Jilly was a bleach-blonde, bubble-headed bimbo.

A lot of my girls could barely stand to have her around, but there were a couple of clients who wanted to fuck the dumbest chick possible-- presumably the ones who would feel threatened by a girl with a brain. I usually send Tammy, who fakes idiocy well, but there's something to be said for a natural talent, and one guy in particular favored Jilly nearly exclusively and very frequently. After he was arrested (on completely unrelated charges, I assure you), Jilly's ... well, I guess you could call it her "productivity" ... declined significantly. I was this close to turning her out on the street, though I really thought it was a waste to let someone with her face and figure go to waste on a street corner or in a paltry strip club. It occured to me that, as a last resort, I had the ability to mold her into whatever I wanted to. It wasn't like anything about her would be a great loss if I screwed it up too badly.

Let me explain: most of my girls are fairly open-minded by nature-- you don't get many whores who haven't long ago had their inhibitions worn away by the prospect of dollar signs-- but from time to time they need a little bit of help. For example, Dayna wouldn't take it in the ass, no matter what her clients were offering to have her there, and since no fewer than three of them personally communicated to me that they were planning on going 'cross town to Madame Darlene's dirty little hut unless Dayna delivered the goods, stronger measures had been required.

I called an old employer of mine, Harry Pinchon aka "The Great Master Pinchon", whose "beautiful assistant" I had been in the bad old showbiz days, and asked him for a favor. Not too much later, he showed up as a weekend entertainer for the girls and did his entire stage hypnotist spiel for fun at one of our parties, and I made sure Dayna was volunteered as a subject. Though that night all Harry did was make her bark like a dog and sing showtunes, he embedded a post-hypnotic suggestion that would let him access her later on, at our convenience, and it wasn't long before our Dayna was happily presenting her rear to all comers, unsolicited.

Or there was the time when Peggy almost got killed by that wacko with the rope fetish; she was unable to perform for months afterward, and any time a man touched her she was brought to tears by the memory of nearly being strangled. Since we don't have that many female clients, she was essentially a charity case in my house until Harry helped her to forget the incident.

At any rate, I'd found that hypnosis was a great tool, but though I liked Harry fine, I was sick of paying his ass to help out my girls. For whatever reason, he wouldn't take his fees in pussy, just in cold green, and that was painful in harder times, like after I had to bribe that District Attorney. Now, I'd seen him do his show hundreds of times, and had seen him in the back rooms of countless clubs for "private sessions" (guess what kind of sessions those were?), so it seemed to me I knew how this hypnotism thing went down. If a somewhat goofy-looking middle-aged guy like him could put girls into trance, why couldn't I?

The answer was, of course, that I could, and very soon did. I tried Dayna first, because I knew she was susceptible, and after an hour's "relaxation exercises" she was staring blankly at my ceiling and telling me about being abused by her step-father. The tale was pretty gruesome, and I could see why she used to resist having it up the ass. It moved me enough that I resolved to steer the anal-fetishist guys towards Kandy from now on, though I still reinforced to Dayna that she'd give it up to her current clientele as before. I'm a softie, but I'm also a businesswoman and I didn't want to lose anybody. I have to admit that having her lying there so docile was getting me hot, and it wasn't long before I was fucking her face, all the time giving her instructions on how to improve her technique, and I have to say it paid off brilliantly because, to this day, she's still the choice pussylicker of all my most discerning clients.

But I digress: this is not her story.

I started considering my options for Jilly-- what was missing in my business model? I had the dommes and the subs (or those who could pretend at either), I had the white girls and black girls and Asian girls and the Hispanic girls, and girls who could fake most other nationalities with the proper cosmetics. I had Sally-Lynn who liked pain, Grace the bull-dyke, Diana the "full-figured" lady, and Fifi, whose surgical enhancements defied the imagination. I had tall girls and short girls, and enough wigs and hair dye to manufacture any requested coloration. What was missing that couldn't be otherwise faked?

