Queen of Hearts

Jo stared at her ticket stub as if seeing it for the first time. It seemed strangely unfamiliar to her; she remembered going to the ticket counter and buying it, she remembered walking into the darkened theater and handing it over to an usher who guided her to her table, she remembered sitting down next to Chantal, but...all that seemed like the actions of a sleepwalker to her now, entirely detached from motive and logic. Things that had seemed perfectly sensible to her at the time now seemed like they'd been decided for her, and all her brain had been doing was stringing together a plausible-seeming set of reasons for doing the things she'd already known she was going to do.

She saw the name on the ticket. 'Madam Columbina - One Night Only'. Ah. That made a lot more sense to her, then. Jo had gotten used to doing unusual and inexplicable things whenever Madam Columbina was in town. It was always the same--her thoughts fogged over with warm and dreamy pleasure whenever she saw one of Madam's playing cards, and suddenly it seemed like a perfectly good idea to do things like host a strip poker game or wander off to a strange hotel wearing nothing but a string bikini or just turn on her webcam and masturbate herself senseless. Madam Columbina had a vivid imagination, and fifty-two potential triggers to play with.

At first, it had seemed a little...unnerving, to say the least, knowing that her mind and body were under someone else's control. But Chantal had explained a little more about how hypnosis worked to her, after that night when Jo first volunteered for Madam Columbina's stage show and wound up as one of her 'special girls'. Chantal told her that it wouldn't really be possible for Madam Columbina to have this much control over Jo's mind--over either of their minds--if they weren't getting some kind of unconscious reward for obedience that overwhelmed their conscious resistance to being hypnotized. (Or at least, that was the gist of it. Jo was cumming a little too hard at the time to remember all the details.)

With her curiosity satisfied, Jo took a moment to look around her at the other members of the audience. It was a small crowd, perhaps twenty to thirty--certainly nothing like Madam Columbina's usual shows. They were all women like Jo and Chantal, and many of them had that slightly glazed expression that told Jo that they had enjoyed about as much choice in their plans for the evening as Jo did. Those that didn't look clearly hypnotized seemed to be waking up like Jo. And Chantal, Jo suddenly noticed, who was staring at her ticket and blinking like she'd just woken up from a blissful nap. "I, um...hi," Chantal said, her voice still slightly muzzy from trance.

"Hi. Did you know anything about this?" Jo asked, holding up the ticket and gesturing to it with a trace of good-natured exasperation in her voice. Not that she was genuinely bothered by being drawn into another one of Madam Columbina's little fancies, but Jo did sometimes feel a bit at a disadvantage compared to her friend-with-benefits. Madam Columbina had originally drawn Jo into her influence because Chantal had a crush on her roommate, and the two of them had taken the opportunity to give Jo a few extra hypnotic suggestions that allowed Chantal to entrace Jo whenever the mood struck her. Madam Columbina and Chantal had a habit of conspiring to mess with Jo's head a little, and while she generally enjoyed the results, she was always a little suspicious whenever they were both involved in the same place at the same time.

But Chantal only looked at her in confusion--both the recently-awakened kind and regular, garden-variety bewilderment. "I, no, I'm as much in the dark as you are. I remember getting a text message back at the apartment, but--" She broke off as the house lights dimmed and the stage lights went up. "Oh, shhh, it's starting!"

Jo still didn't know what exactly was starting, but the calliope music cut off her train of thought as Madam Columbina took the stage. She wore her trademark jester's outfit, tattered and torn in a way that somehow made it look all the more beautiful on her, and her face was made up all in white with a bright red slash of lipstick across her mouth. She did a series of artful backflips and cartwheels to land directly in front of the microphone, and said, "Good evening, ladies and...well, it's just ladies tonight, I see! So many Isabellas, and not a single Silvio to be found. Oh, well. They say the course of true love never does run straight..."

She gave the audience a theatrical wink. "And tonight, we'll be putting a few extra kinks in it." The crowd laughed, and Jo chuckled along with them. She didn't know how many of them got the joke quite as well as she and Chantal did, of course, but she was already developing a suspicion that they weren't the only ones in the audience who Madam Columbina had singled out for personal attention over the last few years.

