“That one,” Annie said, pointing to a card in the middle of the fan-shaped spread on the table.
“Are you sure?” Emily asked.
“Quite sure.” What was the point in changing her mind when, face down, all the cards looked alike?
“This is exciting!” Emily breathed, fake nails gripping the card Annie had indicated, turning it slowly, eyes widening as the image was revealed. “Oooo! The Fool!”
“It reminds me of a court jester,” Annie remarked, staring at the garish picture.
Emily screwed up her face as if to indicate that rank amateurs should know better than to offer hermeneutic suggestions. Out loud she said, “But what does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” Annie replied, wishing she hadn’t allowed herself to be dragged into Emily’s latest enthusiasm. “Something about speaking truth to power, perhaps?”
“If that’s what it means to you,” Emily pouted.
“What does it mean to you?” Humouring Emily was always preferable to contradicting her.
The woman did indeed perk up. “The Fool is all about new beginnings,” she gushed. “About taking a leap of faith. Into the dark, as it were. You need to try new things. The Fool is related to the astrological planet Uranus, which is all about novelty and getting out of your comfort zone.”
“I’m very happy in my comfort zone, thank you very much.” Annie nodded at the card. “Besides, if trying new things means going over the edge of a cliff, you can count me out.”
“The cards never lie,” Emily told her sternly. “Like I said, it’s a leap of faith. There’s a reason why you chose this one.” She tapped on the card for emphasis. “Why your subconscious chose this card.”
Stuff and nonsense, Annie thought. Out loud she said, “I’m sorry, Emily, but there’s no great mystery here. In fact my subconscious and I are on extremely amicable speaking terms.”
Alarmingly her friend fixed her with the kind of stare only the newly converted ever employ. “You just think that,” she declared. “But really there’s all sorts of stuff sloshing around in there.” She jabbed a finger at Annie’s head. “I could help you access it, if you wanted me to.”
Against her better judgement Annie felt that it might be quite amusing to let Emily try, if only to prove to her friend that there was nothing in this nonsense. “How?” she said.
Again Emily went into rampant enthusiasm mode. “I’ve been doing this evening class,” she said. “Mesmeric tarot. It’s amazing…”
“Hold on,” Annie said, putting up one hand. “Mesmeric tarot. You want to hypnotise me?”
“I’ve done it myself,” Emily gushed. “You have nooooo idea who you are until you’ve travelled to the deepest reaches of your subconscious.”
Annie suppressed the laughter she felt bubbling to the surface. “And fallen off the edge?” Seeing that Emily was taking the quip badly, she recanted. After all, there was nothing to fear here. There was no way in hell some half-baked hypnotic technique Emily had learned over an evening in a rented classroom at the local comprehensive would work on her. “OK,” she said, “Go for it.”
Emily lightened up again almost immediately. “This is how it works,” she said, sliding the Fool further toward Annie. “You have to focus very hard on the card and let the Fool clear your mind. Then you start to count backwards from fifty to one.”
Seriously, this was so ridiculous it would be a pleasure to do it, just to help Emily regain her senses.
“Fifty to one,” Annie said, staring at the oblivious character in front of her. “Fine.”
“Only when you’re ready.”
And when am I ready? Annie wondered. She stared hard at the Fool, as much for show as anything, fixating on the bell on the figure’s cap. “Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven…” Emily began to ululate; it sounded like some kind of mantra; nine or ten syllables stuck on repeat. Suppressing her urge to laugh again, Annie continued, “…forty-six, forty-five, forty-four, forty-three, forty-two…”
# # # #
It was just like when she’d had surgery, Annie thought later, in the car. She had no recollection of when she’d lost consciousness, although Emily had assured her that her subconscious had been wide awake the whole time. It irked her that she’d proved so susceptible to what was self-evidently little more than a party trick, even if there was something unnerving about the way Emily had looked at her as they parted. To distract herself, Annie sang along with the tune on the radio, the presenter suddenly interrupting the music.
