Walking in Your Footsteps

Lois usually left her computer locked, but Savannah wasn't about to let a little thing like that stop her. She sat down in front of the keyboard and wiggled the mouse, then typed in the name she found in the chat logs from Lois's phone. She wasn't entirely sure it would work--there were plenty of other possibilities in there, including some that made Savannah blush just thinking about them, but 'Dominus' did the trick and before Savannah knew it she was in. She felt a warm glow of satisfaction in her deductive reasoning, but it was tempered with a healthy dose of concern for her friend.

And maybe just a touch of guilt, but Savannah was already over that by the time she opened Lois's web browser and began to go through her browsing history. She'd known from the outset that Lois was acting funny, and not just 'new relationship energy' funny no matter what Craig might say. People in a long-distance relationship didn't excuse themselves from one of Professor Brinkman's lectures to go to the bathroom and come back fifteen minutes later smelling like pussy... or okay, maybe sometimes they did, but not people like Lois. Savannah pictured her roommate in her head, all mousy brown hair and fishbelly white complexion and chunky woolen sweaters and glasses with Coke-bottle lenses. It was hard to imagine someone like that even knowing what masturbation was, let alone ditching out on class for it.

It didn't take Savannah long to pick out the anomaly among the regular visits to the class resources website, Lois's Netflix account, and her various social media--whatever 'The Dungeon of Lord Dominus' was, it looked like her roommate went there three or four times a day. Presumably this was the same person who kept texting Lois with all the weird quarter-assed ASCII art that she replied to with pictures of her naked body. Not that Savannah was being judgmental or prudish--she'd sent a few topless photos herself on occasion, and under other circumstances she'd only be surprised that Lois had such incredible tits under those baggy clothes she always wore. But these weren't normal circumstances. And Savannah was going to prove it.

She pulled up the website, expecting to find some weird sweaty guy's blog page, but instead she found an impressive, professionally coded site with its own login and password fields. Thankfully, the sheer number of visits to the site worked in the amateur sleuth's favor--all Savannah needed to do was click in the text box, and the browser automatically filled in all the information for her. A further click led her inside... and Savannah's jaw went slack with stunned amazement at what she found.

It was a whole site devoted to... well, to some of the most fucked-up kinks Savannah had ever heard of, honestly. Savannah never thought she'd see the day when her meek, polite, prudish roommate would make her blush, but she could physically feel the heat of her cheeks as they went beet red in shocked astonishment at everything she was finding. 'Hypnotic Training - Begin Here'. 'Earn My Attention - Show Lord Dominus You Can Debase Yourself Like a Good Girl'. 'The Gallery of Special Sluts'. 'Edging Spirals for Brainwashed Slaves'. 'Get Dumber for Dominus'. 'Spread the Gospel of Surrender'. Every button and menu item seemed to hint at a perversion more twisted than the last, until Savannah's eyes crossed trying to figure out where to look first. She literally could not imagine Lois visiting a place like this. She didn't even know how her friend would have found it.

She eventually decided to click on the innocuous-seeming button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen marked 'Inbox'--if Lois had stumbled onto this website and gotten in over her head with a guy who was into some sort of weird hypnosis fetish, and as improbable as that sounded it certainly seemed to be the case, then perhaps her old messages would give Savannah some kind of clue as to where she'd disappeared to these last few weekends. It had the added benefit of being the only button that didn't scare the shit out of the would-be detective.

She'd intended that last bit as a private joke, but the moment the thought settled into Savannah's head she realized she really did believe the site's hyperbolic claims. She wasn't doubting it even for a moment--as soon as she saw the constantly-spinning spiral logo at the top of the screen, and the wall of text that promised 'a mesmerizing descent into complete control like no other', Savannah felt instantly certain that her friend had fallen down some kind of weird rabbit hole and let a creepy Internet pervert get his hooks into her vulnerable brain. It explained the bizarre, explicitly sexual text messages, the public masturbation episodes, the increasingly frequent disappearances... all of it.

