Chapter 1: Big Shoes to Fill

July 25th - August 29th, 1988

My memories of waking up in the motel room Joey had taken us to are extremely gray. Not fuzzy, not indistinct, just very ... gray - in the emotional sense.

I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t excited or content. I wasn’t anything. The words Joey spoke to me I just didn’t bother to comprehend, for I didn’t feel the need to. I had no motivation to do anything. I think I would have just stopped breathing if it hadn’t been automatic.

Joey had to take control of my body several times while I was like that. He kept me from wetting the bed and otherwise took care of my body’s needs while my brain was numb like that.

We were in some car he had hitched us a ride with when I noticed the trees flying by the window. It was just slightly more interesting to me to watch the scenery flashing by than the back of the seat, and the more I watched, the more I noticed.

I was waiting patiently for the scenery to start moving again when a face suddenly appeared in front of my vision that stirred something within me, only to fade away the next moment as the door was opened and my body followed Joey into another motel.

That night, I felt another stirring within me, one that didn’t go away as fast as the last one. And once the two teenage girls whom Joey had borrowed from their parents for the night had sucked every last bit of cum out of my cock, I actually took some notice in the way their moaning and gasping sounded as Joey made use of their young sexy bodies.

I don’t recall the following morning, but sometime in the afternoon, I was sitting in the front seat of a different car, listening to the same sound from the night before and turned my head to look at the driver.

The man seemed to be enjoying the fact that Joey was fucking his wife in the back seat. I watched him as he cheered Joey on and jerked himself off while he drove. Something about the way his cock spurted his load made me turn back to the scenery and ignore the rest of the activities inside the car.

The next time the car stopped and I found myself getting out, I caught a glimpse of Joey’s face and felt something a lot stronger stir deep within me. As my urine ran out of my cock, I had a flashback of Joey’s face from when he had been raping one of the slave girls on the beach.

That face kept popping into my head as the scenery whizzed by, always causing me to blink as I tried to comprehend what it meant. There was a feeling that went with it. Or more like two feelings. Fear and lust were the first identifiable feelings I had after my awakening, and that wasn’t very healthy, I must say.

At dinner, Joey had just finished picking out the girls who would join us in our motel room that night when he noticed I was staring at him. Because his expression softened and his voice sounded so soothing, I listened to his words as he said, “ ... wasn’t going leave you out, you know. I got three this time just in case you felt like fucking one for a while.”

“Fuck one,” I echoed.

“Yeah. That’s right,” Joey said happily. “You and I have done a lot of fucking together. And we’re going to do a lot more too. Just remember that we’re partners. Okay?”

“Partners,” I repeated blankly.

“Partners. That’s what we are,” Joey said while his smile faded and his eyes went a little unfocused.

When his attention snapped back to the present, Joey said, “I know you won’t understand this now, but you will when you get all your marbles back. After I let all that anger out during the wipe, things seem different to me. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I...”

My mind having pieced together what would solve the strange need I was experiencing, I interrupted him saying, “We fuck girl? Now?”

Joey looked at me a little startled, then broke out in a grin that caused me to make my first facial expression since my wipe. The grin I wore was the same as his, and as Joey arranged for the guy at the next table to pay for our dinner, I vaguely recalled that we indeed had been partners about a lot of things.

You have to realize that I was in a very vulnerable and suggestible state while my emotions and memories were trying to reform. So I naturally began accepting everything Joey said and did as right, the slight familiarity I felt about him made me trust his every word.

After taking turns fucking the three girls we took to our room, the image of Joey that had popped up in my mind all day didn’t have the disturbing feel to it any longer. I had done the very same thing he had done when he had made that face, and I had liked it very much. I desired to feel that kind of pleasure again and believed that Joey would show me more ways to feel good.

When Joey discovered I was attempting to do everything he did while ignoring the memories which were trying to surface, he decided he liked the idea of being my hero and encouraged my desire to be just like him. What I didn’t know at the time was he also inserted blocks into my mind that would prevent the negative memories of him from resurfacing.

