The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Xerxes stretched where he stood, interlocking his fingers and pushing his hands forwards and out from his body in extension. Then he swung his arms back, interlocking his fingers again, and pushed backwards and out from his body instead. It felt very good to stretch.

When he was done, he shook his arms out and then dropped them back to his sides.

He spoke up, for Kalchek’s benefit. And for his own sake, too— as the hour continued on, he seemed to draw ever increasing comfort from the thought that Kalchek would hear what he’d said later on.

“Solving at least one aspect of this case has refreshed me, as I told you. And I’m still feeling refreshed now. I feel ready to go on with this and continue. Maybe Helen will cross paths with the killer this time. It’s just— easy to feel optimistic now. I did solve one aspect of the case, after all. That does make things look a little more encouraging than they appeared before.”

It was a comforting thought too, though, that he would soon be seeing Kalchek in person as well. Comforting to think of Kalchek one day listening to all this, but even more comforting to think that at the end of a very difficult hour, there’d be a weathered and friendly face waiting to meet him— maybe a comforting slap to the shoulder when he sat down across the table. Maybe Kalchek would be a few minutes early— order a coffee for him before he got there— Kalchek did tend to be thoughtful in those small ways.

It was nice to picture. He just had to get to the end of the hour. He just had to find his killer.

Xerxes looked down to the table aside from the frequency-scanner. He’d scribbled down Tara’s last set of co-ordinates when he’d found a spare moment the last time the frequency-scanner had been projecting her memories, and he was grateful that he’d done it, now. Following what he’d written down, he reached for each of the three dials on the frequency-scanner in sequence. He turned the first dial, and then the second, and finally the third, until they were all at the last set of co-ordinates Xerxes had observed.

Then Xerxes reached again, nudged each dial a little further forward, before they could start whirling and spinning themselves of their own accord.

Then the frequency-scanner was displaying Tara’s memories of the relevant chronological moment once more.

It was mid-May, and Tara was in Natalie’s office with the door closed. Natalie was elsewhere.

Tara had enjoyed the past few months very much. So far, she was still performing well at her job, but she was really only doing that to please Helen. The job itself didn’t mean very much to her.

The task she’d come in here to carry out mattered more to her than any of the rest the tasks her role required of her. Her continued place in this role was dependent on it, but that was secret— only Natalie and Helen knew that was true. But Tara considered it an equal part of her workload. Sometimes, she felt that doing it was her true work.

Doing it, however, was another extension of her hidden deviancy. Which was why only Natalie and Helen were allowed to know it was considered a requirement of her role. And that must be kept secret until Helen decided otherwise.

Tara did not have an office with a door that closed. Junior assistants got shoved into cubicles out in the open area where everyone could see them, and fifty people walked behind them in a day. So Tara was permitted the use of Natalie’s office, when it was time to carry out this task again. Natalie permitted this— because Helen told her to permit it.

What Tara did here was really for Helen— what she did today would be for Helen, too, as always.

Tara was looking forward to carrying out this task, though. It had become habit to her: repeating ritual she knew to both expect and rely on. She enjoyed doing it— looked forward to doing it— found it was a meditative thing for her, found that it did helpful things for her mind. So now, as she sat behind Natalie’s desk with her chair turned to face the wooden-cabinets along Natalie’s office’s back-wall, she allowed herself to savor the feeling of possibility, allowed herself to savor all that the next few minutes would bring to her. And what they would bring through her, for Helen.

In anticipatory moments of this type, Tara found herself thinking of the woman she’d been before she’d ever been Run. Something waiting and eager, something half-desperate, looking in everything that crossed her path for the hidden secret which, once revealed, would show her the way to a set of experiences she could only guess at, and yet knew instinctively she required to feel fully whole. Every hint that she’d received had left her begging and desperate for more information. She’d received each of those hints— in hearing snippets of conversation as she ed by, or in glancing by luck on some private moment in a corner. And every hint had shown to her that other world of experience she longed desperately to be a part of, to a walk among— if only someone would tell her the secret way of getting there—

She’d wanted to get to Running, every time she’d heard it mentioned it in one of those snippets— or stumbled across it happening somewhere surreptitiously in public. And each hint had made her more desperate— but in those days, when she’d seen those hints, she’d imagined— that she would be the Runner. She had started her job at this law firm still thinking she would be the Runner. In all hints she’d seen, she’d thought Running— once put into practice, once engaged with— would keep to itself within a controlled environment— would not be a wild, sprawling, escaping thing that dragged all other things inside of itself. And she had imagined she would be Runner.

