc continued blandly.
Huh? The detective hesitated, remembering an incident in a pub during his university days in Dublin, when his flatmate, on a bet, had been able to make Joe buy him a beer every time he said, “last call”, and had also made him try, all that evening, to pick up the prettiest of the barmaids - who just happened to be, in reality, a grizzled old man, one of the regulars. However, he answered, “No,” deciding that he wasn’t going to reveal this particular vulnerability to his inquisitor.
Doc sighed and reached into his pocket again. “Mr. McNamara, all of your body language just changed. Do you care to reconsider that last answer, or do you need more encouragement?”
“Ok, OK!” Joe said quickly, “I was hypnotized once, by a friend. It was just for a lark.”
“Were you a good subject?”
Again Joe was remembering how easily his chum had dropped him like a bag of sand – no trance-resistance at all! “No, not really,” the detective lied desperately.
“Tsk! That body language! Well, I hope, for your sake, that you are lying again. We do have access to a number of interesting drugs that can help increase your susceptibility (as well as completely eliminating your ability to resist), but they have a few unpleasant side effects over time. Being a good trance subject will make it all much easier and healthier for you. And it is a distressing fact that if you should prove totally intractable, I would have no choice but to dispose of you.” Suddenly the shock-device was in his hand again. Doc zapped one of Joe’s nipples, and this time, the pain was so intense that, mercifully, the young detective lost consciousness.
When Joe came to himself once more, he wasn’t gagged. He was no longer nauseous, nor was his head as swimmy as before, but his whole body ached in protest to the electrical shocks it had received, and his boxers had joined the rest of his clothing in absence. He had been moved again, whether to some other site, or merely to another room, he couldn’t guess. Joe was now sitting in a different kind of chair. It resembled a dentist’s chair, but was infinitely softer and more comfortable than the usual sort. This chair also had one other feature the detective had never encountered in any dentist’s office: padded shackles that locked his wrists and ankles firmly in place. He tested their strength, and found it to be more than enough to render him helpless. In addition, Joe discovered, when he tried to look around, there was a padded band across his forehead that held his head firmly in place and kept his gaze directed towards a large white screen in front of him. Something was covering his ears as well, although whatever it was didn’t block off outside sounds. There was someone in the room with him; he could hear movement in back of him and somewhat to the left.
Doc came around from behind. He had a syringe filled with a pale, straw-colored liquid in his hand, and before Joe could even try to protest, he efficiently swabbed a site with alcohol, plunged the needle into Joe’s shoulder and injected him.
“What the fuck was that?!” Joe yelped.
“It’s a little chemical cocktail to relax you and help render the hypnosis more effective. I’m afraid it isn’t very good for you, so I hope one or two doses at the most will get you far enough along your reprogramming that it will no longer be necessary.”
“I’ll fight this. You won’t be getting me under if I resist. And even if you do manage to hyp… hypnotize me, you can’t make a fella violate ’s code of… of ethics or his own s-self… int’rest just… b’cause he’s hyp…tized,” the detective blustered. He could already feel his tongue becoming thick and clumsy, and his lips, hands, and feet were beginning to tingle, although not unpleasantly. A warm, drowsy feeling was invading his mind.
“I daresay you would be correct if we were we dealing merely with hypnosis, Mr. McNamara. However, the drugs, as well as a few other tricks we practice here, render immaterial any attempts you may make at resistance. As for the rest… brainwashing (which our process more closely resembles), using hypnotism as only one tool among many, has a well-documented history of causing people to betray friends, family, deep-seated religious and political convictions, to commit murder on command, or even to kill themselves. In any case, you also have the added incentive to cooperate that, should this process, against all my expectations, prove a failure, the results would be most unfortunate… and permanent, so you see, by succumbing you are actually acting very much in your own self interest. Now be a good boy and just watch the show.”