Sure enough, Madam Columbina said, "Before we do, though, I'd like to thank you all for coming out to this very important show, especially those of you who needed to do a little traveling to get here." Jo suddenly found herself wondering where exactly she was--she didn't have much memory between receiving Madam Columbina's text and standing outside the theater, and she knew from long experience that she was perfectly capable of carrying out complex, long-term actions under Madam Columbina's direction while concealing them completely from her conscious mind. She also knew that Madam Columbina always took care of her, though, so the thought faded into blissful irrelevance as the performer continued.

"I've always wanted to perform for all my special girls in one place," Madam Columbina said, "and looking out at all of you tonight is like a dream come true for me. For you as well, I hope...although I suspect some of you still think you might be dreaming." Again, that dazzling smile, made all the brighter by the vivid red around it. "But I promise, you're all wide awake...for the moment, at least. Can I get my first volunteer?" A forest of hands shot up. Jo was surprised to find that hers was among them.

"Hmm, let's see..." Madam Columbina's eyes sparkled with mischief. "Oh, so many choices...ah! Chantal!" She pointed over to Jo's table, at Jo's friend. Jo tried not to be disappointed; the word 'first' implied that a lot of them might get a turn at the stage before the night was over. "Yes, I think you'll do nicely for my first trick. Come on up!" Chantal jumped out of her feet and ran to the stage with almost indecent haste.

"Okay, Chantal," Madam Columbina said, pulling out a deck of playing cards. "Now, we've never worked together before, right?" That got an uproarious laugh from the crowd. "Now, I hold in my hand an ordinary pack of cards, fresh from the factory. Just a very simple, very ordinary deck of playing cards, still in their original wrapper, and you're going to take a moment and look through them to make sure that they're quite ordinary." She grinned mischievously. "And Chantal? As long as you're up here on stage with me, you're not going to have any...difficulties looking at those cards. Do you understand me?"

"Yes Madam," Chantal said meekly, taking the deck of cards from the other woman's hand. It always amazed Jo how swiftly her friend melted into helpless submission for Madam Columbina--all that confidence, all that teasing certainty simply vanished to be replaced by quiet adoration. Jo wondered if she looked like that when she was under Madam Columbina's hypnotic influence. If she did, she definitely understood why Chantal liked to hypnotize her so much.

Chantal tore her eyes away from Madam Columbina with evident difficulty, and peeled the plastic wrapper off of the pack of cards. She opened the box and took out the deck, freezing for a moment as she tried to figure out what to do with the wrapper and box. "Allow me," Madam Columbina said, taking both away and clapping her hands around them. When she spread them wide again, they had vanished. "It's the 'reduce' part of 'reduce, reuse, recycle'," she said with a curtsy. "Now, if you could look at the cards for me? Just make sure they're all there, and that none of them have been marked or altered in any way."

Chantal thumbed through the cards, examining each one quickly as they went by. Jo knew it was a good thing that Madam Columbina had told her she wouldn't be affected by seeing them--every one of those cards had a different post-hypnotic trigger associated with it, from a simple reinduction suggestion on seeing the Joker to a complex series of perceptual alterations that relocated Jo's clit to the tip of her tongue for the Ace of Diamonds. Some of them, Jo couldn't even remember until she actually saw the card; others, she couldn't even remember when she was looking at the card and following the suggestion. If Madam Columbina hadn't instructed Chantal to resist, that many triggers in rapid suggestion would probably have turned her brain to mush.

Instead, after a moment's glance, Chantal said, "No, they all look fine--no, wait. There's one missing." She frowned, rifling through the deck a second time, making sure that none of them were stuck together. "The Queen of Hearts isn't in there." Jo braced herself as Chantal said the name of the missing card--she knew from bittersweet experience that hearing the name of a particular card worked just as well as seeing it to induce the hypnotic effect. But nothing seemed to happen this time.

Which just meant that whatever that suggestion did, it was sneaky. Certainly Madam Columbina's reaction suggested that she was up to something; she furrowed her brow in comical consternation and said, "Are you sure? The Queen of Hearts wouldn't usually miss a party like this, not with so many delicious tarts in the audience." She smiled at the crowd's laughter. "I tell you what. Let's see if we can get her to turn up." She took the deck back from Chantal and began to shuffle it, sending the cards flying through the air in an expert series of tricks that sprayed cards flawlessly from one hand to the other.