She’d turned out to be the one Run, instead. And everyone she’d known of who’d engaged themselves in Running— had maybe done it the smarter way. Had designed controlled environments to house it, had engaged it on their , had tamed it. It had not been a wild, escaping thing for them. Their controlled environments had never been breached.

But Tara had turned out to be the one Run, and the Running she’d gotten herself involved with could not be tamed. It had never seen the inside of a controlled environment— it was loose and running over open country, and she was only being pulled along with it.

The one Run, in that sense too. Run by Running as it dragged her alongside, escaping over country— as much as she was Run by Helen, too.

These moments of quiet reflection mattered; she would not put her task off too much longer, but they did. It was beyond Natalie to understand— she was not Natalie’s to understand anymore. But the few interactions they’d had, where Natalie had seem some lingering effect of this in her, she had not understood. And Tara had not cared. Because she didn’t answer to Natalie anymore.

But for Tara, taking this time— to reflect on her situation, even to frequently reflect on how she had been once before— deepened her addiction to Helen’s Running. And she was always seeking a deepening of that. When she thought, with focus enough, she understood it as one more way the Running was coming to her— it was a way of getting her hit of it, too. It went behind Helen’s back a little— but until Helen herself put a stop to it, she’d go on stealing more moments of satisfaction like these. Of feeling the Running flowing through her, achieving that state, without even having it physically given to her.

It was starting to happen now— she’d focused enough— when she had seen glimpses of Running in her life before, she’d thought it would be a controllable thing experienced safely. But she experienced Running now as something wild and dangerous, with the potential to be lethal— and if she could have chosen one of two options for herself: either the controllable, tame Running she’d seen glimpses of in the past, or the wild dangerous Running which had her in its grip and was dragging her along— she would undoubtedly choose the dangerous form of it.

Satisfied to feel her addiction flowing through her, Tara sat forward in her chair and began the undertaking of her task.

Tara pulled the top drawer of the wooden cabinet in front of her open. She reached in, and lifted out an electric hot-plate. She set this on the cabinet’s surface, unwinding the power-cord behind it, until she had gotten it unkinked enough to plug the teeth at its end into the outlet which was just above the cabinet.

She pulled open the drawer which was beside the one she’d just opened, and lifted it out a stainless-steel pot. She set this on the hot-plate’s first of two elements, the one further left, and more or less centered in front of her chair.

She pulled open the drawer which was below that, and reached in, this time coming up with a tray, upon which had been piled a generous amount of cocaine. She set the tray to the side of the pot, and reached back into the still open drawer, and drew out the large, plastic, multi-liter bottle of water that had been lying on its side. She unscrewed the cap and poured the water into the pot until it was half-full. Then she turned the element underneath the pot on, to high heat.

She waited only a few minutes, and then lifted the tray of cocaine again, suspending it above the pot, and then pushing the cocaine into the water.

She watched it as it began to dissolve, this too for only a moment, then went back into the same drawer as before to take out the box of baking soda. She dumped a generous amount of this into the cocaine-concoction, and watched her concoction reduce.

It fizzed and bubbled a little as it did.

She was thinking about Natalie again. Natalie really didn’t understand her— maybe Helen had not put it in Natalie to understand. But in several of the conversations Tara had had with Natalie alone, outside of Helen’s company, Tara had definitely gotten that sense— to Natalie, Helen’s Running was— just some kind of wonderful gift, but still, something classifiable, something reducible to simple understanding. Natalie did not understand Helen’s Running as Tara did— as the thing which could contain all other things inside of itself. Tara felt sometimes that Natalie understood being Run and snorting cocaine as two separate, if complimentary things.

And it was quite obvious at this point that Natalie was a little non-plussed about the state of things in Tara’s mind— couldn’t understand the complex line of thought Tara followed, couldn’t understand the twisted psychological depth that was at play within her. It would have been simpler, more typical, for Tara to love the cocaine for its own sake, or to love the sex for its own sake. Tara herself had wondered about variations of this thought before.

