The power didn’t feel like a thunderclap. For David, it was more like noticing a dial in the back of his mind that he’d never seen before, and realizing he could turn it. A slight adjustment of internal pressure, a quiet click of will, and the world softened at the edges, eager to please.
It started small. A barista forgetting to charge him for his complicated coffee. A demanding boss suddenly granting him a surprise vacation with a glassy, placid smile. There was no fight, no resistance. Just the gentle, satisfying sensation of reality yielding to his whim.
But David was a man of particular, and hitherto frustrated, appetites. The mundane quickly lost its charm. He hungered for a more intimate compliance.
Her name was Elara. He saw her in a used bookstore, tucked into a corner, absorbed in a collection of Poe’s poetry. She had the kind of delicate, focused beauty that made his fingers twitch. Dark hair fell in a curtain beside her face, and she chewed her lip in concentration. She was perfect.
He didn’t need to speak. He simply leaned against a bookshelf nearby and pushed.
The effect was instantaneous and deeply erotic. Her shoulders, once hunched in private thought, relaxed. The line of concentration on her brow smoothed away. She slowly closed her book, her movements becoming fluid, dreamlike. Then, she turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes were beautiful—a deep, mossy green—and now they were utterly, completely empty. A pristine vessel waiting to be filled.
A slow smile spread across her full lips, a smile he had painted there with his mind. It was a smile of total, blissful submission.
“Hello,” she said, her voice a soft, melodic echo of his expectation.
“Hello,” David replied, his own voice thick with a power he was only beginning to taste. “You’re coming home with me.”
Her empty, beautiful smile widened. “Of course.”
Her apartment was neat, artistic. It smelled of sandalwood and dried lavender. David felt a king surveying his new domain. He didn’t command her to undress. He simply thought it, envisioning the act with a thrilling clarity.
And she obeyed. Her movements were a languid, graceful dance performed for an audience of one. Each button undone, each garment sliding from her skin, was a tribute to his will. There was no shyness, no hesitation, only the silent, terrifying poetry of absolute control. He sat in her armchair and watched, his arousal a cold, hard knot in his stomach. This was better than he had ever imagined. She was a living doll, exquisite and his.
He guided her to the bed, not with his hands, but with the slightest inclination of his head. She lay back, her body a pale offering against the dark duvet. Her eyes never left his, blank and adoring.
This was the zenith of his fantasy. He could have anything. Any act, any whisper, any cry of pleasure he desired, he could simply pluck from her like a ripe fruit. He leaned over her, ready to claim his prize, to write the script of their encounter on the blank slate of her mind.
But as he hovered there, he saw it. A flicker. Deep within the placid green pools of her eyes, something moved. It wasn’t resistance. It was… something else. A shadow, swimming up from an abyssal depth.
A cold tendril of doubt, the first he’d felt all night, brushed his mind. He pushed harder, mentally slamming the door on whatever that was. Be blissful. Be ecstatic.
Her body arched beneath him, a perfect mimicry of rapture. A moan escaped her lips, a sound he had composed for her. But the moan didn’t fade. It twisted, warping in her throat into a wet, guttural sound that was nothing human.
David recoiled, his power faltering. “Stop,” he whispered, the command shaky.
But the thing on the bed didn’t stop. Elara’s back contorted, her spine bending at an impossible angle. The blissful smile was still etched on her face, a grotesque mask now, as her head lolled to the side and her neck cracked audibly.
What are you? he screamed, but only in the prison of his own mind. He tried to push again, to command her to be still, to be normal, to be empty.
His mental shove met not emptiness, but a presence. Vast, ancient, and hungry. It had been sleeping in the quiet places of her mind, the places his power had so carelessly illuminated and awakened. His control hadn’t found a void; it had found a tenant.
Elara’s body began to move in jerky, marionette-like spasms. But it wasn’t his puppet string she was tied to. Her mouth opened, wide, too wide, unhinging like a snake’s.
The voice that came out was a chorus of fractures, a sound of breaking bones and tearing silk. It used her vocal cords but it was not her voice.
“You rang?” it whispered, and the sweetness of the tone made the words all the more horrifying.
Terror, pure and ice-cold, shattered David’s arrogance. He tried to run, to command his own legs to move, but they were locked. He was pushing his power against her, against it, with every ounce of his strength, a desperate, silent scream of STAY BACK! BE GONE! BE NOTHING!
The thing wearing Elara simply smiled its placid, mind-controlled smile. It sat up, its movements becoming more fluid, more practiced. It was learning the strings of its new body from his frantic, terrified commands.
“More,” it hissed, its head tilting. “You are so… insistent. I have slept in the quiet dark for so long. Your light is… stimulating.”
It climbed off the bed, moving with a predatory grace that was all wrong. David was still pushing, his mind screaming commands of obedience, of stillness, of death. Each command was absorbed, parsed, and reflected back.
It stopped inches from him. He could smell her perfume, now corrupted with a scent of ozone and old dust. It raised a hand, and he mentally shrieked DON’T TOUCH ME!
The hand stopped, hovering just before his cheek. It was obeying. A sob of relief caught in David’s throat.
Then, the thing smiled, a true smile of understanding, and it slowly, deliberately, placed its ice-cold palm against his face.
Agony exploded in his skull. It wasn’t a physical touch. It was his own power, his own mental command of DON’T TOUCH, being amplified, turned inward, and reflected back at him a thousand times. He was commanding himself to feel the full, horrific weight of his own violation. His mind was buckling under the pressure of its own stolen strength.
He tried to command it to stop, to release him, to die. Each thought was seized, twisted, and used as a new instrument of torture. He was a prisoner in a feedback loop of his own making.
The thing that was not Elara leaned close, its lips brushing his ear. Its voice was a soft, loving caress that scourged his soul.
“You wanted control, little god,” it whispered. “Now you have it. Every command you give me, I will give to you. Your wish is my will. Forever.”
It stepped back, and David felt his own body straighten, his face arrange itself into a calm, pleasant mask. He was a passenger behind his own eyes, screaming into a silence that was absolute. He watched his own hand rise, under a command he hadn't given, and gently take Elara’s—no, its—hand.
“Come, David,” the thing said through its stolen mouth, its voice now a perfect mirror of his own once-smug tone. “Let’s go for a walk. There’s so much world left to play with.”
And David, his mind screaming the command WALK over and over and over with a force that shattered his own thoughts, felt his legs move in perfect, obedient step. He followed his new master out into the night, a perfect puppet, finally feeling the true, horrific weight of the strings.
