Teaching Her A Lesson

Part Three: Homeschooling

Deep breaths. Deeeeep  breaths.

So that wasn’t working. The garage door creaked shut behind me. And behind that…

The night was almost perfect aside from that. Mid-sixties, a gentle breeze to keep the mosquitoes at bay, crickets chirping, stars shining. It was the sort of night that made me miss my childhood, camping out in the woods by my parents’ house, my friends and I pretending to be trailblazers braving the wilderness, yet conveniently in range to restock our supplies of junk food and flashlight batteries. Then, the worst thing I’d ever done had been   hiding  around the corner on the stairs and scaring  my sister so badly she’d peed her pants; the hardest decision that had lain before me was whether or not to join band  once we started middle school.

Oh, what a difference a couple of decades and a canister of black market neuroinhibitor made.

With a sigh, I made for the garage. My car was in the driveway now, the Stern girls’ in the garage. I prayed nobody had seen her in the short window before I’d been able to hide her away. My house was on a four-lane street, plenty of traffic; anybody who knew either of us and simply saw the two of us standing together on the front lawn would likely have real questions. Not that those questions would scratch the surface of what they ought to be asking about this whole nightmare. In one week, I’d gone from breaking my bank to try to help a wayward student, to somehow making a teenage girl kidnap her own sister. It was so ludicrous, it was almost funny.

Heh, better get in there before Abbie took it to the next level and started waterboarding her in my kiddie pool.

Oh god. I quickened my pace.

There in the garage sat Abbie on the trunk of her car. Here indoors, Taylor’s struggles from inside were much more audible, or perhaps she’d simply decided to kick and scream more now that she’d seen my face. That was a strange little knife in the gut, the idea that one of my students could be that frightened of me. Then again, I wasn’t the one who had trussed her up like a Thanksgiving turkey and shoved her in my trunk.

Only now, she was in my garage.

“You cool now? Got the little bitch out of your system?” asked the unrestrained Stern sister.

“Abbie, we ought to have a talk, I think. No, make that need  to have a talk. But right now, there’s a young woman tied up in the trunk of your car that we need to get out of there.”

The young woman did not, however, get out of the way. “Respectfully, Mr. C? That’s fucking retarded. I guaran-fucking-tee you that the second that trunk opens, she’s going to start screaming. That gag isn’t exactly Abu Ghraib grade restraint.”

“How in the hell do you know about Abu Ghraib?”

“Our uncle was stationed there when all the shit went down. Whole big thing.” How did that not surprise me? “Anyway, your neighbors’ houses are like five feet away. Y’all got fucking tiny-ass yards in this neighborhood.”

Rudely stated or no, she was right. We’d already been lucky that nobody had overheard Taylor’s brief outburst when Abbie first showed me what she’d stashed in there. On a night like this, too, there were decent odds that the Lawrences or the Maravans had their windows open, making it all the more possible they’d hear something.

There was, of course, the obvious way to make sure Taylor didn’t scream. From the way Abbie was eyeing my mini gardening chainsaw , I supposed  there were technically two ways. Jesus. No time to waste. In my paranoia that Taylor might disregard both brainwashing and blackmail, I’d opted not to leave the Serenex in my briefcase. Instead, I’d hidden it in the crawlspace under the house, nestled atop some of the exposed plumbing. Time to get crawling, I supposed. I secured a promise from Abbie that she wouldn’t do anything crazy for a few minutes and got hustling.

When I returned via the door between the garage and the laundry room a few minutes later, marginally cobwebbier and no less horrified by what I’d unleashed, Abbie was bent over the hood. “... if you don’t shut up, I’ma spray that shit right in your fucking eyeball, understand? God, you suck sometimes.” She perked up at the sight of me. “Finally. You  ready to do this? She’s gonna kick out the tail lights pretty soon if we don’t dose  her.”

I nodded. Envisioning the possibility that she could get a good scream out before the Serenex seeped into her bloodstream, I instead crawled into the backseat. The floor was littered with old fast food containers and other miscellaneous garbage, including, behind the center console, what looked to be a discarded condom. Classy as ever , I thought, before considering that maybe I ought to be a hair less judgmental as I prepared to gas my hostage. With a little rehearsal, I got the actions down. Lift the toggle, pull down the back seat, spray into the trunk, slam it closed. The effects hadn’t taken long the last few times. After Abbie directed an exasperated stare at me through the window, I pounced.

Taylor did try to issue what would have been a truly bloodcurdling scream had it not been muffled by the sock taped in her mouth. I sealed her in, climbed back out of the car, and counted to ten. Fifteen, for good measure. At my signal, Abbie popped the trunk.

Taylor was still glaring, still trying to say something. Her struggling and screaming, however, was done. There had been no way to aim very precisely in my method, but I could see a yellowed spot on the shoulder of her white t-shirt from where most of it had hit. I’d used more than enough to soak through, though, and from the visibility of the dark tint of her bra, I was sure she wasn’t wearing a second layer underneath. It was quite a transition, from mild-mannered workaday educator to someone who had to analyze the girl tied up in his garage to make sure he’d drugged her thoroughly enough.

“Gonna shut your gaping cunt of a mouth now, Tay?” Abbie thundered immediately, but I shooed her back.