Doc returned to his position out of Joe’s line of sight, the lights dimmed, and the white screen was filled with swirling lines of black and vivid green that resolved themselves into a spiral vortex. It sucked at the young detective’s drugged attention like a powerful vacuum. In less than a minute he couldn’t have withdrawn his gaze from the spectacle if he’d tried… and Joe had completely forgotten about trying. From the flaps over his ears issued soft, persuasive voices, voices telling him to relax… give in… stop worrying… stop thinking… just go with the flow and let himself float into the spiral… and, above all, to keep on listening and relaxing. With his last remnants of coherent thought, Joe noticed that the voices weren’t in phase with each other. They said the same things, but at different times and speeds, so that, no matter which voice he was listening to, trying to fight, the other was outside his conscious attention, flying below radar directly into his mind. In less than two minutes his befuddled brain had lost the battle, and he stared helplessly at the screen, drifting through the deepest hypnotic trance, obeying and believing every word: “You no longer try to resist hypnosis… you love being hypnotized… you are contented when you are in trance… whenever you hear a voice tell you to go into trance, you will instantly be deeply hypnotized, more deeply each time than the time before… your only purpose is to serve your master… obedience is automatic… obedience is unquestioning… obedience is sexy… it feels good to obey your master… it turns you on to obey your master…” On and on, over and over, the program continued, chipping away at his free will and then his memory, one sentence at a time…
Joe awoke in bed. He was comfortably snuggled between fresh crisp white sheets, in a room he didn’t recall. The detective couldn’t remember where he was or how he got there. Somehow though, this didn’t bother him very much; if it were important, surely he would be told. As his thoughts gradually began to clear from the sleep muddle, the young detective realized he also didn’t remember much of anything else. He didn’t know where he’d been before waking up here, couldn’t even remember his own last name. Oh well, it didn’t really matter. Vaguely, like the rapidly vanishing fragments of a dream, he recalled a beautiful black and green spiral whirling, whirling, whirling... He’d been hypnotized! That would explain it. Cool! Joe loved being hypnotized; there was something so sexy about obeying suggestions and not being able to resist! Maybe if he were a very good boy, they’d put him under again!
The door opened and Doc came into the room, wheeling a breakfast cart. “Good morning, Joe. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, sir. Very well, thank you, sir.” Joe knew that Doc was a very great man. It was important to be polite to him.
“What would you like for breakfast, Joe?”
“Toast and coffee, sir, if it isn’t any trouble.”
“No trouble at all. But, Joe, you don’t really want toast. You’d rather have cereal, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes please, sir!” Suddenly toast had lost all its appeal, but cereal sounded wonderful!
Doc filled a bowl with some sort of granola, tipped a little cream onto it, and then looked at the result as though dissatisfied. “This needs something,” he said, as to himself. Then he brightened, “I know! Stand up, Joe.” The young detective was out of bed and on his feet before he even had time to think about it. He realized that he was totally naked, but doing as he was told was much more important than such petty concerns. He also realized that his dick was a little hard, but somehow he knew that always happened when he obeyed a direct command. “That’s a good boy, “ Doc continued. “I want you to masturbate onto your cereal. Will you do that for me, Joe?”
“Of course, sir!” Joe was thrilled! He already felt so turned on from having obeyed even the simple commands, that he was more than ready, his cock now as hard as a tent spike. He began to stroke himself, looking straight at Doc for approval. God, it felt so incredible that his knees were nearly buckling! And Doc was smiling and nodding encouragement. Joe was really getting into it now. With his free hand, he fondled his balls, roamed across his thighs, stomach and chest, twiddled his nipples, and then he brought his fingers to his nose, to inhale the scents they had acquired. Joe knew he was close to orgasm, so he quickly got himself into position over the cereal bowl. At Doc’s command, he shot a healthy load all over the granola, gasping with pleasure and relief.
“There. Now eat your cereal, boy. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it much more this way. As a matter of fact, it’s going to become one of your favorite flavors.”
Joe dug in. Delicious! Doc, as always, was right. The salty, pungent tang of cum was perfect with the sweet granola, and the slight grittiness it leant to the cream was a terrific texture sensation on his tongue. As a matter of fact, Joe found himself wondering why, in all the times he’d tossed off before this, it had never occurred to him to taste the stuff. He finished the lot, scraping with his spoon, to get every drop he could. Hell, he wanted to lick the bowl, but that wouldn’t be good manners.
