Old Habits Read online

  The Secret of Harmony Reed

  Volume I: Old Habits

  By Isaac Byrne

  Copyright © 2017 by Isaac Byrne

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition, 2017

  Chapter One

  My name is Harmony Reed, and I’m going to tell you a secret.

  I was a sex slave.

  Not merely (“merely”) in the human trafficking sense, but the honest-to-god brainwashed living fuck toy variety. Whenever my trigger words were spoken, my mind transformed me into another woman, whatever the trigger indicated. Not because I wanted to, or because of a gun to my head, but because that became the thing I wanted to be. When I was told to strip, I stripped. When I was told to struggle a little, I did that. When I was told to giggle and jiggle and dance and pose and suck and fuck… you get the idea. A real and true sex slave. That was me, the real McCoy.

  How it happened, I can’t really say. See, that’s the thing about people who have the power to reach inside your head and treat it like a playground. They don’t tend to leave you with a good idea of how you got there. I remember my childhood, just a pretty girl with a hyperactive imagination growing up in a small town outside Denver. Middle child of three, playing house, fighting acne, graduating high school. Not long after, the trail of memories just… stops. One day I was saving money as a babysitter and a part-time fro-yo chef, the next, a few spoken words could transform me into whatever the speaker wanted, serving alongside a not unimpressive harem of girls like me. We were puppets of anyone Master wished to loan me out to.

  Which, it turned out, was a lot of people.

  As for Master, Master died young and unexpectedly in a rock climbing accident. Master wasn’t content merely to exert dominance over women. No, Master had an ego that no amount of fawning and flattery from us slaves could satiate, and so Master partook in a wide array of such “extreme” activities.

  I was there when it happened, and that made me one of the lucky ones, having witnessed Master’s demise firsthand. Not that I savor the grisly memory, nor could I ever wish Master ill, even post mortem. However, while I don’t know anything of how we were programmed, seeing it seemed to break something in my conditioning and I was free. Just like that, from helpless thrall to free-willed woman.

  The others, back at Master’s ranch… there was nothing I could do to convince them. They simply sat there, grooming and primping and awaiting the return of a dead man. It made sense, I guess; if someone could just say the words “Master is dead” and give me my freedom, it wouldn’t have been very effective brainwashing. Still, sympathetic to my sister slaves’ plight, I made an anonymous phone call to the police, hoping they could be found and helped somehow. I didn’t stick around to find out what happened. I’d seen too many cops in the ranch not to fear that one of them would find me out and discover a way to suck me back in. For all I know, Master kept a list of my trigger phrases in a notepad in the office. All I wanted was to get out and start over.

  Master was a stranger before I was taken, I’m pretty sure; at least, my memories of my prior life seem pretty much intact and I don’t recall ever seeing Master before I woke up as a slave. I still couldn’t go back home after regaining my freedom, though. I have a sinking suspicion it was someone close to me who betrayed me into Master’s hands. I had not a jot of evidence, and I acknowledge it could be an idea Master implanted in me to help keep me from going for help if I ever managed to escape. Still, it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

  So I started out on my own. It’s been almost a year now, and I’ve managed to land a couple jobs – nothing impressive, but they let me live in a modest studio apartment on my own. I’ve got a handful of friends (even a couple opposite-gendered, which was hard for me at first), was learning to crochet, and I was even thinking of getting a cat. Nobody in my life now would ever think that just a year ago, all it would take is knowing the right address and having something of value to Master, and they could have had me in any and every way they dreamed of.

  I don’t mean to make it sound like I just jumped right back into the world and picked up where I left off. That’s not the case at all. The things that were done to me didn’t go away overnight. Or over a month, or so far over a year. As far as I could tell, they weren’t even diminishing. As of last week, though, I had health insurance, and as of right this minute, I was seeing a therapist.

  “Come in, Ms. Reed,” said Dr. Kovacs. “Welcome. Do you prefer Harmony, or Ms. Reed?”

  “Harmony’s fine,” I said, settling into his incredibly plush patient chair. It practically engulfed me, it was so cushy. I felt at ease in a moment – and then immediately suspicious at a man who had made me feel at ease so quickly.

  Down girl, I scolded myself. He might be able to help you. I’d done a little digging, and Dr. Kovacs came about as highly recommended as a hypnotherapist could. (It’s not the most reputable of specializations, unsurprisingly.) Still, I’d figured that with what had been done with my fractured mind, I’d need someone who knew a thing or two about digging deep and maybe even reprogramming someone. I just had to see if I could trust him first.

  “Harmony, good. You can call me Dr. Kovacs, or if you feel comfortable, David. Either is all right with me. Now, since I see my receptionist noted that you were stressed over the financials, I’ll just invite you to get straight to it. I don’t ever want you to feel like you’re being taken advantage of.” He twisted the knob on a timer around until it stopped at the one hour mark.

  “That’s good. Thank you. So… I guess I’ll start off with why I’m here?” It wasn’t really a question, but Dr. Kovacs (he wasn’t David to me, at least not yet) gestured for me to continue, listening at rapt attention. “And… you have strict, complete confidentiality, right? Because the things I have to say… no one can ever, ever ever know. Never.”

