You visit your ex-professor for lunch and get home close to midnight.

Even straight after the fact, you’re not sure how it got so late. Maybe it was just difficult to focus on his words with the manikins all over the house, their eyes lingering on you.

On the subway home you go over the notes you took down. Some are in your scrawl, some in his, his hand so elegant you can read it better than your own. The subway cars shake with the chants of people starting their night. When the train rocks you feel the ghost of touches you can’t place. A tap of the shoulder, a grasp of the thigh. A palm pressed to the back of your neck. Against the seat, your insides feel like they’ve been scooped out and replaced.

Your post-it is intact on the apartment fridge, the one saying you’re meeting an online date and here’s the address in case you don’t come back by tomorrow. You scrunch up and toss the note in the trash, noticing as you throw it a new twinge in your neck. Rubbing the painful spot, you wonder if the precautionary measures you’d taken would be futile for… whatever Hugo might do. If there was, indeed, anything he did.

Before you took his class you’d heard stories about him experimenting on his students. People coming out of his classes altered, physically or mentally. But this was Gotham University. The place churned out enough Arkham-bound PhDs that this shit was said about every professor who didn’t give off the exact vibes of a cuddly grandma, usually just to scare freshmen. But you’d found Hugo to be very helpful, always personal and comprehensive — a rarity for someone with as long a tenure as he’d had.

Your phone chimes, the ‘work’ tone. Your lab PI wants you to come in tomorrow to start a test you’d forgotten to start on Friday.

As routine, you strip off and climb into bed, looking forward to the maybe four hours of slumber you’ll get. As routine, you masturbate to get to the unconscious part quicker.

Less routinely, you can’t come. But your head’s aching, your eyelids heavy, so sleep takes mercy on you anyway.

After thirty failed attempts at orgasm, four crying sessions at the back of darkened lecture halls, and ten faltering email drafts to grad school admissions departments, you’re starting to think maybe Hugo was right. Maybe your heart isn’t in this. You spend twenty minutes each morning in whichever campus bathroom opens first that day, practicing the nonreaction you’ll have when you’re yelled at by your PI or you drop a grade.

But then, just as fate dropped Hugo in your lap the first time, his number flashes up on your phone one evening, along with an interesting job opportunity to discuss — in person, if possible.

“It shouldn’t conflict with your studies,” he explains, over the call. “It would be a few hours of your time, at most.”

“I mean, I really appreciate it. But I’ve been having second thoughts about my ‘scientific career’ anyway. I’m not sure if I can afford any more obligations. Even temporary.”

“Yes, of course. I understand completely. Why don’t we meet at the café outside my apartment block, let’s say this weekend, and you can decide after that.”

You pause. You’re reluctant for more reasons than you can state. You haven’t felt especially abnormal since the night you left his penthouse, but your imagination has grown lurid. Uncomfortably, it’s also those flights of the rational mind that have assured you reach the edge every night, labouring with fingers and toys only never to fall over.

When you’re weighing up your next response, it’s his voice you hear in your head, not yours. Specifically his voice as it sounds over the phone lines, each consonant laced with static.

And then you say:

“Okay. This Saturday.”

It crawls to Saturday, and you find him sitting at the back of the café, with an empty teapot and cup. Your muscles stiffen as soon as you see him. You can hardly speak to greet him. Having not spoken to anyone all day, you wonder if maybe you have the start of the flu, or if there’s something in the air — the rush hour smog maybe — that’s upsetting your throat. You lay your notebook out on the table.

He gets right into explaining the job, and the more he goes, the more you know you need to deny this position and leave. He’s speaking in jargon to fill the space, the domain of any tenured professor, even a fired one. That’s how you know there are catches he isn’t telling you. But, at the point you have a window to cut him off and make an excuse, you can’t. You can’t even lift your hands from the arms of your chair… and your eyes refuse to budge from his.

“Might I write something here? Just the email of the person to contact. She’d be responsible for hiring you.”

Without waiting for your response, he pulls the open notebook over to him and writes not an email but a paragraph. After a minute, he spins the book back over to you:

If you find yourself struggling to move, that is perfectly normal, and you are doing perfectly. You will order and finish a drink, and then meet me at my penthouse, from the back entrance — you can cross through the subway station to get there. I will leave a key in your coat pocket so you can let yourself into the building.

“I’m looking forward to hearing your response. But don’t feel rushed. Take some time to think about it, and then let me know.”

He leaves you with a farewell and a shoulder tap.

You wake on autopilot. The same monotonous list of responsibilities… except you don’t need to steel yourself. Your surface is already steel. You drink the coffee you ordered, trying to gather your thoughts before you drain the cup.

Why are you headed for his apartment? Didn’t you have other things planned for today? Yes… but the details are jumbled. You draw a blank on the specifics — the names, the places. It’s like your mental space was previously populated, but now just one person occupies it besides you. And the hallway outside his apartment is glued to your mind’s eye.