That would have been the simpler, more direct response, where not much else became psychologically implicated. But in Tara’s case, she could only come to love of the cocaine, and love of the sex, along a very convoluted and disturbing road. It had to be through Helen’s Running that she came to those loves— and being at them, it could only be through linking them back to Helen’s Running that she could really hold appreciation for them. Not a direct road at all— so many turns to follow, such a long way to wend.

She loved the cocaine really because it was so dangerous— and only loved it for that because of the deeper truth it revealed about Helen’s Running. Helen’s Running was so irresistible that Tara was happy to take such a dangerous substance, to risk health consequences, to risk overdose, to risk death. It was only fun to hold death at her lips and sip when she knew it was Helen’s Running influencing her to do that— it would not have been fun to do it of her own volition.

And still she knew it really was death she held there— and still that was fun for her. Loved that Helen’s Running of her was so powerfully done that she could be made to risk her own death constantly, and love the danger of that. It was that death-risk that made Tara feel how bombastically powerful Helen’s Running was. She loved being forced into confrontation with knowledge of that fact.

So Natalie might walk a more direct road— simply enjoy cocaine for its own sake, and simply enjoy Helen’s Running while it was happening to her, and not reflect any deeper on it. Walk a more direct road, and then not understand Tara on her more convoluted one.

But privately, Tara found satisfaction in the idea that Natalie did not understand all the turns her mind had to follow to arrive at the same place. Privately, she found satisfaction in the idea that Natalie condensed that journey in her mind when she imagined Tara embarking upon it.

The person Tara had been before— she would never have gone on such convoluted journeys. Tara still watched the cocaine-concoction bubbling and reducing. The person she’d been before. She had misunderstood the snippets she’d heard— she had been without experience. In each snippet heard or moment glimpsed, she, too, had imagined that Running was a very direct road to walk. That Running or being Run was a quick destination to reach, and that when one got there, it was only a matter of pleasant enjoyment within safe frames that could then be turned away from as soon as the experience was over.

Tara liked that she’d been wrong. That she walked convoluted paths which meant the Running never really left her, and her addiction to it worsened all the time. The woman she’d been before would never have been able to guess what such journeys would look like, though all the time she’d wished for the secret key. And Tara was twisted now, having to walk such paths— perhaps not capable of direct travel any longer. And yet Tara knew the twistedness came from what the Running had already done to her— came from Helen— so she loved that twistedness too.

And Helen— it didn’t matter if Natalie understood Tara, because Tara was Helen’s to understand, now. Tara’s mind and all the twists of it were now Helen’s problem, the pile of challenges having been dumped onto her for her to deal with as she would. When Helen Ran Tara, Tara felt Helen was understanding her, seeing her twistedness, appreciating it— as if Tara was twisted in just the way Helen wanted her to be, and Helen would keep twisting to get Tara to twist more.

So either way, Tara was Helen’s problem to solve. And it was not lost on Tara that Helen’s solution might be— a kind of spiritual murder. To erase Tara empty until she was only a receptacle for Helen’s power. Maybe Natalie had to be direct, because Helen had already done this to her. As she’d thought before, maybe Natalie couldn’t understand a more convoluted approach, or Tara in general, because Helen had erased that capacity from her. Maybe Tara’s twistedness was a transitional thing— she would only be this twisted for this long and by this much, and later Helen would erase her into a nothing of a Running-receptacle.

But if Helen did that, it would only mean her Running had held the potential to be as spiritually lethal as the cocaine held the potential to be physically lethal. And Tara loved Helen’s Running always for bringing danger to her and proving its potency by it. She didn’t care if that were her future. She would enjoy it when it happened, if it did. Then she would be only a receptacle after.

All of this was only another way of feeling Run, anyway. And she felt her addiction more powerfully now than before. So powerfully that it made brought about pleasure inside her too— to be the Running-receptacle. She really just wanted Helen to do as she planned with her, whatever she wanted. She would feel whatever way Helen wanted her to feel about that. She was Helen’s problem to solve, and for now, Helen only seemed pleased when she looked into her mind and saw the overcomplicated nature of the things that were at work there. Tara didn’t need to worry about the future. Helen had everything in hand.