"Now, if anyone has the Queen of Hearts at their table, this would be a good time to tell me," she said as she sent the cards sliding down the length of one arm to scoop them directly into her hand. "She has a tendency to get a bit...choppy, if you're not careful, and I'd hate to see anyone lose their head tonight." The cards spun in a perfect arch from one hand to the other. "Your will, your mind, your inhibitions, yes, but not your actual head." Jo couldn't help laughing--she had to admit, she was feeling a little bit of sexual tension watching Madam Columbina's act and trying to anticipate exactly what and when Madam Columbina would do to Chantal. It was so rare that Jo got to see the tables turned on her friend when she was awake enough to enjoy it, and she could feel a pleasant heat between her thighs as she waited for the trick to take shape.

Finally, Madam Columbina brought the deck back together into a single stack of cards, cut it, and showed it to Chantal with a flourish. "Is this the Queen of Hearts?" she asked, her expression gorgeously triumphant. Jo squirmed in her chair just a little, remembering all the times that Madam Columbina had given her a very similar look, but for entirely different and much more enjoyable reasons. Not that it was a bad opening trick, but Jo knew that Madam Columbina was capable of much more, both in terms of stage magic and stage hypnosis.

But the trick wasn't over yet. "Um, no, Madam," Chantal said, looking quite nervous at contradicting Madam Columbina. She looked a little bit closer, almost as if hoping it was her lying eyes that got it wrong. "It's the--"

Madam Columbina quickly put a single finger to Chantal's lips. "Ah ah ah," she cooed softly. "Loose lips sink hips. You can just say 'yes' or 'no' when I ask you whether it's the Queen of Hearts." Chantal nodded, looking for all the world like she wanted to suck on Madam Columbina's hushing finger, and Jo frankly didn't blame her. There was something so sensual, so sexy about being stilled into silent compliance like that, and Jo couldn't help imagining what it would feel like to meekly surrender to Madam Columbina's wordless command. It made Jo wish she was up on the stage even more, but at the same time watching Chantal surrender was astonishingly hot.

"No, madam," Chantal said when Madam Columbina removed her finger. "It isn't the Queen of Hearts." Her voice was thick with arousal, and Jo found herself wishing that she had a slightly more private audience to the act so that she could enjoy this a bit more...fully. She wasn't normally a voyeur--well, she didn't normally get the chance to be a voyeur, not when both Madam Columbina and Chantal enjoyed playing with her hypnotized body so much--but this was absolutely scorching hot, even before Chantal took off a stitch of clothing. Chantal's eyes had a misty quality to them that suggested that even though she wasn't exactly hypnotized, she was nonetheless close enough to trance that she could see it without her glasses, and watching her friend hover deliciously near to the edge of surrender was making Jo's pussy wet already. But even among a whole crowd of people who were familiar with Madam Columbina's charms, Jo didn't feel comfortable doing anything about it.

Madam Columbina gave the audience a knowing look that made Jo feel like the other woman knew exactly what this was doing to her. "Well, if at first you don't succeed, blame the manufacturer," she quipped lightly as she began to shuffle the cards again. "Not that this is the first time someone's told me I wasn't playing with a full deck." Jo laughed along with the crowd once again. "Well, let me see if I can lure that pesky Queen of Hearts out of hiding. She's not in here--" and she sprayed the cards high into the air long enough to point at them as they came back down again in a single neat stack onto her outstretched palm. "So where else could she be?"

She made an exaggerated show of patting down her outfit, lingering lasciviously over her breasts and hips and the patch of fabric between her thighs as she muttered, "Hmm, Queen of Hearts, Queen of Hearts...Queen of Hearts..." Jo's breath hitched as she watched Madam Columbina near-openly masturbating for the crowd, her eyes barely even noticing the costume as her imagination substituted a naked body she remembered intimately. Jo's panties clung to her skin as she stared and squirmed, and judging by the looks on the faces of the rest of the audience she was far from the only one who was having a hard time resisting the urge to jill off to the act. The crowd was a sea of flushed faces and helpless, wriggling arousal. Which just made it even worse.

Finally, Madam Columbina gave a heartfelt sigh of despair. "No, it's no good, I've looked everywhere," she said at last. "That gosh-darned Queen of Hearts is nowhere to be found. Unless..." She looked up into the distance, putting her hands on her hips as if staring at some imaginary flag rippling in the breeze. "Maybe I never understood what the Queen of Hearts truly was. Maybe the Queen of Hearts isn't a playing card at all. Maybe the Queen of Hearts is an ideal, a goal, a vision we all share." Her face looked so achingly sincere that Jo didn't understand how she could keep from bursting into laughter. "Maybe the true Queen of Hearts is inside us all along."