Doc poured Joe a cup of coffee and ordered him to drink it. The detective of course complied. He was mildly surprised that his cock, despite the so-recent orgasm, nevertheless twitched in response. The coffee had a most peculiar chemical aftertaste. Doc lifted the coffeepot again, and Joe automatically held out his cup for more, even though he didn’t want it. Seeing the slightly unhappy expression on the young man’s face, Doc said, “I know it doesn’t taste quite right; it’s because of the drugs I put in it. You need to drink one more cup before we continue your training; but you can be pleased, because you are proving to be such a good hypnotic subject that this will be the last time the drugs are necessary.” He smiled approvingly as he watched Joe obediently down the second cup, and then said, “Go into trance for me, Joe.” The empty cup fell from the detective’s hand to bounce unnoticed on the carpet, as he froze, all animation gone in an instant from his face and body, triggered helplessly into deep hypnosis. Doc grasped Joe’s limp hand and said, “Come with me, boy.” The entranced detective followed him unresistingly from the room to begin a new day of mental domination and re-training.
And so it continued for several days. Each morning Joe would awaken, somewhat less in control of his own thoughts than the day before, to a breakfast of coffee and cereal soaked in his own cum (although, after the first day, as Doc had promised, the coffee was no more than that, since Joe, on command, now plummeted into a trance so deep that drugs were no longer required to augment it); then a trigger phrase, and he was off to the lab for more conditioning, a mindless, will-less zombie. By the end of a week, the former detective no longer had any memory of an existence beyond this one. His past was lost to him, and the penetrating, investigative bent that had been the hallmark of his personality was so compromised that he no longer even had any awareness that something was missing from his experience. As far as Joe was concerned, he’d always been here, dutifully doing whatever he was told.
Doc was so pleased with the progress that he decided to begin the second, trickier phase of the program: switching Joe’s sexual attitudes. (It wasn’t that he had any doubts that ultimately a sufficient reorientation would be achieved – deep hypnosis conditioning and electro-shock aversion therapy would see to that, but some of the experimental subjects developed such a deep depression during the process that they ceased to have value, becoming essentially catatonic.) So Doc proceeded slowly, baby steps at first.
One morning, when Doc wheeled in Joe’s breakfast tray, Joe was mildly surprised to see him accompanied by a young man. This was the first new face the ex-detective could recall having seen. The boy looked to be about twenty, plus or minus a year or two. He was barefoot, dressed casually in a green crew-necked sweater and jeans, and his slim, well-toned figure, medium-length light-brown hair, and sweet, boyish face were definitely cute. (It didn’t occur to Joe that he’d never before thought of any guy as cute, but after two days of exposure, under profound hypnosis, to bisexual pornography along with a running commentary from Doc designed to focus his attention on the attributes of the male as well as female performers, and to imagine himself in the action, he was beginning at least to notice other men’s sexual potential, even if he weren’t exactly ready to explore it yet.)
“Joe, this is Bobby Prentice,” Doc said cheerfully. “He’s here to help us out this morning. Bobby, Joe McNamara.”
Bobby offered Joe his hand to shake, but the dreamy expression on his pretty face didn’t alter, and Joe could see that his eyes weren’t really focusing. Obviously, the lad was in deep hypnosis, or drugged, or both. That struck the young ex-detective as sexy, somehow.
“What will you have for breakfast today, Joe?” Doc continued. Thoroughly well trained by now, Joe immediately asked for cereal and coffee, which Doc obligingly served up. However, when the ex-detective moved to begin the process of providing the extra ingredient he’d become accustomed to having on his granola, Doc stopped him. “I’m afraid that you won’t be allowed to masturbate this morning, Joe. It’s no longer appropriate for you to cum without specific permission. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Well, when he put it like that, of course it made sense, but the cereal was certainly going to be a disappointment, Joe thought glumly.
Doc smiled at him. “Cheer up. I wouldn’t dream of spoiling your breakfast. Young Bobby will take care of your requirement. Bobby, please take off your clothes.”
“Yes, sir.” As emotionless as a doll, the boy pulled his sweater off over his head, and skinned out of his jeans (revealing in the process that he hadn’t been wearing underwear).
Stark naked, Bobby was definitely hot. Joe was rather shocked to feel the beginnings of a reaction in his own crotch. What was happening to him? He’d never gotten hard for another guy before, had he? And yet, when Joe tried to remember for certain, he was unable.
