If You Leave

The ringing of the cell phone cut insistently through the fog in Charlotte's mind, refusing to let her sink back down into her relaxed, dreamy trance. "Yes, hello," someone said irritably as they finally answered it. Wait...trance? She cracked an eyelid open just a little, the act seeming to take a lot more effort than she'd expected. When did she go into a trance?

"Yeah, I really can't talk now," the man said as Charlotte tried to focus on him through eyes that were used to wearing glasses. She recognized the voice, though. The Amazing Paul Hammond, Master of Mesmerism. But she hadn't volunteered or anything...had she? She'd bought her ticket and watched the show, but she distinctly recalled being too shy to volunteer. She'd just sat in the crowd, listening and watching as he swung his pocket-watch, dizzying and dazzling the volunteers sitting on their stools as he told them to relax and let go, sink deeper and relax, obey and sink deeper, close their eyes and obey...

And it had been so soothing, so relaxing, and Charlotte had such a long day at work and it was such a goofy, silly way to spend an evening that she'd just felt her eyes closing, and when he'd told them to stand up, she'd just seemed to float to her feet...

"Yes, I'm with a girl," Paul continued. OK, that answered a few of her questions. But she wasn't on stage now, was she? Charlotte looked around a bit more, but the room wasn't the first thing she noticed. The first thing she noticed was that she'd stripped down to her bra and panties, and even her bra was only hanging on by one strap. That splashed a bit of cold water into her mind and helped her clear away the cobwebs, which was probably a bit of a mixed metaphor but she still felt a little muzzy from the trance.

"You always ask that, and I always say no," Paul said, his attention not on her at the moment. "Hypnotize your own, OK?" Charlotte started to stand up, still taking in details of the room around her. It looked like a dressing room; there was a bunch of 'normal' clothing hanging from hooks, probably Paul's outfits when he wasn't up on stage hypnotizing people. (Oh, God, he'd hypnotized her up on stage, and he'd taken her back to his dressing room afterwards...Charlotte racked her brains, trying to think of anyone she'd told about where she was going to be that night.) Her own clothes, though, had just been scattered over the small bed she'd been sitting on.

She started to gather them up when she heard Paul say, "Yeah, yeah, I'll talk to you later," and she spun around to face him. "I see you're awake," he said. "Sorry, I really should have set my phone to vibrate."

"Sorry?" she said, her voice choked with anger and fear. "If I hadn't heard that phone, I'd still be..."

"You'd still be deep and warm in a soft, soothing--"

"Stop that!" she shouted at him. "Don't say another word! You put me under, you snuck me back here, and if I hadn't woken up, you'd...you'd..." She was starting to cry, now, not quite wanting to believe the situation she'd wound up in. She didn't want to say it because then she'd have to believe it was all real. She'd have to believe that she was in a strange room with a strange man, almost totally naked and he was just staring at her and she didn't even want to look at him because she was afraid he might...might hypnotize her again.

But instead, he just put up his hands in a calming gesture. "Now hold on," he said. "I didn't do anything you didn't want to do."

She glared at him, wishing she could just get dressed and run out of the room but not wanting to put down the clothes she was holding up like a shield in front of her nearly naked body. "Wanted?" she shouted. "You think I wanted this?"

"Maybe not consciously," he said, still just sitting in his chair. "But yes, I think that you wanted this very much. You're a very willing subject, Charlotte. It's pretty common that an audience member goes under from an induction meant for someone else, but even so, you practically jumped into trance. And when I brought you up on stage, you seemed very willing to interpret every command in the kinkiest way possible, even adding a sexual element to the non-sexual commands. Which made for a good show, but I was a little curious, so I asked you to come back here with me afterwards. Something else you seemed very happy to do."

"That's because you hypnotized me!" Charlotte said, finally spotting her glasses on the floor. She crouched down very slowly, not wanting to expose any more of her body to Paul's eyes than she had to, and picked them up. "I had to do what you said! I had no choice!"

"Interesting word selection, that," Paul said, steepling his hands together. "Are you familiar with the concept of the 'hidden observer'?" Charlotte shook her head cautiously. "On some level, no matter how deeply hypnotized you become, a part of you is awake. They call that the hidden observer. It shapes the way you respond to commands when you're under hypnosis. No matter what I tell you to do, your hidden observer holds a kind of veto over it."