She grinned and pirouetted over to Chantal. "Or maybe just inside you," she said, reaching into the waistband of Chantal's skirt in a single smooth gesture and pulling out a playing card. Jo let out a choked whimper--the look of astonishment and arousal on Chantal's face as Madam Columbina's fingers slid into Chantal's panties was like a bolt of lightning that went straight to Jo's clit. Her hand literally twitched as the sudden urge to masturbate sent her body into motion before she could even realize that was what she intended, and she had to force her arm back down onto the table to keep it from diving between her legs.

Judging by the look on her face, Chantal felt much the same way; her expression froze as Madam Columbina held up the card for the audience to see, like she wasn't ready for the moment to be over just yet. Madam Columbina seemed oblivious, though; she just put the Queen of Hearts back in the deck and said, "Thanks for coming out and supporting live hypnosis folks. Now, on with the show!"

She gave the cards a little shuffle and turned to Chantal. "So, for my first trick, Chantal here will--" She broke off, looking quizzically at Chantal's expression of astonished lust. "Um, Chantal, are you okay? Do I need to get another volunteer up here?" She pressed her hand to Chantal's forehead. "You seem a little warm. I definitely think you need to spend a little time in bed. But enough about our plans for after the show! Let's get on with the trick! Chantal, I need you to pick a card out of the deck for me. Just pick a card, any card at random, and tell me what it is."

Looking decidedly dazed, Chantal reached out and pulled a card from the fanned deck that Madam Columbina held in her outstretched hands. She let out a stifled whimper when she saw it; obviously, Madam Columbina's anti-hypnotic suggestion was wavering a little under the influence of so much sexual tension. Jo recalled Chantal's comment about unconscious rewards--clearly, her friend's deep self was having trouble which it wanted to do more, obey Madam Columbina or go into trance and get laid. 'Obey' was winning, but only barely. "It's the Queen of Hearts," Chantal murmured, her voice strained with arousal.

"Huh," Madam Columbina said, tilting her head in affected puzzlement. "What are the odds? Okay, I don't think we need to see the Queen of Hearts again right now. Go ahead and pick another card." She acted casual about it, fanning out the deck face-down with indifferent ease, but her eyes glittered with excitement as she watched Chantal reach out and take a new card.

"I, it's..." Chantal's voice jumped nearly half an octave as she turned the card over. "It's also the Queen of Hearts," she said in confusion, staring at the two cards side by side as though they'd sprouted wings. She was swaying visibly, her hips moving from side to side as she squeezed her thighs together rhythmically. Jo recognized the motion from a few plane trips they'd taken back in college; it was how Chantal masturbated when she didn't want anyone to know she was masturbating. And nobody did right now, except...Jo. Jo knew. Jo couldn't stop watching. Jo couldn't stop thinking about Chantal's pussy, slick and soaking for Madam Columbina as the other woman stood on stage in front of everyone silently getting herself off--

Jo sat on her hands. It didn't help much.

Madam Columbina only seemed amused by the whole thing. "Isn't that always the way of it?" she asked, looking out into the crowd. "You spend your whole act looking for the Queen of Hearts and then two of them show up. Go ahead and pick a third card, this clearly isn't my night." She fanned the deck again, and Chantal took another card with trembling fingers.

"It's the...Queen of Hearts again," she whimpered as she flipped it over, her nipples now standing up stiffly under her shirt. "I, um, I..." Her face was flushed, and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. "Oh god," she sighed out, her voice heavy with desperation and lust.

It was almost too much for Jo. Seeing her best friend helpless, squirming and consumed with arousal in front of all these beautiful women, it made Jo so horny that she could smell her own pussy. But she couldn't just finger herself right here in public, not with so many people who could see her. And she couldn't slip off to the bathrooms, not without missing the show...and Jo wouldn't miss this for every dollar of Chantal's trust fund. She had to see the moment when Madam Columbina got tired of toying with Chantal and finally just took her thoughts away and sent her into a mindless, obedient trance. She had to see that blank, empty look in Chantal's eyes as the deeply hypnotized woman peeled off her clothes to stand naked and trembling in front of Madam Columbina...