Tara sat, watching the contents of the pot go. Soon, the concoction was turning to rocks. Tara waited for that process to be complete, and then reached back in the drawer, and took out the box of resealable bags. She began breaking the rocks into chunks, then designated one bag for each chunk— then broke each chunk into usable pieces, and placed those pieces into their designated bags.

She lost track of how many bags she filled. She took them all into her lap, turned her chair around, and opened the bottom drawer of Natalie’s desk. There were bags from other days in there. There drawer was well-stocked. But there was still room for today’s bags. For more bags. There was always room for more bags.

Tara dumped the bags into the drawer with the others, and then slid it shut. She did this every day so that there was never any chance of running out.

Her task finished, she began to set things back in order again. Unplugged the hotplate, and let it cool. Poured some water from the water-bottle on a paper-towel, and cleaned the inside of the pot. She took the paper-towel into Natalie’s private-bathroom, and then flushed, when that was done.

The pot went back into its drawer, and the baking soda, and the water-bottle. The now-empty cocaine-tray went back into its drawer, as well. Then all drawers were closed, and Natalie’s chair was pushed back into her desk.

Her office looked perfectly organized, and beyond-reproach. But Natalie’s hidden deviancy was in here, whether it could be seen or not. All the necessary items for making crack, hidden in her cabinet drawers. And crack bagged up waiting to be smoked, hidden in her desk. Natalie met with plenty other colleagues in here. Not for the first time, Tara wondered if Natalie ever sat in any of those meetings thinking of what was hidden in the room with them. If she got off on the thought.

Maybe that was too convoluted for her.

Maybe Natalie had been simplified by Helen’s design.

Tara dismissed these thoughts, and left Natalie’s office. She went back to her cubicle, sat down, and got on with some of her other work, which meant a lot less to her than what she had just done.

Tara got through an hour of fairly productive effort, and accomplished a number of her expected tasks.

She was jarred from her concentration at the end of that hour, though.

“Tara,” Natalie said, poking her head around Tara’s cubicle wall. Tara startled upon hearing her name, and turned to look at Natalie.

“Helen wants to see us in her office for a meeting,” Natalie elaborated.

“I’ll be right there. You can go on ahead.” Tara didn’t want to delay Helen in anything she wanted, but she was going to be delayed about a minute or two before she could get up and leave. So Natalie should go ahead. That way Helen could have at least one of her women as soon as possible. Even if Tara couldn’t gift Helen with her own presence as quickly as Helen might have liked her to, she could still send Natalie to Helen, as quickly as possible, and so, despite her own delay, there would be someone keeping Helen company. Tara was going to try to make the transition— out of what she’d been doing and into visiting Helen’s office— a quick one.

Natalie had already left as soon as Tara had made her suggestion. Tara occupied herself with closing out of what she’d been doing on her work-computer, and sending her computer to sleep.

Then she stood excitedly from her desk.

She would be given the chance to have more of Helen’s Running today— she’d had tastes of it, in the greedy thinking she’d done earlier to try and steal that experience for herself. But she could really have the experience in full now. She could take Helen’s Running in the form of cocaine, and she could take it in the form of sex. And if she were lucky, she’d actually get to take it in the form of being Run. And no matter what form she took it in, it would all only make her ravenous for more of it. Still, in the moment her sieve emptied, she would enjoy herself.

Tara made brisk strides to Helen’s office, and then let herself in.

It looked the same as always. Tara had become more and more familiar with it since she’d become a junior assistant.

Tara had been the last one to enter, since Natalie was already there, and so Tara closed the door behind herself once she’d ed through it.

Helen slid a different drawer of her desk open— not the one she’d used to keep the cocaine-tray in, but a different one. She reached in, and then held up a fistful of resealable bags containing crack-rocks. “Natalie brought these over to me earlier, very discreetly.”

Natalie shimmied in pride just at Helen’s tone of delight. “I’m sure you restocked her drawer enough to make up for what she took. I’m sure you restocked her drawer enough to leave a surplus above what she took.”

Tara just nodded. She didn’t want to interrupt Helen while she was speaking.

But Helen was done speaking for now, it seemed. She reached back into the same drawer and drew out three glass pipes. She kept one for herself, and Tara and Natalie walked over to take the other two. The three of them were gathered around the resealable bags— they could smoke their way through what was here easily. They’d smoked through this much before, between the three of them. Sometimes they smoked through more.

