Upstairoids
Chapter Seven — Detoxing
“How could I have been so fucking stupid?” Lexi cried to herself. Well, it was meant to be to herself. The dozen-odd other people with some inexplicable cause to be sitting at the Bite By Nite diner at 4 in the morning gave the girl a wary look, then returned to their conversation or their studies. Finals were only a few days away now.
This was a very dangerous place for her to be, no doubt about it. Not only was she utterly suggestible and too void raged to make herself care about how dangerous that was, but… there were men here. Men had cocks. Lexi was a hot slut who could almost certainly use her pretty face and her busty titties and big round ass to convince them to let her suck their cocks. Or fuck them. She could beg—she’d learned to beg for dicks really well the past couple days. Beg for cocks in every hole as fast as she could get them in her. Beg for men to fuck me. Fuck me.
“Miss, you all right?” a woman’s voice asked. It wasn’t Kendra’s. Nervously, Lexi looked up. Her waitress.
“Yeah, sorry. Just… having an off day,” she said.
“Sure sounds like it,” the woman said, smiling empathetically. “Though if you’re going to sit here chanting ‘fuck me’ you may need a bigger sign.” She laughed, and Lexi blushed as she looked at the improvised sign she’d made in the parking lot. She’d written it on the back of an old homework assignment that had been on the floor of her passenger seat. It read, Please do not talk to me. I am not interested in you right now. This is not a joke. Go away. Then she’d come in here, set it next to her paper placemat, and put her head down on the table and covered it with her arms.
It had been the smartest thing she’d done in days, even if it was a big fat lie. She knew if a guy approached her, or even if she caught him checking her out, she’d wind up pleading for him to let her blow him in the parking lot. Or in the men’s room. Or under his table, whatever. As long as she got cock in her.
Why did Kendra have to choose a public place to meet? she asked herself again. It was still a stupid question—Kendra had been perfectly logical to point this out. Kind, even, to answer her phone in the middle of the night, and generous to agree to meet with her desperate client. Lexi told her about the overdose she’d had, how she’d purged as much as she could but assuredly had still taken far too much, and begged her for help. Anything at all to keep her from winding up like Jana.
Jana, whom Lexi had abandoned to the Beta Theta Mu brothers. She’d probably never escape. She’d probably never even consider that she ought to.
Kendra had said she had something that might help, and said she could deliver it immediately—for a price. She wouldn’t get into specifics over the phone, so Lexi had emptied her bank account at an ATM on the way over. When Lexi had asked—repeatedly—not to meet in a public place, Kendra had pointed out just how suspicious a desperate junkie calling in the middle of the night for a private meeting must sound.
Lexi had conceded the point (what choice did I have?) and agreed to the named place, this run-down diner. Clearly only the proximity of the college kept it in business. The exterior had paint flaking off and two of the letters in the Bite By Nite were out (“Bit By ite”), and it was next-door to Jupiter’s, the hottest strip club in town and by most accounts basically a brothel. Inside, the diner was dimly lit and smelled like none of the spills the customers had made over the years had been cleaned up—which was possible, considering the lighting.
Lexi tried to smile at the waitress, fighting to keep her eyes on this woman and not divert them to any of the men she could see in her peripheral vision. Looking was the first step to fucking. She ordered a coffee and some ice water, then put her head back down to hide behind her sign. She heard heavy footsteps pass near her table, then stop; she thought she heard a soft “mmm” of appreciation. Her libido launched itself desperately at this sound, making a well-reasoned and impassioned case that men who made this sound appreciated the sight of a sexy bitch like her and would likely allow her to suck them off. Her thinking mind cried for a moment in the dark before acknowledging there wasn’t really a counterargument to be made.
By the time she perked up and looked around for her admirer to ask for permission to blow him, he was gone. She dropped her head back down in relieved defeat.
The waitress returned a few minutes later and set the drinks down. Lexi left her head buried and said she was waiting for someone. The woman said she’d be back later and left.
A little while later, the sound of the busboy dropping a tray of dishes heralded the arrival of Kendra.
