“I’ll explain exactly what we’re doing and why, and why we’d like you to help out,” the supposed doctor said. I was only there because my occasional fuck buddy Dana asked me to. It was her standoffish friend Carrie who apparently needed my help for something. “Carrie needs to essentially relive a tragic experience from her youth. When she was sixteen, she and her older sister were kidnapped by a group of young men. Carrie survived with fairly modest injuries, but her sister was tortured for days and finally murdered. She’s had a hard time adjusting to that. We’ve decided that for closure, she should experience something like what her sister went through.”

“You want me to kill her?” I asked.

“No, of course not. But we want you to re-enact the scene, this time with Carrie as the main victim. Dana has agreed to stand in as the lesser harmed witness.”

“That sounds kind of fake. She knows I’m not going to kill her, or even do real harm. Right?” I asked, looking at Carrie, sitting on the couch silently. “And again, why me?”

“The why you is simple. You happen to remind her of the main kidnapper. She knows she’s been rude to you. She hopes this will end that, and perhaps make it up to you.”

“Make it up? By pretending to kill her? And how do I do that anyway?”

“It’s more than that. The kidnapping and tortures were extremely sexual. Both girls were naked the whole time, and her sister was brutalized with rape and various types of sodomy the whole time. Naturally you would be free to do the same.”

“It still wouldn’t be real. I’m not doing anything really harmful, nor will I kill her. She knows that.”

“Ah, but she won’t know it. Or you. And she won’t be harmed as much as she thinks she is. I have a very select service that I rarely offer to my patients. It is a hypnosis program designed to maximize the feeling of realism. She won’t remember knowing you, or Dana, or any of the other men hired for this. She’ll feel far greater pain than is warranted for her actual injuries, and those will be kept fairly light by use of prop weapons. The sex, of course, will be real. There will be a very loose script, more like a series of milestones, that you’ll have to work through. The duration is flexible. Once you begin you won’t have to answer to her wishes. I’ll monitor the situation, but won’t interfere unless it’s absolutely necessary. You’ll be acting, but she won’t know it.”

“Interesting,” I said. “And you’re doing this too?” I asked Dana.

“Of course. She’s my best friend. But I won’t be suffering as much, and I’ll know what’s going on.”

“Oh no. To maintain realism, you’ll have to be hypnotized as well,” the doctor said. “Lest you give it away.”

“Oh. I see. Okay,” Dana said.

“So can we count on you, Mr. Jarvis?”

“Sure. I suppose. I’ll want details first.”

“Of course. I have a handbook covering general issues, and a folder with specifics for this case. If you’d like to come by for an orientation next Thursday, we can begin on Friday.”

“Fine. I’ll be here,” I said. I picked up the reading materials and left. Over the next week and a half I thoroughly reviewed the material. It looked fairly hard core and brutal. There were a hundred ways to make the girl look and feel like she was being tortured half to death, all while leaving her fairly unharmed. The main thing was to terrify, humiliate, degrade, disgust, and generally destroy Carrie mentally and emotionally. I couldn’t say I saw the value in it myself, but that didn’t matter. It would be fun to pay the bitch back for her rude behavior over the years. I even got to play a bit with Dana too, though she was over at my place tied to my bed during the week and a half before the session began anyway.

“So you don’t mind being tied up for several days?” I asked her. She was spread-eagled and naked, tied to my bed at the time.

“I guess I will, since I won’t remember agreeing to it and I won’t recognize you. But it’s for a good cause. Carrie’s the one who’s really going to suffer. I never realized how bad it was what she’d witnessed until reading over the plan.”

“Well, I hope that doctor knows what he’s doing, because I’m going to be just as brutal and unforgiving as it says. I’ve met the other guys, and they’ll do the same.”

“And will you torment me as well?”

“I suppose. It has to look real. I’ll make sure you cry and feel fear.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Oh, I meant right now,” I said. I picked up the flogger from the night stand. I carried through on my promise, came on her face, and then left her there while I watched Bruce Lee movies until late in the evening.

The next day I went to the orientation session to learn about the hypnosis and the props. It turned out that Dana and Carrie would both be programmed to accept, as real, suggestions that any of us made during the torture. So if I said something like “time for a tit stabbing” before stabbing her with the prop knife that only left a half inch deep cut, she’d perceive it as being a deep knife wound on her breast.

