A Question of Time, Ch. 02

Maggie wasn't thinking about anything.

Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone.

She was lost in a pleasant, dreamless oblivion, and the one slim part of her consciousness that remained was the part that was aware of just how nice it all felt, not to think, just to feel the soft sheets, the pillow under her head, and just wanted to stay like this forever...

Then Burke touched her on the shoulder, and after a moment of gentle shaking, she woke up. The sunlight streamed through the blinds on the motel window onto the wall just over her head, and she realized it must already be late in the day. She looked down at her watch to see what time it was, and seeing the reflection of Burke in the watch brought back all the memories of yesterday's strange, crazy, utterly mad day, and a sudden, gripping terror clutched at her heart as she turned over to look at him.

"We've got problems," he said before she could get out a single word.

The questions in her mind-how did she get in here, why had he let her sleep so long, why hadn't he ever answered her question that she asked before she fell asleep-all of them fluttered out of her head at the tone of urgency in his voice. "What problems?" she asked, her voice still full of sleep.

Burke went to the window. He lifted aside the blinds for just a moment, long enough to peek out, and said, "I don't think we got away clean." He went back over to the bed. "I went out a few minutes ago, to buy supplies, and I spotted one of their scouts. He didn't spot me...at least, I don't think he did...but they must know that I'm taking you away from them." He went back over to the windows, and peered out through the blinds again. "Worse, they must have figured out that I'd be taking you south. They might have people all up and down the routes into Mexico." Like a tiger in a cage, he stalked the same route back to the bed and looked down at her. "We're going to have to be a lot more careful from now on."

Maggie asked, "Why not just try going somewhere else? Like, I dunno, Canada?"

"Because we're not dodging the draft," he said impatiently. "We're hiding out from mind-control slavers. We need someplace with a low technology level and an under-organized bureaucracy, and Canada doesn't fit the bill. To be frank, I'm not sure if even Mexico is going to be uncivilized enough-we might have to move you further south, into Central America."

Part of Maggie wanted to ask what would happen if she didn't want to live the rest of her life in Central America, but by now, she knew better than to question something like that. Burke was just trying to save her mind, and he knew more about this than she did. If he said Central America, then she'd just need to learn how to speak Spanish. "Then what do we do?"

"For now, we wait. I don't want to travel by day if we can possibly avoid it. That means we're stuck here for a few hours, until the sun goes down."

Maggie nodded. "So what do we do until then?" As she sat on the bed, still wearing last night's sweat-soaked clothes from the club, she realized what the question sounded like, and she blushed. "I mean-um, well, do you have food?" She hadn't realized it until a moment ago, but she was starving.

He went over to the door, and grabbed some sandwiches from a large grocery bag-undoubtedly the supplies he'd went to get earlier. "Here. Eat. When you're done, we're going to work on a little self-defense training."

Maggie unwrapped her sandwich greedily. "I thought you said we couldn't fight them."

"This isn't about fighting. It's about resistance."

*****

"They'll try to separate us, if at all possible."

Maggie was sitting on one of the motel's two dingy, understuffed chairs, the sandwich now resting comfortably in her stomach.

"They know that they can't hypnotize me, so they'll try to distract me with a plausible-seeming threat. Perhaps a noise at the window, or a suspicious figure asking questions of the hotel manager. Something. In any event, it'll just be an excuse to get you alone."

Burke was sitting across from her, in a chair that was identical to her own, apart from a stain here and there and a few lumps in the stuffing. He'd removed his hat, and had his eyes closed as though meditating.

"Once they've got you alone, then they'll try to put you under as quickly as possible. Once they have you under their control, they can walk away with you easily. You'll go willingly into your new life as a sex slave."

The sunlight was orange now, fading to red on the hotel walls, and they'd turned on the desk lamp just to give themselves enough light to see by. It cast odd shadows on the wall, but Maggie had her attention turned to Burke as he spoke.

"I'm not expecting you to be able to fight them off. You can't. I've never known anyone to be able to offer them successful resistance. The only thing you need to be able to do is to hold them off until I get back. None of their distractions will last that long, so all you need to do is to resist for a little while, until I return. Do you understand?"

Maggie nodded, before realizing that Burke's eyes were closed. She said, quietly, "Yes."

Burke said, "Alright, then. We're going to work on resisting hypnosis, then, Maggie. I'm going to open my eyes in a second, and I want you to resist going into a hypnotic trance for as long as you possibly can. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

Burke opened his eyes and looked into her own. "You've already started out wrong, Maggie," he said in a calm, smooth, even tone. "You should have looked away before I could open my eyes. There's nothing in the rules, Maggie, that says you have to look into my eyes and try to resist. You could have gotten up, gotten out of the chair, closed your eyes, looked at the floor, but you looked into my eyes. That's going to make it much harder for you to resist, now."

