Chapter 3: Females
Nicholas couldn’t figure out if the stare she gave him was confused or not, since she had been staring for all of the half-hour he had known her. After a few moments her eyes narrowed and she glanced at the floor, then back to him, and back to the floor again, all while gnawing away at her thumb.
Then her eyes burst wide open again, she scooted a bit closer to Nicholas and said, “’Kay.”
That was it. Nicholas waited for her to say something else. All she did was smile.
“You’re kidding me,” Nicholas whispered.
“Only if you’re lying,” Eileen said. “But your wrist healed up right in front of me, and that’s pretty unbelievable, so I guess mind control isn’t that farfetched.”
Nicholas nodded, amazed it was that simple. Somehow he had always imagined convincing the first person he ever told would be much harder.
“Well,” he said, “since you believe me, why are you willing to be a test subject?”
Eileen shrugged. “You said you’re letting me stay here, so I need to pay you back.”
“Well, yeah, I guess.” Nicholas found all his effort had gone into convincing her that he was telling the truth. Now he had no idea how to describe what came next.
“So what does it feel like?” Eileen asked as she played with the ends of hair.
“Hm?” Nicholas snapped out of his stupor and realized what she said. “I don’t know. That’s why I need a test subject to tell me what it’s like.”
“No, not that.” Eileen pointed at Nicholas. “I mean what’s it feel like for you?”
“Oh,” Nicholas said, trying to think of how to describe it. “Well, I guess that it’s like being a puppeteer. After my blood’s been ingested, I get this buzzing in my brain.”
“Buzzing?” Eileen leaned closer to Nicholas, balancing on the tips of her toes. “What do you mean?”
“Uh, I mean it feels like a small buzzing crawling around the front of my brain,” muttered Nicholas, looking away from her as she got even closer. “I don’t know how else to describe it. And then… and then…”
“And then?” she beckoned. Her breath tickled Nicholas’s neck, causing him to jump to his feet.
“Can I have my personal space please?” he said, walking over to the other side of the room and staring at the wall.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
Thinks she’s real funny, huh? Well, whatever. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, but I need a test subject, so we might as well get on with it.
“Anyway,” Eileen said, “if you’ve actually got mind control powers, then I want to see them!”
Nicholas looked back at her just in time to watch her lose her balance and go tumbling off the bed. She rolled over in the fall and landed on her back, the thud shaking the room just a little.
“Owwww,” she groaned, her arms and legs grasping feebly at the air. Nicholas couldn’t help but imagine a cat playing with a dangling toy. So he stood over her and dangled the notebook above her hands.
“Just take a look at some of my notes, okay?” He dropped the notebook, but somehow it slid past her hands on the way down and smacked her right in the face.
“Uh, sorry,” Nicholas said as he tried to stifle a chuckle. Eileen didn’t even seem to notice as she lifted the notes off her face and rolled over onto her stomach to read.
Flipping through the pages, she read quietly, but punctuated the silence every few minutes with a short laugh. While she did that, Nicholas sat down on his bed and grabbed the razor blade from the bloody bowl. Eileen stopped reading and stared at it.
“Relax,” Nicholas said as he pricked open his fingertip, “I just need to get some of my own blood to use on you.”
“What about the vial you just filled?”
“I’d rather save that for later. It’s annoying whenever I have to produce a full vial. Besides, I want to test if a smaller amount will work.”
Nicholas kept expecting Eileen to back out of the deal any moment, but instead she dropped the notebook and rose to her knees, eyeing the drop of red on his finger.
“You don’t have AIDS do you?” she asked.
“No.”
“How do you know?” she asked, not taking her eyes off his finger. “Have you ever gotten tested? I mean, if you’re some kind of man-slut or junkie, who knows what you have?”
Nicholas frowned. “I can’t have AIDS, all right? Sex isn’t really… um…” He noticed her eyes become wider. “Well, it isn’t something that I’ve ever really had to concern myself with.”
She nodded, but at least she didn’t laugh at him. Then, just as Nicholas realized he needed a cup to let his blood drip into, Eileen reached out, pulled his hand to her mouth, and began sucking on his finger.
Nicholas gasped, but fell silent because he couldn’t think of anything to say without sounding stupid.