“It’s coming up to four o’clock, and I’ll be handing over to the newsroom shortly. Don’t forget, in the next hour we’ll be talking about home improvements. The DIY sector is booming, and I want to hear from you. Is there anything more satisfying than doing it yourself? Call now…”
Annie didn’t hear the rest, it was as if a switch had been tripped in her head, and elsewhere, an urge so powerful she had to pull over at once, just about having the presence of mind to hit the flashers as she came to a halt with the right hand tyres resting on the grass verge.
With the engine still running and half the car still on the roadway, she pulled her tunic out of the way and shoved her hand down her leggings, straight inside her knickers. Her clit sparked, triggered by a finger. Annie moaned loudly, adjusting her hand so that she could rub her clit with the heel while her fingers slipped in the spontaneous outpouring. “Aaaaaah!” she breathed, feeling firecrackers between her thighs, pushing her fingers up inside and twisting, her hand simultaneously grinding against her clit; consumed by a form of rapture she could never have conceived of.
A sharp rap on the window brought her to her senses. Glancing to one side as she pulled her hand from the leggings she flinched at the blinding neon glare of the traffic police. Muttering extremely unladylike words under her breath she slid the window down.
“Good evening, ma’am,” the officer said. “You do know that there’s no stopping on this stretch of road?”
“I… I thought I heard something,” Annie breathed, fumbling for something that sounded even half way plausible. “From the engine.”
“Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but I’m pretty sure that no Road Traffic Act has ever qualified that as an emergency.” He was nodding at her hand, the one that she was still holding aloft, unsure what to do with her sticky fingers, which nevertheless shortly came to smear her forehead as she rested her head on her hand, the full ramifications of the situation hitting her.
“Ma’am. Ma’am!” She turned her head, making sure not to look the police officer in the eye. He was holding a breathalyser. “I’m going to have to ask you to blow into this.”
Possession was instant, normal Annie vanishing, an obscenely coquettish creature replacing her. “Why officer, I’d much rather blow…”
“Ma’am!” the man said sharply enough to bring normal Annie scampering back. “I’m minded to let you off with a stern talking to, but I have to warn you…”
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I don’t know what came over me.”
But she did. It was all too apparent now that Emily, against everything Annie had ever believed, had managed to not just hypnotize her, but make her susceptible to certain triggers. It was horrible, terrible, and she would phone Emily the first chance she got, but not from the car. She needed to get home as quickly as possible, radio off. The police officer had been as good as his word, but she had the feeling misfortune was exceedingly peeved at having been thwarted.
“You look exhausted,” her husband told her. He’d come to greet her in the hall, spotting immediately that she was out of kilter.
“Oh, you know Emily. Exhausting is her middle name. She’s on some new tarot kick. She’s been doing evening classes.” Annie deliberately failed to mention the mesmerism, along with her brush with the law. Certain things husbands just didn’t need to know.
“Evening classes? Tarot?” Ben sounded amused. “You must tell me all about it, but first, let me put the kettle on, you look like you could do with a brew.”
Just like that the switch in her head was tripped. “No thanks,” Annie said. “But I could really do with having my face covered in as much spunk as possible.”
Ben stared at her open-mouthed, leaning back against the doorjamb in disbelief. “I don’t think…” he began.
“Please! Please!” Annie said, a residue of her normal self just about aware of proceedings, but powerless to do anything about them. “Please cum all over my face, darling.”
“You’re clearly not yourself,” Ben decided. He looked as if he was trying to work out what to do with this woman who had all the outer attributes of his wife, but certainly wasn’t behaving like her. “Perhaps you need a lie down.”
“No!” Annie exclaimed. “I need your spunk. All over my face.”
“What’s happened to you?” Ben may well ask. His wife had always been resolutely opposed to the deposit of seminal fluid on her face, though sensible enough to overlook his occasional online indulgence of such activities.
“Nothing,” Annie breathed. “I just want you to glaze my face so very much.” She’d moved right up to him, her fingers unbuckling his belt.
“Annie…” her husband said, gripping her wrist. But somehow she was too strong for him, and as she exposed his genitals his resistance seemed to melt away. “Are you quite sure about this?”