The sound startled her into looking up, and she immediately appreciated the busboy’s reaction. As sexy as she’d become, the presence of this woman still made her feel like the mousy girl she’d been a couple weeks ago. Lexi had nice skin, generous boobs, pretty hair, a nicely rounded ass. Kendra put her to shame. Every inch of her appeared as if she’d been sculpted to perfection by a combined team of Dreamworks animators and Playboy camera men. It was easy to discern this because she was wearing what had once been a pair of jeans but thanks to the intervention of a pair of scissor, covered less than most women’s panties. Her top was a similarly reduced tank top, the bottom of it cut off so it barely covered her underboobage. Her tits, even unbound by a bra, were so well-formed they barely even jiggled as she moved.
The jiggling, evidently, Kendra left to her ass, placing each foot in its dangerously high-spiked heel in front of the other as she sauntered over and sat down across from Lexi.
“Well look at you,” she said with a smirk. “Looks like this little overdose of yours didn’t start just today, did it Alexis?”
“It’s Lexi now,” she corrected, then looked down in shame at how obvious her indiscretions must be to this woman.
“Of course it is.”
Her dealer was apparently waiting for Lexi to start. As she tried to work up the ability to speak through her embarrassment, the waitress returned. “Hey there, Kendra,” she said familiarly. “Haven’t seen you here in a while.”
“Yes, it’s been a long time, Joan. I’m trying to keep to more regular hours lately—until this one dragged me out of bed, that is.” She jerked a thumb to indicate Lexi.
The waitress—Joan—chuckled. “Yeah, I figured she was one of yours from the look of her. Usually don’t see ‘em using signs like that, though.”
Kendra smiled thinly at Lexi. “No, no we sure don’t.”
Lexi sat by quietly while the two chatted; she heard none of it. She was exchanging glances with a guy at a table nearby who’d been doing something on his laptop but kept glancing at her (well, probably at Kendra, but when he saw Lexi looking back and smiling…). She waggled her eyebrows, tilted her head toward the shadowy corridor to the restrooms. He looked like a real geek—the sort of guy she might even have had a shot with before upstairoids—and she could probably make him cum in only minutes, then be back before Kendra knew she was gone. Just show him her big titties and lie to him about how hot she thought he was and beg him to get at his cock.
She was scooting out of the booth when a sudden presence between her legs stopped her cold. It was Kendra’s foot. She’d shed the shoe beneath the table; it was soft, plump toes teasing at her slit through her leggings. (She’d chosen them because it was the least revealing thing she owned that still fit.) Lexi’s mouth opened soundlessly and her eyes rolled back in her head. The boy was forgotten. Kendra didn’t skip a beat in her chit-chat with Joan, but Lexi didn’t hear that either.
Then it was gone. She wanted to cry.
“Now can you control yourself, Lexi? I didn’t come here in the middle of the night to play footsy with you under the table.” Lexi nodded, mumbled an apology. “Good. Now, you mentioned on the phone that you’d taken a significant overdose yesterday. How significant? Be specific, and be honest—if you want to save that brain you value so highly.” Her tone implied Kendra considered it less of a commodity.
“I only have approximations, but I would say around… twelve? Maybe fifteen? But I purged six of them. That I could count.”
“Counting can be tricky, can’t it,” Kendra chided dryly. “Over what span of time?”
“Most of a day. Sixteen, maybe eighteen hours.”
Kendra shook her head. “I told you to restrict yourself to a single dose in a 24-hour period. Genius that you’ve become, you imbibed one an hour. Do you have any notion of how foolish what you’ve done was?”
“Yes, I do. That’s why I called you.”
“That’s right, you’re a very bright girl now, aren’t you.”
“Yeah.” Lexi was getting sick and tired of getting condescended to. She was being crippled by excessive horniness, but it didn’t make her stupid.
“Pre-med, aren’t you? I recall your studying the carpal system when I first encountered you. I’d think a pre-med student would have a more sound grasp of the dangers of overdosing on mind- and body-altering substances. Perhaps the future ‘Dr. Lexi, MD’ will have to put an asterisk next to her spot in the yellow pages.” She chuckled and took a sip of Lexi’s coffee.
