Chapter 1: Help, Helping Rhonda

When Rhonda first approached me about carpooling, I didn’t even think twice about it. She was happy to pay for half the gas, she actually lived on the way to work and - I’ll be honest - the fact that she was easy on the eyes certainly helped make the decision an easy one.

Rhonda was in her mid-thirties, about ten years younger than me. I’d always had a weak spot for girls in glasses (ask my wife!) and Rhonda was just the tiniest bit flirtatious when she asked me.

I knew I would never stray, of course - in almost twenty years of marriage, I’d never even once thought of cheating on my wife. We have two beautiful daughters together, and our marriage was solid as a rock.

But there was no harm in spending half an hour each morning with a flirty co-worker, right?

Well, that’s what I’d thought.

It turned out that once she got what she wanted, the flirtatiousness disappeared. I was still friendly to her - it’s in my nature - and for whatever reason, Rhonda took that as a sign I was interesting in hearing about everything that was bothering her in life.

***Everything.### Her personal life, her family, her job - Rhonda worked in marketing, a whole different area of the company than me, and so presumably she saw me as a safe person to vent to about her creepy boss, her useless subordinates, even the annoying way the sun hit her desk. Within two weeks, I seriously wondered if there was ANY part of her life that Rhonda was happy with.

Now I’m a pretty easy-going guy. When my youngest daughter turned eighteen, she asked if she could have some booze at her party. Most Dads would be the last person to talk to about this kind of stuff, but I’ve always tried to be as approachable as possible - probably why Rhonda saw me as a suitable target for her endless venting.

Anyway, I bought my kid and her friends a few beers, and since they were drinking in the house, no one got totally wasted or busted by the cops or anything like that. Win-win, hey?

But even I have my limits, and after two weeks of putting up with Rhonda’s bitching, I’d had enough. I figured I had a few choices: I could ask her to stop carpooling with me, or ... I could do something to change her behavior.

I should probably warn you: from here, what I did gets more than a bit unethical. I wish that I could say that I sat down with her and had a chat about what we talked about in the car ... but, well, I didn’t.

Instead, I pulled out a magazine that I’d bought a few years ago. I’m not a hoarder or anything like that - normally after I read a magazine, I put it straight into the recycling. But this one had a page of ads at the back, and for whatever reason, one of the ads had caught my eye.

CHANGE THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU, it read. ALTER THEIR MINDS AND THEIR THOUGHTS AND TURN THEM INTO YOUR FANTASIES. I never, ever intended to have sex with Rhonda. I’m going to clarify that again - I love my wife, I love my family, and I was never going to do anything that would risk breaking them up.

But here’s the thing - Rhonda was pretty clearly unhappy. As I’d learned over the past few weeks, she didn’t have a boyfriend, family ... from the sounds of it, she didn’t even have any friends. She lived to work, and based on how much she was complaining, she didn’t even like her work that much.

This ad had been sitting in the back of my closet for years now. It had gotten into my head, and I’d never been able to bring myself to throw it out. Obviously I’d never use it on anyone I knew, but I think I’d kept in just in case I met someone as unhappy as Rhonda. Just to change their lives for the better.

I swear.

It was about a week before the tapes arrived, and man was I glad when they did. Firstly because I was deathly curious about whether they’d work as advertised, but mostly just because I was sick to death of Rhonda’s bitching.

My politeness never wavered, but the complaints after complaints were starting to get to me. There was one positive thing about them though: they assured me I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t destroying a perfectly happy person, or making a happy person unhappy. I was ... Well, you’ll see exactly what I did, and you can judge for yourself.

I played the first tape on Monday morning. Rhonda was just telling me about how her cat had just died (I didn’t even know she had a cat! Rhonda only seemed to acknowledge things in her life after they went to shit. Seriously, spending an hour a day with her was more draining than the rest of my life put together) when I put the tape on.

“What’s this?” she said, her scowl suddenly gone. I had to admit, the music was pretty good - it’d have to be for the tapes to work, I guess.

“It’s a new band,” I lied. “Someone at work lent it to me.”

“It’s pretty good. What’re they called?”

“I don’t know, sorry,” I said. “I’ll try to find out for you.”

I was currently playing tape one of five. It was pretty simple: each tape had a different message, subliminally encoded underneath the music. It was just a single sentence, looped over and over again, and after about an hour, the person listening would accept that simple sentence as an absolute truth.

The next day, I’d play a different tape. It would reinforce the message of the previous day, locking it in as a fact, but more importantly - it would include a new message.

By the end of the week, Rhonda would be a changed woman. A happier one, I hoped.

And certainly a sluttier one.

That’s the thing - they didn’t have an option for “Stop complaining about your life and be happy with what you’ve got.” It wasn’t that sort of magazine. And this is where it gets a bit unethical ... the messages on the tapes were direct and unambiguous: 1) All women should dress like sluts.

2) All women crave cum.