Savannah did feel another twinge of guilt as she opened up her friend's inbox and began rifling through her private messages--sure, this all looked absurdly fucked-up and unethical, but that didn't mean it really was. Maybe this was all just fantasy, some kind of roleplay thing that really pushed all of Lois's hot buttons and got her so worked up that she wound up neglecting her schoolwork a little and ignoring her social circle just a tiny bit. Savannah had gone through that herself, during those heady weeks with Dan back in freshman year. Maybe Savannah was just being nosy when she looked over her friend's shoulder and memorized her phone's PIN number, and subsequently snuck into her bedroom while she was asleep to read her texts.

(Okay. Yeah. That last bit sounded really bad when she said it all at once like that.)

But yes, Savannah told herself, maybe it was all consensual. Maybe this 'Lord Dominus' guy, whoever he was, just had a kink and Lois happened to share it. The very first subject header in the inbox said, 'You Have Chosen to Submit', after all, even if the first line of the actual message read, 'Or at least that's what you think.' Maybe all the hypnosis was fake, she tried to convince herself, or at the very least maybe it was consensual. Even as Savannah went through message after message, from 'You Have Been Trained to Obey' to 'Freedom Is No Longer an Option' to 'You've Earned My Attention, Slut', she still tried to pretend that things weren't necessarily as bad as they seemed. Even if it meant eating some crow when she finally confessed the truth to Lois.

Until she got to 'Welcome to the Gallery of Special Sluts'. That was when Savannah stopped believing that any of this could be just a fetish. Not after three years of chunky sweaters and calf-length skirts. Not after those first few awkward weeks of living together when Lois wouldn't dress down to her comfy clothes even when it was just the two of them in the living room. Not after all those times Lois held her books up anxiously in front of her chest like a shield as she walked across campus, even though her book bag was almost empty. There was no way on God's green earth that Lois Cassaday would ever show her body on purpose without being straight-up hypnotized into it... and that meant every last bit of this was 100% real.

Even so, Savannah clicked back out to the main screen and went into the Gallery of Special Sluts, just to be sure. There weren't a ton of women there--whoever this Lord Dominus was, he was either picky or not as good at recruiting women as his site suggested. But that only made it even easier to pick out Lois, her legs spread wide in a pose that Savannah absolutely never thought she'd see her roommate in, affecting an expression of deliberate vapidity with her eyes crossed and her tongue lolling out of her mouth. It was shocking as hell to look at, even as the bisexual side of Savannah tried hard to suppress a little twinge of inappropriate lust. She'd never realized Lois looked that good under all those shapeless clothes.

As shocking as the photos were, the captions beneath them were even more of a nasty surprise. 'This is LoLo, recruited into my ever-growing stable of brainwashed fucktoys by Little Miss Trixie! She thought she could resist my deep hypnotic programming like all the others, but it wasn't long before my spirals tempted her into submission and she joined the ranks of my Good Girls. Now she obeys every one of my text triggers and shows her body off to entice more sluts into surrender. And do you know the best part? This special little sweetie lives right nearby, just like Trixie! Don't you wish you could be down on your knees in front of my cock every weekend just like them?'

Trixie. Shit. That had to be Bea he was talking about, even if their friend usually reacted to the nickname Trixie like a cat reacted to a spray bottle. A few more clicks through the gallery confirmed it, while giving Savannah a much better idea of what her friend looked like naked than she ever thought she was going to have. But... but Bea wasn't acting like Lois or anything. She was, well, normal. No weird disappearances, no furtive masturbation sessions--she even kept a regular job on top of her classes, and that kept her busy every... weekend.

Oh. Shit. Right. Bea wasn't any less brainwashed than Lois was, she'd just gotten better at hiding it. She'd probably been lying about her work schedule for months now, sneaking off to this Lord Dominus dude's place whenever she got the chance, and doing her masturbation between classes when Savannah was less likely to notice. And all this time she'd been worming her way into Lois's confidence right under Savannah's nose, tricking the shy young woman into confessing a side of her that she hadn't dared to admit to anyone else, and then using it against her to lull Lois onto this website. And this Lord Dominus guy took over from there. Jesus fuck.