I recall very clearly the moment I rediscovered my telepathic abilities. We were approaching the Mexican border in an overcrowded bus, watching two fat women attempting to eat each other out without much success. I kept wishing for one of them to give up and come over to me so I could suck their big tits and then fuck their fat cunts. I suddenly recalled how to make that happen and issued the proper commands to the one on top.

Joey asked a little panicked, “Did you do that?”

“Yes. Did I do something wrong?” I asked, afraid of having upset my teacher and benefactor.

“No,” he said, relieved. “For a second, I thought someone else had, that’s all. Come ‘ere, bitch. Do what she’s doing to him to me.”

I felt so proud of myself as Joey mimicked me as I sucked the fat Hispanic woman’s tits while she rubbed her wet cunt up and down my stomach. I was enjoying myself immensely, but when my cock brushed up against her ass, I suddenly recalled how much I liked fucking a woman’s rose.

I struggled a moment aligning my cock with her backdoor, then in a fit of lust commanded her to sit my cock into her ass with her shitting muscles on full.

The pressure and warmth of her ass as it yielded to my dick caused me to moan in pleasure, then when I was in up to the hilt, I started programming her to give me as much pleasure her ass could provide.

When I had finished using her, Joey became upset with me for the mess I had made of her mind. His philosophy of restoring someone we had used to their original state with no memory of the things we had done naturally became my philosophy after that, and before the night was over, we developed a systematic way of doing so.

Or I should say Joey developed it while I assisted in testing it. Basically, whenever one of us altered another’s mind, we would store the command to reverse our tampering inside their mind in what we called the self-destruct memory.

Joey’s programming ability had become far superior to mine, even though he lacked the sight to see how the symbols work. Joey had developed the technique for cloaking his tampering on his own and hadn’t been able to test it until he had to use it on Gina to prevent his sister from finding out.

He can’t take all the credit, though. He used a lot of what I had shared with him about memory and how personas affected them while teaching him how to form and update the cloak persona. And the encryption aspect was an extension of our work together on encrypting our thoughts. But until I understood how he hid the memories, I couldn’t locate them, so it was pretty impressive work.

The self-destruct memory used a considerable amount of the techniques he had developed for the sole purpose of deceiving me, and his sharing this with me was probably the only thing that saved our friendship from a permanent death later that year.

Despite his best efforts, the woman whom I had altered was permanently fixated on anal sex, but apart from becoming the butt-fuck queen of some small town in Mexico, Joey was able to restore the rest of her personality and all her memories.

I spent a large portion of the next day practicing the things he had taught me, Joey watching every command I made and sometimes correcting me while other times letting me screw up. No harm came to anyone that day, and by that evening, I was proficient enough in using his technique that he let me go round up our bedtime fucks.

That night, memories trying to surface invaded my sleep, and while they were unpleasurable in nature, I was not disturbed by them as I normally would be. I guess Joey was monitoring my thoughts the next morning, for he asked what my dreams were about without me having said a thing about them. I told him as much as I could remember, then didn’t object to his announcement he was going to do something to me to prevent those kinds of dreams from coming back.

As he inserted more blocks in my mind, I began to understand what the blocks were blocking, but didn’t really care if I never remembered my life from before. All I knew was I trusted Joey to do what was best for me, and if that meant living the rest of my life not remembering the first seventeen years, I was positive I would be better off.

Joey and I spent two weeks following a steady routine while making our way slowly up Mexico. We would wake up and have one last fuck with the girls we had picked out the night before, then we would hit the self-destruct command after breakfast and send them on their way.

Once we found a ride, we would play an assortment of mind games, usually involving the other passengers and sometimes the driver as well. Things like searching for their most secret desire or fantasy and make them believe they were living it out. On a few occasions, we were able to arrange it so they actually did physically carry out their fantasy, but most of the time it was only in their mind, I having become quite good at generating realistic dream states.