Tara was as practiced at doing this as she was at making the crack itself. She took a few of the gauzes Helen had also set out, and put them into the pipe, then opened one of the bags, took some rocks out, and put them inside too. She struck one of the also-provided matches off the pack, and lit the rocks inside until they were burning.

Then it was natural habit to inhale the smoke. She did this every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. And this was just another conduit for Helen’s Running.

At the first inhale, Tara felt completely and utterly Run.

The effect was much more instantaneous now than when they had still been snorting instead of smoking.

For a while, the three of them focused on smoking through their rocks— they got through two bags, and the start of a third, but when Natalie reached to draw out more, Helen gestured for her to stop, so instead they put both their pipes out, then took turns cleaning their pipes out into Helen’s toilet-bowl, and helping her clear away all their smoking paraphernalia.

“Alright, ladies,” Helen said, once everything had been put away. “You’ve done very well with the cocaine in general. Snorting it through March, adapting irably in April to smoking it, and carrying on smoking it all the time until present. And you’ve done very well with the cocaine today, specifically. But I think you’re ready to try something else now. You proved you were sophisticated enough to do cocaine. Are you sophisticated enough to do heroin? The latter is even more sophisticated than the former.”

Helen took a tray out of her desk then, just as she’d done many times before. The tray was covered in powder, and there was still a razor there to direct it. But given what Helen had just said, it was an easy guess to make that the tray was not ing cocaine any longer.

Tara looked down at the piles of powder on the tray. The powder was white, just like the cocaine had always been white. Tara had never seen powdered-heroin before, but she was still caught off-guard by its whiteness. She’d expected it to look different, somehow.

“I have connections,” Helen said— obviously having known Tara’s thoughts. “And a lot of money. I can afford to buy heroin of the purest caliber. I don’t have to settle for brown or black powder like people get on the street. Don’t have to worry about what it’s been cut with, either.”

It did strike Tara then that the whiteness of the heroin made it look very pristine and pure.

But they had come to a crossroads moment now— and Tara was reflecting on herself again, seeing what was inside her, and what she was made of, at being presented with it.

Helen wasn’t saying anything, and neither was Natalie— Tara was being allowed to have this moment.

The first issue here was the prospect of— doing cocaine and heroin, on the same day. And the thought of Helen giving them the glass pipes— so insignificant in the moment it had happened, now meaning so much more in retrospect. Helen had given them the pipes, wanting them high on cocaine, all the time knowing full well she was going to bring heroin out for them after. Helen’s disregard for their health in that action made Tara feel very Run. She had to step past that for a moment.

Tara knew she would be able to do cocaine and heroin in the same day. Knew she would be able to risk her health that much. Knew that if she collapsed in death from that action, she would enjoy herself as she descended. She’d been enjoying herself as she descended while the descent was addiction, but even if the descent was death—

This was what she had to face now.

She had been— moving in a dangerous world. She had started out in a benign world— as someone direct and simplified, in a benign world. Imagining that Running would be a straightforward thing.

But from the moment she had started this job, she had left that benign world, and entered this dangerous one. The problem was, she had not left herself in the other world— she had brought her own perspective with her, her own identity, and her own history. So even though she’d been given dangerous experiences— things she would have, at her most fundamental level, wanted to object to the morality of— she had not found herself facing those dangers without a history. And though the woman she’d once been was now a stranger to her, she had left a legacy. So that upon being confronted with danger in the form of Running, she had been helpless to escape her own history. The one in her who had waited and waited for the secret key rejoiced at discovering the chance to involve herself in Running; and so Tara had gone into that more dangerous world, enjoying all dangers more simply, as if she were still dealing in safe things— and what she had encountered had changed her and twisted her further.

But she had adapted to this twisting. Instead of spending her time fearing it, accepted it as a given, and indulged herself. Which had fed the process— increased her addiction.

This moment, now, seemed a pinnacle. She had wandered up a mountain-path in that dangerous world, and had now reached its peak. Here was an opportunity to have more of the same experience she’d been having. She had been brought to this moment, to face this opportunity, and find out who she would be on the other side of it.

