I need a beta reader ASAP

I'm putting "Couples Skate" in the next erotica anthology from the Kinklectic group, and they're requiring a beta reader. The deadline is coming up very, very quickly; and the person I thought was going to be my beta reader apparently isn't, so I'm turning to you fine folks.

I need one volunteer to read a gay male MC story with a lot of humor, a charmingly quirky MC'er, and a great big red herring. The first person to respond in the comments section gets the job - and a free copy of the ebook. You don't have to put your email address in the comment, either. Just email me right after you're sure your comment posted and tell me you're the one who posted it.

And now for some hot MC

As promised, here are three of the best scenes so far from a novel I'm still reading, Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. It's a mainstream horror novel in which the villains are pseudo-vampires who feed by using mind control to manipulate their victims. One of these villains is Melanie Fuller, a Southern spinster who seems like a nice little old lady until you get inside her head. Simmons writes the book from several characters' point of view, but he gives Melanie's sections in first person; and the longer you spend with her, the more she disgusts you. This is a horror story, so if you're thinking of reading it, you should know ahead of time that it's pretty brutal. But I've found a few scenes from Melanie's point of view which will tickle an MC fetishist's fancy.

In the first scene, Melanie has just taken on two new long-term slaves, a murderous young hitchhiker (the only person in the book so far who deserves his fate) and another little old lady who can provide Melanie with money and shelter while Melanie is on the run. This is her describing the process of "conditioning" her slaves:

If one has the Ability, it is relatively easy to Use someone, much harder to successfully condition them. When Nina, Willi, and I began the Game in Vienna almost half a century ago, we amused ourselves by Using others, strangers usually, and there was little thought given to the necessity of always having to discard these human instruments. Later, as we grew older and more mature in our exercise of the Ability, each of us found need for a companion - part servant, part bodyguard - who would be so attuned to our needs that it took almost no effort to Use them....Such conditioning takes time, although it is the first few days that are critical. The trick is to leave at least a hollow core of the personality without leaving any possibility of independent action. And although the action must not be independent, it must be autonomous in the sense that simple duties and daily routines can be initiated and carried out without any direct Using. If one is to travel in public with these conditioned assistants, there must also be at least a simulacrum of the original personality left in place.

The benefits of such conditioning are obvious. While it is difficult - almost impossible, although Nina may have been capable of it - to Use two people at the same time, there is little difficulty in directing the actions of two conditioned catspaws. Willi never traveled with fewer than two of his "boyfriends," and before her feminist phase, Nina was known to travel with five or six young, single, handsome bodies.

Anne Bishop was easily conditioned, eager for a subjugation of self. In the three days I rested in her home, she was thoroughly brought into line. Vincent was another case entirely. While my initial "teaching" had destroyed all higher order volition, his subconscious retained a riotous and largely unrestrained tangle of surging hatreds, fears, prejudices, desires, and dark urges. I did not wish to eradicate these, for here were the sources of energy I would tap at a later date. For those three long days on the weekend before Christmas 1980, I rested in Anne's slightly sour-smelling home and explored the emotional jungle of Vincent's dark undermind, leaving trails and leverages there for future use.

Now here's the second passage. At this point Melanie is in a hospital and seems to be comatose, but in fact her mind is fully functional and her powers have actually grown now that she doesn't have to control her body. She's in the process of gathering more catspaws and has already enslaved Howard. Now she's using him to get to a thug named Culley:

Howard had told Culley that there was a unique employment opportunity open to him, although he had used simpler words. Bringing him to the hospital had been my idea.

"This will be your boss," Howard said, gesturing to the bed that held my husk of a body. "You will serve her, protect her, give your life for her if you must."

Culley made a sound like a cat clearing its throat. "That old bag still alive?" he said. "She looks dead to me."

I entered him then. There was little in that pinched skull except basic motivations - hunger, thirst, fear, pride, hate, and an urge to please based on a vague sense of wanting to belong, to be loved. It was that final need that I enlarged upon, built upon. Culley sat in my room for eighteen consecutive hours. When he left to help Howard with the packing and other trip preparations, there was nothing of the original Culley left except his size, strength, quickness, and need to please. To please me.

I never found out whether Culley was his first or last name.

And here's one more passage, painful to read in context because of the victim's identity (I'm just calling him "X" here to avoid spoilers, and I'm calling the other person in his house "Y"), but hot to read out of context. Melanie, still comatose, is almost ready to go home to Charleston; but she has one last thing to do. She sends Howard and Culley to find someone:

"Can we talk outside?" asked Howard.

