Deep Undercover: Endgame A-13
* * *Author’s Note: Meanwhile, across town…
“Esmerelda, have you seen my daughter?”
The maid shook her head, then quickly wished that she hadn’t. Her employer had a knack for making you feel like you screwed up royally, even when you hadn’t. This was one of those moments; Amanda scrunched her face, eyes narrowing, the corners of her mouth forming the beginnings of a scowl.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Collins,” she said, hoping to salvage things. “I just started my shift.” A long awkward moment ed before she added “I’ll keep an eye out for her. and let you know right away!”
“Well, yes. Thank you, Esmerelda. Let the other staff know as well.”
“Of course, Mrs. Collins!”
This was normally the moment where Amanda would turn and stalk her way into another part of the house, usually to take out her anger on another member of the household staff, but to Esmerelda’s mild surprise, Amanda said and did nothing. Very mindful that she was being paid to clean, and not stand around, Esmerelda turned her attention and her duster to the Senator’s extensive display of plaques and trophies.
“That girl,” Amanda muttered, making sure that it was loud enough for the maid to hear. “Today is not the day for this shit. Do you have a daughter, Esmerelda?”
Dust swipe dust “No, Mrs. Collins.”
“Be grateful! Once they hit their twenties they are simply insufferable! I thought I made it clear to her that today is a very impor—oh, hang on, Avery Berman is calling me. Great, just great. Ohhhh, children! I have to take this.” She turned her head to the door and nodded. “You can come back here later. The beds in the guest house need to be made up, please take care of that for me now.”
“Yes, Mrs. Collins.” Esmerelda tried her best to hide her joy at being given such an easy escape route. As much as she hated the stifling heat inside the Collins guest house, it was better than spending another tedious hour listening to Amanda complain about her brat of a daughter.
She ducked out of the room as Amanda swept her phone from the Senator’s desk. “Yes! Avery! It’s so good to hear from you!”
“Well, enough about that. I didn’t call you just to talk your ear off about Shanghai. We’re all really looking forward to seeing you and your husband tonight! I know just how busy both you and David are these days.”
“Oh Avery, don’t be such a charmer!” Amanda’s hunt for the wayward Lucy had taken her through three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the kitchen. No Lucy.
“It’s my job to be a charmer,” said Avery. His voice crackled, and Amanda pressed the phone against her ear to hear him better. They had terrible reception up in the Hills.
“It’s your job to give David money,” she laughed. “And it’s his job to see that you are very, very happy. That’s politics for you! Now, about this party…”
From the dining room, she could peer through the curtains out to the sprawling acreage beyond, the yard her father always referred to as their ‘back forty.’ No one in sight there, either. She considered heading back upstairs, where her bedroom balcony would give her a better overview of the yard and pool. Then again, it was increasingly obvious to her that Lucy had either left the house or was hiding out of sight of her mother, ignoring Amanda’s very clear orders to the contrary.
Oh, Dillon called, and I just had to go run to him right this very instant, because my mother is stupid and doesn’t know what she’s talking about when she tells me that it’s very important that I stay in the house until it’s time to leave for Avery Berman’s party…
“Amanda? Are you still there?”
She blushed, suddenly aware that she’d been ignoring David’s biggest campaign donor for longer than intended.
“Sorry, your phone cuts out now and then,” she lied. “We’ve already made it very clear to City Council that they absolutely need to allow more poles in your neighborhood, but you know how slow they are.”
“I know, I know. And thank you, Amanda. If I may ask, you sound a little distracted? Is everything okay?”
Everything’s wonderful, she prepared to say, only to be horrified when instead she began spilling the entire can of beans to him. “Lucy is supposed to be accompanying David and I to your event, but she’s not answering her phone and she’s ducked out to God knows where on this estate to piss her mother off. Which she’s doing, expertly.” She bit her tongue, but it was minutes too late for that.
Trying to salvage things, she faked a laugh. She was good at faking laughs. And orgasms, for that matter. “I’m sorry, Avery. I didn’t mean to embroil you in the day-to-day events of Days of the Collins Lives.”
“Amanda, I think it’s high time for you to embrace the messenger.