The props were mostly blades. They had very sharp edges, but reached a rounded second edge that prevented them from cutting more than a certain depth, at least not without serious effort. They looked like real knives, rather than the rounded, smooth props with sharp protrusions they really were, unless someone looked really close. I could slash Carrie with one in a motion that would look like it left a deep gash, but depending on the knife, would actually cut between a millimeter and a quarter inch deep. There were a couple knives with fast retracting blades that would look like stabbing weapons, but couldn’t penetrate deep, or at all. There were also mean looking and painful whips that would actually do very little harm. There were a lot of piercings planned, and they would be mostly real. The abuse to her breasts would be quite severe in many ways.

The important thing was that it wasn’t entirely fake. Carrie would have to be injured for real. We had fake blood, but much would actually be hers. She would feel the injuries we inflicted on her, possibly feeling them much more than she otherwise would. And of course the long term bondage would be real. The sex would be real. The forced water sports and scat parts would be real. The sleep deprivation would be real. And until the hypnosis wore off, her lack of consent or knowledge about what was happening would be real. I didn’t see how this wouldn’t leave her even more messed up than before, but it was her choice.

The other two guys were professionals who worked for the doctor. They would do the kidnapping themselves, but quickly knock the girls out and bring them back to the arranged site. Once there, they would follow my lead, possibly giving me pointers out of earshot. Rick and Jimmy would play the part of dim witted, out of control rubes. By the time the kidnapping began, Carrie and Dana would have forgotten all about the plan, the doctor, and wouldn’t recognize me at all.

I was waiting when they arrived. The site was in a basement with several rooms. It was a real dive, and I guessed they had used it before. It smelled bad and needed a thorough cleaning and painting. Most importantly, there was no natural light at all. The girls would completely lose track of time here, and would be left in total darkness whenever we weren’t around to torment them. It would be pure hell, particularly for Carrie.

“They’re both still knocked out,” Jimmy said.

“Let’s have them naked and bound when they wake up,” I said. “And gagged too.” We quickly pulled their clothes off and tossed them aside. The girls could see us burn their clothes later. Dana ended up in the next room, but with a full view of Carrie. We just put her against a post and handcuffed her seated on the floor. She could squirm around or whatever, but she wasn’t going anywhere.  Her arms would remain behind her back and around the post for as long as she was here.

Carrie was different. We seated her on a chair. The seat of the chair had a sizeable hole cut out, so we wouldn’t have to remove her for bathroom breaks. She could go into the bucket beneath her. We tied her legs apart, with each ankle tied to the corresponding back leg. We wrapped duct tape around the ropes to keep them in place. Her hands were behind her and around the back. It was an iron frame chair, so it was sturdy. Duct tape again kept the ropes from accidentally loosening. Both girls were gagged with duct tape.

“They’re looking pretty clean,” Rick said.

“We’ll give Carrie a nice beating when she wakes up. Let’s just leave them here until they come around. Then we’ll start.”

We went upstairs to watch a Family Guy marathon. After some time we heard crying from the basement, but I decided to leave them for a while. The door to the basement was open, so there was a dim bit of light reaching them. Enough to make them know they were in someone’s cellar and in big trouble. Let the fear get to them.

Eventually we went down to look them over. Luckily Carrie was making more noise when she saw us. “Shut up!” I told her. She just whimpered more loudly, so I began playing the crazed kidnapper part. I punched her hard across her face. “I said shut your fucking mouth, cunt!” I shouted. I began slapping her head hard, knocking it back and forth between my hands. “Shut your fucking useless cunt hole! You got that? Calm down you dumb cunt!”

Of course she didn’t calm down at all. She only cried harder. “You boys want to convince her?” I asked. Like a couple drunken hillbillies on a goat, they were on her. That was the idea. They were pros, and could more easily not injure her during the crucial softening up stage. Between the biting, clawing, punching and stabbing, they soon had Carrie dreadfully bloodied, sweating, screaming, and in gross terror. Dana was screaming through her gag from the other room, but we ignored her for now. In her fear, Carrie pissed herself, and we had to move the bucket quickly to catch it. When she was done I splashed it all back in her face. Then I swung the metal bucket at her head, making a nice, loud bang when it hit.

