An Experiment

Eric sat in his room, needle in the left hand and a belt in the right. He wrapped the belt around his bicep and filled the syringe slowly from a small container of pale red liquid.

'God they're gonna think I killed myself' he thought. It was the obvious guess. Both parents dead in a car crash and not two months later his Uncle and only remaining relative suffocating on his car fumes. He and his sister inherited a mortgage neither of them could afford from their parents and countless useless 'inventions' his Uncle had left him.

'What am I doing,' he thought 'Am I depressed? Is this just begging for death?' he lowered the needle, 'I can't do this to my sister.' He thought of her walking in on her dead brother, dead just like the rest of their family. He thought of her, going through life with no one else. Then he thought of his life. Of spending the next eight decades dying slowly in his room. He was nineteen and hadn't done shit. Not one memorable moment, not some defining moment in his life which he would look back on in fondness. He had spent his days jerking off and playing video games. He felt a sudden rush of adrenaline. He tightened the belt, making the veins pop, and jammed the needle in, pressing down and watching the clear red liquid enter his veins.

He closed his eyes, waiting for it. Waiting for the stabbing pain in his chest or a sudden splitting headache. But nothing happened. He opened his eyes to find that he was very much alive.

"Oh," he said to himself out loud, reasonably surprised to be alive, "Well fuck I guess it might of worked."

He stood up, and his knees buckled. His head crashed into the ground and it went black.

He woke up, not sure how long had passed. Then, with a panic he noticed something wet up against his cheek. He stood up, wiping his face looking for blood. It was not blood. It was drool. He sighed and looked at the time. He cursed at himself. It was already half eleven. He had some preparation to do.

----

The next day Eric sat in the university library with two others. One was his closest friend at uni, Mark. They had met on the first day when they had both ended up passed out drunk in the same hallway. They had been inseparable ever since. They were both drinkers, not frat bro rapist drinkers, more embarrassing karaoke drunks. Needless to say they had not exactly been great with women, but they got around, having fun here and there. The third person sitting on their table had changed that. Nicole was stunning. Beach volleyball stunning. Blonde hair down past her shoulders, a tight body with a stunning ass from countless hours in the gym. They had started dating at the beginning of their second year, and needless to say he was obsessed with her. Mark wasn't ugly, in fact he was pretty good looking. But Nicole was way beyond any girl he had gotten with before. For the first good few months Mark would always joke that he was the luckiest guy in the country and for a while Eric agreed. Then he realized.

See girls like Nicole have a dilemma. For her whole life she had grown up richer and prettier than anyone else. She was a pampered trust fund kid who had never needed for anything. Those types always wanted a boyfriend to spoil them, take them out on nice dates and pose for cute Instagram stories. Mark did in fact fit this perfectly. He worked at a supermarket four out of three days and Eric had no doubt his wage went straight to candle lit dinners at expensive restaurants with his girlfriend. However, pretty gym girls like Nicole also wanted the pretty gym boys. The ones who fucked anything in sight and had two braincells in their heads from the countless years of drunken brawling on a night out. See this was was a pretty hard niche to fill. A romantic caring soul who was also a muscle bound meat head. Finding one person like that wasn't easy, so Nicole hadn't bothered.

Eric had first got suspicious when he would see her at the gym. She had a posse of three gym bros following her around drooling as she did her barbell squats, Bulgarian squats and goblet squats. Sure this didn't really mean anything, but when Eric saw her sitting on one of their laps at a house party he then started to get very suspicious. He asked a mutual friend, and after an embarrassingly little amount of questioning she admitted it. Nicole had been fucking every other guy behind Mark's back, and apparently everyone at uni knew. Eric had gone to Mark straight away, but he dismissed it as rumours. Then he got a picture of Nicole snuggling up to a guy on a dance floor. Mark had just shrugged and said nothing more. Eric had even got that mutual friend of theirs to tell Mark straight up. Again Mark just denied, denied, denied. Eric just couldn't understand how he could be in such denial. Then he realized. Mark knew. Mark must have known. But the poor idiot was so in love he couldn't make himself break up with her. So Eric had decided to take matters into his own hand.

