Perceptions and Deceptions

The veil is gone, and she is stunned at what she sees.

A shifting kaleidoscope of thought and emotion flows like a river through the void, as if all of her dreamscapes have come together into a single, joined entity. Little more than a simple portal stands before her, a gray fog billowing in the doorway. She raises her hand, and the fog disperses as if chased before a summoned breeze.

She understands. The veils are the barriers, the places where minds meet in the dreamverse. They no longer exist for her. She is both excited and humbled at this revelation. Yet there is no time to dwell upon it. She turns to the portal and steps through.

She is inside Gina's psyche once more, manifesting as little more than a shadowy thought at the edge of Gina's subconscious. Ahead of her, in a circle of light, Gina's day reveals itself. Cassie despairs as she witnesses Gina's fall to Brad, and her willing acceptance of everything that Victor had taught her.

Cassie gasps as a sound rises from the darkness like the hiss of a serpent about to strike. It takes on tangible form, whirling about the sphere of consciousness encapsulating Gina's thoughts, as if trying to get in but managing only to skirt the surface.

She approaches, her steps measured and cautious, and strains to hear. She reaches out a hand, letting it touch the rushing flow of energy. Instead of an expected icy chill, her hand is bathed in gentle, hopeful warmth.

" ... lied ... he lied ... Victor lied..."

Cassie turns her head, and is somehow not startled to see Gina standing there, her hands folded before her.

"Victor lied," Gina says. "He really did. I can say it and nothing's happening. It's like Victor can't hear it."

Cassie feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She looks behind her and is certain she can hear distant footsteps.

Gina takes her hand. "But he might sense you. Please, this way."

Cassie is as surprised as she is pleased. It is not just a trick, a way of baiting her to delve further into Gina's psyche where Victor's shadow can converge on her. With her new empathic abilities she would have sensed that. She could even sense the presence of the "guards" as they trekked through the labyrinth of dungeon-like corridors without hearing them.

But her abilities go only so far. She loses track of where she is the further they go. She will not be able to get herself out again. She would have to rely on Gina once more.

Gina takes them almost to the core of her psyche. Just short of it, Gina suddenly dives down a narrow, dark corridor that had not been there before, dragging a stumbling Cassie along with her.

"We have to keep going," Gina says, her voice raspy as if the darkness were trying to swallow her voice. "I had to put it here. It's the only place Victor can't reach right now. But we can't linger or--"

Very soft and very distant, a foot scuffs against stone.

"Come on!" Gina whispers, and pulls Cassie into the black.

It swallows Cassie like a flood of thick tar, clinging and sticky, her feet faltering as they seem to adhere to the stones. She loses all sense of direction, even up or down, until pink-white light blazes ahead of her, and she emerges into a room.

Cassie staggers into the center of the space, her surroundings spinning in a blur of bubble-gum pink, gleaming white, and bright cherry red.

She hears a door close, and a sudden and almost euphoric calm settles over her. Everything abruptly comes into focus, and she stands in a bedroom. "Wait, this is ... this can't be..."

"It's a safe place," Gina says. "He can't touch me in here."

Cassie looks around again and perceives a bedroom that is an idealized vision of childlike innocence. Large, bright hearts fill the walls, the spaces between filled with cute bunnies and adorable teddy bears. Along the baseboard trim are sunflowers with shining smiles and leaves spread as if inviting a hug.

And everywhere, inside the hearts, curling about the little ribbons that joined the cavorting bunnies and frolicking bears, circling the sunflower faces like halos, written in girlish curlicue script are two words over and over: VICTOR LIED.

"He claimed that I had my first sexual experience with Brad in his office," Gina says. "He claimed he never touched me sexually since I wasn't ready. He lied. He made me think it was Brad, but it was Victor that did it."

Cassie is too astonished to speak at first. Finally, she tears her gaze from the walls and stares at Gina. "How did you find out?"