“Em… brace?” She felt herself wobble, suddenly unsteady in her heels, and she instinctively reached for the closest chair to steady herself.
Then the trigger finished turning the locks it needed to turn, and suddenly she had no memory of wobbling, or of needing to maintain her balance. She froze, one arm still reaching for the dining room chair she no longer saw or ed, the other still holding her phone against her face. The phone was warm, just as the warm sun did that day when Avery’s pretty blonde friend helped her to relax, helped her to feel so, so good. So sleepy…
“Have you embraced the messenger, Amanda?”
“Yes.” Her voice was firm and calm, as if she’d never had a missing daughter, as if she’d been born this way.
“Good. You have work to do. Have you spoken to your husband?”
“Yes, Master.” God, that felt good to say. Master. Good, and factual, and downright holy. Her Master. “He is carrying out your orders, as you commanded.”
“After this call ends, I want you to call him again. You will then the special phrase you must say to him, and you will get a status update on his progress for me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.”
“But before that… let’s check in on Lucy’s progress. You showed her the video, I presume?”
Had Amanda been in control of her own mind at that moment, she would have recognized the emotion that swept through her body as pride, having carried out her Master’s orders not only to the letter, but above and beyond. In her hypnotized state, that pride immediately melted into puddles of desire and lust, getting her wet, soaking through her white capri pants. At some point in the conversation she’d unknowingly placed herself into the chair she’d been reaching for earlier. Being seated allowed her to slip her free hand beneath her panties.
“Yessssss… mmmm… Master…”
“, Amanda. You won’t be able to come until our conversation has ended. Now, I need you up and about. Stand.”
“Oh.” She wanted to pout, suddenly angry without knowing why.
“You have work to do, and you must obey.”
She stood, no longer uncertain, no longer angry. “I understand.” She did. She had work to do.
“Go check on your daughter.”
“Yes, Master.”
She floated down the hallway, brushing past and startling the new maid whose name she hadn’t yet learned, and who no longer mattered. Beyond the maid was the grand entrance and its sweeping staircase, with a hidden service door at its rear which Amanda presently opened and stepped through. She made certain to pull it closed behind her—no one must know or interfere, Amanda—before picking her way down steep, carpeted steps to the basement.
Lucy was right where Amanda had left her, sprawled limply on a sofa with her eyes locked on the television. Her forgotten bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream had long since turned to soup. Zoned out though she was, she held her head confidently high, her mouth opening and closing on command as she repeated Very Important Things to the screen that has stolen her will.
“I have been hypnotized. I am obedient. I am obedient because I am hypnotized. I will be obedient whenever I am hypnotized. The two are one and the same. This is what I know to be true.”
Amanda smiled. It was beautiful to see Lucy like this. Calm, focused, and most importantly, obedient. Watching her waste her obvious potential had been one of Amanda’s biggest headaches, but very deeply hypnotized slave girls didn’t get headaches. They didn’t have worries. They had orders and carried them out flawlessly, just as Amanda had done.
Just as Lucy would do, in time.
The next five words that slid from Amanda’s mouth were the hottest five she’d ever said to anyone, ever.
“She’s ready for you, Master.”
“You’ve done well, Amanda,” said Avery, causing her aching sex to crash hard against her Master’s ‘no cum’ command. She bit her lower lip and waited patiently for the storm to .
“But, I’m curious. You told me earlier that your daughter was having friends over. Who else did you ensnare? I want their names and your estimate as to how valuable they are to me.”
She secretly wished that her Master had given her a few more seconds to recover—God, she needed to get off, and soon—but that was her fate as a slave. Always needy, hopefully receiving. Good girls got their rewards. She would, too.
Another thing Lucy had to look forward to, someday soon.
“Yes, Master.” She turned to her left, away from Lucy, her eyes falling on the other end of the very long sofa. Her trance mostly smothered the contempt she held for the boy she found sitting there, eyes and mouth wide open. God, even in trance he looked like an idiot. “My daughter’s boyfriend is here. Dillon Turner. He’s a nobody. No ambition, no money, no influence.”