Savannah had to put a stop to it. That was just all there was to it. She needed to find this Lord Dominus guy, threaten to call the cops or the newspapers or Lois's parents on him, and make him undo whatever he did to Lois. And then maybe the two of them could have a talk and Savannah could apologize for hacking into her phone and they could have a little discussion about what Savannah felt when she saw Lois with her legs spread and her pussy shaved like that.

But that meant finding out where Lord Dominus lived when he wasn't online. Savannah cracked her knuckles and went back to the inbox, determined to search every nook and cranny of this website if it meant tracking down the guy who was messing with her friends.

* * * * *

Four hours later, and Savannah stood outside of a nondescript suburban house some thirty miles outside of Chicago. It had a large privacy fence around the front yard, but Savannah wasn't about to let a little thing like that stop her. She checked the gate and found it unlocked, and opened it just a crack to see if anyone was looking before slipping inside. As late as it was, the lights were still on, and Savannah squared up her shoulders in quiet determination and marched right up to the front door. If she could get this over with quickly, she might still be home before midnight.

She hammered on the door hard, hoping to rattle Lord Dominus even before he opened the door--and god, did she hate having to call him that. Three solid hours of rooting around on his site with that stupid spiral banner at the top giving her fucking eyestrain had convinced her that whoever this dude was, he was sure as hell compensating for something. She didn't know whether she expected to find some weaselly little dude with pipe cleaner arms, or a middle-aged balding guy with a paunch and a thing for younger women, but either way she was determined to give him a piece of her--

The door opened, revealing a handsome Caucasian man in his early thirties with a well-groomed beard and surprisingly warm hazel eyes. He gave her an affable smile, not even bothering to close his burgundy satin robe, and said, "You must be Savannah. Come on in. I've been expecting you." He turned and walked deeper into the house and, nonplussed, Savannah followed along behind him.

"It took you a little while longer than I expected," he called out behind him as he padded through the thickly-carpeted living room and around the corner. "But I suppose you probably spent a little extra time on the website." Savannah felt like she should be hitting him over the head with a vase or something, but she didn't even know where he was keeping Lois and Bea much less how to free them from his hypnotic programming. Plus, she had to admit her curiosity was piqued. How did he know she was coming? How could he possibly have expected her to arrive?

He headed down a flight of stairs into a finished basement, dominated on one wall by a home theater setup that projected a spiral just like the one on his website onto a big screen. There was a large sectional sofa that divided the room, and at first Savannah thought there was no one else there... but then she got a little closer to the far wall, and saw the two women kneeling on the floor in rapt prostration to the spinning disc in front of them. "They're both very happy it worked on you," Lord Dominus said casually, as though he scarcely even noticed his masturbating sex slave. "Well, I told them to be, of course."

That was when Savannah finally got fed up. "What worked?" she snapped, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around to face her. "What worked on me?" She could feel a core of sick dread congealing in her stomach, a vague and inchoate conviction that whatever choices she'd made were absolutely the wrong ones. A part of her wanted to simply turn and run, abandon Bea and Lois to their fates and get herself the fuck out of there, but she couldn't do that to her friend and roommate and maybe possibly secret crush. She needed to figure this out and stop it, whatever it was, and that meant engaging with Lord Dominus no matter how much she wanted to just deck him and drag the others out of there.

The smug expression on his face didn't help the chill in Savannah's gut. "You didn't go into the 'Spread the Gospel of Surrender' section, did you?" he asked, his tone playfully amused. "No, of course not. They never do." He almost seemed to be talking to himself, as though Savannah wasn't worthy of his full attention, and it almost made her want to grab his shoulders and shake him and demand that he acknowledge her full presence before she began to wonder if she was really all there.