“What’s your name, little slut girl?” I asked in mocking friendliness. She moaned into the gag, maybe trying to speak. “What’s that? I didn’t hear you? Little slut girl is your name? Wow, your parents must have hated you. Who’s your cunt whore friend?” She wailed into the tape but still nothing coherent came out. “Cunt whore? Little slut girl and cunt whore? What a pair you two make. No wonder you’re friends.” I suddenly landed a solid kick direct on her tits, knocking her and the chair backwards and toppling over. She was tied too tightly to fall off.

“I said what’s your fucking name! Answer me!” I shouted. Poor Carrie was shivering badly in terror and at the shock of what was happening to her. The thing is, despite all the hypnosis, she hadn’t forgotten who she was or what ordeal she’d suffered in the past with kidnapping and torture. She must have been flashing back hard by then.

We pulled the chair back up and Jimmy pulled the tape off, pulling at her black hair in the process. Her sobs were louder and more desperate once her mouth was clear. “Who are you, baby?” Jimmy asked. “What’s your pretty little name?”

“Carrie,” she whispered, barely able to say anything.

“Aw, her name is Carrie. How you feeling, Carrie? Having any fun?”

“I wanna hit her now,” Rick said, pacing excitedly. “Can I hit her now? Can I?”

“You can slash her titties if you want,” I said, giving him the shallowest knife. “Just a few times!” I warned when he nearly jumped on her with excitement. He quickly slashed the blade over her breasts, laughing hysterically while Carrie shrieked, her eyes bugged out in horror as her breasts were cut into. In fact they barely bled, but our treatment had already left her bleeding and her hypnosis made her think they were deeper cuts than they were.

After pulling Rick off her, I unzipped my fly and pulled my cock out. It had already been straining, and now it grew quickly. “Open your fucking mouth, Carrie whore,” I ordered her. “Do this right if you don’t want your fucking throat slashed like your little titties.” I shoved my cock into her mouth and began thrusting. “Use your tongue! I know you know how!” I yelled.

This was another advantage of the hypnosis. The doctor had explained that a post hypnotic suggestion would prevent her from trying to bite me. Not just now, but for the rest of her life. It was something he did with all hypnotized women, part of a public service as he explained it to me. Now Carrie was gagging on my cock as it hit the back of her throat, but couldn’t do anything about it. I grabbed her hair and jerked her head back and forth as I raped her mouth. Given that this was the first scene, I didn’t last too terribly long, and I shot a good, large load down her throat for the first burst, and then put the rest of in on her face to dribble down.

“Thanks babe,” I said in mock friendliness. “You were terrific.” I poked at her tits as I spoke. They were decent tits, 34 B according to her bra. “I really appreciate you doing that for me. I mean that. I think I’m falling in love with you, Carrie.” She whimpered in misery, just once. Then I punched her face. “Knock it off!” I shouted right into her face, leaning down close. “Don’t you fucking disrespect me like that! I’ll fucking kill your worthless piece of shit body right now!”

I still wasn’t sure how this was going to help Carrie get over her trauma, but that wasn’t really my problem. I let Jimmy and Rick go at her for a while. It was a bit intense for me. I went to the other room to look in on Dana. She was shaking badly, with tears in her eyes, having seen everything we had done to Carrie. “Are you going to be a good girl?” I asked her. She nodded quickly. I still had my softening cock out, and I wiped some lingering cum off onto her nose. “Good girl. Be nice, and we won’t have to hurt you. Be nice to us and maybe we’ll be nice to you.”

I left her there and went back to see about Carrie. She was pretty hysterical, trying to beg for mercy but hardly able to actually say anything. I called off Rick and Jimmy and held up a double edged fake knife in front of her eyes. “Calm down, whore!” I hissed at her. “Just knock it off or this is going up your fuck chute, got it?” I think she got it, but she didn’t calm down at all. No matter. Her legs were not spread all that wide, but I pushed her thighs apart enough to press the tip to her snatch and start sliding it in. This knife was barely sharp enough to scratch the skin, but once it was inside her I did see a tiny bit of blood coming out. Fake or not, it had to hurt like bloody murder to poor Carrie. She was staring down with her eyes wide and teary. Her whole body had tensed up. I pushed it all the way into her and then left it in place. Her fleshy thighs would keep it in place. It was specifically one of the items on the itinerary.

Fortunately we had the tape off her mouth because that was when Carrie chose to vomit. She only vomited on herself, and we just laughed. When she was done I had Rick tape her mouth again and we went upstairs, leaving the two girls in total darkness with only their sobs for company.