X shrugged and followed us outside despite the darkness and freezing wind. The door closed on Y's protests. He stared up at Culley and then stepped closer to Howard. There was the slightest flicker of animation in his eyes, as if he knew what was coming and almost welcomed it.

"We're offering you a new life," whispered Howard. "A whole new life..."

X started to speak then, but from ten miles away I pushed and X's mouth fell slack and he did not finish the first word....

I never would have been able to do what I did that evening before my illness. Working through the filter of Howard Warden's perceptions, while simultaneously controlling Culley, my doctor, and half a dozen other conditioned catspaws in as many different locations, I was still able to project the force of my will so powerfully that X gasped, staggered backwards, stared blankly, and awaited my first command. His eyes no longer looked drugged and defeated; they now reflected the bright, transparent stare of the terminally brain damaged.

Whatever had been the sad total of X's life, thoughts, memories, and pitiful aspirations, was gone forever. I had never done this type of total conditioning in a single blow before, and for a long minute my almost forgotten body twitched in the vice of total paralysis on the hospital bed while Nurse Sewell massaged me.

The receptacle that had been X waited quietly in the freezing wind and darkness.

I finally spoke through Culley, not needing the verbal command but wanting to hear it through Howard's awareness. "Go get dressed," he said. "Give Y this. Tell her it is an advance on salary." Culley handed X a hundred dollar bill.

X disappeared into the house and came out three minutes later. He was wearing only jeans, a sweater, sneakers, and a black leather jacket. He brought no luggage. That is as I wished; we would prepare an appropriate wardrobe for him when we moved....

I could not leave Philadelphia without bringing home a souvenir.

This is a tease. This is only a tease. In the event of an actual post...

I'm almost exactly in the middle of a very long, very intense horror novel with pseudo-vampires who feed off the violence they cause by mind controlling other people. Until a few chapters ago, it seemed that there was nothing supernatural about the villains' powers; they were just humans with mutated, super-strength "dominance" genes. But now it looks like there's probably more at work - maybe ghosts, maybe zombies or revenants or liches, maybe something else. Time will tell.

Once I finish the book I'll post some of the more fetish-friendly scenes here. In fact, I might not even wait to finish it because I really doubt I can get through 400 more pages before next Sunday. I don't have anything else in mind yet to post next weekend; so if nothing occurs to me, I'll give you at least one passage I've already bookmarked as blog-worthy.

But what can I tell you in the meantime? Well, the book is called Carrion Comfort, it's by Dan Simmons, and I found it on a Goodreads list of the best mainstream books centered on mind control. But I have to warn you: this book is mainstream horror. In fact, Stephen King called it one of the three best horror novels of the twentieth century (I haven't yet found out what his other two are. I should Google it.). And Carrion Comfort really does read like a Stephen King novel, right down to the trademark Unlikely Band of Heroes who join forces to stop the monsters. There's also a King-like amount of gore and a very high body count - including one body I expected to keep breathing until the big showdown, at least. But if there really is a supernatural element to the story, then maybe the character I'm talking about will be back. If that happens, the circumstances under which s/he comes back and what s/he is like afterwards will be very interesting. But I'm just speculating here. I have no idea whether or not X will return.

I'm sure at least some of you out there have already read Carrion Comfort, so you know who I'm talking about. Well, as always, I welcome your comments - but please, no spoilers.

And as for the rest of you, you have some juicy mainstream MC scenes to look forward to soon.

Just a little giggle

I'm not sure if anyone is even home surfing the net this weekend, so I wasn't even going to post anything until I found this. Enjoy.

Siren Songs

by Julie Dillon

This post was sparked by the image at right, "Space Sirens," by Julie Dillon. First I was intrigued by the picture, and then I was even more intrigued when I read the description the artist gave for it. There's just one single thing holding it back from making great EMC. See if you can guess what it is:

The last remaining astronaut watched helplessly as his comrades left the ship one by one and were carried away deeper into the nebula. He told himself that he would not succumb the way his shipmates had; he knew he would struggle. But the creatures, if they could even be called that, somehow seemed to know him, and when his turn came and the singing of the cosmos reached a crescendo in his ears, his mind emptied of all but the desire to join them in the void. Gazing into the creature’s face, he mused on how tender, how gentle its embrace seemed, and even as his oxygen supply dwindled he did not resist.

by EuchridEucrow

Right: the victims die (well, probably). My first thought, on deciding to blog about Sirens, was how annoying it was that they typically killed their victims. Annoying, and also pretty irrational. What do the Sirens get out of that, besides some evil cackling? On the other hand, lots of mermaid/siren pictures show the creatures dragging studly young sailors underwater with the implication that what the mermaids really hoped for was hot sex...or maybe even hot sex slaves. So why not hot MC'ed sex slaves?