Lexi glared. “Well, since you bring it up Kendra, not-yet-a-doctor Lexi also knows that an untreated course of tetrahydroparanax-tainted aluminum nitrate as a component of more than 6000mg of atroneurinol will have severe physiological and psychological consequences if not treated within twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Factoring in that my most recent dose to fully activate in the bloodstream was approximately eight hours ago and my first was around twenty hours ago, this leaves me with a narrow window of time in which to seek treatment. So maybe instead of worrying about my ads in the yellow pages, you should be more worried about whether you can provide that treatment—like you promised on the phone—or if I need to go to the hospital, where I’ll surely have some awkward questions to answer about how I managed to get my hands on a banned schedule I substance.”
Kendra’s thin smile endured through her self-diagnosis—right up until the end, when it vanished in an instant. “I’m sorry… did you just threaten me?”
Lexi’s own self-satisfied smirk faded at the dangerous look in her dealer’s eyes. “No. I mean… well, they would ask, you know. I—we—could get in a lot of trouble. Is all I meant to say,” she stammered.
Kendra maintained the raptor expression for a moment, then let her smile return as she fished in her purse, retrieving a small bottle and a syringe. “Well then, you’ll be pleased to learn that I brought something for you.”
Lexi held out a desperate hand. “Oh thank God!”
The other woman withdrew slightly. “Not so fast, my aspiring extortionist.”
“What? No, please, you have to—”
Kendra silenced her with a shush. “Now now, Lexi, it’s a bad idea to talk over me—or talk at all, unless I’ve asked you to or it helps you do as I’ve told you to do.”
I shouldn’t talk over her. Or talk at all, unless she needs me to. The truth of it sunk in instantly. Deeply. She pursed her lips tightly, to make sure no sound accidentally escaped.
“That’s a good girl. Now, don’t you want to follow me? That seems like a smart idea, doesn’t it.”
Follow Kendra. Of course. She recognized the question as rhetorical, and so didn’t respond. She just got up and followed Kendra to the car, who left a twenty for the coffee and a tip for Joan.
Kendra’s car turned out to be an Aston Martin sports car; Lexi didn’t know much about such things, but it looked expensive. “Leaking on my seats would be terrible,” the woman said casually as she slid into the driver’s seat. It sure would. Still, she was far too horny not to—she’d just left a nice wet smear on the chair in the diner. She didn’t have her own purse to rifle through for something to sit on—her money was all in cash and tucked into her leggings—and so she akwardly kneeled on the seat, facing the rear.
“That’s annoying, and I can’t see to my right side. Using your shirt would work.” Use my shirt. Duh. Lexi stripped off her shirt and folded it, then used it as a cushion. She wasn’t wearing a bra; the overdose had already swollen her tits to the point where she hardly fit into the bras she’d bought just a few days ago. Her nipples would have hardened instantly in the cool night air, if they hadn’t been hard already.
The two rode in silence. Lexi had no idea where they were going, but she didn’t want to ask. That would mean talking, which Kendra hadn’t asked her to do. She didn’t even recognize the neighborhoods they drove by. As a college student who grew up in a mobile home hours from here, she basically only knew the campus and the area immediately around it. It was clear the area they were driving through was a nice one—the houses and yards were large, opulently so, many of them gated. It was to one such house Kendra drove, pressing a button on a keypad to open the gate.
Kendra’s driveway was long and wide enough to fit all of the homes in Lexi’s mother’s trailer park on it. Driving here, in this car, with this woman, made her feel smaller than she ever had in her life. She was inferior in every way. She wasn’t as pretty, as confident, as wealthy…
She had a growing suspicion that she wasn’t nearly as intelligent, either.
They pulled into a garage which housed several other cars of similar quality, the sorts of cars one usually only sees in movies. Probably six figures worth of value in them, to say nothing of the house. How could she have afforded all this selling pills for $40 a pill? If she paid cash, a $50,000 sports car would take 1250 pills, which was basically three and a half people swallowing a pill every day for a year, times five cars made seventeen such clients—and then there was this house to account for, and…
As her brain worked out all the figures in a few seconds and the logic in a few more, Lexi was immediately sure there weren’t enough people taking atroneurinol around the area to account for this. If she’d been dealing for a couple decades, maybe, but Kendra was thirty at the outside, and she doubted if she were that.