Upstairs we met with the doctor and went over the events so far. He seemed satisfied with everything and suggested now would be a good time to leave them alone for a few hours. That was fine with me as I had a few errands to run anyway. Besides, I like a nice bit of harsh bondage and rape play, but this was intense shit. I wanted, I needed, some downtime.

When I got back about four hours later, the doctor suggested I go down and stop Rick from sending Carrie over the edge. He’d been with her for the last half hour. I went down and found him carving letters on her belly. “What’s up with that, Shakespeare?” I asked.

“Look! Take a look!” he said, barely able to contain his laughter. All he had done was carve the words “eat me”, and crudely at that. He’d wiped the vomit from her belly and scraped it into the bucket where, I noticed, she’d taken a dump. Perfect. On to phase two.

“Are you hungry, Carrie?” I asked her, in mock friendliness. “Want to eat something?” She was shaking and sobbing too much to answer in words. She just shook her head. I pulled the tape off her mouth, but she still didn’t answer. “Don’t you ever fucking say no to me you piece of shit!” I shouted. Then I made myself laugh. “Piece of shit,” I said to Rick. “Get it? She’s a piece of shit and she’s about to eat shit. She is what she eats!”

Rick just about lost it laughing. Carrie lost it too. I wrapped a piece of rope around her head, resting above her nose, over her eyes, and tied it to the back of the chair so she was forced to face upward. I put gloves on and mixed her vomit and turds together before scooping some up and hovering over her face with my hand.

Her belly heaved, but only a bit of drool came out the sides of her mouth. “No!” I heard her managed to whine.

“Yes!” I said, keeping my voice extra syrupy in tone. “Yes, you get to recycle, baby! Isn’t that green of you?” I put my hand with the vile mixture by her mouth but she kept it clenched shut. I wiped my hand off on her face and then grabbed her right tit, twisting it clockwise as hard as I could manage. Carrie let out a huge scream of agony. “Don’t you fucking dare say no to me!” I shouted right in her ear. “I told you not to fucking do that you piece of shit! You do everything god damned thing I tell you to or I will start chopping you into little girl parts do you fucking got that you worthless whore?”

She wailed and nodded her head yes. I punched her several times in the face and belly before I took another lump of shit and vomit and pressed it to her mouth. Her jaw was trembling badly as she opened up to try to take it. I smeared it all over her lips and teeth, then held my hand at her throat until she managed to swallow it all. I then untied her head, and she vomited up the mixture right there.

“That’s it you stupid piece of filth!” I shouted at her. I landed a hard flying kick that knocked her and the chair over to the side. I was ready to rape her again. I pulled my cock out and knelt down at the base of the chair. With Carrie still tied to it, I pulled up the bottom so I could get my cock at her ass through the hole in the chair seat. I crudely pushed my way in, piercing her anus rudely. I had her flipped so her face was on the floor, in a puddle of her puke from earlier. I raped her savagely, thrusting hard and banging her head against the wall. Rick began whipping her titties with his belt. I was able to last much longer this time. When I was done I pissed on her, washing away some of the more excessive filth that covered her body.

We set the chair back upright away. Jimmy came in then, and we gathered both girls’ clothes into a metal wash basin. “You’re not leaving here alive, cunt!” I said. “You won’t need these ever again.” With that, I lit the pile of fire and burned up all their clothes. I’m not sure it had any real effect on Carrie by then, but Dana was still properly distressed. We’d barely touched her at all.

Rick and Jimmy were both eager to have their chance to rape Carrie, so I let them go at her. To all appearances, they looked even more out of control than I did, though they were actually in even better control. I watched them for a bit and then went to sit with Dana.

“Are you having fun, darling” I asked. She was still gagged and couldn’t answer. She just sobbed, her body heaving with them. There was a puddle of piss that she was sitting in. No matter. She could stay in her own filth for as long as the ordeal lasted. It wouldn’t matter. I leaned in and kissed her gently. “I don’t love her,” I said. “I love you. It’s you I’m going to take care of. You’ll be a good girl for me, won’t you?”

She nodded vigorously but obviously in great terror. I presented my cock to her mouth and pulled off the tape. “You’ll help me out, right girl?”