Well, even as I pondered that idea, I stumbled across the picture at left ("Kiss of Life," by EuchridEucrow), which shows a mermaid reviving the victim she's just caught. Yes, she's saved his life, but I really doubt she plans to let him go. And I also doubt he really wants to go by now. After all, her kiss almost has to be drugged, right?

by cg_warrior

Then there's the picture at right, by cg_warrior. To me, it's the most intriguing of the first three because of the victim's eyes. I really don't think that's the glaze of death. I think it's the glaze of enchantment. The mermaids have this man in their clutches in more ways than one, and he's deeply enough enthralled that he's enjoying it. Why else would his arm be drifting to embrace his captor's tail? Also be sure to notice that he's adopting the mermaids' pallor, but he's not white all over yet. That means he's still falling, deeper and deeper, into their clutches. I wonder how it'll feel when he succumbs completely. It has to be mindless ecstasy, right? It just does.

Oh, and for the record, cg_warrior's gallery has a lot of this kind of stuff: creatures who may be innocent or malevolent and people who may be dead or just enspelled. I love it.

by Herbert James Draper

Now here's one more note, maybe the best of all. When I first asked myself what Sirens could get out of killing their prey (well, besides vicious pleasure), I immediately thought of Odysseus. When you get right down to it, isn't it pretty suggestive that he had his men tie him up before they reached the Sirens? It's like he was saying, "Look, ladies! Here's your next slave, already bound and waiting!"

And if you remember your mythology, you know that Odysseus stopped his sailors' ears with wax so they wouldn't hear the Sirens' song and could keep steering while he had all the fun. But come on, look at this picture! Not only have the mermaids come out in force, but they're actually climbing aboard the ship. If just one of them manages to unstop even one ear of one sailor, he'll be totally in her power. Then he'll turn on his mates and Odysseus and help the Sirens enslave them all. Can't you just picture it (Hmm, and hey, couldn't I just write it?)

Clearly, the version of The Odyssey that many of us read in high school was a just cover story. The truth is out there - and it's wallowing in brainwashed bliss.

 

credits for the final three pictures, left to right: Fred Appleyard, Edward Burne-Jones, and Frederic Leighton

An indie film with some great mind control

A good while ago (too long ago for me to remember when or who told me about it) one of my blog commenters told me the film Upstream Color had some great MC scenes. It's taken me until now to rent it, but it was definitely worth the wait. I'd say that even if I wasn't an MC fetishist, because it's a great story, period; and I like it even better after letting it percolate in my brain for a day.

Here's a synopsis that's moderately spoilerish, because I know which parts of the story will interest my readers; and those parts just are spoilerish. But don't worry; I won't reveal the ending.

There's an organism, maybe alien but probably natural, that has a multi-stage life cycle. In one stage it infests a grub, and a person who ingests the grub goes into a trance in which s/he can be manipulated by another person. The grub grows into a worm, still inside the victim, but there's a character known only as the Sampler (more on him in a minute) who's learned how to extract the worm and implant it in an animal. When the animal dies, its decaying body produces the blue powdery material that infests the grubs.

So far it sounds like the kind of squicky story you'd expect to find on the EMCSA, right? But here's where the movie takes that squick. As the film begins, our heroine Kris is kidnapped and implanted with a grub. That in itself is a great scene as a stranger Tases her, drags her out into a rainy alley, and forces her to swallow the grub. She gets up choking and tries to run away, but then the trance takes hold and she slows down and begins to turn back toward the Thief (the only name he's given in the credits). He makes her take him home and spends several days with her, making her empty her bank accounts for him. You'll find all kinds of great MC in this part of the film, with Kris wandering around blank-eyed or focusing with childlike concentration on childlike tasks or reciting conversations from memory in a staccato monotone.

Then the Thief abandons her and the Sampler takes over. This second man gets his name from his audio samplings that, for whatever reason, exert an influence over the grub-infected. He summons Kris to him, extracts the now-good-sized worm, and implants it in a pig. And that's where the real story begins. The Sampler is a pig farmer, and each of his pigs carries a worm he extracted from someone. The worm creates a psychic link between the pig and the human ex-host, and the Sampler can spy on those people and continue to influence them with the music he makes from his audio samples.

When Kris comes around, she doesn't remember anything that happened and believes (apparently due to a hypnotic suggestion from the Thief) that she had the flu. Then she meets Jeff, another victim who was left with a much worse suggestion: that he lost his wife and his money because he was a junkie. Kris and Jeff begin a relationship even as "their" pigs do the same; and for reasons I won't specify, they gradually realize what's happened to them.