Here was danger, and possible death: she was not greeting it like was either. Was responding as if this was something simple, benign Running which could do her no harm, enjoying it like something simple, like all other Runners enjoyed their simple pleasures. But doing something complicated with it at the same time— in that she knew— she was taking simple pleasure here in a convoluted manner, for complicated reasons. This was death and danger, her body lit in excitement like it was only sex— but her mind understood the gravity of what was at stake.

For her entire tenure at his firm to date, it had been this way: she had been faced with danger and ruin, she had enjoyed them simply, and then become more dependent on them. Become more dependent on others’ Running. Which had twisted her more, and made her more inclined to take simple enjoyment in true danger. And now all she could think was that— maybe developing that capacity for enjoyment was a kind of evolving defense mechanism. It could just be the case that, having developed true understanding of danger, and ability to derive enjoyment from it, where it objectively should not be derived, she would better be able to withstand what would be done to her.

That was a heavy thought. As if something in her had given up a long time ago— and instead of fighting, had just figured out the easiest, most efficient way to adapt into something that could endure the treatment she was going to be subjected to. Endure the treatment in some form. Not as the woman she’d once been, but— as some version of herself.

And maybe that strategy had worked, up until now— she had shifted more and more as the Running twisted her, becoming what it made her, but also becoming something better equipped to stare unflinchingly in the face of her own death. To enjoy the pain of the process.

Yet what did all that mean, now? To begin taking heroin— if she and Natalie were to be heroin addicts now, instead of cocaine— she wasn’t sure the strategy would work anymore. Would she become further twisted, and so better equipped to further endanger herself? Where was that going to lead her? To her inevitable, spiritual or otherwise? If in what she had done so far, she had taught herself how to enjoy undergoing danger— then in what she was going to experience next, would she teach herself how to enjoy undergoing death? Just so that she could later die, and enjoy that when it happened, too?

This was the pinnacle— the decisive moment of the journey. Time to find out who she was now, and who she would be after. Even so twisted as she was, the heroin had still given her pause.

But the heroin’s presence on its own showed a facet of Helen’s Running to Tara. Yes, she loved Helen’s Running even when it endangered her safety this much— even when it endangered her current concept of self this much.

“I want to be more sophisticated,” Tara said, simply. Simply like she was taking simple enjoyment in her awareness of possible death. Taking simple enjoyment of a complicated thing others would have morally objected to, or fled in terror from.

Tara walked to Helen’s desk, hashed a line of heroin out on the tray with the razor, and snorted it.

She didn’t die— at least not physically. Things felt very paradise-adjacent inside her body, though, so it was hard to say that for sure.

It did feel heavenly inside her body now. The heroin-high felt different than a cocaine-high, even though there were still traces of the later in Tara’s body. The heroin-high was so— new and perfect. It was easy for Tara to tell what part of her reaction had been caused by the heroin, and what part of it had been caused by the cocaine. And the heroin-half of things was better.

The heroin made Tara feel like she was warm. Like she was being given some kind of internal hug. Like she was already asleep, and dreaming the best dream that had ever happened to her. Just feeling the effects of the heroin felt like getting a good night’s rest— everything so dreamy and warm and shimmery. The heroin was better than the cocaine. Definitely worth risking her life and health for. Tara never wanted to go back to cocaine again. It was absolutely nothing compared to this.

Tara loved the heroin, suddenly. Not even for the high it had given her— or for the alterations it had made to her existing her. The high was not truly the heroin’s to give. Tara’s mind only understood it as an effect of Helen’s Running. She was having the same reaction she had every time.

And just as the cocaine had been conduit earlier when they’d been smoking it— the heroin was a conduit now that she’d snorted it. And she loved the heroin for being that conduit. Loved it for showing her another dimension of Helen’s control. Loved it for making her realize the risk and danger inherent in what she was doing with Helen.

Loved it, because it was showing her how it felt to experience the effects of this new facet of Helen’s control. Helen’s Running could feel like the bustling inspiration of a cocaine high, or it could feel like the syrupy sweetness of a heroin high, or it could feel like both things together. Tara might feel the trace of this experience every future time she was ever Run. How nice!

It was nice. And Tara was enjoying the heroin in its role as conduit. But Tara was really addicted to Helen’s Running of her. And the substances Helen offered were most helpful, in that they made Tara feel her truest addiction more sharply, made her enjoy it more fully. And things were still the same, even with a new substance. Tara’s sieve filled only to drain out again, but the thing that stayed with Tara, even when her sieve emptied many times in quick succession, was that she wanted this process to happen.