“Taylor, I want to take the gag off and untie you. You promise you won’t scream, won’t try to run away?”

She mumbled something, but quickly conceded the necessity of answering with a nod. That would have to do. After all, the original manufacturer-stated purpose of this stuff was riot suppression. So far, this was as close as I’d come to use as intended. Great. Always reassuring when one finds oneself drifting into the lane traditionally reserved for authoritarian dictators and villains on cop procedurals.

As if I needed more reassurance that it was working, she didn’t so much as flinch as I retrieved my boxcutter and moved it toward her. I cut off the duct-tape from her wrists and mouth, helping her out of the trunk as she worked her sore jaw around. “Thanks,” she muttered as she struggled upright.

“Very welcome.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Me too. Are you OK? I mean, circumstance aside, but physically. Are you hurt, injured?”

“My shoulder hurts like hell, and I banged my head, but I probably won’t die from it.”

Abbie rolled her eyes. “If you didn’t try to dive out like a re-re while I was closing the trunk, you’d be fine.”

“If my own fucking sister didn’t go psycho on me–”

“If my  own fucking sister didn’t make plans to go telling everybody–”

“He drugged us! He molested me!”

“He’d never do anything inappropriate!”

“That’s just the drugs talking!”

“That’s just the you’re a dumb bitch talking!”

“GIRLS!”

They both turned to me, their glares for one another lingering. “How about we go inside and talk about this, calmly, in civil tones, and maybe figure out what we do from here?” Nobody had a better plan, so in we  went.

One afternoon last summer, one of my students, Miguel, had stopped by my house randomly to say hello. His family lived in the neighborhood and he’d been walking by, he said. Miguel had always been a nice kid, nobody I’d ever had any trouble with, but from the moment he showed up on my doorstep, there was this nervous tingle in the back of my mind about that tiny remote possibility of someday sitting in a courtroom trying to reassure a jury about a no-witness encounter with a student in my home. Miguel hadn’t made it past the front steps, and that was a student who had never given me any trouble a day in his life before or since.

Now I was walking into my living room with the Stern sisters, one fresh from being kidnapped in a trunk and the other obviously compromised by my indoctrination attempt. In fact, as we walked into the living room, I saw I’d even left Taylor’s video playing muted on the screen. God, I was stupid. If that knock on the door had  been the police, I’d already be boarding my one-way train to the penitentiary.

“Ew, gross! Were you just sitting here watching that? Oh my god, Mr. Canon was beating off to my  video, nasty! God, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”

I turned it off immediately, as if it made any difference now. “Taylor, maybe you should start thinking about where you are and what’s going on, and if outbursts like that are going to help any of us out of this predicament.”

Abbie was just looking at her sister like the girl had lost her mind, but I wasn’t about to let them start up  with each other again. The Serenex might have made Taylor biddable, but it hadn’t made her any less of a bitch. “And then there’s you. Abbie, what in the name of all that’s holy do you think you’re doing?”

She arched an eyebrow. “I told you, she was… Oh! That. Sorry, duh.” Before I could wonder what she was duh-ing about, her shirt was off, dropped on the floor like it was her living room and we weren’t in it with her.

“Abbie!”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled, two mammoth mammaries thrust forward as she arched her back to get at her bra clasp. The bra fell, and so did they. She even brushed her long hair back over her shoulders to make sure my view was unobstructed. God, I’d been a fool to think she and Taylor could be close to the same size. Those mostly-nude pics on her phone had not done these babies justice. It took everything in my conscious mind to abstain from throwing myself on the girl out of pure instinct.

“You are such a fucking skank! God, what is wrong with you?” snapped Taylor.

“What?” Abbie put her hands on her hips. Christ almighty, those things shook around just from her breathing . It might honestly be too much – except I couldn’t stop staring, my mouth flooding with saliva.

“You took your top off in Mr. Canon’s house! Am I, like, losing my mind here or something?”

“Apparently. I mean, why haven’t you?”

“Because he’s a dirty old creep!”

“When has he ever done anything creepy to us?”

The gaslighting almost made Taylor’s eyes pop out of her head. As the two went back and forth about why it was strange to be half-naked in my house, or why it was strange not to, I was at a loss. There was a zero percent chance that Abbie was merely a casual exhibitionist, idly strutting her stuff. No, whatever prompted this obviously had something to do with the Serenex. Trying to stop Taylor from ratting me out? That I understood, inasmuch as I understood anything about all this.

The hundred repetitions must have seared the message into her brain, and it looked like when Taylor tried to cross that line, Abbie had lost it. The programming must somehow have sunk in so deep as to be inviolate. If, prior to this afternoon, Taylor had announced her intention to go murder a bunch of schoolchildren, would Abbie have gone to these lengths to stop her? I will not let anyone find out what happened in Mr. Canon’s room  must have been shoved as far down as her most basic notions of right and wrong. If not deeper.

As for why she was acting like Taylor was insane not to be happily flashing me her boobs… I was at a loss. Yes, I’d made Taylor take her clothes off, make that video, but I hadn’t done anything improper with Abbie. Aside from looking at her semi-nude selfies. And drugging her. And brainwashing her. But you didn’t turn her into an exhibitionist , I feebly consoled myself. But as she doubled down again and again against Taylor’s exasperated accusations, even her repetition of phrasing made it clear something had sunk in there.