He said it anyway. “You know, I could have put it in some Kool-Aid or something.”
Eileen stopped for a second.
“Yeah, well, I want to see this mind control stuff now. So how much blood do I need?” With that, she slipped his finger back into her mouth, and Nicholas wondered why he didn’t feel more enthused about it.
“I’m not sure. Since you’re… um… drinking it, that should probably be enough.”
Somehow she didn’t hear him, because she didn’t cease her feast. Nicholas wondered whether stopping her was a good idea or not, chiefly because it was one thing to have a cute girl running her tongue all over his finger, but it was another when she was doing it under the assumption that his blood was going to take over her mind.
She’s either into sucking me, or she wants to be completely under my control… both of these seem like favorable possibilities.
“Okay, done,” she said, breaking away after what had to be a very long time. “Now what?”
“Um, we wait for the buzzing to start,” Nicholas said, noticing that his finger had already been healed.
“Oookay…” Eileen returned to gnawing at her fingertips, her eyes darting all around the room.
It took a minute, but soon Nicholas felt a small tingle scratch the surface of his brain. Before he could say anything, he lost feeling in his limbs, and then the powerlessness washed over the rest of him.
He fell backward onto his bed, and he wasn’t aware of how much time passed, just a sense that everything was under control. He could see his ceiling fan spinning and spinning above him. It could spin forever, and all was still well.
His arms and legs came back to him, his joy rushing to his head as he let out a gasp for air. Eileen watched him as he sat up and massaged his head, feeling the new buzz inside his skull.
“Are you okay?” Eileen asked.
Nicholas nodded. “It’s just a side-effect of using it on humans, I guess. I’m still getting used to it, but don’t worry. Besides, it worked.”
Eileen gave him a confused stare.
“What?”
“I’ve got it. Right now.”
“But… I don’t feel anything.”
We’ll see about that. Get up and go stare out the window.
The caution in Eileen’s eyes dissolved instantly. Hopping to her feet, she walked over to the window and looked outside.
“There, right there!” Nicholas said, jumping off the bed and pointing at her. She looked at him like he was crazy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I just thought that you would go look out the window, and you did!”
“Oh, so it’s like psychic control, huh?” Nicholas couldn’t tell whether she was mocking him or not. “Well, it didn’t work anyway. I just wanted to take a look, that’s all.”
Nicholas felt the triumph in his chest deflate a bit, unable to comprehend what she had just said.
“Well… then it was a coincidence!” he insisted. Looking around the room, he figured he would have to choose something a bit more out of the ordinary.
Crawl underneath my bed.
He watched as Eileen dropped to the floor and pulled herself over to the bed. As she slithered beneath it and out of his view, he felt his sense of victory returning. The control worked!
“There, how about that?” he said.
“Wow,” said Eileen, her voice muffled, “you got a lot of magazines down here. I can’t see what they are though. Hey, do you-”
“Forget those!” Nicholas said. “I just made you crawl under my bed! Can you honestly say you just felt like doing that?”
“Well yeah,” she replied, popping her head out from underneath the bed and looking up at him. “I mean, I do stuff like this all the time.”
You can’t be serious.
Sighing, Nicholas rubbed his forehead and tried to figure out what was going on. There was always a slight chance that the blood didn’t work on females, but that didn’t make any sense. Female dogs and cats had always responded to the blood the same way males did, why would human females be any different?
Was it really just two coincidences in a row? As odd as Eileen was, Nicholas didn’t buy it. He would have to first figure out something she wouldn’t normally do.
“Okay Eileen,” Nicholas said, trying to focus despite the fact that he was only talking to her smiling head, “tell me, in complete honesty, something you would never normally do. Ever. Something that, if you did do, would have to be my blood controlling you.”
“Uh, how ‘bout having sex with you?”
Nicholas almost felt a bit of himself die inside.
“Thanks for the self-esteem booster,” he grumbled.
“Don’t take it personally or anything,” she said, frowning in apology. “I just don’t know you very well.”
“Whatever.” Sitting down on the bed, Nicholas realized that he was in trouble. His perfect test subject wasn’t so perfect after all. Almost anything he could make her do, she was spontaneous enough to do on her own. And he wasn’t about to make her have sex with him.