  He looked a tad wary at my insistence. “That I can promise – nothing you say to me can I ever repeat to anyone. Not your family, not another doctor, not the police or a judge. The only exception would be if you told me you were intending to kill someone. Even then, I could only tell that person. Not even the police.”

  “No worries there – I’m a lover, not a killer.” I forced a little smile. Dr. Kovacs forced one in return. “All right, so here’s the short version. Someone brainwashed me into becoming their sex slave, then died, and I became free again. But it’s been almost a year now, and… things aren’t getting better.”

  He blinked a few times. I kind of expected that. Mine isn’t the kind of story one hears at the water cooler, after all. “You say… you were brainwashed? Can you explain what you mean by that?”

  “I wish I could, Doctor. One of the things Master was an expert at was dampening my memories, suppressing things I wasn’t meant to know. I don’t remember anything about how it was done. I was kept indoors and away from windows for a long time and I didn’t exactly have a calendar. For all I know it took months. I’m pretty sure it did, actually. It was late fall when I was taken. When I first got a glimpse of the outside world, it was late spring, maybe summer, and I’d only been at it… months, maybe? Hard to say.”

  I could see he was struggling to keep up, so I gave him a moment, looking around at the knick-knacks around his office. It was all meant to be very neutral, soothing in its lack of theme. Its lack of intrinsic personality reminded me of Master’s ranch, tailored both to offend and please no one. For that matter, not unlike me, when I’d been a slave. No personality but the one my trigger phrase had activated.

  “All right, I see. So… you say that things aren’t going
better. Can you tell me a little bit about that?” Dr. Kovacs asked.

  I nodded. “Well, most of what Master had done to us–”

  “Us? There was more than one of you?”

  “Yes. Twelve others that I knew of, so thirteen total. Master’s dozen, Master sometime called us.”

  “I see. Apologies – do go on.”

  “Right. So I was saying, most of what had been done to us was conditioning. I think that’s the term – I took psychology in high school.”

  “Conditioning would be where the body is trained to respond to a stimulus, yes. Your class probably taught about Pavlov and his dogs, I would think?” he suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. So that was us, Master’s bitches. He would say a phrase, and depending on which he said, our outer personalities would completely transform.”

  “Fascinating,” he said, stroking his goateed chin. “Do you remember any of the phrases?”

  The answer was no, but given the question, I just arched an eyebrow and he belatedly realized what he’d been asking me. At least Dr. Kovacs had the decency to blush and apologize; I took it to mean that the question had been posed out of innocent curiosity, and counted it as a mark in his favor.

  “So sorry, Harmony. But please, you said something else that caught my attention – that your ‘outer personalities’ transformed. What do you mean by that, ‘outer personalities’?”

  I squirmed in my seat. This was getting personal in a hurry. I’d told myself it would, though, and tried to steel myself. Still, talking about this wasn’t easy. My best friends didn’t even know anything about this. “I mean that it changed the way I would act, but usually not the way that I felt in my head. If that makes sense.”

  “I think so… could you provide an example?”

  Cognizant that I was an attractive twenty-something woman in a room with a paunchy middle-aged man with no ring on his finger, I fidgeted a little more and tried to think of a less revealing example than the ones that had immediately come to mind. “So… all right. Master used us girls to enrich himself. I don’t know all the details of it, but everyone who came in was either wealthy or connected. I was a favorite of one of the regulars.

  “Master always did the triggering himself, that way customers couldn’t get any bright ideas about kidnapping us for their own use. So for this guy, he’d always use the same trigger, and suddenly I’d start acting like this bratty little step-daughter. Only I didn’t think I was. I strategized, plotted how to step as completely as possible into the role. So the guy would come in, and I’d be focused on my cell phone – just a prop, since I obviously wasn’t allowed outside contact. And then…”

  “Punkin, your mother tells me you were ditching class in school today,” he began sternly. He was already loosening his tie, slipping into his own role as the weary father home from a hard day at the office.

  At first, I didn’t look up, still busily typing out texts I could never send. This was good. I didn’t want to look at him anyway.

  “Put the phone down, Harmony,” Daddy said, a little edge to his voice. “I need to talk to you about your behavior.”

  Boldly, I ignored him again. The whole point was to provoke him, annoy him. What could be more annoying that having absolute power over someone who wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence?

  “This is your last warning. Put down the phone, or there will be consequences.”

  I didn’t put the phone down, but I finally gave him the courtesy of glancing up. Not with my head, just my eyes. He didn’t merit my full attention yet, nor a verbal response.

  “Now, would you care to explain why you were ditching class?”

  “Nope.” I rolled my eyes and resumed typing.

  “Is it trouble with the other students? The teacher? Is the material too hard? Talk to me, Harmony.” He sat down beside me, and I shifted to give him my back. Still, I could feel him looking me over in my school uniform and blouse. It wasn’t actually too short, but I was tall and leggy so it looked like it was. At home, I had the top three buttons undone, just enough for someone standing – or looking over my shoulder, as Daddy was – to see the top of my white cotton bra.