The answer came to me after Clarence told me it would be his last visit. That happens all the time, by the way. The guy's getting married, or has gone religious, or has gotten through whatever part of his life made him seek my girls out. And a good fifty percent of the time it actually turns out to be true. But not always, and Clarence didn't seem the type to be leaving permanently. I hugged him, wished him luck, and politely asked him why.

"I can't talk to any of these girls, Tess."

I smiled. "That's not exactly their speciality, darling."

He reddened. "I know, but ... before. Afterward. It helps me if there's some kind of connection." I succeeded in not rolling my eyes-- at least outwardly. It's not like I'd never heard this from a client before, but really! A "house" doesn't get its "ill repute" from a lot of jabberring tender-loving care. The bucks roll in when the girls are hot and ready to trot. Aside from that, as long as they're friendly and polite and don't demean their customers (except the ones who want to be demeaned, of course), my girls will be successful, and therefore so will I.

"I understand," I lied. "Well, I hope you find what you're looking for, Clarence."

"I probably won't," he admitted. "But there's always the internet." And with a wave and a sad smile, he was out of there.

That last bit stuck in my craw, for some reason. Actually, for a very obvious reason: I've been in this business for twenty-five years, and the last ten have been touch-and-go because of all the "talent", amateur and otherwise, to be found with a few mouse clicks or a search engine. Don't get me wrong: I have a website myself, detailing all of my girls and their proclivities; it's not been entirely bad. But it's done out of survival more than anything else. I'm old-fashioned, and tend to think fucking for cash should be done discreetly and recommendations passed on by word of mouth. The internet just seems like a good way to get sent to jail when the authorities decide one day to stop turning a blind eye. Regardless, the point is that I'd lost a number of customers over the years because of some bit they found online somewhere, and anytime a customer mentioned it I had to choke down fury. Damned faceless techies who wouldn't know how to fuck if someone handed them a Kama Sutra and a magnifying glass, but who could throw enough suggestive photos and purple prose together to steal my client base.

I strode from the foyer, where Clarence had made his farewells, into my office. I flopped unceremoniously into the leather chair and opened up a web browser and a search engine, half-heartedly paging through the local set of independent "escorts". I don't know what it was-- Clarence's words, or maybe I was just on my game that day, waiting for enlightenment-- but after the seventh or eighth girl promising "a true GFE (girl-friend experience)" from a "college-educated" woman, it suddenly clicked for me. The thing Clarence had been seeking and, more generally, the niche market my girls failed to fill: the brainy, college-girl set.

Now, I'd never gone to college myself. I had stripped for a couple of years right out of high school, done some burlesque theatre (which didn't pay shit), then spent the next ten on my back for Madame Belle's establishment before taking over when the old coot kicked off-- twelve years ago this fall, it was. So my education, while hardly nonexistent (I attended the School of Life, thanksverymuch), was minimal when it came to book-smarts. But I'd done the sexy librarian role-playing enough times (and had my girls do it lots more) to know there's a certain appeal to the smart girl motif. What I hadn't counted on, and what had become clear to me in the last several hours, was that there seemed to be a mostly-untapped clientele out there who wanted it to go a little farther than the glasses and the prim hairstyles-- they actually wanted to discuss poetry or sociolology or ancient Roman history with these broads before fucking them senseless.

And I had to admit that none of my girls was up to the challenge.

Seeing a business opportunity here, I started paging through the independents again, to see if I could find one that looked desperate enough to want to work for me on at least a part-time basis. I'd just jotted down a couple of email addresses and was about to compose a message to these women when Jilly knocked on my doorframe and stepped inside.

"Can I come in?"

My reflex was to be annoyed at this unpleasant (and unprofitable!) presence; after all, she was the precise opposite of what I was currently seeking, and frankly I was planning on housing the new girl, whoever she ended up being, in Jilly's room. Jilly's former room, I already thought of it as. "You're already in, dear. What do you need?"

What do you need? I stopped cold. What did she need? I ignored, for the moment, whatever it was she was blathering about, and concentrated on what she really did need: a reason for existence. Something to make her worth keeping around this place. And I needed someone around the house with some pretty specific traits-- but was it possible, even with hypnosis? Using (I looked, disbelieving, at the vacant eyes across from me... ) this as raw materials? Surely not. But...