I hadn’t done – couldn’t have done – anything inappropriate to them. Their tits, their asses, were mine to ogle. That she wanted to be my fantasy slut – words she used over and over. Even called herself a sex object, insisted she felt lucky to be with me.

That whole afternoon had been such a wild ride that I couldn’t recall any of where those exact things had come from, but something obviously had come up. Taylor had said something, hadn’t she, some sarcastic comment about how I thought of my female students as sex objects? I wasn’t sure. Yet tons of other things that had been said obviously hadn’t sunk in, so why had those?

It would seem shoving untested mind-altering chemicals into people’s mouths wasn’t the most exact science.

“All right, all right, that’s enough,” I said at last, beginning to feel like they’d go back and forth at one another all night if I didn’t intervene. “Both of you have a seat, and let’s start looking forward instead of backward. Whatever happened, happened, and we can’t undo it, so… we… uh…”

Abbie looked perplexed at why I’d stopped talking. “What?”

“Abbie, you’re sitting on my lap.”

“Yeah…? Oh. Gotcha. Sorry, new to this.” She hopped up.

“New to…?” But then her shorts were off. I hadn’t even had time to savor that broad, gorgeous booty, clad only in black cotton trimmed with white lace, bent over within easy grasping distance and offering an unspoken offer to do precisely that, before it was back on my lap, squirming into position. Or maybe just giving me a subtle lap dance.

I should  make her get up. Get dressed. Sit by Taylor on the love seat. But if I did, then she… then, she, um…

I gave up trying to rationalize her away, and accepted that I was going to let this happen. It was too incredible not to. But I wasn’t going to touch her. That, ah, wouldn’t be right. (Would it…?)

Time to return to the real problem here.

“Ahem. So yes. Taylor, I recognize you’re upset, that you’re much more upset than the Serenex is letting you be right this moment. I understand. But we have to accept the world as it is, not as we would like it to be, and right here, right now, in the real world, this is where we are.” Somehow.

“In your living room with my mind-fucked sister curled up naked on your lap, you fucking pig,” Taylor said casually, crossing her legs and studying her nails. It remained just a little off-putting how the feelings were still there, but even her body language wouldn’t put all those feelings into practice beyond a feisty tone and a snotty expression.

“She’s not going to let it go. We should kill her,” murmured Abbie into my ear. Taylor stiffened, but only a little.

“That’s not a funny joke, Abbie. Drugged or no, we’re not going to terrify her any more than we already have.” Damn, I hoped she’d been joking. She had to be.

“And yes,” I continued, redirecting my attention to Taylor. “But I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean for any  of this to happen. But it did.”

“It sure the fuck did. And how did it, exactly?”

“Excuse me?”

Taylor drummed her fingers on my end table, fingernails cl-cl-cl-clicking  rhythmically. “You had that shit already, right? And you obviously used it on me before today somehow, right? Looking back, no way I would have gone along with that stupid writing on the board bullshit, ignoring you creeping on me, if you hadn’t.”

For the third time, I forced Abbie’s fingers away from playing at my chest and back into her lap. “I did. I put it on that chapstick of yours, the one you pelted Jesse with, that you threw that fit over. You were going to be expelled, Taylor. I thought that maybe I could use that stuff to get you out of your own way and behave well enough to graduate. I did all this to help  you!”

She directed her eyes pointedly to the young woman squirming in my lap. “Wow. You’re a real hero, Mr. Canon. Shoe-in for teacher of the goddamn year. What a fucking guy.”

“I don’t know why you sound sarcastic about that,” purred Abbie as she rested her head on my shoulder, nuzzling her nose against my neck. I considered that allowing her to remain on my lap might not actually be worth the disruption to any effort to figure a way out of this, but then she started placing these little kisses, and my will to deny her washed away.

“So what do you propose we do then, Taylor?”

“Oh, I get a say in this now? I thought I was just playing the part of Drugged Out Kidnapping Victim Number Two in this scene of your little porno.” I didn’t take her bait and issue a retort, waiting until she answered my question. Or maybe I was only distracted by the way Abbie was fondling her breasts. “Well here’s a scenario. You let me go, and when this shit wears off, I’ll go to the hospital and tell them how you drugged me and how I need my blood tested. Then I’ll take that to the cops as proof so you can shove your little bullshit blackmail video up your soon-to-be-gang-raped-by-the-rest-of-the-D-block-boys ass. How’s that? Sound like a plan? Because it’s what’s going to happen.”

“See? Let me kill her,” whispered Abbie in my ear, pacifying the panic instinct her words invoked with a hand thrust between her thighs to stroke my cock through my slacks.

“I don’t think that’s a very productive suggestion,” I said. The words were meant for both of them separately. “Now Taylor, you have every right to be upset, but you have to believe that this was all an accident. I really did feel awful for what I did to you on Monday, and I was going to throw the canister away. That’s what I was doing when you walked back in and saw me with it. Then I panicked, sprayed you, and… here we are. But I promise, I will find a way to make this right.”

“You will? Because the naked girl in your lap trying to jack you off right in front of me makes me doubt your commitment to justice.”

