Old Habits Read online

  “So, are you going to call the cops now?”

  He was quiet a moment before answering in a small voice. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Oh! No, I would never have – I mean, I don’t even have…” I pulled out my “gun”, a piece of pipe I’d had in my apartment from when my landlord left it behind during a plumbing repair some months earlier. I dropped it as his feet like it had stung me.

  He nodded. “Then if you’re not going to shoot, I suppose I’ll not telephone the police. Come now, let’s get you up off the floor, dear.” He offered me a hand, pulling me back to my feet. I’d felt better on the floor.

  “I’m sorry. I was never going to hurt you. I’m just… I thought you… I didn’t know who… I’ll get out of your hair. You won’t ever have to see me again.”

  “Wait, Harmony.” I paused near the door, but couldn’t make myself look back. “You came all this way, and you’re obviously very distraught. After what happened last time, don’t you think we should at least talk about it? I know I felt just awful after you left.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “You didn’t enjoy it?” I know what you’re thinking – why was that the first thought that came to my mind? – but it was. Ill-begotten or no, I had my pride.

  “No, I liked… look, I was taken aback by it. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, and I felt too awkward to even attempt to call you. Every day I’ve meant to, but I just hadn’t summoned the wherewithal to do it yet.”

  I tried to process. “But you said you didn’t trigger me.”

  “I’m not certain that I did. If I did, I didn’t mean to. One moment I was trying to guide your subconscious back to your experiences at the hands of this ‘Master’ person, and the next, you were… well. Triggered, I suppose we could call it.”

  I finally turned to face him. “Did I say anything, before that?”

  He shook his head. “You were mumbling to yourself a good deal, which is common enough, but you didn’t actually attempt to communicate. I’m sorry. I’ve tried listening to the tape, even, to see if I could make any of it out so I’d at least have something useful to offer you, but it didn’t take. Listen for yourself, if you like. Perhaps your young ears will pick up something mine didn’t.”

  He fetched the tape and inserted in the player. Together, we listened to the whole thing. It started with the induction, and I remembered that wonderfully relaxing feeling of having my worries all drift away. That was the last thing I remembered, so I focused hard on what followed.

  “Now Harmony, we’re going to take a trip. We’re going back to somewhere you’ve already been. You’ll be right here in my office, completely safe, so no matter what happened there, you have nothing to worry about. All right?”

  “All right, David,” came my sleepy response.

  I turned the volume on the tape recorder all the way up, but even then, my responses remained difficult to hear.

  “First, I want to go back about two and a half years. I want you to remember where you were.”

  “Master’s ranch. With my sister slaves.”

  “All right. And you had a room there, yes?”

  “Master’s room. Let me stay in it.”

  “Of course. So you’re in that room again. And there’s a knock at the door. Who’s there, when you answer it?”

  “Master.”

  “And what does he say to you?”

  “A guest wants me. Master’s there to prepare me for him.”

  “This was usual?”

  The tape was quiet, but I imagined I had nodded. Most of Master’s visits were either for that, or to use me himself. How I had once craved those visits.

  “What happened next, Harmony?”

  “Master made me get dressed. Guest came in, Master left. Guest was my boss.”

  “Your boss? Like, from your old job?”

  “No. Trigger made him my boss.”

  “Ah, so a stranger. But you role-played that he was your boss.”

  “Yes. Liked him. Handsome, friendly. Said, ‘Harmony, you’re going places at this company.’ I wanted that. Wanted to please him.”

  “I think I see. Look, let’s go–”

  On the tape, I talked right over him. “Told me I was pretty. I acted nervous, knew what he wanted. Touched me, on the cheek. I didn’t say no, so he touched me on my behind. Smirked. I was at his mercy.”

  “Yes, Harmony, but now we’re–”

  “Told him he could keep touching me if he wanted. He did. Took my clothes off. Blouse, skirt. Underwear. I was scared, but more scared to say no. He saw me crying, told me I looked even better like that. Knew he’d like it.”