While Joe was searching his uncooperative memory, Doc had ordered Bobby to get himself hard and jerk off onto Joe’s granola, and, showing no resistance or embarrassment, the pretty young boy was doing just that. As the kid stroked himself luxuriously (yet without any apparent self-awareness) Joe found himself becoming more and more aroused. He had become so completely used to trance states that he didn’t even register when Doc tripped his trigger phrase, or that his excitement was due as much to the ongoing litany of suggestion filling his hypnotized mind as to what he was seeing. “Bobby is such a beautiful young man,” Doc was murmuring to him. “You love the way his body looks, the graceful way he moves; you love the way his strong, young hand plays with his cock. You wonder how he would look if he were making love: how he would use his mouth and tongue, how his hard little butt would flex as he fucked, what his expression would be when he came. Maybe you even begin to wonder how it might feel to kiss him, to touch him yourself.” Joe’s spellbound imagination was filled with vivid pictures of Bobby in a passionate tangle with a girl who looked like Helene Brewster (although he didn’t think of her by that name, it having been eradicated from his memory days ago along with any awareness that she actually existed, and wasn’t just a creation of his fancy). But as well, he was beginning to put himself (ever-so-cautiously) into the picture: sharing the woman’s ripe mouth with the boy (or was it Bobby’s lips he was tasting?), caressing her bare flesh wherever it was exposed (and maybe also stroking Bobby’s satiny back, or fondling his peach-perfect ass as he humped?).
When, at Doc’s command, the boy pumped his cream onto Joe’s breakfast, the ex-detective returned to himself with an almost guilty start, feeling embarrassed, but ridiculously horny. However, Bobby took no notice of either Joe’s blushes or his erection, nor did he seem to have any reaction to what he himself had been doing. A word from Doc, and he merely put his clothes back on and drifted out of the room like a sleepwalker, lovely but vacant.
“Go ahead and eat, Joe,” Doc said. “You’ll find that Bobby’s cum tastes just as good as yours, and is a hell of a lot more erotically exciting to you. You’ll find that all men’s cum will be delicious and sexy, from now on. Won’t you?”
“Mmph… yeah.” Joe’s mouth was full. Incredible how good this was! And his dick just got harder and harder as he thought about how it was Bobby’s jizz he was tasting now, instead of just his own. It completely escaped his notice that he was having what was essentially his first truly homosexual experience – eating another guy’s cum, and totally getting off on it.
But it didn’t escape Doc’s notice. He smiled darkly. Joe’s downfall was now virtually assured; he could afford to speed up the process from here on in. When the enslaved detective finished eating, Doc sent him back under hypnosis. Today, after Joe’s mandatory physical workout (no indoctrinee was allowed to get out of shape during the process, Joe being no exception, and though he would never be a muscle slave, lacking the proper body type for it, by the time his mental restructuring was complete, he’d be in the best and most beautiful physical shape of his life), his deep trance training would no longer feature any women, even as bait. The films and suggestions would be totally man-on-man, with Joe hypnotically forced to imagine himself in the scenes, and female images would hereafter be accompanied by electric shocks or suggestions of nausea and fear, until they became objects of distaste rather than desire. This was the portion of the method that was most dangerous to the subject, and the one during which the greatest number of eventual failures occurred (especially since the sexual situations depicted, due to the oftentimes bizarre demands of the organization’s clientele, had to run the gamut from vanilla all the way to sadism/masochism and even snuff). A number of promising young men had simply been unable to assimilate the suggestions, and gone mad. But Doc had a good feeling about young Mr. McNamara. Both his exceptional responsiveness to hypnosis, and the ease and completeness with which he had accepted the conditioning so far, made the prognosis favorable.
Joe no longer knew how long he’d been at the facility; it seemed he’d never been anywhere else. All his moments of self-awareness (and there were fewer and fewer of these as the once razor-sharp mind was dulled into unquestioning, unthinking subservience – he now had, if he could have appreciated it, the same sort of vague, unfocused detachment as he had seen in Bobby the first time they encountered one another) were filled with erotic thoughts of other men – handsome men, ugly men, young men, old men, men performing every imaginable sexual act with each other, with him. He couldn’t seem to think of anything else, and he had an almost perpetual hard-on. Breakfast, one of the few times during the day that he was usually not in deep trance, continued to feature the ingestion of cum. Sometimes it would be Bobby who obliged, but just as often someone else, there seeming to be a rather large supply of pretty young men, all of them willing (or rather will-less, like good hypnotized robots) to provide his protein supplement. (Joe, although, because it only happened when he was in deepest trance, he didn’t realize it, was routinely providing the same service for other young men, more recent recruits to the program.) Lately however, Doc had ordered the process to be streamlined, and now Joe was learning to suck his man-cream straight from the source. It was trickier than he would have guessed to do it up to Doc’s rigorous performance standards, but he was amazed (to the extent he was still capable of amazement) at how much it turned him on to suck these handsome boys to orgasm. And his mouth had developed a perpetual nagging feeling of emptiness whenever it wasn’t filled with cock. Joe guessed it must be something like what a smoker feels when trying to give up cigarettes. Fortunately, he wasn’t being asked to give it up!