Charlotte put her glasses on, just in time for him to fix her with a piercing stare. "Your hidden observer didn't stop you from coming back here with me, Charlotte. It didn't stop you from taking your clothes off, and from the sound of things, it didn't even care whether or not you remembered what happened while you were hypnotized, and I have to tell you that hypnotic amnesia is actually pretty difficult for most people. Now, why do you think that is?"

For a long moment, Charlotte couldn't speak. She knew why that was, just like she knew why she hadn't told anyone, not even her closest friends, that she was going to an R-rated stage hypnosis show. She knew that no matter what she told herself about wanting to wait for marriage, she still couldn't stop herself from having needs, urges...and fantasies. "That's not fair," she said. "There are a lot of things that I might want, but I don't do them because they're not right. You put me in a position where I was vulnerable..." She paused, momentarily distracted by the delicious, erotic sound of the word 'vulnerable'. "And you were getting ready to take advantage of the fact that I wasn't thinking straight to make me do things I wouldn't have done if I was clear-headed."

Paul smiled a little. "Yes, I think that's all pretty much true. Well, I might quibble over the statement that sex isn't 'right', but everything else sounds pretty fair. But none of that changes the fact that you really did want this, Charlotte. And I'm betting you still do."

"No I don't!" Self-consciously, Charlotte inched up her hand and reattached her bra strap.

"Alright," Paul said, "I'm a sporting man. Let's put this to the test." He pointed to the dressing room door. "You're awake right now, right? There's nothing stopping you from walking out that door if you don't want to do it. So if you leave, I promise you that all the suggestions I put into your mind will immediately end and you'll be back to your normal old self again." Suggestions? He'd put suggestions into her mind? Charlotte tried not to panic at the thought and instead focus on what he was saying right now. "If you don't leave, well...that must mean that you're here because you want to be here. And that means you must want me to hypnotize you. To put you into a deep, erotic trance and do all the things you told me you wanted me to do to you, Charlotte."

Charlotte wondered nervously what she'd told him. It all seemed so hazy now... "Alright," she found herself saying, almost before she could give the matter any thought. Still, it seemed like a good deal. After all, she was wide awake right now, and he couldn't do anything to keep her here. Unless he grabbed her or something, she realized suddenly. "But you have to sit right there in that chair until I say you can move," she blurted out.

"Sure," he said. "If that's what it takes to make you understand. Whenever you're ready, Charlotte."

She nodded confidently. Time to make him feel like an idiot. She turned and headed for the door without a single word. Five seconds, that's how long it'd take her to walk out of here, Mr. Paul 'I'm Secretly A Date Rapist' Hammond!

His words stopped her cold in her tracks, though. "You're not going to leave without putting your clothes back on, are you?"

Charlotte flushed bright red as she realized what she'd been about to do. She'd been so busy insisting that she wasn't a bimbo slut, and here she was about to give everyone in the building a free show! She pulled her shirt out from the little bundle of clothes she'd been holding and set the rest down on the floor, then began pulling it over her head.

"You sure you don't want me to come over there and help you?" Paul asked. "I don't know if you still remember how to wear clothes after some of those suggestions."

"Oh, no," Charlotte said. "You just sit right where you are. I don't want you--" She struggled with the thin fabric of her t-shirt, trying to find the hole her head went through. "--Don't want you coming over here and copping a feel, telling me you're just 'trying to help me put my clothes on'." Goddamnit, she thought, there has to be a second hole somewhere on this thing! "I am a twenty-year-old woman, I think I am fully capable of putting on my own..." Aha! A hole! She pulled, but it seemed to have gotten too small for her head. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't fit her skull through the opening. "My own..." Must be an armhole. She shifted her body around, trying to fit her arm through the hole, but it seemed to have unaccountably vanished. "My, um..."

Maybe she should try the pants first. They were usually easier to get on anyway. Charlotte set the shirt down, trying not to think about how she was giving Paul a free look at her in just her underwear (and trying extra hard not to think about the fact that there was a very obvious damp spot on her panties), and picked up the jeans. These should be easy to get into. She just had to lift up her right foot, put it over the right leg hole, then lift up her left foot and...