  “I understand. We can stop this now, Harm–”

  The Harmony in the recording was determined to proceed. The Harmony listening to it was re-living the memory as she told it, savoring the subtle manipulations of both boss and subordinate.

  “Groped me then. A lot. Rough. Hurt a little, but I liked it. Master let them get a little rough, if no bruising or blood. Threw me over his desk – my desk, but became his – and fucked me. Called me ‘hot little bitch.’ Came too fast.”

  “I… see.” He sounded disturbed, not aroused. More and more he was earning the trust he’d told me he needed to before hypnotizing me. “Was that all then?”

  “I asked him if I was getting promotion. Laughed at me. Said they don’t promote little whores. Said he couldn’t wait to tell the rest of the boys on the board about what an easy piece of ass I was. Then left.”

  “That was cruel of him. But remember, you’re safe now, and respected.”

  “Enjoyed it. Masturbated until Master came back, told me I’d earned him a timeshare in Aspen. Fucked me as reward.”

  It was quiet then for a long while; I looked to Dr. Kovacs for an explanation. “You kept attempting to, erm, masturbate. I was trying to gently restrain you without waking you from the trance.”

  I smiled thinly; I was almost beginning to enjoy that my escapades made him uncomfortable more so than turned on. “Did you succeed? I can be pretty determined when I get going.”

  He was turning nearly as pink as his sweater. “I kept your hands outside your clothes, at least. But I think this is where the, um, distraction rendered you somewhat harder to understand.”

  I patted his hand consolingly, then the tape resumed playing.

  “All right. I want to take another trip, back to the beginning of that encounter. Can you do that with me?”

  “Mm. Love to. Earn that promotion this time.”

  “Before that, even. You said Master came in to ‘prepare’ you. I want you to describe what that entailed.”

  “Triggered. Get dressed. Mm. Naked at ranch. Always naked. All of us… so sexy…” It devolved into mutters, punctuated by little moans. “Make up. Lots of lipstick. Hair in bun. Mmmm. Look attractive without trying to look sexy. Mmm, god yes. Unavailable.”

  “To enhance the guest’s enjoyment of ‘conquering you,’ then?”

  “Conquer me. Ungh, YES… mmm…” We listened as Dr. Kovacs tried to prompt me to keep talking, to stop playing with myself.

  “How did you know how to make yourself look and act the way this guest wanted you to?”

  “Trigger. Master… mmm, Master…” Another bout of stopping me. I sounded more and more insensible, frustrated, like an animal not understanding why it’s being kept on a leash.

  “All right now, Harmony, before I let you, ah, resume, I want you to go to the start of that encounter. You’re still… naked, Master has just walked in. What does he say to you?”

  What followed was a long, low moan; out of context it might have sounded like I’d been punched in the stomach, but even aside from his comportment, I knew my moan-vocabulary too well to think Dr. Kovacs had done any such thing. That was the sound I made only in full frenzy, when I had nothing left but lust. Beyond even where I’d been in any of my recent trigger episodes; it was the sound of a primal beast whose only instinct was to fuck.

  �
�Harmony? Ms. Reed! Miss… oh my! You, you can’t… Wake up! Wake up now, oh shit, oh please wake up! What’re you… put that back on! His voice came out in a hiss; I supposed he was wary of his assistant over-hearing in the lobby. He continued protesting, and through it all I was just murmuring and moaning as I stripped myself naked, shoved him down onto his couch and kept working at his groin until the pope himself would have been powerless to say no to the blowjob I was forcing on him.

  It hadn’t been him at all. He hadn’t learned my triggers, hadn’t used my triggers, hadn’t even used conventional hypnotic suggestion to steal a quick hummer from an uncommonly hot patient. He’d been innocent after all.

  I sat down on his lap then and hugged him. There was nothing in it sexual for me; I only wanted to show kindness for this man I had blamed for my own crime. “I’m so sorry, David.”