Maggie thought back to all the stories she'd read, about helpless women like her being taken by hypnotic men. How did they resist? She tried to drag her eyes away from his, but it was like...like they didn't want to move. It was so hard to move them, and so easy to let them stay locked onto Burke's...

"Now that you've looked into my eyes, you're going to have to try to look away. Don't try too often, Maggie, since each effort will exhaust you, tire you out, drain away your will to resist, and so if you make an unsuccessful attempt, that will make it so much harder to resist me. Try to move the eyes first-it takes so much more effort to move your body, Maggie, that you'll probably find that it's already impossible to do so. If you try to move your body, and fail, then you'll be even more exhausted, Maggie."

Maggie realized that she'd involuntarily tried to move, both her eyes and body, when he told her not to. Probably not what he had in mind, she thought distractedly as she gazed into his eyes. She felt so totally immobile in the chair now, and once again, she tried to think of how the heroines in her favorite stories fought off mind control. Idly, she became aware of a trickle of moisture between her thighs, and although she could barely move, she squirmed slightly in embarrassment.

"If you can't move anymore, Maggie, then try to focus some of your attention away from me. Try to center your awareness in your feet, Maggie...or your legs...your thighs, resting on the chair...your back, resting against the chair...your arms, resting on the armrests..."

It wasn't working, Maggie realized. Her point of focus was narrowing, not expanding. It was like all there was left to her body was just her head, gazing out through immobile eyes at Burke, who'd expanded to fill her entire world. She still knew she was aroused, and that the arousal was getting more intense by the moment, but it was a dreamlike arousal that didn't seem to break through the fog she was wrapped in. She felt her head tilt back to rest against the wall as though it were happening to someone else, because she just couldn't hold it up anymore. All her energy, all her attentions were just focused towards keeping her eyes open. As long as she could hold her eyes open, she wasn't in trance. But her eyes felt so heavy... She tried to think about those stories, those women, fighting their evil hypno-captors.

Oh, she thought to herself, as her eyes slipped closed. They all lost, too...

*****

Maggie felt a tap on her forehead, and she awakened.

Burke was staring at her, an icy glare on his face. "Two minutes," he said, getting up to pace around the motel room. "That's how long you lasted, Maggie. Two minutes."

Maggie blinked. She still felt foggy, disoriented. She dimly recalled scraps of the hypnotic experience, and part of her realized just how...how wonderful it was...but she was trying to focus on what Burke had said, now. "Is-is that good?"

"Good?" The words exploded out of Burke's mouth in anger. "Good? I could go to the bathroom, Maggie, and you'd be gone when I came back." He spun around, headed back towards her, and she almost recoiled from the force of his anger. "It's not good, it's fucking useless. You're like a straw in the wind, Maggie. You're...you're..." he finally just spat out the word. "Weak."

Maggie pressed herself away from him. "I tried," she said plaintively. "I did, really! It's just that...well..." she blushed. "It all felt so good."

He grabbed her arm. "'It felt good'? Is there something you don't understand here, Maggie? If that had been anyone-anyone at all-besides me, you'd never have woken up. You'd have been reprogrammed into a mindless little hypno-slut, every trace of original thought would have been removed from your brain, and the words 'free will' wouldn't have even held any meaning for you anymore, and you're telling me that it's too hard for you to fight back because 'it felt good'?" He turned away. "Maybe I should just let them have you, if you so clearly want to be their little slut. If all you really care about is 'feeling good', then maybe you'd be better off as a slave."

"No, please," Maggie said softly, amazed at the twitch in her groin at the thought. "I don't, really. I don't want to be a slave. I just...I can do better. Really, I can."

Burke sat down heavily on the bed, and he stared down into his hands. "You'll have to, Maggie. You just don't understand. You don't understand how dangerous these people are. How easy it is for them to get to you."

"Why do you?" Maggie asked, once again surprising herself with her own boldness. Burke's head shot up, and he glared at her. She almost wished she hadn't asked the question. But her mouth seemed to work independently of her brain now, as she said, "You said they couldn't hypnotize you. You knew Frank. You know about...all of this." She was already wilting under the force of his glare. "Please," she said. "Tell me why."

Burke continued to glare at her for a long moment. "Because," he said, "I used to be one of them."

TO BE CONTINUED...