  “Look, I just didn’t feel like going,” I said, finally speaking under duress, saying something just to shut Daddy up.

  “But you have to. You’re becoming a young woman now” – I was almost twenty-two, but I still pulled off seventeen good enough for Hollywood standards – “and you have responsibilities.”

  “Kiss my ass,” I mumbled under my breath. I don’t even know if he could hear me, but my tone made the essence of my comment obvious.

  “Look here young lady,” he said, Daddy’s patience fading. “I work hard to provide for you and your mother. Just because you’re not my daughter by blood doesn’t mean you can disrespect me!”

  I finally set the phone down, more willing to engage his anger than his tenderness. “Really? Because it seems to me that my mother’s limp-dicked husband isn’t in a position to enforce jack shit.” I stuck out my tongue.

  Daddy broke character then, and told me to hold that pose while he took a picture. This was something almost all of my trigger phrases included, a willingness to indulge photography. Master’s clients liked their trophies. I glared arrogantly right into the camera as it captured the moment.

  Once he’d finished, he stroked my frozen cheek, then recomposed himself. “Oh? You know, it’s about time you learned a little respect! I’m the one who pays the bills around here!”

  “So? You want a medal? Standing ovation?” I stayed seating, but issued a scathing slow clap.

  “Fine.” He reached out his phone and made a show of tapping at buttons. I watched, trying to show that he’d finally made me a bit afraid of him. “There,” he said, putting it back away. “I just canceled your phone service.”

  “What!” I roared, leaping to my feet so fast that my skirt built rose up and showed him my white cotton panties. They were a match with my bra. Most of Master’s customers wanted something racier, but Daddy always preferred something closer to authentic. “You can’t do that! I need that phone! It’s mine! Turn it back on!”

  “It’s whose? I’m sorry, I’m quite sure it’s my name I see on the bill every month. And if you want it back, I’ll consider it. Once you apologize.”

  “No way – you’re totes being an asshole!” On impulse, I knocked over a lamp on the end table. It was porcelain, and probably cost several hundred dollars, but Master’s trigger phrase turned me into a brat, and a brat wouldn’t care about price tags of items that weren’t hers. In fact, she’d prefer to break something expensive. And I knew it would be a paltry fraction of what Daddy had paid for my company.

  “You have to learn that you can’t get what you want by throwing a tantrum,” Daddy said, jaw clenching slightly. Not that the lamp was technically his either, but that wasn’t any part of my consciousness at that moment. “Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take away your car privileges also.”

  “No way! That’s my car! You can’t do that!”

  “Actually, all I have to do is call the dealership and they can turn off the key fob ignition by satellite. So yes, I can do that. In seconds.” He role-played the phone call while I thundered around the room, raving about his barbarism and threatening to call child services. I had to give it to him, most men already had their dick in me far earlier in their appointments. Daddy was committed to the fantasy.

  Over the next ten minutes, he went down the list, canceling my credit card, my weekly salon appointment, my bi-weekly tanning bed session (I was actually rather fair-skinned, but he was obviously channeling his anger at a real step-daughter), took away my tablet, my dermatologist appointment, shut off the cable TV in my room… later, when my mind was more my own, I would wonder at just how much money his real step-daughter had at her disposal.

  At the time, however, my mood shifted with each consequence. Indignance became outrage; outrage gave way to bossiness; that to
a bubble of feigned apathy, which was soon burst to reveal a deep core of despair.

  “You can’t! Oh please, Daddy, please! I need those things! I’ll be a laughing stock without them! Please, please don’t punish me like this! I’m sorry, OK? I’ll be good! I’ll go to my classes! Just give it back!”

  Daddy stopped, towering over me where I sat on my couch, knees pressed primly together in my little tartan skirt. “Look here, there’s a daughter capable of learning a lesson underneath all that bluster after all.” The power was immediately intoxicating to him. No paternal admiration, just the leer of a man looking down at a young girl in his thrall. “Apologize again. And mean it.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy! Really I am! I’m so, so sorry!”

  “Sorry for what, Punkin?”

  I paused to think what he’d want me to be sorry for, and figured he’d like that I wasn’t sure yet, not sincere. He wanted a girl who’d just say what he wanted to hear. “For not going to class?”

  He nodded. “Good. What else?”

  “For breaking your lamp.”

  “And?”

  “For yelling at you.”

  “What about for calling me, what was it… ‘my mother’s limp-dicked husband’?”

  I nodded hard. “Yes. Especially for that. I’m so sorry, Daddy. I won’t ever say that again.”

  “Good. Now… in recognition of your apologies, I think maybe we can reinstate some of your privileges in a month or two.”

  “A month! But Daddy, pleeease!” I whined.

  He just smiled at the view down my blouse. “Only good girls get rewarded. Bad girls need to be punished. Right now, all I’ve seen is a bad girl stop being bad.”

  My character began to take note of the erection hovering a foot or so in front of her face, and started channeling some of that desperation into action. “But… I don’t want to be bad, Daddy. Can’t you…” I swallowed nervously. “Can’t you teach me to be good?”