"I didn't click on any of your sick shit," she growled, pulling her hand away from his shoulder and crossing her arms angrily. She couldn't help noticing that his dick had visibly stiffened in just the few minutes since he'd answered the door, and she wished desperately that there was somewhere in the room she could look that wasn't a spiral or a pair of hazel eyes or a masturbating slut or a hard cock. "I just went through Lois's messages and found the address you gave her, okay? I didn't get, get trained to be a Good Girl or a Special Slut or a Brainwashed Slave or whatever the fuck you think your website did to me. I didn't stumble into it like she did, I--"

And then Dominus laughed. Not a sinister laugh, not a suave evil chuckle, but a genuine snorting guffaw that sounded entirely unforced and spontaneous. For whatever reason, Savannah's words had struck him as absolutely hilarious, and that made the pit of fear in her stomach drop out into a cold, bottomless void of pure dread. She needed to run, she told herself. She needed to stop pretending she was going to be the hero here, stop pretending that she had any influence over this man or this situation or Lois or Bea or any of it and just run like hell.

But her feet remained rooted to the floor. "I'm sorry," Lord Dominus said, as his laughter gradually subsided. "That was so rude of me. But seriously, my dear, you really should have clicked on 'Spread the Gospel of Surrender'. It's a series of instructions for my slaves, a plan to entice others into submission by scattering just a few tiny breadcrumbs of information for them to find so they'll follow the clues all the way down and down and down into my irresistible hypnotic power. Trixie over there followed the plan perfectly, giving away just enough of her true brainwashed nature to pique LoLo's curiosity, and she did all the rest of it herself. Did you really think it was an accident that you saw that PIN number? Did you really think she didn't hear you looking through her texts?"

Dominus smiled. Savannah only saw it out of the corner of her eye as she stared helplessly into the spiral. "You were given everything you needed to lead you to my website," he purred, reaching out and undoing the buttons on her blouse one by one while she stood with her arms hanging limply at her side, unable to stop him. "And the spiral on the screen... the same one you're looking at now, the one with all the tiny little subliminal bursts of brainwashing you never even noticed... it kept you lingering there while my programming began to take root, exactly like it did for precious little LoLo. She came here seeking to free Trixie from my brainwashing, just as strong and as certain and as determined as you were, but she discovered too late that she'd given herself over to me."

His warm hands caressed Savannah's breasts through her bra, working away at the clasp until it fell open to reveal her pert breasts. "Just like you," he murmured, and Savannah found herself nodding helplessly in agreement. Her eyes opened wider as the spiral tugged at her gaze, fascinating her with its constant rotation and pulling her mind inexorably back to the hours spent on the website. She didn't know how she could ever have thought she spent the entire time searching for information there, not when she remembered so clearly now the way she got lost in the swirling depths.

"Don't worry, dear," Dominus cooed, bending her over the sectional sofa and pulling her jeans and panties down to her ankles. "I promise, you'll enjoy being owned and obedient just like my other girls do. They find so many blissful ways to reinforce one another's programming, and I'm sure they'll be thrilled to include you in their activities as well. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Savannah's head bobbed vacantly up and down, the words in her mind flowing out into the spiral as she watched until she could think of nothing more than blank, vacuous agreement with her Lord.

He grunted as his cock slid into her, pushing past her slick labia and into Savannah's wet cunt with a single motion. "I thought so," he growled, his voice thick with lust as he began to rock his hips back and forth against her. "Clever girls always make the best dumb girls, that's why I make sure to find only the smartest slaves to empty out into horny little airheads for me. You followed all the clues so perfectly, just like all the good girls before you... and when we're ready, when you've fully completed your training and all that silly resistance is gone, gone, gone, you're going to find a smart girl to follow in your footsteps. How do you like that idea, pretty pet?"

Savannah's only response was a loud, helpless wail of pleasure as her first climax of the evening hit. But she felt intuitively certain that Lord Dominus would know what she meant by it.

THE END