“Y-yes,” she said. She took my cock, covered in Carrie’s shit, and began trying to get me hard again. It wasn’t easy so soon, but after a while she got me hard again. I pulled her body away from the post, pulled her legs apart, and began fucking her right there. In the next room Carrie was screaming like a fire whistle, but Dana just sobbed a lot until I dumped a rather small amount of cum into her. I gagged her again and went upstairs to shower.

“Don’t worry about anything,” the doctor said when I had cleaned up. “Everything is going fine.”

“Glad to hear it. Will this last much longer? It’s not really all that fun for me.”

“Oh, I think a week of this should do it. You don’t have to be down there all the time, of course. The therapy is for Carrie, but we don’t want to create a new patient here. As long as you’re the alpha male when you are there, Rick and Jimmy can handle most things.”

“That might be for the best.”

I made one brief visit later that day before bed. I tormented Carrie a bit and stabbed her a few times with the retracting blade. She believed it all.

The next couple days were much the same, with Carrie growing weaker and smellier all the time. Dana just sat there going into shock. I was the only one who paid her any attention at all. But it was time to change the plan. We set up a video camera in front of Carrie and began recording while she read off cue cards that we gave her.

“I am here because I am a whore,” she said, looking into the lens. It took twelve takes just to get her to say that much. “If you are seeing this, it’s because I am dead and my worthless body is rotting somewhere it won’t be found.”

That, ultimately, was all we could get her to say. No amount of beatings, cuttings, or other torture could get her to say more without breaking down. I didn’t see the point, but the doctor said it was similar to an event from the real kidnapping years before.

In fact, she wasn’t rotting or even very unhealthy. We’d been mixing in huge amounts of antibiotics with her foul shit and vomit mixtures, for both girls actually. The cuts weren’t deep, but they were real and we certainly didn’t want them getting infected.

The rooms were truly foul in the stench. It wasn’t hot down there. Not by a long shot. It was November, and the furnace had to struggle just to keep them above seventy. It was perfectly comfortable for me and the guys. Carrie and Dana, however, were stark naked and usually wet, so they were a bit chilled.

Carrie hadn’t once been released from her chair. When we wanted to fuck her cunt, we simply pulled her pelvis away and fucked it, leaving her ankles and wrists bound to the chair. Now we were going to scoop a lot of the vomit back into her anus with a funnel, but she needed to be upside down. Rather than release her, we decided for effect to get the entire chair hoisted up with her dangling from it. We had to tie more of her body down, but that was no problem. Once we got her hanging upside down with the funnel in her ass, we managed to pour about a gallon of shit, piss, cum, and puke into her guts. We poured some into her cunt as well, one of the few things that still got poor Carrie agitated and active after such long and horrible abuse. We put duct tape over each hole and then set her right side up again and let the mixtures sit for a while. The rumblings from Carrie’s gut told us her intestines weren’t feeling too good.

When we finally pulled the tape off, the contents came pouring out into the bucket, which we then emptied over her head. The tape still managed to take some of her pubic hair off with it. I had thought it would be too slimy to stick, but we’d washed down the area to make it stick to her skin. I pushed her down onto her back, parted her legs, and then began burning off her cunt hairs. She shrieked each time the little flames got down to her skin and went out.

I had an idea, and went into the other room to shave Dana’s cunt hair off. She was still quite animated in her terror. I’d knocked her around a few times, but nothing serious. Now, with her freshly shaved pubic hairs in hand, I returned to Carrie and put them in her mouth before we tapped her mouth shut again.

That was it. I spent the next two days away from that scene. I could do everything they needed from me, but it all left me feeling revolted. When I returned feeling strong enough to continue, the doctor said they were extending it for a few days. I found both girls still restrained as I’d left them. Dana, I found, had been ignored completely. She was parched, so I let her drink my piss each time I had to go. She looked properly grateful, and I rewarded her good attitude with a gentle fuck.

Carrie was not so well off. Fake props or not, she was looking bad, very bad. She would require some medical attention, though the doctor was sure it wouldn’t be much. The damage was all quite superficial.

With renewed energy, and determined to keep my word to Dana, I got into the whole torment of our victim. We didn’t let up on her at all. It was certainly a testament to how uninjured she really was that she could keep going. Had the worst of our tortures been real she would have surely long since died. Instead, she was alive, awake, and even reasonably alert as we raped and abused her day after day after day. I think she wanted to die, maybe, but had no way to do it herself.