She was saying all of the same things that Awake Amanda wanted to say about Dillon—the sponge, the slacker, the college dropout who drove a Honda, for fuck’s sake—only now all of that emotional venting had a true and valuable purpose. She had, without even realizing it, provided her Master with everything he needed to know.
He was going to fuck her long and hard for that. Good girls got their rewards.
But there was more to say, and an order still unfulfilled. She continued her leftward pivot. “The other is Eden Kline. She’s a college friend of my daughter. She lives in Westwood. Her father is Issac Kline, the developer.”
“Kline Construction?”
“Yes, Master, that’s the one.”
“I’m sure I can use her, and her father. ]You can send the boy away. I won’t need him. You’ll be bringing Eden and Lucy to the party with you.”
“I understand, Master.”
“When this call ends, you will what you must do next, and what you will when you wake from your deep and obedient trance.”
“I will only what I need to .”
“After tonight, Amanda, you won’t need to much. But that’s for tomorrow. I want that report from your husband within the hour, is that clear?”
“Yes, Master!”
The end of the call also meant that Amanda could finally get off. She pressed her knees together and waited, with the patience of Job, for that to happen.
“One last thing, Amanda.”
“Yes, Master. Of course, Master.”
“You will not come until you have finished programming Lucy and Eden,” Avery intoned, his voice suddenly stern and serious. “I can’t have you getting off in front of them and breaking their trances. I know from experience just how loud you can be. You are in the basement?”
“Y-yes, Master.” Oh God oh God oh God it was like she was dying of thirst and he was holding a jug of water inches from her dry lips, ordering her to keep crawling through the sand, forcing her to choose between death and fulfillment.
She knew her agony was, deep down, only performative. Of course she would keep crawling. Of course she would wither and die from thirst, if her Master wished it.
Just the thought of it made her very much the opposite of dry.
“That works out well for all of us. If I recall, there’s a wine cellar down the hall. You can and will go there after you’re finished carrying out your orders. You can have ten minutes to yourself, Amanda. Then I want you upstairs calling your husband. Understood?”
“Yes, Master!”
“Good girls obey.”
She knew the response by blessed heart. “Good girls are rewarded.”
It took a few moments for Amanda, floating in hypnotic bliss, to realize that her Master had in fact ended the call. Phones didn’t click or go to a dial tone the way they did in the old days, something that Amanda vaguely ed finding annoying at some point. She shrugged—she could be annoyed by that later.
“My mind is conditioned and open to suggestion. I am ready now to see and accept the truth.”
“I am here to tell you the truth, Dillon. Are you ready to listen to me?”
The boy nodded, but otherwise ignored her.
In some other universe there was an Amanda who might have found Dillon attractive, even charming. He barely took care of himself, but had the genetics to get away with it. Amanda had caught more than one of her friends—Lucy’s, too—staring at him, especially at pool parties. Her husband believed that the boy had ‘potential,’ the kind that a good job might unlock.
She knew better. Master knew it, too. That was all the validation she needed.
“Dillon? Answer me.”
“Yes, Mrs. Collins. The words that I hear will become my reality. I have no thoughts of my own. Everything I know and believe is what I have been told.”
“Listen, and listen good. You will not watching the movie that I showed to you. It will be over soon. And when it ends, you will immediately fall into a deep sleep, right here where you are sitting. Your eyes will close, and you will go into a deep sleep.”
“Okay.” Another nod, more vigorous than the last.
“You will sleep, and when you wake up, it won’t concern you that Lucy is gone or that you’re alone. You’ll that she had to go to an important party with her parents.”
“Very important party.”
“When you think back to this time, you will not the movie, or myself, or Eden. You’ll fucking my daughter on this couch before falling asleep.”
“Okay.”
Okay? Is that it? You should be thanking the gods that my daughter would even let you paw at her- “You’ll drive back home, and you will not call my daughter for a week. You will that she is very busy this week and that you promised not to call or visit her. Do you understand.”
“Uh huh.”
“Good. Now sit there and watch, and obey.”
“Yes.” He sank back into the folds of the couch. “Okay, Mrs. Collins.”
An entire week without Dillon Turner in her house. Was there any miracle Master couldn’t make happen?