Female passengers, depending on their age, provided us with different forms of entertainment, but we didn’t usually have sex while on the road, for we enjoyed our evening fucks too much to waste our energy during the day. Oh, every once in a while a pretty girl would turn one of us on enough to get laid, but for most cases we just had them serve our lunch off their chests or some other juvenile yet harmless things like that.

Dinner time usually meant heavy scanning while eating. Sometimes we found our pray before dessert was served, but many times we would have to go out and walk around town in search for a decent pair of cunts. We always found something to satisfy our standards, and as soon as we had made our selection we went straight to our room and began trading spit.

I followed Joey’s example and performed the nightly make out and dance without complaint, and even though I would appear to be enjoying the slow kissing, making my intended fuck slut feel romanced, the only sensation I felt was the desire to fuck her, and then fuck her again.

I would always get my wish in the end once Joey had had his fill, and that’s why I never let on that I would have preferred to skip with the pleasantries.

After arriving at our next destination, we’d spend a day resting there while enjoying the hospitality of the people. By the time we were halfway up Mexico, Joey had found his desire to return home fading, and one evening at dinner, he said, “You know, I think I like Mexico. Don’t you?”

“Si, Senior,” I said. “I feel I have spent my whole life in Mexico.”

“Shut up,” Joey chucked before saying seriously, “I’ve been thinking a lot about it the past couple of days. What if we find a nice small town with a lot of pretty señoritas in it and settle down there? We could start our own business as a front, have a nice house built, and play God for a while. What do you think?”

“I guess it sounds good if it does to you.”

Joey frowned a moment, then said, “If you were going to decide, what you want to do?”

“I don’t know. What else would you want to do?”

“I asked what you wanted. Shit, can’t you think of something you’d like to do?”

“I don’t really care what we do. I’ll just do what you want to do, okay?”

“But I was hoping you ... Shit. Never mind. We’ll try my idea, then if we don’t like it or think of something better, we can always leave.”

“That sounds good,” I said honestly. “Can we start scanning now, or do you want to talk some more?”

“Scan, amigo, scan,” he said with a grin.

We altered our course to head east rather than north, and three towns later, Joey announced we had found our new home.

The town was small, well isolated, yet appeared to be prosperous enough that the people were well fed. The population hovered around two hundred, and within twenty-four hours, they all were our happy little slaves.

Well, slave isn’t quite the word for it. Everyone in the town would happily do whatever we asked of them, but they didn’t see us as their lords and masters. We simply were special people who they trusted and cared for, not going out of their way for us unless we asked or they saw the need.

The children loved us, the teens saw us as their idols or heartthrobs, the young single women lusted for us, and the rest just adored us from afar.

Joey asked me not to mess with the girls around our age until he got to know them, and while I had looked forward to fucking this one señorita, I complied with his request and simply permitted five of the women who were in their early twenties to service my fucking needs.

At first, I disliked the way Joey didn’t care to fuck together any longer, but once I stopped bothering myself with the foreplay, I decided I preferred fucking alone. Especially when I found out that Joey hadn’t fucked any of his until we had been there almost a week.

Shortly after his big orgy, I started to notice Joey acting restless during the day, even somewhat down. Three days went by before I finally asked him about it, but the only thing I got out of him was, “You wouldn’t understand.”

Two days later, we visited a family with a newborn and a four-year-old boy, Joey having sought out this particular family because he liked playing with the younger kids, their innocence and enthusiasm always lifting his spirits when he felt down. Or maybe it was because he knew my mom would have had her baby by then, and just wanted to see what it would have been like.

I was acting the polite guest, not really wishing to be there, but such things were not that important to me. I did as Joey wished, something I may have eventually grown tired of even if my eye hadn’t caught something strangely familiar within the four-year-old’s arms.

I thought it was a doll at first so I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But when I caught a glimpse of its fuzzy brown face, my heart nearly leaped out of my chest as an emotional tidal wave washed over the top of Joey’s memory blocks.