"It's complicated. But I managed to get myself to say something to Brad, and he revealed the truth without realizing it. Victor made a mistake. He never made Brad believe the lie; he just counted on me obeying his directive not to mention anything about it to Brad."

"What of Gina? I mean you. The REST of you," Cassie says, exasperated. "Does she realize it as well?"

"It's all in here in this room. No one but you knows it's here."

Cassie looks around the room and is disturbed, not because of the childlike nature of the decor but how generic it appears. Aside from the words, the room itself could have been a furniture store showroom, just bland pieces of reality shoved together to approximate a home setting.

Cassie looks back at Gina. "What do you want to do next?"

Gina wrung her hands. "I-I don't know."

"We should figure out some way to ease Victor's control of you. Maybe expand this room and ... well ... flesh it out."

Gina gives Cassie a despairing look. "But I don't know how!"

Cassie wants to give reassurance that she would lend Gina whatever energy was needed, until she looks into Gina's frightened eyes and realizes that is not the problem.

"I told you before that I don't know who I am," Gina says.

"What about your core, the place you retreated to last time?"

"It's just an empty space. A void. That's all I am."

Cassie's eyes widen. "Gina, you don't mean Victor erased your memories completely?"

Gina's eyes glisten. She shakes her head. "There's nothing missing because there was never anything here to begin with!"

Cassie's heart thumps. "I don't understand," she says, but her spine grows icy with dawning realization.

"I'm the intruder, not Victor!" Gina cries. "I wasn't here before maybe a few months ago, when Mom ... wh-when Mom started acting different."

"Oh my God..."

"I've ... GINA'S been this way all her life."

Cassie feels sick. Suddenly the idea that Victor is immortal makes sense, as did his superhuman patience and meticulous sense for detail.

Gina touches her arm. Her heart lurches when a tear runs down Gina's face. "He BRED me this way, didn't he? Right from birth. I was born just to become a slave."

Cassie covers Gina's hand with her own, only to find her own hand is shaking as well. She swallows hard and nods, her throat too tight for words for the next few seconds. "You said your mother was acting differently. Was she trying to stop it?"

"I don't know. She was letting me make my own decisions and decide what I wanted to do with my time. But she's too far gone now. Victor did something to her, and now she's just his little puppet again. But not before she created me."

Cassie never expected this. Even if she could somehow magically lift Victor's control all at once, a near blank slate would be left behind.

"Giving up is almost easier," Gina says in a hollow voice. "At least I would have something. Some sort of identity. Some--"

"No!" Cassie says with such force that it startles Gina. "Stop talking like that! Victor doesn't want you to have an identity. He just wants you to be a mindless sex slave."

"Gina's not mindless. She--"

"It's as good as mindless if all she can think of is how to have sex!"

"What about you? You have power. You must, if you could reach me in here."

"What?"

"Can't you just take over? Take over Gina and make her obey you instead?"

"No!"

"But then you could reach me in here, and after Victor is gone, we could figure out how--"

"No, Gina, I can't!" Cassie cries. "Please, don't ask me to do that! We--"

Cassie's mouth drops open in shock as she realizes what she was about to say: we already have a slave.

In that brief moment, she sees the lie. She realizes what they have done to Diane. The moment does not last, but long enough to firm her resolve. "If we do anything of the sort, Gina, it will be working with YOU, giving you strength to take over YOUR own mind from within."

"But what do I fill it with?"

"When your mother was letting you do some things on your own, was there anything you really liked to do?"

Gina looks thoughtful for a moment. "I took walks."

"Walks? Where?"

"The little dirt road by the side of the house. The one with the old cemetery at the end, where I first saw Stephanie. I liked being around the trees, the wind, the silence. Oh, and the snow! I love fresh-fallen snow."

"That's it, then," Cassie says. "Focus on that. It's supposed to snow Sunday."

"It will? Oh, I really want to see it again! I want to see it lay on the trees and make them all pretty. I want to walk in it when it's still pristine." Gina's face fell. "But Victor will never let me do it."