Three more weeks had passed, and Joe had been a captive for nearly two months. The few necessary letters, written by Joe’s own, hypnotized hand, had long since been sent out, including a very formal report to Helene Brewster with documentation and expenses for the search he was supposed to have been conducting, and his regretful conclusion that he could find no more avenues to pursue and must close the case. No one would wonder what had become of him.
The Joe McNamara that existed now was a very different young man from the one who had gone looking for David Kennedy. (Indeed, in a very real sense, he wasn’t even “Joe” anymore. He answered to that name, for convenience sake, but it no longer carried any particular stamp of identity. He was merely a unit with a serial number, and when he was purchased, he would answer to whatever name his new master wished, with as genuine a belief that it was his as he had ever held about his own name.) He scarcely ever had what could be called private, conscious thoughts any longer. His mind and will utterly dominated and destroyed through drugs, torture, and endless, endless deep hypnosis sessions, the ex-detective’s world had narrowed to one thing only: sexual obedience to men. He had learned to suck and fuck, to be sucked and fucked, all the arts of seduction and arousal, and a great number of more exotic skills. Joe was trained in every form of fetish known to the organization (and it was a long list), among them: water sport, foot worship, scat, leather, rubber, bondage, and physical discomfort or abuse of all kinds, all performed on command with the requisite degree of enthusiasm (or not, as ordered). His playmates were the other handsome, hapless victims that Doc’s programming had turned into mindless sex slaves, all waiting, as he was, to complete their training and be shipped off to market. It no longer even mattered to Joe whether they were handsome or not. If he were told to service one of them, that one immediately became the focus of his desire for as long as it was required of him. Preference had nothing to do with it. (Indeed, even though Joe was always partnered with another of the trainees, Doc often used hypnotic suggestion to make him believe he was with an old or unpleasant man. It was important to make sure that the indoctrination was thorough enough to overcome any prejudices that might remain, since those likely to want to purchase the finished product that Joe would soon become, were unlikely to possess much personal charm. Otherwise, considering the added lure of their wealth, why would they need to buy a partner at all?) It was time for his final test and “graduation”.
Doc led Joe into a new room. It was similar to the other sexual training rooms he had visited before, but this one had a large two-way mirror behind which Doc’s bosses were seated to observe. The room was already occupied. Had Joe been able to realize it, the quest he had begun weeks ago was finally over. This handsome dark-haired young man, dressed in institutional blue-gray shirt and trousers, standing as still as a marble statue, was David Kennedy. David was one of Doc’s disappointments. It wasn’t that he’d been able to resist the training; he hadn’t. The beautiful boy was every bit as obediently enslaved as any of his fellow abductees. The problem was that, unfortunately, David had proved to be a very indifferent hypnotic subject. This had necessitated continuing the use of the chemical cocktail that rendered him sufficiently hypnotizable for far too long. The young man was now addicted, and so of no commercial value to his captors. His termination and disposal had only awaited the enactment of such a test as was about to be given to Joe.
“Strip, Joe,” Doc commanded, and, with a dutiful ‘yes, sir’, the (of course) deeply hypnotized former detective obeyed. “David,” Doc said, turning to the other, “You are here to be used. Isn’t this so?”
“Yuh… yes, sir…” Unlike Joe’s dreamy, but clear and prompt response, the drugged boy’s voice was sleepy and slurred.
“In order to serve properly, David, you must become a thing,” Doc continued. “Your mind is turned off as of now. You no longer can form thoughts. You will accept whatever is done to you, obey whatever is said to you, because a thing cannot have opinions or choices. You are a thing. Say it.”
“’m a… thing…” David’s handsome face had grown, first ashen, then so utterly blank it scarcely seemed real. He could have been mistaken for a wax figure at Tussaud’s.