I was frozen in my tracks from the sight of this one-eyed brown teddy bear, my mind struggling to recall why I wanted to grab it and hug it, very probably crying my eyes out at the same time.

Then suddenly I remembered my teddy, my first bestest friend who I had tortured and betrayed, and then started getting faint impressions of other things I missed.

I pieced the face of a woman holding my teddy out to me while commanding the boy do the same, then slowly formed the sound of the word related to the face with Joey patiently waiting beside me.

Once I figured out who the woman was, I turned to Joey and said, “Please? Take me to my mom? Take me home?”

Joey’s expression hit the floor at that point. Staring at the dirt floor, Joey appeared forlorn and beaten as he said, “All right. I’ll take us home,” then he got up and walked out without another word.

The following two days were a very confusing time for me. I had realized the reason I had been able to recall my mother’s face was because Joey had removed the block to relieve the strain within my mind. What didn’t occur to me was that he had probably done it more to prevent my undoing it myself, fearing I would then continue to remove the rest as well.

But for the time being, I was happy to be going home with Joey, even if I didn’t have any clue as to where home was or what it was like. For the first time in my limited memories, I had a place to belong to and someone besides Joey to learn from and be with.

The confusing part was how Joey seemed to dread the idea, yet in some fashion was looking forward to it too. We spent the two days traveling to San Luis Potosi which was the nearest city with an international airport, and the closer we got, the more Joey seemed to regret his decision, but he didn’t turn us back either.

We arrived at the airport sometime after three in the morning, and while I was busy checking out the people sleeping in the airport all around us, Joey made a single phone call.

I was pleased to see some of the strain and stress he had before making the phone call had left by the time I rejoined him. But when he looked at me with a sort of soft and sad look, I knew something was wrong.

He finally said, “Your plane leaves at seven.”

“My plane? What about yours?”

“I’m not going. I ... Shit, Tim. I’ve made a mess of my life back there. But here I have a home and an entire village of friendly people that can help me get by until I can find someone else to hook up with. Besides, I think I’m tired of being able to control people. I miss having people who are my equals, shit like that. I think I miss having real friends.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” I said somewhat stubbornly. “I don’t care what you did before. I don’t know how to do anything without you. Come with me. We can make everyone happy you came back.”

“It’s not that simple, Tim,” Joey sighed. “Come ‘ere,” he said, sliding over slightly to make room on the floor beside him.

I sat down without hesitation but found myself oddly ill at ease by the way he took my hand in his and said, “I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and some of them I did because I hated you so much. I know right now you don’t want to believe it, but after you get home and your mom helps you remember who you are and your life, you’re not going to want me as your friend.”

“No, that’s not true!” I said, confused.

“Believe me, Tim. I know how you’re going to feel because I felt that way myself once. But not anymore. I don’t know exactly why, but I feel like my old self again. I ... I care about you. Please, don’t forget that? I know this doesn’t make much sense, but whatever happens, no matter what you remember about what I did, try and believe that I’d never do those kinds of things to you or anyone else again.”

He turned away from me to wipe the tears that had been forming in his eyes but had not yet fallen, then after a few moments listening to him sniff, I said, “There is something else you’re not telling me. Something else you’re afraid of.”

After he turned and stared in my eyes a few moments, he seemed even more saddened by something and turned away again.

“I miss her.”

“Who?”

“Someone very special to both of us. Her name is Suzi Aster.”

“Suzi Aster...” I echoed as I struggled to recall anything about her.

“Even when I was going around raping girls, plotting to somehow get back at you for all I thought you did to me, I loved her. But I couldn’t control myself sometimes, and I was afraid of hurting her. So I stayed away from her. Now she knows all about what I did. I don’t think I could handle seeing it in her eyes.”

“Seeing what?” I said as I absorbed his confession for all time.

“I don’t know. Fear? Distrust? Hate...” he said, ending in a whisper as he shuddered.