" ... and I just don't know if I should do it, ya know?" She snapped a bubble from her gum and looked at me expectantly.

"Um ... Jilly, I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I was zoning."

"Sure! Happens to me all the time." She giggled. "I was just asking if you think I should get the double-Ds like Nikki said I should."

Sigh. Nikki hated Jilly, and was always trying to get her to look stupid. Stupider. Once she'd convinced the girl to draw pubic hair on her naked cunt with an eyebrow pencil. At any rate, Jilly's five-foot-one frame was much too small for double-D breasts, and she'd just end up looking ridiculous-- and for johns who wanted "ridiculous", I already had Fifi.

"Jilly, dear, your breasts are fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Okay, Tess, I trust you."

And those last three words were the catalyst for everything which happened afterward.

It was surprisingly difficult to put her under.

She had all of the calm and attention span of a four-year-old who'd just eaten a fistful of candy, and I had nearly given up after an hour's trying, having had to remove her gum, her hair clip, and even her dangly earrings. It was these last which finally helped out; as I saw her staring at the glass gems that hung from them, it occured to me to try using those. Harry had always just used his hands as a focus for his inductions, and sometimes some stroking of the subject's temples, so that was the method I'd adopted, but when I saw her eyes fixed on the removed earrings, I remembered numerous bad movies with hypnotic subjects entranced using stopwatches or diamond pendants. Huh, I thought. The stereotype had to have come from somewhere.

"This hypno thing is hard, Tess. I thought you said it would be easy."

"Trust me, dear. It will work."

"Good, 'cause I really want to be able to give better head."

Ahem. That was how I'd gotten her in the chair, of course. I'd found out by experimenting on Carlita that a couple of suggestions would allow a girl to completely and easily suppress the gag-reflex, and even to provide better "milking" action using rhythmic movement of the throat muscles. Carlita's "returning customer" rate had skyrocketed: and she wasn't just for guys with the black antebellum servant-girl fantasies anymore. I'd performed this magic on Su Lin and Peggy as well, and had seen similar effects on the cash they brought in, so I had let Jilly know I thought it would increase the money she would produce. Since she'd been complaining lately that she wanted an "iPod thingy" like Grace had (how in the world would she ever operate it?), the comment about money made her decision for her, after I helped explain it to her.

She laid back on the bed and I tossed one of the gaudy earrings aside, retaining the other for use in the process.

"All right, Jilly, dear, let's try this a different way. I want you to look at the ... jewel ... on this earring. It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah, it's, like, my favorite. It's so sparkly, and goes well with my--"

"Hush, sweetie. No talking, just looking and listening."

"'Kay."

"Stare into the sparkles, Jilly. They shine brightly, and as I move them in the light they swirl from place to place. They're pretty, aren't they? So pretty that you don't want to look at less pretty things, just at the beautiful stone and the swirling sparkles. Keep looking, even if it gets harder to do. Keep looking especially if it gets harder to do. Looking at the sparkles, now, not a care in the world, feeling calm and soothed looking at the sparkles. Eyes may be getting heavy, now, but don't let them close, don't let them close because then you won't see the pretty spiralling sparkles. Looking at the sparkles will make them even heavier, make you sleepier, but still you should just relax and stare at them without closing your eyes." I looked at her face, now, and this method was obviously having more of an effect. The small crinkles in her brow softened, and her eyes blinked infrequently now-- and when they did, it was a long, slow, languorous motion which looked like a struggle between two opposing forces. I kept repeating this monotonously for a couple of minutes, as I saw her eyes go blank. "Your eyes need to close now, you can barely keep them open to see the sparkles. Don't worry, when they do close, you'll still be able to see them in your mind. You can close them when I tell you so. Keep staring into the stone and let your mind think only of how pretty the spiralling sparkles are ... and now you can close your eyes."

She'd been a more difficult subject than most of my girls, but it was evident she was under. "Jilly, do you hear me?"

"Uh huh."

"Do you feel very relaxed and happy?"