“Take off your clothes, David.” With slow, fumbling fingers the conquered boy unbuttoned his shirt, letting it slide negligently from his shoulders to the floor, and then unfastened and stepped out of his pants. Naked and intensely beautiful, he stood, head hanging helplessly. “Stand as you are, David, unable to move unless commanded. And get an erection.” The young man’s cock instantly swelled, hardened, and rose throbbing before him. He showed no reaction to it.
Doc returned his focus to Joe. “Look at this boy, Joe. He’s the most beautiful young man you’ve ever seen, isn’t he?” The detective’s eyes widened in astonishment as he suddenly realized the unbelievable perfection of David Kennedy. “You desire his body as you’ve never desired anyone before. You want, you need to make love to him.” Joe’s cock was now also fully erect and pulsing, he was breathing as heavily as a runner in mid-race, and the expression of lust on his hypnotized face was as intense as agony. Relentlessly Doc continued, “But you don’t just desire him. This is David Kennedy. You were hired to find him, to save him. He is your responsibility, your trust, so young, so helpless, so innocent. You feel protective and tender towards him. You feel love! You are in love with David Kennedy. You love him intensely, helplessly, totally! You love him more than your life!”
“Oh, God, David,” Joe groaned. Tears ran down his cheeks at the force of the emotions ripping through him.
Doc was merciless. “I want you to fuck him to death. When he is dead, you will find a gun in drawer over there.” Doc pointed to an end table under the mirror. “You will use it to shoot yourself in the head.” This was the final test. Even the most perfect-seeming diamond could fracture into dust under the cutter’s blows, so unless those blows were allowed to fall, one could never prove the diamond’s worth. If Joe could be made to obey these horrifying instructions, there would be nothing left beyond the reach of his programming. (The gun, of course, would not be loaded. If their subject followed through to that extent, his death would be the last thing the organization wanted.)
“Please. Nooo,” Joe wailed. But his hands were already reaching out to grasp David’s motionless form….
The room is almost completely black except for the fanciful, brightly colored neon lighting fixtures and flashing strobes. It could be a high-tech club, or a circuit party venue. The handsome young men dancing so erotically certainly fit that image; their pretty faces, flawless, oiled, gym-toned bodies, and scanty, form-hugging clothing, as well as their rapt, drugged expressions would be perfectly at home on the circuit. But they are not dancing with each other; they aren’t really dancing with anyone at all; they are just… dancing, on low, individual go-go stages. Throughout the room, other men are wandering to and fro, carefully scrutinizing each of the dancers, one after another, although none of the dancers appears to take the least notice. And these men most emphatically do not belong at a circuit party. Unlike the young dancers, nearly all of whom are white “twinks”, these men come from every ethnic background, though the majority are Asian, and, although some of them are not unattractive, their defining characteristics are not youth or beauty, but rather wealth and power. The least opulent of them is wearing, at a conservative estimate, more than $10,000 in tailored designer clothing, Italian shoes, and Rolex.
Masaharu Ito looks around him as he enters the club. He has paid more than $5,000 American just for admittance to this room; he will likely pay as much as twenty times that, or even more, in his “shopping”, depending upon his bargaining skills and whether or not he is bidding against anyone. It is very pricey, but, he thinks to himself, worth it. After all, how does one put a price on owning another human being so completely? The boys here are amazingly well trained. Ito-san has a long and specific list of requirements, and this establishment is the only one he has ever found that will guarantee satisfaction. These boys will perform any act, submit to any degradation, do anything Ito-san wishes without resistance (unless, of course, resistance is what he wants); the last one he owned had even, at Ito-san’s suggestion, obligingly thrown himself in front of a train when Ito-san tired of him! His eyes having adjusted to the bizarre lighting, Ito-san begins to prowl. He finds his attention soon drawn to one particular dancer. The young man is, of course, very handsome indeed, with thick, sexy, light-brown hair, beautiful sea-green eyes, and the best body that careful training and good genes can produce. He dances with the same oblivious concentration as the rest, but there is something about him that intrigues Ito-san. Perhaps it is the traces of personality than remain imprinted on his now mindlessly blank face. He seems a bit older (late-twenties instead of the college age prevailing among his fellow dancers), and Ito-san suspects that, before his will was permanently obliterated, this was a man who possessed strength and character. His fall must have been great. Feeling a small thrill of arousal at that thought, Ito-san picks up the small plastic identity disc form the dance platform (its presence indicates that this dancer is still available for purchase), and goes to complete his transaction.