You blink and then you’re there, outside.

You knock, not your usual double knock, but three times exactly. Upon his opening the door you feel your knees weaken. The sight of him would be enough to guide you to the ground outside, but before you can sink down he leads you by the hand down the hallway, the weighted door slamming behind you. There are no more manikins to be seen.

“I’m sorry you had to go through an additional month of trouble,” he says, “But I didn’t know if the programming would keep, and my investor was very eager to confirm that.”

He guides you to the centre of his bedroom, his hand all that’s keeping you upright. A mirror hangs opposite you.

Unmoving, you stare at the body in the glass, noticing the differences. Your face, your muscles, have lost some of their tension.

He lifts your bag and coat from you before removing your other clothes, gentle as stripping down a mutilated body for a casket.

“There were some other things I needed to prepare. It is one thing to take a life. It is quite another to make a new one from old parts. There were loose ends to tie. Surgical equipment to procure. The question of how your absence could be explained.”

His words — even these words — wash through you with impossible force, while each lingering touch is like being caught in the spray of a waterfall, something greater than yourself. When you’re naked you’re colder but otherwise unchanged. The clothing is not the shell.

Hugo moves away, but pauses to plant a kiss on your collarbone. “Your belongings will be most helpful for that.”

He carries the folded pile of clothing — along with your bag — out the door. On his return he brings a small cardboard box with him, which he opens on the bed. In the mirror, you see the black lace before he brings it over, lifting each of your legs to pull the bodysuit up between your thighs. He cups your ass and squeezes it before guiding your arms into the straps.

It’s like being clothed in air, being caressed by tiny fingers with every breath, every incremental movement. Being without a partner to please, the mood, or the self-esteem, this is your first time in lingerie. You stare forward, the ‘you’ in the mirror looking a world away from the ‘you’ trapped in the skin-sack.

“One final touch.”

He pulls a lace choker over your head, fastening the clasp at the back. You’re not known in your fashion tastes for discomfort, or jewelery. It’s a perpetual garrote.

“How do you feel?” he asks, smiling down at you, his half-mast cock pressing against your back.

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. Words don’t belong to you anymore.

He breathes you in, squeezing your biceps. “If I could have kept you… I thought every day about calling you before I had planned. I know how much better this must feel, not having to worry anymore.” He reaches around to hook a finger into your cunt, blocked by sheer fabric. It triggers the first moment of feeling you’ve had all day. The room brightens. Your lips part.

And all these words he’s saying, they’re going unheard. The words won’t attach to their meanings. All you hear is the way he tongues out the starting and ending syllables.

“You may notice it is rather difficult to concentrate on my words — only that they are my words. As your programming continues it will become harder and harder for you to comprehend anything but a direct command.”

He takes off his trousers and briefs and climbs onto the bed, patting the space in front of his cock.

“So, for example, if I told you to suck, you would hear that.”

Your limbs move on their own to join him on the bed. He guides you to his crotch, softly brushing his fingers over your bare skin. With a finger on the back of your neck, your mouth opens wide to close around his cock.

Being filled, you feel every pleasure denied you over the past month, crackling on your skin. A hand on your head guides you deeper till his tip brushes your throat. It twitches, but you do not gag. You would not be capable. It’s like all your holes have been filled at once. Taking a breath is an effort but that just empties you out more, leaves you slicker. His hips rock and he pulls you by the hair to fuck your throat slow. Your tongue drags along his shaft, lips moist, savouring the taste.

And then there’s a muffled chime from the hallway. You think: it’s work.

And then you think: there’s a thought. Which means there’s something wrong.

You can’t answer the call from work because… you’re deepthroating someone, their hand clutched in your hair to hold you down. And you look up to see your ex-professor looking down at you, surprised to see your eyes without glaze.

“What’s wrong, my dear?”

The voice that brought a taste you’ll never get out of your mouth. And you’re dripping through your— no, those aren’t yours. How long have you been here? Nothing in the room gives indication. No calendars, no clocks.

You cry out and jolt back, recoiling backwards across the room till you’re flush against the cold glass of the mirror. Your body and mind are wastelands. You look down to see clothes that aren’t your own.

Your assailant approaches, his button-down shirt draping and tenting over his pelvis. His gait is without agitation, without worry.

The phone. The police. Or someone. The text tone has long since ended, and your memory’s foggy of where you thought it sounded, but if you could leave — it didn’t sound like your phone was in this room. You turn to head for the hallway.

But then his hands reach to grasp your shoulders, turning you around so you can see the mirror, his grip tight enough to snap your arms.

“Everything is alright.” He purrs it into your ear. Your body lights up with goosebumps on the same side. “Everything is as it should be.”

He strokes down your upper arms, and with the warmth of his touch the 911 call disappears, then your phone, then the hallway beyond the door.