  He was quiet a moment, then embraced me right back. It was paternal in a way that made me realize how much I missed my own father, wherever he was now. “You’re forgiven, Harmony.”

  When the hug ended, I departed his lap and sat back in the chair. By then, the tape was ending, and he hit the stop button as I heard my fully conscious voice threaten him if he came near me. I’d practically sexually assaulted him in his own office, and here he was trying to make me feel better. Small wonder he’d come so highly recommended.

  “Unfortunately,” he said as he put the tape player aside, “as you can see, there’s precious little we can learn from it. If I had to guess, I would say this master of yours suppressed the knowledge of the commands beneath layers and layers of sexual stimulation, which surfaces whenever they’re brought near your conscious mind. It might even be part of the mechanism by which he programmed them into you.”

  “So then I’m back at square one. Fucked in the head, and no way to stop it.”

  “Harmony, please. I can’t let you leave my office if you’re having these encounters. Being violated, raped by total strange men.”

  I sighed. Even if he couldn’t help, it might feel good just to get it off my chest. I nestled into the thick velvet-covered cushions of the chair, the same one I’d been lying on when he’d hypnotized me, right before all this madness started. “It’s not rape,” I corrected him.

  “You’re having sex with men against your will. What else would you call it?”

  “No, that’s not… Look. Maybe right now, I would say I didn’t want to do it. But then I’m triggered, and then I do want it. More than anything. It’s like…” I tried to think of an analog. “Think of a hooker. A guy meets her on her day off, propositions her, she tells him to piss off. Next day he finds her working her corner, flashes a wad of cash, and suddenly she’s game. She doesn’t consent in the vanilla way people do, but it’s more like the terms of consent get changed.”

  “I suppose I see your point, though it may be splitting hairs. If men can continue to violate you contrary to your wishes in your right mind, does it make a difference if they can temporarily garner your support? If we’re using analogies, that sounds more like a date rape drug to me. You’re made to accept it, then regret it after.”

  My reply was so soft that he asked me to repeat it. Twice. “I said, I don’t regret it. OK?”

  “Don’t… what does that mean, Harmony?”

  “It means… I love it. I fucking love it. I crave it. Part of me wants it, like, all the time – and not some small, quiet part. It’s a screaming, shrieking, clawing at the walls to get out part. The sex… it’s not my choosing, sure, but it’s still so… so…” I paused, realizing I was saying these things out loud, and to whom. And that my hands were trying to creep up under my shirt to play with my tits again.“It feels good. Is all.” I folded my hands back in my lap demurely.

  David – anyone who could make me feel so at peace with a simple hug must be on a first-name basis, I decided – expressed his discomfort through quiet for a moment. “Then perhaps that should be our focus. Reconditioning you to not enjoy it so much.”

  “No!” I blinked. I hadn’t meant to shout it, but the thought had stirred something in me as a reflex. The mere idea of losing that sex, of contorting my twisted mind still further so that it would be denied its only solace… “No. One thing at a time. First things first. I need to find out who has my trigger words, and how they’re giving them out to people. And convince them to stop.”

  And maybe find out what those triggers are, and maybe save them for a rainy day with a man I trusted. But he didn’t need to know that. After being the recipient of even part of one of my blowjobs, just being in the same room with me had to be at least a little distracting. Heck, it was distracting me, and I was the cocksucker, not the cocksuckee.

  “All right then. According to the circumstances you described, it seems like whoever is providing your triggers is choosing people at random. The man in the bar could have been a plant, someone he’d chosen ahead of time and sent in with the knowledge, but the delivery man would be impossible to arrange. He couldn’t know you’d order food, where and when and who would be bringing it. So the perpetrator must have contacted him between the time you placed the order and the time he arrived at your apartment.”