She followed Kendra inside, wordlessly. She wasn’t sure if she should put her shirt back on or not, but figured she’d better, just in case. From the way it was folded, a wet spot decorated her in several spots all over her torso. She could smell her pussy juices on herself.
The interior of the house didn’t disappoint. It was as lavish as it looked like it would be without sacrificing elegance or class. There were shelves of books in almost every room, and one was simply a library. The only thing in the house not spotlessly clean were books sitting out on arms of sofas, counter tops, end tables. Kendra walked right past it and her desire to follow was the only thing that stopped her from gaping at her surroundings. She’d never even been in a house like this. It was a level of wealth she’d only imagined—and imagined poorly.
Her host lead her down some stairs and into a basement, through a billiards room with its own bar and into what looked to be a small home theater—of a sorts. There was no carpet in here—just solid concrete foundation, and four walls of plain, unadorned white drywall. There was a screen hanging on the far wall and a projector suspended from the ceiling pointed at it; these were what made her think it a theater. The only other object in the room was a plain metal folding chair. This was something Lexi’s family also owned. It had cost $19 at Walmart. Though her mother’s had a cushion on the seat; this one had none.
“You should have a seat,” Kendra said. I really should. She sat down, surprisingly nervous given the ‘diminished paranoia’ she should be feeling—with this much of it in her system, she’d have thought she’d be totally numb to anxiety at all. Then again, she reasoned that if she weren’t so in the grip of upstairoids, she would be terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. So hey, there’s another perk of this wonder drug.
“You may speak.”
“What are we doing down here?” Lexi asked in a rush.
“I call this my detox room,” Kendra said, waving a hand as if to show off what she’d done with the space. “I bring my clients here, when they hit the point you have. Usually takes more than a couple weeks.”
“Detox? If I just sit here in this room, I’m going to grow huge titties and a big swollen ass and thick dick-sucking lips and only ever want to fuck for the rest of my life. I can’t just wait this out—it’s not like heroin or something. It’s changing me, right now. It’ll only get worse.” How could Kendra peddle the drug and not realize this?
“Oh, well look who’s suddenly such a bright girl. Note that I didn’t say I brought you here to detoxify your system of atroneurinol. That’s what’s purifying you. I brought you here to detoxify you of all the bad little thoughts and feelings you still have in that head of yours, even as great a debacle as you’ve made of it through your ham-fisted blundering.”
“Wait, what?” Lexi shook her head. “No, you have to help me! You said you would help me!”
“Yes, I suppose that bright as you are, it wasn’t enough to see through that little ruse, was it.” Kendra chuckled. “Now take this needle, and inject yourself with this serum.” She once again held out the items she’d shown her at the diner.
Lexi shook her head. “No. I won’t do it.” She wanted to flee this place—only following Kendra had been such a great idea, and what kind of follower would she be if she ran off now?
“Defiance? How…” Comprehension dawned on her, and she smiled. “Of course, you’re suggestible, not obedient. Irksome little distinction sometimes—makes one have to be ever so mindful of tone and inflection. That’s why I built this place, you know—but we’ll come back to that.” Kendra shifted to an exaggerated parody of a valley girl—it was the sort of voice and demeanor one expected to come from the busty blonde’s body. “Like, O to the MG Lexi! You should, like, totally try this serum! It’d be, like, amazeballs, amirite?”
The tone and expression were so blatantly false, so utterly insincere, Lexi actually thought twice before she injected herself.
“That’s so super awesome! Now like, wouldn’t it be just totally tits if you had some kind of video to pay totally close attention to right now? Like, just super stare at and listen to and absorb?”
Damn straight it would! Sarcastic or no, Lexi recognized good advice when she heard it. Kendra turned on the projector and a solid blue rectangle slowly bloomed into existence on the screen. Lexi stared—even if this was just a blue rectangle, she didn’t want to miss anything. There might be a trick to it or something. In fact, she was pretty sure this whole situation was a trick.
(Certain, in fact, but that was difficult to admit.)