There’s something you’re forgetting. A dream you promised yourself you’d tap into your phone but never did, a person you promised you’d catch up with, and, lowest on the scale of priorities, why you’re here, and dressed like that, your palate all ruined by the taste of flesh. Your eyes peer down on the black lace coating your reflection’s torso, attempting, perhaps, to anchor the ‘why’ to something concrete.

But then your legs spill to the floor, followed by the rest. Gravity, your body giving up, brings a surge of arousal that has the opposite effect — you’re more repulsed than before. He’s fucked with your brain somehow. It’s all that makes sense.

Hugo lowers down to a seat behind you. You inch yourself closer to the mirror to get away from him, at this distance seeing how your lips are raw from sucking. Tears come next, dragging your face from the remnants of its slackness.

“What the fuck did you do to me?”

“Only that which you wished yourself.” One hand returns to your arm, and you try to wrestle free from the touch that kills your speech. But you can’t get any further from him without going through the wall.

“You’re not going to put me back there. I’ll scream murder before you try. I have a life. People who’ll look for me.”

He hushes you, tilting your chin up to look at him. From this angle, he’s upside down, and the patterned ceiling makes your head spin. His next words are harsh, but his expression is oddly sympathetic.

“Are you really so irreplaceable? Did you really have a future to go back to? I have already set your ‘going missing’ into motion.”

The ceiling lamp shatters your vision, turns it to strips of white. Your eyes and nose streaming, you wail, not because of anything he’s saying, but because your limbs refuse to cooperate. You wonder if the barista was in on it too, if your coffee made you this weak, or if all this just comes from the river of Hugo’s words.

If it’s all psychosomatic… maybe you still have a chance. You wrestle free of his grip once more crawling for the door. But you move slow, and Hugo needs only hook a finger under your choker. The metal groans to breaking point and you gag till you see spots before you collapse once more. He pulls you back into the frame of the mirror.

“What life would you be returning to? Look into your eyes.” He repositions your jaw, though not without struggle. “You were killing yourself to make rent, couldn’t bear the thought of moving back home.”

And he knew all this because you had told him. You’d needed an extension that one time, because you were working three jobs at the time, and…

“I thought I’d kill myself if things ever got that bad. But this is worse.”

But… your eyes keep wandering, keep getting lost in your other pair of eyes, red and fluttering. Your cunt wet at the sight of your own surface, at having found home in the lace collar round your neck.

“Life is nothing but chance. If you cannot tolerate that, then this arrangement may prove more agreeable. Therapeutic, even. Your life will be simplified to a singular purpose and you will be perfectly trained to enjoy it. Some people would say only the weak and malleable would take such a deal. I would say you are cheating at life and winning.”

As he speaks he massages your neck just where the choker had tightened around it. You’re still clawing back the oxygen you lost, but your breaths are slowing, growing lighter.

“And, after all, what is submitting to one more order? That’s what perception is, after all. Order upon order.”

His fingers travel north. He grasps your jaw to relax it and sticks a couple fingers in your mouth where your lips are already parted. You vacantly accept him for the second time.

“Life is so hard. Giving up is so easy.”

You suck, your arousal growing, your thoughts drowning. Yes, of course. Giving up. That's what you're doing. Your mouth feels like it’s wired to your clit, and you moan around his fingers.

In response, he curls them deeper into your throat.

“My one condition is that you remain quiet. Plastic does not speak.”

Plastic doesn’t tongue the knuckles of its captor either, but that’s something you can’t help, something he can't blame you for.

He adds another finger, and another, drool leaking out the corners of your lips just as your last resolve leaks out between your legs. In your mind’s eye: nothing. A blank canvas. But it's rose-toned, like his glasses.

Your muscles stiffen as you approach the edge, and though your mind has been emptied, the body remembers the denial, weakening as it leans in to take Hugo’s hand deeper to the back of its throat, spreads its legs to gain a pleasurable friction against the carpet.

“In a moment, I will grant you permission to come. In doing so, your ego will shatter irreversibly, and you will become mine. Do you understand?”

Your chin dips halfway before he says:

“You have no choice. Come for me.”

It’s like taking in air for the first time, except this time you feel the breath through your every pore. Your eyes roll up and your body convulses with contractions, losing its balance. With the last vestige of ‘choice’, of instinct, your hands wrench the wrist of your captor so that you may stay upright, so that the sensation might continue, so that your mouth might keep a part of him — any part of him — inside you forever.

But then the final peak hits. Breath slowing. Mind hollow. Corpse sinking. A mirrored gaze that sees without recognition.

It is carried to the bed and splayed out.

A door opens and shuts, before opening once more. Hugo holds a phone and switches it off.

He sits back down on the bed, propping himself up against the pillows.

“Now. Before that untimely interruption, I believe we were in the middle of something.”

It crawls up on all fours. He leans to hook a finger under its choker, bringing it back down to his cock.

It knows it may only find comfort when its holes are full. Its lips close upon its purpose. It services but does not speak.