Tara stepped back from the tray, still feeling like that syrupy-sweet feeling had been streaked across the surface of her mind. Natalie was the one to bend over the tray next, and snort in a line. Then she stepped back, and Helen did a line herself.

Xerxes was frowning at what the frequency-scanner was showing him. He wondered if Kalchek would frown later, too.

“Helen just seems… so obsessed with— giving them this kind of experience. Is she trying to ruin them with addiction? Why would she want to do that? She’s more creative than Natalie was, I still think so, but I just don’t understand why this is what she wants to create for them. I don’t understand why she’s participating, either. She just watched Tara and Natalie last time, but this time she’s snorting right alongside them. If she’s trying to ruin them with addiction, is she also trying to ruin herself? I don’t understand.

“What was it that Tara thought when she was reflecting as she made crack on the hot-plate element? That only the risk of death could adequately underline Helen’s power? That must be Helen’s motivation— that is creative— it’s just such a bleak use of innovative thinking.

“Tara thought something, too, about being a pile of challenges which had been dumped on Helen— but I’d say from the way Helen’s looking at her, she savors the challenge Tara presents her. Probably wants to solve her in some horribly destructive way. There’ll be some way to get her, I’m sure there will…”

It was easy to let things be the way they’d been the last time, Tara thought. She felt that Helen’s Running was in her body already, in both cocaine-form and heroin-form. And so now she also had to take it into herself in sex-form.

She was the first to strip out of her clothes. Then she got up onto Helen’s desk, and kneeled near its front edge.

Natalie came to stand in front of her— because of the height of Helen’s desk, and the heights of both Natalie and Tara respectively, their faces were level.

Natalie started kissing Tara, at the same sliding her fingers against Tara’s pussy. Helen’s Running in sex-form, in pleased-pussy form… in arousal form. Tara loved Helen’s Running in all forms.

Now Natalie was pushing a few of her fingers inside Tara’s pussy, stretching it out around them. And she was feeling Tara’s insides out with those fingers. Tara was leaking out onto them. That just meant the sieve was emptying— Helen’s Running had poured into her, and was now draining out, and it all came out from the lower-core of Tara’s body. It flowed onto Natalie’s hand.

Tara spread her knees a little wider as she kept kneeling on Helen’s desk. She bucked onto Natalie’s hand, and kept kissing Natalie on the mouth all the while.

She could only appreciate the drugs she was given in a convoluted way— likewise, she could only appreciate the sex she was given in a similarly convoluted way. Sex with Helen was the easiest to accept, but even that was not a direct path for her. What made this moment enjoyable for Tara was not the basic completion of any physical act. It was the thought that— Helen had decided she must be sexed, now. That she must be Run, through pleasure-direction. The thought that the pleasure only seared further dependency to Helen’s Running into her.

The thought that once Tara would never have chosen sexual partners like these for herself. That she would have contented herself with men, and kept herself to simpler pleasures. To be with women more complicated than that, but less complicated than dying. Other women who sought women were more simplified than Tara, even women-Runners who sought other Runners. Conceivably they all sought people who would be safe, and would do them no harm.

But Tara had not only gone off men, had not only sought out women as she would never have allowed herself to do before— she had sought dangerous women. Dangerous women who would do her harm, were already doing her harm. And she was letting them do as they liked with her. Even the benign acts of sex they did all seemed to sharpen a dangerous edge, because those acts were twined together with the drug-taking, and the Running, and all three things knotted together to pull Tara forwards and away from safety.

That convoluted thought-path was the thing that made the sex enjoyable for her. Made Tara able to draw simple enjoyment in a complicated way, draw simple enjoyment from something that, on the surface seemed equally simple. Draw simple enjoyment, and appear as though she was having a direct path. Sex-act to sexual pleasure.

It was really all the danger in between that rendered her to her destination, though. All the danger in between, and that feeling that Helen’s Running contained all other experiences inside of itself.

Tara had stayed in the same position: her knees apart, her back slightly arched, Natalie’s fingers reaching up inside her, her mouth against Natalie’s. But now she felt something wet tickling at her asshole. She realized— Helen had leaned across her desk. She was licking her there!