She fell over. OK, a trifle undignified, but at least they'd be easy to get into from this angle. She stuck her feet into the holes and pulled...but try as she might, Charlotte couldn't get them to go up past her knees. "What the--" she gasped out loud, kicking and struggling, but still unable to pull them on. "You did something to my pants!" she shouted accusingly at Paul, realizing as she said it that the words sounded more than a little insane.

"Not a thing," Paul said. "It's just that subconsciously, you don't want to put them on. I keep telling you, you're looking for excuses to stay here."

"No, I'm--" She gave another tug, but all that happened was that the fabric slipped out of her grasp and she fell flat on her back. "Look, just tell me how to get my clothes on so I can leave!"

"Dunno," Paul said with a trace of amusement in his voice. "Maybe you should try starting from scratch, just to make sure you haven't skipped any steps."

"Starting from--" Charlotte looked down at her bra and panties. "Oh, I see. Yeah, laugh while you can, mister. When I get out of here, I'm going straight to the...the cops, the local news, anyone who'll listen!" She removed her bra with an angry flourish, tossing it to the ground. "And I'm going to tell them about the creepy pervert hypnotist and his sleazy 'private shows' in the dressing room!" She pulled off her panties, sliding her jeans the rest of the way off in the process. "There!" she said angrily. "Enjoying the show?"

After a moment, he responded. "Sorry," he said. "I thought that was rhetorical. Yes, very much so. You're very beautiful, Charlotte."

She grabbed the bra. "Well, that's all you're going to see of it. Because I'm just going to..." She fiddled with the hooks for a long moment, but nothing she did seemed to cause them to snap together. "Just going to..." In frustration, she grabbed the panties, but they seemed to have knotted themselves up in a way that prevented her from getting more than her big toe through the holes. "Arrrgh!"

"I keep telling you, the reason you're having so much trouble is that you secretly want to be an obedient, horny hypno-slut for me. That's why all those suggestions took so well."

Charlotte felt a sick chill of fear in her gut as she heard the word 'suggestions' a second time. "What suggestions?" she asked.

"Oh, just a few things, really. I hadn't really finished." She could almost feel Paul watching her as he spoke, taking in the curve of her breasts, the swell of her hips. She tried to conceal herself from his stare, but she could tell just from the way he looked at her that no matter what she hid, he'd find something else to ogle. "I'd just gotten around to softening your brain up a little, making you more pliant and suggestible even when you were awake. It's really hard for you to disbelieve me now, Charlotte. You just listen to my words and even when you're not in trance, they sink in so deep, and it feels so good to listen to them, just listen and take them in and--"

Charlotte leapt to her feet. "I, I won't!" She wasn't even sure what she was refusing to do now; her mind felt soft and woozy and it felt hard to even think. She wondered briefly whether he was ever telling her the truth about wanting this, or whether he just told her she wanted this and hearing it made it happen. She wondered whether she ever even woke up all the way or whether she was still in trance, but that line of thinking just seemed to be like a whirlpool with no bottom and despite the sudden attraction of gazing into a whirlpool with no bottom and letting her thoughts just get sucked under, she knew she had to stop worrying about those suggestions and focus on getting through that door. Because he'd said it himself; once she was outside this room, all those suggestions would end and she'd be free.

She scooped up her clothes and went for the door. Forget about the free show, she told herself. If she didn't get out of here now, showing off her body (her sexy, beautiful body) would be the least of her worries. Paul would hypnotize her (and it would feel so good) and he'd fuck her (and she was so wet right now) and she'd, she'd...

His voice interrupted her train of thought. "You only think you want to leave, Charlotte," he said. "Deep down, you know that the bed is where you belong, you're being drawn back there even now. It's like a pull, Charlotte. Like the bed has a gravitational field, and it's pulling you irresistibly to it. No matter how strong you are, the pull gets stronger."

"Bullshit!" Charlotte gasped out defiantly, reaching for the door handle. She almost had it when she felt herself overbalancing, tipping backwards and just about to fall down again before she took a step back to steady herself. But that step back just seemed to be the beginning, she found herself taking another and another, closer and closer to...

She looked behind her. The bed seemed to loom in her field of vision.

