Open-Minded

"Yes," she replied, reluctantly, "yes, I did. And I will. No more. I promise."

"You sure?"

Annoyance, now. "I said I promised, didn't I?"

"Hey, it's okay, I believe you. Don't worry about it."

She sighed. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn't have snapped at you. Maybe I'm using the trances as too much of a crutch and now that you're making me-- now that I'm deciding to stop, I'm feeling like it's going to be less easy to get through the day." She puffed out a breath in resignation. "Well, I'm gonna take a shower, now, darling. Maybe later after dinner we could..." She smirked and let that trail off with a firm implication I'd be seeing her in something dirty and filthy and probably translucent later tonight.

"Sounds great, dear. What about dinner?"

"It's in the oven. Can you set the table?"

"Sure. Have a nice shower."

"I will," she replied, downing the... er... coffee from earlier before setting it back on the ledge and going upstairs.

Before the shower door had opened I had pried the laptop open and was frantically searching for some kind of evidence what I'd seen was real. I hadn't found any by the time the shower stopped, so I gave up. For the moment.

***

If the constant sexual stimulus had been negatively affecting Sheila's libido for our marital relations, you couldn't tell it by me. She was a wildcat in bed (and on the floor, up against the wall... all of her favorites), taking me in her mouth while thrusting her clit at my face in a frenzy of maddened desire.

While I was never naive enough to think I had imagined the violation of our agreement, after her initial annoyance at me for invoking the "give it up when I ask" clause she seemed content with the lack of trance sessions with Edralve or whoever else had been there. She spent her free time hiking, and often visited me in the middle of the day at work for lunch and sometimes a nooner. Things were back to normal again.

It wasn't until the night I woke up at two in the morning to find her missing from the bed that things got uncomfortable again. It was rare for her to have insomnia, but it wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility. I told myself this several times as I made my way to the office where the flickering blue light illuminated Sheila's naked form. One hand stroked her snatch vigorously, and the other wiped saliva or pussy or both over her tits, neck and chin. Her eyes were glazed over again and her mouth was silently repeating the word "obey" over and over.

I came up behind her, and she was so deep in the throes of her masturbation she didn't even notice. I yanked the headphones out of the jack, and the computer "conveniently" switched to speaker. A male voice (different from the one before, if I am any judge of such things) thundered out:

"... you are mine, slut. No one else's. Not even Edralve's. Do you understand and obey? Tell your master you obey!"

Sheila leaned forward to the tiny microphone, still oblivious to my presence. She licked her lips and began aloud, "I obey, mas--"

In retrospect I probably shouldn't have smashed the monitor. Or the router. Or did that hammer thing to the cable modem. It didn't matter; Sheila bought new ones at the local electronics store the next day, not even recalling watching me break them. I don't think she knew why she needed them, but that didn't stop them from showing up on my American Express.

***

I've reviewed the network logs to the limits of my sparse familiarity with computers, and so far I've found dozens of addresses for people who have had or still do have access to my wife's mind. Some were sending her text, some accessing her through voice chat, and I found three who had sent her crappy homemade spiral patterns along with MP3s with intricate music and mumbled commands. All male.

In addition, there were the transcripts from the original "Mistress Edralve" sessions, and there were big chunks of time missing from the timestamp on the early ones. Edited. There was obviously some stuff in there this woman hadn't wanted Sheila to see initially, though as the sessions got more and more intense the editing dropped away and I noticed instead admonitions to be more and more helpless to see and remember "some of the commands which used to make [her] nervous". Near the end there were orders to log into websites where a number of "masters" could use her for their own purposes, and Sheila was told to submit to them as well.

It's all thoroughly insane. Whether I believe an iota of it or not (and I still maintain my skepticism), it's clear she believes in it, and by my own admission the whole heart of the game that is hypnosis is that the subject convinces themselves they are under the control of the inductor. So, really, what does it matter if she's "really" entranced and incapable of disobeying suggestions or not? If she thinks she is, then for all intents and purposes she is. Period. End of story.

I've lost nothing, really: she's not changed her role with me, in bed or otherwise. She still cooks the meals, greets me with a passionate kiss at the door and with her legs wrapped around my waist when I tell her I want her. But somehow I feel there's something wrong with our relationship... that she's ceded some amount of control to others I can't touch, that I've lost some imperceptible... something... that maybe I never had in the first place.

And why the fuck can't I hypnotize her, if it's so damned easy that anyone with access to Photoshop can have her for a song? (Literally!) Is it, as she said after I made the attempt a week ago, because I don't really believe it can work, or is it because she knows I don't really believe it can work or (and this is the thought that woke me up in a cold sweat last night) is it because she's been programmed to be inaccessible to my attempts?

I can't find "Mistress Edralve", no matter what I try. The chick is a fucking enigma and the kid I hired to hack our PC and figure out who she was had no more luck than the private investigator I hired to do the same. They both asked for more information, and I'll admit I am scared to give it to them-- do I really need a pimply-faced high-school junior and a moustached forty-something added to the list of people forcing her to chant "Obey... Obey... Obey..." over and over again late at night?

My initial resolution to divorce her based on her broken promise has faded to a dull glimmer of frustration, but I have not, not struck her across that mesmerized facade with the back of my hand, much as I've wanted to when I've found her several times since that night. I love my wife and I'm not giving her up to some charlatan bitch with delusions of grandeur. And the dozens of others... but let's not go there right now. We'll get through this somehow. God only knows how.

I'm a husband whose wife's mind is not her own, and to make matters worse, it's not mine either.

So what do I do now, huh?

Huh?!?

------------------

For Lady Ruetha, who I am sure would never do this. And for MichelleLovesTo, who certainly would.