"Uh huh."

"Do you still see the sparkles?"

"Uh huh. Pretty."

"Yes, they're lovely, I'm sure. Jilly, dear, keep looking at the pretty sparkles, but while you're doing that I'd like you to answer some questions for me."

"Mmkay."

"Jilly, dear, how old are you?"

"Twenty-six."

"Did you go to high school?"

"Sure." I was surprised.

"Did you finish high school?"

"Yeah." I was even more surprised.

"You passed all your classes?"

"All except biology. I had to give Mr. Morris head every day for weeks to even get a D-. The other teachers I fucked gave me Cs." I was less surprised.

"All right, dear. Have you always had trouble with school?"

"No."

"Can you think back to a time when you didn't?"

"Okay."

"How old were you, then?"

"Six."

"You were good at school when you were six?"

"Uh huh."

"What made you stop doing well at school?"

"I was stupid."

"But how could you have done well at school before then if you were stupid?"

"I didn't know I was stupid until Daddy told me so."

"Explain that for me, Jilly. What happened?"

"I didn't mean to do it. Really! I didn't know I wasn't supposed to tell Mommy about Daddy's friends."

"Daddy's friends?"

"Paula and Cindy and Jamie and Violet and--"

"Okay, Jilly. I understand. What happened, then?"

"Mommy left the house and didn't come back, and Daddy spanked my butt and yelled at me. I cried and told him that I was sorry, but he kept telling me I was so stupid, that I fucked everything up. That it was my fault Mommy left, and that I would never learn."

Poor kid. Reminded me of my old man. The bastard.

"And then you didn't do well at school anymore?"

"The next day in school I got two problems wrong in subtracting and I told the teacher it was because I was stupid and I fucked everything up, and she sent me to the principal's office. He was nice to me and gave me a lollipop, and sent me back to class. I liked the lollipops."

"Jilly, I'm going to give you a lollipop, now. Would you like that?"

"Mmm hmm."

"It's a very special lollipop-- it will make you into a genius very quickly. Would you like that?"

"Sure." It sounded unconvincing; I could tell she was going to need some positive reinforcement (I didn't go to college, but as you can see, I read a lot of books).

"Once you finish the lollipop, your brain will be like a sponge for knowledge, and every time you learn something new, you'll feel very excited and sexy. In fact, you'll have the best orgasms of your life after you've learned something new. And you'll know that you feel this way because you're learning to be smarter. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

"Jilly, dear, what will happen every time you learn something new?"

"I'll feel excited and sexy and have the best orgasms of my life."

"Why?"

"Because I feel that way when I'm learning to be smarter."

"Right, dear. That's very good. Now I don't want you to remember this talk we've just had, I just want you to do what I told you, okay?"

"Okay."

"Good." My hopes were not high, but it had been worth a shot. At the very least... "Now, Jilly, as you finish off your lollipop, there, let me tell you some new things about your throat muscles..."

It wasn't long before Jilly was picking up more than just back-issues of Cosmo the other girls left lying around. As I think I mentioned, I'm an avid reader, and I had a decent collection of books. Jilly went crazy over them, finishing off all the Oprah Book Club recommendations I had in the next few weeks. Despite her "dumb" persona, it was evident the girl could read well enough. That or those books really were written at the fifth grade level, as that Time article had suggested.

Soon, however, she wanted more non-fiction, and if there's one thing my bookshelves lack it's the tedium of non-fiction. I gave Jilly what I had, but it wasn't much: some information on AIDS, abortion, and prostitution laws. Practical stuff. She finished it in under a week, spending a lot of time alone in her room with the books. I interrupted her once on a pretext, to see what she was doing in there, and was hit by the smell of sex when she opened the door. That, coupled with her blushed face, let me know she was eagerly frigging herself to get off due to the influence of my post-hypnotic suggestions and her reading material.

When she ran out of non-fiction, I brought up the possibility of going to the library to get more, and she looked at me like I was Moses, leading her to the promised land. She asked to go the very next day, and I called her a cab for the morning drive there; I planned on doing some shopping and then picking Jilly up on the way back home that afternoon.

