"Hey! Hey! Wake up! You have to wake up!"



The voice reached into the nothingness where Carlie had been floating and pulled her up into a state of woozy semi-wakefulness.



"Uhhh," she said groggily.



She opened her eyes, shook her head, and then blinked several times to clear the fog from her brain and blurriness from her vision. The effort worked. But then, she immediately wished it hadn't.



She found herself seated in something akin to an armchair chaise. The chair itself was plush and well padded, but the niceties ended there. A wide fabric band pinned her shoulders and chest to the back of the seat. Similar bands pinned her forearms and lower legs.



Additionally, her shoes and socks had been removed, leaving her barefoot. And the chaise part of the chair was shorter than her legs were, leaving her exposed feet to hang off the edge of it.



Carlie had never felt so vulnerable, nor scared in her life.



"Hey! Are you awake?"



It was the voice that had roused her, coming from her left. She turned to look in that direction and saw a plexiglass partition that rose up higher than the back of her seat and stretched out about half the length of the chair. A light frosting coated it, allowing her to partially, but not entirely see through it.



She could tell that another woman sat on the other side of the partition in another armchair chaise. Past the end of the barrier, she could see the woman's restrained legs and bare feet hanging off the edge of the chair. The two of them were in the same predicament, whatever that was.



"Hey!" the woman called again.



"Yeah, sorry, I'm awake," Carlie said. "Where are we? Who did this to us? What do they want?"



"I don't know where we are, or who did this to us. But I did hear what they're going to do to us."



The woman paused. Carlie didn't know why. Maybe from fear that saying their fate out loud would make it real. Maybe for some other reason. But her silence allowed a slow, creeping dread to fill Carlie's mind and sour her stomach.



"What? What? Please, tell me!" Carlie pleaded.



"They're going to brainwash us," the woman said after an audible swallow. "They're going to convert us into their mindlessly obedient slaves."



"What? No. That's crazy."



"Yeah, I'd think so, too. But I saw them do it--well, kind of--through that glass that separates us. There was a woman sitting in your chair before you. She fought them, but she lost. She ended up with her mind turned into mush, telling them over and over that she would serve and obey."



Now Carlie swallowed.



"How did they do it?" she asked fearfully. "Torture?"



"No, they didn't use torture. From what I could tell, they hypnotized her. They used some kind of machine. It put her in a trance or something, and then they programmed her to do whatever they said."



Carlie digested this new information: brainwashing through hypnosis. She thought about what it meant. What was in store for her.



"Hey, you got quiet." the woman said after 30 or so seconds of silence. "Are you still awake?"



"Uh-huh."



"We don't have a lot of time. We have to act quickly, or we're next. We need to get out of here."



"Hm."



"Can you break free? Try. Try as hard as you can. One of the bands over my arm is loose. I keep working at it. I may be able to get out from under it. You should try with yours, too."



"Mine are tight. I can't do anything."



The woman paused again.



"You sound different," she said nervously. "Are you okay?"



"Yep. Fine."



Carlie wasn't lying. She was fine. Oh, she hadn't been when she first woke up, and even less so when she thought that her captors had some horrific torture in store for her. But now, all fear had left her. She felt okay. Good, even.



And more than just good, she felt excited. And aroused.



For as long as she could remember, Carlie had wanted to be hypnotized and placed under someone else's control. She didn't understand why she wanted that, only that she did. And she had never told anyone about her fantasy because she really didn't think anyone would understand it.



As she matured into adulthood, that want grew into a desire. A burning desire. A desire that she had never known how to fulfill.



Now, suddenly, it was going to be fulfilled.



Granted, she had never fantasized about being kidnapped or tied up or brainwashed. But as she thought about it now, all of those things accentuated what she desired from being hypnotized: giving up control and not having any choice in what she was made to do.



The thought of being tortured into submission had no appeal for her, and thus when she thought that was her impending fate, it had scared her. And she had always imagined the kind of hypnosis that involved watching a swinging pendulum. She had never thought about a machine that could put you into a trance.



But now knowing there was such a machine and that it was going to be used on her, she could barely contain herself.



Loud noises to her left broke her out of her reverie. Beyond the partition, the sight of the woman's bare feet shaking and flexing caught her eye. On the other side of the frosted barrier, she could see two more people hovering over the woman, as well as an unrecognizable shape that could only be the hypnosis machine.



The woman yelled and struggled, her protestations ranging from terrified to incensed, from pleading to defiant.



Carlie watched and listened intently. She was so intrigued and fascinated by the scene playing out beside her as to be almost hypnotized by it herself.



Then, the actual hypnosis began.