I watched him as he quietly cried for a few minutes, then once he started to sober up, I said, “You have to come with me.”

“WHY?!” he said with emotion when he faced me. “Why do I have to hold your hand whenever you do something new? You can read minds and you can make people do things for you. You don’t need me. You never have,” he choked.

“You have to come with me,” I repeated without emotion. “We are partners. Even if I don’t need you, you still need me. Either way, you’re coming with me.”

Again he stared into my eyes, and after a few moments, I asked, “What are you doing that for?”

“You used to make me feel better just by looking into my eyes. I’m sorry. I just keep hoping...”

He stared into my eyes a couple of moments longer before giving up with a yawn, then sat back against the wall again with a sigh.

“There’s another reason I can’t go with you,” he said, not looking at me. “The plane only had one seat left, and your mom only forward enough money for one ticket.”

“You’re either coming with me or I don’t go,” I said firmly. “And since I’m going, you better think of a way to get both of us on that plane.”

“Shit, Tim. That’s the first thing you’ve said since you woke up that sounded like the real you. I can’t make any promises,” he said, stifling another yawn, “Let me take a quick nap and then we’ll see.”

I wasn’t the least bit sleepy after napping during the drive there, and once Joey was sound asleep, I made sure he would stay that way while I went in search for another plane ticket.

Once I had two first class tickets in my pocket, I recruited a pair of American stewardesses to help me move Joey to a more comfortable place to sleep, then went to the airline’s staff room for a long overdue fuck. I clearly remember being disappointed by their performance, having built up high expectations for an American woman’s ability to fuck.

I woke Joey before it was time to board, then went to get him some coffee like he had asked. I had just found a place open inside the terminal when the thought occurred to me he might try and slip out. So I turned around and hurried back, and as I approached the bench where I had left him from behind, my heart started to race because he was no longer sitting there.

As I quickly glanced around in hopes of catching sight of him, an older lady passed me heading for the bench as fast as she could go. But when she got there, she didn’t even try to sit down, but instead she hit Joey over the head with her bag while complaining to him in Spanish about how rude he was to be taking the whole bench up.

“Shit, lady! All right! I’m UP! Shit,” he sputtered, sitting up.

He rubbed his eyes then looked around, catching me gaping at him.

“What’s with you? And where’s my coffee?” he grumbled. “Shit, I knew I should have never started drinking that shit.”

The announcement for our flight to board came as I opened my mouth to reply, then saw the panic on Joey’s face as he realized he wouldn’t have time to get a ticket before the plane left.

“Two first class tickets for the seven o’clock flight to the U S of A,” I said, waving them in front of his face. “I’ll have Jane get you coffee on the plane if you want, but you might as well wait so you can go back to sleep once we’re in the air.”

“Shit,” he said with a sleepy grin, but then his face fell from a fit of nerves.

I said firmly, “You’re coming with me.”

“All right,” he sighed. “Just remember you were the one who wanted me to go.”

Despite still being tired, Joey didn’t go to sleep until a solid hour after we were in the air. Normally I should have been feeling pretty proud of myself, for we somewhat had a switching of roles. Joey had accepted my decision even when he didn’t want to do it, placing his trust in me as I had done so with him.

But I wasn’t feeling proud, amused, happy, or even sad about this or anything. I simply knew that he now needed me more than I needed him, and I suppose I must have felt that I owed him for what he had done for me.

I pondered on my lack of emotions while a fourteen-year-old Oklahoma girl experimented giving her first blowjob. Every person I examined seemed to be full of conflicting motivations because of their emotions kept getting in the way. Kerry, the girl slurping on my cock, was a perfect example to me of how emotions got people into trouble.

She had been alone in her hotel room flipping through channels when she ran across an adult channel and got an eye full of some guy’s cock. At first, she had only been curious, but after the first five or ten minutes, she started getting turned on watching that guy get a blowjob from a woman with an incredibly active tongue.