The other two in the library studies hard for their upcoming midterms, but Eric instead had his Uncle's notebook out. Most of it was nonsense, ideas that even Eric as a second year knew would never work. But oddly enough the final four pages were encrypted. Eric and his Uncle always used to write each other encryptions as a joke between themselves, so after he had gotten the journal in a will he set to cracking it. The first page was easy enough, it was decoded through a cypher, his own name. The second page was harder, the had had realized it was Kings Road, the street where his uncle and dad had been born. He hadn't been able to crack the last two pages, but the first two were enough to grab his attention.

The first page detailed his experiment with gene manipulation. Real life gene manipulation. He had designed a virus which instead of destroying cells through gene manipulation, altered them. It had fascinated Eric, especially considering from the notebook it seemed that it had worked. The second page turned out to be even more insane. It explained how the virus changed the DNA, and from what Eric understood it would turn you into the most charismatic person in the world. Well, as long as your target had ingested some of your bodily fluids. It was exactly mind control. What it did instead was make a person highly suggestible after ingesting one of your bodily fluids. There had to be some rational to the suggestions, otherwise it would never work.

Originally Eric had dismissed it. He couldn't decrypt the last two pages, so the whole thing left him feeling uneasy. Especially since that the dates in the journal implied his Uncle had been working on it just two weeks before he killed himself. But as the days went by, and the grief over his family deepened, he needed something to distract him and getting back at his best mates bitch girlfriend seemed like the best way to take out his frustration.

"Oh fuck," Mark said, suddenly clutching his stomach, "I think I need to go to the toilet."

"Coffee shits?" Eric asked. Mark nodded and Nicole rolled her eyes. Mark always had a black coffee when they went to the library, and always nearly shat himself after downing it. The laxatives Eric had slipped in hadn't hurt.

Eric stood up with him, "Well want another? I got like two hours of sleep last night so I'm getting one."

"Yeah sure," Mark said.

"Nicole you want anything?" he asked. She smiled up at him, like he was being a good little boy. It made his stomach lurch.

"Oh thank you, just some sparkling water if they have it."

"No prob," Eric said smiling. Sparkling water? Eric always knew she was a bitch.

Eric came back quickly holding a bottle of sparkling water and two black coffees. Thankfully Mark was still gone in the toilet. Eric would need some time alone with Nicole. He spat on the lid of the bottle and rubbed the spit all over, hoping that that would be enough for the effects to trigger in her, though Eric was not feeling pretty doubtful that his Uncle's crazy experiment had ever worked.

She smiled at him, eyes devoid of any warmth. He tossed her the bottle and to his delight she immediately opened it and took a swig.

'Well now or never,' he thought to himself. He took a steadying breath.

"I know Nicole," he said firmly.

Nicole paused and looked at him, "Know what?" she asked.

"That you've been fucking other people behind Mark's back," he said sharply.

He expected denial, and outburst of anger or something. His spit clearly hadn't worked yet. The journal had mentioned some specific signs of when it did. So Eric sat there, waiting for whatever lies Nicole came up with. But she didn't. She just shrugged.

"What," Eric yelled, drawing a shush from a nearby student, "You're not even going to try to deny it."

Again she shrugged, "Why bother. I thought you found out ages ago. All those times you gave me death stares in the gym. I'm surprised you didn't confront me sooner."

"You are a fucking bitch," Eric hissed, "Why not just dump him? Can't you see how awful you are?"

"I don't see why I'm so bad. I want a boyfriend and Mark wants a pretty girl to have sex with him. It seems like a fair deal to me. And it's not like I'm leaving wanting. You should see his face whe-"

She suddenly stopped speaking. A dazed expression on her face. And to Eric's delight, her pupils dilated like she had just take a lethal dose of md. This was it. It had worked. Know all that was left for Eric to lay the suggestions in her mind. He had thought about it for so long, hours spent in the shower rehearsing it. But now his mind was blank.