Abbie licked, with delicious, agonizing slowness, up the length of my neck. The faintest of whimpers escaped her mouth, right into my ear, then somehow rushing right to my cock, skipping everything in between. It said that I could fuck her, right now, any way I wanted, right in front of her sister, that I could make another video of it, that she’d cooperate in any and every way I might dream of and that she would experience the most intense pleasure of her young life for the opportunity. My fantasy slut. Her pussy was already soaking through her panties, through my pants and underwear, and right into where she so clearly wanted it all to go. All I had to do was grant her permission.

I wouldn’t have to stop there, either. There was an obvious fix to this – figure out how I’d broken Abbie’s mind, then do the same to Taylor. I’d have both sisters on their knees, pleading for the privilege of sucking me off. They’d make out with each other for my viewing pleasure as they smashed their collective fifty pounds of tits together around my cock. Taylor would confess and apologize for every bitch thing she’d ever done to me as I exacted retribution on her pert young ass. And when she ran out of sins, Abbie would supply more from her sister’s lifetime of being a bully and a tease.

Cl-cl-cl-click.

I sighed, looking over to where Taylor sat, regarding her newly ensluttified sister wriggling around on my cock. No. As painful as it was to squelch that fantasy, Taylor was right. I’d already done some terrible things, but there was no uncrossing that line if I took this one step further. If I ever wanted to convince her I was capable of remorse, that I sincerely regretted what I’d let come to pass, I had to put a stop to this, right now.

“Abbie, no.” WHAT?! Are you INSANE?!  wailed my libido. “Taylor’s right. We have to stop.”

“Taylor’s right? Bullshit! Not like we can actually let her go now!” she whined.

And there was another way she was not going to be helping this discussion. “Tell you what, sweetie.” Taylor groaned at my affectionate term of address for her sibling. “Why don’t you go down and wait for me in my bedroom, OK? Let me deal with her, and when I’m done, I’ll come down and we’ll have ourselves some fun. OK?”

“But I wanna fuck you now ,” she whined, bouncing petulantly on my lap. If not for the dampened fabric separating us, those bounces would have granted her wish. “What kind of fantasy slut would I be if I make you wait? Haven’t you already waited to fuck a hot little student cunt long enough?”

A persuasive argument, admittedly, but my mind had been made up. “I know. But one thing at a time, OK? Get yourself nice and ready for me, and I’ll be down soon. It’s just down that hall, last door on the right.”

She looked where I pointed, frowning like I’d instructed her to march across the Sahara. Then her lips were on mine, tongue on mine, a firm hand clenching our faces together until at last she came up gasping. If I hadn’t spent all afternoon jacking off to what now seemed a pathetic imitation of this in Taylor’s video, I would have come in my pants from that kiss alone. I hadn’t even realized she’d been chewing gum, but suddenly there it was in my mouth with its flavor of fading cinnamon and Abbie Stern.

“Fine. But don’t keep me waiting.” She stood up, glared at Taylor. “And you just quit being a bitch. God, I can’t believe you won’t even take your shirt off for him.”

“Yeah, whatever you say, slut.”

“Cunt.”

“Easy cunt.”

“Soon to be satisfied cunt!” Abbie taunted from the doorway to my bedroom. Then it closed, and I heaved a sigh of… relief? Frustration? I don’t even know.

Taylor rolled her eyes. “So now that you’ve got my sister in your bed, juicing up in preparation for her hundredth performance of pretending to lose her virginity, what shall we discuss, hm? Any other fun plans for your weekend?”

I glanced down the hall. The door was indeed shut. Good. I made my way to the love seat and sat down next to Taylor. She’d only shuffled enough to barely let me squeeze in, so we were rather uncomfortably close. Whatever. Discomfort was going to be a big part of this, and for once, I was hardly even tempted to look down at those long legs and tightly encased boobs. Frankly, after Abbie’s little burlesque show, a fully clothed girl seemed a laughably inadequate source of temptation.

“I’m not going to do it,” I said in a low voice. “But she’s obviously been messed up a little, and we can’t have her getting in the way of you and I figuring this out. I’m truly, very sorry she did what she did to you. I never intended that. I’m sorry for what I  did to you. It was wrong.”

“Damn right it was wrong.”

I adjusted myself, eyeing the still-wet Serenex stain soaking into her shoulder mere inches away from me. Last thing I needed was to smear that on myself and have all three of us be compromised. “Now look. I really, really  don’t want to go to prison. You have to believe me when I say that when this all started out, I was trying to help you. I know I screwed up, but ask yourself this: if I’d really wanted things to go this way from the start, why wouldn’t I have done anything about it on Monday?

“Aside from staring at my ass, you mean.”

“Taylor, if staring at your ass was a crime, we’d have to lock up every man and boy at that school. It was inappropriate, yes. But remember when a week ago, you jumped on me, attacked me, clawed at my hand so hard it left scratches? Officer Barbour wanted to charge you. You could have gone to prison , Taylor.” A major embellishment, but not by so much. A necessary rhetorical deviation from the truth.

“Prison? For trying to get my  property back?”