Having to take sensation in an additional form was overwhelming. And yet that licking was warmly coaxing, just as Natalie’s fingers were inside.

Helen’s Running was coming into her in too many ways— it would still never be enough, but it was also always too much. Her mind was too addled to question that obvious contradiction. Helen’s Running came into her on Natalie’s fingers— on Helen’s tongue. And it was already inside her, as the cocaine, and as the heroin. There was too much of it, her sieve had been filled to overflowing, and this time, as Helen’s Running practically brimmed over, Tara’s emptied itself in an immediate and dramatic fashion, literally pouring out through her pussy as this happened.

It was when the last pangs of being Run— Tara could not understand what had just happened to her body in any other way anymore— had ed that Helen actually pushed her power into Tara’s mind.

Here was Helen’s Running, in Running-form. This was the greatest satisfaction Tara had known today, this was the best high. Tara felt like she was mixing substances. She’d also done that today literally, but this felt like mixing substances too. Like someone getting drunk first to better appreciate it when they did drugs after— seeking multiple versions of intoxication, albeit seeking it through different forms.

Tara had mixed substances a second time— not just the cocaine and the heroin. She’d gotten herself to a heroin-high just to better appreciate being Run after. She’d sought multiple versions of Helen’s Running— from heroin, and now from Helen.

Even in Tara’s addled state, however, Tara could still recognize the sheer cruelty in what Helen had just done. She’d gushed out a release of Running because she’d been filled to capacity, but then Helen had just filled her up with even more of it.

But Helen was still Running her, and everything seemed very simple. Yes, it was good that she was being Run— she should be filled with Helen’s Running until she couldn’t take anymore. Then she should still be given more of it after that.

The frequency-scanner skipped a little ahead. “I think it’s only gone forward a few hours!” Xerxes exclaimed.

As Tara left work that day, she reflected on the fact that she snorted heroin now.

She snorted heroin now— and she felt she needed to do something to celebrate this change.

She toyed with her hair absentmindedly for a moment, but then thought— her hair!

Her bleached-blonde highlights always looked good. They made her look like half the slut she was. But someone so desperate for any taste of being Run that she’d risk her life, that she’d snort heroin at work and fuck her boss and boss’s boss— someone like that really ought to have a fully bleached head of hair.

So Tara changed course and headed for the salon.

When she got there, she was surprised to find Natalie there too, already being attended to by a hairdresser.

“Natalie!” Tara exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

Natalie’s hairdresser went on working, but Natalie met Tara’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m here to get my hair dyed. I’ve kept it my natural color all these years even though I’ve been keeping up with my conditioning treatments too. But with all the… advancements… I’ve been making at our office lately, I feel it’s time for me to have my hair re-colored. I’m going to go for bright pink.”

Soon enough, Tara was being led to her own chair— and then her own hairdresser was getting started on bleaching the rest of her hair. Soon, she would be fully blonde. And would look fully like the slut she was.

The frequency-scanner whirred. “We’re going to the killer’s mind-capture of Helen, now!” Xerxes called over the sound of the whirring. He was sure the camera had picked it up.

You see how it is when I give it to you… how much you like it, how much you need it, how much you want to keep receiving it… feeling it clouding your mind and spreading through it… yes, just like that… like that…

“It definitely seems like Helen was enjoying herself when she had her victims doing drugs. Or when she was fucking them. Or both. And clearly, she also enjoyed introducing them both to heroin. She’s making them ruin themselves— it has to be for the reason Tara thought. Making them do something so life-and-death gives her a greater feeling of power, or makes them both feel weaker— or both. It’s got to be something like that.”

The frequency-scanner whirred again.

“Out of the mind-capture into the rest of the killer’s mind,” Xerxes noted.

The Fifth Law of Running states there will always be someone with a greater ability to Run minds than you, the killer recited internally, putting up their net.

“So now we’ll get nowhere,” Xerxes sighed, and turned the dials of the frequency-scanner back to static. “You know what, though? All the other laws of Running have been seemingly accurate. I don’t see how this one can be true. It seems impossible that anyone with a greater ability than Helen could exist.”

Xerxes glanced down. “It’s 11:12. I’ll continue.”