Then the video began to play. She saw Kendra—maybe a year or two younger, slightly longer hair, but otherwise her usual cruelly too-beautiful self. She was dressed according to her usual style—patently whorish—and from the looks of the affluent furnishings, appeared to be sitting somewhere in her own mansion.
“Well hello there, client,” on-screen Kendra said. “If you’re watching this, then you’ve managed to overdose on atroneurinol and were silly enough to think my desire was to help you.” She laughed warmly, chillingly. “Hold on a second, the real me wants to catch this on video. We really do just live for this moment, where you’re finally realizing how completely screwed you are, and can’t do anything about it.”
As movie-Kendra spoke, real-Kendra walked out beside the screen. She had her cell phone in hand, holding it up to record Lexi. “We really do,” she said, nodding.
“We made this video because this whole process can be pretty tiresome to repeat, and we wanted to make sure we got all the little issues of phrasing right when it comes time to give you some better ideas about yourself. It’s going to take hours and that can be hard on the vocal chords—took me days to film this, you know. But I think you’ll find the advice your about to receive well worth the investment of my time.
“You see, dear client, that atroneurinol is a fool’s paradise of a drug. Sure, it gave you a gorgeous complexion and a dynamite body—or if you overdosed early on, it soon will, trust me—but it also turned your mind into a playground for anyone with a use for you. It’s banned for a very good reason, understand.
“Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘Kendra, but didn’t you take atroneurinol? What makes me any different?’ Right? You should go ahead and respond out loud when the video calls for it.”
“Right,” Lexi said. Kendra was laughing to herself. It was distracting—couldn’t she see Lexi was trying to pay attention?
“Good girl,” movie-Kendra said after a slightly too-long pause in the video. “For your consideration, here are a few photos of me over the years,” her voice-over said as a slideshow played of pictures of the woman. Real-Kendra watched it with her. By Lexi’s best guess, the first images were probably from Kendra’s late elementary school years; over the next few minutes the slide show gave a slow progression going on into high school. She’d been a beautiful little girl, and her adolescent evolution had been towards increasing radiance.
The final image showed a frame of Kendra clad in a cap and gown, the salutatorian’s stole wrapped around her shoulders. Second in class. The gown was open to show a pretty red flowered dress that still showed more than an eyeful of cleavage. Her younger face was no less gorgeous—she would have been the envy of every girl in her school. Of almost every girl in every school.
There was definitely no point in the slideshow she could pinpoint a sudden change, sudden appearance of breasts and perfect skin and hair and lips and ass. By the final picture she more or less had the body she did now as far as Lexi could discern. She wondered what the atroneurinol would do to such an essentially perfect-looking specimen of femininity. Whatever it was, she couldn’t spot it, even with the real McCoy standing next to the screen. Unless…
Her thought was interrupted by the film. “Yes, that’s right, salutatorian, not valedictorian,” movie-Kendra said ruefully as she returned to the screen. “You see, I would have been valedictorian, except for Imogen Gutierrez.” An image showed of high-school Kendra sitting in a classroom, waving to the camera next to a doughy Latina with a hairy upper lip and bad teeth showing in her smile. “Imogen’s GPA was .04 points behind mine, so during our final semester she made an accusation that she’d caught me in a sexual act with our AP physics teacher. We both denied it—truthfully—but Imogen threatened to make the accusation public if the school wouldn’t take action and lower my GPA.
“Rather than have a scandal break out that could have followed me throughout my life, I conceded the valedictorian position, and the scholarship that came with it. My family wasn’t wealthy, so I settled for an in-state school—probably the same one where I found you. I’d always loved learning, you see, for its own sake—read everything I could get my hands on. Still do.”
Real-Kendra nodded affirmingly. “Yet, when I went to college, my feelings toward formal education soured. Spoon-fed recycled lectures by second-tier professors, surrounded by peers whose passion for learning paled next to their passion for bad beer and mediocre sex. That wasn’t made me withdraw from school, however. No, that came from girls like Imogen. Like you.
“Ugly, simple-minded little bitches who look at someone like me and can’t fathom me. So they scorn me, even as they envy and imitate me.”