Now I'm not exactly aware of what went down, but some fraction of it filtered to me through Jilly herself, and I believe what she told me. It seems she'd picked out six or seven books, and finally settled in the archaeology section, finding a book on ancient Mesopotamia and sitting at one of the corner tables. She'd opened the book up, skipped the preface, and by the end of page two her nipples had tightened and her cunt was slick. As she'd read of the priests-kings, of the priestesses of Ishtar, her thighs had slowly parted and her hands slowly crept between their pantiless expanse.

It wasn't until she'd reached her third silent, panting climax that she realized she had an audience. Three young men-- high school boys, probably-- had seen what she was doing and were staring, rapt, at a fantasy come true. Unfortunately, at the same moment, someone else discovered her audience, too, and with an offended cry had leapt towards her.

She'd run, then, down the staircase to the front door, and in a huff, trying to appear casual, she'd proceeded to check out the books she had. The librarian, coming down the stairs a minute and a half later, winded, hadn't been fooled, but had apparently not wanted to make a scene. She'd waited until after Jilly had checked out the books, seized her elbow, and dragged her to the front door.

I was there to pick her up when I saw her escorted from the library building by a stuffy-looking old bat in a red blazer. The woman had her by the arm, and as soon as she was out the front door flung Jilly away from her as hard as she could without risking injury. Jilly kept her balance, but in the process her armful of books and a little white card collapsed onto the sidewalk. The elderly woman, no doubt an administrator at the library, snarled "Disgusting slut!" at her and returned to the building. I got out of the car and helped pick up Jilly's books.

I looked at her library card as I handed it back to her, along with all the books she'd dropped. "'Jill'?"

She blushed. "Well, you know, 'Jilly' is kind of ... um ... babyish, don't you think?"

I shrugged. "Whatever floats your boat, sweetie."

So Jill it was.

The second time Jill got kicked out of the library, they almost arrested her, and at that point I forbade her to go back. She was crushed, and sulked for days until I finally told her she could use the computer in my office to connect to the internet. It wasn't a library, exactly, but I was sure that it would be an adequate substitute, for her purposes.

Of course, she had no idea how to use a computer, so I had to teach her the basics, which was kind of a pain in the ass. She was a quick study, though, eager and open, and after she learned elementary mouse-clicking and web-browsing she excused herself to go to the adjacent rest room. I shook my head and laughed to myself, and when she returned flushed and reeking of cunt it became clear she had been fingering herself to a messy orgasm while away.

I indicated she should sit down, got my purse, and headed for the door. She looked embarrassed when I said, on the way out, "Perhaps you could sit on a towel, so you don't ruin my nice leather?" but I heard her clicking away as the door swung shut behind me.

Jill's first customer in her new role was Clarence. It was actually her idea to contact him, as word had gotten around my house that he preferred brains to pussy. While I make it a point not to contact customers at home, I had an email address for him, so I dropped him a brief note: "Think I may have something that would interest you. Contact me for details. Tess."

A couple of days later, he called me and I told him I had a new girl he might like to meet. "She was a college gal who had to drop out in her senior year because her college found out about her escort business and expelled her."

Clarence was skeptical. "On what grounds could they do that?"

How the hell was I supposed to know? I'd just made it up on the spot! "She was doing it out of her dorm room. I'm not sure of the details, Clarence. But I'd like you to meet her and see what you think. No strings attached. Heck, if she decides she's into you, she may even give you a freebie." My girls never did, of course, but there was nothing wrong with letting the customer think it was a possibility.

In the end, Clarence decided to give it a shot, and she met him on a Tuesday night in the downstairs foyer. She had scorned her usual lycra micromini and tube-top, instead opting for something more subtle. She'd raided my costume vault for something a bit more dressy, but not formal: I recognized the Sexy Woman Executive suit, but she'd dropped the businesslike blouse in favor of a transparent top made of form-fitting nylon. She kept the suit jacket buttoned, but it was evident her 38Ds were only covered by a delightfully thin film underneath. I introduced them, and watched as Clarence's eyes bulged.