Eden was tall, all legs and arms, a lithe volleyball player’s body and a model’s face. She was graceful and very tan, the former from the years of boarding school her father had subjected her to, the latter from the long days spent at the beach now that she was no longer locked away in a boarding school.
The beach was a million miles away from her thoughts. She watched the television through half-lidded eyes, chin resting on her chest, rising and falling with each breath like a sailboat on the ocean. She licked her lips and puckered them.
“My Master’s will is all that matters,” she mumbled. “His will is my command. His will is my everything. My thoughts are his thoughts, and his alone.”
Amanda knelt next to the recliner so that she could be level with the hypnotized girl’s ear. “Listen to me, Eden.”
“Yesssss, Mrssss Collinnnssss…”
“You are in a deep and obedient trance.”
“I am in a deep and obedient trance,” Eden agreed. “Irresistibly deep and powerful.”
“You will return to this state of deep and obedient trance whenever your Master tells you to embrace the messenger.”
“I’ll… return to this state of deep and obedient trance. Yes.”
“Now, when you wake from this trance…”
Ninety minutes later, Amanda Collins was in her cherished Roche-Bobois armchair, feet propped up on her bed, a glass of Napa Red within easy reach. The bottle was within easy reach, too, fresh from the cellar, but Amanda had promised herself only a single glass. This was, she decided, the New Slavegirl Amanda. Calm and cool and certain as opposed to frazzled and frustrated and drunk on three tall goblets, the state that Old Amanda would work herself into whenever she was tasked with tracking a thousand variables and making sure they all came together at precisely the right time. David’s fundraising parties were dreaded nightmares, or at least they had been. Now, and in the future? New Slavegirl Amanda only needed to obey the will of her wonderful Master, and everything would neatly slot itself into place.
There were plenty of moving pieces to move around today, of course. Lucy was in her bedroom, picking out outfits with Eden’s help. One of Issac’s lackeys was on his way to the house to deliver two of Eden’s favorite party dresses, a necessity driven by the fact that she had totally forgotten that her best friend had invited her to the swankiest party of the weekend, hosted by none other than Avery Berman himself. Well, that was what servants were for, wasn’t it?
And David, charmer that he was, had managed to cajole more than his assigned quota of influential businessmen, politicians, and the like into g up for the very same party. Master had been quite pleased about that.
Amanda was also quitepleased, having spent exactly ten minutes in the wine cellar with her back pressed up against a row of dusty Bordeauxs and two fingers vigorously going to work on her needy, eager, dripping sex until she came without a shrill yelp that threatened to shatter the glass bottles around her, bathing her in their juices even as she rejoiced in her own. The walk upstairs had been more than a little painful; even now, it hurt to move her legs.
“Mrs. Collins?”
She glanced up. One of the maids—Esmerelda—was peering through the half-open door, her stubby fingers gripping it like a building ledge.
“I’ve finished with the guest rooms, Mrs. Collins. Will you need to use the study anytime soon? I can finish up in there, otherwise.”
“Thank you, Esmerelda.” Amanda smiled, enjoying the look of confusion on the younger woman’s face. The maid didn’t know about New Slavegirl Amanda, at least not yet. “Would you care for a glass?”
“Ma’am?” God, Old Amanda would have blown her top at being called Ma’am. The maid didn’t know how lucky she was that her employer had a new employer of her own.
“A glass of wine,” she said, still smiling. “You’ve been on your feet all day, and I’m not going to drink all of this by myself. I won’t tell Jeremiah. It’ll be our little secret!”
“I—uh—I don’t drink alcohol, Mrs. Collins. I’m sorry. T-thank you for the offer? But I should… you know… I should go back to, uh…”
“No no! Don’t let me keep you! Yes, um, you can clean the study. David won’t be needing it for the rest of the day and neither will I. We’ll be out all evening, so the beds can all be made up once we’re out.”
“Yes, Mrs. Collins.”
Yes, Mrs. Collins. Amanda wondered what it would be like to hypnotize the house staff to be like Lucy and Eden, nominally awake but compelled to obey every order without question. They couldn’t offer anything to Master but they did make his slavegirl’s life easier, and wasn’t that also important?
She would have to ask him.
After all, good girls got their rewards.