As pleasing as that sounds in theory, I have no idea where she’s been. Besides, I’d feel like an idiot. Or a rapist. Or both.
Nicholas’s phone rang in his pocket. Sighing, he drew it out and answered.
“Hello?”
“Nicky, that you?” The voice was all too familiar, and besides, only one person called him Nicky.
“It’s my cell Tommy, why wouldn’t it be me?” Nicholas replied. Tommy mumbled something indiscernible on the other end of the line.
“Look Nicky, we got a bit of a problem. Open up.”
Frowning, Nicholas walked over to his window and looked outside. Tommy stood right outside the front door, a grin on his face and his cell phone up to his ear.
“I think it’s unlocked Tommy, just come on in,” said Nicholas. As he said it, he watched Tommy try the door and walk on in.
Nicholas hung up and turned around. Eileen was still there under his bed.
Oh yeah. Forgot. Crap.
“Get into my closet now!” Nicholas whispered. Eileen crawled out from under the bed and threw herself through the open door, Nicholas closing it behind her.
“Just stay there and try to not make a sound until I tell you it’s safe,” he said. She didn’t respond, which Nicholas took as a good sign. Sitting down on his bed, he listened to Tommy come up the stairs. A second later three knocks sounded from the door.
Nicholas opened his mouth to speak when his eyes fell on the bloody bowl, vial, and razor still on his table. Quickly, he grabbed them and put them under his bed, far towards the back where Tommy wouldn’t see them.
“Come in!” he said finally as he collapsed back onto his bed. The door swung open and Tommy Evans came shuffling into the room, a meek smile on his face.
“Afternoon, Nicky,” Tommy said, not waiting for an invitation to plop down onto the chair by Nicholas’s desk. Nicholas just waved back. Tommy was wearing the same baggy blue jeans he seemed to wear every day, with a tight white shirt on over the muscles that, along with his handsome face and shoulder-length dark hair, should have made him a regular ladies’ man. At least Nicholas had always thought so.
Right now, Tommy’s normally perfect posture was gone, his body slouched over to an almost grotesque degree, which usually only meant one thing.
“Is this about your girlfriend again?” Nicholas sighed.
“Ex-girlfriend, man,” Tommy chuckled, his eyes not reflecting that humor. “Chel and me broke up.”
The tiniest sound rustled from in the closet, but Tommy didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh,” Nicholas mumbled, wishing he could be more supportive than the girl in the closet was allowing him to be. “Uh, that sucks.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, “but I think it was the right thing to do. I took your advice on it, you know.”
“My advice?” Nicholas asked.
“Yeah man. Remember when I asked you if staying with Chel was the right thing to do since we’d be going to different colleges and her parents hate me and everything?”
“Kind of.” That rustling sound came from the closet again, a bit louder this time.
Try to be quiet! Nicholas ordered, just in case the control worked somehow.
“Well, I told her that and broke up with her about an hour ago. She was pretty pissed. Like, stereotypical-angry-Hispanic-girl pissed. It was pretty funny, actually. Kind of.” He slumped just a bit lower in his seat. “Sort of reminded me of what my Mom gets like whenever I have to dodge the beer bottles she tosses at Dad.”
Tommy smiled weakly, but that just made Nicholas feel more uncomfortable. If there was one thing about Tommy that Nicholas could never understand, it was the nonchalant way he talked about his home life.
“Well,” Nicholas said, trying to get back to Chel, “I’m sure it will work out, man. But if you’ve already broken up with her, why do we have a problem?”
Tommy’s eyes lit up a bit, his body rising an inch or so. “You know Andrea Crantz?”
Nicholas felt a bit strange at hearing that name again after trying to forget about it for the past few years.
“Yeah, what about her?”
“Well, the problem is that she asked me out.”
Nicholas frowned, unable to comprehend why this was a problem. Tommy read the look on his face and laughed.
“Oh man, I dunno. I guess I’m just afraid that if I start dating Andrea so soon, Chel will think that she’s the reason I broke up with her. It really isn’t man, Andrea asked me out about a week or so ago, and I was already set on breaking up with Chel at the time. Besides, I think I’d feel really bad dating again so soon, you know?”
The rustling came again, even louder. Nicholas stood up and yawned loudly.