Rhythmic pulses of both sound and light began emanating from the machine. The sound, though soft, had an indelible, percussive quality to it. Carlie could not only hear it, but she could feel it thumping within her chest.



As for the light, it changed to different hues with each pulse, rotating slowly through a full spectrum of colors. The partition muted it significantly, so it didn't irresistibly captivate Carlie. But she could well imagine how impossible it would be to tear her gaze away from it were it unfiltered and in closer proximity.



Over the course of about two minutes, the woman's struggles steadily lessened. Her vocal outbursts diminished from yells down to utterances. Similarly, her physical efforts to break free decreased and ultimately stopped. Soon, Carlie could see only a twitching of the woman's feet that matched the aural and visual pulses from the machine.



"That's it. She's lost the fight," Carlie thought, straining to see every detail she could of the process through the partition. "She's hypnotized, which means she's suggestible and ready to be brainwashed."



The assessment was true. While the machine continued its rhythmic emanations, the two people began instructing the hypnotized woman. They repeated their instructions over and over, again and again. Then, they told her to repeat everything back to them.



"...I am a slave...I must serve my master...I must obey my master..." the woman said in a soft, droning voice. "...I am a slave...I must serve my master...I must obey my master...I am a slave...I must serve my master...I must obey my master...."



Finally, the woman's brainwashers powered off the machine. One leaned over her body, while the other moved to her legs. Carlie heard several mechanical clicks and saw the restraints retract from the woman's legs. The two people then stepped back.



"Get up. Follow us. It's time to meet your master," one said.



"...It's time to meet my master..." the woman said.



She got up from the chair and followed them, as she had been bidden, her bare feet making gentle slapping sounds as she walked across the floor.



Carlie blew out a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. The whole ordeal she had just witnessed was nothing short of a dream come true. Soon it would be her turn. She couldn't wait! Hopefully, it wouldn't be long.



It wasn't.



A few minutes later, the two people stood before her and readied the machine. Carlie beamed at them.



"I won't resist," she said gleefully. "I'm ready to be hypnotized and brainwashed. I know I'll serve and obey my master without hesitation."



"Oh, man, another one of these types."



"Yeah, we get them every now and then."



"It's more frequent than you think. She's the third one this week."



"The boss isn't going to like it. They want to see the struggle."



"True. But it's okay. There's a new protocol for this. It's more work for us, but it gets results and keeps the boss happy."



"What is it?"



"We run her through it twice. The first time, we don't brainwash all of the fight out of her, we brainwash it into her. Then, the second time, she won't want it to happen, and she'll try like hell to resist it. The boss gets their show and their obedient slave."



"Sounds good to me. Let's get started."



They powered on the machine. The pulsing sounds and lights that she knew to expect immediately bombarded Carlie. Her eyes opened wide, she grinned, and her body trembled with anticipation and arousal.



In no time at all, the power of the machine overwhelmed her. It drained away all her will, thoughts, and memories. And then her brainwashers filled that emptiness with what they needed her to think, remember, and do.



Carlie opened her eyes, not realizing that they had even closed. Two people she didn't know stood over her, with their insidious brainwashing machine at hand. She had just seen it erase the mind of the woman on the other side of the partition, converting her into a mindless slave. Now, they were about to do the same thing to her.



At least, they were going to try.



But they were in for a fight like they'd never had before. She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists, and scrunched her toes. As the machine sprang to life, bathing her in mind-numbing flashes of sound and light, she hissed out a defiant breath.



The resolve that Carlie thought was her own allowed her to put up one hell of a fight. She cursed and spat and squirmed against the onslaught of stimuli meant to erode her will and empty her mind.



To her credit--or more likely due to the thoroughness of her brainwashing--she resisted the induction for nearly three minutes. But the machine was inhumanly unrelenting, while she was all too human with all the inherent frailties of that condition.



Like the other woman before her, her resistance finally broke. Her struggles lessened and then ceased altogether. She fell silent and still, except for the rhythmic twitching of her feet in time with the pulses of the machine.



Then, her brainwashing--her intended brainwashing--began. It ended with her repeating her instilled programming:



"...I am a slave...I must serve my master...I must obey my master...I am a slave...I must serve my master...I must obey my master...I am a slave...I must serve my master...I must obey my master...."



The machine went dark. Several snaps that Carlie didn't hear indicated that she was free of her bonds.

"Get up. Follow us. It's time to meet your master."



"...It's time to meet my master..."



Carlie got up from the chair and followed them, as she had been bidden. She neither heard her padding footsteps, nor felt the cool floor beneath her bare feet.



She was nothing now but a brainwashed slave, who lived only to serve and obey her master. If there had been anything left of her mind to know this, the thought would've brought her more pleasure than anything else in the world.