She leaned forward. It took real effort now, and on some level she recognized that this was just another suggestion sinking into her brain...and it turned her on so much to think of how little she could resist these suggestions. But she had to concentrate, had to focus, had to resist these urges that were helping Paul mindfuck her and make a grab for the door.

She lunged forward, grabbing hold of the door handle, but the pull was just getting stronger. She couldn't turn it; it was all she could do to keep her sweaty palms from slipping off completely. She felt her feet skid backwards on the wooden floor. Her conscious mind insisted it was all just an illusion, that she was actually pushing herself backwards with her hands uncontrollably due to a post-hypnotic suggestion, but her subconscious knew better. Her subconscious knew it was real, all real. The bed was dragging her back, pulling her to it because when she fell back onto the bed, she'd know that she wanted to be a mindless obedient fuckdoll for her hypnotist and there'd be no point in resisting, not ever. She heard Paul saying those words right now, heard herself repeating them right alongside with him, but none of that mattered next to the struggle to keep herself from falling backwards onto the bed.

She turned the door handle, and the door flew open inwards. But she couldn't take advantage of the open portal to freedom, not when it was taking all her strength just to hang onto the door. She felt her hands slipping, wondered if even the sweat on her palms wasn't something her subconscious was doing to defeat her best efforts to stay free. She wasn't sure when her subconscious mind had started betraying her, if this was something she'd always needed deep down or if Paul had put the desire into her head, but it didn't matter anymore. She needed it now, and she needed it so bad that it was like a physical force pulling her into submission. She couldn't walk out that open door anymore, not with her mind so weak and her body so horny. Paul had known that, he'd cheated, but Charlotte's cunt didn't care and it seemed to be calling all the shots right now.

She lost her grip. The door gently swung shut as she slid backwards, trying to stop herself but not finding any more handholds between her and...

She tumbled backwards onto the bed. Her hands just seemed to be drawn further away from her body, touching opposite corners of the headrest as her feet hooked themselves around the railing at the foot of the bed and refused to let go. She didn't even remember him suggesting that she'd spread-eagle herself to the bed with invisible chains, but Charlotte was already having trouble remembering exactly what he'd said in the last few minutes. Her mind was beginning to feel hazy and dizzy and dreamy, because...because...

"Because you couldn't leave," Paul said. Charlotte hadn't even realized she was talking out loud. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe Paul could just tell what was going on in her horny, slutty mind because he knew all her hidden shameful desires. She felt herself leaking out onto the bed. "And if you didn't leave, then that must mean you want to be here. You want me to hypnotize you. To put you into a deep, erotic trance and do all the things you told me you wanted me to do to you, Charlotte."

"uh-huh..." Her voice sounded softer now, emptied of everything but quiet need and insistent arousal. She knew she was fading back into a trance, all her efforts to fight it gone. She'd tried to leave, and failed. If she left, she would have been free, but she'd gone right back to the bed and spread her legs. So she must not want to be free. It was so simple, really.

"But I can't get up, Charlotte. Not unless you tell me to. That was part of our bargain, remember? You're still perfectly safe, so long as you don't let me get out of this chair. So I won't be able to fuck you, Charlotte. I won't be able to satisfy that aching, insistent need in your pussy and give you the orgasm you're craving so very, very badly. Not until you admit that you want me to. Not until you admit that you need to be fucked like the horny, obedient, slutty little fuckdoll you are."

Charlotte whimpered. She'd never felt this aroused before, not ever. She wanted to touch herself, even though that was another thing that she'd never let herself do before, but even that relief was denied to her by the invisible bonds that held her wrists to the bedposts. "can't, i can't..."

"Because you think it's wrong, Charlotte? I understand. I'll just sit here, watching you squirm in need as your nipples tingle, as your cunt becomes slick and hot and you try desperately to think of something, anything but my hard cock pumping into you, and we can just wait as long as we have to." She looked over at him, she could see how hard he was, but he wasn't moving. Damn him, he wasn't moving! "You can't leave this room, you can't get up from the bed, you can't even move as you get hornier and sluttier and sexier and deeper into my trance, but I won't move. Not unless you ask. Not unless you beg for my touch on your deeply aroused body."