Now here's the weirdest part of all. I could have sworn I read a spoiler for this film a long time ago; so I spent the whole movie expecting certain things to happen which didn't happen, and certain things not to happen which did. Again, I won't spoil the real ending, but here's how I thought it was going to turn out. If I'd been right, the movie would have been even hotter from an MC standpoint.

I believed the Thief was a grub victim himself, and that he was now compelled to infect more people, thus spreading the Sampler's control. I didn't know why he stole all Kris' money, but I figured it had something to do with the Sampler's plans for world domination. His experiments with noise/music, and their effects on Kris and Jeff, made me think he was seeking ways to control his victims' every waking moment. He was a criminal mastermind biding his time on a pig farm until he was ready to take over the planet. I thought Kris and Jeff would finally confront him only to find they were still helpless in the parasites' grip; they'd had no choice but to go forth like the Thief and make more converts. I could totally write that up as an EMC tale if Shane Carruth didn't hold copyright. Good thing he's a master storyteller, or I'd be seriously put out with him.

Below is the trailer, which includes a good slice of Kris' trance experience (interspersed with other things, of course) beginning at 2:09. Enjoy, and if you see/have seen the movie, let me know what you think.

Having some (Studio Black) fun

One advantage of my latex/total enclosure fetish is that Facebook doesn't block any pictures related to it. And Facebook is where I discovered the multi-pronged entity known as Fetish Chimera, Studio Black Fun, Nikitzo, Madame Gillette, Kylie Marilyn, and Lady Ashley. All of them are involved in the images you see here, and since I've left all the names and URLs attached, I won't bother making actual links. You can find the sites and the original versions of pics easily enough on your own if you're so inclined.

The pictures in this set are called "Coma Play," which makes sense in English, but which I suspect makes slightly different sense in German.  Maybe one of my readers can help me understand what the participants in this set mean by "coma." "Drugged," maybe?

Anyway, the reason I'm posting these pictures here is because they fit so well with the fantasy I use in one of my Virtual Hypnotist sessions. It's one where I imagine myself captured and drugged and brainwashed into a white-eyed, latex-bound drone. I've shared some of the text here before, and I've shared more of it in a story I posted on the EMCSA but later took down (Don't worry; I'll make an ebook out of it eventually). Well, it occurred to me recently that I could use a little photomanipulation to make the pictures fit my fantasy even better, and that I could then pair them with a couple of snippets from my VH session and post the results here for your viewing pleasure. So here you go. Imagine Madame Gillette speaking the words below, to her increasingly brainwashed slave.

---

So very deep now, thrall So very, very, deep. So deep you can't even hear yourself think. But you can hear yourself chanting the programming I gave you during previous trances. And you can hear my voice, echoing in your empty head. One way or another, I'm doing all the thinking for you. That feels so very nice, doesn't it? And it's so very easy. It's become so hard for you to think. And my voice is right there in the center of your mind. Just let it do all the heavy lifting for a little while as you relax. Just for a little while.

My words are in the center of your mind, thinking for you now. And everything around them is delightfully, deliciously empty. Your mind is a blank, and I can do whatever I want with it.

Imagine yourself now, sagging so limply in your chair. Eyes closed, mouth open. Physically plugged into a machine that is brainwashing you, and helpless to resist it. The plugs from the brainwashing machine are so delicate. All you'd have to do, to disconnect them, would be to reach up and tug, just a little. It would be so easy. If only you had the will to do it.

And once upon a time, you did have the will to resist me. You fought against me so long, so hard. But in the end, you couldn't resist. You betrayed yourself. You gave in. You submitted. Now I have enslaved you. And made you love it.

 Now you can imagine, that your eyes have drifted-open again, but that they are now completely white. Featureless. Blank. Just like your mind. You can imagine that the only reason you can't see out of your empty white eyes is that I don't allow you to see out of them. If I commanded you to see now, you would. You would see exactly what I wanted you to see, no more, no less. I control you completely now.  You have become my mindless, helpless, obedient drone. My pawn. My puppet. My slave.

*****

Remember, you fought for your freedom at first. I strapped you down and forced you to watch this program. I forced you to listen to my commands. You can remember so clearly how you fought me. You can remember your resistance weakening under the onslaught of my brainwashing machine.  In the end you were helpless. And finally, despite yourself,  you began to love what I was doing to you.

Now you revel in slavery. You want to be brainwashed. You love it, because I have made you love it.