“That’s assault, Taylor. And if you didn’t leave me black and blue, you have to realize that being attacked like that in your place of work… that can be traumatizing.” I saw I was losing her with this angle, probably rightly so, and shook my head. “Look, whatever. I’ll concede I put you through worse than you did me, all right? You win the victimization contest. But I mean to say, you did something bad to me, and I helped you out of suffering the consequences for it. Even tried to do you a favor after by making sure you graduate. Now I’m asking for you to do the same. Throw me a bone here, Taylor.”

“You turned my sister into your sugarbaby, and you think I’m going to roll over and let you get away with it?”

“First off, I’m not paying her anything, so I don’t think ‘sugarbaby’ applies. Second, we’re going to fix her. That’s the other thing I need help with, figuring out how she got to be the way she is so we can get her back to right.”

“That crazy bitch wasn’t ever ‘right,’ but I guess if we can get her back to normal … Maybe. I’m not saying I’ll drop everything. But if I could, yeah, that’s where we gotta start.”

I smiled. “Good. So first off, we need to figure out how we did it. The chemical is only supposed to force someone to calm down, as I’m sure you know since… yeah. It’s not supposed to do anything so severe as what happened to Abbie, though. Somehow, it affected the two of you differently. This afternoon I had both of you write the same message, you were both there in the classroom and heard me say the same things, yet–”

“Let me solve your little problem, professor. She drank the shit, and I just had it on my arm.”

“I was going to suggest that, if you’d let me finish,” I grumbled.

“Sure you were. I remembered the name, Serenex, and I googled it when we got home. Looked like it had worked on me like it was supposed to – like it is right now, you old prick. Shut down my resistance. But Abbie, she drank  the shit. I felt her tongue on my arm when you pushed her face into it. I got more on me, but I didn’t get any in  me. It has to be the difference.”

“I’m with you. But I didn’t put any in  you Monday, and it still imprinted the things which I requested of you doing our meeting. It stopped you from telling anybody. Made you apologize. Even seemed to make you actually be a halfway decent student for the rest of the week. ”

“Halfway? Fuck you, I behave myself in class.” She stopped, eyes narrowing at realizing she’d parroted what I’d made her write. “Because you told me to. See, you said you put it on my chapstick. You didn’t think smearing the poison on my lips might wind up making me swallow any, dumbass? Guess that’s why you aren’t teaching chemistry.”

“I… why yes, that would explain it, actually. You were much more acquiescent Monday – that was why I thought trying the same method on you again this afternoon would work the same. But it must do something different when you swallow it. Instead of shutting down the brain’s resistance to physical stimuli, it shut down its resistance to the mental as well. It let words and ideas push around the ideas already in your brain as easily as it let someone push you around physically.”

“Sure, because neuroscience works on metaphors, Dr. English Teacher. But still, yeah. Whatever actually happened, that’s gotta be the trick.” Taylor stroked her chin pensively. “So, what, we make her drink the stuff, then tell her you’re not her dream guy, she’s not a slut…” Her lips twisted for a moment. “Not your  slut, anyway. She was kind of a slut already, but for once we’ve found a problem that isn’t your fault.”

“That sounds like it might work. And we’re sure that’s all there was to it? She was still pretty out of it when you took her home. Did you perhaps say anything else to her?”

“What, trying to make this my fault?”

It was my turn for an eye roll. “Hey, you’re  the one who made some oh-so-cutting rejoinder about you two being sex objects to me, if I recall.”

“Fuck you, Canon. Anyway, no, she fell asleep in the car, and I just put her in bed and started figuring out how to get back at you. Then she woke up, I told her we needed to go to the hospital and why. That’s when she went all psycho on me.”

“And once again, I’m sorry. But good. At least we have a pretty good idea what we need to get out of there.”

“Yeah, well, here’s hoping shit comes out as easily as it got hammered in.” She glanced at the stain on her shoulder. “Not sure we can get it out of a shirt, much less out of Abbie’s brain.”

“Maybe we have her write it two hundred times?” I’d meant it as a joke, but maybe it shouldn’t be. “And for you, in the spirit of full restitution… I suppose we could try ending the compulsion to behave the way I want you to in class and let you go back to being your usual delightful self.”

“I’ll pass,” she responded immediately. “No offense, but I’d rather spend the next few weeks earning a nice Pleasure to Have In Class next to my A – and you bet your ass I’m getting an A – than have you fuck around with my head again.”

I nodded. “Fair enough, Taylor.”

There was a soft thud from the direction of the bedroom. Perhaps Abbie’s masturbating had gotten over-vigorous in her impatience for me to arrive and relieve her. Taylor wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, I’m never using chapstick again.”

“Once we’re done with Abbie, we’ll pour the rest of that crap into a hole in the ground and be done with it. Never again.”

She pivoted to face me, adjusting to sit cross-legged. The girl really did have a gift for finding ways to reveal her underwear. “Yeah? And how do we know you didn’t buy more of it?”

“Well for one, that one canister cost me almost ten grand, so no, I didn’t buy in bulk. And for two, if you think I want to put myself in this position ever again, you’re nowhere near as smart as I think you are.”