It grossed her out when the guy came and the woman made a show of letting it flow out of her mouth then sucking and licking it all down. But the next day, she couldn’t help but to flip back to that channel and watch as a different girl got fucked by the same guy.

For the rest of the week, she watched as much as she dared, faking having diarrhea two days in a row in order to stay in their hotel room while her parents and little brother explored the town. She knew it was wrong, and she had worried all night that her little brother might mention what he had seen when he had turned on the TV, Kerry having forgotten to change the channel before she had turned it off.

After Kerry tasted semen for the first time and decided it wasn’t all that bad, I realized that I did experience one emotion, that being desire to have sex. But once I had recovered from my orgasm, I found my mind completely clear of such distractions and quickly hit the self-destruct and sent Kerry back to her seat without a memory of her first sexual feat.

I suppose parts of my personality were starting to return, for once I had cleared my head of my sexual wants, I started to consider what was moral and what was not.

If Joey had scanned my mind when he awoke, he would have found a different person than when he had gone to sleep. I had already decided to curb my sexual desires with the goal of becoming completely emotionless and thus free of the confusion the people around me seemed to always have.

The plane only took us as far as Houston, Texas, so after we went through customs without any passports (not that we needed them), we waited around the airport for a couple of hours before boarding a different plane bounded for Kansas City.

The flight to Kansas City was the only one available at the time my mom had forwarded the money, but I had the impression it would be a long drive home and that I didn’t live anywhere near Kansas City.

“I didn’t tell your mom I was bringing anyone with me,” Joey said while we ate the inflight dinner. “Of course that’s when I thought I was going to stay in Mexico and just send you by yourself. Uh, Tim. There’s something I haven’t told you that you need to get ready for.”

“What?” I said between bites.

“Everyone at home thinks you’re dead.”

“Oh. Are you going to eat that slice of tomato?”

“You can have it,” Joey said after a hesitation. “But did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah. Everyone thinks I’m six feet under. I guess Mom’s going to be surprised to see me.”

“Shit, Tim. That’s the understatement of the year. Don’t you get it? She’s going to get really emotional, and if you just stand there like you’re a tree, it’s going to just make it worse.”

“She’s going to get emotional?” I said, finding the concept a bit bitter. “Then I’ll wait on the plane until after you deal with it.”

“Fuck that shit,” Joey said. “You’re the one who wanted to go home. You’re the one who said take me to your mom. Well, you’re the one who’s going to have to calm her down after she falls to pieces hugging you. Shit, that is if she even recognizes you. You need a haircut, not to mention a bath and a shave. Come to think of it, your hair should have been turning blonde by now. I wonder why it’s still dark brown.”

“I used to have blonde hair?” I said, trying to imagine it. “That would look weird.”

“Not as weird as when I had black hair,” he said with a touch of amusement.

“Black hair,” I said. “Yeah, now that would be weird.”

I looked over at him and found him deep in thought, his face displaying the discomfort the memories he was wallowing in were causing him.

I asked him, “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” he said, snapping out of his trance.

“Make yourself feel bad by thinking about what you did.”

“Because I ... Shit, I don’t know. I guess I can’t help it. Shit, Tim. I hope you don’t ask something like that when your mom sees you.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Okay then. What should I do when she gets emotional?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Just be happy to see her and hug her back and stuff. Don’t go overboard or anything. That would be even worse than not doing anything at all.”

“Do I kiss her?” I asked, thinking of the foreplay we had done with the girls before I had given it up for being a waste of time.

“I’m sure she’ll want to kiss you, so you might as well. But like I said, don’t go overboard. Just one or two kisses, then just play it by ear. We’re not trying to fool her, just keep her from going into shock.”

If I hadn’t known the true reason for Joey’s nervousness, I would have thought he had a fear for landings. If I could have felt emotion, I probably would have been feeling pretty disgusted with his tense and nervous mood. When the captain announced we would be landing soon, Joey started to fidget, then during the descent, he started making peculiar jokes that caused people to stare.