“As sure as you are,” she giggled, for his cock was stiffening before her very eyes. She grabbed it, using her hand to make the foreskin reveal and obscure the spongy head. Cradling his balls with her other hand, she said, “Mmmm, so much spunk. I can’t wait for it to come shooting out all over my face.”
Normal Annie was appalled, but she was held in severe bondage at the back of new improved Annie’s mind as her lips slurped and slobbered their way down her husband’s rock-solid length. When she pulled back she was drooling heavily down her chin. Looking up to register the gratified shock on her husband’s face, she lashed at his bulb with her tongue. “Give me that spunk!” she urged. “Paint my face with it!”
Then she went down on him again, right the way down with ravenous greed, letting the bulb molest her throat in a way that normal Annie would never have allowed, far less enjoyed. Popping her lips off with a new burst of saliva, she proceeded to work her tongue down the shaft, wriggling it as she hummed with joy. This was good, in fact better than good; normal Annie didn’t know what she was missing.
She took Ben in her mouth again, lips resting just below the glans, slithering her tongue all over the same. That was all it took. Her husband grunted. “I think I’m about to…”
In an instant she’d let him out in the open air, her hand working as she sat there on her knees looking up at him. “Do it!” she enthused, aiming his swollen cock straight at herself. “Spunk my face like I’m one of your little porn floozies!”
The first jet struck her square on the tip of her nose. Feeling a splash dangerously close to one eye, she closed them both, feeling the next spurt strike her forehead and make a dash for her hair. She adjusted her aim, Ben’s cock seemingly inexhaustible as it pumped out warm, sticky seed which adhered to her lips and cheeks and joined the drool on her chin.
With the last drops, the spell was broken. Annie wiped her eyes and opened them to see her husband staring down at her as if wondering what he’d done. “I’d better clean myself off,” she gurgled before darting upstairs – not to wipe her face clean, however, but to phone Emily.
“What have you done?” she blurted down the phone, pacing the bedroom.
“The question is, what have you done?” Emily giggled.
“Emily, this isn’t funny,” Annie snapped. “Have you any idea what I’ve done? You need to come over right now and reverse whatever… hex…”
“I don’t have time,” Emily said. “Not right now.”
“Then I’m driving over to see you,” Annie told her.
There was a brief silence. Then Emily said, “OK, come. Come immediately.”
The by now almost familiar switch in Annie’s head was tripped. She felt her legs begin to tremble, unable to stop herself from crying out as her body tensed. Collapsing onto the bed she shook uncontrollably, her toes curling as she contracted in spectacular fashion. Just about able to function, Annie grabbed the phone, hearing Emily’s witchlike cackle before the line went dead.
Still trembling, and with semen congealing on her face, normal Annie returned, wondering how this could possibly be happening. It was all so much hocus pocus, all that chanting and the stuff with the cards, and yet… Had she been a fool for refusing to believe there might be something in it?
There was a knock, Ben poking his head round the door. “Are you…” Then he stared at her open-mouthed. “I thought you were going to…” he said, indicating his own face. “You always said…”
“It’s not so bad,” Annie told him. Then she put on a smile. “Why don’t you make me that cup of tea you offered earlier? I’ll be right down.”
Her husband vanished, leaving her to make herself respectable again. Strangely, she almost felt sorry to wipe her husband’s spunk from her face. She’d been truthful, It didn’t seem so bad to her after all; in fact a woman could almost get a taste for it. Then she reminded herself that this wasn’t the point. She needed to get Emily to undo what she’d done. What Annie did at home was her own business, but acting like a sex-crazed mad person in the outside world could land her in a veritable lobster pot. She dialled Emily’s number, but this time she was sent straight to voicemail.
The next day, being Sunday, she became only too well aware of how many perfectly ordinary statements had the power to trigger her. After wanking over her face before breakfast, Ben quickly worked out that offering her tea risked exhausting him utterly, but a host of innocent statements carrying unintended meanings made Annie’s day very interesting indeed.