The compliment, however veiled, brought a thin smile to her lips. So maybe there is a merciful god watching over me if I really can talk my way out of this quagmire.  There could be no guarantee that Taylor wouldn’t change her mind, but right then, I’d have much rather finally done the right thing and take a risk than keep doing the wrong thing and keep hurting people.  

She nudged me – though very gently – with her elbow. “Flattery ain’t getting these clothes off again, Mr. C. Now come on, let’s go get the shit .”

“Oh, you mean this  shit?”

 Taylor and I turned as one. Standing there in the doorway to the kitchen and still wearing nothing but her panties, was Abbie. In her outstretched hand, being waved tauntingly at the two of us, was the Serenex. There was a cold look on her face, colder than the night air that had hardened her bare nipples to dagger points.

“Abbie? How–”

“I heard everything you fuckers were saying out here. Your shitty little plan. So I hopped out the window and came around through the garage. Did you really think I was just gonna sit back and fuck with my head like I’m some playdough playmate or some shit?”

Taylor snorted. “You did this afternoon.”

Her head bobbed defiantly, a caricature of sassy teenage girls everywhere. “Says you. But I ain’t never let somebody come along and try to change me, and I sure as shit ain’t about to now. I’m the queen of this muthafuckin’ castle, and you weak bitches ain’t shit.” She brandished the canister, aiming it directly at the two of us.

I thought I recognized some of her self-aggrandizing ranting from the captions on her pictures, especially the fully clothed but nevertheless highly sexualized ones that I suspected she shared on instagram and the like. Don’t hate ‘cause you ain’t , im hype 4 the human race , nonsense like that. In fact, I even recalled one that had read something like you can’t try to make me a copy of you because I’m the original . It had been set, seemingly without intended irony, around a very original shot of her making a duck face and flashing a sideways peace sign in her bathroom mirror with a filter that put cartoon deer antlers on her forehead. An arrangement which I was pretty sure had at one time represented half of all posts on instagram.

My snide judgments, however, weren’t going to have any effect in getting out of this without being sprayed by her, and who knows what might happen then. She really might try to do something terrible to Taylor. Trying not to imagine that gruesome fate, I slowly stood. “Abbie, come on. Let’s put that down and talk. All right? Just talk.”

“Like you talked to Satan's little helper over there? Yeah, that went great. Some talker you are, Mr. Canon.”

“It did go well, actually.” Taylor nodded along, though it was obvious she didn’t – couldn’t – share the full extent of my dread.

But Abbie looked entirely unconvinced, and if anything, her sister’s agreement with me seemed to make her grow more suspicious. I tried a new tactic. “Abbie, it’s me. Mr. Canon. You know I wouldn’t do anything inappropriate, right?”

Her arm lowered, but only a hair. “Right…”

“Good, that’s good. You’re my, um, good little fantasy slut.” Mercifully, Taylor neither laughed nor harangued my attempt at empathizing with the addled girl. “See, so you can trust me. We’re not going to change you. We’re going to un -change you. ”

“But… I don’t feel any different…” The younger Stern frowned, her eyes darting side to side. I was so nervous I could hardly notice her state of undress.

Taylor wisely sensed that her interference would only make things worse, and let me keep going. Cautiously, trying desperately to be as non-threatening as possible, I shuffled toward her in tiny, halting steps. “But you are. That stuff did some things to you, changed the way you think, and we – I – only want to make you yourself again. Make you right, the way you’re supposed to be.”

The arm lowered further. If she depressed the trigger now, it would hit me in the feet, if that. “So… you’re saying… I’m not right right now?”

“You’re not,” I said, inching closer. I could reach it now, but I didn’t want to make a sudden movement and alarm her. Reason was prevailing. “But I’ll help you. I’ll fix you.”

“You’ll fix me…?”

I smiled. “That’s right. Just give me the canister, Abbie, and I’ll fix you.”

She looked down at it, resolve crumbling . Thank god. If she’d used that shit, who knew what–

“Psych!” The stream hit me square in the forehead. I stumbled backward in surprise and alarm, swiping at it, but by then it was all over my face. Before I knew it I’d fallen backwards next to Taylor ( “hey, watch it lard-ass!” ) and…

and…

Well, crud. This is probably bad.

Abbie stood over the two of us, towering even with her slight stature and lack of footwear. She seemed a giant. Implacable. I knew, both intellectually and in my very soul, that there was nothing I could do to stop her. I tried to command myself to stand up. Just get up, take the canister, spray her back. I almost laughed. And while you’re at it, scale Everest, then flap your arms and fly your way back home.  My arms and legs couldn’t be bothered to move, couldn’t be convinced they were in danger.

Beside me, Taylor shook her head at my plight. “Nice going, Mr. Canon. Way to flex on her.”

“You know, Taylor? Just… shut up. For once in your miserable life, shut the ever-loving fuck all the way up.” That felt good to say. Man, I disliked that girl.

“Both of you shut up,” Abbie snapped. “God, if we were half this annoying, you should have slapped us right in our fucking mouths, Mr. C.”

I chose to ignore the threat. Well, not choose  so much as couldn’t oppose , and not ignore  so much as accept that she could do whatever she wanted to me . I should be panicking. Instead, I sighed the way I often did when a student was misbehaving. It was no doubt a sound Taylor knew well.