'Shit, I need to do it quick before it wears off' he thought.

Eric just spoke, "You need to break up with Mark."

She frowned confused, "Why?"

Eric reminded himself. The suggestions needed to have some logic. Some way that they could be rationally believed. He racked his panicking brain for a reason.

"B-because you don't want a man like that. Not really."

"Why not?"

"Because he's too soft on you. You've been treated too nice your whole life. You don't understand how to be told no. You need someone who is able to say no to you right?"

Eric cringed. God that was stupid. He ego was way too big to ever go for that. But to his surprise she nodded. With renewed confidence he continued.

"You need a man who can control you. You need a man who you don't look down on. You need someone strong enough, someone like me," Eric felt embarrassed calling himself some strong dominant man, but if he wanted these suggestions to stick making her think he was a reliable source of advice, "And I am telling you that you will never be happy with a man who lets you walk all over him. You understand?"

With the same vacant expression she nodded. Eric breathed a sigh of relief. Now was the time to seal it.

"So listen to my advice. You like listening to me. You like doing the things I tell you because you know that it'll make you happy, understand?" Again she nodded, "And I am telling you that you need to break up with him understand," she nodded again.

Eric slumped in his chair, letting the tension out of his body. He quickly packed his things and stood up from the table.

"I'm going," he said to the still slightly out of it Nicole, "Tell Mark I've gone home because I've forgotten my laptop charger. Oh, and don't tell him about this okay?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

Eric walked out of the library. He had done it. His plan had worked and he felt fucking amazing.

-- Nicole --

Nicole sat with her head on one hand and phone in the other. This was not a conversation she wanted to have.

She had just about ran out of the library when Mark had come back out of the toilets. Eric had been so right. So persuasive. She couldn't stay with Mark. He just wasn't right for her. The moment he had seen him she had felt compelled to break up with him on the spot. But she couldn't not in front of everyone there. So instead she had rushed out mumbling something about Eric needing his charger.

Now she had Mark on the phone, and it wasn't going well.

"I just don't think that we were meant to be," she said.

"But why? Everything's fine. What's changed?" he asked.

Nicole almost told him that Eric had convinced her, then she remembered that Eric had told her not too say anything, "I just... I just came to the realization that I need someone different in my life."

"Someone different? What aren't I doing?"

Nicole struggled for the words, "You... you just let me walk over you. You're sweet and lovely, but you worship me. I just don't like how one-sided the relationship is."

"I can do that," he pleaded, "I can change. Is it in bed? Am I not good enough in bed?"

"Mark no its," god she was losing her patience, "You know that I've slept with other guys for fucks sake. And you do nothing about it. You just let it carry on. Do you not see?"

Silence on the other line.

"I'm sorry I-I just need a real man," she cringed as she said the words. Sure she had been cheating on him, but she didn't want to be pointlessly cruel, the words had just sort of tumbled out of her.

There was a moment of silence, then she heard beeping. He had hung up.

She felt horrible. She wanted to take a long hot shower. Then a sudden calmness came on her. An almost bliss as she remembered.

'At least I did what Eric commanded,' she thought. She let herself sit in this euphoric state for a moment, then jolted out of it. Why the fuck did she care about what Eric thought? And why the fuck was her hands down her panties?

-- Eric --

Eric had spent the rest of the day very self satisfied. The plan had worked and he had gotten that bitch under his thumb. The only way to cap off such a splendid day was for a celebratory wank. He went on pornhub. He wasn't particularly picky, but today he couldn't seem to find anything that did the trick. He went through video and video, until finally he found one. It was a pretty blonde girl chained up on her knees. Eric was normally pretty vanilla, a homemade video from a couple was his normal go to. But something today was drawing him to this video. He began to jerk off, watching the blonde give a rough blowjob. He sped up about to cum, then a vision flashed in front of him. Instead of the porn actress it was Nicole in front of him. Chained up and begging for his cum. He came hard, so hard that he practically groaned.

What the fuck was that?