“Tommy, you wanna’ go hang out downstairs? I’ve been in my room all day.”
Tommy shrugged and got out of his seat.
“Eh, I gotta’ use the bathroom anyway. Meet you downstairs.”
Tommy shuffled back out of the room, and Nicholas closed and locked the door behind him. As much as he hated seeing his best friend like this, he had a bigger problem on his hands.
Ripping open the closet door, he found Eileen sitting. Not on the floor though. The way her body was upside down, her legs resting straight up against the wall, it looked like she was sitting on the wall and leaning against the floor.
“I told you to be quiet!” Nicholas whispered.
Eileen shook her head. “You told me to try to be quiet. I had to get comfortable, and I tried to do it quietly.”
Growling, Nicholas sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“Whatever. Well, be quiet. And get out of that position, your legs are going to fall asleep.”
“I don’t mind, but if you say so.” Eileen shifted and turned until she was sitting cross-legged.
Oh, so now you’re doing what I say.
That was when Nicholas had an idea.
“Hey, how much did you want to keep sitting like that against the wall?” he asked Eileen.
“A lot,” she said. “But I don’t really want to say no to you.”
“You don’t? Don’t you think that’s strange at all?”
Eileen shrugged, but it was all Nicholas needed. Looking around for his notebook, he grabbed it, flipped to the first blank page, pulled a pen from his pocket, and began to scribble down his thoughts. Eileen quietly watched him write.
Throw me a pair of socks, won’t you Eileen?
As Eileen fumbled around in his closet for socks, Nicholas finished writing the theory that Eileen herself had just confirmed for him. Smiling with accomplishment, he read the newly inked words aloud so that Eileen could hear him.
“The nature of the control which the blood has over the possessed subject is such that the subject is forced to have an inexplicable want to carry out the desired action. Furthermore, the subject will be totally convinced that the action, no matter how ridiculous or contrary to the normal behavior of the subject, was solely the will of the subject themselves and nothing else. However, it remains to be seen whether or not the subject can realize after the fact that the action was beyond the normal limits of their behavior.”
Nicholas looked back at Eileen for approval, just in time to have a pair of balled up socks hit him right in the face. Eileen giggled as Nicholas looked away and continued to scribble away, his face burning.
At present time, Human Subject A’s behavior is too unpredictable to form a reliable hypothesis on the nature of a subject’s free will in relation to their actions. I shall attempt to learn more about the subject in hopes of discerning just what would be considered normal behavior for her. From here on out, Human Subject A shall be referred to as Eve.
Eve. A cliché codename if there ever was one, but it was the first name that sprung to mind when he thought of the fact that she was the first human female he had experimented on. But giving it some more thought, and realizing how much more appropriate it would be for this particular girl, Nicholas scratched out “Eve” and wrote in the more fitting moniker.
From here on out, Human Subject A shall be referred to as Pandora.
The phone began to ring. Not Nicholas’s cell, but the home phone on his desk. Picking it up, he signaled for Eileen to be quiet.
“Yes?” he said into the receiver.
“Is Eileen there?”
Nicholas’s mind began racing. First, he turned on speaker phone and gave Eileen the most serious look he could. Her eyes met his, rapt with attention. To be safe, he terminated his control over her, just in case any of his rogue thoughts interfered with her judgment.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” Nicholas said into the phone.
“Is Eileen there?” the voice repeated. Male, older. Her father maybe?
Eileen’s eyes lost any trace of whimsy they had held before, replaced by the same wild fear she had possessed upon falling into his yard. She shook her head furiously.
“No, I’m sorry,” said Nicholas into the phone, “but you must have a wrong number. I don’t know-”
“No, I have the right number. But if she isn’t there, that’s fine. She could have wandered into any of the houses in that neighborhood. But just in case, if you do happen to see her…” An odd silence followed, and Nicholas could just barely make out a strange sound emanating from the receiver. It sounded like sobbing.
A loud, quick explosion burst from the phone, so sudden that Nicholas dropped it to the floor. Eileen’s hand covered her mouth as she watched the phone with wide eyes. The voice on the other end chuckled, deep and nonchalant. It made Nicholas feel sick.
“Make sure you tell her,” the voice said, “that her sister is dead.”