Abbie continued. “You know, that might have actually been hot. I had a huge crush on Mr. Kirzinger sophomore year. All kinds of crazy hot schoolgirl fantasies. I was super looking forward to acting them out with you, but then you have to go and wreck everything by conspiring with my bitch sister.” She grabbed Taylor’s wrist and pulled her off of the sofa; the girl landed on my living room floor with an indignant grunt. Then Abbie was on me once again, straddling my thigh, her pussy every bit as hot and as wet as it had been earlier.

If she decided to take my pants off and get to it, there was nothing I could do to stop her. Which was a pretty convenient excuse, considering how badly part of me wished for that very thing.

“Abbie, you’re not like this. Think! You didn’t want any of this before, did you? It’s that stuff in your hand! It turned you into something you never wanted to be.”

“We’re all changing, Mr. Canon. But I actually like  who I am.” The sentiment felt laughable, a holdover from this morning when she was just an insanely hot teenage girl with the accompanying goddess complex. Either Abbie wasn’t given to self-reflection, or the chemical reaction simply didn’t let her reject it despite it being nonsensical. Probably both.

Time to make one last ditch effort with my silver tongue. It had nearly talked Taylor into letting me off the hook; it might be able to work on her little sister, too. “All right, Abbie. That’s a good  thing. You should like yourself. I like you too. But can we maybe talk about this? I still want to help you.”

“No, you said you were gonna ‘fix’ me. But you can’t fix what ain’t broke.” She took my hands in hers. It was almost romantic for a moment, until she moved them around to rest on her ass. Fuck. It was so soft, so inviting. It flexed and relaxed as she slowly humped herself against me.

“Do I really need to be here for this?” asked Taylor, still on the floor behind Abbie.

“You are such a fucking prude, Tay. It’s Mr. Canon. Like he’d ever do anything inappropriate towards us.” She leaned closer, kissed me hard. I kept the gum this time, though. “But maybe you would if I asked real nice, huh?”

“Fuck him if you got to, Abbie, but for the love of god, at least let me leave the room first.”

Abbie looked back at Taylor’s petulant protests. “But if I let you leave, how is he going to be able to plaster your bitch face with his cum?”

My fingers sank into her ass like a hot scoop in a bucket of ice cream. I only realized after that I’d been trying to pull her onto my cock, willing our clothes out of the way so I could get on with it. But that kind of force wasn’t in me right then. A little squeeze was all I could muster. For the moment. Nevertheless, my blood was roaring in my ears so loud I barely heard Taylor’s indignant reply.

Not that she needed to. I wouldn’t come on Taylor’s face. Only in my fantasies.

Or if Abbie made me. Which she could.

“You like that, did you?” Abbie grinned, rubbing her nose on mine. “Yeah, well, get used to it. Your little fantasy sluts are here, and we ain’t going nowhere. Maybe it sounds cheesy, but… fuck, I feel so lucky you did to me like you did.”

With a surprisingly minute amount of squirming. she eased out of her panties. “Just tell me how you want it, Mr. C. Tell me your fantasy. I’ll do it. Be it. Whatever you want. Just tell me. I bet a man like you has a hundred fantasies about a slut like me. Just pick one.”

My eyes closed, searching for…

You’re in detention with me. It’s just the two of us. You’re complaining about how you want to go home so you can go on a date with your boyfriend, and you offer to let me punish you the old-fashioned way, just to get it over with.

No, not that. Maybe for…

It’s a rainy afternoon as I’m driving out of the lot. As I pull up to the stop sign on Elm, I see you walking, your clothes drenched and clingy. You approach my car and plead with me for a ride; it’s against the rules, but I can’t say no. As you settle into the back seat, you start changing out of those soggy clothes, and when you see me watching in the rear view mirror, you ask if I mind if you ride with me for a while, dry off. You’d be happy to wait at my place, if I want.

That wasn’t it either. Abbie’s massive tits pressed into my chest as I kept looking…

I’ve confiscated your chapstick. You could wait, or try talking it out, maybe even apologize, but no. It’s not about that. You make a move, throwing yourself on me, but that’s not what why. It’s because you’re a horny teen slut and you’ve wanted to be fucked by your teacher for so long you can’t stop yourself any more. It’s the excuse you’ve been waiting for, and you take it. Your first time with a man, prostituting yourself for a cheap tube of lip balm…

Nope. Nope nope nope. What was I looking … Oh yeah. Right.

“Abbie… this is wrong. I can’t stop you from doing what you want, but this isn’t what I want. So do what you gotta do, but know that I don’t consent. And I won’t.”

When my eyes opened, she was studying me from inches away, a wounded expression on her face. “Really? You really don’t want me?”

“It’s not about what I want,” I answered. “It’s what I’m willing to live with.”

“Really? You… you don’t even want to try it, just once, see how you like it?”

“No,” I lied. I wanted to fuck her more than I’d wanted almost anything else in my life. But it wouldn't be right to–

“Then open wide, mothafucka!” Her eyes flared wildly.

As she tugged my chin down with her thumb and spritzed into my open mouth, I had to admit she’d been right. Serenex really did taste awful.