“Which isn’t to say I’ve ever given two shits about your approval, client. Far from it. For as far back as I can remember, I have always had to go the extra mile to prove myself to the world. ‘A girl that pretty can’t also be that smart, can she?’ I had to work harder, put in the extra time and effort and energy to excel to prove to everyone that I was the genuine article, not just some photogenic Barbie doll who charmed her way through life. As if being beautiful was some miracle that invalidated my intelligence and solely accounted for my every achievement.
“Which brings us back to you, dear client. There you were, an unattractive wanna-be over-achiever. It’s a good idea to answer all of my questions out loud, and honestly, by the way. What were your first thoughts of me? Before I even spoke, what were you thinking?”
Lexi thought back to when Kendra had first appeared before her in the library. She remembered that cleavage-baring outfit, the tiny little skirt. “I… thought you looked like kind of a bimbo,” Lexi admitted guiltily.
“I know you did,” video Kendra replied after a long pause. “Your kind always does. Then we spoke, and you began to realize your error. So of course you assumed that I must be taking my own drug—that I couldn’t possibly be that much smarter and prettier than you on my own. But you see, client, I’ve never taken upstairoids in my life.
“Did you not do any research? Of course you did. You were just too stupid to believe what you read. You thought that doing upstairoids would turn you into what you covet most—me. You thought you could cheat your way into my rightful place as your better. Tsk tsk, little girl. That you could ever be my equal is one of the many notions of which you are about to be disabused.
“Now I want you to know what is about to happen. I am going to have you program yourself. I’ll do my part, certainly, but trials have shown that your own voice is the one you respond best to during the detox period. It can’t be your spoken voice, which your brain associates with its own thoughts and not of external influence; it has to be a recording, watching yourself say the words, which your brain associates with feelings of trustworthiness.
“You’re about to completely transform yourself for my benefit and pleasure, client. Does that appeal to you?”
“No!” Lexi cried emphatically. She wanted to go on, but movie-Kendra kept talking, and she had to pay close attention.
“I thought not. The syrum you were injected with contained a concentrated dose of my person blend of atroneurinol, so your mind should be good and ripe by now. Let’s proceed, shall we?”
“Please don’t do this,” Lexi pleaded to real-Kendra.
“Shh,” Kendra said, holding a finger to her lips.
“Repeating after me, copying my tone, is a very, very good idea. Isn’t that right?”
Repeat after Kendra. Copy her tone. It seemed so obvious. “Yes.”
“The name ‘Kendra’ only refers to the woman in this room and in this movie. I don’t think of any other person as a ‘Kendra.’” Lexi repeated, in the same earnest tone. A smart move on her dealer’s part, she conceded.
“The purpose of being intelligent is not to advance myself—it’s to advance Kendra.” An epiphany! Lexi recited the words with the same sense of excited realization.
“The life I wanted before atroneurinol is scary and awful. That would be the worst.” The tone was frightened. Lexi imitated it as best she could.
“Whatever Kendra wants, she should get. And I should help her get it.” Sincerity. Lexi repeated.
“My needs and wants don’t matter—only Kendra’s do.” Repeat.
“Obeying Kendra is natural and necessary, even if it’s something I don’t want to do. Disobeying her is unthinkable, even if it’s over something I desperately need.”
“My body and mind exist to make Kendra’s life better, however she decides to use them.”
“My possessions and relationships are tools I can and will use to help and please Kendra.”
“I will learn to anticipate Kendra’s preferences, wants and needs, and act in support of them.”
“The spirit of Kendra’s commands to me is more important than their literal meanings.”
“If I ever think of a way I could bring harm to Kendra, I will tell her, then not do it. If I ever think of a way to escape Kendra, I will tell her, then not escape.”
“If either my or Kendra’s actions ever place her at risk, I will independently seek to take the fall for her.”
“I am a hard-working, attractive and intelligent person who deserves respect, kindness and a decent lifestyle.” Lexi frowned as she repeated the words assertively. Did that one slip in by accident?
Then movie-Kendra finished the thought. “…but I will sacrifice all of those things to be whatever Kendra wants me to be.” Ah, there it was.