Finally, after eight days, the doctor told us to wrap it up. But even that wasn’t so simple. The three of us stood surrounding Carrie, looking down on her. “That’s enough of you, slut,” I said. “We’re tired of you and you stink, and you’re a rotten fuck, and you don’t love us and we’re sick of seeing your ugly face around here. Time to die.”

She still had enough energy to go to pieces emotionally. It was as much strength as she’d shown since the first day as we spent another hour or so raping and cutting and burning her flesh. After having our fill, I yanked her head back, and Jimmy brought the retracting prop knife down across her throat. “Say goodnight, you pathetic piece of girl shit!” I snarled at her. Her eyes bugged out at me as she began choking to death. I had to admire Jimmy’s skill with that motion. Even with the prop knife it was still too dangerous for me to make that action.

Of course Carrie wasn’t really dying or even choking. At the same time Jimmy faked slitting her throat, Rick injected her from behind with a hypodermic that gave her a choking sensation while making her lose consciousness. In a minute she was out, having believed that she was being murdered.

There was no reason to keep Dana there anymore. The therapy was over. I considered one last blowjob, but I was drained and she didn’t deserve that. I sat down next to her. “We won’t kill you, babe. You’re better than that.”

I took the tape off her mouth, but she was staring at Carrie’s limp form, too frightened to say anything. “Five,” I began, “Four, three, two, one, your memories are returned now, Dana. Wake up.”

The effect was electric. She sat bolt upright, looking around in shock. She finally rested her eyes on me but still said nothing. I unlocked the handcuffs that had been holding her in place. She mindlessly rubbed her swollen wrists. “How do you feel?” I asked her.

“I need a shower, please. And maybe a hamburger.”

“Sure. The shower is upstairs.” I helped her up and walked her up. I was about to turn and go but she grabbed me and pulled me into the shower with her. Once the hot water had begun its work, she planted a long, lingering kiss on me.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“I just feel it,” she said. “You were the only one to pay attention to me.”

Over an hour later we went downstairs to the kitchen, Dana still nude since we didn’t have any clothes for her, an unpleasant oversight. She’d forgotten to put them in the footlocker. I fixed her a nice lunch.

“What’s going on downstairs?” I asked Jimmy.

“Oh, it’s the aftermath portion,” he explained. “Carrie just woke up. We released her from the chair and turned off the hypnotic effects. She’ll have some time to wander around and absorb what’s happened to her. Then the doc will have a long talk with her. I’ve seen plenty of these sessions. I expect it all went well.”

I still didn’t see how Carrie wouldn’t end up institutionalized after all that, but it wasn’t my problem. Some time later we heard the shower running, and long after that Carrie came down to the kitchen. Unlike Dana, she did have some real injuries, and it would take time for the cuts, blisters, and bruises to fade. She was fully dressed now, so I couldn’t see all of how she really looked.

“I just want to thank you all so very much,” she said. “Especially you,” she said to me.

“Me?”

“You handled that role perfectly. You looked just like the guy who killed my sister when you were down there. I thought he was back to finish the job.”

“Oh, well, you’re welcome.”

She paused, looking at Dana. “Why are you still naked?”

“I forgot to pack clothes,” Dana said. “Don’t worry, though. Martin will drive me home.”

“Good. Anyway, I sorry about how cold I’ve been to you over the years.”

“Um, don’t worry about it.”

“I promise that won’t happen again. I owe you big time. I’m finally over my long trauma.”

“Just like that?” Dana asked.

“Yeah, weird, isn’t it? All these years I was feeling guilt, wondering what my sister thought as she was murdered while I was treated rather mildly. Was she angry at me? Hurt that she had to suffer? But I realized, despite all the pain and agony and disgust, that I was at least glad that my suffering saved you from the same fate. I sort of made it worthwhile in an oddball way. I think I’m cured now and can go on with my life.”

“Okay, then. That’s good.”

“And sometime when you’re feeling like it, I’d like to come over and thank you properly, if you catch my drift.”

“Sure,” I answered. “But for now, I think Dana needs a lift. See you all around sometime.” We left, with me thinking maybe the quack doctor was on to something. Or else I’d lost my own mind and imagined that last few minutes.

Dana moved in with me the following week, declaring that she’d never felt safer than when I was her lord and master. And Carrie did come by to thank me, not just once but many times. The three of us had grand times reenacting far milder versions of that magical week that brought us all together.