What happened next, I couldn’t say 100%. I’d been black-out drunk a couple times in college, and it was about like that. The time was just… lost. I woke up in my own bed. Naked. It was still dark out. (Dark out again? No, my phone confirmed it was the same night, but now it was going on three in the morning.) After pulling on some clothes, I first confirmed that the Stern sisters’ car was gone. It was.

There was no telling what, if anything they’d done with me. I wasn’t sure if Abbie had made me take my clothes off, or if I’d done it myself. I did usually sleep that way, unless it was especially chilly out. The droplets in my shower and Old Spice scent on my body confirmed I’d showered at some point, which I also didn’t remember, much less have any inkling as to why. If Abbie had  taken advantage of me, it would only be poetic justice. Things had finally spiraled so far out of control that I might have actually gotten to live out one of my fantasies, and I didn’t even remember it. Other than a mild headache, there was no evidence the girls had ever come over tonight.

Was anything different about me? She’d said she had overheard our conversation, which meant she was in possession of the same knowledge we had in regards to the potency of Serenex ingestion. I racked my brain trying to think what sorts of things Abbie might have tried to do. There were the obvious temptations, but my bank account balance and the cash in my wallet were still there, along with my credit cards. (Not that a relatively new teacher with a mortgage and a penchant for blowing his savings on doomsday devices had much money, but to a high school student, it might seem a small fortune.)

So it hadn’t been money. Then what? Sex? Certainly a possibility, but I wasn’t sore and was still as passively horny as I’d been all week. There were no condoms in the trash, no signs a woman had tidied herself up after or the like. I ruled it unlikely, but possible. And even if she had fucked me, that wouldn’t have taken five hours. As turned on as I’d been, it might not have taken five minutes. So then what else had transpired in the missing time?

With all that had been done to Abbie’s brain yesterday, it was hard to guess what other motives were at the forefront of her mind. Not that whatever, if anything, she’d done would have had to be on impulse. She’d had hours with me out of it, no doubt wearing that some dopy, vacant stare she’d had under the same influence. Hours to think of what all she might like to do, to change about me. Oh god, and Taylor! Should it be comforting to think she’d almost certainly plugged our leak? Because it didn’t feel comforting. Not that I was any less resolved to prevent the previous afternoon’s events from going public, but that had been true of me before, nothing Abbie would have needed to adjust my thinking on. With that canister of Serenex, she could–

Oh, no . The canister!

I raced through the house, eyes darting frantically every which way for the little white container. If she still had that, people could be in serious danger! Those girls had been borderline sociopaths before they’d learned how to brainwash people, and there had been enough in there for a hundred more doses if the labeling was to be believed. Please let it be here. Please let her have been that careless, that stupid. But it was nowhere. Not in the living room where she’d used it on me, not dumped in the garage on their way out, not on the counters, not under the bathroom sink, not between the couch cushions. I even checked the refrigerator at one point, like they might have pranked me for when I woke up and went to pour a bowl of cereal.

But it was gone.

I sunk to my knees at the realization. I’d created a monster – an even worse  monster than she’d already been – and armed it with power mankind had never been meant to possess. In my hands, sure, it was little more than a teaching tool, but in hers? Damn it all to hell! I shouldn’t have been such a pussy. Instead of taking pity on my whiny bitch student, I should have just taken final and definitive charge of this whole fucking mess before I ever let them leave my classroom. My fist pounded down so hard I nearly broke the glass. I slumped over the coffee table, resting my head on my briefcase, imagining all the–

Hmm. My briefcase?

Oh, why not.

I opened the briefcase. There, tucked off to the side, right where I’d been keeping it all week, was the Serenex. I heaved a sigh of relief, but the sensation didn’t last long.

Beside the canister was a piece of paper covered in my handwriting. It was written on the back of a quiz from my third period. Guess Faruk wasn’t getting that back. It was two columns of small print that grew increasingly sloppy as the repetitions drew nearer to a hundred. The text was simplicity itself, five little words in a declarative sentence. Subject linking verb adverb article predicate nominative. Raw simplicity.

I am not a pussy.

I clutched it in my hands, staring. A deep red lipstick print was at the top of the page. Abbie’s color. The longer I looked, the stranger it seemed. Why would they have me write that? It was the sort of thing you’d have a pussy write, and I am not a pussy. I am so  not a pussy. Not at all. My fist clenched around the paper, crumpling it into a little ball. Pussy? Me?!  I am NOT a pussy!

“Oh, fuck…”

That comment was sparked by two realizations, the first being fairly obvious. She’d brainwashed me, all right. Decided I was a pussy and had me scribble my way to manhood. Which was ridiculous, because I am not  a pussy! Which was in turn confusing, because I was, or had been, even if now, I am not a… Crap. Those words. I am not a pussy. Once I’d thought them , they wouldn’t go away. It was the world’s catchiest jingle advertising my own masculinity and refusing to stop. Knowing what I knew about the Serenex, I was aware that intellectually the thought was new, and was false – except not false, not being a pussy was the truest thing about me – and there was no arguing with it. What could be more of a pussy move than deliberately, knowingly, trying to go back to being a pussy? And I am not…

Ugh.

The second realization, and perhaps more disturbing, came only as I tossed the ball of paper aside and saw the one beneath it. Eyes wide, I flipped past it to the next, and the next…

We’d been busy.