As the litany went on in similar fashion, it only half-sunk in. It was confusing, the way things were worded—hearing Kendra switch between third- and first-person so quickly made the suggestions only partially stick, or not at all in many cases. Regardless, clearly she would become Kendra’s plaything. Albeit with a good deal more forethought and thoroughness, it was the same procedure she’d done to Jana—and already she was thinking about how she might be able to use Jana to please Kendra.
The repetition went on for hours; every time the back of Lexi’s mind thought of a crack, it was hammered shut. Not that she thought too hard. Trying to weasel out of this would likely displease Kendra. Still, she obviously wanted to subjugate Lexi, so if she thought of a way out of it, she had a responsibility to inform her. That would make her happy, so it was worth doing. Even if it was idiotic and self-destructive, like everything else about this was.
Many—most? all?—of the suggestions repeated, with subtle differences in inflection. Being afraid of her old destiny became emphatic dislike; affectionate desire to anticipate Kendra’s desires became anxiety over failing to do so. Even as she participated in the act, she marveled at its cleverness and thoroughness. It was mind-bogglingly brilliant, and utterly ruthless.
Finally, it ended. Her real-world companion told her to stop repeating, so she did. Movie-Kendra smiled at her. “That’s a good girl, client. Now, I’ll bid you a fond farewell and let Kendra handle you from here.” She smiled, but it was a sadistic thing on her immaculate visage.
Kendra stopped the projector, and it went blue again. “You may have noticed none of my suggestions were for you to enjoy serving me. No mention of pleasure in obedience, fulfillment through service.”
Lexi thought. She hadn’t noticed that in the whole minutia of it, but come to think of it, she didn’t feel any such instinct. “That’s… I hadn’t noticed, but…”
“There’s a version of this video in which that’s a major component—that’s the one I show to most of my dim-witted overdosing clientele. The one you just saw, I reserve for those who have managed to cause offense.”
“What did I do to merit that! I never did anything to you! I just wanted to be smart, be… pretty,” she admitted.
“Oh, you don’t remember threatening to go to the police earlier? Well, I remembered, and I did not appreciate it. As they always told little Cindy on The Brady Bunch, ‘when you tattle, you’re only telling on yourself, and telling them that you’re a mean little bitch who doesn’t deserve happiness.’ Something like that, anyway. Just give me a moment here, and I’ll have you ready to be fully detoxed.”
“Please don’t do this,” Lexi pleaded. “I was going to be a doctor—I was going to help people!”
“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Kendra responded without looking up from what she was doing on her phone. “But trust me, Lexi, you’re still going to be helping someone—the most important someone you know. Me. Now we just need to finish running this nifty little app I wrote that filters my voice out of that video, edit out the opening and ending…”
Lexi wanted to cry. To fuck. To beg for mercy. To ask how she could help program herself to be Kendra’s obedient slave.
Before she worked up the gumption to do any of those things, the app finished, and she plugged the phone into the projector. The blue rectangle disappeared, replaced by Lexi’s own face, staring anxiously and looking at the screen that was just off-camera. “The name ‘Kendra’ only refers to the woman in this room and in this movie. I don’t think of any other person as a ‘Kendra.” Then a pause, during which Lexi remembered Kendra Baddle, whom she’d gone to middle school with before the girl moved away. Not really a ‘Kendra’, she thought. She’s Ms. Baddle now. I think that was my hair-dresser’s name when I was a little girl, too, but not any more.
“The purpose of being intelligent is not to advance myself,” Lexi insisted on the screen. “It’s to advance Kendra!” A pause, then she went on. “The life I wanted before atroneurinol is scary and awful. That would be the worst.” Oh geez, good call! Being a doctor would have been such a stupid waste of my time—trying to crawl out of my white trash roots and all would be terrifying. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself! Hopefully Kendra can think of some good uses for my brain.
“Whatever Kendra wants, she should get—and I should help her get it,” Lexi encouraged. She remembered saying that, remember that feeling of knowing she would use those words to brainwash herself, feeling betrayed, and stupid, and weak. She’d been right to feel that way. As she heard them, they became true. In moments, she was wishing she could finish brainwashing herself so she could ask Kendra what she wanted, so she could help her get it.
Lexi paid rapt attention to herself as she destroyed the person she had been and rebuilt herself into the perfectly obedient slave. She didn’t want to miss a word.