They moved to one of the fuckrooms, and I moved to my office to watch it on closed circuit.

Jill had classed the place up a bit with a vase of flowers and a tablecloth, and had some bottled wine and fresh bread on the table, at the ready. She was sitting across from him, her legs crossed at the ankle, leaning in to look into his eyes. I couldn't get all of the dialogue, but I caught the highlights. She was asking him about his hobbies, and apparently they got on the topic of crime novels. She was a fan of James Ellroy, he liked Dennis Lehane, they bantered lightly about their difference of opinion, and she touched his hand whenever she made a point. Soon she was laughing out loud with him, and stealing meaningful glances in his direction. Good fake-demure stylings; I wouldn't have believed this was Jilly if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I suppose really it wasn't: it was "Jill".

After a particularly vigorous laugh, Jill's ankle left its shoe, crossing his under the table, and slowly, throughout the subsequent conversation, it made its way up his calf to his knee. She pointed her toes and stroked his thigh that way, and she was suddenly quiet and thoughtful. She said something to him under her breath, and the look on his face was priceless. He slid his hand from her foot up past her knees and atop her thigh, and she lidded her eyes in apparent arousal when his hands penetrated her skirt. She moaned, leaning back (and pushing her ass forward on the seat) as he penetrated more than her skirt. She made little encouraging noises and there may even have been some words in there, but whatever sounds were coming out of her mouth were having a wonderful effect on Clarence. She suddenly grabbed his wrist under her dress and held the hand to her crotch, grinding on it with full force, and it was only seconds later that she cried out his name. As she panted there, and he panted in his chair, she brought the hand out from under her dress and took his fuckfinger in her mouth to the third joint, sucking it clean.

That was too much for her customer, who smashed the table aside, pushed her down to the floor, and tore his pants off with little ceremony. His lips on hers, his hands cupping her breasts, he was so lost in this scenario that he forgot to put on a condom, but Jill was ready and slid it onto his cock with an artistry even I had to admire, stroking him and cupping his balls as if aroused by the very act. He was ready to burst, and when he was properly adorned he thrust into her with a brute force which astounded me-- keep in mind I'd seen him with at least three of my girls. Nothing compared to this. He pushed hard at her, and was growling sheer animal noises into the cup of her throat, and she urged him on with vigor. When he came, his face was a rictus of near-agony, and Jill matched his tone with intense screams of her own. He collapsed on top of her, and she patted his head as he rested. Afterward, they just laid on the floor and talked of politics, of all things. When it was time for him to go, he picked her up off the floor, kissed her hand in a manner unseen since the 1960s, and asked when he could see her again. She told him she'd have to check her schedule (good girl!), but that sometime soon would be best of all. And with that, he gathered his belongings and moved into the nearby washroom. She was gone by the time he came out.

Clarence tipped big that night, and he left with a smile on his face. He even kissed my cheek on the way out the door.

Clarence's friends Todd and Ahmed called within the week to make appointments with Jill. And that was just the beginning.

Jill was making shitloads of cash for me, now. Not only had I opened up a whole new vista of customers by putting the cultured college co-ed fantasy out there, but the other clients started to favor her more, too. Val Vincent, who used to have a real thing for short brunettes who would spank him and call him degrading names in Spanish, was now regularly seeking Jill out instead of Maria-- a fact which pissed the latter off to no end. I had to break up a catfight in the dining room one morning; I had no idea what a "puta" was, but judging from the vehemence with which Maria had emitted it, it was not intended to be complimentary. Jill had apparently understood the term, though; while I'm not sure it insulted her, I think she was just sick of taking guff from the other girls. She'd plunged into her own tirade en Español, sunk her claws into the Hispanic girl's hair, and yanked her across the table before several of the other ladies had started pulling them apart. I docked them both a hundred bucks that week for fighting-- I can't have that sort of behavior going on in my establishment. Outside of the bedroom, of course; Ted Slobodov pays good money to jerk off while watching two elegantly coiffed and (faux-)Gucci-dressed ladies scratching and hair-pulling and at each other's throats.