  “That was my thinking too. But it doesn’t help – I can’t just walk up to the delivery guy and ask him who gave him the trigger words.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a sweet man, David,” I said, smiling softly at him. “But you don’t think he might use the opportunity to trigger me again? And even if he didn’t, why would he rat out the man who helped him enjoy the best sexual encounter of his life?”

  My hypnotherapist stroked his goatee pensively. “You may be right. If nothing else, it’s a risk, and you’re already dealing with too much of that.”

  “Any other ideas?”

  “Well, I’m sure hiring a P.I. to tail you, watching for suspicious characters, isn’t in the budget.”

  “Yeah no.” With the days I’d taken off work recently, it was going to be hard just to make rent.

  “So you’ll need someone you trust then. To keep an eye on you, watch your surroundings and see who else might be observing.”

  It wasn’t even intentional, adopting my most pitiful expression, big doe eyes still damp with tears, and fixing them on him. “Could you…?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve already crossed more than a few lines, Harmony, in ways that could cost me my license if people found out even if you didn’t press charges.” I nodded. That was fair; he’d been through a lot with me already.

  “That said, I recall you said you’re not on speaking terms with your family, but do you have a friend you trust with such a task?”

  Chapter Seven

  I had reasoned that revealing my history as a brainwashed sex slave would help pave the way to my friends accepting my apology. It had to. After all, it was one thing to nurture a grudge against a friend who got drunk and puked in your car; it was quite another to do so with someone who’d been poisoned. I hadn’t been in my right mind, and once I told them everything, I was pretty sure they’d see that.

  It was the telling them everything part that was making my blood run cold.

  I’ve told you before that I don’t get scared or ashamed, and it’s true. I could strip naked in the middle of a men’s prison yard and still look forward to enjoying the consequences. My hesitation to walk over and knock on the door of Miguel and Justin’s house wasn’t fear, precisely; it was more self-loathing. The whole thing was a jumble in my head; after what I’d seen and done in my short life, I didn’t harbor pieties about sex and sexuality. Yet there was a wide gap between being open-minded and being a living jungle gym for anyone with the inclination to play on me. Even if my friends were understanding about my past, they’d never look at me the same way again.

  Tonight would change everything between us, forever.

  Nevertheless, Dr. Kovacs had been right. I needed help. There was no one else to turn to. I had to reach out to my friends, and Justin and Miguel we
re the ones I needed right now. I was closer with Hannah and Vivian, admittedly, but… if there really was some brainwashing bastard after me, I couldn’t risk even a ghost of a chance of them being taken and made like me. For now, it was Miguel and Justin. They’d help me.

  I’d been parked down the block for three hours trying to convince myself of that.

  Then, there was a light shining at my face and a sharp rap at my window. I was so tense I screamed in surprise. It was a police officer. Wonderful. Thankfully my reaction didn’t scare him into shooting me, so I rolled down my window to apologize. “I didn’t see you there, sorry.”

  He was a clean-cut guy, younger even than me, the sort of fresh-faced young cop you usually only see as the comically naïve rookie in buddy cop movies. Fresh out of the academy or no, he was all business. “Please keep your hands where I can see them, ma’am.”

  “Oh, OK,” I said, placing my hands on the steering wheel.

  “Ma’am, we’ve received reports that you’ve been sitting in your car and staring at a particular house for several hours now. Is there anything you’d like to tell me about what you’re doing here tonight?”

  Of all the activities I’d thought I might have to explain to the police, loitering wasn’t on the list. Public indecency, solicitation, prostitution, disturbing the peace… those, sure. But sitting in my car doing nothing? Damn Miguel and Justin for living in a nice subdivision with an active neighborhood watch. I couldn’t exactly tell this cop I was sitting here summoning the nerve to tell my friends I was a sex slave and need their help not to become one again. I laughed in despair at the absurdity of the situation. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, officer.”

  “Well right now I’m inclined to arrest you, so you don’t have to tell me anything.”

  I sighed. “I’m here to see a couple friends of mine. They live down there, in that yellow house.”