Cassie considers. "Victor is training Gina, isn't he? I mean, not just sex, he's making you strut around in those outfits."

Gina nods. "Yes, he calls it presentation."

"Maybe you can find a way of convincing him it's part of that. Like it's practice or something."

Gina pauses for a long moment, then slowly nods. "All right. I'll try."

Cassie tries not to feel disappointed. She had expected to do something far more concrete. This seems like another baby step, and they did not have time for baby steps. Yet if it delayed Victor from finding out about their plans for one more day, it brought them that much closer to defeating him.

Gina touches Cassie's hand. "I wish I knew your name, but I understand why I can't." Her eyes still glisten but her lips curl into a ghost of a hopeful smile. "You've really helped me more than you can imagine."

Cassie slowly smiles.

Gina glances past Cassie. "Oh, look! What's that?"

Cassie whirls around, and sees a door in the opposite wall.

"It just appeared right now," says Gina.

Cassie edges towards it, but she feels no sense of dread. A pleasant, soothing warmth throbs from it in gentle waves. She opens it, and the dreamverse lies beyond. Cassie gasps in wonder as she realizes she can enter Gina's psyche at will without having to traverse the pathways guarded by Victor.

"I wish you didn't have to go," says Gina in a low voice.

Cassie turns back to Gina and hugs her. "I can get back to you quickly now," Cassie whispers in Gina's ear. "I might even be able to do it in the daytime."

"Yes, please, do so, if you can," Gina says. "I feel so lonely in here."

Cassie suppresses her own tears as she holds Gina's hands and nods, not trusting her voice.

"We better not leave that open too long, just in case Victor--"

"Yes, I know." Cassie retreats to the door. "I'll check on you again soon."

Gina smiles. "Thank you."

Cassie leaves. The door closes behind her and vanishes from her dreamverse. She is not concerned. She knows it will appear to her again when she needs it.

She feels a sense of exhilaration. For the first time, she feels she can embrace her powers.

She wonders if there is more she can do. Can she reach into Melinda's mind and wrest her from the control of the cult? Can she find Stephanie and break her free of her cage? Can she slip into Diane's mind and...

...

She cannot remember what she would want with Diane.

She reaches out her hand, and the continuum rushes past until her fingers brush against another door. So sudden is the transition that she jumps back in surprise.

Her heart pounds. Melinda's personal dreamscape lies beyond. As she approaches it, her nose is suddenly filled with an overpowering aroma, so thick that she nearly gags. She gasps in air, only to draw more of the musky odor of an aroused pussy.

Still breathing hard and trying to ignore the warm tingles in her sex, she reaches for the doorknob. She snatches her hand away when it touches something warm, fleshy, and stiff.

Cassie swallows hard and watches herself grasp the doorknob. The sensation of gripping an erect cock returns, despite what her eyes tell her. Her pussy throbs in anticipation. She presses her free hand against the door, only to feel her fingers sink into aroused feminine flesh. She whimpers as pleasure rises in her pussy.

"No, th-this isn't real, it's just..." Cassie protests, until her ears fill with deep, lustful moans and whispered seductions. She shudders and leans against the door, shivering as her fingers curl around the delightfully hard cock in her hand. She wants to stoke it and feel it throb in her fingers.

Her hand grasping the doorknob trembles, tenses, then lurches, giving the knob a tiny turn.

Cassie closes her eyes. The voices are relentless, drowning out her thoughts, filling her head with perverse enticement that makes her pussy drip.

( ... come in ... be ours ... fill with cum ... obey ... great pleasure ... no, don't ... sex toy ... submit ... no, get back ... complete slave ... totally ours ... get back Cassie ... never stop cumming ... constant pleasure ... NO CASSIE DON'T COME IN! GET AWAY!! )

Cassie shrieks and falls away from the door. The door vanishes, leaving her hurtling backwards...